The Table Podcast - Issues of God and Culture: Recent Episodes
Dallas Theological Seminary
The Table is a weekly podcast on topics related to God, Christianity, and cultural engagement brought to you by the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. The show features a variety of guests and is hosted by Dr. Darrell Bock, Bill Hendricks, Mikel Del Rosario and Kymberli Cook.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology for everyday life.
My name is Jeremiah Chandler, and I'm the guest host for today's episode through my internship here at The Hendricks Center.
Today, we're going to be talking about a topic that you may not be aware of, and that is we're going to talk about black dignity, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. You may be wondering what do those two things have to do with one another? But that's why we have Jamal Hopkins today, Dr. Jamal Hopkins and Kevin are here with me, to discuss this important topic that I think you'll find fascinating. So if it sounds like a weird question or a weird topic, stick with us and you'll find out why it's actually very important, it has to do a lot with Urban Apologetics.
So joining me today, as I mentioned, I have Dr. Jamal Hopkins, who's an Associate Professor of Christian Scriptures, and he's a Director of Black Church Studies at Baylor University, Truett Theological Seminary. And we have our very own Kevin Hawkins, who's an associate here at The Hendricks Center, and also a VP at Southern Bible Institute. Thank you both for joining me today.
Kevin Hawkins:
Thank you for having us.
Dr. Jamal Hopkins:
Yeah, great to be here.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Before we get into this topic around black dignity and what does that even mean, I also just want to ask, how did you guys get into this topic, and tell us a little bit about yourself as well. We can start with you, Dr. Hopkins.
Dr. Jamal Hopkins:
Well, yeah, no, I'm always eager to talk about black dignity, and I think just this conversation we're having today with your community, I'm really glad to be part of and addressing The Table Podcast community. But yeah, I think as we live, as we breathe, as persons of African descent, I think we're always wrestling with the question of black dignity. My area within biblical studies allows me to wrestle with that question, which often and unfortunately finds itself and finds its way in the conversation of what does it mean to be a person of faith, a Christian, and a person of African descent?
And so oftentimes those conversations are needing to be happened or occur, and so that's been kind of the impetus behind my studies. Probably not directly, because I was mostly interested in study of biblical studies, biblical theology, but just as a person of African descent, you have those conversations and our place within, not just those conversations, but even within the text, we find dignity, we find ourselves, we find value, we find kind of a re-education. I like to use a Bible scholar, the late Cain Hope Felder, kind of a historical recorrection, if you will. Those are kind of the ways that I find myself in this conversation.
Jeremiah Chandler:
And what's the work you do at Baylor University or at Truett?
Dr. Jamal Hopkins:
So I am the Director of the Black Church Studies program at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary. It's a new program, relatively new, but just kind of building out the Black Church Studies program via courses, course study programs, but also programs of events and the like. And I also teach Christian Scriptures primarily New Testament, although my background reaches into Old Testament, Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism, but I mainly teach Bible as associate professor, Christian Scriptures there.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Gotcha. Thank you. And Kevin, how about you?
Kevin Hawkins:
Yeah, well, for me it was a little bit different than Dr. Hopkins, he's a friend of mine and I appreciate seeing him here today. For me, it hit a little bit different because I grew up right here in Dallas, Texas, born and raised, and my dad's a pastor or a graduate of Dallas Seminary as well. So I'm a PK, and now I'm also pastoring and serving as a vice president over at Southern Bible Institute and College as well.
And so when I graduated high school, I started first getting some of this pushback on Christianity being a white man's religion, from the conscious community that I encountered at the school that I was attending, whether it was Dallas College, and then for a brief time over at University of Texas in Arlington. So that was kind of my first foray into this kind of conversation.
And then as I eventually graduated, and undergrad, and came over here to Dallas Seminary and getting back into the world, not having started my work in a academic setting yet, as a pastor and just talking to people, whether it's at my local gym or at the barbershop even, when I had hair. But you would have conversations, you would come in contact with people who were a part of the conscious community within the black community, and they're always trying to challenge the whiteness of Christianity, saying that I belong to a white man's religion.
And so having those conversations and trying to show that we are part of the story, and we are a part of the story, we are part of the text even. And so we could see that we belong into this narrative of Christianity that at times has been misunderstood within whether it's evangelicalism or within, to be honest with you, the black community or the conscious community of, which is the subset of the black community as a whole. And so having those conversations as a pastor, also got me into this.
And then as I got into the field of academics, as I graduated my doctoral degree here, and working now over at Southern Bible, these conversations are happening with my students, and how they are to engage within this conversation in this particular area of interest as well. So that's kind of how I got into it. And then the Lord actually blessed me to meet Dr. Hopkins here, and we've become friends. And so he grew up at the church where I'm currently, I'm sorry, his wife grew up at the church where I'm currently pastoring. And so through that connection we have a relationship, and I've been able to bring him into some conferences that I've had, dealing with this particular topic.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Thanks Kevin. And thanks Jamal, Dr. Hopkins. You guys both said a couple of things I want preface for our listeners who may be unaware, Dr. Hopkins, you mentioned this kind of re-education or re-correction. And Kevin, you mentioned the idea of Christianity being the white man's religion. What exactly are we trying to re-correct, and what do we mean when we say Christianity is a white man's religion?
Kevin Hawkins:
Yeah. Doc?
Dr. Jamal Hopkins:
So the work of the New Testament scholars, if I can kind of set a kind of history with biblical scholarship within an African-American trajectory, if you will. So the first generation of African-American scholars that did Bible, I think of the name of Charles B. Cofer, who was the first black man, black person to finish with a PhD in the Old Testament at Boston University in the 1930s. And so he began to ask the question and wrestle with the question primarily in biblical studies that was predominantly interested in just looking at higher biblical criticisms and historical biblical criticism, but asking the question of the black presence in the Bible, is there a black presence in the Bible?
And so he began to ask these questions, being an Old Testament scholar looking through the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible text, he began to ask these questions and began to look at the geography of the land, of the people where they come from, and pulling out the very real presence of black, blackness within the text and Africanness within the biblical narratives within the Old Testament. So a second generation of Bible scholars, black biblical scholars, Cain Hope Felder, who was a New Testament professor at Howard University.
He began to take up this question of the black presence in the Bible, and that kind of spawned the study of the Afrocentric biblical interpretation, Afrocentric biblical hermeneutics. One of his classic texts, Stony the Road We Trod and Troubling Biblical Waters. And so he began to coin and use the term, a corrective historiography. So when you look in the biblical texts, when you find the geographical land of Africa, when you find Ethiopians, when you find Egyptians, we find Africa and persons of African descent within a biblical text. Well, a biblical criticism, primarily within a Eurocentric strand is interested in the historical biblical criticism, and they may not read that or may read past that or diminish that.
And so Cain Hope Felder's notion of a corrective historiography is about reading the history and correcting the misinterpretations or the ignored history within the biblical text, which includes Africa and people of African descent and blackness. And so that's what this notion of a corrective historiography is. It's not reading into the biblical text, it's not inventing something that's not part of the biblical tradition, but it's just merely reading the biblical text historically as it is, and identifying places of Africa and people of African descent. And that's what we identify as this notion of a corrective historiography that Cain Hope Felder so beautifully I think articulates, and something I think that needs to be part of a conversation within biblical studies to bring that back, if you will.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's good. Kevin, did you have anything to add? Or when people say Christianity is a white man's religion, I think we probably understand what they're trying to say or convey by that, but could you explain to the people listening?
Kevin Hawkins:
Sure. Yeah. When I have this conversation, I have a friend I grew up, I've known him since four years old, and he's now an atheist, for some of this very reason. And the interesting thing for me is as I talk to him, and he says he wants to find Africa in the Bible, I often say, "Well, you can't read the Bible without seeing Africa, you can't read the Bible without seeing African people. African people who are part of the story, African people who are very essential to the story as well."
We look at some of the early disciples, some of them are Africans, and so are people of African descent. We look at even some of, and new things that I've just learned even recently with some of the prophets, would be of African descent. And so now Dr. Jamal has been a very significant help for me within some of this conversation as well in giving me more material, but also too, a person that I read a few years back now, Dr. Esau McCaulley, has been someone that I've appreciated his writing in the book that he has, Reading While Black.
And you'll see that much of the conversation that I have with people who are challenging this or challenging the whiteness of Christianity, is from a reference point of they don't understand the history or the historical settings of the Bible, or the people that are in the Bible who are of African descent, who have major influence on the scriptures itself. So for me, it's very important to have these conversations and to show why it is important to especially deal with an African-American church that I pastor, African-American students that I lead over at the school at the college.
And when we're having these discussions, how to, one, defend the texts, not by as Dr. Jamal said, reading into it that it be Isegesis, but from an exegetical point just, "Hey, we're taking what's there in the text and exposing you to an African background that is there, not that we're painting everybody, and the Bible is black, because everybody in the Bible is not black, but be honest about the conversation of where blackness shows up in scripture.
But in having that conversation, whether it's at the church or especially as I engage younger men and having this conversation with them, it is important for them to be able to, again, like I said earlier, see themselves as a part of the story. Because once they leave high school, it is we're showing that the trends are showing that our people, our children are leaving the church, and part of the reason why they're leaving the church is because of the struggle of black identity, finding, or struggling with black dignity. And they are going into some radical areas.
Some of them are, whether it's a Hebrew Israelite or a Nation of Islam, and there they find black dignity, there they find black identity. I'm saying, "No, no, no, you can find black identity, black dignity in the scriptures, and you'll see that no dignity is really solid unless it's apart from Jesus Christ anyway." So I'm showing how they can tie that to the Christian narrative and the redemptive grace that we find within the scriptures that is sufficient, not just for white evangelicals, but we're all made in the image of God. So this isn't a imago dei issue that is at the heart of this for me. And so I am sharing with them and talking to them about that part and seeing themselves in the story.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Right. That's good. I think you both brought up really good points, and I think for our listener out there, for you listening, I want you guys to hear what Kevin and what Dr. Jamal are saying. It's not about us, like you said, trying to paint everything black, but what we are trying to say is, "Hey, we are seeing ourselves in the story, and we would just want to expose and highlight that fact, rather than thinking we had nothing to do with it, this religion really has nothing to do with me, and I can't see myself in it." Because when people believe that, like Kevin said, people are running off to other places that do affirm their identity, do give them dignity, and one, we just think that's sad because you can't find your identity outside of Christ, but also you're going for false reasons because you do play a role in that story.
Kevin Hawkins:
Correct.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's good. Dr. Hopkins… Oh yeah, go ahead.
Dr. Jamal Hopkins:
Something Dr. Kevin said, and I think this is really important to continue to bring out, and it's true, if one wants to find one's African heritage, one just simply needs to engage the biblical text, engage the Bible, read the Bible. And so I think there are these myths, these notions out there, the Bible, and Christianity is a white man's religion or the white man's book. And I think those are simply statements by those who have not read the Bible, or have explored Christianity.
And so I think of one particular text, this is a trilogy, Thomas Oden, who was a late and former professor at Drew University, who wrote a trilogy on the African, how Christianity was birthed out of an African seedbed. So essentially where his story, his theory picks up. So when you take the gospels, the canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Mark, we understand as being the first gospel because it's the shortest, and it's the oldest preserved manuscripts.
And so of course we don't have any autographed copies of any biblical texts, so there's no original writings that have been preserved. But we have manuscript, we have copies, and copies presuppose an autograph. Well, the earliest copies or earliest manuscripts of a gospel is Mark's gospel. And so within biblical studies, within gospel studies that suggest that there's a Mark and priority. So Mark comes first and Mark is a source in all of the material, within Mark's gospel we find in Luke and or Matthew.
And so that suggest that Mark is a source. So if Mark is a source, Mark is earliest, the manuscript, but we don't know who Mark is. And so when you begin to look at Markan studies, you ask the question, who is the author or the redactor? Redactor is just simply an editor, one who compiles or takes a number of sources and compiles a literary text, if you will, together. And that's what we have with the authors of the Gospels. And so Mark, we ask the question, who is Mark?
And so within Markan studies, and I take my students through this, and there are at least five or six different theories on who Mark could be. However, left out of that conversation and left out of that examination, is the African memory of Mark, that Mark, there is a tradition that suggested Mark was a patron saint of Northern Africa, born in Alexandria, or I'm sorry, born in Carinae or Libya, if you will, and died in Alexandria.
And there's this tradition, Tom Oden's text, the InterVarsity Christian Press publishing, of the African memory of Mark, talks about this, talks about the tradition of Mark being African-born and African-died in Alexandria. And how if this is the mark that is responsible for the first gospel, that means you have an African stamp upon the story of Jesus and the Gospels, that the other Gospels use as a source, and that even Paul and the New Testament writings use as a source.
And so his idea and his theory that there's an African memory of Mark and that Christianity was birthed out of an African seedbed, that deserves serious consideration, that deserves serious study, and serious exploration, that unfortunately we talk about black dignity. Unfortunately, it's been left out of a biblical scholarship in Christian studies, and that's a shame, that's a travesty, and that should be an indictment within a larger Western biblical theological scholarship.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Dr. Hopkins. Can you tell us a little bit more about your research with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and then how does that relate to this conversation around black dignity?
Dr. Jamal Hopkins:
So yeah, I'm so glad you asked that. So talked about Mark or Oden, by Tom Oden's theory. Tom Oden was a theologian, and he looks at early African Christianity. So his conversation starts with the Gospels and kind of moves up into the formation of early Christianity. Well, it's where that study begins. My study kind of ends or has an overlap because I go backwards within and into within the Judaic period. And within that Judaic period, I say this kind of nice neat bridge between the testaments, between the Old Testament and the New Testament we find the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is a body of literature that's preserved during the late second Temple period.
Because when you look at the biblical story, we have the first temple with David and Solomon, constructing and merged. That temple is destroyed during the Babylonian captivity. And we have a second temple that's emerging after the Babylonian captives are reemerging within Palestine in the emergence of a second temple. And so within the second temple or the late second temple period, which the New Testament gospels are a part, because the second temple is not destroyed until about 70 AD, or 70 Common Era.
So we have this late second temple period from about 100 before Christ to about 100 or 100 or 70, 68, after Christ where we find the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Dead Sea Scrolls preserve a literature from one of the Jewish sectarian communities that exist alongside and was contemporaneous with the Pharisees, the Sadducees that we read about in the New Testament. Well, there were another group that Jewish historians talk about called the Essenes. And the Essenes are the ones responsible for the writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Dead Sea Scrolls preserves Bible material, primarily Old Testament, nothing in the New Testament is preserved within the Dead Sea Scrolls.
So Bible material. We have pseudepigrapha material, which is kind of material that's falsely ascribed to older periods like Enochian literature, if you will. It's Second Temple writing, but it purports to be older. So that's, pseudepigrapha material was found within the Dead Sea Scrolls. And then you have sectarian writings like Calendrical documents, legal documents, how the community related to the Dead Sea Scrolls is to live and to govern themselves as a priestly community. And so that's essentially the makeup of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which was found in the 20th century, 1947 to 1956, out of 11 caves.
And if you hear even today in the news, as of late of 2021 there were potentially a 12 cave found, which was some maybe blank manuscripts or blank fragments and maybe some small fragments and some Hebrew Bible materials. Nothing significant, nothing significantly conclusive, but there's still archaeological searches and things like that for additional caves and additional material. But that's essentially what the Dead Sea Scrolls are. They're called Dead Sea Scrolls because they're in caves overlooking the Dead Sea in the Judean Desert or the Judean wilderness. Interestingly enough, the same Judean desert and wilderness that John the Baptist was baptizing people, as we read in the New Testament.
And so that's essentially the Dead Sea Scrolls. And so I got interested in that, honestly, just simply because I just fell in love with biblical Greek and biblical Hebrew and wanted to learn to read the Bible deeper. And the best way to read the Bible in a more deeper way is to be able to engage them in their biblical languages, Greek and Hebrew. And so that's how I kind of found my way into the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and of course, being a person of African descent, and this notion of black dignity, I'm asking certain questions that most non-black scholars are not asking. And so that kind of drove my interest into looking and exploring conversations, and what the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls says about black presence and black dignity.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Thank you. That's good. Kevin, real quick, I wanted to circle back to some of the questions you said you are facing when you're doing this kind of work in urban apologetics in this kind of sphere. What are some of the reasons that people are struggling with their identity as a black person within the context of Christianity?
Kevin Hawkins:
One of the things we're facing, you hear the word deconstruction happening within Christianity, and so it's happening within white and black Christians. People are leaving the church after they graduate high school, and it's happening within the Christian circles. So we have fewer Christians today than we did 10 years ago. As a church planner I've learned these things.
But one of the things that for me in having this conversation as to why, is being confronted and being challenged to sometimes things that you'll find that I would say are in the weeds of Christian scriptures. But people are asking these questions based upon other conversations that they're having as to it was, for instance, an example of it is, you'll say that the white slave owner forced you to become a Christian, without understanding that Christianity was within Africa, 15, 1600 years before it came to America.
And you'll find that many people who came here as slaves came here as believers already. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why you had some of the slave revolts was because of the fact that they also felt that they were made in the image of God and they had this black dignity, and being a Christian being made in the image of God, and also using some of the legal language of the day that was during the 16, 1700s, 1800s, and is the reason why you saw that people were having certain slave revolts because they would even use a language that said, "If you are Christian, then you should not be held in captivity."
And so using even some of that language of the day because they claimed Christ, and they claimed Christ as they came here on the slave ships even. So we have that conversation, we have that understanding, and many people don't know, because many people think that over in Africa they worship the ancestors, and I'm not saying none of those things were possible and none of those things happened, but there were quite a significant number of slaves that were brought from Africa on the transatlantic slave ships, and they came here as believers already.
And some of the rebellion that took place was a result of their understanding of who they are in Christ, that they are made in the image of God. And so that led to some of that, not all of it, but that led to some of the reasons why they had to revolt. So as I'm engaging younger men who are struggling with this identity issue, they don't know that, they know what they've been told by meaning of the conscious community, that it was the slave owners who beat Christianity into us. And I'm not saying none of that happened, and sometimes Christianity had been used with slave Bibles that had been used to keep people in subjection.
So some of that is true, I'm not denying any of that. But to also know a fuller and a broader story that we also came here, because you could find that Christianity was, as far as the Congo, it was in West Africa, Ethiopia, and in some of the Bantu tribes. And so you see that there was Christianity that had already spread throughout the African continent long before it came to the Americas. And so when we came here, we came here having already heard the message of Christ, and coming here was a part of that dignity transported over here that sometimes we're missing today. And so you don't hear that story.
And oftentimes in having conversations, you're hearing people who are uninformed about the historical Christian seedbed of Africa, a African seedbed that Dr. Jamal talked about so eloquently. And so those are the conversations I'm having with younger men, and particularly who I think are the biggest group of people within the African community that are struggling with black identity and black dignity. And so helping them understand that story, helping them understand a little bit more of their origins, I think would help bring them back to understanding a healthy view of themselves and who they truly are in Christ, as they see themselves historically coming over here from Africa and historically finding themselves again in the biblical narrative.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Right. That's good. And I think, Kevin, you're making a lot of good points that I want to draw out for you listening, because what you're saying is the response, or this is a topic because there was some type of lack in these people when they're experiencing a certain kind of Christianity, and they're not recognizing themselves and the story, or whether because they're uninformed, or what I think too, it's how it's being packaged to them. They're not rejecting Christianity I think they're just rejecting how it's being presented, and how it's presented to them is, "I'm not included in this story."
Kevin Hawkins:
Correct. Yeah. And you can go to, we were renting when I planted the church over in Lancaster over 20 years ago. We were renting from at First Baptist Church Lancaster, and they were wonderful people, and I enjoyed the time, we had joint services from time to time. But in the baptistry, there is this picture of a white Jesus. And I often hear people get caught up into the fact that, "Well, what color? I mean, what does it matter what color he was?" And oftentimes in the black community, we'll say, "Well, it doesn't really matter." And then you hear people say that in the white community as well. But if it doesn't matter, why do we constantly see a photo of a white Jesus?
I shared this at a conference here recently that Dr. Jamal was at, several years ago on when she was working at Fox News, Megyn kelly, made the comment, she was talking about Santa Claus being a white man. And then she said in the same breath that Jesus is a historical man as well who was also a white man. Well, if you, either one of two things is true about that conversation, about this statement. Either she's ignorant or she's lying. And that may be a strong statement, a strong word to say. But the reason why I say that's important is because of the fact that she was promoting this same historical narrative that we've had in the West within Western Christianity for so long that Jesus is a white man.
And she reported that to be a true statement. And this is why it is significant for us to understand that what she said was historically and factually wrong. And again, I would attribute it to her ignorance of that. I don't know her, I've never met her. I'm not trying to say she was a evil person in saying that, but she was wrong factually. But that narrative is out there. Fox News is one of the biggest news giants in the industry. And so that narrative went forward. And you have a lot of people who would identify as Christians who would say she's right. And I'm saying just look at the historical fact, where was Israel located?
It's not located in Europe. It's located on the northeastern portion of Africa. And in between that and Egypt, another historically black nation. And so you have to deal with those conversations and that reality that many of our people are hearing consistently that, and they see consistently this image of Jesus Christ being a European or a Caucasian man. And we have to set the record straight in that conversation. One of the things that Dr. Hopkins brought up when I first met him was, back to the Dead Sea Scrolls, was even how they were buried was influenced by an African heritage and African root. Am I correct in saying that, doctor?
Dr. Jamal Hopkins:
Oh, yeah.
Kevin Hawkins:
And so I appreciated that. That was the first time I had ever heard that. And so he and I connected from that day when I had him actually do this at our church. So if you would elaborate on that some, doc.
Dr. Jamal Hopkins:
So when you look at the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls or the related site where the Dead Sea Scrolls are found, a site called Khirbet Qumran, the area of Qumran, which overlooks, well the caves overlook the site where the people were believed to have been related to the content was found in the caves, the Dead Sea Scrolls. And so as we look at the site, Qumran, and we look at what arcaeology has revealed within their cemeteries, we see that those cemetery remains, the skeletal remains are buried in such a way where they're covered with rocks.
So if you look at kind of Jewish history and the way persons were buried, they were buried within tombs, and they were buried within, so they would be laid in a stone box, a sepulture or something like that, and placed within a tomb where you could lay an entire family, and you walk out of that tomb and you cover it with a rock. So if you go to Israel, you'll see these tombs. If you go to Greece, if you go to the ancient Nereids, you see these kinds of tombs. Well, within Northern Africa, particularly with Egypt, the way they buried bodies, if it wasn't a Pharaoh, they would bury them, cover them with rocks, not with dirt, but they would lay the body and then they would cover that body with rocks. That was very distinctive Egyptian, common burial custom.
And that's what you find at Qumran among the people that are believed to have been related to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which suggests that there is an influence, an Egyptian or a Northern African influence here at Qumran with these people and within the Dead Sea Scrolls. And or you have Egyptians possibly at Qumran. And the reason why I say Egyptians possibly at Qumran, because when you look at the story and you look at the history, the way that the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls describe themselves, they describe themselves as the sons of Zadok, B'nei Zadakim, Hebrew. Sons of Zadok. Zadok was the priest during the time of Solomon. David, King Solomon.
And so they describe themselves as the sons of Zadok, the priests during the Biblical times. And so we find a community of Zadok priests and a Zadok temple in Northern Africa around the late, I'd say mid to late second century, around 150, 160. And so you begin to pull all this together. We go back to Matthew chapter two when Jesus, his father Joseph in the dream, Herod wants to destroy these Jewish male-born children, two years old and under. The angel of the Lord tells Joseph to go to Africa, to Egypt, to hide from Herod. Well, if you're going somewhere to hide, then there likely is a community there to receive you. It just kind of makes sense.
Well, it just so happens, the fact is there is a Jewish community within Northern Africa, within Egypt, and there is a temple that was found archaeologically unearthed in Leontopolis, Egypt, which is the northern part of Egypt. Likely this is the same community that remnants of were interacted with are known to Jesus and Joseph's father. So there's these connections here, and I think archaeology kind of bears that out and makes these connections and points these dots. So as we're reading the biblical texts, we have a kind of three-dimensional reality of putting the history together with the archeology, with the practices and the customs of the people.
And like Dr. Kevin said, we look at the proximity, geographic proximity from Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine to Egypt. It's very close, much closer than Egypt, Palestine is to Europe. So the question, is the Bible, is Christianity, or is even Judaism white men's religion? Well, I think we have to not just read the biblical text, but also look at the geographic area in the land and the spatial, the dispositional space, if you will. So those are important factors when I think when reading the question and forming and when one forms one's theology to really be well-informed, just kind of all around.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Right. That's good. And I want to go back to what you had mentioned, Kevin, about kind of just how Christianity is presented or Jesus specifically portrayed in the media. And I think what happens is it gets, because I want to say there's nothing wrong with you having a white Jesus as long as you're not trying to pose this as a historical fact or historical truth. But I want to also say, because I think there is in different traditions in history, there's depictions of Jesus in different ethnicities.
So it's not the white Jesus per se, but it's the fact that he gets lumped into ideas of racism in this country and that ideas of black, that blackness was associated with something negative, and degrading and demeaning. And so what I say is, white Jesus, nothing wrong with it if that's what you want to have, but it's been used as a tool. And so if you don't acknowledge it as it's a tool of weaponization or white supremacy or however you want to depict it.
But I want to get back into something, Dr. Hopkins, you had mentioned too when it comes to this idea around black dignity is because it gets lumped into this idea of when you see a white Jesus or when you see, you don't see yourself, it reinforces some of those negative stereotypes. And we know about the curse of ham, Dr. Hopkins, you talk about how can these negative depictions or ideas of when we don't see ourselves, things like the Curse of Ham, and then Psalm 1: 5, how do those things impact our dignity as black people?
Dr. Jamal Hopkins:
Yeah, well, just kind of going back with the depiction of Jesus as white, I think there's a theological statement being made with that portrayal. And this is something that Kevin talked about. I think that's important, and I'm hoping that he can flesh it out, because I love the way that he talks and has this conversation with this Megyn Kelly, which is interesting, if you look at a, I think it's a 1972 clip of All in the Family, the television series, All in the Family, where George Jefferson's brother is having a conversation with Archie Bunker, Archie Bunker makes the statement that Jesus is white, oh, that Santa is white, and that Jesus is white, and Archie Bunker's brothers. So it's this beautiful conversation where he's correcting this corrective historiography there.
But this idea that a white Jesus, a white Christ, what kind of theological statement is that making a whiteness, blackness within American, within Western context is social cultural? Could it be that the theological statement that's being made with the white depiction of Christ is that one's theology is informed socially, culturally. Socially, culturally, politically, so that the theology that we're getting is really kind of a social, cultural, political presentation, passed off as theology. So if the depiction, and I love the way you talked about that, Kevin, where the rejoinder is is that, well, why should it matter the color? Well, yeah, well, why should it matter the color? If it doesn't matter, then why are you continuing to present him as white? So I love that response. But yeah, I mean I love the way you fleshed that out.
Kevin Hawkins:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And there is something that he said at the conference that I had back in March, I think it was, in some of his other work, where when we see these images of Jesus depicted as a white man in media and where there's news or cinematography, there is a suturing effect that he used. I love that word, doc. So I've borrowed that word since then, but there's a suturing to the mind that happens. And maybe that's the reason why you have movements like Christian nationalism, which is Christian, but it is promoted that way.
And for me, and I know that we all bring something to the table, we all bring a little bit of our background to the table as well, and we are shaped, we're informed by our background, but as best we can, it should always be submitted to the Lordship of Christ, and look at the beauty that's within creation, within all of the ethnic groups, and recognize that that's a part of God's creative work. But never was one group supposed to be superior to the other. So when you go back to the question about the Curse of Ham, well, Noah, this is a misnomer. Noah didn't curse Ham, he cursed Canaan.
And so when we see that, now you can talk about how that was carried out within the Canaanites and all of that, and that whole relationship with Israel. But when we look at Cush and who many would say is kind of the father of black people, we would recognize that he's not a part of that curse. And on top of that, I love this too, that in Christ, all curses have been removed anyway, right? He was the curse for sin upon Calvary's cross. And so therefore, I'm looking at a person here and here, that we're all redeemed in the individuals, because we believe in Jesus Christ. So there is no curse that I'm up under.
Even the curse of sin has no impact on my life in such a way that I'm going to be eternally bound by it. We don't have to get into the flesh and all that. But the fact is that because of Christ I am a redeemed person, and that goes beyond skin color. But just know that, and it was being promoted for a long time, even here in America, that that was this curse of Ham, and therefore all black people are cursed. And that's just factually untrue again. I mean, that's not even in the text. Again, Noah cursed Canaan, not Ham.
And so it's just having that understanding I think also helps to rescue black men and young women who are in search of an identity, who are in search of their dignity. And again, I bring it back to that narrative that you are in the story. You are part of the story, not to exclude anyone else, but I'm saying. But you have an inheritance, a very rich inheritance right here that is found in the person in the work of Jesus Christ. And you see that right there in the biblical story that you can be proud of. And so you don't have to go in search of dignity and false movements, you can find your dignity right there in the scriptures right there, and in the person in the work of Jesus Christ.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Amen. Dr. Hopkins, did you have anything you wanted to add to that?
Dr. Jamal Hopkins:
Yeah, so there's a couple of sources I think that are helpful. So David Daniels, who's been featured on the June 3 podcast, but he's a historian at McCormick Theological Seminary. He talks about, because I think it's important that the connection is made that you have persons of African descent in West Africa because those are predominantly the communities that came from Africa over to the new world, that were enslaved.
And so he makes some of these connections of those who were Christian, those who had Judeo-Christian identity within West Africa, because early African Christianity deals primarily Eastern Africa and Northern Africa. And so getting that Judeo-Christian faith community and the migration towards the west, whether you have the people of Western Africa now going over to the Americas, what is their faith? Well, David Daniels, Dr. David Daniels, he does some really important work in that area, looking at the kind of modern, kind of church historical, Western Africa Christian sensibility.
So I think that's a great resource to follow up, looking for works that David Daniels has done. Another source, evangelical historian, Mark Noll, I think about his classic work, Civil War as a Theological Crisis. I believe it was InterVarsity Press, Civil War as Theological Crisis. He talks about, because when you talk about the curse of Ham, the so-called Curse of Ham, I call it the Noahaic, a curse, because it was Noah who cursed.
And so Mark Knoll Noll talks about in his work Civil War as a Theological Crisis that as much as slavery was about economics, and it was more important about who controlled the meaning of the Bible and pulpits across America. One of the sources that was used in perpetuating the myth of black curse and black kind of servitude was, and he mentions this rabbi, Rabbi Rafal, who was going around throughout America, proclaiming and reinterpreting or conflating, the Genesis 9: 18-27, talking about the so-called Curse of Ham.
And so when I say conflation, biblical conflation is within this idea of biblical criticism that says, or that takes one particular biblical passage, which has its own context that deserves to be fleshed out, but it takes this one passage and marries it with another passage and creates a whole new context, kind of ignoring the context that these passages have in themselves. And that's biblical conflation. And so this whole curse of blackness and Curse of Ham is part of this biblical conflation, because nowhere within the curse does it mention color, but somehow and the way, and now we're having, and we're bringing in rabbinic literature. Rabbinic literature, whether it be Mishnah, the Tannaitic literature from the Amoraic period, Jewish rabbinic literature, legal tech, they're attempting to try to fill in the gaps.
They're attempting to try to interpret, answer questions that may be out there that the biblical text doesn't explicitly deal with. And so these rabbinic writings, when they take this Genesis 9: 18-27, there's where you begin to see kind of this Curse on Ham, but they also add this kind of blackness because now within the Genesis 9: 18-27 interpretation, Genesis 4 is kind of merged or conflated with this within the rabbinic writings, and blackness is now married with Cain, who murdered his son, Abel.
And the curse that was placed upon Cain, according to these rabbinic writings and these rabbinic reinterpretations, the curse and the mark that was placed upon Cain was a blackening of the skin. This is what these Genesis rabbinic commentaries talk about, these rabbinic writings talk about, talking about how when Cain realized that he was cursed, he looked up to the sky, and hell and rain beat upon his face and blackened his skin. This is what the rabbinic writings say, interpreting Genesis 9 and Genesis 4. But they also says, because Ham twisted his neck to look upon my misfortune, I shall twist his hair in kinks.
And so you have all of these colorful interpretations that the rabbinic writings are attempting to talk, or to try to make sense of Genesis 9: 18-17. But when you ask the question, where does rabbinic literature come? It comes from the 3rd to about 5th, the 8th century after Christ. So it stands outside of the biblical witness, the biblical tradition. We talk about the biblical tradition, we talk about the biblical books from the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, from the New Testament. And the New Testament writings roughly end around the first century, 90 if we're talking about Johannine epistles or the Gospel of John, extending out that long.
And so we have within this first century, after Christ where the New Testament writings end. Well, rabbinic literature picks up some two centuries after. And so their interpretations aren't authoritative in a sense that the biblical text is authoritative. Well, the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is contemporaneous with the New Testament and the biblical text, because it roughly ends around 70 AD. So it's squarely within the biblical period of its writing. Within one of the pseudepigrapha writings from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Jubilees, it talks about the narrative of the Noahic curse.
And in one particular passage, it talks about how when Ham found out what his father, Noah, had done in cursing Canaan, it disgusted him. This is what the narrative says, the Dead Sea Scrolls speaking on Genesis 9: 18-27. And it says when Ham found out that his father cursed his son, he took his son and departed and left his father. Well, then there's another passage within the Book of Jubilees, a pseudepigraphal writing from the Dead Sea Scrolls, that talked about when Noah found out what had happened, he could not curse Ham because God had already blessed the sons of Noah. So now we get into this whole blessing and curse principle, "Whom God blesses no one can curse."
And so Ham is not cursed. Ham could never be cursed because God had already blessed the sons of Noah. So that's what the Dead Sea Scrolls affords, and speaking about this Genesis 9 interpretation, which is very vastly different from the rabbinic interpretations of the later periods, third century, that stand outside of the biblical text. And so the Dead Sea Scrolls supports the biblical witness, supports the biblical interpretation of who was cursed.
And so it very much supports and suggests that Ham was not only not cursed, Ham was blessed because God blessed him. And that's according to the biblical text, and it's also according to a book of Jubilees, which is pseudepigrapha, which is the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is contemporaneous with the biblical writing. And so that's what makes the Dead Sea Scrolls very important when you're reading this alongside, and to really try to make sense of helping us to understand really what took place. Because if we have a community of the scenes, and they're interpreting or they're writing these, it means that there is a tradition that's understood.
We're so many centuries and generations away from the biblical text, we just take stabs and we're guessing, and I think that's no less the tradition we find within the rabbinic writings as well. They're taking a stab, they're taking a guess. But the Dead Sea Scrolls, they're not necessarily taking a stab or guess because they're very present, they're contemporaneous with what's going on during the period of biblical witness. So Dead Sea Scrolls are very important, in a number of other ways as well, because they also preserve the oldest Bible, the oldest Hebrew Bible version that exists on the planet.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's good. Thanks Dr. Hopkins. We're about out of time, but I just want to kind of summarize what I've been hearing in this conversation when it comes to the black dignity, and I think you tied it in well to the Dead Sea Scrolls, is that outside the Christian tradition, but also within sometimes the Christian tradition, there's this notion of, like you said, blackness is associated with cursing, associated with being inferior, servitude, and all the things of that nature.
And so the reason we have to talk about black dignity and point out our presence in the Bible, point out some of the contributions we made, point out Christianity's, that role Africa played is because of all those things you just mentioned, like Curse of ham and the portrayal of white Jesus, and what are the underlying assumptions that go into those kinds of ideas? And I think conversations like this help people of African descent, black people see, "Hey, I don't have to believe I'm inferior, I don't have to believe I don't have a role in this story. I can look at myself and also affirm people of all ethnicities and all nations, but also can say, hey, I have a role in this too."
And thus providing the imago dei. Because I think you hit the nail on the head, Kevin, this is an imago dei issue, this isn't a black issue, this isn't a white issue, this is about us affirming people made in the image of God. And so for you listening, I want you to take away from this conversation, not merely our emphasis on blackness and the role we play, but hey, there's people made in the image of God that have been made to believe that they are less than that.
Kevin Hawkins:
That's right.
Jeremiah Chandler:
So Dr. Hopkins, Kevin, thank you guys for joining me for this conversation.
Kevin Hawkins:
Thank you for having us.
Dr. Jamal Hopkins:
Thank you very much. Thanks.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Thank you guys. And thank you, our listener, for being with us.
If you liked this show, please leave a rating or a review, that helps us a lot. And we hope that you join us next time as we discuss issues of God and culture.
Dr. Darrell BockWelcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendrick Center at Dallas Theological Seminary and our topic today is urban ministry and cross-cultural ministry and our expert is Chris Brooks who is in Michigan by Skype. Good day Chris how you doing?Chris BrooksI'm doing good. I bring you greetings from the beautiful and peaceful city of Detroit, Michigan.Dr. Darrell BockWell, that's exciting. We are spanning the country to bring you this podcast.Chris BrooksFrom Dallas to Detroit, right.Dr. Darrell BockExactly right. Yeah, well you've got to begin with D; that's only thing that counts. Of course our last names begin with B so we got it rhymed and rocking and rolling the whole way.Chris BrooksThe alliteration is going.Dr. Darrell BockExactly right. Well Chris, it really is a pleasure to have you. You're campus Dean at Moody Theological Seminary Michigan campus.Chris BrooksThat's right.Dr. Darrell BockMost people think Moody is in Chicago, but it has an extension I take it in the Detroit area. Is that right?Chris BrooksThat's right. That's right, one of three extensions that we have around the country. Detroit is where I provide leadership.Dr. Darrell BockOkay. And then there is – I guess is it Seattle is one of the other sites? Am I right about that?Chris BrooksSpokane, Washington.Dr. Darrell BockSpokane, okay.Chris BrooksSpokane, Washington, yeah.Dr. Darrell BockAnd then you say there are three sites. Is Chicago the third or so another one besides those two?Chris BrooksYeah. Chicago, Spokane, Detroit.Dr. Darrell BockOkay, great. And you are a campus Dean there, but you also are host of a radio show called Equipped which is on the Moody radio network and it airs – does it air at different times in different parts of the country?Chris BrooksYeah, depending on the time zone you're in. So Central standard Time which is, again, our headquarters in Chicago; it's noon. It's a drive time talk show for lunch time on the Moody radio network, but we are across market so that folks can check out on our website to see the time in their local area.Dr. Darrell BockOkay. It sounds equipped. Now the question is, equipped for what? What are you equipping me for when I listen to the show?Chris BrooksYeah, so broadly it's a worldview show. We are looking at the intersection of Christ and culture. So we like to say it this way; we are equipping you to live, share, and defend your faith more effectively in culture. So apologetics, worldview, all grounded and rooted in a rich theology.Dr. Darrell BockThat's great. So you are in my business huh?Chris BrooksThat's right. We are fighting the good fight together.Dr. Darrell BockThat's good. Well, you're terrific ambassador for Christ and we're really excited to have you with this. Chris, talk a little bit about your pastoral experience before we talk about urban ministry a little bit. How did you, briefly; did you grow up in a Christian home and then your pastoral experience?Chris BrooksSo I got it honest Darrell. I'm a third-generation pastor, preacher of the gospel. My grandfather, my father, both here in Michigan represented Christ well and preached the gospel and so I caught the bug pretty early. While other folks were pursuing other pursuits, my heart and my passion was to be in my father's library helping him organize books, but my home has been Detroit and this is where my heart is.You know, Darrell, there's a lot that could be said about place in ministry, place in the gospel. I think it's important for us to know our gifts and talents, but it's also really important for us to know where God has called us to serve him. So Detroit is my home. Married here, born here, lived here, and ministered here. So 1998 is when I made my first step into formal pastoral ministry in this local church here called Detroit. I'm sorry, called Evangel Ministries in Detroit.
Dr. Darrell BockOkay.Chris BrooksDid the senior pastor since 2004.Dr. Darrell BockOkay, well that's quite a track record there. Where exactly do you minister in the Detroit area?Chris BrooksWe are on the northwest side of Detroit. So if you know our great city, the Northwest side of Detroit, Grand River Avenue, it's one of the historic thoroughfares in Detroit right about five minutes from downtown. So we like to think we are where the action is happening.Dr. Darrell BockAnd is this now an inner-city area of Detroit or is it that has evolved into – you know, in Dallas what we got in some places are places that were historically inner-city, but they are also being significantly renovated at the same time.Chris BrooksYeah, so can answer you in two ways.Dr. Darrell BockOkay.Chris BrooksFirst off I will answer you the way I would if I was talking to here in Detroit. It's the hood.Dr. Darrell BockOkay.Chris BrooksSo we're in the hood, but what you're talking about is what is broadly known as gentrification. So there are areas that have been gentrified in Detroit; downtown, what we call Midtown. There's another section called Techtown and we praise God for the sections of our city. We just did a church plant in Midtown which is kind of a gentrified cultural epicenter of our city. But now where we are housed in the Northwest section of Detroit is right in the hood. So we experience all the realities of urban ministry.Dr. Darrell BockOh, wow. Now how old is the church itself? Has it been there while?Chris BrooksWe were born in 1967; I'm the second pastor. The first pastor was here for about 36 years and I took over from there. So my predecessor, George Vogel, did a great job laying the foundation of Christ in this church and I'll try to take it further.Dr. Darrell BockSo the history of the church is rooted really and just after the – in the aftermath of the period of civil rights and that kind of thing in the country.Chris BrooksYeah, well if you know Detroit history, what marks Detroit more than anything; 1967 riots.Dr. Darrell BockRight.Chris BrooksIt really becomes a defining image nationally of our city as well as historically a turning point in our city. Our church was founded out of the riots. As a matter of fact, my predecessor was a Caucasian pastor who came to the city of Detroit from the suburbs and the first location for our church was a former Black Panthers headquarters.Dr. Darrell BockOh, wow.Chris BrooksSo picture that; a Caucasian pastor in a former Black Panther headquarters loving on the city, building a multicultural church. So we've been, in our DNA, multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial from the beginning, but as the demographics of the city changes has reflected in the composition of our church as well. We've never run from these issues, but yeah, we have a strong connection to the civil rights movement right here in our church.Dr. Darrell BockThat's amazing. Okay, let's talk about that a little bit because obviously the journey of the church is important to understanding the nature of your ministry. You said you started out multicultural. Have you been able to maintain that or has the demographics of the area impacted the nature of your church?Chris BrooksWell, I think that a church should always be committed to the demographics of its neighborhood. If you're reaching the people in your community, your congregation to be a reflection of that. So I will say this, that we have maintained that in our leadership. So in our leadership we've done a good job of maintaining diversity there within our congregation because we are ministering to this great city. It's reflected within the demographics of our congregation.So we are about 90 percent African-American, about 10 percent other; predominately white, but we have Latino, Hispanic within our congregation as well. But I will say because of our reach through media as you noted, radio media, we reach our region. So that will include a strong Middle Eastern demographic here is you know.
Dr. Darrell BockThat's right.Chris BrooksDetroit is home to about half a million Arab individuals as well as black, white, Hispanic, Latino. So with media we reach a broad section of our region, but our congregation is about 90 percent African-American.Dr. Darrell BockOkay. So let's talk a little bit about the challenges of cross-cultural ministry and also at the same time talk little bit about the nature of the African-American church because I suspect for many of our viewers they may or may not – or listeners, may not be familiar with the makeup of the African-American church and the peculiarities of it. That's an important part of the ministry that you're engaged in. So talk a little bit about the African-American community you are a part of and the distinctives of the church and what it offers people.Chris BrooksYou know, it's interesting because I wrote a book called Urban Apologetics where I try to unpack this Darrell, and one of the things that I will say is that one of the things we have to understand when we are doing ethnic minority ministry is that there is a soulfulness that says the truth must resonate not only with the head, but with the heart as well, with the soul as well. So I will say there is this flavor that comes along with ethnic minority ministry. In the African-American community also there is this connection, the strong connection to the struggle for personhood. The struggle for being respected as equal humans in our culture. The struggle for justice and social structures.So we live at the intersection as well. I think when we talk about cross-cultural ministry though, much of it Darrell, boils down to language. We have to understand that you meet individuals who can be bilingual ambassadors. Individuals who can speak to both groups. Kind of like what CS Lewis did; living in kind of the Oxbridge world of Oxford and Cambridge, but also in the Anglican Church. Being able to speak both as a churchman and as an academic so that when these groups met finally they could kind of hear one another's language.
Welcome in the same way I think that we need bridge builders who can speak the majority culture as well as be sensitive to the cultural realities of being an ethnic minority. I think that this is the call that God has given me.
Dr. Darrell BockYeah, it's real challenge of course because a lot of times ethnic minorities are not either understood or appreciated in some cases.Chris BrooksYeah.Dr. Darrell BockSo being able to do this well is really important. I'm going to ask you a question I asked Tony Evans when we had him on and we were talking about issues related to racial reconciliation. It's a little bit of a challenging question I think to lead off with early on, but it's an important question and it goes like this; what do I as a Caucasian need to hear from you as an African-American about life as an African-American in America that I might not want to hear?Chris BrooksYeah, I think that's a honest question. I think it's a really good question. I think what you may not want to hear is that so often the realities and the struggles of being black in America are very sanitized. So if you talk to the average person about the history of racial struggle in America you will get something like this; there was slavery, then Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, then there was Jim Crow, but Dr. King came and he made everything right and we are doing pretty good now.Things were a lot worse than that when you think about the atrocities of slavery. When you think about the terrors of Jim Crow. The best way for me describe it is, what would it be like if the terrorist group that you had to defend yourself from was your own government, your own country. For African-Americans, for much of our history in America, for large portion of our history in America, the group that we would label as ISIS, the group that terrorized us often times had the power to codify this type of discrimination into social structures.
I thank God there has been extreme improvement and I'm a product of that. I'm being able to sit in leadership roles and positions, but it has not come without intensive struggle. That's something I often don't hear by white brothers and sisters wanting to engage in. Often times the senses, can't we just look forward without looking back. I think it's important for us to be able to look back.
Then as we talk about right now, what we have to recognize is whenever the church has been honest about how racism, bias, discrimination has impacted social structures and we've addressed it we've done well. We've been able to bring a sense of healthy equality, but whenever we deny that prejudice, discrimination, racial bias can impact social structures, we don't address it and those structures go unchanged.
Dr. Darrell BockYeah, and one of the pictures I like to use is we are a little slow to recognize structural problems in our society. We are also a little slow to recognize the shrapnel damage that comes in the past that you start to pick up and deal with today.Chris BrooksYeah.Dr. Darrell BockLet me give you one example that I think people don't think enough about. That is one of the natural results of slavery and the breakup of African-American family units as they spread across the country was precisely that. That didn't necessarily operate in family units and so you had a culture that was used to functioning in some ways, forced to function, without family structure. So now you have problematic family structures in many communities that is a part of generations of things that have gone on in the past. That's part of the shrapnel.So when you say to the African-American community, you all should be doing better on family issues. There is an element of course in which that's true, but there's also an element in which there's been a huge contribution in which the past has contributed to where we are in the present. Fair?
Chris BrooksI agree. Yeah, and I would also say Dr. King, in his letter from Birmingham jail says this; that it's poor social analysis to look at symptoms without looking at causation. I think that often times we can look at statistics in the black community and say, man, you guys are doing bad in education or family or marital structure or economically without asking questions of causation. We should ask questions of causation and that will lead us back to better analysis of public policy, better analysis of the role of the church; more pertinent to our conversation.The role of the church in cities and communities; I think that leads to better analysis if we can have honest conversations, black-and-white, about the causal factors and not just brush over those things.
Dr. Darrell BockOkay, so let's talk a little bit about what it means to be a church located in the hood as you noted.Chris BrooksYeah.Dr. Darrell BockOne of the – let me ask the question this way; what are the challenges that are special to a church in your context that again, someone who might be used to a primarily Anglo experience in the church might not appreciate you have to deal with on a regular basis.Chris BrooksYeah, I guess the best way for me describe it Darrell is because it's almost easier to say the opposite, what's common, because of things that are different and unique are so – such a long list. But let me just say that; imagine working with an individual who has PTSD because they have experienced tremendous trauma from a horrific experience in their life.Now multiply the challenges of that across the community. Not only an entire neighborhood, but an entire section of the city. The reality is that the average person in my community has experienced tremendous trauma and we can get into a long list of the reasons why, but you have to build within that individual hope. Yet to bring mental and emotional stability before you can get into the work of some of the niceties of theological training programs and some of the other Christian educational things that we would love to do.
We have to start with the individual being restored through Christ and the inner man; this whole redemptive work. Then being build up emotionally, psychologically, and in a lot of ways, the economic realities of poverty and what that brings when you live in poverty all around you on a daily basis when you're walking by dilapidated buildings, overgrown fields, where crime is your reality. These are challenges that are presented to the urban minister that I believe are unique.
Dr. Darrell BockOkay, so let me just clear up one abbreviation that you used so people get it. I'm guessing, but PTSD I take it is posttraumatic syndrome disorderChris BrooksStress syndrome.Dr. Darrell BockDid I get that right?Chris BrooksYeah, right.Dr. Darrell BockOkay, so the point is people are living in a context in which they are operating out of shock in a variety of ways in terms of the way their life functions and so I imagine building trust is one of the first almost starting points in trying to minister to people. Get into the point where they don't look at you for, okay, are you have to me for how you can use or abuse me versus really relating to me as an individual.Chris BrooksYeah, and identifying with the struggle. Just being able to be sensitive and identify with the fact that they are living in a desert. You know, we call the cities that are under resourced urban deserts we might find that there is a lack of employment opportunities, healthcare opportunities, even fresh food opportunities. So we have to be able to identify with what it is like to wake up in that reality each and every day. And how do we minister to this individual a gospel that is holistic. That is not just theoretical in nature, but also deals with the practical realities of image bearing and Christ's ministry to the spiritual as well as the physical parts of the person.Dr. Darrell BockNow, I'm listening to you and I'm sure there are people listen to you and they go, okay, now how theologically conservative are you? You are pretty theologically conservative.Chris BrooksI am.Dr. Darrell BockSo you are trying to communicate really a balance about something that some people don't think initially might not go together and yet what I'm hearing you say is, if you care deeply about the person made in the image of God who is your neighbor, then these kinds of questions will be questions you will wrestle with.Chris BrooksYeah, I think so and I think that for a long time Darrell, the church wrestled with whether or not social concern and ministering to the physical nature of a person is in violation to the gospel. I don't think it is a violation to the gospel. We have plenty of examples of that in Matthew 25, Luke chapter 4; we can go deeper into a scriptural analysis of this, but what I am saying is that we don't need to compromise the truths of the gospel, the teachings of Christ, while at the same time acknowledging the fact that this person needs employment, this person needs food, this person needs to be able to be affirmed in their personhood.Dr. Darrell BockWell, obviously then, you are trying to build a community that has this interesting array of values, this primary commitment to the gospel on the one hand and yet a recognition that we are really in a work of community restoration in some ways.Chris BrooksYes. Yeah, we are. And we are in a work ultimately of being a part of the redemptive work of Christ in the lives of individuals. We do have to ask ourselves how is that contextualized. So part of this conversation that you and I are having is a question of contextualization. So if I'm going to reach this individual in Detroit or the south side of Chicago. Let's take that for example. That's been in the news for a while now. Imagine what it's like to have 60 or 70 shootings over a weekend and that's normal. To be in a community where the people are literally calling for the National Guard to come in to stop the violence. This is a – this is a context of what you have to, again, identify with the individuals that you are present in the gospel to.Dr. Darrell BockChris, let me ask you this question; you grown up in a solid home. You said you had three generation of preachers in your home. You obviously have been well educated. You had the opportunity to probably minister anywhere of choice and yet you've ended up deciding to minister in the hood. Why did you make that choice?Chris BrooksWell there's a lot of ways I can answer that. Obviously it's discerning what not only Christ has called me to do, but where he has called me to do it. But I'll also say, Darrell, that one of my deep convictions, biblical convictions, is that we who preach the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ have to demonstrate that it is effective in every ZIP Code, in every city. That a person shouldn't have to relocate to a nicer neighborhood or a nicer community in order to flourish in Christ. That's the joy I have about doing ministry in Detroit.I will also say this Darrell, I don't sense at all that I've given more to the city that the city has given to me. I'm very much a part of the city and I will say that the city has shaped me in ways. It has helped me to understand what the gospel looks like lived out in ways that are innumerable, immeasurable, and that I'm eternally grateful for. Doing ministry in an urban setting is so rewarding that I feel like an unofficial PR rep that we should be running into these communities and not running away from them.
Dr. Darrell BockThat's interesting. Let's talk about the church is able to walk into this space and minister. Obviously the gospel is important because it changes hearts.Chris BrooksYeah.Dr. Darrell BockIt does what I like to call radical heart transplant surgery; working from the inside out. So that's an important starting point. I would also think that the ability of the church to show that heart, to reflect that heart, is a very important part of how ministry gets done. Fair?Chris BrooksYeah, I think it's fair and I think it's important Darrell for us to make this distinction because we don't want to confuse what we are same with the social gospel which is very different. Listen, the gospel is not ultimately the redemption of social structures. It is the transferring of information and the regeneration of the human heart; the awakening of the human heart to Christ. So the message that we preach, the primary message we preach, is the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ and the implications of that.But we have to understand that the primary ethic of the church though, is love. This is the primary ethic of the church. So where we can live out our faith and love that is tangible; love being a verb, an action word; we should do that. We should search for communities where the love of Jesus Christ and the reality of the implications of the gospel of Jesus Christ are not being seen and we should bury ourselves in these communities and work until Christ returns.
Dr. Darrell BockYeah, there is a passage that I really love to talk about that I think shows this pretty powerfully because I think the whole discussion about the social gospel has kind of co-opted the integration of faith and life that the Scripture calls us to.Chris BrooksYeah.Dr. Darrell BockThat passages the unique passage to Luke. It's in Luke chapter 3 verses 10 to 14. It's when John the Baptist is being asked in effect, what does repentance look like? He just given the exhortation to make fruit worthy of repentance. If you look at that and agree, the verb, the Greek verb is the Greek verb _____ and when you – and the crowd responds by asking, what shall we do using the same verb question when it doesn't work in English because we say make fruit worthy of repentance, but then we ask, what shall we do? You can't tell it's the same verb. But in Greek, it's the same verb.If you think about repentance, you think about normally you would say, well, what relationship am I talking about when I think about repenting. Well, you would say, I'm thinking about my relationship to God. I'm thinking about how I walk with God, but in every one of the answers that John the Baptist gives, repentance expresses itself in how I treat my neighbor in one way or another.
Chris BrooksRight.Dr. Darrell BockYou know, given the clothes off my back, I don't abuse them. Those are the responses and there's nothing directly about your relationship to God. In that answer is actually a pretty profound point which is that if I'm relating properly to God and thinking about my relationship to him, then I'm also thinking about how I'm relating to others who are made in his image.Chris BrooksThat's right.Dr. Darrell BockAnd in the midst of that then, I free myself up to really live in a powerful way that thinks about how I'm interacting with my neighbor. I think that's the core ethic of the New Testament and the spirit and the person that's designed to move them in that direction so that they care about people whether they are in the community or not in the community. By which, I mean the church community.Chris BrooksYeah.Dr. Darrell BockSo I'm assuming that that's what you see.Chris BrooksThat's right. That's right. I think a lot of this falls up under the concept of coming grace. This sense that the Lord is good to all and that the rain falls on the just and unjust alike and we have to understand that the definition of success, I used to be a pulpit sniper Darrell. So I kind of measuring success by the blood of my sword if you will. I'm apologist and so the sense that my neighbor who believes or lives differently than me or is a non-Christian; the way I measure success is by how many of them I can defeat and conquer intellectually.But you know, that's not what the gospel compels us to do. It compels us to be able to leverage our influence to be able to win them to woo them to Christ. So being able to live out in a pluralistic society that is broken and falling, the love of Christ and the truth of Christ is our mission or mandate. To contextualize that is what this show is all about and to be up to live it out effectively requires wisdom and it requires a lot a conversation and communication.
Let me just say this Darrell too, that I don't want people to feel like, hey, I wasn't born or raised in the neighborhood or in that type of city are setting so that means I don't have anything to offer. Here's the thing, the great equalizer is the truth of the gospel. It is the – is the message of Christ and it is the recognition that we can improve schools, we can improve the job market, we can improve the economy to bring the best of capitalism and free market economic thinking has to bring to the city, but unless we see internal transformation, the heart being transformed, there will not be any sustainable change.
Dr. Darrell BockYeah, the way I like to say that is that if you want to know what good laws look like without changed hearts, read your Old Testament. That's why we got a new covenant.Chris BrooksThat's right.Dr. Darrell BockSo that's the boil down on that one. So let me read this passage to you because I always think this is striking. This is this passage from Luke 3. So the crowds were asking, what should we do? John answered them;"The person who has two tunics must share with the person who has none. The person who has food must do likewise. Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, teacher, what should we do? He told them, collect no more than you are required to. Then, some soldiers also asked him; and as for us, what should we do? He told them, take money from no one by violence or by false accusation and be content with your pay."
What's really interesting about this passage is you see a willingness to be generous. You see a hesitation to take advantage of someone because they are in a vulnerable position and you also see care to exercise one power and authority by not overstepping that power and authority and is trying to be sensitive to the people whom you – who you are supposed to soldier if I can say that way.
Chris BrooksRight _____ [crosstalk].Dr. Darrell BockThose are very relevant words I think to the situations often we find ourselves in the inner city.Chris BrooksI think so. And I would also say I think it's worth noting that what he does not do is make the mistake that liberation gospel makes in creating oppressor and oppressed groups. I think that that is the freshness, the uniqueness of Scripture is that it's able to talk about the sin of an individual heart without losing sight of the need for the individual to repent of their sins and understand that salvation is a very personal thing.The mistake of the social gospel or by extension a liberation gospel, is that you have an oppressor and oppressed groups and that your salvation or redemption comes in being a part of the group that is oppressed and that your eternal damnation is being a part of the group that is oppressor as if these are kind of eternal categories which cannot be changed. What the Scripture teaches us is that no matter what group we are a part of, we're all sinners and this is a quality. Biblical equality is that we are all sinners in need of his grace and that the salvation is offered at all.
Dr. Darrell BockYeah, and I think the other thing that gets lost in more social gospel or liberation approaches is that it almost creates, how do I say this? A Teflon coating on someone in what you said, I bear no responsibility for what's taken place.Chris BrooksYeah, because the need for salvation is of social structures only and not of the individual heart.Dr. Darrell BockThat's right.Chris BrooksWhich is why we had to preach repentance to the individual, that individuals must repent and turn to God. Let me just tell you, that message works no matter where you preach it.Dr. Darrell BockYeah, now I can imagine. So let's talk about how your church tackles this. What do you – obviously it's clear you're presenting the gospel message, but I imagine there are ways in which you structure the church to try and be of help to people who come out of very broken backgrounds.Chris BrooksThat's right.Dr. Darrell BockWhether we think about their access to education or the brokenness of their families. I mean, I know that one of the large, important statistics that is a part of the African-American reality is how few solid homes there are where there is a father and a mother. That a lot of kids grow up in some cases not even knowing either parent much less one of them.Chris BrooksYeah, so there's a lot of growth in this. There's a lot of hope as well. Let me just say this Darrell, that I think it's so important is that you asked me earlier what's unique about urban ministry, the church in a city like my own. One of the areas of uniqueness is that the church can't just be the church if you know what I mean. We have to be a place where people can turn to for everything. The church historically in the black community has been the epicenter of the city. So it's a place where people turn to for legal advice. It's a place where people turn to for food. It's a place that people refer to for help, medical attention, so much more.So when you are building a ministry, if you're going to be serving in an urban area, you better structured in such a way either through a CDC, community development corporation, or under the umbrella of the outreach of the church, you better have services that can minister to the whole man. That is so critical.
Dr. Darrell BockIt's a market place as opposed to just a place to gather to sing hymns and hear sermon.Chris BrooksThat's right. That's right, and so we need to be sensitive to that. While we are preaching there has to be a place where people can turn to to apply that and to receive help for not only the soul, but again getting access to a job, being able to get marriage counseling, being able to get transportation needs met, housing needs met. All of these things are very critical and very important to a successful urban ministry.Dr. Darrell BockNow, is there any partnershiping that you do with other churches in the area? I tell you what motivates this question. There is a very successful church that was planted in the 1970s here in Dallas right in the poorest part of Dallas. It was a very African-American community in terrific need; high crime rate, extreme poverty, all those kinds of things. There were several Anglo churches that came in alongside the African-American church to actually help get it started and kind of get it off the ground. The church is now very much self-sustaining.They built a – the first thing they did after they built a church was the built a gym to become a community place –
Chris BrooksYeah, that's _____ _____ [crosstalk] yes.Dr. Darrell Bock– To alter the way kids would spend their time and then they built a school and went in that order which was interesting. So I'm not necessarily asking just about your church, but how much cross cultural can I say, support is there for what goes on in Detroit?Chris BrooksWell, needs to be. Let me just say that the last several years, since 2011, Detroit has seen an amazing amount of partnershiping. There was a broad evangelistic campaign that brought together 550 churches; urban and suburban, black, white, again Asian, Latino. There has been more partnership in in our history over the past five years then maybe in the other period in time. So I'm really excited about that.But I will say Darrell, that one of the major keys to healthy partnering is that it has to be mutual.
Dr. Darrell BockRight.Chris BrooksThat Anglo church has to be able to know there is so much benefit and richness and wisdom I can get from my African-American brothers and sisters in Christ and the African-American church can't see itself only as a recipient.Dr. Darrell BockRight.Chris BrooksIt has to see itself as a giver as well. So I think that we have to partner, but we need to do it in healthy ways.Dr. Darrell BockYeah, it can be patronizing is what you're saying.Chris BrooksExactly.Dr. Darrell BockYeah.Chris BrooksOr parental.Dr. Darrell BockThat's right.Chris BrooksThe other thing that I will say is this, that so often, my Anglo brothers and sisters will be very committed to global missions and romanticize reaching groups overseas and very closed off to reaching those who are need 15, 20 miles on them up the street.Dr. Darrell BockYeah, we've talked about this in our own churches here in the churches that I've been in that our suburban churches that – we'll fly a plane to go into mission, but we will cross the railroad tracks.Chris BrooksAnd I think that's critical. I think that's critical. We need to be able to say, how much are we supporting local missions outreach as well as global? I believe that all churches, regardless of ethnic background need to be a part of God's global _____ commission. And where I encourage and challenge African-American or ethnic minority churches is that we need to get into the global mission _____.This is a unique period in time where we can and our voices are – they are hungry for our voices and our voices are needed. I also challenge suburban churches to say, get more involved in local missions as much as possible.
Dr. Darrell BockNow, we've talked a little bit that I mention partnership then I got distracted from where I was going originally and I want to come back to it. And that is; let's talk about the variety of services that a church offers. You talked a little bit about them. Everything from employment to transportation.Chris BrooksYeah.Dr. Darrell BockI imagine food is in that mix too. What goes into the internal ministries of the church to minister to the whole of the community?Chris BrooksYeah, let me just say Darrell, if I could just simplify. There are three Es that every church needs to focus in on it they really want to have impact. I will say this way; education, employment, and entrepreneurship. Those three Es are critical and important. Education, employment, and entrepreneurship. I will also say there's a fourth E that doesn't necessarily move people along the developmental role, but is critical and that's emergency assistance.So we like to categorize our practical ministries in those areas. Can we offer educational opportunities, employment opportunities, entrepreneurial opportunities, but also recognizing there are times that we need to be there for emergency assistance for the person who is homeless, for the person who is hungry, for the person that is in need.
Dr. Darrell BockWow. Well, I have to say, that doesn't sound like my church. That's very, very different. Much more, and some ways much more demanding on the community.Chris BrooksYeah, there is a sense of compassion fatigue as well. As you pray for those who minister in urban areas, pray for their emotional strength, pray for their stress levels because Darrell, as you know, when you are in a war zone, when you are in a place of constant need, struggle, challenge, it can be emotionally draining. But again, it's tremendously encouraging as well as you see all the wonderful things of Christ's redemptive work and people having strong marriages and young people finding purpose and calling in Christ. Men awakening to what it means to not just be a man, but a man of God.All these things are present as well and I want to talk about great fathers, wonderful marriages and healthy churches because it's a sad thing if we think that there's only negative things happening in the hood. There's great things happening as well.
Dr. Darrell BockYeah, again, I'm going back to this was that a story, but about 10 years in, the Dallas Morning News wrote an editorial entitled, "Angels in Our Midst” in the point was, here was a church planted in the poorest part of the city with citywide cooperation. That it produced a neighborhood turnaround in the area of racial relations when everything else around Dallas was kind of under racial tension and the question was asked, what is it that these people are bringing to the table and part of the conversation that seems to be lacking in so much else is happening in the city when it comes to these areas?Of course, the answer was, it was their Christian commitment and a religious commitment that brought the change.
Dr. Darrell BockThat's right.Chris BrooksAnd you know, the Dallas Morning News isn't exactly a church newsletter.Chris BrooksRight.Dr. Darrell BockSo is a pretty powerful testimony about what's possible when kind of all the pieces come together and people make an effort, a concerted effort, to cooperate. It shows that it is possible in that turnaround can happen.Chris BrooksYeah, it can and it does. And again, Christ being at the center, it does happen. Let me also say this Darrell, that we have to look at those individuals that are living in those hard-hit communities as individuals that if in power, can lead themselves into a sense of transformation as well. All the help doesn't have to come from external leadership, but it can be a rich partnership to make that come about.Dr. Darrell BockWell, the beautiful thing at least about the West Dallas story was again, about 10, 15 years in, things have gotten to the point where the church was very much self-sustaining.Chris BrooksYes.Dr. Darrell BockPeople were coming; people who had been educated at the school had made the decision, many of them, to come back and teach at the school and impact the community that they had come out of rather than fleeing it. In the meantime, that part of the city has literally been transformed by what took place.Chris BrooksYeah, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. When we look for these partnerships Darrell, let me just say, we don't have to compromise the tenants of our faith in the gospel to find these partnerships. I think so often we can go to the other extreme where there's overwhelming sense of compassion and we say, well, let me just connect with anybody.Well no, we can do harm that way. We need to connect with people who are going to the lift of the name of Christ high and connect with people who are good models of faithful Bible ministry. If we find those people who can also effectively serve the community, I think that's a great healthy partnership.
Dr. Darrell BockWell, we've got about 2½ minutes left here Chris. Let me ask you kind of one other question and that is, what do you do specifically for families to help ground them in the hopes that the next generation will be quite like the last generation?Chris BrooksI love the question. I think the family is so critical to the great commission, global great commission. When we think about the great commission, we got two pedals on this bike. One pedal is sending missionaries local, global outreaches. The other pedal is the family. So we have to teach three principles; get married, marriage for a lifetime, and also raise your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. We teach those three things. We celebrate marriage.Church can't just be known for what is against, but we also have to celebrate the beauty of marriage. Then marriage for lifetime; be faithful in marriage, and then raise children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. This is the way we transform communities; one family at a time.
Dr. Darrell BockAnd I didn't ask you, I probably shouldn't have, but I'm curious now. How large is the church that you are part of?Chris BrooksSixteen-hundred members.Dr. Darrell BockThat's great.Chris BrooksWe've got about 1,600 members.Dr. Darrell BockYeah. Well, Chris, it's been a real pleasure to have you with us to talk about – we always say this on The Table when we dive into a topic kind of for the first time; we've only scratched the surface of the conversation.Chris BrooksThat's right. Yeah.Dr. Darrell BockAnd we've touched on a lot of things, each of which could probably be their own podcast and focus. But I really do appreciate several things. One, your commitment to the hood, your commitment to really minister in the context in which you grew up.Chris BrooksYeah.Dr. Darrell BockSecondly, the clarity with which you encouraged us to think about what life in the hood can be like and what the demands on a church are. And third, the clarity with which you have expressed how the gospel speaks into that so effectively that it is actually the answer to the question. If we are looking for a program that is going to change people and change the world, that program is primarily the gospel and not something else.Chris BrooksAbsolutely. Absolutely. The Christian worldview is the answer for the hood.Dr. Darrell BockYeah, well thanks again Chris. We appreciate you being with us and with thank you for joining us on The Table and look for to have me back with us again.Chris BrooksThanks Darrell.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture, and show the relevance of theology to everyday life. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at The Hendricks Center.
And if you're a leader in a large organization that has many layers and many locations, and especially if these locations are dispersed across a region or even continents so that you've got different cultures involved, then this podcast is especially for you. Christ calls you to be a servant leader, which is a tall order under any circumstances. But when your organization grows large and complex, and as I say, it has a lot of layers to it, and it's in many places around the world, and it's very culturally diverse, well, the degree of difficulty skyrockets.
So I think you're going to be interested in meeting our guests today, who is Dr. Ken Cochrum, who currently is the executive vice president of Field Ministries at East-West Ministries, which works in countries throughout the world. But before East-West, Ken spent 35 years with Cru, and most of that time he was in China and a number of other countries. Is that correct Ken?
Ken Cochrum:
Spent about 13 years living over in East Asia, and dropped in and out of 60 countries working with leaders in various settings. Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Well then you're the right man to be with us today. And what was your role with Cru?
Ken Cochrum:
I had various roles Bill. I led the campus ministry in East Asia for a number of years. Then I was asked to come to Orlando, Florida and give leadership to Cru's global student work, which had the campus ministry in about 160 countries. Then this little thing called Facebook and Twitter popped up, and we started seeing a lot of opportunities not only with students but beyond, and so launched a new initiative called Global Digital Strategies and led that for eight years with Cru.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, all of these different pieces of Cru, they certainly have different names. What we want to press into here is that these things were layered, and they were dispersed, and they were multicultural. And in the midst of that, you're trying to exercise leadership. I tell you what, before we get into all of that, take us back. Where was growing up for you, and how did you even get into working with a group like Cru in the first place?
Ken Cochrum:
Well, my life was changed as an engineering student at the University of Texas. And I had heard the gospel, I'd made a decision to come to Christ when I was 10 years old, but was in a very liberal church environment and really didn't grow. I didn't have anybody discipling me or pouring into me, and part of it was just my unhardened heart.
But God got a hold of me through fraternity brothers in the secular fraternity house, and we saw God really bring a revival there. And in the sorority house where my girlfriend was, who's now my wife. And God touched us so much during that time, Bill, we just felt like, hey, we want to go out our first two years and give back, minister. And I had aspirations to get an MBA and own my own engineering consulting firm in Houston.
And after our first two years in ministry, we found ourselves, Anne and I, one summer sitting wrapping up a eight-week summer missions trip in Southern China, just being overwhelmed by the task remaining. Let's give it another year or two. And that was 38 years ago. So you know how God's call works, and he keeps calling you to the next thing. And so that's kind of been our trajectory.
Currently, I serve as the executive vice president of Field Ministries with East-West, which focuses on making followers of Jesus in the spiritually darkest nations. And so if you're familiar with the open doors, hardest 50 places to be a believer, that's kind of our strategy list and where we're trying to serve believers now.
And so that's where I'm currently focused, and have loved all the different stages and places that God's taken me in such a privilege at this age and technology. I think about Paul and Barnabas, and some of those initial missionary teams. If they would've had-
Bill Hendricks:
The technology we had-
Ken Cochrum:
We have. Wow, what a gift. But it's a privilege to be with you and with this audience today. Thanks for having me.
Bill Hendricks:
Oh, it's a delight. I think what just strikes me about your history that we've talked about is how you just, if I could put it this way, climbed a bit of a ladder in terms of responsibility. In other words, you acquitted yourself well in one assignment, and next thing you know they put you into a bigger assignment and you do well there. And the prize, the award for doing well is, "Well let's put you over this." And you find yourself at some point with some pretty large organizations under you.
And I'm just curious, as you're finding yourself in these new, and I assume ever more challenging assignments, what was it about all that, that was at the same time motivating to you, but at the same time challenging to you?
Ken Cochrum:
Well, that's a great question, Bill. Since I was about 25 years old, I went through the, if you remember, many people may remember Stephen Covey's 7 Habits and kind of beginning with the end in mind, and thinking through my own personal calling, and took a day with the Lord and really sorted through that. And it became very clear to me early in ministry, and I'm so thankful for this, that my calling was to serve and strengthen Christ's leaders.
So that really hasn't changed. It's taken different aspects of elements of focus through the years, and what that audience looks like, and who those people are. But I think through scripture and servant leadership is such a dominant paradigm. And those who violate it, God is opposed to the proud.
It's not that I've never been proud, but when you wake up and realize either through the Holy Spirit convicting you of that or through someone confronting you on that, often on your leadership team, you realize, "Hey, I'm working against God."
And so serving leaders develops leaders. And when you have developed a bench of leaders that's growing around you, in a matter of time, usually a few years, those leaders are ready to take your role.
And so that's enabled me, as you put it to, I don't know if climbing is the right word, but to be elevated. It's a team effort. And eventually, you have to let those leaders lead or they're going to leave and go lead somewhere else.
So creating space for leaders is something I've grown in my conviction, especially in the last probably 25 years of ministry, particularly in working in cross-cultural environments. Because when we enter in, we are typically older, we have more experience, we're leading new people to Christ, we're discipling them. They're becoming leaders.
And if we don't create space for them to own their decisions, to have a real sense of self-determination and direction, and give that local ministry ownership appropriately to them at the right pace, and probably right pace is faster than a lot of us are used to. I think that's the New Testament model. Right?
Bill Hendricks:
Well, you mentioned the beginning with the end in mind. And it sounds like in one sense, your end, your aim, the end that you want to direct all your efforts toward, certainly there's goals and mission objectives. But if I hear you correctly, you're saying my overarching end is to develop leaders, because ultimately, we need leaders to do this work. And at some point you've done that, "My work here is done, I am ready to take on some new opportunity." Is that it?
Ken Cochrum:
Exactly, yeah. And I've found for me, a lot of people I lead with, we typically have a four, five, seven-year, really good engagement. And then people are kind of like, "Hey, the three or four things that God fundamentally called me in my internal passions," even if I couldn't clearly articulate them, I feel like those are 75, 85% underway and done, and so I'm ready.
So by raising a bench, it is God's way of multiplying. Whether it's in a one-on-one, growing discipleship, small group ministry through a local church, or reaching out to my neighborhood, or leading a large organization, the principle is exactly the same, that there should be more capable leaders ready to lead when I'm ready to leave than when I started. And if that's not true, then something was wrong in the way that I was controlling, and grabbing power, and holding decisions too tightly, and things like that.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. So in a way, you really are, as they say, trying to work yourself out of a job. Or really better put, you're trying to work others into a role. You're preparing these folks to take over. Is that it? Yeah.
Ken Cochrum:
Well, and especially when you talk about a large organization… So I'm a strong believer in when we're leading in organizations, we are providing spiritual leadership and strategic organizational leadership. And that might be broken down in both management, which is handling today's complexities and challenges. And leadership, which is being more pro-visionary toward the future. And both are important. I'm not trying to divide management and leadership, both are essential.
But the servant aspect, the spiritual servanthood is what I think provides the growth environment, the safety, the place where people can suffer and embrace that, and not hide it. Leaders can be authentic, they can grow. We can talk about challenges, we can talk about problems, we can talk about moral failures in the ministry. So you always have a way to release that pressure that doesn't build up. And then you have crises.
You still have crises, but you're cultivating a leadership environment that can metabolize those crises. And to the extent that you can do that, your organization can scale and grow at a healthy pace. To the extent that you don't do that, I think we risk… What we see a lot, we see big organizations that fold because they just expanded too fast and they didn't have the gravitas and the character substance to support the weight of the pressure, and the decisions, and the opportunities that God was putting in front of him.
Bill Hendricks:
I'm curious to know at this point, who were some of the best leaders that you have been fortunate enough to serve under and maybe learn from? If you think back over your career, who would you point to and say-
Ken Cochrum:
I would say it's been an almost unbroken string of model leaders. I was actually on staff in SMU here in Dallas my first four years, and the first couple of years I was trained by a guy named Dan Brenton. And I remember we had signed up, we had joined staff, we had shown up. And my very first one-on-one, we sat down and he said, "Ken, my job is to help you learn to walk with Jesus for a lifetime of fruitful ministry."
And I was like, "Wow," I didn't expect that. It was my job description from my first appointment. And so that really set a tone and Dan built into me, taught me how to play basketball. I'd done other sports but not do that, but really mentored me in so many different areas. Gary Run was my area director for a number of years. Turned out later he became my brother-in-Law. And so we still have a long lifetime journey of learning leadership together.
So many, I can't name them all. I will say right now at East West Kurt Nelson, who's the CEO. And Kristen Shuler, who is our new president and my new boss as of a few months ago, are just fantastic, humble leaders, very energized by the gospel and what remains of the missionary task worldwide, and just give so much space and encouragement. And are not afraid to speak truth to confront where confronting is necessary, to challenge ideas, and to put decisions in open hands around the leadership table.
So I've just been blessed. I've had a few leaders that had some very, very rough, I won't say toxic, I think that word's overused. I haven't had a long-term toxic leader. But blind spots that were so significant that-
Bill Hendricks:
They impaired the relationship.
Ken Cochrum:
They impaired the relationship, and they left marks that are still instructive to me maybe a decade or two later.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I'm struck-
Ken Cochrum:
I don't want to be that kind of leader.
Bill Hendricks:
No. I'm struck by the life-on-life nature of what you're talking about, that this isn't a leadership by position and command and control and, "I'm your boss. You do what I say." And people can be friendly in saying that, but that's basically the message they communicate. You're actually talking about having an impress or an imprint on somebody's way they do life and way they think about their job. Is that right?
Ken Cochrum:
Exactly. I'm sitting here, I'm looking over the camera on my bookshelf at a very well-worn copy of The Master Plan of Evangelism. It's just had its 60th publishing anniversary last year. And I've been back through that book so many times, and it's just how Jesus did ministry. He associated with people. He is talking about the ministry of reproduction. And though he spent afternoons with the 5,000, he spent hours and hours, and days and days with the three and the 12, and a handful of hours with the 70.
And so much of our current culture ministry environment is about likes, and impressions, and eyeball views on our website or on our live stream, or how many seats are in the seats on Sunday. And I don't see Jesus really emphasizing that. He had those engagements, sure. But he was really focused on the 12 and the 70 and that's where his legacy was left.
And so my experience has been taking the time to invest in the smaller groups of people I'm working with is really worth it. That's where the leverage is. And I've benefited from leaders who also held that perspective.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that's a great segue into a point that I wanted to ask you about. I don't know if you did this research yourself or you came across it in doing your doctoral work, but I think you said you'd polled a bunch of high-level leaders about how much time they actually spent with their people, whether it was face-to-face or through I guess Zoom, or phone, or text, or whatever.
And they admitted for most of them, it boiled down to about 20 to 40 hours a year, which is really less than five days, which is a bit shocking when I see it that way. Tell me more about that experience of finding that research and what you did with it.
Ken Cochrum:
Well, I was asked by Steve Douglass at Cru who was president then to move to Orlando and give leadership to Campus Crusade at the time's global student work. And so I became the youngest member by 10 years on the global executive team. And there were a lot of very high level, well known, if I mentioned all the names, many people would know all these kinds of famous Christian leaders on that team.
And so I felt like I'm a rookie, I'm trying to learn this thing. I'm in my mid-forties trying to figure this out. And started realizing we were in 160, 180 countries divided into 13 geographic areas.
And so I was trying to figure out, how do I travel and get to… Really, I thought, okay, I can realistically put my feet on the ground in 13 areas globally every two to two and a half to three years. That was my objective.
Which is still quite a bit of travel, a lot of these places, it's far and long, and Jeep rides, and 30 hours, and connections, and all that. And you got a marriage and kids and everything else you're trying to balance and pay attention to.
So after a couple of years of this, I asked just in passing Reverend In Soo Jung, who was a peer of VP on that team, Korean, and he'd been at it for a while and I said, "How long did it take you to figure this out?" He said, "It probably took me three to five years to figure out the travel and the balance." And then you leave and you're kind of like, "Yeah, I was there and I was there at this conference for two or three days," or maybe a week, which would be very rare to spend an entire week in one location with a leader or two. And I was like, "There's got to be a better way."
So that's really what prompted my doctoral research question, Bill, was is there a way to flatten the learning curve for people who have gotten to a point where they're no longer leading teams that do the same thing?
So typically, let's look at the typical leadership journey. You start doing something, and you realize you're pretty good at it, and God's gifted you, and the body of Christ confirms that and you start seeing success. So you get offered like you said, "Hey, you did that. Well, here's some more stuff." And, "Okay, you figured that out. Well, can you help these three other people in three other cities or locations do that?" And so you're starting to kind of coach and do that, "Okay, well we're going to make you a regional director or a national director," or whatever. And then all of a sudden it's like, now we've asked you to take six countries or 20 countries.
And a lot of these countries, they don't speak the same language. They actually have histories where it's not uncommon for them to hate each other, or even to be currently at war while you're trying to lead ministry between these two countries.
And so how do you navigate being a servant leader, raising up another generation, encouraging? And that doesn't mean they're starting from scratch. You're picking them up in stream. This is not basic discipleship. These people are on a 15 or 20 year journey already. But now you're for better or worse in charge of moving the whole thing northward.
And then how do you do it when you can't physically get to all those countries and all those leaders all the time? And even if you can, it may be two years apart. What's going to happen in the-
Bill Hendricks:
In the interim.
Ken Cochrum:
In the 720 days when you haven't met face-to-face. And so those were the three prongs of my research question was, how do you do servant leadership across cultures? How do you do distance leadership using technology? And Paul did that. John did that. They both wrote and said, "Hey, we haven't met face-to-face, but here's why I am writing you." And thank God, I think most of us could attest that Paul is probably one of the most instrumental shaping disciplers that we had in our Christian growth journey, and yet we never met him. And so it is possible.
And then culturally, what are the key things? You can't possibly know 200 cultures, country cultures. But can you learn two or three things that are kind of indices that will help you before you drop in to ask the question? Whether it's dropping into an ethnic culture in the city that you live in, but still mimics their global south culture, or whether you're going halfway around the world to get a quick scan and in humility go, "I actually don't know what I'm talking about here," but I do know some things that are valuable. So what are the right types of questions to engage these leaders, to serve them and to strengthen them?
So that's what resulted in my dissertation, which probably five people, my mom wouldn't even read it. So I put in a book called Close: Leading Well Across Distance and Cultures that you can find on Amazon.
Bill Hendricks:
So what were some of the bigger takeaways that you did learn from that research? I mean, let's start with the importance of life on life, and yet you can't have life on life quite the same when somebody's in a whole other part of the world.
Ken Cochrum:
Yeah, this is a very circuitous route to answer your first question. The 20 to 40 hours, I asked people, and I've done this seminar many, many times in different settings, both for-profit, non-profit, Christian non-Christian settings, but ask people who oversee people at a distance, how many actual hours of face-to-face or Zoom to Zoom do you get in a year with your direct reports?
And it's consistently in the 20 to 40 hours per year range. This means I'm not at a conference sitting at a table with them and 500 other people, but like you and I are talking right now.
So if that's true, what is the sufficient amount of information to align, and motivate, and connect so that that person knows that, "Hey, I'm on the right page, we're on God's agenda together," whatever that is. And I feel good that I can go away and they can run on their own for a week, or two weeks, or a month because you're not managing… Proximity covers a multitude of bad meetings. If I've got everybody right around me in an office and I have a bad staff meeting, I can read the room and I can go have lunch with somebody or-
Bill Hendricks:
Fix it.
Ken Cochrum:
Five minutes, I can fix it, or I can ask, "Hey, this seemed to go sideways. Give me some coaching here." But you can't always do that on a global Zoom call with eight people on it And half the people are in a second language and they're trying to keep up.
So one of the key principles I learned, and this is straight from our master himself Jesus, is the larger scope you're trying to lead, the fewer things you can talk about.
So Jesus took 613 laws and he said, "Let's get it down to two." And so that scales, because I get it. That's simple. I can't get the whole Jewish canon, but man, if you say love God and love people, I can work on those two things for quite a while.
And the same is true I think for ministry, for work alignment. A lot has been proven. If you have 10 goals, the likelihood you're going to achieve any of them really is low. Where if you have two or three, the likelihood is high.
So have fewer things, emphasize fewer things. But what you emphasize, really drive home, keep coming back to. We're going to stay on this until it's done and then we'll add another one.
And that's been something that I think leaders have learned, we've learned together. That's really important in distributed work is keep focus. I asked people, I interviewed 80 leaders who had lived and worked outside their home culture for at least five years, Bill. I said, we all have our leadership framework and things you're supposed to do as leader, cast vision, formulate strategy, develop your people. We have all these things. But I asked leaders not how do you lead, but, "How do you like to be led?" And simply flipping that question. Here's what I heard. The most frequent thing voiced is, "I want to be respected. I want understanding and empathy that the job I'm in now that I said yes to is probably two sizes too big for me and it's hard, and I'm trying."
Bill Hendricks:
"I'm doing my best to deliver."
Ken Cochrum:
"I'm doing my best." So believe that. And occasionally that's not true, right? Occasionally you got a nepotism situation or something that pops up. But in general, people are really trying hard to do their best.
They want to be led by someone that is honest, authentic, and competent in their role. And by competent, doesn't mean perfect. But it does mean, "Hey, I see you growing. You're reading things, you're listening to podcasts, you're occasionally going to a conference, you're sending me a book recommendation of something you're studying." I see that you're trying to grow in your job. And so that gives me confidence that the reality is they see that I'm not a perfect leader. They want to hear me express, "I know I'm not a perfect leader, I'm still growing just like you are."
Bill Hendricks:
It sounds like you're saying you believe in them, and then as a leader, you want to be believable to them. They see the same thing in you?
Ken Cochrum:
Yes, I'm not in an ivory tower. I don't have it all figured out. I've had the privilege to be part of, and design, and implement several emerging and senior leadership initiatives. And one of the first thing we do in the first module, the first day is have leaders come in and talk about pick three jobs where you got thrown in, and then pick one where you were in over your head and talk about it.
And we go around the room and everybody tells a little three-minute snippet of that, and we end with the president, or the CEO, or the highest person at the apex of the organization telling their story where they were in over their head. At that point, everybody's like, "Oh my gosh, she didn't know what she was doing? He didn't have it all figured out? He got on the floor, was up at night crying and praying, asking God to solve the situation." And we just want to normalize that leadership's hard. It's challenging-
Bill Hendricks:
And it's filled with, "I don't know what to do here."
Ken Cochrum:
"I don't know what to do. I'm open." And if you normalize that, then people can actually say that in front of their team, and they don't have to feel like I have to come in with an agenda that's in PDF format and everything's all locked down. But hey, it's on the whiteboard. We can erase it, we can change it. I need your input. And that when you do that, man, people are drawn to leaders. You just watch it happen.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, so this is where I want to bring in this cultural piece. I got a couple of three questions we could ask on that, but I'm thinking about that. You're describing, normalizing the fact that we don't all have it figured out, okay. But I can imagine in some cultures, and I'm thinking particularly honor shame cultures, boy, to lay that card down, now I'm going to lose face in front of all my peers and in front of my boss. I don't want to do that, whatever I do. Is that true?
Ken Cochrum:
Yeah, no doubt. There's a couple of cultural indices. One is called the Uncertainty Avoidance Index, and it's super high in Japan, Korea, a lot of Latin cultures, a lot of African cultures where you talked about losing face. And so people want to see a leader that's projecting confidence and strength.
Bill Hendricks:
So the fake it till you make it view?
Ken Cochrum:
And I think that's where we come in and we talk about, let's talk cultural aspects of leadership and biblical aspects of leadership. And it's not all one side or the other. But every culture has a CEO, or jefe, or tribal chief or-
Bill Hendricks:
Somebody in charge.
Ken Cochrum:
Somebody in charge mindset that seems unchallengeable, and yet Jesus was not that way. I have this little statue. I've had this on my desk for years and-
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, we have one of those down here at the seminary.
Ken Cochrum:
It's a centerpiece at DTS, and I'm a graduate from there. And that's where I got the idea. But I love that because it reminds me that's not the posture of a saving face power leader.
Bill Hendricks:
No, it's the exact opposite, right?
Ken Cochrum:
It's a very intimate, it's actually a confrontational conversation. Foot washing and saying, "No Peter, you're trying to have it your way this way, your way that way. It's actually, I need you to do it my way and I'm moving toward you as I'm saying that. I want you with me." And it's moving toward that relationship. So that is one way to address that in a cultural context.
The other one is what we call power distance. I'm sure you're familiar with that, but it's the higher up a leader is in an organization, the more people ascribe power to that person and feel like there's distance. And so different cultures have different levels of that, and they kind of are the same as the uncertainty avoidance cultures.
We need to break that down if we want to build a bench that we can leave behind so that our ministry is stronger when we left than when we started. And Jim Collins did a lot of research on that 20 years ago. He wrote a couple books about it. But the level four leader is a genius with 1,000 helpers, but the level five leader is the one who is personally humble, yet has a profound clear sense of organizational direction, and he calls it organizational will.
And I think that's what we see in prophetic Christian leadership is that really bizarre and sometimes confusing, complementary set of skills that the leader is humble but is very committed to achieving God's aims in the world without running over people.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, you've raised a point that I'm glad we're getting to about power and authority. I have been watching so many blowouts of Christian leaders over the last decade and more. And it occurred to me one day, what is our theology of power and authority? And I thought back through all of my education, and I thought about books, and I also literally went through a whole series of Christian journals directed at leadership, and didn't find a single issue, and really only one article that in any way touched on anything related to power and authority. I'm like, "Well, no wonder we got problems." When we put people into leadership, as you've pointed out, whether we realize it or not, we have put them into a position of power and authority. Which then raises the question, what's been their own experience with power and authority? And I'm talking about from their home of origin, to authority figures along the way in school, in jobs they've had. And then what's been their experience already of exercising authority?
And obviously when you look across history in a fallen world again, and again, and again, you see just what Jesus said, the rulers of the gentiles, meaning the nations, lorded over their people.
And you see that again, and again, and again in governments and other structures. And of course Jesus is the polar opposite from that through the servant leadership model you just mentioned.
And we're not going to solve that today. But the reality is, I don't know that we've got a very robust theology of authority and culture on our side. I think we have a very robust theological principle in our Lord's example and all that he taught, but I think a lot more work needs to be done just on that area. Has that been your experience?
Ken Cochrum:
Well, gosh, we could talk for hours on this Bill. And I know you do a lot of work with people's story from birth and their family of origin background. So you have layers, and layers, and layers you could go on this.
A couple of thoughts come to mind. When we read the New Testament and the way authors present themselves, you have Peter who was arguably number one. He was chosen to lead the group, and he could have started his letters saying that. "Hey, I'm Peter. I'm the chief. Here's what's happening."
Bill Hendricks:
"I'm Peter, I'm kind of a big deal."
Ken Cochrum:
"I'm a dude." But he says in 1 Peter 5, and this is my favorite go-to passage for this discussion because he says, "As a fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and I'm appealing to you," and he goes through three, "Don't lead this way, but lead this way. Don't do it out of selfishness, but do it out of this." And so he's really helping us understand. And I bet he was tempted to power up, because that was his personality.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and just like you said earlier, I bet he had a lot of people in the church who like, "Well, you're Peter, of course you're in charge." And they wanted to confer that power on them.
Ken Cochrum:
Yeah. And I call that when leaders get put in the golden cage. They don't necessarily want that, but their entourage creates that, and then they can't act anymore. They're stuck.
But you look at James, the brother, half brother of Christ. And the way he presents it, "I'm a servant. I'm a bond servant." All these people who had the legitimate way to come in with the stick and the carrot, and mainly the stick, and they're all saying, "Hey, I'm a servant. I'm a slave to Christ." And they present themselves differently. So I think there's definitely a modeling that way.
I'm looking at another book up here right now, The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner, which I go to all the time. 40 years of research, 4 million data points from almost every country in the world, leaders, all kinds of different organizations, different levels of organizational leadership. And culturally, the same four things keep coming up of what people want from their leaders of honesty, vision, inspiration, and competence. And they may switch what culture or country has them first or second, but they same four are there.
Culturally, people are people and they like to be led and engaged. And this was the final point when I asked all these leaders that I interviewed later as part of my research, leaders want to share leadership. This was one of the most contentious, when about 15 years ago, helped lead an organization through a massive global restructuring.
And when leaders that were in place, we were talking about, "Hey, we want to do a different type of team structure that shares the leadership more," they were very reluctant to give up their power. But when we asked them, "How do you want to be led?" They said, "Well, I want to share leadership," meaning I want to be led, I want to have a voice. I want to have dialogue.
And so that was the main thing is dialogue, that I came out of my research. If I can create a space where people can have honest dialogue, you create a solvable problem-solving environment. We can talk about it. It's just like a family. If we can talk about it, we can name it. And if we can name it, we can get on a path to solving it. It's dysfunction that keeps people from either fear or that power distance thing where people shut up and they don't say what they're seeing.
And that's where I think leaders, you look at some of these failures you referred to earlier. I don't believe most of those leaders started their ministry and said, "I really want to control everybody and blow out." I think it was just they didn't address some of these issues and weren't willing to model it in a way that has been modeled for us and works quite well.
Bill Hendricks:
Well I want to point out Ken, that there's really not a thing that you've said… Obviously your background has been in a parachurch, mission church settings, right? There's not a thing you've said though that doesn't also apply in everyday work, and in corporations, and in governments, and the other kinds of situations where Christians find themselves in leadership.
Ken Cochrum:
Yeah, and this book is not Christian. It's across the board. People are people. They like to be led well, they like to be listened to, and they want to give their best. People show up 8, 9, 10 hours a day and they want to contribute to the organization or the company's mission. They want to give their best. And so I think starting with that as a baseline really helps us think about leadership.
You asked earlier about some lessons in global organization, and in light of time, I'll just riff off a couple of thoughts. One is we talked about the bigger you want to scale, the fewer things you can say as a leader. You can't come into every staff meeting with 10 new ideas. You can let the team do that, but you've got to keep things focused.
Second in the challenge of leading a large organization is scope and complexity. When people are over a large number, either a geographic space, or a large number of people, or even different types of products or services that are being offered, getting those people with other leaders that share similar scope and complexity for conferences where it's not just park and bark teaching, but really where it's round table and they can talk about what's going on, and you create these peer networks where, "Hey, we're not doing the same stuff," but we're kind of doing the same scope and complexity. You empower people to continue to solve and grow. So that's a huge factor. And a lot of times, that's expensive because you're flying people in and putting them up for a couple of days, but it's worth it.
Bill Hendricks:
I was going to say it's cheap money if it then has a multiplied impact.
Ken Cochrum:
And it avoids the million dollar problems that come with scope.
Bill Hendricks:
Exactly.
Ken Cochrum:
I think another thing, we want to grow, and healthy things do grow. But the paradox of growth I think has taken me by surprise multiple times, and the paradox of growth is this. Growth creates complexity, and complexity is the silent killer of future growth. Growth creates complexity and complexity kills future growth.
So there is the admonition to keep pruning. Growth is intoxicating, and more people, more money, more stuff, more opportunities. If you're good at what you're doing and you're in your mid-thirties, you're going to get more opportunities to travel, to speak. And you're going to feel the tension of, hey, maybe I have a home life or a home. Maybe it's a marriage, maybe it's a family, maybe it's just people in the community that I'm very committed to, and there's a tension because I'm traveling more, I'm doing more out there.
Prune. Learn to prune as you go, and that will create a healthier you. It will create a healthier team and a healthier organization over time.
Bill Hendricks:
How do you know what to prune?
Ken Cochrum:
Man, discernment. And that's part of the objectivity of, is this paying off in what our core mission is? And so constantly going back to, what's our business about, what's our church about? What's our organization about? And avoiding the two mission problems of mission drift or mission creep.
So mission drift is when… And I've seen this a lot in the last five years, the social environments, particularly in North America and the US, and the cancel culture. It's when, "Hey, we're doing this, but we need to be saying it in a different way, or maybe we may need to shift over here because this is what people are really excited about right now."
Bill Hendricks:
You're no longer leading at that point. You're being led.
Ken Cochrum:
You're capitulating.
Bill Hendricks:
You're capitulating.
Ken Cochrum:
And it may be, and I think this is the hard thing. If we're in the culture and the culture's changing, and we're trying to either serve the culture, produce goods and services that are providing legitimate needs now that have shifted, or we're in ministry and it's hard to get a hearing for a clear presentation of who Jesus Christ is because of the cultural blocks. We need to adjust and change. We absolutely need adaptive leadership. However, that's different than mission drift. We were doing this and now we're selling whatever.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, we're in a whole different business now.
Ken Cochrum:
Yeah. And so it is an adjacency that gives us access, but then that drift has caught us. Or mission creep is when, "Hey, we're really supposed to be focused here." I'll speak for East-West where I am right now. We focus on making disciples in the spiritually darkest nations and among unreached people groups. And that's really hard ground. And a lot of times, they don't walk around with little red lights blinking on the top of their head saying, "Here we are." You have to go find them.
And in our modern culture that's so transient, especially with all the immigration and refugees, a lot of times the best place to reach Afghans is in Houston, Texas right now in some of the refugee communities, which is where we are.
But we are constantly, should we be in this country? And why? Because we have limited resources, and the places God has called us to are really hard to reach. And so we need to constantly review that every year.
And so we've put in an annual, whether it's semiannual, annual, biannual review cycle, whatever's healthy for a timeline for your organization to do a product market check and a mission check. Should we be doing this anymore?
And maybe it's, "Hey God, we didn't expect this. God got us here and he's opened up new venues." Well, that's how innovation happens. It's always happening at the fringes. Do we allow that? Do we welcome that? How much resources are we going to allow for that?
And I know some of the best businesses say, "We're going to limit our innovation budget to 5 or 10%." We're okay if we take a risk and that doesn't pay out, but we're not going to gut the other 90% of the organization until that is proving that this has really got some legs and it's-
Bill Hendricks:
That's the new horizon, yeah.
Ken Cochrum:
Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, Ken Cochrum, I could talk with you about leadership all day long. Thank you very much for… I mean, this is wisdom that's come from a lot of, I'm sure challenging times and lots of experience.
Ken Cochrum:
Lot of scars and broken budgets, I will tell you.
Bill Hendricks:
But if you want to find out more about what Ken's been talking about, he referenced his book Close: Leading Well Across Distance and Cultures, and I highly recommend that you get a hold of that if you're a leader, and particularly as I said, at a large organization with a lot of complexity and a lot of diversity culturally, and in a lot of locations. I mean, you're dealing with a very challenging thing there, and Ken can help you out with that. Ken, thanks so much for being on The Table today.
Ken Cochrum:
What a privilege. God bless you, Bill.
Bill Hendricks:
Thank you. It's been my privilege, and I want to thank you for listening in to The Table. If you've enjoyed this podcast today, I would encourage you to head over to Apple Podcasts or wherever your favorite podcasting app is, so you'll not miss an episode, and subscribe to that.
Also, we'd be thrilled if you'd leave a review, particularly on Apple Podcasts, a five-star review. And not for our accolades so much as it helps other people find out about The Table and dial in.
We discuss issues of God and culture in order to show the relevance of theology to everyday life, and I want to thank you for being with us today.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center. There're just countless benefits to living in the United States, but one of the greatest has to be the vast wilderness areas and parks and just the wide open spaces that we enjoy. I lived in New England for 10 years, used to love going up to Acadia National Park in Maine and Cadillac Mountain and looking out over the Atlantic. And then of course, on the other side of the country, you have places like Death Valley in California and Nevada or the Arches Monument in Utah. And, of course, here in Texas where I'm located, we have the Big Bend out in West Texas, which is quite grand. And one of the better places to see stars. And, of course, the granddaddy of them all is the great Grand Canyon out in Arizona, of which many of you have no doubt visited.
And in fact, our country was astute back in 1916 to actually establish a department within the government to oversee these natural resources, which we now know as the National Park Service. And when we go to places like this, we just always tend to think of God's handiwork. We have that great hymn, How Great Thou Art, and it captures up so well, the kinds of experiences that we have out there in nature, the rolling thunder, the stars. And when we see all that we're reduced to worship and praise, How Great Thou Art. What if there were a way to use the National Park Service or the National Parks to actually grow Christian leaders through full-time work and worship and ministry opportunities? That sounds pretty cool. Well, there actually is such a organization that's doing that today and it's called A Christian Ministry in the National Parks. And with that, I want to welcome to the table Amos Smith, who's the program coordinator for ACMNP. Amos, welcome to The Table.
Amos Smith:
Hey, thanks for having me. I'm glad I get to hang out with you for a little bit.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I've been looking forward to this podcast for literally months. I first came across what you guys are doing a while back and just the sound of what you're doing, sound of what your organization's doing, your team, it sounds like the coolest thing ever and I'm sure everybody says, oh, you sound like you have a dream job, and I know every job has its challenges, but it sounds like a pretty cool gig that you have. Tell me about your background. Where was growing up and was the outdoors always an attraction for you? Fill in the pieces.
Amos Smith:
Honestly, it makes me laugh sometimes how God moves things around. I grew up in Florida, lived my whole life there. And outdoors in Florida is very limited, camping. Nobody in Florida camps, there's one month out of the year that it's okay. So I didn't grow up around it, didn't do much outdoors. I actually went to a ministry school, studied ministry, and I got into youth ministry. So I did that for a number of years, I was a youth pastor, loved doing it and had a great time doing it. But in 2020 some crazy life stuff happened. Obviously COVID happened as well. My life got flipped upside down and I was just left wondering what am I doing? And through a series of conversations with mentors and some deep conversations with God, I really rethought my life. Went on a little vacation out to Arizona and saw some friends. Then went up to Utah and I went to my first national park. I went to Zion National Park.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes.
Amos Smith:
And I went to Zion and then I went to Bryce Canyon on that same trip. And while I was there, I had an encounter with God, and God was resetting my life after a lot of craziness. And when I got back home a couple of days later, I talked to a friend about it and he said, Hey, there's a ministry that does things in the national parks, you should look into it. So through some prayer and conversations, I decided, hey, I think I want to explore what this ministry looks like. And so I actually resigned from my full-time position as a youth pastor, and I applied to a Christian ministry in the National Park as just a team member. And I sold most of what I owned, packed up the rest of what I had in my car. I left Orlando, Florida and I drove all the way to Glacier National Park in Montana.
And I lived there for a whole summer working a simple easy job and doing ministry and hiking mountains all summer long. Loved it so much that I re-upped and I went and did a winter season and I lived in Death Valley National Park for five and a half months. And then in the process of doing that, the organization, they were looking for a full-time position as program coordinators. So I applied for that and got the job and as soon as I finished my contract in Death Valley, I drove from Death Valley straight to Denver, Colorado and started working and been there ever since working full time.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow. So your story there is you leave Orlando and leave behind amusement parks and enter a world of what we could call amazement parks.
Amos Smith:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. All those parks that you mentioned I know have just incredible features to them. And I have to ask, you sell off most of your possessions and quit your job and head West. And where there people going, oh man, something's wrong with Amos, man, he's gone off the deep end.b because most people would say, are you insane? You need to go get a real job and make a bunch of money and all that stuff.
Amos Smith:
Yeah, I think for the most part, most of friends and family I had were pretty supportive. Maybe a little confused, maybe a little, I'm not sure what you're doing, but we trust you. So I had a pretty supportive community behind me.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that helps.
Amos Smith:
But really I left Florida and I had a contract for the summer in Glacier and I really had nothing planned after that. I didn't know what was going to happen. I just just trusted God and just has developed into this.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, it says a lot about you and one of them is that you're up for adventure and that you don't have to have the plan all figured out, and you trust God's going to show up and lead you. And I would think that that actually fit you well for the path that you were pursuing there.
Amos Smith:
Yeah. And I've told this to people before about my experience living in the parks. So I did youth ministry for over 14 years before I left. And the ministry I was able to do while living in the parks was, in honesty, all the best parts of ministry without the full-time headaches, and just got to live with people, live in a community of people, just figure out fun ways to love people and build community, build connections. And it was wild. And something to know about, people who work and live in the parks. It's an interesting culture. It's its own unique thing. So stepping into that, it really is like cross cultural ministry. It really is stepping into a different culture and figuring out what's the language here, what's the demographic, how are people thinking, how do people operate? And figuring out how to integrate into that and to love people and point them to something else in the midst of all of that.
Bill Hendricks:
Oh, I can only imagine. It's a very different culture, because we obviously, the vast majority of Americans are in urban settings and fewer and fewer people even in rural settings. And then there's what you're talking about are really wilderness type settings for the most part. I can imagine you have the people that work in the park service and the employees. You've got people who are, I guess I'd call them expert or very seasoned users of the parks, hikers, mountain climbers, skiers, that sort of thing. And then a lot of people that are just, they take the RV or whatever and they camp out and they pitch their tent. And then I know there's got to be a whole bunch of just yahoos that they don't really know what they're doing out there. They didn't come prepared. There they are and get themselves in all kinds of crazy situations.
Amos Smith:
Oh yeah. The national parks are such a unique place to go to see a melting pot of all types of people from all over the country and all over the world. A 100%.
Bill Hendricks:
And I assume for most of them you're seeing them out of their element, right?
Amos Smith:
Yeah, yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Which puts an interesting spin on things.
Amos Smith:
Yeah, it was actually, it's the joke, but it's also sad at the same time, and this happens consistently while I was working in Glacier for example, guests would come up and ask questions and sometimes the questions, I thought they were joking, but they were being serious. They would walk up and say, so when are you going to let all the bears out so we can see them? And there's people coming in with, they didn't do any research, they didn't think ahead, they just assumed it's like a zoo or something. And so it was pretty funny just like saying people asking those types of questions and I would just be like, well, this is the national park, this is the great outdoors, they're around. So maybe you might see one, but it might be good if you don't.
Bill Hendricks:
Now your organization, again, the full name is A Christian Ministry in the National Parks, I'll just call it ACMNP. You guys are there with a purpose and a menu of things that you're up to. Tell us a little bit about that core purpose or mission and then how that fleshes itself out and some of the different ways that you do your work.
Amos Smith:
Yeah. So what we try to do through our organization, through the teams that we send to the parks is to embody and extend the ministry of Jesus Christ through worship, service and leadership development. So that's the core idea. And to give a little context and maybe a little background just so people can understand what this means is. So ACMNP began in 1951, a group of students at Princeton University, they went to Yellowstone National Park to live there and work there for a summer in between their school years. And while they were there, they realized there was no church nearby. They were at the old Faithful Inn and there wasn't a church within a 100 miles. And so they decided, well, this is the kind of stuff that we're learning. We're in the seminary there, so let's do this ourselves. And so at the bar at the Old Faithful Inn on Sundays, they would get together and invite other employees that were living there for the summer and any guests that happened to be there and just invited them to come to a worship service.
So that's how it began. They went back to school, they thought about it, they really were excited about it, so they wanted to do it again. They got help from the Princeton Dean of students who had some connections and essentially they just kept doing this, inviting more friends to do this. And one of the guys in that original group, Warren Ost, he decided, I want to do this continuously, continue to make this a thing. So really turn it into a nonprofit organization. So we've been going for, what was that? 73 years now. And so when people think about this, and this is where I think some people struggle, is when you think about a national park, most people think, oh, it's Smokey the Bear or Park Ranger. When I show up at a national park, if I've ever been to one, I see somebody on a uniform with one of those cool hats on. And that's one part of what happens in a national park is the National Park Service. The other part that most people don't notice are the concessionaires that operate inside the national parks.
So when you visit a national park, you go to the store or the restaurant or you stay at the lodge inside of the park. All of those different infrastructure are all operated by different concessionaires that have won a bid to operate it for 10 years or so. And so our organization, we work primarily with the concessionaires because they're always looking for employees to come and work and live in the park for a season or a whole year. And so we've developed a relationship with them over 73 years and have a fairly good reputation with them. So they want to have the people we're recruiting to be their employees. So when we recruit people with the Christian ministry and the national parks, we're saying, Hey, we want you to be part of this ministry and we're going to help get you a job inside the park so that you can live there and work there, earn money.
But while you're there as a team, you guys will do relational ministry with people that are also living there and working there. And then you'll also provide a worship service or two on a Sunday inside the park, not only for the people living there and working there, but also for guests that happen to be visiting there that weekend. And so those are the people that we recruit, mostly college students, but it could be really anybody over 18. We have people from 18 to 75 that are part of our organization and are on teams all over the country in 30 to 40-ish parks a year, just depending on how many people we have. And they're all doing ministry consistently, throughout the week, relational ministry with coworkers, and then worship services on the weekends for anybody that happens to be there.
Bill Hendricks:
And quite apart from the jobs that your team members have, do you do any enhanced leadership development training or anything like that?
Amos Smith:
Yeah, we do. Everybody that's part of the program, they come to training conference and something that we have them do is we actually have them take the Lion's Lead Leadership assessment. I'm not sure if you or your listeners are familiar with that, but it's an assessment that is designed to look at somebody's behaviors and to help them grow in different competencies and abilities. Things like self-awareness, managing emotions, perseverance, coachability, these types of things. And it gauges where they're currently at. And then it gives steps and ideas in content on how they can grow. So unlike Enneagram or Myers-Briggs that talk about your personality, this assessment really talks about these different competencies and behaviors that can change unlike your personality. So we have all of our team members take that assessment training, we coach them through that to understand it, to utilize it, and then they're able to take that during their season and see how they're growing. And of course, different people take it more seriously than others and use it at different levels, but it's a tool that everybody's given to help them grow as a leader.
Bill Hendricks:
That's great. So you've got personal development and spiritual development built into the program.
Amos Smith:
Yeah. Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Which sounds like a great opportunity for anybody who maybe is at a point in life where they need to do some reflection, maybe dial it back to listen to God, but they can't afford to take a year off. But, again, you get out of your element and you're doing real work, but at the same time you've got people pouring into your life in a way that's redemptive.
Amos Smith:
Yeah. And what I typically say when we're talking to people about this program, because most of the people we talk to are either college students or grad students that typically have more freedom during a summer season.
Bill Hendricks:
Got you.
Amos Smith:
And so what I'll say to them is, a lot of you need to look for some type of job or maybe an internship or something during your summer break. You might as well do it in some of the most beautiful places in the world. You might as well earn income while doing ministry in Paradise. That's my comment to people as they're thinking about whether or not to be a part of this organization, is people that are working in the parks, you're not making a ton of money, but typically in the jobs that our team members get, they'll walk away from a summer anywhere from 3000 to $5,000 in their pocket. So nothing crazy, but if you're going to have a job to make some money and do ministry and be somewhere beautiful, man, you can't ask for something better than this.
Bill Hendricks:
I assume that the concessionaires who are employing these folks in order to be able to have employees, do they provide or set you up with some accommodations to live in?
Amos Smith:
Yeah, that's really the cool part about the whole thing is that once you have a job with concessionaire, you arrive there and they have employee housing, they have some form of meal plan, whether that's employee cafeteria or stipend or something. So there's always some, every park's a little bit different, but yeah, there is something there that when you arrive, you don't have to worry about trying to find your own housing, you don't have to worry about trying to make all this stuff work. That's what they're trying to do. They need employees there. They understand that it's remote and it's far out there, so they provide that for their employees.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, it strikes me that this… Well, let me ask a previous question before I ask that question. So the average person, is that just a summertime gig or is it a year long gig, or what would be a typical tenure?
Amos Smith:
Yeah, typically the concessionaires, they ask for different seasonal contracts. So a lot of parks are only open parts of the year, excuse me. So there's a lot of parks that are closed during the winter seasons because there's too much snow. So they're operating from mid-May through mid-September. So they're looking for people that would be available sometime in that range. There's other parks, like you mentioned, Death Valley, that park is open all year round. And so they're trying to find employees that are willing to do longer contracts, but in the parks, they're always trying to find employees because people are always coming in and out via the seasonal lifestyle.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, so the question I was going to ask was it strikes me that for some of these assignments at least, this might be an actual option for what we call a gap year where somebody needs to just take a year out from the grind of school or whatever, or between college and whatever's next to think, reflect, air out and get another year of reflection and maturation under their belt.
Amos Smith:
Absolutely. You nailed it. And we do have a number of people that do that. We have a number of people that between high school and college, between college and grad school, after their schooling is done, take a whole year. And some people just love it so much they stay in it because they found that this is their niche, this is the ministry that they want to do, and they stay in it for several years.
Bill Hendricks:
That's great.
Amos Smith:
So there's all different ranges. And we're actually currently working on a program to, it's still in the very beginning stages, of an official gap year program. So we have people that do that, just working with us season by season, but we're working on actually having a full gap year program. We're hoping to roll that out in the next year or two.
Bill Hendricks:
That's fantastic. One other thought that occurred to me about the work you're doing, for somebody who was planning to go into pastoral work in a church somewhere, this sounds like it would be a great opportunity to get some familiarity with life in the outdoors with a view that when I get into a church, I would like to create, I'll call them adventures out in the outdoors for different groups of people in the church. Could be a group of men, could be families, could be father daughters or father sons, could be youth, teens, young adults. That way they come in with some experience under their belt and it's not the first rodeo that they've gone to. They know what to expect and what gear to bring and how to get people's expectations and all that kind of stuff.
And I'm sure you have far more examples than I would of people whose lives have been changed by a hiking trip they took or a canoeing trip or someplace where they got out of their element in the outdoors with somebody who was structuring things for them to have an encounter with God and his people, and God does some real surgery on their heart.
Amos Smith:
It's really, really cool that you bring that up because that is actually the real heart of the second aspect of our ministry. What we have been talking about is our park life program, going and living in a park for a whole season. But we understand that there's a lot of people that can't do that, that can't give up a whole summer, whole winter and go live in a park. It's a limited number of people that are capable of doing that. So we created a second program called Impact Trips, and it's exactly what you just described. They're shorter retreats from three to seven days long that we work to build and create for groups to go experience the national parks in a Christian context with our mission of worship service and leadership development baked into that trip. And so we work with schools, with youth groups, with men's groups, women's groups. We even put some together and just invite anybody that's able to come.
We do all sorts of different trips like that with that in mind of, Hey, we understand that when you step out of a normal context that you're used to, that you're accustomed to and you step into a place that is bigger than you for whatever reason, it opens doors in people's hearts and their minds that allows them to have a conversation with God that maybe God's been wanting to have with them for a long time. So we work to create these kinds of trips to bring people into that context, to ask those questions and hopefully have that opportunity where they can experience God and connect with God in a totally new way.
Bill Hendricks:
So let's say there's a pastor, a church leader out there who they've thought at different times about, wow, wouldn't it be great to take the boys in my youth group, my high school youth group, to go on a guy's trip for a week or two, but I don't really know how to do that. I don't know anybody. They could contact ACMNP and work together for you guys to help put that together. And he brings the youth and you run the deal.
Amos Smith:
Yes, exactly. And we want to partner with people as much as possible. So in that example, if that pastor contacts us and says, Hey, I have a group of guys, we want to go and do one of these trips, what could that look like? We would discuss and talk about locations and times and cost and all those elements, and then even have the discussion of how much content do you want to bring to teach your group, and how much do you want us to bring to teach your group? But we can find where that lands. If you just want to be hands off and you want us to run everything, we can do that. If you have a program idea and you just need the context to be operated, we can do that and you can run your program how you want to do it. So we're pretty flexible with what could happen.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and I must point out, you're making this pay for itself, but it is a benefit that this is, I think the national parks is my opinion, but I think the national parks are one of the best examples of our tax dollars at work. It's like, oh yeah, we're actually taking care of these resources. We could bicker over whether we're taking care of them as well as we should obviously. But that we've got these places that have been designated and they're off limits to development and so forth. And our system is paying to maintain those things. And here's an opportunity to benefit from the wilderness resources that have been set aside for purposes of life change and personal development.
Amos Smith:
Yeah. Yeah. And I know that a lot of people maybe have only been to one national park or maybe two, and a lot of people just haven't been to any of them from a distance. You might see some pictures or might see it in a video or a movie or something and just say, oh, that's cool. But until you actually go to one of these places and you're standing there and seeing it with your own eyes, it's a totally different experience, a totally different story. And like I said, there is something that comes alive inside of us when we see these things that are so much bigger than us. And I think that's why people from all over the country and all over the world spend all sorts of money just to be there. There's something that's speaking to our hearts and our souls that's deep inside of us that comes alive when we're there. And there's something that draws us to those places that we want to see and experience more of those.
In my own experience, I see those places, I consider those places the thin places of the world where when you're there, the distance between you and God seems much, much smaller. And honestly, for the ministry aspect of it, especially for people who do the Park Life program, live there for a whole season, they learn that a lot of people who aren't Christians, who aren't interested in God at all still come to live there and work there because they know that there's something like giving about being in these places. And that's where the ministry for our teams really can shine is because they step into a situation. There's a lot of other employees that are atheists or agnostic or don't care about God or have a lot of church hurt, and are very hostile towards the idea of Christ. And our team step in and help bring some context to why they love these places. One of the things that we love to do as team members is just invite other people to go on hikes with us.
It was one of my favorite things to do is just say, Hey, let's go on this hike. You guys want to go, you want to go? Get some people together and go on a hike. And as you're hiking through these beautiful places, you just start talking. You start sharing life, sharing stories, what brought you here? Where are you from? What do you like to do? And it develops into deeper conversations of what do you think? What do you believe in? Where do you come from on all this thing or that thing? And it leads to deeper conversations and ultimately myself and other team members were able to turn that to a conversation about God and at least open that door to that conversation. And what we discover is a lot of times people are very curious, at the least, very curious of why do you believe in this person and what's the answer for these different life things? And so our teams really can step into that unique beautiful space with people and have those conversations and be open to those conversations as they're processing and thinking through all these things.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. That dovetails with a statement that I came across recently where someone said, he had been reading a theologian who says God moves at three miles per hour. And his point was that walking speed for the average human is like about three miles per hour, and that God is much slower than we often want them to be, but it's actually healthy. And of course, in times before the kinds of technologies, transportation we have today, you would move it three miles an hour most everywhere you went. And I can imagine that allows you to notice the flowers, as they say, smell the roses, but also engage in conversation because you're going to be on this particular trip or journey with this person, this path for the next hour. And it's very common for people to have conversations and they don't have other distractions. So now you would start to get into deeper issues and issues of concern inside. And I guess that's what you're setting is doing for people slowing them down.
Amos Smith:
Yeah. What we discovered, at least I discovered when I went into the parks is when I got to Glacier, pretty quickly I disclosed and shared that I'm a part of this Christian ministry, I'm here in the park and I'm a Christian. And right off the bat, a lot of people were pretty hostile towards that. They just assumed that I was an arrogant self-righteous, bigot, because I just said that I was a Christian. And so then myself and my teammates have this beautiful opportunity to rewrite stories for people, their belief in their assumption of what a Christian is, of who Jesus is, of what the church is. And some of them had had really bad experiences to be fair, but our ability to consistently live with them and build community, build relationship over a whole season really change their perspective and their story to see that, Hey, you guys, you Christians are actually really cool. You guys are really great, and you're not what I thought you were. You're not what I assumed you would be.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Amos Smith:
And so being able to rewrite stories is one of the coolest things that our teams get to do.
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely. And for really all of us, I suppose rewriting story is a core thing because all of us, we start out in this world as fallen, broken people despite whatever great background we may have had, there's still an emptiness inside and a brokenness inside because of our estrangement from God. And that narrative, the narratives that we now have in our mind about reality, about God, about life are in many ways false and broken and bent, I guess I'd say. And so we all need a course correction as we go. God needs to speak truth into us. And truth is not just propositional. It is, but it's personal, it's relational. And what you guys are doing is bringing a lot of that relational dynamic into play because you're able to converse with people over some time, again, in a setting that they didn't see it coming.
Amos Smith:
Exactly. Exactly.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. I'm curious, just a personal question, I'm sure you have it yourself been to all, maybe you have all the national parks, but the ones that you have, do you have any personal favorites or even places that you go, man, if I didn't have anything else to do and ahead of time I'd go here because this is what I love about it?
Amos Smith:
Yeah, there's 63 national parks. I've been to 32 of them, and so there's still plenty more to see and experience. As far as to answer your question, I think Glacier would probably be at the top of my list. It's a little unfair because I got to actually live there, so I got to see way more of it than most people get to see. But it's still one of the, if not the most beautiful and incredible places. And if somebody decides to go, I can recommend that you go to the east side of the park and you go to the Many Glacier Valley, and there's the Many Glacier Lodge and the Swiftcurrent Motor Inn, the places to stay on the east side.
I worked and live at the Swiftcurrent Motor Inn, and if you want to just look up pictures on your own time to be blown away, you just look up Many Glacier, M-A-N-Y, Many Glacier. And that area, it will floor you how beautiful it is. And then that's just an example of some of the places that our teams get to live. Wake up every day in paradise.
Bill Hendricks:
No kidding.
Amos Smith:
My thing was like, I'm going to work. I got to work my job, I work eight hours, clock out and get some people, and we're going to go do a 10-mile hike and get to the top of that mountain and come on back down. So it was just like an everyday thing. Work, clock out, go on a hike.
Bill Hendricks:
Sounds like a pretty good deal.
Amos Smith:
It was.
Bill Hendricks:
And do you ever get to the point where you go, okay, this is all well and good, but I got to get back to a city somewhere?
Amos Smith:
Oddly enough, when you're living in the parks, there's part of you that you mentioned slowing down earlier. There is something that happens. It's this weird thing, I can't even describe it, where time moves differently in most of the parks. Your connection to the outside world's limited. In Glacier Eye, there was only one building that had any type of wifi and was spotty. So it was only ever once in a while I was able to check emails or Instagram or something. Most of the time I didn't have it. And suddenly my world slowed down and every moment was more alive than it had ever been in my life. Every conversation, every interaction just became something far deeper and more real. And so simultaneously it felt like I had lived there my whole life and that it was going by quickly. It was this odd thing, and it was so powerful for me that I was like, I need to keep doing this.
And that's why I re-upped and went and did a winter season in Death Valley just to continue to experience this other worldly life and experience of connecting and building community. And my thing, I've joked around with some of my friends that were also in student ministry, I was like, Hey guys, if the job doesn't work out at some point, you need to move on or it doesn't happen, I can recommend take a little bit of time and come and do ministry out in the parks. It is life-giving, it's weird, it's crazy, it's challenging, but it is so amazing.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, you raised an issue that I was actually going to press into, so thank you. Because I can imagine a lot of places in the parks, you don't have cell phone access, you don't have wifi, and I just know there's just got to be a whole lot of younger people, particularly I'm a boomer, there's probably a ton of boomers, that would be the deal breaker for them. Oh, there's a great idea, but man, I can't live apart from my social media. I can't go off the grid like that forever. I don't think I could survive. I don't know what I'd do with myself, but you're saying, well, actually you can and there's some good to that.
Amos Smith:
Yeah, yeah. It's hard to describe until you experience it, but it's like, and I'm sure plenty of people have tried to explain this in different ways at different times, but it's almost like the difference between looking at a crayon drawing and seeing the real thing. It's the difference between trying to breathe with three shirts over your mouth versus breathing fresh air. You're contained and stifled in ways you can't really understand right now, but when that's removed, suddenly you realize, I actually wasn't living a full life like I thought I was. And what I'm seeing and experiencing and living right now in this beautiful place with these crazy and weird people, this is actual life. And once you get a taste of that, it's like, I've been asleep my whole life and now I'm finally awake.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I think context has to have so much to do with it. Obviously all of us can dial up in an instant on our device, a National Geographic quality photo of the Grand Canyon or a waterfall. And if somebody on YouTube put some music to that and maybe dissolves it with a bunch of other pretty scenes, and it's very relaxing, beautiful, pleasurable moment that you have, but that's a problem. It's just a moment and it's also mediated. Somebody's giving you a taste of that experience, and then you're back to the real context you live in, which is so chopped and fragmented.
And what you're talking about there is out in the wilderness, is you're in a context that's stable now and, it's not stable in the sense, there's a lot going on around you, but it's happening at levels that you're so unused to. The pace is slower and the things going on are so much grander than the instantaneous little fireballs that are coming at you in a more technologically driven place. And this context, you're going to be there for a while because it's too big to get out of quickly, and that's got to do something to your soul.
Amos Smith:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, keeping the analogy going, it's like the difference between getting a sip of water and swimming in a lake.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Yeah.
Amos Smith:
I learned so much about myself, about people, about life by being there, connecting and listening to God in ways that I never realized that it was possible. The conversations I had with God sitting on top of mountains were the most real conversations that I've ever had. Walking through the canyons of Death Valley there's a stillness and a quiet there that's deafening that you can't fully describe or explain until you're there. And it's in those absolute silences that God can speak in the deepest ways. Walking on the Salt Flats at night under the stars and seeing for miles in every direction, I'm surrounded by salt on this ground and I'm surrounded by stars in the sky. At a moment of loneliness in life, looking around and seeing these things as examples, real examples of the stars and the light and the salt of the earth that Jesus talks about and remembering, I'm not alone.
There are others that are experiencing life with me and following Jesus. These real tangible examples of what Jesus teaches, of what God teaches through his word in seeing these things and seeing the message, the sermon that Jesus is consistently preaching to me and to others constantly just by being there and living there and observing that, there's something so meaningful to that. And just the growth of my own spiritual development and understanding God's word, it went from just purely intellectual and trying to understand a text to I'm surrounded by all of these incredible, beautiful examples and analogies of this truth that God's trying to get across to me, seeing this every day and then easily pointing people's attention to that through any of the messages or sermons I was able to preach at those worship services we did, or the Bible studies we did on our own, and just pointing people to see that mountain, see that valley, see this river. You see what this is saying to you. What is God saying to you? Yeah, there's something so beautiful and powerful about that experience.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I hear that Amos, and I'm blown away, and it makes me think, wow, maybe another program you guys are going to have to put together, I'll call it the Reentry Program because somebody goes for a summer or whatever, or even just a two-week trip, one of your impact trips. And they do, they have that so-called mountaintop experience, but there's something to that. And then they inevitably do have to come back to where they live in a big city or whatever. And for so many people, they get into a habit of, oh, we go and we have the mountaintop experience. Well, let's get back to the real world. And it's like we love those memories, but they become just that memories. And I guess the thought is how to help people prepare to go back to old systems and layers and frames of living, and yet bring something into those and into that context that they didn't have before. And they'll never quite live in that context quite the same way again because of that.
Amos Smith:
Yeah-
Bill Hendricks:
How to solidify the gains, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Amos Smith:
Yeah. That was something I had to wrestle with too, is stepping away from living in the parks to living in Colorado now. There was a little bit of a shift and change, and there was part of me that missed it, missed the beauty I lived around consistently. However, what I learned in my experience, some of the key things that I learned, I realized these are so valuable and important no matter where you. A clear example of this that I really latched onto was this idea that I came across while I was living in the parks was this idea of gravity, mass and gravity being a great analogy for identity and influence, because living in the parks, I just saw you've got all sorts of different people. You got different groups of people, cliques of people. And I would notice that the people who seemed to know, whether they did or not, seemed to know who they were, have their identity figured out. They were the ones with a lot of gravity. They were the ones that were able to pull people into their orbit.
And so then I realized, and then I shared this with my teammates, is like, we need to know who we are. We need to know who we belong to. We need to be solid in that, have a solid mass, solid identity. That way we can bring people into our gravity and into our orbit and show them who we follow. Because if they don't, they're going to fall into somebody else's gravity and who knows where that's going to take them. And I realize that's a truth that not only did I learn that and live that in the parks, but that's a truth that I learn and live anywhere and everywhere, is your identity is what allows you to have influence. That's just one example of these things that we've learned. Power of community, the power of generosity, of kindness.
Another quick example, when I lived in Death Valley, there was a guy that worked there and he worked in the employee dining room, and his job was to clean things and make sure everything was set and ready, but he was one of those guys that really loved the rules and loved making sure that everybody else kept the rules, and it was just his job. So I ran into him multiple times where he would get onto me for something, oh, move your backpack, or you can't sit there or do this or do that. And I got really annoyed with him. I got really frustrated and to the point where it was like I hated going into the employee dining room because this guy was going to be there and he was going to tell me some other thing that I was doing wrong, and to the point where I was just like, I don't want to be around this guy at all. And one day God was just convicting me and said, maybe you should actually love this guy.
And so I was really convicted by that and thought, okay, maybe I should do something. So I went to the store, I bought a little card and I just got the card and I just wrote in there and I was like, Steven, I know you work hard and I want you to know that I see the work that you do, and I just want to say thank you and signed it. And I left it on his desk. The next day I'm sitting in the dining room and he walks up to me and he looks at me, he says, I've worked here for 12 years, and nobody has ever said thank you. And I was blown away by that. I was just like, oh my gosh. A few days later he told me, he is like, I took your card and I hung it up in my locker so I could see it every day.
And this guy went from being an enemy towards me to being a friend. And he showed me all sorts of incredible places to hike and took me to some incredible places. And just listening to God and seeing these types of things and seeing people differently and seeing the community that can be built through just intentional care and generosity, that's a truth. That's a reality that existed there. But it exists anywhere and everywhere.
Bill Hendricks:
I can imagine as well. You mentioned some of the worship services that you and your team lead, and you've got people from every kind of faith background and no faith background as it were. And I can only imagine that for many of those people, if you say a prayer for them, that's the first time anybody's ever prayed for them. It's like your friend, I've never gotten a thank you note. And it's like, you mean you, you'd pray for me? I've never had anybody do that before. And that in and of itself becomes rather powerful and redemptive for them.
Amos Smith:
It is, it is. And you mentioned this, and just to expound on just a little bit more, we are an interdenominational ministry, so there's people that are part of our organization, part of our teams that come from all different church backgrounds, different Christian church mindsets.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Traditions. Yeah.
Amos Smith:
Yeah, exactly. And so that's one of the really cool and unique and challenging things for our teams is we're putting you on a team with other believers that probably all come from different traditions or backgrounds or denominations. And so you guys, as a team, not only are you doing relational ministry, but you guys also have this beautiful opportunity to learn how to love and listen to each other and build community even though you may have some differences on things. And that's what we try to challenge our team members too, is allow this to be a season where tension creates love, where at the end of the day, you may walk away and you may not agree with your teammates' perspective on certain things, but just for this season, figure out how you guys can point people to Jesus together instead of an opposition. And it creates a cool context where you can learn a lot about other people's… My background is nondenominational. I was on a team with a guy who was Lutheran and a young lady that was Armenian Orthodox.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Amos Smith:
And so the three of us had to figure out how do we communicate to everybody around us, our love for Jesus and in our worship services, how are we going to communicate that and show that? And we teach our team members, we actually have, I'll show you, I don't know if your listeners may not be able to see this, but we have these worship books that we've created that have all sorts of songs, prayers, creeds, different readings, all sorts of stuff from different types of Christian Church backgrounds. And so we give our teams those that they can use at their worship services. So when they're going in to do a worship service, there's so much content that we already give them from the get go that they don't have to create from scratch. Really, the only thing that they have to build from scratch for a worship service is whoever's going to give the message that week.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, this is fantastic, Amos. Unfortunately, our time has gone, but I love the fact that, the way I see it is God has created all this amazing creation out there, and it's all over the country, and it's all over the world. And he calls people out there knowing that if they see what his handy work is like, it at least puts them in the right direction of paying attention to him. And then he wants to start speaking to him. And what you guys are doing, it's like, okay, God's already there. So now we're going to go out and work with him just to try to help people realize that he's here and he's got something to say to him. We're just helpers of what God's doing. And I love that. And it sounds like you guys and God are making a pretty good team.
Amos Smith:
Yeah. That's what we love to do, and we're just going to keep doing it.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, please do, and God bless your work. This is so exciting to hear about. Thank you for being on The Table today.
Amos Smith:
Thanks for having me. Appreciate you so much and what you're doing, and we'll keep talking. And Bill, I'll get you to come on one of our impact trips and you can check it out for yourself.
Bill Hendricks:
I will absolutely be glad to do that. And I would say to you as listeners and viewers, look up A Christian Ministry in the National Parks, ACMNP.com. And Amos is on there and all of his team and their programs. These are wonderful opportunities for you as an individual, for you as a church leader and people in your church. And to me, it'd be crazy not to avail ourselves of what ACMNP has put together in, frankly in, I'll say at least collaboration, not formally, but informally with our National Park Service, and to take advantage of the wonderful resources that God has blessed us with. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please give us a rating on your favorite podcasting service and subscribe to The Table podcast so that you can see additional coming podcast that we'll send out and let us know what you think. So for The Table, I'm Bill Hendricks and I want to thank you for being part of The Table with us today where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology for everyday life.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. My name is Jeremiah Chandler, and I'm excited to be the guest host today on The Table Podcast. Through my internship here at The Hendricks Center, we are going to be discussing apologetics. This topic is very near and dear to my heart, and I could not think of two better people to be having this conversation with. I'm joined by Dr. Eric Mason and Dr. Frank Turek. Both of these men have played a huge role in my life personally, and so I'm extremely honored and grateful to be discussing apologetics with you guys today. Thank you for being here.
Frank Turek:
Thanks, Jeremiah.
Eric Mason:
Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be on here.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Yep. So Dr. Mason, Dr. Turek, you guys are no strangers to conversations around apologetics, but if you could, would you mind just introducing yourselves to our listeners and then also how you got into apologetics?
Eric Mason:
I'm going to let my brother Frank go first.
Frank Turek:
I got into apologetics because I came to faith through apologetics. I grew up Catholic because I'm from New Jersey, and it's the law. You're either Catholic or Jewish in New Jersey. I went to Catholic high school, but I didn't really know who Jesus was until I was in the Navy. I met the son of a Methodist minister, and I had so many questions for this guy. He finally said, "Look, you just need to get Josh McDowell books."More Than a Carpenter." So I read those books back in like 1985, and became a Christian. And when I got out of the Navy, I went to Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte. Still a great place to get an education, ses.edu/frank. Don't forget to order the pillow too. And you can get a great education online. And I actually moved to Charlotte to study under Dr. Geisler, and then later I started a ministry called CrossExamined.org where we go to colleges, high schools and churches, and present evidence that Christianity is true.
Eric Mason:
Stormin' Norman. You studied under Stormin' Norman. That's what we used to call him.
Frank Turek:
That's right. You know about him, Eric?
Eric Mason:
Oh, yeah, man. His bibliology book had a major impact on me. Intro to Bibliology, it's a great book.
Frank Turek:
Oh, yeah?
Eric Mason:
Great book. Yeah. So my name is Eric Mason, born and raised in Washington, D.C. Now I'm in Philadelphia, pastoring here. Epiphany Fellowship Church here in Philadelphia. What else? I'm the husband of one wife, been married for almost 27 years. I have three boys, one girl, and I've written eight books, two more on the way. And yeah, I'm glad to be… I'm a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, so this is my alma mater. And so anytime Dallas calls me. It has had such a rich impact on my relationship with Jesus, my understanding of, and the commitment to handling the Word of God in a way of integrity, particularly in the false teaching age that we're in. So I really appreciate what the Lord did through DTS for my wife and I. So thanks for having me.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Amen.
Frank Turek:
DTS is the gold standard on studying the Bible.
Eric Mason:
Yes, sir.
Frank Turek:
Dr. Geisler taught there for many years, and so many other greats have, and there's still great professors down there.
Eric Mason:
Absolutely.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Very true. Dr. Mason, how did you get into apologetics?
Eric Mason:
So interestingly enough, I didn't know what apologetics was. When I was in college in the early '90s, I trusted the Lord on a college campus, Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland. And during that time, hip hop was very anti-Christian because of Nation of Islam, and a Nation of Gods and Earths, Five Percenters, and a lot of Pan-Africanism. And so there was a lot of Black identity stuff during that time. And one of the particular long-term things that's been… They've been saying this for almost a hundred years, people like Noble Drew Ali, Elijah Muhammad and others, that Christianity is a white man's religion. And so back then, we didn't have the plethora of resources to access scholarship that are already kind of debunked a lot of… Kind of like the 18th century mystics era where you had Gerald Massey, Helena Blavatsky, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, all of those different mystics that kind of came out against Christianity being a copy of Egyptian religions, you know?
Jeremiah Chandler:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Mason:
And so we didn't have that. So I began searching during that time as a believer on how to do that. So that's where it came from. It really didn't come from me wanting to do apologetics. It was me as one of the few Christian men on a Black college campus that was anti-Christian. That was kind of the seeding ground for me to… Over the years, I didn't realize until later that it was called apologetics, what I was doing. So yeah.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Gotcha. Wow, so it sounds like for both of you guys, apologetics was really fundamental in, Frank, how you came to faith. And also Dr. Mason, for just for you surviving a college campus, and trying to work through your faith as well. Is it fair to say? Is that fair?
Eric Mason:
Yeah, that's safe to say.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Well, how would you guys define apologetics? I know we've said it a couple of times. For our listeners who may not know, how would you guys define what is apologetics?
Eric Mason:
Yeah, I just simply define it based on all… Every apologetics' book got first Peter 3:15 in it. The word apology, given a reason for the hope that is within you. And so I believe it is a defense or giving a defense for the faith, or giving clarity for the faith. And so I just believe it's simply that's what apologetics is. Yeah.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Dr. Turek, how about you?
Frank Turek:
Yeah, ditto. Same thing.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Ditto
Frank Turek:
What you said there, what Eric said there. Also, it's a lot about removing objections as well, not just giving evidence that it's true, but when people give you objections, can you answer those objections?
Eric Mason:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's good. One analogy that really helps me as I read through the Bible, I noticed the Parable of the Sower talks about the seed landing on good soil. An analogy that helps me is apologetics is kind of preparing the soil. So when you think about answering objections, when you're planting a seed, you want to break up the hard ground. And to me, that's kind of like, oh yeah, we're breaking up the objections or doubts that people may have, but then also so the seed can grow, you also want to provide fertilizer nutrients for the soil as well. And that's kind of what Frank you were just saying, making a positive case for Christianity.
Frank Turek:
Yeah. I think also part of the four soils shows you that there's a lot of people out there that just won't be receptive too, it doesn't matter what you do. That's why I always ask people, "If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?" And a lot of times they'll answer, "No." Because it's not a… problem, it's a heart problem, right? They don't want it to be true. They don't want there to be a God because they want to be God over their own lives. It's always important to ask them, "If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?" Because it just cuts through all the noise that they're putting out there, and it forces them to deal with the issue. If it's true, you're going to follow? If they say no, it doesn't matter how much evidence you give them.
Eric Mason:
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's interesting that you bring that up. I remember a book from back in the day called I'm Glad You Asked, you probably read it.
Frank Turek:
Oh, yeah, that's… What's the guy's name?
Eric Mason:
Boa and the other guy, I forgot.
Frank Turek:
Larry something, wasn't it?
Eric Mason:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Frank Turek:
Yeah.
Eric Mason:
And they talk about those barriers, the intellectual barrier, the emotional barrier, the volitional barrier. The volitional barrier, you just can't break through that. That's Ephesians 2 stuff. You know you can't do nothing about that. But really dealing with the intellectual barrier, which is barrier that's based on information and values. And then emotional barriers, the factual things, what's the more experiential and personal preferential reasons why the gospel? I mean it's nothing. All that's broken down into 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, "The god of this world has blinded the minds so that they won't see the gospel." And so I see apologetics as the Holy Spirit using it as an aid to remove a barrier, whether emotional, or intellectual, in order that people can actually hear and see the gospel.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Right.
Frank Turek:
Yes. It's an important aspect of Christianity is providing evidence. It's interesting that the one world religion that you can demonstrate that is actually true, so many Christians don't avail themselves of that ability. They don't think it's necessary when in today's culture, man, 70 years ago, you could open the Bible and people would say, "The Bible, what does it say?" Now you open the Bible, they call you names. You got to give them some evidence, if they're going to be open.
Eric Mason:
Absolutely.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Very true. Well, Frank, that's a good segue. What would you say to the pastor or the church leader who doesn't feel that apologetics is necessary?
Frank Turek:
Well, it's actually a command. It's not a suggestion.
Eric Mason:
That's right.
Frank Turek:
He's ready to give an answer, right? Paul says, "I'm set in defense of the gospel." Jude says that, "We need to contend for the faith." It's not an opinion, it's part of the Scriptures, and for good reason. Why should you be a Christian and not a Muslim? Why should you be a Christian and not an atheist? Why should you be a Christian and not a Buddhist or a Hindu or make up your own religion like so many people do today? The reason you want to be a Christian is because it's true.
Eric Mason:
That's so good, so good. Yeah.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's great. Dr. Mason, do you have anything to add to that?
Eric Mason:
Ask the question one more time?
Jeremiah Chandler:
What would you say to the pastor or church leader who feels that apologetics isn't necessary in the church?
Eric Mason:
I would say he is not doing evangelism. I mean, it's impossible in this world to say that, right?
Jeremiah Chandler:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Mason:
One of the things I tell people is, any pastor or the pastors not preaching the Word. And the reason why I say that is because a lot of people always ask me, "Where do I start an apologetics?" I said, "The fundamentals, learn the faith. You can't defend what you don't know." I said, "It's like a guy wanting to learn how to play basketball that wants to start off with a crossover, and he doesn't even know how to dribble. I can't even survive some suicides or some two-a-days, you know?
Jeremiah Chandler:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Mason:
I'm like, "Nah, bro, you got fundamentals to do, and you can only defend what you have a basic handle on." And so you don't start learning the fundamentals through apologetics. And so it's kind of like Simon the Sorcerer, "I'm with the Holy Spirit so I can learn how to do what they're doing," kind of thing. It's like, "Nah, bro, you have to learn the fundamentals." And so I think if someone's teaching the… It's impossible. If you are teaching the didaskalían, if you're teaching the sound teaching, if you're teaching and preaching biblical truth and it invades culture, whether it's through social media, or whether it's through evangelism or whatever, you're going to come up against that. And when you begin bringing clarity, like Frank said, or evidence or whatever, you're doing apologetics whether you know it or not, so yeah.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's good. When I first got into apologetics, I really only understood it in terms of how you explained it, Dr. Mason, in terms of evangelism. But how actually can we actually utilize apologetics within the context of the church?
Eric Mason:
One of the things that a pastor's role is to lead, feed, care, know and protect. Let me say that again. Lead, feed, care, know, protect. That's the dimensions biblically of a pastor, and that is, I have a whole teaching on it. The last one, protect, you'll see in Titus 1, you'll see in 1 Timothy 1:5, he said, "The reason why I left you in Ephesus is that you may teach certain people not to teach strange doctrine." 1 and 2 Timothy are fundamentally written because there's false doctrine in the church, not out in the culture.
Also, 2 Peter 2, is one of the most dense passages in the New Testament on false teaching. And so I think that in this day and age, with the level of false teachers that are online that have popular views and people in the pews. And sometimes it frustrates me and I love my people, and I tell them off nicely. And I'll say to them, "I don't see how you listen to me and the elders here preach, and you're liking that guy's posts to his absolutely asinine, his theological framework. He has no hermeneutics, has no love of the sheep. It's about either money or it's about some false prophecy, or it's about you about to come into your season. It's a egocentric hermeneutic."
And so a lot of times, I tell people it's very important. And a lot of my questions from people… Because I wrote a chapter in one of my books on deconstructing the faith. And one of the things that I talk about deconstruction is really coming to terms with what you really believe. That's what I believe deconstruction is, coming to terms with what you really believe. And a lot of times in the process of people dealing with stuff. I'm dealing with stuff like people in my church being influenced by Hebrew Israelism, the Black people are the original Hebrews, and the people over in the land are the fake Jews. And I'm dealing with somebody with witchcraft, and they believe in syncretism, that they believe that the crystals on the priestly garment is God can utilize those as incantation things to help invoke His presence. And so I'm saying all that to say, in the church today, I've had more need for apologetics in the local church than I think I ever have.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Wow. That's really good. Yeah, that is-
Frank Turek:
Yeah, there's so much Jeremiah, that comes through this thing right here, people getting a lot of misinformation-
Eric Mason:
That's right.
Frank Turek:
… from their phones, that it all the more necessary to counter it with good teaching as Dr. Mason was saying. If you don't have good teaching, if you don't know how to interpret the Word, you're very susceptible. And isn't it interesting that if you go to flyover country in the Bible, which for many people is Roman 16, that's where Paul says, "Greet Rufus, and greet so-and-so and greet all these people." You're like, "I don't need to read that," right? Well, right in the middle of that-
Eric Mason:
Yes, sir. 17 and 18.
Frank Turek:
… there's a section where Paul basically says, I don't have it in front of me, but he basically says, "That the divisive people in the church are the people bringing false teaching in, not the people who are trying to contend for the faith."
Eric Mason:
That's right.
Frank Turek:
So whoever claims that you're divisive because you're running off false teachers, it's not you that's divisive, it's the false teacher that's divisive.
Eric Mason:
That's right.
Frank Turek:
You need to protect the sheep, and that's what you're supposed to do if you're a pastor, or what you're supposed to do with your kids or yourself. You got to chase off the false teaching, and you got to know what the truth is in order to do that.
Eric Mason:
So good. So good.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Amen. That's right. That's good. So as you guys are both engaged in, like you said, apologetics within ministry, how do you go about… Dr. Mason, you said sometimes people, the issues in your church that come up. Dr. Turek, I know you guys visit college campuses. But how do you go about knowing what questions need to be answered, versus just answering questions that you have a good answer for?
Frank Turek:
Well, when you're out there enough, you see the kind of questions that are asked. And right now, I'd say the top three objections to Christianity are morality, morality and morality.
Eric Mason:
Wow.
Frank Turek:
All about morality. Go to a college campus, you're going to get questions on LGBTQ, you're going to get questions on why did God kill the Canaanites? You're going to get questions on, does the Bible condone slavery? You're going to get questions on what about those that have never heard? These are all actually moral questions.
Eric Mason:
Absolutely.
Frank Turek:
They're all about how people are supposed to live, and is the Bible really true? Actually, people, they don't ask as much is the Bible true? They ask more is the Bible or is God good? Now, when they're doing that, they're assuming a standard, and they actually have to steal a standard from God in order to say, "Well, the God of the Bible's not the true God, or the God of the Bible's evil." Look, if there is no God, there is no good or evil, it's just someone's opinion. But if God does exist, the only question is, who is the true God? And the way I think we can show that Christianity is the true God is you only have to answer two questions. Does God exist, and did Jesus rise from the dead? If the answer to those two questions is true, or is yes, I should say, then Christianity is true, and the Christian God is the true God. That's what we do in the book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.
Eric Mason:
Yeah.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's right. Which is a great read. Great read. Dr. Mason, what would you say, since you're actual in a church context, how would you recommend or what would you suggest to pastors who are struggling with some of the questions that people are raising in their congregation, and how can apologetics be the answer to some of those issues?
Eric Mason:
Yeah, I study the text and my people, and culture all the time. I'm watching snippets of podcasts that they watch. Because you got to know that you're not your sheep's only pastor, right? And so, one of the things, I'm looking at Joe Budden's clips, I'm looking at Math Hoffa, I'm looking at The Breakfast Club, I'm looking at Fresh and Fit. I'm looking at all of these, because that's what they listening to. And so I can build my series off of biblically whether I'm going through a particular book of the Bible because of a lot of apostasy was going on, and a lot of deconstruction. I went through the Book of Hebrews because that book is about challenging the church on apostasy, right?
Jeremiah Chandler:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Mason:
And talking about how Christ is better, and don't give up. That's the theme of the book. Right now, I'm about to go through second Peter. Before this, I just finished up a series on culture shift. And so I'm constantly… And then I got an online presence, and so a lot of the people in the age demographic that my folk are in, I got mostly Gen Z and millennials, and so I know where they're listening to, and then I interact with them. I have test groups that I talk to, not official test groups, but I kind of shoot questions. And I'm in DMs with some of my members, and I'll shoot them this, tell them what they think.
And it all helps because it helps me to get a general… That's what the Bible talks about. I hope I'm using this verse in context. "Know well your flocks and herds," at least it can apply to this, right? And so, one of the things I try to do is know where people are. And so that means I'm studying the things that they're thinking through. I'm thinking through, if they're talking about entrepreneurialism and they're into it, I'm like, "What's influencing their desire for entrepreneurialism?" And if they're in the Black identity, are you making your blackness king? How are we doing? Are we letting our theology influence our sociology? So I'm always working through different things like that to just make sure that I'm able to… First off, the Bible says in Ezra 7:10, it says, "Ezra said it's hard to study the law, to understand it, and to practice it, and then to teach it to Israel." And so I try to run things through my own soul, so that I can also viably engage God's people with that.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Oh, that's good. Dr. Turek, what would you say when you're in churches, what are some of the issues that people reach out to you to address or respond to?
Frank Turek:
Well, we were just in Pittsburgh at a church, myself, Alisa Childers, Natasha Crain to do a seminar called UNSHAKEN. And I got 80 questions right here from that service.
Eric Mason:
Wow.
Frank Turek:
Normally when I do Q&A, I just have a microphone, and people ask whatever they want. But there are so many questions here on LGBTQ, there are questions here… you know what's going on? And Eric, you just mentioned this about deconstruction.
Eric Mason:
Yeah.
Frank Turek:
There's a lot of people that are dealing with that in their families now. "My parents have deconstructed and they don't want me in their life, or vice versa." "The kids deconstructed and doesn't want the parents in their lives, and he's even using the grandkids as bargaining chips," which is just ridiculous. There's questions about politics, there's questions here about the Trinity. You get questions about, we understand the Trinity, there are questions about, you always get how old's the earth? And I always say, I'm absolutely convinced the universe is at least 62 years old. There's all sorts of different questions. A lot of them though, as I mentioned earlier, have to do with morality. How do people live?
Eric Mason:
Yeah.
Jeremiah Chandler:
What would you say is the driving force, because Dr. Mason, you say you study culture. Frank, you're getting all these questions. What would you say, what has shifted in our culture that's causing people to want to focus on maybe less about what's true but more about what's good and is God good?
Eric Mason:
I just think the prophecies in 1 Timothy 4:1-2, and 2 Timothy 3, and 2 Timothy 4:1-4, I just think they're just coming to pass. "In later times, many will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons," right?
Jeremiah Chandler:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Mason:
And so people will accumulate for them… They won't endure a sound doctrine, but they will accumulate for themselves… "They will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires." So I really believe that it's… The last chapter of my first book is what was an important chapter, and I wrote… The first book on Urban Apologetics rather. I said, "We have to treat apologetics like spiritual warfare. It's not merely a will battle. It's not merely a intellectual battle. It's not merely a moral battle. It is a war." That's what it calls doctrines of demons. That means spirits are behind these false teachings going out.
And so we have to remember, that's why Paul in Colossians 4:2-6, he prayed for the open door. He said, "Pray for us," right? So in other words, because he understood, even in Jude, he said, "Prays all times in the Spirit," based on Jude 3. "Contending for the faith that was once delivered up for us." But he also talks about praying. Now Paul talks about that in… he talks about praying for boldness in Ephesians 6:18. So I really believe that fundamentally it's an invasion of overt push of the enemy to really try to destroy the image of God's glory in the earth.
Frank Turek:
Yeah, as Dr. Mason just said, that whole passage where Paul talks about, "People are going to let their itching ears tell them what they want to hear, and get instructors around them that are going to tell them what they want to tell them, and their God is their belly and all this." It's more and more today about meology than theology."
Eric Mason:
That's right.
Frank Turek:
It's like, I want God to agree with me, and so I'm just going to create a God in my image rather than follow the true God. And I know that people always ask the question a lot about pain and suffering. Why does God allow evil and all this, right?
Eric Mason:
Yep.
Frank Turek:
But I think the bigger test that we have, particularly in America, is not evil, pain and suffering, is too much prosperity.
Eric Mason:
Absolutely.
Frank Turek:
Because when things start going well, that's when we forget about God, and then we start using God as our cosmic candy man. Like, "God, if you get me this man, I'll be happy," right?
Eric Mason:
Yeah.
Frank Turek:
Too much prosperity makes you shallow. Too much prosperity makes you me-centered. Too much prosperity makes you more of a me-monster, right?
Eric Mason:
Yeah.
Frank Turek:
What do we call kids who get everything they want? We call them spoiled. Why? What's spoiled about them? Their character is spoiled because they're getting everything they want. You want to ruin somebody, give them everything they want. We need difficulty in our lives. We need obstacles. We need God to say no. Because if we get everything we want, we're not going to become more like Jesus, we're going to become more like Satan.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's a really good point, Dr. Turek. I want to ask you guys real quick, but I want to preface this in terms of… Because both of you guys do a lot of work, and I'm here in school, like I mentioned at DTS. And I'm studying a lot of contextualized theology in terms of giving questions or presenting the gospel in ways that people can understand in their current climate or culture. Dr. Mason, Urban Apologetics, I think you would agree, is a contextualized version of apologetics.
Eric Mason:
Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Dr. Turek. You recently wrote a book with your son, if I believe, on Hollywood Heroes, exploring the phenomena of movies and how that relates to our faith. First, how important is it to be able to give answers to people in their context, the questions that they're actually asking? But also, can you talk about a little bit about your thought process behind those two works that you guys did?
Eric Mason:
Yeah, so I think the Bible does it. From the beginning of the Bible, Genesis was written as an apologetic to the Mediterranean, right? So if a lot of… That's why people say, is Christianity a copy of these particular things? Because the writer of Genesis knew the questions that was happening when he was inspired to write Genesis. So fundamentally, that encourages me because the Bible is fundamentally an apologetical book from the beginning. Most books in the New Testament were written in response to false doctrine, right? I mean, most of them. When you look at 1 and 2 Corinthians, it's written in response. Not all of them, but most of them were written.
So I believe that when you're saturated on some level, and I'm not saying everybody has to run around and be an apologist running around the street, what I am saying is, the Great Commission could be translated as you go. So when persons in the marketplace, and they're at lunch, or they go on a business trip with colleagues. Or a person is working the night shift and they come across opportunities to interact with people who don't know Jesus Christ on their workplace or in their third places, as we call it in missiology. The third place is the place where you want to be, where you hang out at. Like the pool hall. Back in my day, it was an arcade, but mall, whatever you're doing today. And you come across people and you start engaging them with the gospel, those questions naturally come up.
And it's necessarily… For very practical reasons, for other people. Some people, you may come across questions you might not be able to answer. And one of the things I want to encourage people to do is, don't feel like you have to know the answer at that point. Put gospel, and the Word of God between you and them, not you between the gospel and them. And so when it becomes more about reaching them, and not being right all the time. And you begin to learn how to, can I get answers for these questions? Then what you begin to do is, you be… that's how you grow really strongly in your faith, in your fundamentals and your ability to share the faith, when you're dealing with issues as they come across your spiritual desk.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's good. Dr. Turek, what question were you trying to answer in your book, Hollywood Heroes? And then also if you could add on to what Dr. Mason said about how important it is to just be able to give answers to the questions that people are asking our culture today.
Frank Turek:
Well, it turns out that the top movie franchises of the past 50 years have all stolen from the greatest story ever told. The story of Jesus. And particularly the superhero genres. So whether you're talking about Iron Man, or you're talking about Captain America, or Batman, or Wonder Woman or Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or even Harry Potter, Harry Potter, are you kidding? Yeah, Harry Potter was taken directly from the Bible. I know she's got a lot of hocus pocus stuff in there, but Harry Potter is a Jesus figure in that story.
Eric Mason:
Wow.
Frank Turek:
And she even admits it, J.K. Rowling does. And so what we do in this book, Hollywood Heroes:How Your Favorite Movies Reveal God, is we show people that all of these heroes are patterned after Jesus in some way. And what does Jesus do, that is the ultimate act of love and the ultimate act that these superheroes do, and that is they sacrifice themselves.
Eric Mason:
That's right.
Frank Turek:
Jesus sacrifices Himself to save people from evil. That's what Jesus does. So the last chapter is, who's the ultimate hero? And that's Jesus. So there's a lot of life lessons in the book. There's a lot of stories in the book about how what you see on the big screen is actually stolen from the story of the Bible. And so if people like Iron Man, or they like Harry Potter, or they like Batman, they're going to love Jesus if they understand Jesus properly. And so that's what the focus of the book is. I want to go back to something we were talking about a little bit before about too much prosperity, and we point this out in the book as well. Dr. Peter Kreeft said this. He said, "The point of our lives is not comfort, security, or even happiness; but training. Not fulfillment but preparation. This world is a lousy home, but it's a fine gymnasium."
So when you're going through difficulty, just as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, "That our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us a greater weight of glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, for what is seen is temporary. Fix our eyes on what is unseen, what is unseen is eternal." When you're going through difficulty, you're being prepared to enjoy God and His creation, not only now, but in eternity. And so it's training, it's not fulfillment, it's not comfort, it's not security, it's not happiness. But those are all the things that a lot of people think If I become a Christian, I'm going to become comfortable, and secure, and happy, and rich. No, you might, but that's not the purpose.
Jeremiah Chandler:
So that's a good segue because one of the things I've been thinking about in terms of apologetics, especially with just the role you two have played in my own life, it helped me mature a lot in terms of thinking through my faith, helping me make my faith my own. And also just kind of like you were saying, Frank, really seek my Christian walk in a new light. And so one question I've been tossing around with my professors here and also just friends, how can apologetics be seen as also a tool for discipleship?
Eric Mason:
Yeah, again, I would say most of the New Testament is that, right?
Jeremiah Chandler:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Mason:
And so I believe that, you see Jesus with His disciples doing that all the time. And His discipleship of His disciples was multidimensional, it was auditory, it was olfactory, it was tactile, and it was visual. Whether we know it or not. Before we had classes, like at DTS, and I know that The Hendricks Center and Christian Education Department, they teach how to teach with all the senses, hook, book, look and took. I remember it all, right? But Jesus involved their senses. And one of the things that was beautiful about Jesus's discipleship in the life-on-life format that He utilized is, He did apologetics while they were apprenticed to Him.
You got to understand, Jesus, Pharisees coming up to Him. He's trying to get trapped constantly. And I just think that the Bible shows that disciple makers can defend the faith in the context of relationship. I love it… When I'm sharing the gospel with someone when my kids are with me. One time I was in Times Square, and they're trying to sell you everything at Times Square. If you've ever been to Times Square in New York, you got 50,000 people trying to sell you something. So this one guy starts trying to sell something, and my wife just briefly starts sharing the gospel with him.
And so he began to get a little disrespectful, but engage her. And he began talking about the fact that the Egyptian Mystery System and Christianity. And I saw the ankh around his neck, so I kind of knew already. And so my sons were standing there, and I began to ask him different key questions about just the medu-netjer, and all these different things that he's into. And my kids were there watching, and they talk about it. That experience of them being there, seeing the faith defended, emboldened them in their commitment to even want to do it as well.
I'm into the whole old school. We do prayer walks in the city here. And so what we do is 20 of us, a hundred of us hit the block, and this is a city. And so we go out and we just say, "Hey, is there anything I can be praying for you for?" And that opens the door so many ways for us to begin developing people. Because it's not enough to have a discipleship or apologetics class. You got to get people in the actual field interacting with actual people. Because your nerves are different and your nerves affect your memory.
I'm telling you right now. And in these streets, you can get a gun pulled on you. So there's all kinds of stuff you can get dealt with. So I think that we have to begin to… we have to get back to Paul says, "The things that you have seen, and heard, and learned in me. Practice these things." In other words, it was verbal, but it was also modeling. So that's big for me when it comes to discipleship, particularly when it comes to apologetics.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's great. Dr. Turek, do you have anything to add?
Frank Turek:
Well, I appreciate what you're doing in Philly. Because Philly's a hard neighborhood, man. Where are you doing that in Philly?
Eric Mason:
North Philly, two blocks from Temple University.
Frank Turek:
Two blocks from Temple, all right. Up near the zoo then, right?
Eric Mason:
Now the zoo's in west, it's more close to University City. It's not too far from here though. But this is close to Center City, but it's the hood. It's the hood/kind of gentrifying, but it's kind of a economic melting pot somewhat, but it's a lot of transient residency here.
Frank Turek:
Well, it's a great way to open, to say, "Is there anything I can pray for you for?" Very few people are going to say no.
Eric Mason:
Right.
Frank Turek:
Or they're just going to keep walking, right? They're not going to… So you start that way, and then you learn something about them, and you're caring about them, and that's a good way in, I think. But yeah, apologetics for discipleship, as Eric was already mentioned, in this culture, you just can't go to people… Well, you can, but more often than not, you're going to need some answers rather than just going at them with the Bible. They're going to start asking questions, and you got to be able to answer them. And Jesus is a master at this, as you pointed out. He would question the assumption behind their question.
Eric Mason:
Absolutely.
Frank Turek:
He did this so much. I'll just give you one that happens a lot here in America. People will say, "Well, I can't believe the God because He did X, Y or Z in the Bible. He killed the Canaanites. He's against LGBTQ behavior," whatever it is. As soon as somebody says that, you need to ask them, "By what standard are you judging that to be wrong?" Because if it's just their opinion, it's not really wrong. But if they're appealing to a standard beyond themselves, that's objective. That's really true that we're all obligated to obey. That's what we mean by God. So they're appealing to God while claiming God doesn't exist, or claiming that the God of the Bible isn't the true God. So always ask people, "What's your… You say you've got a right to this. Where do rights come from? They can only come from God. If there's no God, there are no rights. It's just your opinion against somebody else's opinion."
Eric Mason:
Right.
Frank Turek:
And so when you do that, it… Now people may get defensive, but you're just asking questions, right? You're just saying, "Hey, where do rights come from? What's your standard? Where are you coming up with this?" They get backpedaling pretty quickly. And before somebody's going to accept your worldview, they got to begin to doubt their worldview. And the way you do that is you ask questions that show that they can't defend their worldview. Now maybe, maybe they'll be open to yours.
Eric Mason:
Yeah. Right. That's good.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's good. This can go to either one of you. But Frank, you were just talking about, or Dr. Turek, you were just talking about kind of the approach to apologetics and asking questions. My question to either one or both, when you guys are doing apologetics, how do you balance? Because I'm in a class right now, and we're learning about Old Testament historicity, and some of the ideas about maybe Moses not writing all the words or textual variance when you study the New Testament. Some of that can be unsettling for a new believer or someone who's just learning about this for the first time. And my professor says, he always says, "We want to solve problems, not create them." So how do you balance sharing new information, giving apologetics, but knowing that sometimes this information can shake people's faith? At least the answer is their purpose-
Frank Turek:
People might have their faith shaken by what you just said, is because they had the wrong assumption going in. They think that inspiration can only be of the people who wrote the original document down, and it couldn't be any editor later. Well, who said that, right?
Jeremiah Chandler:
Mm-hmm.
Frank Turek:
Obviously Moses couldn't have written his death in Deuteronomy, so somebody else penned that in there. So what's the problem with that? If God inspired the person to write down Moses's death, even if it wasn't Moses, it's still inspired, right?
Jeremiah Chandler:
Right.
Frank Turek:
By the way, from an apologetic standpoint, you don't even have to get into inerrancy. You just have to show that Jesus rose from the dead. If Jesus rose from the dead, game over, Christianity is true. And then you can show people that the Bible is inerrant, not because I can answer every alleged contradiction, but because Jesus who predicted and accomplished his own resurrection from the dead is God. And if He's God, then whatever He teaches is true, He said the Old Testament was the Word of God, and He promised the New Testament. So look, I just have a personal policy. If somebody predicts and accomplishes his own resurrection from the dead, I just trust whatever the guy says.
So if Jesus is God, and the evidence just from an historical perspective is that He is God, that He did predict and rise from the dead, predict and accomplish His resurrection, then I'm just going to trust what He says. You don't have to believe in inerrancy to be a Christian. You're just disagreeing with Jesus if you don't believe in inerrancy, and that's never a good place to be, be disagreeing with Jesus.
Jeremiah Chandler:
That's right. Dr. Mason, do you have anything to add to that?
Eric Mason:
Yeah, I think most people's disagreement with just the Bible being authentic, right?
Jeremiah Chandler:
Right.
Eric Mason:
It's fundamentally moral. Then the intellectual stuff's just used as a way to kind of justify the morality, right?
Frank Turek:
Right.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Mason:
In my experience, and so it's kind like before we get to the nitty-gritty, what's your beef with God? You know what I'm saying? What's your beef with God? If you're beefing with God, what's fundamentally your beef about what He's saying? And then you begin to ask questions, right? And you begin to ask… And as you begin to ask questions, you unravel it. And it's fundamentally this, because I didn't… Listen, I heard the Bible was changed before I became a Christian, a billion times. But it wasn't me being convinced that the Bible was inerrant that helped me to come to Jesus.
And I'm not saying those things aren't important to talk about, the Codex Vaticanus. I'm not saying those things aren't important. I'm glad for the Dead Sea Scrolls and all of that, right? I just think that we have to begin to, like Dr. Turek was saying earlier about Jesus, what's the question they're asking behind the question? And they asked Him a question that you know they're asking behind the question to get to the heart of the matter. Because a lot of times… And sometimes that takes time, that's the other thing. One conversation isn't going to rescue someone. You know, many times, it's going to take some groundbreaking work, and it's okay to take time to get to that. And maybe one conversation just accomplishes one thing, or partially part of one thing, but I hope people would endure in it as we do the work of an evangelist.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Right. Yeah, and what I'm hearing… Oh, go ahead, Dr. Turek.
Frank Turek:
I was going to say it's a really good point that Eric just brought up about it's not usually a one-time deal. This is a long process. Think to the last time when you weren't a Christian and you became a Christian. Probably it didn't happen in one conversation, did it? It was a long period.
Eric Mason:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Dr. Mason, when you're answering your church members' questions, in terms of the things you were saying, what I'm hearing is you're saying that our faith is a lot bigger than some of the objections that people may have. But also I was hearing you say we need to be rooted in the fundamentals. What would you advise someone who's interested in apologetics? Where should they start?
Eric Mason:
Yeah, so first off, they should start with being saved. Number two, they should being a part of a healthy local church where they are learning the fundamentals, and in an environment, right? One of the things that I do for people is, I don't give them all the answers all the time. I just finished teaching my whole church, Bible Study Methods, took them through Bible Study Methods. And when they ask me questions, I make my people read. So I have FAQ kind of resources to help them. So whether it's Charles Ryrie's Basic Theology, excellent. Whether it's The Moody Handbook of Theology, excellent. Whether it's Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, excellent.
I try to get people connected to learning fundamental Christology, learning their Christology. Who is Jesus? What did He come to do? Trinitarianism. The categories that our THM classes, our Systematic Theology classes are broken into. I try to get them in contact with accessible resources on that. Because for me, when I shepherd people, I want them to own their sanctification process. I want them to own their walk with Jesus Christ. And so I want to teach them different things, but I know that I can't teach them everything on a particular subject matter. So what I try to do is I really try to resource them. And usually, people go get them and try to work through it, which I think this context we're in, people…
Even though we were talking earlier about how much false teaching out there, how much itching ears is out there, there's a significant remnant out there as well that's hungry, that want to be equipped in this crazy world to be able to remain steadfast in their own faith, but then encourage others in their faith and bring people to the faith.
Frank Turek:
That's a very important thing you're doing there, Dr. Mason, that I don't think many pastors do, and that is teaching people how to interpret the Bible. You would think if we really thought the Bible was the Word of God, that'd be the first thing every church would do. But we don't. You notice that?
Eric Mason:
Yeah.
Frank Turek:
We actually have an online course, How to Interpret Your Bible at CrossExamined.org because some few churches do that. It kind of baffles me as to why that is.
Eric Mason:
Wow, wow, wow. Yeah, I think it's so important. I've been really… This is a good point you made. And one of the things I try to do as a shepherd when I'm preaching and teaching is weave the fundamentals into everything, right? So that it's not just me teaching on Christology. So if I'm going through… And what helps me is books like Greidanus' book on Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, his stuff is amazing. And he talks about everything from longitudinal things, compares and contrasts, redemptive historical theology, typology, all of the different mechanisms of interpreting Christ. So what that helps me as a shepherd do, as I'm preaching through the Bible, no matter what text I'm in. Jesus said, "You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you find eternal life, but they all speak of me." Jesus basically said, the Bible is one big Christology, all throughout the Bible.
And so I need to be preaching Him as I'm teaching on marriage, as I'm teaching on singleness, as I'm teaching on drug abuse, as I'm teaching on finances, whatever I'm teaching on, how do I weave the beauty and glory of the redemptive historical story of the death, burial and the resurrection of our Savior in it? And show them how it's applicable in every area of their life. I think it's important.
Frank Turek:
Yeah, that's outstanding. What was that resource you mentioned?
Eric Mason:
Preaching Christ from the Old Testament. It's amazing.
Frank Turek:
Preaching Christ from-
Eric Mason:
By Greidanus.
Frank Turek:
All right. I'm going to look that up. Yeah, I love that kind of stuff. That's so important. I also heard this summary of the Bible, which I find very helpful. This is an overall summary in three statements. "God created it. We broke it. Jesus fixed it. God created it. We broke it. Jesus fixed it." That's really the story of the Bible-
Eric Mason:
I like that.
Frank Turek:
… if you think about it. And so if Jesus is fixing it or He did fix it, but the new heavens and earth hasn't been created yet, we're still going to have some effects of the old world. We're still going to get sick. We're still going to die. We're still going to have trouble. We're still going to be persecuted, but the future is guaranteed.
Eric Mason:
Absolutely.
Frank Turek:
That's what predestined means. It doesn't mean you don't have a choice. It means that it's guaranteed that you're going to be glorified if you're a believer.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Amen. Well, just to wrap up, I had a quick couple of questions. What do you guys see the future of apologetics? I know you guys mentioned that some of the questions now are more morality based, but also we live in a information age where people can get a lot of… I have access to a lot of different either helpful or harmful information. So what would you see the future of apologetics is going? And that can be to either one of you.
Eric Mason:
Yeah, I would say I just think the future of apologetics… I think God is distilling the church down. A lot of churches are going out of existence. A lot of lampstand removal and things like that. I believe God is distilling the church right now down to a remnant. I really believe that. Bible says, "Every branch in me that bears fruit, I prune it that it may bear more fruit." I believe the future of apologetics, to be honest, it's going to be a very serious faith from those who are really real believers who are committed to being unstained by Jezebel, as Revelation says, until Jesus Christ comes.
I really believe that, and I see it happening. There's some young guys that are coming up that I'm really encouraged by their commitment, men and women who are committed to Jesus Christ. And I believe that's what's going to happen. I mean, it's always going to be… I think it's going to get worse, but it's also God doesn't let bad get as bad as it can get, and He always has a remnant to fight against that. So that's what I believe. I just believe it's a continuation of what's been happening, to be honest.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Okay. Dr. Turek.
Frank Turek:
And I also think that in the past, say 50 years, apologetics has really grown quite a bit, especially in America. Because as I say, 50, 60, 70 years ago, you could just open the Bible and most people would assume it's true. Now it's the opposite, and that's why you've seen an explosion of people out there speaking the truth, making arguments for Christianity. I mean, in the modern era, Norman Geisler was sort of the Michael Jordan of apologetics for a while. He wrote so much that a lot of people have been derived from him, myself, one. But other people more prominent, like William Lane Craig. And of course, before he fell, Ravi Zacharias was big.
Eric Mason:
Yeah.
Frank Turek:
And there's been a lot of people that have come off that so-called coaching tree. And there's just a growing need for making arguments for the faith when the world is hostile. The easiest way to get picked off in a war is to not know you're in one. And a lot of churches are out there, they don't know we're in a war. At least they don't think we're in a war, and that's why 75% of young people walk away from the church once they leave the home. Because they haven't been equipped to go out into a world that is warring against Christianity. We need to equip particularly young people with the truth, with the answers, so they can not only survive but thrive in a hostile world, a world that is against Christianity, and that's what apologetics does.
Eric Mason:
Amen.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Amen.
Eric Mason:
Amen. Amen.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Well, guys, we're just about out of time, but I would like to give you guys the opportunity to both give some resources to our listeners. If you can think about church leaders, pastors, and also just people who are interested in apologetics, what resources would you recommend?
Eric Mason:
You can start.
Frank Turek:
Well, we've got a website, CrossExamined.org, and everything that we do, you can get to from that website. We also have a podcast called, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. We do two of those a week, usually on apologetic issues. We have a TV show that you can access from our website. It's also on the NRB Network. We've got over 2,100 videos on our YouTube channel. Most of those are from the college campus. A lot of them are Q&As from the college campus, so you can check all that out. The YouTube channel is CrossExamined. Of course, we're on Instagram, Twitter, all those other places as well.
Eric Mason:
Yeah, recommend of course our resources, Urban Apologetics, what we have, our organization called Thriving. You can go to thriveinthecity.com and download the app as well. We have a podcast that we're going to be starting to film, people been on me forever doing a podcast. So we're finally doing a podcast. It won't be merely apologetics, but it will deal with apologetics issues at times. It'll be coming out this fall. It'll be coming out this fall, about to start filming in the next few weeks our first series. But I also have some other friends out there, Damon Richardson with UrbanLogia, Jerome Gay with the Urban Perspective. Just some good folks out there that are doing some wonderful, wonderful and great works.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Great. Well, thank you. Dr. Mason. Thank you, Dr. Turek. It's been a pleasure talking with you guys.
Eric Mason:
Appreciate it. Appreciate it much.
Frank Turek:
Thank you, Jeremiah. God bless you.
Jeremiah Chandler:
Yep, man. Thank you our listener for being with us today. If you like this show, you can leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app, and then you can join us next time as we discuss the issues of God and culture, and show the relevance of theology to everyday life.
Milyce Pipkin:
Hi and welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture and show the relevance of theology to everyday life. I'm Milyce Pipkin. I'm a fellow at The Hendricks Center here on the campus of Dallas Theological Seminary, and I'm so glad that you could join us today. I think you're really going to love the topic of discussion, probing the pressures of the press. So many times we just love being on the air, whether we're on YouTube or we're videoing things and things like that. But these are experts in fields of broadcasting, in publication, even in photojournalism, whom we're going to be talking to today as we kind of probe them for some of the things that they have to look out as Christians doing their work and their ministry. I think you're really going to enjoy this. So sit back, relax and enjoy this conversation.
Joining me in the studio, we have Radha Vyas. She is a photojournalist and a graduate here of Dallas Theological Seminary like myself. Yay. We'll give you a chance to talk about some of your credentials in just a moment as well, Radha. We are also joined via Zoom by none other than Warren L. Maye, who is with the Salvation Army. And he is an expert in the field of journalism in terms of what he does for writing and producing their publication, SA Connect. We'll be talking to you about that as well. And then last but certainly not least, we're so excited to have Tim Morgan joining us. This guy is the guy who writes ethics for Christian journalism, so we're going to be talking with him as well. Tim, are you there with us? We want to see your face in the place as well.
Timothy C. Morgan:
I am here. Yeah, I'm so excited to be back with you all and have great memories of our session in Lancaster PA last year or so. That was cool.
Milyce Pipkin:
I'm glad you brought that up because that's where I met you and Warren, was at the Evangelical Press Association last year in Pennsylvania. And it's just so wonderful how we get an opportunity to just kind of meet by the Holy Spirit. And then we realize these conversations are conversations we need to have so that anyone can live, learn, and minister by what we know. So I'm just grateful to you all for joining us today and we're just going to dive right in. And I'm going to do that because we know that each of you have, not only are experts in your fields, but you have awards, you have won awards for what you do as journalists. You are serious experts in what you do, and that's why I wanted to bring you to the Table podcast. But before we get to some of your credentials, the reason why you're here, I want to give you each a chance to tell me what it is in terms of your scripture that you live and you work by.
And I'll get started to give you an example. I kind of like Joshua 1:9, where God is telling Joshua to remember the command for him not to be afraid, not to be dismayed. To take courage, knowing that God is going to be with him wherever he goes. And that's kind of like my minister "live by" scripture to remember that God is with me wherever I go, as long as I'm keeping his statutes and his commands, and I do my best to do that. So Radha, I'm going to start with you. What is kind of your scripture that you live by? Work by?
Radha Vyas:
The one that I work by primarily is Colossians 3, I believe it's 23 or 24. Where it's talking about work for the Lord and not for men. That just kind of guides me throughout everything that I do in my work, in my studies, and how I even do household chores. It's important to know that when I'm writing, when I'm photographing the person behind the lens or whether it's a grand scene or something like that, it's going to be for the glory of God. And that's what guides me.
Milyce Pipkin:
I love it a lot. Tim?
Timothy C. Morgan:
Yes, I've used quite a few scriptures over the years. But the one I keep coming back to is from Thessalonians Chapter Five, Verse 21. And I love it. It's so short. We in journalism, we like to do it short, but it goes like this, "Test everything. Hold fast to that which is good and abstain from every form of evil." I mean, how could you go wrong following that guideline? So verification in journalism is so important, but it's really important in theology and in our daily living. We have this desire to know what's true, and I really believe that's so essential.
Milyce Pipkin:
I love that. Thank you Tim. Warren, you have a scripture, I know, that you kind of work by here. Come on, tell us what it is.
Warren L. Maye:
All right, I'm all right. Well, I'm so happy to be back with you guys. We really did a wonderful, had a wonderful time in EPA. It's really something that has resonated with me. So thanks so much for inviting me back. And my scripture has been Habakkuk, Chapter Two, Verse Two. It's all about writing the vision, making it plain on tablets. So that he who reads it can run with it. And I actually put that scripture at the bottom of every email I send out and it's because I was so moved when I read the story of Habakkuk and heard that conversation, that argument that went on between him and God, where he was trying to figure out what was going on, hashing back and forth the facts of the matter until he understood the message that God wanted him to share with the people. And how he essentially, in my mind became the first recorded journalist in history.
Milyce Pipkin:
I got you. I love it a lot. And I wanted to start that way because I believe what we do as journalists starts kind of where our hearts are with God and his word. And so that was my starting point. Now I want to kind of go and pick up a little bit more about the credentials of the woman and the men here joining us on the table. So Radha? Again, we'll start with you. All right.
Radha Vyas:
My, I don't know, it's hard to talk about accomplishments. I'm always so humble and modest.
Milyce Pipkin:
You are. I know you personally. You really are a sweet person. Very humble.
Radha Vyas:
I would say 2022 at the EPA, I was awarded the Jerry Jenkins Award of Journalism, Excellence in Journalism Award. And that was such an incredible moment for me to be honored in that way. That's one thing. I've also published in Christianity Today, some photographs, some writing, and…
Milyce Pipkin:
I'll tell you something that you don't want to talk about that I remember even as a student here just before we graduated last May 2022, was your exhibit that was in the hallways of one of the buildings here. Where we were taking classes and we had an opportunity to just walk along the hallway and see your work in action, what you do, how you see things through your lens when you're taking pictures. Particularly that exhibit, I think I remember, it had something to do with women?
Radha Vyas:
Yes. That was actually women in ancient churches around Italy, around northern Italy primarily. So the
Milyce Pipkin:
So the job takes you in faraway places.
Radha Vyas:
It does.
Milyce Pipkin:
To wonderful places in Europe and all that good jazz.
Radha Vyas:
Yeah, that was such an incredible project that I loved working on, just gathering all these images for the church basically. And for scholars all around the world getting to have access to these images. That's a whole other thing.
Milyce Pipkin:
It's been a journey. It's been a journey. Warren or Tim, we'll go to either of you now. Tell us a little about us. And I know this is not an opportunity to brag. This is just an opportunity for someone who's listening to kind of get an idea of who we're talking to here on the table.
Warren L. Maye:
Okay. Well, I, a very humbling question to be asked. Because I feel that the Lord made it possible for me to have found this niche in journalism, which I longed for so many years when I was working at Harper & Row, at Random House, ad agencies in Manhattan, BBD & O, and down in Brandt Street. I couldn't get over the fact that I was working with colleagues who would stay in their offices till 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night. If you went into their office, you'd think you're walking into their living room or their bedroom that had everything they needed to stay overnight. But all they had to say about their work was four-letter words that they couldn't put in print. And I thought, there's something wrong with his picture. And then do I want to be in this? No, I really, really want to give my best work to the Lord.
And he made it possible through the Salvation Army to become an editor and later an editor-in-chief of SAConnects Magazine, which is our current publication. And we're able to reach people throughout the northeast of the United States and because of social media, throughout the world. And it just amazes me that God would use me and bring me into the midst of the company, of the staff that has been doing this kind of work for so many years.
And I could talk about the most recent award, which was we have best cover of the year through EPA. We've had 11 other awards. We've had many, many other awards that we've gotten through EPA and other organizations. I've also done photography. 9-11 was one of those moments that caused me to have to roll up my sleeves and go to work unexpectedly. But the pictures that came out of that were pictures that ended up in the Smithsonian Institute. And recently we've got the Award of Excellence from the EPA. So those are some of the things, but I give it all to God. I give God praise for every bit of it because he's truly the one that's worthy to be praised.
Milyce Pipkin:
Amen. Tim, you come with some deep credentials as well. Tell us a little bit about your background.
Timothy C. Morgan:
Yeah, thanks for offering. I can share a little bit about that. So I love that you all have such an interest in photography because photojournalism was really how I really stumbled my way into journalism in high school and college. But then I gravitated more towards writing and editing. And so I started working for a daily newspaper in Central Massachusetts in about 1980. It was after I'd finished some graduate work at Boston University for studying journalism. And so while I was a graduate student, I was especially fascinated by all of the ethical quandaries that end up on the front stoop of a journalist's life. And so I really took the time to become very informed about the journalistic ethical issues. And that was very useful during my time at Christianity Today where I worked for 23 years and had many, many dilemmas, especially when it comes to misconduct.
And we unfortunately had ample opportunity. There was no shortage of stories, sadly to say. But there were also many other examples that we could hold up to our readers that were really inspiring and showed that people resisted temptation and they did the right thing in the heat of the moment. So I think that that becomes part of the larger picture that I really hope to be able to have journalism accomplish. So currently, I'm teaching journalism and communication at Gordon College and also I'm an advisor for student media there. And so students really want to get into not only the mechanics of doing good journalism, but they want to understand how to do it better, how to do it more ethically and do it in a way that really brings glory to God and really serves and loves their neighbor.
Milyce Pipkin:
Very good. Thank you all for that. Kind of a round-robin question about some of your credentials. To give you an opportunity to explain that to anyone listening, I want to just say this. As I'm listening to each of you describe what you do, I hear a lot of passion in what you do. But the topic today is probing the pressures of the press. So I'm sure there's some pressure there that we get some pushback to some degree. And so to just dive right into some of these difficult questions, I'll just kind of still start off with this one. Do we find ourselves under any more pressure as we work in the world of Christianity as we would if we were working in the world of secularism?
And the reason why I'm kind of asking that is because this morning I was talking to my husband about it and he said, "No, y'all don't feel any pressure. Y'all are serving Jesus." But I'm like, "Yeah, but we're still in the flesh." That's the spiritual part of us. And that's great, but then as we have to go to work every day, you all are blessed in that you have some Christian environments to work in, but do you feel any pressure between the Christian world and the secular world as we do what we do? And we're going to be talking about some of some more pointed ways that we might feel pressure in just a moment. Anybody?
Radha Vyas:
I just want to start with saying one example, or not example necessarily, but sort of a metaphor is when you put your church's sticker on your car or a cross or something like that, it's like suddenly there's pressure to be the best driver you can.
Milyce Pipkin:
I like that.
Radha Vyas:
You're not going to be speeding past people. You're not going to be tailing anyone because you're representing something. And I think in the same way when we're putting our work out there, whether it's a Christian publication or if it's a secular publication, it's like, "Yeah."
Milyce Pipkin:
That's good.
Radha Vyas:
Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's good. Warren or Tim? Before we go to the next question?
Warren L. Maye:
Yeah, I think we're held to a higher standard, and this is by the secular world. They're quick to call us out if we're unkind, if we're saying things that they think, "Well, you're Christians. You're not supposed to talk to us like that." But in the process, we're trying to tell them the truth. At the same time, we're trying to be nice and it's difficult in most cases because we're caught, like Tim was saying, the dilemma is wanting to be kind, wanting to be nice, but also wanting to tell people the truth in order to set them free, set their souls free. And a lot of times it's a hard call. We're called not to curse the world like the rest of the media does, but we're called to bless it.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's good.
Warren L. Maye:
Yeah, so I think that's our challenge.
Milyce Pipkin:
Tim?
Timothy C. Morgan:
Well, yeah, I think I agree with what I've heard so far. I'd say what's different today than it was say even 10, 15 years ago, is that there are really a combination of different kind of forces putting pressure on both the Christian media and the secular media. So there's the competitive pressure from other publications or social media. There's pressure from some Christians who are really pushing a more political agenda. There's also financial and budgetary pressures I follow, just how different media has been able to survive or not survive under the current economic situation. And all those pressures make it very difficult for people to really… Where's the north star? What am I ultimately true towards? And I think that has a big influence where people, journalists get pulled in a lot of different directions.
Milyce Pipkin:
Good. I'm going to kind of do a rapid fire through some of these so that anyone listening will get an idea of when we're talking about probing the pressures of the press, what kind of pressures we're talking about. So rapid fire just for each three of you to answer this. What are some of the ethical issues arising from the use of artificial intelligence? Have you experienced any of that? Any pressure from that? Tim?
Timothy C. Morgan:
Yes. I'd say, because AI is still evolving, people really do not know where the boundary lines are. And so actually I've been asked by the Evangelical Press Association to revisit their whole statement of ethics. And I'm been working with a group of editors on that and would just welcome other people to contribute. But right now, people are really struggling to figure out what's acceptable, what's not acceptable. I think you have to go back to one of the essentials, which is transparency, disclosure, honesty. If you're using AI, just be honest about it. If you're not using AI, it's okay to say, "I'm not using it." People are suspicious. I guess.
Milyce Pipkin:
Warren, you got anything to add? Radha? Either of you?
Warren L. Maye:
Oh yeah. I'm just thinking about this AI guy that I met on the internet who convinced me to stop scrolling. He said, "Stop scrolling." He said, "Go to this website." And I just went to the website like I was under a hypnotic spell. And it wasn't that great when I got to it. But then the next day I'm scrolling again and I come across another ad for avatars to use on the internet. And it turns out after I scrolled through a few of them, this guy shows up, the one who I thought was a real person. And it just startled me. It just amazed me that a guy like me who spent years as a portrait artist could be bamboozled and fooled by a piece of artificial intelligence. And it made me question my ability to discern things.
And I'm thinking, if it's hitting me like this, if it's traumatizing me like this, what is it doing to the rest of the world? And so it comes down for me is, are we talking about artificial intelligence or should it really be actual integrity that we should be dealing with?
Milyce Pipkin:
That's right.
Warren L. Maye:
That is the issue. Are we going to be settling just for something that's artificial and just intelligence, or are we going to strive for what's actual? And that's integral. I think that's the biggest challenge that we're facing right now.
Milyce Pipkin:
Good. Radha, do you have anything?
Radha Vyas:
Yeah, I just think it's… Warren, like you were saying, that you've seen this ad with this person and it was so real. And I think there's something that's very dangerous for a culture about that. There's just so much out there that how can we make sure that people know that the journalism that we're putting out, how do we make sure that they know that they can trust us?
Milyce Pipkin:
That's good. That's good.
Radha Vyas:
Because it's going to be out there. There's no way we can stop it. It's a flood of stuff now, and we just have to do the best that we can put language out that kind of will just in some way show our integrity. And we act with integrity. And they know when they come to our piece, our photo, our writing, our editing, that they know this is real. This is what we can trust, and this is going to lead us into an understanding of God in that way, in a way that AI is deceiving us.
Milyce Pipkin:
Gotcha. Questions are going to get tougher. Can a pro-life Christian journalist cover a pro-choice protest and/or march objectively?
Radha Vyas:
Objectively.
Milyce Pipkin:
Can we do it? Is it done? Do we do it well?
Timothy C. Morgan:
I'll jump on that one.
Milyce Pipkin:
You go.
Timothy C. Morgan:
It's a real hot potato.
Milyce Pipkin:
Yes, it is.
Timothy C. Morgan:
I would absolutely say that if this Christian journalist accepts the standards for being objective in the sense that you're not picking sides and you're trying to convey something that's happening, if it's like a protest, I think it's important. But not every journalist should be expected to automatically follow those standards. So it really is kind of a defining moment or a moment of truth. You have to ask yourself some of these hard questions before this happens. And I know one of my journalism professors who had a student who was interning at a paper on the West Coast and was actually assigned to cover, it was either a gay rights march, or a pro-abortion march, or abortion rights march. And she refused and she was fired from our internship. So I think we have to be honest with ourselves and say not every journalist should be held to that same yardstick. But the journalists who are willing to take up that charge should be affirmed in that choice. That's how I would…
Milyce Pipkin:
I like your response, and I'm just going to say this. That was well said. I don't know if Radha and Warren and/or want to mention anything else about that. That was good for me. Do you have something you want to add, Warren?
Warren L. Maye:
No, I'm good.
Milyce Pipkin:
I thought so.
Radha Vyas:
That was very well said.
Milyce Pipkin:
Nailed it, Tim.
Radha Vyas:
Very well said.
Milyce Pipkin:
Moving on to the next question. As we kind of live in a world of pronouns of how people are described, I don't want to be disrespectful and go LGBTQ and then get something wrong and don't mention something. But I'll just say in that world where we're talking other than heterosexuality, how do we approach these tough conversations and trying to identify a person without promoting or kind of buying into what that all is about? How do we do what we do to have those kinds of tough conversations with them, about them, and stay along the lines of who we are as Christians and what we believe?
Warren L. Maye:
I think it's important to recognize that simply listening to the person, it's not a concession to believing what they're saying. I think we confuse that whole idea of listening with agreeing. In order to listen to someone doesn't mean you have to agree with them, but the empathy that needs to be in the conversation can't happen until you listen. And I think what also is important is that when you listen, you can calibrate your response to what they're saying in a way that is relevant to the conversation. For example, I remember I was in a conversation with some consultants who came to visit us, to enlighten us and to sensitize us to the issues of the LGBTQ community. And the question that came to my mind was, "If you are married to your wife or your husband and have to be the same sex, what drives you to use the heterosexual model for that relationship? Why does one play the role of the man, the other play the role of the female?" And she thought about the question very deeply, and I was listening for her answer and she said, "I really don't know."
Milyce Pipkin:
Interesting.
Warren L. Maye:
"I really don't know why we use the heterosexual model if we're in the same-sex relationship." So I said, "Well, do you think we could talk about this further?" She gave me her card and I'm in the process now of hopefully getting back to her. But I just want to have a conversation about it. I'm willing to learn what is going through the person's mind that would make them feel that this is something that they want to do and to do it this way. And there's another situation where this one woman who became a Christian, and she became a Christian because one Christian that talked to her was the first person that ever referred to her as a sinner and not just as a lesbian. And she said, "We're all sinners. You're just one of us. This is just how you manifested." And it struck her to the point where she looked in the mirror and had this mirror moment to say, "Who am I?" And it brought her to Christ, ultimately. I think listening is really important in any conversation, but particularly like you were saying, we'll see these difficult ones.
Milyce Pipkin:
Yeah. Yes, it is. And for me, just coming from the world of television and broadcasting of over 25 years as a news anchor reporter and 30 years on my own television talk show for PBS Public Broadcasting system, I can recall having had an interview with a woman who identified as a transgender. And it was difficult for me, even though I call myself a Christian, but I had not been to seminary yet and hadn't learned how to love well. And so I was very uncomfortable with this conversation that was going to be had for PBS. And so what I had to do was just kind of relax and take her out to lunch and just kind of sit there. And like Warren said, just kind of listen and be compassionate to try to learn. Because my job as the host of that television show was to inform the public about her life. Like Warren was saying about what this looks like, about things that could educate people, because that's what PBS does.
And so when I took myself outside of having an opinion and all of these other things that we can tend to do judgments and things like that, then I was able to sit and learn and deliver that information to inform people, as Warren just said. Not educate them about my opinion, but to inform them about her as a person. So that they can go forth and make their own judgments and come up with their own way that they want to deal with that. Any other comments about this particular topic, Radha and/or Tim?
Radha Vyas:
No, I think Warren has it exactly right. Empathy and listening. I think a lot of us could have our own examples of different situations we've been in. And honestly, listening and in our minds and our hearts praying is very critical in those moments. Sometimes that opens up an opportunity to pray with them.
Milyce Pipkin:
Yes, and it did for me.
Radha Vyas:
Nice.
Milyce Pipkin:
There you go. I like that. Tim?
Radha Vyas:
Yeah.
Timothy C. Morgan:
Yeah. I love everything I've heard so far, but I would just like to make reference to, the way I kind of describe this to students or to other journalists is I have gravitated to what I call a relational model of journalism. And if the journalist is based on, and the journalism is based on relationship, it really completely transforms the platform in which you're interacting with both your audience and the person that you're interviewing or interacting with. But yeah, it underscores empathy and seeing that person as a child of God, that God loves as much as he loves each one of us. And when we, it's almost like having a double vision where you see the person from a soul perspective. And that just helps, I think, transform the situation. And the way we're wired is that when you're interviewing somebody, they know that. There's something in the human spirit that we, it's not just body language, it's everything about the way we're interacting when we're communicating and asking questions, interacting with people. I think that for me is absolutely the way to go.
Milyce Pipkin:
Next tough question. How do we go about doing this? The biggest ethical challenge that journalists face can come whenever we have to do any reporting on the misconduct from our own Christian community. How do we deal with that? And what do we do to be objectively who we are as journalists when we have to report about one of our own?
Warren L. Maye:
I've been reading scriptures about Paul's interaction with the churches that were emerging during his time that, and he had to deal with a lot of misconduct going on. And it's so reflected in the plethora of letters that he wrote. Some churches, he commended them for what they were doing and others, he had to reprimand them. He had to talk to them. He had to try to get them back to understanding the original intent of the church in the first place. And a lot of times they didn't like what he had to say. Other times that he had to say some tough words to them. But he was very consistent and unwavering and pointing people back to the scripture where it all started, leading people back to Jesus Christ who started it. And I don't know if there's any easy way to do it, but except, like we were saying before, find a way to show love, but to tell the truth at the same time.
Milyce Pipkin:
But that's what we do here at Dallas Theological Seminary. We teach truth and we love well. So you just said our motto. Tim?
Timothy C. Morgan:
Yeah, that's great. That's great. So yeah, I think it's especially difficult when there's, we all know what I'm talking about when I say blame-shifting, right? So there's this particular human trait that's unflattering across the board. When you try to avoid accepting responsibility, it makes the job of the journalist even more difficult when there's a cover-up. And we see this happening out on the headlines today.
And so I feel one of the important things is in a situation like that, the journalist has to even approach it with a level of balance and fairness, but also put some limits on your role as a journalist. If you're really out to get into the public's eye facts that have been hidden, then that's what you should do. And you don't necessarily have to be doing a drumhead trial and be prosecutor and executioner. Your role is to really help people realize the reality of the situation. And I think that's a pretty ambitious goal right there. So I think that one of the big challenges we have is when people, leaders, don't fess up when they've made something, when they've done something wrong and they've not been able to accept responsibility. So that's especially challenging.
Milyce Pipkin:
Got anything, Radha? You good? Okay.
Well, let's go to this question right quick and then we'll be getting ready to just wrap up. And I wrote these down. I could wrap it off some questions out of my head, but I wanted to stay on course with what we would think of as probing the pressures of the press, in terms of questions that could make us have to go deep and think about some of the pressures that we face whenever we do what we do as journalists. And that's our topic today as we're talking today with journalists from their respective fields of photojournalism. And Tim as an instructor teaching Christian ethics and having worked with Christianity Today and Warren working with the Salvation Army.
So you come from a diverse background to join us in this conversation today. And that takes us to our next question. How can Christian writers stay on-message and avoid today's misuse of words that can become a sort of weaponization of words that we use sometimes, not us necessarily, but that are used to sometimes it ends up triggering people. We thought about how we have to use our Christian ethics and how we use words, period. So that they don't become weapons.
Radha Vyas:
I wanted to ask you a clarifying question actually on this one.
Milyce Pipkin:
They were given the questions ahead of time. That's why she's got a clarifying question.
Radha Vyas:
Well, yes. So you're talking about a weaponization of words. Did you have something in mind with that one?
Milyce Pipkin:
I kind of tried to give you kind of like, Jesus used the parables when he would try to explain things. If we're having a conversation about, and I mentioned this, where new ideas emerge in conversations, then we have opposing sides. How do we address these things without becoming journalists, who we are, using words that could become weapons in warfare that we don't need to be engaged in? I don't know. This is a question we had at EPA last year. Warren, maybe you have a response to where we want to go with this.
Warren L. Maye:
Well, I think the idea of words being used as weapons is a big problem because, and I think of the words as labels. It's so easy to just slap a label on someone and dismiss them, and that can be a painful rejection. And it can be a horrible misunderstanding, and it can happen regionally. The same word you use in the East may not mean the same thing in the West.
So the label doesn't really have relevance across the board. So I guess the thing is that we should try to do is get beyond the label and talk about what are we seeing? What does that mean to you? It seems like you are doing this, or it seems like you're doing that. I'm not going to say you're doing it. I want you to tell me what you're doing. I want you to speak back to me what you're doing. I'm not going to label it. I'm just going to listen to hear what you call it, and let's start from there.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's a good approach.
Warren L. Maye:
Start from where the person is and go from there. I think it's a way of showing respect and empathy, and it kind of disarms the weapon. It lets people know that you're not armed and dangerous when you come into the conversation, but you've holstered your weapon.
Milyce Pipkin:
It's on your side. Tim, you got anything?
Timothy C. Morgan:
Yeah, there's a tremendous temptation in journalism to traffic in stereotypes and labels, and Warren is totally right. And so for me, it is mindfulness. You have to be mindful of whenever these labels and stereotypes slip into your copy or to whatever you're saying, or your framework. You have to set aside the framework and look at things afresh. And all of the competitive pressures and the deadline pressures push journalists to rely on these labels and stereotypes. And they do harm, they do genuine harm. And we have to be mindful and try to extinguish them from not only the words we use, but the meaning is there, too. We have to watch out for the meaning behind the stereotype because it stigmatizes people and harms people. It harms both sides. So that's what I would say.
Milyce Pipkin:
And I like that a lot as we get ready to… Okay. Now Radha, you want to chime in. Go ahead.
Radha Vyas:
Yes. I wanted to add something to both of what y'all are saying. As a reader, I think it's very important for us to also be very mindful of the words that we see on the page or on the screen. There's a lot of journalists out there that don't have the same integrity that we strive for, and it's important for Christian readers to discern the words that are being said and see if we can find the truth in that. And that can be very difficult to do. If more journalists, more Christian journalists are out there keeping that integrity, it'll be easier. But as a reader, we've got to be careful, too.
Milyce Pipkin:
Good stuff. We are wrapping up now, and what I want to do is give each of you kind of like a last word for someone listening right now. To leave this conversation strengthened by some of the things that maybe they've learned or something that you could say now as a tip or an advice that they could use going forward as a journalist. Tim, we'll start with you.
Timothy C. Morgan:
Yeah. I love to talk about how news has become a conversation, and it's more than just like a one radio antenna with sending out a message or like a million copies of a newspaper coming out. But people, journalists as well as the readership and the viewership, need to step up and engage in the conversation. And to share what really is on their hearts and minds.
Milyce Pipkin:
Good. Warren? Last word? Advice? Tip?
Warren L. Maye:
Well, just think of it as an epiphany strategy, is what I call it. It's the expectation. It's the outcome you're looking for, is to have that moment in the conversation where God steps in and you can feel his presence. Where whether it's two people gathered together or three people or multiple people at the table, let the expectation be that something good's going to come out of this, and we're all going to get up from this table energized and motivated because we have heard from God. And maybe that's only going to happen in the Christian realm, but I don't think so.
Milyce Pipkin:
I don't, either.
Warren L. Maye:
I think it didn't happen in any realm, but you have to have your heart open and your ears open and do what my dad always told me. He said, "The greatest asset a man and woman can ever possess is the ability to listen and understand." And then I took it to heart and I took it a step further. I said, "It's really hard to listen if you already know what you want to hear."
Milyce Pipkin:
That's good.
Warren L. Maye:
So keep an open mind.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's good.
Radha Vyas:
Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
Radha? Tip advice for some aspiring photo journalist or person who's writing, such as yourself? What would your tip, your advice, your sure info be to them leaving this conversation?
Radha Vyas:
Be bold. Be strong in the Lord. And I'm going to bring it back to my verse at the beginning. Whatever you do, do it in honor of God.
Milyce Pipkin:
I love it a lot. I thank each of you for what you do on the front lines in journalism, and I thank you for joining us here on The Table today. That's going to wrap up our time. I certainly appreciate having this discussion and having kind of a reunion from our time last year at the Evangelical Press Association. Just thank you all for joining us, and thank you for joining us as well here on The Table. As we leave you, we want to just let you know that anytime that you're listening to one of our podcasts, we'd like for you to just leave us a rating or review. And just let us know that you have a favorite podcast and that you want others to discover us so that they can learn as well, too. Until next time, I'm Milyce Pipkin from The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology in everyday life. Until next time, just be blessed.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendrick Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And our topic today is Ministry in Africa, Southern Africa in particular. And my guest is Greg Seghers. Welcome, Greg.
Greg Seghers:
Thank you.
Darrell Bock:
And I'll tell you just a touch about him. He met his wife, Carlene, who I just met for the first time through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. And you've been married since 1985, three married sons and five grandchildren. So, let's hear it for Genesis 1. Moving their family to South Africa in 1993. They ministered in an African indigenous church movement called… and I'm not sure I'm going to get this right pronunciation wise, amaZioni?
Greg Seghers:
It's close. AmaZioni.
Darrell Bock:
AmaZioni. Okay. In Southern Africa. Well, that covers countries running from Zambia and Mozambique south to South Africa, although I'm just hearing that there are others now who are contacting. And we'll talk about who the amaZioni are later on. Sharing Christ with the amaZioni for 29 years, Greg and Carlene transitioned their ministry with ZEMA back to the U.S in 2022. And they currently serve as ZEMA's home office directors. And ZEMA stands for Zion Evangelical Ministries of Africa. I remember when you first told me about this, I thought Zion was about Israel. So, what in the world is going on?
Greg Seghers:
I'll have to give you a history lesson.
Darrell Bock:
It's okay.
Greg Seghers:
So, there are approximately about 20 million people that call themselves amaZioni, that live in Southern Africa. And it's a Zulu word and it means people of Zion.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow. Okay.
Greg Seghers:
But it has nothing to do with Israel. And it has everything to do with a town north of Chicago called Zion Illinois that was started in 1900 by a guy named John Alexander Dowie, who had a ministry in Chicago during the World's Fair. Then he started a church in 1896. And then he bought up farmland north of Chicago and he was going to set up the Zion cities all over the world where the church ran the city. But he started in 1900.
And because of his influence with the Chicago World's Fair, there were people from different parts of the world that followed Dowie's teaching, which was basically salvation in Jesus Christ, that if you follow Jesus, you live a holy life. And that God had the power to heal people so he would pray for the sick. And so, this teaching spread. And he also was innovative. He would put out 750,000 newsletters or leaves of healing it was called a year that went all around the world. And so, this teaching made it to South Africa. In 1904, he sent a missionary, Daniel Bryant, and began to establish and work with church leaders that were following this teaching. Dowie died in 1907, Bryant returned back to Zion City in Illinois. And the work just exploded in Southern Africa. And I don't know if you want me to keep going on some of the detail about the characteristics of the church movement.
Darrell Bock:
Well, we'll come to that. So, let me stop you there, because we got to figure out how you got into the story. So, let's work back. So, you were telling me you came to the Lord in college at the age of 20, right?
Greg Seghers:
That's correct.
Darrell Bock:
And you met your wife at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which is I guess a terrific parachurch ministry in which many people meet their spouse.
Greg Seghers:
Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's where we met. And we were both involved and I was in leadership at the time. And I was three years older than her, so she came in as a freshman. But I was in going into the physical therapy program and she was pre-physical therapy.
Darrell Bock:
I see.
Greg Seghers:
So, people were introducing her and say, "Hey, you need to meet Greg."
Darrell Bock:
Very good. So, now I also noticed you mentioned Chicago. I also noticed that Moody Bible Institute apparently has at least a partnership, or a relationship, or a connection to you. Is that right? Or is that just this was on your webpage?
Greg Seghers:
Yes. Mm-hmm.
Darrell Bock:
So, does that go back to the time in the 1900s or more recent?
Greg Seghers:
No, Dowie and Moody were contemporaries of each other. But no, it doesn't go back to that point. But I think it was in 1995, we had a team from Moody Bible Institute that was led by Ray Badgero. And he brought about 17 or 18 students and they spent six weeks doing the work with us amongst the amaZioni in South Africa. And also we did a trip into Malawi.
Darrell Bock:
I see.
Greg Seghers:
And I think that that's where the work began to open up, that it got outside of just Zion, Illinois, and it became more known that, hey, this is something that God's doing and we need to partner and get together. And so, one of the things that Dr. Badgero said to us at that time, he said that he's been all over Africa. And that he said that he's never seen a mission organization that has the potential to touch the continent of Africa like ZEMA does because of the open door that we have with amaZioni.
Darrell Bock:
So, the amaZioni is we've suggested live in many different countries. Is that right?
Greg Seghers:
That's correct.
Darrell Bock:
And I think I've mentioned Zambia, and Mozambique, and South Africa, and I think you mentioned Uganda and Kenya are coming into the mix. Is that right?
Greg Seghers:
Just in the last six to eight months, we began to get correspondence from a Zionist up in that area asking for us to come and bring Bible teaching to them.
Darrell Bock:
So, this is, I guess a teaching, and discipleship, and evangelistic ministry. Is it more teaching and discipleship than evangelism or is it a mix? Because in Africa, I mean it could be all of that.
Greg Seghers:
You're right. So, now this goes back to your podcast that you did in 2022 with the two pastors from South Africa. And one of the things that I noticed when I listened to that was that they're accurate in that the amaZioni churches of the African Independent Church movement, they skew the numbers for the amount of Christian churches. But one of the things that is known is that many in the amaZioni movement are syncretistic. And so, whether they have combined a form of Christianity with their traditional African religion, which is the appeasing of the spirits of their dead relatives, to bring good luck and keep bad luck away.
And so, historically, the amaZioni have been closed to outside organization or churches coming to them. And the reason that is because the approach that they've done is that they will go and share the gospel with them. And then they will, if they become followers of Jesus, they say, "Okay, now you got to get out of the Zionist church." And so, the Zionist churches historically haven't been open to them. Our approach is different. With ZEMA, we have an historical connection with the church that started the movement. And so, our approach, our ethos of our ministry is we tell them, no, stay Zionist. We're not trying to make Western churches or plant western churches. But let's get back to the true teaching of Zion, and that's the word of God and the authority of Jesus Christ. And building a trust relationship with them. And they're just open to those who come as representatives of Zion, and they cross that bridge, and they immediately have an open door because there's a trust relationship that's been developed over the years.
Darrell Bock:
So, I've mentioned several countries here. I don't think I've mentioned Zimbabwe. Are they in the mix as well?
Greg Seghers:
Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Eswatini, Lesotho, Botswana. We don't know how far they go up north.
Darrell Bock:
I see.
Greg Seghers:
But in the beginning, the reason that it spread that way was because many of the men were coming down and working in the mines in Johannesburg back in the 1900s. And that after they would go back to their… they become followers of Zion teaching. And then they would take that teaching back to their home countries.
Darrell Bock:
And you all are responsible for 89 Bible schools around, is that number still right? 89 bible schools and 2,400 students.
Greg Seghers:
So, I just got the latest statistics and we're at 86 Bible schools. They're satellite schools. We have about 2,500 students this year. The school started in 1995 was the very first school that was started. And it was interesting, our idea at that time, there was only four families that were working with ZEMA at that time. But our idea at that time was to have centers and that they would come to us. And we almost immediately realized that that wasn't going to work because they were coming from seven, eight hours away. And then after a while that they'd be coming for that distance, they would then come to us and say, "Hey, 30 or 40 other pastors that would love to be here that can't afford it. Could you come and start a Bible school in our area?"
And so, that's how it began to slowly grow into what it is today in that satellite schools that are… pretty much if that, there's a group of Zion leaders that contact us and say that they would like to have a school in their area. We say, "Well, you organize it and then we'll bring the teachers to you with the lessons and all of that sort of thing." But they've got to organize the plate, the venue, and advertise for it.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting.
Greg Seghers:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
So, you mentioned, I think ancestors in the syncretism. That's not that unusual in certain parts of the world. I mean, I think of Asia where association with ancestors is a big deal. I guess my question is this, part of the reason we do these podcasts is to help people get a picture of what the church around the world is like, and particularly what particular cultures are experiencing. What else perhaps marks the syncretism that an indigenous African person would have that I imagine is part of the challenge of ministering in this area?
Greg Seghers:
So, a couple of the things that come to mind is that if they're sick or if things aren't going well, that then their ancestors are not happy with them. And that they then will go to a witch doctor and they will then get a message of what is the problem. Someone's causing this issue. And so, they'll go and get that information. And then they will say that your aunt, or your grandfather, or whatever is hungry and that you need to make a sacrifice. And so, they'll have a sacrifice of a sheep, or a goat, or a cow, or something along those lines to appease that spirit. And then they will then wear a skin bracelet on their wrist. And that will signify to them to remind the ancestors that they have done what they needed to do.
Darrell Bock:
They've responded.
Greg Seghers:
They've responded.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Interesting. So, yeah, I tell people that in different parts of the world, the way in which the whole spirit world is seen is very, very different. I mean, in the West, in many places people don't even recognize that spirits exist and that kind of thing. And then in other parts of the world, they're very, very present. I remember my first awareness of this was actually before I was a believer, I was in and we visited a place called Chichicastanango, which has a syncretism with the indigenous Indians who are in Guatemala. And they were burning incense and had all kinds of things going on. And I'm going, this is very, very different than the world that I live in.
Greg Seghers:
Yeah, yeah. There's even part of their belief is that if a snake comes to their hut, then that's an ancestor that's come to bring a message.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow.
Greg Seghers:
So, that's part of their belief system. So, the issue then is that that's part of the church experience of the amaZioni of some of them, not all of them, but some of them. And they will have prophets who will receive messages from the ancestors, and then they will then give that to that person. And as part of the service, they will have a sacrifice that takes place that goes on during their service, as well as they'll have communion, or baptism, and Christian singing, and the Bible.
Darrell Bock:
That's what syncretism is. I mean, it's a mix.
Greg Seghers:
Yeah. And so, what's been fascinating for me over the decades that I was teaching is that during the schools… So, let me back up a little bit. One of the things that we do is that we get invited to the churches. When they hear about these representatives of Zion coming, they invite us to their church services, which I don't know if you've had the experience of going for seven or eight hours in a church service, but that's how they do it for 11 o'clock at night until about 6:00 in the morning.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, so it's through the evening?
Greg Seghers:
It's through the evening.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. That's another difference. Okay.
Greg Seghers:
You have to be a little bit energetic when you're preaching at 2:00 in the morning.
Darrell Bock:
I guess you get a nap before the service or something.
Greg Seghers:
Or during it sometimes.
Darrell Bock:
We probably shouldn't go there. But anyway.
Greg Seghers:
And so, they will do their services, and their program, and that sort of thing. And then they will look to us and say, "Okay, it's your turn now." And so, we don't put down what they're doing, but what we do is again, we lift up the authority of the Bible, we lift up the authority of Jesus, and we then stay around and they have a meal afterwards, of course, in their culture. And then begin to engage and talk to them, and invite them to the Bible schools. And then that's how the relationships are developed. But one of the most asked questions that I got in my years of being a teacher in the schools was, what does the Bible have to say about ancestor worship? And it's in a non-confrontational way, so we can talk about it. And I would ask them, "Well, what verses do you use to support it?"
And they have verses that they use to support it. The passage in Ezekiel, the prophecy over the dry bones. That's one passage. And they would say that, and then I would say, well, let's look at the context of that. And then they use the 1st Thessalonians passage of, "Do not be ignorant about those who have fallen asleep." They say, "See, we're trying not to be ignorant about that. We're teaching our children that this is what you do to those of our relatives who have passed away." And again, you then go in and you give the context of it and help them to see what that passage means. And it's a process of them letting go of that and seeing that, "Okay, we're doing things that aren't pleasing to God, and so we need to stop doing those things."
A story that I liked telling is that after about the third year at Sunbury, which is the camp that I lived at, and we had one of the schools, there was about 30 students. And they wanted to have more discussion about what the Bible says about ancestral worship. And so, after class, the teacher stayed around, the students stayed around, and we had that discussion for a couple hours. And then one of the older bishops in the back, he stood up and he said, "I think I get it what you white missionaries are saying to us. You're saying that when we become followers of Jesus, there's things in our culture that we need to leave behind." But then he said this and he looked at us and he said, "When, you became a follower of Jesus, what did you leave in your culture?" And he sat down. And that question has affected me for the last 25 years.
Darrell Bock:
Sure. Yeah. Very interesting. Do you know why they worship in the evening?
Greg Seghers:
So, culturally, there's a belief that the spirits are more active. So, those who are not followers of Jesus, they believe that the spirits are more active at midnight.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So, I mean, again, part of why we do these is to have people understand the way different people in different parts of the world see the world, and what goes on in it, and how they perceive that. And then the challenges to ministry that come as a result of some of these differences. Some of which are benign, but some of which actually do have issues tied to them that need attention. So, it's interesting. So, you've got the Bible schools. Are there just, for lack of a better description, missionaries who work in the area as well? Or is everything tied to these Bible schools?
Greg Seghers:
So, we have 18 families that are working with ZEMA. But part of that 18 families is that we also get missionaries seconded from other mission agencies. So, team SIM, DMG, which is a German mission. So, we have missionaries from those missions that have seen the tremendous open door that we have and have loaned us missionaries. So, most of our missionaries are in the South African region. And then we have a missionary in Eswatini. And then the missionaries that are in the Johannesburg area, which is in the northern part of South Africa, they've been going into Zimbabwe and then also now they're going into Malawi.
Darrell Bock:
So, is there a particular set of regions in South Africa that get a lot of attention? Or is it spread across the country?
Greg Seghers:
It's spread across the country. Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and in between. And now spread all.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, South Africa is a fascinating country. I go every other summer basically our summer there and there's certain places I haven't been. I've never been to Durban. I've been to Cape Town regularly. Johannesburg, Pretoria pretty regularly. So, yeah, that's the normal swing for me.
Greg Seghers:
Carlene and I were based about an hour north of Durban. So, we got some really nice weather then for the most part in that area.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Now, it's interesting, most people don't realize this, but there's a significant Indian population in parts of South Africa as well. But I'm assuming that that's a whole completely different cultural and demographic presence in South Africa as opposed to the indigenous African free independent churches? Or has there-
Greg Seghers:
That's correct. We have been partnering with a Indian pastor up in the Northern KwaZulu-Natal area that has been working with us and has been teaching with us in the ZEBS program. And the ZEBS is what the school is called, Zion Evangelical Bible School. And so, that's probably our only contact with them then. There isn't that I'm aware of. There's no Indian people that are involved in the Zionist churches.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. And again, this is just from memory, I may not be right, but I think it's the Durban area in particular where the Indian population is concentrated?
Greg Seghers:
Yeah, in that KwaZulu-Natal area. And the reason, I don't know if you know the history of it, but they came over as indentured servants to work in the sugarcane fields.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, really? No, I didn't know that.
Greg Seghers:
And so, this is what I've been told is that it's the largest population of Indians outside of the country of India are living in that area.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. I mean, when I was first being told this, I was totally surprised. Of course, I'm in the middle part of the country for the most part. Like I said, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town. And so, I've never been to the eastern coast of India, which is where we're talking about.
Greg Seghers:
That's correct. Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
So, what's it like to come out of the West and… well, you know what? I forgot. You have a story to tell. So, how did you get into this to begin with? I mean, what's a nice InterVarsity Christian Guy, how does he end up in South Africa ministering to indigenous Africans?
Greg Seghers:
So, I won't give you a too long a version, but I'll give you a little bit of a version. So, in the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, I went on a trip with Operation Mobilization down to Ciudad Juarez, and we did a blitzkrieg of the town. There was college students from Canada, from United States, and from Mexico that came together and worked with churches. And then from that experience, I began to receive newsletters from agencies that were working with the Muslim population. So, I was praying through those each time that I would get it. And one of the main prayer requests was pray for more workers. And it wasn't like God spoke to me verbally, but it was like, "Well, Greg, why don't you? Why don't you go there?"
And so, I always had a desire to tell people Jesus. And I knew that with my physical therapy that I could get into a closed country. So, when Carlene and I were dating, and she knew the desire that I have, and she also was a physical therapist. And so, we decided that that's what we believed that God wanted us to do, was to use our physical therapy to get into Muslim country. And after we graduated, back in those days, you had to get your school debts paid off. So, I had to pay .
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Right. People are still doing that today.
Greg Seghers:
Okay. All right. I knew I needed Bible training, and so I was still full-time working. We had a child, my wife was pregnant with our second child. And I went full-time to a Moody Bible Institute. And at that time it was called Advanced Studies Program, which has become their master's level program. And I did those courses and my wife took some courses, and we went to the Missions Week. And we-
Darrell Bock:
Which is a big deal at Moody, right?
Greg Seghers:
Yeah. Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
I mean-
Greg Seghers:
The agencies they have lots.
Darrell Bock:
They're everywhere. They're all there.
Greg Seghers:
And so, Carlene and I went to the seminars that they had. And then we went up to and visited the agencies that were working with Muslim countries, Muslim people. And it was amazing what they told us. So, we went up to one table and they told us that, "No, that you guys are too old." And I was only 29 at the time, but we just couldn't believe that's what they said.
Darrell Bock:
File for Medicare.
Greg Seghers:
And so, then we went up to another table and they said, "You have too many children." Okay. And then we went up to a third table and they told us that we needed more education. And so, three strikes and you're out. And we left there like, "Okay, God, we thought this was the direction you want us to go."
Darrell Bock:
So, this was at the Mission Week. Wow. Okay.
Greg Seghers:
And just so you know that after that, as we became missionaries and we would talk to missionaries from those agencies, and they just can't believe that's what was told to us. And we said, we can't believe it either, but that was God's way of getting us to where you want us to be. And we had friends from Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at our campus that were home on furlough from South Africa. And we invited them to come over for dinner and we came over, they had a little child, and our little one played together. And they showed us, in those days, it was the old slideshow presentation. And afterwards they said-
Darrell Bock:
If you're under 20, have someone explain to you what that is. Anyway, go ahead.
Greg Seghers:
And so, then they just said to us, "It'd be nice to have a couple like you to with." And so, that night, Carlene and I began to talk about it. We began to pray and research it, and three and a half years later we were in South Africa.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So, your intent had been to go minister in a closed Muslim country.
Greg Seghers:
That's correct.
Darrell Bock:
And you obviously got directed in a different direction. And as I say, the rest is history for you and your family?
Greg Seghers:
Yeah. What's interesting in my networking and getting to know people from different agencies, and that sort of thing, is that, I don't know how much the listeners will know, but the Islam is going further and further south sub-Saharan Africa. And they're pouring millions of dollars into establishing footholds into the southern sub-Saharan countries. Like in Malawi, I was there about 10 times in my early days of ministry. And pretty much their goal was to have a mosque in each village. And they've done it. And then in discussing as missionaries and with other agencies, one of the things that we've talked about is who's there that's going to be witnessing to their neighbors? And the Zionists are in those villages. And so, we just think for such a time as this, is God opening up the hearts of the amaZioni people to his word, so that they are becoming followers of Jesus, and they'll be able to witness to their Muslim neighbors?
Darrell Bock:
So, what is the tribal makeup of the amaZioni? I mean, are they considered to be their own tribe? Or is there a mix of tribal?
Greg Seghers:
Yeah, it crosses the barriers. There's no barriers in South Africa. It's all the different.
Darrell Bock:
So, this is a particularly, I can say what cross-tribal denominational movement basically?
Greg Seghers:
That's correct. And just so to help the listeners to understand about the Zionist movement, and one of the things that we've noticed about particularly the Western churches in South Africa is their understanding of the Zionist movement is that they believe that it's just one denomination. The ZCC, I don't know if you've heard of that, the Zion Christian Church, which has about a million members. And they go up to a place called Moriah every Easter. And that's a huge denomination. But there's actually 6,000 different Zion denominations in South Africa. And they each have their own bishop and they have their own name of their church in a different uniform and that sort of thing.
Darrell Bock:
So, now the natural question that comes to me in that kind of a context is do those tend to be formed by tribe? Is that part of what creates those differences?
Greg Seghers:
So, what's happened in the beginning, I have to go back a little bit in history.
Darrell Bock:
No problem. Yeah.
Greg Seghers:
That they immediately began to break away from each other. So, there was some early leaders, guys that Le Roux, Buchler Mahon were some of the early white people that were followers of the Zionist movement. And Konyana Luthuli Gubese were some of the African leaders in the beginning. And they immediately broke away from each other.
And I believe that that's also part of the African culture is that let's say you were the bishop. And if I was a younger guy and after a certain amount of time, I would say, "Well, I want to have my own church." So, I would take my members and I would start my Zion denomination. I would change the name a little bit, maybe change the uniform a bit, and then I would have my church and I would become the bishop of that church.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So, I've been waiting to ask this question. I haven't been sure how to ask it. And that is, so you said there were white leaders and there were African leaders as well. How much is the cultural reality now? I'm thinking particularly South Africa, although it's probably true across the continent to some degree. How much were the racial divides that existed in the continent at play in some of this?
Greg Seghers:
Yeah. So, what's particular about Zionist teaching from the beginning was that they were egalitarian and cosmopolitan. So, there was a reception of all the different races, and there was no status higher. And so, there was a unity there.
Darrell Bock:
So, it was counter-
Greg Seghers:
So, that was the beginning.
Darrell Bock:
So, it was counter-cultural to what was going on in South Africa, for example?
Greg Seghers:
That's correct.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Greg Seghers:
At the beginning.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Greg Seghers:
Now, what I have been amazed at in my 30 years of being over there is how forgiving the African people are, because we were received with open arms. And one of the things I think was significant in those early years of the other missionaries that started and Carlene and I when we went, is that we were instructed that we needed to learn their language, we needed to learn their culture. And so, one of the things that my wife and I did in the early days was we would take our family and go live with a Zulu pastor. And we would do what they were doing and learn their culture, learn their language, and live with them.
And I remember in the early days that I would go for a whole weekend, and go out and participate with a family, and have the service, and that sort of thing. And one time I was in a hut, and it was in the early days when I didn't know the language so well. And a person would come in and they would say hello to me, and I'd greet him in Zulu. And then they would talk to the coworker that I had, Cuba. And they would talk for a while. And then he would get up and greet me, say goodbye. And then he'd go out and another person would come in.
And after a while, I finally asked Cuba, I said, "What's going on?" And he just said, "No, they couldn't believe that a white man was going to sleep in a Black man's bed. And so, they wanted to come and see with their own eyes." And so, I think if you go there with an open heart, an open mind, and you're not trying to change them to become Western, and you become a learner and learn from them that they are so receptive to us then bringing the Bible teaching.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I mean, there's terrific hospitality that runs through the culture that I've seen, and just a graciousness really that runs through as well that you sense and pick up when you're there. And with everything that South Africa in particular has been through, we really do appreciate people who we know, both whites and Blacks, who we've gotten to know who are connected to the church, and the churches that we minister to. It's a fascinating place to be. So, what would you say you've learned as a result of the ministry that you've been a part of? Because I imagine just a little bit of a culture difference.
Greg Seghers:
Very much. Yeah, very much so. One of the significant things I think for me was that when I went there, that I went there because I love the amaZioni people. And so, I could have a meal with witch doctors and I could have meals with prophets who were receiving their messages. And there wasn't any emotional baggage that I had because I wanted to love them, build relationships with them, and share the truth. But allowing them to wrestle with the truth and allowing the word of God and the spirit of God to work within that person. And so, when I come back here to America, and now we're here totally in the country and the culture, I know that there's topics that are very heightened emotionally, and especially as Christians that we get upset about certain things. And so, one of our messages that my wife and I have tried to give and to talk with people. And last semester we taught a class at Moody Bible Institute, intercultural engagement, and we were teaching the students that they have different cultures all around them.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, yeah.
Greg Seghers:
In America. It's amazing.
Darrell Bock:
Well, I tell people when you ask the question, so what's the culture like? I said, you've already fogged up the conversation. It's not culture singular, it's cultures, and they rub against each other. I compare them to plate tectonics. They rub against each other, you build up enough pressure, you get a reaction. And so, that is pluralism is that mix, that multiple mix that you have to deal with. And Africa is certainly that way. You've got multiple languages in any given country.
Greg Seghers:
That's right. 11 national languages.
Darrell Bock:
Greg Seghers:
South Africa.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly.
Greg Seghers:
So, the thing is, how do we build bridges, take down walls, and build a trust relationship where you can go out and have coffee with somebody that's from a different political or different social agenda perspective. But have a conversation and share, and not try to talk them into believing what you do, but just share and listen to their story, and share your story. And then depart ways, but still be able to have a communication. So, that's what I…
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, when we do our cultural engagement stuff and we talk about difficult conversations, we talk about learning to become a good listener and ask questions, and find out where the person is coming from and why. I call it getting a spiritual GPS reading on someone. And you're just listening for what drives them and what they're concerned about, where they're coming from. Because the better you understand the person, you're actually in a better place to interact with them.
Greg Seghers:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And so, that becomes a very key way of thinking about how to share your faith in this context. And I say, if you show an interest in someone else, and by asking them questions, wanting to hear their story, et cetera, and putting what I call your doctoral meter on mute, you're not going to turn it off. It's there. And your first response isn't to rebut what you hear. Your first response is to actually draw closer to the person and get to know them better, then you put yourself in a position when it's your turn, you've set an environment for that a conversation, which allows you to share as they've shared. And it just changes the dynamic of what's going on between people when you operate that way.
Greg Seghers:
Yeah. And giving the space for God to do his work.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. And it's his timing, and it is sense that we do it. So, you've come back from South Africa and you're now here. And it says you're serving as ZEMA's home office director. So, what does that mean? I mean, home office isn't a big place, I don't think. So, what does that actually mean?
Greg Seghers:
Yeah, so what happened in our ministry is that in 2018, I took over as field office director. And then in 2019, our home office director resigned. And so, my wife and I raised our hand. And so, we were carrying both responsibilities while we were there in South Africa. So, then in 2021, my wife's parents needed some assistance. And so, Carlene came back here. And then in January of 2023, we finally came over where we're full-time now here. So, we got our feet wet a little bit in those early days. So, now our concentration is networking and going out to churches, coming to Bible schools, and having the opportunity to tell the story of what God's doing. Because I appreciate what you're doing in The Table podcast is that you're helping believers to see of what God's doing worldwide.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Greg Seghers:
And it's huge.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly.
Greg Seghers:
So huge.
Darrell Bock:
Most stories people don't even know or aware of, but he is quite active and it's in certain parts of the world. It's exciting to see even in the midst of some cases of real challenge. And so, I take it you're overseeing and encouraging people who are in the ministry, the families, et cetera. Is that basically the role?
Greg Seghers:
That's correct. And so, I am doing a lot of administration answering emails, helping to solve some issues, or pointing people to the right people that can solve their issues that they're having. And being in communication with the field office director on a weekly basis, and the board chairman. And-
Darrell Bock:
So, you were overseas for what, 20…
Greg Seghers:
Darrell Bock:
29 years. So, what was it like to come back to the States? There was culture shock when you came back?
Greg Seghers:
Yes, very much so. Very much so. So, when I first realized that we were going to be making the transition, it was hard because that became home for Carlene and I. And that was where we were friends. And there's a pace of life that you-
Darrell Bock:
I understand.
Greg Seghers:
… that you have and we really enjoyed. We really loved what we did. And we loved the people we were with, and we loved the amaZioni. And we love the culture that-
Darrell Bock:
There's a reason why you spent seven or eight hours in the church service because of the community values that represents.
Greg Seghers:
That's right. But making this transition, God has given us peace about that this is what he's asking us to do at this time. And that we are grabbing hold of what God's given us. And so, opportunities like this get us really excited. And just a really short story. We were trying to make a little bit more contact with Dallas, the Theological Seminary. And so, we were trying to be part of the WEC, I think, where we had the mission agencies, and it just wasn't happening. Didn't have the right emails and that sort of thing. So, we decided to come a little bit early today.
And I don't know which building it was, but we were looking at the directory, and a gentleman came up and asked us do we need help? And so, we told him who we were, and it was Dr. Ortiz. And so, we ended up having a great conversation, and he introduced us to Shannon. And so, we had a thirty-minute discussion with her. And so, I see God opening doors for us to just have opportunities to tell the story of what he's doing amongst the amaZioni people.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, it's a fascinating part of the world, South Africa and the southern part of Africa. It's becoming a challenging part of the world as well, with all the issues that exist. As you've already talked about, the influx of Islam coming South is a challenge. And some parts of the African continent have had a very tumultuous history over the last several decades, and coping with that. It is a fascinating, I could say, part of the world. And to hear about ministry that's connecting with people who are from Africa and the reception that you've managed to get is encouraging to hear.
Greg Seghers:
One of the things that I don't know if I explained also is that out of our 80 teachers, 60 of them are African nationals.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow.
Greg Seghers:
God is really doing a movement where he's raising up people from within that are ministering to their own people.
Darrell Bock:
So, you mean they're running the schools and that kind of-
Greg Seghers:
They're running the schools.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Wow. That's cool. Yeah. Well, Greg, I want to thank you for coming in and talking with us, and sharing a little bit about a small piece, important piece of what's going on in Southern Africa, not just South Africa, and the opportunity that represents and the history that is behind it. And the way in which you all have shown what I would call relational sensitivity in thinking about ministry. That's a value that we have at the center. And so, it's a real pleasure to hear your story.
Greg Seghers:
Well, thanks for the opportunity. It's great to be here.
Darrell Bock:
And we're glad that you were able to join us on The Table. If you want to see more episodes of The Table, you go to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast. And as you heard, we've done other podcasts about South Africa that discuss different aspects of the makeup of the country and what has gone on there. The history, which most people are aware of, has been at different points tumultuous. And so, it's interesting to hear how the church has coped with all the changes that have come really in the last several decades there in South Africa. So, we thank you for joining us. We hope you'll join us again soon. And welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture, and where we look at the relevance of theology to everyday life.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas. And you can see I am surrounded.
Sandra Glahn:
Friends.
Darrell Bock:
Yes, friends. Very good. Yeah. Well, that's great. Hopefully it remains that way. Anyway, and our topic today is feminism and womanism. What is the difference? And I'm going to take a little bit of time to kind of set the stage here because this is actually for us a very important conversation. One of the things we do at the center is we try and prepare people and equip people with regard to difficult conversations in our complex world, by which we mean our pluralistic world. And probably one of the most challenging areas of that conversation for the church in the last really half century, if not longer, has been the area of the way in which women have become more and more involved in our society and in some cases more vocal in our society.
And at this point, we're not trying to portray that as good or bad, it's just the reality. And so dealing with pluralism means understanding who your neighbor is, particularly neighbors who think very, in some cases very differently than you do. So we spent a few years ago, an entire year reading in this area of feminist studies. And what we thought was one thing and had always been one thing, became many things with many different angles and parts to it. It was eyeopening to say the least. And so we want to reflect some of that discussion in the conversations that we have today and help people kind of get acquainted with the complexities of the conversation as it exists today.
So I have three wonderful guests with me today. Christina Crenshaw is an associate at the Hendricks Center and has worked with us on and off for several years now. Makes cameo appearances on the podcast every now and then. And she's shown up for this one. And then Cheyenne Coote, who is office manager at the center, but did some study in your undergraduate in this area. Tell us a little bit about that and then I'll introduce Sandy, Cassandra.
Cheyenne Coote:
Yes. So when I was in college, I minored in gender and women's studies. And so I took some classes, Black Feminisms, Contemporary Feminisms, and wrote some papers on the depiction of Black women in society. So this has always been kind of an interest of mine, both in my academic and personal life.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. And then our third guest who has, you're such a veteran of these, I almost have to not need to introduce you. Sandra Glahn. Say it that way. Professor of media arts here at the seminary and also has done a lot of work in this kind of an area. Talk a little bit about some of the work that you've done in this area.
Sandra Glahn:
One of my fields of my PhD program was the history of ideas about gender, which included of course, feminism and womanism, but it was really going much further back to even the Roman Empire. What would it have been like in the context of Jesus and Paul? What's masculine there and feminine, and how much of a moving target is that?
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so I talked about the last 50 years, you went to use the language of that great theologian, Chris Berman. Back, back, back, back, back to the Roman Empire.
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah, it goes of course way back to Aristotle and before that, so…
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I mean, Jesus, time of Jesus. That was even more recent. So anyway, okay, so let's dive in. Let's start first with feminism. And Sandy has come prepared with a definition. So let's hear it.
Sandra Glahn:
So its foundation is the equality of the sexes and the ramifications and sociologically, politically, ideologically, and the movements that come out of that. Basically fighting sexism.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so well maybe we ought to define sexism. Do you have a definition for sexism?
Sandra Glahn:
Sure. It would be discrimination against women. And not just men against women. It can be women against women. It's anyone who's putting women down and exercising ramifications that are or look unequal or unfair.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Now most people think that there, well, you gave some subcategories. Let me go through that before I ask the next question. You said, and I don't think I remember them all, sociological, ideological, is that list?
Sandra Glahn:
And political.
Darrell Bock:
And political. Okay. So there are different dimensions to these conversations that come in, and that impact the way in which the topic is introduced and what's the concern. I mean, I take it the woman's suffrage movement is a part of this history.
Sandra Glahn:
Sure, because rights, voting is going to be political, but it's also going to be ideological and sociological. So it's not always clean categories.
Darrell Bock:
So one way to think about this is there are some things that we don't even blink at today that are a part of this history.
Sandra Glahn:
That's true. Custody used to always go to the man, even if he was a heavy drinker and was abusive, it was just assumed, goes to dad. Now we kind of swung the pendulum the other way, and sometimes fathers are having to fight for their rights because the court thinks of mothers as nurturing and they might have to establish that that's not what's happening.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So that's kind of the starting point for us now. Well, let's go through it this way. So when I first heard about feminism, I thought it was one thing. It was feminism, it was women's rights and that kind of thing. The right to work, the right to equal pay. I can think about a lot of things that could go into the sociological considerations of what this is involved, but actually it's more complex than that, isn't it?
Sandra Glahn:
It's like asking what is an evangelical? It's a very wide range and it has a lot of subsets.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so let's walk through some of those because I understand, I feel like I'm going to be surfing because I'm going to be talking about waves, but there have been multiple waves in this history. So Christina, let's start with you. When did you first become aware of all this?
Christina Crenshaw:
Yeah, thanks for asking that question. So I want to just add first that I love the working definition that you just gave. And I would add one of the things that is of interest, particularly within our evangelical circles, is that it also encompasses our spiritual dimension as well, I think we've seen the past couple of years. But I first became aware of this conversation around feminism and womanism when I was actually only in the second grade. Of course it was lost on me at the time, but my mom was earning her master's degree in women's literature at Texas Women's University. She was newly divorced and she needed childcare for the day I was sick. So she pulled me out of my school because I couldn't go and she brought me to class with her, and the conversation for the day was on Alice Walker.
And I remember being in second grade and listening to a room full of women discuss what it meant to really empower women. And of course most of it was lost on me, but retrospectively I realized the larger, broader context and just even the gravity of that moment being with a single mother, listening to her struggle for her place at the table, struggle for women's rights and having to bring her daughter to class with her. And it was this clash of beautiful and broken all at the same time. But I would later go on in college to major in English, master's degree, PhD. And so I would of course encounter feminism. But by that point, I was in the third waves. We've actually had four waves of feminism.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so I'll come back to that. I want to come back. And so tell us who Alice Walker is because some people may not know.
Christina Crenshaw:
Okay. Well, she is part of third wave feminism, and I will let Cheyenne speak. She's kind of our resonance scholar here on Alice Walker. But there was first wave feminism, which really brought to the conversation a lot of what Sandra has highlighted. It was really a fight for a place with legality and voting and the ability to open a bank account or to have these parental rights, many of those kinds of things. Second wave was a lot of conversation around things like reproductive rights. We saw a lot with Roe v Wade. That was a big marker with second wave. Third wave feminism, which we had talked about before the podcast, is debatable. Is there a third wave? Is there a fourth wave? Are we in it? But third wave feminists would say that those were the ones who started to really ask the questions about what does work life balance look like?
What does it look like for women to enter the workforce, to have a seat at the table, to sort of shorten the wage gap, so to speak. And fourth wave is a little bit more nebulous, I will agree, because we are currently in it, so it's hard to define what we are in. But fourth wave would be more of an online and more inclusive wave that you don't necessarily have to be a woman to be a feminist would be part of their argument. Alice Walker, I would say she was the mother of womanism. I don't know if you would agree with that, Cheyenne. But she is an author, a writer, a poet, a thinker. And if we have time, let's circle back to her daughter who stood in contrast with her feminist teachings, her daughter did.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So let's talk about womanism, and in particular as you went through the waves, it struck me that one of the things that you didn't mention that womanism supplies is a particularly Black perspective on the whole feminist movement. So let's talk about womanism, where it fits. Does it belong in the waves or is it alongside the waves? How should we think about what womanism is?
Cheyenne Coote:
Sure. So kind of piggybacking off of what Christina said, so Alice Walker, in her book, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, that she published in the late eighties, she coined the term womanism, which actually comes from the term womanish, which is an expression that some Black people in the south might use to describe a little girl who's maybe acting older than her age. Maybe a little bit more audacious, a little bit more outspoken. And she uses this quote to kind of contrast womanism to feminism. So she says, "Womanism is to feminism as purple is to lavender." And so even though she doesn't say it explicitly, I think Walker implies that she thinks womanism is maybe a better way to capture the experiences of Black women. And she does define a Black feminist as someone who can identify as a womanist. I think she thinks that anyone who is a Black woman can inherently identify as a womanist.
But I think she does make it clear that womanism is an exclusive way for Black women to define their lived experiences. And there are nuances to womanism that we'll get to later. Clenora Hudson-Weems, she coined the term Africana womanism. And then in the late eighties, you have Black Christian women who use the term womanism to talk about reading the experiences of Black women into the Bible. And so I definitely think that according to Alice Walker, womanism and black feminism can definitely be parallel.
But I think she would say that womanism is a better or a more accurate way to describe the experiences of Black women. And I think part of that is because of some of the racial discrimination that has unfortunately been a part of the mainstream feminism movement. And also some of the reticence or hesitation that some Black women have towards feminism because of how they see it as something that's more antagonistic towards men. And I know some Black women are more supportive of womanism because they feel like it's more community-oriented, more family-oriented.
Darrell Bock:
So there are multiple levels of the critique that womanism is issuing towards classic feminism in the midst of saying there are certain experiences that are particularly a part of the Black community that feminism didn't address and it actually didn't pay attention to. In fact, in the reading that I've done, there's a lot, there's a use of the term invisible, which I think is interesting where it says, "Black women are invisible in this conversation." Talk a little bit about that.
Cheyenne Coote:
So kind of going a little bit into Black feminism. So Black feminist consciousness kind of became officially a thing in the 1970s, but when we bring it back to the mid 19th century, Sojourner Truth's speech, "Ain't I a Woman," is kind of seminal to Black feminist consciousness. And she's at a women's convention in Ohio and she's talking about how as a Black woman, in contrast to the experiences of a lot of her white counterparts, nobody helps her into carriages or over mud puddles. And her speech was huge because this was one of the first times at least on a public platform, that a Black woman was able to speak about her experiences as a Black person and also as a woman.
And historically, we see that struggle in the mainstream feminist movement to prioritize or to really include the experiences of Black women. And so to clarify, Black women have always been a part of the feminist movement. But going back to what you said, that term invisible, those experiences haven't always been validated. And so in the late 19th century, there are a lot of club organizations, National Council of Negro Women, National Association of Colored Women, that were doing work to help improve the social and political welfare of Black women. But unfortunately, what they were doing wasn't always integrated or acknowledged in the mainstream feminist movement.
Darrell Bock:
And another challenge that is a part of womanism and part of the Black experience is there's not only a critique of feminism, but there's also a critique of the way in which Black men and women have interacted with each other. Talk a little bit about that.
Cheyenne Coote:
Sure. So kind of going off of what I was saying from before, so I think there are Black women who may be hesitant to identify with feminism because it's antagonistic or maybe it puts down Black men in a way that makes it hard for Black women and Black men to work side by side. And so I think there are some Black women who would support womanism because it's not necessarily, I guess from their perspective attacking Black men, but more working with Black men to improve the welfare of Black people as a whole. And so I think some people would see womanism as something that's more of Black women and Black men working together, that the liberation of Black women is contingent upon the liberation of Black people as a whole, that it's not something that's independent. And I think that's some of the issues that some Black women may have with feminism.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so we've used the term liberation. This is going to be a challenging term I think for us, but let's think about that for a second. We're talking about liberation, and this is to any of you. We're talking about liberation, we're really talking about people regaining a status they currently do not have. It's usually put in an oppression, oppressed, oppression lens. And the idea that there have been certain groups that have been limited in what they have been able to do historically, and you're bringing them to a place of more equality. And now whether we're talking about race or we're talking about gender, that has been a part of both of these movements that have existed side by side. That's where they kind of cross and the two highways kind of get on the same plane. So let's talk about that a little bit, the role and the picture of the term liberation in these movements because that certainly is also a part of the language that's going on. Sandy, you want to help us with that?
Sandra Glahn:
So Christina made an important point that this has a spiritual element. And so if you really want to trace the history, we can go all the way back to Genesis 3. And there is this conflict that's happening that is completely redeemable in Christ, but typically, particularly in agrarian societies, you have women getting pregnant. So they're completely vulnerable compared to a man who can go out and hunt. So that dependency includes an economic dependency, which is why widows are so pitied, right? Through in the scriptures were called to care for those because in an agrarian context, she is not liberated in the sense-
Darrell Bock:
Put right next to widows and orphans.
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah, exactly. And so the liberation is saying there are ways through the laws, through social, there are things we can do to bring some equality to the situation. It's not just completely hopeless. And so for some, liberation is just an attitude, but for a lot it's a concern for justice and is an outworking of do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God. And that's part of the challenge for us as you talk about pluralism is are you talking about a chip on your shoulder or are you talking about really true injustices? Cheyenne is talking about there are real injustices if you look at how we handled the right to vote vote. That was white women's right to vote largely in that movement. And so then it raises a question of liberation. So liberation can be a bad word, but so can feminism. And a lot of times comes back to what do you mean when you say that, how are you using that?
Darrell Bock:
So one of the reasons we spend some time on defining these terms is because what you mean and what you're communicating is actually pretty important. And a lot of people have defaults for some of these terms that may or may not reflect what the actual conversation is.
Sandra Glahn:
I almost went into a university classroom and said, "I'm not a feminist," and I'm glad I didn't because after listening a while, I realized what they would've heard me say in that group would've been, "I'm not for equal pay." That's not how I used it in most of my life.
Darrell Bock:
So we've got this odd combination. I mean, we live in a fallen world, so we've got this odd combination, if I can say it this way, of the pursuit of everyone's made in the image of God. There's an inherent equality and inherent value that every human being has that's regardless of race. But we also have this history that has divided us that I once got into a discussion with a pastor who said, "Well, race is a social construct. It shouldn't be a part of this conversation." And I say, "The trouble is that no one lives that way." No one lives in a way in which race is a non-factor, and there's a history that has involved wounding and damage and that kind of thing which people are reacting out of. And sometimes we ignore that in the conversation. We make it a raw abstract conversation.
So I guess the question I have, and I'll direct us to you, Christina, is in thinking about the balance of being in a fallen world and trying to say, "All right, what is right? What should be just?" God does care about just. He's a God of justice. In a meditation over the Christmas season recently in which someone read out Isaiah 9:6, a very well-known passage, gets read every Christmas. And for the first time, I'm so, prince of peace, mighty, everlasting God, Father, all those terms. Mighty God. And for the first time, I noticed the term justice is in that description as well.
And I thought to myself, "That's interesting how I have missed that for so long." And so in thinking about that, how do we wrestle with the balance between the pursuit of justice and healthy relationships and living out the great commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself," on the one hand, and the damage that our history has done on the other, which creates an alienation and a sense of being pressed down if I can use that image. And yet at the same time, not doing it in such a way that it ends up being destructive and problematic for us in our relationships.
Christina Crenshaw:
That is such a broad question, but it's encouraging to hear you say that yes, there are times where we read scripture and the Lord highlights different things, and that's important to pay attention to what the Holy Spirit's doing there. I think to answer your question, I would dovetail that with what Sandra said earlier, that the context and the definition is everything. And particularly for Christians, I think it goes back to being able to root our beliefs in scripture. What is our hermeneutics? What is our apologetics for this? How do we go back to the biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption and restoration, because that is our touchstone. And so we want to be sure that we aren't just listening to the cultural narratives around feminism or womanism, that there are redemptive aspects of both of these ideologies if rooted in scripture. But apart from scripture, they become part of the cultural narrative.
And we know culture changes, culture is wrong, culture has fallen, right? And so I think that I can find things that I appreciate about each wave of feminism that has been so very helpful for the church, for women. I can find things about womanism. Similarly, I am so thankful that womanism considers the larger social fabric of what it means to be a woman. Part of why womanism was birthed in the first place, it seems like an apt analogy, birthing womanism. But part of the reason that was necessary was because feminism did give more critique, more consideration to elite women. Women who were in academia, women who were in professional spaces. And it wasn't necessarily addressing the needs of women in a social context. Well, what does it look like to fight for a seat at the CEO table if I can't even find childcare? Or what does it mean to lean in, as Sheryl Sandberg has famously coined, if I can't even get custody of my children or if race is a barrier?
So I think to answer the broader question, for Christians, it really looks like rooting what does the redemptive gospel narrative on this say? What do we know that God's heart is, that Jesus teaches us about how much God values women, how much the Lord values women? And then from there, letting that to be our guiding framework for what does it mean to care for the orphan, the widow, to care for the least of these, to look for ways to empower women? And so it really is, and it's not just semantics, it's a heart motive. It's our theology, it's our hermeneutics. What does it look like to lean into God's definition of justice so that we're empowering women from that space? It becomes tricky when you're engaging a pluralistic culture because they're not going to use the same language and the same terminology. But when we're inside the church, we need to make sure that we have a robust understanding for when we're engaging culture. So we are using the same words and definition.
Darrell Bock:
So sometimes when I'm in this pluralistic space, I'll say to people, "You have to distinguish between an analysis of the problem and how we got to where we are, and the way we think what the movement towards the solution is." And of course, the nature of where we are, where we are is that there have been distinctions made. There have been groups that have formed some having sometimes advantage and others not. I think if we look at our history, that's hard to deny that that hasn't gone on. And so how do we come out of that? Out of that has come wounding. I think this is a very important, out of that has come wounding that alienates people that has put a, if I can say it, a chip on their shoulder sometimes or a tendency to want to think tribally about the protection of their group because of what they've been through, that kind of thing.
And then reactions come out of that space and it becomes a competition for space, a zero-sum game that kind of says, "The only way I can gain is if you lose." And that's the analysis place that puts us where we are and sometimes how that analysis takes place. But on the solution, the question is do you continue down that path with the assumption of a zero-sum game, or do you think about is there a way to think about this space to where when one group gains, it actually benefits everybody. That they become more participatory, more present, more visible, more cared for, et cetera, et cetera. And my contention would be that what the gospel does in the midst of this is to say it creates a heart that says that's the goal, that we were created to cooperate with one another, male and female made in the image of God. I like to joke with people that God didn't promote the creation from good to very good until the woman was put alongside the man, so thank you.
Sandra Glahn:
Glad to oblige.
Darrell Bock:
And then we were created to collaborate and work together in such a way that the creation hummed, the creation did well before God, and we were made to be stewards in this space. And so if we do that well and we work together, it's a cooperative arrangement in which we recognize that each of us is bringing something to this conversation that everybody needs. And you do it out of that restored, reconciled space, which is so important. And then the competition isn't that it goes away. It doesn't. You still have to negotiate space and that kind of thing, but you do it with a different attitude and with a different approach.
And so to me, when I'm thinking about how do I orient myself to this gospel story, this theological story that's underneath the way Christians should be responding in this space. It isn't to plug my ears on the one hand, nor is it to simply accept everything that's coming my way, but to actually parse out what's going on. So I'd like to do a little exercise, and I know that Cheyenne is ready to talk about this, and let's do it from the womanism perspective. And the figure that I want to use as the model is Hagar. So let's think about what the story of Hagar is because some people think the Bible is only about Abraham and Sarah, but there actually is this role for Hagar in scripture that needs attention. And the interesting is God also notices Hagar. So let's go there.
Cheyenne Coote:
Yeah. So Dolores Williams, who is a womanist scholar, in her book, Sisters in the Wilderness, she talks about the story of Hagar and Genesis 16 being a really central narrative to Christian women as theology. And so I'm sure a lot of people listening already know the story, but Sarah and Abraham were having a hard time conceiving. Sarah wisely recommended that Abraham conceive a child with his mistress. And when she did, Sarah mistreated her, was jealous. And Hagar ends up fleeing because of her mistreatment.
And while she's on the run, an angel comes to her in the desert and basically encourages her to return and instructs her to name the son that she's pregnant with Ishmael, which means God hears. And in the story she says, "Oh, you're the God that sees me." And so Dolores Williams uses her story as a way to show that even though God didn't necessarily change her situation and change her from being a slave, she did allow Hagar to recognize that God was with her. And her being able to understand that is what gave her the encouragement to be able to go back to that situation having some type of hope.
And so in her book, Williams talks about how for enslaved women, this was really important for people who were in the generation before 1865, before slavery in the United States ended. They didn't know what the future of their children held. And so being able to have that type of understanding of that story in Genesis 16 would give them hope that God was with them even though they weren't sure when slavery in the United States would end. And I think the way Williams frames this is really important because she talks about how a lot of womanists have a survivalist lens versus going back to the word again, liberation versus a liberationist lens.
And so a lot of womanists like Williams look at the issue of how does God help people who are in oppressive situations build a quality of life in the midst of oppression versus how do we necessarily liberate people from systems of oppression, which is another end. And she makes it clear that a liberationist lens versus a survivalist lens, one isn't better than the other, but this is the lens that she prefers. How do we help people have hope in the midst of a situation that may not change or that may take a while to change?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Now, there's another level to what Dolores Williams is doing in Sisters in the Wilderness, in which she also engages a critique of the Bible and the way the Bible presents the story. And I think it's important that this is one of the points. It's important to be able to parse the conversation. And what I mean by that is that on the one hand, there are a series of observations here about Hagar, that God paid attention to Hagar, that God cared for Hagar, God was aware of what Hagar and her situation and even elements of the injustice of it. And yet at the same time she's saying, "But he did instruct her to go back into a situation in which she was going to be a slave and be subservient." And Dolores Williams is a little uncomfortable with that element of the Bible.
And so what you see in the midst of some observations that are made that cause us to pay attention to things in the Bible we might skip over is also a handling of the Bible that allows a different kind of reflection that puts the theme of liberation almost over what the Bible is doing if you're not careful. And so I have some quotes here from the book, from Sisters in the Wilderness, that I'll just read that'll show this element which I'm being critical of. "And that is engaging this hermeneutic, women's hermeneutic. Also allows Black theologians to see at what point they must be critical of the biblical text itself in those instances where the text supports oppression, exclusion, even death of innocent people." She talks about the way in which the Canaanites are seen in the Bible and how that's a negative that can't be embraced because of the way of the use of violence.
And I remember being in class in seminary when we were going through the Bible and the Pentateuch, sorry this is going so long. And we were going through the Pentateuch and I was reading about the way the Bible was describing Canaanite culture. It was polytheistic, there was child sacrifice, et cetera. There were a lot of things attached to Canaanite culture that God was judging as Israel took the land. And that's not anywhere in anything that she's talking about, which is a part of what is going on in that passage and that's important to what's going on, so that this challenge of reading everything through the oppression lens or through the exclusion lens, although it's important to be sensitive to those things when they're happening, can result in missing some of the things that the Bible is actually doing with the space, which is also important to be aware of. Now I've gone long and hard, and so I'm really ready for interaction from any of you about what I just did.
Christina Crenshaw:
Well, I just have a quick quip and I want to say that one of the most profound and simplistic things that I have heard someone say here at DTS that has really helped shape my theology was actually Dr. Yarbrough. And he said, "Just because it's in the Bible doesn't mean that God endorsed it."
Cheyenne Coote:
Right, placement and advocacy are not the same. I was going to say that.
Christina Crenshaw:
Right. And it's such a simplistic but important statement that we recognize what is part of the larger narrative, what God is doing with the larger narrative, where he is judging, where we're under a different covenant. And for some of this, this is really deep theology, but again, just sort of the macro-narrative here is just because it's in scripture doesn't mean that that's God's heart and he endorses it. It is part of a larger narrative and we can't miss that.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. So when we cease to think canonically from the variety of angles that scripture gives us, we may too quickly make the analogy and miss something that's going on in the way in which the associations are actually working biblically. Sandra, you looked like you were-
Sandra Glahn:
One of our challenges is to constantly think critically without becoming critics of everything. And don't you think that that's how we should read any commentary, even if it's written from someone in our camp, so to speak? I mean, it's part of reading outside of our camp to see some, if you allow me that, there isn't like there's really an in or an out, but you get what I'm saying. That for example, the woman at the well. There has been a tendency to just come to that and say, "Yeah, she's immoral. She had slept with all these guys and now she's shacking up with somebody." And then you go to some of the feminist scholars and they've done some really good work on the backgrounds and going, "You know, she could have been in a polygamous situation. War is the number one killer of men." And that's the same phrase that's used for concubine.
And then you go back to church history and find out there are a bunch of people in church history that didn't think she was immoral at all, and in fact that Jesus has gone out of his way to see this vulnerable person who's widowed multiple times. And so we might reject a hermeneutic, but also appreciate observations that might come from a different socioeconomic status perspective, a different ethnicity perspective. And we need all eyes on the text. So we have to think critically, but also read widely and recognize that we have our own blinders when we come to the text that sometimes people outside of how we might see things are going to help us see things that we've missed because we don't even know what we don't see.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Cheyenne, anything you want to add?
Cheyenne Coote:
Yeah, going off of what you were saying about your critique of Williams, I would add to that for sure that I think that's one of my hesitancies with womanism is sometimes womanist scholars want to dismiss or look over stories in the Bible that they read as misogynistic. And just going back to what Christina said, we want to clarify that just because there's the rape of Tamar in Genesis 34, which is obviously really unfortunate, and a lot of womanist scholars don't even like that the story is in the Bible. And so it's really important that people understand the reason why something is in the Bible and not assuming that because it's there that the action or the event was supported. And so that's definitely a critique that I have of womanism that we don't want to omit or dismiss any part of the Bible, but we want to make sure that we're looking at it in the right way in terms of the context of the whole biblical narrative and not issues that we might be facing today.
Darrell Bock:
So this raises, I think, the point of the exercise of much of our conversation, which is that there are blind spots that people have when they read the scripture that are important, they're important to recover from, if I can say that.
Sandra Glahn:
That we have. Right, yeah, everybody has. Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. That we have. That's right. Sometimes the only way I see those blind spots is by someone coming at the Bible from a completely different angle and raising a biblical question for me that allows me to see, oh, you know what? I didn't notice that before. I haven't thought about that question. And of course, it's natural that if someone lives in an isolated or marginalized environment, they would be more sensitive to marginalizing passages and the status of marginalized people than I might be having not experienced that marginalization to any great degree. And I do know when I became sensitive to this. I became sensitive to this when I went to Germany on sabbatical and I was operating in a second language which I only partially possessed, which meant that there were things that I was thinking about what was going on around me that I couldn't adequately express to people around me necessarily.
Sandra Glahn:
You lost nine tenths of your vocabulary.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. And I remember the very frustrating feeling of being in what the equivalent of a PTA meeting, parents meeting at the school where my kids were going because we put them in German schools, everything's going on in German. And we had a phrase in our house that's, "Turbo Deutsche." And so, I mean, the German was-
Sandra Glahn:
They were talking fast.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. The German was coming fast and furious and I'm just trying to keep up and understand and get my hands around things that are involving my kids. And I was recognizing, "Man, I'm not only culturally in some cases not understanding what's going on here, but I'm struggling to even understand what's being said and what that means for my kids, et cetera." And just the disconnectedness that created for me through no fault in one sense of anyone, it was just the situation I found myself in.
And then the next thought that came to me is, "That's how a lot of people live in our country." And I'm sitting here going, and so what can we do? So when my wife and I came into the PTA at Hillcrest, we spent a lot of time making sure that at least a bilingual structure existed in the things that were being communicated so that Latino parents in particular could connect to what was going on with their kids, that kind of thing. So they weren't in the same position we were put in. And I'm just sitting here going, "I think that that's fair. I think that's right."
Christina Crenshaw:
Yeah. And I think this is the point that you're trying to make, but just to say it more explicitly, it strikes me that that really when we talk about these terms like womanism and feminism or critical theories in general, that it is just culture trying to make sense of this world we live in and this fallen, broken world we live in. And it's not that there isn't overlap in language because I think the language that the church use and that culture uses speaks to each other in a lot of ways. And again, as I said earlier, there are redemptive aspects of all of these movements and ideologies, but I think that it compels me to give a little bit more grace to culture grasping to try to make sense. I've got the end of the story, I know how this ends, I have a biblical picture, but not everybody does. And so that really is when we talk about all of these different terms, it is culture grasping to make sense of the world we live in.
Darrell Bock:
And in some cases, it's a grasping because there's not a hope, that involves a fighting for territory and a fighting for recognition, a fighting not to be invisible, et cetera. And if you don't have that identity, that solid identity base, which I think the gospel offers to people, then it makes sense. I'm going to be protective. I'm going to be protective of when I'm, since I'm being injured or my own are being injured, that kind of thing. And so to understand that that's sometimes where things are coming from, even with the frustration, the anger that often comes with it, because it's happened over a long period of time, that kind of thing.
Sandra Glahn:
And the injustices might be real.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right.
Sandra Glahn:
So anger's inappropriate response.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. So it's a much more mixed bag of a fallen world in which I sometimes say that life in a fallen world are values that are out of whack and so they're colliding. They're not aligned. And if you understand the world that way, it makes you in one sense a little more patient with the struggle of trying to figure out what's going on and how to talk to people about it. And particularly how to talk to people about it who aren't approaching it the same way oftentimes you are, and who may not have all the elements that they're not playing with the same elements that you are. Let's just say it that way.
And all that's important in the interaction that you have and in developing the interaction. And I think one of the things that that means is it should turn us in one sense into better listeners. Better listeners and better parsers, listening on the one hand, but doing this kind of parsing that we did with the little exercise that we had earlier in which we say, "I can value this. I can understand why someone would raise this. This is important to see. But this part of it, I think I'm not sure I would go there in terms of trying to solve this problem or complete the assessment of it."
Sandra Glahn:
I mentioned Genesis, but I don't want to end without mentioning Revelation. And that is some of what drives the desire for embracing ethnicity is coming right out of revelation.
Darrell Bock:
Sure it is.
Sandra Glahn:
And in the end, women and men are priests and we're family, we're brothers and sisters. And so it can be also living into the kingdom to be doing what you and your wife did, right? You experiencing something and you saw I want to do to others as I would have them do to me. So sometimes I think it's a desire to make sense. Sometimes I think it's a legit desire to right a wrong, and we might have very different reasons. A radical feminist might hate pornography and I can hate pornography and we can join forces even if we have different rationales or different views of how this ends. But that doesn't necessarily mean I can't have anything to do with them or can't listen to them or partner with them because it's us and them.
Darrell Bock:
Revelation's a good place to kind of land this plane because the other thing that's going on in Revelation that's also very clear is it's many tribes in many nations. And I tell people the church is a transnational entity. Or a pan-national entity, however you want to express it. And the church is supposed to be a sneak preview of where we're headed. So how do you get there and what does that mean? And that certainly is a core and biblical value. The whole point of redemption in its long run is to restore what was lost at the fall. And in that restoration comes that cooperation, comes that working together, comes that shared positive engagement and stewardship and effort to understand one another, all those kinds of things. So I see this as a very natural biblical landing point for all this. I mean, I like to joke when I'm in Ephesians 2, maybe not joke, but actually have people think seriously about the passage.
In the very passage where I get it's clear that salvation is by grace. It's not by works. The very next point that's made is in Christ, we're all one new man, and Christ is about the business of reconciliation. He says we've been created for good works, and the first good work that he has on display for us is this reconciled work between formally estranged people. This two groups that are called Jews and Gentiles, okay? It's not race, but it's similar. And these two estranged groups now brought together. And God says, "You're going to get along, and you're going to get along. You're going to get along. And the reason you can get along is because you all share the same need for me."
Sandra Glahn:
You're even going to love each other.
Darrell Bock:
That's exactly right. So I think it's extremely important in thinking about this space and the challenges of it. So we've got a couple of minutes left. I'm going to let you each say one thing. So what's the one thing you haven't said that you wish you could say as we think about this topic? And I'm just going to start with you, Christina.
Christina Crenshaw:
Okay, well, that's a lot of pressure, but one of the things I was thinking about as you were speaking, Sandra, is that I don't want to lose sight of there's a way to engage within the church, but that there is still common grace and common good outside of the church too. And that is what allows us to engage culture in a way that is winsome and compassionate, not compromising, but still very compelling and leads people to Christ. And so sometimes I think we can become unintentionally so us versus them. And then you really parse it out and you're like, who's the us and who's the them? It gets very murky because the truth is it's not an us versus them. There is the church and there is the lost. But one of the ways we engage them is through that common grace working towards the common good. And so it's not an exclusivity to this is how the church engages feminism. There is actually a way to engage culture without losing your biblical values that is winsome.
Darrell Bock:
Sandra?
Sandra Glahn:
I would say there are good and bad things about feminism and womanism, and we can embrace the good and reject what isn't healthy. And I think rather than if I were going to apply it in a church situation, I would say if you come in, men and women alike, seeing there are gender injustices happening here, instead of how can we promote one or the other is what would it look like for us to partner? Do we have a missions committee that has men and women on it? Are our greeters men and women? If somebody comes down to the front to respond to an altar call in churches that still do, are there men and women down there so that we are modeling what it looks like to love one another deeply from the heart? We have the best message for doing that. We of all people should be able to not be sexualizing relationships, to be modeling what it looks like to love one another and work together as brothers and sisters partnering.
Darrell Bock:
Cheyenne?
Cheyenne Coote:
Last thing I'll say is that I think sometimes when we have these conversations, there is a lot of conversation about identity placement and how do people see their race and their gender in light of their faith. And I think one thing I want people to take away from this conversation, particularly as it relates to Black feminism and womanism, is that the Bible does support the sociopolitical and economic welfare of Black women as image bearers of God. And that upholding the Bible and supporting Black women is not mutually exclusive. That, going back to what you said earlier about justice, that is a part of the biblical definition of justice. But I think it's our job as Christians to do a better job of parsing that out. And sometimes we don't do a great job of that.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. In fact, the only way to parse it out sometimes is to have those conversations, do some listening, hear about someone's different experience and actually not just react, but take it in and process what it is that's being said. Because oftentimes I find in the conversations I have with people of different ethnic backgrounds, their nature of their experience and what they've been through is very different than what I've been through. And that's not to elevate experience, but it is to say that experience can define people. What happens to people can impact people, and to be aware of that can be very, very important.
Sandra Glahn:
Experience is story.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. So I want to thank y'all for taking the time to do this with us. We've been asking the question, feminism versus womanism or feminism and womanism. What's the difference, and what difference does it make? And I think you've helped us think through that, so I appreciate it. And we thank you for being a part of the table. We hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to look at other episodes of The Table, of the podcast, you can go to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast, and you can find the whole menu of the variety of things that we do on The Table. And we hope you'll join us again soon.
Voiceover:
Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary.
Bill Hendricks:
Hello. I want to welcome you to this edition of The Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center. And I want to come right to the point of our theme today. Why the church needs drama and the arts. And I can't think of anybody more qualified to speak into this area than Dr. Reg Grant, who is the Department Chair and Senior Teaching Professor of Media Arts and Worship. Reg, welcome to The Table podcast.
Reg Grant:
Thank you. Good to be here.
Bill Hendricks:
I always feel like media arts and the Hendricks center were sort of cousins were like joined at the hips.
Reg Grant:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
We have a lot of things in common. But I feel like with this announced theme, why the church needs drama and the arts, I'm in a sense asking you to justify your job here at Dallas Seminary.
Reg Grant:
You're not the first.
Bill Hendricks:
And frankly, yes. And to justify the existence of the media arts and worship department. Let me ask, why is this even an issue? Why would we not be thinking about worship or about media arts and worship?
Reg Grant:
Because the arts are slippery. I used to tell my students if DTS had a flag, our colors would be black and white because we are more comfortable in a yes or a no. And shades of gray are difficult to navigate, but that's where the arts live. They live in shades of gray. They live in the colorful fringes that are unique to our discipline. It doesn't mean that there isn't truth here. There is truth here. There is truth that is nuanced here.
Bill Hendricks:
I was going to say nuances loom large in this conversation.
Reg Grant:
It is. But it makes those who have been raised with a more definitive kind of an attitude toward you do it or you don't. It's good or it's bad. To have more difficulty in being comfortable with that level of mystery. We're not strong on mystery. Mystery makes a lot of our colleagues and just brothers and sisters in the Lord uncomfortable because there isn't a real hard and fast yes and no in the realm of mystery. And it's something that invites us in and invites us to recognize, I think that, and acknowledge that we are dependent because the closer you come to a black and a white, the closer you come to being able to control-
Bill Hendricks:
Very good
Reg Grant:
Your world.
Bill Hendricks:
It's my experience that humans hate uncertainty.
Reg Grant:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
We hate uncertainty. And so black and white gives us, at least sometimes, an illusion of certainty. It's ironic because when we talk about God Himself, ultimately He, while He's revealed Himself to us in ways that are reasonable, He Himself goes beyond reason into mystery.
Reg Grant:
Yeah. Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
And that's scary for us.
Reg Grant:
Well sure because I mean the old temptation to become God hasn't gone away.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
We still would like wisdom right now and don't make me wait for it. And that's what got Adam and Eve into trouble. They were approached with the abundance of the garden of the orchard in front of them. And they were given a really simple test but the temptation to gain wisdom quickly, immediately on their timetable superseded their desire to follow the Lord. And that's where they got into trouble.
Bill Hendricks:
Hans Rookmaaker is a name that I know looms large in your field. Hans Rookmaaker, for our listeners, lived back in the 20th century and was Dutch and was a professor, a scholar. And he spoke a lot about art, art history, philosophy, became very good friends with Francis Shaeffer. And in fact, formed a branch of LaBree up in the Netherlands. And he said that art tries literally to picture the things which philosophy tries to put into carefully thought out words. It's the same idea that you're now speaking in art, not so much through words, but through images, through portrayals, through story.
Reg Grant:
Through sound.
Bill Hendricks:
Through sound. And so it's a different calculus.
Reg Grant:
It is. One way that I like to think about it is it's pretty much the opposite of a materialist frame of reference when we try to interpret reality. You cannot unravel mind. You can understand the brain. You can understand that this is a collection of neurons, but that's not what a person is. That's not what a mind is. You cannot unravel consciousness. Nobody can do that.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
God alone created mind and consciousness and an awareness, as CS Lewis said, of a greater reality beyond this one. How do you boil that down to neurological synapses firing? It's just not a materialist… You're going to come to the end of yourself before too long if you're a full blown materialist. And I think in the arts, while on the one hand we may say, oh yeah, I'm a materialist. I mean those who are not Christians yet or believers yet would feel more comfortable with the materialist kind of an approach. But in practice, when they exercise their giftedness, they're anything but, or they're not good artists.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. So let's just backtrack. How did we get here? Because we have in Christian history, this rather rich history of creativity and the arts and music and even drama, the middle ages, the churches are holding Christmas masks and they're telling stories publicly in the streets. And then you have this explosion of art in the Renaissance. How did that all suddenly, or maybe it wasn't sudden, but how did we get from there to what I might call sort of a sterile vision of art today?
Reg Grant:
The enlightenment. The enlightenment combined with Oliver Cromwell, who came in and closed all the theaters in the mid 17th century and thought he could stamp out this pestilence of creativity, and it just will not stay down. It will not go away. It keeps popping back up because people are made in the image of God and-
Bill Hendricks:
They will create.
Reg Grant:
They will create. It's part of who we are. It's in our spiritual DNA, whether or not the person acknowledges Christ as Lord or not. Those people are all created in the image of God and have an impulse, compulsion to create that can't be denied by something as simplistic as an atheistic approach to life. Just doesn't work.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Oh, creativity is irrepressible.
Reg Grant:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
I think of how would anybody possibly shut off a Mozart? The guy's composing in his sleep. He cannot not compose. He cannot not hear that music and want to bring it out.
Reg Grant:
Yeah. And when you think of Bach.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes.
Reg Grant:
We don't have a lot of his works. And they were finding his works. People were using them to wrap fish, his compositions. That's how some of the most magnificent work of Bach was discovered wrapping fish because people didn't recognize, to a large extent, his genius especially on the basic societal level of the very poor people to whom he ministered in his churches, didn't recognize it. They just got a new Cantata every week and had no idea what it meant to compose something, the genius behind it. So we almost lost most of Bach. And if it weren't for some people intervening, then we would have.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that kind of raises the question of there's this masterpiece, but are there enough people who recognize it, recognize what they're even listening to?
Reg Grant:
It doesn't matter. The reason it doesn't matter is because if the piece is done well, and it doesn't stand up and trumpet I am creative. I am a genius. I'm creating all this wonderful stuff and why aren't you appreciating it? If it does its job of revealing, from a Christian point of view, if we do our job of revealing Christ who is beauty, He is goodness, He is truth. If we do our job of revealing that then the people will be affected even though they might not be able to rationally deconstruct it and understand why they're being affected. But a good story well told is going to have an impact on the listening audience or the viewing audience that a simple grocery list of do's and don'ts will never have because there's a motivational element in the story that's lacking in a grocery list.
Reg Grant:
So we need to be doing what we're doing well to the best of our ability under the control of God's Spirit because it works. Because that's the avenue through the local church that God is using to transform us. Not society. Our goal isn't the transformation of society. Our goal is to mirror Christ. The transformation of society is up to God. If we make that our goal, we're going to be frustrated artists our whole life. Our job is to mirror Him and let Him take care of the results.
Bill Hendricks:
So do you see that happening in the church and among Christians today?
Reg Grant:
More and more I do. I'm encouraged by what I see in the local church. As I travel around the world and go into churches in different parts of the world, it's not rocket science. It's real simple. I have been in South America and been in a church in Ecuador, in Quito, where I was able to see… It was just a cinder block church. Very, very basic. It had space between the roof and the wall to let air circulate and just unpainted raw concrete floor. I think it might have even been dirt. As we were singing these Christian hymns, I stood behind. One man was a Quechua, another man was a Huaorani, another man was a Jivaro. Now two years prior to that, they would've killed each other.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
They were singing praises to God. And the binding force that the Spirit used to unify this group was music.
Bill Hendricks:
Mm.
Reg Grant:
Music bound these brothers in Christ together and gave them the opportunity to celebrate the risen savior in a way that was so basic and yet so profound in its exercise. We have a man here at Dallas seminary named Todd Agnew. Todd is fantastic musician, and he's also a worship pastor. And I think those two things go together so well. Being a pastor and a musician whose heart is for his people. And Todd does such a magnificent job of replicating the life of Christ in the pulpit and in the classroom as he's teaching.
Bill Hendricks:
Hmm. Reg your whole background is particularly on the drama side of things. And to this day, I know you still do acting an one man productions and storytelling and so forth and so on. That seems to be a part of the creative fields that is missing in action in many churches today.
Reg Grant:
Yeah. It's a discipline that's… I said it's not rocket science, but there is technique involved. And there is discipline and it's hard work. Most of the time, if a church isn't participating in promoting or participating in drama, it's because they haven't been exposed to it on the church side of things. Now, everybody in that congregation's going to go home and watch Arnold Schwarzenegger and watch movies and things like that. But the connecting point between what's possible and what… there's a secular sacred division that's not healthy. In this case, it's not healthy because there are opportunities to explore the use of drama and it's biblical.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
We have many biblical examples of the Lord commanding drama in the worshiping community for the furtherance of his message.
Bill Hendricks:
Give us an example.
Reg Grant:
Okay. Isaiah 20, the Lord tells Isaiah to take off his clothes. Now, Isaiah was probably a pretty well to-do dude, but the Lord gets him to go real basic. And even to the point of exposing a kind of at least a semi-naked quality to him and he went parading through Israel as a sign to Israel that judgment was coming and they were going to be led away.
Bill Hendricks:
It was street theater.
Reg Grant:
Yeah. Yeah. Ezekiel. Ezekiel, 4:1-8. The Lord starts out by saying, I want you to draw a picture. Now etch it in a clay tablet. Okay, that's going to be Jerusalem. Now take an iron pan, set up the iron pan, erect a siege wall against this pretend Jerusalem. Now here's what I want you to do. Zeke. I want you to go down and lie down on your side, your left side. You're going to go down on your left side for like 390 days, something like that. And by the way, in case you get uncomfortable and you decide you want to turn over, I'm going to tie you up. I'm going to tie you up so you can't move and you're going to be there for 390 days. Now he gave him breaks, obviously, right. There are gaps in the story.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
And then when you're done with that, we're going to flip you over and lie on your right side for 40 days for all the years that Judah was… So you've got an object lesson of a man lying down, and I'm sure he said something while he's lying there, so we've got this wonderful acting going on and it doesn't stop in the Old Testament.
Reg Grant:
New Testament. We have Jesus himself in John in 5:19, 12:49-50, and in 14. Jesus says in five… this is one of the most fascinating things he says. I never did anything I didn't see the father doing first. And 12:49-50, He says, I never said anything I didn't hear the father speak first. Now we think of Jesus as being creative. And He was. But He was not original. CS Lewis says, I don't want to have anything to do with originality. It's bad news. The devil had the original sin. That's where Lewis goes with it. But when Jesus was saying He didn't do anything or say anything He didn't hear the father doing or saying first, He was saying the father and I are one, and it's not like, this is Reg's paraphrase, it's not like when I was a boy and I was in my earthly, adopted father's home. And he was demonstrating how to shape a piece of wood. And he would do it. And then short time lapse, I would do it. And I I would follow his lead.
Reg Grant:
Jesus isn't watching the father and listening to the father and then copying him. It's a mirror image. The best word that we have for it, I think, is mimesis. It's the primary principle in all of Western imitative art. And it works for this connection as well. When you put your hand together in front of a mirror, when you put your hand in front of a mirror and you move it, well which moved first? There's no separation. There's no time lag. Why? Because this image is in a sense, this image.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
Jesus is saying the father and I are so much so this perfect re-presentation of God, Jesus says, the one thing guys, when He's talking to the disciples in the upper room, He said the thing that you must realize is that I have revealed the father to you. That's my job. To reveal the father to you. Now, John 17, I want you to do the same thing. As a matter of fact, I'm going to pray that you will be one even as the father and I are one.
Reg Grant:
Back in 14, Phillip pipes up, Phillip's sort of a backseat guy, and you don't hear much from him throughout the course of Jesus' ministry. But Phillip says, Lord, I'm sure kind of wanting to sort of impress the master. You've had students like that sit on the back row and then it comes to finals and they, all of a sudden they become active. Well, there's Philip on the back row saying, tell you what, Lord, just show us the father. And it'll be enough. Doesn't that sound spiritual? It's just great. It's just super, but Jesus, isn't going to have anything to do with that. He said, Philip, have I been with you this long? And you don't know if you've seen me, you've seen the father, not the same person. But a perfect re-presentation of the father.
Reg Grant:
That's our goal. And in the arts, whether it's music or dance or drama or whatever that art is, there is an opportunity for us to take that aspect of the character of God and under the guidance of God's Spirit, allowing Him to mold us and shape us and frame our art to present that to the world. And so reveal Christ.
Bill Hendricks:
To manifest Him.
Reg Grant:
To manifest Him. That's what we're about. Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Well that segues into a question that I know you must get asked incessantly, which is, Reg, what makes art Christian?
Reg Grant:
Oh, that's a great question. I don't believe in Christian art. I don't think there is such a thing. I think art is art. I think beauty is beauty. Dr. Chafer himself said that systematic theology is the gleaning of truth from any and every source. It's truth. It's not, it's not Christian truth. It's truth or it's beauty or it's goodness. Now how we manifest that, how we take that beauty, that goodness, that truth. And we-
Bill Hendricks:
Convey it?
Reg Grant:
Convey it. Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
Manifest it.
Reg Grant:
The manner in which we do that has an end in view that is unique to our position in Christ. And that is the glory of God. Because we have at our disposal, these many, many, many tools that allow us the privilege of participating with God in showing Jesus to the world. And it's so multifaceted, it's as different as every single individual. Bill, if you don't do this, if you don't do what we are doing here, nobody does it. Darrell could come in and take a shot at it, but it's going to be Darrell's deal. It's going to be different. And if I don't act, then nobody else is going to act.
Bill Hendricks:
Each of us is unique.
Reg Grant:
Yeah. Unique contribution. So the Lord gives us this privilege of taking these gifts, submitting them to Him to the end that, and this is one of the things that's missing in the church, I think, to the end that we glorify Him. So the church doesn't get reduced to something like an extended marriage seminar, or how to get your kids to obey you or-
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
It's not that. I can go to a lot of secular places to try to get that. It's how do we engage the gospel? I mean gospel in the largest sense, the Word of God. How do we engage that in a way that is going to honor the Lord? In the process, I'm going to wind up with a family that loves Jesus. I'm going to wind up with a marriage that works, but that's not my primary goal.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, it reminds me of something CS Lewis said, he talked about friendship, philosophy, and art. And he said, all of those are actually unnecessary in the sense that none of them has what you might call survival value. But rather they are things that give value to survival. And we've kind of mix those up, I think. We're wanting to survive. And the question is survived for what? Like, what's the nature of that survival?
Reg Grant:
Yeah. Because it all comes back to me again. Even in the Christian realm, it's so easy to slip back into that prepper kind of a mentality where I'm preparing for the end, not to the glory of God, but so I can survive.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
It's so easy to slip into that. And even when it comes to protecting my family. I can want to protect them but I have to ask myself, why do I want to protect them? Why do I want to preserve my life? Well, I want the opportunity to witness for Christ more. I want the glory of God to be accomplished in my life and in the life of my children and the life of my wife and my loved ones. And that's what gets me up in the morning. And that's what helps me go to sleep at night.
Bill Hendricks:
So how would a church go about bringing this into its discipleship of its people?
Reg Grant:
It's real easy just to… Back in the old days before we had internet or even computers, I used to hand out three by five cards when I was teaching in the local church. And say, for example, I want you all to write down your favorite books, the things that you're reading now that you really like. And I got a little reading club together and it started out like 40 or 50 people and it quickly got down to about 10. And so I said, okay, now you're going to take that. And you're going to read. And you're going to hand in… I had talked to the secretary beforehand, so I got permission to do this. You're going to hand in the best examples of illustrative material, good or bad, positive or negative, to her. She's going to type it up and I'm going to start working those illustrations into my sermons and my messages. Well-
Bill Hendricks:
Interesting.
Reg Grant:
Well, I got that idea from your dad. Those people are on the edge of their seat listening because they-
Bill Hendricks:
Want to see if they got into it.
Reg Grant:
If they made the cut. Yeah. It was so much fun. I think little simple things like canvasing your congregation, sending out one of these real easy to compose Google doc survey things and saying, Hey, where are you? Where's your gift? What do you love to do? What's your passion in the arts? Where do you line up? And then collect those and approach those people and say, here's how we want to celebrate your gift to the church. And start letting go of the reins a little bit and trusting these artists to put together something that's going to benefit and bless the church and wind up being a ripple effect out into the community.
Bill Hendricks:
So as people start to express those creative gifts, what if they all end up, oh, this is a Christian thing. I got to put a cross in there. I got to put an angel in there. Is that legitimate? Is it-
Reg Grant:
No.
Bill Hendricks:
How do you-
Reg Grant:
I wouldn't dare to challenge the motive of the person wanting to do that. It's just uninformed because our job is to help them understand that if you've got a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh, I don't have to tack a Bible verse on it to justify its inclusion in my hallway at my church or at my home. Again, it's that secular sacred divide that's just poison. I want the biggest thing that I have, you ask any of my faculty or my students, the biggest word for Reg is integration.
Bill Hendricks:
Say more about that.
Reg Grant:
You know the verse every good and perfect gift comes down from the father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. James. And the idea is that I think the way it works itself out practically is that every gift, every good and perfect gift, comes down from the father of lights. Now that may extend beyond love, joy, peace patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. What if, what if there are, there are riches beyond our imagining that are good gifts that come down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. So you've got this constancy and consistency in the triune God.
Reg Grant:
And at the same time, you've got this enormous variety of gifts that all work together. When we consolidate those gifts where we are given the opportunity to explore how, if you're a plumber, God bless you. I need you. You're a plumber. But to be a really great plumber, you need to know something about dance. If you're a dancer, you need to know something about plumbing because they're related. We don't see it right off the bat, but there's a connection between these good and perfect gifts that God gives to the body of Christ. It's our joy to discover what those connecting points are and to celebrate. I can't look down on anybody else in the body of Christ. How can the hand say to the foot, I have no need of you?
Bill Hendricks:
Right, we need-
Reg Grant:
We need plumbers. We need dancers. We need actors and we need technicians.
Bill Hendricks:
So when we say why the church needs drama in the arts, what we're really saying is first Corinthians 12. Why the church-
Reg Grant:
Exactly.
Bill Hendricks:
Needs everybody.
Reg Grant:
Yeah. Yeah. It's because the church needs everybody. There is no special class. Artists don't occupy a special, higher calling. It's a calling like anybody else. But what I think we can do in the local church is try to move beyond suspicion through acceptance to celebration. So that we're no longer… I want to encourage our leaders out there to give the artists in their congregation a chance. And relax… I want to say not be afraid, but it's more than just fear. It is. There is a justifiable caution to the arts because they see what's going on in worldly arts. Some of which is really awful.
Bill Hendricks:
Really dark.
Reg Grant:
But one of the reasons that they're afraid is because they inherently recognize the power of those arts. Well, if those arts are sanctified, if they are dedicated to the Lord Jesus, and dependent on the Spirit to mold and shape us, they are far more powerful than anything that the world can produce. It's just that we're scared by the world a lot of times.
Bill Hendricks:
Do you find that it seems like maybe some ministers, some pastors, some church leaders, they sort of get art and others just like they don't quite get it. Like, what's the point of art? Like they just don't have categories in which to work with it?
Reg Grant:
Yeah. A lot of it's the way that we were brought up that each individual, what kind of home were you brought up in? Were you exposed to the arts as a kiddo or not? And, and some guys come, and women too, of course they come to the arts later in life. Sometimes that light bulb goes on and boy get out of the way because they are going to… So I had a student, Jason Shepherd. I hope Jason's watching this. Jason came from a long line of preachers and he was the center for the Texas Aggies.
Bill Hendricks:
Oh, wow.
Reg Grant:
I could go anywhere with that guy. Over 300 pounds of… He was a bull. And he wanted to be a pastor. And he had a semester where he just couldn't work out his elective offering. So he had to sign up for creative writing, which is what I was teaching.
Bill Hendricks:
Right. All right.
Reg Grant:
He didn't want to be there. And it was obvious from day one. And about halfway through the semester, the bug bit. Jason Shepherd is a good writer. And he came to my office, not too long after that. And he said, Reg, I'm not going to be a pastor. I'm going to be a professional writer. And I need you to help me. Well, years pass, he goes on to become a senior editor at Insight for Living and then goes down and he wound up coaching football at some little town down south and teaching the kids creativity and writing.
Bill Hendricks:
He's writing it and-
Reg Grant:
Still writing. Yep.
Bill Hendricks:
Good for him.
Reg Grant:
Yeah. Arts change people.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Reg Grant:
Beauty has a habit of doing that.
Bill Hendricks:
So me being the contrarian that I am, I always flip these things around. We've kicked around the question why the church needs drama and the arts. Why does drama and the arts need the church?
Reg Grant:
Oh goodness. If we don't have the church, then we're missing out on the primary tool that God is using to reach the world for the Lord Jesus. I mean, you could go out, hang out your own shingle. You know, you can go through this program, the Media Arts and Worship Program, and you could go into LA. And I've had some students who have done this. And hang out your own shingle, do your own thing, become para church-
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
Outside the church. Now these are good people. And they are convinced, and I believe that in many cases they are correct, that this is the professional avenue that God has called them to. But there is another group of students who are going in as worship pastors, and they are working through the church as the primary organ of distribution of goodness, beauty, and truth to the community and to the world at large. Both groups are okay.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Reg Grant:
Both groups are doing what God has called them to do. All these people that are out in LA and Nashville and New York. Those folks aren't ignoring the church, but their professional life is in secular media and trying to make a difference inside out.
Bill Hendricks:
Inside the culture.
Reg Grant:
Yeah. It's a kind of a Larry Crab thing. Inside out. Yeah. That's character transformation 101.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, because as you pointed out earlier, if you leave God out of the equation, the art can go dark very, very quickly.
Reg Grant:
Oh yeah. Yeah. It's our inclination. We don't lose that tendency. And the church helps. Sometimes the guardrails that the church puts in place can be more restrictive than they need to be for the sake of safety. And I can understand that. And it takes a very brave pastor and church leader to allow these artists who are admittedly different to play. We don't encourage play sometimes in the local church. And that's where a lot of good things happen when you have that. When you have the freedom to blow it, the freedom to fail.
Bill Hendricks:
I was going to say play and experimentation. You know, every once in a while something blows up and you go, okay, that didn't work. But that doesn't mean that whole project of creativity gets thrown out.
Reg Grant:
I know. Yeah. I mean the Texas Rangers, go Rangers. Even the best batters for the Rangers, we may have one guy that's over 300. He blows it seven times out of 10 coming to the plate. So they're coming up with creative approaches to help them over the hump, but we're not going to fire these guys because they're not batting four and 500. We're going to work with them. And that's what we need to do in the local church. Work with your good batters get them up to 300. Fantastic, great. Give them the opportunity to fail seven out of 10 times. Man. That would be a different kind of looking church.
Bill Hendricks:
What are some of the most encouraging and hopeful models that you're seeing out there of Christians embracing the arts and doing some incredible things with it?
Reg Grant:
Oh, goodness. Well, the ones that everybody goes to. I see Naima Lett on the west coast. She's doing marvelous work through Letts Rise, L-E-T-T-S Rise Productions. She and her husband Kevin are just doing marvelous work out there with the acting community and in worship out there as well. Brian Albrecht graduated right when the program was getting started, I think right before the program was ever even official. And he's making on average a film a week in his church. And that is-
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Reg Grant:
That's a tremendous work ethic. Brian and Kathy, Kathy his wife is an actor and he has a marvelous family. We've got other people. I mean, we've got, I'm trying to think of the Nihonga, my buddy who wrote silence.
Reg Grant:
Mako Fuji Mora is doing great work. And he was up in New York and working in Presbyterian church up in New York, just welcoming artists, training them.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
And so there are those huge success stories, but the real success stories, I think that I'd like to highlight are the people in my congregation, the people at Lake Ridge Bible Church who are just doing marvelous work. We have artists who are working there and reaching the community for Christ. We just finished vacation Bible school and using beauty and goodness and truth through the arts and getting these dear little ones to a relationship with the Lord Jesus. I tell my writing students, Bill, that most of them aren't going to go out and sign a six figure deal, but they can write a letter creatively to their estranged children or their estranged spouse, or their estranged father and mother that will heal and bring them back by God's grace, to a relationship with the Lord Jesus. I would trade any contract for life change through the exercise of creative writing in that venue.
Bill Hendricks:
So in a way you're making a distinction between art as a career versus art as a calling. My dad used to say your career is what you're paid to do. Your calling is what you're made to do. And if you have a creative notion, a creative gift in you, then you must do that creativity. Whether you get paid to do it or not, somewhere in your life you've got to express that because that's what God has made you to do. He's got a contribution to make through you in this world.
Reg Grant:
I think everybody has that calling.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Reg Grant:
I think every single person because we're made in the image of God.
Bill Hendricks:
We're all made in the image of God.
Reg Grant:
We had a gentleman, Greg Vaughn, a good friend of mine called me into the office one time, many years ago. And he said, look, I got all these executive people who are married to their jobs. And a lot of these guys have lost their wives and their children in the process of building up their business. What do you think we could do? Don't you teach writing down there at DTS? And he said, well, why don't we put together a little course. So we did, it's called Letters from Dad. And it takes guys who are businessmen who don't know, they claim, anything about writing a letter from the heart instead of just a letter from the mind.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
And we teach them how to do that. And then we have a banquet and they get together with their loved one that has grown estranged. They work for weeks on one letter.
Bill Hendricks:
I can only imagine.
Reg Grant:
And they get together with them at the banquet. They separate out-
Bill Hendricks:
And read.
Reg Grant:
And they read that letter.
Bill Hendricks:
Oh, I'm sure you got tears and hugs.
Reg Grant:
Yep. The Lord uses that. Yeah. Businessmen who wouldn't think they could pick up a paint brush. That's my next step with them show them they can paint, can draw as well.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, let me let you give a little advertisement for the Worship Arts Department. What kind of students are you looking for? Enroll in that program?
Reg Grant:
No one has ever asked me that. The kind of student that I am looking for is a student who is willing to follow the Lord in the exercise of his or her creative gifts, wherever the Lord leads. You give me a student like that. We're going to town. And it can be any kind of, I don't have to… I'm a horrible dancer. And I used to be able to sing, but I can't anymore. But you give me a student whose gift is that. And thing is, over the years I know people. And we can help-
Bill Hendricks:
You can link them up.
Reg Grant:
I can link them up. And just seeing what the Lord does with these young, especially the young ones. Oh my goodness. Opening doors that even them in their creative capacity, couldn't begin to imagine. He's the God of infinite surprises. And he keeps opening doors, despite my protestations of inadequacy. He keeps saying, I mean, Bill, if you knew me before when I was cowboying the first 18 years of my life, you would never. I mean and even people that know me now say Reg really?
Bill Hendricks:
The Reg I knew?
Reg Grant:
Yeah. Not the same. No. And it's the Lord's grace. It's just pure. It sounds so trite doesn't it? But it's what it is. It's his grace, it's his overwhelming kindness that I don't deserve. And I couldn't work for. It's just because he loves me. And I pray every day that he'll help me love him the way that he loves me.
Bill Hendricks:
So the word that comes to mind as you're describing this and your work with your students, among other things, you're unleashing something there, it sounds like.
Reg Grant:
I'm giving the students permission to be what God has always designed them to be. And once they sense that it's okay to play. Once they sense it's okay to not make a hundred every time, then we're off to the races.
Bill Hendricks:
And so we're back to our question. Why does the church need drama and the arts? What I hear you appealing to church and church leaders is to start giving permission to people to be who God made them to be.
Reg Grant:
That's a very good way of saying it. I wish I had said that myself. Yes. Yes. But it's risky. It feels risky. And you know, if you're not uncomfortable, if you're not uncomfortable in your position of creative leadership, you're probably not leading very well or being very creative. You need to be on the edge saying, Ooh boy, Lord.
Bill Hendricks:
Lord, you better show up.
Reg Grant:
Need you. Need you. And really, you know what enhances our prayer life. It really does. It drives us to our knees. It keeps us dependent constantly, consistently aware of our need for him. So I think, I think it's a win-win.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and the opportunity costs. If we keep people bottled up, what are we losing?
Reg Grant:
The thing is, you don't know. You don't know what you're losing.
Bill Hendricks:
The treasure you're missing out on.
Reg Grant:
The treasure you're missing out on. You're going to leave it buried. And you know, I can go back with the Lord over this talent. You know I did this, and he's going to say, you know what? There was so much potential in what I gave you and you missed it. I don't want to be on that end of his declaration.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and if I'm a church leader I don't want to be on the end of saying the reason they buried it was because I didn't give him permission to unleash it. To use it. To put it into-
Reg Grant:
Yeah. Because so many of them, those people who are sitting out there who are gifted-
Bill Hendricks:
They're waiting on me to say, hey try it.
Reg Grant:
Yeah. And they don't even know they're waiting on it.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Reg Grant:
You know, they're just they're content. I'm not taking a chance. I'm okay. Cause you know, the artist egos are infamously fragile. And they wouldn't step up and say, oh, I could do this. And some of them aren't stage people. Some of them are seamstresses and some of them are backstage people.
Bill Hendricks:
Gardeners and chefs.
Reg Grant:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
All kinds of stuff.
Reg Grant:
Yeah, absolutely. But all part of the body of Christ, all contributing, all integrating toward one common goal of glorifying the Lord Jesus.
Bill Hendricks:
Reg. This has just been fascinating today. Thank you very much for joining us. And thank you as well for joining us here on The Table Podcast. We'd invite you to subscribe to whatever platform that you receive The Table Podcast on, and we'll look forward to seeing you back next time on The Table. I'm Bill Hendricks.
Voiceover:
Thanks for listening to The Table Podcast. Dallas Theological Seminary. Teach truth. Love well.
Darrell:
Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and you have landed at The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. And today our topic is the ethics that surround and the topic of in vitro fertilization, IVF. I've told someone today, if you can't live with initials in our modern world, you're in real trouble. And we have three guests today. I'm going to let them introduce themselves and then we'll dive in. Scott Rae, who, I guess we'll do this at the very, very start, he and I have known each other since we were five years old. So we go back further than we care to remember. Let's just put it that way. And so, Scott, welcome to the table. We're glad you could be with us.
Scott:
Thank you.
Darrell:
And then the other person by Zoom is Jeff Barrows, who I didn't give your position. I'm going to let you do that later. I'll go through and go around. And then Christina Crenshaw is here on my right. She's an associate at the center, formerly taught at Baylor University. So with that in mind, I'm going to ask the question I normally ask that leads off a podcast, and how did nice people like you get into a gig like this? And Jeff, I think I'll start with you since you're the doc in the room.
Jeff:
Well, I guess the short answer is I answered an email, but the long answer is that I serve as a Senior Vice President for Bioethics and Public Policy at the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. I've been in that role now about two and a half years. Prior to my life in CMDA, I was an OB/GYN practicing in a relatively rural area of Ohio, northwest of Columbus. I did practice infertility, did not practice IVF well, not trained on IVF, but did do a fair amount of infertility in my practice. So I think that probably helped get me to the table here today as well.
Darrell:
Well, thanks Jeff and Scott, give us your background, how you got into this.
Scott:
Yeah, I've been on the faculty, Professor of Christian Ethics at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University for 34 years, have a ThM from Dallas Seminary, and then a PhD in ethics from the University of Southern California. And I spent about 15 years as a hospital ethics consultant for a variety of both non-profit and for-profit healthcare systems here in Southern California.
Darrell:
Right. And Christina?
Christina:
Yeah, so my PhD is in education and woefully prepared me for this IVF conversation, but I do have personal experience with the IVF journey, so that is what brings me to The Table today
Darrell:
Today. All right. Well, thank y'all. First of all, I'll give you great thanks for giving us of your time and expertise as we do this. I'm going to start with the doc since he said he was an OB/GYN and that is, so you're there in rural Ohio, just practicing your medicine and trying to apply the oath that you swore as a doctor. And you said you sometimes work with infertility. Tell us about that and why this leads into the other discussion.
Jeff:
Well, infertility, unfortunately, is very common. And in fact, I think it's increasing in incidents. When I was practicing, the statistics that I would quote my patients would be that on average between 10% and 12% of couples would qualify as being infertile. And by the way, I'll give the definition of that. That usually means a couple attempting to become pregnant over a 12-month period of time without success. If the woman, the wife is over the age of 35, sometimes we'd cut that down to six to nine months so that it wouldn't shorten it the time that she'd have to wait, but very common.
So I would have patients that would come in and I would begin an infertility workup with them. And if I was successful in diagnosing, for instance, an ovulatory problem where they were not releasing an egg on a regular basis, I would begin treatment or some of the other types of problems in infertility that I could treat, I would do that. But then a lot of times there were instances where I could not find the problem using the usual infertility tests, and then I would send them down to typically Columbus where they would see an infertility specialist, not necessarily to jump right into IVF, but certainly IVF was and always is an option that would increase that couple's odds of being able to achieve pregnancy. So it was a relatively common thing that I dealt with when I was in full-time practice.
Darrell:
And how equipped did you feel like you were to go there as a doctor? I mean, is this something they did discuss in your medical school preparation or is this something… Sometimes in ministry we encounter stuff that we didn't do class on, so how did they help prepare you for what it is you were facing?
Jeff:
My training was solely in the science of infertility. And in fact, I did my residency in OB/GYN in the early eighties, and the first in vitro baby born in the United States was 1981. So I was being trained right as in vitro was coming into being. And so it was clear it was going to become fairly widespread across the country as it did. But in terms of the ethics on surrounding infertility and especially surrounding IVF, I had absolutely no training until I went into my master's program at Trinity in the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. And I have to make a confession up front, my thinking was far too utilitarian and not enough Christian until I went through that program. And it changed a lot of the ways that I now think about IVF.
Darrell:
Okay. So we go from the doc to the ethics theologian. He shows up in your program, I mean it's not your program, but theoretically, it's in your program. And what kinds of questions are you thinking about the go beyond the kind of question that is, well, we're a couple and we seem to be unable to have a child.
Scott:
Well, first of all, we want to acknowledge that, and I'm sure Jeff would agree with this too, there's much more than a medical side involved here. There's a pretty significant spiritual and emotional side to this. And Christina and you can speak to that too, I'm sure. But the reason I got into this was that basically my wife and I were in the middle of a four to five year period of infertility ourselves about the same time that I started studying this. And I soon discovered that in this field, what I study had a way of following me home. And it certainly did in this case.
I started studying this about the time that IVF was maybe 10 years old. And that the stuff of these surrogacy arrangements that often used IVF, that's the stuff of TV miniseries. And it was about that time that my wife and I began our own very painful journey. What we discovered quickly is that for people who hadn't been down this road, it was really easy for them to seriously underestimate the degree and intensity of pain that was felt by infertile couples. We went to our church. Our church did virtually nothing on Mother's Day or Father's Day to commemorate people for whom those are two of the worst days of the year. So there's a pretty significant pastoral and spiritual side that I would want to address to first and foremost before going into the ethical issues.
Darrell:
Okay, that's great to raise because it's with a lot of areas, there's what you believe and what you think about it, but how you actually relate to people is a pretty important part of the equation.
Scott:
Well, and I think to the degree that you have pastors and church leaders listening here, I challenge them to think really hard about all of the couples for whom Mother's Day and Father's Day are just terrible days for a variety of reasons, infertility being one of those. And so at least to acknowledge that, I think has a chance to bring some people in to the ministry of the church that might otherwise stay home on those days. I know my wife and I stayed home from church on those days regularly during that time period.
Darrell:
Interesting. And obviously the other side of that equation is the people who go through miscarriage and what that's represented for them as well, so that's a good word to open up with, Scott. Let me ask you secondly then, when I think about my own training, which predated in vitro, but still even afterwards thinking about the kinds of things that I would hear about in pastoral settings and that kind of thing, there wasn't very much help coming from the theological side on this that I can recall.
Scott:
Well, we at Talbot do have a course on this that almost all of our students are required to take. And I tell them right at the very beginning, my goal for this is for the people in your church to call you instead of me when they face some of these issues. And my job is to equip you to deal with this at the level of a local church because these folks, you walk through life with them, you are far better equipped relationally to deal with them than anybody coming in from the outside.
Darrell:
Okay. So that's the pastoral side. The next level of questions is what are some of the ethical issues that we need to consider? And we're going to loop back and talk about those down the road, but I just want to get them out on the table before I talk to Christina.
Scott:
Well, I think there are a handful of things that you need to wrestle with. One is probably the most basic one and that is there anything unethical or unbiblical about conception taking place outside the womb? And I think this is the objection that I think most of our Catholic brothers and sisters raise. Well, we'll get into the resolutions in a minute. That's one. Second is the standard of practice in IVF is to harvest as many eggs as possible, fertilize as many as possible, plant two, maybe three at most, and then freeze and save the rest for later use. But if you hit the jackpot on the first try, you may have eight, 10 embryos, children left over in storage. And so the disposition of those embryos, what to do with those is another significant ethical issue.
A third one has to do again with IVF being maybe too successful and you may have all the embryos that are implanted actually form successful pregnancies and then clinics will usually offer the option of some sort of selective termination at that point. Fourth ethical issue has to do with freezing embryos per se, regardless of things like attrition rate and success rate and thawing them out. Is it morally justifiable to freeze a human person in any case? Because I think most people would say we wouldn't do that to our two-year-old regardless of the reasons. And if we consider embryos, fetuses and two year olds persons, but on just a different place of maturity, then I think some of the same ethical issues apply to embryos as they would to fetuses in two year olds.
Darrell:
So they're actually behind all those questions. It strikes me, there's a premise that's pretty important and that is when conception begins and when is a person, a person?
Scott:
Well I think for one, I scripture's pretty clear on this in the first place, but I think this is something actually that science can tell us. I think you have a living human being from the point of conception that's a separate entity genetically and biologically from the mother. I think we ought to distinguish between the fetus being a part of the woman's body and being dependent on the woman's body. Those are two different things. The fetus is not a part of the woman's body. It's a genetically distinct entity that is housed there and dependent on the woman's body. But it's different fundamentally than being a kidney or a liver or a piece of tissue.
Darrell:
Okay, that's helpful. And like I said, I think that's an underlying premise behind all the other questions that you've asked that's actually pretty important. So we'll rotate. We'll come back to that because that's the starting point for all the conversations ethically, it seems to me. So Christina, after that wonderful brief exposition of the ethical challenges, we come to the whole personal side of the story, et cetera. So I'll let you fill that. Let's talk about some of the things that we've already raised, how personal this is and how this works at a human level.
Christina:
Yeah. And Scott, thank you for sharing a little bit of your journey. I think that that gives it more of credibility and clout that you are studying something that you have personally, you and your wife, have wrestled with. And I would say that bioethics is not something that I was particularly interested in my late twenties, but by the nature of struggling with infertility, I was thrust into a lot of these conversations. And to summarize my story and journey, I would start by saying to anybody who's listening, who's going into pastoral ministry and encounters a couple who are struggling with infertility, to know that this is not usually anyone's first choice, that people typically find themselves at the doorstep of fertility treatment by way of trying all other methods of conception.
So for us, it was a four year journey, similar to Scott's. We ended up having to go out of town. Waco, Texas didn't really have a robust clinic for the sort of treatment. And we did IVF and it was a very rigorous, expensive process. That's another ethic we could get into, that this typically costs anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 to do a round of infertility treatment. We had prayed about adoption, we went through adoption training and we realized that our window for fertility was very short, that adoption window is as much whiter and broader. We did a round of IVF and we harvested five embryos, which I think given the ethics of that IRB and that ethics committee at the hospital was a respectable number. Part of what happens behind the scenes that you don't really have control over is how many they decide are viable. And so a lot of prayer went into that as well. We implanted two, which is standard if you are under 30, particularly if you're under 35. And we ended up conceiving, but then we miscarried, which was heartbreaking.
So we had three that were frozen. At that time, I was finishing a PhD program and I had landed a tenure track job in California. My husband landed a position doing mergers and acquisitions in California, and we knew we were leaving, but we had these three frozen, so I won't say the name of the hospital, but we had to go before the ethics committee and we begged, can we please implant three because we don't want to just implant two and come back for one? And transferring from the embryos is a whole nother industry and facet that you have to consider to the IVF process. So they gave us permission to implant three and only one took, and that was our firstborn.
And I remember the doctor saying, "You have unexplained infertility. We can find nothing wrong with your husband. We can find nothing wrong with you, but based on the four years that you've been trying and the three rounds of IUI and the two rounds of IVF, we give you less than a 1% chance of ever being able to conceive on your own." So we, again, started the adoption process after that. And this is a different conversation, but I just want to say as a place of a miracle and praise, we did end up conceiving my second more naturally after that. So I want to give anybody listening, not a false sense of hope, but that just because you are infertile so to speak, doesn't mean that you will always be in fertile.
Darrell:
Interesting. So I'm going to go back to the doc, Dr. Jeff. In what you heard is sounds like what you heard on the one hand and secondly, how prepared are most doctors for what you are hearing?
Jeff:
Well, I assume you're going to want me to answer in terms of OB/GYNs that are dealing with infertility patients?
Darrell:
Well, let me start elsewhere first because OB/GYN probably has more likelihood of coming across this and being prepared for it than other doctors. So let's say you're in your normal internist or general practitioner doctor who you might see for a physical or something like that. How prepared do you think they are for something like this?
Jeff:
They're not going to be very prepared to talk in depth about not only the science and the workup, they would just assume refer to someone in their network in terms of the workup. But even to answer the ethical questions that Scott raised, very unlikely that they'll be able to do that and have really thought much about it frankly. And so even family physicians, I think most that are not doing it directly have probably not thought in detail and depth about what are the ethics. And many of them frankly will probably have differing views on when life begins and differing views of what I call the sanctity of the body, which is really what Scott got to. And the fact that God designed our bodies where fertilization would occur inside the woman.
And the other ethical issue that Scott didn't raise that I think also needs to be brought up and that is the use of gametes outside of the marriage. Do you use a donor sperm? In surrogacy, you might use donor eggs. Is that ethical? And I would say that's far beyond the average, not only the average physician that doesn't deal with infertility, but it was not something I thought about as an OB/GYN, as I said, until I got into the bioethics degree at Trinity.
Darrell:
That was embedded in the surrogacy that he raised as he went through the questions. And that actually was something I saved in my cache to come back to. So I'm glad you raised it.
Scott:
Yeah, comment on one thing that Jeff said. Raising the issue of egg and sperm donors I think is right. That's another significant ethical issue that doesn't affect every couple, but it does affect quite a few, especially if the woman is a bit older. She will often get really strong suggestions to have an egg donor because, for example, I consulted with a couple two weeks ago where the woman's 46 and they're on their second round of IVF and the physician basically wouldn't do IVF unless they were willing to have an egg donor be a part of it.
But I think it's true that physicians, they're just not trained in some of the ethical issues with this. And I think it's interesting, Jeff, you had mentioned you defaulted to a utilitarian position on a lot of these things in your practice. And the couples do that too because most of the couples that I've talked to, a lot of times they're just not open to any kind of ethical discussion that would put constraints on their likelihood of having a baby. I mean, their goal is to get out of this thing with a healthy baby and they'll deal with the ethics later or not at all.
Christina, you had mentioned the financial stuff, they're willing to take out second and third mortgages on their homes and to do all sorts of, in my view, financially irresponsible things simply to achieve the goal of getting a baby.
Darrell:
So Jeff, I'm back to you. So we've put several levels of doctor under the bus. What about the gynecologist?
Jeff:
The OB/GYN
Darrell:
OB/GYN.
Jeff:
Yeah. I think that I was fairly representative even as a devoted Christian. I mentioned earlier before we got on that I was preaching at churches. When I wasn't on call on the weekend, I was preaching. And so I was studying a lot of scripture, but the whole concept of IVF I had in my mind separated out and I hadn't asked the difficult questions. And really the coming down to is this the right thing to do? I mean, that's the essence of ethics is science says this is possible. Ethics tries to answer yes, it's possible, but should you do it?
And I hadn't really answered that even as, I would say, a very committed Christian OB/GYN until I got into my bioethics degree and was forced to really start thinking about it. And by the way, it's interesting because in my class at Trinity, we had an IVF specialist who came in and he was doing IVF without thinking about it as well. And through the course of his studies in our classes, he came to realize I have been doing something that is unbiblical and I have to hand it to him. He stopped practicing IVF in the middle of taking this degree. So I don't think it's common even committed Christian physicians to think in depth on this issue until they're forced to ask these questions.
Darrell:
Interesting. So Christina, I'm going to come to you next and ask it this way. And that is, how much did you give thought to these ethical questions that we're beginning to raise and that are on the table for us to be thinking about?
Christina:
I would say that I give a great deal of thought given what I had resources to think about because we did this process 10 years ago and this was in the throws of Octomom. Your listeners can Google if they're not familiar with her, but I think she's pretty mainstream. People know that reference. There was a TV show, John and Kate Plus Eight and they had their, I think, sixtuplets through IVF. And I did my research, I'm a pretty research-oriented person by nature.
Darrell:
I know that. That's true.
Christina:
So I was actually seeking medical journals, which is probably not the typical response, but because I was a doctoral student and I had access to medical journals, I started researching the first successful IVF baby was done in England. And then as I think it was Scott who relayed America two years after that. And so I knew that I was about the same age as the only successful IVF babies. And so I gave it a great deal of thought. I think the way I'm wired, I remember rereading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and really wrestling with the Lord, when does life begin and what is an interference in creation? But I think what was helpful for us and the older we've gotten, my husband and I, and the more we've matured spiritually, the more we've surrounded the contextual conversation with some ethics.
But the big rocks for us were what do we believe about conception? What do we believe about using our own bodies versus a surrogate that was not a road that we had to cross and what do we believe about human flourishing? And so we came to a conclusion that if we believed in implanting all of the embryos that belonged to his sperm and my egg, that we were enhancing our fertility journey more than we were interfering with the Lord's plan or will. And so I think that every situation has more nuance or different situations would have more nuance in that we didn't have to use any donor eggs or sperm, we didn't use a surrogate. I think those raise, as we've discussed, an entirely different set of ethics when we're bringing in a third party to the marriage.
But I would highly suggest anybody in the throes of infertility or anybody who is pastoring a couple or discipling a couple through medical infertility to ask the couple to come up with the big rocks, look at scripture, look at the whole of what we believe about life and to not compromise on those convictions that you're feeling the Lord is speaking to you. That was helpful for us.
Darrell:
Okay. Well, I appreciate you sharing that. Scott, so now I'm going to you and how many people did you meet who were couples who gave as much thought to that as is Christina and her husband apparently gave to this? Is that exceptional or unusual?
Scott:
It's pretty rare.
Darrell:
Okay.
Scott:
Most of them don't give serious thought to it until after the fact. And by that time, the proverbial horse is out of the barn and in some cases it's too late to make the kinds of decisions that they should have made beforehand.
Darrell:
So that's actually raising a good pastoral point. So let's pause there for a second. What can be the fallout, let me say it that way, what can be the fallout of the pursuit of this that someone may or may not have considered before they stepped into it?
Scott:
I'll give you an example that may illustrate this pretty well. We have very close friends who they tried and tried unsuccessfully, had IVF done and conceived with triplets. And they figured at that point their childbearing days were over. And especially because she developed lupus after that, which her physicians told her then further pregnancies were a pretty bad idea, but they had five embryos left in storage. And so they came to me and just said, "What do we do with these?" Because they hadn't thought about that beforehand. I said, "Well, you have a handful of options, most of which are not good ones. One, is that you can discard them, which is the moral equivalent of aborting fetuses. You can allow them to die naturally, which is unethical to do if it's possible to save them. You can donate them to another infertile couple, which I think is morally acceptable." But as my friend put it, he said, I don't like the idea of my progeny running around the area without my knowledge.
And so really the only option that they had available was to keep them in storage indefinitely. And I think that's what they chose to do, which all that does is kick the can down the road and force them to make a decision later. The only one of those options I think is acceptable is to put them up for adoption to another infertile couple. In the last 10, 15 years, embryo adoption has become a thing that's actually a viable option. And for couples who are considering a sperm or egg donor, and I think Christina, you're right about your hesitation to bring a third party into the matrix of marriage for procreation purposes. I always suggest that they adopt embryos instead because they get a lot of what they value out of natural procreation, which is the experience of being pregnant, giving birth, the bonding with the mother. There's no break in the relationship at birth when the child's handed off to someone else and that's not a knock on traditional adoption, but it does have some differences that I think are to the benefit of both the parents and the child.
Darrell:
So for clarity, when you adopt an embryo, what does that actually mean?
Scott:
Well, I would encourage your listeners, if you Google the Snowflake program. Christina, you're nodding your head, you're familiar with that? That's the largest embryo adoption agency in the world. They facilitated more than 400 or 500 of these in the last 20 years. And essentially, you take possession of embryos that another couple had left over and had left frozen. And you implant to however many is safe to do or however many children you want to have, although that's not always in your control and you implant them and then you formally adopt the children and go through all the same legal arrangements that you would in a traditional adoption.
Darrell:
It's just earlier in the process basically?
Scott:
Much.
Christina:
And a lot less expensive I would add too than going through the entire IVF process. But Scott, you could probably talk to this more than I could, aren't there a significant amount of frozen embryos available for adoption? Because that is part of the ethical dilemma as well.
Scott:
Yes it is. It's a good point. The demand exceeds the available supply. And the reason for that is because most couples don't designate their embryos for donation. Well, in fact, most couples who have embryos left over in IVF have this profound ambivalence about what to do with them. Because they know that the embryos, especially if they've had children successfully, they know that there's a big continuity between the embryos in the lab and those bouncing children that they're holding in their arms. But they also say, "Well, this is just cells that you have to look under a microscope to see." And there's something counterintuitive about calling embryos persons, even though I think they are. So most couples choose to simply keep them in storage indefinitely, which just shifts the ethical decision from the couple to the clinic about what to do with all these. Last count, they're probably close to a million frozen embryos in infertility clinics around the country.
Jeff:
I think that's right, Scott. They're about a million the last I read. And the estimates are that about 15% of those are really now getting into the category of being unclaimed. A lot of the infertility clinics, I've had these customers stop paying for the annual fee for the freezing and the clinics are struggling what to do with these. And that's really where I'm glad to see that some of these clinics are setting themselves up as donation clinics. So they'll take and do all the legal work to accept the embryo as a donation that then later can be put into an infertile couple.
Darrell:
I don't know who answers this question. It's a technical question. And that is, I'm going to use probably a crass illustration to ask it. And that, is there an expiration date on this? Is there good until 6/28 or something like that?
Christina:
I have heard about 20 years. But I will let somebody with a medical degree answer that.
Jeff:
I don't think anybody knows, nobody knows. There are embryos that have been frozen for 20 and 30 years and there have been live babies that have come out of those frozen embryos. So I don't think we have an answer to that. I was just going to say part of it depends. The freezing technique has changed as well over the last decade, especially. And the initial 20 to 30 years, they were using a slow freezing technique that had a mortality of about 20% to 30%. But in the last 10 years, they have perfected in a better way. I'm still opposed to it. I want to make that clear. But they use a fast freezing technique that's also associated with a process called vitrification that dries out the embryo. And so the mortality is actually less than 5%. And so that process has only been in use, as I said, for the last five to 10 years. And who knows how long those embryos will remain viable in that frozen state.
Darrell:
Scott, I think I heard you trying to comment. Go ahead.
Scott:
The longest time span that I'm aware of for a successful live birth from a frozen embryo is 13 years. Christina, you mentioned 20 years, that's probably the upper limit, I would say.
Darrell:
Okay, so this is the other side of the conversation in some ways. You've got all these embryos that are frozen, unclaimed sitting around, and if they've gone 20 years, I dare say they're likely to be sitting around. I mean, the idea that someone's going to claim them 20 years afterwards, not great. So that's another dimension to the question. I haven't been keeping count of how many questions this raises, but I think I'm on my second hand if I can say it that way. And so there are a lot of questions that are associated with this. We've got about 10 minutes left and our time is flying. So let's dive into the ethical parts of this. I've almost heard in the midst of the exchange that we're having that people tend not to think about the ethical dimensions of what's going on here. I'll just ask that as a simple question to start off with and then we'll go from there. So fair, most people don't think about the ethical dimensions of what's going on here?
Jeff:
I think that's true.
Scott:
I think that's fair. And I think most of their physicians have not thought seriously about it either.
Darrell:
Okay. That's fair. So let's assume… Now you gave a list at the start, Scott and I'm going to put a little bit of onus on you, but then you know I do this on a regular basis because of our friendship. So I see that little gleam in his eye. Here it comes again. Anyway, I owe you. You're right. Okay. We'll take care of that conversation first. So let's go through the list of questions that you raised and give us some help on how to think about each one of these in a pricey kind of way.
Scott:
Okay. First one was, is there anything intrinsically unethical about conception taking place outside the body? I don't believe there is. I view infertility as a result of the general entrance of sin into the world. It's not the way God intended, and therefore it's an appropriate area for medicine to be involved in. And even though IVF doesn't really treat anything, it's an end run around a problem, there's lots of medicine that's an end run around problems too, things like dialysis. It doesn't treat anything, it just is an end run around kidney disease. So I don't think there's anything immoral about that, as long as you follow certain guidelines, which are no throwing away embryos.
In fact, I would often encourage couples to limit the number of embryos that they create. And there are clinics that do this with things like what they call minimal stimulation IVF, which limits the number of eggs that the woman produces. I'm also aware of clinics that will do IVF one egg at a time, which guarantees you won't have leftover embryos. It may also guarantee that you don't have any pregnancies either, so that's a risk too. But I think it's on the couple to adhere to the principle that every embryo you create in the lab deserves an opportunity to be implanted.
Darrell:
So is there a way to do that in such a way that you say, "I'm going to preserve five embryos and if we conceive after the first two, the other three are available for adoption," is that how you do that?
Scott:
That's one way. The other way is just to limit the number of eggs that you would have harvested from the woman so that in your best estimate, you're not going to have any leftover. That's a bit more of a crapshoot.
Christina:
I think, Scott, what you're saying is that a couple should go in not planning on doing embryo adoption, but implanting all of the eggs that are created.
Scott:
That's the better option.
Speaker 1:
Okay. So the other would be a fallback option to prevent embryos from being left over.
Scott:
Right.
Speaker 1:
Okay. So that's question one. Let's keep going.
Scott:
So second one had to do with selective termination of pregnancies, that can be avoided just by the decision that you make. You just never implant more embryos than a woman can safely carry. And so that one is easy to avoid. Third one has to do, I think, with freezing embryos. Jeff, I'm encouraged to hear the new technology has significantly decreased the mortality rate on those. I'm not thrilled about freezing embryos per se, even if the mortality rate is real low. I suppose one way to think about that is that the reason, and I'll defer to your judgment on this, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but the reason that embryos don't thaw out successfully, I've heard this from our own OB, usually is because there's some sort of genetic abnormality in the embryo that would highly likely cause it to miscarry once it's implanted.
Jeff:
I think it raises the odds that there is a genetic/chromosomal problem. I agree.
Scott:
But not a sure thing.
Jeff:
Correct.
Scott:
Darrell, just to be honest, I'm ambivalent about that one. The standard of practice is that every egg gets fertilized, every embryo gets frozen. And whether they're viable or not is that is often a physician's judgment. I'm not quite sure what that's based on, but I don't think that has anything to do with the obligation to implant every embryo that's created in the lab. The other ethical issue has to do with the use of third party donors. And I think the scripture tilts for skeptically against that because bringing third parties into the matrix of marriage for procreation purposes, I think is a big problem biblically and theologically.
Darrell:
I call it the Abraham solution. Go ahead.
Scott:
Well, because yeah, the Abraham solution was the old fashioned way.
Darrell:
Exactly right.
Scott:
Which some of the early cases of surrogacy were done the old fashioned way too.
Darrell:
Right.
Scott:
But I think that's a problem that I would encourage couples not to consider that. Does that cover them all?
Darrell:
I think that covered the ones we were… Of course, the other premise that we raised at the beginning that we probably do need to come back to is the premise that's underneath all this, which is that when you have an established embryo, and I want to tackle this scientifically and theologically, because I think this is a very important question for a whole lot of reasons, even beyond in vitro fertilization. And that is that all the potentiality for life exists from the moment that you get an embryo. Most people debate that, but that's true both scientifically, as well as being a theological view. Now am I right about that? I'm going to ask Jeff first. Is that the right way to see the science?
Jeff:
Exactly. In fact, if you ask embryologists, regardless of their faith, lack thereof or whatever, about 98% of embryologists, people who study the embryo as their life mission, will say life begins at fertilization.
Darrell:
And that's because all the potentiality for life is already residing in the embryo. Isn't that the basis for that judgment or is that a way… That may be a poor way to state it, but is that-
Jeff:
I would say it's partly that, but more that this is a genetically unique individual. The genetic makeup of that embryo is different than any other individual in the universe. And so that's a unique individual. The only caveat to this is that it's possible for an embryo to divide, you get identical twinning, that throws a mess into all of that. But aside from that, that embryo is a unique individual genetically and has the capacity to grow and develop into, now I don't want to say into a human being, but as a human being from that point forward.
Scott:
The way I'd put it is the embryo matures into a fetus, which matures into a newborn, which matures into a two-year-old and so on.
Darrell:
The point that I'm making is everything that you needed to get to what everyone sees as life is already there in the sense of the material necessary to produce life.
Scott:
I'd put it like this, that from the moment conception is complete, the embryo has all the capacities it needs to mature into a full grown adult.
Darrell:
Yeah. Okay, so that's actually important. To me, that's the fundamental conversation in all this is you ask the question, life doesn't begin when it looks like life as we know it now, life begins much earlier than that, if I can say it that way.
Christina:
Yeah. And I think to Jeff's point, most embryologists don't disagree on that.
Jeff:
No they don't.
Christina:
It would undermine their entire field of medicine if they did. I think where the ethical dilemma is usually found is the wrestling on how then do we treat these embryos as potential human life for human flourishing.
Darrell:
Yeah. I know when I came across this, I'm on the board at Wheaton and we were in the midst of deciding what as a school we would cover as board of trustees, what we would cover in terms of medical care and medical treatment. And we ended up being, I don't remember the technical legal term, but we ended up being a supporter of another suit that was being made that was asking the same question from another school. And in the midst of doing the research for that as board members, we came across this embryological definition of life as a way of thinking about morning after pills and that kind of thing.
And I found myself going, well, this is something I hadn't thought about before, not really, not from a scientific point of view for sure. So I knew theologically the idea that conception starts at birth, but the science behind it, I had no idea about. And it really does, I think, it makes a difference in thinking about the question. So the distinction you made earlier on, Scott, between, what was it? It's not a part of a body, I don't remember exactly.
Scott:
Not part of the woman's body, but it's dependent on the woman's body.
Darrell:
That distinction is really an important distinction to be thinking about. Well, that seems artificial, but then I remind people we have children who are born on the other side of birth who are very dependent on their parents for their survival.
Scott:
That's correct.
Darrell:
Okay. And we don't blink about that. So I think that's the point of the distinction.
Scott:
Right, because after birth, the child is only just minusculey less dependent on the mother than before.
Darrell:
Right, exactly.
Scott:
It's just in a different location.
Darrell:
So I think all of this is important as we think about it. Believe it or not, our time is gone. So I want to thank you all for taking the time to discuss it. I think we've covered this as an initial foray into the space reasonably well. Certainly it's raised questions, some of which I hadn't even thought about before, so this has been informative to me. So I appreciate that very much. I'm assuming be informative to the audience and I just want to thank each of you for taking the time for being a part of this today.
Jeff, thank you very much for giving us a doctor's perspective.
Jeff:
My pleasure.
Darrell:
And Scott for the ethicist/theologian/been there, done that perspective.
Scott:
Something like that.
Darrell:
And Christina, for the same been there, done that perspective and in a thoughtful way, which is a really appreciative. One of the things I think Christina's remark shows is it's possible to be thoughtful about this as you go through it, which I think is an important point to be making. So thank you all very much and thank you for being a part of The Table. We hope you'll join us again soon. If you're interested in other podcasts that we do, you can see them at voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast. And we hope you'll join us again soon.
Voiceover:
Welcome to The Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. Brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary.
Kymberli Cook:
Welcome to The Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the Assistant Director here at the Hendrick Center. And today we're going to be talking about fashion and theology. I'm so excited. I really like fashion. We are joined by two other people that I think really find it at least interesting or like it. We're joined by Jacob Taylor, who is a DTS student and fashion designer with Jacob Taylor Design. It's nice to have you here, Jacob.
Jacob Taylor:
Thanks for having me.
Kymberli Cook:
And we're also joined by Robert. I always want to call you Roberto. But Robert Covolo. I say it in my head all the time. So there you go. Robert.
Robert Covolo:
My dad called me Roberto because we're of Italian stock. So.
Kymberli Cook:
Perfect.
Robert Covolo:
My wife's from Mexico. So you're not far off.
Kymberli Cook:
Maybe that's why. Covolo. It just seems like it should be Roberto Covolo. Robert Covolo, who is the Director of The Pastoral Residency Center at Christ Church Sierra Madre. He's got a lot of titles. Director of Vocational Disciple at the Center For Faith and Work in Los Angeles. He is adjunct faculty at Fuller, teaching a course on Fashion Theology. And he was previously on faculty at the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola. So he is ultimately, I don't know, credible. Yeah.
Robert Covolo:
I would say so.
Kymberli Cook:
But thank you so much for being here, Robert. We really appreciate your presence and everything that we know you're going to bring to this conversation.
Robert Covolo:
Thank you. It's a delight to be here.
Kymberli Cook:
Awesome. All right. So let's just get started. This is a topic that a lot of people don't think should be combined, fashion and theology. Those are two separate things that are either, it seems, opposed to one another, or at least neutral to one another and just kind of exist in the same world, but they don't really interact. Obviously by the topic of this podcast, we don't think that that's true. We think that there is important reflection to be had in this area. So how did you all end up thinking about living in and considering the relationship between fashion and theology? So let's start with Jacob and then we'll move to Robert.
Jacob Taylor:
I grew up in Europe for about eight years of my life and I caught the fashion bug there. I became aware of quality, the differences in quality of fashion there. I was cross sectored at that time with English couture, haute couture, is the full phrase and I was blown away at seven and the rest is history. It probably has taken over about half my existence and again, I love it. And when you love something, it's never work, never work. Never, never, never work. So.
Kymberli Cook:
And so, how did you end up being a DTS student having that interest? Because that sounds like, okay, well that makes sense that you have your own brand, design brand, but how did you end up here at DTS and thinking about theology?
Jacob Taylor:
Well, I was in California. My background is that I am a pastor's son, so I was aware of God and those things like that. And I knew that I needed to become equipped. And so my wife and I were living in Anaheim, California, just about a year and three months ago. And we answered call from a local well known pastor here in this area and flash bang, boom, I'm here. And I'm taking up a degree that really speaks to my heart and men as well. Also being a veteran, that's kind of my focus as a student here. But that's what took me here, is to answer the call, to help equip and build men for the service of the Lord in various applications. My personal loves have been tools that have been utilized to draw men, but for sure to assist and partner with the Lord to do that. So, yeah, that's how I ended up at DTS.
Kymberli Cook:
Fantastic. Robert, you've written a whole book on and you teach class on fashion theology. How did you end up thinking about this area?
Robert Covolo:
Well, I was a college pastor in Long Beach, not far from Anaheim where Jacob was and they had a large fashion studies program there. And I had nothing to say to my fashion studies students. I could talk about how Christianity interacts with psychology or the sciences, you name it, but I didn't know what to tell these students. And so, I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord of everything and that Jesus matters to everything and everything matters in relationship to Jesus. So I was just curious. I had family that were in the industry. There was a lot of people in my church that also had fashion lines.
Robert Covolo:
But there was one more piece, and that is that one day, my daughter, I think she was like four or five found an old pillowcase and she had created a gown. It was really cute. But I just thought to myself, how is it that this is such an essential part of who we are, before we become rational, before we become really thinking beings, we want to interact with this and what does this tell us about our humanity? And so my mind, I just had a lot of questions and I didn't know where to begin. And so I began exploring fashion studies and I did that as a theologian. And so.
Robert Covolo:
I'll add one more thing. I had to do a writing sample because all my writing samples were terrible to try to get in a PhD program in theology. And so, I picked up an essay by Abraham Kuyper and in it, it was an essay that was written, I think, in 1867 and it was on the relationship between fashion and secularization. And here was a theologian, in 1867, talking about the importance of fashion and how we need to take fashion serious if we're going to be Christians in the modern period. And I was spelldown. So all those things kind of came together and just kind of exploded this interest in studying fashion as a Christian and as someone that wants to help equip the church to engage this important area of culture.
Kymberli Cook:
That every single one of us, hopefully, engages every single day. Like we all wear clothes pretty much every day. So it's a relevant thing. No. And to your point about your daughter, it is. It's just ingrained in us. And the fact that there hasn't been more reflection is interesting to me, especially with the level of interest for both men and women, there are a lot of people who are interested in fashion and it just never seems to combine. So, okay. So for those who would be listening, who are still hanging with us and they say, okay, fashion isn't my favorite thing in the world, but I have a daughter that really cares, I have a wife that really cares, I have these people in my ministry that I know are aware of it, tell me how, this sounds incredibly pejorative, but tell me how to take them seriously, because I have a hard time taking this seriously. Robert, what would you say to them?
Robert Covolo:
I guess I would start off by saying that our culture takes fashion incredibly serious. So if you're going to try to engage a culture, it's just, if you are a missionary, if you are far removed from the world of fashion that you have to look at it from the outside, at least have the heart of a missionary that wants to understand and reach, especially your children. But I would say that when you look at the history of Christianity, if you don't take fashion serious, you're kind of out of step. And this was a big shock for me, was when I read through the whole scope of Christian history, I was shocked by how many Christian theologians took fashion incredibly serious and thought it was an important subject. And even before the rise of fashion, what we'd call modern fashion, even as far back as in the fifth century and in even the late fourth century, you have St. Augustine talking about how incredibly important clothing is.
Robert Covolo:
And so, I guess I would say that you're a little out of step. You need to understand that we have a theological inheritance that's gone before us, that has shown, at least taken very serious, the role of dress and then when fashion emerges, the role of fashion. So then I would finally just say that once you actually start to understand what fashion is, I think you would take it serious. When you start to see all the different ways fashion intersects as an art form, as a form of communication, the way it shapes our social realities, the way it shapes social power, the way it influences politics, the way in which it opens up democracy, I think that part of that kind of like, I don't know, I don't care, I think that actually some of that is just simply, I just don't know. And that's okay. I didn't know. So.
Kymberli Cook:
Jacob, what would you add?
Jacob Taylor:
Building upon Robert's foundation, completely accurate. It is important. I take it to, oh man, the Bible. I just think about how detailed God is and how specific he was in building the priests' outfit. And then having gone to Israel and saw it on display. And I was like, man, that breast plate is beautiful. I could see that on a leather jacket. That's kind of how my brain works. But then I'm learning languages and I've been immersed in the languages of the Bible pretty much on my life. But I was like, and Christianity and my faith became an actual central love of my life, Christ became a love of my life, I figured, how can I marry all my loves? I loved performing. I loved drawing. I loved sneakers. I blame a certain basketball player who played for the red oxen of Chicago.
Jacob Taylor:
But anyway, I just thought, how can I marry all my loves? And it came to me one day when I put the word father or ab, I went into my little commentary that was on my dad's shelf and I just drew the shoe first and then drew that and then drew a shield around it and then drew a hovering crown. And it just… The rest was history. But why it should be taken seriously? Because again, as Robert said, it conveys, it communicates a thing. When people say the statement, this particular outfit says this, from presidential to artsy, stars and things like that. If they want to say a thing of how they feel about themselves without saying what they feel, they'll say it with an outfit. I think of a R and B artist who shall remain nameless, but she once showed up in an outfit full of mirrors, full of mirrors.
Jacob Taylor:
And I was thinking, what is she saying? What is she saying? And it's up for debate obviously because it's in her particular inspiration would ever let her or somebody around her said, I think this would be the time for you to wear this because it will say this to the world. And so for me, it was messaging in the heart and some of my inspirations as a designer were definitely would say the same thing. They would say, how you feel goes into what you do. And it's conveyed in the world from color choice to material choice to symbols you come up with, decorative elements, all of those things, they directly speak and agree with what Robert says. It's important from almost day seven of creation. No, but yeah. And so, I think that's why you should take it seriously because, again, it's so interwoven in our general culture at large and then to varying degrees expressed very powerfully in different types of cultures for different messaging, different distinguishing messages, royalty versus Nobles versus commons versus… That kind of thing. So.
Kymberli Cook:
So, you mentioned the seventh day of creation and turning to think biblically about clothing and Genesis and we see clothing showing up in Genesis and it doesn't necessarily have a great connotation there, I believe.
Jacob Taylor:
The beginning.
Kymberli Cook:
At least around three. Yeah. At chapter three. And going through scripture and even as I was preparing for this, I kind of, I wasn't really digging in, but I was kind of thinking of all of the passages that I could think of that had to do with dress or even culture, because that really gets into this conversation too, how we interact with the culture, the passage about women not having fine apparel or intricate hairstyles, all of that. One, what do you all see in scripture with regard to dress, both negative and positive, its statements about negative and positive? Let's start there. Jacob, why don't we start with you? What do you see?
Jacob Taylor:
The first outfits that were not constructed by man were made of leather. So. No, I'm kidding. But it was a… Oh, how do you say this? I'll take the positive element and I'll partner it with messaging again. Positively speaking, you want to convey how you feel and where you're at one way or another, whether it's your face, whether it's a color, whether it's a thing. But if you take it to scripture, I think about Aaron and Eli and all of the priests, I like to go there and I how the Royal composition, the stones on the breastplate and how God selected them and told him specific things what to do, I think my thought about what God was attempting to do by allowing it to be recorded was telling a few things, how detailed he is and how much he likes variety and the intent where it leads you to think. We call it aspiration or inspirational pointing, driving, messaging.
Jacob Taylor:
Positively speaking, I think the creator intended us to understand that part of ourselves by referring to scripture and seeing when he exerted his creativity in designing concepts, designing empirical things like the earth. I mean, the earth is amazing. The universe, all of it, the grand designer knows what he's doing. So.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, even to your point about messaging, though, it's a negative message, genesis three when God creates that, it still says something.
Jacob Taylor:
It does.
Kymberli Cook:
It is very explicitly communicating something. The fact that they had to wear the clothing and all of that.
Jacob Taylor:
Yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
Robert, what would you add with regard to scripture and where we see clothing and scripture.
Robert Covolo:
Yeah. I think if you take the scope of the biblical narrative, clothing is placed in an incredibly positive light. To be found naked is a metaphor for deprivation in scripture. And so you see the Proverbs 31 woman who not only knows how to dress her house, but they look great. They're all dressed in red. It gets into the detail. They're decked out. When they leave the house, people know they're taken care of. You've got Isaiah 60:11, "He clothes us in robes of righteousness."
Jacob Taylor:
There you go.
Robert Covolo:
And actually, Jesus Christ himself, we are to be clothed in Christ. We are commanded to put on Jesus Christ. And when you come to the story of Genesis, I think oftentimes, having studied the history of theology, it's for us to see clothing emerging as a part of the fall. But I believe that actually, when you want to understand the logic of fashion, the logic of dress will say, it actually begins the first time they're seeing and being seen.
Robert Covolo:
So when Adam sees Eve and Eve sees Adam, and there's a declaration and explosion of poetry, it's that activity of seeing and being seen that is the very logic of dress. And that's why we take it serious. And the fall is actually where we see the corruption of that logic. But that doesn't mean that we need to be a part of that corruption, right?
Jacob Taylor:
Absolutely.
Robert Covolo:
That God wants to redeem the way that we see and are seen. And so you can do a biblical theology of clothing from Genesis to revelation. I'm halfway through a book that does that. Hope to get that out this next year. So, but I think there's just so much good stuff in the Bible. We could talk about the beautiful wedding dress in, I think it's Psalm 22:23. No. Psalm… The Psalmist talks about the beautiful wedding dress or… There's all these things that kind of speak very positively to clothing. So.
Robert Covolo:
There is this passage that talks about women not showing up to church services and being a distraction and being focused, losing their focused. But the very fact that you can lose focus just simply shows the significance in the importance of dress. It doesn't diminish it. It just says that there's a time and a place and there is such a thing. And I think there is such a thing as dressing appropriately, hospitably, a way that invites the kind of conviviality. I love that word, conviviality, in social settings, right? I just got married a month ago. I tried to dress nice. My bride looked amazing. People showed up, dressed up and it lifted and elevated the whole experience. This was a sacred time. And by all of us dressing collectively, there was a grand conviviality that really glorified and honored the Lord.
Robert Covolo:
So, I think that the biblical message is really interesting. And here's one, go through the narrative arc of the story of Joseph and just see every single turn in the story hinges on what he's wearing, or look at all the different changes and outfits for Jesus. Jesus wears lots to… He's swaddled, he's got a crown of thorns. So, the Bible's fascinating when it comes to clothing. And it gives a very interesting message that has lots of different pieces to it.
Kymberli Cook:
So you made reference to that, just like all the rest of creation, it is fallen and it can be fallen. And I guess my question and I'm hearing the theological themes that you're bringing out, I agree with them, but I also see a lot in church history, but even in some of those passages about the lilies of the field arraying themselves and we don't need to worry that. And I mean, I guess you did talk about the women, sorry, I'm going back to my notes, but we're told not to love the world and or things in the world and that kind of thing.
Kymberli Cook:
So I do think that there is a question that arises, especially if you're taking seriously your suggestion that this does seem to be a very positive theological theme that we need to reflect on. The question is, okay, but it seems like in the redemption of it, it seems like a lot of the instruction and the tradition has been to minimize it and to elevate simplicity. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's not thought behind it. It doesn't mean that we don't value it, but it does seem like simplicity has been elevated, just certainly by John Wesley and by Tertullian, like you talk about in your book, but also in some of these passages. So what are your thoughts? Robert, I'm going to start with you.
Robert Covolo:
All Right. You threw out a lot of different questions.
Kymberli Cook:
Sorry. Sorry. I did. The main question being, if we are trying to embrace all of those good things about theology or I'm sorry, about clothing and theological truths about clothing that you're suggesting and I agree with, what do we do with what seems like a push against valuing that in a tangible way now as we're practically living life?
Robert Covolo:
Yeah. So loving the world is… The world there is not the creation, right? The world there is the entire world system that ignores and neglects God and attempts to find its meaning within finite creation and therefore elevates finite things to the place of the creator. But in terms of the gift of creation, I think that there's a place for celebrating and rejoicing and all the color and texture and taste and form and beauty of this world, which we find out will one day be redeemed and elevated in the new Jerusalem. And so to be a Christian is not to be some kind of aesthetic that just rejects any kind of pleasure. There is a place for, and we do find this in the theological witness, Aquinas is really good about this. There is a place for moderation. You can throw yourself into something in a way that's out of balance.
Robert Covolo:
Jacob is a fashion designer and this is his vocation. So he should be focusing and spending a lot of time in ways that maybe I shouldn't be because it's not my primary vocation, is design clothing. That's not what I'm focusing on. So we also need to recognize that people have different kind of callings within the body and allow for that. And there are some people that are called to a very simple lifestyle, and we need to also elevate that as the good thing and allow them also to be a part of the body of Christ and not say that there's only one to approach this. The reality is clothing is so unique and multifaceted that we should expect multiple ways in which people within our communities respond and decide to honor Christ in this sphere.
Kymberli Cook:
Jacob, what would you add?
Jacob Taylor:
Again, building on that appropriate balance assessment. Robert's right. The only way I could be a fashion designer as a vocation or one of my vocations is the fact that I surrendered it to the gospel. I had to allow it and the Lord had to instill it in me through the lens of my Christianity, or I wouldn't do it. Because then to me, it's a waste of time because it would be a love that would take my heart away from him. And it would be something I would build a name for myself, which is totally what I do didn't want to do, because I had seen the perils play out of people who in various different fields built names for themselves. And that castle fell, that empire crumbled and great was the fall thereof. But I surrendered it to the gospel and said, okay Lord, what was your intention behind fashion or dress?
Jacob Taylor:
And growing up in Europe helped me from a practical, immersive standpoint to do just that. And then growing up in England, specifically, monarchy. Even if it's just figurehead, in name only, do you see how they get down when they walk Buckingham palace? And so, it says, again, messaging, I believe God intended to say something from his heart through every concept he has revealed to us and whatever that message is, it was his glory to conceal it, it's our honor to discover it. And that's where I start. And so I sit with him to gain any design I get and say, what do you want to say through my hands and what comes on this paper? And it's prayer before doing it and not almost allow… Whatever he comes in he messages through, it could be out of my devotion or whatever. And it's a real thing.
Jacob Taylor:
But again, it's surrendered to the gospel and appropriate balance. Like Robert said, you're not over focusing on it as some replacement for the Lord, at least not in balanced Christianity or balanced Christiandom, as they say, but it really matters where your heart is when you engage in anything you do. And so for us, we are seeking to honor God with the things that he has created. I mean, cajillion, bajillion ways to honor him that don't conflict with his character and he just absorbs it, sweet smelling sacrifice. Ah, I'm getting that out of his life because I put it in him to reap a harvest, that out her life, ah, yes. Reaping a harvest. This is one of my offerings to the Lord is my fashion design. I surrender every project from the naming of it to the material choice, to the texture, to colors, to the finish, what I want the finish product to say. Then I ask the question in prayer, Lord, is this what you were… Is this it? And he's just that involved, just that involved. So, yep.
Kymberli Cook:
So you mentioned Aquinas, Robert and what he said with regard to temperance, what other historical voices are there that help inform how we should think about fashion or have at least spoken into it? Because you said there were a variety of people.
Robert Covolo:
Yeah. Yeah. You got to get the book.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah. There's a lot there.
Jacob Taylor:
I will do that, Robert. I will do that.
Robert Covolo:
An interesting one is Karl Barth, who really wants to understand how fashion can be conscripted into larger kind of like systems of power and oppression. And he kind of is the patron Saint of going against sweat shops. Amazing how much Barth kind of saw that going on. And, but if you go back to Calvin, you want to talk about someone that believes in simplicity. If Luther is the priesthood of believers, Calvin's the monk-hood of believers. And yet John Calvin, interestingly enough, had incredibly positive things to say about God's good gift in giving us clothing. And that there's something that dignifies and elevates our humanity and that we can recognize that.
Robert Covolo:
You know St. Augustibe, you know when I doing this fashion theory research, I studied with the top fashion theorist over in the UK, this guy named Malcolm Bernard. He's an atheist. And he was shocked that a theologian wanted to study with him. And he kept telling me, what you need to do is, you need to write a book that shows how fashion and theology have nothing in common. And so I was open to that. I was open to just… I just simply… I wasn't trying to fit them together, make them work. I just wanted to tell a true story. And what I came to discover, which was so amazing, is that there has been such an overwhelming amount of conversation by theologians. Very positively too. Not always. There's Tertullian who I'm… I like Tertullian in some ways, but I'm not a fan of this theology of culture. If Tertullian would've got his way, you would be wearing a hijab right now because in North Africa during his era, women were dressing the same way that Muslim women dress.
Robert Covolo:
I mean, that's not an Islamic distinctive, that's actually a north African distinctive that got pulled up and spread into worldwide Islam. He was arguing that all women should be covered from head to toe, with little tiny isolates. But thank the Lord, his theology of culture lost and Augustine, who's theology of culture won, actually talks about, I call him the first fashion theorist. He actually talks about how fashion works as a complex, a form of communication within advanced societies in the fifth century. So I had to tell my poor professor that in spite of his idea that Christianity has nothing to do with fashion, we actually were at the party first and theologians were the first fashion theorists. So.
Kymberli Cook:
I'm sure he appreciated that.
Jacob Taylor:
Right.
Robert Covolo:
He gave a good review of the book too, which was very kind of him. So yeah. So I just think get the book. But it's really quite shocking how serious Christians have taken dress and clothing. And not in a way that's dour or something like that. Another favorite thinker is Calvin Seerveld, who is a Christian philosopher, and he's written quite a bit about the joy of dress and how we can express it. And when I hear Jacob, I hear him talking about the joy he finds in his creativity and being able to put this together in these designs. And there is a place for great joy in getting dressed. And we can add a little bit of joy into other people's lives when we think about, because they have to look at us. When we dress, other people have to look at us. What are we going to do to them? Are we going to make it like a downer that they have to look at? Are we going to make it interesting and fun?
Kymberli Cook:
Trying to respect, at least.
Jacob Taylor:
Right.
Robert Covolo:
Respect, maybe. Yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah.
Jacob Taylor:
Right. Right. Can I add to that?
Kymberli Cook:
Absolutely.
Jacob Taylor:
That is amazing. So building upon that, and again, he mentioned Augustine and I was thinking back to just how exactly it developed for me. There was the initial spark by just seeing a couple of the runway shows in England. And at that time, dating myself, Calvin Klein was pairing double breasted suit jackets with jeans. Oh. It's like the most phenomenal thing ever in the eighties. They were like, whoa, has this ever been done? Go search the house of common archives. We normally would wear white wigs.
Jacob Taylor:
But to take it to pop culture, one of my favorite movies and I won't mention it, but the protagonist is an amazing actress. And her antagonist turned protagonist is also an amazing actress. She's legendary. But the movie talked about how… There was a snide comment made by the protagonist and the co-protagonist stopped everything in the track, stopped the photo shoot, stopped everything and said, huh, you think it's just blue, huh? Do you understand how this process came to be? Even that blue sweater you're wearing… As she goes down this, not a rant, an educational moment that taught the protagonist a lesson, not to. You do not ever disregard the effort, the labor, the pieces of the puzzle, the supply chain, the delivery, all the way down to what influenced her to choose that blue sweater that she showed up to work late for and had the nerve to actually say something. You may know the name of the movie, but that movie spoke to me in ways a lot of other things couldn't. And so I took that as a further affirmation of that I was doing the right thing.
Kymberli Cook:
Hmm. So with that in mind, how do I, as a regular person who took a blue sweater out of the closet this morning, how do I allow this conversation to impact what I choose to wear, what I buy? What do I do with this? Okay. That's great. There have been lots of people throughout history that have talked about, why Christians should care about dress because it's part of the world. And if I'm cynical, I might even say that's because they just wanted to control everything. I don't think that that's true. I'm getting a PhD in theology. I love theologians. But let's take the cynical route. How does all of this impact what I do, what I buy, what I wear? What would you say Jacob?
Jacob Taylor:
One way or another dress is a means of expression personally first. No matter who you are, where you are in this world, no matter what gender, man or woman, you're going to dress how you feel. I grew up in the nineties and the goth movement and the grunge movement blew up on the heels of certain influential people that just dressed a certain way. Their idea towards their fashion might have been, eh, but people thought if I'm going to buy into this mindset, I need to dress like that. It'll say the same thing that I'm picking up from this person or persons or famous people. So it's actually undeniable. And what we hope to do, what I hope to do is kind of help people take a different look at why they made the choices, fashion wise, Christian or non-Christian.
Jacob Taylor:
And for instance, blue. We are surrounded by blue every day, green and brown earth tones hit us every day. That was God's choice. Why? I don't know why the sky's blue. It could have been Emerald. It could have been magenta, but he made it blue. There's studies that show that blue is one of the most aesthetically pleasing and mood calming colors.
Kymberli Cook:
I was going to say, calming. Yeah.
Jacob Taylor:
Yeah. Mood calming colors. And so it influences you whether you on it to or not. You may choose to do something that helps you express your calm mood. So you may have chosen that blue based on that, ah, this is how I'm feeling today. And then there you go. And then piecing it together, that's another expression of your creativity, whether you would gauge yourself as creative or not. That's how I would hope it would affect someone, is to take another look through a different lens and say, well, am I influenced? The answer you'll probably find is, yes. And is this influence bad? Hmm. Or is it enriching? I would err toward the side of enriching.
Kymberli Cook:
What would you say Robert?
Robert Covolo:
First, I just want to say, I really like Jacob's answer. Yeah. It is a way of informing ourselves about, and also bringing kind of things to the surface sometimes. And I would say that as you think about your day and what you're going to do that day, just ask this question, how can I show respect and how can I show hospitality and more, and how can I bless the people that I'm going to be interacting with today? And sometimes that means you're going to be building a house maybe for the poor, well put on your grunges, come on now. But maybe it means that you're going to have a meeting with somebody. I can see that you took some time to get dressed today and it elevates this event.
Jacob Taylor:
Amazing. [crosstalk 00:36:30].
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah.
Jacob Taylor:
That house too.
Robert Covolo:
Yeah. Also I would say, one of the themes that throughout all the theological witness kept coming up again and again, is that the reason why we are captivated by dress, one of the reasons, is that it gives us hope for our bodies. And we are people of the resurrection.
Jacob Taylor:
Amen.
Robert Covolo:
And we believe that our bodies are going to be one day so glorious, C.S. Lewis says that people would be tempted to worship us if they saw us now. Well, give a little bit of a clue that that's the future of your body. Step into a little bit, just to inform yourself, remind yourself, you know what, this is passing away. One day, I'm going to explode from the grave. I'm going to be raised to new life. And I am going to be filled with glory and I'm going to at least get outside of my fuddy duddies just to remind myself today that I have resurrection hope.
Jacob Taylor:
Absolutely.
Robert Covolo:
And so dress for yourself. But also if you kind of take it a little serious and you step it up, who knows, people might say, you look nice today. You say, yeah, no, I've got a great future in front of me and give you a chance for you to let people know about the hope you have. So there's lots of reasons, lots of ways that we can approach it. But it's definitely a vehicle for us to honor the Lord. And yeah, you can get all crazy and spend all your money on clothing. And you can do that with anything.
Kymberli Cook:
Be obsessed with it. So, yeah.
Robert Covolo:
We're saying that. Yeah, but we are saying, this this is a wonderful avenue in which we can honor Christ and show that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, and to y'all's points, I think I really liked what you said about the color with the world and all that. I think we might go somewhere else with that. But I even think of just as you're trying to encourage people and even thinking about it yourself, what I'm hearing you all say is that it is a form of communication. Whether you like it or not, you're communicating something. And so you need to be aware of the communication. And as an ambassador of Christ, which all of us are, you are communicating something about the kingdom, whether or not, and to your point, Robert, then, embrace that like the resurrection, the coming kingdom as well, and embrace it.
Jacob Taylor:
I love that, Robert. Love it, love it.
Kymberli Cook:
But also recognizing that the inescapable fact is that you are also impacting the economy, because what you buy does matter because it has true economic impact. And so maybe, perhaps even thinking through to your point about what Karl Barth was saying, Robert, thinking about what you purchase and to your point… I almost called you Robert again.
Jacob Taylor:
That's fine. I'll answer to it.
Kymberli Cook:
To your point, Jacob.
Jacob Taylor:
It's good.
Robert Covolo:
You should call him Roberto.
Jacob Taylor:
Yeah, call me Roberto.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, I was going to say, because you're Roberto in my mind, so he's Robert.
Jacob Taylor:
I can be Jacobo. I can be Jacob.
Kymberli Cook:
No, but to your point, Jacob, I mean, I totally lost track of my train of thought. But oh, that what we communicate is often pointing to something else.
Jacob Taylor:
Yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
And so your economics are supporting that design, that brand, that store, that way of life, all of that. And so not only are you communicating those things, you're actually supporting them.
Jacob Taylor:
You're supporting them.
Kymberli Cook:
And so we have to think through that as well.
Jacob Taylor:
Yes, ma'am.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, I could talk about this all day and I probably haven't engaged y'all's statements as much as I should have as a host because I'm just sitting here like, Hm. Yeah, that's true. Oh, I like that. So thank you all for being willing to chat about this with me.
Jacob Taylor:
Absolutely.
Kymberli Cook:
It's nice to feat meet other believers who see this and see it as an important dimension of our life, our communication.
Jacob Taylor:
Yes. Ma'am.
Kymberli Cook:
Our place in this world and as believers and followers of Jesus. And so I just really appreciate your time. Thank you, Robert, for being here with us.
Jacob Taylor:
Thank you, Robert. Thank you so much.
Robert Covolo:
Jacob, I want to connect after this thing.
Jacob Taylor:
Absolutely. Obviously. Man, you were reading my mind.
Kymberli Cook:
And we want to thank you who have been listening. Thank you for joining us today on The Table. Please just subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave us an honest review. It really does help more people discover these conversations and we hope that you will join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Voiceover:
Thanks for listening to The Table podcast. Dallas Theological Seminary, teach truth, love well.
Bill HendricksHi. I'm Bill Hendricks, Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center, and I want to welcome you to the table podcast. At the table we discuss issues of God and culture. And today, the title of our podcast is A Healthy Christian Approach To Sexual Attraction. And even in saying that title, I feel like I've got a rattlesnake in front of me. If you pick up a rattlesnake properly, you don't have any problems. But if you pick up the wrong end, it can go bad real quickly. Fortunately I've got two snake charmers here with me who are ideal … and if you've watched the podcast for any length of time, these are by no means strangers to you. First of all, I want to introduce Debby Wade, who is a licensed professional counselor and a marriage and family counselor. Thank you for being with us today, Debby. You bring a lot of deep expertise into this topic, and …Debby WadeThanks for letting me come back.Bill HendricksOf course we want you back, especially for this. And Gary Barnes, Dr. Gary Barns, who is a professor of counseling here at the seminary. Thank you, Gary.Dr. Gary BarnesYes. Great to be back.Bill HendricksAgain, no stranger to the podcast. And both of these folks have deep expertise in this whole area of human sexuality. But again, as I said, a healthy, Christian approach to sexual attraction, I think for many of our listeners, a healthy Christian approach to, everything's fine up to that. But when you hear the word sexual attraction, it's like wait a minute. How does that work? Can there be such a thing? Because there's a lot of … The New Testament says, "Flee youthful lust," and so there's this sense of we … sexual attraction, that's something you try to push away. But there's a healthy approach to this. And a Christian approach, to boot. So, talk to us about how that works.Dr. Gary BarnesYes. You know, Bill, I think before we could really begin to talk about sexual attraction, we would just have to talk about God and sexuality. Just let's get the big picture here. And then we can see how the attraction piece fits in.Bill Hendricks'Cause you're saying sex is actually God's idea.Dr. Gary BarnesIt's something that we didn't just come up with.Debby WadeWe didn't just attribute it to him. He really did design …Dr. Gary BarnesIt's not something that God got surprised by.Bill HendricksRight.Dr. Gary BarnesAnd so, one of my favorite quotes about sexuality is from Dan Allender. And he says, "Sex is a window into the heart of God." That's a great thing to think about.Bill HendricksWell, it's a deep thing to think about. Boy, how does that work?Dr. Gary BarnesYeah. And so I think, in God's design, he was realizing we're gonna need some real special help to understand multi-leveled intimacy. And so, first of all, he wants us to understand the Godhead, the intimacy of the Trinity. Christopher West says that the Trinity is an eternal exchange of love.Bill HendricksI like that.Debby WadeI like that.Dr. Gary BarnesAnd it's an intimacy that is something we can get a glimpse of, but it's so deeper and richer in a divine sense than we can fully grasp. And I think God knew, we need extra help to grasp this. And so, I think he gave us an experiential object lesson to provide this window into the heart of God. And so it gives us this eternal intimacy within the Godhead. It also helps us understand the intimacy of Christ and the bride, the church and the intimacy there. Then it helps us understand our horizontal relationships in the here and now on Earth in our intimate relationships, for sure in marriage, but way beyond marriage, in our brothers and sisters in Christ intimacy.Bill HendricksSo you're, early on here, introducing this idea of intimacy, which certainly gets … has connotations of sexual intimacy. But it goes beyond sexuality, right?Dr. Gary BarnesIt does. In our time and space, sexuality plays a really special role in this. But sexuality's limited to time and space. Sexuality's not gonna be eternal. But it serves a really important purpose in our time and space right now.Debby WadeAbsolutely.Bill HendricksBecause we're embodied creatures.Dr. Gary BarnesWe are. We're embodied, but we're also sexual beings by design.Bill HendricksRight. Which is also spiritual.Dr. Gary BarnesYou cannot be not a sexual being. Now you can repress it, but God made us as sexual beings.Bill HendricksSo Debby, talk to us about this notion of sexual attraction, 'cause that puts a finer point on there's a desire here involved, and we all know from personal experience, that's a powerful desire.Debby WadeRight. So I'd want to really make sure that we separate sexual attractive, that chemistry vs. lust. Because you said in the beginning that we think sexual attraction, and some people think, "Oh. Well sexual attraction, that can't be Christian, 'cause that would be lustful." And lust truly is objectifying, just seeing one level of a person, and then desiring that to the point of wanting that for myself, and objectifying. Sexual attraction, I think is way deeper, and encompasses so many things, that certainly the way that God designed us physiologically, we do have that chemical reaction and that chemistry that we may experience with others. And we know that there's an attraction there. But we wouldn't just want to base a relationship on just that attraction.Bill HendricksOn just that attraction. There's so much more.Debby WadeAnd we have to be so careful with that. 'Cause we think just the culture we live in, and so much is put on the physical.Bill HendricksIn this culture, sure.Debby WadeIn this culture. You can't pick up a magazine or TV, movie, news …Dr. Gary BarnesBuy tires.Debby WadeRight. And we're gonna use attractiveness to sell, and all things. Someone could, "Oo." We're attracted to them, not even lust, but we just find that we're attracted to them. They do something bad, they're in the news the next day and we're just like, "Oh. Not attracted anymore. No thank you." But then we could take a couple who've been married sixty some odd years.Bill HendricksYeah. That's what's beautiful.Debby WadeThey've grown old together. They were attracted to each other physically. And although their body physically has changed, because of intimacy, there being an attraction and then a deeper knowing, they would still say, out of all their body changes, their wrinkles and everything, "We're as attracted to each other now as we were 60 years ago." And there's a deeper meaning in that. And I think that's part of why it is so important.You were speaking of God, and when we think of the character of God, God is so creative. And he designed all of us so uniquely, that I believe he would not have gone to all that trouble to design … It'd been so easy. They'll just all go like this. Or we can make them all look like her. Or we can make them all look like him. But he went to such uniqueness in all of us that I think, of course, in our design we would have different attractions to different people, and that what one female may be attracted to in maleness, another female may be attracted to something else. And I just think he … to ignore that would be to ignore so many of the magnificent ways that God went to prove his love and his design and his character. We'd have to ignore that.
Bill HendricksYou raise a very interesting point there. We will refer to someone as, "Oh, they're so attractive." And what we're really saying is they're attractive to me.Debby WadeYes.Bill HendricksThey might not be attractive to someone else. My first wife passed away back in 2000, and I didn't date for the entire first year after she passed, which was probably one of the smartest things I've ever done. But eventually you get back into the dating scene … that deserves a whole podcast to itself otherwise … at age 47. But people would say, "Oh, I need to introduce you to so-and-so. She's drop dead gorgeous." And then I would meet so-and-so. And I'm like …Dr. Gary BarnesIs this the one you wanted me to meet?Bill HendricksYeah, right. [Laughter] So my point there is, sexual attraction really does come on a person by person basis, both the attractiveness of a person, as well as my attraction to them. But I guess that's where people get tripped up, and particularly in a Christian setting. Here you are, in an office, a school, wherever your day happens to be spent. And you find yourself attracted to somebody. And you're a little overwhelmed, 'cause you're like, "Wow. That person really is drawing me." And that's a little … it's scary. You're like, "Boy. I gotta keep this from getting out of control, but I can't just say that doesn't exist, 'cause I know it exists, and I kinda like it, but I don't know what to do with it." And so there's just all this confusion that I think many, many Christians feel.Dr. Gary BarnesYes, for sure.Debby WadeYeah.Bill HendricksWhat do we do about that?Dr. Gary BarnesI think if we have some guardrails to guide us.Bill HendricksAnd … look, y'all have heard as many sermons on sexuality as I have. And the very common line is, "Look. Jesus said, 'Whoever looks on a woman to lust for her, has committed adultery.'" And so the idea is, it's okay to have the first look, but not the second look. And I'm like, "Well, that sounds good, it preaches well, but how does that work?"Dr. Gary BarnesYes. So again, getting back to Debby's comment about objectifying for self-gratification. That is not attraction. That's lust. And so attraction can be beholding the beauty. And it's powerful, and it's meant to be powerful. I like your rattlesnake metaphor. But also dynamite's a good metaphor. It's powerful on purpose. And it could be used for constructive purposes, or destructive purposes. But it's not ho-hum. And that's really the good thing about God's idea of sexuality is that it's not supposed to be ho-hum.Bill HendricksSo you're suggesting, maybe, that you see someone who's, in your eyes, beautiful. We're in Psalm 139 at that point. "Boy, Lord. That person's fearfully and wonderfully made. When you put that person together, at least physically …" Or, maybe the attraction isn't so much physical, but it's something in their character. That's also a kind of sexual attraction.Dr. Gary BarnesYes. Exactly. Totally.Debby WadeYes.Bill HendricksYou're like, "Wow. That would be wonderful to live with.Dr. Gary BarnesYes.Bill HendricksThat's a beautiful creation that you have made, Lord.Dr. Gary BarnesYeah, yeah. So here's a little handy visual picture for me. I call it the slippery slope of sexuality. So on the bottom side of one part of the slope we have a response of demonizing sexuality. Sex, oh, that's bad. Oh, that's bad. Now, on the other side of the slope we can slide to defying sexuality. So I'm trying to make sex something that it wasn't meant to be. And it becomes an ultimate for me.Bill HendricksAn idol.Dr. Gary BarnesAn idol, yes. Now at the top, the slippery slope that we tend to slide to one side or the other, is sacred sexuality. And that is God's call for us to elevate. I really like that word, elevate. It's not what the broken person in a broken, fallen world, raised by broken parents, under attack by Satan would naturally think.Bill HendricksRight. They're gonna go one side or the other on that.Dr. Gary BarnesYeah. But what God has given us is a gift that he wants us to elevate. And the purpose, again, is to draw us beyond the physicalness of sexuality, although the physicalness is necessary to the drawing. And that's what attraction contributes to. It's a powerful part of the drawing. But we can't let it pull us to either side of the slippery slope.Bill HendricksI like that. That's helpful.Debby WadeAnd if I could say where I think the tension happens, and why it's so difficult, if I can just say, in the circle of Christianity, I think sometimes Christians want things to be easy. They don't like to live in the tension. And so, that's why I think it's too often …Bill HendricksJust tell me what to do.Debby WadeTell me what and we'll all just repress it.Dr. Gary BarnesHow far can I go?Debby WadeOr, if I'm … I'll just repress it, and just, "That's dead to me. I'll repress it." And then hopefully, when I walk down that marriage aisle, and on wedding night I can just let that back up …Dr. Gary BarnesLet 'er rip.Debby Wade… and flip that switch, or tap that up and there it is.Bill HendricksAnd how's that working out for you?Debby WadeBecause we don't like living in the tension. Or, on the seminary campus, somebody may have everything we've ever dreamed … they meet all 16 points on my list except for I'm not really sexually attracted to them. But that'll be good 'cause then we won't be tempted while we're dating. Or, he meets, or she meets everything on their … and I probably feel a little more holy because I'm invested in her, although I'm not all that sexually attracted to her. And God will reward me for being so holy, for dating.Dr. Gary BarnesOh, and also, my pastor said, "Don't worry, because once you get married, it'll all happen."Debby WadeIt'll come. And I think that's … if I could speak to anybody it would be that that sexual attraction in the beginning is so powerful, and it's needed. And that's needed to draw us together. We don't want it to be the only thing, but that's where we want to look at whole person, body, soul, and mind. I want to know that person. But beyond the outer beauty, I want to know the inward beauty, or the inward handsomeness, whichever works for you. I want to know that, too. I want to know the mind, I want to know they're spiritual relationship with the Lord. I want to know them. I want to do life with them. But I need to be attracted to them. Probably … I don't know what your experience is, Gary, but some of the saddest couples that I work with, doing sex therapy with, or they come in, and when I get them separated, it's like, "He met all the qualities except for I wasn't sexually attracted. And everybody told me, 'Well, that's really okay, because when you get married, it'll come. It'll make dating easier.'" And that doesn't come. And it's hard to manifest.Bill HendricksWhat do you say to a couple like that?Debby WadeOh, gosh. That's whole 'nother podcast. [Laughter]Dr. Gary BarnesThat's many sessions.Bill HendricksI can see that that's not quick therapy.Dr. Gary BarnesNo, no.Debby WadeNo, it's not quick therapy. And it can be rewarding therapy. And, of course, we would never want a couple to separate. If they did marry with that, we wouldn't want that to be a reason to not stay married. But that's where I think, as Christians, we need to help other Christians really change that message in pour in that yeah, sexual chemistry, physical chemistry, again, I think God went to too much trouble to make us so complex that we can't ignore that. It's there for a reason.Bill HendricksWell, I was gonna say, as I was preparing for our podcast today, I thought, well all these things we're raising about the challenges of being sexually attracted to people. I don't know which is worse, to be sexually attracted or to not be sexually attracted. If it's somebody has no attraction, you wonder, are you alive inside?Dr. Gary BarnesEither one can promote one side of the slippery slope or the other. And we're still gonna be challenged to elevate to the sacred. Now, getting back to what Debby was just talking about, about God creating us multi-dimensional, the physical is of God. It's not spirit good, body bad.Bill HendricksThat's important.Dr. Gary BarnesVery important. That's God's plan.Bill HendricksRemind everybody of that. We're material beings, as well as immaterial.Dr. Gary BarnesYes. We're embody spirits, on purpose. And part of that is about the physical sexualness of us. There's hormones that are involved. This is like chemistry, like real chemistry, not just emotional chemistry. And so, one of our colleagues, Doug Rosenau, who we owe a lot to in our learning and training, comes up with three D, three dimensional, whole person. You could think in terms of we're physically beings. We're also psychological beings, mind and emotion. But we're also spiritual beings. And it's the whole person that God wants to relate to him. It's the whole person that he wants us to relate to one another. It all taps in to, I think, that window into the heart of God, and understanding … it's not the main theme of the Bible, but it is cover to cover through the Bible as a sub theme … this concept of oneness that is not based in sameness.Again, going back to the Trinity is the ultimate picture of it. But we get to experience it as whole people. So maleness and femaleness in an exchange, not just as physical beings, but as sexual whole beings. I'm a sexual being, in a physical way, in a psychological way, and in a spiritual way.
Bill HendricksYou bring all of that.Dr. Gary BarnesAll of that. And all of that is a way of reflecting the image of God, when it's elevated.Bill HendricksSo how can our listeners elevate? How can they begin to think in those terms? And I assume it's a perception, it's an awareness, it's a thinking sort of thing, as well as a feeling thing.Dr. Gary BarnesYeah, yeah.Debby WadeI would say …Bill HendricksHow do we elevate our view of healthy sexuality?Debby WadeYeah. This is gonna sound pretty basic, but I think in stating off, one, with a heart of gratitude, a gratitude that God chose to make us as sexual beings, a gratitude that God chose to make both male and female, that God chose, in his creative way, to make us so uniquely different. And I think when we stay in a heart of gratitude, that we're aware of it, so we can't repress, we're grateful for it. And then, I think when we have a gratitude and a gratefulness for something, and we know that he is the creator, that helps us get in line of keeping this elevated. It's not just being grateful for the object, or just eyeing in and going, "Whoa, I'm liking what I see." I want to be grateful to a creator who chose to do this for our benefit, and for his glory.Bill HendricksWell now, I love the sound of what you're saying, and I agree with it. And then I quickly realize how counter cultural what you're saying is, because I can think of so many people I know who, when they think about being grateful for them self, what God's put together, the struggle with that, because they're like, "Well, I'm grateful that I'm a man, but I'm too short." Or, "Why did God make me a woman?" Or, "Okay, I'm a woman, but why do I look this way?" And all of that, of course, is heavily influenced by this culture we live in, which is so sexualized, and just has got all of the values messed up. And yeah. And gosh, people, in a sense, rank themselves, "Where do I fit, relative to others?" And that loses any sight of gratitude.And again, heavily focused on the physical, not the psychological, the spiritual …
Dr. Gary BarnesRight. 3D.Bill Hendricks… that, for many, doesn't even enter into the picture.Dr. Gary BarnesRight.Debby WadeRight.Bill HendricksBut gratitude, that's a whole new way of thinking for many of us.Debby WadeYeah. So, Gary mentioned elevated earlier. And when I think of, even when I do with therapy and walking couples through healthy sexuality, because it does begin, I think should begin in early years, us learning healthy sexuality. But with what I teach and what when I'm trying to help in therapy to get this healthy concept, I walk through that we have to be liberated. And from some of the culture biases and buy ins, we have to be liberated from the bondage of maybe the things that have happened to us in the past, or the choices we made along the way and we did to our self, really trusting in the healing power that when God says in Jeremiah, "I will heal your wounds and restore you to health," not all Scripture's about sex, but most scripture can be applied to sex, we said, "I will heal your sexual wounds, saith the Lord, and restore you to sexual health." So that we could have a gratefulness for how we are designed and feeling liberated, and how we can live that.But I think, truly then, what Scripture would want us to be liberated with healthy sexuality. And then, we truly have to be educated. But we've gotta know some things about it, and know when we've … are buying into myths and misconceptions, and we're not educated … and be healthily educated. And so we need to educate our singles that are out there in attractiveness. 'Cause attractiveness is something that we don't just have to monitor and healthy boundaries around in our singleness. We're all married. We still have to have good boundaries around what we're attracted to, and who we're attracted to.
Bill HendricksAbsolutely.Debby WadeAnd how to have that in a healthy way, so to be educated. And then, as you were saying, we do want our sexuality to be elevated. And again, are we gonna keep it as something we believe is sacred, and holy? Are we gonna put it in a part that God designed this, again, for our benefit, his glory, but put it in a concept, then what are the things I've put in place to keep it elevated? And then I think in relationships, and just in teaching, and to understand a healthy maleness and femaleness in the way we interact, I think it's gotta be celebrated. And celebrating … so coming back, that we women could learn to celebrate our uniqueness in how we're designed.I love the passage in Psalm 4510, 11, where it says, "Oh daughter, consider and give the ear. Forget your people in your father's house, for your king is enthralled with your beauty. Honor him for he is Lord." Now I don't think we ought to be cocky and entitled. But if we women carried ourselves as if our creator is enthralled with our beauty …Bill HendricksThat's a whole different …Debby WadeOh. I think I'm gonna be so much … we're gonna be attracted to just about everybody. But to realize that our attraction, our attractiveness, it's not just outer beauty. But if we carry that with confidence, our inward beauty comes out, and it just exudes with us. And then, for that, over time, with couples, and to keep that attractiveness going, and that attraction, and the healthiness, it's gotta be cultivated. And we tend to think, "Well gosh, attractiveness is so natural, or attraction's so natural," then whatever we feel in the very beginning, it'll just happen, it'll just grow, it'll just maintain, 'cause it's organic, it's natural. But if we say that about a garden, I'm not into gardening. It's too much work. But I know we're using organic, natural earth, and we throw in natural organic seed and water, pretty natural, and sun, and we can't just throw it in and put it together and go, "We've got an organic garden, it's gonna grow." We have to work at it and cultivate it and see what it needs.Bill HendricksAnd pull the weeds.Debby WadeAnd pull the weeds. Find out what's messing that attraction up. And so, I do believe it's a space that requires all those things, long term. To be liberated, to be educated. Our sexuality and attraction needs to be elevated.Bill HendricksAnd cultivated. Celebrated.Debby WadeCelebrated and cultivated.Bill HendricksSo you mentioned the word early there. And I think I'm about to flip the switch on yet another podcast topic by asking this question. But it now seems, when you introduced the word early, I immediately think about the role that parents play in helping their children elevate sexuality, as well as this whole notion of attractiveness.Dr. Gary BarnesIt's huge. It's gigantic. And if you are talking to people behind closed doors, or if you just do general surveys, and you're asking, "Where'd you get your sex education? And what did you get at home? Or what did you get at church?" Usually it's three words.Bill HendricksThat's a short conversation.Dr. Gary Barnes"Don't do it."Bill HendricksThat's about right.Dr. Gary BarnesThat's my sex education. And so, we also give the message, even in our Christian communities, that you're not even a sexual being until you become married.Bill HendricksWow. Yeah.Dr. Gary BarnesAnd don't even think about being sexual if you're single. So there's a lot of miss education that may be well intended, but is still miss education. And we especially, I think, need to do makeup work on single sexuality, and elevate it, and give it a vision.Bill HendricksThat there is life apart from marriage.Dr. Gary BarnesIt's God's ideal that you are a sexual being as a single. You have a unique way, and a unique mission as a single sexual, compared to … But it's not second class. It's not secondary. But it does have a uniqueness to it. I like Stanley Grenz's explanation. He says, "Okay. Just like you need male and female to bear God's image, you need singles and marrieds to bear God's image. Because any one of those is an incomplete image bearer." So in a married couple, intimacy is uniquely bearing God's image about his exclusive love, whereas single intimacy, as a whole person being, including sexual, is demonstrating God's inclusive love. But it has distinctives in how you're being a sexual being, as a single, or as a married. And so we're totally missing our opportunity to elevate, especially for singles, I think, in this way.Bill HendricksWell so … let me try to put this in some practical terms. Let's come up with a hypothetical. And being a man, I'll speak as a man. So, a man's in an office setting, and a new person's hired who happens to be female. And when she's introduced his instant reaction is, "Wow, she's gorgeous." And let's say, for the sake of argument, she's single. Now, first of all, if the man is married, that kind of attraction, he already knows if he's faithful to his marriage vows, there's a boundary here that I can't pass. Whereas, if he's single, I think there's a strong tendency for the guy to go, "Boy. I'd like to get to know her. I'd like to move forward here." But it seems to me, somewhere in here, whether married or single, the guy … what I'm hearing is, there's some reflection he needs to do about that attraction. Is that … ?Dr. Gary BarnesBut we have to be very intentional with it.Bill HendricksTell me more about that.Dr. Gary BarnesOkay. So, I think there's two expressions, sexual expressions that are really helpful in an educating way, to think of social sexuality, and erotic sexual expression.Bill HendricksOkay. What's the difference?Dr. Gary BarnesOkay. So in a social sexual exchange, I am not trying to neuter the exchange. I'm actually embracing the maleness and the femaleness, or you might say, the otherness … 'cause I don't want to over stereotype what maleness and femaleness is. But let's just say the otherness. And the also chemistry, the chemical chemistry that's going on in that exchange. When I neuter it, I'm taking away the potential, the capacity of that exchange, in terms of what it can be like. In the process of this, I'm thinking in terms of three D exchange, whole person exchange, not just a physical, "Wow, you have physical beauty," or, "you have sexual attractiveness," the way the world would define sexual attractiveness. I'm thinking of whole person exchange. And so, but I'm not neutering, I'm not repressing, so that I'm not experiencing sexual feelings. I'm boundaring sexual behaviors, but I'm embracing that this is a whole person exchange.Bill HendricksWhich is really important, because of the problem of objectifying that you mentioned.Debby WadeRight.Bill HendricksIf I just look at them as a one dimensional body and I don't see there's a whole person here, and I need to take into account the whole person.Dr. Gary BarnesAnd this is where the slippery slope comes in. We tend to have a tendency to repress the whole thing as a way of having a boundary, which is actually a really unsafe boundary. Or we tend to deify, and then we physically objectify. And then it's about self-gratification than it is embracing and bring out the best of somebody else's otherness.Bill HendricksWell, and I can see that the whole person really is the whole package, in the sense that it's all tied together, meaning … I've certainly had this experience myself of meeting somebody and I think, "Wow, she's gorgeous. She's really attractive." But then after hanging around this person and watching her interact with people, or maybe with me, I'm like, "You don't look nearly as attractive as you did an hour ago. I'm actually kind of repulsed here." And, of course, how many marriages are there out there where, "Oh, he was my prince, she's my … and we had the marriage, we had the wedding," and six weeks later, they're hardly talking to each other, because they've discovered who they married.Debby WadeRight. I'm gonna come back to two words that I would say if we have that slippery slope that help us maybe navigate staying at the top where it's elevated. And the two words that come to mind for me is respect and steward. That God expects us to respect others. And again, respect females in the way that they exude their femaleness. And that could cover a wide range or variety of how somebody would express their femaleness. But for men to respect females. And then for us females, that we would respect the male. And so I'm gonna respect you as a whole person, so I choose to respect your body. I respect our interaction. I respect your uniqueness. So I am gonna respect that this is also could be dangerous if I did not steward myself well.God gives us the ability and a lot of freedom in two areas that are very powerful. The ability to make money, and our sexuality. He designed us with our sexuality. And he trusts us. And when we think about how much he trusts us in that. And he says, "I gonna to trust you. And I'm also gonna ask you to steward it well."
Bill HendricksThat's right out of the creation mandate.Debby WadeYeah.Dr. Gary BarnesYes.Bill HendricksI'm giving you this world.Dr. Gary BarnesExercise your power.Bill HendricksExercise your power.Debby WadeAnd so, if I don't repress my sexuality, but I am going to steward it well, and I'm gonna respect you in the process. It really helps. And again, I think there's a lot of boundaries we could create on what are boundaries I need in stewarding? Just like we have financial planning. How do we steward our finances well, so we're able to do with our finances what we want to do and honor God? So, finding the healthy boundaries that help us steward our sexuality well. And then, what is it that we do that makes sure that we are always respecting others in their body, their personhood. So.Dr. Gary BarnesCan I go back to the social sexuality thing? Because Debby and I co-teach a course here on human sexuality. It's an elective course, not required, but we get so many requests that it would be required, putting in a plug for it. But one of the big things that we have some of our best discussions about in this class is about social sexuality expression. And so …Bill HendricksWhich would be the kind of …Dr. Gary BarnesBecause when I'm embracing this whole person exchange, that's not sexual behavior, genital, erotic behavior, but it's still a full sexual exchange, what is gonna happen is I will have sexual feelings. And so it's about Debby's term, respecting and stewarding these sexual feelings that are also in the exchange, both from me and from you. It's a two-way exchange. And so I have to live in the tension of feeling sexual attraction in that exchange, but I'm respectful, and I'm responsible in my stewarding so that I don't let the feelings drive my choices.Bill HendricksI don’t have to act on the feelings.Dr. Gary BarnesYes. But I have to live in the tension of experiencing those feelings. But I'm saying to myself, "My feelings don't determine my decisions, but I'm gonna have to work with them." I'm gonna have to be intentional with these.Bill HendricksWhat you're describing here is, frankly, a matter of spiritual growth, and some spiritual discipline, if I could put it that way.Dr. Gary BarnesBut here's where it disconnects, even on a seminary campus.Bill HendricksOh, for sure.Dr. Gary BarnesMen and women are passing each other on the sidewalks, and men are not even looking at women in the eyes. Because they're afraid they'll have sex with them if they look at the in the eye.Debby WadeAnd they'll want to have sex with them if they have eye contact.Dr. Gary BarnesYes.Bill HendricksRight.Dr. Gary BarnesA man will be on an elevator and the door opens and a woman steps in and smiles and says, "Oh, do you know what time it is?" And the guy jumps to the back of the elevator and says, "I'm married."Bill HendricksNo, I know exactly what you're talking about. I've seen that happen.Dr. Gary BarnesYeah.Bill HendricksFor some men, it's like there's a fear, like women are dangerous.Dr. Gary BarnesYeah. Repression is my strategy.Bill HendricksExactly. Exactly. And that's not healthy.Dr. Gary BarnesThat's a time bomb ready to go off. So, I … We're growing godly servant leaders on campus that are missing the idea of how do I become a godly steward of my sexual feelings.Bill HendricksWell I'm glad you're teaching that class, then.Dr. Gary BarnesWell, maybe we should make it a required class.Bill HendricksMaybe we should. Because I think about somebody who's got that mindset, a man, knowing … okay, they make it all the way through graduation and so forth, and then they go, say, become a pastor in a church, and now they've got people in his congregation looking to him for direction on the very things we're talking about. What's he gonna say? More importantly, what's he gonna model?Dr. Gary BarnesYes. Exactly. What's he gonna model?Bill HendricksThat communicates everything.Debby WadeYes, it does. That makes …Dr. Gary BarnesBecause modeling repression is not gonna be helpful for the congregation, and it's gonna be dangerous for him.Bill HendricksIt just repeats the cycle. So there's some other person that grows up in that congregation and thinks, "Well, that's how it works."Dr. Gary BarnesThat's how we do it.Bill HendricksWell, we gotta change that.Dr. Gary BarnesYeah.Bill HendricksOur listeners have to help us change that in the places they have influence. One question … we're starting to run on our time … but we talked about sexual attraction, which is sort of from within. It has that feeling of something within me is being drawn toward this other person. What about sexual attractiveness? In other words, the person who is putting their clothes on for the day, and they're thinking about the face, if you will, that they're gonna present to the world.Dr. Gary BarnesThe presentation.Bill HendricksThe presentation. They want to be attractive. And again, I think there's a bunch of cultural things driving it. But is that a healthy value, to want to be attractive? From a biblical standpoint.Dr. Gary BarnesYeah. That's definitely your question, Debby.Bill HendricksFrom a biblical standpoint, just …Debby WadeAgain, God uses beauty throughout Scripture. And so I believe if anything, he would want us to believe within our self, that because we are a creature that he designed, that there is beauty within us. And so I think there is a way that we can all choose to carry our self that puts our best self forward. Now that doesn't mean we all always have to be all dolled up, or always wear tuxes or whatever. But how can I exude my best? And I believe that if I'm exuding my best because I believe inside positive things, I am probably going to exude positive attractiveness. If I loathe myself, if I'm disgusted with myself, if I don't appreciate at all at how God designed me, that's what I'm gonna exude.Bill HendricksThat's right.Debby WadeAnd so I think some of our outer attractiveness does come from with on how we carry ourselves. And again, whether someone feels they exude beauty … I'm gonna say females … without any makeup on vs. if they do have it on, they still feel they can exude with confidence. If somebody feels that they can't go outside or set foot out in the yard unless they are all dolled up, then I would say that they need to work on how can they exude their natural beauty? I believe that lot of that's based on what do we believe, coming back to the mind? What do we believe about our self?Dr. Gary BarnesIt goes back to the slippery slope again.Debby WadeYeah.Dr. Gary BarnesAm I repressing or deifying in my presentation of attractiveness?Bill HendricksWell, and I also think it goes back to the whole person, the three D idea, because notwithstanding, yes, we have a physical being, which is what people see first, but I think the New Testament instruction to women is let not your adornment be external only. And it's important, that word only is there. He's not saying, "Don't worry about that." He's saying, "Don't just focus on that," which, of course, is where most people, certainly most women I suppose, focus, is like how'd that face look? How does that hair look? That's fine, but let it be that person within.Debby WadeAnd then, how do we treat others?Bill HendricksIs there a beauty about the whole person, so that as they treat other people, and they communicate, there's a beauty that exudes from them that becomes very attractive in every way, not just sexually, but just, you like to be around them as a person, because they're a great person. They … ultimately they're manifesting Christ to us in their unique way. That's what we want to elevate to, I think. Right?Dr. Gary BarnesYes.Debby WadeI think it's the opposite example you gave earlier when you said somebody might be very attractive and you think drop dead gorgeous, and spend some time with them, and all of a sudden they're less and less pretty vs. someone that you may not necessarily be as attracted to at first. But the more you get to know them, it's like, as their beauty exudes, they all of a sudden become this beautiful or handsome person, because now you know them full body and full person. It's if that attraction never comes, if that physical attraction never comes, that would be someone you don't want to date.Bill HendricksYeah. Probably God didn't design you to move all the way into intimacy, full intimacy with them.Dr. Gary BarnesYeah.Bill HendricksWell this is a very deep, complex subject, it seems to me, but a very practical one, because people deal with this all day long.Dr. Gary BarnesWe are sexual beings.Bill HendricksYeah.Debby WadeAt every age.Dr. Gary BarnesIt's who we are.Bill HendricksAnd the real word here is we need to celebrate that. But we need to elevate that to the place that God intended it to be.Dr. Gary BarnesAnd be very aware that the slope is slippery. I do tend to slide to demonizing and repressing, or I slide to deifying and making it an idol.Bill HendricksAnd fortunately, that's why we have the Holy Spirit. That's why Christ has redeemed us so that we become more like him.Debby WadeAnd accountability with other people.Bill HendricksAlright. I like that. Well, our time is gone. I want to thank the both of you for being here. This has been fantastic. And I want to thank our listeners for stepping in with us. If you have a topic that you'd like us to consider here on The Table Podcast, or comments, feel free to email us at thetable@dts.edu. That's thetable@dts.edu. And for the table, I'm Bill Hendricks. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. Brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Mikel Del Rosario, cultural engagement manager here at the Hendricks Center. And our topic today is one that's near and dear to my heart. Its cultural engagement, and Christian apologetics.
I have two experts in both areas with me, joining me today via Zoom. First guest today is Josh Chatraw, the director of the Center for Public Christianity, and the resident theologian at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome to the show.
Joshua Chatraw:
Good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Mikel Del Rosario:
And second guest is somebody who you know well if you listen to The Table often. It's Dr. Darrell Bock. Darrell is the executive director of cultural engagement, and senior research professor here at Dallas Theological Seminary. Welcome, Darrell.
Darrell Bock:
My pleasure, Mikel.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Now, what's really cool to me is that you guys have both worked on both apologetics, and cultural engagement books, and some of them together. So that's pretty awesome that you've joined us on the show today. One of the first ones that I ever read that you guys did together was this, Truth in the Culture of Doubt. And of course, there's the green one, the Truth Matters as well, which is a similar kind of book.
But that got me interested in what you're doing, Josh, when I saw you were working with Darrell in this area of cultural engagement. Tell us a little bit about the Center for Public Christianity, and what that's all about.
Joshua Chatraw:
Yeah, well, the heartbeat of the center is actually a fellows program, which is a nine month program where we work with people, typically late 20s, 30s, early 40s, who are young professionals in the city here in Raleigh. And it's really a discipleship program for post Christianity. For folks who are future leaders in the city working secular jobs in various fields, and they're trying to put their Christian faith together with that, and dealing with cultural issues, dealing with work faith issues.
And so it's this nine month CrossFit version of a discipleship program. And then the center is an outgrowth from that, where we're really hosting, through our alumni, we're at about 100 now, people who have gone through the program over the last five years, who are hosting big public conversations within the city. We're trying to connect up networks of Christians as well, who are trying to do this in different areas. So we're taking that fellows program, and then opening the door up to the city, and inviting non Christians as well as Christians into what we're doing by having speakers, and conversations on different cultural issues.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Wow. That interesting. Yeah, not your typical thing that people think about. Actually, people have a lot of interesting ideas about what cultural engagement is. All three of us work in cultural engagement, but I'm really interested to hear how you would explain what cultural engagement is to someone who asks you, "What is that, Josh?”
Joshua Chatraw:
Yeah, well, a lot of my … I don't know if you guys have had this, I've had the experience where a lot of my colleagues, and friends don't actually like the terminology too much. So I have to do this quite a bit. It's almost I have to give an apologetic for that terminology. And I think … And maybe I'll start with what sometimes people ask me is, "Hey, Josh, culture is like the air. So what does it mean to engage with the culture? I mean, that's like engaging the air we're all breathing."
And I can understand that critique, and that question. What I say is, first we need to understand what culture is. And culture, I define it with three levels. One is, within culture, people have worldviews, things that they articulate within particular cultures. On the other hand culture can work like air, which is, culture gives us a framework that we don't normally think about. It's not ideas we've articulated as much as we just take for granted. It seems like common sense.
But then this third component of culture are institutions, and artifacts, the things we make, the material parts of culture. And so when I'm talking about cultural engagement, I'm talking about thinking through these different areas, the ideas, the artifacts, the institutions that make up culture, the worldviews that make up a culture.
And just like a missionary would when we send missionaries out to foreign places, we say, "Go understand the culture as Paul did in Athens, so you can speak to it, and interact with people." We have to do the same thing, especially as culture is shifting in America. And so it's understanding these three different dimensions, and then being able to speak the Gospel, and then speak from a Christian understanding of different issues in light of where the culture is.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Darrell, how would you explain what cultural engagement is, maybe with more of an emphasis on the engagement part? What's it mean to engage?
Darrell Bock:
Well, I'm not going to leave the culture part, because part of the challenge here is, is that culture as a singular, is probably a misnomer. What we have are cultures. We have a combination of cultures, we have different worldviews, we have different institutions that represent different positions.
And so the idea that our culture is singular is actually a little bit misleading. It's a diversity that we're dealing with, it's pluralism that we're dealing with. So when you're talking about cultural engagement, you're talking about engaging these variety of cultural perspectives that are differently framed, and being aware of how to move with alacrity, with skill between them as you move.
And then you've got the institutional dimensions that Josh mentioned as well as just the framing, the air of what culture is that is moving and shifting in terms of what's being emphasized, what's highlighted, how things have changed, that kind of thing, which is undertaken such an accelerated movement in a variety of levels and layers that the church has been challenged.
It's gone from being … This is Duane Litfin, former president at Wheaton College's expression. The church has gone from being the home team in America to being, and this is a biblical image now, in exile, or being less than central, more marginalized. So how do you cope with that?
And then you've got the whole shift in worldviews between a predominantly Judeo-Christian backdrop vis-a-vis the more often secularized and non theological approaches to life that are surrounding us. How do you make those moves? And so engagement is simply being aware of how … I compare cultural engagement to plate tectonics, okay. In geography, you know how you get plate tectonics, and they rub against each other, and eventually the build up friction, you get earthquakes.
So cultural engagement is being aware of the tensions that the plate tectonics of life are throwing at us, because of these different combinations of views that are surrounding us because they are who our neighbors are, and where they're coming from. And engagement is simply the ability to be aware of that, to stay abreast of that, and to know how to address that.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You've used the illustration of reading and reacting before, a sports metaphor. Explain how we need to be able to read and react in terms of some of these hot button issues.
Darrell Bock:
Well, this'll be fun for Josh, because he's a soccer player. So I know he'll get this, although it's a football metaphor primarily. But reading and reacting is knowing on the one hand … I'll use football as an example. When you have a football play, it's drawn up in a certain way. You know that the guard is going to pull. And if you're the running back, you're waiting for the break to come to stop the hole to go through.
But when the play actually happens, you aren't going to run it the way it's drawn on the board. You're going to read and react to what's happening in front of you, and then you're going to respond based upon what's taking place. And so the ability of engaging is the ability to read and react, it's the ability to understand what's in front of you, and then know how to respond to it, how to engage with it.
And in particular, in cultural engagement, what's very important as a first step is the ability to listen, the ability to hear, the ability to sense what's going on around you. That's the reading part. And then the reaction has to do not just with what you bring in terms of content, but the tone with which you respond. All those things are important in engagement.
So engagement is a very challenging thing. And it's become more challenging the less monolithic our culture has become, as we become more aware, globally, what's going on, as we're connected globally. I like to say the world is bigger and smaller simultaneously. We are aware of more people, and there are more people here, and there are more views out there. But we're also more tightly connected to those views than we used to be. All of that impacts the way in which we engage.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm part of a number of podcast groups now outside the Christian community. And when I explain what we do on the show, I say, "You know those things that you're not supposed to talk about at parties like politics, and religion, and stuff like that, we go there."
And that helps people understand what we're doing. And many of them are intrigued by it like, "Really? And you guys are Christians, and you're engaging in this way?" Especially since a lot of people feel like Christians don't understand them, and they wish Christians would try to take a step back and understand them before engaging.
When the Truth Matters book came out, Darrell, I like how you used to say, "Truth matters, but tone matters too." That was cool. Josh's latest book, Telling a Better Story: How to Talk About God in a Skeptical Age, talks about this inside out approach. Josh, could you explain that to us? What's this inside out approach to doing apologetics and cultural engagement?
Joshua Chatraw:
Yeah, well, if I can … And this is going to be on the fly. But since we're using a sports analogies, I might try to work on in here, Darrell, just try to match you, is yeah, so one of the things I saw in evangelism is that it was like we were playing soccer games, but we were expecting to …
In a soccer game, right, you blow the whistle, and the coach is over there, and he's not really doing too much, right. In football, the coach, you huddle up, you give plays. And I think our evangelism was working with, "Here's the play, football." When we're actually playing a soccer game. Which means you need to know what you're doing. But if you're just going to try to run off a play sheet, you're expecting to call the coach just to give you a track, and that's going to work in a 21st century post-Christianity, it's not going to go too well.
And yet, at the same time, people need to learn a way to approach these evangelistic conversations. So we need apologetics. But a five steps to go from truth to the resurrection often times doesn't actually play out, because one of the challenges, as we've been alluding to, or Darrell has alluded to is that it's not just that people don't think Christianity is true, or irrational, that is still part of the problem. But the other part now is that they don't think it's good or beautiful.
So then how do we approach this knowing we can't just go, "Here are five arguments that proves Christianity." And then we can walk away. First of all, I don't think that's how arguments actually work. I don't think it's going to give us a course of 100% of proof anyway. But what it means is, how do we talk to someone who's coming from, as Darrell again has mentioned, very different framework. We're in a pluralistic society.
So to start with stepping inside their story. Asking them questions. "Hey, tell me your story." Is a great place to start. And if you listen closely, you will hear things, and ask good questions like where they're getting meaning, where they're getting their value, what they're living for, what their moral code is.
In other words, I think these are some of the core things of what it means to be human. And so we learn to talk to people about what it means to be human by asking them questions and entering their story. As we do that, what often comes out is, you hear some things that we can begin to dig deeper in, and ask questions on.
And because I think you're going to hear things that are, on one hand, you will need to eventually challenge. But you'll also hear some aspirations that you can affirm. You can say, "Yes, that's good. You want justice in the world, that's a good thing. And yet, are we going to get it in the way you're going about it?" Or, "Yes, that's good that you value your relationships, but have you adopted a world view that actually undermines flourishing relationships?”
And then to be able to transition in conversations to say, "This is how the gospel, this is how Christianity makes sense of that. This is how the Christian story …" So we're taking them from … We're going from inside their story, to Christianity, and saying, "This is how Christianity actually leads to true humanity, to true flourishing."
So it's a way that says, "Hey, yes, we do need to challenge. But are there opportunities here where we can say, 'You know what? Christianity is actually what you're after, you're just going about it in all the wrong ways. You're going about life in the wrong ways.'?" It's an Augustinian approach where Augustine famously said, "We all have these restless hearts. And we're searching for God, but we're searching in the wrong places.”
And so I'm wanting to pick up on these existential things that people feel in order to get to, hopefully, the more traditional apologetics, yes. But I'm wanting to use inside out to deal with the questions of goodness, and beauty, and then come on the back door on cases for the resurrection and other things.
Now, sometimes you don't have to do that, you can go straight to making a case for the resurrection, and that's fine too, I'm very practical. If you can do that, if they're ready to listen, go for it. But often find that in a post Christian society, we have to start further back.
Darrell Bock:
Let me introduce an analogy. You know how when you learn a foreign language, you go into the chapter and here's the dialogue, okay. And so here's how you order a hamburger in Spanish, or French, or German, whatever language you're … Okay. So you have taken the class, and you walk in, and you're very, very confident about what you're going to do, because you've got all the vocabulary and everything.
You walk into the restaurant, you ask the first question, which is exactly how your dialogue began. And then you get a response, and the response wasn't in your dialogue. The response is something else. And you're on your own. Now, you're on your own in the language. That's cultural engagement.
Cultural engagement is, you build, with your apologetics, et cetera, a toolbox of things that you're aware of, and that you've learned, and that is a certain way to respond. But in the actual conversation, it very rarely goes in the way, and in the sequence in which you learned it. And so you have to be flexible in dealing with that.
And you've got another obstacle, which Josh has already alluded to, but let me develop it a little more. And that is, if you're in a seminary, or you're in a church, or you're in a small group, theology is at the center of what you do. It's at the center of your world view, it's at the center of how you think. The moment you get in your car and drive away from the church or your small group, or your seminary, and you go out into the world, you're going to be interacting with people for whom theology may not even be a category. It may be nothing. There may be nothing there. "What is your theology?" "I don't have a theology."
So how do you have a conversation with someone who's starting place, who's world view is so differently oriented than your own? And how do you bring them into a world that they don't even occupy, or at least, they think they don't even occupy? That's a challenge of cultural engagement.
And so learning how to build that bridge, now there are two ways to build that bridge. I can build that bridge by insisting that there is a theological world that they need to come into. Or I can build that bridge by starting with wherever they're starting from, and then working to build those pieces back into a theology. That's what Josh is talking about in inside out. You start with where the person is coming from, what their aspirations are, how they see the world, et cetera.
And then you take your world view as a template against that, and you look for those things that allow them to step towards a theological world, and a way of theologically thinking. And introduce those as moments for pause for their reflection. And that's underneath what's happening in the conversations you're having as you engage.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, very true. I think there's a … Oh, go ahead, Josh.
Joshua Chatraw:
I was just going to add, and for some who might be listening and think, "Well, hang on, why would we … Are we giving up the game by starting where they're at?" I think that could be an objection to what you hear me and Darrell saying. Are we giving up the game?
And I would say certainly not. We always have to start somewhere with somebody. And for me as I'm thinking about this, we have to have this deep and rich theology, rooted in the gospel, that we're … That's our framework, that's the center of this. And yet, when we're talking to somebody, I think that that same gospel drives us to step into their world, and say, "How do we make these connections?"
So the gospel is the center of this. And yet, certainly when we're talking to someone, we've got to step into their world. You've got to start somewhere. And so we're looking for places to start, which is different than saying, "Hey, we're just going to end where they're at. Or we're just trying to make this more palatable." That's not it at all. But we're trying to get them to understand. And that means we've got to, at least in a conversation, step into their world in order to be able to communicate.
Darrell Bock:
So let me make a contrast in the Book of Acts with how this works, because I think you can see it pretty vividly. If you go to the speech that Peter makes in Acts 2, he's dealing with a Jewish audience. They know the Bible, they know the promises of God. It’s literally littered with Scriptural references. I mean, the whole speech in Acts 2 is one scripture reference after another. It's built around four Old Testament Hebrew scripture texts. Okay.
Come to the Areopagus, come to Mars Hill, where the audience doesn't know shmots about the Bible. Now, shmots is a technical term, okay. It means they don't know anything about the Bible. They don't know Genesis from Malachi, they don't know anything about the promise of God.
And what happens there? Well, he takes them, he tells them a storyline that's based upon how they are worshiping. And when it comes to the crucial point to make his theological transition, he doesn't cite a Bible verse, he cites one of their own poets. And he makes his move into the theological word through an aspiration, an expression that comes out of their own culture.
I think that contrast teaches us a lot about how to approach people I their background. If they're aware of the Scripture, you're having one kind of conversation. But if they're not aware of the Scripture, you're having another kind of conversation. But both conversations are very much in touch with where the audience is coming from as they engage.
And developing that ability, which means that it's not one size fits all, that there is going to be variation in how you handle the approach, is really the key to developing wisdom in engagement. Developing what we have called in the center, cultural intelligence, not just cultural engagement. But actually doing it intelligently with the sermon, and judgment about how to go, and when to make your move. Go back to the sports metaphor, when you see the hole and cut up field.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Darrell has a book called Cultural Intelligence as well, which we'll link to in the show notes, which you can check out as well. I was going to say earlier, Josh, that I think for us, who are seminary trained type people, maybe what really grabbed ahold of us was something theological, was something philosophical, say, for you, a classical argument for the existence of God moving from the Kalam argument, all the way up to the moral argument, and then the resurrection. That just really resonated with you.
But like Darrell was saying, for most people, that's not where they're at. And so it's almost the idea of loving our neighbors, looking out for the needs of others before your own, saying … As missionaries, if we were going to be missionaries like you were saying, Josh, we would be thinking like that. It's just natural to be training people in their cultural studies to think, "How would you engage with someone who's not like you?"
I guess sometimes we tend to forget that when we're at home, so to speak. One of the things we talk about at the Center too, that Darrell has mentioned is the challenge of turning your truth meter down. Not off, but down. So that when somebody says something that's different than what you believe, you don't feel like, "Well, now I have to defend the entire contents of the whole Christian worldview because somebody disagrees with something I believe." But we can actually hold it, save it, and then be good listeners.
A great example of this, Darrell, I think is what we did on the show with the whole world religion series, where you had a series of three questions that you asked people. Tell us a little bit about that, and how that cultural engagement looks in terms of world religious conversation.
Darrell Bock:
Well, again, it's an illustration of trying start where the person is coming from. Let me tell you where the origins of these questions came from. I was in Chiang Mai, in Thailand. We were doing a tour of the town. And we had a day off. And when you walk through that town, it's full of Buddhist temples.
I knew next to nothing about Buddhism. And so I'm walking these temples, and I'm watching people engage in their worship. And all of a sudden, the idea hit me, "I wonder what these people think they're doing. And I wonder why they're attracted to this." It was a straight question of curiosity.
And so when I came back, I said, "Let's do a series on world religions. But let's not do it the way it's normally done." Which is to take … Usually, the Bible says about religion and God, and here's what this religion says about religion and God. No. That's valuable. I'm not undercutting that. That's very valuable stuff.
I said, "Let's go at this a different way. Let's ask three questions." The first is, what does this religion believe? Is it even a religion? Because in some cases, we were dealing with Eastern philosophies that aren't really religion, although they tend to have a religious devotional element to them. Okay. So what do they believe?
And then secondly, what's the Velcro factor? What I call the Velcro. What makes someone attracted to this? What do they think they get out? What is it that they believe it gives them that makes them dedicate their life to it? And this is something more than, "I was born in the part of the world where this religion appears." No, this is what caused them to adhere it? What's the Velcro factor?
And the third question is, how does the gospel speak to that Velcro factor? How does the gospel speak into the spiritual space that they're already occupying? And what does it have to say about it? And that's where the contents that we didn't pursue tend to come into the conversation.
But pursuing those three questions means that you're trying to understand what someone else's spiritual makeup is. What their spiritual GPS is. I call it getting a spiritual GPS reading on someone. And if you'll understand that, then you know how to speak into that space.
And so a lot of what Josh is doing in his writing is helping us understand how and where that person is coming from. What their spiritual story is. What he's calling their spiritual story, I'm calling their spiritual GPS reading. We're pursuing the same thing, fundamentally.
And when you do that, you're looking for … It's really important in listening to make this distinction, which Christians sometimes confuse, which is, it's one thing to make an effort to understand someone. And in your effort to understand someone, and have some level of empathy in that understanding, that is not the same as agreeing with them. We often mix the two.
Okay, when we mix the two, we get into trouble, because I really can't assess where someone is until I understand where they are coming from. This is why listening is so important. And so a style of engagement that has listening as a very important core component is fundamental to doing a good job of engaging when you've got the variety of worldviews that we are coping with in a post-Christian, in a post modern world.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, there are so many places we can go with that. These places where we do try to engage … These are hot button issues where people are just afraid to go, just because they're afraid it's going to blow up. What are some principles that can guide us in engaging in some of these hot button issues. And, Josh, if you could just maybe pick one. Here's an area where Christians are typically afraid to engage, or they've tried, and it's just blown up, and they don't know what to do. What's one of those areas? And what are some of the tips you would give someone as they walk into engagement.
Joshua Chatraw:
Yeah, well, obviously the one that's been huge recently, and has been an issue for a long time, but has become more tense in the last six months has been race. And so there's a variety of reasons that we're not very good at talking … For the most part, why evangelical church hasn't been very good at talking about this. And right now, part of the issues is, we want to label things so we don't have to think about it.
So instead of listening, well, we can create a label, we can cast them off as not Christian, because they are X, Y, or Z, and then we don't have to listen, and maybe do some evaluating, and self evaluation.
I think some principles is, number one is treat other people how you'd want to be treated. I mean, we typically don't like to be labeled. We typically want people to hear us out when we speak. And yet we often times aren't very good about doing the same to others. I suggest to my fellows that … I'm borrowing this from Alan Jacobs at Baylor, over there near you guys. But he calls it the five minute rule, which he says, "Give it five minutes."
And I think that's a good principle. Before you … He makes the argument that, if you're really smart, you're going to have a lot of trouble with what me and Darrell are talking about. Because what happens is, when someone is talking, if you're really smart, what happens is, you're already thinking five reasons they're wrong, and why my view that I've always had, or I'm at least coming into this conversation with, is right.
And when you do that, you shut down, and you're just in self protection mode. And so if you can give it five minutes, and know that you are prone to do that, you might just learn something. And you might actually find out that you are right, or you haven't changed your mind, and be more persuasive in the end to this person you're talking to, because at least you understand them, and haven't written them off, and assumed, "Oh, I've heard this argument before." So I think the five minute rule is a pretty good rule. Some of us might need 10 minutes. I probably need 10 minutes. But just the five minute rule.
I think another rule is, before you post it, before you go public, talk to somebody who is fair minded, who is likely not to agree with you. And if you don't know anybody like that, go spend your time finding people out, and finding a community, or other people out like that before you post something. Because if you don't know people like that, you're probably just posting it to your own crowd, and they're going to affirm you, and you'll get likes, and you'll feel better about yourself. But you're not really persuading anyone.
So why don't you go, before you post it, and run it by somebody else, and see what they think. I think that's a good rule. And then cultivate those types of relationships so that you actually have people who disagree with you, that you can run things by.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I was a communication major as an undergrad in college. And the more I work in cultural engagement, the more I think, "You know what, we're communication coaches in some way." Just the idea of listening to somebody so that you're not formulating your rebuttal while they're talking, but you can actually listen to understand, which is a huge, huge thing to teach people, just because we've forgotten how to do that.
And then you bring the whole social media aspect to this by talking about posting. It's a knee jerk reaction that so many of us have to post things. And sometimes you see people just totally ripping on other people, and they don't even know them or where they're coming from on social media. But that's the world that we've seen recently. Again, so many places we can go with this.
Darrell Bock:
Can I add something? Because I think there's … Besides the five minute rule, which is a great idea, here's another test. I tell people it's pretty easy to determine instantly whether you're what I call a rebutter or a listener. And that is, what are you doing while someone is talking to you? Are you formulating that rebuttal? Okay. This is where the turning the doctoral meter down comes in.
Okay, that's not going away. You're going to be thinking while you're hearing, "I'm not sure I agree with that. And here's why." But here's the test. The test is, are you able, after you've taken your five minutes, and you've listened, or in Josh's case, 10, okay, and you've listened, are you able to reformulate what has been said to you in different words, but in such a way that the person who said it to you can say, "Yeah, you heard what I was saying."?
Okay. That is the pursuit of understanding, okay. Remember, understanding is not necessarily agreement. That's just saying, "You heard what I said to you." And I want you to notice what goes on in the dynamic. You're actually engaged in a conversation when you do that. When you rebut, you're not engaged in a conversation. You think you're engaged in a conversation, but you're actually not engaged in a conversation. You're only interested in getting your point across, okay. That's actually not a conversation.
So what you want to do is, you want to be able to mesh the assessment skills which come to you naturally, and the conversational skills, which will actually advance a conversation, and give a … When you show the respect of someone, of communicating to them, "I'm working very hard to listen and to try and understand you." You open the door for them to do the same to you. You lead by example.
And so it changes the dynamic of the conversation when the pursuit isn't simply, "Well, I want you to agree with me." But rather the pursuit is, "I want us to make an effort to understand one another." Two completely different ways to pursue a conversation. And then once you get everything on the table that you have achieved an understanding about where each of you is coming from, you're actually in a much better position to assess the nature of the differences that you have.
And again, you have a conversation. But now you've had it in a sequentially … How do I say this? Functional way that actually gives the opportunity not just for you to dig in, but actually perhaps even to learn some things in the process which are helpful to you. Things that may help you understand how to make your own argument, as well as things that you need to understand because you have blind spots.
Because the other thing that we all need to realize as we enter conversations is, none of us has the gift of our missions. So there are things for us to learn in the conversations that we have.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, my head is just spinning with all kinds of different ways we could go with this. When I was first introduced to what we were doing at the Center, Darrell, in 2012, you had just started this podcast. And there was a concern that we would run out of topics, if you remember that. But as you've seen, people who have been listening for the past eight years now, there's a lot of places where we can still be engaging and helping people learn how to engage.
One of the troubles that people have, especially those who are trained in theology and apologetics is, we're trained often to respond to objections. Someone says, "There's no evidence for God." Or, "How could there be a God when there's so much evil in the world?"
We can respond to that because there's an objection. If someone's objection is, "I don't really know what Christianity is all about, I just don't like it for some reason." We don't know where to go with that unless we what? Unless we listen, unless we draw them out, unless we engage in that conversation, not a debate, right.
And so another question to throw out to both of you guys in terms of apologetics is, is it helpful to see apologetics as one little area underneath this umbrella of cultural engagement? Is it a subsection, like it's a subsection of theology? What would you say to that, Josh?
Joshua Chatraw:
Yeah. That's a good question. Well, I see apologetics as a culminating discipline. That's the way I'd put it. And what I mean by that is, it really incorporates … It’s kind of like preaching in that, in preaching, you're taking church history next to Jesus, and theology, and philosophy, and preaching, well, goodness gracious, is such a challenge. But it has this practical, "Hey, you got…" In the church I'm at now, because it's Anglican right now, it's 25 minutes, right. They don’t even give you the 40 minute Baptist. I give you 25 minutes. Here you go.
And I think apologetics is … It's very similar, because you need to have church history, you need to have philosophy, you need to understand sociology, and culture, you need to have a working anthropology, how are people persuaded? So much of that goes into preaching as well. Except, you can't script it out.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Yeah.
Joshua Chatraw:
So you can't have a manuscript in your hand. And so I view it as a culminating discipline that certainly needs to include cultural analysis. And so that's not a neat answer of maybe of how it relates to cultural engagement. I will say this, in certain ways … I'll throw this out there, and then you guys can tell me I'm wrong. But in certain ways, I think all apologetics is cultural apologetics.
And what I mean by that is, I'm never talking to someone in the abstract. I'm never talking to someone in the abstract. I'm always talking to someone with particular objections, whose part of a particular culture, who has a narrative and a backstory that is embedded in a particular time.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Chatraw:
So I'm talking to either a non-Christian Buddhist, or a non-Christian new atheist, or … So there's always, we're cultural beings. And so that is inescapably part of apologetics. And so there's been some kind of … Lots of discussion on this thing called cultural apologetics. But I'm wanting to say really all of apologetics is cultural apologetics in that sense.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a really good point too about, there's no cookie cutter way to approach someone. And you see this a lot in world religion, where people say, "Okay, I just read the textbook on how to engage with Muslims." And I meet a Muslim person, or a meet a Buddhist person, right.
But I mean, how many different versions of Buddhism are there is dependent on how many people you meet pretty much, right. So I'm not engaging with a Buddhist, I'm engaging with my friend, Liam, my friend John…
Darrell Bock:
We're back to my foreign language illustration. I mean, basically. I mean, if you think about the point, apologetics, at least the way it's normally taught is, it's by chapters and topics. Here's the list of facts that go under whatever topic I'm looking at, that you need to be aware of and realize. Here are the four arguments for the existence of God. Here are the three reasons why the resurrection is true, et cetera. It's a nice cookie cutter list.
But when you get into a conversation, it doesn't work that way. It just doesn’t. So apology … You think of apologetics, on the one hand, it's as the content, which is what your question presupposes, I guess. But then there's the whole other element about how apologetics functions. Apologetics functions like a toolkit that you have in the background. And then depending on the problem that you have … I'm going to use a car analogy. Not that I fix cars on a regular basis. But you're trying to fix a car, and you've got your oil needs changing or whatever. Well, okay, then I know I'm going to need a certain kind of tool in order to deal with that particular circumstance that I'm faced with. And if I've got a problem getting the lug nuts to work, or whatever it is that I'm trying to work with my wrench, then I've got to think about what plan B is, that kind of thing.
So you're always … And I'm back to another image. You're always reading and reacting to what's going on around you. And as you read and react, which is an expression of cultural awareness, and cultural sensitivity, and the deeper your cultural awareness and sensitivity is, the more maneuverability you give yourself. You know how to draw into that toolkit for the particular set of combinations of things that need to be said at that particular moment, at that particular time, with that particular person.
And that's a skill that just takes time. Just like learning a language. When it goes off script, you've got to have enough in that toolbox to know how to adjust. Apologetics works the same way. So I don't know what umbrella it belongs under. I just know it's there, okay. And I need to be able to draw on it.
Joshua Chatraw:
And I would just add to that, to use that tool analogy, I think what sometimes happens is, you can get trained in seminary by someone with a specialty. In other words, they learned how to swing a hammer. And so then everything looks like a nail.
Mikel Del Rosario:
That's right.
Joshua Chatraw:
So everything … Or well, that hammer really worked good for me … Mikel, you had referenced this before. That argument really helped me, and so I'm going to use it on everyone. And so every issue becomes a nail, and this is how we approach it. And seeing … I was using the language of cultural apologetics as … But using the … Recognizing, no, actually we need all of these tools.
So by making that proposal, I'm not saying the classical arguments can't be useful, I'm saying those are tools that we can have in our box. But learning when to pull out which tool, you have to have apologetic virtue. You have to be the right type of person, you have to have wisdom. And that's why we can't just say, "Learn Aquinas' five proofs, and there you go." Because then you're just repeating those proofs that, by the way, weren't formula … Might not play as well to somebody on the street who isn't working with the same … Who doesn't know what the cosmological argument is, or these different kind of big… Or even care.
Darrell Bock:
They can't even spell the word ontology. I mean, it's a little bit like taking a … You ever try to do a Phillip screwdriver when you have a normal screw? It doesn't work. If you use the wrong tool for the situation that's in front of you, it doesn't take you anywhere. And so that's … There's a relational element. What we're saying, probably the most important thing we've been saying all the way through this time. There's a relational element to engagement that you cannot do away with. It's at the center of being effective. And if you approach these conversations without thinking about that relational dimension, you will almost surely misstep.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I like to say that our apologetic engagement, these arguments aren't heard in a vacuum. They're not just an argument sitting there in a book. They're coming from you. And so they're wrapped up in this wrapper of your life, and who you are. And how do we engage with people? How do they see us? Do we stand for-
Darrell Bock:
And you're trying to build a bridge to the other person who may or may not appreciate everything that you're bringing while you're saying it. And so if you haven't built some level of just interpersonal credibility for example, I mean, we haven't even talked about that. The ability where they will trust you.
The thing I often say in dealing with apologetics is, if people don't know you care, they won't care about your critique. I mean, its just something as simple as that. So there are relational bridges that have to be built. So the person will take on a suggestion, "Here, have you thought about this?" Well, if you haven't built a relationship, why should I think about that coming from you? I don't even know you from Adam. I don't sense you care about me, all you care about is making your point. How's that going to be effective? It isn’t.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Yeah. Yeah.
Joshua Chatraw:
Which ties into, again, these evangelistic, or apologetic conversations are now tied into a bigger milieu of, well, just to say it, culture war mentality, or it's an us versus them mentality. So in cultural engagement going wrong is us versus you, cultural war, and then we're coming along and saying, "Oh, yeah, but let me give you the gospel, and let me tell you why you should believe this Jesus guy."
There's a huge disconnect with that. And I think that's why the cultural issues that you guys are discussing on the show, and that we're engaging with at the center here in Raleigh, are relevant also to the evangelistic issue. If we don't care about the oppressed, and the downtrodden, and the poor community, then we're going to lose a lot of credibility to saying, "Hey, let me tell you about Jesus who cares for you." There's going to be a disconnect.
So there is a, as you just said, Mikel, this doesn't happen in a vacuum. These conversations don't happen in a vacuum. And it's why we have to be, as the church, a hospital for sinners, and care for our communities.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Josh, you mentioned earlier, right, this is a sensitive area. And a series of passages I like to draw people's attention to, they're in Isiah 1, Isiah 56, Isaiah 58, Amos 5, Micah 6, I can go to the Sermon on the Mount. They all say basically the same thing, which is God saying to his people, "If you do not care about justice, I do not care about your worship." Which tells me that that, caring about justice, is a pretty important category.
And then I like to point out, all those texts were written long before there was red, blue, or a guy named Marx, okay. And so coming centuries before that. Now, obviously we've got to get into a definition of what justice is, and how the Bible sees it, and all those kinds of questions. But the idea that we care about people made in the image of God, regardless of their nation, regardless of their race, because they're made in the image of God.
If we root our theology in Genesis 1, we are in the conversation that is a race conversation. And we've actually been there since … Where does Genesis 1 begin? In the beginning. Okay. So that automatically should open a door that's to say to Christians, "This is something I should be aware of, and sensitive to, and open about." And then you start your conversations from there.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Mm-hmm. Well, our time is rapidly coming to an end. Josh, I want to just ask you one last question about what you do in the Center. You have the pastoral side experience, and then also in the academic side. How do you see churches and ministry leaders being able to equip Christians better to think about cultural engagement and apologetics? What advice would you give?
Joshua Chatraw:
Yeah, and just so I'm understanding the question, you're saying as far as particularly for leaders as they're walking through this. Yeah.
Mikel Del Rosario:
How can we help our people with this?
Joshua Chatraw:
Yeah, what I tell leaders is, don't see apologetics and cultural engagement as this other thing over here, but tie it into spiritual formation. And what I mean by that is, at the heart of what's going on is, for all of us, we're swimming in this thing called culture. And culture has certain narratives that are shaping and forming us, and certain practices that are shaping and forming us.
And they're forming us, if it's not the Gospel narrative, it's forming us in ways that go away from God. Whether it's achievement culture, meritocracy, or if it's consumerism, or it's sex. And these things that aren't, in and of themselves, bad, but when they're made ultimate, and we get on the narrative that, "Hey, these things are going to ultimately satisfy me." Then even as Christians, these things become God, and they have all these impacts us and our spiritual formation.
And so what I tell leaders is, you need to not just teach people that spiritual formation is about following a bunch of rules, but about who we're worshiping, and seeing how these other kind of narratives and Gods aren't going to deliver. And make sure they see that, and they see that in a myriad of ways in culture, and how they buy into that. And once we do that, once we teach spiritual formation in this way, then we're already, or halfway there. In many ways, we're all the way there, of them being able to turn to the city now, and say, "Oh my goodness, the same things going on with my neighbors."
It's not just that Christians are obviously buying into these false narratives, and these false Gods. It's what our neighbors are doing too. And so being able to do that, to deconstruct, and be self critical is both going to make us humble as we go to our neighbors, and also we've wrestled through these things ourselves, we've seen the dead ends, and we're going to be able to talk to them about those dead ends.
So I actually see these things as something we need to tackle together, not attack on. Like, hey, grow with the Lord, and then go talk to other people about Jesus. But seeing actually, you're going to be equipped to change how people actually change is also how we change is how other people change. The Gospel is for everybody. So that's how I … The vision I want leaders to have for how to approach this.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Yeah, the humility piece is so important. That takes it away for this culture war of, let's fight everyone, to, we're in a spiritual battle actually, and our enemies are not other people, and we demolish arguments, and we get around to that. But not other people. Darrell, I'm going to give you the last word on this. How can churches help people better think about apologetics and cultural engagement?
Darrell Bock:
Well, I think a first step is they need to teach them how to be good listeners, and how to listen and hear things that they may not be comfortable hearing. And then how to respond.
So I mean, a lot of what we've been talking about is this relational dimension of what we're dealing with. There's content for sure. And there's plenty of content out there for people to get their hands around, and get their minds around. That's not a problem.
The place where the church struggles is how to relationally handle that material in a context in which people don't have the categories that we are arguing are very important to possess in order to understand what it is that's being said.
And so the ability to build those bridges, teaching how to build those bridges, and how to think through that, and how to engage, not wall ourself off from hearing that stuff, or thinking about it, but actually learning how to engage it is a very, very important step. And it's challenging, because it's uncomfortable for people. And one thing people don't like is to be uncomfortable. But unfortunately, part of the calling is, I like to say, the great commission is not go into the church and make disciples. The great commission is go into the world and make disciples.
And so that is part of our most fundamental call as people of God, to be engaged with those around us who don't agree with us, and who need what we're offering. And our belief, our deeply held belief is, is that if they will embrace what is that's being offered, God will do a work in their life to really make their life infinitely better. We can never forget that.
Mikel Del Rosario:
That's awesome. Well, thank you, Darrell, and thank you, Josh, for being on the show as well.
Joshua Chatraw:
You bet.
Mikel Del Rosario:
Darrell and I authored a series of articles on dialogical apologetics, and difficult spiritual conversations in Bibliotheca Sacra. We'll link to those in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for joining us today on The Table Podcast. We hope that you will subscribe to the show if you found this helpful. And we hope to see you again next time here on The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to The Table Podcast. For more podcasts like this one, visit dts.edu/thetable. Dallas Theological Seminary. Teach truth, love well.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture, in order to show the relevance of theology to everyday work. I'm Bill Hendricks, the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center. So back in 1943, a psychologist named Abraham Maslow created what came to be called a hierarchy of human needs. And you may have seen the pyramid where at the bottom of those needs is what he called, the physical. People need oxygen, they need food, they need water.
And then on top of that is the need for security, shelter, health, and of course the employment, to be able to pay for those things. Above that is love and belonging, family, friendship, that sort of thing. And then comes self-esteem, which has to do with respect and dignity, and a sense of worth and being oneself, being unique. And at the very top of the pyramid is self-actualization, which has to do with living into one's potential and expressing one's values. And I thought about this pyramid when I came across a blogger who was writing about art. And the title of the blog post was, The World Probably Doesn't Need Your Art.
And he said, "It's not that the world doesn't crave good art, but it absolutely doesn't need it to survive. Because while the purpose of art is to lift us up and enhance the quality of our lives, art itself never creates the inherent quality of life. It only expands on that quality itself." And then he closed with this arresting statement, "The world will survive without good art." And that leads of course to the question, so what do we need art for? Then a further question, why should Christ followers have any particular concern for the arts, and for artists for that matter? Does art, in any way, factor into our faith? Or is it just an add-on, or even just a luxury? Having opened this can of worms, I'm very delighted to have Marissa and Guy Delcambre with us today. They are supremely positioned to be able to speak into some of these issues.
Marissa is the Executive Director for Art House Dallas, which is a Dallas-based nonprofit that serves and supports hundreds of local artists, people in the visual arts, musicians, writers, through artist formation and outreach opportunities. And prior to that, she worked with artists as a marketing rep for Sony Music. She has a degree in business administration, with an emphasis on the music industry, from Dallas Baptist University. And I understand she's an expert in arcade games, and in particular is regarded as something of a Jedi. And I'm going to let you give me the right pronunciation. But this was a game called, depending on your pronunciation, Galaga or Galaga, or Galega, or Gaiyiga. How do you pronounce it?
Marissa Delcambre:
Galaga.
Bill Hendricks:
Galaga.
Marissa Delcambre:
Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
All right. There you have it. You have it from the expert. And Guy is the Associate Pastor of Arts and Pastoral Care, at All Saints Dallas Anglican Church. And he's also the spiritual formation person at Art House Dallas. And he's also an artist in his own right. He's a storyteller, he's a poet, he's a writer. And he's written, in fact a book from his own life experience, on Earth in the sky, "A beautiful collision", as he puts it, of grace and grief. And in that book, he shares his own journey from happy husband to grieving widower, to single dad and victorious believer. And you can find that on guyDelcambre.com. The Delcambres have three daughters and one son, and a dog named Jack, the golden whom Guy claims is his best friend. I don't know what that says about you to have a dog as your best friend, Guy.
Guy Delcambre:
I don't either. He didn't feel like my best friend this morning.
Bill Hendricks:
Anyway, so let me just… I got all these questions that I raised, but before we get into those, I'd like to go back and find out how you even got into working with artists, A little bit about your backgrounds. Marissa, why don't you start, since you're the Executive Director at Art House Dallas?
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah. So thanks for having us.
Bill Hendricks:
You're welcome.
Marissa Delcambre:
I'm excited to be here this morning.
Bill Hendricks:
I am too.
Marissa Delcambre:
So my background, I actually started performing and entertaining at the young age of four. So I was a childhood entertainer. I had thirty-minute sets and I would sing these country music… I'd have these country music performances, and I traveled all over the West Coast. So from the West Coast, I performed at fairs and festivals, and made my way into pageants and music theater, and did that whole kind of child performer space.
Bill Hendricks:
And you wanted to be what? An actress when you grew up?
Marissa Delcambre:
Country singer. Yeah, a country singer. And so I kept performing until I hit the ripe old age of 16. And at 16, I had decided I was done with performing and kind of just said, "That's it. I've had a good career, and I'm done." But what that did was it really infused this space of, how do I stay in music and how do I stay around the arts, but not be on a stage? And so that became a question that I really asked myself for many years, until I ended up finishing my degree here in Dallas, had just come from Seattle and finished my degree here in music business, started working for a record label. Was very immersed in just kind of music industry shows every night, working with record stores, going down to festivals in Austin, really all over the Texas market. And I saw my role as being in this hospitality space to really engage with the musician, and be in conversation about what their life looked like in that calling.
Bill Hendricks:
So you saw them not just as entertainers, but as persons in their own right.
Marissa Delcambre:
That's right. That's right. And so that really became the question of, how do you support the musician? Not for the bottom line, not for the record sales, not for the best song or album. And the accolades and the awards are amazing, and they're affirming, but how do you really support the whole person? And so that question kind of led me to Art House. And we can get into that in a little bit, but really my space started in the music industry.
Bill Hendricks:
That's great.
Guy Delcambre:
I'll just say there was a little in-between there that she left out. After she retired at the ripe old age of 16, there was a pretty hard shift into dyeing her hair black, wearing a white belt, and getting into more aggressive music. So it was kind of her move away from that. And that kind of baptized her into-
Bill Hendricks:
The pendulum swing.
Marissa Delcambre:
That's right. Leave it to your husband to bring up that little space there. But yeah, there was definitely a heavy metal phase that then landed into a more balanced appetite for various genres.
Bill Hendricks:
I take it you're very glad that at that time, the internet isn't what it's become now.
Marissa Delcambre:
Isn't that right? Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
And we have all this evidence online to go back and blackmail you with.
Marissa Delcambre:
That is right. And the amount of times people have asked me, "Hey, how do I see some of those performances from the olden days?" I happily say, "They're locked away in a vault somewhere. So good luck. Good luck."
Bill Hendricks:
So Guy, how about you? How did you get into this whole thing that you were doing?
Guy Delcambre:
My background is pastoral ministry, and when I started working on the book that you had mentioned, I had a friend who introduced me to Art House Dallas. So I had no idea what I was doing. I'd always been a writer, but I'd never embarked on a project quite that ambitious for myself. I came from Denton, and drove down to Lakewood, and it was one of their first gatherings. And Jenny White at the time, now Jenny Green, she was the Executive Director and Marissa was new in the organization. The organization was new.
And that was my movement into creative community, discovering what that was. For me, it was always important because in pastoral ministry, small group ministry was a lot of what my past was. So knowing that I needed to be in community, to find an identity as an artist and not just as a pastor, was very important. I was still involved a little bit in pastoral ministry when I first started, and then full throttle into writing the project. About a year after my involvement in Art House, just as a volunteer, leading a small group of artists in Denton where I still live, they sponsored me to go to an artist weekend over, and I'll pronounce this really well, Laity Lodge. Sometimes when you say it, you're like, "Lady Lodge." And people are like, "That's really strange. What's Lady Lodge?"
Bill Hendricks:
Lady Lodge? Doesn't have a good connotation to it.
Guy Delcambre:
The church, Laity. So Laity Lodge down all the way by nowhere, Leaky, Texas, and it was from there-
Bill Hendricks:
The Hill country.
Guy Delcambre:
The Hill country. So from there, I was pushed even deeper, submerged if you will, baptized if you will, into the identity of artists, and continued, finished out the project. Marissa was there. We took a little… So if you know anything about Laity, it is on the spring head of the Frio River, where it comes out of the ground. So I just asked, I was like, "Hey, do you want to go kayaking?" And we took a little kayak trip and maybe saw some sparks. I was about two years beyond as a single person at that point. And a month later, we had dinner in Dallas back here, and a year later, we got married. I inherited sort of my involvement with Art House Dallas and got married at the same time.
Bill Hendricks:
Pretty good deal.
Guy Delcambre:
Not a bad deal. It's a very giving community to me.
Bill Hendricks:
I have one follow up question. You mentioned from as long as you can remember in a way, you've been drawn toward pastoral ministry. Where did that come from for you?
Guy Delcambre:
Honestly, I don't know. I mean, I always had this disposition in life of helping, just a really raw, primal, just how I was going to always be involved myself or find myself involved in people's lives, friends' lives, whatever. Classmates. And my maternal grandmother, a deeply devout Catholic woman, very quiet, very ordinary, and there was no bifurcation of who she was. It was always just this whole person. And it's not like she stood on that platform, like I'm a wholly integrated person. It just, everything came out of her and-
Bill Hendricks:
It was authentic.
Guy Delcambre:
It was very authentic.
Bill Hendricks:
Very integrated.
Guy Delcambre:
It was always very grounding for me. And I think those two things would end up becoming sort of the little sparks that would drive me toward… I thought it was going to be counseling at first, and the Lord, through friends, clearly revealed or unveiled, no, it is the vocation of pastor, the way you're oriented in the world.
Bill Hendricks:
That's great.
Guy Delcambre:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
So you said you would come back to a question that I was going to ask. Art House Dallas, where did it come from? How did it get going? And I kind of read the mission statement as it were, but what is Art House Dallas in your mind?
Marissa Delcambre:
So Art House, I had come across it in college. My philosophy professor, many people, especially in Dallas, are familiar with him. Davey Noggel.
Bill Hendricks:
Oh man, a legend.
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah. So Davey was my first entrance into this world of Art House. And it was kind of intro to philosophy, so we were going through Os Guinness's, The Call, and started bringing up this conversation of, what is vocation? And Art House Dallas was barely even a thought at this point. So Davey was invited to this kind of introductory party and he couldn't go. And so he came to me as a student and said, "Hey, I want you to take my place. I know you work in the music industry. I think you would really find inspiration here and encouragement here."
Bill Hendricks:
You're there to stand in for Davey Noggel.
Marissa Delcambre:
Right. And so I ended up going, learned about the mission and vision. And how it started in Dallas was very unique, in that it was a Dallas entrepreneur who is not a practicing artist himself, but he sees his life most impacted by the arts. So great films, would read lyrics to his children instead of books at bedtime, great albums and bands. And so, his life had been so impacted by the arts that he wanted to create a structure or a system in Dallas, a community where artists don't feel like they have to go to LA and New York, and Nashville, where they feel like they have the support and the resourcing they need here. That Dallas based entrepreneur, Brad, he was friends with Charlie and Andy. They're our founders.
So Charlie Peacock and Andy Ashworth. So decades ago, in 1991, they were living in Nashville, pretty new to the area, and came across this turn-of-the-century, old Methodist church that had been built in the early-nineteen-hundreds. Decided… They call it following the breadcrumbs. And had decided that this may be the venture, there is something that is drawing them into this space. So long story short, they were able to purchase this old church that had been functioning as a home. And over the years, ended up starting with a Bible study that became an artist's retreat, that became theologians and songwriters, and really culture makers coming into the space to speak on what does it mean to live faithfully into your vocation.
Bill Hendricks:
So it grew into a colony in a way.
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah, a strong community. And some of these questions that were being asked, we would call them conversations of consequence. They were artists and creatives that maybe at one time, your only real option was to go work in a church. And they were asking questions like, well, what if I want to go tour? And what if I want to write music that is language that the whole world can hear, not just the Sunday service? And so they were asking these questions and the Art House became this place where they could just have an open dialogue and feel that comfort in that community. So Charlie and Andy did that for about 30 years in Nashville. Dallas launched about 14 years ago. And then we have one other location in St. Paul, Minnesota, run by a recording artist named Sarah Groves.
Bill Hendricks:
Okay.
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
I've heard of Sarah. So just to make a distinction there, I'd love to hear what y'all have to say. Art House Nashville, and now Art House Dallas, in St. Paul, you're working with people who… Not all of them, but many of them, they're artists who happen to be Christians, but they don't style themselves as Christian artists. Is that…
Marissa Delcambre:
That's right.
Bill Hendricks:
Would that be a fair statement?
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah, I do think that's a fair statement. I think that some artists might identify as Christian artists, and there is a theological work that goes into how they would name themselves, but largely, we are working with the creative space or the creative person who says, "I want to just be faithful to where I feel I'm called." And vocationally, that is within the arts.
Bill Hendricks:
Gotcha. Because the term Christian gets used so much in so many different ways, you would know with a marketing background, it's become a marketing term. It's become a demographic term. It's now a political category term, and not always in a positive way. And of course, whenever we get into this conversation, I always just point out, well, the word Christian started out as a noun. And then somewhere along the way, it became an adjective. In my judgment, we need to get it back to a noun. We need to talk about people who follow Christ. That's what it originally referred to, not just, oh, I'm in this particular industry, or I put these particular words in, or I have these particular motivations for what I do, so that makes me a Christian lawyer or a Christian doctor, or Christian artist, or whatever.
Guy Delcambre:
Yeah, yeah. It's quite unfortunate that it becomes a descriptor. And at Art House, I think all the way from the beginning, there was an intentional parsing out or an intentional distinction, to say Christian artists would connotate something that would be, in people's minds, may be contrived, too resolved immediately. It doesn't leave room for mystery, ambiguity or the inexplicable things. I mean the things that we couldn't possibly know about God. And maybe more importantly, we literally just wanted art to be good art, to be good and honest, like your transcendentals, your truth, your goodness, and your beauty. We wanted art to embody that first, and not to have to filter itself through a value. Because there's so many… Like you alluded to, I mean, who knows what people mean when they say Christian now. I mean, it's just kind of all over the road. So the idea at Art House that we invite people in, and I mean it's reflected in how the organization organizes itself.
It is very focused on community formation and outreach, and the community is bringing artists together. So it's just wide open. It's a pub gathering. I mean, it's bringing artists in a very safe feeling place to come and meet other artists. From there, there are discipline-specific tracks. Marissa can speak much clearer than I can about it. But there are discipline-specific tracks that are focused on artist formation or craft development. The development of them as artists, songwriters, poets, filmmakers or whatnot.
And then there's outreach where we're wanting to send those artists, give them the opportunity to go in underserved parts of the city and integrate in other nonprofits. And then we will help them build art workshops to where they're working with kids mostly, who don't have access. And then we do spiritual formation. And that part is explicitly of a Christian theological value. And if a person… I mean, I've been in writing groups of people that are atheists, that are agnostic, Jewish, I mean just like secular Jews, just all sorts of things. And we've done collaborative projects together, and they embody good values. And that's good art. I mean, it's good communication, good expression.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that's just a great segue into the question I sort of began with, that this guy's blog post kind of raised. It's an age-old question, what is art? And then another age-old question right with that is, what's the purpose of art?
Guy Delcambre:
I mean, art is… Saying it's the language of beauty I think is really good. It's an engagement of the imagination, which is probably a good starting point for considering what art is. Because there certainly is bad art. I mean, not everything that is creatively done is considered good. Like a poem, for example. You take a poem, and a poem that is so obscure and so esoteric, and so disconnected, I wouldn't consider that good art at all. I mean, it's just like a word salad, if you will. It's just really fancy words perhaps. But a good poem is like a good story. It's got characters. It's communicating something very clearly, and perhaps it's making you squint into the small pinhole of a fence to see a whole other world. But it's certainly bringing you into a world like a story does, right? It's got a purposefulness to it. It's got some definition around it. It doesn't need to be a clean sonnet or anything like that.
But you can tell good art by, I think the communicative value of that, even if that's a painting or… I mean, we hold onto good songs because of what they do to us, how they move us, and what they communicate into us. But I would say the purpose of art is really just to allow people to continue to engage with the imagination. And especially in modernity, postmodernity and post-postmodernity even, you would get reason and logic as king. Well, you can't have reason without the imagination.
I mean, the imagination certainly informs reason, and then reason informs the will. And you look at those as either a linear movement or a triadic relationship, but all of those are dependent upon one another. So you can't just completely suck out the imagination and live in some sort of mechanical world of reason and logic, because then you begin to suck out the humanity of it. Art brings us back into the place that reminds us we're actually sacred humans. We're part of a larger cosmos. It causes us to wonder, it causes us to look outside of ourselves.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, when I hear those… Very eloquent Guy. When I hear those assertions, art starts to take on this almost religious feel, or conceptually, it takes on kind of a religious tone, if you will, ethos. And so, then I look back through history and I go, "Huh, that's interesting, because in some places, art and religion, art and faith anyway, they live together." I mean, you take the Renaissance, some of these sculptures, some of these paintings, some of the works, the cathedrals. I mean, it's like, "Wow. Art, faith, it's co-mingled." And then of course at the other extreme, you have periods in certainly church history, and if we went back to Jewish history in the Old Testament, places where, thou shall make no graven image. And so like, oh boy, I guess we can't have any painting that depicts God in some way, if that's what that means. And of course churches, at different points in time, have not been exactly friendly toward artists.
Guy Delcambre:
Yeah, that's right.
Bill Hendricks:
And so, what accounts for this sort of uneasy, fragile relationship?
Guy Delcambre:
I'm not going to be as ambitious to try to tackle all of history, but I will point out, what you see in history as it relates to the church… Like icons, for example. So icons would be viewed as windows to see through into the transcendent world, to see God. A person in the ancient world would not worship the icon. They were just looking at God through something. But then you had the iconoclasts, who needed to do that away for the very reason, the commandment that you quoted.
And there's always been this tenuous relationship, but there is a sacramental value to art that allows us to see outside of our own predicament, our own circumstance, and causes us to wonder. Beauty does the exact same thing. I mean, if you have sat on the side of a hill and looked at a mountainside, I mean, you can't help but be raptured out of the mundaneness or the ordinariness of your life, and consider something much larger. You see majesty, you see something majestic in front of you. I think there's been dark periods of art and faith, to where obviously it has devolved into propaganda, and it had been used in those manipulative type ways. But I think the relationship is one that makes a lot of sense, in that art has the ability to pull us out and bring us into a point of awe and wonder, and worship. And in that way, it serves as windows into the divine.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. You used earlier the beautiful image of looking through the pinhole to see a broader sort of dimension. And no matter what kind of theological guardrails you put in place to say, "Art? No." Art just pops back up somewhere. Maybe not inside of a house of worship, but it's like ping pong balls, trying to hold them under the water. They keep popping up. And art just keeps… If I can't do it in a community of faith, I'll do it somewhere.
Guy Delcambre:
Yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, even with our young, twenty-month-old child, I mean, we use music, we use pictures, we use things to help him engage in the world now. I mean, he's got a little index of words that he's using. He's certainly not thinking rationally, but he's able to engage with pictures and sounds, and songs, and those things are beginning to help develop his imagination, and develop his way in the world. For the same reason, a song can speak to us and rescue us out of our moment, bring us back to a point of strength in our lives, or lift our eyes and see outside of our own selves.
I think that's something within the Art House as a whole, that we're constantly inviting artists to come in and to explore is, what do you feel as though you want to communicate? Or who are you? We would start at an identity point first, who are you? And how does that expression… What does your voice sound like? Whether you're singing a song or your voice in a painting, and what does that begin to do? We look at that as communicating to the common good of the city we live in. And that being an inspirational element within our city, within the landscape of Dallas, to point people… People, not just Christians, just people, to the truth, goodness and beauty.
And whether that helps you imagine being a better neighbor, imagine being a better citizen, imagine being maybe not so grumpy in traffic, whatever it looks like. But murals inspire us. Some buildings inspire us. Churches…
Bill Hendricks:
Can inspire us.
Guy Delcambre:
Can inspire us.
Bill Hendricks:
And have inspired us.
Guy Delcambre:
Yes, yes.
Bill Hendricks:
So I know the word support factors heavily into the work of Art House Dallas, and I guess it raises the question, what is it about artists that they need support? I mean, there's all kinds of occupations out there, and they have their associations and their clubs, and so forth, but it sounds like artists need something a little bit, either more or different. What is it about creating art that…
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah. I mean, I think that whenever we approach, what does it look like to be a community, or serve the needs of maybe somebody that's more creatively bent, that first approach is hospitality. No matter where you fall on that spectrum of beginner to very professional, everybody is looking for that invitation in, and everybody is looking for that place to belong. And I think that is kind of how we set the tone for everything we're doing. So an example of that might be, Guy had mentioned community formation, and then we kind of this ideal streamlined space of community to formation, to outreach. And the community space is if maybe you're a beginner and it's your first time exploring what does it look like to maybe not call myself an artist yet, but I am interested in this space. We want to provide a welcoming, invitational, warm space for somebody to ask questions and to listen, and to be around other people that have maybe stayed the course a lot longer.
And so it kind of starts with just that hospitality. I do think just at that core, we all have the desire to belong. So you talk about other professions and vocations, those associations are inviting people to belong, right? I mean, we're all desiring of that. So really that's kind of the starting point. And when you say support, man, that can take on so many different things. From there, I would say maybe you're more in the intermediate space and the support you're needing is business structure. Maybe you've never considered, what would it look like to develop a business out of what I'm making, what I'm putting into the world?
So maybe you need someone to come alongside you and help you write a business plan, or to consider, could you make a financial living off of what this is, what this medium is? And then from there, patronage. Right? I mean, patronage has always followed the artist, historically speaking. And so the artist always needs patronage. So I think there are many ways that you could talk about support. And then kind of undergirding all the work that we do is what we would call spiritual formation, asking these two very direct questions. Being, who are you in the world? And how are you in the world? And everything we do is operating out of those two questions of, are you cohesive? What is your interior looking like? And how is that coming out of you? We try to provide opportunities to engage all along the way, from community to the more practical support, to the spiritual formation and support.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, man, there's a whole nest of things to look into deeper there. I want to go back though to that piece about working with the so-called beginner. Okay? I just want to say something to the listener. You yourself may feel like you've got some creative juices, creative talent, you play the piano once in a while, or your guitar, or you write poems like Guy does, and you're thinking, "Yeah. Well, I don't write them like Guy does, man. I just scratch things down. I don't know if it's good or not." And there's a lot of people, Marissa, that I think they're kind of scared to even let anybody know that they do this. It's like, they do it at home. They're almost embarrassed by it. But they find a sense of joy in doing it. And so they think, "Well, I guess this is just my little thing to do on my own. Nobody else is really going to take any interest in this." Do you find a lot of people like that?
Marissa Delcambre:
Absolutely. Yeah. So I would say the first thing is to recognize where you find joy. Right?
Bill Hendricks:
Oh, yes.
Marissa Delcambre:
And what brings… Where are you passionate? I would ask those two questions to start. The amount of people that come into Art House where it's their first time, they maybe aren't ready to call themselves an artist.
Bill Hendricks:
Because it sounds too pretentious for them.
Marissa Delcambre:
Pretentious or… I think there's a lot of ambiguity around that. What does it mean to be an artist? Because that looks so different given the discipline, given the culture we live in now. Artist is very… In our mind, we talk about artists as a very broad statement, from the performing artist to the writer, and everything in between, we're describing artists. So I think there's not just one slim definition for that.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I'm guessing that both of you have this experience that I have all the time, because as you know, I do a lot of work in giftedness, which is getting down to that who are you piece. And I listen to all the stories the person says, which is really the evidence of what brings them joy. And they're struggling. And I'll just say, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't you realize? You're an artist. You have the soul of an artist." And it's like a new thought that they've never really allowed themselves to have. I'm guessing you do that a lot, not even at Art House Dallas, but just in the community. You meet somebody, you talk with them, and you go, "You need to know about Art House Dallas because I think you'd find your tribe there."
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean the amount of people that come in with reservation, because they're not sure how to name that or identify that. But I think that's also why we start with that place of hospitality.
Bill Hendricks:
You got to feel safe and welcome.
Marissa Delcambre:
You have to feel safe. And it is a vulnerable space. Anytime we're identifying something that is very close to who we are, and that really taps into the interior, it is going to be-
Bill Hendricks:
You're putting yourself out there.
Marissa Delcambre:
It's very daunting. Yeah. And so, I think when people come in and they're invited, and they feel like they have a place to belong, they realize-
Bill Hendricks:
And I'm not the only one.
Marissa Delcambre:
They realize they're not alone. And I think whether it's at a song critique or a writing workshop, so many artists, even the most professional artists will come in with nerves, and sometimes feeling like they have doubts or insecurities. That journey, it's not just marked on one person. It's a shared experience. And so, the amount of times we meet that person is very common. I mean, Guy can speak to this because long before Guy and I were married, he mentioned this artist retreat we went to. And I remember sitting down at lunch, at one of the lunches during this artist retreat, and I overheard Guy, it was us. I don't even remember who we were talking to, but I remember Guy saying, "Oh yeah, I'm in sales." When they had asked what he did for a living.
Guy Delcambre:
Yeah, it was ridiculous. I mean, you're in this enchanted place like Laity Lodge, and it's an artist retreat. And this artist organization sponsored me as an artist to go to it. And I had not published anything yet. It's daunting to call yourself a writer. I certainly would never have identified as an artist at that point. And we're sitting there, and people had written songs, people had carved wood, whatever, just a whole gang of artists of different disciplines. And Marissa heard me, and this is where you get the strength that she's always brought in the organization. So I'm there, and they're like, "What do you do?" And I'm like, "Literally, I'm in sales right now. I was a pastor. I was a church planner, and now I'm just doing a job." And everybody kind of turned like, "Oh, that's interesting and super weird." And just kind of kept talking.
Bill Hendricks:
What's he doing here?
Guy Delcambre:
Yeah. Like, why are you here? Or they're probably thinking like, "Wow, maybe he's a patron." So Marissa leans over after a while and she's like, "Hey, just to remind you, we sponsored you to come here as an artist. You're a writer. We really believe in you." And I'm like, "Okay." I mean, it didn't really sink into the bones yet. And that's the thing, it's almost like that message at Art House just kept, like a tide, just kept washing over me, just continued to wash over me. And I'm like, "Yeah, okay. I think I am a writer." And everybody around me are like, "Well, no joke. You've been writing."
Bill Hendricks:
It's okay to say that about yourself.
Guy Delcambre:
Yeah, you just write. I mean, you're not claiming to be anything else. That's what you're doing. And I can't tell you how many times, when I first help started the writing programming at Art House, so many people were coming out of the woodworks and they were like, "I mean, I'm not really a writer." I was like, "You literally just brought a chapter out of a book that you're working on. That's a writer." "Well, I haven't published anything." "Well, here's the thing. Nobody affirms you. The industry doesn't affirm you as an artist." You had mentioned this before, it's an intrinsic giftedness that is inside of you, and you need to fan that flame.
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah. And I also do think it takes somebody outside of maybe your spouse or your kids, or your parents, to name that in you as well.
Guy Delcambre:
Definitely.
Marissa Delcambre:
And I think the naming of that, right? God names creation.
Bill Hendricks:
It affirms the-
Marissa Delcambre:
Absolutely.
Bill Hendricks:
Existence of that thing.
Marissa Delcambre:
And I think when somebody can recognize that in you, and call it out of you and name that, it just gives a different platform, a different identity space, a different recognition of what that is.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and of course, part of the problem, much of the problem here is, in our culture, we take these occupational titles and mix up our identities with them. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, salesmen, homemakers, et cetera. And that's not who we are. Those are occupations, those are roles. And who we are, our being, our personhood, is a different matter. And when you use a word like artist, it can kind of be both. But not all artists are paid artists, probably the majority aren't.
Marissa Delcambre:
Right.
Guy Delcambre:
We have a word for that. And sometimes people will more easily identify with being a creative. Okay. So you're a creative. Literally, it's how you are in the world. You could be an accountant who's writing stories. That's a creative. Because not all accountants just sit there and write stories. So you have creative, you have an artist, a true artist, maybe they're getting paid or maybe that's all they're doing, devoting themselves into, and they're fully living into that. And then you have obviously the patron sort of in that ecosystem, that allows especially the artists to rise. And that's a lot of the good work that Art House does, brings patrons, creatives, and artists into the same rooms together, to experience things, to share of local art that's being made, to expose that. And there are patrons that fund projects. There are patrons that come up and fund programs that Art House is doing because they really believe in it. Like the Art of Business Program, people come and like, "I really believe in that." I mean, most artists have no plan of business. I mean, most artists would be like-
Bill Hendricks:
Don't think in those terms.
Guy Delcambre:
"I'm not going to want to think like that, because don't cramp my style type thing." And it's like, "Yeah, yeah. But you want to be doing this in five years, and 20 years. So you need some stability."
Bill Hendricks:
You need a plan for that.
Guy Delcambre:
Yeah. You need a plan toward that.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I never really thought about it, Guy, until you talked about it, but patrons are expressing a form of generosity to artists.
Guy Delcambre:
Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
And not just money generosity, but the generosity of their interest, of their vote of confidence, of their affirmation of the art, of their critique. I mean, it could come in many ways. But we're back to community. It's not only a community of artists that you're trying to pull in, it's… The patrons may not come to Art House Dallas functions and stuff, but they may come to some, but they still are part of that ecosystem you're trying to have.
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah. And it's an exchange. I mean, when we are thinking about how to platform something or introduce something to the public, we're considering the audience, the patrons' experience with the storyteller, whoever that is. Right? And everybody is a storyteller, the painter, the writer, the songwriter, the actor, they're all telling a story through their work. So we're always trying to consider, and help the artist consider, what story, what am I sharing with my audience? And how do I make this a mutual exchange that's beneficial? Because both are supporting one another in this ecosystem.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Well, let me ask a question about one particular group of people that could be patrons. And just real quick, just churches. Aside from churches in Dallas going to artists, "Oh, you should check out Art House Dallas", what could churches do to help artists that they encounter, both in their congregation and in the community?
Guy Delcambre:
Yeah. So I can tell you what we do at All Saints. So Art House and All Saints have hopefully the blessing of both of us being involved on both. So they get double-ended on both sides. But how we think about it locally as a church is, it's very important for the church to affirm the artists who are members of that church. There's one thing, you don't want to outsource that to an organization, a para-organization of any kind. We probably have 30 artists within the All Saints congregation. And so, part of my role is to develop community in the locality of that membership, to affirm that, to create a gallery and allow them to present work. I mean, as a clergyman, it's very important that the aesthetic value of beauty and art is rising to a theological value insulator, if you will. To where what we're learning intellectually with our minds, what we're experiencing through prayer and through community, it's also being echoed back and insulated by the art within the space.
I mean, that's not going to happen with an external agency of any kind. But we're also not going to create a bunch of programs. So that's when we refer out artists to belong to the Art House community. I mean, because this is what Art House is doing. But most churches don't have an arts pastor or something like that.
Bill Hendricks:
Very few would.
Guy Delcambre:
Very few. Right? So the easiest thing would be, first of all, just get to know your people. Affirm the artists that are there. I mean, recognize that most of the scripture you're pulling from, all of it has a literary form. Most of it in the Old Testament is actually poetry. So just recognize these things, and then refer them out to Art House Dallas. Art House has two programs that can be completely white labeled for any local church. One is Origin, the Spiritual Formation Program.
There's literally a series reader that comes with it every year. So we have two gatherings. An opening session this year will be Malcolm Ghite, and the closing session will be David Taylor. Those are huge, heavy hitters in this part of thinking of art and theology. And then in the in-between, there are discussion groups. A church can literally take those and partner with us, maybe fund part of the program, buy the booklets for themselves, and then organize their artists into discussion groups. The other one would be the outreach program, Deploy. We do that actually with a local church around the Bachman Lake area. And they really want to work with issues right around Bachman Lake. So we help them mobilize artists from their locality, and give them art workshops that we've done in the past. And we kind of function as consulting voices for them. And we're just empowering them to do that on their own.
Bill Hendricks:
That's fantastic.
Guy Delcambre:
So it's very, very easy programs that the team has created.
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah. I mean, I would say, with that in mind, knowing that most churches don't have that arts pastor, and likely most churches are not going to start some type of ministry around that. But I do think it's very approachable in what Guy's saying of, recognize who your congregation is, and then from there, what locally do you have available to you? And with that in mind, we have created so many things to be evergreen and to be a resource for the church.
Bill Hendricks:
That's great.
Marissa Delcambre:
So you find what that is. Maybe it's not Art House, maybe it's another arts organization, but they're out there and they're doing it.
Guy Delcambre:
It should be Art House.
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah. I mean, it should. Come to Art House. Yeah, we have all the programming and resourcing. But whatever that is locally, I think there are so many opportunities to partner together, to work together, and to increase impact, and to recognize that so many artists feel alone in that space, and feel isolated in that space. And without that community, they're not going to be able to keep growing in whatever maybe that joy is, or the thing they're doing at home.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, if the church should be interested in ministering to anybody, it's the isolated and lonely. I mean, that's kind of what we're called to.
Guy Delcambre:
That's right.
Bill Hendricks:
I got two final questions real quick, but they're tough questions. I started with this quote from the blogger, "The world will survive without good art." Do you think that's true?
Marissa Delcambre:
I would say no. I've often asked friends and people in the community to imagine a world without the things that inspire us, that bring us joy in every day, that wake us up in the morning, that we're excited about the following day. The songs we listen to, the books we read, the films we watch. Can you imagine a world without those things?
Bill Hendricks:
I don't know if I want to imagine that.
Marissa Delcambre:
That's right. That's right. And I think when we start to actually consider what that looks like, it's a very lonely, dark place. Because the beauty that we see every day is because people have been bold and have put that work into the world. So no, I can't imagine surviving in that world.
Bill Hendricks:
I mean, the world will survive without good art. I guess it gets down to what do you mean by survive?
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah, what type of survival?
Bill Hendricks:
There's different kinds of death.
Guy Delcambre:
There's no chance humanity survives without art. Not a chance in the world. Because this is just general revelation knowledge. I mean, a person would understand, okay, so there's something bigger than what's created now. So there's a creator. And from that creator, you have this value of creativity, of making. Right? Tolkien had coined the phrase, sub-creators. So we're all sub-creators, the artists in this world. Molding the material that had been created already. But I mean, there's no chance, because we're not machines, there's no chance the human soul, the human psyche, survives without stories that helps it understand and grapple with the terror of this life sometimes, with the inexplicable things, with the darkness that's around us. Not a chance in the world. If we were machines, that might be another world. Right? Machines could survive without it-
Bill Hendricks:
Scary.
Guy Delcambre:
But humans can't.
Bill Hendricks:
All right. One last question, and it flows out of this. Artists can't survive without what? Artists can't survive without what?
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah. I mean, I think what I had mentioned earlier. I mean, they can't survive without support, without community, without a place to belong. I mean, they can continue creating, but without that spurring on and without that refining of the work, and without knowing they're not alone, they typically will not continue. There will be kind of a burnout place or a stopping place without that.
Bill Hendricks:
Or they go crazy.
Marissa Delcambre:
Or they go crazy, which we've seen over and over again.
Guy Delcambre:
Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. A sense of belonging. I mean, artists will never survive. Because an artist will never know themselves without belonging.
Bill Hendricks:
Humans are social creatures.
Guy Delcambre:
Yeah. You learn yourself through other people. And I'll just say, artists will also not survive without money. I'm just going to plug that real quick. Artists need-
Bill Hendricks:
Wait a minute. She's supposed to be-
Marissa Delcambre:
I know.
Guy Delcambre:
Artists need to be supported. Sometimes that happens through a patron commissioning a project, but then also patrons supporting an organization like Art House. And I said it in jest earlier, there are numerous other organizations that are working in local arts here in Dallas, that are superb. And even if it's buying a ticket to go watch a show, just support the local arts on whatever way you can. And I think that provides a good ecosystem, if you will, for an artist to be able to thrive in. Because people are recognizing, oh, I appreciate going to the ballet or going to watch a concert, or going to watch a show. Here's a local artist, I want to support them as well. It's very, very important. Very important to the local soul of where you live.
Bill Hendricks:
The soul of the community.
Guy Delcambre:
Definitely.
Marissa Delcambre:
Well, right. And it doesn't keep growing and thriving-
Bill Hendricks:
If you don't have-
Marissa Delcambre:
Without the patronage.
Bill Hendricks:
Exactly.
Marissa Delcambre:
So like I mentioned, buy the ticket to the show. Go see the art show.
Bill Hendricks:
It's an investment.
Marissa Delcambre:
Go to the gallery. Without that, we don't have the thriving, robust art scene that we all want in our city.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, our time has past gone, but I just want to thank y'all so much for being a part of the table today. Thank you very much.
Marissa Delcambre:
Yeah, thank you.
Guy Delcambre:
Glad to be here.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, we'll have to have you back. And I want to thank you, listener, for listening to The Table Podcast. And if you've enjoyed this conversation today, then head on over to Apple Podcast or whatever your favorite outlet is, your app, and subscribe, so that you'll never miss an episode. And frankly, we'd be thrilled if you'd leave a rating or review, on Apple Podcasts, especially five stars. That actually helps us find more people who can be exposed to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture, in order to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. Thanks for being with us. We'll see you next time on The Table.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and my guest today is Vladimir Pikman, who is a longtime friend. We've been co-laborers in ministry at Chosen People Ministries, where he serves as the European director. Would that be the correct… What's the exact correct title?
Vladimir Pikman:
Oh, there is no title. I'm just Vladimir, just I'm serving. It's difficult with titles there.
Darrell Bock:
He's not going to go there, but he helps oversee the European operation at Chosen People Ministries, among other things. He also is serving and in the process of introducing a program here in Jewish studies. And so, our topic today is the relationship of the Bible to its Jewish background, it's Jewish context, as well as why someone might be interested in studying in an area that's entitled Jewish studies in a seminary context. So with that, it's the really quick introduction. I could say a lot more, and he knows that, about Vladimir and his family who… I watched him raise his kids. Let's just dive in. First question I always ask someone who's a guest is, how did a nice guy like you get into a deal like this? Talk about how you came to the Lord and why your interest in Jewish ministries?
Vladimir Pikman:
I was born and raised in the former Soviet Union in Kiev, Ukraine, as the third generation of the Jewish atheists. So, nobody in my family believed in God, even through the third generation, although I didn't know anybody who was not Jewish in my extended family. So, everybody was Jewish and everybody was an atheist. In the Soviet Union, that was probably the way to go for Jewish people to survive.
Darrell Bock:
Atheists are common in the former Soviet Union?
Vladimir Pikman:
Very much so, and not just common, it was imposed and it was bad enough for us to be Jewish. Nobody wanted more troubles by believing in God or something like this. So, I grew up experiencing much antisemitism as a teenager and then in my early student years. The Soviet Union, as I was a student, began to collapse and the doors went open for the Jewish people to immigrate and I became very strong Zionist and moved to Israel.
And in Israel, I had my first encounter with God at the Wailing Wall in the old city of Jerusalem, so-called also Western Wall. I came there for the first time and I was so impressed by the idea that I reached the destination as a Zionist, as a Jew who was longing to be in Israel among other Jewish people in safety, without any antisemitism. It was the feeling like I reached the destination, and then I remember I came to the wall, I put my hand on the wall, and I believed in God. It was like electricity struck me. So, God became very real to me, but not Jesus at that time, just the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Darrell Bock:
That's a good starting place.
Vladimir Pikman:
Absolutely, and then a couple months later, I was crazy enough to ask God for his guidance and direction for my life, also using the Wailing Wall, again, a note with my question to God.
Darrell Bock:
Anyone who goes there and knows what you're talking about.
Vladimir Pikman:
So, the next day he sent me back to Ukraine, as I thought only for a year to finish my university. I didn't like the idea, but I promised him that I will obey in my question and that I will never complain about this. Well, I broke my promise regarding complaining, big deal. On the way-
Darrell Bock:
You launched into the psalter, you lamented the direction injustice of God and then relied on him anyway.
Vladimir Pikman:
Well, I wouldn't describe it that way back then, but it's just like it's bad. Anyway, there was no direct connection between Israel and Ukraine or Kiev at that time. There was still Soviet Union and Israel and there were no diplomatic relationship. So, my journey was normally to Cyprus, from Cyprus fly to Moscow, and then train to Kiev, something like this. On the ship from Haifa to Cyprus at night, two men approached me like backpackers asked what language I speak the best. I said Russian, and they gave me the New Testament in Russian language. And for me it was just like, "What? I'm Jewish. The New Testament is not for me. It's like the book for Gentiles and maybe antisemitic book, but not the Jewish book." I didn't know at that time that it's a bestseller of Jewish literature, written by Jewish people, and written to the Jewish people. But anyway, I loved books so much that I couldn't say no to a book, so I took it just because it was a book. I might say if it would be a Quran, I would take it as well just-
Darrell Bock:
Out of the curiosity.
Vladimir Pikman:
Right, I just love books. It's more than curiosity, I love books, and that was, I would say sort of like a hint in a certain direction. I looked through the New Testament trying to find out how the Jewish people might live at that time. So for whatever reason, considering the book to be for the Gentiles, I still consider that as possible hint to Jewish history of that time. As I came back to Kiev, I met my old Jewish friend who meanwhile became a believer in Jesus in a very conservative evangelical type of church. He started talking to me about Jesus like, "You are a sinner. You go to hell, believe in Jesus, otherwise you're toast," something like that. I didn't like the message, and also I didn't like the idea that I should believe in Jesus. I'm Jewish and Jesus is not for me. I told him, "You got crazy, but I will never believe in Jesus because I'm Jewish."
And he was arguing his cause and I was refusing that. At the same time, I was jealous. His life sort of changed in the way I was missing in my life. For example, he was confident, forgiving, peaceful, sort of… He enjoyed his life and I was just anxious about many things, nervous. Can you imagine, as I had to make… I was in trouble. I was going to him telling, "Would you pray to your Jesus that your Jesus would help me with this problem?" I didn't like this. I tried to convince him that he's wrong, for him to be the same miserable as I am. Well, probably I'm exaggerating, but anyway-
Darrell Bock:
You need to be miserable. That was your message?
Vladimir Pikman:
Exactly, and I was jealous. I envied him to some extent, and I couldn't believe like he did at that time, so why not to convince him that he believes wrong? At least we're on the same page then, and I was reading through the Old Testament, Hebrew Bible, but at that time it was in Russian. I didn't know… Well, my Hebrew was not sufficient to read it in Hebrew at that time, but still I was consulting different Jewish literature and materials that he gave to me. And one year later I lost this competition because I could see that Jesus is the promised Messiah from the Bible, but I couldn't make my decision to follow him because I was concerned, what will other Jewish people say? My parents and friends, and I saw that there are only two Jewish men who consider Jesus to be the Messiah, my crazy friend and I, and only three months later, God put me in a situation, I needed him.
And for the first time in my life, I knew that I'm a sinner. I knew that everybody is a sinner, except me. I considered myself a Jewish angel, never killed anybody, never committed any crime or something like that, so pride and joy of my parents, probably more pride than joy, but anyway, at that time I suddenly saw that I am in trouble because everything what was good in me, it was sort of like hypocrisy, trying to please for others to think good about me.
And I never committed anything like crime, not because I was good, but because I was afraid of the consequences. I felt like filthy of all this, and I remember that night at home, I was on my knees praying to God in the name of Yeshua, Jesus, for me to be forgiven. And it was not important for me any longer what will other Jewish people say. I remember that after that prayer, my life changed radically, and it included my profession, it included what I'm doing in my life, my passions. So, instantly on the very next day, I got immersed into the ministry, to the Jew first and also to everybody else, and I'm immersed in this ministry 30 years later.
Darrell Bock:
You ended up connecting to Chosen People where you served for a very, very long time.
Vladimir Pikman:
The connection was the very next day after this prayer at night, I came to a messianic congregation in Kiev that was planned by Chosen People Ministries that's the beginning of the story
Darrell Bock:
That's where the connection-
Vladimir Pikman:
And then I went for training and then I joined and ministered with them for a number of years.
Darrell Bock:
A couple of decades, right?
Vladimir Pikman:
Mm-hmm.
Darrell Bock:
So, how'd you end up connected to the Jewish studies program here at Dallas?
Vladimir Pikman:
Well, Jewish studies… No, first how I got connected to Dallas Theological Seminary through a professor of Dallas Theological Seminary, Dr. Darrell Bock actually. After 10 years in full-time ministry after planting several congregations, starting ministry in several countries, I decided to take a sabbatical and it seemed to be a good idea to do it as ThM in Dallas Theological Seminary. So I came, both of us, my wife and I were graduated-
Darrell Bock:
And your two very, very little children.
Vladimir Pikman:
We came with little daughters that were semi adopted, and so we both graduated 2006, moved back to Germany… Our ministry base in Germany
Darrell Bock:
So, your wife took the program here as well?
Vladimir Pikman:
Yes, I graduated with ThM and she graduated with MABL, Bible of Jesus and linguistics, yes.
Darrell Bock:
And then eventually we started to invite you back to address the Jewish background of the Bible, et cetera, and that has grown into Jewish studies, so talk about that part of the story.
Vladimir Pikman:
Yes, absolutely. 2014, we came here for a sabbatical, again, as a missionary in residence with, at that time, old missions department. And I was overwhelmed by the interest and relevance of everything related to Jewish studies, Jewish background, and Jewish people here on campus in Dallas, on theological seminary. I was absolutely impressed, so I couldn't walk 10 steps from campus back then without anybody starting talking to me, asking questions, interacting on that. So, it became evident to me, as well as to the leadership of Dallas Theological Seminary, that it's a right moment and season to start Jewish studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. Besides, my passion since many years was to offer a degree in Jewish studies in Europe, particularly in Germany, to strengthen the messianic movement and Jewish outreach there. And we started a school called Messianic Jewish Theological Academy, and our two schools, Dallas Theological Seminary and the academy in Germany, we offer this degree together here in US, but also in Europe.
Darrell Bock:
So, one piece of the puzzle that we haven't specified for people, so they can connect the dots is you currently serve as the leading rabbi of a messianic congregation in Berlin.
Vladimir Pikman:
Mm-hmm.
Darrell Bock:
And you've been doing that now what, for more than 10 years?
Vladimir Pikman:
Well, I am founding senior rabbi of that congregation. We started this congregation, 1995.
Darrell Bock:
So, that's 28 years now.
Vladimir Pikman:
I feel mature.
Darrell Bock:
You're still young.
Vladimir Pikman:
Yeah, right.
Darrell Bock:
So, let's talk about Jewish studies and Jewish studies background, but I want to pick up one strand of what you said before we do that, and that is you talked about experiencing antisemitism. Most people don't understand antisemitism. So, could you talk a little bit about what that is and what that looks like?
Vladimir Pikman:
Antisemitism is when people feel, think, or assume something negative about Jewish people as people. So you are Jewish, there is something wrong with you. You are different than I am and I don't like you, and then there are tons of conspiracy theories, what Jewish people do and how they control the world and stuff, and from the medieval period, from the centuries and centuries Jewish people are surrounded by different accusations of doing wrong and it leads to a negative attitude toward Jewish people. Sometimes it's related to what people say or think. Sometimes it comes to physical violence, depending in what country and culture.
Darrell Bock:
So when you experienced this, you sensed that the moment someone found out you were Jewish, there was a reaction in a pushing away basically?
Vladimir Pikman:
Oh, as other children in my class, in the school, they found out that I'm Jewish… And being Jewish was clearly ethnic, at the time. It has nothing to do with religion, but it was written in all our paperwork, like everywhere, first name, middle name, father's name, date of birth, ethnicity, there were Russians, Ukrainians, all possible, and Jewish or Hebrew. And as the children in my class saw that, oh, I got in trouble. So they were telling me, "Go away to your Israel." They were saying names and words, bad words about me, just I was even sometimes beaten as a Jew. Again, it has nothing to do with Jewish observance, with Judaism, with religion. It was just because I was ethnically Jewish. I belong to the people of Israel.
Darrell Bock:
And so, you weren't one of them?
Vladimir Pikman:
Yes, right. Then later in churches, I found out that there is another type of anti-Jewish sentiment that I would call probably anti-Jewish. Not anti-Judaism, but some people antisemitic, some can be anti-Jewish. They don't mind Jewish people, everything is fine with them, but everything Jewish is sort of like-
Darrell Bock:
A problem.
Vladimir Pikman:
A problem, bad, sort of like anti-Jesus or whatever in Christian churches sometimes.
Darrell Bock:
And this probably manifests itself most obviously in the assumption that everything about Judaism rotates around legalism that we should not embrace, as opposed to thinking through what it meant, what the role that the law had played in Judaism, because God gave the law to the Jewish people.
Vladimir Pikman:
It's probably one part of the reason, but also Christianity, when we take the Bible, it's like for us and suddenly there are Jewish people, there are some things that we don't understand and we don't want to practice or whatever, and it's naturally probably to oppose to that.
Darrell Bock:
So, the Jewish studies program is designed to help people understand actually to one degree, one, to understand the Jewish people and understand the nature of Jewish ethnicity and faith, I put them both together. And then the second element is to appreciate how immersed in a Jewish background and context the claim that Jesus is the Messiah, not just of people in general, but particularly of Israel and what that means. So, talk about what you hope to accomplish, what the goals are in a Jewish studies program. Why should a good, Protestant evangelical seminary, you know what I'm going to ask, have a Jewish studies program?
Vladimir Pikman:
That's an excellent question. There are so many reasons. One reason, God cares for the Jewish people, never abandoned Jewish people, and I bless those who bless you, and actually to care for the Jewish people, it's something what brings blessing and what Jesus would do, actually.
Darrell Bock:
So, you're alluding to obviously Genesis 12:3.
Vladimir Pikman:
Genesis 12:3.
Darrell Bock:
and the Abrahamic covenant.
Vladimir Pikman:
Right, but it's also what Jesus would do because he cared for the Jewish people-
Darrell Bock:
Well, he was Jewish.
Vladimir Pikman:
Exactly, we'll get there, but as I did… I spoke in chapel at DTS before COVID. The topic was A Tiny Minority with a Great Significance because that's the Jewish people, and it's good that Dallas Seminary have this program. Besides, the theology of Dallas Theological Seminary sees very clearly the future of Israel, not just the past, but also the future and even embracing the current present importance of the Jewish people, so it's a perfect fit actually. It's long overdue to have it at Dallas Theological Seminary, also coming to theology in all possible theologies, Jesus is Jewish. Everybody knows that, but it's not just history, it's relevant. Jesus, as we say, he's 100% divine and he's 100% Jewish. Seriously, I just think of this, we are saved by Jewish blood, not just by blood of Jesus, whether it's very general, we're saved by Jewish blood because his blood was Jewish blood.
Darrell Bock:
Well, and again, back to Genesis 12:3, it's through your seed that the world is going to be blessed.
Vladimir Pikman:
Absolutely, so Jesus is 100% Jewish by flesh and it should be relevant. His humanity matters for our life, otherwise, what's the point? And his Jewish humanity, so his Jewishness is not to separate from his humanity.
Darrell Bock:
It's part of the story.
Vladimir Pikman:
Exactly, so the New Testament, I would say it's a very Jewish book. It's more Jewish than the Old Testament even, talking rabbinically Jewish because we see sort of resemblance between the New Testament and I would say a little bit later, rabbinic tradition, but still the kind of thinking, even the kind of jokes of fun, making fun is the same. It's very important in order to understand the Bible, not just the Old Testament, but even primarily the New Testament, it's important to have Jewish studies and understand the Jewish people.
Another thing, the gospel or the salvation is the good news for the Jews first, not just first. It's the good news for the Jews, in a sense. If you take the Jewish part of the gospel away, there is no gospel actually. Jesus came to restore the people of Israel, it was he what we see in the prophets, by taking their sin away and also with assumption or just with this theological idea and life idea that the restoration of Israel means the redemption for the whole world. It goes together. We now live in a different time, but still, the end result is the full restoration of Israel and restoration of the world. What I mean just regarding the gospel, the church needs to acknowledge and understand that the gospel is in its essence, the good news for the Jews of Israel's restoration. If you take it out, you will never get the full story of the redemption or the full story of why Jesus came. It's like a bagel. The gospel is a bagel, there is a hole in it.
Darrell Bock:
So, think about it this way, this is a way of elaborating the point that you're making. In Ephesians 2, or in Ephesians 3, take your pick, there is the idea that the reconciliation that God has brought into the world involves Jews and Gentiles. If you don't have Jews in there, you don't have the reconciliation. That's part of the program that God has in mind, and that's an explication of why God comes and saves by his grace. It comes right after 2:1-10 in which we have what I call the Protestant creed, "Salvation is by faith through grace, not of works lest anyone should boast." And actually, that's the theme of Romans. The point of Romans 1-3 is to say, here's why Gentiles need the gospel, that's chapter one, here's why Jewish people need the gospel, that's chapter two, "For all of sin and fall short of the glory of God," that's the beginning of chapter three, and Jesus is the answer, that's the end of chapter three.
Vladimir Pikman:
And in chapter 11, he says that if their rejection is such a blessing for the Gentiles, how much more… He's talking about Jewish people, how much more will be their full restoration or full redemption-
Darrell Bock:
Looking to the future, right?
Vladimir Pikman:
Exactly, as the life from the dead. So, actually the ultimate goal of God in this plan, and the plan related to the gospel and Jesus' salvific work is to restore Israel, and it's like life from the dead for the world.
Darrell Bock:
And that restoration of Israel completes the corporate reconciliation that God is also in the business of doing through Jesus. Sometimes we think about salvation strictly in individualistic terms, but now we're thinking it in corporate terms.
Vladimir Pikman:
Exactly.
Darrell Bock:
And I don't get that full restoration, and just think about this for a second, I can't have shalom unless it exists between people. So, if I think about it strictly individually, I'm cutting off one of the most important results of what salvation is supposed to bring, and that's shalom and reconciliation between peoples who are formerly estranged.
Vladimir Pikman:
Right, and that's something what also very deep in a Jewish mindset, what Christian in the Western world should learn, salvation is not just about you, it's about you, but not just, it's about us. It includes… The Catholic Church say that… Simplifying, there is no salvation outside the church. It all depends what church they mean. I might disagree with that, but according to the Bible, you are saved as a part of the body, so the corporate and individual goes together.
Darrell Bock:
You're safe to go into the body and become a part of the body and interact with people-
Vladimir Pikman:
Exactly.
Darrell Bock:
… Minister-
Vladimir Pikman:
With other words, there is no safe person outside of the body.
Darrell Bock:
Yep, fair enough, so that's the background. We're recording during the High Holidays. So, let's talk a little bit about some features of Judaism that people perhaps may not be familiar with, but that are important to understanding one, Jewish people and two, in some cases some things that are going on in the Bible. So, let's start with the High Holidays. Talk about the High Holidays and why it's important to a Jewish person.
Vladimir Pikman:
Well, we just talked about corporate, about the group, about the people as a whole. The holidays according to the Torah and what we see in the Bible, they are special appointments of God with people. I personally can meet with God any day, any time, any second, particularly through Yeshua, Jesus, because of his sacrifice for my sin. But as the people, as the nation, we meet with God, and those are called the times of appointments for the holy convocation, we meet with God in a certain times that he ordained for that. So God, he's not bounded by the time, but he created time and calendar for us to celebrate it.
Darrell Bock:
So, Jewish people have a sacred calendar, and this is something they do corporately as a community together because they're observing it together at the same time with a sense of an awareness that that's going on. So, what are the special times within what we call the holy days or the High Holidays?
Vladimir Pikman:
Well, special times, just if you… I would recommend everybody who works, read for example, Leviticus chapter 23. It's all described there. It starts with Passover, then the early first fruit when Jesus rose from the dead actually, I believe so, and then Shavuot, Pentecost, and then for the full High Holidays, including Feast of Trumpets, also known as Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and then Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles.
Darrell Bock:
So, those three holidays are congregated together, and so-
Vladimir Pikman:
There are three pilgrimage holidays according to the Torah, it's Passover, it's Shavuot, and it's Sukkot.
Darrell Bock:
So a difficult question perhaps, but more or less, what time of year are we talking about for these holidays?
Vladimir Pikman:
Spring and fall.
Darrell Bock:
So which goes to which, I'm trying to draw a map for people.
Vladimir Pikman:
Passover and Pentecost, Shavuot, are in the fall, are in the-
Darrell Bock:
Spring.
Vladimir Pikman:
… In the spring, sorry, and then Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot in the fall. In between, there are also some feasts that are not directly mentioned in the Torah as God's appointed times, but I would consider them biblical. One of them is Purim. It's the book of Esther, as it's described there, and another is the Feast of Hanukkah. It's not in the normal conventional Hebrew Bible or Protestant Bible-
Darrell Bock:
Because it came later.
Vladimir Pikman:
Well, because it's in the book of Maccabees, but what we know, Jesus celebrated it. That's why I say that it's fully biblical because in John chapter 10, verse 22, we read about this feast and Jesus was speaking to something… Preaching at this-
Darrell Bock:
I tell people, Hanukkah's a very important holiday because it represents the victory of the Israelite people at a time when Antiochus Epiphanes was trying to wipe Judaism off the face of the earth, and had they lost that war, we wouldn't have had Judaism.
Vladimir Pikman:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
So, they're celebrating really their preservation in many ways. Actually, what's interesting is Purim does the same kind of thing. It's a feast that celebrates the preservation of the Jewish people in a period of high persecution. We were talking about antisemitism earlier. It's been around for a long time. So, some of these feasts are celebrating the activity or the provision of God. First fruits is probably a celebration to the provision of God, some of them provide the spiritual provision of God, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which is a very special day observed normally with a fast is another key holiday, and then we've got these feasts that really celebrate the fact that God has been with us and protected us and preserved us even in the midst of extreme opposition in the world.
Vladimir Pikman:
Yes, and all these feasts, I would say they're spiritual, they're also physical, but spiritual and physical goes hand-in-hand, and I would say all the holidays, they relate to God salvific activity, in the people of Israel, and as result in the whole world. Hanukah, as you rightly mentioned, it's salvation from assimilation, so from dispersing and full destruction of the Jewish people in culturally, faith wise, religion wise. Purim is more about bodily destruction of the Jewish people, they should be killed, but also other feasts like Passover, exodus from Egypt, and Shavuot, giving the Torah.
And then the Feast of Trumpets, the provision of God in the desert and his great signs, and then the Yom Kippur, the atonement that God was doing for people not to die in the desert entirely, for us to have future. And the Feast of Tabernacles, that is actually was pointing at the God's provision in the desert. He sheltered us there, but when we see the cycle of this feast, it's like coming back constantly. For example, Jesus died as a Passover lamb for us to have the Exodus, the spirit of God came on the feast of Pentecost, Shavuot. We believe that God will gather us to himself, that instead of the judgment, there will be atonement for the Jewish people in the future, and Sukkot represents the kingdom to come, but also Hanukkah, we see Hanukkah also in Matthew chapter 28, and Jesus was talking about the future. He was referring to the events of Hanukkah. So, there is another Hanukkah coming in the future. Hanukkah has a prophetic significance, each feast does.
Darrell Bock:
So, why would someone be interested in Jewish studies? Why should someone be interested? We started talking about why you have the program, but why should someone… I guess maybe the way to ask this question is, why should a Gentile be interested in Jewish studies? I could see why a messianic believer might be interested in Jewish studies, that seems transparent to me, but why would a gentile be interested or should be interested in Jewish studies
Vladimir Pikman:
Based upon what I mentioned previously. First, you will know Jesus better, you will know the gospel better, you can understand the Bible better, and you will know God better. In what way? God never abandoned the Jewish people and he is working in the Jewish history. I don't believe that he stepped out of this history. He was navigating them before Jesus' event. He was navigating them toward first coming of the Messiah, and now in the last 2,000 years, he's navigating them using different historic events, but also using rabbis. I'm not talking of God's inspired like the scripture, but he's navigating and preparing the people for the second coming of the Messiah. We can understand God and his plan better when we study even the Jewish history and Jewish theology and in making how it was made. We're learning how God is functioning through and he's chosen people Israel. So, I think it's relevant for us to understand God better, Jesus better, the gospel better, the Bible better. If it's not enough advantages, I can keep going.
Darrell Bock:
That's at least a few.
Vladimir Pikman:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
So if someone comes to do Jewish studies here, what are the types of things they're going to be studying, what's in the program?
Vladimir Pikman:
In the program itself, you will study through the entire Bible, you will take all the Bible exposition classes. So, you will start with Genesis through Revelation. You will be proficient and professional in theology, particularly even in Christian theology, because you will take all the systematic theology classes. You will-
Darrell Bock:
So, it has the core master's program in it?
Vladimir Pikman:
Yes, the core master program, you will get the best of that. You will be proficient to read the Bible in Hebrew because it's like four semesters of Hebrew, and you can take electives in Jewish studies from the pool of more than 20 different electives, according to your specific area of professional ministry or life goals and desires or areas of interest. And so, you will be professionally equipped to live and minister not just among Jewish people, but among also other nations. Understanding what I mentioned, Jesus, the gospel, God, and the Bible betters through the Jewish perspective.
Darrell Bock:
So without naming all the 20 options that exist, what kinds of courses are in that pool? In other words, I guess I could say, doing all the Bible and doing all the theology, every DTS student does that.
Vladimir Pikman:
Mm-hmm.
Darrell Bock:
So, that's something that's shared across the board, whether you're in Jewish studies or not. What makes Jewish studies, Jewish studies? And by that I mean, what are the kinds of courses that you're taking in that elective pool?
Vladimir Pikman:
Great question. For example, ministry in Jewish context to learn how Jewish people actually… How it works, just to understand the Jewish context better. It's like overview-
Darrell Bock:
How they see their origin, et cetera.
Vladimir Pikman:
It's like overview from the history through religious practices, apologetic methods of how to talk, so all it's overarching, and then it goes to more specific with different classes like Jewish history or rabbinic literature and how it functions, not just you list the books, you learn how the rabbis created their theology. It's fascinating. I don't mean that you need to embrace it, but at least you can understand how it functions, it's enriching, or the history of relationship of the church and Judaism, the messianic movement, the messianic prophecies, Second Temple Judaism, traditional Jewish lifestyles, including how to share Messiahs through Jewish traditions or how to see the Messiahs through Jewish traditions and holy days. I can keep going. It's like everything what you might find helpful, important, and relevant in real realm of Jewish studies, we offer that.
Darrell Bock:
And so, the hope is that you're better equipped to minister to the Jewish community, to reach out to the Jewish community, to understand the Jewish community, and to engage in ministry that is supportive of reaching out to Jewish people. Is that one of the goals?
Vladimir Pikman:
Absolutely, it's one of the goals, and I would say I'm passionate to see Jewish people coming home to their Messiah, to our Messiah, Yeshua, Jesus. And that's probably my first goal that I personally would see, but also, as I said, you will know God, Jesus, the gospel, and the Bible better. So, it's enriching spiritually. It helps to come to more maturity. That's why besides offering degree, we offer a number of seminars, Brownbags and Seders at Dallas Theological Seminary for everybody. It doesn't matter what program and what degree he or she is pursuing to learn, to get enriched, to grow in the spiritual maturity through enlarging this horizon of understanding how God works with the Jewish people and through the Jewish-
Darrell Bock:
So, you used a term that maybe some people don't know, it's the term Seder. Talk about what a Seder is.
Vladimir Pikman:
Seder means order, that's approximately what Jesus did with his disciples, what is called Lord's supper. It's supper, and that's what we do. We show how Jesus might do that and we celebrate it with him.
Darrell Bock:
So the Seder is… How can I say this? It's the liturgy that comes with the Passover meal, would that be a way to say it?
Vladimir Pikman:
Yes, it's what we tell when we go out of Egypt every year during the Passover season.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, I had one other question. What was it? So, I often say when it comes to understanding the Bible, that the Bible is loaded with what I call cultural scripts. These cultural scripts, many of them are Jewish. They are rooted in Judaism, and if you don't understand what the cultural script is that's being evoked, you'll miss something in the passage that's going on. And so, one of my favorites is the healing of the paralytic where Jesus says directly to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven," and he isn't performing Yom Kippur, he's not in the temple, and there's no sacrifice. He's just simply declaring, "Your sins are forgiven." And the theologians in the audience… And theologians in the audience of the gospels are interesting because sometimes even though they don't believe some of what they're saying, they're making the right point, say, "Only God forgives sins," which frames the entire event that, how is it that Jesus as a human being could have the authority to do something only God can do? That's the cultural script that's wrapped up in the passage.
Vladimir Pikman:
Right.
Darrell Bock:
If you don't know that, then you don't know that Jesus' action isn't an example of a prophet saying something for God, but he's exercising his own authority as one with divine authority, which of course is the point he makes. "You might know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. I say to you," the paralytic, "Get up and walk." So, that's an example of cultural script. So, that's an example of the kind of thing of how the Bible is opened up by understanding Jewish backgrounds?
Vladimir Pikman:
Well, yes, it's important. I need to humbly tell that if somebody doesn't know the Jewish background, still he or she can be saved.
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Vladimir Pikman:
Even to understand the main messages from the Bible.
Darrell Bock:
Fair enough.
Vladimir Pikman:
But it's so much fun, joy to study the Bible, to do this discovery, what in Judaism is called uncovering what is concealed, so revealing something. It's covered, but we just uncover it and we look deeper and deeper.
Darrell Bock:
My metaphor for this, and it depends on what era you belong to, I guess, so I'll do this for the over 50s and under 50s, the over 50-year-olds, you just say, "It's like going from black and white to color pictures." And for under 50s, "It's like going from 320 to 4K."
Vladimir Pikman:
So, it's just like we need the background for us to go deeper into the Bible.
Darrell Bock:
To see all the nuances and all the shades of what is happening.
Vladimir Pikman:
Listen, and if you don't know that, it's so much joy to study the Bible deeper, and yes, we do need the Jewish background of that time.
Darrell Bock:
Now, I forgot to ask a pretty basic question, which is, how long is the program designed for?
Vladimir Pikman:
It's 74 credit hours.
Darrell Bock:
Notice he answered that by hours and not how many years it would take to do it.
Vladimir Pikman:
Well, because it depends. Well, if you are really, full-time student, it's 15 hours a semester. So it's what, two and a half years?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Vladimir Pikman:
Otherwise, if you take less, take your time, but there are some limits in time. I don't know, seven or eight years, I don't know.
Darrell Bock:
You have to do it within eight years, I think.
Vladimir Pikman:
You see? So from two years and a half, through eight years, something in this window.
Darrell Bock:
Very good. Well, Vladi, I thank you for coming in and talking Jewish studies with us and the Jewish background. It was certainly fascinating to hear your story. Actually, some of this I heard for the first time myself, which is interesting. And so, we wish you well with the program here at Dallas, and we thank you for the ministry that you have with us and for your taking the time to be with us here.
Vladimir Pikman:
Thank you, and come and join Dallas Seminary. Take advantage of this program and the seminars that we're doing. Hope to see you on campus or online.
Darrell Bock:
And we thank you for being a part of The Table, and we hope you'll join us again soon. If you're interested in more episodes of The Table, you can find them at voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast and we'll be glad to have your presence. We hope to see you again soon.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for The Hendricks Center and executive director of Cultural Engagement for The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas.
And today, our subject is the situation in Israel. And I have two prominent guests who live in the land. I first of all want to thank them during the time difference that they're having to endure because of when we're recording this. And They are Pastor Saleem Shalash, who is founder and senior pastor of the Home of Jesus The King Church in Nazareth, who has a bachelor's degree from Bethlehem Bible College and two master's degrees from Israeli College of the Bible, and who did doctoral studies in Los Angeles. He has been studying the impact of the Arab-Israeli conflict on Israeli theology during this time. This is part of his focus. Saleem, welcome to The Table.
Saleem Shalash:
Thank you. It's an honor to be with you all.
Darrell Bock:
And Golan Broshi, who since 2010 has been serving as professor at ONE FOR ISRAEL Bible College, which is the same as Israel College of the Bible, one and the same teaching Old and New Testaments, Biblical Hebrew, introduction to Rabbinic Traditions and Second Temple Literature. The reason that alternative name for the school, ONE FOR ISRAEL, is important, Golan, is because you're trying to make a point about who this Bible college ministers to. And it ministers to an array of people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds in Israel. Is that right? And Golan, thank you for being with us.
Golan Broshi:
It's my pleasure. Yes, yes, this is one of our goals in ONE FOR ISRAEL to unite people from every ethnic group, especially Arab and Jews, under the banner of Yeshua, the Messiah. This is what we do, this is who we are in ONE FOR ISRAEL. Yes.
Darrell Bock:
Now as we turn our attention to what's going on now, and one of the reasons we asked you all to discuss this is because you bring to the discussion this ethnic mix that we're concerned about as we think about the region. And my basic question is this, what I hear from people coming from the Middle East and particularly out of Israel, is that October 7th changed everything in terms of the way people see the region. So can you give us a little before and after? Describe generally the situation, what it was like before and why October 7th has been such a turning point, such a change point for the way people are seeing? And thus where we are after? And I'm going to ask Saleem to lead us off.
Saleem Shalash:
Well, it's a very historical day for us now. It's very hard what we passed on the 7th of October. It was for me a demonic terror attack. It's not defense of country or try to fight a war because this is not a war. War is fighting soldiers in front of soldiers, army in front of army. But what we saw is killing children, innocent people, killing women, raping them. A lot of videos that really most of these videos is not published because it's very sensitive. It's not usual videos that I can't imagine that people could do something like that. And having time to film what happened in the 7th of October.
So from that day on, our church was focusing, all the purpose of Home of Jesus The King Church is a reconciliation between Arab and Jews. And what we are trying to do is building bridges. That the reason that we call ourselves bridge builders or peacemakers. And on this day we felt that the devil is attacking us as a ministry with all the bridges that we try to build. And we can see a lot of things God is doing in this country that people don't expect what is happening or don't understand what is happening in this historical days. We are living historical days that a lot of raw prophets wish to see what is going today between Arab and Jews. And that is not what in media is interested to show all over the world. They just show the negative thing that is happening.
But I want to tell you that a lot of things God is doing in the land of Israel, of reconciliation between Arab and Jews, building new relation between Messianic believers and Arab pastors working together. And ICB College Israeli College of the Bible, ONE FOR ISRAEL change all my life. And it was because at the beginning we were 12 Arab pastors and 12 Jewish pastors in the same master. And at the beginning, if people would like to know who I am, I grew with a lot of hatred for Israel and the nation of Israel. But God, in one night he changed everything through the story of Luke 15 about the eldest son and the prodigal son. I can't share it because I need just 45 minutes for this story, but God changed all my life and he changed all my thoughts.
And I believe that if God put me in Israel for a reason, the world changed a lot of things. The situation was meeting people. It was very hard to fix all the bridges that was attacked by the devil. Secondly, the church is busy with helping a lot of evacuated families, helping a lot of people that were attacked, not just physically, also mentally, it was very difficult period. And we felt that the church was silent on Holocaust time and we felt that we are not going to be silent. We're going to share the love of Yeshua everywhere by showing the love of Yeshua. Sometimes words doesn't help but taking an action, helping these families, visiting them, blessing them, showing them that we can live together, that's help us.
And I will tell you a very important thing that really people don't understand because I'm not talking from a political situation, I'm talking from a spiritual one, biblical concept, that God is opening a lot of doors for us as an Arab to be witnesses for the Jews. And after the 7th of October, God is opening a lot of doors, visiting a lot of families. And to show them the evacuated families come both ties, from north and from south. And they were in our hotels here in Nazareth. To visit them as an Arab pastor, that is something not taken for granted. They were shocked how an Arab pastor is coming? He's not afraid to fight with him? No, it was the spirit of the Lord there. And we feel that blessing them. We come to show them the love of Yeshua and that the only weapon that we have.
7th of October until today, it's not done yet, we are busy every day Home of Jesus The King Church with our humanitarian aid center, that God is blessing us every day. Accepting these families. Now we have a lot of Jewish families coming to our humanitarian aid center after the 7th of October because many were hurt financially, so they are searching for help. They're coming to us. Can you imagine Jewish coming Arab for help and our blessing Jewish? That's people and the media is not interested to hear and to publish.
But really if you want to see the truth and understand what is going in the land of Israel, don't listen to media. You know when they ask in the Bible, "Can something good come out of Nazareth?" Jesus said, "Don't listen to media. Just come and see." And I say to people, if you want to know the truth, come and see what God is doing after the 7th of October, and before even. And I do believe that the future is waiting for us for a lot of work. So we decided at Home of Jesus The King Church, to create new generation that is empty of hatred, empty of poisoned ideas, empty of planning just to fight for war, just to work for the good, for every one of us.
And I can share from today until three days continually 24/7, about testimonies that God is doing in the land of Israel and from expected place Israel, that people don't expect anything going to happen, especially with wrong tools like Arab and Jews, wrong timings of war and wrong location, the land of Israel, I do believe that revival will start from Jerusalem to all over the world. So it's time to work. It's not time to win discussions. It's time to win souls to Jesus.
Golan Broshi:
Amen.
Darrell Bock:
Golan, your take on how October 7th changed things in the before and after?
Golan Broshi:
Yeah. Well, I relate to everything that Brother Saleem said. And Brother Saleem is modest, so I will say he's one of the biggest lovers and defender of Israel because he loves the God of Israel.
Darrell Bock, with your permission, if I can share a story. In ONE FOR ISRAEL Bible College, we have a course that is called Theological Trends. And for three years now, we invite Saleem because in that one of the trends that we teach the students is about replacement theology. And what we do, we invite at least two people to defend each side. So we invite a professor to speak for replacement theology and we invite a professor to speak against replacement theology. So we have a Jewish guy that we invite to speak in front of the students, but the Jewish guy speaks for replacement theology. And we invite Brother Saleem for three years now, and Brother Saleem is speaking against replacement theology. So I just want you, Darrell, to imagine the students in the classroom when they see an Arab Christian guy with an Arab accent and they don't know what to expect and he opens his mouth defending Israel, defending the plan that God has for Israel. Can you imagine the faces on the students when they hear him?
Darrell Bock:
That's interesting. Obviously in conversations about replacement theology and the idea that the church has replaced Israel in the plan of God and that Israel doesn't have a future in the plan of God. And I like to tell people, because when I talk to people who hold a replacement theology, the way they will frame it will be to say, we aren't teaching replacement theology. We're simply saying that Christ is the fulfillment. And by the way, the name Yeshua, for our listeners, is a way of talking about Jesus as the Messiah, as the Messiah.
Anyway, they will say, "We believe that Jesus is the fulfillment and the spiritual blessing only comes through Jesus Christ." Which of course is totally correct. But then I follow up by saying, "So what does the Fulfiller have to say about Israel? What did he teach?" Well, he taught things like, "Your house is desolate until you say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Or, "Jerusalem is going to be trampled over until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." I call him the until passages. Or, "Heaven must hold Jesus until the restoration comes." This is Peter who sat at Jesus's feet and says, "Until the restoration comes," and you can read about that restoration in the prophets of old.
So the point is if you want to know what's coming in relationship to the program of God, the Fulfiller himself in whom the spiritual blessings reside says there's a place for Israel in the program of God. There's a place for Israel in what's going on. And there is a future for the Israeli people and they have not dropped out of God's sight as a result of the coming of Jesus Christ and everything that's associated with that.
So there's a way of dealing with a point that they're making that has an aspect of truth in it, and it certainly is part of the key. No blessing comes to anyone except through Jesus Christ. That's why we preach Yeshua. But on the other hand, that doesn't mean that because the Gentiles have been included and the promises expanded into Gentiles that Israel has been cast out or we've lost sight of Israel in the program and plan of God as a result. No, that hasn't happened at all. Israel is still a part of the program. And you go to Romans 9 to 11 where you're talking about natural and unnatural branches and Paul says, well, God grafted in unnatural branches into the vine. He's quite capable of grafting in natural branches as well. And so this also holds out the idea of a hope for those who don't believe, those who Paul described as, "I weep and wish I myself could be crucified so that they would believe. And so that tells you there's an ongoing role for Israel in the program of God. And that-
Golan Broshi:
And by the way-
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead, Golan.
Golan Broshi:
… by the way, Dr. Bock, I think Brother Saleem with his ministry, especially after the 7th of October, after the war began with Brother Saleem's ministry feeding Jewish people. Can you imagine the way he provoked Jewish people to jealousy for the Messiah? He's taking the mandate that Paul gave the church to bring the Jewish people back to their Messiah through jealousy. So Brother Saleem is in the front, praise the Lord. It's a pleasure to run for Israel to get to know him.
Darrell Bock:
And you produce jealousy by caring for people, imagine that. We have a brand here in the United States that has what they call secret sauce that they put on what they feed you. That's the secret sauce of the way God works, is that when we show love and when we serve the city, to use Jeremiah's language, we actually draw people and bring credit to God the Father as a result.
Golan Broshi:
Can you imagine the impact that Brother Saleem has on Israelis, on Jewish Israelis serving them in the name of Yeshua the Messiah that they haven't heard for 2000 years? Yeshua, this name back to Israel after 2000 years in Hebrew.
Saleem Shalash:
Amen. Amen. And if you allow me to add Dr. Bock.
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead. Yes.
Saleem Shalash:
When I finished my thesis, I go with replacement theology because I served inside the Catholic Church for five years. When God revealed to me the biblical truth, I finished my thesis with two questions. One, why Israel still exists? A lot of empires disappeared. The Romans empire disappeared. The Babylon empire disappeared. Crusaders empire disappeared. And this small nation still exists. Why? It's not because who they are, it's because who God is. If God promised, he keeps his promises, otherwise, I would have problem with this God that if I do believe that he replaced the church instead of the Jews, soon he will change his mind and replace the church with something else. And I can't say no because basically I do believe with the idea that he don't keep his promises.
Secondly, why God rejected his people? And always the answer because they disobey God. So my next question come directly, are we better today? It's called the grace. No one deserves it. That's called the grace. And that's the reason. And I do believe when God blesses someone, he never curse again. When he blesses the nation of Israel, look around you, 12 million Jews all over the world. They received 84 Nobel Prize. Can you imagine that? It's not once again because of who they are, it's because the blessings of the Lord. And with their disobedience, that's what Romans 9, 10 and 11 talk about, with their disobedience, we received the grace. Can you imagine what going to happen when they obey God?
And I just want to tell you, to share with you a really quick testimony that we were visiting… Our church, we give food packages and in our food packages we wrote in three languages, Arabic, Hebrew and English, "Jesus, He went about doing good. Go and do likewise." We visited a widow woman, a Holocaust survivor. I still remember the number on her hand. And when I get in, she looked at me and she said, "Are you Arab?" And I said, "Yes ma'am" She said, "How come?" I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "How come or a visit Jewish and give them food? We are enemy." I said, "No we are not." She said, "How?" I said, "Because of your Messiah." She said, "My Messiah? He didn't come yet." I said, "Oh my God, they didn't tell you that He already came." And she said, "I don't believe in your New Testament."
I said, "I'm not talking about my New Testament. Give me your Bible." I took the TANAK, took her Bible and I start to read from Isaiah 53, jumped to Psalms 22, Proverb 30 and Jeremiah, because in the book of Jeremiah chapter four and chapter 31, he's mentioning the word watchman in your Bible. But biblically he's using the word notzrim. And notzrim, if you want to translate it to the real meaning, mean Christians. And already Jeremiah's prophesying about our days what is happening. And her eyes was open, she said, "So I was deceived for 80 years?" I said, no, "But I'm just showing you the real savior. It's your scriptures, it's your Messiah." And she said, "How can I accept Him as a savior?" I said, "Do like me, repent, ask forgiveness. Ask him to get you in your heart and believe in him." And she did that.
So what I'm saying that are we going to be blessings and shining in these darkness days or we just want to win discussions and to show that we are right and they are wrong? Now we are chosen, they are not, what kind of selfish it is? I didn't see that in Jesus' life.
Darrell Bock:
Yes.
Saleem Shalash:
Even it's very hard days, He just showed the love. He was blessing everyone that He's meeting. We're trying to read the same in this period.
Darrell Bock:
It's interesting in the way you're tying it to the Old Testament's important. I tell people when I get the rationale that says, "Well Israel's been disobedient, so she's been in effect disqualified." I say, are you reading the prophets carefully enough? In the book of Jeremiah, Israel is disobedient and yet God promises he still will keep His commitments even despite the disobedience. And so the little purchase of land in Anatov that Jeremiah was told to undertake is a sample and an example of that very thing. We're disobedient, yet you're asking me to buy land here? Yes, because I'm going to keep my promises. It's a matter of God's faithfulness in doing this.
Now, in saying this, let's talk about the plight of the Palestinians for a second because I think you all will have insight into this that's important. What do people need to understand about the plight and the suffering that Palestinians are going through? And I say that not just because it's all over the media, but also because there is a real human cost to what's happening. So Golan, I'll start with you on that one. What do you have to say to us about-
Golan Broshi:
Yeah, that's a great question. Shortly I'll just say that there's two kind of hostages in Gaza. There's the Jewish-Israeli hostages that were taking in the 7th of October. That's one kind of host hostages. But there are other kind of hostages, and that's the Arabs that are under the Hamas, the occupation of Hamas. And I pray to God that through a miracle we would liberate both hostages, the Israeli hostages that were taken by Hamas and the people of Gaza that suffered under the Hamas, the hostages that suffered under the occupation of Hamas that took the Gaza Strip by storm.
Darrell Bock:
So when you speak of the occupation of Hamas, let's just talk about Hamas for a second. They are not willing to recognize that Israel's presence in the land should take place. They want Israel to be removed from the Middle East. They also commandeer, if I can say it that way, the property and people in the Gaza and store weapons, etc., in these locations, attack from these locations. I've heard stories of people who are told, if you do not respond positively to the request Hamas makes of using your property, then your house gets burned down or destroyed as a result. That kind of thing.
So I tell people when this gets portrayed as Israel versus the Palestinians and it gets set up that way, that they're actually ignoring a third party in the conversation. And that's Hamas. With everyone who is supporting Hamas, a segment of radical and… how can I say this? Jihadist segment of the Muslim community that is supporting Hamas, etc. And the hard part is that many Palestinians view Hamas as their defender as opposed to their occupier. And so you've got that problem. And I tell people this is such a layered complex situation. Hamas is using Palestinians as shields to protect them. They don't care about, this was on CNN here in the United States where Hamas leaders were saying these are martyrs, they're sacrificing themselves on behalf of the cause. Even if they don't want to be in that position, they are seeing them that way. All those factors. Saleem, am I leaving anything out? As I talk about what Hamas represents in the region?
Saleem Shalash:
Really just a few days ago we celebrate Purim. Purim is Haman decided to defeat Israel. And today Hamas decided to defeat Israel. We need to understand what's going there. You know I'm Arab. I'm not Jewish that trying to defense Israel. I'm Arab just sharing the truth. And if you ask me if I'm going to live there, I'm not going to live under this kind of terrorist organization. This terrorist organization that received a lot of money. And all of this money goes to build tunnels to kill and to kidnap and to free us from occupation. I'm not coming here to discuss which occupation it is about, we are talking about biblical concept, but I'm talking about all this money from Oslo agreement until today the PA authority received $32 billion. That mean 15 times double what the European economy received after the World War two in the Marshall plan. Look for Europe and look for Gaza where all this money goes,
This conflict is about business. It's not about… Using a human shield. This people that they are suffering, the Palestinian themselves, and we can hear and see a lot of movies that's Hamas their own people because they are coming to take food to survive this war. Can you imagine building 500 kilometers of tunnels? One mile of tunnel could build one school, the cost. So imagine, Gaza could be the Riviera of the Middle East. Look for Gaza today. Look for the people that they are suffering.
And also God is still working in the heart of these people. They are asking now more to shouting to release them from this terror attack that's called Hamas. We are feeling that, but my brother Golan shared two kind of hostages. The Jewish people, the innocent people that they are all they're saying they are Jewish. And the second one that they are suffering under Hamas. Where is the leaders of Hamas? Can you tell me please? Where is the real leaders that they must be in front on this war? All of them in Qatar and in these different places they are hiding under. And who is suffering the normal people that they all their purpose, they want to live and to survive and to feed their families.
What I'm saying that it's time that this kind of people, the Palestinian people live in dignity, live in a way that they can live like other families. How? By removing Hamas. And the only way taking Hamas outside of Gaza is this war that… I'm not agreeing, once again, not killing from both sides. Not Jewish, not Arab. We are against killing anyone. We believe in peace. But if they are killing their own people, what you expect from this kind of people to behave to others like Jewish people?
So what I'm saying that it's time that the Palestinian who live in Gaza live in freedom. And we can see that the terror attack on the 7th of October, Israel wasn't ready for this kind of terror attack. They didn't expect it. It took a lot of time to respond. Why? Because they trust the other side. But still it's – the occupation and about the land. We can discuss it later if you would like to. But what I'm saying that today as believers, as Christians who live in Israel, we are honored to have our freedom to build churches, to worship. In Israel you have different kinds of people. So what I'm saying that it's this Palestinian to get free and to live in dignity without any kind of Hamas or other organizations.
Golan Broshi:
Dr. Bock, I'm glad that Saleem brought up Purim because I think Saleem would agree with me that in the bottom line it's a spiritual war as was in Purim against the… it's a spiritual war between the seed of Satan and the promised seed and those who believe in the promised seed in Yeshua. And I'm thinking about, again, in ONE FOR ISRAEL Bible College and I remember when Saleem was studying there you could… Darrell, I wish you were there in chapel, when you see Arab and Jews worship Yeshua together, instead of fighting and killing, worshiping together, that gives you a taste of what we can expect in the kingdom of heaven.
Darrell Bock:
So the challenge is in the area, that not only do you have what has taken place recently since October 7th, but you've really had decades of conflict and it's deeply rooted. The discussions I have with people who are pro-Palestinian, their comments go back all the way to 1948 and before and the displacement of many, many, many people in the midst of the establishing of Israel as a nation, there's oftentimes a tendency to ignore the legal means by which Israel was formed and established. Even though there also was conflict associated with, there's a tendency to underdiscuss, I don't know what other word to use, or to not discuss the difficulties that displacement faced when the countries around Israel weren't willing to help with the situation because they didn't want to tacitly recognize that Israel had the right to exist in 1948. I tell people, all the nations around Israel when Israel was formed were not interested in being a help because that would involve, in effect, recognizing that Israel had the right to exist in the land.
And I do think that the way in which displacement was happened in 1948 produced the groundwork for many of the problems that we see today. It was never adequately solved and adequately dealt with. And as a result, the animosity that existed perpetuated itself. And we find ourselves in the situation that we're in. But we can't go back to 1948 and undo that. We can't.
So I guess my question here is what do you hope for… And let me ask it this way, let me separate it from what you hope for to how are the Jewish people in Israel feeling about what has taken place? Because one of the changes that I hear is that they see the region differently now than they did before. So help me with that. Golan, why don't you lead off with that question?
Golan Broshi:
Yes, Dr. Bock, like in every conflict and even among Israelis, Jewish people, there's pro-this and pro-this side, but we are pro-life. And who promised to give us life and life more abundantly, if not Yeshua, the Messiah? So we are in a special position that instead of being pro-this side of being pro-the other side, we can be pro-Messiah and use this special opportunity that God gave us in this land, in these times to proclaim the good news of the Messiah that came to destroy the wall of separation and any other wall that we have, first of all, against us and God and then against each other and bring peace. I don't think there could be a real peace without the Prince of Peace. So how would they believe if they don't hear? So I'm so glad that Saleem and I can share the gospel together as brothers and show the Israelis from both sides something that they never saw before. Unity under the love of the Messiah, Yeshua.
Darrell Bock:
And the point that you're making is that the center of what Jesus brings is an offer of reconciliation, not just between an individual and God, but between peoples. And so in the midst of that, that becomes at least a way to think about getting through in the context of a conflict in which you have religious beliefs on the Muslim side and the Jewish side that are in conflict with each other?
Golan Broshi:
Yes. In Israel there's so many opinions and everybody has an opinion, but how many people in Israel can proclaim the good news of the Messiah? If Saleem and I wouldn't do it, who would? So praise the Lord that God chose even vessels like Saleem and myself to proclaim the good news. Because again, everybody has an opinion. Everybody's pro-this or pro-that. I want to be pro the Messiah. I want to declare the good news and see both Jews and Arabs getting saved and worshiping the Messiah together, worshiping the God of Israel through the Messiah of Israel together, side by side.
Darrell Bock:
Saleem, anything you want to add to this?
Saleem Shalash:
Yes, as I mentioned in the beginning, we are living historical days. And if we remember our Bible, we know that the Gospel start from Jerusalem and went through a Macedonian man to Europe. In the book of Acts chapter six, you read that they tried to go to Asia, the Holy Spirit prohibited them because this wasn't the plan of God. And after Europe adopted the spirit of God, that breathed the word of God, they want to put it in a box, so limit the spirit of God. It's moved to US. US adopted the word of God, they put it in every place, in every hotel, in every school. God blessed the US. Even in your money you wrote down, "In God we trust." But today US is losing the right path by taking all these Bibles outside from schools, from jails, from everywhere.
One of my friends mentioned to me last week, very good news that he said, "Pastor Saleem, now we are allowing to put Bibles in jails." Said, "My friend, if you put your Bibles in school, you don't need it in jails." And today that spirit, the spirit of God is moving where? To Asia, to what is happening in China, Taiwan, India, all these countries, a lot of revivals, but Jerusalem is part of Asia and the Holy Spirit is moving back to Jerusalem. The circle will be closed soon. But it must pass through the Arab countries. Why? That will provoke jealousy to Jews to ask about their Messiah. Look what is happening, Doctor, today. Today, a lot of opportunities for us to go. We didn't even dream to go to Dubai until the gospel in these churches.
I have been traveling with another messianic pastor that to Dubai to share the word of God. People didn't believe that, Arab and Jews together. How come? This is what we call it, peacemakers. Sometimes it's very difficult for me personally because I'm Arab. And when I say Arab, doesn't mean a Muslim converted to Christianity. Because if you read your Bible in the book of Acts chapter two, there were Arabs worshiping in Jerusalem, that was 600 years before Islam came. So we are basically Christian. But you become the slice of cheese between two pieces of bread. Why? Why am I saying that? Because as an Arab, if I stand for Israel in biblical concept, I become a spy. And for Orthodox Jew, I still Arab. So you are between these two piece of bread and you are the slice of cheese. But if God put you there, and if we forget every doctrine, Doctor, let's forget everything, and we believe in one thing that Jesus said in the book of Matthew 28, "Go out to all nations." Aren't the Jews nation.
Yes they are. And they are priority for God. That's what the Bible said, Jews first. But the media try to make hatred for this nation that people start to hate Israel even before knowing who they are, not knowing the country, not understanding the reality there. And I can challenge you that no one will give his Israeli passport and leave Israel because we are so blessed in this country. So the gospel is going back to Jerusalem. Are we peacemakers? Are we bridge builders? How we can shine in these darkness day? The Lord want to see different kind of believers, believers who don't take one side and fight the other one. No, we love the Palestinian people. We love the Israeli people. We are here to show the love of Yeshua. So we are going to continue until the Lord come back again.
And by the way, the Lord is on the way because so quickly, two hands for the end of the days, one is Matthew 24, with all the sign that Jesus gave and what we are doing, Gentiles sharing the gospel all over the world and that what is happening today. But there is important thing, Jesus is a Jew. Somebody forgot, I'm just reminding them. And even His disciples. And if you are calling to boycott Israel, start with your Bible because your Bible was written by Jew. So not just products, but also your Bible was written by Jew. Jesus said, "I will not be back until I start hearing you saying Baruch haba b'shem Adonai. And this verse we already start to hear, there is more than 35,000 Messianic believer who believe in Yeshua and the Lord is coming and we want to be witnesses together, Arab and Jews waiting for the Lord and the kingdom of God.
Darrell Bock:
Well, I want to thank you guys for taking your time here, including with the time difference to chat with us about how you see the situation in Israel. And what I really appreciate is this emphasis on the fact that in the Christian faith there is this emphasis on reconciliation and bringing people's from various backgrounds together. And that in the end we can do all the politics that we want. But in the end, He is certainly a key to any answer that will be real that should come to the region. So thank you all for taking the time to be with us today.
Golan Broshi:
Thank you. Thank you. God Bless.
Saleem Shalash:
God bless you all. Thank you.
Darrell Bock:
Yep. And I want to thank you for watching this issue of The Table and we pray that you will join us again. If you want to see other issues of The Table, you can go to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast and you'll see almost 600 different episodes of the table listed there covering an array of topics. This is The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture and also pursue the relevance of theology to everyday life.
Kymberli Cook:
Welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology in everyday life. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the Assistant Director of the Hendricks Center and I am so thrilled that you have joined us today. And today we're going to be talking about the relationship between Christianity and philosophy. Now, you might be saying, "Yes, I love philosophy," and if that's you, we hope that our conversation can join you in that joy and that we can discover new depths together with you. But if you bravely made the decision to click play on this episode, because philosophy is just not your thing, but you were like, you listen, "I'm going to give it a shot. I'm going to hear what they have to say," or you're wary of philosophy, we are hoping to make a case for you that philosophy is very much something that is meaningful and has an intentional role in the Christian life.
And so if you are, like I said, if you're wary, please stick with us because Ross Inman, who I'll introduce in one second, has really good thoughts on why we should embrace philosophy with Christianity. So again, to make that case, we're joined by Ross Inman who's an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he is also the editor of Philosophia. Philosophia. How do you say it?
Ross Inman:
Philosophia Christi.
Kymberli Cook:
Philosophia Christi. He says it so flowingly. Philosophia Christi, which is the Journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. So thank you Ross for joining us.
Ross Inman:
Really glad. I'm delighted to be here.
Kymberli Cook:
Awesome.
Ross Inman:
This is a lot of fun.
Kymberli Cook:
Oh, good, good. We're thrilled to have you on campus. It's even better. Typically, people who are at different seminaries we end up having on Zoom or something. So it's good to have you in the studio.
Ross Inman:
It's great to be here. Really great to be here.
Kymberli Cook:
So like any good college student, I was first introduced to philosophy with Plato's Cave, again, I feel like that's how you get introduced. And my mind was blown at that point and a little confused past the general observation that maybe we don't have the real, quote unquote, real world accessible to us. So when I got confused there, I stopped more or less and I was like, "Oh, that's really helpful. And wow, there are people who think about those things a lot." But you didn't stop, you kept going. What was it about philosophy that drew you in and just never let go?
Ross Inman:
Great question. I should say that I actually dropped my first philosophy class in college because it was so boring and seemingly irrelevant, and a lot of that was the teacher, but the Lord didn't give up on me, brought me back to philosophy. But yeah, so my own journey with thinking philosophically or living philosophically, it really did start, I was in college, became a Christian my junior in high school, and I was a biblical studies major. And the questions that would keep me up at night about life and meaning and purpose and Christianity, they just seemed to be fundamental questions. They seemed to be questions about what is real and true and how do I know, how can I know anything even about history, about Jesus' resurrection and these sorts of questions. And I would go to the people in my immediate church community and sincerely ask, "Would you help me? Would you help walk with me through these questions?" And I began to realize the questions that I was asking at the time were philosophical questions.
And here I was, I was serving in youth ministry in college at a very large church in Southern California, and really feeling the vibrancy of my faith leaking and thinking, "How am I supposed to help strengthen and encourage these students if I'm barely holding on myself?" So it really became a discipleship issue for me just to find some help to think through these philosophical questions. And the well-meaning response that I received was almost like, "Please don't ask these types of questions." Or I was given remedies that were surface-deep remedies, and I was struggling to lean over a Bible and read a Bible that was allegedly written by a God that I wasn't sure was even there kind of thing. And so I walked into my first philosophy class in a Christian college and I saw the syllabus, I saw that all of the questions that I had been thinking about and wrestling with that were keeping me up at night, were up for discussion. And here it was, this professor began to walk with me through those questions.
And so it was a homecoming into a discipline that I was like, "I didn't even know there was an area of study that looks at these fundamental questions about reality and truth and knowledge and ethics and value and these sorts of things." And I just got really excited about it and my faith was so strengthened that I just thought, when I began thinking about what would the Lord have me do with my life during that time, the Lord just spotlighted my professor, his name is Fred Blackburn. And the Lord spoke and said, "Look at the impact that this man has had in your life," and there was just great need in my community at that time, in conservative evangelical circles. There were a lot of people going into biblical studies and theology, but how few Christian philosophers there were at the time was really troubling to me. So I knew I wasn't the only one who was wrestling with these types of questions. So I asked my professor, I said, "How do I become a philosophy teacher?" He's like, "Well, you've got to go to school for a really long time." And I was like, "Okay," so.
Kymberli Cook:
Read a lot.
Ross Inman:
We did that. But that was initially, it was more of wrestling with how can I live well as a Christian and come to some satisfying answers about these fundamental questions because Christianity presupposes a lot of these answers, but I wanted to understand the things that I believed and professed. So that was the initial, and here I am all these years later, so that was the initial hook that got me.
Kymberli Cook:
Interesting.
Ross Inman:
It was a discipleship thing.
Kymberli Cook:
No, that's really interesting. When I was, I don't actually remember my, I think it was 14 or 15, I'm giving away my age here, but is when September 11th happened and I started asking a variety of those questions for myself and before then, Islam hadn't really been on a major world scene as far as a fifteen-year-old in the US. I wasn't fully aware of that, but I was seeing all of that on my television screen and I thought, "Man, what makes them…" And I actually saw a boy about my age and I said, "He's praying and what makes me right and him wrong?" And I started asking those questions. And I was in a very small, rural Kansas environment where people aren't necessarily equipped to handle that, but praise God that I didn't have somebody who shut me down, like you were saying, somebody was like, "Please don't ask that question." I had people who said, "We don't know. We don't know how to answer this. I can only tell you." But I hear so many stories of people, especially people who've ended up leaving the faith, who hit that point in their faith journey and their intellectual journey, and they ran up against some people who said, "You shouldn't be asking these questions," when in reality, it's probably quite good to ask those questions.
Ross Inman:
Yeah, I think so.
Kymberli Cook:
So what phil… I don't know why the word philosophy. I think ever since I tried to say Philosophia, I'm stumbling over the word every time.
Ross Inman:
You can do this. Yes. You got this.
Kymberli Cook:
Thank you. I appreciate the cheerleading. So what philosophers or philosophical fields or veins of thought do you regularly disagree with?
Ross Inman:
Yeah, I mean, gosh, there's things to disagree with all over the place in the history of philosophy, in contemporary philosophy, amongst Christians, amongst non-Christians. So my main area that I work in, well, there's two, one is metaphysics, which is one of the sub-disciplines of philosophy that just studies the nature and the structure of ultimate reality or fundamental reality. So it asks questions about God, does God exist? Does the soul exist? Does free will exist? Does human nature exist? These kinds of things. Those would be metaphysical questions. And the other is philosophical theology. So I just love thinking about the nature of God, his activity in the world, the nature of the incarnation, the trinity and those sorts of things. So there is plenty. That is a hard question. There is plenty to disagree with.
Kymberli Cook:
Especially for philosophers, because philosophers like to debate and think through things and pick things apart.
Ross Inman:
Yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
But who are you regularly encountering and not really… Sorry, I don't want to make it combative as much as it's… I think what I have in mind here is who do you highly respect? Or in my mind, I think of Nietzsche. I highly respect Nietzsche's thoughts on a lot of levels. I do not agree with him, with the fundamental way that he lands, I do not fundamentally land there, but I can respect a lot. So maybe that would be a better question. Who do you respect and what veins of thought do you respect what they have to what they're presenting, though you might not in the end land with them?
Ross Inman:
Yeah, great question. So let me just think historically here to keep it safer.
Kymberli Cook:
I know, right? That sounds like you don't have to name current philosophers.
Ross Inman:
See here. Yeah, I mean, Descartes is somebody that I engage a lot. So I also think deeply about the nature of the human person. I teach several classes on philosophy of mind and anthropology and just a lot of the early modern philosophers, I have deep respect. Some of them were brilliant and they had significant innovations in philosophy and in science but I think there was significant confusions. That was probably one of the most important turning points in intellectual history in my opinion, was the early modern period and just fundamentally re-conceiving of the nature of nature, of matter and these sorts of things. So yeah, Descartes, somebody I have immense respect for who is a Christian philosopher, but I think he went astray in a few areas that I think we're still recovering from that today that actually has significant implications for how we think about human persons, about how we think about human nature today, how we think about the true self and what the true self is, and what does my body have to do with that, these sorts of things.
So we're seeing the ripple effects of ideas that were forged centuries ago. We really are seeing the fingerprints of the history of philosophy really unfolding before us in so many cultural issues. So these philosophers still speak. Though dead, they still speak, do they not?
Kymberli Cook:
Very much. And oftentimes-
Ross Inman:
Nietzsche as well.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah.
Ross Inman:
Yeah. Nietzsche as well.
Kymberli Cook:
Especially if you are listening and you're less inclined toward philosophy, but you're hanging with us, they do still speak. And oftentimes we don't realize that we have their assumptions and that their assumptions are, and the things that they have said function as these background assumptions that we move through life with that we don't even know. Most people might not even know that Descartes has really impacted the way that they view the world and they understand themselves in the world, but it has.
Ross Inman:
Absolutely.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. One other just general question about you and philosophy and your thoughts there is who do you think is underrated? What philosopher would you say is underrated?
Ross Inman:
Yeah, great question. German philosopher, I think he was a seventeenth-century German philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who was a Lutheran Christian philosopher who was a polymath, co-discovered calculus, was a genius and he was a brilliant man, and his work is read. It's widely read, but it's not as widely read as some more notable Christian philosophers like Augustine or Aquinas or Anselm. So yeah, his stuff needs to be read and engaged definitely a lot more than it is today.
Kymberli Cook:
And so what would you say is the significant contribution, why you would say, "Man, we need to read this more"?
Ross Inman:
Yeah, so Leibniz effortlessly weaves between science and philosophy. So he has an all-encompassing vision of reality. He was one of these old rationalists who was a system builder in the sense that he had this unifying vision of reality that we've tend to, for various historical and philosophical reasons, pivoted away from having this or valuing these unified visions of reality. But Leibniz was, he was a systematician and every little piece had its place in his philosophy. We tend to be more fragmented in piecemeal today, and I think that's not necessarily a good thing because more of like a buffet, it tends to more look like our own preferences than actually these pieces fitting together in a tight-knit way, like a puzzle.
So yeah, Leibniz was a systematic thinker, was a brilliant man, was a devout Lutheran, cherished holy scripture, but was not afraid of the sciences, but critically engaged them and was a metaphysician too. So he was a jack-of-all-trades, but for various historical and sociological reasons, we don't really have Jack-of-all trades very much any more because of the specialization in the academy. Everybody's required to be so specialized and narrow that they're really unable to adequately engage with other disciplines. And so I think that's more of a result of the high specialization in academia today, but yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
Interesting. So I want to connect what you were talking about, I feel like something you said a little bit earlier when you were talking about yourself, you said not just studying philosophy but living philosophically.
Ross Inman:
Yeah. That's right.
Kymberli Cook:
And so when you're talking about Leibniz, would you say that there's a connection there between this sense of a holistic view of philosophy and the whole system and what you were talking about with living philosophically
Ross Inman:
There would be different-
Kymberli Cook:
Sort of, not that you're just ascribing to his philosophical view.
Ross Inman:
Yeah, so I would say the period where philosophy is seen less as a subject matter that one studies and it's a purely cognitive cerebral thing, and it's more of a holistic way of life, would be the ancient philosophy in antiquity. And so what I'm trying to do in the book is to help broaden Christian's conception of philosophy. I think it has a public relations problem today, philosophy in general. A lot of people think of it as a purely intellectual exercise reserved for those who are either majoring in philosophy or you got to take that intro to philosophy class and check it off the curriculum list and you're done with it, in fact, people can't wait to be done with philosophy in some ways. But I'm just trying to draw to Christian's attention to the fact that the perceived irrelevance of philosophy to human life wasn't… Philosophy didn't always have a public relations problem. It was seen to be more of a whole life orientation, a way not just of thinking, but also ordering your actions towards certain goods.
And so I like to point Christians back to antiquity. So whether Roman, Greek or Hellenistic philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and whether Stoic or Epicurean philosophers, they all were part of this conception of philosophy is not something you just go and you do and then you're done with, but it permeates. It is a subtle rhythm that orders your life from sunup to sundown. And I think we really need to recapture, especially today when philosophy has… It's conceived of so narrow. I mean, I'm thinking of Florida Senator, Marco Rubio, gave a comment in a public forum where he said, "Welders make more money than philosophers." He says, "We need more welders and less philosophers." I mean, for a public figure like that to be able to say something like that and believe it, he did later recant that, I should add. He says, "I went back and I read some ancient philosophers and I realized, we need both."
He says, "We need welders and we need philosophers to help us make sense of things." But I think a lot of people share that worry. And so I would just want to encourage Christians that we have a rich tradition, a philosophical tradition. There are riches that belong to us as Christians that are, they're back there. There's a conversation that's been going on for a very long time. So think of even Augustine's interaction with the most influential philosophy of his day or Aquinas's interaction with the best philosophy of his day. But there is an older tradition with a much thicker, broader conception of philosophy that would actually entail, and I tell people this, that there are a few things that are more practical that you could do with your life than live philosophically, and that strikes us as wrong and odd. But I think it's because of how we're understanding philosophy, is very narrow and just to philosophize for a course grade and you're done or getting really heady in the dorm room conversation or something like that, and then you can live your life and leave philosophy behind. But you really can't honestly, at the end of the day, we will all be living philosophically in some way or other, it's just whether we'll be living a Christian philosophical life or not.
Kymberli Cook:
So that's actually what I was going to ask. So when you're saying it's this way of life, it permeates all of these different parts of our lives and we're doing it whether we know it or not, when I'm hearing that as a Christian, I would tend to think, "Well, that's actually what the Christian faith is supposed to be doing. The Christian faith is supposed to be permeating my life, and that's really supposed to be the worldview that I'm having." So how do you understand that relationship?
Ross Inman:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So interestingly enough, some of these philosophers, Christian thinkers in antiquity, they would've identified themselves as Christian philosophers. We would more identify them as theologians today, but I don't think they would've seen those disciplines as separate as we see those today. So you think of Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Maximus the Confessor, even Augustine, they actually viewed Christianity as an all-encompassing philosophy that could stand toe-to-toe with rival ancient philosophies. So not just as belief systems, they did think that, but also ways of life. So if you, I think, were to sit down with some of these ancient thinkers, they would say, "Yeah, Christianity is the true philosophy." Or if you were to ask Augustine, he would say, "A Platonic philosophy gets us only so far, and Christianity corrects and chastens and also fulfills that philosophy to make it the true philosophy." So Christianity, as Augustine famously puts it in his confessions, he says, "Platonism tells us that there is this rational ordering principle. All things are intelligible and ordered according to this rational logos, but it doesn't tell us that this logos became flesh and dwelt among us."
And so there are things that Christianity picks up these ideas from antiquity and fulfills them and completes them. And I think that even Augustine would recognize today, they arrived at some truth about reality, but it's incomplete, it's distorted in some places, it needs to be corrected. So I do see, and I think I'm with these ancient thinkers, I do see, I would agree with you, the Christian faith is an all-encompassing philosophy of life that's not just a belief system we not give our mental assent to, but we actually order our lives around. And I use this language in the book about, we commit ourselves to an existential map that's shaped by the Christian story, a map that's going to include coordinates about what is real, where am I? Maybe even some coordinates are higher elevation than others. God is the chief coordinate on a Christian's existential map shaped by a Christian story. But we don't just say, "Yes, that's true," we let that map actually guide and direct our lives. We live our lives by that map.
We order our whole lives around that map. So we live in such a way that we begin to navigate our life being informed by that map, and we engage in certain practices. And there's all sorts of… Philosophy is just a lot broader and thicker, morally speaking, than we tend to think about it today, at least it was in antiquity.
Kymberli Cook:
So going back to what you were saying, let's just take Augustine as an example where you were saying, "Well, I think," speaking as Augustine, "Plato was on to some things, but there are some things that the Christian faith then fills in and corrects and that kind of thing." So what do you see as the relationship between faith assent and the intellectual assent that you were talking about, and how do those two play together? Because I think that's part of that territory that makes people in these days want to separate the two. How do they interact in how you're viewing, especially historical Christian philosophers?
Ross Inman:
So the difference between, you said faith assent and intellectual assent? Is that what you-
Kymberli Cook:
Yes. So if Plato was on to some things about how the world actually works and had good thoughts there, but you have to make this, and from Augustine's root, but then you make this faith assent and it makes a lot more sense altogether and it corrects some things. It seems that there might be different steps there or are there not? How do you see the two interacting with each other from a Christian perspective?
Ross Inman:
Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe one way into this would be, yeah, so merely intellectually assenting to the truth of various propositions, like there is a objective reality or there are objective values, or there is objective truth. Plato would agree intellectually with all of those things. In fact, he was an ardent defender of these things in his own context against these philosophers called the Sophists who didn't think they were hardcore relativists. And Plato was like, "You guys are just wrong about reality." There are objective standards to truth and goodness and beauty, and let's not play fast and loose with the truth. And so I think we can read Plato and say, "I agree with the exact same thing that Plato is saying there." So I think in terms of mere mental assent to the truth of there is an objective reality, there is objective truth or objective morals, we would agree with Plato. But of course, merely mentally assenting to these things doesn't save anyone, has no saving import or efficacy. So the way I understand this is there are really three stages.
There's the conceptual understanding, there's the mental assent, and then there's the volitional aspect to Christian faith. I think Christian faith involves all three of these. So the conceptual understanding, so when I say, "The cat is on the mat," you have some idea of what a cat is, what a mat is, and what a preposition is. It's hard to have faith in something you have zero conceptual understanding of. But two, thinking, is that true or is that false? You can mentally assent to the cat being on the mat. And then lastly, the third step is involving the will. So I want to take James seriously when he says, "Even the demons believe," I think they're pretty darn good theologians in the sense that they have a pretty adequately calibrated view of reality, perhaps better than most of us, but yet what's lacking?
They have mental assent in the sense that they believe true things about God, but they're lacking this volitional component. They haven't entrusted themselves volitionally to the triune God. So that's why they're not in a saving relationship to Him. They have a conceptual understanding. They have mental assent, but they don't have… The will has not been engaged. In fact, it's probably actively been resisted. So those would be the three things that I think are involved in it. If you're going to build the cake of Christian faith, so to speak, those would be the three essential ingredients. But you need all three to get Christian biblical faith. So I would say Plato, we can even say, we can look at Plato, we can look at Aristotle, we can even look at some of the Stoics and say, "Gosh, they got some things right. They mentally assented to truths about reality."
They also mentally assented to falsehoods about reality too. But the question of salvation and their right relationship with God is whether they had faith or those sorts of things, those are separate issues altogether. But I think just approaching the rich philosophical tradition in the west, like an Augustine who critically chews on and interacts with the best ideas of his day, spits out the bones and consumes the meat, and he calls it plundering the Egyptians, and he says, "We will all be influenced or absorbed some philosophical assumptions that will inform our faith and discipleship." It's just the question of which, it's not whether it's which. And I'm worried today, Kym, that many Christians are very passively absorbing a whole host of philosophical assumptions about the world, about human beings, about what the highest goods are worth seeking in human life inside and outside the church, that is shaping our discipleship and our Christian commitment more than we'd like to admit. And so I just want to let Christians be aware of the fact that examine, take an audit of the things that you believe and why you believe them, but also take a look at your own life and look at your actions. How do you order your days? That will tell you what you believe very quickly.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, and that's what I wanted to narrow in on now, is this idea of, I like what you're talking about with the volitional component. Okay, so then if you entrust yourself, you have a faith assent to these things that you have become aware of and are intellectually assenting to. But again, if you turn yourself over to them, that's going to be more. And I think the whole point in what you talk about specifically in your book… Can you give me the name?
Ross Inman:
Christian Philosophy As a Way of Life.
Kymberli Cook:
As a Way of Life. Sorry, I didn't have my copy right here. So what you talk about in your book is that that entrusting from yourself as a believer must involve philosophy, correct? Is that…
Ross Inman:
Yeah, to some degree or other, it's going to be basically setting your eyes and turning your heart towards a particular view of reality in the good life. And Christianity, Christian teachings, scripture gives us that full picture, but it's also going to be turning away from rival views of reality. And the good life, that is just to live philosophically is to… Am I tempted to think that life consists in the abundance of my possessions? Well, let me look at the way that I live and how I spend my time and what are my priorities. Our lives will tell us very quickly what it is that we really believe in our hearts, what have our hearts basically. So we will all be, to some degree or other, be living philosophically. It's just whether it will be normed and shaped by the Christian story in particular or rival visions of reality and the good life.
And the fact is is that even those of us who are committed to walking on the way of Christ, who are walking in the truth, as John puts it over and over in his writings in the scripture, we tend to wander, we tend to be allured away by rival visions of reality in the good life at times and that's why we need people walking next to us. I talk a lot in the book about spiritual friendship and the importance of… And actually, friendship was part of living philosophically in antiquity. You actually couldn't live well philosophically without virtuous friends helping course-correct you and guide you and say, "Hey, your eyes and heart are set on pretty distorted visions of reality in the good life," reminding each other what is reality and what is a life that's truly worth living on the Christian story. I need that reminder.
So that's what it is to live philosophically as a Christian, is to have your life shaped and oriented around a particular vision of reality in the good life. But again, it's not just saying, "Yes, that's true," but actually living as if it is true with how I spend my time, how I parent, how I teach, how I take care of my body, how I eat. I mean, it's one of these things that can permeate out into every aspect of human life.
Kymberli Cook:
So do you consider philosophy then as a spiritual discipline, or is it more a worldview out of which we then have particular disciplines? What's the relationship between spiritual disciplines and philosophy?
Ross Inman:
Yeah, great question. Great question. So in antiquity there were, even amongst these non-Christian philosophers and later Christian philosophers took up some of these disciplines and actually tweaked them and even fundamentally changed their orientation in light of grace. And there's no lasting transformation of the self apart from God's activity in my life. Some of these non-Christian philosophers who employ these spiritual exercises and disciplines have a very optimistic view of the power of the self to transform oneself and that's where I think Christianity really helps correct and chasten. But yeah, the spiritual exercises were at least according to some contemporary philosophers, a fundamental part of a philosophical way of life. And that included friendship, that included meditation, that included self-examination that included Socratic dialogue, that included keeping deep attention or contemplation, we would call that today. Mind you, these were all non-Christian philosophers.
So these early Christian thinkers come along and say, "These are really… These are helpful practices that help tame, by God's grace, that help tame and sculpt the soul." Because I mean, we know from scripture that unruly desires of the flesh will wage war against the soul, they will destroy us. And so these philosophers thought if living well means that my desires have to be towards the right objects, and they have to be in due measure in order to live well, and even in order to think well for them. So there had to be an overall harmony to the human being working properly for them to actually live well. So these exercises were just as physical exercises like sculpt and shaped the body and give it muscle memory and those sorts of things, these spiritual exercises for these thinkers were part of doing philosophy.
Funny enough, we don't think of… So spirituality and philosophy was really quite integrated in antiquity, that they actually sculpt the soul and give the soul a kind of muscle memory in a responsiveness to reality in ways that it would otherwise be unresponsive to what's truly good and beautiful. So they actually play this sculpting role. They help shape and sculpt our loves, our desires, how we see, and whether we see. I mean, because we know from scripture, this idea of having eyes but not truly seen, having ears but not truly hearing, That's a profound philosophical insight that we can have eyes working properly, but we aren't actually seeing things as they truly are.
Kymberli Cook:
Do you see… So in that way, it sounds a lot like you're saying philosophy at least can be or perhaps even should be practical, incredibly practical. Would you agree with that? So is philosophy actually quite practical and that's part of why it has the image problem that it has these days, is because that dimension has been lost?
Ross Inman:
Great question. So when people normally hear me say philosophy is immensely practical, they scoff at that. And I think the reason is they have a view of what it means to be practical, a philosophical view, a subtle philosophical view about what activities are practical.
Kymberli Cook:
You're like, "You don't even know what practical means without philosophy."
Ross Inman:
Well, I mean, we just assume what it is to be practical and might you guess what that view is? What does it mean to be really practical? And we tend to think in quantitative terms like measurable deliverables. What products are produced? How many? Or how long have I spent in prayer this morning? Or how much of scripture have I been reading? How big is my truth?
Kymberli Cook:
How many people did you not yell at?
Ross Inman:
Exactly. And we think… Or how much money is that going to make me? We think in either pragmatic economic terms on the one hand, but there's a Christian version of this too, that can be particularly acute as well. Success in ministry or success in the Christian life is understood, I think, wrongly as purely quantitative rather than qualitative. But I think there are things in scripture that push against that view of being practical. But I think if you understand practical less as is it going to give me a large social media following or is it going to give me a six-figure salary, or is it going to help me land a job? Well, no, philosophy is useless, but it all depends on how you're defining what it is to be practical. And if being practical means helping you realize the kinds of goals that are ultimately worth achieving, well then that changes things a little bit.
So to be practical means helping you realize the kinds of goals that are ultimately worth achieving. This makes philosophy or living philosophically as a Christian, immensely practical because it raises the question, what are the kinds of goals that are ultimately worth achieving? Is it fame? Is it power? Is it money? Is it pleasure? Or what? So philosophy helps us live in a self-reflective, critical posture of what am I living for, and will this particular activity help me achieve not just any goals, but the kinds of goals that are ultimately worth seeking, which is to know and to love God and to invite others to do the same? And I think historically, philosophy was seen as being immensely practical to that aim in particular.
Kymberli Cook:
And the Christian faith then also helps you, as you are pursuing those lines of thought, the Christian faith helps you sculpt your soul to want to do those things. Because in light of how we are living in a fallen state, and okay, fine, maybe that is what matters, now I actually have to get myself to the point where I want to do that, or I am doing it, and the disciplines definitely come in there too. So with the… I have one last question for you, and we've tiptoed around it this whole time, and I think there's one point you maybe even put half a foot in, but just so that everybody listening is really clear. So what do you see as… I want to talk about a very clear relationship with philosophy and Christianity. So what does philosophy offer Christianity?
Ross Inman:
Well, yeah, I would reiterate, I think Christianity is a philosophy.
Kymberli Cook:
This is the half foot thing that I was talking about.
Ross Inman:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it offers an all-encompassing philosophy of life in the sense of not just a, so as Jude puts it, contending for the faith that was once delivered to the saints, or as Paul puts it, the good deposit. There are theological tenets to what it means to live philosophically as a Christian, and rather than say what it means to live philosophically as Stoic or an Epicurean or whatnot, other rival ways of living philosophically. So Christianity is going to provide the framing, the ideological framing for what existential map, how many coordinates are on there, what are the highest coordinates? And just by way of example, maybe this would help. So Stoics, for example, someone like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, they were hardcore materialists. They didn't think there was any nonphysical reality. So think of what coordinates do they have on their map? Just material coordinates. So they're not only missing important coordinates, like reality is much more than meets the eye, they're missing the most important coordinate, the triune God and His kingdom and His reigning.
So it's going to be hard to live well when you're missing, when your map doesn't include the most important coordinate, the due north, so to speak. Try to be rightly oriented to the world if you have no conception of what's a due north. So Christianity provides the true coordinates, the highest coordinates that allow us to actually live in such a way where we're actually going to make contact with the way the world is in what's truly good, not just what I perceive to be good or want to be good, or what culture tells me is good. So Christianity really is providing the content for a Christian philosophical way of life. But again, it's not just mentally assenting to a Christian worldview. It involves a soul training and regimen, ordering your life in such a way that you actually believe that, for example, God has created me as an embodied creature where my body is not superfluous to my identity, my body is a part of who I am, and I have real limitations, and that's a good thing.
God has created me. Those limitations are good, and I can either heed those limitations or I can shake my fist at them and revolt against them to my own demise. So it puts me in this humble and receptive posture towards reality because of my Christian convictions, that I'm a creature of God with very real and good limitations. I want to lean into. I don't want to revolt against. And so Christianity, I think provides… I think Christianity is a way of life, and it involves both doctrinal content, but it also involves a whole pattern or rhythm of living that shapes how I think, how I live, how I feel, all sorts of things. So it's a total life-orienting, soul-orienting way of being in the world. I don't know how else to put it, but I think that's refreshing news when we tend to… A lot of us view Christianity as just, or can view it as just a worldview. We say, "Yes, that's true."
Kymberli Cook:
And if I'm hearing you in how you're describing it, then you would also say, or I think you would say Christianity is then offering, I mean, you said that Christianity is offering the content, some of the content or a lot of the content that philosophy is missing or the full picture, the due north, that kind of thing, that it's adding that. So I just want to emphasize, or I'm trying to explore both what philosophy offers Christianity, but then what Christianity offers philosophy, because it really does, and I think that that's what you've been talking about the whole time, is Christianity has a lot to give philosophy. It's not necessarily just one of many. It has a lot of things that can strengthen the field in and of itself and has over the millennia.
Well, we could clearly talk about this all day, and you often do, right? But I want to thank you, Ross, for being here.
Ross Inman:
Appreciate it.
Kymberli Cook:
And we want to thank you for listening, and we just ask that you be sure to join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendricks Center here at Dallas Theological Seminary. And my guest today is Stan Jantz, who leads Come and See in its mission to share the authentic Jesus with 1 billion people, that's a lot of folks, and it's bigger than most church services I've ever been in. And after serving as president of one of the nation's largest Christian bookstores, he began a writing career that has produced 75 books with more than 4 million copies sold.
He served in leadership roles with several Christian publishers, and as president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, he served 25 years on the board of trustees at Biola University. He and his wife Karen just celebrated their 50th anniversary, and just found out about that. He lives in Huntington Beach, California, deeply involved with Bayside Church in Orange County, and they have two children. So Stan, welcome, but if I say Come and See, most people will say, "well, what in the world is that?" But if I say The Chosen, I bet they will understand why we're talking to you. So two questions, what is a nice guy like you doing in a gig like this? And then secondly, explain the relationship between Come and See and The Chosen.
Stan Jantz:
Thank you, Dr. Bock, it's a pleasure to be with you. And yeah, what am I doing? My whole life has been around Christian content. As you said in your intro, I was involved in Christian book selling for years and years and then got involved in Christian publishing. I've written some books and so it's all content. God is the great producer of content. He obviously got the Bible and he speaks every day through his Holy Spirit and through nature and all of that, and so content is king. And so here I am, I'm just sitting around looking for my next assignment and I got a call from Mark Green. Mark is the board chair of Come and See and I'll explain Come and See in just a minute. And he says, "Hey, I'm going to come out and talk to you about something." I didn't know what it was, but two weeks before I had seen the very first episode of The Chosen, had never seen it before.
Now, you've got to note something about me. Growing up in a Christian bookstore environment, and I later ran the stores for 25 years, I was around a lot of Christian media. We had from 16 millimeter films the churches used to show on Sunday night and then video, and I was never really all that impressed with what Christian media was doing. Now, the greater good is you're talking about the gospel and you're presenting that and you're telling stories of people who come to faith, but the quality just lacks. So, I was reluctant. I'd heard of The Chosen and had never seen it, but I got invited. Biola University sponsored a special showing of episode one of season one and they invited me to go, so I went and I was so impressed, and I've talked to many people who feel the same way. This was a different level of quality in storytelling.
And after that, two weeks after that, I got this call, and so we got together, not knowing what the other was going to talk about, but I started gushing about The Chosen, what a fantastic series it was telling the story. And I'd only seen one episode, but I said it's so authentic, it's real, it's biblical. And then Mr. Green had this wry smile on his face, he says, "Well, that's what I'm here to talk to you about. We're going to start a nonprofit that will assist and help in The Chosen, making sure that all seven seasons get made and that it's translated into 600 languages and that it remains free for all. So, that's what Come and See does. We are the nonprofit, we've come alongside The Chosen, and our goal is to reach 1 billion people with the authentic Jesus, the Jesus from scripture, but a Jesus that we can relate to and that is real and he is living.
And so, we are now in our second year, and we came along after the first three seasons we're done, but now season four of course has been in theaters, it'll soon be in the app, and streaming after that. And right now they're in production on season five. So, we're on a fast moving train and it's great to be a part of it, but we are so grateful that more than 100,000 people have given to Come and See for the purpose I just gave you to reach those billion people and use The Chosen as a way to do that.
Darrell Bock:
Well, I heard about Come and See at an event that I was at last November in which we were actually discussing the church and its witness in the world in which there was a segment dedicated to media and what was going on with Chosen and Come and See was introduced to us. I was there with about 200 other Christian leaders and something the Barna Group hosted in Fort Worth. And the moment I heard it, I went, "Well, this is pretty interesting." It's an immense vision, to put the amount of media material that is being produced for the series into 160 different languages, which does a pretty good job of blanketing most of the world is a huge assignment. So, let's talk a little bit about what that takes and then I'll come back to The Chosen. Have you started in on translating in any of the languages already and where does that sit?
Stan Jantz:
Dr. Bock, it's even greater. It's actually 600 languages.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow.
Stan Jantz:
So, it's never been done. Now, The Jesus Film has been in over 1,000 languages, but we're talking a single two-hour movie. The Chosen has eight episodes per season, and eventually there will be seven seasons. We're talking 56 episodes, multiple characters throughout, so it's an immense job and it's never been done at this scale with a TV series like this.
Darrell Bock:
So if I'm doing the math real quick, what is that, 560 hours of recording or thereabouts?
Stan Jantz:
Exactly, some are a little less than an hour, so 50 hours would be real close. And the thing of it is too though, because you have these multiple characters and those of you, your listeners have watched The Chosen, in any given episode, there may be 10, 12, 15 characters. Even in a typical TV show, you may have eight to 10 it would be max. So, they have way more than that. And so when you're talking about the translation, and this is… I'm learning so much about it, but God has blessed us. We have a gentleman in place, his name is Rick Dempsey. He worked for Disney for 35 years. He's a believer, worked for Disney for 35 years, overseeing all of their translation, and what they call localization for the Disney feature films and animated features. And what localization means, and you would know this in terms of being a Bible scholar, when you translate something, it isn't just a matter of say, "Okay, what's the language? We're going to put it in that language and then we're good to go."
There are idioms, there are nuances, there are phrases that don't necessarily translate like that word for word. You have to be able to get a sense of what that language will do with that script. So, we work with subject matter experts, and these are typically pastors who are in country or they could be theologians who are in a particular country, particular language, they review then the initial translated copy, which has not yet been dubbed or even subtitled and give us feedback and responding to, will this play in Ethiopia or in Brazil or in Nigeria or India? And of course, India's got 40 languages just by itself.
Darrell Bock:
That's right, yeah.
Stan Jantz:
You have to be able to do this. These subject matter experts are of vital importance, and then the process of either dubbing or subtitling, sometimes both, but we think at the end of the day we'll have about of those 600 languages, about 100 will be fully dubbed, and then all of them will have subtitles as needed. And we already are seeing… We've already done 50 languages for seasons one through three. We just hit a milestone just about 10 days ago and hit that number, and it's an extraordinary task. And again, were it not for the professionals that do this language dubbing and that kind of thing, plus the volunteers, the subject matter experts, we just couldn't do it.
But I was just in Brazil two weeks ago, they did a national premiere for season four, episodes one and two, so it's like a season four premiere. And so, we did the dubbing into Brazilian Portuguese, and then they showed it in a theater for the premiere, and then it opened in 600 languages that following weekend, and the reports that came back as they were very pleased with the quality and the level of the dub, because there's nothing worse than a bad dub that can detract from a really good film or TV show.
And so, they were very pleased in that, but that quality takes a lot of effort and care, and especially as you do the dub that you get a voice actors to actually take that and then voice it to… Because you're not changing the lips, they're still speaking English on screen. So, you've got to match that up, and it's a beautiful, beautiful job. People can go to our website, in comeandsee.net, and click at the top under languages, and there's a video that shows a sample of 14 languages in a certain scene. The scene is actually the paralytic being lowered through the roof.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I've seen that video.
Stan Jantz:
Have you seen that? Yeah, it's really, really helpful. And to see what that sounds like in 14 languages, it's very inspiring.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting, so I take it then you've got to get a variety of voices to dub the language for each episode to reflect the different characters that you… So, this is not getting two or three people in a room and doing the dubbing. This is getting multiple people for each of those episodes.
Stan Jantz:
You're exactly right, and you want to match the voice tone. So, whether it's the actor playing Jesus or Mary or Simon or Matthew, you want to match that voice tone, number one, so you have to audition voice actors. And then to be able to coach them through that to make sure it's getting the person producing that, and it's I tell you one area that's been extremely effective then, and we think it's just the beginning and that's the Arab world. Now, can you imagine a show about Jesus in the Arab world? There's an organization in Beirut, they're Christians, and they do media. And so, we're doing three different Arabic dialects, so there's classic Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, and Syrian Arabic. And we've done episodes one through three and using voice actors there, and these aren't believers for sure, but they are good at what they do. And the quality was so good, a secular television station in Beirut asked this ministry, they're a production company, "Could we show The Chosen on our channel?"
And I asked the person who's helping us with facilitating the translation and the dubbing, and I said, "How is that possible?" I said, "why would they want this show?" He says, "Well, number one, it's such a good quality. The quality is so strong that they see the difference between other things that have been done." But he says, "Number two, it's not proselytizing." The Chosen as a TV show is not trying to "win people to Jesus". It's portraying the character of Jesus as we know in the Bible, and to then get people curious and interested and go to scripture, and we're finding a tremendous connection between people watching The Chosen and then wanting to read Scripture. One of our ministry partners is YouVersion, and they're able to track the number of people that come to their website and then want to look at a certain scene in a language or to study more about what that language or what that passage in the scripture says for them. And so, those two things are really important and The Chosen presents… And isn't that true? Just present Christ.
Don't try to manipulate or try to… He will come. He's so compelling in his character, in his words, and he is the son of God and he has come to seek and save those who were lost, but he was a person of compassion. And so, we see this character and people are drawn to him, as they were in the first century, and I think we're seeing that people are being drawn to Jesus. So it's not quite there yet, this particular relationship with this television station in Beirut, but they're getting close, and I think Ramadan came up in the middle of that and they're negotiating and they had to kind of slow things down, but it shows you the quality of the show and also the fact that it's a quality dub, translation, and also it's not trying to "win people to Jesus", it's presenting Christ and as we'll see, presenting Christ in him crucified, as Paul said. That's coming in season six, so we're not there yet. Season four takes us right up to the triumphal entry.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow.
Stan Jantz:
That's the end of season four, and right now, as I said, they're filming season five, which begins with the triumphal entry and goes all the way through Holy Week.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting, so when you do these, how's the distribution? Is the distribution intended to be online primarily or what's that going to look like? Will that be different in different places?
Stan Jantz:
Well, when we say we want to keep it free for all, it is available through the app, and it's The Chosen, and people can look it up in the app store, either Apple or Android, and just download that for free. And then the episodes then are in that app, The Chosen app. Season four is not there yet, it's coming in the next probably month that'll be on there. So, people can always watch it. Plus, there are behind the scenes features. We have a theological roundtable that includes a professor I think you know, Dr. Doug Huffman from Talbot, he's one of the advisors, Rabbi Barry Sobel, who is on TBN quite a bit, he's a Messianic Jewish scholar, and then a Catholic scholar. And so, they review the scripts before they're produced. We have a team also of theological reviewers. Dr. Jesse Stone is our chief reviewer. He just last summer got his PhD completed at St. Andrews, and you'll be interested in this. He was the last student that N.T. Wright took on while he was at St. Andrews.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow.
Stan Jantz:
He's a New Testament scholar, and we have then three international scholars, Dr. Miguel Alvarez from Latin America, he's in Guatemala, Dr. Phinney Paul, I think his last name is, and he's in India.
Darrell Bock:
India. I know him, yes.
Stan Jantz:
Dr. Paul, and then I forget the name of… There's a Nigerian scholar, and they were all classically trained, and I think our Nigerian scholar actually teaches in the US, but Dr. Paul and Dr. Alvarez actually are leading Bible colleges in their respective countries, Guatemala for Dr. Alvarez, and Dr. Paul in India. So, they review it then for localization, contextualization, making sure, and so before it even goes into production, all that work is done just to make sure not only is it biblically faithful, but also that as it reaches other cultures, is it going to have that same impact, that same understanding that we would have here in the West?
Darrell Bock:
So, I take it you joined this effort after the first season was done?
Stan Jantz:
Actually, the first three had been done.
Darrell Bock:
The first three seasons had been done.
Stan Jantz:
So, we came in and of course now season three came out after we were there, but as far as providing funding for the things we talked about, the production, the translation, distribution, our first initiative was season four, but season three… And what happens is, like I said, season four is in release right now, so it's easy, because we're in 2024, but they've started work on season five, and that takes about nine months, seven to eight months. They'll finish that at the end of the year. Then that will release in 2025, and then season six will start filming in 2025 to the release in 2026.
So, they're always about a year away from the release. So to answer your question, yes, it's on the phone. And for those who are technically adept, you can mirror it then to your TV if you like. From other countries of course, they don't necessarily have that option, but it's always available for free on the phone as an app, and we're hearing some amazing reports from people that have maybe a feature phone, so not even a smartphone, but a feature phone, and they can get the episodes downloaded even without the internet. I don't know how it's done, but there's some amazing technology workarounds in some of these places, and one of the great stories that we've had, and this happened last summer, is the president of Madagascar is a believer. Madagascar is an island country off the coast of Africa, and so he wanted The Chosen to be shown in his country.
Now, there's not a lot of homes or TV sets or running electricity, but enough to where they could show it, and they showed it in public places, they showed it at an orphanage, they showed it in a prison, and the response was so overwhelming they decided to go back, and this kind of follows The Jesus Film when it was first out, put a big screen on a truck and take it into the villages.
And then this case, it was the LED screen, not a projector like Jesus Film used many years ago, and so people could see it, but we did the translation in Malagasy, the dub. Malagasy is their heart language. It would not register among probably the top 100, but it's kind of return on mission, as opposed to return on investment. So, that was one that we felt was really important to do, and we're starting to get requests from places that have limited population, let's say, but they have such a heart and desire for The Chosen to be there. So, this president wanted shown, it was shown, and they've had tremendous response from that, and there are many pastors in Madagascar who are using The Chosen then as a tool really for discipleship and even before that for evangelism. So, these stories are starting to pop up.
We're also seeing it, Dr. Bock, in the Catholic Church worldwide. As I said, I was in Brazil to be there for the premiere, and we were earlier in the year in Warsaw for a premiere, the Catholic Church is embracing The Chosen. It's remarkable, and I think I talked to one priest who came to one of the premieres and I said, "What is it about The Chosen that is appealing to the Catholic sensibility?" He said, "It's like lifting a veil that you're able to see Jesus for who he is and this human Jesus that you can relate to." And I just think it's a wonderful trend I think that we're seeing, and I really believe too, to go back to the Arabic translation, you know how we know it's been documented that Jesus comes to people in the Arab world in dreams.
And I think there's something about the vividness, the imagery that they're seeing in their dream, but I think to have The Chosen come into the Arab world in this way through devices that already exist, it could be something remarkable. I'm not going to try to predict anything at all, but there seems to be an openness and part of is the beauty of the show, the beauty of our savior that appeals to people. It's not just about facts and figures. Yes, facts matter and they're important. He was a real person, he lived, he did miracles, he died, he was resurrected, but the beauty of his person and the variety of the people who follow him back in the first century, and these characters that are real characters but have been given more personality, let's say, than perhaps we read in scripture.
One of the keys is plausibility. We know Peter had a wife in the scriptures, because he had a mother-in-law, but his wife was never named, so they give her a name, and a story and just people are drawn to that, because these are human people. These are who we would be if we were there living in the first century, the kind of people that Jesus called.
Darrell Bock:
So, I have two directions I want to go, and I'm going to save The Chosen discussion and how it gets put together for a little bit down the road. Let me ask you one more logistics question about what you're doing, because 600 languages is just a few, and the logistics of putting that together, because you're starting from scratch, right? Someone says, "Let's do it in this language." I can't imagine anyone on your team who automatically knows someone who speaks that language, much less putting together a team that's able to put that together. So, tell us how that works. Someone says, "We'd like to see it in language whatever," and what happens?
Stan Jantz:
So, there is a company that we're working with, they're called Iyuno, and they are a global secular company, and they work with Disney and Amazon and all these different studios doing translation work for film, so they know how to do film, that's their specialty. And they have people then in these countries that are qualified both to do the dubbing, as well as the recording of that, so they have studios. Now, we're in that tier of that first 50 languages that you can generally find, because again, most major feature films, they don't always go to 50, maybe they go to 30 to 40 for a big worldwide release of a feature film. So, we're kind of pushing the envelope now between 50 and 100, let's say, there may have to be some new procedures put into place, and that's something that our team is working with.
But we work with on the ground, existing production companies that assist us both in actually embedding the translation, because once the translation is done, you have to embed that then in a file, and they're layered. So, there's a lot of technology obviously involved, but the human touch is then when you have that ready to go, the person that does the acting, the voice actor then has to take that, and as they're the film… And I'll brag on Rick Dempsey for a minute.
Rick, as I said, was with Disney for 35 years is a remarkable talent, and knows people. Because of his work at Disney, he's got these different organizations that do this, and I kind of joked with him. "35 years, I figure, okay, you've directed a lot of voice actors." I said, "Tell me that you've not directed Robin Williams," like in Aladdin or something. He says, "Yes, I did." Oh, man, talk about having to capture even in English, a voice that matched to an animated feature, so that kind of experience we have. And then we have other people on the team that are more focused on the localization part of it. Because there again, this is what's so critical. And as you know, Dr. Bock, there is such an enormous effort in scripture translation, Every Tribe, Every Nation, which is kind of this coalition of various Bible translators that are focusing on 6,000 languages for the scriptures.
Darrell Bock:
You guys are little boys on the block.
Stan Jantz:
I know. Well, here's what's interesting, and this speaks to this, and I'll just say this. We had a little saying that the quality of production speaks to the one. In other words, if I'm watching that, the quality is going to speak to me. And I experienced that when I saw it at Biola back in March of 2022. I was in a crowd of 2,500 people. We were sitting outside, it was being shown a big screen, and I'm kind of looking around again. I hadn't seen it and my expectation wasn't that high, but as I started watching it, it was like because the quality, I was just drawn in individually, and I kind of lost sense of the crowd around me. So, it spoke to me, and of course at the very end of that first episode, for those of you who've seen it, is when Mary Magdala comes out of the bar and the scripture says seven demons, and Nicodemus has tried and failed, and so Jesus just simply calls her by name.
She's been called Lilith during this time, calls her by name Mary, and she's just startled, drops her cup, turns around, and he quotes the scripture that she was taught as a girl, "I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine." It's like she was cleansed and healed right at that moment. That just got me, and I was just, "Man, oh man, this is different. This is real." So anyway, so the appeal to one is the quality. Translation speaks to the heart, and you probably hear that phrase, especially with illuminations, the Every Tribe, Every Nation is the 6,000 heart languages. That's the language your mother taught you. That's your heart. It may not be the only language you know, for some people it is. It is for me, I don't know any of the languages. I study Greek and know a little Spanish, but my heart language is English, and I kind of stumble with anything else.
So, you need 6,000 heart languages. Now, when you get to that long tail, some of those languages and you get over a few thousand, they're very obscure, but every language counts, because every person needs to hear it in their heart language, experience of scripture. With 600 languages, only a 10th of the total number, you actually hit 95% of the world who can understand it. Now, it may not be their heart or their native tongue or heart language, whatever you want to call it, but they can understand the language that it's been translated in. Interesting experience in Poland, we did the premiere I mentioned in Warsaw. Poland is unique in the world in that their translations are done by voiceover. They don't do dubs, they don't use subtitles, they like voiceover. So, the film was playing in a theater, the season four premiere and you could hear the English kind of underneath.
It was audible enough where you could hear it, but over that was the voice, and it wasn't a voice actor, it was just a narrator giving you all the lines and what was going on. That's just how they do it. It came out of communism. For some reason, they still like it. Younger people like dubbing, and so we're doing both. We're doing the voiceover and the dubbing to Polish, but we just watched around us watching people responding. They pulled their tissues out the same time that we would watching in our language, and they laughed at the same stuff that they found to be humorous. So, when you can reach somebody with the language they were taught, the language you understand, you really are speaking to their heart. So, it's not just about reaching the one, but reaching the heart. That's why translation, whether it's scripture, or whether it's a book or in this case a film series is so very important, because you show respect, you show honor to that language, but more importantly, that understanding comes because of speaking to their heart.
Darrell Bock:
I know I asked you this and you told me earlier, how many languages have you done already? And I'm assuming that comes in kind of that core 50 or so that the production crew is used to working with?
Stan Jantz:
Correct, yeah. We just hit a milestone of 50 and again, on the commonandsee.net website, just click at the bar at the top languages, and it actually has a chart that shows which languages have been completed, which ones are in progress, and they're prioritized. What we've done, because people have asked, "Which ones do you do first?" Well, the top 10, 20 are pretty easy." You've got Mandarin, English, Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, you name it, those top ones, and then you start getting past 20, 30, 40, then it's kind of a priority, but we have our third goal is distribute to the world, and we have ministry partners that we have come alongside or they've come alongside us. So for Alpha, for example, what are your languages you prioritize as you take the Alpha material out into the world? What about you Virgin? What are your priority languages or crew we're working with?
We're working with OneHope. So, you collect all its data and merge it and find out which of the languages are of the priority, and it isn't always just population. It could be, where's God working right now in a way that is just dynamic and we want to be there with the language, so that it can support the work these ministries are doing? And we're finding that there… I'll give it another example, and this, so far it's just been in America, Prison Fellowship or the ministry that was founded by Charles Colson many years ago, and the current CEO of Prison Fellowship is Heather Rice-Minus, and they've been using it in 300 prisons in the US. Well, just as of about a week ago, we have connected with the international director for Prison Fellowship. There are 10,000 prisons that they want to show The Chosen in.
We're seeing reports coming from incarcerated men and women. It's been such an amazing tool for them to be introduced to the gospel through the person of Jesus and his followers, and then they do materials. They have discipleship materials that they use in these prisons, and of course they have staff that are available. So, it's working really together with these ministries to be able to not just have this TV show to show, but then how do we then make it available in all these different resources and support material? Starting with, we have on the website, again, an area where churches can use clips from The Chosen to illustrate a sermon. I have a good friend who's a pastor, and he did a message just two weeks ago on essentially around the woman at the well, there's a wonderful scene of Jesus meeting the woman at the well.
And so he used that clip, he could get it online through our website, and showed that, it's about seven minutes long, and he said it's remarkable how I just kind of made the scripture come alive, and he tied it into his sermon. He said it was really effective. He was very pleased with the impact that it had. So again, think of pastors all around the world with those clips and those resources in their language. So, that's not just translating the show, it's translating these derivative materials, these clips that we have that they can use. So, it can be used by pastors and by people in different communities in different countries to be able to use The Chosen for evangelism and then also discipleship.
Darrell Bock:
So, the interesting thing here is there's been kind of an infrastructure that's been built through the history of ministries that are global that you all are drawing on in order to branch out into the languages that aren't the more common ones and aren't readily accessible.
Stan Jantz:
Right, yeah. These are ministries that are very obviously mature, they've got staff around the world. And so in fact, when I mentioned Malagasy, the language of Madagascar, we depended on a ministry called Jesus.net, and they are a global ministry, they do work all over the world, but they were able to help facilitate. And again, there weren't any professional voice actors in Madagascar, so they actually used volunteers for that.
And the president didn't like the… I'll just give… He didn't like the first one, the first pass they did on episode one. So, they redid it again and he said, "Okay, that's better." So, you do what you can, and again, we'd love it to all start with a very professional all the way, but that may not always be the case, but we still want to be accurate, we want to be respectful. So, they're getting a good translation, and then a good dub on top of that. Interesting enough, another little, as you learn this, Scandinavia does not want dubs, "Don't do a dub for us, just give us subtitles." Scandinavians pride themselves, "We know English, so just give it to us in English, but you can go ahead and dub it Norwegian or Swedish or Finnish or whatever." And again, that's unique, because Scandinavia doesn't care for it. In Brazil, a country of 220 million people, they love the Portuguese dubbing. They were very excited about it, were very pleased with the quality of how that was done.
Darrell Bock:
So, you deal with all that variety. So, that's what's going on around The Chosen. Here's one of the issues that I think I'd love to hear your response to this and deal with it. I tell people that when you try and visualize, I'll just say it that way, visualize the events of the Bible, many of which are very, very short. I can do the healing of the paralytic and read it and probably a minute and a minute and a half, and you're going to give 50 minutes to this. So, I guess my question is, how does that work? And that's one of the challenges that I think people face when they come across something like The Chosen. They sit there and go, "Well, I know that's in the Bible, but I'm not sure that is over there." So, how do you deal with that tension that's inherent in trying to give kind of flesh to the bone that's there in the Bible?
Stan Jantz:
Great question. Well, it starts with the Bible and there are actually three writers, Tyler Thompson, they're credited in The Chosen. Tyler Thompson, Ryan Swanson are the two primary writers, then Dallas joins them when they get the script to a certain point. So then to three of them, in fact, they just finished what they call a writer's retreat, and they get away and they were working on season six.
So here again, got to get that sequence. This year, season four is released, they're starting to film season five, but they're writing the script already for season six. So, they're always staying one or two steps ahead. And we've asked that to them, and in fact, there was a panel we had for one of the premieres earlier this year, and both Ryan and Tyler were on that. And that question came up, just what you asked, how do you kind of give life and flesh out these characters without veering away from scripture? And both Tyler and Ryan said, "Scripture is our guide. We absolutely do not go away from that, but what we do is we fill in the characters, some of whom I just mentioned briefly." I'll give you an example, in season four, there's a character by the name of Joanna and her husband is Chuza. I didn't know, I thought
Darrell Bock:
Luke chapter eight. Yep, go ahead.
Stan Jantz:
So I found it, there they are. It turns out Joanna especially was a supporter, as were other women, of the ministry of Jesus. And so I read that and I go, "Wow." Now, she's just mentioned.
Darrell Bock:
Just a name, that's all you got in a role.
Stan Jantz:
But we know she supported the ministry of Jesus. So, they worked into where she became this fairly important character, especially in season four, because she believed that John the Baptist was who he said he was, because he was announcing the Savior, he was announcing Jesus, the forerunner. And so she becomes, and I won't give it away, but becomes really important character and her relationship with Chuza, there's a little tension is in there as well.
Another one would be, as I mentioned earlier, Peter's wife or Simon before his declaration, then Jesus changed his name to the rock. So, Simon's wife, Eden, as a mother-in-law, we know that his mother-in-law got sick and that Jesus healed her. So they build this… So, it's not just a scene suddenly appointing, you kind of have this buildup to the relationship between Simon and Eden and that her mother is of great concern to her. And this is again, this would not be a spoiler alert, because it's in season three, the writers decided, and this has happened a few times, where they've done something that is immensely important to people as something they can relate to, and they realize these are human characters.
Eden has a miscarriage, and it causes in Peter not to doubt that he was Jesus, the son of God come to the world, but that he's good. Why would he let this happen? And it's a question so many people have oftentimes. And so, the way they deal with that, and again, there's a beautiful, beautiful scene at the end of season three where the disciples had just been with Jesus feeding the 5,000, and we know in scripture that he kind of went off to pray. They got in the boat to go across the Sea of Galilee and a storm erupted. We know that, it's all in there. What they brought into this is Eden also at that time going into a cleansing bath called a mikveh.
It was because she's had this miscarriage, and so she's going in there and then Peter gets out as Jesus comes, and it's a dramatic scene. Dallas didn't want to do it at first, because he didn't want it to be cheesy, but the Lord provided a tank with professional special effects, and it's remarkable. So, there he is on the horizon coming, and Peter says, "Lord," in this moment that he's struggling even, and he comes out and he starts to walk to Jesus in the middle, and then he goes down, and then as Eden is going down in her mikveh, and they're kind of playing these both in a creative way.
Darrell Bock:
So, they're playing the Peter walking on the water scene against the mikveh visit. That's interesting.
Stan Jantz:
Yeah, and he's down. And so, then he got underwater and she's going and she comes up and she goes, "Never let him go." This is her prayer, and the hand of Jesus goes down the water and he pulls Peter up, but he just embraces Jesus, "Never let me go." And it's his moment of realization of what's just happened. And it's just like, "Oh, man," and we've talked to more people who just said that was so powerful to bring us this sense of healing and wonder that existed. It doesn't change that Eden still had her miscarriage, but the fact that they could come together around the person of Christ and have hope for him. So, those are the kinds of things… Now, is it in the scripture? Obviously not, but it is one word, again, that they use, it's plausible that Eden could have a… Miscarriages were a characteristic, I'm sure, of that era as it is today.
Or the other scene where, and this isn't probably the scene that's gotten the most attention over the last few seasons, of Little James asking Jesus, "You've asked us to go and heal, why haven't you healed me?" Now, the conversation that they have is not in scripture, but the theology behind it and the way Jesus explains to him why the Father has chosen not to heal him, the affirmation of people… Joni Eareckson Tada watched that scene, they did a private showing for her, and she said, "I have to look at it again because I was crying as I watched it." I need to see it again. It just how it spoke to her. Nick Vujicic who's the-
Darrell Bock:
Yes, I know who he is. He's here in Dallas.
Stan Jantz:
Oh, he is? Okay. He watched it, and you can go on YouTube actually and see Nick Vujicic and Dallas had an interview with him. He's Australian, right? He's got this accent. And Dallas asked him, "What did you think of that scene where Jesus and Little James are having this conversation?" "I was moved, moved," three times, "Moved."
And he get so tired of people saying, "If you just have enough faith, God will heal you. And if you don't, then that's your fault." And he said, "That's not how it works." It was just beautiful, the way he responded to that. And then Jesus in that moment to Little James spoke to millions of people who have struggled with that, whether it's happened to them or not, but we've all prayed for healing for people, whether it's for a loved one, a friend, or prayed for healing for herself. And there's that question that's there, and what the writers did for that is completely theologically consistent with the person of Jesus and how God operates in the world. And yet, there's still some mystery to it. And James, the actor that plays him incidentally does have a disability, and I think they chose that actor for that very scene.
He's a wonderful actor, Jordan. And so it's those kinds of things, I think, Dr. Bock, that bring the show to where it's touching people, but it's all scriptural. It's in terms of the way the plot is going and how they handle it, but to fill these characters in that are relatable, and that's one thing that Doug Huffman, who is one of the advisors, Dr. Doug Huffman, he said, "It's authentic and it's plausible and it's relatable." And as you look at it, even as a New Testament or a Bible scholar, is to see those things. And really, all of us when we do Bible studies and if you do Bible teaching, we're always looking for ways to, how do you relate this to people? And there'll be maybe an illustration of something that's happened or some kind of personal experience that all of us as communicators will give as we talk about scripture, talk about Jesus.
And I think we're just seeing it this way in this very imaginative way, that it really brings a dimension to it, but again, as I said, one of the great beauties I see is that people want to go read the scripture. What did that story say and how did it go? The opening of season four, this isn't really spoiler, but the first episode, John the Baptist is beheaded, and the whole way they set that up is again, right from scripture, the dance of Salome, Herod, that whole thing, asking for his head on a platter. The way they do it though is they're the juxtaposition of John going to his execution and it's juxtaposed to Zechariah filled with the Holy Spirit, then given this prophecy about John the Baptist in the first part of Luke. So, you have these two things going together as he's going to his execution. And it just, again, pure scripture, that's a pretty long passage Zechariah
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, it is.
Stan Jantz:
And we don't know much about the execution, except that she asked for it, Salome, and he got it.
Darrell Bock:
It took place. So the schedule here, so you say four is coming out, five is under production, six, the writing's being discussed. So, I guess that means what? We're four years away from getting to the end?
Stan Jantz:
Well, three years, actually.
Darrell Bock:
Three years?
Stan Jantz:
The last season will be in 2027.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Stan Jantz:
So, we've got three years to go, and so I can say four takes you right up to the triumphal entry, right up to it. And here's something else, I think I know the Bible pretty well, and I'm talking to someone who hadn't seen it yet. And I said, "Yeah, the last episode of season four, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, and then he goes on his way to Jerusalem. He finds the foal of a donkey that had never been ridden." And the guy says, "Wait a minute, didn't the raising Lazarus happen during Holy Week?" And I didn't think that was the case, so I went to the scriptures and sure enough, in John 12, it was actually the Saturday before what we would call Palm Sunday is when he raised Lazarus from the dead.
And in fact, I found out doing more research, and so I loved about it, because it prompted me to do this, the Eastern Orthodox Church calls that Saturday Lazarus Saturday, and they actually have a commemoration for it. And of course in John 12, it says six days before the Passover is when Jesus raised Lazarus, which would've been before Sunday. And that was just for me, it was like, "Oh man, I've read the Bible my whole life, know that story," but I wasn't sure. I thought, "Oh yeah, I didn't think I remeber that one."
Darrell Bock:
Hadn't put it in a calendar.
Stan Jantz:
So, it really helped, and again, that sets up as he goes to Jerusalem, just the remarkable events of Holy Week. And by the way, the show is getting darker. There's no question. And we know that the pressure on Jesus… Season three, the theme was, "Come to me all you who are labor and are heavy laden and I'll give you a rest." Jesus was asking in season three, and he was healing and wonderful things happening.
Season four takes a little turn. He starts bearing, such as losing his friend, his cousin, John the Baptist, having Lazarus, his friend die, and realizing what the death… Jesus wept that scene. So, there's more of a burden you see on him, and we're just going to continue to see that through Holy Week, and the pressure and the way they portray the Pharisees and Sadducees, the opposition is just… In fact, if you haven't seen it, Dr. Bock, the character who plays Caiaphas, of course he's going to play a major role in the trials as they come before the crucifixion, and this opposition, which is in scripture… I don't know how many times it says they wanted to kill him.
We kind of take that like, "Oh, they wanted to kill him." What you see it on screen, how they're plotting to do this, and how they're trying to figure out, "How do we get around our… Because we can't do it, so how do we make this happen?" And it just comes alive, even for people who have known scripture for a long time, and for those who are just getting introduced, it's a wonderful entrance, because scripture is where God speaks. This is where the Holy Spirit… The Bible is alive, and it's living and breathing, and I think this is a show, but to drive people to motivate, to show them, here's what the scripture is saying is the beauty of what this is doing.
Darrell Bock:
Well, thank you, Stan. I appreciate you taking the time to walk us through both The Chosen and what's wrapped around at this Come and See vision to take the authentic Jesus and give a glimpse of Him to people in the variety of languages that will connect with them personally and hopefully become a means for which they can be drawn to consider who Jesus is. So, we just appreciate you giving us the time.
Stan Jantz:
Thank you, and I just want to say, too, a little, comeandsee.net, and you can look how you can become a part of Come and See. Over 100,000 people have joined us in this effort. They're bringing their loaves and fishes, which is one of the themes of season three, and that is your five fish and two loaves, or excuse me, five loaves and two fishes, and bring them and let Jesus multiply, and we're seeing that happen in ways that are just extraordinary. So, we appreciate everybody who's watching, who's giving, and we thank you for people in media who are paying attention and spreading the news, so thank you so much.
Darrell Bock:
Well, we're grateful for what it represents, and I appreciate you being with us, and I want to thank you, our listener, for being with us. If you like our show, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app, so that others can discover us. And we hope that you'll join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture and where we attempt to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. Welcome to The Table.
Kasey Olander:
Welcome to the Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture to demonstrate the relevance of theology to everyday life. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and today, I'm excited to welcome you because our topic is podcasting. So this conversation will be a little bit meta that we're listening to a podcast on podcasting. So bear with us, but we discuss issues with God and culture—this is a cultural phenomenon that's worth addressing. So something that didn't even exist 20 years ago is now a billion dollar industry. That's billion with a B. I just learned that apparently 42% of Americans over the age of 11 have listened to a podcast in the last month. So this is a growing phenomenon. And a decade ago, it was only 12%. So this has gone from 12% to 42% of people, and that's only that have listened recently.
The topics run the gamut. People are listening to true crime, news, entertainment, sports, relationships, self-help things, and of course religion and spirituality. So maybe you're listening and you've thought of starting your own podcast, or obviously you're listening to one right now. So how can Christians best engage with this platform today? We want to help you reflect thoughtfully on podcasting and how God might use it. So we're joined by two expert guests. Rebecca Carrell is the director of apprenticeships and special projects for the Media Arts and Worship department here at DTS. Rebecca, thanks for being here.
Rebecca Carrell:
I'm honored you asked me. Thank You
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, I'm excited. We also have Dr. Ryan Holmes. Ryan is our executive director for media production at DTS. Thanks for being here.
Ryan Holmes:
Thanks for having me.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, should be a good conversation. Each of these guests represents a number of dimensions of the podcasting world. So I guess I'll start with you, Ryan, just what is your experience in podcasting?
Ryan Holmes:
So I go way back with this podcast specifically. This podcast started I think in 2012, and so I have been a part of helping to produce this podcast ever since Darrell Bock initially kind of got it going off the ground. So my history with this is very specific, so it's strange to be on this side of all the equipment. Normally I'm in the dark room where you can't see me, so it's a real privilege to be here though.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, thanks. And then are there any other dimensions of podcasting in your experience that you want to highlight?
Ryan Holmes:
Sure. So for a while I had with a couple of friends, we had our own podcast called We Talk Different, and that dealt with issues of race, faith, culture, and we would sit down every week and talk through mostly current event issues. So it's a bit different from what the table does, but it tackled primarily those types of things.
Rebecca Carrell:
I was a fan of that show. Oh,
Ryan Holmes:
Were you?
Rebecca Carrell:
And I did not know you were that Ryan.
Ryan Holmes:
Yes. Oh, so there you go. We've made a connection then.
Rebecca Carrell:
Yes, we have.
Ryan Holmes:
That was me.
Kasey Olander:
That's awesome. Yeah, so very cool. You've been on a lot of different of this.
Ryan Holmes:
So I've helped plan and produce them. I've helped do the technical equipment that we all are sitting in front of. And then I've also done the hosting and guest scheduling and interviewing part of it. So yeah, I've had my hand in a little bit of all of that stuff.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, for sure. Thanks for this, by the way.
Ryan Holmes:
You're welcome.
Kasey Olander:
How about you, Rebecca? What's your experience with podcasting?
Rebecca Carrell:
I'm kind of a dinosaur in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in that I've been in broadcasting since 1998. So initially that was radio. And then in 2007 while I was still on a radio station, we started podcasting our on air segments. And then in 2019 at a different radio station, I launched a podcast called Honest Conversations with another DTS grad. And then when I left the radio station in 2021 to make the move over here to Dallas Seminary, I essentially kept the same format. It was the same show, but we changed our title and our branding. So I've been podcasting in an in-depth interview format for about five years.
Kasey Olander:
Okay, that's awesome.
Rebecca Carrell:
And I've played every role and still play every role. I mean, since I was the one that came with the broadcast experience, I host it and I do the booking and I do the audio engineering. And so I'm the one wearing most of the hats.
Kasey Olander:
A lot of the things like the details that people don't always think about when they're listening,
Rebecca Carrell:
Right.
Ryan Holmes:
There's a lot of logistics that go into even just this podcast, specifically the table from scheduling people to how you prep for that interview, interviewing them, and then even on the backend of how it gets approved and published somewhere. So yeah, if you give your hat into all those things, that's a lot of hats to wear a lot of times.
Rebecca Carrell:
It could be easily a
Ryan Holmes:
Full time job?
Rebecca Carrell:
You know what I was about to say, a part-time job. But no, it could be a full-time job. If I could put more into it. If I had the capacity, I would, but I don't right now.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, that's understandable. All of us are just limited human beings. So speaking of being human beings,
Ryan Holmes:
Nice segue. Nice.
Kasey Olander:
Yes. What do you think is it about podcasting as a medium that makes it so popular? Does it say something about the way that we're designed, the way that God created us? I guess, Rebecca, I'll start with you. What is it about podcasting?
Rebecca Carrell:
I think first of all, it's that it's content on demand and it's content on the go. And right now, the thing that I think is probably most prized in our Western culture is efficiency and immediacy and podcasting offers that you can learn about something new while you are driving to and from work while you're working out while you're walking the dog. And so I think that I would say the primary thing is we are an on-demand culture, and we really love not having to wait until every Thursday night. I mean back when must see tv, whatever. So we really love being able to binge something, being able to listen to 10 episodes in a row or pick and choose from a wide variety of topics and shows. And so I think it really scratches that itch.
Kasey Olander:
Yes. On demand and on the go for sure.
Ryan Holmes:
It, I mean, kind of what you're saying too, as a medium, I think it can provide a potential for community. We talked about this I think before we got recording, which we circle back to what you talked about in that because a two-sided to that, it can create room for connections and community around a shared specific topic. So for this one, issues of God and culture, if you're concerned about that or you want to learn about that, this is a good place to do that. But then it also creates, like you said, a fracturing of knowledge and how you have a shared reality. But at least on the positive side, you can definitely get into specific niches. I think you listed true crime, which I know people have binged all of those things. There's ones that investigate MLMs, and then there's just the generic broadcast ones that are a broadcast television show being podcasted after the fact. So on demand, I can catch up with my ESPN news really easily in the morning. I wasn't available at 6:00 PM last night. So it allows you to have a shared sense of community around a given topic, but it can also fracture as well, which I think you talked about before.
Rebecca Carrell:
One of the things that I like to say is that increasingly more and more we're living in an area of hyperconnected disconnect. And so what I mean by that is more and more and more we are connected to each other on a global scale, but what that's doing is it's causing this fracturing in the local community. Here's an example. I remember when Survivor first came out love or hate the show, it was the first to really capture the reality show imagination. And so everyone talked about Survivor the next day after the episode, and there was shared incarnatiolal community because you talked about it with your friends. Well, I probably listened to six podcasts regularly, and I don't know that I know anybody who is listening that listens to the same. And so while I do have this potential for community around those shows, it's online community, I will probably never meet them unless the host shows up at a live event and does a live recording.
Right? And so while it is great for things like immediacy and efficiency and on demand, and you get to learn about whatever you want to learn whenever you want to learn it, or your favorite sports morning show, you didn't get to hear it that morning. So you get to catch up later in the day. You lose, pardon me, you lose a little bit of that gathering around the water cooler aspect of having a shared experience. And so I think podcasting and YouTube, these are things that have led to more individual experiences, and that doesn't have to be a bad thing as long as we're not sacrificing the best thing, which is we are incarnationalal people meant together around things together and have communal experiences.
Kasey Olander:
Because if I go to a podcast instead of going to my neighbor or going to my friend or my family, then I've lost something that's part of being human. Even if you go to those in-person meetups for fans of a podcast or a live recording that's still just we're convening for this one event and we're not actually living life together and sharing the deep things about us, most of the time
Rebecca Carrell:
It's still an individual experience because you're there and you might meet a few nice people, but you're probably not going to keep in touch and they probably don't live in your neighborhood. So yeah, it's just fewer communal experiences, even communal listening or viewing experiences and more individualization, which again, doesn't have to be a bad thing so long as the best thing's not sacrificed.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's interesting. Do you think that there's a danger of people feeling like they're, oh, I'm not giving that up because I'm chatting with these people online or yeah. Do you think that there's a danger in people mistaking what community really is?
Rebecca Carrell:
That's where the hyperconnected disconnect comes into play, I think because these are connections. They're not deep connections, they're not incarnational connections. They are online connections, which to an extent do provide some of the things that Friendship does, but only to an extent. And it can never substitute for a flesh and blood relationship where you're showing up for each other when you're sick or celebrating each other's wins, mourning each other's losses.
Ryan Holmes:
Yeah, I mean definitely when we were doing, we Talk different, there was a component where it's very one way. So you're talking into a microphone or a camera, and then people listen. But whoever's listening, those folks get to know you on a certain level in a way that when they do meet you in person, there's almost a familiarity there on their behalf because they've been listening to you for possibly months or years if however long your show runs. So people would approach us at live events and they would want to jump into very deep topics right after saying hello because they've listened to you for months and years and they know how you think. But for me, I'm just like, I just met you. I don't know you from anybody else, but there's a very one way component where you're talking to this mic, but people do make that connection. And there is a sense of community, but it can be a bit jolting when you do hit the incarnational phase of like, I don't know you that this well, but you try to switch into like, okay, you want to have that conversation, let's think through it. But there's not an established trust there yet. And if you maybe get to know them, maybe that could happen. But to your point, you often don't.
Kasey Olander:
And I love that you highlighted that because that's so different than how we consume other things like television. I don't expect to go in, if I meet an actor, meet
Ryan Holmes:
An actor
Kasey Olander:
And talk about their personal life right away,
Ryan Holmes:
Which I think that's one of the powers of this medium specifically because I don't know how y'all listen to podcasts, but I do it while I'm cleaning the house, doing dishes if I'm working out. So I put my earbuds directly in my ears and I feel like Rebecca's voice is like it's right next to me and I'm sitting next to her and she's just talking to me the whole time. So I feel like, oh, I know Rebecca. This is my friend. So when I see Rebecca I'm like, Hey, so you said this and this, and then Rebecca's like, I just met you. But it is a very personal medium in a way that I don't think other things are like tv. There's that screen, there's a barrier. Even radio broadcasting has a professional component where you're like, okay, I know Rebecca's on here doing this broadcast as this person, this is her job. But when she does her actual podcast, I'm like, this is a more unfiltered, this is Rebecca being Rebecca, and I feel like I'm getting to know some part of her.
Rebecca Carrell:
So that you've just tapped into one of the biggest differences between podcasting as a medium and television or radio, and that's broadcasting versus narrow casting and podcasting. You said it's more of a personal experience. I would even call it an intimate experience. And when I coach people in podcasting, I tell them, we've laughed about this. Kasey, you say you because you really are right now we're talking to you. I'm talking to you as you're listening, I am talking to you. And yes, there's a lot of you, there's a lot of us to the one who is sitting there to you as you're sitting there with your headphones in, you're the only one. And so it is an intimate experience and there's is also an imbalance of relational capital. Correct. When I do share, and I do on my own podcast share, I go deep into some of the struggles that I've faced and our guests are very vulnerable and authentic.
And so when I'm listening to someone sharing like that, they have established some relational capital with me, but they don't have that of me. So when I come up and I want to share my things, it does Ryan, just like you, said's a bit to jolting. It is jolting. And it's just something that podcasters and television personalities, YouTubers you do need to keep in mind is that when you are developing and cultivating and growing an audience, you are sharing a piece of yourself with them. And in any other incarnational relationship, the next proper thing is you would share a piece of yourself.
Ryan Holmes:
There'd be reciprocation.
Rebecca Carrell:
And so really we shouldn't be surprised when people come up and they're like, yeah, when you said that it made me say this, but it is because,
Ryan Holmes:
But that's the human connection part, right? So mainly the image of God, we long for connections and to know other people and to be known. So podcasting does allow whoever's on this side of the mic to be known, but whoever you that's listening, we don't necessarily know who that person is. And so it becomes a bit disorienting sometimes when you do talk in person. But I do think that's one of the powers of this medium specifically to connect with people in a way that is intimate. And it does validate some, because some of the stuff that you share probably on your podcast that's very vulnerable and open, and then that may be stuff that you talk about often, but for the you that's listening, they're thinking, oh my gosh, I've gone through that. I've experienced that. I know people who've done that,
Kasey Olander:
And maybe I've never shared that with anyone, but the fact that Rebecca
Ryan Holmes:
Has, but the fact that Rebecca is opening that door and is talking about it, that's powerful.
Rebecca Carrell:
Right? Right. And too, if you think about it, people listen to radio differently than they listen to podcasts because radio, it's broadcasting. The announcers know they're hitting an audience of scattering broad seed, and people tend to listen to the radio together in the car. You're all listening to it together. That's a good point. You've agreed upon the format, and so you just sort of handle it differently when people have you on, but they're probably not paying close attention. But with podcasting, people are listening to hear what you have to say. So there's a big difference in delivery.
Ryan Holmes:
That's a really good point. Thinking of the times where I might just plug my phone into my car, so it is being broadcast in my car as a whole. So there is listening, but I often don't listen to podcasts with, if Kasey and you and I we're all going somewhere to eat, I don't just turn a podcast on. So it is a very just me experience where it's usually in my earbuds only, but a radio we'll all listen to whatever the radio station is collectively. Sure.
Rebecca Carrell:
And it sort of serves as background as opposed
Ryan Holmes:
To you tune and tune out. Right. But a podcast I want to hear what is Rebecca talking about? What is this topic? And yeah, that's a very intimate connection. It
Rebecca Carrell:
Is it.
Kasey Olander:
So then as let's say, let's say you're listening and you want to start a podcast or you're already hosting one and you're like, oh, this is good to know. What advice would you have for people as Christians to steward? Well, this medium for creators,
Rebecca Carrell:
Do you want me to start for it? Yeah. Okay. The very first thing I have people do is I have them really meditate on why they want to do it. Because podcasting right now is the new blog. And so a lot of people are podcasting because they feel like everybody is podcasting, and so they should be podcasting. And that's really not a good reason to podcast
Kasey Olander:
Or do anything right or to do anthing
Rebecca Carrell:
To do anything. And so I say really think about it because it's a tremendous amount of work. And if you're going to have a successful podcast, then it's probably more time and money and work than you initially expected. And so know what you're signing up for, but then also know exactly who you're talking to and don't aim for the world because if you aim for the world and if your goal right out of this shoot is 50,000 listeners per episode, you're going to be very disappointed unless you are part of the 0.03%
Ryan Holmes:
Or you're already launching off of a platform that has an established base to it.
Rebecca Carrell:
Most of us aren't, don't do that. When we start a podcast, I would probably speak directly to the women's ministry director, to the pastor who wants to know if this is a good way that they can steward the content they're already managing. And I would say yes, but know exactly who you're talking to and don't shy away from a local podcast. Sure. I have decided that my podcast is meant for the Dallas-Fort Worth area woman who is probably working at least part-time, and she's busy and she wants her Christian content and she just doesn't have time to sit down and read all the books she wants to read. And I'm speaking exactly to her. Now, my audience is broader than that, but I have her in my cross hairs and I know her age and I know what she's into. And so everything I'm talking about is filtered through that local funnel.
And so pastor, women's ministry director, do this for the people you're already shepherding and then be very, very satisfied with that. And if your audience goes broader than that and it might, then that's just sort of the cherry on top of the cake. But what happens when we want massive numbers overnight is that just tends to not happen very often, perhaps rarely. So have a good definition of success, and if you're reaching the people you're already shepherding and if you are supplementing what they're already getting from you or from the church service or from the Bible study, that is a tremendous success in my mind, and that's a really good reason to do a podcast. And then if the Lord wants to take it bigger than that, he will. Yeah,
Ryan Holmes:
Sure. Well, that was all my points. Thanks. But going back, I think what you described, I can tell your radio background, you have a very specific person in mind. So we talk a lot about demographics and audience. And so what you're describing is this is the particular person that I have in mind, or maybe a small group of people.
Rebecca Carrell:
She's my you.
Ryan Holmes:
You're right. And then oftentimes that also comes with an age range. It can come with income levels depending on how specific you're getting in a given broadcast space. But if you have that as a target, that's a good starting point to say we're going to generally try to structure episodes that would target this person's interest set. I think when we did our podcast, ours was probably a bit broader because of the topic that we were tackling, which was race and gender in society, and then we had a cross section of people on the podcast that were the primary hosts, which then created more prongs of being able to plug into different listeners. So as a white man, I hit a certain part of the demographic. We have a black woman who was on there. We had an African male who was on there. So there was a lot of different components of people who would want to listen to hear a given spot. But I think what you talked about as an audience is important to start out with in mind. And then having a definition of success, like you talked about that you're not going to start off with 10,000. I think when we got to the height of even what I did, we were only around four or 5,000 downloads a week,
Rebecca Carrell:
Which by the way is fantastic,
Ryan Holmes:
Right? It is.
Rebecca Carrell:
That's fantastic.
Ryan Holmes:
I say only because, yeah, that's a lot, but that it's not a lot. At the same time when you're comparing it to other huge platforms, like you talked about the 0.03% that has tens of thousands or millions of narrow loads. But I think in order to even hit those numbers, the biggest note I would want to add is consistency. Yes. So that you, you're doing this, what the table does is it's relatively week in and week out. It's maybe not 52 weeks a year, but whatever you're doing, if you're doing seasons, and that's a 10 or 12 week run, or it is an all year thing where you're doing 46 or 48 weeks that you do show up every week at about the same time. So the table podcast releases, I believe on Tuesdays if I'm correct. Okay, that's good because I've been doing this for a while. You
Rebecca Carrell:
Noticed you picked up on that,
Ryan Holmes:
But it comes out consistently. So if Rebecca's a subscriber, she would know, oh, hey, it's Tuesday. I can go check my feed and there's going to likely be a new episode that I can then listen to. But if you only show up once every other month, or sometimes it's Wednesdays, other times it's Fridays, it's hard people to find that rhythm because like you said, that specific you, they're busy and they've got a lot of things that are vying for their attention. And if you want to try to cut through some of that noise and static, you need to be a reliable voice that's always shows up at about the same time whether or not they listen, that's on them. But if you're always there at least at the door where they can say, oh yeah, that's a good topic. Let's open the door and let's listen to that one. But you have to be consistent and show up over and over again. And it is a lot of work.
Rebecca Carrell:
And the algorithms will love you if you're consistent. And if you're a hundred consistent, the algorithms pretend you don't exist. So the almighty algorithms actually, we hate them, but we need them.
Ryan Holmes:
But that is what drives traffic a lot of times to how you get. And then word of mouth spreads and then people leaving ratings and reviews. So if you like the Table podcast, thank you. Please leave a rating review. But it does help because it does promote it then within the system that it's in, if it's on Spotify or it's on iTunes or it's in Google Play Store, we're all places that you can get the table podcast. But if you drive people to those spots and even within your own marketing or discussion of it, we would always highlight where you can go find it. Because that way they can tell people, oh, well, yeah, it's on Spotify, so if you want to go check it out, just type in whatever their name of the podcast is and it should show up. So being readily available and then submitting your stuff to all these different platforms, it's helpful, but you got to be consistent, you to show up over and over again. And there's a lot of times when you'd just rather stay in bed
Rebecca Carrell:
because
Ryan Holmes:
It's a lot of work.
Kasey Olander:
Well, let's go that direction now that you brought it up, Ryan, what all is involved in creating a podcast? We know it's a lot of work, and I mean, we are intimately involved with the process and know it's a lot of work. But I guess, so for example, I went to the Sundance Film Festival and it was really cool because I got to hear interviews with a lot of filmmakers and it just enlightened so many things that I didn't realize. I grew so much of an appreciation for filmmaking in a way that I didn't before. So Ryan, give us that appreciation. What I might go into a podcast that people don't really know about.
Ryan Holmes:
Well, definitely starting where Rebecca talked about. So starting with your audience. So if you are approaching this, think of who's you that you want to talk to, and then we don't want to get mired in the technology discussion, but if you are watching this podcast, so this podcast has a video component that adds a whole other layer of complexity. And I generally would not recommend doing video. This works in a corporate environment because what the table does has a whole department of support staff that support that component. Thanks guys. Thanks to all the folks behind the scenes. But if you're just starting out, just doing audio only is 100% sufficient and fantastic. And there are inexpensive mics where you're just talking a hundred, $200, which that can be a lot of money for some folks, but if you want to do this, that's that's a good entry point that will give you good quality, you can get decent recorders.
And then as you grow, if you get into having subscribers or people who support your podcast, then you can move up to better equipment. But I would say an audience narrowing down the technology and the format that you want. So if it's like this one's all in person, but I know this podcast also has the components where we bring in people over zoom, that's a different layer of complexity, but there are a lot of platforms now where you can record in the cloud. So your voice is technically being recorded in a high quality format. So is your guest who's all connecting just via the internet through this particular website. And then you can process all that audio and put out a very high quality sounding, broadcast sounding podcast. Yeah, go for it. I
Rebecca Carrell:
Would echo what you said, but also to lend some credibility to audio versus video. I think video is great if you can do it, but I also think if you can't do something with excellence, you serve yourself better to not do it than to put out a subpar product. And I would say that with the audio product as well, I checked this morning and it looks as though 87% of people are listening to podcasts while they're doing something else. Now, I've seen studies, and I did my own little research project on this a year and a half ago, and my number was 91%, and I've also heard others say 91%. And so if that is the case that 87 to 91% of people are listening to podcasts while they're doing something else that should direct you as to where the lion's share of your time and energy should go, hundred percent.
I simply don't have the capacity to cater to, and I'm sorry if you're one of the people who love the video, I don't have the time or capacity to cater to that. I just don't. And so I would much rather take my time, put out an excellent audio product, and I think I do. Our audio quality is excellent. I'm a meticulous editor, and so I'm very proud of the, just in a technical sense, I'm proud of the product we put out. And I would rather do one thing with excellence than a couple things with mediocrity, because here's what I can promise you, if you are producing a poor quality podcast, nothing drives listeners away faster. A hundred percent. You will get your parents and your best friends listen a couple times, listen a couple times, but then they're going to drop off. This is bad, right? So I think quality needs to be right up at the top of your list of things that you focus on
Ryan Holmes:
A hundred percent. And I would add that the department that I work in is where media production, so we traffic heavily in video and video is its whole own language. So if your podcast is served by adding that language to what you're doing, it can be really beneficial if you're going to show graphics or there's something that the video enhances, which moves it kind of from a podcast into more like vid casting and vlogging, which is technically a whole other part of the world that we're not covering. So I don't think video adds a lot often to most podcasts because even radio shows will video. So you can watch the recording of whatever it is, whatever channel you watch because everybody live streams it, so it's easy to see, but there's not much is being added when I watch the Rebecca Carrell radio show. But you might just have it on in the background at your computer, and that's how you can access that content. But it's just in a tab that's open, but your email's in front of that and your calendar's in front of that, and so you're still listening. You're just listening. So the audio quality becomes the primary driver. And then video is really a supplement. If you're going to add to me some sort of graphic or some element that is that language that helps express what's going on,
Kasey Olander:
Those are really helpful principles for different areas of ministry too, that you want to pursue things with excellence rather than overtaxing and spreading yourself too thin or spreading your team too thin. You want to do things that you're actually able to do. Well, I mean, it's a sense of stewardship. I don't want to sound too corporate about it for business, but it's, I mean, a sense of using resources wisely.
Rebecca Carrell:
Yes. And I feel so strongly about this. I'm glad you brought that up, because also the more mediums we try to get ourselves out on, none of it's negative. It's all good. And it's wonderful to give as many people possible access to good content. However, pastor, there's a but yeah, and women's ministry leader, you're not called to shepherd the world. You're called to shepherd your flock. And so I would so much rather see you steward them well, you worry about giving them the best resources possible, and you probably aren't going to be able to juggle too many of those balls at the same time if you are in local ministry, and truly that is where your heart needs to be with your local people. They're the ones who need you. And we're called to incarnational ministry. And so I think it's wonderful to have multiple formats of resources available, but I think our first and primary concern needs to be to the people God is placed around us and so worry primarily about what is going to minister most to them.
Kasey Olander:
And it can be cool because podcasting can be a way to, like you said earlier, Rebecca, strengthen relationships with people that you actually know in real life. And hopefully, I think one of my hopes would be that if they listened to an episode and they're like, wow, that person was really vulnerable. They were really willing to share the then call to action would not be, I can start my own podcast and do that, but rather I can share vulnerably and have real community with people.
Ryan Holmes:
Go ahead. And I think podcasts can sometimes be a catalyst to help have that conversation because I can take your podcast or Rebecca's podcast and I can then share it with someone and say, Hey, check this out. And then maybe after you listen to it, maybe we can talk more. And it becomes an entryway where Rebecca just often is the platform to then stand on to say, Hey, so she shared that. I know I've experienced that too. Do you want to talk about that episode and our own experiences with what she shared? It can create a doorway to have deeper conversations and hopefully connections within that community that you're describing, Rebecca.
Rebecca Carrell:
Totally. The hope that it would spark organic conversations with the people face to face, not your Facebook friends. Right.
Kasey Olander:
There's a girl that I was discipling one time and she was asking me a theological question and I was like, here's a podcast episode that would address that, and then you and I can talk about it after you listen to it. And it's funny because afterwards she came back and she was like, it was really encouraging that they were struggling through this issue too. These are theologians and they're professionals, and yet I got to overhear a dialogue that they're having as they're processing and wrestling. It wasn't just, oh, that theologians have all the answers
Ryan Holmes:
Come to hear the sage on the stage. Exactly. Yeah. I think when we had our podcast too, we would share stories like that, and both of my cohosts, they would often when people would want to meet with them to talk about a specific issue on race, they would share, Hey, listen to this previous episode or read this book first, and then if you get through that, then we'll spend some of the time to do that because there's an emotional labor that is going to go into having those conversations with people, even if you know them well. So you want to say like, Hey, let's make sure that you have some commitment to the level of work, emotional vulnerability, some of the nuance of the conversation before we actually sit down. I don't want to sit there and have to do all of the lifting of this given topic as a black woman, as a black man, I want you to have some skin in the game thinking through this before we actually sit down. And podcasts became a really good way to say, Hey, check this one out and see how that strikes you. And then maybe you're upset or maybe you're like, you want more, but then we can talk about that because now you've framed some of the conversation before we sit down.
Rebecca Carrell:
That's how I was introduced to your podcast, really and truly, I wanted to have a conversation with someone. She asked me if I would listen to an episode first. I did fantastic. And then I listened to all of the episodes.
Ryan Holmes:
We were definitely bingeable. I will say that
Rebecca Carrell:
I loved it. I loved it. And then we had a conversation and I was so grateful that she had pointed me in your direction because then I was prepared to have the discussion.
Kasey Olander:
It's not passing the buck like, ah, these people are going to disciple you instead. Not at all. It's coming alongside.
Ryan Holmes:
And I think at least in my experience, when we were doing that, I think one of the things that made what we did special was that all of us had prior friendship connections. So it wasn't a corporate environment. So we weren't paid to be there. We were doing it out of the literal love of our heart to talk about this. But we used to all work together. And when we would have lunches and whatever you're sitting in the conference room, we would have those conversations. And then at some point they said, Hey, we should record this. And I was like, that's a terrible idea.
As a white man, I can say that. I think that's one of the worst ideas possible. But they kept at it. And then that friendship though, I think came out because it was an organic thing. It often allowed me specifically to be a person that I didn't know a lot of the time, but I could ask questions, which is representative also of the you that we were targeting people who want to have this conversation, but they're afraid and they don't know how to enter in. But that friendship really created a base to start with. That was, at least for us, unique. It wasn't a corporate environment, but I know I think Rebecca, on the podcast you have currently, I think that's like you guys have a good friendship, so that also can then become a,
Rebecca Carrell:
Oh, best friends.
Ryan Holmes:
But that comes out then as an organic part where you guys can joke and you can get into topics that you and I probably wouldn't because we know each other, but we don't know each other that
Rebecca Carrell:
Way on that level.
Ryan Holmes:
So at least for us on our podcast, we all had a very deep connection initially. So that friendship, I think it permeated what you were hearing
Rebecca Carrell:
And it bore the weight to the heaviness of the topics.
Ryan Holmes:
And it made it more intimate too, because it is a heavy topic. And then yeah, you're sharing trauma and struggling through what's happening culturally, but you have friendship through that. That is a very different thing. So really our goal for our podcast was to have what we normally had as a conversation, but put a mic in front of us. So whoever listened to it, we didn't have as specific an audience as what Rebecca described earlier. We probably should have, I want to ask thinking back through it, I was like,
Rebecca Carrell:
Actually, but it was a fabulous podcast. It served its purpose. And these are all things, when we give these guidelines, they're just guidelines. A hundred percent. If you have great chemistry with two of your friends and you talk about meaty topics and you want to launch a podcast, launch a podcast. But there are some things that I can say after having been in broadcasting for 25 years here are say it some tried and true tricks that are generally going to work well for you. But if you don't want to do that, the beauty of a podcast is it absolutely is something you can do in your basement on your terms, your rules, your topics, and then distribute it to whoever wants to listen to it. Right.
Ryan Holmes:
And it's probably fair also to say that whatever topic you do engage, that's not a consequence free conversation. So I don't want to discourage anybody from talking, but the things that you're saying, you're now putting those out publicly. So if you're going to act like a clown, sometimes you might get caught then by your employer, or if you work at a church, you need to be conscious of the fact that when you use this medium, anybody can find it, anybody can listen. So I would say for our experience, we generally had a very specific conviction of what we were doing so that if somebody called me into their office to say, Hey, this is what you said. I wanted to be able to stand on that and say, yeah, that is what I actually believe. And I will say it again, if that's a problem, then you do what you got to do. But your discussion of the free speech of putting it out there, you're absolutely welcome to put whatever you want out there. But that does not mean that it's a consequence free conversation. And this is a very powerful medium to be able to say whatever you want. We have technology democratized so we all can record great stuff, even just in our own home. But that comes with a lot of responsibility and that power should be thought about, and I think wield it appropriately because you might get pushback or worse.
Rebecca Carrell:
Well, my rule of thumb is boss, mom, pastor, if my boss, my mom and my pastor are in the room, am I still going to say this? And if the answer is yes, then say it. Say it.
Ryan Holmes:
Right? And that could still be controversial what you're saying, but if that's what you want to stand on, and
Rebecca Carrell:
Those are my convictions, yes,
Ryan Holmes:
Be convicted and say what you want to say. But it's not consequence free though, as I just want people to hear that as a, it's great to do this, put it out there. And then they're like, so I just got called into my boss's office and And that might happen too. Then you have to be mindful of where you're working at because if you're at a certain church and they have certain doctrinal convictions, your beliefs may be not in alignment with those, which you should have that conversation. But if you put that out publicly, that's a different level than you remaining silent in those areas.
Kasey Olander:
There's a sense of stewardship, and this is, this is a weighty platform. It could be, and that anybody can access it. Anybody can listen to it. And so hopefully you're modeling for people in the friendship that you're cultivating, you're modeling for people what they can do in being authentic and vulnerable. And maybe they're saying some things that might cause controversy, but as long as they're genuine convictions and they're real things that you're willing to stand by
Ryan Holmes:
And then be willing to have, because going to have probably tough conversations. I know I did when we had our podcast, but our topic was also, again, race and gender. So it was a very difficult topic, but it got a lot of people caught up in their feelings a lot of times. And then I would get emails or discussions offline about stuff that either I said or my co-host said. And so then it became something that I realized that this is not a consequence free medium. I love what we did and what we talked about. I'm still proud of it, but I am very mindful of you need to be aware of the broad audience that this does hit and anybody can listen. So I didn't even know Rebecca was a listener.
Kasey Olander:
Just found that out right now.
Ryan Holmes:
Yeah, I mean, there's been times where I've been at environments like doing my job working, and I do photography and video work. So I've been telling people, okay, we're going to line up and do this photo. And then I've been approached afterwards and they said, your voice sounds really familiar. Are you on? And I was like, oh my goodness. And then they launched into a conversation, which again, to our earlier point was kind of jolting. They know me, there's intimacy there. But then I was like, oh yeah. So this is not just a do it, smile, have fun. So for the topic that we were covering, it was very weighty. And depending on what topic you're doing, you should just be mindful of the potential ramifications of broadcasting that all out
Rebecca Carrell:
There, an ongoing ripple effect. It has an ongoing ripple effect, and you just never know when a ripple's going to splash up on you
Kasey Olander:
In addition to the fact that it's a lot of work.
Ryan Holmes:
It is a lot of work, but I mean it really, so much work. I find it, it is a lot of fun though. I mean, like you said, ours ran for a certain time and then we were all done. But it was also a collective, like it's tiring too. We ended kind of during the Covid era, because Covid made it a lot more challenging too for how we would record. But it is difficult, and you have a co-host, so to schedule people or to coordinate your schedule with your co-host schedule and have them all be on the same page to come up with topics week in and week out,
Rebecca Carrell:
Content vacuum, it's a content vacuum. It's
Ryan Holmes:
A lot. And then you can get sucked into just the immediacy of now. So you start just doing whatever just happened recently, we should talk about that tired, know what to talk about. So generating a whole plan of what you want to do, it is a lot of work. It's worth it if you love that topic and you really want to share that, but it can become laborious and exhausting and suck some of the joy out of what this is.
Rebecca Carrell:
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but the vast majority of podcasts have less than 10 episodes. Wow.
Ryan Holmes:
That would make sense. Because you realize at that point, oh
Rebecca Carrell:
My gosh, right? This is a lot
Kasey Olander:
Of work. What have I gotten into?
Rebecca Carrell:
There's a whole bunch that quit at three, and I wish I had those statistics in front of me, but it is the vast majority, it's over half, have less than 10 episodes, and then people call it quits because it is, it's
Ryan Holmes:
Hard to get to 50 or a hundred or 200 or 600 plus. That's a lot of work to maintain that longevity. So congratulations.
Rebecca Carrell:
Thank you.
Kasey Olander:
Thank you. I didn't even tell you to say that. Well, I guess to shift gears a little bit as we wrap up our time almost, what encouragement would you have to people who are listening to podcasts? We talked about a lot of the content creator side, but how would you encourage people who like to be good listeners? I hate to say consumers, but listeners.
Rebecca Carrell:
Oh, I can speak into that. So my years in radio left me for an appreciation with the host because the host or the personality that you love to hate is a real person with real feelings. And believe it or not, when you throw verbal darts at them, they could get 500 compliments and one vitriolic filled post or something like that, and they will carry that for years. And I've been this person too, where someone's just gotten me so riled up and you want so much to comment, and
Ryan Holmes:
I'm going to get back at this person.
Rebecca Carrell:
Because of social media, I would say, wait 24 hours, at least. At least. And if you still feel passionately about it, don't be afraid to address something. I certainly want to know when I'm stepping on tender areas for sure. So don't be afraid to do it, but please do it in a spirit of love and not a spirit of hate, because I've just had some of those emails and I developed thicker skin over time. I mean, I was in it for 25 years, but it hurts. And then the other thing is I'm just so grateful to the Lord that we do live in a time and a place where we have this kind of access to anything we want to learn about. So I have grown so much. I mean, I've been at Dallas Seminary since 2015 growing, got a master's, and I'm in a doctoral program, but I have supplemented that with so many wonderful biblical and theological podcasts. And I'm just so grateful that I've been able to go deeper into subjects that I may not have had the time or capacity to in my seminary journey. And so I've been able to continue enriching my education. And then sometimes you just want to laugh, and so you put on something stupid and comedy, and that's a gift too. So I just carry with me gratitude that we have this available.
Kasey Olander:
Those are great things to highlight the intentionality of listeners, to not be deceived by the fact that, oh, they're out there and they're distant, but these are real people that you're listening
Rebecca Carrell:
To. And it hurts when you spend hours and hours and hours and sometimes weeks crafting your product and putting it out there. It really hurts when 30 seconds after someone listens to it, they sling back with something that you forget about in 20 minutes. But that we wear that for a long time. And maybe I'm a sensitive person anyway. I tend to, I don't know. I feel things deeply, but anyone with skin on, oh, for sure. When they work hard on a project and then it's hated and you let 'em know just how much it does, it hurts.
Ryan Holmes:
There's a whole part of sometimes just don't read the comments. Exactly. I was a sucker for that though, where I was like, I want to see what people post on iTunes.
Then I'm like, I don't want to know what people post on iTunes and now
Rebecca Carrell:
And then we stop.
Ryan Holmes:
That's a very real thing. It is. I think if I can answer that question real quick in our closing minutes, I would say two things. One is to always be curious, not judgmental. That's good. So if you're listening, listen with curiosity, not judgment. Judgment can always come later, but be open and listen to what people are saying. Actively engage in not listening to prove why they're wrong, but listening to actually say, I hadn't thought of Rebecca's position. That's good. I don't agree with her, but I can see why she holds that and she defended it, and I can respect that point of view even if I don't align with her on that. So be curious, not judgmental. And then for a lot of people that I have learned the most from, they are always good readers. So be a reader who reads widely, so that way you have a very informed background.
You have a lot of experience. You read news. You might read pop culture, you read theology, you read commentaries, which I know people are like, that's so many things to do, which I understand. So not everybody is built that way. I understand that. But for me, I always try to read as much as I can from different authors, people that are completely different parts of the spectrum of whatever topic I'm pursuing. I want to be well-rounded, so I can interact graciously and respectfully with whomever I talk to about a topic. And the more I can read, hopefully I can then project that in my conversations, in my recordings, in my writing. But you have to be a good reader. So being curious and not judgmental, how you actively engage, and then being just a very specific wide reader and thinker on whatever topic. That's
Kasey Olander:
Good. Yeah. I love it so much that you guys just highlighted this. This is not just listening to podcasts. This is good advice for ministry, for having difficult conversations with actual human beings, to retain people's personhood, to be charitable and gracious, and also to be curious, not judgmental, and to read widely. Yeah,
Ryan Holmes:
We didn't even plan that. That's beautiful at that. That's just the organic beauty of podcasts. Praise.
Rebecca Carrell:
We should do a podcast,
Kasey Olander:
Or spinoff show.
Ryan Holmes:
Well, the spinoff show. Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Okay. Well, on that note,
Ryan Holmes:
We're making moves here. Yeah, we're making something happen.
Kasey Olander:
We hope that today was encouraging for you, and we're grateful that you've tuned into this conversation. We hope that you have a greater appreciation for podcasting as a medium, how the Lord might use it, and yeah, maybe some fun along the way. So we thank you for joining us today. We hope that you join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture, and we hope that you leave us a rating or review as Ryan highlighted earlier.
Thanks for that, Ryan.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary.
And not only do we discuss issues of God and culture, but we also discuss how theology is relevant to life. And our topic today is the situation in the Middle East, which is nothing short of incredibly complicated. And my guest is Joel Rosenberg, who is probably known to most of you as an author of fiction. But what we're going to be talking about is not going to be fiction.
Joel Rosenberg:
No.
Darrell Bock:
It's going to be nonfiction.
Joel Rosenberg:
If only.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly. And runs the Joshua Fund. And you're like the guy who has his hands in all the pies. You know what I mean?
Joel Rosenberg:
We're trying to be a witness and a blessing to Israel and our neighbors, both from the humanitarian relief side, the strength and the church side, the educational side to the rest of the church, and a media side, because so much of the media is so hostile to Israel, and Jewish people, and Palestinians that, so there's a number of things. So we're working on multiple fronts.
Darrell Bock:
So talk a little bit about the Joshua Fund and what you do, because I think that'll set a context for the conversation that we're going to have.
Joel Rosenberg:
Sure. So in 2006, my wife and I started the Joshua Fund, which the simplest way to think of it is a mutual fund. It's not literally for financial investing. It's for investing in kingdom work in Israel and the Arab Muslim world, meaning most people don't know enough about stocks to say, "Okay, I'm going to pick those 10 stocks, and those are the ones in my portfolio." Most people are more comfortable saying, "I want to have a mutual fund. Let people who are experts figure out how much of my portfolio should be in this stock, or that stock, or bonds, or whatever. I trust these people and I'm going to put my money there, and they're going to figure out the best way to invest to get the highest returns."
And in that sense, we realize that most evangelical Christians in the United States or elsewhere, if they're going to give $25 a month or $25,000, they don't actually know mostly what's happening in Israel spiritually or much less in the Palestinian areas or in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq or Egypt, to know how to invest wisely. Their instincts, I want to help, I want to be a blessing to the local church-
Darrell Bock:
They don't know where to help.
Joel Rosenberg:
… where to witness.
Darrell Bock:
They don't know how to help.
Joel Rosenberg:
But yeah, I wouldn't know the theology of, I don't even know the names of the churches or the pastors. I don't know their theology. I don't know if they use the money the way they say they're going to, if they're healthy, if other people in the land think they're healthy people. And so that's basically what our team does is go and have a lot of coffee and baklava. We joke that that's our main line item in the budget, coffee and baklava. It's not really true, although in my case it looks like it's true. But it's building relationships in Israel and the Arab world and getting to know them and saying, "Lord, where do you want us to direct these resources?" They may not be the only places to give, but that's where we were asking, "Lord, show us where and how," so that the Great Commission is fulfilled, that the local church is strengthened, and that the local church has the physical, and financial, and spiritual capacity to be the hands and feet of Jesus, including humanitarian relief, including in times of war and terror.
So over the last almost 18 years, the Lord has brought more than $100 million through the Joshua Fund to invest in local ministries. And so the ethos is both and, that God doesn't only love Israel and the Jewish people. He clearly does and He has a unique plan, but He also loves the neighbors and He loves the enemies, and we're supposed to also.
And so last point on that is it grieves us that too many ministries, obviously not all by any means, but many ministries who love one side are so passionate about that side that I think mostly it's inadvertent or maybe a little careless, that they either don't talk about God's heart of compassion, and love, and mercy for the others side, or they speak at times derogatorily. So if you really love Israel, it's not a fan club. It's not a college football team that you're supposed to be so in that you take shots at the other team, right? God loves both, and it's not either or.
And so for us, that's challenging. We understand why most ministries don't try to focus on both simultaneously because the spiritual warfare and the complexity is very, very challenging. But this has put us in a place where we've built very deep, challenging but exciting relationships with Palestinian Arab pastors and their wives, Israeli Arab pastors and ministry leaders and their wives, Israeli Messianic Jewish pastors and ministry leaders.
And then I don't get to travel as much to the neighboring countries because I am an Israeli, I am a Jew, I'm a Zionist. So that sometimes is more challenging than our teams that work on that side can bear. And that's fine. I want to help raise money and let that money flow to those folks. I don't want to make their lives more complicated by getting to know me.
Darrell Bock:
So just again, to give you a feel for this, I mean your involvement, and of course I know your involvement, particularly in this area through a trip I took to Egypt several years ago, you're actually in contact with leaders from around the region, and the Joshua Fund is aware in contributing to people around the region. So even though you're located in Israel, you're actually engaged with people, if I can say it this way, who surround Israel in many ways.
Joel Rosenberg:
Yeah. So financially and practically in terms of gospel, church growth, pastor training and encouragement, obviously prayer, humanitarian relief, there is a footprint. Israel, Palestinians and five neighboring actual sovereign countries, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. But then in terms of the delegation work, so God has opened up doors for me not just to focus on pastors and ministry leaders on the ground, but Netanyahu as a Prime Minister, President El-Sisi as the Egyptian President, King Abdullah of Jordan, Mohammed bin Salman the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and others.
And at that level, that's where we brought you and other evangelical leaders to go meet with Christian leaders of those other countries as well as Muslim leaders, as well as senior government officials in a dialogue to try to advance religious freedom, advance peace. But also try to understand where are these folks coming from and how can we be true ambassadors for Jesus in every way that an ambassador for Jesus should be, both the gospel side but also as peacemakers and friends.
Darrell Bock:
So just for example, when I went to Egypt, it was on the occasion of the dual inauguration of both a Christian Coptic site and a Muslim mosque in the new administrative area of Egypt.
Joel Rosenberg:
Right.
Darrell Bock:
Which was an incredible experience.
Joel Rosenberg:
It was.
Darrell Bock:
To be within 10 minutes of each other basically, they were dedicated in the two different locations. It was an all day deal because it's got quite a drive through the sand to get there. And so your engagement with kind of all the parties, if I can say it that way, makes it a different kind of ministry in some ways, it seems to me.
Joel Rosenberg:
It is. And that is not by design. I mean the fact that the Lord has opened these crazy doors, they're crazy. They don't make any sense. I'm not a billionaire. I don't have a political movement behind me. There's not an immediate obvious reason why an Arab Muslim monarch, or crown prince, or king, or president, or prime minister would ask me either to meet with them at all, much less to come back and bring a delegation of other evangelical leaders to open up a dialogue. But that is what's happening.
And the Joshua Fund itself has had to adjust to, is that a thing? Is that something we do or is that something that Joel does over there? And so, yes, we have embraced it as a team because what's happening now is it means from the poorest of the poor with whom we're engaging through the local believers on both sides of the Israel and the Arab world, as well at the spiritual pastor, ministry leader level in Bible colleges, seminaries, but then at the political and even monarch level, that is not a normal set of things.
The only guidance I really have, well, Billy Graham maybe of the modern era who had the access as an evangelist, but still to sit with the Queen of England, or the king of this or whatever, because they were just so intrigued with, and you would be, why are so many people listening to you? But that's not true of me. Not that many people are listening to me. I'm glad that you are and anyone listening to this podcast. But God has created an environment where the evangelical voice is clearly important in the United States culturally, and politically, and socially, and that is intriguing Israeli and Arab Muslim leaders. And maybe they don't know anyone else to ask, and so they ask me, but God has put me in that-
Darrell Bock:
"You're the one guy in Israel I can ask."
Joel Rosenberg:
"He seems like a funny, interesting person, but sure, let's start with him."
But the other side of it, I guess, is that it's allowing us to also talk about religious freedom issues and to engage people who don't, you don't get in the room. When Juan and I brought a delegation to meet the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, he told us that you're the first Christian leaders in 300 years that the Saud Royal Family has invited into the palace. That's not normal, obviously. But as we began to define terms, I asked the Crown Prince, I said, "I'm guessing, is this true that the term evangelical is not used much here in the Kingdom?" And he laughed and said, "No, it's obviously the epicenter of Islam. We don't talk about evangelicals much." I said, "Well, I've got an ordained pastor as part of our delegation. Could he just take a moment and explain what is an evangelical and what do we believe?"
Now that sounds like a lovely normal sort of stage setting conversation, but that's a pastor from Albuquerque, New Mexico, sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected with the future king of the center of Islam. That itself is not normal, but God is opening these doors. And so Billy Graham is, maybe it's not directly applicable to me, but I've read a lot of books about him. I've talked to a lot of people that know him and knew him, as to try to get some sense. But also, of course, the Apostle Paul, he was told through Ananias, but the Lord was saying, "You're going to be the witness for the Lord to the Gentiles, to kings and to the sons of Israel." Well, that's quite a comprehensive ministry portfolio. I wouldn't claim that. I just mean I'm trying to be a good steward with the opportunities I've had.
And more recently, the most recently, just before this war broke out in Israel, I was invited by the number two most powerful official in the Palestinian authority, sight unseen. I didn't ask for the meeting. I wasn't even praying for the meeting. I mean, in general. But Sheikh Al Hussein invited me to go to Ramallah. I took another Jewish believer with me, and that was a two-hour meeting. And it was, I mean, there's not much we agree on, but it was fascinating for him to sit, and want to sit with two Jewish, Israeli evangelical followers of Jesus.
You could ask a lot of questions. Books could be written, books are being written about what is happening. But I think it's all part of Matthew 24:14, that this "good news of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world to all nations, and then the end shall come." I think God wants everybody to have a friend who loves Jesus and who, have somebody in their life who's willing to answer any question they want to talk about, but has a desire to lean in and hopefully talk about the good news of Jesus and how he's changed our lives.
Darrell Bock:
So that sets the context for what your ministry is and kind of the background that you have. You've been in Israel now for how long? More than 10 years?
Joel Rosenberg:
We've been citizens for exactly 10 years actually, in March 2014. I've been traveling in and out for 37 years since I was undergraduate. And the Joshua Fund started 18 years ago. But living there, dual citizens on the ground-
Darrell Bock:
You were living there how long? Is it that-
Joel Rosenberg:
10 years.
Darrell Bock:
10 years as well?
Joel Rosenberg:
Just a few months. In August, it'll be 10 years when we actually moved there.
Darrell Bock:
I see.
Joel Rosenberg:
Two sons who've served in the Israeli military.
Darrell Bock:
Now, the other thing that I've heard, and basically I'm dealing with what I'm hearing, which sometimes I wonder if what I'm hearing is what's really real, but is that October 7th changed the region. Can you help people understand what that means? One, is it true? And then two, what that means?
Joel Rosenberg:
Well, I think October 7th has certainly changed Israel forever, but we're still trying to figure out what exactly that means. So we can't unpack that. I think October 7th has certainly impacted the region. I think it's too early to say if it's changed the region. Let me give you one specific, Israelis who have been long interested in making peace with the Palestinians and have been supportive of various left, center, and even center right governments to make peace offers to create a two-state solution.
Darrell Bock:
So you're talking about Israeli governments-
Joel Rosenberg:
Israeli-
Darrell Bock:
… that represent that spectrum?
Joel Rosenberg:
Yeah. So Israeli Jewish citizens who have supported various types of governments over the 76 years making two-state offer solutions. Almost nobody wants to do that anymore. Almost nobody. And the reason is because they're like, "You got to be kidding me." In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, very controversial decision, pulled every soldier out, every civilian out, and gave the entire Gaza Strip to the Palestinians of Gaza without a peace treaty. Just, "Listen, it's yours. You've got beachfront property on the Mediterranean, you've got natural gas, trillions of cubic feet. Go build a Palestinian paradise." And that was 2005.
In 2006, they held their first Democratic elections and they elected Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization. And in 2007, Hamas took over, killed every political opponent that they could find, and then began firing rockets and sending suicide bombers. And we've been dealing with this for the last 17 years. So Israelis who were against that decision by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, say, "See?" But the center and left, that was the majority at that time, say, "Wow, we really thought, I mean, how could we make a better offer than that?"
Darrell Bock:
"That's the best we could do."
Joel Rosenberg:
"What more do you want from us? We're not occupying. You have all the makings. You have your own freedom. You vote your own elections, but if you're going to vote in a genocidal, terrorist organization and then use all your money and time to attack us, then we don't see any way forward." And that's the, I'm not talking about believers, I'm talking about the mainstream Israeli political spheres, like, "We're done."
Darrell Bock:
So the way I sometimes explain this is to say that there was an effort to get along and try and pursue peace. The Abrahamic Accords is a start. I mean the movement towards Israel, even going as far back as Anwar Sadat, here he made this move, look what that got him.
Joel Rosenberg:
But the peace held. That's one thing.
Darrell Bock:
That's right. That's right. And then you had this, for lack of a better description, the intifadas that led to the building of the walls and the trying to contain the violence. My explanation for October 7th is October 7th was viewed as the failure of a containment policy, and that the only choice you had now was to make the choice to eliminate the cause of the violence. And that that's the way Israelis see it. Is that fair?
Joel Rosenberg:
Yes, yes, that's fair. And the reason that it's fair in terms of that's how Israelis mostly see it, which is because they would say, "When we gave the land back to the Palestinians in Gaza in 2005, there were no walls. And then they started sending suicide bombers in, so then we built a wall. And so then they started firing rockets over the walls, so we built the Iron Dome system to shoot down the rocket so we wouldn't have to invade. Then they started digging tunnels to get under the wall and send terrorists, and then we had to start building ground penetrating radar and metal plates that would go down a mile or whatever. And then they still found a way to blow up our wall on a Jewish holiday, on a Sabbath, October 7th and kill 1,200 of us butchering us, putting babies in ovens, chopping people's heads off, raping women. So there's no way to stop these people. We have to invade and we have to destroy it. Not the people, but the Hamas terror organization."
Unfortunately, the most recent poll as of December shows that 75% of Palestinians, and this is by a Palestinian pollster, it's not by an Israeli, 75% of Palestinians support enthusiastically the invasion and slaughter of Jews by Hamas on October 7th. So this is, again, reinforcing a view by Israelis. There's no living with these people. We've done, we even supported the Trump two-state solution to three years ago, whenever that was, and they still want to kill us. So this is the way almost every Israeli sees it. I'm not saying there aren't still two-state solution holdouts, but they are-
Darrell Bock:
Fewer and farer between?
Joel Rosenberg:
… fewer and farther between than there ever has been. And remember, the country started by atheists, socialists, agnostic, pretty much a peacenik, almost by American standards you'd almost say like a hippie sixties, "We just love everybody and…"
Darrell Bock:
"We'd like to figure out a way to get along."
Joel Rosenberg:
Yeah, "You have this part. We'll have that part. And that's the partition plan." The vote in the UN. November 29th, 1947, the world voted and said, "The Jews will get some of the land, but the Arabs get most of the land starting with Transjordan," which was determined before '47, and then pretty much the rest. Jews were not happy with that division, but they're like, "All right, at least we get a land." And it's sanctified. It's legitimized by the international law.
Darrell Bock:
We got recognition law. We got recognition.
Joel Rosenberg:
Yeah, we're now a real country. What happened? Seven Arab countries invaded the day after we announced independence on May 14th, 1948 and try to kill us in the cradle. But even still, it's taken 75, 76 years to pretty much kill off the peace movement in Israel because Israelis, we say hello by saying peace Shalom. We say goodbye by saying peace. I mean, it is deeply ingrained. We just want to live in peace. And thus far, there's no evidence that most Israelis see, geopolitically speaking, to have that, and with Palestinians. With Egypt, yes. With Jordan, yes. With Bahrain, yes. With United Arab Emirates, yes. With Morocco, yes. Sudan, I don't know where, that's an open question. Even the Saudis. October 6th, everybody, what was everybody talking about? "We're about to make peace with the Saudis, and if we make peace with them, the next 50 Muslim countries are coming."
Darrell Bock:
In fact, as I'm dealing with what I'm hearing, one of the things that I'm hearing is one of the reasons why October 7th happened was to try and block that from happening.
Joel Rosenberg:
Yeah. The Iranian regime, it's widely believed, was looking for a way to blow up the emerging Saudi Israeli peace deal. And the only way they thought they could do it was create an environment in which Israel has to invade Gaza and start killing people, mostly terrorists. But you put civilians in their way, and if Israelis kill them too, then from the Iranian regime perspective and the Hamas leadership perspective, the more Palestinians that die, the better. That's the way they see it, because it'll make the world turn on Israel. And that's exactly what has happened.
And so as a follower of Jesus Christ and an Israeli, you think, okay, Lord, where is this going? We know that ultimately Jesus is the only answer. But don't you want to give us a few ideas of sub Second Coming pre Second Coming, how do we show compassion to Palestinians who have been terribly misgoverned, have lived under a terrorist state in Gaza, and have lived under corruption in the Palestinian authority in what we would say biblically is Judea and Samaria, but they call it the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority? 89%, 89%, nine out of 10 Palestinians in the West Bank want the Palestinian authority, President Mahmoud Abbas, to go today, tomorrow. Why? Because they believe he's corrupt and ineffective. And by the way, Mahmoud Abbas is serving the 18th year of his four-year term. And so Palestinians can't stand him and want him to go.
This is the world that I think many evangelicals who love Israel have really got to process how painful it is to be a Palestinian, how lonely it is. Not every Palestinian supported blowing up airliners, or kindergartens, or cafes but-
Darrell Bock:
That's an allusion to the intifadas, right?
Joel Rosenberg:
Yeah, over all these years. But when you see that 75% of Palestinians currently enthusiastically support the savage butchery, the genocide of attack on October 7th by Hamas. Then you think, well, this is a super majority, so how do you love and show compassion? That is our mandate. Set aside Israeli foreign policy set aside, American foreign policy. Foreign policy is the wrong term, but what's the foreign policy of the church towards loving and helping? What's the right way to help Palestinians who are truly sheep without shepherds or the shepherds are evil and are eating the sheep?
I mean, right out of Ezekiel 33, something like that, 34, it's pretty bad. And so you think most people, most Christians who care about this are still stymied, not everybody, obviously, some people have very strong opinions. "No, no, no. The two-state solution is right, and it's right right now." But even in the fairest conversation, I think you'd have to ask, "Well, so you've got two parts to what would be the state, Gaza and the West Bank." Gaza has been controlled by terrorists. They voted for terrorists, and now you could say, "Well, they haven't voted for 17 years." True. And actually it's interesting, if you look at that polling that I mentioned from December, only 52% of Gazans support what Hamas did, 52%. Where it's 82% in the West Bank, 30 points higher in the West Bank where it didn't happen and Israel didn't invade. But if you combine that, you still have 75%. So Gazans and Palestinians, it's still a slight majority, but it's a majority.
So you think, well, that's a culture. You can't just build a society, and build nice homes, and cul-de-sacs, and beachfront hotels, and an airport and a port and say, "Well have an awesome time. You're going to have a great life." Because if the culture says, "We hate Israel and we're going to do everything we can to destroy you and kill you," it's all going to grow right back. And if you've got the West Bank, which would be the biggest amount of territory and the largest population of Palestinians, if you're talking about 85% of Palestinians, according to the Palestinian most respected pollster, hates Israel so much that they support enthusiastically October 7th, then Israel thinks there's literally, we cannot let a state be created because they'll do unto us what the people of Gaza just did-
Darrell Bock:
They'll continue to do what they've been doing and even worse.
Joel Rosenberg:
And it leaves Christians who really care about loving both, again in a very difficult situation, unless you're willing to throw out all the facts and stick with a dogma that says, "Well, it just seems fair." Well, it seemed fair in 1947. It just has never worked. And you could say, "Well, I think it will this time." Maybe, but there has to be a culture change because you're talking about people who are supporting cutting off heads and burning people live in their homes. No Jew is going to let that happen.
Darrell Bock:
So how do you deal with this? Which is that, again, I'm dealing with what I hear. Some of it's from this group that I participate in that has a mixture of people and mixture of perspectives in it. And then the observation goes something like this, to the extent that Israel prosecutes its effort to eliminate Hamas and to do so with a singularity of focus, I'm trying to figure out how to describe this in as neutral way as possible, which is even hard to do. How does that not build up the animosity of the Palestinians to such a way that your 85% becomes more deeply ingrained as opposed to being softened?
Joel Rosenberg:
Right. Well, the honest answer is I don't know. I don't think that America's first thought after 9/11 was how do we make the Afghan people love us? The first question was how do we destroy the very movement that's trying to do this and will do it again, and again, and again if we let them? It didn't mean we shouldn't care about what Afghanis thought. And over time, we tried to figure out how to help them build a democratic society, right?
Unfortunately, the democratic society that the United States under President George W. Bush helped try to create in Gaza led to the election of a genocidal terrorist organization. So democracy is not the silver bullet answer. We as Americans think that that's a great thing. But when you're just talking about making a vote and you don't have a civil society under which people can debate vigorously, and have open free conversation and assembly, then the only people that have actually organized in an environment like Gaza were radical Islamists in the mosques. So you give them a chance to vote, well, they're going to vote and they're going to have one vote, and that's it. You'll never vote again.
So the answer is, I don't know, but let me offer a possibility. I think there's two possibilities for Gaza. Let's set aside for a moment, the West Bank, just for the moment, but let's just look at Gaza. Everybody's saying, including the President of the United States, "Israel needs a post-war plan." Okay, the first question is, what does the culture of Gaza look like? I've been in Gaza since this war started. I can tell you the facts on the ground, apocalyptic devastation as far as the eye can see. I've never seen anything like this. And I've been to Iraq four times. I've been to Afghanistan. I'm not saying there weren't places that looked like this, but oh my gosh, it's apocalyptic terror.
So the question is about the culture. After Israel defeats Hamas is the culture turbocharged, radicalized? "See what you've done to us. Now you're really going to get it once we get off our and get the weapons to come after you again." That really could happen. But there is another possibility. Japan, after the bomb, two of them, and the victory in World War II. Germany, not after World War I, but after World War II and the utter devastation. Both societies felt completely defeated. And having come to the conclusion we are defeated, Germans didn't feel that way, they felt cheated, they felt betrayed. They felt a lot of emotions, but defeat was not one of them after World War I. After World War II, "We're done."
Darrell Bock:
No doubt. Yeah.
Joel Rosenberg:
And so what created were peaceful societies that were grateful for the Americans who wanted to help them try to rebuild and become healthy, normal, 21st century nations.
There's a scholar, a Middle East scholar that I like and respect. I know him personally. Daniel Pipes, he's based out of Philadelphia. He runs something called the Israel Victory Project. And his case is until the Palestinians feel defeated and then are ready to build a sort of Japanese, German-esque new life, that this is never going to change. I've been hesitant to embrace that thought because it feels to war against my sense of Christian compassion, and like, okay, I don't want to make a person feel utterly vanquished. I think we have to ask ourselves compared to what? And Gaza is a different situation.
So the same thing spiritually. I'll just add to one other point. What does Gaza look like spiritually after this is all over her? Has this war, as horrific, messy, brutal, painful as it's been, and it is one of the worst in Israel's modern history, is the back of radical Islam or Islam generally broken? And people are like, "I'm out." This is what radical Islam brings, devastation and misery. "I believe in God, but it can't be that God." And they start scanning the dial as it were to and flood the zone of Gaza with 10,000 Arab Christian missionaries preaching the gospel, teaching the word, planting churches. Could that work? I pray, but I don't know.
And I'll tell you why, Darrell, just to, I don't want to go on and on here. These are very complex. It's hard to give sound bite answers.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I got it.
Joel Rosenberg:
This comes right out of Genesis 12. The people of Gaza, being perfectly frank and painfully candid, have been cursing Israel for 76 years. There is a consequence. Now, we as Christians aren't supposed to be rejoicing in judgment. I believe this is a judgment. Could the judgment come within mercy after it and a new birth? It could, and I would love that it too. But right now, I think there is a price to cursing, not just disagreeing with Israel. But if they had built the ideal Palestinian paradise that they could have had in 25, 2005, '06, '07, they would now be the model for the West Bank and say, "Listen, brothers and sisters over there, you don't have to live in poverty. We just showed how you could do it differently. And we learned from Dubai, we learned from Singapore, we learned from Bahrain and other countries. Do it our way."
But instead the west bankers are looking at Gaza saying, "That's the model." You're like, "What? What model?" Killing Jews-
Darrell Bock:
Defiance.
Joel Rosenberg:
… savagely. Okay, well, where do you go from there? It's painful.
Darrell Bock:
My way of saying this is to say it's hard to negotiate at the peace table when you have one party that isn't interested in peace.
Joel Rosenberg:
Well, their definition though would be peace without Israel-
Darrell Bock:
That's my point.
Joel Rosenberg:
… instead of peace next to Israel.
Darrell Bock:
That's my point.
Joel Rosenberg:
Exactly, right.
Darrell Bock:
That's precisely my point. In other words, when the whole point of you shouldn't be at this table, in fact, we would like to have you not be at this table, what do you negotiate? I mean, so that's hard. All of this to say, in the midst of it however, that the amount of devastation that we've been seeing and which the world sees has put Israel in a very difficult place in terms of global, I'm going to use a PR term which is crass, but in terms of global branding.
Joel Rosenberg:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And to me, that is a challenge that Israel faces because the less sympathy she has globally, the more she has to go it alone.
Joel Rosenberg:
Look, this is the evil genius of the Iranian regime. They were looking at their toolbox and thinking, what tools can we use to derail this rising brand where Israel actually is welcomed in the region and is making peace with everybody? And pretty soon it's going to be making peace with the rulers of Mecca and Medina. If that happens and everybody's celebrating, Israel's a technology, and economy, and the stock market, and they're making peace with everybody, and even Bibi is a peacemaker. That was Iran's worst case scenario.
I actually wrote a novel about this, it was called The Jerusalem Assassin, several years ago, in which the Saudis sent a back channel message to the U.S. Administration saying, "We're ready to make peace, but we need you to sort of prod us into it. We want to make peace with Israel. So could you call, Mr. President, American president, could you call sort of a peace summit in Jerusalem? And we'll reluctantly attend, but we're ready."
But what happens, I won't give the whole novel away, but in The Jerusalem Assassin, it's Iran and Iran's proxies that come out of the woodwork to try literally, figuratively, and in every other way blow up the peace process. Because Israel making peace with the Saudis is the ultimate mother of all peace deals because it gives the good housekeeping seal to any other Arab or Muslim society to go, "Look, you don't have to agree with Israel on everything. You can still care for the Palestinians and want a good life for them, but we're playing ball with Israel now. And if Saudis are doing it, let's do it too." And that's what Iran feared so much. And the evil geniuses, we are now…
The President of the United States, well it wasn't the president, it was Senator Chuck Schumer the other day saying, "Israel's becoming a pariah." That's from the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the history of the United States. I don't agree with him, but I understand what he's saying. He's calling for regime change, by the way, in Israel rather than Iran, or Russia, or China. But when you have a Senate Majority Leader who's Jewish saying that the Prime Minister of Israel, democratically elected, is creating a pariah state, Iran is, I don't know if the Ayatollah can do cartwheels at this age, but inside he's doing cartwheels. President Biden and Senator Schumer are giving an awful lot of language that helps the case that Israel under Netanyahu, which means basically Israel, is horrible and nobody should really be doing business with us. That's my country. That's where I live.
I know that prophetically, we're heading towards a time where no country will stand with Israel, right? When we get to Ezekiel 38, 39 and the war of Gog and Magog, no country comes to Israel's rescue. And of course we see that in Zechariah. We see it in Revelation. There's going to be a point which nobody, nobody wants to stand with Israel. We're not there yet, but we're seeing tensions in Washington over should we, how do we stand with Israel?
And right now, the United States veto at the UN Security Council is the only thing that's keeping the rest of the world from condemning us and beginning to put sanctions on us. And so it's a very dangerous moment for Israel internationally.
And this last point on this, which is when it's difficult in terms of media, and Israel's on trial for genocide at the World Court, and the UN is condemning us all the time, it makes many evangelicals or Christians of other theological persuasions start struggling. "Do I want to even be identified with these people? Why should I stick out my neck in my conversations with my friends, or my family, or at work? I don't want to defend Israel, I can't defend…" And that starts to isolate Israel and Jewish people even more, which yes, is prophetic, but isn't something that we as evangelical should be-
Darrell Bock:
Promoting.
Joel Rosenberg:
… promoting or excited about. So how do you stand with your friend? Even if you think, wow, Israel's right to try to destroy Hamas, but they're going about it all the wrong ways. That's a fair argument. Saying that Israel is genocidal is not a fair argument.
Darrell Bock:
Right, right. I actually think that distinction's important. That asking the question, the goal makes sense because you have someone who's trying to eliminate your presence, and it's the goal of a government to protect its people. But the challenge is how do you actually execute that goal in a way that doesn't play into the hands of the people who are trying to isolate you? Because that's what they're trying to do with this. And so some people suggest that part of the pushing that you're getting from the United States is to try and make an effort to persuade Israel that we share your goal, but the way you're executing it is creating problems that you actually don't need to have.
Joel Rosenberg:
Yeah. And look, I think that's a fair argument, but there is a question that is the pushback, which is how would we do it differently? It's not clear. I have not heard a single argument from the President, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, how Israel would be doing it differently. I think, again, I go back to the evil genius of the Iranian regime is that they realize once you've created the entire Gaza Strip into a military state with 300 miles of terror tunnels underneath where all the weapons are held, and that every single house has weapons, every single mosque, every single school, every single medical clinic, whatever, they all have weapons and they all have terrorists in them. Or maybe not terrorists in every one, but the terrorists can move from one apartment to the other, and there's more weapons to use. That's what is the situation. Once you've built that, Israel starts moving in and they literally have to deal with every single part.
Darrell Bock:
How can they be selective?
Joel Rosenberg:
And when you created a human shield strategy in which Hamas surround, where do they fire the missiles from? Kindergartens filled with children. So we have to tell the children to leave, but then the Hamas people sometimes don't let them leave. And then we have to think, all right, well, we're going to have to send ground forces in, and then we take over an apartment building next to the kindergarten, but that's all booby trapped. And so all of our soldiers are dying up and down in that building. So they decide, leave the building and just bomb the building. And then that creates television images on NBC, CBS, ABC, BBC and of course, Al Jazeera see the Israelis are bombing indiscriminately.
So the evil genius is that the Iranian regime has strategically created a way to checkmate us by doing our legitimate right of self-defense. Because self-defense when the entire Gaza Strip is militarized, looks really bad. And I actually don't know. I'm looking, I'm waiting to hear an argument of, well, how would we be doing it differently? And I haven't seen it. I'm open to that idea, I'm sympathetic to the idea. But I've never heard somebody who charges me with that or charges Israel with that make the case for, tell us what are those options.
Darrell Bock:
Let me add one other element to this-
Joel Rosenberg:
Please.
Darrell Bock:
… that I think is important, and that is the position of Hamas about the way Palestinians are utilized, and I'm going to use that phrase purposefully, is that they turn those civilians who are lost into martyrs and do so consciously.
There was a report run on CNN about six weeks into the war, which I sent to some of my colleagues, in which they interviewed Hamas people who were talking about the level of civilian casualties. And basically what the Hamas leader was saying was, "Well, these are people who are sacrificing and engaged in martyrdom for the cause that we are espousing." So they have it both ways. Okay? On the one hand, they say, "Isn't it terrible that all these civilians are losing their lives?" But on the second hand, "If they lose their lives, they're martyrs and we're willing-"
Joel Rosenberg:
"Isn't it wonderful?"
Darrell Bock:
… "we're willing to honor their sacrifice for the cause." That's a tails, I win, heads, you lose operation.
Joel Rosenberg:
No, that's exactly the situation we're in. And it's prophetic, whether it's in our generation that we're going to get to the point where the entire world turns against us. I hope not. But the first question is, is the church going to turn against Israel and the Jewish people who have a legitimate need, much less right, to self-defense? Keep giving and offering deals of every possible stripe to the Palestinians who keep rejecting them and then commit genocide. And then you ask them, "Do you support what they're doing?" "Absolutely." Well then show me the pathway to a two-state solution, a pathway to peace short of the millennial kingdom. I hope there is one, but so far, this is the most intractable problem on the planet.
Darrell Bock:
And so the level of mistrust that exists really going both ways is because of a history that is 76 plus years old because you can talk about what happened in 1948, but the grievances go back before that.
Joel Rosenberg:
It all goes back 100 years before that.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. Makes this, I always refer to the Middle East as the most tangled web, or sometimes I refer to it as a dual cul-de-sac in which each side is creating an environment for themselves that only keeps them going in circles. And there's no way out, at least it's hard to figure out a way out.
Joel Rosenberg:
And you start with the psychology of Palestinians and Israelis are both, I mean, you could use a lot of different versions, they're abused children, they're battered wives. I mean, pick your analogy. But the Israeli Jewish context comes out of the Holocaust where you can't even live, and go to the symphony, and speak German and still not be sent to Auschwitz. No matter what you do, how helpful you are in the society, what an industrialist you are, whatever, you are illegal, immoral, illegitimate, and you should be exterminated.
But Palestinians feel similarly. And they feel like, "So what did we do? We were living here fairly quietly, and then for hundreds of years." The Palestinian people are not indigenous, but I just don't accept my Christian friends who say, "There's no such thing as a Palestinian." If you can't even let somebody self-identify, people who've lived there for several hundred years. So maybe they're not the Philistines. They took the name from the Philistines, and in Arabic, you sayPhilistine but okay, they're not Philistines, but so what? Hundreds of years. So they feel like, well, we were living here and then the Jews started buying up some of the land, but then there was a war, and then we were forced to leave. And then their narrative is real. It has lies in it, it has inflation in it, but the pain is real. I've never met a Palestinian-
Darrell Bock:
The displacement's pretty real.
Joel Rosenberg:
The displacement's real. So if your goal as a Christian is to dismiss the emotional pain that two groups of people are in, that gets worse with every generation, there's no way to show love and compassion. So you have to start with that love and compassion. Now, I don't think that love and compassion means that you throw out the scriptures and say, "Well, no, there's no such thing as God saying, 'This is a land I'm giving you. You have to be kind to your neighbors. You have to love your neighbors.'" But yes, there is…
So I don't accept that for me to show love to my Palestinian Christian friends, I have to throw out the Bible. That's never going to happen. But I also don't believe that I should become a hyper Zionist who believes that, dang right, it's our land and you guys have no place here, and get out. And I don't see how that's biblical, and I don't see how that's compassionate. It's not what Jesus was talking about.
But going back to the complexity, so then how do you live? How do live with, yes, Israel has, it's not even a right. We forfeited our right when we got exiled and we never repented. God mercifully brought us back. We don't really have a divine right to be living in that land, but we have a divine calling. And the prophets told us we would go, and we're there.
I don't excuse, I said it earlier so I want to make sure I'm being clear, especially to my Palestinian or other Christian friends who are going, "Okay, now see," but let me just say this. I did say earlier, Israel keeps offering deals, and the Palestinians have really rejected all of them except for the Oslo Accords in the early nineties. But the Oslo Accords led to suicide bombing so it's not like it worked perfectly, but it was supposed to lead to a state. But suicide bombings caused everybody who supported Oslo in Israel to go, "No, we're not, no, we're not doing that."
I'm not saying that everyone, so when I talk to my Palestinian friends, they say, "Yeah, but each of those offers look at the offer. That was not sufficient." But I think that, so you end up in this sort of-
Darrell Bock:
Cul-de-sac.
Joel Rosenberg:
… cul-de-sac, this loop of, well, if no offer is sufficient, then what are you actually asking? Show me the Palestinian offer. What's the plan that the Palestinians have ever-
Darrell Bock:
What will it take?
Joel Rosenberg:
… put on the table-
Darrell Bock:
What will it take for us-
Joel Rosenberg:
… "You give me this and we are done"?
Darrell Bock:
… to be able to live here
Joel Rosenberg:
It's never been offered because at the leader level, I can't speak for every 4 million Palestinians, but at the leader level, there is no deal except Israel leaves. Now, they don't want to say that because that puts them on the defensive internationally. But every time you make an offer or the world creates an offer, and Israel says, "We're not really fans of that, but we could probably accept something like that."
Bill Clinton, 2000, Camp David. It takes Ehud Barak, a left-wing labor rights Prime Minister, but a general and probably the most revered since King David, and Yasser Arafat, puts them in Camp David, and they spend how many weeks there. And what's Bill Clinton's view in the end when the deal doesn't happen? Well, I'll tell you, Darrell, I'm going to tell you exactly what happened. He hated Yasser Arafat. In Bill Clinton's memoir he writes about Arafat calling him when Clinton was leaving office, and, "Oh, you're such a great president. We're so grateful." He goes, "Are you kidding?" And Clinton reamed out Yasser Arafat. And Arafat's like, "Whoa, whoa. What did I do?" "I put you in a room and Ehud Barak offered you 93% of the West Bank, and all of Gaza, and half of the Old City of Jerusalem. And you said, 'No.' You made me look like a laughing stock. You're never going to get more than that. What is wrong with you?" That's from the most progressive Democrat offering the brokerage of a deal that Israel was ready to sign.
I wouldn't have supported that deal, but I wasn't in charge, and most Israelis would've. And Arafat said, "No." And he came back to Israel or Rameh, and he set into motion the Second Intifada and thousands of Israelis dead from suicide bombings. So Israeli is like, you got to be kidding me. You never have a plan that you can say yes to. And when we offer you the most generous plan there is, you set into motion suicide bombings. What do you want from us? That's the way Israelis feel. And I understand that feeling.
Darrell Bock:
I say, when I go to the Middle East and I listen to the stories, and I ended up, this is before October 7th, on both sides of the wall, when I would go, I say, "I hear the same stories. The only difference is different people are wearing the black and white hats." And they're basically the same stories. They're the claims of the same injustices, that kind of thing. Each side charging the other. And the level of, as I said before, the level of distrust is so great that finding some way to have a conversation that is positive has become terribly difficult. And when it devolves to the level that we're at now, it's very, very difficult.
Joel Rosenberg:
I mostly don't talk about any of this when I'm with my Palestinian Christian friends. The Joshua Fund hosts the annual Bible retreat for all the Palestinian pastors, and their wives, and some of the younger ministry leaders, and up and coming leaders. About 90 to 95% of all the Palestinian evangelical ministry leaders that there are attend this annual conference. And we don't talk about politics at all. We bring a visiting group of pastors. I'm a teacher. We teach through books of the Bible. We have worship, we have praise, we have prayer. And fellowship is verboten. It's completely forbidden by the Palestinian evangelical leadership that hosts, they're the ones organizing it and inviting us to do it. We are not talking about the conflict, not because it's not important, but it's fruitless. None of us have any influence to solve it. It just creates a division and hurt.
You can go off and talk about it on some other weekend, but this weekend is about just being with Jesus and with each other. We have found that very healthy. You could say, "Well, isn't that avoidance?" Maybe it was priorities. We can talk about it. And believe me, people have taken me aside and, "Can we go have dinner and lunch?" I'm willing to listen to everybody, make all the cases. I said, "I can't solve this, but I can help you as a Palestinian Christian grow in your faith, and be refreshed, and feel connected." To you come in our conferences and make your case. We're not here to, we have no plan that we're trying to impose on how this should be done.
And we're not asking you to become dispensationalists. We're not asking you to become Zionists. We're asking you to be a Palestinian Christian who loves Jesus, who comes to Europe, or the United States, or whatever. Just share your heart and show us, show the people how can we pray for you? How can we love you? Again, it doesn't solve the problem, but I do think that's the primary way forward is not to engage directly head-to-head the problem all the time, because I have never found a way out of that cul-de-sac.
Darrell Bock:
You can't get there without building relational trust. It's that simple. And everything that's happening challenges that ability to build that trust. And there's a history behind it that's built up, that's built up walls, and so it's a problem.
So I want to thank you for coming in, and sharing with us, and talking about this. I really wanted our audience to understand, each individual listener, every you out there, to understand how complex this is. And there's a lot of history behind it. There are layers to it. Everywhere you turn, there's a story and a counter story, and it really is a challenge. But we're grateful for the attempt through the Joshua Fund and efforts like it to try and say to everyone, there is a way in which the uniqueness of what Jesus Christ offers is the only way out of the cul-de-sac.
And so our hope is this has been helpful for you to hear, and we thank you for being a part of the table. We hope you'll join us again soon. If you have, want to see other episodes of The Table, it's voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast. And that will get you to the almost 600 separate shows that we've done over a little over the last decade. So we hope you'll join us again soon, and we thank you for being with us.
Kasey Olander:
Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. I'm Kasey Olander, I'm the Web Content Specialist here at The Hendricks Center.
Bill Hendricks:
I'm Bill Hendricks, the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendrick Center. I also want to welcome you to The Table Podcast. In Psalm 13:1, David begins by crying out, "How long, Lord, will you continue to ignore me? How long will you pay no attention to me?" Later, in Psalm 83:1, Asaph says a similar thing. "O God, do not be silent. Do not ignore us. Do not be inactive, O God."
When's the last time you prayed a prayer like that? When's the last time you said, "Where is God and why is God not speaking to me?" When's the last time you felt that I don't feel God's presence, I just feel numb or blank inside? Why do my prayers seem so pointless and ineffective? Or maybe you've had a moment of doubt where you think there must be some sin in my life that's standing between me and God. Could be as recently as this morning or even this afternoon, today. If you've ever had those thoughts and feelings, I might suggest that what you need is not more introspection, but a person, a person we describe as a spiritual director.
With that, I want to introduce you to two such persons today. First of all, my long-time friend, Dr. Gail Seidel. Gail has served as the women's director of spiritual formation in the Department of Spiritual Formation here at the seminary, and she's also an adjunct professor in the DMin studies and the spiritual formation track. She's also been co-director of Christian Women in Partnership Russia, which is a leadership training program. She is married to Dr. Andy Seidel, who was my predecessor at the Leadership Center as the executive director for Christian leadership. Gail, it's so, so wonderful to have you on. I can't believe we haven't had you on before.
Gail Seidel:
Thank you, Bill. It's good to be here.
Bill Hendricks:
A newer friend that I want to introduce you to is Casey Tygrett. Casey is the director of spiritual direction at a wonderful, wonderful organization in Colorado called Soul Care. Soul Care is an organization that provides spiritual direction to church, parachurch, and non-profit leaders so that they can lead from a place of soul health and soul flourishing.
Soul Care, which was founded by a good friend of mine, Mindy Caliguire, who has actually been with us here at DTS, they actually come alongside us in the lead program that we do at the Center, which is a five-day intensive leadership development process that we offer.
Casey is the author of several books, the latest of which I believe is going to be out soon called, The Gift of Restlessness: A Spirituality for Unsettled Seasons. That's actually a revision of a book that Casey wrote that won a 2020 Christianity Today Award of Merit in spiritual formation. Casey is host of the podcast, Restlessness is a Gift, interesting name. He's been married for 23 or more years to Holly. Lives on the south suburban side of Chicago. Casey, welcome to The Table Podcast.
Casey Tygrett:
Good to be with you. Grateful for the time to be with Gail, to be with the other Kasey. The two Caseys, I love it.
Gail Seidel:
K and C.
Bill Hendricks:
I wanted to go through these credentials that Gail and Casey bring because I want you to realize we've got a team with us today.
Kasey Olander:
That's right.
Bill Hendricks:
We're glad that you've joined us. We're hoping in this podcast to kind of demystify this thing called spiritual direction, which is a name that's being more and more used in churches, and we want to bring some clarity to this whole rising phenomenon. Before we get into the conceptual, I want to start with the personal. Gail, tell Kasey and me and our listener, how did you begin to get into this line of work and a little bit about some of your background?
Gail Seidel:
Thank you, Bill. I became familiar with spiritual direction when I was studying for my doctorate in ministry at Gordon-Conwell. We practiced it there with the students, and I was so impacted by the fact that it was uncovering, I guess pieces or parts of my soul that I had not paid attention to before.
The questions that were asked, the community that we were in and the openness that we shared made such a difference. I thought I want to pursue this further, so I chose to go through the SILA program, which is a two-year training program for spiritual direction. At the end, you become a spiritual director. My soul has benefitted, but it's also given me a tool that's not competing with any other ministry that I can use to encourage women as they're walking with Christ.
Bill Hendricks:
Wonderful. Casey, how about you?
Casey Tygrett:
I came to spiritual direction as someone seeking a director. I was in a ministry context in a fairly large church here in the south suburbs of Chicago. I hit that four and a half, five-year mark, and went to a friend of mine named, Mindy Caliguire, who you've already mentioned, and talked about some of the struggles I had.
They were struggles about vocational discernment, like should I keep doing what I'm doing? Is this the thing that God has given me to give this next chapter of my life to? I was turning 40, beginning to have some of those thoughts, and she recommended a particular spiritual director, and I went to meet with him and it was amazing. I had about a 40-minute drive to his house and back and the entire way back, I was just overcome with what it was like to have someone here and actually feed back to me things that I could understand.
These were markings of the presence of God. As I sat with that and as I drove home, I thought as a pastor, I do this with people all the time, I just didn't know what to call it. Now I know that I'm not any good at it. I don't have the skills I need. It was from there that I actually pursued a training program through Christos Center for Spiritual Formation. I did that program and finished in 2015, and then have since been seeing directees, whether from my own church or individual people who know me or even through Soul Care.
Kasey Olander:
I love that humility, the self-discovery and the wait a minute, maybe I could get some training in this and be a little bit more effective. That's awesome. Thanks for that, Casey.
I feel like I hear each of you highlighting just the encouragement that it was to your souls, that somebody was helping you to attend to something in a really unique and maybe even formative way. I guess I'll start with you, Casey. Can you give us a definition of what is spiritual direction? I'll confess that I walk around like yes, I know what spiritual direction is, but then if somebody asks me to define it, I hesitate.
Bill Hendricks:
Your mind goes blank.
Kasey Olander:
It does. Please help me out, Casey.
Casey Tygrett:
You would not be alone. I think if you put 10 spiritual directors in a room and ask for a definition, you'd get 20 definitions. The one that I typically talk about is what we create in spiritual direction is a non-anxious space. We want to make sure that people know that there's no program, that's no real methodology because people will ask me what's the difference between spiritual direction and counseling or mentoring or other things. What I want to tell them is our methodology is presence. We're there to be there with you. It's a non-anxious presence, a space where we pay attention to what God is up to in your everyday life.
On the one hand, that gives us a big canvas to work with. On the other hand, I want to end it by saying this is all grounded in the reality of your everyday life, in what you go through as a parent, as a leader, father, son, mother, daughter, orthodontist, podiatrist, whatever you end up doing, we want to make sure that you are noticing where God is active in your everyday life and then being able to attend to that so not just hey, there's the presence of God, but also okay, now what does that mean?
Defining it as a non-anxious space where we listen to what God is up to in your everyday life is how I define it typically. I'd love to hear Gail's definition of this because I would imagine she has a pretty generous and beautiful definition as well.
Gail Seidel:
Thank you. Should I offer that now?
Kasey Olander:
Yes.
Gail Seidel:
One thing that impacted me just in reading some of the books about this is that there are always three convictions that underpin these meetings. The first one is that God is always doing something in the person's life that you are interacting with. It's exciting to me because it says that the Lord has started a process in our lives and He will finish it. I see, as a spiritual director, the opportunity to come alongside of what God is already doing.
The second conviction is that responding to God is not sheer guesswork because we're building on the foundation of the Christian community through the centuries. It started in the early church and the concept of… I know this is a longer answer, it's supposed to be short. Cura Anumarum means care of the soul. There were individuals who were known specifically the curates for caring for people's souls. This isn't a fad, it's not something that we've thought up recently, but it's a time-honored practice in church history.
The last thing, the last specific is that everyone's soul is different. It's unique. The wisdom that we are offering, it's not a textbook box you fit someone into, it's everything that Casey said. It's listening to the spirit, it's asking God where are you in this person's story? What do I have to offer now? What question should I ask? These three things are not original to me, they're from Eugene Peterson's book, Working the Angles, which is a really good book on all of this.
Bill Hendricks:
What I'm hearing in both of your answers, and I really like that word, a space. I think Gail, you talk about an offering of spiritual direction is an offering of hospitality, which is like inviting someone into your home. There's always three persons involved here, there's the person themselves who's come for spiritual direction, there's this spiritual director, but then there's this third person, God.
What I'm hearing you articulate underscores something that I came across as I was preparing for this conversation, that the focus really is on the relationship between the person and God, even more than the person and the spiritual director.
The spiritual director, yes, you certainly want to build and develop a healthy relationship and a meaningful relationship with the person, but that the spiritual director is really there to facilitate this relationship between the person and God. Obviously not trying to take the place of the Holy Spirit, but again, as a human guide or facilitator to, if I could use the phrase, help the person catch the winds of the Holy Spirit who is seeking to have that relationship with them.
Gail Seidel:
I also think it's helpful to distinguish between spiritual direction and spiritual friendship because spiritual direction is formal with a trained director and it is guided listening and often, it's individual whereas spiritual friendship is informal and it's mutuality where you share back and forth, and it's often corporate. I think people get mixed up. They think I just want a friendship with you. For me, I have to distinguish when I'm meeting with someone, are you wanting direction or do you want just to be a friend? It's subtle.
Kasey Olander:
That's an important distinction and that helps clarify a little bit. Can you continue to tease that out? Because Casey, you made a distinction between spiritual direction and counseling, which is also formal, but then Gail, you distinguished it between spiritual direction and spiritual friendship. Can we, I guess further narrow this? What else is spiritual direction not?
Gail Seidel:
It's not bible study, it's not things we've already mentioned, counseling, mentoring, and it's not developing a group of friends. My challenge as a director is to stick with what the person is asking for because I would love to become a friend and let's go do lunch. That's really not the traditional, I'll even use the word orthodox view of direction. You have to identify.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Casey, do you have anything to add to that?
Casey Tygrett:
Yeah, that's where it's an interesting thing because there are places where this spiritual direction is so distinct from other what I call helping professions. If you think about it in terms of a choir, in a choir, everybody has a different part to sing and spiritual direction has theirs, counseling has theirs, but there's also places of overlap.
There are skills from counseling and therapy that really do come into play. Things like, and Gail, I'm sure you've had this happen where you have a directee, and you begin to see where this is headed and you so desperately want them to go there, but you know I can't take them there. The director is trusting that God has already put the wisdom in their life into them. What we're helping them do is uncover that and pay attention to God's presence and God's voice.
We can't manufacture it. You cannot microwave spiritual direction and you can't push someone to go to… That's true not only with spiritual direction, but also of therapy as well. Counseling or therapy, you can't press somebody towards an insight or a realization. You remain present and if you're hearing it, I always tell the directee that I'm listening to stuff going on in me, I'm listening to the conversation between us, but we're also listening for wisdom and insight that's outside of us. Trying to pay attention to all of that, you cannot get in the weeds of pushing towards something. You have to let things develop over the course of time.
Gail Seidel:
One of the most helpful things I learned from a group spiritual directors consortium or whatever, we met regularly to discuss what we're doing is being willing to wait. That is really hard because as you say, you have insight. You can say if you would just do X, y and Z, and yet that's not what God's called me to do if I'm acting as a spiritual director. Sometimes, in the group that we had, people were talking about how they waited several years for an individual and when the individual became aware on their own with the Lord, it made a powerful impact.
Bill Hendricks:
I think that word aware is very important in this conversation, Gail. Self-awareness is massively huge in spiritual growth, and we have to step back a little bit and think about why that might be because I think a lot of people think, I think I know myself pretty well, and they very well-may.
There are certain things about self-awareness, however, that the person themself, I myself cannot see. The way I like to put it is I live inside my skin. It's a physical impossibility to see my own face. I could see every other face in the world, but the one face I'll never see is my own. I can look at a mirror or a video camera but even then, it's a reflection. I can't have that out-of-body experience to see myself.
There are certain things about me that other people can see that I don't see. Maybe a different metaphor I could use is my dad had what's called color blindness and he literally could not distinguish between blue and green. Of course, he was working back in the days when men wore coats and ties in the line of work he was in. Boy, when it came to picking out ties, man, he had to get some help because otherwise he'd show up and really look like he didn't have the right tie on.
There was the colors there, but he could not distinguish them and another person would've to come alongside and help. It sounds to me like what you're suggesting is that if we're going to be fully aware, and not only aware of what I call the bad truth about who we are, but also aware about the good truth about who we are, we often need somebody from the outside to come along and point things out that once we see them, we realize wow, that's a truth that I missed, but it's hidden in plain sight. Is that a fair size-up of what I'm hearing? You get at it with this whole thing of awareness?
Gail Seidel:
Yes. I didn't know if you were asking me or Casey.
Bill Hendricks:
Either one.
Gail Seidel:
Right. I think for me, it's strategic and critical dependence on the Holy Spirit of listening because if you can't be present to Christ yourself, it's hard to encourage someone else to be present to Him. Self-awareness is huge and it's tricky. Within a person's story, you can ask questions to pull out their story and many times, the pain comes out and then the discussion of what are you doing? How is the Lord speaking to you in this?
Kasey Olander:
In the context of this formal relationship that you mentioned, what is actually happening in a spiritual direction session? I would never do this, but if I were observing somebody's spiritual direction session, the directee meeting with the director, what would I be looking at?
Gail Seidel:
Casey, do you want to answer that?
Casey Tygrett:
Sure, yeah. What I think is wonderful about this practice is that you may, again, like we talked about with the definition, each director I think approaches it differently. The other thing before I answer that, Kasey, is that spiritual direction tends to be, on the whole, a longer-term relationship.
I had the same director for eight years, nine years. I have some directees who've met with me for three, four years. When you get to that point, there's a rhythm, there's a rapport, you know this person's story so well, there are some assumed things that you wouldn't normally need to do.
Typically, we meet for about an hour, 50 minutes to an hour. I like to begin with silence, and I invite the directee just to settle in. A lot of my direction anymore is taking place on Zoom, so everybody can just slide in and click mute and I'll mute because my dog loses his mind sometimes. We'll settle into the silence, and then I usually begin with some kind of prayer practice. Whether we just pray and use a Psalm. One of my favorites to use is, "Be still and know that I'm God." Just repeat that a couple of times and let it become not only a touch point for the directee to connect with what God is saying, but also to put themselves in a posture of being still and knowing that He is God.
The middle part, 35,45 minutes of the session, I usually ask my directees, "What are you bringing with you today? What's the most important thing for us to talk about?" Other directees will sometimes say, "I'm just going to hold the silence, and whenever you're ready, whenever you have something you want to offer, feel free to break it." Sometimes that works better when you have longer term relationships.
As the person, the directee is talking, I'm usually just asking follow-up questions when I feel prompted. This is the big difference I think for most people that gets a little unnerving if they've never had spiritual direction before, is that we hold a lot of silence. We don't immediately respond when the directee stops talking. That gets even more fun on Zoom because they don't know if your connection dropped or if you're just holding silence for them, so I'm trying to nod a lot so they know I'm still there.
What we're doing is trying to discern what God is prompting us to ask or just catching up and listening to what they just said. Sometimes there's a reflecting back that happens. Here's what I hear you saying, or there's a question that's how have you prayed about that? How have you interacted with God on that topic?
At the end of the session, I usually take some time to go back into silence and let what we've talked about settle and then I'll offer some observations, maybe a question or two for them to ponder, maybe a spiritual practice. I always talk about how the irony of spiritual direction is it's not very directive. We're not going to tell you a whole lot of stuff to do. We're going to offer some things to you at the end that are gifts that we noticed, and you can take those and use as you will.
The hope is that through that whole process, through listening and being with and holding a silent space for people, they will hear more from God than they hear from me. My job is really just to make sure that the table is set and that they're able to come and have that meal.
Kasey Olander:
That's really helpful. That really helps it be a little more concrete for me, for our listener, and also helps to give some of the fluidity that you're talking about. It's not that there's a set formula for every session looks the same.
Casey, I loved your quote that you can't microwave it. I love it and I don't love it because I would rather microwave things. I like the convenience, but that's a really helpful description about what your session might look like in terms of allowing so much space for silence, really it does mean that a person can hear from the Lord, and it's not just about what Casey says or what any director says. What about you, Gail? What do your sessions look like?
Gail Seidel:
I would not disagree with anything he said. I think that the other thing is the year calendar of usually the people I meet with, it's once a month, so I know that they'll have 12 times from that year to interact. That's a hard thing to do because you want… let's talk next week, too. It helps give them a rhythm to follow.
I think I just can't agree more with what Casey said. It gives the Holy Spirit time to work in their life, in their heart and in the issues they've brought, but it also gives you as a director time to think about it and to pray for them, and to ask the spirit to give you a sense of direction for them. You're right, there's irony because this really isn't true. We're not directing anyone's life, we're pointing them to the Lord and hopefully they're listening.
Kasey Olander:
Right. You mentioned Zoom and then obviously y'all mentioned in person as well. Is there a space for spiritual direction over the phone? Is it an audio important that you hear the person or more important that you see the person? How do those dynamics work?
Gail Seidel:
I meet with my spiritual director on the phone. I met her through the Gordon Conwell doctoral program, so I know what she looks like and she knows what I look like, but I like that because I'm not focused on myself, how she is looking, is she's smiling at me, that it is just strictly audio. You have to figure out what works best for you and for the people you're directing. You need to think through how you're going to offer it.
Bill Hendricks:
I'd like to press into this question that Casey asked about what's typical, and I realized that in one sense, no session is typical because every person is unique and everybody's situation is unique, and every time you meet with them, it's a new experience. Having said that, I know that both of you have worked with many people over time, and when you work with lots of people over time, you start to see some things that happen frequently.
I just would be curious from each of you, what would you say is extremely common that you see very much of? I'm just curious about that moment as you're working with people, you see certain things, just okay, there it is, there it is again, there it is again come up.
Kasey Olander:
Casey, why don't we start with you?
Casey Tygrett:
Yeah. I was going to say there's a rhythm to asking a spiritual director a question because we're not used to immediately responding, so we make the worst podcast guests ever.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, you warned us there'd be silence.
Casey Tygrett:
One of the most helpful things for me as a director has been learning more about things like certain personality profiles and also different perspectives on the stages of the spiritual life. There are all sorts of people who've done research on that, James Fowler was probably one of the first, but there have been others. Thomas Ashbrook is another, a book called Mansions of the Heart that talks about the development. That's one of the keys I think is what I notice is there are these milestones in a person's spiritual formation that map over onto different stages. We're also onto their unique design.
For us at Soul Care, for me, when I work with church leaders or ministry leaders, it also maps onto where they are in their ministry journey. There are things people at year two are dealing with that year 4, 6, 8, 10 and on look very, very different. I think a lot of the issues are related to development where they are in the stages of their growth and their life with God, self, and others. People who are early on in their faith, I've had a lot of twenty-somethings who have just stepped into ministry and there's a whole different slate of things they're dealing with.
We talk a lot about ego, we talk a lot about not believing your own hype, and listening well for the ways that God crucifies the stuff that needs to get crucified in us in order for us to move on and be healthy and well in the future ministry that we have. I think for me, what I notice is a lot of things that are related to these stages of spiritual growth and also just the nuances of a person, whether it's their personality type or their disc profile or whatever it might be, if they have access to that, I like to know that. I think that's helpful for how they articulate stories, how they talk about.
I usually always like to get a sense of what their experience, like how they came to faith and what their spiritual journey has been like up until the point that they met me because that says a lot about how they interact with God and when they listen to God and what that means to them. Audible voice, sign from heaven, does it sound like me? Does it feel like a burrito? Whatever it might be, helping to discern how they best hear from God is also really helpful.
Kasey Olander:
That's fascinating. Could you speak a little bit more… Before Gail, Casey, could you speak a little bit more to the stages of a person's spiritual journey?
Casey Tygrett:
Yeah. What I'm looking for is what are the things… I'm listening for parts of their story where they're identifying markers, boundary markers, and basically the question around what does it mean for me to be faithful? Often that means belief, often that might mean especially for people in ministry, what they're believing in and how they're presenting it.
The other is their community. How does this affect the people they're with? I had a directee at one point who was going through a transition in his belief, in the belief aspect, of the things that he held true and to be most important in his spiritual life. He was having a conflict because the community he was a part of held to one thing and he no longer held to that. It had actually been some time since he hadn't, but he really hadn't dealt with it because of the cost of losing that particular community of people. There are so many people who change their belief before they change their community because the cost is higher to change your community than your belief.
Part of a spiritual direction for him was a bit of permission to say this is part of you growing in faith and in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. This is part of you developing. This is part of where God is taking you. Part of it's giving permission, part of it is helping them navigate through how do you talk about this and do you talk about it? How does prayer change for you? It's as if they think it's the Jenga tower and you take the one block out and then everything else is going to crumble. Nope, people have been doing this for thousands of years, so you can take that block out. There's going to be a new block put in there eventually, but right now that's something that you can move and you are still God's beloved and whom He's well pleased, fearfully wonderfully made, none of that changes.
Some of that is just attending to them where they are and helping them move from one stage to another because every person that I've studied in the stages about stages of spiritual life say that move from one stage to another is always facilitated by pain. Every time we make a jump from one place to another, there's a significant amount of pain, whether that's internal, relational or otherwise, sometimes it's vocational, especially with pastors and staff. That's how I look at the stages question.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, thanks for that, Casey. Do you have any other resources besides, you mentioned Mansions of the Heart book?
Casey Tygrett:
I think starting with something, it depends on how academically inclined. Gail probably has some suggestions too here on stages, but I think James Fowler is a good initial one, it's a human development and spiritual development. It's been one of the ones that I see most people building off of. Thomas Ashbrook's is good. It has more of a devotional practical quality to it, so if you're looking for something that's a bit more entry level. He uses the research or the writings of St. Teresa of Avila, her interior castle, and he talks about these mansions that are basically stages of development. That one is I think a bit more accessible, but Fowler's is probably one of the better ones that I've seen.
Kasey Olander:
That's really helpful.
Gail Seidel:
I am going to have to leave the conversation to go find it. Maybe I can send it to you, Kasey.
Kasey Olander:
That's totally fine. Gail, what would you say to Bill's question? Are there common trends?
Bill Hendricks:
What have you found to be rather common, if I could use that word, or not unexpected?
Gail Seidel:
That's a good question. I think as a practice with a certain individual, for them to know what the parameters are, it's a structural, almost systemic issue. This is the way I'm going to offer this to you. It's almost the exact same thing that Casey described of going into silence, reading some scripture, but for the individual to know what they can expect because it's not really a time to talk unendingly for hours, but to clarify that we have an hour, and this is what I'm thinking in terms of, and is there something you would like to have included in that hour? Just so that there's a good synergism between your working style, I guess is what I would call, so they know what to expect.
I also try to clarify you don't have to do this with me the rest of your life. Say six months, whatever seems… Because sometimes it's a fit and sometimes it's not a fit. I think we as directors need to be free to say, "I think you might be served better by meeting blah, blah, blah." I haven't had to do that very often, but I think we need to create boundaries so that there isn't an expectation again, that it's a lifetime commitment.
Bill Hendricks:
Great. I actually have a follow-up question to that, which is the flip side. I'd just be curious, what's the most surprising or the most unexpected thing that's ever happened in your interactions with your various directees? Didn't see that one coming. I mean things that you're maybe excited about, it was some breakthrough or some amazing way in which God intervened in their lives.
Gail Seidel:
I just want to say this one thing, I do think there's some legal things like if this would be true of a priest or a pastor or counselor, if something is revealed that's majorly illegal or they've committed a certain act, that's very tricky with spiritual director. I would recommend seeking the council of someone else, another director, and then going back to the person and first encouraging them to confess whatever it is to the right people. I don't know. Casey, maybe you've had that experience. It's awkward.
Casey Tygrett:
It is. I've had that experience more as a pastor than I have as a spiritual director, and I don't know what that says, I don't know what that means. I know that that's been my experience, but the things that have been most surprising to me in spiritual direction is for the most part, it is a very… Every month we're really tending the soil. It's a very simple conversation.
You don't normally have… Maybe Gail does, I don't. I don't normally have these big… Me and a directee, you don't normally have these big amazing moments. Usually it's like a steady checking in as we go and you leave each session going, "I'm glad we met," and then you move on. But there have been occasions where I've seen a directees… Just the great part, the thing that excites me so much is when I watch their viewpoint on God themself or other people, or all three, to watch it change in real time and to see the freedom that happens.
That can be so simple because we deal with a lot of people who are coming with questions like my spiritual practices just aren't… They aren't feeding me like they used to. A lot of times, there's a question that's why aren't my spiritual practices feeding me or should I leave this ministry or should I stay? Or if I leave, how do I leave, if I stay, how do I stay? They're coming with these questions and they're always rooted in a particular viewpoint about God, about themselves and about other people.
It's watching them have a moment where I didn't do anything amazing. I didn't do any magic voodoo. I just asked a question and you watch it dawn on them, and they go… To the point we were making earlier about how you want to move people to a place. This is when you're like I'm just going to ask this question. You ask the question and all of a sudden, they go… That's it. And then there's this just effusive thing that happens. That doesn't happen very often, but that is one of the unexpected things because I don't ever sit down and go, I'm going to talk to this guy today or this woman today, and this is the day the floodgates break free. It never happens like that. It's usually unexpected some Thursday in February and all of a sudden, there's a lightning bolt moment and those are just so sweet and so humbling.
I'm just there. I'm just a guy with a Zoom connection, a microphone who spent two years and some money getting a certificate. I'm just here to be present. The Spirit's doing all this stuff, I'm just making sure that the puck stays in play. Those are really, really wonderful moments and I try to hang on to those.
Gail Seidel:
I think too, this highlights the fact that this is really God's work, even though we are a human being, sitting there being present. That has helped me relax that I might see what I would like to see that person become, but that's God's issue. I could make 1,000 suggestions.
Kasey Olander:
It seems like it's encouraging your directee to trust the Lord, but also it's you as the director trusting the Lord that He's going to show up and that He's going to speak to you and to them and just being participant in the process instead of being the one who's driving it.
Gail Seidel:
Right.
Casey Tygrett:
That's always helpful because sessions don't always go the way you hope they would, so if you allow yourself, you can become pretty self-conscious about it. I try to just embody the idea of what needs to happen today in this session will happen.
Gail Seidel:
Oh, that's good. That's good.
Bill Hendricks:
Casey, you've used two analogies that are very interesting relative to our cultural moment. Kasey Olander, you put your finger on one of them earlier because you talked about spiritual direction is like tilling the soil, which is an organic over time process. It's growing crops over time or an arbor of trees over time.
Earlier, you used it's not microwaving. There's not a microwave moment here. That seems very counter cultural to where most people I think in our culture are today, which is I need it now I need it fast. I don't have time to wait around. I wish I did, but I'm busy and boy, can we get to it quickly? I need God to show up now, I can't wait 10 years. My need is great, my time is dear.
Even as I ask a question, everything in me says that's probably the person who really needs to have some direction in terms of how they relate to God but you see the tension there, and I'm just curious how you help people see the value of what spiritual formation could do if they will submit to that time-bound process. Will it slow them down? What do we do with people that are busy and want it now?
Casey Tygrett:
That's a very interesting question. Gail, I'd love to hear your response to that first.
Gail Seidel:
I think we want to make sure that we're clear about what the soul is. You can't talk about soul care or giving direction without understanding what the scriptures say about the soul and that the soul is that part of you that's going to endure after death. It's not your body, it's not your job, it's not your mate, it's not your physical appearance, but it's that part of you that connects with God.
Now, this is such a good topic because we are all in the fast lane and we are wanting to get there as fast as we can. Help me with my soul care so I can become more soulish and relevant. I don't really have an answer except being patient and waiting and helping them see that this isn't a band-aid do it all right now experience. It's a long-term process, and if you don't really have time to enter into that, then this may not be for you. I don't think we should create an expectation that this is going to fix everything because it may open an awareness that's painful. I don't know, that's going around the block. I'm not sure that…
Casey Tygrett:
That's right on the block. I like that. I like that a lot. I think the one piece that I resonate most with is the idea that this can't be… I can't convince a person that they need to slow down. Mindy likes to say that at Soul Care, we tend to deal with two different groups of people, either candle lighters or jet fuel drinkers.
The jet fuel drinkers are the ones that talk about efficiency more often than they do about the slow… It's a sprint, not a marathon. I don't know that I can sell someone who is bought into the jet fuel drinking world on spiritual direction because, the ROI in corporate language, the ROI isn't there, depending on what your metrics are.
What I find is when people come to us for spiritual direction, they've usually come to the point at which the jet fuel no longer is satisfying them, and the significance piece is starting to creep up. The sprint is no longer either physically possible or they've realized it's just it's not worth it. Spiritual direction becomes this really safe place for them to go. "I feel like I'm at the edge of the way I was taught." Maybe they're bought in… Henry Nowand in the book, In the Name of Jesus, talks about those three temptations in leadership to be relevant, to be powerful, to be spectacular. They've just come to the point where they realize those are a fool's errand all three, so what's the alternative?
I think spiritual direction is the wonderful safe third space where a person can step in and we can help them see that there actually is another way to do things. There's a way to take care of your soul and be efficient at what you've been called to do, be vocationally faithful, but not lose your soul in the process. It's difficult because I've had some directees who I feel like they came to meet with me once, they had that experience Bill that you described where they're like this isn't fast enough, and they've walked away. It's almost as if I have to say… It isn't almost, it is. I have to say okay, and maybe at some point when the jet fuel runs out of value for you, you'll go, "I met with that guy that one time that was different. I feel like that's what I need right now."
There is this playing the long game, planting a seed, back to that metaphor that we get to do all the time and that the relative pace of people… I always say everyone has a reckoning. Everyone hits a wall. The question is who's going to be waiting there to pick them up and help them see what God is up to even after they hit the wall? I think that's what spiritual directors do.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Ironically, our time is dwindling, but you have… This goes against everything you just said, but do you have a quick answer to who should seek spiritual direction? You said somebody who's not finding satisfaction with the life in the fast lane and the productivity. Who else is a good candidate for somebody who should seek a spiritual director?
Casey Tygrett:
I'm supposed to say everybody.
Kasey Olander:
Okay.
Casey Tygrett:
I'm going to say everybody, but specifically if you're thinking should I or should I not? I would say anyone who's having questions around discernment, trying to make a decision or trying to discern what God is up to in a situation, anyone who feels like they're at an impasse in their spiritual growth, the practices that used to give them life, the podcasts, the preaching, it just doesn't connect like it used to. Anyone who's having issues specifically with prayer and the life that they have in prayer, and maybe someone who feels like they're at a stage, they're moving from one stage of their spiritual life to another. Those are a few that I would suggest. Gail, what about you? What would you add?
Gail Seidel:
Because you're so familiar with Mindy, I love her book, Discovering Soul Health, and she talks about the soul that is neglected and dangerously tired and then soul that can be nourished. There's not time to go into all the categories, but there's a lot of scripture that talks about what the soul is and wants. I don't know, Hebrews. In the Hebrew word, there's supposedly 750 times that it's mentioned in the Old Testament, for sure.
It's just understanding that all of this longing and semi-depression and frustration and feeling scattered and unloved and unknown, you name all of them, are reflections of what you're talking about, that our soul health needs some attention. Maybe people don't seek it unless they're really desperate or they go to a seminar and hear Mindy speak and you think I want that. I have benefited a lot from her teaching and her books, and I think she has a good place in the body of Christ.
Kasey Olander:
Mm-hmm. My last question, hopefully even more briefly, is how does somebody find a spiritual director. Once they've decided, yes, spiritual director direction is worth pursuing and I've set aside the funds for it, how do I know that a director is a good fit? Briefly.
Gail Seidel:
I think the best way is to contact Grafted Life Ministries, because they have a list, they have answers to your question. It's www.graftedlife.org, Grafted Life Ministries, and they cover how do you know if you're looking for a spiritual director? They list geographically if you are registered with them. They have a long list of… I just checked and my spiritual director is listed with them.
It just is an organization that might be helpful. It's not the only organization, but it gives you ideas of where to look, what you're looking for, and should you even consider becoming a spiritual director because a lot of times, someone who's already in direction find that they really are energized by helping others, coming alongside of them and campaigning.
Casey Tygrett:
I would say one suggestion is don't Google spiritual direction. Every religious tradition has spiritual direction, so if you're specifically looking for someone from a Christian tradition, don't go to Google. Grafted Life is a great resource, if you're interested in Soul Care, our directors, we have a team of 13 directors on our team from a variety of different contexts, speaking different languages, so soulcare.com, you can find our list of directors there as well.
Kasey Olander:
That's awesome. I think that's all of the time that we have, regrettably.
Bill Hendricks:
Unfortunately.
Kasey Olander:
Mm-hmm. I wish that we could talk longer, but we'll have to say goodbye for now. Gail and Casey, thank you guys so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure.
Casey Tygrett:
Likewise.
Gail Seidel:
Good to meet you, Casey.
Casey Tygrett:
So good to be with you, Gail. Thank you, friends.
Kasey Olander:
On behalf of The Table Podcast, we also want to thank you, our listener for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure. If you like our show, then please find us on your podcast app and leave us a rating or review so it'll help other people discover the show. We hope that you'll join us next time when we discuss issues with God and culture to demonstrate the relevance of theology to everyday life.
Josh Winn:
Welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to demonstrate the relevance of theology and everyday life. My name is Josh Winn. I'm the Vice President for Communications and Community here at Dallas Theological Seminary, and I'm your guest host for this episode of The Table, and I'm here with the other hosts of The Table, the many hosts of the table. We're going to get to that here in a minute because this is a unique aspect to the table in that we have different hosts for different episodes.
But I want to welcome each one of you, and just to orient our audience to who you are, would you introduce yourselves? What you do for The Table and The Hendricks Center? Then, how long you've been involved in this particular podcast? One of the reasons why we are celebrating The Table with this special episode is that we are reflecting on our 600th episode, and it's so exciting to think about all the ways that you have led conversations that are impacting people in everyday lives. Bill, let's start with you. We'll work our way around the table and then we'll get started and just having a conversation.
Bill Hendricks:
Thanks Josh, and good to have you with us today. I'm Bill Hendricks. I'm the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at The Hendricks Center. I've been involved with The Table podcast, gosh, about seven years, eight years. I think I started a couple of years after I came into this role.
Kasey Olander:
I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the Web Content Specialist at the Hendricks Center. I got involved with the podcast when I first started at the Hendricks Center probably three or four years ago, but then didn't get started hosting until just one or two years ago, so it's been an honor.
Kymberli Cook:
I'm Kymberli Cook. I am the Assistant Director at the Hendricks Center. I got sweaty palms when you asked how long I've been associated with the podcast because I don't remember. I think it's four years, something like that. Sorry, I don't remember.
Josh Winn:
It feels much longer than that.
Kymberli Cook:
Maybe five?
Josh Winn:
In a good way. In a good way.
Kymberli Cook:
Thanks Josh. It's gone on forever.
Milyce Pipkin:
I'm Melissa Pipkin. I have been affiliated with the podcast starting out as an intern with the Hendricks Center, and have been actually co-hosting along with these fine folks for about a year now. I'm just learning a lot from them and just enjoying the journey. I'm a fellow at the Hendricks Center, which is unique to the rest of them because they're actually staff and I'm like just a very blessed person to be out here and being able to utilize my talents and gifting in Christ.
Darrell Bock:
I'm Darrell Bach, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center. I'm also Senior Research Professor for New Testament at the seminary. We've been doing the table now for, it was a year in planning, so 13 years total, 12 years in execution, and we have done 377 hours of material, which I told Kasey earlier today is three seminary degrees.
Milyce Pipkin:
Incredible.
Josh Winn:
Okay. One of our goals during our time is to orient maybe new listeners to The Table, and I actually wanted to start with the name of the podcast, The Table. Darrell, I'm pitching this one to you because you go all the way back to the beginning of The Table podcast, and there's a philosophy that it seems to be represented by the name of The Table and what you're trying to accomplish here. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
Darrell Bock:
It took Mark Bailey and I almost a year.
Josh Winn:
Who's Mark Bailey?
Darrell Bock:
Mark Bailey, former President now Chancellor at Dallas Theological Seminary. Took us almost a year to determine the name of what we we're going to call the podcast. We had been doing podcasts randomly ever since the iPod came out, and this was a decision to make it more systematic and to have a plan and a purpose to what we were doing on a regular basis. We spent a long time on the name because we wanted to give a certain feel to what it was that we were doing. We wanted people to feel like they were walking into a conversation at The Table, at the family table or among friends that was worth overhearing. That's actually what generated the name, was to create that sense and ethos about what it was that we were doing, even though we were talking about controversial in some cases and a wide variety of things to have it be worth listening to.
Josh Winn:
I want to ask, because each of you have, obviously, you're hosts of the table. What are some of the challenges you've faced, even as you've hosted, in light of the vision that Darrell was just talking about? This idea of bringing people around a table to discuss topics that are, they're not just relevant, but sometimes they're difficult. Boy, talk about a real challenge in today's age. How do you discuss and talk about things that are difficult but in a way that's constructive and edifying? Is there a particular episode or topic where you said, "Man, this really was apparent to me of the challenge, but it worked out quite well"?
Bill Hendricks:
Well, there's any number of themes you could pick, Josh. We've done, how many podcasts did we say that we've done on the homosexuality?
Kasey Olander:
Bill Hendricks:
- Then, the whole race and racial reconciliation conversations, we've talked about that. But the way we do The Table, we want to model what it looks like to have difficult conversations, which means you put issues out on the table with real honesty, and of course, you bring truth and research to back up what you say, but oftentimes, we may disagree with the guests or the guests may disagree with us or sometimes we have more than one guest and they disagree with each other. That's fine. What we want to demonstrate and show so that people hear this is the tone with which Christians ought to be having those kinds of conversations. That's again, links back to The Table that you come to a table often to eat, which itself is kind of a unifying thing, but also you come to the table to talk, not shout, not dominate, not power up, but to listen.
Milyce Pipkin:
Bill, I'm just going to say just right quick, our theme for Dallas Theological Seminary, of course, this year we're celebrating a century of teaching truth and loving well. I think what happens here at The Table, whenever we're having discussions with our guests, is we realize that we can teach truth, we can talk about truth, and sometimes everybody's truth. It has to line up with what God is saying at the end of the day, but we can do it with love. We can love well through the process, and I think that's what you're going to see when you see us at The Table.
Kymberli Cook:
I think one of the things that I've at least become quite passionate about in the podcast that I host, and everybody does this, because it's a part of our method, is to do our absolute best to love well by best representing as many voices as we can in the conversation and trying to give a sense of validity to that voice and saying, "Hey, there's a reason somebody is taking this perspective." We want to actually try to understand if that voice isn't here at the table right now, I as a host am going to do my best to represent that and treat it fairly, and we're also going to try to treat everybody else fairly that is at the table and really respecting what it is where they're coming from.
Josh Winn:
Can you speak to the, we were just talking before about the change in or the modification in the tagline to The Table podcast. It used to be issues of God and culture and now you're expanding it a bit issues of God and culture to demonstrate the relevance of theology in everyday life. Can you talk about how that connects to the mission of the Hendricks Center in which The Table podcast lives? The mission there is to.
Bill Hendricks:
Shape compassionate, courageous leaders.
Josh Winn:
To shape compassionate, courageous leaders. Can you speak to that connection there? Because what I hear you saying, and really each of you is, when we come to this particular podcast and we have guests in, we're not just trying to dispense information, we're trying in the actual process itself to model what we're hoping others will then go out and mimic and exemplify. It seems to me that there's a close connection between what The Table's about and then the Hendricks Center.
Darrell Bock:
Well, we always are deeply committed to two ideas, one that the truth matters, and secondly, how you treat people matters. I actually think it's an extension of the great commandment. You love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and you love your neighbors yourself, and that extends even what makes Christianity distinct is that's true even of people who are opposed to you. You're supposed to love your enemies.
How do you do that well? Well, the first way you do it in the context that we're operating in is, I need to understand where the other person is coming from. I need to work to understand where they're coming from, where they are, et cetera, and to actually let them speak to why it is they believe what they believe. Then, I move into assessment. I'm actually in a better place to assess and to engage if I really understand directly and honestly from the person why they are holding to what they hold.
Sometimes what you find is, they share a value with you, they apply it differently. That's what we're searching for. We're searching for what drives a person to go in this direction, what might be worth a great conversation. The second feature that's important is we're an educational institution. Most people think, well, we teach facts in four walls. Okay, so I think of Dragnet, I'm sorry for the old illustration, but just the facts, ma'am, just the facts. Theology is actually supposed to be applied. It's supposed to impact your life, it's supposed to impact your life wherever God is. Now, think about that. God's everywhere. God's everywhere all the time. God's wherever we are doing with us, wherever we are, guiding and leading us supposedly. What does that look like in everyday life? We're trying to make sure that bridge is never broken.
Josh Winn:
Any other comments?
Milyce Pipkin:
I think the podcast does that in that you can see in how we open up in our opening and everything we do is to engage the culture and to show the culture, which can be very worldly that God is in all of this, as Dr. Bach just said. It's in his works and our glory that we see around us. It's in our worship and it's in his word. We just work, I think, to make sure that people can see that not only are we talking about these issues that can sometimes be controversial as we've mentioned, but that God is in the center of all of this at the end of the day, and that's what we want to leave them with no matter what.
Kasey Olander:
Right. It helps eliminate the sacred secular divide of like, "Okay, I have my church life over here, and then there's this other secular stuff,” but we're helping people go from life to the Bible, as Darrell's always talking about.
Josh Winn:
What surprised you about this journey? We're talking about 11 years of production, 13 years of planning and production, over 600 episodes. What surprised you about how The Table has been received as we've talked with our listeners? What has stood out to you from when you began to where we are now?
Bill Hendricks:
Well, one thing that surprised me, frankly, is that our podcast is finding listeners not simply in the United States, but now increasingly globally. I'm excited about that, but it says to me that we're addressing not just Western issues but human issues, that as humans engage life, whatever culture they're a part of, they have to deal with the human condition. They ask questions that everyday people here are asking, because they're everyday people there, but they're finding some people that are actually talking about those issues but doing it from a biblical worldview.
Kasey Olander:
I've been encouraged. I actually got a text from a listener the other day who said, "Oh, I was listening to Cultivating Love for God's Word," the episode with Jen Wilkin, and she said that she's a podcaster too, and she was just thinking about how she could apply some of what she's hearing to her own podcast, how she could help people to own their faith, their Bible literacy, and so I've been pleasantly surprised and really encouraged that people are applying, not just overhearing a conversation, but actually thinking through what it might look like to apply some of these things in their own lives.
Darrell Bock:
I'm overseas almost the entire summer. I walk in and speak inevitably where I speak, someone comes up and says, "Hey, I've watched you on The Table." Or they'll say something really cute like, "I feel like I know you," because they've seen me on the screen, so I tell, "Yeah, they let me out of the screen. I'm actually a physical person." Then, the array of topics that people bring up when I, because I usually will follow up, "What issue did you hear?" or whatever. It's the whole smattering of the array of things that we discuss. It's clear that we're drawing attention to people who really want to sit down and think about, we go 45 minutes on purpose because we want to have time to discuss what we're pursuing.
Milyce Pipkin:
I'm going to throw a ringer in all of this. I actually almost got a job from somebody watching The Table podcast. My background is I'm a former anchor and reporter, and I have my own television talk show for 30 years on the public broadcasting system, and so in the secular life, I come with a lot of experience from that arena. But at the end of the day, I almost got a job from someone who knew me from the secular world as a news anchor, and they saw me on the podcast and they contacted me. I didn't get the job, and even if I had, I probably wouldn't have taken it because I would've thought that they were trying to get rid of me.
Anyway, I just wanted to add a little humor, but that is an actual thing that happened. I guess I'm most encouraged when I see what we're doing not only helps, as Bill said, the reach, the global reach, but even in our classrooms that we're able to get students to use the podcast as they're working their way through some things theologically. When you have a New Testament scholar like Dr. Bock and a pastoral person like Bill, and then you have a millennial feeding into this thing, and then even the pastor's wife, you're coming from so many different perspectives with a theological view as your base, the Bible, the word of God, so it's really good.
Josh Winn:
Is the variety of your listening base and the variety of the topics you cover, is that one of the reasons why you have so many different hosts? I'm throwing this out there, you can say, "No, Josh, that's not why." One of the things I've appreciated is in that variety, you get a slice of a perspective, in the hosting and in that conversation. Then, as you step back and start to look at the vast array of episodes and it becomes a mosaic where you see a lot of different angles and perspectives represented. Is that one of the reasons why you have five hosts?
Darrell Bock:
One of the things that we're trying to demonstrate is the value and depth of the body. That the body has a variety of people with a variety of gifts who bring a variety of skills and a variety of helpful Biblical perspectives to thinking about things. Our goal was we wanted to be sure we didn't create a podcast that had a celebrity feel to it where there was just one host. We're going against everything that broadcasting tells you to do in-
Josh Winn:
That's why I asked, because it's very unusual to have this number of-
Darrell Bock:
And to get that variety of voices means that also you get that variety of perspectives. Well, one of the things that's challenging for the church is that it tends to approach issues oftentimes from one perspective only and doesn't have that variety and we need that variety. God designed the body for a reason. We're trying to reflect that in even the way we do the hosting and the various angles, and what's happened is that each of us have kind of developed our own interests in terms of what we want to pursue on the podcast, and that's created categories that we tend to operate in as a result. That's done. There are certain things I could never be a host for that these people are wonderfully qualified to host, so I think it's added to the depth of what we do.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's a compliment coming from Dr. Bock.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, there are multiple chairs around The Table for a reason, and it recognizes the validity and dignity of each one of those people. One of the things I love about the podcast is the diversity that we try to provide as far as the voices, because it demonstrates that … everybody is a theologian as we all have heard many times, but that everybody is able to participate in these kinds of conversations and to do so thoughtfully and to do so with a voice that contributes something that everybody needs to hear.
Josh Winn:
When Darrell says that each of you have developed interests, what are the interests that have developed? I'm curious. In no particular order.
Kasey Olander:
This is going to-
Darrell Bock:
I just set you up. I just set you up.
Milyce Pipkin:
You go off the rails.
Darrell Bock:
That's right.
Josh Winn:
But you all have to answer. This is what I want to hear. Yeah, what are some?
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I think you get into, to some extent, gifting and also life messages. For me, giftedness and mentoring, and therefore discipleship and spiritual formation and leadership, because I am executive director for Christian leadership. You could also add in a whole category on grief, because I've experienced that in my life. Those are some core things that then you build off of. I've done a podcast with a scholar on epistemology.
Kasey Olander:
I knew you were going to say that one.
Darrell Bock:
That was your favorite podcast, wasn't it? What in the world is she saying to me?
Bill Hendricks:
She was a lovely guest. I felt very honored, but I was way out of my depth, but somehow it came off.
Kasey Olander:
For me, my background is in campus ministry, so college ministry and ministering to young people, discipleship and evangelism are some of my interests. Then also, psychology and counseling trauma, that kind of thing. That may sound strange to, I don't know if I should say, enjoy trauma, but it is something I found really interesting.
Josh Winn:
I think you actually say that on the trauma podcast. You're like, "I need to be careful how I say this."
Kymberli Cook:
Just to brag on Kasey a little bit, you would be hard-pressed to find somebody who has actually presented the gospel to more people than this young lady right here.
Josh Winn:
Fantastic.
Kymberli Cook:
She has a lot to say. So if you're listening and when you hear things from Kasey, listen up because she knows what she's talking about.
Josh Winn:
Fantastic.
Kymberli Cook:
Mine is theology. Actual systematic theological conversations and topics I very much enjoy. I am a pastor's wife, and so I've gotten, I don't know if thrown is too negative of a term.
Darrell Bock:
That sound that you're hearing it to the bus coming, go ahead.
Kymberli Cook:
I've gotten.
Josh Winn:
It's another type of breeze.
Darrell Bock:
That's right.
Kymberli Cook:
I have been presented the opportunities to do many women's topics. There's one other one. Oh, yeah. They jokingly call me the angel of death, because I have kind of developed a passion.
Josh Winn:
Angel of-
Kymberli Cook:
I know, right? I've developed a passion for talking about some of the, I don't know, more cryptic, more difficult topics around scary things in life that we all experience, that we all think about, and we don't actually, especially in the church, we don't actually talk about the fact that we think about them. The scripture has a lot to say about it, and there are scholars out there who have thought about it, and so I have a variety of podcasts on those topics.
Kasey Olander:
Those are some of our most popular ones, so we always appreciate your courage.
Kymberli Cook:
We're thinking about it.
Milyce Pipkin:
My thing is I'm the biggest sinner of the group. Not that I'm sinning now, but my background is a story of God's redemptiveness in your life.
Josh Winn:
Praise God.
Milyce Pipkin:
I have come from a mighty long way of running from the Lord to running to him like never before. A lot of my podcasts, or that I will do here that you will see is just, I love to tell those redemptive stories of what God can do with the mess turning it into a miracle if you just give it to him. I can speak to women, I can speak to trauma having lived a lot of it and just being a survivor, not a victim. You'll see those kinds of podcasts come out of me. I just love to just get to the heart of the matter, the root of the matter, and just let people see how God can just turn it all around. The turnaround agenda is possible through Christ who strengthens us. Those are my stories. That's what I love.
Josh Winn:
Fantastic.
Darrell Bock:
Then, I think my role, other than to be a New Testament person who believes in Biblical passages, Kym and I go back and forth on theology versus Biblical passages all the time even though they actually do work together, but we have fun with that little contrast is public theology. I actually don't think we have a theology of cultural engagement. We need one as a church, especially as we function in a pluralistic environment. A lot of what we're doing on The Table is designed to really zero in on, what does it mean to be the church in a pluralistic environment? How do we represent God well in the midst of that even as we, in some cases, find ourselves in conflict with what's going on around us. How do you balance the challenge that's in the gospel with the invitation that's in the gospel? I tell people, if you never get to the invitation, all you do is challenge people. You haven't shared the gospel because the gospel means good news.
Josh Winn:
Well said.
Bill Hendricks:
I got to throw in one more huge topic that we spend a lot of time on, which are integration of faith and work. Kasey mentioned the sacred-secular divide that for most people, they live one way on Sunday when it's almost like their faith is a hobby. Then we go back to work on Monday and basically, we're secularists, we leave God at home. We're trying to press through that and help people, again, the relevance of theology for everyday life. Where's God when it comes time to hire people? Where's God when it comes time to cast vision? Where's God when it comes time to set a budget? All those kinds of issues.
Josh Winn:
What strikes me is when I hear about all of these interests, it really does fit well, again, back to the mission of the Hendricks Center of shaping compassionate, courageous leaders. Because in the ethos of The Table podcast, with that particular vision, to have leaders that can engage culture, engage in specific areas of leadership, but do so in a way that may be countercultural, it may be difficult, but it's also laced with compassion. It's really neat to see how The Table podcast functions within the mission of the Hendricks Center, because the Hendricks Center has a whole bunch of other resources that tap into some of the things you've already talked about, but The Table is almost this variety clearing ground to really surface and stir up some really great discussions on topics that need to be discussed.
Darrell Bock:
And apply. If you think through the history of the center itself, which started off by being focused on the character of the leader, the kind of organization that he or she might lead, those kinds of questions. When the center was founded in the 80s, that was really the focus. Then, what happened is the culture shifted in a momentous way. I tell people the culture that I was born is not the culture I'm living in now, it's not even close. As that shifted, it became clear, a leader can't know how to function and even know how to build his organization if he doesn't know what's going on around him. That was the justification for thinking about the podcast and how do we help people see and understand what's going on around it, assess that Biblically, et cetera.
Now, we're wrestling with, "All right, in the midst of Christians being found in a challenging culture, how can we now unite together and work together and hopefully try and say the same thing together to a world that needs what it is that we're trying to encourage people to pursue, which is why they were made the way they were made?" To understand that every person's made in God's image, they were made to image God, they were made for a relationship with God, they were made to steward the creation well. You can see what's happening with our stewardship by just looking around and watching the news.
How do you turn that around? Well, you turn that around by reconnecting to the reason you were created to begin with, and that's what we're hoping to show by what we do. That creation roams the creation, and so as a result, we're anywhere and everywhere. When I think about the saying that says, "Welcome to where you discuss issues of God and culture," I'm actually thinking in my head, "That means we discuss anything and everything."
Josh Winn:
Well, speaking of that, great segue, because we've used the term variety, different perspectives. Here's some interesting statistics that we pulled here by category. Theology and Bible, the category of Theology and Bible, 106 episodes devoted to that. Faith and work, 61 episodes. Sexuality including LGBTQIA+, that's 40 episodes. Cultural engagement, 34 episodes. Race, 20 episodes. Engaging world religions, 12 episodes. The list goes on and on. How do you pick the topics? How do you pick the topics that people want to listen to, and that can be constructive? Because there are times where, man, you want to have a conversation, but it may not be the right time to have the conversation. How do you go about that?
Bill Hendricks:
I'd like to say that we don't so much pick the topics as the topics pick us. Literally, when Dr. Bock and Dr. Bailey were first starting and even contemplating this whole experiment, the question that Dr. Bailey had is, "Darrell, we've had some good podcasts here, but aren't you afraid? What happens if you run out of material? What happens if you run out of topics?" Well, this world, this culture, it's the gift that keeps on giving, because every day something pops up and you look at it and you go, "Huh, if I'm troubled by this, there must be a whole bunch of other people troubled or confused by this," and so we bring it to the group and say, "What do you think about this?" We're just getting started. This is off all those things I'm going. Man, there's so many more though.
Darrell Bock:
You should see our list that we have that we haven't recorded yet. Literally, we've got a queue that fills in all the topics, because sometimes what we'll do is we'll introduce a topic and then we'll say, "You know that little 10-minute segment right there, that needs a closer look," and we'll dive in. One of the things-
Josh Winn:
That's usually a common statement, you're like, "Oh, that's a podcast episode under itself."
Darrell Bock:
All itself, exactly right, and you'll hear us say that, but that's almost a note that we're sending to ourselves saying to be continued. The other thing that we've done that was a conscious decision at the beginning was we decided never to do a series as a series. In other words, we knew, for example, we did a thing on the Nicene Creed, and we broke it down into parts, but we didn't do it as a six-week series, six episodes, because we thought if someone isn't interested in that, they're going to go away and then we're going to have to get them back. Every podcast is self-sustaining to a degree and connected, but we also knew we were building an archive in the background, where you see the series is in the archive. If you come to our website and look at what we're doing, you can see all the other topics that relate to the topic that the particular episode is in, and you can get almost the seminary education on any one of these areas because of the amount of hours that are spent talking about this.
We did the LBGTQ+ and everything else in about as many different ways as you could think about. We did it from the standpoint of the counselor, we did it from the standpoint of the person who's come out of the gay life, we've done it from the standpoint of the parent who's had a child who was in gay lifestyle coming out of it, we've done it from the standpoint of the impact of a child growing up in a gay family and what they thought about the way Christians treated their gay parents. We've cut that thing from about every angle that you can think of each time looking at it from a particular way because we're trying to give a holistic, ultimately a holistic look at the topic and give people a feel for how complex some of these discussions actually are.
Kymberli Cook:
Basically whatever makes us talk in our staff meeting, we end up doing a podcast.
Kasey Olander:
Where do we not get episode topics from?
Josh Winn:
How do you navigate the difficult topics? You brought up the many topics or angles for addressing just one hot topic in conversation today, and we all know that there are 30 to 40 other topics that command a lot of emotion on which people have strong convictions. It seems to me that it's an art to be able to guide that conversation in a way that's constructive and also challenging. That's what I mean by constructive. It's challenging, but it's still clear on where you stand in those convictions. How have you wrestled with that as you've entertained these topics?
Kymberli Cook:
Real quick. I think one of the things that I have personally learned is the power of framing a conversation as clearly as possible. When any of us are on our game, Darrell's the best at this, but when any of us are on our game, we're very clearly at the outset saying, "This is what we are saying, this is what we're not, and we are hoping to acknowledge those who might be listening for whom this could be particularly painful or particularly yeah, just a particularly painful conversation." In that, we demonstrate the pastoral dimension, that's hopefully the compassion, and then the courage is, but we still need to dive in because this is important. But the framing of the conversation, and I think I've taken that even into my regular day life with people setting up how you go about it, it puts it at least on some tracks that they can then run off, but usually it doesn't. It makes it a bit more stable for everybody involved.
Darrell Bock:
We're trying to turn people actually into better listeners. We're trying to help them listen where the other person is coming from, why that might be the case, what their whys and wherefores are. In many cases, these conversations are not an all or nothing kind of conversation. There's something in there where the other person is coming from that's worth zeroing in on and talking about in a significant way that can communicate an element of regard for the person while you're engaging them. Even when you're disagreeing with them, there are ways to get there.
Our first responsibility is to instruct in such a way that you see and come to appreciate the nuances discussion. I usually say that many false beliefs have just enough element of truth in them to grab people, and so you have to look for that. You have to look for that. Now, the way it's spun, it could end up being a real problem, and I think that often happens in many of the more volatile discussions that we have. There's something that's a concern that's legitimate, but the application of it has somehow gotten offline. You want to think about being able to sort that out that way so that you can connect to the person you disagree with in a way and then say, "Hey, have you thought about doing it this way instead of that?" That ends up creating a conversation as opposed to a debate, and then you're in a better place because the person's defenses aren't going up. We're trying to figure out how to do that. Now, in some cases you just have to confront, there's just a disagreement, but usually that's not the place to start.
Josh Winn:
For a listener that listens to The Table and says, or let's just take a single episode, and they say, "I just disagree. I disagree with that. I disagree with that approach." What would you say to them? In generality, we don't know what the topic is, are you saying, "Hey, be a better listener," or, "Stick with us," or, "Know where the boundaries are in the framing of our discussion." Because when you cover some really challenging topics, and there may be some people that say, "I'm just not seeing where you're coming from," but Darrell, it sounds like you're saying there's something for everyone to learn in these conversations.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Josh Winn:
I'm asking you, what would you say to them to say, stick with it?
Darrell Bock:
For example, I'll say things like, I think this is one of the most basic things. It should not surprise us if someone doesn't believe they're made in the image of God, that they're trying to make sense out of their life, and that they do it by forming their own identity. It's about the only other place they can go. They're sitting, and actually, if you listen to language of the way people talk when they're doing this, they're actually signaling this is where they're going because they say, "I'm trying to find myself." I go, "Well, I thought you were here all along." They're indicating that they're trying to make sense out of their life, and they've taken what we believe to be the most central feature to give you location and have said, "Well, I'm not going there," so I shouldn't be surprised they go somewhere else and how they go in that direction.
Just having that sense of, and what I'm going to call understanding empathy, it doesn't mean you agree with it, but you understand what's driving the person, puts you in a different pace about how you engage with them, because you're not shocked, you're not caught off guard. You actually go, "Well, I think if I didn't believe what I believe, I think I would be going down that path too." Then, you pursue how to get relocated because they're searching, they're looking for a location. That's an example of the type of thing that we're doing where you're taking someplace where someone is because you've been listening to them and you say, "Okay, I get that." We're trying to say to them, "I think there's something missing here." But at the same time, you're also trying to say to them, "I get the search to make sense out of life. We're all trying to make sense out of life."
Josh Winn:
Any other?
Bill Hendricks:
Well, James 1:19 is the verse that I think about when Darrell talks about that and he's wisely interpreted it. Let everybody be quick to hear and like lightning quick to hear first, slow to speak and slow, slow, slow, slow, slow to anger. In our culture, we generally do that exactly the opposite.
Josh Winn:
Exactly the opposite.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. In fact, I have a line, I say, "This is how the world takes that verse that says, let me be quick to speak, quick to be angry and slow to hear." Because the passage says that the anger doesn't accomplish the righteousness of God, but in our world, our anger allows me to express myself fully. That's what we're up against. We're trying to help people, we're really about ethos, if I can say it that way. We're really about what goes around what we do and the heart that we bring to it. That's really what we're trying to show as we go through all the topics of the podcast. We're trying to bring a different heart to what's going on.
Josh Winn:
Of all these topics, what are some of the favorites among our listeners? I'll get to you in a second. You guys get to choose your own favorites here in a minute, but as you've talked with people, what have you heard more than once where you're sitting there saying, "Boy, that one surprised me. It's been really popular." What are some of those?
Kasey Olander:
I've been really surprised by the diversity like we've been talking about, but it's not like, "Oh, all of this category is the most popular." For example, in our top 10, just by the number of downloads, what happens when we die? You're welcome, Kym. What happened to the Trinity on the cross?, The World of the New Testament, God's Design for Sexuality, Escaping the Prosperity Gospel, you can see that these are all over the place.
Bill Hendricks:
But they're the issues people are facing.
Kymberli Cook:
One that surprised me and continues to surprise me is we did a podcast on working moms. I didn't think too much about it. I was like, "Oh yeah, I'm a working mom. I can talk about it," that kind of thing. I get, at least once a month, some woman comes up to me and says, "I listen to that and it's just like that's my life and that was so helpful." That's been a surprising one that has been at least very popular in feedback that I've received. I don't know about you all.
Josh Winn:
Some of your favorites now or maybe a favorite podcast that has been recorded, I'll word it that way.
Milyce Pipkin:
I'm going to start this one off because I'm thinking to myself, it kind of hinges on your question you asked the last time, and then it goes forward with this one. because I mentioned that I love redemptive stories to show how the gospel met a person where they were at, because we know that God will leave the 99 for the one. I think that so often we hear of all these really good warm stories about how Christianity allows us to have these really good walks in life because we don't have all of the baggage to bring forward. I love those stories too. I love a pastor in the pulpit telling me about the great examples of how they lived a wonderful life and walked with the Lord all their lives and all that. That's wonderful. But what about the people who went off the rails and went to the left and the Lord had to bring them back to the right?
With that in mind, just going on with one of my favorites is one that we just recently did. I didn't do it, but Darrell, Kym and Bill were a part of the conversation, and it was Shaping Leaders in Shifting Times. I love this one because they were sharing how they have shaped leaders in shifting times past, but how they continue to do through the Hendricks Center and all that they are going forward. I loved even the guests they had on this, Dr. Bill Lawrence was one of the guests, and he was sending the message that I'm sending now that I'm saying now, let the gospel meet people where they're at because it is good news and we do need to share it, and we can turn some things around through Christ who strengthens us.
Darrell Bock:
My favorites tend to be stories where I'm interviewing someone whose experience has been very different from my own. They take me to a world that I have never inhabited or rarely inhabited, or I only visit. It's a word that's controversial today, but it's an important word, it's the word diversity. Usually, I'm getting a perspective or an angle, a way of seeing life, a way of living a set of experiences that I'm just totally foreign to, and so I'm hearing someone apply their Christian faith to this environment, which is so different than my own, and I find it enlarges the way I see the world.
I have learned so much doing these podcasts. We come in and the feeling is, well, you're a set of experts talking theologically about this, but because we're listening, we're learning. In the midst of listening and learning, your view of the world, of God's activity, of who he's working with and how he works and the way he works through people just expands and in ways in which something that was previously foreign now makes sense. That helps us to relate to people better across the board. Those are the ones. I remember, Bill, I'm going to point out one that Bill did. Bill had one with, is it Thomas Terrence?
Bill Hendricks:
Tom Terrence.
Darrell Bock:
Tom Terrence, and former Ku Klux Klan member who came to the Lord totally shifted his life. That was one amazing podcast, just hearing the entire journey of how he got into that to begin with, what God did with him to get his attention, what he's doing now. We talk about transformational activity that we engage in. We're in the business of, God's in the business of transforming people from sinners to be more like him. That was the full journey and really, really opened up a lot of eyes for how God can work and totally turn someone's life over upside down.
Kasey Olander:
Darrell, I like that you highlighted that it's building empathy, because some of my favorite ones. We've had Ron Deal on the show a lot, he's an expert in blended families. That's not my experience, it's not my background, and so to listen to him talk about how many different ways blended families can be manifest, but also the ways that they're affected was really eye-opening, helps build empathy and compassion for someone in the situation that I'm not in.
Josh Winn:
Yeah, empathy is a good word.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. I think those are some of my favorite ones that I've listened to. Then, gosh, it's hard to pick favorites.
Josh Winn:
They're like our children, right?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, right.
Josh Winn:
Favorites.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Kasey Olander:
I really have a soft spot for the one that Kym and I did with John Adair about Harry Potter, because it's nostalgic and I like Harry Potter. But also I think it's a good example of the cultural engagement dynamic that we've been talking about, that we're looking with kingdom eyes at a cultural phenomenon and we're saying, "Okay, what is it that the culture appreciates that we as Christians can also celebrate?" We as Christians celebrate courage and friendship, of course we do, and so I think that the discussion in that was really just a picture of the things that we do.
Josh Winn:
Favorite podcasts, favorite topic?
Bill Hendricks:
Well, you mentioned Tom Terrence. That interview, that was definitely one of my favorites, and another one, somewhat along those lines. We had a woman who had written a book on, I believe it was Forgiving My Assassin, and she had been a lawyer in Czechoslovakia?
Darrell Bock:
Romania.
Bill Hendricks:
Romania, thank you, under Ceaușescu, so this communist, and she becomes a believer. Then, the authorities find out about it because she's representing Christians and churches in court and usually gets ruled against, but every once in a while wins one. She's caused a problem, so they wanted to get rid of her. This guy comes to her office and makes it clear that she's supposed to leave and she says, "Can I pray for you?", and she prays for him and he leaves, and eventually she, with the help of our government leaves Romania, ends up here in Dallas. Well, years later, she meets the guy who had visited her office and he said, "I needed to find you because I now am a Christian too."
Josh Winn:
Wow.
Bill Hendricks:
"The reason is, I was sent that day to kill you. I had the gun in my pocket. I was supposed to shoot you and you said, 'Can I pray for you?' When you started to pray for me, I'd never had anybody pray for me before," and he dissolved and he left. Then by amazing circumstances, God reached him.
Darrell Bock:
Just to show you how global that story is, we did another one with a man in South Africa, who's now a pastor, who was part of the anti-Apartheid movement, student movement back in the time when that was going on before Nelson Mandela or while Nelson Mandela was working, who had been beaten up by the South African police on a regular basis and he tells the story in his testimony that one day after he came to the Lord, he walks into a hospital and the guy in the hospital bed who's dying is the guy who beat him up, and the guy asked him for forgiveness.
He talks about the dual things that were going on in his mind. The one was his reaction about why should I have to forgive this guy, et cetera. Then the other one, because he was a mature Christian, he knew he didn't have a choice, that God had forgiven him, and so he needed to be forgiving to this person. He talks through that. It's one of the most powerful testimonies I've ever heard in my life anywhere, but it's very similar. We are surfacing stories of people who have been in the midst of what it means to live in a fallen world, and we're trying to indicate how God is at work in the midst of our falling world.
Milyce Pipkin:
I know I mentioned one of my favorites being the one about leaders, but one that I'm hoping will be soon released that we've been approved for is Dimas Salabarios. The title of that podcast is from Dealing Dope to Preaching Hope, because he's talking about how his life was first early on spent with him not knowing any better or knowing any better and not choosing any better and doing that and how God literally intervened in his life in so many different ways that back to that, leave the 99 for the one. It was apparent that that's what God was doing for him, and now he has just got a turnaround agenda that's crazy for the Lord, going everywhere now all over the United States and abroad, preaching and hoping to turn some people's lives around.
I'll give you this example. He was able to use how he smuggled drugs to how he's smuggling Bibles into countries that don't want them, it is sanctioned. His story is just one that we're seeing through him, his eyes and his life's experience, how God used him for that story to be told for such a time as this, and I love that. It's that kind of thing that gives you an opportunity through this podcast.
Darrell Bock:
We run the gamut from that all the way over to thinking about how the arts, we haven't talked about this, but how the arts should be viewed and how we ought to think about the arts and the impact of our culture. Our staff, half of our staff has just come back from Sundance thinking through that experience, and we're listening for the way the world sees the world and struggles to try and make sense out of life because we think in that there are actually clues about how to share the gospel.
Josh Winn:
Yeah. Kym, if a person is coming to The table podcast, maybe they're new, where would you direct them to start? Do you like how I put you on the spot?
Darrell Bock:
The easiest question you've asked.
Josh Winn:
Where should they start to begin to taste the impact that's coming through from each of you? It's really amazing to hear about the impact these conversations have had on your lives. I'm sitting here challenged by forgiveness. Where would you encourage them to start? Because 600 is a lot of episode and you cover a lot of ground and some topics may not resonate with people. Should they search for the thing they're interested in? What would you recommend?
Kymberli Cook:
Well, like we've talked about, we do have … I think we had a 10-year anniversary podcast, and if you're listening to this, then you've been introduced. I think these are actually helpful ones to start with because it kind of gives you an introduction to the hosts and to, again, the variety that we've been talking about, variety of topics and points out the different, I don't know, topics for lack of a better way of saying it, that we do cover. I'm going to be honest, Josh, I don't know that there would be one place that I would say, apart from that, if somebody's like, "Hey, I'd like all the background." I think that's actually what makes our podcast so unique to a degree.
Josh Winn:
So your advice is, "Hey, scroll through it. Scroll through the options and look for the ones that seem to catch you."
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, and because it's the same method applied. I don't know, like my philosophy professor told me at one point, you just have to jump in the pool and you'll figure it out. But really, because it is the same method applied over and over and over and over again, but it's just in all of these different contexts and all these different conversations.
Josh Winn:
Okay. Next to last question, and I'm looking at you, Darrell, but really, any of you can answer, what's the future of The Table podcast?
Darrell Bock:
We're just going to keep podcasting. We've got a queue that's as long as all our arms put together in terms of what's coming.
Milyce Pipkin:
And some.
Darrell Bock:
And some, and we are trying to figure out how we can make it better. We're always wrestling and talking amongst ourselves. We meet together on a pretty regular basis talking about how we can do a better job. We're going to do a better job of talking about you, which means the single person out there who's listening, because we tend to talk about y'all because we're from the South. We want to shed the all and just talk about you, the individual person, why is the particular person listening to this podcast, why should they be interested in what we're saying and what do we have for them in particular?
Josh Winn:
That's how I want to finish. Here's my last word challenge from each, finish this sentence. You should listen to The Table podcast because, and I want each of you to finish that sentence.
Darrell Bock:
Make you see God in a new light.
Milyce Pipkin:
Help you see diversity and the grace of God in your life and in others.
Kymberli Cook:
This is getting harder as it goes down. It'll cause you to read scripture differently.
Kasey Olander:
It helps you cultivate empathy and humility as you appreciate and embrace a variety of topics, guests and hosts.
Bill Hendricks:
Because it'll show you the relevance of theology and God's word to everyday life.
Josh Winn:
Well said, well said.
Milyce Pipkin:
Can I say this before you go anywhere else?
Josh Winn:
Sure.
Milyce Pipkin:
I'm going to say, this has been a really, really good interview. I'm not saying that because I need any brownie points, but I just want to say to you that it would be too bad that if people don't know or if a listener doesn't know that this is out there, then they can almost get so much information just off this 600th episode that will tell them so much about the essence of The Table podcast, and you did a great job doing it.
Josh Winn:
Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank each of you for spending this hour with me, I've really enjoyed it. We want to thank you on behalf of our other hosts of The Table podcast, we want to thank you for joining us for this 600th episode. We pray that it's been insightful for you. We pray that you have come across maybe a topic, we've mentioned a topic or an episode that you want to go and explore further. We ask that to you subscribe to The Table podcast and join us next time as we unpack issues of God and culture to demonstrate the relevance of theology in everyday life. Thank you.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center in Dallas, Texas at Dallas Theological Seminary. And our topic today is politics and theology, or politics and the gospel, or political gospel maybe with a question mark. Anyway, my guest is Patrick Schreiner. I've known the Schreiner family for a long time. Patrick is Associate Professor of New Testament at Midwestern in Kansas City. Is that right?
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
You've been there not too long. Am I right about that? This is your second year?
Patrick Schreiner:
This is my third year.
Darrell Bock:
Third year.
Patrick Schreiner:
I was at Western Seminary before that in Portland, Oregon.
Darrell Bock:
Patrick's father and I hit the theological scene about the same time so this is fun to do this. Patrick was telling me before we recorded that he's on his first sabbatical. All my sabbaticals are behind me so there's that dimension of what's going on. But we're going to discuss politics and the gospel. So my first question to anyone who's new to The Table is always this. What's a nice guy like you doing in a gig like this? How did you get to what we're about to discuss?
Patrick Schreiner:
Someone twisted my arm and said I had to write this book. No. Most of my books, like yours, have to deal with the biblical text. They're not really hot topics like Matthew or Acts or the Ascension. It's not like a lot of people want you to come on their podcast to talk about just Matthew, in general, or whatever book it is that we're writing on. But actually, this book stems from a few different sources. Number one, I was studying Acts, and you actually read my Acts commentary as one of my editors. I was studying Acts and I just kept noticing Paul's engagement in the second half of Acts with the culture and how his message was viewed politically. I had done a lot of work on euangelion in gospel terms in Greco-Roman history.
And so all of this was combining and I was starting to pay a little bit more attention to the Greco-Roman side of backgrounds and not just the Jewish side. I think Jewish side takes precedence but they live in the Greco-Roman times. All of this research was coming together for me, but at the same time, I'm a person who has a foot in the academy and a foot in the church. I was also looking from 2016 to 2022, just what was happening in the church politically, and even before that. But certainly, in 2016 things ramped up I think as most people would admit. I saw a lot of division in terms of politics.
I wanted to bring a biblical perspective to the political conversation. I'm not a political theology person, I'm not a political theorist, I didn't do political science in my BA but I have studied the biblical text and I think the biblical text has a lot more to say about our political engagement than most people realize. Typically, when I read books on political theology they'll talk about three texts probably. Genesis 9, Mark 12, Romans 13. Paying taxes to Caesar, Paul's statement about submitting to the human governments, and then Genesis 9, a natural theology text. And I just think there's a lot more in the scriptures in terms of engaging with politics and how we're to think through politics than those three texts. I don't deny that those texts are important, but I think there's a lot more there. It stems from my studies of the scriptures and then also our current cultural moment and where Christians are in terms of our political conversations.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So we share a lot of the same concerns and a lot of the same background that we bring to this. And I really like the way you're walking into this to say there are more than three texts that involve how we engage with government. I like to remind people, particularly when they park on Romans 13 that I need to ask a second question and that is, what do you do with the prophets? And all that the prophets have to say about the way in which we relate corporately to one another and the responsibility of governments and that thing. And the challenge that the prophets give to the ethics of what is going on in society at large. Those kinds of questions which seems like a pretty large swath of scripture in comparison to just Romans 13, if I can make that observation. What are those things have to tell us?
This isn't so much directly related to your book, but I'm curious how you answer the question. How do you think we got here? In other words, how do you think we got to the place where our thinking about corporate structures and the way they work, and the way we think about politics, the way we think about being a citizen, those questions, got separated off from the issues of discipleship?
Patrick Schreiner:
There's so many things that need to be said there. I'd say a few different things just to begin. Number one, I mean, I exist within evangelicalism. I know that's a debated term whether it's a political term, social term, or theological term, but if we could just use it more broadly. I grew up in evangelicalism. And one of the pros of the evangelical movement is it's very much about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And I totally believe that and I think there's a lot of good to that. What we miss sometimes when we overemphasize that is that the gospel's a fully public message as well. And so I think one of the reasons we've gotten here is because people have basically put religion in the private sphere and they don't think it's a public thing. We think well, I have religion over here, I have my belief in Jesus, I have a relationship with him, but maybe politics is a different thing. That's one era that we can step into. Now, some people might be like "Wait a second, I don't think that's the era we're in because some people are way too political."
The opposite era that I identify is partisanship. So we could put it in the terms of we either privatize our faith or we make it partisan. And what that means is we so combine our Christian faith with one political party. Then we think "Oh, they are advocates for the kingdom of God." So it seems like we're falling off on two different sides here. Either we make it private or we make it partisan. And I especially look at the New Testament. The gospel message is fully political. I don't mean partisan, I mean, it's fully political in that Jesus announced he's the king of the kingdom. That's a political message. And I think there is a lot of evidence within the scriptures themselves that the terms that we think as religious terms, whether that be gospel, euangelion, faith, Pistis, Basileia , kingdom, Ekklesia, church, those are all political terms.
And as you know, in the first century, there's no division between religion and politics. I'm not saying I don't agree with the separation of church and state in some sense, but I do think we need to return to the scriptures and recognize Jesus didn't come and say, "I'm just your spiritual guru who's going to talk about your heart," he was forming a new society, a new society under the thumb of Rome. And so that is going to cause some challenges and Rome's going to look at him a little sideways and say, "What's going on here?"Now, what's shocking as you know, and we could get into this more, is they all declare him innocent when he comes before the court.
I use this paradigm of Jesus, Paul, and our future. The message is subversive but it's also submissive at the same time. It's subversive in that it's forming a new reality, a new polis, a new city, where we get the word politics from. But at the very same time, the way that it's subversive is by being submissive, Romans 13, and that's not all we could say. You mentioned the prophets earlier. I like to use the line that Revelation 13 and Romans 13 are both in our Bible, and Revelation 13 seems to say the human governments stem in some sense from the dragon. Now, how we interpret Revelation 13, we can get into that. But I do think there's this line in the Bible that the dark spiritual forces are also using governing forces to spread chaos, while at the same time, Paul can say they're God servant to spread order and peace. And so I think that's a paradox that we live in and that we have to come to the scriptures and recognize both that subversive nature of Christianity and the submissive nature and they both actually come together.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, that's a good way in so let's talk about this. You alluded to the definition of political so probably that's a good place to start the conversation. Making the point that the term political is a variation of the term polis which means city. It's talking about how people live together, how they function side by side, how society works, those kinds of questions. The issue of the role of the city in thinking through corporately who we are as people is deeply rooted in the Christian faith. I think of Augustine, City of God, as probably the prime example of that conversation going back a few centuries. So this has been something that has occupied Christians. I like to say to people that Christianity, it was designed to be holistic, it was designed to give us a way of life that touched on all the areas of life that Jesus's Lordship extends into all areas of life.
One of my explanations for how we got here is the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. That what happened in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy is liberals came along and said, "We like the Christian ethic. We really love what the prophets have to say and the challenges that they put forward for people but we don't necessarily buy everything that's the theological story underneath it." And they pulled what was together apart. And then conservatives, because of that separation, looked at that and said, "We like that deal we're just going to flip it." And so the flip was you had a battle undergoing between what was called social gospel and what I'm going to call gospel gospel, and it's the more conservative side of this equation, and they got pulled apart. And in the pulling apart, you separated something that God had actually designed to work more together and be more connected.
And so we're still living in that shadow. So that when anyone speaks about what it takes to be a good Christian citizen, et cetera, and wrestles with the relationship of what it means to be a member of the kingdom of God versus being a citizen of any particular country, take your pick, all of a sudden you've got tensions that are introduced. We tend to be inherently more patriotic to the earthly country that we're associated with than we tend to identify with what makes the kingdom of God the kingdom of God.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. I totally agree with that, Darrell. And when I say political gospel people will hear me maybe saying partisan gospel, and that's actually precisely what I'm not saying. By political I mean the activities associated with the organization and governance of people so really the historic sense of political. In terms of public life, the ordering of society, enacting justice, the arranging of common goods. I think Christianity, the ultimate aim is to order all of those things. We can go back in our history, we have really separated this social aspect from the personal aspect, and the scriptures just end up bringing them together. I mean, in Luke 4, it's very clear that his kingdom message has to do with the brokenhearted, those in prison, so forth, and so on. Quoting from Isaiah 61. There's just so much in the Bible, you cannot divorce those two things.
Augustine I think said, "Politics is a people bound together by common loves." We're bound together in one way or another in a nation, in a community, in a group. And the question is how do we organize ourselves? And what I'm not saying is the scriptures come and tell us this is the type of government I want you to have. Christianity is malleable enough to live under many governing systems. I do think it has something to say in terms of what might be some better and worse governing systems just by implication but it's not here to give us that. Rather it causes us to exist as the kingdom of God in the midst of … To use Augustine's phrase, "The city of man," right?
And so political theology I have found to be so difficult because we live in that overlap of ages. That the kingdom of God is here present but it's not fully here yet. And also the city of man exists and there's overlap. And so are we supposed to advocate for the kingdom of God? Yes. Are we supposed to install the kingdom of God? I don't think so. I don't think we're supposed to install, I think Jesus is going to do that. And that's where we get a little confused I think with some of the Christian nationalism conversations. That we think the government needs to be the one who promotes and orders Christianity. And I'm saying, "No, that's going to happen at the end when Jesus comes back." For now, we exist actually as exiles according to 1 Peter, according to Jeremiah, according to really the biblical witness. That doesn't mean the kingdom isn't present, it just means we advocate for it by politic of persuasion, it's conversion. Not by law, not by order. We're not going to institute Christianity by law, that doesn't seem the way that Jesus wants us to move forward.
As you know you've written on the scriptures and you've written on politics yourself, you're well versed in this, there's so many dangers in terms of this conversation because it is complicated and it's really hard. I'll just add this. It's really hard to move … You know this. From the Old Testament political system to our modern day, and then from the New Testament political system to our modern day. It's really easy for us to want to make a one line straight line jump but it's just more complicated than that. So my encouragement to people is recognize that we live in the already not yet. Recognize that we live in that already not yet and that can help us a lot with our political doubt.
Darrell Bock:
And another element of what you've raised in living in the kingdom of God, in the midst of the kingdom of man, is that the function of the kingdom of God is to represent what God desires in the community that he has formed, which exists as almost … If I'm going to use an image, almost as a oasis in the midst of the world. I think that some of what our theology has done when we move in a more partisan political direction is that we lose the value of why the church exists, and why the church is the church, and why the gospel is necessary, and why you're calling people out of the world into this new community as a part of the solution, all those kinds of things.
I like to step back and say, the people of God have basically existed under two systems in the Bible. One is a theocracy, okay, that's the Old Testament. So we had the presence of God, we had the revelation of God, we had the people of God, we had everything that you think you would want and need, and yet everything about that history is a mess because of the hearts of people that needed reformation, and reshaping, and fresh empowering, and all the things that sin and depravity introduce into the world. That was a mess. To try and run our world on a political system without the relationship with God at its base is always going to be chaotic.
And I think that's the lesson of the Old Testament, that's why you get the New Testament. You come to the New Testament and you've got … Well, let me make one other point about the Old Testament before we leave it. You even have people living in certain parts of the Old Testament in foreign pagan nations where none of that exists, and yet the exhortation to people who are in that situation is serve the city.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
Do what the very famous Jeremiah passage where how you conduct yourself as a useful citizen to that community is what commends God to people in the midst of that chaos. You come to the New Testament and you've got an empire. You've got a republic but you've got an empire, you've got emperors who are ruling, and very much a one-man show if I can say it that way. Certainly not a democracy. And you've got the church functioning as this oasis in the midst of that that's calling people and saying, "You can have your allegiance to Rome on the one hand, it exists, but the greater allegiance that you have is the allegiance to God and the community that you're going to be as a people of God in the midst of that larger community, and the way in which they draw."
And the thing that I like to say about the first century is, the early church was a minority. They had no cultural power, they had no political power, they had no social power, all they had was spiritual power. And they seemed to have done pretty well in that environment despite the fact they didn't have the normal accoutrements of power that we normally think make you effective culturally.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right, that's right. And what you said, I think we're on the same page here because I like the language of oasis, that the church is an oasis. I use the language of … Others have used this too of embassy or an outpost. We are representatives for another kingdom here on a foreign soil in some sense, and our foreign soil is the city of man. And then you went to Jeremiah, and I love that you went to Jeremiah. Even though my book is on the New Testament largely, at the end I actually go back to Jeremiah.
And I was just thinking through Jeremiah's political message. And I pointed out four things in the book about Jeremiah that I just wanted to share with people that I thought was helpful for my own thinking. Jeremiah's first political move was to warn God's people of their own disloyalty to the Yahweh. And so when people are like "Hey, how do we be more political? What do you mean by that?" I say it starts in the church. I say it starts with hearing the word preached and actually taking of the sacraments, that's the most political act you can make. Because as you said, the church is the oasis, it is the embassy of that kingdom.
And so Jeremiah's first political act is to warn them of disloyalty via Yahweh. But at the same time, that doesn't mean he doesn't have anything to say to the state. He also warned Babylon of judgment in Jeremiah 25. And so just because he's speaking to the people of God doesn't mean he can't say something also to the larger statecraft that exists. But then as you mentioned, he also told Israel in the midst of their disloyalty, "As you're in Babylon seek the good of the city." Be good neighbors.
I also want to balance that with the fourth thing. Jeremiah told Israel to hope only in God's kingdom in his rescue, not in Babylon's rescue. So in the midst of seeking the good of the city, I think it's amazing that Jeremiah will also say, "God will rescue you not Babylon." The hard thing for us is balancing all four of those things because we like to take one of those out and say, "This is what we're called to do, we're only to speak to God's people." No, Jeremiah also spoke to the larger nations. Oh, we're only supposed to hope in God's kingdom. No, you're supposed to seek the good of the city at the same time. I found Jeremiah just a really helpful example to balance that witness and wisdom in terms of political conversations.
I mean, gosh, I know it's the Old Testament, but I think pastors can follow that example. We speak to our people first about their first allegiance, their first political loyalty, that's to Jesus and his kingdom. But then I think we can also warn the state of judgment that is to come if they don't follow God's natural order. I think pastors should be doing that. I know there's always the critique, "Oh, pastors get so political." As I've talked to pastors I keep saying, "Be really clear where the Bible is clear. If it's not clear in the scriptures in terms of this policy issue, this issue of immigration or economics, maybe you need to not be so bold on those things because it might be a little bit more of your opinion than of scriptures call for us." I think some of things in terms of policy get really complicated, but I also think there are straight-line issues in the scriptures in terms of how we should speak politically.
You asked me at the beginning why … How have we gotten to this place politically? And I know this podcast is devoted to this and so I'm thankful for it. I would also say, people are scared to talk about this issue. And so we have not discipled people in this political realm because we're so scared to talk about it because it's so divisive. And so I would encourage pastors and leaders in the church, you do need to talk about these things because we have this division because I think we've been scared to talk about it. We haven't stood up when we've seen people who are not formed in the image of Christ in terms of their political engagement. We haven't stood up and said, "That's wrong we shouldn't do that." I know I'm speaking in generalities, but I think we need to do that more.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so let's go through these four principles, I think there's a way to dig deeper on each one of them. Let's talk first about the disloyalty to Yahweh as the starting point. What I think the principle that raises is the ability to be self-critical. The ability to be self-critical about your own walk, your own need for God, where you need to do better as a community. I often get in these conversations and people say, "Well, Jesus railed against people." And then my response is, "But who did he rail against the most?"
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
He railed against the most the Pharisees. People who claim to represent God but who were doing so very inconsistently, let's just say it that way. And because they put the moniker of God on top of what they were doing, in some ways that was more reprehensible than the person who doesn't pretend to represent God.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
So that's the first one, that self-critical ability. And I think sometimes we aren't self-critical enough. So here we are giving the world, and rightly, a hard time for some of the way it's moved on certain issues, but our own house isn't really in order in a lot of these areas as well. And we need to acknowledge that and say, "We all have the need for God." That's a given, that's the starting point. So that's point one. Go ahead.
Patrick Schreiner:
I think
Darrell Bock:
That's Jeremiah, go ahead.
Patrick Schreiner:
Jeremiah is saying, "Before you seek to transform Babylon you need to be transformed yourself."
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Patrick Schreiner:
And I think that's the word to the church. And so I think you're exactly right. I read an article and I don't remember who it was by, but the line was basically, and the whole chapter was about, maybe our first act of politics, of our political lives, needs to be political repentance. And I think that was a great way of putting it. And just saying, maybe the first thing we need to do, as you just said, is examine our own hearts and are we being loyal to the king and his kingdom, to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Darrell Bock:
Can we be an oasis if we're not an oasis but we're more like the world?
Patrick Schreiner:
I don't think so.
Darrell Bock:
That's the first point. So let's go to the second one. And second one is, all right, but he did challenge the nations around him. I think the important point here is how did he challenge the nations around him? What I think the challenge of the nations is about is reestablishing the idea that people are accountable to God whether they recognize it or not. And that accountability is something that God will resolve one day it's not something that we resolve by what we do. I mean, we can impact it and we can try and impact it, but in the end, when we're in the public square, we advocate for what we believe in but we recognize because we're in the world we may lose that case of advocacy in the world court. But in the end, that's not the court that matters. In the end, the court that matters is the court that lies with God.
This is a point where I like to say, I'm glad that is out of my pay grade and that that's being handled by God and not by me. I think that's an important part of the second step. You challenge with regard to the moral calling that God has asked people to live by because they're made in his image. And you remind them that they're accountable and the choices that they make now will come to roost one day.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. Christopher Brian, who's an author, who's written I think on the subject, he said, "What is the main way that the church speaks to the government?" I love the way he put it. He said something to the effect of, we confront representatives with the truth about their origin and their purpose. In other words, where did you come from? Where did you get your authority? God, right? The scriptures say you get your authority from God himself. And what are you supposed to do? And this is where I think Romans 13 is helpful. You are to punish the evil and reward the good. You're to provide order and justice to society.
So Christians uniquely can call nations and states to account for not fulfilling their God-ordained means and goals to what they're supposed to do. We can critique this state in that way because we know who has given them their authority and what they're called to do. Actually, in one sense, I don't think that's a distinctly Christian move, I think other people can do that who are non-Christian. They can say, "You're not providing order and justice as well." But Christians know that authority has been given to the state by God himself. He is their ultimate authority and they're here for a short time. You nailed it. That's exactly what Christians are called to do.
Darrell Bock:
And then the backside of that is that we realize that even if we lose the debate now, there's a time when justice comes, justice will be rendered, and things will be set straight. Order will be established. It may not be now in the time that we way and like. Which puts in place another principle and that is, that when we advocate in the public square and we get the pushback that the world inevitably gives that effort, we need to figure out how to be what I call good losers in that level of the debate, which I think we have shown we may not be as good at as we think we are.
Patrick Schreiner:
Exactly.
Darrell Bock:
In that space that means I've got to wrestle with the question, what does it mean to be a citizen of a nation? It doesn't mean that I have a religious belief. And so my neighbor who's thinking very differently about what citizenship entails than myself, I've got to figure out how we're going to live together side by side as citizens of this country in which their rights and my rights are actually the same. And wrestle with that question. That's when the common good comes in, all those conversations. And you're advocating for the idea that certain principles about the way the Bible asks us to live are actually good and healthy for society, and you're trying to make that case as best as you can.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. And we are to advocate for those things that we believe in but we also recognize we live in a pluralistic society and they should advocate for what they believe in, and those are going to come to conflict sometimes. But we need to be able to recognize that we need to have humility in the midst of that. We will advocate for things that they won't like sometimes and that's part of what it means to be the kingdom of God, the oasis here in the city of man.
Darrell Bock:
And the challenge of that on top of that is that when the gospel is offered and it has a challenge on the one side about the sinfulness that we all possess but it also has an invitation into a new and different life, we've got to make sure that the gospel remains enough front and center that the good news part of that gets out in the midst of how we advocate in the public square for the need for Christ. And I think sometimes we're so heavy on the challenge side of that equation that you lose the redemptive good news, forgiveness offer, et cetera, reformation offer that's on the other end of that offer of the gospel and we can't lose that. I have to say, people are never supposed to be the enemy they're supposed to be the goal.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
There's a whole orientation to how we engage tonally that's a part of this challenge invitation place that says, we are an oasis because we're asking people to live in a way that's different from what surrounds them in the world.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. I begin the book with a story of me getting my haircut in Portland, Oregon, and my barber asked me, "What do I do?" And I said, "I teach theology." Nobody in Portland knows anyone who teaches theology and so they had a bunch of questions for me. I intro the book like this. The challenge for me was to not present the gospel at that point because I had the opportunity. Because most people when they hear I teach theology or the Bible they think Republican, right-wing, whatever it is. For good or for ill that's what they think, right, in Portland, Oregon, it's a very progressive city. So I wanted to stay away from honestly any sort of political conversation. People in Portland are immediately turned off to the gospel because of certain political views. I don't think that's always fair but that's just the way it is. So I wanted an avenue for the gospel.
But at the same time, I didn't want to make my faith merely a personal thing because Portlanders love to say, "Well, that's really nice for you. That's wonderful for you that you believe that." And so I had to chart this middle ground of really presenting Jesus and his sacrifice not only for their sins but really the city that he was coming to rebuild and to make. That was the way I wanted to intro the book just to show people our gospel message is not just a private thing, nor is it a partisan thing, but it's truly a political thing. That we have a good king, and he's coming back, and he's going to turn everything and make it all right. And I think people in more progressive cities like a Portland, Oregon when they hear that they look around their city and they say, "Why is there so much that's going wrong?" And I say, "Well, I have hope that one day this will all be reversed but you do have to submit to that king."
Darrell Bock:
I had a very similar conversation with a guy watching a set of sporting events on a Saturday night when I was speaking in another city. I went to this restaurant to have a meal and to watch a sporting event that I wanted to see, and I was pretty concentrated on the sporting event, and the guy sitting next to me says, "You're pretty focused on that." I said, "That's the team I'm rooting for." We got into a discussion. And when he asked me what I did I said, Well, I teach theology." He said, "I've never met a theologian before, can I ask you some questions?" And we were off and running into a conversation in which all the things that he would be afraid to ask … In fact, he told me, "I don't discuss theology with my family it's just too controversial." And so we pursued this conversation in which we were talking about a variety of things, some of which touched on the way he lives his life.
It was a natural conversation. I mean, that was the thing that was interesting about it. He was genuinely curious. He lived in a small rural Texas town growing up so he knew a little bit about the church but really had drifted away, et cetera. And it was, in some ways, a very pleasant, I would say, seed planting conversation in many ways. It was very important. And I find that there are a lot of people who are in that space who if they determine it's safe will have a conversation about spiritual things with you because most people are searching to make sense out of their life.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right, that's right.
Darrell Bock:
So that's the second thing. So let's go to the third one. Let's see if I can remember it off the top of my head. The third point you were making from Jeremiah was-
Patrick Schreiner:
Seek the good of the city and what you already-
Darrell Bock:
Seek the good of the city which is … The way I like to put this is, how do I deal with the stereotype that people have, generally speaking, of people who believe in God, okay? And they've never walked into a church in their life and so the only Christian experience that they have, and their only definition of Christianity, comes from one of two sources. Either the Christians that they know or what the culture says about Christianity. And then when I speak about this in the church I say to people, "How many of you want those two sources to be the source of people's understanding of Christianity?" And so that raises a challenge. So how do I deal with the stereotype that people may have about who Christians are, and what they believe, and what they think, and what they think about people? And how do I break that?
Patrick Schreiner:
And I think part of the answer is found in Jeremiah 29:7 that you get out there and you actually show that you want to do good for the community and for the world and that we're not just only internally focused on the church. I think focus on the church is hugely important for Christians, but the church is also supposed to be a light to the world. We need to seek the good of the city. I mean, this is a challenge for me. I use the phrase that Christians can tend to be quietistic. In other words, we can be so turned inward … And this is the thing. When you begin talking about well, you need to practice your own repentance. The negative side of that is you only begin looking internally and forget to look outward.
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Patrick Schreiner:
If you look through the history of Christianity, Christians were the first people to start hospitals, and orphanages, and foster care, and all these different things, which largely in the American system the state has taken over. I think Christians could recover this mindful activism. And I do think that begins in our local bodies and our local communities, and it doesn't necessarily begin at the federal level. Christianity, as you said, is a world-forming holistic belief system. And that means it should affect how I treat my neighbors, how I interact with my community, how I seek the good of all those around me. Your question was, how do we change people's minds about who we are? You love your neighbor. You love your neighbor-
Darrell Bock:
Which is a minor commandment in the Bible, right?
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. It's easier to say that than to do that. We need to be Christians that are really looking for the good of others and not just the good of ourselves. One of my fears is that, in the politics conversation, if you begin speaking about politics all that people hear is we're afraid of what's happening to us, we're afraid of what's happening in this culture, and so we're going to fight. I just think we need to have more tools in our tool belt than that. We need to show people that we have more to say than we're scared and we're going to fight against it.
Darrell Bock:
It's a very, very important point. And I think wrestling with how we serve well and break this stereotype or the impression about what Christians are. The only way you can do it is to show the difference and to show that there is a difference. And that you're not only complaining about what's going wrong in society but you're actually trying to make an effort to do better with society. I think back to the earliest Christians who picked up the babies that were left and abandoned and said, "I'm going to take" … "This may not be my biological child but I'm going to make sure that this child has a life." And to do that through the entirety of life, from what some pastors call from the womb to the tomb, and to think through what's involved in that is a very, very important ability to be able to undertake. Well, let's go to the fourth one now. And now that I've remembered the third one I've forgotten the fourth one.
Patrick Schreiner:
The fourth one is, Jeremiah also told Israel to hope in God's kingdom, not in Babylon.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Now that-
Patrick Schreiner:
And so-
Darrell Bock:
That's the eschatological answer to everything that we're talking about.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. One of the dangers though with the previous point is we can begin to think that we can … I would just put it this way. Transform the city and we can install God's kingdom here on this earth. I mentioned this earlier. But I think the scriptures are very clear that in the midst of seeking the good of Babylon and the good of the city, we don't put our hope in them. So the Psalms talk a lot about don't put your hope in human governors. Don't put your hope in them put your hope in the Lord. Because guess what? Human governments will not provide justice in the ultimate sense. Human-
Darrell Bock:
You've made a very important point here which is you need to understand the limitations of our traditional politics and what it can and can't do for us. That-
Patrick Schreiner:
It won't care for the poor in the ultimate sense. They can make some progress, but in the ultimate sense, they won't. We will still live in a corrupt system until Jesus Christ comes back. So you think of Jeremiah 31, right, the new covenant promises. God is going to bring this, he's going to change your heart. And I think we see that in Revelation as well. While we can acknowledge the good that governments do and acknowledge the evil that they do, we just ultimately don't put our hope in them.
Darrell Bock:
That has two other corollaries that I think are important, one of which we've mentioned, which is in the end God will establish justice. The proper recompense for actions will take place. People who make bad decisions will face the consequences of those decisions apart from the relief that the gospel does give. That kind of thing. That's one element of it. I think the other element is reminding ourselves that Jesus spent the entire second half of his discipleship program with the 12 and with the disciples saying, "You follow me the world's going to push back. You shouldn't expect to be treated well."
In fact, 1 Peter 3 and the very famous passage where it says we're supposed to be prepared to give it offense for the hope that is within us begins by saying, "Do good." But then the next thing is, "But if you should be slandered for doing good you are blessed." And so I call this box rule. Every good deed will get punished. When you think about the way in which discipleship is seen because it is counterculture, it is in one sense counter-political in the worldly sense of that term, we should expect pushback. I mean, we can try and portray ourselves as the victims but there's another sense in which we go "I shouldn't be surprised that I'm a victim here because of the pushback that Jesus said I would get for following him."
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. And as Peter shows in the text, Jesus is our ultimate example there. Jesus was the ultimate one who did good, he never did anything wrong. He never sinned against the government and the government killed him. He was crucified, he suffered. So 1 Peter says "Like no ill word came out of his mouth and he still suffered." What should we expect as sinners We're going to be punished. And Peter says, "But you need to suffer for doing good."
Darrell Bock:
And this-
Patrick Schreiner:
And I think-
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Patrick Schreiner:
The whole theology of 1 Peter is because your exiles here on this earth because you're sojourners. That's whole how the whole thing is set up. And so if you're an exile and sojourner you shouldn't expect to be accepted even if you're seeking to do good. This is where it's such a paradox. I keep on going back to that word. That we're to do all of these things, we're to seek the good of the city, but then I think we're tempted, as you said, to expect that people will start cheering and clapping for us. I just don't think that's going to happen.
Darrell Bock:
The other element of that 1 Peter passage that I love is a little reminder that comes, why are we willing to suffer for doing what's right? And as you said, Jesus is the example. But there's a little curveball in that explanation because, in the midst of, explaining how Jesus has died in effect for the ungodly, there's a reminder to bring you to God. He personalize it. And the reminder is, when you're back was turned to God, when you were rebelling, God took the initiative with you. My line is, you should never forget where you came from. That when you engage with the world you never forget where you came from. That when your back was turned to God, God reached out to you, and so now you have the opportunity to occupy that same space. To reach out to someone whose back is turned to God and invite them into the relationship with God that has the potential to restore them and make sense out of their life.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. I think that's really helpful.
Darrell Bock:
Well, we ended up with an exposition of Jeremiah 29 in full. That passage really is to me one of the most important passages in thinking through how you face engagement and how you deal with these tensions that we're dealing with. I'm going to say it this way. What it means to be political without being political and what it means to be political without being partisan. What it means to be … To represent Christ. And what the community of relationship with God and the kingdom of God in the midst of the world is supposed to be. To do it in a way that makes sense for why the kingdom of God exists in the midst of the world.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. And one of my big encouragements to people as well in the political realm is … I know this is a popular phrase, but just to be a non-anxious presence in the culture. In other words, Christians are people who ultimately have their hope in Jesus Christ. And so wherever the political system or party or whatever it may be goes, you don't have to get all worried and wrapped up in it. Because I think we can stand out from the world in this because politics has become the new religion. Politics has become the new identity marker of who are you. Well, I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat, I'm left. I'm right, I'm this, I'm that. People don't know how to define themselves anymore without these categories.
In Christians, we have an identity marker that's deeper and stronger than that. When something happens that we might disagree with or we might even have some worries about, ultimately though I think we can be a calm and peaceful presence in the midst of our society and say, "This is not where our hope lies. We care about these things because we care about humanity but it's not ultimate for us. This is secondary for us. We're waiting for Christ and his kingdom." I know when you say those things, sometimes people think "Oh, that means you just eject yourself from society." No, I'm not saying that. You got to balance all of these things together.
Darrell Bock:
That leaves us with one space that we have very little time for but I do want to introduce as we close and that is … So the tensions that we felt within the church for people who view the partisan space differently raises another question. I actually think this is a litmus test in some ways of how central your Christian commitment is in the face of your partisan political commitments. And that is, is my relationship to my brother and sister in Christ, who I may or may not agree with politically, a stronger tie than my partisan politics which has been divisive in the church.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. And I heard one author or pastor say, "You're more united to your African, Asian, Chinese brother or sister that lives halfway around the world than from you, in the Christian sense than your neighbor who votes the same as you who's not a Christian." And I think that's just saying exactly what you just said. We are more united in Christ. I would hope that churches in the future and currently can be those who represent maybe both political parties and that we can be united in Jesus Christ and recognize those things are secondary. The whole purpose of my book is to say, you have a first politic, and the first politic is the gospel. And so you're united under that banner first and then you can begin to have discussions about the other things. And the other things are not unimportant, they are important, but they are secondary.
Darrell Bock:
You've said in a different way what I like to say which is, the first passport that I have is the passport that says Kingdom of God.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And I'm a citizen and an ambassador for God. And if I do that well I will represent fallenness wherever it falls on the political spectrum whether on the left or the right, and be able to call it out whether it's on the left or the right and recognize that. No one side in the partisan discussion is probably anywhere close to having the truth put together. And then depending on which space you're in might indicate whether you are affirming or challenging what it is that's an offer.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. I use those terms. I introduce them earlier throughout the book, subvert and submit. And one of my fears with the book is that people will pick it up and just be confirmed in their political position right now. If I'm Republican or Democrat I'm going to submit to the Republicans but then I'll subvert the Democrats. But my point in the book is that those two actions, subverting and submitting, applies to both parties and both governing systems. We need to recognize, no, we don't fit wholly in either one but that we both subvert and submit to both of them in unique ways. And so I hope that it comes actually as a challenge and a reminder of what the scriptures call us to.
Darrell Bock:
Whether you're an oasis or an exile, what you're saying is you're different than the way the world is functioning.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And what you need in the divine space that is occupied by the forgiveness that Christ offers and by the empowerment that comes by the Spirit is an enablement and an empowerment that you can't find in the world. If we aren't talking about that part of our message then we are falling short of what it means to represent and be the people of God on this earth.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's exactly right.
Darrell Bock:
Well, that's probably a good place to land the plane. I want to thank you, Patrick, for being a part of this conversation and for helping us think through what is a challenging space, and is a space, as I said, that a lot of people are afraid to talk about. But we've tried hopefully to do it in a way that gets people thinking and that has some balance to it in terms of how we face our role as citizens on the one hand of both the kingdom and citizens in the particular country that we live in. So I thank you for helping us with that.
Patrick Schreiner:
Thanks, Darrell, good talking to you.
Darrell Bock:
And we're glad you could be a part of The Table, we hope you'll join us again soon. If you're interested in other podcasts on The Table you can go to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast where you can see one of the almost 500 plus episodes that we've put together in the last 10 years. And we hope you'll join us again soon.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center, at Dallas Theological Seminary. And our topic today is dispensationalism and everything that goes with it, and its relationship and its role in evangelicalism in general. And I have two guests, Dan Hummel, who is online with us from Madison, Wisconsin and Paul Weaver who teaches here in Bible Exposition at Dallas. And we're headed to a conversation about a book entitled The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, which Paul was kind enough to bring a copy of. So there's a look at it. And Dan, I'll let you tell people what you do. So introduce yourself to us.
Daniel Hummel:
Sure. Happy to be with you. I am here in Madison, Wisconsin. I work at a Christian study center called Upper House here that serves the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I also am starting up a new initiative with the same foundation that funds Upper House called the Lumen Center, which is, you can think of it as a sort of emerging Christian scholarship think tank here in Madison. I've been here in Madison for about now 14 years. Came here for my PhD work in American Religious History, and I finished that a few years ago. So really call Madison home, we will probably get into it. I have a deeper history with dispensationalism and the Evangelical Church, but maybe that's enough for now.
Darrell Bock:
So undergraduate and graduate work, where did you do your PhD?
Daniel Hummel:
I did it here at Madison-
Darrell Bock:
I see.
Daniel Hummel:
… in the history department. And I actually, my main fields were diplomatic history and intellectual history, and my dissertation and my first book was on Christian Zionism, a related but different topic than dispensationalism. But my interest in dispensationalism came out of that. Before that I was in Colorado. I went to Colorado State University for my undergrad and my master's degree. And part of the reason I was at Colorado State was because my family moved to Colorado after being missionaries with Greater Europe Mission, which is headquartered just north of Colorado Springs. We were in Germany when I was a young kid, and then we ended up landing in Colorado Springs. My dad worked at the home office for many years, and I ended up spending middle school and high school in Colorado Springs and then going on to Colorado State.
Darrell Bock:
So it's personal, but where in Germany?
Daniel Hummel:
Southwest Germany in the Freiburg area. We actually were in different places. We were there from 88 to 93. So it was a really active time to be in West Germany and then reunified Germany. And the place that we spent the most time was actually on a farm right next to the Black Forest where there were a number of German seminarians that came through and were being trained by my dad and some other Missionaries.
Darrell Bock:
So was he at the Black Forest Academy?
Daniel Hummel:
Yes, he was part of that. Yeah
Darrell Bock:
Okay. The reason I say, I spent four single years in Tübingen, one of which was 89, 90, the year the wall actually came down. So we have a shared background in terms of where we were located, when all that was going on. That's its own podcast. That's its own separate discussion.
Daniel Hummel:
The world's always smaller than you think it is when you get into these conversations.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. So Paul, tell us a little bit about your background.
Paul Weaver:
Sure. So I've been here at Dallas Seminary for just about two and a half years. Before that, I was a missionary with Word of Life Bible Institute in the country of Hungary. I've been a professor of Bible and Theology for a total of 21 years. In Hungary, I also directed the Bible Institute there. My last year there we had 79 students from 17 different countries. So quite a diverse group for a small campus, but training nationals to go to Czech, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Germany, Serbia, that whole region of the world that was Communist-Bloc countries for so long. My parents were married in Berlin. My father was stationed there prior to the fall. So we have a common theme here so far.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, man. Deutschland. I won't say Deutschland über Alles, but I almost feel that way. Anyway, and your training was here at Dallas?
Paul Weaver:
My THM was here. My PhD I did while in the country of Hungary, directing the school there, teaching, but did my PhD work through Baptist Bible Seminary in Clarks Summit.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Good. So that gets everybody's credentials out. Mine are Dallas THM, and I did my PhD at the University of Aberdeen in New Testament. And then I've been in public space most of the last 20 years in terms of splitting. I'm a schizophrenic person, I do New Testament and then I'm in cultural engagement. So those are the backgrounds. So let's talk about the book. So obviously as an MK, right, Dan, you had a lot of exposure to evangelicalism, particularly evangelicalism in Europe. So talk about what led you to do this book.
Daniel Hummel:
Yeah. And there's a few different reasons. Some more personal and some more, you could say, intellectual, but I start the book talking about just remembering the bookshelf growing up, where these big imposing names of Ryrie, Walvrood, and Pentecost were on capital letters on the spines of these books. And this was my dad's library, and he is a Dallas grad from, I believe, 86 or 87. And this was the world, I assumed, most Christians believed the things that were in these books. And so I grew up in a dispensationalist household. It wasn't something that we talked a lot about in some explicit way. It was just the assumed way that we practiced our faith. And it wasn't until I went to college at Colorado State that I really got a sense of the diversity and the breadth of different Christian traditions. So one reason I'm interested in this topic is because I grew up in it. There's a more in intellectual reason or a couple more.
One has to do with something sort of just of the field of American religious history, where I noticed that there wasn't a up-to-date survey of dispensationalism that had been written in the past few decades, at least. There are a lot of very good books on related topics like evangelicalism and fundamentalism, apocalypticism, and some other related terms that you might be able to… You, of course, would talk about dispensationalism in those topics, but it wasn't the subject of inquiry. And so that was my pitch to Eerdmans, in part, to publish the book, was that we needed an up-to-date narrative that took things past the 1960s and 70s, which is when most of the surveys finished. So that was one more intellectual reason. One that was a little more personal to me, was on my dissertation research, I was in Israel, I spent a year there. And part of what I was doing was I was writing on the Christian Zionist movement and I came to Israel with a lot of, you could say, US centric assumptions about Christian Zionism that were actually born in the historiography in the scholarship of Christian Zionism.
Particularly I remember thinking, or I remember reading about, how most Christian Zionists would look something like Jerry Falwell. Would be Southern, would be Baptist and would be, you could say, have a certain type of American way of talking about Israel and US interests in Israel. I went to Israel, I did find a few of those types of people, but what really struck me was how that is not, at least from Israel's perspective, from the vantage point of Israel, most Christian Zionists today are not in the global north or in the global south. Most of them come out of Pentecostal traditions. And interestingly to me, dispensationalism was not at the core of their thinking about Christian Zionism. There's a lot of different strands of why Christian Zionists support Israel, that have to do with the Bible. dispensationalism is not the most popular one outside of the US context. And so that put me on a path for my first book, where I really tried to actually diminish the role of dispensationalism in telling the story of Christian Zionism. Not entirely. You can't not talk about dispensationalism.
But particularly to get away from some of the stereotypes that scholars had been writing about Christian Zionism, primarily that it's all about ushering in the end times or that it's all about trying to secretly convert the Jews or covertly convert the Jews. I thought those had had their play, and I wanted to talk about different things. And that set me on a trajectory that after I finished that book, I was still curious about why was I not seeing nearly as much dispensationalism in the broader Christian Zionist world than I had expected. And that took me on a path that opened up a different way of thinking about the dispensationalist relationship to evangelicalism that has the shape of this rise and fall narrative that I titled the book on. But it was really born out of that work, and realizing that there was something more to the story, as I was studying Christian Zionism, about dispensationalism than I was getting from the history books that I was reading up to that point.
Darrell Bock:
That's fascinating. I think that as I think about this and also as I think about your book, that getting dispensationalism placed within the larger evangelical conversations is actually an important part of this. And also, thinking through the legacy of the fundamentalist modernist controversy, which generated where we are in evangelicalism today, it still, that hasn't gone away in many ways. So that bigger frame, I think it's interesting that you mentioned it popped up in your study of Christian Zionism, because I actually think that's actually part of the frame for thinking about your book as well, this book, in particular. So let's talk about that. Let's transition to, if you were to summarize in a… People talk about their elevator pitch, but if you were to talk about… We're going to go from the first floor to the 30th. Okay. If you were to summarize what your thesis is and what you were doing in the book, how would you describe it to us?
Daniel Hummel:
Yeah. Well, I start in the middle. I start actually with the story of the coining of the term dispensationalism in the 1920s. And I think that gets at the heart of what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to historicize dispensationalism and trying to track its origins, at least as a modern theological tradition, in the Plymouth Brethren movement of the 19th century. And really ask questions about how did that context, which is very different from any American context, how did that context actually bridge with American evangelicalism in the 19th century? And why did these particular ideas around a certain way to read the Bible, certain distinctions to make when reading the Bible, and then a certain type of eschatology to go along with it, how did those concepts become popular enough that they actually became the backbone of evangelicalism in the United States by the turn of the 20th century?
So I'm doing a narrative there. I'm making arguments along the way about why that happened and who the important figures are. And then I see the peak of influence for dispensationalism, particularly in a scholarly mode. I draw a distinction about halfway through the book between popular and scholarly or scholastic dispensationalism, to try to identify that there are certain institutions like seminaries and certain Churches where dispensationalism takes on a very academic tone. And this is an attempt to try to systematize the things that the Brethren gave to American evangelicalism. And there's a conversation there that's happening, and Dallas Seminary is a very important part of that conversation. There's also a dual track, or a related track, that's much more popular and much more about reaching a broad audience. So I see those things as peaking, or I see the scholarly movement as peaking in influence across evangelicalism in the 1960s, 1950s and 60s.
And at the same time, I see a decline after that in the scholarly influence of dispensationalism, while at the same time, there's this almost totally unexpected, you might say, from the outside, career for popular dispensationalism that really takes off in the 70s and becomes a default popular theology for much of the American evangelical landscape up to today. So I track those two different trajectories through the rest of the book, and as close as I can when this book finished around 2020, to try to give a snapshot of where I think dispensationalism is in both the scholarly and the popular spheres today.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, that's helpful overview. Yeah, go ahead, Paul.
Paul Weaver:
I'd love to… If you don't mind explaining to the audience what intellectual historian would be, compared to a Church, someone that might be a traditional pure Church historian.
Daniel Hummel:
Yes. Yes. Certainly the way I approach the topics here, and everything else I write, comes out of my training as an intellectual historian. So intellectual historians really care about texts and reading texts, and obviously from the term, they care about ideas as well. I think what makes them different than a historian of ideas, that might be a too fine of a distinction for some, but between a historian of ideas and intellectual historian is an intellectual historian really cares about the context within which ideas are formed and developed. And some intellectual historians, I'd count myself among them, hear about the influence of those ideas beyond just the thinkers that thought them. And so you blend into a type of cultural history as well. So I like to say that I often am interested in three things.
I'm interested in ideas, institutions and individuals, and how the three of those intersect together to create history, you could say. So I am not a Church historian in a really traditional sense, which is, I'm not writing sort of out of a particular denominational setting with a defense of that denomination or that tradition, though I wouldn't count it up. But I'm sure many of my footnotes and many of the things I've read are indebted to some of those traditional Church historians who have, maybe they're fronting a little more some type of doctrinal commitment or some type of confessional commitment that's driving what they're asking about, and the way they're writing about the same type of history.
Darrell Bock:
Let me go back and pick up a strain that you talked about, which is, let's talk about the origins of dispensationalism a little bit. And one of the conversations that happens between dispensationalists and other evangelicals is the debate about the origins of the movement. And usually what you hear is dispensationalism is a rather new innovative theological tradition coming out of the Plymouth Brethren movement, usually dated in the 1800s and thereabouts, and then develop from there. And then what dispensationalists will talk about are the roots of chiliasm and millennialism from the early Church that begins to flow into this tradition as well. Paul, let me ask you this question, because you think about this too. Connect the early Church history to what we're talking about, and then why might someone make a distinction between what's going on there in that early period and the later development of dispensationalism?
Paul Weaver:
So I do have a couple of references here with me. I think we want to be biblical and we want to be driven by the text, but we certainly don't think anything's new under the sun. So we want to make sure we're going back to the apostolic fathers and of course the apostles themselves. So I do believe that, as you mentioned, the early Church were chiliasts, and that that was a predominant view for several hundred years. And I think it was influential. I think Augustine was probably the influential person that led things away. And I'm not a Church historian and I've taught theology overseas, but I'm sure my colleagues here could do a much better job of articulating all the details.
But I think we all have the typical, the possibility or inclination to look at things around us and evaluate the Bible in light of the culture we see around us. And I think Augustine probably had some of that as well as he saw this emperor, that's now a Christian, and also the head of the state and said, "Well, Christ hasn't returned. Christ hasn't returned. Maybe we misunderstood. We're trying to defend the Christian faith and now we have this holy Church led by a leader, who's also the Christian, who's also the emperor of the nation. So maybe we misunderstood." So yeah, we do want to go back to the original Church fathers and understand how they understood, and certainly how the biblical texts understands the millennium.
Darrell Bock:
Dan, how do you take that early period of history and do you connect it at all to the history that we're talking about?
Daniel Hummel:
Yeah, I don't. I'm very limited, and my expertise areas are basically the 19th and 20th century, yeah, 19th and 20th century. Maybe I'll claim the aughts, maybe I'm an expert on the aughts. I don't think I am yet. But I do take it that… There was a book that just came out right around the same time mine did called Discovering dispensationalism. That is a collected volume, and Darrell, you're in that book. Which makes the case that… Oh, there you go, there's a copyright there, which makes the case that there is this longer tradition of at least dispensational ideas that go back all the way to the early period. I don't have much to say about that in the sense that I trust the scholars in that volume that what they're finding is true. What I'm most interested in is the certain constellation of ideas, the interlocking set of theological commitments that do seem to emerge in the 19th century and around Darby.
Maybe there's someone that Darby took it from. That wouldn't matter much to me in the way I tell my story, because I think from Darby… And I actually try to diminish Darby a little in my book, it's more about the Brethren movement and there's actually people around Darby that are a little more important. Darby was hard to read and not the most entertaining speaker as well. He had people around him who were much better at this. But you do see pretty clear, and this is maybe where my intellectual history comes in, you see pretty clear genealogies of thought and training that flow from the Brethren to James Brooks who taught Cyrus Scofield, who was connected to others. And that to me is the important genealogy there. So I know that this debate about the provenance of either dispensational theology or covenant theology, which by the way isn't that much older than dispensational theology in the way we're talking. That is a debate that, from my vantage point, is an intra-theological debate.
There's a lot of significance put on sort of which one's older or which one has claims that is less interesting to me, as an intellectual historian, than it would be for a theologian or even a Church historian who there's a lot riding within the community on how you answer those questions. So I find it all very interesting, and I'm always willing to learn and discover that 16th century monk who had the Church/Israel distinction and a literal hermeneutic and a rapture, I don't know. Maybe there's someone like that, I'm not sure. But I'm always open to that. But I'm more interested in looking at this movement that a lot of historians have agreed really starts with the Brethren, which is still a remarkable story, because the Brethren are not a main vein of Protestantism. They're a sect that is not that large. But nevertheless, that's where most historians trace the modern iterations of these ideas. And I'm totally fine saying it's the modern dispensationalism if that moves us beyond these questions about how old a lot of the particular teachings within dispensationalism are.
Paul Weaver:
But would you say… I've had the chance, I was joking, I probably know your voice as good as anyone's besides your wife, as far as… You've made your circuit in different podcasts, so I've wanted to listen, make sure I understand you correctly, and we've appreciate you reaching out to me after my podcast, discussing this. And we've been going back and forth a little bit. But on the more covenant theology side of those interviews, definitely people picked up on that new and really wanted to drive that home. Would you agree with that in the interviews we've had?
Daniel Hummel:
Sure. Yeah. And depending on the interviewer, they might be coming from a covenantal perspective. So that for them is a win on their side if they-
Darrell Bock:
Can be a little older?
Daniel Hummel:
Yeah. If they're a little older. Right. And of course, I am a Christian, I'm an evangelical. I have my own commitments on these things, though I don't… I honestly don't understand always what's riding on this debate. I'm at a Church right now that is very committed to a multicultural vision for their Church. And to be honest, the theology behind modern multicultural Churches is not very old. We're talking 20, 30 years old where you have a robust conversation about this stuff. Just because it's not hundreds of years old does not really have any bearing to me on that I think that this is something rooted in the original text and the vision that God has called the Church to be. So in my own ways that I relate to some of these things, the provenance or the oldness of the… In some ways I think I'm a Protestant. There's something about protesting against what is been there.
Now oftentimes that's framed rightly so in going to retrieve something that had been lost. But in a lot of these debates… And I am learning more as I do more of this circuit, Paul, as well, but I'm learning more about how these certain things have very strong significances within different communities, partly build up because of the history, of the 20th century history of how covenantal and dispensational theology have really seen each other as the primary rivals within the evangelical world. And so these questions about authenticity and closeness to the history of Protestantism and other things take on a lot more value than maybe they would if you're just trying to tell the history without those significances attached to it.
Darrell Bock:
I'm really glad you've raised this framing of the conversation that happens between dispensationalism and covenant theology, because I do think that is part of what's going on in the story. And I think that part of the story is, what I will call, the resurgence of the reform movement within evangelicalism that's taken place probably within the last 30 years or so. And so part of the… In your book it's Rise and Fall of dispensationalism, but it's against the backdrop of the rising influence of the reform tradition, even a return, in some ways, to reformed tradition across many strains of evangelicalism. And so you've got this popular Christianity that's out there that is widespread and much talked about, and much discussed, and much reflected on in the public on the kinds of things that popularizing dispensationalism was doing alongside this resurgence that's going on within the reform tradition, which has been at least a part of what has happened in the scholastic and more intellectual parts of evangelicalism. And so that contrast is actually a vivid one and is part of this conversation. I'd love to hear your comment on that.
Daniel Hummel:
Yeah, I largely agree with you. I think that takes us back to just the origins of the term dispensationalism. And this is another thing, when I say the origins of the term, that doesn't mean necessarily I mean the origins of dispensationalism, but it's to acknowledge that before around 1927 or 1928, if you were to call someone a dispensationalist, even like a… Scofield died, I believe, in 1921, he would have to ask you, "What do you mean by that?" Because that's not a term that was being used regularly. But the term is coined by a man named Philip Morrow, who is a dyed in the wool covenantalist. He converted into Christianity in a dispensationalist tradition and then rejected that later on, and became one of the arch opponents of dispensationalism.
And he coined the term to try to, in his view, identify a heresy, he believed, was in the fundamentalist movement. And it was a heresy to him on intellectual grounds or substance grounds, but also to him, he was trying to identify those fundamentalists who weren't as committed to the civic activism that he was, particularly around anti-evolution and some other social issues. And he called them dispensationalists because they were otherworldly, they were just waiting for the rapture. All those tropes that seem just so tired today, those come out of the very coining of the term. And so I think that the way that covenantalists and dispensationalists have contrasted with each other since that time is just, it's so core to how we need to understand evangelical history, at least the theological side of evangelical history since then. As I argue, institutions are built based around these contrasts. That's why you get certain seminaries that demand dispensationalist views and certain that demand covenantalists. You get mission agencies, you get Churches and denominations who adopt these different theological systems as a way, and this is within a fundamentalist evangelical world.
And that to me is a key part of the story of evangelicalism that I thought was missing from a lot of the contemporary historiography of, even people who, even Mark Knoll who wrote my foreword, is not someone who tended to pick up on these distinctions in the same way. And I think if that's something I could contribute was to give a stronger theological lens to how we think about evangelicalism and fundamentalism in the 20th century, and pull back a little from just using, what you might call, sociological terms to describe these movements, and actually take many of these people on their own terms that they really did care about what dispensationalism versus covenantalism meant. Much in the same way that in earlier centuries, reformers really cared about predestination and free will and baptism. Issues today that seem secondary were primary at certain points. And for much of the early 20th century, this was one of the primary dividing lines of the evangelical world.
Darrell Bock:
That's a great framing, and I'm going to go before the 1920s. Okay? Because I have a take on what I think is going on in evangelicalism at large that also impacts what's happening today. And it goes like this. In the middle of the 19th century, before we get to really the rise of the fundamentalist modernist movement and controversy, Christianity was seen as holistic. It was designed to walk into all spaces of life. And if you want any proof of that, the two key proofs that I like to bring forward are the abolitionist movement, which obviously is a work in public space, thinking about what's going on in public space, and the fact that you had state Churches, which had existed for a long time. Okay? So here's a Christianity that's expressing itself through governmental structures, and those governmental structures are tightly attached to Church structures as well.
So we're in a holistic space. The fundamentalist modernist controversy came along, and I hate using these labels, but I'm going to have to do it to do this description. Liberals came along and said, "We like the ethics of Christianity, but we're not so sure about the theological story and its base that rotates around Jesus." So they went to public space and worked in public space with an element of Judeo-Christian ethic behind it, but they weren't as interested in the Soteriological story about how Jesus saves. Conservatives looked at that split, because that's the split of the holistic model, that split and said, "Ooh, we like that deal, but we're going to reverse it. We're deeply committed to the Soteriological story, and we're not so committed to what's happening over here in public space because that represents, in part, a rejection of the Bible and the story around Jesus."
And it produced a counter reaction. And so everything got split and seen through that double vision, if I can say it that way. And the result was the impact of the fundamentalist modernist controversy, with the fundamentalists lining up on one side and the liberals lining up on the other. And that continues, that continues till the 1940s, what was called the neo-evangelical movement. The evangelical movement emerged as evangelicals tried to distinguish themselves from fundamentalists and saying, "No." This is Carl Henry saying, "No, the public space does matter. The public space is a part of the Christian." But it had to get over the hurdle now, the divide that had been created in seeing those two spheres previously, of which the reaction that you're talking about in the 1920s, where you have some covenant theologians who still say, because they're fundamentally denominationalists, still say the public space matters while the dispensationalists are saying, "Yeah, but you better not forget the story about Jesus. That's important to the Bible too."
And that becomes your conversation. And now we see it today with the same divide, at least among some evangelicals that say, "No, the business of the Church is really about the soteriological story tied to Jesus, and everything else is more marginal and on the edges, and in fact, it may be influenced by influences that we shouldn't be paying so much attention to versus what's really central to the Bible." And it persists. And any effort to bring it back together has that now extant hurdle to get over in order to connect the two pieces. That's the theory. I'll throw that out to both of you. What do you think? Because I actually think that's part of the intellectual dynamic, thinking about being an intellectual historian, that's part of the intellectual dynamic and context that's operating here, which means, here's how it relates to this conversation, that dispensationalism is a part of the larger fundamentalist discussion as opposed to being the driver for the fundamentalist discussion.
Daniel Hummel:
Paul, I'd love your thoughts on that.
Paul Weaver:
Sure. Well, I do have a lot of critiques of this book and you know that Dan, and some of it has to do with… That's why I asked the question about intellectual history and being an intellectual historian, because I do think it requires a great deal of interpretation and of the facts. And I do appreciate Dr. Marsh and Dr. Fazio's treatment as they try to follow this progress of thought, discovering dispensationalism, following this progress of thought. But definitely, I think… And so that's one other critique I would have is that sometimes you conflate dispensationalism and fundamentalism, and it seems in your writing that it's one hodgepodge of… And it's seeing the difference between them. I think there's a lot of this that has to do with the cultural fundamentalism and not necessarily… And it'd be good for you even define our term here, fundamentalism, because I don't know that everybody listens.
Darrell Bock:
Let me say it this way. In other words, it's the soteriological dimensions of this conversation that are driving some of the conservatism that you're seeing out of the fundamentalist movement, as opposed to the eschatology that's driving this conversation. It has spillover effect into eschatology, but the real concern is at a soteriological level. And so just react to the way I've tried to frame this.
Daniel Hummel:
Yeah, I think I totally track what you're saying, and I think I largely agree with you. I think a broader thing would be to say that dispensationalism is relevant to the story of evangelicalism for a lot of reasons, eschatology only being one of them, that dispensationalism is much more than eschatology, and so there's a lot more at stake than just your view of the end times. So when you talk about the centrality of soteriology to, you could say proto-dispensationalism or proto-fundamentalism, I think of… I mean, this is a core part of the center part of my book, is looking at what I call new pre-millennialist, but proto-dispensationalists, were at the core of founding Bible institutes, Bible conferences and mission agencies in the late 19th century. And these were all geared toward a soteriological agenda.
Darrell Bock:
And a defense of commitments to the Bible in the face of what was happening from modernists. Right?
Daniel Hummel:
That's right. Right. And a commitment that the gospel depended on a high view of the Bible. And that that was actually the calling of the Church was to spread the truth of the gospel as expressed through the Bible. So that's a big part of it is the very structures, the institutions that end up perpetuating dispensationalism, come out of this core concern of converting people, of bringing people into the Church, particularly because time was short, and that was what they were convinced of. So on that front, I really see that as the main driving force of proto-dispensationalism up to the fundamentalist movement. And I think you're right too. Paul, may be part of the hodgepodge feeling of what I'm doing is there are numerous factions within the fundamentalist movement that I actually think, and maybe I overdid it, I don't know. I think previous historians have not been nuanced enough about the different types of fundamentalists that are gathering together under, as Darrell talked about it, this broader, you're being forced into one camp or the other on these core issues of the faith, the fundamentals of the faith.
And if you are a conservative or a fundamentalist on these things, well then there's all these other differences you might have with your co-fundamentalists, that end up having to be worked out, certainly after the split happens. And you all are just hanging out as fundamentalists at this point, either exiled or have exited your Churches. And that's really where you see the institution building starting to happen as well, along these very lines. So you have Evangelical Theological College Dallas Theological Seminary, founded in 1924, and you have Westminster Theological Seminary, founded a few years later. And these become sort of different poles within this entirely fundamentalist debate. So they're not enlisting University of Chicago Divinity School faculty members on their side. Those people are so far outside of the community of concern. But between these two, there are some key questions about how to read the Bible, about what the gospel is and other things, even within just the fundamentalist world.
I think it's important that when we get to the new Evangelicals just a few years later, this becomes one of their hobbyhorses, for lack of a better term, is getting rid of dispensationalism, at least for many of the leaders, people like Carl Henry and Harold Ockenga And then George Ladd comes by, he comes just a few years later. They identify dispensationalism as the bad part of fundamentalism. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that's what they're saying. And that becomes this big debate within the evangelical fundamentalist world. And you have Dallas Seminary professors taking one side, and you have Fuller Seminary professors taking another side. And these become the ways that the social structure of evangelicalism, at least in the scholarly level, is developing. And I think it comes down to this insight you had Darrell about the fundamentalist movement, and that dispensationalism is not driving it. It's driving parts of it, and dispensationalists are absolutely crucial to the fundamentalist movement.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, it's a response to it in some way. dispensationalism was a response to it. Yeah, because it's trying to defend the credibility of the scripture.
Daniel Hummel:
That's right. And even… You get this, this is talked about at the time, so J. Gresham Machen, the famous fundamentalist, he talks about pre-millennialist, he would call him because he grouped all pre-millennialists together. He talked about how they were problematic on so many things, but they were also so core or so solid on the things that mattered, that he was willing to work with them during the fundamentalist period. But it's like many stories, when there's a moment of crisis, you work with people because you see eye to eye, and then when the crisis pass, you start moving down into the secondary issues and start dividing over those things. And I think that's one of the things that happened in the fundamentalist movement after the 1920s, and then much of the, many of the institutions that we have even still today are a result of that story.
Darrell Bock:
And then, of course, when Evangelicalism came along and tried to make, at least, some level of reconnection between things that had been separated, that produced, I got to say, a series of calibrations that everyone was making about how much do we give attention to that versus this. And that produced the variety of strands that you see out there that we cope with today, and that are out there today. And so on some things… When we're thinking about Christianity in the midst of a pluralistic world, there's a sense we're allies. But when we get into, all right, how should we do this and what should we emphasize and what should the testimony of the Church look like? There are these little inner family conversations. If we elevate them a little higher, a squabble, a little higher, debates that take place that are about applying the relative priorities that we're giving to things as we put the whole package of our faith together.
And that's what you're seeing is the result of that. Although I do think that since, I'm going to say the 1990s, and maybe even earlier than that, although there is a question I want to ask Paul about Moody that's coming up, but you do see an awareness and an appreciation of the need to be working more closely together because of the bigger concerns that the Church faces in terms of the challenge of the world. And it isn't like public space isn't a part of that conversation, because it is, it's actually where the witness happens. So that's not a minor detail. And so I think we see that going on. Let me ask Paul this question, because we've assumed something that, I think, at least needs some qualification perhaps, and that is that there wasn't a social concern among these early dispensationalists. We might discuss how wide and broad it is. That might be another discussion.
But the idea that there wasn't some kind of a social concern, and that the only position that dispensationalists had… One of the things that we're reacting to is there are certain descriptions of dispensationalists coming from those who reject dispensationalism that we don't accept as reflective of actually who we are. And so we're a little… That makes us a little nervous and helps me have my hairline and that kind of thing. And so one of those is the idea of, well, the idea was, you can't rescue people on the sinking Titanic, so the goal is to get as many people in the saving boats that you can get before the Titanic sinks. That kind of thing is a kind of emphasis, which in some rhetorical expressions of dispensationalism you would hear in this period. But there are also other things going on that are also happening that show at least some awareness of a need to have a testimony in public space. So that's why I'm going to ask Paul this question. Tell us about DL Moody and how you see him fitting into this kind of a conversation, the way that we framed it?
Paul Weaver:
Yeah. So your book's spent a good bit of time on, rightly so, on DL Moody and his ability to unify different people for mission agencies, starting mission agencies, starting schools. And in this conversation, it's a little softer presentation than maybe in a covenantal situation, where the discussion also in your book is about how there was a big neglect. It appeared or sounded like an underhanded comment or underhanded compliment, I should say, that they're unifying to go and reach the lost abroad, but failing to do anything from a social, political side of things. And so I would like your comment on that, but I do want to say that… And then also I feel like there's some marginalizing saying it's all white evangelicals, and that comes up multiple times in your chapters. And one of the books, I think it's come to your attention more recently is called Black Fundamentalism, where they discuss, written in 2021, where it talks about black individuals who were fundamentalist doctrinally, theologically, but also some dispensationalists there that were influenced that direction.
And I even think three years after Dallas Seminary started, 1924, three years later, just down the road, the Southern Bible Institute was formed, which was previously known as Dallas Colored Bible School, and it was started by graduate students here at Dallas Seminary that went and established this school in the midst of the segregated south to really influence and to help and to train. They came… These students came asking for training, and Edward Ironside, you know the last name, obviously, the son of the pastor at Moody Memorial, right? He started this school. And so we had professors like Charles Feinberg, John Walver, Dwight Pentecost, Merrill Unger, all who taught there during the history of the school. So I think that then… So I feel like it puts us in a bad light. Certainly there is racism in the history of every… Back then. Maybe you want to talk about that. There's racism in every brand of Christianity at the time, but to say it's white evangelical, repeated multiple times, it doesn't seem fair.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Here's another factor. Let me… When we think about Moody, Moody was doing stuff in the city of Chicago in a variety of ways. That's one example. Another example has nothing to do with dispensationalism, but shows the cultural forces. And that's the history of Wheaton College. If you look at Jonathan Blanchard, who was an abolitionist, talked about race and the need to abolish slavery in the lead up to the Civil War. Wheaton College was founded as an abolitionist institution, et cetera. And then once the Civil war happened and the slavery problem was "solved," I'll just put it in quotes, he stopped talking about race, and he went on to talk about masons and gambling and prohibition and those kind, the moral character of America, that kind of thing, and race kind of dropped off the map.
And so what we see in this conservative Christianity of the time is the engagement with some things, but it's not full. Even the example of the Southern Bible College, which was mentioned, gets founded here as the offshoot of giving theological education to blacks here in the Dallas area, still is a segregated educational system. It's not having a Tony Evans coming to the Dallas campus, which didn't happen until the late… Early 70s.
Paul Weaver:
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. So I could tell you stories about that, that show this. And so when we talk about the cultural context of what's happening here as being influencers, I think we see it in these examples, where people are reaching out in certain directions, even out of a certain theological system, but they aren't applied with a fullness, if I can say it that way, that maybe today I'm looking back, we say, "Well, yeah, that's a step in that direction, but that certainly doesn't deal with everything that needs to be dealt with."
Daniel Hummel:
Yeah. I would agree with that. And maybe to frame it in ways that interact with what Paul was bringing up about the story I tell. Well, first of all, I want to say I do cover briefly, and too briefly, probably, black pre-millenialism. It's just a couple pages. But one of the questions, it wasn't the driving question, but it was a question I had as I started this, was why aren't there more black dispensationalists? Why isn't this a major stream in African-American Christianity? As you mentioned, black Americans and evangelicals tend to share a lot of fundamental beliefs about the Bible, about who Jesus is, about all that kind of stuff. So why didn't that happen? So that was one of the animating questions. And Moody, I'll get to Moody in a minute, but Moody's a big part of that for me. I do want to just say, there are other people that are important mentioning, that on an individual level, either personally or publicly were, you could say, ahead of their times or just better on race than others.
I think of AT Pearson, who was an important, turn of the century dispensationalist, totally tied into the networks that everyone else we're talking about was into. And he published a number of African-American authors in the late 19th, early 20th century, including WEB Du Bois in his journals. He didn't have to do that. That was actually something he was convicted, based on his passion for missions, that it would be almost impossible to convert Africans when they looked at American society and saw rampant segregation. So that was a vision out there. However, I think the broader thrust of what happened in the dispensationalist reception, coming from the Brethren and then moving into the late 19th century, was an appeal to missions, and it's very contextual. So it's happening in the Reconstruction era. This is when Moody is very prominent. In the 1870s is when he really takes off, and Moody is having to make, over and over again, an overture to Christians who were either in the north or in the south, and who were entirely still divided by the animus around the Civil War.
And his appeal was, "Let's get past that. Let's move into the global missions' movement as the way to live out our faith." And part of that was driven by his dispensationalist convictions about the importance of missions and about the spirituality of the Church. And in practice what that meant was, particularly for southern evangelicals, this was the tacit agreement was we will put up with Jim Crow segregation and we'll put up with the peculiar southern ways of dealing with race if you commit to the global missions' movement. And you can maybe argue with me that I didn't show that enough or there's another side to that story, but I think it's pretty clear that Moody made that overture over and over again. And I don't mean it as a backhanded compliment. I think it's a very fraught question. If you are deeply committed to missions and yet there are these local, national barriers to getting people on board to missions, what do you prioritize?
Do you, in an alternate reality, does Moody become a social justice warrior on race? And basically become that entirely polarizing figure and he can't get nearly as much missions work as he wants done. Or do you do the flip side? Which is more of what he did, which is to talk about, and I get into this in the book, but he framed the Civil War in a way that as historians we now know was the way that was becoming prominent, which was to remove the issue of slavery around why the war happened, to talk about brotherhood over division, and to point to other worldly goals, like missions work, as a way to move past, what could have been, decades of being mired in this whose fault was the Civil War. So that's the choice I see. And then I see generations after that making a similar choice.
It's much easier to make the choice after someone made it for you, and you're on that road, but that would be the terms I'd want to talk about race. I'm really happy you brought up, Paul, the Dallas Colored Bible school. I knew nothing about that. So that's something I want to read more about, and that seems to me like something maybe that is worth adding into another narrative of this. But I still think on the big scope, to get back to what was said before, that there's a lack of fullness here. And even if on an individual level, on a personal level, I don't think I ever call anyone a racist or something on an individual level. I didn't detect much of that. Most of these people, on their personal conduct, they were quite friendly to everyone they came across. But on a structural level or on a missional level, they made decisions or they prioritized things that I think had a certain trajectory and consequences for the later story of dispensationalism.
Darrell Bock:
And the point that I'm making through the Blanchard example is to say this wasn't something unique to dispensationalism. This was culturally, at large across-
Daniel Hummel:
I totally agree with that.
Darrell Bock:
… conservative theology. And the trouble was, I think, what became the trouble is, because public space got captured in this division that came from the fundamentalist modernist controversy, it became very difficult to move into that space and have conservatives view it positively. It was always viewed with the suspicion of "That's something liberals do. That's something you do when you're moving away from the Bible." That kind of thing. And that worked against anyone… That worked against Pearson trying to say, "There's a different way to do this and there's a more unified, way more cohesive way to do this in light of your faith than what you're seeing here." And I think that's at play. We are rapidly running… Go ahead. We're rapidly running out of time. There is one more issue I want to be sure and discuss. So we're going to run long, but go ahead.
Paul Weaver:
Well, again, I don't think it's inherent in the system of dispensationalism, and I think it is more these issues of culture and problems that were plaguing all denominations. And even in some of the discussions you had with other guys, those that were more informed were a little bit more reserved in their interaction on this, but those that weren't, they loved it was sensational and without awareness of their own really bad history.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Let me cut this two ways. Because I think that there's actually two things being said, both of which people need to pay attention to. I think what we're saying is, is that there are cultural influences that are overwhelming for all traditions in Christianity, in one way. They are framing the discussions that are taking place, and in some cases, even driving them. I think what you're trying to say back, which I take, is but certain systems were inclined to take what was coming from the culture and block off certain discussions because of the way they were set up, and the way they saw the world, that other traditions weren't quite so inclined to. And so that's the element of dispensationalism that you're raising questions about. I actually think there's something to think about there that's worth raising and discussing and think about it. And this transitions to where I want to go next, which is, the way you handle the most recent period. And now you're going to get my reaction, and this is bad story for everybody. Okay? And it goes like this.
You took the progressive dispensational discussion and almost set it off to the side. Now you did that for two important reasons. One, progressive dispensationalism hasn't penetrated the popular culture in the way that the popular dispensationalism has. Check. You also did it because traditional dispensationalists themselves raised questions about who we were as progressive dispensationalists. Okay? Check. But then my next observation is, I don't have the job I have at Dallas Theological Seminary doing the things that I do if much of what you said is true of dispensationalism is true. So that's a non-check. And so the reason why the inner dispensational dialogue is important, is for the same very reason you were saying the conversation of dispensationalism with evangelicalism is important, if I can say it that way. I'm just going to throw that out there and see what you think.
Daniel Hummel:
That's interesting. You're right. Well, I don't know if I set it aside. I definitely treat progressive dispensationalism as part of the decline of a continuity in dispensationalist scholarly activity. Part of that is I probably do, and maybe this is irreconcilable, it's just a reading of the history, or maybe I just need to sit at your feet a little longer and learn the way to talk about this properly, but-
Paul Weaver:
Is that in your chapter on collapse or aftermath? Which one is that?
Daniel Hummel:
Collapse would be the one. That's right? That's right. In collapse is… I mean in collapse, I'm trying to track a few different ways that what I see is the pinnacle of scholastic dispensationalism, which is the Walvrood, Ryrie, Pentecost, 60s, 70s. What's happening in the 80s, that's really starting to chip away at their authority. And there's a number of things. There's reconstructionism that is picking away. And I see progressive dispensationalism, at least at the time, in the 90s, was seen as, at least by many of the leading lights of dispensationalism, as a significant threat. And they were reading it in this coded way that you would read it if you were within a covenant dispensationalist frame, which is that anything that deviates from the categories that dispensationalists have established must be a slide toward liberalism or toward mainstream evangelicalism. And that's the whole point-
Darrell Bock:
Or even reform theology. It doesn't have to be that bad. It could just be towards reform theology. Go ahead.
Daniel Hummel:
Right. And so that fit in with this sense that there's a declining scholarly authority writ large. Now, I'd have to think about it more, like what would the story look like differently if I just treated progressive dispensationalism as another era or another iteration? Much like I treat the transition from Brethren to American, from American proto-dispensationalism to dispensationalism. And what if progressive dispensationalism was sort of the next-
I guess there's too many traditional dispensationalists around for me to see that as a narrative that wouldn't be really complicated to write as well. But I think you're right. I've been reflecting on this. The one critique you could have of my book, that I think I would agree with, is that I have a narrow definition of dispensationalism-
Darrell Bock:
That's where I was going next, so that's good. Go ahead.
Daniel Hummel:
That's largely calcified in mid-century 20th century. I've gotten critiques from others. I don't talk about Mid-Acts dispensationalism at all. I think there's one paragraph on it. I've gotten critiques from that side too, that if you're going to talk about dispensationalism in the title, you better include the sub-substrands as well. That's something I can think about. I also… Maybe I'm like 50% there, but I'm not a hundred percent there that what we see in progressive dispensationalism isn't actually what the traditional dispensationalists said it was, which is an adoption of categories that moved everyone closer to a center, that was actually more on covenantalist terms, neo-evangelical terms, than anything else.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Let me tell you why I think that's a poor framing. Because I think this is an important conversation. And that is that what we did was to say there are things coming in critique of dispensationalism from the reformed tradition that need to be taken biblically seriously. Okay? There are also things that dispensationalism has always been arguing for that don't need to be abandoned. And when it comes to the livelihood of the prophetic word, that God keeps his commitments, that he keeps his commitments to Israel to whom he made them, that Israel has a future in the plan of God, which are all dispensational points in one way or another. That those things make what we do very, very dispensational. I need to say one thing about the term progressive because of a context we're in now, and that is the term progressive had nothing to do with politics or the outside world had everything to do with how the dispensations progressively revealed the program of God within the scripture.
It's an totally internal term. That's important, because some people have misread it. But the point that I'm making here is, it is a mix, but our question is not to say which side we're on. Okay? Our question is to ask, what's the best biblical combination of factors when you have certain factors that are emphasizing continuity and other biblical factors that are emphasizing discontinuity, and how do you put those together and make them cohere? That's the question we were pursuing. And so we weren't interested, I'm going to say it this way, we weren't interested in the tribalizing of the conversation, we were interested in trying to get people to reflect biblically on the conversation.
And one of the things that I think has happened, that is kind of odd, is that in covenantalism there became a movement called progressive covenantalism in reaction to what we were doing and in response to what we were doing. So we catalyzed the very conversation we were trying to have across evangelicalism because we weren't just speaking to other dispensationalists, we were also speaking to evangelicals at large, particularly in light of some of the things that they said they thought disqualified dispensationalism from being seriously considered. And we were saying, "I think you can seriously consider us if you will see that we have done some listening interaction, and we're asking for whether or not there's a better way to think of the world than the two boxes we were currently in at the time."
Daniel Hummel:
Yeah. Paul, thoughts on that?
Paul Weaver:
Well, you want to pit us against each other?
Daniel Hummel:
I'm genuinely curious.
Paul Weaver:
No, I appreciate his point on believing in an ethnic future for Israel. And we're was just talking about this as well. It's not… Michael Horton recently, in print and in speaking, has talked about a place for Israel. So that's interesting, that it's not just staying outside of the covenant community, if you will. But yeah, I definitely have a different take on whether this is the Kingdom now, but I certainly appreciate his holding to a future ethnic plan for God in Israel with ethnic nation-
Darrell Bock:
But you think the expression of theology in the public space is important?
Paul Weaver:
Sure. Oh yes, yes. And again, I consider myself an optimistic dispensationalist. And some of the terminology used like escape hatch theology that NT Wright uses and that Dan has used. And in your own words, as agents of the Church, Christians are called for renewal of things, not to wait for the declining of everything and go to heaven when everything gets bad. That's a caricatured view of what we believe. And so I think the Church should be engaged. And so there's definitely a wide variety within dispensationalists, as far as those that may be are less engaged. I don't want to use terminology and put someone in a category, but that's the complexity of this is that I think it's important for the Church to be engaged. And you're doing that, and I think traditional dispensationalists are doing that too.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I see some who do that. I do think that there is a question that sits out there that says, "Why is it that there's been this inclination to emphasize kinds of things that traditionally dispensations have tended to emphasize and then be less joined?" Although I think many of them did connect to some of the evangelical discussions that said we need to do a better job in public space. And to see that not in this liberal/conservative conversation, which tends to happen culturally, but to see that as actually this is a way of undergirding the witness that we have that says God cares about people and God cares about how we interact with people both inside the faith and outside the faith, as a way of drawing people to the fact that Christians are called to love their neighbor and to love their enemies, and as part of the great commandment.
That this is a natural extension of the mission that we have, as well as being a natural extension of the idea that when you look at the body of Christ itself and what it contains, it contains people from many tribes and many nations. And it actually is the business of God taking people who are estranged from one another. We know that Jews and Gentiles were very estranged from one another in the first century and saying, "I'm going to make you family, and that that happens through Christ." But to show that there's an inclination to go in that direction and reach out in that direction depends, at least to some degree, on how we engage in public, in our public ministry outside the Church as well as inside the Church, and that that's all valuable. And I think those are all very legitimate questions that can be raised about the way all of us do our theology, whether we're covenantalists or dispensationalists or Methodists or who knows.
Paul Weaver:
That's imago dei. That's the nature of… Our nature is being created in the image of God, not dispensationalism or covenant theology.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I actually think it's an expression of thinking through the cultural mandate and what the gospel does to address the cultural mandate, and recover what the cultural mandate was asking for. So I'm agreeing with you. And yet somehow we've managed, in the Church, to truncate those kinds of questions in ways that actually, if you talk to people who are evangelicals in other parts of the world, don't get. They don't get how we divide it up that way. And the reason they don't get why we divide it up that way is because of some of the cultural influences and debates that we've just talked about, that have caused us to see it in a certain way and therefore react by default in certain ways.
And so for that reason, I would say… We need to wrap up, but I would say that this is the value of a book like yours in which, obviously, we all don't agree down the line on everything that's going on in there, but there are really, I think, important, serious, intellectual questions. I say that so that you'll smile, intellectual questions that need to be pursued and reflected on by all believers as a result of some of the history that you present and discuss, even though we might calibrate it a little differently than you do. So Dan, I'll give you a final word and then I'll let Paul wrap up and then we'll be done.
Daniel Hummel:
Sure. I really appreciate the conversation, and I'm happy if you are more critical than just have minor critiques. I think Paul has more than minor critiques, and that's fine too. I think part of what I enjoy about this process of writing books and talking, is that, one, I get to learn a lot and I get to understand even phrases like Paul pulled out. I don't think I meant what you… I don't dispute, you read my words, but I didn't mean how you read it. And that's a fault of mine, as an author, that I didn't word it more carefully. And so anyway, I learned a lot from those types of conversations. And then these types of conversations, I think, get, I hope, when we have them, get evangelicals really thinking about fundamental questions about how they think about the Bible, how they think about theology, how they think about culture.
And that to me is the thing that I ended with NT Wright and some other theologians who really put that front and center. There's plenty of people who you can disagree with, big parts of what they say, but I've appreciated it here, certainly in my context, working in Madison, a pretty post-Christian city, and trying to give students here an imagination for what it means to work for Jesus, to work for the gospel, and ultimately to work for the kingdom. Those types of things really are powerful here. And that's part of what drew me to this project as well, was trying to understand how does dispensationalism connect with the work I'm doing now. But I appreciate the conversation and also the multiple perspectives from the dispensational side. It's been a real treat.
Darrell Bock:
Well, Dan, I just made you a friend on Facebook, so welcome to the world here in terms of… And I'd love to follow up. I think there are some very meaningful and even mutually shared conversations that we could have with one another. Paul, What do you?
Paul Weaver:
Well, I do appreciate you coming here and being willing to dialogue with us, because I probably would not have done that if I were in the other reversal, going as it relates to, obviously we've got an impartial moderator here. And yes, you're right. There's a lot of things I would be critical of that we haven't talked about in the podcast yet. We've dialogued a little bit on it, and including the sensational title, Rise and Fall and Collapse and Aftermath and all of that. So my greatest concern with the book is that way it's being used on the various podcasts and talking heads and such, including the one… I don't want to say the most salacious things.
You probably can think of the ones that were said. But it becomes a tool to caricature dispensationalists. And so I know that you're telling us that's not your intent, and I take you at that. And that quote wasn't from your book, it was from a conversation in one of the podcasts. And I know we tend to be less, maybe, careful when we're in different settings and different audiences, and people that might be more appreciative of that, but so… Obviously there's a lot we agree on in evangelicalism, and thankful for your work and what you're doing there in Wisconsin. So thanks Dan.
Daniel Hummel:
Appreciate it.
Darrell Bock:
All right. Well we thank you all for joining us here on The Table. We hope you'll join us again soon. If you are curious about other episodes of The Table, you can see them at voice.dts.edu, and we hope you'll join us again soon. This has been The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture, and also discuss the relevance of theology to everyday life.
Kymberli Cook:
Welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology in everyday life. My name is Kymberli Cook. I'm the Assistant Director here at The Hendricks Center, and I am so thrilled that you have joined us here today because we are going to be talking about why the Bible is so important to the Christian faith, so not an important topic at all. We really have two listeners in mind with today's discussion. We want to talk to you if you just wonder what all the fuss is about with the Bible. There's a lot of history.
Well, there's a lot of history, but what I want to say is that we want to assure you and we want to help you, orient you to all of the history and thought that's been put into the book, and we would be honored… I think I can speak for these gentlemen. We would be honored to introduce you to it, but we also want to talk to you if you love scripture and encourage you to recognize that many believers have contributed to the beliefs that you have likely inherited about the Bible, and we want to encourage you to recognize that inherited faith and appreciate it maybe on a deeper level.
And we are joined by two eminently qualified scholars to help us dig into those questions. First, we have Clint Arnold, who is a research professor of New Testament at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. Thank you for joining us, Clint.
Clint Arnold:
Great to be here.
Kymberli Cook:
And we're also joined by Stephen Nichols, the president of Reformation Bible College and chief academic officer for Ligonier Ministries. Thank you for being here, Steve.
Stephen Nichols:
My pleasure.
Kymberli Cook:
What does a chief academic officer do?
Stephen Nichols:
Ligonier is a teaching ministry, been producing discipleship resources for over 50 years now. And so as a teaching ministry, we are always concerned about content and especially a faithful content that's helpful for the church. So, I have this wonderful role of being able to serve my colleagues there at Ligonier to just think through, number one, most importantly, how we can be faithful, about how we can connect this teaching to folks, and help them in their discipleship today. It's a great job.
Kymberli Cook:
When I saw it, I was like, "Man," I'm interested in theology and academia and all of that and I thought, "Man, that sounds like a really nice gig, just a chief academic officer." It reminds me of some of my… I actually have one friend who has this position, but some churches now are having resident theologians and I feel like that's a similar type thing where I'm like, "That'd be nice to just be paid to sit and do that stuff, wonderful."
Clint Arnold:
So, I've got to add something to that.
Kymberli Cook:
Please.
Clint Arnold:
Because I was a chief academic officer-
Kymberli Cook:
Oh, were you?
Clint Arnold:
… At my institution for a while.
Kymberli Cook:
Nice.
Clint Arnold:
And our creditors had a special conference once a year called CAOS theory, Chief Academic Officer Society, and there's times that those of us in the academic administration feel that there's a little bit of chaos there running some institutions, but that one always cracked me up, CAOS.
Kymberli Cook:
That's wonderful. Well, sorry to you who are listening for that little sidebar, but I was just a very interested, a little glimpse behind the curtain of what goes on in academic institutions, but thank you, gentlemen. As you have heard, they have both been chief academic officers. So again, they are imminently qualified, but thank you for joining us at The Table today. We really appreciate you being here. So, we're talking today about the Bible, the centrality of scripture, why it's important, how it's important, how Christians have approached it over the millennia, quite frankly. So, how did you, gentlemen, end up spending so much time studying the Bible? Steve, let's start with you.
Stephen Nichols:
Sure, I grew up in a pastor's home. I don't remember a time when I didn't own a Bible and multiple Bibles for that, and I'm so thankful for that, really being surrounded by the Bible. When I was a kid, it was scripture memory and it was scripture drills where we'd hold up our Bible and they'd call out a book in a chapter, you'd have to find it. So, I'm just very grateful for that and very blessed. I know many people don't have a similar story and grew up not in a Christian home or surrounded by the word of God.
And when God brings them to himself and they see the truthfulness of God's word, you see the joy of that discovery. So, I think whichever that journey is, whether it's within a context of having the Bible around or where God brings you to the Bible, I think we both have that same experience, how blessed we are to have the word of God. And I just think about, imagine navigating this current world without it. I'm glad I'm not in that position.
Kymberli Cook:
What drew you to dig deeper into scripture? It's just fine, I love your answer, but somebody sitting in a pew that would never end up being in some of the positions you've had and the time with the scriptures that you had, what drew you to be like, "No, I want to know more?"
Stephen Nichols:
I hope Professor Arnold appreciates this story, but as a freshman in college, I took Greek. And the professor walked into the classroom, had Greek grammar, which was Machen's Greek Grammar, picked it up, kissed it, and set it on the podium. And then he proceeded to give this brilliant lecture about Greek, and I was hooked. And from then on, I just knew that I really wanted to commit my life to an in-depth study of this. I went more the route of church history and historical theology than biblical studies, but it really was that moment was a turning point for me of a calling, I think, to pursue this.
Kymberli Cook:
What about you, Clint?
Clint Arnold:
Well, I am a little bit more like the second person that Steve described in that I never really cracked open a Bible until I was a teenager, so raised in an non-Christian home, the Bible just was not a part of our family life at all. But there was a lot of sin issues in our family with divorce, remarriage, and a lot of difficult things, and my great-grandmother had given me a Bible at one time and it said holy on the cover. You were talking about that earlier today, and I took that literally that that was holy, but I never read it until I was 13.
And in God's providence and grace, my mother and stepfather and I moved into this new farming community and we were surrounded by Christians for the first time in our lives and they kept inviting us to church. "Oh, no, thanks. No, thanks," and we finally came, and it was around a dinner table that the pastor led my mother and stepfather to the Lord. And then he caught up with me a couple of weeks later and explained the gospel, shared how I could receive Christ, and I prayed and received Christ at that time.
And then the discipleship process began with this pastor and he told me, he says, "You really need to get into the Bible." And I thought, "That's what every Christian does, get into the Bible." And I started reading the Bible and I couldn't get enough of it. Everything was brand new, everything was fresh. I'd seen change in my family's lives. I knew something was real and dynamic and working here, and it motivated me to get into it deeper and deeper.
Kymberli Cook:
So, the holy really then took root.
Clint Arnold:
Yeah, it was a different book than any other, for sure.
Kymberli Cook:
Oh, interesting. So this morning, in honor of this podcast, as I was driving in today, I was listening to 2 Timothy just being read on the Bible. Props to you Logos for having that now, so I was listening to 2 Timothy and it made the way through the whole book, and especially there at the end, chapters three and four, I am very much like you, Steve. I was raised in a Christian home, the Bible drills were probably the source of some anxiety, just all of that.
But for some reason, those passages, those two chapters I feel like have just kind of been consistently present in my life and people have dug into them on sermons that were meaningful for me. And I hadn't even really put it together until this morning and I just thought, "My heart just feels this home when I hear these words," and I hadn't ever really thought about it until I just heard it read. So I'm curious, is there any passage for you all? It can be a book, it can be a passage, it can be a verse, but where you kind of have that home feeling where you're like, man, I just kind of come home to my faith and it just kind of settles right here for some reason? Clint?
Clint Arnold:
I learned an expression from my youngest son once and it was called, "What are you vibing?"
Kymberli Cook:
That is a much cooler way of asking.
Clint Arnold:
I have to confess that it varies for me from time to time. I get enamored with a certain book for a period of time and immerse myself in it and enjoy it and savor it and so on, and then it's something else. And interestingly, right now it's Leviticus and we've decided to do a series on Leviticus in our local church, and I'm part of the preaching team there. I'm so excited about this because of all of the great stuff in Leviticus, we're going to call it Loving Leviticus because that's not the way most people respond to it. But when you dive into it and think about what it reveals about God, about his plan of salvation, about his holiness, there's just so much to be encouraged by. But I have to admit, I've done a lot of academic work on Ephesians and Colossians years and years and years of work on those written commentaries on both of them, and I never get tired of them. I feel really at home in both of those.
Kymberli Cook:
Interesting. What about you, Steve?
Stephen Nichols:
Well, to use this expression, I'm vibing. For me, I like the Psalms. I just always come back to the Psalms. As you mentioned, you find yourselves in seasons sort of diving into a particular portion. Last year it was the gospels, I just kept reading through the gospels. This year I'm doing Paul's epistles, and Crossway puts out those wonderful little reader's editions and they're just bound beautifully. So, it's just an enjoyable experience to read and then of the content of what you're reading, but I still always come back to the Psalms.
Kymberli Cook:
Isn't that interesting-
Stephen Nichols:
Just the beauty of the Psalms.
Kymberli Cook:
… How just different parts… To Leviticus, I will say in seminary, there was a point where it was very intense and I hadn't done what I needed to do ahead of time. And so, I had to read the whole book of Deuteronomy in one sitting and by the end of it, and I kind of had to journal my way through it as part of the assignment. And by the end of it, I was sobbing. I was like, "This is such a beautiful book," so I had a soft spot for that general area. I can appreciate Leviticus. All right, well, now that we know how much you all love scripture, for the record, I do too, I'd like us to turn to why the Christian faith as a whole clings so tightly to the Bible. Why is it so important? So let's start first, and you mentioned something about historical theology, so this is going to be punted to you first and then you can add in.
I know you have very much to say, too, but let's talk first about those earliest Christians. We don't have time to get fully into the development of the canon as a whole. We've actually already done a podcast on that. For you listening, that's Making Sense of the Biblical Canon. Feel free to go there and Michael Spiegel will walk you all the way through how it was developed, but can you at least describe for us why the writings specifically that were being passed around and that were inherited from the Jewish tradition, why were they so important for those earliest Christians?
Stephen Nichols:
If we start with the first century Christians and the New Testament writers, we see this remarkable expression, they will interchangeably use God says, and scripture says. And so the high view of scripture of the New Testament scripture writers, and then we have that wonderful text at the end of Peter where he speaks of Paul's writings. The ink is still wet on Paul's epistles and he's comparing them with other scriptures. So, just the high regard we see in the Bible itself and self-consciously aware of this book as scripture. So, that's where it starts. Then you go to the church fathers post-New Testament, so 90 on, and they're writing epistles. They're in that vein of the epistles that are written. And when they want to make a point, they'll quote the text. In fact, it's a good witness, and Dr. Arnold here is far more an expert in this, but it's a good witness to us is the presence of the text in the church fathers as part of our manuscript evidence.
So, they'll quote the text if they want to make a point, and if they really want to make a point, they'll just string together a bunch of texts. So, early on you see that in the church, authority is not lodged in a religious leader, authority is not lodged in the dynamic illumination of the Holy Spirit. Authority is lodged in the word of God, in scripture, and so that's the trajectory that's set. Now, you get to the 400s, 500s, and all of a sudden we sort of veer away from that and scripture recedes, and now the church's tradition on scripture comes to the foreground, and our beloved reformers, of course, return us back, and that's the whole sola scriptura in authority. But you look at those early centuries of the church, scripture is the authority for life and church practice because it is the word of God and you see it and the documentary evidence.
Kymberli Cook:
And this is for you Clint, and I want to hear any thoughts you have there too, but what do you think the relationship is between them seeing… So, I think even the Jewish texts might be a separate conversation, but especially the New Testament texts that are arising, what is the relationship between the revelation that we see in the person of Christ and they're pointing to that as the word of God and the authority that is then granted? What's the relationship going on there?
Clint Arnold:
So, the texts that we have available to us today are texts that give a record of who Jesus is, what he has accomplished on our behalf, and what the future plans are that he has in place for us, the way God has used him through that. So, I love this passage in Colossians 3:16 that I talked about recently, "Let the word about Christ dwell in you richly," and of course, in that first century context, at the time that was written, there was no New Testament gospels written probably that they would've had. So, the word about Christ would've been the oral traditions of everything that was taught about Jesus, everything that Jesus taught, and that was memorized and faithfully passed on. And these all came to be written up eventually in our synoptic gospels and in the Gospel of John, and that became the word of God that we know is the New Testament text.
And I think what I'd like to add is just that the early church saw this as more than just a documented history. The early church saw these documents that we came to know as the New Testament documents as the writer of Hebrews puts it, living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. Something that God wields, something that God uses to miraculously change lives, to reshape and reform who people are, bringing them more into the image of Christ, and somehow uniquely the church uses these documents and God through the church uses these documents to bring people closer to a relationship with Christ and into a walk that's pleasing with God.
Kymberli Cook:
That's a wonderful add. I think why they still matter, so not just to the early church, but even why this document as a whole now that we have… But the earliest documents still matter to us is because at the core, it is an understanding that or it is a belief that God has revealed himself to us. And we see in that passage that he says, "no, you're even my image bearers, and I don't have to tell you anything about myself, but I'm choosing to." And he does so through the person of Christ and then the preserved record of Christ and everything around it, and that's where the Jewish tradition comes in and we rethink it and… Not rethink it, that's not a good term, but we re-understand everything that was going on there. The Bible itself even points broader than in the world, it points to nature at times revealing God, that kind of thing.
So, God has revealed himself as tightly and succinctly as possible. Now, don't you love when things are phrased that way? I was in a podcast recording the other day where I was one of the guests and they were like, "In one phrase, can you say this?" I was like, "I really don't want to, please don't do that to me." Because they're not one phrase, but as tightly and succinctly as possible. For our friend listening who wonders why this old book is such a big deal, what would you say is the reason for the Christian reverence that we give to the Bible?
Clint Arnold:
The holy God has revealed himself through this means through this book, and because of that, we can get to know our creator, God, in a deeper, personal way.
Stephen Nichols:
There's an image of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, the classic book that I love. It's the beginning image, and he has a Christian described as dressed in rags, a burden on his back, and none of his family has that same perception on life. To them they're fine, but he's fixated on this burden on his back. And then Bunyan says, "And a book in his hand," and of course the book in his hand is the Bible, and it is what is eventually going to lead him to Christ and lead him to relief from that burden. So, it's an existential thing to recognize that our fundamental problem before our holy God is that burden of sin. And there's only one way that we're going to learn how to be relieved from that burden, it's the book.
Kymberli Cook:
So if you're listening and you don't have that question at all, you are sitting here with us and you're hearing Steve talk and you're like, "Oh, that's so true, and that's been my life, and it was the burden and now it's the book that brought me there," that's wonderful, and you're committed to scripture. We also want to talk a bit about the approaches to the Bible that Christians have had and why they have had them throughout the history of the church specifically because there is a lot. Steve, you walked through a little bit of it and we can dig in deeper because I think sometimes… I didn't, until I came to seminary, I didn't know that I had inherited all of this and that there were forks in the road where I didn't inherit some things that others have because way on down the line, I'm in this tradition.
And so, I would love for us to unpack a little bit of that today just for people listening who are 100% behind the Bible, they know why it's a big deal, but maybe they don't know as much about why they believe what they believe as they could. So talk to us, we have thousands of years later, we still have all of these writings. Talk to us about the variety of ways that Christians approach them now. What does "reverence", what does "centrality" look like in various Christian traditions today? Either one of you can hop in.
Clint Arnold:
Since you used the word hop, I will build on that and refer to the image of the grasshopper.
Kymberli Cook:
All right, I did not see that coming.
Clint Arnold:
No, and I'm going to start simple and then we can work out from there.
Kymberli Cook:
Sure.
Clint Arnold:
But I think one of the things that I see in the church today often is what I might call grasshoppering around the text. In other words, seeing the Bible as a collection of Bible verses. So, you hop from this verse to another verse to another verse, and there's great promises and there's great thoughts and great ideas in this way, but in terms of an approach to Bible, there's a popular approach that looks at it a little bit like that. And I think for me, growing as a Christian was recognizing that Bible verses are embedded in context, Bible verses are embedded in whole letters, whole books, and these books are embedded in historical cultural settings.
And the Bible was in some ways like Jesus was incarnated, the Bible was incarnated into a social-historical context and there's a richness and a texture that comes from knowing where this Bible verse fits into the larger context. And it's exciting and enriching to see that in the way that God has chosen to give us the scripture in this holistic sort of way. And so that's one thing that I like to encourage people to consider is a fuller, holistic way of approaching the Bible, especially seeing things in context.
Kymberli Cook:
It's really interesting that you say that because I was just having a conversation with one of my interns today, and he was at a church that is very seeker-friendly, and he was saying that the only time that the Bible was read was when one verse was kind of shared and out from that there was… He said, "I didn't learn very much about the Bible, but I felt very empowered. I felt very good about my life and what I could accomplish." And I think that that's maybe a practical application. There are people that we call it cherry-picking a lot here, but that go and they take certain things and put it together, but I also think that this self-care, self-empowerment vein that's running through our society also, there's a danger of kind of going and clipping out the things that really fit that narrative, and the church might end up doing it and might not even really be meaning to, but that's really interesting that you bring that approach to scripture up.
Clint Arnold:
And if you're just cherry-picking and hopping around different places in scripture, you're missing some crucial things that it's saying and seeing the whole testimony of the scripture, the whole revelation of what God wants you to know about yourself, and I love the image of Christian and burden on his back to understand what that burden really is as a means of understanding yourself and your desperate plight and desperate need before a holy God is just really crucial. And cherry-picking may not get you there.
Kymberli Cook:
What would you say? What are some other ways that-
Stephen Nichols:
I'd love to keep on this theme.
Kymberli Cook:
Go ahead. If you have something to think to say-
Stephen Nichols:
I'll be real quick and then I'll-
Kymberli Cook:
Please, no, you're fine.
Stephen Nichols:
I'll hop off onto another.
Kymberli Cook:
You're fine.
Stephen Nichols:
But no, I think the old adage, even the devil uses the Bible for his own purposes and you can get the Bible to support any view you want it to. That's where the whole council of God is so, so crucial, so I really appreciate that. I was enjoying listening to it. One of the things, we talk about the attributes of God., one of the things I found very helpful as a construct coming out of historical theology and different theologians is speak of the attributes of scripture. And it's just a nice way to sort of help us think about what scripture is, and so historically we've had four of these. We think of the authority of and the stresses that it is revelation. This is not a bottom-up book of a human expression of encounter with the divine.
This is a divine down book, a top-down book, and because it is origin sourced in God, it is authoritative. And so, we have the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy that flow from that. We speak of the necessity of scripture. If we want to be right with God, which is humanity's the human condition's central issue, scripture is necessary to lead us to Christ and teach us of Christ.
We speak of the sufficiency of scripture and many say for an orthodox view of scripture, this is where the rubber meets the road. You can affirm inerrancy all day long, but do you rely on the Bible and look to the Bible and trust in the Bible? And then we have this word, the perspicuity of scripture, which is an unclear word that means clarity because there's a lot of disagreement over particulars, but it does mean that central message is clear, simple, not simplistic, but simple and understandable. And I'd just like to add a fifth attribute, and it is that scripture is beauty. It's a work of art. God could have given us bullet points and maybe wouldn't have so much theological debate, but we've got narrative and poetry and fascinating apocalyptic drama scriptures. It's beautiful literature.
Kymberli Cook:
So, going a little bit off of what you were talking about with the authority and it's not the encounter of the human with the divine and up, are there Christian traditions who do say that?
Stephen Nichols:
Right. You mean bottom-up or top-down?
Kymberli Cook:
Bottom-up.
Stephen Nichols:
Oh, yes, and they're the wrong ones.
Clint Arnold:
Agreed.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, right now we're just exploring why they might think that.
Stephen Nichols:
In one sense, this was sort of higher criticism and it started with the Pentateuch and then it moved into the gospels, and I'm going to step aside here because we have much more authority here, but that's really what was the heart of it. We're really seeing here through these authorial strands of the Pentateuch, we are seeing at various moments in Israel's history, their expression of that divine encounter, whether it's the deuteronomist or the priestly vein, and then same thing with Jesus and the different, so-called community. So, the Gospel writers are not individual authors. They sort of represent communities in that the old view is in the 200s and 300s even that were reflecting on who Jesus is. So, there's definitely those traditions, but they're out of step with orthodoxy and Bible's teaching of itself.
Kymberli Cook:
So, I do want to continue with just helping the person listening understand if they haven't ever really realized that that conversation has gone on that bottom-up, top-down that that's even happened in the church, what "hill" is the bottom-up group defending in that approach to authority or not holding the top-down view?
Clint Arnold:
That's a tough question to answer-
Kymberli Cook:
I know, I'm sorry.
Clint Arnold:
… Because we're trying then to venture into probing into the motives of scholars-
Kymberli Cook:
Or I guess I could add, well, this may be the same but values-
Clint Arnold:
But I think it's a legitimate question.
Kymberli Cook:
… What values might be there that we can surface to help understand why they would take that position though we might not end up there?
Clint Arnold:
So, I studied in Germany for a year and there was a word that's often used in German scholarship, it's called Wissenschaftliche, and that's the scientific study of scripture. So, there's a group of scholars and Stephen referred to them as historical critical scholars, that believe that they are applying a scientific method to the study of the scripture in a way that would be applied to any other literature. And the end result is that we really have a set of documents that, for instance, the gospels that are not very trustworthy in terms of conveying accurate historical information.
The problem is that so many of these historical critical scholars are controlled by a set of presuppositions and assumptions that bringing with them to the text that maybe influence where they end up far more than they realize. And so in a post-enlightenment world, when there's this inherent doubt about the reality of supernatural beings, doubt about the miraculous, doubt about the existence of God, and this flows into biblical scholarship in certain ways, it will have an impact on where we end up, and even in our methodology. I remember years ago we had a scholar that came on our campus that was from a very prominent German university and described it as a theological system in which it's controlled by a set of theological convictions more than it's controlled by an objective critical method. And so, becoming aware of that I think for a scholar, for any of us, is really crucially important
Kymberli Cook:
For the few that are still open, when somebody might go to a Barnes and Noble and pick up a book about the Bible, it could very easily be coming from that kind of perspective, and they are learning from it and they're interested, and let's say they did encounter the Bible, just in a very similar way that you did and it meant something to them and they're wanting to go read more about it, they might not be aware that there's this whole different language going on between the two camps.
Stephen Nichols:
You raised such a great point. I hear this testimony of students who go off to a university and study a Bible as literature course, and nine times out of 10 they're going to be reading a textbook by Bart Ehrman, very popularizer of the critical method you've been talking about, and wanting to talk about how helpful the Bible is or whatever the case may be, but not realizing-
Kymberli Cook:
Because it's not denigrating it.
Stephen Nichols:
Right.
Kymberli Cook:
And from their perspective, as far as I understand, they are still trying to elevate scripture or the Bible as important for life, there's a special nature to it that is helpful and worthwhile, and so sorry to cut you off, but I just wanted-
Stephen Nichols:
No, you're exactly right, and not realize that underpinning all of that is this rather unhelpful view of what the Bible is in its essence.
Clint Arnold:
Well said.
Kymberli Cook:
So, why did you all find yourself landing in the other camp?
Clint Arnold:
I'll begin. I started today by describing my conversion and God became very real to me. The book that claimed to be holy seemed very holy, and it made a big difference in my family's life and in my life. And so, I was bent toward accepting it at face value, what it really was. Then, I started studying the Bible and I just had this insatiable desire to get into it deeper and deeper and deeper, and I eventually did doctoral studies, postdoctoral studies, and wrote commentaries, and academic monographs on things and would go five miles deep on very specific things, but it encouraged my faith.
And what I mean by that is I felt like I could go into, for instance, a particular slice of the Book of Acts, that's very historical, look at every available piece of historical evidence and not find anything that contradicted the testimony of Luke and the Book of Acts. On the contrary, finding abundance of historical information of various sorts, inscriptions, papyri, archeological data, literary data, and so on, that illustrated the text. And so, it became even more self-authenticating by diving in more deeply. And so, I came away feeling like, as believers, if we really take this seriously that the Bible is inerrant, it's true in everything it affirms even historically, we have nothing to fear in getting deep into the scholarship, deep into historical study because the more we do, the more we will find out the Bible is accurate.
Kymberli Cook:
Even in some of the more "unbelievable places".
Clint Arnold:
Part of the difficulty is that we will find things narrated in the Bible that we have no way of gathering empirical evidence for that. So, we have to say we just don't have the historical evidence one way or the other on that. We've got things that point and suggest, but we may not have historical evidence for everything that we would like to demonstrate historicity.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, of course, but I guess what I was just trying to summarize is by you saying all of the digging deep actually strengthened your faith even for those parts that can't necessarily be empirically proved because the parts that can be are. It even made it a straight-up reading of scripture all the more believable because of what you found.
Clint Arnold:
That's exactly right. When you think of the Book of Acts or the Gospel of Luke and Luke wrote 25% of the New Testament, if Luke got this correct in certain places, chances are he got it correct in other places. In other words, he was a very careful historian. He was a member of the Jesus movement and thought that the Holy Spirit was real, God was real, and God was moving in amazing ways and it's very inspiring to read. But he was also one who was concerned about getting things accurate, and of course we believed he was moved along by the Holy Spirit to ensure that as well.
Kymberli Cook:
What about you, Steve? Why did you end up landing with your approach to the Bible?
Stephen Nichols:
I've been really enjoying listening to that answer. In many ways, we're sort of venturing a little bit into apologetics here and we think of apologetics for the non-Christian and the unbeliever, I think there's apologetics for the Christian, too, and for the one especially to put it, "Am I a Christian because I grew up in a Christian home? Do I believe in the Bible because I've just known it all my life?" And you want to say, "No, you actually believe this Bible because it's true, it's objectively true." And the thing that I find fascinating about the Bible, especially if you compare it… Because it's not the only book that claims to have divine origin. There are other religious texts out there that make similar claims, but the Bible was written in such a way involved in space and time and almost there's an ordinariness to the… We're talking about the extraordinary-ness to it, but there's also an ordinariness to it of just being in…
Pontius Pilate, he's a mid-level bureaucrat. If he wasn't in the pages of scripture, we wouldn't be talking about him as an historical figure at all, but there he is, and it's almost as if the Bible invites scrutiny. It's not some revelation that's just directly given to one individual and then is written down. It's not some secret language. It's known languages of Greek and Hebrew, and so I find the Bible to sort of welcome scrutiny, and I think we just have to respect that of it. And then once we do scrutinize it, we see that the Bible is unique and we see that it's reliable, and the ergo to that is maybe we should read it, see what its message is, and maybe that message is-
Kymberli Cook:
With the words that it's saying and not necessarily ascribing different meanings to many of the words that are there, just reading what it says. We don't have a ton of time to dig in here, which I would love to because I'm a theologian and this is where I get excited. But do you think it's possible for people to overstep and cling too tightly to scripture?
Stephen Nichols:
You hear this charge and sometimes you hear it from Catholicism to the Protestant view that we've turned scripture into an idol and I don't think so. I think as we come to scripture with that attitude of reverence and awe, we don't worship scripture, we worship the God of scripture, but it is through scripture that we learn to worship God in reverence and in awe. You see the psalmist who speaks so highly of what would be the Pentateuch, back to Leviticus, who just wants to meditate on the word of God, needs the word of God for life. I think that we can have as high a view of scripture as the psalmist does.
Kymberli Cook:
Clint, what would you say to somebody who says that they only gain their truth if they were trying to solve any problem that they would go to the Bible?
Clint Arnold:
In other words, does the Bible address every conceivable issue that I might have? Well, that's an interesting question. If I have tooth decay, I don't know if I'm going to find anything in the Bible about brushing my teeth, flossing, going regular dental checkups. I hope I'm not making anybody feel guilty here. So, there is a sense in which the Bible doesn't address every conceivable topic, but it certainly gives us a framework for addressing all of the major issues of life. Of course, the Bible is mainly concerned about our relationship with God, the problem of our rebellion against God, that maybe we're unwittingly don't even realize that we're living in rebellion against God and that we come to realize that, and then the scripture gives us a solution to that plight that we have. The scripture tells us about the future, scripture tells us about God's plan for the church, but a lot of different things that the Bible doesn't directly address and we wouldn't really expect it to.
Kymberli Cook:
We have talked about the word sufficiency, and I think sometimes that can get passed down through a variety of teachings and it becomes, "Well, that's the only real truth, and we have to look there." Tooth decay obviously is a hyperbolic, but it's not far from some communities that… And so, I think that it's helpful for us to both talk about, yes, absolutely scripture is sufficient, and just like what you were saying, its main concern is these things, but they are broadly, broadly applicable in so many areas of life. So, it's worthwhile to go to scripture, but also recognizing that it itself recognizes its limits. So one last question, and we don't have super long, but what would you say to the person listening about the role that the Bible should have in their daily life?
Clint Arnold:
I'm happy to jump in on that. In reflecting on this and preparing even for today and just reflecting on the topic, I can't think of anything that's had a bigger, more profound impact on my personal life than regular times of reading and reflecting and praying through the Bible. It has just reshaped me, and it's helped me to walk in a way that's more pleasing to God than the way I was raised, and so it works, but it works in a way that leads us into a life that is joyful, with peace, and is something that God will be well pleased with.
Kymberli Cook:
What would you say, Steve?
Stephen Nichols:
There's a lot of noise today, and voices come at us all the time. Who knows what this new era of AI and deepfakes is going to be. We really need that place to stand. We just need that grounding and that foundation and God has revealed to us his word. It's a gift to us it, and we've always needed it. It's always been urgent for Christians to know their Bible and read their Bible and study their Bible, but it really seems like we're coming into a moment where that urgency has taken on just a palpable increased sense. So, where would we be without God's word in our life?
Kymberli Cook:
So, as far as standing firm, like you said, and having a place to stand, what does that look like practically for somebody with the Bible on a Tuesday?
Stephen Nichols:
Well, I think it's good old Romans 12:1-2, "We have our minds are shaped and they're influenced by the world, they're influenced by our sinful nature, and sinful self, and we need to be transformed in our thinking and step by step, day by day we grow in grace as we take advantage of the means of grace and seek to obey God's word in our lives. It's sort of that simple and just that consistent stepping forward in the right direction and growing as a Christian.
Kymberli Cook:
Clint, when you were talking, when you said that it had shaped you, the image that I got in my mind was of like a heavy, long-standing river that has been there for generations and will be there for generations still, but it shapes the landscape and it does so usually not through massive floods or crazy circumstances, though sometimes it does, but mostly it's that day-to-day, consistent, just forward, like you were saying, Steve, forward motion of the scripture. And I think that is something that sometimes I even find myself missing in my daily life if I haven't spent time with the scripture and haven't allowed myself to be daily just shaped by it.
So I hope you, as you are listening, are able to appreciate the fact that that river is deep and it is steady and it is long-standing, and it is something that it is something that you would be very respectable to depend on and to allow yourself to be shaped by. Our time is up, and I want to thank you, Clint and Steve, for joining us for this beautiful discussion about a beautiful book that thousands and millions of people have thought is beautiful and have allowed themselves to be shaped by as well. So, it is an honor to be here with you in that tradition, and thank you for listening. And we would ask that you would subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you are using and that you be sure to join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Kasey Olander:
Welcome to the Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendricks Center, Dallas Theological Seminary, and today, I'm excited that you've joined us today for our conversation on art and beauty. The guests that are going to be joining us in this conversation, we have Dr. Brian Chan, who is Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Worship. Thanks for being here, Brian.
Brian Chan:
Thanks for having me.
Kasey Olander:
And we also have Dr. Neil Coulter. He's senior writer and editor of DTS Magazine. Thanks for being here, Neil.
Neil Coulter:
Thank you, Kasey.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. I'm eager to jump into this conversation, since the three of us went to the Sundance Film Festival, and I feel like both of you have a lot to say about art and about beauty, and so I'm excited that our listeners get to hear from your expertise.
So I feel like, in a sense, this conversation might be sort of difficult to have because we're using words, we're not really using visuals and a lot of the mediums that art usually uses, but we're trying to capture something that is not always verbal whenever we talk about art and beauty. So I'm interested to learn from you guys as we navigate this conversation. So why don't we start off with, Neil, I'll start with you, but how did you get interested in art and beauty? What is your experience with it?
Neil Coulter:
My background is music, and so I went to Wheaton College as a music major. And from Wheaton, went on to grad school in ethnomusicology. So I was learning how to do field work and ethnography, how to work with communities that maybe haven't gotten as much notice from musicology. And from there, my wife and I joined Wycliffe Bible translators and ended up spending 12 years in Papua New Guinea in the Pacific where I was in ethnomusicology and arts consultant.
So we spent a few years living in a remote village, and then the remainder of the time I have went out to various locations and worked with communities and churches to create new songs using their own languages, their own musical styles and instruments. In some cases, this was the first time they had put their own artwork to use for Christian and worship purposes. So that was our role for 12 years. And then we came back to the US where I teach at a couple of schools and work at DTS.
Kasey Olander:
That's awesome.
Brian Chan:
I'll add for Dr. Coulter too, as part of his background, he's the adjunct professor for a Christian View of Art. So very pertinent, the
Kasey Olander:
Perfect person to talk to about having a Christian view of art. Yeah, that's awesome. I love that you're helping people and not just learn worship songs that you knew, but helping them to create their own art.
Neil Coulter:
Yeah, it was a way of getting people engaged with scripture. That was, in many cases, in the process of being translated. And so, to help people understand what is the Scripture for, what do we do when we get the New Testament to the Bible, A way into that was songwriting and drama and storytelling, and artwork of all kinds.
Kasey Olander:
Gosh, that's awesome. What about you, Brian?
Brian Chan:
What was the question again?
Kasey Olander:
I'm sorry. What is your interest in art? What's your experience with it?
Brian Chan:
Oh, yes. So I've been a visual artist for many years, and been an exhibiting fine artist. And was in Hollywood for 18 of those years, just working with actors and artists, as well as exhibiting at that time. And I really discovered my love for biblical beauty from here at DTS when I was a student and when I did my thesis on the beauty of God and art and worship.
And I discovered that through being a historical theology concentration where looking at the heritage, the history of our faith, so much of art was interwoven with our faith and how we understood things theologically. And then diving into the exposition of scripture and seeing how much scripture actually uses a lot of art and aesthetics and that just set my heart on fire for it. And it blended in so well with me as a visual artist, me as a writer, and even as I was a fight trainer in Hollywood as a certified Kung Fu instructor. And even just seeing beauty in fight choreography and in Kung fu. So I think that the art and beauty side really has many dimensions for me.
Kasey Olander:
That is really cool because that's not something that people normally think about in martial arts as a form of beauty and art.
Brian Chan:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. So is it fair to say, we've used the word art, but is it fair to encompass film and theater? And you mentioned music and visual art in addition to, is that fair to use that term broadly?
Neil Coulter:
I think so. When I think about art, I think more of arts plural, which encompasses so much. Even just oral verbal arts, storytelling, proverbs, joke telling, puns, things like that. It's all this creative expression that is doing something more than just conveying a direct meaning, but it's being more playful about it. So when I say art, I'm thinking not just of paintings in the museum, but really the whole spectrum of what humans might do creatively. What do you think, Brian?
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, that's good.
Brian Chan:
Yeah, I agree. I would think of the term, the phrasing, the art and aesthetics. And I think in the scriptures we see that expands the smell, even, like perfume making. And so when it comes to the aesthetics as a focus on all of our sensories, how do the aesthetics, the arts, appeal to all of our sensories in order to connect with our minds, our mental sensory as well, too. So yeah, I agree with that.
Kasey Olander:
That is really fascinating that already this has so much more layers to it than people just think of sometimes just painting as art or something like that. But it's so much more broad than that.
Brian Chan:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
And I love that you brought up humor. I feel like I have to go home and think about that humor as art. It's funny, we actually have an episode called Taking Humor Seriously. So thank you for plugging theTable Podcast.
Neil Coulter:
And I think that word art, the word, for us, means the whole concept of all those things, either visual art or the whole spectrum of arts. And that word as a concept is actually historically not nearly as old as I think a lot of people would assume that hundreds of years ago people didn't necessarily have this category in their minds for art as a separate profession, as a separate thing to do. And in other cultures around the world today, what we would look at and say is art or artistry might be functional, it might be ritual function, it might be nothing that… Because that category doesn't exist. And so we are in this moment, culturally and historically, where we say the word art and it draws in all these other connections, all these other things, but it changes throughout time and from different places.
Brian Chan:
Even looking older civilizations, art was used to tell history, art was a means of learning, and it was a pedagogical means as well. And there was no separation between really the functional and the aesthetic. They were blended together, which I think in no surprise why we would find so much art and aesthetics blended in with faith in theology as well, too. Art can be a means, a way of connecting with reality.
Kasey Olander:
That is really helpful. A lot of times we have this false dichotomy of what's productive and what's artsy as though they're antithetical to each other when historically that hasn't been the case.
Brian Chan:
Yeah. I think you really see that development during the modern age, that dichotomy that's split happening during the modern age.
Kasey Olander:
That's fascinating. Well, in light of all that, Brian, how would you say it? What's beauty?
Brian Chan:
What is beauty? Well, I think in many discussions nowadays, beauty oftentimes is relegated to a subjective definition or relative definition. I think a biblical view of beauty introduces us to an objective view of what it is. And that objectivity is first defined by God who created beauty, and it's based on his subjectivity, the subjectivity of what pleases him or reflects his character, the subjectivity of his words and his works. And so, we have an objective canon of beauty that is bound in the subjectivity of who God is, which is fascinating to me because that means that when we discover what is beautiful and aesthetically pleasing or convicting, it centers and revolves around an individual a being. And so you can't get away from experiencing the cosmos and not seeing that the cosmos revolves around the heart of a divine being.
Kasey Olander:
That's interesting. So you're saying that it's related to who God is.
Brian Chan:
It's related to who God is. Yeah. Who God is in terms of his character, his nature, his works, his words, and his will.
Kasey Olander:
Can you flesh out the idea of objective beauty then? Is that what you're talking about?
Brian Chan:
Yeah. Objective beauty would be something that is an absolute. It is a definition of something that does not change from person to person. It is something that exists in reality. I see it as similar to gravity. And for a long period of time and a part of the heritage of our faith, and even for the ancient Greeks, there was this understanding of a canon of beauty. And it's only more in recent modern era into the postmodern era that that sense of a canon of beauty was really lost in our everyday culture. And yet it's something that is built into people still.
So if you ask people what is beauty, they may start off with well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and beauty is subjective, and the more they talk, they start stating things that are common usually to nature, and they start stating things that reflect balance, harmony, symmetry, order. And there are certain things wired into us where we think of what we think of as beautiful, and I think that's part of both a reality God created in the cosmos, as well as how he created us in his image to be able to resonate with what he placed in the cosmos. Does that make sense? Those two things match. The reality of beauty in the universe and people made in His image are able to sense what that beauty is.
Kasey Olander:
That's fascinating. So what is this canon of beauty that you're saying that we've lost? Is it that what you're talking about?
Brian Chan:
Yeah. So a basic canon of beauty would say that beauty involves order, unity, harmony, symmetry, balance, and all of that is to produce two things, two qualities, which is a flourishing and goodness. So if you think of the opposite, it is not too hard to realize, okay, that is a canon. Because when you think of the opposite, we don't really want that. We don't want chaos that is destructive to life. We don't want the lack of flourishing or the lack of goodness or fragmentation. We don't want imbalance.
So you hear people talk about, I'm trying to achieve balance. I'm trying to find harmony, whether they're looking for beauty in life in their soul to experience beauty in their minds. So when you look at art, for instance, like let's say a visual art, but we have the rule of thirds, we have horizon lines, vanishing points, and we talk about composition and contours and shapes, and all of that is forming a sense of order.
Otherwise, they're random paints, and we're bringing random paints together to create something. There's a sense of order, something that's coming together in unity, and that can be broken down even further into understanding what all that means in terms of proportion, how things are in proportion to each other. Then you add the theological element into it, which is the basis of it. And this is where God comes in, is that all of that stems from who God is. God created something out of the mess, the formlessness and emptiness and created the universe in six days. There's order. There is composition. There is symmetry, there is the expanse above and the expanse below. There are the sea creatures teaming in the seas as well as the creatures flying in the air. There's constant symmetry and balance. There's man and there's a woman.
And then the world was created to be blessed, to flourish, to be full, to be good, and that's what He called it repeatedly. Good, good. And the Hebrew term for that has a semantic connotation of delightful, pleasing, pleasurable. And when you think about this is the subjective, and I'll stop here. When you think about when He declared good, this is before He created people. So the only person in reference to who He's referring to in terms of who it's delighting and who is pleasing to was Himself, that's why beauty is first and foremost subjective to God. But because He's creator, what is subjectively beautiful to Him is objective rule for the rest of us.
Kasey Olander:
Wow, that's fascinating. You think about, people who don't have training in art and don't know that there's principles, and it's not just haphazard, but that there are certain things that you follow and-
Brian Chan:
Yeah. A way to understand it. And we experience it though. We experience it all the time. We experience balance in story. We experience balance in the way we dress. We experience balance in relationships, harmony, order, all of that. When you stick a group of people together, they start forming societies and civilization and unity and order is what we progress and tend towards. That's the natural goal orientedness of our human nature.
Kasey Olander:
And that's one of the universal human longings that doesn't always get addressed. People think about everybody wants to be loved, but beauty, I don't know that we always articulate as something that we're searching for.
Brian Chan:
Yeah. Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Neil, anything to add to that?
Neil Coulter:
Yeah, I just think it's interesting what you were just saying about how we pursue beauty or strive for beauty. If somebody comes to you and says, my life is a pursuit of goodness, no questions asked, of course. My life is a pursuit of truth. Perfect.
Kasey Olander:
Good for you.
Neil Coulter:
My life is a pursuit of beauty. Well, suddenly a lot of Christians say, wait a minute, that's a conversation. What do you mean by that? And yet, what Brian is saying is if we believe in a world that is founded upon a loving God who continues to be involved and loves His creation, then pursuing beauty is not a frivolous or flippant lifestyle. It's actually pursuing the truth of the world of how God made us to appreciate His creation. So it's just interesting. And I think beauty is, it confronts us. It makes demands of us.
So I think part of coming to beauty and contemplating artistry in this case as we're talking about, it's something that pushes us to become a different sort of person. And I think beauty can be a little risky because of how it might clash with your worldview. So having a worldview of created by God, when you see the beautiful in the world, it pushes you to be closer to God, to be a different person. Without that worldview, beauty can maybe push you away, push you to something else. So it's always a relationship as so much of what God does and says before us is not just for us as individuals, but it's a relationship to draw us into something more.
Brian Chan:
Yeah. A couple of things there that Dr. Coulter said is so important. I'm so glad that Neil, that you pointed out the element of truth, and that's part of the classical canon of beauty is I don't have truth. And just as one example, Plato wrote in The Republic that people don't desire lies, they desire truth.
And one of the basic understandings of truth is that truth leads to flourishing, which is what beauty does. And if that's the case, then when you encounter genuine beauty, it is also a discovery of what's true. It's epistemological at the same time. So there's so much value in beauty, and I love the last thing that Neil said there, which was that it pushes us to be better. I think, going back to there was something that Neil said, referring to a good and loving God. The fact that there is beauty in the world and the fact that people resonate with beauty is a testament that there's a good and loving God because it pushes us to be better. It pushes us to seek for more, and we are beings who can be inspired to have greater vision and seek for more, rather than just be a blob mass and just kind of a lump, just feed me and I'm enough. But there's so much more to us and we realize there's so much more because we do sense beauty.
Kasey Olander:
In the same way that objective morality, we all have a sense of right and wrong.
Brian Chan:
Yes. Yes. And that would fall in line as well too, where if there were vices, immoral, unethical conduct or conditions, traits that lead to a lack of flourishing, well, classically we would say that's not beautiful. Aristotle would say that's not beautiful, nor would the scriptures. And so, there's a connection between the virtues that lead to greater flourishing in life and the fruits of the spirit. And this idea of fruits being something very visible and aesthetically wonderful and pleasing. I was just talking about an orange tree today. You don't notice a tree that's an orange tree until the oranges start coming out on it, right? And then that's when you see, wow, look at those oranges on there.
Kasey Olander:
Right. Yeah. I feel like y'all are highlighting some really important things. We usually think of beauty as this, what a shallow pursuit, if that's your life's end. But you're talking about so much more depth and richness to it in pursuing beauty, right?
Neil Coulter:
Yeah. So it's not beauty as this outside of ourselves standard. You look at a landscape or a person or a vocal tanbur that you hear or a taste in a dish, it's not like you look at that and just almost outside of yourself. It's good or bad. It's a critique. But it's an invitation to more of a relationship with the world around you with the people who created and produced these things. And I think looking at artistry and thinking about beauty, it's a way that we kind of test ourselves to see what do we really believe? What are our ideals? And every time we come against, we come to an encounter with a work of art. It's not just applying a standard to it and saying, well, this is six out of 10, or this is four stars.
But it's about how am I engaging with this and how does my engagement with whatever this is, relate to my most deeply held beliefs? And so in that way, it's this active. It's not just a static and sterile process of here's beauty, here's me, here's my opinion about it. Now I move on to the next thing. But it's a really relational and it should draw us together as people, as we engage with all of this together and just figure out who we are and ask ourselves questions all the time.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. How do you help people to cultivate that sort of attitude? If our default is to go from like, okay, I like this or I don't like this. How do you help people along this journey of engaging better with art and beauty?
Neil Coulter:
Oh, that's a great question. I think the first thing for me that I would advise is when you encounter a song or a film or a painting, you spend time with it and you don't go in thinking you know already what you're going to think about it afterwards. I think a lot of times we go into a movie or a church service even and before we even go through the door, we pretty much know what we're going to think about it. And we go through the process so that we can verify that yes, I was right. I did think about that.
Kasey Olander:
Confirmation bias.
Neil Coulter:
So I think patience first and just spending time with it. We were all at Sundance Film Festival last month, and while there we saw a lot of really interesting films, particularly the feature length documentaries were really intriguing. When we got to know some of the filmmakers behind those movies, we heard things like a filmmaker saying, "I started making this documentary eight years ago." Or I remember another filmmaker saying, "We filmed in this location for 250 days." And when you hear that, you suddenly realize, who am I to spend an hour and a half with this movie and say, eh, that's not my favorite. What's next on the schedule?
But I need to first of all say, this is a gift. Thank you. It doesn't matter, liking or not liking right away, because this is the product of somebody's real heart motivated, passionate, enthusiasm for something. And so my first question, encountering artwork is not, do I like it or do I not like it, but it's what sort of gift is this that I'm receiving? Why was this important enough for somebody to spend years of their life doing? And then, that's the conversation that starts. And so it's not a quick response of like or not like, but it's what sort of process, what sort of gift am I receiving here?
Kasey Olander:
And that's a really key principle to apply when you're listening to people too, not just coming to evaluate what they're about to say, and then that's it. But coming to a deeper encounter of being patient, of listening first, and then before you can even move to evaluating, do I agree or disagree with them.
Neil Coulter:
And when people are making things, making any sort of artistry, that is a space in which people can tend to ask their deepest questions, and they play around with what the answers might be. And so we might disagree with what the answers are in that instance, but the questions are likely to be the questions we all ask. We all want to know what's the good life? What's the abundant life? What does it mean to live well? What do all of these things mean to us? And so, that's the entry point. You say, what are the questions this filmmaker or this artist or this singer is asking? And how are they finding their way through the answers?
Kasey Olander:
And there's a sense of vulnerability from the artist. They're presenting something to you that you can then engage with and realizing that they put themselves in a vulnerable position, then you can honor them with the way that you engage with it. Yeah. How about you?
Brian Chan:
I think that how we engage with the beauty of the art has to do with conversation and contemplation. Something that we actually have. We have to create space for. And I think a society oftentimes will try to create space for that. So a movie theater is designed so that you focus just on the screen, all the lights go off. Have you ever been in a movie theater before where they forget to turn off the lights? That's happened to me before in the dollar theater. You cannot focus on the screen. And that's one of the reasons why you want to go to the theater versus just watching your home. Even at home, my son, when his movie night, he wants all the lights turned off, even the lights upstairs. That little bit of light up there is so that you can focus on the screen. It's creating contemplative space.
And Craig Detweiler writes about this in his book Into the Dark, so making a plug for Craig Detweiler. And that book was based on his dissertation, I believe, where what happens when you enter into a dark theater, you create a contemplative space. And in that contemplative space, you allow for your mind to sink in to the work of art, whether it be a film or story. A lot of people, they love having that one spot they sit in to read their book, where it's quiet. And whereas that coffee shop where it's that corner spot, that chair. Same with art. The galleries were designed so that you would actually pause in front of a painting and look at it comparatively to business offices where they hang up pictures on hallways. You're not meant to stop, you're walking past. So those are the two contrasts of type of spaces we run into in society.
Is it decorative where we're meant to just pass by it? And decorative is okay, we need that too, or is it you're meant to engage with it further, so there's contemplative space for it? And so society I think sets up some of those spaces. I think then we have to look at our own lives. How do we either engage in the spaces that society sets up already or how do we create some of those spaces in our own lives? And it's John Dewey who said that's the killer, I'm paraphrasing, he didn't use the word killer, but he said, "The killer of creativity is really the mundane, the humdrum." It's the constant movement of life, the busyness of life we got to do, do, do. Where society is creating space to remind us, come to the theater, go to the gallery, come to the park, the arboretum, where you can just sit and contemplate and engage.
And that's one of the things I think Aquinas says is such a value of art and beauty is that level of contemplation. Because as Dr. Coulter said, a conversation has begun between an artist presenting an artwork, which is the medium for that conversation. Then the audience comes to the table, the table for that conversation. And if that is true, and you think of God as the artist, and you look at the universe as His artwork, well, He's put something on the table constantly for us to engage, to contemplate. And the mental busy space of life can detach us from what is already there that beckons us to contemplate and converse.
Kasey Olander:
Right. Yeah. The heavens declare the glory of God, and we can see His eternal power and define nature. He's invited us into a conversation just by virtue of the fact that we live in this world He created.
Brian Chan:
Yeah. Yeah. And when you look at the description of the tabernacle, There's constant contemplative spaces where you're just at the altar burnt offering. Now you're at the wash basin, and there's movement through that, but it's contemplative space. There's no distractions around. There's not like things you got to do. It's focused. And then all the aesthetic elements that come in. Everything from the visual to the kinesthetic to the smell.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. And that sort of goes back to the order that you were talking about earlier. It's not haphazard and random, but creating space is intentional.
Brian Chan:
It's intentional.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Anything to add to that?
Neil Coulter:
Yeah. Oh, I just love what Brian was saying because I think that's one of the things that the arts can do for us is they frame things so that we know to take time to give some intentional contemplation. So a song takes time, which is just this thing. Time is continually progressing. And a song says, now, I want you to make this three and a half minutes a specific space that you're going to focus on this one thing. So out of all the time that's progressing around us, now we have a focus for that three and a half minutes or whatever it is for the song. And a painting. It's a painting in the studio, but then you frame it and you hang it in a distinctive place on the gallery wall, and it is literally framed. Or the arboretum, it's nature, and yet it is bounded to tell us, no, take a minute. Don't just walk. Take a minute and think about what this is like.
And I think we see that a lot through the scriptures and through traditions or history, that there are all these ways that God has created everything and then found ways to help us say, okay, here's a boundary. Here's the tabernacle. Here's where I will meet you here. I'm everywhere. This is my creation, but I'm going to bound this space and here's where we're really going to have some special time. And art does that. And as we lose art and the arts in public education, we lose that specific way. You just take a part of your day and say, this time is going to feel different, but you're going to do something different with your hands and with your whole body at this time.
Brian Chan:
Yeah, it's good for your soul. And going off of songs and contemplative space, I'm glad when you mentioned that, I thought of how many of us like to sing in the car? We just go at it singing in the car or in the shower. Come on folks. Admit it. And I remember once I had a stoplight and I look over to my side and I see this lady, she's belting it out in her car, and it's like, you think no one sees you, but it's that bound space. You're in your own little space that it's contemplative for you. And I realize as I'm watching her lips move, it is the same station that I'm listening to on my radio. But the shower is the same way, too. It is like bound space. You're not checking emails, but it's contemplative. And I think it goes to show that we seek it. Our souls need it. We need that contemplative space that engages with something artistic like music.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. You're mentioning our souls. And I think also along with that, you guys have said a lot of things about our bodies. That we're embodied humans. You're talking about all of the senses things we feel, things we… I don't need to list them all, but you're talking about us as humans that we're embodied creatures, too. I think a lot of times as Christians, we sort of shrug that off and don't really prioritize the fact that we are embodied. But a lot of times, I think the way to get through to our soul sometimes is by starting with our body and sometimes having postures and the way that we pray, or there are different rituals that we do at church or whatever, we taste something in the Lord's Supper and we hold it in our hands. And so that's a really interesting thing that you guys are highlighting. It's not like the sensual things are flippant or shallow, but they're really rich and filled with meaning.
Brian Chan:
Yeah, the physical is important. I think art and aesthetics validate that. That God created the physical as well as the spiritual. And that's really the first way we engage with art and beauty is physically. We see it, we smell it, we taste it. And through that, it activates our mind's eye to be able to perceive things that are invisible. And that's Romans 1:19 and 20. It's through the physical things that are symbolic, iconic to us that allows our mind's eye to perceive the invisible reality.
Kasey Olander:
Right.
Neil Coulter:
Yeah. I think that's one of the big challenges of AI is that's the question. Are we anything more than just a consciousness that happens to ride around in a body, but the body's not important? So AI would say, there are tech companies working on AI who really believe we can make the brain, we can make an AI brain, and the body was never that important. If you have a brain that's technological, it will never die. So we've overcome death. So they would say. And I think that's one of the big questions for us as Christians, is how can we fight against that and push against that and say, "No, we were created body and soul, the mind, heart, and God wants us to use all of that." So obviously, as with everything in creation, you can use and misuse things, but the body is extraordinarily important.
And the artistry allows us to do things only because our physical bodies can do things. So there's an ethnomusicologist I like, Charles Kyle, who comes at this not from a Christian theological point of view, but he feels that what we enjoy in music is actually the small imperfections when we play music together. So he says, "We have this ideal that we want to be perfect in time, in sync, all lined up." And he believes, and I agree with him, that what makes music, and maybe other arts really engaging for us, is that it's not ever quite perfect, but that's what generates the energy. So visual art maybe is the same way. The painting is not perfect, whatever that means, but it's the way the paint dripped, and you didn't control that. But now it's part of it, and it's the way you sing in a choir and it's good. But it's the energy of the imperfections, tiny imperfections. And that's the physical getting involved that we can't do it perfect. But that's actually where the joy comes from in a lot of ways.
Brian Chan:
Yup. I totally agree. Yeah. I think the discussions of AI is pushing some of these questions to the surface, and I don't know if it's yet really being asked in terms of what does it mean to be human? So when we're considering art, beauty, and creativity, well, it's part of being human. And for us to make things, even if we make it a hundred times slower than an AI generator, but it's part of being human, us interacting with the physical, us generating ideas and wrestling with how do we put this together to create an expression that comes from our souls in order to engage in conversation with others. But we also live in a culture that wants to be fast-paced. It's about final product and money and what's quickest and most efficient, where this is where pragmatism, the danger, it takes over. And there's a dehumanization that I think that we ought to be careful about.
It's not just about the efficiency and the final outcome. It is about what does it mean to validate us as being human and the way we engage with each other as humans. If I create an art piece, I can either keep it in my closet or when I show it's with the intention that you will see it, and I'd love to hear from you about it. You know what I mean?
And as part of the process, the conversation, what was your inspiration behind creating this? How did you make it? And in my engagement with the materials and the emotional process, I went through, all the hours put into creating an art piece. That's all part of being human.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. So what then is the relationship, because you highlighted expression, and I think there's a lot of value in self-expression, and then also you talked about art being witnessed by people. You have an exhibit, you want people to come and engage with you. So what is the relationship between those two, I guess, is one or the other more important as you're creating art?
Brian Chan:
Between a relationship between people-
Kasey Olander:
Expression and witnessing? So are you like-
Brian Chan:
Oh, I see.
Kasey Olander:
I'm sure that you created some things, it's just for your self-expression and probably nobody sees it, that kind of thing. But then also there's some pieces that you want other people to witness and engage with.
Brian Chan:
Well, that is a really interesting question, and there are a lot of discussions on this and theories, it's a spectrum, a spectrum of do you create art to communicate something to the audience? Almost like for audience sake or the other extreme of the spectrum, do you create art purely as self-expression, without much regard for how the audience may or may not perceive it? And I think that, having spoken with a lot of other fellow artists as well too, sometimes we go to the other side of audience sake because, well, you need money. You need to sell it.
Kasey Olander:
Pragmatic.
Brian Chan:
Yeah, it's very pragmatic. But you see a lot of fine art where it's artists that create art as self-expression, and they die very poor, and it doesn't become popular until after they're postmortem. And I find for myself, I think that I create mostly out of my own contemplation of whatever it is I'm contemplating on and self-expression. And there's a part of it where it's because I don't have to sell art as a means for livelihood. But the one thing I keep in mind is context. So I think most artists keep in mind the context they're in, but a lot of artists also keep in mind the context they're in, but choose to create art on the fringe of social conventions. Does that make sense?
Kasey Olander:
Like Kind of edgy?
Brian Chan:
Edgy, avant-garde, because if you're trying to speak into society, but maybe you're trying to speak into in a way that is not a popular message. It is not the mainstream of what everyone thinks and sees, but so you want your art to provoke in that way. And for myself though, a lot of it is really just my own journey, where I'm at and how the Holy Spirit leads me and how I'm inspired in the word. And it seems to work out pretty well that way just for me operating in that way as an artist.
Kasey Olander:
Sure. So for you, it depends, piece to piece, as to whether it's just for your own self-expression or if it's for other people to see, also.
Brian Chan:
And all of my work that I create, inevitably, I think 99% of it is exhibited. There's very little that would never be exhibited. So it's all exhibited. There's a theory that says when an artist exhibits a body of work, you're getting to know the worldview and the heart of that artist. And that's how I come at it. Not necessarily to sell the piece as much as here's my world, you're welcome to step into it.
Kasey Olander:
And especially for you as a believer, I think that that's huge. How has that been? What has your experience been with that as you, as a Christian, are in these artistic spaces, like engaging with non-believers?
Brian Chan:
Yeah. Most of my artist friends are not Christian and I love them dearly, very talented people. And generally, I'm perceived as, my work is perceived as spiritual, and there's always a spiritual element, which they seem to love and appreciate because they see and feel the depth that's in it, and it creates conversation. And oftentimes, it's not one piece that communicates, it's the body of work. It's like what Francis Schaeffer's son says. "You get to know an artist's heart and his world or her world through the body of work, a lifetime of work." And so when they've seen enough of my pieces exhibit after exhibit, it begins to build a story, a narrative, for them about me and vice versa. I get to know them too through their artwork, and the conversation is very fruitful and wonderful in that way.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. That reminds me of how we get to know God. We get to know him through His revelation, whether His word through Christ and through obviously the creation that He's made.
Neil Coulter:
And I love, it's the relationship again. So people are getting to know your heart through seeing your art over the years, but every time they come to one of your paintings, they're also processing it based, bringing all of their background to this. And so you're getting to know yourself as you look at another artist that you're getting to know. So it's all this, it's not just a person staring at a painting. It's all this communication and community happening.
Brian Chan:
Yeah, yeah. So I enjoy that part of it. Artists talk about authenticity of a piece where it is genuine and it's authentic. And I think for the most part, an audience loves authenticity. They want to see not you creating what they want to see or hear, but you creating something that's dear and true to your own soul.
Kasey Olander:
Which goes back to the truth that you were talking about earlier. Nobody's seeking for lies. People really value truth and genuine connection.
Brian Chan:
Exactly. The authenticity. And Steve Turner says, "To answer the question of how do Christians create Christian art, so to speak, it's well, when you are walking with Jesus enough and your faith is very incarnational, you can't really separate the art from the faith." So I don't really think much about how do I make my piece a witness. If I'm genuine, authentic, in my own faith and in my creations, then it would be naturally a witness.
Kasey Olander:
Which is really helpful, too, because it's taking down this sacred secular divide, like my church life is separate from the rest of my life or something like that. You're an integrated person, your body and soul, you're a whole person who follows Jesus. And so that makes sense that your art is just the same way. That it overflows. Anything to add to that, Neil?
Neil Coulter:
Oh, no. That's great. I'm loving listening to Brian talk.
Kasey Olander:
I know.
Brian Chan:
Likewise.
Kasey Olander:
So what would y'all say? What role can art and beauty have in our spiritual formation?
Neil Coulter:
I think a lot of what we've said leading up to this, it provides an intentional space that we don't have to take, but we can take the time and the space to really contemplate our beliefs, how we see the world, how we see God at work in the world. Artwork just creates this extra space in life that is not work. And it's not all the things you have to do at the house. It's not all of those things every day. It's this little space maybe on the commute when you're listening to a song or maybe when you stop in at the museum and look at the gallery and look at some paintings. But I think it has a lot to do with forcing us to look at ourselves and how we encounter the world. And therefore, what kind of a God are we thinking of as we relate to Him, and how does He want to speak to us through these little moments of one film or an album or whatever it is.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. So it's not this passive engagement, but it's growing in self-awareness and God awareness as we are engaging with this, whatever the piece may be.
Neil Coulter:
Oh, I think, ideally, working with artwork and engaging with artwork is always active. It's never just something that's coming into my eyes or into my ears, and that's as far as it goes. But it's that back and forth, even when it's a sculpture or a painting that doesn't talk back to me. But there is, I'm part of a community of people thinking about it, asking those questions, looking at answers, and it draws me in to a contemplation and hopefully a prayer of what am I doing in the world? Who am I and what is God speaking to me?
Brian Chan:
I would probably just, my response will be a compliment to what Neil just shared there. I'll probably just boil my answer to one word for each. Art and beauty. Art I think can help with our spiritual formation because it's a way of knowing.
Kasey Olander:
Knowing.
Brian Chan:
And that's one of the understandings of iconography. It's a way of knowing whether it's knowing something that's invisible or awareness. As Dr. Coulter mentioned and enlightenment. For one example, I had curated an art event in Burbank a couple years ago, and it was to address depression. And I brought in 12 artists. The first five artists only created works to exhibit depression addressing the depression. The other seven artists addressed hope, but the first five could not deal with anything with hope.
And so when the audience start to come in, we had 260 people that attended this exhibit. And when they came in, they would first engage the first five artists, and they would spend so much time standing in front of this looking at it contemplative space for them. And in conversation with them, they would say, it put language that were not words to what it meant to be depressed, how they felt or how they knew a loved one felt. What space, what state of mind they were in because I remember this one artist, she's a comic artist, so she did these graphic comic artworks, and they were just fantastic. It portrayed isolation. But because it did that, it opened them up the audience to progress on towards what does it mean to now to receive hope. They identified first, the pain, the brokenness, gave words and language. So it's a way of knowing.
For beauty, I may sum it up just to what Augustine and Jonathan Edwards writes, "That if there's one effect that beauty can have upon us is to evoke in us love." And that is the greatest drive for any spiritual formation, because what you will do for someone you love, the change that you're willing to make in your life, the restraint you're willing to, and self-control you're willing to implement in yourself because of someone you love, the pursuits you have and the choices you make revolve around love.
Jonathan Edwards says, "People are driven by something. It could be anger, it could be hate, it could be selfishness, jealousy. But the greatest drive ever is love." And I think that's seen in marriage, I think is seen from a parent to a child, what we would not normally do unless we were doing it for a child or doing it for a spouse. And to think if we discovered the beauty of God, what we would do for God, the greatest spiritual formation motivation ever is the first and greatest commandment. To love your Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
And if we perceive God's beauty that may be communicated to us through His works and creations through people, even through aspects of culture, and we get glimpses of His beauty, and we are able to grasp that, how much that may inspire our hearts, woo us, convict us to give up that sin, to stop that habit, to love your wife better, to be a better man, because you love God so much to make that sacrifice.
Kasey Olander:
Which is like Neil was talking about earlier, that we're being transformed into better people.
Neil Coulter:
Art can break your heart. It can thrill your heart. It can convict your heart. If you enter that space and say, I'm willing to take a hard look at myself and the world around me, the artist who did this for me, the community of people that are thinking about it, all those relationships can just really be transforming.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. And as we talk about the fact that we're embodied humans, obviously we can't forget the incarnation that Jesus himself came and would've had these tastes and smells and visuals and things that he would've experienced, too. And as you're talking about that, art and beauty can build love and empathy and help us to connect with the artists, but also to connect with other people around us and transform us into better people. So Christians care about art and beauty because it helps us to more fully realize who we are as humans, and also to connect with God in a way that is rich and meaningful and stirs our affections for Him. And we're not just brains on a stick, but we're embodied souls who are able to, I think that's a quote from James K. Smith.
Brian Chan:
That's pretty clever.
Kasey Olander:
It wasn't me.
Neil Coulter:
Well, it's like Brian pointed out, when God created where we read in Genesis, he was delightful. He was delighted. And do we go through our days sometimes in just everyday drudgery and not looking around at colors and fragrances and the way people look. And art maybe could motivate us to really just delight and be excited about the creation as God is.
Kasey Olander:
Right. And all of these things are evidence of God's grace to us. Everyone can enjoy this, and hopefully it draws our hearts back to Him as we think about art and beauty more and more. So I hope that for you listening, that you've gotten a chance to think a little more deeply about art and beauty and that you're able to reflect on it and to engage with art and beauty whenever you encounter it in your life.
So Brian and Neil, thank you all so much for joining us today.
Brian Chan:
Thank you.
Neil Coulter:
Thank you, Kasey.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, it's been an excellent conversation. Really appreciate you guys and your wisdom. And I also want to thank you guys for listening, too. If you haven't already done so, we ask that you, if you like our show, leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. And thanks for joining us. We hope that you tune in next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Kymberli Cook:
Welcome to the Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook and I am the assistant director of the Hendricks Center here at DTS. Today we're going to be doing something a little bit different. We are actually focusing specifically on a book, which we do not do very often, but our very own Michael Svigel has written a book called The AI Theist, is that how we say it?
Michael Svigel:
Yes.
Kymberli Cook:
The AI Theist, and it has several different layers to it that we thought were very interesting and very relevant to both theology and culture, which is what we do. So, we are committing a whole podcast to it. So thank you, Dr. Svigel, for the work and for being with us today.
Michael Svigel:
Thanks for having me.
Kymberli Cook:
Awesome. For the record, he is the… Let's see, make sure I say it right. Department Chair and Professor of Theological Studies here at Dallas Theological Seminary.
Michael Svigel:
Correct.
Kymberli Cook:
Then we are also joined by my boss once more, Darrell Bock, the Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Center and Senior Research Professor of New Testament here at DTS. He also happens to be a world renowned apologist, which is going to be relevant for our AI Theist book. So welcome, Darrell.
Darrell Bock:
It's my pleasure.
Kymberli Cook:
So Dr. Svigel, for those who have not read the book, can you give a brief synopsis of what is involved so that they can be aware, and so that I don't step on anything and give away spoilers that you don't want given away?
Michael Svigel:
Yeah, we want to try to dance around the twists and turns. On the cover, it says, when a sentient AI system finds religion, its creator calls on a theologian turned atheist to cure it of its faith. So, it's basically fleshing out this idea of what happens if an AI system that becomes self-aware decides to embrace religion. Usually the sci-fi trope is the AI goes mad and tries to kill everybody in some way, shape, or form. I thought, what if we flip that and he is the protagonist, the one who embraces religion?
In this case, he embraces Christianity in its conservative traditional form, and its creator decides it's slowing down the system. He's obsessing over religious things. So he phones a friend, calls in former theologian that has become an atheist for various reasons. What ensues is a dialogue back and forth through the chapters of the former theologian trying to convince this computer that Christianity is not true. That's the basic story. I don't want to give away the ending.
Kymberli Cook:
It's a really good read, just for the record. It's actually a novella, and so-
Michael Svigel:
A couple hours, yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
… an hour and a half, two hours, you can work your way through it and it is a very good read. So you can see as Dr. Svigel walks through the different, I mean, just the plots of the story, that it hits major points. So it has AI, which is very much a culturally relevant conversation right now. It has theology, it has apologetics as an underlying theme throughout. There are a lot of things that are very much of interest to the center, and hopefully you can understand why we're talking about it today.
So, let's start first with technology. So an AI entity is one of the main characters, and that obviously puts its thumb on a cultural conversation that is very relevant currently with AI, artificial intelligence. So just for the record, for those of you who are listening, we've done a number of podcasts on artificial intelligence, technology, transhumanism, lots of things in that realm. So feel free to go over to those podcasts and to search them on our website. If you want to wade into the technicalities, today specifically, we're actually going to be looking at and trying to surface if it's possible for technology to be an apologetic device or an apologetic tool.
So in the book, it certainly functions as that, but do we actually see that in the real world? So with technology having that ability. Yeah, we'll get into lots of things there. So Darrell, you've done some work in anthropology, transhumanism, artificial reality. I don't know, artificial intelligence is a part of it, but you've been in that world with Fuz Rana who's also an apologist, all of that. What are your thoughts with regard to technology and their role as an apologetic tool?
Darrell Bock:
Well, I think we've tended to talk about technology and Christian circles often in a negative way. We need to think about what its potential actually is in terms of helping us. It obviously helps us with all kinds of analysis that we engage in, that kind of thing. It has the potential to get us to information very, very quickly. I tell people I probably can write four or five times faster than I would otherwise if technology didn't exist. My son reminds me I don't have to walk to my study in order to find what I have to look up because of technology, so seeing technology not just as negative, but as potentially positive, being aware of its limits at the same time is of value. I'll just make the side note that if you are interested in what Fuz Rana and other people had to say, it's voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast, that it gets us to that site so that you can see what's on offer there.
Kymberli Cook:
Or there will be links right below this podcast, always.
Darrell Bock:
That's exactly right. Both, yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So, technology can be positive. How can it be an apologetic tool though? How does it help us represent the faith? Does it?
Darrell Bock:
Well, it can certainly help you find things that represent the faith in some of the search capabilities that it has and that thing. One of the interesting things is that the premise of the book is that AI matures to the point where it's able to make its own self-reference, and almost becomes part of the thinking that we do. I don't know if that result happens in real world or not, but it's an interesting premise to explore and to think about. But there's no doubt that technology, because it gives us access to a vast amount of information, makes available to people at the click and the right and the questioning for the right query information that otherwise might not be readily available to you.
Kymberli Cook:
So Dr. Svigel, did you do any research into this, or? You did? Okay.
Michael Svigel:
Yeah. Yeah, I did some research into just artificial intelligence in general, trying to inform myself on it. As you know what it was when I was into sci-fi 30, 40 years ago, deep into it, it's totally changed. The language itself has changed and in a few years, it's going to be different even then. So things are just changing at such a rapid pace, but I'm with Darrell. I think number one, the tools that we have just to do the research, first of all, to explore an issue, you can type in a lot of these ChatGPT or whatever and ask just the three classic arguments, best arguments for the existence of God.
It's going to give you something. It's going to give you a place to start. I think people can use it that way. But also the fact that pretty much everybody listening or watching this podcast is doing it on some device-
Kymberli Cook:
Technology.
Michael Svigel:
… the ability to broadcast and the ability to spread good and bad is a reality that we have to deal with, but we're able to engage with things in real time. Back in the old days, you'd have to wait until you'd become aware of some problem. But by that time, by the time someone's written a book on it's festered. We can begin to answer things in real time and post things and direct people as we've done already in this show. So, I think it has promise as well as problems.
Kymberli Cook:
I also think that there's something to, I guess, the overall trajectory of technology and what it reveals or could reveal about human fears, human drivers, that what it is that we're trying to accomplish through technology reveals something about what's going on in the human heart. Do y'all have any comments there? I mean, that helps at least undergird our apologetic efforts, right?
Michael Svigel:
Yeah. It sounds eschatological, end times-y. People are going to immediately, and you see it today in media sources, people think about where is this going to be in another 20, 30 years? Those that sparks conversations. Who's controlling this, and to what end? Now you have questions of-
Darrell Bock:
How is it programmed?
Michael Svigel:
… how's it programmed? There's no such thing as neutral programming nowadays. There's always some bias. People are putting their thumb on the scale on one side or another. What search results? How are those being filtered? People talk about algorithms. I don't know what that is. Sounds musical to me, but apparently it's bad. But all of these things, what are they bringing up? They're bringing up issues of sin, of humanity, of knowledge, awareness, epistemology. How do we know something? How do we know something to be true? Who do you trust? I mean, these are great topics for apologetic conversations.
Kymberli Cook:
Darrell, do you have any thoughts?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I think that one of the challenges is that you mentioned algorithms. It always bothers my wife that she goes to buy something and then in the next five minutes, all these advertisements pop up that show where she's been.
Michael Svigel:
Exactly.
Darrell Bock:
She wants to know who knows and that kind of thing. So people are watching what our habits are, that kind of thing and what we're drawn to. So, aspects of that become a challenge. But I think the major thing is just the access, the overwhelming amount of information that we have access to, which raises its own set of problems because sometimes that information is accurate and then sometimes it isn't.
I like to tease people, it's like rumors that you sometimes hear. As fast as the omniscience of God, just not as accurate. When you do that, you've got the problem of being discerning about what comes across the net as well. So the net is both an opportunity and a challenge, and being aware of that's important in interacting with it. I don't think it's strictly negative. I don't think it's just something that we see, "Oh, here's our one world reality that's coming in some scenarios," the end times, et cetera. It actually provides some really important services in the midst of all those kinds of concerns.
Kymberli Cook:
I also think that it demonstrates that people fear death because especially with transhumanism, but even to a degree AI and how that interacts with transhumanism in the future, that's people trying to live forever. I guess I'm trying to think of some other ways. The fear of death, what are some other… There's another one. I'm missing it. Anyway-
Darrell Bock:
While you're thinking about that, the fear of death is dealt with very simply by responding to the Gospel.
Kymberli Cook:
Fair enough. So, we have also a world renowned gospel scholar.
Michael Svigel:
Even the fear of the future and the unknown. I think for me, I fall back on my eschatology a lot where someone says, "If we don't do this or if this happens, this is going to happen," and call me naïve, nut I'm looking at you don't even have to get into detailed eschatology. There are just some things that are just a good, healthy, basic eschatology rules out. This is not a plausible scenario given what we know, what scripture clearly says about the future. So some of those things too, we'll come back to. Look, there's millions of sources of information saying a million different things.
There's something comforting to know that God's word doesn't change and he's been saying these same things over and over again. The other thing it does too is in the multiplication of sources of information, I've noticed that that is causing people to fall back on conversations and personal relationships again. Because I don't know who to trust, but I know this lady has cared for me. I know this guy has met some needs. I know this person was there when I was going through something and you can't Google that. So I think that there's something very helpful in the midst of the noise, that calm steady relationship, that can some bear some fruit.
Kymberli Cook:
So shifting a little bit to much murkier water-
Michael Svigel:
Uh-oh.
Kymberli Cook:
… as it relates to AI, and as we think through the relationship between artificial intelligence, what we know of it now and moving forward and the faith, how do we think about what that is going to look like? Do we need to be preparing to witness to artificial entities? Does that kind of faith commitment lie outside its domain? What are y'all's thoughts on that?
Darrell Bock:
You're right when you said that was murky.
Kymberli Cook:
I told you.
Darrell Bock:
It could even be a-
Kymberli Cook:
I think it's worth talking about. We don't have to say that we know what we're talking about.
Darrell Bock:
The worst is it could be a black hole.
Michael Svigel:
The worst is we could be disproven in a week.
Kymberli Cook:
I know. That's why I said-
Michael Svigel:
We have to be careful, whatever we say.
Kymberli Cook:
… we don't actually have to know what we're talking about. We're just clear we're in murky water.
Darrell Bock:
Here's something-
Kymberli Cook:
I guess I'm just trying to say, what are some things for people to be thinking through? I mean, they're already talking about AI having feelings and really, I think even Fuz Rana said in one of our podcasts a while ago that it is quickly approaching something that it's hard not to ascribe some kind of-
Michael Svigel:
Sentience. Yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
… sentience and personality too, on some level. So, I think it's a relevant question for at least us to be talking through how to start to wade in those waters.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, there's several things that come to mind. One that I'm going to start with is sometimes when you get into these discussions, people get really afraid about what could be happening. This is where the eschatology point you made earlier is important because I think what it says to us is, "Look, God is very aware of all this. He's been aware of it for a very long time." In that sense, God is able to communicate that he is in control of what's going to happen. I really think a Christian who lives primarily out of fear has wrestled with not understanding the depth of the theology of their identity, and it should be able to remove fear from us and call us to a faith that trusts God. So, that's the first thing that I would say. The second thing that I think I would say is that as artificial intelligence becomes… I'll say it this way, just a little less artificial and more intelligent-
Michael Svigel:
There you go.
Darrell Bock:
… okay, that it will require us wrestling with the relational dimensions that are so central to our faith. Both in terms of understanding, listening, engagement, all those kinds of things. So, I think we need to be prepared for the possibility of those kinds of interactions. It's something that the book, in one sense, has fun previewing. So, certainly that element. I also think that it's a challenge in wrestling with a reality that seems human on the one hand, but isn't on the other. In other words, I would be hard-pressed to think that we will ever get to the point, and maybe this is my limited point of view, where something that we create reflects the image of God.
It may reflect the presence of creativity, it may reflect all kinds of things, but it won't reflect being made in the image of God. So that represents the fact that this is something other than being human and always remembering that is actually pretty important, especially given the fact that we mentioned earlier that the way in which the programming works to set up the entity you would be dealing with is actually a pretty important consideration in thinking about how I interact with whatever it is that's in front of me.
Kymberli Cook:
So, I definitely agree with you with regard to the distinction of the image of God. Anthropologically, I think that is only going to be more and more of something that we're having to explore and really firm up a Christian understanding on moving forward. But I will say, I mean, the rest of creation is not in the image of God and it is still going to be redeemed. That's part of our eschatological hope.
Darrell Bock:
We still have to relate to it and we have a responsibility to steward it well.
Kymberli Cook:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
The original mandate was the call to steward the creation in which God had put us in because he made us, to use the language of scripture, a little lower than the angels. I tell people the image of God, at least for me, one aspect of it is that we're made in the image of God to image God, to reflect his character and who he is and what he's about and the way that he's made us and the creativity that he gives us, the ability to think, to think about what comes down the road, all those kinds of things. Now it's conceivable that artificial intelligence will develop the ability to do some of this, but I'm not sure it will develop the ability to do all of it.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, I agree, but I'm just saying even might it become something that is a part of… I don't want to say creation, because obviously there's a secondary step of creation, but something that would or could be redeemed, I don't know. What do you think Dr. Svigel?
Michael Svigel:
Well, I mean, it depends on what you mean by redeemed.
Kymberli Cook:
Again, not equating it with the image of God.
Michael Svigel:
Yeah. It depends on what you mean by redeemed.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, I don't know. That's why I'm throwing it to the-
Michael Svigel:
Well, I mean, in one sense, things can be used for redemptive purposes that could otherwise… or were used for non-redemptive purposes. So in that sense, it's like any tool that can further our… what I call the imago dei mission of humanity, what we're called to do, as Darrell mentioned. In that sense, it can be a tool for those purposes, but it can also be used in destructive ways. So I think when we stop thinking of it as a tool and an extension of our hands and our minds, then it can become dangerous. Now the next question is, what if it stops thinking about itself as a tool?
Is that a possible scenario? There's a line in the book, and I dodge the question to some degree in the end and don't actually fully answer it, but the designer of the machine is asked whether… YAR is the name of the machine, whether YAR is actually sentient or if that's just a claim, marketing claim. He pauses and he says, "YAR thinks he's sentient." That's as far as I went. Well, if you think you're sentient, are you sentient or are you just really, really, really good at faking it? It's a hard question.
I have a feeling that we're probably very close to the point where we will no longer be able to tell whether we're talking to a real person on the phone when we call customer service or not. I think we're really close to that. In many cases, I would rather not talk a real person because the computer's never rude to me. I mean, really. They get the job done.
Darrell Bock:
I'm sorry you feel this way.
Michael Svigel:
I do feel like we're probably going to get to that point, but that doesn't make the computer self-aware or feeling things like shame or remorse, or-
Darrell Bock:
We're already close to that in some instances. I think about the way, I mean, I'm just thinking about the recent commercials that I've been watching that are about the smartphone in which photographs can be manipulated and the situation that didn't happen is chronicled as if it did, those kinds of things. Those represent challenges because that opens up the door for all kinds of information manipulation, which is already going on and that kind of thing. So, it's a challenge. It's also one of the observations I think I have about the book is that the dialogues that take place look like they're pretty human at one level, in terms of the exchange and the give and take that's happening in the retorts that are coming from both sides. I mean, if I were keeping score, I think the human loses in the book on a regular basis.
So there are challenges like that, and I don't see it as being unrealistic that that might be in some cases where we're headed. That's why you come to rely on some of the technology that you have, because it's able to do things more smoothly and more quickly than we could do on our own. I mean, some of the mathematical equations that get solved electronically took years to solve otherwise, because there are so many actions happening in a millisecond. So those are real challenges for us, I think long-term.
Kymberli Cook:
Interesting. So I want to transition from just the murky waters of AI and faith to some of the more apologetic themes, and especially the underlying ideas that we see in the book of the questions that underlie apologetic-
Michael Svigel:
Sure.
Kymberli Cook:
… conversations, and it's presented as an intellectual exercise, but both in the book and it seems like in real life oftentimes there are very felt needs. What would you all say are some of those core drivers that may or may not be intellectually grounded?
Darrell Bock:
I'm going to flip the script here a little bit and ask this question, which is look at all the effort that's gone in to create artificial intelligence and then ask yourself, how did we get here? What I mean by that is think about who we are as human beings, the way in which we analyze and discuss and can see and control.
You have a view out there that says, "Oh, that was just a wonderful coincidence that all that happened." Then think about all the intentionality that goes into creating AI. So I asked myself, so what's the more reasonable expectation? Is the more reasonable expectation that this just happened and everything just clicked right all along the way? Or is there some reason to believe that the reason why intelligence exists is because there was an intelligence that existed, that kind of a thing. So, that's one thing that strikes me about this exercise and questions it can raise.
Kymberli Cook:
Which is an example of technology as an apologetic tool.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. Exactly right. Yeah.
Michael Svigel:
Another form of the argument for design and complexity.
Darrell Bock:
Yep.
Kymberli Cook:
Dr. Svigel, what do you think is at the core of many apologetic questions?
Michael Svigel:
Yeah, I've been asked many times, "What are the themes of the book?" I would say the main theme is what motivates doubt and what motivates faith. Yes, it's facts and there's a lot of facts back and forth, and arguments back and forth on the existence of God and what constitutes a good argument, and did you meet the burden of proof? What about this problem in the Bible? But in the end, all of that crumbles.
You realize that for both parties, there's something more than… It's not without the facts, but there's something more than the facts that the image we use in here is that's putting the thumb on the scale to a certain degree. Everybody does it. We're not just computers made out of meat. We are thinking, feeling, experiencing, loving creatures of God with complex histories and more than just facts motivate faith as well as doubt. I don't want to give away anything away, but that's part of the theme.
Darrell Bock:
Let me go at it this way, because I know when we do our work in the apologetics program, one of the things we have the students read is CS Lewis' book on miracles. In that book, he makes the point of just ask people where they think thought comes from. You can't see it, you can't hear it, you can't feel it, you can't taste it, you can't touch it. Something's going on. That indicates there's another realm that's out there that we have to come to grips with. It's a variation of the argument I was just making about complexity and design. So, I think that one of the things that you wrestle with and have to ask is, is there more to our existence in the material world that I can handle?
I think in the long run, the answer to that question, interestingly enough, is deeply rooted in what makes us unique, and that is our ability to think and reason, interact, et cetera, which is not… I mean, I don't think there are chemical things going on between people who interact. There's something more profound that's going on, and to just explain it as a reaction of chemicals is to highly underestimate what's taking place between people.
Kymberli Cook:
So yeah, I definitely think the existential questions are one of the things underlying the types of faith conversations that we see in the book and that we see played out across the public square. I also think there might be, I don't know, at least for those who are more intellectually driven, I think there might be a fear underlying for people who want to control, want to know. So the questions that can get very detailed, and like you were talking about even in the book, the burden of proof, all these different kinds of sophisticated, philosophical back and forth and all of that. But perhaps, I don't know, would you all agree or have you had any experience with people where it seems like there might be actually fear driving those questions?
Darrell Bock:
What fear does is it tends to move us away from faith. One of the things that I like about the book, I can say this without giving anything away, is that it gives space to the lack of certainty that we sometimes have or the role of doubt or openness, I'll say it that way, to thinking about how you think about what's in front of you. Those categories exist in the conversations. I think that that is something I don't have to have everything nailed down in order to move out in faith. I'll say it this way, this is a little more graphic. I don't have to be or perceive myself as being omniscient in order to function in life.
So that seems to me to be something that the people who seek to control what goes on around them are really expressing out of their fear and attempt to grasp and get ahold and control that fear, and the best way to control that fear, I think, is to have a healthy, mature faith that trusts in the one who actually is in control.
Kymberli Cook:
So that actually brings up, Dr. Svigel, one of my questions for you, was it seemed like in the book you took care to caution against 100% surety in intellectual answers?
Michael Svigel:
In both directions.
Kymberli Cook:
Yes, absolutely.
Michael Svigel:
Theism or atheism.
Kymberli Cook:
So, talk to us about that approach.
Michael Svigel:
Yeah, I think I'm trying to be honest and wrestle with number one, what motivates faith, what motivates doubt. Both of the cases, both characters, Mike Berg, the former theologian-turned-atheist and YAR, the computer. At first, it looks like YAR is motivated strictly by the facts. He's done all the calculations and concluded Christianity is true.
Then you start peeling some things away and you realize even for it or him, there are other factors. There are other things going on that he has experienced and has had to think through and face. So what I'm trying to do through the divisive fiction and dialogue is basically paint a picture what real life is, and just be honest with it, there are a lot of things in my life that have pushed me to Christ and pushed me to faith. I understand. I try to understand my atheist uncle who has rejected and the reasons he has rejected he articulates, they make sense to me at an intellectual level. I'm doing everything I can to not give away the… No spoilers. Spoiler alert.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, don't-
Kymberli Cook:
I know, I'm trying to be so careful.
Michael Svigel:
I'm right at the edge here.
Darrell Bock:
I know, you got to-
Michael Svigel:
Read the book.
Darrell Bock:
You got to the edge of the file.
Michael Svigel:
Shh. But I think if we are honest, everybody's in that situation. We're all in that situation where we're moved back and forth through… We're wavering between certainty and doubt. I think that's actually close to where it ends. That's where faith is. We don't have all of the answers and have it all figured out.
Kymberli Cook:
Which-
Michael Svigel:
And that's okay.
Kymberli Cook:
Which is not always communicated from the church to the public square.
Michael Svigel:
In some circles, yes. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Kymberli Cook:
So that can be something that could be really refreshing, even for people who are listening that find themselves… Like you said, we all find ourselves in that space. To be able to own that and to say that and say, yes, there is not 100% surety, but that doesn't mean that there's not a place for faith, that that is actually part of the faith journey itself and the release of the fear in faith.
Darrell Bock:
So, let me talk about the danger of what it means to try and pursue 100% certainty. Because what it does is it risks shutting down the conversation that we need to have in people who are in a vulnerable place. So they don't feel the comfort of being able to raise an issue or a question or a doubt because they feel like, "Well, I know how you're going to… I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't have this feeling or reaction that I'm coping with on a regular basis," et cetera. If we don't create a space for this kind of thinking, then the result is a shutdown that actually isn't healthy for a function of a community of people, many of whom in the same breath will say, "We know there are a lot of people broken around us." You can't have that both ways. So actually being aware of the kind of space honest, transparent engagement produces is actually one that serves the community at large, because that means I can approach someone with what I'm wrestling with.
Kymberli Cook:
I think this work gives that space in a unique way. So for our final turn of all of the different layers of the conversation that we're having as a result of this, you talked about, "Through this literary device, this is what I'm trying to do." So, talk to us about your approach to the relationship between faith and in spirituality and literature and art.
Michael Svigel:
Yeah, it's like you said, it's a device, it's a genre. The history of the church is riddled with religious fictions. We call them apocrypha or pseudepigraphic writings and things like this, where they're trying to get across spiritual or moral or sometimes political, social kinds of values and messages, and they cast them in the form of some kind of narrative. But science fiction, this is my fourth fiction book I've done, it's a great vehicle because you can get characters to say things that you wish you could say in ways you wish you could say them and have these discussions.
So it's a great way of studying some of these issues in a way that's engaging, entertaining. I think more Christians should do it better than we have, I think. I'm not going to give away the ending, but the ending, interesting little fact, there was a 32nd chapter to the book that served as a wrap-up and tied up things very nice and neat, typical cliché, happy ending thing. One of my early readers of a draft said, "This is great. Get rid of the last chapter. Leave it…"
Darrell Bock:
Open.
Michael Svigel:
"Leave it open for reflection/discussion." I said, "Are you serious?" I went back and I'm like, "He's right." Deleted the chapter, and now you're, "What happens next?" It's that message of we're all one step away from the next step. It's always in this process in a journey. So I think that fiction has a way of just illustrating and accentuating things in a way that, no offense, people aren't going to read a lot of the books Darrell and I write for the scholarly audience.
Darrell Bock:
It's another way in, and it's another way in that sometimes works around even defense mechanisms that people have when you say the word theology, and I've got to say, the Bible does this. You've got parables, major vehicle of Jesus that are constructed stories that are designed to illustrate a truth. But to do it not necessarily because its facts are bolted down to the ground, but it's the kind of thing that could happen or the kind of thing that someone could contemplate. You've got, assuming the short ending of Mark, okay, so there's my little apologetic coming in, you've got a very open-ended ending to the Gospel of Mark.
I've got a resurrection. Now the question is, "What are you going to do with it?" You don't even get appearances in Mark. You just get the empty tomb. What are you going to do with this? Or the end of Acts?
Michael Svigel:
Acts.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, what in the world happened to Paul?
Michael Svigel:
What next?
Darrell Bock:
Okay, all right. Isn't even addressed, because I think the book is saying once the Word of God moved from Jerusalem to Rome, the center of the world at the time, God had already done a pretty amazing thing with the Word of God. So, they're open-ended things that happen. Some of them are grounded in history, and some of them aren't. But the point is the way in which truth gets framed is as important as the truth itself.
Michael Svigel:
They become dialogue starters rather than dialogue.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Michael Svigel:
In fact, I mentioned earlier my atheist/agnostic uncle, he's not a fictional character. He's real. He's read it. He would pick it up. He'll pick this up and read it. He's not going to read my commentary on Shepherd of Hermas, but he'll read this and ask questions, engage with me a little bit about it. So, point of fact. So, it is a helpful tool.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah. So I was going to ask, who was your intended audience for it?
Michael Svigel:
Not strictly the unbeliever, the atheist, but my primary audience was a Christian audience. Let's just be honest, most apologetic sources are consumed by Christians. They're the ones who are reading it and it's firming up their faith or giving them tools to engage unbelievers. But it has been in the hands of unbelievers or atheists or agnostics. My goal was to hopefully represent them in a way that they felt fairly represented, their concerns and questions, but the primary audience was a Christian audience, informing them that atheists aren't stupid. They have concerns, they have questions, and we can carry on conversations like this.
Darrell Bock:
Yet I'm assuming that in the dialogues that you have between the two sets of characters that you're trying to help display, at least to a degree, the way in which interactions on these topics should take place.
Michael Svigel:
Yeah, and I think I wrote this fine line between being too preachy, because it wasn't supposed to be just a bunch of apologetic arguments in narrative form, which is a gimmick I don't like. But I also had to make it believable. You got a PhD theologian and a computer and they have to carry on a conversation at a certain level. How do I-
Darrell Bock:
Or School of Divinity no less.
Michael Svigel:
Yeah, not a real place, wink, wink. But right, how do you present this story without… My wife, when she read it, she said, "I felt like I was in a room and there was some scholars having an argument and I didn't know what they were talking about." That's what I wanted because it was like the clash of the titans, to a degree. But I also had to tone it down because I did want it to be understandable, so it's a fine line and a very risky endeavor. So, there's a little bit of that. It's hopefully not overly preachy and teach-y, but hopefully the story has enough heart to make that make sense.
Darrell Bock:
One of the tensions in Christian media is how explicit to be versus implicit, and let the observer think about what they are seeing rather than being told what they are seeing. That's, I think, part of a good artistic skill, is the ability to probe a question and to probe a deduction without actually declaring it.
Michael Svigel:
Just for the record, what YAR says in his arguments and statements are not necessarily my perspective.
Kymberli Cook:
Just that little caveat.
Michael Svigel:
It's a device.
Darrell Bock:
We're going to bar Svigel from the YAR.
Kymberli Cook:
So one last question before we run out of time fully is what surprised you at the end of the project, after you did it? Is there anything that you were like, "Huh, I didn't really see that either coming," in the narrative, or in the feedback, or just in your own reflections, what surprised you?
Michael Svigel:
Yeah, that's interesting that you asked that question. I think people who have never written fiction don't realize that your characters start to take on a life of their own. They do. They do and they say things that even the writer as they're going don't quite expect. It's a weird dynamic, but everybody talks about it. So I would say what surprised me, that's a great question.
I guess I'm a little bit surprised at the end at how, even with the original ending, how unresolved it was to a certain degree. I was at the front end thinking that eventually, they're going to get to the bottom of the paper and have the answer. I like where it landed. You got to the bottom of the paper and you ran out of paper. That's life. Maybe you turn the page and you keep writing, but I think we have to be happy with a little bit of lack of total resolution. I think that that's another one of the themes there.
Darrell Bock:
What I found interesting is I was asking myself, so which of these two approaches to life would I prefer to adopt? I think I found myself on the side of the machine.
Kymberli Cook:
Of course you did.
Darrell Bock:
So, maybe the artificial intelligence isn't so artificially intelligent after all. I think that actually could be one of the ways, the probing way that you went about this actually functions.
Kymberli Cook:
So hopefully those of you who are listening have had your curiosity piqued as we've been talking through this. Like we said, it is a really good, nice, quick read. It would be wonderful to do over a weekend or something like that. But it's very layered, like we've said, and it is thoughtful and it engages a lot of different dimensions of our faith and our current cultural context, and all of that. So Dr. Svigel, thank you for being here. Thank you for putting the time in for this work in general.
Michael Svigel:
Thanks a lot. They can get it on Amazon, ebook, print. It also has an Audible-
Kymberli Cook:
There you go.
Michael Svigel:
… audiobook version.
Darrell Bock:
The Last Minute was presented to you by DTS professors on behalf of literature.
Kymberli Cook:
Awesome. Well, Darrell-
Michael Svigel:
Appreciate it. Thank you for the conversation.
Kymberli Cook:
Of course, of course. Darrell, thank you as always for joining-
Darrell Bock:
Yes, of course.
Kymberli Cook:
… and actually just letting me sit at this table. We would just want to thank you who are listening, and we ask that you would be sure to join us next time as we discuss issues of God and culture.
Milyce Pipkin:
Hello and welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Milyce Pipkin along with the Hendricks Center. Joining us today with our topic, going from dealing dope to preaching hope is this guy, Dimas Salaberrios.
Dimas Salaberrios:
How you doing?
Milyce Pipkin:
Thank you so much for being here.
Dimas Salaberrios:
What a joy to be here and to be in this Dallas Theological Seminary. This is big time for me.
Milyce Pipkin:
Really.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
I can hardly believe that, with your big testimony?
Dimas Salaberrios:
I'm a Chuck Swindoll fan. Good friends with Dr. Tony Evans, and many other great ministers that's come from here. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
Yeah. I can certainly see where you're coming from. We've had some wonderful men and women come through this seminary, do some great things for the glory of the Lord. Your story is going to be for His glory. Is going to be one of those really good things here at Dallas Theological Seminary here on The Table Podcast. We're so glad to have you, Dimas.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Honored to be here. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
Okay. I'm just going to start with a little background. Now I got to know you through the Evangelical Press Association in May of 2023. There I heard you as the keynote speaker at the awards banquet that evening. When I heard your testimony of how you went from dealing dope to preaching hope, I was like, "We've got to have that guy on." Yeah.
I want to start off with an introduction of you, because who you are is more important than who you were. Then we'll get into who you were and how that resonates for us today. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you're doing now.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Right now I do two things. One is I mobilize pastors and leaders to pray and to seek after God and I've done that for a lot of years. I was in charge of doing that for 5,000 churches in the New York City area, mobilizing the leaders together. Now I do it in New York and we do it here in Dallas.
We've been coming to Dallas. It's been a little tough in Dallas because a lot of people are blessed, so blessed that they don't know how much they need God sometimes. I'm trying to really get some of these pastors. Just because you got 3 or 4,000 people don't mean you can't spend a day with Jesus. It's been uphill but I know through consistency and faith we're going to win the victory.
Then other than that I make films. I've been a filmmaker. I'm a writer with the Writers Guild of America. I didn't have to go through the strike, I just became a part of that. I'm with the Producers Guild as well.
My first movie was called Emmanuel, and that was on the church shooting that happened in Charleston, South Carolina. My partner's on that. I was blessed with Steph Curry from the Warriors, of Viola Davis Oscar winner and Mariska Hargitay who's an Emmy winner. I had a dream team with me on that film, but the goal of that was to tell the story of forgiveness and then give the money to the families. We didn't make a profit off of that film.
Then my next film was Chicago: America's Hidden War, which Denzel Washington is my producing partner on that. And so we just sent it to Amazon and Netflix. Listeners pray that Amazon would say, "Yes." That's who we really desire to work with on this one, so that would be great. I have a film coming out called Camp Joy this coming summer. We've been busy.
Milyce Pipkin:
You've been very busy.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Very busy and honored to work with the best of the best and to glorify God and Jesus. In the Chicago movie, what was profound was we mobilized the church to hit the streets through a whole summer. For the first time, homicides dropped by 20%.
There was one group that passed on the film that was very frustrating and we know why. Because this gives the evidence that when the church goes out, it really makes a difference. And so it was a lot of fun and great to do. Very dangerous and we had some close calls.
One time my family was all there and we were driving in a shootout happened right in front of our car. And it was by the grace of God, my wife saw a beauty supply store. She said, "Oh, pull over." If we didn't pull over, our car would've been right in the middle of the shootout. After that-
Milyce Pipkin:
Yeah. It is amazing grace.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah, it is grace.
Milyce Pipkin:
But your whole life is riddled with stories of God's amazing grace on you.
Dimas Salaberrios:
That literally is-
Milyce Pipkin:
That's your testimony.
Dimas Salaberrios:
…my whole life. It really is.
Milyce Pipkin:
I am going to get to the testimony because it's deep. I know that with our limited time, we can't get into every little detail of it. Prayerfully, someone gets an opportunity to hear it in its entirety.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Or they can get the book Street God.
Milyce Pipkin:
Or get your book Street God.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. They can pick up the book everywhere books are sold. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
But for right now we'll do a list, a synopsis of it. But before I get there, once again, something that struck me in your giving a little information about your background during the EPA convention earlier this year. Is you talked about how you were able to mobilize the church or a church of sorts in Charleston with the Emanuel shooting. Can you just expand that because I don't want people to get lost in the shuffle of what happened there at the church.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. Just so you know, I live in New York City. But our model of my family's mantra is what would Paul do if he had planes, cars and boats that we have today and all the opportunities? When we woke up to the shooting that happened in Charleston, my family saw it and we said, "As Christians, that's where we need to be."
To understand the story, the leadership team of the church was executed. My friend's wife was preaching In that circle they call it your trial sermon, but basically she was preaching her first sermon to be ordained and that's AME, I know, different than this denomination and a lot of dominations I'm part of, but that was her situation. And so when I got to the church, it literally was like a sea of people, I mean by the thousands. It was like-
Milyce Pipkin:
Because that speaks to the community in Charleston. I used to be a news anchor there, so I know how the community is. Very tight-knit.
Dimas Salaberrios:
They came out and I mean every news outlet that you could think of was there. I'm just a snap-charged person so I said, "Everybody, we're going to mobilize right here, and we're going to do a prayer vigil and we're going to get this started." I started preaching Jesus on a bench.
I felt like I hear stories of people used to preach on a soap box but for us it was a bench. It was all on CNN and MSNBC, FOX, I mean every outlet you can name. what was profound was after I preached, this white man in his thirties came and hugged me and he let me go.
He said, "I'm a part of the Klan but not anymore." He said something very profound too. He said, "I know the guys pushing this kind of message to kill like what this young boy believed, Dylann Roof." He said, "I'm going to go and be a voice that this has got to stop." Then he walked away and never saw him again, but that's happened to me about three times.
I've led three Klan members to Jesus and they dropped their association. Never planned, it's just the gospel. I'm trained through Dr. Tim Keller, that's been my mentor and Dr. A.R. Bernard and Floyd Flake in New York. But you just lay out the gospel and he pierces the hearts.
Milyce Pipkin:
Yeah. God is love and that's hate. We don't want to be advocating hate. We want to be advocating love as Christians. I'm glad that you took that message there and changed some hearts by the grace of God through the Holy Spirit. It's wonderful.
Now, I don't want to waste any more time because you have an amazing testimony. And as our topic was today and will be how you went from dealing dope to preaching hope. A lot of pastors don't want to talk about the dark side of where they came from. They talk about walking into the marvelous light, but you don't mind giving your testimony. We just want your synopsis of your life's testimony and how you got to the pulpit.
Dimas Salaberrios:
My story is not like a poverty story. I grew up in middle class. The largest black, middle-class population in America was in Queens, New York. And so I grew up, my mother was a principal of a school. My father was a captain of correctional Rikers Island, which is embarrassing because I had to visit there not to visit him, but with handcuffs.
I went to a predominantly white school and I went to see this movie called E.T. After seeing E.T. I wanted to ride my bicycle into the sky. The next year when I was 11 the movie Scarface came out. When I left that theater, I wanted to be the biggest drug dealer in New York. They almost rated that film X. You can look that up. Not because of sexual content, because the impact they knew it would have on young people. And myself and many other drug dealers that I meet that were kingpins said that movie had the same effect on them.
Going to this white, pretty preppy-type school. And a friend called me into the bathroom, pulled out a bag of drugs that he stole from his brother, said, "Do you want to help me sell it?" I started into this life at age 11.
We sold that. We finished all of that. I liked the money and where we were going and how it was working and then I started selling marijuana. Then very quickly I realized almost like Tony Montana, to be the millionaire I had to deal in crack or cocaine, so I got involved in that.
By age 15 I became what's called a boss. Meaning certain street blocks I controlled everything on that block or mostly everything. Once in a while there'd be a old timer or something, you just let them do their thing. But for most of the money being made on that block was mine.
Milyce Pipkin:
17-year-old.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Milyce Pipkin:
15-year-old.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Milyce Pipkin:
15-year-old running the block.
Dimas Salaberrios:
The cops were watching me. They waited until I turned 16, they visited me and I had a big mouth, so I got surrounded by the cops. I said, "What you going to do? I don't have anything." They opened up the back seat of their car. They had bust one of these girls that was selling drugs for me. Took the drugs off her, put it on me and I went to Rikers. And so I wasn't clean. I was a little bit-
Milyce Pipkin:
You weren't innocent.
Dimas Salaberrios:
I wasn't innocent. I was a little clean. They didn't play totally fair. At that time I had so many arrests, but my mother had such a big heart because this was the time they were doing raids everywhere and I kept getting arrested. I was like, "Ma, I was just caught in a raid. I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything."
She believed the best because it wasn't a bad neighborhood. But when crack came, everybody still thought it was a nice neighborhood, but it was changing underneath the community's nose and they didn't notice it for a while.
Milyce Pipkin:
Everybody wants to believe they're immune to crime. They don't want to think that's in their neighborhood.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. Then my amazing lawyer said, "There's no way we're going to beat this case. I could get you into a military program where it'll cut your time in half. Will you take it?" I looked, I said, "Well, I already got two months in here already." I said, "Let's do that."
But they were smart. They kept me in there for six months and then put me in the six-month program, so I ended up doing a year. I did not get around a year and jail was very violent. Around that age, more people fought than we would shoot, so I fought a lot. Fought a lot in jail. Fought a lot in the streets and I got out and I wanted to do the right thing. The only job that was willing to hire me was White Castle.
This is the mind I had. I'm seeing this little restaurant or fat-fast-food place clock in about 100,000. I'm saying, "It's only five of us working. Can a brother at least get a 1,000 out of that?" If that's not capitalism. When my check was $75 I said, "You're not going to rob me. I quit."
I went back into the drug world and I thought I was smart. I was like, I'm not going to deal it this time. I'll cook it like the TV show Breaking Bad. I'll package it all and I'll have other people sell for me and I just won't be on the block.
It was basically the same plan I did before. But my mistake was every week I had to go and turn in a urine test to make sure I was clean from drugs. I didn't realize my hands were dealing with the drugs and cocaine was going in through my pores and coming out in my system. I was blowing every drug test and they were just building this case on me. I walked in one day-
Milyce Pipkin:
I'm smiling because I just see the Lord coming for you. He left the 99 for the one and he was coming. Come on.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Let me tell you, he saved. I have no regrets of any time I went to jail. It was sovereign because when I look back with my adult mind, I was in the middle of a serious beef. I would've got killed the first time. The second time I would've got killed. The third time I would've got killed. I look back and I'm like, "God, your grace was there the whole entire time."
I walk in to visit my parole. I was always a little smart. My goal was make a whole lot of money, open a whole lot of businesses and live a legitimate life. That's most intelligent, drug-dealer's goal are, but others want to just sling forever. That's just ridiculous. I always knew I was going to go to school. I was going to get a master's. That was still a part of me because that's why my story's not really a poverty story. I always had a plan and a vision, even though it was very dark.
Milyce Pipkin:
And a methodology to get there.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. It was very dark but it was a vision. I walk in and I pass her a note like, "Yeah, I'm in a GED program." I'm doing this, I'm doing that. Give them my whole spiel. Next thing you know they rush in and they handcuff me and they said, "You're going back to jail." I said, "Why?" They said, "For turning in three dirty urines of cocaine." I'm like, "What?" Then I realize, oh, I was handling it. I should have wore gloves. If I'd just would've wore gloves.
Milyce Pipkin:
Should have taken those science classes or psychology or something of those physiology.
Dimas Salaberrios:
They walk out to do the paperwork and I slipped the cuffs down and I stepped over the cuffs where the cuffs are not behind me anymore. They're in front of me. When the woman walked in, she said, "Are you ready to go to jail?" I said, "No, I'm not."
I took off running. I'm in the fifth floor of a building. I'm running. I get to the stairwell. I mean hundreds of cops are running after me. I dive down the flight of stairs. I mean, I'm tumbling and rolling. This stuff you can only do when you're a teenager. I'm rolling down the stairs, getting up, running, running, running.
I get out of the building and they're chasing me down this busy New York street. I run into the mall, I hid inside of a barbershop and I could hear the guys in the barbershop saying, "The cops are chasing this guy down in the mall." They must have thought somebody kept running. But I was literally to the side in a corner of a barbershop, while they're running all the way in the mall looking for me.
One of the barbers worked it out where he got a metal cutter from a jewelry store, cut my cuffs, got me in a car and got me out of there. And so now I'm at my girlfriend's house, which is the worst place to go when you escape. I knew that, so I was packing up all my drugs, all my money. I'm like, "We've got to get out of here. We've got to get out of town. We've got to run." Because I knew they were closing in.
This cab driver said, "I know somebody with a handcuff key that you can pay and they'll take the cuffs off." I said, "Fine. Bring them here." This guy walks in, pay him a $100. He takes the cuffs off. I don't know why I asked him. I said, "What do you do for a living?" He pulls out a badge, he says, "I'm a parole officer."
Milyce Pipkin:
Wow. You could have gotten taken in there.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Then from his eyes, I could see it was like a wake-up moment. He was like, "Wait, you're the guy everybody's looking for." I'm looking at him. Our eyes are saying it all. I'm like, "But you're illegal in my girlfriend's house." When he walked out that door, we ran out the back door. Five minutes later the cops came bum rushing my girlfriend's house, we were already gone.
Then they did a perimeter where they surrounded the neighborhood and they were closing in on, they know the bad places to be and I was in one of those bad places. I told my girlfriend this. Now all listeners, listen. This is not my lifestyle, but this is a strategy I had to do. I said to my girlfriend, "I need three things." She said, "What?" I said, "I need a wig, I need a dress and I need some high heels." I was the tallest girl in New York for at least five hours.
Milyce Pipkin:
Yeah, because you stand what, at six?
Dimas Salaberrios:
I'm 6'6". With those heels, listen, I got a lot of mercy on women. I don't know how y'all do it. Oh my gosh, but we got-
Milyce Pipkin:
They just thought you were a model.
Dimas Salaberrios:
We got in the car and we rode by. They looked in at us and we drove by them. Then I got on the train and went to Winston-Salem, North Carolina and then I started to take over the drug market there. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
You still hadn't had enough. You still went back to that dark world.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Well, once you're on the run you're-
Milyce Pipkin:
What else are you going to do?
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah, you're in it now. I had no other way to provide for myself because I'm illegal. I go down to Winston-Salem and in a matter of a year I dominated the drug market there. Got into a vicious drug war. About 30 of my friends were killed that hustled with me.
By God's grace, my mother was going to a church, and she started putting my name in a prayer box and she started interceding for me and God really, really, really showed up. I don't know if you want me to just keep going or do you want to break a little bit?
Milyce Pipkin:
Well no, you're doing good.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Do you have any questions, anything?
Milyce Pipkin:
No, you're doing good. I know at this point of the story, I'm loving the fact that you have a praying mother because we know the power of prayer. Anything can be changed with that. And so from there, we'll finish up your testimony and then we'll have some questions about that.
Dimas Salaberrios:
My mother was like an Easter churchgoer. But because of all the situation that was going on with me she said, I was the motivator for her to be a consistent-
Milyce Pipkin:
Kept her on her knees.
Dimas Salaberrios:
…church woman. Yeah. I just want you as a listener, to just hear this part, which was really profound. But my mother had a strong sense that I was going to die and she was right. One guy shot a shotgun at me and I saw the slug hit the wall right next to my head. That's a miracle.
She gathered my family together and she said, "I think he's going to die. I think he's going to be killed and we just have to prepare ourselves." Then she did, for lack of a better term, a Hail Mary prayer. Not praying to Mary but literally she just said, "God, I don't know what to do with him." She said, "You have to be his father. You have to be his mother. I'm giving my son to you." It's a beautiful, powerful prayer. Man, was that prayer not answered.
When she did that prayer, these three women made a decision that they wanted to shut down the drugs in their community. My street name was Daylight. That's what I went by and I still direct on the Daylight Supreme but now as the light of the chosen one instead of just a cool street name.
Three women, they walked up to my girlfriend. They said, "Do you think he'll let us pray for him?" She said, "Yeah, he's like going through a lot. I mean all his friends were killed. All this stuff." I was in a very, very dark place.
How war room has got one woman, my story has three. They came to me and said, "Could we pray for you?" I said, "Why not? Sure." They walked me into this house, into this room. All I know is I walked in in the morning and I left out at night. They started praying for me. The power of God knocked me to the floor.
The way Tim Keller's wife, who's a great Presbyterian woman, she said, "You are a prime candidate for deliverance." Because of all the darkness I was in. They were praying for me and they were praying for me and they were praying for me. Demonic forces were truly dominant in my life. It was like a full-on exorcism going on. I mean, I'm rolling around on the floor, I'm vomiting stuff out.
My girlfriend had opened the door and she just screamed and slammed the door. I asked her years later, I said, "What did you see?" She said, "My neck was the size of a football." She said she never saw anything like it. These women just prayed and prayed and prayed and then it was like, boom, something happened and I felt something left out of me and I felt the peace of Christ all over me.
These women knew immediately. They were like, "It's done. It's done." I know now what they were saying. They were saying, "We bind you in the name of Jesus. Come out." And oil. I know there was a lot of oil. Man, I walked out of there, I was greased up. Okay? They were slapping oil on me and praying for me. I remember they were on my head and on my back and I mean they went to war for my soul.
God bless those women and deliverance today, if it don't happen at the end of service, all right, hey, we'll see you next week. No, they went in from the morning and stayed there in faith that Jesus was going to free me. They didn't give up and God showed up.
I remember I got up. I had crack in my pocket, I threw it in the garbage. I walked outside and I just screamed towards heaven. I said, "Never again, Lord." I said, "Never again." I said, "I'll never sell crack again." I said, "I'm just going to sell weed because it's natural." That was my first prayer to God.
Milyce Pipkin:
Wow. You didn't know any better.
Dimas Salaberrios:
I didn't know any better.
Milyce Pipkin:
You will learn.
Dimas Salaberrios:
I was going to a Baptist church called First Waughtown Baptist. While I was-
Milyce Pipkin:
I'm not going to sell crack, I'm just going to sell marijuana.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah, sell weed. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
Because this is natural and grows.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. Crack was white. Weed looked like grass, lettuce. That's why a lot of people are deceived today by the marijuana. I start selling. I'm walking with a Bible and I'm selling pounds and pounds of marijuana.
Other drug dealers, they always admired me. they was like, "How are you selling so much?" You know what I told them? I said, "It's Jesus man." I said, "He's blessing my business." I said, "Watch this. Every time I try to read a scripture, another customer will come." This is how confused I was.
But the good part was, I was tithing that drug money to the church, so the church started screaming for a building fund. The pastor said, "Giving has tripled in this church." He was going nuts. I look back now and I'm like, "He was getting all my drug money, that's why." But the Bible says, "The wealth of the wicked is laid up for the righteous." We were doing that.
Then this one woman challenged me and the youth pastor held a big meeting and broke down the scriptures. The word sorcery in Galatians 5:19-20. He went through those verses on sorcery is pharmakia where we get drugs from, and that's why I need to walk away from this.
I gave it up. God spoke to me to come to New York, face my time for escape charge. It's an automatic seven years. I turned myself in. I went before the judge and she asked me why did I turn myself in? I said, "Because I'm a follower of Jesus." I said, "I'm going to follow him whether I'm in jail or out of jail, I'm following Jesus."
She put me in a cell and then called me back out and she said, "I'm going to do something I've never done before." She said, "I'm going to tell you why." She said, "I'm going to pardon you. I'm going to release you."
Milyce Pipkin:
That's amazing grace right there.
Dimas Salaberrios:
She said, "The reason I'm going to do that is because I'm afraid if I send you to jail, you'll become who you used to be and I love what I'm seeing right now." She let me go. I went got out, locked in with church, started following Jesus, but I still had this adventure side to me.
I met my beautiful wife and she was looking online and she said, "You know what?" She said, "They need Bible smugglers in China." I said, oh my gosh, I get to use my gifts for Jesus? I'm an expert smuggler. I smuggle drugs, guns, you name it." Yeah. I was like, "I could do this for Jesus."
I went to China. I'm smuggling Bibles to the persecuted church and then one day I got busted. When I got busted, I'm standing there and one of the soldiers pulled out the books and he said, "Whose books are these?" I said, "They're all mine." He said, "You read Mandarin? Do you read Cantonese?" I said, "No, but they're mine."
He came over and he shoved me in the face with the book and all these officers ran towards me with sticks. I thought they were going to do Bruce Lee on me, man. I was like, "Jesus." I'm like, "He hit me. I didn't even respond." But they were all moving in close. Then one of them said, he said, "I have one question." He said, "How tall are you?"
In New York sometimes we have this, it's a slick-mouth thing. We've always got to surrender it to Christ. I looked at him. I said, "I'm as tall as Michael Jordan." Then they started staring. They said, "Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan." They thought I was Michael Jordan, so I started shaking their hands. They were all smiling. I left the Bibles and just walked out.
Milyce Pipkin:
They want autographs.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. I walked out of there and had no problem after that. I think I did one more smuggling trip from another border and then I said, "I'm done, man." I've got to go back to New York. God has been great and that's the bulk of the story in this quick time. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
Your story is simply amazing for so many reasons. I know anyone hearing it, like I said earlier, can see how the Lord was just running after you. And you could just see that resonated in how people were responding to you, the trouble you were getting into, how you were getting out of it.
I just love your story of redemption too, how you've had a turnaround agenda. You've taken all of that and you use it now as a testimony of who you used to be to try to touch others. You would be amazed with how many pastors don't want to talk about drugs in their background. They want everybody to believe that they were always…
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. I don't know what that's about. There's one part of the story, forgive me Lord, I didn't share. This was one of the biggest turning points. It was after I accepted Christ in the South and I stopped selling drugs, one of my friends set up a home invasion plan on me.
There was a knock on my door and I stepped outside. I was smart enough to lock the door behind me because they would've probably came in, killed the people inside the house. I looked to the right. I saw a car was running with two guys with hoodies on, and my friend was on the bottom of the steps and his brother was just killed about a week or two before.
I knew he was a little nutty and he was like, "Yo man, I need to talk to you. Come to the side of the house." This is not like TV where you can just take off running. I probably would've been shot in my back or whatever.
I walked down. I'm walking to the side of the house, and when I got to the backyard, my enemy was back there. A dude that wanted to murder me was back there. All I could say, I was like, "God, you've got to get me through this." I was like, "God, you have to show up." And so he starts arguing with me, pulls out the gun, and when I saw a tear go down his eye, I knew he was about to kill me.
Milyce Pipkin:
He came to assassinate me.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. He was like, "Yo man, forget this." When he pointed the gun towards my head, he pulled the trigger and you could hear the pin hit the bullet like, "Tink." He clicked it again and went, "Tink." And clicked it again and went, "Tink. Tink."
By the power of God, no bullets came out of that gun. They knew I was a fighter, so they both took off running because their weapon didn't work. I stayed right in that backyard and I prayed the greatest prayer I ever prayed. I said, "Jesus, if you ever need someone, you can have me." I said, "Anything you want to-"
Milyce Pipkin:
I surrender all.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. "Anything you want to accomplish, if you can't find somebody to do it, come to me. But please speak loudly, so that I know it's you and I'll go anywhere." That's what led to me going to China and it matched my mother's prayer too. When you think about it, she was like, "Lord, he's yours." Now here I am saying, "Lord, I'm yours." It was like the perfect combination of surrendering all.
God took me all around the world. Smuggled Bibles in China. Preached in Kenya. Went to, oh my gosh, Sri Lanka, New Zealand. I mean all around the world now up to something like 30, 40 countries because different times God told me, "Go."
I was at the Paris terrorist attack. We were leading hundreds of people in prayer there. Ministered at George Floyd to thousands of people. I brought my own sound equipment and while I was preaching, I had everybody on their knees. I'm talking like 8,000 people were on their knees and then they let loose the tear gas on us.
I mean, this was a peaceful moment and you know what happened? All the big media turned their cameras away because they wanted to just catch the chaoticness because I don't get into politics. I'm like, "Yo, I'm here to minister Jesus." Because these were young people that were just like sheep without a shepherd. I said, "No." I said, "I'm here to minister Jesus. I'm here to help you. Y'all need healing. Setting the city on fire ain't going to do anything." I said, "Right now," I said, "let's get on our knees. Let's seek the face of Christ."
When they got on their knees, you started hearing, "Boof. Boof. Boof. Boof." The tear gas just hit us all. That was one of those things where I'm like, "Man." That's why I'm glad I'm in film because the media is shady sometimes except for podcasts, but it gets very dark.
Milyce Pipkin:
Which is interesting because you started off your story talking about how movies like Scarface and secular movies influenced you. Here you are now making religious movies to influence our culture to know and love God.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Right now the church of our generation is Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and the movie theaters. That's what people are learning how to interact and it's so sad. My daughter went to her prom. All the girls are lined up on one side. All the guys are lined up on the other side.
Because of these movies and all the movies and I want y'all listeners just remember. This may ruin movies for you for a few years but it's going to be helpful. Watching every movie, the woman comes and asks to dance or a kiss, but in real life it doesn't happen that way. All the girls are sitting there like, "Why are the guys not coming?" the guys are sitting there saying, "From the movies, how come the girls are not coming?" It was the worst prom ever, and this is happening all over the country.
Milyce Pipkin:
Well, we know how the world is, that it's always the opposite of the truth. It's always a lie. I mean, it's not a surprise to us, but maybe if you don't know the Lord maybe it's a surprise but we don't.
Dimas Salaberrios:
It's so sad. In our movies, we are tackling these issues and doing it in dynamic ways. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
I know that I keep going back to this about pastors. I just wonder, I'm hearing your story and I hear that you didn't allow fear to overcome your faith at that point. You continued to press for the Lord, even in your misgivings and not quite understanding until you got to a point where you did.
I just want to talk a little bit before we lose out on time. You've gone on since and you did finish your degree and you did do those things that you said you were going, to do in your plan. Let's just go into that and then we'll teeter-totter back and forth.
Dimas Salaberrios:
I think you hit it on the head. It was interesting. I was listening to something, a John MacArthur interview quite recently. One of the things that he said, and I realized this a long time ago is, "We cannot allow fear to have any area in our lives as Christians, none."
A lot of Christians are not effective today because they want be in the book The Pilgrim's Progress. One of the areas he was supposed to avoid was civility. We want to be civil. We want to be liked. Now, I'm not saying be a jerk. I've seen that route too. I'm not saying do that, but we have to fully be Christian everywhere.
Some leaders may not want people to know their backstory because they feel they may be judged or miss out on things, but I don't miss out on anything. I want to tell them, "Be who you are." I have a friend, he's a multimillionaire. He sold kilos of cocaine. He's like, "Y'all don't ever tell anyone about my story." I'm like, "People would be freed and delivered by your story. That now you're a gigantic tycoon, but people would love to know what you were in your younger years."
But a lot of them, it really takes a reliance on Christ to say, "My success is not in anyone's hands but God." Nobody can take something from you. You can delay me, but you can't stop me and I've seen that.
Milyce Pipkin:
I always liken it to a freight train coming. It's a freight train coming when God's got it for you.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. The world sometimes purposely delays things in my life or things in other believers' lives. They think they can delay, but they can't stop it because we have no quit and we have a father that does miracles. I've had people tell me, "I don't even know how I let your movie get in. I don't even know, what was I doing?"
I said, "You know what? One of my big prayers is, 'Lord blind them from who I am, so that my stuff gets through the door. Blind them. Let them not see me.'" Start walking very humbly on humility and just, "Hey man, I just put this little movie together. I don't know if it's good or not."
They see it, they're like, "Dude, this is amazing." I knew it was good, but I go in there and they're like, "I can't find one thing wrong with it." Because I do my movies unto the Lord. I'm not with the Christian, corny-movie circuit. I love my brothers, but we've got to do a much better job. I'm an award winner.
Milyce Pipkin:
congratulations.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
I think that's the challenge here as we go forth with this podcast, putting it forth. Not only is it a wonderful testimony of what we're talking about. How you in your testimony went from dealing dope to preaching hope. But it's also saying to us that God is working through anyone who is willing to be a vessel. He is using your testimony.
As the Psalm says, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so." Don't be afraid of your testimony of who you were because it's not who you are. God has specifically designed a purpose and a plan for you in your life. I'm grateful that you're stepping into that, and being a voice for those who are not willing to speak up and speak out about their past and who they were.
What are the challenges that you see before us today? You do a lot of speaking engagements. I've actually had the opportunity to hear you go and speak to some the organizations.
Dimas Salaberrios:
I'm looking forward to speaking at this chapel here one day, Dallas Theological Seminary.
Milyce Pipkin:
Well, we'll see.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Mr. President. Nah.
Milyce Pipkin:
If the Lord says so. Oh, if the Lord is willing. What are some of the challenges that you see even set forth now as you go forth and go to different places and do what you do?
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. One of the biggest challenges is church unity. A lot of people are not willing to work together. I'll say it like this. In Los Angeles, how Los Angeles goes is how film goes in a lot of television. In New York, how New York goes is how a lot of secular music as well as the media, all the talk shows and news and all those else, they control it there.
With Christianity, how Dallas goes really impacts the church. Dallas probably funds more ministry around the world than probably any other city. It is really critical that the church in Dallas stays vibrant and strong in passing this same faith and values to the next generation. Otherwise, it will hurt Jesus's bride big time.
That's why unity is really, really key. We have to not compete against one another or let a lot of pride come in where, oh, it's this meeting going on. Well, who's going to be there? It's not that guy with 40,000 and I got 10,000. Unless he personally calls me, I'm not going and all this kind of stuff. It is deplorable to Christ. It's deplorable.
Milyce Pipkin:
Right. I love how your testimony speaks even to our youth, who could be wayward in going down some of these areas that you went into. What would you happen to say to parents who have children, who are in some of these spaces and places? Your mother prayed for you. What can you lend in love and in a message?
Dimas Salaberrios:
I would say when it comes to parenting and you're parenting from 1 to 18 or 19, depending on we still have some 19 year olds that are kids, be very wise and be willing to relocate. Because sometimes our kids get caught up in a group that they don't have the strength to break out of.
You can't be in love with your house. You can't be in love with your apartment. You can't be in love with your property. Sometimes you would have to move to save your kids. One of the things since I became a Christian, I have never hung in my old neighborhood again, not even a day. Not even a-
Milyce Pipkin:
You don't go back.
Dimas Salaberrios:
No, I don't go back. Most people feel like, "I've got to go back. I've got to see how my man's doing and my friend's doing." And this and that. No. I meet a lot of people who I hear their lives were in the dark and now it's shining in the light.
One of the common denominators is like, "Yeah, I was running with my cousins. They were controlling the neighborhood. Then my mother said we're moving to so-and-so and we moved. She got me out of there." But the ones that stay, most of their stories are not victory stories. Very few and small between. It's possible.
Then I would encourage them to do like my mother. I mean, I give people to Jesus sometimes like scriptures. I think it's 1 Corinthians 5, somewhere around there, where you can give some people to Satan. I'm a little scared to do that. I don't know. It just doesn't sit with me here, go to Satan. I say, "God, I'm giving this person to you because you know how to reach them. You know how to connect with them." And be confident that God will really, really answer the prayer.
Then lastly, I'm probably hitting this four times because sometimes it says you have to say something seven times for people. Remember, it is as believers we cannot be in fear. Can't be in fear of any group that doesn't believe like us, any group that comes against us.
We have to be bold witnesses for Christ everywhere, and then let our love so shine. I mean, I'm on the set with celebrities, I mean big celebrities. They cursed. They're crazy. They're wild. I've been cursed out on sets. I mean, I wish I could say their names but I've been cursed out by big celebrities.
You know what I do when they curse me out? I take two steps back and I say, "Okay, I'm sorry. All right. All right, let's get back to work. Now we need to do this. We need to do that. We need to do that." I had some, they're like, "Where's this guy from?" On my set they said, "I just feel protected."
I had one supermodel who's in my movie, and she came to me and she said, "This is the first time a director's never hit on me." She said, "I came here knowing that you were going to hit on me." I said, "Oh, they say he's a pastor." Yeah, pastor, sure. He's going to be trying to move up on me. She said, "This is the first time I left the set where you were just incredible." When the righteous are in power, all the people rejoice, and so let's be righteous.
Milyce Pipkin:
Amen. Amen. Well, Dimas, in closing here, I'm hoping that people saw what I saw when I first heard your testimony. I'm hoping that people hear the man of God you are. I hope that they see that and I hope that you continue the work that you're doing and that it's just bigger and better for the Lord. I know you've got a number of projects coming down the pipe. Can you just give us some quick insights into what we can expect to see maybe next?
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. My big film coming up next is Berkowitz, The Son of Sam. That's going to be a mammoth of a movie. He's a good friend of mine. I've been visiting him for about six months. He's been a Christian for 30 years now, and that is by far the biggest film I've ever done. I think it's the greatest redemption story outside of the Bible that we have ever heard. And so get ready for that.
Milyce Pipkin:
Okay. Good stuff. Good stuff. Then the other thing, I know that I mentioned this but you did go on to get a doctorate?
Dimas Salaberrios:
No.
Milyce Pipkin:
You're working on it.
Dimas Salaberrios:
I have a Master's of Divinity.
Milyce Pipkin:
A master's. You did go get your master's.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Yeah. I have a master Master's of Divinity. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
My point is, is that you did complete the work that was set out before you with your education, so you took that serious.
Dimas Salaberrios:
Absolutely. It took me 10 years but you've got to tough it out. You don't quit. It took me 10 years because I paid ninety-eight percent out of my pocket. When I had money I paid. I went to class.
When I didn't have money, I didn't take loans. I got more money. I paid. I went to my classes. I fought. I scrapped. I paid. I went to my classes. I don't recommend that for everybody. That was my journey but I left with very little. I took one loan at the last semester though.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's encouraging for our youth as well, anyone who hears your story. Although you're an older, seasoned wisdomatic man of God now, that we're looking at now. Closing comment right quick from you?
Dimas Salaberrios:
Hey, honored to be here. Live out this legacy of Dallas Theological Seminary. Represent Christ well and follow your dreams, your passions, your desires. Let no one put a blanket over your plans.
Most people's plans for us are smaller than the plans we have for ourselves. So we have to know what God has called us to do and do it fully with all of our passion, with all of our might. Fast, pray. Seek God when you have obstacles and watch him show up and open doors.
Milyce Pipkin:
I love it a lot because we see that with you. Thank you so much for being here. Once again, Dimas Salaberrios coming in to Dallas Theological Seminary here on The Table talking to us. Our topic today was how he went from dealing dope to preaching hope. I'm hoping, Lord, that he just continues to shine his light upon you and that you just continue to do great things for His glory.
Thank you for being here and thank you for joining us as always. Until the next time, be blessed. We'll see you later.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas. And my guests today are Jim Davis and Michael Graham, who are here to discuss, I guess what I would call the slow shrinking of the North American Church. They have a book they've written called The Great Dechurching: Who's Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? Three very good questions. And so we're going to work through this book and the issues that it raises and some of the polling that was done. That's really what we're interested in. So thank you Jim and Michael for being with us today.
Jim Davis:
Thanks for having us.
Michael Graham:
Glad to be here.
Darrell Bock:
And my understanding is this is not your first rodeo. In fact, this is interview number 130, we confirmed before we started taping, so I feel sorry for whoever's 131. Anyway, let me tell people a little bit about each of you. Jim is a teaching pastor, Orlando Grace Church, and got is MDiv at Reform Theological Seminary in Orlando. So you are a deeply entrenched in the middle of Florida, is that right?
Jim Davis:
That's right. We are.
Darrell Bock:
And Michael Graham is program director for the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Now we are all for Cultural Apologetics here at the Hendricks Center, something we are very concerned about. Also got his MDiv at Reform Theological Seminary in Orlando, is a member of Orlando Grace Church. So you're also deeply embedded in Florida as well, is that right, Michael?
Michael Graham:
That's right, almost my whole life.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Well, it's been a long time since I've been to Orlando. Last time I went, I think it was a Disney World trip or something like that. But anyway, just that-
Jim Davis:
Tends to be why people come.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. Yeah. Well you got to experience the magic of the Magic Kingdom, right?
Jim Davis:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
Anyway, okay, well let's dive in. So Jim, you first and then Michael. What are nice guys like you doing in a gig like this?
Jim Davis:
Well, it definitely wasn't the plan. I mean, this really started out as two pastors. Michael was actually on staff as a pastor at our church when we started this. We started just doing cultural exegesis. Trying to understand where God has placed us, what ministry here looks like. And we saw in 2018 a study came out with Barna and they examined what they called the Orlando Metropolitan area, which is bigger than most of us would call Orlando, but central Florida. And they made the statement that we had the same percentage of evangelicals as New York City and Seattle. And that really got our mind going because Orlando, if you know Orlando, it feels so much different culturally than New York City and Seattle. So how could we have the same percentage of evangelicals? And in the same study, it said that 42% of our area, the people who didn't go to church, used to go to church.
That's about 2 million people who used to go to church and no longer do. And then it really started to make sense to us that these are people that still carry with them biblical values and in many cases are still Christians. And so we wanted more research. We couldn't find any research. There really was nothing out there. So that's when we found Ryan Burge and commissioned him and his partner, Paul Jupe, to do a nationwide quantitative, academically peer reviewed study. Actually the most comprehensive of its kind on dechurching. This was originally done for our podcast As In Heaven, and we wanted to prove or disprove this thesis. We are currently in the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of our country. And the study proved it. And we did two more successive studies to dive in more deeply as to where people are going, understanding evangelicalism specifically.
And again, we just wanted to learn. We weren't looking to write a book at the time until we found ourselves possessing the sole data that proves that America's in the largest and fastest shift in the country's history. But one of the reasons that books like this don't get written is because it costs so much money to do the research before you even know what the research is going to say. We had to raise about a hundred thousand dollars just to do the research. This isn't a moneymaking project for anybody who sets out to do a book on research like this, but we were really thankful for everything that we got to learn along the way.
Darrell Bock:
And Michael, your involvement, how did you get involved in this? I mean, did Jim pull you in or were you there or were you guys discussing this as a group? What was going on there?
Michael Graham:
Well, this originally started, as Jim alluded to, we knew that this was a major problem. And when I first saw that data, I'm like… We were talking with our elders about this and we're just like, "This is almost half of our city, and if we don't know why all these people left, then we can't be effective as people, as believer priests or elders or pastors in our city." And so we needed actionable information. Information that would be actionable pastorally and philosophy of ministry wise and contextually.
And so I think for us it was just boiled down to two things. One, curiosity and two, really necessity. We needed this information because this is 2 million people in our area and we want to see these people at healthy churches. And so we need to know why they left and are they willing to come back and if so, under what terms and is there anything we can do about it? So I've been a geek my whole life and I've been a numbers person my whole life. I did science fair and all that. So the opportunity to work with such a top shelf researcher and data analyst in Ryan Burge is a total no-brainer.
Darrell Bock:
Well, that brings me on to something I was going to say towards the end, but I think I'll do it now. And that is, you guys talk about it towards the end of the book, the generational handoff, which is not happening in this go around, this generation. And it strikes me, one of the figures that I think a lot of people do know about what's going on is the rise of what's called the nones. And I always have to say that's not N-U-N-S. That's N-O-N-E-S and the fact that that number has hit about 30%, but if there's no generational handoff with that number being at 30%, that means we're going to be headed towards, or may already be there, environment here in North America where people are not biblically literate or biblically connected anymore. There is a completely different set of ways to see life, et cetera, which is I often talk about the loss of the Judeo-Christian net around our culture.
This is evidence that it's not just freight, it's not even basically there anymore in many ways. And so your work, it seems to me is explaining the variety of ways in which people have chosen to no longer engage with the local church. And that is important for all local churches to be aware of, it seems to me. So I commend you for the premise upon which you launched upon this and engaged in obviously some expense to find out about it. It is important to say that this is a local phenomenon in many ways, it's something that's going on here in the United States. It probably is a reflection of something that has already gone on in Europe.
And we're not talking a global phenomena here by any means. But what I found so interesting about your book was how many people who had left the church said they might be interested in coming back if the church wasn't what it was that they left, if I can say it that way. So let's dive into some particulars here, overview this. You have five groups that you looked at, which you called cultural Christians, mainline evangelicals, Exvangelicals, de-churched people of color, diversity in people of color, and then the de-church mainline Protestants and Catholics. And four of those five groups worked in somewhat similar ways, but one was exceptional. So talk about that a little bit. Because I think that's one of the most interesting findings of what you all surfaced. And this is for either of you, Jim or Michael, whoever wants to go first.
Jim Davis:
Yeah, I can start. And Mike, the data guy can fill in any of my gaps. Well, so this is really important that when we talk about these groups, this wasn't Mike and myself kind of putting our finger in the air and coming up with some creative ideas of groupings based on anecdotal evidence or our own filtering through the data. This was done by machine learning, by an algorithm that takes… We have over 7,000 participants. We have over 600 data points. So it's… Sorry about that.
Darrell Bock:
No problem. We all have pets.
Jim Davis:
My dog stays in my office. But we have all these data points, the algorithm minds and it came up with these groups based on common answer sets. And so we then had to look at these groups and come up with names. And so they are really interesting. This is evangelicalism. We're talking about 15 million people. And the first group, the cultural Christians that you talked about is about 8 million of the 15 million. And really this group is probably the people… Let me first say at a high altitude, one of the things that we wanted to communicate is that the de-churched people are not a monolithic group. They look different, depending on your information intake or diet, you might think because of what you see on social media that everybody leaving the church does so intentionally, they deconstruct, they don't like the church, they had a bad experience, but that isn't the case.
I mean, they're there for certainly, and we don't want to minimize it, but many of these people, de-churched casually, many of these people have retained positive feelings of the church. And so this group of cultural Christians is a group that de-churched very casually and intentionally has a positive view of the church. But these people, it does not seem like they were ever Christians to begin with. Only 1% of this group would say that Jesus is the son of God. And so we look at these people and realize, we're probably not dealing with Christians in that group. So then you have the mainstream evangelicals, and this is another interesting group because they also de-church casually, but this is 2.5 million people, but 100% of them are willing to come back today. And 98% of them believe that Jesus is son of God. We measured their orthodoxy scores based on Nicene Creed, Christianity.
So we're talking about the basics of the faith and the orthodoxy scores of this group, the de-churched mainstream evangelicals is higher than the people who still go to church. So you're talking about people who really just need a nudge in… Mike, in my personal ministry, when we can identify in our neighborhood work, gym, whatever… Well, I say work, probably not our work, but our gym and neighborhood, one of these mainstream de-churched evangelicals and we invite them back to church. They come back, like they come 100% of the time. It's pretty amazing. Those are two of the categories. Mike, I'll hand you over for the other three.
Michael Graham:
Yeah. So we kind of developed these two categories of casually de-churched people who just kind of left unintentionally and de-churched casualties. These are people who left highly intentionally and with some kind of significant pain point or pain points. Some of those pain points were bad relationships on an individual basis, and some of them had to do with a bad relationship institutionally. So the third and fourth profiles are a little bit more de-churched casualty than the casually discharged of the two profiles that Jim just covered. So the third profile is the Exvangelical profile. We're using that term just a little bit different than how it might be used in the online discourse. In online discourse, Exvangelical typically means deconverted or at least significantly deconstructed. And where deconstructed means core doctrines of the faith, say certain parts of the Nicene creed are no longer being held to or certain key ethics of the historic faith are just kind of being abandoned.
But what it looks like, that's kind of how that term Exvangelical has been used online. We're using it a little bit differently here. 0% of this group was willing to return to an evangelical church, but about four and five were willing to go back to a Christian Church of some sort. And so that was interesting to us to see a group of people that were very done with evangelicalism, but who had relatively high doctrinal scores, very high view of Jesus, relatively high view of the Bible, yet it seemed that probably four out of five of this group had not deconverted or not abandoned key doctrines of the faith, but instead were probably disenculturating or disentangling their faith from say, evangelical subculture more than they were just kind of leaving the faith. Certainly there were some, but this group trended very female, 68% female, and their average age was 53 years old.
And this group was actually the least online. So I think what you actually have among people who were done with going to evangelical churches is you have a group of hyper online people who are younger and more tech-savvy and more educated who are deconstructing and deconverting. And then you have another group that's actually much, much larger of predominantly middle-aged women who are very much struggling in life, in education, in income and their relationship towards American institutions. And so yeah, there's just a little bit of additional nuance there in terms of looking at that. And we feel a real stewardship of telling more of the story of that group that isn't hyper online among that group of people who have been really legitimately hurt, but definitely still have a strong affinity for Jesus. So we don't want people to just assume because somebody's done with going to an evangelical church that they're done with the gospel itself.
Darrell Bock:
That's an important distinction. And this is the group that actually I had in mind as being somewhat exceptional to the others in many ways because of the selectivity with which they are willing to come back, if I can say it that way. So that strikes me as an interesting group. Go ahead and tell us about the other two.
Michael Graham:
Well, I mean the good news is there's plenty of traditions that are out there that are not in the evangelical denomination that still hold to Nicene Creed level Christianity. And we want people to do that. It's not the kingdom of evangelicalism, it's the kingdom of Jesus. And so we want people to… You don't have to go back to what you left. You can find a good healthy church and something that looks a little bit different in the different stream. So the fourth profile was the BIPOC group that stands for black, indigenous and persons of color. And so, one of the interesting things about the machine learning algorithm is we had the opportunity to, but we elected to not show it ethnicity or race when it was determining the different profiles and clusters of people who had highly similar answer choices.
Because we wanted to just see what would happen if we didn't let it see that. And what was interesting, and this is Ryan's term here, he says that… Because what happened was the cultural Christians were 98% white. The mainstream evangelicals were 91% white. The Exvangelicals were 82% white, and then this BIPOC group was 0% white, not one. Well, I mean, how does that even happen? And so Ryan's take on this is that ethnicity and race casts a really long shadow in the data that even when you're not able to sort on it and you choose not to sort on it's still there.
Darrell Bock:
It still shows up.
Michael Graham:
It still shows up because it is a significant category even if race is a biological fiction. And it is, it's a sociological reality. And so the way that people experience America, our country, our institutions or even the church is going to have an impact because of the sociological reality that's there behind those things. And the way that many people experience America differently.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Race may not be a real category, but we sure really talk about it. I mean, it's just the nature of the way we relate to one another. This is an important group because it is… As you noted, it's an exception in terms of its makeup to the three groups that you've already mentioned. So what's distinctive about it?
Michael Graham:
Yeah, so the most interesting thing about this group is they were the highest educated and highest income of the four different profiles. And this is two and a half million of the 15 million people who left evangelical churches. And they left the earliest and really kind of the late 1990s on average, a little bit before the turn of the millennium and before 9/11. But what's interesting is that a hundred percent of the cultural Christians, that's the first profile… Oh, sorry, 47% of the first profile are willing to return to an evangelical church. A hundred percent of the mainstream, 0% of the Exvangelicals, but almost two thirds of this group are also willing to return to an… Excuse me, an evangelical church. And that's fascinating. I mean, consider for a moment, what habit have you left behind 25 years ago and you're just willing to pick it up 25 years later? I mean, that's what these people told us. So there's a lot of mystery really in this particular group and a lot of complexity.
Darrell Bock:
So part of what I'm hearing… Tell me if I'm reading this wrong, is that the major reasons why people are leaving are not so much doctrinal as they are relational and how can I say this? The community implications of what we believe, how the community actually functions. And later I'm going to ask a question that goes through the variety of reasons, and there are many, as to why people say they disconnected from the church. This is a chart I think you guys have on page 166, and I've got what, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23 different reasons that registered more than 4% or more to show the complexity of what it is that we're talking about. Am I right that these relational components or the applicational aspects of what the church shows what it believes is really a significant issue in why people are departing?
Jim Davis:
Yeah, people generally don't leave first because they believe different. So sociologists have categories of belief, belong, and behave, and generally speaking, your behavior changes first, then your belonging and then your belief. So if you dive more deeply into these categories that we're talking about on the whole, the longer you've been de-churched, the lower your orthodoxy score, but people leave the church generally for very casual reasons. The number one reason was, "I moved." They're not leaving largely because they disagree with the doctrine. A lot of people actually are leaving because they disagree with the way the doctrine has played out ethically. And so in some cases, the de-churched are looking back at the church with a high and reasonable expectation of how our biblical ethic should play out.
Darrell Bock:
So I'm going to read that between the lines and say the fault lies with the church communities as much as anybody. It isn't a case of the person leaving because they have departed from what they believe as much as they think the church is not reflecting what the church says it believes.
Jim Davis:
Yeah. I think you could acknowledge fault in various places. I mean, there's fault across the board, but there's different kinds of fault within the church. Sometimes the church has not been doing what the church is supposed to do in terms of its biblical ethic, but you also have to wonder why have 20 something million probably unbelievers existed in the church so comfortably for so long. I mean, that itself is something I think the church really needs to wrestle with and answer.
Darrell Bock:
So I wasn't intending on asking this question, but I think I will now. And so you guys did all this work and you said you did it as you were discussing with the elders what's going on and how it impacts your mission in your church. So let me ask that question. How does this impact your mission in your church? What did you do besides write the book? What did you do besides write the book that's impacted the way you think about your ministry?
Jim Davis:
Well, in the context of our local church, it's changed the way we look at a lot of different people. So we have identified… I should say, we are. We're learning as everybody else, didn't like we figured it out here and everybody else can follow suit. But there are some things that we're really trying to zero in on. There are seasons of higher risk for dechurching. So as we said, the number one reason is moving, in Orlando that we're on the receiving side of a lot of that moving. And so we want to identify new people to town and we want to mobilize Christian realtors and school teachers and administrators who are the first points of contact with people when they come. On the sending end of moving, we want to stay with our people when they move to a new city and help them to plug into a church.
There's great kingdom value in that. The ages of between 13 and 30 is a real high risk season. So we want to… Of course, that's largely high school, college and young professional years. So we've been really trying to reassess and reevaluate our ministry from one to 18. And then there's some other implications depending on your context with college students and young professionals. And then really just realizing that dechurching is largely a lower income, lower education phenomenon. Contrary to popular belief, a higher education is not the boogeyman taking our kids away from us.
Only 3% of evangelicals with a master's degree have de-churched. So it's really hitting the lower income, lower educated class more and which makes sense because when life transition happens, who does that hit the hardest? It hits the lower income. So if you become a single parent, however that happens and you're not making a lot of money, well, you're going to have to work longer hours or more unusual hours, and that could impact your church involvement and attendance. So we've tried to really identify those people in our midst, but then so we think about the back door, but we also think about the front door and just… Front door and back door and equipping our people and thinking about how are we discipling our people? And we've really tried to make an effort to disciple the head, the heart, and the hands and comprehensively come up with a strategy in the church to be able to do that.
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead.
Michael Graham:
Yeah. On the same subject, there's work that needs to be done individually and there's work that needs to be done institutionally. And the Great Dechurching book is a little bit more of an individual resource than institutional. Certainly there's plenty there for institutions, but we wanted to build a second resource that was purely for local churches. And so if you're connected to a local church or your clergy or on staff at a local church, we built the website dechurching.com, super simple dechurching.com, and all that's on there is basically a 20 point audit for your local church that's there. That 20 point audits for free. And it's basically a checklist of how we're doing on 20 areas that deeply impact dechurching in general. And so in that audit, it's meant to be, you go through it with whatever your key stakeholders and your polity, whether that's elders or your session or your vestry or whatever the tradition.
And you go through that checklist, how are we doing on each of these 20 items? And then for each item where either you don't have anything in that particular area or that area needs some work, then there's a paid resource there on that website that basically has worksheets to work through, project management worksheets to kind of get that particular area that impacts dechurching more in line with best practices. And so yeah, we wanted to build dechurching.com, particularly for local church pastors to be able to improve institutionally.
Because at the end of the day, we want to make a difference on all these things. You can make a difference on a handful of individuals or even a couple thousand individuals across the country. Great, awesome. But I think the bigger difference that we can probably make is institutionally by helping our local churches be able to go about their ministry in a way that better understands and better relates in light of all of this particular phenomenon. And if we do that, then we're talking about making a difference for not just months or years, but we're talking about making a difference for decades. So firm believers in institutions and building healthier institutions, particularly institutions that are going to clearly show and teach that our gospel is true, good and beautiful all at the same time.
Darrell Bock:
I'm going now to this chart on page 166 of the book that I find to be one of the most fascinating pieces of the entire exercise. And I'm just going to read through some of the top percentage reasons. So I'm going to take anything that is 15% or more as expressed as the reasons for dechurching. "No longer believe what the congregation did, 23%." It'd be interesting to dig into that figure and just figure out how much of that is actual belief, which is what we talked about earlier, and how much of that is the application of that belief, which is a whole nother layer of what that might believe. "Didn't fit in. That's strictly relational, 22%. Doubted God's existence, 19%. Other priorities, 18%. Instances of misogyny, 18%. Disagreed with the politics of the congregation, 18%. Faith wasn't working, 17%. Messages not relevant, 16%. Disagreed with the politics of the clergy, 16%. And then moved 15%." And then there's a whole nother half that goes 14% and under all the way down to 4%, a huge array of reasons, variety. So you aren't going to solve this by picking on one thing, right?
Michael Graham:
Yeah, there's just a lot of complexity that's there, and that's the hard thing about data is it doesn't really always fit cleanly. Whatever preconceived notions or stories or narratives that we might have around things, the reality is always just far more complicated than whatever stories we told ourselves walking into those things.
Darrell Bock:
So what do you guys feel like you learned from doing this? I mean, other than the fact that this is very complex and multilayered and what surprised you about what you learned? What did you learn and what surprised you about what you learned?
Jim Davis:
I think we've learned a lot. One of the things that comes to mind is I've learned that I really do and my preaching and our church discipleship, we need to be teaching why it is that people need the church. I've realized a lot of people are just thinking, well, I'm a Christian, I have my bible study, have my quiet time. Why do I need the church? And so we've done a lot more teaching and preaching to why we need the church. We were called and baptized into? Why we need corporate worship? Why we need the sacraments? Why we need the community of believers?
We've also realized that the need to help people prioritize, especially I would say demographics like me with middle schoolers and teenagers, life is very busy. And people in the study saw there were a number of people who are de-churched who said, "Well, when I got to about eighth or ninth grade, my parents stopped taking me." Because they got into athletic sports, things like that. So there's a lot of priorities that intersect with the value of corporate worship that need to be addressed. I think we've learned a lot. But Mike, I'm curious what you have to say.
Michael Graham:
Well, I think the number one thing that I learned in all of this was I was a little worried that going into this, that having a spiritual conversation with somebody or having a conversation where you invited somebody to church was potentially a relationship ending conversation. And what it really looks like is probably about three quarters of the people who have left, so about 30 of the 40 million people who've left houses of worship in this country, it really doesn't look like it's a relationship ending conversation. And I think really actually for some of those 30 million people, it looks like a conversation that they might actually appreciate and respect you for going there relationally, and they might see that as something that's actually building trust. I was surprised at how much also vestigial Christianity there is there, even among people who seem to have been gone for a very long time.
Certainly those beliefs erode over time. But going back to the idea of it not being a relationship ending conversation, for everybody who's listening here, I want to inspire you to one thing, and that is take relational risk. You can know the difference between somebody who's had significant pain and somebody who hasn't. And so the people who… The casualty de-churched, the 30 of the 40 million people, take relational risk with these people in your life. Many of them might be very grateful to you for initiating spiritual conversation or just conversation, encouraging them to come to church with you. It doesn't have to be anything big or you don't have to make it any more complicated than what it is. It's just like, "Hey, I love my church. Here's two or three things I like about it. I like spending time with you. Would love get more time with you and encourage you to come to church with me. Would you be interested in going one of the next few Sundays and we can go grab lunch after?"
It doesn't have to be anything bigger than that. Some people, they might need to be around your dinner table and you might need to have more relationship there then that. But you just exercise relational wisdom and knowing the difference between somebody who needs to have more time, more proximity, more relational intimacy, and the ability to process bigger or harder questions versus somebody who just… They just got out of the habit and just a lot of people, a lot of this stuff just came down to America, just got them out of the habit of going to church and they got nothing against it and are willing to return and would be excited to go with you if you just take a little bit of relational risk.
Jim Davis:
Well, and I'll say one thing that was surprising that we learned is we think of people dechurching being more on the secular political left and just how that was true in the '90s when this really began to see the uptick. But at this point, the secular right is dechurching at almost twice the pace and catching up almost in total number with the secular left. So the type of person, not only are the dechurched not monolithic, the type of person that has de-churched over the past three decades has changed too.
Darrell Bock:
So that raises this question and that is the person who's leaving for political reasons, leaving for a completely different set of concerns than the person who is not leaving for political reasons. In other words, is that a potentially significant distinction to be making as you encounter someone who's left the church and you're trying to figure out, so you used to have this association but you don't anymore. Is that kind of an initial differentiator that you need to be aware of as you walk into a conversation with someone who you might be trying to encourage to reconnect to a community?
Michael Graham:
Yeah. So there's two things. At least two things going on here. The first is people who are very turned off by people who are church going, but where the politics flag seems to be flying higher than the Jesus flag. So there's a large group of people that are very allergic to political syncretism. Those who are mainline de-churched, those who are Roman Catholic de-churched, the Exvangelical de-churched and the BIPOC de-churched all are in particular very allergic to people who are highly political. And that can be in either direction. I think there's a little bit more allergic-ness to those who are highly political on the right. So you have some people who are very put off and have de-churched because of either that friction between them and individuals, them and the congregation, them and the clergy or any permutation in combination of those things.
The second group where politics comes into play are people who seem to maybe have had a… Pardon the pun, had a come to Jesus moment with themselves where they've come to realize actually the horse for them has always been politics, and they have found a greater home in the political community than what they have in the religious or church community. And originally probably, as Jim already alluded to in the '90s and aughts, that was probably more happening on the left. And now here in the 10s and the 20s, that's happening more on the right. And so you have people who are just catching up to speed really on the right where politics is king. And so I think that's… So you have, and-
Darrell Bock:
So those are two countervailing contrastive tendencies, right? One going in one direction, in other words, moving away from politics towards the church and the other moving in the direction of politics away from the church, right?
Michael Graham:
Yes. And the lesson there for all of us is that Christ is the King. Christ is King, and we worship him and his kingdom alone. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't care about culture and society. It doesn't mean that we don't vote or don't exercise persuasion in the civic sphere, but what it does mean is Jesus is King and he must always be first. And we must exercise kingdom ethics and that we must exercise kingdom ethics regardless of where that puts us in terms of the political binaries that we're forced into in our particular system. And I think too, there's value for us in examining the merits of the kind of historic exilic posture that the church has historically had, whether that's the early church or the various periods of exile.
And when we look at the Old Testament and the people of God or the various parts in church history where Christians have exercised their influence from the margins of society rather than from the seat of power. So I think there's lessons in there for all of us, not that we're just kind of abandoning our country's institutions or throwing them to the wolves of things, whether that's the secular left wolves or the secular right wolves, we don't want either of those things, and we don't want a country that isn't thriving and doesn't have some level of shalom and prosperity. At the same sense, we're citizens of a different country and that other country is of much higher importance and of paramount importance.
Darrell Bock:
So that's the kingdom of heaven, which is multinational and multi-ethnic at all, that the scripture is clear that we have been called out to be distinctive from the world. Those kinds of ideas. I'm highlighting some of the scriptural themes here because I think that in the syncretism sometimes that gets lost, and… Go ahead.
Jim Davis:
Well, just to say, the gospel comes with an ethic and ethics are inherently political. So there's this overlap but at the same time, neither political party… We would both say neither political party has the market on kingdom ethics. And so in our context, we would say something about race and people would say, "Stop getting political." And those same people would want us to do more about abortion and hand out right wing voter guides, and we'd have similar things in the opposite direction. But we have to realize the gospel comes with an ethic. Those ethics are going to be polarizing because they are political, but no political party has the market on biblical ethics.
Darrell Bock:
Which means that there are conversations to be had in all directions.
Jim Davis:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And an awareness and a respect for the fact that that is part of what goes on. I mean, this is a podcast in and of itself, what we've just talked about. So I'm going to try and avoid diving into what would become a black hole. But let me ask you one kind of… I guess it's a final round of questions. You talk about the challenge at one point between confession and mission, which I think is an interesting contrast. I think it's the challenge of the church. The more confessional they are, the more they're built for discipleship, I'll say it this way, the more they're built for discipleship and insiders, the risk is they lose the mission of the great commission.
The more they're built to reach out and try and create the seekers… We went through this in the '90s, the more danger is they'll lose the discipleship piece. So these seem to be in tension with one another. It's not the only tension, the gospel. I often tell people the gospel itself has a tension built into it. That is the challenge of dealing with sin, which the gospel message does. But then the invitation that there's a different way to live in a much better life going through that recognition than it is to pretend that it either doesn't exist or that there's no way to handle it. So I think Christianity has… Because we live in a fallen world, we live in a tension setting faith, if I can say it that way. Talk about this commission and mission relationship because our… Confession and mission relationship, because I think that's another interesting observation you guys were making.
Jim Davis:
Yeah. I think this is a really good and important question that you're asking. So when we talk about confession, it's what do we confess to believe? And some people might say, no confession, but Christ. But that's a confession in itself, and we see it through in the Bible, Moses, Paul, we see the creeds, the reformation confessions. So we have something that we confess to believe. And then we are also called into a mission, like you said, the great commission. Churches can… And I would argue that no church is perfect. So we're all going to err on one side or the other. We're going to care more about what we believe in terms of the confession and the headspace or our heart's going to be more in the reaching others for Christ, do what you will with theology. But what we're arguing is being confessional… The confession is missional, and we absolutely have to do both.
So when we stray to the side of having caring more about the confession, we become heady. We become cold, we become overly didactic. We tend to build more walls around ourselves than… Our churches then are helpful when we drift to the other side, that's when we get to Coldplay and a Ted Talk. We develop entertainment because that's what's bringing people in without realizing what you win them with is what you win them to. The discipleship is lacking, the spiritual ceiling is low. And what we would argue, no one has ever embraced confession and mission more than Jesus. There's never been a more missional person. He left heaven to come to earth. He took on flesh, and he came bringing us the perfect manifestation of God's character. Sorry about that.
Darrell Bock:
It's all right. The theology's barking at us. Go ahead.
Jim Davis:
Yeah. That's my dog saying, "Amen. That's right."
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. So I like to say about the Nicene Creed, it's a wonderful doctrine. There's not a word of ethics anywhere in it. And so the danger can be that I can have all this wonderful belief about who God is, which is certainly what the Nicene Creed is focused on the Trinity, and yet at the same time be vacuous in terms of practice. And what we're seeing in what you all have done is that the Praxis talks, it preaches, it walks, it pushes. And so if you don't have balance between what you teach and how you manifest that teaching, you're not going to be the kind of community that's going to bring someone back who has had an attachment to Christianity.
Is that a fair summary of one of the things that you were contending for? Because to me, the surprise of the book was, we have all these people who've left, but they haven't left with the idea, I've shut the door behind me and I'm never coming back. They have left the door open as they've walked out and said, "If I can find a community that connects with what I think the consistency of the faith is all about, I'd be more than willing to come back."
Michael Graham:
I think at the highest level, it really is as simple as most of the people who left who are willing to return, which is at least half of the people who left evangelical churches, they're just looking for a healthy local church that's got good leaders and a good community. And what does that healthy church local church look like? It looks like a church that's preaching and demonstrating that there is a gospel through Jesus Christ, that is true, that is good, and that is beautiful all at the same time. That's what these folks are looking for. And so we got to build healthy local churches and we got to have healthy leaders.
Darrell Bock:
Whoa. Well, that's nice, short, crisp, sweet and simple. Well, maybe not so simple as we may need, but it certainly is an important combination of things. Jim, how do you put that together?
Jim Davis:
Well, not as concisely crisp as Mike just did, but I do think in the season we're in, I think Christian leaders who are getting pushback from both sides are probably doing something right. I think there are those that want us to live a Christian ethic. Now on either side, the left and the right, it can go to an extreme. Each side has an extreme. But I think the middle spot where we are closest to embracing and living out the ethics that Jesus demonstrated and teaches, it's not going to make the secular right or the secular left happy. It's not going to satisfy them the way… Because they're looking for satisfaction in something else. But Jesus isn't the only one who's satisfied. And that ethic is just going to look different than we see on the secular right or secular left or really anything else.
Darrell Bock:
So I want to thank you guys for taking the time to allow us to dip our toe into your great experiment, the Great Dechurching and the insight that you all have as a result of the work you've done. I wish you all the best as you apply what it is that you've learned. And I just want to thank you for taking the time to be with us and to give us a look at the fact that just because someone has walked away doesn't mean they've walked away permanently. And I think that's actually one of the big, big takeaways I got from reading your research. There are a lot of people who are still spiritually hungry who are not attending church every week. And if we can create communities that will reflect both a spiritual vitality and a relational… How do I say? Heftiness and a spiritual heftiness, then I think many of them will be drawn back. So thank you for that message.
Jim Davis:
Well, thank you for having us. And I also wanted just to be really clear, the goal here is not just to get butts in seats and money in coffers. Statistically speaking, the children of the de-churched will be unchurched, and then we will feel like Seattle and New York City. This is a generational opportunity where there is this low hanging fruit that will impact generations. So thank you for seeing that and for having us on.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, no, my heart bleeds for the younger generation. They're my grandkids. And I watch what's going on, and I'm seeing the loss of people with an age group that has all kinds of proper ethical sensitivities, but just doesn't think they're finding it in the church. And that is a shocking conclusion to have to deal with. So again, thanks to you all making us aware of that and for having that motive, because I think that the abandonment of the youngest generation could be a really terrific mistake that the church will be dealing with on the other end. And I think we can look across the ocean in Europe and we can see what that looks like. So thank y'all again.
Jim Davis:
Thank you so much for having us.
Darrell Bock:
Glad to do it. I may have you back, you all, so duly noted.
Jim Davis:
We'd be happy to.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Thank you all for being a part of The Table. We appreciate your being with us through this episode. If you want to see other episodes of The Table, you can go to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast and you can get a look at the almost 600 episodes of The Table that we have produced over the last decade plus. And we thank you for being a part of this, and we hope we'll see you again soon.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the executive director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center, and I want to welcome you to this podcast, which is going to talk about organizations. Now, many of those organizations are going to turn out to be churches and nonprofits. And when you ask people what is a church, many people will say, well, the church is a cause and it is, it's the cause of Christ, it's mission driven. We have a message. We're trying to push that out there. And other people will say, well, actually the church is a community. It is, it's an organism, it's the body of Christ, it's the family of God.
And then somebody will also perceptively say the church is a corporation, which is actually true because most churches, at least in the United States, are under the IRS code labeled as 501(c)(3) organizations. So there is an organizational dynamic. Well, that's the circle that we want to focus in on today, is that organizational life. And specifically we want to look at what we're going to call the name of a book that our guests have put together, Smart Church Finances, and I love the subtitle, A Pastor's Guide to Budgets, Spreadsheets, and Other Things You Didn't Learn in Seminary. The two authors are George Hillman and John Reece. George is the vice president. I want to make sure I get your title right here.
Dr. George Hillman:
It's a long title.
Bill Hendricks:
Vice President for Education and Professor of Educational Ministries and Leadership at DTS.
Dr. George Hillman:
Yep.
Bill Hendricks:
Welcome George.
Dr. George Hillman:
Thanks.
Bill Hendricks:
And John, you have a consulting practice called WayQuest,
John Reece:
Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
Which helps organizations be free from business distractions to accomplish their mission and purpose. I go way back with George, so I'm actually going to start with you and ask how in the world did you land on WayQuest and this work to help organizations be free from business distractions?
John Reece:
I started out with a name even it's the quest for the way. And so there is something embedded in that. And when I was working mainly with corporations early on in the consulting practice, I had opportunities to share what that meant and open up more of an evangelistic conversation, even with VPs of finance of multi-billion dollar companies. And so that was one entree into it. And then the work that I've been doing, I keep on getting drawn into working with churches and ministries. I've been a part of launching ministries or serving in churches my whole life pretty much. And so that was the beginnings of that.
Bill Hendricks:
Now you've picked a really interesting word though when we talk about churches and this whole matter of their finances and the organizational side of things. It sounds like for me it's a distraction. Tell us more about that.
John Reece:
The distraction is, folks that are in ministry that are serving in ministry are not, like we talked about, they're not equipped to typically understand what a spreadsheet is and the numbers and everything else. And it gets distracting even in leading an organization and how to put the plans together of, it's almost as if it's, well, this is where we're being led, whatever the context is, and we're just going to trust that God's going to do everything for us. I believe there's something more to that that we can work together with God, but he has also provided structure and order for us to follow. And so to be able to do that and use some of the things that corporations use, and there's a balance. One of the things I'm constantly fighting against is it's not to have the business corporate feel of things come in and either displace, not that this could happen, displace the Holy Spirit's leading, but sometimes it feels that way, but it really is the distractions of having to mess with filings with the IRS, tax filings, making sure things are in compliance.
I was talking with chairman of Deacons a couple of months ago and they were bombarded, just stepped into this role, bombarded with the, oh, we need to make sure we're doing our payroll taxes properly, and it's 1099 versus W-2 and all these different pieces.
Bill Hendricks:
So George, you're on the academic side of this whole equation and you put in your title things they don't teach in Seminary. Why are they not teaching these things?
Dr. George Hillman:
That's a great question because the irony of it all is that I'm even sitting here talking about a book on money that I wrote.
Bill Hendricks:
I understand.
Dr. George Hillman:
Because I don't do the money thing.
Bill Hendricks:
That's not your-
Dr. George Hillman:
No, it is a distraction for me. And my dad was an accountant. I did not get any of those genes and I don't know what happened along that side, but it was guys like John that would come alongside to help me understand spreadsheets and tax role. And a lot of the start of this book was actually us helping a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary plan a church. How do you negotiate with the local school board to be able to use their facilities and liability insurance and all those types of things. And so we kind of joke with the book is that really John wrote the book, I translated the book, if that makes sense. And so John was able to-
Bill Hendricks:
You translated it for the ministry types.
Dr. George Hillman:
Yeah, translated it for people like me, who, I don't like math, I don't like doing budgets, I don't like dealing with the personnel thing, but it is a reality. You have to do these things or you're out of business or you're doing things unethically and you're begged this whole premise of stewardship, you're not stewarding God's resources, you're wasting them.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I want to come back to the thing of stewardship, but I guess I camp on that it's not in Seminary, but even if it were, it might not take.
Dr. George Hillman:
Well, and that's one of the things too. So how we started this is John would come into my classes and I'd say, "Well, hey, come teach a lesson on how do you put together a spreadsheet?" And really for most of the people in the classes, they had never been exposed to anything like that.
Bill Hendricks:
Interesting.
Dr. George Hillman:
Part of the thing is I think it's felt need, you come to Seminary to learn bible and theology, but then when you leave, then you realize, oh, there's things that-
Bill Hendricks:
There's boards, there's budgets-
Dr. George Hillman:
All those things.
Bill Hendricks:
There's fundraising.
Dr. George Hillman:
And you don't spend 40 hours a week writing your sermon, you're having to work with a board, you're having to work with city councils, all those types of things. Part of it is just we do have classes that teach this type of stuff. Students just don't take them at that point. They come back later when they had the felt need. And really that's how we started with this was based on felt need of our graduates.
Bill Hendricks:
It sounds like a good idea for a certificate.
Dr. George Hillman:
It does sound like a good idea for a certificate. Well, that is definitely an inside joke on that one.
Bill Hendricks:
So I said I was going to come back to this issue of stewardship, and that's really where you guys start. And stewardship, most people think, well, what's that? That's like the money part. That's like stewardship is, oh, they're going to raise money for the budget or a building. Stewardship is far beyond that, right?
John Reece:
Yes. Far beyond that. So stewardship really is leading, well, the people, and I don't necessarily like the resources being the human resources, but people are a resource. In some ways they need to be led well. Decision-making has to be something that is walkthrough and not just based on a lot of opinion, but with some kind of logic and structure and some disciplines and analyzing what is valuable, what's a priority within the organization as well, and how does it fit with the overall mission.
Bill Hendricks:
I just want to camp down briefly on let's call it a theology of church management. If I could, because there's a stream out there. There's probably several streams out there. People say, "The Holy Spirit's going to show us what to do. Why do we need to get into the weeds? That seems like that's going to limit God somehow."
John Reece:
Well, God created business and one of my favorite verses is Proverbs 16:11, "All the weights and measures are his."
Bill Hendricks:
There you go.
John Reece:
So everything. So he's a God of order and structure. Even though the process and all the different pieces are applied in business, he created all of that. He created us to implement that. And it's something if we cut that off and don't include that in any of the conversations in the planning and the management of what God has provided, then we're actually cutting off what he has created and not using that fully.
Bill Hendricks:
Well. And then there's 1st Corinthians 12 and other passages, God also created people to whom he gave gifts. And among those gifts, at least one of them is called administration and George you know I grew up in the church. I've been going to church since nine months before I was born. So, I've been around lots of churches and it's my, not just opinion, it's been my experience that some gifts, just like 1st Corinthians 12 says, they get a lot of promotion, particularly the communication gifts, the dynamic, the spectacular gifts. Administration is one of those quiet gifts. And it gets short shrift in many churches and many nonprofits because let's face it's quiet, it's often behind the scenes.
Dr. George Hillman:
Well, and I'll throw this out as well, is that most of our graduates do not get fired for heresy. They get fired because they don't know how to work with people or the church runs out of money and they can't pay for their program anymore. I literally have an email from one of our graduates right now. Their church is going to close their doors because they don't have the finances to actually pay the people to do what needs to be done. And so that's all part of that stewardship aspect as well.
Bill Hendricks:
That reminds me of something that Peter Drucker said, and many of our listeners may not know who Peter Drucker was, but in the 20th century, nobody knew more about management than Peter Drucker. He's really the godfather, I think, of modern management. And if you have an executive pastor in your church, Peter Drucker actually was part of a small group of people that created that whole role. And a lot of people pushed back as I guess you do. It's like, Oh, let's not bring business principles into God's work kind of attitude. And Drucker simply said, "The reason the church needs management is not to make it more business like, it's to make it more church-like." His point was, if the church isn't run well, it doesn't accomplish its mission. That's what we're trying to accomplish. And what you've done here is try to begin to put together resources to help pastors and church leaders and para-church ministry leaders do that.
John Reece:
And the center of that framework that we developed is mission. And without that, that is a driving focus. And with churches, I always say it's a secondary mission. We're called to go and-
Bill Hendricks:
Preach the gospel,
John Reece:
Preach the gospel. So the secondary mission is a contextualized mission wherever that church has planted. And we have churches in the area almost on every street corner, but what is that contextualized mission? And part of that is who are the people that you're serving? And that is the first step in our process of walking through understanding who are you serving, what are their needs, what are the things that are important to those? And within a church, it's not even just the church members. It may be that you are serving a community that they may never be a member of the church. That's still part of the calling of that body.
Dr. George Hillman:
And the mission of the church. It's already been set. We-
Bill Hendricks:
Make disciples.
Dr. George Hillman:
Yeah, make disciples. But each individual church is a unique expression of the gospel in that context. And so that church, why does that church even exist? And I always tell this to students, every church is A church plant. You think about here, first Baptist downtown, there was a church plant at one time. Every church is a church plant because a group of individuals said the gospel needs to be presented to this people group, to this location, whatever the case may be. So how do I take the gospel and make it an expression of the gospel in that unique context? And then out of that flows, the strategies and where are the resources we need and who are the people that we need?
Bill Hendricks:
And that mission is not just a set of good intentions, the are good intentions, but good intentions go nowhere until you begin to put actual practical feet on them, which includes money, people, time, physical plan, often, all those resources.
John Reece:
And boil it down to it. The mission is really what problem or problems are you solving and who are you serving? And then from that you can build on what are those pieces that are needed? What are the resources that are needed? What are the programs? And that word gets kicked around a little bit as far, Oh, just put a program on it. And there's also a process of we've been doing this program for years and years and years. We need to keep on doing it. And so even the process of assessing is this continuing to fulfill our mission.
Dr. George Hillman:
We'll even give you a real practical example of this. So a church that we used to be a part of was across the street from a very large church here in the Dallas area who did an amazing job with vacation Bible school. Our church chose not to do vacation bible school because why?
Bill Hendricks:
It's right there.
Dr. George Hillman:
Same neighborhood, same everything. We actually would tell people, go volunteer at that church's vacation Bible school. Now we came up with a different avenue to reach a different population, but we have to evaluate all of our programs of what are we doing? And just because the church down the street has this great program doing this, you might be called to something else.
Bill Hendricks:
So knowing why you're here. What your particular church plant is called to do.
Dr. George Hillman:
And who has God brought to your church? Who are the people in your congregation? They're a resource.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Talk to us about budgeting because it seems like a lot of things boil down to let's get a budget plan going.
John Reece:
Too often churches start with this is how much money we've been receiving through tithes and offerings. And then from that point, we can build programs and ministries and everything else, and we suggest that that is the wrong approach. I worked with too many organizations that do that, but as the wrong approach. It's from a corporate speak, it might be a zero based budgeting, but it really is starting with the mission and then how are we going to accomplish the mission? Maybe different strategic initiatives, programs that are underneath that, that would be put together to accomplish that. Once those are defined, who are the people? What are their other resources? Facilities, technology, curriculum, what have you. With all of that, then you can apply a dollar amount to it. Money is a transitory resource is what I would suggest. It is not the thing that should be focused on. What are the things that really can be used to fulfill whatever activities and programs to fulfill the mission.
Dr. George Hillman:
What I was going to say as well is another thing that will happen is that use it or lose it. So I have to spend all this money left over or-
Bill Hendricks:
They'll take it away from me.
Dr. George Hillman:
Or they'll take it away from me. And that's terrible stewardship. You're wasting money instead of actually using it in a almost say a God-honoring way.
John Reece:
Well, along those lines, it was actually in one of the classes that I was speaking with and a woman was serving in their ministry youth group, and they had a fixed budget for the year for pizza, let's say.
And they had grown, they doubled the number of students showing up by June. And so halfway through the year, she started pulling money out of her pocket to buy the pizza because the budget was locked in place for the year, instead of on a monthly basis or at least quarterly looking at it, what is going on? What are these? Reassessing, what could happen? Because a lot of times the budgets that are set could be 15 months old by the time you get to the end of the year and everything, 15, 16 months old. And so things change. There are things that are happening within the ministry that you want to be sensitive to. And so part of that is not taking that this is how we just lock in a budget and stick with it, be sensitive to what's happening and the response that is going on within the ministries.
Dr. George Hillman:
And I'd even say this of the members of the congregation using church for example, they want their resources going to the things where God is at work. And so they see the youth ministries exploding. And to be able to go back to the church and say, "Look, this ministry is exploding." God, I truly do believe God will provide. But you've got to make people aware of, and we talk about this in the book of telling the story of your ministry, of here's the things, here's the impact that you're having. And when people understand they're able to connect those dots they want to give, I think God places it in their heart to give.
John Reece:
Just to follow on with that, one of a thought is, too often I believe boards and let's say pastors are looking at it from the standpoint of that is such a big number that we can't do that, whatever program it is. And I would suggest by going through a process of really understanding what are the resources, breaking it down and defining what that, and putting a dollar amount to that, that provides a very specific ask and a prayer request. And the more specific it is, I have just from a stewardship experience on my own multiple times where through prayer, specific dollar amounts have been prayed for and provided over a span of many months. And it's amazing how God can do that. And I know we are familiar with that, but it is something that I think too often we're too vague. We don't think about that.
Dr. George Hillman:
Well, again, example, so church I'm currently a part of, we're involved with a ministry to Pakistanis who are living in Dubai, and this is crazy a story. And so we are training Pakistanis in Dubai who then go back to Pakistan to pastor and lead these churches. And so we are doing pastor conferences there and we have it down to, for $75, you can buy the curriculum for one pastor, almost like not the adopt a child, the sponsor a child type of thing. And people caught the vision versus saying, "We need $10,000 to do this." Hey, people would come up to church, "I want to buy 10 notebooks and I want to sponsor these two pastors." And we had the cards, just like your sponsor a child, here's the pastors that you're investing in. We told the story well, we made it manageable. And so it could be something as simple as $10 to $300.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, you made it manageable is the key there. You Put it in bite size, personable numbers. The pastor stands up and says, "We need to raise one and a half million dollars as a church this year." I'm like, "Well, boy, I hope we do that because I don't have that." As opposed to, "Here's part of what we're doing, and for $75, here's what you can do." I can look at my budget and go, "Well, yeah, that's about what I might spend on a Christmas gift for somebody. So let's spend it on this." And it breaks it down. And then also, by praying specifically, I mean, let's not leave God out of this equation. When we pray, we're asking him for specific things.
And according to what Jesus says after the Lord's prayer, like a father, he loves for us to come and ask him. He already knows what we need and he's also wants to give us what we need, but he loves us to ask him. And I've seen situations like that as well, John, where man, it's a big target. It's a big goal, but we're trusting God to do it. We're praying, we're talking to people, people are talking to God themselves. And over time, you get down to that deadline and you think, are we going to make it? Are we going to make it? And then, oh my gosh, we exceeded it.
Dr. George Hillman:
And everybody gets to play a part.
Bill Hendricks:
What would you do in churches that I've seen and been involved where like you mentioned the youth group, and I'll just ratchet that age bracket up a little bit, a church where there was a substantial number of college students coming. But some people in the church were like, "We really shouldn't be investing all this staff time on these college students, because they don't give or they don't give much. They don't have any money." It was that sort of attitude and you're like, "Yeah, but look at the impact we're having on these lives at a formative period. And so there was a clash of, I guess it's a mission clash.
Dr. George Hillman:
Yeah. For seven years, that's what I did, The College Ministry at University of Georgia and the impact that those students had who came through for that short period, it impacted the world. The number one school that sends students to Dallas Theological Seminary is my alma mater, Texas A&M University. There are churches down there that get it and invest in those kids, those 18, 19, 20 year olds, that was me, that I had a pastor who invested in me, and now the dividends are paid tenfold.
Bill Hendricks:
And you had people in those churches that who were giving to support that pastor investing in you. So by proxy, they're contributing to your life.
Dr. George Hillman:
Absolutely. And to be able to tell-
Bill Hendricks:
And all the people that you impact.
Dr. George Hillman:
And to be able to tell that story. Absolutely.
Bill Hendricks:
That's fantastic.
John Reece:
When I think about impact, I think about evaluating performance and the metrics. And too often we just look at attendance or giving units, what have you. And one of the things that needs to be reminded of so many is when we talk about impact, that is generational impact. So the outputs of here's the performance of whatever it is, the story I like to always tell is, we have a dirty water is a bad situation. And so in order to put resources, poke holes in the ground, filter, bottle clean water, what have you. An output is a bottle of clean water to measure, an outcome is that people are not getting sick. But that impact is that they're able to live in the community, grow, go to school, expand their family, and invest in the community. It's that generational impact that I think we lose that connection with even within a church context.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I appreciate your saying that because I think too much of what we do in life in general, we take the short view. We need to take the long view that God seems to move at my church on Sunday, the pastor to read the book where a Japanese theologian said, God seems to move at three miles an hour. And his point was, the walking speed. There's just a time element that's slower than most of our current technologically driven culture moves at, which may be why we don't hear God's voice very much, but God's taken the long view. You mentioned every church is a church plant and you mentioned First Baptist downtown has been there a long time. It's still planted. It's like a little acorn that grew up into a tree, but that tree's now real big, but it's still there.
Dr. George Hillman:
And I can look at other churches that came off of that church and I mean, just the impact.
Bill Hendricks:
There you go.
Dr. George Hillman:
We kind of joke that in the Dallas area, there's a family tree. When you look at the core churches of Dallas and how they have planted churches and planted churches and planted churches. I'm at a plant of a plant of a plant that goes all the way back to Gene Getz from the early 1970s. And any church in Dallas that has the word fellowship in it probably is connected in some way to Gene Getz.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah,
Dr. George Hillman:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and across the country.
Dr. George Hillman:
And across the country as well.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, that's beautiful. You mentioned a minute ago metrics and how we measure success. I wanted to come back to that. You're right, so often it boils down to just what we can kind of count numerically. Pretty easy to count attendance, pretty easy to count the money. And for many pastors, I can feel it, some who are listening are thinking, guys, this is all well-intended, but it stands or falls on noses and people in the pews.
John Reece:
There is some aspect of that because if the organization is going to continue, you need to share what is happening, what that impact is so that they want to participate in that financially to support it. But I would suggest that while you're tracking the numbers, look at the right numbers, but also this idea of the stories. The stories are what you can capture more of that impact, and you need both. And some people, the numbers go over their head, everything else, and okay, yes, it's a number, we're hitting it, what have you, but the stories and even boil down to a story of one as an example.
But then you can extrapolate that to the impact that is being made through that organization and don't lose sight of that when measuring the performance. It is a both end, the data and the stories, not just the numbers. And being able to put that together in a way that I was talking about, the output, outcomes and impact, metrics in all three of those categories are Important. The metrics of impact are not going to be necessarily a number driven, but it could be what are those story impacts?
Bill Hendricks:
Of changed lives, of transformed lives, of transformed families.
John Reece:
And to get really nerdy and everything from a data standpoint, you can also analyze textual data numerically.
Bill Hendricks:
Say more about that.
John Reece:
So the simplest way to describe that is, and I haven't seen a lot of them lately, the word clouds with the bigger words? That is what's happening in some form of analyzing textual data, but describing it in a way where, oh, these are popping up more. So you can do a sentiment estimates or surveys with that, just analyzing the textual data, roughly speaking, a church may not do that, but looking if you can capture those stories, you're going to see certain themes that pop up. And those themes would be like those word clouds. And then being able to highlight those themes would be important to share what's really going on that's connecting with the heart.
Bill Hendricks:
And those could be sermon illustrations, they could be videos, they could be testimonials that people give prayers, all kinds of ways of sharing those stories. Yeah. George, you've been in churches, you've pastored church. Were you in the pastor before?
John Reece:
No.
Bill Hendricks:
Okay.
John Reece:
I'm a business guy. I'm a business guy with a heart for ministry.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, we're coming back to business guy.
John Reece:
So anyway,
Bill Hendricks:
So you've been in that hot seat and you've already admitted you're not a numbers guy, and yet this made a whole lot of sense to you. Talk to me through a pastor's.
Dr. George Hillman:
Oh yeah. It made sense to me just because it becomes a stark reality very quickly that I've got to have money to be able to do some of these things. I've got to have space, even things as simple as scheduling rooms to figure out, oh wait, I had an event planned but the gym's already taken because of another event and I didn't plan well for that. Or I was planning to go to this event and oh, I forgot to reserve a van. It's just some simple things, logistical things like that's some logistical things. So I learned very quickly I need to have someone on my team who comes alongside me that can handle some of those things that I can just handle those things over.
Bill Hendricks:
So we're back to giftedness,
Dr. George Hillman:
Then it's back to giftedness, and there's things I'm not good at and I am-
Bill Hendricks:
It's okay to say that.
Dr. George Hillman:
And it's okay. Again, this is how our friendship started. I'm not good at the stuff that he's able to do. He likes Excel spreadsheets. I can't do a formula on Excel spreadsheet if my life depended on it, but if I'm trying to do all those things, I am actually taking away from him an opportunity to serve. And joy. We talk about this in the book as well. There's joy with the stewardship as well. Illustration I use in class is I'll draw boxes, and I say, most churches only have four jobs. You can work with the kids, you can teach an adult Sunday school class, but there's only a certain number of those people who are teachers. You can park cars or you can be an usher. That's it. And how do I know that? Because that's the announcements every Sunday. And so when I have a chief financial officer who we're not using because he doesn't fit in one of those four boxes, and what happens is a lot of these business guys, why do they disconnect from the church?
Bill Hendricks:
Because you didn't give them anything to do.
Dr. George Hillman:
We've communicated we didn't need you. And how incredibly sad is that for us as a church, we lose that benefit. So yeah, early on in my ministry, I realized because I was staying up late, doing all these things and serving outside of my giftedness, and I had to learn really quickly, no, I need to bring people who actually doing these things and I need to empower them and let them go do it, and they do a much better job.
One other thing I'll say as well is that every great idea that was ever in my ministry, I didn't come up with, every great idea. It was because someone else in the ministry, they had the idea and it popped up and I just got to empower it and I got to watch it. That's a major shift. And I'll say this as well, most of our graduates don't make that shift. They think it all depends on their talents, their charisma, and sometimes they're the greatest hindrance from their ministry. The ministry is going to look differently than maybe what you had planned. But I think sometimes that individual is a hangup actually versus a release. I know that connects with all your stuff with giftedness. And so back to stewardship, this all is connected with one another.
John Reece:
I'm reminded of a story. I'm going to share one of our stories as we were writing the book, we were at the coffee shop, met at multiple coffee shops many times, but it was amazing when I might say something and I'm speaking English words, and he looks at me cross-eyed and break that down, whoa, slow down. Let's unpack that.
Dr. George Hillman:
Yeah, what's a cash flow? What do you mean by this?
John Reece:
And all those different pieces. And so working together on the book really opened up and shaped my vocabulary as well as I engage. But that story right there of it doesn't matter. Understanding from a business perspective, from a pastoral perspective, coming together and having the patience to work through that instead of being intimidated sometimes or pushing off because of whatever kind of guards that are up. It is worth working through that. And I think that's exhibited with what we put on the book.
Dr. George Hillman:
The intimidation can go both ways, especially young individuals who graduate from Seminary and their elder board is a bunch of 50 and 60 year old men who are very successful in business. They're scared.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that's the question I was going to ask is, I think for many, particularly younger pastors, if I let my board of trustees or elders or deacons or whatever it is, if I let them know that I don't really know anything about handling money, they're going to fire me. They're going to think, well, we don't want you incompetent person here, so I guess it's maybe I should fake it till I make it, but you're never going to make it.
Dr. George Hillman:
And I would say the opposite thing is to go to them and say, "Guys, this is what you do for a living."
Bill Hendricks:
Exactly.
Dr. George Hillman:
This is what you do for a living. Help me.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and the wonderful thing about giftedness is that they not only bring just the skills to be able to do that stuff, it's the mindset. They get money. They understand how money works.
Dr. George Hillman:
They're in real estate.
Bill Hendricks:
They're in real estate.
Dr. George Hillman:
They're in these businesses, they're lawyers, finance, all those.
Bill Hendricks:
They're in deal, all of that negotiations. They understand stuff that I think many of our students at the Seminary, they don't have those marbles. God just didn't put those marbles. He put other marbles in that, great and some of the people you're working with, you're like, "How did he know the Bible that well?"
Dr. George Hillman:
That's what I was going to say. So we were part of a Bible state for years at Rudy's Barbecue, and now we're living in different parts of the area, and he's doing a Bible stay in his local community. And I've still got a Bible study that meets on Wednesday mornings, and it's all business people, and it's not rocket science what I'm teaching them. But for these individuals, it is like I have opened up this goldmine of the Bible and how to do bible study methods and the stuff your dad used to teach those types of things. And they also to the pastoral care, people are hurting. This is a hurting world. And so it becomes, you're not adversaries, you're partners with one another-
Bill Hendricks:
Members of the same body.
Dr. George Hillman:
And These businessmen, business women, they are desperate for relationship. They're desperate for community and connection, and they're looking for that. And even if you're that younger minister, you have so much to contribute to that older, wiser business person who's in the context of your local church.
Bill Hendricks:
And then it works the other way. When they can open up a spreadsheet or a budget or a profit loss statement, they can tell you a whole story out of those numbers. Yeah. And you're like, I didn't see that.
John Reece:
It leaps off the page. But one of the things though that I think is a caution, and that is the trump card, so the business guy using this spreadsheet as a trump card because that young pastor does not understand it and say, "Oh no, this is it." And then railroading through say a decision, no. But also in fashion where pastor would say, "No, God told me this."
Bill Hendricks:
God told me.
John Reece:
And so it really-
Bill Hendricks:
There's a mutual submission of-
John Reece:
Submission and working together, collaborating, partnering together, and understanding if you think about it from a mentoring standpoint, there is this idea of reverse mentoring where a lot of times a mentoring relationship is an older person, a younger person, and especially it came about with the millennials where that reverse mentoring is the older person. What I experienced in leadership is I can learn from the younger generation as well and applying that with the business folks and the pastors saying, "Yeah, we can learn from each other," because the ultimate purpose and mission that we are called to do is to accomplish the first mission, go and make disciples, whatever that contextualized mission is, and go from there. And we're on the same team. And it's not personal kingdom building of it's expanded.
Bill Hendricks:
It's not my church.
John Reece:
Its not mine, it's not an oriented program or what have you.
Dr. George Hillman:
Whether it's my idea or your idea or your idea, that's a great idea. Let's go for it.
Bill Hendricks:
This brings us to this whole thing of volunteers. I mean, I think there's been a trend. Maybe this is changing, but I'm not sure, where we just keep hiring more professionals.
Dr. George Hillman:
Yeah. I think COVID especially, we can't do that anymore. We can't hire out everything. And again, back to that thing of I am taking away, I'm going to say a discipleship opportunity for an individual, and it's based on volunteers. It's based on volunteers and equipping these incredible godly men and women who are gifted and have a calling in their life as well, and to give them the resources they need to be able to go and do ministry. In my own life, the men who had the greatest impact in my life as a high school student was a gentleman who owned a toy store at the local mall, a gentleman who worked at a hardware store in downtown and a gentleman who sold class rings and caps and gowns. It wasn't my youth minister.
It was these godly men who were my Sunday school teachers, my sophomore, junior and senior year of high school. That had incredible impact. A guy who discipled me throughout college, he's in the oil business, wasn't a pastor. And an example I always use as well is that even with our own daughter, I look at two college students who invested in my daughter when she was a college student, and they had an eternal impact in my daughter's life. And these are what we say, the common lay folk, that's who's doing the ministry, the ministry's happening at that level.
Bill Hendricks:
That's great.
John Reece:
But there's a challenge with volunteers as well.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes. I was going to bring that up.
John Reece:
And an approach that we talk about is recruiting, matching and equipping.
Dr. George Hillman:
And managing.
John Reece:
And the managing leading of that. Yes. Getting that out there. Because if from a recruiting, there are opportunities, not stealing opportunities by staffing. So there are opportunities to serve. I remember when growing up, we were putting chairs, stacking chairs, and doing all the things that sometimes that doesn't happen anymore. Cleaning the restrooms and everything, but also the matching, and that's the giftedness as well. Where should that be? But the opportunities really from a planning standpoint can be defined from an organizational development. I always start with an org chart and too often that org chart, the organization chart is just-
Bill Hendricks:
The paid people.
John Reece:
Staff. And that is missing the point of put all the roles that are needed on the chart. And how is it going to be?
Dr. George Hillman:
Yeah, we talked, every job has a job description. Every job at the church has a job description.
John Reece:
And too often there becomes then a class structure within the church, "Oh, I'm on staff. Oh, you're just a volunteer."
Bill Hendricks:
Just a volunteer.
John Reece:
That's how it comes across, right? Instead of, we are all working together, you've chosen, this is a full-time. It's how God is providing for your family through say, a full-time position versus I'm volunteering. But that role and the impact on people's lives and whatever the requirements are, and then matching and then equipping, and it's more of don't just throw somebody out. Oh yeah, best of luck. But there's an equipment and then the managing the feedback on coaching, just all the things you'd think about with an employee, you can do that with volunteers and not run them off if you do it the right way.
Too often it is, well, if you want to be sensitive to volunteers and you don't want to say, "Well, I think there's a better way we could do that." There's a way to say that that works. That the overall, I'd say the excellence of the organization, of the ministry can be raised without being rude and saying, "Oh, well, that was dumb. Don't do it that way again."
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I hope somebody wouldn't say to a volunteer something they wouldn't say to somebody who's paid. In other words, you wouldn't say that to a paid person, hopefully.
John Reece:
Agreed. But too often that there are two different ways of thinking. It really is because, yeah, it happens, unfortunately.
Bill Hendricks:
And I suppose we don't have a lot of classes in how to lead volunteers.
Dr. George Hillman:
Well, I mean, again, we've got a core class in the Education Ministries and Leadership department, and we do one lecture on-
Bill Hendricks:
On volunteers.
Dr. George Hillman:
On the volunteers. Now, again, we hope that they will take those other classes, but a lot of times it's that felt need of after they've graduated and they go out to the church, then it's that idea of, oh, I don't know how to do some of these things. Again, there's nothing in this book that the two of us haven't sat down many times here on the campus of Dallas Seminary with our students getting ready to graduate and helping them think through these types of things of not just budgets, it's the volunteers and the job descriptions and what do you need for this and what do you need for that?
Bill Hendricks:
I think probably most of the work of the church really is, and could be done with volunteers, and probably in many ways should be done. But you talked about equipping. There's also a real role for pastoring people who are volunteers because it's in the moment, on the way, the teachable moment situations that something comes up and it's a wonderful opportunity, you talked about connecting with the people that you did.
Dr. George Hillman:
Well, again, don't know if this is the direction you're going, but for example, when there's a death,
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely,
Dr. George Hillman:
And you're on pastoral staff, that's three days. You have lost three days because that's what you're going to be doing. But for-
Bill Hendricks:
Gain three days of ministry.
Dr. George Hillman:
That family, you'll never have a more impactful-
Bill Hendricks:
They'll never forget it.
Dr. George Hillman:
They never forget it. And I always say this as well, that the ministry is in the interruptions. It was never in the things I had planned. It was the interruptions. It was those divine, I would say those divine moments that would happen. And to free yourself up enough by equipping the saints for the work of ministry so that you're able to do those types of pastoral things that only you can do. There are some things that only you as the pastor can do.
And I would say this as well as that for, let's say you're going to be a senior pastor. Your immediate flock is your deacons and elders. That's your immediate flock, and then you shepherd them so that they can then help to shepherd the people. And you have to be real careful, and you know this as well, once you get beyond the size of 150 to 200 people, you as a pastor, you can't make every hospital visit. You can't be at every potluck and you're going to have to equip your under shepherds, you're an under shepherd yourself, you've got to equip your under shepherds so that then they can go out and do the ministry.
Bill Hendricks:
And then that even expands beyond the church because there's so many pastoral needs in the world. As you pointed out, this world's a big hot mess and there's just spiritual needs all around us.
Dr. George Hillman:
Yeah, lost people are not showing up at my church.
Bill Hendricks:
They're right where we are in the workplace.
Dr. George Hillman:
They're in the workplace.
Bill Hendricks:
In the neighborhood.
Dr. George Hillman:
They're my next door neighbors. I've lived now in a neighborhood that's becoming very multi-ethnic and incredible needs and different world religions and all that's happening. It's in my neighborhood. And how do you equip the people in your church to go and minister in their neighborhood, in their local school, in their businesses?
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I had one last question here. You have this whole set of what we call field notes in here. What are those?
John Reece:
Those are the templates that we've put together that actually can walk you through the different topics of either putting a plan together, all the different stages of the book.
Bill Hendricks:
So this is like paint by numbers. This isn't complex. It's just put this information in here and-
Dr. George Hillman:
Yeah, it's simple enough for me to do. And that's saying something. Yeah. We really tried to think through what are the things that a young minister, a ministry director, here's the spreadsheets, here's the checklist. Even things of, as you think about it, here's a ministry, a program we're going to be doing. Have you thought about how many goldfish do you have? If you're going to do a children's ministry and how many juice boxes and things you don't normally think through. Somebody has to pay for this technology. What does it look like to have the technology? You're going to have a Bible stay. Well, did you think through, you actually have to buy the curriculum and you think, oh, well, is this Xerox it? Well, that's illegal. You're cheating out somebody's livelihood by illegally xeroxing the sheet music or the curriculum or whatever.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, the thing I love about this is that you've put the cookies on the lower shelf. There's 350,000 Protestant congregations in the United States with an average attendance of 75, which means that the vast majority of pastors and church leaders out there are working with fairly small churches, not churches of a thousand or more. Yeah, they're out there. But that's almost a whole different, really not a different conversation, but for somebody who is just getting started and has a small church, this is the kind of thing that can set them up and put them in business.
Dr. George Hillman:
Yeah. It's the thing I wish I had had.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah,
Dr. George Hillman:
Absolutely.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I want to thank you guys for putting this resource together and having this conversation to kind of talk through the spirit of how we not only do church well, but we lead church well. We run churches well, and we know that excellence is something that God puts a lot of emphasis on. It's a value for him, and he wants us to steward this world well. He wants us to steward the body of Christ well, so thank you very much, gentlemen.
Dr. George Hillman:
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes, and I want to thank you for joining us for this podcast on the table where we discuss issues of God and culture. Feel free to download us from your favorite podcasting platform and we'll see you next time here on the Table Podcast.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Darrell Bock and I am Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And our guests are two Australians, Simon Smart, who is in Sydney, probably you qualify as the guest who is furthest away from us when we have recorded, I'm guessing because it takes a good 18-hour flight to get to you from Dallas. And then John Dickson, who normally would be in Sydney at least in a past life, but now is teaching at Wheaton College and a Green Bay Packers fan. And Americanized as you can get, right John?
John Dickson:
Except for the accent.
Darrell Bock:
That's exactly right.
John Dickson:
I think my accent has got more Australian in the year that I've been here.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I do that too when I say I'm in Texas and I'm in Australia, we can both play that game. Anyway, so it's great to be with you guys. Our topic is Australia. We're going to talk about the church in Australia, the situation that exists. I'm going to begin with you, Simon. You work for the Centre for Public Christianity, and just to make it clear that you are in Australia, that's spelled C-E-N-T-R-E, okay? That'll give some of our American friends pause. But anyway, talk a little bit about why the Centre existed and why you and John created a Centre in Australia for the church?
Simon Smart:
Yeah, thanks Darrell. Good to see you. Good to see you, John. I'm just going to say I've done that Dallas to Sydney flight a number of times and it's a long one, especially when you sit up the back.
Darrell Bock:
It's a long one. There aren't enough good movies.
Simon Smart:
Anyway. Yeah, so it's good fun to be with you. Well, it's 15 years ago that John, we got together with a few others, and it was John's idea, by the way, but I think we both felt very keenly that in Australia there's a huge amount of misunderstanding really, about what's core to Christianity. So we set out to, we've continued to do that, to try to promote the public understanding of the Christian faith, which we feel like is really lacking in Australia. And I thought, sure, we'll talk about why that might be. But that was the aim. And so, we thought we want to direct everything we do to the secular person and try to find ways of having better conversations about what's called to Christianity, what it might have to say to contemporary life.
And we do that in a bunch of different ways with writing for mainstream media, which we've done a lot of, John will remember when we set out to try to do this, we weren't sure how that would go, but it's gone pretty well actually. And we've tried to find a way to be in those spaces where often your public Christian voices are absent or perhaps not quite the tone that you would love to see all the time. So we thought there'd be a role to play there in being a voice that's clear, thoughtful, respectful, and engaging. We've tried to do that in lots of different ways, documentaries, public events, all that sort of stuff.
Darrell Bock:
John, and one of the things that you've tried to emphasize is that Christians need to be better listeners about what's going on around them as they interact. Talk a little bit about that because that's probably the reverse of the way. Most Christians think, "I've got this new good news to share. I just want to share it." Talk a little bit about that dimension of what you all do at the Centre, have done at the Centre.
John Dickson:
Well, in emphasizing listening, it's not in any way taking away from, we have a message. I mean, Simon described it as communicating, creating the public understanding of the Christian faith. So there's content, but the thing is, unless you're really listening, you don't know how the content is coming across. So it's one thing to have a message, but unless you're really listening to people's emphasis, passions, biases, preferences, and so on, you have no idea how what you are saying is being heard. And so CPX from the beginning had a message. I mean, we're a bunch of talkers and writers, but listening just lets you know where you are, where you're situated, and what are people thinking before you open your big mouth. And if you've listened enough, when you open your big mouth, hopefully they hear what you think you are saying. It's as simple as that. It's not rocket science.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, interesting. Well, yeah, and of course, I tell people all the time, there are major obstacles between the Christian message and where many secular people are. They don't have some of the categories that we assume in our message. So we may be communicating something we think is totally clear, but people don't even have a category for receiving some of what we say. And so becoming aware of that and being sensitive for that is important.
So let's take a step back and talk about Australia for a second. Basic facts, population, how many states does it have or provinces, however you want to do that. Oh, by the way, I was going to say CPX is the abbreviation for the Centre for Public Christianity, for those of you who don't speak in code. So how many states do you have? What's the population? What's the Christian population or Sunday attendance and the evangelical population? So let's run through some of those stats if you have them between the two of you, and we'll see where that lands.
Simon Smart:
Between the two of us we should be able to get something out here.
John Dickson:
Five states and two territories.
Darrell Bock:
Is it five states and two territories?
John Dickson:
Six states if you include Tasmania, do we include Tasmania tonight?
Darrell Bock:
Now, I didn't plan on opening any inner Aussie debate here, but Tasmania is its own place.
John Dickson:
I really hope this doesn't broadcast to my very dear friends in Hobart. I think we're shooting-
Darrell Bock:
Capital of Tasmania for those of you don't know where Hobart is. But anyway, very cool. So I don't think I can name them all. Let me see if I can name them all. This would be a good test of my American, Aussie. So Tasmania, we'll count it. Okay. Victoria, Queensland.
John Dickson:
You just jumped over a state.
Darrell Bock:
Western Australia. Well, what have I left out? New South Wales. Right? Okay. And so I'm missing one, what is it? Northern Territories?
John Dickson:
South Australia.
Simon Smart:
South Australia.
Darrell Bock:
South Australia, okay.
John Dickson:
And then the two territories.
Darrell Bock:
And the two territories. Northern Territory. I don't know what the other territory is, I don't think I've ever known.
John Dickson:
The Australian Capital-
Simon Smart:
ACT.
John Dickson:
Territory. It's where our national capital is. It's where Canberra is.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Canberra is-
Simon Smart:
It's essentially just the city really and a tiny bit more, but-
John Dickson:
They couldn't decide where to put the capital of Australia, Sydney and Melbourne just were arch rivals. So they basically-
Darrell Bock:
I can't understand that at all.
John Dickson:
Basically counted to the middle and plunked a capital there in the middle of-
Darrell Bock:
Okay, the great compromise, huh?
John Dickson:
And now I've just lost our friends in Canberra.
Simon Smart:
You're losing friends here-
Darrell Bock:
Okay, you're carrying off the country one answer at a time. So okay, population.
Simon Smart:
Can we geo block this program? The population's 26 million people roundabout. It's on the census, so where people will tick, I have some sort of religious affiliation and there's a lot to talk about and what they mean by that. But that's one measure, let's stick with that. So the people who would tick Christian is 43.9% and that's dropped very quickly in the last several years. So the one before that was 52% in 2016, the one before that was 61%. So it's dropping very quickly. The people who would be happy to tick that. I remember John and I used to talk about this, we thought this latest census would drop below 50%, but I don't think John, at least I didn't think it would be quite as far down as-
John Dickson:
Yeah, I thought it would drop to maybe 47, 48%, something like that, just below.
Simon Smart:
So it ended up being 43.9.
John Dickson:
Yeah, it's dramatic. And of course the no religion crew have increased with the same success that Christianity's declined.
Darrell Bock:
So where is that now?
John Dickson:
39%
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so you're ahead of us here in the States. The States has a 30% number for what are known as the nones. And then I always have to say that's not N-U-N-S. So those who don't claim a religious affiliation. So is what has happened, well, I can ask it this way. So what is happening in Australia, kind of like what's happening in the States and that there's a younger generation that is coming along that is not as religiously inclined as the older generations in our country have been, or is this a pattern that's been part of the Australian life from the beginning?
Simon Smart:
Yeah. Can I just say in answer to that, Darrell, we often like to tell the story of the first chaplain to the colony of New South Wales. The chaplain's name is Richard Johnson. He was a colleague friend of John Newton, William Wilberforce, those sorts of people. He was a very popular chaplain. CPX's public lecture every year is named after him. But he among many other things in the colony, built the first church out of his own funds. And that church was then promptly burnt to the ground by the convicts. So we often say there was an uncomfortable relationship with religion ever since that moment. And it's true. Australians have a weird, I'd love to talk more about this today because they have a weird relationship with religion. It was pretty like a lot of, I can you imagine it was sort of built into the culture in lots of ways institutionally and culturally for a long time. But it's always been, there's this sort of anti-authoritarian streak in Australians. And so that's kind of been there all the way through, but it has been in our lifetime, it's really dramatically shifted.
So back when I was a kid, even if you weren't a real church goer, let's say you're going to get married, you'd turn up at the church to get married, that would've been just a natural thing to do. It's almost no one would do that now. It's like unless they're committed kind of Christian person. So these sorts of indicators are interesting to me because that was once a thing you would do. But even in the last 50 years, that's changed a lot. So most people now would have a non-religious celebrant including, and this is sometimes a surprise to me, but including for funerals as well. So yeah, it's been a big shift. You've got a generation of people now that have had really no meaningful contact with Christianity. So it presents a really interesting, doesn't it John, that kind of moment really to speak to people who have both a baggage, there's still a bit of resentment about the church and claims to authority of the church, but a deep naivety in terms of what it's actually about.
John Dickson:
Yeah. There's a famous Australian historian, Patrick O'Farrell, who was the first to describe Australia as the first genuinely post-Christian society. And he named that in an essay he wrote way back in 1975. So in 1975, they were describing Australia as a post-Christian society. So it is something that's been in our tradition for a long while and the parable of, well, the fact, but the parable of the burning down of our first church, as Simon said, is often brought to bear on this. So there is this strain of anti Christianity that's always been there, but what we've seen in recent decades and the dramatic decline, I think is partly the younger generation not going to church and not having Sunday school and not having any religious input. And part of it is the loss of social credibility in saying that you are a Christian.
So 30 years ago there was still some social value in saying you were a Christian or involved in a church, but there's been a moral credibility and crisis in credibility that has meant that even those who thought vaguely that they were a Christian, the kind of nominal, socially respectable, "Yeah, I'm a Christian." They have said, "No, I'm not ticking that box anymore. There's no value to it anymore." I think that is a real part of this story. It's not the whole story, but it's a genuine part of the story.
And in a way, it's going to just keep going until the real number of genuine Christians for whom there is no social value in saying you're a Christian, is revealed by the data and it might be as low as 20% in Australia. So I think we've got a long way to go from 44%.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. And this is happening here too, the number of people who are culturally Christian, Christian because the environment allowed you to affirm it and it gave you some spiritual connection, that number is dropping here in the states as well. And that has some element of the adjustment in our own numbers. But that's not the only thing that's happening, there is just a general reduction as well. And the risk of losing here, we've got the risk of course of losing an entire generation of people to the faith as these numbers change. I need to go back and collect one piece of Australian history so that people who don't know Australia's history will appreciate it. And that is, Australians origins aren't the most honorable at their start. Is that a fair way to put it?
John Dickson:
I won't have that said. We take great pride in the fact that we come from British convicts.
Darrell Bock:
From British convicts, that's right.
John Dickson:
You can have your pilgrim fathers with their prayers and Psalm singing, we are rum drinking, swearing, anti-royalty thieves. And-
Simon Smart:
And we're proud of it. In fact-
Darrell Bock:
The word penal, the word penal is honored in the roots of Australia, is that correct?
Simon Smart:
If people trace their ancestry, they'd be glad to. It's actually true, people would be glad to say, "Oh no, our ancestors were convicts. They weren't part of the establishment."
John Dickson:
It's even worse than that because anyone who can say they're related to Ned Kelly, who is the most notorious bushranger. I don't know, what's the equivalent in America-
Simon Smart:
Means thief, bandit.
John Dickson:
Yeah, a bandit out in the Wild West. So if you are somehow related to Ned Kelly it's a thing of pride, it's truly weird. And our genuine national song is not Advance Australia Fair, it's Waltzing Matilda, right? And if anyone goes and listens to that, it's a song about someone escaping the police who jumps into a billabong and dies rather than get caught by the cops.
Darrell Bock:
Oh my goodness. What a horrible starting place.
Simon Smart:
Yeah, that's true.
Darrell Bock:
Well, I always knew Australia was different, I just didn't know how different it was. So the evangelical population in Australia, where does that fit? What's that percentage? Well, you said, let me do one other thing before I go there. You said population around 26 million. Did I get that number right? How many of those are in Sydney and how many of those people are in Melbourne? Those are the two big cities.
John Dickson:
Yes, it's about four to five in the Sydney area and three to four in Melbourne. I think that's about right, Simon?
Simon Smart:
Almost. It's actually changed, John, since you've been away.
John Dickson:
What have you been doing?
Simon Smart:
Melbourne's been growing-
Darrell Bock:
John is not an activist to America. Go ahead.
Simon Smart:
Melbourne's been growing and they're much closer to, and depending on how you divide it all up, this year they reported that Melbourne had just tipped above Sydney.
John Dickson:
I don't believe it.
Simon Smart:
I'm afraid to tell you.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, really? So Melbourne is now the largest city in Australia?
Simon Smart:
According to the figures this year. But it's a good point to raise about the population of Australia, because they're mostly in huge, a couple of big metropolitan centers, Sydney, Melbourne, and then they hug the coast as well. So the eastern seaboard, most of the population's there and then hugging the coast and huge parts of Australia are kind of uninhabitable. That's a similar size geographically.
Darrell Bock:
I've been told that if you drive in Western Australia and leave Perth and go North, that you'll go North and North and North and North and North and North and not see almost anything.
John Dickson:
Yeah, if you fly from Sydney to Perth and try and look out for cities along the way, you won't spot one.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, yeah.
John Dickson:
It's nothing like-
Darrell Bock:
East Coast to West Coast.
John Dickson:
Yeah, East Coast to West. It's nothing like flying New York to L.A.
Simon Smart:
No. I'm always struck by that if I have flown in the US that you just look down and you see city after city after city. It's the absolute reverse in Australia. You can watch a movie-
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, we're 10 times bigger than you are in population easily.
Simon Smart:
So yeah, you can watch a movie then look out the window and the view hasn't changed.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so let's come to the makeup of the church in Australia, particularly evangelicals. Let's do Protestants, Catholics, evangelicals, and then I'll ask about other religions.
Simon Smart:
I'm hoping John might note some of this. So Catholics, I think I'm right in saying 20% of the population. Does that seem about right to you, John?
Darrell Bock:
Yep. Yep.
Simon Smart:
Anglicans are 9.8%, but that wouldn't mean evangelical and we'll talk about that. And then there's a category of not a mainline denomination, which is that's the one area that's growing. There's sort of non affiliated, which has got to about 2.7% evident.
Darrell Bock:
Do those groups tend to be evangelical?
Simon Smart:
Yes.
John Dickson:
Yeah, Pentecostal.
Simon Smart:
Pentecostal.
Darrell Bock:
Pentecostal?
John Dickson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So Pentecostal movement is growing in Australia?
John Dickson:
Yes, it's taken some hits in recent years.
Darrell Bock:
Because that's Hillsong, right?
John Dickson:
Yep. Yeah. And our friends out at Hillsong have taken some real hits, but overall the trend is that Pentecostals are growing, most mainlines are not, most of the mainlines are declining. There's a different story with Sydney Anglicans. They're a particular kind of Anglican, they tend to be not mainstream, traditional, nominal. They tend to be more sort of passionate evangelical. And they're not growing, but well, they are factually growing, but not quite with the population increase. So they're growing but not quite at replacement level you might say. But nonetheless.
Darrell Bock:
They tend to be reformed in Sydney?
John Dickson:
Reformed-
Simon Smart:
Tend to be reformed.
John Dickson:
Evangelical, Anglican. I know that's weird for an American audience, but you need to think of J.I. Packer, John Stott, Dick Lucas, Vaughan Roberts to think of a Sydney Anglican. It's more like J.I. Packer than-
Darrell Bock:
I see.
John Dickson:
I don't know, I won't name names.
Darrell Bock:
I was about to say.
Simon Smart:
I was waiting.
Darrell Bock:
So what percentage of the population would that be? Is that well under 10%, 8%, something like that? What's the-
John Dickson:
The Evangelicals?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
John Dickson:
Well under 10%. I don't have the figure to hand. I would say it's probably something like three or 4%. Simon, have you got any data on that?
Simon Smart:
I don't, but I do know that it's still the case that, no, I don't particularly on evangelical, but it would be low. Christian Church all over would be about once… People who go once a month would be about 15%-
John Dickson:
Yeah, 15% go to church once a month but that includes Catholics, Orthodox, everybody.
Simon Smart:
That's everybody.
John Dickson:
Yeah.
Simon Smart:
But on any given Sunday, it's closer to about 8% of people.
Darrell Bock:
But that makes you twice as religious as the UK, right? Because the UK is about half that number, isn't it? Or less?
John Dickson:
I'm not sure. I know that the UK just last year announced that they too had dropped to below 50% claiming to be Christians. They dropped to 47% in the UK. I was there just last November when it was announced. And just as happened in Australia, in the Uk, the media had a field day. Now Christians are a minority, now the data proves they're a minority. Why are we giving them so many privileges? That was the kind of story both in Australia and in the UK. I mean, it's a good question, but my secret thought was, man, we've been a minority, a real minority for a long time, the data's just catching up.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, interesting. So obviously this produces challenges for the church to be, one might also suggest there's some benefits in having the people who identify as Christian as really being committed to Christianity and not being just culturally there on the one hand, but on the other hand being so few, there's no confusion. One of the things I actually find interesting in going to Australia coming from the US is, no one is pretending to have any social, political, cultural power of significance. Everyone knows they are a minority and have to function as a minority in the country. So talk about the challenges that face Christianity. You've talked about the public perception of Christianity in Australia. What is it that you felt like you needed to provide for people?
Simon Smart:
Yeah, there are lots of challenges. In Australia, there's just a huge amount of apathy as well when it comes to thinking about deep human questions. And we're always trying to provoke the imaginations of people to ask these sort of questions. And particularly at CPX, we're trying to look at what are the foundational things that you've build your life on and what does it mean to be a human being? What's the shape of the good life? Where am I going to get meaning and satisfaction and these sorts of things. I don't think Australians have been good at answering those sorts of questions or even addressing them. We're very good at distracting ourselves. There's a sort of superficiality in that way.
It might come from, there was Australian very famous rock band called Midnight Oil, and they had a song called, "Too Much Sunshine." And I've often wondered about that. Australia has a very kind of hedonistic, especially in certain parts of the country approach to life. It's all about the good times and the weekends and being out on your boat or doing whatever it is, fun thing you can do. And there's a sense that people live in pretty, they live a very materially prosperous life here. And it might be that question of if you feel like you're already in heaven, you don't need to think about those sort of questions.
So on the one hand, I'd say that a thin, I've sometimes described it as a thin layer of resentment, but over a sea of apathy, people really are quite apathetic. But on the other hand, we have huge and interesting and sobering statistics on things like loneliness and disaffection and anxiety and suicide rates and all these sorts of things. And I'm always trying to pay attention to those as I sit alongside other stats. And to say that human beings are human beings everywhere, and they do need a big story to belong to, they do need answers to longings that they have. And we feel like, yes, on the one hand you could get depressed about what's happening in terms of a spiritual conversation in Australia, but on the other hand there are great opportunities to talk to people about these things and find ways into the conversation.
I really, really like what John was saying earlier about becoming good listeners, as not just as people working in the work we do, but as a Christian community to really loving the community around you. And you have to know them well to do that. They say two thirds of people in Australia say they don't have a close friend who's a Christian. And that for me is a very telling thing. The need, the opportunity is for Christians to be out in their communities, living lives of service of the common good in order to provoke that, well to do what they should be doing, and also to invite the question of why you live like this or why you're that kind of person? So yeah, I think that there are huge challenges, it'd be silly to kind of play those down, but also-
John Dickson:
But the interesting thing-
Simon Smart:
Great opportunities.
John Dickson:
Well, yeah, on that opportunity side, one of the curious things about Australia, we've talked about the decline of religion, but there's a lot of enduring background belief. It tends to be shut out because of apathy as Simon said.
But there is some interesting data just from 2021, I just called it up as you were talking, Simon, that McCrindle Research conducted in 2021 to find out what people thought about the resurrection. They asked Australians whether they believe in the resurrection, and I've got the data in front of me. Those who were certain it didn't happen in Australia was only 15% certain it didn't happen. Those who think it's really unlikely, 12%. Okay, so let's just add 15 and 12, right? It's 27 or it's 28 with the little points, so 28%. So under a third are skeptical about the resurrection. Those who said, I don't know, 28%. Okay, but the most extraordinary thing from this survey is those who are certain Jesus rose again from the dead, 23% in Australia. Okay, those who think it's possible, Jesus Christ rose from the dead, 20%. So 43% of Australians are open to the resurrection and then another 28 aren't sure. And then you've got this smaller section that's really skeptical.
And the reason I point that out is, if it's true that Australia is the future of America, as in the data in America is about 10 years behind in secularization, it's not all depressing. There's this sort of memory of an echo of Christianity that's still in our culture. That's one of the relics of being a post-Christian culture. There is stuff sitting there ready to be activated. And it might be the case that people have a perception of Christians, as bullies say, but sitting right alongside that perception is the memory that Christians, they're the ones like the Salvos, the Salvation Army who will be feeding the homeless and caring for people and opening hospitals and so on. So there's two Christianity sitting in a post-Christian head-
Simon Smart:
Yeah.
John Dickson:
And it's the easiest thing to activate one or the other of them. The smallest hint that you're a bully Christian will activate this whole perception of Christians as bullies. But the smallest hint of kindness and compassion and other person's centeredness activates this memory. Oh yeah, that's what Christians are like on their best day.
Simon Smart:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
So this brings me to a project that you guys did that is really I think a model in some ways for the engagement that you're talking about. When you're a cultural minority, you're trying to establish who you are and talk about who you are. Now, I can't for the life of me ever remember the name of this project. I call it the good, the bad and the ugly of Christianity. But-
Simon Smart:
Darrell-
Darrell Bock:
What was this project and how was it received? Yeah, go ahead, Simon.
Simon Smart:
Well, first of all, we'll be testing you next time we see to make sure you do know.
Darrell Bock:
I need to remember, you're right. I need to remember. I need to be a good student and remember the title of faith.
Simon Smart:
So our historical documentary called, "For the Love of God: How the Church is Better and Worse Than You Ever Imagined." Is a very large project we took on a few years ago.
Darrell Bock:
Long title too.
Simon Smart:
Long title, but I think it said a lot better or worse might be your little summary to help you remember.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Simon Smart:
And it was a big project we took on because one of the things we noticed is we do a lot of stuff in mainstream media. So we'll write for media all the time and what we got over and over again. I remember John and I used to talk about this, what are we going to do? Because we'd get some responses that we'd say, "Yes, yeah, whatever. Great." But what about the inquisition, the support of slavery, the crusades, the witch trials, the oppression of women, and there was this sort of long list of complaints about Christianity.
Darrell Bock:
So you're saying when you first founded you were doing this effort to say what Christianity is, and this was the pushback you were getting?
Simon Smart:
Exactly. And we looked at each other a few times and said, "Well, it's a long list and it's a valid list. That's a valid list." We had to say that we had to go, well, anyone who knows anything about history knows that there's a point to be made here. But we thought, okay, we've got to take this on. And we did, and I'll let John pick up here, but we thought it was worth answering it. And we did in a very big project that nearly killed all of us-
John Dickson:
Yeah.
Simon Smart:
But we think it was a good one.
John Dickson:
Yeah. So I mean, we went to, I don't know, 15 different countries, took a couple of years to film. Three of us hosted it up front, but there was an army of people behind the scenes putting it together. And in the end, it's for nearly one hour episodes that track through church history asking the question is, would we be better off without Christianity? And the answer is, some forms of Christianity, you betcha.
The project definitely was open and honest about the failures of Christians, and we took our cue from Jesus who said to His disciples, "You hypocrite, why do you look at the spec in someone else's eye when there's a plank or a log in your own eye?" He's saying that to His disciples. So we just felt like it was an attempt to look at the log.
And so we got some criticism from Christians more than anyone else, for being a little too honest about Christian participation in slavery and the crusades and the inquisitions and so on. And we didn't take the easy course of saying, "Oh, they weren't really Christians." Or even worse, "Oh, that was the Catholics." "Oh, those Catholics with their inquisitions and crusades." That's too cheap. You just got to read what Luther wrote about Jews to see he more than made up for time. And then of course the Protestant slave slavers. So that was not an argument.
So we were very honest, but that I hope gave us permission to do good history and not just bash the church and point out that in fact, Christianity gave the world some of the things it loves most. The notion of human rights didn't come from Greece or Rome, certainly didn't come from Thomas Jefferson. It came from the doctrine of the image of God, from the Jewish scriptures through its Christian transposition, the ethic of humility, charity for all, the birth of hospitals, schooling for rich and poor, boys and girls alike. None of these things can have come from Greece and Rome. But they did come from the Judeo-Christian way of looking at the world. And I know the language of Judeo-Christian is fraught now because it sometimes code for white. That's not what we mean at all. It's the Jewish and Christian influence on the world, gave us some beautiful things. And in the end-
Darrell Bock:
Suppose to do these things each other, right?
John Dickson:
Yeah, you do. And I'll let Simon sort of tell the punchline because we had a message in the end.
Simon Smart:
Yeah. So we're absolutely right, and we thought we can tell, but we should be honest about the bad, but tell this really good story that runs parallel all the way through Christian history. We got to tell some great stories we can be very glad of. Everyone can be glad of. But then the punchline was really, and there was an image we used, which was John's. There was a genius move from John. I have to give him all that credit. But it was just-
John Dickson:
Oh, my one moment.
Simon Smart:
No, you've had plenty but this is a good one. I hope I described this well enough to do it justice. But the idea of was a metaphor or an image of a beautiful tune that Jesus writes for the world, "Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you." And the way He not only said it, but lived it out, this servant leadership. And so the images of a glorious composition that Jesus writes and his followers have in various ways tried to play. And sometimes they've played it so discordant and terribly, it's almost unrecognizable from the tune dreadful result, that's true. It's also true that some have fumbled along and tried to play and sometimes played it absolutely beautifully, and we've all benefited as a result. But the key was to say, let's judge that on its best performance and not its worst. And let's point people back to the person who composed the tune. So it was a real attempt to push people to who Jesus is and what was he like and what did he leave for us? And have them ponder that as they weigh up the different aspects of Christians.
Darrell Bock:
And the thing I found interesting about the project is the way it was received, not by the church, but by people outside the church. Talk a little bit about that.
John Dickson:
Pretty well. Pretty well, it got reviewed-
Darrell Bock:
I mean, didn't it end up in theaters across Australia?
John Dickson:
Yeah, it played in, I don't know, 30 theaters.
Simon Smart:
We had 20,000 people buy tickets for that. And then on television.
John Dickson:
And then it was on ABC TV, which is I guess-
Darrell Bock:
Australian Broadcasting Company-
John Dickson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Am I right?
John Dickson:
So it's like the BBC.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
John Dickson:
But people actually watched that channel. So it was a great privilege and it got some good writeups as well. We had some atheist people say, "This is surprisingly good. Maybe Christianity's not as dumb and mean as we thought." Which is a great win.
Darrell Bock:
So you were attempting to be honest and crash a stereotype at the same time, right?
Simon Smart:
Yeah.
John Dickson:
Yeah.
Simon Smart:
Yeah, we were.
Darrell Bock:
And on that, you probably had some success in terms of saying, "Christianity's more complicated than you may have thought." That kind of thing.
Simon Smart:
Absolutely. And Darrell, it's still, we pointed it out, was it four or five years ago now, John? But it's still used a lot, especially in schools in Australia and independent schools, which is a big part of the school sector. It's about 30% of the school sector, I think. It's used a lot there and people still use it in universities and churches and whatever else. And here's my ad for it because you can get on our website.
Darrell Bock:
That's where I was going next. Okay, go for it.
Simon Smart:
You can go get it. You can buy the whole thing or you can use segments. You can just pick up individual segments, none of them are more than 10 minutes. And so they're kind of useful in a whole lot of different contexts. And at the risk of sounding like we're still promoting, I just think it has been received as really useful.
John Dickson:
Well, given I don't work at the Centre for Public Christianity anymore-
Simon Smart:
You can just.
John Dickson:
Let me just say it is phenomenal. I mean, yes, you can buy all four episodes, but actually these guys have released little segments completely free of charge that you can just go to the website and watch tons and tons of segments. And then they've also produced a curriculum that goes with it that you can use and guide people through it. So it's definitely-
Darrell Bock:
And this isn't just about Australian history, this is global Christianity that we're talking about-
John Dickson:
Oh, it's hardly about Australia at all.
Simon Smart:
Yeah, there's a little bit of Australia. No, it's global.
John Dickson:
Little bit of Australia. Yeah.
Simon Smart:
And we interview over 50 true experts in this thing. And we took the approach of let's go to the top people that we can find that we can get access to. And we've got some amazing people in this. And it helped to, I think, give what needed, which was real credibility, who's the best crusade scholar, this sort of stuff. So we really were pleased with how that went because I think we needed the credibility of that.
Darrell Bock:
Well, I think it's an interesting example of a testimony of a group that's a cultural minority speaking up for itself, being honest about what they've been, et cetera, dealing with the perception of Christianity that's out there. I tell people in the States that if you are meeting someone who's never darkened the door of a church, their definition of Christianity is coming from one or two places, the Christians that they know. And you've already cited a statistic that usually that's not very many or what the culture says about Christianity. And then my next question is, how many of you would like your Christianity defined on that basis? And so that becomes the challenge. And so to be who the church is and to be honest about what the church is and to be even self-aware enough to know that that's part of your history, all of that it seems to me is pretty beneficial.
And you guys know how highly I think of the Centre and what it does in Australia and the way it tries to represent Christ and the history of Christianity faithfully. I can say it in the good, the bad and the ugly. And to do it in a way that says, yeah, but what we're really about is this aspirational and real life that Jesus Christ can give to people if you'll really connect with what it is that He's about and come to understand it. And I just see that as extremely valuable in terms of the way in which Christian communities need to function in a context in which they're minority.
I didn't ask one question about Australia, I probably should have asked earlier, but I'm going to cover it now. And that is when it comes to other religions, what's the makeup of Australian? How much is that changing more recently with all the diaspora movement that we see in all parts of the world? What's that look like?
Simon Smart:
Yep.
Darrell Bock:
John's probably got the figures-
Simon Smart:
I've got a few figures here. So it's still a really small part of the religious makeup of the nation. And it's nearly all, a lot of this is through migration. We have very big levels of migration to Australia. So we have Islam is at 3.2% of the population. Those who are Hindu, and these of course are people migrating to Australia on the whole. 2.7%, Hindu, 2.4% Buddhists. There's tiny other percentages. Sikhs… It's quite a, I mean, you get a representation of a big range of different religions, but at this point are still really quite small percentage-wise.
Darrell Bock:
So is that going up over the recent years versus what it used to be?
Simon Smart:
It's going up. And that would be largely through migration.
John Dickson:
Yeah. For example, in census, Hinduism was the fastest growing religion. It wasn't because Hindus are evangelizing because immigration from India.
Darrell Bock:
They're coming in.
John Dickson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And of course the other issue that you all have had in your past that's unique to you all, well maybe it isn't unique, it's the thing that happens in a variety of places. Is your relationship to the aboriginal population and the issues that has raised for you all. Maybe the analogy is the American Indian issue with us here in the States, but I know that that's another issue that triggers reaction in the country.
John Dickson:
Yeah, rightly so. I mean, in some ways it's even worse in Australia than what happened in America. I mean, at least the American founders tried to have treaties with indigenous people in America. I know you didn't keep many of your treaties, to put it mildly-
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
John Dickson:
But we didn't even-
Simon Smart:
Do that.
John Dickson:
Condescend to have any kind of treaty with indigenous people. They were like non-entities in the way we treated them. And there have been lots of attempts to care for them and so on, but we've never made up for what we've done to indigenous people.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. One of the things that stands out to me, and you probably won't like it back, I'm going to bring this up, but is the difference between the way the aborigines were treated in Australia and what I see or since happened in New Zealand.
John Dickson:
Oh, absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And that there's a big difference between the way, basically the same problem was handled in two different contexts.
John Dickson:
Well, the Maori were able to fight back and force the settlers to a treaty. Indigenous people in Australia just weren't able to be in that powerful enough position, and so lost out. And Simon and I would both tell you probably, I don't know how you just voted, but I'm pretty sure how you voted, Simon. There was just a loss of a national referendum to change our constitution to recognize indigenous people and give them a voice to parliament. And sadly, it went down 60/40 against this.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I'm aware of that.
John Dickson:
I don't think we're in a very good position. Weirdly though, Darrell, percentage-wise there are more indigenous Christians than there are non-indigenous Christians in Australia, percentage-wise, as a percentage.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting.
Simon Smart:
It's much higher, isn't it, than the general.
Darrell Bock:
So the missionary impact on the indigenous population is still having an effect.
John Dickson:
Partly that, and partly there was a big indigenous run revival in the 1970s throughout Australia. Some indigenous evangelists went nuts and loads of people became Christians and it's continuing to bear fruit. So God has been-
Darrell Bock:
What's the aboriginal population in Australia? Is that a question I can ask?
John Dickson:
It's tiny. Yeah, it's only about 4%. Depends how one counts it. And people are more or less willing to say they've got indigenous heritage. So it's a little bit difficult, but it's around 4%.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting.
John Dickson:
So it's nothing like the 18% of say African Americans.
Darrell Bock:
Right.
John Dickson:
I think it's about 18%. Is that somewhere?
Darrell Bock:
Well, it's slightly small. I mean, the tricky thing in the US of course is you've got the African Americans and you've got the Hispanics and the Hispanic minority population is bigger now than the African American population, but the African American population has all the history behind it in terms of the impact on the nation. So that's the dynamic of what goes on here.
Well, I just want to thank you all for helping us get a glimpse of Australia and what's behind it and a little bit about what the Centre for Public Christianity does and CPX as we love to call it. And by the way, Simon, where do you get access to those segments? I didn't give you a chance to tell people that.
Simon Smart:
Yeah, so publicchristianity.org is our website. You can find it all there. We have huge public library there of written and video material, audio material-
Darrell Bock:
All kinds of stuff.
Simon Smart:
All kinds of stuff. If you look for the document-
John Dickson:
We've even got Texans. We've got some Texans.
Darrell Bock:
I know, I'm tuck to away in some corners of that.
Simon Smart:
You can find Darrell if you look hard enough. And also probably worth saying Life & Faith Podcast, which we do every week. I'm sure you've been on that, Darrell, which we are proud of. We think it's a good podcast that you can always send to your friend, your uncle, your daughter, your sister who's not a believer, and look out for things that you think they might be interested in that. And that's the distinctive thing about what we do. Everything we produce when we're speaking to that microphone, pick up the pen, start to write, we're trying to write for that friend of yours who's not yet convinced. So that's worth saying.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, and that's another thing that I think I really appreciate is, is that you're very attuned to the non-believing audience as you do what you do. And that's a skill that the church desperately needs to pick up on. So thank you again for the time and for the willingness to update us. John, the more I see you keep your eye on the National Football League, the more I realize I have to appreciate Aussie rules football. Anyway. So thank you guys for being a part of this. We thank you for being a part of The Table, and we hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to see other episodes of The Table, that's voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast where you can see one of almost 600 episodes that we've made over the last decade.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas. And our topic today is the Urban Church, Understanding Your Neighbor in the Urban Church. And my guest is Zion McGregor, who is a contributing writer and author to an award-winning book co-known as Urban Apologetics. And you can go ahead and hand it to me here. I'll flash it at the camera. Urban Apologetics: Restoring Black Dignity with the Gospel. It's edited by Eric Mason, who is a graduate of the seminary here at Dallas. But Zion is a graduate of Southwestern, showing that we don't show preferences, that kind of thing. THM at Liberty. He's well-traveled, and a church planter at Mission City Church in Grand Prairie, Texas. And Zion, it is a real pleasure to have you with us today.
Zion McGregor:
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Darrell Bock:
Glad to do it. So my opening question to someone who's new to the table is how did a nice guy like you get in a gig like this? So tell us about your background and how you ended up being interested in this topic.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. Born and raised in the African American church and in the Baptist tradition of the National Baptist Convention was called to Ministry in '95 while in college, and along the way just matriculated in my learning and development, went to seminary, met Blake Wilson, my pastor, and through Blake I was able to connect with Eric Mason.
We began to build a relationship, and just organically really, many of the people that are in the book organically, we were all beginning to be sensitive to what was happening around the country with some of what we'll be talking about with various black religious identity cults. And we would individually begin to read and study. And just organically, Eric Mason reached out to me and asked me if I would contribute. And I've been a part of Urban Apologetics ever since.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So I mean, normally when we think of apologetics, we think about the defense of the faith and those kinds of questions, but you put urban before the word apologetics and that raises it. Well what in the world does that mean? Let's talk about the urban church first for a second. When we talk about the urban church, what exactly are we talking about and why is it important to understand the urban church and kind of the experience that urban churches go through?
Zion McGregor:
Right. Historically, the term urban usually speaks to city settings and whatnot as opposed to rural. We don't know when or how or why, but urban began, as related to the church, began to be code language for black and brown churches. But what really I would say the urban church speaks to are churches that really are engaged in more of the inner city work. And that can be a black church, white church, the ethnicity really doesn't matter. It just for whatever reason has become code. So that's the first thing I would say. So the urban church is really those churches that are in these urban settings that are trying to basically engage the communities with the gospel and as it relates to, is that the right term or whatnot, I mean that's debatable. In my context, we use urban to denote black and brown situations, but I'm sure you will find, like anything, people of all spectrums, some will have a problem with it, some won't.
Darrell Bock:
So it really is dealing with inner city issues. And I take it that generally speaking, inner city churches are dealing with a full array of black brown experience in such a way that's a little bit distinct from say the average if we say suburban church that we think about. So talk about that a little bit. What's the nature of that difference?
Zion McGregor:
Well, some of the differences with the more urban context is that these are urban contexts where there tends to be a little bit more. First of all, the tax bracket is different. And so the economic situation is one that like with anything else presents challenges to just day-to-day life. These challenges eventually have a tendency to spiral out and cause one to either gravitate toward faith, or have an hostility toward faith and religion because of their circumstances.
So that's kind of what's at the root of it. We really don't have to go through the various challenges. I mean that's pretty documented as to if you're in a poor community. But not all urban churches are poor. You have an urban context that can be urban and middle class. But the challenges even in the climate that we're living in as the Christianity is in retreat in the West, we're finding challenges in the urban context more and more unique within black and brown spaces.
Darrell Bock:
And so even if you are in a middle class church because of your family and background, et cetera, that tends to reach in oftentimes into the inner city? I mean the break isn't total, is it?
Zion McGregor:
Say it again.
Darrell Bock:
So even if a church is a middle class urban church, because of the family situations that exist in many cases, there's not a total break necessarily from the background that many people have come out of to reach the middle class.
Zion McGregor:
Right. What is happening to the issues that we try to address is in those settings, forces come from outside to recruit, for example. So a person will come in and we'll get into some of this, I've got some stories, and they'll begin to just try to proselytize. And then that worldview begins to migrate and spread like a virus into those spaces.
Darrell Bock:
So we've isolated three issues. I'm sure there are more, but one is called Hebrew Israeliteism, which may be completely new to a lot of people or Israelism. And then what we might call liberation movements, which tend to also get into class discussions, and then divination and witchcraft. Those are the three areas that we've zoomed on that we want to talk about. So you talk about recruiters coming in. When I hear recruiters, I'm either thinking sports, or maybe the military. You have something else in mind.
Zion McGregor:
Right. Oh, go ahead.
Darrell Bock:
No, go ahead.
Zion McGregor:
So what we have happening right now within the African American context and in the Latino context are what's black Hebrew Israelites. Some camps prefer to be called just Hebrew Israelites. They actually find the reference to being black offensive. They completely reject it. So that should be known. And what has happened is when I say recruit, I mean that because of their worldview and what they believe, they really believe that they are the true descendants of the Old Testament biblical Israelites. And because of that belief, they feel compelled to go out and say, everyone that looks like me, I have to tell them this also. And so they're going out and they're recruiting as a result of that. And that's what I mean by recruiting. They're going out and they're trying to proselytize, it's their form of evangelism. They go to barbershops, they go to blocks on the city, and just wherever they can engage someone, they try to do that.
Darrell Bock:
And so what is it that they believe and why is it important to proselytize in this direction in their mind?
Zion McGregor:
So what they believe again is that they believe that they are the Israelites of the Old Testament. And there are probably 15 different camps. They continue to splinter, most notably here recently in our culture, you've seen events with Kanye West and with Kyrie Irving, there was a group called IUIC. IUIC is probably the most organized, most disciplined branch of the Hebrew Israelite camps. And they believe, again, that they're Israelites. And as a result, now that's the commonality. And they draw largely from Deuteronomy 28. They read Deuteronomy 28 as a prophecy. Because in Deuteronomy 28 it talks about where Moses, it really contextually begins in Deuteronomy 27 and it goes through 29, but they don't have a very good hermeneutic at all. And so they don't really know how to read the text properly. But from Deuteronomy 28, they draw from where Moses just basically warns them, hey, if you do not abide by the law of God, you'll be put on ships and you'll be carried over into slavery, things of this nature.
And so they read into that African American history through the transatlantic slave trade, and they just assume that this is talking about us. The transatlantic slave trade fulfills this prophecy, therefore this is who we really are. And this is why they in some cases, hate African Americans, because they completely mentally have disassociated themselves being from that. And so they don't even being referred to as African, they're not African, they're not black, they are Hebrews Israelites, full stop.
And so from that point on, it varies in terms, the beliefs breakdown. None of the camps hold a Trinitarian view obviously, they all have a oneness, sabellian Arius type view of God. You have extremes. You have very moderate Hebrew Israelite camps that you can dialogue with. And then you have very violent extreme groups. They all would deny that. But you do have that.
Darrell Bock:
So what's to be gained from this identity? Is it just the separation that it produces? What's the payoff of understanding supposedly who you are?
Zion McGregor:
For black religious identity cults, the real payoff is really a crisis of identity. And we're having this across America, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote an article about a crisis of boys and men in America. Scott Galloway, a PhD out of New York who deals with marketing in digital marketing and digital spaces. He says in his book, Adrift that we have an identity crisis in America. David Gergen, who served five presidents talked about several years ago in an article about an essay he wrote that there was a crisis of leadership in America. For black religious identity cults, it is an identity crisis. And the payoff is I now find identity in this. And so that's the real palp at the root that now I know who I am because of slavery. They don't deny that they've come that way, but they just say, well, we were mixed in with Africans, but we are the true Hebrew Israelites for those who believe it. And we now have our identity because America stripped us of our tongue. America stripped us of our language.
And so this is really kind of the root really at all of the black religious identity cults. What they all have in common is this sense that when they look at the African American experience in America historically, they feel that that America has raped those who were walked from the interior of Africa to the west coast of Africa, brought over by slave trades and just literally taken everything from them. And so what the payoff is, the belief that I have finally found who I am. And so that's the real payoff, a sense of identity.
Darrell Bock:
So I have that sense of identity. I'm just going to draw this out a little more. I have this sense of identity and that gives me self understanding, that gives me dignity, that gives me pride. Is that what the payoff is?
Zion McGregor:
It gives me all of that. It gives me a new world view. I see myself differently, and now since I now feel that I have a sense of where I come from and who I am, now I can move forward, whatever that looks like. The thing that's interesting, I go back to IUIC for example. If you look at that doctrine, they tend to be like most cults, very shrouded. You have to really get in to learn the deeper diggings. But you will see where Bishop Nathaniel, who's starting to get a little bit more attention now, who's the leader of IUIC, I don't know if he's still now, but he used to be a New York police officer, New York City police officer. But you can see where he has been taking from Jehovah's Witness, taking from the nation of Islam, taking from Christianity, taking from Judaism and just kind of on the fly constructing this theology. And so it's still kind of developing out, I shouldn't say theology, but this worldview. But that's kind of what it all comes to.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so that's the Israeliteism or Israelism. You said black identity cults. So I take there's more than one. So let me throw in one that we didn't mention we were going to talk about, but just see what you can tell us about it. And that's black Muslims, the whole black Muslim movement. I take it as another example of a black identity cult.
Zion McGregor:
It is. It's a black religious identity cult. And to kind of give some framing to that, black speaks of just the universal commonality that they share. Religious is the spiritual distinctive that they subscribe to. Identity is the dignifying characteristics that give meaning in place to the person. And then the cult is that which emerges as the expression of those beliefs. So that's what makes a black religious identity cult. And so yes, the nature of Islam, for example, would be one or the Moorish Science Temple that was established in the late 19th century by Noble Drew Ali. These are examples. You also have Kemet African spirituality, which is a dead religion out of Egypt. So these are some examples. The nation of Islam is in decline. It's been declined because it has aged with Lewis Farrakhan.
Many people don't know, but Louis Farrakhan's in his late 80s. And so he hasn't made a significant address in 20 years. And so kind of like with an aging church, an aging pastor, the nation of Islam has aged with Farrakhan, and as he's aged, it has lost its momentum it once had. Creation will not tolerate a vacuum. As their pursuit and influence began to decline and wane, it gave space for black Hebrew Israelites to rise, because that movement has actually been around longer than the nation of Islam. The nation of Islam began in 1934. Hebrew Israelites came about in the late 19th century, but they've never been able to get momentum in the African American community until really the internet, more than anything else has played the biggest role in their rise.
Darrell Bock:
So the interesting thing of course is that you have a black identity movement that goes in the direction of identifying with names that come out of the Old Testament, and then you got black Muslims which come in a direction that identifies with a religion that has nothing to do with Christianity. But I'm assuming that both of these are pushbacks on traditional Christianity. Am I reading that right or is that unrelated to the way things work?
Zion McGregor:
It's a 1A and a 1B. One sense, it is a rejection of Christianity because they believe Christianity's the white man's religion. And the 1B part is again, kind of going back to the way that they see America's treatment of people of color more than anything else is what drives them away from the gospel.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So that raises all kinds of questions. Probably it's its own entire podcast, but I'll introduce it now anyway. And that is, it's probably pretty important for everybody to understand the history that stands behind this sense of alienation that exists. Is that a fair statement to make?
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
Because my sense is that whereas this is very real for large portions of the black community, they know their history. They know what they've been through on the one hand, for many whites that part of history is almost like if it exists, it's almost like a thin shadow or a fog. It's not anything that's in focus. And yet it has helped form the dynamics that exist within large portions of the black community in the United States. Fair?
Zion McGregor:
Fair. Very much so. Eric Mason said it best, the black church exists because the white church failed to be. And when you look at the rise of the AME church as a result of Richard Allen just not being able to pray, I think today we are mature enough, the culture has kind of caught up a little bit more with the gospel to where we will say who stops someone from praying? That seems absurd now. But we have to understand in this historic context, because of the social dynamic, the social dynamic had the church in the case where it was the tail wagging the dog that we have to police the social standards even in the church. And so you had secular really doctrines of demons as Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:1, imposing themselves within the body of Christ and the body of Christ embraced it and behavior changed.
And racism has been so devastating to the sharing of the gospel to all parties, those who oppressed and played a role in dispensing it. And those who are on the receiving end. It's just been very harmful and prayerfully, hopefully the church will eventually come to a place where we can get past the differences just in how we look and see one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. And if we could ever do that and deport ourselves with the love that Jesus calls us to in John 13 verse 34, we would have a greater impact. The country would look different.
Darrell Bock:
Well, one of the ways I think about this, I was a history major in college, so history is important to me as just a discipline in the humanities. But one of the things that I think I see is that when you understand the history, and when you understand how the history of certain events has wounded certain people and wounded certain communities, that actually is a very important thing to understand about the dynamics of what's going on. I mean, it's created the sense of alienation that leads to this pursuit of dignity.
I sometimes say that there was such a long time in which black people were not treated as full people and they were almost invisible or seen more as objects than people, that that impacts the psychology of a community. And some of the pushback is involved in saying, I not only deserve to be noticed, I demand to be noticed.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And in that then you get all these dynamics that gum up relationships which have been produced in part by the history that one side has very much experienced and felt, and the other side is almost oblivious to.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
So that produces the challenges so that handled in the right way, it isn't a competing history, it's a history to be understood and appreciated for what it has generated in terms of now use of figure of speech in terms of shrapnel, in terms of damage that has come as a result of what's taken place.
Zion McGregor:
Yeah. African-American history is American history. It is an impossibility to separate the two. We know we're in the midst of a cultural fight over CRT and I have yet to hear a coherent definition. Different camps construct their own definition to suit the argument they want to make. But again, I think for the Christian, it's important for us to understand how history has played a role in the acceptance and rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is at the root of my concern, the root of our concern is that we know that it is not God's will that anyone should perish.
And so it's important that, as I say in the book, what you believe matters because there's eternal consequence tied to it. And so our goal is to try to make a defense of the Christian faith to the objections held by African Americans because they have said, "Well, if you are a Christian and you are a Caucasian European and you treat me like this, whatever that is, I don't want it." And what we're just trying to do is trying to help them to one, get a proper understanding of what Christianity really is, and how it is supposed to be deported, and to kind of just show that it's not everybody. And so that's part of the effort of what we're trying to do.
Darrell Bock:
I see. So really urban apologetics, just to come back to that term for a second, is a way of defending the faith in the midst of these kinds of challenges. Is that right?
Zion McGregor:
Yes. It's to the unique questions and objections that African Americans who oppose Christianity have, our goal is to address those questions, give sound intelligent answers, well-reasoned answers so that we can kind of disarm them of the ignorance that really shapes their view.
Darrell Bock:
And the same is true the brown church with the marginalization that sometimes happens in a Latino community.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, well that's helpful. Well, I think that sort of helps us with the black Hebrew Israelite issue. Let me turn our attention to another one which we've labeled liberal theology or Liberation Theology. Now this one's tricky, because it comes from within the scripture, it emphasizes the themes of justice and liberation, which certainly are part of the scriptures and are part of what is taught. It is rooted in a concern that says, the way in which God has built us means that we should be concerned with what's going on around us in the society. The original calling of men and women in Genesis one was to manage the creation well in all its spheres and to walk in a way that honored God and that honored others made in God's image.
So there's rootage here that is biblical and there's a lot of biblical language that shows up in the conversation. So talk a little bit about your take on liberation theology and on what we might also call a liberal theology because it tends to be selective in what it emphasizes out of scripture, and to diminish some features of the scripture that are also there.
Zion McGregor:
So liberation theology as introduced by late Dr. James Cone is one of the fruits of liberal theology. Liberal theology is born out of the Enlightenment from Friedrich Schleiermacher as we know, for those who don't know. And what has happened, in the African American Church, liberation theology is not what it once was. It's been seen by some or the way that over time kind of matured out. It kind of became more of a victimized theology in terms of the thinking. And that's why it really, people outside the American church may think, oh, black churches do liberal racial theology. Absolutely not. I didn't know about liberation theology till I came to seminary, and that's just because it never really took whole because it situated the individual too much as a victim. And that left a bad taste, particularly merging out of the civil rights movement and people finally getting some rights in a sense, now we can do some things that maybe we haven't done. They were not looking for this victimized mindset. And so it didn't really take, although it does linger and there are pastors who subscribe to it and practice it.
Jeremiah Wright was one of them. And in fact, he was a Cone disciple in many respects and those who followed. But when I talk about liberal theology and its impact on the African American church is that what has emerged here now amongst my generation, amongst some, those would be colleagues and contemporaries for myself is more what Schleiermacher and what would come from him and the influence of David Hume Immanuel Kant. That has come to be more and more realized in the black church now, not overwhelmingly, but I would say maybe 10 to 15%, which is for me is a big number amongst African American churches. You're having clergy who are beginning to say things who one, start one with a high view of naturalism and a diminished view of scripture. So they don't realize when you talk to them, the ones I've spoken to, they don't know who David Hume is, but they're echoing a diminished view in the miraculous.
That's one thing. So a diminished view of the scriptures. Secondly, you have in some of these spaces you have, there are two or three preachers that come to mind within the African American context that are advancing the idea of salvific inclusivity, that Jesus is not the only way to be saved. And they're rejecting the exclusivity of Christ and salvation through Jesus alone. And so now you'll hear them say things like, who's to say that you can't worship our lie and be saved or you can't be a Buddhist. But I hear them say that, I know that they're not well read because Hinduism and Buddhism are non-theistic faith of religions. So they don't even know that part. But that's what I mean when I really talk about liberal theology because it's rising in the way that we haven't heard before.
Darrell Bock:
Well, the framing that I'm used to seeing and hearing is this kind of, I'm going to go slaves, women, sexuality, that kind of intersection where the inclusivity is not necessarily just religious, but it's also social to some degree, and where the overhang… Liberation theology comes out of Latin America, and it isn't in part of the American context, but what is shared is this oppressed, oppressor, oppressed, right? Binary, which is the major lens through which people approach the space. So you intersect those two things, people who have been marginalized, people who have been pushed to the side, people who've been taken advantage of however you want to express it and put it next to their discovering their identity, discovering their rights, and pushing for that combination with this idea of being inclusive. You put that all together. One, it fits the spirit of our age.
And then secondly, it obviously is not interacting in a full way with all that the scripture says. And it isn't that the scripture says. And it isn't that the scripture doesn't have a concern for issues of justice and how we operate in our society. It certainly does. But the question is what do human beings need in order to function well in society? And one of the things that they need is to be properly related to the living God and to recognize their need for God in order to put themselves in a position to think outside themselves, interact with other people whose situation may be different than their own.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. Absolutely. To your point about slavery, women, children, that is something that too, to in the 80s, feminist theology first then womanist theology came in the 90s emerged, and they kind of took the philosophy of feminism and they took the blueprint of black liberation theology from Cone and kind of began to build out their own, I, forgive me, I can't call it theology in good conscience, but they began to build out their own philosophy with religious overtones and religious vocabulary over time. But again, what this type of liberalism in the African American context is also tied to, similar to the black religious identity cults is a sense of oppression. This is just a really common thread with frustrations within the African American context and emerging more amongst Latino seminarians and whatnot, and thinkers who are now looking more critically at their journey in America. And they're beginning to talk and write, and it's beginning to expand there as well.
Darrell Bock:
So the challenge becomes identifying something that is a part of the history and that has produced its effects, many of them destructive and many of them painful, and understanding the impact of that. Because when you dismiss that impact, the danger is then a person who's been on, how can I say that? On the short end of the stick in terms of that history, we'll say, well, you have no sensitivity to what I've been through at all.
Zion McGregor:
Right. I do want to say that with all that we've covered that these are still very much though they're rising, this is still for the African American church, these are still minority spaces. They're not the mainstream,.
Darrell Bock:
But they're competing spaces.
Zion McGregor:
They are competing spaces. They're absolutely competing spaces. I think it has to be said that the African American church is still overwhelmingly very, I don't use the language conservative, but I will say it's very orthodox instilling values from Dr. Tony Evans to Dr. James Meeks, to Dr. Crawford Loritts, to Blake Wilson, Eric Mason, Jerome Gay, and Brandon Watts, Brandon Washington, all of these others, myself, still preach and teach a crystal centric gospel. We still preach about the triune God, we still preach about family. Tony Evans and Dr. Loritts have done so much in writing and series on family, and that's still the norm overwhelmingly amongst African-American pastors. It is, as I said, black liberation theology going just to touch back on that again was never the predominant view. And I don't think that people know that. And that's why I want to kind of reiterate and say that for those outside the African American context, that has never been the predominant teaching in the black church.
Darrell Bock:
And now I'm going to problematize this a little bit, but the role of sometimes some segments of our media are to pick up on those outside voices and lift them up and give them more attention. And the voice, even though it's a minority voice within the community, becomes a louder voice.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. Yeah. Especially in the climate that we're living in with age of sound bites, it can be seen, I remember when the Jeremiah Wright snippet was leaked, when then Senator Barack Obama was running for president, you would've thought that that was norm everywhere. Now what he said, have I heard that before in my lifetime from the pulpit? Yes. But it is not the norm as people would think it is. And the way that it's expressed and framed.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. The way you ended that's really important. I mean, on the one hand, the entirety of the black community has had to deal with this history and what it's meant for the African American community through its history. I've heard, as you've mentioned, Tony Evans and Crawford Loritts and Eric, I've heard them speak to this directly, but how they frame it is very, very different than the framing that you get when it's coming out of a James Cone, for example. And it isn't just to say this, it isn't that there are observations that James Cone is making about the nature of this history and what took place that can be ignored, that it's there, but then how you frame it, how you spin it, how you present it, what you think the way out of it is, all those kinds of things, those are other conversations.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
I often say when we get into this space, it's one thing to analyze the nature of the problem. It's another thing to think about what solves the problem that we find ourselves in. And that sometimes the analysis of the nature of the problem is something where we can get at least more agreement on than perhaps what the solution should be. And it's the solutions that produce the debates.
Zion McGregor:
Yes, absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And sometimes when we don't distinguish that, when we treat it all as one, we actually mess up the conversation.
Zion McGregor:
Right, absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And you know mentioned CRT earlier, that's one of the things that's happening I think in the CRT discussion, is that one, you've got people using the term in very different ways, with different meanings. For some people it's a positive term. For some people it's a negative term. It's like the term woke. For some people, the term's positive, some people the term's negative. And then depending on that starting point, you literally can be talking past one another because you're not talking about the same thing.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. And I think that's one of the byproducts of post-modernity, and when you start talking about the populist secular new age, live your truth, and people don't realize how dangerous that is, and do you want the pedophile to live their truth? Is that the kind of society we want? These are hard teachings, and we could go into other things, I mean, do you want the serial killer to live his truth? That's how extreme, that may seem extreme, but that's how it begins to spiral out.
Darrell Bock:
Well, once you lose a sense of what's true and what's false and you lose any effort to pursue common ground, that's where you end up, it's like the absence of honor and shame. You lose a sense of honor and shame when you dissolve standards. That's the result.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
So those are two of the areas. The third area that we want to have, I'm trying to manage our time here is something completely different. And to me, when I was thinking about this and how to approach it, I was thinking divination in witchcraft in that whole area, the way in which the spiritual world is perceived in the urban church reminds me of trips I have taken to parts of the world, say Guatemala or Haiti, where I see these, I don't know what other word to use, this kind of syncretistic view of the spirit world at work.
And I saw things in Guatemala that I would never see or rarely see in the United States, but they've been imported in one sense, or at least are part of the same world as that is. Because once you get to the point of the rationalist says, well, none of that, you're just in a fantasy world. But then theology says, no, there are spirits, they're real, there are challenges that are real. And so now the question is, all right, now how do I balance this? So talk a little bit about the role of divination in witchcraft in the black church.
Zion McGregor:
So it's not necessarily present in the black church, but in the black community, it is one of these fringe marginalized movements that's beginning to get a little of attention, mainly amongst African American women. There is for whatever reason, and similar to the black religious identity cults, and it falls into that space in that when you ask what led you to this, identity always comes up, a connection back to the spirit realm that for them has not been stained by the fingerprints of white people. And then also it's tied to what their lived experience thus far has been like nothing else has worked for me.
Many of them, ironically within our context, come out of the Episcopal and Catholic church that we're finding that are beginning to take interest. When you ask them, well, what was your background growing up? You'll say, well, I was Episcopal or I was Catholic. You don't hear as much Baptist or Methodist, though there are some that will say, oh, I came from the Baptist church, or I came from AME church. They're rarer. But you'll hear Episcopalian, Catholic, and you will hear that they're coming out of usually apostolic churches also. Which tend to have what W.E.B. Du Bois called the frenzy, just the charismatic worship. But for them it was always something deep for this prophecy happening and whatnot. And that just kind of helped play a role to lead into other things. Well,
Darrell Bock:
I think what I'm hearing that's consistent across all this, there is an acceptance of, and two, a recognition that dealing with the reality of the spiritual world is a part of religious experience that has to be taken seriously. And then the question is, all right, how in the world do you get your hands around this and understand what's going on in areas where all the forces that you're talking about are unseen?
Zion McGregor:
Yeah. To your first statement, that is very much a large part of it because when you look at, or if you talk to someone in these spaces, candles, crystals have become popular, burning sage, creating potions. And a lot of this ultimately is for many of them to one gives them, again, a sense of identity, but also they believe that this praying to ancestors,
Darrell Bock:
There's a way of getting some control
Zion McGregor:
In your life. There's a way of getting control and changing your reality. So if I drink a potion, I can get this person to love me that I want to marry, or I can maybe have money come my way. So all of this, and that's what makes it witchcraft, divination, is that they're trying to find a way to have an experience without God. They don't necessarily think of it quite like that. Because they talk about ancestors and spirituality, but they're really trying to move in a way kind of like those at the Tower of Babbel, we're going to make our name great without God. And that's kind of what all of that space attempts to do.
Darrell Bock:
So you're saying this is part of the reality on the fringes of the urban context outside, mostly outside the church, but it's all these things that we've described, and this is maybe the way to land this plane, all these forces that we described put pressure on the church in terms of how it represents itself in the midst of this environment.
Zion McGregor:
That's exactly right. And the challenge for the church is to, unfortunately not enough churches are seeing these as a big enough threat. We're not responding fast enough. A little known fact that in 1974, for example, a Hebrew Israelite went into a church, shot a deacon and shot a woman in Oregon. Her name was Alberta King, and it was Martin Luther King Jr's mother. He was shot, she was shot and killed by a Hebrew Israelite. This is the kind of, and I think back, that was 1974, where was the AME church? Where was the Nash Baptist Convention? Where were these churches to say, to not treat it as a one-off in fringe, but to say, wait a minute, what is it that this person believed? Because in his deposition he said that my beliefs in Hebrew Israelism led me to my actions. Because he wanted to punish her for giving birth to Martin Luther King Jr. But again, the thinking behind it, the worldview behind it shaped it. So this can get dangerous.
Darrell Bock:
And when you're saying the churches aren't taking this seriously enough, what you're saying is predominantly the Black Urban Church isn't taking this seriously. Now this is an issue within the community they need to be aware of, but I'm thinking in the back of my mind, well, if the Black Urban Church is being slow to respond, the rest of the church is probably even less aware of what's going on here.
Zion McGregor:
I think that one of the problems that we have is that we do not think Christianly about our corporate identity. I think an assault on a church is an assault on the church. This is my conviction and the circle that I run in, it's not merely… Christians should be alarmed at the assault on the body of Christ, the assault on people who need the gospel. It should be the business of us all to prioritize at least making a defense of the faith if we're not evangelizing, which if it wasn't for church plants in America, all the data from Nam to Barna to Pew Research, if it wasn't for church plants, the gospel wouldn't be shared in America. Church plants lead in that area, but the issue that we're facing within the African American context, in Latino context, Santa Maria is a issue for them that's growing.
But if it's long, as long as it's looked at as that's your issue and not our issue, it will continue to be a growing threat. And what is beginning to happen. One of the tactics, and I just want to share this, IUIC has been conducting since Easter of this year, what they're calling a church blitz, where they're targeting churches and they're going outside the churches before the churches are dismissed, and they are bombarding them with, they're trying to get people pamphlets, they're trying to talk to people, they got loud speakers and they're trying to, what are you doing here? You came out, and they've hit locally-
Darrell Bock:
That's how the recruiting works.
Zion McGregor:
That's one aspect. But the part of the Blitz one is a marketing stunt, honestly, because they record, they use their cell phones.
Darrell Bock:
To just get attention.
Zion McGregor:
They're just trying to get attention and kind of expand their brand just here locally in Dallas, they've gone out to the Potters House, they've been out to several churches in Dallas Fort Worth. There's actually a video. They went to Oak Cliff, but the ministers of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship came out and met them and they left quietly. But that's a church, that's a rare case. The discipleship when the Dr. Evans is probably a different kind of discipleship than in many spaces, and they were well-equipped, the ministers, and they were able to handle it quite well. But this again, has to be, and I just wish this was across the board that the church, if we would just see, not see your problem, my problem, but our problem, I think that America would look drastically different than what it does right now.
Darrell Bock:
And part of that involves conversations like the ones we're having of just becoming better aware of one another, by which I mean in particular, people who are in predominantly white churches, having a better understanding of what the minority experience is, that just having a sense of the issues that each community faces that are challenges for it and challenges for believers in those communities that may not be at all anything I might face on a regular basis, but that I absolutely need to be aware of in order to understand what my brother or sister in Christ is going through.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That just has to be, as you said, conversations that have to happen. But the problem with that is though we've been saying that since pre-Emancipation proclamation.
Darrell Bock:
Which means that the one with ears needs to let them hear. I mean, I often say that the first step in good conversations is to actually do a pretty good job of listening. And so sometimes we go into a conversation wanting, well, I've got this content that I want to make sure you get, but before I get to that stage, it might be better for me to stop and listen and get a reading on what's driving you and why, so that I'm in a better position to actually be responsive rather than demanding, for example.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. I think just one solution is something that, I don't think it's ever been the norm in America amongst the church, but I think that every African American pastor, and every Caucasian pastor needs to have a real relationship with their counterpart, I don't care if you have coffee once a month and agree to have peaceable, and there'll be times when you disagree, but to be able to have all conversations on the table, we can talk about anything. Let me hear you, and allow me to be heard so that we can then prayerfully hopefully, guided by the word of God, come to solutions that benefit the body of Christ ultimately.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And those conversations are important. I mean, this is something we've worked to try and promote at the center, to try and get people in dialogue to do several, we've tried to do several podcasts like this where we've had these cross community conversations really in many ways, and to try and listen for what it is that is initially unfamiliar. Because what a lot of people do when they meet with unfamiliarity is, they step back and say, "Oh, I don't know if I want to go there and take the time that it takes to get familiar with this and to have an appreciation for it," that kind of thing. And so there becomes a silence that actually is debilitating.
And so part of what we're trying to do is to say, no, these conversations are worth having. These are things worth being aware of learning about, et cetera, because there's a segment of the body of Christ that's directly impacted by what's happening, and it's important to understand where that impact is coming from, what the challenges are and how the gospel speaks into it. So in your mind, so to wrap up. If you were to say, so how does the gospel speak into this in your mind, how would you say or how would you describe what the calling of the church should be in the midst of these challenges?
Zion McGregor:
I think the calling of the church should be what it's always been. That's a call in Ephesians 2 for us to be one man. For every one passage that Paul writes about justification, there are five passages on unity. And Ephesians 4 comes to mind, a whole chapter where he's driving home the point of how important unity is. And as long as there is division in the church, it's just going to continue to be a challenge. But the gospel calls us to see one another the way God sees us, and to deport ourselves with the type of agape love that enables us to be living sacrifices for my brother, my sister. That's why the Bible has all that familial language of family. And wherever there is a need, as we see in Acts 2 and 4 that we collectively work to meet that need to solve that problem, that's what the gospel has always called us to do. We have failed as the body of Christ over almost 2,000 years to rightly and consistently deport ourselves in that manner.
Darrell Bock:
Well, Zion, I want to thank you for taking the time to come in and talk with us about issues that are unique to the Urban Church and the challenges that faces. We thank you for the kind of ministry that you're trying to plan in churches and others like you. We thank you for the work that you're doing, and we really appreciate you taking the time to be with us on The Table.
Zion McGregor:
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Darrell Bock:
And we're glad you could join us on The Table. We hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to see other episodes of The Table, we have over 500 of them. voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast will take you to the list, and we hope to see you again soon.
Bill Hendricks:
Hello, my name is Bill Hendricks. I am the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and it's my privilege to welcome you to The Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. If you're a parent or a grandparent of anyone who is 15 years of age or younger, or you work with that demographic, perhaps you're a teacher, a Sunday school teacher, a youth worker, and you're working with adolescents, young teens, and below, children, this podcast is for you because today we want to talk about Generation Alpha, as it's called.
When we talk about Generation Alpha, of course, we're talking about children. So we all tend to think back to our own childhood, which is fine because these are children. They're going to experience the normal things that children experience, except they're also going to experience a world that, for many of us, if best, it may be lived in science fiction when we were growing up and in cartoons, but now it's reality. They're growing up into a world that will be filled with virtual reality, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. There's talk of humans returning to the moon, perhaps even Mars and beyond. Frankly, the increasing intermingling of humans with machines boggles the mind to think about.
That raises a very interesting point for Christ followers, and particularly for the church trying to work with families. How do we minister to this Generation Alpha? And to help us really go deep in thinking about that? I am so honored to welcome Janine McNally today, who is the founder and director of Grace4Kidz. Grace4Kidz exists to produce resources for children's ministries that offer clear presentations and applications of the gospel for Generation Alpha. Janine, welcome to The Table podcast.
Janine McNally:
Thank you so much. I'm very pleased to be here.
Bill Hendricks:
I'm pleased to have you here. I came across a resource that you had put together recently that was sent to me, and as soon as I saw it, I said, "Wow, this lady's really onto something important." Because I think we have to really think differently now as we raise this next generation. I'm an aging baby boomer. We used to worry, "Oh, here's Gen X coming along." And then, "Oh yeah, but there's the millennials." And about the time we started to come to grip with maybe how to minister to them, it's like, "Yeah, but don't forget Gen Z." And now here we are already at the age of what for many boomers or grandkids, Gen Alpha.
Janine McNally:
Yep.
Bill Hendricks:
I need to just point out to our folks what qualifies you to speak into this. Janine is a DTS grad, by the way. Got her THM here at Dallas Seminary, where she also met her husband, Gary, and she's taught high school and worked with youth in Australia, which is where she hails from. She and her husband planted a church in New Jersey, then also pastored a church with her husband in Pennsylvania, and was a director of children's ministry in Colorado at a church there that she and her husband had planted. So she's got this whole background in church planting, but particularly with an emphasis on youth. They now live in Florida. Janine, tell us a little bit about your background. I mentioned you're from Australia, but that's a long way away from here in Dallas, Texas, where I live. Tell me a little bit about your background growing up, how you entered the ministry, and ultimately decided to found Grace4Kidz.
Janine McNally:
Sure. Like I said, I was a high school teacher in Australia. From the time I was four years old, I wanted to be a teacher. I used to line my teddy bears up and teach them if I couldn't find any kids younger than me. At the age of 16, I felt called to ministry. I wasn't sure what that would look like, and in Australia, ministry for females at that point was pretty limited.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Janine McNally:
I wasn't deterred. I left my teaching position and attended a small school in Adelaide, Australia, for three years, and that was where I was exposed to a couple of DTS grads and they taught. I had three years of Greek and loved it, but wanted to learn Hebrew. I know I'm weird, and no schools at the time taught Hebrew over there, and they suggested I try DTS and Dallas Seminary. At that point, in my imagination, was like, "Wow, I'm never going to cope. I won't ever see the letter A on a paper again." It just was way up there in the echelon of theological education in my head. Anyway, I came over, did my THM, met my husband, like you said, and we went from there. We had three kids. Teaching children, never in my repertoire.
I remember the day our pastor came to our small group and said they were looking for children's director, and I felt the Lord tell me, "You could do this." And I said, "I don't want to do this." And I heard, "But you could do this." And I'm like, "I'm not looking for a job." And that night I couldn't sleep. The next morning I told Gary, and he's like, "Are you nuts?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I think so." Anyway, I applied, got the job, started, three years later, I have to say I loved it. I told them at my end, "If you don't expect, I'm going to get on the floor and teach these little rugrats. That's not who I am, but I can recruit, train, organize, and pull together the children's ministry." And in that three years, it grew from about 20 children to about 120.
Bill Hendricks:
Oh, my gosh.
Janine McNally:
20 volunteers. I think at the end we had about 80 committed people. It was really great. It was going really well. It's funny, when we were in church planting, my husband has a gift of evangelism, and during that time I got a real passion for evangelism. Like I said, my gifting is teaching. But during those three years, I got a real passion for children, realizing, which I already knew, that was the time of greatest receptivity was during those ages from four to 14. So I finished up there and thought, "I've got to do something in this field." Because the materials I was getting hold of, they were very unclear on the gospel all the time. Coming from a church planting background, we wanted a crystal clear gospel message, especially with kids. So I thought, "I'm just going to start creating resources for children that incorporate the gospel in everything." Because we have such little time available to us, and I wanted it clear.
So that's where it started. Since then, it's beginning to morph into resources for the volunteers to teach the kids and resources for parents. Now that I'm doing my doctorate and working on my dissertation, it's definitely going in that direction. So Grace4Kidz is having a bit of an identity crisis. It's probably going to end up being grace for everybody. But yeah, so that's where it came from. That's where it started.
Bill Hendricks:
I'm very curious to ask if I go back all the way to the beginning, and you said those first three years, you went into it with a lot of doubt, but three years into it you said, "I love this." I'm curious to know, what was it about teaching children that you discovered was so satisfying for you?
Janine McNally:
I think because they're so receptive. I trusted Christ for the first time when I was around four years of age. When I do surveys in rooms where I'm speaking and I ask people to raise their hands, "How many became Christians before the age of 14?" Nearly everybody puts their hands up. Barna Group says 75%, 70% some say, 65% some say. But they also say that the majority gets saved in that 4-14 window. If that's the case, if I was Satan trying to stop God from working in the world, what better target to target than that age group and what better thing to target than the gospel message? So for me, that was all of my passion level went through the roof, and you may hear it as we talk today, it's just like, "Oh my gosh, we've got to get them then." We look at the teenagers and say, "Oh, look at them. They're so much trouble." I say that's because we didn't reach them when they were younger.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Janine McNally:
Instead, we're putting all our money and resources towards adults who primarily have already made up their minds instead of prioritizing this window of opportunity that we have. When I was on staff, I found out, the week I resigned, by mistake, I came across a paycheck from another staff member, and I realized how little they were paying me. My budget was minuscule compared to the rest of the departments in the church. What other ministries have to ask for donations of candy at fall festival time or candy to fill the Easter eggs at the Easter fest? Men don't raise money by buying eggs for their breakfast. Why is it, the children's ministry are begging all the time for funds? I think it's because they're not prioritized, and I think that's backwards. I think we should be working first with the kids because that's such a precious, receptive time that we can get them then, and then they've got their entire life to live for the Lord, hopefully.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, I guess to put it in a business context, it's as if a business was spending 80% of its marketing on the 20% that might buy their product or service, and meanwhile, the 80% that they can't get enough of it, they never hear about it.
Janine McNally:
Exactly, exactly.
Bill Hendricks:
I know you've done massive amounts of research by now on this generation and just this whole dynamic. I'm just curious, have you been able to identify what the factor or factors are that seem to make children 15 and younger so receptive to the gospel?
Janine McNally:
I let the little children come. Become like a little child if you want to enter the kingdom. There's something about children. I don't know whether it's their ability to trust. Maybe it's their understanding that they're not capable because they're so young. They're not capable of almost anything. They need help. As we get older, we think we know it all. We think we're capable. We can do things on our own. We don't need… We're not as dependent. I think that's probably part of it. There could be some psychological and professional better answers than that, but they just are. If you sit down and say, "Let me tell you a story." And they're all ears. They're ready to learn. They're ready to trust. They're very vulnerable, to the point of being naive, almost. Yet that's the time that is the best. Do a survey. How many people have… What age were you when you came to know the Lord? It's obvious. Statistics tell us that it's obvious.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, to answer that question for myself, I very, very clearly remember, I was four and a half when I heard the gospel message. To me, there's a lot more to the story, but I'll put it this way. I was a child that nobody ever had to convince was a sinner.
I knew that if there was a bad thing to do, I'd find a way to do it. So I didn't need much convincing that, "You know you're a sinner, Bill."
Janine McNally:
Right.
Bill Hendricks:
What I was more in need of is, "What's the way out of this thing?"
Janine McNally:
Right.
Bill Hendricks:
When I heard that this man, Jesus, who, out of love, had taken my sin and paid for it through His death, that that was somehow… And I didn't understand the theology behind it. I just knew somehow whatever He did there on that cross put me into a right standing and a right relationship with God, and that my sins were forgiven, they were covered. I took it. I bought it. I said, "Man, if that's what it is, that makes sense to me, and I don't understand all the ins and the outs, but I'll go with it." And so it was a childlike faith, but man, it was a real faith.
Janine McNally:
Oh, sure.
Kids don't have a lot of pride. I think that's what stops us.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Janine McNally:
You don't often see a proud child, and they will all readily admit that they do things wrong. So all three of our kids, four, four and a half, five years old, clearly understood the gospel. For me, I was around that age. It wasn't presented real clearly. So it was, "Ask Jesus into your heart." I hate that phrase. The Bible doesn't use it. Why do we? And so I was always wondering whether He might've left or whether He really didn't come in, even though the belief was there. It created confusion and sometimes a lack of assurance. That's why I get so passionate about making it crystal clear for little kids so that the assurance comes with it instead of them doubting because life ahead is going to be full of enough doubts. You don't need to doubt that one.
But all three of our kids, they knew, and people will say they're too young to understand. I disagree. If a child understands he's done something wrong and that there's a way out, it's easy for him to think, "There's nothing I can do to get myself out of this. I'm only little, and if Jesus did it, I'm in."
Bill Hendricks:
We're now talking about grace, but I think of the enormous benefit you give a child to say there's someone, Jesus, who has done something to take care of that, as opposed to saying, "You're a naughty child. You need to get back in God's good graces, and to do that, you're going to have to start doing this and this and this and this, and you got to work your way out of it." Doing that, you now put that person in a lifetime of hurt.
Janine McNally:
Oh, yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
So obviously, by now, I'm sure you have any number of different, if I can use the term strategies or approaches, that you present the gospel to youngsters, but I'm just curious to hear what some of them are and some that you've found particularly helpful and effective.
Janine McNally:
Yeah. One of the things… So much of the curriculums out there really bridge off the Romans road, the verses that are all in Romans, and then get to Romans 10:9-10. They use the verse, "If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth…" And that verse is, they don't use the other parts of the Romans road. They zero in on that one. When I was taking a class at my school, I decided to do a paper on Romans 10:9-10, and it's written to the nation of Israel, and it's talking about temporal judgment, a prophecy out of Joel 2. It's not a salvation verse. It's talking about being saved from judgment, not being saved from hell. Yet every curriculum uses it. One day I walked into one of my classrooms and one of the teachers that was in our very vulnerable preteen class, and he was saying, "How many of you raise your hands if you believe in your heart that Jesus died on the cross and was raised?" And they raised their hands.
"Oh, yes. But how many of you confessed with your mouth?" And my jaw dropped, and I ran back to my office. I grabbed the leader's guide, and I thought, "Where did he get this from?" Sure enough, it was right there. He had basically read it verbatim, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I couldn't believe it." So from that point on, I started to look at the different materials. That was what propelled me into Grace4Kidz. I thought, "What am I going to do? I can't do anything about this because I can't write a whole curriculum. I'll create an addendum." So I created a training session, we did it with all the volunteers, and I said, "All right, from now on, in order to be consistent with the way we teach the gospel, we going to use this approach." I don't know if you've heard of Larry Moyer and EvanTell.
Bill Hendricks:
Oh, very much so. Yes.
Janine McNally:
Bad news and good news. Bad news, I'm a sinner, Romans 3:23, the wages of sin is death, Romans 6:23, Jesus died, John 5:8, and John 3:16, all I have to do is believe. There's four points, four verses, and I taught them the four illustrations. I made up posters which had those four points and the four verses, and I plastered them in all of the classrooms. I said, "From now on, anytime you see anything in any material that teaches the gospel, I want us to be consistent from nursery to preschool all the way through with the same four verses and the same four points to eliminate confusion rather than using phrases like, 'Ask Him into your heart. Make Him Lord of your life.' Things like that, that create issues." And even Romans 10, 9-10. Even if you disagree with me on the interpretation of that, the very fact that it's unclear and ambiguous makes it a bad verse for kids. Why not use John 3:16? No one has a problem with that.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Janine McNally:
So that's what we did. That's how I got around any confusing aspects of the gospel, which, for me, that was the heart. If we confuse that, what are we doing? It doesn't matter how great our programs are if our gospel message is unclear. So that's what we did. We just used bad news and good news.
Bill Hendricks:
So you then take sort of that template, if I could use that term, and you train volunteers and Sunday school teachers, whoever in that approach to the presentation.
Janine McNally:
Yeah, we practiced in pairs and got them to… I jokingly tested them on their outlines to see if they'd learned it or not.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Janine McNally:
That's the gospel outline through all my materials. So that, again, if a church decides to use one thing and then picks up another thing, it's the same message. Something which I hope and believe that any evangelical Christian wouldn't have a problem with.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Janine McNally:
Remove unclear, remove abstract, remove confusion. Just make it crystal clear and concrete for these little kids.
Bill Hendricks:
So obviously, the point here is, you're not trying to give a kid everything that there is in soteriology and hamartiology and all the finer points of things that theologians write dissertations on.
Janine McNally:
Oh, goodness. No.
Bill Hendricks:
You're trying to boil it all down to something a child can understand, but it's pure in the sense that you're not introducing ideas that may later on create problems that are unneeded.
Janine McNally:
Yeah. We all continue to learn. I don't have all of soteriology down. Jesus isn't Lord of my life every day and every moment. That's something we grow, and the sanctification comes and all that. I focus just on the essentials, salvation.
Bill Hendricks:
I'm reminded of the passage in Peter where he talks about the pure milk of the Word. What you're trying to do is just get that really pure initial milk for the child to take in. It also sounds to me, Janine, like an approach that is highly adaptable. So you may have a Sunday school class and curriculum. You may have an after-school Bible group, kids group that you're running. It may be a Vacation Bible School, it may be a couple of high school kids that are going to throw a little kids thing in the summer for kids in their neighborhood. It seems like it's endless where that could be applied.
Janine McNally:
Sure. I think most of the time, most of us haven't rehearsed that. We haven't prepared it well. So when we get into the situation when we're presenting the gospel, we're, "Um Um Um Um." And we tend to fall back on these phrases we may have heard. Instead of knowing where we're going and being clear, I think I created little business card sized outlines of the gospel, laminated them, told them, put in their wallet. Anytime that gospel came along, opportunity, pull it out.
Bill Hendricks:
So in the different experiences that you've had of presenting the gospel to children and some of the people you've trained presenting it, I'm just curious, what are some of the common questions that kids raise their hand and say, "But what about this?" Or, "I don't understand that"? What are some common questions that come up as kids, many for the first time encountering the gospel?
Janine McNally:
Like I mentioned before, I didn't get down on the floor and talk to these little fellas. It was mainly the adults. One mom came up to me and she goes, "Oh, Janine, I've been doing it wrong all these years. I've been telling my boys to ask Jesus into their heart." And I said, "You know what? God uses anything. If the Holy Spirit is drawing you, He can use mistakes, He can use unclear. The goal is to be as clear as possible. I think if you're clear, I don't think the kids are going to misunderstand. I just don't." And I told them, "If we present it the same all the way through, and they really grabbed onto that consistency thing, which is important with children," I said, "By the time they leave children's ministry in 5th grade, they should at least have the gospel memorized. They should have learned it. We can't push them into believing it, but at least they'll know it." And that was the goal. So yeah, that was my dream for Alpha.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Again, I should just represent this as my opinion. So I'm not asking any of our listeners to necessarily buy this hook, line, and sinker, but I'm a big believer that God uses or that God respects is a respecter of people's response to whatever light they're given.
Janine McNally:
Right.
Bill Hendricks:
I have another podcast that I did with a gentleman. He was actually a Ku Klux Klan terrorist, and he ended up in a prison cell in solitary confinement for a felony that he had committed. That he was caught in the midst of attempting to commit, which was going to be an assassination. So there he is, and he's hook, line, and sinker committed to right-wing, nationalistic KKK terrorism. He's certain that's the truth, but there he is, in prison. I remember thinking when he told me that, it's like, "Wait a minute. Now you're a Christian and you're telling people that that was the wrong way." How did God possibly penetrate that? How did the gospel possibly get there? And for him, it was through good behavior, whatever that means in solitary confinement.
I guess he was allowed to check out books, certain books, from the prison library. The big burning question in his mind was, "What is truth?" And God used that question. So he began to read. I think he actually started with Plato, and he worked his way through Plato and then Aristotle. Through an interesting story, he ends up wanting to read the Bible, and he reads the Bible, and he gets into John. He's like, "This is different. Who is this guy, Jesus?" That's a great example to me of whatever light there is there, just the simple question, what is truth? God takes that, and He woos a person forward.
So I can imagine a child or the woman you mentioned said, "Oh, I've been doing this all wrong. I've been telling people, if you just raise your hand when I pray the prayer, you're in." That's terrible. From one point of view, no, that's probably not the best way to do it. Yet I've met people who said, "I raised my hand, and that's all I knew. Then I met somebody, and they told me more, and they told me more." So you're not shaming people, but what you're trying to get to, it sounds like, is but at some point, here's the essence of what particularly children need to start to come to grips with because it opens up a life-giving stream for them.
Janine McNally:
Again, if Satan was to try to mess up our kids, this is the place to do it. So, in my opinion, the best thing to do is to present well.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes.
Janine McNally:
God can use… The Holy Spirit can use our mistakes, but that's no excuse for not learning, preparing to present well.
Bill Hendricks:
I think in this conversation, and I'd love your input on this. Because what I hear driving you obviously not only just a compassion for people that've never heard about Jesus, and particularly children, and therefore, like a child, they have their whole life ahead of them. So if they head down the wrong road to begin with, that's a real problem. But the gospel is not like sitting in a vacuum. The gospel in this culture has many, many other truth claims. They may not represent themselves as truth claims, but many other representations of what reality is about that are whispering in children's ears through media, through stuff online, through things their parents tell them, particularly through things they hear from peers at school. Those are also vying for this child's belief and commitment. What you're trying to do, it sounds like, is somewhere in here. We've got to let them know there's this truth, which is true truth, which is the life-giving truth. So we can't just say, "I hope that happens someday." You're saying, "No, we need to be proactive about that."
Janine McNally:
Absolutely.
Bill Hendricks:
So how do you find volunteers and people to train?
Janine McNally:
Oh, this is the area that I hadn't figured we were going into. I went around, and the first thing I did, because at the time I didn't know everyone in the church, I sat down with the pastor, said, "All right, who can I ask?" He gave me about 150 names. I emailed all of them, which is the wrong way to recruit. But I was desperate. I had about 80 or 90 that said, "Sure, I'll help." I think they were trying to be nice, "We've got to help Janine. She's new in the job. Let's help." I plugged them all in. Gradually over time, I spoke to the ones who were obviously passionate about kids, and I said, "Would you be…" They were all rotating. It was once-a-month rotation, which is horrible with children. I started asking, "Would you be willing to serve every week or at least every other week?" And gradually, as the people said yes to that, I was able to release the others that really didn't want to do it, but we're doing it because I needed help.
So for every four volunteers, I was able to replace it with one committed person, and that's how it went. The best way to do it is to go and approach people. That's assuming you know them, that's assuming you have contact with them. I was immediately thrust into Sunday mornings in the children's department, so I didn't see any adults anymore. So I had no way to contact any of them without knowing them, and I didn't know them. So for me, that worked. From then, it was just build relationships with those people and start to appreciate what they were doing. I got great responses. Great volunteers.
Bill Hendricks:
That's great. I know that we have many people that listen to this podcast. Obviously, many people listen to this podcast. We have children in Sunday school in a church, and we also have many because they're alumni of DTS who are in church work. They're pastors, they're youth pastors, they're children's pastors, they're Sunday school teachers, et cetera. Many of them are doing a fantastic job in their children's ministry. But having grown up in the church and dealt with a whole lot of church programs and read Barna statistics like you have and so forth, I'm just all too aware that for far too many churches out there, the children's ministry, sad to say, I want to be polite about this, but for many of them, they're very lackluster. They really amount to not much more than a bit of a babysitting service while the adults have the church service.
We may have a Bible story. We may color some pictures that have lambs, Jesus, and Bible themes in them. We may have some content that's Bible-based, we could say, and yet I've just met too many people who came up through a whole church Sunday school and youth program. They'd never heard the gospel ever. Then it's not until they get to college or later on. I very clearly remember one person who came to faith in her 20s. When I asked her about her background, she told me about several churches she'd been a part of, at least one of which was an extremely well-known megachurch that's celebrated as they're doing great work. I realized there's all kinds of factors, and she's got personal responsibility, et cetera. But what shocked me was, she basically said that she had never heard those simple truths that you have just articulated anywhere in any of the youth programs, college ministry programs, or so forth that she had been a part of.
It seems to me that this simplification of… Not simplification, but the essentials, that's what you're putting to it, these essential truths that we got to at least start with. Churches need to come to grips with, "Are there places where we're routinely putting these before the children and the young people that we're working with?"
Janine McNally:
Is that a question?
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Janine McNally:
There are so many things I could say to that, as you were talking, my mind was spinning. First thing I would say is that a lot of children's ministry people are not trained biblically or as ministry people. So they don't know what they're doing. They're committed volunteers. The church says, "Would you take over the kids' ministry?"
"Sure, why not?" They have no idea what they're doing. Second thing I would say is, a lot of curricula out there are very wishy-washy. They're very theme-oriented, moralistic. They, like I said, do not present the gospel well, do not present it very often. Between that and families where the children are only coming sporadically, they may miss the one time it's presented. When I was starting, I'm teaching at my school now, children's ministry, and when I was prepping for it, I was looking at all the different curriculum out there, did a quick survey of them all, and I tried to contact every one of them, the big companies, and said, "Could you please show me one lesson where you present the gospel?"
"I'm going to have to do some research on that." It wasn't then. Then they would send me a lesson, and it didn't even have the gospel. There was nothing about Jesus dying on the cross, nothing. They considered that the gospel message. So you've got curriculum that are not solid. Then some churches, unfortunately, do view it as childcare. That is like anathema in the children's ministry world. There's a big T-shirt at the big conference I was just at, "Children's ministry is not childcare." Unfortunately, if the leadership see it that way, if they don't fund it well, if the pay is low, the priority is low, it's not mentioned from upfront and celebrated upfront, then that's how it's viewed. Again, that's what I keep saying. It's like, "Oh my gosh, the first one there wins." We've got to reach them young. That's what the schools are trying to do. They're trying to indoctrinate them early.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Janine McNally:
Valerie Bell, she wrote a book, Resilient. She tells a story about two missionaries. One, a missionary in a Muslim country, and how the Muslims are offering free education to families. All they have to do is send their children to the mosque for education. They're smart. They know, get them early, get them young, and even if the family is trying to teach them otherwise, education is never neutral.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Janine McNally:
There's secular humanism, if not, Muslim faith. It's everywhere. We have to be proactive. We have to include the gospel regularly. I would say pretty much every time we meet for kids, it's important. So yeah, it doesn't surprise me that people can go through a church program and not hear it or not understand it, or maybe it was unclear and they got confused.
Bill Hendricks:
One, I guess, you'd call it a pushback that I've had, or at least a counter to what I've said about Sunday schools that I have heard from some churches, and it sounds extraordinarily noble and in fact is something I agree with, which is, "But Bill, the responsibility for discipleship, spiritual formation of children, ultimately that's the family's responsibility."
Janine McNally:
Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
Now the church has a role in assisting the family, helping the parents, and providing things at church. But we've got to have our families doing that, which sounds wonderful. I couldn't agree more. But then you come to the problem that I'd say, "If that's the case, then we need what Grace4Kidz is talking about and presenting and training." You need to get the parents trained in what Janine is teaching here.
Janine McNally:
Oh, gosh. Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
I think some of the parents don't know, and I'm sure you've had parents who their kids come home and tell them about. They're like, "This is amazing. I got to find out more." And they contact you or whoever's saying, "I've never heard this. Tell me more."
Janine McNally:
Like I told you earlier with my dissertation, it started out talking about Generation Alpha. As I've read and thought and studied more and looked at Deuteronomy 6, obviously it's the parents' responsibility. In fact, I started my first children's ministry class with, "Okay guys, what's the biblical foundation for children's ministry?" And I asked that question, and it was quiet. I said, "You're right. There is none." Never does the Bible tell us to take our kids to the temple? Never does it tell us that the church is going to teach them. It's the parents and the grandparents teaching sons and grandsons. The problem with that, unfortunately, most families have abdicated that responsibility to the church for a number of reasons. One, they feel unqualified. They don't know what to say. They don't know what to do. They have no resources. They feel overwhelmed themselves. They know it's their responsibility, but life has crowded them in to the point where their commitment, spiritual commitment is low, or they're just busy, or whatever their excuse is. So it doesn't get done. Now that's assuming you've got two believing, committed parents.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes.
Janine McNally:
In our world today, there is no nuclear family, hardly.
Bill Hendricks:
Correct.
Janine McNally:
It's completely dysfunctional. We've got single-parent homes. We've got parent homes where the father is physically or emotionally absent and the fathers are the sole responsibility. If you've looked at statistics, if the dad doesn't attend church, it's actually lower for the mother to attend on her own than it is if she doesn't go. I'm not quite sure of that reasoning behind those statistics, except that I believe that it was God that gave the fathers that primary responsibility to lead their families. That's not happening. So when you see that, yes, the church needs to train, equip, and encourage the parents, absolutely. But at the same time, we also need to realize that the world is a mess. So therefore, unfortunately, if the church had done a good job of discipling the parents, children's ministry would be an added extra.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes.
Janine McNally:
Because the church failed to disciple those parents, now it's a necessity to come alongside to teach the kids what the parents should have been teaching. How do we stop that cycle from going? We need to head it off at the past and start training those parents, the ones that at least are there. The ones that aren't there, there's not much we can do about that except keep working with the kids. But as I've worked through all this material, I look at children's ministry almost as secondary now to what the trend is, family ministry or equipping parents to do what they should be doing in the first place. That's a whole different job.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes.
Janine McNally:
There's posts on Facebook. I'm part of a Facebook group for children's leaders that have over 30,000 leaders in the group, and they all talk about, "I've got to try and reach the parents. I've got to try and reach the parents." I'm thinking, "That's not your job. You're already busy enough reaching the kids." The church has to provide leadership for these parents, whether it's women's, men's ministries, a family ministry pastor, whatever it is. To think that the children's ministry people can do all that, it's just not possible. It's crazy. I had 120 kids. I had 80 volunteers. 120 kids. Maybe that's 40 or 50 families. So that could be anywhere from 90 to 100 adults plus the volunteers plus the kids, just me. That's the size of a church. To expect one person to lead that kind of a group is unrealistic. So the church has got to step in. It's got to wake up to what is going on and what the need is out there.
Bill Hendricks:
Just to further complicate that, you mentioned that several different kinds of families where there's single parents or single moms, homes without fathers, and so forth. We do have another table podcast in which we interviewed an expert on blended families. That's a very, very… For me, it was a chilling podcast because this gentleman, first of all, pointed out that if you look at all the different permutations of what we mean by blended families, there's something like 86 different forms of blended families. The most chilling statistic was that if we look at the, quote, "traditional family," which means intact mom, dad, and a couple kids, that now represents about 8% of what are considered family units in the United States.
Janine McNally:
Right.
Bill Hendricks:
So when we talk about family ministry, if that 8% is what you're thinking, "Oh, that's who I'm supposed to minister to." You're missing the people that are in your church. If you look at that through the lens of the children that you're talking about, it means that the boy or the girl that shows up to your ministry on a given Sunday, they may actually be a part of four different blended families. So they're there that Sunday, but the next Sunday they're with family B or family C, which has a whole different worldview, and a whole different makeup, and a whole different experience on the child.
Janine McNally:
There goes your continuity.
Bill Hendricks:
There goes your continuity. But if I think about that in light of your appeal, I guess if I only got that kid for one 50-minute period on a Sunday, whatever else I give them, A, I want them to know that there is a God, He's a person, He loves them, He's created them as a person, He wants a relationship with them, but that here's how you can have that relationship with Him. It's very clear, and that child gets that message again and again and again to be reinforced.
Janine McNally:
You're preaching my story there. Go for it. Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
Janine, our time's gone. But I can't tell you enough how appreciative I am of the work that you're doing. Again, with such a strategic age, you have a website. How can people reach you?
Janine McNally:
Grace4Kidz, it's the number 4 and kidz with a Z. The S was taken. It's Grace4Kidz.
Bill Hendricks:
.org. Is it .org?
Janine McNally:
Yeah. I think I managed to get com as well, but .org will work. If they're interested, that's the book I just released this year, When You See Fireflies, it's Equipping Leaders and Parents to Minister Effectively to Generation Alpha.
Bill Hendricks:
Gotcha.
Janine McNally:
I'm a research person, so it's not fluff by any imagination. There's a couple of hundred footnotes, so it's got a lot of information, but it's also very practical if they're interested.
Bill Hendricks:
Thank you very much. Thank you for being with us today. This has been so informative, so helpful. So I guess I'd say inspiring and on a critical need. Thank you.
Janine McNally:
Sure. Thank you.
Bill Hendricks:
I want to thank all of you for joining us today on The Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I invite you to subscribe to The Table podcast on whatever service you happen to belong to, and hope always to see you next time on The Table. For The Table, I'm Bill Hendricks. Have a good day.
In this episode, Kasey Olander and Jen Wilkin discuss the pressing need for bible literacy in…
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And my guest today is Tom Wright, all the way from the UK and apparently live in his study. I get asked, Tom, sometimes whether I've read all the books in my library and I reply, "Some of them twice." But we really do appreciate you coming and being a part of our podcast today and helping us think through the book of Romans.
N.T. Wright:
Thank you very much. You know Umberto Eco, the Italian philosopher and novelist. He said, when people ask him, "Have you read all these books?" He says, "No, these are the ones I have to read this month, the other ones are upstairs." It's a great line. I bequeath it to you if you need it in future.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, that's good. Well, it gives me an alternative answer when I can use, because I do get the question more than once. Anyway, so my opening question is something I always ask when we interview someone for the first time, and that is, how did a nice chap like you get in a gig like this?
N.T. Wright:
Well, I grew up in an ordinary middle class, middle of the road, Anglican family in the north of England. And a lot of my male relatives were clergy. My mother's father was clergy. My godfather, who was a cousin of my mother's was clergy. We were in church every Sunday. It wasn't particularly either evangelical or Anglo-Catholic or anything, it was just kind of ordinary English, Anglican. Quite low-key, but nevertheless, you were expected to show up and we said prayers before bed and all that stuff, and sang hymns around the piano on a Sunday afternoon. And this was normal kind of 1950s middle English piety, I guess.
And within that context, when at quite an early age, I think maybe seven or eight, I was aware that what I really wanted to do with my life was to do what my grandfather was doing, which was to be running a parish and preaching sermons and taking services. And I didn't really know very much about what else clergy did, but I just thought, "That's a great life, I'd like to be doing that."
And there were twists and turns along the way. And at that stage, I had no idea that there was such a thing as academic theology, I wouldn't have known what that could have been about. But when I then in my late teens ran into philosophy and theology properly, oh my, I knew that that was the particular direction that my kind of ministry was going to be going in. Though I never wanted to leave the vocation to be a pastor and to be leading in worship and so on. And so I've managed through twists and turns, as I say, to combine the two over the years, much to much taxing for my poor wife and family who've had to move house and move job and move place and so on.
But it started very early and in quite an ordinary way. Only when I was a bishop and helping others towards ordination did I realize that actually knowing that you were called to ministry at the age of seven or eight is actually quite unusual. Most people, it's a bit later than that.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, it's nine or 10.
N.T. Wright:
But for me… Nine or 10, or actually in many cases, 20, 30 or 40 or whatever.
Darrell Bock:
Right, right.
N.T. Wright:
Yeah. So that's where it all began.
Darrell Bock:
That's great. And so, in your education, your theological education, you said you became aware of academic education as you hit philosophy and other things. Walk us a little bit through that background.
N.T. Wright:
Well, yeah, I always enjoyed the classics at school, Greek and Roman classics, language and literature. I'd done Latin from the age of eight, because in my school system that's what we did. And I started Greek at the age of 13, which was a bit late. I was in a class that had already done two years, so I had quite a bit of catching up to do. But it was because when I was about, I think 11 or 12, a school master who I trusted had asked me one day quite casually, "What are you going to do when you grow up?" And I'd said, "Actually, I'm going to be ordained." And he had immediately reacted very positively and said, "That's wonderful, because you'll have to get to know the classical world and study the New Testament and learn Greek and all that stuff." I remember thinking, "Yes, that sounds great." So I was diving into the classics and then got fascinated by the early Roman Empire, particularly, which I was studying at school.
And then I was fortunate enough in coming to Oxford to be able to study philosophy and ancient history, which is the main classics degree at Oxford to this day. And I was as excited by the philosophy, which was new to me then, more or less, as I was by the theology. I'd done a bit of philosophy at school, not that much, but the philosophy and the ancient history were my first degree, and then I did theology as a second bachelor's degree. So I had the two BAs, one after the other. And having plunged into the ancient history and philosophy, I then found the whole thing rushing together when I was studying theology and particularly studying the New Testament, which I quickly realized was the thing I really wanted to do.
And I always intended to study the New Testament's use of the Old because I didn't want to lose touch with either testament, and that seemed to be a good way of doing it. And so, I picked on Romans, having talked to my professor, George Caird, he became my professor after that conversation, to say, "What should I be doing for my doctorate?" We agreed that if I wanted to study the use of the Old Testament in the New, then Romans was a pretty good place to start. So that was 50 some years ago, and after all these years, I just keep coming back to it.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. I know how that works. My own study at Aberdeen started with the use of the Old Testament in the New, and Luke, Acts for Christology. So for all the same reasons basically, to keep the testaments together and linked. So very much appreciated. Tell us a little bit about George Caird as a supervisor.
N.T. Wright:
Oh, George Caird was an old-fashioned English gentleman. I mean, Scottish gentleman actually, he had quite a Scots accent. He was kind in a really rather sharp way. He said to me when we first met after the initial conversation, he said, "Well, go and write something and then we'll talk about it." Which is I now know a very scary thing to say to a beginning doctoral student. So I spent about eight or 10 weeks trying to write a paper that would say something that I thought I ought to be saying and realizing the huge volume of books that I was going to have to read, and I couldn't do more than a few of them. And then he would sit down and we'd go through and say, "Well, on page two, it's an interesting idea, but had you not thought of such and such?" And then, "Well, but so-and-so says this, doesn't he? But Paul elsewhere says the following, and how does that square with what's going on in Galatians?"
And so, these were all questions and push-backs. It meant very kindly and supportively, but it meant that after each session like that, I would go away thinking, "He's not going to do that to me next time, I'm going to…" And I think this is probably the aim. And after about two years, something that he said to me was really positive like, "I really like it when you said such and such." And I thought, "Oh my goodness, I've hit the jackpot. This is amazing." So, I don't think he wasn't intending to be cruel or difficult. It was just, you've written something, we're adults, we're discussing it, here it is.
But then about, when I've been with him for about two years and had done all sorts of things and had to apply to having my status elevated in Oxford terms, you start off as a BPhil student and you have to get bumped up to the DPhil status, which was what had happened. But I then applied for a research fellowship at one of the Oxford colleges, and I knew that this was a long shot because they had about 300 applicants for about three of these fellowships, and he was my principal referee. So when I then was awarded the fellowship, I thought to myself, "Oh my goodness, Caird must've written me a pretty darn good reference." And that was the kind of, "Oh, I think maybe he likes what I'm doing." And then gradually it became apparent that he really did, but he wasn't going to say that off the top, presumably to stop me being big-headed or think that I'd got it all made or whatever because I obviously still had a long way to go.
But then, I wouldn't say we ever really became close friends. He was very busy. He was running Mansfield College for some of that time. And then very sadly, not long after I'd finished my doctorate, he died in his mid-sixties quite suddenly. And that's a shame because I would've loved to have got to know him as an older man as it were, and we might've become real friends. But so, I revere his memory. He was a great man, a fine scholar in all sorts of ways, even though I disagree with some of the lines he took. But that's inevitable and right and proper.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. I mean, his take on New Testament theology, I still talk to my students about to this very day in terms of historical Jesus questions. Your interactions with him remind me of my exchange with Howard Marshall. When I wrote him about the initial topic I wanted to do, he wrote me back and said, "Here are two German works you need to look at to see if they will help you narrow what you're interested in." And I didn't know a lick of German at the time. So I was here going, "Well, I think I'm a little behind." And went from there. Well, great. Yeah. Well, so let's talk about your love for Paul. I'm working my way obviously to Romans, but let's talk about your love for Paul. How did Paul get into the mix?
N.T. Wright:
Well, when I was an undergraduate, I was a very active member of the Oxford Christian Union, the student evangelical Christian body, which was a very lively and full of interesting people. It wasn't narrowly evangelical in the sense that the word might be used today, but it was a very sort of British evangelical and all sorts of topics would come up. And I remember in my middle year, I think as an undergraduate, somebody coming and speaking to the Christian Union who was saying that actually Christian discipleship means leaving behind Romans 7 and getting into Romans 8. In other words, you should no longer be having moral failure in your life. If you really have the spirit dwelling in you, that wouldn't be happening anymore and you need to find the new spiritual level.
And it was like the old holiness movement from the 1890s and the early years of the 20th century. And then it was coming in as well on the back of the then very new Pentecostal and charismatic movement. We're talking late '60s, early '70s here. And because, try as I might, I found myself still frequently as an enthusiastic Christian still saying the evil that I would not is what I find myself doing and the good that I want to do, I seem to miss out on. I was then very much taking the same line, which I subsequently discovered Jimmy Dunn and Charles Cranfield had taken on Romans 7, that this is the normal Christian life and that Romans 7 and 8 sort of go together as Christian discipleship. So, that was a major issue.
And the other major issue that would hit us as students in the late '60s was the issue of Calvinism and predestination and so on. It was when the banner of truth-trust was at its height, I think. And so, we were all debating about Romans 9 and how does it work and does God really a predestine some to salvation and others to damnation or what? And so, with those big questions in the back of my mind, and assuming that I sort of knew, we didn't call it the Romans road, but we had something similar, you work through… Well, you know as well as I do. Sin, salvation, belief in Jesus. So, I knew my way around Romans reasonably well, but with certain big buzzy topics.
And it was with those in mind that I was then studying the text for myself when I was doing theology as my second degree. And then particularly, when I was diving into doctoral studies. And I quickly found that if I thought there were just two options here, there were about 22 options and that Romans went on being challenging and fascinating. And fortunately that was okay at an undergraduate level, I was still handling all these issues. And then when I started my graduate work and plunged in particularly to Romans 9 to 11, all sorts of things happened and all sorts of changes took place.
And I went out one day and bought a large board, which I put up at the back of my desk and I photocopied the text of Romans in Greek, and I stuck Romans in Greek right across this board so that whatever I was reading, I had Romans in Greek as the backdrop. And I got lots of different colored felt-tip pens and I scribbled all over that for about two or three years until I really, I could feel the way that the argument of Romans worked and the way that Paul comes back to different themes, but from another angle. And Romans is just the most extraordinary work of art, quite irrespective of its theological meaning.
And so I kind of did a, say I've done a deep dive into Romans 8 here, but I did a deep dive into Romans, and this was in the mid-70s. And I still look back on those days with delight, but also with a measure of awe, because I realized still how little I understood. I was feeling my way forwards. And that's when the so-called new perspective really kicked in, because I was doing my best to try to find out how Romans and Galatians belonged together. Was it a development? Had Paul changed his mind about the law? How did that work? And it was one day, actually here in the same street where we now live, curiously, Holywell Street in the middle of Oxford. We were living just six doors down the road, and this is 40 years ago.
And when I was working through again and got to Romans 10:3, when Paul says that they are seeking to establish, seeking a righteousness which is of their own righteousness rather than submitting to God's righteousness. And realizing, this is not the Jews being legalistic, trying to do good moral works to earn their status of moral goodness, this is a righteousness which is for Israel and Israel only and keeping Gentiles out. And Paul's whole point is that it's for everybody. And I remember coming back home to our house, just down the road here and sitting up in bed and reading Galatians in Greek and thinking, "This is going to work. This is going to work. This makes sense of Galatians in a way that I've not seen before, and I think we're onto something here."
And it was the following year that Ed Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism. And though he wasn't saying what I was saying, he hadn't seen that point, he kind of opened up the whole field of different ways of reading Second Temple Judaism. And it was just around then that Geza Vermes was reediting Schürer's work on the history of the Jewish people in the time of Jesus Christ. It was just then that various other major works on Second Temple Judaism were coming out, and I just plunged in, scrolls, pseudepigrapha, the lot. And the more I went at the Jewish world, the more the pull that I was discovering made sense. And that's really, sorry, it's a longer answer than you're expecting, but that's how it all began.
Darrell Bock:
No, that's actually a great answer. It actually makes a wonderful segue into the book on, I call it taking a deep dive into Romans, into the heart of Romans. And one of the things that strikes me about what you emphasize is this corporate dimension of the way of reading the New Testament, particularly Paul. That we're not thinking about each individual so much as we're thinking about large entities that are present in the reading and intended in the reading. If we think individualistically, it's only because Paul is a representative of a kind of person who belongs to a kind of group, if I can say it that way.
N.T. Wright:
Yeah. No, I see what you mean. Yes.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And so, I noticed at the beginning of your book, you make the point, you make three points and I'll let you take them in whatever order you want. "This is not about me or my salvation, it's a much bigger corporate concern. It's the story of Israel, but it's the story of Israel that leads to a Messiah who's in the middle of everything that's happening." And this is where I hope we spend the bulk of our time is, "It's not about some heavenly ethereal existence to come, it's about this world." So, take that in whatever order you want.
N.T. Wright:
Okay. Well, let me just quickly go through, the first one was the individual or corporate thing. And I mean, sometimes people take fright at this and they think, "Oh, this is a kind of a liberal move to say it's not about whether I have faith or not, it's just something much larger." And I want to say, no, if Paul found anyone in one of his churches who said, "Oh, I'm just sliding along, everyone else believes it, I'm not sure whether I do." Paul would sit them down and make sure that the gospel was eyeball to eyeball with them personally. But having said that, yes, the larger issues that Paul is dealing with are the big cosmic ones about how in the Messiah, Jew and Gentile come together, and this, I'm kind of tracking with Ephesians at this point.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly.
N.T. Wright:
This is the sign to the powers of the world that God is God, that Jesus is Lord. And so, you get it at the end of the theological argument in Romans, in Romans 15 where he says that, "So that you may with one heart and voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus," And that that is the sign that Isaiah 11 has kicked into operation, which is the Messianic passage about the root of Jesse who rises to rule the nations, and in him the nations will hope. And this is, Paul wants the church in Rome to be, what I call a small working model of new creation. That when people come together gladly, freely in faith, obviously individuals, but that's not the point he's making. That cross the cultural and ethnic boundaries and across the gender gap and across the social gaps, when they're all together worshiping, this is the sure sign of hope. He says, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace, so you may abound in hope." This is the sign to the world that the new creation is on the way.
So that's really, really important. And everybody, it's like rowing in a boat. Since we're in Oxford, that's what people do here, in a rowing age. You're all doing it together, and you must all do it together, but there's no room for slackers, everyone has their own particular ore to pull it. So, it's both the corporate and the individual, but he's emphasizing the corporate.
The second thing is about Messiah and Israel. And so much of Paul's theology is about Jesus as Israel's Messiah summing up the people of God and their destiny in himself. Drawing of course on Isaiah 40 to 55 and the servant picture there, who is both a Messiah and Israel and so on. It's a kind of a fluidity between the one and the many there. And for Paul, I have emphasized this because so often today, and you'll be aware of this, there are people who talk about Paul within Judaism. They think that Paul thought that you could have… Jews are all right to stay as Jews, they don't need to convert and become Christians, but Christianity is fine for Gentiles.
And that's complete nonsense. Because for Paul, Jesus is Israel's Messiah. And if you said to a first century Jew, "The Messiah is here." It would make no sense to say, "But it really doesn't matter whether you want this Messiah or not, you just carry on the way you were." No, if God has sent his Messiah, this is the point around which Israel is being regrouped, regathered, reshaped, fulfilled. And so, it's not a matter of then the Jews being shunted off into a siding, it's about Israel being enlarged to include exactly as Isaiah had said, exactly as the Psalms had said, exactly as God promised to Abraham. What's Paul quoting again and again? The Abraham cycle, the Psalms and Isaiah to say, "This was always God's intention to enlarge the family of Abraham to include the Gentiles, so Messiah and people of God." So those are your first two. Now, sorry, I've already just lost the the third.
Darrell Bock:
The third was, "it's not about some ethereal existence in the future, it's about this world."
N.T. Wright:
Yeah. I mean, you will know my book, Surprised by Hope, which is probably my best known book in America, I think at the moment. I've got a sequel, which I've been trying to write for the last two or three years. But last year I had long COVID and I've had all sorts of medical problems on the top of that, and that's my excuse for why it's still sitting in piles of paper behind me on the desk here. But the point is this, most Christians today in the western world, and most non-Christians as well, think that the point of Christianity is for my soul to go up to heaven when I die. Actually, in the New Testament and in the Old Testament, the point is that God always intended, the creator God always intended to come and live with his people. The strap line at the end of Revelation isn't the dwelling of humans is with God, it's the dwelling of God is with humans.
And the New Testament, gospel four, canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, tell the story of how Israel's God came back at last to dwell with His people. And the way Luke tells the story of the Spirit in Acts 2, is the Spirit coming and filling the house and the people, which is like a temple scene. This is Yahweh returning to Zion, and it's all about God coming and dwelling in and with and through us. So then, so much of the New Testament, which we have read as though it's really about, "How do I get out of here and go off somewhere else?" Is actually about, yes, you are going to be rescued. When you die, God will look after you and eventually when He makes His new creation, you'll be raised from the dead. But the resurrection from the dead is not so that you can lull around and do nothing for all eternity. It's very clear that Paul says in Romans 5:17, "Those who receive the gift of righteousness will reign in life." Revelation 5, "We are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb so that we can be the royal priesthood." We have task.
And the good news in Romans 8, not least, is that the vocation starts now, that we are debtors to God to live now in the present time as ourselves, individually and corporately, the small working models of new creation. And that's really the heart of so much for Paul and Romans, Ephesians. It's about the people that we are at the moment being already a sign to the world that Jesus is Lord. And this comes out of the strong theology of the resurrection of the body of Jesus, plus the strong theology of the Holy Spirit. That this is not designed as, "Oh well, now we have the clue to how you can be good Christian platonists and leave earth and go to heaven. In fact, the word heaven hardly occurs in Romans. And when the word heaven does occur in Romans, it isn't talking about the place where God's people will go when they die.
And likewise, we maybe going to get to this, the notion of being glorified. So many Christians, so many of the great commentators have assumed that when Paul talks about glorification, he simply means going to heaven and perhaps shining like an electric light bulb. That's not the point. As in John, the glorification is the being set in authority over the world. It goes back to Psalm 8, "The humans are made little lower than the angels to be crowned with glory and honor with all things put in subjection under their feet." So there's a whole raft of stuff coming through there, which is about, the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. It's about the Spirit coming to dwell within us, to make us already the people God wants us to be.
Obviously, that issues in suffering and issues in the prayer of groaning, which Paul talks about in Romans 8. But it's that vocation which we've so often missed out, partly because as good Protestants we're frightened of doing anything that might seem to be trying to please God. No, the pleasing of God has been done by Jesus, let's not make any bones about that. Jesus has done what Jesus has done. As a result of which, we are now called to be conformed to the image of the Son, Romans 8:29. Now, I could go on about this all night-
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I can. I feel like I hit an on button.
Anyway, so there are two strands I want to pick up in what you've said, and I'll do it in reverse order of the way probably we ought to talk about it. But you talked about the connection to Ephesians. I just gave a chapel message to the seminary here, in which I talked about God's multifaceted and unconventional wisdom. And out of Ephesians 3:10, which is making your point, we're supposed to shine before the principalities and powers. And what shines, is this radical idea that in the first century, that Jews and Gentiles, who would be estranged groups, you could hardly think of more strange groups in the first century, God says, "I'm going to make you family."
N.T. Wright:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And I think that is at actually the center of most of the New Testament, that cosmic reunion that pulls us back together. And then here's the second strand, that takes us back to actually Genesis 1, that God created humanity so that we would subject the earth. And then my line is, we're all designed to be hummers. We were supposed to so reflect the presence of the image of God, that creation hummed, that it was functional. And we cooperated and collaborated with one another in such a way that creation would hum and be functional. And of course, what we see is the dysfunction that sin has introduced into that and the competition that sin has introduced into that. But when we manifest this reconciliation and genuinely experience it and begin to work together and appreciate one another in the process, we actually replicate what God was originally asking of us when He created us.
N.T. Wright:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's frustrating that we haven't spent more time together over the last 20 or 30 years because we're clearly on the same page there. And likewise, I go back to Genesis 1, and I've learned so much from people like Richard Middleton and John Walton and others who've written about Genesis 1 and about the image as, what I call, this is my way of doing what you are doing with the humming thing, I think, the angled mirror. And I explained to students, it's like a mirror that cuts across like this, reflecting God into the world and reflecting the world back to God. So that humans are called to be the wise stewards of creation, reflecting the loving care and wisdom of God into the world. And also called to be, this is the royal priesthood bit, to be reflecting the praises of creation back to the Creator. And also, especially in Romans 8 and in the Psalms, the laments of creation back to the Creator.
And so, if that's the human vision, then of course you get it in Colossians 3, where we are renewed in knowledge according to the image of the Creator. You get it at the end of 2 Corinthians 2. You get it, as I've already quoted in Romans 8:29. You probably know, by the way, that one of my graduate students, Haley Goranson Jacob wrote her thesis, I thought I had it here, it's over on the shelf, Conformed to the Image of the Son. She did a lot of work on the use of Psalm 8 in Romans 8, in a way which I hadn't followed through before. And she was landing on 8:29 as summing up that vocation. And I owe a lot to her work, which I've tried to acknowledge in a couple of places in this book.
So that, yeah, Genesis 1, and then you see for me, this goes back, you probably know this from other bits of stuff that I've written. But when I was quite young, somebody told me I should read Umberto Cassuto's commentary on Genesis. An old Jewish scholar, a big commentary on Genesis. And it was Cassuto who pointed out, which I'd never seen before, that the promises to Abraham reflect the commands to Adam as though Abraham is being the new Adam. And that's one of those things, once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. And it is of course there in the rabbis. God says, "I'll make Adam first, and if he goes wrong, I'll send Abraham to sort it all out,"
So then when you're reading Romans, and here is Abraham in Chapter Four, and the promises to Abraham are fulfilled. And then you turn over the page, and that's a sort of QED. Therefore we now have the Adam story fulfilled at last. And as you say, it's precisely in the coming together, and I would say, Ephesians, the coming together of heaven and earth in Chapter One, the coming together of Jew and Gentile in Chapter Two, the coming together of man and woman in marriage in Chapter Five. I see all these things as contributing to that lovely verse you quoted from 3:10, that amazing Greek phrase, "ἡ πολυποίκιλος σοφία τοῦ Θεοῦ,", the many colored, many splendid wisdom of God. And I wonder if you feel this living where you do, I certainly do in Britain, that this is a message that our churches in the West just have not thought about.
Darrell Bock:
It's exactly where… I mean, it's actually the dedication of my life the last 10 years, to actually encourage churches to think through what it means to manifest this reconciliation, which automatically is a contrastive message to what we see going on in the world today.
N.T. Wright:
Of course.
Darrell Bock:
I mean, it just comes with the territory. And so, you don't even have to… Once it's seen, you don't have to write about it because it stands out so much, and yet we don't pursue it.
N.T. Wright:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Like I say, the more I read the New Testament, the more I feel like if this isn't the theme of the New Testament, it's pretty close.
N.T. Wright:
It's pretty close. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And so, I'm actually going to give a lecture in Australia. I'm doing the Henry Morris lecture at Ridley College this summer, and it's going to be on this.
N.T. Wright:
Oh, great.
Darrell Bock:
Because I just think this is… And what it does, is it gives an ethical bullseye for the church to pursue in terms of thinking through what it's supposed to be and what it's supposed to show.
N.T. Wright:
Yep. That's great. That's great. So Ridley College, you're going to be hanging out with my friend Mike Bird.
Darrell Bock:
Yes, Mike Bird and Brian Rosner, who's a former student of mine.
N.T. Wright:
Brian, yeah. Okay. Okay. But Mike and I are just finishing off, in fact, we're proofreading at the moment a book called Jesus and the Powers, which is a kind of a, the beginnings of a Christian political theology from the New Testament and elsewhere. And that's coming out in three months or so, which is exciting. But see, I have this theory, and I would love to know what you think of it. The Protestant Reformation was so keen on discovering justification by faith over against what it saw as the Catholic justification by works. But that that became a very individual thing, "How is your soul going to get to heaven?" But at the same time, they were very keen, rightly, on having the Bible and the liturgy in their own languages. So yes, excellent.
But that meant that by the end of the 16th century already in London you had a French church and a Portuguese church and a Polish church and a this and a that and the other. And then we exported all these to the new world, of course, often with their own different theologies. And at no point did anyone say, "Hang on, if the Bible is our authority, we're missing a trick here, because we're supposed to be worshiping together, precisely across these boundaries." But we were so keen on doing our own thing in our own cultures that that theme has been missed out in Protestant Christianity for the last 400 years. So, then you get, of course, both in Britain and in America, and in South Africa and so on, people who think it's better to keep different ethnicities apart and to try to argue that from the Bible, when the whole of the New Testament is saying, "No, no, this is the time when the new thing happens."
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, the sad thing about that is, is that on the one hand, it's the differentiation that shows the reconciliation, but you can't have the reconciliation unless you're all together.
N.T. Wright:
Yeah, that's right. That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And so it's both layers. It's like a lot of theology that gets us into trouble. I tell my students, sometimes we ask either or questions that are actually both ends.
N.T. Wright:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And if we would learn how to do that better, our theology would be better. We create problems for ourselves.
N.T. Wright:
Yeah, I'm very much aware of the danger. And as a Black woman theologian pointed this out to me some years ago, and she said, she heard all that I was saying and then said, "Nevertheless, when I hear a White man saying that, what I hear you saying is, 'You all now get to be honorary White males.'" And I said, "No, that's absolutely not the point. How can I say what needs to be said without giving that impression?" And that's a real toughie.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, it is. And that's part of the work, I reckon, part of the work of the New Testament is, it's bringing these two very distinct cultures together to try and make them one family, and they're having to figure each other out in the process. And that's not easy,
N.T. Wright:
Hence Romans 14 and 15.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. Exactly right. That's exactly where that is. Well, man, I've got so many different directions I want to go. Let me say one more thing about image, because this is, I really like your phrase, image reflectors, that's in this book. That we're designed to be image reflectors and that that's part of our vocation. The way I like to say it is, we're made in the image of God to image God, to image His character, to image His heart to people and to show what He's really about. And so again, I think a lot of the world that doesn't know the gospel is actually searching for location and they don't have it.
N.T. Wright:
Interesting.
Darrell Bock:
And so I tell people, why is it that the world tries to define its own identity if it's not connected to the church, it's because they don't have any alternative.
N.T. Wright:
Yeah, yeah. I think that's right.
Darrell Bock:
And you hear it in the language they say, "I'm trying to find myself."
N.T. Wright:
Yes, that funny.
Darrell Bock:
There's a part of me that's humorous that goes, "I thought you were with me all along." But still-
N.T. Wright:
But that is, of course, as Harold Bloom said, Agnosticism is the default American religion.
Darrell Bock:
… Yes.
N.T. Wright:
Much more so America than here. But discovering who I really am as opposed to what my body may be outwardly appearing to be or whatever, or my social or cultural background. No, there's a real me inside somewhere. And from that fount flow all sorts of nonsenses, as far as I can see.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. But I say, if you don't have a sense of location in who you are, that's what you're looking for. I mean-
N.T. Wright:
Yep, that's what you're looking for. Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
…. it's the natural default if you're not going to have a sense of location. So being understood to be made in the image of God is pretty important. Let me deal with another thing that I think you raised, it's really profound. And that is, "We rule, but we rule being able to stand in the place of suffering and lament." I think that is, it's in the middle of the book, and I just thought, "Man, this is an interesting idea." So talk about that a little bit.
N.T. Wright:
Well, I suppose across the New Testament, the clearest place where that is stated is John's gospel. Where the whole climax of the sequence of signs and the point about Jesus being lifted up and glorified, where it's a double entendre, He is both glorified in the sense of being magnified and praised and lifted up on a cross, for goodness sake, which is the most horrible way of killing somebody that they knew. And John is telling us all the way through, I take it, I'm not a John specialist, but that's my understanding. That actually this is how Jesus is taking charge of the world by dying for the sins of the world, by fulfilling the mission which God had lined up for His own second self, if you can put it like that, for the Word made flesh, this is what He came to do.
And so, from then on, He has defeated the powers of darkness. It says, "If I'm lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself." There you've got, all people, again. So now is the ruler of this age cast out. This is very much John 12, but then leading into the whole crucifixion narrative. When I then come across to Paul, I find, particularly in Romans 8, the sense that this being conformed to the image of the Son, this is the image of the crucified Messiah. And that whole passage from Verse 18-28, is about the groaning of creation, the groaning of the church within creation, and the groaning of the spirit within the church. And then Paul says, "The one who searches the hearts, that is God the Father, knows the mind of the spirit." And that's how we are conformed to the image of the Son. Because the dialogue between the Father and the Spirit is taking place in us as we lament, as we lament.
I mean goodness knows, as we look around the world at the moment, there's so much to lament, so much horrible stuff happening. And when we then allow our own personal laments, of which we all have, some of us have a lot, when we allow those laments to resonate together, then Paul is saying, we are being conformed to the image of the Son. In other words, exactly as in Galatians 2:19 following, "I am crucified with the Messiah. This is who I am. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but the Messiah lives within me," But being crucified, being co-crucified with the Messiah, obviously that comes out of Romans 6, but it's this sense that He has won the victory by going to the cross to bear and share the sin and the pain and the shame and everything of the world. That's how the victory was won, and it's how the victory then has to be implemented.
Just as in 1 Peter, you know 1 Peter, writing to people who thought that because Jesus had died, they were going to have a free pass. And Peter is saying, "No, no, no, you are sharing the sufferings of the Messiah." That is what was uniquely achieved on the cross is implemented in the world. And so, I mean, I don't like suffering, I don't like the idea of being called to suffer. The suffering by definition is what we don't like happening to us, but that is how we go through it as people who are called to share the victory of Christ by sharing his suffering. And that for me is the, what I've sometimes called the dark heart of Romans 8, Romans 8:18-30.
Darrell Bock:
You know what's interesting about that is, is that if it's properly appropriated, it seems to me it creates an empathy that you have, forcing and of deep awareness of your need for God at the same time.
N.T. Wright:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And I tell people, when you're sharing with someone who doesn't share your faith, you need to remember that's where you were at one time, that your back was turned to God. And if you will approach the conversation that way, it will be a different kind of conversation. And if you feel like, "I've got to crush this person," in some sense of the term. So this idea of being able to identify with the pain and fallenness of the world and then how do I react to it? I like to shorten John 3:16 to, "God so loved the world that He gave," And just leave it there. And just leave it there. Because it shows the heart of God and why He gave His son.
N.T. Wright:
Yeah. And that's very much Romans 5, of course, out of which Romans 2 flows. And one of the things, you'll have picked it up, is that I read the odd little phrase in Romans 8:28, that those who love God , τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν τὸν θεὸν, as referring back to the previous verse in which he's talked about the groaning of the spirit within us and the Father listening. Because in 5:5 he said that, "The love of God is pulled out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who's been given to us." And I think he's saying that when we are groaning like this and the Father is listening, we are in that relationship of love. God is loving us and we are learning to love and trust Him. And that it's, God works with those who are doing that to bring about good in the world. And you'll have picked up that I have this revisionist reading of 8:28, which again, I got from some friends who nudged me into saying, "Come on, Tom, read the Greeks. Remind yourself what it actually says."
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. As I tell my students, nothing beats observing the Greek text. Nothing, nothing at all.
N.T. Wright:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
So let me go to one other theme, I think we have time maybe for one more. And that is the ascension. I think the ascension is the lost act of Jesus, if I can say it that way. Or the lost act of God for Jesus. And the way I like to say it is, is that when we come to Easter, we tend to say the pastor walks out, at least what happens in the States, is the pastor walks out and says, "He has risen." And the crowd says back, "And he has risen indeed." And so we think about the new life that we have. Which is tremendous and is obviously a point of Easter.
But the other point of Easter that I think is as, if not even more important, because it's the supposition for being able to say that is, is that Easter is God's vindication of the options of what the cross represented. Because Jesus either hung on the cross because He was the intended exalted figure of God, or because he was a blasphemer. Those were the two options that put Him on the cross. And of course the Jewish leadership in Rome said, "Oh, He's a pretender, He's not the real thing." And the resurrection was God's vote in that dispute. And the idea that He sits at the right hand of God, sharing in the rule and the benefits of God is making that point. And I sometimes think we miss on Easter the opportunity to drive that point home on that special day when there are a lot of people in church who otherwise wouldn't be in church.
N.T. Wright:
Yes, of course in my tradition, we keep a day called Ascension Day, which is 40 days later. And technically we are supposed to keep Easter as a 40-day festival, all the way from Easter to Ascension. And then you have Pentecost a week later. I know that not all churches keep Ascension Day, but it's one of my favorite moments in the church year and we have some great hymns about it. And I've often preached on the end of Matthew 28 where Jesus says, "All authority in heaven and on earth is given to Me." And I've said, many evangelicals like to think of it as the great commission, "Go into all the world," Well, fine. But that only makes the sense it does because all authority has been given to Him. And that's an already, that's not will be given, that has been given in His resurrection and then His being seated at the Father's right hand.
And that's obviously such an important New Testament theme. And it's kind of implicit in Paul, but it's then obviously explicit in that last great paragraph, that He died, yes, He was rather, He was raised, and He is at the right hand and He intercedes for us. So that sense that He is ruling the world, and I've often said in preaching and chatting with people, we are quite happy to think about Him having all authority in heaven, we've hardly really begun to figure out what it means that Jesus has all authority on earth. What does that look like? What are we talking about there? But part of that then is, that He's interceding for His people, praying for us so that we may be able to be His faithful witnesses, to be-
Darrell Bock:
That's a vocation idea.
N.T. Wright:
Yeah, exactly. To be the small working model of new creation so that even if it doesn't make any sense to people… The reason that early Christianity spread was not because of great ideas being passed from one brain to another, whether it was Iraneus or Tatalian or Augustine or whoever, it was because ordinary folk on the street were living the Jesus life and people looked and said, "Didn't know that was possible, didn't know you could live that way." And that's the real emphasis for me, the vocational emphasis. And this is not vocation or salvation. Of course it is about salvation, Romans is all about salvation. But salvation is about new creation, and new creation begins when Jesus comes out of the tomb on Easter morning and pours out his spirit upon his followers and is exalted to the right hand of God. And so that's where we're at on that.
Darrell Bock:
We're on the same page. I tease people, I actually did another message, it was Ephesians 2 and following, and I said, we all know the Protestant creed, "Salvation's by grace through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast." And I say, "Keep reading. What does that salvation for?" "Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." What's the first good work? First good work is what gets evidenced through the new man. And so I say, if you ask what salvation is for you, don't separate this calling from salvation, it's actually part of the point of it.
N.T. Wright:
Yes. And the good works, I mean because we've been so hung up about good works and good works can't justify you. People read Ephesians 2:10 as though good works there simply means, so now you get to behave morally, properly. But actually good works, as we know from, say the Letters to Titus in the New Testament, good works is about followers of Jesus doing things in the wider community that make people say, "My goodness, that was great. We're so glad to have these people on our street." The good works, whether you've got lots of money to splash out on good works of that sort, or whether it's just being kind to people and rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep. These are the good works. And I love that line, again, we're coming back to Ephesians. Γάρ ἐσμεν ποίημα. We are his workmanship. And the word poiema being the word from which we get poem. We are God's artwork. He's putting us in the world to display what his purpose for true humanity is all about.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, the church is God's great art museum. Go ahead.
N.T. Wright:
That's right. That's right. Maybe we should write a book together, Darrell.
Darrell Bock:
That would be fun. That would be fun to do
N.T. Wright:
When we haven't got anything else to do.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. Well, as I tease people, I'm off the streets and the crime rate's down. Well, Tom, just a real pleasure to just exchange with you on Romans 8 and Romans and your love for Paul and your commitment to the New Testament. And what I love about what you do is, there is, and maybe this is not the best way to say it, but there is an ethical heartbeat to what you write in terms of how the church shows its theology. And I think that that is central to what the church desperately needs today in terms of being able to display what it means to be an image reflector, just to use more language that you've printed. So thank you very much for being with us.
N.T. Wright:
Well, thank you, Darrell. It's very good to see you. And again, apologies I was late on, but I'm so glad you were able to come back into the studio. That's great.
Darrell Bock:
Well, we'll have to do more of this. This is fun, and I really have enjoyed it. And like I say, one of these days when I get back to Oxford, we'll sit down and just have a long chat about all kinds of things.
N.T. Wright:
Indeed. Indeed.
Darrell Bock:
Because I can tell, this is a kindred spirit conversation.
N.T. Wright:
Absolutely. Let me know when you're coming through town.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, thanks a lot. And thank you for joining us.
N.T. Wright:
Thank you very much.
Darrell Bock:
You're very welcome. Thank you for joining us on The Table. We'll hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to see more episodes of The Table podcast, it's voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast, and we hope you'll join us again soon.
Kymberli Cook:
Welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the Assistant Director of the Hendricks Center. And today I am sitting amidst every single director of the Center that there has ever been. So it's not intimidating for me at all. Welcome.
I'm actually very excited for this day. We've been trying to plan this for a long time and it's the first time, I believe, that everybody's been together, right, in one general sort of virtual place. So it is an honor to be able to be here and to be hosting and to introduce each one of you. So going in chronological order of their leadership of the Center, here we go. We have Andy Wileman, who was the first executive director of the Howard G. Hendricks Center for Christian Leadership. He was also the long-time senior pastor at Grace Bible Church here in Dallas, and he is now the principal officer of the Cornerstone Center for Economic Opportunity.
We are also joined by Brad Smith, who originally worked with new programs from the very beginning with the Center for Christian Leadership. And he is now the Chancellor of Bakke Graduate University and the director of Alliance Engagement for the World Evangelical Alliance. And with Brad we have Bill Lawrence, the founder of Leader Formation International. He was the past executive director of the Center for Christian Leadership and a former professor of Spiritual Life and Preaching at DTS here.
Yes, there are two pages of introductions. And then we have Andy Seidel, who served as executive director of the Hendricks Center. He was also the senior pastor of Grace Bible Church in College Station, Texas and now serves as the chairman of INTRUST. And then we have my current bosses. And I think this is Darrell and I's third podcast in two weeks. So we got to quit meeting here.
We have Darrell Bock, the executive Director for Cultural Engagement here at the Center and research professor of New Testament at DTS. And Bill Hendricks, who is the son of Howard G. Hendricks, the executive director for Christian Leadership at the Center as well as the president of the Giftedness Center here in Dallas.
Thank you gentlemen, everybody, for being here. It's going to be fun. Clearly a lot of people have thought you all are worthy of being a part of a lot of organizations, so it's really good to have you here. So the Center is thirty-seven years old this year. So let's start back in 1986 with the first executive director, Andy Wileman. How did you end up being the first director?
Andy Wileman:
I served in the president's office for the seminary for six, seven years. Started out with Dr. Walvord and normally most associated with Dr. Walvord, but then also transitioned the presidency to Dr. Campbell. And so I was working in a lot of things related to marketing, fundraising, strategy in the president's office. And there were two real issues that brought it up. One was Dr. Campbell wanted to make sure his very close friend, Howie Hendricks, was happy. And that was not a small act of conversation in the president's office.
And the other one was in all of the research we were doing for marketing and strategy, what we kept hearing was our alumni knew the Bible amazingly and theology amazingly, but when they failed, they failed in the area of leadership. And so honestly, I went to Dr. Campbell and said, "How about we start a center and put Prof over it and study leadership," because Prof, he was lightning in a bottle. He spoke to leaders in an amazing way. And I actually recommended Bill Lawrence be the executive director. And then one day between Chafer Chapel and Davidson Hall, Dr. Campbell looked at me and said, "I want you to be the executive director." And to this day, the only reason I can think is they didn't want to take Bill Lawrence out of the classroom and they figured I was expendable.
Kymberli Cook:
You'll be all right.
Andy Wileman:
Go sit with Howie and keep him happy. So that's how it started.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So you were here from the beginning. Bill Lawrence was at the Center from the beginning. And Brad, you were here from the beginning as well, correct?
Brad Smith:
Almost.
Kymberli Cook:
Brad, when did you come in?
Brad Smith:
So I came in after they had started it at the end of 1986, and Prof Hendricks called me. I had actually worked with his son, Bob Hendricks in Washington D.C. And Andy, I think, had asked him to call me. I was running a congressional campaign at that time, that was ending in the early part of November. And he said, "I understand you run political campaigns." And I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "Would you like to come to Dallas Seminary and work and run a political campaign here? The politics will be much worse " And so then I met with Andy, and Andy explained it and I jumped in at that point.
Kymberli Cook:
So the hope or the vision, was a place to keep Hendricks happy and having a little bit of a playground that he could do what he wanted to and talk about leadership, right. So what was the hope for the Center to accomplish? Was there anything, any goals originally?
Andy Wileman:
Yeah, I think when we kept hearing our students, our alumni, are failing in the area of leadership, then Prof and I started a class that then other people took over. I only did it twice with him on leadership for our students, but we wanted to elevate the issue. Leadership wasn't even talked about. It was not a subject. We were told during that area, just preach the word and everything else takes care of itself. Andy, was that your experience as a pastor?
Andy Seidel:
No.
Andy Wileman:
So it was a weakness and frankly, historically that probably was more true, but the world was changing. Leadership mattered more. And Brad's background in student government at the school and College Station helped because he knew how to work with students. And so student area, on campus, and then alumni, which Bill Lawrence was strategically related to. And then the other area we wanted to work on was laity. And that was actually my interest. And so during my time we did some things related to emerging lay leaders.
Kymberli Cook:
So from the beginning it's always been students, alumni, and the people out in the pews.
Andy Wileman:
And each one has a little different need.
Kymberli Cook:
Yes, absolutely. Okay, so Bill Lawrence, can you tell me a little bit about what your work with the alumni was?
Bill Lawrence:
With?
Kymberli Cook:
With the alumni.
Bill Lawrence:
With the alumni. One thing I failed to mention that I need to say was my experience as a pastor. I was the founder and pastor of South Hills Community Church in San Jose, California for 12 years. We started from zero and the Lord used us to build it to 800. It was an amazing time and it totally formed my whole view of seminary and leadership, and that is very defining.
Now, my experience with alumni grew out of all of the opportunities I had to connect with students who then graduated. And the moment they get their degree, in reality, what they know changes from classroom to the street. Because when they enter the pastorate, they're on the street and they are dealing with people who are living struggles, people who are dying, people whose marriages are falling apart, people whose children are suffering, people whose teenagers are rebelling, people whose businesses are going in multiple directions. And those are the kinds of things that I had to face constantly. I had World War II veterans who were relating to me as navigators coming out or walking across the Philippines behind MacArthur and teaching me what I did not know and that no seminary professor was capable of teaching me. As good as they were, as great as they were. And I learned that's what you need to have before you get into the pastorate so you can really be useful.
Kymberli Cook:
And that was the vision of the Center.
Brad Smith:
So he was a pastor, but he also taught preaching, taught spiritual life as well as worked with alumni and pastors that were alumni. So he was uniquely positioned for both character development, preaching, which had been a lot of Dallas Seminary's history, as well as a practitioner pastor.
Kymberli Cook:
Wonderful. So what was one of the first obstacles? So this is the beautiful vision that I'm hearing for the Center, was the need to address this hole that people were seeing when especially men at that time were out in the pastorate and they were struggling like you were just saying, Bill, to really put the boots on the ground of theology. This is what it looks like to apply. And so I see the vision. What was one of the first obstacles that the Center really faced that it had to tackle?
Andy Wileman:
We picked a horrible time. We were in the middle of the eighties savings and loan recession in Texas. And so budget was almost non-existent. And that limited. I look how many employees Darrell has and I am a little jealous. We had Brad. And he was worth several, but that was it. But budget really was a major issue. And then the other thing was I think there was a little bit of institutional distrust of the idea of leadership.
Kymberli Cook:
Talk to me a little bit more about that. And Bill or Brad, feel free to hop in as well about an institutional distrust of the concept of leadership and perhaps even wider than that at that time, wider than the institution.
Andy Wileman:
I think incorrectly, obviously leadership is abused a lot and everybody has experiences of that, and that's absolutely legitimate. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding what servant and leadership mean together with each other. And a lot of people felt like talking about leadership eradicated the servant aspect of it. And anybody who knew Prof knew that wasn't what he was teaching. But I think people jumped to assumptions until it just took time to see, okay, what they mean is absolutely positive and legitimate. And Bill and Andy, as it grew over time, and you had men who had more experience than I did, I think that helped too. I was thirty-two when we started it.
Kymberli Cook:
Wow, really?
Andy Wileman:
Yes, I was 32.
Darrell Bock:
Wasn't one of the challenges, the fact that here you had this entity that was attached to a seminary? We know what a seminary is, but we're not sure what a Center is?
Andy Wileman:
Yeah. And we intended for it to not be absorbed by the academic. I called it para-academic because we felt like it had an opportunity to bring things to the campus without the limitations of academia. For instance, we wouldn't have to make sure everyone was a pre-trib dispensationalist to involve them. And I mean that respectfully. I worked for Dr. Walbert. Protecting the doctrinal statement was a major issue. But to bring in something like leadership, you want to broaden that circle. So we wanted outside of the academic, but informing the academic. And people wondered why in the world do y'all want to not be in the academic?
Kymberli Cook:
Bill or Brad?
Bill Hendricks:
I wasn't around the Center, but I was around. So I was very aware of what was going on and I was actually working in the faith and work space from the beginning of my career. And at that time there was quite a bit of entrepreneurial activity that had taken place in the United States. And out of that came a lot of research on leadership in the business world. And companies were trying to figure out new ways of managing people. And the works of Peter Drucker became quite read and there was a whole movement. And so understandably, a lot of those ideas began to get studied and imported into churches. And unfortunately that created some problems of acceptance of the concept of leadership. The idea that, wait a minute, you're telling us we're going to go out into the world and let the world tell us how we should be doing ministry? And so there was that sacred secular dichotomy in play that the Center had to fight.
Kymberli Cook:
Bill, what did you want to add?
Bill Lawrence:
That relates directly to what I want to say about academia because I believe in academia. I believe in academics. I have always believed in academics. I came to Dallas Seminary because of academics and I pursued what I did at Dallas Seminary because of academics. But the reality is academics are incomplete. Reality is not academic. The issues of life are not academic. They are not theory. They are deep, unknown, un-understood realities that a leader has to guide his followers through. And that's what the Center had to be about. When we had this theme in front of us, shaping leaders in shifting times, you better believe it. That's what Matthew 28 18 through 20 is all about. All about forming leaders, taking followers and forming them into leaders. That's what Jesus did. And we are doing what Jesus told us to do. Make disciples.
Andy Wileman:
And Bill is still preaching.
Darrell Bock:
And what's interesting is nothing's changed about that.
Brad Smith:
So when I was brought on, Andy told me a few things. One thing he said is that the board had changed the mission statement of Dallas Seminary back in the early eighties from a preaching-based mission statement to a leadership-based mission statement. What Andy told me is that then about a year or two later, the board asked the staff, "So now that we've changed the mission statement, how has the program of the seminary been changed?" And so that was part of the idea behind the Leadership Center because it hadn't really been changed much. And that was a good question.
Second thing is Prof Hendricks would say that the school was kind of at a crossroads and had been for quite some time. Is it going to be the Princeton of the south, conservative Princeton of the South, where it was really an academic and scholar leadership for the world and training professors that would influence seminaries around the world, or was it going to be a practitioner school for pastors? And obviously Hendricks, Prof Hendricks had been more on the practitioner side for years. There was a lot of people on the other side and that was still in the works of being a crossroads.
Thirdly, Andy asked me to interview board members and faculty and staff about what the Center could be. And one of the things that came back from quite a few is that the Center for Christian Leadership could be the skunk works and the idea behind that phrase, it goes back to one of the examples would be the Apple Macintosh versus Apple, that we could try out new things in leadership development without having to move the whole ship. That we could be an example, a positive example, that people could look over and say, "That makes sense. Let us try that." And so a lot of the ideas behind it was to be a skunk works. And then the last thing is Bill did a good job because there was some degree of questions about the Center of having brown bag lunches with faculty. And talk a little bit about how you were building relationship with the people that perhaps had some of these challenges.
Bill Lawrence:
Well, I wanted to do the best I could to have the most positive relationship so that academics could realize that what you do is phenomenal. What you do really matters. What you do is not just theoretical. It's actual. It's real. What I say to somebody on a deathbed is something that had its foundation in what I heard in the classroom. That is essential. And I needed them to know that we were not trying to replace them, we were trying to complete them. That's the difference. The academics don't always understand that, but that's what we have to communicate. And I'm saying that that's just as essential today, even more so in the twenty-first century, than even it was in the late 20th century.
Kymberli Cook:
I'm hearing you, especially Brad and Bill, talking about the obstacle of this conversation might be a nice word between academics and practitioners. And that also was one of the things in addition to the finances, just on a really practical level and the concept of leadership being new and questionable, especially in the midst of the eighties and the corporate conversation happening as well.
Andy Wileman:
And I came out of fundraising, and faculty didn't trust us fundraisers either. Truthfully.
Kymberli Cook:
That's fair.
Andy Wileman:
Because we manipulate people to pay their salaries.
Darrell Bock:
And I'm getting nervous sitting here as a faculty member.
Kymberli Cook:
I was thinking that. Okay, so Bill, you actually, and Brad, you introduced it. And Bill, you told us a little bit about one of the ways that you responded to that meeting with the academics. How else did you all respond to those early obstacles, especially the leadership dimension, the questions around leadership?
Andy Wileman:
I was here a very short time with the Leadership Center. So really in fairness, Brad and Bill and later Andy did the hard work with that. I was just trying to get us started. It was just the very beginning. And frankly, I ignored the faculty, not because I didn't value them. I cannot communicate how much I valued what the THM here gave me. But because we were fighting for survival. We didn't know what we were going to be, what we were going to do, and we were trying to write the…
The biggest mistake we made in my opinion, and Brad and Bill are welcome to disagree, but was that we started it before we had a full-blown plan. And the reason we did that is Dr. Campbell wanted to go public that Prof was staying. And as soon as Prof agreed to it, they did ads of Prof and Dr. Campbell and me in Christianity Today and in Movie Monthly announcing Howard Hendricks Center for Christian Leadership.
So it got approved, but we had no plan. So literally. And they just said, "Trust us. We're all for you." And so Brad and I spent a lot of time together. I would talk and then Brad would write it down and come back with something that was legible and made sense. And we tried to develop that plan on the fly, literally. And the first several months of the Leadership Center, I was still in the president's office working full-time there.
Brad Smith:
So one of the things that Andy had found in the research, because you notice he talked about the marketing research and the alumni research, is that the alumni said that they also needed character development. And what happened is the school had always been focused on academic development and skill, but they were saying we need character as well. And so what Bill walked into, what Andy had walked into, was a lot of the faculty said, "Obviously they need character development, but that's going to happen in the local church." That is not the role of the seminary to do that except by example, prayers in the classroom.
But in terms of specifically intentionally adding things to the curriculum for character development, that was a new concept and that was something that Bill had to spend a lot of time on talking about that yes, it is the job of the local church, but the seminary should also be involved in intentional ways. That's where the spiritual formation program came from is from that conversation coming from the research that Andy had done in the president's office.
Kymberli Cook:
Bill, did you have anything you wanted to add to that?
Brad Smith:
So you were teaching spiritual life and the intentionality of adding spiritual formation. Any thoughts?
Bill Lawrence:
I came from the pastorate and I saw… When I was a student, we had a spiritual life course that had been dropped. And I said, well, to me, I said to myself, I don't want that missing. So when I added electives, I included some significant things on the spiritual life that were very significant for me when I was a student. And then out there it really made a difference. So the students took this course, these courses from me, and they got spiritual life from me, and they began to talk about it. And when they began to talk about it, the president, Don Campbell, heard it and he finally decided we're going to have the spiritual life. Why did we ever drop spiritual life? We want it back into curriculum. And so I was the guy who was talking about it.
Everybody knew it. The faculty knew it. The faculty practiced spiritual life. That was not a problem. They just didn't… They saw it as a one hour classroom lecture and not a course and not something that really formed life. That's where spiritual life, I ended up teaching it, and then it expanded and became very much a part of what it is, has been. And that's where the Center came. All of it came out of that.
Darrell Bock:
Then that's where I actually had my first contact with the Center is that I was brought in, I guess because I was an academic, to help with the biblical discussions about the New Testament and the spiritual life and helped with the team that was designing what was going into spiritual life. Think through, I used to do the opening lecture that they would have for the leadership team on the New Testament background to the spiritual life and that kind of thing. And Bill talked to me about… He said he had two pillars that he wanted the Center to be built around. One of them was the academic and the other was the practical. You've heard him talk about it here. You talked about being the token person. I was the token academic in that conversation.
And we developed a really good relationship because the seminary was making a very important decision, which was we were going to serve the church. And I actually think that that's one of the most important decisions that the seminary made in its hundred years of existence. When that move was made, clearly made in the late 1980s with the Center being an example of what it represented, that made a statement that said we care about what's happening in the pews and we care what's happening with the pastors, and we want to do it from a pastoral angle. We want have substance, but we want to do it with a pastoral angle and with a relational thrust. And we've never lost that heartbeat.
Kymberli Cook:
And it made us unique. So that's a good example of the seminary in general reading the winds of change and trying to figure out how to lead in the midst of it. And you gentlemen were part of the landing party that the seminary sent out to do that. So then we have Andy Seidel over here. When did you get pulled in to the work of the Center?
Andy Seidel:
Well, I went to Dallas Seminary, but that was much earlier than that. I got pulled in 1998. And I got to become the director of the Center largely because of Bill Lawrence and Brad Smith. And you got to begin on the basis of the two of them and Andy Wileman and what they had created.
Kymberli Cook:
So between 1986 and 1998 and even as you were stepping in 1998, what were some other key moments that you gentlemen, when you look back, you say this was a time when it felt like there was a really clear obstacle or there were different needs all of a sudden presenting themselves that the Center kind of had to figure out how it was going to address?
Andy Wileman:
I want to say in fairness of the seminary, because of being at the president's office, I'd gone back and read historical documents and all of that. I think DTS really has always tried to adapt. And it's easy to look back and say, "Well, they didn't do this." But when you know the history and where they came from, you respect a whole lot more how they adapted. Dr. Walvrood and I talked a lot about those things. And I think in fairness, throughout the time of the Leadership Center, the seminary has been adapting too. When we started teaching dynamics of leadership, some of our best students were women. But when I'd started seminary seven years or 10 years earlier, there were no women. So the seminary was constantly trying to adapt. And I think it was hand in hand with the Leadership Center. I don't think it was one against the other. There was misunderstanding, but I think they both were trying to get there, but it was in fits and starts, because our society's in fits and starts. Does that make sense?
Kymberli Cook:
Absolutely. So I guess what I'm trying to surface are what were some of those fits and starts?
Andy Wileman:
I'm trying to be real careful.
Kymberli Cook:
I know. So am I.
Darrell Bock:
The structure of what was going on was you're used to being an academic educational institution, and now you're going to put something around it that's going to try and be something more than that in one sense and be connected with input from people who are outside the classroom. That is logistically a challenge. And so I think that's part of what the struggle was. We were doing something innovative. And innovation takes practice. And practice sometimes doesn't make perfect, and sometimes it takes time to figure out and get your bearings. And that's I think what was happening.
Kymberli Cook:
It sounds like there were a lot-
Brad Smith:
There's two things that come to mind. So two things come to mind. One is, given what Bill Hendricks had said earlier about trying to engage the marketplace, we were working hard to bring in more marketplace speakers in chapel and also in the classroom so that that way pastors in training could see kind of the end product and hear the language and the ideas behind that. That was a new concept. But that was a major emphasis. And a lot of people responded to that in a very positive way because these are often very good speakers, very wise people.
The second piece was based upon what Andy and Bill worked on is the seminary asked us to do the two large pastors conferences. And normally that had focused more on perhaps what's happening academically at the seminary. So an alumni can come back and see that. They asked us to start doing pastors conferences that were more leading. What are the cultural issues that are happening? What are the challenges that are happening, including two very large pastors conferences. And we were given freedom to bring in speakers that might push a little bit, might create a little bit of tension, but in ways that would clean that up well.
Bill Lawrence:
They take care of that.
Brad Smith:
[inaudible 00:30:55]. It was good. But I think that was a huge element of trust from Dr. Campbell to say, "We want you to actually produce the showcase of how we showcase Dallas Seminary to our alumni and donors as well." And I think that was also a place where we could begin to show a little bit about the future, engaging faculty, of course, but having more talks, not on the latest academic research, but perhaps on what's happening in culture and how pastors are dealing with that.
Kymberli Cook:
So how did you-
Bill Lawrence:
You know that ninety-eight 98% of all that's done to expand the gospel is done by non-seminary trained and non-professional leaders. Our graduates need to know that before they get out, because that's their whole life.
Kymberli Cook:
So what I'm curious is, around the table or at the lunch tables that you all were sitting at, and as you were talking through all these things and saying, "Okay, here's where we're at. Here's where we're trying to go. Here are the realities we're seeing," even like you were just saying, Bill, that this is the reality of even the movement of the gospel and what's happening. How do we get this out? And we have this opportunity with these pastors conferences. And just talk to me a little bit about those conversations and how you all got to the point where you had some of these ideas and you know what, we're going to bring in marketplace leaders. That's what we're going to do. Just talk to me a little bit about that.
Andy Wileman:
Marketplace was my thing. My degree's in business. I'd owned a business. I'd worked in financial services while I was in seminary, and the president's office is a business office. So I had that bias. The only doctorate I started was actually a business doctorate before I decided to leave. And then for instance, Prof and I went to a conference at Center for Creative Leadership, and it was of educators from all over the world speaking on leadership.
And what you found it was, there were two groups that had done the most in leadership. Business because it was all about making money, and the military because it was all about saving lives. And that's why Andy was such a great hire. He came with that military. Because the academies were hands down the best leader trainers we met, not even close because people die if you don't lead well in the military. So we would be talking about military and business and those names and Search of Excellence was hot then by Peters and Waterman. And those were the kind of conversations we were having.
Brad Smith:
So Andy, could you share a little bit about the boost we got when Bill Hendricks wrote Your Work Matters to God, how you put together the advisory group that included Ford Madison, Jack Turpin, Bob Buford at one point. And then you had a younger leaders group, Bill Biesel, Russ Miller, some of those people. They became a huge part of how we were shaped and the ideas that we learned as we talked to them. Tracy Taylor was part of that. Maybe some of your thoughts on why you did that and what we learned from them.
Andy Wileman:
Well, again, it was to get outsiders in. But there were outsiders who loved Dallas Seminary, that believed in Dallas Seminary. I always said some of our donors believed in the seminary more than some of our faculty because they were so passionate about what the seminary had done in their lives. So we brought those kind of people, and Turpin and Madison and others, and had a conference out at Tracy Taylor's Ranch and ruminated on it, talked about it, and they were excited and helped with it.
And then we did the Emerging Leaders. I went to some old friends, Vern Garrison, whose dad had been on the seminary board forever and others, and said, "Introduce me to other people our age who are going to be leaders." And so we brought in a group of men who still in Dallas Fort Worth, we're all old now, but are exercising leadership in a great many ways. And so that was my emphasis because I never had any pastoral experience. That was for me, the safe spot. And then Bill came in and cleaned it up for pastoral experience.
Brad Smith:
Andy, at that point, Lhe leadership Center was asked to raise money for its work. It was given freedom to do that. That's how we got the Bill Seay library and other things. Can you talk a little bit about why that was important, at least at that stage of the Center for Christian Leadership, for us to have the freedom to do that?
Andy Wileman:
Truthfully, that was always attention, honestly about could we go out and raise money and could we talk to people that were already giving money? And so there was always a struggle with that, but we wanted the autonomy. We wanted that ability to not, especially given the fact that the seminary was in a bind financially, a committee. I sat on a committee of six people and we went through and cut 5% out of the budget by going through every line item of the seminary's budget in a week. I mean, it was that ugly. And so bringing in additional money was what freed us to do other things, but it also to Brad's point, gave us some autonomy and some freedom.
Kymberli Cook:
So Andy, what did you feel like when you came on board? What was your vision? What were you hoping to accomplish in continuing where the Center had begun from and what was your vision for the next phase?
Andy Seidel:
Well, there were a couple of things that we had similar experiences of. One was we started a ministry called Leaderboard to business leaders. And that became a really, really good thing. And thanks to Bill Lawrence encouraging that and being supportive of that, we had really all kinds of very interesting leaders that came and spoke to business leaders.
And these were of course, Swindoll and Hendricks and Mark Bailey spoke, but also we had all kinds. Ken Starr came and spoke. Ozzie Enes, Dave Ridley, he gave a marvelous thing about Southwest Airlines, how the first flight after 9/11 and how they let all the people of Southwest Airlines out to the fences to cheer the plane along, the first one that left. Dan Reeves, who was the head of the Dallas Cowboys, Tom Leppert, who was the mayor of Dallas, and a lot of other business leaders came and encouraged them. And it was a seminary event. And so it was really a good thing in connecting some of these business leaders with the seminary.
Kymberli Cook:
And was that partially your heart was to continue building that, not just connection, but the bonds between the business world and the seminary world and the church world and pulling it all together?
Andy Seidel:
Absolutely.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay, wonderful. Andy's the one who hired me, so it's really good. It's really nice for me to even be here.
Andy Seidel:
It was a good hire.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, thanks. That's very kind, Andy. And I just have to be careful with time. So then we end up adding Darrell into the mix, right? So Darrell, how did you end up in the game?
Darrell Bock:
Well, what had happened is the society had moved miles. It had gone from a Judeo-Christian backdrop that you could assume to a culture that was becoming pluralistic and was raising all kinds of questions for the church, practical questions that demanded a wedding between academics and really deep serious Bible study and discernment and practical application. And so what happened was is that I had a conversation with Mark Bailey. You need to know the podcasting started at the seminary apart from the Center. And the day the iPod was announced, I was in Germany on sabbatical, and I sent an email to John Grasswick and Mark Bailey saying, "This is a great way to stay in contact with alumni and to pull them into the work of the school without asking them for money, where we can minister to them and serve them and keep them up to date with what's going on, connect with them."
And we did that for about five years. And the whole purpose was when everything hit the Richter scale that Mark and I both reacted to, and our schedules would allow us to be in the same room at the same time to do it, we'd do a podcast. We went to the Lausanne Conference, the global conference in South Africa in 2010, met with alumni and we asked them, "How can the seminary best serve you?" And without any hesitation, and almost to every person, they said, "Keep those podcasts coming to us. They're like a lifeline for us in terms of thinking about where we are theologically," et cetera.
I walked out of that meeting and said to Mark, I said, "You realize we do this so ad hoc. There's no plan to it," et cetera. We do it when it's necessary, et cetera. But I think there's a way to do it, and I think it makes sense to put it in the Center. And I think that will help the Center complete the loop of you've got to have your character, you've got to understand what leadership is, you've got to understand how to run an organization and how to lead people. I said, "But if the leader doesn't know what's going on around them, they're in trouble, particularly in changing times." So that became the mandate. We ran that by Prof and he said he thought that was a great idea. He signed on. And you've been dealing with me ever since.
Kymberli Cook:
About the same time actually.
Darrell Bock:
And so we started the podcast. We took a year to plan what we were going to do before we did it. We spent six months deciding what we were going to call it, that kind of thing. Spent that much detail, and then we launched. And this next year we will hit our 600 episode of the podcast. So the podcast has been a major part of what we've done. And then we came alongside that and said, "We've got to help churches wrestle with the fact that Christianity is now having to adjust with being in a pluralistic environment." And at least in the United States, it's not in the majority position that it used to have, etc. That changes the way you interact and dynamic and lead out of it, etc. So that's what we're working on. So now we're working on what is the theology of cultural engagement that we can give to leaders that will help them lead well? And so those are the spaces that we're in now, and that's what we've brought in. But some things have never changed.
Kymberli Cook:
Oh, no, no, no. That's my last question. But I need to get Bill Hendricks in here. Stop. So Darrell, you brought this sense of, okay, so the leader, again, like we've talked about, needs to be connected to the wider world, the business. That was all from the get-go pulling in the business community and addressing character issues, addressing the spiritual life like you were bringing in Bill and Brad. And then Darrell, you have the bearings of the cultural swirl around the leader. And then we also have Bill Hendricks who in this most recent iteration, at least in directorship, has brought in how the individual leader can find their bearings in the midst of just the swirl of opportunity in life and all of that. So Bill Hendricks, can you talk a little bit to that and what brought you to the Center and got you excited about joining this decades-old effort?
Bill Hendricks:
I actually started this journey one night at dinner. Andy Seidel and his wife Gail invited me and my wife Lynn to dinner. And halfway through dinner, he says, "Bill, can I ask you to pray about something?" And I'm like, okay, how do I answer that? No? I said, "Sure." He said, "Would you pray about succeeding me as the executive director for Christian leadership at the Center for Christian Leader?" And I didn't really see that coming, but now I was committed. So I spent a summer praying, talking to people, trying to decide is this what God has from me or not? And believe it or not, at the end of the summer came to the conclusion, no, I don't think the Lord's really leading me into this direction. So I said no. And Dr. Bailey and Darrell were disappointed. And I thought that was the end of it.
And a month later Dr. Bailey calls me back and said, "Well, would you consider being the acting director? If you're not the guy to take over for Andy, help us figure out who is. And meanwhile, would you put a board together, a advisory board, and would you help think through some vision?" And so now I had another season of prayer, but this time I thought, okay, this is a little more along the lines of what I'm doing and been doing. And it is after all my dad's legacy, so maybe I should take a second look. Finally, I agreed as long as I could keep doing my consulting practice, the Giftedness Center. And so the first year I just spent talking to people. What is this thing called the Center for Christian Leadership? Where does it fit in this bigger thing called Dallas Seminary? So that's a thousand conversations. I came back to Dr. Bailey that spring and I said, "I don't have a candidate for you yet." And he was like, "Oh, no hurry, no hurry."
And so then the second year goes by and by now I'm starting to have some fun. I'm seeing a little bit of influence and things are happening and getting excited. But by the end of that year, I realized, Bill, you're going to have to make up your mind because it's very difficult for the seminary to raise money for something that they don't quite know what the leadership's going to be. So finally one day, again, after lots of prayer and searching my soul, I went to Dr. Bailey and said, "Listen, let's take acting off the title of director. As long as the seminary is happy with me and I'm happy with the seminary, let's just keep this going." And so that was almost a decade ago.
What got me really excited was I saw that I could make a contribution in at least one way. I mean, from one point of view, Kym, you have to stop and think about with all that's been written on leadership, what new thing could I possibly bring that nobody's seen about leadership before? But I did see one possibility for how I could maybe make a contribution because I kept talking to seminary students who are spending lots of money and getting these degrees. And I'd say, "Well, what are you going to do when you get out?" They'd go, "Boy, I don't really know. I'm praying and I'm hoping the Lord shows me that before I graduate." And I'm thinking, wow, that's a risky proposition.
And it was at that point I said, if I do nothing else while I'm here, I want to do what I've been doing, which is I want to create a robust set of resources to help future leaders have a sense of their calling and what God's purposes are for them. And I mean, their individual calling. We call that their giftedness, what they're born to do. And you're right in the middle of it. But since then, we've created a lot of resources now to help seminarians and others find out what God designed them to do and put them here to do, and what contribution they have to make.
Kymberli Cook:
So in a lot of ways, it started with this idea of the character and the spiritual life and making sure that the internal part of the leader was right. Goes all the way through all of these different professions in the business world and the wonderful things and culture that it has to impact and that the leader needs to be aware of and be able to navigate and speak into.
And then at this point, we're actually back to the internal part of the leader, making sure that even their own calling and that they're in the right place. That in and of itself is actually an additional need that leadership and at least current leadership has. So in three words, three words, gentlemen, three words, what do you see in the Center that has remained constant throughout from 1986 or whenever you ended up on board? What do you see where you say there are different emphases now, there are different programs, but this I still see. Andy, let's start with you, Andy Wileman.
Andy Wileman:
Christ is central.
Kymberli Cook:
Christ is central. Andy Seidel.
Andy Seidel:
Leadership is necessary in all parts of ministry.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. Brad, and Bill Lawrence. Brad Smith, Bill Lawrence, what would you guys say in three words?
Bill Lawrence:
I have a little more than four. Be a Matthew 28 seminary.
Kymberli Cook:
Brad.
Brad Smith:
Spiritual formation is core.
Kymberli Cook:
Spiritual formation. Bill Hendricks.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, my three words would be, what's not changed at the Center would be my father's heartbeat. My dad did his thesis on the book of James and the verse that he camped on and he camped on it throughout his whole career was be doers of the word and not hearers only. And he felt like if we did not demonstrate in practical ways the relevance of God's word to living out real life, just like Bill Lawrence was saying, then we have essentially, he used Tom Nelson's phrase, practiced pastoral malpractice.
Kymberli Cook:
Darrell, I gave you the last word. You're welcome.
Darrell Bock:
Compassion, show compassion, be connected to people. The second word is courageous. Be willing to speak out when the church needs to hear it. And the third is collaboration, to realize that ministry is never on one set of shoulders, but it's always on a team. And we need to be better at collaborating with one another.
Kymberli Cook:
Wonderful.
Brad Smith:
You have a global piece to what is being added to the Hendrick Center. Maybe could you share a little bit about the global piece you're doing for Lausanne, WA and other things? Bill has been a part of that as well. Because that's pretty important for shaping leaders of the future.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. We're asking the question and helping doing polling at a global level to define what evangelicalism is and what it isn't. We're trying to make clear the distinction between what I call theological evangelicalism and political evangelicalism and the difference between them. And we're helping with the World, Evangelical Alliance and through Kirby Lang in Cambridge, England, do this polling and get a sense of the world's voice into what it means to be a Christian who belongs to a body of Christ that's made of many tribes in many nations.
And so in that effort, we are trying to help people appreciate the contribution that comes from outside our own context for what it means to be Christian in this world, because they all live in a pluralistic environment that's challenging, and we need each other to do that. That's part of the collaboration I was alluding to.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah. Yeah. I was just about to pull that in. That definitely reflects and will continue to in the future of the Center, reflect the collaboration dimension. Well, gentlemen, we are so thoroughly out of time that we probably all just need to run out of the studio. But I just want to thank you each for being here, for the time it took to come in and for the time, quite frankly, that you have given to the Center. All of those conversations around all of those tables and trying to figure out how best to serve students here at Dallas Seminary and leaders throughout the world. So thank you so much for your service and for being here. We really appreciate it. And we appreciate those of you who have listened in on this conversation today and have learned a little bit more about who we are here at the Hendricks Center at DTS. And we would invite you to join us next time as we discuss more issues of God and culture.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, hello there. I'm Bill Hendricks, Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center, and it's my privilege today to welcome you to The Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. Recently, a now-former pastor in the Chicagoland suburb used his final sermon to explain to his congregation why he was leaving not only that church, but pastoral ministry in general, and that caused quite a bit of discussion among us at the Hendricks Center. He cited research from the Barna Group that shows that 42% of pastors, 42% of pastors, have considered quitting within the past year. And among the reasons that Barna noted were the top five, the immense stress of the job, feeling lonely and isolated, current political divisions not simply in the church but in the culture, being unhappy with the effect that that role of pastor has had on their family, or not optimistic about the future of their church.
And this particular pastor said, "I can relate to all of these, but in particular the top two are the ones that figured heavily into my decision, the stress of the job and feeling lonely and isolated." And then, he said this, which I thought was fascinating. This is his opinion. "Being a pastor is like being a parent. You can imagine what it's like to have a child, but until you're in that role, you cannot fully appreciate what it's like to shoulder the responsibility of caring for a life 24/7." Well, parenting certainly is a calling, but pastoral ministry is also a calling. And while that calling, just like parenting, has significant challenges, it's also a noble calling, and an incredibly important calling.
We've invited our guests today to talk about that incredible calling that the minister has, and why that calling is worth the commitment. Dr. Kevin Wilson is pastor of Bethel Memorial Church in Princeton, Indiana. He has a bachelor's degree from Southeastern Bible College in pastoral theology and is a graduate ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary. He has also ministered the word in Hungary through the Word of Life Institute, and he contributed a chapter on Ephesians to Dr. Paul Weaver's book, Surveying the Pauline Epistles. Kevin, you're married to your wife of 38 years, Linda, and you have, I understand, three grandchildren, and-
Kevin Wilson:
Three children.
Bill Hendricks:
Three children.
Kevin Wilson:
And one grandchild on the way.
Bill Hendricks:
And one grandchild on the way. Congratulations.
Kevin Wilson:
Thank you.
Bill Hendricks:
And he plays pickleball. So, there you have it.
Kevin Wilson:
That's right. There you go.
Bill Hendricks:
But we get a double portion of God's spirit today because we also have with us Dr. Stephen Bramer, who is the department chair and professor of Bible Exposition here at Dallas Seminary. Stephen, thank you for joining us.
Stephen Bramer:
It's great to be here.
Bill Hendricks:
We love to have faculty and particularly faculty from Bible Ex, so thank you for representing your-
Stephen Bramer:
Good. Well, we love Bible exposition. We think that's the best.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, there you go. Well, we'll come back to that. But Kevin, tell us a little bit about your own background. I certainly want to jump into these issues that I've raised, but where was growing up, family schooling, and of course, tell us about your own calling to the pastoral ministry.
Kevin Wilson:
I was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, and my mom and dad were on the front end of a little Bible church plant there. And grew up, my dad was always an elder, most of the time the chairman of the board, I think. So, we had no choice. We were…
Bill Hendricks:
You were around.
Kevin Wilson:
… around and involved. And, looking back, that has been a huge impact on my life, because I got to see and do a lot of things, maybe not always willingly, but I got experience in that. So, I'm grateful. Came to Christ when I was nine.
Bill Hendricks:
Congratulations. That's wonderful.
Kevin Wilson:
My dad's persistent question about my faith. And when I went to Sunday school, I rode home with him, and I always had to have an answer, because he would always ask, because he wasn't sitting by me, "What did you learn in Sunday school today?" So, I either had to make up an answer or come up with… And so, this one day in class, got… The conviction of God was just… I'd heard the gospel hundreds of times, growing up, but-
Bill Hendricks:
It made sense.
Kevin Wilson:
And so he asked me what I learned in Sunday school, and I just started to cry. Nine years old, just started to bawl. He pulled the car over, we're a mile from my house.
Bill Hendricks:
He knew something was up?
Kevin Wilson:
He just pulled it over right there, and he said, "You need to trust Jesus, don't you?" So, so grateful for his sensitivity, and persistence. So, I grew up in that church, didn't know what I wanted to do. Post high school, went to… Our pastors had come from this little Bible college in Birmingham, Southeastern, and most of the Southeastern's profs had come from Dallas Seminary. And so I knew I could go there and play basketball, sit on the bench, because they didn't hardly cut anybody. And I wasn't very good, but I really loved it. And so I went and went back a second year, knowing I had to make a decision. My folks were gracious, but said, "If you're not doing ministry, we need to get you on a track for a career." So, the second year you have to declare a major and, knowing no better, most of the guys are pastoral theology majors, so I said I'll do that, which means you have to take homiletics. And our professor was a wonderful man, Dr. John Talley was his name. He'd been a Vietnam chaplain. We called him God's bulldog. He would rip-
Bill Hendricks:
I'm sure he didn't suffer fools gladly.
Kevin Wilson:
No, yeah. He would rip us as young preachers, appropriately so. He would just put us where we belonged. So the end of that year, the call to ministry wasn't fireworks or lightning strikes for me. I walked out of class, homiletics class at the end of my second year and not still knowing what to do. And Dr. Talley followed me out, and then he said, "Stop a minute." And when he talked to you, you pretty much just locked it down.
And he said, "What are you doing? What do you think God's got for you?" And I said, "Dr. Talley, I have no idea." And this is the man that had taken my sermons apart and bled all over my papers. He said, "I think the Lord is calling you to be a pastor." And I just stood there for a bit and I went back and picked up the phone and called my folks and I said, "Mom, dad, I think God wants me to be a pastor." And so, God used him, a man like Dr. Bramer does, in my life to really just push me to where I think God wanted me to go. I'm so grateful.
Bill Hendricks:
And I take it, because of that exposure at Southeastern and the professors from DTS, then when it was seminary time, it was like, well-
Kevin Wilson:
Yeah. My dad said, "No options." he was not a minister, but he loved and he knew, he knew and had read, taught Sunday school forever. He said, "You're going to Dallas Seminary."
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Kevin Wilson:
I didn't argue with him.
Bill Hendricks:
Sure.
Kevin Wilson:
Grateful to come. So, my wife and I marry, going to honeymoon, come back to Dallas, we don't know a soul, and we jump into seminary here.
Bill Hendricks:
Is that where you met Stephen?
Kevin Wilson:
No, I only know Dr. Bramer-
Bill Hendricks:
How did you guys meet?
Kevin Wilson:
Go ahead.
Stephen Bramer:
Well, he knows my son in Hungary. So he went to-
Bill Hendricks:
Oh, that's right. He went to Hungary to-
Stephen Bramer:
We met there.
Kevin Wilson:
Yeah. I met Stephen in Hungary, and I watched Dr. Bramer preach. Our assistant pastor is a 2006 grad, Kyle Powell, and he sings Dr. Bramer's… He really loves Dr. Bramer. So, there was this sermon on Jehoshaphat I listened to I was really encouraged by, and so I was grateful to get to meet him personally.
Bill Hendricks:
So, you guys got to know each other?
Kevin Wilson:
Yeah, we just met and-
Stephen Bramer:
We're getting to know each other, yeah.
Kevin Wilson:
… we're getting to know each other now.
Bill Hendricks:
That's great.
Kevin Wilson:
So, married my wife, come to DTS. I mentioned in chapel today, our oldest was born here, 35 years old, has special needs. So, really just turned our world just upside down.
Bill Hendricks:
Sure.
Kevin Wilson:
I tell folks, and of course nobody ever plans to have a child with-
Bill Hendricks:
Special needs.
Kevin Wilson:
… special needs. And so she has taught me inordinate things about life and ministry. So she's with us, 35 years old, has a wonderful ministry of encouragement to so many people. Humble-
Bill Hendricks:
Praise God.
Kevin Wilson:
… servant of God, I call her. Kind of one of my heroes, really, in the ministry. And we have a daughter who is married to a young man that just took a pastorate part-time, pastorate just north of us. Really thrilled about that. And my son is a physical therapy assistant and does worship for us in the church part-time. So they're all kind of around. I'm so blessed to have them close and loving the Lord.
Stephen Bramer:
Kevin, when you had that special needs daughter, did that affect your call to ministry? Your life is changing, and there's going to be uniquenesses. Did that affect your call?
Bill Hendricks:
Great question.
Kevin Wilson:
To be honest, really, as things happened, my wife taught in Christian school down south of Dallas, was pregnant before the school year started. So they said, "We can't keep you. We got to have a teacher that's going to make the school year." So she was laid off, she was our prime. So I went to work at UPS at night, loading tractor trailers and did seminary in the daytime. So one thing that happened to me during that season when Audrey came was God knew I was really immature. I really needed to grow up. And so working at UPS at night and doing seminary in the day grew me up quickly, because it was just-
Bill Hendricks:
Lots of responsibility.
Kevin Wilson:
… survival, and kind of grinding it out. And then Audrey comes, and to be honest, when she's born with the needs, my questions to God, "Why would you do that? It's pretty hard right now, Lord." And of course there was no clarity for the answer to that question, except I knew a lot of theology and Bible by that time, and it was "You need to start to practice, what you've been taught and know to be true. You need to lean on me." And God was just so faithful. So in some ways, I think having her and walking through that, while it was hard, maybe firmed up that call, that if God is going to be faithful to our family in that circumstance, which he was, He's going to be faithful in ministry and to those that are hurting. And so she's allowed us a platform to minister that we would've never had without her. So really grateful for that. God took us here to the middle of nowhere, I call it, to the Texas panhandle, an hour north of Amarillo.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes, that is.
Kevin Wilson:
And I was there in a wonderful little church for five years as a youth. The second guy on staff, learned a lot, sweet people. And then we moved from there to where we are in Princeton, Indiana, at Bethel Memorial Church.
Bill Hendricks:
And Princeton down on the southern…
Kevin Wilson:
Just north of Evansville,
Bill Hendricks:
…border, right?
Kevin Wilson:
… down in the southwestern corner.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, southwestern corner. Yeah. So we're talking about calling, you're here focused on calling with some of the lectures you're giving and so forth. How do you guys define calling? That's a word that gets thrown around a lot. And we as theologians I think managed to really confuse that term.
Stephen Bramer:
Yeah, I grew up in the Plymouth Brethren assemblies, and calling was not really mentioned, because people didn't go into the ministry at 20-something years of age. The people who were full-time workers were 40 or 50 and they had learnt the scripture. So it was kind of a new term to me when I started hearing about calling, but I knew that I needed to do what the Lord wanted me to do.
Bill Hendricks:
There you go.
Stephen Bramer:
And there was no going forward at a meeting or anything like that, a just growing sense that God had called me. And in the brethren I couldn't go into the pastorate, because they didn't have pastors.
Kevin Wilson:
They didn't.
Stephen Bramer:
So I got a chance to either go and work at a summer camp or become a teacher, and I love teaching, and so that was the direction that God took me. It was a confirmation over a number of years at school that finally I knew that this is what God had for me.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. How about you?
Kevin Wilson:
Yeah, I would say the same. I know people give all kind of descriptions about experience. God spoke to me in this way or that way, and I don't disparage that because I wasn't there. For me, I think more it's you pursue your giftedness humbly and stay close to the Lord and allow him to… Proverbs 3 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding," which I'm really good at, but if we acknowledge him and follow him, He's going to direct our path. My experience was that's exactly what God used some people in my life to speak into. I was trying to follow, but I wasn't sure. And some people, by God's grace, saw some things in me that helped me take that next step. And so it was more a process of just trying to follow the Lord.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, you mentioned Dr. Talley's influence, and I, as you know, grew up in a Christian home, been part of a church since nine months before I was born. So this issue of calling has been around from the get-go. And I'm not asking people to necessarily buy this, I'm just saying how I've thought about it now over many years, and particularly through the lens of my specialization, which is people's giftedness. And it works like this. You say, well, does God speak audibly to people? I don't want to really so much get into that debate, but I think most of us, if somebody came to us and said, "Hey, this morning there was this conversation that I had with God and he said this…" And we'd be thinking, "Well, maybe we need to get you over to the counseling department, to check those voices out."
But in recent decades, I've come to think, I actually think that God does speak through voices, but it's actually human voices, that he actually uses certain people and their gifts. And one of those gifts or a dimension of that gift is to see in someone that which indeed God has put in them. So in your case, Dr. Talley says, "Son, I think God's calling you into the pastorate." Now, he's summarizing a whole lot of observations there, right? And hearing you give your first faltering sermons and so forth. But he's going, "This kid's got potential. This kid's got a gift. This kid's got something that we look for when we say you should be a pastor." And so in one sense, by him speaking up, God is using him to direct your paths as the proverb says. And it sounds like it was very effective.
Kevin Wilson:
In my life, what you just defined is pretty much the story. It also makes me mindful as I speak into other people's lives, especially the ones that are considering the ministry that, and I don't know how God going to use it, but it's not insignificant. I mean, it can have impact. And so I'm grateful for that, and also a little taken aback sometimes.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, there's a tremendous responsibility that goes… You say something, somebody's liable to take you seriously. And yet, when you see someone who the light comes on in their eyes and they go, "Wow, I hadn't thought of that, but maybe you're right," and then they go forward and they lean into it and God shows up and the gift, the Holy Spirit inhabits their gift and there's fruit, what a joy to feel like you unleash something for the kingdom.
Stephen Bramer:
And so many people have giftedness that could go into ministry, but that could be used in so many ways.
Bill Hendricks:
Many other options. Exactly.
Stephen Bramer:
And so there is that pull sometimes, especially in our culture that's going to emphasize getting ahead and financial benefits and everything, to say, "Well, I'm going to go and serve the Lord," and realizing that this is not what all my friends will be going into, who we've grown up together." I think it's a real challenge.
Bill Hendricks:
It is. Kevin, you have used the phrase, it stuck out to me, "incredible calling." Now I've heard many people talk about, "Oh, so-and-so has a, quote, incredible ministry," meaning lots of people have responded to their preaching or they've sold a lot of books, or they're a popular conference speaker, that sort of thing. I haven't heard that word incredible connected to the word calling, and it makes me think you see something at least different if not more important there. What makes a calling incredible?
Kevin Wilson:
Right, right. So we are doing Colossians 1 where Paul in the Chapter 1 kind of talks about he's elevating Christ in the book and he talks about his ministry and just how… I just think what greater calling is there, than to, in whatever forum, to teach the word, present Christ, point people to God, encourage them in their walk with him. And when it's all said and done, there's nothing. My brother's an attorney, very successful. And sometimes, growing up, you go, what am I doing? What exactly? Because running on two different tracks in just about every facet of life, but as God's given me some time, and I don't do this perfectly, but perspective is a wonderful thing. I'm thinking there's nothing… I'm so grateful for God's calling on my life. And I'm not a famous anyone and I live in Southern Indiana, but I'm so thankful for the calling to preach God's word and shepherd his people. I'm really grateful for that.
Stephen Bramer:
I was thinking of Amos, love Amos. I did my dissertation on him, and he's up there and the Northern King speaking and they tell him to go back where you came from and earn your wages there from prophesying. And he said, "I don't need to go back and earn wages. I was a herdsman or a shepherd and dresser of sycamore, but the Lord took me, and he called me." he rests authority not in his gifts or talents, although they were there obviously for him to speak in such a remarkable way, but the calling of the Lord. And I don't know how that happened for Amos, but he was aware that he was serving the Lord God and a steward of whatever the Lord was asking him to speak. And so I love Amos. The Lord took me.
Kevin Wilson:
Sure. Sometimes it's that sense of calling that keeps you in the ministry. I think I've read this book-
Bill Hendricks:
I wanted to get to that. Thank you.
Kevin Wilson:
… that you read. Because it is hard. It's a struggle. And in our world, it's very difficult. And sometimes, what keeps you in it is the fact that God's called you to it, and you're convinced of that. You may not be convinced that you can make it through the next week, or the next counseling session or board meeting or whatever comes, but you're convinced that God's called you, and sometimes, that strengthens you enough to step forward and just to continue another foot, another day, another message.
Stephen Bramer:
And our spouses play such a great part. Sometimes, they remember our calling better than we do because we're in the midst of all this craziness and pandemic and everything. But they know that we were called, one of the reason they probably married us, our spouses, because they wanted to be involved in ministry. They wanted to make a difference in this life. I know that from my wife Sharon. And so we need to remember it. We need to have good friends and a good spouse who reminds us of that wonderful calling.
Kevin Wilson:
So great to have somebody that will speak the truth to you that loves you. And sometimes it's settled down. My wife sent me a text this morning, I'm speaking in chapel at Dallas Seminary, a little nervous about that. And she says, "Remember, it's not your performance. It's God's presence."
Bill Hendricks:
Praise God. Praise God.
Kevin Wilson:
You're like, "Okay." So she can bring stability when I get out of balance. Absolutely.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I'm glad, Stephen, you raised this issue of wives and spouses and calling. I guess the question I was going to ask you guys was the spouse, let's say in this case a guy who's a pastor, or called the pastorate, he's got his wife. So does she need to be called as a pastor's wife? Is it like a dual calling? Like I'm calling both of you into this form of endeavor, which is going to place certain expectations and responsibilities and challenges on your spouse here? Does she need to feel like, "Yeah, that's what God has for me?"
Kevin Wilson:
That's not how it worked for me.
Stephen Bramer:
Good, good.
Kevin Wilson:
My wife is not the upfront lady's ministry leader. Whenever she knows the church is going to do something for us and she'd have to come up on the platform, she tries to work in the nursery that Sunday, so she doesn't have to. She loves the church, but her niche are children and she's the most creative teacher I've ever met.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and you get into the issue of gifting there. I know many, many women who make wonderful wives through pastors have zero interest in being on a platform, and many of them even want to be sort of out of sight. I guess where I was really going was just the calling to be with this person who's going to be in the hot seat, who's going to get the calls in the middle of the night, who's going to feel that stress of just like this guy said, it's like children, 24/7, I'm on. I got to take responsibility for this flock. Is she prepared or just feel called that I will walk with this partner in that?
Kevin Wilson:
I don't know that she would say she had a call of God to be a pastor's wife. She would say her story is she came to Bible college to play basketball, which she was much better than I was, and to marry a good Christian guy. Not necessarily a pastor, but just a godly man. And eternity will tell whether she actually did that or not, but I think by the time we're serious, she knows that that's where, as God's leading us forward, "I think we're headed here." And so her calling would be to me, I think as my wife, that if I'm going to go be in ministry, she's going to have to follow and be a part of that in whatever way God will give her the grace. And neither one of us knew, of course,
Bill Hendricks:
All that was coming.
Kevin Wilson:
… what all that was coming, but we had to be willing to step in it together with the Lord. And she's been a great blessing to me in that.
Stephen Bramer:
Yeah, I've got a very similar story. Met my wife in Bible college. She did want to marry a person who was in love with Jesus and in love with the Word, because she was in love with Jesus and the Word, and it wasn't really whether it was going into ministry. I think she was pretty excited when she realized that we were dating and that that's where I was headed. But similar to you, Kevin, her call was to support me. And I know that that sometimes sounds kind of funny in our world today, but she really was committed to me. She's so committed to me that she will call me on things and make me not do ministry sometimes because she really is concerned about me and my health. And when I came to Dallas Seminary back in '97, all these living legends walking around including your dad, How Hendrickson, and I remember coming home a number of nights and saying to her, "What if they find out who I really am?"
She'd say, "You've got to stop saying that. They're going to think you're hiding something." And I said, "But I can't do this." And she looked at me real clearly and said, "Stephen, they've called you because you're Stephen Bramer, and you just need to be Stephen Bramer with what God has given you. And if that isn't a fit for Dallas Seminary, that's okay. We'll move on somewhere else." I just remember relaxing. The first time I went to preach here, Sharon said, "What are you going to preach on?" I said, "well, I've been through all 66 books, and someone has written a commentary on every one of them. So I'm into the apocrypha now." We laughed together, but once again, you're not comparing ourselves to others, just asking the Lord to give us a message from his Word. And she's been a real encouragement that way, and I'm grateful. I'm grateful.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, both of you now have articulated that in the dark nights of the soul, which ministry does have like probably so many other occupations, but we certainly know what those are, you have a companion come alongside and say, "Honey, let's go back to square one. Who called you into this? And don't you remember how you agonized in your soul about it and you prayed about it and you got godly counsel and you chose, we chose this path? And if God said that in the light, don't doubt him in the darkness." That's essentially what you've said. What a joy that would be.
Kevin Wilson:
Yeah, it's been the anchor, outside the Lord obviously, but on a human level, my wife has been my rock to speak sensibly when I maybe make no sense or get so flustered, I don't know exactly what to do. Grateful for that.
Bill Hendricks:
Because Lord knows, and I even hate to say it, but again, having grown up here at the seminary, I do know too many stories of people who came to seminary, and he was all in for expository preaching and the languages and pastoral ministry and the whole thing, but she was not, and it affected their marriage while they were in seminary, but that just… It was like a fuse, because once you get out into the fray and you're actually in harness and those stresses start to come and challenges, boy, it's like a sword of Damocles just sitting there, because as soon as there's a crisis, you can just hear her voice going, "Well, I never wanted to do this in the first place." And unfortunately, not all of those marriages have survived.
Stephen Bramer:
Exactly. And the sacrifice that is required to be in ministry is significant, and it's sometimes very significant in terms of traveling and how you use your money. And if your spouse and even your children as they grow up aren't on board, saying, "This is important," Even your kids don't understand it all, but they know daddy's doing it for Jesus, those are extremely important times to have where a wife needs to be on board, she's at home with young children and you're traveling or speaking at a conference or something, and really the burden is on her. And if she's not called, not to specific ministry, but called to make sure that God's word is proclaimed and the gospel's preached, it would be difficult. And I'm sure it is difficult. I know it's been difficult for my wife at times, and that's when I've needed to remind her that together we chose this ministry.
Bill Hendricks:
And that's really my point. I'm not saying some woman doesn't… like pastoral wife's not what I want, but-
Stephen Bramer:
The support.
Bill Hendricks:
That's not something wrong with her.
Stephen Bramer:
No.
Bill Hendricks:
But I do think that together they're going to have to make some hard choices.
Kevin Wilson:
There are.
Bill Hendricks:
And it may be, well, maybe God's not calling me in the ministry. If he's not giving you a peace about walking with me through that, then does that raise some questions about what I've perceived as a call? Because I got to be sensitive to my wife.
Kevin Wilson:
Yeah, absolutely. It's a team thing. It is.
Bill Hendricks:
In that sense, yeah.
Kevin Wilson:
It is. So if someone says, "I'm not in," then I think you've got to really, really pause and take stock of a lot.
Stephen Bramer:
And many women are not being challenged with that these days. I mean, as they go off to university, I mean, it's very individualistic for all of us, and long as it works out that two of us can live together, we're headed in the right direction.
Bill Hendricks:
It's a "What's in it for me?" culture, right.
Stephen Bramer:
And I think in the Christian world, both women and men, we're coming with this, and yet ministry doesn't work that way. So unless the word of God can come in with good, wise advice from people and change our hearts that we really become one and are headed in the same direction using our gifts as God's given, it's difficult. I really feel for younger people going into ministry today because they need to know so much more than I do because the world's so complicated, and people aren't always wanting to hear truth from the Word. There's stress, and so it is harder, I think, for younger men going in today, and yet they've got such tremendous opportunities.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that's what I wanted to come to. Because certainly there's the Barna statistics, and at times it can get very distressing. But what I don't hear as much on is, and I'd love to hear from both of you because of your experience, and the guys that you know. what would you say are the two to three… I know this is almost impossible to rank, but I'm really trying to get at what are the upsides of pursuing a calling to the pastoral ministry? What is most laudable noble worth, praising God and rejoicing in that you get to do because of that occupation?
Kevin Wilson:
Wow.
Bill Hendricks:
Or you get to experience?
Kevin Wilson:
Sure. Being a pastor allows me to study and teach and proclaim his Word, which is living and powerful and active and life-changing by his Spirit. So we live in a world that has a lot of moving parts and all kinds of things that people… But God's word is still what changes people in eternal ways. And again, that's a privilege, to be able to study and to teach the word of God, and then to love people and to do life with them, that's not easy and it's messy and can be heartbreaking at times. But the upside for me is there's those times, but there's a lot of the other times where you get to cry with them in a good way or laugh with them or celebrate or to watch them grow and change over time. I'm so thankful God's given us longevity in the ministry in this one place where we, by God's grace, have seen him just working families and in our community in some really significant ways.
So that gives me great joy. Those would be, and that sounds really simple. I remember when I went to this church 28-plus years ago, I sat down with a man who knew the church and he was a pastor. And in a real quick conversation, "I said, so what do they need? What do they need?" Here's what he said. He said, "They need somebody that's going to teach the Bible, and is going to really love them with all they have." And I thought, "Well, I went to Dallas Seminary. I think I can teach the Bible, and by God's grace, I think I can love them." And those 28 years later would probably be the two things I enjoy the most about ministry.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I mean that dovetails with everything in scripture that talks about certainly the pastor role of being a shepherd. You provide for your people, you feed them and you protect them, and you help them grow, and you're right there with them, and they know your voice. Jesus said, "You know my voice," they get to know their pastor's voice, and that is a blessing. And I guess you've been at this church long enough to see that that extends through generations, which is great.
Kevin Wilson:
It's a great blessing to see, have a wedding, and they're-
Bill Hendricks:
Just as there's generational sin, there's generational grace.
Kevin Wilson:
Yeah. And there is generational sin and there's cycles of evil.
Bill Hendricks:
But you can break that and then introduce grace.
Kevin Wilson:
But yeah, God can and just what He's done, and it is his power, it's his spirit, it's his word. But again, that he allows us to have a part in that and a voice in that. His voice to share is a great blessing. Really, really privileged.
Bill Hendricks:
Stephen, what would you say?
Stephen Bramer:
Yeah, sometimes say,
It's nice to be paid to study the Word. And I say to my students, "I'd probably do it even if they didn't pay me, but don't go and tell the president of Dallas that, because I do need to eat.
Bill Hendricks:
We'll edit that out.
Stephen Bramer:
I agree with Kevin. The Word and seeing people's lives change. And because the ministry that I'm in here at Dallas, also at a local church where there's a multi-pastor church, the relationships you have with other people in the ministry, that may not always be possible, but in most places, you can have a really good relationship with others who are ministering in the same way, facing some of the same challenges, and have a fellow pastor who can share his wisdom, not in competition with him, but just in him loving you and wanting you to do best. That's been a tremendous blessing in my life to have faculty members who love on me. I preached in chapel recently, and people say, "Well, aren't you nervous about the other professors there?" And I say, "Well, tell you the truth, I am a little bit, but they're almost always the most encouraging afterwards." Because-
Kevin Wilson:
Wow.
Bill Hendricks:
Your biggest cheerleader.
Stephen Bramer:
Yeah, and they love the Word, and it's so nice to see them with their bibles and they want… I know when I go to places, I want to be fed. I'm not there to criticize. And so it's been a wonderful experience for me to have other people in the ministry that I'm close to.
Bill Hendricks:
Let me ask a question that I suspect may be a hot button. We call your department the Bible Exposition department.
Stephen Bramer:
Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
And I look out across the landscape of certainly the American church today. It is my perception, correct me if I'm wrong, I hope I am wrong, but is my perception that in many, many quarters, and unfortunately in increasing numbers of churches, expository preaching is sort of viewed as, "Oh, that's kind of old school. We don't really need that anymore." Or-
Stephen Bramer:
Too academic.
Bill Hendricks:
It's too academic, and it's not relevant. It's not going to meet people's needs. It's not going to draw people. It's not going to hold people. How do y'all respond to that? I think I know, but what is the response here?
Kevin Wilson:
You go first, Dr. Bramer.
Stephen Bramer:
Yeah. Well, I just think as we've been talking, the Word of God changes people's lives, and-
Bill Hendricks:
There's power in it.
Stephen Bramer:
It's not my opinion, and we were talking a little bit earlier, I'm not creative enough to come up with a new topic every week. I like to work with good material. And the 66 books are good. And Dallas Seminary from the very beginning said, "We want our graduates to have studied all 66. Now we can't do them in great depth, but to be aware of what's in there. And it seems to me that gives you a broad ministry. And I say to some of our students, "It is possible to bore people with the word of God. We got to work really hard at that because it's alive, and if we don't show the relevancy of it, then of course it can become boring." But nothing like going through the Word, chapter after chapter, book after book, because it doesn't grow churches quickly, but it grows them deep and solid.
Bill Hendricks:
That's good.
Stephen Bramer:
And a lot of the churches that they're trying to start, they want to start with a bang, and what you attract them with is what you kind of have to keep them with. And people get used to fast food and everything prepared for them. They become a consumer. And to call people to a meal, and to have to think and evaluate and be like the Bereans, search the scriptures themselves, it seems to me that that grows the church deep. And it's not what the church is after two or three years. It's what it is after 20 years, to find out if people have grown deep, and I think it's the Word of God. Exposure to the Word of God, consistently, chapter by chapter, you can't miss anything. You can't skip over anything. It's there. And I believe that God's Word is relevant, not only when it was written, it's relevant for all time. It's inspired. And therefore, if we give them the Word, it will meet people's needs. It will meet people's needs.
Kevin Wilson:
No, I was just going to… I think Chip Ingram was here last year, I think, and I listened to that message. One of the quotes, I believe, from when he was here was, "It's not how many people come in, it's what kind of people go out." And I thought, that is a great quote. I mean, we can attract people with maybe a lot of things, but what difference has it made? And God's word makes a difference. Jesus makes a difference, and his spirit grows people by his word, and it's written, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, and that's how it should be taught. And then God does what he does.
Stephen Bramer:
That's the way we read books. We start the beginning and we go through, and each chapter makes a contribution. And just to jump around in a book, you might get something out of that sentence or something, but it's not in context. And so exposition is just trying to really expose what the truth of the scripture is, what the meaning is, and it's best to be done in context. And so we're trying to teach our students that this is what our world needs, and I believe it is. We want to teach truth and love well around here, but we do need to teach truth, and we need to teach truth that will last.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, what I hear you guys saying is we've got this text that God has given us in the Bible, and yeah, it's in a couple of different languages at least that we don't speak. And so we've got to translate, and yeah, is a different era when these cultures lived, and you need some translation contextually. So there's some challenge there. But what I hear you saying is, but if you get it, if you get what's in this thing, if you get what this is saying, there's a power in it that will change your life for the better, for the way that God says is the way of life. That's what I hear you saying,
Stephen Bramer:
And-
Bill Hendricks:
And that's…
Stephen Bramer:
And for all the-
Bill Hendricks:
… expository preaching.
Stephen Bramer:
Yeah. And for all the differences, I say God knew that his Word was going to be translated into many different languages, and he knew this word had to be relevant to many different cultures and societies. The 20th century doesn't surprise God. A ministry in China doesn't surprise God. So I believe that he's given us his word in such a way that even without knowing a great deal of background, even without knowing the original language, as long as it's been translated very accurately, this word can be read in different languages and in different cultures, and it can change people's lives. To know what we should believe and how we should act is clear. And to get into some of the minor points is not helpful, but the Word, I think, is clear, and we just need to preach it. We just need to let it go.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Well, and my dad just talk about the problem that we saw when we major in the minors. It's those issues that frankly are so in the backwaters of the essence of the gospel and Christian living and what Jesus taught, and yet we magnify them as this divides churches. This is what we're willing to die… this is the hill we're willing to die on. This is what we write books on and have conferences on. And meanwhile, particularly, I think, of so many of the portions of the epistles that be kind to one another, love one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other as I've forgiven you, be one in mind, prefer others… their interest's more important than your own. It sounds simple, but that's like the majors as it were, that flow out of all of that rich doctrine that we have in the other parts of the epistles.
Stephen Bramer:
And all those minor things, God spoke about them, so they're valuable. And I think when you're doing exposition, they just fit in properly. It's only when you kind of pull them out of the passage it can become a real point of contention. But when you're reading it within the context, it makes sense in the context. Now we can misapply it or something like that, but it seems to me that solution to a lot of this is just going through the Word, going through the Word.
Kevin Wilson:
Yeah, I agree. So the great thing about teaching expositionally is you're going to deal with issues that you'd rather not, but they do fit in the greater context of the Book and the Scripture that it doesn't stand on its head if you pull out a one sermon on, "Hey, today we're going to talk about this crazy issue that divides people." People come and leave without hearing the rest of the story, which is going to emphasize there's a God who's real, there's a savior who saves. And this issue fits in to some argument and context in the book, where it really does fit.
Bill Hendricks:
So I want to come back to the issue we started with on calling in the time we have left. So I'm thinking about young Timothy there in the New Testament and Ephesus, and reading between the lines, you get the sense that he was a timid person to begin with, maybe shy, certainly not a dominant personality. We don't know anything really, I guess, about his dad. So maybe he didn't have a dad. Maybe that contributed to things, I don't know. But it's clear that Paul had been that Dr. Talley to him, and said, "Timothy, I want you to be a pastor here in Ephesus. I believe God's called you to that. In fact, I'm going to lay hands on you, and impart that grace and that calling."
And then even after being in that role, it's clear, hey, don't let anybody look down on your youth. Timothy sounds like he had some doubts, like so many pastors apparently are having these days. So I'd be curious, Kevin, your thoughts on how do we call young people into the pastorate, and how do we help those who are, once in it, beginning to have doubts, saying, "I don't know, man, I'm not sure this is for me. I don't think I have what it takes. I'm not sure I want to give it what it's taking. Maybe this isn't for me."
Kevin Wilson:
I think young people, we've had some young men come through, and that's been one of the joys of my life, is to have a young guy go, "I think God's got ministry in my future." And so for us, in our context, it's been… And of course our church is not… We're not a mega church, so we can rally around those guys. And I grew up in a church of about a hundred, that got smaller every year as people passed away, and I was kind of their project. I was headed to Bible college, and so good and bad, they'd say, "How are you doing? I'm praying for you," or "You better be studying."
We need to encourage those young people, and we need to find out what's going on and pray for them and really try to walk alongside them in that process, because it's easy to get distracted, it's easy to get discouraged. So for young people, I would say it's just investing and keeping your finger on the pulse of what God's doing in their life.
For guys in the ministry that are struggling, sometimes… Dr. Bramer mentioned having contemporaries and peers. I think that's…
Bill Hendricks:
That's key.
Kevin Wilson:
Because if somebody might recognize in me that I'm struggling before most anybody else, and so if I have somebody attentive, they can call me aside and encourage me, pray with me, and maybe helped me realize what I need which may be to step back. Maybe I need a month out, maybe I need six months out. But if I don't have that person and I'm continuing to grind and push, sometimes that's when the wheels come off, and I just step out like this fella.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you for being in this conversation today. This has gone fast, but it's a critical topic. I agree that the pastorate is a very high calling, a very noble calling, because as pastors go, churches go, without solid pastors, it's hard to have a solid congregation, seems to me, notwithstanding the Plymouth Brethren background you came from.
Stephen Bramer:
Well, they're changing too.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, you may not have had formal pastors, but you had people in the role of pastor.
Stephen Bramer:
The elders knew the Word and preached the Word. It was wonderful.
Bill Hendricks:
I don't want to get into the ecclesiological governance of the whole thing, but you take the point. Thank you for being with us.
Kevin Wilson:
Oh, thank you, Bill.
Bill Hendricks:
Thank you for being in Dallas and letting us talk with you, Kevin.
Kevin Wilson:
Oh, it's been an honor. Appreciate it.
Bill Hendricks:
Stephen, again, thank you,
Stephen Bramer:
Thank you, Bill, for having me.
Bill Hendricks:
… for representing the department. And I want to thank you for joining us today on The Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. You may know a pastor who is struggling in their calling right now, and this would be a great podcast for you to send them a link to. And we would certainly encourage you to subscribe to The Table podcast at whatever subscription service that you have. We come out weekly with a new Table podcast on yet another topic of God and culture. So thanks again for being with us, and for the Table Podcast, I'm Bill Hendricks.
Darrell Bock:
This special edition of The Table is a recording of Jeanne Hendricks, the wife of Professor Howard Hendricks, or simply known affectionately on campus as Prof. Howard Hendricks had a distinguished career at Dallas Seminary, hitting the campus and innovating literally from the moment he started teaching as he was the founder of the Christian Education Department. And then that followed with the establishment of a core course that all first-year students took on how Bible study methods and how to study the Bible. Almost every student knows about Acts 1:8, knows about observation, interpretation, application, and correlation. All those ideas were deeply embedded in what Prof did on campus. He also developed a reputation for the Christian family and writing about the Christian family taught courses on it as well as mentoring. In 1986, that was all put together to establish the founding of the Howard G. Hendricks Center for Christian Leadership. That's what it was called at the time. We now just call it the Hendricks Center, and it involves Christian leadership and cultural engagement today. But the foundation that Prof laid and the values that he brought to the Center are still with us 37 years down the line. So I invite you to listen to this very interesting interview with Prof’s wife about the founding of the Center and the values of Prof, which we still quite value today.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture, and we have a special edition of The Table today. As you can see, we're not in the studio. We don't have the normal background.
We are at the home of Jeanne Hendricks and we are going to look at the origins of the Hendricks Center. So Jeanne, thank you for having us into your home, and we really appreciate you taking the time.
Jeanne Hendricks:
It's a privilege to have you. Thank you, so much.
Darrell Bock:
So we're going to walk through the origins of the center and we're going to consider the life of Professor Howard Hendricks, and who better to ask than his wife.
So I'm going to start at the beginning, and that is tell us a little bit about how Prof grew up in Philly. I know there are parts of the story that I'm aware of, but I'm just curious if I were to ask you that general question, what would you tell me before you met him? What was his life like?
Jeanne Hendricks:
Well, this is ancient history, you understand?
Darrell Bock:
Yes.
Jeanne Hendricks:
And I always think, although I lived all of those years when the center was being formed, I realized it went back to the very beginning, how his parents were separated. He was living with his grandmother, but he discovered himself in grammar school. He loved being the class clown. He discovered that it was fun getting other people in trouble, as well as himself.
Darrell Bock:
So the humor goes way back?
Jeanne Hendricks:
Yeah. He's just in grade school. He did have a teacher, beginning in the sixth grade, who took him under her wing, and that was a change. But the big change came because he was living with his grandmother and she took him to this church, small church around the corner from where they lived. And the pastor led him to Christ and he became a believer.
And this was a whole new world to him. And as he got older and had to face, when he got to 18, of course, it was a World War II. He was faced with the decision of whether he was going to go into the military or not, but if he was in farming or medicine or the clergy, then he didn't have to go. He decided to go into the ministry, which caused a huge, huge trouble in his family.
His father, who was in the military was very angry with him, but the Lord had, of course, plans. So he goes to Wheaton College and there his life was just really changed as he's studying the Bible and realizing the enormity of this whole Christian life thing. He had a number of professors that were very impactful in his life. Dr. Tenney was one of them.
Anyway, he discovered he was still using his childhood advantage of making people laugh and take charge of the situation. He became the president of the senior class, and he just loved studying the Bible. He was a Bible major. And then, of course, he went to Dallas Seminary.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so let's stop there. Let me just recover one thing. So I take it that the family background, which was chaotic, helped to form what became a major concern in his life, which was the Christian family in a stable family environment.
Jeanne Hendricks:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And that would've been pretty important, I think, in his formation and in the way he developed a sensitivity for the family.
Jeanne Hendricks:
That's right. But he learned that he loved people. He had several advantages. First of all, he was sort of a people person. Came from that kind of a family. Furthermore, his grandfather had been with the Metropolitan Opera, so he had a wonderful tenor voice singing. So he always, in the youth programs, he was always on the platform leading the singing.
And, of course, he became famous for his one-liners, making the teenagers audience laugh. And he would, this is World War II, so he's teaching them a new song, V Is for Victory. And then he would turn it into a round. And you'd understand that we were involved in Christian Endeavor, major organization, and the city was divided into branches. He was part of Northeast Branch. I was part of Southwest Branch. So I only saw him on the platform. He gave himself a nickname. Nobody knew who he was. He was just this figure that was always in charge. He called himself Nate at that time. So everybody loved Nate. But that was when he was a teenager.
Darrell Bock:
So this was in Philly?
Jeanne Hendricks:
That's in Philadelphia. And then of course, he went to Wheaton College and graduated and decided to go to Dallas Seminary.
Darrell Bock:
So, how'd y'all meet?
Jeanne Hendricks:
Well, that's a story.
Christian Endeavor was this big organization, but once in a while we all came together in some big church downtown in Philadelphia. So we were in a big group, and he announced that we were all invited to this big downtown hotel. And we all show up at the hotel because this is a big deal, he said. And you're going to have a special speaker for high school kids.
So we all show up at the hotel, and sure enough, they introduce this guy, from all places, he's from Dallas, Texas. And he's introducing this thing called Young Life for high school kids. And of course, when Young Life meets, they always have a lot of fun. And that night they were looking for the shyest little girl in the room. Now, there are hundreds of us in there, and I am this very, very shy little girl, blonde hair, blush bright red when I'm embarrassed. And they have a spotlight and they're going around the room looking, and I'm sitting at the very back table and I'm trying to be invisible.
But, of course, it landed on me. So they drag me up like a suspect going into a squad car on the platform. They asked me the question and I gave them the answer. I was a high school kid. And, of course, it's no, no, no, because they rigged question. But I stood there and argued with him.
As I recall, I was taking Latin at the time, and I'm explaining why my answer was rooted in the Latin phrase or something like that.
Darrell Bock:
Something that would impress all high school kids, no doubt.
Jeanne Hendricks:
And the place is just coming down roaring with laughter. But the guy down at the speaker's table, who was Howard Hendricks, who is the MC of the evening, said to his buddy, "Who is that girl?"
And, of course, nobody knew me, and he said, "I don't know, but I'll find out for you."
So five months later, our little West branch group is over in New Jersey at a very primitive Boy Scout camp having our thing by ourselves and who shows up but this music leader. And I said, "What's he doing here? He's from someplace up north."
Anyway, it was Howard Hendricks, and I didn't pay any attention to him. He led all the singing and everything. He's made an announcement and he said, "Now on Sunday night, we're going to have a sing down by the lake, so be sure and bring your flashlights."
We all show up with our flashlights. But he came up to me at the end of the meeting after the benediction, and he said in a very gentlemanly way, "Excuse me, but I have forgot my flashlight." It was a planned event.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, sure.
Jeanne Hendricks:
And that night he introduced himself. I found out that he was only 18 years old. He just graduated from high school. He's going to Wheaton College. And he asked me if he could write to me.
And I thought he was putting me on. What college guy would want to write to a high school kid back in Philly? Anyway, he did, and we became pen pals, so to speak. But he was very gentlemanly, and he was different from any boy that I ever knew.
And I told him right off as we were getting to know each other that I was not planning to get married. And he said, "That's very interesting."
But I had the same idea. And he was cagey. He just knew exactly how to work me.
Darrell Bock:
That's a great story. So he's at Wheaton, and then he goes on to Dallas, right?
Jeanne Hendricks:
Right. And with this Bible knowledge now that he had, he was absolutely transfixed by Dr. Chafer and this experience that so many early students had where they sat in the class, Dr. Chafer would speak or teach on the Holy Spirit, for example. And when he finished, he would turn off the light, walk out the room, and the class is still sitting there transfixed because of the power of this message.
And I think it was about that time that how I began to think, what is it about… I know it's the Bible, but how is it that a man can get up and talk to a group of people and leave them with such an impression? I think that was really the beginning.
Then as he was a student there at Dallas, he also went, on weekends, over to Fort Worth and became a youth pastor for a Westminster Presbyterian church there. And he loved doing that and realizing the effect he was having on these teenage kids at that church. The power of having a leadership position and recognizing that it's not me, it's the Bible. It's the word of God. And he's trying to put this all together. How does this work? Because he had such… In fact, when he graduated, then he took in Fort Worth, he became a pastor of the church, many of them that were from that youth group.
And the whole development of this leadership position, I could just see it working in his experience. So he didn't talk about it a lot to me. I'm just getting it from watching him.
Darrell Bock:
So there are two things going on. There's this deep DNA about the power of the word of God-
Jeanne Hendricks:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
… Which he is picking up. I imagine he picked it up initially at Wheaton and then it all Dallas did was reinforce that.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And then there's this leadership development, and particularly leadership aimed at very young people in developing them from a very early point on, with a total commitment to a kind of discipleship that leads into real Christian maturity.
Jeanne Hendricks:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
Both of those pieces, of course, are very, very important to everything that Dallas does even now.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Oh, sure.
Darrell Bock:
And really is a part of what we regard, I think, as our own DNA in terms of the way we train people to lead people into the word of God and lead them into maturity in the faith.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Exactly.
So as he developed on, and as I said, he started the pastorate, but this is Fort Worth. And Dr. Walvoord had him coming back on weekdays to teach because he was a theology major, and he loved to teach.
And again, he was growing in this whole concept of realizing the power of the word of God, but also the way it affected people, that some people used it, or God gifted them in a way that they could teach other people. I don't know. I'm assuming that that concept was growing in his mind, like I've got to find out. There was an obsession that he had. How does this work? How do you make other people want to know the word?
He was excited about the word, but how do you make other people get excited about?
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. Well, of course, one of the lines that he's known for all the students is that it's a sin to bore people with the Bible. So let's turn to the time when we come in, informs a new department, Christian Education, which doesn't fit the normal mold of what seminary education looked like at the time. Completely new innovation.
I don't know how to ask this question delicately. How was that received when it was initially proposed?
Jeanne Hendricks:
Well, I have to be very honest with you, it was not well received. You see, as he served in the pastorate and he understood, I am well qualified to teach these adult people, but I do not know what to do with these little kids in the junior department.
So he took one summer… Wheaton College, in their graduate school, it was in its infancy at that time, but the Christian education concept was growing. So he took that course from them. Then there was a professor at NYU, and he signed up with him, but he only got a little way with him. And Dr. Walvoord called and said Dr. Chafer had died. And Dr. Nash, who was the registrar, had a heart attack at the same time.
And he said, "Howard, you've got to come back here and teach theology for me."
So we packed up the little kids and all went back to Dallas, and that's when he started to teach.
Darrell Bock:
So he was teaching theology to begin with? That's something I didn't even know?
Jeanne Hendricks:
That was his major when he was in seminary.
Darrell Bock:
I see. And then there's this transition, right, because of this other concern, I guess?
Jeanne Hendricks:
Well, he said to Dr. Walvoord, "I'll come back and teach theology if you let me teach one course in Christian Ed."
Darrell Bock:
The cagey prophets at work, huh?
Jeanne Hendricks:
Well, he came back and he was allowed to teach. But I have to admit that some of the older members on the faculty were not happy about it. They felt he was introducing some foreign idea that was not consonant with seminary.
However, it grew. And as you know, the department was founded and he loved it. But again, this whole idea of leadership, how do we develop these little children and young people into becoming people who will again, teach others? So the obsession was growing in his mind.
Darrell Bock:
This is interesting. I was talking to my wife, Sally, last night. We were talking about Prof, and she said, "The one thing that I really appreciate about Prof, is I never felt like an appendage to you," you speaking about me. A seminary prof's wife, he always related directly to me, and he seemed to have an ability to see potential in people that they didn't see in themselves.
Jeanne Hendricks:
I'm a good example of that. I mean, as I told you, I was very shy little girl, and I didn't know what I was getting into. Because as I said, he made me a teacher of this little class. But then as we were mingling with other people, he was always putting me out where I had to do something that I hadn't done before.
And he wasn't a teacher in that he taught me at home, but whenever I asked him a question, he would say, "Well, go study Romans 8 or whatever, and then we'll talk about it."
That was the way he taught me. So it was a very informal thing as well as my sitting in and listening to him. Of course, I wasn't in his classes at the seminary, but I had all these other opportunities to hear him.
Darrell Bock:
So this innovation that he brought, which wasn't initially well received… He and I have talked long and hard about this because of my own experience. But eventually he did something and he and I have talked about this a lot, that sometimes when you're in a situation where people are uncomfortable with what it is you're trying to do, the best thing to do is to just show its effectiveness.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
And to do what you think is right. And if the Lord is honoring it, it'll get lifted up and then it'll be regarded. So you think about here he founded this department that was innovative and was challenged initially, but by the time I came as a student in 1970s, the Christian Education Department at Dallas Seminary was well recognized and was leading other schools in the area, et cetera.
And the whole mentorship, discipleship, leadership thing was very, very prominent in his thinking. All of that was going on. So he just let what he was doing speak for itself.
Jeanne Hendricks:
He did. But remember, he realized early on, this is not a solo performance.
Darrell Bock:
Yes.
Jeanne Hendricks:
And what he started to do was to look for other leaders. For example, one of the earliest ones was Tom Landry, because he used to go over to the practice. Every Wednesday he went to the practice field and he got to know Tom and they became friends.
But he was observing how Tom interacted with his players. And then he did the same thing with any leader that he could find. He was very much involved with the military. He found out from some friends that the military was teaching leadership up in Virginia. So we went up there and he got invited to sit in on their leadership training, and then we eventually went to the Pentagon where he began teaching some of the guys at the Pentagon.
So his field of reference was growing in a number of-
Darrell Bock:
So he was really a student of leadership long before the leadership center came along.
Jeanne Hendricks:
… He was fascinated by it. I think this question of what makes somebody so important and attractive that all these other people want to come-
Darrell Bock:
Interesting.
Jeanne Hendricks:
… And learn from him. And, of course, he used his… As I said, when he was a teenager, he used his singing voice and then he used his ability… He had an ability for one-liners, make the audience laugh and feel comfortable with him.
Darrell Bock:
So we come to the 1980s, and he's prominent. You've already alluded to his relationship he had with the Dallas Cowboys and Tom Landry. He's well-known internationally. I think I came across him the first time going to some event for Campus Crusade that I attended.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Yeah, that was another with Bill Bright, he was very much involved with the, which is now Crew. And of course, a lot of students came to the seminary just because he taught every summer for campus crusade
Darrell Bock:
Of course, I was a young lifer, so I was crossing tribal lines by doing this, but still, he was just captivating. And what was beautiful about it was he was captivating on the one hand, but the word was coming across on the other.
That combination was just so uniquely stirred by the way he taught.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Well, he was very much involved with understanding that is not in the person. So he did a lot of reading. One of the first books that he talked about a lot was The Training of the Twelve by AB Bruce.
Darrell Bock:
Sure, yes.
Jeanne Hendricks:
It was one of his basic studies. And then Barkley's commentary on the Book of Mark, because The Training of the Twelve sort of moved him into the Book of Mark, where he realized that it was the very first chapter of Mark where Jesus got the 12 together and realized you got to have a group and work with you. You can't do this by yourself. You may be that figurehead, but it's not all about you.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting.
So let's talk about the origins of the center a little bit. We're in the 1980s, and leadership is a challenge. And there's a citation, I think, that comes in. As I walk into my office every day in the Hendricks building, there's a display with a picture of Prof, and there's a quote there about the importance of character in Christian work.
And what I see him doing with the Center is focusing on, all right, now, what does it take to be a leader? And then what does a leader do with the stewardship and responsibility that he has as a leader for the people around him in forming an organization that's going to go somewhere?
Jeanne Hendricks:
Right. You have to know what you're doing and pass it along to other people in the proper way. As I said, you didn't do it by yourself. For example, the Center was an idea, but you couldn't get that idea into formation without help. So you had to have a financial help. So you had Bill Seay, Bill and Marge Seay. Bill once served as the mayor of Highland Park. And he funded the thing.
Then you had other people come along like, well, of course right out of the military was his right-hand man.
Darrell Bock:
Thinking of Chuck?
Jeanne Hendricks:
Pardon?
Darrell Bock:
You thinking of Chuck Swindoll? Or are you thinking of someone else?
Jeanne Hendricks:
No, not Chuck, but let me see. The guy was Andy Seidel.
Darrell Bock:
Andy Seidel.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Yeah. He helped him put together. There was a number of young men that he called around him that were very gifted people. And then there was the woman, Pam Cole.
Darrell Bock:
Oh yeah, sure.
Jeanne Hendricks:
I mean, when she came on board, she was in… See, Howie was not a detailed person.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, really? Yeah.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Everybody knew that.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly.
Jeanne Hendricks:
I mean, he had ideas and Pam took care of all those details. Brad Smith was another one that-
Darrell Bock:
And Andy Wileman. Yeah.
Jeanne Hendricks:
… Andy Wileman.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Jeanne Hendricks:
So he had this group of people that he depended upon. They were all gifted people and he loved them, but he loved his students.
In the early days, the seminary used to give the professors a page with the pictures of each new student that was going to be coming into the class.
Darrell Bock:
We still do this today.
Jeanne Hendricks:
And he would sit and memorize the night before the class. When he got to the school, he would greet each person. They're brand new, they've never been there, and he knows their name, where they're from, and it just blew them away, of course.
He just loved doing things like that. Of course, the school was small, so you only had 15 or 20 students, but it was one of his favorite things to do.
Darrell Bock:
So he forms the center and builds around the leadership idea and builds around this training of both character and organization. The seminary has also ended up initially placing spiritual formation which, speak about another innovation, coming to a seminary, it's an educational institution, and we're going to invest not just in the classroom and what they learned, but we're actually going to pay attention to where they are spiritually.
Spiritual formation came in during this time, and the center was initially responsible for the spiritual formation of the student.
Jeanne Hendricks:
That's right, yes.
Darrell Bock:
And worked on that. That's actually how my relationship with the center began, because I helped… When they were planning the curriculum to develop the spiritual formation, they turned to me as one of their consultants, if you will, to help build that program and build its base.
And that's actually where I got to know Prof. We were working on the spiritual formation side of things and very informally connected to the center. And then eventually when Bill Lawrence came in, he asked me to come help more formally. And so I had this, I guess, sidebar relationship to the center for years. And we would go out for lunch once a semester and just talk about leadership and the savior evangelical.
Jeanne Hendricks:
He was, I think, gifted in pointing out who were specific co-leaders. You were one of them. He knew. He just sort of knew intuitively, this guy is going to make it. He's going to be able to take charge. And so it was a gift that God gave him.
And of course, as you know, there were a number of groups that spun off of this ministry, like Family Life Ministries and so forth.
Darrell Bock:
All formed by people who he had discipled, basically.
Jeanne Hendricks:
That's right. His disciples. He loved every one of his students. We had this house and we had a big house before this one. And Thanksgiving or any other time, we had filled with students.
Also, he tried to convince the seminary to make it a formal thing, but we went out and visited alumni. But he wanted to know what happens to you when you get out there in the field.
Darrell Bock:
Sure.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Because it's not always a pretty picture. But the seminary felt like they couldn't do that at the time. But he was very much interested in the alumni.
Darrell Bock:
So here's an interesting fact, because this relates to how I came into the center. So what happened, of course, in the eighties, we were in one situation. And as we move into the eighties and then the millennium comes and we're into 2000s, the world around us is shifting immensely.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Exactly.
Darrell Bock:
And so Mark Bailey and I started these podcasts. We started these podcasts which were not connected to the center originally that we would do. And then in 2010, when we went to Cape Town for the Lausanne global event, we met with alumni. Mark and I.
And Mark asked a question. He said to the alumni, "What can we do to continue to serve you?"
And he said, "Well, keep these podcasts coming. They really minister to us."
And it was 50 people in the room. And it was like this came up and everyone signed on to the idea and reinforced it. So I'm walking out of that meeting with Mark Bailey and I said, "You know, we do these podcasts. They're ad hoc. We do them when our schedules match, when we think something is important enough to talk about. But there's no rhyme or reason to what we're doing. We're just doing it as it pops up as a need. They're asking for more intentionality in terms of how we do this."
And so that started the conversation and our culture had shifted to the point where it became clear you couldn't lead well, even if you had great character and you knew how to build an organization without understanding what's going on around you. And so that led into the request of my coming into the center and, one, launching a podcast with some intentionality behind it. We ended up calling it, of course, The Table and helping the church cope with what has been a massive cultural shift from the time when our ministry started all the way even to the present.
Jeanne Hendricks:
That's true. Yes.
Darrell Bock:
And so we came in and again, we used to meet once a semester, just go out to lunch and talk about what was going on and the challenges that that produced for the church in the way of thinking through what's going on.
Andy Seidel was still connected to the center when I first came. And so we put these two wings now, leadership, which of course Bill, your son, now helps us with and has just been a wonderful addition for us.
Jeanne Hendricks:
That's encouraging.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And of course, I've had responsibility on the cultural engagement side, but that's how the center emerged. We were trying to fill out the way the leader functions in the world and to make them aware of how to do it.
Jeanne Hendricks:
And moves with the way the culture is moving.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly. Exactly. And so that was the challenge in the life of the center. So let me ask you this, and this'll kind of be where we're laying the plane. What are some of the things about leadership that you absorbed from Prof that when you think of the leadership center, these are things you can't forget?
Jeanne Hendricks:
Well, I would have to say relationships, first of all. This was not my background, but I learned so much, so much from him because he just glommed on to people. It didn't matter who they were.
Now, of course, there were always some who sort of backed off, but then there were the guys like Chuck Swindoll who came up and Chuck would sit on the very front row in the middle. The minute the class was over, Chuck would be out the door with him asking questions, that kind of thing. So he developed this sense of people who were teachable, I guess, is the best word.
But the main thing that hit me, and I think hit his family as well, he was always involved with some student. Whenever he traveled, he took students with him, especially in the early days when the children were young. Always took students with him when he traveled. He was always trying to get to know people. Not to impress them. His relationships, he just knew how to move into a person's life.
I mean, I experienced it myself, but I saw it with all these other people. And it wasn't a fake thing. It wasn't like he's trying to get them to do something for him. He just wanted to know people and to love people. God gave him that ability.
Darrell Bock:
It's interesting. One thing I remember about Prof, I've talked to Bill about this a lot. That I remember being an event. It was a student orientation event, and we were sitting next to one another. This would've been somewhere in the 2000s.
And Prof, actually, were times when he was actually quite shy himself, even though he was so extroverted. It was an interesting contrast.
Jeanne Hendricks:
That's exactly right.
Darrell Bock:
So he is very low-key. We're just having a conversation, and the tone is about this. It's pretty quiet. And then it comes time for him to speak, and all of a sudden all this energy just pours out of him.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Exactly.
Darrell Bock:
And I'm sitting next to him and I'm going, where'd that come from? I mean, because the decibel level just leapt up.
Jeanne Hendricks:
The minute he got on a platform in front of a group of people, you're right. It just exploded out of him.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Jeanne Hendricks:
And he loved it. See, he learned that when he was in grade school, when he was making a fool out of himself. But he learned that, I hate to call it the thrill, but it was something in him that it was a satisfaction. When he saw a group of people in front of him, he just had to relate and say whatever it was.
Darrell Bock:
Well, he is connecting and capturing them. And I remember being so impressed with the difference and the ability to modulate up and to grab a big crack. Because what it meant is he was grabbing a big cloud. It was like he was putting his hands around everybody.
Jeanne Hendricks:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And pulling them in and drawing them into whatever it was he was talking about.
Jeanne Hendricks:
I think, personally, he was very shy. Because of his background, his family, and so forth, he never thought of himself as being important. He just was so amazed at what God had done in his life. And if he knew we were sitting here talking about it.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I know.
Jeanne Hendricks:
He'd say, "You don't need to do that."
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I know. Yeah. But the fact is he's an example of the thing he often would talk about, which is God can take anyone from anywhere, and they seemingly seem to have very little to offer. And God can shape them and mold them and make them into a leader.
Jeanne Hendricks:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And Prof was consumed with, how do you do that? How do you do that well? Let's study how we do that. Let's think about how we do that. Let's think about the character that the person has, the organization that they're attached to that they have to give energy to, and let's also think about the way they have to understand what's going on around them in order to make sense out of what's going on.
Jeanne Hendricks:
And it's all based on the scriptures.
Darrell Bock:
And rooted deeply, deeply, deeply in a conviction that Jesus Christ makes sense out of life, that God is at work in His grace, that people need the Spirit of God in order to make sense out of their lives.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Yes. That whole truth of the power of the Holy Spirit, which I know he got from Dr. Chafer, it never left. He understood if the Holy Spirit is not working in your life, you're wasting your time.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Well, that's a good way to wrap up what we've been talking about, because the one thing that is constant in his life, and the reason he would be very uncomfortable that we're doing this, so we apologize, is here's a man who drew on the resources that God provided, lifted the Lord up in his life and teaching so that other people will be drawn to the light.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Right. And I think that he never forgot that we will all stand before the Lord to give account for what he has given to us. And he was very moved by the fact that God had given him some skills. He didn't make them up. God gave them to him.
And he used them for God's glory as best he could.
Darrell Bock:
Well, he was a very gifted man, and you've given us a gift today by sharing what the life of Prof has been like.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Well, I thank the Lord every day. I see his pictures I've got around here, and I just am so amazed that God led me into his life. I'm so honored and privileged to even still have the name Hendricks.
Darrell Bock:
Well, thank you Jeanne, very, very much.
Jeanne Hendricks:
Thank you.
Kasey Olander:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendricks Center, and today we're discussing habits, mental health, and spiritual formation. If that sounds like three different topics, don't be afraid, we're going to talk about how they intersect and ways that they might overlap and relate to each other. I'm excited because we're joined by our guest, Justin Whitmel Earley. He is a lawyer, former missionary, and author and speaker. Justin, thank you so much for being with us today.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Thanks for having me, Kasey. I'm super excited to talk with you all and habits, spiritual formation, mental health, they all go together to me. I think they're the same topic, so let's find out.
Kasey Olander:
Perfect. Well, let's jump in. I will preface this by saying obviously we can't speak to every single person's mental health situation. People need to do what's right for them, but Justin, I would love to hear more about your story, your journey, and how you came to care about this one singular topic of habits, mental health and spiritual formation. Justin, I guess I'll start off by asking you, what are habits and how did you become so passionate about them?
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Well, the what are habits is an easy answer. Habits are the small but consequential things that we do every day, particularly, and this is important that are semi-conscious to unconscious. There are all these kinds of things that happen in our top order thinking, but habit activity, and this can be daily or it can kind of be weekly, it's the grooves that we settle in.
It's the decisions that we don't have to make is the important part of habits. The things that we do, because we've always done them and we do because we don't really think about them too hard. That's what makes them so important.
Now, how I got into talking about habits, that's a whole different story because I'm a former missionary and lawyer who now talks and writes about habits. There's a story there that I just launched into that.
Kasey Olander:
Obviously. Yes, please.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Great, let's do it. The short version of that is that I graduated University of Virginia and went to be a missionary in China for a couple years, almost five actually. That was a time where I really felt called by the Lord to be in China. Then, strangely, I felt called to leave China and go be a business lawyer, which is also, that's the loaded statement on faith, vocation and calling, but probably the subject for a different podcast, but I really did feel called to leave China and go into business law.
The important takeaway there is that I really ran at the law with all the fervor of a man on a call, not just to do it excellently, but to indwell it as an opportunity for missions. I still believe now sitting in my law office where I'm talking to you, that the law and business need to be shaped in the shape of the gospel. They need to be formed in these institutions into the image of the way that Christ created us in the world.
At the time, and law school was almost 10 years ago for me actually is when I started, I just ran at it like a man on a calling and I was always adding more to my resume. I was really busy. I went at it just like everybody else did, staying up later, waking up earlier. Looking back with the clarity of hindsight, which is always 2020, I had this house of my life that was decorated with wonderful Christian content on worldview and calling, but the architecture of my habits was exactly the same as every other top law school student.
While it worked well for me, and I graduated really high in my class and got my dream job in mergers and acquisitions at an international law firm down here in Richmond, Virginia, my life completely collapsed my first year of lawyering. I went from what was a carefree, passionate, young parent, I had two boys at the time that were both born during law school, to being in very short order, the nervous medicating lawyer who could not sleep or calm down unless I took sleeping pills or a couple drinks.
This all happened right in my first year of lawyering. I didn't know the word for panic attacks at the time. I really didn't even think of anxiety as a real thing. I thought it was a way that people described life as stressful and I was familiar with that stress. I just never responded like this before, but what happened to me that first year was something I had never experienced before.
It was as if my mind caught a cold. It was as if my heart came apathetic about all the things that I knew and was only responding to this sort of anxious schedule that I was experiencing. I could talk about this for a long time, Kasey, but the important part I would say is twofold, one, that was a time in my life where I realized that Psalm 23 is true, that the Lord really is with you in the valley of the shadow of death.
While I never want to experience that time of insomnia and panic, and even at some point, suicidal thoughts, I never want to experience that again, but I see now the Lord walked with me through that incredible low point and used it to make me into someone who was more like Christ, more loving, more patience, more sensitive. Primarily, that sanctification that happened was through a great epiphany that your head can go this way and your habits can go the opposite way and your heart is going to start to follow habits.
With the clarity of hindsight, again, easy to say now, a long journey later, I realized that despite the fact that I had a great worldview. I was living according to a set of rigorous, liturgical, spiritual disciplines called everyday habits of the Modern West. They were the ways I looked at my phone, the ways I treated my schedule, the ways I didn't rest, the way I didn't sabbath, the way that I didn't sleep, the way that I thought everything was about what I could get done. I now see those ordinary habits as deeply, formative, spiritual disciplines.
That's the short version. I now see that habits are not neutral, nor can you ever get away from them. You're always going to be living according to habits. Once you realize that habits are spiritual liturgies in and of themselves, it becomes fairly intuitive to say, "Well, why don't I choose them carefully?" That's what a lot of my writing has been about ever since.
Kasey Olander:
Wow. You feel called to be a missionary, and then you feel called with a similar feeling of mission to lawyering, but then all of a sudden you realize, wait a minute, this pace of life isn't going to work, just looking the way that my peers look, even though I know Christ, my life needs to look like it, not just with reading the Bible…
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
… but also with things, I mean, you defined habits as things we don't even think about, right?
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Right, right, very much so.
Kasey Olander:
Then, how did you realize that connection between what your habits were, not thinking about them to realizing, maybe this is actually related to my spiritual life?
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Well, there were two ways. The primary wake up was about a year into my struggle. I had tried medication, I had tried counseling, and neither of those were really moving the needle, though, I hardly recommend both to anybody, but I was still really struggling. I ended up, right around the new year, sitting at a table with my two best friends, Steve and Matt and I had this journal on the table where I had written out this program of daily and weekly habits.
The reason I had done that was because my wife and I had said, "Let's just try to find something to reign in your chaos, put a couple limits on your days and weeks," but they were small things, like turning off my phone an hour a day, actually practicing a Sabbath, trying to do at least a meal with other people once a day and not always eating on the go, committing to scripture before phone, so I wasn't looking at my email first thing in the morning, I mean, all stuff that I list them out like that.
They sound like good ideas, but I didn't think they were going to matter because at the time, I had no idea how much these smallest and most ordinary patterns of our days and weeks actually affect our souls, not to mention our mental health, but our spiritual formation in the most deep and extraordinary ways.
My life began to drastically change from this day on. It was really a sharp pivot. I started asking myself, Kasey, I mean, it was good. I started to feel different, not completely better all of a sudden. I could never in good conscious recommend to anybody who's struggling with their mental health that this will fix you right away, but it was the most meaningful change that had happened in that whole year of struggle.
I just started to ask why was that? Almost as if, why is this working? What I found in my reading, as a lawyer and a Christian and an armchair philosopher myself, I just started to read and research and ask, why does this mattering so much? I'm almost a little embarrassed to say that I started to realize that what I was doing was absolutely nothing new, but just a rediscovery of the spiritual disciplines of a very old, because it's biblical, understanding of sanctification and participation in the Lord's work of sanctification.
I was also reading people like Jamie Smith or other people that were writing on cultural liturgies and understanding that there is no neutral, that what I had happened in on, I thought that these ways that we used our phones or lived according to certain law school schedules or things were happening in the realm of neutrality, and we could put Christian content maybe on top of them. I started to realize that, there is no neutral for the human heart. We are always gravitating towards some love or another.
It was both the experience of a deeply changed life as I started practicing that what I now know were spiritual discipline is and also then reading and realizing that this is a historical biblical way of living the faith and maybe most famously coming to understand that what I had essentially done was create a rule of life, even though I never knew that word at the time. That is when I started to realize this is not just for me.
My story might be extreme, but I'm not unusual. That's when I started to realize that, wait, everybody needs to start thinking about this. That really started the writing about it to try to offer all the other people like me who are struggling with their mental health and sort of the chaotic sense that there's no form to life, I'm just being whipped around in different places and say, "You're right. It's not, but that's a problem of the modern world." We haven't always lived this way and we need to really think about the biblical and ancient practices of a rule of life and spiritual disciplines.
Kasey Olander:
That's kind of funny that you're like, "I invented this new thing. Wait a minute. No, I'm actually joining in with this old thing."
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
I love that.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Honestly, it was refreshing because if I invented a new thing, you're always pretty skeptical like, really did that happen?
Kasey Olander:
In Christianity, you're not really trying to make stuff up.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yeah, but it was deeply encouraging when I started to read about just spiritual disciplines and the rule of life, and it was just say, "This is why I've felt the way that I felt, and this is why this is working the way that it's working because it's how God made us and it's how the church has lived usually."
That gave me a sense of history and tradition and theology that was not present on that night with my journal where I was asking my friends. It started as an experiment. It ended as realizing that I was in a deep, strong, and comforting current of Christian theology for centuries.
Kasey Olander:
That is comforting to know you're joining in with these ancient friends.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes, yes, very much so.
Kasey Olander:
How did you identify, I assume these ancient saints weren't telling you to turn off your phone for an hour, right? How did you and your wife, you said you sat down and you made this list, how did you come to these specific habits? How did you identify, it's my relationship with technology or specifically my phone? I guess, what did that kind of look like for you?
Justin Whitmel Earley:
That's such a good question because some of them, we didn't invent Sabbath. You sort of suddenly look back and realize that you've been ignoring one or more of the 10 commandments your whole life. Other ones that were turn my phone off for an hour a day and scripture before phone, I'll go with both of those because those have been incredibly important disciplines that I still, even yesterday did, Kasey, and today. I still actually live like this surprisingly.
A lot of people intuit that something is happening to them with their smartphone and that they need different practices. I'm no different in that sense. I was intuiting that something was fracturing my sense of presence. Honestly, I think I had read about each of those practices somewhere else. I had heard in a podcast that turning your phone off for an hour a day was one of the most psychologically effective ways to break phone addictions.
I had also read someone talking about morning prayer and how one easy marker is just to say, "Do you go to prayer before you go to your phone?" I'm actually not sure where I came to it, but those were places where I thought, "Well, that makes sense. Let's just try that."
Now, what I think is interesting, Kasey, is that I was in the place, probably most other people are listening to this and they're hearing it right now, and they're saying, "That sounds like a wise idea, but is that really going to make or break my life or is that really necessary?" I am here to tell you, yes, it is because here is what is happening. We are overlooking one of those formational moments of our day in waking and by default giving it to our smartphone. I think some most recent statistic I read, some 90% of Americans begin their day in their phone in bed.
Kasey Olander:
Wow.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
It is now unsurprising to me that if we begin our day on Twitter, we become spiritually formed into angry people. If we begin our day in cable news, we become spiritually formed into very, very worried and frustrated people. If we begin our day on Instagram, we become formed into very, very envious or self-conscious people. I could go on.
We have a God-shaped and God-sized hole in our heart. We wake up every day wondering, "How is it that I'm justified? Can somebody look at me and tell me that I'm worth it today?" I, for many weeks, months, really years, actually looked to my inbox to say, "What am I going to do to prove that I'm lovable today?"
The answer, as a young lawyer was, "Well, I need to do these tasks. I already see the list of things I need to do today in my inbox." I never would've said, I had way better theology, way better worldview to say, "I'm going to go find my identity and work today." I would never have said that. Probably nobody listening would.
Kasey Olander:
Not explicitly.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
That's the whole point of what we're talking about exactly. We would never say it explicitly, our head's going that way, but our heart is following the habit. When you look there first thing every day, we become our habits of attention.
When I noticed, and anybody who practices this will, you will feel extraordinarily different if you, for the next 30 days, decide to spend your waking moments in either silence, meditation, prayer or scripture, any of those things work, but do it before you go to your phone. You will find your life is dramatically different and it's unsurprising, because as the scriptures tell us, prayer and the word of God, they're divine. They're here for a reason.
It sort of the phone off for an hour every day is similar just in that it was one of those practices where I realized, "This is not about a life hack to get more done," though I would recommend that, anybody who wants to be more productive, turn your phone off, literally off and see how your mind works differently when you work.
What I realized is that I was made for presence, presence with other people. When I was turning off my phone, I was suddenly with my kids and with my wife in a way that I hadn't been in a long time. It became intuitive once again that I was living in a rushing current of fractured presence and that I was going to try to be omnipresent for the rest of my life if I didn't turn off my phone, because the phone encouraged us to sort of sense that we can actually be like God and be everywhere.
Unsurprisingly, our mental health splinters, when we believe that and act that out. It is a dangerous spiritual narrative that is essentially replaying the sin of Eden over and over. I'd rather be God than worship him. I'm kind of raising the stakes of phone usage on purpose in that, of course, again, we'd never say that. I'd never pick up my phone and say, "I want to be God, thus I will swipe up."
Those habits, that worship is bound up at habits and swiping with our thumb in the ways that is now available to us very quickly becomes a liturgical habit of, I am God, through my thumbs' motions and I can be everywhere and anywhere and present to all people at any time.
Once again, I'm not surprised we have the mental health epidemics that we do when our habits are leading us in such idolatry. Of course, we fracture because worship forms us. As the psalmist says, "Those who make and trust in idols will become like them. That formation is dangerous even if we don't know that it's worship. That's why I want to call people's attention to the liturgical and the spiritual discipline nature of habits because so much is happening that we didn't know was happening there.
Kasey Olander:
I feel like you're highlighting some interesting things about anthropology, who we are as humans. We don't consciously set out to say, "You know what? I'm going to worship my phone," or "I want to feel loved, and so I'm going to check my email or my social media," or whatever, but a lot of times the rhythms like our bodies sometimes lead the way in a way that we don't think that they do. We think…
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
… my mind is in charge, and so if I cognitively think whatever is true about how Jesus is Lord, but my body does something else, then it'll just be fine. I'll go with my mind, but you're saying that that's not the case. We're creatures and we're finite and we're limited, even sometimes such that we're limited in our own awareness of ourselves.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes, and I think we, it's such a good point, Kasey, the way you just put it, I think we know this when it comes to the most visceral tasks of the body. We recognize, for example, that exercise will change us, that something happens to our body when we move it in this way or that. That's not necessarily neutral.
I think we intuit it and know it but probably rather explicitly with sex, that there are acts that are not neutral. You can't just say, I am devoted to my wife or husband, and then go, as Paul says, "Unite your body with a prostitute," because something happens spiritually in those moments. Your body is not neutral. I just think, we probably, this is probably the task of another podcast, smarter people than me, but I think our theology of the body is actually probably very underdeveloped in the 21st century western Christianity.
I think that we have assumed a much more pagan understanding of our body, and that is that we're basically in sort of a platonic charge of it, as in the important things happen up here in the head. What happens down here in the body is not that important, that's just of the world. That is not biblical.
God had created our bodies and then he breathes life into them. They're not accidental and they matter. I mean, I'll short circuit this discussion because I'm probably not qualified to give a protestant theology of the body here on this podcast, but it may be important, but when it comes to our phones, I think we don't realize how much our bodily attunement, attention gaze swiping is actually forming our mental health and our souls. If we did, we'd probably realize why so much American Christianity looks like it does and why so much of the western mental health problems are what they are.
Kasey Olander:
Also, I think I want to mention too, it's not that phones themselves are always evil, even though sometimes our posture has changed and sometimes our eyes change based on how much we look at them, but I was thinking a phone can be a great resource to call a friend who's an actual…
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
… human being that you can connect with…
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
… or to FaceTime…
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
… somebody who lives far away, they can be an instrument that actually cultivates connection instead of just stealing it, but it depends on, I think your intentionality with the way that you use it.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
I couldn't agree more, though, I would add something in there, but first, the agreement, yes, it would be super important to know that I am no Luddite. I am a corporate lawyer and a writer who is on my phone and my computer now and most of the day.
Kasey Olander:
We're on Zoom right now.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes. Here we go to, the redemptive point of technology. Just as a Bible believing Christian, I believe what Genesis says, and that is that God created the world and it was good and that we are also called to create, and that fundamentally, I believe that technology is more redeemable than it is evil, any day of the week. Sometimes people say, "Well, it's good too, right? It's not all bad." I would not only say yes, I would say, "That doesn't quite encapsulate it."
Technology can and should be very good the way that God says good in creation. The problem is only that it's actually just way more important than we think. I think like sex, like money, like power, the most important things that God created have the greatest capacity for evil and brokenness and the greatest capacity for good. I would put technology right there in that category because it's a mode fundamentally of human communication and knowledge and for us to communicate with each other.
It's just tremendously wonderful that I can call my wife and tell her I love her in the middle of the day from the office, or that my son can FaceTime me when he scrapes his knee and I can comfort him or that we can have this incredible conversation across time zones is not only good, it's very good in the genesis sense of it, but that I could go home tonight and create a secret user account and go do things on the internet that nobody would know. That is a possibility we now all live with and that is very, very dangerous.
If we don't have patterns of radically different technology uses, we will slip into some of the most dangerous evils almost unconsciously. I just would caution anybody against saying, "Well, technology is neutral, it just depends on the intentions you bring to it." That's not quite enough.
Intentions are very important, but it also really depends on how this is made. It depends on how our computer is made. For example, I would love the next generation of Christians to be thinking about are disappearing chats an appropriate version of technology period? Is that or are swipe right for a private browsing window, is that good technology because it means that despite your best intentions, you are almost certainly going to use this for evil.
I say this because Tolkien and Aristotle and many other writers and philosophers in the 2000 years between those two back this up. This is the ring of Gyges' idea that the Lord of the Rings was based on what happens when you give a human being a ring that makes them invisible? What will they go do? It was the philosopher's will of saying, clearly human nature is flawed because we all know what people will go do. Are they going to use it to go put money in people's pockets and do kind things for widows or are they going to, I don't even have to give the list of things.
When technology allows us to disappear, we have really dangerous questions when it allows us to comment on people's posts with just vitriolic poison and never be known because we created a secret account. I'm not sure these are actually things that should exist. It matters how technology is created. I'd love to see a new generation of Christian entrepreneurs who say, "We're going to make better social media platforms. We're going to make better devices."
That's a generational thing. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but then again, anything that can be accomplished in one generation is probably journeying too small anyway. I would love Christians to think about that in the long run.
Kasey Olander:
Absolutely. We think, I mean, we affirm that humans are totally depraved and we've rebelled against God, and thankfully we also affirm that Jesus makes a way for us to be made right with him, that Jesus is the one who accomplished everything on our behalf. I wonder in light of that, that as Christians, we are all about God's grace. How do you reconcile that? If somebody says to you, "Justin, that sounds a little legalistic. You really want me…
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
… to put that many boundaries on my phone or on the stuff I feel like doing all the time, I just want to rest in God's grace. Jesus died and rose again. How do you respond to that?
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Well, first I would affirm we're on the same page of theology. This is unquestionable, it's unassailable. We are saved not by our good habits. We are saved by Jesus's good work on our behalf. Honestly, I think a fear of legalism was actually probably what made me the person that I was going into law school, which is something to notice.
We should be good at identifying legalism, and I would define legalism as looking for anything besides Christ for your justification. Looking to your work, looking to your Christian practice, looking to the health of your marriage or the greatness of how you raise these kids, looking at whatever it is, your bank account, your followers online, whatever it is that makes you feel like I'm worth it today, you're now basing the validity of your existence or your sensitive justification on something else that's not Christ.
I think what's important to note, Kasey, is that we are all equally prone to do that. We do it in radically different ways, but we're all equally prone to do that. I usually try to turn this question gently back to the asker and say, "What makes you think you're more prone to legalism simply because you're trying to cooperate in your sanctification?"
As in, if you did nothing, you look to your status as a Christian who just does nothing than rest in God's grace and start to imagine that that's why you're actually doing well as a Christian. I mean, that's how broken we are. Legalism is going to be a problem everywhere. I always just am skeptical of the upshot of that question, but I think the more final answer is just that I always try to remind people, habits will not change God's love for you, but God's love for you should change your habits. That is just one…
Kasey Olander:
Say that one more time.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
… short summary way to say, read the Bible and the way that Jesus talks or the way that Paul ends any of his letters, after explaining the love and the unconditional love of God and justification by faith alone, Paul is extremely comfortable and so is Jesus in telling us how to live our lives, telling us what to do in light of that.
That's just the correct use of the law to put it in reformed theologies in a sense. I mean, the idea of the law was to tell us one, why we're damned to show us the standard that we're not going to live up to, two, to create order in society. That's another use. The 10 commandments have practical use in most cultures, but three, to show us the path for the good life. These are traditional biblical understandings of the use of the law.
That third one that I mentioned is about sanctification. It's the idea of participating in your sanctification, which does not justify you, but it is God is trying to work in your life. He is laid out good works for us in advance, Ephesians says. I wholeheartedly now look at habits as a way to honor God and participate in my sanctification, not at all a way to justify myself.
Kasey Olander:
I want to come back to that. You used a pithy phrase and I liked it. I think it was that you said habits don't change God's love for you, but God's love for you should change your habits. I think…
Justin Whitmel Earley:
That's right.
Kasey Olander:
… that's a great way of looking at it because it removes from us this idea that if I live a good enough life, if I order all my things, if I have the appropriate boundaries on my technology and stuff, then God will like me, but rather, it gives us this freedom as believers to be like, God already loved me when I was at my worst, in my deepest mess…
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
… Jesus still died for me. Out of that, wow, I can understand a little bit of this great love and then be motivated. How can I order my life so that it's honoring to him and how can I be a good steward of my health, my mental health, my physical health, my things that have been entrusted to me like phones and computers and the internet or what have you, as a means of worshiping God, of being intentional with worshiping God instead of worshiping the good gifts that he gives.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes, that's exactly it.
Kasey Olander:
I love how you said that. What is the value of doing this in community? I definitely see value in, for me, if I read scripture before I'm on my phone, that puts me in a better mental state and it puts me in a good spot, but what is the value of doing this with other people?
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Really everything, because I don't see a route to do this alone. The book on this that I wrote is called The Common Rule, which is a play on the idea of the rule of life that I mentioned earlier, a program of spiritual habits that changes you. The rules of life were traditionally done in monasteries amongst communities of monks. The lessons we could draw from Acts where people would point to that as an example of a rule of life happened in the community of the church of early believers.
You could point to all the biblical examples of this, but you could also just look to the whole of the Bible and how it describes the church and our relationship of Jesus and that is that we were not made to walk with Jesus alone. We're made to walk with Jesus alongside other people.
This is actually, as you know, something that I now have a whole book on because this is so important to me, but just in the habit sense, any habit psychology will actually tell you that it is extraordinarily hard to start and keep a habit alone, but it is very, very possible to do it in community. I always tell people to start any of this stuff, you pick one habit, let's call it [inaudible 00:33:42], one person, and do it with them for about four to six weeks a month maybe. Those are the ingredients.
One small change, one other person and one limited timeframe like a month where you can actually build a new habit, but that other person, Kasey, is nearly essential. That sense of accountability and community, that is how we change. I always think it's just delicious to read the habit philosophy and hear psychologists say that as it turns out, we can't change unless we're in a community of other people who believes in some higher calling for themselves.
That's the church. That's why we have the church. We were built to change in the local church. Find somebody in your small group, ask them if they want to do this habit together, that is the route to practically starting any of this.
Kasey Olander:
I love that. That's awesome. I really enjoy The Common Rule and I've sent it to a number of people. I think that that's really helpful. It's I think helpful and hopeful that it's not just me by myself, and it's not even just me and Jesus, but it's, God has saved Jesus's bride the church and enabled us and equipped us to do some, like you said, small incremental things. You've given people really easy bite-sized things. They don't have to start with eight habits for the rest of your life forever.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Right. Only the weird people like me will do them all at one time. Most of us will do them incrementally, and that is actually the way to radically change your life. Start small, the small things are the big things as it turns out.
Kasey Olander:
Do you encourage people, what is it about the rhythms of daily and/or weekly? Is there anything to be said for quarterly or annual habits? I don't know if you can call them habits at that point.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
That is exactly the conversation. We could get really esoteric here, but usually we would call them traditions or rituals when they occur less than weekly because it's harder to be subconscious about things that only occur annually, but not entirely because we all know at Christmas time, we all sort of celebrate it this way in our family. Traditions become that.
You should think about it writ large for sure, but it's the micro habits on the daily to weekly level that I think are the most powerful and spiritually formative practices that we don't know we have. That's why I point people to those. Some of your weekly and daily rhythms are probably the things that are discipling you the most. I would just want to encourage the church to give that daily and weekly discipleship over to Jesus rather than the cultural norms of the modern technological west.
Kasey Olander:
That's a good way to put it. You're definitely being discipled. You're being formed by something, but there's hope for the fact that you can actually be intentional about what it is you can actually submit to the lordship of Jesus and you can be a steward of…
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
… things that he's entrusted to you.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes, that's absolutely right. We are all being discipled by American culture unless you are counter discipling yourself in the way of Jesus.
Kasey Olander:
That's good. Yeah.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Well, I would revise that, you're not counter discipling yourself unless you're allowing Jesus to be the counter discipleship.
Kasey Olander:
There you go.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
We are primarily following him.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, you're intentional with where your mind is going, where your affections are going instead of letting somebody else decide it for you. That's really good. Can you speak to, I guess, a couple more of the ways that you doing these habits has formed like you, your family, your community, the group, whatever group you inhabit?
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Well, I wrote in The Common Rule about a weekly practice of spending an intentional hour in conversation with friends every week. That habit is not as pithy as scripture before phone, but it actually became one of the most important and cherished practices for me over the past few years. That is just to look for a regular, typically weekly rhythm of deep conversation with other friends.
That has really changed the way that I walk with the Lord in recent years. I've seen, I think looking to my right and looking to my left, just the difference in people who persevere in their walk with the Lord, who persevere in their marriage, who persevere through mental health struggles, the difference between those people and the ones who fall away or are crushed by mental health struggles or are receding or drawing back from their marriage.
It's not usually the circumstances because we all face suffering and difficulty. It's just life, as it turns out, is very hard. We live in a fallen world and we're sinners after all, but those who walk through those circumstances alone are almost doomed to failure, because I believe that God really did make us for other people, he made us to experience him the most, or not, I don't think we can even experience God correctly until we experience him alongside other people because he made us in the Trinitarian image of God. We need other people to fill out that image bearing.
My point is that practice of communal living, which helps me practice all these habits in community of my family and my friends, that has drastically changed things maybe more than anything else because again, back to the American culture of discipleship, we are being aggressively discipled into individualism if we do nothing else. That's the current of American culture to become busier, wealthier people who used to have friends.
I've come to believe that fighting back against that current towards a communal life where friendship is sacred and seen as spiritually valuable on the same level of quiet times and church walking deeply with other people, should be recognized as an incredibly spiritually formative practice. I've just seen that as one of the key issues for the modern church. We could do a lot of other things right, but if we get that wrong, we're not living the way that God made us or the way that Jesus calls us to.
We can't be people who are so good at scripture before phone and we put our phone away and we Sabbath, and yet, no one in our life actually knows who we are. That's not a Christian, that's not describing a life that Christ called us to. We need to figure out ways to radically push against that individualistic current and live into a community of people.
As we talked about before this, that's the subject of my most recent book, Made for People, because I've found that that one practice in The Common Rule was actually so important. The Made for People is kind of an exploration of the theology behind why we can't live a spiritual life alone, why it all falls apart if we try to do it alone.
Kasey Olander:
It sounds like you're saying that these habits are not just good for you, but they're part of the, Jesus talks about the greatest commandment to love the Lord your God, but then also, the second is like it to love your neighbor and you can't…
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
… very well love your neighbor in isolation.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
That's exactly and none of these, I try to be really clear in The Common Rule, you'll read at the very beginning that these are not habits designed to optimize your life. They're not habits designed to make your life easier or neater or more productive. They're designed to actually push you out of you into the love of God and neighbors.
In that sense, yes, we're talking about inward spiritual disciplines in some sense, but the inward spiritual disciplines are always pushing you outward. I think it was Luther who called our sinful state, like being curved in. I can't remember the Latin incurvatus in se or something maybe, but the state of being sinful is always being curved into yourself.
These spiritual disciplines are trying to push us out towards the love of God, towards the love of neighbor, of course, the greatest commandment, but I think we need a particular push in our modern moment to say that you can't do those spiritual disciplines correctly unless you're doing them intimately alongside other people.
I think we've been so formed in the American water of individualism that we kind of sense our Christian life could happen in that structure and Made for People as sort of a treatise on saying, "No, you're fundamentally created in the communal Trinitarian image of God, which is why nothing works until you're doing it in friendship with others."
Kasey Olander:
That's beautiful. I like that you're highlighting too. We actually have an episode on Sabbath. It's called The Lost Art, I'm sorry, it's called Sabbath for Your Soul. Then, we have an episode on friendship called The Lost Art of Friendship. We are really on board with these things that you're discussing.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
We're tracking on these topics. That's so great. Did you say The Lost Art of Friendship or was it lost?
Kasey Olander:
Yes.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
I couldn't agree more. I can't wait to hear that one.
Kasey Olander:
Well, I wish that we had more time to talk. I feel like, we've talked about a lot of things that could be an episode in and of themselves, but I think the…
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Sure-
Kasey Olander:
… encouragement that we have for our listeners, that you can be intentional about your habits, not in order to please God or make him love you, but in order to be a good steward. This intentionality with habits is something that actually can cause you to flourish and cause you to love God and love your neighbor more.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
Real quick, Justin, if people want to connect with you and find out more about the work that you're doing, where can they find you?
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Two best ways to do that would be to go to my website, justinwhitmelearley.com, and I've got a mailing list that people can subscribe to there. I am always sending out maybe article ideas or thoughts or recent podcasts like these that I think are useful.
Then, second, I am on social media. Instagram is where I'm most active in putting out some of this content and responding to people. As you might know from the conversation, I limit my engagement there and have certain rules and practices about how I do it, but I am there in my own way. People can come find me there, and I won't respond to messages right away, but I always eventually respond. You're always free to direct message me there.
Kasey Olander:
That's perfect. Well, thank you so much for your time, Justin. I'm really grateful that you're able to be here today. Really enjoyed our conversation.
Justin Whitmel Earley:
Thank you so much, Kasey. This has just been wonderful, and I really appreciate your great questions.
Kasey Olander:
I've really enjoyed it. We also want to say thanks to our listeners for joining us. We hope that you join us next time at The Table when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Mikel Del Rosario: Welcome to the table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Mikel Del Rosario, Cultural Engagement Manager here at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And we have a special show for you today. As it's Christmastime, we want to talk about history and the Christmas story. We'll be talking about some of the most common questions that people have about the traditional Christmas story. And I have two guests coming to us via Zoom today. First guest is Dr. Darrell Bock, Executive Director of Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center, and Senior Research Professor of New Testament here at DTS. Welcome, Darrell.
Darrell Bock: My pleasure. And you've got that introduction down, Mikel. I just want you to know that.
Mikel Del Rosario: I can say that in my sleep, unfortunately. And my second guest coming to us also via Zoom is Joe Fantin, Professor of New Testament Studies here at DTS. Welcome, Joe.
Joe Fantin: Thank you. Good to be here.
Mikel Del Rosario: Well, it's a wonderful time of the year that we're talking about today. I want to begin just by thinking about the traditional nativity scene. So many of us have these in our homes, or we see them at our churches around Christmastime. And it's just so iconic. But back in the day, around 1223, St. Francis of Assisi put together what we now know as the traditional nativity scene. And it was never meant to be a historical security camera footage version of what happened when Jesus was born. Instead, we have this collection of characters, different scenes in the story, like a movie poster that just pulls a number of these characters and scenes together. So let's think through the traditional nativity scene and get a handle on what we're looking at when we see these famous iconic scenes around Christmastime.
And Darrell, I want to start with you. If you could just help us understand the kind of time compression that's going on here when we, on the one hand we've got the shepherds who are linked with the angels. And on the other hand we've got the wise men who are linked with the star, and they're all there together. But when did each group actually come on the scene?
Darrell Bock: Well, to be honest, I'm not sure we know the chronology with that kind of precision. We know in general terms what's likely to have happened. And most creches that I see have sheep present, though they were in the field. They weren't with Jesus when he was born. So that's relocation number one. The sense is that the shepherds did visit pretty close to the birth, but the Magi may have been later. And we don't know how much later. We do know that Herod tried to slay all the children age 2 and under after he figured out the Magi weren't coming back to tell him where the Messiah had been born.
And so we know there's a delay because the Magi have to visit, find out where the location is, go to that location, and then leave that location, and leave that location long enough for Herod to become suspicious, they're not coming back to tell me where he's located. So this is after. We just don't know how much after. So, when you do the creche scene, at least the normal way that it's seen, you want to biblical, I think what you have to do is, the shepherds could be there, Joseph and Mary could be there with the baby. The sheep need to go back to the field. And the Magi are somewhere. We just don't know where. They're not in the room at the time as the shepherds are.
Mikel Del Rosario: Now what was the social status of shepherds? Why was their visit important.
Darrell Bock: Well that's actually debated. Some people think that shepherds have a very negative connotation. But most of the evidence we have for that is later than the first century. So we can't be sure that actually goes back into the first century. And as a result, some of the points that are made off of the shepherds' background, et cetera, that you sometimes hear in association with the Christmas story may actually not reflect the point of the narrative.
Mikel Del Rosario: Why do you think their visit was important?
Darrell Bock: Well, it's true, the entire scene from beginning to end, everything about it, it reflects a very humble set of origins for Jesus. I like to joke with my classes that if you were in the PR meeting planning the arrival of the Messiah, and you were saying, "What's the best, most effective way to do this?" That most of the planning that would involve the normal way we would think about public relations is it would happen with a lot of fanfare. It would happen in a capital city. Everyone would be aware that it's going on, et cetera. In fact, what you get is a little village, outside a capital, of the location that is very tangential in the totality of the Greco-Roman empire, tucked away in a little corner. My analogy is it would be like someone being born in Samoa in relationship to the United States. And then, of course, the people who are gathered, the Magi, obviously, have traveled a long way to come. But the shepherds and Joseph and Mary themselves, being in a room because there isn't room at the inn, everything about it is very, very humble, and reflects the fact that God has come, not for the elite, not for the powerful, but for anyone and everyone who is reflective of being made in the image of God.
Mikel Del Rosario: And these are Jewish shepherds, right?
Darrell Bock: I would assume so. Yeah. We're in Israel.
Mikel Del Rosario: And so we have the Jewish shepherds. And then we have these Magi who are coming from outside Israel. And Joe, let's talk about the Magi for a little bit. In Matthew 2:2, the Magi came to Jerusalem. They were asking, "Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw His star when it rose. We've come to worship Him." And then verse 9 says, "It went before the Magi and it came to rest over the place where the child was." Let's think about who the Magi were for a minute. Who are these guys?
Joe Fantin: Again, we're not 100 percent sure on who these guys are, but probably our best educated conclusion or guess is they were probably Persians. Persians were interested in astrology, they were interested in stars. The word Magi really only appears here, although we also see it later, in the Book of Acts, chapter 13. We're talking about a magician there. People who probably are not what we would normally think of as good Christian type people, even good Jewish people, interested in stars, interested in that, but would have nevertheless probably been important. They might have a history going back into Babylon and Persia, with even the Book of Daniel made mention individuals like this. So the best guess we would probably say would be these are astrologers interested in the stars, and saw significance in that type of phenomenon.
Mikel Del Rosario: How did ancient people view stars? Certainly differently than we think about stars today, but what was the idea that they had in terms of why they are watching the star, and what stars were?
Joe Fantin: The ancients watched the skies for lots of things, whether it be birds during the daylight, the stars at night. These could be deities, at that time. But they also, depending on how the stars were aligned, they depended on what type of life you'd have if you were born under those particular things. So they paid a lot of attention to these kinds of things. And, like I said, in some cases, when an important person died, they might look up to the sky and saw a new star, and they could have identified that individual with that. So, these were important. These were the types of things that the gods used, or the gods themselves were that could help direct us to get a connection to some information that we might not otherwise have access to.
Mikel Del Rosario: Philo, in Origin, saw stars as living kinds of beings. And in the Old Testament, some people saw them as angels. It's interesting, in 1993, Dale Allison had a piece in Bible Review Magazine, where he cited the Arabic gospel of the infancy. In chapter 7 it says that it was an angel in the form of a star. Is that a widely held idea that it was an angel?
Joe Fantin: I don't think it's a widely held view, but it's one of the potential supernatural explanations for the star. It could have been a star that God did outside of the normal course of creation, to lead the Magi there. And this notion that it could have been an angel makes sense. It could be a supernatural expression of God trying to use an angel to guide. And a star is just a way of doing that. So I don't think it's widely held, but it fits within that type of interpretation, a supernatural idea.
Mikel Del Rosario: That's interesting. I don't think I've ever seen a Christmas play where you dressed up a kid as an actual star and had them come on the stage. But that would be interesting.
Joe Fantin: You'd need a new play character there.
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah.
Darrell Bock: So we've traded, I guess what we've traded the Magi for a star to be named later or earlier or something like that?
Joe Fantin: Yeah, yeah.
Mikel Del Rosario: So when we think about these Christmas plays, Darrell, sometimes we see these plays have an innkeeper, or a hotel with this no vacancy sign up. How likely was it that there was anything like a Holiday Inn, or anything like that in Bethlehem?
Darrell Bock: Yeah. Motel 6 wasn't leaving a light on for them. What this room is is basically an animal stall. It's attached to the edge of a building. It's the one place they could put the couple that would afford some limited shelter, that kind of thing, for someone bearing a child. But it wasn't anything close to a Holiday Inn, or a Motel 6, or anything like that. Again, it's part of this very basic picture of a very humble, basic beginning. There are no creaturely comforts being afforded to this couple, as they give birth to this figure who literally was history, and historically transforming in terms of the history of the world.
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah, it's interesting, the old 1984 NIV translates Luke 2:7, "And she gave birth to her first born son, she wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." So this idea that there was no room for them in the inn is something we need to think about a little bit. Joe, what do we know about that word, the inn there, that's used?
Joe Fantin: The kataluma term? It most likely is some type of public shelter place that could … that existed in various towns. And given that this was census taking place, there were probably lots of people coming through. Might have been an area in which a town designated that people could gather. A place like that. We see it also used in the upper room. Prior to the Passover, Jesus tells a disciple to go find a person and tell him that I need to have the Passover meal, and that's the kind of room, in that case, that He is asking about. He uses the same type of a term there. So again, probably a public thing. Had nothing to do with, as Darrell said, a Holiday Inn, which I guess is the NIV translation is saying there… Holiday Inn is kind of implied.
Darrell Bock: The Judean Hills Hotel. Not that.
Mikel Del Rosario: Well there was something that interestingly in 2010, the NIV translated it, “There was no guest room available for them.” So there's, the English language has changed a little bit in the minds of some people when we see the word “inn.” In Luke 10:34, the good Samaritan took this man to a place, the pandocheion. Is that more … Darrell, is that more like what we think of as an inn?
Darrell Bock: Yeah. And there's obviously someone caring for that location, as well. He leaves money with him and says, if there's anything else that he owes you, I will pay you when I come back. So this is obviously a fairly traditional stopping place, if I can say it that way, where someone who is traveling, business person, something like that, could stay.
Joe Fantin: I was gonna just add, I often wonder. I'm not sure what type of evidence there is for this, but in light of the hospitality of the ancient world, in the first century, this was a very common thing for people to extend hospitality, have people come in. I'm wondering if towns, in light of big potential gatherings, set places like this aside, just for times like this, where you don't necessarily have to have that personal touch, to go live with a family or go stay with a family, but nevertheless the town can offer some type of hospitality. Gets the average person a little bit off the hook, but at the same time the town maintains a hospitality type of image, if you will. But again, we don't have enough evidence to discuss that one way or another. But it is a potential possibility.
Mikel Del Rosario: So the area where Jesus was born, then, Darrell, you were talking about it being an area where there were potentially animals. And what is a manger? 'Cause we hear this, we sing the song, "Away in an manger," and sometimes people aren't entirely sure. Was that a barn? Or what is that? Tell us what a manger is.
Darrell Bock: It's an animal trough, basically. So this room, however it was being used, also was a place where animals could be housed, in case of weather or something like that. Or if they needed an opportunity to just refresh themselves, this would be place where that could take place. Like I said, it's just a very, very common, maybe even rustic location. There's nothing special about it. There's no penthouse. This is on the opposite end of that scale.
Mikel Del Rosario: Were the feeding troughs made of stone? Or were they made of wood more commonly?
Darrell Bock: I actually don't know the answer to that question. And I wouldn't even know to surmise. I imagine it could be either, but I don't know that.
Mikel Del Rosario: Okay. There have been a couple … there's a picture in the Holman Bible Dictionary of one in stone. But then also we have a lot of our common pictures in wood. And I know there's, obviously there's trees around the area, but there's also a lot of stone there. But the point being it's super humble. This not like what you would make up. It also tells us that Luke resisted the temptation to make the physical location a grand kind of a place. The early church didn't invent this setup, even though Jesus was called the King of the Jews.
And, speaking of which, Joe, why was King Herod so concerned about the gentiles, or anybody calling a little baby the King of the Jews?
Joe Fantin: Well first and foremost, King Herod was the King of the Jews. So the other person … I guess it's like someone coming up to your wife and saying, "Hey. I'm Mikel's wife." Might not go over very well with your wife. It was a term, a title that King Herod held. And he held it rather loosely, if you will. He'd been trying to maintain some type of connection to the previous Jewish dynasty, the Hasmoneans. And if you go back to the Apocrypha, they basically give the Hasmonean dynasty the rule and high priesthood of Israel. But they always … they qualify it in 1 Maccabees 14. And they qualify it by saying, "You are basically the ruler and high priest until the rightful person comes back."
And I often think of The Lord of the Rings story. You have Gondor, and the guy who was the Steward of Gondor and wants to hold on to the power. And when the actual king shows up, there's some resistance to him. And I think this is what Herod was probably feeling. He realized that his whole claim to ruling the Jewish people, at least from the people's perspective, was that he had a connection to that dynasty. And then, all of a sudden, he hears, "Hey. The King of the Jews is here," or is being born, or however he might have heard it. To him, that would be a challenge.
Mikel Del Rosario: We also read …
Darrell Bock: And he's a little bit of a paranoid character, too. He killed his favorite wife. I'll never forget doing a tour with, I think it was with IFL in Israel, and we were talking about Herod at the time. And I told them the story about the number of family members he executed, the fact that he killed his favorite wife. And so my application to that talk was … and then he came to regret it. So, my application was, don't kill your favorite wife. Don't think about that too much. He had a reputation for holding ruthlessly on to his power. He changed his will multiple times, et cetera. So it was clear he held the title, and he was jealous of holding the title, if I can say it that way. And even acted out of that jealousy which, as background, actually helps us understand why the idea that he would slay the two year olds and unders makes sense and fits in the character of what we know about him.
Joe Fantin: He was a … he killed two of his kids, too, which is not the thing a sane person normally does, but for the same reasons, to maintain that power, concern that they would overtake him. I think the Emperor Augustus is quoted as saying, "It was safer to be a pig," the Greek word for pig looks an awful lot like the word for son. "It's safer to be a pig in Herod's castle and home, than it is to be a son." I don't know if Augustus really said that, but it's a play on words, the point that the pig is safe to run around in a Jewish home without fear of being eaten. And yet sons could be killed.
Mikel Del Rosario: Wow.
Darrell Bock: So Herod becomes the black widower is basically what happens. He's not a very … He's a brilliant character in the kind of building that he engaged in. But he is not a sympathetic character in terms of the way he treated people.
Mikel Del Rosario: And so when it says that Herod was disturbed and all the people with him, that's because they were … this dude's the paranoid king. Who's he gonna kill next? Who looked at him the wrong way?
Darrell Bock: Yeah. All that's in Josephus. We get that detail from what Josephus tells us about Herod.
Mikel Del Rosario: So we have the shepherds, we have the Magi, and we talked about King Herod who … of course, King Herod isn't in the nativity scene. That would be quite a thing. You’d have a kid stumble on there, ”You're not in this scene."
Darrell Bock: That's a creche on steroids.
Joe Fantin: We can add Herod too.
Mikel Del Rosario: But during Christmastime, when we begin to hear people questioning the historicity of the Christmas story, there are some of these cultural kinds of historical questions that people have. But some people go straight to the miraculous part, and their objection would be something like, Jesus' virgin birth seems to be patterned off of pagan myths in the Greco-Roman world. Joe, you've done a lot of work in this area of Greco-Roman religion. How does it work to deify somebody in this polytheistic kind of system?
Joe Fantin: The Romans worshiped men, generally speaking. Although they didn't until the Imperial period. But to deify a person … let me step back and say, for important people, they wanted to have miraculous type births… Stories that surrounded their birth, whether or not they were actually ultimately gonna be deified or not. And it just seemed to be one of the things on your resume if you wanted to be an important individual. You would have to find out birth, remarkable, and that would tick that particular box. So it was not uncommon, and it was probably expected of people who were claiming greatness one way or another. They would have had this, which again I think your question's leading towards how can we trust the Gospel ones? We know these ones probably aren't true in that respect.
Mikel Del Rosario: Okay. So somebody who was perceived to be a great heroic figure would have some kind of miraculous birth story or supernatural origin. Let's talk about this a little bit. Darrell, I know we've talked about this. We did a whole show on this with Mary Jo Sharp, couple years back. But what place would a deified person get in the pantheon?
Darrell Bock: Well, what you get, a deified person is a person who is treated as having lived a life, if I can say it this way, worthy of a god. And so it's a way of honoring someone, and giving them a status, and basically saying, he ruled us like a god. That would be one way to think about it. And when you think of a pantheon of gods, you gotta remember, the Romans had a ton of gods. You go to Pompeii, and you walk around, you're running across all kinds of temples to all kinds of gods as you roam the streets of Pompeii. And, in fact, I like to joke, there were a lot of religious holidays in the Roman calendar. I think there were about 150 Roman religious holidays a year that people were supposed to participate in. I like to joke that we ought to adopt that calendar. A holiday every three days isn't bad.
But it shows you how "spiritual," I'll put it in quotes, religious life was in the Greco-Roman world. And, in fact, Christians were even called atheists, because they only believed in one God. Look at all these gods you're leaving out, is that perspective. And so this elevation sometimes touched on rulers, and they would be basically at the bottom of the pantheon. They would make it in, but they would be on the back rows, if you want to think of it that way. One of the points I like to make about the Christology of the New Testament is, Jesus isn't in the back row of the pantheon. He's at the top layer. He's seated at the right hand of God. So that contrast is very important, culturally, in terms of what it's trying to say about the nature of Jesus' authority.
Mikel Del Rosario: So very different from how Christians began to give honors to Jesus as divine. No one ever thought that Alexander the Great was Adonai, maker of heaven and earth in that top spot that Jewish people would give to God, who created everything.
Darrell Bock: He's like the new Heisman Trophy winner. Welcome to the club. And I think of those commercials that I see where the last winner of the Heisman Trophy is cleaning the door for the other guys who live in the house. That's a way to think about it.
Joe Fantin: Mikel, it might be helpful to elaborate on what Darrell said there, is the way the Romans would have viewed gods would have been quite differently than we do. They didn't quite have this concept, as Darrell alluded to, of this all powerful creator type of a god. They had a much more limited type of deity. And when you lived in that particular context, and you honor an individual, you give them various honors, et cetera, et cetera, but at some point you honor somebody so highly that it actually becomes worship. Where the Romans … the difference between honor and worship of men and gods was probably a difference in degree. It just happened to be greater honor turned into worship. Whereas us, with Christianity, when we honor people, it's completely of different kind than when we consider worship, where we are worshiping God. It's not a difference in degree, like the Romans would have had. It would have been a different kind. And you could even say the same thing about their divine men. We think of us and God as completely different, for a lack of better term, species. Whereas, in the Roman concept, gods could simply be just great, great powerful individuals. And things like immortality were not necessarily a character only of gods. There were other beings in their concept that were immortal but they weren't necessarily deities. But yet you have these men, such as emperors, that would have been actually seen as gods.
And I think Darrell's alluding to those who'd actually become gods officially, put into the pantheon, if you will. And they would have gotten a name like divas. And that was generally reserved in the first century for emperors that did good things, like August, and then Claudius, and Vespasian, and people like that. But the individual them self, the man while he was alive, was also viewed as a god, whether or not he ultimately becomes an official divas, as they would have been called, was still up in the air. Nevertheless, when he was walking on that earth, he would have been considered by the Roman people a deity, in that respect.
Mikel Del Rosario: And they put that on the coins, too, didn't they?
Joe Fantin: Yeah.
Mikel Del Rosario: “The son of a god,” so that people would know.
Joe Fantin: If you're Tiberius, for example, and your adopted father is Augustus, and he is god, what better title to have than son of god? Think about our own political situation. If one of the candidates can actually ever say, "I am the son of God," he's gonna have a leg up on his competition. And it was just a matter of way which theses emperors were able to appeal to the masses. It's likely that the Emperor Nero had Claudius deified, who was not the most popular of emperors, in order that he could claim the title son of god. We don't know for sure, but it sure came out convenient for him.
Mikel Del Rosario: Well, there's a couple of people that want to mention quickly who are often cited as examples of these alleged parallels. And I'll just get each of you to respond to what you might think is going on here, as far as any similarities at all. The first one is Alexander the Great. And we could read in Plutarch around 336 B.C. He wrote that Alexander's mom dreamt that was this thunderbolt that hit her womb. His dad had a dream that he was closing up her womb. And then the strangest thing that he saw was, he saw this snake lying next to her in bed. He thought that she was having sex with some kind of higher being, that she was the consort of some kind of deity. Darrell, what strikes you as the strongest contrast one could possibly think about between this story, like the similarity and the contrast between this story and what the Bible tells us about Jesus' virgin birth?
Darrell Bock: Well, what's very interesting is the matter of detail we get about how the conception itself took place. Very vivid imagery in the case of the emperor, leaving no doubt really how this happened. No mystery to it whatsoever, really, in many ways. You contrast that to the New Testament, which it's simply the announcement that the Holy Spirit will overshadow you. And that's all that's said. There's no detail to the how and the when, and all that kind of stuff. Just the generic who's responsible kind of description. And that's all it is. It's a simple description without any detail. And that's in stark contrast to the vivid portrayal that you just mentioned, that is significant for a variety of reasons. Actually, I don't know if there's any symbolism attached to the snake, per se. But certainly there is this vividness that is associated with how this took place, to try and … I think the sense of credibility. Yeah, we know exactly when and how this happened.
Mikel Del Rosario: Joe, do you know anything about the snake theme? Because I'm about to mention Caesar August and the snake theme in his origin story, too.
Joe Fantin: Yeah, no I … again, I suspect it's the … They're both different deities, though, that are associated with the snake in this case. So, I'm not sure there might be something overly significant. I would like to mention, though, that when Phillip did see his wife … Alexander's father, Phillip … did see his wife with the snake, it says in Plutarch there that it cooled his passion for his wife.
Darrell Bock: I think it would have that effect on me, too. [Laughter]
Joe Fantin: I think that would be. But yeah, we see that snake theme in a couple of places. And it is just a mysterious type of thing. There might be something out there on that, but the snakes interesting. Like you say, it appears again with Augustus, but that's gonna be the god Apollo… the god Zeus.
Mikel Del Rosario: Let's talk about Caesar Augustus briefly. We can read about him in Suetonius. And Suetonius wrote the 12 Caesars in the early second century. And there he says that Augustus' mom was at this midnight worship service for Apollo, like you said. And then this snake, according to Suetonius, it says the snake went up inside her. And then she purified herself, just like she would have done after sex. And she was actually married at the time, too. But then she actually … she had a daughter before August was born. So right off the bat, no virgin birth there. But in the minds of ancient people, are there any important similarities between either of these stories and Jesus' virgin birth story?
Joe Fantin: There probably were in the minds of ancient people. Everybody wanted to be associated with Alexander one way or another. Everybody, whether it be Julius Caesar earlier, Augustus, he was just a great individual in the history books. Several of them wanted to do something that way. I'm sure there's something there, but as far as beyond that, a lot of these stories would have had … But Darrell mentioned the idea of virgin birth. Neither of these stories emphasize virginity at all, in these cases. So, that's probably another major contrast between these and your Gospel stories, which emphasize that notion.
Darrell Bock: And as Mikel noted, in the one case, we know we are definitely not dealing with a virgin birth. So yeah. The emphasis on the condition of Mary during the birth is tied, of course, to the Isaiah passage, and the idea that there's a promise of this unusual … I'll say it this way … it's, in the story as it's developed in the infancy material, there is this sense of there's something unusual and supernatural about this birth. And I think to that extent, it may share the backdrop of these other stories.
But, of course, the point here is is that this isn't just a way of portraying the Son of God, it's a way of saying this is the Son of God. And then in that full sense that we talked about earlier, this is not someone making it in in the pantheon with the back seat on the back row. This is someone who goes directly to the right hand of God. He does not pass go. He does not collect $200. He just goes straight to Park Place. And so that's a significant difference, in terms of the way the New Testament ends up portraying the role of what this represents ultimately.
Joe Fantin: I think also it's worth adding, the types of literature we're looking at. Plutarch is writing, probably close to 500 years or so after Alexander. Certainly he had other sources, and things like that. But Arian, for example, who wrote around the same time, maybe a little earlier, he doesn't have much of a remarkable birth for Alexander. He has has a decent one, but nothing like Plutarch. And Plutarch was a biography. Suetonius is notoriously … is known for having more gossipy type of things. He's more likely to put rumor and gossip in it. And that's important because it's what people probably believed. But as far as historicity was concerned, we're not entirely confident in things that you might find only in Suetonius, for example, that we won't find in other writings of the day. So you've got the date in both those cases. They're long after. There's nobody in the lifetime of Alexander or Augustus reading those particular texts that could validate what was actually said. And in the case of Suetonius, as I said, his historicity is gonna be a bit questioned anyway.
Darrell Bock: I think you're telling me, Joe, that Suetonius would write stuff that would belong in the 6:30 to 7:00 in the evening hour on television, the TMZ show.
Joe Fantin: I think of the National Enquirer, or The Sun paper in Britain. And again, there's nothing wrong with that material, and we just need to know how to actually incorporate it and use it. And, of course, they might have had sources we no longer have access to. But yes, they're much more likely to be… that period, yes.
Mikel Del Rosario: But the very idea that the virgin birth of Jesus was just a direct copy from some pagan story is dead in the water when you start taking a look at the actual texts that are supposedly copied off of. Nothing at all like what we see in the Bible. Like Darrell said, a very, very simple description in the Bible. The Holy Spirit will come on you and you will be with child. And then Mary says, let it be unto me just like you said. And we see this great, really of the model disciple I would say that we can all learn from, and how whatever comes we just say, may God's will be done.
And, Darrell, when we think about the earliest preaching of the apostles, we don't see a huge emphasis on the virgin birth, do we?
Darrell Bock: No, we don't. It's actually amazing how little it gets talked about in the New Testament, when you view it as a whole. And I think it may be because in many ways, if I can say it this way, the end of the story of Jesus' ministry is what the New Testament focuses on. It's interested in the crucifixion and the resurrection. And the resurrection is seen as a restoration of where Jesus originally came from. And so the idea, in John's gospel, about Jesus repeated … He repeatedly is described in John's gospel as the sent one. He's sent from heaven. Or you can think of the reverse parabola that you get in Philippians 2, where the picture is Jesus did not view deity as a thing to be held onto, grasped onto. But He emptied Himself to take on humanity. So this picture is of Jesus going back to where he has been. And the virgin birth is simply a transition point in that larger story that is being portrayed.
We tend to think of the virgin birth as the beginning. But it actually isn't, from the biblical point of view. It's a transition point, as opposed to being a beginning. So you don't see that much emphasis in the New Testament on it, not because it's not significant, but simply because it's actually a door through which the story moves, as opposed to being this central defining feature of what's going on. The more defining feature is the preexistence of Jesus in one sense or another, and also the return to what he becomes as a result of having done the work that He was sent to do.
Mikel Del Rosario: It also seems to speak to the credibility of the virgin birth story to me because, as I like to say, why wouldn't they talk it up if they made it up? If the whole point was to say, "Let's worship this guy, because He was born of a virgin," why didn't they go around saying that all the time? Sometimes people will say, "Well how come, if Jesus was born of a virgin, why doesn't Paul talk about it all the time? Or why don't the apostles talk about it all the time?" Well, that wasn't the major thrust of their preaching. Who was the only eye witness to the virgin birth? Mary?
Darrell Bock: Well it's clear Joseph struggled with it. You read Matthew and he goes … The scene that isn't in the infancy material that I would love to have seen how it would have played out was when Joseph and Mary told their parents what was going on. That would be an interesting … that would have been an interesting conversation to overhear. But it's clear that Joseph was bothered by the fact that his bride to be was pregnant. And he knew enough biology to know, "I wasn't responsible for this, so how'd this happen?" And so he goes to a default category, which would be I think the default category everyone would go to if they were in that situation. And it's only a revelatory moment that tells him, "No, no. This is a truly unusual birth." It's almost as heaven says, "I understand why you didn't have the category for this."
Mikel Del Rosario: Well, let's finish up the discussion on the nativity scene with Mary. And Joe, tell us if this is a standard situation of the first century. How old do you think Mary would have been?
Joe Fantin: Oh, she could have been probably 14 to 16. She would have been young.
Mikel Del Rosario: Wow. That's so …
Joe Fantin: That is just about the age when she just starts to be able to give birth.
Mikel Del Rosario: So that would play a role in who you would cast for your church play, as well, huh? Let's think about the meaning of all of this now, because we can get into conversations about the possibility of miracles and the historicity of the gospel accounts around Christmastime. But it's important that we don't get so distracted by historical or philosophical questions in our 21st century context that we just miss out on what the gospel authors are saying through the infancy narratives. So let's think about the Gospel of Luke, just as we warp up here. Luke tells us about a number of unusual things, as Darrell said, unusual things that happened. In the first chapter we have Elizabeth, who's an old woman, gets pregnant, even though she never had kids before. And then we have Mary, a young teen, gets pregnant, even though she never had sex before. What do these kinds of things signal to the people who heard the story as it’s in Luke, Darrell?
Darrell Bock: Well, I think the key thing that I like to highlight when I talk about Luke's infancy material is the theme that often gets missed as we tell the story, particularly if we get … and I don't mean this negatively … but get distracted by the kinds of apologetics that often has to come in some ways, because of people's doubts about the virgin birth. The point that both, actually the infancy material in both Matthew and Luke make but in different ways is: God keeps His word. He made certain commitments and certain promises, and He will do what He says. He will do what He says if it takes unusual means to get there. And it's in His timing, and it's in His program. So there's a line in the Lukan infancy material of, in effect, that his may seem to be impossible, but nothing's impossible with the Lord. And so … And then everything is steeped in promise.
Now in Luke, it is portrayed in the language of the participants. In Matthew it is portrayed through the language of the narrator pointing out different passages along the way, that different actions represent fulfillment of in one way or another. So behind the backdrop of everything that's going with regard to Jesus and the program, is the fact God does have a plan and a program that He is executing. And He's promised certain things, He's made certain commitments. He said He would deliver His people. He has said where that would take place, and under what kinds of circumstances would this child be born, those kinds of things. So there's a program that's being mapped out in God's way and in God's timing. And we're called to believe that, so much so that when Mary does believe, she's presented as a model believer, someone who responds with trust, even though God is putting her in a very difficult situation personally, to bear this child with the reputation that it would have generated by having a child so early in the midst of betrothal. And so all of that is going on in the midst of what is happening.
Mikel Del Rosario: Well, our time has rapidly gone away from us, but I want to thank you both so much for being on the show. Looking at the historical background of the Christmas story, it just helps us to see, as we noted, the humility of Jesus' birth, the earmarks of historicity that are there, not the kind of thing you would make up. And so let's continue to ponder, as Darrell was saying, the message of the infancy material that God can get His will accomplished, and He will get His will accomplished, no matter what, no matter how odd or unusual the circumstances end up being. May we all take some time to ponder the good news of great joy for all people, and the birth of Christ the Lord.
Thank, Darrell, for being on the show.
Darrell Bock: My pleasure as always.
Mikel Del Rosario: Thank you, Joe, so much for being on the show, too.
Joe Fantin: My pleasure as well. Thank you.
Mikel Del Rosario: And we thank you for joining us on the table today. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review on Apple or Google podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you tune into the show. I'm Mikel Del Rosario, and we hope to see you again next time on the table, where we discuss issues of God and culture.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to the Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary.
And our topic today is we'll take your pick either Ephesus or Artemis or both and the relationship that they have to one another. We're going to talk about the background to one of the epistles in the New Testament, the book of Ephesus, and then what that means for the way in which passages in the New Testament get read.
And my guests today are Gary Hoag, who is a visiting professor at a variety of schools, and also does work with relation to finances and stewardship with global trust partners where he's CEO. And Sandra Glahn, who is a fellow colleague here at Dallas, who is professor of what? Media.
Sandra Glahn:
Media Arts and Worship.
Darrell Bock:
Media Arts and Worship. I never get it in the right order. I want to start with worship, and then go to media and arts.
Sandra Glahn:
That's not a bad priority.
Darrell Bock:
But that's okay, anyway. And we're discussing really the background to a book that Sandra has written called Nobody's Mother. That title is intriguing because I have a mom and you have a mom, and Gary has a mom. So, that's interesting. Artemis of the Ephesians.
So, I'm going to dive in. So, the first question to ask always in a topic like this is because this involves stuff like papyri and things like that which people handle on an everyday basis. And so, how did nice people like you get into a gig like this? Gary, I'm going to start with you. How did you become interested in Ephesus and the things surrounding Ephesus? Because Ephesus is a long way away.
Gary Hoag:
I appreciate the invitation to be on today. And to answer that question, I wanted to pursue my PhD on wealth in ancient Ephesus in the first layer to Timothy because I simply wanted to know what did Paul want Tim to understand about handling riches in God's house? And so, that's how I got connected to wanting to research the social and cultural world of Ephesus.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. And so, you dove in and got started. And I'm assuming it took you to some of these resources that we're going to be talking about. Is that what happened?
Gary Hoag:
It did. Here's how it went. In my first year, I was studying under Phil Towner. And if you can imagine, he released the NICNT commentary in 2006. And six weeks after he released it, he agreed to be my advisor. And so, in the first year he said, "I want you to read all the secondary literature on the passages where riches were in view." I came back at the end of that year and said, "Wow." I said, "The debate swirls around rare language."
So, he says to me, "Go to Yale in year two." He says, "Go to Yale, sit down with Abraham Malherbe and ask him how he unlocked the medical imagery of Paul." And so, how I got deep into Ephesus and the Ephesian inscriptions and Artemis was I spent two years looking at tons of primary material. And significant among that was Ephesian inscriptions.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So, Phil Towner, who by the way, I did my doctoral studies at Aberdeen, and Phil I think overlapped my last year there. So, that name goes way, way back for me. So, Sandra, how did you get involved with Ephesus and Artemis?
Sandra Glahn:
In my PhD program, which was aesthetic studies, I had three prongs, history, art and philosophy. And my history element, I could choose anywhere in the world for a 200-year period. So, I chose 100 BC to 100 AD in Ephesus.
Darrell Bock:
And that pulled you into all the same materials.
Sandra Glahn:
That pulled me into all the same materials, lots of overlap, yup.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. And I take it you guys ended up being in contact with each other, is that right? Or, I mean, we were chatting about that earlier. But…
Sandra Glahn:
Not until our dissertations were done.
Darrell Bock:
Really?
Sandra Glahn:
Actually, yeah. I'll let Gary tell it.
Gary Hoag:
Yeah, I think what it was, was, it was one of those cases where our research was happening in parallel tracks, like simultaneously. So, we might've been looking at similar material. Whereas, what I was looking at was epigraphic. So, I looked at the inscriptions of Ephesus, and by the way, because the year I was researching, I'm holding up the copy. I have one of the only sets of the Inscription von Ephesus. Blumberg offers or asks to borrow one sometimes.
But I basically immersed myself in the inscriptions because Malherbe said, "Gary…" He said, "Don't search ancient material. Everybody searches it, but they make one fatal error. They think they're searching everything available." And so, I started with epigraphic, then I went to numismatic. And then, I went to literary and I found lots of stuff that wasn't necessarily in the Greek English lexicons. And so, for me, it was like spending two or three years reconstructing the world of Ephesus based on all this really cool evidence. And so, I found it absolutely fascinating.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. We'll come back to these categories in a second. So…
Sandra Glahn:
And one day he walks into my office and said, "We need to meet." We are apparently doing parallel research. And I had no idea.
Gary Hoag:
She published an article, right?
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah. Bibliotheca Sacra, run a two-article series.
Darrell Bock:
And so, what years are we talking about here?
Sandra Glahn:
We were trying to decide, I think 2014, '15-ish maybe because we were both… I don't know…
Gary Hoag:
Right around in, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So, let's go through the categories, inscriptions, epigraphy, numismatics. Okay, these are not words people use in their everyday speech, so let's help them with this. Inscriptions, I'll let you… We'll alternate.
Gary Hoag:
So, let's start with epigraphic.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Gary Hoag:
Epigraphic evidence, which is inscription evidence. Ephesus gives us second or third to maybe Rome and Athens. Ephesus gives us thousands of inscriptions.
Sandra Glahn:
Massive amounts, yeah.
Gary Hoag:
And when I was going through them, I noticed that basically they helped me understand the social and cultural rules, the expectations of people, the different patterns of behavior. It's like they provided snapshots of what life was like, and they even included names of different characters. For example, Towner said to me when he agreed to be my advisor, he said, "I want you to do one thing. I want you to unmask the opponents of Paul."
And by the time I'm working through it, I said, "Oh, well, I can find all these characters that Paul says to watch out for. And 1 and 2 Timothy, I can show you where they appear in all the different inscriptions." And he says to me, "Wait, how did you do that?" And I said, "Only because I spent years studying these different lists and these different inscriptions that all of a sudden these characters came to life for me." And the reality is, in the inscription evidence, nobody's reading it, Darrell. Nobody's…
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, that's right. They sit there.
Gary Hoag:
Because they're not digitized, so no one's actually looking at them.
Darrell Bock:
Right, fair enough.
Sandra Glahn:
Right.
Darrell Bock:
So, what's in these inscriptions? Or what kind of variety do you see in inscriptions when you read them? In other words, what are you reading?
Gary Hoag:
Okay, I'll rattle off a few things, and then have Sandra comment.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Gary Hoag:
One, you see benefaction inscriptions, so all praise be to Celsus, for out of his great goodness gave us this library for everybody to enjoy.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so benefactor is someone who, sorry, I'm going to be translating all the way through this.
Sandra Glahn:
So, you don't have income taxes…
Darrell Bock:
Right, right.
Sandra Glahn:
… and you get a rich person to underwrite the gymnasium or the coliseum or the whatever…
Gary Hoag:
There you go.
Sandra Glahn:
But then, they get their name.
Darrell Bock:
It's like a patron, right?
Sandra Glahn:
It is a patron with big lettering.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, and that's a big deal in ancient society. The role of the benefactor is a huge deal.
Sandra Glahn:
Right, right, right.
Darrell Bock:
So, I'm sorry, I'll probably be doing this all the way through.
Sandra Glahn:
No, it's okay.
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead.
Gary Hoag:
Sure, sure. We don't even realize it because we were in that world.
Darrell Bock:
I understand, yeah.
Gary Hoag:
Second example would be honorific inscriptions. In other words, not necessarily for benefactors, but to honor certain people for their roles in society. Another one would be like tombstones where we would learn about their faith, or…
Sandra Glahn:
Theodora was a good wife.
Gary Hoag:
… about the God they trusted in on the tombstones. Another would be like where they would post laws or rules. But my favorite of all is the largest inscription in Ephesus number 27, The Caius Vibius Salutaris inscription, which basically summarizes how the celebration to the annual birth, the annual celebration to the birth of the goddess, Artemis, should be handled with its lotteries, distributions and procession. It's the biggest inscription. And if you just read that one, it can unlock a number of things when you think about Ephesus, 1 Timothy and Ephesians.
Darrell Bock:
So, let's talk about ranges. So, some of these obviously are very short. A tombstone is not going to have a lot to it. But the number 27, which you have now made sacred, how long is that text?
Gary Hoag:
It's in Guy Rogers book, The Sacred Identity of Ephesos, he translates that in his appendix, which is about, say, 30 pages long.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So, it's very significant piece of work is the point.
Gary Hoag:
Right.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. So, the honorifics are interesting. You're in an honor shame culture where honoring people is a big deal. So, when you say we're tapping into the cultural ethos of a community with these resources, and they help open up. They open up elements of the everyday life and the everyday language of people, that kind of thing. The expressions and colloquialisms that come with it, as well as describing a little bit of the society.
So, it really is a glimpse in, and it's different than digging up a site where you're just got a room or something or a house that you're looking at, something like that. And it's not a formal text, like a letter, at least in one sense, although probably can overlap. So…
Sandra Glahn:
No scribe is editing it or giving a comment.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Right.
Sandra Glahn:
You're not worried that something got removed or added because it's in stone or in a writing.
Darrell Bock:
What it is… It's what it is.
Sandra Glahn:
What it is.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Sandra Glahn:
Another source is just lists. If you go to the fish market and you have all the experts in fishery.
Darrell Bock:
I get your grocery list, right?
Sandra Glahn:
And you get groceries, you get curses.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Sandra Glahn:
You get sometimes prayers. You'll get lots of everyday sorts of items. I think one of the benefits of the list is, we're able to look at who's got a name that looks like it came from Hittite background.
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Sandra Glahn:
Or you're getting a sense of immigration. You're getting a sense of class sometimes. And so, and you'll get lots of forms of the name Artemis. So, parents are naming their sons and daughters after her. We see one of those actually in Titus where it's Artemas gift of Artemis is somebody Paul is planning to send. So, you get a sense of how much somebody is worshiped even by how many kids are named after them.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So, okay, so that's the inscriptions and epigraphic evidence. Numismatics, what's numismatics?
Gary Hoag:
So, I would describe it as numismatic evidence. And so, one of my favorites that is pictured in my published work, Wealth in Ancient Ephesus, is the coins show Artemis holding the Artemisium. And so, I think of that childhood song, "He's got the whole world in his hands." So, it looks like she's got the whole Artemisium in her hands. And so, her name means strong limb.
And so, it's like, she is watching out for the wealth of the ancient world because other ancient sources described the Artemisium as the Central Bank of Asia where the kings of their store, their wealth. And so, this was this place where Artemis is viewed as watching over it. So, on the coins she's depicted, they're holding it.
Darrell Bock:
So, numistics are about the study of the coins and the inscriptions that are on them, the images that are on them, and that kind, the slogans that are on them. So, again, short texts on the one hand. But certainly, things, phrases that might've very well widely circulated because they were on the currency that people were using.
Gary Hoag:
And Darrell, it's like if we pull a coin out of our pocket, and I think Sandra would agree, our coins in America say, "In God we trust." So, it gives you a sense of the history. And so, when you pull out this coin, it's basically their coin said, "In Artemis we trust." And when you look at the inscriptions, the inscriptions talk about celebrating the Eusebeia, the piety of the wealthy people toward Artemis. And so, they show us that she was the center of all life, whether it's in the inscriptions or on the coins.
Darrell Bock:
So, you sometimes hear about papyri, where do they fit in this conversation? Is that a separate category? Or is that's kind of like the epigraphic evidence, but a slightly different form?
Gary Hoag:
So, when Malherbe… And at least in my research, I'll let Sandra comment in on hers. When Malherbe and Towner directed me toward… They said, "Go toward literary evidence and look at anything that's primary material." So, I would search with TLG, and you can explain what TLG is in a minute. But I searched with TLG and looked for anything with an Ephesian provenance or a connection to Ephesus.
Darrell Bock:
Got it.
Gary Hoag:
And so, that's when I discovered a story. And I can tell a little bit about Ephesiaca. But basically, for me, it was looking for any literary evidence that had any ancient connection to Ephesus.
Sandra Glahn:
And our best document is Acts 19.
Darrell Bock:
Yes.
Sandra Glahn:
So, you wonder, you read over in 1 Timothy 1, where Paul tells Timothy in verse 3, "I left you in Ephesus to teach certain people not to teach false doctrine." So, the first question is, what are some of the doctrines floating around? And we have a primary piece of evidence that says, well, magic and Artemis. And actually, the two are connected.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So, this sets the backdrop. So, this is where all this information is coming from and what you all were working with as you help us understand the environment of Ephesus. Obviously, we've said the word Artemis multiple times. So, she obviously… Let me say it this way, use a little flare here. She cast the shadow on Ephesus. Is that fair?
Sandra Glahn:
That is understatement.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. All right.
Gary Hoag:
Yeah. I mean, she was… Again, when I spent time in the world of the inscriptions and the literary, she was a part of everyone's everyday life.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Sandra Glahn:
It's not just religion. There's not that category.
Gary Hoag:
Right. Because religion and culture and economics and everything was connected.
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
So, and in fact, Acts 19 makes this clear that when there began to be a cultural reaction to the presence of the Christians…
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And this was impacting the commerce of the silversmiths. The silversmiths union reacted and responded because they were being shut down from their means of living.
Sandra Glahn:
Right. And interestingly, we noticed there that it's male silver workers, which solves another question. Is this just a girl cult? Absolutely, not. This was in the same way that you don't just have women who are venerating Mary.
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Sandra Glahn:
You don't have just women that are following Artemis. It's completely everybody.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So, let's talk about the casting of this shadow. First of all, let's talk… Ephesus, the Temple of Artemis was one of the wonders of the ancient world.
Sandra Glahn:
We'd probably argue the star wonder, right?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, yeah.
Gary Hoag:
In Pausanias, just guide in Greece, he had the heptà theámata, or the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And it was actually number two of the seven. So, if you're listening, it was the ancient TripAdvisor. So, the ancient TripAdvisor said, "You have to see these seven locations." And the Artemisium was across between the Smithsonian and the Creation Museum because they learned they would go there to learn the origin of all life, and to see the artifacts of then the history of life.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, and the temple… This is no small building that we're talking about, right?
Gary Hoag:
No, huge.
Darrell Bock:
This is a huge, huge place. Probably, when I say temple, probably the first building that might come to the mind of an average person would be the Parthenon and it happens…
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah, it's about four times that size.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, four times the Parthenon. I mean, my understanding is, think about it this way, think about an American football field from one end to the other. But probably, double or triple size in width, okay. So, length going one way and width going the other, and it's massive. And you look like you're ready to give us some statistics, so I won't get in your way.
Gary Hoag:
No, no. I'm agreeing that I was trying to, for modern listeners, I was trying to picture because it's bigger than… And then, these football stadiums or even Olympic stadiums because of the width of it.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly. That's the surprise. The length is almost end of an end zone to the other end of the end zone. But the width is, I think two and a half to three times the width of American… So, think about all that being a building, okay, not the enclosure around a football field that we get in a stadium, but the actual building itself with everything inside.
So, this is a massive spot. I sometimes preach on Ephesus, and I'll do a rendering of the temple, and I'll show it and talk about its size and people will be impressed. And then, I'll show a picture of what remains today.
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah, which is cobbled together from a bunch of stones that fell. It's one pillar.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly. One pillar all by itself.
Sandra Glahn:
With a stork on top, I might add.
Darrell Bock:
That's right.
Sandra Glahn:
Ironic.
Darrell Bock:
Someone is living on the top. Artemis, the sustenance of Artemis still lives in a very reduced form.
Sandra Glahn:
Very reduced.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. So…
Sandra Glahn:
And the temple isn't just for worship. People are going to… Let's say, you're retiring from farm work, you're going to take your best implements and offer them to her. So, it can become a museum. It's the only place that's safe to leave money because it's guarded. They don't have banks. And so, you're going to get rich people coming from around the empire and depositing their funds there. So, it's sort of the bank, the temple, the everything, museum.
Darrell Bock:
It's a kind of form of a public square, functioning public square, functioning public mall almost for…
Gary Hoag:
The big thing for me about the precincts of the Artemisium was that in the story I discovered, which it's interesting, when I discovered it in 2008, it wasn't released in the famous Loeb Classical Library yet. And so, I go to my advisor, Towner, and I show him in the opening scene that women are wearing this prohibited hairstyle in 1 Timothy 2, that up until that point, scholars had said, "Well, we're not really sure what it refers to." And I said, "Look, all the girls are wearing it to show their piety to Goddess Artemis in the opening scene."
But then, as the story unfolds, this story called Ephesiaca, I discovered that every day the young gals would go and compete and not learn in silence with submission, but compete with competition and recitation to recite the Artemis myth, so that they could have one of four priestessly roles, so they could basically have these roles to serve the tens of thousands of tourists that came through and visited the Artemisium. And so, it was this place where you would've heard a lot of incantation going on in at least parts of the precincts every single day.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So, we've given a feel for the scope of this, that this drove… This not only drove the worship in the area, but it actually was a commercial center. It was a lot of attraction. Everyone interacted with the reality of what this meant for Ephesus. And Ephesus is no minor city in the ancient world. I mean, it's a crossroad city in many ways.
Sandra Glahn:
It's probably worth mentioning too, that it's considered the natal city for Artemis, that she is born there, that she has a twin. They assign him Delos even though they're twins. But that's her natal city. And I think in the same way that people in Bethlehem connect Jesus with that city and annual festivals, and that's where they get their identity and their income.
Darrell Bock:
Yup.
Sandra Glahn:
I'm not saying Artemis is anywhere close to Jesus. I'm just saying in terms of thinking about the connection of the city to a natal event, that's how they would've thought of Ephesus.
Gary Hoag:
So…
Darrell Bock:
Sure. Go ahead.
Gary Hoag:
And what I would add to that is that when we read about things like endless genealogies and people connecting their genealogies linked to the nascent heresy or the local heresy, the people would process in this annual celebration of the birth of the goddess based on who could trace their Ionian roots back to the origin of the city.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow.
Gary Hoag:
And so, if you could trace your roots back to the origin of the city, you got to be in the front of the line.
Darrell Bock:
So, it's like Daughters of the American Revolution, right?
Sandra Glahn:
Very…
Gary Hoag:
That's it. That's it. That's it. If you could trace your roots, you got to carry the statues and you'd be in the front of the line.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, there you go.
Sandra Glahn:
In an honor culture.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, in an honor culture, exactly. So, I think we've painted the feel for how important and how almost omnipresent Artemis was in the city of Ephesus. So, now let's talk about what I think is the fun part of this, which is what did people say about Artemis in the past? And what did this research surface about Artemis as a result? So, let's talk first about the way Artemis has been portrayed and traditionally been portrayed that… And we'll just start there. So, I mean, she obviously is prominent, but who or what was Artemis in the view of a more traditional reading of who Artemis is?
Sandra Glahn:
So, one of the falsehoods I was trying to correct was that you'll read a lot of commentaries, a lot of folks saying she's a fertility goddess. And that comes from misunderstanding the statuary surrounding the Ephesian version.
Darrell Bock:
Which if you go to Ephesus today, you can even see.
Sandra Glahn:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah, and the one that dates back to the approximate time of the earliest Christians, you'll see a number of them that would've been in the temple. And so, the wrong thinking goes, those look like breasts. Breasts are connected with nurturing and fertility. Therefore, Artemis must be a fertility goddess.
Our best understanding now is those are closer to maybe Hittite magic, sacks that they're something you put on rather than a body part. And Artemis from antiquity and down to the time of the New Testament has consistently been a virgin goddess. She doesn't hate men. She is worshiped by men, but she's not interested in sex, love, marriage. She did love once, but he died. And so, that's the end of that.
But she's been very, very connected, especially in Ephesus with midwifery. The thought is that she provided a painless birth for her mother. Her arrows are thought to be euthanizing, but also pain-free birth.
Darrell Bock:
And birth in an ancient world is a big deal.
Sandra Glahn:
The number one cause of death for women.
Darrell Bock:
Right, right.
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah. So, fear all that.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Gary Hoag:
I think the only thing I would add to that, I would say amen to what Sandra just said. And I would add that in antiquity because in this whole Greek mindset, she helped her mother, Leto, deliver her twin brother Apollo. She became known as the Goddess of Childbearing. And so, one of the social and cultural pressures on all the gals was, you remain loyal to the goddess, otherwise you're going to die during childbearing.
So, if somebody died during childbearing, they'd be like, "Wow, she must not have been loyal to the goddess." So, don't you think that would make sure you would dot your i's and cross your T's and do whatever the social and religious pressure said you did. So, just like in the modern world, we have these religions that pressure people to say, "If you don't do all these things…" That's why, what I find is so beautiful is that the freedom that we see is you're going to be saved through childbearing if you continue in faith and modesty." That's part of what I connect in my doctoral research is that the pressure on these girls was, "Oh, I've got to remain loyal to the goddess." And the reality is, you can follow Jesus and not worry about what's going to happen during childbirth.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So, you've brought in one of the applications that comes out of this. So, I was going to save that for later, but we can do it now. And so, the point is, is that… I have to see if I'm coming a coin or phrase here. It's an anti-Artemarian text.
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah, it's a pro-Jesus text. How about that?
Darrell Bock:
It's a pro-Jesus text.
Sandra Glahn:
So, I think Paul is arguing that Jesus is better.
Darrell Bock:
That's right.
Sandra Glahn:
Anything that you look through from her, she's fake. She's God made with hands. That's not a real God. Jesus is better. And if you look at Acts 19, what's happening in the face of magic work is anything Paul touches, you take it to somebody and they're healed. And I think probably something similar is happening in his instruction to Timothy of their number one fear for a convert is, okay, this is where the rubber meets the road.
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Sandra Glahn:
And he's saying, Jesus is better. Jesus is stronger.
Darrell Bock:
Jesus will protect you.
Sandra Glahn:
Jesus will protect you.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Gary Hoag:
Yeah, and where I would… You called it… Use your word again.
Darrell Bock:
Anti-Artemarian.
Gary Hoag:
Yeah. By the way, Towner told me, "You can invent only one new word in your PhD." So, you have…
Sandra Glahn:
That's a good role.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, I'm done after 20 minutes. So, I just want you to know.
Sandra Glahn:
There's your bucket on for the next…
Gary Hoag:
Here's what I would say to that. I would say, until I really dug into the ancient world and saw that in the ancient mindset that the Roma and Diana, and the Egyptian Isis and the Ephesian Artemis were this mystical, same lady, I didn't realize that in the legends, the reason it's an anti… I can't even say it because I haven't…
Darrell Bock:
Artemarian.
Gary Hoag:
Okay, the reason it's that kind of a text is because in the legend of this goddess, she promoted that sin came into the world through man, and she promoted that the origin of all life was women. And so, that's why in 1 Timothy, it flips it and says, "These things aren't true." And so, it's literally deconstructing or demythologizing that which was part of everyday thinking in Ephesus saying, "You can't promote this any longer," because that's what everybody thought was common place.
Sandra Glahn:
So, he's correcting a wrong creation story, which…
Gary Hoag:
Exactly, exactly. A wrong creation story and a wrong origin of sin story.
Sandra Glahn:
Origin of story, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So, let me go to another thing that you alluded to earlier, which is that this statue with which will be the
Sandra Glahn:
Bulbous appendages.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I don't know what to quite happens.
Gary Hoag:
Good recovery, Sandra.
Darrell Bock:
This clothing that suggests magic, am I reading that right?
Sandra Glahn:
Magic sacks.
Darrell Bock:
Magic sacks.
Sandra Glahn:
Hittite magic sacks.
Darrell Bock:
So, what's going on there?
Sandra Glahn:
There are a lot of questions about it. I would prefer to say what we've eliminated.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Sandra Glahn:
We've eliminated breasts. We've eliminated bull testicles, which is later a theory that tries to masculinize her sexual power. But it's pretty much undermines that. Some have thought that it was the opposite of a honeycomb because a bee is the symbol of the city of Ephesus.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting.
Sandra Glahn:
And so, people have tried to see. And you could see bee imagery. Her legs look like a bee. But I think we have been slow to look to the Hittites and more look to European sources, and the Anatolian influences that are coming in from the Hittite influences. It seems that those are probably magic pouches and relating, connecting Artemis to magic. But I'm not going to die on that hill. I'm more concerned to say what she's not. She's not a fertility goddess.
Darrell Bock:
But wouldn't the point be… Let me ask it this way, wouldn't the point be that Artemis is associated with certain kinds of powers?
Sandra Glahn:
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
Protection, et cetera.
Sandra Glahn:
And the world.
Darrell Bock:
And that's what's being celebrated.
Sandra Glahn:
Right. Yes, yes.
Darrell Bock:
And again, the passage that we're talking about, about childbirth is a counter to that.
Sandra Glahn:
Correct.
Darrell Bock:
And then, of course, it also explains one of the things that I like to point out about Ephesus, which is that because there were so many people who were having a change of heart and they were burning their magic books and setting them aside, why this is useless. We don't need to be a part of this anymore. And I like to make the observation that this change did not happen because the Ephesian city council met and passed a law…
Sandra Glahn:
It did not.
Darrell Bock:
… saying, "We're ruling out magic books."
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. It happened because of a change that Christ brought into the community and into the culture that caused them walking away from a certain activity that they said, "We aren't engaged in this anymore."
Sandra Glahn:
It didn't come from smashing statues of Artemis…
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Sandra Glahn:
… and Paul calling people to… I mean, it was false. He didn't believe in it.
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Sandra Glahn:
But he's also super savvy about how he talks about it.
Darrell Bock:
Just to show how savvy we're talking about, now I'm going to jump to Mars Hill and to Athens because I actually think there's a huge lesson in this part of the passage…
Sandra Glahn:
Agree.
Darrell Bock:
… where Paul opens up on Mars Hill and he says, "I see that you're very religious in every respect." And this is coming from a person who in the end of Romans has some less than flattering things to say about idolatry. That's an understatement again.
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah, that is.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. All right. And someone who the passage in Acts itself begins by saying, he walked around and saw the idols and his spirit was provoked, okay. So, his blood pressure changed. That's my paraphrase of that. So, we know he's upset at what he's seeing, yet he walks into the audience who are connected to this style of life and he goes, "You know what? I see that you're pretty spiritual. Let's talk spiritual things."
Sandra Glahn:
Let me quote one of your poets.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Quotes poets down the road.
Gary Hoag:
And because of my time in the semantic world of the inscriptions, I would say the reason he said that is one of the most common words you see celebrated in the honorific inscriptions is Eusebeia, which is piety.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Gary Hoag:
So, he's going to walk in and say, "Wow, I see there's a lot of Eusebeia. There's a lot of piety. There's a lot of religiousness here." And so, he then uses that, at least Eusebeia…
Darrell Bock:
That's the door he goes through.
Sandra Glahn:
He goes the door, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Gary Hoag:
That's the door.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Gary Hoag:
He uses that as the doorway, yes, exactly.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And so, the point I'd say, I see that you're very spiritual interested in spiritual things. Man, that's a topic I can talk about.
Sandra Glahn:
It is.
Darrell Bock:
So, let's do it. And then, the next step, which is really interesting is, he takes where they are and says, "Do you really think this works in effect?" Because he says, "Do you think you can contain the creator God? The God has created everything all around this in a building?
Sandra Glahn:
Just ask him.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, do you think you can represent him in something made with your own hands with classic Jewish argument about idolatry and the idols? But still, the point is, he's coming at them from where they are coming from, and that's his launch into the conversation. He's not just dumping his evangelistic agenda on them.
Sandra Glahn:
Correct.
Darrell Bock:
He's actually connecting to them before he goes there.
Sandra Glahn:
I see something similar with what he does in the introduction, the 1 Timothy where one of the myths about Artemis in Homer is that she asked to have many names, and she is called God and Lord and the female version of King. And usually, Paul just starts out with grace and peace to you. But he's like, he greets Timothy talking about the Savior, the Lord, the God…
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Sandra Glahn:
It just pulls out all the…
Darrell Bock:
Goes through his list.
Sandra Glahn:
And manifest is another one. And you see that in 1 Timothy. And so, it's like he inscribes her so-called majesty and redirects it to where it belongs. But never insulting her in the process.
Darrell Bock:
No. Always in the way it's attached to Christ.
Sandra Glahn:
Just exalting Christ. Right.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly, yeah. And you see a similar thing with the title Lord in the New Testament as a response to Caesar. And Caesar's claims of Lordship. So, this is a variety of environments, the same kind of move that you're seeing. So, what else should we be aware of in Ephesians as a result of some of the background?
Sandra Glahn:
I think we should hear from Gary about his work in the novel that was sent in the first century because it actually really helps us, I think, understand some of that.
Gary Hoag:
Sure. So, let me go back to when I was digging into literary evidence. So, I go into this story and it's called Ephesiaca or published as Anthia and Habrocomes. Just think it's a story about a wealthy…
Darrell Bock:
I saw it at the top of my New York Times bestseller list.
Sandra Glahn:
No, I think Shakespeare might have borrowed from it though. So…
Gary Hoag:
So, here, let me, in plain terms, I'll call it's about a 50-page story.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Gary Hoag:
It has five sections to it.
Sandra Glahn:
Fiction.
Gary Hoag:
It's about a wealthy Ephesian couple. And in this story, it starts out, it's basically, we would call it Christmas Eve. It's like the Eve, the celebration of the birth of the goddess. Everybody's getting ready for the festivities. So, it's just take that Salutaris inscription, that's IvE 27, which is this really long inscription, which describes the annual celebration. So, if that inscription describes the celebration in a description, this is watching a movie of it happening.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow.
Gary Hoag:
So, they're all getting ready for the festivities. And when I discover in the opening scene, the women are all wearing this apparel that they're prohibited to wear in 1 Timothy 2…
Sandra Glahn:
Sumptuous, yeah.
Gary Hoag:
And this hairstyle… And they're doing it to show their piety, the Goddess Artemis. I'm saying to myself, "Wow, this is…" And so, then as you go through the story, the story is this story of this couple, and let's just say their love for one another and their loyalty to the goddess.
Now, there's a lot of things that happen in the story, but what I'll tell you is, it simply adds to our knowledge. Now, when it was discovered, this is the interesting part of Ephesiaca. When it was discovered in 1726, it was dusted off. There's only one copy of it. It was found in a monastery. So, now it's in the library in Florence, Italy.
And so, when it was discovered, it was in 1726, it was thought to be Ephesus in the third century. That's why it was put on a shelf. And New Testament scholars never really looked at it because only Greek nerds, Greek classical scholars looked at it. In 1996, one of these beloved whatever, Greek nerd scholars dusted it off and said, "Hey…" James O'Sullivan. He said, "Hey, wait a minute, based on this, this, this, this, this all this archeological evidence that appeared between 1726 and 1996," he says, "This isn't Ephesus in the third century. This is Ephesus in 50 AD." So, now all of a sudden, if we take Luke's actually…
Sandra Glahn:
It's a source.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, we're right smack in the period, yeah.
Gary Hoag:
That's right. So, Luke's, Acts, and the Apostles places, Paul and Ephesus 52 to 54. Now, we have a contemporary document to the ministry of Paul and Ephesus. So, wait a minute. So, now what we have is some of the rare terms and themes that appear in 1 Timothy, which have caused liberal scholars-
Sandra Glahn:
people to question Pauline authorship, for example…
Gary Hoag:
… to say we don't even think Timothy wrote it to…
Sandra Glahn:
Right.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Gary Hoag:
Wait a minute, if this brings to life some of these terms because they're used in this story.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. You keep holding up that Loeb Library, which volume are you holding up? I mean, first of all, I want to clear that that definitely is a used volume. So, if I bought it in a resale, I would probably talk about its character and that kind of thing with tabs no less. I hope it comes with the tabs when you resell it. But anyway…
Gary Hoag:
Oh, I'll die with this one. This was volume 69.
Darrell Bock:
Volume 69 of?
Sandra Glahn:
The Loeb.
Gary Hoag:
The Loeb Classical Library. So…
Darrell Bock:
So, in the front, what's the title on the front?
Gary Hoag:
Title says, Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, and Xenophon of Ephesus, Anthia and Habrocomes.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, got it.
Sandra Glahn:
Xanophon.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, there you go.
Sandra Glahn:
Xanophon of Ephesus.
Darrell Bock:
There were go. That's what I was looking for.
Sandra Glahn:
Anthia and Habrocomes.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Sandra Glahn:
So, it's a sweet little love story, but it has all kinds of stuff that tells us the actual practices of…
Darrell Bock:
I don't know if I have that volume. I may have to go get it, but anyway.
Sandra Glahn:
You might have to. It's a good read.
Gary Hoag:
So, listen, listen, there's one more thing. So, I'm defending… So, in the British system, you have to do, it's either two years, or excuse me, either four years or eight years part-time. I did the eight-year part-time program. So, I'm at the three-year mark, and I'm about to schedule my upgrade, right?
Darrell Bock:
Uh-huh.
Gary Hoag:
And this is released, and I'm like, "Oh, my goodness, what did Jeffrey Henderson say the dating of Ephesiaca was? So, I held my breath, and I open it up and they say… Basically, they say, "Wow, maybe Ephesiaca or this story, Anthia and Habrcomes, it has different titles. Maybe this story should be earlier after all." And so, they don't necessarily peg a date, but they allow for the earlier date.
Darrell Bock:
So, the whispering about the date was going on when this volume was being produced? Is that what you're saying?
Gary Hoag:
Literally, yes. So, it wasn't until this was released in 2009. And so, it was released literally right as I'm defending my upgrade and they're like, "Wow, you don't have to argue for an earlier date because they've already said it seems like it's the logical earlier date because of…"
Darrell Bock:
Aren't you grateful when something like that appears while you're doing your work?
Gary Hoag:
Here, I thought I was like, I thought I was bringing some new evidence to the table, and then boom, it's published. And I'm like, "Oh, my goodness. Please don't."
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Sandra Glahn:
Oh, collaborating.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly. So, we just had a dissertation nerd moment. I just want to…
Sandra Glahn:
We did. But it's helpful for Bible scholars. It's helpful for pastor just knowing that you have this fun story that is set in our city at the approximate time of the earliest Christians. It gives us all kinds of hints about what…
Darrell Bock:
Sure. And this is actually one of the reasons why we did this particular Table Podcast is that, think of all the work that goes on in the background underneath all these passages in the Bible where you're asking, "What was going on in the period when?" And you just fill in that sentence, and you can think about all the various locations that you're dealing with in the New Testament, whether it be Rome or Corinth or Athens or Ephesus, whatever.
And people have spent years of their life working through this material to present it, so that you can get two or three sentences in a commentary that are accurate, okay?
Sandra Glahn:
Right, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
All right. And that set the background. And that's what we're talking about. There's a layer of scholarship that usually goes unhidden. And mostly, unacknowledged other than in a footnote that is involved here. And yet, these little pieces add up and they help us to understand what's going on in the Bible.
Sandra Glahn:
They help us see Paul's approach to mythology. They help us understand that Paul wasn't picking on women and their hair. He was actually, making a statement about how we exercise our piety. Just all kinds of ramifications for what Gary's work in wealth and just seeing how much wealth is in the city of Ephesus and how that explains to some degree why so much of 1 Timothy focuses on wealth.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, if you go through to Ephesus today and you just tour some of the sites. When I went, it's been in 2003, I think 2004… When the moment they found out I was a professor, they said, "Oh, let's take you to a part of Ephesus that most people don't get to tour through." And they walked me through some of the houses of the wealthy part of the city, and that kind of thing with the walls that were still had remnants of the paint, the one that looked like…
Sandra Glahn:
They're open to the public now.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly, yeah. It's now public. But at that time, it wasn't. They're basically telling me, "You're going through some of the richest part of what Ephesus was at that time," and that kind of thing. And you get a sense of how vast the city, of course, you walk into that big theater, which wasn't all there during Paul's time. But a lot of it was, and you go, "This is a major metropolitan area. This is no minor location in terms of what's going on," because it could see thousands and thousands of people. I love telling my students when I'm there or talk about it on a picture, I say, "This is holding as many people as the basketball arena in Dallas." So…
Sandra Glahn:
Picture that with people yelling.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly, right.
Sandra Glahn:
Greatness of the city of Ephesians for two hours.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly. Exactly, right.
Sandra Glahn:
You'll be a little intimidating.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, that's the feel of it.
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah.
Gary Hoag:
I'd love to hear more from Sandra on this, but one of the biggest things I discovered in spending basically a decade living in the world. And if you're listening, this is what I mean by spending a decade in this ancient world. For about a decade, I can't say that I knew anything about what was going on in modern day football or baseball. I could tell you…
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah.
Gary Hoag:
I could tell you more about the names on the Via Sacra, and that's called The Sacred Way in Ephesus. Then, I knew on the professional sports teams that everybody was talking about over coffee, donut…
Darrell Bock:
So, you knew what Yelp, Ephesus looked like in the first century, is that what you're saying?
Gary Hoag:
Exactly. Exactly. So, but this is what I would love to hear more from Sandra. And that is, what I found was going into it. And this is the British system really forced me to set aside any agenda going into my research. And when I did my research, I went in knowing that many women didn't really like Paul. And what I realized was, for me, the author of 1 Timothy, he actually was really kind to women. And the ancient world is what was mean and harsh to women.
Sandra Glahn:
Completely.
Gary Hoag:
And so, I found…
Sandra Glahn:
I think as well, completely.
Gary Hoag:
Would you agree?
Sandra Glahn:
Absolutely. He's much more of an advocate even for women than I knew before I had the eyes to read the text, knowing his context, for sure, for sure.
Gary Hoag:
And I never dreamed that in… I never dreamed that in wanting to know what did Paul want Tim to understand about handling riches and spread in the house of God? What did he want him to propagate or to communicate? I never realized that riches would be in view and the adornment of women, and that I would discover this ancient story and that I would use it as a Rosetta Stone next to the Greek text of 1 Timothy.
And I would discover, oh, my goodness, Paul was like their best friend. He was saying, "Look, you just got to let go of the heresy. You got to let go of the goddess being a part of every aspect of your life, and you're going to be saved through childbearing. And you don't have anything to worry about, and quit promoting your myth." And it's like, "Wait a minute. He's so kind."
And so, you know what then I discovered? I mean, people who really appreciated the social and cultural richness of the word of God, loved my research. People who had an agenda about the role of women, they wouldn't even look at it. They wouldn't even talk about it. Whereas, women would say like, "Wow, you just set me free. I didn't like Paul before. Now, I like him."
Darrell Bock:
Yup, yeah. No, it is an important set of themes. And, of course, the 1 Corinthians, sorry, 1 Timothy 6 passage on wealth and riches is probably one of the… I'm now have a little pun. One of the richest texts on riches in the New Testament in terms of how… I can't tell you how many times I've taken people to that text and talked about its contents.
Sandra Glahn:
Wouldn't you say, Gary, that we came out focusing more on 1 Timothy than we did on the book of Ephesians that just were parallels?
Gary Hoag:
Yeah, I think, for me, I simply… In looking at the world of Ephesus, just looking at Ephesus, it just dawned on me. No wonder when I read Ephesians, every other verse, it seems like talks about the riches of the glory and the riches and riches because it was like the Wall Street of the ancient world. And so, I just tell people simply, if you read Ephesus, you need to think it's the Wall Street of the ancient world, where wealth and religion and everything was wrapped up in the goddess, and they wanted you to wrap it all up in Jesus instead.
Sandra Glahn:
Right.
Darrell Bock:
And, of course, one of the things now, I am going to cross over to Ephesians is the emphasis that's put on exaltation of Jesus in the book of Ephesus, which is like the Gospel of Luke and its sequel Acts. I had to get Luke…
Sandra Glahn:
That was subtle. Subtle and capital B.
Darrell Bock:
Right. So, but if you think…
Gary Hoag:
We'll salute you.
Darrell Bock:
I appreciate it. But that whole exaltation theme and above all rule and principalities and powers, that's what's resonating in that first half of the book.
Sandra Glahn:
I read one thing that talked about a guy bringing his inheritance to Artemis. And then, when I reread Ephesians 1 about our inheritance, it was like, "Well, he takes his inheritance to his God. Our God gives us an inheritance. And oh, by the way, that inheritance is God himself."
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Sandra Glahn:
It's just the contrast of that is really moving.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. So, again, the reason we did this was to show that one, give a little glimpse about what it takes to do this kind of research and how one goes about it, and whatever it requires. Hold up that stack of books again that you had. I just want to…
Gary Hoag:
So, this is…
Sandra Glahn:
For your audio only. It's 3 feet high.
Gary Hoag:
I know you guys can't see it, but this is the 10, whatever, all the volumes of The Inscription von Ephesus.
And it's one-page at a time, right?
Sandra Glahn:
And it's not expensive…
Gary Hoag:
Honestly, what was providential for me was the language I studied in high school was German. And so, all the notes in…
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow.
Gary Hoag:
Of course, they're German.
Darrell Bock:
Sure. Yeah, exactly.
Gary Hoag:
And so, I was like… But let's go back to this because if someone's listening and they want to do research, and this is what Sandra asked me before we started today like, what are you looking at? There is so much more to be drawn out of these inscriptions.
Sandra Glahn:
So much.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, a lot of it hasn't been read yet.
Sandra Glahn:
Right.
Gary Hoag:
Right, right. Nobody's reading it.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Gary Hoag:
And I go back to a Malherbe's advice, don't search ancient material. Everybody searches it with an agenda. Just go read it. And if you read it, you'll enter into that world without an agenda, and you'll discover new things that you never dreamed.
Darrell Bock:
You get context that way.
Sandra Glahn:
Correct. That's right.
Darrell Bock:
Whereas, when you search, you tend to go, "Oh, it's this line, and it's this line, and it's this line. And that…"
Sandra Glahn:
Dictionary term, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And you also miss or can miss the related terms that are on the same topic, that will open up even more. I mean, you can give your life to just wrestling with one of these themes if they're full enough and never roam from that space. I mean, it's that vast. And so, when you hear people who do deep scholarships say, "The more I do deep scholarship, the more I'm aware of what I don't know." So, you understand where that's coming from. So…
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah, so true.
Gary Hoag:
I want to share what Abraham Malherbe did with me though. If anyone's listening and they work with the next generation of scholar, this was really profound for me. So, Towner called Malherbe. And so, Malherbe said he would agree to meet with me. And this is what he said, "Bring your Greek New Testament, a tape recorder and a pen and pencil or a pen and paper."
And so, I get to his house and he agrees to spend three hours with me. And we read through 1 Timothy in Greek. This is all we did. We read through the whole text in Greek and every three verses, he would stop and wax eloquent on how words appeared in the moral and ethical philosophers. And so, if you look at my transcription of the meeting, it was like 17 pages. It was like all Abe and then me. And then, all Abe and then me.
But this is what was key. I said, about halfway through this time, I said, "How do you know all this?" And he said, "Well, for about 17 years, every day when I went into work, I would read a little bit from the ancient world. Just every day, I would be reading, reading material." And so, he entered that world.
So, when a word appeared in 1 Thessalonians or word appeared here, he was like, "Oh, I see it here, here, here, here, here" in all these places, many of which maybe weren't cataloged or whatever. And so, I would just encourage people when you enter into then that primary material and you read it, and then you go read just in one sitting, you read like 1 Timothy in Greek. All of a sudden, you go, "Wait a minute. I saw that word, that word, that word that…" And then, all these things that you didn't have an agenda to find, jump out to you.
Darrell Bock:
Yup. You're reminding me of the conversations I used to have with Martin Hengel when I was in Germany. And he would have this vast room of library, and we would talk about something, we'd hit something. What he would do is, "Wait a second." He would get up and he'd pull a book off. And sometimes, he had it marked. And sometimes, he didn't. And he'd say, "That reminds me of this."
And the knowledge that he had of what he had around him was endless, immense. And almost always really, really insightful about what the connection was and how it helped illuminate a text, that kind of thing. So, yeah, we're talking about a level of work and scholarship here that just is trying to wrestle with understanding the culture and the history in which the Bible is immersed. And oftentimes, people think of the Bible as its own game, but it is actually interacting with a world around it that you understand much better. Once you understand the conversation, you understand the text much better.
Sandra Glahn:
Correct. Agree.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. I want to thank y'all for taking the time to be with us, and to walk us through this kind of background to a particular text. I think it's been instructive to people. And we really do appreciate your taking the time. And you know what? Sandra, I didn't actually ask you to explain what you mean by nobody's mother. So, let me close with doing that.
Sandra Glahn:
Artemis not a fertility goddess.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Sandra Glahn:
She's a confirmed virgin.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Sandra Glahn:
And if people get nothing else from my book, I hope that they'll quit saying she's a fertility goddess because there are a whole lot of historians out there that roll their eyes at us when we say that.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Sandra Glahn:
So, she's nobody's mother.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Sandra Glahn:
Literally.
Darrell Bock:
We all of us have mothers, but apparently Artemis ain't one of them.
Sandra Glahn:
Artemis has a mother.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Sandra Glahn:
She isn't a mother.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. All right.
Sandra Glahn:
She's not that she's nobody's child.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Sandra Glahn:
She's somebody's child. She's Zeus's child.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Sandra Glahn:
But she's nobody's mother.
Darrell Bock:
All right. She's nobody's progeny… And, oh, she has no progeny, but she's everybody's progeny.
Sandra Glahn:
No, no, She's the daughter of Zeus and Lato. A little dalliance there on the side of… So, we could do a book on Zeus called Everybody's Father, but that's a whole different… Whole different book.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, there'll probably isn't enough. There probably has been a lot written about that.
Sandra Glahn:
Probably, yeah.
Gary Hoag:
Only people with a classical education would even understand what you're saying.
Sandra Glahn:
Yeah, what I'm talking about.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I understand. We need to have a little 30 second bit of humor bit and say, "And now, study up in order so you can get this joke."
Sandra Glahn:
So, you can get the joke.
Darrell Bock:
Anyway, thank y'all.
Sandra Glahn:
Thanks for having us.
Darrell Bock:
I appreciate it, Gary. Really do appreciate you taking the time with us.
Sandra Glahn:
It's good to talk with you, Gary. Thanks, Darrell.
Darrell Bock:
And Sandra, as always…
Sandra Glahn:
It's been a pleasure.
Darrell Bock:
… real joy. And we thank you for being a part of The Table. We'll hope you join us again soon. If you want to see one of the other episodes of The Table, we have almost 600 of them now, I've done over the last decade. It's voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast and we hope you'll join us again soon.
Kymberli Cook:
Welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kimberli Cook and I'm the Assistant Director here at the Hendricks Center. And today we are going to be talking about eschatology, so the end things. And particularly, we're going to be focusing in on why what we believe about the end times matters for our Thursday, that it actually impacts how we live day to day. And so we are joined by Dr. Michael Svigel, who is the Department Chair and Professor of Theological Studies here at Dallas Theological Seminary. Welcome.
Michael Svigel:
Thanks for having me.
Kymberli Cook:
Dr. Svigel. He has been my professor for about 15 years, so I am not going to be able to call him Michael. And then there's Darrell, who's my boss, who I have no problem calling Darrell who's the Executive Director for Cultural Engagement here at the Hendricks Center and Senior Research Professor of New Testament at Dallas Seminary as well.
Darrell Bock:
Good to see you, Kim.
Kymberli Cook:
Thank you for being here with us today.
Darrell Bock:
Anytime.
Kymberli Cook:
So it seems like in church history, there's kind of an ebb and flow as far as an interest, a widespread interest let's say in eschatology. Sometimes the church is really, really interested and it's all it's talking about or it's one of the major things it's talking about. And other times, people are like, "Yeah, Jesus is coming back. We're not really sure beyond that." But it seems to me that there is also, so in a parallel sense, there's also this nerve running through the body of Christ where it always matters. And if you push on it wrong, it will set certain people off.
So I just want to make clear that today, as we're talking about eschatology, we aren't looking so much to argue for a specific position, though we are DTS and are historically and continue to be committed to dispensationalism, a dispensational view. But our emphasis more is trying to surface or trying to look at essentially the musculature that eschatology provides the believers as they live daily. I think it underlies so much of what we do, and we don't actually know or recognize that it does. And even more frightening, the two might be disconnected. So we might think we believe one thing and we're living in a different way.
So hopefully people listening will say, "I want to be more intentional about what I believe and how I live?" So that's where we're headed today. But before we get fully to that conversation, I want to talk to you gentlemen about how did you end up thinking through the eschatology area and yeah, we'll start there. Dr. Svigel, how did you start thinking through it?
Michael Svigel:
Yeah, I mean I came to the Lord out of a mainline denominational tradition, which we didn't really talk about it at all. In fact, we were discouraged from talking about eschatology or end times things.
Kymberli Cook:
Really?
Michael Svigel:
Other than just Jesus is coming back someday, resurrection of the dead, eternal life. That was it. And then when I became a Christian, the pastor who led me to the Lord was a pre-millennialist, interested in end times things, but it really hit me in Bible college when I started looking at that into that myself and had classes. I had Charles Ryrie for eschatology back in bible college.
Kymberli Cook:
Did you really?
Michael Svigel:
I did, yes.
Kymberli Cook:
That's awesome.
Michael Svigel:
And then really my study of patristics, the early church really influenced my thinking on that, especially at a more practical level, 'cause it was very, very important for them for not just right thinking, but right living. And I think that's something that I've tried to carry with me into my ministry.
Kymberli Cook:
Fun aside, I learned who Darby was because of a paper I had to work on with Dr. Svigel for my internship. So maybe we'll hit Darby a little bit later. All right, Dr. Bock. Darrell, look at that. Im getting in a mode. How did you end up thinking about eschatology in these areas?
Darrell Bock:
Well, I lived in the '70s, came to the Lord in the early '70s, in the shadow of Israel having won the six-day war. And so eschatology was a nerve. It wasn't just the little strand that went through. Everyone was in back pain, because of trying to figure everything out. What's going on? What could be next around the corner? Is Jesus coming soon? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then I went to Dallas, and the one thing you couldn't do at Dallas in the late '70s is not think about eschatology.
So I was kind of surrounded by it, would be one way to say it, and then trying to process eschatological hope in imminence, Jesus the next thing, could be the next thing that happens. We could be gone before the podcast is over, all the way over to the fact of well, people have had that expectation and we're all still here and trying to deal with what is that very natural biblical tension that we all have.
So yeah, so it's been an interest ever since. And then the monkey wrench in the whole thing was realizing that the term eschatology, the way we use it popularly is actually probably not the best biblical definition for the term, because we have been in the last times ever since Jesus showed up. And so, it isn't a matter of talking about the eschatology that is yet to come, 'cause we're in the eschatological times already, which most people don't even think about. So I hope that didn't confuse you, but that's how it happens.
Kymberli Cook:
No it didn't confuse me.
Michael Svigel:
And in a sense from day one, the whole plan and purpose of God has been forward-looking. So every age of God's plan of redemption has had an eschatology. So we got to know where we are in the story, so we know how to live and what to believe.
Kymberli Cook:
It's kind of the, you are here?
Michael Svigel:
Exactly. We need to know where we are.
Kymberli Cook:
Arrow? So why do you all think that eschatology in general strikes such a nerve for some?
Darrell Bock:
Because a lot of people have a lot of different views about what's coming.
Kymberli Cook:
What do you think is driving that?
Darrell Bock:
Well, I think it's a natural human … When God made us in His image, He gave us the ability to think and reason and think, not only look back but look forward and wrestle with where we're headed and all those kinds of questions. And so I think people naturally want to know, "Okay, so where's this going? Not just where am I going, but where's this going?" And in the midst of thinking about that and then having an array of answers that everyone says is biblical, which is confusing, okay?
Kymberli Cook:
In a variety of topics, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
You're off and running.
Michael Svigel:
Yeah. And you had different eschatological expectations pre-Christian. The Jewish people had different ideas, the Greeks had different ideas how this was all going to end. Somewhere a little more heavenly and spiritual, some more earthy. And then, you get into the early church, you inherit some of those same tendencies. So by the second century, you had a diversity of opinions just on big questions like the millennium, and then get into the details of end times events and how literal and how spiritual to take things. So the diversity that you're seeing in evangelicalism is not new. We've been dealing with it for 2000 years.
Kymberli Cook:
Interesting. So with all of those people having different opinions, different interpretations, some people tend to hold them very, very strongly. So in light of where we're headed with the rest of this conversation, what might be y'all's exhortation to those who have a very specific opinion on what the end things is, what is going to happen even now should be happening now and headed until the end of all things? What would be y'all's word to those listeners?
Michael Svigel:
Yeah. I will first start out by saying, we need to understand what the main things are. Even though there have been a variety, dozens, hundreds of different views on details from order of end times events to nature of the millennium to identity of the two witnesses in Revelation 11, there are still these things that the church has always believed from the beginning in near unanimous consensus. And that's simply that someday in the future, Jesus Christ is coming back as Judge and King, there's going to be a resurrection of the dead. This world is not going to be the same as it always is. There's going to be a restoration of creation and eternal life, banishment of sin, death, devil, suffering.
I think we can reemphasize those basic foundational hopes of the Christian faith as a starting point. This is something we all have in common. Now, we can start talking about legitimate diversity of opinions and knowing the difference between those two things, if you can get that settled, it'll cut down on a lot of the vitriol, I think.
Darrell Bock:
I very much agree. I was going to say you step back and you say, "What do we hold in common?" We hold in common that Jesus is coming back. We hold in common that this is a hope. We hold in common that this hope means the restoration of the way the creation was originally intended to function. There are lots of things that go into that bucket that we share, that actually are at the core of what we're hoping for. And so, that's to be focused on the one hand. And then the differences are kind of in family conversations. I love my sister. I don't always agree with her about everything that she ever did in her life, and she certainly feels that way about me. So that kind of thing.
Kymberli Cook:
And at the same time, you can also, if you have a posture of humility, you're able to learn potentially more about the faith and more about scripture and the Lord, and perhaps even, some end things if we're willing to kind of hear what the other perspectives have to say. You don't have to accept it all wholesale, but there is learning that can happen, especially if it is your interest.
So what about the people on the other end of the spectrum? So the people who are like, "Listen, I do not have a journal with a bunch of charts. I don't have anything that I am looking for the news to happen."
Darrell Bock:
You're missing so much in life.
Kymberli Cook:
"I know I don't really care," like Dr. Svigel just said. Jesus is coming back, that's probably all I really care about." What might you say to those who would find themselves a bit agnostic about this conversation about the end things?
Darrell Bock:
My guess would be that in stepping back from considering what the end is like, that you're missing some things that you need to know and understand and appreciate, in order to understand who you're supposed to be now. And so the lack of interest in where we are headed may actually create an inability to appreciate who we're supposed to be.
Kymberli Cook:
Anything you'd add?
Michael Svigel:
Yeah, I would say the same thing. I would also say that just to kind of reiterate, there is a feedback loop as you are thinking about details of the end and how this is going to work out, how it's not going to work out, how do we get there? These are all questions that are answered by the details of eschatology. Is this something that we have to establish in our own age prior To Christ's return? Versus is this something that we have another mission until Christ returns? Or is it a little of both? How you answer those questions is going to affect if you're consistent with your eschatology, how you live on that Monday morning or I guess Thursday morning as you brought up earlier.
Darrell Bock:
In fact, the failure to understand where eschatology takes us probably makes us more nervous in this time, and then we're more likely to make mistakes.
Kymberli Cook:
Interesting. So you talked about, we've been referencing all these diversities of views. We're definitely not going through the hundreds, but in four or five big categories, what would you all, for those who are listening who are like, "All right, I didn't really care but you just told me that I should, so I'm listening." What are kind of the big interpretational camps for eschatology views? Just start throwing them out? We can work our way down a spectrum? Or we can just throw them across?
Michael Svigel:
The way I teach my eschatology class is I begin with the things that we all hold in common. So Jesus Christ is coming back as Judge and King, resurrection, the things we mentioned. And then I say on top of that, "You've got a diversity of opinions on the next big issue, which is the question of the millennium, the nature of the kingdom, how much of it is not yet? How much of it is already?" And it's kind of like a sliding scale to some degree in different areas. But the three big views traditionally have been the amillennial view, the pre-millennial and the post-millennial. Again, these are on a spectrum and they overlap with each other. And the problem is there's varieties of amillennialism and varieties of pre-mil and varieties of post-mil.
Darrell Bock:
You just went from hundreds to three, so now we're in trouble.
Michael Svigel:
Right? So I'd like to think of them as three continents that are overlapping and they have their own little cities, and there's some things that are in common. And I think there's even probably at least a theoretical spot where they all sort of overlap with each other. So that's if you look at the history of that, but how you view the coming kingdom, the messianic age does affect how you live today. And whether you think it's mostly or all heavenly or mostly or all earthly, mostly present or mostly future. I think that's the first kind of grid where you have to sort of figure out where you land and then work from there.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So let-
Darrell Bock:
Can I try and fill in with each of the three? So if you're amillennial and you believe Jesus can come back and form the new heavens and the new earth, you're less likely to be concerned about the role of Israel and the plan of God, just by that default. If you're pre-millennial, you're going to be concerned with figuring out, "Okay, so when is Jesus coming back to set this all up?" If you're post-millennial, you're going to be working hard to fix things until we get there. And so those break out into three very different general approaches, depending on which space I'm in. I like to compare views to plate tectonics. They rub against each other and they build pressure. And then when you get too much of a pressure, you get an earthquake.
Kymberli Cook:
That's the ebb and flow.
Darrell Bock:
That's the ebb and flow of our conversation.
Michael Svigel:
And let me fill in even further then. So I feel like we're looking at it from the planetary perspective and then we're zooming in. So just to take amillennialism and varieties of that, this is basically saying the kingdom, the millennium as described in Revelation 20, actually began at Christ's ascension and comes to a conclusion with His return. So it's happening now. Well, in the history of that, some really emphasized it as a heavenly spiritual kingdom, and some emphasize it more as a present earthly reality through the church or somewhere in between. And depending on which one you take on that, your goal is to die and go to heaven and you have not a lot of concern about the present earth, or it's to realize that as much as possible in the earthly realm.
Same with post-millennialism. In the history, there have been what I would call passive evangelistic post-millennialism, where you just preach the word and eventually miraculously, there'll be this pouring out of the spirit and the world will convert. But then there's on the other extreme has been militant post-millennialism, where our job is to pick up the pitchforks and the spears and overthrow the king in the church and establish a perfect society.
Kymberli Cook:
To make happen.
Michael Svigel:
And then everything in between. So how you answer those questions just by those examples has been very, very important to your day-to-day living, how you view the mission of the Christian.
Kymberli Cook:
So just bringing that in a smidge more. So we were just in the countries, let's bring it to the cities. How might that impact somebody like an accountant who is a parent, has kids at their school, they attend church regularly, and they listen to The Table Podcast?
Darrell Bock:
So can I play with your question and tweak it just a little bit?
Kymberli Cook:
Sure.
Darrell Bock:
And that is, how would that impact me as a citizen. If I'm a citizen, whether I'm counting bank accounts or whatever, it wrestles with the question, so what exactly is my involvement in public space? How should I think about government? What's its role to be? How should I think about morality in public space, et cetera? It's going to impact all of that. Do I have a, I'm going to put it in quotes, "A theocratic expectation for where we're headed or not?"
Kymberli Cook:
What might a theocratic expectation look like?
Darrell Bock:
Well, a theocratic expectation is the idea of governments are called to live by God's values, no matter what. And you're going to enforce those values by the way you structure your government, as opposed to a approach that says, "Well, we should live by God's standards, but we also understand we're living in the world." And so how do you balance that in the pluralism that we experience, for example?
So obviously, those are not minor questions. Those are big orientation questions. Most people float through their theological life not even thinking about them, but they end up depending on what they're absorbing, having a theological and eschatological worldview whether they realize it or not. And so it's much better to be aware of what's going on around you than not being aware of what's going around you. So that's part of the reason for having this conversation.
Kymberli Cook:
What would you add about the accountant-
Michael Svigel:
Yeah, I think-
Kymberli Cook:
As far as understanding what that might impact that daily life?
Michael Svigel:
Yeah. If they're consistent, it's going to affect how they invest their time, what they invest their money in, that kind of thing. If there's this urgency in missions or if they view their job as kind of just improving society, that's going to affect your day-to-day decisions, simply what are you going to do with your spare time? What are you going to do after work? Where are you going to send your kids to college? Who are you going to vote for, right? Those questions. Who are you going to follow on X?
Kymberli Cook:
There you go.
Michael Svigel:
Or Twitter, formerly known as Twitter, right? All of these decisions, sometimes unconsciously, we're making-
Darrell Bock:
Who you're going to face in the book, right?
Michael Svigel:
Yeah. These little decisions are being made based on kind of what do we view our mission as, as Christians.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So that's the millennial question. What's the next ring of discussion?
Michael Svigel:
Yeah. Well, I can tell you what I deal with in class. After we answer the millennial question, we move on to the question of what's called, futurism or historicism or preterism? What about this? How do we take the Book of Revelation and the end times events? That's kind of the next question, how you answer that. Also in very clear example, sometimes pre-millennials or dispensationalists are accused of believing that the world has to get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse, in order for Jesus to come back.
So we almost have this, or we're accused of having this sort of global shot in Freuda where we are delighting when things are getting worse, because it means Jesus coming back. Well, that's not really, if you hold to a futurist view of revelation that these things are going to occur in the future during a seven-year period, and that's yet to come, which has a distinct beginning. The world can get better, could get worse, could stay the same, leading up to that commencement of those events. It's really in the, what's called the historicist view, that kind of took the Book of Revelation and says, it's describing the whole history of the church until Christ return. Would you really necessarily begin to see this decline in the quality of society, this collapse in society before the return of Christ?
So there's some mixing of categories, and I'll just have to admit, a lot of people in our own tradition have not been consistent with that futurist expectation. So in my expectation, I think it's not a waste of time to be working to improve society and the economy and people's lives and to invest in the future generations, because we don't know if Jesus has come back today or a 1,000 years from now. And I don't expect the world to necessarily get worse and worse before that begins.
Darrell Bock:
And just to add to that picture, how we interact with people outside the church becomes a testimony for what people think about God. We've allowed eschatology in some cases to become separate from the mission of the church and to be its own distinct conversation and category. It's actually quite connected. When I go to share Christ and say, "God cares about you, God loves you. He sent His Son to die for you, et cetera." And someone comes back to me and says, "Well, where do I see evidence of that being the attitude of the church in the world?" Which is a very good question to ask.
If the church is showing a total lack of concern for their neighbor in the midst of that process, that becomes an inconsistency between what we're saying and what we're demonstrating. So you want those two things to align, not because you think necessarily you're going to fix the world, but because it is a goal to love people, care for them and try and make the world a better place as much as possible. And by doing so, making people aware of the presence of God and what it is that the church has to offer to the world. And we've allowed that distinction and that separation to prevent us from going there. And that ends up working against everything a lot of people want to see in the church, which is to see people who need the Lord come to the Lord
Kymberli Cook:
Well. I mean this is a little bit different I think than what you're saying, but in the disconnect, we no longer actually have hope, which is the Gospel and what the Gospel is. And if we don't live out the rest of the Gospel, which includes all of this eschatological hope, then we're missing the whole point.
Darrell Bock:
And the risk becomes, we isolate ourselves from the very mission that God has given us, which is not to go into the church and make disciples, but go into the world and make disciples. And so we lose our concern for evangelism if we're not careful. If we don't understand what the eschatological call is, why God has the church in our midst, what the church is supposed to be as a witness to what God is and will do, all those things, that disconnect becomes a gap, and that gap can become a canyon. And when that canyon exists, then we cease to do the one thing God has called us to do until He comes back, which is to try and be a witness to what it is God's Grace is all about.
Kymberli Cook:
So we talked about the futurist a bit and the historicist, right?
Michael Svigel:
Sure, yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
Or is that the term-
Michael Svigel:
Different views of end times events.
Kymberli Cook:
Yes. Well, but we didn't cover preterist. What does the Preterist real life look like?
Michael Svigel:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
They're busy boys. They basically say, in one sense or another, the consummation has come and we are the expression of the consummation now. I think there tends to be a fusion of what other views would see as the eschatology and what is going on now. And so, preterists will place Jesus, some preterists will place Jesus' second coming with the destruction of the temple in AD 70, for example. Already happened, been there, done that.
Kymberli Cook:
So we're in the eternal kingdom now?
Darrell Bock:
Not quite, but pretty close.
Michael Svigel:
Yeah. Usually, there's a strong emphasis in some of those circles. And again, I'm generalizing 'cause there's varieties of preterism.
Kymberli Cook:
Of course.
Michael Svigel:
But a strong emphasis on, well we get saved now and we die and go to heaven, and the heavenly destination is really the consummation, it tends to be a de-emphasis on. But then there's other varieties where it's partial preterist. So a lot of the events, prophecies of revelation were fulfilled in the first century, but we're still awaiting, although those big bucket things we talked about. So there's those varieties, which I have far more tolerance for. There are some though where they just deny even bodily resurrection, because it's just dying and going to heaven. So you always have to ask them follow-up questions, what is it that you really hold within the bound of that preterism?
Darrell Bock:
Which brings us to another ring in the big set of things that we're talking about, and that is what does the end actually look like? Is it a strictly spiritual existence? And I'm going to use this description, even though it might not totally … A kind of disembodied presence with God? Or is there, what I call a full physicality associated with it? It's a material and spiritual reality that we'll live in. Nations and nation states will matter, and not just being in the presence of God. It will be nations that worship God, not just individuals, that kind of thing. We'll realize that people from every tribe in every nation while we're there. There's still an earthly structure and an earthly presence over which God sits. My joke about the eschaton is no one will debate who the Pope is when Jesus comes back. And-
Kymberli Cook:
No, but it's a real thing.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right.
Kymberli Cook:
We hear that and we're like, "Oh, well of course not." But even in some of the training and teaching that we've done in our church, it's become very apparent when we actually get into, okay, so when we die, there's going to be this intermediate state. We will be with the Lord, but that's not the end. And people just, half the time, don't know what to do with that, because they really functionally have that kind of disembodied eschatology.
Darrell Bock:
Heaven will be, I'll be on leisure time 24/7 forever. I mean-
Kymberli Cook:
Exactly.
Michael Svigel:
[inaudible 00:27:12].
Kymberli Cook:
On a cloud with a heart. Yeah.
Michael Svigel:
But I tell people, "Look, I'm not denying that when we die, we go to heaven. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. But you follow that with an ellipsis, dot dot dot until resurrection of the body, restoration of creation." This world is going to be restored and renewed and it's going to be exactly like Darrell describes. I tell my kids when they would ask me about what's heaven like, I say, "Well, do you mean heaven? Do you mean the new heavens and the new earth?" So I try to redirect them and I say, "It's like this world without all the bad things. It's earthy. You'll be able to reach down and pick it up. That's how earthy it is, and you'll have a hand to do it." And so too many people think the Christian eschatology, even if they have charts saying otherwise, we reinforce it through these songs and hymns and conversations and pop theology, they think that eschatology is dying, going to heaven!
Kymberli Cook:
Jesus wins.
Michael Svigel:
I get that all the time.
Darrell Bock:
And of course, the end chapters of the Bible are the new heavens and, and, and the new earth.
Michael Svigel:
Yep. Guess what? There'll be birds and butterflies and animals and people and water and clouds and all that. It's very much God, as you said early on, taking this place back to and outdoing what was originally planned.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, it's a restoration.
Michael Svigel:
It's a restoration.
Darrell Bock:
And an enhancement at the same time.
Michael Svigel:
Yep, exactly.
Darrell Bock:
Yep.
Michael Svigel:
Isn't that exciting though?
Kymberli Cook:
Well, of course it is. I think so. Well, but I think that's part of the hope that is sometimes lost too, is because if you don't have that dimension, then the things that we do here in our earthiness even now don't really matter.
Darrell Bock:
Or they matter too much.
Michael Svigel:
Right.
Kymberli Cook:
Unpack that.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so they matter too much. In other words, if I don't know where things are going, if I'm not confident that justice will come to the earth one day, if I'm not confident that sin will be done away with and that I've got to fight to stop its presence, then the risk is I'll try and do too much, for lack of a better description because it matters too much.
Michael Svigel:
And be very frustrated when you can't get it done.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right.
Michael Svigel:
And now someone's to blame. So understanding where you are in the story. The other extreme is, it's out of my hands, and why polish the chrome on a sinking ship and this idea? Well, the reality is yes, there's a coming kingdom. We're citizens of that coming kingdom, but now we are to live out the values and priorities of that coming kingdom. And if part of the job in the future kingdom is to pick up all these styrofoam cups we polluted for whatever and restore this creation, maybe we should be about that today.
Live out our citizenship and the values of those things in justice and righteousness and peace and work toward healing, right? Work against the forces of evil and wickedness in this world, knowing though, because we know we're not there yet, that it's going to be two steps forward, three steps back, four steps forward, two steps back. It's going to be a battle, but we don't give up on righteousness because we're not glorified yet. Therefore, we don't give up on the priorities of the coming kingdom because we're not there yet. We keep living those things out.
Darrell Bock:
So that means that there are three things that are associated with how we understand the future. One is aspirational, where is God taking us and what does that look like? The second is the idea of, oh, well this is an audiovisual. What the future looks like is what we're supposed to be kind of a sneak preview of now. So you have the aspirational and you have this sneak preview dimension. And then the third part of it is understanding that in reaching towards that aspiration and reflecting that aspiration, you are trying to show where God is actually taking us, it's trajectory. And so you put those three things together and all of a sudden, you've kind of got a lane to live in that you can pursue, and you have a target in mind as you're on that lane.
Kymberli Cook:
So in light of what we're talking about right now and DTS' historic commitment with dispensationalism, sometimes dispensationalism has gotten a rap for maybe being one of those polishing the chrome on a sinking ship kind of thing. First, we've said the word a lot, but some people who are listening might not necessarily know exactly what we're talking about when we're saying dispensationalism. So can somebody unpack that? And then, can we talk through how essentially a dispensational perspective looks like daily lived up?
Darrell Bock:
So who wants to define dispensationalism?
Michael Svigel:
You've been at this longer than I have.
Darrell Bock:
Let's play ping pong.
Kymberli Cook:
The good thing is I'm asking the questions.
Darrell Bock:
A dispensation comes from a Latin word, translates the Greek word oikonomia, and it's the word for administration. So the idea is that the program of God has different administrative structures along the way that are related to one another as the program of God unfolds. And there's a stewardship responsibility within an administration that people have to know where they fit in that plan of salvation and how they're supposed to respond.
Normally, dispensations will divide the three key periods associated with dispensationalism as law, grace and millennium. I actually don't like those three descriptions, because they're different kinds of things. I prefer to think about Israel, church and millennium, 'cause they're the same kind of restructured entity. And so they relate to how does the law of the Old Testament and the Torah relate to what's going on now and what will happen in the millennium? Those kinds of questions come up.
Dispensationalists have been known for making distinctions in the administration, noting the differences between those administrations and then what progressive dispensationalism has done, yeah. But in the midst of those differences, there's certain continuities that are advancing the program that we also have to keep our eye on. So that was, I did that in about what, 90 seconds?
Michael Svigel:
Good job.
Kymberli Cook:
That was well done. That was like years of your life consolidated.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, it's frightening to think about it. There was a time when I did have dark hair and I had lot more of it. Anyway, so yeah, so that's the dispensational background. And of course what happened was, is that this dispensationalism, and this is a result of the fundamentalist modernist controversy to a certain degree, is dispensationalism came to the point where it was defending the Bible and staying away from what came viewed as social action. And in that division, that meant that people were just doing evangelism were trying to bring people to the Lord, 'cause what matters is their salvation, what happens to them in the future. And we became less concerned for what was going on around us unless it impacted that mission.
Of course, what that did was to create this divide I talked about earlier, which is that we lost the ability to see that how we treat people outside, who are outside the church is a reflection of our message, 'cause our message is, God loves you and cares for you and sent His Son for you. Well, how do I see God's care and love for people outside the church, unless I show it by the way I minister? So it got severed from our mission by we're polishing chrome on the Titanic. I mean, that was a legitimate illustration that was used. And in the process of that severing, we actually lost one of the best means we have to show why Jesus matters.
So now, what's happening is you have some people who are trying to reconnect those things, even though they have an eschatology that says, "We're not fixing this till the end," because they want more people to benefit from what it is God offers in the meantime. And the understanding that the quality of life in this life is enhanced by having a life that walks with God.
Kymberli Cook:
And so if I'm hearing you right, going back to our accountant, the way dispensationalism would look like lived out in the type of dispensationalism you're talking about is recognizing I'm a part of the church age. There's a certain stewardship and responsibility as a part of that, and which is what you're talking about as far as-
Darrell Bock:
I'm a witness to the goodness and grace of God.
Kymberli Cook:
Yes, and telling people that God loves you and demonstrating how that is.
Darrell Bock:
And show it, that's right.
Kymberli Cook:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. I have a line that I like to use from Hamilton. The Hamilton has a song where Aaron Burr is being introduced to Alexander Hamilton and the line goes, "Talk less, smile more." Okay, I love that song. Don't go through the rest of that line, 'cause it doesn't apply. But anyway, and I like to say, when we need to adjust that, it needs to be, talk less, show more. That we show who we are. We show God's care. We show God's grace. We live out as His ambassador, what His character is about. And when we do that well, we care for people. We care for people both inside and outside the church. We care about what goes on with people inside and outside the church. And when we connect our evangelism and our mission and our calling to that level of care as part of our outreach, we actually engage in an evangelism as it was designed to be engaged. And most of the Bible is about everyday life outside the spiritual activity of people. So that's worth contemplating.
Michael Svigel:
And this is important too, because how we view the ultimate end. If you view the ultimate end of dying, going to heaven and emphasize the spiritual, the tendency is going to have a faith, a lived faith that is only emphasizing the invisible and the spiritual.
Darrell Bock:
And sometimes the private.
Michael Svigel:
The privat, personal individual.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, yeah.
Michael Svigel:
But if we understand that God's plan of redemption is the whole cosmos from the birds and the bees to the flowers and the trees and everything in between, now just that whole worldview that God is concerned about the physical world. And if He's concerned about the physical world, He's concerned about the people and the animals and the nature, et cetera, that is going to make us better citizens of this world. The other thing I'd like to point out is that because this creation, and this is one thing when Darrell was talking about, 'cause some of the older forms of dispensationalism really emphasizing beginning and end of these things rather than they're actually headed somewhere and building upon each other.
Kymberli Cook:
The continuity you're talking about.
Michael Svigel:
Right, the continuity. When it was a beginning and end, there tended to be this emphasis on, well this world is going to be burned up and destroyed into nothing, and just God's going to start over and create a brand new world. Which is not my view, but it's out there. And if you understand that no, it's this world that God created that He's going to redeem, He's going to restore, He's going to glorify, the fact that it is going to be done means no, we're fighting a winning battle. We're not fighting a losing battle. We're just waiting for the reinforcements.
Could you imagine if you're an army and you are convinced that nobody's coming to help, this battle's never going to end well, I mean imagine what that's going to do to the way you carry out your operations. But if you are waiting at any moment for the reinforcements to come in and this is going to turn the tide, I think that just inspires us to live out even more the soldiering that we're supposed to be doing.
Darrell Bock:
And just to mention the Bible, Romans 8.
Kymberli Cook:
Little things.
Michael Svigel:
Amen. Yes.
Darrell Bock:
That's right. Romans 8 talks about all creation groaning for the redemption of God. So this is not something that's privatized. It's not privatized appointed, this is about me and my God. No, this is about us and our God. This is about us in the midst of the creation in our God. This is about everything that God created in Genesis 1 being restored, so that by the time we get to the end of Revelation, everything is restored. And we're people who are previewing and moving towards that trajectory. And everything that we do should be related towards that, establishing that trajectory. So that accountant is counting. He's not just counting money. He's counting how he lives his life in line with where God is taking us.
Kymberli Cook:
That was a nice tie, tie together
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I was working on it.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, actually, I was about to say that our time is pretty much up. Just to summarize, I think we talked about how there is a connection between our beliefs and our actions, whether we know it or not. And we want to make sure that that is a clean, intentional line instead of us living out something that we don't actually believe. And some of the key things that all Christians believe, what is it Dr. Svigel?
Michael Svigel:
Jesus Christ is coming back as Judge and King. He's going to banish sin, death and devil and usher in His kingdom. There's going to be a resurrection of the body, restoration of all things.
Kymberli Cook:
Thank you. And then, for those who in the variety of opinions beyond that.
Michael Svigel:
I will not list those.
Kymberli Cook:
No, please don't. We already did.
Darrell Bock:
Like credits at the end of a movie.
Kymberli Cook:
But key in that is just the recognition of the importance of the life that we're living here and now. And that what we believe matters and we need to take our place, however you want to place it as far as the you are here arrows with the different interpretations. But we need to take our place as God's people representing His kingdom and representing it well.
Darrell Bock:
We're all ambassadors.
Kymberli Cook:
And looking ahead.
Darrell Bock:
We're all ambassadors for the Lord and representing a kingdom that exists in the midst of the world that's not the world. And in the midst of doing that, trying to draw people into what that opportunity to experience God means and to be light. So we're going to talk less. We're going to show more. We're going to shine and then shine the light. It hopefully draws. And in drawing people, people are drawing closer to God. And the closer they get to God, the better off they'll be.
Kymberli Cook:
Indeed, and there'll be a lot more hope for all of us in the midst. Gentlemen, thank you for your time, for joining us and talking about these things. I really appreciate both of your ministries in my life and in the wider DTS community. So thank you for being here.
Michael Svigel:
Thanks.
Darrell Bock:
A pleasure.
Kymberli Cook:
And we just want to thank you who are listening. We want to thank those of you who have tuned in and listened, and would just ask that you would review us anywhere that you are listening to podcasts. And be sure to join us next time, when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. Today we're going to talk about the nurture and care of pastors. Pastors pastor others, but then the question becomes, who pastors the pastor? And I have been looking forward to this time with my longtime friend, Andy McQuitty. Andy, I guess your first title is Pastor Emeritus of Irving Bible Church. And emeritus makes you sound like an old guy, Andy.
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah, it makes me sound smart and important too, neither of which are true.
Bill Hendricks:
But he is also the founder of the Kaleo Collective, which is an outreach to pastors that I want to use as kind of a model and a platform to discuss this broader issue of pastoring the pastor. So Andy, welcome to the Table podcast.
Andy McQuitty :
Thank you, Bill. It's great to be with you, my old friend.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes, yes. I want to get to Kaleo here in a minute, but you've been a pastor now for what, your whole career basically, right?
Andy McQuitty :
I have. I have.
Bill Hendricks:
How'd you get into the pastorate?
Andy McQuitty :
Well, that's interesting. I went off to Wheaton College back in the day I was going to major in biology and become a missionary surgeon, had that in my heart. And so after my freshman year at Wheaton College, they had a summer missionary project. And I signed up and they sent me off to South America. I was up in the mountains of Colombia, in the rainforest of Colombia. And they said, "You'll be working with Lee Hendrickson, who's a Wycliffe Bible Translator." SIL is their terminology in South America. And they said, "You'll be basically making an airstrip on the mountain ridge there so that the Helio Couriers can come in and fly in and out." This was a primitive tribe, the Kwicere Indians that we were with all summer, and it was a 13-hour hike into this thing, and they wanted to make an airstrip so they could fly supplies in.
Bill Hendricks:
Sure, yeah.
Andy McQuitty :
I was going down to help them build the airstrip, but they said, "Oh, but you could do some medical work too." machete cuts, snake bites, worm medicine. I could be a doctor, right?
Bill Hendricks:
Oh boy. The real deal.
Andy McQuitty :
And so it's interesting, the Lord used that whole summer trying to play doctor to call me to the ministry because I was with some of the Indians one day at dusk when it was time for them to go down the mountain to their village. And there was this mom and her two little children, and she was on the porch of this palm slat hut that we lived in, and she wouldn't budge. And Lee spoke to her in her language, said, "You need to go." And she says, "I cannot go. It's getting dark, and if I go after dark, the demons will eat my children."
Bill Hendricks:
Wow, wow. Wow.
Andy McQuitty :
And Lee immediately said, "You can stay here with us. You can stay tonight." And then later he told me what she had said, and it was like God just put a dagger in my heart.
Bill Hendricks:
You just saw up close and personal, you've looked over into that spiritual realm.
Andy McQuitty :
He said, "Yeah, I want you to be a doctor. I'm calling you to be a doctor. I'm calling you to be a doctor of souls."
Bill Hendricks:
A surgeon of souls. Yeah.
Andy McQuitty :
So I came back. I changed my major, went a different direction, and wound up going to seminary right here at Dallas Theological Seminary, and then pretty quickly right over to Irving Bible Church where I was the senior pastor for 32 years.
Bill Hendricks:
Now, if memory serves me correctly, and I may be wrong, wasn't Chuck Swindoll at Irving Bible Church at one point?
Andy McQuitty :
Chuck was my predecessor there.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Andy McQuitty :
Not my immediate predecessor. There were two in between Chuck. He was in the sixties, the late sixties-
Bill Hendricks:
That's what I was thinking.
Andy McQuitty :
At IBC. And I came in 1987, so I came about 20 years after Chuck.
Bill Hendricks:
Gotcha. But there were still echoes, I'm sure.
Andy McQuitty :
Oh, yeah. And Chuck has been very gracious with me over the years as just following the progress at his old pastorate at Irving.
Bill Hendricks:
And you really helped that church grow significantly.
Andy McQuitty :
Well, we started with a hundred people in a little old building on four acres down in Old Irving. And when I left, we had a $12 million budget, 70 full-time staff members relocated to a $50 million campus up in Las Colinas. And I don't know how that happened. I just know that God did it.
Bill Hendricks:
I was going to say, apart from the grace of God.
Andy McQuitty :
Truly, I can't explain it, but it's what God did. And it was quite a journey for me, pastorally speaking, because I feel like though I've only ever pastored one church as a senior pastor, and that's Irving Bible Church, I think in my tenure there, I pastored five different churches.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, I'll bet.
Andy McQuitty :
The church I went to-
Bill Hendricks:
What it became-
Andy McQuitty :
… and then all these increments right up until… The one that I left was about five iterations after the first one. So it's been a journey.
Bill Hendricks:
And in there, your health went bad at one point, right?
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah. Back in 2009, I went in for a colonoscopy and my doctor called me up and he said… Basically, he said, "Look." I'd just gotten off the phone with the golf course. I'd set up a tee time to play golf. And I hung up and then my doctor called. He said, "Hey, bad news about the colonoscopy. He says, "You got cancer in there real bad. Get in here ASAP. We got to take care of this." It turned out to be stage four colon cancer.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Andy McQuitty :
They gave me an 8% chance of survival. But we jumped in and two major surgeries and 18 months of gnarly chemotherapy, and all the while still at IBC and the pulpit and carrying through. The whole church knew. I took them on this journey with me, and they prayed me through it. 2012, they declared me in complete remission, and I have been there ever since. I feel like God healed me.
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Andy McQuitty :
And I'm grateful. I'm grateful for that. And when they did declare me in remission, I've immediately felt like an obligation to the Lord-
Bill Hendricks:
You've left me here to do something.
Andy McQuitty :
… who brought me through this. And so I took a three-month sabbatical, and I wrote a book about the-
Bill Hendricks:
The ordeal.
Andy McQuitty :
… the whole deal. And basically, that was my offering of gratitude and thanks to the Lord, because the book consists basically of 10 questions that I wrestled with as a Christian when I got cancer, all the way from the first chapters. Why me? And just working through, it's part apologetics, it's part theology. It is a lot devotional. And that book continues to fly off all over the worlds because there's so many people that wrestle with cancer.
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely. We almost want to do another podcast at some point on that topic because you're right, so many people deal with cancer, and it doesn't always come out well, and there's just a whole nest of issues there. But I wanted you to sort of tell that story so that our listeners really understand. I'm going to talk about pastoring the pastors. But that this is a guy who… He's been there. Like, you've seen the movie, and all the different scenes and iterations of what happens in that movie.
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah, yeah. It's been a rich experience, and not always easy, as you say. And I would dare say that no pastorate is ever always easy, if at all, but that it is in the grind and sometimes the suffering, sometimes the pain, sometimes the Covid-19 lockdowns that pastors and their congregations find something special about the Holy Spirit and God's purpose for them, both as pastor and congregation in this cultural moment. So I have learned to take it one day at a time as a pastor and to start out with just a plea to God, "Lord, let me have listening ears to what you would speak to me, how you would guide me, and resource me for going in the directions and doing the ministry that you've called me to do." You just make that prayer every day. You have long-term plans, but you keep them short accounts because they can change.
Bill Hendricks:
You don't know what's going to happen.
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah. My tee time that day, I didn't keep my tee time. It changed.
Bill Hendricks:
That suddenly became very minor.
Andy McQuitty :
It did. But this is life. And really, I've come to find great joy in it because it's only in those gnarly, chaotic, churning times of uncertainty that you can truly experience the full breath of God's grace and love.
Bill Hendricks:
When you got nowhere else to turn, he shows up.
Andy McQuitty :
You really learn that you are weak. I am weak. These are the three things that I learned. I'm weak. God is strong. Love is precious.
Bill Hendricks:
There you go. Praise God.
Andy McQuitty :
And it's how it's always been. It just took me a while to get there.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Well, you mentioned that the pastorate is a difficult job. It's challenging and it has its challenges, but I think part of what led you to get Kaleo going was the fact that the pastorate, it seems like it's become even much harder in the last few years, just recently.
Andy McQuitty :
Well, it has. My goodness. I think having several friends in other fields that require leadership… I've got friends that are CEOs of-
Bill Hendricks:
Companies.
Andy McQuitty :
… Fortune 5 companies. I've got a two-star Air Force general in my Bible study group. I've got a judge in my group, and he leads courts, whole courts. And these are people in the worlds of business, military corporations, law-
Bill Hendricks:
The professions, sure-
Andy McQuitty :
I've got friends that are in the academy. And they're leaders, and I'm a leader as a pastor for church. But I've always noticed the difference that being a pastor and a ministry leader is from any other kind of leadership. And I think it all boils down to this. Our leadership requires of us to persuade people to follow because we don't have… We've got carrots and sticks as the tools of leadership. Pastors don't have any sticks. I mean, my two-star Air Force general friend has a bunch of big sticks. My business corporate leaders, they can persuade with money or The threat of-
Bill Hendricks:
That's right. Or the position or… right.
Andy McQuitty :
… being terminated.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, terminated.
Andy McQuitty :
But in the ministry, I mean-
Bill Hendricks:
You lean on somebody, they may just walk.
Andy McQuitty :
That's right. And so it's a mix of wise human interactions and solid leadership principles that I think go back and forth between the church and the corporate world, military world. I mean, leadership principles are the same, but you just have a different perspective and I think a harder challenge as a pastor. And so that's how it's always been, even what we might have termed the good old days back before we entered into this country, into the roiling social upheavals of the sixties and sexuality and with the genders and with racial issues, and then all the stuff lately with wokeism and grooming. I mean, it's amazing to me how rapidly-
Bill Hendricks:
These all have come up now.
Andy McQuitty :
… these kinds of challenges have snowballed. And pastors, I mean, we're sitting out there in our churches trying to lead our people in this culture that's just coming down on us like a flood. And people are asking, "What do we do? What do we believe? What is right? Should we do this? Should we do that? Who do we vote for?" I mean, the politics going on. 2020, 2022. Oh my goodness. We're coming up to 2024 and it's another presidential election year.
Bill Hendricks:
Exactly. And you get it from both sides or all sides.
Andy McQuitty :
You do.
Bill Hendricks:
You try to speak biblically and pastorally into any issue, and so you say some things. And one person comes up and says, "Pastor, there you go. You're going off on craziness." And then somebody else comes up and goes, "Pastor, I hand it to you that you tried to say something, but man, you just fell far short of what you needed to say. You needed to be much, much more challenging."
Andy McQuitty :
This is the other major difference between pastoral leadership and being a general in the Air Force or being a CEO, is that as a pastor, everybody in your congregation feels like they're qualified to preach that sermon or to take that position just as much as you are. And when you deviate from their idea about it, they feel free to tell you about it.
Bill Hendricks:
You're the worst pastor in the world.
Andy McQuitty :
I used to speak at a convention of coaches in Texas. I love coaches, football coaches especially. I'd get with these guys and I'd say, "I really understand what you guys go through. You're down there on the sidelines in a tight high school football game," which in Texas is like professional teams, in some places.
Bill Hendricks:
Yep, absolutely. Yeah, the competition.
Andy McQuitty :
And you make a call. What do we do? It's fourth and one, and we're behind by three, and we're on the 20 yard line. Do we go? And you make a call. Problem is, everybody in the stands think they know what you should do-
Bill Hendricks:
And they're going to tell you about it.
Andy McQuitty :
And they think they're just a better coach. And I said, that's what it's like for me sometimes preaching and I'm looking out and everybody out there feels just the same way. So I understand you, but it's always been difficult. But I do think Bill, man, through the pandemic and in the aftermath of it, I mean, oh my gosh.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, I think I saw a statistic that you gave. It was 1500 pastors were leaving the pastorate.
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah. Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Was it per month or something?
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah, at the height of the pandemic, we were losing up to 1500 pastors a month in this country. The churches were locked down. And this is mostly pastors out in the hinterlands. They're not in metropolitan areas where they have a lot of peer communities-
Bill Hendricks:
Resources.
Andy McQuitty :
… like pastors or resources or whatever. And when they got locked down, I mean, they had no people coming to church. They had therefore no money flowing in. Therefore they had no encouragement, and they were just withering on the vine. We were losing 1500 a month.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Andy McQuitty :
I know in Canada, 600 churches shut their doors permanently,
Bill Hendricks:
Never opened.
Andy McQuitty :
Never opened again. I don't know how many closed in America. But that's the stat. Here I am sitting in my little retirement. I handed off IBC to Barry not a year before the lockdowns came. And I felt really guilty. I felt really kind of relieved. I'm glad I'm not in that hot seat right now, leading through with masks and in person and distancing and all the stuff they had to go through.
Bill Hendricks:
You felt like a president that's served his term and now he goes into the retirement with the Secret Service and taken care of. And the year after he leaves, World War III breaks out for the next guy.
Andy McQuitty :
So you feel guilty that you're not in the fray, but you also feel a little relieved it's not me. But all that God used to kind of work on me, it broke my heart. And it was like the Lord was saying to me, "Look, I want you to help. You can do something here."
Bill Hendricks:
So tell us, where did that vision for Kaleo come from?
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah. Well, basically you started it, Bill. I can't remember exactly when it was. It was a couple of years before the pandemic, but I remember you reached out to me and a couple of our pastor friends here in the DFW area and asked us to come up to the Leadership Center. And just in your boardroom up there, I remember you just threw out to us, "Hey, look, here at the Leadership Center, we're trying to figure out a way to support the guys in ministry that come through here. And they go out, and we want to help them and bless them. And we are just interviewing pastors about your ideas about how we might go about that.
And I think what you were thinking about at that time was gathering pastors in some sort of ongoing groups or cohorts, and you were just asking us, what did we think about that? Would it work? Would we be involved in all that kind of stuff? And I was intrigued by… I thought it was a great question because I've always thought that pastors ought to have an ongoing continuing education kind of morale and peer group support system all rolled into one.
Bill Hendricks:
Their peers who know their world and their situation.
Andy McQuitty :
That's right. And so I came to the meeting very enthusiastic, and I don't even remember what I said. I took notes. I said, "Thank you very much." And so that was the last I thought about it until I'm in the middle of this pandemic shutdown, and God is just pounding on me, like, "I want you to do something." And I said, "Well, what?" And my meeting with you up here at the Leadership Center came into my mind. That's what. I want you to get guys together. There've been so many studies. One of the studies that I go to is the Lilly Endowment.
Bill Hendricks:
They do a lot of in this whole area.
Andy McQuitty :
Back in 2010, I think in 2010, they had been at a nine-year study of what contributes to the flourishing of pastors in their calling. And they spent $10 million. They interviewed a hundred thousand people. I mean, it was a major thing over a nine-year period. They released the results in 2010. And basically, and I quote this on our website, in our little elevator speech video that I made, telling what Kaleo is about, is that they spent $10 million over nine years trying to answer the question, what is it that pastors can do that will help them flourish in their ministry? And they came up with this: being an ongoing peer group for the purposes of support, encouragement, and learning. And not only did they discover that those pastors that were involved in ongoing relationships with their peers contributed to the flourishing of their pastorate, it contributed to the growth of their church,
Bill Hendricks:
Sure, which makes sense.
Andy McQuitty :
It does. And they studied the churches of those who were engaged in these peer groups and found that there's a direct one-to-one correlation. I mean, you got a pastor who's receiving regular ongoing support, encouragement and leadership training in a community of his peers, and that church is also going to be growing. And it just hit me, okay, this is it.
Bill Hendricks:
It reminds me of what Tom Nelson says. Families don't thrive unless their church is thriving, but churches don't thrive unless their pastor's thriving. And so there's a lot of dominoes here that are involved.
Andy McQuitty :
Well, one of the things… Interesting that you quote Tommy on that, because I've heard him say that, and he's so right. And when I retired in 2019 from being senior pastor to IBC, I had been kind of kicking the tires of possibly getting into kind of a pastoral consulting kind of ministry and so forth. And I spent a lot of time looking at becoming like a church consultant. I've come in… I've got a good friend, Reggie McNeil, who came in and consulted with us at IBC a couple of times over the years. And I liked Reggie. I liked his style. I liked what he did for us. And I thought, yeah, I could see myself doing that. And then I began to realize that what Tommy said is so true, and that is, "Hey, the church… I mean, you can go as a consultant to help a church thrive, but if you really want to help it at the grassroots, you got to help that pastor because if you get the pastor, the church is going to come along."
Bill Hendricks:
And helping that pastor is not just giving them a bunch of advice and technical know-how. I mean, that's always beneficial. But you mentioned earlier, you're really talking about his soul, what's going on inside of him.
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah. I brought an article here that I stuck in my file a couple of years ago. It's Tish Harrison Warren, great writer. And this is New York Times. She's talking about why pastors are burning out. And this article is 2022.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, fairly recent.
Andy McQuitty :
But she quotes the Barna study that everybody quotes that was taken in 2022. They did a huge survey of pastors in America and found that 42% of pastors are thinking seriously about quitting right now.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Andy McQuitty :
This is a year ago. It is pretty serious. And then Tish comments on that in just a couple sentences that I want to read to you that I think really capture our heart at Kaleo Collective for what guys are going through and how we want to help them. She says, "In the Barna study, the top reported reasons for clergy burnout were the same ones that people in the population at large face. This is a burnout, stress, loneliness, and political division." I mean CEO of Exxon, right down here in Las Colinas, he's susceptible to burnout for those same reasons as a pastor. Stress, loneliness, and political divisions. And those are part of the warp and woof of a pastor's challenge and looking out at a sea of faces on Sunday morning. Man, you got divisions. You've got all the stuff that's going on in this cultural moment.
But then she continues. She says, "But these stressors affect pastors in a unique way." And I think she's right. "Pastors bear not only their own pain, but also the weight of an entire community's grief, divisions and anxieties. They are charged with the task of continuing to love and care for even those within their church who disagree with them vehemently and vocally. These past years required them to make decisions they were not prepared for that affected the health and spiritual formation of their community, and any decisions they made would likely mean that someone in their church could feel hurt or marginalized."
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Andy McQuitty :
This is insight into this unique difficulty of being a pastor, is that not only do you have intellectual decisions to make, financial decisions to make, program and policy decisions to make, you've got spiritual and political decisions to make.
Bill Hendricks:
Everything's personal.
Andy McQuitty :
It is. And-
Bill Hendricks:
Because it's a bunch of interlocking relationships.
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah, yeah. And I just think that the pressure of all that is just too much. There is too much demanded from pastors today than what their training and experience has prepared them for. And I'm working on a book right now with another longtime pastoral friend of mine, Dr. Larry Parsley, who was recently ensconced down in Waco at Truett Seminary as a professor of theology and pastoral theology. But he and I are writing this book together. It's called Hobo Pastor, in which we are going back through and realizing all the things that in our long ministries we came to find were essential to success that we never learned in seminary. I hope the walls here at DTS don't close on me. But I came on campus here during accreditation hearings a few times. I don't know why they brought me back, "Hey, how did we do in preparing you for the ministry?" And I lowered the boom a couple of times, but here I am still. And that's not DTS's fault. It's an academic institution. I think-
Bill Hendricks:
It's part of the reality of training.
Andy McQuitty :
Pastoral ministry is something you can't learn in a classroom.
Bill Hendricks:
No, no. And even if we gave you the information at the time-
Andy McQuitty :
It wouldn't mean anything.
Bill Hendricks:
I memorize it, I take the test, I'm done. And then you get out there in leadership, and suddenly now what was just a footnote in class, now I need a crash course in.
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah. You're looking back through your class notes saying, "Please let somebody have said what to do."
Bill Hendricks:
It's a case of when the student is ready, the teacher will show up, right?
Andy McQuitty :
That's exactly right. And the teacher often is hard experiences.
Bill Hendricks:
Hard knocks.
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah. But the overall motivating factor for me in pulling together the Kaleo Collective is just the remembrance of a peer group of my peers that kept me going here in Dallas for 30 years.
Bill Hendricks:
That walked with you for 30 years.
Andy McQuitty :
I think it was my experience with my guys, I called them. I've said some of their names before we started this, prominent pastors in Dallas and Fort Worth. We used to just get together once a month and we'd share around. Somebody would put the food on, we'd go all in, close the doors. What happened behind closed doors with all those senior pastors stayed behind closed doors.
Bill Hendricks:
That's key.
Andy McQuitty :
And we dealt with everything in there. We dealt with moral failures of staff members. We dealt with failed capital campaigns. We dealt with church splits. I mean, I could go on and on.
Bill Hendricks:
I'm sure.
Andy McQuitty :
And we kept-
Bill Hendricks:
People's anxiety, their depression, their grief-
Andy McQuitty :
Very transparent.
Bill Hendricks:
… their trauma that they remember, all that stuff.
Andy McQuitty :
All that stuff. And it was once a month, and it was just senior pastors, we get together. I could have saved Lilly $10 million if they would've just came to me and said, "What helps you?" It's my guys. So when we came through the pandemic and the Lord's tapping on my shoulder saying, "Look, I want you to do something about this." And I'm remembering, I'm remembering that day up at the Leadership Center with you talking about getting pastors together. I'm remembering my own experience in doing that. Not organized, but just us guys. And it went for 30 years. It went for 30 years.
And I thought, that's all I want to do. I want to find a way to facilitate guys getting together in peer communities where they can deal with soul care issues and leadership best practices, where they can become a band of brothers who have enduring not just relationships, but friendships, that we get together and we go through, "Hey, what are the bent nails that are going on in your ministry?" I call them bent nails. You know when you're pounding that thing and you just can't get… Like, "I can't get a capital campaign launched. I've got conflict on my board. I've got a staff member who's being dishonest." And we bring these up, and we talk about them on a regular basis. Also, the way that we have Kaleo set up, we have a 90-minute Zoom call. And we do this via Zoom so the guys can participate no matter where they are.
Bill Hendricks:
So it's not geographically bound.
Andy McQuitty :
It's not. I would prefer if it was because-
Bill Hendricks:
You always want to meet in person.
Andy McQuitty :
… our group was in person. But if there's one thing that pastors in America learned during the pandemic is how to do a Zoom call. So I thought a lot of the pastors that need this most are probably going to be out there. And so by-
Bill Hendricks:
They're in a small town or a remote area or-
Andy McQuitty :
Exactly. Making the Zoom call an option includes them.
Bill Hendricks:
They may not be part of a denomination of any sort.
Andy McQuitty :
Right. They may not have any support systems, but they can be part of our cohorts and benefit, the whole thing. So we have a 90-minute Zoom call with what I call our cohort pastor, Kaleo cohort pastor, who's an old guy like me. I've got some friends. I call them sages, ministry sages, successful, experienced pastors. Most of them are not full-time. Some of them are retired like me. Some of them are, and still in the ministry.
Bill Hendricks:
When you say successful, I'm assuming by that you mean not so much that, oh yeah, they had this massive church. It's like, no, they stayed the course for 30 years in the pastorate, and they were effective in that role.
Andy McQuitty :
And thank you for clarifying that. That is my definition of success, is being a faithful pastor over the years and keeping your family, keeping your own soul together, keeping your family together, and being a blessing to your church and your church and your community. It doesn't have to be big, but I do think that longevity is part of my definition of success, because the best things only come after a period of time.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and because pastoring, by its nature… I mean, this is right out of the scriptures. In many ways, it's like farming. It's like growing an arbor of trees. It doesn't happen overnight. It's time with people over time and time with families over time. Because you've not only got to build a relationship, but that's how people grow. It takes time to grow.
Andy McQuitty :
That's exactly right. That's one of the things that breaks my heart about the fallout from the lockdowns in driving a lot of people out of the ministry because they just lacked what they needed to sustain in there, and thereby killing their longevity.
Bill Hendricks:
Is the elephant in the room, I guess I'd say isolation or loneliness? Is that kind of the nut of it?
Andy McQuitty :
I think the isolation is the loneliness.
Bill Hendricks:
Somebody's trying to do it on their own.
Andy McQuitty :
But being alone in that situation, but also I think sometimes feeling inadequate. In the Barna study, they asked about 12 different questions about what is it that is stressing you in the ministry? And the things that rose to the surface were loneliness and stress. But also number four, I think, was a feeling that our church is not doing well, and I can't fix it. In other words, I feel like I don't have the resources to turn this thing around. And in other words, I need help. I need some leadership coaching. I need some shared experiences from others who have faced similar challenges, and what did you do and how did you manage that?
So yeah, I think the loneliness is kind of the hotbed of a lot of these self-doubt questions that pastors are asking. They're going, "I wonder if other guys feel as blue as I do on Monday after you preach your heart out on Sunday. I wonder if other guys feel like their church is stuck and that they're not going to ever be able to get it unstuck. I wonder how other guys handle specific issues like conflict with your leadership." And they have to wonder all these questions alone, where what we're trying to do in Kaleo is say, "Hey, we're coming into a group here where we're putting all our stuff on the table."
And what I've learned in my cohort that I've been leading is that this thing just catches fire. Because I have nine guys in my cohort right now, and I meet with them in a personal Zoom every month for 30 minutes and then once all together. But in those personal 30 minute Zooms, I'm getting in the weeds with them. "Okay, what questions do you want to ask me?" I say right off the bat. And man, they come up with, "How do I do that? I got a problem here. This thing's killing me over here." And I'll work through it with them then as much as I can. But then we'll bring it to the group in the big thing. And it never fails. "I just had that."
Bill Hendricks:
I was going to say, I bet there's a lot of-
Andy McQuitty :
"We just went through that.
Bill Hendricks:
"Oh, you too, huh?"
Andy McQuitty :
And so it's like-
Bill Hendricks:
"I'm not the only one."
Andy McQuitty :
CS Lewis said, "This is why we read, so that we know that it happened to them too." I mean, it happens to our brothers in the ministry too. And they become now-
Bill Hendricks:
Peer mentors.
Andy McQuitty :
… peer mentors. And we're throwing out, "Okay, read this book. Call this-
Bill Hendricks:
This person, right. Resource, right.
Andy McQuitty :
… fundraising. Do this." We've had a couple of occasions where we had an elder in one guy's church had been basically put on suspension because he had made sexually suggestive statements to the secretary at the church. And the other elders had just put him on suspension. And this young pastor was telling us, and "Yeah, this is my church. What about this?" And one or two of our older guys, they stepped in and said, "Okay, look, you're in the weeds here legally. You've got to back this thing up. You've got to get him out. You've got to call this. You can't just let this thing… try to put it under the carpet. You could lose the whole church in a lawsuit."
Bill Hendricks:
You got too much exposure.
Andy McQuitty :
And so in that way-
Bill Hendricks:
You got wisdom.
Andy McQuitty :
… the experience of the group comes in, and everybody's feeling like, I got a stake in your ministry and you have a stake in my ministry. And we're like a band of brothers in this together. And that's the dynamic that I had for 30 years with my guys here. It's the dynamic we want to create in the collective.
Bill Hendricks:
It's that feeling of, wow, these guys are for me. They want to help me and see me succeed.
Andy McQuitty :
Yeah, yeah. And that is the chief challenge that we have in getting guys to come into the groups as participants. Because most pastors' concept of other preachers and ministers getting together in a group is your average local ministerial association. You smiled as soon as I said that. Everybody knows the ministerial association that meets every month is you get a bunch of the preachers in the room, and it's like everybody's posing and posturing-
Bill Hendricks:
It's a gamesmanship thing.
Andy McQuitty :
It's competitive and it's gamesmanship. It's who's got the biggest church?
Bill Hendricks:
Who's got the political power?
Andy McQuitty :
And nobody that I know wants that anymore.
Bill Hendricks:
No, no.
Andy McQuitty :
And so I'm just saying to everybody, Kaleo is the opposite of that. We are not interested in getting guys in groups so that they can be competing with each other, boost their self-esteem by comparing themselves to others or lose their self-esteem by comparing. That's not what this is about at all. We are here to love each other and to help each other and to pray for each other and to hold each other's hands up.
Bill Hendricks:
I would assume that one of your biggest recruiting tools, if you will, are the pastors that are in the groups, and then a buddy of theirs is, "Hey, I got to get together." And they spill their guts and the person says, "Well, man, you should come check my group out."
Andy McQuitty :
That I believe is going to be the primary recruiting methodology once we get this thing to a tipping point where we're big enough to have that kind of clout. Right now, I'm relying much on Jeremiah's exhortation, "Do not despise the day of small things."
Bill Hendricks:
There you go.
Andy McQuitty :
We're very small.
Bill Hendricks:
Do not despise small beginnings.
Andy McQuitty :
And my main job in these days is I'm trying my best to recruit cohort pastors, older experienced guys who will basically say, "Hey, look." And I'm hiring them as independent contractors to work with me. I'm paying them to do this.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, I think that's an excellent avenue for people who they've kind of been faithful and they've had a pretty decent run, and they're not quite ready to just go play golf all day. They're like, "I want to do something." Well, here's something you could do.
Andy McQuitty :
And they have so much to offer.
Bill Hendricks:
So much
Andy McQuitty :
All those years of experience, much of it in the crucible. They have so much wisdom to give. And so I'm basically just recruiting personally these cohort pastors. And then it's their responsibility-
Bill Hendricks:
To go find guys.
Andy McQuitty :
… to go and recruit guys to participate in their cohorts. And this process is all on our website and so forth. But I think that… Okay, let me give you my two biggest problems in recruiting cohort pastors and cohort pastor participants into the group. My biggest problems with my cohort pastors is many of them are retired. Not all of them are. And the ones that are not retired that I'm still approaching because I know they could do so much good for these younger pastors, "I don't have time." And I understand that. If somebody-
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, had come to you.
Andy McQuitty :
If younger me had approached me back when I was full in the saddle at IBC, I wouldn't even have considered it.
Bill Hendricks:
I can't handle what I got on my plate.
Andy McQuitty :
Exactly. But what I come back to them with, it hasn't been a successful rebuttal yet, is that you could be a cohort pastor… Basically if you have 10 guys in your group it's only about nine hours a month, and you get paid for it.
Bill Hendricks:
But the impact.
Andy McQuitty :
And you do some good.
Bill Hendricks:
The impact.
Andy McQuitty :
So it's not that much time. And by the way, I don't care how many cohorts a guy wants to lead. You can do that. But if you just do one, it's not that much. So for all of you sages out there, I want to put a guilt trip on you. You got a bunch of young people out here dying on the vine. They need your help.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, they do.
Andy McQuitty :
But then to the participants… At first, it was a real hard sell for me to get anybody to join my cohort. And again, it was the time issue. They thought, "I don't have time for something else." I mean, if anything, they feel more put upon than even older guys in the churches. But I think the other resistance from pastors out there that are laboring is they just don't want to get into that old ministerial association thing, and especially if they don't already have a personal relationship with you. Of my guys, the majority of my guys, I already knew them, had a relationship with them-
Bill Hendricks:
from the ministry.
Andy McQuitty :
And they said, "I'd love to be part of that." But there are a couple that didn't know me before. And man, it took me a long time. And I think it's just because they're a little skittish about committing to some sort of an ongoing peer group that-
Bill Hendricks:
They don't know about.
Andy McQuitty :
They're not sure they're going to like it or… So I'll just say this, you can get out of this real quick. I mean, give us a month's notice and you're out. We don't want you to, but you-
Bill Hendricks:
You're not trying to lock anybody in.
Andy McQuitty :
It's not the whole rest of your life. And for those who are interested in kicking the tires a little bit before you commit, I have guests in my Zoom cohort all the time, and we'd love to have you come in for a guest. Call up one of our cohort pastors, talk with us personally, get to know us, whatever. I do think that once this thing gets some wheels to it and we get more cohort pastors populating their cohorts and having great influence and success, I think we're going to-
Bill Hendricks:
You get a track record going.
Andy McQuitty :
… get to a point where, as you said before, word of mouth, that what's going to do it. But we're in the trenches right now.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Well, our time's gone. Andy, this has just been so rich. And I guess I just want to encourage our listeners, particularly pastoral leaders. You said, "I don't know if I want to do that. I don't know if we have time for that." It's like saying, "I don't know if I got time to sleep." I mean, I think it's that crucial to their literal health and their soul's health. And the image that comes to my mind, and we'll finish with this, is just, it's like mountain climbing. And I'm talking like in the Alps or the Himalayas or something.
You go mountain climbing, you always go with a group of people and they're all tied to each other because it's treacherous up there. And if somebody slips and falls, they've got somebody to belay them and pull them back. But man, if you're trying to do that on your own, I mean, you could fall, and you could fall thousands of feet to your death and nobody would even hear you. And to me, it's that serious. So that's why I'm so thankful for the work you're doing, and I certainly endorse it and encourage it-
Andy McQuitty :
I appreciate it.
Bill Hendricks:
… encourage pastors to check out the Kaleo Collective. Thank you for being with us today on The Table.
Andy McQuitty :
Thank you for having me, Bill. If the guys or gals want to go to the website, it's kaleocollective.org.
Bill Hendricks:
Dot org, okay.
Andy McQuitty :
And it's Kaleo-
Bill Hendricks:
K-A-L-E-O.
Andy McQuitty :
… with a K.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Andy McQuitty :
Right. And it's all theological people who should know.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I was assuming that pastors knew how to spell it.
Andy McQuitty :
You're right. But I don't make any assumptions anymore.
Bill Hendricks:
If they took Greek.
Andy McQuitty :
That's right. If they did. So thank you. Thank you, Bill, for having me.
Bill Hendricks:
You're welcome. It's been a pleasure. And I want to thank you for joining us today on The Table podcast. You can subscribe to The Table on your favorite subscription service, and we look forward to seeing you next time on The Table. I'm Bill Hendricks. Have a good day.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to the Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center here at Dallas Theological Seminary. And our topic today is film, the arts, the Christian, and in particular, Sundance Film Festival. Now, those of you who are aware of the calendar know that the Sundance Film Festival takes place normally in January. It takes place in January. It's not normally, it takes place in January, but we have waited a few months to talk about it, to see where Sundance lands. And I have two really qualified people to talk with me about this. First is Claude Alexander, who is a leader at the Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has been there for 29 years. That's not bad, Claude. That's a good long tenure. What is that?
Claude Alexander:
Darrell Bock:
Claude Alexander:
Darrell Bock:
- We need to update your bio. Okay. All right. You're chasing me. I'm in my 42nd year here at Dallas Seminary.
Claude Alexander:
There we go.
Darrell Bock:
There we go. Yeah.
Claude Alexander:
There we go.
Darrell Bock:
And he also serves as the chaplain for Windrider, a group we'll be talking about later on in the podcast. And then Craig Detweiler is president of the Wedgwood Circle and dean of College of Arts and Media at Grand Canyon University and has a variety of film credits to his name, as well as written several books related to the arts and film, Deep Focus, Film and Theology in Dialogue in particular. So, I couldn't have two more qualified people to think about the integration of theology and film than Claude and Craig. So let me dive in. And Craig, I'll start with you. How did a guy like you get into a gig like this? How in the world does someone who's thinking about theology end up focusing their life on film?
Craig Detweiler:
I think because film animated my imagination and stirred my spirit before I had ever heard the words personal relationship in Jesus Christ in the same sentence. And so, my categories for understanding faith fell in after I tried to understand what does manhood look like based on Humphrey Bogart or Robert De Niro or all of these maybe non-role models that I was studying in film, but trying to also try to figure out how to live a purposeful life. I guess movies were giving me an idea of what happy endings look like and how you write them. So I've always integrated these two things, faith and film.
Darrell Bock:
So In the beginning there was film and then there was Christ.
Craig Detweiler:
Maybe in my own heart and mind, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Okay. That's pretty interesting. Claude, how did you get interested in this topic?
Claude Alexander:
Well, film was something that my mom and I would always do. And so, I loved film. I mean, I just loved movies. And then, in the course of going to seminary at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, there was a course Theology and Film, and that was it. That was all that it took in terms of the integration. And so, since that was around 1987, so it's been on since 1987.
Darrell Bock:
And Craig, how does one train, and maybe that's not the right word, but how does one train to integrate theology and film? I think for a lot of people, that seem like two such very different things. Of course, at their core, they're all dealing with issues of life. But how does one train for that?
Craig Detweiler:
Well, in both cases, you're dealing with a text. One begins with a written word, one maybe begins more with a visual word, with moving images. So in both cases, you're trying to unpack a story. You're trying to figure out maybe the surface meaning, and then try to get the subtext, trying to do some history, try to do some homework. So whether you're doing biblical exegesis Jesus or maybe a visual exegesis of film, it's really similar. It's trying to get at the author's intent. It's trying to get at how it applies and what it means, what it meant in its day, and what it means for me today. And so, I don't see it as complimentary. In fact, in our book, we talk about the lenses that we bring to film, maybe a visual lens, maybe a cinematographer's lens, a audio lens, a musical lens. And then we're doing the same thing with Scripture. We're bringing our lenses of our life and what are the lenses that were influencing the author, and then how do we find, in a sense, God's lens, what's the spirit saying to us through that process?
Darrell Bock:
I was talking to someone, well, earlier this week or the end of last week, I guess, about film, about the chosen. We were talking about that in particular. And I said, what most people don't realize when something like that gets done, how many questions a cinematographer has to ask or a director about everyday life, that what does this look like, how did this work, how does that happen, et cetera, which most people probably don't even think about being a part of really trying to present a film if you're going to be wrestling with the authenticity of what it is you're looking back- looking at as you look back in time.
Craig Detweiler:
And I think if we, again, go back to the Scripture and start to understand why was Jesus pulling all these agricultural metaphors or fishing metaphors, it's like, well, that was the context, right? He's literally pointing to something that's all around, that people can see and hear, and might be right in front of them as daily reminders and sermon illustrations.
Darrell Bock:
So Claude, as a pastor, and I know you've got family that has stayed in this space as well, I think, is your daughter still at Windrider working there?
Claude Alexander:
No, now she is in Ecuador with the Peace Corps.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow. Girl on the move.
Claude Alexander:
Yeah, there you go.
Craig Detweiler:
That's called the twenties. Right? There's your twenties.
Claude Alexander:
There you go.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Claude Alexander:
There you go.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. But she worked at a while at Windrider. Talk about your association with Windrider as a chaplain there, and what attracted you to doing that?
Claude Alexander:
So besides the fact that my daughter was there, the fact that here is an institution with a theological underpinning, it's tied to Fuller Seminary that is effectively engaging the arts and culture space in a major way by its presence at Sundance. You don't get a greater open door than that. And so, to see the commitment that John Priddy and others have to that, to see the level of excellence at which they operate, to witness the reach, I mean, to be able to bring on these producers and directors of major films, to have served in the development of an Oscar winner, all of that appealed to me, and it was just something that I couldn't refuse.
Darrell Bock:
So Windrider hosts us when we take students to Sundance and provides a Christian lens, to use Craig's term, into the world of the arts and thinking about the world of the arts and what it offers to Christians. When I tell people that I spend one week out of the academic year at the Sundance Film Festival as a New Testament person who also works in cultural engagement, I think people look at me cross-eyed and say, "What? How does that work?" So, let's talk a little bit about film and the arts because I think this is an important conversation. So let's talk about what is Sundance and why should what happens at Sundance matter to people of faith. All right, Craig?
Craig Detweiler:
Well, it's the largest market for independent film in America, and probably one of the most influential, I would say, in a sense, king makers or queen makers regarding talent, new talent. And so, going there puts you ahead of the cultural conversation. A solid six months. In some cases, maybe three, four years. At Sundance, we were there when Ava DuVernay won Best Director way before she did a film like Selma. We saw Ryan Coogler's first film, Fruitvale Station far before he did Black Panther. Damien Chazelle broke through with winning a film called Whiplash One at Sundance, way before La La Land was competing and winning Oscars. So, it's a chance to meet the culture shapers and makers and get ahead of what's coming, and start to, I think, exegete the cultural conversation and think about a thoughtful response before it hits the broader culture.
Darrell Bock:
Claude, as I think about this, and this is one of the reasons we take students, is it's a way of putting your ear to the ground and listening to what the culture is wrestling with about life and thinking through those kinds of issues, and hearing people wrestling to put life together who may not have a connection to God, but are still trying to ask core questions about how life works. And I find that to be pretty fascinating.
Claude Alexander:
Well, the old adage, Karl Barth said, "Have your Bible and a newspaper." Right? Well, in today's society is have your Bible and you have film or media, visual media, and the way in which we come to terms with understanding the thoughts, beliefs, feelings, perceptions, is really generated through visual arts and visual media. So the opportunity to be exposed, as Craig said, six months to three years ahead of time, because independent film, that's where it's happening and that's where the cutting edge is, and so to be able to be present there gives us an unusual opportunity worth taking advantage of.
Darrell Bock:
And for me, the opportunity is, like I say, putting kind of an ear to the ground with what people are wrestling with and how they see the world and how they are thinking about what's happening in front of them and trying to make sense out of it. I mean, you go to the film festival and you watch these films that really deal with very interesting kinds of topics. I'm thinking in particular, and I'm trying to think of the name of this as I'm thinking about it, but you sit down and there was one film, for example, I think it's called A Still Small Voice, that took a close look at chaplaincy training at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. And you're watching chaplains being trained, and what they're having to deal with and face at some of life's most traumatic moments.
And the filmmaker is trying to process… Of course, we interviewed the filmmaker and we asked him, "so how did this film impact you to be filming these situations where you're ministering to a couple that's just lost a child in a miscarriage?" Or in fact, the interesting scene was we had a Jewish chaplain who was performing a prayer and a service for a Christian family that had lost a child and was engaged in a form of Christian liturgy as a Jewish person. He was just trying to minister to this person. And it's a very poignant moment in the entire film. Meanwhile, she's struggling with all she's having to cope with in the midst of all that and the tensions that, I mean, that's life as it's happening in many ways.
So to me, it seems that one of the values is this ability to overhear what people are wrestling with and struggling with and trying to put life together. And I think that makes for very interesting reflection for someone who is also thinking about the gospel and what God's doing in the world. That's an open-ended comment and can go to either of you. What do you think.
Craig Detweiler:
Bishop?
Claude Alexander:
Well, in listening to him, he also had a relative who was in the chaplaincy that served as the motivation that piqued his curiosity. And so, being drawn in through that, it was personal and you could sense how personal it was by the way in which he made it. Craig can speak to how a director's or a producer's personal experience and motivation impacts how a film is done and what one feels. But that's certainly an example of that.
Craig Detweiler:
From the beginning, with Windrider, we've always wanted to bring aspiring filmmakers who have a chance to learn from role models, as well as ministers in training, or maybe ministers who are already in the field, who are trying to figure out what are those questions being asked by these artists or being asked through the stories that these artists are telling. And so, I think Sundance being really strong in the documentary category gives us windows into major world conflicts that are hard to get our heads around, but I think even last year, there was 20 days in Mariupol-
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I'm going there next, so that's good. Bring it up.
Craig Detweiler:
Right. The Russian invasion.
Darrell Bock:
Yup.
Craig Detweiler:
The Russian invasion in Ukraine couldn't be more timely. And yet to have a camera that's there, sitting with the victims, sitting with the folks struggling with it, it's going to move your heart, it's going to move your mind, and then it's going to cause you to go deeper and try to understand more, and then also try to understand where is Jesus in the middle of that conflict and how do I respond as a person of faith?
So whether it's chaplaincy. There was a beautiful doc called the Eternal memory about Alzheimer's, maybe you're dealing with aging in your congregation. Beyond Utopia was about Pastor Kim in helping defectors from North Korea. These are major geopolitical conflicts that all have these faith issues floating around and essentially as part of them. And so, rather than seeing those things as separate from us, Sundance gets it into your soul, I think, in the right kind of way.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, that's a great description. I was just going to say, one of the things that these films do, because they're usually done if it's done by a competent crew, is to pull you in and make you experience what you are seeing to a degree. And so, rather than it being an abstract discussion with no names, no faces, no reality, it's in cinematographic Technicolor or whatever, with Dolby sound on top of it, and you're pulled in. And of course, when you're in a theater, you're immersed in what's in front of you. And so, it's maybe the ultimate Baptist experience of immersion. I don't know.
So you're confronted with this, and if the characterization is done, well, of course you get a sense of knowing the people and what they're wrestling with in the midst of these often challenging scenarios, which I think causes anyone with any kind of sensitive or pastoral heart to be sensitive to what's going on around them relationally and not just doctrinally, if I can make that distinction. And so, all of that, it seems to me is important in developing someone who's thinking about being a mature Christian in a world that's obviously filled with all kinds of challenges because of the fallenness of the world that we live in.
Claude Alexander:
Darrell, you mentioned the last word, fallenness. One of the themes that ran throughout our time was the notion of brokenness and how many of the filmmakers were seeking to address that in one form or another. How do we come to terms with it? How do we rise above it, the ability to own it and transcend it, that was a constant theme throughout.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that I find attractive having gone now for a few years, is everyone's dealing with… they recognize what's going on and they're trying to come to grips with it. And to see it from this angle or that angle is a way of beginning to come to grips with sometimes how complex some of these situations that people put themselves in can be, or that life circumstances put them in. So brokenness is a good term, and it does something else, Claude, that I think is important, and that's a good alternative term to fallenness. Because I think one of the things that Christians do is they will park on the fallenness part, this is where this comes up short, whereas it's the brokenness that produces the pastoral connection and relational connection that also has to be dealt with.
Claude Alexander:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And so, both of those are important in the conversation. And what I find, and I think this is what surprised me about my own Sundance experience, is there are so many things that non-believers, I'll say it that way, are seeing and feeling and sensing that I tend to think sometimes in the church we miss because we're in the fallenness box rather than the brokenness box.
Claude Alexander:
Yeah. So a prime example of that, one of those short films Just Hold On?
Darrell Bock:
Yes.
Claude Alexander:
About the girl who rides sheep, but she also has pediatric cancer. Now, that is transcending brokenness. That is her ability to rise above this, what many would say cuts life off, but she doesn't allow it to do so she rises above it. Now, whether that gets a lot of play or not, that movie is powerful in its ability to show how we rise above.
Darrell Bock:
Another one along that line is the movie, I think it won the award this last year in one of the categories, I don't remember which, Scrapper, which was about a dad who picked up a relationship with a child, abandoned child who had been returned to him after mom died. And of course, he wasn't planning on ever being a parent to this child. And the movie is about his having to adjust to the presence of this responsibility, for lack of a better description, located inner city London with, well, I can say, all the accents attached there unto in that part of the city. And the challenge of just watching someone cope with having to care for someone when really it seems like, and I think the movie reflected this, it was someone who wasn't used to having to think about caring for someone else and building that relationship, et cetera. I mean, those are the kinds of themes that show up at Sundance that are in the middle of really what ministry oftentimes ends up being, people who have walked into a situation in life that is challenging them immensely and they're looking for help.
Craig Detweiler:
Yeah. Well, and film, I think at its best, I believe Roger Ebert called it an Empathy Machine. Right? It's literally generating feelings of identification, whether it's with the dad in Scrapper, whether it's with a single mom in a film like Flora and Son, whether it's with Iranian families in the Persian version, whether it's with a teacher in Mexico in a film like Radical, it's both an empathy machine and it's also a transportation engine. So it's transporting you to places that you could not easily go, dropping you into situations that you may not be familiar with, and then allowing you, as Bishop Alexander mentioned, to be ushered to a higher plane, a different plane of response, a more transcendent space, because you are out of your comfort zone now, and now your eyes and ears are more attuned to what's happening with other people. And that's when you start to see, gosh, well, if Jesus loves this person, how do I need to love this person? How do I need to care for this person and respond to this situation rather than judging it? Can I enter into it in a compassionate way?
Darrell Bock:
And it does so in a… Go ahead, Claude. Go ahead.
Claude Alexander:
You mentioned that the movie Scrapper, and another part that made it compelling is that it's looking at it from a child's point of view, how the director chooses to give that the point of view can totally alter the experience, and that one is from the child's point of view. There was a movie that we saw, not this past year, but the year before where it was from the wheelchair point of view.
Darrell Bock:
Yes. Yeah.
Claude Alexander:
Do you remember the name of that?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I don't remember the name of it, but it was filmed with the camera on the edge of the wheelchair, so you're looking at everything from that angle. I mean, that was an unbelievable piece of work.
Claude Alexander:
Right? And so, how one chooses to even frame, not just by way of the framing but the point of view, opens up possibilities of consideration that you would not normally have.
Darrell Bock:
Yup. And the thing that I found interesting, and this is one of the things, another thing that I really enjoy about the week is the films come from all over the world. So I mean, in just the what, 10, 15 minutes we've been talking about these films, we've talked about a film that's in the UK. We've talked about a film that's in the Ukraine. We've talked about a film that has Persian roots.
I remember this was two years ago now, I think there was a woman who… Well, there were two films juxtaposed to each other if you paid attention. One was in maternity wards in hospitals in the US, and the other was a woman who gave pregnancy care in where was it? Somewhere in Asia, Myanmar, someplace like that, where there also were religious tensions associated with who she cared for, that kind of thing.
And you're plunged not only to a visual experience and a reflection about life's brokenness, but oftentimes, you're plunged in, in cross cultural way that you have very little chance of replicating as Craig mentioned earlier. I think that's part of the attraction of what happens at Sundance, and you can hear in the undercurrent of what I'm saying, that usually when Christians go to film, they go to film to critique it and say, "This is how this doesn't match up to the Bible or whatever." But actually there are things going on in films that are worth observing and reflecting on, and not coming so much with that critical lens only, but also coming with a lens that says, "Okay, I want to understand the human experience that's being portrayed here, and think about what would be the best way to step into and minister to someone who's in this kind of a situation." Craig, talk about that a little bit, and then we'll talk about some of the technical aspects of film.
Craig Detweiler:
Well, it brings to mind the Leonard Cohen line from one of his songs that says, "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." I think that that's where the beginning with brokenness, as you enter into that, if you make room in your own heart, right, more space in our own hearts through these films, you might find God surprising you in how he's expanding your own vision, your own heart. The film you mentioned, I Didn't See You There, and took you inside Reid Davenport's experience as someone who is experiencing life from a wheelchair and literally seeing things literally from his point of view, where he sits, and thinking about curbs differently, and thinking about streets differently and buses and apartments. He, I think-
Darrell Bock:
And the way people look away when he shows up, I mean-
Craig Detweiler:
It's right there in the title, I Didn't See You There.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Craig Detweiler:
Right? Yeah. So yes, I think having to deal with people who are not like us, who might be viewed as other, whether that's the Afghan immigrant experience in a film like Fremont, whether that's what's going on with Native American women in a film like Fancy Dance, I just find myself a richer person from having given myself 90 minutes, two hours of these folks' vision of life and where they're coming from.
Darrell Bock:
It inevitably causes you to reflect. If it's done well, it inevitably leads you to a place of reflection about an array of life's circumstances. Let me mention another film that at least I saw that I thought was interesting, that as far as I know hasn't been picked up, but raised interesting questions. It was what's called iPod Generation. It was the film about AI and imagining a world in which it would be possible, how can I say this, to give birth to a child without the child actually being in a physical woman's womb, but in a technologically produced environment. And the experience of thinking about that, and then the play that took place, because in this case, it was a woman working for a corporation who wanted her to utilize this service so she could continue to be employed all the way through her pregnancy.
Meanwhile, her husband, who originally didn't want to have anything to do with it, because this artificial womb, I don't know how else to describe it, was at home, and he had to care for it, developed a connection that the woman didn't have. I mean, this is breaking all kinds of stereotypes and stuff, and done with such a sense of humor from a producer, I think who was from Belgium, or at least from Europe. I don't remember if he's Belgian or not. But anyway, the Belgians would do something like this. Anyway, that to me was an interesting film because it shows the way imagination can work in areas of terms of speculating where we could be headed.
Craig Detweiler:
Did you see the Pod Generation, Bishop Claude?
Claude Alexander:
I did. I did. Yeah. Yeah.
Craig Detweiler:
It's available on, I think, you can see it on Amazon or Roku or wherever you buy and rent movies. It's out there now.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, well, that's good. The group I saw it with, a group of students I saw, we were talking about it for a long while after we walked out of the film, just because of the array of… We talked about it in two ways. One, just the issue itself, and then secondly, the skill that we thought the people who put the film together approached a delicate topic and used humor among other things to get there.
Craig Detweiler:
Yeah. Yeah. That's that French director, Sophie Barthes.
Darrell Bock:
Ah.
Craig Detweiler:
Yeah. She's charming. Did you like the film, Bishop Claude? Did you remember it?
Claude Alexander:
I did. I did. So many different levels that it addresses, role reversal, right?
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Claude Alexander:
In terms of the husband as opposed to the wife, this notion of freedom versus responsibility. So, the continuation of technology, being able to "free us, remove us" from things and what happens when we go there.
Darrell Bock:
And institutional pressure, because she was doing this solely because the company that she was working for was asking her to do it, demanding her to do it, rewarding her for doing it. I mean, take your pick, right?
Claude Alexander:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of the above. And again, the scary part is how close one really is to that.
Darrell Bock:
That's right. That's right. Yeah. You were talking about earlier, we were talking about how Sundance puts us ahead of the game in terms of what's being talked about culturally, well, here it's an example of Sundance looking forward and making us think about what may be lying ahead.
Craig Detweiler:
Yeah.
Claude Alexander:
That's right. Yeah.
Craig Detweiler:
That's good.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. It's a fascinating piece.
So let's do a little scorecard checking. Okay? So Craig, this is you. Sundance took place in January. Of course, what happens is people display their films and they're hoping that they get picked up so they can get into wider distribution. I mean, that's the market part of the business part of Sundance. So how did that do this last year? I mean, where did stuff land?
Craig Detweiler:
So the two biggest films to sell, they each sold for around $20 million, a film called Fair Play sold to Netflix, and it's a very, I would call it, a dark thriller about men and women and Wall Street and maybe toxic insecure masculinity and how far you're willing to go if women are getting promotions that you aren't, and where jealousy leads. So that one's heavy. And that's on Netflix. But then Flora and Son was bought by Apple. It stars Bono's daughter, Eve Hewson as a single mom.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, I didn't know that.
Craig Detweiler:
A teen son that she's trying to reach, and it was made by the gentleman who's a musician by background, who made Sing Street and Once. And so, it really allows us to use music as a way to lift our spirits, lift out of our situations, imagine a different world from us. Apple bought it because it involves coaching by a guitar teacher via Zoom and via the computer. So it's about how the power of computer allows us to connect and the power of computers to make beats and make sounds. So it's a bit of a film about creativity, allowing us to get out of our maybe what feels like maybe a trapped situation. So Flora and Son is the feelgood film of the fall, which just released on Apple.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, and I've got some others here, Still and Underrated and A Thousand and One, and they end up all over the place, Apple, Hulu, Peacock.
Craig Detweiler:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And in fact, I think one that we alluded to earlier that we haven't developed and I want to go back to, 12 Days in Mariupol, which was about the siege of Mariupol at the very beginning of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, which ended up, I think, on PBS through the summer, et cetera, one of their major documentary presentations, taking a close look not only at the war, but also giving people a feel of what it takes to be a really top flight photojournalist in a difficult situation.
Craig Detweiler:
That's right. Well, the hard part is there's so much good work, it's very hard to find these things. And oftentimes, if you blink, you'll miss it, which Apple, they funded the Michael Fox documentary, Still, the Steph Curry documentary, Underrated, the Judy Blume documentary. There's a Little Richard documentary. So when you have a celebrity that's easier to get your head around when it's maybe a story that you haven't seen, like A Thousand and One, that's available on Hulu now. You've got Teyana Taylor, a great actor. She's a musician, she's a known entity, but you haven't seen her in this kind of dramatic setting. And if you blink, you miss it in theaters, yet it's really beautifully done hard film, but also beautiful film about dedication and love. Rye Lane is also on Hulu, if you're looking for a Sundance film. Theater Camp is on Hulu also. Those are a little more romantic comedies, a little more lighter flavor, and a little more hopeful in how-
Darrell Bock:
The one built around celebrity, I mean, the first film that I saw this last year when I was at Sundance was the one that featured Brooke Shields and what her life was like when she was very, very young, thrust into a very, we might even say, prematurely sexualized environment, and the way she looks at all that now and what she sees and how she talks to her kids about it, that kind of thing, very interesting feeling. In fact, I was surprised by that film. I walked in saying, "Well, I signed up for this because it was on my menu. I'm not sure I would've volunteered to do this one." But I ended up really being caught by just her wrestling with her own self-awareness, both as she was going through this and then her reflective self-awareness afterwards having been through it, and just what that did to her in her life. In some ways, a frightening film about how she was, I want to say, taken advantage of in order to be thrust into this limelight simply because she was attractive.
Craig Detweiler:
Yeah. And that's also on Hulu, if you want to seek it out.
Claude Alexander:
Yeah. Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. So it's interesting how-
Claude Alexander:
So-
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead, Claude.
Claude Alexander:
So one of the things that you're scratching on, Craig, is the role of streaming and how it has really changed the distribution of movies. 10 years ago, there was no Hulu or Netflix or Prime. And for people out there who might be listening to this, who've witnessed the recent writer strike and don't know, can't make heads or tail of it, can you speak a little bit about that as it relates to how we're viewing films, the access that we have, et cetera?
Craig Detweiler:
Yeah. So Sundance, an independent film fills in this middle space. They're made outside the Hollywood system. So they're made for lower prices, but they also have more freedom of expression. They don't have that pressure with a Marvel film where it's like they need $200 million just to break even or a Star Wars update.
So these are smaller films that are really about bigger ideas. And right now, the rise of streaming has put a squeeze on independent film where there's many more outlets, but they're also not paying at the same rates. And so, for artists and creators to have a sustained career, they've had to say, "Hold on, time out." It can't be that there's just like three $200 million movies, what about the rest of us? How do we sustain a career in film, in TV? And so, the strike was a way of saying, "Hey, due to technology and AI, the ability to duplicate me or to duplicate my work, we want to seek timeout and let's rethink this and let's come up with an equitable distribution for everybody.
And frankly, the streamers have seen good success with Sundance Films. A film like Coda, it was made outside the Hollywood system, it was bought at Sundance by Apple, and then it ended up winning the Oscar for Best Picture. So this is what independent voices are capable of if they have that chance to come to the table. So that's what that strike was about. I'm glad that they're winning, got the creator's way.
Darrell Bock:
If someone wants to dip their toe in this independent film/documentary world, is there a place for them to go to either one, find out what is out there, or two, view some of these films that don't get as wide a distribution? Is there a collection point or at least an information collection point for what's going on?
Craig Detweiler:
Actually, I don't think there is. I think that's a real problem.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting.
Craig Detweiler:
Is that the fragmenting of the audience into all these different forms has made it really tough. I think a few labels have become kind of go-to's, so a company like A24 has a certain brand identity that allows you to say, "Okay, I don't trust that studio, but I trust that brand, A24."
And so, even in the last year at Sundance, they had a film like You Hurt My Feelings starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus. They had a film like Past Lives by a director, Celine Song. It was just gorgeous. But they also had a breakout hit with a film like Talk to Me, a horror film from Australian YouTubers. So they do a range of product and projects that I think are of a slightly higher quality. You think of an Oscar nominee and a winner like Minari, Korean-American immigrant experience film. That was A24 releasing that. So you can trust certain brands within the independent world, I would say.
Darrell Bock:
So that ends up being a challenge then in terms of what goes on. I'm having trouble thinking of the title of this, but the other thing that's interesting is you've got what you might call full length feature films that run your 90 minutes or two hours, and then you've got these little things called shorts. As I'm thinking about this, the reason I'm laughing is they may be short on time, but they're not short on content. And the one that I remember is the one made, I think it's of a black filmmaker with his… I think it was his father or something who he's caring for, and it's about the special connection that they had in the midst of their developed relationship. Man, I can't remember the title of it, but I do remember thinking, "What a interesting work."
Claude Alexander:
Yeah.
Craig Detweiler:
Well, and these are segregated on Windrider, right? You could talk about that a bit?
Claude Alexander:
That's right.
Craig Detweiler:
Yeah.
Claude Alexander:
Yeah. It actually won the Amplify Award, which was Winrider's first award for a black filmmaker, and I forget the title of the film.
Craig Detweiler:
That's fine. I'm going to look it up. I'm going to look it up.
Claude Alexander:
Oh my God!
Craig Detweiler:
Yeah.
Claude Alexander:
Yeah. But it was profound in that it was father-son relationship, grief, mental health, all wrapped up into five to 10 minutes.
Darrell Bock:
And done in animation. I mean, that's the amazing part of it.
Claude Alexander:
And done in animation.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, told the story, but did it in animation. It didn't just do it straight. And so, just a fascinating film about connection. I mean, I remember they had a certain way of communicating when they wanted to talk to each other and a certain code language that they used and that kind of thing.
Craig Detweiler:
Check in.
Darrell Bock:
Check in?
Craig Detweiler:
Check in.
Darrell Bock:
Is that what it's called?
Claude Alexander:
Check in.
Craig Detweiler:
No, that's what they did with each other.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, in packing all kinds of stuff in a short period, another short that I remember, and again, I'm not sure I remember the title of this, maybe it was the one on miscarriage, was it Black Whole? But W-H-O-L-E, which was taking a family through their sense of loss and recovery as they had gone through a miscarriage, which of course can be devastating to a family and reproducing the trauma and the reflection and the experience and the sense of loss. I mean, doing all of that all at the same time, very visually. We have the expression, a picture is worth a thousand words. It's amazing sometimes how much absence of dialogue leads to reflection about what's taking place.
Craig Detweiler:
That's good. That's good. Well, you know where you can find these, if you go to windriderstudios.org, they have all of the award-winning short films that we've featured at Sundance. And so, they're all gathered in that one place, windriderstudios.org. You can join for a month for free and just check it out. The film that we were talking about is called Grab My Hand: A Letter to My Dad.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Craig Detweiler:
Grab My Hand: A Letter to My Dad, and it was about doing a gate check.
Darrell Bock:
Gate check, that was the expression. You're right.
Craig Detweiler:
To make sure that you're doing well.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, that was a great piece. We have a carousel on our own webpage that is a Windrider carousel that takes some of the best of these and makes it available to people who are connected to the Hendricks Center as well, because we're really committed here as we think about public engagement and public space, about people thinking about the culture, the arts, what they deal with. And again, because we're talking about independent films, most people when they think about films, they're thinking about what the major studios produce as entertainment, and in some cases, I say, to distract us from life in some cases. Even though sometimes good films that are produced by studios do have some underlying questions, they tend not to be as focused at the trauma and empathy and reflective elements as the stuff that you see at Sundance. You think that's a fair way to characterize the difference between what comes out of studios oftentimes and what comes out of these independent films?
Craig Detweiler:
Yeah. I say it's as simple as most studios are designed to comfort you, and so you walk in maybe feeling tired and beat down at the end of a week, and a happy bright ending lifts your spirit, so they comfort the afflicted. Independent films, I think, tend to afflict the comfortable, coming after the powers that be and saying, "Something's wrong here, and we need to fix something." And so, they're more about disturbing the peace than offering reassurance. And so, it's a lot in a week long experience to process that many hard messages, but it gives you so much to think about that you carry throughout the rest of the year.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, in fact, I tease the students that I go with. I say I see more films in one week than I do probably in four years, otherwise. So just the nature of my own life. But it is a really good tap into what people are wrestling with and why.
Well, Claude and Craig, our time is up. I really thank you for taking the time to help people understand what's going on in the arts, what's going on with independent films, what Sundance is about, what Windrider is, and just possibly encouraging people to think about a different way to listen to what's going on in the culture that might actually open up some vistas to see life from a little different angle and appreciate what's involved, so thank you all very much for the time.
Craig Detweiler:
We'll see you in the snow.
Darrell Bock:
Well, just right ahead.
Claude Alexander:
There you go.
Darrell Bock:
Yup. Yup. We're turning the corner here in Texas in terms of the weather. I know we haven't quite reached you in Phoenix, but we're praying for you, Craig. So I want to thank… Go ahead, Claude.
Claude Alexander:
Nope, we're good.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. I want to thank you for being a part of The Table, and we hope you'll join us again soon. If you're interested in any other of our podcasts, you can see them at voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast, and we hope you'll join us again soon.
Kasey Olander:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendricks Center at DTS and today, our topic is trauma. We did do an episode about this already, if you're curious. That gave an overview of this topic, an introduction to trauma. It was episode number 548 and it was called Understanding Trauma. If you haven't heard that, we recommend it to you, encourage you to go listen to that.
It was first released in April of 2023, so give it a listen if you're new to this topic or if you're just interested. We also, before we jump into our conversation, do want to say, perhaps you deduced this from the title of the episode, but some of the subject matter might be difficult for people or heavy, hard to listen to, in the fact that we're addressing the topic of trauma. We would caution you in that.
If you're not in a spot for it, we would encourage you to listen to some of our other content. We have episodes about things like friendship and fashion. If you'd prefer that, if you'd rather have a lighter topic for today, enjoy that. But if you're interested in trauma, if you're like, "I'm good to go and I'm ready," then we'll jump into our conversation.
Today we're joined by Andi Thacker. She's associate professor of Counseling Ministries at DTS. Andi, thanks for being back with us today.
Andi Thacker:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. We're also joined this time by Josh Freeman. He's adjunct professor of Counseling Ministries here at DTS.
He's also director of counseling at Dallas Life Homeless Recovery Center. Thanks for being with us, Josh.
Josh Freeman:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. I mentioned that we did this previous episode about trauma that gave just a broad overview of the topic. We defined trauma as anything that shocks the system, anything that it could be too much, too little. Anything that sends a person's nervous system into fight or flight or a shutdown. That was the definition that we're working with.
But we also, Andi's hot take from our last episode, was that trauma is not just a niche group of people that it applies to, but we said that everyone has experienced trauma. It's not just maybe a distant relative or somebody that is a small subset of the population, but rather that everyone has experienced trauma. This is an episode that is appropriate and applicable to literally everyone, since we live in a fallen world.
In this episode, we're going to hope to focus on types of trauma. We might get a little bit more specific about the causes and the effects. We'll still do a high-level overview of these things, since we don't really have time to plumb the depths in the next 45 minutes or so. But we'll get a little bit more specific into what trauma might look like and how it could affect our society and the places that we live.
Yeah. I guess, Andi, why don't I start with you in asking what is the importance of learning about trauma, about types of trauma? How could this be a value to our listeners?
Andi Thacker:
Yeah. Well, I think because most everyone walks around with some sort of impact from trauma, we have the potential to either use that for healing or hurt others because of our unresolved experiences.
So part of it is just being safe and not acting out of the brokenness that we find ourselves in.
Kasey Olander:
Sure. If we're not aware of something, then we can't address it.
Andi Thacker:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Josh, anything to add to that?
Josh Freeman:
I think that's exactly right. I think we're often walking around unaware of what's happening with us, and so a growing awareness of our own experience, our own history.
Then as well as what we've experienced and how it is either limiting us or being a limitation or causing harm to other people.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. We want to be able to, I think, you mentioned being safe for other people, and also finding healing and wholeness that we can encourage one another towards that end.
Also, that we can make steps towards that and for ourselves. What are y'all's thoughts about why maybe this hasn't been addressed as much historically, and why this is an important topic for right now?
Josh Freeman:
I think it's uncomfortable.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Josh Freeman:
There are a number of authors that would say, "This has been addressed historically, but in various contexts." Then inevitably, we get too uncomfortable with it and we say, "No, no, no, no. We're going to relegate that to like we're just going to not talk about it anymore." Then something else comes up.
I think it is uncomfortable for us to recognize our own limitations, maybe coming to grips with the reality of a broken world. Or that things might be less than ideal for us and maybe for the rest of our lives, or unideal for other people that we love and maybe for the rest of their lives too.
It's an uncomfortable topic, and I think that's why we often try to minimize it for ourselves. I can just get over this, or you should get over this. We start using that language.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. If it's inherently something that is too much for our systems, then of course, it makes sense that we'd be like, "Well, I'd rather not talk about that. I'd rather not address it." Push it aside. Yeah, anything to add?
Andi Thacker:
Yeah. I think it's grief inducing too, and that discomfort, we're having to sit with an uncomfortable feeling.
Like Josh said, it may never be resolved this side of heaven, and that does not feel good. Even saying that, I can sense that my body's like, "Yep. Nope, I don't like that."
Kasey Olander:
Don't like that.
Josh Freeman:
It's complicated in that oftentimes, especially if you look historically for the last 40 years, we have been approaching problems as I need to understand it, I need to intellectualize it. If I can understand it in my mind, then I can have power over it.
This is something that's complicated in that it does affect our mind, our will and our emotions. It also affects our body, and there's a lot of things that make us uncomfortable with any one or multiple of all of those things.
Kasey Olander:
Yes. That's a good thought too, we're integrated human beings. We're not just souls or just bodies. But the fact that we could be so affected by the world that we live in can also be alarming.
And potentially discouraging for people if we're not like, "Okay, I'm just going to solve this easy-peasy, three-step problem, and then we'll be on the other side of it."
Andi Thacker:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
It may not happen that way.
Andi Thacker:
Yeah.
Josh Freeman:
A little cheekily, I guess, a lot of us want to assume that the rules don't apply to us, which we want to think that we're special, we're unique. I might be able to help you with this, but obviously I'm not going to experience it the same way.
Then when we do experience it, our self-concept, our understanding, or maybe even our value gets messed up with this too. It hits all of those nerves for us.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. When in reality, it's part of being human as opposed to if trauma affects everyone, it's not just a particularly weak subset of the population or anything like that. It is a universal reality that all of us are living with and walking through.
Yeah. As far as what trauma might look like, and we talked about how it can be caused by a number of different things, depending on the person, the situation, everyone's different. But are there certain categories of trauma?
Are we about to talk about the five types of trauma, then we can just understand them and then organize them easily? Or how are there ways to categorize trauma?
Andi Thacker:
Well, that's part of the complicated nature of it, is there's not one set, universal understanding of there's these five types. Different authors and researchers have put forth different categories.
Some broad brushstrokes would be chronic versus acute, big T versus little T, which we referenced in the last podcast, complex versus not complex. Those are broad brushstrokes.
But again, it's complicated because we don't have this really cut and dry set, "You fall right in this category here."
Kasey Olander:
That's some of the difficulty and nuances that we've been addressing. Not only is it difficult maybe emotionally for us to talk about, it also is hard to quantify.
Josh Freeman:
Yeah. Making that even more complicated is the fact that it is subjective. Two people in the same experience, might experience it very differently. The repercussions might be one person might experience it as very traumatic and experience PTSD symptoms.
Another person might be able to assimilate the experience that happened to them, and they will not experience it as traumatic or experience PTSD symptoms. It is very subjective, and it also is more added to that complexity, is the fact that the logic gets thrown out the window sometimes.
Somebody might perceive a threat that might not even be there, and they experience it as traumatic. Then somebody goes, "Well, that didn't even happen. That wasn't even a threat." It's like but the perceived threat, the subjective experience, makes it difficult to make it a one size fits all. That's why it's personalized.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Andi, you talked about things, for example, like acute versus chronic trauma. Can you tease that out a little bit? What are the differences? What do those terms mean?
Andi Thacker:
Yeah. Acute is short-lived, maybe one event, whereas chronic is an ongoing type of traumatic experience. Chronic might be microaggressions or living with food insecurity. Things that are not easily resolved.
It could be caring for an aging parent. There's so many things that don't ever get resolved this side of heaven. Acute may be like a natural disaster. Yeah. Would you add to that, Josh?
Josh Freeman:
Yeah. Acute could be something like even just a traumatic pregnancy or traumatic delivery, right?
Something that lots of people experience, but it is experienced that time and then it has long-reaching effects.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Are there particular subsets of the population that might be a little more prone to experience one or the other, or is it just dependent on the timeframe?
Andi Thacker:
I think it's really dependent upon the timeframe. Also, like Josh said, it's subjective. We all carry different resources within our bodies. Also within, we have different resources monetarily that impact how we can deal with things. Depending upon the resources that we have at our disposal, that can really impact who is more susceptible.
A lot of times, kids or anyone who doesn't have as much agency or choice, is more at risk because they don't have the power inherent to escape, to change the circumstances. My 6-year-old is far more at risk than I am, because he can't get in his car and flee. He can't go to the bank and get something because he doesn't have a checking account.
He is potentially more of a greater risk. He also hasn't had as much time to live to grow his internal resources. Ideally, I should have more resources than he does psycho, socially and emotionally at my disposal.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Josh Freeman:
Yeah. I would say that along with that, he doesn't have as much autonomy or agency, and he's a lot more vulnerable. I would add though that, especially given the person that might be listening to this. There are vocations that are innately more risk presenting, such as working as a firefighter, a police officer, that we think, "Oh, that person is going to be both under the chronic stressors that can produce trauma."
Such as, "I don't know when I'm going to get called out to a really hard call." Or they also have a higher probability of a single or acute aspect of trauma, where something might happen that they go, "Oh, this is life altering. I understand that tonight my life is different and I have a new perspective from here on out." But in addition to those that we would normally think of.
The police officers, the firefighters, the military, I think the helping profession is much more at risk of experiencing trauma. That's because we're working with people who are more vulnerable. Our prevalence for vicarious trauma or experiencing my trauma through somebody else, is much greater as well. People that work, youth workers at churches, people that work in schools, but then also pastors and ministry leaders, much higher risk.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Yeah, so in addition to the acute and chronic trauma there also, you mentioned vicarious trauma.
Are the symptoms of these different kinds, might they all look similar, or are there some distinctions that you would identify?
Josh Freeman:
I think by and large, they look very similar. Yeah. I think when we're looking at trauma symptoms, you have to start getting much more in the weeds to start separating what some of this looks like. But I would say the acute would be more like the PTSD experiences, so that hyperarousal or the hypervigilant.
The constant threat that I'm experiencing where I could jump into a different state of mind, versus the chronic where I've developed a mindset that I've incorporated more into my working life. That might be a little bit harder to assess in myself or see in other people.
I might even see them as strengths in other people, because they were effective coping strategies when I was going through my chronic trauma.
Kasey Olander:
Sure, yeah. Anything to add to that?
Andi Thacker:
I think that's great.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. How are these things best addressed? Do we address them differently? If, for example, vicarious trauma, if you're hearing from somebody else.
Do we address that differently than something that you just experienced today? For example, like a car accident or something like that? Go ahead, Josh.
Josh Freeman:
Do we experience, do we address it differently in ourselves? I don't think we experience it very differently in ourselves. I think the goal would be for me to be a healthy, congruent person that's able to incorporate into my nervous system, my body as well as my mind and my emotions, what I experienced.
For me to have community that I can process that with, so that this thing that I experienced doesn't get locked in an unhealthy pattern. Whether that means in a session that I have with a client or a supervision I have with a counselor where I'm experiencing things from their story that I'm experiencing.
Or if I experience a car wreck on my drive home, I'm wanting to close the loop on the whole experience for me either way.
Kasey Olander:
To give it some resolution and make sure you relegate it to the past. Is that what you mean by close the loop?
Josh Freeman:
Not relegate it to the past necessarily, but where this arousal that happens, my nervous system goes crazy. That I incorporate that into my life, and I don't then try to hide it.
I don't try to push it down. I don't try to avoid it, so that it gets locked and comes back up in an unhealthy way.
Kasey Olander:
When you don't expect it, maybe. Okay. What about addressing these different kinds for other people?
Would it be a different way that you would address somebody who has acute trauma versus a chronic trauma?
Andi Thacker:
That all depends on the model that a clinician ascribes to. There's various, different models that talk about addressing trauma. When we're talking about the layperson who's spending time with someone that they care about, or a church worker who's ministering to someone. Their approach to addressing these things is going to stay more higher level, surface level, so to speak, of being present with them, being accepting.
Hopefully, not adding on to that traumatic experience by disenfranchising this person, invalidating being a safe person. From a clinical viewpoint, it depends on where you start with someone. If they've done significant work already, just like Josh was saying, you want it to be an integrated part of your experience. How integrated a person is when they come into treatment, really impacts where you start with them in the healing process.
If someone is not integrated at all and they're not very aware of their experiences physically, emotionally, you have to start there. Because part of processing trauma is you're going to get hopefully, intimately acquainted with how you experience those things, physiologically and emotionally. People that haven't ventured into that, going into their body, going into their emotions is really scary, and oftentimes dysregulating.
Because part of the way we tend to cope when we have long chronic, when we have a history of trauma, is our body is constantly giving us information and talking to us. But if it's constantly saying, "You're unsafe, you're in danger," a lot of times we have to put some distance between us and that stimuli or that information that the body is giving, so that we can cope and we can just get through the day.
Whatever that looks like, go to work, operate your car, care for kids, do whatever. Part of that first step clinically is to help people, first off, befriend their nervous system and know that this is a safe environment. That takes a significant amount of time, just because the minute you overwhelm the system, you're sending that person right back into fight or flight or immobilization.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. It takes being careful and gentle with the way that we address this. We can't just be like, "All right, tomorrow we'll be cured."
Andi Thacker:
Yeah, yeah. It's not like we're going to throw you in the deep end of the pool and see if you can swim. Hopefully, you make it to the side. If you don't, we'll rescue you, but we're going to let you take on some water first. No, it's like we're going to just dip our toe in the shallow end, and then we're going to bring it back out.
We're going to go so slowly that we acclimate to the experience, and we don't overwhelm the system and retraumatize the person. I think a lot of times that's something that can happen is, like Josh said, we tend to intellectualize things. We think we can think our way or logic our way out of our pain, and we just want to get through it. That actually is way more damaging than helpful.
Kasey Olander:
I wonder too, if that's part of why we don't really have this eagerness to address trauma just in general, is because it takes so much time?
A lot of times, we're used to what is instant, what is immediate. Instead of being willing to enter into this however long process, because it could be an indefinite amount of time.
Josh Freeman:
Yeah. It really demands a flexibility. It demands me changing. Whether I'm working on this in myself or working with this with somebody else, or just somebody else experienced it that's close to me, it demands that I change to some extent. That requires a humility and openness, a curiosity, these types of character qualities that not everybody has or have practiced a lot. But oftentimes, we want the solution to be quick and simple, like you're saying, or painless.
Most of the time, that means somebody else needs to change so I can stay the same. When we start talking about trauma or when we start experiencing it face-to-face with a person in our small group, our children, our parents. We start recognizing that our world has to expand in how we think about things, that we're very resilient, but we're also susceptible. Yeah, it demands that we adjust and change.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. How might somebody take those initial steps to cultivating those qualities that you're talking about, the humility and things like that?
Josh Freeman:
Well, listening to this podcast would be one of those, by expanding some of our understanding. But what Andi was talking about in the first steps of working with trauma, is identifying it, creating safety and stability. That can be a really long phase in the trauma journey and so that requires evaluating it.
That requires making sure that I'm not continuing to be in an unsafe place that's keeping my brain in this fight, flight or freeze mode. Cultivating a safe place with some safe people relationship is almost always a part of that. I would say usually that's safety is with a counselor experienced almost first and foremost, is the first time that they're experiencing a true, safe and empathetic experience.
But it can be with other people, but that's a big part of the first steps. If somebody has already been doing work on understanding themselves, or they've been doing work on accepting themselves, their work on accepting that they have value, they are starting at a different place. Maybe they're not putting their toe in the water, they're putting their foot in the water and then pulling it back.
But those would be parts of that. Then let's say I'm talking about somebody who's experiencing a person who's experienced trauma not my own. Then in order to garner more of that flexibility or curiosity, the big part on that is not oversimplifying a complex problem so that I can understand it, or so that I can have a soundbite or a TikTok, or a, "Here's what you need to do so that I can feel better about myself."
I would say continuing that thought is, "I need to be comfortable with discomfort, both mine and somebody else's."
Kasey Olander:
Okay. Yeah. Anything to add to that first steps people can take?
Andi Thacker:
Yeah. I think that's huge, that piece of being comfortable with the discomfort starts with you. Brene Brown talks about how when we're going to empathize with someone, it's challenging because it forces us to get in touch with the feeling that they're experiencing within ourselves. If I'm going to be an empathic listener, that requires that humility because I have to touch that pain in myself.
If I'm not willing to do that, then that's going to interfere with my ability to be a safe landing spot for someone. As a professional, part of the reason we don't work with family and friends, is so we can create some of that professional distance. It's harder at times to be an empathic, understanding person with a good friend or a family member because their life intimately impacts my life.
If I'm listening to their struggle with an illness, it's impacting them and I'm sad for them, but I'm also sad for myself because their illness impacts my life. If it's someone who I don't have a relationship with outside of the professional dynamic, then I can be a little more removed and get in touch with that in an abstract way.
But that's a huge piece of humility because I have to stand in that place of, "I'm finite. Any of this could happen to me at any time, and I'm vulnerable," and that's hard.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. We don't like that aspect of our humanity having limits and having things that are out of our control. I want to, I think, nuance a couple of things.
We've used the term complex to refer to just the fact that trauma is complicated, and it's nuanced and it's layered.
But I think you also alluded to complex trauma maybe as a category. Andi, could you describe the different ways that we're using that term?
Andi Thacker:
Yeah. There's the nuance and the complexity that it's not cut and dry and everybody has a different experience and it's subjective, but there's also complex trauma where someone might experience trauma that continues over a number of years.
It includes multiple facets of different areas in which they are impacted. It could be complex from the perspective that they don't have as many resources to be able to address the complexity of the situation.
Kasey Olander:
Is that, would you say, a type of chronic trauma or is it distinct from chronic?
Josh Freeman:
It really depends on who you're-.
Andi Thacker:
Who you're reading.
Josh Freeman:
Yeah, who you're reading.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Josh Freeman:
Some authors will distinguish complex as having a long-term, but also it would be connected with somebody who would be younger and it would be affecting their development. Complex trauma would be affecting development.
But a lot of times when people are talking about complex trauma, it's exactly that. It's affecting all of these different areas at the same time. People use complex trauma often to point to more of the chronic but severe aspects.
Kasey Olander:
Because it's far-reaching.
Andi Thacker:
Yeah, perfect. Then adding in developmental trauma, which some people will use that term to talk about trauma that happens during the early years of formation.
Technically, development never stops because the brain is always plastic and changing or potentially changing to some extent.
Josh Freeman:
For some people.
Andi Thacker:
For some people, yes, with the right circumstances and the willingness. But early in life, we know that the brain is still going to continue to form and develop up until like 25 or 30 years old. Trauma that happens during those formative years, is going to have a different effect potentially than other trauma. Because it shapes how that brain forms, it shapes how a person views the world that they live in.
It's not to say that you couldn't have a life-altering viewpoint of the world later in life. It really impacts attachment, which is how we anticipate relationships going for the rest of our lives. Those form early in life, so that can be a little bit more tricky to work with. It can have more longstanding repercussions because of when it occurs during the lifespan.
Kasey Olander:
At the risk of oversimplifying, you're saying that developmental trauma is really significant for people potentially because they're shaping how they might view the world for the rest of their lives.
If something happens with a caregiver or whatever, they're like, "Oh, all adults must be like this." When in reality, maybe an adult who experiences a similar thing, would already have the resources to realize, "Okay, because this one person is this way, it doesn't mean everyone is this way."
Andi Thacker:
Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
Josh Freeman:
Or they might be saying, "I deserve this," whereas an adult, I might not say, "I deserved that." But as a child, that might be the first message that I experience, "I must deserve this."
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. They have a mistaken view.
Josh Freeman:
Then that gets carried on forever.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, yeah.
Andi Thacker:
Well, and some of why someone might say that, is because God has uniquely situated us within the context of relationships, we have to have relationships to survive. That's not even just thriving, like survive without significant relationships and the care you need from those. In the worst case scenario, children have failure to thrive and they die.
How we, because God put us under the care of other people, and because we are the only species that takes this long to be independent. We are very much at the mercy of how we experience those main caregivers. That we need, in some ways, to believe that the people that are taking care of us, love us and have our good at heart.
A lot of times, it's not uncommon for people who have experienced developmental trauma, to take on the blame or to think it must be internally about me, as opposed to about my caregiver. Like Josh said, as an adult, I can have a bad experience with someone and think, "Wow, that was not cool. I did not like how they treated me. That really hurt. That wasn't okay. There is something not okay with them."
We need to believe that our parents, our caregivers, are going to protect us. When they don't, we tend to turn that self-talk inward to blame ourselves more so than others, because we need to protect their image in our minds.
Kasey Olander:
That's fascinating.
Andi Thacker:
Yeah. Not unlike how we image spiritual leaders throughout the lifespan too.
Kasey Olander:
You want to unpack that a little more?
Andi Thacker:
Yes. Well, there's a special significance that, and it may not be only spiritual leaders, but with spiritual leaders, we ascribe authority. We anticipate that they will be safe and they have a lot of power in our lives.
When they don't live out how we need them to be and how we anticipate them being, because they probably have their own trauma that's unresolved, they can leave a significant, negative impact that can be very traumatizing, that is different than maybe other folks could have in our lives.
Kasey Olander:
Because it's a unique position that people have, and I mean a really significant role to steward.
Josh Freeman:
But it also is connected to our identity. This is the person that we have as the face of what I'm believing about this community, is maybe even a voice piece for some of the things that I identify with.
When things start happening to me from this person, or when I find out that this person has done things to other people, that can affect and negatively impact my own identity. It can be like when Andi was talking about this for a child, it can be this, "My world is not what I thought my world was."
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. A sense of betrayal, even if it wasn't directly something against you, but the idea that, "Oh, this person wasn't doing what I thought they were doing."
Yeah. What are y'all's, I guess, advice for how to address people in that situation? Is there a change in the way that we should view spiritual authority, or is it just a matter of as things come up addressing them that way?
Josh Freeman:
Well, I think if we oversimplify and we think that trauma is something that you just get over or it's relegated to the past, it starts changing the way we think or the standard that we hold other people to. Recognizing that most likely people that are in places of authority or power or have quite a bit of lived experience, they have experienced their own things. Not thinking that they've somehow missed it or that everybody's operating out of a healthy, congruent personhood.
Part of it should be us not putting people up on a pedestal or thinking that if somebody has the right theology, they're not going to experience some type of trauma. Then there is still an aspect of, depending on what we're talking about, there's an aspect of I'm going to be gracious and still choose to engage in relationship with this person. Then there are also the aspect of, depending on the circumstances, this person might be very dangerous for me to engage with and continue a relationship with.
It's going to depend a lot on the circumstances, the person and my own ability to relate with other people.
Andi Thacker:
I think that's a great jumping off point too to self-reflect, because many people who may listen to this podcast or who are part of our community, are people of influence into other people's lives.
To ask that question, "Where are my blind spots? Where is there woundedness that may not have been my fault, but it is my responsibility to deal with it?" And to be humble in that way and to maybe ask some really uncomfortable, hard questions of yourself.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. What are other ways that you would encourage people to reflect as they are listening and processing all this?
Andi Thacker:
I think part of it is to reflect on in a kind way to yourself, because that whole piece, I think there is a piece that no matter what community you're a part of, there is a certain aspect of a stigma that we tend to other people in a way who have experienced trauma of, "Oh well, if you're strong enough, then you wouldn't have that response, or you would've been able to withstand that."
To really know that it's not about strength, it's not about goodness or virtue, it's a part of living in a broken world. To be safe enough in yourself where you can acknowledge that I've had some woundedness, and it's okay to validate that. I believe wholeheartedly, we can't give away that which we don't possess.
If I have a hard time validating my own experiences and trauma, it's going to be hard for me to do that for someone else.
Kasey Olander:
Sure. Yeah. Anything to add to that, Josh?
Josh Freeman:
I think the emphasis on self is a great place to go on that, and that is recognizing that some of my knee-jerk responses to hearing news of a particular person, might be something that's been in me for a while that I haven't been addressing. I might have an exaggerated response.
Or it might be a response that I don't fully understand, or it might be different than other people's responses that I've been interacting with, or it might be in my circle or my community. That could be a neon sign saying, "Hey, this doesn't just have to be about this other person. This is rubbing up on some of my stuff."
Kasey Olander:
Self, not in a selfish way like focusing only on myself, but in a sense of stewardship that in whatever roles I happen to have, whatever capacities, whatever tasks are at my disposal, then it's my job to do it to the best of my ability, to reflect on who I am, how God has made me. Yeah, the things that have happened, and how best to address them.
Because like you said, while it may not be someone's fault, it is still the responsibility. Yeah. What are y'all's, I guess, encouragement to people for how to identify a trauma? I know we've talked about a number of different types of trauma, a number of different ways that it might play out.
But if somebody's looking for the first time trying to do this introspection, how would you help them identify trauma?
Josh Freeman:
I think some of the key things that pop up in our body, is going to be awareness or my heart starts beating. I might start getting sweaty or my hands might start getting cold on something. It could be a memory that pops up routinely. Growing up, I got in this car accident in Atlanta.
Going up 400, I got in this pretty big car accident as a 17-year-old. I go back, I still have family in Atlanta. I will be even in an Uber with somebody else driving from the airport up to my parents' house. All of a sudden I'll be like, "Wait, what's going on?"
I'm like, "Oh, I'm coming up on the stretch of highway where I got in an accident." My body's telling me-.
Kasey Olander:
Here's this thing.
Josh Freeman:
Right, here's this thing. I'm like, "What is going on? Oh yeah, that's that." Then it happens here in Dallas when I experience a skid on the road or something like that, I'm like, "Oh, this thing is still here."
There's still this safety response that says, "This has been impactful for you before." I think looking physically, there's those types of triggers. Yeah, what would you add to that?
Andi Thacker:
Yeah, I think that's a great example. The body always talks first. A lot of times, that's our first neon sign, so to speak, of there's something going on because it takes a couple minutes for our conscious brain to catch up with what's going. Paying attention to what your body says, and some of that is just being aware. A lot of times, we're really disconnected from our bodies, and part of that is to borrow from Jamie Smith.
He says, "We're not just brains on a stick, but I think sometimes we like to live like we are." Being aware of what is the sensation I feel in this moment. Peter Levine has a great book, little, tiny book called Healing Trauma. A lot of it is really befriending your body and your nervous system, in the sense of just getting used to what it feels like to feel water run across your arm.
Because we can be so disconnected as a mode of safety, it's not a bad thing, it's really adaptive that we don't even know what that's like. But just getting used to that and getting used to this is what my body says when I'm interacting with a skid. Also, too sometimes, our brains don't consciously remember things, but even seasons. Seasonally, things really impact us, especially depending upon the time of year.
If there's been a significant event that was traumatic that happened during the fall, as you start to venture into the fall, or faux fall what we have here, summer 2.0, your body may start to you may not be sleeping as well. You may have changes in your eating patterns. You notice that maybe you just have a little low-grade depression in the sense of it's not horrible. I can still get through the day, but I just don't feel like myself.
Josh Freeman:
Sleep patterns or you might be experiencing this in relationship with other people. Your response might be something that you don't intend. You might be going back and apologizing for a statement you made or the tone of your voice when you were doing something.
Because it felt like an automatic response and not one that I was intentional with. It might even sometimes feel like it was out of character. All of those experiences, I would say, can be indicators that something, that a nerve inside me has been touched or brushed, and something's going on with me.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Those are really helpful examples to help people connect with how this might actually feel for somebody identifying trauma for the first time.
What would then be the next step that you would encourage them in, besides obviously practicing this? It's not like a one-time thing.
Andi Thacker:
Well, I think if it's never been addressed, then part of it is to find a safe therapist who can really help you move into that space and explore what the trauma is. If it is something that you have processed through and you have addressed. This is an ongoing experience throughout the lifespan, that there are just seasons and times where you need to be extra kind to yourself.
Looking for ways that you can put margin into your world. Sometimes this is life stage and that it's going to pass, and eventually you won't need as much margin. Then sometimes if you're dealing with, let's say, a chronic illness that's never going to be resolved, you may need to rearrange some of your values and priorities in the sense of you sleep longer, you do more.
I have a family member who is going through cancer treatment, and she has coined herself a stay-at-home cancer patient. We laugh about it, but that is a great example of self-care through a traumatic experience.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. I wish we had more time to talk through all of these different things, but would each of you have maybe one last encouragement to our listeners as we conclude our time here?
Josh Freeman:
My encouragement would be for the listener to grow in their own self-awareness. That oftentimes, we try to bypass the awareness and bypass our own processing of what has taken place, and jump into focusing on other people. What we're doing with that, is we're avoiding things for ourself and often causing more harm. Not thinking that this is a process that can be rushed or there are steps that can be bypassed.
This is a long and difficult process that requires me to be aware and flexible. If I try to cut steps, I'm prolonging that for myself and for others. To not think that I can go through these steps with other people, that there are some steps for me. Like emphasizing maintaining a place of safety, maintaining a relationship that's authentic and vulnerable, maintaining stability for a person. But not going in and thinking that we're going to go process somebody else's trauma.
Kasey Olander:
Sure, yeah. I'm hearing you say a lot about patience and being willing to be flexible.
Josh Freeman:
Yeah. I think sometimes the biggest thing that we need, is somebody to sit with us and hold our hand.
Or to just say, "Well, let's just go for a walk and we're not even going to talk about this. You just need somebody to be with you, and I can do that."
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Andi?
Andi Thacker:
I love that. I would say that this is a difficult path to walk, and healing takes time. To be really patient in that process, but also know there are ways to heal that are not going to be retraumatizing. It's not like a no pain, no gain kind of thing.
We want to make it hurt really bad, and that means we're healing. Now, the healing process shouldn't be so overstimulating that it's retraumatizing someone. I think sometimes that fear of what am I getting myself into is really scary, but there are ways to walk this pathway into process and to heal, that will not be retraumatizing.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. There's hope for people. It's not just that you have to live with it forever.
Josh Freeman:
Yeah. I think if we're thinking of it in terms of like a knee replacement, I have this physical thing that has happened to my knee, and now I'm going to go through physical rehab. A lot of times what that physical therapist is doing, is telling us to go slower than we want to do. They're saying, "This is the safe way of doing this."
Like what Andi was saying, "We're going to dip our toe in and bring it out. We're not going to start doing a whole bunch of exercises." That's the benefit of having a third party, like a professional that you're working with and who's going to walk on that slow journey with you. As opposed to oftentimes our knee-jerk reaction, which is, "Oh, you just share everything all at once."
And then tomorrow you're going to feel better, because oftentimes tomorrow you don't feel better as a result of that.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. To use the word complex again, because of the complexity of trauma, whether you're looking at your own life, whether you're looking at other people. I think that what you're both highlighting is being patient and gracious, and still being hopeful for the fact that there can be recovery.
Even though trauma is a universal reality of living in a broken world, and it comes from a lot of different sources. It can look a lot of different ways, but there's still hope, still hope for healing. I want to thank each of you guys for being guests today. It's been a really fascinating conversation.
Josh Freeman:
Thanks.
Andi Thacker:
Thanks.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. I want to thank you guys, our listeners, for joining us today. We hope that you'll join us next time on The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, welcome. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And, it's my privilege to welcome you to The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. Today, we're going to look at youth ministry, and particularly youth ministry in churches. For many churches, the youth ministry is something of a need to make sure that families have a place where they can bring their kids while the adults worship.
Bill Hendricks:
Our guest today though, is going to show you how a youth ministry and a youth group may be the most potent force for taking the gospel to your community. So it's my privilege to welcome to The Table, Greg Stier, who's the founder of Dare 2 Share Ministries and your mission: Help youth leaders empower students to reach their world. Welcome to The Table podcast, Greg.
Greg Stier:
Thanks, Bill. So glad to be here with you.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Well, it's a treat. We've been looking forward to this, and I'll just say from the outset for our listeners' sake, Dare 2 Share, this is coming out of a life message for you, right? So go back and tell me your story and how you kind of got into Dare 2 Share. I know it goes all the way back to your childhood, I guess.
Greg Stier:
Yeah. I was raised in a very violent inner city home.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Greg Stier:
And three of my uncles were competitive bodybuilders. The fourth one was a bouncer at the toughest bar in Denver, and the fifth one was a Golden Gloves boxer and a Judo champion. And my ma was the only girl in the group and they were all afraid of her because she used a baseball bat when she fought.
Bill Hendricks:
So there was real competitive fighting and-
Greg Stier:
Yeah, but not with each other as much as with gang-
Bill Hendricks:
Just in the neighborhood?
Greg Stier:
Gangs, yeah. The Denver Mafia, the Smaldones had a nickname for my uncles. They called them the Crazy Brothers. So when the Mafia thinks your family's dysfunctional-
Bill Hendricks:
You're in trouble.
Greg Stier:
You're in trouble. And, I was not that way. I never knew my biological father. My mom met my dad at a party. They partied, she got pregnant. He was in the Army. He found out, he got transferred 2000 miles away.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Greg Stier:
Mom had been married several times so I was just a scared, scarred fatherless kid in the hood, and my family terrified me and my neighbors terrified me be we were at the highest crime rate area of our city. And, a hillbilly preacher who's nickname was Yankee, I guess his dad was a counterfeiter and a bootlegger in the deep south and he was born on the run from the law, so his dad nicknamed him ___ Yankee. I won't fill in the blank. So, he kept that title.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, it shows you how people in the south thought of Yankees in those days.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so, Yankee planted a church in the suburbs, reached my toughest uncle with the Gospel, my Uncle Jack, and he trusted Christ. One by one, my entire family put their faith in Christ and I sat there as a kid watching my entire family transformed by the simple Gospel message. There was no complication. It wasn't a turn or burn message. There was no list. It was you put your faith in Christ, and Him crucified, that He died in your place for your sin and you are saved.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Greg Stier:
And that message, the simplicity of the Gospel, transformed them. And, I got involved with Yankee's youth ministry. Yankee believed, he had a philosophy that the fastest way to reach a city was through the young.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow, yeah.
Greg Stier:
Because he said teens come to Christ quicker, the spread the Gospel faster. So he trained and equipped us, and we had 800 teenagers in our church. We only had 300 adults. 800 teens in our youth ministry.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Greg Stier:
And, he equipped us in sound theology. He equipped us in evangelism. It wasn't like first grow … it was both and at the same time. He gave you a Bible and a stack of tracks and said you're going to learn to master both of these. I read Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson when I was 12. I got a Lewis Sperry Chafer eight volume Systematic Theology set when I was 15, and I wasn't the exceptional kid. I was just one of the leadership students.
Bill Hendricks:
But you were drawn to that?
Greg Stier:
I was drawn to it because I had seen the power of the Gospel. So, reading the prolegomena and the Systematic Theology of Chafer's, I wept. Because for me, it wasn't just cold dead theology. It was I'm learning to know who my dad is, who my big brother, Jesus, is, what salvation is. I mean, it's putting words to everything, all the questions that a teenager from the hood who's fatherless and struggles with identity … I remember when I was a kid, all my uncles, before they were saved, they were ruthless. Most of them were just downright mean. My Uncle Dave gave me a gift in front of our entire family when I was six, and I opened it up. It was Christmas. And, it was a girl's doll.
Greg Stier:
I thought it was a mistake. I go, "Why'd you give me a girl's doll?" And, he's like, "I figured you don't have a dad so you like to play with dolls like a little girl."
Bill Hendricks:
Oh my gosh.
Greg Stier:
That scarred me.
Bill Hendricks:
How shaming.
Greg Stier:
It shamed me.
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely.
Greg Stier:
But I want to tell you something, that began the search. As a six-year-old, I said, "There's got to be more." And, I began to study my little King James Bible underneath the kitchen sink with a flashlight. I still have that red King James Bible. I couldn't understand it, but I knew the answers were in there. So coming to Christ, watching my family transformed-
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, that's the big thing.
Greg Stier:
… studying this theology and then getting mobilized for evangelism hit every major question a teen has. Dr. Kara Powell talks about the three big questions; identity, belonging and purpose. Well, identity, I'm a child of God. So I don't know my dad, that's okay. I have a heavenly Father. Belonging, I have the people of God, the family of God. And purpose, I have the cause of Christ to make disciples of all nations. So for me, as an inner city kid-
Bill Hendricks:
It put the pieces-
Greg Stier:
It put everything together. So, I don't have a story like, "Well, and then I strayed years later." It was like, "Why would I stray?"
Bill Hendricks:
Right, you'd found life.
Greg Stier:
I found life. Why would I stray?
Bill Hendricks:
And this may sound like an obvious question, but just briefly, what did that transformation in your family look like that was so … basically you saw power at work there.
Greg Stier:
Yeah. So my Uncle Jack, Yankee goes to his house on a Saturday morning and knocks on his door. Jack comes to the door, no shirt on, tats everywhere, two beer cans, one for drinking beer, one for spitting chew and goes, "What do you want?" He didn't know who he was. He didn't know who he was. He goes, "My name's Yankee Arnold. I'm here on a dare from Bob Daley to tell you about Jesus."
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Greg Stier:
He goes, "I don't know Jesus. I know Bob and I'll give you five minutes." So, Yankee just went in there and laid the Gospel on him and asked him, "Does that make sense?" And my Uncle Jack said, "Hell yeah." That was a sinner's prayer. He trusted Christ. He started devouring his Bible. He brought 250 people out to church in one month, body builders, street fighters, gang members. Then my Uncle Bob, he came to Christ as a kid actually, but then he went far from God. Got in a bar room brawl with a guy that stabbed his best friend, Doug Johnson, five times. Beat the guy to death, gets arrested. Throw him in the back of the squad car. While the EMTs are working on this guy to resuscitate him, he called out to God, "God, I'm in."
Greg Stier:
Well, he found out the next day they did resuscitate him. He was released from jail. A year later, he was at Florida Bible College where he went and grew and just … So, it was over the course of time. It was messy. My mom was one of the hold outs. So I got equipped to share the Gospel when I was 12, so the first person on my heart was my ma.
Bill Hendricks:
Oh, sure.
Greg Stier:
Because mom …
Bill Hendricks:
She had been there for you.
Greg Stier:
She was a partier. She had been married several times. She was like the woman at the well with a baseball bat, just tough lady. One day actually, a guy pulled up she had married in a car, brand new car, and I was on the porch. I was five. I go, "Mommy, one of my daddies is here." And she's like, "Where's the bat?" And she reached behind the door, got the baseball bat, runs out there, cigarette hanging out of her mouth … because he had left us. We had no idea where he was … shatters his front windshield, shatters his headlights and is like, "Get out of the car. I'm just a girl." Well, she's a girl with five bodybuilding brothers that were all scared of her.
Greg Stier:
Well, she starts doing body damage and I'm freaking out, but somehow proud of her. I'm like, "Yeah, you go, Mom," because she's whaling. Well, he gets out and she beats him bloody. He finally gets back in the car, drives off. We never see him again, for some strange reason. I remember mom walking back up asking myself three things. Well, saying to myself three things. Number one, I will never disobey my mom again. Number two, how did the cigarette stay in her mouth the whole time? Which was impressive. And three is why is she so angry?
Greg Stier:
Well, she had a shamed-fueled rage. When she got pregnant with me, my grandma told me years later, she drove from Denver to Boston to abort me. Changed her mind after a couple months staying with my Uncle Tommy and my Aunt Carol. They talked her out of it. She came back and I wondered for years why when she would look at me she would burst out in tears.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow. Wow. Just holding all that-
Greg Stier:
It's because she felt guilt. Holding all that. All the guilt and the shame. So I started sharing Christ with her when I was 12, simple Gospel. "Mom, God loves you. Our sins separate us from Him. Sins cannot be removed by good deeds, Ma. But paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again and if you trust in Him alone, you have eternal life and it starts now and lasts forever." And she would say, "You don't know the things I've done wrong."
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, God can't love me. I'm beyond the pale. Right.
Greg Stier:
Well, I knew everything she had done wrong because my grandma had told me everything. And, for three years I worked on her, and finally one day I walked in the kitchen. I was like, "Ma, sit down." I didn't talk that way to my mom. I go, "I don't want you to go to hell." You got to come at my family like that.
Bill Hendricks:
Pretty straight.
Greg Stier:
She goes, "All right, tell me again." She's smoking a cigarette. I laid it on her. She goes, "You mean to tell me Jesus paid for all my sins?" I go, "Yeah." She took a drag. She goes, "You mean to tell me all I have to do is put my faith in Him and He forgives me for everything? What about the bad ones?" I go, "They're all bad to Him and they're all nailed to the cross."
Greg Stier:
She took another drag. She said, "I'm in." And my family, when they said they're in, they're in. She put her faith in Christ and I just remember that one of the greatest days of my life was being able to lead my own ma to Christ.
Bill Hendricks:
No kidding, man.
Greg Stier:
And then, I discipled my mom.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Greg Stier:
Because I had been discipled to disciple. And, it's because Yankee did not look at teenagers as second class citizens, or they're not real until they can tithe. He looked at them … Okay, so Bill, if I'm in the business world, I'm going to focus on the demographic that's most likely to buy my product and sell my product.
Bill Hendricks:
Exactly.
Greg Stier:
80% of those, ish, that come to Christ do it by the time they're 18. So why are we not spending-
Bill Hendricks:
It's a target rich-
Greg Stier:
… 80% of our income on … and, I'll tell you the honest answer. It's because they don't tithe.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, right. They don't have any money.
Greg Stier:
And I want to tell you, but our currency in the ministry, it's not money, it's souls.
Bill Hendricks:
Correct.
Greg Stier:
And the only way we're going to change the trajectory of the church in the Western world and all around the world is mobilizing teenagers for the Gospel. If we miss youth, we miss the movement. Jesus was a youth leader. And, I remember talking about youth ministry, I was preaching at Billy Graham's School of Evangelism. This old Black pastor goes, "You know Jesus was a youth leader?" I'm like, "Oh, what are you talking about?"
Greg Stier:
He's like "Matthew 17:24-27, Peter, Jesus and the disciples go in Capernaum, but only Peter and Jesus paid the temple tax. Exodus 30:14 says the temple tax is only for those 20 years old and older. All the disciples are there but only Peter and Jesus pay."
Bill Hendricks:
They were younger.
Greg Stier:
So I say hey, Jesus was a youth leader with one adult volunteer and one rotten kid and with that youth group, He changed the world. So you got a youth group of 12, you can change the world because Jesus said, "Greater things in these shall you do." And, those disciples didn't have the Holy Spirit until Acts 2. Our students have the spirit now. We have to mobilize. The Western church is missing the mark because we do not take youth ministry seriously.
Bill Hendricks:
You use a term in work, gospelize. Is that just a different permeation of the word evangelize or do you have a special connotation attached to that?
Greg Stier:
You know it's the original old English word for evangelize? I heard it in a Spurgeon sermon.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow, okay.
Greg Stier:
But I think it's got a fuller meaning, because when I say gospelize, yes, I mean evangelism, but I also mean creating a context for evangelism and disciple multiplication to be the culture in which our students live and breathe. So from square one, it's not about you. It's about the kingdom, and it's about the Gospel and it's about making disciples, and you're here for a reason, and that's to reach your friends, to grow deep, to know Christ and to make Him known. And so how do you create what we call a Gospel advancing ministry philosophy? Gospel-centered sounds like we're just sitting around listening to Matt Chandler sermons or something, which is great, but we want to be more than just listening and executing. We want to execute.
Bill Hendricks:
Do.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, exactly.
Bill Hendricks:
Why do you call me Lord, Lord, but you don't do what I say?
Greg Stier:
Exactly. Let's go do this. And students are longing for it. So, Dare 2 Share for 32 years, we've done events. Now we do Dare 2 Share Live.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, tell me about that. I was interested in it.
Greg Stier:
It's a once a year event where we provide video training, equipping and tools for a day of global youth evangelism. It's in November. We train, equip and we mobilize students to share Christ. And so, all around the world in English and Spanish it's available. And then, the last Saturday of every month, we challenge youth leaders to do Go Share Day, which is to go out to your city, your community, and pray. Prayer, care and share.
Bill Hendricks:
I wanted to focus on that prayer piece because I noticed in your …You have Gospelize Your Ministry. It starts with prayer, and you emphasized the importance of intercessory prayers. Talk about that. Why is that so important?
Greg Stier:
Well, you think about intercessors at your typical local church, they're usually the weirdos. I mean, let's be honest. Like, "Oh, here comes an intercessor." Like, "Oh, no." And, it's like, "Oh, the intercessors are interceding and that's something that they do." Well, intercessors, number one, they're not weirdos. They're necessary. And number two, we're all called to be intercessors. So, we're all called to be weird. We're all called to intercede for the lost. 1 Timothy 2, Paul writes to Timothy and he's like, "First of all, prayer supplications, intercessions be made for all people, kings and those in authority, everyone. God desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth."
Greg Stier:
He is telling Timothy how to program the church services in emphasis.
Bill Hendricks:
To pray.
Greg Stier:
He doesn't start with preaching. He starts with praying. You start by praying. So we spend more time in announcements than intercessory prayer for the lost. The average church, I don't think, spends any time in intercessory prayer for the lost in the church service. And if it's in small groups or Bible study, it's usually praying for my Aunt Susie who broke her arm, which we need to pray for Aunt Susie but are we interceding for the lost?
Greg Stier:
Somebody once said before we talk to others about God, we need to talk to God about others. So, prayer. I give an illustration. When I was eight years old, I was walking to school. My mom had bought me this discounted leather jacket because it was back in the Happy Days, so I wanted to see if I could be cool.
Bill Hendricks:
Be Fonzie.
Greg Stier:
I'm like, I don't know, nine or 10 years old. Two German Shepherds come from across the street, ears back, teeth bared.
Bill Hendricks:
You're done for.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, they push me up against a … I grab a chain link fence. Around my face, I block my face with my arms, and one's going for my arms, one's going for my gut and they're trying to tear me down. And, I know if they get me … I mean, they're German Shepherds, so if they get me on the ground, I'm dead.
Bill Hendricks:
I'm dead.
Greg Stier:
So, I'm screaming and a little old lady, Ma Zeemer, probably 80 years old, comes shuffling down the street with a baseball bat cursing like a sailor. Cracks one in the head, cracks the other in the head and then she jumps between me and these dogs swinging the bat. Well, the word intercession comes from the Latin words I go between. It's a go between. She was my intercessor. She stood between me and the danger swinging that bat. Intercessory prayer is us standing between the lost and the danger interceding to God on behalf of their lost souls.
Greg Stier:
And, I think we vastly discount the power of intercessory prayer. Intercession is the manual labor of praying, but Epaphras says in Colossians 4:12 … Paul says about Epaphras, "He's always laboring in prayer for you that you may mature and fully assured." We need to be praying for each other. We need to be praying for the lost. We need to intercede. Intercede, that's where it starts. Intercede for the lost. And when you pray for the lost, you start seeing the lost.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I think in many ways we've lost sight of the fact there's a huge spiritual battle at play in a soul that the evil one doesn't want to lose that person to the Gospel, so he's going to put up every resource to try to prevent that. And our only recourse there is prayer.
Greg Stier:
I think about my grandma. I always tell the story about Yankee, and my grandparents were Christian. They were Baptists but all their kids rebelled. And, she told me one time after I prayed, she goes, "I appreciate Yankee, but you got to remember that I prayed every day for my kids to be saved."
Bill Hendricks:
I was going to ask. I had a feeling that was the case.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, she goes, "It was your grandma's prayers that sent Yankee." And she carried a gun with her so I was like, "Yes, ma'am. I'll acknowledge that."
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that was the story for my grandfather. My dad's dad was not a believer, and he came to visit us here in Dallas once. He was an Army sergeant and he smoked a big old cigar. Nice guy, but at dinner one night, the story I've been told is that I asked him, I said, "Well Granddaddy, are you a Christian yet?" And, he said, "Oh no, son, that's not for me." And allegedly, I don't remember this, but apparently I said, "Well, you will be because we're praying for you."
Greg Stier:
Oh, wow.
Bill Hendricks:
And we did. We prayed for him frequently. And, you got to go forward now about 40 years, and it's a long story, but a fascinating work of the Gospel that a pastor up in DC befriended him and then shortly after that … befriended him because my dad resembled him and this pastor said, "Man, this guy looks like my old prof. It turned out to be dad's dad. And shortly after that, he contracted lung cancer and went into the hospital and he was literally on his deathbed.
Greg Stier:
Wow.
Bill Hendricks:
And this guy came in every day to share the Gospel, and push, push, push, and then one day, the guy comes in and my granddad's, he said, sitting up in bed. And of course, they're military guys, he goes, "Well, today I got a new commander."
Greg Stier:
Oh, wow.
Bill Hendricks:
And he had prayed to receive Christ.
Greg Stier:
Wow.
Bill Hendricks:
And you go back to those prayers, and you have to know that there is power in those prayers, those intercessory and laboring prayers over time. Long obedience in the same direction.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, it's like some people say they'll never believe. I'm like, "You know, prayer's like chopping down a tree. The bigger the tree, the longer it takes but you keep swinging and you keep praying and guess what? When that tree finally falls, two things happen. That soul gets saved, and you're jacked because you've been swinging that ax. Your faith is built in the process." So, not only does prayer get answered but we get spiritually, our faith gets strengthened in the process.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, I was going to ask you what's the most unlikely or unexpected conversion you've ever seen?
Greg Stier:
Well, it was my whole family. I'm not exaggerating. My family is the most unexpected conversion.
Bill Hendricks:
You thought, "There's no way."
Greg Stier:
No, no. They loved violence. And my Uncle Jack, and my mom … It was powerful to see it, but it makes me think of Romans 1:16. I'm not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. And what I tell teenagers is the Gospel's like a grenade. It doesn't matter if a 30 year old Marine throws it or a 12-year-old girl-
Bill Hendricks:
It's got power.
Greg Stier:
It's got inherent power. And the Gospel, we need to give that message. We need to give it clearly. We need to make sure we're giving a clear, simple Gospel message, nothing added. The whole book of Galatians is about don't add anything. And, the simple message of the Gospel … I mean, if Yankee would've come with a turn, like, "You got to turn from your sin before you come to Christ" to my Uncle Jack, my Uncle Jack would've given him the middle finger because my Uncle Jack was smart enough to know there's no way he could turn from his sin.
Bill Hendricks:
I can't turn on my own.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, but you come to Christ in simple faith, knowing you're a sinner, and He will make you a new creation and He will begin to turn you from your sin from the inside out, and that's exactly what happened.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Greg Stier:
So I think we got to get that order right. And a lot of gospels today, that order's wrong. I hear it all the time, like, "Turn from your sin and then come to Christ." I'm like, "If I could turn from my sin, I wouldn't need to come to Christ. I could save myself. I come to Christ and He turns me from my sin, and He's still turning me from my sin." It's an ongoing process until we're in His presence.
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely.
Greg Stier:
So keeping that Gospel clear and then mobilizing our kids, our grandkids, our youth ministries. Let's build a Gospel advancing strategy where kids literally wake up and see themselves as missionaries.
Bill Hendricks:
How do you help youth pastors create that kind of a mobilized ministry?
Greg Stier:
Well, praying for one, and I don't say that lightly. So, we have these seven values. Intercessory prayer fuels it. The second value is relational evangelism drives it, so that means giving students Gospel urgency that they need to know why they should share the Gospel. And so you talk about Heaven, hell, identity, belonging, purpose, all that stuff. Give them why. Then, Gospel fluency, what is the Gospel? So at Dare 2 Share, we use Gospel acrostic, and we literally have students memorize. We've had millions of teens memorize this. God created us to be with him, Genesis 1-2. O is our sins separate us from God, Genesis 3. S is sins cannot be removed by good deeds, Genesis 4 through Malachi 4, the blood, sweat and tears, the sacrifices of sweat of trying to obey 613 Old Testament commands, the tears of contrition. So, sins cannot be removed by good deeds. P, paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again, Matthew, Mark and Luke, the substitutionary death work of Christ on the cross.
Greg Stier:
E, everyone who trusts in Him alone has eternal life, the Book of John. 98 times. Believe, believe, believe, believe, trust, put your faith in Him. And then L, life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever, Acts through Revelation. It's quantity of life and quality of life. And, we have students memorize that and then once they get it mastered, it's like chords on a guitar, then you can make it your own, make a beautiful song. So, giving them Gospel urgency, Gospel fluency and then some sort of Gospel strategy. We have a tool called Life in Six Words. It's an app that students can use and share with their friends, and share the Gospel using an app-
Bill Hendricks:
It's a tool.
Greg Stier:
It's a tool. But I tell people sometimes we go straight to tool, but you got to give them urgency and fluency first. And then, it doesn't matter almost what strategy you use. I don't go into a steak restaurant for the plate. I go for the steak. So, the tool is the plate, the Gospel is the steak so make sure they get the Gospel down. And that's why the Gospel acrostic is so helpful. I used it when I was a pastor. I had our church memorize it, so they knew the Gospel, and then I'd give it every week. So, they knew the Gospel and they knew how to share Christ.
Bill Hendricks:
Now, you speak widely, I take it, and train youth pastors all across the country.
Greg Stier:
Yep. Round the world now. The Lord's opening it up. I think there's a global thirst for evangelism and mobilizing young people.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. And, you mentioned your own story with your mom. When you mentioned the 12-year-old girl, the Gospel is just as powerful in her hands as some adult. I assume that you've got stories back of kids who not only are reaching their friends but they go home, talk to mom and dad, grandma, granddad, and they're coming to faith.
Greg Stier:
So, last night I did an evangelism training in Frisco for about 100 students. And, I had them all practice, and I went through the Gospel … These are student leaders and adult leaders. And I say, "By the way, if you haven't put your faith in Christ, do it now."
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, now's the time.
Greg Stier:
And let somebody know-
Bill Hendricks:
Can't share what you don't have.
Greg Stier:
Well, guess what? A mom volunteer that was there told her daughter, "I finally got it."
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Greg Stier:
And her daughter had been sharing Christ with her and praying with her, and one of the adult leaders came up to me afterwards last night in tears saying, "This mom that this daughter had been praying for finally put her faith in Christ." Yeah, I gave the Gospel but this girl had been working on her mom for months. Months praying for her, sharing the Gospel with her, and she finally came in. We get stories like that all the time. Again, I just challenge every leader out there, if you miss the youth, you miss the movement. Every great spiritual awakening in the history of the United States has had young people. The first Great awakening, Whitfield and Wesley. Wesley, the master organizer. Whitfield, the cross-eyed preacher. A lot of people don't know he was cross-eyed.
Bill Hendricks:
I didn't know that.
Greg Stier:
He could preach to 30,000 people without voice amplification. I think a lot of the reason people came down forward is they said, "That dude's looking right at me. I'm going down now. I believe." Jonathan Edwards, the man who preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God also did the history of the first Great Awakening, said, "The revivals been chiefly amongst the young." It was a young people's movement. And, it was a student-led spiritual awakening that in the words of Metaxes prepared the United States to become a republic, because the colonies were a dark place. And I believe a student-led spiritual awakening can repair this republic.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and you think of the recent movie about Jesus' revolution. It was a youth movement.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, youth movement.
Bill Hendricks:
Right?
Greg Stier:
Yeah, a bunch of stoners. Teen and 20-something druggies that were radically converted.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, yeah. So, a kid comes to faith, talk to us about the whole discipleship piece. How do they grow in Christ? Because a lot of programs, we're saving souls, we got numbers and it's almost like that's the endgame is how many salvations did you have this week? And then, as we know, so many leave the faith later. They're not grounded.
Greg Stier:
Well Jesus, He didn't say go and make converts. He said, "Go and make disciples." So, the best way for that to happen we've seen is in the context of community, and so the way that we do this is when students come even to our event, we have the students come forward to their youth leaders, not to us. And then, the students that lead their friends to Christ are responsible to disciple their friends. So we provide free tools and resources for discipleship that youth leaders and students can use.
Greg Stier:
Here's what I think is important, too. The Western model of discipleship is flawed, I believe. Jesus connected evangelism and discipleship in Matthew 4:19-20. He's like, "Follow me and I'll turn you into fishers of men." So evangelism and discipleship are together, right? Following Christ entails fishing for the lost, sharing the Gospel. My buddy, Doug Holiday, says it this way, "Any discipleship strategy that does not begin with and end with evangelism is not biblical discipleship." Our philosophy of discipleship is two believers that have been saved for 20 years getting together once a week for a one-hour Bible study reminding themselves of stuff they should already know and should already be doing. Biblical discipleship is taking somebody, bringing them to Christ, helping them grow in Christ so that they can tell others about Christ as soon as possible.
Greg Stier:
And so, an illustration I use with youth leaders, if I take a sponge and I take milk, and I pour milk in that sponge, that's our philosophy. It's like, "Well, let's just get the content of theology, the milk of God's word …" But what happens to that milk in that sponge is it spoils if you don't wring it out. So, I think we're missing the wringing out part. Yes, we pour in sound theology. We get them in the basics. We call it 5G Theology, God, God's son, God's spirit, God's word, Gospel. Boom. What does all that mean? How do I read God's word? How do I depend on the Holy Spirit? All the core, they need to get but then they squeeze that out to others. They're sharing Christ with others. They're discipling others.
Greg Stier:
So, we got to pour it in and we got to squeeze it out, and the Western church has half that equation. If that, because sometimes there's no discipleship strategy. There's no milk being poured.
Bill Hendricks:
That's exactly right.
Greg Stier:
So, we have to pour it in and we have to wring it out. We need to help them go deep and wide at the same time, not like, "Well, I'm going to take you really deep first and then the 401 class, we'll teach you evangelism." By the time 401 hits, they're institutionalized.
Bill Hendricks:
And they don't have any non-Christian friends left.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, that's right. So let's get them mobilized now. Welcome to the family, who you going to tell? And here, let me show you how to study your Bible. These kids are taking advanced Calculus and Honors statistics and all this other stuff, and we don't think they can learn how to exegete the scriptures. We don't think they can learn how to effectively evangelize and use apologetics. We have lowered the bar. We need to raise the bar, and kids will rise up to that expectation. We taught on the Trinity once, and I was talking about the Father, Son, Holy Spirit in that classic Trinitarian graph, and you got to make it personal so I talked about the love among the members of the Trinity, and then we had this plexiglass, and I'm training these hundreds of students in the Trinity.
Greg Stier:
And I said, "What does this mean for you?" And I went out in the audience and I said, "What's your name?"
Greg Stier:
"Claire." I said, "Are you a believer in Christ?" She goes, "Yes." I go, "Come up with me," and I painted her hand red and I put it right in the middle of that Trinitarian graph and I said, "Listen, you're not a member of, but you're invited in to the fellowship at the Trinity. You're never alone." This one kid in the audience falls to his knees and screams, "I'm not alone." Starts weeping because of the power of the theology, the practical nature of systematic theology, but the practical implications of that in a kid's life.
Bill Hendricks:
That's powerful.
Greg Stier:
And then, you think that kid wants to go out? I know that kid. He's going out, sharing the Gospel all the time-
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely.
Greg Stier:
Telling everybody, "Hey, you don't have to be alone. There is a God that loves you that's going to invite you in."
Greg Stier:
So at Dare 2 Share, we really try to help that vein of discipleship, practical, theological, biblical and evangelistic. Let's go deep and let's go wide. Let's do it now.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, there's built-in accountability with sharing one's faith. If I'm trying to tell my non-Christian friends about Jesus, there's a built-in accountability. I can't fake it. I got to live this out. I got to be me. I don't want to fake spirituality, and I'm not perfect, and I admit that, but I can't have my little Christian life over here and with you, I'm going to do other stuff.
Greg Stier:
If you evangelize, you're putting yourself out there and you better be trying to live it because kids will-
Bill Hendricks:
Because they'll call it out if you're not.
Greg Stier:
Kids will call you on it, right?
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, for sure.
Greg Stier:
But that's one of the powers of sharing the Gospel. It's almost like the new coming out. I'm coming out, "Mom and Dad, I have some news for you."
Bill Hendricks:
I'm a Christian.
Greg Stier:
"I'm a Christian, I believe in Jesus." But, it strengthens their faith. Think about it. Romans 10 is weird if you look at it. It says, "If you believe in your heart, your justified. If you confess with your mouth, you're saved." That Jesus is Lord, right? Well, if you look in the NIV text notes, Jesus is Lord was the baptismal confession. So, when you got baptized, you stood in the water and said, "Jesus is Lord", that was right after you got saved. I mean, there was no hesitation. You believed in Christ in your heart, you're justified. Confess with your mouth, you're saved. Maybe that saved is talking about sanctification saved, because that confession with the mouth is a baptismal confession. Where was that done? Hidden in the church? No, that was in the mikva or that was in the Jordan or was in public with people around. It was your first evangelism experience.
Greg Stier:
You stood up in the water and said, "Jesus is Lord-
Bill Hendricks:
I'm going to follow Jesus.
Greg Stier:
"I'm identifying with these guys." That steeled and sealed their faith. That's a case for right away evangelism. The declaration that Jesus is Lord, that salvation is by faith in Him. This is what I believe. So, I think bringing that stuff together is so, so important.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, many of my friends who do evangelism in other cultures outside the United States, particularly in the global south, have said that is one of the main marks of new believers, that once they come to faith, the first thing they want to do is go tell. Like, "I got to tell my family" or, "I got to tell the people in my village." They never even think about it. It's just like, "Oh my gosh, there's somebody I need to tell about this."
Greg Stier:
And, what do we do?
Bill Hendricks:
It's like the woman at the well.
Greg Stier:
What do we do? We say, "Okay, before you get baptized, we need to put you through an eight-week course-
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, we'll teach you how to do this.
Greg Stier:
"And then, we're going to fully institutionalize you before we allow you …" And then, by then … I think it's right away. Let's go tell somebody, and let's dive into the Word. Let's get sound theology. Again, I go back to Yankee and his impact on his my life, and it was theological and it was evangelistic at the same time.
Bill Hendricks:
All right, so let me ask you, you've been working in this for 30 some years so you know a whole lot about young people. What's the one most important thing you want to say to youth pastors?
Greg Stier:
I would say your teens are waiting for a cause to live for and die for, and it's the cause of Christ. There's a lot of good causes out there, stopping human trafficking, feeding the poor, giving water wells to the thirsty, but the overarching cause is to go and make disciples of all nations. And you can give the hungry bread and the bread of life, you can give the thirsty water and the living water, you can stop human trafficking and soul trafficking.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, they're not either/or, they're joined.
Greg Stier:
They're connected. And I would really encourage youth leaders, we have a free digital download of a book I wrote called Gospelize Your Youth Ministry. If you just look up Gospelize, Greg Stier, S-T-I-E-R … I before E … it'll pop up. You can download it for free. It's also on Audible. It's not free on Audible, but you can download a digital copy or purchase a hard copy. Read Gospelize and implement those seven values, even if you're not a youth leader. Pastors, I encourage you … Listen, I pastored at a church-
Bill Hendricks:
Pastors and churches.
Greg Stier:
Planted a church, pastored a church for 10 years. When I left, it was a pretty good size church, about 1000 people, but 62% of the people came to Christ from people reaching people. So, this works in a church-wide setting, not just a youth ministry setting. So, I would really encourage you to download Gospelize and become a Gospel advancing leader. And, start with your student leaders. A lot of people are like, "Well, all the kids aren't going to get on board." No, not all the people got on board with Jesus's ministry. It was 120 in the upper room. He ministered to thousands. Go with the goers, pray for the others and keep chucking seeds. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute did a research project that said if you can get 10% of any group 100% committed to a vision or set of values-
Bill Hendricks:
You got something.
Greg Stier:
They'll influence the other 90%. But they got to be 100% committed. So I would say start with your student leaders and get them-
Bill Hendricks:
Red hot.
Greg Stier:
… all in. Yeah, and your adult leaders, get them all in. And they become the thermostat for the group. Start there. Start on your knees and then continue there.
Bill Hendricks:
All right, so what's the one most important thing you also want to say to parents? Because they factor into this sometimes.
Greg Stier:
Oh, man. So I'm a dad. I have an 18-year-old and a 22-year-old who's getting married in a week, a week and a half. Prayer and duct tape. I had it all figured out. I went through those courses on parenting that made it sound like bowling. Like you just follow the lines and you'll get a strike or a spare. Now, it's just pinball. Prayer and push buttons.
Greg Stier:
I would say, first of all, make sure your kids understand the Gospel. Make sure your authentic and you're seeking … Honestly, if you screw up what you do, and I did so many times, confess it to them, ask for forgiveness. Try to set a consistent example and exemplify the grace …
Bill Hendricks:
Grace.
Greg Stier:
I'll tell you a hard story. My son, Jeremy, who's the one going to get married, went through a time of rebellion. Secret rebellion. Now we knew he had a bad attitude and stuff. We didn't know that he was doing marijuana, vaping, getting drunk for, I don't know, six, seven months.
Bill Hendricks:
He was heading down a bad path.
Greg Stier:
And he had hid it from all of us, and my wife's a public school teacher and I work with teens-
Bill Hendricks:
So you figured we know the signs.
Greg Stier:
And, I was raised … No, he masked it. One night, he came in, midnight, woke me up. My wife, as a teacher grading papers, fell asleep by the fire downstairs. He goes, "Dad, I got to confess something to you." And, he woke me up out of a dead sleep, I go, "What?" He goes, "I've been vaping. Last school year, I was vaping. I was getting drunk, I was doing weed, and I haven't done it for months, but I can't live with myself. What are my consequences?"
Greg Stier:
I'm like, "Well, you just woke me up." I said, "The first consequence is we got to wake your mom up." So we woke her up, and it was a long night, into the early morning. She's crying, tears were shed. He's like, "What are my consequences?" He wanted to know because he went to a Christian school and they had an honor code. And, I'm a rules guy.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, if those are the rules, right.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, yeah. I was a rules guy. It was last school year. My wife's like, "It was last school year. He confessed to us." I'm like, "Well, we need to figure this out." And, I always gave an immediate consequence. So I was one of those parents that counted up when their kids were disobedient and it worked. Somebody, a donor to our ministry, he's like, "That actually works?" I go, "Yes, it's the number of spankings he's going to get when he gets home." So it was a different kind of counting when he was little.
Greg Stier:
So I go, "Jeremy, we need two weeks to figure this out, to pray through it. I was not seeing this coming. We need time to figure this out." So Deb and I, we genuinely differed on what the … but I said, "Well, let's pray through it." So we prayed and we finally came to a conclusion. Jeremy was sick waiting two weeks because he thinks I'm going to get him kicked out of school. So, we sit down. During that time, I had figured that all the food that I transferred money because he didn't have a job for food was actually about $500 worth over the course of several months was used for drugs and alcohol.
Greg Stier:
So, I had a whole list. You broke the law, you broke our hearts. You had to visit a drug dealer for this. You broke the school honor code. You broke the house rules. You broke God's heart. I mean, I had this whole thing. Stole money, everything. Here's the potential consequences. The page was full, and I gave him the list. I go, "Jeremy …" He goes, "Yeah …"
Greg Stier:
I go, "Read it and tell me if it's all accurate because I want to give you an accurate consequence." And, he was pale and shaking. He looked through it all and he goes, "Dad, this is all. I am guilty of everything." I go, "Okay, mom and I have decided what your consequence is. I took a sharpie and I wrote the word over all that, Tetelestai, and he looked at it and he goes, "I have no idea what that word means." I go, "It's what Jesus said on the cross when He said it is finished. Paid in full." And he goes, "Dad, I know Jesus forgives me. I'm not afraid of what He's going to do. What are my consequence?"
Greg Stier:
I go, "Jeremy, you're not getting what I'm putting down. Here's the consequence. There is no consequence. You confessed to us. You are completely 100% forgiven. I'm not going to kick you out, not going to make you pay the money back, not going to turn you into the school." Then I leaned over the table and said, "But Jeremy, unlike Jesus, this is a one-time deal. Next time, I'm going Old Testament." He broke, and that became a turning point in his life.
Greg Stier:
So I would just say make sure we're living out … Jeremy today is serving the Lord. He's a marrying girl that's serving the Lord and he'll never forget-
Bill Hendricks:
He learned grace.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, and I asked him for permission to share this story with teenagers. I wasn't planning on it. He said, "Dad, I have one precondition. You can't hold anything back because a lot of kids are struggling with this because it's available so easily."
Greg Stier:
So I would say yes, have rules, yes, consequences, but man, let's live out the grace that we've received with our kids. Let's live out the Gospel.
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely. That's great. All right, we got just a handful of minutes left. Let me do a rapid fire here, all right?
Greg Stier:
Yeah, yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Just one-liner responses. How would you complete this sentence? Young people, the Gospel and … Okay? I got too many words here for the time we got left, but young people, the Gospel and social media? What comes to mind?
Greg Stier:
Use it as a tool to share the Gospel.
Bill Hendricks:
All right. Young people, the Gospel and peer pressure?
Greg Stier:
Flip the pressure by creating a crew that advances the Gospel.
Bill Hendricks:
Good. Young people, the Gospel and global warming?
Greg Stier:
It's all going to burn some day. That's what 2 Peter 3 says. It's true. Global warming's true.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. All right, young people, the Gospel and shame?
Greg Stier:
Oh, Jesus, He removed our guilt and therefore our shame is nailed to the cross as well.
Bill Hendricks:
Just like you showed your son.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Young people, the Gospel and video games?
Greg Stier:
I've seen students use video games to communicate to other gamers and use it as a vast outreach opportunity. The devil's tools can be used against him.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, because it's a real community that get into these games.
Greg Stier:
Yeah, so let's stop looking at everything as the devil's tools and let's start redeeming it for the advancement of the Gospel.
Bill Hendricks:
You talk about the peer pressure, let's flip the script. Instead of it's these other kids that are somehow going to corrupt my kid, it's like, "No, no, no. I want my kid to be the influencer."
Greg Stier:
Exactly.
Bill Hendricks:
I want my kid and his friends to be the influencers. His Christian friends to be the influencers.
Greg Stier:
That's right, and so we call it a Cause Crew. You get a crew of teenagers on fire for Christ and they go as federally funded missionaries into the public school system or the Christian school system because there are a lot of unbelievers in Christian schools.
Bill Hendricks:
So that's back to that 10%, but they got to be 100% committed.
Greg Stier:
They do, and so we got to pray those strongholds down until they're all in.
Bill Hendricks:
Good. All right, young people, the Gospel and churches?
Greg Stier:
We need to mobilize them now, not later. We miss youth, we miss the movement, to and through the local church.
Bill Hendricks:
So you really do believe that may be the most potent force a church really can have to penetrate its community?
Greg Stier:
Teens can spread the gospel. They come to Christ faster, they can spread the gospel farther. One 15 year old on TikTok that posts a Gospel viral video can reach more than Billy Graham did in 15 stadium events.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Greg Stier:
So let's use that.
Bill Hendricks:
All right. One more. Young people, the Gospel and Jesus?
Greg Stier:
A relationship, not a religion.
Bill Hendricks:
Love it. Yeah, get to know Him. Let Him know you.
Greg Stier:
Love Him. Let Him be the revolutionary that changes everything in your life.
Bill Hendricks:
That's powerful. Greg Stier, thank you very much for being with us today on The Table podcast.
Bill Hendricks:
And I want to thank you for listening in. You can subscribe to The Table podcast at any outlet that is your favorite. We look forward to seeing you the next time. For The Table podcast, I'm Bill Hendricks. Have a good day.
Milyce Pipkin:
Hi everyone, and welcome to this The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Milyce Pipkin, I'm a communications fellow at the Hendricks Center.
Kymberli Cook:
And my name is Kymberli Cook, and I'm the Assistant Director here at the Hendricks Center. And today we are going to be discussing the ministry that we see women doing in scripture. Now, that's a little bit of a unique way of saying it, and we'll unpack it in a second, but first we're going to introduce those who had that observation and they are distinguished guests that we're thrilled to have. Sue Edwards is an author and the Professor Emeritus of Educational Ministries and Leadership here at DTS. Welcome.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Thank you for inviting me. I can't wait to get into this very interesting conversation.
Kymberli Cook:
We're thrilled to have you here. And then we're also joined by Kelley Mathews, who is also an author and is a writer at RightNow Media. So welcome, Kelley.
Kelley Mathews:
Thank you.
Kymberli Cook:
We're thrilled to have you here too.
Kelley Mathews:
This is great.
Kymberli Cook:
Awesome. So there is a lot of conversation surrounding the role of women in ministry, all over, all over evangelicalism, all over everywhere, and whether there are or are not appropriate lines and all of that. And it is a super worthwhile conversation and one that I am sure we are going to be walking along today. But our heart with this podcast, and I guess I should say and not but, and our heart with this podcast is to really let ourselves hear and praise the Lord for the ministries of the women in the Bible and looking at their presence there as ministry and looking at what they are actually doing. And I'm so excited about that because I feel like it doesn't get highlighted very often, and I am thrilled that you guys have had this observation and done some really deep study and deep diving into this. And so, we're thrilled to have you bringing a spotlight to that in this way, and we're thankful for your ministry.
Milyce Pipkin:
Absolutely. And with that in mind, I love how you just colored all of that in, I couldn't think of two better women to be sitting at the table, actually I could here at this seminary think of a lot of women who could do it, but with you and the research that the two of you did in order to put together this literary work that we're going to briefly talk about a little bit in our discussion today. What were you thinking of when you were going and diving into this, doing something for women's ministry? And what were you hoping that would come out of it in your research?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
I would say that we wanted more than anything to give women a resource that was deep but concise, where they could actually get into the issues for themselves. And we did our best to make it very readable, understandable for the average woman. There are that many books that people normally read on this topic, and yet we know that the average woman in the church and even outside the church is not going to read that many books. So we were so excited to try and take all of that and condense it.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah, concise is the word you were going for.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Concise, yes.
Kelley Mathews:
I don't know how well we did it in certain chapters. And honestly, it's not just for women.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes, that's right.
Kelley Mathews:
It's for the entire church.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes, it is.
Kelley Mathews:
There are a lot of pastors who are trying to figure this out, and giving them a concise resource that says, hey, here are the questions that are really common. We even got these questions from Facebook, like tell us what you want to know. And we pulled it all together and we made these up. So giving them both sides, that here are the major arguments that conservatives and liberals, however you want to call them, the different names, this is how they come to conclusions. So now, people know how to study for themselves. So we are hoping that it's a really useful tool.
Kymberli Cook:
I love that, because like you're saying, it's not even just for women. Because I think we've talked about that a lot here at the center, and about when you're talking about women's issues, it feels like you only get women usually at the table talking about it. Which is ironic because here we are. But in defense of our brothers in the church who are also trying to work through it and think through it, they also sometimes don't have time or the energy to sort through all of those books. And so, having this resource is really helpful.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah. Sue had to reign me in a little bit, there were times when-
Kymberli Cook:
Oh, really? I was wondering who the concise problem was going to be between you.
Kelley Mathews:
It was more the academic, I was writing on a higher academic level. She was like, no.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
I had to bring her.
Milyce Pipkin:
So wait a minute. We had to bring the editor, reel her in?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yeah, we did.
Kelley Mathews:
Use regular words.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Use regular words, that's not our audience. And trying to make deep theology understandable.
Kelley Mathews:
Accessible.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Accessible, understandable. Because this is such an important topic. I mean, actually I said to somebody, "This affects 50% of the church." And I had a student say to me, "No, it affects a hundred percent of the church."
Kelley Mathews:
That's good.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And I thought, she's right.
Milyce Pipkin:
And I love this because you could say it speaks to women, but when you say it's broader because it's the church and it just speaks to that's what a ministry does, right? It speaks to the church. The Holy Spirit moves and it teaches the church by and large if you're allowing the Holy Spirit to hear, see, do what it is that God has put in you to be able to embrace. And so I love that response, Kelley, when you're saying that. When you were doing this and when you're doing work, period really, what is it that you discover about women? I mean there's probably a new discovery, I'm sure, as we discover ourselves, as we discover others. What does that look like for you all having done the deep dive? As Kym just mentioned.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
As I was thinking, honestly I loved… I knew some things about the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman, but I think for her and then other women as well, getting into them in a really deep and concise way. I see so many times that women are really, they're categorized in ways that are not true. It's a beautiful story of a woman who probably was one of the first evangelists, the woman at the well, who is so misunderstood. It's very likely that if we don't know… We take all of these other texts and we look at the background and we look at the culture, and DTS is really known for that. And yet it seems that often when we look at someone like the woman at the well, where we don't actually look at what could her have life really have been like, and we see that she likely could have been married very young, that women were married at 12, 13 years of age, possibly right at the time of puberty.
We see that probably to an older man. And people didn't live as long, she could have been widowed, she could have been widowed a couple of times. And if she was not fertile, she could have also been left by another man. There are so many possibilities. And it's so interesting that Jesus doesn't say to her like he did the woman who was taken in adultery, he doesn't say, go and sin no more. Now, we're all sinners. And I'm sure she was a sinner, but to label her as the quintessential bad girl of the Bible, which we often do, is really… If you go through the rest of it and you notice that when she went back to the town, they believed her.
Milyce Pipkin:
She had respect.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
She had respect. And you also notice that Jesus starts then teaching the disciples about evangelism. And I'm wondering if he doesn't just point to her as the example.
Kymberli Cook:
But instead, she's often approached as a literary device in the teaching of scripture and that kind of thing, but she's not even recognized sometimes as a person who had a ministry and that kind of thing.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
No.
Kelley Mathews:
In the early church in some way.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And she did. I mean, think of the gutsiness of her and the passion, going back to the village and telling everybody, and so passionate. They believed her and they run to see what's happening. And you wonder, wouldn't it be wonderful to know more about her after that? And to think that he actually intentionally made his way there, to a woman, to a Samaritan. So you have racial issues, you have gender issues. He went out of his way-
Milyce Pipkin:
To make that conversation happen.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
… to make that conversation happen. And it should make everyone realize the value that Jesus brought to women. There are over 40 times that Jesus interacts with women in the gospels.
Kymberli Cook:
Cool.
Milyce Pipkin:
You are just full of information.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, it's very exciting when you think about all of the women, and then you think about the culture.
Kelley Mathews:
And that was part of the fun.
Kymberli Cook:
What stood out to you, Kelley?
Kelley Mathews:
That was part of the fun of researching, because I'm in history and backgrounds are really interesting to me. So knowing, okay, are we treating these characters, these people, fairly? Have our traditional understandings really looked at the whole picture? And so, in that example, we think not. We think she's just been labeled and then that's it. So I was thinking of women from the Old Testament, and it's been a few years so I can't say that the research for this book was the first time I ever heard of them, but Huldah was a prophet, a prophetess. And so, there is an argument that I feel like is super foolish, but it's out there, of God only chooses women when there's no good man around. And that's prevalent in certain circles even today. But Huldah, I mean you only see her if you're reading in Second Kings. Who really reads Second Kings really closely these days? But she was there in the time of Jeremiah and Isaiah.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And they weren't out of town.
Kelley Mathews:
So you go, well, then why did the court officials go to her? Well, we don't know why, but obviously she had respect. And so, even just this small little story that is truly about the rediscovery of the law and how the king turned the nation around by becoming faithful. She has a major role to play by saying, "Thus says of the Lord. This is God's word." And they listen. So really, she has spiritual authority, and that's kind of a new way of thinking about women in the Bible.
Kymberli Cook:
What other Old Testament women stood out to you? Let's not go Proverbs 31 woman.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
That's who I was thinking actually.
Kymberli Cook:
I'm thinking of any other-
Kelley Mathews:
Like Deborah?
Kymberli Cook:
… female prophets.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yeah, Deborah, certainly.
Kelley Mathews:
She was major.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
She was major. And she has been called, and so is Huldah, a breakout. Because it doesn't fit with a lot of people's-
Kelley Mathews:
Preconceptions.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
… preconceptions. But some of the, this was another, there were no men. Well, God can raise up a donkey to speak, I just cannot believe that there were no men. And the other thing, it says that she was a judge and she was, how many years? 20.
Kelley Mathews:
I don't remember how many years it was.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
20? Was it 20 or 40?
Kelley Mathews:
I don't remember how long she actually lived and ruled, but because of her ministry they had peace for 40 years.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
40 years. That's right.
Kelley Mathews:
So that was a generational thing.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Think about it. And she was one of the judges. There were a bunch of them that weren't that great.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah. One of my favorite things with her was that she was a judge and a prophet, and the only other ones that we see with both of those terms are Moses and Samuel. And so, she's somewhere in the middle to early end of the Judges period and there are no others. And after Deborah's two chapters, so she gets a ton of space, if you look through the Judges, you see how much. I think Gideon's the only one who gets that kind of comparable space. And from-
Kymberli Cook:
From an editor.
Kelley Mathews:
Editor, there you go. What are you going to do?
Kymberli Cook:
You're like, listen, this is a big deal.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Word count, yeah.
Kelley Mathews:
And it's all positive. There's not a negative thing said about her. And all the other judges, there's some negativity going on. Even poor Samuel, he's not a great dad, otherwise he's wonderful. So yeah, that was one of those things I learned. I was like, oh, I always knew she was a great judge and she led this battle with Barak and all that, but I didn't, until this time of really digging in, notice the dual nature of her leadership.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And that is very important. And some say that she actually just judged in private. Well, that's silly. I mean, really.
Kymberli Cook:
Didn't it say she sat at a tree and they came to her?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yeah.
Kelley Mathews:
In central Israel.
Kymberli Cook:
So, how is that private?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And all these people came to her just like they did for any judge. And to say that she didn't speak publicly that entire time-
Kelley Mathews:
Is reading into scripture.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
… is really reading into scripture, and it's just kind of illogical.
Kelley Mathews:
I feel like the studies that, and we're not the only ones who have studied this just to be fair, but just given that we've spent a few years looking into them, we have seen the preconceptions that people bring to the text over the years. So if you don't think a woman can lead, you're not going to think Deborah's really a normal judge, or that maybe she did it in private. Just coming with an idea of what that's supposed to look like instead of looking at the text.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So can I push on that for one second? I'm not going to push on it, I'm going to ask.
Kelley Mathews:
Sure.
Kymberli Cook:
So what might be, because we're talking about women in scripture and we're referencing it as their presence there as ministry, so what about those who might say that we ourselves are doing that? So we are coming with our preconception.
Kelley Mathews:
We all have them.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
We all are.
Kymberli Cook:
I know. That's actually what I'm trying to surface and at least acknowledge.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes, absolutely.
Kelley Mathews:
And we wouldn't deny that. And when I say that the folks who look at Deborah are coming with those, they're coming without looking at the scripture and being willing to be taught differently. Does that make sense?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And everybody does it. That's the thing. And we call it, in our book, thinking evangelistically.
Kelley Mathews:
It's a made up word.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
It's a made up word, but it stretches in order to, we need to come to each text honestly, as best we can. Now, we all have our biases and we need to fess up to those and know that. But if something is not in the text at all, and I'll give you an example.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, I was going to ask for one.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
All right. So we say that if a woman, if the church met in her home, then she must have led the church. Well, it doesn't say that.
Milyce Pipkin:
No.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And I think that's a stretch. And I think everybody needs to come to this with an open mind, an open heart, open eyes, and not come with making it fit a preconceived agenda, or we have this pattern that we have to fit everything into. Honestly, when I look at all of these different women and all these different scenarios, I come out sometimes on one and now sometimes on the other. And we just want to try to be honest and be open and look at it for what's really there. And if we would all do that, I think we might not fight so much over there.
Milyce Pipkin:
Oh, I love that.
Kelley Mathews:
I was just going to say, we wouldn't be so mean about it.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And we wouldn't be mean about it, and call people names.
Kelley Mathews:
And impugn on their motives.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And impugn their motives. The things that we do to each other. And in the middle of all the crazy things going on, and we're doing that to each other. It's just-
Milyce Pipkin:
It's ungodly. It's not right.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, the thing is, it hurts the cause of Jesus.
Milyce Pipkin:
It hurts.
Kelley Mathews:
Right.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
What we're really about is everybody, men and women, are so desperate for the Lord. And that's all we focus on. Just the divisiveness just makes me sad.
Milyce Pipkin:
Well, we're all products of Dallas Theological Seminary, and so part of the motto here is to teach truth and to love well. And so, I'm loving that you ladies are doing that, but then you're speaking to that, the love well part, and how are we doing that when we are being divisive? It's just not representative of Jesus, as you mentioned, as Christian.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
No.
Kelley Mathews:
Let me speak to that real quick. I had a church call me a few months ago and say, "Hey, could you come talk to our group. We're wrestling with this issue and we were just trying to get different perspectives, so come talk to us about your book and Q&A." And so I walked in there going, this could get really ugly, or we'll see, right? And it turned out to be wonderful. But what I love so much about the experience is that this group, they come from all different variety of thought and background, and they are together, they're united. I mean, they have their disagreements, but they are at peace with one another. And they're looking at all options and they're trying to discern, what does the Bible tell us? And so the idea of, we come to the conversation with charity thinking that I'm looking at your best motives, I'm expecting the best out of each other, not automatically thinking the worst. And that's the only way you can really have a conversation about this.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's good. You've mentioned some women that you talk about in the book, but I'm just curious about Old Testament women that you personally may resonate with or someone who sticks out to you just personally going forward, before we get to the New Testament. Anybody?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Really, I think we've hit on the ones that I-
Milyce Pipkin:
Well then, that's fine. That's fine.
Kelley Mathews:
I have one.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
You got another one? Okay.
Kelley Mathews:
I'm going to go back to Moses, and again, I don't even know if we wrote much about him, but his early life was saved by a bunch of women. So you've got the two midwives, right? In the early, was that Exodus one, where they save his life by lying to Pharaoh and his officials, his mother who sneaks him around as long as she can, she's nursing them. And then his sister. Okay. So he's surrounded by women who birthed him and fed him and saved him and watched over him.
Kymberli Cook:
And were insanely brave.
Kelley Mathews:
And then Pharaoh's daughter.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes, yes.
Kymberli Cook:
His mom sets her baby on a river, and his sister-
Kelley Mathews:
Since an eight-year-old girl or however old she was.
Kymberli Cook:
… potentially with wild animals and all of that, follows. That's pretty incredible.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah. And then Pharoah's daughter, I forgot her, who eventually saves him.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
She's a woman too.
Kymberli Cook:
Not a small thing either.
Kelley Mathews:
There's a full circle.
Milyce Pipkin:
And then even later in life, his wife Sephora.
Kelley Mathews:
Oh, yeah. That's a crazy story.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's a crazy story.
Kelley Mathews:
She did.
Milyce Pipkin:
Yeah. I like that. I've never thought of that before.
Kelley Mathews:
I hadn't either.
Milyce Pipkin:
But yeah, that's all there. There was a lot of love for him from women who were very instrumental, very brave in saving his life.
So that would, I think, bring us to, if we were even going in order here, to the Proverbs 31 woman.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Okay. All right.
Kymberli Cook:
Let it rip.
Milyce Pipkin:
So yeah, let's talk about talk the Proverbs 31 woman.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Okay, talk about the Proverbs 31 woman. Well, first of all, she's not a real person and that is so, so very helpful.
Kelley Mathews:
Refreshing.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Very refreshing. She is not a real person, she is the quintessential king's wife. And actually, King Lemuel who wrote this, learned it from his mother. It's really his mother's idea of what her best daughter-in-law would be. There's so much distortion that has come from this section of this ending of Proverbs, where there'd be people who say, well, all women then need to be married, all women need to have children, all women. But that's not what the scripture says. And it's wonderful, I'm married, I have kids, I have grandkids, I love them dearly, but the scripture actually holds that singleness is also an honorable state. And so, when we take that woman and we put her up as a model for every woman, it doesn't fit, first of all. And she's also an aristocrat with a bunch of maids.
Kymberli Cook:
A lot of privilege.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
A lot of privilege. And even in the midst of that, she's an honorable woman, but she's in a particular cultural setting. And so it's the kind of thing that we always need to do when we do scripture, is we take out principles. Now, there are wonderful principles in there. Her main loyalty is to God. She does honor, and she makes sure that her children and her husband are respected and loved and taken care of, which any woman who's married knows that that is absolutely appropriate.
Kelley Mathews:
Appropriate.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
It's a beautiful picture. She also works very hard, and she has, you think she has a belt factory, she's got all kinds of projects going. And so to take her and make her the woman that every woman has to be like, which is what some have done with this, and then to set her on this high, she's impossible.
Kelley Mathews:
Nobody likes her.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Nobody likes her because she's just a beautiful picture of wisdom.
Kelley Mathews:
Right. I was hoping you were going to go there.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yeah. And we all want to follow that, but it doesn't mean that every one of us has to be every one of those things. And God doesn't actually, I mean, our highest calling for each of us is to be a disciple of Christ.
Milyce Pipkin:
Amen.
Kymberli Cook:
To look like Christ.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
To look like Christ, yes. That is our calling, and that's our first calling. Every single one of us. Some women discern that they want to invest their entire life doing that, because we all know from Corinthians that if you don't, you're going to have other issues, life's going to get complicated. Now, you can choose that. It's wonderful, it's honorable, it's a lovely way to spend your life, if that's what you choose. But it isn't necessarily what every single woman needs to do.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah. I think of Proverbs 31 as a list of qualities. Isn't most of Proverbs about character?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes.
Kelley Mathews:
And that's what we're looking at. And I would say even men are supposed to read that, not as a, this is the kind of woman I want to marry, but as the kind of person I want to be.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yeah, yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
So just to note, you don't have to be Proverbs 31 woman because it's a poem.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
That's right. And it's not a real person.
Milyce Pipkin:
Not a real person. It's what to aspire to be.
Kymberli Cook:
That's my Bible bookmarks. Here, I'll give you a couple. All right, so New Testament. Sorry. So New Testament, Mary and Martha are two very key women in the New Testament accounts of Jesus.
Kelley Mathews:
Everybody knows them.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, everybody knows them. We've all, or not some generations, but at least my generation and up have seen the flannelgraphs of Mary and Martha. So to me, and at times, I think especially the one account where Mary's with Jesus and Martha's preparing the food and that kind of thing, it seems like maybe they have two different ministries in scripture. And what are y'all's takes on Mary and Martha's ministries?
Milyce Pipkin:
You could do a dissertation about this. People probably have, I'm sure.
Kelley Mathews:
So this is just me personally, I don't know that they're really all that different. There are actually two scenes where they really show up together, the famous one where Mary sits at Jesus' feet as a disciple, like any of the men did. And Jesus blessed her for that and was like, don't take that away from her. It doesn't mean Martha didn't listen, right? It is just that she had gifts and a responsibility that she felt for the whole hospitality side of things. And she was just having a rough day, I think, with all these people who showed up, so maybe she wanted some help.
But if we look at, is it John 11 or 12? I forget, where Lazarus has died. Who shows up first as Jesus approaches? Martha. And she comes to him and she's like, where have you been? If you had come, he would have lived. So she has faith. And then he was like, Martha, and then he weeps with her. And then she makes this declaration of, "You are the Christ, the Son of God, I know you are." And he's like, "I'm the resurrection." She knows her theology, just like Mary does. Okay. So we just don't see it in these two little [inaudible 00:28:29]. And so, I really don't like the way that generally it has been divided so harshly. They're both amazing.
Kymberli Cook:
So how would you characterize those ministries? Declarative? They're both disciples, you know what I mean? Just digging into what is it that they were doing as they were ministering in scripture and in the life and ministry of Jesus.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
They were friends. They were good friends of Jesus.
Kelley Mathews:
They shared life with him.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
They shared life with him, and he was in their home often. And they were both godly women. I think Martha was just a little bit more, at that moment-
Kelley Mathews:
Working in the background.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
When a bunch of people come into your home and suddenly you think they're hungry, and I want to take care of them.
Kymberli Cook:
As a logistics person, I appreciate Martha immensely.
Kelley Mathews:
Absolutely.
Kymberli Cook:
Even her being like, listen, if you had been here earlier, this is how it all would've worked together.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
But it doesn't mean that she's this homemaker or that's all she is. And I think Jesus was just using this setting to make a point, that women are called to learn, which we often don't think how counter cultural this was. The entire Bible is all about… We have to look at the culture at the time. Men are in charge of everything. Women, they can't testify in a trial, they have very few rights.
Kelley Mathews:
Their identity is all connected to their male person.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And their identity is all connected. Even they can't work. They have no way to-
Kelley Mathews:
Independently, you mean?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Oh, right. Exactly. They can't. Yes, they work all the time.
Kymberli Cook:
All scriptural women might be offended by that.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Right. No kidding. No kidding. But they can't go out and run a shop. And so we have to always consider how scandalous really Jesus was in the way that he treated women. I mean, a Pharisee would not have a woman in the same room at his feet, he wouldn't dream of that. And here she is, and he's actually praising her, blessing her for it. That is just so radical.
Kelley Mathews:
And I like the way you said this situation, that he was probably using this example of, calm down, Martha, it's going to be okay, she's actually doing exactly what she needs to be doing. In the sense of showing a contrast between them, not that what you're doing is bad, but what she's doing is actually good. And that was different, counter cultural. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
I just love the fact that you, Dr. Sue, just brought up the big word learn, women learning, because this to me, I had not thought of it. But yeah, that's important to me because that's like the gift of Jesus for her, is that she is noted for sitting at his feet and learning what it is that he's teaching at that time. And it's okay. And that's what we're doing, that's what women do in seminary. That's why we're here. We're here learning about the love of God, we're here learning about scripture, we're learning about how to put this into life, practicality and in ministry.
And so I just wanted to just zoom in and focus on that word because it's a word with huge connotation here in scripture. I could move on to Priscilla, we've got that coming up. But just talking about the two women and the contrast that rests between them, I'm just wondering, just us sitting here at the table and the contrast that rests between us and the women in the New Testament that we probably, I wouldn't say align yourself with, but someone who sticks out to you in ministry in the New Testament. Can we just go a little bit broader with that? Yeah, there are a couple of them.
Kelley Mathews:
Who were you you about to-
Milyce Pipkin:
I Love Dorcas. I mean, I love all of them, don't get me wrong, but people just don't talk about her, or Tabitha, in Acts. I mean to me, there were women who prayed for her, who loved her because of the work that she did in ministry, making clothing for the widows and seeing after people, and loving them well. And so long story short, when you look at her story and you see that there were women who prayed for her, and when she passed suddenly, they sent for Peter to come and pray for her. And when he came, he was able to resurrect her through the glory of God. And so, she's that woman.
She's that woman that we could look at her and say, I would love to be a Dorcas, that people could pray for me and resurrect things within me and take that to the Lord in prayer for me. I even loved the women who loved her well to know to do that, who knew God to do that. And so, that's one of my- women who you don't hear a lot about, but the story is huge and it has a lot, and there's a lot to unpack there with that story. So if you haven't read it, please do.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes, that's right.
Kelley Mathews:
We love to pick on Euodia and Syntyche, I probably butchered her name, in Philippians, where Paul is writing and saying, okay, let's get them to agree. I need them to agree to stop disagreeing because they're important to the ministry. And I'm paraphrasing, I don't have my Bible with me, but we like to just go, oh, look, those two gossipy women, those two, they're cat fighting. You can use all the tropes about these two women who are disagreeing that Paul calls them out by name in this communal letter.
Kymberli Cook:
Tragically for all of time.
Kelley Mathews:
Right.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Don't you love it?
Kymberli Cook:
They're probably like, oh, man.
Kelley Mathews:
If you don't understand, who were they that they were worth naming? They were leaders in the church and they were his coworkers. And that's a big term he uses, of Timothy and Titus and Silas, coworkers. So when I started looking at that, I was like, oh, so they weren't just these two little troublemakers, they were important to that community, and he needed them to get over whatever was dividing them so they could come back together so that the ministry could move forward.
Milyce Pipkin:
And how often does that happen, even in the church, right?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, sadly, it does happen.
Milyce Pipkin:
Yes, I know. I've read one of your books about that, and I've experienced it personally in the ministry, so I know.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Oh my goodness. Well, the woman now, she is not in the corner, we know her well, but I love Priscilla and I love her because… I love that, I mean think about it, she's a tent maker with her husband and with Paul, they have a little business together and can't you just see them sitting around and they are making tents. And of course, Paul is just teaching and talking about Jesus. And she is just a sponge, obviously. And the first time that Priscilla and Aquila are mentioned, it's Aquila and Priscilla, a couple times. And the rest of the times, like six times they're in there, her name is first, which is really interesting. She obviously was a thinker.
She was the one who, when they confronted Apollos, and that's crazy, when we got into that, we don't know really, what it says is they heard Apollos. She knew, and her husband knew that he was a little confused. He was a powerful orator, he had a great future in the church, and he was extremely later, but he was off on some things. And the passage actually says that Priscilla and Aquila, and her name's first, took him aside. Now, a lot of translations say took him to their home, but that is not in the text, which is very interesting, really. And because the argument is made, well, she was just doing this in private, we really don't know. She could have taken them to their home where a bunch of friends gathered, and that was actually the assembly, because they didn't have church buildings.
Kelley Mathews:
That was the church.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
You see, we look at all this and we say, oh, we think of it in terms of our churches. Well, they just have little local houses where they meet. How often do they meet? Maybe they meet every day. Do they have an actual sermon? Maybe not, maybe they just have conversation. Do they just talk? Do women talk too?
Kelley Mathews:
Well, we know they do.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
We know they do, yes. Because Paul told them to be quiet sometimes, because they overdid it a little bit.
Kymberli Cook:
There it is.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes.
Kelley Mathews:
I was wondering if we were going to go there.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
But really, I mean she was, and that culture and for him, obviously, she was a coworker that he highly respected.
Kelley Mathews:
Oh, yeah. He names her so often in different ends of letters and things like that.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes. In a culture where this was almost scandalous for a man to have a friend like that. This was a culture where men didn't have friends, women friends.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's good.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah. I like her because, I don't know if it's the most empowered thing to say, but I really like her because she ministers with her husband. And my husband and I both, we met in seminary, and he's a teaching pastor, and I'm here at the Hendrick Center and finishing up some doctoral work and that kind of thing. And there's a lot of occasions where he and I get to teach together and that kind of thing.
Kelley Mathews:
Oh, that's great.
Kymberli Cook:
And we love it. And there's just this dynamic between us. And so, I feel like I look at them and I'm like, ah.
Kelley Mathews:
They're a great mom for you.
Kymberli Cook:
And I'm probably the bossy one, it would be like, I'm going to take you aside. Theology matters to me, and you're a little off.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And think how God's going to use that in your life. It's wonderful.
Kelley Mathews:
Yep, yep. I love that she was concerned about theology, you're getting it wrong.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes.
Kelley Mathews:
Let us get back to what's the real.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes. And that was important to her, obviously.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah, to both of them.
Milyce Pipkin:
As our time winds down a little bit, women of God, just want to get an opportunity to ask you guys, you ladies, this question before we wrap things up. How have you personally seen the Lord just show up and show out in your ministries? Do you have a particular… I know this is just something that you're saying, it's like a needle in a haystack.
Kymberli Cook:
We've been talking about all of these different ministries of women in scripture, so your own ministries and how the Lord has used you.
Kelley Mathews:
Okay, this is very minor, but I'll go with it. Because I don't have a position in a church, I'm a volunteer leader. We do what we can, that kind of thing. Every now and then I'll teach a Bible study, but I write for RightNow Media, which is a ministry in and of itself. And I blog when I get a little passionate about certain thoughts, I will vent through words, but not spoken. I'll write it out until it feels like, okay, this says what I'm feeling. And then I stick it on my blog and go, okay, well let's see what happens. Okay. And most of the time, it's fine. I might get a little pushback or I might not, but I never really know who sees those because I don't have a huge platform, I don't even really know who knows where my address is.
So not long ago, this week, I got a little text from a friend that I don't see very often, and she was like, "Hey, I just want you to know, you just keep writing. All your stuff on women is blowing my mind." And I'm like, "What?" Because to me, I've been studying for so long and I think everybody knows this stuff, and they don't. And so that was just a sweet little confirmation. And then she had a question for me, have you seen this? And what do you think of that? But you just don't know who's hearing you, who's seeing your stuff. You guys, keep going.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, and you also did a class on theology in your church last year.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah. That was fun.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And I think men were there too.
Kelley Mathews:
No, we didn't invite them.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
You didn't invite them. Okay.
Kelley Mathews:
Not this time. We had some go, that sounds interesting. We were like, maybe later.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
All right, all right. Okay, okay.
Kelley Mathews:
So yeah, it was good.
Milyce Pipkin:
What about you, Dr. Sue?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, I was raised in a non-Christian home. I was a mess. And gosh, if Jesus hadn't found me, and you too, I mean there's a bunch of us around. I didn't know what a flannelgraph was, because I was 24 by the time I even figured out, even started on my road with the Lord. And gosh, He has been so faithful and so good. And there have been times that have been really rough. I was a minister to women in a couple of megachurches. But it all prepared me, I've just looked back now and see that everything God has done has been used and been there to pour into other people.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's awesome.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And I love pouring into other people.
Milyce Pipkin:
And you ladies, you only have a few minutes left here. But I just want to say that I love that you've poured into me, here in seminary. And so I see how your ministries resonate in women like me everywhere all over, especially for the ones of us who have been blessed to come here to Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Sue, you were instrumental in my even getting admitted and taking classes with you and learning how to minister to women and to love women well. And just reading your books and just seeing you live the life has just been a joy to me.
And then Kelley over here, in my little book, my little manuscript that I've been writing, Kelley's been instrumental through the years of just having helped me with the editing and that kind of thing, and a few of the chapters and that sort of thing. That's not why you're here, but you are here for me to just have an opportunity to publicly say, thank you, thank you. And to dear, sweet Kym here, she too got the Hendrick Center to just take me in and embrace me and give me an opportunity to just podcast here for The Table podcast. It's just been a blessing in my life. So it's just a joy to have three beautiful women whom I get the opportunity to see you live out the love of God in your ministry and in your lives.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, it's a beautiful thing to do ministry together. I think we, in our individualism, our American individualism, we miss so much by not joining together and loving each other well. We need each other.
Milyce Pipkin:
We do.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And it's such a joy. I am just grateful to the Lord for the opportunities and the doors that He opens, I think, for anyone who really wants to serve Him.
Milyce Pipkin:
Amen.
Kymberli Cook:
Milyce Pipkin:
Hi everyone, and welcome to this The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Milyce Pipkin, I'm a communications fellow at the Hendricks Center.
Kymberli Cook:
And my name is Kymberli Cook, and I'm the Assistant Director here at the Hendricks Center. And today we are going to be discussing the ministry that we see women doing in Scripture. Now, that's a little bit of a unique way of saying it, and we'll unpack it in a second, but first we're going to introduce those who had that observation and they are distinguished guests that we're thrilled to have. Sue Edwards is an author and the Professor Emeritus of Educational Ministries and Leadership here at DTS. Welcome.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Thank you for inviting me. I can't wait to get into this very interesting conversation.
Kymberli Cook:
We're thrilled to have you here. And then we're also joined by Kelley Mathews, who is also an author and is a writer at RightNow Media. So welcome, Kelley.
Kelley Mathews:
Thank you.
Kymberli Cook:
We're thrilled to have you here too.
Kelley Mathews:
This is great.
Kymberli Cook:
Awesome. So there is a lot of conversation surrounding the role of women in ministry, all over, all over evangelicalism, all over everywhere, and whether there are or are not appropriate lines and all of that. And it is a super worthwhile conversation and one that I am sure we are going to be walking along today. But our heart with this podcast, and I guess I should say and not but, and our heart with this podcast is to really let ourselves hear and praise the Lord for the ministries of the women in the Bible and looking at their presence there as ministry and looking at what they are actually doing. And I'm so excited about that because I feel like it doesn't get highlighted very often, and I am thrilled that you guys have had this observation and done some really deep study and deep diving into this. And so, we're thrilled to have you bringing a spotlight to that in this way, and we're thankful for your ministry.
Milyce Pipkin:
Absolutely. And with that in mind, I love how you just colored all of that in, I couldn't think of two better women to be sitting at the table, actually I could here at this seminary think of a lot of women who could do it, but with you and the research that the two of you did in order to put together this literary work that we're going to briefly talk about a little bit in our discussion today. What were you thinking of when you were going and diving into this, doing something for women's ministry? And what were you hoping that would come out of it in your research?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
I would say that we wanted more than anything to give women a resource that was deep but concise, where they could actually get into the issues for themselves. And we did our best to make it very readable, understandable for the average woman. There are that many books that people normally read on this topic, and yet we know that the average woman in the church and even outside the church is not going to read that many books. So we were so excited to try and take all of that and condense it.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah, concise is the word you were going for.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Concise, yes.
Kelley Mathews:
I don't know how well we did it in certain chapters. And honestly, it's not just for women.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes, that's right.
Kelley Mathews:
It's for the entire church.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes, it is.
Kelley Mathews:
There are a lot of pastors who are trying to figure this out, and giving them a concise resource that says, hey, here are the questions that are really common. We even got these questions from Facebook, like tell us what you want to know. And we pulled it all together and we made these up. So giving them both sides, that here are the major arguments that conservatives and liberals, however you want to call them, the different names, this is how they come to conclusions. So now, people know how to study for themselves. So we are hoping that it's a really useful tool.
Kymberli Cook:
I love that, because like you're saying, it's not even just for women. Because I think we've talked about that a lot here at the center, and about when you're talking about women's issues, it feels like you only get women usually at the table talking about it. Which is ironic because here we are. But in defense of our brothers in the church who are also trying to work through it and think through it, they also sometimes don't have time or the energy to sort through all of those books. And so, having this resource is really helpful.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah. Sue had to reign me in a little bit, there were times when-
Kymberli Cook:
Oh, really? I was wondering who the concise problem was going to be between you.
Kelley Mathews:
It was more the academic, I was writing on a higher academic level. She was like, no.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
I had to bring her.
Milyce Pipkin:
So wait a minute. We had to bring the editor, reel her in?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yeah, we did.
Kelley Mathews:
Use regular words.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Use regular words, that's not our audience. And trying to make deep theology understandable.
Kelley Mathews:
Accessible.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Accessible, understandable. Because this is such an important topic. I mean, actually I said to somebody, "This affects 50% of the church." And I had a student say to me, "No, it affects a hundred percent of the church."
Kelley Mathews:
That's good.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And I thought, she's right.
Milyce Pipkin:
And I love this because you could say it speaks to women, but when you say it's broader because it's the church and it just speaks to that's what a ministry does, right? It speaks to the church. The Holy Spirit moves and it teaches the church by and large if you're allowing the Holy Spirit to hear, see, do what it is that God has put in you to be able to embrace. And so I love that response, Kelley, when you're saying that. When you were doing this and when you're doing work, period really, what is it that you discover about women? I mean there's probably a new discovery, I'm sure, as we discover ourselves, as we discover others. What does that look like for you all having done the deep dive? As Kym just mentioned.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
As I was thinking, honestly I loved… I knew some things about the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman, but I think for her and then other women as well, getting into them in a really deep and concise way. I see so many times that women are really, they're categorized in ways that are not true. It's a beautiful story of a woman who probably was one of the first evangelists, the woman at the well, who is so misunderstood. It's very likely that if we don't know… We take all of these other texts and we look at the background and we look at the culture, and DTS is really known for that. And yet it seems that often when we look at someone like the woman at the well, where we don't actually look at what could her have life really have been like, and we see that she likely could have been married very young, that women were married at 12, 13 years of age, possibly right at the time of puberty.
We see that probably to an older man. And people didn't live as long, she could have been widowed, she could have been widowed a couple of times. And if she was not fertile, she could have also been left by another man. There are so many possibilities. And it's so interesting that Jesus doesn't say to her like he did the woman who was taken in adultery, he doesn't say, go and sin no more. Now, we're all sinners. And I'm sure she was a sinner, but to label her as the quintessential bad girl of the Bible, which we often do, is really… If you go through the rest of it and you notice that when she went back to the town, they believed her.
Milyce Pipkin:
She had respect.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
She had respect. And you also notice that Jesus starts then teaching the disciples about evangelism. And I'm wondering if he doesn't just point to her as the example.
Kymberli Cook:
But instead, she's often approached as a literary device in the teaching of Scripture and that kind of thing, but she's not even recognized sometimes as a person who had a ministry and that kind of thing.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
No.
Kelley Mathews:
In the early church in some way.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And she did. I mean, think of the gutsiness of her and the passion, going back to the village and telling everybody, and so passionate. They believed her and they run to see what's happening. And you wonder, wouldn't it be wonderful to know more about her after that? And to think that he actually intentionally made his way there, to a woman, to a Samaritan. So you have racial issues, you have gender issues. He went out of his way-
Milyce Pipkin:
To make that conversation happen.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
… to make that conversation happen. And it should make everyone realize the value that Jesus brought to women. There are over 40 times that Jesus interacts with women in the gospels.
Kymberli Cook:
Cool.
Milyce Pipkin:
You are just full of information.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, it's very exciting when you think about all of the women, and then you think about the culture.
Kelley Mathews:
And that was part of the fun.
Kymberli Cook:
What stood out to you, Kelley?
Kelley Mathews:
That was part of the fun of researching, because I'm in history and backgrounds are really interesting to me. So knowing, okay, are we treating these characters, these people, fairly? Have our traditional understandings really looked at the whole picture? And so, in that example, we think not. We think she's just been labeled and then that's it. So I was thinking of women from the Old Testament, and it's been a few years so I can't say that the research for this book was the first time I ever heard of them, but Huldah was a prophet, a prophetess. And so, there is an argument that I feel like is super foolish, but it's out there, of God only chooses women when there's no good man around. And that's prevalent in certain circles even today. But Huldah, I mean you only see her if you're reading in Second Kings. Who really reads Second Kings really closely these days? But she was there in the time of Jeremiah and Isaiah.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And they weren't out of town.
Kelley Mathews:
So you go, well, then why did the court officials go to her? Well, we don't know why, but obviously she had respect. And so, even just this small little story that is truly about the rediscovery of the law and how the king turned the nation around by becoming faithful. She has a major role to play by saying, "Thus says of the Lord. This is God's word." And they listen. So really, she has spiritual authority, and that's kind of a new way of thinking about women in the Bible.
Kymberli Cook:
What other Old Testament women stood out to you? Let's not go Proverbs 31 woman.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
That's who I was thinking actually.
Kymberli Cook:
I'm thinking of any other-
Kelley Mathews:
Like Deborah?
Kymberli Cook:
… female prophets.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yeah, Deborah, certainly.
Kelley Mathews:
She was major.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
She was major. And she has been called, and so is Huldah, a breakout. Because it doesn't fit with a lot of people's-
Kelley Mathews:
Preconceptions.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
… preconceptions. But some of the, this was another, there were no men. Well, God can raise up a donkey to speak, I just cannot believe that there were no men. And the other thing, it says that she was a judge and she was, how many years? 20.
Kelley Mathews:
I don't remember how many years it was.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
20? Was it 20 or 40?
Kelley Mathews:
I don't remember how long she actually lived and ruled, but because of her ministry they had peace for 40 years.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
40 years. That's right.
Kelley Mathews:
So that was a generational thing.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Think about it. And she was one of the judges. There were a bunch of them that weren't that great.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah. One of my favorite things with her was that she was a judge and a prophet, and the only other ones that we see with both of those terms are Moses and Samuel. And so, she's somewhere in the middle to early end of the Judges period and there are no others. And after Deborah's two chapters, so she gets a ton of space, if you look through the Judges, you see how much. I think Gideon's the only one who gets that kind of comparable space. And from-
Kymberli Cook:
From an editor.
Kelley Mathews:
Editor, there you go. What are you going to do?
Kymberli Cook:
You're like, listen, this is a big deal.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Word count, yeah.
Kelley Mathews:
And it's all positive. There's not a negative thing said about her. And all the other judges, there's some negativity going on. Even poor Samuel, he's not a great dad, otherwise he's wonderful. So yeah, that was one of those things I learned. I was like, oh, I always knew she was a great judge and she led this battle with Barak and all that, but I didn't, until this time of really digging in, notice the dual nature of her leadership.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And that is very important. And some say that she actually just judged in private. Well, that's silly. I mean, really.
Kymberli Cook:
Didn't it say she sat at a tree and they came to her?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yeah.
Kelley Mathews:
In central Israel.
Kymberli Cook:
So, how is that private?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And all these people came to her just like they did for any judge. And to say that she didn't speak publicly that entire time-
Kelley Mathews:
Is reading into Scripture.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
… is really reading into Scripture, and it's just kind of illogical.
Kelley Mathews:
I feel like the studies that, and we're not the only ones who have studied this just to be fair, but just given that we've spent a few years looking into them, we have seen the preconceptions that people bring to the text over the years. So if you don't think a woman can lead, you're not going to think Deborah's really a normal judge, or that maybe she did it in private. Just coming with an idea of what that's supposed to look like instead of looking at the text.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So can I push on that for one second? I'm not going to push on it, I'm going to ask.
Kelley Mathews:
Sure.
Kymberli Cook:
So what might be, because we're talking about women in Scripture and we're referencing it as their presence there as ministry, so what about those who might say that we ourselves are doing that? So we are coming with our preconception.
Kelley Mathews:
We all have them.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
We all are.
Kymberli Cook:
I know. That's actually what I'm trying to surface and at least acknowledge.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes, absolutely.
Kelley Mathews:
And we wouldn't deny that. And when I say that the folks who look at Deborah are coming with those, they're coming without looking at the Scripture and being willing to be taught differently. Does that make sense?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And everybody does it. That's the thing. And we call it, in our book, thinking evangelistically.
Kelley Mathews:
It's a made up word.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
It's a made up word, but it stretches in order to, we need to come to each text honestly, as best we can. Now, we all have our biases and we need to fess up to those and know that. But if something is not in the text at all, and I'll give you an example.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, I was going to ask for one.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
All right. So we say that if a woman, if the church met in her home, then she must have led the church. Well, it doesn't say that.
Milyce Pipkin:
No.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And I think that's a stretch. And I think everybody needs to come to this with an open mind, an open heart, open eyes, and not come with making it fit a preconceived agenda, or we have this pattern that we have to fit everything into. Honestly, when I look at all of these different women and all these different scenarios, I come out sometimes on one and now sometimes on the other. And we just want to try to be honest and be open and look at it for what's really there. And if we would all do that, I think we might not fight so much over there.
Milyce Pipkin:
Oh, I love that.
Kelley Mathews:
I was just going to say, we wouldn't be so mean about it.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And we wouldn't be mean about it, and call people names.
Kelley Mathews:
And impugn on their motives.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And impugn their motives. The things that we do to each other. And in the middle of all the crazy things going on, and we're doing that to each other. It's just-
Milyce Pipkin:
It's ungodly. It's not right.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, the thing is, it hurts the cause of Jesus.
Milyce Pipkin:
It hurts.
Kelley Mathews:
Right.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
What we're really about is everybody, men and women, are so desperate for the Lord. And that's all we focus on. Just the divisiveness just makes me sad.
Milyce Pipkin:
Well, we're all products of Dallas Theological Seminary, and so part of the motto here is to teach truth and to love well. And so, I'm loving that you ladies are doing that, but then you're speaking to that, the love well part, and how are we doing that when we are being divisive? It's just not representative of Jesus, as you mentioned, as Christian.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
No.
Kelley Mathews:
Let me speak to that real quick. I had a church call me a few months ago and say, "Hey, could you come talk to our group. We're wrestling with this issue and we were just trying to get different perspectives, so come talk to us about your book and Q&A." And so I walked in there going, this could get really ugly, or we'll see, right? And it turned out to be wonderful. But what I love so much about the experience is that this group, they come from all different variety of thought and background, and they are together, they're united. I mean, they have their disagreements, but they are at peace with one another. And they're looking at all options and they're trying to discern, what does the Bible tell us? And so the idea of, we come to the conversation with charity thinking that I'm looking at your best motives, I'm expecting the best out of each other, not automatically thinking the worst. And that's the only way you can really have a conversation about this.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's good. You've mentioned some women that you talk about in the book, but I'm just curious about Old Testament women that you personally may resonate with or someone who sticks out to you just personally going forward, before we get to the New Testament. Anybody?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Really, I think we've hit on the ones that I-
Milyce Pipkin:
Well then, that's fine. That's fine.
Kelley Mathews:
I have one.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
You got another one? Okay.
Kelley Mathews:
I'm going to go back to Moses, and again, I don't even know if we wrote much about him, but his early life was saved by a bunch of women. So you've got the two midwives, right? In the early, was that Exodus one, where they save his life by lying to Pharaoh and his officials, his mother who sneaks him around as long as she can, she's nursing them. And then his sister. Okay. So he's surrounded by women who birthed him and fed him and saved him and watched over him.
Kymberli Cook:
And were insanely brave.
Kelley Mathews:
And then Pharaoh's daughter.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes, yes.
Kymberli Cook:
His mom sets her baby on a river, and his sister-
Kelley Mathews:
Since an eight-year-old girl or however old she was.
Kymberli Cook:
… potentially with wild animals and all of that, follows. That's pretty incredible.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah. And then Pharoah's daughter, I forgot her, who eventually saves him.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
She's a woman too.
Kymberli Cook:
Not a small thing either.
Kelley Mathews:
There's a full circle.
Milyce Pipkin:
And then even later in life, his wife Sephora.
Kelley Mathews:
Oh, yeah. That's a crazy story.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's a crazy story.
Kelley Mathews:
She did.
Milyce Pipkin:
Yeah. I like that. I've never thought of that before.
Kelley Mathews:
I hadn't either.
Milyce Pipkin:
But yeah, that's all there. There was a lot of love for him from women who were very instrumental, very brave in saving his life.
So that would, I think, bring us to, if we were even going in order here, to the Proverbs 31 woman.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Okay. All right.
Kymberli Cook:
Let it rip.
Milyce Pipkin:
So yeah, let's talk about talk the Proverbs 31 woman.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Okay, talk about the Proverbs 31 woman. Well, first of all, she's not a real person and that is so, so very helpful.
Kelley Mathews:
Refreshing.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Very refreshing. She is not a real person, she is the quintessential king's wife. And actually, King Lemuel who wrote this, learned it from his mother. It's really his mother's idea of what her best daughter-in-law would be. There's so much distortion that has come from this section of this ending of Proverbs, where there'd be people who say, well, all women then need to be married, all women need to have children, all women. But that's not what the Scripture says. And it's wonderful, I'm married, I have kids, I have grandkids, I love them dearly, but the Scripture actually holds that singleness is also an honorable state. And so, when we take that woman and we put her up as a model for every woman, it doesn't fit, first of all. And she's also an aristocrat with a bunch of maids.
Kymberli Cook:
A lot of privilege.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
A lot of privilege. And even in the midst of that, she's an honorable woman, but she's in a particular cultural setting. And so it's the kind of thing that we always need to do when we do Scripture, is we take out principles. Now, there are wonderful principles in there. Her main loyalty is to God. She does honor, and she makes sure that her children and her husband are respected and loved and taken care of, which any woman who's married knows that that is absolutely appropriate.
Kelley Mathews:
Appropriate.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
It's a beautiful picture. She also works very hard, and she has, you think she has a belt factory, she's got all kinds of projects going. And so to take her and make her the woman that every woman has to be like, which is what some have done with this, and then to set her on this high, she's impossible.
Kelley Mathews:
Nobody likes her.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Nobody likes her because she's just a beautiful picture of wisdom.
Kelley Mathews:
Right. I was hoping you were going to go there.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yeah. And we all want to follow that, but it doesn't mean that every one of us has to be every one of those things. And God doesn't actually, I mean, our highest calling for each of us is to be a disciple of Christ.
Milyce Pipkin:
Amen.
Kymberli Cook:
To look like Christ.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
To look like Christ, yes. That is our calling, and that's our first calling. Every single one of us. Some women discern that they want to invest their entire life doing that, because we all know from Corinthians that if you don't, you're going to have other issues, life's going to get complicated. Now, you can choose that. It's wonderful, it's honorable, it's a lovely way to spend your life, if that's what you choose. But it isn't necessarily what every single woman needs to do.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah. I think of Proverbs 31 as a list of qualities. Isn't most of Proverbs about character?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes.
Kelley Mathews:
And that's what we're looking at. And I would say even men are supposed to read that, not as a, this is the kind of woman I want to marry, but as the kind of person I want to be.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yeah, yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
So just to note, you don't have to be Proverbs 31 woman because it's a poem.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
That's right. And it's not a real person.
Milyce Pipkin:
Not a real person. It's what to aspire to be.
Kymberli Cook:
That's my Bible bookmarks. Here, I'll give you a couple. All right, so New Testament. Sorry. So New Testament, Mary and Martha are two very key women in the New Testament accounts of Jesus.
Kelley Mathews:
Everybody knows them.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, everybody knows them. We've all, or not some generations, but at least my generation and up have seen the flannelgraphs of Mary and Martha. So to me, and at times, I think especially the one account where Mary's with Jesus and Martha's preparing the food and that kind of thing, it seems like maybe they have two different ministries in Scripture. And what are y'all's takes on Mary and Martha's ministries?
Milyce Pipkin:
You could do a dissertation about this. People probably have, I'm sure.
Kelley Mathews:
So this is just me personally, I don't know that they're really all that different. There are actually two scenes where they really show up together, the famous one where Mary sits at Jesus' feet as a disciple, like any of the men did. And Jesus blessed her for that and was like, don't take that away from her. It doesn't mean Martha didn't listen, right? It is just that she had gifts and a responsibility that she felt for the whole hospitality side of things. And she was just having a rough day, I think, with all these people who showed up, so maybe she wanted some help.
But if we look at, is it John 11 or 12? I forget, where Lazarus has died. Who shows up first as Jesus approaches? Martha. And she comes to him and she's like, where have you been? If you had come, he would have lived. So she has faith. And then he was like, Martha, and then he weeps with her. And then she makes this declaration of, "You are the Christ, the Son of God, I know you are." And he's like, "I'm the resurrection." She knows her theology, just like Mary does. Okay. So we just don't see it in these two little [inaudible 00:28:29]. And so, I really don't like the way that generally it has been divided so harshly. They're both amazing.
Kymberli Cook:
So how would you characterize those ministries? Declarative? They're both disciples, you know what I mean? Just digging into what is it that they were doing as they were ministering in Scripture and in the life and ministry of Jesus.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
They were friends. They were good friends of Jesus.
Kelley Mathews:
They shared life with him.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
They shared life with him, and he was in their home often. And they were both godly women. I think Martha was just a little bit more, at that moment-
Kelley Mathews:
Working in the background.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
When a bunch of people come into your home and suddenly you think they're hungry, and I want to take care of them.
Kymberli Cook:
As a logistics person, I appreciate Martha immensely.
Kelley Mathews:
Absolutely.
Kymberli Cook:
Even her being like, listen, if you had been here earlier, this is how it all would've worked together.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
But it doesn't mean that she's this homemaker or that's all she is. And I think Jesus was just using this setting to make a point, that women are called to learn, which we often don't think how counter cultural this was. The entire Bible is all about… We have to look at the culture at the time. Men are in charge of everything. Women, they can't testify in a trial, they have very few rights.
Kelley Mathews:
Their identity is all connected to their male person.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And their identity is all connected. Even they can't work. They have no way to-
Kelley Mathews:
Independently, you mean?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Oh, right. Exactly. They can't. Yes, they work all the time.
Kymberli Cook:
All scriptural women might be offended by that.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Right. No kidding. No kidding. But they can't go out and run a shop. And so we have to always consider how scandalous really Jesus was in the way that he treated women. I mean, a Pharisee would not have a woman in the same room at his feet, he wouldn't dream of that. And here she is, and he's actually praising her, blessing her for it. That is just so radical.
Kelley Mathews:
And I like the way you said this situation, that he was probably using this example of, calm down, Martha, it's going to be okay, she's actually doing exactly what she needs to be doing. In the sense of showing a contrast between them, not that what you're doing is bad, but what she's doing is actually good. And that was different, counter cultural. Yeah.
Milyce Pipkin:
I just love the fact that you, Dr. Sue, just brought up the big word learn, women learning, because this to me, I had not thought of it. But yeah, that's important to me because that's like the gift of Jesus for her, is that she is noted for sitting at his feet and learning what it is that he's teaching at that time. And it's okay. And that's what we're doing, that's what women do in seminary. That's why we're here. We're here learning about the love of God, we're here learning about Scripture, we're learning about how to put this into life, practicality and in ministry.
And so I just wanted to just zoom in and focus on that word because it's a word with huge connotation here in Scripture. I could move on to Priscilla, we've got that coming up. But just talking about the two women and the contrast that rests between them, I'm just wondering, just us sitting here at the table and the contrast that rests between us and the women in the New Testament that we probably, I wouldn't say align yourself with, but someone who sticks out to you in ministry in the New Testament. Can we just go a little bit broader with that? Yeah, there are a couple of them.
Kelley Mathews:
Who were you you about to-
Milyce Pipkin:
I Love Dorcas. I mean, I love all of them, don't get me wrong, but people just don't talk about her, or Tabitha, in Acts. I mean to me, there were women who prayed for her, who loved her because of the work that she did in ministry, making clothing for the widows and seeing after people, and loving them well. And so long story short, when you look at her story and you see that there were women who prayed for her, and when she passed suddenly, they sent for Peter to come and pray for her. And when he came, he was able to resurrect her through the glory of God. And so, she's that woman.
She's that woman that we could look at her and say, I would love to be a Dorcas, that people could pray for me and resurrect things within me and take that to the Lord in prayer for me. I even loved the women who loved her well to know to do that, who knew God to do that. And so, that's one of my- women who you don't hear a lot about, but the story is huge and it has a lot, and there's a lot to unpack there with that story. So if you haven't read it, please do.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes, that's right.
Kelley Mathews:
We love to pick on Euodia and Syntyche, I probably butchered her name, in Philippians, where Paul is writing and saying, okay, let's get them to agree. I need them to agree to stop disagreeing because they're important to the ministry. And I'm paraphrasing, I don't have my Bible with me, but we like to just go, oh, look, those two gossipy women, those two, they're cat fighting. You can use all the tropes about these two women who are disagreeing that Paul calls them out by name in this communal letter.
Kymberli Cook:
Tragically for all of time.
Kelley Mathews:
Right.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Don't you love it?
Kymberli Cook:
They're probably like, oh, man.
Kelley Mathews:
If you don't understand, who were they that they were worth naming? They were leaders in the church and they were his coworkers. And that's a big term he uses, of Timothy and Titus and Silas, coworkers. So when I started looking at that, I was like, oh, so they weren't just these two little troublemakers, they were important to that community, and he needed them to get over whatever was dividing them so they could come back together so that the ministry could move forward.
Milyce Pipkin:
And how often does that happen, even in the church, right?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, sadly, it does happen.
Milyce Pipkin:
Yes, I know. I've read one of your books about that, and I've experienced it personally in the ministry, so I know.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Oh my goodness. Well, the woman now, she is not in the corner, we know her well, but I love Priscilla and I love her because… I love that, I mean think about it, she's a tent maker with her husband and with Paul, they have a little business together and can't you just see them sitting around and they are making tents. And of course, Paul is just teaching and talking about Jesus. And she is just a sponge, obviously. And the first time that Priscilla and Aquila are mentioned, it's Aquila and Priscilla, a couple times. And the rest of the times, like six times they're in there, her name is first, which is really interesting. She obviously was a thinker.
She was the one who, when they confronted Apollos, and that's crazy, when we got into that, we don't know really, what it says is they heard Apollos. She knew, and her husband knew that he was a little confused. He was a powerful orator, he had a great future in the church, and he was extremely later, but he was off on some things. And the passage actually says that Priscilla and Aquila, and her name's first, took him aside. Now, a lot of translations say took him to their home, but that is not in the text, which is very interesting, really. And because the argument is made, well, she was just doing this in private, we really don't know. She could have taken them to their home where a bunch of friends gathered, and that was actually the assembly, because they didn't have church buildings.
Kelley Mathews:
That was the church.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
You see, we look at all this and we say, oh, we think of it in terms of our churches. Well, they just have little local houses where they meet. How often do they meet? Maybe they meet every day. Do they have an actual sermon? Maybe not, maybe they just have conversation. Do they just talk? Do women talk too?
Kelley Mathews:
Well, we know they do.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
We know they do, yes. Because Paul told them to be quiet sometimes, because they overdid it a little bit.
Kymberli Cook:
There it is.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes.
Kelley Mathews:
I was wondering if we were going to go there.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
But really, I mean she was, and that culture and for him, obviously, she was a coworker that he highly respected.
Kelley Mathews:
Oh, yeah. He names her so often in different ends of letters and things like that.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes. In a culture where this was almost scandalous for a man to have a friend like that. This was a culture where men didn't have friends, women friends.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's good.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah. I like her because, I don't know if it's the most empowered thing to say, but I really like her because she ministers with her husband. And my husband and I both, we met in seminary, and he's a teaching pastor, and I'm here at the Hendrick Center and finishing up some doctoral work and that kind of thing. And there's a lot of occasions where he and I get to teach together and that kind of thing.
Kelley Mathews:
Oh, that's great.
Kymberli Cook:
And we love it. And there's just this dynamic between us. And so, I feel like I look at them and I'm like, ah.
Kelley Mathews:
They're a great mom for you.
Kymberli Cook:
And I'm probably the bossy one, it would be like, I'm going to take you aside. Theology matters to me, and you're a little off.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And think how God's going to use that in your life. It's wonderful.
Kelley Mathews:
Yep, yep. I love that she was concerned about theology, you're getting it wrong.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes.
Kelley Mathews:
Let us get back to what's the real.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Yes. And that was important to her, obviously.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah, to both of them.
Milyce Pipkin:
As our time winds down a little bit, women of God, just want to get an opportunity to ask you guys, you ladies, this question before we wrap things up. How have you personally seen the Lord just show up and show out in your ministries? Do you have a particular… I know this is just something that you're saying, it's like a needle in a haystack.
Kymberli Cook:
We've been talking about all of these different ministries of women in Scripture, so your own ministries and how the Lord has used you.
Kelley Mathews:
Okay, this is very minor, but I'll go with it. Because I don't have a position in a church, I'm a volunteer leader. We do what we can, that kind of thing. Every now and then I'll teach a Bible study, but I write for RightNow Media, which is a ministry in and of itself. And I blog when I get a little passionate about certain thoughts, I will vent through words, but not spoken. I'll write it out until it feels like, okay, this says what I'm feeling. And then I stick it on my blog and go, okay, well let's see what happens. Okay. And most of the time, it's fine. I might get a little pushback or I might not, but I never really know who sees those because I don't have a huge platform, I don't even really know who knows where my address is.
So not long ago, this week, I got a little text from a friend that I don't see very often, and she was like, "Hey, I just want you to know, you just keep writing. All your stuff on women is blowing my mind." And I'm like, "What?" Because to me, I've been studying for so long and I think everybody knows this stuff, and they don't. And so that was just a sweet little confirmation. And then she had a question for me, have you seen this? And what do you think of that? But you just don't know who's hearing you, who's seeing your stuff. You guys, keep going.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, and you also did a class on theology in your church last year.
Kelley Mathews:
Yeah. That was fun.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And I think men were there too.
Kelley Mathews:
No, we didn't invite them.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
You didn't invite them. Okay.
Kelley Mathews:
Not this time. We had some go, that sounds interesting. We were like, maybe later.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
All right, all right. Okay, okay.
Kelley Mathews:
So yeah, it was good.
Milyce Pipkin:
What about you, Dr. Sue?
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, I was raised in a non-Christian home. I was a mess. And gosh, if Jesus hadn't found me, and you too, I mean there's a bunch of us around. I didn't know what a flannelgraph was, because I was 24 by the time I even figured out, even started on my road with the Lord. And gosh, He has been so faithful and so good. And there have been times that have been really rough. I was a minister to women in a couple of megachurches. But it all prepared me, I've just looked back now and see that everything God has done has been used and been there to pour into other people.
Milyce Pipkin:
That's awesome.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And I love pouring into other people.
Milyce Pipkin:
And you ladies, you only have a few minutes left here. But I just want to say that I love that you've poured into me, here in seminary. And so I see how your ministries resonate in women like me everywhere all over, especially for the ones of us who have been blessed to come here to Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Sue, you were instrumental in my even getting admitted and taking classes with you and learning how to minister to women and to love women well. And just reading your books and just seeing you live the life has just been a joy to me.
And then Kelley over here, in my little book, my little manuscript that I've been writing, Kelley's been instrumental through the years of just having helped me with the editing and that kind of thing, and a few of the chapters and that sort of thing. That's not why you're here, but you are here for me to just have an opportunity to publicly say, thank you, thank you. And to dear, sweet Kym here, she too got the Hendrick Center to just take me in and embrace me and give me an opportunity to just podcast here for The Table podcast. It's just been a blessing in my life. So it's just a joy to have three beautiful women whom I get the opportunity to see you live out the love of God in your ministry and in your lives.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
Well, it's a beautiful thing to do ministry together. I think we, in our individualism, our American individualism, we miss so much by not joining together and loving each other well. We need each other.
Milyce Pipkin:
We do.
Dr. Sue Edwards:
And it's such a joy. I am just grateful to the Lord for the opportunities and the doors that He opens, I think, for anyone who really wants to serve Him.
Milyce Pipkin:
Amen.
Kymberli Cook:
That's right. What a good way to end, Sue. Look at you, tying a nice little bow on it. Well, our time is up. And we just want to thank you, Kelley and Sue, for being here and for all of the work you put into this study on all of these different women in Scripture. It definitely is a service to the church and we appreciate it. And we want to thank those of you who are listening for joining us today and hanging with us all the way through Scripture and lots of ladies. And we just ask that you be sure and join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Note: This podcast episode on Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel is unique for The Table. We rarely cover current events as they unfold, much less events with such personal and global significance. At times, guests display the emotion that comes from knowing victims of the attacks. We decided not to edit out these moments. Our guests long for God's protection of the innocent and justice against the wicked. There is biblical precedence for this request and the emotion that accompanies it. One need look no further than Psalm 9. We also want to remember that there is a legitimate concern for those Palestinians who are also among Hamas's victims. We hope to follow up with a podcast episode exploring this topic. One thing is clear: Hamas helps no one, Palestinian or Jew. We offer this discussion of the conflict with these reflections in mind.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director at The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary.
And our topic today is the current situation in Israel, in the aftermath of the battle, really between Israel and Hamas. And so, I have two ministry experts who have had ministry experience with their organizations in Israel for a long time. David Brickner of Jews for Jesus, who's in the San Francisco area, and Mitch Glaser of Chosen People Ministries, who's in the New York City area. So I think we can say we've kind of got the country covered between the three of us because sitting here in Dallas, and we're just going to dive straight in.
Let's talk about a little bit about the context in which we find ourselves and why this situation has emerged. What's going on? And Mitch, I'll let you lead off.
Mitch Glaser:
Okay. There are some very gruesome details. I don't think that this is a war or a battle like a normal war or normal battle because it's not been fought between professional soldiers. It's actually a battle between terrorists and civilians.
The ground war hasn't started yet, and that will be slightly different, but for the most part, of the 1,300 Israelis that were killed, probably 1,100 of them were civilians. And they're still trying to figure out the numbers. And so, this is not just a war, this is a merciless attack by terrorists at a massive scale on Israelis.
So a week ago Saturday or whenever this podcast will get out there, on October 7th, based upon the number of bodies that were recovered of terrorists, it looks like about 1,500 terrorists, maybe more, broke through the borders of Gaza. They cut through the fence, they came on gliders, they came on rafts, and they slaughtered 1,300 Israelis.
More than 3,000 were wounded, and now the number is about 200 were kidnapped. That includes babies, moms, dads, elderly people, everybody. And as a result of these stunning, horrific, and gruesome issues that came up because nobody could really figure it out as it was happening, it took a few days really to just basically count the bodies. And I do believe the stories have been pretty verified about beheading babies and everything else. You just have to, when you're dealing with Hamas, you basically are looking at the same stream of extreme Islam, militant violent Islam.
And so, now what we have is there were 360,000 IDF soldiers called up. And right now these soldiers are gathering on the border of Gaza. Some of course are taking care of the northern border with Hezbollah. And they're going to go in and their goal is to deconstruct Hamas, to destroy them. And so, Israel is shell-shocked.
This is the worst catastrophe for Jewish people since the Holocaust. And so, I can't compare it to the Holocaust, but in one day to have that many innocents killed, and I don't know, David can probably describe some of the areas of attack if he wants, but the Israeli IDF, the Israeli soldiers are poised to go into Gaza and their mission will be to destroy Hamas.
Obviously, we make a distinction between Hamas and between average Palestinian citizens and people. And our hearts go out to the families and the loved ones of the Israelis who were killed. And of course, our hearts will go out and will go out to the innocent Palestinians that will be killed. But I can promise you, Darrell, my heart doesn't go out one bit for Hamas, I believe.
I'm praying for God's judgment to reign upon them, and I'm praying for them to be destroyed. If that makes me a lousy Christian, then so be it. But I really hope and pray that there will be a divine victory through the very faulty, inhuman idea and that this curse on the earth, the Hamas will be wiped out.
Darrell Bock:
By the time this is released, some of this may have happened. It's conceivable that the troops will have rolled in and we'll be hearing about what's taken place as a result.
David, you want to add anything?
David Brickner:
Yeah, Mitch, I don't think of you as a bad Christian for having those feelings about Hamas because this is not a group that's just dealing with the rights of the Palestinians for a homeland, they are hell-bent on the destruction of the Jewish people wherever they might be. And they are also haters of the God of the Jewish people.
I think it was incredibly cynical and revealing that they chose the day of our rejoicing, a Jewish biblical holiday, to attack. They are opposed to all who follow the God of Israel. And so, we need to recognize that God's judgment is already on them for the position that they've taken, for the lives that they have taken, murdered.
And this is not just Jewish people. The innocents who live in Gaza are also dying because of Hamas. And so, we need to recognize that these people are against life itself and they're willing to take that life. And so, I applaud Israel's commitment to completely obliterate this terrorist group.
And I think that the posture of our United States government is also laudable, to stand a hundred percent behind Israel. And I hope that the church does as well and does not fall prey to some of the equivocation that so often comes. And that's going to be a more tempting issue when the ground war begins. And there will be a call for ceasefire, there will be a call for comparing the loss of life. Any loss of life in Gaza is on the hands of Hamas because they're the ones that are hiding there behind the innocents.
So we just need to be, and I think this has happened, that there's a renewed moral clarity in our nation, even in places that you wouldn't expect it. As we are hearing government officials and legacy media talking heads talk about pure evil. Well, that's a judgment call that has not been heard very often from the podium in the White House or the floor of the Senate or from the New York Times. But they are stating that.
And so, in one sense, this evil has made itself manifest beyond those who should recognize it. But for us who are believers in Jesus, there's no question that this is good versus evil. This is the God of Israel versus Ha-Satan, the adversary. It's the cosmic conflict of all the ages writ large for us to see in our generation.
Darrell Bock:
So just quickly, just to fill some gaps for people, October 7th on the Jewish calendar, why was that significant?
David Brickner:
Well, it was the end of the feast of Sukkot, the most joyous feast in all of the feasts found in Leviticus chapter 23. It was the conclusion, Simchat Torah, the rejoicing in God giving the law. It's a day where the scriptures say you shall have nothing but joy. And that's what God was intending for his people, Israel and for all who are part of the grafted in blessed gentiles who worship the God of Israel. This is a celebration of God's provision for us. And at that high point of the Jewish festival, the concluding feast of all of the seven, this evil intent came into Israel to rob the command to have nothing but joy, instead giving us nothing but sorrow.
So there's a spiritual dynamic we cannot forget about when we think about these global issues. And you see the protests going on in major cities around the world in support of what happened, which is horrifying. And it makes you realize this is not isolated to the Middle East. This is a sickness and a sinfulness that is in the human heart across the globe. And those of us who love the Lord and who love his people, need to recognize this is not a battle isolated in one.
… Need to recognize this is not a battle isolated in one small part of the Middle East, it's across the globe.
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead, Mitch. I didn't mean-
Mitch Glaser:
Well. I agree with David's perspective, of course. Just to remind people that it was the Sabbath, it was the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, and it was a holiday. And if you read Leviticus chapter 23, you'll see that it's a no workday. And so between a Sabbath, a holiday, the 50th anniversary, this was a date that was carefully selected by Hamas. And again, the key problem with this that makes it distinct is that the attacks were not against the military. The attacks were against their neighbors who lived on Kibbutz Gaza or Aza, which is what it is in Hebrew. I mean, it was right there and right next door, two kilometers from the fence. And that was the first group that was wiped out. It was 260 or 70 kids who were at a concert and were in part of a new age festival that went there to have fun and enjoy themselves. And now their parents are waiting for some of them to come home. But they've been abducted in Gaza.
We spoke to a relative in Israel and asked how they were handling it, and she said, "I've gone to more funerals for friends than I have in my entire life," because her kids are the same age as the kids that were slaughtered and they were friends with so many who were killed. It's innumerable. And so, again, they picked a date when defenses would be down and they killed and slaughtered children, elderly people, babies, not soldiers. Even I sometimes use the word war, but the war is about to begin. But this was not a war. This was a terrorist slaughter.
Darrell Bock:
One of the points that I like to make in talking about Hamas is Hamas is not interested in defending the Palestinian people. They are interested in… And I think, David, you said this earlier, they're interested in trying to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and kick them out of the land, et cetera, and are interested in any means to do so. And I know when I've spoken to Palestinian groups, which I have done, about the situation in Israel, it is this reality that, I say, you have to take into account why Israel is so committed to her own security. This is an illustration of why, and sometimes I think people forget that some of the things that people have been complaining about, the cause of it is the presence of a group that wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. And the Bible is clear…
I want to talk about this biblically for a second. The Bible is clear that a country has the right to defend its people and the wellbeing of its people. That's one of the reasons governments exist. And so we have the idea of what's called sometimes Just War theory about the way in which battle should happen. And you're pointing out about this being not a fighting of soldiers, but an attack on people. That's a violation of what most people see to be international standards about how conflict should be fought. That's just an observation. Let me turn my…
And you can comment on this or what I'm going to raise next, the protests around the globe raise a specter of another reality that really Jews have been coping with for almost their entire existence. That's antisemitism and the significance of antisemitism. And let's talk a little bit about that because I think the moral clarity that you all were talking about earlier is important to appreciate here because it should be a check on what has been a problem with regard to antisemitism that runs the centuries when it comes to Israel. So I'll let you go either direction. You can talk about Hamas or you can talk about antisemitism, whichever way you want to go and to whoever.
Mitch Glaser:
Well, I'll just speak briefly. Antisemitism, the source of antisemitism is Satan himself. He was the first one to hate the Jewish people and he has inspired that hatred. Why? Because Satan understands the role of the Jewish people based upon God's covenants. The choosing of Abraham, from the Abrahamic covenant on, the devil who can't control history, he can only interrupt it at times, but what happened is the devil was trying to destroy the Jewish people, was trying to keep the Messiah from being born. Just look at the history. If he could wipe out the Jewish people, he could wipe out the plan and purposes of God. And so I think it's important for those listening, Darrell, to at least have a… I mean, I know many people who listen to the podcast and many of them have a deep understanding of scripture, theological sophistication. And so I know that I'm speaking to many people who understand exactly what I'm talking about, that the Jewish people are not finished yet, and the plan of God through the Jewish people will continue.
Ultimately, the Jewish people will be the light to the nations that the Jewish people are supposed to be. And if you read Romans 11 chapters 25 through the end of the chapter, you see that there's a day coming when the Jewish people will turn to Jesus and Jesus will return. It's well understood in certain circles, especially with those who take the Bible very, very literally. And we understand that the Jewish people have a role to play. The Jewish people had a role to play in the first coming of the Messiah and the Jewish people have a role to play in the second coming of the Messiah, and it's clear that the devil is trying to interrupt and counter God's plan. And so we have to understand that there is a cosmic battle. It's like Daniel 9, 10, and 11 just coming to fore. "There are principalities and powers," Paul says in Ephesians 6.
And these things are happening and it plays out through humanity in history. So am I saying that Hamas is from the devil? Yeah, probably. Yeah. Am I saying that every individual who hates Jewish people? Well, I won't exactly call them from the devil, but I will say that it's a devilish scheme that they've embraced and that they should reject and they should repent. And so wherever it is, we had the protests in New York in Times Square, you had it in Paris, where in the north of France, an Israeli diplomat was stabbed. I mean, you had it all over the place, but probably the penultimate expression of Satanic antisemitism, which brings the moral clarity that David mentioned, occurred on October 7th. And to see that has really caused people to take sides. My prayer, and I know that I'm talking to many believers right now, my prayer is that believers will understand that when you align yourself with those who are against the Jewish people, that you've actually aligned yourself with Satan.
It's a satanic plan. I'm not calling you demon possessed, but I am saying that it is a satanic plan. And last statement, there's a good Southern Baptist preacher that I like very much… And the Southern Baptists have such a great way of preaching. I wish I was Southern Baptist. I'm Conservative Baptist, I'm not a Southern Baptist, but I wish I was. The Southern Baptist leader said, "We need to love what God loves and we need to hate what God hates." And my prayer is that Christians will step up and be bold and will embrace the Jewish people and will love the Jewish people because God loves the Jewish people and hate the devil and hate those who embrace devilish schemes to try and destroy the Jewish people.
Darrell Bock:
David?
David Brickner:
Yeah. The greatest evil that a person can commit according to Jewish tradition is chillul hashem, the cursing, the bringing ill repute on the name of God himself. And this attack is chillul hashem because God staked his reputation on the perpetuity of the Jewish people. And so to attack the Jews is really to attack the reputation of the creator of the universe. And he has promised… He's jealous for his name and for his glory, he'll not give it to another. And so any effort to undermine, to destroy, to harm the Jewish people, that's why the scriptures say it's like touching the apple of God's eye, poking God in the eye. It is an assault on the name of the one that we love and worship. And so we need to recognize what's at stake here. It's not just an attack on Jewish people, it's an attack on the God of Israel, who is the God of all who follow the Lord Jesus. So I…
… who is the God of all who follow the Lord Jesus. So I really feel like the foundation of this is not just the Jewish people, it's the Jewish God, and it's the God of Israel. It's the God of Jesus, his father that is being attacked. His reputation is being called into question. And he promises in the end that he's going to preserve his people for his name's sake. And so when we enter into prayer, Psalm 1:22:6 says, "shaalu shalom Yerushalayim, pray for the peace of Jerusalem." We are engaging in spiritual warfare that ultimately will establish the glory of God, his name and his purposes on the earth. So this is a momentous event in the history of the church. This is an opportunity for God's people to stand up for what God has already declared in his word he is committed to. And we have that opportunity in our generation to do that through prayer, through support, and through no equivocation on this issue. It's a biblical issue and we need to see it clearly.
Darrell Bock:
So one other question, and then I'll ask for prayer requests. What are you all hearing from the ground, from your people there in terms of what they're going through, what their needs are? What are you hearing from Israel itself, David?
David Brickner:
We have about 50 staff of Jews for Jesus who are Israeli citizens on the ground in primarily Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. And a number of our key staff have already been called up to the front lines to serve. Some of them are in the North because Israel needs to watch out for a two front war, and it seems to be escalating there, but the majority are down in the South, mobilizing on the border. There are already some of our staff who can't tell us where they are because there are secret missions that are going on to try to discover what is happening with the hostages. And it's just a nightmare. But a number of them are basically saying that the first group that's going to be called to go into Gaza are the 18 to 21 year olds. They are in the middle of their military service and they're the frontline that's going in.
And then the next group will be those who've just completed their military service and are sharpest. But there are 300,000 reservists that have been called up. And so a lot of these people are believers in Jesus, and a lot of these people are coming into this fight with the hope of heaven. And so we want to pray and ask for prayer, especially for those of God's people who are on the front lines, who are defending with their own lives, the Jewish people and Israel. And so what our ministry is doing right now is trying to provide help for these. We have care packages that we're putting together at the Morris Rosen Center and distributing them to soldiers on the front line. Were also, because so many who were attacked in the South are still living in bomb shelters, their homes were destroyed, we're providing meals, personal needs, clothing, things like that for those who are in need.
We are also trying to provide ministry help through distribution of the scriptures. And then special events at the Morris Rosen Center. The children are traumatized. So for example, just yesterday we had an event for children at the Morris Rosen Center where you could come and play with puppies. And so we had kids coming to have a relief from the tension that they're feeling, but everybody feels it, and there's a lot of trauma, emotional, Mitch mentioned the funerals, they're just constant on the news. Israel's a very small country. And so what we experienced here in America with 9/11, people are saying, "This is 9/11 times 10 when you consider the population of Israel." And so all of that trauma, all of those needs are multiplied by the concentration of the people. And so whether it be serving on the frontline, bringing meals and care packages, or just helping Israelis to cope, we sent out in the first few days, 66 New Testaments were requested through our website in Israel.
And so there's a spiritual hunger as well as the needs of the people that are very much practical. We're trying to do our very best to meet those needs. And of course, our own staff, I'm praying for them because this has an impact on them just like it does everybody else in Israel. And it's hard to both care for yourself and care for the needs of those around you, but that's what needs to happen right now. So those are the prayer needs and what's happening with our staff on the ground.
Darrell Bock:
Mitch, what's going on with Chosen People?
Mitch Glaser:
Well, very similar to what David described. The needs are quite obvious. There are needs because the soldiers, when you call up over 300,000 troops, it's not like you gathered the food before you call them up. And so there's been a great need for thermal underwear and it's not so easy to get as many pairs as you want. So the IDF did their best in getting people in, but there's a lot of places where soldiers gathered before they go down to their basis or their posts. And so we're meeting them there and trying to provide. We're doing a lot of the same things that David mentioned because those are the needs.
One little difference maybe over the years because we have a lot of Russian, Jewish speakers on our staff, because of that, we've had a really intensive ministry among Holocaust survivors. And a lot of these Holocaust survivors, they were children and some of them were at the most teenagers. And when I started with Chosen People 26 years ago and became president, there were probably over 300, 350,000 Holocaust survivors. And we had ministries all over the country to the Holocaust survivors, loving them, taking them on trips, taking them overseas, taking them on tours, cleaning their homes, helping them, feeding them, I mean, just everything. And it took 10 years before we actually saw any of them come to faith. But now we see quite a few come to the Lord. But now the number's reduced. Maybe, nobody really knows, but maybe less than 50,000 of these elderly Holocaust survivors.
So we had a very strong ministry, the way you'll hear it either way. And so they are in the process at this very moment of being totally evacuated. They say that only about 10% of the, I don't know, 40 or 50,000 people that live there on a regular basis of whom many, many are elderly Holocaust survivors, will be out. And as David says, they're going to need a place to stay and they're going to need food. Chosen People's had a long-term relationship with many of these families. And so we're cooking and we're distributing food and praying with people and as usual, sharing the gospel. But we also had a relationship not just with the towns on bordering Gaza, but some other towns. There was one kibbutz that was in the South, and there's a town that was near that kibbutz called Ofakim, O-F-A-K-I-M, town of about 35,000 people.
About a third of them were ultra-Orthodox Jews. About a third were Holocaust survivors, Russian speakers. And then the rest, well, we were ministering there for years doing holiday celebrations, Hanukkah, Passover, and they were very, very involved with us. And what we found out on Sunday on the eighth was that a group of the terrorists entered Ofakim and slaughtered a whole bunch of people. But five of the people that we were ministering to on an absolute regular basis were gruesomely killed. And if they were in the late eighties, they were young, they were in their nineties, and one of the men was taken as a hostage.
We think, we don't know because they can't find his body, but he's in his early nineties. And so we have a group of traumatized elderly people, and so we have done everything we can to help these people who we love and we know well. So what we just did was we took about 30 or 40 of them to the Dead Sea. They needed to get out and we had a retreat. Most of those who came were unbelievers, but we went to the Dead Sea and we gave them some time to relax. And the conversations were very intense as you think about it. They escaped the Holocaust, admittedly very young, but they escaped the Holocaust, then they were pretty much imprisoned-
Then they were pretty much imprisoned as Jews in the former Soviet Union. They couldn't really identify. Then during Perestroika, they left and they ended up living in Israel, which was a dream of so many of theirs. They wanted to get out and to live as Jews. And now they died as Jews in the most horrible way. Well, of course, they died, but the people who are still alive are devastated. I mean, beyond devastation. And so, the amount of post-traumatic stress and trauma counseling that we're doing, it's just going on all day and all night.
And so, that's one. There's a lot going on among younger adults. We have a lot of young adults that we're ministering to. But this is a particular group of people that we've had a unique ministry to for years. And that's just the beginning of it all, Darrell. We learned a lot. I'm sure David learned a lot. A of us in ministry learned a lot. In New York, we had 9/11, then we had Hurricane Sandy, then we had a pandemic, then we had Ukraine and Russia, a war where I know Jews for Jesus was very involved there, still is, and so are we. And now we have this horrible thing happen. It's probably almost really the most horrible thing that happened.
And it's not that we are battle-hardened when it comes to disaster, but we do have some experience, unfortunately now. And we know that there are at least three phases, and we're in the first phase right now, barely into the first phase, and that's the emergency phase. So right now we're throwing every piece of spaghetti against the wall, doing everything we can to try and meet people's needs physically and spiritually, emotionally and psychologically, no matter who they are, what age they are. I mean, think, you have 300,000 call-ups. Well, most of them or many of them, not most of them, but many of them are married. Many of them have kids and most of them are men because there'll be some women, but most of them are going to be men. And so, we have a whole ministry that we've been doing to these poor moms and wives that are at home, and they don't know if they'll ever see their husbands again or their fathers.
And so, we are ministering to them. Of course they need meals and they need other things, but most of all, they need someone to hold their hand, to pray with them, to talk with them. And so, our staff is just dozens of staff in Israel. They're just going all day and all night doing this kind of thing. And so, we need the prayers of believers. And I really appreciate the support and the giving that Christians have. I mean, most of us we're getting gifts we never solicited. Money was just coming in. David, I'm sure that was true for you too. And it was just coming. And the money's important, we appreciate it, we're grateful. And I wish that some of what we're doing could be solved by money, but it can't. You can't. And so, we're grateful for the investment, and of course we need the funding because there's a lot of stuff we have to buy for people. And we have to rent spaces because there's not enough space for them to stay in different places.
But really pray for our staff and pray for JFJ staff, Jesus for Jesus staff. Because you can only imagine… Because our staff, we're all Israelis too. You can only imagine what they're going through and now they need to give out.
Darrell Bock:
Let me ask you-
Mitch Glaser:
It's really tough.
Darrell Bock:
Let me ask you this question. The population of Israel is, what? I actually don't know, it's an honest question.
Mitch Glaser:
A little over seven, 7.3 million.
David Brickner:
7 million Jews, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Mitch Glaser:
And another 2 million who are Arabs.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So there are 9 million-
Mitch Glaser:
At least.
Darrell Bock:
So 9 million people in the area.
Mitch Glaser:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And on the Israeli side, 7 million Jews. 300,000 reservists. How many people are in the core army, are we talking about? Do you know?
Mitch Glaser:
That's a good question. You know what? I don't know. I don't think they give that information out, Daryl.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, well that's interesting because-
Mitch Glaser:
Sure someone knows.
Darrell Bock:
Here's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to say that probably one out of every, what, 20, 30 people has been called up in the country? And that doesn't count the people who are already in the Army. My point is, everybody is very, very closely connected to what's happening in the land.
David Brickner:
Daryl, I just Googled it. 169,500 active troops in the IDF.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so that's 500,000, right? When you put the two numbers together. That's one in 14, have I got that right? Would that be right? One in 14 people are directly involved.
Mitch Glaser:
Well, you write commentaries on Acts and Luke, and you can also add, Darrell. That's amazing.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I didn't do that on a calculator. That's just off the top of my head. May or may not be right. I can't always trust the way I handle numbers. But anyway, my wife will tell you I definitely can't do that. Anyway.
Mitch Glaser:
It sounds pretty close. We have a saying, the six degrees of separation. Among believers, that drops to four or five. Among Jews, it's about one or two. And that's the hard part. It's not just Jews in Israel who know people who are in the army or who have died as a result of all this. We all do. Every single one of us do. And that's the difficulty, where Jews suffered as a community.
Darrell Bock:
Yep. Well, I just wanted to have people have, because you brought up 9/11 earlier, and the proximity issue in Israel is far more intense than anything that happened here. That's part of what I want people to realize.
David Brickner:
Yeah, that's fair.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Well, I want to thank you all for taking the time to kind of update us on what's going on and to think about what we should pray for. You certainly gave us a nice list of things to take into consideration, to give us the background of what's going on. We do pray for the ministries that are represented, not just from Jews for Jesus and Chosen People, but for anyone who's ministering in the area. And I imagine I might be calling you back in the future to see where things are in terms of what's going on so we can keep people informed. But I really do appreciate you giving us the time.
Let me close this in a word of prayer. Father, we do just lay this situation before you. And if there ever was a time where people feel like they're at a loss because of the depth of pain, and the depth of evil, and the depth of the challenge of what it means to live in a fallen and broken world, it's now.
And we just ask for your protection for those who are trying to save lives and trying to protect people. We pray for wisdom for those who are making decisions about what is going to happen and what is happening. We pray for some way to break through what is this deep level of sustained hate and evil, and that we pray that at least something good and redeeming can come out of it. But we do ask for your leading guidance of those who are on staff of these ministries and for the ministry of outreach that they're providing, may it provide some measure of communication of care and love to those who are being ministered to. And we just ask for your guidance. There's probably no situation more like this when we realize that we need what you are able to provide for us, so we pray for that. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
Mitch Glaser:
Thanks for the opportunity, Darrell.
Darrell Bock:
You're very, very welcome. Thank you, David as well for giving us your time,
David Brickner:
Privilege.
Darrell Bock:
And we thank you for being a part of The Table, and we hope you'll join us again soon.
Kasey Olander:
Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and today we're going to be discussing Sabbath. So we are joined by Dr. Sten-Erik Armitage and Dr. Shawn Shannon. Shawn is minister of spiritual formation at Tallwood Baptist Church and she's also a former campus minister with Baptist Student Ministry, which is how she and I initially got connected. Shawn, thank you so much for being here.
Shawn Shannon:
I'm glad to be here with you.
Kasey Olander:
I'm excited for this discussion. Sten-Erik, you are Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministries at DTS and Lead Pastor at Trinity Fellowship Church. Thanks for joining us today.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Oh, it's a pleasure to be here.
Kasey Olander:
I'm really looking forward to it. So I'll just start to put my cards on the table, no pun intended. Sabbath is something that I'm really interested in and really passionate about, but I know that we as Christians a lot of times have different opinions about Sabbath today. So even as we as brothers and sisters might land in different spots, it is still one of the 10 Commandments. And so it's mentioned several times in Scripture and for that reason, I figured it was something that was worth our time to reflect on and to talk about. And so I'm really excited to have each of you join me today, and I figured that we would start off by just setting the table, talking about well, what is Sabbath? What is our topic today? So Sten-Erik, why don't we start with you?
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Sure. Just at a base definitional level, Sabbath is Shabbat, which means to cease. We often think it's to rest, but it's to cease, to stop.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. What about you, Shawn? Anything to add to that?
Shawn Shannon:
Is it is simultaneously a command because it really is right there, fourth command, and a gift. And so I think sometimes in our culture, we think a command, a demand, an order is something that is not really for us, it's for the advantage of somebody else. That's not true here. It is a command, it is a gift.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
I like that language of gift because we think about that first Sabbath on that seventh day. God, his presence filled creation completely on that seventh day, and I think about our contemporary practice of Sabbath. We should be filling our day, our mind, our hearts with the peace and the rest of God. It's a time that we can luxuriate in his presence, and that's a gift anytime we can do that.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. So you're talking about the presence of God, but you Sten-Erik, you mentioned ceasing. What are we ceasing?
Sten-Erik Armitage:
So God ceased creating because it is finished, it was done, and so he stopped that productive work. So traditionally when we talk about ceasing with Sabbath, it's ceasing anything that is productive, anything that's obligatory or anything that would cause others to work on our behalf. That's the traditional idea.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. So maybe some examples of what is work? What is obligatory, productive?
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Well, work is a good thing. Work is in the garden. A man was created to work. Toil is what happened after the fall, right?
Kasey Olander:
Important distinction.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Work is something that we do that glorifies God, that can be life-giving both in what we're doing and how we're doing it, where toil is that grind, that pain. That now this is necessary just to exist idea, and what we're ceasing is that toil, because we're resting in what God has done. But as far as the production, just as God was done making, so we are done doing the things we're obligated to do, taking a minute to recognize the world will keep spinning. My company will continue to exist. My ministry will continue to thrive without me steering the wheel. God's got this.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Shawn Shannon:
When Sabbath is first mentioned, it's before the commandments were given. God let his people know, "I'm going to feed you, I'm going to give you manna," and that was Sabbath. This was their introduction to that. And can you imagine what it's like for people who are trying to live away from home, they're living in the wilderness, to go to bed every night with knowing the pantry would be full for tomorrow? So there's always that gift. An interesting thing about Sabbath for me is that the first thing that God calls holy in His word isn't a space, it isn't a people, it's time. That you get to the first dimension of when he rested and he called it holy. Who knew that the thing that most commonly we interact with that's holy is time? It's this time.
Then when we get the commandments, the mention in Exodus 20, it's tied to creation like Sten-Erik was just talking about. God ceased. He didn't stop creation and then rest, the rest was part of creation. It was the culmination of creation. And so we're invited to remember the Sabbath, and it's a time for worship. But then when we get to Deuteronomy, we're asked to observe the Sabbath and it's tied to being freed from slavery. This is being said to people who because they're slaves had worked for 400+ years without a day off, and suddenly they're invited into something new, sadly, which wasn't something that the people around them were doing. And so for me, it's back to this is a gift. Remembering, observing, creation, Exodus. Here, God is helping us by giving it a name, Sabbath.
Kasey Olander:
That's really interesting. I like that you highlight that, the first thing that is called holy is time. I feel like there's in today's culture, simultaneously we're always keeping track of time. We have to go to the next meeting, we have to have our next. We're always looking at the clock and at the same time, time is something that we take for granted where we have electricity, we could work around the clock if we wanted to.
And so it's interesting, we don't always stop to think about something like time being holy as opposed to something that dictates our lives or something that we can try to control with technology or what have you. So we have talked a little bit so far about what we might do for Sabbath, but I guess to take a step back a little bit, what are some of the different views that Christians might have today about Sabbath? Surely not everybody thinks of it the exact same way, but Shawn, why don't we start with you? What are I think a few of the ways, the places people might land as they think about Sabbath for Christians today?
Shawn Shannon:
I would be delighted to think that Christians think about Sabbath, just to be honest. I think growing up, I didn't receive any instruction about it. Sometimes Sabbath and Sunday were used interchangeably in my world without much explanation, and so it took some outside sources to introduce me to Sabbath. It took the Holy Spirit to convince me about Sabbath. I'm not talking about those things, but I'm making an assumption here. I think a lot of believers just don't think much about it. I don't think our culture thinks about it.
Probably when I was growing up, there was a sense that Sabbath was something that some people held to that was restrictive, so it meant certain things were closed on Sunday. That was about as far as it went, but without explanation except that that seemed to be for some people, pleasing God. I have had very little but some interaction with Seventh Day Adventists and they hold to their conviction that the day of the week matters, so that's one aspect of different Sabbath beliefs, and they have excellent biblical background on that. And then I think there is a general, sometimes unconscious really, that the Sabbath no longer applies, that there's no longer Sabbath. I have some thoughts about that.
So probably in the world in which I traffic, there are some people who have ideas of a real restrictive sort of Sabbath, it must happen on a Sunday, some who believe it must happen on a Saturday, and some who believe it just doesn't matter at all. Those are at least categories. And then there's people who are either Sabbath observers or the category I put myself in, I'm a Sabbath attempter. I never quite get it right. When I got to the end of my Sabbath this past week, I realized two things that were really missing and I felt it, but I haven't given up. I'm a persistent Sabbath attempter because it's such a gift. So those are my thoughts about what I see about Sabbath. Sten-Erik, I want to hear your thoughts then I'd like to talk a little bit about what happens with Sabbath in the New Testament.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Yeah. I think you nailed it. It's that spectrum between completely unaware of what Sabbath is other than a word that floats around church sometimes to an overly legalistic observation of Sabbath, where they bring everything back into it. But I think the most common in our circles is that view of Sabbath, that's supposed to be on Sundays, but it's not practical because we have so much to do and it wasn't commanded in the New Testament, so we don't have to do it.
Kasey Olander:
And I think like you guys have highlighted, a lot of times people just haven't thought about it. I was like, "Well, that's why it would merit a conversation. I would love to reflect on it."
Sten-Erik Armitage:
There you go.
Kasey Olander:
Have a discussion. But Shawn?
Shawn Shannon:
I did a project with campus ministers. It was a project of a program of spiritual formation for first year full-time campus ministers, and one of the invitations in that was to observe Sabbath monthly. Worked with this group for four or five months and one of the interesting things was helping people not immediately substitute the idea of day off for Sabbath. "For my day off," it's like, no, no, no, no, no, this is a day for. This is not a day off.
Kasey Olander:
Perhaps if you-
Shawn Shannon:
It's time as we don't normally practice it. It's something that really for most would not be in our lives, except for God's ask and God's gift. But I have heard though Sabbath really isn't mentioned in the New Testament, Jesus heals at least seven times on the Sabbath and Sten-Erik, you may agree, it seems pretty intentional.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Oh, yes.
Shawn Shannon:
He's restoring that healing aspect to the day. One thing that argues well for me, that Sabbath is taking the disciples and Jesus as an example. What happened after the crucifixion? And depending on whether or not there are seven times during the year that there are two Sabbaths in a row with our Jewish brothers and sisters, this was one of them. Well, I've wondered where was Jesus between the crucifixion and the resurrection? Why not say he was observing Sabbath? He had this lifelong practice of there's Sabbath. His disciples, who I could not fault at all for running around trying to do all sorts of things on the Sabbath after he passed away, apparently it wasn't even a question for them.
They did not move out and move toward the tomb until after Sabbath. When Jesus is talking about the Sabbath, he describes himself as the Lord of the Sabbath. I don't think he would make himself Lord of something that no longer existed. And it seems like his big interaction with Sabbath was it's redemption. So I see, and then you get into Acts and the times that Paul is in the synagogue on the Sabbath day because worship was a part of that. So it just seems to me that it was meant to continue. There was no canceling of the Sabbath. Why would there be? All these people that I take as my teachers observed the Sabbath.
Kasey Olander:
Sure. How about you, Sten-Erik? What do you have to add to that about how do you find where you land in terms of Sabbath?
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Sure. It is one of those things where there's not the explicit command from Jesus to observe the Sabbath in the New Testament, but we're told to imitate the life of Christ, and we see him consistently observing the Sabbath and the comments made of him being critical of the Sabbath. He's not critical of the Sabbath, he's critical of the way the Sabbath is being observed. It became this very legalistic thing where the beauty of Sabbath was lost in making sure we get the ritual of Sabbath right. And going back to Genesis, here in the creation account it was day, it was night, the next day. So there was a beginning and there was an end to every day of creation, but then we get to the seventh day, God rested and there was no end to that rest.
Which makes Hebrews 4 make even more sense when we hear about the rest, that we have the hope of rest we have presently and future, that is a Sabbath rest. And the idea that the Sabbath has been fulfilled by Christ, so we don't need to keep it. Matthew 5: 17, Jesus said, "Don't think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come to fulfill it." Fulfillment doesn't mean abolishment. As Christians, we have freedom, we have liberty. We're no longer bound by the Sabbath requirement, but the example of Jesus. The example of the history of Sabbath keeping as promoted by God in scripture, it's a beautiful thing that has present day ongoing significance for new covenant believers.
Kasey Olander:
And as you guys have mentioned, having it be a gift, not something that we're like shackled to, we have to Sabbath, but it could be a gift and making it distinct from Shawn, like you said, not just a day off. If I spend 18 hours watching TV, then that's not really refreshing for my soul, even though maybe it was my day off. So I guess that moves us into then what does Sabbath currently look like for each of you? Shawn, why don't we start with you?
Shawn Shannon:
Years ago, I read Ordering Your Private World by Gordon McDonald and he talked in there, one of his first points was the difference between living driven and living called. And I felt a little nailed by that because I thought I'm much more driven than called, and a lot of my drivenness, if I keep boiling it down long enough, has the basic ingredients of fear and pride in some sort of mix. So I felt convicted, and the conviction there about exploring how to live called eventually led me into being around some talk and some reading about Sabbath practices. And I can remember, I had been to a meeting where we were asked to fast from media and from food from the time we left to go to the meeting until the time we were returning.
When I was returning, I was having my first break fast meal in a Schlotzky's and I was reading Working The Angles by Eugene Peterson, where he talks about how we relate to Scripture and prayer. He talks about spiritual direction. He also hints at Sabbath. And I sat there and I thought this is getting personal. The Lord wants me to honor the Sabbath. So then I begin to look for teachers, and that old saying that where there is the desire to learn, the teacher will appear. Well, again, I'll lift these up. This isn't all of them, but there began to be all these people who wrote about Sabbath, either entire books or chapters, and I thought there's something to this. And when I was reading about it, there was consolation in my soul. There was a quickening. I thought oh my goodness, this is something I'm thirsty for that I didn't even know was on the shelves, and I began to explore how to do Sabbath.
So what began for me with scanning ahead into my work week to find 24 hours where I was not responsible for leading something, now I could attend something, those kinds of things, but that was the key part. And from there it just began to be learnings about what was a good investment in my relationship with the Lord? How was I wired to replenish spiritually? And then I began to need to also inform my community that this was a different day, and so that was very important. I think this is a place where Justin Whitmel Earley he talks about he observed Sabbath in community. Well, my only community is my cats, and they don't have intelligible conversations about Sabbath. But my closer friends and my work associates know this is Shawn's Sabbath day, so that's been helpful too, to have the community there and then to have that freedom to try things and to find out I don't think so. That's not very restful.
Anyway, I've been committed to the practice of it. I'll say this, I did not know how lifesaving it could be. There was a time period when my mom was declining with Alzheimer's and I was working on a doctoral degree and I was working full-time plus, and it sounds like it would've been a good time to use that extra day to get more stuff done. But I think the thing that kept me alive for those five years was the commitment to persevere in keeping Sabbath. If nothing else, it thrust me into some very practical dependence on God to make life work or not. It put me in a position to need manna, to need something I couldn't make for myself. And either God was going to come through or he wouldn't, but I really think it helped me live, even though it was very counterintuitive to continue to observe Sabbath during that time.
Kasey Olander:
There's a very practical way for you to exercise, "I have to trust the Lord. I have to trust that the next things will keep functioning, whether it's my job or my family or whatever it is, that if I Sabbath on this day, that I trust that the Lord is the one who upholds all things."
Shawn Shannon:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
So Sten-Erik, what about you? What does Sabbath look like now? How did you first start practicing it or getting interested?
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Well, I got interested because I was so tired and so busy, and this idea of Sabbath seems well, if I could do that, that would be refreshing. So full disclosure, I am a very gifted and talented hypocrite. So I have come to value Sabbath and I have rhythms where I am regularly practicing Sabbath in certain ways that I'll share, but then life starts getting intense and that rhythm gets set aside. And I'm very thankful that once every two years I teach a class here at DTS on the spiritual disciplines, and I feel that Sabbath is the anchor discipline from which the other disciplines receive their life. It's important.
And as I'm preparing for that class, the Holy Spirit reminds me of how poorly I'm doing, and so it's this recurring cycle of I need to get serious about this again. So one thing I started with Sabbath was the traditional, the day off idea. I'm going to rest so that I can be rested, so that I can be productive. After a while, I was convicted of the idea that the, "So that," was a problem because the Sabbath was not given to us so that we would be more productive the rest of the week. Rodney Clapp writes that the uselessness of Sabbath is precisely the point of Sabbath. So if I have the mindset of I need this so that I can be more effective in the classroom or in the pulpit, then I've co-opted Sabbath for my own purposes instead of honoring the Lord of the Sabbath.
Kasey Olander:
It's not a means to an end.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Exactly. And so that's one of those places where I have to question myself regularly. There is the inadvertent fruit that we will be more rested, but I need to focus on this is for God. It's not for me, it's for him, and so I set it aside. It's not a time for me to read a book that I want to teach on or prepare for a sermon. No, it's a time for me to cease from those things that are my necessity the rest of the week. So my practice runs depending upon what I'm doing in that season from two half days where I'm intentionally ceasing. Now, there might be some work involved, which I can talk about that later, but it's a different kind of work. It's not work for production. And those two half days are that purpose, but I like it when I'm able to have a solid day where that entire waking cycle is focused there, but that really depends upon where we are in the school year and the church calendar.
Kasey Olander:
Sure. And that's why it's good news that it's not legalism, it's not a have to if you want God to love you or if you want to be saved, it's something that we get to do and something that God might invite us into. But like you said, that doesn't make it something that is a compulsion or that we need to feel like guilt or shame about not doing.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
It's a voluntary act of worship that we've been invited into that Jesus modeled for us.
Shawn Shannon:
That is so well said.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
I'll write it down.
Shawn Shannon:
Well, in some of the writings about Sabbath, it talks about one reason we do that is that if we don't, everything fills in. There's not a space cleared where there is not something that doesn't have to be dislodged in order for that to be time with God.
Kasey Olander:
Right. It's maybe not natural to us to have these regular patterns of rest. Maybe it would be nice if rest just happened to me, but a lot of times if I'm not intentional about it, stuff crowds in there.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
It is just like budgeting. Our expenses will always make their way up to our income and the cult of productivity that we all subscribe to, if we don't dedicate this time to this purpose, something will enter in and take that time away from us.
Shawn Shannon:
I'm glad you said that. It reminds me that when you look at all of the 10 Commandments, the first talk about not having idols. And I don't know, I've not ever done a quiz on this, but for me, when I think of if the basic understanding of an idol is something that I'm counting on to provide me for what only God can give, then my big old idol is productivity because I have this thought that if I get enough stuff done, I'll have peace. So the practice of Sabbath is an affront. It's toppling that idol. And I don't know this because people have different idols, but I wonder if for most of us who follow the Lord, if the Sabbath in some ways always takes direct aim at whatever our particular idol is. It wouldn't surprise me.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
No, me either.
Shawn Shannon:
And another thing about Sabbath, we've mentioned rest and I think Sten-Erik mentioned evening and morning, that pattern, it's so interesting to me that there in the beginning of things, our day starts with rest. It doesn't end with rest, and so we're not working toward rest as something that's earned, which is how I think of it. But my reeducation is that I rest and then I work from rest instead of toward rest, that seems to be the rhythm of Sabbath, which I'm really bad at. But again, only virtue is not having given up.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
If I can be a nerd for a second.
Shawn Shannon:
Oh, please.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
We see two words that are used for rest regularly in the Hebrew scriptures and Shabbat is one, which we already said means more ceasing. The more common one is nuakh. And nuakh has that connotation of abide like we have in John 15. In this rest, this nuakh, we find a safety and protection and home. This is where we live. And in Exodus 20, where we have the command, we hear that God rested, nuakh, on the seventh day and then he blessed the Shabbat day and made it holy. So he rested and blessed the ceasing day, and then we go on and we look at the creation mandate.
When he is talking to Adam, the text says, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it." The word for "put" there is nuakh, so he took the man and rested him, abided him, placed him in that place to work and keep it. So he's in a state of rest in this work because he's in the presence of God and toil hasn't been entered into. And I think when we fail to Sabbath well or recognize that rest includes work, but not the type of work that can be classified as toil, then any work can devolve into toil. It's the rest of God.
Kasey Olander:
I was going to come back to, Sten-Erik, you mentioned earlier that you might do some work on your Sabbath. What does that look like for you and how do you distinguish it from toil?
Sten-Erik Armitage:
If it's something I'm obligated to do, then I should not be doing that on the Sabbath because I'm not trusting God to sustain and take care. I'm not recognizing who really is doing everything. But if there are things that I don't normally do that I am able to enter into as a form of worship, of delight, then that's work that I can do. So for example, writing for pleasure or reflection, I'm going to use this example. You know what? This is a good example for me. I was going to use gardening, but I don't enjoy gardening, so that would be a toil.
I'm hoping my wife doesn't see this, but I enjoy cooking and I don't do a lot of cooking. That is something that Sabbathing I would be able to enter into because it's not something I have to do, it's not something I regularly do. I know this goes against some modern day Jewish conceptions of Sabbath. You're not going to cook on the Sabbath, but that's something that it's not toil for me and it's not something I need to do Monday through Saturday, it's a special thing. And if it's worshipful, and again, not obligatory, I believe this is going to be up to the individual believers, but that's something I can enter into.
Kasey Olander:
I like that you phrased it that way. And at the Hendricks Center, we talk a lot about giftedness, this idea that each of us has things that we really gain energy from doing that we're really satisfied by, and so cooking might be one of those activities for you. For me, one of those things is drawing. It's not productive, it's not to sell. It really doesn't do anything, but it's something I, quote, unquote, "never have time for." Really, I never make the time, but having a Sabbath has that time already carved out so I can do something that might be enjoyable or restorative and something that to me is something that might honor God with.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
That's great.
Shawn Shannon:
Amen.
Kasey Olander:
Shawn, are there any of those things for you, things that you either know are really restful or restorative, things that you really enjoy doing?
Shawn Shannon:
I enjoy story, the experience of a story. My current Sabbath practice is to enter into Sabbath about 7:00 PM on Thursday if I can, and even the gift of Sabbath has to be held open-handed. Stuff happens and sometimes it can't. Well, I like PBS and if I guard the schedule, then I can begin my Sabbath with a Father Brown mystery.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Those are great.
Shawn Shannon:
And that's just not something that has value in other areas, but it's a story and that is precious to me. And it's lagniappe. It's not a necessary thing, but it's a good gift. Also, I think we'd do well to explore what are those settings where we flourish in relationship to God? And for me, one of those is nature, and I'm glad to say I live in a neighborhood where I feel safe to walk. And there's a little park that I often walk to and I often try to save it for Sabbath so that I can walk to that park on the Sabbath and think of it as the Sabbath park, so little things. Now, sometimes there's advances in Sabbath observance that happened because I realized I missed the mark. This past Sabbath day, I was weary by the Sabbath. What is this?
Well, then I took a walk and I called a tenured friend who lives in another time zone and we caught up, and after that there was this spring flowing again. And I realized that especially for me as a single person, I need to be careful that somewhere in my Sabbath, there's something about belonging. That was like oh yeah, I need to be intentional about putting some kind of belonging into my day. Another thing I neglected that day was worship, and I'm talking about something that's pretty overt that you wouldn't mistake that for an activity. So I'm all geared up for the next time the Lord clears the Sabbath for me, probably this Friday, that there will be belonging and there will be worship because I missed those things.
Which is to say that for the daughter of two teachers and someone who's around the academic system as both of y'all are all the time, I have to remember I'm not getting graded for the Sabbath. I'm not going to make an A in Sabbath. On the other hand, if Sabbath isn't something that I've accomplished and that I become an expert and I keep a Sabbath perfectly, that God is always, he's my teacher, he's my master, he's my very good shepherd. I like also the aspect of Sabbath, that I'm a learner. I'm a learner at this thing. Sten-Erik, Kasey, y'all have both already said things that I look forward to applying.
Kasey Olander:
I appreciate that, Shawn. Sten-Erik, are there other key elements? Shawn highlighted belonging and she highlighted worship. Are there other key elements that you would think that would be a part of a Sabbath for someone to practice it today?
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Yeah, sure. I think when we are looking at Sabbath, there's aspects of it of engagement. So community is one of those things that you're going to intentionally engage with, but there's also elements of withdrawal. I'm going to pull away from those things that are productive or might be those idols that have been distracting me the rest of the week. And I look at things like in Isaiah 58, we have the Lord talking about, "Keeping my Sabbath as a delight." So what is something that is a gift from God that allows me to delight in him? And those things should be welcomed into my Sabbath.
And so that might be you mentioned a Father Brown mystery on PBS, maybe it's a work of fiction that you otherwise normally wouldn't take the time to read because you're too busy with other things. But you know what? I can take a break and I don't have to read this, nobody's asking me to read this, but it is something that I can use this time for to delight in. That's a good litmus test question. Is this something that brings about delight and can be offered as an act of worship or received as an act of thanksgiving because of what God has done, not because of what we have done?
Kasey Olander:
That's really good, something that can be offered as an act of worship or something that can be received as an act of thanksgiving. That's good. I need to chew on that. Are there ways that I imagine that Sabbath would look differently for people perhaps in different roles or occupations? Some people in ministry, some people in the medical field, some people in different places might have ways that they rest differently, but also perhaps there might be different seasons of life. Has your practice of Sabbath changed over the years as you've endeavored? Shawn, I resonated with your language of Sabbath attempting. Has it looked differently over the years for either of you?
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Absolutely. Different seasons of being a student, of being a pastor, of having a full-time job and pursuing a doctoral degree, life gets busy. I have five daughters. Life is at times very intense, and so a part of Sabbath keeping, as we've already talked about, is not to make keeping of the Sabbath and idol itself where it becomes this guilt-inducing thing if I get it wrong. There have been seasons where my Sabbath thing has been an hour set aside, where I'm entering into silence and solitude and ceasing for the purpose of doing nothing but recognizing who God is and what he's done, and other times where I'm able to embrace that more complete 36-hour idea of Sabbath. And so those rhythms, we don't want to hold ourselves to a law that is going to create a pressure or an obligation that could cause us to lose sight of the beauty of Sabbath, if that makes sense.
Kasey Olander:
Shawn, anything to add to that?
Shawn Shannon:
Five girls?
Sten-Erik Armitage:
And one granddaughter, so there's a lot of consistency.
Shawn Shannon:
Oh, wow. Well, my admiration grows. That's great. I think the main shift for me, shifts, I can think of a couple. One has been when there is someone in my life in medical crisis, Sabbath's just going to look different. It can still be, but I don't feel like I can demand Sabbath from life. I can receive it. It's something to receive. But when there are certain crises, you just show up. And that's a part of what is so helpful to me that Jesus did intentional good on Sabbath that involved healing people, restoring their bodies, but also pretty much in every case, restoring them to community.
Another thing that has shifted Sabbath for me is moving from a campus minister schedule, which put my Sabbath frequently on Sunday, to being a church staff member. And that's just been just finding other ways, other times, other practices. Another thing we haven't mentioned is I have a desire to see people in my life be able to observe Sabbath. So to care about the people around whom I work, other things like that, that they have some opportunity to consider clearing that space of time to tend to their souls. And there's not really much more to say about that except that I want to be mindful of people around me as potential people who have also received the gift of Sabbath, and some of them may just never have gotten back to that part of the closet to even start to open it, but it's still theirs and still there.
Kasey Olander:
I'm sensing a little bit of I don't know if tensions to navigate is the right word, but Shawn, you're highlighting of course we want to take care of people still. Of course we want to do something, even if it might be a lot of work to bring someone a meal, or of course you want to feed your kids on the Sabbath. It's not that we cease everything or even everything that might be somewhat difficult if someone is in a medical crisis, and at the same time, we also think of the fact that it's not self-focused, self-seeking, and yet there's a way in which knowing ourselves helps us to rest.
So I am thinking there's a number of things that might be challenging for somebody if they endeavor to, "Oh, I've never Sabbathed before. Maybe I ought to try it. Maybe I might dip my toe in, or it might be something that just sounds like fun and it sounds like a gift that I might get to enjoy from God." So what would be each of your encouragement to somebody who is never Sabbath before but is open to the idea of trying it? Sten-Erik?
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Don't put too much pressure on yourself, first of all. And it's not about getting it right, it's about recognizing the heart behind what you're doing. And so the encouragement I would have, you don't need to have that full day right away. Maybe you enter into it where this evening is going to be a Sabbath evening, and this is going back to the very beginning of early Jewish observation of Sabbath, I'm going to have a candle and I'm going to gather the family around the table, and we are going to pray together as we prepare to enter into this four hours of ceasing.
And we light the candle, and I can't remember who it was, who said it, but as you light that Sabbath candle, picture the wax as the pressures and obligations that you have to do to keep the world spinning as melting away because God has it under control. And just that simple act and then sitting down and engaging in delight with your family, having people over to celebrate in community, that's an act of Sabbath. It's just watching the heart intention. Are you doing this so you get to hang out with friends, or are you doing this to delight in the time that God has given you because he's taking care of all that needs to be truly done?
Kasey Olander:
And then that frees us up to find our identity in Christ, not in our productivity, not in checking things off our to-do list, even though I love doing that.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Exactly. And for pastors, you mentioned Shawn, the difficulty on Sundays of that being your Sabbath, and I know that I have my Friday or my Monday have traditionally been my Sabbath days, but there's a pastor and author named Mark Buchanan who wrote a book on Sabbathing called The Rest of God, which is a great title because it's both the rest of God and the rest of God. And he's been able to, as a pastor, makes Sunday his Sabbath because of how he prepares and how he has taught his congregation in that his serving on Sunday morning because it is effectively done Friday or Saturday, he's able to simply present what he has prepared as an act of worship. It's not work at that point. And in his book, he writes through how he has done that. And it's a beautiful picture of even Sundays, for those who are in vocational ministry, could be Sabbath. I haven't personally gotten there yet, but I'm encouraged reading Mark's story-
Kasey Olander:
That it's possible.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
… it's possible.
Kasey Olander:
How about you, Shawn? What encouragement would you have for people?
Shawn Shannon:
You used a key word and used it a couple of times, Sten-Erik, the idea of preparation. Sabbath doesn't happen in my life without some sort of anticipation of it. I will start, I don't think about it now, but I scan out probably beginning a couple of days beforehand. And if there's something I need to get from a store or if I need to fill my car up with gas or laundry, but laundry to me is not an unSabbath thing. I love the transformation of the clean clothes. And I even think ironing for me is very Sabbathy because there's all these… anyway, we have different things that can be Sabbath, but there needs to be preparation.
I need to have evaluated what are things that are urgent and important to which I need to attend so that it won't be irresponsible to step away from that. And the idea that you mentioned starting even with an hour is the blessing on start with something. You don't have to start with everything, but whatever something you can start with, do. And I have found that there are some principles that there are some things that are good for us that when we partake of them or even dare I say indulge in them, we get an appetite and want more of that. That, "This is good. Where can I get more of this?" Is you get a taste. You taste and see that the Lord is good, and then you want more, and then all sorts of things kick in inside to help arrange life so that thing can happen.
Also, a reminder that Sabbath… I would love to take your class, Sten-Erik. I've been thinking that for about the past I don't know how many minutes… but that this is part of a larger picture of that buffet for spiritual growth that we have that's called spiritual disciplines. And so Sabbath exists in our life alongside of things like meditation or celebration or fasting or simplicity, but it's also part of a holistic picture of things that we are doing that help us abide, that help us hear the shepherd, those kinds of things.
So I would say the preparation, the starting where you are. If I were going to go to Seattle from here, really the first thing I would need to know is not where Seattle is, it'd be where am I because I can't start from where I'm not. So in a Sabbath practice that's new, any of us starts where we are and takes the next reasonable step. And the idea that often progress is as much about direction as it is speed, that even to turn in the direction of Sabbath can begin some sort welcoming blessing that begins to draw us in more. I would say the Lord draws us in more, it's not some disembodied force. So those things, planning, preparing, starting where you are.
Kasey Olander:
Yes. It's one of any of the spiritual disciplines really are things that help our souls to delight in God as opposed to help us to feel productive or help us to feel super spiritual or help us to gain brownie points with God. God has already demonstrated his love for us and that while we are still sinners, Christ died for us and already accomplished everything we needed for salvation.
Shawn Shannon:
Sorry, there's a gnat. Sorry, I dispatched a gnat. So it was a delight to me when I realized that I love Taco Bell, but Taco Bell has what would you say, maybe 7 to 10 ingredients and you just put them together differently?
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Right.
Shawn Shannon:
But I've done some fine Chinese buffets in my lifetime, and when I began to realize that the nurturing of our life with God and even with others is like this huge Chinese buffet and there's all these different choices. And some of them are wonderful and I haven't even gotten to the end of the line yet, it is just really good news.
Kasey Olander:
Well, I would love to keep talking about this, but we're about out of time. I've really appreciated each of your insights. I know, like I said, we've talked about throughout that Christians have different convictions about what Sabbath is, what it might look like for the church today, but I think it's become clear that all of us are proponents of Sabbath, of resting in the Lord and finding what delights us because the things that we enjoy, even if they're activities, are ultimately gifts from God that can roll upward into enjoyment of him, who's the Giver of all good gifts. So I'm excited for the next Sabbath and I'm grateful for the time with each of you, and so thank you guys for joining us today.
Sten-Erik Armitage:
Thanks for having us.
Shawn Shannon:
Thank you. Thank you very much. A pleasure to meet you, Sten-Erik, and good to see you again, Kasey.
Kasey Olander:
I appreciate it. And we also want to thank you guys, our listeners, for joining us. We're grateful that you've listened to The Table, and we hope that you join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And my guest today is Dr. Woodrow Kroll, who has embarked on an ambitious publication effort to discuss the events of the crucifixion. The intent has six books to it, right? Six books in the series, is that right?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Seven books.
Darrell Bock:
Seven books. Oh, okay.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Seven books.
Darrell Bock:
I'm missing one here on my list. Let's see.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
You're right, we added one on the end.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, you added one on the end. Because the list I only have had six. But I was getting ready to ask you why not seven? Seven's the normal biblical number.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
There you go.
Darrell Bock:
So self-corrected. What a great deal that is. Let me just review the topics for people so they get a sense of the series as a whole, which Wipf and Stock is going to publish. And we're actually going to talk about the events associated with the book as opposed to the books themselves per se. But, Roman Crucifixion and the Death of Jesus, Watching Jesus Die, this is a look at the characters associated with the cross at Calvary. Probing the Trials, Crucifixion and Burial of Jesus. Although I'll have fun when we get the word trials in that book. And then, The Day Jesus Died: Identifying the date, day and time of Jesus' crucifixion. Walking with Jesus from the Upper Room to Joseph's Tomb, Tracing Jesus' Final Hours and What Jesus's Crucifixion Accomplished. That's book six. And since book seven isn't on my list, what's book seven about?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Book seven is Take up the Cross: Why you do it and how you do it.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so it's application of all this.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
More practical theology than archeology.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, very good. Okay. Well, needless to say, this is a pretty extensive survey of the topic. So my standard question to someone who's on The Table for the first time is what's a good guy like you doing in a gig like this? How did you get here?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Well, I spent 23 years at Back to the Bible as their president and senior Bible teacher, and I retired in 2013. And immediately when you retire you have to find something else to do. And actually create a little project called the HELIOS Projects, to help untrained pastors in economically challenged countries, to have a Bible in Christian faith education right in their hands. When I finished that, I said, "Okay, Lord, I still have time on my hands." And I've always been interested in crucifixion. I've been researching it for probably 40 years. And I sat down and I said, "Okay, what do I want people to know about the cross and about crucifixion?"
And basically the outline came out just like these six now seven books. And I started to write it and actually tried to put it in one book, two volumes of one book. And I have a friend who is a representative for authors and he said, "Nobody is going to buy an 1,850 page book." So we broke it down into these seven books and made a series on it. And Wipf and Stock was very interested in doing a series, which made it perfect for me because I had a lot of material to cover in more than one book.
Darrell Bock:
Well, 1,800 pages is a lot. I've did a commentary that was a little slightly larger than that. Some people will buy it, but it takes a lot to get them there. So you made a wise choice.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
That's right. That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And you've already given a little bit of your background that you were president and senior Bible teacher at back to the Bible. And of course you worked in the Department of Religious Studies at Liberty University, so you bring a background to this area. And then I also see that you have the traditional view of Christian retirement, which means we need to look it up in a dictionary. Because most Christians when they retire, don't actually retire, they just shift emphasis.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
You know what I did retire. I traveled extensively for Back to the Bible. I've been to 113 countries preaching. And everywhere I went I would meet a pastor, who was doing the very best they could with what they had to work with. The problem of course was they had nothing to work with. And I promised God, if I ever was in a position to help these pastors, I would give them what God's been so gracious in giving me. And I was retired probably four or five days when God reminded me of that promise. And so I started the HELIOS Project and then from that onto this crucifixion project.
Darrell Bock:
So are all these volumes completed now? What's their status?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
They all are all written. Book one is out. Book two is at the publisher right now. I'm editing book three at this point, and book four will come in a month or two after that.
Darrell Bock:
I owe you a forward for book four, which I haven't done yet. So I wanted to know how pressing this was going to be. It appears this took you a while to do. How long did you actually work on this project of doing these seven books?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
It took nine years to write the seven books, and maybe 35 years before that in research. I own just about every book ever in print on the subject of crucifixion. Some of them are extremely helpful, some of them not so much, but they're good books.
Darrell Bock:
So a generic question, and that is when you look at the project as a whole, what do you feel like you gained from investing nine years and working on this?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
For me personally.
Darrell Bock:
Yes.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
I think I have a deeper, greater appreciation of what Jesus had to go through, not only on the cross, but in preparation for the cross. The series itself only goes from the upper room to Joseph's tomb, so I don't deal with the passion week. I actually don't deal with resurrection. It's all focused on that weekend, and what happened to Jesus on that weekend.
Darrell Bock:
So it starts with the upper room and then goes up through the crucifixion itself and the burial, is that basically where it starts.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
The burial.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So let's talk about this. Obviously, Roman crucifixion was a significant deal, not only because of what was involved in it, the actual pain and punishment of crucifixion, but also because of the role that it had in Roman society, and what they were trying to accomplish through it. So let's talk a little bit about that to start off with. I'm familiar with a little book called Crucifixion by Martin Hengel, which goes through in great detail the background of what was involved in crucifixion, how the Romans viewed it, the fact that Romans wouldn't allow Roman citizen to go through it, et cetera.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Best small book written on the subject.
Darrell Bock:
It's a brilliant little book and you can read it in an hour and a half. And it's just loaded with direct citations from all kinds of sources about what's going on with the crucifixion. But let's talk about that a little bit. Why did Rome crucify people? What was their intent in crucifying people?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Well, I think there were several. Obviously, it was a form of punishment that's a given. And it was punishment mainly for slaves, for the lower class people. Roman citizens could be crucified, but they had to be specific requirements before they were crucified. The other reason though, that they wanted to crucify people was a deterrent crime. If you watched a person being crucified, you would think twice about doing something that the Roman Empire didn't want you to do. So it was a deterrent. They would leave them on the cross sometimes for days until they finally expired. There are all kinds of incidents of carrion, and dogs, and other animals coming and nibbling away at the people who were on the cross.
So it was punishment, it was a deterrent. They did it to shame the person, to dishonor that person's name and perhaps that person's family. I think a lot of Jesus' crucifixion had to do with shaming him, because he'd become popular. The religious elite in Jerusalem weren't his best friends, and as a result they wanted not only to be rid of him, they wanted to shame him in the process. So they had a variety of reasons why they might crucify a person. None of them justified, but all of them made sense to the Romans.
Darrell Bock:
What I say to my students is that the Romans believed, "You follow our law, we'll put you in order." And this is one of the ways that they did it.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Exactly.
Darrell Bock:
Was to show that if you cross us, you will end up on a cross and it will be a very gruesome death. It was known as the most horrific form of dying, I think, in the ancient world. And was intentionally designed to be very gruesome and very painful.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Cicero said it was the most pitiable of all deaths.
Darrell Bock:
So that's significant for the background. It's interesting. One of the things that we have to think about, when we think about this event is the Jewish role in leading up to crucifixion, and then the Roman responsibility for crucifixion, and that this was intentionally done. So I'm going to jump around in your series a little bit because on book three you talk about Probing the Trials, Crucifixion and burial of Jesus of Nazareth. And I like to say that the examination of the Jewish leadership before the examination for Pilate, technically speaking isn't a trial. It's an examination to gather evidence to take to Pilate.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Exactly.
Darrell Bock:
And so it's more like gathering a grand jury to seeing if you have a charge that you can take, as opposed to actually being a formal trial with a judge.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Right. And I think the role of Annas in this especially shows that it was more of an inquiry, it was more of a pretrial. When you get to the second part of the Caiaphas event, when they're actually at the Chamber of Hewn Stone. And they're formulating the charges, they're getting the 70 together, so they can actually take that charge to Pilate, they know they can't crucify Jesus. The Romans won't let them crucify anyone. So they have to get all their ducks in a row to make a case to Pilate. I think they were hoping that when they got Jesus to Pilate, there would be no trial at all. Pilate would simply rubber stamp what they had said about Jesus and away he would go. There must've been surprised when Pilates said, "Well, let me take a look at this myself." And as a result of that, that's where the trial took place in Roman custom.
Darrell Bock:
Very, very good. And I think it shows the transition and the difference. There are some interesting features in that Jewish examination. And you said that there comes a point in the second half of that time, where they're really focused on what they're going to bring to Jesus, what charge they're going to bring to Pilate about Jesus. And it's interesting to me, they kind of at least with Mark as any clue, they struggle to find exactly what they're going to do. They can't go to Pilate and say, "We believe Jesus is blaspheming our religion." Pilate's reaction to that would've been, "So."
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Big deal.
Darrell Bock:
"That's your business, that's not mine." So they had to take the religious concerns that they had and translate that into a political charge, which is what the synoptic gospels make transparent, particularly Luke when he talks about the kinds of things that were brought before Pilate about Jesus. But what's interesting about that move is, and I like to point this out to people, the person whose testimony is responsible for Jesus' death is Jesus's testimony himself.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
He's that committed to going to the cross.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
And he didn't back off when he was at Pilate. He didn't answer a lot of the Sanhedrin questions, or Annas' questions, or Caiaphas' questions. I don't think he respected them as legitimate authorities. They were not doing the service to God that they were required to do, or they were expected to do. When he gets to Pilate though, he knows this is the Roman government officially appointed legate for this region, the prefect for this region. And he is dealing with a organized government at this point. So when it was simply religious in nature for Annas and Caiaphas. Now it is as you say political, it is now a charge against the government in which a government has some ability to actually make the charge, and set the punishment for the charge, and carry out the punishment.
Darrell Bock:
So let's talk about the difference because I think this is important. In the Jewish examination what the leadership asks about and focuses on is whether Jesus is the Christ. Now, this is both a religious charge and then in this environment it's also a political charge, because the Christ is a king. And in the Roman view of things, Rome appoints the kings for the Roman Empire. You don't get a self appointment, if I can put it that way. And so as a result, that's a challenge to Roman authority if Jesus is actually a Messiah that Rome didn't appoint. Now when they asked Jesus about this, Jesus gives the Jewish audience initially in the examination, gives them more than they bargain for. Because not only does he accept the title of Christ, but he says basically that he's going to go to the right hand of God and ride the clouds, which is a nice way of saying that, "You may put me on trial here, you may crucify me, but God's going to vindicate me one day. And one day I won't be the defendant. I'll be your judge."
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
I think it's interesting that for Caiaphas especially, he can't go to Pilate saying that Jesus blasphemed God. Pilate has done that himself. Pilate wouldn't care that Jesus blasphemed God. He can however go to the other religious Jews and make the case that Jesus is blaspheming God, because he did not deny that he would one day sit at the right hand of the Father, and come on the clouds and judge them. And that put him in a position that no Jew would ever allow another Jew to be in unless they were the Messiah.
Darrell Bock:
It's a tricky question because in some of the extra biblical material, you see contemplation of the possibility that someone might be at the right hand of God, but it's very clear dignitary figures or it's in very symbolic context. For example, in The Exagoge of Ezekiel, which is a second temple Jewish text, Moses has a dream and he's invited to sit on the thrones of God. Now, there's only one passage where thrones is plural in the Hebrew scripture, that's in Daniel seven. And so he's invited to sit on the thrones of heaven. And in the midst of doing that, Jethro interprets the dream by basically saying, "When God gave you the authority over the plagues, when you were speaking it was as good as God speaking." And this was a figurative way to present that kind of authority that Moses was yielding in the Exodus. And most people see The Exagoge as a midrash on Exodus 7:1, which is an interesting text because it says, as God is addressing Moses in his calling, "I will make you God to Pharaoh."
That's actually how the Hebrew text reads, translations wimp out, "I will make you like God to Pharaoh." No, that's not the way the Hebrew reads, so that's an important text. And then a second example is Rabbi Akiva thought that David perhaps could sit at the right hand of God, but that got a retort from the sages. The sages are where the majority opinion is in Judaism, and it says, "How long will you profane the Shekinah?" So they didn't like that idea. But Akiva entertained it for David. And then the third example is the Son of man who sits with God in heaven and first Enoch, and has all kinds of authority that he's exercising in relationship to the judgment.
But again, all these were, how can I say this? Parts of Jewish speculation at the time, they weren't adopted doctrines if you will. And this council is made up primarily of Sadducees, who did not like additions to the Hebrew scripture. In fact, they were committed to the Torah above everything else. And so they never would've tolerated these kinds of options that some were entertaining in Judaism. So the point is when Jesus replies saying, "Yes, I'm the Christ, and here's another thing you didn't count on. God's going to vindicate me, and then one day I'm going to come back as your judge." For them because they didn't believe that they thought that was blasphemy. And technically speaking if Jesus wasn't who claimed to be, they would be right.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
They would be, yes, certainly.
Darrell Bock:
And so that's the religious charge. And of course in Mark Caiaphas rips his clothes to show that blasphemy has been uttered and they render a judgment. And then they translate that charge when they go to Pilate and say, "Jesus has claimed to be a king of the Jews. And your job is to look after Caesar's interests, and to make sure that Caesar isn't dishonored. And Rome appoints the kings in the Roman Empire, you don't self proclaim yourself to be a king. You've got to do something about this."
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
When Jesus admits who he is, when he says, "I am going to be seated next to the Father on his right hand. I will be coming on the clouds." Immediately, Caiaphas says, "Well, you've heard the blasphemy. What other charges do we need?"
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
"We have all the evidence we need with that one charge."
Darrell Bock:
Exactly. And this makes the point I was making originally, which is the testimony that actually sent Jesus to the cross, that started the process was that remark that Jesus makes. Because they had failed previously to say, "Well, Jesus said he was going to destroy the temple in three days and raise it up. He's going to act against the temple." And they tried to do it that way as a disturbing the peace charge, and that didn't work. This is ironic, Jesus supplies the testimony that ultimately sends him to the cross. I think that's one of the most profound parts of the passion narrative, because it shows how committed Jesus was to doing the work that God had called him to do in dying for sin.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
And at some point the silent lamb led to the slaughter, makes the admission that silent lambs don't make, and that is, "I am who you have claimed I am, and I can't go back on that."
Darrell Bock:
Fair enough. So this charge gets put into the political realm and Pilate upon examination, his initial reaction is, "Well, I don't see him doing anything worthy of death." I like to think about this from Pilate's perspective. He's a prefect of the powerful Roman Empire. He's got Jesus in front of him who's been presented as a king. But Jesus doesn't have an army around him, or anything that indicates any kind of power, any kind of threat to Rome. I think he initially looked at this and said, "Well, this is a Jewish dispute. I'm not quite sure what's going on here. And I certainly don't feel threatened by any of this. This is a Galilean Jewish teacher, preacher, and I don't feel-" And his initial response is, "What's the big deal?"
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
He wanted to dismiss it.
Darrell Bock:
He wanted to dismiss it. And then of course, they kept pressing him and basically said, "If you don't show yourself to be defending Caesar's interest, which is why you're here and is a part of your job description, like the central part of your job description, then you're not doing your job."
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
And it wasn't until that charge that he would no longer be a friend of the emperor, that Pilate said, "Okay, I have to do something about this. I can't dismiss this anymore. I can't just shove it aside. If they're going to claim to the emperor that I'm not his friend, I'm going to lose everything." Lose his position, probably lose his life. He had to do something at that point.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly. And then of course, the issues the opportunity for another out with Barabbas, on the premise that, "Well, this is such a notorious insurrectionist and then this teacher over here. Surely, surely that will get us out of the situation." And that didn't work, and so eventually he signed on. You made one other point that's important here, and that is that only Rome crucifies. The Jewish leadership had no ability to deliver the kind of sentence for the way they saw Jesus that they wanted. And there's another thing going on here that's important, which is why this discussion of the Jewish background versus the Roman background is important.
I like to say to my students that this is actually a brilliant plan in some ways that the Jewish leadership has put together. Because in the midst of trying to get Jesus to Rome, if Rome crucifies Jesus, in the end they can say, "Look, all we did was bring him before the official Roman leadership and they did the deed. We were just being good Roman citizens in bringing Jesus to Pilate's attention." And so there's protection there, but there's also risk. Because had they brought Jesus before Pilate without a solid charge to get him to give a verdict, that would've been a bad result for the Jewish leadership.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Sure. Sure. Sure. And there are times it looks like Caiaphas is playing Pilate and Pilate is playing Caiaphas. They're really two pretty sly characters here, equally matched, I would think. And one of them is playing the Rome card to the Roman, and the other is playing the spiritual blasphemy card to the Jews.
Darrell Bock:
It is a very, very interesting exchange. And then of course, it's clear that Caiaphas and Pilate had an existing relationship, because every year that Pilate appoints the high priest, he appoints Caiaphas as the high priest. So another thing I like to say is, so Pilate had a choice. He could go with his instincts that something wasn't right here, and that Jesus didn't deserve what was being asked for from him to crucify Jesus. Or he could go with the gal he brought to the party, they had had this relationship. He was this expert in Jewish affairs, if you want to think about it that way. And so he eventually followed the lead of the pressure he was getting from a relationship that he had that existed, as opposed to this new one that was cast in front of him when Jesus shows up in front of him.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Yeah. These were two, I think, equally matched politicians. They wouldn't have hung up there as long as each of them did if they hadn't been.
Darrell Bock:
So let me go back to the contents of book two, where you talk about a cast of characters of Calvary's cross. I really like this part of the passion narrative. Because I think it shows what I call the array of responses that the crucifixion generates. It literally is a little microcosm of the array of responses that Jesus generates, and it's all revolving around how people are reacting to his death. So help me with that a little bit. Who are some of the key characters and what do they represent?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Anybody who is touched by the Savior at this weekend event is in book two, and I think they're 27 chapters, something like that. Because you start with Jesus, no one would be in this book if it weren't for the Lord. So everyone touches him and he touches them. The disciples are obviously there, Peter is there, Simon Cyrene is there, the daughters of Jerusalem are there. The ladies who came with Jesus from Galilee down and ministered to him, they're all there. And of course, Annas is there and Caiaphas is there, and just everybody. The Roman soldiers, the killing field soldiers, those who were adept at taking people's lives by crucifixion, who did the actual crucifixion, they were there. And of course the last chapter is Satan, because I think Satan had a pretty strong vested interest in what happened at Calvary.
Darrell Bock:
Fair enough. And they all represent a little bit of a different feel. For example, the women that you mentioned at the beginning who are in Luke, where Jesus says, "If they do this to the green wood, what will they do to the dead wood?" Which raises a question of there's a sense in which they're observing and there's a bit of sympathy and empathy for what's happening, but it's unclear… Well, what's clear is the injustice of what's taking place. In Luke Jesus' death is portrayed as an injustice, that Jesus wasn't guilty of the things he was crucified for. So there's that dimension of the equation. Then you've got the mockers, the people who mock Jesus. You have the debate between the thief on the cross who responds to Jesus and the one who doesn't.
I even like to talk about the creation as a character in the story, because the creation reacts to the death of Jesus. You've got people who are just sitting and watching, they don't have any commitments, they're just observing what's going on. You've got the centurion who sees everything that happens, certainly the climactic figure in some ways of the crucifixion and says, "Surely this one was "dikaios " was righteous emphasizing. So you really get the array of responses to the crucifixion that really cover almost the entire spectrum of how someone might react to Jesus and his death.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
And not only their responses, but the backgrounds each of these people bring, they are so, so different. You have the religious leaders of the day in Jerusalem, then you have the Roman leader of the day in Jerusalem or in Caesarea. And you have people from all over who are all touched by the same person, and touched in different ways because his ministry to each of these people was a bit different. When you get to that soldier, that centurion who makes the comment about the righteous man, I think you have hit the zenith there, even though there's a burial after that.
I think you've hit the zenith there of the story, because here's a man who all his life was taught to follow the pagan gods of Rome, many of them. Follow the emperor, he was a god himself. Suddenly he sees all these things happening. He hears what Jesus has to say. And here's a man whose life is changed, flipped upside down immediately. He recognized something in Jesus he never saw before. And a lot of the other people around the mockers, and at least one of the bandits on the other side, they don't even see this in Jesus, but this man does. He knows this is someone special, "And I have to pay attention to this person."
Darrell Bock:
And of course, the term dikaios is interesting because it's a double entendre in and of itself. It means righteous on the one hand or just, so here's a guy up on a cross being crucified for a crime who is just, put that together.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Exactly.
Darrell Bock:
So you've got this confession that comes from this figure who's watched everything, including I think the reaction of the creation might've gotten his attention. And so responds accordingly. We're used to talking about it just simply from asking the question, "So what is Jesus doing up on the cross?" And of course the Christian answer is, "He is dying for sin." But I actually think one of the fascinating parts of this scene is the array of reactions, that Jesus generates, because it's no different than the array of reactions Jesus generates in general.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Sure. Sure. Sure. That he has brought to the foot of the cross just about every spectrum of society that you can think of. He's brought to the foot of the cross, rich and poor. He's brought to the foot of the cross male and female, bond and free, as Paul says. And he is the link to all these people. And the cross is where the connection is made to all these people.
Darrell Bock:
Now, in some ways, the most interesting volume, I think at least the most controverted volume, maybe that's the way to say it, is book four, which is The Day Jesus Died. You and I have had email exchanges about this book and identifying the date, the day, and the time. And of course, the problem that we have is that we're 2,000 plus years removed from this. We're dealing with witnesses, we're dealing with a section of timing that generally speaking the ancient world wasn't as precise about time as modern. I've got an iWatch here that keeps nuclear time. They weren't dealing with that. A sundial is a little bit of a way from that, and that kind of thing. So it raises all kinds of questions. So I think what I want to do with this book is to just lay out the options a little bit, and help people see what gets discussed, and then try and pull it together. Because despite the conversations that these topics generate, there is something that's central that shouldn't be missed, so let's do that, first of all. So what year are we talking about?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Well, if you're talking about the crucifixion itself, it all comes down to two options, I think, and that's AD 30 or AD 33. Boy, there are just really good scholars that come down on both sides of this.
Darrell Bock:
That's right.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
The arguments on both sides are really good arguments. And if I say I think it's AD 33 and you say 30, God bless you.
Darrell Bock:
Fair enough.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
It's really a tough issue.
Darrell Bock:
I actually don't remember how you decided this. Did you lean one way or the other?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
I did lean to 33, although I didn't say thus saith the Lord.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, that's good. I'm a 33 guy too. I actually think that one of the reasons that I think 33 makes sense is the text says that Pilate and Herod got along better after this. And there's a figure unnamed in the background, Sejanus, who was kind of-
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
… the Secretary of State for Rome during the time, if I can say it that way, who had passed away and had a reputation for being antisemitic. And so as a result with him being off the scene, Pilate's ability to get closer to Herod opened up to a degree. And that would've not been true in 30 and would've been true in 33.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
And that's the very reason why I leaned to 33, because Sejanus he was doing fine as long as Tiberius was on the aisle of Capri. When Tiberius found out what Sejanus was doing, Sejanus is killed. Now Pilate's inside man in Rome is gone. And that's when the charge, "You're no friend of the emperor would've meant something to them."
Darrell Bock:
And there's an interesting background to that. Because Pilate had done some things that were particularly offensive to the Jewish community-
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Correct.
Darrell Bock:
… within his prefecture, and Tiberius had rebuked him for it. So he already was kind of on a short leash, and needed to be careful about how he was handling affairs there. And of course, he eventually lost his prefecture by doing another offensive thing in relationship to Samaritans after the time Jesus was crucified. So we know he was being, how can you see this? He had an overseer who was very much overseeing what he was doing.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Yeah. He was being surveilled from Syria.
Darrell Bock:
There you go, that's a good way to say it. So that's the interesting one, that's one on which we agree. Let's go to one where we've discussed back and forth. And that is, so the last supper. Not so much the day. We agree on the day, the day of the crucifixion is a Friday. It's the day before a Sabbath, which means that you're going to have… It's also associated with a feast, so it's a sacred day, which leads into a Sabbath, which is also a sacred day. So you've got two sacred days in a row, which produces its own set of problems if you're a Jewish person trying to keep tabs of following the law. So you've got that environment. But the discussion around the Last Supper involves what feast and what is the discussion?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Well, the discussion is was this actually a pre Sabbath, pre feast dinner, or was it just an ordinary dinner of some sort? And then beyond that, I have a rather unique interpretation of that dinner. But if it was a genuine Seder meal, a genuine pre Sabbath meal.
Darrell Bock:
Passover Seder.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
It would then mean that you're looking at the Sabbath the next day, and therefore you're looking at the Synoptics account of events falling right into play. If it was something else, then John comes into play because he has a little different take on how these days play out, and what this particular meal was.
Darrell Bock:
And the trick here is not only the combination that you're dealing with Passover and Sabbath, but Passover itself moves into Unleavened Bread immediately. There's no break. So you've actually got a series I mentioned too, but you actually have a week long feast in which every day is regarded as a holy day. So once you enter that window, you're there for a while. And the day of preparation associated with the Passover, and this is how I resolve it. The day associated with the Passover is actually part of a sequence of several days. And you could be anywhere in that and refer to it as the day of preparation for the Passover, because the Passover holiday covers that in one sense that entire week, even though it's Passover and Unleavened Bread. That favors if you can say it this way the synoptic emphasis.
What produces the Johannine in question, and then a question about whether there's a Passover meal is that John uses the phrase the preparation for the Passover. And that gets read in a very specific sense, not as the Passover week, somewhere in the Passover week, but actually the beginning of the Passover itself. And when you do that, then it looks like the Synoptics in John aren't quite on the same page. And then you make a choice and an explanation by saying, "Well, then Jesus did a meal that was so close to the Passover that it had Passover connotations, even though it wasn't a Passover meal." And I think that that resolves in favor of highlighting the Joanna chronology read in a particular way.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
And actually that explanation wasn't all that attractive to me anyway, which is why I saw this meal, whatever it was, as a transition from Old Testament to New Testament, from the Passover meal to the last Supper. And therefore it didn't fit the category of just any old meal, just a regular dinner with his disciples. It had a specific purpose, if not the Passover meal itself, it had another specific purpose.
Darrell Bock:
I tell people regardless of how you take the view on this, it's a little bit like the way we handle the Christmas season. We have Christmas parties in our workplaces that aren't held on Christmas day, because of the overhang of what the holiday season is. And so you could have something like this. One thing that I'll be honest attracts me to the Passover view and the fact that Synoptics call this a Passover is, I think there's something subtly Christological going on here. Which is that Jesus has taken a specified Torah commanded liturgy, which is tied to the Exodus and the Passover-
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Correct.
Darrell Bock:
… and has changed the symbolism that's involved in it. Well, he's added to the symbolism would be a better way to say it. He's added to the symbolism because his death is kind of a second salvific event in the history of Israel and connects to that. And then that raises the question, who has the right to do that? Who has the right to take Torah based teaching where all the symbolism is spelled out for you and alter it and attack it, that says something about who Jesus thinks he is.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Yeah. 20th century old tradition. He changes it overnight.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. And he's got to have the authority to do that, that's part of the point. And I like to make the point about the resurrection. The resurrection we tend to preach it on Easter as well. You walk out and you say He has risen, and of course what does the congregation say? He is risen indeed. And so we make it about the fact that there's an afterlife and there's life after death. All true, all absolutely true. But in many ways the most important thing that Easter represents is the vindication of God for everything that Jesus is claiming about himself.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Justification.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly. So that's one that you and I've gone back and forth on and had some fun with. But I think the point that we're making in talking about this is either view makes sense, if I can say it that way, and either view is possible. It's two different ways to deal with a variety of things that the text is suggesting about the timing. We know it's close to the Passover. The Passover is overshadowing the symbolism of the event as a whole. It's being seen throughout what's happening at the end of the week, regardless of which of those views you take.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Right.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Let me go on. We're rapidly running out of time here. You have a book that says, Walking with Jesus from the Upper Room to Joseph's Tomb. Is this a work through some of the upper room discourse material and that kind of thing?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
It's actually more geographical than theological.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Basically, we start at the upper room and go through each of the steps, each of the stops if I could say it that way. Each of the stops of Jesus along the way, where they are in relation to the other, what is the meaning of this stop? And why did this one occur until you get to Joseph's tomb, which is the final stop. And as I say, I only deal with from the Upper Room to Joseph's Tomb in the series. So I don't go either before that or after that.
Darrell Bock:
I see. So this is the equivalent of, or like what is it the 14… What's the Catholic thing?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Right, the steps of the cross.
Darrell Bock:
Steps of the cross.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Stations of the cross.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
We don't have 14.
Darrell Bock:
So you basically deal with things like the fact that Simon of Cyrene had to bear the cross for Jesus and those kinds of things.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
And things like how do we know that the upper room is where it's located, is that right? And whatever archeological evidence I can bring to bear on current day archeological evidence on what we know the location is. How do we know where Jesus prayed in the garden? What are the options in the Garden of Gethsemane? So it has a lot of archeological historical bend to it as well.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. It sounds pretty fascinating. I haven't seen that volume, so that's interesting. And then book six deals with What Jesus' Crucifixion Accomplished: The purpose and meaning of Jesus' crucifixion. There's a part of me that says, "Oh, everyone's going to know that." But what do you deal with there?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
I try to stay away from the traditional theological answers to that, redemption, justification, so on. And I said, "Okay, Satan has been at war with God for a long, long time." One of the things Jesus did was he ended the war, the long war against God by defeating Satan. Another thing is, it was at the cross that the personality we have. The what's the word I'm looking for? Our ability to do things. When we were created, we were the crown of God's creation. And we had a certain-
Darrell Bock:
Calling.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
… substance. I cannot come up with a word, but anyway, we were significant. There's my word. God created us the most significant thing in his creation, and he did it in the way he created us. He did it in the timing of our creation being the last created. But in the Garden of Eden, our significance was lost when we severed our relationship with God. What Jesus did on the cross was he reignited, reattached that relationship which was severed in the Garden of Eden. So that's one of the chapters in that book. And I've tried to look at things that Jesus did on the cross that may not show up immediately in the theology 101 textbooks.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Well, that's fascinating. I like to tell people that if you look at the evangelistic speeches in Acts, there isn't a whole lot about substitution in those speeches. It's all about who does the saving, and our connection to him and the reestablishment of who that relationship is with, et cetera, which I think is actually important. There's also another important thing that I think needs to be said here, and that is when we make the gospel just about the cross, the danger will be that we cut out the hope of the new life in the gospel message, and the hope of the new life is the point, at least a point about why Jesus went to the cross.
He's clearing the decks and dealing with the barrier between humanity and God by dealing with sin, but that's not the end. It isn't just, "Oh, my sins are forgiven, and that's the end of it." No, my sins are forgiven so I can have experience of the new life, so the spirit can come in and change and transform me and make me into the person God designed me to be. I like to say we're made in God's image because we're made to image God. And when we do that well, we are able to reflect his character, and that's what we're called to do and be. And Jesus's death for sin, ending the battle with Satan. All those things are designed to take us to that place where that new life can come in, and we can experience what God designed us to experience.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
The cross represents old and new. The old is now passed, the new has come, the new creation, new life in Christ. This is why we walk away from the cross and we don't stay there. Because it was the end of our responsibility to God for our own sin, but it was also the beginning of a new life that is our responsibility now to live out.
Darrell Bock:
And I tell people, we don't share the gospel fully if we only talk about the cross because it's the new life that actually generates the hope that we have.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
That's correct.
Darrell Bock:
And I like to picture it as a baptism, and I'm going to be Baptist here, immersion, not sprinkling, get that weak stuff out of here. And if it's only about the cross, it's like going in for baptism under the water and never coming up.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
And never coming out.
Darrell Bock:
That's right. And you'd expire if you do that. So the text says, dead to sin, that's the cross part, alive to God, that's the new life and resurrection and the provision of the spirit part, and that whole thing makes up the gospel,
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
That's for sure. That is for sure.
Darrell Bock:
Well, Woodrow, I really appreciate your taking your time to walk us through this. Book seven again is about what, we didn't cover that I should mention that before we close.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Take up the cross. It's our responsibility, how we take it up, how we deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow him.
Darrell Bock:
So it's the discipleship implications of the cross.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
It really is. It's more practical theology, discipleship.
Darrell Bock:
When do you hope all these volumes are out?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
The hope is to do three a year. And if we do that, then it'll be, let's see, this is '23, the end of '24, beginning of '25. So it'd be the first quarter of '25 it should go on.
Darrell Bock:
Great. Well, this is obviously quite an assignment that you've undertaken and we've only briefly overview it, but you're being commended to work through this. I've looked at one of the volumes in detail. And one of the beauties of what you've done is you set out all the conversations that people are having, and all the discussions that rotate around it, but you delivered it at level that people can process and absorb. And you're probably right to have broken it up into seven separate steps, as opposed to making a person have what would be, I don't know. I would define it as probably the ultimate mega meal on the cross, which they would probably be way too… I think I overate. But anyway, really appreciate what this represents in terms of your own effort and commitment to communicate the truth of Jesus' life at this particular crucial juncture to people. So thank you very much for that.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Well, my pleasure indeed.
Darrell Bock:
And so we thank you again for taking the time to be with us, Woodrow, and we wish you well with the project.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll:
Thank you.
Darrell Bock:
And I want to thank you for joining The Table. Hope you'll join us again soon. If you are interested in other episodes of The Table, you can check them out at voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast. Where you can get the whole menu of almost over 600 hours of material that we've produced for The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. And we hope to see you again soon.
Kymberli Cook:
Welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the assistant director here at the Hendricks Center at DTS. And today we are going to be talking about the origin of the soul. Are you ready? Here we go. For the record, it sounds a little bit mystical and maybe it is, but we'll see about that. To help us out and to make sure that we don't go too far off the path, we are joined by a very distinguished guest. His name is Joshua Ferris. He's with the Missional University and author of a brand new book called Creation of Self, and he's currently a Humboldt experienced research fellow at the University of Bochum, Germany. For the record, you don't hear Humboldt fellow very often. That's how distinguished he is. So Joshua, thank you so much for being here today.
Joshua Ferris:
Hey, thank you, Kymberli. It's good to be with you. Nice to meet you virtually at least.
Kymberli Cook:
Yes, I know, right?
Joshua Ferris:
Yes.
Kymberli Cook:
I think to start off with, your specialty is at least partially in what's called theological anthropology, and let's just introduce people to what that even is and how did you end up thinking about those things and thinking about the theology of humanity and yeah, let's start there and then we'll talk about the soul in a second.
Joshua Ferris:
Great. Yeah. So theological anthropology is broadly the study of the anthropos, what it means to be a human being in a theological context. And so a variety of questions come up, A broad set of questions that frame several biblical and theological issues come up regarding the anthropos or the human being and what it means to be human, namely the Imago Dei, what it means to be created, the image of God or what it means to be constituted what it is that we are, what it means to have a heart or a soul or a body, and these sorts of things. And how it is that we relate to both God and creation. And so you could construe this as a discipline or a set of subjects that fall under creation, a specific subset of creation and how God relates to his creation, particularly human creation, his highest creation, depending on how you construe that.
And so kind of my story, I got into it really when I was in seminary at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Systematic Theology II class. I remember where we picked up on various topics within theological anthropology, like the issue of gender and gender roles and offices within the church and how we understand the relationship between husband and wife and these sorts of issues, but also more fundamentally what it means to be image bearers of God, what it means to be an Imago Dei bearer, the image of God, and how that relates to the covenants and these sorts of issues. And so I became really fascinated with that subject in that particular course. And simultaneously I was really interested in the soul, what we'll talk about and human constitution, which is one facet of the discussion in theological anthropology and how that impacts other issues within theological anthropology.
And so I was simultaneously studying philosophy, consciousness, and philosophy of mind subjects in their own right that are vast and complicated and detailed, but also have some overlap with theological anthropology more broadly. Because at the end of the day, I think somebody like Steven Priest said something like, ultimately we are theological beings, and so there's something even that the philosophical world cannot answer about what it means to be a human being. And so that sent me on my journey and simultaneously as I was thinking about the human being and theology and in biblical studies and how the biblical covenants work out and understanding of the human, I was also studying philosophy and fascinated with that. And so I wanted to bridge those worlds. And I ended up studying at the University of Bristol in England under my supervisor, my doctoral supervisor, Oliver Crisp, who was very influential on me.
I read his book actually in seminary, one of his books on divinity and humanity. And I said, I love the philosophers and I love the Bible guys, but I want to do what he's doing and I want to write like him, so I want to study under him. So that's where I went and I continued the study and I became fascinated with the sort of exchange between philosophy of mind and theological anthropology and how they interact, and I think how they inform one another. And so that's where the journey kind of began. And people often have asked over the years, are you a philosopher? Are you a theologian? And most of the time I don't have an answer for them and I don't really care to answer, but I guess it would be theologian would be the proper answer because everything that I think about when I'm thinking about or reading through detailed philosophical works, I always have these broader theological questions in mind that I want to try to answer or touch or scratch on at least.
And so even when I'm doing more technical philosophy, it's always aimed at broader theological questions, which I think philosophy can aid in the process, but it is in itself insufficient for answering completely. And so that's a bit about my journey and why I got into the study and some of the influences therein.
Kymberli Cook:
Fascinating. So you said the soul was a part of what even initially sparked your interest to go down that path. What was it about the conversations about the soul that stood out to you?
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah. Well, there were several things. So one was the question of human constitution. When I started reading some of the more historical theological sources, it seemed to me that they were always working within some kind of philosophical framework for one thing, even if it wasn't overt or explicit, they had philosophical assumptions that were impinging upon or informing their hermeneutic or how they were reading the Bible, how they were systematically putting together doctrinal issues related to the human. And even more so they had some sort of philosophical anthropology that was informing how it is that they were thinking about other theological issues concerning the human being. And so it seemed to me they always had some kind of philosophical anthropology framework that was in the background in shaping or forming in some way how they were thinking about the human and even how they were thinking about the Imago Dei.
So this became pretty clear reading a lot of the reformed scholastics, and then reading some of the later modern theologians and philosophical theologians, of course, René Descartes and Leibniz and others. But even prior to that, in the medieval period, they were working with explicit philosophical frameworks, but also they were working with some kind of view, some sort of view about the constitution of the human being. And that seemed to impact in varying ways, subtle and some ways more deep and detailed other doctrinal issues that they had in mind when they were considering what it means to be human. And so I started picking up on that and I became fascinated with that. And it seemed to me that at some level, the constitution question touched upon every other doctrinal issue in terms of what it means to be human from a theological perspective.
So of course when you look at some of the older sort of theological statements, the cradle statements, some of the confessional statements, they too are using explicit language that is framing how they're thinking about the human being from a, I guess kind of a constitution perspective or a philosophical anthropology.
And so in almost every case, they're using language of body and soul, and I don't think that's unintentional or accidental, and nor can it be if there is anything that we call the tradition, if there is such a thing, which is a question, if there is such a thing, I don't think we can so quickly be done with the language that they used or be so open to dismissing the language that they were using in how they were framing these carefully constructed theological statements. And so the soul language is present and arguably at the center of how the theological world is thinking about the human early on and even into the reformed period and into especially some of the modern debates about theology. And so that became important to me, and I still believe that now that the soul is central. So there are many today who are biblical scholars, who are theologians, who have become much more open to the possibility that we can excise any sort of soul language.
Kymberli Cook:
That's what I was just about to bring up. The idea that this isn't… We're talking about philosophy and mentioning all of these different things about the constitution of the human being and all of these kind of amorphous concepts, but really, that's in no way, I mean, I live in amorphous concepts too, so that's not against you, but it really has very tangible on the ground implications for especially when we start talking about science and neuroscience and some of the technology and everything that's coming out. So can you speak to that, especially you're talking about the fact that soul language and reference to an immaterial part of our being human beings has been a part of the Christian tradition for so long, and to dismiss it in light of current trends is worth a conversation and worth thinking through. So can you speak to how does that actually on the ground impact how we interact with each other and think about ourselves and think about technology and science?
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah, that's a big question. So there's a lot of angles to maths in terms of trying to answer that or get some kind of-
Kymberli Cook:
You don't have to hit all the points.
Joshua Ferris:
So I think there's obviously a danger that has been driving or a couple of dangers, one's more philosophical, one's more theological, that's been driving a lot of theological discussions as of late and has shaped the theological discussions around the human being that have moved people away from an actual commitment to the soul and the embrace, or at least the possibility that within orthodoxy, broadly speaking, or Christian belief, that's somehow consistent with biblical teaching and a high degree of authority, biblical authority. There's a much more openness to the fact that maybe we are just physical beings and not in soul beings.
And I think the impulse there that's standing behind that isn't necessarily wrong, and that's the impulse of some sort of holistic integrity between the soul and body or the mind and body or the human being as an integrated being that's not divided. And so there's a lot of literature on that obviously, and over many years.
There's obviously the theological side to this, and that is the emphasis on… There's a famous article by Oscar Cullmann some time ago that raised the question about either the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the body, which anyone familiar with. The literature knows that it's bringing up a whole host of issues in terms of how Greek philosophy integrates with theology and all sorts of other questions about philosophy, and its information in terms of how it integrates or informs how we do theology and the like. And then later theological literature has really developed in a way that, some of it has developed in a way that the primary sort of impulse and telos of the human being is the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul or the soul itself is really quite incidental, or at least not all that important, maybe not even necessary.
So that's a whole lot of context there of the impulse, which I think the impulse all of it is not wrong, but I think to go so far as to say, Oh, we can get rid of the soul. It's perfectly respectable within Orthodox Christian teaching to be a physicalist or something, a physicalist being that the view that we are just well physical beings through and through that we do not have this sort of immaterial substance or the soulish substance that's strongly distinct from our bodies and even could be independent of our bodies. I think that's probably mistaken. I'm not so sympathetic to the physicalist, and I think this stands behind the discussion we're going to have about the origin of the soul. When we look at the cradle statements and confessional statements, maybe you would claim it's not a dogmatic teaching that we have to hold to some sort of philosophical principle like the soul, the Greek language is incidental to the cradle language and the confessional statements and confessional symbols of the reformed tradition, et cetera, et cetera.
You might take that sort of line. I think that would be mistaken because it seems to me a couple of things need to be kept in mind when thinking about broader orthodoxy and cradle and confessional standards. One is that not only is the language so prominent throughout these statements so as to be, at least it should raise the question, why is it so prominent? But the language of the imago dei is centered or couched in the soul language or the spirit and how the ancients, the medievals and the reformed scholastics understood the soul as that substantial part of human beings that connects them to God, that transcendent part that makes them or connects them to God. So I would see that as important. Of course, the response is going to be, well, there's a whole philosophical psychology that we've now rejected and the like, but I think that we would be throwing the baby out with the bath water by throwing out the soul in the process.
The other thing is that we need to keep in mind is it's not just that there's this profound language that's used and permeates the whole tradition. You might argue that… Well, the biblical line is maybe, here's a second line, is that there is a doctrine of the intermediate state, and without the intermediate state or if there is an intermediate state, then we have to have something like a soul that makes sense of the intermediate state. And so that stands in the background, the background belief of all these theologians who definitively seem to affirm or assume some kind of soul as part and parcel of the constitution of the human and-
Kymberli Cook:
Sorry, just to interrupt. For those of you who are listening in light of passages like to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That kind of idea, that's largely what's in mind when we're talking about the intermediate state, the between the time.
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. And like Charles Hodge says, Hodge would say, it's not a question of belief in the intermediate state. It's what you believe about the intermediate state. That is the question everybody believes in the intermediate state, at least he's referencing the broader reformed tradition. So if we are going to make sense of that to be apart from the body, the body has different properties than the soul, the body actually goes into the grave, it becomes a corpse, it's a different kind of thing at that point. If the person literally goes on without the body, well, then something has to make sense of the fact that the thing goes on without the body, and that seems to be the soul, and that's the assumption of the tradition, the wider tradition. Some will say, well, we need a soul, at least for resurrection as well, to make sense of personal identity continuity.
I think that's right. The further idea is that if it's not a dogmatic teaching, it's really, really, really close because it's an entailment from other doctrines like the intermediate state, but also, at least this is questionable in the Protestant tradition, but certainly in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, Christ's descent into hell is I think pretty clearly a dogmatic teaching within those circles, which presumes him being our sort of example of what it means to be human and the like. It at least minimally presumes this intermediate state doctrine that there is a soul that exists on and persists, and we have to make sense of that in some way without the body as the body is a corpse. And so I think for all those reasons, and I think there's other reasons as well, I think those are in the background that say, hold on. I wouldn't say that a physi… Well, it depends on when you're asking. I'm not going to answer that question. Yeah, I would be-
Kymberli Cook:
I didn't ask it. Don't worry.
Joshua Ferris:
I was asking myself.
Kymberli Cook:
I know
Joshua Ferris:
I would be very reticent to be so open to the physicists as being respectable orthodox or even biblical approaches or appropriate approaches to understanding the human for some of those reasons.
Kymberli Cook:
Especially in light of, there's been a large, like you already referenced, but there's been a large embodiment conversation going on in theology, trying to again, make sense of some of the science that we see coming out, but at the same time trying to be thoughtful, truly thoughtful about a lot of the passages and the points that you've been bringing up. And so let's say we are thoroughly convinced by you that there is a soul where the question and a long-standing question and kind of the topic for the podcast is the origin of it. So where does it come from? How does the soul come about? And that has been a conversation in Christian theology for quite a while. So would you mind giving us kind of an idea of the spectrum or is it even a spectrum or are there just a bunch of different camps? What are some of the general thoughts? And I'm talking big generalities. What are some of the big camps on approaches to where the soul comes from at all?
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah, yeah, good question. Yeah, so all of these views, this whole discussion seems to presume that there is a soul and well, because of its kind of radically different nature from the body in some respects, we have to make some sense out of the question, Well, where does it come from? It doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that is certainly identical or reducible to its body or its brain, the neurology. So some sort of biological explanation would certainly seem to be out of bounds or at least insufficient for explaining the origins of the soul, biological evolution, whatever you think about that or wherever you stand on that issue, it doesn't seem like that's a sufficient kind of means of generating a soul-
Kymberli Cook:
It has significant problems with it. Yeah.
Joshua Ferris:
Right, right. And so that's why you have some contemporary believers of the soul today saying something like, they affirm something like, Well, God has to put it there or something. He has to just kind of create it. Some call it kind of the zap view or some call it God has to create the soul in the body or create the soul and then attach it to the body. And so that brings us into some of the assumptions or intuitions that the historical discussion is having about the soul. Crudely that many would refer to that as kind of the creationist position. And that's one view on the origin of the soul. It would be historically called the creationist position. Not to be confused with these other discussions about how God creates the world or the origins of the universe, and whether or not you affirm theistic evolution, evolutionary creationism, old earth, progressive creationism, or even younger earth creationism.
It's not to be confused with that. In fact, I think arguably a sort of simple creationist view could be compatible with all those views. It's simply the view that God is the kind of the end or the terminus, the end of the causal chain of the soul's existence of coming into being. God brings about the soul directly and immediately in the causal chain of the human story. And so God either creates it in the body or creates the soul and then attaches it to a body in some form or fashion. But the soul itself needs… In order to have a sufficient explanation, God has needed to be invoked in order to make sense of the causal story that's told about the soul. So that would be broadly speaking, a kind of creationist view of the soul.
Kymberli Cook:
And just so we're clear, is that kind of comparable, like you were saying to the zap view, which I've never heard, but I love that term. Is that comparable to that or are those two different things?
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah, I would say-
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. Just making sure.
Joshua Ferris:
… some creationist views as a zap view. I mean, some creationists hold to more complicated views that wouldn't, I guess, fit so well with a zap, but I don't mind that. I don't mind that God zapped me. It means we must be pretty special beings for him to create us, right? That's one of the intuitions obviously, that somebody like Calvin has in his institutes. He's a creationist. And so there's another view that's related that's common in the wider tradition, and it's called the traducian view. And so if you read standard systematic theologies, at least historically, many of them I imagine will start getting away from this because well, they don't even believe in the soul anymore. So it's kind of irrelevant to even talk about this discussion really to some extent. But historic systematics have this broad categorization of at least these two views and probably three different views.
And then there's a complex set of different ways of working out each one. But there's the traducian view which says something like, there are generative mechanisms that God creates, that brings about the emergence of the soul from its progenitors. And so there's different ways of thinking about this. You could think of souls as being the kinds of things that have parts like bodies. That sounds a little physicalistic. I mean, Augustine sometimes talks like this when he talks about traducianism. Augustine himself goes back and forth between creationism and traducianism, and then he finally says something like some kind of hybrid view may make the best sense, and he's unsatisfied with all of the views that he can clearly parse out. But he talks about souls sometimes as kind of having parts, like bodies have parts, that when you have a sufficient number of the right kinds of parts, soulish parts that come together from your parental progenitors, then you have this new thing that pops up or comes into being.
And so you might think of it that way. You might think of it as more like atoms splitting off. If you have these atoms that can split off the soul might be something like this when the gametes meet and the progenitors bring or give some sort of physical genetic material that coinciding with that, there is this soulish material or soulish stuff that splits off from the parents or from the father depending on who you're reading. And that brings about a holy new soul that's attached to that body that the progenitors give off from the procreative process. And so you can see already that on that picture, at least on the surface, it begins to look already a bit more integrated in terms of how the body and the soul might be together. And so certainly in contemporary times, for those who still believe in a soul, traducianism has really become quite popular and a lot of contemporary theologians have been taking and picking up traducianism and developing it in interesting ways.
Creationism has become less popular, but it's still around. Interestingly, historically, creationism has been the dominant view throughout church history, especially in the medieval times in Roman Catholicism. It is dominant. In fact, if you read the catechism, it basically expounds creationist view, although you could have a more complicated creationist view. And then in the reformed tradition, creationism has been dominant. Maybe in the Lutheran tradition, traducianism has been dominant.
There's a third kind of view as well that's much more platonic and Origen held to something like this view, you could call it the pre-existence view of the soul. And the pre-existence view of the soul says something like this that our souls at some point in time they were created prior to the body. So even prior to sort of our biological origins, the soul exists maybe in some sort of heavenly state or in some sort of platonic heaven as an abstract that somehow maybe after the fall kind of descends. And some of the stories are told that the soul then descends to be in the body in a kind of this denigrated state. That's one way of thinking about it. But that's another view that the pre-existence view, that the soul preexist the body or biological history and biological origins and exists in some other state.
And maybe it existed eternally in heaven with God, or it existed in some sort of abstract way in God's mind or something like that. And certainly Origen and Plato held something like this view, and some early Christians held this view. Some more mystical Christians held this view. And this becomes a kind of third view that isn't really very popular today. In fact, I put together a collection on the origin of the soul. We just submitted the book. It's a discussion of various views. Five years ago, we were looking for somebody who would defend some sort of pre-existence view. I was trying to find somebody. I thought, surely somebody believes this, or at least could offer up some kind of defense of it. But I had a really hard time finding anyone. But-
Kymberli Cook:
Have you seen the movie Soul?
Joshua Ferris:
The animated movie?
Kymberli Cook:
Yes.
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah, it's great.
Kymberli Cook:
So again, you used the word crudely earlier, and that would be very applicable to this, but crudely, that's kind of this idea that there's all these souls in this different dimension or something that then get affixed to a body for whatever reason. I mean, there's a variety of views. Again, crude, but it's that kind of idea, right?
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah, actually, that's right. That would be a good- I like that.
Kymberli Cook:
So there you go, Pixar, they could have been the ones for your book.
Joshua Ferris:
Great. That would sell a lot more.
Kymberli Cook:
So how did these different interpretations, I mean, you've talked actually a lot about the history of it, and if we're talking about a biblical approach as well as theological, what are the passages that are making people think differently? Or is it really just very linked to one's philosophy? And I don't even necessarily want proof text passages, but concepts and scripture, or is it really just more a philosophical approach to the world?
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah, that's a good question. I was just trying to think back to the different passages of scripture, but there have been a lot of biblical exegetical cases made for both views throughout church history, and I'm not sure that they're decisive in favor of either creationism or traducianism. Certainly, I find pre-existence kind of implausible. I mean, maybe we could make sense of it, but I find either creationism or traducianism to be more plausible as frameworks for reading the Bible. So on the creationist side, there are several lines of reasoning that you might invoke to make sense of creationism.
And I'm not sure even from a theological sort of interpretation perspective, that we could make a definitive case either way. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, maybe some exegetical argument will come up that we'll suggest otherwise. But creationism certainly, there's the story of God making dead bones live, and there's this animating picture that's often used in readings of church history that would use that as a picture to make sense of, yeah, this is basically how God makes sense of the human person. He basically makes the bones alive with the soul, and so he informs the bones and brings them to life. And so you have that clear picture in scripture, and it's a common, I think, kind of picture that we see in the Old Testament where God brings to life something that's dead.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, I mean would they also use Genesis one? I mean God breathing into the dust and creating Adam?
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah. Yeah, actually I think so, yeah. Yes, particularly Genesis 2:4-7, that whole picture where God breathes into the dust and makes it alive. I think ruach there – Richard Steiner actually suggests this is really actually quite unpopular in biblical interpretation, it seems. I mean, actually, I'm not sure that there's any definitive. Some will say that, like Alistair Mcgrath says, "This kind of reading is ancient reading. The early Christians, Eastern Christians would read this way. They would read into it kind of this dichotomy or even this trichotomy position, and it's a common way of reading that passage. But Richard Steiner, the Old Testament scholar, he's actually picking up on nephesh and he's doing a pretty detailed sort of word study and theological assessment of nephesh in Ezekiel, but he also picks up on nephesh in other contexts as well as Ruach, which is used in the Genesis 2 passage.
And he says, "Actually, this makes a lot of sense of the ancient world and how it is that many interpreters of the Bible throughout history have interpreted Genesis 2. It's not that foreign. And in fact, it does lend credence to a kind of dichotomist or even dualistic picture of the human person wherein God is literally fashioning the body and then bringing life to it by breathing into it, this new type of thing, this soul, this substance, he says, "So this isn't really all that foreign." He doesn't lay all his weight on that particular passage, but it's consistent, he says, with kind of the Ecclesiastes 12:7 reading that's very dualistic, where we have this body that goes into the ground as a corpse, and then the soul goes up to be with God in heaven. And so you have this common interpretation of Genesis 2:7 reading with other passages in scripture as a clear picture of the soul has its own origins, and the body has a distinct set of origins.
They closely overlap in that God is fashioning both of them in a sense, but there's something distinct about the activity of the soul coming into being. And so that picture is quite a profound picture, I think that many early interpreters and later interpreters pick up on and read the scriptures in that light. And I think that becomes an interesting picture, especially with bringing dead bones to life of redemption where divine action becomes a picture of redemption. So this whole creationist picture. So I think that's one line of reasoning that one could take in reading the Bible in favor of creationism.
Kymberli Cook:
What about for traducianism?
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah, traducianism. So there are several lines, certainly there are several passage in scripture, especially in the Old Testament that speak of us being in the loins of our fathers almost in a sense preexisting, not preexisting in the sort of originating or sort of platonic sense, but preexisting as kind of-
Kymberli Cook:
Part of the procreative process, like you said earlier. Yeah.
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah. But there's a real sense in which we exist as a communal whole or as part of the family. And so you have this strong covenantal language in the Old Testament that's suggestive of the fact that we preexist in our parents already, and that creates a strong continuity link between the whole of the human race as a product of our parents. And so you might take that line and say, well, this makes sense of the fact that our parents really are true causes of the soul, that they have a real causal part in bringing about new souls into the world. And certainly that would make sense of other passages of scripture where there is this continuous line between parents progenitors and their offspring as well as the generation of the Imago Dei in the Old Testament, which seems to be suggestive in lots of places, like in Genesis 5, where it talks about the Imago Dei or being in the image of the Father as a kind of generative link between parents and offspring.
So I think conceptually that's there, you have that in other places also, especially when we get into discussions about Adamic humanity, Adam's relationship to the rest of humanity, and then Christ's relationship to the rest of humanity in Romans. When we start thinking about the original sin discussion, however you make sense of original sin as being something that is somehow transmitted through some sort of generative process. Well, if you actually affirm that, well, the traducian view actually seems to make a lot more sense on the surface. It seems to be more intuitive of the fact that if we are parts of our parents, that the whole generative process that brings us about also is the mechanism that transmits original sin that connects us to the guilt of our fathers. So that would be a couple of different lines in favor of traducianism. Certainly from a theological perspective, it seems to make more natural sense of original sins transmission.
Kymberli Cook:
So we've got traducianism and creationism, as you said, are two of the key approaches. You also have the pre-existence of the soul, which you introduced and kind of shared that you don't feel like it's quite as biblically defensible.
Joshua Ferris:
And I think most people would agree with me on that.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, well, fair enough. Except for maybe the Pixar people, I don't know.
Joshua Ferris:
Yeah, yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
But no, so for anybody who's listening and thinking, okay, well, I'm hearing especially if Augustine, who it seems like lots of people really respect was kind of vacillating between the two of them, then is there a way that I can go wrong in thinking about the origin of the soul? Oftentimes a lot of the people that we teach at our church, they're always like, I don't want to be a heretic. Just tell me how to not be a heretic. And so, I mean, we can not get into all of the things that are involved in actually being labeled a heretic, but is there anything that you would say as we're thinking through and as people are thinking through different opinions and different interpretations of these passages on the origin of the soul where you'd say, yeah, this is out of bounds. I mean, I think we've kind of touched on a couple, right? Which is just that everything is material. There's nothing else perhaps even pre-existence, but can you just speak to that a little bit as we kind of round out our conversation?
Joshua Ferris:
Sure. Yeah. I think there are some unorthodox positions or positions at least that are out of bounds in the origin soul discussion. There are a variety of… Well, there's a couple of things. There are a variety of new positions right now that are working within a broader materialist framework that the soul emerges from the body, I think for some of the reasons we've mentioned already, that would be at least on the fringe of acceptable at a minimum. I think there's other things we could say about why they're problematic, but I think they at least be on the fringe because there's no sort of clear link back to God in the way that the tradition has been reflecting on the nature of the soul and its generation or its originative generation. But the pre-existence view I think is potentially problematic as well and would be outside the bounds.
There's a lot of new discussions right now within consciousness that are kind of hearkening back to sort of pagan views of persons as well as maybe you would call them more occultic views of persons. And I think, gosh, this is opening up a whole big discussion that we don't have time to get into, but there's a reason I think the pre-existence view has been so closely aligned with some of the mystical theologians who have always been considered on the fringe within tradition. And there's a kind of tendency with… I'm summing up a lot, and this may be uncharitable to some extent, but there's a tendency to read some of these mystical theologians as blurring the lines between the creator and creature. And I think that's a clear sort of demarcation that we want to maintain in our theological anthropology.
We want to maintain a clear creator creature distinction, even if we have a robust view of the human as being the kind of thing that experiences God and becomes something like God, that's different from even the way we think about humans being like God presently, there's a kind of tendency to blur the distinctions to such an extent, to askew the identity of individual persons for one thing, but also to askew the identity of creatures in light of their creator as kind of existing in this mass.
And this analogy is not uncommonly used amongst those who sit on the fringe of Christian orthodoxy. They will often describe the pre-existence soul as something that's trying to find its way back to this sort of massive body of water referring to God and become as a droplet kind of become part of the water once again. As pantheism and panentheism are becoming even more attractive today in wider science and religion discussions, even on the fringe of Christian theological discussions, there is this tendency to askew the identity of the soul as kind of already part of God in some way, in a real chronological sense that skews the creator creature distinction.
And so I think the pre-existence view of the soul or various views of the soul often come really close to that. And sometimes they just jump in full on in that sort of view. They have more of panentheistic, even some have more of a pantheistic conception of the human person where there is no real distinction between the creator and creature. And I think that's dangerous. So for those reasons at least, that's one reason I would say I'm pretty hesitant about the pre-existence view amongst other reasons. But I think that's one good reason that we should consider. Yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
So we are out of time, but just to kind of round out everything that we're talking about that we have touched on, the soul is something that there are a lot of people talking about whether or not they even believe that it's a thing anymore. And so we've talked about the reasons that it does seem that there are… The scripture is very clear that there is at least some immaterial dimension to our being and to creation. And so we have to recognize that as believers. And then even further, it does seem like the Christian tradition has been very clear that there is an immaterial dimension of the human being themselves, and that the soul is often ascribed to that idea.
But where the soul itself comes from is kind of up for debate there, especially with creationism. And Joshua has distinguished it apart from the evolutionary conversation, the creationist perspective and the traducian perspective. Both of them seem to have legitimate biblical grounds. And like we said, even Augustine was kind of going back and forth between them. And so both of them seem very much within bounds, but we wouldn't want to go too far to a reductive physicalism that says there's absolutely nothing that's immaterial and we didn't want to go to the panentheism that he was talking about. And yeah, those are probably the big spectrums we want to stay away from.
But Joshua, thank you. I just wanted to round out everything we were all over, but I really want to thank you for your time. We really appreciate your observations and just the time in your own life and your own study that you've taken to serve the church in this way and to learn these things and to think about these things. So thank you, but also for the time with us today.
Joshua Ferris:
Appreciate it. Thank you, Kymberli. Appreciate it.
Kymberli Cook:
Appreciate it. Absolutely. And we just want to thank you who are listening, and we want to ask you to be sure next time to join us when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Kasey Olander:
Welcome to the Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendricks Center at DTS, and today I'm really excited because our topic is humor. We're joined by Dr. Steve Wilkens. He is the professor of philosophy and ethics at Azusa Pacific University, and he also wrote a book called What's So Funny About God? A Theological Look at Humor. Thanks for being with us today, Steve.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Oh, thanks for inviting me. Look forward to this.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, I'm excited about it. We are also joined by Dr. Robert Duckworth, Director of Counseling Services and adjunct professor here at DTS. Thanks for being here, Robert.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Glad to be here as always.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Well, my hope today is, I'm going to borrow one of Steve's phrases, but my hope today is to think theologically about humor and also to think humorously about theology. Humor is just part of our existence as human beings. We all are created by God and so I think that there might be something meaningful in there, and so it'll be worth reflecting on. I wanted to start off with a quote that Steve uses in his book because it's highly appropriate for this conversation, but it says, "Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind." And apparently that's a risk we're willing to take here on the Table podcast. So I'm excited to jump in with each of you guys and interested to hear about how you guys came to think in this area. And so we'll start with you, Robert. I said that you're the director of counseling services, but how did you start taking humor seriously?
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Oh, I think it was probably just as a child, watching my parents. My dad was a pretty humorous guy. It was not his intention to be humorous, but he was funny. My dad was a master impressionist. When he would talk about people in the community, people he may have been frustrated with at church or on the job, he would just naturally impersonate them and I would watch it. And he didn't realize it until many years later when one day he chastised us yet again when he was talking about a situation with someone that had done something he didn't approve of, and he was impersonating the guy, and we just were laughing. He said, "I'm not telling you this to be funny. This is just to help you all know not to be silly or ignorant like this." I said, "Dad, do you not realize all these years…?"
And I had to stop him. I was an adult then, so I had all this authority to say these things to him. So I'm an adult, and I say to him, I said, "Do you realize all these years when you would talk about people, you would get into character and become them? And it was hilarious to hear you say things that they said and sound like them." And he said, "I never realized that." I mean, it was like a complete shock to him. He was well in his seventies by then, and I naturally picked up on those skills growing up. So I remember when I was in school, the guys, we used to have this thing. It changes over the years. I think now kids call it snapping or capping. I don't know what they call it today. You can never keep up with these kids, Steve. You can't keep up with them at all.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
No.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
But we would do it. They would even call it the dozens, and we would get in there, we'd talk about each other, but that's when I would make things humorous. And I took it serious. I was probably in fourth, fifth grade, probably even earlier than that because I remember a kindergarten teacher told my mom, she said, "He's so hilarious." And at that time when I was in kindergarten, I'm going to age myself, she said, "That's my little Richard Pryor." So I never forgot that, and I was just a humorous guy.
So I think at a young age, I really took being funny seriously and then got to the point where I'd start writing things down that would be funny. And that was just kind of the way I was wired through family members, dad. Mom knew how to put storylines together, just because she was a good speaker. She was a teacher and my dad was this impressionist. And then I had an uncle that was just raw funny, and I would always be with him. So I enjoyed laughter, I enjoyed humor. I think that was the beginning for me as a child, that impression, and it still sticks with me today.
Kasey Olander:
So you started off young, and then what bearing did that have on your vocation as you grew into adulthood?
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Oh my goodness. People think I'm confused, I've been in so many professions. I was in corporate America. I wanted to be a lawyer before I went to corporate America. I went to corporate America because I needed a job after I graduated from college. And I was like, "I need just to go to work. I don't have time to go back to school." And I had no interest in school after my bachelor's. And then I ended up getting a job, and then I continued to be the humorous person that I was on the job. And every so often people would say, "You should be doing something else in theater, other than business. Why are you doing this? I mean, you're good at your job, but you would seem like you'd have more excitement about doing that." And I said, "Yeah, I would," but I just didn't think it was realistic.
So I started writing after so many people kept telling me that. In probably 1996, I started writing comedy routines and trying to figure out what it would be like to be a comedian. But I was like, "I don't think I'd ever go on a stage and try that. That is a very, very…" And it is a very, very difficult job to do. And I started writing those comedy routines back in 1996, and I held onto those jokes from '96 to probably '98 before I ever stepped foot on a stage. But what I ended up doing… Now, I just definitely believe this is a God thing and God's sense of humor. He took me through that corporate career and then having this sense of humor. And the first opportunity I ever had to go on stage as a comedian was not at a comedy club, but it was the National Association of Black Accountants.
And they were having a convention, and I knew it was all these corporate folks, black folks. And I was like, "Well, I know two things in this room. I've been in the corporate world and I'm black," and I knew how to make both of those crowds laugh. And so I got in, did an act, and it went over very, very well. And in that particular show, met some comedians that were in that particular show that kind of groomed me and took me under their wing, and we started going to comedy clubs and they would take me to comedy clubs. And that's how I started doing comedy. But I kept my day job. I was not out of my mind. I kept my day job. I was moonlighting as a comedian for three or four years.
Kasey Olander:
That's fascinating.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
It was a lot of fun.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. I love that you did stand-up comedy. Yeah, that's really rare. And like you said, kind of providential that the Lord was working it out-
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely.
Kasey Olander:
Even when you thought that you wouldn't do it professionally. But Steve, what about you? How did you first get started thinking seriously about humor?
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Well, it almost sounds too simple, but I've always just loved humor and I love God. And so you kind of want to see how the two fit together. And so I started thinking, "Theologians poke their nose into everything. So surely there's something out there on theology and humor." There's "Theology and" books by the truckload. And I really didn't find much. And so I thought, "Well, I guess I'll just have to write it." So that's what I ended up doing. And I've never written a book that was so hard to write and so much fun at the same time.
Kasey Olander:
Sure. Well, I'm glad you did. It's kind of funny. My husband and I have this joke that humor is one of our family values. I'm pretty sure it's not a joke because I don't know what our other family values are. And pretty much every time we come home, we start off with, "Okay, this is what I said in a meeting today that was really funny," or, "This is that funny thing that happened to me at work." So yeah, I totally agree with what you're saying, Steve. I love God and I think that being funny has its value. So there must be some sort of way that they fit together. So as I was searching for resources on Amazon, your book was one of the things that came up, and I was like, "Oh, this is exactly what I was looking for and I'm glad that somebody has already done the legwork to write it."
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Yeah. Well, as you get into it, you find that there have been others who have been in these areas as well, but a lot of times they were kind of writing off to the side of where I wanted to be, but their insights really helped me. And I also did some work in the philosophy of humor. Believe it or not, philosophers have taken humor pretty seriously, and psychologists have as well. And it makes sense because it's such a deep part of our lives.
Kasey Olander:
It is. And that kind of brings me to, okay, is it possible to define humor? Can we at least describe it or does it have some hallmarks? What is humor?
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Very good question. You have all these different… Sometimes people say tragedy turned inside out. I think that's the terminology that's been used. I've just never thought about defining humor. It's just funny. I've just never thought of putting a definition on it or coming up with this scholastic response as to what it is. It's just humor. It is what it is.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. I have the Merriam-Webster definition here that says, "Humor is that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous, a funny or amusing quality." And it just seems to me like that falls so far short of what the reality is when we experience humor. And yet it's because it's one of those things that's so difficult to put into words. We have almost a visceral reaction. Laughter is something that happens to us physiologically or biologically. I'm not a scientist, but it happens to us. It's a response to either situations or words or intentional jokes, things that we experience in the world. So what is it about humor that we love, or at least the three of us that we find ourselves drawn to? Steve, can I start with you?
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Yeah. Well, again, it's kind of hard to put into words, but for me, humor's a love language. That's how I say I love you to my friends. As I said in the book, if I came right out and told my friends I love them, they'd think I'd probably just been diagnosed with stage four cancer or something. And it's that playful attitude with my kids, with my wife, that just is a gentle but understood way of expressing love. And I think there are a lot of other things that go with that too. So for example, on Match.com, both males and females put a sense of humor in the top three of what they were looking for in a potential mate.
Kasey Olander:
And that's kind of interesting, but we don't know how to define that.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
We don't know how to define it. But at the same time, people who have a sense of humor, who laugh easily, are perceived as more loving, more social, and more caring.
Kasey Olander:
Which matters for us.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
So there's that empathetic response. What happens when you see a couple of people laughing, as long as you're confident they're not laughing at you.
Kasey Olander:
Right.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
That's right.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
The first thing we say is, "What's so funny?" Because once they share that, you're in. It's a means of inclusion and can be. But on the other hand, it can be very exclusionary as well. We use humor as a blunt instrument. And so it's got power in both directions.
Kasey Olander:
As Christians, we care deeply about what it means to love somebody, what it means to show care to people, what it means to connect with people. And so if humor is a tool that we can use for that, it makes sense that we would want to explore it and delve into it.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. Yeah. I would say I've used it tremendously in my work as a counselor. When I'm counseling clients, if we were somehow able to get all of these, many, many, many people, hundreds of people to sign a release, to come and give a testimonial about their time of working with me in counseling, and most of them would probably tell you that they were able to laugh in counseling with me. And in my work as a professor of my students, they laugh in class. It naturally happens. I don't go in there with the intention. It just happens. And it breaks down walls, so many walls. I've had some very difficult conversations with people.
I've had many conversations on the subject of multiculturalism, diversity in a world where it creates a more of a divide. I have seen people be able to come together in the room by having a lighthearted conversation about those very subjects, and it breaks down walls. And I think God is excited about using that. And I praise God that he gave me this gift of humor to be able to do that in so many ways. And it doesn't have to necessarily be in a major comedy club or have your own television show. It makes a difference in people's lives in a 50-minute counseling session or in a three-hour class setting.
Kasey Olander:
It does. Yeah, it makes you relatable, it makes you personable. And I think sometimes too, it's a way of communicating truth to people-
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Oh yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Whether it's by satire or whether it's by poking fun. And a lot of times, the comedians that are the funniest are the ones that are the most relatable. They're pointing out things. "Oh, yes, I've definitely been there. I've definitely had that experience." And that's what makes it so funny, is it's making observations about the world around us.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Well, and one of the interesting things about humor too is it's a form of confession. I'll tell you the truth about myself in a humorous way when I wouldn't say it in a straightforward way. And so I've often said that people don't go to the comedy club to see a hero, they go to see themselves and sometimes an exaggerated version. And so it's a way we can sit back and say, "I think they know me." And so it's kind of a catharsis. You go in there, you can kind of laugh at yourself, you can laugh at the world. And I think it's very important in that way. And I would say amen to what you said about the classroom. You may not believe this, but sometimes 19 year olds are intimidated by philosophy. And I can get them to loosen up a little bit if we can laugh a little bit and just throw in a one-liner here and there. So it lightens up the room.
Kasey Olander:
It does. I think it takes a level of intelligence too, to kind of, like you're saying, think on your feet and get it to be something that people are able to relate to. So I think we've highlighted a lot of really positive aspects of humor, that it helps us connect to people and helps us teach people truth sometimes. But another related question, do you think that we would have humor if it weren't for the Fall?
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
We wrestled with that in our little chat that day, and I purposely didn't read a word in Steve's book yet, but I can't wait to read it after get out of here today. But I wrestled with that because if you go back to that definition of turning tragedy into something beautiful or or tragedy turned inside out becomes humor, well, pre-fall there was no tragedy. There was no tragedy. Had a kind of little debate over the phone the other night with one of my buddies, and he said, "I think there would've been humor pre-fall." I said, "Well, I definitely believe it was joy. I think it was laughter between Adam and Eve." It was probably laughter somewhere between the end of chapter two and chapter three of Genesis. But they probably had laughter and joy and he picked on hers, he picked on… I don't know.
I'm sure but it wasn't humor based upon tragedy or to make light of a difficult situation because there was no difficult situation. As far as I can see, all of that was post-fall. So that's kind of my thoughts on it. I think there was laughter, I think there was some joy, but would have there really been a need for humor or comedy prior to the fall? I don't think so.
Kasey Olander:
You don't think-
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
I think people would've laughed, but I don't know if it would've been in the context of a joke or a humorous situation, unless they were looking around at the different animals and just what they were doing. I don't know. Depends on what the animals were doing. Might have made someone laugh. And I guess that's humor. Yeah, maybe so, as I process through it. Steve, you are the philosopher. You can tell us, I don't know.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Well, I do have a little section in there on will there be humor in Heaven? And I agree with you. I think there'll be lots of laughter, lots of joy. But I think probably the most important trigger for humor is incongruity. We see things that don't fit and a lot of those things that don't fit is because we don't have a God's eye view on things. And so one of the things Christians struggle with is the fact that we are embodied beings. And far too many Christians act as if somehow we escaped from God's lab during beta testing and God was going to take our bodies away.
But the fact that we die of the same diseases that our pets do, but at the same time, our pets don't have a sense of humor and they don't write constitutions, they don't compose poetry, so there's this odd incongruity. If you want to call it body and soul, let's call it that, but we've got two things that don't seem to fit together. And in the same way, the whole story of the incarnation. It's no accident that most of the earliest heresies arose in the church because of the inability of people to perceive God taking on meat and becoming flesh. And so we struggle with that. Whereas in heaven, we'll say, "That's kind of a no-brainer, I guess. It doesn't seem to be incongruous. It's just the way God intends it."
Kasey Olander:
Sure. So there may not be this juxtaposition of way that we think something should be and the way that it's not or any of that other incongruous things that you're talking about.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Yeah. And a lot of times I talk about how we live Holy Saturday. We are stuck between all the horrors and the ugliness of Good Friday and the Joy of Easter. And we live with a foot in each world. And I think a lot of our humor comes out of that. We live by two different calendars. We celebrate Holy Week, but we also celebrate Shark Week. And so it's that odd dual citizenship sort of thing that I think is at the root of so much humor.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. And when I think about those… Well, using pre-fall and post-fall. I've always believed Jesus and those 12 disciples, those apostles that are traveling with him, I know guys. If I'm hanging out with 12 guys and we have work to do and we're doing all these things, at some point there's going to be horseplay, there's going to be some level of just jovial behavior. "Look at Judas' hair." I mean, it could have been anything like that. And everybody's having a fun time around this whole thing. I just believe they probably had a good time. And now we read about what's serious because our lives are hanging on this. But I have to believe Jesus as a child played with other children and they had fun, they wrestled, they did things. I believe the disciples probably in their travel… These were, I would say, adult men going out doing work.
But I know how it is around here. Even at DTS, we do have fun. At DTS over here, and we laugh and we're jovial with each other. I think that's a part of the community that God has created in us and in that community, there will be humor that comes in that. And I just don't believe those 13 men hanging out didn't have a good time together. I just don't think they would've done that and didn't have a good time. And we know they debated, we know they had a hard time with each other on different things and didn't agree, but I think they had some fun together too, because that's what guys do when we get together.
Kasey Olander:
And even that's what friends do. It seems like a common misconception that holiness and humor are incompatible.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Oh Lord, yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. If we're going to take something seriously, then we never can laugh about it. But I mean, I don't know, I have a pastor who preaches funny sermons. A lot of times we might laugh in church or that'll be something that's really memorable is, "Oh, I know that was a joke. But the serious underlying meaning was actually really convicting, but he delivered it in a way that made it palatable for people." And so probably in the same way you're talking about Jesus and his disciples too. Just because of the relational aspect, how could they not have been having a good time? How could they not have been making jokes and probably saying something funny?
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. Most of the time when we have chapel speakers here, somebody says something, I would say the majority of the time someone is going to say something that's funny. And if you have any chapel speakers that were once students here, they'll say something that that entire audience relates to and it erupts in laughter. I think it's a natural part of who we are. So maybe that's our definition. Humor is a natural part of who we are, and it is very soothing and healing to us.
Kasey Olander:
Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
See, put that in your dictionary. That's what we need to do.
Kasey Olander:
I'll call Merriam-Webster real fast. We'll have them edit that.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. Good. Call them. Let's get that in there quick. Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
I think that brings us to… You brought up Jesus and the disciples. Where else is there humor in scripture? I'll start off with the most recent time that I read Esther, I thought that book was hilarious. Haman is doing some crazy things, he's cooking up these schemes, and he's acting all conceited, "Who would the king delight to honor more than me? No one." And so then he goes around and has to do all of this amazing stuff for his mortal enemy. That's hilarious. How ironic! And all of the "coincidences" in there that are really the lord's providence. So I noticed that the most recent time that I read Esther, but I wonder if there's anything else that comes to mind for you guys.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Things that come to mind… Steve?
Kasey Olander:
Steve?
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Well, I did a little interlude on Esther in the book, but I also spent some time in… Oops, I forgot to plug my computer in. Did a little bit of work in Jonah, and I think Jonah's one of the most hilarious books in the Bible because here's this guy who's supposed to be on God's A Team, and God says, "I want you to go to Nineveh." And he heads for Tarshish, which is about as close to 180 degrees off compass point that you can get. So I think that's hilarious. And then he goes to Nineveh and preaches probably the most unenthusiastic sermon possible, but yet people repent right down to the livestock. I got to grab my power cord before I go dark on you here.
Kasey Olander:
No, yeah, those are good examples. And I think too that there are sometimes… I thought of Sarah this morning and how she laughs at the very idea that God could give them a child in their old age, and God calls her out, "Oh, you laughed." And she's like, "No, I didn't. No." And he's like, "Well, you did. Yeah, I'm omniscient so I actually know that you did." Stuff like that.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
I couldn't imagine trying to change diapers at a hundred years old since I didn't want to do it at 32. All of those, yes. But you could find humor… I know when I first started writing, I used to struggle with it. I think I struggled with trying to write humor about scriptural context or stories or narratives in the scripture because I think I was wrestling with the fact, "This is holy stuff. I shouldn't really be making light of it, but I'll make light of the church." So that's what I would do. I did those things.
A lot of my comedy, when I would do shows for churches, would revolve more around making light of the current church or the contemporary church or the church as we know it today, and all the stereotypes that go with the church today and the like. So that was kind of my genre that I wrote to. But I think if I was to go back now and write, which I am writing now, it is much easier to use content from the scriptures and really find humor in those things. And just finding anything. I just can't think of anything off the top of my head, but just Jesus's-
Kasey Olander:
The talking donkey.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
The donkey, that's been used. People have talked about that. Jesus comes back. You are the promised Messiah, you died. You died a brutal death. And you come back, you walk through a door and the first thing you do is, "Hey, you guys have anything to eat?" You got to come up with something better than that, Jesus. How did this happen? He told us how it was going to happen, but the first thing he comes up, "Let's have some dinner," that kind of thing. So I just think that there's stories you can come up with altogether make it lighthearted, but it might convey a true message about the scriptures. And if it helps with the truth, well, praise God. Praise God.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
I've got the belief that one of the most hilarious scenes in there is when Jesus joins the two disciples who are heading back to Emmaus, and he kind of comes up and says, "Hey, guys, what are you talking about?" And they said, "Are you the only one who isn't in on this?"
Kasey Olander:
"This guy is not in the know?"
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
And I just got to imagine Jesus doing everything he could to not burst into laughter and say, "Well, do tell. Bring me up to date on this." And I think that's absolutely a hilarious story.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely is. I think perhaps that humor is one of those genre pieces that we need to look for in scripture, because there is so much of this irony. A dead person came back to life, they don't normally do that.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Exactly.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. There's a lot of things that are incongruous or unexpected that I think it merits us, at least, looking at when we read scripture because it is God's revelation to us. And so if it's one of the means by which we understand things, then it's at least worth considering.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
One other thing that fits in there too is if you're open to surprise when you're reading the Bible, look at how many times God does the least expected thing. David, the youngest of all these sons, ends up as King of Israel. Paul, Mr. Super Jew, becomes the apostle to the Gentiles. God is always choosing the least likely person. And when you look through that Hebrews 11 Hall of Faith, well, yeah, there's a lot they did that was admirable, but in many ways they were giant goof ups too. And so you got murderers, some swindlers in that group, and couple of guys who tried to pass off their wives as sisters so they could save their own bacon. It doesn't happen in the way you would expect it to.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
You get four Gentile women showing up in Jesus' genealogy and all of this stuff that shouldn't happen keeps happening.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. That is meant to catch us off guard. Sometimes we, I think, wrestle with over familiarity in that we're like, "Oh, I've read this before. I know Jesus is coming back. It's not a big deal," but we need to appreciate those things that you're pointing out. That actually is really shocking that these different people would have these significant roles in the narrative of scripture. Yeah, it should bring us maybe some delight and pleasure that, "Oh, God uses regular people like us," and that should be surprising and not just what's expected.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. I think about just using me. That's a great example. People find out now, "You've gone into ministry?" And people are just… I would go back to my college homecomings and we'd have these grand times and they knew me as this jokester and this humorous dude, always doing these fun things and just outrageous stuff and they're like, "You're in ministry?" And often times their response is, "God really does have a sense of humor to use you and to see this guy that would play practical jokes on people in college and to see you come back… Your whole goal was to humiliate people and now you're trying to build them up?" I said, "Yeah, I try to build back up the same people I humiliated. I just have to do it with Jesus Christ now. And it works."
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Yeah. He uses it. And I love what Steve is saying. I think that alone is humorous, but truth, that he uses these broken people to do such magnificent things to redeem us. So there's more to theology and humor than I ever even thought. Even in this conversation I'm learning about it.
Kasey Olander:
And just because something is beautiful and humbling, that the fact that God uses us, doesn't mean that it also can't be funny.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
That's right.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Do you think that there is such a thing as objectively funny, the way that we have objective morality? We know that there is right and wrong, sometimes we disagree on exactly what right and wrong might be in a given situation, but there is a right and a wrong. Do you think that there might be an objectively funny,
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
A right and wrong, an objectively funny? So something that shouldn't be funny is what you're saying or-?
Kasey Olander:
No, just that there are categories of funny and not funny.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Yeah. It's funny, even if you're not laughing at it.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Yeah.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Well, a lot of humor is very cultural. And so one of the weirdest things that came out of this book is I had a Russian Christian ask for permission to translate the book into Russian because he says the Russian Christians tend to associate solemnity with piety. And he said, "I think your book really makes a good case for doing it otherwise." But he says, "I'm going to have to rewrite a lot of the jokes because they won't play in Moscow."
Kasey Olander:
Or the word play even, it just doesn't translate.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Yeah, yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
There's things I won't do as a comedian. I wouldn't do, knowing that it would harm someone, causing harm to someone. And there's stuff that I could say that would be funny to a big audience, but if it would harm that one guy or that person here, yeah, I just don't touch it. But then there's other things that I'm just driving down the road and it pops in my head and I was like, "Man, if I had a place to go and say that, I would say it," and I'll say it to my friends and they're dying laughing over the phone or if we're on a Zoom or we're just hanging out or whatever, and they're laughing. They're like, "You need to write that down." I was like, "Where can I perform it? I'll lose my job at DTS, I won't get to preach at church. My family won't respect me." But it's hilarious.
And there are things that you just… And have to keep it to yourself or keep it amongst your inner circle really, and don't go with it. But then there are some things that I do and it's edgy and I have done, and I've said them, and people loved it. And oftentimes it was people within a very pious Christian audience that would tell me, "Man, I love that joke you said about blah, blah, blah," whatever it was. And so you know it's not just you laughing and others are laughing. I mean, I wouldn't say all the people, but a lot of the people that I hang around with are Christians. I would say probably most of them are. Yeah, they are Christians.
And as I'm thinking about my friend crowd, and there's some I'm still working on too because witnessing to them, but most of my friends are Christian, but they find some of these, I guess, probably even crass thoughts that I may have about some subject matter very humorous and they laugh at it. And then in the African-American community, we'll tell somebody, "You're wrong for that," but they'll die laughing because you know it's wrong, we shouldn't say that publicly, but you're laughing.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
One of the main theories of what makes something funny is called benign violation. And so there's a little aggressiveness in the joke, but it doesn't go over the boundary.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
That's right.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Okay? So you nudge the envelope. The problem is though, the line is in different places for everybody. And so yeah, I've got a pretty high tolerance for jokes that others might consider inappropriate, but you got to know the room. So I was here nodding my head, saying, "Yeah, there are things that I will say to my friends that I can't say in a classroom."
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
That's right.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
It'd get me thrown out. Or I couldn't say to certain people with certain trigger points. So yeah, a lot of what's important in humor is the relational aspect, knowing the other.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely.
Kasey Olander:
That there's always boundaries to be drawn because our goal is to love people. We want to care about people, we want to connect with people. And so we never want to use humor to dehumanize people or ridicule them. And at the same time, also, we can have a little bit of levity to, for example, laugh at ourselves. One time my husband and I were at a family gathering and somebody made a joke about our denomination. And so the people around us were like, "I'm so sorry. I didn't know they were going to say that." We were like, "That's okay, that's fine." It's okay to poke fun at each other and we didn't take it personally. And it was, like you said, very benign. And so I think that there's a delicate balance to this benign violation that you're talking about where it-
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
There's a huge cultural discussion right now. I mean, a lot of the biggest names in comedy won't do college campuses because everybody is so sensitive about everything and they don't need that hassle. They don't need people getting on their Twitter accounts trying to cancel them so they just don't do it. And so I've often wondered whether it's a good metric of how spiritually healthy we are if we are willing to be the target of humor and perhaps hear truths about ourselves that are funny and have truth but may have a bit of an edge to it too.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. It's a difficult thing to take some things seriously and at the same time not hold them too closely. If our identity is ultimately secure in Christ, then maybe it's okay if people poke fun at us a little bit for whatever reason, especially in the context of a caring relationship, in the context of our friends and people that we've established relationships with. So we talked about that humor can connect people. Whether in a classroom, in a seminar, different things, humor can bring us together. And it also can be a tool that we use for even reading some of scripture and seeing… Yeah, Robert, I love that you pointed out that once you came to know Christ, it's not like everything funny about you went out the window. No. Now it's something that the Lord uses in your life.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
He has, he's done that. Can I back up to the other thought of just on the cancel stuff with our college campuses? Steve's exactly right. And cancellation is going backwards and forwards in different ways because you can get canceled in environments where they're holding up a moral standard. The Christian Church, they have this standard, but if you say something humorous about and attack that, you would be canceled from that particular culture. So cancellation goes either way. It can be towards more of a believing audience, they can cancel you, or a non-believing audience can do. And I like to use that. I try not to go into the whole left-right debate because I'm just trying to get away from that.
But back to your other question, so I wanted to just kind of point that out, but back to the question about how God can really use it after you have accepted Christ, I was able to explicitly see how that took place for me, the humor, because I remember the first time that my former church went in and did prison ministry at a prison in Palestine, Texas. This is a maximum security prison, probably more than 3000 inmates in this facility. I went through probably six or seven checkpoints or gates of some sorts to get into this prison, walked down a hallway that looked like a highway. It had yellow tape or lines in the middle where these guys have to walk on this side and other guys walk on this side. You're on a highway. And it looked like a highway. It was just this long gangway down here. And all you could see is bars and walls. So I'm in this prison and I go up and it was like the Lord was nudging me. I didn't hear a voice.
I always tell people, "I didn't hear a voice, I didn't hear an audible voice, but I felt a nudging. 'Use what you have. Talk about your experience getting here.'" And the first thing I told those guys… When I went up, I took the microphone. I was scheduled to preach in the prison. And when I walked up and I described my journey to prison ministry and my first time of ever seeing an inmate working on the side of the road when I was growing up in Arkansas and didn't know what that was, and I was like, "Well, who are these guys out in these white suits out here working?" And I was telling these guys in prison, I said, "My dad did not give me the textbook answer. He didn't say, 'Well, those are guys that committed crimes and they're paying for their crimes. Oh, those are bad guys. They did wrong. All those guys are being punished for the wrong that they did in life.'"
No, my dad said, "That's where you're going to end up if you don't stop being hardheaded." And when I said that, the room erupted in laughter. And immediately I felt like God was saying, "That's why I had you at the Laugh Factory. That's why I had you on television because I was training you for this moment right here." And when I saw men accept Jesus Christ that day, after I was able to preach the gospel and was able to connect with them and break down those walls in a building full of walls, that's when I knew God was using humor to make a difference in the lives of his people and draw them to him. So I was able to clearly see it, and that's why I love prison ministry. And even came full circle where there was some inmates that actually had recognized me from television, and it was amazing. So I'm just amazed at how God has used humor to help me really just deliver his word and deliver the message of the cross.
Kasey Olander:
That's beautiful. That's not just something that you're trying to excuse or rationalize. Actually the Lord is using it to draw people to him and to use you.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
And we'll do it again. It is not just that… No, no. I will do it again to reach people for the Kingdom.
Kasey Olander:
Well, thanks for sharing that with us, Robert. And this has been a fun conversation. Really appreciate each of you guys and your willingness to take humor seriously, to really inspect it, and to think about how it really can be a gift from God and something that he can use and has used. And it's something that we can even use to love people well and teach them truth. So thank you, guys, each of you for being with us, Steve and Robert, really-
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Thank you.
Kasey Olander:
Grateful to have you.
Dr. Steve Wilkens:
Thanks for giving me this opportunity.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, it was fun. And we also want to thank our listeners. We're grateful that you've joined us, and we hope that you join us next time on the Table podcast when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendrick's Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And my guest in Brandon Washington, who is a pastor in Denver, Colorado. Whenever I say Denver, Colorado when I'm in Dallas I go, "Man, the environment around Denver is completely different than the environment around Dallas. Dallas is flat and boring. Denver's beautiful with mountains." I mean, so I'm jealous.
Brandon Washington:
It's among the reasons I stayed here. Moving to Denver was the first time I experienced four distinct seasons.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, well Dallas has-
Brandon Washington:
Those people in Dallas, it's two maybe.
Darrell Bock:
Dallas has two. Summer and getting ready for summer. But anyway, yeah, and Brandon is pastor at the Embassy Christian Bible Church in Denver and he also holds a master's degree from Denver Seminary where he studied systematic theology and apologetics and ethics. I mean, what a combination. And you did it so well, they asked you onto their board of trustees.
Brandon Washington:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
So thanks for being with us. He's written a book, I have it here, called A Burning House, which tells you we got a hot topic. And it's redeeming American Evangelicalism by examining its history, mission, and message. So obviously, we're going to be talking about racial perspectives in the church and what God is doing amongst us in these days. And it's been a challenging period. And so, I want to frame this a little bit, Brandon, by opening up and saying that just because you occupy the same space, just because we all walk into a church and we worship the same God, doesn't mean that we see that space in the same way. And your book is an effort to try and write in such a way, in a sympathetic, gentle, but direct way about how many Black people see the space of the church which they share as Evangelicals and primarily with the white majority of Evangelicalism.
So first of all, I just want to commend you for undertaking that task, and the challenge that it represents. But secondly, I want to ask you, as a way in, tell us how you got to this topic and why is it that you decided that this was something you wanted to speak to?
Brandon Washington:
Very good question. I became a believer in the mid-'90s. It was 1997, and I am from Dallas. Born and raised in Dallas.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow.
Brandon Washington:
Yeah. So my introduction to the faith was heavily influenced by… Well, much of my understanding of the faith was heavily influenced by a local radio station, that if I were to mention now, everyone would recognize it. And my pastor was Dr. Tony Evans, and that gave me a flawed… it was a skewed sample size regarding seminarians, because until I left Dallas, every seminarian I knew was African-American. There were dozens of them at the church, because of who the pastor is. I received this perception from them of what seminary is, but it was a flawed perception.
I left Dallas and moved to Denver, first, because I wanted to leave home. And the other reason was, I did not want to be a pastor, I wanted to be a professor of philosophy, and that's why I chose Denver Seminary, which at the time had a program in philosophy of religion and ethics. And I realized how skewed my sample size was, because there were so few, relatively speaking, the Black student population was significantly smaller than the overall population. And I noticed, when we were in class, that our questions weren't the same. Our theology was the same, but the practical application of the ideas was not the same.
Darrell Bock:
So the contexts were that different? The context of student experience was that different that it was generating different kinds of conversations about how to think about ministry?
Brandon Washington:
Absolutely. The questions we asked were along the lines of how is this going to nurture wholeness in our community, where we lived in the time, which is in Northeast Denver, which was historically, is historically, an African-American community. And I had classmates who told me that such questions are off the mark, to stick to the gospel. And I always wondered, "Well, why is the gospel not relevant to these questions? Why does the gospel have no bearing on these concerns?" So I noticed that we shared orthodoxy, our ideas were the same, but our orthopraxy, the application, the embodiment of those ideas, were often just askew of one another, enough to be loud. Enough for it to be a stumbling block for many students of color.
So I wanted to address that distinction and the specific moment when it came to a head was the conversations I had around the death of Trayvon Martin. And the idea that people who received the same theological education I did, who were telling me that the gospel and some of the other fundamental aspects of our faith have no bearing on that moment. That was troubling to me and it made me realize that we are in the same house, but I walked away from those conversations feeling like a guest, an unwanted, sometimes, guest, instead of a family member who was in the household that we all share, the family dwelling.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, well you've opened-
Brandon Washington:
So I want to visit that distinction.
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead. You've opened this with a metaphor that I like to use, which goes something like this, I equate the church to a blended family. A blended family, they're not biologically related to one another, but because of a second marriage or a death, there is a second family that is put alongside the original family and they have to blend together. And all those relationships have to be fixed. In a practical space, people who study this say it takes five to seven years for everyone to work out their relationship to one another, if they get there. Okay, if they get there.
Brandon Washington:
If they get there.
Darrell Bock:
And so, the church is like a blended family. And the other metaphor I like to use is God has adopted all of us, but we have not adopted each other. Okay? So that's another way to think about the same image, that we share space, we even share the same set of… well, I'll say it this way, we claim to share the same set of theological beliefs. Okay? But the application of those beliefs, because of the different spaces that we live in, doesn't work out to surface the same kinds of issues and problems, and sometimes we don't recognize the issues and problems that someone in the different space is having to deal with.
Brandon Washington:
Right, right.
Darrell Bock:
And so-
Brandon Washington:
I have a-
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead.
Brandon Washington:
No, I have a mentor here who says that empathy is essential to applying the gospel well, and he says empathy is nearly impossible without proximity. So we have to be in the same space, but we have to do it empathetically. I'm not trying to copy you, but I'm trying to appreciate you and appreciate how you see the same circumstances, which will potentially shape how I apply the gospel to those circumstances.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly. And then, I think the other issue that you've raised in your introduction is that… I'm going to say it this way, is our gospel big enough? Is our gospel big enough to incorporate all the spaces that the people occupy who come into the shared space of the church? And sometimes I think our gospel isn't big enough. I actually have a historical explanation for why this challenge exists. I'll go ahead and share. It works this way, that Christianity was seen as very holistic up until the point of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. You had state churches. Okay? And whatever you think a state church is, the fact that you had state churches says Christianity is designed to apply to every public space. Okay? And then, you had the abolition movement. Okay? Which certainly was, in the way we tend to frame things now, more political than theological, although I would say that, "No, that's not the way to read the space," but that's what happened.
Anyway, so what happened is liberals came along and they said, "Ooh, we like the Christian ethic, but we don't necessarily buy the theological story in the Bible that's underneath it," and they split the two apart. Okay? Conservatives came along and they said, "Ooh, we like that deal, but we're going to flip it." Okay? "We like the theological side of it, and we're going to defend this to death, because the Bible's being challenged. And everything that's over there, that has nothing to do with the Bible, nothing to do with the gospel, et cetera, that's its own separate space." And then, my next line is, what God has joined together let no man put asunder, and both side pulled it apart. And in pulling it apart, then when you go back to try and put it back together and say, "What is that relationship between these two pieces?," you end up in a discussion where, "Well, wait a minute. Does that actually belong together or not?"
And so, people don't see how this could possibly belong together, because we've pulled it so far apart from one another, and then we've labeled it ideologically rather than theologically, and when we do that, we dissipate how big the gospel is, because the gospel not only is designed to save us, it's also designed to reconcile us.
Brandon Washington:
As is your way, you articulated my point in a moment. You just did in 120 seconds what I spent 260 pages doing. I believe we've truncated the gospel and I don't believe that it was one camp versus the other who did it.
Darrell Bock:
That's right.
Brandon Washington:
I believe that each side chose half of the message.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Brandon Washington:
And my goal is to not merely unify us, but to do so by reuniting, redeeming the message and bringing it to its wholeness. Resist the truncation of the message and I think the justice discussion often falls apart because we're trying to seek justice without having the means by which God provides justice in the world. We're trying to get the back half of the gospel without the surrender that the front half requires. And I think that the other camp, it celebrates the sacrifice of Christ, but it's celebrated as a thing that we will experience one day, we'll get the fruits of it-
Darrell Bock:
Or we'll experience-
Brandon Washington:
… one day.
Darrell Bock:
… as individuals and not thinking about what it means corporately.
Brandon Washington:
Oh my goodness. The corporate relevance of the gospel, and the idea that that would require corporate repentance and corporate surrender to that message, that's what we're resisting. I believe that's a Western publication.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I agree.
Brandon Washington:
We're trying to impose a Western value onto a gospel message that is much bigger than Western ideas.
Darrell Bock:
That's right. And just to translate for people, because we're speaking in code. By saying that it's Western, it's so individualized in its focus, and it's directed out of reflection of Western culture being basically individualized. That we miss and don't see the corporate elements and implications that are also wrapped up in that. I tell people, let me illustrate it, we have the Lord's Prayer, right? We call it the Lord's Prayer, because it comes from Jesus. Okay, fair enough. It's actually the disciples' prayer, but the apostrophe goes after the S. And so, we are praying, when we pray the Lord's Prayer, we are praying for one another at the same time, but we don't often recognize that we're praying for one another. We tend to individualize it. And so, it's like a lot of hymns that get expressed in the first person singular and I say, "Man, I would enjoy these hymns a whole lot more if they were expressed in the first person plural." That kind of thing.
So that's what we're talking about in terms of some of the influences. And then, these become, how can I say it? These become blinders, or at least, what's the word I want? Blurred spots in our thinking that need more focus and need more clarity, in order to represent everything that God has intended when we reached out and saved each one of us. And he certainly saved us individually, one at a time, but he saved us for a community and he saved us to see our role in community in the midst of a world that needs what this community represents.
Brandon Washington:
Yes, sir. I think what you're outlining here is not… and this is often the pushback I receive, it's not a new idea, the idea of the corporate representation of our message, the need for corporate repentance and our prayers are extended to one another. God reconciling us to himself and reconciling us to one another. Those aren't new ideas. And I think we can redeem the message if we retrieve the longstanding, well defended old ideas of those communal values, corporate ethics, and a whole gospel message.
Darrell Bock:
And, in fact, it's so important to God, now I'm going to be messing with people, it's so important to God that he says in multiple passages in the Old Testament, and I think he reaffirms it in spots in the New, as well, that if you do not care about how you're relating to your fellow person, then I don't care about your worship. And I tell people, our worship is supposed to be pretty important. I mean, we spend an hour on it every week and it's the main thing that we do when we gather together, so that's pretty important to most people. All right. But God says, "I don't care about that if you don't care about this." And the New Testament passage that shows, it is on the Sermon on the Mount when the remark is made, "If you have something against a brother and you're going to bring a sacrifice, I'm telling you to take a TV timeout, add a two-minute warning and go fix your relationship with your brother before you come bring your sacrifice.
And so, that's making the same point in a different way. And so, those are the images that we're dealing with as we think about this space, which is why I appreciated your book so much, because I thought you made a really full effort to have someone who doesn't share African-American space, to understand how the African-American sees the space that we share, both nationally and in terms of church. And I just thought it was well done, I mean, I'm in these conversations with Black leaders all around the country, and I've had this kind of conversation and sometimes it gets said this way to me, it says, we can't have a meaningful conversation till you understand where I'm coming from and what I've been through and how I see things, which means I have to sit and listen and just work hard at trying to be a good listener. And when you do that, that's that proximity that you were talking about earlier. That's part of what being proximate means.
And then, when we get to the point of talking about genuine repentance as a group, we've shared in that repentance. It isn't that I've applied repentance, so I don't have to go through that space with you. But no, I've come alongside you, and even though I haven't experienced what you're experienced, I've made an effort to try and understand what it is that you've experienced. And therefore, when we get to the point of repentance, we're in a better place to together than we would've been had I not shared that experience alongside of you. That's what you mean by proximity, right?
Brandon Washington:
Absolutely. In fact, you said something earlier that links to this for me. My observation regarding the modernist-fundamentalist controversy is that one of the fundamentalist strategies was isolationism, separate yourself. It's building schools where the fundamentals, as they understood them, were the emphasis of the education, and separating from the world. I would argue that the isolation was not merely immediate, it was not just relational, it was also a historical isolation. Separate ourselves from the values and distinctives of previous believers. It was almost a remodeling of the Christian idea at the expense of its historical worth.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting.
Brandon Washington:
And one of the reasons we try to do that is if you attach yourself, if you're one with the movement, from eras that predate you, and we function corporately, there will be days when I have to repent of my movement's behavior, even if the behavior predates me. On more than one occasion, the individualism that is common to the West was the pushback I'd receive in conversations around this. I wasn't there and I didn't do that. But my consistent refrain on that is, we don't deny the virtues of the movement from previous eras. Let's not isolate ourselves from the failings, and own them, repent of them. It's a witness to the world, if we concede some of those broken moments, concede those moments that are inconsistent with the message we're preaching and publicly repent of them, because we align with the movement, with the camp that committed them. It will be a witness to those who are currently put off by our message and what they perceive to be, sometimes legitimately, and inconsistency between what we're saying and what we're doing.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so let me illustrate this, and I'm going to do it with something that'll be a challenge, probably, for some of the people who are listening, but I'm going to try it. And I'm going to tell a story, and then I want your reaction to it. This is a conversation I had with someone on our campus, someone who worked on our staff. A student came to them, a Black student came to them, they were white, and said, in effect, "You're a racist." So he came to me later and he said, and was sharing this conversation with me and he said, "I didn't know how to process this. What should I think?" And I said, "Well," I said, "You probably heard one thing, and be probably meant something else."
Brandon Washington:
That is true.
Darrell Bock:
So let me go through this. Most white people, when they hear the term racism think that you've just accused me of having a very malicious attitude towards minorities if you haven't put white sheets over my head and said, "You're a member of the Ku Klux Klan." That's what whites generally hear when they hear the term racism, that there is an active, malicious act towards minorities, particularly towards Black people. And, of course, what the person's reaction is is, "Well, I don't have a malicious bone in my body. I don't have anything consciously malicious that I'm trying to do or do against anybody. I'm trying to live my life as a faithful Christian and have done the best I…" That's the reply you got earlier when the person says, "Well, I never did that." Okay? That's what motivating that. Okay?
And so, then I said to him, "But that's not what he meant. Let me tell you what he meant. He meant that to the extent that you don't care about the society that we function in that continually pushes me down or that risks pushing me down, to the extent that you don't care and don't engage and the society stays that way, I remain in the push down position."
Brandon Washington:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
Okay? So it's talking about complicity, it's not talking about malice, if I can say it that way. And because we see that term in such different ways, we are literally talking past one another, there's no empathy happening, there's no proximity happening, there's no effort to understand the space where someone else is coming from is happening. And as a result, we miss and then we each continue on our own ways and nothing changes.
Brandon Washington:
Yes. I am reticent to start a conversation regarding any New Testament text in a conversation with you. I'm reluctant to do that, but give me this one moment.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. All right, go for it.
Brandon Washington:
My refrain on moments like that is, are we properly applying the imperative to love your neighbor as yourself?
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Brandon Washington:
That is the empathy imperative. Essentially, Christ is saying, as he applies to the New Testament, if you were in the same scenario as this person, what would you need from an observer to help pull you out of those circumstances? And never, never is indifference the answer to that question. Never. Indifference is never an act of loving your neighbor as yourself. Placing yourself in the predicament they're in and being for them, what you would need, if you were in their predicament. The answer is never complacency. That is never the answer to the question.
I don't deny anyone who says, I don't have the capacity to know the inner workings of hearts and minds in the way that individual accusations of racism would require. And I would argue that you're right, and that the conversation regarding racism on the campus there was not an individual confrontation. It was more a matter of do you concede the history that our movement has that results in the present moment, and are you basking in some of the privileges and the benefits that the movement has purchased for us? And are you actively resisting the broken circumstances that we are in? Indifference is not a fulfillment of love your neighbor as yourself.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Brandon Washington:
Are you with me? Are you standing with me? And however God has equipped you, however God has gifted you, are you speaking into these circumstances using your gifts, your strengths, your platform to confront this brokenness with me, because from the perspective of needs to be loved, as you would love yourself, that's what I need from you. And a resistance to that, would land on the one on the downside of a caste system, the downside of a historical racial hierarchy. Bring indifferent to that imperative is properly identified as a racist act.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And so, since we're talking New Testament here, and it's good to bring in the Bible, just on occasion when you have these conversations.
Brandon Washington:
Every now and then, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
The other passage that strikes me is the one that involves understanding what it means to be part of the body of Christ, which says, "If one rejoices, we all rejoice. And if one hurts, we all hurt." And so, that's your empathy passage. That's your passage that says, "I am so in touch with the person sitting next to me in church. I am so in touch with the person who is a fellow believer that I am processing their story," and in this case, it's corporate story, their corporate story of how they have to adjust in the life that they have to live. You had a wonderful chapter early on in the book, which talks about we're not talking about assimilation here, we're not talking about making, I'm going to characterize this, making Black people into white people. Okay? We're talking about respecting the cultures that each person represents and saying, "God has made a mosaic out of who we are." And we're supposed to appreciate the depth and beauty of the variation in that mosaic.
And one day, when we all sit next to each other in Revelation 5 or Revelation 7, take your pick, and it's every tribe and every nation praising God, we're going to share that in Heaven together and appreciate it for all that it is. It seems to me that that's what you were driving towards, and the reason I liked where you began the book, is because that was the frame, that was the theological frame that you were coming through. That was not an ideological frame that you were coming through, and that difference is very, very important in this conversation for the church. Because a lot of people are reacting because they think they're getting ideology when, in many cases, what they may be getting is theology.
Brandon Washington:
Okay. Okay, I'm very blessed that you said that. It was very important to me that no one hear my approach to this as ideologically driven rhetoric, and I'm hoping that no one hears partisanship. We tend to think in these terms automatically. So the theology of the matter goes out the window, because we think that by choosing a party or choosing a tribe, all the heavy lifting and the hard thinking is done for us, so we skip all of the process and go straight to the partisanship. I want us to resist that for a moment and just discuss these issues on theological terms, using history as the backdrop. Discuss them on theological terms. I attended a seminary that I love. I love Denver Seminary, and it was a lot of them to drag me from Dallas, because everyone I knew was a Dallas Seminary student. There were times, early on in my Christian life, I thought Dallas Seminary was the only seminary, because I didn't know anyone who did not attend Dallas Seminary. So I attended somewhere I love-
Darrell Bock:
I'm not going to stop you there, keep going.
Brandon Washington:
I forgot where I was. But the-
Darrell Bock:
You love Denver Seminary.
Brandon Washington:
I do love Denver Seminary, but full disclosure, there were times I would notice that my classmates were so immersed in their cultural identity that they didn't realize we're studying theology through that filter. We are evaluating our ideas through that filter. We're applying what we're learning through that filter and they would assume their cultural expectations, their cultural norms, their application of the theology, they would assume that upon me and would even question my Christian identity if I did not land in precisely the same place. There have been friends with whom I graduated from seminary, who asked if I've walked away from the faith. My theology has not changed, and I would argue that I hold to it well and I defend it well. What they're noticing is not a difference in our ideas, they are noticing the difference in how we apply them and it comes down to them expecting me to adopt their culture if I'm going to have what they perceive to be a true Christian identity.
And my question to them is, why can't two legitimate expressions, two doctrinally sound expressions of the common faith, the Lord whom we share, why can't they coexist? Why do they have to be mutually exclusive? Why can't they benefit from one another? And where I need sharpening, I have you, and where you need sharpening, you have me, and we'll have a more comprehensive perspective on the gospel we have in common, if we approach this having one another's perspectives in mind. Instead, the argument is, put down the angle from which you approach the gospel. Put that down and adopt mine. And I would call that assimilation, in its dishonoring of the perspectives that are outside the dominant norm.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so I'm going to make a metaphor and I want to know what you think, because I think I'm tracking with you. But sometimes when I hear something I say, "Well, let me try it this way and see if I'm actually hearing you." It's like what happened in the music wars in the 1990s and early 2000s, when we had a battle between hymns and praise songs. And I'm sitting here going, all right.I hear the hymn people saying, "Well, our words have substance and we don't say the same thing seven times in 11 verses," however that works. And then, the praise people say, "Yeah, but you do hear the heart and the focus of what goes into a praise song?"
And I'm sitting here going, "Why are you making me choose? Why are you making me choose between the hymn and praise song?" Why don't I come alongside and say, "You know, the hymns do this for me and praise songs do that for me." And I actually am benefited, if I will enter in with empathy. If I will enter in with empathy, I actually would benefit from both side by side, in a way that if I just had one or the other, I would not benefit from.
Brandon Washington:
That's exactly right. I pastor a church in Southeast Denver, that is about 40% Black, it's about 30% white, and the balance is Latino and Asian. And not only do you have that ethnic and cultural distinction, that diversity within one body, we have generational diversity, so the younger adults in the room are young enough to be the children and grandchildren of some of the older people in the room. I assure you, musical styles have been a topic of conversation for us from day one. And my consistent refrain is, we will not choose. We will not choose. As long as the song has theological foundation, if it has a basis in the gospel. If God is the star of the message, we will sing all of them.
And we're not going to have segregation under one roof, where we have a hymn Sunday and we have a contemporary Christian Sunday. That has come up. I will concede the blurred lines that exist between the styles, but I assure you, if we do them long enough, the lines start to become irrelevant and the God of the song, the message of the song, takes center stage. And so, let's stop emphasizing the distinctions between them when their agenda and their message is exactly the same.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. Yeah. Let's run an experiment here. I want to deal with something that you raise in the book that I think is a good example of the nature of the problem of sharing the same space, but not necessarily seeing it in the same way. And since we've talked so much about empathy and trying to get people to understand, I'm going to ask you to talk about July 4th, and the tension that that represents. Because, for most people, July 4th is a day to celebrate our independence and what a wonderful, great experiment, I'll put it in those terms, America has been and what it offers the world, et cetera. But for a Black person, it's ambiguous.
So I just want you to explain that ambiguity and before you do it, I want to make this kind of caveat as we walk into this, and it's this, that what you're about to hear is descriptive of the historical realities that inform what's about to be said. That's important to just understand that. I've set the table for you as well as I can, and go for it. So July 4th, why is July 4th, generally speaking, harder for the Black community than it is for other people in the country?
Brandon Washington:
Let me briefly tell me where I sit, before I tell you where I stand on that. I celebrate the professed values of our founding documents. And, of course, I stand by the idea of all human beings being created equal by a common creator who bestowed them with inalienable or unalienable rights, and I stand by the language of that. I can do that while conceding, while recognizing that at the country's emancipation, the language and the behavior were inconsistent with one another. And all I'm asking is for us to keep that in mind when you impose certain celebratory obligations upon Black people, around that particular holiday. When I was in high school, I was introduced to a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass entitled What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? And that was the message that made me reassess what it is.
And his argument was not one should not celebrate emancipation or independence, that was not his argument. His argument was, "It is sacrilegious," I'm quoting him now, "It is sacrilegious irony." It is inhumane to force a person to stand before you and deliver the plenary speech celebrating that independence when on the day he delivered that speech he was a criminal, because he was guilty of stealing himself from a Maryland enslaver. He existed in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Darrell Bock:
So you're talking about Frederick Douglass himself. He's describing himself there.
Brandon Washington:
He is. Frederick Douglass is saying to them, "You're asking me to celebrate your independence when the very people to whom you look as the fathers of that independence enslaved my fathers-
Darrell Bock:
So let me say-
Brandon Washington:
… and even now, enslave me."
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so let me paraphrase this. So you're celebrating the independence at the beginning, so this is July 4, 1776.
Brandon Washington:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
And an emancipation of people who are declaring their independence and freedom from Britain. But at the same time, there were people who were not emancipated, who are a part of that land and a part of that world, that now declaring independence world, who themselves were not emancipated.
Brandon Washington:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
Until, at least legally, more than 100… well, almost 100 years later.
Brandon Washington:
Almost 100 years later.
Darrell Bock:
And so, the Black person has this, who can I say it? Hybrid relationship to the Declaration of Independence that a white person may not possess.
Brandon Washington:
That is correct. One of the things I took away from that speech from Frederick Douglass, who delivered that speech in the mid-1850s, 1854, I believe, one of the things I took away from that was it is possible for two people or two groups of people to experience the same moment in fundamentally different ways. And because of that, it will effect how each of those groups will interpret the moment. So for those who were among the liberated American populous, they look at July 4, 1776 as a day of freedom, independence. But their slaves didn't see it that way. Their slaves saw it as just another day of bondage. And it's irresponsible to evaluate history from only one of those two perspectives, because it will give you a slanted view of our historical story. It'll give you a flawed view of the narrative.
Darrell Bock:
And that's why I wanted to introduce it as an example, because I think it's an example of something that, perhaps, happens more consistently than we're aware of and why you need the variety of voices that walk into a church building, so that you understand that what you've experienced and what you've gone through is not necessarily what the person sitting next to you, who comes from a different background, has experienced and gone through. And then, we're back to your empathy and proximity thing again, which is empathy means I become a good listener, and proximity means I become a good listener with an attempt not to rebut what I'm hearing, but to actually receive at least sympathetically what I'm hearing with an effort to try and understand.
I tell people, before you go to assessment, you've got to understand where you are first and a lot of times we try and fuse those two together, and when we skip that step, we inevitably will miss something. And this is especially true when people disagree about something. It's very, very important in the midst of a disagreement to have that preliminary step, or else you'll actually end up talking about something without knowing what you're talking about. And so, Brandon, what else would you say to us about that? Let me ask it this way, because your heart's desire, I think, what I hear in the book is a desire to have what I would call a really healthy, worked through reconciliation in the church.
Brandon Washington:
Yeah. I think that you cannot have reconciliation until you have ears that are open to a whole narrative, which means that the two perspectives on history have to coexist. The complication we run into often is we so identify with whatever story holds us up, that we will take any amending of that story, any addition to that story, we will receive that as a personal assault. But it could be that the alternative view is maybe a person adding their legitimate observations of history that are omitted or left out of your story. They're adding them to the comprehensive message. We cannot get to a place of reconciliation until we concede those moments. And instead of resisting the legitimacy of our past, of those bad moments, the legitimacy of those bad moments in our past being a part of our historical story. If we can concede them, and repent of them, and then embrace the one who was injured by those bad parts of our past, we cannot experience reconciliation.
It is one thing for us to say, "I recognize what you've been through, and I want us to grow together and recover from what you've been through. That's one thing. It's an entirely different thing for you to say to someone, "Why don't you just get over it?" That's an offense to a victimized person, to tell them to simply get over something, especially when you identify with the offending party, to tell the victimized family, the victimized camp, they should just get over it. When you identify with the victimizer, that's an additional offense.
Darrell Bock:
You're actually-
Brandon Washington:
But to-
Darrell Bock:
Here's the irony, you're actually asking them to do something that you have not done. In other words, I can see the reply coming back, "Well, you need to get over it. You need to get over it. You need to hear what I'm trying to say to you, and you're not interested." And then, what you get is two bulls, okay, both with horns, running into each other. Okay? And that's not going to reconcile anything, all that's going to do is add injury. I mean, I think what some white people don't understand about the Black community is the level of frustration that the failure to process the Black story is to Black people when it comes from whites, and how that builds up frustration. Tony Evans and I have actually had this conversation, I think, on The Table, that it's like a teapot that just builds up pressure and pressure and pressure. And if you don't relieve that pressure, and empathy is one of the great ways to relieve that pressure, if you don't relieve that pressure, it just explodes.
Brandon Washington:
Yes. Okay, so I think that one of the greatest, and I'll use this word carefully here, one of the greatest offenses, and it's almost weaponized in ways you just described, to do what you just described is the way we handle history. We often treat history as a timeline, instead of a narrative, a story, which allows us to skip some of the hard parts. Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 occurred in 1964, which was after the end of the Civil War, which culminated in 1865, we will make a direct causal relationship, we'll create that from the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights progress of the 1960s. That ignores nine decades of social bungees that were trying to pull us back to previous times, and the complexities of Jim Crow and red lining and the idea of separate schools and the distinct water fountains. The dehumanization of separate water fountains, it's not something you should expect someone to recover from quickly.
So to just from 1865 to 1964 is a mishandling of my entire story. That's the era in which my father grew up. He is from Natchez, Mississippi. Born during the height of Jim Crow, in what I would call the epicenter of Jim Crow, he raised his children to be mindful of that. To say, "Get over that," is asking me to dismiss formative aspects of my story, which frankly, shaped how I understand the gospel's relevance in a falling world, and how I apply the whole gospel message to reconciliation, both vertically from God to humanity, and horizontally within humanity.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, and I'm reminded, I work very closely with an African-American woman who grew up in East Texas, who's told me stories of how when she would go to, basically a drive-in hamburger place, that the only way she could get food was to knock on the back door and not come into the building.
Brandon Washington:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
And so, I'm sitting here going, when you're growing up with that as a young person, how does that shape you? How does that form you and what does that mean? And granted, in our world today, generally speaking, that's not happening. Okay? So there's been progress. I mean, we shouldn't deny that, on the one hand, but there are underlying aspects of what that represents that we still deal with today. And to pretend that it isn't there, and we're back to the earlier illustration of to the extent that I don't care about those things or don't engage with those things, and those things perpetuate, those I call it death by a thousand cuts. That damage, that bleeding still happens.
Brandon Washington:
I think that, I want to be careful here, because again, I'm trying to avoid ideology, but I think it's irresponsible to deny systemic racism today. Having said that, even if you do, you'd be hard-pressed to deny historical racism or systemic racism in our past. And our present moment is the last chapter in a series of historical events, which means that all the preceding moments gave rise to the moment that we are in. They shaped the moment that we are in. And there are some practical applications of that. I think that the housing boom of the mid-1950s and the aftermath of Brown v. Board, that resulted in suburbs and it created a wealth gap that we're dealing with even now. If you put aside even those practical realities, those real world tangible realities, you cannot simply tell a group of people, "I know that happened, I know it injured you. I know there has never been a careful, deliberate reckoning or repentance of recognition, a hard recognition of that reality, but get over it."
And, in fact, will cite the gospel, that's happened with me more than once, will cite the gospel as reason you should just get over it. Well, that only adds to this yawning chasm that is growing between Black and white Evangelicals. Frankly, it surprises me that Black Evangelicalism exists to the degree that it does, considering the history that we have, and the role that the church played in much of that history.
Darrell Bock:
And we're rapidly running out of time, in fact, we've run out of time, but we don't have a time limit, so we can keep going. And that reminds me of this, when I get into this discussion, I always go to the prodigal. And the reason I go to the prodigal is because some people say repentance is a biblical idea, and you just need to acknowledge the repentance and move on. But actually, if you look at the prodigal, what the prodigal does is he not only repents, but he apologizes.
Brandon Washington:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
Okay? So he walks up to his father and he begins by saying… he doesn't just say, "I've sinned against God." "I've sinned against God, and you." He says it directly. He owns what's been done. And then, the beauty of the reception of the father, of course, is that he owns what he's done to such an extent that he says, "I don't even deserve to be treated as a son." Okay? "I've wronged you so much, I don't deserve to be treated as a son." But the father won't have that. Okay? The father says, "No, I go out and get him all the accoutrements that say my son is back." And so, there's something about what I think, what I call deep repentance. There's something about what deep repentance is, that not only says, "All right. Not only am I going to… Okay, I'm changing direction. But I'm going to acknowledge that what I did that's causing me to change direction, I need to be consciously engaged with working through. And if I do that well, than I've had the full spiritual response of what it is I'm being asked to do when I say I've repented."
Brandon Washington:
Dr. Bock, you know I can do this, I believe, because he has done it publicly, but you know Dr. Mark Young. He was a colleague of yours there at Denver Seminary. He's the president of Denver Seminary, and a few years ago we had a moment where we gathered and he gathered with several hundred Black church leaders and he acknowledged the history of Denver Seminary and its role in the broken relationship between the school and many of the churches in our city. And he consulted with me on what to do there, how to handle that. And he went above and beyond my expectations, and among the things that he acknowledged was, "I cannot celebrate the joys of our past. I cannot celebrate the virtues of our past." He would often cite Dr. Vernon Grounds, he in jest refers to him, he says, "If we had patron saints, Vernon Grounds would be a patron saint of Denver Seminary."
Because I cannot recognize Vernon Grounds in our history without also owning the short steps, the failings of out past. I inherit all of them. So as I celebrate one, the virtues, I repent and apologize on behalf of the school for the others. That is a corporate approach to Christianity. That is a recognition of communal sin. Things that predate him. He was not the firsthand assailant in many of these broken relationships, but he, as a part of his leadership, he owned them as a pursuit of reconciliation. That was a turning point, not just for the school, but in the Christian community within our city. And I would contend that that would happen nationally if we as a church, and I use the word deliberately because I am Evangelical, I have not turned from this, I'm speaking from within the house, if we were to own our past and repent of it, and desire restoration as we go forward, it will be a turning point for us nationally and be a witness for the gospel to the world.
Darrell Bock:
One of the things that I think a Christian always has to remember, well two things, is one, they have to never forget where they came from. They came to God because God got his attention when their backs were turned to God. That's the first thing. Second thing is, is that we need God and we need God until God makes us whole, and that hasn't happened yet, which means that we all have shortcomings. We all have things that we do that we shouldn't do or things that we do that ought not to be done. And when we recognize that that's the case, you don't go by and back to the deep repentance idea again, you don't recognize it by saying, "Okay, I'm just going to be different." No, you actually try and come to grips with what brought me here? What caused me to do what I should not have done? And to come to grips with and acknowledge that in such a way that I own my need for God, again.
And when I own my need for God again, that's what keeps us humble. That's also what keeps us dependent. That's what keeps us focused on who God is shaping us to be. He's not done shaping us yet, shaping us to be rather than, perhaps, residing, and perhaps in a misdirected way, and saying, "I am all that I'm going to be." Well, yes, in one sense you are all that you're going to be. You're a redeemed saint, you're set apart to God, you're declared holy because of what Christ has done for you, because of what Christ has done for you. I'll say it one more time, because of what Christ has done for you. But God is also in the business of shaping you to become like Christ at the same time. Okay? And that pressure of that shaping is still a part of our lives that we need to acknowledge.
And so, the beauty of this conversation, and we could spend another hour talking about the other half of this conversation, which is what is it that the Black community needs and how does it need to grow into this space effectively to complete the loop of the reconciliation that we're talking about here? There are conversations to be had there, but I find that they're easier conversations to have once there's a recognition of the pain that's been inflicted.
Brandon Washington:
Precisely, precisely. Whenever I have conversations with… because I'm observing this in my community where the groups that we refer to as BRICs, the Black religious identity cults, they have become a destination for people of color who are leaving the Church and looking for a spiritual or theologically backed experience somewhere else. And the reason they're going to Black religious identity cults is they experience affirmation of their identity there. In fact, I would say they're experiencing an idolizing of their-
Darrell Bock:
Interesting.
Brandon Washington:
… identity there. But the reason that's a draw, is because they are recognized as, from their understanding, they're recognized as less than in the Evangelical camp that they've aligned with for several years. And my consistent message is, while I advocate for the repentance of American Evangelicalism, I had to take a stand among people of color, Black people who are in the same world I am, and say to them that repentance that is not received, that is not responded to graciously is not of the gospel either. That may be the next book, the appropriate response to repentance, but right now the obstacle, I would argue, is not a lack of willingness to receive, it's the absence of the repentance in the first place.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So just to fill this out, so when you talk about Black identity groups, is this Black Muslims and other groups like that? Go ahead and name them, because for many people in the white community, they may not even know what their relationship is to the Evangelical Black church and what that migration represents.
Brandon Washington:
Yeah. There are pseudo-Islamic and pseudo-Christian Black religious identity cults. So you you have the Nation of Islam, which would be pseudo-Islamic. It's an Islamic cult. And you also have groups like the Five-Percent Nation, which is a sibling of the… it's actually an offspring of the Nation of Islam. And you have Hebrew Israelites, which is a, I would call it-
Darrell Bock:
That's the one I was hoping you'd mention. Yeah, go ahead.
Brandon Washington:
Yeah. That's a Christianized cult that hyper-emphasizes the presence and role of Black people. Instead of celebrating the Black presence that is legitimately there, the nation of Cush, and movement of that sort and look at the genealogy of Christ himself and seeing that presence there. They will identify the 12 tribes as Sub-Saharan Black Africans, and they will identify people in Black communities in metropolitan cities as the descendants of those people. In the Five-Percent camp, which is an offshoot of the Nation of Islam, Black men are referred to as gods, and Black women are referred to as earths. It is a high standing within the population, and those are a draw.
Setting aside for a moment the absurdity of the theology, I need for people to stop focusing on where people are running and ask, "Why are they going there?" And one of the things I'm pointing out here, is that camp affirms the value of people of color in ways that they're observed is lacking in the Evangelical church. So instead of mocking their destination, let's self-assess and ask, "What did we do? What has happened historically for which we have not repented that results in their decision to flee and run to those aberrant camps?"
Darrell Bock:
So I want to thank you for taking the time to discuss this with us and for the efforts to express yourself in the book A Burning House. I think we've done a good initial dive into the topic. There's a lot more that could be said. I want to thank you for helping us think through what I said earlier, which is God has adopted us, but we haven't adopted each other. And this is a good way to think about how to adopt each other and how to engage with each other in a respectful listening mode that allows us to actually hear about a part of the world and a part of the experience that sometimes we, and now I'm speaking as a white person, as a white believer, that sometimes we don't hear, but that is coming from a voice of a fellow brother or sister in Christ who deserves to be heard, because we're all connected to one another. We're part of this blended family that God has shaped.
Some people say, "Oh, we've never been here before. We've never gone through anything like this." I go, "Have you read the New Testament?" God said, "I'm going to take Gentiles and Jews, whose history with one another was not beautiful." Okay? All right. They were estranged. They did not like one another. They did not want anything to do with one another and God says, "I'm going to make you family through Christ. I'm going to make you family." And the whole New Testament is the story about how God is in the process of making family out of people from varied backgrounds around the one thing that they come to share, and that is they all need God, and they need God through what Jesus Christ has done for them.
And because of that, that's like glue, that not only sticks them to God, it sticks them to one another. And so, and one day, that glue will show itself, when every tribe and every nation gets up and praises God. We all listen to the Messiah together and sing it together and lift up our voice to God together, and we look at one another and we go, "Look at what God has done. Isn't grace amazing?"
Brandon Washington:
That blesses me.
Darrell Bock:
That's where we're headed. That's where we're headed, brother. I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us.
Brandon Washington:
Thank you for having me. This was a blessed time. I appreciate it.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And I want to thank you for being a part of The Table. We hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to see other issues of The Table, you can go to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast, and you can see other topics, as well as this one, other themes related to this topic. And we hope you'll join us again soon.
In this episode, Kymberli Cook, Timothy Yoder, and Paul Smalley discuss free will and predestination, exploring…
Kasey Olander:
Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendricks Center at DTS. And today, we're talking about the topic of friendship.
I'm joined by two excellent guests. The first one is Drew Hunter. He's the teaching pastor at Zionsville Fellowship in Indiana, and he wrote a book, it's called Made For Friendship: The Relationship That Halves Our Sorrows And Doubles Our Joys. Drew, thanks for being with us today.
Drew Hunter:
Thanks for having me, and excited to talk about this together.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm also grateful that we're joined by Rebekkah Scott. Rebekkah is the online course coordinator for the online education department here at DTS, and she's also a PhD student working towards a dissertation on the subject of friendship. Thanks for being here.
Rebekkah Scott:
Thanks for having me. I'm excited about this.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Yeah, I think it'll be a lot of fun. Friendship is one of those interesting things that I think a lot of us take for granted. A lot of us would say that we have friends, but we don't think much about it. We don't think very deeply about what does it actually mean to have a friend or to be a friend. Everyone has their own concept of friendship. Even children have a concept of friendship. They kind of know what friends are and have some sort of idea about what that's supposed to look like, but we don't always stop to think deeply about it. I think I want to open up talking to each of you about, how did you guys really begin reflecting on this idea of friendship? Why is it something that we should even take the time to consider? We'll start with you. How about you, Drew?
Drew Hunter:
Sure. Yeah. There's a few things that come to mind. One of them is, I think back to when this topic as a focus of study became important to me. It was about 11 or maybe 12 years ago now, and I've had good friends in different seasons of my life and moved around a little bit growing up, so I had to kind of and then maintain friendships like that, but I was just really grateful for close friends. But then, about 12 years ago, I was studying the Book of Proverbs to teach it, and I just sat down and read through the book and I was collecting the themes. I wanted to have messages on the themes that were most important in the Book of Proverbs rather than me just bringing topics to it to look for, and I was not expecting friendship to be one of the most important themes of the book.
Money would be obvious, of course, wisdom and things like this, and maybe relationships in general, but I was struck by how many very specific and pointed things were said about friendship in that book. So then, that week that I spent studying that theme more deeply in friendship in Proverbs, led me to also think about John 15 and Jesus calling his disciples and us his friends. And I just realized, at some point that week, I don't think I've taken friends for granted per se, but I've never really stopped to think about, what is friendship? Why is it important? How much do I really value this? And then, to think of Jesus as a friend, of course, who knows how many times I had read that in the gospel of John, but I was realized I was not really relating to him explicitly, intentionally, consciously, in terms of friendship.
So that week really changed my life because, ever since there, the topic, I just haven't been able to let go of it because it's just been such an increased joy to think about the value of friendship, and then, value my friends more and be more intentional about friendships and recognize the rich blessings that are in life because of it and talk to other people about this too. And then, of course, relating with Jesus on terms of friendship has been a life changer for me too. That was the week that it became really important to me to be intentional about thinking about friendship.
Kasey Olander:
That's awesome. I love that it was a surprise to you. You went to scripture not expecting to find that, but then, you were like, "Wait a minute. This is something that I actually need to really reflect on."
Drew Hunter:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, that's awesome. What about you, Rebekkah? How did you start getting into this?
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah, that's so cool, Drew. I like how your discovery of friendship came out of a study of the Bible, out of Proverbs and everything else it had to say. I think I came at it from the other angle of lived experience, more. As a child, friendship was very important to me. My friends were important to me, and that's acceptable in the context of childhood. But as I grew and I went to college and I became an adult, I started to grow very slowly in this awareness that was a little odd. I sensed, I intuited that friendship was something very important, very necessary, something that deserved to be invested in, but I didn't have the vocabulary to talk about it, and neither did the people around me, it seemed.
There was no ability to speak meaningfully about friendship, so I became frustrated. I wanted a deeper context for understanding what this thing called friendship is. And I knew I needed to investigate it theologically and biblically, and I needed to just learn and develop a way to speak of it. That's what started me investigating it more explicitly, when I came here to DTS, actually. I ended up writing my master's thesis on friendship, and I finished that, and I just felt like I wasn't done. There was more to say. And it's one of those topics that the deeper you dig, the richer you realize it is. It's not just a quick little investigation, a quick little study. This is something I honestly think it's going to take me the rest of my life to get to the bottom of. And the implications of it are just so broad theologically, but also practically so it's very worth investigating, and I'm really pleased and grateful that it came onto my radar.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. So you don't think we're going to totally plumb the depths in this 45 minute episode?
Rebekkah Scott:
Stranger things have happened, but yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Okay, we'll try. Now that we've used this word several times, what is friendship? Can we define it? Does it have certain hallmarks? What do y'all think?
Drew Hunter:
Yeah, what do you think?
Rebekkah Scott:
Me?
Drew Hunter:
Yeah.
Rebekkah Scott:
Oh, my goodness. It was really funny. I was thinking about this question the other day, and I was remembering, remember Plato's dialogue on friendship? I think it's Lysis, maybe, it's called. And he goes on and on investigating what friendship is, what it isn't, really just at length. And he gets to the very end. And the last sentence is, and I wrote it down here even, the last sentence, the last half of the last sentence is, "But what a friend is, we have not yet been able to find out." So if Plato couldn't define friendship, I really don't think I stand the ghost of a chance. Actually, it's historically been very difficult to define friendship. Everybody's agreed, philosophers, theologians, it's tough. But there was this guy named Cicero, this Roman statesman, and he took a stab at it, and he called it, "Friendship is a complete accord on all subjects, human and divine, joined with mutual goodwill and affection." That was a standard for a long time. And then, in the Middle Ages, this Cistercian abbot came along, Aelred of Rievaulx. You've probably read a lot of his stuff.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah.
Drew Hunter:
Great name.
Rebekkah Scott:
And he accepted name-
Kasey Olander:
Haven't we all?
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah, I know. He's so popular.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah, good old Aelred.
Rebekkah Scott:
It's basically Stephen King. But anyway, Aelred accepted Cicero's definition, but then, he sort of Christianized it and he said, "Friendship begins in Christ, continues in Christ, and is completed in Christ." We can start there. I think it's really difficult to define friendship conclusively. I think, at bare minimum, we have to say that it includes a common outlook on the most important things. It includes a concern for the other's wellbeing, and it includes a mutual commitment to one another, all in the context of a mutual affection. I don't know, but maybe Drew's got the final, the ultimate, the conclusive definition.
Drew Hunter:
I don't, actually. But yeah, I think the shortest definition, if I was just asked just by anyone on any day, life, what friendship was, I would say, it's a close relationship of truth and trust. My expanded version of that would be, it's an affectionate bond forged as we journey together with truth and trust. The idea is that there's a closeness, there's a bond that's forged, and it's mysteriously forged. Sometimes, it's instant. Sometimes, it takes time. Sometimes, it's expected. Sometimes, it's not. But there's an affectionate bond. It's not just being bound together abstractly, but there's a real love and affection that friends have for one another. David and Jonathan's an example of that. It's an affection. And then, it's forged as we journey together through life. There's shared experience. It deepens over time. We're journeying together toward the horizon of our future.
And then, there's several additional ingredients in addition to affection and love, which would be truth and trust, and those are just essential. Speaking honestly and transparently about who you really are. The mask is gone. They know the real you. And there's trust. Trust is the foundation of friendship. If you remove trust, it's like the foundation of a home cracks, that home will eventually start coming down. You can't feel safe there. That's my working everyday definition of that. And I think that that works for me because it brings together some of the most essential ingredients of what friendship really is. And it's doable too. I've come across definitions. And then, someone will give a definition. And then, maybe you've read these things through history where someone's writing a few hundred years ago or a thousand years ago, and then they'll say, "I think there's maybe been three friendships in the whole world." It's like, okay, there's probably been a few more than that, so let's have a definition that can include most of us.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Rebekkah Scott:
There's morals. Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
That's funny. I feel like each of you highlighted some interesting things. There's a mutuality there that it's not just one-sided. It's not like I can decide to be someone's friend who doesn't reciprocate. There also is a level of genuineness, the truth and trust, the going together that you guys have highlighted. And an opting in. It's not, "Oh, I was just born into this friendship." Friendship is something that occurs along the way, and there's a genuine love for one another, which is really interesting.
Drew, you brought up David and Jonathan. I wonder, not just in scripture, because hopefully, we'll get to that, but I wonder how has friendship been seen throughout history? Is that the same as it's seen nowadays in contemporary culture, or is there kind of been a shift over time? Rebekkah, how about we start with you?
Rebekkah Scott:
Oh, I think there's definitely been a shift. Drew, you should definitely weigh in here too, but yeah, the ancient philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, they thought it was the highest form of human love that could exist between individuals. They thought it was the foundation of the state. And then, you move into the medieval period, and we see a lot, well, before that even, the church fathers, they talked extensively about friendship. And later on, John Kristos, he said, friendship, the work of friendship was more important than raising the dead. And I don't know how you could speak more highly of friendship than that.
In ancient philosophy, in the church fathers, and then, in the medieval period, we also see a lot of the language of friendship, especially in the context of monasticism. This is where Aelred of Rievaulx wrote his book, Spiritual Friendship, which is the book on Christian friendship. We also see it used theologically in Aquinas and stuff. And then, when we move into the Protestant reformation and into modernism, we see a diminishment in how often and how highly friendship is spoken of. And I think we're still existing in that space today where we've lost a heritage of friendship that our forefathers and our foremothers once enjoyed. Yeah, I guess that's where we're sort of today, unfortunately.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, that we don't value it nearly as highly. I don't know anybody who would say that it's the highest form of human relationship.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah, that just doesn't even make sense to us anymore.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. We don't even have a concept for it.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah, I think even the past few hundred years, there's been a significant shift. Even in the era of the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, it's not as commonly talked about in those exalted ways in the past, but there are bright spots throughout and people valuing it. Jonathan Edwards had some strong statements on friendship, not often, but when he did speak of it, he would use very lofty language. Of course, C. S. Lewis is known for his writings, and some of the writings that he had was directly on friendship. A well-known book of his is called The Four Loves, and he deals with friendship in there.
John Newton, author of Amazing Grace that he would sing, he wrote about friendship a little bit. He made a few important statements in just various things he wrote. And then, he modeled it really well with William Cooper. That's a beautiful friendship to look into of, he and another member of his church that then moved away, and they were the closest of friends throughout those years. And it wasn't viewed mainly as pastor-parishioner, their friendship was mainly viewed as a friendship, so it's really beautiful. But then, even just these past decades, there's been a massive decline, not only in thinking about friendship and valuing friendship, but experiencing and practicing friendship.
So then, there's plenty of studies that have been picking up to show this. It's become a really hot trend in sociology. One study showed, I think it was Cigna Health Insurance showed that something like 54%, and this is now even, this study's a number of years old now, within the last decade, I think, still, but still not as recent as some of the newer ones. They were still saying that over half of the people that they surveyed said that their relationships weren't meaningful. And 40% said no one really knew them at all, which is language of friendship, right? Is they basically are saying, 40% of people said, "I don't have a friend." And then, they studied this over the course few decades, and it was a sharp decline, and it's only gotten worse the past five or 10 years. So we're in, actually, a really unique situation where there's a decline in friendship. I think that's why I'm sensing, even the past five years, there's been an increased awareness of, we've got to talk about this, is because we're hitting a bottom here that's been going on for a long time, but it's kind of accelerated downward right now.
So yeah, we've lost our heritage and we've lost this amazing gift, and it's there to recover.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, that's true. It hasn't expired. It's lot like it's lost forever.
Rebekkah Scott:
No.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Did you have something add? Are you good?
Rebekkah Scott:
I don't know. I think Drew put it absolutely beautifully. Yeah, I think every generation seems to have their own tasks and responsibilities and opportunities, and if I had to identify one of those for our generation, I really do think it is the explicit recovery of friendship. We need to learn to see it again, talk about it again, to cultivate it in our lives together again. I think that's a huge opportunity and responsibility that we have.
Kasey Olander:
Which is really interesting, because it's not as though the term is lost. People still talk about friends, but a lot of times, people mean those as social media relationships. And it could mean somebody that I clicked a button, but I've never actually met, ever, or interacted with whatsoever.
Rebekkah Scott:
It means everything, and therefore, it means nothing.
Kasey Olander:
Right, exactly. People are like, "Oh, my friend," and they mean, really, somebody I don't even talk to.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Drew Hunter:
Right. Yeah, and then, when they look for language to describe their closest relationships, it's interesting how people quickly move away from friendship language today.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Drew Hunter:
So they'll say, "Oh, these are, they're more than friends," or, "Oh, you're not a friend. You're like family." And it's like, well, that's fine. Family, that's a great metaphor too, pervasive in the Bible. But it just strikes me that's so interesting that people are so quick to jump away from friendship language when they want to grab language to express the closest of relationships, whereas friendship, understood rightly, actually, is exact exactly the right word to use in addition to to family kinds of language, but friendship for sure.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. We almost have it, it's almost pejorative like, "Oh, we're just friends." Friendship is like, "Oh … "
Rebekkah Scott:
That's saying so much.
Kasey Olander:
Oh, they're demoted almost from these other things. And that's so interesting how the language we use, well, maybe it is informed by, or maybe it shapes the way that we think of friendship. It could, I guess, go both directions.
Drew Hunter:
Probably both, yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Mm-hmm. Could y'all speak to, how do you think that things like social media and technology, what impact has that had? Especially, because that's one of the new things, Drew, you're talking about, just in the last few years, that's one of the things that has become so pervasive. Drew, how would you say that that has affected our view of friendship?
Drew Hunter:
Yeah, I'll note a few things. I think we're going to be finding out over these coming years just how much it's affected relationships, but a few things come to mind.
One is technology itself and social media has at a very basic level become a pretty big distraction in life. So in a culture where we already value this busyness too much, it's like everyone's busy and we think everyone's busy, so we don't want to bother them with friendship. We think no one has time for it. On the other hand, we're spending inordinate amounts of time watching Netflix and on social media. The average time that people engage with Facebook is incredible on a daily basis. We're busy, but we're doing these low reward activities rather than actually experiencing friendships. It's become a distraction in life and just filling our time that we could use for friendship with these other digital distractions. Another issue-
Kasey Olander:
Watching other people's friendships play out on the streaming services and on social media instead of actively participating in them.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah. It's a distraction, but then you think, "Well, we're distracted by social media, but that's engaging with people and engaging with Facebook friends," but it's a shallower, more superficial experience of friendship. We're created, as embodied creatures, made for real experiences, life on life, face-to-face friendship, having experiences together, and merely looking at a screen at people's general posts to the world is not anywhere close to the kind of connection we could have.
I remember John, the apostle John wrote, in Second John, he said, "I'd rather not write with paper and ink." So he's using modern technology of his time, and I'm glad he did because we have his writings, so he uses it, but he said, "I'd rather not, because," he said, "I want to come speak face-to-face so that our joy may be complete." There's a ceiling on our joy that we're hitting if we are only using this technology to connect, where face-to-face is where the fullness of friendship can be experienced. That's another way that it's affected us.
And then, maybe a third one would be the way that we use the internet and social media and to communicate, it rewards and seems to attract really unhealthy ways of relating to each other as humans. I remember, even when email came out, my dad, he was a manager, so he worked in a corporate world, and he said pretty quickly, he's like, "People will say things in email that they would never say to your face." It becomes impersonal. And we've seen this polarization politically and socially with tribalism. And then, that creates this sense like you can't trust people. You think everyone on the other side's crazy. And then, you look at your neighbors in your neighborhood and you figure they hold views that they don't really view. And then, you just are only wanting to talk to the people that are exactly aligned with you in every way. And maybe those people are only found online. Those are a few ways that it's affected us. There's, no doubt, more, but that those are direct connections to affecting the way we relate to each other.
Kasey Olander:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I like that you pointed out that we're still going to see the ramifications for years to come. These are things that we're already seeing, but also, that will continue, the more prevalent it is.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Do you have anything to add, Rebekkah?
Rebekkah Scott:
Oh, no, absolutely, I completely agree with all that. I think things like Facebook, and full disclosure, I haven't deleted my Facebook specifically because I do want to retain some sort of connection with friends that I've made over the years, but …
Drew Hunter:
I have it too. Yeah, I'm not dismissing all-
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Drew Hunter:
It actually has a unique role to strengthen friendship, used properly.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yes, exactly. Exactly. But yeah, I think, inherent in these platforms is a temptation to think that we can transcend our finitude and connect with everyone, when in reality, it's just not possible, as you say. If social media is distracting you from those embodied relationships that are possible, which are obviously going to be a few, then, I think getting as far away from it as is possible in this world is definitely a great idea.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah. Ditto on everything you said.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. And if we do elevate friendship to the definitions that you guys were describing earlier, where there's a real sense of mutual affection and not just, we shook hands one time, then, maybe we would realize that we can't literally have 1,000 friends.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah. I really think we ought to choose alternate terminology for speaking of people we're connected with on Facebook. II have a few real life friends on there, but then, most of the people, they're acquaintances, and I value them, and that is important, and then, I'm not trying to diminish them by taking away the language of friendship and reserving it for something more special, definitely not trying to do that. But I do think we need to reserve the term friend for people with whom we do have that mutual affection, that trust, as you mentioned, those really meaningful connections in the real world.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah, it seems like one of the ways we can recover friendship is by also recovering value of acquaintanceship-
Rebekkah Scott:
Exactly.
Drew Hunter:
… letting it be its own thing and not a bad thing. Right?
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah. It's okay to be just friendly with some people and not friends.
Drew Hunter:
Right. Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
And not being offended. "Wow, that person only thinks of me as an acquaintance." Well, let's be real. That's what it is sometimes.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah. Yeah.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah.
Rebekkah Scott:
It's not a bad thing. And if we were to become better friends, that would be a good thing. There's many possibilities involved in being an acquaintance.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, absolutely. I wonder, since you guys have thought so much about this, and we've talked about what it means to be human, we're embodied creatures, what bearing does friendship also have, if we have a robust theology of it, what bearing does friendship have on the way that we understand God? Drew?
Drew Hunter:
Yeah. It's been really helpful for me to think about friendship in connection with God and just the way He's made us. A couple things come to mind. One would be, on the first page of the Bible, we see God create a world for friendship. He creates the world, and the way it's ordered in Genesis 1 and 2 is over the course of this creation week. He's creating realms, the sky, the sea, the land. And then, He fills each realm with communal life. And then, when He gets to humanity, the purpose is to fill the world with communal human life, but He starts with two, Adam and Eve, and He makes humanity in His own image, and then calls them then to multiply and fill the world with society. So we just see, on page one, we see a God who is happy to bless the world with friendship.
And then, even in Chapter 1, we get a clue as to why. And it tells us something about God because He says, "Let us make man in Our image." And then, He makes humanity, in the plural, Adam and Eve, in Genesis 1. And I know that some people debate what is the us going on? What does that refer to? I'm convinced that is a way of God referring to us as plurality that we find out as we keep reading scripture that he's a triune God, Father, Son and Spirit. This triune God is a unity in plurality, and He's an eternal communion of effusive love. This means that God did not create us or the world because He needed friends. He didn't create us because He had any lack in Himself. He created the world to share His blessings.
The Puritan Richard Sibbes refers to God as having a spreading goodness. I love that. It's like a picture of Genesis 1. God has this fullness of communal life and love, and He overflows to spread it in a creation world where he then makes us in His image for friendships. So here, we have a God who's enjoying communal love, friendship, in a sense, and then, He makes the world.
That tells us one really important thing about God, and that makes Him unique from any other worldview or religion or concept of God out there. He's not just this singular God in isolation and lonely, and therefore, has needs and he needs us. He's one in three. It means the Trinity is not so much just like a math problem to be solved. It's a wonder to enjoy. And that He would invite us to share in His communion, and that's really the purpose of the universe. He creates us, and just fast forward to the very end of the Bible, and we have a new creation of embodied joy in friendship with the Lord Jesus and all those who are united to Him. So from beginning to end, the Book of the Bible shows this God of love creating a world of friendship, and what a privilege to be a part of this.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. That's wonderful. Yeah. Anything to add?
Rebekkah Scott:
That is so cool. One of my favorite things about your book is just how you do lay out a biblical theology of friendship. And yeah, I think part of the problem with friendship, when you speak of it with regard to the Bible and theology, is that it's everywhere and it's so easy to miss the forest for the trees. And part of my struggle over the years has been trying to find ways to point it out and to articulate it in ways that help other people to see because it's everywhere. It's like saying, "Hey, look at the air we're breathing."
Yeah, I think we just have to keep pointing out these cosmic themes over and over again until they're visible to our eyes. I was thinking about what this theologian, John Webster, he said that the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of creation, they're distributed doctrines, which means they inform and are informed by all the other theological topics. So salvation, humanity, eschatology, they're all tied into who God is and what it means to live in his creation. And I think, although I would not elevate friendship to the level of the doctrine of the Trinity or of the doctrine of creation, I think friendship functions in a similar fashion. It informs everything we understand about who God is and what He's doing and who we are. And it's just absolutely essential that we see that and allow it to shape our lives accordingly.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah. I really love the way you put that, because in one sense, I think a lot of people would say friendship is nowhere. It's not in any of those doctrines, and it's really nowhere in the Bible, maybe a few places. But what you're saying is, once you see what friendship really is and notice where it's explicit, and then, see that it's very tightly tied other places and it's implied, it's everywhere. You could just walk through the doctrine of creation, as I was just sharing a moment ago, and the fall, what's the first result of the fall? It's hiding.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Drew Hunter:
It's relational breakdown. And then, redemption. What is redemption? It's God inviting us back into friendship with one another and Himself. Jesus came as the friend of sinners, calling His disciples His friends, and the night before He goes to the cross to die, He wants His disciples to understand what's about to happen, and He explains it in terms of friendship.
He says, "Greater love has no one than this that someone laid down his life for his friends," so right there … Actually, I think since writing the book, I've done a lot more thinking just over time about John 13 to 15 and what's going on there with love. And I'm thinking of it even more in light of what you said, because you have the doctrine of the church right there because He says, "A new command I give you." The new covenant command is to love one another. And then, He defines that. He ratchets it up, saying, "as I've loved you, you are to love one another," and then, He defines it in terms of friendship because he goes right on to say, "Greater love has no one than this that a man laid down his life for his friends." So what's the church? We're called to love one another as Christ loved us in terms of friendship. And that's according to Jesus's own teaching. What is the cross? It's a cosmic act of friendship where He gives His life down for His friends. Again, Jesus Himself, defining the cross itself and the atonement in terms of friendship. And of course, eschatology, the world of friendship to come. We could probably keep going, but you're just firing my mind with thinking through all these topics and showing how really it is integrated in everywhere.
Rebekkah Scott:
I absolutely love it. I really do. There are just layers to this. And you go back over the story again and again, and it just goes deeper and deeper. It occurred to me in the shower the other day. I was thinking about Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning. God created the heavens and the Earth," and just in that one verse, we have the seeds of understanding that God is a friendly God. He's created us and he's disclosed himself to us. So of course, your case for him being a friendly God is going to be strengthened if you go on and see the whole narrative played out as you've walked it out for us. But just right there, we have the makings of understanding that God is a friend. That's just tremendous. And then, you go all the way through the glorious story of redemption and everything, and you come to the church, and I was thinking about something that Eastern Orthodox theologian Pavel Florensky said, and he talked about how, at their pinnacle, siblinghood and friendship merge, they join. And I think that's what we see happening in the church as well. There's so much sibling language, and as you said, we're the community of God's friends, and it's all wrapped up in each other and in one another. It's one thing that God is doing.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah.
Rebekkah Scott:
And it's just so cool.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. It's foundational for understanding scripture. You don't see David and Jonathan as like, oh, that's kind of quirky. They talk about this friendship a lot, so that's just one spot. No, it's like something that is woven throughout the entire narrative of scripture, and it helps us understand how we relate to God. The fact that Jesus calls us friends, if we do elevate the idea of friendship, is so much more meaningful and beautiful. I'm really struck by that, that Jesus would want to be friends with me instead of just thinking that as a casual click of a button. Oh, that's something that's so meaningful and rich, and I'm honored and humbled and yeah, I'm really struck by that.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah. And I think it takes getting a growing understanding of the value and richness and thickness of friendship for the idea, the notion of Jesus being a friend to actually do land in a weighty way, right?
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah.
Drew Hunter:
Because if we just take our current cultural understanding of friendship, which is pretty chum, buddy, pal, good if you have extra time in life, it's an optional thing. Oh, I remember that was nice in college or something, and then you say, "You know, Jesus is also your friend." It's like, "Okay, cool, I guess. Moving on." But once we realize just how rich friendship really is, then, for Jesus to define His cross as an act of friendship and to befriend us in love is a wonder, and we should regularly be thinking of him in terms not just as a savior and Lord, but also as a dear friend. And He authorizes this. It's his idea.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. And that's something we can marvel at instead of being like, "Oh, that's interesting that he would use that term." It becomes so much more wondrous if we take it that seriously.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
I think it's interesting. It's C. S. Lewis, I think, in The Four Loves, who talks about, he says it a lot better than I'm about to say it, but he says something along the lines of, it should be more noteworthy that we don't have these demonstrative expressions of friendship that are regular in our society today, rather than the fact that some people like David and Jonathan had it long ago, that we're the ones who are weird, not them, when we read these different expressions of friendship.
Drew Hunter:
Yes.
Rebekkah Scott:
Mm-hmm.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah, that makes me think too of just what's happened. This is obviously another related topic that's pretty wide reaching in itself, but just the sexualization of relationships. So David and Jonathan, there's tons of different articles and people writing saying that maybe there's more going on than just a friendship there, right? And that's just a completely modern interpretation. It was unheard of before a few decades ago. And that tells us more about where we are right now in our understanding of sexuality and friendship than it does, actually, about David and Jonathan. And there's a book I read called The Overflowing of Friendship by a historian named Richard Godbeer, not a believer, as far as I know, but he's just analyzing friendships in the founding era of America between men as you look at their letters to each other, and he found it to be filled with affectionate language for one another.
And he says he reads what these guys wrote to each other to his classes today in college, and jaws drop. And they're like, "No way that's just friendship. There's more going on." And he's like, "No," but it's because we've just, especially for men, in our culture, we've taken this affectionate aspect of it and we've just sexualized it to say that that's either a feminine quality or it's for someone who's going to be in a sexualized relationship with another man, rather than recognizing that this is supposed to be a very normal, natural part of what it really means to be a man in friendship. Even how we experience these things, and like David and Jonathan, it should be way more normal, but we're in a unique time, and it's really helpful just to get that historical perspective and realize, we're off here, our default understanding of what friendship is and should look like, let's not assume that it's correct. Let's keep stepping back, and then, try to adjust to a greater vision.
Rebekkah Scott:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's one of the tragedies of our day, that we use love, romance, and sex in this synonymous way, and we're no longer able to parse out the distinctions between them. And I think that's one of the benefits of really recovering a robust concept of friendship, is that we might be able to see the distinctions again. And we even say things like, "God is love." And I don't think we always necessarily know what that means anymore, just because of this habit we have of sexualizing everything. So to say, "God is love," it no longer makes sense because we don't remember what love is. I think, friendship, if we recovered that idea and that practice, it could actually help us understand what love is again. And if we were to say, like Aelred did, "God is friendship," that might actually be more accurate and closer to what the biblical authors or are the ancient theologians we're getting at than what we might mean today when we say "God is love."
Drew Hunter:
Right.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. So how do we go about recapturing this high esteem, this deep value for friendship? If our listeners are like, "Oh, okay, maybe friendship really is a big deal. Maybe I can't just throw the word around so frivolously," what are some things that y'all would encourage people to do as we seek to recapture the value of friendship?
Rebekkah Scott:
Well, I think Drew's written a lot about this in his book, so I'm really curious to hear what he has to say. I think one of the first things that comes to mind for me is just, be a good friend. Before I go out looking for other people and wishing they'd be good friends to me, I need to learn what it is to be a good friend to other people. And we exist in a world in which we're not quite sure how to do that anymore. Somebody needs to be the first to say, "Hey, look, even if this is not reciprocated perfectly, I am still going to devote myself to learning how to be a good friend, regardless if that ever gets returned to me in this life." We need to begin patterning what friendship looks like in order to set other people up and future generations for success. That's just one thing. There's another zillion out there. Drew, you got any?
Drew Hunter:
Sure. Yeah. This is actually something that, since writing the book, I've done a lot more thinking about as well, just as I've tried to grow as a friend and I've tried to just pay attention to people who do it well. There's a few things, kind of categories that come to mind. One, I love that, just be a good friend because if you're just trying to find someone that's a good friend and you're not actually trying to be a good friend even if they're not, it's not going to work. You're putting so much pressure and expectations on people and you won't be the kind of friend that they'll want to be a friend of.
Another category is just even thinking about Jesus as the truest friend. He is the ideal human, the true servant. He's the truest friend. He models for us what true friendship looks like. And even at the cross, He's defining it as sacrificial love. And calling us to love one another in terms of friendship opens up, really, all the areas in which the New Testament speaks of what love looks like together and the fruit of the spirit. Friendship isn't always explicitly mentioned, but that's how you are a good friend. So love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, bearing one another's burdens, forgiving one another, all those one another's, actually doing them and practicing them with other people builds friendship. And I remember Don Carson had this comment in a book he wrote on the Sermon on the Mountain on the Beatitudes, and he said something like, "We all love the beatitudes. And it seems like people, because they love them so much, think that they're actually doing them." I feel like it's a bit like that with friendship and these qualities.
It's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Love one another, forgive … Bear each other's burdens." It's like, "Yeah, but whose burdens are you actually bearing?" And you can't do that, even as a church, you're by showing up to programs and events. This has to be a real everyday relationship. That'd be another category.
And then, there's just a lot of specific strategies. I would just say, look for people that do this well and take notes. A few things that I've learned from watching and trying to implement it, one, try to be a connector. Or if you're not, look for connectors and honor them for being connectors. And by a connector, I mean someone who's good at connecting people. Some of my friendships, I've looked back on and realize that the reason why they're so strong is because one of the guys is always calling us together and getting ideas and reminding us to get together and initiating that. Let's learn from that kind of person how we can be a connector and introduce people to each other and create environments for friendship and honor those people and say, "You do such a good job with this. Thank you for strengthening my friendships by being that."
Another thing would be getting some rhythms and habits in your life, or just scheduling friendship. If you think of all the essential things in life, the only way they become functional priorities in your life is if you schedule it. Being with a church family on Sunday morning, having a small group, eating with your family, if that's a priority, or a friend. Sleep, exercise, time communing with God and friendship through the word and prayer, all those things don't happen unless you schedule it and build rhythms. Going to work. So friendship, think of it as, okay, when can I intentionally build friendship into my weekly and monthly rhythm of life?
Is there an evening a week that I want to reserve to just get together with people, invite people over, have a meal with someone, connect some other people together, maybe run a fire? Is there a morning breakfast where you can think, on Wednesday mornings, I'm going to meet with this friend every other week. Or I'm just going to have breakfast with somebody and I'll invite them to meet. I have some coworkers that might live near or work near me, and we'll just meet for lunch maybe on a certain day a week. Those are some ideas.
Another one would be learning to just be a curious, kind question asker in conversation. Rebekkah, you kind of nodded on that. I'd love to hear what you have to say about questions. Why is that important to you, do you think?
Rebekkah Scott:
Because we talk so much and we talk all about ourselves and we make assumptions about other people. And if you're actually going to enter into somebody's life as a friend, you need to know them, not as you perceive them to be, but as they actually are, and the only way you achieve that is by listening. Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Not as you perceive.
Drew Hunter:
That's a great way to put it, because if-
Kasey Olander:
As they actually are.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah, because that's going back to what we said earlier about the definition of friendship is, part of it is being known and knowing each other and trusting each other and being transparent, then, you have to ask questions to learn about them. And it also just helps conversations go more than superficial. I also think, actually, small talk's important for friendship. I think, if people stay in small talk mode all the time, that is really frustrating. That's really frustrating. But to dismiss it all together isn't good either, because small talk itself is a way of showing someone that you're going to be easy to be around right now. You care about them. They have an easy welcome mat into conversation with you. When you engage someone with small talk, you're making it easy for them to talk. Weather, sports, just something they can talk about it. They're set at ease. They're participating already. You're saying that you want to talk with them, and they're welcome here.
And then, from there, ask good questions to go deeper. I have a few go-to questions that I always try to just have in mind to ask that work for me. Some can be awkward, but the ones I use are something like, "How have you been lately?" Right? That's not just, "What'd you do today?," it's, "How have you been?"
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah.
Drew Hunter:
Or to think about how things are at work or family life or something like this or school, I'll ask, "How are things at work? How are things with school right now?" It's different than just asking for, "Are things going well?," or giving information of just what's going on, but just, "How are things going?"
Or, I think, just the other day, I came across a new one on accident. I was just trying to think of a different question to ask someone. I think I'll use it more if I can remember it right now. It was something like, oh, "What are you enjoying in life these days?"
Rebekkah Scott:
Hm.
Drew Hunter:
It just gets talking beyond the normal things into what's important to the person. And then, once you ask some of those questions, just stay curious, ask follow up questions, genuinely love them. And then, of course, make sure you don't only go into question asking mode because you can react to the, well, I don't want to just talk the whole time mode, and then, you ask questions the whole time and they talk, but they didn't get to know you, then. There is a reciprocating skill that's needed to be learned here. I think those are key ways. There's a lot more, but those are good starters, I think.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, those are really helpful. I think that both of you are highlighting that friendship takes a measure of intentionality as opposed to just, "Oh, it might happen to me one day." No, it's not a passive thing that might occur, but rather, it's something that we need to be intentional about.
And Drew, I think that was really helpful too. You don't have to go straight for, "What's your deepest, darkest secret?" We can do small talk and we can ask some meaningful questions that help people to feel at ease and feel comfortable. And I think that, hopefully, we get more practice over time, so we learn how to be better friends by trying to be better friends. And-
Rebekkah Scott:
That's the practice of friendship. Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that it's an art, not a science, but it's something, still, that we can excel at and get better at over time.
Rebekkah Scott:
Mm-hmm.
Drew Hunter:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Drew Hunter:
That's good. And part of it too is just, it's so connected to just being an enjoyable human being with people.
Rebekkah Scott:
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Drew Hunter:
You're not going to have good friends or friends that really want to be around you if you don't kill a tendency if you have it. I used to just be sarcastic or to be critical and grumbly. They're some basic things too. I just think there's no harm in overcorrecting and just being an encourager of people. Ray Orland, a pastor, says he's never seen anyone who's too encouraged, who will walk in a room over encouraged. We're in a very critical time period right now, where people are just critical all the time, so just encouraging people and reaching out in small ways, even using technology to send a quick email or text message, or if they don't answer, leave a voicemail and include things that are very specific that you love about that person, respect about them, and that you notice.
There was even an article that I read about, it was in The New York Times, about the importance of small touchpoints and reaching out in small ways. And the study was interesting because it said, the thesis of this study they did was, people tend to underestimate how important it is to their friends to reach out in small ways. Just send a note saying, "Hey, I'm thinking of you." Or, "Hey, I was just driving to work, figured I'd give you a call. You're probably tied up with something, but I just wanted you to know that I'm thinking about you, I love you, and I hope you have a great day," or something like that.
The study is saying that, basically, on the giving end, we assume our friends won't care or they're too busy or it won't matter to them, so we don't do it. And if we do, we think, "Well, it's not a big deal," but on the receiving end, we love to receive those. It's so encouraging, so strengthening. What we need to do, then, is learn the wisdom, as the giver, to just know and assume that our sense of the importance of this is not in tune with reality, so let's go over the top with even these small touch points, and then, infuse that with encouraging and honoring each other and saying "I love you" to people and making that non weird. Those kinds of things are really helpful too.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, that's fascinating. And I feel like that goes back to what we talked about earlier, that if we feel awkward about something or we're like, "Oh, that's a little too mushy for me, that might be uncomfortable," well, throughout all of history, that's been so much more normative than we think about it, telling people that you love them or telling them something really specific about their character or about their personality that you just enjoy about them. If they're your friend, then, presumably, there's something that you enjoy about them. I feel like there's so much more that we could talk about, but since our time is about up, just real quick, are there some resources that you guys would recommend to people if people want to learn more about friendship. Obviously, I would recommend Drew's book, Made For Friendship.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely that. I have my copy as well. Aelred of Rievaulx, the old, dead, Cistercian abbot. He wrote Spiritual Friendship, which everybody should read it, a bit dense, but it's excellent and definitely worthwhile. And then, Victor Lee Austin wrote a book called Friendship: The Heart of Being Human, published by Baker a few years ago, and it's really good, and everyone should read that one as well. More accessible than Aelred of Rievaulx's Spiritual Friendship, for sure. Yeah.
Drew Hunter:
And I think not neglecting just looking for this theme in the Bible, so study Proverbs and look for what it says about friendship. There's some amazing things in there. And having this lens to read scripture with just noticing where friendship is noted or the qualities of friends are noted, and just integrating that into your thinking and application of the Bible. So as you read the Bible and it's a call to bear one another's burdens and forgive one another and love one another, just be thinking about how that's a resource to help you become a good friend and to pray for your friends. I think the Bible itself can be, perhaps, an untapped resource for this for some people. I think that would be a key as well. And then, Coleman Ford just wrote a great book that's on spiritual formation. Okay, what's the name of the book, Rebekkah? You're nodding.
Rebekkah Scott:
I'm just trying to think of it. I have it sitting in my room.
Drew Hunter:
Is it In His Image, or Formed In His Image?
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah, something to do with image. This is terrible.
Drew Hunter:
Okay. It's a great book on integrating just a lot of important aspects to spiritual growth and growth as a Christian that are often neglected. And he talks about the Trinity in there and union with Christ, and he has a chapter on friendship and the importance of that in community for growing as a Christian as well. It's an excellent resource as well. That's by Coleman Ford.
Rebekkah Scott:
Have you seen his, he just came out with a whole book on friendship and in the letters of Augustine, I think, as well.
Drew Hunter:
I think I saw that. Yeah, that'll be interesting.
Rebekkah Scott:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. That's awesome. Well, this has been so helpful, Drew and Rebekkah, I really appreciate you guys being our guests today. And I hope that you guys, the listeners, will be encouraged to be intentional with your friendships, to take friendship seriously, and to elevate it as something that's significant, something that's given to us by God, and something that we can see all throughout the pages of Scripture. I'm grateful that you guys could be our guests today, and we thank you guys, our listeners, and hope that you'll join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
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Voiceover:
Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture, brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary.
Bill Hendricks:
Hello, welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendrick Center, and I want to welcome you today. Today we're going to talk about a fairly personal and intimate issue, our sexuality. We're going to look at sexuality from a biblical perspective by inviting two experts in this field who have an organization called Authentic Intimacy. I want to welcome Dr. Juli Slattery, who is the Founder and President of Authentic Intimacy, and she's a clinical psychologist, and her colleague, Dr. Joy Skarka, who is Director of Discipleship for AI. I might point out, is also a Dallas Seminary grad. Ladies, welcome to The Table Podcast.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Thanks for having us. We're thrilled to be here.
Dr. Joy Skarka:
Thank you, Bill. I'm excited to do this again with you.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, welcome back. I got to tell you, you fill me with interest as I pondered this subject and looked over the resources that you've developed on it. Your vision, you said on your website, boils down to two words, sexual discipleship. That's a new term for me. I've not heard that one before. I certainly believe in the concept of discipleship. And in fact, I believe that discipleship is whole life discipleship. It extends to every area of life, which of course includes our sexuality, but never really talked about sexual discipleship. Maybe a good place to start, Juli, you're a co-founder with Linda Dillow of Authentic Intimacy. Tell us even how this came about in your story. What led you to develop this organization?
Dr. Juli Slattery:
I'd love to share that. Bill, I was working in marriage and family type ministry as a psychologist since the time I got out of school. Just a real heart for women and for marriage and family issues as a clinician. And then I spent four years working at Focus on the Family in that capacity. And during my four years at Focus on the Family, the Lord just began to take me on a very personal journey of pursuing his heart. During that season, he just laid on my heart this burden for sexual brokenness, particularly sexual brokenness among Christian women that wasn't being given a voice. I felt like the church at best was sort of dropping care packages of information without really giving in the trenches of what women were struggling with.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
And so I had written on sexuality in the past in relation to marriage and spoken on it. But at this point I really just felt like the Lord was asking me to sort of do a deep dive and to start creating resources that would be helpful for women. That was about 10 years ago. And since that time, the ministry has really grown and morphed into not just a women's ministry but really an all church ministry. So we also do a lot of training with Christian leaders on how do you approach sexuality with more of a discipleship and gospel focus instead of it being more a problem issue that we're just trying to get rid of. So that's kind of the heart behind it and it certainly has been a faith walk ever since the Lord called me to it.
Bill Hendricks:
I can only imagine. And I'm sure that you over the years have run into plenty of people, particularly in our culture, who they would say, well, frankly, the church is the problem of why sexuality is so problematic for people. How do you respond to that?
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Well, I would say the church isn't the reason it's so problematic, but I'd also say that the church hasn't done a great job historically of helping us navigate these issues. So while as God's people we have his truth related to every area of life, including sexuality, some of the ways that we've addressed or not addressed sexual issues has added to this shame to which people are feeling stuck. You mentioned that term sexual discipleship, it's a term that I started thinking about probably about five years into the journey. I recognized in working with so many Christians on this topic that we essentially had been sexually discipled by the culture and at best the church had been giving information on what should you think about sex before marriage or what should you think about having a gay identity.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
But we weren't training people in how to think biblically about their sexuality and how to walk that out in the trenches of life. And so, although it's an odd pairing of words, I think it really focuses on how we need to change the approach to sexual issues in our day and age with more of a discipleship mentality coming out of our commitment to Christ rather than it being more of a separated or segmented category that we're trying to fix or we're trying to figure out. So it's, again, a journey that's been evolving for us as a ministry.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Joy, let me direct this question to you. You're the Director of Discipleship there at Authentic Intimacy. And so let's work with this term, sexual discipleship. I don't know, maybe this isn't the right way to put it, but can you give us a crash course, a 101 on where does the understanding of sexual discipleship begin and where does it take us?
Dr. Joy Skarka:
Thanks, Bill. What we have discovered is so much of this starts with ourselves and working through our own sexual issues and realizing that we're all sexually broken and how do we follow God with our sexuality? And so we actually have a membership platform where hundreds of Christian leaders, we have pastors, teachers, lay leaders, small group leaders, are all joining us and processing through their own sexual discipleship so that then they can have a better understanding foundation so that they can begin discipling those around them.
Dr. Joy Skarka:
And so that looks like practically is we have different online groups, we call them cohorts or online book studies, where people are studying God's word, what does it say about sexuality and how can we apply this to our ministries? And it has been powerful to see some of these Christian leaders who for the first time are acknowledging their own issues, their own brokenness. In fact, in one group, we had a woman, she has been serving in ministry for 20 plus years and she said that was the first time she had ever said the word masturbation out loud. And so just things like this happen in our groups all the time where people have these little glimpses of freedom and then are able to then go help the people in their churches.
Bill Hendricks:
I understand or assume that people can get more information about those groups at your website, authenticintimacy.com. Is that correct?
Dr. Joy Skarka:
Yeah. We have two different websites. We have authenticintimacy.com, and we talk about that as resources for the average person trying to understand God's design for sexuality. And then we have a second website called sexualdiscipleship.com. And this is our leader platform with e-courses, training videos, podcasts, resources to help Christian leaders understand how to navigate this conversation like we're having today.
Bill Hendricks:
That's outstanding. So you mentioned the particular woman who struggled even to articulate sexual terms and so forth, like that was a new thing for her. And in doing so you sort of raised the curtain a little bit on this huge, massive issue of shame that many people feel around sexuality. And in fact, you yourself in your dissertation talked with over 1,000 women, interviewed 1,000 women about this very issue of shame. I'd love for you to share more about that with our listeners and what you discovered in that process.
Dr. Joy Skarka:
It was such a powerful project. I surveyed and interviewed over 1,000 women and got to hear their stories of how they experienced sexual shame. And so it was a lot of stories of conversations that they had in church culture and from relationships, different addictions, different abusive situations. It all boiled down to this feeling of something being so wrong with these women that they thought no one would love them, that God wouldn't even love them, that they couldn't be forgiven. And so it caused some of these women to walk away from church, their faith, and to kind of hide. So relationally, it caused a lot of damage.
Dr. Joy Skarka:
And so what I saw, so I got to hear all these stories, but then we got to talk about the hope that how Jesus had set so many of these women free from the sexual shame they experienced. And so one of the big pieces of this was understanding God's design for sexuality. So many of the women said they didn't know that it was okay to have sexual desire and curiosities and questions, but how to steward that, how to live out sexual integrity. And so being able to understand that that's kind of what we're so passionate about in our ministry is to help people process this. That this is okay and good to have, God created us as sexual beings, but how do we steward it not just in singleness but also in marriage.
Bill Hendricks:
Juli, I love the idea that you all are working with leaders and through that able to get to sort of everyday Christians, which is exactly what needs to happen. What do you do with the criticism that I know some probably are thinking, well, man, if we start talking about these issues with our people, that's going to lead to no good. I mean, if nothing else, it's going to tempt people to go places they shouldn't go just because they're thinking about sex too much. How do you deal with that?
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah, that is like sort of an empty question in some ways because we know that in every church, in every organization, in every family, these issues are represented. People are struggling with pornography and sexual addiction. They're struggling with the fallout of sexual trauma from their past, both men and women. We know that marriages are struggling to understand what does sexual wholeness even look like and how do we overcome the barriers that we run into? We know Christian singles are wrestling with, why am I sexual in the first place? And then of course the issues that are coming up more in our day and age with gender confusion and same sex attraction and how do we navigate this in our own lives and families but also as we interact with a culture that has a very different perspective on sexuality.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
It used to be, Bill, that when we would go to a church, they would raise that objection of, well, we don't struggle with those things, we don't want to introduce this conversation. But I would say within the last five years or so, we have the churches coming to us saying, "We realize that not only do we need to have this conversation, but we don't even know where to start." Unfortunately, we really have adopted this heritage of we don't talk about these things. I know we sometimes even would quote your father, Bill, and say, I think he put it, "We shouldn't be ashamed to talk about what God wasn't ashamed to create." And he really was one of the pioneers in just even challenging the church to have hard conversations.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
But nowadays we hardly meet a Christian leader who isn't fully aware of the fact that not only is this an issue, it is perhaps the most pressing issue causing Christians to deconstruct from our faith in God, causing them to question his goodness. And so most Christian leaders we find are very ready to have this conversation and eager to have it in a way that is both ground in a biblical truth and also compassionate, related to the real pain and issues people are walking through.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, you're right. There is a cone of silence for many churches and Christian groups around it. Let's press into having the conversation. How do you siphon the shame off? I know that doesn't happen immediately. How would a congregation, a small group, a group of Christians who want to get serious about sexual discipleship, begin to talk and have conversations that are of a sexual nature when certainly from the very beginning, many of them are like, man, I'm really feeling uncomfortable. I don't know if I want to go there. For some, as has been pointed out, it's literally re-traumatizing them from things that have happened to them in the past. So as a psychologist, what's your approach?
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah. First of all, you're absolutely right that it's not just that we talk about sexuality but how we talk about it. Talking about it with reverence and with dignity and with sensitivity to know that there are real triggers there. And so typically I will begin by even just talking about how we think about sexual issues. I think one of the mistakes that we make in churches is we go after the specific issues or symptoms or problems. So you might hear a sermon series on LGBT issues or a sermon series on pornography, and it makes people feel called out, it makes them feel shame, and it makes them feel like they're the only ones that may have a struggle.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
And so we really encourage organizations to talk first holistically about why did God create sex in the first place? What's the purpose of our sexuality? What are the counterfeit narratives that we've grown up believing, whether they're narratives that come from the culture or more legalistic understanding of sexuality? And then why is sex such a spiritual battleground? Why does the enemy want to defeat it so much? Why is it so tied into our identity? And so we really encourage churches to begin with that conversation and then start walking out of that with a phrase that we use all the time that Joy already mentioned, we are all sexually broken. I think this really helps, again, connect our sexuality even to the gospel message that none of us are righteous even if our actions have been "pure". We have hearts that want to really defile and misuse every good gift that God has given, including sexuality.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
And so when we lay that groundwork and we let people know, hey, we're all on a trajectory towards integrity, towards asking God to reclaim this area of our lives, it really does open a conversation where people begin to feel safe asking their more specific questions.
Dr. Joy Skarka:
And can I speak to that too, Bill?
Bill Hendricks:
Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Joy Skarka:
I think something that Juli does really well in our ministry and as she's at these speaking events is she really leads with humility. And so when we say we're all sexually broken, she shows it too. Like she'll share some stories from her life or she'll have people come up and share testimonies of how we have experienced maybe someone who's struggled with pornography and found freedom or is still struggling with an issue in their marriage. So really showing other people's stories that aren't all wrapped up in a bow helps people realize, hey, we're all on the sanctification journey to become more like Christ and we're here to partner in that with you to walk on this journey. It is powerful after some of our events or our groups, people line up to talk to us, to share. They want to share their story because they feel so safe and seen. And so we really encourage our leaders to create these safe environments so that in a small group setting, people can feel that safety to share their stories and begin that freedom-filling journey.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I was going to ask, I feel certain that we have listeners that are struggling say with pornography and they're leaders in a church, they're pastors or youth leaders or whoever. They're thinking, man, I'd love to be able to open up about this and begin to deal with this and have tried different times. But boy, if I sort of outed myself and the leaders, the elders or whoever, found out about this, I mean, they'd show me the door like yesterday. So how would you advise, what would be your recommendation to somebody who wants to come to grips with a brokenness there and a habit that they know is killing them but at the same time they feel desperate, like I don't know how to get out of this without some serious repercussions professionally.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah. Joy, do you want to share a little bit about your testimony first and then maybe I can respond to just church culture and environment and how we need to change that?
Dr. Joy Skarka:
Yeah. This is a part of my story, Bill. I was a freshman in college. I had just walked through a sexual trauma as a freshman in college and had no sex education and so I turned to pornography to try and find answers to what had happened to me and it quickly became my coping mechanism. And so here I was, also a new believer in Christ leading small groups for college ministry trying to figure all this out. And it really took another woman to go first and to share her story of how she struggled and how she found freedom for me to feel comfortable to share my story.
Dr. Joy Skarka:
And so a lot of what I challenge different church leaders to do is to have other women begin having conversations so this is an acceptable thing to talk about, but also creating this safety of, hey, if you come forward and share that you're struggling with pornography and say you're a small group leader for a church or you're a youth pastor, we have something in place to help you so that there is that safety of, okay, you're not going to get fired on the spot for coming forward and sharing that.
Dr. Joy Skarka:
I know Juli and I are going to talk into that some more, but for example, at my church, we've created this sort of small group where, hey, if you're a woman that has come forward, we're going to provide this safe place with other women who are trained leaders and who maybe have gone through a similar struggle that can help you process through your story and begin finding healing.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah. I'd love to speak into that in terms of church culture. That's actually something that we found that so needs to be addressed and changed because we really do have this environment where not only are you not allowed to sin, you're also not allowed to struggle. There's the assumption that if you're a spiritual leader and you're reading your Bible, you won't be struggling with anything sexual. And it really does create this atmosphere where leaders feel like I have nowhere to go. Like if I even admit that my marriage is struggling or that I'm struggling with a certain sexual temptation, I may lose my job.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
And so we do a lot of work, again, just with leadership teams in terms of how do you change that culture and that environment where we actually get back to what's more biblical, that we're all on a journey of maturity, we're all on a journey of surrender, we all face temptations, and really help a team or even a ministry realize that what we really want is people with so much integrity that when they begin to struggle, they come forward with that. That's a more mature Christian than somebody that feels like they have to be double faced, they have to keep their sin secret and then they present the image of a leader on the outside.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
And that will take a culture change. We see that happening in some of the organizations that we work with. For example, even the questions that you ask on an application or in an interview process is the question, do you struggle with pornography or another sexual sin? That's the current question. But asking a question instead, something like, how has sexual struggle played into your spiritual journey and what kind of accountability or resources are you currently involved in in just surrendering that area to God?
Dr. Juli Slattery:
So it begins with the assumption that you are going to struggle, it's normal to struggle. And particularly for Christian leaders, this is an area that the enemy will come after. And if we're not actively engaging in maturity and discipleship and accountability, we really set ourselves up for kind of that battle by ourselves that we're probably destined at some point to lose.
Bill Hendricks:
I have to ask both at a sort of psychological level and a spiritual level. It does seem that sexuality has such a powerful impact, and if I can say the word, hold on people. There's something about that experience of life that is very, very gripping. Why is that and what do we do about that?
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah. I think the power that it has in our lives even speaks to the significance with which God created it. And so we talk a lot at Authentic Intimacy about how our sexuality is actually a living metaphor of our need for covenant relationship and God's covenant love for us. When we read the scripture from cover to cover, which I know most Dallas grads, all Dallas grads I'm sure have done, you see that sexuality is most often referenced in the position of being a metaphor. For example, the Old Testament prophets all the sexual language that is metaphorical of the covenant, the love relationship with God and his people and his call to faithfulness, his holy jealousy.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
And so we really believe that when you press into that metaphor, you can never separate sexuality from the spiritual and relational significance with which it was created. Our culture keeps trying to section it off, say there's hookups, there's friends with benefits, this won't hurt you, but you never can do that. And so sexual sin as 1st Corinthians 6 says is a sin against your own body. There's something very spiritual in the component of how our sexuality integrates with our bodies being the temple of the Holy Spirit. And so there's a mystery to that, but everything we see in research and in our just normal everyday experience would say sexuality is one of the most profound aspects of how God created us in his image for intimacy to be known and to be in relationship with him and here on planet earth. So that would be how I'd say that. Joy, would you want to add to that?
Dr. Joy Skarka:
I think I would just add in that our world, our culture is just trying to meet those legitimate needs in illegitimate ways. Juli, you talk about this a lot, and I think it's so helpful in that God created us as sexual beings. But when we are turning to pornography or something else to meet those needs, it's really not how God created it and I think that's why we see this confusion in our culture or, well, hookup after hookup is never enough because of that. We're not satisfying that real need we have to be known and to be loved, which only God can fill.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and that links up with, again, the interviews that you did, but I also think that a lot of the power of sin lies in when it's a secrecy. People, out of that shame, they cloak and try to hide what is actually true about them that they're ashamed of and that makes it much worse and it has a certain hold on them. The silence in and of itself can begin to break them down. You described to me the joy, the sense of freedom that women had found once they were able to talk about things either that they had chosen to do or things that had been done to them.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah, that's so true. Part of the enemy's strategy, particularly related to sexuality, is to keep us hidden and in shame. I think even when we look at 1st John chapter one, it talks about the difference between walking in light and walking in darkness. Sexual shame and sexual secrets and temptations often have so much hold on our lives because we don't speak them out loud. That's not the final cure all but it certainly is the first step for many, many people to come out of the light and be able to speak these things out loud.
Bill Hendricks:
And then… I'm sorry, go ahead, Joy.
Dr. Joy Skarka:
I was just going to add to that that one of the most surprising things that came out of my research was the high percentage of women who, because of the sexual shame they experienced, doubted their salvation. They just believed they were so far gone that God could never love and forgive and redeem them. And it makes me just think of the Genesis creation story where after Adam and Eve sin, they're hiding from God. They experience sexual shame. They realize they're naked. They hide in a bush. What does God do? I mean, God comes into the story and he calls them back into a relationship with them. He says, "Where are you?" He's calling them back. And so I just encourage all of the women that I've ministered to that nothing that you've done or has been done to you would ever be too far gone for God to love you and redeem you and forgive you. And so I think that message would break a lot of women free from this shame that they're experiencing.
Bill Hendricks:
If you don't mind, I was going to ask you if there was a particular story, obviously not getting into people's names and revealing their identities, but if there was a person that you had run into in the course of your work along the way who was a perfect illustration of what you just said.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah. Would you like me to share one, Joy?
Dr. Joy Skarka:
Sure.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
We probably both have like a role deck, maybe we could each share one. I'm thinking of somebody that is involved with our ministry who actually was on the mission field and loved Jesus but struggled with same sex attraction and actually left the mission field, left her mission because of that struggle. She just couldn't reconcile it, and her faith started to deconstruct. And then somehow she found our ministry and got plugged into our resources, started going through some of our online Bible studies and has been doing that over the course of the last year and a half and really begun to reconcile her relationship with God, with her particular struggle, understand God's design for sexuality but also understand that God still loves her and wants to use her and that she doesn't have to be ashamed of her struggle.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
And so she's now at a place where she's leading groups and is so on fire not just for the Lord in terms of the mission work but also helping people understand how God is the redeemer of all things. That's somebody that I just spoke with this morning. So she's top of mind for me, but representative of just so many women but also men and couples that we've seen that have just really been changed because they began hearing God's truth on sexuality with a realistic and loving perspective. What's one that comes to mind for you, Joy?
Dr. Joy Skarka:
I was just thinking about, so we've been doing online book studies, these small groups that I've mentioned, the last two years and we found out today that over 600 people have gone through these groups. And so just thinking about, wow, 600 people that have experienced being able to, for some of them the first time being able to talk about these things in a safe environment. I think that's just a powerful number of life change. And then how many, we've had close to 100 leaders come out of that too. So there is a lot of multiplication happening here, a lot of discipleship at work in our ministry.
Bill Hendricks:
When you mentioned the mission field, Juli, it reminded me of something that I read that you all talk about when you say talking about sexuality is a necessary part of the great commission. That's a new one for, I think, many of us to hear. Talk to us more about that. Where does the Great Commission and sexuality come together?
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah. Boy, I see it intersecting so much. If we break the great commission down, it's really these activities of evangelism, of sharing Christ love, and then teaching people to walk in the way that Jesus calls us to, that discipleship component. And so when we talk about sharing the love of Christ with people, we just even look at how many people are turned off to the gospel because of sexual issues. When I talk to apologists or evangelists today, they will tell me the number one category of objections is about being gay or about transgender or about sexual abuse. Like loving God would not behave this way or have these kinds of standards.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
And so that actually is a roadblock to most people that you're sharing that gospel with, particularly in the Western world. If you can't be equipped in addressing that issue, you're going to lose people. But then we also look at, for example, in John chapter four, Jesus is ministering to the woman at the well. John Piper said, in reference to that passage, that Jesus knew the quickest way to the heart was through a wound and that's why he brought up her sexual shame because that was the greatest wound in her life. The same is really true for a lot of people that we are reaching for the gospel. The greatest wound in their life is their divorce or an infidelity or their sexual addiction or their broken gender identity. If we can't step into that conversation with comfort and with knowledge and with a biblical perspective that goes beyond just quoting a Bible verse, then we won't reach them with the living water that Jesus is.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
And so that is the evangelism component, but then the discipleship component. Again, when we look at the research, we see what percentage of confessing Christians believe that it's okay to cohabit instead of get married, or we look at the percentage of professing Christians that are struggling with pornography or who their greatest issue in marriage is around sexuality, like don't know how to love their gay son or daughter. This is the discipleship issue of our day and age. And so I really have come to believe that it's essential for not just those of us who are kind of doing this work full-time and to have a biblical grasp of this, but we also need to equip every believer in how to engage in these issues because of the gospel and discipleship that are at stake.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, am I correct that for many people, the engagement in sexual immoralities, if we call it that, and sexual addictions and so forth, is less driven by the sex itself but by much deeper needs and wounds and brokenness and places that need healing in their soul and the sexual activity is basically an attempt to escape that pain and narcotize it with dopamine.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah. Boy, you know something about this, don't you, Bill? That's a good way to put it, and you're absolutely right, and this is why the traditional church approaches of just pray harder, memorize this verse, just stop doing this don't work because with most of us, our sexual temptation is coming out of wounds, coming out of pain, loneliness, depression, trauma from the past. And if we don't invite God into those wounds, we really will feel like we're losing a battle of willpower. And so when we say God wants to reclaim the sexual area of your heart, it's not changing your behavior primarily, it's truly changing your identity so that your behavior becomes a new outflow, the fruit of that. Joy, would you want to add to that?
Dr. Joy Skarka:
Yes. I think we see that too as people are working through their sexual issues, that there's always a root or a deeper issue there. And so even to ask good questions to help that person try and figure out what that is, another word for it is trigger. So what is triggering someone to turn to something to cope, to numb with that pain? And I think to break free from a lot of these issues is to find those root issues, what's triggering you, and to start in that. Yeah, start there.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, Joy knows that at the Hendricks Center, we have a program, a leadership development process we call Lead, which is a five day intensive program for say a couple or a single person to come through and over five days to meet with four different kinds of coaches, a personal and if they're married, marriage coach or a family coach, a giftedness coach, a career or ministry coach, and what we call a life dream coach. And so for five days, we kind of go hammering tongs all the way from the family of origin issues and what I call the bad truth about the person, their brokenness, the things that have not worked out in their life and the wounds all the way to the good truth, which has to do more with the giftedness and God's purpose for them.
Bill Hendricks:
One of the things we do in looking at the family of origin is go back all the way into childhood and see it again and again and again, you're corroborating what we see there is people have been hurt and wounded just by the circumstances of life and things that have been done to them or things they've engaged in at these tender years of five and seven and 12 and 18 and so forth. But those things were never processed. Nobody helped them deal with, what does that really mean? What's that really about? And so they create a narrative and often those narratives are very filled with lies. The reason daddy went away was because I wasn't a good child, that sort of thing.
Bill Hendricks:
The reason that I was sexually abused is because I'm just a piece of trash. They then carry that narrative all the way into their conversion say in college. And then they get called to come to Dallas Seminary and prepare for what God has for them. They get into that. We're talking decades later, but the seeds of what was sewn there is now manifesting itself in inappropriate ways in relationships or in addictions and so forth. What you talk about when you talk about rewriting the identity, rewriting those narratives is absolutely what we see in that program. I feel certain you're seeing it before your eyes in the work that you're doing.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah. That sounds like a great program by the way. So hats off to you for the work that you're doing.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, thank you. Thank you. Another thing that struck me is, as you say, about what we believe about sex reveals what we believe about God. Put that together for me. I think I understand that but you guys have obviously done a lot more thinking about that.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah. I think another way that I put that is every sexual issue is also a spiritual issue, and understanding that these two are not compartmentalized. I think it goes both ways where the foundations of what we believe about God is going to come out in our beliefs about sexuality. For example, if we believe that God is the creator, if he's the definer of right and wrong and of truth, and he's a revealing God, then we look in scripture and we say, okay, we can discern a clear design for sex and for marriage in the scripture. That's a more compelling truth for me than what I might experience or feel or what the culture tells me.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
And so, as we see more progressive Christianity going away from those truths about God as creator, God is the one who defines morality, we see them changing their views on sexuality. We have to see that the change first came in how they view God. And as we rewrite our understanding of God, that's going to flow into every area of life, including what we think about marriage and divorce and sexuality. And so we believe that's really important that you have that conversation about who is God before you start arguing about your beliefs on sexuality. And so that's the first piece of it, Bill.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
But then the second piece I think is equally important, that our sexual experiences also inform what we believe about God. This is what we see happening so often in our culture today where people grow up in the church, they believe the Bible. And then they have a gay child who says, "I also believe in God but this is who I am and you have to love me. God loves me." That parent begins to go through something in psychology that we call cognitive dissonance. Now all of a sudden one plus one doesn't equal two. I have to look back at the scripture. I have to look back at what it means. Is God trustworthy? Does he love me?
Dr. Juli Slattery:
We see this happening not only over issues of LGBT, but let's say you experience sexual trauma. Where was God? If he's all loving and all powerful, why didn't he stop this? And so we believe a lot of the work of sexual discipleship is actually joining with people as they're experiencing that cognitive dissonance and revisiting if God is really who he says he is. And so, again, this is where we see that overlap of discipleship and sexuality, that every sexual issue is connected to deeper spiritual questions and issues that we want to get to. We don't have that conversation only on the sexual issue. We want to go to the deeper, more significant question and pain point.
Dr. Joy Skarka:
Yes. And with that, Juli, realizing how it takes time. For me, after I walked through that trauma, just sexual discipleship for me looked like going to Panera once a week with an older wiser woman of the faith and reading God's word together because I had never read his word to understand what God says about sexuality. So it was a whole process of relearning and figuring out, okay, what was just being said by my church but wasn't actual part of scripture? And so we take our leaders through a whole e-course on this on how to figure that out, how to get rid of what the world or maybe the church has historically said and figuring out, no, let's figure out what God says. We call that sexual discipleship.
Bill Hendricks:
That's excellent, because I think there's a bit of a caricature in our culture that the church is full of prudes and we don't talk about sex and we're actually against sex and God is mad because people are having sex with each other. And then in the culture, the pendulum sort of swung to where, oh, look, we're liberated and we have no shame around sex and we have sex with everybody all the time as we choose. It's a culture you said where people make sexual choices for themselves. Yet I meet people who are in that culture, I mean, that's their cultural sort of worldview if you will, and A, they don't strike me as happy. But if I engage them, it becomes very apparent they're not at all happy. They're actually, having tossed shame aside, something darker has come than shame. It's like a deadness inside.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah. Boy, it's so true. When we even look at the research, there was a study that just recently came out with Barna that was looking at loneliness, and loneliness is the highest at the youngest generations right now. And you can say, oh, that's because of the smartphone or the pandemic, and certainly those things play into that. But when you look at millennials, you look at Gen Z, they have rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, suicidality that are just continuing to rise.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
I think a piece of this is that the prevailing message of the culture is that you were made for personal expression, you were made for sexual expression. Whereas what we see in scripture is actually you were made for intimacy and sexuality is a piece of how we express intimacy within the covenant of marriage. But as people pursue personal expression and autonomy at the sake of intimacy with God and with people, the fallout emotionally and psychologically is just going to be catastrophic and that's what we're beginning to see all throughout Western culture.
Bill Hendricks:
Authentic Intimacy really is, if I could use this word, you're in the healing business as it were. In other words, it's very much about restoring people souls if you will.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
For sure, yeah. I have no desire to talk about sex for the sake of talking about sex. I don't want to argue with people. I don't even want to argue with fellow Christians about what this Hebrew word means or Greek word means. Unfortunately, that's a lot of what's happening in these conversations. What we're really called to is how do we meet people in their pain and draw them to the feet of Jesus for healing, for restoration, and most importantly, to reconnect in their relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and when I say healing, I'm really getting at this sense of restoration to wholeness. What I love about your work is that you're trying to put a positive dimension and vision for what sexuality can be for people. That, as you said, sexuality is not a problem to solve but a territory to reclaim, that it can be life giving for people.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Yeah. I really believe that. We've seen it. At 10 years of ministry now, I just every now and then wake up and say, God, you're amazing because we so imperfectly articulate this. He keeps meeting us. And as you know, just in your work at Dallas Theological Seminary, when we faithfully live and teach the word of God, the Lord does great things. We need to apply that truth to sexuality and not be afraid but just to winsomely and courageously carry God's truth to people that are desperate for it.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, thank you so much for the work that you're doing. Juli Slattery, Joy Skarka, thank you for being a part of The Table today. This has really brought a lot of helpful not only information but resources to our listeners. I want to thank you for being a part of this.
Dr. Juli Slattery:
Thanks for having us. It's been a joy.
Dr. Joy Skarka:
Nice. Thank you, Bill. Good to see you.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, it's great to see you again and to meet you Juli. And again, their ministry is authenticintimacy.com. And if you're a leader, you also want to look at the sexualdiscipleship.com. I want to invite you to join us next time on The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Bill Hendricks. Have a great day.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to The Table Podcast. Dallas Theological Seminary; teach truth, love well.
Kasey Olander:
Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendricks Center. And today, we're going to be discussing ways to love your neighbor. So how can we reach out to those around us and love them by sharing Jesus with them? And I'm really excited about our guest today. We're joined by Jimmy and Kelly Needham. Jimmy is a singer, songwriter, and speaker who serves as worship and teaching pastor at Stonegate Church. And Kelly is a bible teacher, author, and speaker. So together, they have five kids and they also have a podcast. Thank you guys for being on the show.
Jimmy Needham:
Hey.
Kelly Needham:
Yeah, glad to be here.
Jimmy Needham:
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, really excited for this conversation. So in general, we're talking about how to creatively reach out, how to love your neighbors in general, just the people around you, how to engage the culture so that everyone can hear the good news about Jesus. So the hope for this conversation, the hope for people listening is not just that you realize how cool the mediums are, even though that's true, but also that you can all be encouraged, "Hey, how can I personally seek to love my neighbors? How can I reach out to the people around me and show them Jesus?" So we're just going to jump right in, and we're going to start with a little case study that's going to explain to you why we have Jimmy and Kelly on the show today. So holidays can be a really good opportunity to love your neighbors well, and I know that a lot of Christians have a variety of feelings and convictions about Halloween specifically. But Jimmy and Kelly, what does Halloween look like at your house?
Jimmy Needham:
Not like what it looks like in most houses.
Kelly Needham:
Right. It is one of the biggest events that we do all year, which seems very abnormal to say for believers. We hand out king-size candy bars to people who come to our house and offer prayer, coffee, and hot chocolate with a team of volunteers in the hopes to display the extravagant generosity of God to a lost and dying world. And that looks like about how many bars did we give out this year?
Jimmy Needham:
Well, we give out about a bar a person, and we gave out roughly 1,500 bars this year.
Kasey Olander:
1,500?
Kelly Needham:
1,500.
Jimmy Needham:
Yeah. So we had about, I would say, on the street when, you count the parents who didn't come up the stairs to our house. We're probably looking at roughly a couple of thousand folks that come down our street specifically to do this thing.
Kelly Needham:
We just happen to live in a neighborhood that is known in the city for trick-or-treating. Everybody is out, everybody comes.
Jimmy Needham:
This street name is Sleepy Hollow, so it's kind of baked in, it's like something's going to happen on Halloween.
Kasey Olander:
That makes sense.
Jimmy Needham:
We didn't know we were inheriting that when we moved into the house.
Kelly Needham:
That's right.
Jimmy Needham:
And so, that's what we signed up for.
Kelly Needham:
Yeah. It felt like in the beginning, an opportunity for us to steward and a potential place of influence that we saw opportunity for. We would've never considered doing something like this except that it was the place everybody was on Halloween and we just started to ask the Lord, "How can we use this to try and get gospel good news into the hands of people who would otherwise never be entering a church probably." And we have an opportunity to do that. We didn't want to just shut the windows and the blinds and be like, "Oh, the Christians moved into that house. Don't go there." We wanted to… But we didn't want to celebrate Halloween either. So being the generous house on the street was the way that we creatively wanted to display God's great generosity in Christ.
Kasey Olander:
That's awesome. I love that. Examples of God's great generosity. So I imagine that you didn't just wake up one day like, "Hey, I hope 1,500 people come to my house tomorrow." What did this look like in the very beginning? How did you get started?
Jimmy Needham:
Yeah, you bet. So when we moved in, we didn't know anything about this. We went to the grocery store to get some candy for that night because we're like, "Who knows, but maybe somebody will drop by." And they were like, "You live on what street?" They said, "Oh, you need to buckle up partner, because it's about to get crazy." And we thought they were kidding. But we got wiped out of all our candy just in a moment's notice. One of our neighbors told us around that time, "Hey, you know the house that you bought, that was the haunted house of this street." They did a huge haunted house thing and-
Kelly Needham:
The previous owners.
Jimmy Needham:
… the previous owners did this whole extravagant deal. So like they'd said, "Kids would line up around the block to come to your house. You know that's the house you have." I was like, "Oh my goodness."
Kelly Needham:
Oh, okay. Which is why we felt like we were inheriting a reputation and we wanted to strategically look at how to shift that. And so, it did look like just initially, we bought candy bars and we put out a sign that says… You wrote it, babe. Tell them.
Jimmy Needham:
So I think it says… So we live up on a hill with lots of stairs. "If you make the climb, there's king-size bars because there's not a king as generous as ours." So that's the sign that you see right at the front of the center. Now, the first couple years we did this, we had 300, 400 kiddos come to the door over that time.
Kelly Needham:
Maybe a little more because we kept running out of candy the first three or four years.
Jimmy Needham:
But this has been over a decade in the making and so, it was 300, 400. Then the next year, 600, 700, then 800, 900 and now we are easily bumping up to the 1,500, 2,000 space every year.
Kelly Needham:
And getting our church involved. And singles and college students from our church come and help us. And we're looking for ways to engage people when they ask that question, why do you do this with a gospel answer. Where we get to tell them we do this because God has been generous to us, that He's given His Son for us. That just for no cost to us, that we now have entrance into eternal life. And we actually have now a sign as you come up to our house that displays Roman 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus." Just so that these kids, every year we're hoping that kids that grow up trick-or-treating in our neighborhood, remember the house with the king-size bars, and if they know no other scripture, they would at least know that one because they see it every year. And that they would associate free fun generosity with a God who sent His Son to save them from their sins. That's what we're praying for.
Kasey Olander:
I love that. I love that you want people to ask the question, why are you doing this? When I was in college and then after in college, I was a college minister and we would take our students on a spring break mission trip called Beach Reach. And so, we would go down the South Padre Island and give out free van rides and free pancakes. And that's the main question that gets us to the gospel is why are you doing this? You could be anywhere for spring break and you're choosing to hang out with party and college students and you're sharing Jesus with them. It's exactly like you're saying, like that's an opportunity to say, Christians are doing this weird thing actually to demonstrate how much God loves you and meets you where you are, and he cares about you so much.
Kelly Needham:
Absolutely. And Halloween is actually a really great night to do that because it does have, I know we don't like it, but it has spiritual connotations in it, right? Demonic negative ones. But spirituality is a little bit on people's minds. And so, we were in a foreign country looking for opportunities to share the gospel as missionaries, and there was some pagan celebration, but it was spiritual. That would be a great opportunity to show up in that moment and be like, "Hey, let me tell you about something else. Let me tell you about the free gift of God and Christ Jesus." So we actually feel like it's a really strategic day that you cannot celebrate what Halloween stands for, but actually meet the community of people that happen to be out and about on the streets and interested in having conversations.
Kasey Olander:
That's a really great way to put it. I was going to bring up the fact that I know Halloween is associated with a lot of witchcraft, occult themes, a lot of darkness, obviously, understandably, some Christians don't want to participate in that. But how did you guys arrive at that conviction for you? What did it look like for you guys to pray about that together?
Jimmy Needham:
Yeah, I think when Jesus rose from the dead, everything changed. I mean, just all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. He's not intimidated by our weird little cultic practices and stuff in our culture. I just don't think He's scared. And I think that there is… I don't want to frame Christians who don't participate in this night as being scared because that's not the motivation of every Christian. We know godly people in our church family who are like, "Yeah, we're not going to be a part of it for these convectional reasons." And I totally, think you should have a category for that. But on the other side of that conversation is going, you know that Halloween isn't Satan's night. You know Jesus owns every night. He owns tonight, tomorrow. He owns Christmas and He owns Halloween. It's all His, the whole earth and all it contains is His. The cattle on thousand hills are His. Every day is His.
Every holiday, He is the Lord over everything. So I think that for us, just having that big God, big Christ theology of just knowing we get to charge the gates of hell. Our savior has been victorious. He's risen, He's made a public display of the enemy. There's nothing scary about this night for Christians. And so, if that sort of fearfulness can be off the table, then we get to ask a new set of questions. How can we leverage this moment? I mean, how many times can it be said? Not every story is ours where you have thousands of people come to the door, but let's say you have a dozen people come into your door. How many people come to your door besides the Amazon guy in a year? Now, it's like there's a night. You're telling me there's a night in our culture where folks show up to my door and ask me for things? Okay.
Kelly Needham:
Okay. Well, and if you think a missionary, which we are all called to be thinking like that. We've been sent people, we're saved people and sent people, the mission field is coming to us on this night of the year. And if that's true, then for us personally, why would we not show up to the table in that moment and at least get to know our neighbors, greet them, find opportunities to learn about them, to get to know them, to find ways to bring Jesus into the conversation.
Kasey Olander:
That's a great way to put it.
Kelly Needham:
It's a really easy night to do that.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Like you said, leveraging the fact that spiritual things are already on people's minds. And so, that's an opportunity to capitalize on. Obviously everybody needs to follow their own convictions and stuff, but that totally explains how you guys arrived at your conviction that, "Okay, maybe this is something that we can not celebrate Halloween itself, but we can actually use for the kingdom."
Kelly Needham:
Absolutely.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. What does it look like for you guys to make a distinction between yourselves? Okay, we're not participating in darkness. How do you look different from your non-Christian neighbors who are actually celebrating Halloween?
Kelly Needham:
Well, one thing we do is we're very particular with anyone who comes and helps us pull off this night that they are not dressed up as anything celebrating death or the demonic, that we actually allow for people to come in costumes, but we want nothing to be celebratory of death. If anything, we display that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. We want to be celebrators of life, not death. So in decorations, in anything on display-
Jimmy Needham:
The aesthetic.
Kelly Needham:
… yeah, the aesthetic. We want to be people who are people of life, not death. And so, we're particular about that. And then even just that we would have down front, we have a little thing that says, "Welcome neighbors. How can we pray for you?" We're trying to just let them know. If you want prayer for anything, we're just raising our hand to say, we'd love to pray for you tonight. We actually turn our guest room into a prayer room throughout the night. And so, any prayer request left that night, we let people know it will be prayed for tonight. And there's something about that that I think changes people's mind and being willing to write down a prayer request.
Jimmy Needham:
I mean, over the years we've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of prayer requests of folks, just random neighbors, that it's like they didn't think they were showing up about to talk about the deepest needs of their heart and their life. But here we are, and it's been amazing to watch God answer some of those prayer requests over the years and the other fruit that's come too. But largely for us, it's about what's the aesthetic we're presenting? What's the language we're using? Those types of things are ways that we can mitigate the more spooky, weird un-Christian elements and then leverage it for Christ.
Kelly Needham:
We also usually have a little hat tip to reformation date, which is also October 31st, and you've often carved reformers into a pumpkin and had it-
Jimmy Needham:
Leave it to the seminary guy to have Martin Luther as a pumpkin head up there.
Kelly Needham:
But it is. We've done all sorts of little things like that. But I think the main way is to offer prayer to make sure we're celebrating life and not death and anything that we're presenting. And to be quick to have Jesus on our lips as frequently as we can, anyone who's serving with us, to just-
Jimmy Needham:
That's good.
Kelly Needham:
… "Hey, I love Jesus. How can I pray for you? Hey, do you know about him?" This is why we do it.
Kasey Olander:
Yes, that's a really good point. Ways to set yourself apart in distinguishing, "Hey, the reason that we're doing this is Jesus. The whole point isn't actually the candy, even though we hope you enjoy it."
Kelly Needham:
That's right.
Kasey Olander:
That kind of thing.
Jimmy Needham:
Right.
Kelly Needham:
Absolutely.
Kasey Olander:
So you've alluded to these other people who are helping you in this effort. What does it look like to involve other people? I'm sure it takes your whole family and probably a village. What does that like?
Kelly Needham:
Well, it actually started when we were leading a college small group, and they learned about what we were doing and wanted to get in on it. And so, we had, for many years, the small group that we led of college students that helped us pull it off every year. And now, we don't lead that group anymore, but a lot of them as even they've aged, they come back every year and help us pull it off. And word has kind of trickled out through our church. And so, if there are people that don't have a home themselves that they live in, they have an apartment or somewhere else, they'll often come and volunteer with us. And we have about 20 to 25 people that will help us set up everything, help run our little coffee hot chocolate station.
They stand at the prayer table and they're just standing as greeters as well with name tags down front to just welcome people, offer prayer, even offer prayer in the moment. So it's not an unusual site on Halloween to look at our circle, drive down front and see people praying with other people right there. It's really beautiful. So they kind of all rotate in stations. People have been doing this long enough with us that it kind of runs on its own now a little bit, which is really neat.
Kasey Olander:
That's wonderful. People are so accustomed to, "Hey, this is how we reach the lost and this is how we capitalize on this day and leverage it for Christ." That's very cool. What are some of you all's favorite stories that have come out of this day, either on this day or even throughout the year?
Jimmy Needham:
Yeah, so many. I'll let you share some. The first one that comes to my mind is a guy that's young guy, probably 16, I think at the time named Ethan, who I had the privilege of leading to the Lord at the foot of our stairs on Halloween night. He's dressed up as this creepy like monkey thing, I don't know. He had a mask, and it was actually very weird. He would just stand there and kind of freak people out, and I think he was doing it on purpose. So me and a group of our crew decided to go over and engage him and start talking to him. And I was asking him questions about his spiritual life, his connection to anything with respect to Jesus or Christianity.
And we talked about morality and got to the gospel and right there, I mean, there's just swarms of human beings, going around us. And right there, this kid who was this just standing at our house to scare strangers, bow the need of the Lord Jesus and trusted him. And we swapped information and stayed in contact after that. And that one sticks out to me because it was just such a picture of what the enemy intended for evil got intended for good.
Kasey Olander:
Of course. That's amazing. I love that.
Kelly Needham:
It's amazing. We've actually heard about a lot of salvations happening throughout the year through prayer requests.
Kasey Olander:
Wow.
Kelly Needham:
We've been doing this long enough that people will come back year after year now and they'll find us because it's crowded that night, and they'll pull us aside or ask people we know, "Do you know where Jimmy and Kelly are?" And they'll come up to us and say, "Last year, I asked you to pray for my son who was far from the Lord, or he was addicted drugs or this was going on. I want you to know that God saved him and has set him free." Or we just hear about salvations that happened through the year just because of the ministry of prayer. And so, that's amazing, those stories are some of my favorite. But one of my other favorite moments that happened was probably about four or five years into doing this, offering prayer, all of that.
We had a knock on the door around July at our front door, opened the door, and it's somebody we don't know with her daughter, and she says, "Hey, you don't know me, but I just live a few streets over. I came here on Halloween and our water just got turned off. We actually don't have any money and we don't know what to do, and we didn't know where to go. But we remembered you guys and remembered that your generosity in Halloween, and we just wanted to see if you guys could help us." And it actually opened the door for us to have a really unique ministry for a season with this family who just lives a few streets over and was in a really bad place. Not only to minister to them and meet their practical needs, we were able to find them things like a refrigerator because they needed it to raise some funds for them.
But we were able to bring her and her daughter to church with us for the first time. And just amazing ministry that happened just because they knew us from Halloween as people who would be willing to raise our hands and say, "We'll, pray for you. We'd love to help you. We want to be generous." And so, that's been neat to just see within our community. Our house is being known as a place for people to come to and say, "Hey, I'm in a place of need. Can you help me out?" What a great opportunity to point them to Jesus.
Jimmy Needham:
That's right.
Kasey Olander:
That is amazing. That not just is this impactful on the one day a year, but also it stuck in someone's mind so much that in July, they were like, "You know what? I experienced these Christians back in October and I'm in a spot where I need it." That's amazing. Not only are you guys able to personally minister to her, you also are able to bring her to church with you and those are continuing relationships. That's really sweet. I love that.
Kelly Needham:
Amazing.
Kasey Olander:
What does it look like to live missionally with your kids? I think you said you had five now and what does that look like over the years?
Jimmy Needham:
Yeah. Well, I mean, we just get them involved in everything we do. They're just around. It's not like, "This is what mommy and daddy do." It's like, no, we're on a team. One of our sort of family axioms is teammates, so we are eager for them to see like, no, we're running the same play together guys. And so, with specifically this night, they're involved. They're handing out candy, they're filling the baskets up. They're down front with flashlights, helping people come up the steps. They're running prayer requests up and down to our prayer room, they're doing those types of things. And even not all of our kids have trusted the Lord yet, but just getting them integrated into like, "Hey, this is the heartbeat of us as Christians. This is what it looks like to be missional as Christians." I think there's no way that it's not planting some really deep seeds in their mind and heart over the years that this is one of the family liturgies that we do. We go and we serve and we reach.
Kelly Needham:
And even outside of Halloween, they know us to be really interested and invested in the neighbors around us, specifically those that don't know Jesus. They hear us talk about it over the dinner table. I've even trained our children to have some category for, "Hey, when dad starts talking to our neighbor across the street, they don't know Jesus. If that conversation is happening, we're going to not interrupt Daddy's conversation. We're actually going to pray because we want opportunities for Jesus to go to that person." And so, they hear us talking about people who don't know Jesus. They hear us looking for opportunities for that, creating a weightiness around it like don't interrupt. Let's pray instead. And it's actually made our kids now go to Sunday school at church, and they're like coming home going, "Hey, we prayed for people who don't know Jesus, and I prayed for our neighbor too, and maybe we can go…"
One of our kids came to us and was like, "Can we go across the street and talk to him about Jesus?" And so, it's just neat to just be talking about that with them in such a way that they become now invested in it as well. And to even help them see that they're not interrupting of mom or dad talking to somebody who doesn't know Jesus is a way that they partner with us in it and go, "Oh, this is a great moment. Let's all be a team together and not disrupt this opportunity." So those conversations are happening kind of all the time for us around the dinner table. We've done it around Easter where we've made cookies with the kids and said, "We're going to go bring them to all the neighbors and just ask how we can pray for them." That's just such an easy opportunity to ask a person, "How can I pray for you for the gospel to go forth?" And so, they…
Jimmy Needham:
That actually turned into our next door neighbor coming in to know the Lord through that moment.
Kelly Needham:
Through the Easter cookies.
Kasey Olander:
Whoa.
Jimmy Needham:
And our kids were there for the beginning of that. It's amazing.
Kelly Needham:
Yeah. She invited us into her home. We hadn't met her yet, and we asked, "Well, how can we pray for you?" She gave us a few things and we didn't… She just opened her hands like, "Let's pray right now." And we went, "Great. Let's pray right now." And we got to pray together with the kids and with her. And again, she later reached out probably two months later needing a ride to the grocery store because she didn't have a car. She was elderly and called me of all the people she could call. And that started a great conversation, great relationship that ended up leading her to the Lord and getting to baptize her in our church. It was amazing. And the kids were there for so much of that.
Kasey Olander:
That is amazing. Wow, that's so sweet. And you get to still live life alongside her that you're right next door. It's not like somebody that you met one time, but it's an ongoing relationship.
Kelly Needham:
Absolutely.
Jimmy Needham:
She was our neighbor. Yep, that's right.
Kasey Olander:
That's wonderful. I also love that your kids are seeing this all the time on an everyday basis. This is what's normal, it's important, and it's special, but also it's normal. It's not like, "Wow, once a year we do this weird thing," but it's, "We are sharing Jesus with people continually."
Jimmy Needham:
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Kelly Needham:
We want them to see us leveraging every opportunity to engage the community located around us in proximity. The physical community God has put us in matters. And when we have opportunities to engage, especially the lost community there, we are going to drop everything else to do that. And they're seeing us do that in little and big ways throughout the year, and Halloween just happens to be a big way we do that. But all these other ways, we're hoping they see us model that, and we have to be willing to invite them into it. Sometimes it's easier not to because you're partly training the child and doing the thing. But we do want to have the attitude of, come along with us, let's do it all together and model that for them.
Kasey Olander:
You see that Christianity is not just a thing that we do on Sundays or Christmas and Easter, but we are always looking to make disciples. We're always looking to share Jesus with people and teach them about following Christ. I love that.
Kelly Needham:
Absolutely.
Kasey Olander:
So maybe shifting gears a little bit, we've talked about Halloween specifically. We've talked about that holidays are a really good time. You mentioned Easter cookies as an opportunity to reach out to your neighbors. Are there other things that you can think of, other creative ways that if people want to get started, they're like, "Okay, if I'm listening to this and Halloween's a really long time away, what can I do between now and then to reach out to my neighbors?" What are maybe ideas that you guys have about that?
Kelly Needham:
Well, I think one easy thing to have planned is a game plan for new neighbors. So that's something that I think is important. Jesus welcomes us to into His family. And so, that's one of the ways we can picture that is be a welcoming presence to others. So anytime someone new moves, it is like priority number one for us. We want in that first month or so to make it over to their house with some kind of thing. Like a welcome basket, maybe we bake something, but we are going to engage them, welcome them, start a relationship and just get to know them. And then try and find a time to have them over for dinner and build a relationship with them. That's easiest to do when somebody first moves in. But the second thing I would say is a lot of us tend to go, we get home, we pull our car in the garage, we shut the garage, we're tired.
We don't have any more relational energy, and we kind of just avoid our neighbors. And someone might be listening to this conversation going, "Gosh, there's a neighbor across the street that I haven't talked to in three years, and it would feel really awkward to engage them because I've kind of obviously been ignoring them." I think one great place to start is to own that and approach that person and say, "Hey," knock on the door, or just leave a note. Write a handwritten note, "I know that we kind of see each other every now and then. I haven't really been great about being a good neighbor, but I'd like to change that. Could I have you over for dinner sometime, or could we go to coffee?" Or if you get to talk to them in person, just own that and say, "Hey, I'm sorry, I've been just kept to myself. I'd love to get to know you. We live across the street." And just start with build a basic relationship of getting to know them. That's just such a great place to start.
Jimmy Needham:
And I think all that's great. I would also add just starting to create a culture in your family of lingering in public spaces more. So we are a culture that loves our fences and loves staying inside and all that. But some of our best moments with our neighbors and with our kids, with our neighbors has been when we've moved the party from the living room to the driveway or something like that. And now I'm throwing ball with my kid, and now my neighbor comes home from work and he's right next door and he happens to get out. And instead of just one quick nicety, I ask him one extra question about how his day's been. He steps out of the car, now he's moving toward us, now my son wants to throw the football with him. And now, I've just created a situation where I have my kids in the mix.
I'm engaging with my neighbors. They're watching me ask good questions and love this guy well. And I'm speaking from… This is every week for us with our neighbors around. We'll just move the activity into the driveway when folks start to come home. And it turns out folks come home around five or six. And so, that's actually been a really great, easy low hanging fruit pressures off just like I know I'm going to see this guy here in a minute. I'm out with my kids, get to ask him a couple questions, and that starts to build some really great rapport that you can build on.
Kelly Needham:
And I think the buy-in that you have to have as a family in that moment is that engaging with neighbors, especially those who are not believers, is going to cost you something and it's worth the cost. So sometimes that's meant, Jimmy comes home from work, I have dinner ready, but I see him talking to our neighbor, and I'm immediately going, "Well, that probably means dinner's going to be an hour later. That's okay, I'm going to change game plans." And even if we don't get to have what I was planning on making, I'll just save it for another night because this is a moment that Jesus might be proclaimed and a soul might be saved that matters. And that's more important than, sorry, we didn't have dinner on time, or…
Jimmy Needham:
Although your dinners are delicious-
Kelly Needham:
Oh my goodness.
Jimmy Needham:
… sweetheart.
Kelly Needham:
Or just anything like that. I was hoping to talk to him about something, but now we're talking to this neighbor or going on a walk and we're just going to commit to the fact that if we see a neighbor that we know that lives near us, we're going to stop and talk with them. And yes, that's going to change the plans later. It means we might not get to everything we wanted to get to in the rest of our evening. But there's a commitment together amongst our family to go that's going to take precedent because those moments don't ever happen in any planned way. They happen spontaneously and they require a bit of margin from us. And so, if you have no margin in your life, that's going to hinder you in actually walking this out. But it just means it will cost you something in the end. But we have kind of a prior commitment to, it's worth the cost, and we're going to pivot to make those moments happen.
Kasey Olander:
That's a really good way to put it. It's going to cost you something, but you've already calculated, you've already decided beforehand that it's worth it. So you have an understanding in your family. It's not like, "Wow, this is really disruptive." It's, "Okay, this is something that we already agreed on. We decided to follow Jesus so that we know that He's preeminent. We know that He's preeminent over our dinner plans or whatever it is that we had going on." That's awesome.
Jimmy Needham:
That's right.
Kasey Olander:
I love also that you guys are talking about, okay, so we had 1,500 people at our house in Halloween, this really big thing, but you're also giving some small steps. Okay, I saw that neighbor come home and we just happened to ask, "How are you?" Even, I love that you address the people that are like, "I haven't talked to my neighbors in three years." It might be awkward, but that's okay. You just start wherever you are, wherever you happen to be in your relationship with them, whether they just moved in or if it feels like it's too late to ask. It's not too late.
Kelly Needham:
It's not too late. If anything, owning that awkwardness with them might actually be something they're feeling too, and kind of clear the air for them as well to go, "Oh, okay, let's start again." "Hi, I'm Kelly. I live across the street. It's good to meet you. Let's start over and get to know each other." And even to let them know this is what a special thing to have neighbors you can trust and that. I think that's something everybody wants at the end of the day. And to say, "I value that. I'm sure you do too." Let's just start with, "Hey, how are you? Let's get to know each other. Maybe you can come over for a barbecue." Sometimes it's easier to invite people over to an outside space than even inside your own home. And so we've had neighbors live next to us that we've just said, "Hey, walk through the back gate and just hang in the backyard with us. We're grilling something. "For some reason, that I think feels a little less intimidating than walking into your actual house.
Jimmy Needham:
I agree.
Kelly Needham:
And so, that's sometimes an easy way to do that and welcome someone in to just get to know them a little bit better. One other thing I would say we do is we're always aware of moments of crisis in our neighbors, moments of hard. As soon as we hear about it or we're aware of it, we see that as an opportunity to step in and provide care and support for them. We've seen ambulances on our street at parked at a neighbor's house, and I don't want to be intrusive, but I will write a handwritten note to stick in their mailbox, "Hey, I saw the ambulance. I'm not sure what's going on, but I want you to know we're across the street. If you need a meal, if you need something, let me know. Here's my cell number."
Or we found out from a neighbor once that if you're through texting with them that their brother I think was in the hospital, and we just went, "Okay, well, what can we do to just…" We put a little care basket together. We offered to bring a meal. I think we even sent a Grubhub gift card. I mean, that's such an easy thing. "Give me your email, I'd love to just… Don't even worry about a meal." They don't even have to deal with the fact that they might not like our cooking or that might make them uncomfortable, or do they trust what we would make or what allergies are there. It's like, here's some money to order yourself some food. And we've just seen that open the door and soften people's hearts to just step into moments of crisis and just being aware of those.
Jimmy Needham:
That's right.
Kasey Olander:
I love that. And you talked earlier about if you don't have margin in your life, you may not have the attention to notice things like that to step into, wow, this is an opportunity for me to minister to somebody who I don't even know what kind of hard time they're having. But that's a chance to step in and meet a tangible need that you didn't even plan on or that you didn't even know about beforehand. That's beautiful.
Jimmy Needham:
Being exhausted works against being missional.
Kelly Needham:
Yes, it does. Because if you work and give all your energy to these pre-planned things and then you come home and you have nothing, I mean, you will burn out. But to me, that has helped me say no to things and make sure our family schedule has moments of unplanned activity times, because it allows you to shift your schedule around when those opportunities do come without exhausting yourselves. Margin matters not just for your own rest and recovery, but because mission being missional in your physical community never happens in planned ways. It's almost always spontaneous and in a moment that you cannot predict. And again, that's one of those commitments I think that the two of us have. We're going to say no to enough things so that our life isn't jampacked so that we have margin for being missional.
Kasey Olander:
I love that. I feel like that's a whole nother podcast. I could talk about that for a long time about how being healthy is actually what enables you to live in a Christ honoring way. And I love that you guys are sharing things like that. And it even makes me think of like, that could be such a redeeming thing in someone's really hard situation. Nobody wants to call an ambulance ever. But how sweet might that be that you were willing to step into something that may be uncomfortable for you, or for whatever reason, maybe hard to step into, but that's what Jesus does for us, is meets us in our hard things and meets us in our suffering and turns that around.
Kelly Needham:
Absolutely.
Kasey Olander:
Are there other things that you can think of, let's say, okay, now I know my neighbors, I've been hanging out with them, and we're kind of on a talking basis. What are some ways that you can think of? How can I transition to the gospel? How can I make this a spiritual conversation from whatever small talk we were having about work or school or what have you?
Jimmy Needham:
Yeah. My answer to that is usually, always curiosity is the way. I'm going to be a wildly curious person with every person I meet, and anybody who's around me long enough knows that's true. I'm just asking questions. I just want to know. Tell me about you. Tell me what makes you tick. Tell me what your favorite blah, blah, blah is. I can't tell you how many times I've asked that. Kelly's smiling because she knows that's all I ever do. But I find that that curiosity has been the gateway for every vital spiritual conversation I've had. Because inevitably, when you ask one or two questions past what a normal human asks, when you just keep asking a little bit, and when you're willing to ask.
I typically say, "If you can go two questions past what you're normally comfortable, if you can go two questions deeper than what the typical person does, you are almost always going to hit something that's getting at the deeper regions of a person's inner life and heart." Maybe it's a struggle that they're dealing with. Maybe it's how they were raised as kids. Anytime you're bumping up against any of those subjects, you now have very likely open doors for all kinds of things. I remember I was at an AT&T store getting a new phone, and I'm talking to the guy, he's selling me the phone, and we're talking, and he is talking to me about his background. And he said something about being… I forget from what country, but I knew there were a lot of Catholics in that country.
And so, it's just a shot in dark. But I was just like, "Oh, that's interesting that you're from there. I'm just curious, were you raised Catholic? Because I know there are a lot of Catholics in that country." Again, it was kind of like a shot in the dark, but it was an opportunity for me to get him talking about something more than just my cell phone plan. And what happened was he didn't shut me down. He was like, "Oh, no, actually, my parents raised as Lutheran and blah, blah, blah." And then we were off to the races and we started talking. We swapped numbers. By the end of it, I invited him to church. We did the whole thing, and he was selling me a phone. But it was curiosity that took us there. Curiosity with a little bit of risk, a little bit of, I'm willing to get some egg on my face, it's okay. I would rather have a little bit of an awkward moment and then have an eternal joy at the end of this conversation then not.
Kasey Olander:
I'm assuming he got your phone number for more than just the paperwork for the phone, right?
Jimmy Needham:
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Kasey Olander:
Kelly, were you going to say something?
Kelly Needham:
Yeah, well, just to affirm that I think that learning about the other person where they're coming from, their background, their beliefs, is the easiest way. We know that the gospel is the answer. In some ways, you just don't know in which inroad to take into a person's heart and life that it will resonate, and you don't learn that without getting to know them. And so, I think the way that maybe many of us were trained to even think about this, how do we get to Jesus as we have a speech and we're just looking for the lull in the conversation to insert the speech. Okay, I told you the gospel. Okay, now I'm out. And that usually, it's not very effective.
Jimmy Needham:
It's weird, that's what it is.
Kelly Needham:
And it's weird. And the reason we avoid it is it doesn't feel natural in conversation. And so, to learn about somebody's life and heart and what motivates them, what drives them, I have at times, when somebody's mentioned church or something like that, I'm like, "Oh, that's interesting you mentioned that. How do you feel about that? I know a lot of people feel really hurt by the church. Sometimes because that's pretty common. Do you feel that way?" And they're like, "Yeah, I do." I'm like, "It's interesting that Jesus actually had a lot to say to people who were leaders of the church in His day." And they'll be like, "Oh, really? Let's talk about that." And I'll just find interesting ways to talk about how I've understood the scriptures and "Oh, I haven't seen it that way. Well, let's open a Bible together."
But asking questions about where they are and how they think and what they believe is the easiest way to then know, "Oh, there's an interesting way that I can just start talking about, well, the Bible actually says this about that thing. Did you know that?" And we can go there. And again, we're trying to be as committed as we can to relationships with the people who live near us. So it's never a one and done conversation, and that's really freeing. I don't have to get everything out on the table in this one moment. Sometimes it's just, we talked a little bit about something, and then-
Jimmy Needham:
And it's amazing. I imagine somebody on the other end of this podcast hearing this is like, "Gosh, that feels intimidating. Didn't it go south all the time and everybody's hostile to you?" And I'll just tell you, we talk about Jesus with lots of people a lot and almost never do I get a red light in those conversations? It's always curiosity. It's always like, "Yeah, I'm willing to, yeah, let's go get coffee. That's fine." But if you can be winsome and curious and kind, it's amazing what doors that opens. "A soft word turns away wrath," Proverbs says, right. And there is just something true about that. If you are met with a kind person who also happens to be a Christian who has curiosity about you in your life, you're human heart just naturally just wants to open up.
And so, some of the hardest guys right in our neighborhood that you would normally interact with and be like, "Man, that guy's a nut that's not going to crack." I go to coffee with these guys now. They're in their 60s and 70s, and I'm going to coffee with them just shooting the breeze with these rough Vietnam vets who are just former cops and all this. But they're soft toward me because I built this relationship of curiosity and question asking and kindness. And I know when their birthdays are now, so they get gifts on their birthday. It's like all that stuff pays dividends long term.
Kelly Needham:
And you're a good listener. I mean, part of that curiosity is you're learning to be a listener of somebody else, and everybody loves to be listened to. I mean, who doesn't love a good listener? And so, if you can be that for somebody else, it's one very general and an easy offer of kindness and generosity to offer a listening ear to somebody in your time. It's one of the first gifts that you give that softens somebody's heart to then later when you say, "Hey, that's interesting that you believe that. This is actually what I believe, or this is how Jesus has changed me," that now they're usually willing to listen because you have first listened to them. That even in the evangelistic spaces we're in, we're still trying to model, be slow to speak, slow to get angry, be quick to listen. And that has really served us well and produced a lot of fruit and conversations that we would think that's not going to go well. And a lot of times it goes so much better than we ever thought.
Jimmy Needham:
For sure.
Kelly Needham:
It's always scary, but it's always borne a lot of fruit.
Kasey Olander:
That is really helpful and really encouraging to think about all of these different ways that we can be curious. We can ask questions. It doesn't have to be that I have knowledge of every foreign country to know how many Catholics there are in them. But I also like-
Kelly Needham:
That's right.
Kasey Olander:
… yeah. Getting to know somebody personally, genuinely shows, "Hey, I really do care about you. I'm not just trying to make a sales pitch for Christianity so I can check it off my list. I genuinely have this deep affection for you, not in a creepy way. But in a way that Jesus loves me, that people I don't even know I can have genuine care for and empathy for." So I love that you guys are modeling that. I love that you've given so many examples of that. And even Jimmy, your two question thing past, how are you? Good, how are you? Is I think-
Kelly Needham:
That's right.
Kasey Olander:
… yeah, really helpful. Do you have maybe one or two other examples besides of the two questions beyond the normal threshold?
Jimmy Needham:
Let's think about that. The thing that…
Kelly Needham:
Well, I know with our neighbor next door who is a Vietnam vet, and we would hear a little snippet of that. It gets mentioned briefly. You'll ask questions like, "Gosh, tell me more about that. Was that hard? I bet that was a really hard time in your life." So you can make an assumption that sounds like that would've been hard. Tell me more about it. And then as they start telling you more about it, you're just listening for another piece in the thing that they're saying that's interesting to go, "Oh, wow. You just mentioned that your mom died, gosh." Or, "Oh, you just mentioned that, you had this experience. You lived in this place, man, I know that could have been it this way."
Jimmy Needham:
That's one I'm thinking of. There's a thing I didn't know existed until I moved to this neighborhood called National Neighbors Night Out. Have you heard of that?
Kelly Needham:
Yes.
Jimmy Needham:
Apparently it's a thing. I guess, it happens in October and our neighborhood does it. It's the first time I've ever seen it, but that's been a great time to meet folks. And last year we went and was talking with a guy, just an older guy who kind of presents intimidating, that sort of thing. But we were talking for a little while and he found out I was a pastor, and he kind of wanted to fly a flag too. He is like, "Oh, I believe in God." And I was like, "Okay, well, here we go." And I actually don't think the I'm a pastor thing is a deterrent because immediately, it's like as soon as we're talking about careers, now we're into a spiritual conversation. But then that allowed me to ask him some questions, and we ended with me getting his number. And we meet at Panera on Thursdays now for coffee and talk about Jesus and the Bible and all that, and it's been great. So another thing, this is not the two question thing, but this is definitely a door opener thing that Kelly just-
Kelly Needham:
You tell me what I used to do.
Jimmy Needham:
Yeah. Kelly is a weird bird, people.
Kelly Needham:
Wow. It's going to get better, I promise.
Jimmy Needham:
When somebody's talking to her, if you ever want something free, just compliment my wife on anything she's wearing. You like that necklace, you just say, "Wow, that's a beautiful necklace." And what my wife has done over the years I've watched her have it, she just goes… She's in a grocery line, "Oh, that's a really pretty necklace." "Thank you." Kelly says, and then she takes it off and she gives it to the lady. She's like, "Hey, I want you to have it."
Kasey Olander:
That's awesome.
Jimmy Needham:
And then the lady freaks out, and then that moment happens, and the natural question is, what next?
Kasey Olander:
Why are you doing this?
Jimmy Needham:
And now we're into a gospel conversation and it's cost me a fortune, but it is a great ministry opportunity.
Kelly Needham:
Yeah, it is true. If I have things that… Now, necklaces aren't as weird to give people as earrings.
Jimmy Needham:
She's holding onto the wedding ring, she's comitted.
Kelly Needham:
There's certain categories of things that would be weird. But there are other things that if somebody has just complimented of it it's like, "Yeah, I would love for you to have it." "What, are you sure?" "Yes, I'm sure. I actually love doing this because Jesus has done this for me. He has given me His very life, so He could set me free, and I couldn't imagine anything better than to just be a generous person to celebrate what He's done for me." So I kind of have a pre-written thing that I've practiced so that in that moment, because I'm sometimes in a grocery line with children and it's kind of chaotic that I can just let them know about Jesus and help them associate that.
But they're usually so taken aback by it that they're just eager to hear anything that I would say about it. Or if they mention anything else, I'm just listening for, "Oh, I've always wanted a whatever. I love that flower." If they're by my front yard and great, I'm going to go to Home Depot tomorrow and maybe buy a little one. It can't be too extravagant or people get weird, they feel weird about it. But a small little offering of like, "Hey, I heard you love this flower. I just wanted to give you your own." Just finding small ways to extend kindness and generosity to people in surprising ways. So if you can surprise somebody with your kindness, that's usually a way to open their heart to hear more from you.
Kasey Olander:
I love that. I feel like there's so many opportunities that in general, I think in our culture's generosity is surprising. The fact that people don't expect you to go out of your way. People don't expect you to take the necklace off your neck and give it to somebody. They're like, "I've never seen anyone do that." I would totally be curious about what motivates someone to do something like that for a perfect stranger that they don't even know. Or even for somebody that they do know, really, you're willing to part with this necklace? And then obviously in comparison to how Jesus has given me new life, of course, take my necklace, take whatever.
Jimmy Needham:
That's right.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. I love that.
Kelly Needham:
Absolutely.
Kasey Olander:
I feel like we've covered so many helpful things. You guys have talked about generosity with money and with food, but also with your time. And by listening, not just listening to respond to somebody, but listening to genuinely care about them and to understand how does Jesus meet the deepest longings of their heart? We know that the gospel is the answer, and we're just looking for the right question. We know that other people may not know what questions to ask, but we know that we have them, what they're looking for. And so, we're beggars trying to tell other beggars where to find bread, where we have hope-
Jimmy Needham:
That's right.
Kasey Olander:
…and life.
Kelly Needham:
Absolutely.
Kasey Olander:
So I love that you guys do that on Halloween, and I love that you do it all year round. I feel like this has been so helpful and given so many good insights and questions to ask people and ways to get started with creating our own opportunities to share Christ with people. But also just capturing opportunities that may already be existing in our everyday life if we just have our eyes open to look.
Jimmy Needham:
That's right.
Kasey Olander:
I hope that you, listeners are encouraged to do all these things, not just again, because the Needhams are cool, but in your own context and with your own neighbors, whatever it is that fits your situation. If you live in an apartment, if you're single, if you're married, if you have kids, whatever, that there are ways that God has equipped you and given you opportunities to be with the people around you and to share Jesus with them. Jimmy and Kelly, what are ways that listeners can connect with you if they're interested in your songs or books or podcast?
Jimmy Needham:
Yeah, Kel.
Kelly Needham:
Well, you can find… Our podcast is called Clearly. So you can listen to us, we're on our second season right now, Clearly Podcast. Both of us are on Instagram and Facebook. And so, you can follow us there or go to jimmyneedham.com or kellyneedham.com and find more of our books, articles, other things we've written, things like that.
Kasey Olander:
Awesome. Well, this has been such a helpful conversation. I'm really excited that we got to have you on the show today. So Jimmy, Kelly, thank you so much for being here.
Jimmy Needham:
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Kelly Needham:
Thanks.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, and we thank you, our listeners for being with us on The Table Podcast today. We ask that you join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Kymberli Cook:
Welcome to The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook, and I'm the assistant director of the Hendrick Center here at Dallas Theological Seminary, and today we are going to be discussing the spirit world in scripture. Now, I want everybody to understand me and hear me. We are not talking about the spirit world like how we experience it in our day-to-day life. That we actually covered in a different podcast called How Christians Think About the Paranormal. So if that's what you're interested in, pause here, and go over to that podcast.
Today, we are going to be concerned with the passages and the indications of a spirit world in scripture, particularly the Old Testament and the interpretations that Christians have, that Christians have currently, and maybe even have had historically of those passages. That is where we are headed, and I am so thrilled to be joined by Bob Chisholm, who is the department chair and senior professor of Old Testament studies here at DTS. Bob, thank you so much for joining us. And then we are also joined by John Walton, who is a professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College. Thank you so much, John, for being here as well.
John Walton:
Great to be here.
Kymberli Cook:
Wonderful. So I think we just need to get started by letting everybody get to know y'all a little bit. How did you all end up interested and really spending your lives in studying the Old Testament, and then maybe if you want to add on how you're particularly interested, or how you got into thinking about the spirit world in scripture? John, let's start with you. How did you get into this gig?
John Walton:
So I was raised in a family that was very Bible oriented. So I basically was raised in the Bible. We learned it early. We learned it deeply, and when you're a little kid, that tends to mean that you learn the trivia, and which testament has more trivia? Well, of course, it's the Old Testament, and so I kind of became by default specializing in Old Testament by virtue of that basic, largely unimportant fact early in my life, and so I enjoyed the Old Testament because I had been trained in it in those ways that you are in church and in family. When I went off to college, I didn't know what to major in. I didn't realize that there could be a career in Old Testament academia. I had no such idea of such a thing. And so I thought, "Well, if I'm interested in Old Testament, I could be a pastor or a missionary, but those don't really connect to Old Testament." So the vocational test told me to be an accountant.
Kymberli Cook:
Oh my goodness.
John Walton:
And so I majored in economics and accounting in college. It wasn't really until nearly the end of my college career that it suddenly dawned on me that there's an academic field for teaching Old Testament, and the minute I realized that, I'm there. That's what I want to do. That's what I'm born for. That's what I was raised in. That's what I want to do. So at that point, that became my academic interest, and I began pursuing that into graduate work and on. So that's kind of how it happened. You would almost say by accident, but of course there aren't accidents like that, and I feel like when people say, "So how did you go from accounting to Old Testament?" Well, the answer is easy. The book of Numbers, of course.
Kymberli Cook:
Oh my word. Oh, You are set up for that. So I guess we can't really discount kids in quiz bowl and that kind of thing. It could be laying a really solid foundation.
John Walton:
Yeah. Right? I mean, it worked for me.
Kymberli Cook:
So how did you come to think… And I know, well, actually, you've written very directly on the spirit world. So how did you come to think in that specific area? What was interesting or thought-provoking for you?
John Walton:
Well, of course, I've spent a lot of time in the book of Genesis that was, I had courses in it in my graduate work. I wrote my dissertation on the Tower of Babel. I wrote a commentary on Genesis relatively early in my career, and so Genesis was an issue, and so therefore the serpent, and the whole question is Satan there. I got involved in the Book of Job, and of course writing about Satan there, and so that part of the discussion has been pretty much things that I've dealt with for a long time. It was really the influence of my son who pushed me into going further into that and talking about demons in the ancient world and things of that sort. It was an interest of his, and, of course, the book you're referring to, Demons and Spirits in Biblical Theology, we wrote together.
When I say, "Wrote together," I'm using that loosely. It's like 90% him, but lots of the Old Testament stuff I provided, and of course I was consulting with him all along the way, and we truly did work together, but lots of the ideas he was generating, and the interest was part of what he was generating. So lots of what I had done within my various fields that fit into that, we brought into it. He had me do an article for festschrift on Demons in the Old Testament and the ancient Near East just because he wanted to use that research, and he said he wasn't going to be able to do it, so I to. So I did that for an article, and then that ended up being a chapter in the book. And so those kinds of things. So it was really my son made me do it, but it was a great project to work on, and I'm really pleased with the book and the ways it pushes the conversation forward.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, it's always helpful to have a father who could just do the academic work that you need done for something else over here. Man, I wish I had that.
John Walton:
Although, he's much more critical of my work than I am of his.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, of course he is. That's how it works. What about you, Bob? How did you get involved in Old Testament and how did you become interested in it and thinking even about the spirit world? I'm assuming it's because it's a part of the Old Testament, but what about you?
Bob Chisholm:
Well, first of all, I want to say I'm delighted that John was willing to join us today. John is one of my go-to guys on ancient Near Eastern backgrounds, and I'd like to promote his book right here.
Kymberli Cook:
There it is.
Bob Chisholm:
I frequently use ancient Near Eastern thought in the Old Testament, so thank you John for joining us here at DTS today. We're excited to have you and hear what you have to say. I grew up in a Christian home, and my parents came to faith in their thirties, and so all of a sudden we were in church all the time when I was five or six, and I always enjoyed the stories of the Old Testament, like any little boy would. I mean, who's not going to like Sampson and several others that appear? But I decided I wanted to be a sports writer, and I went to Syracuse University, which has a very good journalism school, and so I was planning on becoming a baseball writer, but about halfway through my college days, I had a spiritual awakening.
I was already a believer, but I had a spiritual awakening, had a deep desire to study the Bible, and I had a pastor who said, "You ought to go to seminary." And I said, "What is that?" And he explained to me what a seminary was, and he said, "You'll study Greek and Hebrew." I said, "You got to be kidding me. Why?" So I was pretty ignorant about some of the languages and things like that, and then I was interviewing for a job with the Cleveland Plain dealer, and I ended up sharing the gospel with a guy who was interviewing me, and he said, "Young man, when you get as much zeal for news writing as you do for your faith, you come see me," which I think was his way of saying, "You're not getting the job, but I'm impressed." And so I decided I needed to go to seminary.
So I went to Grace Theological Seminary in Indiana and just planning on studying theology. I just wanted to study the Bible, and I was terrified at the thought of taking Hebrew, but I did really well in it, much to my surprise, and my professor, James Battenfield, he said, "Have you thought about a career in Old Testament studies," and I said, "Well, tell me what that would look like and what that would involve." And I just got really interested in Hebrew. I did well, and then I came down to DTS and just pursued a career in it. I'm not as much of a specialist in this area we're talking about today, as John would be. Most of my academic career, I've been working in the prophets. I like narrative literature, so I've been doing a lot of work in Judges, Samuel, Isaiah, but I've gotten more interested in this spirit world thing.
Mike Heiser, the late Mike Heiser, who's now with the Lord, I found some of his talks at ETS interesting, and so gradually I got a little more interested in this and started to teach Job and Genesis. And so I find it interesting, and people have a lot of questions about it, and there's some difficult texts, and so I always find those challenging, but that's pretty much how I got interested in it. It comes up in the literature that I'm studying and teaching.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, absolutely, yeah. And actually the reason I wanted to do this podcast is it's for the Sunday school class that I teach.
Bob Chisholm:
Oh, okay.
Kymberli Cook:
Because we were actually going through a book written by Michael Heiser, and we'll reference the Divine Council at some point in this podcast, but he kind of had that running through a lot of his material, and I got so many questions about it.
Bob Chisholm:
You can say that.
Kymberli Cook:
And I was like, "I don't really know very much about what's going on here." And so I thought, "You know what? We're doing a podcast, and I'm going to find some people." Well, there you go. That's kind of like what your son did, John. I came, and I found somebody who's going to tell me about it. So I think before we hop into specifically talking about some of the spirit world entities, I think it might be helpful to just ask, and you guys might say, "Well, there's really nothing," but to ask when we're looking at any Old Testament text, but particularly the text that involve the spirit world, which is something that we can't see and seems quite mysterious, is there anything that we need to keep in mind as far as context or the ancient Near East, just anything like that that we need to know about and that the people listening where you would say, "You can't just read what it says on the surface and that's the way it is," or is that the way it is? Who wants to start?
Bob Chisholm:
I'm going to defer to John. I'm delighted that he's with us today, and I view my role as supplementary
Kymberli Cook:
John. What do you think?
John Walton:
So this is something I talked about quite a bit in the book that I just published called Wisdom for Faithful Reading. We're accountable when we view the Bible as having authority, it means we're accountable to track with the authors, not just to do our own thing, and the authors are writing in a language that we have to have accessible to us, either because we learn it or because somebody translates it for us, but they're also writing in a culture. And if we're going to be accountable to them, we have to be accountable to their culture because they are writing within that culture. I like to say that Israelites thought a lot more like Babylonians than they think like us. And that certainly there are things that God was trying to do in them that would differentiate them greatly from the Babylonians or the Egyptians, but still on the main, they thought more like Babylonians than they do like us.
So my default can't be my thinking. My default has to be ancient world thinking, and then I can talk about how Israel was different, how the Bible shows them to be different, how God wanted them to be different. And so I think that's an important perspective to take that whenever we read scripture, I mean, we've got the general Hermann Gunkel statement, "Context is everything," and that includes not just literary context, but cultural context, linguistic context, theological context. And so if I'm going to be faithful to the scripture and its authority, I need to read it in context, and that includes culture. So that means I can't just read it as me, because I'm modern, western, 21st century, and that's my mindset. If I just indiscriminately read it as me, I'm going to be imposing things on the text that are me, that is not the text, and that opens up all kinds of possibilities for misunderstanding.
So I want to try to move me a little bit off the table, as hard as that is, to say, "Okay, what about them? What would've they known? What would have they meant?" I've got an author which I believe is speaking intentionally, purposefully, with meaning, and he expects his immediate audience, the Israelites, to understand him, but that all has a cultural setting. I was reading a new book the other day, and one of the characters said to the other in their wild and crazy world, "I just want a 9:00 to 5:00, a white picket fence, a black lab, and 2.5 kids."
Now, as an American, I read that, and that makes perfect sense. I know he is talking about a 9:00 to 5:00 job. I know he is talking about the kind of house that would reflect kind of an ideal suburbia. I know that he's talking about a black windowed methane lab. Oh wait, no, a dog. And that he's talking about the kind of average level of… That's culture. That's just all filled up with culture, and that's because this is insider to insider, okay? And so we understand it because we're insiders, but yet when we read the Bible, we're not insiders, and we don't like to think of ourselves that way, as outsiders, but we are.
The insider to insider communication is Israelite to Israelite, and so in that sense, I can't afford not to read it that way, because I'm an outsider. And if they do stuff like 9:00 to 5:00 and white picket fence, I'm not going to know what they're talking about unless I can penetrate their culture.
Kymberli Cook:
So specifically when we're-
Bob Chisholm:
Can I add something there?
Kymberli Cook:
Oh, sure, go ahead, Bob.
Bob Chisholm:
Yeah, I totally concur with that. That's why they made us spend so much time working in Akkadian and Ugaritic, et cetera. Right, John?
John Walton:
Absolutely.
Bob Chisholm:
Long hours working in those texts, but I concur. I'd just like to add a couple of things to what John said. I always emphasize with my students the importance of contextualization. It sometimes is called accommodation, but God reveals truth about himself within a context, and he will speak within that framework. For example, in Genesis, when he creates the world, there's a heavenly ocean. Well, I don't believe there ever was a heavenly ocean, and I don't believe there is one today, but nevertheless, that's the way they thought about it, and so God is willing to accommodate himself. I like contextualize a little better because it makes it a little more proactive on God's part, missiological almost, where God contextualizes his revelation, and another important principle is progressive revelation.
We can't necessarily project something that's in the New Testament back on the old because there is a progress of revelation that takes place as well. So those are a couple of other elements in that approach to scripture. And of course John was referring to relevance theory. We just pick up on things because we're part of the culture, and I think the great challenge is we try to get back into that world as much as we are able, but boy, there's still gaps. For us there are gaps, and it's hard work sometimes, and it requires a lot of methodological precision. Okay, we've got Egypt, we've got Mesopotamia, and all other areas. How do we methodologically utilize those materials? Do we just assume it's all one big culture, or are there important distinctions to be made geographically and chronologically? And John has a nice discussion of method in the book that I held up earlier, and so those are some other elements that I'd like to mention with regard to what John said.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. And even in the midst of those, of that approach to scripture, presumably there are different interpretations along the way, different… As we're trying to figure out where we are, and what it might be saying, and what black lab, and white picket, and Ugaritic may or may not mean. So when we're looking at the spirit world passages where it seems like there's something else going on or there's direct reference to something going on in that world, what are the major camps of interpretation that we need to be aware of or that would be helpful for people to be aware of, so that they don't think, "Oh, I just read what it says on the surface, and this is what it is, and just go on their merry way. Are there any major camps of interpretation?
John Walton:
Well, when you think about the spirit world as it's reflected in the Old Testament, some people take the approach that's more like de-mythologizing. They say, "Oh, demons, that was really just psychological problems, or epilepsy, or this, or that." So they de mythologize. That's certainly one approach. There's another approach which reads from these passages a cosmic battle that's taking place, and day by day angels are fighting with demons right in your backyard, in your living room, and that there's this… And I call that conflict theology. That's what we called it in our book. So you've got the de-mythologizing camp, which is way over on one side, and the conflict theology, which is on the other side where demons and angels are fighting all around us. And so those could be kind of two camps that define the perimeter, but of course there's all kinds of positions in between that can be discussed.
Kymberli Cook:
Would you consider either of those, the ends of that spectrum, to be outside of the realm of Christian orthodoxy, or could you even be within Christian orthodoxy and hold to those camps?
John Walton:
Yeah, there are Christians who in most every way would be considered Orthodox, who hold both of those kinds of positions.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay, that's helpful, because oftentimes when we talk about the ends of the spectrum, oftentimes you think, "Oh, I shouldn't really want to be there," that kind of thing. It's out of bounds. But that's not necessarily the case here, if I'm hearing you correct?
John Walton:
Right. I don't land in either of those camps, but those are…
Kymberli Cook:
That's' all right.
John Walton:
If you want to survey the landscape, those are some of the things that you would identify.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. Okay. So when we talk about the… let's actually dig into some of the entities in scripture that we see in the spirit world. I think it's obvious we have God, and I'm probably going to move past him pretty quickly, though He deserves a lot, and I probably shouldn't.
John Walton:
I don't think we're going to de-mythologize him.
Kymberli Cook:
No, let's not. Let's not at least on a DTS podcast. What about angels? What do we see? What are some key passages, key areas where it seems like angels are in play? John, do you want to start again?
John Walton:
Again, those are our ideas that develop. In the Old Testament, my opinion is that we should take the word fairly strictly, that is that it refers to messengers. That's what the Hebrew term refers to. That's the role that they play. That's the role that they consistently play in the Old Testament, and even when we pick up the Greek word of angelos, it has that same kind of sense at its core, but yet things develop, and eventually it becomes the case, as often so in Christian thinking, that any… Okay, I'm going to use a fancy word here, supramundane, non-human entity would be described as an angel, and that mixes things up a little bit.
In the Old Testament, I don't think they would've thought as the cherubim or the seraphim as angels. They wouldn't think of the Divine Council members as angels. They're the sons of God. They're not angels, yet even by the Septuagint they're translating sons of God as angels. And so angels takes on a growing definition, at least that's how I've seen it as time goes on. So in Christian theology, we're used to using that category, angels, to talk about all the supramundane entities who are good guys.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah. No, really.
John Walton:
But that only happens over time. In the Old Testament, it's certainly not that broad. We should not, in my mind, talk about the seraphim or cherubim as angels. They have other roles. They're not messengers. Don't ask that cherub to go deliver a message.
Bob Chisholm:
He's sort of a bodyguard, isn't he?
Kymberli Cook:
Oh, no.
John Walton:
Yeah, yeah, regardless.
Kymberli Cook:
So the cherubs in Valentine's Day, we've missed it all, huh?
John Walton:
Right.That's the Middle Ages thing, got all mixed up with Eros. It shouldn't go there.
Bob Chisholm:
Yeah, to illustrate John's point further, I understand Genesis 3 as you can be like the Elohim, the gods who know good and evil, but if we start throwing gods around in our church, people are going to think we're crazy or polytheistic. So I think we kind of default to angels even though that's not really technically correct with regard to those beings. Agree, John?
John Walton:
Agree.
Bob Chisholm:
Yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So let's unpack that a little bit. Let's unpack the good guys in the spirit world that we see in scripture. So I'm hearing you say, "The Seraphim and the Cherubim." Can one of you talk about what you're referencing when you say the Divine Council, and is that the same as the Elohim that you were just talking about, Bob?
Bob Chisholm:
Yeah. I would see the Elohim in Genesis 3 as God is… You know the, "We, us," passages. I don't think that's inner Trinitarian dialogue, or trialogue, or whatever. That's the council. God is speaking to the Council, and so there's a ruling body in the universe headed up by God, and we see glimpses of this council in various places in scripture like I Kings 22, where Micaiah is forced to tell the king what he has seen in a vision, and actually, interestingly enough, and this is I think a good example of contextualization, it's the host of heaven that's up there with God, the host of heaven, which if you study that elsewhere, includes the sun, the moon, and the stars, and they're deliberating.
In fact, God sets the agenda, who is going to go and deceive him, and then oddly enough, Ha Ruach, the Spirit steps forward, and he has a game plan that is authorized by the Lord, so there's a glimpse of this assembly as well. So it's called different things throughout the Old Testament. I teach a course where I just got a whole list of ways that the assembly is referred to, but it's kind of like a ruling body headed up by God and distinct from God. It's not polytheism, right, John?
John Walton:
Correct. So the sons of God in Job, they're gathering together. That's the Divine Council. And in Ugaritic text, the sons of God is the term for the Divine Council, and we have the Divine Council referenced in Psalm 82. We have it referenced even in Isaiah 6. Isaiah has entered the throne room, and the Divine Council is meeting.
Bob Chisholm:
Who will go for us.
John Walton:
Yeah.
Bob Chisholm:
Yeah, who will go for us.
John Walton:
Who will go for us. There's another plurality in the divine realm, and so, again, as Bob says, contextualization is the key here to read it in its own context rather than impose our later theology on it.
Kymberli Cook:
And so I think especially when you hear, "The host of heaven," and that kind of thing, at least in my evangelical upbringing, Awana, all of that kind of world, I've always envisioned a bunch of angels. And so to your point that you were talking about earlier, and just to be clear, so that's not what we should necessarily think of, and we don't know much else beyond that there is this ruling body. Is that what I'm hearing?
John Walton:
Correct. We were told very little about how they operate, and we see them again in Daniel 7 where the ancient of days is seated on the throne, and the whole court is gathered around him, multitudes, unnumbered gathered around, and so we get this idea of a heavenly entity. Now, maybe I can mention, I'll try to be quick here, but one of the issues, lots of times when we think about polytheism, we think it's an issue of numbers. There's one, monotheism, and there's a bunch, that's polytheism. And that's true, of course, but it's not the most important thing about polytheism. The idea of polytheism is that the gods act and live in community, and the community of the gods is how they do their work. There's jurisdictions. There's roles to play, and the people in the ancient world understood the gods as acting, and living, and being identified in and by their community just like people were.
And so polytheism was a very natural way for them to think. They viewed themselves as being in community, and so they viewed the gods as being in community. People drew their identity from their community. The Gods draw their identity from their community, and so the Divine Council is an expression of this idea of the gods in community, but Israel has got to do a little bit different thing with it because they've got this idea of one God, only one God is worthy of that title and position, yet he's not a God without community, and so that's an interesting contextual element to it.
Bob Chisholm:
Yeah, it's a good point. And also at like at Ugaritic there's a hierarchy. There's a high god like El, and then you've got Baal, Yam, and Mot kind of buying for power beneath his authority, but I think his authority is recognized. And then you've got craftsman deities like Kothar. There's a hierarchy among the gods, and I would say the messengers are kind of like go-fors, wouldn't you, John? They're kind of on the perimeter who take messages and things
John Walton:
At one level, yes, they are go-fors. Some of the other guys would say, "No, I don't do that," but on the other hand, there is a certain dignity to the messenger role because when they went someplace else, they were to be received and treated just as if they were the person they were represented. That's why with the angel of the Lord, the Malach Adonai that we see in the Old Testament, sometimes suddenly he's speaking first person as God, or that somebody Is bowing down, and that's not inappropriate for the messenger role. They're treated as if they are that person. So it does have that dignity to it as well as your go-for roll
Bob Chisholm:
Yes. Because you're representing the one who sent you. That's why David gets so ticked off when the Ammonites mistreat his messengers, cut off half their beard and half their clothing. Yeah, you better treat the… And if I recall, in the Ugaritic text, when Yam's messengers come into the assembly, he's not coming. They're coming as fiery flames, but they're spoken to as if Yam is there.
John Walton:
Right.
Bob Chisholm:
The one who sent them. Yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So those are the good guys. What about the bad guys that we see, particularly in the Old Testament, but in scripture? Walk me through those entities.
John Walton:
Well, it's one of the things that I noticed when I first wrote the article on demons in the Old Testament in the ancient Near East, that the Old Testament really does not have a demonology. I did a whole taxonomy chart of the different categories, and where they fit in, and how those categories changed over time, but even a couple of the rare Hebrew words like shedim and se'irim that are sometimes translated as demons really aren't quite that. And so I dealt with that in that book, but that's really a remarkable thing, that whether it's very minimal or non-existent at all, that they have no demonology because they're living in a world that's just replete with demon entities, and that would be that's a very distinctive difference that we see, but of course in Hellenistic Judaism, they adopt all that demonology, and suddenly Jews have a very full demonology represented in Enoch, and Qumran, and all the Hellenistic literature, but that doesn't come from the Old Testament. That comes from the Mesopotamian world, so it's a very interesting phenomenon.
Bob Chisholm:
Yeah, it is, and sometimes it seems in the Old Testament as if the spiritual enemies are the other gods, the competing gods, and I personally believe that there are spiritual entities, or were spiritual entities behind those gods, and so they're gods from the standpoint of those, but it doesn't mean the Old Testament doesn't say they don't exist. They just can't rival Yahweh. Is that the way you see it, John?
John Walton:
Yeah. Well, one of the things that I do in that book you've mentioned so kindly, Ancient Near Eastern Thought, and by the way, there's a new addition that has even more the methodology and some things in it, but in that book, one of the points I raise is that in the ancient world, they don't think of divine existence in terms of metaphysical categories that we tend to do. For them, a God exists when he is capable of acting, and so that's why even in Isaiah it keeps saying, "Well, they can't do this, and they don't do this, and they aren't capable of doing that." If they can't act in a divine way, then for all intents and purposes, they don't exist. So they don't ask that question or address that question in the kinds of metaphysical ways that we would.
Kymberli Cook:
I'm going back to something you said, Bob. So if the gods of the other tribes and peoples are the enemies, let's put it that way.
Bob Chisholm:
Well, Baal is an enemy.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, yes. Fair enough. And then I'm also going back to something you were saying earlier, John, about the gods and or the community, basically, of Gods, and that that was represented representative of those specific locations. So the idea kind of a cosmic geography, that there are different spirits assigned to specific physical locations or different gods maybe assigned to different locations, is that a part of what you're talking about, Bob, as far as what you're saying, like-
John Walton:
I was all ready to jump in.
Bob Chisholm:
No. Yeah, we'll get John involved here definitely.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, go ahead.
Bob Chisholm:
Most of that comes out of Deuteronomy 32:8 where there's a textual issue, the Hebrew text. When God divided up the nations, he did so in accordance with the number of the sons of Israel. In the Septuagint, it's the angels of God, and it looks like at Qumran it's the sons of God, it's just sons of God, and so it looks like in the Hebrew tradition and in the Greek tradition, they've interpreted that in different ways, but a lot of people will argue, "Yeah, God delegated authority over nations to members of the council who are sons of God, and he reserved Israel for himself," verse nine of Deuteronomy 32. And then the passages in Daniel come into play with the princes, the Prince of Persia and the Prince of Greece, who are not human princes in those contexts. They're I don't want to say angelic. .
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, well, that's what I was going to ask. So if-
Bob Chisholm:
Council members gone rogue is I think what Michael Heiser would say if he were with us today, and there's a battle that's going on. It's not going on in my street right out here, as John talked about that extreme view earlier, but there seems to be some conflict in the heavenlies that has a bearing on what is going on down on the earth. Those are the key passages that I think that come into play in that regard. Right, John?
John Walton:
Yeah. I-
Kymberli Cook:
Real quick, sorry, I just want to clarify.
John Walton:
Yep.
Kymberli Cook:
So you're saying that that idea would be the Divine Council and the good guys, apart from those who went rogue, not some kind of community gods that are the enemies, like Baal and that kind of thing?
Bob Chisholm:
Well, if indeed you can extrapolate from those texts, then there would be maybe a spiritual entity behind Baal, and he's gone rogue, and Psalm 82 may address that as well.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. Sorry, John, go ahead.
John Walton:
Okay, so I probably have a little bit different position on some of those issues. I don't know if I'd be as comfortable calling Baal an enemy of God as an alternative to Yahweh. The reason I back off a little bit from enemy is because I'm not sure that he's high enough pay grade to count him as an enemy. God doesn't feel put off because Baal is somehow challenging his authority. People get confused. So I would just want to nuance that just in terms of yes, he's obviously not just buddy buddy with God. Yahweh is not threatened by him. Yahweh is not at battle with him. He doesn't rank high enough to do that. Is the garden ant my enemy? No, but I might not want them there. So I would wonder about the word, "Enemy," whether that's the best way to describe him, but I get what you're saying. They're certainly not on the same team by any means.
Bob Chisholm:
Yeah, and Yahweh tells Gideon to tear down the altar in his hometown.
John Walton:
Yeah. Sure. Sure. So Yahweh-.
Bob Chisholm:
And he does a number on Dagon over in Philistines territory.
John Walton:
He does, he does. So again, they are in opposite one another, but again, enemy I take almost as if there's a war going on, and Baal, boy, he's winning some battles, and no, it's not that, but again, that might not have to be included in the word, "Enemy." With Deuteronomy-
Bob Chisholm:
Yeah, I see what you're saying John. I see what you're saying on that, yeah.
John Walton:
With Deuteronomy 32, I'm very happy to follow the alternative reading that it's Sons of God as in Qumran, but there the differentiation that we recognized and gave voice to was that it talks about it according to the numbers of the Sons of God, but it doesn't go quite as as to say, "And everything was distributed to those numbers." Yes, Israel was reserved for Yahweh, but that still falls just short of saying that the geographical areas were doled out to each of those entities. So again, maybe it's implied. You can certainly read it there. Others have, certainly Michael Heiser has, but again, it's just we tried to reflect that little ambiguity that that's not mentioned.
Kymberli Cook:
No, that's helpful to know. That really is. So what about the… We've got just a little bit of time left, and it feels very not okay to talk about the spirit world and not reference Satan, or maybe we should. Maybe we should just not reference him, but-
John Walton:
I really need to say one quick thing about Daniel 10.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay, go ahead.
John Walton:
That is the central passage, and that is the preposition in Daniel 10:13, the Prince of Persia, it's usually, "Resisted me," or, "Stood against me," but that preposition there is always to stand before me. It doesn't suggest conflict. So again, in Daniel 10, we take a little bit different view of that, that it's not really saying what lots of people say with it, but we can't go into that in detail. Let's by all means be Satan's advocates.
Kymberli Cook:
So what do we see in the Old Testament about either the accuser, the one who stands against God, I mean, however… I don't even know the specific ways. You guys do. What do we see his reference?
Bob Chisholm:
He's only mentioned specifically two times, Ha-Satan the adversary. I don't consider I Chronicles 21:1 as referring to Satan by name. I just see the Satan there as a human adversary that the Lord used, if you look at the Samuel parallel, that the Lord used to incite David. Now, that raises all kinds of questions, which we'll have to talk about a different time and place on that. So there's only two references in Job Zechariah.
John Walton:
Right. I find it helpful with my students to use two terms separately, Devil and Satan, even though, of course, Satan comes to be a name for the Devil by the time we get into the New Testament, but let's separate those out, Devil as the general job description, Satan as the name of a functionary. Okay? So once we do that, the point that I make is that in the Old Testament way of thinking, in their theology, in their worldview, there is no devil slot. There's no job description for that, and therefore when we read about this character named Ha-Satan, we can't immediately say, "Oh, since in New Testament we use that as a name for the Devil, this must be the Devil." I think that that's a flawed transfer, and so I would say that the Old Testament has no role for a Devil. That is the chief of the demons, who is the highest power in that realm, and sort of dualistically working against God. There is no Devil in their thinking.
So then we have to redefine Ha-Satan differently. Where does he fit in? And again, we don't find anything that suggests anything but a functionary within Yahweh's system. He's doing the job that's been given to him. He raises an issue about Job, which is a legitimate issue to ask, "Is Job serving God for nothing?" That's a very legitimate question, and Job he does not tempt, he does not possess, he does not deprave, he does not do any of the things that we often connect the Devil with. He does what God gives him permission to do, and to bring suffering on-
Kymberli Cook:
So you're suggesting he would be a member of the Divine Council?
John Walton:
Possibly.
Kymberli Cook:
I mean, again, possibly, yeah.
John Walton:
He comes among them. Whether he comes as an outsider or an insider there's dispute about.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. And so going back to what you saying about the-
Bob Chisholm:
But I think we need to-
Kymberli Cook:
Real quick, Bob. I want to clarify something. So when you said, "The Devil job description," how… Was that a Hellenist idea? Where did that come from then?
John Walton:
Yep, we start to see it in Hellenism, Hellenistic Judaism.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay, and where do we see that?
John Walton:
Well, we see it in things like the Book of Enoch and Qumran, and also, of course, it probably has roots back into Persian Zoroastrianism where it's a more dualistic approach to things, so it comes out of those contexts.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. Okay. Bob, what were you going to say?
Bob Chisholm:
Well, John's view is one view. There is a viewpoint that views the Ha-Satan in Job as a little more of a sinister figure. He may be the prosecutor in the Royal court, but if so, he's more like Inspector Javert in Les Misérables. In calling Job's integrity into question, he's really challenging God's wisdom, and in determining who's righteous, and who isn't, and God does accuse him in 2 of inciting him against Job for no reason, and there are more and more scholars today who are seeing a spiritual warfare interpretation of Job, and I'm thinking of Robert Fyall, who wrote a book 21 years ago where he really tries, because to support John's view, you could make the point that he just disappears.
The Ha-Satan is there. He does his job, and he's gone, but those who see a spiritual warfare dimension, and really that's more God's answer to Job. There's a spiritual battle going on in the cosmos, and he refers to it in chapter 40 in between the two major speeches, and some of these scholars, Mettinger, there's a whole bunch of them, Gibson, LaCocque, I think Ortlund's new book goes this way, that the Ha-Satan is the reality behind Leviathan when you get to the end of the book, so he hasn't disappeared. So I just want to make the point that there are some scholars who are taking a different view of Job and would see the Ha-Satan as more than just a royal court functionary, but I agree with John. There is no developed view of all this like you see in the New Testament.
He only shows up a couple times, so it's certainly not developed there, but it may be rooted in those passages. Some of these later texts may be understanding Job that way. Of course, you got to explain the talking snake in Genesis 3. There's something going on there. He's not just a snake, but-
Kymberli Cook:
Once again, sinister.
Bob Chisholm:
He's not mentioned as Satan, and then, of course, in our circles, the reception history, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are always brought into play, but I don't think Satan is in view at all there, if you read those passages in their context. I think Ezekiel is just referring to a Cherub. The King of Tyre is being compared to the first man. I follow the Septuagint there rather than the MT, and in Isaiah you've got a bunch of pagan kings who are taunting the king of Babylon as he shows up in Sheol, and that's drawing on their own mythology, and so we've got some texts in our tradition that are used to develop this Satanology in the Old Testament that I don't think are being used properly, and I have a hunch John agrees with me there on those.
John Walton:
I do. And again, we deal with all of those in this book with my son.
Kymberli Cook:
There it is.
John Walton:
Yeah, the whole point of this book is to go through all of those passages, and to really parse them out, and deal with them, and granted, as you say, there are different opinions that can be had on them, but those opinions are all different from saying, "This is exactly the same kind of thing as what we get in the New Testament."
Bob Chisholm:
Right. Right, and that's the point I was making earlier when I talked about this back reading that goes on. You have to acknowledge that there's progressive revelation, and you can't just take everything in the New Testament and pose it on the old, and that happens in this discussion.
John Walton:
It does.
Kymberli Cook:
Yes, yes, there are lots of thoughts that we could add to that, and we could go down a giant rabbit hole with that, but we won't this time. One final question I just want to ask. So we've been in all of these passages and kind of thinking about these potential cosmic entities and all of that, and so not necessarily in the sense of… I guess to a degree they could be in our living room fighting, but how should this impact how we function as a church, how we live our lives, even just the interpretations of it, and what are the implications of having different interpretations of these things?
John Walton:
Bob is looking to me. In the end, I think it affects the whole idea of where our allegiance lies, in whom do we find our hope, in whom do we trust for all of the challenges that we face, whether they're human, the result of human behavior, or larger spiritual aspects, that basically God is the one who reigns, that God is the one who is in control, that God is the one in whose hands history is held, and that therefore we're not supposed to fear. It may be that the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking to devour, but our trust is in our God, and I think that's the contrast we're supposed to find. I don't think the Bible is trying to give us an authoritative taxonomy of spirit beings in the cosmos. It's trying to get our focus in the right place.
Bob Chisholm:
[inaudible 00:48:15]. Yeah, when I teach it, like these Old Testament passages, I always try to interpret them in their context as we've emphasized, but when I'm teaching in the church, you're really doing more correlation at that point in biblical theology where you are tracking the development maybe more, and where it ends up in the New Testament, and so the New Testament does say that there is spiritual warfare, Paul in Ephesians 6, but as John said, we don't have to be fearful because we serve the living God and the risen Christ, and so I always try to emphasize that in my own teaching. Yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
So what I'm hearing is that it is important to recognize the existence of this spirit world. The scripture, and particularly the Old Testament in our conversation, does reference it, and there seemed to be mentions that of… What was your fancy $5,000 word, John, Supramundane?
John Walton:
Supramundane.
Kymberli Cook:
Of the supramundane, that there do seem to be those kinds of things happening, but like you said, John, and you, Bob, that all of it is really to direct our attention to the greatness that is Yahweh, and that we worship him, and that, again, we are not to fear, we're not to serve these other entities or anything else that we might encounter. We're supposed to keep our eyes on him. So gentlemen, I just-
Bob Chisholm:
Mhmm-
Kymberli Cook:
What?
Bob Chisholm:
Easter is coming, so we celebrate the victory of risen Christ.
Kymberli Cook:
Indeed.
Bob Chisholm:
And Jesus came to destroy the works of the Devil, and he has done that.
Kymberli Cook:
Indeed. Well, gentlemen, we are out of time, but I just want to thank you so much for joining us, for allowing me to pick your brains with regard to this topic and kind of really work our way through some of the passages that it seems can either push people into interesting interpretations of the spirit world in our own time, or just think that they know exactly what the Bible is saying, and they might not be taking some of the contextual issues into view, and that kind of thing. So I just really want to thank you, Bob and John, for being here.
John Walton:
You're very welcome.
Bob Chisholm:
Thank you.
John Walton:
It was an enjoyable conversation.
Kymberli Cook:
Wonderful. And we also want to thank you who are listening, and we want to encourage you to join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and our topic today is Israel in the Middle of the Middle East. We have a wonderful expert to discuss this with us, Joel Rosenberg who's actually in Israel. He lives in Israel, and he's been there… Joel, how long, have you been in Israel now?
Joel Rosenberg:
Well, as we record this, it's been about eight and a half years, Darrell, in fact, that we've actually lived here as citizens, as dual citizens, US and Israel.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So I guess that makes you a quasi local?
Joel Rosenberg:
Yeah. Sadly, the first seven years were the seven fat years, so I'm hoping to try to turn that into the seven lean years. It's not going so well. But anyway, yeah. We're becoming local.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And getting you used to functioning, et cetera, and dealing with people coming in and out of Israel who are visiting and all that kind… And then of course you globe trot. Let's talk personally for a second and continue this, and that'll set a context for our conversation. So you've been in Israel, but you've been busy helping to connect different groups of evangelicals really to people, not just in Israel, but in the nations around Israel. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Joel Rosenberg:
Sure. Well, we moved to Israel, as I said, about eight and a half years ago, or at least when… It basically was August of 2014. So whenever your podcast airs or whenever people are listening to it, that'll give you some context. August 2014. I was a bestselling author in the United States before this novels mostly, political thrillers and non-fiction books and have continued writing. That's my main gig as an author, also as a journalist, and as a speaker.
But a few years ago, maybe six or seven years ago now, I wrote a series of political thrillers about ISIS. Nobody had really heard of it at the time. You'll recall that President Obama at the time in 2014 was saying what became ISIS. Al-Qaeda and Iraq at the time was really a JV squad, meaning it wasn't really a serious threat. I don't say that as a partisan point, I'm simply saying as context. But several CIA directors that I knew that were reading my books told me, "No, it's a real thing. You should write some political thrillers about the threat that they pose."
The reason I say it, Darrell, is because I decided to write a series about ISIS capturing chemical weapons in Syria, and then preparing to launch a series of genocidal attacks against Israel, against the United States and against Jordan. That's where the series begins against King Abdullah whom ISIS is trying to assassinate in the series of novels. They want to assassinate him, they want to destroy his palace and take over Jordan. That's why the novels called the Third Target, because Iraq was their first target. Syria was their second target. And then what's the third target? Well, in the novel, it's Jordan.
The reason that's interesting is because King Abdullah ended up reading the second novel in the trilogy. One of his advisors had happened to pick it up and Heathrow London was flying to Washington to meet the king and meet President Obama. And the advisor had no idea who I was. He just saw the book in a bookstore in Heathrow Airport. It looked interesting. He bought it. He sits down on the plane heading to Washington, heading to see the king, and oh my gosh, the king is a named character in the book.
So what happened was, the advisor lands in Washington, goes to the hotel room, the suite where the king is staying and says, "Your majesty, you have to read this." "Why?" "Because you're in it." "What do you mean I'm in it? It looks like a political thriller. It's a novel. It's not-"
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, it's fiction.
Joel Rosenberg:
"… a non-fiction book." He goes, "I know, but you are a character in the book." "What do you mean I'm a character?" "No, you're a named character." "I don't understand that." "Well, neither do I, but you should read this." And the king actually read it. Rather than banning me from the kingdom forever, Darrell, he invited my wife and me, this is now in 2016, to come for five days to Amman and meet with him and his senior leadership. And that was pretty stunning, right?
I'm an Israeli, but I'm also an American. I'm Jewish on my father's side. I'm a follower of Jesus. I'm an outspoken evangelical. What in the world am I doing in the palace? The palace, by the way, that I had fictionally blown up in the novel series. So he certainly had fun poking at me about that. Anyway, it was just such an interesting conversation. He's a direct descendant of Muhammad.
At the end of five days, the last dinner was a private dinner in his private palace. It was two and a half hours. Just fascinating. I said, "Your majesty, I hope you understand that I have great respect for you. I'm writing this as a worst case scenario, not something that I'm predicting or wanting." He said, "No, no, I get it." I said, "But so rarely does an evangelical who loves Israel, but is intrigued with the Arab side. How often do we get a chance to sit with a monarch, the longest serving monarch, by the way in the Arab world, and just get to talk to you and your team for days on end?"
I said, "Would you ever consider inviting some other evangelical leaders over to meet with you and have a similar experience that Lynn and I have had?" And he said, "Let's put together a delegation." That's what he said. And I said, "I'd be honored." So this set into motion what has now become seven delegations to Jordan, two to Egypt, one of which you were on.
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Joel Rosenberg:
Two to Saudi Arabia to meet the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, the future king, one to the United Arab Emirates, one to Bahrain, and one to Israel. So it's been fascinating and completely unexpected.
Darrell Bock:
What I think it reflects, that's an important value here, it creates an avenue for dialogue and discussion and getting acquainted that generally speaking might not happen otherwise and just as helpful to everyone involved. Fair?
Joel Rosenberg:
Yeah, very fair. In fact, to be clear, when I say it was unexpected, it was unexpected, but it wasn't unprayed for. When we moved here to Israel, I thought, "Well, Lord, how do I love my neighbors now that these neighbors are actually physically quite close?" Yes, that means the Palestinians. So how do I do that as an Israeli? That means Israeli Arabs, that means Orthodox Jews and all four Orthodox Jews, but it also means the people and the leaders throughout this region. And remember, this is all pre-Abraham Accords.
This is before this new era of peace with breaking out. So I just started praying, and King Abdullah was the one that I started praying for. Lord, you are a prayer hearing and a prayer answering God. You can say, no, I get that, but would you open up a door for me to meet with the king of Jordan? I just find him interesting and I want to get to know him and pray for him, and I'd like to be an ambassador for Jesus, for you, Lord, to him.
It's a crazy prayer. Even one of the guys on my board of our nonprofit ministry, The Joshua Fund told me years later, "I thought you were nuts. And I love you. I'm on your board, but this is not going to happen." So again, I encourage our staff, our team, our board to pray crazy prayers. I call them audacious prayers. The Lord doesn't have to answer them, but the question is sometimes we don't aim high enough and ask the Lord to open doors as Paul prayed. I mean, he wanted to be a witness for Jesus, an ambassador for the Lord to Caesar Nero.
So King Abdullah doesn't seem so difficult by comparison. Most of us are not going to have those opportunities, but it doesn't mean we don't want to lean in and ask the Lord, how can I get to know my neighbors, even though they totally disagree with me on theology and maybe on politics, and various ways? But where is their common ground and how can I love them? How can I understand them? How can I be a blessing to them? And certainly a witness, Lord, if you'd open that door.
Whether that's in a neighborhood in Dallas or anywhere in the United States or around the world, certainly here in Israel, Jesus did command us to do it. So sometimes we're not sure how we have to start in prayer.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Well, it's a great story, and of course the trip to Egypt is probably one of the highlights of my own life and experience. What you discover a part as a part of it is the nature of the global church. We were there in Egypt to dedicate a Christian cathedral in, I guess the government district of Egypt just outside of Cairo, which was primarily a Coptic church. And because Coptic is the primary form of Christianity in Egypt, and the whole trip was fascinating.
We actually did a podcast on that visit, but that's a whole nother conversation about what's going on there. Let me do one more question that relates to-
Joel Rosenberg:
The one thing I just had to say, Darrell, for those who may have missed that other podcast, let's just say, how often is it that two Jewish people get to stand before the leader of Egypt and say, "Let my people come instead of let my people go." God is opening crazy doors. It's a time of we have to be trusting him to think, Lord, what do you want to accomplish that maybe we're thinking too small?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Of course one of the things that accompanied that particular event in Egypt was a huge ceremony beforehand dedicating the entire complex because it came with a trip to the church, but also a trip to the mosque and asking the question from a government leader, how can these people live together, non-violently? Which is a basic question.
So a very fascinating trip. Let me put one other piece of background in place and then we can turn our attention to Israel in particular, and that is you mentioned the Abraham Accords, and you've mentioned the way in which actually… The way in which the Arab world is responding to the presence of Israel now at least some portions of it, is very, very different than what used to be. So why don't you quickly sketch that map out for us.
Joel Rosenberg:
So one of the delegations that I was invited to bring into the region was to the United Arab Emirates. This is a small but incredibly wealthy and dynamic and progressive in the true positive way. I'm not using American politics here, really making enormous progress. I mean, sending rockets to the moon and inviting the first ever evangelical delegation, which I led to the Emirates ever in their history, inviting the Pope to preach in a stadium, buying F-35 fighter jets from the United States and making peace with Israel.
But before all that, I was sitting there in the palace in Abu Dhabi, the capitol of the UAE with this group of evangelical leaders. Unfortunately, you weren't on that particular trip, but we had this opportunity to sit for two hours with the top leader in the UAE. We asked them a range of questions, but one of them was, "Listen, we love Israel and we pray for the peace of Jerusalem. You're not going to change us on that, but I don't think you want to."
But we also love Arabs, we love Muslims. But one of the things we're curious about is who's going to be the next Arab leader to make peace with Israel? Because at that point, 2018, we haven't seen an Arab leader since King Hussein of Jordan in 1994. So there'd only been two piece treaties. Egypt in '79, Jordan in '94. We said, who's going to be the next Arab leader to make peace?
Now, this was just almost a boilerplate point just to say it because there we were. And Mohammed bin Zayed, the sheik who's the head of the country, leans forward and said, "Joel, it's going to be me." We were shocked and we said, "Why?" And he began to explain that he's ready, that he decided it's in the national interest of the UAE to make peace with Israel, to have trade, technology, tourism, foreign direct investment.
Yes, there are still political disagreements with Israel, but he said, "We're going to move forward anyway." Unfortunately that was off the record, so we couldn't walk out of the palace with the biggest story in Arab-Israeli peacemaking in a generation and say it, and we didn't. We kept that confidence, but we prayed and two years later it was MBZ who made the first move to make peace with Israel in August of 2020. I wrote a non-fiction book that came out about a year and a half ago called Enemies and Allies where that is a story that I take everybody inside each of those rooms with each of the delegations that I led. So you can see it, you can hear the conversations.
Those conversations were off the record then, but they're on the record now because it's already done. It's a fascinating way for people to get a sense as a Jewish follower of Jesus, what would it be like to sit with all these leaders? What are they saying about religious freedom, about the Saudis allowing churches in Saudi Arabia when they don't have them?
Of course, we sat with top Israeli leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as well. So I think people will find Enemies and Allies a way of taking this conversation you and I are having and expanding it out and getting much more details.
Darrell Bock:
There are also some conversations I think, happening between religious leaders in the country at the Evangelical Theological Society. Not this year, but a couple of years ago we had a meeting with a group that's focused on Christian and evangelical relationships with Muslims, and we brought in some Muslim leaders to interact within that event and have a conversation. We're working our way towards a joint event that's going to be sponsored in the Northeast.
So there are these conversations that happen. They're very rare, but they exist and the potential for them is significant. So that sets the plate of what's around Israel, what's surrounding Israel. Of course, everyone's familiar with the region in general and the tensions that are a part of it, but let's talk about Israel in particular now. I'm going to ask some general demographic questions and then we'll dive in to particular challenges of what is going on with the church and the Messianic movement in Israel. So let's start in general, first of all, how large a country is Israel? I guess the second question is, and how quickly is it growing?
Joel Rosenberg:
Sure. Well, geographically, we're only about the size of New Jersey where my wife is from. I'm a New Yorker, so when I met her at Syracuse University, which is in New York, I had to get rid of all my Jersey jokes.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly, yeah.
Joel Rosenberg:
… our relationship. But it's about the size of New Jersey. Now you have to think if you lived in New Jersey, fine, wonderful, you'd have the seashore, but maybe New York would hate you and Pennsylvania would want to annihilate you, but maybe a piece with Delaware. So that's the geographic space. It's not that much space. That's the one. In terms of size, we're just coming up close to 10 million citizens now.
About 80% of that roughly is Jewish, and about 20% is Arab. Most of the Arab citizens are Muslims, but there is a significant Christian Arab population. Not all born again, mostly maybe from a more nominal or historic background, let's say, to be fair, Roman Catholic, to be sure, but range of Coptic faiths or denominations as well. So that's about 10 million people roughly.
And then the believing community, if you ask the Israeli government, they'll say there's about 125,000 Christians in the country that would cover everybody of any type of denomination whether they're born again or not. If you look at the Messianic community, particularly the Jewish believers of Jesus, that's what you're asking. And that number is roughly 25 to 30,000. There was a pretty good study done by the Israel College of the Bible, the main Bible Institute here, the Dallas Theological Seminary of Israel.
Their study was that in 1948 when Israel was miraculously and prophetically reborn, according to the scriptures, there were only 23 known Jewish followers of Jesus in the entire land of Israel at the time.
Darrell Bock:
That's just a two digit number.
Joel Rosenberg:
That's a two digit number. Amazing because some of them are still alive. We know them. For an American, it'd be like knowing a Christian that stepped off the Mayflower, to know some of the original people in the country that love Jesus. It's really extraordinary. Today, there are about 25 to 30,000 believers. So that's encouraging. Some of that is natural growth people having kids and raising them to know the Lord. And some of that is immigration. But most of it is… Or let's say a significant portion, are people, Jews coming to faith in Jesus.
It doesn't happen as much here in Israel as it does in the United States for a number of reasons. The main reason is in the United States there are so many followers of Jesus who love their Jewish neighbors and dentists and lawyers and doctors and whatever, that there's just so much more witness possible. We're a very small community in a very large country, but there is growth and it is exciting. And then there's roughly four to 5,000 actual evangelical Israeli Arabs. So that's the short version.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Let me go back to the 10 million for a second because the other question that's in the back of my head is what kind of immigration is going on in Israel and how is that population growing? In other words, I seem to remember a time not too long ago where if I had asked you that question, the answer would've been 8 million. I guess underneath that question is with Israel absorbing people, primarily Jewish people, obviously from around the world who come to Israel make Aliyah is the phrase that you also get a very interesting ethnic mix of people whose national backgrounds are quite diverse and probably most people aren't even aware of that being part of the equation in Israel. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Joel Rosenberg:
Sure. So let me break that down in a couple pieces. First, yes, the immigration issue. We've got the highest degree of immigration into Israel of any OECD industrialized country. You have a steady flow, 20 to 40,000 Jews a year are coming in and most of them historically are from maybe the eastern block, the former Soviet Union. And then of course from Europe and very few from the United States. We're learning where some of the few that have come and actually become citizens because most Jews who decide to leave their country and come to actually live as a citizen, not just by an apartment or send their kids to summer camp here or come for high holidays, they're coming because they're afraid, because they're leaving a country that either is actively anti-Semitic or anti-Semitism is spiking and they're nervous and they decide to come here.
Americans, I mean, think that's changing. That's a separate issue and we may want to talk about that. I think antisemitism is spiking and we're going to see more of that in the United States and we're going to start to see more Americans coming. But right now most Americans think, "Why would I go to Israel? I got a great life in the United States." But prophetically God is going to pull people, Jews from all countries. And he says in Jeremiah, "First I'll send the fishermen. So I'll draw you in, and then I'm going to send the hunters. If you won't come in voluntarily, you're not going to thwart my plan, so I'll force you to come back to Israel just like he forced us out at the beginning. So that's significant. Right now you're seeing a lot of course Ukrainian and Russian Jews coming in, but French-
Darrell Bock:
Yup. That's where we'll go next. Go ahead.
Joel Rosenberg:
The French Jews are coming up now. That's the first time I think we're seeing a western European country since the World War II in the end of the Holocaust where we're seeing a European Jewry start to come in and say… It's challenging for them, but it's good for us. We're the getting good food out of this equation. But that is a dynamic. And of course, Jews have come from Arab world over the last 50 or 60 years, 75 years, but we're not seeing much of that now because there aren't many Jews left in the Arab speaking world.
That takes us then to two other points. One is that we also have a high birth rate here higher than any other ACD, industrialized country. Arabs are having more kids. Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox are having a lot of kids, but even Israelis generally have more than West Europeans, let's say. So that's causing the population to grow as well. Now, the one other thing is the multicultural diversity. We've got Jews literally coming from all over the world because God dispersed us to all over the world. And one of the things that does is create a very interesting cultural mix.
It also creates fascinating ranges of food and culture and language. It's also great for, I'll say, Darrell, for our intelligence services, because you don't just have people who seem like they know a little bit about China, they're Jews who are Chinese. So they come back here and over the years they look Chinese. They sound Chinese. They know the language. They know the culture. Or Iranian Jews have been great for our intelligence services.
Ultimately, I believe setting the intelligence services aside, it's great for the church. In time, it's taking some time, but in time you're going to have believers, Jewish believers in Yeshua from all over the world who live here, but they know the language, they know the culture. They know how to be a witness to their other cultures and their countries.
We don't see much of a heart and a mindset yet in the believers here to be in short-term or long-term missions outside the country, unfortunately. But I believe that's part of our calling to be a light to the nation. So I believe that will come in time, but we're not seeing much of it yet.
Darrell Bock:
So let's think about this mix… So someone comes from say the Ukraine or out of Russia or Poland or whatever, wherever they may be coming from in the Eastern block, they come generally not knowing Hebrew? I mean, they are starting their lives again from scratch?
Joel Rosenberg:
Yeah. And especially when we saw the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the soviet flag literally came down over the Kremlin on Christmas day of all times in 1991. Once the doors fully opened and Jews trapped inside the Soviet Empire were suddenly free to go wherever they wanted, a million Jews came here to Israel. This in the early years of the 1990s.
Now, it was incredibly disruptive in one sense, right? Economically and in terms of how do you build housing for them all and create jobs, and not just government makeshift job, but real work. What do you do when somebody comes and they're a nuclear physicist or a chemical engineer, but they don't speak Hebrew and therefore they have to get a job as a street sweeper or a janitor? It's humiliating.
It showed Zionism at its strength, I would say, in the modern era where a country decided to open its doors to a quarter. Imagine the United States opening its door, I guess it has opened its doors, but not officially to bring an extra 25% of the population into the country. For the United States, that'd be like 75 or 80 million people in two or three years. Even with what's going on in the US southern border, that's, its not that much.
Darrell Bock:
It's not even close.
Joel Rosenberg:
Well, over time, about 25 or 30 million, but over 25 or 30 years.
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Joel Rosenberg:
Here it was about 25% of the population, about a million people coming in about a three or four or five year period, and it changed everything. So you still have Russian-speaking Jews. Now, we have to be careful not to call them Russians because the Ukrainian Jews don't want to be called Russians. And this is attention in the country, it's attention in the Kehillot, the congregations, the believing congregations here. So there's a whole new dynamic because of what Vladimir Putin has done in invading, and raping, and pillaging Ukraine.
But it's also, he's one of the hunters. I mean, he's intending it for evil, but God is using it for good, both to bring Jews into the kingdom, but also bring them into the country. So he's driving Jews out of Ukraine and even Russia here. But it takes time. In a fairly short period of time though, one of the interesting dynamics or nuances is often it's the kids who learn the Hebrew first. They're going to school. They're learning it so they can make friends.
So then there becomes a new tension inside the family. Mom and dad, grandma and Grandpa, sava and safta, they don't know Hebrew or they don't know it well. The kids know it and they want to be part of the society. They don't want to be ghettoized as, "Well, we're Russians." I'll say it, even myself, although it's not exactly the same, my boys, all four of them, they know Hebrew and I'm incredibly proud of them. I'm terrible at it, partly because I came in, at the time I was 47 with a full career, and a husband, and a father of four.
As you said, my time is spent in the States. So my wife would tease me sometimes mercifully and sometimes not like, "Joel, did you make Aliyah to Israel or to flight 90, 91 on United back and forth to Newark. Because that's where my business is, that's where my books are mostly sold. So that made it hard for me to learn Hebrew. I'm not good at it. The good news is English is the business language here and Jerusalem particularly, you can get by. You don't have to go too far outside of Jerusalem to really, really need Hebrew.
I'm one of those classic immigrant fathers, Darrell, where one of my sons has to go with me and I'm like, "What did they say?" I'm grateful that they've got it. Fortunately, they are honoring their mother and father and helping us through this, but it's not easy and it's not easy for these immigrant issues.
Darrell Bock:
That's not unlike the kind of immigration experience that particularly Asians had coming from China, et cetera, in the United States where the second generation child is the bridge and then the third generation child is actually in some ways totally assimilated to the culture and that kind of thing. It produces its own set of interesting. I have one more general question for we turn to Messianism in particular. And that is… So you've got this wonderful range and mix in the country and it seems to have produced within the Jewish community real different approaches to how to handle Israel's position in the world.
We've got a segment that is… If I can say it this way, classically Zionist and keep Israel great again. And then you've got another group that is concerned about how Israel interacts with its unique position as a nation surrounded by all these Arabs and Palestinians. Talk about that a little bit because it looks like it's about a 50/50 proposition in the country.
Joel Rosenberg:
Well, it's a huge challenge right now and we certainly have very deep political divisions which evidenced by the fact that we had five elections in the last four years.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Joel Rosenberg:
Neither side could really figure it out. It's not exactly a left right divide to be clear. There isn't much of the political left here anymore. The country was founded by atheist, agnostics, leftist and quasi-communist socialist. That's how the country was founded. But over time, the country has rejected those ideas almost entirely. So you've seen a collapse of the political left. It's become a very free market, very robust free market society, and it's become a very… In terms of security and religious identity, respect for faith in God, even if it's a number of different shades of that.
The country has moved from the left to the center, from the center to the right, from the right, in some cases to the far right and sometimes crazy in some areas. So it is a center right country politically and religiously. The number of religious Jews is rising significantly here. And that's not just immigration. Part of that of course is birth rates, but it's really that Jews who are secular are actually feeling like that's not working for them.
They're actively searching for faith in God. But some are very turned off by ultra-Orthodox and even Orthodox Judaism. So they're looking in other places. That's one of the reasons they're looking at is Yeshua actually the Messiah. So there there's a number of things going on there. Now, in terms of relationships to the outside world, there's a general desire by most Israelis, not all, but most. We want to have peace with our neighbors. We are not trying to take over more territory or start wars.
The country was mostly let's give land and if we'll get peace. But the reason they moved rightward on security and political issues was because every time a center and left politician gave land for peace, they didn't get peace. We got rockets and terrorists and suicide bombers. So that shifted the population from, look, we want peace, but we are not going to be suckers. The worst thing to be called in Israel is a friar, like a sucker, like such an idiot that you'd get tricked-
Darrell Bock:
Friars, not a monk.
Joel Rosenberg:
Exactly right. It's a Hebrew probably term. But it means you've just been duped. So having given southern Lebanon back to Lebanon and then Iranian back, Hezbollah terrorist moved in and fired 4,000 missiles at us, people are like, "Well, that was a dumb idea." And then Israel gave the Gaza strip to the Palestinians without asking for a peace treaty in 2005. But what do we get? 15 or 20,000 rockets and missiles fired at us? Israelis are not willing to do that anymore. So do they want to make peace with the Arabs? Absolutely. Do they want to just give things away? Sort of like whatever, I'm sure it'll work. No.
That's why they're so excited most Israelis about the Abraham Accords because how can you make peace with other Arab countries that are aren't going to fire missiles at us? And it's real peace. It's real trade. It's real tourism. 600,000 Israelis, Darrell, 600,000 have traveled to the United Arab Emirates just in the last two years since the Abraham Accords were signed.
Darrell Bock:
Oh, wow.
Joel Rosenberg:
Just to see it. You get to go to an Arab country that's economically growing and loves Israel and has kosher food now and wants to be peaceful with us? That seems so insane. It's exciting. I've been on that flight many times there. These are 787 jumbo jets packed, completely packed, mostly with Israelis. Emirates aren't coming yet because that's a big cultural divide if you're an Arab. But anyway, there's a lot of… I hope that answers some of your question. You have a lot of nuances, that question. A doctoral dissertation. I should get some sort of degree for that question.
Darrell Bock:
Well, a piece of paper is in the mail, but I'm not sure it has anything behind it. So let's turn the Messianic community. We don't have as much time as I'd hope, but so the Messianic community is in an interesting place because they are a religious minority in a country that has very Jewish origins and is committed to a Jewish way of life, not just ethnically but religiously. So at least with a significant portion of its population. And with that religious element, having at least currently having an important political and social role in the country. So talk about that and I guess what I have in mind here is in part the tension that Messianics live with as Christians in Israel. So you can parse that out however you want.
Joel Rosenberg:
How many more hours did you say we have to cover that topic? Okay. So let's break that down a few ways. First of all, let's start with the good news. Israel is a very robust democracy, but it is a democracy. I mean, the fact that I was able to make Aliyah with my family, I'm googleable. Is that a word?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Joel Rosenberg:
Professor Googleable. I'm googleable on the topic of do Jewish people need Jesus to get saved, to go to heaven, to have their sins forgiven? Absolutely. I've spoken at chosen people, ministry events and all kinds of conferences and churches all over the world. I'm not hiding that. I also believe Muslims need Jesus. They really believe all people need Jesus. But I'm not hiding that, and I'm not saying that other Jews are, I'm just saying that may not be their calling. And some other line of work, but this is what I do.
It's amazing that they let me become a citizen of Israel and didn't have a big legal battle over it. So that's just a small but personal example to me. I will say 15, 20 years ago, maybe even less Jewish believers in Jesus, Messianic Jews, they couldn't get in intelligence units or high level advanced elite military units. Why? Because they were considered traitors or undependables.
But over time, that has changed. The Israeli defense forces has discovered, "Hey, these Jews who believe in Jesus, they're strong Zionists. They believe in the country. They get it and they want to help." They're actually pretty good at whatever they do. So I had two sons who've served in the Israeli defense forces. One of them in an intelligence unit and another one in an elite combat unit. So that's not normal historically, but it's becoming more normal in recent years.
Those are the good news. I think there's such openness. I would say that the whole region is experiencing a spirit of tolerance. Now normally, and it's certainly an American evangelical ear, the word tolerance sounds like you're basically tolerating things that are wrong. That's certainly true. Israel is tolerating… Actually, it's embracing gay pride parades in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and the speaker of the house.
The parliament here whom I've met is an open homosexual. It's very interesting how this country has embraced homosexuality. So that's tolerance. Not a good thing. I mean to be kind to people even if you disagree with them, that's a good thing. But Israel is not processing the biblical risks of not helping people understand what God's plan and purpose is for marriage and sexuality. So that's a problem. But that spirit of tolerance of anything goes, it's okay, whatever you think. Mostly that's bad, but it is creating the environment for two things. One, people are tolerating, Messianic Jews.
They're kind of curious. What do you believe? I don't believe that, but I'm curious, what do you believe. That is happening not just with our family, but all over this country, and that's a good thing. There's an openness, a curiosity. Maybe we ruled out Yeshua as the Messiah too quickly. Make the case, tell me what you think. The other piece of that I think is… Well, and then we could go in along. That's actually a long road, but I'm just saying there's an openness and there's a willingness not to beat you up or slash your tires or punch you in the face or whatever that there was a few years ago.
So I think that's good and I would just say one more thing. The Chosen People Ministry and Israel College of the Bible Partnership one for Israel is that brand creating these short videos that of Jews, yourself, myself, my father, others, explaining why we believe that Jesus actually is the Messiah. And then Israelis doing that in Hebrew. The Israeli videos have been watched more than 50 million times. They're not 50 million Hebrew speakers on the planet. So that means people are watching multiple videos.
They're like Pringles, you can't eat just one. This is impossible. And then on the English language videos that you know and I have been part of, that's over 200 million views. So this shows that there's a curiosity and openness, and that's good, but I don't think that's going to last forever. I think we're heading towards a period of new persecution. It hasn't happened yet mostly, but because Israel is becoming much more a segment of us becoming much more militant, ultra-orthodox and sort of demanding that sort of Halakhah, sort of the Jewish legal system from the scriptures imposed on modern Israel.
That's what they want. And most Israelis don't. So there's a civil war tension brewing. I'm not saying it's going to become violent yet, but this is a serious problem here right now, Darrell. There's a huge tension between secular and traditional and militant ultra orthodoxy that's coming out on the political sphere. I'm afraid it might burst out into the streets, but I believe that prophetically, we should expect more and more Jews to be open to other things, including Yeshua, but also more and more hardening.
I think the middle is dropping out. People are breaking. They're going to break in time for Yeshua, or at least open this to him or harshly against. Right now you have a large middle, but I don't think that's going to last for forever.
Darrell Bock:
So all the ultra-orthodox that you're talking about really want a… I'm going to use this figure and I think you'll get it. I hope the listeners get it. Almost a kind of dominion approach to the role of Judaism in the country, and in such a way that it defines what takes place. When you lose that, you lose the openness of the way western democracies have generally been formed.
Joel Rosenberg:
Well, that's right because we haven't really seen a theocracy except in Iran. You have Muslim countries and that's where secular and traditional Israelis are saying, "Look here, ultra-orthodox, you're trying to impose almost a Sharia law on us. And we didn't sign up for this. You're a minority. Now, you are a steadily growing minority, but you're still a minority. How can you impose this on us? We don't believe what you believe."
And this is a challenge because in the Old Testament Torah law, that is a theocracy. That's exactly what it is. It didn't work then. It's not going to work now. And most people don't want it. The only answer to it is the New Testament. The only answer to this question is, yes, there are principles we can learn from the Jewish scriptures, the Hebrew scriptures, but if you apply them in a New Testament perspective, then you don't have to be kosher if you don't want to be, but you can be.
You're not going to stone your neighbor because they're committing adultery. You're not going to murder them. But you have to in the Torah system. So you cannot impose the Torah in modern Israel. And ironically, it's the Messianic believers who have the actual theological and social principles to govern. They're not going to look to us to do that, so don't hold your breath.
Darrell Bock:
That's a great transition because one of the points that I like to make even talking about the situation here is that we've had the experiment where our laws align with God's desires and that gets imposed on people. And that experiment was Old Testament Israel. And it failed. It failed to such a degree that God said, "I'm going to provide a new covenant. And the new covenant is going to not do this from external law, it's going to do it from an internal heart change."
I like to refer the Old Testament is the story of a heart transplant only you don't change hearts. God takes the heart of stone and turns it into a heart that's open to him. You can keep the same heart. It just gets changed. So in the midst of that transfer, which Jesus is in the middle of, Yeshua is in the middle of, you get the internal clock that you need to make a healthy society.
Joel Rosenberg:
We saw that in Europe. When we saw Protestantism begin to rise, it was because people were rebelling against a Roman Catholic legal and political, and social system that forced people to do things, and yet was riddled with all kinds of hypocrisy and legalism and corruption. I'm not saying Protestantism can't become that. It obviously has in many ways, but there was this sense that if people are people of faith, or at least of Judeo-Christian ethic, you don't have to impose such draconian rules upon them.
You can give them the freedom to make decisions in their family life, in their businesses, in their culture, and they can choose their leaders because they're probably going to pick people that are fairly decent. That's the dynamic that created Western democracy. I mean obviously it comes from the Greeks, but I don't think it really took off until Protestant Christianity laid the moral groundwork and framework by which you could have self-governing people that didn't need a heavy, heavy hand, a draconian, authoritarian hand of government because they were basically following Judeo-Christian ethics in their personal lives, therefore, you could trust them not to run rampant and go crazy.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. My example here in the Book of Acts' Ephesus, in which you didn't get a law from the Ephesians City Council saying, "We're going to outlaw magic books." What you got were people whose hearts changed who said, "This isn't healthy for us. Were done with it." Which is part of the explanation with why the gospel is so central to what it is we should be about as we go about our daily lives, that the only change that isn't superficial is the one that comes from the inside out and the one that God works from within hearts and within groups of hearts because this isn't just an individual thing, it's a corporate thing as well that changes the ethos of what goes on around us.
And in the midst of doing that, the New Testament is also clear, and some people in the world are going to push back against that. They're not going to like it. So that's part of the dynamic we live in.
Joel Rosenberg:
And in the Jewish world, this is what's so exciting and fascinating to me, and yet I'm amazed so many Christian media outlets are still not even covering this. The study that you and I got to be part of about five years ago through the alliance for the piece of Jerusalem in which we hired Lifeway Research, the Southern Baptist research arm, to go to a real scientific study of how many Jewish people, or at least people with Jewish roots in America are evangelicals by faith.
Not self-identified. And that turned out to be a number we didn't even believe and therefore we didn't publish for several months going that can't be right. We must have made a mistake. But the number turns out to be 871,000 people with Jewish parents or grandparents in America who have evangelical theological beliefs set aside whether they're living them or not. But the point is, they believe this, that Jesus is the only way, that the Bible is their highest authority so forth, that they have a responsibility to share their faith with others, their faith in Jesus.
That's an extraordinary number, almost 900,000. When you add in Israel and Europe, you're at about a million Jews worldwide now who believe in Jesus. What that's telling us is two things. One, that the gospel does work for Jewish people even though people like Martin Luther and others in their day thought, "This doesn't work."
Darrell Bock:
It's impossible.
Joel Rosenberg:
Right. But it also shows us that Christians mostly in the United States, evangelical primarily are so loving and warm towards Jews that because they believe that they are chosen of God and they have to choose God back, but still, the Jews are part of God's plan and purpose for the world and for Israel. And therefore many Christians honor and love their Jewish neighbors, literally. That has created a climate where Jews could at least consider, could this be true? They weren't able to reject, "Oh, my neighbor is an anti-Semite and he's a Christian, therefore, obviously, Christianity is false."
What I'm saying is this is a moment where Jews are more open than any time in the last 2000 years to at least listen, read, consider, could Jesus really be the Messiah? I say all that because Jews come to Israel and Jews all over the world have all kinds of different political views. Obviously in America, 70% of Jews are Democrats. So I'm not getting into the politics, I'm just saying wide range of views. The question is, "Do they have an openness to consider the claims of Jesus?"
We're not trying to change their politics, we're trying to get them to consider the Messiah that came and died and rose again for us. And that Moses said in Deuteronomy 18, if you don't follow this person, you get cut off from Israel's. We don't want that to happen. So I'm just saying to me, "This is the most exciting point in the history of Jewish society because there's such openness and response that most of us didn't even realize the response was that high because these are not mostly people going to Messianic congregations, they're mostly just attending evangelical congregations, and so they don't get picked up by past surveys and studies."
So that to me is incredibly encouraging. I believe we are now on the road significantly towards Romans 11:26 where eventually all Israel gets saved. I don't want to get into picking that all apart right now. I'm not saying that every Jew-
Darrell Bock:
It's a separate podcast.
Joel Rosenberg:
It's a separate podcast. But I'm saying if you asked your podcast audience… I don't know when you started it. When did you start it?
Darrell Bock:
It's been a little over 10 years ago.
Joel Rosenberg:
Okay. So 10 years ago. If you said in 10 years there'll be a million Jews worldwide who believe in Jesus, I think you might have had your tenure revoked. That would be so… Sure, in the distant future.
Darrell Bock:
Well, we didn't believe it when we got the number. I mean, as you said, when we heard that it was this large, and of course, I've always heard very recently that the amount of Messianic presence in Israel is unprecedented as well. I mean, when you start out with 23 and you're now in a multi-thousands, that's a different deal. Joe, I just want to thank you for giving us a glimpse at what's going on. We've actually run over a little bit, which is nice, but it's clear that we've only, I love using this metaphor on the podcast because I use it regularly, we only scrape the top of the iceberg, but you've helped us to get a portrait of what's going on and where Israel fits in the Middle East and the variety of tensions that have to be dealt with. It reminds us to pray for the country and for people in the country and for the Messianic presence in the country, et cetera. So I really thank you for taking the time to be with us today.
Joel Rosenberg:
Well, it's an honor, Darrell, always, and I look forward to seeing you here in Jerusalem or in Dallas, Lord willing, soon.
Darrell Bock:
And we're headed your way this summer, so we're looking forward to it and with a good visit. It's been several years because of COVID, and so I'm looking forward to going back.
Joel Rosenberg:
Well, you're always welcome. Bless you.
Darrell Bock:
We thank you for being a part of The Table. We thank you for joining us. Hope you'll join us again soon. If you're interested in other podcasts related to The Table, you can go to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast and you can see the more than 600 hours of material podcasting that we've done over the last decade. I invite you to do that, and I certainly invite you to join us again soon.
Mikel Del Rosario: Welcome to the Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I’m Mikel Del Rosario, Cultural Engagement Manager here at the Hendrix Center. And our topic on the Table podcast today is mental health and Generation Z. Going to be talking about how Gen Z has been affected by the pandemic, some mental health issues and how the church and people who work with youth can better minister to people in Generation Z. And I have three guests who are joining me today, all via Zoom. This is actually my first time back in the studio in quite a while. First guest is Jonathan Morrow who we've had on the show before. He is the Director of Cultural Engagement and Student Discipleship at Impact 360 Institute. Welcome.
Jonathan Morrow: It's great to be with you again.
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. so good to have you back on the show. And you have a DTS Hendrix Center connection. That' right?
Jonathan Morrow: Yeah. Absolutely. So worked for the Center For Christian Leadership there and spiritual formation and loved my time there. It was phenomenal. And yeah. Big fan of Dallas Theological Seminary.
Mikel Del Rosario: Awesome. Well, we're so happy to have you, and the work you're doing at Impact 360 is awesome. I have another guest on the show today coming to us also via Zoom. It's Jenny Wang. Jenny is a licensed professional counselor with the Lifeologie Institute in Frisco, Texas. Welcome, Jenny.
Jenny Wang: Thank you. It's good to be with everyone.
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. Good to see you Last time, you had – we had some kind of…I got to see you at an event we did. It seems like a long, long time ago now. But I think it was just last year.
Jenny Wang: Right.
Mikel Del Rosario: You got to help parents think about how to be better administering to their own children; their Gen Z children. So thank you.
Jenny Wang: Thank you. It was fun.
Mikel Del Rosario: Next person we have on is my friend Erin Roy. Erin Waller Roy is the Area Director with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Welcome to the show, Erin.
Erin Waller Roy: Thanks for having me on, Mikel.
Mikel Del Rosario: Now, Erin's DTS connection as we once had coffee at the coffee shop here [laughs] …and she's my good friend from church as well. Well, today we're going to talk about Gen Z. And I want to start in the beginning just talking about how Gen Z has been affected by the pandemic emotionally and spiritually. But first, I want to get a handle on this demographic. So, Jonathan, you partnered with Barna Research Group on a study that was all about Gen Z. Could you help us understand the demographic that we're talking about today? How would you describe them in general terms?
Jonathan Morrow: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So for those of you not familiar with Gen Z, Gen Z is the generation after Millennials. So right now, Gen Z is probably wrapping up college. Like that age, kind of that 1999-ish, you know, birth all the way through. And so, basically if you have a current teenager in the home, if you have a pre-teen in the home, all the way through kind of finishing up college…kind of that age range right there is Gen Z. And so, yeah. So that's the generation we're talking about. And so, we studied that with Barna Group and really kind of looking at what's shaping them and how they're unique and different in ways than Millennials and different ways…and I know the Millennials are all thankful that people are talking about someone else now. Right? [Laughter] Yeah.
So it's like, "Thanks." You know? No. But it's a blast because, you know, every generation is – we have to pay attention. We're wanting to give our faith to the next generation. We want to disciple the next generation. And so, we want to care about what's shaping them, their – not only their world view but also the topic today and their emotional and mental well-being and everything else like that. So yeah. So that's the broad category for people watching.
Mikel Del Rosario: Some people have called them similar to Millennials in all but optimism. What do you think about that? [Laughs]
Jonathan Morrow: Yeah. Yeah. I think Millennials tend to be probably a little more idealistic. And I think Gen Z tends to be a little more pragmatic. So I think that's fair. I think from a world view standpoint, they're – in terms of even biblical categories and world view – they're farther from even kind of orthodoxy and biblical world view than their Millennial older brothers and sisters in that regard and things like that. So I think those are some of the trends for lots of different reasons. But in terms of kind of that general outlook, I think you see Gen Z as a lot more pragmatic and kind of, "Okay. Realistic a little bit," than probably some. You know, there's always generalizations…than their Millennial counterparts.
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. Well, we're going to put a Link to the study on the Webpage so people can check out that. We're going to come back to these things a little bit later on in the show. But over the summer, Darrell Bock and I did a kind of an apologetics workshop with some high school students over a period of weeks. And one thing that I ask is… I asked them to describe, "How are you feeling right now?" And a number of them said, "Very fragile. More fragile than usual. Overwhelmed. Exasperated." And I want to ask Jenny. I want to ask you. You know, even before the pandemic Gen Z was characterized as people who were suffering from some of the highest rates of anxiety. The National Institute of Health says 1 in 3 teens will experience anxiety or some kind of anxiety disorder. What are some of the things that you feel are contributing to this, even before the pandemic?
Jenny Wang: Yeah. that's a great question. Let me just add to that, I see that in my own practice. I've been practicing for probably about 15 years now; graduated from DTS with Biblical counseling. And I have seen that increase in my own practice – of teenagers with anxiety. And, I mean, I think there's multiple factors. You know, I have to start out with saying that we're probably [laughs] a reason. And when 'm talking about "we," I mean us parents. I have four kids. I have kids from the age of 5 to 15.
So I have, you know – they're all Gen Z. Plus, a lot of my clients are. You know, I think part of it is that we haven't really learned how to deal with our stress very well. And so, we project that in our families; you know, in the way that we kind of raise our kids. I think our households are more stressed these days with all the – all of the things that we juggle at home. And so, you know, I think if parents are able to kind of deal with their stress, they can help the kids as well how to work through that as well. Definitely another one I would say is social media. I mean, there's just…not just information, but there's information. Just all the information that's out there.
And I think, you know, there's FOMO – the fear of missing out; constantly on your phone, with friends, and you don't want to miss out on anything. There's the whole, you know, self-image; like, "How do I present myself? I feel like everything that we show on social media is all the good parts." Right? All the quote-unquote "perfect parts." "So I feel like I need to be that all the time." You know, plus the pressures – I work in Frisco. So a lot of my clients are very high-achieving [laughs]. Plus the pressures, I think, of school and what I have to have on my…well, it's not my resume but on my college applications and all that. So there's multiple things. There's probably even more that, you know – to add onto that list.
Mikel Del Rosario: So how is the pandemic added to that?
Jenny Wang: Well, I think one of the things…so let me just king of add all of this together. I think one of the things is, for us as parents – and I'm including myself. I have to kind of watch myself sometimes…we expect the same things pre-pandemic than post-pandemic. You know? And not realizing that when we're isolated from our friends, when we're at home, when things are changing so much that our kids are not going to achieve as much as maybe they did before – even before it was stressful…it's even more stressful now. So I think that's part of it for kids, for Gen Z. And I think another part is the isolation. You know? The loneliness. I know there's been a lot of articles about having to be apart from their support groups.
Mikel Del Rosario: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Erin, how have you seen, in your ministry, the pandemic impacting Gen Z on campus?
Erin Waller Roy: Yeah. I can speak a little bit to the spiritual impact. I think, Jenny, that's a great summary of the emotional impact for a lot of students. I think spiritually what I'd say generally before the pandemic is that students are probably at their spiritually least healthy when they depart from the rhythms such as they are that they've set up at college. That might be a local church they're connected to. That might be a campus ministry or Bible study; Christian friends. So I see students go home over Christmas Break. They're excited for some rest. When they come back, you know, they feel like they have to rebuild their lives again.
Well, if you take that scenario and then you send students home unexpectedly in the middle of the year for five months, we had a lot of conversations just about daily life rhythms. "How do you get reconnected to your home church or stay connected to the church or in college? Are you going to be willing to get up and go to Bible study when it's another Zoom call on a day that's already been really full of Zoom calls? Will you choose to still connect with community even in ways that feel unsatisfying compared to what you had access to when you were on campus? How will you deal with parental relationships and family relationships and places where there might be strain?"
For some students, going home was a really – you know, was a welcome place to be. And for some students, that's a hard place to be. And so, I think we saw just a lot of spiritual challenges and kind of a winnowing-out of which students were going to be willing and able to press in on some of the ways they were pre-pandemic to prioritizing their relationship with Jesus in college. And I think it's a time of incredible stress.
A lot of opportunity for discipleship but incredible pressure on students to still finish out the semester and now to come back and do a great job when all around them – "Is their school going to close? Are things going to be able to continue as normal?" And some of the trends of isolation that we were seeing and concerned about long before the pandemic for this generation had been, I think, exacerbated by the effects of being away and then being back maybe on campus now but not in the same way that they were before March.
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. Jonathan, what are you seeing with your ministry? You're working with students before college as well as college students. How have you seen that affected each of those groups?
Jonathan Morrow: Yeah. Absolutely. So at Impact 360, we have a nine-month Christian gap here. And so, we have 18 to 20-year-old's who are on our campus. And so, a lot of things Erin was talking about in terms of going home, re-entry, coming back from parents…that's a big thing. Like, "Well, okay. I just moved out sort of. And now, I'm starting to figure out who I am and who I'm becoming and what my rhythms are going to be. Now I have to go back and re-entry into that world."
But all that. And so, one of the things I think I'm seeing is kind of two-fold; is, one, obviously some of the fragility. Some of those things that you guys have already mentioned. Obviously all the social media, the isolation, the disruption, the disillusionment, the disappointment with things that aren't happening that they were expecting to happen. Everything from sports to plays to, you know, getting together at the church in different ways or whatever that might be. So there's kind of disappointment. But then, there's an opportunity side to that of amazing resilience. And this is the piece where I think we have to be kind of balanced in how we kind of cast vision.
Because the Lord is not surprised by 2020. And Acts 17 reminds us that, you know, the times and the places are determined by the Lord so that we might seek him. And so, you know, this is their moment to be resilient disciples and follow Jesus. And this maybe is not what they picked. But what does it look like for me today to follow Jesus and seek the truth and grow and engage and" – because we've been able to do some of those things; engage in spiritual conversations, still talk to people who are lost; engage – you know, looks a little different but still do those things. Right? And so, there's excitement. There's energy around those things. And so, kind of both of those things together of, "Okay. How are we caring well for them? Are they able to talk and process?"
But also, we're still calling them for something. We're still calling them to grow, and all of those who care about youth and the next generation know – it's just such a unique season where God does so much not only in your life but also uses you in ways that older generations can't have certain conversations or go certain places in different ways, typically. And so, kind of trying to balance both of those factors together. And so, that's kind of one of the things we're seeing here at Impact 360 for all the students but also try to be mindful of kind of, "How you doing?" Process, "What are the things – are there any release valves we can give while at the same time still passing vision for moving forward in the future?" So trying to balance those two together.
Mikel Del Rosario: Mm-hmm. Are there new kinds of spiritual conversations that you see students wanting to have or in terms of how you prepare them to explain their faith to others? How has that been impacted?
Jonathan Morrow: Yeah. That's a good question. I think one of the things that we always try to do is, we always try to equip them to ask good questions in every conversation, obviously, and have clarity if they have opportunity to share the Gospel. So clarity around what the Gospel is. And I've found as we've talked about, you know, there's never been a better time to talk about things of eternal value and life that people are just awake to listen to or right and wrong or justice or, "that's not right," or, "That's not good,' and how God might play into that.
So kind of framing some of those conversations a little differently; just helping them navigate and ask questions. "Hey. How can I pray for you?" You can ask that question. And all of a sudden, 20 other things might come out, and then you're off into a different conversation with either a family member or a friend or roommate or somebody else. And so – or somebody on campus or on a different experience. And so, I think the questions – some of them are the perennials that are always still there.
You know? "Where is God in the midst of things that are disappointing for me in my life and/or purpose? And where does everything look different for me now? How do I navigate that?" So I think some of those things. Some of the existential kinds of questions are definitely forefront. But again. Also, "Hey. Is it true? What's the good news? Where's our help ultimately rooted?” In the resurrection, in the risen Jesus. Right? So he's risen. That's not changing. How do we then live that out in this moment that we're in?" So I think framing around that as we engage and we equip them to engage.
Mikel Del Rosario: Erin, when you're on campus, how much of a spectrum do you see between students who are just super isolated and, say, you know…people say like, “I’m a prisoner in my dorm," and then others who are like, “I'm so over this pandemic thing, and the college parties are going on?” How much of a split do you see in your ministry about how people are responding that way?
Erin Waller Roy: Yeah. I think the kind of critical part of your questions is the seeing. There are students that we will not see because of being on either kind of far end of that spectrum. So I would say that a lot of the fringe members that have been part of our Christian communities on campus, we're hoping to influence. We're excited they're in the room even if they aren't maybe at fully engaged; might fall into that first category you mentioned of, "You know, I’m taking another step back of social engagement." Or, you know, financially or personally they've had to take a physical step back from campus. Right?
They may have stayed remote this semester and not come back at all. But you're right. The other end of the spectrum is people who are pretty [laughs] over COVID and pretty over the experiences having on their campus. And I think you see probably those two extremes a lot in the media. I'd say the more of what I have actually seen on campus is in the middle. I've actually been really impressed with the series with which students have taken the precautions that they're asked to make on SMU's campus fairly often and seeing – you know, driving by, seeing students walking alone outdoors with masks on. You know? So choosing to engage in that kind of level of care even when they're on their own.
And I'd say the students who, again, are willing to take those risks for community – 'cause it is a risk, like, as we gather together in person. And it's also a risk to spend the time that they could take to dig into their studies and try to get ahead in some of the ways Jenny was pointing out. And for those students to risk spending that time with Jesus instead; spending and investing that time in Christian community. You have students this week at SMU doing outreach in person, on campus and also on Instagram. And those are risks that students are still called to take for the Gospel, even as they're balancing these safety questions. [Laughs] The COVID fatigue questions. And of course, like the election and all of the tension that's kind of looming in their worlds.
Mikel Del Rosario: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jenny, what are you seeing as you talk to teenagers about how they're processing. I know a lot of Gen Z students are angry right now. Where is that anger being directed towards? Mistrust of authority figures. How does all that play into what you're seeing in the counseling room?
Jenny Wang: Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking through – I mean, I have high school students and college students. And my counseling practice, I would say, the majority are actually not Christians. So maybe I can speak a little bit into the non-Christian Gen Z. Because I would love for, you know, people to reach out to [laughs] them, you know, in their anger. Yeah. I will say I have students who are in leadership positions in college, and they've having to tell other students to wear their masks. And that's a lot of pressure for a peer to have to do. I have clients who are – yeah. I mean, I think the anger has more to do with like the…a lot of division that we see. Right? Social justice issues. Things like that.
And so, as a counselor I had a friend of mind, a peer of mine, who said – colleague who said, "You know, our society is so focused on self-care. But really, what we're needing is community care." And I definitely see that with, you know – I'm hearing…I'm a little bit envious of the ministries because they have groups around them. I think a lot of non-Christian Gen Z's, they tend to be a little bit more isolated. It's hard to find that group – especially during this difficult time. I don't know if I answered your question at all, but I'm just thinking [laughs] of my clients and what you guys are sharing.
And I would love for there to be that kind of outreach for people who are struggling. And I think that, you know, my demographic is very different because my Gen Z clients that I see are…they are struggling with anxiety, are ones that are struggling with depression. And so I think when you talk about that anger, you know – depression, anxiety, there are some cognitive distortions there; which means that there's, you know, automatic negative thoughts that we're working through in the counseling office in our sessions. And they're needing community. They're needing people to kind of help them see that there are beautiful things out there, and there are people who want to spend time with them and want to be in community with them and want to share love with them. And I hope God's with them as well. I kind of went off on a tangent. I apologize for that.
Mikel Del Rosario: That's all right. Would you say that the anger that you're seeing is directed more towards the government, or it's parents, other authorities or just the whole situation? And how are they directing that anger?
Jenny Wang: Yeah. Can I say all of the above? [Laughs] Yeah. I would probably say…I mean, my theory – you're going to have me kind of go on another tangent. My theory of counseling is, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy – which is everything that is our thoughts – I do think that that's very…for Christians, we can look at the viable and challenge those automatic negative thoughts. Right? Into the truth and what the word says and what God says about our worth and our value and His love for us. But the other part of my counseling theory is something called attachment theory. And attachment theory has to do with connection and especially connection with our primary caregivers and how that translates in the future with those that we are in relationship with.
So, I mean, I think it all connects together in terms of, "Okay. Is anger directed towards government or parents or" – well, I think it's all….I would have to have a – so when they say that they're angry at the government, I need to dig a little bit deeper and say, "Where does that disconnect come from?" Right? "Is it something to do with, you know, a hurt that you have, a pain that you have from your childhood or from growing up? Well, let's work through that." Yeah. So I see – a client might come in with what we call a presenting problem. "Okay. You know, we're talking about angry specifically. Angry with society at-large. Well, there's a deep pain there that's connected to" – so I don't know if that answered your question. Yeah.
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. Lots to think about. It's a very complicated. I have a Gen Z kid myself, and we're all trying to figure it out right now. There's no textbook on how to parent through a pandemic like working with your Gen Z student.
Jenny Wang: Uh-huh.
Jonathan Morrow: Yeah. And each personality's different too. Right? 'Cause, I mean, some parenting is…so it's like one might respond in one way, and the same thing is not going to be helpful to another. And that's…
Jenny Wang: That is such a great point, especially if your child has anxiety. You know? You want to tell your child to toughen up. But that's not necessarily what they're needing. They need those steps. They need you to walk with them in terms – in helping them to take those steps working through things. That's a great point. Yeah.
Mikel Del Rosario: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh, there is a couple ways we could go here. [Laughs] There's so much to think about. Let me ask Jonathan this a minute. I want to come back to the comment that you just made. Jonathan, there is a Millennial pastor who tried to connect the two generations and kind of see what's different. And he says that for him being a Millennial pastor in a Gen Z ministry, he feels like for his generation, they needed to be told that, "No. You can't actually fix the whole world," and that you are – you do have weakness. But he feels that the Gen Z people need to be told that they can be strong. What do you think about that?
Jonathan Morrow: Yeah. It's a good question. So yeah. I think generally speaking, I mean – I think some of the idealism is like "Hey. You know, let's change the world. Let's also wash the dishes and clean up after ourselves along the way." You know, there's a Millennial – and again. That's a negative. That's all of us. But there's a step of only really big, visible things matter to the Lord as opposed…you know, if I didn't build my own nonprofit, start my own platform – if I didn't accomplish all these big, visible things, I haven't done anything.
Mikel Del Rosario: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Morrow: So I think there's some of that, obviously. And then, obviously you've got kind of the celebrity activism kind of piece in terms of Instagram influences or YouTube celebrity or whatever that might be. So there's a lot more of that. And even those are starting to shift in how people see things. But I think…I mean, my experience with students – and maybe it's just some of the students that we're around here – is, I do see a lot of strength. What I would impassion…but there's not as much clarity. I think there's more confusion about what to aim it at.
So for example. I think if I was going to put underneath it…I think there's a crisis of knowledge. We don't talk about that. That's kind of the under-the-surface kind of thing where I don't think many people think there's really moral and spiritual knowledge anymore. And because they make that assumption, things about purpose, right and wrong, goodness – all of those things, those are left to kind of, "Well, just do what you feel. You do you. You've going this culture of relativism," all this stuff. So you have people running to go do "good" quote-unquote in all sorts of directions. And they're slamming into one another. And then – so you've got those elements.
And so, you have the idealism, the pragmatism. Now you throw a global pandemic on top of that in this coming-of-age season. And so, I think you're seeing them strong in some ways and really hesitant in others. For example. I'll make one example. There's a big difference being judgmental and making evaluations. Nobody – I mean, none of us…no one I know, students, "Hey," wakes up in the morning, "Hey. Can I be please judgmental and self-righteousness." No one does that. Right? And yet, there's a real hesitance to offend. There's a real hesitance to evaluate. Because tolerance is seen as agreement in our culture.
And that's just not true. Tolerance is giving people the right to be wrong about things and then talking about those things. The strength in those conversions isn't happening as much for a lot of reasons; the social media, all of those kinds of things in terms of the way people kind of come after different people. So you see hesitance to be strong on the things that really, really matter. But you see strength in kind of this, "Well, this is who I am," this kind of self-definition piece. Which is really subjective, and that could be a really good thing, or it could be a really not-so-good thing according to God's good design, for flourishing, all that or not.
And so, you see this strange mix of kind of hesitancy and strength. And I almost wish they were flip-flopped where they were a little more hesitant on the self-perception identity pieces – you know, especially as a teen. Look. I mean, none of us had it figured out as teenagers. We're all starting to figure it out – you figure out new things at different stages about your identity. I would love to see a little less confidence there in terms of assertions about who I am for the next 60 years and a little more increase of confidence about what is good, what's true, what's beautiful, what's right, what's wrong, what I'm called to do objectively and lean into that.
And so, I think in discipleship I think that's a real gift we can give to Gen Z – is helping them spend time wrestling with those internal questions but also saying, “You know what? You can be confident in the direction of these.” And this is where a lot of fulfillment, meaning, purpose and goodness and hope is going to come, when you live that out. And you don't have to wonder about these core things. And so, that's kind of a broad way to answer your question. But that's how I would start – I would kind of parse some of those things out if that makes sense.
Mikel Del Rosario: Erin, who are you on your campus ministry encouraging students nowadays in terms of, how did you guys have to pivot in terms of the messaging? And how do you help people spiritually?
Erin Waller Roy: Like, we committed in every way possible. [Laughs] I mean, you guys are all parts of churches and ministry. So you know nothing feels the same as it was six or seven months ago. I'd say the biggest pivot I've seen is an increased desire to use and redeem social media in this season; particularly Instagram. Instagram just feels like a much bigger part of my world as a campus ministry practitioner than it did six months ago. So recognizing that students aren't going to wander down a hall, and the students that peek into a room, see an event, hear the music, see that these people like each other, maybe wander through the door. Instead, they're going to see our Instagram stories. They're going to see a peek into the ministry that happens that way.
And so, we've had to become a lot more self-conscious, I think in good ways, about how we represent our ministry, how we represent our hope in Christ through social media, and, "How do we encourage students to engage well with their peers where their peers are?" Which in this season is more online and is more in those spaces. Without [laughs] our students falling into some of the traps that Jenny was laying out. Right? Social media has a huge impact on this generation and how they see themselves and others so how do we have our students leaders on Instagram maybe daily sharing about the work we're doing within InterVarsity, inviting people into that community, creating a hospitable presence where people can engage without then also [laughs] going down this vortex of their own social media usage and managing perceptions of themselves?"
I think there's also been a shift…so as much as – I mean, we're an Evangelical organization. We're oriented towards outreach – like as Jenny describes her clients who don't have Christian community, I long to be in their lives. You know, long to make that available to them. But at the same time, we're trying to focus on, "who are the students who are coming?" How do we be faithful to discipling and developing the students who are learning to stay the course in this pandemic?"
I think a lot of that has been a trend we've been on the last few years but an increasing way to help students to look at spiritual disciplines and, "What are the building blocks of their daily life and walk with Christ?" I actually found one of my most enjoyable aspects of being a minister during the pandemic was, I felt like I got to talk about students' real lives with them at a deeper way than I had been, say, like in February [laughs] to March. Because now, we're talking about things like, "How are you using your cell phone? Are you reading the news? Like, is the news the last thing you're reading before you go to bed? Is Instagram the last place you are before you go to sleep? How do carve out space even there for prayer?
How do you set healthy limits to yourself to say, "I probably need to check on the global pandemic once today. And I might not need to check on it 15 times." And those are conversations I long to have with students in normal times, but the pandemic and I think students' awareness of their own spiritual and emotional needs give a lot of opportunity for having those conversations. And I think pivoting into talking more about spiritual disciplines, more about, 'how are we walking daily with Christ," has been a really important part of how our ministries have responded differently now than we were a year ago.
Mikel Del Rosario: Mm-hmm. Wow. Those are really practical things that we can take away from how you're now engaging with students. Sometimes social media gets a bad wrap for all the negative stuff, you know, and rants and fear of missing out and all that. And certainly, even today there's that going on where students are comparing themselves to, "How come these people are like hanging out at a party all by themselves with no masks," and what not, "And we're doing this with our families." So there's that. But there's also the positive ministry side that you guys are able to do.
So that's amazing. I want to come back to Jenny. I want to – there's so many things that I wanted to come back to. But let me just pick up one of these things. In terms of our messaging now, encouraging people to be strong and giving them hope in Christ, there was a college professor who, at their school, they said, "Hey. The exams are going to be optional at this point. But it's up to the prof." And so, the prof sent out this email that was like, "When this pandemic is over, you have to be able to look back and say, 'I was strong.' And so, we're not going to cancel our exams in the class." Well, apparently he had caused so much anxiety with that particular email he had to take it back and apologize for what he had written 'cause it had caused so much anxiety amongst his students. So my question is, "Is it ever harmful to tell someone to be strong?"
Erin Waller Roy: That's a good question. You know, I'm thinking about…who is it that wrote the Grace-Based Parenting?
Jonathan Morrow: Tim Kimmel.
Erin Waller Roy: Tim Kimmel. That's right. You know, I'm thinking about just his stories about when he prayed with his kids. You know, I've taken that with my children as well; to pray that God would help you be strong. Right? And I think, like – I don't think it's…I think that, yes, it can be harmful to tell our kids sometimes to be strong when –if they take it as an, 'I need to be strong on my own strength. Like, it's up to me because I'm feeling – if I'm feeling anxious right now, if I'm feeling like I can't cope with things right now" – I have a child who has panic attacks. And when he's having a panic attack, I start getting panicky.
So really, it's my own anxiety. Right? I start getting like…even as a counselor, sometimes I feel like I'm overwhelmed. Like, "How do I help them?" My natural, automatic thing I want to do is to tell him, "You can do it." Like, "You can be strong. Like, you can do it." You know? But I know that I need to work through my won anxiety, take a deep breath, tell him, "Let's pray about this together." You know, pray that, "God will help you feel" – but then help him with his coping techniques; help him breathe.
You know, just tell him, "One step at a time. He knows that if he goes outside that helps a lot. Like, if I can give him the tools and take him…you know, he's little still. He's still, you know, a young child. If I can help him, then I know that he's – it's my strength. Right? That's the thing. I think if I can share anything with our viewers, it's that as parents, as leaders, as adult leaders, we're the ones…our strength is what our kids are needing to lean on during this time. Our strength and God and Christ. Right?
And obviously that they don't have the tools right now as young kids or young adults. Their brains are still developing. What they say up until age 25, "We are their leaders that God has placed in their lives. We're the ones that can help them." One of the biggest things that I can tell my teen clients is, "You're not alone. I’m with you in this." Yeah. So I think if the message is, "You need to be strong on your own," then I think that can be difficult and hard and damaging. But if the message is, "You know, let's pray for God's strength in your," or, "I'm here. You're not alone," then I think that kid…that is supportive, and that is…yeah.
Mikel Del Rosario: That's good. Yeah. I go think we need to balance that. There is a realism that comes from admitting your weakness. But the call to be strong not in your own strength but with the Lord…that's a whole different thing. Right? So Paul can tell the Corinthians, "I boast in my weakness," but he can also say, "Stand firm the faith. Be courageous." Right?
Erin Waller Roy: That's right. Yeah.
Mikel Del Rosario: And we need to strength of the Holy Spirit really to do this. Yeah. It's just not something that we can do on our own. What are some-
Jonathan Morrow: And you can be courageous and still have, you know….be afraid of something. So both of those can co-exist in the same way that, you know, Jenny was talking about. And so, anyway.
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. No. That's a really good point as well. Yeah.
Erin Waller Roy: And if I can add on that…Mikel, am I allowed to interrupt you and add onto that?
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. Please.
Erin Waller Roy: [Laughs] I'd just say this has felt like such a unique time in ministry because, instead of leaning on the things that God has done in our own lives in the past and helping students walk through something I walked through as a college student however many years ago, I'm now helping students walk through something that I'm also walking through live and helping my staff walk through something that's live for me. It's not like I have, you know [laughs] cope-with-pandemic checked off my to-do list, and now I can help others.
But I think that that's a posture of Christian humility in which we get to lead to say, “Not, you know, these things were helpful to me a decade ago, but these things are helping me right now. I need to read the news less often and pray more often. And that's why I'm encouraging you to do that." And I think I've seen students really – I think students really enjoy getting to hear the realness of our own lives and walks with Christ in this season and that we're impacted by these things too; we're struggling with these questions too. And the kind of strength that Jenny is talking about is coming out because we're engaging with the Lord and because He is meeting us and He is providing for us in this season.
Mikel Del Rosario: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Really does give us the opportunity to come alongside and say, "We're going through this together, and let's ask the Lord to help us because we're all dealing with it in different ways." As parents, as students, teenagers. Jenny, how can you give advice to churches who want a better partner with mental health professionals? Because there are some things that pastors, youth pastors, recognize. They just don't have the clinical expertise to handle…so how would you encourage a church to be more proactive about partnering with mental health professionals?
Jenny Wang: Yeah. That's a great question. Thank you so much for asking it. So here in Frisco, we have partnered with Stonebriar. Stonebriar I think might be actually a great example. Because I think it was last year. Last year seems so long ago. It seems like five, ten years ago. But last year, they had a luncheon for just area counselors. And they, you know, just kind of said out there that they wanted to partner with the therapists in the area. And, you know, churches definitively are front lines. If you don’t mind me sharing the story, this kind of showcases the strength of this kind of partnership between churches and therapists.
I had a young teen who Stonebriar realized was having some difficulties and some struggles in life. And I saw her for, you know, a – maybe six or eight sessions that the church paid for. So that's another way that churches can come alongside, if that they have a fund that can help their congregation with therapy costs. And, you know, I saw her for a few sessions. And, you know, they went fine. She got the tools that she needed. And then, you know, a year later she was able to tell her parents, "I'm struggling right now with the pandemic. I think I need to go see Jenny again." You know?
And after the session, she was like, "You know, I can tell that I'm more ready for therapy than I was last year." You know, she was asked to go by the church. She saw some struggles. But that wasn't necessarily her choice. But this time, it was her choice. And to be able to say, "You know, I can ask for help when I'm struggling. And, you know, I have leadership. I have church leaders who will support that for me," I think is one of the joys that I have, you know, in what I do. So I would love for more area churches to be able to partner with Christian therapists that they trust and that they have a partnership with that we meet together regularly so that they know that we're not sharing anything that they don't want us to share.
Mikel Del Rosario: And can campus ministries and other peer church groups do that as well?
Jenny Wang: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I'm sure that a lot of them do. I also have some clients who have come through peer church organizations. Yeah.
Mikel Del Rosario: Well, our time is rapidly getting away from us. We got about five minutes left. Let me leave us with this question. I'll have each one of you respond to this. How can parents and adults who work with Gen Z or parents of Gen Z students – how can we help them cope with uncertainty and anxiety? Just some really, really practical tips. Let me start with Jonathan.
Jonathan Morrow: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. You know, I think a couple things. I think this is just a good principle in general – especially all of us who work with other students or in a ministry or a church context or a campus ministry or counseling. As a parent, sometimes we forget to have the lens that we would have if somebody else came and asked us the same question that wasn't in our immediate household, "How might we respond to them," without all the context and" – so meaning, like, if a student came to me and was struggling with X, Y or Z, what questions would I ask, and how would I relate to them? Would I be gracious and kind as a default? Right?
Because they're a student – they're somebody I'm trying to minister to. You know, sometimes in our own families we kind of skip that step of kind of that initial lens of kindness and awareness or even objectivity sometimes. I mean, I'll admit it as a dad, "Yeah. I'm close to this. I care about this." You know, at the same time, if a parent is watching this, it's good to say, "Just because my son or daughter is coming to me with a question or a doubt or an insecurity or an anxiety or something like that, it doesn't mean that everything is falling off the…I just say, "How are you doing? Tell me about that. Say more about that."
Draw them out. You know? "And tell me about – say more about that. Tell me more," is a great question. And just until they kind of keep talking. You know? And so, kind of that framing. Because in our – and then I'll be quiet because I know there's other great wisdom that you guys have more on this than me. But I think it's so easy sometimes because parent are so close they don't see it the same way as if they kind of stepped out of themselves a little bit and said, "Okay. Well, if my best friend's son or daughter came over and asked me the very same question or was struggling with the same thing, how would I relate to them?" I think that's just a good mindset shift to sometimes, you know, look at some of these things.
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. No. That's good advice. It comes to you not during office hours, right? It comes to you at 11:00 o'clock at night when your son or daughter wants to talk to you. And you're like, "I'm in the middle of something right now." But how would you approach that if that was somebody who came to you during your quote-unquote "ministry time"? Right? Erin, what would you say?
Erin Waller Roy: Oh. It's a good question, Mikel. For me, I think the bedrock – you're coming back to the basics with students. My own son is a toddler, so I can't speak to the parenting from that perspective. But I know with students – one of my best moments of this semester is sitting down with a student – Bailor, who I'm coaching – and saying, "You know, I'd love to spend some time in Scripture together today." And she said, "I was really hoping we would do some Bible study."
And that just pierced my heart, right, that I have all these practical things I want to talk to her about to help her succeed and thought, "No. I need to prioritize that we spend time together in Scripture," and that that's the place that we're coming back to as we do ministry and as she learns to walk with Jesus in the season. And so, I think coming back to those basics of, "How can I be praying for you? Where can we be in Scripture together?" Even in simple, basic [laughs] ways. It wasn't a fantastic, in-depth Bible study that day. But the very act that we're going to come back to the Lord with the things that are on our plates I think is how I've been served in this season and how I hope to serve others.
Mikel Del Rosario: Well, thanks for sharing that. Jenny, how would you respond?
Jenny Wang: Yeah. I love all our answers. They're all my subject. Mine will be what – specifically with anxiety is to move your body. [Laughs]
Mikel Del Rosario: Good point.
Jenny Wang: Yeah. You know, and it's neat. I think about David dancing, worshipping God. I think a lot of times we're so in our head – when anxiety's actually a very physical thing. We feel it very physically. So, I mean, I do this with my kids, with my clients. I would say move in some way; be aware of what you're – how you're feeling in your body. And dance. You know? And move around and walk around. And yeah. Be outside. [Laughs] It's okay to be outside right now. [Laughs]
Erin Waller Roy: Amen.
Jonathan Morrow: Yes. Go outside.
Mikel Del Rosario: Very good advice. Yeah. When the pandemic hit, I – to be honest, I'll be a little personal on the show and say I struggled with some anxiety as well. But the Lord really helped me through it. but part of that was, I became quite a fitness dude. [Laughs] And I just like running, working out every day pretty much, and I lost 20 pounds since the pandemic started. Kind of a latent function when you feel your heart beating a little harder, you're like, "Yeah. I felt this this morning when I was running."
So it just kind of helped a little bit. And so, that's certainly part of it; relying on the Lord. We need to point people to the hope we have in Christ and no just say we can do it on our own strength. So there's that Biblical humility that comes from recognizing our weaknesses and then the call to be strong but not in our own power but in the power of the Holy Spirit. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us on the show today. It's been amazing to have the three of you share your wisdom. Thanks, Jonathan.
Jonathan Morrow: All right. Thanks for having me. Great to meet you.
Mikel Del Rosario: And thank you, Erin.
Erin Waller Roy: Oh, a pleasure. Thanks.
Mikel Del Rosario: And thanks again, Jenny.
Jenny Wang: Thank you so much. That was so fun.
Mikel Del Rosario: And we thank you so much for joining us listeners and viewers once again on the Table today Please Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and we hope to see you again next time here on the Table where we discuss issues of God and culture.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, hello. I'm Bill Hendricks, the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center, and it's my privilege to welcome you to The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. And today the issue that we want to discuss is rather serious, having to do with domestic violence. And we want to particularly aim it toward women who are in the church and those who pastor those women. This is a topic that frequently doesn't get talked about, which is precisely why we wanted to bring it to bear here on The Table podcast. The Emory University School of Medicine, which defines domestic violence as it's commonly referred to as intimate partner violence, but points out that 85% of the victims of domestic violence turn out to be women and a woman is beaten every nine seconds in our culture. And every year, nearly 5.3 incidents of intimate partner violence occur among US women 18 and older.
And yet most of those incidents are never reported to the police. And even despite that under reporting roughly half of all calls to police departments are domestic violence calls. And only one in five of those victims with physical injuries seek professional medical solutions. So this is a major problem, but it's under the radar problem. And yet if you're a pastor or a church leader, you have in your congregation and in the folks that you're trying to work with on a daily basis, whether you're aware of it or not, women who are suffering from domestic violence. And to help us unpack this and begin to think about it both from a theological standpoint as well as a pastoral standpoint, we have my colleague, Dr. Robert Duckworth with us. Dr. Duckworth is the Director of Counseling Services as well as Adjunct Professor of Counseling Ministries here at the seminary. Robert, thank you for being on The Table.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Glad to be here and to be able to share in this conversation on such an important topic.
Bill Hendricks:
So maybe just as a way of jumping in, because you're a counselor, if it's under reported and it's below the radar, what are the signs that you look for when it comes to abuse? How do you even end up knowing if somebody's suffering from this?
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Oftentimes, Bill, we don't know unless it … It usually would come out through a number of sessions where you would sit down with someone and you have to have built that level of trust for them to even bring it to the surface. I mean, you can suspect things, but it could be any number of types of trauma that one has experienced that you can see in their countenance in terms of a depressive look, flat affect, not much emotion could be signs, but that could be signs of any other thing. So really you won't know it until it's really verbally shared. Typically, you're not going to see any physical signs. Now, you might make that assumption if someone wears sleeves or something often or something like that, but it really has to come out and it has to come out through some trust in that counseling setting.
Bill Hendricks:
So the leader, the pastor, really has to engender that trust. And I guess that begs the question, if you have any thoughts of how a pastor might do that, because you've obviously got a bit of a power differential there.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
I could see a parishioner, a member of a church not even wanting to share that with their pastor because of the big S word. Shame. Not wanting to share that. And it depends on what pastors we're talking about. A senior pastor would probably miss this all together. If they're mostly preaching, doing leadership activities, they may not even see it. It's those pastors that actually get involved and if it's more of a smaller congregation where they're able to get involved with doing some pastoral counseling, they may have an opportunity to see that once they've built those relationships, built those alliances, that rapport with those members, they may do it. So if it goes under the radar to us and we're sitting with them and it takes a number of sessions or really a strong relationship, it's going to be very difficult for a pastor.
Bill Hendricks:
A senior teaching pastor.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Oh, absolutely. That would be very difficult for them to see. So it's probably going to be more of a pastoral care person doing those types of-
Bill Hendricks:
Maybe even a small group leader.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Small group leader. Those are very important. Those are very important in terms of seeing those things.
Bill Hendricks:
And I take it it might be the case where let's say a woman, she really wants to unburden herself, but she's not quite ready to do so. She might actually come in and present a different problem like, "I want to talk about my son today." And there may be some issues with her son, but behind that, she's testing to see is this person safe enough to tell what I really would like to share.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
It is so interesting that most recently … And I don't very careful when I talk about most recent situations, but I'm not talking about a counseling situation, but just talking with some of my supervisees, those that work under me as counselors at various sites. So no one can ever narrow this down to who's he talking about, because it happens all the time. People come with what we call presenting concerns, and it's exactly what happens. The presenting concern is, I don't know how to control my kids. Well, who does know how to control their kids?
Bill Hendricks:
I don't like the music that they're singing in the choir.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. And they bring that, but then they're building that trust. And we have those conversations all the time in our counseling practicum courses where it's like, well, what's the real root of this client's issue? What are they coming for? But it requires patience, long suffering, being there with the client, being present with them to get them to that point where they feel comfortable saying, "You know what, it's something else I've been wanting to talk to you about." It doesn't always come out that clean, but it does come out like that. But it takes time. Rapport.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, you mentioned the term shame, which certainly has emotional, psychological components to it, but shame also has some spiritual dimensions to it. And it strikes me that there's a number of spiritual dynamics in play here that I think pastors need to particularly be aware of because they are indeed concerned with matters of the spirit. And shame is one, fear would be one. I'm afraid that if I unveil this, bad things are going to end up happening on the backside. This news are going to get out. And if I thought I had it bad before, once he finds out about this, it's going to get worse. Or guilt, like I feel like I've done some things that invited what I got. Say I got sexually abused. Well, I've convinced myself that maybe I came on real strong with this person and it got out of control and now I feel really guilty even though I've basically got abused. Or worthlessness, like this has been going on for a while and I've just come to think that I'm a piece of trash, that I don't matter. All of those are matters of the spirit. Seems to me a pastor has a vital role to play in all those, but they've got to be sensitive to how they deal with those.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. And you've unpacked a lot there. So that whole action that we hear all the time in these scenarios like this or people just talking about abuse that they've experienced, trauma they've experienced from the past, even as children, it's easier, Bill, to sit in there and say, I did something wrong so that it gives me the power to say, I can control this. I wasn't out of control. I wasn't unable to control the situation. I could have controlled this. And that somewhat gives them that temporary sense of … But it's a false sense of power in that scenario. And then we have to be aware of those things.
Our pastor's not going to recognize that because they're not trained to recognize those things. But environments like this create some awareness that that may be a little bit more of what's going on under the surface and that's where the pastors can refer out. Even some pastoral counseling could reveal a lot of this. It just depends on the pastor and who has that heart for counsel. That's why I'm always so encouraged when our pastoral students and THMers are coming and saying, "I want to take some counseling courses." Because it's going to create that awareness. But yeah, you're unpacking something where that person is really trying to control that situation and take the onus off of the perpetrator, put it on themselves so that they feel a sense of that I didn't lose control. But they did and it was nothing they could do about that. And so we have to unpack all of that.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I can see taking that control puts them in a real bind because if they had control, then the question becomes, well, how come then you let that happen? Oh, well now they feel more shame.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Then it becomes that cycle. That cycle of that. And it's very difficult. But when an individual does that, they're only doing what they know how to do on their own. It's survival. It's really a form of survival for them.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow. Well, there's many directions we could go here. Let me go in the direction of, you mentioned the pastor may want to refer out and then others may have had some training before they refer out. So I assume there's somewhat of a continuum there of the pastor's, I don't want to just say ability, but really by rights, when should they refer out and how far can they go based on what they've already been trained in? How do you guide a pastor in that area?
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
There's really two types of counsel that we can render to an individual. It's pastoral counseling and then there's clinical counseling. And to differentiate those two, clinical counseling are those like myself that went to school and were prepared, received licensure. Not always licensing, but typically it's licensed and you have some responsibility to a professional organization like the American Counseling Association, American Psychological Association. But you have standards, you have all of those practices that come within that organization and within that profession.
Bill Hendricks:
And we're talking hours and hours and hours of preparation, right?
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Hours and hours and hours. It's a lot of those. It kind of brings back, triggers some things for me. But it's all of those, but you're learning those clinical skills, practicing those different theories of counseling. Cognitive behavioral, solution focused, narrative therapy, that's my thing. Person-centered therapy. All of those theories. And there are techniques, clinical techniques that go along with that. And when you're practicing those, what we call evidence-based approaches to serving clients, that comes out of the psychological community, that comes out of that theory. Pastoral counseling on the other hand, very important. I always used to tell my pastoral counselors that were on staff, "This is not a less than counseling. You may have an opportunity to go a lot further than others will be able to go because you're not mandated by a licensing board to say what you can and cannot do. You still have some ethics, absolutely. Pastoral ethics. But you're not mandated by those type of ethics."
And so those individuals may be able to have more contacts with a client, talk to them or the phone, checking in with them, bringing in other advisors as a pastoral counselor with the client's permission or the person's permission. We're a bit more limited by that, but we have to really remain objective. So that's where the clinical and the pastoral differentiates. But a lot of times we can come alongside one another and do some really good work with our clients. And so with those scenarios, when a pastor sees that it's clinical and it requires some further training than they've received as a pastor in terms of theoretical training, therapeutic technique, they need to refer out. It's very important that they refer out in those particular scenarios.
Bill Hendricks:
I don't know if this is the best analogy, but it is this akin to somebody who's an EMT, an emergency medical technician, who arrives on the scene of an accident and I can get you to the hospital. I can keep you alive and get you to the hospital. But now I got to turn you over to the brain surgeon who's going to help with the wound to your head or whatever.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
I'm going to steal that from you as I describe the purpose of counseling. That is a beautiful illustration. Because you're going to be … Not saying you, but the pastor could be that first point of contact. People don't just wake up and say, "Let me go talk to a counselor." They don't even know where the counselors are.
Bill Hendricks:
But they know who the pastor is.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
But they know who the pastor is. For the context that we're talking about, the demographic we're talking about, there's trust in the pastor. They trust the word that's coming from the pulpit. They trust the counsel that has been given to elders and others there. And those individuals are a great point of contact on the scene. And when they recognize it, I have a place for you to go. That's a wonderful illustration right there.
Bill Hendricks:
So it seems to me it behooves any pastor or somebody who's in a pastoral role to have taken some effort to find folks like yourself, professional clinical counselors as a referral base so not if but when these situations come along, to be able to say, "Listen, I know someone that I've checked out and have a lot of confidence in that I'd like to put you with because I really think they can take this way beyond what I'm going to be able to do."
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
And I've experienced that. I've been on the receiving end of that. As a counselor, one of the first locations where I did that was with a church where the pastor came to me shortly after I graduated and said, "I believe that's something our church could use." And having that referral base to go to, it got to the point where I was actually able to just go to the church every weekend, Fridays or Saturdays or both, and sit down with clients and be available. And they were able to bring me in, contract with me to do some counseling with the parishioners there. I was not a member, so there were no dual relationships and I was able to do my supervised hours there and all of that. And they had someone that could go beyond. The pastor might have met with him a couple of times, may have met with a couple in terms of just the marital piece, and then saw that there were some other issues with the individual spouses in there.
And so knowing that and having that referral base, and it has made a tremendous difference. My former church, we did the same thing. We contracted with a counseling center and I was over pastoral care shortly after I graduated, and I knew I couldn't counsel the folks in my own church cause of my restrictions. But I was able to get our people to a location where they could get those services and I as a pastoral care personnel could recognize those issues and say, "Hey, let's get them in to talk with someone else." And now you've got a wonderful evangelistic approach to reach out and really deal with the whole member versus preaching to them every Sunday, which they must have. I don't want to get away from that. And God wants us to be able to work in their lives and do some of that James 2 work, give them what they need.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, to borrow a phrase from a premarital counselor that I once heard, he said we need to make use of what he called the extended resources of the body of Christ. And so yeah, there's a lot at church within the four walls that can be tremendously helpful from a pastoral standpoint, but oftentimes we need to make use of believers who are outside those four walls but have the same faith commitment, the same commitment toward wholeness and holiness and healing, but also have training to go into some of those deeper waters.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Yeah, absolutely.
Bill Hendricks:
And that's the extended resources of the body of Christ.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Great analogy of that extended resource. And that's what we see ourselves as is … I used to, when I would work with our students on that, I would talk to them about those very things. Is that when it talks about it in James 2, giving people what they need for the body and we can't merely tell them to go in peace, be warmed and be filled about your domestic abuse scenario. We have to give you what you need. I think that principle applies to counseling very much so because now we're able to give our parishioners what they need to take care of their presenting concerns. And those extended resources are so very important. And I just believe when churches do … And this is by no means what I'm trying to say or communicate, but if you want to see your church grow, take care of some people.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Because it's out there
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
And they need it. Because we should care for the sheep. We don't know who these individuals could be as kingdom builders, but we have to help them get through their presenting concerns and that could be a domestic violence situation.
Bill Hendricks:
Let me ask a technical question before we jump into some deeper things. You mentioned the word ethics. I know if a church leader discovers say that a child is being abused, they have a legal responsibility to report to the authorities. Does that extend to a parishioner who's an adult, they know abuse is taking place on a regular basis? Are they beholden then to report that to anybody?
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Morally, yes.
Bill Hendricks:
It's a moral thing.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
When you are a part of an organization … And I would go and research this. Do like the Bereans, go and make certain-
Bill Hendricks:
There you go. Yeah.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Make certain I know what I'm talking about. But typically where I've seen it is when you're in an organizational capacity whereas you're a ministry leader serving in a church and you learn of abuse with minors, you have an obligation as what we call a first … My goodness. I don't know why it's just escaping me. You're a mandatory reporter. You're a mandatory reporter to report those things to the appropriate authorities that that abuse is going on in those situations. Now, technically with an adult that's married, you're not-
Bill Hendricks:
You're not obligated.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Obligated in those situations. But then it becomes a moral-
Bill Hendricks:
A matter of conscience.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Yeah. A matter-
Bill Hendricks:
Do I keep my mouth shut?
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Exactly. And I think a lot of times that does happen, but a lot of times when those individuals feel that comfort level, that trust level with you as just a fellow parishioner, then they'll say, "You know what, I think I need to talk to someone about this." And then that person can then in turn take them to someone in the church that's in leadership to assist with that. Giving them that type of support and what have you. But yeah, we would hear about things even as counselors. When it's an adult in an abusive situation, we can recommend you go get some help, but there's no marriage protective services like there is child protective services. That's a whole different ballgame right there.
Bill Hendricks:
All right. Well, let me open up a can of worms here.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
More worms. Go ahead.
Bill Hendricks:
And this, we almost need to devote a whole podcast to this at some point with somebody. But you get here, I would think, into the issue of church discipline where these two folks, let's say are members of your congregation, and this comes to light to you as a leader. How does the church hold, in this case, the spouse accountable to say, "Hey, look, what you're doing with your wife is not really acceptable. This is not loving your wife as Christ loved the church." And I realize there's going to be a whole spectrum of how churches want to deal with that. But I'd welcome any thoughts or input you have on that one.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
I mean, I think you can follow that Matthew 18 model to work through that trying to restore. We're always working towards restoration.
Bill Hendricks:
Exactly.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Child Protective Services works on restoring the child back to their family. Well, we better as a church work on restoration, but it doesn't always work that way because the Holy Spirit has to move in that person's heart. And if they are unrepentant about that situation, church discipline is very, very appropriate. I want to encourage churches to have it in your bylaws or in some writing that we do render church discipline.
Bill Hendricks:
You got to make it clear.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Make it very clear, because we live in a very litigious society. But I think we have a lot of freedoms in those areas to say we do church discipline. And that would absolutely fall under church discipline. If that person is in leadership, they can't remain in leadership. You're not following the directive of Ephesians 5. You're not honoring the institution established in Genesis 2. So absolutely. I think that we just need to have those things written out, spelled out when we're planning churches, when we're talking about, well, you have to have all of those things now because you are now an organization.
Bill Hendricks:
And make it clear to people when they join.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. Oh yeah. That this is what we do. Even that can help mitigate some behaviors perhaps. It's not going to clear up domestic violence in a church, but it lets them know that we as a church take this serious and we are not sweeping this, as the world believes we do, up under the rug. We're not doing that. And I think it's a good way to take that very serious.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, it seems to me this is one place where some of the other men in the church could be invaluable to come around a brother again, with the view to restore, not to beat up on. But to say, "Hey brother, we want to come alongside you. There's clearly some stuff going on here and we're with you in this, but we also want to keep you from abusing your wife here."
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. It's great opportunity for doing further ministry. And it's there. It's in our churches. It's on our church. We kind of chatted about that before. If you look at a church and certain sizes, there's somebody in that audience that's experiencing that.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. There's many somebody's in a large church.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Oh yeah. Absolutely.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I want to get into the question of the roots of this, because I'm guessing that both for many women who find themselves in abusive relationships, this didn't necessarily start in that relationship. That it has tentacles that go sometimes all the way back into childhood. I'm also guessing that for the abuser, it's quite similar. That they also have a pattern that goes back into childhood. Talk about either of those two sides. First the woman.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Well, we plausibly, it could be if one's … This is just an if scenario. If one witnessed those types of behaviors, they might not have even witnessed physical abuse, but if they were one that lacked affirmation, some type of autonomy in their growing up or rearing, they may be susceptible to a lower self-esteem. And it almost seems spiritual, man. That-
Bill Hendricks:
It's the worthlessness piece.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
That this is what I have to accept I can do. And then it's almost like they find these people. Now, if you want to look at it from a truly theological perspective, the enemy leads them in that direction. And they find these individuals and then they perpetuate that what they've experienced for most of their life, if not all of their life. And I have seen scenarios where they go from one … It's a pattern, a theme. They go from one relationship to the next that has some-
Bill Hendricks:
Abuse.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Some abuse of some level. And they may not have even experienced or witnessed physical abuse, sexual abuse or anything growing up. But they end up in those scenarios with one that has those traits. So that could very well be the case, or it could be a woman that just literally married a bad guy.
And it just happens. It does happen like that a lot. Had a very good home. And see, a person that's coming from a very good home, Bill, they may be completely naive that, hey, I can trust whomever. And then they find themselves in that situation. For a guy that may be the perpetrator of domestic violence or abuse, may have witnessed that. And now this is that person's opportunity, that man's opportunity to exert power. Or they've witnessed a father who was abusive. Or mother. It could be vice versa. That was verbally abusive to the dad. And this is my way to combat that. This thing between our ears, man, it gets all mixed up. And the way we process things and the way it comes out, it can just come out any kind of way. It's kind of like a dream. If you take in all this information throughout your life and then you dream this crazy dream and it comes into a narrative of some sort through a story for those few seconds you dream at night.
That's how it happens, is that all of this that you've taken in comes out and it comes out and sometimes the dream doesn't make sense. Sometimes the behaviors don't make sense and that's what comes out. And so it could be the result of that type of behavior that they've witnessed or they were just never told no as a child. Be careful when you're-
Bill Hendricks:
You're angry.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Very permissive and letting children do whatever they want to do because they think they can take that into any scenario. And I can think of children, and I'm not even thinking of children I've ever even spent a second of time counseling them. Watched them in children's sports and the way the parents catered to them. I don't know if I'd want my daughter to marry that person or date them. Because it's that mindset of expectation. And so I would say almost always, there's a family of origin challenge that comes into that. We have to always investigate that at least. There's no guarantee in that. Let me be very careful in saying that. But it's highly probable that something in the home has created that.
Bill Hendricks:
And so let's say to the woman who perhaps is experiencing this, I assume that going into counseling, part of the discovery process in that counseling engagement is to go back and revisit some of those ancient wounds from her past, or in the case of the gentleman, to go back and revisit some of those ancient wounds because that's really the source of what's driving this behavior in the present.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely.
Bill Hendricks:
And so they can just expect that that's really part of what the counseling is about, is to help you unpack that stuff.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
I'll say eventually.
Bill Hendricks:
Eventually. Yeah. Because it's an excavation.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Oh, it's building rapport. I mean, first thing, if you take someone that's been in an abusive relationship, the first thing we have to do is meet … You've probably heard about the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Just that level of safety. Do you have a place to stay? Where can you go? Where can we get you to? Or what can the church do to get you to those services? Churches need to have a list of those battered women's shelters that are available. We have those. We have lists of those. We have students working in practicums in these locations, doing those things. So I mean, that's something many of us here have access to and a lot of churches would. But just researching that, having a pastoral care person know where those places are to meet just those basic needs. She may not have food. How is she going to take care of her children? We have to meet those needs by just recommending those. And I think a pastoral person could jump right in there and do those things. Because there's this whole notion now that counselors are having to become more social workers now. We're having to broker services for our clients, which is not wrong, and do that advocacy work.
Bill Hendricks:
It's just more on top of what you thought you were supposed to do.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. Because we want to be objective in as many opportunities … I was reading a textbook the other day. The fewer the contacts you have with a client outside of counseling, the better because you want to be objective and focused on just that particular scenario. However, a pastoral person can go a little bit further in those areas and help them meet those needs and then from there, just literally being present with the client. That's where you're listening. Not doing what Job's friends did. You need to listen, be present, affirm, create those scenarios where you're able to ask those questions. Well, what would help you in this situation? What do you think would make things better for you right now? And that now puts some autonomy in their lap to say, "You mean to tell me I now have a voice in that which could make things better for me?"
Yeah. That's what this environment is for. And being able to do that, a pastoral counselor could do that. A clinical counselor could do it. And then putting them in that place and then affirming them when they come up with their own ideas of what to do. And we're not in the business of telling you what to do. We're just in the business of creating a space where you feel that autonomy that you probably never have felt. And then just listening to people. I thought one of the silliest things I ever heard in a counseling methods class with Dr. Martin when I was a student here was there's healing in the telling. I said, "Wait a minute. I'm a counselor. I'm supposed to get in here and help people." No. I cannot tell you how many times I've had to eat those words or those thoughts about that just being something that was just a bunch of psycho mumbo jumbo.
And I have apologized to my former professor about that and told her, I said, "That works." There's healing in the telling. And clients have come back to me afterwards and said, "I don't know what it was about today, but it just felt good to say something and talk to you about it." And we have to create those environments where they can do that. Whether it's pastoral, the senior pastor who has time to do this, which is few and far between, or a clinical mental health professional. So I think giving them that space.
Bill Hendricks:
So you're back to the issue of trust, really.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Trust, absolutely. And that has to be built to give them that space and then walking them through. Then I think that's where you can get into the story. I'm a narrative therapist, so I believe-
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, tell us a little more about that.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Yeah. I believe in working through a narrative therapeutic process where we eventually hear the client's story. Some situations you can sit down in the first session and say, "Tell me your story." And that client begins to unload and unpack that. But the goal of the narrative therapist is to try to find some themes in there. What are some things that we keep hearing? Point those out to the client or ask the client, "What do you keep hearing? What do you keep hearing yourself say?" And then they pick up, "Well, I've never thought about it. That I find these relationships where I feel less than, that I don't feel worthy of being in it, and I have to settle. I felt like that when I was choosing a sporting team or a sport that I could play. I played things that I felt like I could do well in, but I never tried things that I would've been challenged in." Themes. When we look for those themes.
But our goal is also to help them look for those places of resiliency. Where were you able to be strong? Well, how can we apply that here now? That doesn't mean you stand up to your abusive husband. No. That's telling a person to go in and put themselves in harm's way. But it at least empowers them to say, there are things I can do. So I'm big on narrative and helping a client rewrite their story. Now you'll get a lot of flack about that in the theological world. Well, the Lord helps. Well, of course he helps us write our story. But-
Bill Hendricks:
First he's got to have a story to work with.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Have a story to work with, and God uses us. He uses a multitude of counselors to support in that particular area. So I love that narrative therapy. I fell in love with that many years after I finished my program and that's what I lean into quite a bit now.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I'm on the same page there with you. I believe that the best way to understand people is not really through psychometrics. They have their place, but through story. And people are literally a character in a novel that they're living out a story in front of you. And just like every good novel, there's a beginning, a middle and end. There's all these different chapters, all these different scenes. And the person's usually never read their own story.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
And they haven't.
Bill Hendricks:
They need somebody to help them go back and tell that story.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. And that's ministry. That's ministry walking alongside. And God is the author of our stories. He allows things and he allows … Not but. And he allows those of us, whether it's in a spiritual formation setting with our lead process here in our leadership institute here, or a center for leadership here, wherever, walking people through their stories. It's a beautiful thing. I don't know why I didn't discover it way before now, but it has taught me so much.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and that God redeems stories. It's like Joseph and his brothers. You intended it for evil. God meant it for good.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Perfect biblical example.
Bill Hendricks:
But he was able to see the whole narrative.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
And had to experience.
Bill Hendricks:
And had to experience the whole narrative.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
That we don't always like-
Bill Hendricks:
The good, the bad, the ugly.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
We don't always like going through. Because the Bible is narrative. I think we can definitely compliment that theory with our biblical narrative. And that's encouraging oftentimes for our clients, particularly in my work as a director of counseling at the seminary, where students understand both sides of the coin.
Bill Hendricks:
You mentioned safety when it's a … We're in the crisis in the moment and this woman desperately needs relief immediately safety from the abuser. And you mentioned there may be a place where she and her children go and stay for a season. So I take it from that that sometimes it really is in order to put a bit of separation between the person and their abuser.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. Has to be that. Safety. You have to take care of that because we never get anywhere.
Bill Hendricks:
And so what you would not do is counsel somebody, "Well, you just got to go back in there and do the best you can."
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
I won't ever do that. I don't believe I'd be led by the Holy Spirit to do that. I mean, I can't say what the Holy Spirit would do, but I've never had the Holy Spirit tell me to do something like that. It's not safe. Absolutely I would not advise anyone to go into a situation that was harmful or their life is in danger, or it could just cause a further demise. It could even lead to suicide or something like that. So absolutely not in those scenarios because that marriage, that abuser is not following the principles of scripture. I just shared a message a couple weeks ago at my church about how your marriage is in the Christian context, ought to not be this thing where people just be something where people say, "Well, I want to have a marriage like Robert and Asara." Or whomever and have these long … No, no. The goal of our marriages ought to be to glorify God to the point that people look at our marriages and say, "I want to have a relationship with Jesus Christ because of the way I see a marriage and how it reflects that relationship between God and his people."
A domestically abusive marriage does not reflect an evangelistic marriage. And I'm not saying I advise anyone, "Go get a divorce. You need to leave him." Or leave her or whomever. No. We got to get you to safety because that's not honoring God at this point. And we pray for that restoration. But they do have free will and they have to yield to the Holy Spirit in those particular scenarios. So no, I would not advise anyone to go back to an abusive situation at all. But I've heard of horror stories where people have been advised, stay and-
Bill Hendricks:
Just take it.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Take it. And that doesn't make any sense.
Bill Hendricks:
It's hard to see Jesus telling somebody that.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
I just don't see it. I don't see him do it. And we'll get our naysayers. But I'm trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit, and I'm trusting in the inherent word of God to drive my Christian ethic to say, I can't do that.
Bill Hendricks:
So I'm going to ask you a very difficult question here.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Okay. That's common.
Bill Hendricks:
Because I'm just thinking through this couple, and she's really scared and really has taken a lot of abuse and he's got an anger issue or whatever his issue is that keeps him doing this. And I think about, okay, we've got them separated here, but now goes to hard work of how do we put this thing back together? And my question sort of boils down to the lion's share of the burden here, is it on her or is it on him that something's got to happen inside to make this work?
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
I would think it would be him because he's the perpetrator of those-
Bill Hendricks:
So God's got to do some real serious surgery on this guy's part.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
And he can do it. We serve a God that can do it. We serve a God that can do it. He has redeemed sex offenders. He has deemed murderers. He can-
Bill Hendricks:
He can redeem abusers.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Abusers.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Does it happen? Yes, it happens. Have I seen it happen a whole lot? No. Because people choose to stay in their depravity. But yeah-
Bill Hendricks:
Here's where we really got to … Yeah, we want to come around her, but we really got to come around him too.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. And I see the onus being more so on him because he's the one that's perpetrating that. In the scenario that we're talking about here. That's not to say that women cannot be abusive to their husbands. Happens every day. But we're talking about in the context of this hangout time between you and I, men being abusive towards women. He's creating this scenario. He's yielding to the enemy on such behavior. He has to be converted. And it will take the … At the end of the day, if he has an anger issue and he gets on medication, the psychiatrist prescribes medicine, an anger management counselor or group counselor has to offer counseling and they support him, ultimately my biblical worldview drives me to believe it's going to be God that makes that change. And so we can put it like this, Bill, the psychiatrist plants, the counselor waters. But every time God's going to be the one-
Bill Hendricks:
God's going to increase.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
He's going to do that increasing there. But it's whether God chooses to move in that direction, the sovereign God, what he does. But a person can always choose to stay in their depravity. There's a hell for a reason. Cause somebody's not going to accept what he says.
Bill Hendricks:
But it does strike me that for many men that may be the first time in their life they've ever come to grips with the thought that God is actually for them, not against them.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. Oh, absolutely.
Bill Hendricks:
That's the gospel.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
That is the gospel. And I've seen enough of that in just prison ministry seeing that. And going in and seeing that he loves you and he's still wanting you. He's pulling you and drawing you to him. Do you accept? And I think that's where the challenge is. And a lot of people don't want to hear us say that, but that's real. We have to-
Bill Hendricks:
That's the gospel.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
It's the gospel. Had it not been, the problems I have Bill-
Bill Hendricks:
Well, none of us would be here.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
I wouldn't be here at all.
Bill Hendricks:
Robert, thank you very much. Our time has flown by, but this was just a boatload of very helpful information and encouragement as much as anything. Thank you very much.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Thank you for having me.
Bill Hendricks:
Thank you for your work.
Dr. Robert Duckworth:
Absolutely. Glad to. It's kingdom work, so I'm excited about doing it. Thanks for having me.
Bill Hendricks:
You're welcome. Thanks for being with us. And thank you for being with us on today's Table podcast. And we invite you, whatever your platform is that you receive this on, that you subscribe and join us again next time on The Table podcast. I'm Bill Hendricks. Have a good day.
Kasey:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendricks Center, and today, our discussion is on trauma. So we're joined by my guest, Dr. Andi Thacker. She's associate professor of counseling ministries at DTS. I know you've been on the show a lot, but thanks for being back with us today.
Andi:
Thanks for having me.
Kasey:
Yeah, I'm excited for this conversation. This is a topic that has been really prevalent in society recently. People are talking all about trauma and have a lot of different ideas floating around. So the hope is for listeners after this conversation to just be a little bit more informed, a little bit more understanding. We're not going to train people to treat trauma on this episode. Obviously, we're going to leave that to the professionals, but the hope is that people will just have a better understanding and maybe we'll address some misconceptions along the way. So why don't we start off by talking about how you got interested in this topic, Andi, and why would this matter for people?
Andi:
Yeah. Well, when I was first out of seminary, my first job was at a psych hospital, and I noticed pretty quickly a trend that all of my patients there had some sort of trauma, generally childhood trauma. And about a year after that, I started my doctorate at North Texas and started working with kids, and thought, "Oh wow, if we could catch some people upstream, then maybe they could have some healing prior to adulthood and not have to have a hospitalization." They're appropriate when they're needed, but it can be kind of cumbersome at time, so it really piqued my interest. And then I really think all helping professionals got into their profession with a little piece of them wanting to fix their family, and that's a part of it for me. My family has been affected by trauma, so I have a heart for those who are hurting.
Kasey:
Yeah, absolutely. How would you define helping professionals?
Andi:
So counselors, even at times, pastors, pastoral care, social workers, psychologists, doctors, nurses, anyone who cares for the physical, emotional, or psychological needs of people.
Kasey:
Yes, yes. That's such a needed thing in society, like you said, because a lot of times, it's so prevalent with people that we know, people that are close to us in whatever kind of relationship capacity. So just to lay the groundwork, how would you define trauma?
Andi:
Well, trauma's a big word, and I think people hear that and they think what we would define as big T trauma, like a really big massive event like a natural disaster or physical or sexual or emotional abuse that's ongoing. But really, trauma is anything that stuns or shocks the system, and it's too much or too little, so much so that it sends a person's nervous system into fight or flight or into shutdown. So it could be witnessing something violent on TV for a kid. It could be losing someone's best friend. It could be any number of things that we don't always think of as traumatic, but it was too much for the nervous system at that time.
Kasey:
That really broadens the view. It's not just the things that are really big deal that we normally think of. You alluded to Big T trauma. What is that opposed to or what is that contrasted with?
Andi:
Yeah. So a big T trauma would be like a school shooting or domestic violence or intimate partner violence that's ongoing. Little T trauma would be something like a move, and it maybe is a good move, like a family's moving to a new house and it's going to be exciting, but it's still a loss and maybe it's unfamiliar for the kids, or they left friends behind, or any number of things that maybe doesn't stick out to us as that big of a deal.
Kasey:
But the fact that it can affect someone's nervous system in a similar way is what makes it able to be called as trauma. Could you unpack for us a little bit more, what is it that's happening in the person's brain and body? You said fight or flight mode, but what else is happening to someone when they experience trauma?
Andi:
Well, God made us to survive, so our bodies and our systems are hardwired for survival and that is always the first default. And because of how God made our brains, we are constantly taking in every experience we have and cataloging it, and all of this is happening below our conscious level of awareness. And every time we go into another situation, our brains are quickly and subconsciously looking through all of that previous experience, and based on what we experienced, is anticipating what's going to happen in the future. And so if you've had an experience that stuns you or shocks you as too overwhelming to the system, the body is going to move into survival mode and it will first try to do either fleeing, so that's when we talk about flight, or it will fight.
So you have to shape someone in to have their default to fight. Our automatic default is to flee. If you can't fight or flight your way out of a situation, then you will drop down in what's called immobilization. And sometimes, people go into what's called fawning, and fawning can be an over pleasing, people pleasing, or immobilization is shut down. And so at immobilization, that's freeze. The body tries in many ways to get small and to be invisible or will begin to shut down in anticipation of death. And at those different levels, a person's ability to connect and to learn new things is diminished tremendously. All energy and all focus is now on how do I survive this experience?
Kasey:
That's huge. So to expect someone to do some other level activities like thinking, learning new things, their capacity for that is so diminished by their need, their hardwired impulse to survive. Like you said, that's the way that God created us and gave us some really interesting capacities for things. Can you speak a little bit to how that affects the brain if perhaps someone is experiencing trauma on a regular basis or even just once?
Andi:
Yeah. So ongoing traumatic material or traumatic experiences or singular events that have not been processed and had space to be dealt with, a person will at times stay in that fight or flight in a continual manner. So if you are at work and you're trying to focus on doing a task, and stimuli from the environment is signaling your brain that you're not safe, then you're not going to be able to focus to do that task. In kids in adolescence, it looks like inattentiveness, it looks like they're not paying attention, so it really impacts people's ability to learn and to get things done. As well as you can't connect relationally well when you're constantly anticipating danger or threat.
Kasey:
Which is a different one of our basic needs.
Andi:
Yeah.
Kasey:
Yeah, that interferes with our normal functioning and day to day. I hear the word triggered a lot. I feel like that's a pretty modern term that people use really regularly. How would you say is maybe a good way to define it correctly? People use it in terms of their political beliefs and other things like that, but what would you say that triggers actually might look like for somebody who's experienced trauma?
Andi:
Well, it can look like a lot of different things, and sometimes it's confusing to folks because it isn't tied directly to something they remember about the trauma or it doesn't make sense to them, but for their body and their nervous system, it is something that they probably experienced or coupled with the traumatic experience that when they experience it later, it causes their nervous system, red flags to go off. So it could be anything. And for some folks, political beliefs could be triggering, or religious beliefs. It really is in the eye of the beholder.
Kasey:
That's a good word and that's interesting, to think of trauma as not just whatever stereotype someone might have or whatever preconceived notion, but that it's in the eye of the beholder makes it sound like it is based on how their nervous system responds. Why is it that maybe the same stimulus would affect different people in different ways?
Andi:
Well, we're all different, and some of our personality and temperament traits make certain folks a little more sensitive to certain stimuli. So some people have a sensitivity to visual stimuli or auditory stimuli, and it's not bad or wrong, it just means they're different. Also, we all have different resources. So as an adult, I have a lot of resources at my disposal to access when I feel threat. Part of it is I have had a lot of training and I've been committed to my own therapeutic work, so I have years of experience working on my stuff. I also have more volition than my little guy who's the youngest of our family. He's in kindergarten and so he doesn't have as much free will as I have to be able to get out of a situation, because he can't drive. He also doesn't have the years in therapy that I have or the financial resources or whatever. And so not everybody is well resourced as others, and so they don't have the ability to access those like other people might.
Kasey:
Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating. What are some common symptoms of people who have experienced trauma and had some long-lasting effects from it? And I guess I want to tease out the fact that somebody can experience trauma and have some really long-lasting repercussions. Another person can experience the same traumatic event and not be considered traumatized, I guess. Is that fair language to use?
Andi:
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Kasey:
Okay, great. Then what would you say is some things that might look like for the person who experiences the long-term repercussions?
Andi:
Yeah. Well, there is a clinical category of this and it's what we call post-traumatic stress disorder, and so those folks are going to meet criteria for having ongoing symptoms that interfere with their functioning significantly. There are also folks that may not meet that category threshold but I would still say have experienced trauma and maybe experience the negative effects. So on the extreme end, we're going to see disruptions in daily functioning, inability to sleep well, inability to concentrate, maybe some depression or anxiety, difficulty relationally, problems at work, problems at school. One big thing that people often will experience is what we call hypervigilance, and hypervigilance is where your body, specifically your amygdala in your brain, what we might call the watchman is on high alert. And so if someone were to drop a book or slam a door, you might see a greater startle response than someone else.
Kasey:
That makes a lot of sense. Is it fair to say that it's almost like a spectrum how someone might respond to trauma?
Andi:
Yeah.
Kasey:
Okay.
Andi:
Yeah, definitely.
Kasey:
All the way from not having any lasting repercussions to this. Like you said, they could have all of these things, the hypervigilance and the increased stress responses. So as we mentioned before, obviously our listeners are not now going to treat everyone that they know with trauma, but what are some common ways that you've seen people recover from trauma?
Andi:
Well, therapy is a big one, and I'm a big believer in what we call somatic therapies that involve the body. And why I think that is important is because trauma is stored differently in the brain than other memories. It gets stored kind of fragmented, kind of like if you were to look at a mirror and it had been shattered but the pieces remained, the reflection is jagged so it's not complete autobiographical memory. So also, the part of the brain that's responsible for language sometimes tends to shut down during traumatic experiences. So people may have conscious recollection, but they may not have words to go along with it and they're like, "I just don't know what to say or I don't know how to describe this," all the way on the spectrum where some folks will just completely shut down. They don't have any conscious memory of it. And so when that happens, there's not material to process verbally, and so we use specific therapies that involve the body to help a person process.
Another big thing is relationship. So like you mentioned, we were created for relationship and connection and belonging, and those are inextricable needs of being human. And without those, that is equally as traumatizing as other experiences, and so that I believe is the vehicle through which God brings the most healing, is being in relationship with someone who is safe. And part of what is helpful is having a regulated nervous system for someone who is feeling dysregulated to kind of borrow on. So if you're in the presence of someone who is safe and who is well attuned, they're making good eye contact, their facial expressions are saying, "I'm here, I'm with you. I'm safe, I care," then it's going to automatically calm your system and give you space to be able to explore hard things. So the relationship is really the crucible by which healing can occur, and there may be different modalities and different techniques, but that has to be present for healing to occur.
Kasey:
Wow. I feel like I need to think so much more about that, because isn't that what God does with us?
Andi:
Yeah.
Kasey:
The fact that it's relationship with him that is an avenue for our healing from sin. Well, I guess how would you respond to someone who's maybe a little bit wary about this modern psychology or science? Should we really listen to that? Because I don't know if scripture talks specifically about trauma. How would you interact with that?
Andi:
Yeah. Well, that's kind of our specialty around here in the counseling department. So we believe that God provides his general revelation through people that believe in him and people who don't believe in him, and that comes in the form of psychological advances, medicine advances, all kinds of things. And so as long as what is being discovered and put out there is not contradicted by scripture, and that's where scripture interpretation is really important because sometimes we don't always interpret it accurately, but that's where that's really important because if it's not contradicted, then that is something that God has given us that is a gift and it should be used because it gives so much freedom, and the Bible is silent about certain things.
Kasey:
One of his common graces to us is he designed a world with order, and so it makes sense that as we have the capacity for learning new things and doing research and exploring more about what he's created, that of course we're going to find some patterns and learn some things about maybe how to help people who've really experienced the world's brokenness. So is this conversation about trauma just for a select few? Is trauma super rare? How likely is it that our listeners know somebody who's experienced trauma?
Andi:
So I'm going to take a big stance here that I think everyone has experienced some form of trauma.
Kasey:
Okay. Please unpack that for us.
Andi:
And there's varying degrees, and if we're using the definition of experience something that's too much, it's overwhelming or not enough for what the system needs, then we've all experienced that. We also have all at this point lived through a pandemic, and so we've all experienced a global trauma. We also, because of globalization, we have access to a lot of media sources for lots of different countries and nations, and we are privy to the information and the trauma that other people groups experience, which is good in a way.
Also, I've heard researchers say we were not hardwired and geared towards taking in all of the news of every village in the world. We were really only geared and hardwired to take in our village's news and information. So if you think about that and then think about all of the stimuli that people are exposed to all the time, and that even witnessing a traumatic event unfold on the news can be traumatic for some, then we've probably all experienced it. We also, between Eden and Heaven, we're all broken and touched by that brokenness because of imputed sin and because of our own volitional sin, and hurting people hurt others. And so there's no way of getting out of this life without being wounded by someone, so I think we all have it.
Kasey:
Yeah, that's really huge. I think maybe even levels the playing field, so to speak, that all of us are walking around in this broken world and hopefully gives us some compassion for people. People might have some responses that we don't understand, and thinking about the fact that someone experiences even the same circumstances in a different way than I do, maybe I can have more compassion for them not knowing why that's like that for them. Is there a Common misconception, I suppose, that, okay, well, even if trauma is a big deal, if somebody just moves on from it, time will heal it? Is that something that you've heard before?
Andi:
Oh, yes. I hear that all the time. So there is always outliers and the possibility that in God's common grace, things happen like that. My experience has been that more often than not, time doesn't heal wounds, it just festers them. So it's like an unaddressed wound. I mean, if you have a big gash on your leg and you don't care for it well, it's not going to go away. It's going to get infected and that infection is going to spread. That is generally how unattended emotional wounds play out.
Kasey:
Wow. Yeah, I can see that being significant for someone having not addressed it. You talked earlier about the somatic kind of therapies that are oriented around the body. Can you explain a little bit more about what some of those might look like and how that might address some long unaddressed wounds?
Andi:
Yeah. So part of what the nervous system does when it's mobilizing for survival is the body gives a pretty big energy release in fight or flight so that the person can survive. So this is why you can read accounts of mom's lifting cars off their child, and she would've never been able to do that, nor should she be able to do that because she's not a superhero. I mean, she is because she's a mom, but she shouldn't be able to do that but she can. That is a huge mobilization of energy, or of people running great distances or doing things that are not common. That energy release, especially when someone is immobilized and that energy just gets trapped in the body, and that trapping in the body creates the adverse symptoms that many people look at as the after effects of trauma. And so part of somatic therapy is letting whatever didn't get to be completed get completed.
So if you're looking at someone who was a part of a mass shooting and they had to lay really still and couldn't move, there was energy going in their body but they were containing it to survive. So part of the process of somatic therapies is listening to what the body is saying and letting the person explore, what did not get completed? What did you have the urge to do? And they may say, "Well, I really wanted to get up and run, or I wanted to fight back." And so you can use imagery and the mind to explore, "Well, let's just imagine that you can do that, or maybe even let's let your legs pump back and forth and run." And so some of that is discharging the energy so that it's no longer stored as traumatic material in the body.
Kasey:
Wow, that's fascinating. So it's not necessarily that that person needs to literally run five miles and then it'll be okay, but I think it sounds like you're talking about being in a safe environment with somebody who's willing to help them understand their experiences of what their body might need, that they may not even have paid attention to at the time.
Andi:
Yeah, because they couldn't pay attention to it. And some of it at times with trauma, medical procedures can be traumatizing. Even though they're lifesaving and they're really important, sometimes, people don't know that their body wanted to do something different because it's still hardwired for survival, and that part of your body is not rationally thinking, "No, I really need this surgery to survive, so this is okay." It's still cataloging all that experience and it just needs space to work that out.
Kasey:
That's fascinating. So is that limited to just a therapy setting with a licensed therapist? Are there other ways that somebody could physically maybe work through some of those things?
Andi:
So there are some resources that are for the general public. So there's a book called Healing Trauma by Dr. Peter Levine, and it's a 12 step model that you can go through his steps to just explore befriending your body and really connecting to it. So that's one of the things that trauma does is it disconnects us from our body, because part of dealing with the after effects of trauma, if you're having… I like to say, "Wow, your body's really talking to you." If someone's having a lot of those after effects, saying, "Your body's talking and we need to listen." A lot of times, our natural inclination is to shut that down and not listen because it's distressing to us, and we may not know what the link is and so that's even more distressing, so we shut that down. So his book is really about befriending the nervous system.
There's another great book called Anchored by Dr. Deb Dana, and she uses what's called polyvagal theory to walk through, again, befriending your nervous system. So for some people, that will be sufficient and adequate, and then for others, a clinical therapeutic setting is really warranted, either in a group or an individual setting.
Kasey:
Sure. Yeah, that's fascinating. I think this is such an interesting topic, and the fact that God designed us so intricately and the fact that we can learn all of these things really, I think is really beneficial and helps us, no matter if we're trained professionals or lay people in whatever area. Like you said, if we all have experienced trauma, then we all know a lot of people who have experienced trauma, and so we can think about all of the people that surround us every day. And even the people that we're connected with digitally, it sounds like you're saying that in today's digital age, we're exposed to such an overwhelming amount of information that maybe people in previous generations didn't have the access to. Is there, on the flip side of that, some positive things that have happened, maybe some treatments that have come about because of the way that technology has advanced recently?
Andi:
Yeah. Well, telehealth has grown exponentially. We have a lot of privilege in the United States and many people do have access to services, but many people don't, so the presence of telehealth helps folks in rural communities or in areas where there may not be a therapist who is licensed to work with folks. Also, globally, being able to reach folks in another country that don't have access to services is really beneficial. As well as that connectedness piece, that relational piece. Being able to connect with others who have had similar experiences, knowing you're not alone is really powerful.
Kasey:
It's like utilizing that technology that can be overwhelming or distressing or stressful, but rather turning it and being intentional with helping people to connect with one another and experience that relational safety that you were talking about.
Andi:
Yeah.
Kasey:
Yeah. Makes a lot of difference. So you talked about earlier that trauma can inhibit people's normal functioning, functioning at work or at school. Is that to say that if someone is functioning really well, then they haven't been traumatized or that they're not experiencing the effects of trauma?
Andi:
Oh, no. Some people, they can push through things and that may be kind of a blessing or a curse to them. Because they may look like they're okay, they may just power through. So as I've worked a lot with kids, and a lot of it applies I think to adults as well. So females tend to have more of what we call internalizing behaviors and it's depression and anxiety, and that tends to be true across the lifespan. So thinking about in school or maybe in an adult setting, those are behaviors, because they're going on below the surface, they don't raise red flags because they're not causing problems. Whereas men tend to have more externalizing behaviors, so it could be aggression, anger, outbursts, and so that tends to get a little more attention because it can be more disruptive. But some people, they just keep going. And folks also can use different strategies to numb, and that numbing can help them get through the experience that continues to be detrimental to them.
Kasey:
What would you encourage someone to do who's using some numbing strategies? I guess what would the strategies be and then what encouragement would you have for them?
Andi:
Yeah. Well, there's a spectrum or a continuum when we talk about numbing strategies, so the ones that most people tend to think of is drug and alcohol use or pornography use, any type of addictive behavior. If it is to a place of using substances like drugs and alcohol, there needs to be some sort of intervention because it can be detrimental to the person physiologically to just stop use or end things that way, so in that manner, there probably needs to be some medical intervention. Anything that's a distraction to us can be a numbing agent, so that can be social media, that can be TV, that can be food, that can be shopping, that can be working.
And I've noticed that a lot of times, especially in Christian circles, we have our taboo numbing strategies that people either keep hidden really well or they don't use, but then we have our socially acceptable ones, and that's being really busy for the Lord. That's a good numbing strategy, and it's not wrong to do things for the Lord, but if it keeps you from addressing your pain and your woundedness, then it's a problem. And so I think some of it is giving yourself compassion to know that what you're doing is normal.
You're doing the best you can in that moment to try to survive and to get through these adverse effects, because a lot of times, we tend to go to that place of, "Wow, you're a horrible person. You shouldn't be doing this." When we do that, we're triggering a nervous system response within ourselves, and we're probably triggering that sense of shame and hiding within us. So you want to approach with compassion and caution and say, "This has be effective. It's just not beneficial and useful in the way I want it to be," and so then giving yourself freedom to change and to change at a pace that's manageable.
And if you take away a coping strategy, you have to deal with whatever that was that you were using it for, and you have to replace it with something that is more beneficial. So you can't just take it away because you'll figure out something else or you'll go back to that.
Kasey:
But maybe having a healthier strategy, which could be different for everyone.
Andi:
Mm-hmm.
Kasey:
Sure. It could be exercise, it could be taking a nap or other kinds of things that we can do to care for ourselves.
Andi:
Yeah.
Kasey:
The way you're framing it makes me think of the same idea could be applied, whether someone is talking to themselves or talking to someone else, the same kind of compassionate attitude towards it rather than the attitude of condemnation. "I can't believe that you would use that as a coping mechanism," can be said to ourselves or to somebody else, and so what do you think that it is about the attitude of compassion that is the gateway for healing, rather than shame?
Andi:
Yeah. So I think there's a lot of misconceptions in that, that we think that we change best out of fear or out of condemnation, and that can bring about momentary change, but it really will create more hiding strategies because it ignites that shame, and shame always causes us to want to hide. And so what compassion does is it offers empathy, and empathy is that sense of, "I am willing to sit with you in the pain and the sorrow that you're experiencing, and I'm not going to try to give you some pithy answer and explain it away or tell you that you're bad. I'm going to see that you're struggling and you're hurting, and in this moment, you really need love." And so what that does is that helps people know that it's okay to come out of hiding. And so compassion, either compassion to others or compassionate self, is one of the first steps to true change.
If you feel like you're not safe, you will never be able to truly bring about lasting change, and if another person feels like you're not safe, they will never fully let themselves be open with you. And so a lot of times as a counselor, I know that there's a lot of my work that I do that I'm proving that I'm safe and that I'm not going to hurt that person and I'm not going to condemn them, and I really think that all behavior makes sense when you understand it in its context. So showing people compassion is not going to cause them to sin more or to do more that's unhealthy. It's actually going to be a gateway through which they can find freedom. And if we look at Jesus as he walked the earth and the account that we have of that in scripture, he always met people with compassion. He may have had boundaries in that compassion, but he was never disparaging, he was never mean-spirited. He got them better than anybody else could get them.
Kasey:
I love that you said it that way, that it's not a gateway for more sin. I think that that's sometimes our fear, is, oh, if I seem like I accept this in any way, then the person will keep doing it, and of course, I want them to pursue holy living. I want them to honor God. And of course, we do want people to pursue holy living and honor God, but meeting them with the spirit of compassion and long-suffering and empathy as a gateway to lasting change is really crucial.
Andi:
Yeah. Well, there's a quote by a counseling theorist. He says, "We're not free to change until we're free to not have to change." And I really think that resonates with who God is and how he meets us, that we don't have to get our act together. We don't have to be sinless, we don't have to be enough or be anything for him to love us and have already died on the cross for us.
Kasey:
Yeah, while we were still sinners, while we were his enemies, Christ died for us.
Andi:
Yeah.
Kasey:
That's beautiful. And what a picture that can be to somebody if someone meets them with that same compassion, that God did that for us first and he sets that example for us. Wow, I love that. So in light of that, how would you advise people or caution people? What should I say or not say to somebody who has experienced trauma, somebody who has trauma in their background? How can I address what they're experiencing and what are some dos and don'ts?
Andi:
Yeah. Yeah. So I'll borrow from Brené Brown. She talks about with empathy, you can always tell that a non-empathic statement starts with the words, "at least." So someone's had a really bad car wreck and is feeling traumatized having those symptoms, and a non-empathic statement would be, "Oh. Well, at least nobody died." Or someone has a miscarriage, "At least you can still get pregnant," or, "At least you still have other kids." That's not good.
Kasey:
An impulse to add a silver lining.
Andi:
Yes, exactly. And so a lot of it is one tuning into your comfort level with people's suffering in sorrow. So when we enter into empathy with others, we're having to get in touch with that feeling that they're having within ourselves. So when I sit with someone who's grieving, if I'm trying to empathize with them, I'm having to get in touch with what grief feels like within me, and that can make me really uncomfortable. And so in that moment, there are times that we want to naturally diminish that discomfort because it may feel unsafe, and that's normal. But in that moment, we have to be really careful not to try to diminish that and settle our own nervous systems. And so one way to do that is to notice what you're feeling, to notice what you're experiencing. If you have that inclination to want to say, "I know it will get better," you don't know it'll get better. So that's another thing to not say. "I know you're going to get through this." No, you don't. You have no idea.
So a great thing to say is, if you don't know what to say, again, I'll borrow from Brené Brown. "I don't know what to say right now but I'm just really grateful that you would include me in on this. I know this is really hard. I'm so sorry for what you're going through." Not every situation this would be appropriate, if it's a professional situation, but a friend or a colleague or a loved one where this is appropriate, even at times, just a knowing look and a touch on their hand or squeezing their hand is all that's needed to say, "I'm here." There have been times that I've just sat in people's presence and we didn't say anything. Or to say, "I don't know what lies ahead but I'll be here for you."
There's also things too, when people have let me into their world to let me know about an event that has been traumatic, I try to make notes in my phone, so on my calendar, so that it'll give me reminders of anniversary dates, of times just to check in on them and say, "Hey, I was just thinking about you. I really appreciate you sharing with me last week. I just want you to know I'm thinking about you." Sometimes with folks, I don't say anything. I send them a heart emoji, and that's just my code for, "You're on my mind." There are times that scripture and talking about God can be really, really comforting to folks, and then there are a lot of times when it's not, so I use a lot of that with caution.
So I'm even really careful just because of the presence of spiritual abuse, that I'm very careful to even say, "I'm praying for you." So a lot of times, if I don't know if it's going to be okay, I'll just say, "Hey, I'm really thinking about you a lot." So sometimes, it can be helpful if it's appropriate to share maybe your experience. However, I think it's important to never say, "Oh, I know exactly how you feel." Nope, you don't. And sometimes, that can ignite people's anger of, "You have no idea how I feel." So if you don't know, you can say one of, "I remember a time where this happened to me and it was really hard, and I imagine that's a really hard time for you as well."
Kasey:
Yeah, that's really helpful. That gives a lot of things to say, and I love that you caveat all of them. You can't make any assumptions with people. I think that's what I'm gathering.
Andi:
Yeah.
Kasey:
Everyone's different and everyone's situation is different, and the way that they might even receive certain words might hit them differently. And so it sounds like it all depends on the context, your relationship with them, what might be appropriate and what might be hurtful. And I think that also maybe even gives a little bit of a sense of freedom. I don't have to have all the right things to say before I meet somebody who's suffering. I don't have to know all about trauma and become a licensed therapist before I talk to my friend who's been through a traumatic event, but being present with someone can be a lot of times just what they need just with a situation elsewhere at the time.
Andi:
Yeah. Well, and I think, and something you shared reminded me of not having all the answers. I think we want to help people so much that we want to try to fix it. Most of these situations are not fixable, really ever.
Kasey:
You can't undo it.
Andi:
No, it can't be undone but what we can do is we can walk with them, and we don't have to paint the silver lining. And we're all going to say dumb stuff. I say things, I've done this for almost two decades and I've had a lot of training, and there are times that something comes out of my mouth and I'm like, "That was not it. That was not good." And so in that moment, that's okay. You just own it and you repair. And so I'll say, "Oh, that was really insensitive. I'm really sorry. I missed there. I'm really sorry." And so you just repair.
Kasey:
Yeah. Can you talk briefly about what rupture and repair can do for relationships?
Andi:
Yeah. So God in his infiniteness, I don't know how he did this, or it just amazes me. So like a broken bone, it follows that principle, if you break a bone and it's set properly, when it heals back, that portion of the bone is going to be stronger, stronger than if you had never broken it. Relationships are the same way. So my relationship with my husband and my children, if I repair well when I mess up and I wound them, then our relationship is stronger than if I'd been a perfect wife or mom. Which is, I'm like, wow, okay. Thank you God for that, because I'm far from perfect. And so we do a lot of apologizing in our house, and that's all you need to say. And at times, there does need to be reparations. There are times that the wound is so deep that there needs to be reparations.
And in the circumstances of trauma, there's times where reconciliation is never appropriate, but these everyday ruptures that occur within families that maybe aren't as toxic or they're not as deeply wounding, saying, "When I said this, when I did this, I was wrong and I'm so sorry. Period. Would you consider forgiving me? Period." And then just leave it at that. There are so many times that we want to be like, and I do this a lot with my kids, "I'm so sorry you got hurt. But if you had listened to me and not jumped from the coffee table to the kitchen table, you would not have broken your collarbone." That's not a teachable moment in that moment. It's just a time to repair or to give empathy. Later will be times to teach.
Kasey:
So I feel like that's reassuring that we don't have to have all the answers, and even if we do say the wrong thing, it actually might even, by the grace of God, strengthen the relationship rather than ruin everything.
Andi:
Yeah.
Kasey:
So we don't have to be fearful about entering into difficult spaces with people. And you mentioned your experience. I think that it seems like something that we may not be perfect at it but maybe gets easier with practice.
Andi:
It does.
It does.
Kasey:
That's reassuring, and I praise God that he gives us people to walk alongside us, people for us to walk alongside, and also all kinds of tools and common graces for addressing the trauma of the broken world that we're in.
Andi:
Yeah.
Kasey:
Are there other resources that you would recommend? You alluded to a couple of books for people who've experienced trauma. Are there other resources that you'd recommend, just for people who want to learn more about trauma in general?
Andi:
Yeah. So probably hands down, the most informative book on trauma at a high level and what it does is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. And he covers everything, and it's great. From a faith-based perspective, Dr. Kurt Thompson has written several books about shame, and shame is always present when trauma occurs, so those are great. Anatomy of the Soul, The Soul of Desire, and The Soul of Shame are really useful. Deb Dana has written several books that are really helpful about managing the nervous system. Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger or In an Unspoken Voice are really useful. And then from a perspective, and this takes more of a church hurt perspective, but it integrates theology and psychology and polyvagal theory and it really unpacks that well, is the Lord is My Courage by KJ Ramsey.
Kasey:
That's helpful. Well, we're about out of time. I think that there's a lot more that we could talk about, but I'm really grateful that we got to do this overview of trauma together so thanks for being on the show again, Andi.
Andi:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Kasey:
And we want to say thanks to you, our listeners, for listening to The Table Podcast, and we hope that you'll join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, hello. Welcome to The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the executive director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center.
In 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute came out with a study that was entitled Census of American Religion 2020, and it was an unprecedented county by county look at religious identity and diversity in the United States. And the research found that over the last few decades, the white Christian proportion of the US population has declined by nearly one third hitting an all-time low in 2018 of 42%. And white evangelical Protestants, which are the oldest religious group in the country, have experienced the greatest drop in affiliation over the past decade. That's shrunk from 23% in 2006 to 14% in 2020, which leads to the question that we want to discuss today on the table, why are people leaving the church? And to help us do that, it's my deep privilege to welcome and introduce Dr. Sam Perry, who is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma. He also has his PhD from the University of Chicago and is a DTS grad getting his THM in 2008. Sam, welcome to The Table podcast.
Sam Perry:
It's a privilege. Thanks for having me.
Bill Hendricks:
So we want to get into this whole issue of why people are leaving the church, but even before we jump in there, I always like to get the backstory of how you, well, what was your background? Where was growing up for you? And particularly because you're a sociologist, what piqued your curiosity and an interest in pursuing sociology?
Sam Perry:
Sure. So I grew up in a Christian home certainly. My dad went to Dallas Seminary in the late '70s and early '80s. He and my mom met on crusade staff and I was raised in Fellowship Bible Church in Richardson, Texas. And so raised as a Christian certainly, raised in the church by godly parents who love the Lord and were a tremendous example for me. I would say a kind of early interest in the kinds of things that I study now came from my own experience and my family. My parents adopted two African American girls when I was four and six years old, and they were not sisters, but they were both adopted at different times. And because we adopted my oldest adopted sister Beth when I was four, I mean I grew up never not knowing having Black sisters.
It was just something where this was dinner table conversation for us to talk about issues of race and identity, how people were perceiving us as a family and the various kinds of issues that we faced. Issues of prejudice and in some ways that alienated people in my own family who were from Alabama or from different parts of the country where that was just a little bit more taboo. And so I think I grew up with something of a proto-sociological eye for understanding experiences of diversity and how faith shapes families and communities. Going into college, I was a communications major, I wanted to be a pastor at the time, but I also was just fascinated by sociology because it was asking the kinds of questions that I was really asking myself my whole life about racial prejudice, race relations and faith and those kinds of things.
I went to seminary at DTS and I had a great experience at Dallas Seminary. I was a New Testament major and it was tremendously fun, learned. I had a passion for research and writing and it was actually at that time I think God was redirecting my own vision of my own gifting, my own understanding of gifting. I'd always loved teaching and preaching, but I think it wasn't until I came to seminary at DTS where I understood that, "Oh wow, I actually really enjoy research and writing and I'm really good at it and I think I have a gift for that kind thing." I was counseled against getting my PhD in New Testament studies by some seminary professors who said, "You may stand a better chance of finding employment…" I don't even know if I should say that, but they said, "You stand a better chance of finding employment if you go some other route." And for me that was easy. It was just I love sociology, I want to pursue that. And I was fortunate to get into the University of Chicago, which is a great program. And now University of Oklahoma was my first job out of grad school, so that's where I've been.
Bill Hendricks:
Of course nowadays a college student decides they're going to study sociology. People are like, "What? Do you want to be unemployed?"
Sam Perry:
Yeah. Unless you get a PhD in it.
Bill Hendricks:
Exactly.
Sam Perry:
That's pretty true.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that's fascinating. So you're a committed Christian. You've had training in theology as well as sociology. Let me ask a question, and in asking this question, I don't mean to insult your intelligence, I mean more to expose my own ignorance, define what sociology actually means and what it's all about if you can?
Sam Perry:
Yeah, absolutely. And this is something I'm very cautious in explaining to my own students because I think they come in to my classes with their own perceptions of what a sociologist is and does. And some of that has been my own experience. So I dropped my first undergraduate sociology class because the guy I took the class from, if you Google a picture of Karl Marx right now, I mean the guy looked like Karl Marx and frankly spoke a lot like Karl Marx, or I perceived he was a wild-eyed guy that I felt like was very, and I was a Christian in college. I mean, I felt like the guy was very antagonistic. I felt like he was provocative on purpose. I didn't feel like there was a lot of science to that social science going on. And it wasn't until I actually took some more sociology classes that I said, "Oh no, actually this could be quite data driven and interested in gathering evidence and information about our social world in a way that is productive and helpful." And that is the kind of sociology that I aim to do.
I tell my students that I am a social scientist, that I am interested in gathering facts and information and data so that I can draw informed conclusions about how the world works. That does not necessarily mean it, and in fact, I should make that case stronger, I stress to my students that if I'm doing my job right, the information that I share should inform your faith, but it really doesn't speak to the empirical reality of your faith. I don't speak in terms of ontological or epistemological truths. That's not the job of a social scientist, my job is to speak to the human side of everything that we experience and what we can gather information about or empirical evidence about. And so that's how I see sociology as opposed to say something like psychology, which is focused primarily gathering information and data about how the human brain works and interaction with others. Sociology is far more interested in gathering data about society and the collective and the aggregate and how social systems and social environments shape the individual and vice versa.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, I was going to ask how sociology contributes to a particularly Christian understanding of the world.
Sam Perry:
Yeah, I write about that all the time and hopefully I'm persuasive enough to sell what I do a little bit. But I think sociology contributes to a Christian understanding of the world in that I think we get lost as Protestants and evangelical Protestants. I think we come with our own cultural predispositions to think in terms and also as Americans. We tend to value the idea of the individual as somebody who is almost in isolation and somebody who is an agent and making decisions on their own and that God deals with on an individual basis and their own personal faith journey. Sociologists, I think come with a perspective of we're all embedded in relationships and contexts and those relationships and social context and those experiences shape the interiority of our lives and they shape our expectations and they shape our culture.
I would say sociology has the most to contribute in terms of how Christians understand culture and understand the cultures that end up shaping us and the decisions that we make. Also, sociology powerfully shapes our understanding of human demographic processes and transitions that are powerfully shaping our own religious reality today in the United States in ways that we often don't understand. And sociology also contributes an understanding of social structure and that is how the organization, the structural organization of our relationships, the rules, the resources, the laws and policies, they shape our own experience as individuals. And so I think we would be remiss as Christians if we did not acknowledge a lot of the truths that I think a sociological perspective can bring to the table without becoming. And I think I get the question a lot, or at least I have, not so much anymore, but I've gotten the question before of, "Wow, you're a sociologist, so when did you lose your faith?" Or something like that. The implication being something like, "I can't imagine a sociologist and a committed believer being the same human person.
Bill Hendricks:
Being in the same body.
Sam Perry:
Yeah, and I think that is because of an assumption of sociology that is unfortunate, that assumes all sociologists are secular leftists or something like that. And it also comes I think with an unfortunate assumption that all committed Christians must be right wing Republicans. And yes, if that is what you believe, if that is what you understand as a Christian believer, if that what you understand by a sociologist, then I get why you would feel like those two things in conflict. But there is a lot that of diversity among sociologists and Christians that I think that is understood rightly. I think both can be good sociologists.
Bill Hendricks:
So by the name which includes social. It sounds to me like sociology forces us to get beyond our individual perspective. It reminds us that we are in relationships with a whole world of people, whole society of people, whole culture of people. And by stepping back to take that more coordinated, the collective view, we often can see things that we would miss if we're simply in our own self-absorbed perspective and just taking care of what's in front of us.
Sam Perry:
I think that's not only just to remind us, but I think it should correct our paradigm to understand human beings as fundamentally social creatures, that there is no hypothetical individual living off on their own like a person who is raised by wolves without the influence of their parents and their community and their environment. And there are not only the influences of our kind of immediate community, but there are layers upon layers of social influence, both within our global and national and familial community-based context that all have something to say about the kind of people that we end up being and that we contribute to in our own ways. And so that isn't to say that human beings don't have agency and matter of fact, this is one of the constant sociological conversations. To what extent do human beings have agency and contribute to their own futures and to what extent is there a social structure that is so determinative in the kinds of things we end up being? And there's an appropriate middle, complicated kind of nexus of individuals making decisions and empowered by God to be agents and to make voluntary choices, and at the same time doing that within a context that constrains a lot of those choices and their information.
Bill Hendricks:
That's fascinating. Well, today we want to focus that inquiry specifically on the choices that people make, whether to identify as Christians or not. And what's interesting is that fewer and fewer people are doing that. The number of religiously unaffiliated Americans so-called "nones" is actually on the rise now and it hovers around 23% to 25% of the population. I'm curious to the extent you're in touch with that development, and if so, what's behind those numbers? How do we have the percentage of Christians diminishing in the big picture while people of no faith or not necessarily not of faith, but not of the Christian faith or any other designated religion, seems to be growing now upwards to quarter of the population and particularly among younger people?
Sam Perry:
Yes. I think there's a lot of information out there, and so I'm happy to share the available data, what I think social sciences are able to be concerned with broader aggregate surveys and the kinds of trends that we see. I will say I think a truth that needs to be brought up, and we're not remotely the first people to ask that question, but I think a great book that I want to plug here.
Bill Hendricks:
Thank you.
Sam Perry:
Back from the early '90s, Exit Interviews from Bill Hendricks is on my shelf. An important truth that you, I think, drive home from your own interviews toward the conclusion of the book is that there is no one reason that people leave the church, and there are multiple stories. And people are individuals and each individual has their own kind of story and experience and so we should be cautious about speaking so confidently in the aggregate that we just explain away everybody's experience. I think that was an important point to recognize in your book, and I think it's still true 30 years later subsequently.
I think some new developments though in terms of this process, one, we should observe that what is taking place in the United States is actually a delayed process of what has gone on in western societies for a long, long time. A gradual process of secularization and not just secularization as in the institutions of our society are gradually becoming disestablished or disconnected from any kind of religious faith, but that individuals are, say attending church less or more likely to identify as nothing in particular. We don't see a really rapid rise in say, atheists and agnostics. I mean, I think Gallup has come out with some recent data to suggest that has seen an uptick recently, but other data sources don't suggest that this has been driven by atheists and agnostics. It's been more people just disaffiliating and saying, "I'm nothing in particular." It doesn't necessarily mean that they are.
And as I think as you point out in your book 30 years ago, what we're seeing now, I mean it's similar in that we don't necessarily see that people are not praying or not interested in spiritual things or that they don't believe anything at all. Actually, the percentage of Americans who believe in life after death has stayed flat right, it's right around in the seventies and it doesn't move and it doesn't even move among young people. So that is almost a core belief that does not change, but we do see a disconnect from say formal religious affiliation and that being a leading identity. So there's a couple of things going on there.
One that I think is a relatively, I don't mean a new development, but I think one that we are now coming to grips with, and this is just becoming clearer, is something called the backlash hypothesis. And that is a result of… If I could back up a little bit, if we could think of secularization in terms of our religious identities becoming less salient in terms of the primary identities that organize all of our other identities. So it used to be the case where, I mean Americans were divided up into Protestant, Catholic and Jew, and these were central identities and not only just Protestant, but the denomination that you were involved with, these were important identities. You were a member of the Methodist church and that was something that mattered to you and it distinguished and you didn't marry Presbyterians or something like that. You know what I mean? It was something that was a central organizing identity, and those kinds of identities cut across politics in ways that they do not now. I have some data on this that I share with my students.
In the 1970s, there was a nearly identical percentage of evangelicals in the Democratic Party as were in the Republican Party, you stood to be just as likely to be an evangelical among the Democrats as among the Republicans. What has taken place within the last four decades, within my own lifetime is that there has been an increasing process of political sorting to where our political identities and our ideological identities, liberal, conservative, Republican and Democrat have become the primary identities that are organizing all of our other social identities and that includes religion to where you've got conservative Christians who are becoming more, not only just aligned with the Republican Party or conservative politics, but everybody knows it. That's becoming something that is common. White conservative Christians are Republicans. They tend to vote that way, and that's how they identify.
What that has brought about among young people in particular, and that has actually been a variety of different studies, you can see this in a variety of different data sets. You can see in an experimental data, you can see it in survey data that follows people over a period of time, that young people are making a conscious choice as they go into college. And young people tend to be a little bit more progressive in their views and in the society that we grow up in. And young people are making choices about the kind of people that they're going to be religiously throughout the rest of their lives. And they are saying, "Well, if being a Christian means being a right wing conservative or the kind of person that my granddad is or my parents were, then I'm going to go a different direction. This is something that I'm going to disengage from. I'd rather be something else." And so we can actually track that over a period of time. And that is, in fact, what we have seen is young people in particular are choosing their politics before they choose, and this is happening across America, but they choose their politics before their faith identity solidifies in terms of how they want to be moving forward.
They go to college and it's not just college, it's about coming out of your parents' household. And they engage in the traditional process of what we call institutionalized deviance, where they go to church a little bit less because they're young people. They're out from their parents shelter and historically they always came back, they got married, they got families, they got plugged into middle class life, they came back to church. And that was just kind of a pattern that reproduced itself.
Nowadays because of this kind of political backlash thesis, you have young people who are saying, "If that is what religion is and I have to be that…" And you actually have people who are saying that, "… then that is not the kind of faith experience that I'm interested in." And so they don't walk away from any kind of faith or religious belief, but they walk away from formal affiliation in a way that I think has long-term consequences and that has long-term consequences to the extent that they are raising their kids now in a family that is not connected to. So it's a cyclical thing and it actually becomes something that is self-reinforcing. The more young people walk away now, the more likely they are to have smaller families, but also raise their families disconnected from church and all to where that's just never been something that these young kids have experienced at all. And it's something that is foreign to them, and it becomes something that's self-fulfilling, not a self-fulfilling prophecy, but something that's cyclical and it ramps up.
Bill Hendricks:
It feeds on itself. This term "nones" is so fascinating to me because in all of this research that the sociologists do, demographers do, they talk about people who identify as Christian or non-Christian or atheist or whatever, and then people who identify as "nones". I don't know. To me there's a certain sort of inherent contradiction of terms there. My identity is none. I'm not this, I'm not that, but there's no sort of positive affirmation of here's what I am and here's what I do believe and here's what I stand for and here's what I'm committed to. And I get the feeling that there's just a lot of people out there that as you point out, they've looked at what they've been offered and say, "Well, that's not it for me." And from there it's a smorgasbord, all bets are off on where they're going to land if they land. And so there's a lot of people just wandering around.
Sam Perry:
Well, I think that category of nothing in particular, or the nones is actually a good indication of what I'm talking about. So as young Americans, other identities are now taking the place of what used to be our primary identities, and that was religion, family, community. Now it's become nationalized politics, and that is who you are, where you fall along that spectrum. So you have a situation in which these people, they aren't self-consciously secular people. In other words, if you ask them, "Are you a secular person?" They might not say it, they might even know what to do with that because it's no longer a master identity to them, it's just something that they don't think about a lot. They would rather emphasize other identities in their own lives because they don't feel connected to a formal religious organization. Matter of fact, they're feeling kind of soured on that.
Some of it may be, as you pointed out in your book 30 years ago, I mean, I've conducted surveys with my own undergraduate students about their own religious journey and where they are. And some of them do point to scandals or some kind of moral failure in the church that they feel turned off by. My guess though is that I think for a lot of them, the process of identity transition takes place a lot sooner. And they look at scandals in the church as a convenient, "Oh yeah, that's reason enough.
Bill Hendricks:
That's the excuse.
Sam Perry:
That's reason enough, that's justification enough for me to feel good about this slow drift." In fact, I've asked students, those students who have said that they are less religious now than they were as young people before college, I asked them, "Was it a conscious decision for you to move away from your religious faith or was it more of a slow unconscious drift?" And about two thirds of them say it was more of an unconscious drift in a way.
Bill Hendricks:
And that mirrors that C. S. Lewis line about very few people suddenly decide, I'm not going to believe in God anymore. It's a slow drifting away.
When we look at these macro trends… Well, let me ask this question first because it's the question I'm sure people in your shoes always get asked, and I suppose it's a bit of a trick question. In talking about these things, I hear people say, "Well, the real problem is social media." And I often wonder, so is social media the cause here that's accelerated something that was there? Or is it actually more of a symptom of what was going on elsewhere and just happened to show up with the technology in time to catch that wave?
Sam Perry:
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean it's both. I think it's both an amplifier of trends that have already been taking place because I mean, what I've been talking about, and it's both an amplifier and it's a symptom, and I'll speak to both of those. So it's an amplifier in the sense that the broader sorting trends that we have seen, I think people respond on social media because social media is very polarized and it gives a false impression that Americans are a lot more polarized than they are. There is all kinds of talk about social media being an echo chamber where you hear these kinds of really only one-sided narratives and that kind of thing. Really what social media is very good at because it's only the loudest, most polarized people who consistently post on social media. So for example, Twitter or something like that. Most people don't post on Twitter. Most people lurk on Twitter. Most people are just reading what's going on.
If you're only reading and not really contributing because you're a moderate and you don't really care and you're not really you don't really care, but you don't have strong opinions or you don't feel informed enough, is what you're hearing is you're only hearing the most dogmatic and angry and polarized and loud megaphone voices talk about how these two groups of people hate each other and how these two groups are polar opposite and there is no middle in between them. And so what that becomes is it becomes a powerful sorting mechanism to say, "Okay, who do I identify with and which tribe is my kind of people?" So social media has amplified that organization where politics and identity now sort where you are religiously, especially among for young people.
So if you have any kind of religious faith convictions and you are somebody who subscribes to traditional views on family or those kinds of things, well then you quickly learn that there is only one group for me and everybody else is anathema and they're blind and they're Luciferian, I think is the most recent word. And if you have more progressive views on those kinds of things, well then you learn quickly. I have no more place any longer among religious Americans. My group of people is the liberal church or progressive whatever, or just seculars in general. So social media in that sense has amplified the sorting and they've have catalyzed it in that way. But social media is also a symptom of our broader addiction to inattention. And it is a way that capitalism has, I think, leveraged some very foundational tendencies that we as human beings have to enjoy distraction and to play around on our phones like their slot machines and get likes and retweets and to build identities and test our identities on social media.
I mean, it's one of those things that, one of my previous books was about how conservative Christians, how committed Christians experience pornography in their own lives. And one of the things that I found in that study was that evangelical Christians are just as likely to be on their phones and on social media and all and connected to the internet as anybody else. They are no less likely to be on the internet, to be online, to be at their phones constantly. And so, one of the problems that Christians face, even with say struggles with pornography is the fact that conservative Christians are just like everybody else in that we are always almost like cyborgs attached to our phones.
Bill Hendricks:
Always wired.
Sam Perry:
And if it wasn't pornography, it would be some other kind of click addiction. It would be social media, it would be posting things-
Bill Hendricks:
Online games.
Sam Perry:
… it would be scrolling. Yeah, mindlessly scrolling and that kind of thing. And part of the connection or the challenge of detaching young people away from say, pornography is actually a broader problem with detaching them away from just addiction to screens and clicking in all of the things that compete for your attention. So that is a symptom of a broader problem.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow. I mean, I was going to ask you and you're kind to mention a book that I wrote 30 years ago, but I must say after I wrote Exit Interviews, and then I don't know, 10 or 15 years later, the Reveal Study comes out from Willow Creek and I read through that. I'm like, "Huh, I kind of said that 15 years ago." And then we get to the Barna Study, 2019 church dropouts have risen to 64% and Pew Research. And I'm like, "Okay, so this is a trend that's been going on a while with people drifting away from churches." I guess the question then, it looms, why has the church not been able to turn this around? I mean, it's not like this is a new thing that we're just figuring out. There's been a big backdoor to the church for quite some time but it doesn't seem like anything's really stemmed that tide. And I'm just curious if you have any research or thoughts about why that might be.
Sam Perry:
So I think one of the challenges, and I think a great new book that has just come out recently by a religion journalist, Bob Smietana. Yeah, I'm not even sure of Smietana, but it's called Reorganized Religion. Want to make sure I get that right. I'm listening to it on Audible right now and he covers all of these kinds of broader trends, Reorganized Religion. I'll read the subtitle, the Reshaping of the American Church and Why It Matters. And he's done all of these interviews and he looks at a lot of data. He's a great religion journalist. The last name is S-M-I-E-T-A-N-A, Bob.
Bill Hendricks:
Thank you.
Sam Perry:
And one of the observations that he makes, and I think this is a thought-on observation, is what has been going on? Sociologist has been observing this as well. What we're actually seeing, there has been a trend in church… I mean, Dallas is on the forefront of this of course, but with the Walmartization of congregations to where mega churches are growing, the phenomenon of satellite churches. And I know they've tried to suppress this a little bit by spinning these things off and giving these things pastors in individual community, kind of like the village, [inaudible 00:32:49], like Bethlehem and Minnesota and other places. But it doesn't change the fact that a smaller number of churches are now housing a larger number of Christians and the mom and pop churches, those small community churches that were in your local community are now being driven out and they're no longer a thing. So it's kind of a big box phenomenon.
On the one hand, you could see this as a positive that more and more people are able to go to these churches, they provide great programs, they have great resources, they obviously, I think wise people are at those churches too. I don't mean to trash those places. And yet it is obviously easier within those larger megachurch contexts to be anonymous, to be a free rider, to be a taker, to come and not invest. I do think you have some churches, I think Watermark is an example of that, that holds as a standard of church membership. For you to be a member you have to re-up every year. You have to be involved in service, you have to be in a community group. I think that is a way that people try to fight this tendency.
But I think all that to say in our hyper-connected, very, very busy lives where my kids are involved in five different things a piece, and we're running them to and from everything, and church just becomes one more thing. To the extent that I'm not really connected personally, my identity is not connected with that community, and I'm very anonymous and I'm kind of on the fringes, then it's easy for me to put that down and just walk away and get involved in something else. I think that has been going on for a long time now. And I think Covid certainly threw gasoline on that fire, because it just created a two-year window almost in which people-
Bill Hendricks:
Figured out they had other options.
Sam Perry:
They got the taste on Sunday, what it's like to sleep in and do other things and go fishing and travel out of town and travel for soccer or kids or whatever.
Bill Hendricks:
And the convenience of watching the service in your pajamas.
Sam Perry:
I'm sorry, I don't have to tell pastors this, but I mean obviously that comes at the cost of people saying, "Well, I think I'm just going to kind of keep doing this," and "I've disrupted my pattern and now I have another pattern." And I think that has really not only long-term consequence, not only consequences for those people's immediate spiritual lives, but the lives of their children and their children's children, as this becomes a generational thing where people are no longer growing up active in their faith.
Bill Hendricks:
So as we're having this conversation, it's occurring to me that the role of sociologists in our culture may be not dissimilar to what the role of journalists in an earlier time was, which was basically, "We're just given you the facts, here's what happened, and we're just reporting what's actually going on." But at the same time, I can't imagine that you as a sociologist merely want to be sort of a spectator and a reporter and let the chips fall where they may. And do sociologists ever get to the point where they're going, "In light of these facts, here's some things you might want to think about doing." And I guess where I wanted to go was, as we've talked about this decline and people leaving churches, and again, particularly younger demographics, any thoughts you have about the implications of this? If we apply it down, back to smaller unit, here's an individual family, a couple trying to raise their children or even a single parent trying to raise their children, that sort of scenario. And then of course, here is a pastor and he may be in a multi-staff church, but that leadership team is thinking, "Man, we got to shut the back door here. What are we going to do?" Any thoughts about what we might offer to parents and to church leaders?
Sam Perry:
Well, that's great. I think that's a great question. I mean, it is one of these challenges because I think some of these challenges that churches face, they didn't create, you know what I mean? So it's unfair in some ways to say, "You pastors, you faith leaders, you seminary professors, you need to solve the problems that are broader, even global challenges that now face these faith communities." And in some ways it is not a situation in which we can as churches go back to some other time where it was just better. Actually, it is adjusting to a new reality. And so that is probably the more important question of how do we adjust to this new reality?
And there are some things that we can correct. And so I don't mean to just say, throw my hands up in the air. There are some things that actually I think are certainly proactive, but how do we adjust to this new reality where we undeniably live in a more secular society, that there are frankly just more options. And so I don't know if the best option is to do the Benedict option and just to create these kinds of, that is, I think, antithetical to the evangelical identity that we want to be forces for good, that we want to be people who are shaping the world in a positive way and with the gospel, with love, with our own families and mission that Jesus said that we're not supposed to be taken out of the world, and we're not supposed to be of the world. We're supposed to be into the world. So what does it mean to be into the world now in this new context?
In many ways I think we have to take a good hard look. I mean, I think one of the things that is undeniably driving young people away from the church is I think an uncritical conflation of politics and religion in ways that this is not to say that Christians ought to be politically agnostic or disengaged. I've never said that and never want to imply that Christians have to check their politics or not bring their faith into their own political values. Of course they do. But to the extent where it is becoming a common truism that if you are a committed Christian, you vote this way always and you have no other options and you don't question who is the leader. It's just kind of like you don't question the coach, you're just a part of the team. That I think is problematic because I think people read that and they make decisions about Jesus before they actually get a chance to encounter Jesus people. I think that's a hugely problematic thing culturally.
I do think there is a reinvestment that needs to be made in authentic faith communities and families raising those kinds of resources. I think megachurches and megachurch culture needs to reconsider what kind of trends that they're a part of and how we have, I think, built monuments to egos and broader movements rather than investing in smaller communities that may not be so financially rich, and yet they are more nimble to be able to meet the needs of families and invest in those kinds of communities in more proactive ways.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I know one issue that young people in particular, again, you would know the facts of this better than I would, but at least everything I see and read, an issue that's very much a hot button is justice issues, could be human trafficking, it could be racism, it could be economic injustice, all kinds of possibilities. But it does seem to me that first of all, the Bible and our Lord had a whole lot to say that speaks to justice. And that seems like a good place to start with some meaningful conversations and even action steps to show again, let's just say nones, which are quite possibly kids who grew up in a Christian home and now they've kind of drifted away. But if somebody said, "We're doing something related to justice, you might be interested in checking this out. We want you to at least get your voice in the conversation." Might be some interest in maybe there's more here than I thought.
Sam Perry:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that should emerge as a part of the Christian identity in a way that it now is perceived as something that is more optional, that some churches are into. Some churches are into justice, other churches are in small groups. It's something that is just kind of like a fad thing or something that they're into that season, "This year we're into justice."
Bill Hendricks:
That's not going to work.
Sam Perry:
That is not going to work because people immediately acknowledge that that is a tack on, that is inauthentic, that's not something that is a core part of their identity. I'll put it this way, I think this is a good way to put it. So if I were to talk to a group of, I think really committed pro-life Christians and I were to say, "The hardcore pro-life thing is not a winning issue for you guys. It's a minority view and this is something that the wider culture is going to frown upon." I think they would respond with, "We don't care what the rest of the world thinks. This is right. This is a part of our identity. This is who we are. We are pro-life." And I think we need to move to that kind of understanding of a Christian's commitment to say justice issues, is that whether it's popular or not, whether the progressives or whether society or whether the media picks up on that and notices and they give us applause for it, and the people start coming back because they recognize, whether anybody notices or not. I think it needs to be a part of our identity because that is what Jesus taught.
And so to the extent that that can actually become a fully formed part of our own community identity, that this is who we are as a people, I think that is not only good for the church because it is something that people will see, but even more important it is because it is righteous. It is Christlike and holy.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and of course the context in which we have to wrap that is the way that we communicate that also has to be in a Christlike tone so that we don't bring this defiance and this in your face kind of thing. We're going to do what's right and we come across as Pharisees, but more, we do this because this is the right thing to do because this is what our Lord is telling us to do. We're sad that you don't agree, we don't agree with you, but it's a big world and we understand you're not with us, but we're going to do our thing and let the chips fall where they may. And by the way, we're going to pray for you and we're going to love on you, and we're going to do what we can to help you flourish just like we're trying to help ourselves.
Sam Perry:
And that right there, I think Bill, is a commitment not only to the ends, but to the means. And I think both of those are central because I think it is unfortunate that I think committed Christians, I think especially, have gotten a reputation for this within the last 10 years of being willing to sacrifice the means to accomplish the ends and to say whatever gets the job done and we're going to be willing to do that. And I think that has been a disaster.
Bill Hendricks:
It's been a losing strategy for sure.
Sam Perry:
It absolutely is. I mean, it's something that you end up making a Faustian bargain to say, "If I can just have that victory that W, then I'm willing to compromise in this area." And it is something that I think if we are committed to, I think as you're describing, a vision for certainly values and justice and all of the things that we believe are central to what it means to live as a Christian in today's world. I think it also requires a commitment to sacrificial love, commitment to turning the other cheek, a commitment to forgiveness and to winsomeness in a way that we believe Jesus did while he was here and he taught. And again, it's not just good because that's a winning strategy. It's good because it's righteous, it would be good if it was a losing strategy. You know what I mean? It would be good if it was-
Bill Hendricks:
It's truly the right thing to do.
Sam Perry:
Exactly.
Bill Hendricks:
So again, for our listeners to The Table, we put together there, we've got to show courage. We've got to stand up for what is right and true and biblical, and then do it in a compassionate way that we're the hands, the feet, the heart of Jesus to the world. And Sam Perry, thank you for bringing your, pardon me. Thank you for bringing your expertise in sociology to bear on this question of why people are leaving the church. This has just been so instructive and insightful today, and I can see we need to have you back for lots of other issues that really need to be considered through a lens of sociology as well as theology. I want to thank all of you for listening to The Table podcast today. Be sure and subscribe to us on your favorite podcast stream and join us the next time for The Table podcast, I'm Bill Hendricks.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, welcome to The Table podcast. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the executive director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center. And on The Table podcast, we discussed issues of God and culture. I want to begin with a question today, whom do you trust? Whom do you trust? The Gallup organization essentially asked that question in its annual confidence in institution survey in which respondents rank how much confidence they have in a wide range of institutions. Let me just mention a few, and you can ask, whom do you trust and how much, the church or organized religion, the military, the Supreme Court, newspapers, congress, television news, the presidency, the police, large technology companies, news on the internet, there's others mentioned, but the question again, whom do you trust that you'd likely say, "Well, people that I believe are telling me the truth," but how do you know what is true?
That's becoming harder and harder to discern in our culture, but of course, having a basis for truth and knowledge is foundational to social and personal wellbeing, and that's why we've asked Bonnie Kristian to join us today. Bonnie is a journalist whose work has been published by the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, Politico and other outlets, and her column, The Lesser Kingdom, appears regularly in print and online at Christianity today. I've particularly invited Bonnie to be our guest because she's the author of an outstanding book that's extremely well written called Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community. She's a graduate of Bethel Seminary, lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and her twin sons. Bonnie, welcome to The Table podcast.
Bonnie Kristian:
Thank you so much for having me.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, we're delighted to have you here. In light of this question, who do you trust and the kind of work that you do, please don't take this as too cynical, but how in the world did a nice person like you end up as a political journalist?
Bonnie Kristian:
Well, I knew from quite early on that I wanted to write for a living, and I realized at a young age that fiction was not my forte. And so from there, I started becoming interested in news, in politics and spent a few years in Washington DC after I finished college working at some political non-profits, but I realized that I wanted to write about ideas and that I came to think that I needed another degree to do that the way I wanted to. And so that was when I decided to go to seminary and started building up a freelance portfolio in journalism while I was there, and then I've been doing it full-time ever since.
Bill Hendricks:
I'm curious, in seminary, did you have any particular, I don't know that they call them a majors, but concentrations or specific focus that you seem to zoom in on?
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah. So my degree was in Master of Arts in Christian Thought, which I think they've actually changed the program a little bit since I left. So if you look it up now, it might not be the same. But what attracted me to it was it was essentially a theological studies degree but very outward facing. So a lot of the classes would be like Christianity and something and science or social issues or culture, looking at how our faith interacts with the world. And I thought that was quite well suited for what I was interested in writing about.
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely. So in your book Untrustworthy, you began early on with a statement that we have what you described as a knowledge crisis and you then put a more technical term on it, an epistemic crisis, which brings us to the word epistemology. Now, we have a lot of theologically trained people that listen to The Table podcast, but frankly, we also have a lot who are not trained and the word epistemology already starts to cause their eyes glaze over. Tell us about what you mean by a knowledge crisis and epistemology crisis. What does it get to?
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah. So epistemology is, it's a branch of philosophy, it's concerned with the study of knowledge itself. So it's asking questions like what is knowledge? What is truth? How do we acquire knowledge? How do we distinguish between a situation where we think we have knowledge and we actually don't, and a situation where we really do have knowledge? And I think it's perfectly fine and normal that most people haven't heard of that, thinking a lot of situations you wouldn't have to really think about epistemology. It could be sort of just an academic thing that you find out about in college at most. Our situation though, I think, is a little bit different because we have so rapidly and massively increased the amount of information, and a lot of that contains really significant truth claims that we encounter on a daily basis. First, with the rise of 24 hour cable news in the '90s and then soon after the internet and social media as we know it now, and now it's on our phones.
So it's with us constantly in the way that in 1998 you maybe watched cable news, but you couldn't take your television with you and look at it in line at the grocery store. There's a constant sea and an issue of quantity that is quite new. And so, we're flooding ourselves with information and truth claims constantly. And we didn't really, I think, prepare ourselves for that, and now it seems pretty clear that we've gotten ourselves in trouble. And so, epistemology I think becomes important for us to think about in a way that it wouldn't normally be where we need to be a little bit more deliberate in how we're approaching the process of gaining knowledge and the process of parsing what is truthful and untruthful. And so, the knowledge crisis, or you could say epistemic crisis is what's happened in the absence of that preparation and the absence of that being deliberate.
And it's that sense, I think, that probably everyone listening is familiar with of uncertainty and of confusion and feeling like we're in this very overwhelming information environment. We don't always know how to decide what is true, and frequently there's relational element of it as well where we're having conversations with loved ones that are not just about policy disagreements because we've always had political disagreements like that, but where you're talking to someone who you thought believed quite similarly to you, perhaps, especially if we're talking about fellow Christians and it's like you're talking past each othert, you're not even looking at the same reality. And I think that experience of being so unmoored and uncertain is very much the knowledge crisis that I have in mind.
Bill Hendricks:
And you mentioned the relational dimension of that. So I think what I hear you describing is the classic, the family gets together for Thanksgiving dinner, and next thing you know we've got a pitched battle of sides about a political issue often with generational overtones. And each side is absolutely passionately convinced that the facts that they are purporting from their side are the real truth, and the other side has been deceived and this is terrible, and how could you think that way, and it boils down.
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah. And like I said, there's always been disagreements within families about politics. So the mere fact that the argument isn't new, but I think that sense of, we can't even agree on the basic starting facts, we're probably immersed in totally different media environments such that what the other person is saying just seems totally out of touch with reality and it's become such a larger part of our lives, it's harder to set it aside now and say like, "Well, let's just focus on other things. Let's just have our nice dinner." Because again, everybody can pull out the phone and say like, "No, no, I have it right here, I'm going to prove it to you." And so, those changes in technology and in the way that we've apportioned our attention and the voices that we've given so much more authority in our heads that has really created a substantively different situation than we had 20, 30, 40 years ago.
Bill Hendricks:
Does part of this crisis also mean that we, at some point, begin to even lose our belief that maybe there is such a thing as truth? I certainly don't want to get into any of the specific divides, but let's just keep it at this. We've now had two presidential elections in the United States in which two people who, according to the electors, they lost the election, "But no, we didn't really lose the election, it was stolen from us." Just those claims alone at least begin to raise some doubts in plenty of people's minds, even people to think, "No, you did lose." But I do wonder, you know what mean, maybe there's something here, there's some smoke, maybe there is some fire. I mean, does that itself begin to cause this malaise of skepticism?
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah. I mean, think that's a big part of it and that the reaction to it depends perhaps significantly on the person. So I think there are some people who faced with that kind of debate and uncertainty some people will just double down on whatever just they want to be true essentially. They'll say, "I'm looking at this. I see people presenting an argument for one side, some people presenting an argument for the other. There's no way for me to really verify which one of these is right. I'm just going to go with the one that I want to be." And it's a very easy to do that and to find a wealth of a parent confirmation for that.
And then I think some other people maybe who don't have quite such a taste for political debates will just throw up their hands and say, "You know what? I don't know. I can't know. I don't know, maybe there is no truth." And the challenge I would argue is to be able to not go into that apathy or into that very cynical tribalism to still be looking for the actual truth. That is a very hard thing to do.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I think the sentence in your book that said, "Okay, I got to have Bonnie on The Table podcast," you asked the question, "If truth exists as Christianity affirms it does, can humans access it rightly?" It's extremely important question because it's one thing to talk about our reports on the news true, or is this publication true or is this scientific report giving me accurate information? But we, as Christians, at least Bible believing Christians, we also believe that God has revealed himself through His word. Is that true? And can we be certain that there is such a category as truth? And so, this is a modern day problem that has long-term implications. Welcome your thoughts on that.
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah. I mean, obviously, as you said, is this news report true, is not the same question as is scripture true. To some degree, we're talking about different kinds of truth, but they're not totally disconnected. And I think if we're very confused, we have a confused habit of mind, if you will, I think, in these political and public spaces, that's not going to stay isolated there, that confusion is going to affect how we think about other things. And likewise, the inverse should be true as well, that if we are immersed in theological truth and developing a real feel for truth, an analogy I like to use is the way you can just feel the difference between cotton and polyester. You might not be able to always articulate it very clearly, isn't of pre rational but you have a feel for that that at least points you in the right direction that if you're in a good space with that on this more theological side of things, that hopefully that would lead you to having a feel for truth in those more political and public spaces as well.
And that's not a sure thing, it's not like a mechanistic process where if you're a Christian, your political beliefs are always right. I mean, they would be nice if that were the case, but just the sheer political disagreement among Christians shows that's not the case. But there is certainly a relationship there, and I think permitting yourself to fall into habits and mindsets of confused or even corrupt thinking in one area will eventually affect the other and vice versa.
Bill Hendricks:
I'm curious whether you've thought about where this human desire for truth really comes from, and maybe another way to ask question is, it seems like we have a real propensity anymore to mistrust things, where does that propensity to mistrust come from or is it the opposite? Humans always got to put their trust in something, it may be in something that's false, but they've got to trust something, it's just inherent in our nature. What drives that?
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah. I do think that just as a matter of practicality, we do have to trust a lot. We have to assume that we can acquire real knowledge, we have to trust expertise that we have no way to evaluate. Like I just had a plumber in my house this week, you might actually be able to hear some of the banging, there's some repairs ongoing as I'm recording here. I have no knowledge of plumbing, I have to take others on their word and trust that. So we have to live with a certain amount of trust to function. I think the rising skepticism and distrust, and you mentioned all those institutions at the beginning, and if you track polling on that over time, it's the trust is just going down in pretty much every category. And the few categories that haven't seen a market drop in trust in the past few decades were already pretty low to begin with, so it's not like they're doing much better, they're maybe just already at their floor.
Bill Hendricks:
They didn't have far to fall.
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah, exactly. I think there's not a single reason for that decline in trust, but now that it is ongoing, it's sort of a snowball effect and one affecting the other where we have this sense of feeling like very isolated individuals in this very uncertain and chaotic society. And once some trust begins seeping in one place, I think it starts to affect others until you… I've observed plenty of conversations in social media, people just will say, "Well, you can't trust anything." And once you get to that sort of universal place of distrust in those public spaces, it's hard to get out of that. I think it's misleading because it feels like it doesn't have the immediate consequences of being distrustful in those more practical senses.
Like if I decide I don't trust any plumbers, pretty soon I don't have a functional toilet. So I have to make up my mind and get myself together on that and decide I'm going to trust someone. If I decide I don't trust anyone in the media, for example, I can still go on reading the news, the news that I don't trust and go on arguing about it on the internet and go on having political discord in my life. And there's not that immediate concrete backlash, but I think it's misleading if we imagine that living that way has no effect on us.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I know that politics is your particular beat, the political area. Is it possible that the more cynicism creeps in as to whether the sources can be trusted, that you end up with these two polar extremes fighting it out on your side, but they're actually quite small? And in fact the middle finally just says, "You know what, I don't have time, I don't have energy, I don't have the emotional bandwidth to get involved in any of that, I just literally tune out politics in general." And so you've got a very uninformed electorate when you do have an electorate and that doesn't even count the people that say, "I'm not even voting because I don't think any of it matters or makes a difference." And now you've got another crisis in the political area, which is just people that aren't involved and maybe the majority.
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah. So there's a sense in which I want to say that a certain degree of uninvolvement is appropriate. I mean, we have a representative system for a reason. The average person is supposed to be able to delegate their political engagement to elected officials, to journalists, to people who choose to engage in politics full-time and to develop real expertise and do it for them while they get on with their own lives, more important things that they have to attend to. And so, that I think is not a bad thing. The problem is when you have less of that deliberate delegation and more of, as you described, just a burnt out apathy, and especially when the full-time voices who are left, as you say, are at the extremes and not really representing as they're supposed to, the great bulk of people who are busy with other things.
And that I think is a closer picture to where we are right now especially on social media, the way it works is the more extreme voices are more exciting, they're more likely to induce fear or anger or in some cases joy in their readers, and so they tend to get more attention. And that also creates among that more engaged group of people are really distorted like view of where the average American is. And this is something that I have to pay a lot of attention to myself or I will end up thinking that my neighbor down the street is paying as close attention to the things that I'm paying attention to and has such strong opinions as I do when the reality is they don't. And that's okay, but it's very easy, I think, if you're in that small more engaged minority to have a perspective that in some ways is even more distorted than among those very apathetic people who have just given up.
Bill Hendricks:
In your book, you talk about the political implications of this knowledge crisis, the social implications. I was particularly fascinated with your conversation at length about the faith implications. In other words, how does a knowledge crisis affect the way that Christians think about God and think about their Lord Jesus? It also, how does it affect their way that they see and interact with other people, particularly people that they may not disagree with? Enlarge on, this really is a crisis of how we live as Christians in the world.
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah. So I think you sort of gestured in a couple directions that it has implications for our faith. One on the more theological side of things is that scripture draws very clear connections between faith and love and truth. And a lot of times, we tend to speak about these things as somewhat separate things in different categories. Love perhaps is more emotional, truth as more logical, but that's not how the New Testament and especially Jesus in the Gospel of John and then later the First Epistle of John talk about this. And in fact the way that these passages speak of it is they link the two. Jesus says in John 14 and 18 in particular, he talks about how his opponents, his critics at the time are unable to love him because they don't know God and therefore can't recognize God's truth.
He says, "My language isn't clear to you, you can't understand what I say because you belong to your father of the devil and there is no truth in him." And so, these kind of passages, I think they prevent us from saying it's not a big deal. If I'm spending my days immersed in political or untruth, be that watching cable news or on social media, whatever your media of choice, it's okay if I'm immersed in untruth there, I'm still a loving Christian, I'm still growing in my faith because that connection does matter. And if we are spending so much time in untruth, it is going to make it difficult for us to love God and vice versa. There's also, in many cases, a much more immediately visible and practical effect of this knowledge crisis for Christians that it's popping up and causing division in congregations and it's becoming an issue of discipleship.
Something that I heard over and over again as I was researching this book from pastors especially was it was almost a verbatim quote to the extent that it was seemed strange. You would think it was coordinated except that it came unprompted from so many different quarters, was pastors saying, "I get an hour or two with people every week and their social media or television or whatever media of choice gets them for 10, 15, 20 hours and there's no way I can compete with them." And it's true that a lot of churches are politically homogenous. So in that case, they're going to just have, perhaps, the conflict between what is being taught at church and the small amount of time devoted to that and then the engine of anger and fear and conflict that the political media tends to generate.
But in churches where you have also political differences within the congregation and those 15, 20 hours are being spent in very different places. Then you have the added complication of that intense disagreement within the congregation. I mean, it's a huge challenge for pastors right now and something that, I think, even when I was in seminary a few years ago, we were not talking about this. So let alone people who received their pastoral training earlier. If it's not in the congregation already, it's probably coming and I think it's something that has blindsided some pastors is this major new issue of discipleship.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, you're absolutely correct, and you actually mentioned a Lifeway poll that had been done that said that half of all Protestant pastors say they frequently hear church members repeating conspiracy theories that they've heard for why something's happening in the country.
Bonnie Kristian:
Yep. It's very widespread.
Bill Hendricks:
And one of the nastiest outcrops of this that divorce between love and truth as it were that you mentioned, is the disunity that has resulted. And what is so striking to me when I looked through the New Testament, certainly all through Jesus teachings and the gospels, and then you get to the epistles and particularly the sections of the epistles that are the implications of the truth, the doctrines that are given. Over and over and over and over, there's this appeal to unity and to having like-mindedness in Christ and to being of one mind and to referring one another before yourselves and being humble with each other and being kind to one another and forgiving one another as Christ is for forgiven you and Jesus going so far as to say, "If you don't forgive your brother, then I'm not going to forgive you."
And yet you see the exact opposite in so many situations between Christians who disfriend each other, disfellowship from one another, leave churches over, something that is not anywhere near a core doctrine. And to me, it feels like there's got to be even a larger sort of spirit of darkness involved here. It's a very pernicious thing, but it seems to be widespread and growing. But again, we get back to this question that you raised in the book of how do we know and how do we think about knowing is I think what you're also asking is that we, first of all, and I welcome your input on this, how do we go about thinking about knowing, I guess is the question. Where do we start?
Bonnie Kristian:
Well, so where I landed on this in the book because it's a difficult question, especially if you're not in an academic context and trying to parse different claims in real-time and they're coming at you almost faster it seems than as possible through your newsfeed. The answer that I landed on in Untrustworthy was to look at intellectual virtues. So not offering any sort of single rule because there's just too many scenarios. I can't possibly say, "Here's how you can decide whether something you encounter is true or not." But to instead say, "All right, we can't lay down a single rule like that, we can't individually make our information environment less chaotic. They're not going to figure out some perfect way to better moderate social media, they're not going to figure out some new law that's going to fix this for us. But what we can affect is what kind of people are we as we're coming into this space, and again, developing that feel for truth and that looks like developing intellectual virtues".
And in the field of epistemology, these days, it tends to be not really so focused in this area, but several centuries ago, the older tradition of epistemology was very much concerned with virtue. And so, there's a long history of this, of thinking about, what does it mean to be intellectually virtuous? And the three virtues that I talk about in the book are studiousness, intellectual honesty, and wisdom. And in that order, they're very much concerned with the process of finding, of gaining knowledge, of parsing purported facts and truths.
And then what we do with that knowledge once acquired, how we use it and to what ends do we use it. And unfortunately, we can't simply decide to be virtuous, that would be very nice if we could, but what we can do is to build habits that create spaces for virtue to develop in us. And so, that more than trying to give, I guess, really specific guidance is about making individual discreet decisions about truth, I think, is something that we can begin to do. And that is something that anyone can do even if you don't have that sort of academic background in epistemology.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, yes, Philippians 4 talks about what sort of things are true whatsoever, things are pure, whatsoever things are righteous, etc. Let your mind dwell on these things, which gets back to, if I can use the term, some basic spiritual disciplines, it sounds like you're suggesting where what I hear you saying is that in coming to the whole task of thinking in our culture and living in our culture, we've got to bring a mind that's prepared, a mind that's formed, if you will, to even think well, and that that only comes again through our time with Christ and in His Word and letting the truths of the scripture at least wash over us first and by the Holy Spirit's grace begin to penetrate our hearts and our minds so that we bring a tool, if you will, an organ to the task that's even ready to do what's being asked to do. Is that what I hear you saying?
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the foundation of it. And then a lot of the practical habits, some are more explicitly in that spiritual formation place and some, I think, are very mundane, and even things like how we arrange our homes, are you putting your TV at the center of your most favored gathering place, your living room? Is your phone the first thing you picking that up, the first thing you do in the morning, is the first thing you lay eyes on? And so, it's very much concerned with how we're spending our time and how we're spending our attention.
And to go back to that comment that I hear from pastors so often, are you giving Facebook or Instagram or whatever it is that you prefer 20 hours a week and giving church life and time with God one to two hours a week? Because that will have its effects, certainly most of us, at least, are not going to have the ability to spend 40+ hours a week in church or studying scripture. Some people get to do that, but most of us don't. But that kind of gross imbalance is going to have an effect on our lives and have an effect on our thinking and have an effect on our faith. And I think just plunging into this new technological era and figuring everything would be all right, that was a mistake.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I want all of our listeners to know that what Bonnie is suggesting here is something Bonnie practices herself. In your book, you talk about yourself as a writer and that as you were writing your book on Untrustworthy, you found a prayer by Thomas Aquinas that you said, "First of all, I love it because it was clearly written by a writer for a writer," but you love it because you have spent each morning before you begin your work praying through that prayer as a way of framing the day and getting your mind prepared to do that work of writing. Tell us a little bit more about that or tell the listeners a little bit more about that. I just thought, what a wonderful habit. So simple but very practical and very powerful in a daily drip of that and more than just a drip, that's a communication between you and the Lord there. Talk about that.
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah. So it's called a Prayer before Study, and it's a pretty short prayer, maybe 15 lines where Aquinas is asking God for things like, "Give me a sharp sense of understanding or attentive memory, the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm." And also very much acknowledging his own ignorance and his own proneness to error and asking God to alleviate that and to be with him in that. And so, I don't pray it every morning now. I did while I was working on the book, and I still do it pretty frequently, especially days when I'm going to be writing. But my idea with praying it every morning was essentially a hope that it would form in me the virtues that it was modeling and it always wasn't fully there for it every morning.
There were times where it was like, "All right, this is part of the routine, so I'm going to do it," without necessarily really feeling it. But then perhaps is when it does feel like the most discipline in the more negative sense is when that sort of practice is most important because it's those days when doing without that framing, that communication with God at the beginning, when that becomes the riskiest, I guess if you will, it's then I think when more likely to go awry, to forget our own ignorance and our own tendency toward error if we don't start with that reminder. So that was the attraction of it for me, and some days, the difficulty of it for me. But it's a beautiful prayer and something that I strongly recommend to everyone.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, germane to the subject we're talking about today, which is knowledge and knowing, one of the things I love most about that prayer, there's an inherent sort of humility that Aquinas brings to his work, and his work of course was very much thinking kinds of work.
And when we talk about knowing and how do we know if nothing else the virtue of intellectual humility compels us to always hold lightly whatever we think we want to become certain about or something can even be, "Oh no, I'm certain that's true," but can't always be certain that our understanding of that truth is complete and adequate, or whether we'll always quite see it in quite the same way. And so, I'm not just talking about understandings of theological truths, I'm talking about even what we're finding today and trying to live life. We have opinions, we have things that we actually get facts and we base our conclusions on those facts, but even there, we sort of hold that slightly open handedly because we don't have all the facts, and tomorrow there may be additional facts that come on the table that we have to adjust how we think about things.
This to me, was one of the most interesting things has been about the pandemic is I think most people certainly who've been educated and rational would subscribe to the idea, "Well, we do need to trust the science," but it was like a whammy because as the sciences, we know it, and then with more research, you begin to find out some additional things about the science. Then people say, "Well, they keep changing the science." Well, not changing the science, science is an iterative process, but there's an intellectual humility that we have to hold those things with.
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah, and it's tough to do. I think it's very easy to fall into an extreme of either there isn't objective truth there, there's no ultimate reality that we can seek to know, or if you want to say, "Yes, very much that objective truth does exist, that reality does exist to lose that humility and follow it up with, and I know it. And that's to acknowledge that the truth does exist, but I may not have a full grasp on it yet." That is a hard balance to maintain. And I think that that's true in most cases. Obviously, we all think that everything we think is right if we didn't think that would change our minds, but to recognize the likelihood that, "Everything that I believe right now is true." That's probably not the case, there's probably some wrong things in there. And as you said, to hold things lightly and be willing to be demonstrated wrong, be willing to change our minds, that is a hard willingness to maintain.
Bill Hendricks:
But isn't that a lot of sanctification? I mean, we got to remember, we are turning around from having been rebels against God toward following His son. That doesn't happen overnight. And in the process of making that turn, we find out that there's still a lot in us that's kind of in rebellion, which by the nature of the case means we've been wrong.
And so, we as Christians of all people, it seems to me, should have some facility at saying, "You know what, I realize I'm wrong and I need to change that." In the minutes we have left, if I may ask you, since switch from political journalists to mother, you've got twin boys as I understand it, and I guess in light of those who are listening who are parents, would love your wisdom and anything you're learning. As you help your sons growing up, thinking about, how do they come to know what is true? And as a parent, how do you help them in that exploration and discovery?
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah, so our three, so-
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, a little young.
Bonnie Kristian:
Little young for some of the biggest challenges. I mean, think on the discipleship side of things, you don't need a lot of innovation. Like we've been doing this for 2000 years and a lot of the old things work well. On the tech side of things and the encountering of truth in many ways, quite new media environment. There, I think there's a real sense in which parents of my generation, parents who have children now, parents who have grown up, if not quite as digital natives, certainly as early arrivals, I feel like I have an advantage over my parents' generation because when I was a teenager going through AOL free trial CDs and then calling up and canceling and then starting a new one, because my mom would not pay for the monthly thing after the free trial ended, our parents back then that the internet was new, they couldn't know what the real risks would be.
And so, the concern back then was very much about physical abduction like you're going to get lured to the Walmart parking lot and they're going to kidnap you. And not that that's never happened, but I think, at this point, having experienced it myself, it's much easier for me to say, "No. The chief problem is that the risks we're dealing with here, a lot of them are about attention and just the way that our brains work and the ability to sit down and read a book without switching to a screen after every section or every chapter." And that wasn't possible for parents to know 20 years ago, but we know it now, in many cases, via unfortunate personal experience and own struggles with getting our habits under control and trying to build some intellectual virtues.
And so like I said, my kids are three, a lot of those choices I haven't had to concretely make yet because for now we can just put the phone out of reach. But looking ahead, I do at least feel better equipped to say, "I know what the dangers are here, and can hopefully at least put that unfortunately hard one knowledge to better use so that perhaps their brains will not end up as broken as ours are."
Bill Hendricks:
Okay. Well, Bonnie Kristian, thank you very, very much for being on The Table podcast today. This has been very insightful. I know we've only scratched the surface on the topic that you raised in your book Untrustworthy, but thank you for spending these times with us.
Bonnie Kristian:
Yeah, thank you again for having me.
Bill Hendricks:
You're more than welcome. And I want to thank you as listeners for being with us today to hear about this crisis of knowledge and all the insights that Bonnie's given us on that. Encourage you to join us again next time on The Table podcast. Be sure and subscribe in your favorite subscription service, and I will see you again on the table where we discuss issues of God and culture. Have a good day.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture and our topic today is part of our global perspective series, and the nation that we're focusing on is New Zealand. And I have two guests who I visit with regularly every other, and now I don't know what to say, summer or winter, because it's summer here in the US but it's winter down there when I go. And we've reversed it now because they're entering into summer as we record and we're entering into winter. But Russell Thorp, who's with the community churches in New Zealand, and Richard Fountain, who also works in the same area, and is a DTS grad are my guest. Russell, welcome to the table.
Russell Thorp:
Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here and good to be a part of a conversation about the church in New Zealand.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly. And Richard, thank you for being a part as well.
Richard Fountain:
My pleasure, Darrell.
Darrell Bock:
All right, so let's just dive right in. Let's talk about New Zealand a little bit. Most people have heard, if they know anything about New Zealand, they probably connect it with Lord of the Rings and the topography and just the beauty of the country, which is world renowned. But tell us a little bit about the country. It's actually not a very large country in population, is that right?
Russell Thorp:
Yeah, that's right. About 5 million people. And where we are in Auckland, both Richard and I, is about 1.8 to 2 million.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So there are two islands, the north island and the south island, and Auckland is the dominant city in the country. That's almost what, 40% of the population in the Auckland area?
Russell Thorp:
Correct.
Darrell Bock:
And much of the country is rural in terms of its topography and that kind of thing. And I know you're famous, not just for your people, but Richard, what else is New Zealand known for other than the 5 million people who inhabit the two islands?
Richard Fountain:
Yeah, well, farming is really the backbone of the economy as well as manufacturing and tourism. But yeah, the joke is we have more sheep in New Zealand than people. It's about 26 million sheep, was 70 million sheep. So farming has been a big thing in New Zealand and 5 million people, that's pretty small by comparison.
Darrell Bock:
You may be the first country that keeps a census on sheep beyond a census on people. But anyway.
Richard Fountain:
Well, the tourists see it when they come and they're amazed at the beauty of the countryside and the diversity of the countryside. And you're right, it is, it's like Lord of the Rings at the right season and it's beautiful with rainforests and farmland and mountains and lakes. So everything's on display.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, it is. It is a beautiful country. I remember visiting, I guess a cow farm where milk production was big. You all actually supply a lot of the milk for the entire Oceania region and extending into Asia, is that correct?
Richard Fountain:
Yeah, that's correct. I mean, there are countries like India that produce more dairy products than New Zealand and America, but we export all our good stuff overseas, so yeah, we're an export nation. So we're very much well focused in that regard.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Very good. Well, so let's talk a little bit about the history of the country and its background. It's a very distinct history, Russell, in terms of its origins and also in terms of the … what was formally Europe, people of European descent in the country, distinct from Australia. Is that right in terms of its roots?
Russell Thorp:
Well, certainly the people that inhabited these islands were probably from Hawaii, Hawaiiki. And they came to New Zealand in canoes, the Mori Ori, and then the Maori and the Maori are the dominant race of those two, and they continue today as being quite dominant. They have a language called Maori, Maori language, and it was probably around the early 1840s when Europeans and before that of course Europeans had come, but where there was a treaty because Maori were fighting amongst themselves and they were fighting with the British colonialists that were here at the time.
And so there was a group of Christians related to the Wilberforce group in the UK who actually managed to help put together the treaty of Waitangi. And Waitangi is a place up north that was the middle of Maori chieftain folk who had influence in the country. And that treaty of Waitangi is very important even today and it's meant that there's been quite a good relationship between Maori and what we call Pakeha, which are the white-skinned people, the Europeans obviously. So that's a little bit of background for New Zealand. And Christianity grew very quickly amongst Maori for a long time. It's now in a bit of a recession, but we believe that God is at work amongst our Maori folk again, and they will help the church in New Zealand I think in the future.
Darrell Bock:
It's interesting when you get off the plane and you fly in from the states into New Zealand and Auckland Airport, you are immediately greeted with two languages. And then of course, and we're going to touch on all the New Zealand, how can I say, the particulars of New Zealand, the haka, which of course is associated with rugby now and the All Blacks, really has Maori roots, doesn't it? Richard?
Richard Fountain:
Yeah, absolutely it does. And the Maori chiefs and the Maori people had a very rich culture and still do. Sadly it has been suppressed, but Te Reo, the language is now being encouraged and is flourishing again. But yeah, haka was one of those cultural oddities for Europeans.
But I'll just add, it was really interesting, the British intervention in New Zealand, which it really was, I mean, when you are coming as a colonial group, it was to establish government and to bring law to the British subjects who were coming into New Zealand. And in decades later it was going to be a tsunami of settlers and it was always intended to establish law and order and also equality amongst the British subjects and also the native people, the indigenous people. But it was never intended to suppress their culture or treat them as subservient.
And just by way of comparison, the British Empire had a lot of treaties with indigenous people, you can think of Canada, you can think of West Africa and you can think of Australia. But in New Zealand it really was quite a unique new system of dealing with indigenous people and part of that arrangement was to preserve the local governorship of the tribal leaders. And so it was working towards peace and it was working towards a harmony rather than an upper state and a lower state and a hierarchy of humanity and so it really was quite significant at the time in that regard.
Darrell Bock:
And it's somewhat so, and the point you're making is this is somewhat exceptional and has marked New Zealand culture ever since.
Richard Fountain:
Yeah, absolutely. And even our cousins, we love the Aussies, they're great rivals and great friends, but even in amongst the Aborigine people there, the British did not encourage, they certainly didn't impose assimilation, but they certainly didn't encourage the people to flourish. And so it was very much a separateness from the Aborigine people, whereas the language of the treaty is very, very unique and it's a language of covenant. And the Maori people today fully recognize that language, that model, that concept of bringing two different communities, two different groups of people together.
And you can imagine the difference. I mean we were joking about sheep, but when the early settlers came, they brought sheep and cattle with them eventually. Maori people had never seen sheep, so when Samuel Marsden preached the first sermon on Christmas morning in 1814, he preached from Luke Chapter Two and he was talking about the good news of great joy that the angels gave the shepherds, you can imagine the people thinking shepherds? We don't even know what sheep are. So there was that cultural disconnect in terms of understanding a lot of concepts, including what does it mean to have sovereignty for the British Empire when they're working amongst themselves as different separate tribes. So Christianity was actually pivotal in helping both preserve the local culture and also develop it for the new people that were coming and were going to be mixing together.
Darrell Bock:
So I can imagine an early sermon on Jesus as the good shepherd would be translated Jesus the good what?
Richard Fountain:
Yeah,
Darrell Bock:
I mean that just shows at some degree the cultural distance. And yet as Richard's already alluded to the role of Christianity as kind of a cultural glue that allowed the country to grow and function and flourish is important in the development of the history of New Zealand.
Russell Thorp:
That's very true. I think it's important for us to understand that concept of covenant, which was at the back of the thinking of those who were putting that treaty together. And I think the early Maori chiefs, they were intelligent people and they understood all of this as well. And this is one of the things that as we reflect in the second half really on the state of the church in New Zealand, identity politics, as in the US, is an issue here. And it's important that unfortunately it's become this thing about Christianity versus secularism or whatever it is. But if we talk about covenant and agreements to work together, that's very much a part of humanity and the importance going forward of Christianity, also within the culture going forward in New Zealand.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, this is one of the fascinating things about why I enjoy visiting New Zealand is the way in which they handle some of these issues and tensions that it can exist between people and yet watching the situation in New Zealand and the way in which there is cooperation and recognition, obviously still being worked on but still present and really being focused on in some ways that allows for progress as opposed to strict opposition.
It's interesting to watch as an outsider from a distance and to have discovered in the conversations that I have as I move from various countries. I visit Australia, New Zealand, I'm in India, I'm in South Africa. They all have very distinct histories including at a societal and racial level with very different backgrounds. And the contrasts really do jump out to someone as you move from place to place. So let me ask you some other questions. What else would you say is distinctive about New Zealand? You've mentioned that you're an export country, that there is this pursuit of racial recognition, mutual racial recognition in the country. What else would you say is distinctive about New Zealand, Russell?
Russell Thorp:
I think New Zealanders have always been seen to be very good at improvising. They left the UK, they left other places in the world to come and settle here. And we have this wire called number eight wire. It's just a certain thick wire and farmers learned how to do a lot of things with that number eight wire. It's just an expression really of us as Kiwis being creative and able to bring solutions to issues, engineering issues, all sorts of issues because of our smallness and in terms of population.
But the other side of that is that actually New Zealanders punch above their weight in terms of new inventions and all sorts of things that they have brought to the table for the world. Rutherford helped, he helped split the atom, didn't he? So he's a kiwi. And so there's a whole range of things, including just recently the ability to beam power from a solar setup from space into the world is the people that are in front of that science development are Kiwis. And they've just been over in Europe working with people around that. So it's an interesting country from that perspective. A lot of creativity.
Darrell Bock:
Again, I'm going to smile and bring in sports, the creativity that you had in winning the America's Cup, taking it from the States at one point and the innovation that went into the design of the boat could be a metaphor for the creativity that New Zealanders have and the contributions that they've made in a variety of areas in the world.
Russell Thorp:
Yeah, that's right.
Darrell Bock:
So primarily, so is New Zealand primarily an agricultural country? I mean it sounds like it's a mix of technology and agriculture. Is that a fair summary or is there anything else I'm missing in terms of the general social climate in the country, in terms of its economics?
Russell Thorp:
Richard, you've answered that one.
Richard Fountain:
There's general manufacturing, there's innovation, a lot of innovation is being talked about in terms of technology and that sort of thing, electronics and that sort of thing. A lot of the industry is based around service industries for power generation or running the country in a unique way and that sort of thing. So tourism is the biggest thing.
The other thing about being a small island, roughly land mass size of Great Britain is that, like you said, we're forward facing, outward facing, and really the ocean or Oceania, Oceania is just as important as the land mass. So I mean Australia is the smallest continent, but it's not an island, it's massive, but we are just a little island. But the people and the diversity of residents now come from all through the Pacific. And there is definitely that boating flavor, that motif of sailing and travel. So we have Tongans and Samoans where we we're kind of like the capital of the Pacifica islands for some of the Samoan and Tongan countries and that sort of thing. So yeah, very, very multicultural, very ocean focused, lot of boats and that sort of thing as well.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I talk to many Americans and New Zealand is often on their travel bucket list of hoping to get to at some point in their lives because of one, the reputation of the islands. It's interesting that you compared the size of New Zealand to the UK. Most people don't realize that Australia is actually as big, if not slightly bigger, than the United States in land mass. So these are two substantial countries in terms of size located in a completely different part of the world from the US and yet most people probably know more about Australia than they do New Zealand, but both countries have managed to etch their way into the consciousness of many North Americans.
Okay. So let me shift gears a little bit. You've talked about the multiculturalism and the fact that people are coming from other islands. So how many different languages are you dealing with in the country in terms of its current population? How multicultural, I guess is what I'm asking, is how multicultural is New Zealand beyond the indigenous tribes and the European presence that's come? You've mentioned the influence of the Pacific Islands because you're surrounded by lots of little islands. Talk a little bit about the makeup of the country demographically beyond the 5 million.
Russell Thorp:
Probably the most-
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead, Russell.
Russell Thorp:
The largest group is probably the Indian population. I think Indians are spread all around the world. It's no different here. Auckland is an interesting place. Only one in four Aucklanders were born in New Zealand, so including myself, I was born in Papua New Guinea. My parents are missionaries of course, but that that's reflective of the country. But the languages, really we are a bi cultural nation in terms of language. There's English and Maori, and of course then we have a large population of Indians who speak their languages and then Chinese. And we have a lot of immigrant groups that have come here from places like Bangladesh, places like Myanmar and Ethiopia, all those things. I think every country is reflecting that input from other nations. Now New Zealand's no different, even though we are so far away from everyone else.
Darrell Bock:
And Auckland's been growing in part because it's been drawing people from this variety of locations, or is there a lot of rural to urban movement as well, or a combination of the two?
Russell Thorp:
Yeah, it'd be a combination of both those things, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
So it's a real mix. So let's talk about Christianity in New Zealand. Shift gears a little bit and can you give us a quick overview of the history of Christianity and then we'll talk about what the current status of Christianity is, but obviously came with the Europeans. That's about all I know. Let's pick up from there. Who got us, go ahead Russell.
Russell Thorp:
I guess my reflections are that Christianity was a very important part of New Zealand in its early days. And I think the ratio of the church, of Christians, of people who went to church was a lot higher of course than it is today. The Catholic Church was and still is the largest grouping of Christians and then the Anglican church would've been the next largest to Presbyterian Methodists and so on. And then the evangelical side was a smaller portion back in the early days, but it's grown these days to be a much larger portion. It still doesn't beat the Catholics. And of course then growing from there has been the growth of Pentecostalism in New Zealand as it has grown elsewhere and independent Pentecostal churches have become large. That's waned a little now, but it's still very important part of the makeup of Christianity here.
Darrell Bock:
So in distinction from a Australia, which originally was founded, I think as a penal colony, if I have my Australian history right, where did the impulse for Europeans to come to New Zealand come from? Richard?
Richard Fountain:
Well, it came from the Anglican Church, the Presbyterian church, and those that were part of the Christian missions around the world that were going into India and that were going into a lot of the Pacific Islands as well. So the missionaries that came, I mentioned Samuel Marsden, there was another character who was involved in the Napoleonic Wars back in the early 18 hundreds converted or he became a priest and that sort of thing, an Anglican priest. And so he joined the efforts to come down and bring Christianity to the islands.
So yeah, it was very much instrumental. Some of the key people we alluded to which were against slavery and those that actually wrote the laws in England to abolish slavery, the actual abolition of slavery act, were relatives of some of the influences in the forming of the treaty. So you could say that the DNA of what is true Christianity, what does Christian community look like was right there at the beginning in terms of working with the people. So it wasn't just a preaching message, it is very much how do we live as human beings as well and so that was a strong element from the church at that time. And again-
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead. Go ahead.
Richard Fountain:
Yeah, and again, the contrast was are we going for slavery or is there something better on the shelf for us here?
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So really my guess would be there would be two motivations for people coming from Europe to New Zealand. One would be economic and the other would be in terms of mission and I'm assuming that that explains the Catholic presence in the country as well, that it was part of this missionary outreach of churches in general to reach parts of the world where the gospel had not gone before.
Russell Thorp:
Yeah, that's correct.
Richard Fountain:
And there's just an important point about the Catholic Church. I mean if you go back to some of the papal bills, there's a thing called doctrine of discovery and that was often associated with North America and how some of the Christianity there influenced the colonial approach. The Anglican church really had a completely different approach, and I know it is debated, but records show that the Anglican church had a completely different approach and there was no doctrine of discovery, which was like we will subjugate you to be Christians.
It was very much a voluntary thing and very much preaching the gospel, preaching the good news and show and tell rather than we are taking over your country. And so right from the get go of the early days, the language of Christianity was, this is good news, this is how it works, this is who Jesus is and this is what a relationship with God looks like. And by the way, this is what relationships with one another ought to look like as well.
And so that language of reconciliation, that language that Christ is our peace who brings two together as one, which is a major theme of Ephesians, was part of early mission emphasis including things like education and acknowledging the rights of indigenous people to flourish and to gain education and to gain skills, not as a competing culture but as one of invitation and of tasting and seeing what European culture looked like and also learning the other way.
Darrell Bock:
So I'm taking it by that overview that one of the points that you're making is in this early treaty that brought the cultures together, that the influence there was primarily Protestant or did the Protestant influence dominate the way Christians approached New Zealand, whether they were Catholic or Protestant?
Richard Fountain:
No, it was predominantly Protestant. Although the interesting thing, the Catholic Church were the first to bring in the printing press and print bibles in Maori and Te Reo. So they were the ones who handled the literature in a sense and published the Bible for the native people. But yeah, the predominant church I think would've been Anglican in terms of the governance and those ideas for developing a country.
Darrell Bock:
So now let's shift to modern New Zealand. I don't know what the statistic is in New Zealand, I have some idea what the statistic is in Australia. I think the estimates are that about 6% of the population are evangelical church attending Bible believing people in Australia. What kind of number are we dealing with in New Zealand? Is it about that, lower, higher? Where are we?
Russell Thorp:
There's a report that was written in Australia but also in New Zealand called the McCrindle Report and there's some interesting statistics that come out of that. So just to go through that very quickly, 35%. This was done what, 2018, I think. So it's a little bit old, but we've had COVID in between, no religion or spiritual belief that's 35%, Christianity people put down that was their faith it was 33%, 20% were spiritual but not religious and then 12% were other religions. And out of that list of 33% of Christianity, 16% said they'd go to church once a month and we think the figure's probably a little lower than that actually. So I think around 7% of those people would be evangelical Christians who go to church regularly. So that gives you a bit of an idea of it's not too dissimilar to Australia in many ways.
Darrell Bock:
And of course, again, one of the fascinating things for me visiting of course is that when you're in Dallas, Texas that the number of people who are attending religious services on a weekend is supposed to be close to half. So that's obviously a huge difference between the two cultures. What do you think you learn as a Christian being in the environment where you clearly are a cultural minority?
Russell Thorp:
You learn how to live in exile.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Russell Thorp:
You have to have a theology of exile and not see that as a bad thing, but see that as a good thing, because there's no way we'll become the majority voice. We have to learn how to operate as a minority voice and punch above our weight in terms of our influence as Christians, and we're struggling with that to some extent, but there are some Christians who are making a wonderfully good impact in some churches.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So the challenge is, and particularly since the large percentage that you talked about, who don't have any faith at all. There really is, if I can say it this way, a genuine secular religious divide in New Zealand that is present, even though again, if you just take the people who have no religious orientation at all, they're also minority, but it's evenly split. That's interesting. So Richard, how do churches try and face this reality that you deal with? Not just the difference between not having large cultural numbers but just coping with the role that you have with so many neighbors who are different than yourself?
Richard Fountain:
Yeah, it's a interesting challenge and most churches are focusing, it's not just preaching and teaching, although there are various degrees of that, but the works that go on during the week and the connection with Christian trusts or Christian community outreach and that sort of thing. So it's very much credibility is seen if not through the message of Christianity, through the actions of Christians. So you've got the likes of not just world vision or anything like that, but you've got food banks and you've got social concern and social care.
And so everybody is wrestling with how to help families. Everybody is wrestling with issues in the economy and that sort of thing. But I think a lot of Christians are recognized as doing something positive for those at least on the bottom row and that sort of thing. So that's one way of doing it. The other way is to emphasize, as we said, it's not just about preaching and proclamation, but watching your tone and how you engage with people who might be opposed to what would be considered ultra conservative views or views of the past, this is the way society used to live in terms of family and ideas about gender and that sort of thing. So how do you engage with that and not coming across in a condemning way, but seeking to engage in a positive way, that's another way around it.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. You use the phrase Christian Trust, is the equivalent of that for us Christian nonprofits or are those special kinds of organizations?
Richard Fountain:
They're attempts by Christian local churches to take the church into the community. So they're charitable trusts that the government allows to be established and they go beyond the local governance of the body and the pastoral care of the body. They're aimed, they have objects such as helping in education or helping the poor, those kind of things. And they exist in a bunch of different areas that address trauma, social needs, poverty and that sort of thing so they're very practical ministries that are allowed to exist.
Darrell Bock:
And Russell, you work with the denomination community churches, which most people here would know as open brethren churches. What's the denominational breakdown in the country? I mean, not necessarily specific, but in general, in terms of obviously Anglicans are a large group and who else will you find in the Protestant part of the community and is there a general breakdown between Catholics and Protestants in terms of percentage?
Russell Thorp:
Well, there is. I can't give you the specific figures right now, but I think that the Baptists are a large group. I mean the open brethren were large and we've reduced in numbers. We used to be larger in the early seventies, 1970s, than the Baptists. The Baptists have taken over well and truly from us. We have Elam churches, we have groups like the Lutheran Church are quite small in New Zealand, and the Presbyterians are a bigger group, but not that much bigger really than us. They've been struggling. The Anglican churches are struggling, they've got plenty of churches, but the numbers going are reducing quite remarkably, and they're struggling to find ministers and vicars for their churches. And so there's becoming a lot more of a cross-pollination actually between evangelical churches and even mainline churches who have a desire to preach the word and share the gospel.
So I think that's become a common thing. In New Zealand we're so small in number that we are not easily put into silos if you like. I think we are talking together a lot more than we used to. I don't know if you want to … I think one of the things to reflect on for us in terms of our approach, back in the 1980s, we were strong on apologetics and those sort of things because we had a base of people who might have been brought up in Sunday school who were no longer in church, and there was a common faith understanding of the Christian faith. It was also a common angst against Christians and that whole thing has changed quite remarkably with the growth of the non-religious or not Christian group. And now it's not so much apologetics that will reach people arguing for the faith, it's more about what Richard was talking about. It's getting into the community and building bridges so the gospel can go over those bridges because there is very little understanding of the Christian faith.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So there really is, in one sense there's a lot more work to do and there's not as much shared background culture so you almost have to go from scratch, if I can say it that way, in terms of getting people to see why Christianity is helpful in how you approach life and the way in which you engage both individually and as a community.
Russell Thorp:
Yeah. Richard may have some reflections from that from a pastoral perspective, but-
Darrell Bock:
No, go ahead, share those.
Richard Fountain:
Yeah, I mean the number of people who say I'm spiritual but not religious, they're basically saying I've tasted Christianity and I've moved on, it's no longer working for me. And part of the problem is that we live in such a prosperous area in the sense of it's a good life, there's a lot of freedoms. We're not worried about being invaded by any country. Russia is a long way away. And so we're immune from a lot of things and people come here often, like you said, from other countries as refugees and settle here and so there's peace in that sense.
But without knowing Christ and without knowing the hope of the gospel, they're just living the good life, so to speak. And so why would you go to church? Why would you, even in the post COVID world, why would you bother to, why would even some Christians bother to go to church when you can go online and hear a preacher? So the whole sense of Christianity being under tension either from those who have been a church attender and no longer interested or those that are currently in church and they're thinking, are there different ways of doing this? The church really needs to have to get back to its core values and get back to who we are, because there are massive changes afoot and people are voting with their feet.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So you're really experiencing a post COVID experience maybe in a more intense way than perhaps here. I mean we have some of this post COVID here where people who used to go to church aren't showing up on Sunday, and there's a substantial portion that still stay connected online. But it sounds like that you're dealing with a larger challenge. And I wonder how much of that is the ability to produce community in a context where people's lives are so, how can I say this, dispersed in terms of what they're engaged in, that producing community really is an uphill battle. Russell, what do you think?
Russell Thorp:
Yeah, I think I've traveled around a lot of churches post COVID, I've preached in Anglican and Baptist and Presbyterian churches and our open brethren churches, and a lot of them are reflecting on the fact that about a third of the congregation is not back in church and that they're not sure they'll ever come back. Some of those people have gone to other churches because they experienced online with other churches as well and got to know other communities. And then other people have realized that, hey, I don't just have to turn up to a physical building, I can have fellowship in a different way. And there's some creativity coming out of the post COVID era, which is positive. But on the negative side, there are people who are drifting and I think there was an opportunity during COVID to be pastorally active and some churches were better at that than others. Those that weren't active pastorally, I think, have lost people. So there's opportunities there, but there's also been some struggles. So yeah, we are just still grappling with all of that turmoil.
Darrell Bock:
So Richard, what are some of the other challenges churches are facing in New Zealand and whether they're distinctive to New Zealand or not?
Richard Fountain:
Yeah. So any teaching on homosexuality is fraught with landmines. I actually think my kids' generation and the generation coming up really has a different view on the whole gay LGBT approach and that sort of thing and acceptance. So that's a massive issue to the point that I would say that some people are basically maybe offended by how the church community has handled this. And if you think about it from a relational perspective, if you're offended by a parent or if you're offended by a family or a group, you're not going to have fun and you're not going to want to show up. And so some of these issues, they're both beneath the surface, they're beneath the carpet so to speak, but they really need to be explored and addressed because that whole area of sexuality, which is becoming like this is my identity instead of part of who we are as human beings, is being so dominated by the popular culture that people are unable to see their way through it from a biblical theological perspective.
Darrell Bock:
And I take it that the community involvement where churches really pour themselves into serving the community is the best counter to that. Am I reading that right?
Richard Fountain:
Yeah. How do you serve the community? How do you accept people? It's like a new humanity in a sense. How do you show that you're accepting of people but you're not watering down Christian truth and yet maybe the way to bring in that truth or to have those conversations is just that, as a conversation. But you are there, you're present, you are available.
I'll tell a fun story, when I was a teenager, I made my mother cry because there was a protest going down the street once in our town and a couple of us grabbed some eggs and we're getting out there and we kind of thought, oh, it'd be cool, we'll just throw the eggs at that group of people that were protesting. And back in those days, there was no civil unions and marriage was between a man and a woman so things were completely different. That whole approach of the tide being turned and instead of being an antagonist, but being someone that is able to walk alongside people, that's a whole new challenge. And there are no simple answers there and there's no simple way forward either.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Russell, go ahead.
Russell Thorp:
The same report I alluded to before, the McCrindle report talked about blockers to the Christian faith in New Zealand. And as Richard says, this one, teaching on homosexuality or even on any gender issues is really the biggest blockage to people coming to church and that includes Christians who have sympathy for this group of people who feel the church is not handling it well. And that's a 36%, it's the highest blocker for people being in church.
Hell and condemnation would've been another one, and that would've been high in the 1960s and seventies, suffering being 24%, the role of women 23 and supernatural aspects 22%. So those are interesting stats. So how we handle this? I think in terms of myself, I'm aware that we need to have our doctrine right and we need to have our teaching correct, and we've got to sort that out and we send people to places like Dallas to get that sorted out.
But the thing that we want to be able to do, actually increasingly more I've been understanding the teachings of Paul, yes, he's got doctrine and he's got way forward there, but when you read him talking about character and attitude, he's talking about posture, which is a great word to use. What is our posture with that teaching? And Paul's posture, the way he leaned into things that help people, and it was so amazing. And I think it's really important that we have in our good works, in our outworking in the community, that our posture is leaning into Jesus, but also not antagonistic to those who don't understand things the way we understand them. And so we love them. And this is of course the teaching of Jesus, which is to love your neighbor as yourself, to love your enemies and those sorts of things.
And that becomes a real issue when we talk about gender issues. So how do we do that? And it's a tricky balance. Yeah, that's probably enough said at this point about that but that that's the road we are on at the moment and journeying down.
Darrell Bock:
The term posture's an interesting one. I picked it up the last time I was with you all, and our word is probably the tone. And the whole point is there's a tension in Christianity between the challenge of Christianity. After all, Christ died on the cross to deal with sin and the invitation about God's love and God's forgiveness and getting those in right balance so that I like to say, if you're all about condemnation and challenge and not about the invitation and the commitment to God's love and showing God's love, you lose the fact that the gospel actually means good news. And so you want the good news to show forth in the way you care for people and reach out to them even when their backs are turned to God. I remind people we should never forget where we came from, God approached us when our backs were turned to him.
And so if we remember where we come from, that gives us a better place to think through how we should minister with posture or tone, however you want to describe it. And I do think this is becoming the larger challenge for the church today in dealing with a culture that certainly is moving and in some ways moving away from, at least in many parts of the world the Judeo-Christian roots that it had, and yet at the same time, how do you reclaim people who either think, well, I tasted that and didn't like it, or people who have no clue what Christianity's all about and all they think about is it's prejudiced or doesn't care for people, or that kind of thing?
Unless you show a counter to that stereotype, you've got to climb uphill. I think that's the real challenge of the churches that exist today and what we're facing. So our time, believe it or not, is gone. So I want to thank you all for taking the time to give us a glimpse of the church in New Zealand. It's been good to see you all again, even though it's within the confines of a box. I tell people every now and again, I get to get out of the box and see people face to face. And so it's good to reconnect again. I wish you all the best. I thank you for the time you've taken with us to help people understand a little bit about what's going on with Christianity in New Zealand. So Russell, Richard, thank you all very much.
Richard Fountain:
Thanks Darrell.
Russell Thorp:
Thanks Darrell.
Darrell Bock:
And we thank you for being a part of the table and I hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to see other episodes of the table, you can go to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast where all our more than 500 episodes are present. And we hope to see you again soon.
Kymberli Cook
Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook, and I am the senior administrator at the Hendricks Center, and today we're going to be talking about working moms. I am joined by Andi Thacker, one of our – one of the assistant professors of biblical counseling here at DTS, and also Christina Crenshaw, and she is the speaker, author, and lecturer at Baylor University in literature and leadership, and Christina is a mother of two. Andi is a mother of three, and I am a mother of one, expecting another one.
Andi Thacker
Oh.
Christina Crenshaw
[Laughs]
Kymberli Cook
And so we all find ourselves in this situation of being working moms, thus it's a helpful conversation to have for the three of us. So to get started, I just want to give you both an opportunity to kinda tell us about yourself. How did you end up in this situation where you both have a professional life and a home life with kiddos and the fun that happens in the midst of that?
Andi, let's start with you.
Andi Thacker
Okay. Well, I was a counselor long before I was a mom. So I started my career in 2006 after I finished my master's here and worked for several years, and went on and got my doctorate at UNT, and then we had kids, or started having kids after I finished my doctorate. But during that time, I was working in private practice and also started adjuncting here and then went full-time about five years ago. So I still have a small private practice, but emphasis on the word small, very, very small, tiny. And then my husband and I have been married for almost 15 years, and we have three kids, like you said. Our daughter Emerson is 7, and our son Will is 5, and our littlest one is 2.
Christina Crenshaw
Oh, man.
Kymberli Cook
I have a 2-year-old, too. Wow.
Andi Thacker
Yeah. They're a lot.
Kymberli Cook
They are.
I haven't had three of them.
Kymberli Cook
Christina, what about you?
Christina Crenshaw
Yeah, so we have very similar narratives. I teach at Baylor University, and I was an assistant professor, and I did that. I was out in California at California Baptist University, and I was an assistant professor before I was a mother, and I knew that I was called to work. I knew even after I had children that that was really what the Lord had for me. I don't think I quite anticipated how hard that would be to have these dual vocations, to be both a mother and an assistant professor. And I did that for a little bit until I had two within 20 months, and [laughter] I really, you know, spent some time praying about that and was feeling this nudge to step off the tenure track.
But every time I saw advice on that, people said, "Don't do it. Don't do it. Do what you have to do to make this work." But I think that was a real season of trusting the Lord with my career and being obedient and purpose in calling. And yeah, so I think I've experienced both. I've experienced the full-time, working-mom, tenure-track, you know, two kids under two. And then I've also experienced the stay-at-home for a year of maternity leave, and your sense of calling and purpose is really primarily in the home. I did some outside-of-the-home contract work with an anti–human-trafficking organization, and but then slowly went back to work. Started teaching part-time again, and then that developed into a full-time teaching position.
So I feel like I have had the gamut, the spectrum of, you know, working-mom full-time, working-mom a little bit, working-mom part-time, to back to full-time, so, my story, yeah.
Kymberli Cook
Well, there are a lot of women like us in the workforce, according to the Department of Labor. We make up 47 percent of the workforce, so almost half, and interestingly out of that 47 – I guess not necessarily out of that 47 percent – 70 percent of mothers of children under 18 actually work. So 70 percent are in the workforce on some level. I was kind of floored to see that.
My goodness, there are a lot of women doing this. And out of that 70 percent, 40 percent are actually the breadwinners.
Andi Thacker
Oh, interesting.
Kymberli Cook
So almost half of them are the ones who are providing the majority for their families. So there are a lot of working moms out there, but we do want to be sure to affirm – and like you said, Christina, you've been in a lot of the different seats, and we want to affirm those who do choose to stay at home with their children. They – it is absolutely work.
It is not parenting if you're not working on any level [laughs], and it's just that each set of those who stay at home and work at home, and those who choose to work outside of the home each just set face a different set of challenges. And so today, we're really going to be focusing on the challenges facing the mothers who decide to work outside the home.
So the first challenge that when I was trying to think through this kind of the obvious one, it almost seems that comes up, is the pressure or judgment that sometimes still comes for women who choose to – who make that choice, and there are some who still argue – particularly it feels like in more conservative Christian circles – there are some who argue that women shouldn't be working outside the home and that their place is in the home. Andi, can you unpack a little bit about that? Like, what have you heard, those arguments. Has anything ever been said to you?
Andi Thacker
[Laughs]
Kymberli Cook
Just kind of what are your thoughts kind of generally to get us started?
Andi Thacker
Yeah, so – well, my background – well, I grew up in a home where my mom always worked, and my parents were business owners, so they had a lot of flexibility. But I didn't know anything but a mom who worked outside the home. And then when my husband and I married, his mom also always worked outside the home. When we began attending a more conservative church faith community is where I first encountered the thought process that women should make every effort to make the home their main priority by not working outside the home vocationally. And it was a little shocking 'cause that's not what I was accustomed to, and I grew up in a religious background.
So that's where I first encountered it, and I've noticed in my talk with friends and students that there's different subcultures, and specifically different churches that have different belief systems and different pockets of the population where it's predominantly work-at-home moms, whereas other places it's work-outside-the-home moms. And so I think the setting that a woman finds themselves in, as far as their main community, really influences the messages that they hear, and I think from a biblical standpoint, there's a lot of disagreement between different groups on this subject that women need to make every effort to be at home, and that's their place, and their kids really need them, and the thought process being that their kids would suffer if they're not the main one providing care the majority of the time, as opposed to the thought process of women can work outside the home, and it's not gonna be harmful at all.
I have definitely felt that judgment, and even as a woman who works outside the home, I employ childcare services, and I've even had people on social media talk about that in reference to the choice we've made of how childcare workers are the ones raising my kids, or I know in passing one time, I had a woman say, "You just need to find someone good who can be the one who raises your kids." I'm like, "Oh, I'm raising my kids. I'm just not there all the time." So I think it is – it's hard enough to be a mom, just because of the struggle of, am I doing it right? And is this what's best?
But to have other women in the same foxhole with you throw darts at you makes it especially difficult. So I love what Brené Brown says about this, that "as women, it's so important to support one another and create an atmosphere where we can be vulnerable when we have those days of this did not go well. My toddler's running around naked, or – and refuses to wear clothes, or my older child is struggling in school, that if we create an atmosphere of judgment, we lessen our ability to support each other from a community standpoint."
And so I just think about from a biblical standpoint, it is so important that we rally around each other and be a good community. And part of that comes from knowing, I think, that this is a stewardship issue, whether or not you work inside the home or outside the home or both, it's stewardship of what's the best thing for my family in this season. And that may be different for somebody else, and that's okay.
Kymberli Cook
And really, Christ kind of gives us that example when he in his interaction with Mary and Martha – when, you know, he never actually corrects Martha for working, and ironically, the situation is almost a little flipped from what we're talking about. But he – what Jesus was upset about was what Martha trying to dictate what Mary should be doing. And kind of Jesus was saying, "You know, no, that – how she has decided to follow me is good, and, you know, that should be honored just how you're deciding to follow me."
And the demoniac is another good example. The demoniac who wanted to follow Jesus – like, everybody else was following Jesus, and Jesus said, "No, I have something else for you to do. You need to stay here," you know?
And Peter, he – when he found out that he was gonna have a suffering death, and he said, "Well, what about John?" Like, "what about this one?" And Jesus says, "That's none of your business. I have what I have called and the path I have laid out for these people," and, you know, Jesus never expressly says this, but, you know, and our role with one another and in the church is to support one another in what we feel like the Lord has called us to do and to, you know, get behind each other, and whether that's supporting a working mom or supporting a woman who probably needs to work financially but really wants to stay at home.
Maybe there's something the church can do there to support her, or stay-at-home moms. But any of the options are ones that we need to be getting behind instead of, you know, yeah, like you said, just casting judgment. Christina, did you have – have you had any kind of pressure in this area?
Christina Crenshaw
Oh, certainly. But you know, it's interesting to bring in the other side of that coin. I've experienced judgment from more of an academic community when I decided to step off that tenure track. Everybody within my collegiate circle had an opinion on that, and I don't know that I felt a lot of support, and I think it really went back to discerning what was best for my family in this season and knowing that every yes is a no to something else and that there are consequences to really obeying what you feel like you are supposed to do in that season and owning that, accepting that. But it was really interesting to see that the judgment was more on, "You're not stewarding well. Everything that we've poured into you, or everything that you've been called to do," and I think it was a moment of saying, "I'm just pausing to rest and be obedient, and to follow this other vocational call on my life, but that doesn't mean I've dropped it completely."
There is a season to everything, and so being able to, you know, to really walk out in – so the season has changed a little, but that doesn't mean that it won't come to fruition in another season, and I've experienced that even in the six years of being a parent. I've seen that rhythm of, you know, there's been some judgment on whether I should work or shouldn't work. But within a faith community, I don't know if I've experienced as much judgment on the shame of working. But I have experienced it on the flip side of, "You should be working." So it's interesting how your communities influence, you know, how you even filter the world, you know, and your working worldview, so.
Kymberli Cook
That's so true, and I'm working on a Ph.D. right now, actually here, and everybody is obviously fantastic. But I have felt that pressure, too, of I don't want to disappoint the people who have poured so much into me in an education sense, but as well as my job, you know. And because I work for Dr. Bock, who is fantastic and incredibly flexible, and very passionate about making working mom – like the life of a working – a young working mom work, and he work – is very flexible with me.
And so then, I feel that pressure of they're doing everything to try to help me, and it's still sometimes, things can get a little hairy, and I – yeah, you're right. You feel pressure on both sides because you really don't wanna fail or disappoint those who are really trying to help you have it all. [Laughs]
Christina Crenshaw
Yeah, and I think some of that might be the expectation that we put on ourselves, too. I mean, that's not to say that pressure from outside voices – that's not a real pressure, but sometimes I think it's almost managing our own expectations and saying, "Okay, but what am I called to do, you know, not what does this community say I should do, or what does that community say I should do, but what is best for me, for my family?" And then, it – you know, the rest is just white noise, you know? I haven't mastered that –
Andi Thacker
[Laughs]
Christina Crenshaw
– but I know that is the right approach.
Kymberli Cook
So let's dig into this idea of vocation a little bit. How – it is different? How do you – is it – I'm trying to think. The only other type of double vocation I can think of [laughs] is a pastor who works full-time and, you know, he has that going on as well, and I don't know. Is that what it is? Is it a double vocation? Is it – I don't know. What do you all think? Andi, what do you think about that?
Andi Thacker
I'm – part of me says yes because so much goes into running a household, and I'm so thankful to be married to a man who helps a lot, and we're very much a team. This doesn't work if he's not fully onboard. But I know that I probably take it upon myself that this is my main responsibility and not –
Kymberli Cook
The household?
Andi Thacker
– the household, that, you know, to organize kids' schedule and to do homework stuff and whatnot. But at the same time, he is an equal partner in that with me, and so in some ways I would say he's also bivocation in that because of the role he plays and his willingness to play that. But then there's part of me that's like, this is just what you do. You have a family, and that's just part of life.
Kymberli Cook
[Laughs] That's how you grew up. So it's – everybody makes it work.
Andi Thacker
Right. And I didn't train to be a mom. Even though I'm a counselor who works with children specifically, that doesn't seem to actually transfer to my own kids, unfortunately.
Kymberli Cook
[Laughs]
Andi Thacker
I didn't train to do it, whereas I've trained to do this and spent a lot of time and effort getting to this place.
Kymberli Cook
Christina, you've done some thought in the area of vocation and I think even to a degree in this. What are your thoughts on it?
Christina Crenshaw
Yeah, so I teach a class in vocation leadership at Baylor. It's to affiliate sophomores, and they're learning what it is they're called to do, and we sort of start with the premise that if you feel called to do something that there must then be a caller, and kinda go from there. And I think, you know, it's – vocation has several different definitions depending on who you're reading and listening to.
I think the most simplified version of that is, what is it that sets your heart on fire, and where do you see a great need in the world? Specifically, where can you do this common good work? And so for me, I have found that it sets my heart on fire to teach and to work with students and that I am not fully alive, and I am not fully human if I am not walking out in that.
And so there might be seasons of stepping back from that a little bit in order to invest in motherhood or to invest – even when I was investing in my education, I couldn't teach nearly as much as I would like to because I was a student taking classes. So I think knowing that what I'm really called to do that sets my heart on fire is working with students, teaching, reading, researching, all that nerdy stuff.
Christina Crenshaw
And I am more fully alive when I am bringing my gifts and callings to the table for the common good, and that doesn't make me less of a mom to do that. There might be times when motherhood calls me away from that calling a little bit more than other times. But I am very much still a mom if I am standing in front of a group of students or if I am at the gym or I'm getting my hair cut or I'm recording a podcast. I don't cease to be a mother, and it's interesting how that's the one vocation that we call into question. Can you do these other things and still be a good mother? And there's not any other calling in life that we do that to. You know, nobody would ever really question, you know, can you be a good wife and a good mother. You know, there's tension, but we accept that those are dual narratives.
So I think we're all bivocational or trivocational by nature because we're all called to do so many different things. In my mind, I picture it more of a Venn diagram, you know? I like to limit how many Venn diagrams are [laughter] layered on top of each other.
Kymberli Cook
Life has a lot of Venn diagrams.
Christina Crenshaw
But it's a lot of Venn diagrams, right? You know, the idea of balance hasn't ever really sat well with me because life isn't really balance. But life is a Venn diagram, and there are so many overlapping spheres, and they touch each other. They influence each other, and so I think when we start to look at our vocations, you know, like, motherhood is a large part of what I do. It is arguably the most important thing that I do other than my marriage. My family is the most important thing I do, but it is not exclusively the only thing I do, and so looking at my vocation through that lens, I mean, I'm called to do multiple things, so.
Kymberli Cook
Yeah, I really like that, and I hadn't – I think I hadn't necessarily thought about myself having had the vocation of motherhood. Just my particular story was that I wasn't necessarily looking for it to happen –
Andi Thacker
[Laughs]
Kymberli Cook
– and I wasn't opposed. It was just something I'm – I don't know. Really, when I think about that, it's kinda scary, kinda not. I don't know, you know?
And so I wouldn't have considered that being – now having a child, it does – I would say I would echo what you were saying as far as when I research and when I, you know, my area, my discipline is hopefully gonna be theology. And so when I'm digging into the fathers and digging into those kinds of things – like I feel my heart on fire. I do that, you know? And I feel that a little bit, as cheesy it is, of the Chariots of Fire thing, like when I run, I feel God's pleasure. I feel like God's like, "Yeah. There it is. I have been waiting for you to see it," you know? And so there is a sense of vocation there. But I also have found that I feel that way with my daughter, and there are times where, you know, whether – probably when she sleeping 'cause she's two –
– and she's really tough right now, but [laughs] even, you know, there's times where she'll just lean over and put her head on my shoulder, or I'll see that she's just really struggling emotionally, like having, you know, trying to deal with what's going on, and I feel a very similar heart-on-fire, "I'm here to help you," and I feel God saying, "Yes," like, "this is part of what I have for you, too," you know. And so I hadn't ever really thought of it as two vocations.
But I think there is – or I guess one, your general vocation of seeking to serve the Lord and work toward human flourishing, and it happens in multiple areas. And so that's kinda one pressure that we see working moms, one challenge, is pressure and judgment maybe coming from the outside or even on yourselves as to whether you should even be doing this. [Laughs]
Another pressure that I feel regularly is that of logistics. So just straight up trying to make it all happen, and I really would love to come back a little bit to the idea of the husbands because I think that that is key. But Ann-Marie Slaughter, who was a – in the political world and an author, wrote a pretty infamous article a while ago, though I was teased about saying it was a while ago 'cause of my youth –
Andi Thacker
[Laughs]
Kymberli Cook
– in The Atlantic on why – and she – it was called "Why Women Still Can't Have It All." And she was making – essentially making the argument that working moms are gonna struggle and are essentially always behind everybody else in the workforce because they just have so many things pulling at them. And she hammers away at logistics and just what it takes to run a household, and like we've been recognizing, running a household in and of itself is its own job –
Andi Thacker
[Laughs]
Kymberli Cook
– and so what it takes to run a household as well as have an entire other profession. So Christina, would you just speak to the pressures of logistics?
Christina Crenshaw
Sure.
Kymberli Cook
How have you all experienced them? What are the general ones that working moms experience? And then we'll hear from Andi.
Christina Crenshaw
Yeah, so I would say – I think it's fair to say my husband would probably say this, too, if he were here – that it – we've been married 15 years, and it has been a learning process. He grew up in a very conservative home. His mom stayed at home. That was his preference when he married me, but we know each other well enough to know, you know, that – I went to grad school, and he's like, "Oh." I went to grad school again, and he's like, "Okay, here we go."
So I think he, because he loves the Lord, and he loves me, he's willing to be teachable in that, and in return, I have had to say, "Okay, this is a season of deferring to you." So in – you know, when we first had children, really felt like I needed to defer to him, you know, in order, you know, for him to flourish. And then the past couple years, I would say it's really been a place of him being a little bit more deferential to what I've been called to do so that I can make it up to Dallas for a fellowship, so I can make it here for a podcast, or the other various things that I've called to steward.
And so it really – it's this place of, which is such a picture of marriage in general, of, you know, this is a season of getting behind you and supporting you, and this is a season of getting behind you and supporting you. And I don't know that in our 15 years if there's ever been one dominant narrative, that it really has been this place of support, defer, support, defer, support, defer with each other, and that that's been a really healthy place for us. And you know, even though he's very much the leader in the home, it is just this place of mutual support that we need each other to do that.
So I would say going back to your question about men and being a partner, I was raised actually in a single-parent home, mostly. My mom was a teacher. My parents divorced when I was really young, and she loved what she did, but she also worked out of necessity. And she had summers off, and, you know, if you're going to work, that's a really great profession to be in, to be a teacher. But I think sometimes women are in a position where they don't have a partner, so it's great to pause and recognize sometimes when women are working outside the home because they have to, and they really are doing it alone, and that is a hard hustle to do alone. That's a great place for the church to come in and say, "How can I pick your kids up from carpool? How can I get them to church activities? How can I get them –"
Kymberli Cook
They almost certainly need to – I mean –
Christina Crenshaw
They need it. Right, and then where we have husbands who are helpful, I think it's great and not at all chauvinistic or, you know, anti-against rhetoric that is in support of women to say, "My husband is a copartner, and I want to honor that." You know, it doesn't make him any less masculine. It doesn't make me any less feminine. It doesn't – you know, it's just this place of we co-labor together. He leads, but we co-labor together, so.
Kymberli Cook
And there might come a point where I need to step back and allow and put some emphasis toward his vocation, just like he's been willing to do for my – I mean, we're in the middle of a Ph.D. program right now, and my husband is carrying the team.
But – and we've recognized, you know, this is a time where he has intentionally said, you know, it's – you know, he has big things going on in his life and in his ministry as well, but right now, this is – our family is kinda about making sure that you have this opportunity, and this is what we're trying to do. Yeah.
Christina Crenshaw
And it might shift after the Ph.D. program –
Kymberli Cook
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Christina Crenshaw
– right? There may be some things calls him to that requires you to kinda give him a little bit more.
Kymberli Cook
And that's kind of the dance of making it all happen. Andi, what are your thoughts on logistics?
Andi Thacker
Well, I think about as a parent and as I work with families, I always come back to, our premise is we want to prepare our kids for the path, not the path for our kids. And one of the things that I think is so healthy for kids to learn early is that there are limits. We are limit – we are limited, and we are finite, and so to know that, you know, because mommy works, you're not gonna get to do more than x number of activities outside the house, and that will not be bad for you.
And so they can learn it within the confines of our home, and I think that's something I always kinda come back to, especially if there's days that I feel guilty or bad, is that it's okay for them to learn that every choice that we make has a consequence, good or bad, and it's important to be able to role-play those consequences, and so as I manage logistics and figure out schedules and when I'm gonna travel and when my husband's gonna travel, it's okay for our kids to see us say, "You know, we just have to draw this boundary," 'cause hopefully, they'll get to a place as adults where they can do that same thing and know that I can't do everything. Your dad can't do everything, and that's okay. We were never created to do it all.
Christina Crenshaw
And it's okay to bring in outside help. The most – one of the most glorious seasons of my life was when I went back to teaching at Baylor and we employed two of my former students who also went to our church to help with my kids. And they were more fun than I was, and they were newer than I was. My kids loved going to the zoo or, you know, the museum, in town with them, and there was a place of struggling, you know, feeling like, "Oh, I should be doing that with my kids," but I do do that with my kids. It's okay to allow other people to also do that with my kids. And really, those were sweet friendships that my kids still have with those girls, and one of them is now a mom. So it was good training for her, so I think bringing in community is really good for logistics as well.
Kymberli Cook
And I feel like – you're right, and I think sometimes we have, because we're just such an individualistic society, we think, "Well I'm supposed to – we're just supposed to have it all together in the Cook household, and no, we don't need anybody. We don't – you know, like, to have to ask anybody except maybe our parents quietly, like when things get really bad.
You know, we don't need – and really, as far as, like, childhood development, you would definitely be to speak to this, I feel like it's helpful for kids to get loved on by other people –
Andi Thacker
It is.
Kymberli Cook
– and to be exposed to a variety of other – and just from an ecclesiastical perspective, I feel like that allows, you know, different people in the church to love on them and for them to come to understand and love the church in a different way than you would if you were just kind of rolling along, you know, and doing everything on your own.
Andi Thacker
Yeah, absolutely. I think about your example, Christina, that you gave, and what you just said, Kim. So our family, God put it together uniquely. Our first two kids are biological from us, and our third child was adopted, and he came with a sweet little gift, and that is that he has a sister who is a year older than he is, and she was adopted by a single woman who lives near us, and to see her community – my son's sister's adoptive mom, her community loves her so well.
They come around her. They help out, and she's equally as willing to ask for that help, and that sweet little girl is so blessed by the different people in her life that aren't necessarily blood relatives, but they're part of the body of Christ, and they're her family, and it has just broadened her – she is loved by so many, and it works the way the body of Christ should work, and so it's just such a beautiful picture.
Kymberli Cook
So I'm hearing logistics as far as – certainly requires support, especially if you're in a single situation. But even if you are married, it definitely, usually necessitates the support of the husband and his willingness to kinda pull double duty as well. But I also think, even for a married couple, and I know we're in a little bit of a season right now where things are crazy because I'm in my first trimester, which means I'm not feeling well, and we're in the middle of Ph.D. and working and all of that, and so many people of the church – people have just started bringing us food.
Andi Thacker
Aw. That's so great.
Kymberli Cook
And I wept every single time because I was like, thank you, 'cause I just don't want to cook but I didn't know what to do, but we have to eat food.
And, you know, and even then I think support is so necessary for people to just – and really, I feel like that's life. Like, that's – everybody could benefit from that every once in a while. But I – so support, but I also hear boundaries, what you brought up, Andi. It's – if you're going to be living this life, and the logistics pressure is bearing down, part of it is here is where we say no, and we kinda just look at it and say it'll be good for our kids. It's good for us. It's the only way we're gonna make it. Here's where we say no, you know. And that's a tough – that's so hard. I'm not very good at saying no. [Laughs]
Christina Crenshaw
And back to the Ann-Marie Slaughter article, you know, you really can't do it all and particularly not all at one time, which I think was really what she wanted to emphasize in that article. And she – I think she's a dean at Princeton now. She worked –
Kymberli Cook
That's right, yes.
Christina Crenshaw
– in the political sphere in it, and she had talked about how I was always able to manage these roles when I was in the academy, but as soon as I stepped out into politics, it got crazy quickly. But I think she had that epiphany, that revelation, that, you know, there's nothing inherently wrong with a woman working. It's good. It's great. But I think when we started to have that expectation that we can logistically do it all is when it quickly falls apart because it's not sustainable, and it's not true, and there's nothing holy about thinking we can be an island unto ourselves, whether the island is us or our family. But you're right. We are – we were created for the body of Christ. Let's invite them in, you know, to this calling and journey.
Kymberli Cook
So the – a third pressure I thought of when I was kinda thinking through this – and I think sometimes it can be the most painful one, is what I'm gonna call the heart tug. So the – that maternal part of yourself that just – you know, here's the perfect example. The other day, my husband actually, he's a pastor, and so he has Fridays off, which is fantastic because he's able to spend an entire day with our two-year-old. She's not in daycare on that day, and he – they're – they call it Hattie/Daddy Friday, and it's just fantastic.
Christina Crenshaw
That's sweet.
Kymberli Cook
And so they'll often come down and have lunch with me here on campus, and so recently, when it's gotten toward the end of lunch, and we were kinda finishing up wherever we are, like, at the restaurant, and all of a sudden, she started looking at me and saying, "Mommy no go to work –"
Christina Crenshaw
Mmm. That's hard.
Kymberli Cook
And just saying it over and over, and there's just this part of me that dies on me inside [laughter], and I'm like, "I know. I don't want to," but I do, and so I've started answering her. "Well, Jesus has some other things for Mommy to do today, you know, and so we're all trying to follow Jesus, so Mommy needs to follow Jesus because he has some of these other things for me to do today, but I'm gonna be home soon –"
Andi Thacker
[Laughs]
Kymberli Cook
"– and I'll see you, and we'll play then," you know, that kind of thing. So how do you all manage the heart tug? Christina, let's start with you.
Christina Crenshaw
Yeah, yeah. I – I mean, I think I often refer to this as working-mom guilt. I mean, being a mother, there is guilt-induced no matter if you're inside the home, outside the home, you know, you're always wondering if I'm doing this to the best of my ability or even somebody else's ability, unfortunately, and that comparison trap can really get us into a rut. But I think for me, I don't know that there's any formula, but I think just really giving my kids vision for what it looks like to give attention to them and also give attention to work and using – now that they're in school – they're four and six – I can use that as an analogy and say, "You know, just like you're in school for a little bit these hours, you know, I'm at work for these hours, and when we come home, it's time to be together," and so that helps a little bit for them. It is a little harder when they're two, so I wanna validate that.
But when they're little, I mean, life is harder when they're two, but much less logic. Logic's not on when they're two. But I think as they get older, kind of giving them vision for, you know, just like you're not in school all day, or you're out for summers, you know, I'm not always working, helps them, I think, get vision for, you know, their different places, and I would not say this to my kids, but I say this to myself. I like them better if I've had a break from them.
Andi Thacker
Amen.
Christina Crenshaw
So I'm a better mother, and I don't know if this is true for every mom, but if we're really honest about it, we take breaks from our kids when we go to a workout class or we go on a date, or we have a mom’s group, even. I mean, we need breaks from our children to get refueled and refreshed. I may just need a little bit of a longer break.
Kymberli Cook
[Laughs]
Christina Crenshaw
And I like my breaks to be, you know, walking out in this calling of teaching and researching and that sort of thing. So I think it's okay to recognize, "I feel a little guilty, but I need this break if I'm gonna really be a great mom and flourish in that vocation," and then walk out in teaching, researching, and flourish in that vocation, then this is necessary. So I don't know there isn't a way to, you know, negate the guilt, but I think you can abate the guilt by really saying, "Okay, but this is right," and talking to your kids as they get older, so, yeah.
Kymberli Cook
Andi, how do you manage it?
Andi Thacker
A lot like you do, Christina.
I always come back to I have to talk to myself, not listen to myself –
Christina Crenshaw
Oh yeah, that's good.
Andi Thacker
– because if I listen to myself, what I'm saying is not always truthful or honoring to how God created me. And so I try to remind myself that, first and foremost, just like you said, kinda the oxygen-mask principle, if your air-cabin pressure on an airplane loses oxygen, you put it on first because if you're passed out, you can't help the kid next to you or the person who's acting like a kid.
So I know as a mom, and this was hard for me for a while 'cause I was kinda mad at God about this, he created me as an introvert, and so I recharge by being alone, and that seems like such a death sentence as a mother [laughs], especially little kids 'cause, like, the two-year-old. If I go in the bathroom, here come his little hands underneath the door or the knock, "Mom, mom, are you in there?" and then realizing, kind of sensing him saying, "No, no, no, Andi. I created you intentionally like this. This isn't a sentence you. This isn't a flaw. This is who you are, and it's okay to embrace that."
And part of the self-care oxygen mask for me is working because I feel so much wonderful things when I sit with students, when I teach, when I counsel, and so it's just a – I'm a better woman because I get to exercise my gifts in different areas. And then I was really, really blessed this summer. I read the book by Bill Hendricks that talks about giftedness, and he talks about how God specifically gifts some women with the unique gift to really exercise that at home and be fulfilled at home, and they're gifted in that way, whereas other women aren't necessarily gifted in that way and going outside the home is very appropriate for their gift exercising.
And so that was such an affirmation to me of, this is who God made me as. It's not a flaw. It's not a sin issue, and what my job is, is to do the best I can and just – in those places where he's put me. And on those days where I feel like I'm dropping the ball, I just go back to that, like, she did what she could.
I'm just gonna do what I can, so today it means cupcakes that I bought from Walmart. They're not homemade, or I'm not publishing as much as other counterparts, like, 'cause, I feel that on the academic side of I'm not teaching as many courses extra, and I just gotta do what I can in the place where I'm at.
Kymberli Cook
And you just think, and I'm embracing the opportunities God has given me, and that's the most I can do. You know, and he doesn't expect any – I don't think he expects anything more of me, you know, and nobody else really does, either. And if they do, that's kinda their deal. [Laughs]
Andi Thacker
Right. That's their baggage.
Christina Crenshaw
That's on them. That's on them. We don't need their stuff.
Kymberli Cook
So you brought up a book. Are there any other resources that you all have found, like, helpful for either working through all these different pressures that we've been talking about yourself as a working mom, or that you would think, "Man, this would be really helpful if I pastor or a church kind of was aware of this, and, you know, it would help them support." Are there any resources that you guys have seen?
Christina Crenshaw
Maybe not specifically for working moms, which leads me to think maybe we need some of those.
Andi Thacker
I know. I was trying to think of one, too, and I don't know that there is one.
Christina Crenshaw
Katelyn Beatty has a book, A Woman's Place, which isn't specifically for working women, but it's probably a great book for all women who, you know, feel called to do, like, motherhood and something else, 'cause as a society we were created to do things for the common good, and to really contribute, I would say probably be the basis of her book. As far as vocation, I think Bill Hendricks' book is great. I just got done reading that as well.
Kymberli Cook
That's so good.
Christina Crenshaw
Gordon Smith has a lot of great books. Tom Nelson, Why Do We Work, if we wanna discern, kinda like what am I called to do? Faith at Work Movement, kinda the Timothy Keller, they've got a lot of – a lot of these things you can actually find through the Hendricks Center.
Kymberli Cook
You can. Now that you mention it, I can bring it up. I think for discerning vocation or how do I use my work towards building God's kingdom, that would be a great resource. I don't know specifically for working moms or working mom guilt, but do you have any thoughts on that, Andi?
Andi Thacker
I don't know any resources specifically geared toward working-mom guilt, but I think about Brené Brown's resources, The Gifts of Imperfection, and talking about from more of a global perspective, how do you deal with guilt and shame and vulnerability? I think that's a great launching pad for working through guilt and shame, and how as a community do we embrace one another so that we can really lean into the calling the Lord has placed on our lives and support each other, not throw darts at each other and judge?
Christina Crenshaw
And from Brené as a working mom, it's worth printing out.
Andi Thacker
She is.
Kymberli Cook
And really, you're right, and that part of it, that self-expectation, is something women just tend to put on themselves in general, and so those kinds of resources would be helpful even if you're personally applying it to the motherhood or track part of what your vocation is. So I'm hearing that it's – to face these pressures, it's best to seek support from those around you –
Kymberli Cook
– and not from those who might, you know, pass judgment and seek to be a part of a community that is really onboard with what you feel like the Lord has led you and your family to be doing and for those people that community of which we are even a part. It's not that working moms are just recipients and aren't giving as well, you know, for those communities to really pitch in and help when they see a family that's just struggling, and it doesn't have to be like things are coming unwound, but, you know, and maybe having a sensitivity for dual-working families, like, you know, things are probably run on a pretty tight ship anyway, and if something happens, then it really –
– goes off the rails. And then [laughter] – really, and then finally, just encouraging women in what their vocation and where – maybe even pointing out where – how they are helping the community and flourish. It – particularly for women who find themselves in situations where they have to work, and they don't necessarily wanna be doing that, but they're doing it to provide for their family and for their children, and even pointing out, you know, if you're working at a fast-food restaurant, which I have, you're feeding people, and you are actually helping working moms, and [laughs] you are helping a lot of these people survive because we eat at restaurants a lot
Andi Thacker
[Laughs]
Kymberli Cook
– and there are – and really seeking to support other working moms in all of those ways, I think, is the best way that we can all kind of –
Christina Crenshaw
Rally around each other.
Kymberli Cook
Rally, yeah, around each other. I like that. So I just wanna thank Christina and Andi for being here. It was a lovely conversation on working moms, and thank you for listening.
Kymberli Cook:
Welcome to The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the Assistant Director here at the Hendricks Center at DTS. Today, we are going to be discussing the ways that broken marriages impact our society every day and we probably have no idea that we are experiencing their impact. We are joined by Ken Sande, who is the founder of Peacemaker Ministries and Relational Wisdom 360, so two different ministries, and the author of the very popular book, the Peacemaker. Ken, thank you so much for joining us today.
Ken Sande:
It's great to be here, Kymberli. Thank you so much.
Kymberli Cook:
Absolutely. Let's just introduce you a bit to everybody it. You've been on the podcast one time before, but in case somebody hasn't heard that one, do you want to just share with us a little bit, how did you come to regularly deal with helping other people address their relationships and, particularly, conflicts in their life?
Ken Sande:
Well, I'm an engineer and an attorney, so I'm a problem solver by nature and training. In 1982, founded Peacemaker Ministries and our goal was to help Christians resolve conflicts outside of the civil court system. And so, a lot of the work we did and the people we trained were doing was broken marriages or marriages around the brink of a divorce.
I personally handled about 600 divorce mediations myself, over half of which reconciled thanks be to God. Some of them came to me, literally, 24 hours before the final divorce decree, so people were right on the brink. I've been involved in a lot of divorces over the years. I've seen the impact, but I've also seen what God can do to turn those things around as well. This is something I care very deeply about.
I've sat in my office with seven year old young girl just weeping over her parents' impending divorce. I've seen firsthand what is accepted, pretty commonly, is that children at that age think the divorce is their fault. No matter what you say, they still think. I've seen little girls beg daddy, "I'll wear my pretty dress, daddy. I'll be really nice, daddy. Please don't leave." I've seen the pain and I've seen how God can intervene so this is a subject that's very, very significant to me.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're talking about family and we're talking about parents. And so, whenever a broken marriage is in view and is in the conversation, we're talking about things that are just so deeply felt and not just the… We'll get to the impact of it on our lives and on our society, but just the emotional impact and the personal investment in the conversation is you just almost can't even communicate how deep it is.
For about half of the people who are listening, potentially, you'll hopefully be able to share a few statistics with us later on, but about half of the people listening might actually be a part of a broken marriage themselves. Many, many more will be in families that have been impacted by broken marriages, directly impacted. It's in their family. And so, for those of you who are listening and might be in that situation yourself, and you actually were brave enough to click on this podcast and to say, " Okay, well, I want to hear what they have to say about broken marriages," we first just want to let you know that you are loved and you are valued. This episode and everything Ken and I are about to talk about is not an indictment against you or against your life.
It's more of an exploration of the unseen and the underappreciated consequences of broken marriages within our society. That's more what we're talking about. We're not trying to talk about your specific situation and, really, hopefully, we're trying to better understand your world and your pain and how we've all actually been impacted by it and we might not even know it. Ken, do you have any thoughts on that, on what you would like to say to people ahead of time as far as what they might hear and making sure that they hear our heart behind this conversation?
Ken Sande:
Well, really to echo what you said, Kymberli, in some churches, we unconsciously send the message that divorce is somehow the unforgivable sin. That's not true. There's no sin that Christ cannot forgive, and there's all sorts of things that are listed in the Bible as very serious in God's eyes. We know that a lot of divorces, people don't choose. Someone else divorces them and they've been unable to stop it. They still feel, in many cases, I mean, the pain is inevitable, but sometimes they also feel a lot of guilt and shame, which should not be on their shoulders.
But I also want to speak to those who have divorced, even divorced for unbiblical grounds. The gospel is there for them and there can be healing, there can be forgiveness, even if it's beyond the point where the marriage can be restored, there can still be personal reconciliation. I've been part of many of those things. There's always hope in Christ, no matter what we've done, no matter what we've experienced, no matter what others have done to us, God is still there with his arms open wide for us. The gospel is there too. Whatever your situation is, and also I would just say to people that may be concerned about a child or a friend or a coworker heading toward a broken marriage, you can play a huge role, often, to be a channel of God's grace in a situation. Almost every person in our country is, one way or the other, directly indirectly, impacted by this very relevant topic.
Kymberli Cook:
Yes. I want to quickly just say we are also, in no way, advocating that people stay in abusive situations. If you are in a broken marriage or a problematic marriage because of abuse, God very clearly condemns oppression and calls on believers to move to react to that. We, in no way, when we're talking about broken marriages, we are not speaking about abusive marriages in this specific episode. I just want to make that very clear as well. And so, now that we have that and, hopefully, everybody can hear where we're coming from, again, just because it is such a heartfelt topic, we just want to be sensitive to anybody who's listening because everybody, like we said, is impacted by this.
Just to settle a little bit into the topic, what do we have in view when we are talking about broken marriages? Ken, what do you think is at the core of most struggling non-abusive marriages? What do you think is the problem?
Ken Sande:
Well, if you use the broad term broken marriages, there's a lot of people who are still legally married who are in a broken marriage. And then, there are people who are legally divorced. But even there, if they've got children, they have an ongoing relationship for the rest of their lives. There's any number of arrangements that fall under that heading, Kymberli.
What I say when I speak on this topic is God's design for marriage in the beginning, according to Jesus himself, was one man, one woman together for life. That's the ideal. But when Jesus was challenged on some marital issues, he said, but it was because of the hardness of your heart that God allowed divorce. And so, sin is the ultimate cause of any broken relation. That's whether it's a friendship, parent, child, or a marriage relationship being broken. Sin, selfishness, lust, craving, anger, unresolved issues like that, those are the things that is a sin that gets into the gears of a marriage and eventually wears it down to the point where it'll be broken.
But what I found, and this is significant, is even though the ultimate cause of a broken marriage or divorce is sin, the precipitating or triggering cause is hopelessness. People can stay in a difficult relationship for a long time if they have hope that things would get better. A very common situation is a husband's going back to school for an advanced degree. He is pursuing his Master's or doctor degree, spending long hours at work and at school, doesn't have time with the kids. His marriage is not as deep as it used to be, but the wife will hang in there, in most cases. He's going to graduate in June. It'll be over with. If there's some reason for hope, people will often hang in there, and especially if there's hope that's generated by people starting to address their sin, go to counseling and those things.
But once hope is gone, in our day and age, even where a couple generations ago, you just stayed in there for life no matter what, that was what society told you to do. But today, when hope is gone, that's when people pull the trigger and move toward divorce. What's interesting is women in the United States, 66% of the people who file for divorce are women, and that has actually ratcheted up as high as 75% at times. It's when they just give up hope that that relationship is ever going to get any better. One of the first things we do when we get involved in conciliation is how do we inject hope? We can't cure all the problems, change all the behavior instantly, but what can we do to bring hope back to that situation as quickly as possible?
Kymberli Cook:
What are some of those things that you do or suggest? How do you inject hope?
Ken Sande:
Well, the single greatest way to inject hope is to see the Holy Spirit work in at least one party's heart, to bring about sincere, heartfelt, broken repentance. Now, even that is not always a guarantee because I've seen some people who've hardened their heart so much, no matter what the other spouse says or does, their heart is just dead. But I've also seen hope visibly come back into the eyes of a party when one spouse gives a humble, authentic, deep confession. And so, we spend a lot of time helping people really look to God and ask for the Holy Spirit to give them the gift of repentance. That is a gift of the Holy Spirit to come to that brokenness.
I'm working in a case right now where the husband's heart is so hard. I mean, he's destroying his marriage by his own actions, and yet he just refuses to see it. He's unable to see the harm he's doing to his wife and his children, which is heartbreaking. But I've also been in situations where, through counseling, being in God's word, praying for the Holy Spirit, I've seen people just completely crumble under the realization of how much they have hurt other people. When that happens, and then somebody can make a credible, authentic, sincere confession, very often the other spouse will go, "Whoa, I've never heard this before. This is different. This is different."
At those times, we'll often say, "Can we just put the divorce proceeding on hold. Talk to your attorney, just put it on hold for three months. Let's see what can happen." And so, you turn it around. Authentic repentance and confession followed up by sincere efforts in counseling and discipleship to change and grow, that's the single best way to put hope back in a situation.
Kymberli Cook:
Fascinating. Sorry, that was just an aside. I'm like, "Well, how do you inject hope?" But again, this specific conversation is hoping to talk about the societal impact of these broken marriages, particularly divorce. For those who that isn't possible and they're remaining in that hopeless situation, what are some of the statistics that we should be aware of? You just said 66 to 75% of all divorces are filed by women. What other statistics should we be aware of?
Ken Sande:
Well, the United States has the highest divorce rate in the world today. We're higher than Russia. Societally, we're not able to hold our marriages together in this country. On average, we're seeing about 750,000 divorces a year in the United States. You can break that down by the day, by the minute, by the second. It's just, it's huge. The way I would liken the cost of divorce, Kymberli, it's like the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima, and there's intense damage. I mean, just they obliterated everything right in the center of that blast. And then, there was a place that was affected by heat that went out and wind that went out. And then even further than that was radiation. And so divorce has a intense impact on certain people, but it radiates out and it affects me. My taxes are affected by the high divorce rate in my state.
Just for example, just talk about the epicenter here. The people going through a divorce, there's very few things in life that are more emotionally traumatizing than to have another person who you bound yourself to for life, who knows you better than anyone else, say, "I reject you. I no longer want to be with you." It's devastating emotionally and psychologically to experience that, and many people never recover from that. The rest of their life, their relationships are guarded. They're tentative. They're afraid to remarry. There's all sorts of ways that the person who's being divorced is impacted directly. Financial impact to divorce. Suddenly you've got, in many cases, a family that had an income that was supporting one household and now they have two households. The cost of that now of having either rent or mortgage for another household, that money is taken away from all sorts of things. The food and groceries they can have, the special activities the kids can do. Divorce tends to move women and children into poverty, especially women and children. In spite of all the other things that have changed in recent years, women are still impacted the most financially.
There's a loss of friendships. People who used to be around. People used to do things with as a couple, you're no longer a couple. Many people lose their church over divorce. It just, the strain in relationship with your children that goes on. Children are often caught in between. They're the conduit of unresolved conflict. Just that person going through the divorce. And then, there's a person who may be divorcing the other one, maybe legitimately, maybe there is unrepentant abuse and we've been unable to deal with it through either civil… I mean, I've called the sheriff on people. I was the one that called them. Or church discipline, some kind of pressure, and it was unable to do it. You might have a legitimate reason for the divorce. You made every effort to save it and it was unsuccessful.
But I would say that even if someone pursues an unbiblical divorce, has an affair, for example, breaks off, they also pay a price. Sin exacts a toll on us, our conscience, our closeness to God, the emptiness in our life, the guilt and shame, estrangement from our children. It has huge impact. You move out the next circle, the children. The financial loss they have of having united household. Parents who are distracted, angry, bitter, sad, depressed, are no longer able to parent adequately. There's all sorts of statistics indicating that children in divorced families increased risk of leaving the church, dropping out of school, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual activity, criminal activity. Some of those increase by a factor of three or four. That's not inevitable, but the exposure and the odds of those things happening in children go up significantly.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, sorry, real quick on that. I actually, in preparing for this conversation, I ran across there's a Finnish study, so from Finland, that found that adult children of divorced parents actually experience more job loss, more conflict with their teachers and their supervisors and more interpersonal conflict. It's not even just when they're young and they're trying to navigate all of that and it's a tough childhood. It again, societally, even as they grow and they become contributing members of society, there's still this residue that can't be cleaned off.
If you think of a whole generation of people or multiple generations of that, sorry. I'm getting in on what you're saying too, but I couldn't believe that, because I didn't see who sponsored that, but it wasn't a faith-based institution that sponsored it and they're finding these things about that. Sorry, go ahead.
Ken Sande:
Absolutely. No, you're absolutely right.
Kymberli Cook:
It was about the children. Tell us about the children.
Ken Sande:
The impact of divorce on, say a seven year old, can follow that person to the day he dies. Because the chances, especially for girls, of getting into high-risk marriages when they first start to marry. There's going to be a reactive attachment disorder that was triggered through the divorce. Their ability to identify healthy relationships, find healthy partners, have healthy marriages, is diminished. Their likelihood of going through difficult marriages, and that can then attract them all the way to the day they die, because if they're in broken marriages, they lose retirement access, their ability to get an edge. I mean, the ripples are all over the place on those people, but it doesn't stop there.
The employers. When an employer has a worker, an employee goes through divorce, on average, the employer loses 25% of that employee's productivity for two years. That's about $8,000 per year hit to the employer because the employee is distracted. He's irritable. He's less engaged with his staff. He's gone at court hearings all the time. He has to pick up his kids because there's all these visitation issues. Employers are impacted. It often takes about five years for people to recover from a divorce, to the point where their behavior in the workplace is, again, back to normal. Employers pay a price for this. There's more depression. There's more alcohol use. There's more health issues for employees going through divorce. Employers pay a price.
Then you move out to society at large. All sorts of implications because families are the nucleus of society. In every society since the foundation of the world, the family, the man and woman coming together, having children, raising children to be responsible, contributing parts of a tribe, of a nation, of a community in the city. You can think of a family like a brick. I was in Africa one time and they told me that they made bricks with straw. In fact, we've seen the Bible, they were making bricks for Pharaoh with straw. The trouble in Africa is termites, and the termites will actually get in there and eat right up through that straw and just go right in the brick eating the straw. Pretty soon you've got a brick with no straw. That's what holds it together and the bricks crumble.
When you've got families crumbling, I mean, I saw all these buildings, as in Uganda, the building is tipping over because the bricks are falling apart. When families fall apart, society pays a huge role. We talk about all these issues about children with drug and alcohol abuse, not doing as well in school, dropping out. Society pays a price of that. Social services, counselors, criminal juvenile behavior, incarceration. You look at the statistics on the number of people who are in our prisons. 70% of the people who are in prison come from broken homes, 70%.
Now, many of those probably could end up with criminal behavior even if the divorce had not occurred. But if just a portion of those families had stayed together and helped deal with that young person when he was starting to get into some destructive habits, it could reduce substantially likelihood of later criminal behavior. Well, America, just in our state prison systems, I didn't find the figures on federal, but our state prisons spend $43 billion a year incarcerating people. We have the highest prison population per capita in the world. That's a price that I pay every time I get a paycheck and I see what's deducted from my paycheck. Part of that money is going to support the prison system, the police, the everything else in my state, not to mention federal. Those implications go out.
Just the brokenness, the hostility, our inability to deal with other issues in a united way. Poverty, broken homes, et cetera, trafficking, we're distracted. The money is going elsewhere. The ripple effects even diminish our ability to deal with other issues in society that get worse as well, that aren't directly caused by the divorce but our ability to deal with those is actually diminished because of the price we're paying for divorce. It's huge. It's absolutely huge. Now, I want to quickly say though, I want to put a caveat. I do not want to put pressure on somebody who's listening to this broadcast who's going, "Oh-"
Kymberli Cook:
That's what I was about to say.
Ken Sande:
"I'm in this horrible marriage and I better not do it." Well, I don't want to send that message. What I do say to people who come to me, "Let's just make sure we leave no reasonable stone unturned to try to save your marriage. If it's going to fail, I want you to walk away with a clear conscience that you made every effort to understand and deal with your contribution to the breakdown of the family, that you're growing through this thing. You've made every opportunity for the other person to change and grow. If that person refuses, continues with destructive behavior, then you can leave that marriage. It'll still be difficult. But the benefit of having your clear conscience is huge."
And so, I've walked with people through that process where they got the divorce legitimately, biblical grounds, clear conscience. They still had a lot of challenges to be sure, but the value of a clear conscience is incredible.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, if those who are in broken marriages, it's not like they're fully responsible for all of society's problems.
Ken Sande:
No.
Kymberli Cook:
Again, it is something that I had never really thought about until I actually heard you speak on it, of just all of these different ways that society is impacted. Even if right now, Lord willing, for the rest of my life, I'm in a very lovely marriage. I love my husband and we're in a great situation, but the reality that I am impacted by other people's broken relationships, and more than just a loss of communal cohesion, which is something. Bad friendships and that kind of thing, because friends get split like you were talking about earlier. But the money that I pay and the future workers that I will employ. Not just because of the divorce that they might go through, but if they were children of divorces, then all of a sudden, I'm the supervisor that they're having conflict with. There's all of these different tentacles around it that I had never really thought about.
One other thing that I that occurred to me was, have you heard of the book or the idea of inherited trauma? Inherited generational trauma. There's a book called, It Didn't Start With You, and it's in the same vein, I think, as the, oh, what's the other book about it? Your body.
Ken Sande:
Oh, The Body Remembers. Keeps Score. Keeps Score.
Kymberli Cook:
Body Keeps the Score. It's that same idea, but essentially that trauma, and even this kind of thing that happens, the emotional trauma and everything that we've been talking about, gets passed on even through essentially the DNA. And so, even future generations are dealing with the physical impact of that. And so, not even just is it our society and the kids that go through it and any consequence that it has in their life, but potentially it's even passed on to future generations and it affects who they will even be. It's just startling.
Ken Sande:
Well, as the Bible says, the sins of the fathers, and there's a lot of ways the sins of fathers are passed on to children by our example, by undermining their stability. Is there sometimes a spiritual, what you would even call a curse, that's visited? We see in the Bible, whole nations being cursed for generations. It's very sobering. Very sobering.
But the good news is, what I love is, through the power of the gospel, those chains and those cycles can be broken. That's what's so beautiful. I've worked with people who went through difficult divorce or their parents went through a difficult divorce, and yet to see how Christ can redeem in those situations and make that part of people's life testimony is that even coming from that difficult background that here's what Jesus has done in my life and here's how he's changed me. Here's the grace and the redemption, the forgiveness I've experienced. No matter what the situation is, what was it? There's no problem so great that Christ is not greater still.
Kymberli Cook:
Well, it's almost, and for the sake with regard to society, but even what you're saying, Jesus becomes the straw that stabilizes our own individual lives and our own individual families, even if they are broken and cracked. But he also, in doing that, he helps stabilize our societies even. We can have faith and not despair. Like you said, the core is hopelessness. We don't want to leave people hopeless.
Ken Sande:
Right.
Kymberli Cook:
With regard to this wound essentially in our society. Making that turn even for people who might be listening and they find themselves in bad marriages or they're friends of people who find themselves in bad marriages. I know we're not saying this, but I'm just going to ask. Are we saying that people should just stay in bad marriages so that society can be a full building and it's not tilting over? What do we say and how do we address the reality that there are bad marriages out there?
Ken Sande:
Again, going back to what I said earlier, is just make sure that you've not walked away prematurely when there was still some chance. Now, that's a subjective issue, and I find most of us are unable to deal with a really hard subjective question on our own. That's where you need your pastor. You need close friends. When you're having a difficult marriage, one thing for sure is you don't want friends who are just going to tell you what you want to hear. You want friends who love you enough to tell you what you need to hear, which may be distance yourself from this abusive spouse, or it may be don't give up, I think there's still some hope here. We need objective godly people who have courage and wisdom and everything else. No, we're not saying just stay in a difficult marriage.
In fact, one of the things that I'm convinced of is churches need to do a better job of advertising to their congregations their positions on grounds for divorce. Because, historically, a lot of evangelical churches have only held to two grounds, unrepentant adultery by a spouse or abandonment by a non-believing spouse. Those are sort of the two that many evangelical churches would take. Some more conservative, some less, but that's sort of the norm. I used to be in that camp, Kymberli. But over time, as I study the Bible more, as I observed people and marriages breaking down, I'm convinced there's a very solid biblical argument that unrepentant prolonged abuse or neglect also constitute grounds for divorce. Now, some people may disagree. We've got some articles on our website giving both sides of those things, but I think there's a very strong argument.
Now, I emphasize the modifiers, prolonged unrepentant, because I've seen people who neglected families who turned around, learned to love families. I've seen people who were abusive, who learned how to manage their emotions, their own inner trauma, and figure out how that was impacting how they treated others. They learned to love their spouse, love their children. Those things can be turned around.
But it breaks my heart to think of, on every Sunday, there may be a family sitting there in church that has smiles on their face but, at home, one of those spouses, and it's quite often the man if we're talking about a physical type of abuse, is overbearing, oppressive, emotionally oppressive, and nobody knows about it. Often the wife, if she's in an evangelical church, has somehow picked up the idea, I just need to bear this.
Our church, for example, adopted a document called Relational Commitments where we advertise this to the congregation. One statement we have in there is we believe it is a responsibility of the church to become involved in situations where there's tensions or difficulties in marriage ranging from some minor differences on parenting or finances all the way up to significant abuse or neglect. If you have such a situation, we actually, how do we put it? We say we exhort you to come to the elders and seek our assistance.
Our hope is if a couple in our church is going through that and that woman picks up that booklet and sees that, she goes, "Oh, I'm actually supposed to come to the pastor. I don't have to just suffer in silence the rest of my life." That gives us the chance to intervene before things are damaged so much they can't be repaired. There's a lot of proactive things I think churches can do much more aggressively than this and just being much clearer on their theological positions on divorce, marriage and remarriage, for example.
Kymberli Cook:
There's also, I mean, because you've done a lot of marital conciliation as well, correct?
Ken Sande:
Yes.
Kymberli Cook:
You want to talk a little bit about that? Because before I became familiar with you and your work, I had never really heard of marital conciliation before. Maybe some people listening haven't either.
Ken Sande:
When people come to me, over the years, they're usually Christians. Most people I've worked with are professing Christians. They will either come to me because they sincerely are looking for help in either trying to save their marriage or at least go through a divorce with as little trauma and expense as possible, sort of thing we can help. Sometimes they come to me because they want some accredited Christian to give the stamp of approval to their divorce. Their motive is not really the best motive, but I don't care what their motive is. I want them to walk through my door because then I can start to engage them and I'll hear their story, hear what's going on. Whatever I assess their motivation would be, I'll lay out basically the three things that we make clear.
Number one, we believe it's your church's responsibility to guide you on the theological legitimacy of your divorce. We're not here to impose our theology. I may share my thoughts and views on it, but it's your pastor and your elders who need to help you make that theological decision. Secondly, we will help you deal with the legal issues attendant to a divorce, but only after you've made a good faith effort to, number one, understand your own contribution to the breakdown of your marriage. Because if you don't understand that, you'll carry those relational deficits in the future. Most people acknowledge that's true. Yeah, I probably should learn.
Secondly, we want to make sure that we've made every reasonable effort to reconcile the marriage. We can't force it. It has to be a united decision, but we want to give you every opportunity to do that. If you will deal with those things in good faith and one of you still decides to pursue a divorce, then we will work on child custody, property settlement, visitation and those things. They may just be wanting the fast, easy, and expensive divorce, but we put them through a process of first understanding the relationship, and that's often what turns people around. That's when we get into basic peacemaking principles, relational wisdom. We start giving people tools to deal with the things that have caused so much damage. There are many people, Kymberli, particularly I would say men, who've never seen an example of a father admitting he was wrong.
If you cannot, in a marriage where two sinners come together, learn how to say, "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. I lost my temper. I spoke sharply. It was wrong. Please forgive." If you can't do that, there's just a steady accumulation of offenses and hurts. What confession does is it empties that. Learning confession, repentance, forgiveness, negotiation skills, managing emotions, preventing emotional hijacking. When people start to get these skills, they start saying, "Hey, we can start to deal with this conflict. I can learn how not to lose my temper all the time, and if I don't lose my temper, there's a better chance my spouse won't be triggered either." And so, they start learning tools, they finally say, "Let's give this a try. Let's turn it around."
Kymberli Cook:
Well, all of a sudden, and that's just another way, going back to even kind of how we started the conversation, that you can infuse hope. That's another. Repentance and the spiritual work being done, and also the really relational skills. Like you said, all of a sudden, there's still a spiritual dimension there, their willingness to engage that, but, all of a sudden, there's a glimmer of light saying, "Oh, well, we're communicating in a way that we never have before. Maybe we can make this."
Ken Sande:
That's right.
Kymberli Cook:
Maybe we can make this work.
Ken Sande:
I love to hold out to people a possibility, you could be a living testimony of how a marriage that was almost completely on the rocks turned around into a beautiful, loving, intimate, joy-filled relationship. This could become your major ministry the rest of your life, is helping other couples who were where you were when you came in. Give them something to aspire to. I've seen it. I've seen people with a horrible marriage, and they become a testimony to redeeming grace of Jesus Christ.
Kymberli Cook:
One last fairly quick question because it may be the exact same, but I do want to explore it. We've been talking about that largely in the context of the church and with professing believers. In your opinion, is there, apart from from Jesus, and I don't say that in a way that diminishes, I obviously believe he's the straw that holds everything together, but apart from their turning to the Lord, do you think that there's a way that the church can help essentially this wound in society in a non-judgmental way that doesn't necessarily mandate that they accept Jesus? Or I don't know, what are your thoughts on that?
Ken Sande:
Well, I'm a huge, huge believer in the concept of common grace and that God pours out grace through general revelation and common grace. God gives people in society who don't acknowledge his existence at all, don't even believe there's a God, and yet he pours his grace into their lives where they get up in the morning and they say, "Good morning." They smile at their spouse and they go to work and they obey the traffic. I mean, those are all manifestations of God holding society together, preventing chaos, just as he brings some measure of decency, civility, moral understanding.
I mean, my father wasn't a Christian until about an hour before he died. He was one of the most empathetic, compassionate, kind, gentle, generous people I knew my entire life, even before he acknowledged Jesus Christ and put his trust in Jesus. Yes, I believe that non-Christians can. I think there should be a huge marked difference between someone who is filled with the Holy Spirit and forgiven in Christ. There should be such a difference between our behavior and, tragically, there isn't always. I know non-Christians who are more humble, more kind, more reasonable than some Christians are. Just because you're a Christian, even genuinely regenerate, doesn't mean your behavior changes.
But yes, to go to your question directly. I think non-Christians can benefit from the biblical wisdom God gives to us in his word. I mean, just something as simple as, first, get the log out of your own eye before you get the speck out. That simple principle is one of the most important relational principles in the world. Just take responsibility. Once I do that, it's amazing how often the other person responds the same way. I do training in secular venues. We're working in the military, businesses, schools, police departments, teaching just relational principles from God's word. They're all biblically grounded because God designed human nature and his principles of humility, kindness, gentleness for responsibility are good for society. But we will teach those without an explicit religious framework.
Now, what I will often do though, I'll ask questions of an audience that are specifically designed to give the Christians in the audience the opportunity to voice, "Yes, I struggled with confession for many years, but when a friend told me about Jesus, I put my trust in him. He gave me humility." There's people in the audience that are bringing Christ into it, but I'll be up there just teaching some of the basic relational conflict resolution principles from a secular perspective. I think they could be beneficial. I mean, I want my non-Christian neighbors to obey the traffic signs in Billings, Montana. It's to everyone's benefit. And so, yes, I think they can benefit.
The other thing I think we can do is that our marriages, as Christians, should be an enticement, a fragrance to non-Christians. In fact, that's what really brought me to Christ. I had a roommate in graduate school and then two people when I was working as an engineer that were Christian marriages. I watched how they related to their wives, and I thought, "I want that," and that's what drew me to the church. I saw these Christian marriages.
The analogy I would use, if I walk into a mall, Kymberli, and there's a Cinnabon store there, you go, "Mm, something smells good here. Where's the Cinnabon store?" That's what Christian marriages should be. There should be a fragrance about us, and not one that's perfect, everything's easy. We should be open about our testimony. We should talk about our struggles, and yet how we had to work it through. Then people say, "Oh, I can relate to you. Yeah, I've got a temper too," or, "I can be very bitter," or, "I can fall into self pity. How did you do that? How did you overcome that?" Let's be transparent about our weaknesses, that His grace might be magnified.
Kymberli Cook:
I really love that. I love the idea of the fragrant marriages. Like you said, especially not in the sense that they look at it and it just looks like the Cleavers from Leave it to Beaver.
Ken Sande:
Right. Yeah, the Cleavers. Yeah.
Kymberli Cook:
Look at that. I'm not a completely young millennial. But it doesn't have to look picture perfect. It's actually more powerful if it says, "Yeah, we went through a horrible spell of," this spouse had awful anxiety, "and we really struggled." This is how the other spouse really showed love in a way that they had never experienced before and, unpacking all of that, all of a sudden gives the fragrance. I love that. Obviously, it spreads the gospel in a really meaningful and, potentially, a new and different way than the pamphlets and the tracts and that kind of thing necessarily.
Ken Sande:
If I could put in just one little pitch, if I might, Kymberli?
Kymberli Cook:
Sure, go for it.
Ken Sande:
An ounce of prevention is worth $50,000 worth of attorney's fees. And so, the more that we, in the church and even individually, as Christians can help people develop healthier relational skills before there's a crisis, the better. And so, that's what our educational materials are designed for, Sunday school classes, small group studies on conflict resolution and a concept we call relational wisdom, which is basically biblical emotional intelligence.
The more people can develop those good skills, even starting very young. We've got material for first graders. But the more we can learn those things, especially if we model them for the young children, they see that, teach those things in our churches. Learn how to say, "I'm sorry I was wrong." I don't know if you're old enough to remember Happy Days with Fonzie. One of the most popular clips in that movie was Fonzie trying to admit he was wrong. He couldn't say it, "I was wr, wr, wr."
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah.
Ken Sande:
We, as Christian parents, should make sure our kids see, yes, this is part of reality. We have to sometimes say, I was wrong. I'm so sorry. As we adults learn these concepts from God's word, as we model them to our children, as we invite… I mean, you could have a Christian in a secular workplace who would use our values-based material, secular material, invite coworkers, brown bag lunch once a week. Let's discover this concept of relational wisdom. It's enhanced emotional intelligence. That's a way for you, as a Christian, to bring wisdom principles to your coworkers and it might actually open the door at some point.
The typical thing is, or people say, "This is all sounds good, but I just can't change." You, as a Christian, could say, "I can't either. In my own strength, impossible, but what changed for me was Jesus Christ." And so, it's even a way to witness. I would just put in a pitch for prevention is so much more valuable than an agonizing divorce mediation.
Kymberli Cook:
I'm a huge believer in it, obviously. Ken, our time is up, and I just want to thank you so much for your time in being with us and really appreciate the wisdom and unpacking of so many years of practice with helping people manage this as well as thinking through it and writing and that kind of thing. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Ken Sande:
Thank you, Kymberli. It's always a privilege to work with you.
Kymberli Cook:
Thank you. We also want to thank those of you who are listening for being with us and hanging with us all the way through the conversation, if you're here. We just ask that you be sure to join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture, and today our topic is Christianity in the UK. So we're going to be over viewing first the United Kingdom, and then we'll talk about Christianity in the United Kingdom. And my guest is just a delightful friend, Krish Kandiah, who is director for the Sanctuary Foundation in the UK. What does the Sanctuary Foundation do?
Krish Kandiah:
Hey, Darrell, lovely to be with you. Sanctuary Foundation was set up to support refugees that are coming to the UK and we bring together the church and wider civil society and business to wrap around those communities, so we're quite excited. It's a unique kind of catalyst that is leveraging as much support as we can around vulnerable people.
Darrell Bock:
So when we do a global perspective on a given country, we first kind of overview the situation in the country and what the country is like, and a little bit of its history, and then we turn to the church. So I'll start off by asking a simple question that will be so simple, you'll laugh, but still, what is the difference between England and the UK?
Krish Kandiah:
Oh, that's a good question. The United Kingdom is made up of Great Britain, which is the land mass that has Scotland, Wales, and England in it. But the United Kingdom is including Northern Ireland and some of the little islands around as well. So Great Britain is a land mass. England is one of the countries within that land mass. And the United Kingdom is the bigger political realm.
Darrell Bock:
So when we think of parliament, et cetera, it's the UK parliament, it's not just the English parliament. Is that correct?
Krish Kandiah:
That's a great question. We have devolved some powers to regional governments. So Scotland has its own Assembly, as does Wales. And so they can discuss their own approach to education, things like adoption, which is in my world, that's different in Scotland than it is to England. So some things are UK-wide and some things are devolved down, so it's even more complicated.
And there's a big conversation now, since Brexit, when 52% of Britons that voted decided they didn't want to be part of the European Union, there's a big conversation about whether the United Kingdom will remain one. And so there's a big vote that happens periodically in Scotland about whether they're going to become an independent nation and go back and join the European Union. So these are interestingly hot topics at the moment, Darrell.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. But technically speaking, Parliament has representation from all parts of the United Kingdom, is that correct?
Krish Kandiah:
It does, yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Well, you mentioned Brexit, so we might as well go there. So are the British people European or not?
Krish Kandiah:
Well, there's two levels of answering that. We are definitely part of the continent of Europe. That has not changed. We have not become a separate continent. There's a debate about the relationship that Britons want with Europe when it comes to law making and economics and trade. And so there was a huge kerfuffle, big vote. I don't think even those that were in the Leave campaign thought they could possibly win it, but they did, by a very small majority. And it's still an issue of much contention about how people in Britain feel about themselves.
So there has been a rise in nationalism and isolationism, and that was typified by the phrase, "Take back control. We don't want anyone telling us what to do." And even the church got implicated in that a little bit, which will be a fun conversation. So yes, we're part of Europe, we always will be, but no, we're not currently part of the European Union when it comes to law making and also economy.
Darrell Bock:
So here's another tricky question. When a person says, "Yes, we're European, but we're British," what does that mean?
Krish Kandiah:
Well, it's an interesting conversation, isn't it? We're in a time of identity politics and your nation or patriotism are an important part of who people think they are. And a lot of the debate was around immigration, which is fascinating because right now today, Britain is just about to have its first prime minister who is non-white. We're having our Barack Obama moment. And so you could say we've reached a high point of inclusion and diversity, that we've never had someone who wasn't typically white as the leader of our nation.
But at the same time, immigration was such a hot topic that people wanted isolation from Europe because they didn't want the free movement of people across borders. For me personally, I'm a foster parent and the way I see it is that my foster family needs to have porous boundaries. I need to be able to let people come in if they need help and assistance from me. That's why we've got six children that live with us. Some of them have a birth connection with me, some of them don't.
But if I invited 2,000 children into my family, my family would lose its integrity as a family. It wouldn't be a family anymore. So I think there needs to be a porous boundary when it comes to welcoming immigrants and refugees and asylum seekers, but there do need to be some limits around it in order for us to actually help anybody. Now, it was quite a digital debate, immigration in the UK. It was either door fully open or door fully closed, and I don't think either of those extremes are actually helpful.
Darrell Bock:
There are two ways I could go here, but I think I'm going to continue a little bit down the path that I was on, which is… Well, let's do this. Let's talk about the demographic makeup of the UK a little bit, because one of the things, because of the history of the UK, it's association with the Commonwealth, et cetera, it's really quite a diverse country. Most people, I don't think, realize that. So talk a little bit about the makeup of the UK.
Krish Kandiah:
Oh, I wish I had the stats on the tips of my fingers, Darrell, but you're right. The UK is a diverse place. If you were to be traveling on the underground in London, it would not be unusual for you to hear maybe 15 or 16 different languages as people come in and come off. We've got a really exciting melting pot, if you like, of different cultures here. Our favorite food in the nation is chicken tikka masala, which is an Indian dish. That's our most preferred dish.
So we have this beautiful, rich tapestry that is who we are now as a nation. It's very unusual for a talk show to have an all-white cast list. Our game shows and our radio presenters are all made up of a wide variety of different people, which is beautiful. It's absolutely wonderful. And some of that, as you say, is due to the commonwealth, that Britain went and colonized the world, sometimes bringing wonderful things, sometimes imposing horrible things, and we've got to deal with that kind of colonial history. But it's meant that a lot of people have felt it safe to come here and to build a life here, which is wonderful.
Darrell Bock:
So it's a wonderfully diverse country. It's made up of several nations, each of which, by the way, we're talking about the identity thing. This is the other place I could have gone and I'll go there now. So you have several nations that make up the United Kingdom. They each have their own sense of identity. You've suggested that by the fact that they have their own assemblies and that kind of thing. One of the questions I was going to ask earlier is when I say we're European, but we're British, does that mean we're European and we're English? Or does it mean are we European and Welsh or European and Scottish, or we're European and Northern Irish?
Krish Kandiah:
That's a really good question. Scottish identity, Welsh identity, Irish identity are more defined than English identity. And that's often the case when a minority find it easier to define who they are. England is the largest land mass and the largest population out of the United Kingdom, but we have the least defined sense of who we are as English people. And every time English people try to assert their identity, it comes across as xenophobic or nationalistic in a way it doesn't in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
And I think that's because they're the smaller nations and they're not going to try and take over everybody else. Well, when the English exert their identity, that's a little bit more complex. So it's a big issue that we have at the moment. What is English identity, as opposed to Great Britain or Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland?
Darrell Bock:
And isn't one of the other adjustments, and it's kind of a duality, England having to deal with, and I meant talking about the English in particular now, having to deal with the shift from being a commonwealth to being its own entity, detached. It still has relationships, commonwealth relationships, but it's not the same, as well at the same time, trying to figure out how it fits into Europe?
Krish Kandiah:
Yeah, again, there's a huge identity crisis going on, if you like. What does it mean for us to be the UK outside of Europe? What does it mean to be English within the United Kingdom? What are our core values, our core identities? Those are really up in the air at the moment. And post-Brexit, the UK wanted a different relationship with the rest of the world. We haven't necessarily figured that out.
I've been involved in some really exciting movements of people to the United Kingdom. So just as lockdown happened, the UK opened its borders to anyone from Hong Kong who was born in Hong Kong before 1997 when it became independent from Britain or who had ancestors who were born in Hong Kong before 1997. That's a huge group of people. And in the first year alone, over 100,000 Hong Kongers came to the UK. And I saw this as a huge opportunity.
Britain is wrestling with some of its colonial past, particularly the way that we treated people from the West Indies, from places like Jamaica, who came to Britain at our invitation to help us rebuild our economy after the 1950s. But Britain did not treat those new arrivals well. And there's lots of cases of injustice and repatriation and racism that are a bit of a national scandal. It's called the Windrush scandal. The Windrush was the boat that first arrived from the West Indies carrying these migrants that we'd invited to come and help us.
And this movement of people from Hong Kong was going to be the largest migration of people to the UK from outside of Europe since that time. And I thought, wouldn't it be amazing if we could do a reverse Windrush? Instead of it being an embarrassment and a scandal, wouldn't it be amazing if we did a fantastic job? One of the sad things about the Windrush scandal was the church was implicated. People came, who had been part of local churches in let's say Jamaica. They went to their local Baptist church or Anglican church or Catholic Church, and they came to the UK and turned up at those churches expecting a warm welcome back at the mothership.
But they were told, "It's very nice that you've come here, but wouldn't you be more comfortable worshiping with people your own kind down the road in the Black church? You're making our other congregants uncomfortable." The church did a terrible job. So with Hong Kong, we made sure the church were the first at the front of the queue to offer welcome and hospitality to Hong Kongers. And it's been incredible. Just in the last year alone, the Chinese-speaking church congregations across the UK have tripled in size, and many white-majority churches have received dozens and dozens of people from Hong Kong. It's a real success story of the church getting it right when it comes to national identity, welcome and immigration.
Darrell Bock:
Now, I have one other generic question and then we'll shift specifically to the church. And the generic question's this: so you've shifted from a queen, which is the only queen I've ever known, I lived in Scotland for three years at Aberdeen, so I have some feel for the UK, to a king. And the issue of the king and the queen or a king or a queen in general is another issue for Britain, isn't it?
Krish Kandiah:
It's a huge change. I mean, we saw a ridiculous response. People were surprised by the scale of it, people queuing for 20 hours just to walk past the coffin of the queen. She was one of our kind of constants, like a foundation stone of our culture. And she was so clear about her Christian faith. It was the motivator for her life of service and kindness. And yes, there's some colonial questions that need to be asked, but in the middle of this tumultuous time in Britain, just coming out of COVID, who we are in Europe, economic crisis going on, war in Ukraine, suddenly our queen dies. And that really threw everything up in the air.
And at the same time, we've had absolute chaos in our parliamentary politics. Well, we're going to have a third prime minister in a matter of 50 days. It's just unprecedented in our history. So there's a real time of change and what our king is going to be like when he gets his coronation in the new year, that's an open question. Like you, most Brits have only ever experienced Queen Elizabeth II. They're not ready for a king. And what kind of king is he going to be? That's a huge question.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so let's shift now to the church. And one of the reasons I went to Europe to do my own education was not just for the educational part, but for the cultural part. And what I mean by that is that I wanted to see how Christianity functioned when it was a cultural, or becoming a cultural minority in many ways, and yet at the same time had this rich history that was underneath it that actually was in the warp and woof of what it meant to live in this country. So talk about that dimension of the church experience and then probably the best way to start off is most people don't realize how few people go to church in the UK. So let's start there.
Krish Kandiah:
Yeah, you're right. Church attendance in the UK is nothing like it is in America. I'm just pulling up the latest stats that we've got published here. Here we go. In 1980, it was around five million people went to church in the UK. That was about 11%. But by 2015, the level of church attendance has fallen to about three million people, or 5% of the population. And that's an interesting issue, isn't it? Because we are officially a Christian nation, Christian in the sense that the head of our parliamentary political system sits the queen, now the king.
For example, Rishi Sunak is our new prime minister, but he's not the prime minister until he goes to visit the queen and asks the queen if, oh sorry, asks the king if he can become the new prime minister. Now, the king is also the head of our state church, the Church of England, and the king gets final say on who gets to be a bishop in that church and who doesn't. The king is very open that he is a defender of the faith, that's the Christian faith. He's also mentioned that he wants to be the defender of all faiths, which is about pluralism and inclusion and diversity. Those two things aren't necessarily at odds with one another. You can be a Christian and still passionate about helping others to have freedom of religion in their own context.
So we have this really bizarre situation, very small church attendance, and that's everybody. That's not evangelicals, that's everybody that goes to church. It's such a small percentage of the population and yet our system is founded, and as you say, the warp and woof of our culture has Christianity baked in at almost every level. So we're in this really weird state that we are increasingly secularized and yet Christianity has an unprecedented access to power.
For example, not only is the king the head of the church and the head of our state, bishops of the Church of England have a seat in our House of Lords, which is our second house in government. And they have that because they're a bishop, not because they're great politicians. They have it because they are holding an important role within the Church of England. That automatically grants them a say on some of our law making.
So we are not a secularized nation. We are being increasingly secularized. We are a pluralistic nation in that most people in the nation still would say they have Christian affiliation, whether they go to church or not. But we also have large numbers of people who would say they were Muslim or Hindu or the biggest group that's growing, as it is in the US, is what we call the nons, not Catholic nuns, but people who have no stated belief or allegiance or affiliation to a faith. So we're in this interesting mix. I would say, in many ways, we're ahead of America in that secularization curve, but also behind because faith has some access to parrot it doesn't really have in the US.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So let me ask you an evangelical question or a Christ follower question. I won't even ask the question about what people think of evangelicals. But, of that percentage, you said it was 5% who are attending, what percentage of that would be evangelical?
Krish Kandiah:
That's a tough question because, as you say, the word evangelical doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. But the Evangelical Alliance used to say they could claim there are around two million evangelicals. That's harder to justify these days. The numbers aren't clear. But out of a population around 60 million, they would say there was around two million evangelicals. But I think the term evangelical is proving more difficult nowadays in that I would say I hold evangelical theology, but I don't necessarily hold evangelical political ambition.
So those two words are being confused. I saw even from some studies in the US, people that identified as white and evangelical weren't necessarily clear on things like the deity or the divinity of Christ. So it has become a political position in some places, more so than a theological set of convictions. So that's difficult, who is identifying as evangelical anymore in the UK?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, we're sometimes finding that we have to clarify between what we call political evangelicals and theological evangelicals and make that distinction in order to make some of those differences clear. So the condition of the church is it really does operate as a minority in the culture, but it's a strange minority. It's not large in numbers, but its history has left it a place in the culture, which means that sometimes on major issues, how the church, and now I'm speaking church broadly, particularly perhaps the Church of England, speaks to issues, is pursued and in some cases heard, which is different in some ways than here, which is a more independent kind of voice into the culture. Talk a little bit about that because that's distinctive, I think, to Britain.
Krish Kandiah:
There is definitely a lost narrative in Christian understanding or approach to our place in society. I remember I had to go and give evidence at a select committee hearing of the relationship between state and faith and state and Christianity in particular. And I had a fold-up bicycle, which meant I had to go a certain way into the parliament building and I ended up being the last person in the room and everyone else was telling me, or telling the committee, all the ways in which they'd lost access.
So they're saying, "Oh, Christians are being marginalized, we're being persecuted. You can't even stand on a street corner and preach the gospel without fear that you might offend someone and end up being arrested. These are difficult days." And my experience has been very different. I do a regular service on the BBC, which is a state-funded broadcasting network. And every day for over 100 years, there has been a daily worship service on that station broadcast out to the nations. It's not listened to by as many people as it used to be, but it's still there. And they pay you a little stipend, 50 quid I think it is, to give a little sermon and have some hymns.
And I've never been edited for saying too much about Jesus. I've never been told, "You can't say that. You can't say Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. You can't." I had to give a sermon on when Jesus said that it was better for someone to have a millstone tied around their neck and thrown into the heart of the sea than to cause one of these little ones to suffer. That was the text they gave me. And I actually chose a Johnny Cash song as one of the songs that I think people should hear. "Sooner or later, God's going to cut you down."
So we could talk about judgment, we could talk about anything you like. I also have a slot on Radio 2, which is one of our most listened to radio stations. Normally about nine million people listen. And I'm deliberately invited to talk about faith and culture three times in a row, nine times a year. It's an incredible gift. I have access to parliamentarians and politicians. I'm asked, "Could you help us? Because we've got 3,000 Afghan refugees moving house, moving from one hotel to another in the next couple of days. Could you help us? Can we call on the church?"
That's a call I got from the Ministry of Defense. So I don't feel marginalized or persecuted, but that lost narrative is there in our culture. And I think we assumed that because, in the past, Christians used to run things, we should have access to running things in the future. And I think what we need to have is more of a mustard seed mindset, to realize that we are supposed to be having a positive impact in our culture, but we shouldn't assume that we'll always have that access. But we are here ready, a little bit like Daniel in Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom.
He wasn't invited to speak truth because he was a Hebrew. As a Hebrew, he demonstrated he was a man of integrity, he had supernatural insight and therefore he was given access to power. I think that's the situation we're in. And there are huge opportunities for the church to make a positive impact in society, but we shouldn't assume it. It's not a privileged power that we have because we're Christian. I think Christians should use the gifts and skills that we have in order to be great citizens. And when we do that, when we take that mindset, the opportunities are endless. So that's the little conundrum, the paradox that we're in at the moment.
Darrell Bock:
So what I'm hearing you say is that there's a way of service, serving the city, if I can use some Jeremiah language, that commends Christians and commends the gospel that the faith community in Britain is trying to embrace, even though their numbers are small, and I find this true across Europe, this isn't just particularly British. There's still this historic place for Christianity which allows them to have this voice that, it may be pushed against, but it's not totally repudiated. And therefore the tone that you bring to that voice and space that you have impacts significantly the impact that you have as a result and the opportunities that get created. Fair?
Krish Kandiah:
Yeah, but I think the dynamics are changing. So the voice that's there because it's Christian and because we used to be a Christian nation, that opportunity's diminishing, but governments have very few deployable resources they can call on. For example, with the Afghan refugees, I was told the MOD had two choices. They were either going to call the military inn to kind of help people move house, which would've been a nightmare because people were already traumatized, having come from Kabul where guns and camouflage uniforms, what they saw, and it would just re-traumatize everyone. Or they had the church.
And the reason they were calling the church is because we were a deployable force, not because of our doctrine, not because of our situational positional power. It was because we were good at doing stuff and getting stuff done. And I think that's the way things are going to go into Europe and in the US. They won't call on you because you're Christian, you are a means to an end. And I don't mind. When there's overlapping ambition, when there's something the government needs to do, like for example, I'm passionate about seeing vulnerable children find foster and adoptive homes. Guess what? The government has responsibility for that by law. But guess what? Christians have responsibility to that by God's word. That's how we're judged. How have we cared for the widow and the orphan?
So when those two things overlap, we've got a sweet spot and we can show compassion and kindness to the most vulnerable and we serve an issue that the government doesn't have a solution for. I think that's the new place we need to get to. And that's the Daniel moment, I think. And you can see that in Daniel and Joseph and Nehemiah and Esther. That's the space we need to recapture again, and be less worried about our own positional power and being heard because of our history. We need to be able to be heard because of what we're actually delivering.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. And what I'm hearing in the background of that is when you do that and do that well, that actually opens up doors for the rest of what makes you tick and creates an interest in why are you in this space and why do you do the things that you do and how can you be so altruistic, or whatever, however you want to fill in the blank. Is that what you're saying?
Krish Kandiah:
Exactly right. What did Jesus say? "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." It's interesting that seeking justice, compassion to the poor, that's actually be built into the DNA of who we are as the church anyway. And guess what? When we live like that, that shines a light in the darkness and makes people want to know the God that we serve. I've seen that at every level.
So the Home Office, which is our, I suppose it's your Homeland Security Office, they phone me and they say, "Krish, where are you?" And I say, "Well, we are the church. We're in every village, every town, every city." Christians have got two jobs. Love God and love their neighbor, and Muslim refugees coming from Afghanistan, they're our neighbors. How can we serve them? Just let us at them and we'll do our best to show them dignity and kindness and compassion.
And I'll tell you, it was such a blessing at two levels. One, Afghan refugees, the first people that wanted to help them were Christians. That's beautiful, isn't it? We're we're not coming with bible tracts and Jesus videos, we're coming with kindness and compassion and dignity and that builds a bridge for all the other conversations we want to have. Wonderful. But what a signal it says to the government. Here are a group of your citizens that are driven by compassion and love for God. We want to be your best citizens because we are here to do what God's called us to do, which is love our neighbor.
Darrell Bock:
Well, I know you're tight for time today, so I'm going to let you go, but I just want to thank you for giving us this glimpse of the church in the UK. We probably need to do a follow-up so we can dig a little deeper.
Krish Kandiah:
I'd be happy to.
Darrell Bock:
But this is a good start, Krish, and I just wish you all the best as you continue to minister there. It's always good to see you when you're back in Texas. There's more barbecue that awaits you, so thank the Lord.
Krish Kandiah:
Darrell, thank you. I'm a big fan of yours and I love the work that you've be doing on racial justice and racial reconciliation. The church has got so much to offer in that space and I'm so glad for someone like you that's leading the charge, so it's always a pleasure, Darrell. Anytime we can talk again, I'm happy to do so.
Darrell Bock:
Well, thank you again, Krish, and we thank you for being a part of The Table. We hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to follow up on other episodes of The Table, you can see us at voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast and you can see the variety of episodes on a variety of topics we have because this is The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture, which is a nice way of saying we discuss anything and everything.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center in Dallas, Texas at Dallas Theological Seminary. And our topic today is politics and theology, or politics and the gospel, or political gospel maybe with a question mark. Anyway, my guest is Patrick Schreiner. I've known the Schreiner family for a long time. Patrick is Associate Professor of New Testament at Midwestern in Kansas City. Is that right?
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
You've been there not too long. Am I right about that? This is your second year?
Patrick Schreiner:
This is my third year.
Darrell Bock:
Third year.
Patrick Schreiner:
I was at Western Seminary before that in Portland, Oregon.
Darrell Bock:
Patrick's father and I hit the theological scene about the same time so this is fun to do this. Patrick was telling me before we recorded that he's on his first sabbatical. All my sabbaticals are behind me so there's that dimension of what's going on. But we're going to discuss politics and the gospel. So my first question to anyone who's new to The Table is always this. What's a nice guy like you doing in a gig like this? How did you get to what we're about to discuss?
Patrick Schreiner:
Someone twisted my arm and said I had to write this book. No. Most of my books, like yours, have to deal with the biblical text. They're not really hot topics like Matthew or Acts or the Ascension. It's not like a lot of people want you to come on their podcast to talk about just Matthew, in general, or whatever book it is that we're writing on. But actually, this book stems from a few different sources. Number one, I was studying Acts, and you actually read my Acts commentary as one of my editors. I was studying Acts and I just kept noticing Paul's engagement in the second half of Acts with the culture and how his message was viewed politically. I had done a lot of work on euangelion in gospel terms in Greco-Roman history.
And so all of this was combining and I was starting to pay a little bit more attention to the Greco-Roman side of backgrounds and not just the Jewish side. I think Jewish side takes precedence but they live in the Greco-Roman times. All of this research was coming together for me, but at the same time, I'm a person who has a foot in the academy and a foot in the church. I was also looking from 2016 to 2022, just what was happening in the church politically, and even before that. But certainly, in 2016 things ramped up I think as most people would admit. I saw a lot of division in terms of politics.
I wanted to bring a biblical perspective to the political conversation. I'm not a political theology person, I'm not a political theorist, I didn't do political science in my BA but I have studied the biblical text and I think the biblical text has a lot more to say about our political engagement than most people realize. Typically, when I read books on political theology they'll talk about three texts probably. Genesis 9, Mark 12, Romans 13. Paying taxes to Caesar, Paul's statement about submitting to the human governments, and then Genesis 9, a natural theology text. And I just think there's a lot more in the scriptures in terms of engaging with politics and how we're to think through politics than those three texts. I don't deny that those texts are important, but I think there's a lot more there. It stems from my studies of the scriptures and then also our current cultural moment and where Christians are in terms of our political conversations.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So we share a lot of the same concerns and a lot of the same background that we bring to this. And I really like the way you're walking into this to say there are more than three texts that involve how we engage with government. I like to remind people, particularly when they park on Romans 13 that I need to ask a second question and that is, what do you do with the prophets? And all that the prophets have to say about the way in which we relate corporately to one another and the responsibility of governments and that thing. And the challenge that the prophets give to the ethics of what is going on in society at large. Those kinds of questions which seems like a pretty large swath of scripture in comparison to just Romans 13, if I can make that observation. What are those things have to tell us?
This isn't so much directly related to your book, but I'm curious how you answer the question. How do you think we got here? In other words, how do you think we got to the place where our thinking about corporate structures and the way they work, and the way we think about politics, the way we think about being a citizen, those questions, got separated off from the issues of discipleship?
Patrick Schreiner:
There's so many things that need to be said there. I'd say a few different things just to begin. Number one, I mean, I exist within evangelicalism. I know that's a debated term whether it's a political term, social term, or theological term, but if we could just use it more broadly. I grew up in evangelicalism. And one of the pros of the evangelical movement is it's very much about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And I totally believe that and I think there's a lot of good to that. What we miss sometimes when we overemphasize that is that the gospel's a fully public message as well. And so I think one of the reasons we've gotten here is because people have basically put religion in the private sphere and they don't think it's a public thing. We think well, I have religion over here, I have my belief in Jesus, I have a relationship with him, but maybe politics is a different thing. That's one era that we can step into. Now, some people might be like "Wait a second, I don't think that's the era we're in because some people are way too political."
The opposite era that I identify is partisanship. So we could put it in the terms of we either privatize our faith or we make it partisan. And what that means is we so combine our Christian faith with one political party. Then we think "Oh, they are advocates for the kingdom of God." So it seems like we're falling off on two different sides here. Either we make it private or we make it partisan. And I especially look at the New Testament. The gospel message is fully political. I don't mean partisan, I mean, it's fully political in that Jesus announced he's the king of the kingdom. That's a political message. And I think there is a lot of evidence within the scriptures themselves that the terms that we think as religious terms, whether that be gospel, euangelion, faith, Pistis, Basileia , kingdom, Ekklesia, church, those are all political terms.
And as you know, in the first century, there's no division between religion and politics. I'm not saying I don't agree with the separation of church and state in some sense, but I do think we need to return to the scriptures and recognize Jesus didn't come and say, "I'm just your spiritual guru who's going to talk about your heart," he was forming a new society, a new society under the thumb of Rome. And so that is going to cause some challenges and Rome's going to look at him a little sideways and say, "What's going on here?"Now, what's shocking as you know, and we could get into this more, is they all declare him innocent when he comes before the court.
I use this paradigm of Jesus, Paul, and our future. The message is subversive but it's also submissive at the same time. It's subversive in that it's forming a new reality, a new polis, a new city, where we get the word politics from. But at the very same time, the way that it's subversive is by being submissive, Romans 13, and that's not all we could say. You mentioned the prophets earlier. I like to use the line that Revelation 13 and Romans 13 are both in our Bible, and Revelation 13 seems to say the human governments stem in some sense from the dragon. Now, how we interpret Revelation 13, we can get into that. But I do think there's this line in the Bible that the dark spiritual forces are also using governing forces to spread chaos, while at the same time, Paul can say they're God servant to spread order and peace. And so I think that's a paradox that we live in and that we have to come to the scriptures and recognize both that subversive nature of Christianity and the submissive nature and they both actually come together.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, that's a good way in so let's talk about this. You alluded to the definition of political so probably that's a good place to start the conversation. Making the point that the term political is a variation of the term polis which means city. It's talking about how people live together, how they function side by side, how society works, those kinds of questions. The issue of the role of the city in thinking through corporately who we are as people is deeply rooted in the Christian faith. I think of Augustine, City of God, as probably the prime example of that conversation going back a few centuries. So this has been something that has occupied Christians. I like to say to people that Christianity, it was designed to be holistic, it was designed to give us a way of life that touched on all the areas of life that Jesus's Lordship extends into all areas of life.
One of my explanations for how we got here is the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. That what happened in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy is liberals came along and said, "We like the Christian ethic. We really love what the prophets have to say and the challenges that they put forward for people but we don't necessarily buy everything that's the theological story underneath it." And they pulled what was together apart. And then conservatives, because of that separation, looked at that and said, "We like that deal we're just going to flip it." And so the flip was you had a battle undergoing between what was called social gospel and what I'm going to call gospel gospel, and it's the more conservative side of this equation, and they got pulled apart. And in the pulling apart, you separated something that God had actually designed to work more together and be more connected.
And so we're still living in that shadow. So that when anyone speaks about what it takes to be a good Christian citizen, et cetera, and wrestles with the relationship of what it means to be a member of the kingdom of God versus being a citizen of any particular country, take your pick, all of a sudden you've got tensions that are introduced. We tend to be inherently more patriotic to the earthly country that we're associated with than we tend to identify with what makes the kingdom of God the kingdom of God.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. I totally agree with that, Darrell. And when I say political gospel people will hear me maybe saying partisan gospel, and that's actually precisely what I'm not saying. By political I mean the activities associated with the organization and governance of people so really the historic sense of political. In terms of public life, the ordering of society, enacting justice, the arranging of common goods. I think Christianity, the ultimate aim is to order all of those things. We can go back in our history, we have really separated this social aspect from the personal aspect, and the scriptures just end up bringing them together. I mean, in Luke 4, it's very clear that his kingdom message has to do with the brokenhearted, those in prison, so forth, and so on. Quoting from Isaiah 61. There's just so much in the Bible, you cannot divorce those two things.
Augustine I think said, "Politics is a people bound together by common loves." We're bound together in one way or another in a nation, in a community, in a group. And the question is how do we organize ourselves? And what I'm not saying is the scriptures come and tell us this is the type of government I want you to have. Christianity is malleable enough to live under many governing systems. I do think it has something to say in terms of what might be some better and worse governing systems just by implication but it's not here to give us that. Rather it causes us to exist as the kingdom of God in the midst of … To use Augustine's phrase, "The city of man," right?
And so political theology I have found to be so difficult because we live in that overlap of ages. That the kingdom of God is here present but it's not fully here yet. And also the city of man exists and there's overlap. And so are we supposed to advocate for the kingdom of God? Yes. Are we supposed to install the kingdom of God? I don't think so. I don't think we're supposed to install, I think Jesus is going to do that. And that's where we get a little confused I think with some of the Christian nationalism conversations. That we think the government needs to be the one who promotes and orders Christianity. And I'm saying, "No, that's going to happen at the end when Jesus comes back." For now, we exist actually as exiles according to 1 Peter, according to Jeremiah, according to really the biblical witness. That doesn't mean the kingdom isn't present, it just means we advocate for it by politic of persuasion, it's conversion. Not by law, not by order. We're not going to institute Christianity by law, that doesn't seem the way that Jesus wants us to move forward.
As you know you've written on the scriptures and you've written on politics yourself, you're well versed in this, there's so many dangers in terms of this conversation because it is complicated and it's really hard. I'll just add this. It's really hard to move … You know this. From the Old Testament political system to our modern day, and then from the New Testament political system to our modern day. It's really easy for us to want to make a one line straight line jump but it's just more complicated than that. So my encouragement to people is recognize that we live in the already not yet. Recognize that we live in that already not yet and that can help us a lot with our political doubt.
Darrell Bock:
And another element of what you've raised in living in the kingdom of God, in the midst of the kingdom of man, is that the function of the kingdom of God is to represent what God desires in the community that he has formed, which exists as almost … If I'm going to use an image, almost as a oasis in the midst of the world. I think that some of what our theology has done when we move in a more partisan political direction is that we lose the value of why the church exists, and why the church is the church, and why the gospel is necessary, and why you're calling people out of the world into this new community as a part of the solution, all those kinds of things.
I like to step back and say, the people of God have basically existed under two systems in the Bible. One is a theocracy, okay, that's the Old Testament. So we had the presence of God, we had the revelation of God, we had the people of God, we had everything that you think you would want and need, and yet everything about that history is a mess because of the hearts of people that needed reformation, and reshaping, and fresh empowering, and all the things that sin and depravity introduce into the world. That was a mess. To try and run our world on a political system without the relationship with God at its base is always going to be chaotic.
And I think that's the lesson of the Old Testament, that's why you get the New Testament. You come to the New Testament and you've got … Well, let me make one other point about the Old Testament before we leave it. You even have people living in certain parts of the Old Testament in foreign pagan nations where none of that exists, and yet the exhortation to people who are in that situation is serve the city.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
Do what the very famous Jeremiah passage where how you conduct yourself as a useful citizen to that community is what commends God to people in the midst of that chaos. You come to the New Testament and you've got an empire. You've got a republic but you've got an empire, you've got emperors who are ruling, and very much a one-man show if I can say it that way. Certainly not a democracy. And you've got the church functioning as this oasis in the midst of that that's calling people and saying, "You can have your allegiance to Rome on the one hand, it exists, but the greater allegiance that you have is the allegiance to God and the community that you're going to be as a people of God in the midst of that larger community, and the way in which they draw."
And the thing that I like to say about the first century is, the early church was a minority. They had no cultural power, they had no political power, they had no social power, all they had was spiritual power. And they seemed to have done pretty well in that environment despite the fact they didn't have the normal accoutrements of power that we normally think make you effective culturally.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right, that's right. And what you said, I think we're on the same page here because I like the language of oasis, that the church is an oasis. I use the language of … Others have used this too of embassy or an outpost. We are representatives for another kingdom here on a foreign soil in some sense, and our foreign soil is the city of man. And then you went to Jeremiah, and I love that you went to Jeremiah. Even though my book is on the New Testament largely, at the end I actually go back to Jeremiah.
And I was just thinking through Jeremiah's political message. And I pointed out four things in the book about Jeremiah that I just wanted to share with people that I thought was helpful for my own thinking. Jeremiah's first political move was to warn God's people of their own disloyalty to the Yahweh. And so when people are like "Hey, how do we be more political? What do you mean by that?" I say it starts in the church. I say it starts with hearing the word preached and actually taking of the sacraments, that's the most political act you can make. Because as you said, the church is the oasis, it is the embassy of that kingdom.
And so Jeremiah's first political act is to warn them of disloyalty via Yahweh. But at the same time, that doesn't mean he doesn't have anything to say to the state. He also warned Babylon of judgment in Jeremiah 25. And so just because he's speaking to the people of God doesn't mean he can't say something also to the larger statecraft that exists. But then as you mentioned, he also told Israel in the midst of their disloyalty, "As you're in Babylon seek the good of the city." Be good neighbors.
I also want to balance that with the fourth thing. Jeremiah told Israel to hope only in God's kingdom in his rescue, not in Babylon's rescue. So in the midst of seeking the good of the city, I think it's amazing that Jeremiah will also say, "God will rescue you not Babylon." The hard thing for us is balancing all four of those things because we like to take one of those out and say, "This is what we're called to do, we're only to speak to God's people." No, Jeremiah also spoke to the larger nations. Oh, we're only supposed to hope in God's kingdom. No, you're supposed to seek the good of the city at the same time. I found Jeremiah just a really helpful example to balance that witness and wisdom in terms of political conversations.
I mean, gosh, I know it's the Old Testament, but I think pastors can follow that example. We speak to our people first about their first allegiance, their first political loyalty, that's to Jesus and his kingdom. But then I think we can also warn the state of judgment that is to come if they don't follow God's natural order. I think pastors should be doing that. I know there's always the critique, "Oh, pastors get so political." As I've talked to pastors I keep saying, "Be really clear where the Bible is clear. If it's not clear in the scriptures in terms of this policy issue, this issue of immigration or economics, maybe you need to not be so bold on those things because it might be a little bit more of your opinion than of scriptures call for us." I think some of things in terms of policy get really complicated, but I also think there are straight-line issues in the scriptures in terms of how we should speak politically.
You asked me at the beginning why … How have we gotten to this place politically? And I know this podcast is devoted to this and so I'm thankful for it. I would also say, people are scared to talk about this issue. And so we have not discipled people in this political realm because we're so scared to talk about it because it's so divisive. And so I would encourage pastors and leaders in the church, you do need to talk about these things because we have this division because I think we've been scared to talk about it. We haven't stood up when we've seen people who are not formed in the image of Christ in terms of their political engagement. We haven't stood up and said, "That's wrong we shouldn't do that." I know I'm speaking in generalities, but I think we need to do that more.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so let's go through these four principles, I think there's a way to dig deeper on each one of them. Let's talk first about the disloyalty to Yahweh as the starting point. What I think the principle that raises is the ability to be self-critical. The ability to be self-critical about your own walk, your own need for God, where you need to do better as a community. I often get in these conversations and people say, "Well, Jesus railed against people." And then my response is, "But who did he rail against the most?"
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
He railed against the most the Pharisees. People who claim to represent God but who were doing so very inconsistently, let's just say it that way. And because they put the moniker of God on top of what they were doing, in some ways that was more reprehensible than the person who doesn't pretend to represent God.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
So that's the first one, that self-critical ability. And I think sometimes we aren't self-critical enough. So here we are giving the world, and rightly, a hard time for some of the way it's moved on certain issues, but our own house isn't really in order in a lot of these areas as well. And we need to acknowledge that and say, "We all have the need for God." That's a given, that's the starting point. So that's point one. Go ahead.
Patrick Schreiner:
I think
Darrell Bock:
That's Jeremiah, go ahead.
Patrick Schreiner:
Jeremiah is saying, "Before you seek to transform Babylon you need to be transformed yourself."
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
Patrick Schreiner:
And I think that's the word to the church. And so I think you're exactly right. I read an article and I don't remember who it was by, but the line was basically, and the whole chapter was about, maybe our first act of politics, of our political lives, needs to be political repentance. And I think that was a great way of putting it. And just saying, maybe the first thing we need to do, as you just said, is examine our own hearts and are we being loyal to the king and his kingdom, to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Darrell Bock:
Can we be an oasis if we're not an oasis but we're more like the world?
Patrick Schreiner:
I don't think so.
Darrell Bock:
That's the first point. So let's go to the second one. And second one is, all right, but he did challenge the nations around him. I think the important point here is how did he challenge the nations around him? What I think the challenge of the nations is about is reestablishing the idea that people are accountable to God whether they recognize it or not. And that accountability is something that God will resolve one day it's not something that we resolve by what we do. I mean, we can impact it and we can try and impact it, but in the end, when we're in the public square, we advocate for what we believe in but we recognize because we're in the world we may lose that case of advocacy in the world court. But in the end, that's not the court that matters. In the end, the court that matters is the court that lies with God.
This is a point where I like to say, I'm glad that is out of my pay grade and that that's being handled by God and not by me. I think that's an important part of the second step. You challenge with regard to the moral calling that God has asked people to live by because they're made in his image. And you remind them that they're accountable and the choices that they make now will come to roost one day.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. Christopher Brian, who's an author, who's written I think on the subject, he said, "What is the main way that the church speaks to the government?" I love the way he put it. He said something to the effect of, we confront representatives with the truth about their origin and their purpose. In other words, where did you come from? Where did you get your authority? God, right? The scriptures say you get your authority from God himself. And what are you supposed to do? And this is where I think Romans 13 is helpful. You are to punish the evil and reward the good. You're to provide order and justice to society.
So Christians uniquely can call nations and states to account for not fulfilling their God-ordained means and goals to what they're supposed to do. We can critique this state in that way because we know who has given them their authority and what they're called to do. Actually, in one sense, I don't think that's a distinctly Christian move, I think other people can do that who are non-Christian. They can say, "You're not providing order and justice as well." But Christians know that authority has been given to the state by God himself. He is their ultimate authority and they're here for a short time. You nailed it. That's exactly what Christians are called to do.
Darrell Bock:
And then the backside of that is that we realize that even if we lose the debate now, there's a time when justice comes, justice will be rendered, and things will be set straight. Order will be established. It may not be now in the time that we way and like. Which puts in place another principle and that is, that when we advocate in the public square and we get the pushback that the world inevitably gives that effort, we need to figure out how to be what I call good losers in that level of the debate, which I think we have shown we may not be as good at as we think we are.
Patrick Schreiner:
Exactly.
Darrell Bock:
In that space that means I've got to wrestle with the question, what does it mean to be a citizen of a nation? It doesn't mean that I have a religious belief. And so my neighbor who's thinking very differently about what citizenship entails than myself, I've got to figure out how we're going to live together side by side as citizens of this country in which their rights and my rights are actually the same. And wrestle with that question. That's when the common good comes in, all those conversations. And you're advocating for the idea that certain principles about the way the Bible asks us to live are actually good and healthy for society, and you're trying to make that case as best as you can.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. And we are to advocate for those things that we believe in but we also recognize we live in a pluralistic society and they should advocate for what they believe in, and those are going to come to conflict sometimes. But we need to be able to recognize that we need to have humility in the midst of that. We will advocate for things that they won't like sometimes and that's part of what it means to be the kingdom of God, the oasis here in the city of man.
Darrell Bock:
And the challenge of that on top of that is that when the gospel is offered and it has a challenge on the one side about the sinfulness that we all possess but it also has an invitation into a new and different life, we've got to make sure that the gospel remains enough front and center that the good news part of that gets out in the midst of how we advocate in the public square for the need for Christ. And I think sometimes we're so heavy on the challenge side of that equation that you lose the redemptive good news, forgiveness offer, et cetera, reformation offer that's on the other end of that offer of the gospel and we can't lose that. I have to say, people are never supposed to be the enemy they're supposed to be the goal.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
There's a whole orientation to how we engage tonally that's a part of this challenge invitation place that says, we are an oasis because we're asking people to live in a way that's different from what surrounds them in the world.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. I begin the book with a story of me getting my haircut in Portland, Oregon, and my barber asked me, "What do I do?" And I said, "I teach theology." Nobody in Portland knows anyone who teaches theology and so they had a bunch of questions for me. I intro the book like this. The challenge for me was to not present the gospel at that point because I had the opportunity. Because most people when they hear I teach theology or the Bible they think Republican, right-wing, whatever it is. For good or for ill that's what they think, right, in Portland, Oregon, it's a very progressive city. So I wanted to stay away from honestly any sort of political conversation. People in Portland are immediately turned off to the gospel because of certain political views. I don't think that's always fair but that's just the way it is. So I wanted an avenue for the gospel.
But at the same time, I didn't want to make my faith merely a personal thing because Portlanders love to say, "Well, that's really nice for you. That's wonderful for you that you believe that." And so I had to chart this middle ground of really presenting Jesus and his sacrifice not only for their sins but really the city that he was coming to rebuild and to make. That was the way I wanted to intro the book just to show people our gospel message is not just a private thing, nor is it a partisan thing, but it's truly a political thing. That we have a good king, and he's coming back, and he's going to turn everything and make it all right. And I think people in more progressive cities like a Portland, Oregon when they hear that they look around their city and they say, "Why is there so much that's going wrong?" And I say, "Well, I have hope that one day this will all be reversed but you do have to submit to that king."
Darrell Bock:
I had a very similar conversation with a guy watching a set of sporting events on a Saturday night when I was speaking in another city. I went to this restaurant to have a meal and to watch a sporting event that I wanted to see, and I was pretty concentrated on the sporting event, and the guy sitting next to me says, "You're pretty focused on that." I said, "That's the team I'm rooting for." We got into a discussion. And when he asked me what I did I said, Well, I teach theology." He said, "I've never met a theologian before, can I ask you some questions?" And we were off and running into a conversation in which all the things that he would be afraid to ask … In fact, he told me, "I don't discuss theology with my family it's just too controversial." And so we pursued this conversation in which we were talking about a variety of things, some of which touched on the way he lives his life.
It was a natural conversation. I mean, that was the thing that was interesting about it. He was genuinely curious. He lived in a small rural Texas town growing up so he knew a little bit about the church but really had drifted away, et cetera. And it was, in some ways, a very pleasant, I would say, seed planting conversation in many ways. It was very important. And I find that there are a lot of people who are in that space who if they determine it's safe will have a conversation about spiritual things with you because most people are searching to make sense out of their life.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right, that's right.
Darrell Bock:
So that's the second thing. So let's go to the third one. Let's see if I can remember it off the top of my head. The third point you were making from Jeremiah was-
Patrick Schreiner:
Seek the good of the city and what you already-
Darrell Bock:
Seek the good of the city which is … The way I like to put this is, how do I deal with the stereotype that people have, generally speaking, of people who believe in God, okay? And they've never walked into a church in their life and so the only Christian experience that they have, and their only definition of Christianity, comes from one of two sources. Either the Christians that they know or what the culture says about Christianity. And then when I speak about this in the church I say to people, "How many of you want those two sources to be the source of people's understanding of Christianity?" And so that raises a challenge. So how do I deal with the stereotype that people may have about who Christians are, and what they believe, and what they think, and what they think about people? And how do I break that?
Patrick Schreiner:
And I think part of the answer is found in Jeremiah 29:7 that you get out there and you actually show that you want to do good for the community and for the world and that we're not just only internally focused on the church. I think focus on the church is hugely important for Christians, but the church is also supposed to be a light to the world. We need to seek the good of the city. I mean, this is a challenge for me. I use the phrase that Christians can tend to be quietistic. In other words, we can be so turned inward … And this is the thing. When you begin talking about well, you need to practice your own repentance. The negative side of that is you only begin looking internally and forget to look outward.
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Patrick Schreiner:
If you look through the history of Christianity, Christians were the first people to start hospitals, and orphanages, and foster care, and all these different things, which largely in the American system the state has taken over. I think Christians could recover this mindful activism. And I do think that begins in our local bodies and our local communities, and it doesn't necessarily begin at the federal level. Christianity, as you said, is a world-forming holistic belief system. And that means it should affect how I treat my neighbors, how I interact with my community, how I seek the good of all those around me. Your question was, how do we change people's minds about who we are? You love your neighbor. You love your neighbor-
Darrell Bock:
Which is a minor commandment in the Bible, right?
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. It's easier to say that than to do that. We need to be Christians that are really looking for the good of others and not just the good of ourselves. One of my fears is that, in the politics conversation, if you begin speaking about politics all that people hear is we're afraid of what's happening to us, we're afraid of what's happening in this culture, and so we're going to fight. I just think we need to have more tools in our tool belt than that. We need to show people that we have more to say than we're scared and we're going to fight against it.
Darrell Bock:
It's a very, very important point. And I think wrestling with how we serve well and break this stereotype or the impression about what Christians are. The only way you can do it is to show the difference and to show that there is a difference. And that you're not only complaining about what's going wrong in society but you're actually trying to make an effort to do better with society. I think back to the earliest Christians who picked up the babies that were left and abandoned and said, "I'm going to take" … "This may not be my biological child but I'm going to make sure that this child has a life." And to do that through the entirety of life, from what some pastors call from the womb to the tomb, and to think through what's involved in that is a very, very important ability to be able to undertake. Well, let's go to the fourth one now. And now that I've remembered the third one I've forgotten the fourth one.
Patrick Schreiner:
The fourth one is, Jeremiah also told Israel to hope in God's kingdom, not in Babylon.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Now that-
Patrick Schreiner:
And so-
Darrell Bock:
That's the eschatological answer to everything that we're talking about.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. One of the dangers though with the previous point is we can begin to think that we can … I would just put it this way. Transform the city and we can install God's kingdom here on this earth. I mentioned this earlier. But I think the scriptures are very clear that in the midst of seeking the good of Babylon and the good of the city, we don't put our hope in them. So the Psalms talk a lot about don't put your hope in human governors. Don't put your hope in them put your hope in the Lord. Because guess what? Human governments will not provide justice in the ultimate sense. Human-
Darrell Bock:
You've made a very important point here which is you need to understand the limitations of our traditional politics and what it can and can't do for us. That-
Patrick Schreiner:
It won't care for the poor in the ultimate sense. They can make some progress, but in the ultimate sense, they won't. We will still live in a corrupt system until Jesus Christ comes back. So you think of Jeremiah 31, right, the new covenant promises. God is going to bring this, he's going to change your heart. And I think we see that in Revelation as well. While we can acknowledge the good that governments do and acknowledge the evil that they do, we just ultimately don't put our hope in them.
Darrell Bock:
That has two other corollaries that I think are important, one of which we've mentioned, which is in the end God will establish justice. The proper recompense for actions will take place. People who make bad decisions will face the consequences of those decisions apart from the relief that the gospel does give. That kind of thing. That's one element of it. I think the other element is reminding ourselves that Jesus spent the entire second half of his discipleship program with the 12 and with the disciples saying, "You follow me the world's going to push back. You shouldn't expect to be treated well."
In fact, 1 Peter 3 and the very famous passage where it says we're supposed to be prepared to give it offense for the hope that is within us begins by saying, "Do good." But then the next thing is, "But if you should be slandered for doing good you are blessed." And so I call this box rule. Every good deed will get punished. When you think about the way in which discipleship is seen because it is counterculture, it is in one sense counter-political in the worldly sense of that term, we should expect pushback. I mean, we can try and portray ourselves as the victims but there's another sense in which we go "I shouldn't be surprised that I'm a victim here because of the pushback that Jesus said I would get for following him."
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. And as Peter shows in the text, Jesus is our ultimate example there. Jesus was the ultimate one who did good, he never did anything wrong. He never sinned against the government and the government killed him. He was crucified, he suffered. So 1 Peter says "Like no ill word came out of his mouth and he still suffered." What should we expect as sinners We're going to be punished. And Peter says, "But you need to suffer for doing good."
Darrell Bock:
And this-
Patrick Schreiner:
And I think-
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Patrick Schreiner:
The whole theology of 1 Peter is because your exiles here on this earth because you're sojourners. That's whole how the whole thing is set up. And so if you're an exile and sojourner you shouldn't expect to be accepted even if you're seeking to do good. This is where it's such a paradox. I keep on going back to that word. That we're to do all of these things, we're to seek the good of the city, but then I think we're tempted, as you said, to expect that people will start cheering and clapping for us. I just don't think that's going to happen.
Darrell Bock:
The other element of that 1 Peter passage that I love is a little reminder that comes, why are we willing to suffer for doing what's right? And as you said, Jesus is the example. But there's a little curveball in that explanation because, in the midst of, explaining how Jesus has died in effect for the ungodly, there's a reminder to bring you to God. He personalize it. And the reminder is, when you're back was turned to God, when you were rebelling, God took the initiative with you. My line is, you should never forget where you came from. That when you engage with the world you never forget where you came from. That when your back was turned to God, God reached out to you, and so now you have the opportunity to occupy that same space. To reach out to someone whose back is turned to God and invite them into the relationship with God that has the potential to restore them and make sense out of their life.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. I think that's really helpful.
Darrell Bock:
Well, we ended up with an exposition of Jeremiah 29 in full. That passage really is to me one of the most important passages in thinking through how you face engagement and how you deal with these tensions that we're dealing with. I'm going to say it this way. What it means to be political without being political and what it means to be political without being partisan. What it means to be … To represent Christ. And what the community of relationship with God and the kingdom of God in the midst of the world is supposed to be. To do it in a way that makes sense for why the kingdom of God exists in the midst of the world.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. And one of my big encouragements to people as well in the political realm is … I know this is a popular phrase, but just to be a non-anxious presence in the culture. In other words, Christians are people who ultimately have their hope in Jesus Christ. And so wherever the political system or party or whatever it may be goes, you don't have to get all worried and wrapped up in it. Because I think we can stand out from the world in this because politics has become the new religion. Politics has become the new identity marker of who are you. Well, I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat, I'm left. I'm right, I'm this, I'm that. People don't know how to define themselves anymore without these categories.
In Christians, we have an identity marker that's deeper and stronger than that. When something happens that we might disagree with or we might even have some worries about, ultimately though I think we can be a calm and peaceful presence in the midst of our society and say, "This is not where our hope lies. We care about these things because we care about humanity but it's not ultimate for us. This is secondary for us. We're waiting for Christ and his kingdom." I know when you say those things, sometimes people think "Oh, that means you just eject yourself from society." No, I'm not saying that. You got to balance all of these things together.
Darrell Bock:
That leaves us with one space that we have very little time for but I do want to introduce as we close and that is … So the tensions that we felt within the church for people who view the partisan space differently raises another question. I actually think this is a litmus test in some ways of how central your Christian commitment is in the face of your partisan political commitments. And that is, is my relationship to my brother and sister in Christ, who I may or may not agree with politically, a stronger tie than my partisan politics which has been divisive in the church.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. And I heard one author or pastor say, "You're more united to your African, Asian, Chinese brother or sister that lives halfway around the world than from you, in the Christian sense than your neighbor who votes the same as you who's not a Christian." And I think that's just saying exactly what you just said. We are more united in Christ. I would hope that churches in the future and currently can be those who represent maybe both political parties and that we can be united in Jesus Christ and recognize those things are secondary. The whole purpose of my book is to say, you have a first politic, and the first politic is the gospel. And so you're united under that banner first and then you can begin to have discussions about the other things. And the other things are not unimportant, they are important, but they are secondary.
Darrell Bock:
You've said in a different way what I like to say which is, the first passport that I have is the passport that says Kingdom of God.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And I'm a citizen and an ambassador for God. And if I do that well I will represent fallenness wherever it falls on the political spectrum whether on the left or the right, and be able to call it out whether it's on the left or the right and recognize that. No one side in the partisan discussion is probably anywhere close to having the truth put together. And then depending on which space you're in might indicate whether you are affirming or challenging what it is that's an offer.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right. I use those terms. I introduce them earlier throughout the book, subvert and submit. And one of my fears with the book is that people will pick it up and just be confirmed in their political position right now. If I'm Republican or Democrat I'm going to submit to the Republicans but then I'll subvert the Democrats. But my point in the book is that those two actions, subverting and submitting, applies to both parties and both governing systems. We need to recognize, no, we don't fit wholly in either one but that we both subvert and submit to both of them in unique ways. And so I hope that it comes actually as a challenge and a reminder of what the scriptures call us to.
Darrell Bock:
Whether you're an oasis or an exile, what you're saying is you're different than the way the world is functioning.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
And what you need in the divine space that is occupied by the forgiveness that Christ offers and by the empowerment that comes by the Spirit is an enablement and an empowerment that you can't find in the world. If we aren't talking about that part of our message then we are falling short of what it means to represent and be the people of God on this earth.
Patrick Schreiner:
That's exactly right.
Darrell Bock:
Well, that's probably a good place to land the plane. I want to thank you, Patrick, for being a part of this conversation and for helping us think through what is a challenging space, and is a space, as I said, that a lot of people are afraid to talk about. But we've tried hopefully to do it in a way that gets people thinking and that has some balance to it in terms of how we face our role as citizens on the one hand of both the kingdom and citizens in the particular country that we live in. So I thank you for helping us with that.
Patrick Schreiner:
Thanks, Darrell, good talking to you.
Darrell Bock:
And we're glad you could be a part of The Table, we hope you'll join us again soon. If you're interested in other podcasts on The Table you can go to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast where you can see one of the almost 500 plus episodes that we've put together in the last 10 years. And we hope you'll join us again soon.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and our topic today is the church as blended families. So we're going to be talking about blended families on the one hand and use it as a metaphor to talk about church relations on the other, and the way we interact in church. And my guest today is Veteran of Foreign Wars. He's been with us before.
Ron Deal is bestselling author and licensed marriage and family therapist, podcaster, popular conference speaker who conducts "laugh and learn" marriage and family seminars. That's a good combination when you can laugh and learn in a marriage, and professional training around the country. He specializes in marriage enrichment and stepfamily education. He is President of Smart Stepfamilies and Director of FamilyLife Blended, a division of FamilyLife Ministries. So welcome, Ron. It's good to have you back.
Ron Deal:
Darrell, you know how much I enjoy working with you. Thank you for having me again. I'm glad I haven't worn out my welcome.
Darrell Bock:
No, you're good. You're good. You're perfectly dressed for the occasion and everything. I mean, it's really nice, and that background is just… I can't decide where it's from.
Ron Deal:
It's stunning, isn't it?
Darrell Bock:
It's amazing. Anyway, so let's dive in. Let's talk about blended families first. So you were here a few months ago in a cultural engagement chapel in which you dropped a statistic that I think just about floored everyone in the audience. They were sitting in chairs, but they were floored by what you said, and that was, the percentage of average audience that represents a blended family as opposed to the simple husband and wife, kids, one-time around family. That's the way I'm going to describe it, the traditional family. So give us that statistic. We'll start there.
Ron Deal:
Well, yeah. If you think, again, this is inside and outside the church, across the country, less than half of people are in a first marriage situation where mom and dad are living at home with their kids. Actually, mom and dad living with their children is less than 25% of the population. The other, more than half now, are single, never married, single again by widowed or divorced, or in a blended family. So literally, I'd like to say the non-traditional family is the new traditional family. Sometimes we immediately say, "Well, we need to argue with that. That shouldn't be the case." Well, okay, we can have that conversation, but that is your audience.
That's who you're trying to reach out to in the community, that's likely who's sitting in your church even though you don't know it. And that's what we were talking about that day was, when you stand up to speak from the pulpit or teach a class, who do you envision as your audience? If you have a first married couple raising 2.2 kids in your mind, you're really missing a lot of your audience. We need to think more ethnically diverse, we need to think more family typology diverse, and we just need to understand who's sitting there so we can teach them, talk to them, give illustrations for them. There's a lot of implications for even how we do church.
Darrell Bock:
Now, I'm going to ask you a strange question. I don't know if you'll know the answer to this question, and that is, let's go back to the traditional family, just first marriage, husband and wife. A relatively new category in some ways is the interracial marriage in which you're actually combining two cultures as opposed to just two people. Do you know what the percentage is on that? Because there was a time in which that was outlawed and controversial and couldn't happen. So what's that statistic? Do you know?
Ron Deal:
I don't know off the top of my head, but I do know that it is increasing rather rapidly. Over the last 10 years there has been quite an influx of intercultural, interethnic, they call it, marriages. Again, for some people that's not a problem. For other people, they look at that and they think, "Wow, the world is changing and I wish it wouldn't." I mean, we can have the conversations about what should and should not be and why we believe that, but when it comes down to, but what are we going to do? I think that's the practical thing that we have to address.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, the illustration I like to use is, it's one thing to have your belief. It's another thing to think pastorally about how you handle what's in front of you so that when a mom or a dad walks into your pastor's office and says, "My child just came out as gay. What do I do?" Your pastoral responsibilities are not only about what you believe about that, but how are you going to handle the father, the mother, the child, all those relationships that are bound up in it. And I think one of the things that's fascinating about thinking about blended families is, is that everybody has to recalibrate. When you end up in a new family with a new set of siblings and at least one new parent, everyone's having to adjust and that takes some time, doesn't it?
Ron Deal:
It does. It does. On average we say blended families need somewhere between five to seven years to figure out their family identity, find their fit, bond relationships, navigate the parent, stepparent team unity question, and how we're going to work together? What are the standards going to be for our home? And then develop some traditions, some practices that there's a rhythm, if you will. The daily rhythms, but also those annual events, Christmas, Thanksgiving, et cetera, birthdays, how we do those things. That just takes time. My favorite metaphor is to say, cooking a stepfamily is done in a crockpot, not in a blender or a microwave or a pressure cooker or an instapot.
It is in a crockpot which is slow and steady, which by the way, I know we're going to turn the corner here in a few minutes and talk about leadership in local churches. That's also a way you do leadership. Anybody who comes in and walks in on day one and says, "I'm the new sheriff in town, and my way or the highway," is not going to be the sheriff very long in the average church context. You develop those relationships slowly over time. You gain your trust with people and different parts of the church, if you will, the different groupings within your church. And so the crockpot metaphor works in more than one way.
Darrell Bock:
That's interesting. And of course, one of the things that happens with blended families is you're not only dealing with the new family that you put together, but you're dealing with the residue of a broken family if it doesn't involve a death in the family of, "I've still got to negotiate taking the kids from one parent in the house to a parent outside the house." All the relative relationships that attach to that initial spouse, if I can say it that way, and so the adjustments are at multiple levels and in multiple directions.
Ron Deal:
Yeah, and this is really important, Darrell. I'm glad you hit on this because let's just think again about the audience. Sunday morning, standing up on the stage pulpit speaking to your audience. It's one thing to say how many blended family couples are in the room. It's another thing to say, how many grandparents are in the room who now have a stepgrandchild because their son or daughter who has made some choices in life that have caused some consequence to them, have affected three generations of people? So grandparents are sitting there, they're key stakeholders in your congregation, and they're trying to figure out how to navigate relationships.
Uncles, aunts, children in your children's program, teenagers in your student ministry program, not their choice, not their decision. "Dad passed away a few years ago. Mom's now married to somebody new. I got a stepdad." That's the reality for lots of people. Here's the number that knocks people down, and I think I shared a few months ago. When you count the individuals in the United States who have a step relationship, meaning they have a stepparent, maybe they have a stepsibling, maybe they have a stepchild, that's one third of the US population. That's 113 million people.
Now you add the people who know and love them, friends, neighbors they go to church with, maybe it's a grandparent who's become a stepgrandparent, that doubles the number. That's two thirds of the US population. If you look at your church and you say, "Well, we don't have any stepfamilies here." Something's wrong. I just got to say it. You're not connecting to your community. You're nice and tight, you got your people that look clean, but you're not doing outreach. You're not ministering to people. You're not really living where people are. Or maybe you have more than you realize. But I think the question is not… In other words, this is our world and if we're going to be relevant and active in our world and take the gospel to our world, we're going to have to figure out ways of navigating this terrain.
Darrell Bock:
And so just to add to the level of challenges that's a part of this discussion, so you've got a child, I'm going to say four to 16 range, so they're in the house. Maybe I go four to 18 just to make that clean. And they're going back and forth between parents. What's happening in that exchange on the other side is impacting how they come back to you from week to week, the way in which they relate, what's said about the new marriage that might take place, or the family that now exists, et cetera. There are additional levels of concern that are going on as those relationships are playing themselves out.
Ron Deal:
Exactly. I mean, that speaks to the emotional climate of the child moving between homes, bio mom, bio dad, maybe a stepparent or two in those different households. All of that is going to affect the child's emotional wellbeing, their psychological… Their child development, their attitude, their heart and their spiritual development. I mean, again, I make the case that inadvertently, there are a lot of fractured family systems that are training children to be post-modern in their thinking. They go to mom's house, she has a set of values and rules and beliefs, and we go to this church. And then lo and behold, she just married this guy and he's got a couple of kids of his own. Well, they go to a slightly different church. They have a different take on certain things.
And so I'm confused what is truth just between churches. "When I go to dad's house, he didn't go to church at all. He's now living with a woman who definitely is against church. She's anti-church. She has liberal values about politics and all sorts of things." And so what does this kid want to do? He wants to get along. He wants to enjoy everybody in his world in his life. So he doesn't fight over values and politics. He just adapts into it. He learns how to be a post-modern thinker. All truth is okay. Well, guess what? We're trying to say something about truth with a capital T, and that's confusing for this child whose life is about adapting to multiple truths. You could see how this works against what your student ministry program, children's ministry program is actually trying to do.
Darrell Bock:
And of course, the other factor is, is that sometimes they're in that, assuming you're attending church consistently, sometimes they're in that class and sometimes they're somewhere else, either not in church at all or in a completely different program.
Ron Deal:
Yeah, very common for kids to just be one weekend a month, they're in a Sunday school program or in a small group program, maybe two a month, and that affects consistency. It affects the child's relationships with the other students in the student ministry program. All kinds of things are impacted by that.
Darrell Bock:
We could go on and on and on this. I mean, we've done it before and we'll probably do it again, and it is a real challenge. It does introduce a whole layer of dynamics that the traditional family, generally speaking, doesn't have to deal with. Traditional family may have to deal with my aunt or uncle who's a little odd and that kind of thing, but at least the players are consistent and have been around from the beginning.
Whereas in this situation, you're having to adjust on the fly and everyone's adjusting. The new couple is adjusting, the kids are adjusting, the people around the family are adjusting. Everyone's trying to figure out where to land. And so, as you've said, it takes a while to figure out where the game stands.
Ron Deal:
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I just have to say, as complicated as it is, Darrell, I often have pastors who will say to me, "Wow, I've just never really thought about that and I guess I need to learn more." And then they'll say, "I just have never experienced anything like that." And I'll say, "Well, be careful. You live and work and breathe in a church context, right?"
And they'll say, "Yeah." And I'll say, "Well, you know how we say, churches are like families? Well, really, they're more like blended families." And all of a sudden they'll kind of perk up and their eyes open, like, "What do you mean?" And I'll start drawing these parallels between blended family living and church family living. And it's like you really know more about this than you realized you did because you're living it day after day in church and leadership and how things work within local congregation.
Darrell Bock:
So you've made our transition. I just want to tell people how we actually got to this podcast. You were here visiting, doing one of our chapels. It was on blended families and we were just talking about the different kinds of family units that people have to cope with and raised the question, "How do you pastorally care for them? All the things that you do on a regular basis." And in the midst of it, you popped in this remark about, "The church is really like a blended family." And all of us, because we had our whole team there, looked at one another and said, "Yeah." I mean, if you stop and think about it, it's kind of transparent, which is I have a lot of people who I call brother and sister who are not my biological brother and sister. Boom, we're there.
Ron Deal:
Yep, there you go. I mean, that's just the first place. Let's just go a little farther. That brother and sister came from a different origin, meaning that maybe they grew up going to a different church, different denomination. Maybe they had a completely different theological training or understanding when they walked into your building. Well, you don't just have one or two people. You got a whole bunch of opinions out there about what's right, what's true, what the Bible says, how we should approach it. Those different traditions we even call them are sort of like facing a tradition about how to do Thanksgiving or how to do Christmas. We all have our origins that influence what we're emotionally invested in and what we think is correct. Now, that's just two quick examples, and I mean, I could go on.
Darrell Bock:
Well, and just think about, I almost think the church is a blended family on steroids because it's not a singular unit. There's not a clear mother and father in the family. It's almost like a blended family, not without the parents, because I mean obviously you have leader figures, but it's not… It's the same on the one hand, and it's different on the other. That's the point that I'm making.
Ron Deal:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You think about members of a stepfamily often have different last names, right? Kids can have different last names because they came from different origins, and that represents a loyalty. It represents something that's deeply important to them and people that they're connected to. You think about a church, it's a collection of people who have different paths and histories and loyalties, things they're connected to and deeply passionate about, and we have to navigate those. Sometimes people bring you ideas for ministry that you're like, "That's a great idea. It's not within the scope of what we can do. We just don't have personnel."
And this person's like, "But you have to." There's a deep passion somewhere in their heart that's connected to something that matters to them. How do we pay attention to that? How do we affirm those things, even though we can't choose necessarily to follow through with them? Those sorts of dynamics I think are very, very common. There's just one other quick observation I'd love to get your reaction to. Blended family happens because two people fall in love. Mom, dad, father, mother, maybe one or both of them brought children to the relationship, but two people fall in love. They just invite everybody else to figure out how to be a family.
That's part of the journey of, now what do we do? Who are you to me? You're my stepbrother. What do I do with that? And that's the journey of becoming family. In a church context people come together around an idea of Jesus Christ and faith, and we trust in Him, but that doesn't mean I like you. That doesn't mean that this person sitting next to me in the pew and I have anything in common. Nan and I, we've been a part of a church where we live now for about a year and we still feel lonely. I mean, candidly, we still walk in looking for somebody to connect to. We developed a few relationships. We have some things that are working, and a couple of people we can stop and visit with, but on the whole, we don't really know anybody there.
And it's amazing to me how, for a year, we've been in this journey and it's not family to us. That is something I hear from children in blended families all the time. That's something I hear from stepparents all the time. "I'm still trying to figure out the lay of the land. I'm connected to this person and this person, but, man, I'm not connected at all to these people." And, again, it's a very common experience. You have insiders and outsiders, both within a blended family and the church. Insiders in a blended family are people who are biologically related to one another.
They come in with a last name. They come in with history. They come in with DNA. They both have traveled the same foxhole through life, the hard stuff that has bonded them and knit them together very, very tightly. And now you have outsiders who are like, different last names, different history, different… And I don't know who you are. We're both here because something brought us together, but we have differences. We have to figure out how to cross those differences and bond and build relationship. That happens all the time in a church on a regular basis. That's a very similar journey in stepfamilies.
Darrell Bock:
So you asked me for my response and I go, there's a similarity and there's a dissimilarity, it seems to me. The similarity is that you're having to forge a new set of relationships as you walk into a new community. It's like walking into a reconstructed family and trying to figure out, "What do I do with these new people who've shown up?" The difference is that whereas in a blended family, a couple of people have made the choice to be there and others are kind of around it. In a church, you make the choice. This is going to be my community. You step in with an advantage, it seems to me, which is, "We've decided this is where we're going to worship. These are the people we're going to hang out with," and that strikes me as a difference.
And then here's the odd irony that comes out of that. The odd irony is, it's the responsibility of the community to help build off of that initial decision and identity and solidify it, if I can say it that way. And then the other odd irony in this is, when you get a new pastor into that group, the person who's having to do the biggest acclimation work in some ways may be the new pastor if he hasn't been around that community before. If he's dropping in on a parachute and this is now my new community and I'm going to lead it, and all these established relationships exist, he's like the stepparent who comes into a family and has to negotiate all these established relationships that are around him.
Ron Deal:
I want to come back to that idea of pastor as stepparent in a minute because that is exactly what I teach and talk and help pastors to see. A couple of other layers, just to reflect on what you just said. Motivation is really important. If you come to a church and you're choosing to make this your church family, your motivation is high. That's a huge advantage. For some people in a blended family, they make the choice. Their motivation is high. Usually the couple, for example. They're choosing marriage. They're choosing to bring their kids and family together. Their motivation to find connectedness is high. Other people, however, sort of brought along and they haven't made that choice, but they're forced into figuring out the territory.
The same thing sort of happens in a church. You can imagine a scenario where mom and dad say, "Hey, we're going to this church," and the kids are like, "Eh, we don't really like it." Well, motivation's high for some, motivation's low for others. The student ministry program has got to figure out how to deal with that teenager who really doesn't want to be there, but their mom and dad are making them. So there are some parallels there, even I think in a church context, but motivation is everything. We teach blended family couples, for example, you got to temper your high motivation for a child who has a lower motivation, not necessarily against you. They're super low, but they're just not as high as you.
You've got to temper your motivation because otherwise you're pushing them and it feels like, to the child or the other member who has lower motivation, it feels like you're invading my territory, my space. Well, we sort of get that in church leadership. You reach out to somebody who comes and visits a couple of times and they're sort of like, "Yeah, no, I don't really need that." Well, you got to temper your motivation to their motivation in order to build a little bit of a connection that would make it easier for them to have their motivation grow over time. That's just basic relationships. All of those things I think parallel very nicely into blended family living. But can we go back and talk about pastor as stepparent?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, because I think that's the other real challenge in some ways.
Ron Deal:
More than once, I have been sitting with somebody who's moved into a new job, maybe followed the founding pastor, and maybe you're the 10th pastor down the line. But the person who preceded you was loved. People thought they were great, and they led the church to a certain place. Okay, you got to recognize this. It all depends on how the transition took place. We spent a lot of time in church leadership talking about transitions. Let's imagine if there was a divorce in your church. The pastor, the church, all of a sudden didn't like each other. Too much conflict and they separate and went separate ways.
Divorce polarizes people. There's a lot of pain left over, and you're walking into that scenario as the next generation leadership. You've got to notice where the pain is. You've got to spend some time listening to those stories and understanding. It's very important. Stepparents, we teach them to not come in with, "my rules, my way," claiming authority you have not yet earned. What is it that is really wise for a new generation of leadership to do? Yeah, you need to come in and listen. Spend a year listening, absorbing, hearing people out, getting to know the different parts of the church, the little sibling groups. This pocket over here that believes this, and this pocket over here that loved the last guy, and this pocket that hated the last guy.
You got to hear all of them and try to connect to them, otherwise you're going to get triangled between all those various parts. You try to lead out too soon without having built trust, you're in a peck of trouble. Same thing's true for stepparents, right? That's 101. But here's the thing. The other thing we tell stepparents is, there's a lot of things, but keep in mind there's a fragility to your relationships when you're the new person and you've got to temper how aggressive you get to create change, for example, to say, don't ever denigrate the previous person. "Oh, boy, I don't know why he made those decisions. They really led you guys in the wrong direction. We're going this way now."
You just burned some bridges with that pocket of people that really cared for and loved and were loved by that previous person. If you don't understand the fragility, you can inadvertently undercut yourself fast. Recently I was actually a part of a dialogue with, we'll just call him the stepdad, the new leader that came in. And by the way, he and I were having a conversation one day and he said, "I just can't figure this out. These people want this from me. These people want this from me. I'm not really sure what my role needs to be. The elders are saying this, and I'm just trying to get my footing and understand my place and the relationships and I'm completely lost."
And I said, "You're the stepdad." And he just stopped and he thought about it a minute and he said, "Tell me more." We start processing all. He said, "That is exactly what's happening. There's ambiguity around my role. I don't know who I am. Everybody needs something different from me, and they sort of resent me because I'm not the last person that they dearly loved that passed away, if you will. That sort of moved on, but everybody wished they were still here." Wow, you got to be careful in that position or you're going to get stuck.
Well, this guy had some tense relationships with some people that reported to him, and all of a sudden he began to back away and he wasn't as invested anymore. And they saw that distancing and they were like, "See? We can't trust him." It's so easy when you're the stepparent to be judged harshly and to be judged, well, inaccurately, and it works against you. It is what it is. People will take that in the wrong direction. So now it's tenuous, but then if you do something that really sabotages the trust you've gained, you can lose it all really fast.
Darrell Bock:
I'm going to play with this metaphor some because I like the picture of the pastor coming in, who's the stepparent. Let's go to the staff. The staff are like adult kids, right?
Ron Deal:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
They're old enough to be making their own judgments. They're independent. They're used to making their own decisions. They have a world that they had stability in and understood, and you're the new kid on the block and they're having to respond to you on the one hand, but they're responding out of, "I've been here a while. I know what this is."
Ron Deal:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
Fair enough?
Ron Deal:
Fair enough. Absolutely. And again, like we were talking earlier, there's pockets of the church. They'll be staff that are polarized over how that last transition took place, and what the story was, and what it means, and therefore what you should do in… Again, lots of opinions, lots of ambiguity about what's expected of you. And, these people, you're right, they're staff, they are deeply invested in this church, this family, and they want you to play the role that they need you to play in it.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so now this is the hard part. I don't know what to do with elders, okay? What do you do? Which slot that I… And I'm thinking of, in a family, they're always kind of the big players who actually run the dynamics of a family to some degree. Let's assume that you're an older child and you've got parents who are in the house who are there. The elders are kind of like that parent that's sitting over you in one sense, and how they respond to what you do actually becomes very important to how you lead.
Ron Deal:
Darrell, here's the metaphor. The elders are your spouse-
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Ron Deal:
… okay? This is the biological parent who brought you into the family. All right? And so, marriage is important. Unity is important. It's doubly important in a blended family because the stepparent's authority is based upon the spouse, the biological parent, in this case, the elders, their ability to extend authority to you, to communicate to the church, "Hey, we're invested in this person. We're on a team. We're together. Let's figure this out together."
Darrell Bock:
And they have a track record in the community that you can't replace.
Ron Deal:
That's it. Right. The biological parent has authority and definition and clarity in their role with the people that the new person doesn't have yet. You haven't gained that trust yet, so you have to rely on their ability to support you. That's why nurturing your relationship with those to whom you're accountable, the eldership or what have you, is so critical. You want to be very careful making decisions or changes or anything over the first couple of years in your tenure at a church, making sure always that the elder board is definitely with you in that decision.
And I would say any early changes. Sometimes you're forced into doing something that you said, "Man, I wouldn't have scripted it this way, but I've got to do something." I would say, try to let the elder board even communicate on your behalf because their voice is clear. Your voice is, "Hmm, we're still figuring this guy out," but their voice is clear. So that gives you leadership strength that you didn't have on your own.
Darrell Bock:
Now, that that image assumes something, and I'll just talk about what it assumes. And that assumes that there's some degree of, how can I say? Coherence between where the elders are and where the church community is. If you're in a church that has already… You've walked into an internal fight that you may or may not be aware of when you took the job, the dynamics change significantly.
Ron Deal:
Oh, my goodness. You just gave me a flashback, Darrell. Early out of graduate school, I went and applied for a job and I had picked up from a friend that there had been some trouble with the guy that previously left the role that I was applying for. And I went through an entire weekend interview and never heard anything from anybody. The elders, nobody ever brought it up. And I am smart enough to know as a family therapist that when there's secrets, there's stories behind those secrets and there's dynamics at play and there's power issues.
And so I finally waited long enough and I just said, "It seems to me there's a story here that I need to hear a little bit more about. Can you tell me about my predecessor and what happened?" Now they all just stopped and looked at each other. There was great division in that group. Long story short, he'd gone down the block and started a new church and took a bunch of members. They weren't even going to tell me, as if the past didn't have anything to do with the… It has everything to do with the present. It certainly has everything to do with your ability to fulfill the role that you're trying to step into.
I turned that job down. And sometimes, like you said, you don't know those things until you're already there and you're committed and now all that stuff starts bubbling up a little bit. It is very difficult and it can be hard to maneuver. It's helpful if you understand. Think of your role, "Okay, but I'm still the stepparent. I can't take on too much, too soon. I've got to be careful. I've got to make sure my primary connections are," like with the elder board, for example, "are tight and secure because that's the thing that's going to help me maneuver through all of these difficulties."
Darrell Bock:
We haven't talked about this, but when you're thinking about transitions and coming into a new role, et cetera, when you're approaching the possibility of a new job, I often say this is particularly true if you're not particularly happy where you already are, that the grass always looks greener on the other pasture. And if you're not careful, you will not ask the questions you need to ask before you make the move because you may realize that you went from one mucky situation to another mucky situation.
Ron Deal:
Hey, what do we tell single people who are dating? Single parents, singles never married. "Desperation is not a good motivation to find a partner, and it's not a good way to look for a job because you will not be discerning. You lose your discernment. You lose your ability to ask the hard questions. You lose your ability to be able to say no. And if you can't say no, then you really haven't made a good yes." You're exactly right. And so if you recognize that desperation in yourself and you're thinking about a transition out, I would try to resolve that as best you can. I would try to stay in the relationship, in the marriage you're in, if we could put it that way. By all means, work on that reconciliation.
Sometimes in a job situation it's just not possible, but you still got to get your discernment back. Darrell, something else has just occurred to me. I want to just say, in a blended family… Here's another parallel I think is helpful for leaders. In a blended family in the beginning, because children preceded the stepparent's presence in the family, children have an inordinate amount of power. A kid can say, "Look, I've been here a lot longer than you have, and you're not my mom, so you can't tell me what to do." At least there's a platform for that battle to even take place. That never happens in a first family because the kids know, "Well, you're my mom. You do belong here." There's inherent power-
Darrell Bock:
You beat me here.
Ron Deal:
Right. You made me here.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, yeah.
Ron Deal:
And so, same thing's true in a leadership situation. When you're the new person, when transitions have taken place, in particular if there's been a pain at the core of why the last person left, children, members of the church, have an inordinate amount of power. They have influence, they have a voice, they complain. They know who's on their side. They play those little lines to their advantage, and it's all out of fear and pain, and it's very hard not to take that personally, but it is really not about you. We tell stepparents all the time. "It's not about you. This is about a kid who misses their parent."
Darrell Bock:
It's about the past.
Ron Deal:
That's what this is. It's about the past, it's about sadness, it's about loss and grief. Now you just happen to be the person standing here, you're the new person, so you're going to take the brunt of all that pain, and that's hard, but try not to take it personally. I think understanding that dynamic, and again, working in alignment with the other leaders who have clarity in their roles, it is one way. But the other ultimate thing here is to say to that person who's treating you harshly, "I am so, so sorry that you've had to go through this difficult transition. This is so hard. I can tell you lost a lot in this. Would you mind helping me understand that more?"
And that softness, and that "let me help you grieve" posture, here's the irony, can be a form of building trust with that… They see you as somebody who cares deeply about them, who ministers to them, even when they're less than Christian in how they're behaving towards you. At the end of the day, you might win their affections, if you will. You don't do it to be manipulative. You do it because you're loving them, but it might have a really nice by-product in terms of your role in becoming a leader.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, it strikes me that when you come in from that situation, that one of the disadvantages that you have is, you don't know what you don't know. And they know.
Ron Deal:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
In fact, they may know and they may know more than they know. In other words, they think they know more than they actually do know, that kind of thing. And so you're dealing with that. You're dealing with a space that's hard to get your hands around because you don't know what you don't know, and you don't know what they know. And that's hard. And I do find your response of letting that person talk and just… I sometimes talk about this in evangelism, that sometimes in evangelism what you have to do is, you have to put your doctrinal meter on mute, okay, and just ask questions and get to know the person you're interacting with.
What motivates them, what's driving them, what concerns them, et cetera. It strikes me you're in a similar situation here where the issue is, your tendency is going to be, "I want to fix this. I want to get our hands around it. I want to make a decision." No, you need to step back and actually get a better lay of the land before you start picking sides.
Ron Deal:
I think you're exactly right. Be careful with those initial steps. Grow your relationships with the different parts within the church, the different little subgroups, the different individuals, especially those who are deeply wounded. The old adage, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," has great, great application to leadership in those situations.
You want to move toward them, not away from them, because toward is how you gain influence. But that means you have to deal with your own emotional pain and your own difficulties and how you deal with conflict. A lot of us in ministry, we're conflict avoiders. We don't want to touch it. That does not bear well in these situations. You have to find your resolve and step in with gentleness and try to move toward them.
Darrell Bock:
So, it's a lot to process and we've really focused in this conversation on the role of the pastor, and as happens in all our conversations about blended families, you change the player, the discussion changes. The role of the pastor's not the same as the person in the pew, or the elder who's brought in the new pastor or the staff that's dealing with… Depending on who we're talking about in the genogram, if I can use a technical term, well, the dynamics change.
Ron Deal:
They do indeed, and here's one of the complicated things about stepfamilies and church leadership. Some moments you find yourself in a different role with a different person. So in a blended family with your spouse, it's husband and wife and it's intimate and close, and we're trying to figure out our us-ness even as we're bonding this family and trying to be parents at the same time, and that's confusing. Sometimes I'm your lover and sometimes I'm your copartner in raising your kids, and I don't know which is acting. And then the next person walks in the room and they want me to be a parent. That's your child, but the next child, the stepchild, is saying, "No, I don't want you to be my parent."
Similar sorts of experiences and dynamics within a church context. Again, especially in the beginning of your journey as a leader within a… You're not really sure who you are with what person. It's a lot to navigate, and I think here's the hope. Here's the thing. We started our conversation talking about average stepfamily needs five to seven years, something like that. Have that same sort of crockpot mentality and just say, "I'm just working on this relationship today. This particular ingredient in our church crockpot is wide open to me. They're on board. They're ready to go. They're looking for the future.
"This ingredient is still holding on to the past and I just have to be super patient and gentle with this person. I have to spend a lot of time unpacking their pain in the past for them. They're not where this ingredient is." And then there's a group over here that's got this opinion and that. I just got to be what I have to be in this moment, in this relationship, trusting that over time what the Lord is doing is softening all the ingredients and they begin to share of themselves in new ways.
That's what happens in crockpots. That's what happens in blended families. That's what happens in churches. And with time, your level of clarity in your role, clarity in your relationship with different people, rises. Generally, what would you say to people these days? Five years in is when you really begin to pick up steam as a senior pastor in a church. Obviously with more time that goes even faster. Some pastors, maybe, in less time can get there, but you need some time for that to bake, for things to really begin to take off.
Darrell Bock:
It's interesting because you ended up landing in the very place that I was going to go, which is the crockpot metaphor, the five to seven year window, which actually means that you have to go in with a high level of patience about how you're walking into the space, the way in which you are perceived. You may even be initially misperceived because of stuff that you have no control over, that kind of thing, and it's giving yourself that space to figure out, "I'm in the crockpot, but I don't know where I'm sitting in this crockpot."
Ron Deal:
Hey, Darrell, as I was thinking about this conversation today, it occurred to me that, how much time does Jesus and Paul spend in the New Testament encouraging unity among the various members of his family? We got to get over the ethnic stuff. We got to get past the racial lines. We got to figure out ways of merging our hearts and our dreams and our passions, and your spiritual gifts and my spiritual gifts, and the way I think we should worship. The whole thing is about figuring out what we have in common, moving towards that which we hold up, and that's Jesus Christ, first and foremost. The things that unite us, and then me putting off my selfishness and making sacrifices on behalf of my brother and sister so that we can have even greater unity. That's an exercise in spiritual discipline right there.
That is what blended families have to learn to do, figure out how to not be family and grow into being family. And that's essentially what the local church is doing as leadership changes over time, as people come, as new people join the church, as children are born. It's an ongoing process for all of us, and it's a beautiful thing when it happens. I mean, my mantra is, blended families are redemptive. They're an amazing act of God when it comes together for this generation and the next. When blended families don't come together, well, it's a lot of hurt and chaos and pain for people that have already had hurt, chaos and pain. I think the same thing happens in churches.
Darrell Bock:
Well, my guess is, this has been an interesting journey for people to hear us talk about this and explore this idea. I want to thank you, Ron, for taking the time to talk our way through this and to have us think about it. I think it's a helpful metaphor of thinking about the relational side of church, which sometimes we perhaps desire and desire deeply, but underestimate what's involved in getting there. And so I want to thank you for taking the time to do this with us.
Ron Deal:
Oh, always. Thank you very much for the invitation.
Darrell Bock:
And we thank you for being a part of The Table. If you are interested in more podcasts, you can go to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast. We'd love to have you look at the other things that we've done and we hope you'll join us again soon.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas. And our topic today is the Urban Church, Understanding Your Neighbor in the Urban Church. And my guest is Zion McGregor, who is a contributing writer and author to an award-winning book co-known as Urban Apologetics. And you can go ahead and hand it to me here. I'll flash it at the camera. Urban Apologetics: Restoring Black Dignity with the Gospel. It's edited by Eric Mason, who is a graduate of the seminary here at Dallas. But Zion is a graduate of Southwestern, showing that we don't show preferences, that kind of thing. THM at Liberty. He's well-traveled, and a church planter at Mission City Church in Grand Prairie, Texas. And Zion, it is a real pleasure to have you with us today.
Zion McGregor:
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Darrell Bock:
Glad to do it. So my opening question to someone who's new to the table is how did a nice guy like you get in a gig like this? So tell us about your background and how you ended up being interested in this topic.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. Born and raised in the African American church and in the Baptist tradition of the National Baptist Convention was called to Ministry in '95 while in college, and along the way just matriculated in my learning and development, went to seminary, met Blake Wilson, my pastor, and through Blake I was able to connect with Eric Mason.
We began to build a relationship, and just organically really, many of the people that are in the book organically, we were all beginning to be sensitive to what was happening around the country with some of what we'll be talking about with various black religious identity cults. And we would individually begin to read and study. And just organically, Eric Mason reached out to me and asked me if I would contribute. And I've been a part of Urban Apologetics ever since.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So I mean, normally when we think of apologetics, we think about the defense of the faith and those kinds of questions, but you put urban before the word apologetics and that raises it. Well what in the world does that mean? Let's talk about the urban church first for a second. When we talk about the urban church, what exactly are we talking about and why is it important to understand the urban church and kind of the experience that urban churches go through?
Zion McGregor:
Right. Historically, the term urban usually speaks to city settings and whatnot as opposed to rural. We don't know when or how or why, but urban began, as related to the church, began to be code language for black and brown churches. But what really I would say the urban church speaks to are churches that really are engaged in more of the inner city work. And that can be a black church, white church, the ethnicity really doesn't matter. It just for whatever reason has become code. So that's the first thing I would say. So the urban church is really those churches that are in these urban settings that are trying to basically engage the communities with the gospel and as it relates to, is that the right term or whatnot, I mean that's debatable. In my context, we use urban to denote black and brown situations, but I'm sure you will find, like anything, people of all spectrums, some will have a problem with it, some won't.
Darrell Bock:
So it really is dealing with inner city issues. And I take it that generally speaking, inner city churches are dealing with a full array of black brown experience in such a way that's a little bit distinct from say the average if we say suburban church that we think about. So talk about that a little bit. What's the nature of that difference?
Zion McGregor:
Well, some of the differences with the more urban context is that these are urban contexts where there tends to be a little bit more. First of all, the tax bracket is different. And so the economic situation is one that like with anything else presents challenges to just day-to-day life. These challenges eventually have a tendency to spiral out and cause one to either gravitate toward faith, or have an hostility toward faith and religion because of their circumstances.
So that's kind of what's at the root of it. We really don't have to go through the various challenges. I mean that's pretty documented as to if you're in a poor community. But not all urban churches are poor. You have an urban context that can be urban and middle class. But the challenges even in the climate that we're living in as the Christianity is in retreat in the West, we're finding challenges in the urban context more and more unique within black and brown spaces.
Darrell Bock:
And so even if you are in a middle class church because of your family and background, et cetera, that tends to reach in oftentimes into the inner city? I mean the break isn't total, is it?
Zion McGregor:
Say it again.
Darrell Bock:
So even if a church is a middle class urban church, because of the family situations that exist in many cases, there's not a total break necessarily from the background that many people have come out of to reach the middle class.
Zion McGregor:
Right. What is happening to the issues that we try to address is in those settings, forces come from outside to recruit, for example. So a person will come in and we'll get into some of this, I've got some stories, and they'll begin to just try to proselytize. And then that worldview begins to migrate and spread like a virus into those spaces.
Darrell Bock:
So we've isolated three issues. I'm sure there are more, but one is called Hebrew Israeliteism, which may be completely new to a lot of people or Israelism. And then what we might call liberation movements, which tend to also get into class discussions, and then divination and witchcraft. Those are the three areas that we've zoomed on that we want to talk about. So you talk about recruiters coming in. When I hear recruiters, I'm either thinking sports, or maybe the military. You have something else in mind.
Zion McGregor:
Right. Oh, go ahead.
Darrell Bock:
No, go ahead.
Zion McGregor:
So what we have happening right now within the African American context and in the Latino context are what's black Hebrew Israelites. Some camps prefer to be called just Hebrew Israelites. They actually find the reference to being black offensive. They completely reject it. So that should be known. And what has happened is when I say recruit, I mean that because of their worldview and what they believe, they really believe that they are the true descendants of the Old Testament biblical Israelites. And because of that belief, they feel compelled to go out and say, everyone that looks like me, I have to tell them this also. And so they're going out and they're recruiting as a result of that. And that's what I mean by recruiting. They're going out and they're trying to proselytize, it's their form of evangelism. They go to barbershops, they go to blocks on the city, and just wherever they can engage someone, they try to do that.
Darrell Bock:
And so what is it that they believe and why is it important to proselytize in this direction in their mind?
Zion McGregor:
So what they believe again is that they believe that they are the Israelites of the Old Testament. And there are probably 15 different camps. They continue to splinter, most notably here recently in our culture, you've seen events with Kanye West and with Kyrie Irving, there was a group called IUIC. IUIC is probably the most organized, most disciplined branch of the Hebrew Israelite camps. And they believe, again, that they're Israelites. And as a result, now that's the commonality. And they draw largely from Deuteronomy 28. They read Deuteronomy 28 as a prophecy. Because in Deuteronomy 28 it talks about where Moses, it really contextually begins in Deuteronomy 27 and it goes through 29, but they don't have a very good hermeneutic at all. And so they don't really know how to read the text properly. But from Deuteronomy 28, they draw from where Moses just basically warns them, hey, if you do not abide by the law of God, you'll be put on ships and you'll be carried over into slavery, things of this nature.
And so they read into that African American history through the transatlantic slave trade, and they just assume that this is talking about us. The transatlantic slave trade fulfills this prophecy, therefore this is who we really are. And this is why they in some cases, hate African Americans, because they completely mentally have disassociated themselves being from that. And so they don't even being referred to as African, they're not African, they're not black, they are Hebrews Israelites, full stop.
And so from that point on, it varies in terms, the beliefs breakdown. None of the camps hold a Trinitarian view obviously, they all have a oneness, sabellian Arius type view of God. You have extremes. You have very moderate Hebrew Israelite camps that you can dialogue with. And then you have very violent extreme groups. They all would deny that. But you do have that.
Darrell Bock:
So what's to be gained from this identity? Is it just the separation that it produces? What's the payoff of understanding supposedly who you are?
Zion McGregor:
For black religious identity cults, the real payoff is really a crisis of identity. And we're having this across America, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote an article about a crisis of boys and men in America. Scott Galloway, a PhD out of New York who deals with marketing in digital marketing and digital spaces. He says in his book, Adrift that we have an identity crisis in America. David Gergen, who served five presidents talked about several years ago in an article about an essay he wrote that there was a crisis of leadership in America. For black religious identity cults, it is an identity crisis. And the payoff is I now find identity in this. And so that's the real palp at the root that now I know who I am because of slavery. They don't deny that they've come that way, but they just say, well, we were mixed in with Africans, but we are the true Hebrew Israelites for those who believe it. And we now have our identity because America stripped us of our tongue. America stripped us of our language.
And so this is really kind of the root really at all of the black religious identity cults. What they all have in common is this sense that when they look at the African American experience in America historically, they feel that that America has raped those who were walked from the interior of Africa to the west coast of Africa, brought over by slave trades and just literally taken everything from them. And so what the payoff is, the belief that I have finally found who I am. And so that's the real payoff, a sense of identity.
Darrell Bock:
So I have that sense of identity. I'm just going to draw this out a little more. I have this sense of identity and that gives me self understanding, that gives me dignity, that gives me pride. Is that what the payoff is?
Zion McGregor:
It gives me all of that. It gives me a new world view. I see myself differently, and now since I now feel that I have a sense of where I come from and who I am, now I can move forward, whatever that looks like. The thing that's interesting, I go back to IUIC for example. If you look at that doctrine, they tend to be like most cults, very shrouded. You have to really get in to learn the deeper diggings. But you will see where Bishop Nathaniel, who's starting to get a little bit more attention now, who's the leader of IUIC, I don't know if he's still now, but he used to be a New York police officer, New York City police officer. But you can see where he has been taking from Jehovah's Witness, taking from the nation of Islam, taking from Christianity, taking from Judaism and just kind of on the fly constructing this theology. And so it's still kind of developing out, I shouldn't say theology, but this worldview. But that's kind of what it all comes to.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so that's the Israeliteism or Israelism. You said black identity cults. So I take there's more than one. So let me throw in one that we didn't mention we were going to talk about, but just see what you can tell us about it. And that's black Muslims, the whole black Muslim movement. I take it as another example of a black identity cult.
Zion McGregor:
It is. It's a black religious identity cult. And to kind of give some framing to that, black speaks of just the universal commonality that they share. Religious is the spiritual distinctive that they subscribe to. Identity is the dignifying characteristics that give meaning in place to the person. And then the cult is that which emerges as the expression of those beliefs. So that's what makes a black religious identity cult. And so yes, the nature of Islam, for example, would be one or the Moorish Science Temple that was established in the late 19th century by Noble Drew Ali. These are examples. You also have Kemet African spirituality, which is a dead religion out of Egypt. So these are some examples. The nation of Islam is in decline. It's been declined because it has aged with Lewis Farrakhan.
Many people don't know, but Louis Farrakhan's in his late 80s. And so he hasn't made a significant address in 20 years. And so kind of like with an aging church, an aging pastor, the nation of Islam has aged with Farrakhan, and as he's aged, it has lost its momentum it once had. Creation will not tolerate a vacuum. As their pursuit and influence began to decline and wane, it gave space for black Hebrew Israelites to rise, because that movement has actually been around longer than the nation of Islam. The nation of Islam began in 1934. Hebrew Israelites came about in the late 19th century, but they've never been able to get momentum in the African American community until really the internet, more than anything else has played the biggest role in their rise.
Darrell Bock:
So the interesting thing of course is that you have a black identity movement that goes in the direction of identifying with names that come out of the Old Testament, and then you got black Muslims which come in a direction that identifies with a religion that has nothing to do with Christianity. But I'm assuming that both of these are pushbacks on traditional Christianity. Am I reading that right or is that unrelated to the way things work?
Zion McGregor:
It's a 1A and a 1B. One sense, it is a rejection of Christianity because they believe Christianity's the white man's religion. And the 1B part is again, kind of going back to the way that they see America's treatment of people of color more than anything else is what drives them away from the gospel.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So that raises all kinds of questions. Probably it's its own entire podcast, but I'll introduce it now anyway. And that is, it's probably pretty important for everybody to understand the history that stands behind this sense of alienation that exists. Is that a fair statement to make?
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
Because my sense is that whereas this is very real for large portions of the black community, they know their history. They know what they've been through on the one hand, for many whites that part of history is almost like if it exists, it's almost like a thin shadow or a fog. It's not anything that's in focus. And yet it has helped form the dynamics that exist within large portions of the black community in the United States. Fair?
Zion McGregor:
Fair. Very much so. Eric Mason said it best, the black church exists because the white church failed to be. And when you look at the rise of the AME church as a result of Richard Allen just not being able to pray, I think today we are mature enough, the culture has kind of caught up a little bit more with the gospel to where we will say who stops someone from praying? That seems absurd now. But we have to understand in this historic context, because of the social dynamic, the social dynamic had the church in the case where it was the tail wagging the dog that we have to police the social standards even in the church. And so you had secular really doctrines of demons as Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:1, imposing themselves within the body of Christ and the body of Christ embraced it and behavior changed.
And racism has been so devastating to the sharing of the gospel to all parties, those who oppressed and played a role in dispensing it. And those who are on the receiving end. It's just been very harmful and prayerfully, hopefully the church will eventually come to a place where we can get past the differences just in how we look and see one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. And if we could ever do that and deport ourselves with the love that Jesus calls us to in John 13 verse 34, we would have a greater impact. The country would look different.
Darrell Bock:
Well, one of the ways I think about this, I was a history major in college, so history is important to me as just a discipline in the humanities. But one of the things that I think I see is that when you understand the history, and when you understand how the history of certain events has wounded certain people and wounded certain communities, that actually is a very important thing to understand about the dynamics of what's going on. I mean, it's created the sense of alienation that leads to this pursuit of dignity.
I sometimes say that there was such a long time in which black people were not treated as full people and they were almost invisible or seen more as objects than people, that that impacts the psychology of a community. And some of the pushback is involved in saying, I not only deserve to be noticed, I demand to be noticed.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And in that then you get all these dynamics that gum up relationships which have been produced in part by the history that one side has very much experienced and felt, and the other side is almost oblivious to.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
So that produces the challenges so that handled in the right way, it isn't a competing history, it's a history to be understood and appreciated for what it has generated in terms of now use of figure of speech in terms of shrapnel, in terms of damage that has come as a result of what's taken place.
Zion McGregor:
Yeah. African-American history is American history. It is an impossibility to separate the two. We know we're in the midst of a cultural fight over CRT and I have yet to hear a coherent definition. Different camps construct their own definition to suit the argument they want to make. But again, I think for the Christian, it's important for us to understand how history has played a role in the acceptance and rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is at the root of my concern, the root of our concern is that we know that it is not God's will that anyone should perish.
And so it's important that, as I say in the book, what you believe matters because there's eternal consequence tied to it. And so our goal is to try to make a defense of the Christian faith to the objections held by African Americans because they have said, "Well, if you are a Christian and you are a Caucasian European and you treat me like this, whatever that is, I don't want it." And what we're just trying to do is trying to help them to one, get a proper understanding of what Christianity really is, and how it is supposed to be deported, and to kind of just show that it's not everybody. And so that's part of the effort of what we're trying to do.
Darrell Bock:
I see. So really urban apologetics, just to come back to that term for a second, is a way of defending the faith in the midst of these kinds of challenges. Is that right?
Zion McGregor:
Yes. It's to the unique questions and objections that African Americans who oppose Christianity have, our goal is to address those questions, give sound intelligent answers, well-reasoned answers so that we can kind of disarm them of the ignorance that really shapes their view.
Darrell Bock:
And the same is true the brown church with the marginalization that sometimes happens in a Latino community.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, well that's helpful. Well, I think that sort of helps us with the black Hebrew Israelite issue. Let me turn our attention to another one which we've labeled liberal theology or Liberation Theology. Now this one's tricky, because it comes from within the scripture, it emphasizes the themes of justice and liberation, which certainly are part of the scriptures and are part of what is taught. It is rooted in a concern that says, the way in which God has built us means that we should be concerned with what's going on around us in the society. The original calling of men and women in Genesis one was to manage the creation well in all its spheres and to walk in a way that honored God and that honored others made in God's image.
So there's rootage here that is biblical and there's a lot of biblical language that shows up in the conversation. So talk a little bit about your take on liberation theology and on what we might also call a liberal theology because it tends to be selective in what it emphasizes out of scripture, and to diminish some features of the scripture that are also there.
Zion McGregor:
So liberation theology as introduced by late Dr. James Cone is one of the fruits of liberal theology. Liberal theology is born out of the Enlightenment from Friedrich Schleiermacher as we know, for those who don't know. And what has happened, in the African American Church, liberation theology is not what it once was. It's been seen by some or the way that over time kind of matured out. It kind of became more of a victimized theology in terms of the thinking. And that's why it really, people outside the American church may think, oh, black churches do liberal racial theology. Absolutely not. I didn't know about liberation theology till I came to seminary, and that's just because it never really took whole because it situated the individual too much as a victim. And that left a bad taste, particularly merging out of the civil rights movement and people finally getting some rights in a sense, now we can do some things that maybe we haven't done. They were not looking for this victimized mindset. And so it didn't really take, although it does linger and there are pastors who subscribe to it and practice it.
Jeremiah Wright was one of them. And in fact, he was a Cone disciple in many respects and those who followed. But when I talk about liberal theology and its impact on the African American church is that what has emerged here now amongst my generation, amongst some, those would be colleagues and contemporaries for myself is more what Schleiermacher and what would come from him and the influence of David Hume Immanuel Kant. That has come to be more and more realized in the black church now, not overwhelmingly, but I would say maybe 10 to 15%, which is for me is a big number amongst African American churches. You're having clergy who are beginning to say things who one, start one with a high view of naturalism and a diminished view of scripture. So they don't realize when you talk to them, the ones I've spoken to, they don't know who David Hume is, but they're echoing a diminished view in the miraculous.
That's one thing. So a diminished view of the scriptures. Secondly, you have in some of these spaces you have, there are two or three preachers that come to mind within the African American context that are advancing the idea of salvific inclusivity, that Jesus is not the only way to be saved. And they're rejecting the exclusivity of Christ and salvation through Jesus alone. And so now you'll hear them say things like, who's to say that you can't worship our lie and be saved or you can't be a Buddhist. But I hear them say that, I know that they're not well read because Hinduism and Buddhism are non-theistic faith of religions. So they don't even know that part. But that's what I mean when I really talk about liberal theology because it's rising in the way that we haven't heard before.
Darrell Bock:
Well, the framing that I'm used to seeing and hearing is this kind of, I'm going to go slaves, women, sexuality, that kind of intersection where the inclusivity is not necessarily just religious, but it's also social to some degree, and where the overhang… Liberation theology comes out of Latin America, and it isn't in part of the American context, but what is shared is this oppressed, oppressor, oppressed, right? Binary, which is the major lens through which people approach the space. So you intersect those two things, people who have been marginalized, people who have been pushed to the side, people who've been taken advantage of however you want to express it and put it next to their discovering their identity, discovering their rights, and pushing for that combination with this idea of being inclusive. You put that all together. One, it fits the spirit of our age.
And then secondly, it obviously is not interacting in a full way with all that the scripture says. And it isn't that the scripture says. And it isn't that the scripture doesn't have a concern for issues of justice and how we operate in our society. It certainly does. But the question is what do human beings need in order to function well in society? And one of the things that they need is to be properly related to the living God and to recognize their need for God in order to put themselves in a position to think outside themselves, interact with other people whose situation may be different than their own.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. Absolutely. To your point about slavery, women, children, that is something that too, to in the 80s, feminist theology first then womanist theology came in the 90s emerged, and they kind of took the philosophy of feminism and they took the blueprint of black liberation theology from Cone and kind of began to build out their own, I, forgive me, I can't call it theology in good conscience, but they began to build out their own philosophy with religious overtones and religious vocabulary over time. But again, what this type of liberalism in the African American context is also tied to, similar to the black religious identity cults is a sense of oppression. This is just a really common thread with frustrations within the African American context and emerging more amongst Latino seminarians and whatnot, and thinkers who are now looking more critically at their journey in America. And they're beginning to talk and write, and it's beginning to expand there as well.
Darrell Bock:
So the challenge becomes identifying something that is a part of the history and that has produced its effects, many of them destructive and many of them painful, and understanding the impact of that. Because when you dismiss that impact, the danger is then a person who's been on, how can I say that? On the short end of the stick in terms of that history, we'll say, well, you have no sensitivity to what I've been through at all.
Zion McGregor:
Right. I do want to say that with all that we've covered that these are still very much though they're rising, this is still for the African American church, these are still minority spaces. They're not the mainstream,.
Darrell Bock:
But they're competing spaces.
Zion McGregor:
They are competing spaces. They're absolutely competing spaces. I think it has to be said that the African American church is still overwhelmingly very, I don't use the language conservative, but I will say it's very orthodox instilling values from Dr. Tony Evans to Dr. James Meeks, to Dr. Crawford Loritts, to Blake Wilson, Eric Mason, Jerome Gay, and Brandon Watts, Brandon Washington, all of these others, myself, still preach and teach a crystal centric gospel. We still preach about the triune God, we still preach about family. Tony Evans and Dr. Loritts have done so much in writing and series on family, and that's still the norm overwhelmingly amongst African-American pastors. It is, as I said, black liberation theology going just to touch back on that again was never the predominant view. And I don't think that people know that. And that's why I want to kind of reiterate and say that for those outside the African American context, that has never been the predominant teaching in the black church.
Darrell Bock:
And now I'm going to problematize this a little bit, but the role of sometimes some segments of our media are to pick up on those outside voices and lift them up and give them more attention. And the voice, even though it's a minority voice within the community, becomes a louder voice.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. Yeah. Especially in the climate that we're living in with age of sound bites, it can be seen, I remember when the Jeremiah Wright snippet was leaked, when then Senator Barack Obama was running for president, you would've thought that that was norm everywhere. Now what he said, have I heard that before in my lifetime from the pulpit? Yes. But it is not the norm as people would think it is. And the way that it's expressed and framed.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. The way you ended that's really important. I mean, on the one hand, the entirety of the black community has had to deal with this history and what it's meant for the African American community through its history. I've heard, as you've mentioned, Tony Evans and Crawford Loritts and Eric, I've heard them speak to this directly, but how they frame it is very, very different than the framing that you get when it's coming out of a James Cone, for example. And it isn't just to say this, it isn't that there are observations that James Cone is making about the nature of this history and what took place that can be ignored, that it's there, but then how you frame it, how you spin it, how you present it, what you think the way out of it is, all those kinds of things, those are other conversations.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
I often say when we get into this space, it's one thing to analyze the nature of the problem. It's another thing to think about what solves the problem that we find ourselves in. And that sometimes the analysis of the nature of the problem is something where we can get at least more agreement on than perhaps what the solution should be. And it's the solutions that produce the debates.
Zion McGregor:
Yes, absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And sometimes when we don't distinguish that, when we treat it all as one, we actually mess up the conversation.
Zion McGregor:
Right, absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
And you know mentioned CRT earlier, that's one of the things that's happening I think in the CRT discussion, is that one, you've got people using the term in very different ways, with different meanings. For some people it's a positive term. For some people it's a negative term. It's like the term woke. For some people, the term's positive, some people the term's negative. And then depending on that starting point, you literally can be talking past one another because you're not talking about the same thing.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. And I think that's one of the byproducts of post-modernity, and when you start talking about the populist secular new age, live your truth, and people don't realize how dangerous that is, and do you want the pedophile to live their truth? Is that the kind of society we want? These are hard teachings, and we could go into other things, I mean, do you want the serial killer to live his truth? That's how extreme, that may seem extreme, but that's how it begins to spiral out.
Darrell Bock:
Well, once you lose a sense of what's true and what's false and you lose any effort to pursue common ground, that's where you end up, it's like the absence of honor and shame. You lose a sense of honor and shame when you dissolve standards. That's the result.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
So those are two of the areas. The third area that we want to have, I'm trying to manage our time here is something completely different. And to me, when I was thinking about this and how to approach it, I was thinking divination in witchcraft in that whole area, the way in which the spiritual world is perceived in the urban church reminds me of trips I have taken to parts of the world, say Guatemala or Haiti, where I see these, I don't know what other word to use, this kind of syncretistic view of the spirit world at work.
And I saw things in Guatemala that I would never see or rarely see in the United States, but they've been imported in one sense, or at least are part of the same world as that is. Because once you get to the point of the rationalist says, well, none of that, you're just in a fantasy world. But then theology says, no, there are spirits, they're real, there are challenges that are real. And so now the question is, all right, now how do I balance this? So talk a little bit about the role of divination in witchcraft in the black church.
Zion McGregor:
So it's not necessarily present in the black church, but in the black community, it is one of these fringe marginalized movements that's beginning to get a little of attention, mainly amongst African American women. There is for whatever reason, and similar to the black religious identity cults, and it falls into that space in that when you ask what led you to this, identity always comes up, a connection back to the spirit realm that for them has not been stained by the fingerprints of white people. And then also it's tied to what their lived experience thus far has been like nothing else has worked for me.
Many of them, ironically within our context, come out of the Episcopal and Catholic church that we're finding that are beginning to take interest. When you ask them, well, what was your background growing up? You'll say, well, I was Episcopal or I was Catholic. You don't hear as much Baptist or Methodist, though there are some that will say, oh, I came from the Baptist church, or I came from AME church. They're rarer. But you'll hear Episcopalian, Catholic, and you will hear that they're coming out of usually apostolic churches also. Which tend to have what W.E.B. Du Bois called the frenzy, just the charismatic worship. But for them it was always something deep for this prophecy happening and whatnot. And that just kind of helped play a role to lead into other things. Well,
Darrell Bock:
I think what I'm hearing that's consistent across all this, there is an acceptance of, and two, a recognition that dealing with the reality of the spiritual world is a part of religious experience that has to be taken seriously. And then the question is, all right, how in the world do you get your hands around this and understand what's going on in areas where all the forces that you're talking about are unseen?
Zion McGregor:
Yeah. To your first statement, that is very much a large part of it because when you look at, or if you talk to someone in these spaces, candles, crystals have become popular, burning sage, creating potions. And a lot of this ultimately is for many of them to one gives them, again, a sense of identity, but also they believe that this praying to ancestors,
Darrell Bock:
There's a way of getting some control
Zion McGregor:
In your life. There's a way of getting control and changing your reality. So if I drink a potion, I can get this person to love me that I want to marry, or I can maybe have money come my way. So all of this, and that's what makes it witchcraft, divination, is that they're trying to find a way to have an experience without God. They don't necessarily think of it quite like that. Because they talk about ancestors and spirituality, but they're really trying to move in a way kind of like those at the Tower of Babbel, we're going to make our name great without God. And that's kind of what all of that space attempts to do.
Darrell Bock:
So you're saying this is part of the reality on the fringes of the urban context outside, mostly outside the church, but it's all these things that we've described, and this is maybe the way to land this plane, all these forces that we described put pressure on the church in terms of how it represents itself in the midst of this environment.
Zion McGregor:
That's exactly right. And the challenge for the church is to, unfortunately not enough churches are seeing these as a big enough threat. We're not responding fast enough. A little known fact that in 1974, for example, a Hebrew Israelite went into a church, shot a deacon and shot a woman in Oregon. Her name was Alberta King, and it was Martin Luther King Jr's mother. He was shot, she was shot and killed by a Hebrew Israelite. This is the kind of, and I think back, that was 1974, where was the AME church? Where was the Nash Baptist Convention? Where were these churches to say, to not treat it as a one-off in fringe, but to say, wait a minute, what is it that this person believed? Because in his deposition he said that my beliefs in Hebrew Israelism led me to my actions. Because he wanted to punish her for giving birth to Martin Luther King Jr. But again, the thinking behind it, the worldview behind it shaped it. So this can get dangerous.
Darrell Bock:
And when you're saying the churches aren't taking this seriously enough, what you're saying is predominantly the Black Urban Church isn't taking this seriously. Now this is an issue within the community they need to be aware of, but I'm thinking in the back of my mind, well, if the Black Urban Church is being slow to respond, the rest of the church is probably even less aware of what's going on here.
Zion McGregor:
I think that one of the problems that we have is that we do not think Christianly about our corporate identity. I think an assault on a church is an assault on the church. This is my conviction and the circle that I run in, it's not merely… Christians should be alarmed at the assault on the body of Christ, the assault on people who need the gospel. It should be the business of us all to prioritize at least making a defense of the faith if we're not evangelizing, which if it wasn't for church plants in America, all the data from Nam to Barna to Pew Research, if it wasn't for church plants, the gospel wouldn't be shared in America. Church plants lead in that area, but the issue that we're facing within the African American context, in Latino context, Santa Maria is a issue for them that's growing.
But if it's long, as long as it's looked at as that's your issue and not our issue, it will continue to be a growing threat. And what is beginning to happen. One of the tactics, and I just want to share this, IUIC has been conducting since Easter of this year, what they're calling a church blitz, where they're targeting churches and they're going outside the churches before the churches are dismissed, and they are bombarding them with, they're trying to get people pamphlets, they're trying to talk to people, they got loud speakers and they're trying to, what are you doing here? You came out, and they've hit locally-
Darrell Bock:
That's how the recruiting works.
Zion McGregor:
That's one aspect. But the part of the Blitz one is a marketing stunt, honestly, because they record, they use their cell phones.
Darrell Bock:
To just get attention.
Zion McGregor:
They're just trying to get attention and kind of expand their brand just here locally in Dallas, they've gone out to the Potters House, they've been out to several churches in Dallas Fort Worth. There's actually a video. They went to Oak Cliff, but the ministers of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship came out and met them and they left quietly. But that's a church, that's a rare case. The discipleship when the Dr. Evans is probably a different kind of discipleship than in many spaces, and they were well-equipped, the ministers, and they were able to handle it quite well. But this again, has to be, and I just wish this was across the board that the church, if we would just see, not see your problem, my problem, but our problem, I think that America would look drastically different than what it does right now.
Darrell Bock:
And part of that involves conversations like the ones we're having of just becoming better aware of one another, by which I mean in particular, people who are in predominantly white churches, having a better understanding of what the minority experience is, that just having a sense of the issues that each community faces that are challenges for it and challenges for believers in those communities that may not be at all anything I might face on a regular basis, but that I absolutely need to be aware of in order to understand what my brother or sister in Christ is going through.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That just has to be, as you said, conversations that have to happen. But the problem with that is though we've been saying that since pre-Emancipation proclamation.
Darrell Bock:
Which means that the one with ears needs to let them hear. I mean, I often say that the first step in good conversations is to actually do a pretty good job of listening. And so sometimes we go into a conversation wanting, well, I've got this content that I want to make sure you get, but before I get to that stage, it might be better for me to stop and listen and get a reading on what's driving you and why, so that I'm in a better position to actually be responsive rather than demanding, for example.
Zion McGregor:
Absolutely. I think just one solution is something that, I don't think it's ever been the norm in America amongst the church, but I think that every African American pastor, and every Caucasian pastor needs to have a real relationship with their counterpart, I don't care if you have coffee once a month and agree to have peaceable, and there'll be times when you disagree, but to be able to have all conversations on the table, we can talk about anything. Let me hear you, and allow me to be heard so that we can then prayerfully hopefully, guided by the word of God, come to solutions that benefit the body of Christ ultimately.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And those conversations are important. I mean, this is something we've worked to try and promote at the center, to try and get people in dialogue to do several, we've tried to do several podcasts like this where we've had these cross community conversations really in many ways, and to try and listen for what it is that is initially unfamiliar. Because what a lot of people do when they meet with unfamiliarity is, they step back and say, "Oh, I don't know if I want to go there and take the time that it takes to get familiar with this and to have an appreciation for it," that kind of thing. And so there becomes a silence that actually is debilitating.
And so part of what we're trying to do is to say, no, these conversations are worth having. These are things worth being aware of learning about, et cetera, because there's a segment of the body of Christ that's directly impacted by what's happening, and it's important to understand where that impact is coming from, what the challenges are and how the gospel speaks into it. So in your mind, so to wrap up. If you were to say, so how does the gospel speak into this in your mind, how would you say or how would you describe what the calling of the church should be in the midst of these challenges?
Zion McGregor:
I think the calling of the church should be what it's always been. That's a call in Ephesians 2 for us to be one man. For every one passage that Paul writes about justification, there are five passages on unity. And Ephesians 4 comes to mind, a whole chapter where he's driving home the point of how important unity is. And as long as there is division in the church, it's just going to continue to be a challenge. But the gospel calls us to see one another the way God sees us, and to deport ourselves with the type of agape love that enables us to be living sacrifices for my brother, my sister. That's why the Bible has all that familial language of family. And wherever there is a need, as we see in Acts 2 and 4 that we collectively work to meet that need to solve that problem, that's what the gospel has always called us to do. We have failed as the body of Christ over almost 2,000 years to rightly and consistently deport ourselves in that manner.
Darrell Bock:
Well, Zion, I want to thank you for taking the time to come in and talk with us about issues that are unique to the Urban Church and the challenges that faces. We thank you for the kind of ministry that you're trying to plan in churches and others like you. We thank you for the work that you're doing, and we really appreciate you taking the time to be with us on The Table.
Zion McGregor:
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Darrell Bock:
And we're glad you could join us on The Table. We hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to see other episodes of The Table, we have over 500 of them. voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast will take you to the list, and we hope to see you again soon.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendrick Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and our topic today is ministry from womb to tomb, which means it kind of covers everything but eternity, which is a lot. And our guests today are Rick and Jocelyn Sun, who work with Life International, they're also DTS grads. So it's great to have you with us. Thanks for being a part of the table.
Jocelyn Sun:
Thank you for having us. Yeah.
Ric Sun:
Yeah. It's such a joy and honor to be here with you, Dr. Bock.
Darrell Bock:
Well, as we often do, for someone who's a guest with us for the first time, my question is, I got to slightly adjust it for you all is, what's a nice couple like you doing in a gig like this? How did you get to where you are ministering? Tell us that story.
Jocelyn Sun:
Well, Dr. Bock, I'm just going to start from a little bit about my background so you get to know us a little and then heading towards how we got to DTS. So I was born in Houston and raised in Taiwan. My father passed away when I was six. So my mom took me and my younger sibling to Taiwan. And it was a culture where highly academic driven, honor and shame. Everything was about performance, appearance and then knowledge. It was very difficult. And after college I wanted to come back just to further study and not knowing that I stepped into a church where my younger sister and my aunt was at. Our Father, Jesus Christ, in desperation probably He saw me and He remembered me and he pulled me out of the darkness with His gentle and tender kindness. It was very difficult that I also have to wrestle in much tears that I often question God, "If you were the real God, could you just show me?" And the next day everything was different. The Bible came alive.
And so at that moment, we were really passionate about evangelism. Everywhere we go, we said, "Everybody needs to hear about this story, about the love of God in the gospel." In 2015, I worked for 10 years in corporate America. The Lord had to use a layoff from my job. And then at that moment, the Lord pushed us to fundraise to come here so that Rick can become a full-time student at DTS. And we said, "Lord, if you're going to give, we will go." And He has given us six years at DTS and ongoing till now. In 2018, so I also sense the urgency to be equipped at DTS as well. I said that, "Lord, I would love to integrate the faith into the workforce. So I want to equip the saints, teach me how to do that." And who knew that our heavenly Father had a grander plan. He always has a best plan for us. So He said that, "Daughter, not this right now, but I would like you to go through a post-abortion retreat."
And I said, "Father, really? With all the homeschooling finals and then TaeKwonDo ministry, college ministry that we're in." And I've never heard of this kind of retreat, but with lots of grief, pain as I dragged in my foot into the doors of that retreat, after a weekend, I attended the Someone Cares retreat in Dallas where I learned how to grieve. And later I was an intern at a 12 week recovery group. And later on I attended a Deeper Still retreat in Tennessee where I counted the Holy Spirit very intimately. I had to face something back then where we didn't understand the sacredness of life. And back when we were in college, we sacrificed our unborn for this whole world. But this whole world has nothing comparing to a living life within me.
Darrell Bock:
So Rick, what's your side of the story?
Ric Sun:
So I was born and raised in Taiwan. And then as Jocelyn shared, the big part of our life is really about achieving, and honor and shame. To the point where that it's almost like you asked you asked the fish, what is the water? The fish said, what is water? There's nothing else. There's no other ways for the fish to know there's a different purpose of life, a different sense of the belief system. So that was the upbringing and pursuing the whole world. Romans one is pretty much sum up everything that I have done in the past and live 24 years without knowing Jesus until when we found out that we actually fell pregnant and then that completely shattered our lives. And at that time, just because we don't know the value of life without knowing Jesus Christ is our Lord and savior, that the culture is affirming us, "Hey, you just need to clean up, fix the problem and move on."
And so that's what we did. And as if that there's nothing happen, and I even vow to myself that I am not going to share with anybody else with this part of story, I will bury this part of story with me to the grave and without mentioning the words, and even our parents did not know about that. And then a year later, as you can imagine, that the spirit of God began to woven into me now because living in the darkness and shame and knowing there's something deep inside that I cannot share, that it really affects and trigger anything that I do.
And even later on I went to seminary, become a pastor serving in the church in Texas, I'm really good at performing, pleasing people. Say the words people want to hear or even just do things that gain people's respect. And just a lot of the turmoil, a lot of the darkness that I've been wearing a mask, the facade way too long, way before COVID. And it's really not until 2020 something dramatically, even supernaturally happened. And then we'll share it in just a second. So that's my life story.
Darrell Bock:
So this is pretty fascinating. So the post-abortion seminar that you attended was in part to deal with what you had been through. Am I right about that?
Jocelyn Sun:
Yes.
Ric Sun:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
And I guess this… Well, let me mention something. You all work for Life International, which is headquartered in Grand Rapids. And on their website they make a point, they start off with birth and then they go through the care of a person all the way through their life, which is something we want to try and do as we talk with you. But the thing that struck me is there's a statistic on that webpage that talked about how many children are born in a given year and how many children are aborted in a given year. And I think the figure is something like one out of every four pregnancies ends in an abortion.
At least that was the figure this last year, which is a number that… And that's globally. We're not just talking about the United States, that's globally. And I'm just thinking about man, what a number that is. Such a high number. I had no idea it was that prevalent. But I'm assuming that in the midst of doing this, and I also am assuming that this happened before you came to the Lord, that something in you triggered that there just wasn't something right about having gotten an abortion. Am I right about that or did you have that sense before you came to the Lord?
Jocelyn Sun:
Yes. So yeah, at that time we were just thinking what will people think about us? And then being a performer, we just wanted to hide that part. We never talked about it and we'd taken upon the decisions upon ourself. And then in Taiwan there wasn't any resources. There wasn't any pregnancy centers and nobody ever talked about it. We remember in middle school when we are being taught about sexuality, it was only two pages and then it was just really fast. The teacher wanted to just skim through it and then afterwards nothing was taught in school. We just put it underneath the rug in the closet and not trying to say that it pretended that it didn't happen, but it would just shut there. And then we never dealt with it till we went to a retreat like this, which we never thought that there was this kind of retreat because I lived 10 years of Christian life afterwards and then I've never heard of this kind of retreat.
And then at that moment, John 9:1-3 really imprinted it in my heart. And you know the story, His disciples asked Rabbi that, is it the men or their parents that sin that he was born blind? But what's did Jesus say? Jesus say neither it is this man nor his parents that he was born blind, but so that the works of God will be displayed through him so that His work will be displayed. And at that moment because of learning how to grieve, encounter the Holy Spirit, slowly I became to breaking the alabaster jar that my friend encouraged me to do. And so God's redemptive love can show and shine through this story. And I turned to Rick, I said, "Rick, it's time for you to go."
Darrell Bock:
And so he attended a retreat as well with you or on his own?
Ric Sun:
Well actually I said no. I said, "No, it's not…" I mean, know my theology. I think the moment I professed my faith in Jesus Christ, I already dealt with my sin with Jesus and I've been forgiven and my sin has been washed away white as a snow. But then God has to use COVID, 2020 and closing the border of New Zealand while we were really just waiting and been discerning going overseas to serve at a church in New Zealand for waiting for more than two years, but God has to use that 2020. And a lot of people want to delete that year, but that happened to be a mighty years of our family. He brought me deeper. So I was dragging my feet to Smokey Mountain, which is where the retreat was hosted, and went through three days completely soaked in the Holy Spirit, that faith in prayer, people serve you.
And without knowing that I have never really surrendered 100% of my life to Jesus. And so I left the retreat, I made a commitment to the Lord that we will begin to talk about our unborn daughter's name, which is Iris. She will be 20 years old this year. And secondly, I will begin to share my testimony with people who God has brought into my life. And this is the part I want to kind emphasize a little bit. So we were still living at DTS at that time, 2020. And so I came back, I began to pray and God brought people to me. I began to share with my fellow seminarians and pastors and to my surprise, but which I shouldn't, that one of them came out by saying that, "I don't know why you shared this with me, but I have gone through the same thing and you are the first person I was able to share because you shared with me."
And there are other younger seminarians were sharing that they were living in double kind of life within the door of their dorm. They're addicted to a pornography, fantasy, arguing with their wife and spouse. But then when they come out, they have to put on the best themselves, say the things that people want to hear because they're serving at a church. And that just occur to us that how many people actually still living in such a defeated life when John 10:10, that Jesus has come and give us a life and have it abundantly that even within the circle of our Christian community, that there's so many hidden sin and shame has not been explored and even been healed.
And so that's one thing that begin to vow to ourself and God that we want to go anywhere that devaluation of life is happening even within our backyards where we are. And God became to open doors and we got to speak on the different churches, organizations and mission conference. And so those are the part of where God's leading us that the redemption of God is not just individually, but also it's a whole family and that can affect entire church community and even the city, eventually to the country.
Jocelyn Sun:
Yeah, God's really opened up the doors for us during and after recovery that we get to minister to a high schooler that just got an abortion and then to a lady across the table saying that it is so sad that she had to understand the sacredness of life when her hair is turning gray. And then not only that, we found our new passion in walking alongside wounded hearts to see their lives radically transformed to have total dependence on Jesus Christ. But we personally experience and have experienced through discipleship and ministering that when they're done with recovery, they're better off to receive new information, whether it's academic work or other things in front of them. And so we just want to let you know that we've really encountered seven people around us that still will benefit from a retreat at DTS.
Darrell Bock:
So I've got a million questions, I'm trying to decide which one of the million to ask, which takes a while. But anyway, let's go here. So what would be your general advice to someone who was in the situation you were in before you went to the retreat and they had done something, they did something they had a sense wasn't quite right, and they knew that they were kind of shoving it down underneath and locking it up. What's your advice to a person who finds himself in that situation?
Jocelyn Sun:
We are so good at reading the Bible and then understanding the scripture, but do we really understand the heart of it, the core? As in, you look back on the biblical stories and even people that have gone before us, the woman at the well, or the blind man, or so forth, they were desperate. They carry their sins to Jesus and not knowing what will happen and all they have is just to fix their eyes on Jesus and their faith made them well. Jesus said that I'm not only going to heal you physically, I'm going to heal you spiritually. And what does that mean? That I'm not going to let my sins be in the gap of me reaching Jesus. And I know that I have sinned and I'm still a sinner and I will sin in the future, but I'm going to bring this to you Lord.
And I know that you are bigger, you are bigger than my sense and all the stuff that I've done in the past and now and will do in the future. That Lord, all that you've done at Calvary will make no sense if I didn't fully surrender to you. And so that knowing our God, He loves us so much, He forgives and He wants to redeem you because what he did at Calvary was so much. He not only take away like my sin, my husband sins, but instead He redeemed us. He redeemed me, my husband and our whole family. So what Rick didn't mention was after he came back to the retreat, our oldest daughter, I mean, we have three kids now, they're 11, eight and five. And at that time they were a little bit more younger and so we had to face to let them know, that you actually have a sister in heaven.
And so she embraced me and cried with me for 30 minutes. But afterwards what she did, she wrote a song for the men and woman who are struggling, who are wounded. And so now when Rick goes out to preach, we deliver the message as a family. He talks about the identity of Christ and we come up to share our recovery story. And the kids, they wrap it up with the song called Healing. And so the redemption comes in a holistic way. In all the things that we've done, it's not that one day that I woke up that I said that, "I want to take away a precious life." Well, I didn't even know it was a life. And so it's not that, but you need to see it in a holistic way, how we were raised, what the culture was speaking into us, how we were influenced and brought up. And so that at that moment, that event occurred, whatever it is, and that robbed us from the love of God.
Ric Sun:
Yeah, And I will just add a scripture that James 5:16, that's as many people have memorized, "Confess your sin with one another, pray for one another for the prayer will be powerful and effective." And I realize that it's throughout this season of restoration and healing that this is not just a scripture that we memorized, but it is actually a powerful, powerful message for people to live out. And we have encountered people who have gone through maybe suicidal thoughts, abuse, and more than just abortion, all the kinds of devaluation of life in the very first place is really recognize that are we have anything holding back from receiving the fullness of the spirit of Jesus Christ. A lot of time that you ask a question that if there's anything in your life that you would like to receive the healing, you would like to have Jesus to meet you at a place.
And we believe that the beginning of the healing is to meet Jesus where they want to run away from, whatever that is before their salvation or in the midst of following Jesus or serving Jesus. I think there's always the area that we cannot talk about. And so our invitation is always that Jesus want to meet you where you are running away and we are here as a community to walk alongside you, to serve alongside you, pray over your champion for your marching on our knees, to pray for you. And we over and over that this is not a rocket science, there's no formula, but it's really just based on relationship and discipleship that people can trust you. It's not a safe place, but a safe person that they will be able to surrender and let go. And then we begin to see life begin to come forward and then will burst into transformation.
Darrell Bock:
I'm assuming that you're doing this in conjunction with your ministry with Life International. We haven't talked about how you got to Life International. So let's do that. So you came to seminary. It sounds like you're still in class and so you're still doing that. You're not in Dallas, you're in Grand Rapids. I know how that happens, we do online so that part's easy. So tell us about how you transitioned to Life International. Was Life International responsible for this retreat or did it come some other way?
Jocelyn Sun:
No, actually, well, during this whole time I was still in class. Rick graduated in 2019.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Jocelyn Sun:
And then-
Ric Sun:
Waiting for New Zealand.
Jocelyn Sun:
Yeah, waiting for New Zealand, the borders to open up. God really called us there. There was a army waiting behind us to go. But during that time, God refined our call way before we knew Life International existed. He said that, "I want you to talk about the sacred of life." And then as we're serving at recovery retreats either in Dallas with Someone Cares or Deeper Still, Deeper Still has 24 chapters globally. In Asia, they have it too. You could go to Hawaii to get healed as well, and the whole retreat is completely free. You just got to say yes to the Lord. So like Rick said, we created a safe space. We encountered seminarians, leadership, church body, and then that has not only abortion issues, but suicidal thoughts, marital issues, struggling with pornography-
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, we'll get there.
Jocelyn Sun:
Yeah. And then so Life International, we got to know them through Deeper Still. They're sort of like a sister kind of organization. And so they invited us to come up on the website through Zoom to learn their courses. It's like a three to four day course online or you could take it in person. So at that time, we got to train with them. We love it. It's prevention. The Lord said, "We don't want to only do recovery, let's do prevention." And so later on. We just kept in touch. Sometimes we'll teach online. At that time we were still in the Swindoll Tower, so we were there for six years till this May. And so this May…
Ric Sun:
Early this year that they reach out to us by asking that, would you be interested in joining Life International to serve as a pastor of partner care? And long story short, I mean we pray for a couple months to make sure that if this is the way God's calling, because I mean, Grand Rapids, we have no one that we know here. And then we know the winter is going to be notorious.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, just white. Exactly. You're probably in the midst of it right now. But anyway.
Ric Sun:
And then-
Jocelyn Sun:
Winter wonderland.
Ric Sun:
But I mean, I'm a Texan from Taiwan.
Darrell Bock:
I know. I tease people when they go to the north and say, "I hope white is your favorite color."
Ric Sun:
Exactly. But when God opens the door, nobody can really shut. And then so we pray and then really God make it so clear that the next season of life that God is really just open up this newfound passion that even though I'm still called to want to be a serving pastoral ministry, but then God's telling us, "No, there's a lot of churches in need of the resources." So we pray to become a bridge, to become a support, to really strengthen Christ's church around the world.
Darrell Bock:
So the ministry steps into church contexts that are looking to be able to minister to people in this situation, and you offer resources and advice and counsel for how to do that. Is that basically the core of what the ministry is about?
Ric Sun:
Yes. It's actually more than that. I think the goal is to make known of Father's heart for the sanctity of life. And then part of what we do is that recognizing that there was so much devaluation of life happening. And we believe that abortion is only the tip of the spear. That there is a oppression of women, there's euthanasia, there's a shooting, human trafficking, abuse. So as we really travel around the world, I got to different parts of the nations in the past couple months that you realize that there's so much hurting and pain and a lot of pastors that they are lacking of the resources not alone to even speak into the cultural moment like this. I was just in India as for two times, actually a couple months ago, and pastors there are very burned for the gospel. They're just all for the Kingdom.
They're running, and yet they do not know how to talk about abortion because I mean, India or in Asia, abortion is just going through the roof everywhere you go that you see abortion thrown away aside, don't throw it away, your baby girl. Or even India they don't allow ultrasound because once they found out it's a girl, they almost 100% of the chance that they will abort the baby, and such things like that. We got to connect with the people who are serving in the ministry. Then so we provide this trainings, it's called Journey of Life Giver, that it touched base on the message of life and taught a lot about the foundation of life. Like I said, biblical worldview decision of aborted baby is not built up overnight. It's throughout the years or throughout the background and culture. And so we begin with the foundation, kind of deconstruct what their background and value and to rebuild, what does the Bible say?
And it's not about political. I think a lot of science that, especially in America that we kind of politicize the pro-life movement. But I do really want to emphasize this with you, Dr. Brock, and whoever is listening that the goal for our purpose is not about to change the law, but to change the hearts. Because we are not trying to make abortion illegal because it doesn't matter how hard you try, there is going to be abortion, but we are trying to make abortion unthinkable because ultimately this is not a political issue. This is a biblical issue that the image of God is under great attack in this time and age.
And so what we are really going after is not about changing the law. Yes, that's part of the plan, but we are calling ourself as equipping ministry that we are serving the pastors and the leaders and helping them to empower them. Actually, we don't try to take over, we go to India, we go to Georgia in Central Asia, we go to Africa. We don't tell them what to do, but we come alongside them to serve them and then contextualize their own culture. And so they are taking all this curriculum to be able to serve their own people.
Darrell Bock:
So that's a great overview of the direction of the ministry. I have one loose end I want to tie before we turn to some of the other categories besides abortion, since you did just a great job there of talking about what's important and to make what I think is a fundamental biblical point, which is, you don't get changed without changed hearts. I like to use the example of Acts 19 where the magic books were burned in Ephesus. And I said that didn't happen because the Ephesian city council had a meeting and said, "We're outlawing magic books." That happened because people's hearts were changed and they said, "Magic is bad for us." So I'm deeply curious where in New Zealand you all were thinking about serving before you did… I go to New Zealand every other summer, so this is fascinating to me.
Ric Sun:
We were thinking about having a partnership with DTS once we get to go, because we know that it used to be a… There's a office or school there. So we actually signed a contract with the church in Christchurch.
Darrell Bock:
Oh sure.
Ric Sun:
In Christchurch, and that was February, 2020. And then as you can imagine a month later, COVID hit everything. Just shut down.
Darrell Bock:
Everything completely shut down. Yeah, I went in that summer right after as the restrictions were being lifted and actually was in Christchurch was one of the places I visited this last summer. I've been there now twice. So I've been there, I think I've been in New Zealand six times total because I go every other summer for about two months, New Zealand and Australia. And I've really come to love the church there and the people there. So that's an interesting thing to walk away from in many ways because the opportunities that exist and the need is so great. So let's transition back to, you've already talked about abortion and we said this is womb to tomb and if we're not careful, we get stuck in the womb and I want to get through life. You said there are several other things. There's suicide ideation, there's human trafficking, there's what else is in that list of… So the person's born and we're thinking about how does life get de-sacralized or devalued? What are the types of areas that you all talk about?
Ric Sun:
Yeah, so one of the sections of this curriculum, we also talk about how to be a life giver. Life giver, not only for those who easy to love and who care for you, who are talking like you, but also to those who are difficult to love, or hate you, or don't say anything similar as you, or even vote differently like you. And so based on that foundation that we get to talk about oppression of woman. Oppression of oppression of woman is the area where that everywhere you go basically in Asia or Africa, it's devalued and even polygamy that in Africa, I remember one of the stories that our trainer went to Africa, one of the countries, and there's a group of just a pastors and bishops meeting and receiving the training and the story as we taught and throughout the time until the where that we talk about God's plan for marriage, which is that marriage is a holy institution created by God with one man and one woman.
And then one of the bishop just stood up and was so mad by saying that, "What are you saying that this is only one man and woman? And our culture, our background is, I mean you can have multiple wives." And as a matter of fact that in Old Testament they always kind of refer to that. And then it took a while for other bishops and pastors rally to pray and to confess. And then in the end we turned that into a time of just a confession and worship. And that the biblical truth has been revealed to all these bishops. And they went back to their village, they were able to begin to talk about what is marriage, what is God's intent for this area, and also euthanasia or disability. And we also talked about what if it is a Down Syndrome?
So we just recently had another case in India too. One of the leaders have Down Syndrome, baby already diagnosed in the womb. And then so most of time in India, there's a condition, even you're Christian, you can still abort the baby because you don't want to have a burden for the family. But then because of the teaching that for a lot of the disabled people, even like blind, we have attendees who are having a lot of defect of their body. They were able to receive the value of God. And then so people begin to see people in a different way, view each individual, whether men or woman, whether they're rich or poor or a healthy or sick defect through the lens of God.
Darrell Bock:
So I'm assuming that the starting point for this is, because we've spent a lot of time saying, here are the problems, here are the things that are faced. But I'm assuming that one of the core starting points for this is to establish the sacredness of life because every human being is made in the image of God. And that that's kind of the stop one, if I can say it that way in the story, and then it builds from there. I also assume that in the midst of this, there's a discussion about the value of each human person, which moves in the direction of a broad definition of justice and a broad definition of caring for people that says that every human life has value and is sacred and starts from that point. Am I right about that?
Ric Sun:
You are absolutely right, 100%.
Jocelyn Sun:
And if I can add, there's five main points. So I'm just going to go down really quick. The foundation in life where, what's the biblical worldview? And then how do you become a life giver? Redemptive thinking, transformation, abiding in Christ. What is marriage and family? The miracle of life, biblical sexuality, family planning and so forth. The devaluation of the life, abortion and its effects, and then global issues. And how do we restore? Let's not end on the devaluation, but let's restore. What's the next step of healing and renewal and repentance and forgiveness?
Darrell Bock:
So this involves kind of rallying around people who have a need and helping them… The Romans 12, one and two pops in my mind about transforming the way you think about the world and what the way you see it. And then out of that, redirecting the energy that you give to life and what you think about and what you direct and how you interact with them. And then you're off and running and trying to be someone who is called to represent God in the world and to serve and be redemptive, to be the passer on or the mediator of what it is you have received from Him in the way in which you live out your life.
Ric Sun:
That's right.
Jocelyn Sun:
Amen.
Ric Sun:
And that about, if I can add one thing that as our mission statement is so clearly an explicitly, teach truth and love well. I oftentimes kind of categorize life international under the category of love well. How do love well in the intimate and personal way for those broken hearted and crushed in spirit? And also a lot of times that is even, are we able to be formed into the likeness of Christ? Are we able to counsel people or pastoring people who have been hurt or gone through a lot of different devaluation of life in their lives? And so what we really just championing here is that as we are trained to exegete the words and then teaching the Bible and theology. At the same time, on the flip side, how can we be the hands and feet of Jesus, providing resources and connecting with people who are really just living in shame and brokenness, because that's our experience too.
Darrell Bock:
I can't tell you how important I think this is. And the way I will often say it is, in the conservative church we have a premium that we put on the truth and believing the right thing. But the other half of that equation is how you minister and how you pastor and how you relate to people in the fallen situations they often find themselves in or have placed themselves in because they've simply absorbed what's been said to them all their lives from the world.
And so thinking about one, how to reach out to people who are in that situation, and two, how to minister to them in such a way that also shows there's a whole nother way to put this together and to make sense out of your life. And then the middle of that is Jesus Christ and the gospel. I can't imagine a better, more useful, more holistic way of ministering to the entirety of a person's spirit than doing that. And so I love the emphasis that says, yeah, we believe this and we know this and this is what Bible teaches, but then how are we actually going to touch people who have been impacted by the choices that they've made and the decisions that they've undertaken that God can redeem?
Ric Sun:
Amen.
Jocelyn Sun:
Yeah.
Ric Sun:
Yes.
Jocelyn Sun:
And then the thing is that Life International to date, that they have over 13,000 gospel leaders already trained in the six continents over 91 nations. And so they break it down to 10 hubs. And then you want to share the hub?
Ric Sun:
Yes. This is one of the things that Life International, as you talked about, what are we really going after? That our really angle is one, to strengthen Christ's church everywhere that is serve the people pastors are serving. And number two is that we pray this message of life will be like a wildfire. And the next year that in November, and I think the third week, 20, don't count on me, I need to check the dates. But November that we will host a Congress for Life in Malta. I like Malta, where a where Apostle Paul got shipwrecked, that's the place. And then we will rally the delegates from 199 nations to come together and have a time of confession, time of prayer, worship, and commission, send them out into their nation for the very purpose. This message of life will be a outburst of wildfire to spread out every parts of their nation.
And so our job right now, basically for what I'm doing as a pastor partner care, I'm walking alongside these pastors delegates and to pray with them, serve alongside them and encourage them and provide special resources, but then for them to do the work, take this message and into their country, and we pray that eventually the rate of the abortion will prayerfully decrease, to ultimately cease. And we believe this is something, the big goal that we are praying for, and if that's even possible on this sided eternity, but that is our life goal mission that is not just about abortion, but for the life message to be spread out. And it's not just about pro-life movement, but we see that as a great commission movement because not until every person-
Darrell Bock:
It's pro-life. I mean, it's not a pro-life movement, it's pro-life. You said there are 10 hubs, what are they?
Ric Sun:
So we have a Latin America and we have North America, in Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia-
Darrell Bock:
Oceania, yep.
Ric Sun:
Oceania.
Darrell Bock:
That's where you were headed. Go ahead.
Ric Sun:
That's right. And then East Asia, and MENA, and Middle East and North Africa and South Sahara, and Europe. So far we have formed seven hot leaderships. And so next year we are looking into East Asia, Oceania, and then lastly North America. So yeah, I think this is a vision that God has given to our president and founder, and so far that we have been just seeing that fulfill one step at a time and day by day, more and more just delegates said, "Hey, we would love to journey with you." So far, I think I can say this, about 44 delegates. So we have about 30 nations, I mean, sometimes it's a couple serving together, and so I got to go visit them in person, host the training. That's just also part of what I do and our whole family is serving together.
Darrell Bock:
So I forgot to ask this at the start, so this is a good time to ask it. So how long has Life International, been around? I mean, how old an organization is it?
Ric Sun:
So it has been 21 years, since 2001. And then it's quite a fascinating story behind that. Our building here in Grand Rapids used to be the largest abortion clinic.
Darrell Bock:
And it was the synagogue before that, that's on your webpage. That was really interesting to read. I mean, yeah, it's been a lot of places. The building has gone nowhere and been a lot of places.
Ric Sun:
Yeah, you know the story.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Well, I just want to thank you for taking the time to be with us and to introduce us, not just to Life International, but just to this whole message of thinking through the entirety of life as being something that should be dedicated and generated to honoring people who are made in the image of God and thinking through how to minister to people who have made, in some cases, what we might consider poor decisions or decisions that they now regret, et cetera. And being able to think about how do you minister to bring them out of where they were with an understanding of how they got there. That is really terrific.
So I just want to thank you for giving us your time and sharing a little bit of your story. I was going to say, it isn't just a story with a tomb to womb perspective, which kind of covers everything, but it's not a long ending, it's in progress and it's going to be in progress for a long time, and we just really are supportive of what it is that you're trying to do. And I'm glad that in the midst of it, you've brought a little of that message back to us here at the seminary. Really appreciate it.
Ric Sun:
Yeah, thank you so much.
Darrell Bock:
Thank you so much.
Ric Sun:
And then, Dr. Bock, Once again, it's not just our story. This is God's story that continue to write in our lives and through us.
Darrell Bock:
That's great. Well, we really thank you, Rick and Jocelyn for doing this, and we thank you for being a part of the table. We'll hope you'll join us again soon. If you're interested in other episodes of the table, you can see it at voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast and that'll take you to the more than actually 500 hours of material that we've done on an array of topics. We often say, "Welcome to the table. We discuss issues of God and culture." And the point underneath that is that means we discuss anything and everything, and we don't have anything and everything up on that site yet, but we're trying to get there. So we hope you'll join us again soon. Thank you for joining us on the table.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center. From time to time, we like to visit with Christians around the world in order to find out what God is doing in different nations, in different cities, in different locations, and in different cultures globally.
And today we're going to visit the central region of Africa. And because of the nature of both the work and the location and the circumstances under which our guest is operating, I'm going to just call him Matthew, not his real name. Matthew is a DTS grad and he is a church planter, but with a very unique, I would say, calling to the people group and the situation in which he's, and his wife are attempting to plant churches. So Matthew, welcome to The Table podcast. Thank you for being with us today.
Matthew:
Thank you, Bill. It's good to talk with you.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. I'm very excited about this. It's a part of the world that, I mean, for most of us, certainly here in the West, probably gets very, very little thought, very, very little attention in that sense. It's sort of an out of the way corner of the globe.
But as I understand it, you're working with nomadic people groups, which means folks that have livestock that their whole living, their whole lifestyle is to, I don't want to say wander around, but travel around to find suitable grazing, suitable water, suitable conditions for their livestock. Is that general? Do I have that generally correct?
Matthew:
Yes, that's right. So in this region of Africa, there's just a lot of land which can't really be used for agriculture, for farming. And it's actually quite useful for migratory grazing. So it's seasonal, it's periodic, which means that again, they can't graze their animals in the same fields all year long.
And so the people group is adapted to travel throughout the year on traditional migration routes with their herds. They have cattle or camels, sheep and goats, and they're seasonally looking for the fresh grass, available water supply. And they're moving North, South, East, West throughout the year in order to find that good land for their animals.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow. What a very, very different context from the urban life that so many of us, certainly here in the United States and the West in the developed world, live in. I'd certainly want to come back to this people group and hear much more about their lives and their conditions and so forth and your work.
But I must ask, how did you get into this line of work? Did you grow up in an agrarian family or what was it that attracted you to pursue taking the gospel to this particular people group?
Matthew:
Well, that's an interesting question, Bill, because ironically, my training is as an electrical engineer.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Matthew:
And there's no correlation between the work I was doing as an electrical engineer and working among a nomadic people group. But it was early on that the Lord really impressed upon my heart the need to take the gospel to the remaining people groups in the world who have no access to the gospel, there's no Christian witness among them.
And among those remaining unreached people groups, the nomadic peoples are just least likely to have gospel workers sent to them, mainly because they're in remote locations, it's difficult to live where these nomadic people are living.
And I was just thinking primarily about, Lord, who would you send? If it's not me, who else would be willing to go to these places? And I really wanted to surrender my life for the greatest leverage in the kingdom and being able to go someplace that may be a significant obstacle to many people who want to plant churches, but this specific location might be an obstacle to them, I wanted to fill the gap.
And so that's really the beginning of my calling to nomadic people group. And the Lord began to grow that vision in my wife as well as we got married and began to seek the Lord about where he would have us. And so yeah, it's not about training, it's not about skills or qualifications, really. It was the Lord really pressing on my heart to stand in the gap where there was a clear need for someone to take the gospel.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes. And you and your wife have kids as well, and I'm fortunate enough to know your wife. And I know she's adventurous, which helps. So how is that, to be literally raising your family in the midst of doing this work? Is that…
Matthew:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
I guess, that creates its own challenges or I don't know, maybe your kids are excited to be on this adventure with you.
Matthew:
Well, Bill, we do live in a very rural, undeveloped area of the world. And so there's just a lot of challenges that go along with setting up a home and a life. And as parents, one of the biggest challenges, especially when you have young kids, is thinking about healthcare, thinking about if my kid gets sick or there's an accident, are we going to be able to take care of them?
So these are significant considerations where we are. But on the other hand, our kids who are now nine, seven, and three years old, they love it. They feel the sense of adventure, of exploration. And I would have to say that the characteristics of the nomadic community are being adapted by my kids. They love the autonomy, they love the mobility, the constant change in location and schedules. And so it's just now becoming a part of their development and their experience.
Bill Hendricks:
That's great. I guess too, they get exposed to a lot of animals.
Matthew:
They do. And they learn some valuable lessons that way too.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, no kidding. Well, so these nomadic people groups, if I understand correctly, this is a way of life that literally goes back, I guess, millennia. In other words, this is in that part of the world, this way of taking your animals to find pasture and so forth has been kind of uninterrupted for just time out of mind. Do I understand that correctly?
Matthew:
Yeah. That's right, Bill. The way of life that they currently practice has not changed for hundreds of years. And they have traditional routes that they follow. They have tribal wells that they return to every year. And the resources that they have available to them are really unchanged.
And we feel like as we are working among them, that we could almost imagine ourselves living alongside the Patriarchs, alongside Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Apart from the occasional cell phone in someone's hand, there's almost nothing that gives away that we're in the 21st century.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Matthew:
And it's just really incredible.
Bill Hendricks:
I'm curious what the effect of climate change, and perhaps even, I don't know, I know urbanization in some areas has encroached upon natural resources and particularly water usage and so forth. But are the nomads affected by any changes in the weather and the climate and so forth that have seemed to take place in the last a hundred years?
Matthew:
Yeah. As their way of life, they value the mobility and flexibility. And so as grazing lands change with the climate, when there's a significant drought or a flood, they are able to adapt and they are affected. But because of their constant adaptive nature, it seems like their way of life and their livelihood is able to persist even through bad years.
Even through significant disruption they're able to spring back. Now they're experiencing longer dry seasons and during the rains more flooding. And so it does affect their travel routes and it affects where they can take their animals. But one of the most significant things that's facing them is as a growing population, the surrounding and integrated tribes in their land are wanting to farm more land.
And of course, as more people prepare the raw land for farming and plant crops, there's less room for the nomads to graze their animals. And so there's, I would say a constantly increasing friction between the farmers and the nomadic herders. And that sometimes results in violence and it's a constant source of frustration on the nomads part that the farmlands are, it seems like they're increasing every year, and that's just a result of population growth.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I guess I would point out that we certainly had the similar, not identical, but certainly a similar situation in North America as the settlers continued to move Western into the first the plain states and then ultimately toward the West. And meanwhile, you have the native peoples who are living off of buffalo and antelope and somewhat nomadic, some of those tribes. And of course we know the friction that happened there.
So I guess, we can to some extent relate to that. So how do you, first of all, as a westerner, as an American or as Americans, and also as people, I mean, you live in a village, but at least it is a village, even if it's rural, how do you even approach, how do you go about approaching nomads and even building some rapport, some trust, some relational capital to at some point begin to introduce spiritual conversations and ultimately the gospel? Walk us through that, sounds like a real challenge.
Matthew:
Yeah, it is significant for a number of reasons. They are a very isolated group, and that's by choice. They are suspicious of any outsiders, anyone who is not nomadic and not part of their clan. And so gaining access to them is a slow process. And this is true with nomads around the world. In general, they would prefer to keep to themselves and are suspicious of outsiders.
So building that relationship takes time. We started out asking, we did just kind of a general surveys, we went out to where they were gathering and said, "We would love to help you. We feel God wants us here to be a blessing to you. What would you say your top five needs are? If you could wave a magic wand to change your life, what things would you change?" And so they talked about healthcare, education, they talked about access to water.
They talked about their migration routes being protected, and they talked about the health of their animals. And so we looked at those five things and we began to pray and we said, "God, show us how we can make an impact in one or more of these things."
And the people that God brought to us were just the right people to be able to begin healthcare trainings, to provide medical care, to provide birth and delivery care for women, and to provide some water development using locally resourced technology. And so it's beginning in those service ways to meet their needs that they began to welcome us and begin to accept us. And that slowly was the avenue for building relationships.
Bill Hendricks:
That's such a fascinating list that you just gave Matthew, because I look my way down through that. These are human beings that have concerns and needs so identical to what I think any of us anywhere in the world would want, health education, certainly for our children.
You mentioned water, but obviously the broader context of that are material needs are met, protection. You said, of the routes, but the whole don't cut off our means of livelihood, economic needs, which leads into the animals, which is their property. I mean, for these folks, their bank account is in those animals.
Matthew:
Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
And so as they protect the animals, they're literally protecting their assets. And these are the kinds of things humans globally I think would care about. And it's a wonderful thing to see these folks as, yes, a very different lifestyle, but fundamentally so much in common with anyone anywhere. Now when you say you took this survey, did you have to work through translators or have you learned their language or both or?
Matthew:
Yeah, at the time that we started the surveys, I had already spent two years learning the language. And…
Bill Hendricks:
How was that? Was that difficult?
Matthew:
Yes, it is difficult. There's very few resources in terms of written material to use. And so it's a, we call it a learner directed approach, which means that myself as the learner, I go out into the community, find speakers of the language, and I engage them in certain activities which slowly build up my vocabulary and my understanding of how to communicate.
And so yeah, it's a process. It took about two years to get to just a kind of conversational level. By no means a professional level, but a conversational level. And that's where we are able to begin actually interacting with the nomads face to face.
Bill Hendricks:
Did these folks, did they get a kick out of you trying to learn their language? Was that somewhat humorous to them or maybe they were just amazed that anybody would want to come learn their language?
Matthew:
Yeah, they're actually very welcoming and I think were very proud of the fact that they were able to teach me something about themselves, about their culture, part of who they are. And the fact that I was really interested and eager to be able to learn it and to learn it well, the fact that I would say, "No, I don't think I'm saying it right.
Please help me pronounce this better." They could tell that this was more than, for me, more than just a practical exercise. I really wanted to honor who they were, honor their culture, and be able to interact with them in a respectful way.
Bill Hendricks:
Now you mentioned that there were not hardly any written resources to help you in learning the language. And I'm assuming that this is in part because this particular language and these folks, this is not a written language to begin with, that this is an orality culture. Is that correct?
Matthew:
Yeah, so generally speaking, this is a dialect, a specific dialect of a broader language group. And so it is well known across the region, but the local dialect is very unique. And at the time that my wife and I started working with them, there was ongoing language development work, but the resources hadn't been completed yet. There weren't language schools or programs like that. At the time, they were still actually working on translation for the New Testament in the language.
Bill Hendricks:
Okay.
Matthew:
And so it wasn't until a couple years in that we even had a published book, the New Testament, that we could use to begin building our vocabulary and begin actually sharing from scripture with people.
Bill Hendricks:
But do these folks read? I mean, are they literate?
Matthew:
So they aren't, and in fact most of them have never been to any schooling. And that's why education is a priority for them. They see that the people around them that live in villages and towns are advancing, and they are, the gap between them and the people around them is growing. And so they see that education is a necessary park to keep up with the development. And it's difficult because schools are in a building which is stuck to a specific location.
Bill Hendricks:
That's got to be scary.
Matthew:
And their family has to continue moving throughout the year, covering sometimes 300 miles. And so it's not very practical for them to stay close to a school where their children can receive an education. And so most of them have never learned to read and write. Most of them can't even recognize their own name if it is written out.
And so yeah, we were able to begin very basic things like introduction to writing, introduction to letters, and recognizing their own name when they see it written down. And so that just gave them a boost of confidence for specifically for the adults that, "Yeah, we can learn this and it will help us." And then of course, they were very eager to have their children begin learning how to read as well.
Bill Hendricks:
Are the adults concerned that, "Gee, if we and our children and our grandchildren all start to get educated, that's going to substantially change our life?" And yeah, the old ways, as it were.
Matthew:
I don't get a sense that education is in opposition to their way of life. It is true that sometimes when the young people receive further education, they see more opportunity in a different way of life. So they might discover that they can get employment and make more money or be able to travel or buy nice things that they wouldn't have had if they continue the nomadic lifestyle of taking care of their animals.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Matthew:
And it's true that a lot of nomadic tribes around the world have been slowly declining or integrating into more settled cultures. But I think this is actually a problem. From my personal opinion, is that we need to seek to honor their culture and not apply pressure to them to change their culture unless that's something that they're desiring, that's coming from within their own culture to…
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Matthew:
To change their way of life. And so coming in, we've been very intentional about respecting their culture, about, I want to say affirming their way of life to them, to say, God has created you for this place and this time. He has put you here as it says in Acts, that God has put you in this place to live in this way, and it reflects his glory.
You can do this in a way that is pleasing to God. And so we wanted to be very careful not to say that they needed to become either like the tribes around them who were farming or like us as westerners who were totally different, but to say that we believe God wants to bless you in the way that you're living now, in this lifestyle.
Bill Hendricks:
So let me shift gears a little bit. As you talk to them about God and his purposes for them, what is the existing perception of God and the spiritual condition, I guess I would ask, and the belief system for most of these folks?
Matthew:
Well, across this region of Africa, Islam is the dominant religion. The form of Islam that's practiced in this area is highly syncretistic. It's what has often been referred to as folk-Islam. It incorporates a lot of traditional animistic and spiritual beliefs kind of under a layer of this religious framework.
And so for them, they're often not as concerned with the theological framework or doctrinal statements of formal religion. They are mostly concerned with how is this religion, how is this way of practicing a faith in God going to help me in my daily life? And so they want to know how their religion can keep them healthy, how it can be a blessing to their family and their animals, how it can secure their future and how it can protect them.
And so a lot of traditional practices have been incorporated with, I would say an Islamic flavor or yeah, an approach that uses the tenets of Islam to have power and control over their daily lives, including over spirits, curses, and to acquire blessing, things like the birth of a baby. And so these are ways that they interact through their faith.
Bill Hendricks:
So something tells me that Genesis 13 through 50 factors heavily in the material from biblical texts that you're able to incorporate in your work with them.
Matthew:
Absolutely. The stories from Genesis are scenarios that these nomadic people experience on a regular basis now. And so when we read about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, almost everybody that we speak to can relate.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Matthew:
To them.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Matthew:
In exactly the same ways, even in terms of looking for a bride for their son and having disputes over a well that was dug and traveling from one land to another and having to stay either at a distance from the settled people that are in that land. And there's so many things that they can relate to in those stories.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. And what a wonderful thing, I would guess to be able to read that magnificent passage where God tells Abraham, not only are you going to have a seed and a inheritance, but through you all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And to say that includes you, that God has done something through Abraham that is a blessing to you. Would you like to know more about that?
Matthew:
Yeah, absolutely. And again, I love to point out to them because they are conditioned to think that every outsider views nomadic people as backwards, as just unable to integrate with society and develop.
And I like to point out to them, look, God often worked through and spoke to nomadic people. God honors and loves nomadic people. Scripture is full of nomadic people, and so there's no reason to feel like second class citizens and there's no reason that you should be marginalized because of your lifestyle.
Bill Hendricks:
That's fantastic. And having said that, again, I sort of think of the degree of difficulty of establishing the gospel and planting churches among nomadic people. And you've heard me say this before, but to me it feels like trying to plant a church in Grand Central Station.
You've got people coming and going on a regular basis, and just about the time you think you're making a beach head of impact and starting to get some things going. I mean, then you wake up the next morning and they're leaving. And so tell me what you've learned about that whole challenge and what you're trying to do about it.
Matthew:
Yeah. And that's one of the misunderstandings I think that people have is that they view nomads as moving haphazardly or…
Bill Hendricks:
Randomly.
Matthew:
Random.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Matthew:
And actually the nomads travel in a very established patterns, routes, and seasons. And so they travel as families, as family groups, and they continue to camp at the same locations or graze their animals the same locations year after year, generation after generation.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Matthew:
And so we are able to, you say it's like Grand Central Station, but there's people who go through there very regularly, two times every day. And if you're there at the right times…
Bill Hendricks:
At the same time, day after day. Yeah.
Matthew:
Yeah. If you're there at the right time, you can talk to them in the morning and talk to them in the evening. And that's how it is with nomads as well. If we position ourselves at the right places and we're ready, we can have repeated interactions with them at various places throughout the year. And that's how we can begin to sow the seeds of the gospel and begin to spread truth.
Now as far as how is a church going to take root, this is another really important thing. Because they can't really embrace an idea that is going to remain foreign in its sedentary nature. And so it has to become nomadic with them. And so as we thought about this, as strategized about this, we were very careful of making sure that any approach with the gospel would be able to be nomadic in both the method we were using and in the product in whatever form took place.
We did not want to have buildings, we didn't want to have outside resources that they didn't have access to because then it would always be a foreign concept. Even if it was considered to be nice, it would always be held just at arm's length or at one location. We wanted it to be transportable. And so we are praying for and envisioning a church forming in a nomad camp in the way that the whole camp gathers to read scripture, to apply it to their lives. And as they move, the church is moving.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Matthew:
Just as the Israelites did, they were intense and they moved and they brought the tabernacle with them wherever they went. That opportunity to walk with God and have him in the middle of the camp is so available and real that we should not get in the way by saying, "Where's the building with four walls and the cross on the door?"
Bill Hendricks:
Right. Well, yeah, now you're into the Exodus experience and the journey, the journey toward the Promised Land. It kind of redefines this term, the church on the move.
Matthew:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
You got to make it transportable. That's beautiful. So I'm just curious, we've talked about the nomadic peoples and your work with them. On a broader regional basis, I mean, I guess the question I'd ask is the church, are there Christians sort of on a broader regional basis, indigenous Christians there in that part of Africa?
Matthew:
Yes, there are. And it's a very complicated history, a very complicated social dynamic in that there are many tribes in this region, and the tribes that were historically animistic tribes have been evangelized and have had a gospel presence among them for many years. And the tribes that have been islamized since the Islamic conquest years have not been.
And so it's created this great rift between the two groups of tribes. And so the church has begun growing among the historically animistic tribal peoples, but it has not been growing or even engaging the tribes that have been Muslims. And so this has been the case for about the last hundred years in this region.
And some of that actually was due to colonization and a desire to keep the peace. And so it's just now quite literally in the last 25 years that we are seeing a concerted effort both from local churches and Christians as well as from gospel workers from all around the world to bring the gospel message to these other tribes, these tribes that have been Muslims for hundreds of years now.
Bill Hendricks:
And is that being met with hostility or on the opposite side with interest and receptivity?
Matthew:
It's a mixed bag. They have a long history of actually living side by side without much interaction. And so now to begin changing that dynamic does create some wrinkles.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Matthew:
In kind of the community, in the social fabric. And so there's not an open hostility, but at the same time, there are very deep underlying tensions between the differing tribes in the two groups, between the Muslim tribes and the animistic or Christian tribes.
So that, that is a significant obstacle that the local Christians have to overcome. And it takes perseverance, but most importantly, it really just takes relationship. And it takes people crossing the line of seeing each other as you're from this tribe and I'm from a different tribe and just saying, "You know what? You're actually my neighbor and I live next to you. Can we just talk?" And that's kind of where it all begins, is just getting these people to come face to face and talk as neighbors and not just see the general categories of their tribes.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Well, we've got a couple minutes left. Matthew, as we think about, and when I say we, I guess I'm particularly thinking of we who listen to this podcast, which tend to be in the West. So as we think about the church in that part of the world there in the central region of Africa, what could we, what should we as fellow believers be praying for our brothers and sisters in that part of the world?
Matthew:
I would love to be praying alongside of you guys for the church to conduct themselves in an honorable, respectful way in every community. And that has been, and I believe will be the door opener to building meaningful interactions and developing trust. It has to break down the stereotypes because there are many. And it takes an established witness in the community of living with integrity and compassion and generosity for people to begin saying, "You know what? This other group is not all bad.
They're not hypocrites and drunks and into loose living. They're people who really love us and care for our needs." So I would love to just be praying that the church would be that model of Christ's love in the community. And then the second thing is just a love for the diversity that God has created. Being able to see people from different tribes and different languages through the perspective that God sees them, that these are all people made in his image.
And we have to be willing to set aside our own personal sensibilities and preferences to be able to step across the street and extend a hand of friendship. Before we can even expect to have the gospel effectively received, we have to be able to extend the hand of friendship. And I'm praying that that would be the characterization of the church in these areas.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much for giving us that insight, Matthew. And we certainly will also be praying for you and your wife as you continue this work with the nomadic peoples. And thank you for your time today to kind of give us this snapshot of what's going on in that part of the world, again, that we often don't think that much about, but God is at work there. And you've given powerful testimony to what he's doing. So thank you very much for being with us.
Matthew:
Thank you, Bill, for inviting me. It's been a joy to be able to chat together today. And yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Great.
Matthew:
Just pray that this will be a blessing to many people.
Bill Hendricks:
I know it will. And I want to thank you who have listened in to this podcast today on The Table. And invite you to subscribe whatever service that you're on to listen to The Table podcast, and we will look forward to seeing you next time. I'm Bill Hendricks. Have a great day.
Kasey Olander:
Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kasey Olander, and I'm the web content specialist here at The Hendrick Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And today we're going to be discussing Innovative Apologetics for Gen Z.
So that's those people that are born approximately from 1997 onward, how we can reach them and equip them. And today we're excited because our guest is Mary Jo Sharp. She is an author and speaker and apologist, and she's the founder of Confident Christianity, which is an apologetics ministry.
She's a former atheist from the Pacific Northwest who now holds a Masters in Christian Apologetics from Biola, and she teaches at Houston Baptist University, which is now Houston Christian University. Mary Jo, thank you so much for being with us today.
Mary Jo Sharp:
Hey Kasey, it's so good to be on.
Kasey Olander:
Yes, we know you've been on the show several times, so we appreciate you coming back and being with us. So, like I said, today we're focusing specifically on Gen Z and some of innovative ways that we can reach them with apologetics.
And so you're really well suited for this conversation because of your background in apologetics. And so first of all, I just want to set the table for us. Can you give us a quick definition? What is apologetics and why does it matter?
Mary Jo Sharp:
Oh yeah, very good. So apologetics, that word is a transliterated word straight out of Koine Greek from the scriptures from the Bible. And you can find it in 1st Peter 3-15 where it says, or Peter saying, "Always be prepared to give a defense of the reason of your hope." And that word defense is apologia.
So it means to make a case to give that defense. And that if you're like, "Okay. Yeah, that's great, but what does it mean?" Well, it's like what a lawyer used to do. We used to call them apologist because they were making cases. So if that kind of, it's not apologizing, it's give that defense.
Why is it important? Is because apologetics is this field that helps people answer these big questions about why we believe in God. So it answers objections to Christianity such as, if God is good, why is there evil in the world? How do I know Jesus rose from the dead? Why do you say God exists?
Those kinds of questions. So objections to the Christian faith, but then it also builds that case, like Peter was saying, that case for why we believe so. It makes a positive case for Christianity as well.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, absolutely. So how did you get into this area of apologetics, specifically geared towards Gen Z?
Mary Jo Sharp:
How I got into this, well, basically I got into the field of apologetics because I doubted my own faith. So this is not something I meant to get into. I was actually a music teacher. I taught band at the public schools and I went through a time of just serious doubt based in the hypocrisy I saw in the church.
And also just a lot of the pain and hurt that I experienced in the church. It caused me to question whether or not people took the Bible seriously and whether or not they really believed in God and in Jesus. And so that launched me into searching for the answers to my own questions about the faith.
So that's kind of how I got involved with apologetics. I started teaching in my church. I went and I saw that there was a degree that I could get in apologetics where I could go very deep into this field. And so that was something that I did as well. And all of that ended up in a ministry that I really didn't mean to have.
I started a blog on the defense of the resurrection called Confident Christianity. And that led to all sorts of other things, writing books, and then eventually this professorship. Now for Gen Z, my heart has always been for students. When I was a student myself in high school, I wanted to be a teacher.
I wanted to specifically teach students a love of music like I had a love of music, but that sort of teacher attitude, that desire for helping others learn and get excited about learning has been something that has always been with me.
And so it doesn't matter what generation we're talking about, I just love being in that learning process alongside those who are engaging in their own education, especially young learners who are open to new ideas and discovering things for the first time.
Kasey Olander:
Yes. That's amazing. I love that you already had a heart for young people and that was something that the Lord used once you came to faith that you wanted to continue that. Yeah.
Mary Jo Sharp:
Yeah. Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
So what would you say is some things that are maybe unique about Gen Z? The young people of today, they're kind of the high school and the young adulthood right now. What are some traits that are unique to describe them?
Mary Jo Sharp:
Yeah. So first I'll say whenever we do this, we're sort of doing, we're stereotyping, but in the positive sense of that term. So you're always going to find people this doesn't apply to. There's the caveat, the professor caveat, but their overall characteristics, I mean, first of all, there's a lot of things that come from them being born as digital natives.
So they were born into this world with technology, whereas the generation right before them, the Millennials, Gen Y, they were introduced to technology young in their life. But these guys are the first digital natives.
So there's some things about them that are challenging about that sort of fact about them. One is that because they've always been surrounded by technology and they've had access to social media and the internet, they actually get referred to as the loneliest generation because they spend endless hours online and that can foster feelings of isolation and depression.
So it's an important thing to keep in the background is these guys are those digital natives who do a lot of their fact finding and their socialization through the internet. Also, they're going to be the last generation, and at least I'm guessing this applies to America, that is predominantly white.
So a slight majority of Gen Z is white, and then you have Hispanic and black and Asian. So the trend is changing there according to some of the statistics of Gen Z. They overall, just characteristic wise, they are highly collaborative. They're a highly collaborative group. And though they're sort of self-motivated, self-driven, yeah, they're collaborative and social.
They value flexibility, relevance, authenticity. And I'm getting some of this from a study being done by Roberta Katz at Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral sciences. And she says that they have this attitude of non-hierarchical leadership.
And I think that's really important because instead of where maybe Gen Z, boomers, we value having those leaders that sort of pull us along as authorities and there's a hierarchy, and you can see that sort of in the church as well. We really trust in those authorities.
I think Gen Z, according to Katz, Gen Z is more about this collaborative effort and bringing everybody's skills to the table. And so that's where I think that also plays into the authenticity of every individual. So translating this over to the church and their participation, they're a little bit more skeptical of the church and its purpose.
And they're a little more skeptical of trusting in the leader's authority just because they're the leader. So they're a little bit disillusioned with what we're doing in church and why we're doing it. And probably these stories of people falling where we're seeing cases of abuse and stuff like that is adding to that disillusionment.
So they kind of feel disconnected, but the good thing about them is that they value very much in-person communication. So that's going back to their digital nativeness because they're digital natives and then they have that sort of feeling of disconnectedness overall and disconnectedness from the church.
They actually do very much value mentorship being there with them, the in-person communication that they're not getting from their digital landscape. So those are some of the things generally and then related to the church about Gen Z.
Kasey Olander:
Right. Yeah, definitely. That's of course, yeah, broad strokes. But by virtue of the world that they're growing up in, with so much technology that's just ubiquitous, you can't go five steps without seeing somebody on their smartphone and all kinds of things like that, that makes sense that it's shaping this generation.
And so it seems like that is something that we can almost capitalize on. The fact that they're so integrated with technology, it's part of their school, it's part of their socializing, even could be part of their spiritual walk. Can you speak a little bit to the value of media to reach young people then for the gospel?
Mary Jo Sharp:
Yeah. I think it's really important that we are attentive to being in their space where they're at. And there was one study that came out, and I wish I could cite it for you where it was, but that's sort of slipping my mind. But it says, where's Gen Z going to gather their information?
And that is TikTok and YouTube. Now YouTube, I kind of get it because you do those long videos, but TikTok, the quick hits. And that makes conveying these hard truths of the Christian faith difficult because trying to distill the doctrine of the Trinity down into a minute clip or less when it's thousands of years of study on this is really difficult.
But that's one of the things we have to pay attention to is where they're at and being in those spaces. Another thing about that is because they're digital natives, they're used to seeing really good digital media.
So the aesthetic quality of what we're doing is important in reaching Gen Z and in communicating with them because the gaming worlds that they've been a part of since forever for them, since they're born, the gaming universes that are created are gorgeous, they're detailed, they're beautiful, they're the highest quality visual arts.
And so one of the things about communicating with Gen Z is that visual element or the element of excellence in how we're communicating our ideas. I think I'll just tag this on there. I think for Gen Z, especially excellence in storytelling is going to be a big part of communicating gospel to them as well.
Kasey Olander:
Absolutely, yeah. You think about, yeah, they have very high standards because that's just what they're accustomed to. And so I can even think of the fact that, I think that part of your testimony was the fact that you were drawn to beauty in nature. I mean, I almost see a little bit of that.
And as humans, we have these artistic endeavors, and so pursuing creative things and doing it with excellence can be a way that we reach out to people who are so accustomed to this high standard of excellent quality media through, like you said, video games or videos and the content that they're consuming.
So why would you say that we need innovative apologetics? Obviously we're not innovating the truth. Like you said, the doctrine of the Trinity is very old. We're not innovating new ideas in that way. But yeah, why, and maybe how do we innovate our presentation of historic, yeah, Christian truths to this new audience?
Mary Jo Sharp:
Yeah. Well, Christianity has always, like what you said, it has its truths, but it always has understood. I'm personifying Christianity a little bit, but in the Christian faith here, we've always understood that we need to communicate the gospel in a way that makes sense to the culture who is receiving it.
So if we have a missionary and they're speaking to somebody in another country who may have not heard the gospel, like a tribe often some distant on a mountain somewhere, we understand that we have to make it understandable to that culture.
And I think that's one of the things that we have to do with any generation that we're trying to reach. It seems difficult because it's our culture, it's our generation. These are our students that we're talking about and we live in this culture, but as Gen Z is changing, we need make sure that we are adapting to that change to communicate the same truths of Christianity that we've always been communicating.
So some of the things like we've been talking about are communication with excellence, and not just in visual. I could see somebody saying, "Oh, you're just playing into the consumerist mentality that's all around us by doing great visuals and all of that, trying to hook them with a really beautiful video."
But at the same, we're trying to be where they're at is what we're trying to say. And we also see the opposite of that, which is that not only does Gen Z, they live in that environment, but they're saying, "Hey, I want in-person communication." That's what they value above the other forms.
And so there's that element of not only are we going to have to be innovative in staying up-to-date with the excellence in our art forms and in the way that we're communicating things if we're going to do videos and all that, but there's the flip side that Gen Z doesn't just want that.
They want the in-person communication, they want the mentorship. And that's not just meeting together on a Sunday morning with 500 people in your congregation. That's not what they're asking for. They're asking to know that they matter individually and that you care for them for who they are on an individual basis.
So also being attentive to smaller group settings to one-on-one mentorship with Gen Z students, that's going to be really important. So ways that you can do that? Yeah, we have the Darkroom Faith series where it's a series of videos, but it also has curriculum and content in which you can interact.
You can watch the videos. You can say, "Hey, hey, I saw this series. How about we take a look at one video per week and then you and I can meet for lunch and discuss what you thought of that." So just having that one-on-one interaction is really important for Gen Z.
Kasey Olander:
Yes, that completely makes sense. Yeah, we want people to consider ways that they're able to connect with Gen Z, not just to present information, but to really live life and come alongside. Yeah. So can you talk a little bit more about Darkroom? What was your role in this project?
Mary Jo Sharp:
So Darkroom Faith is a apologetics video series. It's a 14-part video series and it has a full curriculum. And the really neat thing about this, one of the things I'm most excited about is we're offering it free and we're also making it of highest aesthetic quality.
So we're really trying to meet Gen Z and then we're really trying to offer this to anybody who wants to utilize it. My role in this was that I was director of content. So I was working alongside the screenwriters and the producers and the film directors as well as alongside the experts.
I really helped to bring in the apologetics experts. So the way that we did this was that we did a casting call for Gen Z stories across the United States. What is it that you are struggling with, and how would you frame that?
So we got all these stories from students all over the United States, and they have these questions that they're asking or things that they're struggling with. So we use those stories in our video series, but then we needed to have some kind of response. As an apologist, how would you answer this?
And what's a good metaphor or analogy that you might use to communicate this truth to a student? And so we worked with apologist from all over the country like Sean McDowell and Rebecca McLaughlin and Rachel Gilson and Adam Coleman.
We worked with a bunch of apologies who would act as our expert voice, but they're not just coming out and disseminating information. The videos are, they have these creative ways of communicating the expert's language that the screenwriters wrote right into the story.
And so it's really a neat way and a unique way to present some of these issues that Gen Z's dealing with.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. So it almost conveys this idea that if you have this question, you're not alone, you see this play out. And even though it's scripted, it's based on real questions that people are actually asking at this age. And so it engages them with things that they're really… It's a felt need, I would say, that it addresses.
And yeah, I've seen the videos, they're very well done and yeah, the website provides all kinds of resources and provides that avenue, like you said, for not just presenting information, but also providing a conversation starter for people who are looking to engage with Gen Z. So where did the name dark room come from?
Mary Jo Sharp:
That's a great one. I really like this. We actually started out with a different name and we realized that our name probably only appealed to boomers and Gen X. We were like, "That's not going to work." So we changed to darkroom and it centers on.
There's one of the episodes that's on pain and suffering and our student is in the video, he's dealing with a lot of bullying, he's dealing with very dark thoughts about his own life. And as he's struggling through this along the way, he discovers that one of his passions is photography.
And so he starts to develop his love of photography and how he and his pain and suffering can minister to other people who are also in pain and suffering by taking photographs of them and sharing this with them. And you see him in the video, he's doing old school photography, not digital stuff.
He's actually doing old school photography where you have to go into the photographic darkroom to develop your pictures of life. And so the metaphor is that sometimes our faith develops in those dark places in our lives, the dark night of the soul, the wandering through the valley of the shadow of death.
There's places and things that we go through that helped us to develop our faith in God. And so the dark places can seem kind of scary and confusing, but they can help us develop. That's the sort of metaphor for the Darkroom series.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, I love that. That's creative. And yeah, I think really a helpful metaphor. Can you speak a little bit to the significance of engaging with those doubts, whether it's because of suffering or because of any sort of personal dark night of this soul?
What is the value of maybe leaning into that? How does that grow someone's faith?
Mary Jo Sharp:
Yeah. I think one of the things that we do as human beings is that when we're young, we sort of trust in authorities and we trust in the people over us. We don't have a lot of experience with life yet. We're just kind of trusting our parents and the church leaders and other people that what they say is actually true.
But as we grow older, you start getting your ability to have abstract thought. When you're a preteen, you start thinking through things and you're like, well, how I know this? Why do I trust my parents? Why do I trust what these people are telling me? I think that is a natural part of growing up and becoming an adult.
And what it does is it takes your beliefs, oh, it takes it and it matures them so that they're no longer just, you believe this because your parents did, or you know what, whoever. But now you're starting to question it. You're starting to dig into it to come to the place where this is what I personally believe.
It's taking ownership of your faith. So us answering these doubts and asking these questions is part of the maturing of the individual believer so that they can grow into adulthood, which is part of becoming Christ-like. And actually, as you read through the New Testament, Paul is constantly encouraging believers to grow up in the faith.
To grow and to learn about God and to move from the simplistic ways of knowing into deeper ways of knowing God and learning about him and the deep doctrines of the faith. He's constantly pushing us on into that.
And so this is sort of mirroring that the reason we do this, the reason we ask questions, the value of the struggle with the doubt is that it does mature you in the faith.
Kasey Olander:
Absolutely. So if someone is wrestling with wondering does God really exist? Does he really love me? Is he really good? Any of these questions, it's not something to be ashamed about or to hide from people, but rather something to lean into and to really press forward because it can lead to that maturity.
And it seems like also from what you're saying, if Gen Z is really valuing this authenticity and wanting this in-person connection with people, then that's a great opportunity for church leaders to come alongside Gen Z and to love them. Like you said, love them where they are. Right?
Mary Jo Sharp:
Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that we have to remember is that Gen Z like any young generation is seeing things a little bit differently and they're saying things differently than my generation. And so yeah, this is an opportunity for us to really listen to them, to really see what their fears are, what their doubts are, where they're at, what their concerns are.
Because their concerns a lot of times they're going to be different from even Millennial, like older Millennials or Gen Z, they're going to be different because we grew up in a different timeframe than them. So I really like Darkroom because of the fact that it's from Gen Z with what they're struggling with in their own language.
A lot of times we like to say, oh, no, no, that's not the way to say that, or you shouldn't say it that way. This is what we're trying to do is hear them and engage them with where they're at, with how they understand the world.
And that's an important part of that authenticity like you were mentioning, to really hear them out, really listen to them and see what is it they're trying to say and connect with them on that.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. So what is the best way, or I'm sure there are several good ways, but what is the best way for people to utilize these Darkroom videos?
Mary Jo Sharp:
Oh, there's a couple of different ways. We had in mind youth groups could use them, student ministries. So the leader could show the video to the group and then they can maybe break out into small groups and discuss the content.
And we have a leader guide for that, which gives you all the resources to do that. Plus there's PowerPoint in there. If you go to the website and you enter in your email, you have access to the PowerPoint, all of the social media shareables, and then all the resources that we give you the leader guide in more.
So you can do it that way. You share it with your youth group. You don't just have to limit to that, you can share it with somebody. I was alluding to that earlier that if there's a person is struggling with a certain issue, you can say, "Hey, I found this video, love to discuss what you think about it." And then you yourself have access to all those resources to be able to engage the person one-on-one as well.
Kasey Olander:
Right. So it seems like it doesn't have to be leave it to the professional, ministers or people who have a ton of experience with Gen Z, but it seems like it gives a really good on-ramp for anybody to be able to at least start conversations.
Mary Jo Sharp:
Yeah, that's what we tried to do. With the video specifically, we tried to not wrap everything up real tidy so that the person who was encountering the video could have a hot second to really think through what was just presented to them.
And then we give all this content, the leader guide, so that you feel more competent. You feel like you have some resources to be able to just share with either the student group or with an individual.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah. Yeah, that's really helpful, especially as we're thinking about, you said like, maybe other generations have a different perspective. This is a way to really meet them where they are, to see what questions they're asking.
And perhaps this video articulates something that they've felt but never expressed or haven't had the words for. So that could be a cool avenue at the very least too, to get it from the digital world where they might be seeing it for the first time too.
A real life in-person conversation where you can really express this doubt or this fear that you have to someone and not be afraid of being turned away or looked down on for having questions.
Can you speak a little bit to that, like your experience with maybe the church when somebody did engage the questions that you had and when maybe it wasn't as helpful? And yeah, how did people respond to you having questions? You mentioned that earlier.
Mary Jo Sharp:
Yeah, mine was sort of a mixed bag because I quickly got involved with ministry after becoming a Christian and my husband became a minister, like he was called into ministry. So for me, I sort of naively expected that I could carry on asking a lot of questions and challenging things when I was a very young Christian.
And that wasn't received very well. Those questions weren't received. At least I'm perceiving they weren't received well because I never got the response where you just have to have faith.
Even though I hear that, like I hear other people tell me when they had a question that's what they got as an answer, which always shocks me that anybody would really just avoid the question altogether and say that.
Kasey Olander:
But it's pretty common.
Mary Jo Sharp:
Yeah, isn't it? Yeah, surprisingly so. But for me it was more of a shifting of the conversation, not answering the question, getting upset. Getting agitated with me if I asked it in a Sunday school type setting.
Yeah, just getting kind of agitated because the leader didn't have the answer. Instead of just saying, "Hey, that's a good question, Mary Jo, you know what? I don't know that," they would get agitated with me. And so when I was asking the questions, I started to realize indirectly that these were not welcome questions.
That I was just supposed to listen to the teaching and assume everything was true and that everybody else assumed belief in God and that the Bible was true and all of this stuff. And so I learned to stop asking the question.
And when my husband was a minister, I figured out real quickly that this was unwelcome from the minister's wife. Never welcome. Yeah, I'm not supposed to ask questions, I'm not supposed to have doubt. I'm just there to sort of cheerlead my husband along.
Kasey Olander:
So I guess how would you respond to someone who maybe suggests that there's a tension or an opposition between faith and reason?
Mary Jo Sharp:
Oh, that's a good one. I would say good job for bringing that up, asking the question because this is a question that Christians have been asking since we've had Christianity and writing on. This is a philosophical question that has been written about since we've had our teachers in Christianity since the apostles.
So the tension between faith and reason is it's been resolved in different ways. Some people say they're opposites. That's the old Mark Twain saying, "Faith is believing in what you know ain't so," but that's not the traditional Christian understanding. Christians believe that faith and reason go hand in hand.
That God himself, the giver of all truth, gave us a good gift of reasoning of rationality. And so we already use it to know our God, but then there's a certain point at which human reasoning can only go so far because we aren't God, we don't have absolute knowledge.
So our knowledge gets us only so far. And that's where faith comes in. And it's not the only place where faith comes in, but that is like, if you're just talking about the relationship of rationality, sort of reasoning and faith, that's one way that you can look at it is that you can only go so far with human reasoning.
There are things that you're going to have to trust. And when you get into the Hebrews passage that a lot of people like to quote of faith is that belief in the hope that's coming. I'm not quoting that right, but they use that as saying that's sort of like the Mark Twain believing in what you don't have evidence of.
But then if you keep following that Hebrews passage, you see that God gave evidences of himself, he has evidence who he is and the kind of being that he is and his love and care for us. And the greatest example of that was the incarnation of Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice on the cross.
So you have the evidence of God, the nature of God, that he is a loving God, that he's a just God, that he cares for his creation and he values it greatly. So faith is also trusting in what you know is true.
And that's very C.S. Lewis of me, but that's kind of how he said it. Faith also applies to you already have this belief, you know this is true, you've evidenced it, you've reasoned it, and now faith is that next step of trusting in that belief.
Kasey Olander:
Right. So yeah, people didn't need to feel any shame or feel like they're the first one to be asking this question because like you said, conversations like this, philosophical questions, faith and reason have been going on for a long time.
And I also think that there shouldn't be this fear that somehow Christianity will collapse under the weight of my questioning it. God is bigger than us, than the questions we have. And so yeah, we may not have every single answer as thoroughly as we would like it, but there's evidence and there's a rationality that we can definitely engage with and be equipped with.
So it seems like that's maybe a way to reach out to Gen Z, like to people who don't know Christ yet, but also a way to equip Gen Z. Can you speak a little bit to that? How to help them mature and grow in their faith? Gen Z may be like if they're transitioning from high school to college or college to the adult world.
Mary Jo Sharp:
Yeah. It was just Gen Z and like other humans. You want to tell them that you affirm that they are digging through these hard questions that, like you said, there's not a shame in that. There's no shame in asking hard questions and growing up in the faith and maturing in what you believe.
So I want to make sure that as I'm talking to them, that I am affirming the human being that is behind the questioning, that there's a person back there and that I don't know why they're asking the question they're asking.
There's a lot of concern from Gen Z with what they're seeing in Christian leadership when you have these stories coming out almost monthly about somebody else who is going to jail for pedophilia and was a longtime pastor of a church or the coverups of abuse. We can't discredit that.
I'm one of the people that says the litmus truth or the litmus test for Christianity cannot be the behaviors of the believers. But yet at the same time we have to acknowledge that the behaviors of the believers are actually communicating to our world and to younger people in the Christian faith about the truthfulness of Christianity in that existential way.
And so there's this sort of, we have to acknowledge that as well. And I think telling younger students in the faith in Gen Z that we acknowledge that these things happen and that they're wrong and that people fall, I think it's important not to try to sweep it under the rug, but actually deal with it, confront it face on and affirm that they have these questions that are born out of this doubt.
Sometimes it is just intellectual doubt, Kasey. I mean, that's sort of rare. I've heard some people just say, Hey, I don't know how the Bible came to be or something like that.
But I think for the most part, since you can't separate out the intellect from desire, will and emotion, I mean, they all go together, that we have to acknowledge that what people are seeing from Christians also is causing them to have big questions. And so the hypocrisy of the church is becoming a big objection to belief in God.
Kasey Olander:
Yes. So it seems sort of like, yeah, people aren't just asking these philosophical questions a lot of times. I think what you're saying is there's something underneath it, a personal experience, a wound, something else that is prompting them to ask this question.
Even though, like you said, sometimes it is just, I genuinely have this intellectual question and that's worth engaging with too. Right? You have a degree in apologetics, I'm sure that you think that's worth engaging with and learning more about.
Mary Jo Sharp:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Do you have any stories that you would like to share of, yeah, engaging Gen Z with some innovative apologetics?
Mary Jo Sharp:
Oh, stories I'd like to share. I'm rifling through a few of them. Which one did I share? I think one of the things that has really impacted me is seeing the effects of our culture on these younger students. They are exposed to so much media.
And media unfortunately comes with manipulation and they're not as trained in how to work through what they're seeing. So let me break this down into, I teach a class on intro to logic and in that class they encounter what people are saying in the public realm, whether it's a political ad or it's a commercial or whatever it is.
And they have to break it down into what's being communicated here. Do you see any faulty reasoning? And students aren't learning philosophy at the level that we used to teach it at. They rarely encounter it. And so they don't know how to make good arguments and they don't know how to break down what they're seeing.
So I'm seeing the effects of being batted around by cultural movements and how that affects them personally. It's affecting who they think they are. And so a lot of times they're relying on cultural influence to inform them about who they are.
And the problem with that is a lot of times our culture is very reductivist in how it views human beings. So it reduces them to one part of their who they are. So it could be their sexuality, it could be what they're ultimately going to do for a job or the one they get when they're young.
Well, what are you going to go to college for? I'll get your degree going to be in. So reducing them down to what they can do and what they are doing. And those things, they affect these kids. Some of the questions I've had is they're really struggling with who they are.
They don't have that really sound teaching that you are a creation of God, that you are greatly valuable, that your life has meaning, purpose and intention because you were made, because you're made in the image of God and you don't need anything else to inform you or to give you that value, you have it already.
So I'm encountering students who are looking for that meaning, purpose and value. And they're being, like I said, sort of just smacked around by cultural standards of all kinds of things, beauty and everything else. Beauty, success. And it's really hard on them because they have so much influence so readily accessible in their hands with their phones and on their computers.
I mean, I could go into what specifically are they asking, but that's sort of the general thing. When they come to me with a question, a lot of times it's they got something erroneous from the culture that is informing who they think they are or who they are or what they believe and they don't know how to sift through it.
They don't know what have they received that's manipulative versus factual versus fake news. They live in the era of fake news and deep fakes online. And so there's a lot of confusion and they're trying to search for how can I know what's true?
Kasey Olander:
Right. And that's really huge, the identity piece, the being able to discern how can I know what's true. And so that's the perfect opportunity for the church to step in, to come alongside and to genuinely engage.
We talked a lot about the authenticity piece, but also in these apologetics ideas that, yeah, that's a crucial opportunity is to come alongside people because they're genuinely desiring connection in addition to content. Can you share the name of the Darkroom website and any other resources you'd recommend?
Mary Jo Sharp:
Yes. So darkroomfaith.com. So definitely go there and check it all out. Most of our videos are out. I think our last one is coming out on the week of Halloween, I believe, or just right before. So that's a great one. You can go to my website, maryjosharp.com.
And if you click on my resources page, I have a bunch of lectures and videos and just recommendations for you to get started in apologetics. There's a great resource that I always recommend, which is bethinking.org, out of the United Kingdom.
And the reason I like it so much is if you click on that, it's an apologetics website that organizes all of their resources, not only by audio, video and written, but also by level of understanding.
So if you feel like you're a beginner in all this, it'll tell you this is a beginner level or this is intermediate, or this is advanced stuff. So bethinking.org is a great place to go as well.
And then the last one I want to make sure I mention is Houston Baptist University or Houston Christian University now. I teach in the Master of Arts and Apologetics, and that's a fully online degree. So if you want to delve deeper into apologetics, you can come study with me there at the university.
Kasey Olander:
That's awesome. Well, this has been really helpful. I feel like we, yeah, hope that our listeners will consider ways that they can connect with Gen Z through apologetics content. And Mary Jo has given us so many helpful resources. Mary Jo, thank you so much for joining us here today at The Table.
Mary Jo Sharp:
Hey Kasey, it's so good to talk to you again and to be on the podcast again.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah, we really appreciate it. Yeah, we hope that this resources Christians to live out the great commandment, to love people and the great commission to make disciples. And Gen Z is a really awesome opportunity to do that.
So we're grateful to you and we're also grateful to you for listening. We thank you for joining us today on The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture and hope that you'll join us next time.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And our topic today is probably one of the most basic things that churches do, which is this combination of evangelism and discipleship. And I have with me on my left and right, two Veterans of Foreign Wars. People who've been in the ministry for a long time, who have given of themselves to serve the Lord and now are in a different phase of life and with a ministry that has grown out of that experience.
So to my left is Ken Horton, who's President of Ministry Catalyst. And to my right is John Tolson, who works with a group called The Tolson Group that works in evangelism and discipleship. And so we're just going to talk about really the pursuit that every Christian should have, which is to grow in maturity and in wisdom and the knowledge of the Lord as God walks alongside them in their spiritual life. So I always ask, you guys are kind of your initial effort with us. I always ask the same question to open with a group of people. And that is, what do nice guys like you do getting in a gig like this? So Ken, I'll start with you.
Ken Horton:
Well, I trusted Christ 60 plus years ago. I understood the gospel, understood I was forgiven, going to heaven. Spent a number of years in a church that gave me a bunch of things to do and I did pretty good at them, but created an environment of uncertainty about just what it meant to enjoy being a Christian. And when I went to Auburn, God had already done some work, but I began to work through a process with Camps Crusade that let me take the first steps toward learning about living by faith. And that was a really critical part of my journey. Spent some time in the Air Force, which was critical for me to learn how to enjoy being with people that weren't Christians. And I think I've tell people I learned as much in my three years in the Air Force as I learned in my years at Dallas Seminary, about ministering to people who were going to be in environments with people that didn't know Jesus.
Finished the time in the Air Force, came to Dallas Seminary, was involved in ministry here and have had decades long ministry in youth ministry as a senior pastor. And was involved as the chaplain of the TCU Football team for 20 years.
John Tolson:
Great.
Ken Horton:
And in that process I began to wrestle through some things about my own life, just that I was having a fruitful ministry but was not enjoying it nearly as much as I thought I would have. And as I wrestle through that, it dawned on me that you can do what God wants you to do. And if you're doing it in the flesh, it may be impressive to people and even encouraging to yourself on some level, but it's not going to be very joyful and it won't be pleasing to God.
And so that process in my own heart began to move me in a direction to try to think through what it looked like to live in a posture of dependence on God so that I could actually enjoy the relationship that I had with Him since I was a child. And so our discipleship resources unpacking that process, how to begin by faith and live by faith in a way that your relationship with God is intentionally dependent and you're able to be involved with people in a way that allows you to stay focused on being a blessing to them rather than impressing them.
Darrell Bock:
Oh wow. So I take it you were in Fort Worth for a long period of time?
Ken Horton:
I've been in Fort Worth since 1984.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
John Tolson:
Wow.
Darrell Bock:
Very good.
Ken Horton:
I was in Greensboro before that where I met my wife.
Darrell Bock:
In Greensboro, North Carolina?
Ken Horton:
I was. Worked with a guy you knew there, David Kernel.
Darrell Bock:
David Kernel, sure.
Ken Horton:
You and I have a common ground there.
Darrell Bock:
Oh wow. So Westminster Presbyterian?
Ken Horton:
Yeah, was there.
John Tolson:
Wow.
Darrell Bock:
That's where I did my internship.
Ken Horton:
That's where I met my wife, first night I was there. I had a rule-
Darrell Bock:
Small world.
Ken Horton:
I had a rule that I wasn't going to date any women in the church, 'cause I knew that could go sideways. And when I met her on the way home, I said, this is not going to end well.
Darrell Bock:
So much for that rule.
Ken Horton:
I'm pretty sure that one was-
John Tolson:
Great.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, yeah. That's a whole nother conversation, we'll pursue that process.
John Tolson:
I love it.
Darrell Bock:
Anyway.
John Tolson:
Beautiful.
Darrell Bock:
So John, how a nice guy like you get into a gig like this, tell us your story?
John Tolson:
Well, I was born in Ohio and my mom and dad divorced when I was two years old. And I never met my father and had no recollection with him. A stepfather came into my life when I was about seven. He had no idea how to be a father. I had a crazy uncle in Ohio who was a phenomenal athlete. And he showed me at a very young age how to shoot a basketball and throw a baseball. My now stepdad made fun of that. He said, "It's stupid, stupid to spend your time playing ball."
The other little sight is that no one in my family had ever gone past the 10th grade in school. Good people, not necessarily followers of Jesus, but good people. But they were not highly motivated. They worked either on a ranch, a farm, steel mill. Nothing wrong with that, but they just weren't highly motivated. But something in me, hopefully I trust it, it was the Lord, was saying, "You got to break that chain." So I had an amazing opportunity. It's a whole nother session for us, the story of how this happened. But I had a chance to go to school in Arizona to play basketball and baseball. My family moved to Florida when I was about the third or fourth grade. So I made it to college. When I graduated, I signed a contract to coach in a college in Mississippi that summer. And I had come to know Christ going to the 10th grade year in high school. And it was real. It was real, real, real.
And anyway, my church in Florida was asking me to run this youth work that summer. And we had kids coming to Christ, right, left from all over the city. And I said to a friend, "I'm not sure if I'm supposed to coach." So he said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "I want to do this, I want to work with these students." And anyway, he said, "Why don't you go to seminary?" I said, "What's that?" He said, "Well, that's where you go if you want to be a preacher." I said, "I don't want to be a preacher, I just want to help kids know Christ and get in the scripture and live it out every day in their life."
So anyway, I ended up going to seminary and then over the next 15 years worked with students in churches. And then when I was here in Dallas, back in the mid to late 70s, I had a question fall out of a folder that I had written down two years before. And the question said, literally fell out of a folder, I was looking for something.
Darrell Bock:
A folder? What in the world is that?
John Tolson:
Oh, it was a folder. I know I got one with me right here, baby. I'm big on folders. But anyway, the question I had written down a couple years before, "If you could do anything you wanted to do, knew you couldn't fail and money weren't a problem, what would you do?" So I started for a couple months writing down what was in my heart using the gifts God had given me, past experiences, needs that I saw around the country, et cetera. Anyway, out of all that, an incredible story, another session, I was able to go, a group of men asked my wife and I to come and our family to come to Houston and do what I had written on one piece of paper to summarize everything I'd written down for a couple months and they said, "If you'd like to come do what's on that paper, we'll take care of you." So I went to Houston for five years and was freed up.
Darrell Bock:
Houstonians are like that, you know?
John Tolson:
Huh?
Darrell Bock:
Houstonians are-
John Tolson:
I know, they're kind of let it rip and let roar.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly right. I'm from Houston, so yeah.
John Tolson:
So I was able to do that and then a group in Orlando said, "Would you come and help us do that in Orlando, 'cause Orlando's getting ready to pop and we're trying to lay a base of leadership in the city as the growth comes." So we were there for 20 years and then about 20 years ago, a group of men here in Dallas said, "Would you come back to Dallas and do what you're doing in Orlando and what you did in Houston?" So basically what I do is help men come to know Christ, get them grounded into faith in the Book, and to train and equip them to replicate in others what I have done with them.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So I'm going to ask you to do some math. How long have you been in ministry, Ken?
Ken Horton:
- So what, 40 something years. 46 years.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, 46 years. That's good, you do that pretty quick. Yeah, he's doing the math, you got enough-
Ken Horton:
Darrell Bock:
You don't have enough fingers and toes to get there, huh?
John Tolson:
Long time.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
John Tolson:
Started in 68 and now it's 2022.
Darrell Bock:
So my point here is, is that you all have been seeking to minister to people and train them in the area's discipleship and growth for a long, long time, a lot of experience.
John Tolson:
Yeah, both of us have. Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
So let me start here. And John, I'll start with you first.
John Tolson:
Sure.
Darrell Bock:
What do you see as the biggest obstacles that people have in their pursuit of the Lord? What gets in the way?
John Tolson:
Well, and I won't call this disciple making-
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
John Tolson:
Replication, just their personal life ground. I think number one, they don't have the help that they need individually or in a more intimate, small setting to understand what God wants from them. Number one, what does He expect after you get your ticket punch? And then as a result of not knowing the big picture, they then don't have the hands-on help from somebody to guide them, lead them.
I mean, I can put a person in a room that someone has built their life into and discipled them. And I can put another person who knows the Lord next to them who has not been exposed to somebody walking with them and discipling them. And I'm five minutes, only I can tell you which one has been discipled, which one hadn't.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting.
John Tolson:
think there's a lack, well there's a lot of other reasons. I think people, because they haven't made that a priority in their life, they let everything distract them and pull away from them, et cetera. So those are a few things.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. And so I take it that what you're talking about here is pretty small group based, is that-
John Tolson:
Actually, I'll mention the priorities in a little bit when we get to that point, but-
Darrell Bock:
Sure.
John Tolson:
I think every person that knows Christ ought to be in a little huddle or a core with three or four people that are encouraging one another to follow Christ and live the faith out, but the discipling we worked on is one-on-one.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
John Tolson:
So people are-
Darrell Bock:
It's very small group?
John Tolson:
Very small. Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, very good. So Ken, I mean he's mentioned some of the things that get in the way and one of the things is they don't get the big picture. I think the question I want to ask you, because we're talking about evangelism and discipleship, and I'm just going to throw this out there and get your reaction. I often say that we tend to share the gospel starting from Genesis three, and we need to share the gospel starting from Genesis one. And the point that I want to make is, is if a person doesn't understand who they're designed to be in the way in which God has made them, and we just start with the sin story, we have missed actually where God is planning to take them on the other end of the salvation decision. If I can cast it that way, what do you think?
Ken Horton:
Our first session is about how to begin a relationship with Christ. And the first point is that you have a purpose, Genesis one and two. And that purpose is to enjoy intimate fellowship with God in this life and for all eternity.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Ken Horton:
And so that purpose shapes the perspective of what God wants to do in your life.
Darrell Bock:
So I like to say the church gets what it pays for when it shares the gospel, and so if I share the gospel in such a way that I make it sound like it's an insurance policy about not going to somewhere-
Ken Horton:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. And that's very warm and for a very long time and very uncomfortable, that once that person checks that box, I think they're done.
Ken Horton:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
But if you present the gospel in the way in which it's offered, which is it is the restoration of something of a relationship you were designed to have-
Ken Horton:
And you were created for eternity from the beginning.
Darrell Bock:
With this in mind.
Ken Horton:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly, right. That's really the best starting point to have in thinking about. So I guess the question that that raises is, as we think about sharing with people, and this is a question that I raise because I think in the pluralistic environment that we live in. People are hearing all kinds of voices and choices. Now I'm thinking about people outside the church. So people who've never darkened the door of a church and they're trying to make their life to, "What's the point in my life?" Et cetera. I that's very dislocating. I compare it to a bazaar, a Middle Eastern bazaar that has a lot of booze or a lot of station- It's like a mall. And I say some of the booze are pretty bizarre, that you've got this tension that you're dealing with here.
And so all those voices, it's like all this static coming at you trying to make sense out of what your life is. And people will use language outside the church, "I'm trying to find myself." I'm going, "Well, of course you're trying to find myself."
John Tolson:
Most people go to Aspen to find themselves. I don't know why they go up there.
Darrell Bock:
So there's this sense of dislocation.
John Tolson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And I think one of the ways into thinking about the gospel for people today is the idea that when you think about a relationship with God, that will give you a location and a sense of who you are.
Ken Horton:
And you've got a problem.
John Tolson:
Sure.
Darrell Bock:
Right.
Ken Horton:
And if we don't put a proper emphasis on the problem, it's bad and it's even worse than bad because we can't fix it.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly, right.
Ken Horton:
In a world that's basically universalist, everybody's going to go to heaven because God's too good to send anybody to hell, in that world if we don't make the problem clear, then the provision of God and Jesus Christ is not going to be nearly as convincing and clear as it needs to be.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, that's fair. So you move from Genesis one to Genesis three, if I can say it that way?
Ken Horton:
That's exactly right.
Darrell Bock:
And the problem for sin. But you've got that Genesis one in the background because this is who you're designed to be. This gets in the way. You can't fix it yourself among other things that you're talking about. I always tell people that the gospel is about something that's in tension. It's about the challenge on the one hand, which is the problem. But it's also about the invitation to experiencing something that is far greater than the problem that you have if you'll step into it. And this gets to the enjoyment and the joy.
This is why I remind people the gospel's called good news. It's called good news for a reason, not because we're going to park on the challenge, but because we're going to park on the solution. And so if we think about the gospel in that kind of way, and I'm glad we're talking about the gospel before we get to discipleship, the point that I'm trying to make is, and that I want your reaction to is that how we set up talking about the gospel sets up the person for the journey they have on the other end?
Ken Horton:
No question. And you begin that relationship with God by faith, and you continue that fellowship with God by faith.
Darrell Bock:
That's right.
Ken Horton:
I mean there's great continuity and obviously a disciple that's not intentionally looking for opportunities to share the gospel with people is not involved in the fruitful discipleship God wants him to be a part of.
Darrell Bock:
And if you think about the language that we have, although it seems strange to someone who's just coming into understanding and hearing about this. You talk about a relationship with God, and of course people will go, "Well, okay, God, I can't see Him, I can't hug Him in one sense. So what does that look like? How can I talk about this ongoing thing with this being this person who I can't see, but who I sense who sense is around me?" I mean, most people have a sense that there's something more than what they can smell and touch and feel, et cetera.
John Tolson:
Yeah, sure. Well if you help them read through Romans one, without a Bible, you can still know that there's something greater than you behind it all. You may not be able to fill out or fill in the blanks, but that's obvious there. But I love what you're saying about Genesis one, I really, really think that's key. But then also with Ken, I rush right over the Genesis three and talk about the four things I call the fall out of the fall. We're unplugged from God, therefore we're unplugged from ourselves, therefore we are unplugged from people and everything on the planet has been thrown off kilter, so we have hurricanes, tsunamis, cancer, et cetera. And to me, if you don't have that backdrop, there's no way in the world you're going to understand what's going on today.
Darrell Bock:
So I mean, this is the groaning creation that Romans eight talks about.
John Tolson:
Yeah, sure. Right.
Darrell Bock:
It longs for redemption. And yet at a personal level, we need the redemption that God offers. And I think the backside of that conversation is the point that's already been made, which is, and you can't fix it yourself. So I mean, because most people, we have a thing in our culture that says, you got to be this great independent who can fix things on your… If you just want something bad enough and pursue it persistently enough, you can get there, that kind of thing. And it's just not true.
John Tolson:
Yeah, and I think Ken and I would both agree with this. I think that how you say what you say is really just as important as what you say.
Darrell Bock:
Oh man, you're right.
John Tolson:
And I think we can just absolutely bomb out if we come with people beating them over the head with the Bible instead of caring for them and letting the Holy Spirit working in through us and then getting to the content. But I think the question that I've learned to ask over the years with people that seem like they're stiff arming God, but really most of them are most of those people, most people I think just don't have correct information. And so they throw the baby out with a bathwater. So here's the question I like to ask. I'll get to know a person, ask a little bit about their life and usually it's crumbling somewhere in their life. So here's the question, "Well, how's that working for you?"
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
John Tolson:
It ain't working.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
John Tolson:
"And so, if there was a solution, would you like one?" Well, who wouldn't?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
John Tolson:
And then I start laying out who Christ is, what He did, why He did it, why we need it, how we get it. Boom.
Darrell Bock:
Now it is not very different than the conversation I have. I often say we have to translate our theology in a way that someone can understand.
John Tolson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And then I'll be honest with you, I like to finesse the problem, okay? And the way I like to finesse the problem is to say, all right, so if I say the word sin, I call it the Star Wars defense. The Star Wars defense goes up, they don't hear sin, they hear sin and this phaser shield goes up, it's a mile high and 10 miles deep. And so how do you do that? But if I approach them and say something like, "Your life is dysfunctional." Which is your question, "Is it working for you?" Okay, that's even a better way to say it in many ways. "Is your life dysfunctional?" I get what I call a confession and then I joke, we have a Catholic moment because they confessed, all right?
John Tolson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And then I begin to explain to them that's part of what the Bible calls sin, that dysfunction is a product of sin. And I work my way to the biblical concept, but I've already gotten them to take a step in the direction of saying we need to have this conversation. So that's one of the ways that I think about translating our theology so it connects with someone at a place where they can connect with you've built that bridge and then you can go take the next steps. You're doing the same thing by the questions you're asking.
John Tolson:
Sure.
Ken Horton:
We often have people who will push back some because their definition of sin is, "I'm as bad as I could be, or I'm as bad as the worst person I know. I'm Adolf Hitler or whatever."
Darrell Bock:
I'm not that bad.
Ken Horton:
Not that bad. And I often say, "Look, if we could do a videotape of your life the next month, would you want your family to come to that?" Some of them said, "Well, yeah, not too bad." Said, "If we could add a track on that, that lets us see everything you think about for a month. How many people… And what about if we could take a track of every motivation for all the good things you do?" And by the time you get to that point you say, "That's how God sees everything." And God has a verdict. Not about you alone, but me and everybody else, we're sinful.
Darrell Bock:
We're all in the same boat.
Ken Horton:
We're in the same boat.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And they'll say, "Well you Christians think that you're better than us." Oh no, no.
John Tolson:
We could be worse.
Ken Horton:
No, no, no, here's the deal, I am not better than anybody, but I am desperate enough to know that I don't need a religion. There's a thousand of them out there. I need a savior. And Jesus is the only savior I think the world's ever heard about. And so that's sort of the way we try to frame it.
Darrell Bock:
And can I-
Ken Horton:
In terms of the fact that we're all in the same boat and there's only one option because Jesus truly is the only savior the world is, certainly the only reason Savior of the world's ever heard about.
Darrell Bock:
The reason you need to savior is because you realize you can't save yourself.
John Tolson:
When you get to that John 14:06, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." People start twitching when you start saying it's exclusive, it's one way. Say, yep, that's right, but let's look at why? And then when it comes, like you said, the religions, I said, most people think, "Now you're really putting down those people." I'm putting them down, I'm worse than all of them. But I have an answer that they don't have.
Ken Horton:
One of the views of traveling around the world gets to talk to Buddhist and all kinds of folks. I was flying from Dharamshala where I was teaching nearby back to Delhi and a guy who was the athletic trainer at MIT was on the plane and sitting next to me and he had been at the Dharamshala compound for a month as a sabbatical. And my question to him, he was telling, I said, "Tell me about what you believe?" And I always do that and they talk a while. And then he brought about up about making progress toward the place of blessedness that he was hearing about. And I said, "You're 30 years old and in your view, you don't know how many times you've been on this drill." But I said, "Are you making progress? Are you closer at 30 this time than were in the times you can't remember before? How much progress are you making toward that end result so far in these 30 years?" And he says, "Not very good." I said, "That's why I couldn't believe what you believe."
John Tolson:
Yeah.
Ken Horton:
"There would be no hope for me. And I need hope, and Jesus is the only hope I got."
Darrell Bock:
So-
John Tolson:
One of the questions-
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead.
John Tolson:
If I could just earn it for 10 seconds. One of the questions I often open up for people and present that I don't know well, I'll just, "Well tell me your faith journey. Just give me something." You can tell in two minutes if they know the Lord or don't know him from Donald Duck. I mean, boom.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Ken Horton:
And if they come from another background, I say, "Tell me about that."
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Ken Horton:
Let them talk to you about what they think.
Darrell Bock:
I'm so glad y'all went here-
John Tolson:
And that opens it all up.
Darrell Bock:
I'm so glad you went here because what we talk about regularly here as we talk about when you meet someone who likely hasn't walked into a church or doesn't have a church background, you don't even know what they know about Christianity. You want to get what I call a spiritual GPS reading on them. The only way you can get a spiritual GPS reading on them is to ask them questions and let them tell their story.
John Tolson:
Yep.
Darrell Bock:
And I say, when you first are engaging in evangelism, you have all the stuff you want to say to them. I said put your doctrinal meter on mute.
John Tolson:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
I said don't turn it off and you're not going to be able to do that anyway.
John Tolson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
I said but put it on mute and just listen for a while. Let them tell their story, let them tell you their background. I like to share the story of my grandmother-in-law. My grandmother-in-law, I like to joke, if you think a mother-in-law is a challenge, a grandmother-in-law is a real challenge. And now she did grow up in a Christian home, put it in quote. Dad was attended a Baptist church, et cetera. But he also was very, very abusive, it led to a divorce in the family, et cetera. Despite all his attendance at church. So for her, when she heard the word Christian, she heard the word hypocrite.
John Tolson:
Wow. Yep.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So that colored any discussion that we walked into about the Christian faith. When I discovered that, I changed the way I had the conversations with her because I knew I had this barrier that had been built that we had to work around and through in order to have those kinds of conversations. And so she was having trouble understanding why I was giving my life to what I was giving it to given what her experience was. Which to me, once I knew that that was part of that, well I think I get this now.
And so that spiritual GPS reading tells you what they're thinking, what they know about Christianity. I tell people, if you want to know what someone thinks about Christianity's never darkened the door of the church, they have two sources and two sources only. The people they know who call themselves Christians and what they've heard in the culture. And I say, how many of you want your definition of Christianity to come from either of those two sources?
John Tolson:
Yeah, very good. That's great.
Darrell Bock:
So that's the challenge of the space. So getting to know someone and getting a read on where they're coming from and thinking about what in their story can build a bridge to what it is that God is offering them through the gospel, that's what you're looking for.
John Tolson:
Exactly.
Ken Horton:
In fact, in our discipleship process, 18 conversations, the conversations that young life navigators, everybody deals with, with a few others, we basically try to teach people a paradigm. And that is when somebody brings up something that has significance, not necessarily spiritual, affirm their willingness to talk about it, they're taking a risk to even talk about anything.
Darrell Bock:
That's a disclosure.
Ken Horton:
And then after you've affirmed it, you ask them a question.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
Ken Horton:
Get some understanding. It matters whether you're talking to a Buddhist or a Baptist.
Darrell Bock:
That's right.
Ken Horton:
And once you've affirmed that and ask some questions, give just enough of a good answer to ask them another good question. Because our basic principle is that when somebody else is talking about what they think, they are learning more than when you're talking about what you think, even if it's the world's best answer.
Darrell Bock:
That's good.
Ken Horton:
Because they are actually processing it and something that they thought was clear and settled as they begin to talk about it, what was rock solid between the ears unravels out of the mouth and you don't jump on and prove the point, you gently give them a sort of a redo and let them keep talking. And so that whole thing of cultivating conversations, my experience having worked with doctors, lawyers, engineers, seminary students, pastors, all kind of people, people that are well-educated have been taught to answer questions and they struggle to ask good questions.
John Tolson:
And that's the key.
Ken Horton:
And so if you can ask good questions and have an affirming attitude, of course that works in parenting and marriage and every other relationship too. But that's a key part of these kinds of conversations.
Darrell Bock:
And what sometimes will happen because you've opened up that space and you've taken the initiative of letting them speak, at some point they'll turn around to you and say, "Well-
Ken Horton:
"What do you think?"
Darrell Bock:
Exactly, right. Or, "Tell me your story?"
John Tolson:
That's right. And I think we have to remember even when we don't say the words exactly right, we use the wrong approach. I think if the heart's right and we're trying to get people to Jesus, I think the Lord works in and through all that to bring clarity. And I mean I've bungled it so many times in the person sitting and said, "I think I want that." "You do?"
I was thinking about, well y'all were talking, I was thinking about a real good business man, buddy of mine over Mississippi. We're doing a lot of stuff over all over that state with discipling and reaching people and the black and white issue, which is tense at times. But my buddy has a farm and he said he was… He had to get this tree that had fallen down. And so he went into this little town nearby his farm and got three guys that said, "Yeah, I'll pay you if you'll come cut the tree up and get out of here." So he's felt compelled he said to share the gospel with him after they were all done.
He said, "Y'all go sit down over here for a minute." So he said, "When you die you're going to heaven?" And these real old country boys, salt to the earth and this is what they said. One of them said, "You know how to get there?" One boy said, "I don't don't know, I don't know." Other one said, "I don't know, I don't want to know." Other one said, "I know I'll make it." He said, "How you'll make it?" "Well I did eat goats and sheep and I know I'm going to make it." What's that mean?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
John Tolson:
So again, you got all kinds of stuff going out right there.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Well again, it's the relational element and where we started is important here. And that is how you present the gospel tells people signals what they're in for.
John Tolson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
If they embrace the move. And so I've always react to the question, "If you died today, would you're going to heaven?" Because I think that's presenting the gospel as if it's a box that I check and I'm done.
John Tolson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And I'm sitting here going, "No, you don't respond to the gospel to avoid a place, you respond to the gospel to gain a person."
John Tolson:
That's right. I agree with that.
Darrell Bock:
If you're going to gain a person and what better person to gain than the person who created you, who knows how you're made, who knows how you tick, et cetera.
John Tolson:
And I know Ken well enough and his material in his heart and his life, he's going to focus on Jesus. And I think when a person is introduced to this magnificent person, Jesus, there's something very magnetic the Lord does to pull that person to himself. And I want to just go back for 10 seconds to the way you started a while ago is if you go to Genesis one, and I jumped over to John from there. "Eternal life…" John 17:03 "That they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." It's a relationship.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
John Tolson:
And it's not like any other relationship you ever have in your life. And I don't think people think that way, but when they are introduced to that thought, I can have a relationship with the God of the universe through His son.
Ken Horton:
And our first step after a person trust Christ is not to give them a list of things they got to do because they have spent their whole life living by the flesh.
John Tolson:
Right.
Ken Horton:
And you give people a list, they'll try to do that list, good list things you ought to do in the flesh and they're going to be off in the weeds spiritually. And so I try to say, how would you build a friendship with somebody you just met? Now the things we want them to do are very analogous to spending time in the word, prayer, spending time with people that know Jesus. I mean, but you frame those in relational terms and as a privilege, not as a list of things, an obligation to do. Because my experience was that they gave me the list and I did a pretty good job at it, but I wasn't enjoying it. And even once I began to understand living by faith, the reality is that if we're not intentionally depending on God, we are inevitably dependent on ourselves. And the thing that confused me was if I'm doing the right thing, how can it be wrong?
John Tolson:
How could it be wrong?
Ken Horton:
And yet, if you're doing the right thing in the flesh, the Bible says that sin, and it doesn't mean God's not able to use it in other people's lives, it just means you're not going to enjoy it. And the way you're doing it in the flesh, in my experience and I think in Philippians and other places, there are three key things that are indicators, sort of tales and gambling terms that you were doing into the flesh, and that is you're anxious. Because it sort of depends on, you probably ought to be anxious. You're angry because other people aren't lining up like you wanted to and you're arrogant if it goes well. And those are the three big things that Christians struggle with that can be experienced in the midst of all the religious activity that the church and many ministries tell them to do. But they're not going to experience the joy that God uses as a magnet to people that aren't Christians yet.
John Tolson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
That's great.
John Tolson:
That's very good.
Darrell Bock:
And you were tying loose threats. I want to go back and tie in a loose thread.
John Tolson:
Sure.
Darrell Bock:
Since you brought up John 17:03. I want to go back to Genesis one. Genesis one says that we're made in the image of God but we're made male and female. I want to get beyond the idea that salvation is just about me and my God. And because of the way Genesis one works, Genesis one says, we're created male and female. And that I like to remind people creation didn't get promoted from good to very good until we had both male and female in the image of God. They were designed to cooperate with one another so that they would subdue the earth well. The assignment was to fill the earth and to subdue it. So they were supposed to cooperate with one another in a way that made the world functional. That made the world function smooth.
I like to joke that we're designed to be collaboration. We're designed to make the creation hum. We're designed to be hummers, and so we're supposed to help make creation hum. And then what sin does is it creates the dysfunction so it breaks up. So when you love God or properly related to him, it's no accident that the commandment that he says is the great commandment is to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul and love your neighbors like yourself because you were designed to contribute to the creation in that kind of a way. Or another way to say it is people say, "Well, I want to find love in the world. I want love in the world to be well." Wonderful goal. "Okay, how do you get there?"
John Tolson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
You get there by what God provides and by understanding how you were made and how you were made to love well and that the spirit of God, this is the thing we haven't talked about yet, but it's important. What fixes you, if I can say that is not just the forgiveness that you receive but the spirit of God that indwells you.
John Tolson:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
That now gives you an enablement and a capability that you previously didn't have and couldn't have without him.
John Tolson:
Right.
Ken Horton:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And that's the source of the life that then feeds into the discipleship.
Ken Horton:
And the genesis is one passage is where all these gender issues have to be addressed because it's diversity-
John Tolson:
Exactly.
Ken Horton:
Let us make man in our image embracing unity.
John Tolson:
Right.
Ken Horton:
Unleashing creativity. And that's true in a marriage, that's true in the church, that's true…
Darrell Bock:
In the workplace.
Ken Horton:
That is the fingerprint of God and all creation, diversity, embracing unity, unleashing creativity.
John Tolson:
That's great.
Ken Horton:
And that really is foundational to the fruitful ministry God's called us to.
Darrell Bock:
It's foundational to virtually every relationship that we're ever in.
Ken Horton:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And so, you talked about the abundance of the life and you can try and do the right thing, but you don't have that sense of abundance and joy that it comes with it. And the reason is because you're still disconnected, you're still disconnected to the walking relationship with God that you need to have. Our time is flying. I mean, I'm looking at the clock and we-
John Tolson:
Are we having fun yet?
Darrell Bock:
I'm having so much good time. But we've talked all about evangelism and we've barely, we haven't barely touched on discipleship. So in the time that we have left lets dump as much on the discipleship side as we can before we have to wrap up.
So let me talk about that. So someone comes to the Lord, they're walking in. You've got this mentoring, this side by side. I'm assuming that part of the principle of mentoring is the modeling that's offered to someone about the journey as-
Ken Horton:
It's the foundation.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right.
Ken Horton:
Its the foundation.
Darrell Bock:
Sometimes call it modeling, some people call it mentoring depending on how you set it up. Sometimes it seemed, well you have more experience than I do, so I need to think about who you are. Sometimes it's done as modeling. We're just going to walk side by side as brothers, however that works. So what's on the other side? What's the discipleship like?
John Tolson:
Well, Ken's older than I am, so I'm going to let him go first.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. All right. That was gracious.
Ken Horton:
Well, our approach is basically we want to help a person learn how to begin a relationship with Christ, live by faith, we call it living independence mode. And that is a reflection of confidence in the word, it's a reflection of security and identity. And if a person is intentionally depending on God, he's going to be in a position where he's able to enjoy what God's prepared for him. Ephesians 2:89 says, "We're saved by grace, not by works, no man can boast." But the very next verse, it says that we're workmanship creating in Christ Jesus to do good works. And from my perspective, we have nothing to boast about in terms of the ministry.
Darrell Bock:
That's right.
Ken Horton:
And because He gets the credit in us, He gets the credit in our circumstances and the Holy Spirit's what empowers us. So it's faith from start to finish and then the rest of our material is how do you strengthen that pattern of living by faith in all these other dimensions of life that people shrug with? How do you make decisions? How do you enjoy your shape? How do you study the scripture? How do you pray? Those kinds of things, all of which can contribute to it if done by faith, fuel a life that is both pleasing to God and influential and fruitful with people.
Darrell Bock:
And another corporate aside while you are in Ephesians. And that is, if you ask what's the first good work that gets defined by Ephesians two after Ephesians 02:10, it's 11 to 22. It's the idea that God has taken people who are formally estranged, Jew and gentile who did not get along and put them together in a reconciled relationship, not only with God but with each other. And so if you pursue in the context of love, this attempt to live out a life that is pursuing the best for people and the reconciliation for people, et cetera, you're right smack in the middle of what God is about.
John Tolson:
Right in the middle of it.
Ken Horton:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And I think that's important because one of the things that I think we struggle with in the church, at least in America, is we have a very privatized faith. We tend to want to walk alone, we tend to want to walk in a way where it's just about me and my God, I'm not thinking about other people. We don't think corporately, naturally. And so we have to develop that muscle because that muscle wasn't developed by our culture.
John Tolson:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
So it's thinking through those corporate dimensions of what's going on. So I have one other thought real quick and that is this. It seems to me that the discipleship has, if I can say it this way, three elements, your relationship with God, your connection to God's people and your interaction with God's revelation and His word. So there're probably more things than that, but that seems to me those are pretty good. So your relationship with God is going to involve you with prayer and your walk with God, your talk with God, et cetera. Your relationship to God's people is going to put you in a community that you need to be functioning in. And your commitment to God's word is what feeds you, what helps to keep you alive with the sustenance of the spirit that's inside of you in order to walk. Now am I missing anything?
Ken Horton:
I'd say that what we started talking about is that we are here as ambassadors of Christ to share the gospel.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Ken Horton:
And so, if we aren't really focusing on that relationship, and most Christians do not intentionally build relationships with folks that aren't Christians. And if you don't do it intentionally, it won't happen. So I just think that that's a key part.
Darrell Bock:
So there's a missional element?
Ken Horton:
There's a mission and if you miss the missional element-
Darrell Bock:
You're missing out on-
Ken Horton:
You're missing out on the great commission, in order for a person to need to be baptized, they got to trust Christ and you're back to act one.
Darrell Bock:
So if I can say it this way, there's the personal nurture that those three things that I initially mentioned, but then there's the assignment that God gives us, the missional call that we have for why we are, who we are and what we're supposed to be about and the way we're supposed to think about engaging with people and really, I like to joke, the Great Commission and the Great Commandment are great because they're great and which means they keep us focused.
Ken Horton:
And it's not just sharing the gospel, it's investing in people so that they're prepared to be multiplied.
Darrell Bock:
That's why I mentioned the Great Commandment because the Great Commandment is to love people, to care for them, to be engaged with them. And that love is exceptional. That love is not just to love for the people who like us, what makes it exceptional, the reason Jesus says we're supposed to be different than everybody else is because we have a love element that we're offering to people who don't normally get it and that's your enemy. And that that's the hard part.
Ken Horton:
I'm sure John's, the people in the military who were the most hostile, who would say awful things to me because I wasn't doing what they were doing. When I found out their daughter was in the hospital and I said, "Tell me about your daughter. Can I pray?"
John Tolson:
Yeah.
Ken Horton:
Oftentimes the people most hostile are people God's already working on, he's already drawn them to Christ.
John Tolson:
I agree.
Ken Horton:
But my heart, I did lots of ministry, I was producing few multipliers. And so I've spent the last number of years trying for myself and for other pastors and for lay people, you don't have to go to seminary to have this much fun, I tell guys I wanted to give them a resource that would give them an opportunity to be intentionally involved in both evangelism and launching what we call launching multipliers. Because I think that's at the heart of the mission we have.
Darrell Bock:
Yep, that's the assignment.
John Tolson:
How much time I have left?
Darrell Bock:
No, go for it. You got a couple minutes.
John Tolson:
Okay. Can we go over it all?
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, we can splice and dice.
John Tolson:
Well, I think the first thing, and again Ken and I are so much on the same page here. I think the reason we disciple is because that's what Jesus said to do. Matthew 28, "Go therefore and make-
Darrell Bock:
That's part of the Great Commission.
John Tolson:
"Or as you are going, go back."
Darrell Bock:
That's right.
John Tolson:
And nobody on the mountain, when Jesus said that, none of the disciples raised their hand and say, "What are you talking about?" They knew what he was talking about. They had had it done to them.
Darrell Bock:
That's right.
John Tolson:
So that's the first thing. Second thing, as a lot of people I don't think know we do, because we've been around a while, we learned this stuff. But it was a command, it wasn't a suggestion. It was the imperative. I believe Jesus' strategy to change the planet today and tomorrow is making disciples who make disciples who make disciples. But the question then is, what does it mean to make disciples? And what is one? And Ken and I would both tell you probably 260 sometimes, all depends what translation in the New Testament you read, the word disciples is used, the word Christians used three times.
So if you do your due diligence through all the discovery in a funnel out the bomb funnel dropped three things it means, a disciple is a learner. And it's one of my great impactors on my life said, "True learning biblically speaking only happens when it changes my life." So just because I got the information doesn't mean it's changing me. My head's packed, but my life's not changing. Number two, it's a follower and the demands of following are very challenging. But the third part is where the church in our country has missed it. For the most part, it's reproducing.
And so if I were to put in a statement succinctly what I have for my life and others to do this, my desire is to live by his priorities and to spend my life reproducing those priorities and the lives of others who were reproduce in others. And the priorities are simply, you mentioned already, Matthew 22, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength." Second commandment, like the first, "Love your neighbors like yourself." So I feel there, love God, love Christ, all the stuff you need to make it sizzle, the word, prayer, worship, all that stuff. I think a lot of evangelicals miss the second one though. He says, "Love your neighbor as…" It's a simile, like you love yourself. So what if I don't like me? It's going to hurt me caring for my wife, my kids, or anybody else. So we call the second one a commitment to loving yourself.
Now here's the what's behind that. I'll only love someone else to the degree I love myself and I'll only love myself to the degree I know how much God loves me. And so therefore, if I get that right, then I can begin off of that basis to develop, take care of myself physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally. Luke 2:52, same way Jesus went. And then the third priorities of commitment to other believers. Look at John 17. Francis Schaeffer taught me this years ago. He said, "John 17, If we are not one as followers of Christ individually with other people, then we are going to be a bury and a detriment to people in the world knowing Christ." So the body of Christ. And number four, the people that don't know God from Donald Duck, they're lost. So those are the four things for 50 years in my own personal life I've tried to live by. And they would incorporate everything John's talking about.
Darrell Bock:
So just review it as a list. Just the list, give us the list.
John Tolson:
Yeah, the first priority is a personal progressive commitment to Jesus Christ, making sure you've got it, developing and growing it and make it sizzle.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
John Tolson:
Number two is a personal commitment to love of myself.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
John Tolson:
Love your neighbors, you love yourself.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
John Tolson:
Number three, a personal commitment to the body of Christ, other believers. Number four, a personal commitment to the work of Christ and a lost world.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
John Tolson:
And then under each one of those, there are a lot of specific areas and so forth.
Darrell Bock:
Sure. Yeah. Okay.
John Tolson:
So we're saying the same thing, we're just using different jumping points and so forth.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. But what I love about what's being said is how outward it is.
John Tolson:
Priority ones is going to go out.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
John Tolson:
If you get one and get that humming, as we would both know, it's how you look at you, how you look at others and caring about people that don't know anything about-
Darrell Bock:
I used to say that the arc of life that most of us have to live is we start with arrow in ourselves, because we're the center of the world. And then God is doing this, pointed outwards. Outwards and upwards. And that there's this little ethic, what I call the ethical triangle. There's this triangle that gets admitted about how the way I relate to God is supposed to impact the way I'm relating to others. And then the way I like to say this for evangelism, I like to play with John 03:16 and shorten it and say it this way. "God so loved the world that he gave…" End of verse. And so the point is-
John Tolson:
That's great.
Darrell Bock:
The point is, and you think about the world that God is loving, it's not an attractive world.
John Tolson:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
It's not a positive world. It's the world with everything that we know about it is wrong. But the way He gets there is that He gave. And then we come back to something that you mentioned earlier, John, which is the tone that we use is as important as the content that we have. And its that outwardness is the draw.
Ken Horton:
And we both do one-on-one discipleship because I'm convinced that people need to have an environment where they can ask their questions, where they can be honest. And it is more time intensive, but if you want to equip somebody to do something with other people, one-on-one's the simplest relationship. And it's worth my time having done lots of group things. I do group things too. I want to help people make incremental progress toward maturity as much as possible. But I think the intentional preparation of multipliers as a 71 year old, I don't have time to not make the most of my time.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. Well, I want to thank you guys for coming in.
John Tolson:
Hey, we both have more now.
Darrell Bock:
I know. I know. Think of this as part one.
John Tolson:
That'd be great. I would love that.
Darrell Bock:
Because this is a good conversation, an important conversation. It's a conversation the church needs and the whole idea of being able to move from starting from ground zero to taking people to the full and abundant life is the calling of the church.
John Tolson:
That's right.
Darrell Bock:
It's the calling of everybody in the church. It's not just the calling of the pastor.
John Tolson:
No.
Darrell Bock:
It's not just the calling of the Parachurch ministries that reach out to people.
John Tolson:
Exactly.
Darrell Bock:
It's the calling of every single one of us. And getting equipped to do that fully so that you're walking with God in the way that draws people is important. I'll close with this observation and that is that at least in most of the testimonies that I hear that come from people who did not grow up in a Christian home, so they didn't have it from their parents or whatever. The way this works goes something like this. At some point in their life they met a Christian who was authentic about their faith to one degree or another.
John Tolson:
Sure. Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
And you hear in the midst of that testimony, "I met so-and-so, whatever, whoever it is, and something about their life caught my attention." Something about their life caught my attention. You said that the begin word, and I was curious about what that was and that started on the journey. So sometimes we think it's our words that do it, but words may be the finisher, they may not be the starter.
John Tolson:
You got to let me say this.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
John Tolson:
Someone said you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink, but you can feed them salt and make them thirsty.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah.
John Tolson:
That's what our life should do.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, interesting. Very good.
We're called to be salt, we're called to be light. Right on that note, we're out of here.
John Tolson:
We're out of here.
Darrell Bock:
All right. Let me thank y'all for joining The Table and glad you're a part of this, I hope you enjoyed our conversation. And if you have an interest in The Table, go to voice.dts.edu. You can see other podcasts we do. We cover an array of topics Table. At The Table we discussed issues with God and culture. I like to say, I'm thinking in my head when I say that. We talk about anything and everything. So we're real pleased that you could join us and we hope you'll join us again soon.
Kymberli Cook:
Welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and Culture. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the assistant director at the Hendricks Center. And today we are going to be talking about how Christians should think about the paranormal. We hope that this can be a really helpful time to tackle some of the mysterious and more disarming experiences and things that we hear accounts of, and just really work through how to think through the claims of those kinds of experiences, and navigating situations in which we find ourselves, knowing what… And not even knowing. That's probably a strong word in this environment, but trying to work through how to think biblically and theologically, and where to not overemphasize or underemphasize the spiritual world.
So we are joined by very distinguished guests today. On my right is a retired DTS professor who continues private practice and overseeing budding counselors. Linda Marten, thank you so much for being here. You're
Linda Marten:
Welcome.
Kymberli Cook:
And then to my left is Scott Horrell who… And just be prepared, this is a little bit long, in a good way. Professor of Theological Studies here at DTS and is also adjunct professor at SETECA, which is a seminary in Guatemala, Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary in Jordan and the Center for Theological Development in Mozambique. So he has been all over the world multiple times. It's nice to have you here.
Scott Horrell:
Thank you.
Kymberli Cook:
All right. So to get us started on this conversation, which is just really exciting. I've been looking forward to this podcast because I have a thousand questions and I'm sure that the people listening have a lot of questions as well. But to start off with, and just so everybody can get to know you all, how did you come to reflect on these areas, on the areas of the supernatural and the paranormal? And we'll get into what those words even mean in a second. But Linda, let's start with you. How did you come to be thinking in this area?
Linda Marten:
If I had been reincarnated, I used to be a cat, I'm sure. I'm curious about everything. So I've just been curious about everything. So I really got into it more in depth after my graduate work because I thought I was going to be a counselor and teach people appropriate boundaries and communication skills and those kind of things. So one day I was working with a client of mine, this while I was doing my doctoral work and she had come in with a pain in her side.
Well, I was doing projective techniques at the time, so I said, "Why don't you just close your eyes and let your mind's eye go down to that area of your body?" And so she sat there with her eyes closed and I said, "Go down there and look and tell me what you see." So she said, "Oh, it's really dark. It's really dark." See, I'm expecting some association with the memory or something like that. So I said, "Well keep looking." She said, "Oh, it's really, really black." I said, "Okay."
So she sits there quietly for a while and I'm sitting there quietly for a while. All of a sudden with her eyes closed, she says, "She's mine." I couldn't think of any graduate book where that had come up.
Kymberli Cook:
Prepared you for how to answer in that moment.
Linda Marten:
All I know is the hair on the back of my neck went up. And interesting, what came into my mind immediately was my old catechism training where you memorized verses, "He who was in you is greater than he who was in the world." I felt comforted, but I was still lost. I didn't know what to do. But that's how I started.
Kymberli Cook:
Wow. What a cliffhanger of a start. Okay. Scott, how did you come to be interested in this area? Or reflect.
Scott Horrell:
Mine is not quite so dramatic because I've been in a lot of places. But when I went out with YWAM, I was 18 years old and we were in the town near the most remote of a little island called Tobago. Speyside is the name of the town. And the rest of the team had gone back to the capital three hours away. I don't know, I must have bumped into a pastor who said, "I'm a spiritual Baptist pastor. Would you like to preach at my church tonight? Which was a Monday night.
Well, sure I'm spiritual, I'm Baptist. Gotcha. I went there and he comes in. It was getting cloudy and rainy, and lightning too. He comes in with a bell to scare out the spirits. Water sprinkled around to attract the spirit and flowers to appease the saints. A few things like that. Well, I preached everything I knew. The Pentecostal Pastor showed up, so there's sort of an amen contest who could outdo the other. A little girl went to sleep and fell off her bench, which made a big-
Kymberli Cook:
Oh my goodness.
Scott Horrell:
… crash on the ground. I just walked out of there thinking, I have no idea what just happened, but it was strange. So welcome to the unseen world.
Kymberli Cook:
Again, we'll get to definitions in just a second with regard to what paranormal and supernatural and all of those things do and don't mean. But I'm just curious a little bit more, what does it look like to reflect in these areas? Because I find it interesting that you both tell a story. So is it largely experience based? What reading in the area or what… I mean, I'm not looking for some kind of certificate or credential, but just what has it looked like as you have reflected and thought about these areas? What does that even look like?
Linda Marten:
I'm always looking for answers. Because I grew up as a Lutheran, Conservative Lutheran and so we knew we had the right answers. And my mother had a bunch of sisters, but we knew my mother was the best of the sisters.
Kymberli Cook:
Of course.
Linda Marten:
Yeah, I mean that was helpful. And I lived in a state Iowa that had no poison spiders or poison things, so I knew I had the best of everything. And so I would assume everybody would agree with me because I had the best and I knew the best. As I grew up, I thought, "I wonder if everybody else thinks that what they think is right?" So now I became on a quest to is truth really… That I think is true, really true? And then I started questioning everything.
Francis Schaeffer apparently went through a time like that where he just threw it all out and had to start over too. So I felt like that. And forgetting what your question was, but that's how I got into it, is I was reading everything. Bridey Murphy, that was reincarnation at the time that book came out. I was reading things at Glossolalia. I never heard that. We, Lutherans didn't even talk let alone in tongues. So I would just…
Scott Horrell:
You interpreted a lot.
Linda Marten:
Yes,. So I did a lot of reading and some of probably, which you may touch on today and the slightly occult. I even read about ectoplasm and those kind of things, which, do you know what that is?
Kymberli Cook:
I do not.
Linda Marten:
That's all right.
Scott Horrell:
I don't either.
Linda Marten:
Oh really? They put a body dying on a bed and then they wanted to know how much the spirit weighed. So then at the moment of death, they could see the weight difference. They decided it was just a couple ounces.
Kymberli Cook:
Wow.
Linda Marten:
And then they used to do a Kirlian photograph to catch the spirit going. So I was curious about… Do you see what I mean? I used to be a cat? So I've been around.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. All right. What about you, Scott? What does it look like? What does it look like to reflect on these things?
Scott Horrell:
I think it's just been through the years, different things that have come up. And I haven't had a lot of direct experience, but I remember needing answers. Speaking Francis Schaeffer, I went to L'aBri, lived at L'aBri. Oz Guinness was writing his famous book, The Dust of Death. And about that time he was writing about the really dark, the occult. And he would explain to us that strange things are happening, things fall off shelves. There seems to be real spirit activity, even where I'm writing this in my own home. Well, I'd known a little, but I suppose then as a missionary and other things, you see that sort of thing more often than one would expect.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So when we're approaching this topic for the first time in a serious way, and we're not just giving candy to some little children dressed up as ghost at our front door, when we're approaching it in a serious manner, what are we talking about? What are the definitions that we need to know? What are the areas that we need to know and that you would suggest a basic Christian or a basic pastor should be aware of?
So I've at least thrown out too. So there's the supernatural and the paranormal. Would you mind unpacking the difference between the two? Are there differences?
Scott Horrell:
Well, I'm normal. I'm not sure about everyone else. Normal would be the natural world that we live in. The experiences that we have supernatural, of course, are beyond what can be verified, really paranormal in some ways as well. The paranormal might be the broader term. Well, Linda, you might be able to help me here too. It is what from a naturalist world, we simply don't understand what's going on there.
Supernatural very clearly defines spirits or forces beyond us, but that are in some sense defined as spirits, ghosts, in some places, saints, God working, Satan working. So the supernaturals is the more elevated of the two. Paranormal can be that we just don't understand it. But it could be supernatural.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. What other terms we should know what they mean?
Linda Marten:
And things that maybe used to be considered paranormal. We just didn't have the science to understand it too. So knowing what is paranormal, the Northern Lights seems scary until they understood the temperature changed, the inversions of the whatever up there. A silly thing, but an example, I used to be terrified of sinkholes. As a child I read the paper and I read about a sinkhole. So I was probably nine years old. All I knew was all of a sudden the earth could open up and fall in and you could fall in it.
I knew that that happened with Moses when people disagreed with him, the earth opened up and some fell in. So I was very sensitive to sinkholes.
Kymberli Cook:
Oh my goodness.
Linda Marten:
Well, this is how children think. Fortunately, I moved-
Kymberli Cook:
Absolutely.
Scott Horrell:
And the whole world.
Kymberli Cook:
… a little bit beyond it. But as I grew older, I started reading about sinkholes and what causes them and how the earth erodes the sand underneath and it'll fall in. And then it took it out of the paranormal for me that it wasn't aliens who were underground sucking in bodies like the old movies showed. So that would be an example of sometimes we just don't know enough and sometimes it can be normal. I mean, ice cubes are paranormal to somebody who's never seen cold weather.
Okay. We'll get into a little bit more of those later on. So you've already talked about some things coming off shelves and definitely some kind of other entity speaking from the woman that you were counseling. So is there credibility to the stories of the supernatural that we are hearing? And for those who would really want to know, what does the Bible have to say about that and helping decide whether or not those are credible stories? Linda, let's start with you.
Scott Horrell:
Oh, great.
Linda Marten:
Well, I was thinking about stories in the Bible. Of course, there's always… Was it the Witch of Endor? Was it calling up Samuel?
Scott Horrell:
Indeed.
Linda Marten:
Lo and behold, she got him.
Scott Horrell:
Sure looks that way.
Linda Marten:
Yeah, it looks that way. So was that really Samuel? Can people come from the dead back into this realm? The Bible would suggest that happened, but we don't know what it really… I don't know. So I put that in with a lot of other things that I hear from clients or interviews or things like that. I know a lot of strange things do happen.
Kymberli Cook:
Scott, what would you add?
Scott Horrell:
Yeah. Sharon Begley in Newsweek, this goes back a few years, but she said that… I don't know what her source was, but she's well known religion writer, 40% of Americans believe that aliens may have come to earth and taken people captive. 40%. She talks about how there are quirks for her evolutionary process of forming our brain. So there are aspects of perception that just sort of like a kink in the machine. All of a sudden something that we perceive doesn't make sense.
And of course for us, for anyone, you already have some kind of a worldview that's behind you. You have a way of thinking. So, "Oh, that must have been an angel," when somebody else looking on might say, "No, you just were lucky." Or it might have been a spirit or might have been whatever else. But we do fill in the blanks, the gaps with what we think maybe should have happened.
So I, in fact, just this last weekend, taught on angels and spirits. This was a pretty calm class. They didn't want to say much. Sometimes people really do burst out with all these stories they have and I'm thinking, well maybe it was an angel but probably not. I'd be too much a skeptic. Other times it's very, very clear that something happened that goes well beyond what we can explain.
Kymberli Cook:
Can I interrupt you for a second?
Scott Horrell:
Sure. Please do.
Kymberli Cook:
So what makes it clear?
Scott Horrell:
What makes it clear?
Kymberli Cook:
When you hear that and you say, at least for you when you would be making that decision as to what a student would be saying, what would make it seem clear to you?
Scott Horrell:
One is where there seems to be no other explanation except the supernatural.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay.
Scott Horrell:
Dare I give an example?
Kymberli Cook:
Sure.
Scott Horrell:
One of our students who graduated with his THM, but he and his wife and two children, little children were in Cleveland, icy winter, 17 below at that point. And he ended up sleeping with one child and his wife another, which they never did. But in that, he had something of a vision or a dream that suddenly woke him up. And as he woke up in the middle of the night, then he heard glass break and he thought maybe somebody's breaking into the house.
So he started running down the hall and hit a thick cloud of smoke. He immediately woke up his wife and children with bare feet, ran out into the snow as their house literally burned down. The head of the fire department said, "How did you wake up?" This is a kind of fire that nobody wakes up. It sucks the oxygen out of the rooms and you're asleep before you know what hit you.
It was at that point that this man named Jake said, "The Lord wants more of my life than I've given him." And that's what led him to seminary. So how do you explain something like that? Maybe coincidence? But many times that which surrounds… Like Peter. He didn't know what was going on with him when the angel broke him out of the prison. And yet he thought it was all a vision until he's standing in the street, the angels left him and I'm really here. Something really happened.
Kymberli Cook:
I'm not in jail.
Scott Horrell:
So often it's hindsight that fills some of that in. That's how. It helps a little.
Kymberli Cook:
But I just want to be clear for anybody listening, we are saying, sure there are instances where some credibility might be in question, but as believers we definitely hold to a supernatural world and to a spirit world. And so we have really the vantage point that allows us potentially some explanation or understanding though that is a very loose, that we hold our explanations loosely because, again, it's outside of much of our understanding and even perception. And so we have to hold that loosely. But we do recognize that as opposed to somebody who would just say, "Well, none of that is true. It's only the material world and the books just fell off the shelf in the middle of the night. There's nothing wrong." That kind of thing. Would you guys confer concur with that or no? Okay.
Linda Marten:
I think-
Scott Horrell:
I was studying this very area.
Kymberli Cook:
I'm very interested.
Scott Horrell:
At 11 at night, all of a sudden a whole wall of books came crashing down. That has never happened before or since. It's freaked me out and my immediate thought was there's there's more going on here than just… I just put them back up. Same stuff. They've never fallen again. How do you account for that? I don't know, but I have my suspicions.
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah.
Scott Horrell:
So those things do happen that are difficult to perceive in other ways, but are possible other ways.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay.
Linda Marten:
Let me come out on that one.
Kymberli Cook:
Yes, please.
Linda Marten:
I have some equivalent things and it irritates me that there should be supernatural things that I then account to darker forces, and I get irritated at them. I mean, this is my reaction to it.
Kymberli Cook:
Unpack that for us.
Linda Marten:
How dare you? I mean, I'm a child of the king. We all know that. So I just pray against them and I don't like to think… Because I know a lot of really dark things because the client base I work with. I don't like to have that in the front of my mind. So when I go to the store, I don't look around and go, "What do you do at night? What ceremonies do you lead?"
I don't like to live there and I feel like it almost gives Satan too much of me. So I think the best of everyone. I'm cheerful. We joke and all that. I don't know what they do at night, but if I found out… So there's that element.
Kymberli Cook:
That's actually really helpful. That leads right into the next question. So if we do in some measure as believers recognize the supernatural, the presence and existence of the supernatural world, how do we think distinctively, Christianly, that's too many -ly's, but how do we think in a distinctively Christian manner about this area in a way that doesn't just take us to what we see in Hollywood or other, like the occult in what they might do, what might be real or not with what they do? How do we distinctively as Christians approach these areas? Linda?
Linda Marten:
I was going to respond to what Scott was going to say.
Kymberli Cook:
Oh, okay.
Linda Marten:
No, no. It's all right. Maybe I'll give you the philosophy of demomics that I cultivated.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay.
Linda Marten:
Okay? And this is part scripture and part my experience with them. I came to believe that demos are just like germs. They're around all the time because we were born into a fallen world. What that means is they're against the image of God in us. So we're in a fallen world with germs around us. And yet at the same time we are given through scriptures all the ways to live in a healthy way. When we live in a healthy way, germs don't typically bother us. In fact, we have a very good system to fight off germs.
So you don't worry about germs. You live a healthy life. You have good family, good relationships. You learn all the one another concepts in the Bible, how to forgive one another and confront one another and all these things.
What happens is when you get into woundings. Then in woundings the germ can get in. And those are what we have to be careful about. How do you deal with the wounding? See, because anything of the spirit world, the demonic world if you want to say would have us divide and conquer. They want divisions. Christ's last prayer was about unity. So all of his teaching is how to come together, how to wear shoes of peace and so forth. It's just opposite. You just think opposite and you know what the supernatural world would have for you. So I put it in sense simply because I taught first grade and third grade out of college and I found out that's perfect.
Kymberli Cook:
That's always the best way. My father always said, if you can't put the cookies on the lower shelf, you probably don't know what to begin with.
Linda Marten:
Very true, very true.
Kymberli Cook:
So just to followup on what you're saying, for clarity's sake, are you saying that when we look at the supernatural world, we should largely just presume it's demonic?
Linda Marten:
No, not necessarily. But when we sense an evilness to it, then those are the germs. If my hands are sticky, I don't assume that's something toxic. It's probably some sugar I've been eating. So no. I was thinking about, because I just saw the movie Titanic recently, a re-thing on the television. When the Titanic went down, people all over the world woke up in the middle of the night. They knew something had happened to their loved one.
Now, that's supernatural. That's not demonic, but it does speak of some sort of… It's intuition. My mother always had intuition, which was spooky or irritating. That's not demonic. So there is another aspect of the world that I don't even know what to call it, paranormal alongside the normal that is just not demonic.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. I just want to make sure.
Linda Marten:
Does that help?
Kymberli Cook:
Yeah. That's very helpful. I just want to be sure that we're all saying the same thing and talking through that. Okay. Scott, what would you say with regard to how to think Christianly about this general area?
Scott Horrell:
Well, pretty obviously, we start with the word of God and one of the primary texts, there's other ones as well, but should I read Deuteronomy 18?
Kymberli Cook:
Sure.
Scott Horrell:
Just a little passage of it. "When you enter the land, the Lord God is giving you do not imitate the detestable way of the nation's there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft or cast spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord because of these same detestable practices the Lord, your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the Lord your God."
So there's a good structure and that continues right into the New Testament as to what we are to avoid and stand against really. I don't think it's in vain that like Ephesians 4 says, "Don't let the sun go down on your wrath, lest Satan get a foothold into your life." So along with a wounding, I think, Linda, I would add, when there's conscious sin in a believer's life, particularly sin repeated, justifying it, maybe getting away with it and all of that, that weakens a child of God, a soldier of God, daughter or son, it breaks down their armor in some ways and makes them also susceptible to, let's say supernatural and I would say demonic oppression because of that sin.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So what I'm hearing you all say is that as believers we need to recognize the legitimacy of this dimension, of our existence, of our reality. And in doing that, as we do that we need to be very careful, be very careful in any instances, particularly like you've said, where there would be some kind of wounding emotional like relational, psychological, all of that. Right?
Linda Marten:
A lot of people have trauma background.
Kymberli Cook:
Exactly. And then as well as wounding from sin and continuous sin. Is it only with caution that we should approach the supernatural? As believers?
Scott Horrell:
May maybe we need to bring in also here, as believers, we have a holy spirit within us. And not many of the gift of discernment probably, but all of us should be discernful. We have the Holy Spirit within us. We have the word of God to guide us. And so word of God and listening, trusting step by step with our Lord protects us from all kinds of stuff. And a lot of things we just don't know. Where's this coming from? Is this of God? It is paranormal. Lord, keep me on track.
And you don't see the apostle, Paul or any the apostles going around as Ghostbusters. I mean they're not going in to spirit of centers and casting out everyone. Those problems usually came to them and then they dealt with it. I think of, where was it, Philippi, where Paul is preaching and Silas is with him. And it says that day after day, this girl who was a medium kept walking after them and saying, "These men are the men of God and they're telling you how to be saved." How does it get any better than that? That's advertisement you can't pay for.
But after, it says, many days, Paul became frustrated with that, turned around and cast out the demon and literally all hell broke loose on him and Silas. Of course, they were beat in prison and all rest, but he didn't go after it. In fact, he ignored it for a while. And maybe that's good for us to do typically too.
Kymberli Cook:
Do you have anything to add?
Linda Marten:
Yeah. I don't think it's good for me to obsessed about it. Because, I mean the whole thing is we are filled with the Holy Spirit and as believers we're sealed with the Holy Spirit. At least keeping ourselves open to his guidance. I mean he nudges when we're going too far the other way. I mean, I get nudged a lot because I'm curious, but then I always have to go… Because I'm always curious why somebody believes something I think is absurd. Why would they believe that? So then I let myself go into it.
But then I always say, "Is this scriptural? Well, if it isn't, then I know exactly what I either need to talk to them about or their error and then I can resolve something in myself." So I enter into more places with people just kind of like that's my nature and that's my nature with therapists. I don't assume. Although, I know another therapist that says he assumes everybody that comes in is lying to him. I assume they probably are, but they don't intend to or they intend to, but they're not really… And I will notice where they're not lying.
Kymberli Cook:
How do I think about that? Do I think, "Well, the Bible doesn't have anything like that really and it just says that God created the world, and okay, the universe, but the only creatures and beings it seems like that he largely created, at least at that point is given to me in Genesis"? And so to go beyond that is to really go beyond what I know with regard to origins and that kind of thing.
So if that's one of the things that's coming to mind, what would you guys say to help my mind try to think through, "Okay, if that is real, then does that mean that God isn't real and the Bible isn't true because it doesn't seem to have anything like that reflected in how to live a godly life? It says it's equipped for godly living. Well if that's the case and there are aliens, how do I live in a godly way with aliens?"
Linda Marten:
I clean my house to death.
Kymberli Cook:
What's your opinion?
Linda Marten:
Well, see, and that's the way I thought. I know exactly what you're thinking. Go ahead.
Scott Horrell:
Well, we might disagree some because the Bible is the word of God. God is really there. He's the sovereign one. And because the scriptures don't bring it up, I think we can… There's always ambiguities in life. And I think, "Well, the kids, let's keep firm in our faith, the Lord Jesus and let's entrust him." And if you're scared at night, like our kids would be in Brazil and we'd have spiritist works out in front of a house, sacrifices against us. But you trust Christ walk in and claim his power. And if there be any malignant spirit in the name of Jesus Christ, speak out loud. Don't shout, just tell them to get out of the home and leave those little children alone and that they can rest in the Lord and be safe.
But there are things we don't know. And I think the scriptures don't go there because we don't need to know in one sense. That may not satisfy the curious 10-year-old though. So Linda, help us out here.
Linda Marten:
I agree with what you're saying. One of the verses that Philippians 2:10, the one about God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him, meaning Christ the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow. And this is what I always thought was so interesting, you know that one. Above the earth, on the earth and under the earth. And I thought under the earth. I know night crawlers are under the earth.
I mean, I'm from Iowa, I'm real simple like this. But I always was puzzled about that. I've since looked that up and they're talking about the tri-part way the old… They said heaven was up there with the stars. Earth was… Let's see, there's the heaven. It's a tri-part thing. The heaven was the sun and the stars and then the middle earth, and then the earth sat on top of what was left over which was just kind of under the earth. And that's where Lazarus, when he was in the bowels of… Help me out there. Lazarus-
Kymberli Cook:
Abraham's bosoms?
Linda Marten:
In bosoms. Okay, so that would be under the earth. Or not. Because then if you go to Genesis 6, and this is where a lot of other Christian researchers go to Genesis 6 and go, what happened where the sons of God thought, the daughters of men, and they were cast down and then kept out of their estate. They were almost cast to earth as punishment. So where are they? I don't know. But in one sense it doesn't matter because I end up where you do, Scott, which is Christ is above all and every knee will bow.
So I don't care who's under the earth. If they're coming out, and there are a lot of stories, especially if you go to Indian stories of their history of portals where they do come out. We still got Jesus, which is a name above all name. So I would end up talking to my children just like you would have where we have the authority in us that Jesus gave us.
Kymberli Cook:
That's the distinctively Christian view, regardless of what is-
Linda Marten:
Yes. Regardless if they're real or not real.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay.
Linda Marten:
So we have the medicine. If the disease is real or not real, we have the medicine for it anyway.
Scott Horrell:
And our Lord proclaimed victory over, you could say, Hades and Tartarus, the lower echelons, the abyss of powerful enemies of God.
Linda Marten:
He went down there and preached to them.
Scott Horrell:
And he has the victory and all of this. So the Holy Saturday, as it sometimes called between Friday and Sunday, I think is increasingly being appreciated as our Lord conquering the dead and proclaiming the, of course, good news to those Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham. That's their salvation and perhaps being at that point taken into the heavenly, but certainly he has proclaimed his victory over the spirits of the underworld. So just so we talk about heaven being up, and so the other being down, that may be metaphor, but-
Linda Marten:
But maybe not.
Scott Horrell:
It's a different dimension.
Kymberli Cook:
So I do want us to just hit a couple other of the supernatural type entities that I referenced earlier. So we've already kind of touched on which is witchcraft and mediums. It seems like, especially Scott with what you shared, there's some clearer indications and biblical direction with regard to those and very much an assertion of their reality and a caution to avoid. So there are two more I want to talk about. I want to talk about ghosts, and I want to talk about the undead, and we have very little time.
So I'm going to pitch into you quickly. So ghosts, and we can start with the idea of Casper, the friendly ghost, but for those apparition type things that people think that they have seen, there's haunted tours pretty much in every single major city in at least the United States. What's your take on that and how should Christians think about it?
Scott Horrell:
Ghosts.
Linda Marten:
I hear about them a lot even when I was here because they knew of the professors, I'm one of the spooky ones.
Scott Horrell:
Scared me half to death sometimes.
Linda Marten:
That was just kind of… So they would come into my office and they would tell me their strange spiritual stories, whether they lived in a haunted house or dead grandmother kept advising them or just weird things. I mean, my answer is, "I don't know". That's my answer.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So you-
Linda Marten:
Well, because my understanding of scripture is we don't stay around and haunt the places. So I don't know who's doing all this and I don't know, but it does seem like things happen. And so I don't know. I just didn't think of Casper.
Kymberli Cook:
Scott, do you have anything to add on ghosts?
Scott Horrell:
Of course, Lazarus and others came forth from the dead and at the resurrection at that point, but it is appointed to men wants to die and then the judgment. So what to do with these ancestral spirits and the ideas, and almost every culture from Eskimo to Polynesia to Zambia, what do you do with all that?
Kymberli Cook:
Which does seem like there's something really going on in that.
Scott Horrell:
It does, doesn't it?
Kymberli Cook:
It is a widespread concept.
Scott Horrell:
The passage I read out of Deuteronomy 18 didn't say, "That's not real," it said, "Don't consult them. Stay away from it." So we can dismiss it in a lot of different ways, but whatever it is, stay away from it. I mean, Moses could throw down Aaron's staff and it became a snake. But then Pharaoh brought his boys out and they threw down their staffs and they became snakes as well.
This isn't slight of hand, this isn't a trick you bought in New York City, this is real stuff. So the evil and the power of the supernatural is really there, but we're told to avoid it.
Linda Marten:
That gets you into the witches and the mediums and so forth, because it really bothers with me when people talk about, "Oh, let's get a Ouija board. Let's do this and that." And I'm thinking, "You don't know that you're opening up doors to the evil and the demonic that would love to come in and open doors and lighten you on things that are possible for you."
As you know, because I work with a lot of trauma clients, one man told me about lying there at age 16, and he looked at the foot of his bed and there was a face looking back at him. And they just stared each other for a while. And finally the face said, "What do you want?" And so he told the face… And you can imagine he wanted what a 16-year-old boy who wasn't yet popular in school, wanted all those things. And within a year he had all those things.
He later went on to become a head priest in a satanic covenant. There's a lot more to that story because God was after him too. But see, so all those things are real, but we're not to play with them or make room for them. There are a lot of things that opened the doors to them. One of my clients sent me the ad that Disney is starting a new series that's called Little Demon. It's Satan is now having a daughter who is the antichrist.
I mean, so look at all the stuff that's flooding our culture. One, to make it silly and we can play with the demonics. We can play with all this stuff because it's not dangerous. Well see, that's a trick. It is dangerous.
Scott Horrell:
And it makes it attractive and exciting.
Linda Marten:
Yes.
Scott Horrell:
Almost every psychic that I know of, and we have the John of God series on Netflix in the last two years. A lot of others as well. I've got Edgar Cayce who founded the Association for Religious Enlightenment. They often start out even as religious kids. Edgar Cayce loved the Bible and taught the Bible for 20 years in his church and didn't want anyone to ask the spirit in him as he go into a trance and give medical solutions around the country. Didn't want anybody asking religious questions.
He said, "No, I believe the Bible. But with time, okay, ask a religious question." And the psychics very often are, I'm going to say invaded by some kind of power. I'm going to say a spiritual demonic power, very young. But it's very beautiful, and everything they do seems to turn out lovely.
Linda Marten:
Always at the beginning.
Scott Horrell:
And with time… So even warning our children don't go there. Not everything you see on Disney is great, much less some of the other ones. So I think bathing our kids in prayer and helping them to learn to pray, to resist the evil one, though they don't understand it all is really a healthy thing to do.
Kymberli Cook:
Like Tolkien says, not all that glitters is gold.
Linda Marten:
Let me followup on that one because it's for mothers. There was a witch and she knew she was a witch, but she got ill in her latter years. And some Christians, Christian women started taking care of her. Well, she became a believer. And I saw an interview with her and even over the three years in between the first and the second, you could tell her face was softening after she became a believer.
She went back to the mother of two girls because her job as a young person was to go around and make friends with kids and entice them into things where they then could be abused and could keep secrets and get pulled into a cold, strange stuff. She was after these two kids and she could never get them. So she went to their mother who was an old woman at the time and said, "I'm sorry, I was a witch and my father was blah, blah evil," and on.
"I could never get your kids." "Why?" And she said, "I was so afraid for my children. I didn't know what to do. So every morning during breakfast, I stood behind them with one hand on each one of them, and I prayed silently for the Lord's protection over them that whole day." She said, "I did that every morning. Every morning, every morning." And the ex-witch said, "That makes sense now."
Scott Horrell:
Let me throw something.
Kymberli Cook:
Okay. We've got it. We've got it.
Scott Horrell:
I had lots of students who were involved in spiritism before they came to Christ in Brazil. And Juan was brought up in a spiritist family and trained to be one of their leaders in the future. And then his leader called a father of saints said, "But stay away from evangelicals. You have no power over them." It was like the lights went on. Well, why don't we have any power over them?
Kymberli Cook:
Fascinating. Okay.
Scott Horrell:
That's kind of cool.
Kymberli Cook:
So I would love to continue this conversation, but we are out of time and I'm sure that we will do more podcasts on this topic because there are very real things that need to be dug into even deeper to help other believers think through these issues and through these areas. But what overall I'm hearing is very much there is a supernatural world. We don't want to disregard that. And as believers, we believe it is there, but we are to treat it very cautiously and not to delve into anything really that seems to be outside of the indwelling of the spirit and the leading of the Lord through scripture and his community, and his people. Is that fair? All right.
Linda Marten:
And they can be set free.
Kymberli Cook:
Yes. And there is much power behind that spirit and his people. All right. So I want to thank you, Scott and Linda for joining us today. It has been a ball. Thank you so much for being here. And we want to thank you who are listening and we just ask that you be sure to join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at Dallas Theological Seminary and at the Hendricks Center in Dallas. And my guest today is David Geisler, president of Norm Geisler International Ministries. And we'll explain the name change in just a second for those of you don't know history, but it be transparent once we do it. And is adjunct professor at Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina and Veritas International University in Southern California. And he's been teaching what he calls practical apologetics for a long time. I can't imagine, in some ways, having a better guest who, on the one hand, deals with the substance of what apologetics is, on the other hand, and wrestles with the question of, all right, how do we do this on the other? David, thanks for being with us on the table.
David Geisler:
Hey Darrell, great to be with you today.
Darrell Bock:
My standard question, it's like the equivalent of a baptism for this podcast is how did a nice guy like you get into a gig like this? And I guess we've got to explain you're David Geisler, but you're president of Norm Geisler International Ministry, so let's put that together for people who may be young and may not know who your dad is.
David Geisler:
Yeah. My father is considered the grandfather of classical apologetics. Classical apologetics is what's called two-step apologetics where you established the worldview of theism and then you look at the evidence. It would be different than, say, an evidentialist who would say basically you just look at the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that proves that Christianity is true. Or a classical apologist would say, "Well, once you've established that atheist to God exists, then looking at the evidence does prove that Jesus is the Messiah."
Darrell Bock:
Your dad, let's talk about him for a little bit, was trained, I think, in philosophy as well as in Christian theology. Is that a fair representation of him?
David Geisler:
Absolutely. In fact, I don't know if our audience knows his story, but my father was practically illiterate till he was 17 years old, became a Christian, and then took 20 years to educate himself and got a PhD in philosophy. And as you know, we made this movie about his life, normgeislerthemovie.com, just as a resource for the church.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And I've seen it, and it's a fascinating walk through your dad's life. And there are things in there that I didn't know about him, even though we were colleagues overlapping for several years when he was here at Dallas. The other thing that's unusual about the philosophical depth of what your dad brought to his apologetics was he was very well schooled, I think would be the way to say it, or very well-informed on the Catholic philosophical tradition. Isn't that right?
David Geisler:
Yes. And one of the things that Richard Howell brings out in the movie is that my father took the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and applied it to Protestant thought. And he impacted a whole generation of Christian leaders and, yeah, helped us to see that we don't just have to start with the Bible as the word of God, that we can use general revelation and talk about truth and help people to see there's good evidence that God exists. Because if God exists and miracles are possible, then you can look at the New Testament and see what Jesus claimed and Jesus proved and therefore conclude that Jesus is God.
Darrell Bock:
One of the places where evidentialists and classic apologist overlap is in the area where they say we can use and think about the way God works in the world itself and in general revelation as a whole, we can think about the way we should think about science in a way that integrates science and faith that's in a way that's healthy as opposed to being combative, those kinds of ideas. Let me just contrast that to say the presuppositionalist who simply says, 'You presuppose that everything the Bible says is true and you don't go down the evidentiary path and you don't go down the classical apologist path because then you're trying to prove the Bible and the Bible is the word of God so you shouldn't really try and do anything to buttress it up." That's the more presuppositional approach. But the more important point that I'm trying to make right now is the way in which you integrate what's going on within the Bible and set that in a frame that makes sense out of the whole of reality that God has created.
David Geisler:
And this is exactly what the Apostle Paul did in Romans chapter one, he basically helped them to see that we can know just from what God created that there is a intelligent creator who is all powerful. And we can know a lot about his attributes, and we can use those as bridges.
When my father first started out his spiritual journey in the '50s and '60s, he learned three things. He learned that all truth is God's truth, that faith and reason are more compatible than even most Christians realize, and that there is an appropriate way to use apologetics in our witness to others. And he taught me and a number of people those simple principles.
And they're really life changing. It's really helped my ministry over the years. I was a missionary in Asia for several years and I was a missionary here. And it's really helped to have these resources that so when people bring objections or they have trouble just accepting the Bible is the word of God, we have recourse. We don't have to stop there, we can help build that common ground with people and help them deceive that the Bible can be trusted.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. I did not grow up in a Christian home. I came to the Lord to my freshman and sophomore year in college at the University of Texas in Austin, believe it or not, through the witness of several believers. But one of the first apologetic works I came across when I was thinking in the area of biblical studies was a general introduction to the Bible that your dad did with Bill Nicks. And Bill, who lived in the Dallas area for a long time, he and I used to go to lunch regularly when I was on faculty here and just interact with the contents of that book, et cetera. In some ways, it laid a foundation for me in terms of thinking through the truthfulness of the Bible, the nature of the manuscript tradition, the different kinds of issues that would come up in the Bible, et cetera, really core foundational stuff that was important in getting a good, solid base and orientation to what it is that the Bible is and in some cases what it is that the Bible isn't and creating the right kinds of expectations for what the text was attempting to do.
Yeah. And this classical fusion between the role of philosophy and helping us think through worldview kinds of questions and then the biblical studies technical stuff, which is where I've ended up, is an important combination. And I find that sometimes when we talk apologetics, at least in the popular realm, that people may have done a pretty good dip into the philosophical classical side of apologetics, which is does God exist? What about the problem of evil, the nature of suffering? Those kinds of questions. But they tend not to be as deeply connected to the biblical studies as why can't I trust the Old Testament? What about the New Testament? That kind of thing. The particular problems that those raise. The resurrection in particular, Jesus, historical Jesus questions, that kind of thing. And even programs that are designed nationally at schools are weighted more oftentimes on the philosophical side than they are on the biblical study side. And so that introduction was making a statement that I think was important in terms of connecting the philosophical worldview discussions with the nature of the Bible discussions, which are also an important part of apologetics.
David Geisler:
Yeah. And I think my father was, in some ways, a bridge to help people understand those two things. And that led of course to the ICBI statement.
Darrell Bock:
That's where I was going next. Why don't you explain what that is? Good. ICBI, tell people about the ICBI because our younger listeners may not even know what that is.
David Geisler:
The International Council of Biblical Inerrancy. There were about 300 scholars from all different denominations of evangelical community got together in Chicago. What year was that? 19-
Darrell Bock:
I think the statement came out in '79. Am I right about that?
David Geisler:
Oh, '79. And then it also came out with another statement.
Darrell Bock:
There was a hermeneutical statement that came a few years later.
David Geisler:
Yeah, that the Bible is the word of God. I think one of the greatest lines in the whole movie by Josh McDowell is he would say something like this: "If you let inerrancy slip, then every other doctrine in scripture will slip intellectually." And I just think it was just such a powerful moment, and it really clearly communicated why inerrancy is so important, that if we can't trust that the Bible is the word of God and essential matters, how can we… or in trivial matters, how can we trust it in essential matters?
Darrell Bock:
And of course the important part of the Chicago statement, which was written out in articles, and then there were affirmations and denials that came with it, was trying to deal with what I call the nitty grittier granular nature of what it means to believe inerrancy. This is what an inerrancy does mean. And again, this is what inerrancy does mean, this is what inerrancy doesn't mean. This is what inerrancy requires, this is what inerrancy doesn't require, which is really helpful in some of the areas certainly that I get to work in, which is what do you do with these gospel accounts when you put them side by side and there are these little differences in the way events get described and worded? Are those contradictions or are they complimentary accounts of the same event? That kind of a problem.
And some of these articles in the Chicago statement are an attempt to be clear about what the playing field is that you're on because sometimes you can make the Bible do too much versus too little and get yourself into trouble by expecting things out of the Bible it isn't intending to do. And so those conversations, which had a mixture of philosophical and systematic theologians and biblical scholars as well. I think some of the other names that are associated with… I know Harold Hunter was very involved from our department. I think Walt Kaiser was involved as an Old Testament person in that group. You had J.I. Packer who was representing systematic theology in that area, James Boyce who was a pastor who was trying to apply what was going on. This really was quite a mix of people who were saying, "When I say the Bible is the word of God and I believe what it is that it's saying, this is what I mean by this."
David Geisler:
And this was at a time out of, if you remember from the movie, that our culture was beginning to accept the idea that we can't even know reality. And there weren't enough Christians that were trained in philosophy to be able to respond to all the people that were making those kinds of statements. And I think personally, Darrell, that's why the Christian culture got run over by the secular culture during that time because there weren't enough of us like my father that were speaking philosophically to the wrong philosophy of our culture. And it had implications in the Christian Church as well.
Darrell Bock:
And the other dimension of this conversation that was happening internally within some segments of evangelicalism was you can believe the Bible but it's infallible with the regard matters of faith and practice, but the other stuff doesn't matter. And the attempt to make that kind of a distinction produced internal inconsistencies for the faith that also had to be dealt with. It was a conversation that was taking place on multiple fronts in many ways.
David Geisler:
Right, right. And then remember in our culture during the '60s through the '90s, this was a time when the Supreme Court had decided that you can't talk about a God creator, creation or God-given moral values in a public school. And my father tried to play a part in that as well and get that turned around. And we lost that battle. Just think of what happened to our culture since then, since the '90s; we've gone even further. And-
Darrell Bock:
The hard part of that conversation is the fact that we have a citizenry. Well, let me back up and say it this way because I've written about this. Robert Novak, who's a very good cultural observer, said that our country was really built on two wings simultaneously. Think about an airplane. The Judeo-Christian values and net that wrapped around Western culture on the one hand and principles of the enlightenment on the other. And the Enlightenment principles had come out of a reaction to European conflict, religious conflict that had taken place over many centuries that created the space for religious liberty, for example. Why you were trying to move away from a state recognized religion and that kind of thing, which often was the case.
But in going in that direction, it also opened up the idea of a person's religious beliefs, whether they were religious or not were a matter of their own conscience and their own personal decision, created that space. And so Novak says, "It's two wings, but in the end, the design, rightly or wrongly, leans in the enlightenment direction than it does in the Judeo-Christian net direction." And so we're getting then, if I can say it, the natural outcome of that imbalance in what we're seeing in our culture.
David Geisler:
And there are more skeptics and atheists today than ever before.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly.
David Geisler:
And that's why apologetics is so important. That's what I'm trying to do with this movie. I'm trying to use this movie as a catalyst to awaken the church. Because I told you about the three things that my father discovered when he first started his journey in the '50s and '60s, that all truth is God's truth, faith and reason are compatible and there's an appropriate way to use apologetics. I've discovered just that people don't realize these things like when I'm showing the movie in different places around the country that even some pastors don't even understand that, as my father taught, there's a difference between belief that and belief in. That apologetics bears on the question of belief that, not on the question of belief in. That's a matter of the Holy Spirit. And that's actually what my father said the evidentialists and presuppositionalists are confused about. They're not making that clear distinction that evidence deals with belief that, but it's the Holy Spirit that works on people's hearts.
Darrell Bock:
We're in a segment here where I can go one of two ways. What I'm going to do is I'm going to say the two ways so that we're sure to cover them both, and yet at the same time I want to go through those three core points because I think they're important. And then I want to come back and talk about… Our engagement in apologetics isn't just about our intellect in the end; there's more going on there. Those are the two places I want to go.
Let's start with the three points. The first is that all truth is God's truth. This alludes to something that we've already talked about a little bit, and that is that every sphere has something to offer. If we think about it through a godly worldview, I don't know, a Christian worldview, then there are ways the philosophers and questions that philosophers ask that are worth probing from that point of view; science the same way.
David Geisler:
Psychology. Every field has some truth that we can learn something from and put it within the Christian worldview context.
Darrell Bock:
Just to put this in a theological frame, we could say it this way: Oftentimes this point is made, well, we're fallen creatures so we can't read what's going on the outside very well. But the flip side of that is that we're also made in the image of God and we're hardwired to think in certain ways as human being. Most human beings, even if they aren't Christians, think that there is a spiritual world out there, that there's something more than us, those kinds of ideas. And that's coming from somewhere. And when we apply a godly worldview or a biblical worldview to those kinds of questions, we can probe those areas positively. I'm assuming that that's what's underneath that first point, that all truth is God's truth. However God has made the world and the reality in which it functions, when we discover that, we're running into something that God has done and created.
David Geisler:
Yes. And also with that first Corinthians 9:22, Paul said, "I became all things to all men, so by all means I may save some." We can find common ground with every non-believer, we just have to be sensitive to looking for those bridges that we have with people.
Darrell Bock:
Yep. That's good. I'm tempting to go in a place, but I'm going to avoid the temptation because it'll knock us off course. Let's talk about the second one. What's the second principle that you said your dad had?
David Geisler:
That faith and reason are more compatible than most Christians realize. And here's what my father taught me: that I can trust God for the things I don't know because of what he's revealed to me that I do know. And-
Darrell Bock:
This is actually his pushback against any anti-intellectualism in the church. Is that right?
David Geisler:
Yes. And showing how faith and reason can be more compatible, that we can still trust God for the things we don't know because of what He's revealed to us that we do know. For example, we can know from reason alone, Romans one says that God exists, but we can't know from reason alone that God is a triune God, that He's a trinity. And that's where we take a step of faith. And so we need both general revelation and special revelation. If you and I are going to be Christians who can really communicate well in our culture.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Everything about the way your dad pursued learning about philosophy and depth is a reflection, I think, of that commitment. He wanted to understand the way in which… Both positively and negatively, by the way. Not just what we got right, but some of the things we've dealt with that steer us off course, and understanding where that comes from and what the impact and effect of that is. It's one of the advantages of doing some good, solid, historical philosophical work is the ability to spot those moves when they're made. And this is a passage several people quote, but I remember your dad in particular quoting, "We take every thought captive for Christ." And that was another principle that I think he would have shared regularly with students. Okay, so let's go to the third one. What's the third one?
David Geisler:
The third one is there's an appropriate way to use apologetics in a witness to others. And this is my specialty, actually. I wrote a book with my father called Conversational Evangelism where I just applied everything he taught me about apologetics and I applied it to the area of witnessing. And that's what I've been doing for many, many years. My father would say it this way. One of the first things he taught me is you don't go to war with a pea shooter but you don't go to target practice with a bazooka. Find what's the appropriate apologetic approach.
I have a new skeptical scholarly friend in the last few years, and after reading his book, I didn't argue with him, I actually sat and wept for him, I cried. And then I told him, I said, "Just want you to know that I don't think there's anything in your book that would keep you from trusting Christ. And I just want you to know I just sat and wept for you for about 10 minutes." See, and I think we have to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit when to push forward and use all these great apologetic tools that my father and others have developed and be sensitive to know is there a moment that we can communicate something even more important than just a specific point that we're trying to make about the Christian faith?
Darrell Bock:
Okay, now you've now gone into a space that I think is so important for the church, I can hardly emphasize it enough, and that is that your engagement with people who are not a part of the church isn't just an intellectual exercise, it's a relational exercise. And that sometimes we err because we have all this stuff we want to communicate to people, but we don't necessarily give care to how we communicate it in the way in which we say it. Whether we've done any preparation to help the person be receptive for the kind of thing that we're going to say.
I often talk about when you're first getting to know someone, your first assignment is to get what I call a spiritual GPS reading on them. How do they think in the spiritual realm? What are their values? What brought them there? Just let them tell their story. And you put your doctrinal meter on mute. You don't turn it off because you can't, but you put it on mute and you just let them tell their story, which actually opens up in relationally the opportunity for them to do the same with you down the road, so that's one of the benefits.
And the other benefit is you might find out, one, what their perception of Christianity is, two, if there are any impediments to that understanding that they get in the way or that drive the way they're thinking about Christianity, et cetera. Again, another thing I'll say regularly is if someone is never darkened the door of a church, then their definition of Christianity is coming from one of two places, or a combination: that is the Christians that they know and/or what they've heard in the culture about Christianity. How many of you want the definition of Christianity to be either of those two things?
David Geisler:
Yes. When you said all that, it reminded me of John 16:12. Remember when Jesus was speaking to his disciples at the end of his life and he said something like this to them. He said, "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now."
And the problem, Darrell, is we live in a world in which there are many things that we want to say to our non-believing friends today about Jesus, but unfortunately there's only so much they can actually hear so we need to be sensitive to how we use apologetics. This is an art, and unfortunately, most of the apologist that I know aren't as sensitive in this area. And this is one area that I'm trying to help the body of Christ. I'm trying to help these apologist learn to be a little more sensitive of how they use apologetics, and especially since their primary barrier is not intellectual. The scripture is very clear. Ephesians 4:18, Jeremiah 17:9, First Corinthians 2:14. Ephesians 4:4 says, "The God of this world has blinded their minds." Ephesians 4:18 says, "They're ignorant because of their hardness of heart." If that's the case, then if intellectual barriers are never the primary barrier, then we should be sensitive, more sensitive to how we're using apologetics. And don't whack people over the head with it but use it to remove a barrier so that we can allow the Holy Spirit to begin to penetrate their heart.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Again, I came to the Lord out of an agnosticism so I remember what it is to think as an unbeliever. And the intellectual ojections, I think, are a shield to either the emotional or will issues that really get in the way of embracing the gospel.
And so that actually is an important observation, that connecting to the person at a level in which you build some sense of trust for what you're going to say. And this actually introduces my definition of apologetics. This will sound strange perhaps, but my definition of apologetics, because we tend to think of it as the defense of the faith, but it also has this element: it's creating categories for people that they currently don't have.
David Geisler:
Oh, I like that.
Darrell Bock:
Another way I like to say it is when you talk to an atheist or an agnostic and you say, "The Bible says," or, "God says," you need to recognize they have problems with both the words in that sentence. You aren't communicating anything yet because you're on such different plains in terms of how you're evaluating what's in front of you. Now your job is to say, "How can I create a category for them or at least that opens up towards a category that they currently don't have so that they'll consider it when you say, "The Bible says," or, "God says"? How does that work?
David Geisler:
Yes. I say it this way: how can my heart accept what my mind rejects?
Darrell Bock:
Yep. Fair enough.
David Geisler:
And you have to be sensitive to removing those intellectual barriers that people have. One of the things my father taught me and I use a lot is this: that if you can believe the big miracles, you can believe the little miracles. If you can believe that there's good evidence that there's an intelligent designer who created the universe and He created the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing. If He could do that miracle, Jesus miracles are not a big deal.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, and I like to joke in light of the James Webb telescope and stuff like that, and that miracle gets bigger all the time. The more we understand how vast the creation is, the orderliness of it, the complexity of it, whether I'm thinking macro in terms of the totality of the universe or micro, what goes into making DNA work or something like that, and you sit there and say, "That all happened by accident? Probably not."
David Geisler:
And this is how I combine apologetics and evangelism in a book, Conversational Evangelism. We talk about the five planks. The five planks are I'm accountable. See, if there is a God, then we're accountable in some way. You can't deny that. I'm accountable, I can't measure up, I'm a sinner, I need an outside source for help, and I need what only Jesus can give. And if we can help people to understand here's an evangelism element, but then put the apologetics at the very front so that people will understand there's evidence for intelligent creator, and it just makes our gospel presentation a little easier for people to swallow.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, yeah. And another version of the same argument is the idea if God can raise someone from the dead, then that tells you he's got control over life. And life's pretty important to me given that I'm mortal. That's another way into the same space.
This is fun. Let's talk about First Peter three for a second because this is a core passage that comes up regularly in apologetics. I tell people I don't know of a memory or a system that doesn't have this verse in it somewhere, that, "Set Christ apart as Lord in your hearts and be prepared to give a defense for the hope that is in you." And then the ending part, which some people don't quote when they quote the verse, is, "Yet with gentleness and respect," or gentleness and fear.
I want to talk about three parts of that passage, the apologetics part to start off with. The idea that Peter, when he has to summarize what our faith is about, parks on the word hope. That's the one word that he chooses, which I think is extremely significant. And then last, the tonal part of how we're engagement, which oftentimes gets ignored. Let's start with the first one, apologetics. What do you know about that word?
David Geisler:
Well that comes from the great word apologia, which means to give a defense or reply. It's what a lawyer would do in the courtroom, he would defend his client. And that's what we want to do. But I want to go beyond that because most people get afraid of that word and so they don't do anything. I think the command… It's an imperative. I think the command is more than just when people ask us questions we are to give answers, we're to remove barriers whether people ask us questions or not because that's what the apostle Paul did in Acts 17 at the Acropolis. He didn't wait for them to ask him questions, he removed barriers whether they asked him a question or not.
And I think sometimes the devil wants us to think that apologetics is answering questions that people ask us so then we can say, "Nobody's asking me questions. I don't even need to have answers." But then if you don't have answers, how can you have hope? How can you provide hope for people? Because if there's no one right answer, Darrell, how can there be any hope?
My father taught me this principle: A point in every direction is no point at all. If you embrace everything, you stand for what? Nothing. Pluralism cannot be true. We have hope because there is an answer. There's an answer for our sin problem, there's an answer for the transformation problem because the Bible teaches in Romans 8:11 that that same power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to me so I can be a better father to my children, better husband to my wife, and a better spiritual leader in my home. It's a transformation issue that we need to help people to understand, it's not just He's forgiven us of our sins and so we have a ticket to heaven. He wants to transform our lives and He wants to do it now and not wait till we get to heaven.
Darrell Bock:
Yep. And going back to your observation about it isn't just waiting till you get asked, I tell people if they will pay attention to the testimonies coming from people who didn't grow up in a Christian home, they will hear something consistently that they need to ponder. And it's this: that somewhere in that testimony there will be the observation that goes, "I met this person," whoever it is, "a Christian whose life was very different than the way I was living. And it made me curious. It opened me up to thinking about the things of God." Someone they worked with, a neighbor that they had, or whatever. And so it was this experiential relational connection that opened the door.
Remember, we said apologetics was creating categories where they currently don't exist. Well, the first thing you got to do is get person to be open to categories they currently don't have. And that dimension of the testimony opens that up so that how we conduct ourselves and even how we interact with people about our faith, whether they're engaged with us on the particular issue or they're just watching us from a distance, makes a lot of difference in terms of opening up the possibility of considering who Christ is.
David Geisler:
I think my skeptical friend was surprised that I cried for him. And I think that that was a powerful apologetic in his life.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I've heard numerous cases where a person's response to something is, "Well, can I pray for you?" Prayer isn't a normal part of their life, so they're going… But they understand that that's… You just committed to intercede on my behalf, and they connect to that. There are these dimensions of engagement, don't have anything to do with intellectual arguments of apologetics but have everything to do with opening people up so that they'll consider what it is that's being discussed.
David Geisler:
Exactly. And that's why there's a distinction between belief that and belief in. And we know it's the Holy Spirit that has to work on helping them to believe in Christ because the evidence alone won't do it.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. The example of belief that versus belief in that immediately popped in my mind is what James says about the devil. The devil believes that God is one, but he doesn't believe the God who's behind it. He doesn't have that faith commitment, that trust and who that one is. Let's shift gears. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm sorry.
David Geisler:
I was going to say an illustration I used to explain this, I said when I married my wife, Charlene, I believe that she would make a great wife based on the evidence. I would've never married her unless there was great evidence. But the evidence of why I thought she would make a great wife never forced me to say, "I do," to her. That was a decision of my will.
In a similar way, that's what happens when we trust Christ. The evidence for Christianity doesn't force us to invite Christ to come in to be a Lord of our life. My father would say it this way. In fact, in the movie he talks about this, that basically when you put your faith in something, you want to look and make sure there's an elevator. If you walk in an elevator, make sure that there is a floor there before you walk in an elevator
Darrell Bock:
Better be a button to push. Let's talk about hope for a second. Let me frame it this way: I really think that sometimes the church doesn't take the gospel as being good news seriously enough. And here's what I mean: We're so committed. And there's a reason for this. We're so committed to making people understand their need and their sin that we forget the other half of the gospel message, which is there's a challenge on the one hand. This is why the cross was necessary, because of your sin. But the other half of the cross is the life that's offered and the relationship that's offered on the other side. And the good news isn't merely that your sins are forgiven, the good news is the relationship you get to walk into. And Peter uses the word hope to make sure that the emphasis is on the right syllable, if I could say it that way.
David Geisler:
Yes. Yes. And First John 3:2 says that when we see Him, what? We will be like Him, that once we make that commitment to Him, every day we take that step further to be more like Christ. Remember that old commercial? I could have had a V8. It's like when we see Jesus, we're going to say, "Ah, this is what I should have been all along."
Darrell Bock:
I could have had a savior.
David Geisler:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Interesting. I just think we underestimate in the way we communicate whether the challenge and the sin and the problem is prominent or whether the hope and the abundant life offer is prominent. And I think if we don't take people to the landing place in when we share, we risk cutting short or making the gospel too small.
David Geisler:
Right. Yes, I totally agree with you, that we need to help people to see. It's just not a matter of Christ forgiving you, positionally your sin, but He wants to make that transformation in your life and give you a hope and a future. A lot of people right now, especially during COVID, that feel very hopeless.
Darrell Bock:
That's exactly right. Yeah. And the abundant life that's on offer from John 10 tends not to be in view. Okay, let's turn to the last piece here, which is the tone piece directly, the concept of meekness and fear or meekness and respect. You did a nice job in a little piece that you sent me in preparation for this of talking about those two terms, [inaudible 00:41:28]. Tell us about those two terms.
David Geisler:
Yeah, well, if I can remember offhand, meekness is more than just gentleness, meekness is an inner disposition. We're not trying to assert ourselves… Well, we're not trying to win brownie points with the Lord.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, there's a humility wrapped up in it.
David Geisler:
Yes. Yeah, very much so. I like the word fear rather than respect because someday, Darrell, I'm going to get to heaven and God's going to say, "David, you had been discipled by these men in your life, including your father. What did you do with that? Did you pass it on? Did you make a difference?" And so I see my life in terms of that someday I'm going to be accountable to God for what I do in my life.
And I think we need to keep that in our mind daily, that we are responsible, Darrell, as Christians. I get so tired of hearing all these stories of Christian men who are failing their congregations. It's mind blowing. We shouldn't even be hearing these kinds of stories.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. This is a little, little, little pushback. And the reason I like respect is because in this particular case, I'm not talking about my relationship to God, I'm talking about relationship and the way I'm interacting with other people. I'm not accountable to another person in the way I'm accountable to God. But I think this word is important. Well, let me say it this way: Sometimes in language, a word is used, and in English we make a differentiation when really there are two elements combined together. And that's the way I think of this term. The reason I respect someone when I'm engaging with them, even if they're coming from a completely different point of view, is I'm respecting the fact that they're made in the image of God and I'm respecting the fact that God has me in this conversation or has me relationally connected to this person because I'm called to love them and I'm called to respect the way in which God has made them.
David Geisler:
Yeah, I like that. It's very-
Darrell Bock:
And so that's your step towards somebody, if I can say it that way. And that's important because sometimes tonally we can be right but say it in the wrong way or in the wrong spirit or with the wrong edge. And actually, what we're doing is we're not drawing the person towards what we're getting to think about, we've actually pushed them away by the way that we've done it.
David Geisler:
It's so true, it is so true. And if we would just think about these things on a daily basis when we talk about how we're using apologetics, I think we would make a lot more progress.
Darrell Bock:
Well, I want to thank you. Our time is gone. I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us and to dive into this initial foray into apologetics and think about what apologetics is and the legacy of your dad. Like I said, he was a former colleague of mine for years and had a impact in many organizations and really helped put apologetics in an important way on the map for evangelicals. And to be able to sit and converse with you both about that legacy and your own work in… And what strikes me about your work and talking to you is this tonal piece that you have put your hands around is an important part because the tendency can be in apologetics to not be so tonally sensitive. I really appreciate that about what you've shared.
David Geisler:
Well, thank you. Well, thank you for having me on.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah. And we thank you for being a part of The Table and joining us. Hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to see other episodes of The Table, you can do that at voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast. We have a whole array of episodes on a whole array of topics because at The Table, we discuss issues of God and culture. And in the back of my head, I'm thinking that means we discuss anything and everything. We hope you'll join us again soon.
Bill Hendricks:
Welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center, and I want to introduce my co-host, Kasey Olander.
Kasey Olander:
Yes, I'm the web content specialist at the Hendricks Center.
Bill Hendricks:
In Matthew 28, we have what has been called the Great Commission, which most all of us are probably very familiar with. The Lord told us to go and make disciples of all the nations, all the people groups. And many folks down through the years have interpreted that to mean that we need to go, meaning we need to physically travel to distant places, encounter different cultures in order to begin the process of creating Christ followers, which is absolutely needed.
But we have a unusual dynamic that has come about just really in the last generation or two, where we have vast numbers of people from different cultures coming certainly to the United States and to Europe. It certainly takes place elsewhere in the world, but we have many people who are not native North Americans or Europeans, but they're coming to those regions to study, to do business. There's no end of diasporas of different people, groups taking place, Chinese, Spanish, many Africans. This is a global phenomenon.
There's the whole phenomenon of refugees, and this has tremendous impact on our understanding of the Great Commission because when we say go, there's a sense in which we no longer have to go. The world is coming to our doorstep if we live in North America or Europe, and that means we have an opportunity to have a global ministry without even leaving our city in many cases.
And that's what we want to consider today. And to help us with that, we've got Sundeep and Pranutha Malickal, who are with International Students Incorporated. And Sundeep is the Campus Minister with ISI and a DTS grad, DTHM degree. And Pranutha, you're working in our IT department here at DTS-
Pranutha Malickal:
That's correct.
Bill Hendricks:
… as the Senior Systems Administrator and also working on your PhD up at University of Texas at Dallas where you all are with ISI.
Pranutha Malickal:
That's true.
Bill Hendricks:
Thank you for being with us today.
Sundeep Malickal:
Absolutely.
Pranutha Malickal:
Thank you.
Sundeep Malickal:
It's our pleasure.
Bill Hendricks:
And we get a bonus guest who's also a co-host because in fact, Kasey, you're doing work in international work yourself, right? Through BSM. Tell us about that.
Kasey Olander:
Yes, the Baptist Student Ministry, especially at UT Dallas, has lots of international students. I think it's the highest number in Texas as far as different, like you said, different countries represented. So there's Indian students, Chinese students. I'm sure will get into it, but it's been an awesome opportunity to work with not just the students who are from Dallas or even from Texas but also, like you said, the nations are coming here.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and that was actually I think part of how you got into this work. I think you told me a little while ago that when you first came to DTS, the library was closed and you ended up at UTD and you looked around and said, "Wait a minute, there's all these Indians." Tell us more about that.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah, so it was a Sunday. DTS library was closed obviously, and I was with my dear friend of mine, and we wanted to go to some other library, and we ended up in UTD. And as soon as I entered, that was the first time I entered UTD, and I saw that so many Indian faces like, "Oh, sorry, wait a minute, am I in India?" And that's actually started the whole thing. And I just started to talk with the students over there, and it was a natural thing for me to just then go every time to the campus over there.
Bill Hendricks:
You all had a real advantage. You didn't have to, in a sense, cross cultures. It was more like, "Oh my gosh, I'm home."
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes, yes. We're reaching to our own culture. They were all many, many Indian students. And the moment they see us, they want to be home because they're away from their home. They're homesick and they're alone here. And they definitely wanted to be with us and have that fellowship and friendship and spend time with us. That was so natural.
Kasey Olander:
Yes. An easy way to connect with people.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes, yes.
Sundeep Malickal:
Absolutely.
Pranutha Malickal:
We were able to connect.
Kasey Olander:
Yes. So, how did you get involved with International Students Incorporated?
Pranutha Malickal:
It was actually with that, how it started, and maybe you want to start your journey?
Sundeep Malickal:
That was actually a fun story because I had taken a DTS course on World Missions, WM101, and we had an assignment on international friendship. And the assignment was such that you had to have meet some people who you need to meet and talk and understand the culture, so it cannot be North American, and it cannot be from your culture. And so, I'm here in the US just a month, I have no car, I have nothing. Where will I find?
And so, I didn't know what to do and that's how I got connected with ISI Ministry. Somebody took me to a home group and these were all Chinese scholars from UTD, so I went to the foster home group on a Friday night, and we both went with our kids, and it was an assignment where I really got to meet some people. In fact, I got a friend who's Chinese, and he was a professor from China and came here as a research scholar, and our friendship developed beyond that assignment and beyond that semester. And we actually got into… We never thought that-
Pranutha Malickal:
He came as a family, and his kids were friends with our kids, and it was good.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah. From then, our association with ISI started, and then I came to know that, "Hey, they're having a bigger ministry in UTD campus," and I mentioned I went to the library and all of that stuff. So, that's how it was.
Bill Hendricks:
And just to clarify, the history of ISI, International Students Incorporated, goes back into what, the 1950s, '60s?
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah, it's quite very old here. Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. I mean, the founder really had a vision way back then for international students coming to the United States and realizing what a great opportunity this was to engage people. As you say, they're out of their normal context and that little bit of disequilibrium at least opens their awareness or interest in, if nothing else, in a friendly face and somebody who-
Pranutha Malickal:
Correct.
Bill Hendricks:
… makes them feel welcome.
Sundeep Malickal:
Absolutely, yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah, I mean, especially for the fact that now the situations that India are pretty closed, this gives us an opportunity to actually witness the Christ love in us. So, whenever we approach students, mostly it's because we love Christ. We want to show that Christ love to them. And therefore, we develop that friendships and the relationships with them, which is genuine friendships are not with any secret agenda or anything. That's how we wanted to keep our friendships all about. And then, this is a huge opportunity for us to reach out to the students.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yup. As she mentioned over there, so don't see this as a tool to reach Christ. What we have seen and learned is because what Christ has done in our life, we just simply serve them and be authentic and just open up our lives to them. And so it's a very, very, very authentic and very natural relationship. We don't have any, as you mentioned, we don't have any agenda.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Sundeep Malickal:
Of course, that which is very close to our own heart, what we believe to be true and good, we wish it for everybody else. And so that's the message of love of Jesus Christ. But our friendships are genuine, our friendships are authentic and just be real and being real with them.
Pranutha Malickal:
We want to invite them to our homes, and we want to share them our love and share our lives. And we want them to see what Christ has done in our lives, how we enjoy that joy in our lives, and we want them to see it and witness it, and we invite them to our homes. That's because we want them to be with us.
Bill Hendricks:
So it sounds like first and foremost, it's a posture of hospitality.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
We want to welcome people into our home and into our lives. And having come there obviously because you're Christ followers, I think the New Testament describes it as they smell a certain aroma of Jesus.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah, definitely. In our conversations, over the period of time, they would definitely ask. Very simple. For example, we don't do something which we would not otherwise do in our family. For example, when we are all here, "Hey, it's our tradition, it's our custom to pray before we have the meal. So, would you like to join us?" Obviously, nobody says no and we pray together. And they understand, "Oh yeah, okay, so this is how you do it." And then, there will be some conversations which they may ask on this matter and then we have an opportunity to just tell it out to them.
Bill Hendricks:
That's great.
Sundeep Malickal:
So yeah, we don't do anything, which we don't do it kind of thing. What's just being natural, what we do in our house.
Pranutha Malickal:
Our children are very good conversation starters. I have two girls. They're fun to be with. Once it happened that we had these few girls, we invited them home, and then we're having good food. I made good South Indian food, and we are just having a good time having food. And then, my younger one, she was then six, so she was saying that, "I have a newborn cousin," and she was telling so excitedly telling about her cousin.
And there were some discussion that came up, and she said that she's a sinner. So, all the girls saw the six-year-old using a big word saying that she's a sinner. And then again, she said that, "Even my newborn cousin is a sinner." And that caught the attention. So, all these girls are now very much interested to find out why she said that. Sundeep actually took that opportunity.
We didn't want to do anything preaching over there, but he just kept asking her questions like, "Why do you think you are a sinner? What made it? So, how can you be saved?" It's just simple questions. And this little girl, over the top, she was just answering all that. No filters. She's just telling about how Christ love and how Christ saved her. And that made those girls to think that if the little girl could say that she is a sinner, then how much they will need Christ. So, things like that. We would just open the conversations and then we would ask them.
Kasey Olander:
That's awesome. I love that your whole family is involved.
Sundeep Malickal:
It is. In fact, yeah, it's a whole family thing. I would've not done, although you mentioned my title is campus minister, but it's actually the entire family who is part of it, yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. It sounds like you're doing several things. You're creating a place for people to feel welcome and helping them to feel comfortable in addition to just living the Christian life in front of them.
Sundeep Malickal:
In fact, so we see our home as the place where it all takes place. The home is where everything is. They're coming to our houses, so we all are there, my children are there, and so everything is there and then it's in front of them.
Bill Hendricks:
You mentioned the food part, and I love the cook, so I have to ask this question. So you're Indian, and let's say you had Chinese folks over. The question becomes, what's going to be the menu? Are you going to cook Indian food for these Chinese folks? Are you going to attempt to do Chinese food so they feel comfortable? Or are you going to say, "Hey, we're in Texas, we're going to grill out"?
Pranutha Malickal:
Usually, in our home groups, we will have this mixed crowd. Any student from any background, they would come in. But what we usually try to understand is that when the students sign up that they want to come in, we would like to know their preference of the food. So based on that preference, we would make multiple items over there that at least they should not go back hungry. That's the goal, that they should have something to eat. There's some comfort food of their culture that they can easily go without asking any questions. But if we are inviting them home, we usually invite students in a smaller groups because we wanted to spend time with them, talk to them, have a-
Bill Hendricks:
Get some conversation-
Pranutha Malickal:
… yeah, fellowship with them. So therefore, we want to invite the smaller groups. So, when we are inviting the smaller groups, we know exactly what their preferences are. And when we talk about India, it's not just one culture.
Bill Hendricks:
No.
Pranutha Malickal:
It's so much of-
Bill Hendricks:
A lot.
Pranutha Malickal:
… subcultures that are there. Even in that, also we would make sure if they're from South Indian or North Indian or the ones who would not touch anything of meat, then we make sure that it is even cooked in that style, so that they're comfortable, and they are accepted in our culture. So, that's how we take care. We try to take care. And then, we intentionally work towards showing that love of Christ to them.
Sundeep Malickal:
Food is a great conversation opener. We have some foods which will be new to them, but we first need to know, "Hey, what are the kinds of food you prefer eating?" And all of that stuff, but the best part of India is that if you know what they eat and their preferences, we can make different things, mix and match and make a lot of things. And it's basically good conversation starter where they ask about this, and we have an opportunity to ask to them about, "Hey, tell me something about what do you do with this? If you get these ingredients, how do you prepare this particular thing?" And that's…
Kasey Olander:
Mm-hmm. It sounds like the name of the game is flexibility. I think of the Baptist Student Ministry, in BSM, and UT Dallas has vegetarian options. If they're going to provide a free lunch, they have non-veg options and different opportunities for, like you said, you never know who's walking in the door, and you want people to feel comfortable.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah. And food is definitely an important part of… If you want students to come after their busy week, food plays a major role.
Sundeep Malickal:
Exactly.
Pranutha Malickal:
You'd really want to come.
Bill Hendricks:
The Italians have a saying, "I cannot know you until I have dined with you," and I love that. Food does have a way of bringing people together, which is of course a large part of why the Lord instituted the Lord Supper. It's a unifying thing.
Sundeep Malickal:
I always see whenever the Lord met these disciples, he always had that. Have you a fish?
Bill Hendricks:
Well, you mentioned flexibility. It also sounds like in welcoming people from different cultures into one's home, you have to give it a bit of forethought about what culture are these folks coming from, and I assume do a little bit of background research to the extent that you can to understand where are these folks coming from?
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes, that is very important. Mostly our mission is mostly oriented towards South Asian, but again, South Asians is a very big diverse thing. Even India for that matter, we just-
Bill Hendricks:
Oh, yeah.
Sundeep Malickal:
… cannot put India in one box because there are several cultures. We have 2,500 people groups within India itself, so-
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah, definitely.
Bill Hendricks:
They are very different in the north and the south.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes, very much. A small example, when I met her for the first time, guess what was her common language? It was English because I didn't know to speak her language, which is Telugu, and she didn't know my language, it's Malayalam, and so English became our language in the family.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Sundeep Malickal:
There's a lot. That's the way we're just different. Cuisines are different, food is different, everything is different. Yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And also, talking over the subculture and to be aware of this culture, before assuming something about the culture, we need to know what their assumptions are. We had this interesting thing. It's one of our home group. We have our elderly couple from our church who ministers along with us to the international students.
During the food, those younger students were having conversation with him, and he mentioned his age. In India, with age, there's a respect that is so much attached to it. So what happens after the photos is done, we called everyone for games. Immediately, the student got up and gave hand to him, whereas he wasn't expecting that. I mean, he felt little like, "I didn't ask for the help, I can do it myself." But in his context, it was a respect, giving that respect.
Bill Hendricks:
It's courtesy.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes, giving that hand. And whereas, this couple took it like, "No, I'm not in need of a help." So, there's this difference before we assume something from the other culture, what are their assumptions are about?
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
That's a great point.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes.
Kasey Olander:
I was a college student on a mission trip one time in Canada, and we're from Texas so we all said "yes, ma'am" and "yes, sir." And one of the women found that offensive. Ma'am was like, "I'm old enough to be a ma'am? Excuse me." You're talking about here something is respectful and somewhere else it might be-
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
… disrespect.
Sundeep Malickal:
That's so true. And also, always good to know what does that symbol or that… Best thing is to detach any symbols or things, which we have attached to a particular assumption. Another example would be like here it's very common, that when you meet people you hug an opposite sex and all. But in certain cultures, especially eastern cultures, that may not be very common.
Bill Hendricks:
Appropriate.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah. And in the other way, it's very common. People if they're friends with same sex, you can hold hands and you hug each and go, that's very common there. But if that is important here, it's a different-
Bill Hendricks:
It means we're very different?
Sundeep Malickal:
… location. So, yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Do you ever run into situations culturally where, I don't know if ISI has single women that want to host groups of students in their home, are there challenges with, "Oh, single men from a certain culture might feel uncomfortable coming to a single woman's house?"
Sundeep Malickal:
It's sort of thing. We do have something called the Friendship Partner Program, where we match people, those international students with person local over here. So, if it's a single and single person, we were very careful that it would be the same gender. But if it's a large group, it doesn't much matter because it's a bigger group.
Pranutha Malickal:
I think the other aspect of your question is that when the international students comes, boys I think would not mind, they would go whoever invites, they will go out. But whereas coming to the girls, they are very careful about who they are getting into.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Pranutha Malickal:
Sometimes I get calls from their parents to make sure that they're going into the right home.
Bill Hendricks:
Sure.
Pranutha Malickal:
Even if we invite them home, they would want to know who-
Bill Hendricks:
They're looking out for their daughter.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes, yes. So they're kind of like a trust that needs to be developed. With girls, that's what we have noticed, especially with the girls, when they have to come to our home or come with us. Whereas with the boys, whoever is single women or single men, whoever invites them, they would usually go out. They're fine with it. So yeah, that's the only thing that we would take care, but I've spoken with many parents.
Kasey Olander:
So we've talked about food, we've talked about male-female relationships and about physical touch and things like that. Are there other general areas to keep in mind about what assumptions we should not make? Just categories for things that other cultures might have a different view of?
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah, I have seen that. Although cultures look very different, they are not too different. What happens is that, for example, there are general concepts, for example, love or caring for each other, all these are universal I guess, but it may manifest in a very different form. For example, over here I've seen as children grow, when they are of a particular age, the parents are… the children are allowed, they're given out independence so they don't… That's out of love and concern. That's a good virtue here. But at the same time, for example in eastern culture, wherever the children are there, the parents will move with them, that kind of thing. So two opposite things-
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Sundeep Malickal:
… but the intent or the motive, I see, is that universally it's the same thing, but it manifests differently.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
So, would you say that asking questions is a good way to avoid making assumptions about someone does or doesn't?
Sundeep Malickal:
I think that is really good to ask. The thing is, sometimes when we are so focused on ministry that we are immediately going to the helping mode, and sometimes that's a trouble. We have learned this that it's always good to, before how can I help? how can I learn from you, guys? When I learn something then, I can put it into practice.
Again, for example, we had an Indian fellowship with few friends, and we were supposed to restart on an afternoon for lunch and I was on my way. And I got a call from a student that they got into an accident, so I just had to change and go there and take care of all of that. It was around 3:30 in the afternoon, and we said that, "Hey, we have to cancel. We cannot come, so you guys proceed." And he said, "No, no, whatever time it is, you will come, you'll just come." And then, okay. So anyway, we came and then when we went there, they were all waiting for us to even start the lunch. And that they did not have the lunch because that's the part of their culture, that's the part that they show their culture.
But we had the same experience with another culture. And what they said was, "Hey, sorry. Please take your time, and we can meet later on."
Bill Hendricks:
Reschedule.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah, reschedule it, but they were caring enough that what they did was that they sent food to us through Uber Eat. So that's a different way of-
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Kasey Olander:
Oh.
Sundeep Malickal:
… doing it.
Bill Hendricks:
Interesting.
Kasey Olander:
Yes.
Sundeep Malickal:
So, I don't see wrong or right.
Bill Hendricks:
It's different.
Sundeep Malickal:
One culture operates in a different way. One operates in another way. Both were doing their best.
Kasey Olander:
That's great. I love that. Be a learner before you're a helper.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
And I guess in some situations, just because somebody is in need doesn't necessarily mean they want your help.
Pranutha Malickal:
Mm-hmm.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes.
Sundeep Malickal:
That's true. Yeah, that's true. The example which she gave you is such-
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah. But offering the hand doesn't mean… That's a help. And also, talking about that subcultures not to classify them or put them into categories because too funny experiences is, because we come from India, they would assume like, "Do you eat beef?" Because India is a whole huge country, and there are different parts and different food. It's not just one blanket. The funny thing is that in our home itself and the different generations how the culture kind of changes.
My older one and my younger one, there's five years apart. And at the table dining table, my younger one goes, in the school they're having this discussion that her friend asked her like, "Hey, can you speak Indian?" And then she goes, "Yeah, I can speak Indian." She's proud. She was like, "Okay, can you say a sentence?" And then, she goes that, "[foreign language 00:27:46], Abigail." And then, my older one goes, "There is nothing called as Indian language. What you just said is a Hindi language." It's like the understanding about that just in the same home, even though she's exposed to the different things, the understanding. When students also come in, they might be from the same country, but they're-
Bill Hendricks:
Not the same culture.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes, totally different in how they respond to the things and how they eat and how they take the responses. Yeah, it's different.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that's a really good point for particularly Americans to hear. Europeans still have different sort of cultural distinctions. But here in America, it's such a melting pot as we call it, where people generally start to learn to speak English, and they start to adopt so-called American ways. And more and more cultural distinctions are being held onto more, but it's still just a very relatively more homogeneous culture. It's easy to forget many countries around the world. There may be boundaries, like somebody drew a bunch of lines, but these are very, very different people groups within all those lines.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yup. That's so true. For example, the moment we say India, first we talk about marriage, they say, "Oh, yeah. So, you all have arranged marriage still? How it was?"
Bill Hendricks:
Correct.
Sundeep Malickal:
No, oh yeah, that largely takes place. But especially in the cities, in the urban cultures, those things are changing dynamics. I knew my wife. I dated her before marriage. I knew her well before… As you said, asking is good rather than immediately telling this in a statement.
Kasey Olander:
If I know one person from a country, I don't know everyone in that country.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
I suppose you have an added dynamic. You mentioned that so many of the students that come to study in the States, these folks are at the graduate and doctoral levels, and they're future leaders back in their countries. And it's been my experience that with more education, and particularly if they're working with a corporation or something, a lot of those cultural distinctions have taken a backseat to what they have to deal with at a global international level. And while they don't dismiss those things, those things at the same time don't have quite the same hold on them that they might if they were in country, in culture, and particularly uneducated.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, for sure when they come over here, their perspective about the things change and their understanding about the things change. And then, we have seen that this understanding would impact back to their families. And as I mentioned earlier, that how I get to speak to their families, to their parents. And they would be so thankful to us that we're actually taking care of their children. And then, even though we want to share the love and Christ love to them, but at least that understanding in India about the Christianity or the missionaries or they're only concerned about whatever the conversions that are there. It's not that. It is actually our life shows the love of Christ.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Pranutha Malickal:
And we want them to know that it is love of Christ why we are doing it, nothing else. And when that message is passed back to their homes, their understanding and their perspective of looking at Christians kind of changes and softens. So, that's what we are saying it's so amazing how Christ can work between just few friendships, how he can actually work.
Kasey Olander:
Right.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah. Definitely, yes. You mentioned when they come over here, they are here to explore. And so, they want to learn, they want to see to understand, which definitely back in their own homes, there is a limit on it. It's not possible to do many things. But over here, they come here, they explore. Just for example, last week, we took a bunch of students to NASA Houston.
Bill Hendricks:
Oh, wow.
Sundeep Malickal:
It's called a Space Weekend. We had-
Bill Hendricks:
Fun.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah, we had a stay overnight, and so we went to the NASA facility and everything. And it was also an opportunity for them to see other things, like for example, the next day we invited all of them to attend a local church. And so, many of them attended that for the first time, and they had a lot of question because they also had, so when we as international students come, we have some assumptions.
Over the lunch, they're asking me, "Oh, I was thinking that a church is like this or something else, but this is a little different. Tell us about this thing or…" So, they're happy to engage in you. In fact, when they come over here, it opens up a world for them to explore or learn.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
So, it's a really strategic opportunity, not just for the student that you're actually interacting with but also for their family and also-
Sundeep Malickal:
Oh, yes.
Kasey Olander:
Yes.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes.
Sundeep Malickal:
All of them have very strong connections back home. It works in ways we may not really realize here right now. How does it work? Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Mm-hmm.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah. Even in our home group, when we meet some Fridays in a month, it's not just we who would be there to interact with the students. Our whole church is actually behind us supporting it because they also love want to reach out to this international students. So they help with cooking, getting the meal ready for them, and all these international students do not have their own transportation. Around 50 students, if you have to get them to the home group, we need so many cars and so many drivers. So even though they won't stay for the whole thing, they would just pick up the student and drop them and then again pick them back up.
Bill Hendricks:
But it's another touch.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes, yes. And then, they have the relation. We encourage, "Meet up these guys later," because they have their other needs, like going to the groceries. I'm so glad that there are other people who meet up with these four or five students regularly, and there are a lot of conversations that takes place. And it's a great opportunity actually to minister actually, to serve the love of Christ in various ways, which just opens up naturally.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that's a great bridge to a question I wanted to ask. Let's say, here I am, say me and my wife, I grew up here in Dallas. And Dallas looked a whole lot different when I was a kid. I hate to say it, but we didn't have folks from India living in Dallas at least that I was aware of. Okay. Very homogeneous town. And today, I look around, I see all these different groups and at times it's a little scary. But I listen to this podcast and I go, "Huh, I never thought about it. I actually could do global ministry right here in Dallas."
So tell me, how would I get started in that? I'm not quite ready to… I don't even know any internationals. I'm not ready to have a bunch of people in my home, but what would be some first steps that I could take? And then, maybe when we've talked about that a little bit, what could a church do that wanted to engage in some of these things? So would I and my wife get started?
Sundeep Malickal:
It's a good question. Actually, I would always encourage to start with an existing relationship. Like for example, in UTD, just to give you an example. We have certain ministries like ISI or BSM. I was just mentioning before we started that, in UTD, it's very unique. We all do the ministry together. We are known as UTD Big Howdy, so any-
Bill Hendricks:
That's a good Texas, man.
Sundeep Malickal:
… yeah, any student who comes, "Do you know UTD Big Howdy?" So, what do we do is that we network with the existing relationship over there. In UTD, there is Indian Students Association, Chinese Students Association. We meet them, ask them, "Hey, how we can help you?" And most of the time, it will be like, "Hey, we need airport pickups. 1500 students are coming this summer, we need help with airport pickups." And we know how this Dallas Public Transport is so…
Bill Hendricks:
Right. Yeah, definitely.
Sundeep Malickal:
So best thing, "Okay, we can do that." And so then, we've reach out to churches who are interested, individuals who are interested, and that becomes the first point of entry. And then, from you pick up a few students from the airport and then, "Hey, okay, let me know if there is any help, you need any grocery to be done, and…" "Oh, yes." "Okay, second Saturday, I'll be available for you." And so, you go help them with the groceries. So, it's just building one step on the other.
Bill Hendricks:
That's correct.
Sundeep Malickal:
I just feel that just visiting the university, that will open up a huge… I mean, that happened to us. I just visited it without any thinking about it, and it naturally started so much of relationships there.
Kasey Olander:
Sure. So, I'm sure for people who aren't local to UT Dallas specifically, they can look up a university in the area or somewhere else.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah. I mean, all universities here attract international students. That's the beauty of it.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah.
Sundeep Malickal:
It's huge, and it's in Texas, especially Texas is I think the number third state that attracts international students.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Sundeep Malickal:
In UTD, there are around, 8000 plus international students. It's a huge number. And there is always ways, and there is always some existing ministry which is already there. And so, I would always encourage them just get in touch with…
Bill Hendricks:
They'll find a place for you.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah, absolutely. We are always in need of volunteers every time. We never say that, "Oh, we are full." No, we are always in need because there's a flow of international students just increasing every semester.
Pranutha Malickal:
And it's not only the airport pickups. There are several opportunities. Now this time, especially with the housing situation going-
Sundeep Malickal:
Oh, yes.
Pranutha Malickal:
… so there's many students who couldn't find an apartment, a place, even for the temporary apartment before they could come in, but they have to come in because their classes are going to start. So they are actually, again, Big Howdy, we reached out to the churches and the homes. There are many people who open their homes for a week or two for the student to be there with them until they find their accommodation. So that's another amazing way that we can reach out to them, to the students. And as churches, how they can be with them. It's such a relief for the parents to know that their children are not somewhere out.
Bill Hendricks:
On their own.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah. That they're well taken care of.
Sundeep Malickal:
Just before the semester started, we had a female student who stayed with us for a week before she got her accommodation finalized then. When somebody stays at your house, that opens up a big relationship because they've become a part and parcel of your family.
Kasey Olander:
Mm-hmm.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah.
Kasey Olander:
Yes. You're meeting practical needs and getting to know one another.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes, yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, and you mentioned the importance of family, so I could also imagine a family who has younger children sort of welcoming a family. They're coming in to study, and they have younger children, and it just seems like a natural connection.
Sundeep Malickal:
Children open up the biggest… There is no boundaries. There are no mental lines or anything.
Pranutha Malickal:
No filters.
Sundeep Malickal:
No filters. Yeah. I think that's the biggest benefit to serve as a family. It's amazing.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah. They're big icebreakers.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
They can do small talk.
Sundeep Malickal:
And you can be as you are, and do what we're doing. You're not doing anything out of the way. You're just being as you are and just, as honoring Christ in your family, you're just doing that.
Kasey Olander:
You don't have to be an expert on every single culture in the world to get started.
Sundeep Malickal:
No, yeah, yes. And we are learning, actually. We are learning, actually. We are not perfect, right? So, we are asking questions to them, and they are asking questions like, "Oh, really, it happens." And they'll ask to us, "This happens?" So there's also a time where we share the vulnerabilities and that's how we actually come closer. It actually works two ways. We think we are ministering, but in a way we are learning a lot, and God is using those experiences.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, when you mentioned children, the thing that comes to my mind is soccer because soccer's played universally and if food is a connection, sports can be another connection for a lot of people as well as music for that matter.
Sundeep Malickal:
Music, yes, yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah. These are different kinds of arts.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Sundeep Malickal:
I saw another pair of thing, talking about certain things, "Hey, what is this thing?" In our place, we have certain things which show certain things and depict certain cultures and they ask, "What does this art piece mean?" So, it's an opportunity. These are things where we can have plenty of conversations.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah. Even in our home, even though we both are from India, but we both are so different in our culture. We have five languages in our home, so we have this mixture. When students come in, it is so interesting for them to know about our culture, and how could these two cultures could meet and how we are getting into one culture now. And our children's culture is completely different to how we grew up, and how they look at the things.
So yeah, it's all learning when they come in. We learn from them, and how they look at the way we do the things. And then, they would ask questions. And it's a good thing that they feel comfortable to ask questions instead of just assuming certain things and go with that idea. And we wanted to cultivate that thing that, if at all there's something that you don't understand, do ask. So, that we both are the same understanding and on the same page.
Kasey Olander:
Yes. It takes a certain level of humility to admit, "Oh, I guess I'm ignorant about this," or "I never thought about anything that way." Are there resources that you would recommend to people, whether books or articles or anything like that?
Sundeep Malickal:
One good book I remember is book by Elmer. I forgot the exact title of that book. It's on culture, actually. The author is Elmer. I really-
Bill Hendricks:
E-L-M-E-R?
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes, it was really, really, really good book to actually understand and engage with cultures and all of that thing. Perspectives is another.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah. Perspectives is a course on basic world missions, right?
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes, yes.
Bill Hendricks:
Who oversees it? Or is it own standard?
Sundeep Malickal:
It's called as Perspectives.
Bill Hendricks:
It's called Perspectives-
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
… at many churches.
Sundeep Malickal:
There's a course, and also there's a good book, actually. In fact-
Bill Hendricks:
The book is excellent.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah, those are really excellent, and they have certain cases and all of that, so that really, really helps. And of course, the website on internationalstudents.org that will definitely have a lot of things on that just to get a brief overview of these things. Yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
I would say not to worry if you really want to reach the next door neighbor who is from a different culture. It just starts with a simple hello to them and just trying to know them with a good question, so eventually you'll get there.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that's absolutely true. The early Christians, I'm not talking about the first three, four centuries, I mean, that really was their strategy, if you want to call it that. In one sense, they didn't have a formalized evangelistic strategy. Their main objective was to worship God and be His distinctive people and live together in community. The way they lived their lives then was noticeable to the surrounding cultures, with whom they had to work and interact and be in community. But it was again, that aroma of Christ, they weren't… I mean, there's a lot of documentation on this, but they were not sitting around thinking, "How are we going to reach our neighbor for Jesus?"
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
They were saying, "How are we going to be God's people for here. God is sovereign. He loves people. He will call people to himself as He wills, but my job is to love my neighbor." And they made a big point of that. That was their, just like you said earlier, it's a second commandment. My first task is to love my neighbor.
Pranutha Malickal:
Right.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah. That's so true. Yeah. So, loving my neighbor is we always get reminded that by loving our neighbor is not a tool to reach something in. Loving our neighbor is what we are commanded to do.
Bill Hendricks:
It's inherent.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah.
Sundeep Malickal:
That is what we are doing, that's what we are doing.
Bill Hendricks:
Who proved to be a neighbor to this person, is the question you say.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah, that's true.
Bill Hendricks:
And so, here's somebody from a different culture or, in your case, somewhat similar culture, but somebody who's displaced, they're a stranger trying to educate themself, and the question is, so who's going to be a neighbor to those folks?
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
That's true.
Bill Hendricks:
It's what you're basically asking.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yes.
Pranutha Malickal:
Actually, you put that. That's how we actually open our home groups because they come with this question like, "Why are they being so nice? What's the catch?" And it's difficult for them to understand because we go at odd hours to pick them up, we host them. And why? To understand that, it's because we love Christ and what Christ did for us.
Bill Hendricks:
We love because He first loved us.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yes.
Bill Hendricks:
That's beautiful.
Sundeep Malickal:
Yeah. That's what we make it. And when have a lot of questions, of course, they'll have… So, we to make it very clear, "Hey, we are disciples of Christ, and our Lord commanded us, asked us to love the neighbor. And so, when we are doing all of this serving, so actually you are giving us an opportunity to fulfill the command given by our Lord, so thank you for doing that."
Pranutha Malickal:
Right.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, thank you all, Sundeep and Pranutha, for being with us today.
Pranutha Malickal:
Yeah, thank you.
Sundeep Malickal:
Absolutely.
Bill Hendricks:
This is so helpful. And we started with Matthew 28, and we can end with another version of that in Acts 1:8. Jesus said He wanted us to be his witnesses beginning where? Beginning in Jerusalem.
Kasey Olander:
Mm-hmm.
Bill Hendricks:
Meaning, we start at home. Yes, He wants us to go, but maybe it's just to go down the street, go to the local university, that He's got somebody right there on our doorstep that we can reach out to with the love of Christ.
Sundeep Malickal:
Absolutely.
Pranutha Malickal:
Right, right. Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, thank y'all for being with us. Kasey, thank you for helping co-host today. I'm Bill Hendricks, and I invite you to back next time on The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture.
Mikel Del RosarioWelcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Mikel Del Rosario, Cultural Engagement Manager at The Hendricks Center, and our topic today is the birth of Jesus and specifically talking about the Old Testament passages that are used in the book of Matthew where we read about the birth of Jesus.I have three guests in the studio today. First guest is Dr. David Lowery. David Lowery teaches New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary. And second guest is Dr. Gordon Johnston, who teaches Old Testament here. And Dr. Darrell Bock, who's normally driving this podcast, but is one of our expert guests today.
Darrell BockI'm riding the wave with you today.Mikel Del RosarioAnd Darrell is the Executive Director of Cultural Engagement at The Hendricks Center and Senior Research Professor of New Testament at DTS. Welcome, Darrell.Darrell BockA pleasure to be here.Mikel Del RosarioWelcome Gordon.Gordon JohnstonThank you.Mikel Del RosarioAnd welcome, David.David LoweryThank you.Mikel Del RosarioWe have a good panel here; we have a good five things we want to talk about in terms of five key passages in the book of Matthew, that talk about the birth of Jesus, and use little parts of the Old Testament. And I want to approach the conversation this wayWhen it's a Christmas service, there are people in the pew who are reading along, and the pastor is giving a message, and they read these passages, and it says, "Here's what the prophet says in the Old Testament…"Sometimes people will say, "Where's that come from? What prophet?" Or maybe they have a footnote in their Bible, and they say, "Okay, well, I'm gonna go there," and they want to figure out, "How does this relate to what Matthew is doing?" And then for pastors as well, as they're preparing their messages, what the significance is of these things that they can bring up.
So, we'll talk about Matthew 1. There's one passage in there, and then there's four passages in Matthew 2 that we'll discuss. So, let's just dive right in. We'll take a look at the first passage, and I'm gonna read these passages 'cause, as we've learned before, nothing beats looking at the text. Right?
Gordon JohnstonMm-hmm.Mikel Del RosarioNothing and nothing at all.Darrell BockThat's right.Mikel Del RosarioSo, let's take a look at the first one. This is in Matthew 1, talking about the birth of Jesus. I'm gonna read from verse 18 on to 23, and we're going to key in on that last part – 22 and 23. So, Matthew 1:18 starts out like this:"But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, 'Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.'""All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet" – and then we have verse 23, which is a quotation. It says, "'Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,' which means, 'God with us.'"
Now, sometimes people will notice there's a footnote in their Bible, and they'll say, "There's a footnote. It says, 'This refers to Isaiah 714.'" But, Gordon, when we take a look at this – say you flip back to Isaiah, and you're thinking about how did Isaiah's audience hear this language of "virgin" and "Immanuel," what's the backstory here?Gordon JohnstonSure. And it's an important passage because if we are going from Matthew back to Isaiah 7, there may be some surprises where somebody might assume that this was a crystal-clear, direct prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah. But when you look at the context, it's the King Ahaz, 735 B.C. He's being besieged – Jerusalem's being besieged by two enemies, the Arameans and the Israelites to the north.And Isaiah the prophet shows up and says, "Don't be afraid, because these two countries that are your two enemies, they're going to be wiped off the scene within the next generation or so." And he says, "As a sign for that, to confirm that you'll be safe, God's gonna give you a confirming sign." And typically, the word "sign" would be – this would be fulfilled before that.
So, the expectation would be that whatever the sign is going to be would be fulfilled before the end of the next generation. And he says, "The sign is going to be that an almah is pregnant and about to give birth, and she" – and actually, the Hebrew could be understand in terms of "you" and the Septuagint even translated that, "Well, you, young woman, will call His name Immanuel."
So, and then it says, "And after He's born, He's going to eat curds and honey so he knows to choose the good and not the evil. And before He knows good and evil, the two kings that you fear are gonna be wiped away, and then the king of Assyria is going to come up on the land." And that likely happened in 701 B.C. with Sennacherib. So, these events happened. Samaria gets destroyed in 722, Damascus 732, Sennacherib 701. So, we're talking about the eighth century.
In the context, we're probably talking about – Isaiah's probably addressing or at least referring to a woman – a young woman, an almah. In Hebrew, the word almah is a young woman. Betulah, a different word, was a technical term for virgin, and he doesn't use that.
So, there's a young woman. The Hebrew could be read easily that this young woman is already pregnant and about to give birth. And so, we'd expect that this would be fulfilled in the near view. In Isaiah chapter 8, there's a parallel passage that appears to be a parallel description of Isaiah's own son. So, in the near context, this is probably fulfilled historically.
Now there's a broader context in Isaiah 9 that there's a Davidic King to come who's going to be born. And it's remarkable that Matthew doesn't quote that passage but Isaiah 7. And it's interesting; this probably would not have been a text that would have been, in the first century, somebody would have been necessarily going to messianically. The Isaiah 7 was – it appears people understood this as being fulfilled in the eighth century. It was never really one of the inventories – on the inventory list for future messianic prophecies to be fulfilled.
So, I think the best way to understand this is that Matthew is seeing some kind of typological escalation that when this child was born in the eighth century, it was a sign that God was there to protect and provide and deliver His people, but then how much more, in the first century, with Jesus, the ultimate Son.
And David might want to talk about the parthenos. The Septuagint translated the Hebrew word almah – Hebrew almah – young woman. The Greek Septuagint translated parthenos, that at the time meant young woman, it could be used of a virgin, but technically meant young woman. But by the time you come to the first century, it starts being used more and more – a virgin.
And so, it's there, under the providence of God, for Matthew to seize upon. And Matthew's not getting the virgin birth because Isaiah 7:14 was direct prophecy; he's getting the virgin birth because he knows there was a virgin birth.Mikel Del RosarioYeah.Gordon JohnstonAnd under the providence of God, the wording, the language here, the theology, it's all there for Matthew to bring out these parallels and to escalate it and see that God's doing an even greater work now today.Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm. So, the word in the Old Testament for young woman here is a more general term –Gordon JohnstonIt's a more general term.Mikel Del Rosario– than a virgin.Gordon JohnstonIt can be used in reference to virgin, but it technically didn't mean virgin, and she's already pregnant.Mikel Del RosarioAnd so, most people have thought the fulfillment happened already; they weren't waiting around for – let's see if somebody's born of a virgin; they might be the Messiah.Gordon JohnstonRight, right.Mikel Del RosarioNo one was thinking that.David, let's think about how, in Matthew's context, he uses – why would Matthew go to this, and what would be significant for his audience?
David LoweryI think there are a couple of correspondences in this passage that Matthew is interested in. One, as Gordon brought up, is the statement about the birth of this child from a virgin. But there's also the historical correspondence related to the time of Ahaz, the troubles, and now the time of troubles associated with Herod the king, and the confidence, the idea of God's presence, which is brought out, then, with the idea of the name Immanuel, God with us.A word of assurance, then, that the purposes of God are being accomplished, and despite the troubling times and the apparent difficulties associated with what we'll see as the life of Jesus, God's purposes are going to be accomplished. And He is with His people particularly – as Gordon said, escalation – in the person of Jesus; His presence is manifested.
So, it's both a word of assurance, a word of fulfillment, but a reminder that the purposes of God are going to be achieved, and Jesus is going to be the focal point of what God is going to do in terms of His presence with His people.
Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm, mm-hmm.Gordon JohnstonAnd this is one of those cases where we don't want to narrow what we mean by "fulfillment." I mean Darrell might really want to talk about that because there's something interesting going on with that fulfillment language.Mikel Del RosarioYeah, unpack that a little bit. How do we see fulfillment working here?Darrell BockWell, this is – as Gordon has mentioned, it's a typological prophetic text, which means that an event in the short term mirrors something coming later. And often the mirroring event that comes down the road is a more escalated or more amazing kind of fulfillment of the pattern, and that's what I think we have here.We have a woman who's announced to give birth to a sign child. Jesus is going to be a sign child, believe me. He means God with us. And so, we have this sign child that shows that the program of God is moving ahead.
But instead of this being about a young woman who either is pregnant or about to become pregnant, in the original setting, we now have someone who's a virgin, who gives birth. So, that's an escalation. And "God with us" is not merely the presence of God in our midst, although it's certainly that, but it is, if I can have some fun here, "GOD WITH US – THIS IS CNN." I mean there's an escalation here, and that escalation has pushed – is being pushed to the limit.
So, it's a pattern fulfillment, and then that sometimes bothers people that it's not a direct fulfillment – you know, a direct prediction looking hundreds of years down the line. But I tell people, "What's more amazing, that God predicts a single event down the road, or that there is a pattern that God is exercising across time at multiple places and in multiple spaces that shows a connection and a design to what it is that God is doing?"
So, I actually see typological prophetic fulfillment as a sign of God's hands being across history and not just in one event. And so, I think that helps to explain the kind of fulfillment that we're dealing with here. It's not a retreat from a view about what God is doing; it actually invests God with more involvement in history to see it this way.
Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm, mm-hmm. So, how would we respond to – I know there are some skeptics who would say Matthew probably just made up the whole virgin birth thing because he was sitting around, waiting for a virgin to be born, and he made up the story so that Jesus could be the Messiah? So, we know they weren't waiting around for that –Gordon JohnstonWell, and we know from the first – we know from the Talmud that there was a live controversy in the first century that Mary was claiming this, because the Talmud even refers to this. They're trying to refute this, and they know that this was the claim. And the Talmud even refers to Jesus pejoratively as, Yeshua ben – what is it?Darrell BockPandira.Gordon JohnstonPandira, which probably is kind of a slur on parthenos. So that it's clear that they know what the claim is, that Matthew's not making this up, that they're dealing with that claim.Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm, mm-hmm.Darrell BockYeah. And I think the interesting thing about this text is is that because of the modern controversy, we get locked up about whether the word "virgin" or "young woman" and how that fulfillment happens, and I think we actually miss the point of the text. The point of the text is is that this child represents God with us, and God's program is moving ahead.So we get stuck in the first part of the passage. The point of the passage is coming really at the end and advances the story. And so, in that sense, some of this skepticism that we end up having to deal with – I'm not saying you shouldn't deal with it – having to deal with gets us off the track in terms of what's happening in the narrative.
Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm.Gordon JohnstonAnd the other thing Darrell's made the point before about – the fact that there were no Jewish expectations coming into the first century that the Messiah would be virgin born. And the claim of the virgin birth created a controversy. So, if Matthew completely contrived this, he would have contrived something that would have been going against expectations. Why would he do that unless this actually had happened?Darrell BockYeah, yeah, good point.David LoweryWe don't want to miss, either, the emphasis on Jesus being the means by which God is going to save His people. He saved His people by delivering them, ultimately, from the enemies in the time of Ahaz, but He delivers them preeminently through Jesus in His birth and in His death and resurrection, which Matthew will narrate at the end of his gospel.Mikel Del RosarioHmm. And I think we're going to see this kind of pattern fulfillment showing up more and more as we progress through this narrative.Darrell BockYeah, it's the most common way that the Old Testament is used in the New, and it's also the most underappreciated.David LoweryThis theme of God's presence also is found in chapter 18 of Matthew, where Jesus talks about resolution of controversy in the Church, but most importantly, at the end of the gospel when He sends out the disciples. He says, "You're gonna make disciples of the nations of the world, and I will be with you." So, this "God with us" theme begins with reference to Jesus' birth and continues with reference to the mission to the world.Mikel Del RosarioHmm, that's a good observation. Let's move on to chapter 2, and let's take a look at the second text. This is the visit of the wise men or the magi, and it starts out, verse 1 – we'll read until 6 and focus in on verse 6.Matthew chapter 2 says, "Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, 'Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star when it rose and have come to worship Him.'"
"When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, 'In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet"And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd My people Israel."'"It's this last section that I want to key in on, where we have this quotation. Again, some people will see a footnote in their Bible that points us to Micah 5:2. But how did theoriginal audience hear this in the Old Testament, Gordon?Gordon JohnstonWell, it's interesting, because unlike Isaiah 7:14, which was not on anybody's radar screen until Jesus came, in terms of being a messianic text – Isaiah 5:2 was a messianic text. But it's also remarkable because the direction that Micah is going – Matthew is going that direction, building upon it, but in some surprising ways.In the context of Micah 5, you've got Jerusalem is under siege by the Assyrians. Micah also announces that eventually Jerusalem's going to be taken into exile by the Babylonians. So, 701 B.C., 586 B.C.
But in the future, Jerusalem's going to be restored by a coming David, a new David, a greater David who's going to come out of the veritable roots where David came from, with Bethlehem – the book of Ruth takes us all the way back to Bethlehem, with Naomi and Ruth and Boaz, leading to David.
In the context, though, this ruler that's coming out, that Micah is anticipating, is that he's going to end up defeating the enemies of the people of God, and Isaiah describes it as if the next time Assyria tries to besiege us, we're gonna chase them back, and we're gonna besiege them, and the enemies of God are gonna be defeated.
And so, Micah is picturing Him in terms of this mighty ruler and military warrior who's gonna defeat the enemy because that was at the time.
When Matthew cites this, he's not got a military conqueror in mind, but rather the one that ultimately will defeat sin – the victory over sin which ultimately is the reason why there's trouble in the world.
And Matthew tags Micah 5 with not who will be the ruler, but as the shepherd. And he picks up on 2 Samuel 7, where he says, "David used to be a ruler" – or, sorry – "a shepherd. I took you out from the pasture as a shepherd, and I made you a shepherd over My people." So, he's picturing in terms of where David had these obscure beginnings and was a shepherd.
So, he's blending ruler with shepherd imagery and, if you will, almost suggesting that this Messiah Jesus is gonna have the shepherd role first before he comes in terms of the mighty conqueror. But it's got typological escalation as well, and you've got second exodus imagery with the Messiah. So, it's really remarkable, a profound passage.
Mikel Del RosarioM-kay. So, this was something that was seen as a messianic text. People were waiting for the Messiah to fulfill this.Gordon JohnstonBut they're really – from the context they're set up that He's gonna be this military conqueror who's gonna defeat the Assyrians and defeat the Babylonians, and He is the defeater, but it's not military; it's something more profound.Mikel Del RosarioYeah, yeah. Well, David, if people were waiting around for this messianic prophecy to be fulfilled, why did Herod have to call the chief priests and the teachers of the Law? Why did he have to call them?David LoweryI think it's an interesting contrast going on in this passage between the question the wise men bring, which is they are responding to natural revelation. They think there's a king born; where is this king? And then Herod calls his scribes to say, "What do we know about this?" And they quote this passage from, as Gordon said, Micah 5:1 and 2 Samuel 5:2, concerning the one who's going to shepherd the people of Israel.So, Herod wants to know what's going on with regard to this possible king being born, asks for information about it, receives special revelation. But it's interesting, as Matthew presents this, the wise men rejoice at the news and go and worship, whereas Herod decides he needs to kill the child.
And it becomes, in some measure, an illustration of – for readers – of what should be expected with regard to the response, generally speaking, of the political and religious leaders with regard to this child.
Now, Herod's going to try and kill the child, as we shall see in another passage, but he's ultimately unsuccessful. However, Pilate, at the end, is successful in bringing about the death of Jesus. But in the passion narrative, Jesus basically says, "All these things must happen in accordance with what the Scriptures say."
So, we're seeing a pattern all the way through the gospel, in some respect, of what God said is fulfilled, is carried out, but it's in His time, in His plan, and for His purpose.
Mikel Del RosarioHmm. It's interesting we have this juxtaposition of the Gentiles – the wise men – were the ones who were seeking the king – the King of the Jews really, right? – and then we have the person who was reigning as the king of the Jews, and he's rejecting.David LoweryYes, and the religious leaders who know the special revelation, but basically, as far as we can tell, were unresponsive to it. They didn't go to Bethlehem to worship; it's the Gentiles who did.Darrell BockAnd there's an irony in the fact that, you know, Matthew is normally characterized as the gospel written to the Jews, but it's containing hints that the responsiveness is not going to come predominantly from within Israel.Mikel Del RosarioMmm, interesting. Why did – in Micah, if you take a look at Micah, there's a part that they leave out. They leave out this part about how His origins were from the distant past. Why would they leave that part out?Darrell BockTo be honest, I don't know. I'm not a mind reader. But I do think that it's important to see the identification with Bethlehem. That part of the passage is probably as close to a predictive element as we see anywhere in these passages that we're gonna be discussing.And so, there's the idea that these origins – you know, out of Judah – not just out of Judah, but out of Bethlehem, that's an important feature.
So, what the Scripture delivers to the wise men is more than what the stars are giving them. And the stars are giving them the sense that something of significance has happened. A king is probably being born somewhere, but where exactly? And this is the telegram that tells you exactly where to go – or at least the city to go to.
Bethlehem wasn't very big, so with – you would – the sign saying "Entering Bethlehem" and then the sign saying "Leaving Bethlehem" would be really close to one another.
Gordon JohnstonYou know, it's interesting, because some of the passage is typological escalation. In this case, it's an ultra literal fulfillment. Because when he talks about He's – His origins are from old, from ancient times, Bethlehem, it may not be saying – making a claim that He was going to be born in Bethlehem, but His origin – roots are from Bethlehem; He's gonna be a veritable second David wherever He might be born.But the irony is, in this case, He actually was born in Bethlehem, in literal fulfillment of it. But then there's more typological fulfillment of other parts, and He's not this conquering hero; He's more of the shepherd and the conqueror of sin and evil. So, there's all sorts of things happening here.
Darrell BockYeah. The juxtaposition of Micah with 2 Samuel 7 is important because that is evoking the Davidic Covenant and the Davidic Covenant promise and hope, which eventually, in the development within Judaism, became focused on a specific Davidic Deliverer as opposed to just the line. "This is what the line of David's going to be like for the nation, and God's gonna be behind it, and that king is gonna be seen as a sign" – all those kinds of things were already there. But that hope crystallized into the expectation, "There's gonna be someone who brings a decisive deliverance, with whom the eschaton's gonna come, all that kind of stuff. And all that baggage, if you will, is coming with this citation in terms of what it's evoking.David LoweryIt's almost a promise – isn't it? –Darrell BockYeah.David Lowery– when it says, "He will shepherd His people." He has said earlier that He will save His people from their sins. Now He's going to be the shepherd, and you wonder, "Will He really do this for the people of Israel?"And, of course, the gospel's gonna answer, "Yes, He will." But it's based in the promise of God.
David LoweryAnd that actually has a very important point attached to it, which is sometimes when we talk about salvation, we think it's just about forgiveness of sins. But no, the point of forgiving sins is to build a relationship with the living God, in which He participates in leading and guiding and shepherding us.And so, the point of salvation is never just to tick a box, say, "My sins are forgiven, and one day I'm gonna be in heaven." No, it's about this ongoing relationship, this journey with God that I'm gonna be on, in which He's gonna be my protector, my leader, my guider, et cetera, and my enabler. And all that is wrapped up in the idea of being the shepherd who looks after the sheep.
Mikel Del RosarioMmm, mmm. Well, let's take a look at our third passage now from Matthew 2. And this is Matthew 2:13, moving into a quotation – a very short quotation there at the end of verse 14. So, let's just read those two verses quickly. And this is the flight to Egypt.It says, "Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, 'Rise! Take the child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy Him.'"
"And he rose and took the child and His mother by night and departed to Egypt." This is the part I want to key in on. It says, "And remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet 'Out of Egypt I called My Son.'"And again, people may take a look in a footnote and see there's a reference to Hosea 11:1. And so, Gordon, I'm going to turn to you and ask, "Who is this 'My Son' in the context of the Hosea passage?"Gordon JohnstonWell, this is another amazing, remarkable use of the Old Testament in Matthew. And we're getting into all different ways in which he's seeing fulfillment work under the providence of God and the design of God.When you look at Hosea 11, when he talks about, "Out of Egypt I called My Son," it's not prophetic at all; it's looking historically back in terms of God's son being Israel coming out of Egypt when – as is His collective son, and he's describing Israel collectively as a son in the exodus.
And it goes on and says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him. Out of Egypt I called my son. The more they called, the more they went away from Me. They sacrificed to the Baals. Yet I was the one who taught Ephraim to walk."
So, it's clear in the context that the son here was Israel who was a disobedient son. He called Israel to be a covenant-keeping people; they weren't. And then He ends up going – down to verse 5, He says, "They're gonna go back to Egypt. They're gonna go back to Assyria. I'm gonna reverse the exodus." And then Hosea ends up predicting a second exodus, and eventually chapter 3 talks about a new David who's going to be part of that second exodus.
So, it's really clearly Matthew is doing some things in terms of he's seeing a pattern again, that at one point his people were in Egypt and God brought them out in the first exodus. The first exodus is gonna have to be reversed because His people violated this. But Hosea also has a second exodus imagery, and in chapter 3 he's got a Davidic figure there.
So, I think Matthew is looking at Hosea holistically and sees this whole thing, and he sees patterns in terms of the holy family being warned to go down to Egypt. And that's where he – where Matthew is quoting Him, that He's going down – He's sent Him down to Egypt so He can bring them back out. And when He brings them back out, it's not Israel collectively; it's the ideal Israel; it's the ultimate Israel – Jesus, who's now gonna inaugurate the second exodus as the second Davidic King. So, it's a remarkable passage.
Mikel Del RosarioDavid, how do you see this being used by Matthew? Why is Matthew pulling this in and linking it with Jesus?David LoweryWell, it's another passage, as Gordon said, with correspondences. It is a statement, as Gordon said, but it does fit the circumstance and situation of Joseph responding in obedience to what the angel told him, "Take your family to Egypt." And then it reflects also the fact that he's called, because the angel comes back and says, "Okay, now it's time to go."So, Joseph responds again to the revelation that he's given. Jesus is in Egypt. He is the Son – preeminent Son, as Gordon said – and all of the passage fits the circumstance of Jesus being in Egypt for a short period of time and then being brought back into the land.
Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm, mm-hmm.David LowerySo, it's a correspondence on several different levels that works here.Mikel Del RosarioOkay.Gordon JohnstonBut again, with this escalation and typological – which is all part of what – how the Old Testament is even viewing – the future's gonna be recalibrating the past but greater.David LoweryIn this context, it's again a reminder of God's preservation of Jesus until it's God's time for Him to be the sacrifice for sin. Herod wanted to kill Him, but he wasn't able to do so 'cause it wasn't God's time yet.Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm. Darrell, how did this fit into messianic expectation in the second temple period, this idea of coming out Egypt?Darrell BockWell, I don't know if this text is necessarily a prominent messianic text, but what it is is a re-invoking of the fact that salvation is showing up. You call someone – you call the nation out of Egypt because you were forming the people of Israel and you're in the process of taking them to the land – it's what the book of Exodus is all about.And so, what we see here is the preparation for the formation of a ministry that's going to deliver the people in this – with this eschatological expectation, which Hosea has tipped his hand to in a bigger sense. You know, sometimes what’s going on in these texts is we're citing a verse, but the verse is aware of the bigger story of what's going on from the place from which it is cited.
Gordon Johnston'Cause it activates the entire context in some cases.Darrell BockExactly right. And so, there's this expectation of deliverance, ultimately, and God's faithfulness to His nation in delivering them, et cetera, that's in play here. So, again, you get a mirroring or a correspondence or a typology or – there are lots of ways to talk about it – a pattern. There are probably four different ways to say the same thing, and in the pattern, you get the realization.And what's interesting about this one, and what some people comment on is that the placement of this is actually pretty interesting because it's placed as Jesus is sent to Egypt, and then the extraction from Egypt, if you will, comes after the citation as opposed to the way many of the other citations work, where you get the layout of what's going on, and then you get the citation following it in a description of kind of a commentary.
So, this is almost anticipatory of what – where the narrative is gonna go because it's anticipatory of what the story of Jesus is from the standpoint of His birth. You know, this is the start of what is going to be a saga of deliverance on behalf of God's people.
Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm, mm-hmm.Gordon JohnstonAnd it's another example in which the events have happened – I mean God sovereignly orchestrated the events to send Jesus and the family down to Egypt, understandably, because God is in charge of history, and He's setting up these events to create those correspondences. So, Matthew's not just doing this literarily; he sees the events, and he sees the patterns and what God actually was doing in history.Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm. And when they look back on the exodus from Egypt, that was a great example of God's faithfulness, and then now we have this almost – a parallel to, here's a great example of God's faithfulness.Darrell BockAnd preservation. You know, that intense plague was pretty devastating and reached a lot of firstborn, and yet the firstborn of those who participated in the Passover were preserved because they were in connection with what it is that God was doing.Mikel Del RosarioAnd the exodus from Egypt was a great thing, but the incarnation in Jesus and salvation of humanity's an even greater thing.Darrell BockYeah.David LoweryThis is the first time, I think, in Matthew's gospel, too, that Jesus is referred to as My Son by God. The next time will be the baptism, when He formally begins His ministry.Gordon JohnstonIn 2 Samuel 7, the Davidic King was called "My Son." So, you've got the link between Israel "My Son," the Davidic King "My Son."Mikel Del RosarioWow, it's amazing. Let's take a look at the third snippet here.Gordon JohnstonThe fourth, isn't it?Mikel Del RosarioOh, yeah, that's right, four. Thank you. And this is why they had to leave – right? – because Herod killed these children, as some people call "The Slaying of the Holy Innocents." Let's go to 16."Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children, in Bethlehem and in all that region, who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men."
"Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah" – and here's verse 18 in a quotation – "'A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.'"
So, Gordon, context in Jeremiah, what's going on here?
Gordon JohnstonSo, again, we go back to the context in Jeremiah 31:15. And this is a wonderful example because we've been talking about pattern fulfillment and typological fulfillment. Jeremiah himself is talking typologically here himself. So, Matthew is gonna do a typological working of this that Jeremiah himself is doing.So, what's happening in Jeremiah 21 – or, sorry, 29 to 31 is that Jeremiah's dealing with the reality of the exile. Jerusalem is in exile 586 B.C. And he pictures Jerusalem, during the exile, as being this woman, this mother who's been abandoned, bereft of her children. And she's heartbroken. And in Jeremiah 31, he comes back and forth to this imagery of Jerusalem as a woman and says, "You're heartbroken now, but one day I'm gonna bring the children – your children back on the highway, and you're gonna be full of joy." But now there's this drama.
Now, the picture that Jeremiah has of Jerusalem during the exile is he says, "A voice is heard in Ramah" – that's an important tag as far as the city of Ramah. And "Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted" – he's referring back to Rachel. So, Ramah was an important town mentioned, and Rachel was the wife of Isaac.
And you remember Isaac had two wives, Rachel and Leah, and under the providence of God, Leah conceived first. She was less loved than Rachel was. And Rachel was heartbroken that she could never conceive.
Genesis 30, Genesis 31, she's not able to have children; she's heartbroken; she's crying; she wants to have children 'cause she can't. And then finally God opens her womb and gives her children. And the first child she has is Joseph, the beloved child.
As time goes on, then she conceives a second child, Benjamin, but she has such a terrible labor that she ends up dying in childbirth, and she's weeping not because she's lost her child, but because in her very last breath, she gives birth to a child that she had longed for. But Rachel then becomes this lamentable picture of a woman who is not able to have children, and then finally has them, but it's in the midst of tragedy.
There's another example of this, too, in which Hannah, in 1 Samuel, the wife of Elkanah, she was barren as well, and she's lamenting. And she prayed that God would give her a child. And finally, God gave her a child – Samuel – who was the kingmaker. Well, Hannah lived in Ramah. Okay?
And so, Hannah was from Ramah, Samuel was from Ramah, and so Samuel was the kingmaker. And Samuel anointed David at Ramah. And all of these events happened at Ramah. And eventually, as time went on, when Israel got into trouble, their kings went foul, they went into exile.
The Davidic dynasty – the throne got dismantled, the prophets – Isaiah and Jeremiah – talk about Ramah weeping because kingship has been taken away, and Rachel now is evoked because it's this picture of Jerusalem now as a woman who's been bereft of her children.
But the context has to do with loss of kingship, exile, and it's taking us back to these figures that the ancestors of Israel and Joseph and Benjamin, and then the place where kingship began. So, it sets up in so many wonderful ways as far as the kingship's now gonna be restored. And Rachel's grief will one day be turned to joy because a King's coming.
But in the meantime, Matthew's also saying they're parallels because just as Jerusalem suffered at the hands of this violent, wicked king in the sixth century, now you got an Israelite king that's gone rogue.
Darrell BockAnd the interesting thing about this, that sometimes is forgotten, is this whole typological way of reading things is not something that Matthew invents.Gordon JohnstonRight.Darrell BockIt goes back to a Jewish way of thinking about history and a Jewish way of even reading the Scriptures. And the beautiful thing about this text is is that you see it – you see it within the Old Testament itself, this kind of way of putting history together so that when Matthew does it, he's doing something that –Gordon JohnstonThe Old Testament's doing it.Darrell Bock– his readers are used to. The Old Testament does it, and his readers can connect to it.Sometimes I think we, as modern readers, lose context of what – the way in which texts were read. And therefore, it looks perhaps cavalier or innovative. And in fact, it's something that's well established in terms of how to look at history from within Jewish tradition.
Mikel Del RosarioInteresting.Gordon JohnstonYou could say that Matthew's getting his hermeneutics of Jeremiah – his use of Jeremiah 31 from how Jeremiah 31's using the Old Testament.Darrell BockYeah, exactly.Mikel Del RosarioDavid, is there anything else you want to add about the significance of this for Matthew's readers?David LoweryWell, for Jeremiah, he's reflecting on Rachel's loss in probably the connection with the Assyrians carrying off the ten northern tribes and Manasseh and Ephraim, her grandchildren were tribes in that area.But he's also, from Jeremiah – I wonder if he's evoking Jeremiah's also word of hope? Yes, bad times are coming to Israel, 'cause he's predicting the Babylonian captivity, which is coming soon, but he also includes the promise of the New Covenant in Jeremiah so that God again has not forgotten His people.
They will experience times of real trial and difficulty, and Matthew will narrate that as well, when he talks about Jesus' prediction about the destruction of Jerusalem, which comes later. That the people of Israel may be facing a time of real trial and suffering and lamentation, but there is a promise bound up in the work that this child is going to bring about.
Darrell BockAnd there might even be a little bit of an overhang in the fact that when Matthew's writing his gospel and things don't look necessarily quite so rosy for the new community, that nope, God has a promise that He is carrying out. And there's a rest of the program, God will perform His word; it will come, and it will happen.Gordon JohnstonAnd the comment that Jesus makes on the road, with the disciples that said "You know, we thought He was the Messiah, and then He died," which in their mind disqualified Him 'cause they didn't understand the Scriptures, and He said, "Don't you understand that the suffering has to come before the glory?"And in Jeremiah 31, it starts off with, "Here's the suffering," but at the end, "There's the glory. Jerusalem will be restored, there will be the new covenant, and you're going to get the new David."
Darrell BockYeah, there's a case where Luke compliments Matthew pretty nicely in terms of the struggle that the disciples are having, even after they've seen the ministry of Jesus and His death. They've heard the prediction, et cetera, but they don't quite get it. They don't quite get it till that tomb goes empty. And all of a sudden, you know, the lights go on, and they realize God is really doing this, and He does it in very surprising, unexpected ways.Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm, yes. You know, for – to start out with the virgin birth – surprising, unexpected thing.Darrell BockThat's right.Mikel Del RosarioAnd all of these – now Jesus is coming out of Egypt. How could that be orchestrated – right? Well, God has His hand all over this thing.Let's take a look at the very last passage, now, and this is the return to Nazareth; they're coming back. Verse 19 through the end, we'll just key in on the last part here in verse 23.
But it starts out like this, verse 19, "But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, 'Rise, take the child and His mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead.' And he rose and took the child and His mother and went to the land of Israel."
"And when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a city called Nazareth so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that 'He would be called a Nazarene.'"
So, He would be called a Nazarene that what was spoken by the prophets – Gordon, what’s the reference here, these prophets?
Gordon JohnstonThat's the question. What's happening? So, we're not quite sure. It's not – ironically enough, we've got several passages here that were not directly prophetic that Matthew's using typologically and escalate – and here we're not quite sure – it's not necessarily – not a direct prophecy – we're not even sure where the prophecy's coming from.It looks like it's an example in which Matthew is taking language out of several texts and combining them in some very creative ways, and seeing the providential hand of God. And I think at this table we've got probably five different views among the four of us as far as what's happening.
My gut feeling is, and a number of people are gonna suggest that he's – Matthew's using language out of Isaiah 9:1 and language out of Judges 13.Well, the term for the branch is the Hebrew word nazer for branch. And nazer in Hebrew sounds like the word for Nazarene. In Isaiah 11 –Darrell BockSo, it's a wordplay.Gordon JohnstonIt's a wordplay.Mikel Del RosarioHmm.David LoweryThat's the most common way, I think, to read this passage.Darrell BockYeah.Gordon JohnstonIn Isaiah 11, it's clearly messianic, and it's a picture of the future David who's associated with the second exodus. So, He's in the remote future, and He's this ideal Davidic King. And it's remarkable. I would have thought that Matthew would quote this directly, but instead, there's a wordplay there. And it makes me wonder is if he's saying, "Yes, Jesus is this Isaiah 11:1-6 King, but there's some other things going on. The fulfillment is not going to be exactly the way that you expect. He's a nazer, but in a different sense."And then also, it looks like there's language drawn from Judges 13:5, which is announcement of the birth of Samson. And I don't think any of us would take that in terms of thinking it was directly messianic. But it's interesting; the language in Judges 13. So, I'm wondering if Matthew's use of Isaiah 7:14, he also knows there's another passage that's got that same language. And here he goes on to say – the angel says, "He" – this child – "will be a nazer to God all his days." A Nazarite. So, you've got this wordplay between – and Nazarite refers to someone who's specially dedicated to God, who's specially empowered to deliver the people.So, there's some things happening in terms of what Matthew's doing. But I think it's an example in which the fulfillment is more broad in terms of how he's reading the Old Testament as a whole, some typological, some wordplays. But it may be a clue that some of the old expectations of what Messiah's gonna do, there's gonna be some surprises and some things happening before He fulfills everything fully –David LoweryYeah, this is – Gordon, I think, has done well to summarize what is probably the most common explanation. The problem I have with that explanation is that it requires a certain sophistication of the reader that I don't think most of Matthew's readers would have. They have the Greek Old Testament; they probably don't know Hebrew. And so – and he talks about prophets as if it's more than one.So, I'm a little more inclined to the view – I shouldn't say it's a common view, but the notion that "Nazarene" refers to someone from – as Nathaniel said, "What good whoever came out of Nazareth?" – someone who is lowly, meek, humble, and that Matthew will later quote some passages along this lineJesus as the meek and lowly One who comes riding on a donkey; Jesus as the One out of Isaiah 42 who won't disturb anything.So, I'm a little more inclined to think it evokes this meekness, humility that characterizes Jesus contrary to expectations that a king would come out of Nazareth.
Gordon JohnstonSo, it's not – you're not saying that there's actually a passage that's got that language of Nazarene, but the imagery of meek and lowly which Nazareth would have epitomized.David LoweryYes, that idea.Gordon JohnstonSo, it's more of a conceptual –David LoweryAnd he does have – he does mention some prophets then later on that would emphasize that kind of a character, if you will, of Jesus.Gordon JohnstonSo, Nazareth –Gordon Johnston– kind of epitomizes that kind of a thing.David LoweryRight, yeah, mm-hmm.Mikel Del RosarioDarrell, how would you interact with these –Darrell BockYeah, I almost have the suspicion that there's something almost secretive going on within – between Matthew and his readers; that he's evoking something, a connection perhaps that we have lost and we're trying to figure out. And they are aware of the play here and what's going on, and we're trying to discover it.Just because it is such a hard one to identify exactly what's going on, and the appeal to the prophets – plural – I mean it could just be a way of saying, "In the Scripture." And it could just be as generic as that, and there is something specific in mind. But usually, when you get prophets in the plural, there's more than one text and more than one idea in play.
And so, this combination of things that we're talking about all have possibilities and no one knows. But I'm deeply suspicious that he was sending a signal. And it's a cultural script that Matthew and his readers get that we've lost or that we're fishing for in terms of thinking about this.
So, it's a little bit of a harder text. But it does land us – you know, when we come to the end here of a section in which we have had five appeals to the design of God as the birth of Jesus unfolds. And the whole point is to say, "Look, what is going on, as surprising and as wondrous as it is, is a part of the program and plan of God."
And it's the beginning of a story in which the program and plan of God is unfolding, and it evokes pictures of rule, pictures of victory, pictures of God's presence, pictures of the eschaton, pictures of the Messiah – I mean these two chapters are loaded.
Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm, mm-hmm. So, if we think about the main themes that are coming out of this, we see prophecy, fulfillment, God's faithfulness – His faithfulness to His promises and to Israel and preservation.What would you say, just as a – to encapsulate one main thing that a reader could take away from these passages we've looked at, a pastor could just make sure that he brings out the significance of during a Christmas message perhaps? What would that be?
Gordon JohnstonI think it would be that God has been at work, for centuries ahead of time, in His design of history, of what He's been doing through His people, in His design of the very language and fabric of Scripture. And that you've got the Old Testament – Old Covenant prophets are predicting New Covenant glories.But the fulfillments, if you will, are suggesting that the New Covenant fulfillments dwarf Old Covenant expectations, that Matthew's using Old Covenant texts, but the fulfillment is even greater. It's not just – it's not just that it matches; it's even greater and grander than anybody had in mind.
And that's why it was so surprising, because Jesus is pushing the boundaries and going above and beyond 'cause God's plan is even greater than any of us could imagine. I think Jesus even said the same thing. He says, "I'm trying to talk to you about earthly things, and you don't understand; how can I talk to you about heavenly things?"
And they're asking a question, "Whose wife will she be?"
And He says, "You don't understand the power of the resurrection. How can I even begin to describe it for you?"
And I think the author of Hebrews is doing the same thing. The fulfillments are so much greater and so much grander. So, the kind of things that Matthew's doing – I don't think – don't undermine what he's doing; it actually points to the fact that God's going above and beyond what anybody even had in mind.
Mikel Del RosarioDavid, main takeaway?David LoweryI think it's the idea that God does things in unexpected ways – things – ways that we would not imagine. We would be like the magi and think a king is going to be born in a capital, in Jerusalem. But the events of Jesus' life don't seem to correspond to the way in which we think a royal child should be born and have to grow up, but here He is, this meek and lowly One who comes to be the Savior of the world.Mikel Del RosarioMm-hmm, mm-hmm. Darrell?Darrell BockAnd then I think we tend to view Christmas by looking back and thinking about, "Well, this is what happened." We put it all in the past. But this career actually envelopes the audience that you're preaching to. There is what God has done, and then there's what still He is going to do through Jesus. And this is the beginning of the story. And sometimes we lose the fact that we are caught up in the same drama; we forget that. And so, we look back on it as history.Well, it's actually – to those who are believers, it's our story, too. And the promises that God has kept are an assurance that there are other promises that God will keep, and that this design extends beyond us and wraps around us and hugs us in His grace.
And that is, I think, another part of this story, that the incarnation drives to the cross, and to the ascension, and then eventually to the return, and to the vindication of God's people and the reestablishment of God's presence on the Earth. God is with us, and He is with us always.
Mikel Del RosarioAmen. That's good news of great joy for all the people.Thank you, Darrell, for being with us. Thank you, Gordon, and thank you, David, for being with us.
And thank you so much for joining us on The Table podcast today. Please stay with us next week where we discuss issues of God and culture.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, welcome to the Table Podcast. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center. It's possible there's no other passage of scripture that is more cited than Psalm 23, and what a wonderful Psalm it is. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And when we hear those words, many of us tend to think and associate them with a bucolic painting of a lovely meadow and a flock of sheep. And we may even hear strains of Beethoven's pastoral symphony in the background, and that's not bad. But in thinking that way, we actually probably misunderstand one of the central images of scripture. And in the process, we also miss out on some of the key insights about leadership that the Bible has to offer.
And I've invited today Dr. Tim Laniak from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, formally with Gordon Conwell, now with our Daily Bread Ministry, and its Global Center for Outreach, but he also runs something called the Shepherd Leader Ministries, of which he's the director. And this is a ministry focused on equipping leaders who think biblically about leadership, and where you're going to see the tie in with Psalm 23 is the name of a book that absolutely began to transform my own thoughts about leadership, shepherds after my own heart pastoral traditions and leadership in the Bible. Tim, welcome to The Table Podcast.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Thank you, Bill. It's good to be with you and with all those that listen to you.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, thanks. let me just start with your own story here. How does the Bible and leadership and shepherds and sheep all coalesce into a consolation for you that's become almost like a life message? Walk us back through that journey.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Okay. Well, I grew up in a Christian home with a lot of great Bible School, Bible church, Bible in the home. And I felt my life was really transformed by scripture when I was in high school. And I also felt called in to missions, and it wasn't long before I had a chance, as a college student, to make a trip to the lands of the Bible as part of a Bible program. And I really had my first cross-cultural experience then in the Bible itself. I had my culture shock. I had in some ways, my first mission trip into the Bible, and that made it possible for my two twin passions of scripture and culture and missions on the other side to come together, and for a lifelong interest and cultural difference.
And has just always been interesting to me as not only the ways in which people live out the gospel in various ways around the world, throughout church history and the global church, but also the way the Bible itself has been revealed in cultural context and how a certain amount of cultural competence is really necessary to make sense of a world of diversity, but also to make sense of the Bible. Those twin passions fueled a lot of Bible education that eventually led to a doctoral degree. They also fed a sabbatical in the lands of the Bible where I studied among shepherds. And leadership in particular, to get back to your question, wasn't something I was even aware was that much of a topic for study.
But it turns out that my own journey and ministry, my own career in a sense, has begun around the era when people were starting to pull leadership out from management and some of the early works on servant leadership and transformational leadership that came out in the '70s and following. Those were starting to create another field of its own. And as you know now, you can do a search on leadership and see millions of resources.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
It didn't touch me, it didn't affect me, but I was at Gordon Conwell Seminary in Charlotte when we had a Lily Grant to fund three years of round tables with seminary presidents who would be enriched with Bible study as they also did research projects on leadership. It could be anything from administrative faculty to running satellite programs and to focus on the leadership dimensions of it, but I eventually became the biblical theologian for the actual Bible content we were doing together. Now, having lived in Israel before then, taking groups to Israel, including some from Dallas I remember one summer, I knew that everybody was fascinated with the world of the Bible.
That was a Christian who made their way there for any kind of pilgrimage or study program. And I knew that everybody always wanted to stop the bus if there was a shepherd or sheep, and you couldn't tell them we had plenty of pictures. You can get them, we get home. Everybody wanted their own pictures of sheep and shepherds, and…
Bill Hendricks:
They wanted the authentic experience.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
It is, and it tends to be one of those moments in the lands of the Bible, especially Israel, where people go the most, where they look at outside the bus and they think it's like time has been flattened. And all of a sudden, I'm in the land of Abraham, I'm in the land of Jacob and David and Jesus. I couldn't help, but assume that most people that were in pastoral ministry had lots of resources that explained shepherding, because it's just so prevalent in scripture. Interestingly about the time I was doing this work with the Lily funded round tables, I was eligible for a sabbatical. And I had to do a sabbatical proposal for our trustees a couple years in advance.
And I made a proposal for a Hebrew exegesis manual to do with a colleague in South Africa. I put that aside and started working on it, while I was doing these round tables thinking, "Okay, we're going to bump into stuff on shepherding." I started to get more intrigued by what seemed to be a lack of resources for pastors that were deeply exegetical. There were certainly people who had titles in books, they smell like sheep, things like that. And even Escape from Church Incorporated, Glenn Wagner wrote with a good chunk on Ezekiel 34, but I spent about a year looking for shepherding resources that were truly biblical and biblical theological. I thought that was really the important thing.
And what I found were some deep dives on passages like Psalm 23, Ezekiel 34, John 10, but to my surprise, not more. And then I did another year of research before I ever went on sabbatical on metaphor, and the power of figures of speech and how central they are to semetic thinking and writing, and how central they are to scripture, and to the actual theological fabric of scripture. So…
Bill Hendricks:
Now let me jump in and ask that obvious question-
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
… just for the sake of some of our readers. We talk about a metaphor, just simple definition of what you really mean by that.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
A metaphor is a comparison between two things that is described in direct language. For example, in the Middle East, someone might say, my throat is a desert, rather than saying, I'm thirsty. And a simile technically would be my throat is like a desert. But when you make that flat direct comparison, it's very graphic and concrete, and it triggers your imagination. And as one of many figures of speech, we actually find the Bible when we discover how rich it is in analogies and metaphors, figures in speech, we realize that it's actually triggering our imagination all the time. And metaphors in some ways are like little explosives that pack all kinds of associated meanings all at once.
If you say, the Lord is my shepherd to someone in the ancient world, they would've thought of a lot of things. They wouldn't have thought of one thing, they would've thought of a number of different dimensions. I like to think of them as micro narratives. We often talk about the meta-narrative of scripture, but I think in some ways, some of scripture's greatest themes are really captured and compressed. You might think of them as zip files in these metaphors.
Bill Hendricks:
That's a great analogy.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
A great metaphor.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Exactly. I can't help, but think analogically now.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
I ended up writing my book on Hebrew Exegesis before I ever left on sabbatical. And I went to the Albright Institute for archeological research as their annual professor to do research on Bedouin and on ancient shepherding practices and texts. I didn't just go live with Bedouin, I didn't just interview Bedouin, but I was doing something that you can call ethnoarchaeology, which is when you take modern cultural practices and you use them as a guide to help fill in the gap between ancient practices and modern ones when literature sometimes is an archeological remains themselves are somewhat limited. People that live in the desert often don't leave a lot of ruins and remains.
And the texts are often very scanned and often written by outsiders. I had a modern insider's view and I put it together with an ancient outsider's view.
Bill Hendricks:
It's not just a translation there, it is a translation, but it's a contextual bridge you're trying to build?
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Right, right. Geography is what stayed the same, and geography has a lot to do with traditional lifeways. How people raise sheep and goats relatively unchanged until the modern era, which gave rise to political boundaries, which limited people for migration, grain and water trucks, which also actually compromised some native skills. Machine guns, AK-47's and Uzis populate most tents, that changed thing. I had to show some Bedouin on how to use a slingshot. Just when you think the Bible was right there in front of your eyes, these guys don't know as much. And also some of the fabric production, it used to be that they could make something out of every part of a sheep or a goat.
And now they're more commercially driven, but I was able to interview people that had lived prior to some of those realities, or they at least knew the stories and had some collective memory.
Bill Hendricks:
What were some of the fascinating things that you discovered about that way of life?
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Well, I learned that shepherds were talented in a multidisciplinary way. They were desert experts. Even to today, they have certain better one that are hired. It's called the Baheth when you're a guide in the desert. Some of them are hired by the Israeli army, for example, in Israel because they know how to work desert's a complex place even in the daytime. But for them to be able to figure out where you, are at night's amazing, but they're also veterinarians. Again, back before the days of veterinarians with specialization, they really had to be able to save a flock from an epidemic. I mean, imagine what we're facing with COVID-19. They lived with that peril. They were really also geographical and climate experts.
You could be in a canyon, and you could have your flock washed away if you didn't understand the seasons. And also what soils that you were in and what would be the impact of a flood. They're fighters. I've often had Bedouin that I was trying to get me to tell stories about sheep and goats, and they'd rather tell me about people they killed who were marooned out in the desert.
Bill Hendricks:
Oh man.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
They are poetic. I mean, when people think about Psalm 23, they think maybe quite often of David sprawled under a tree in the shade with his liar, with plenty of time to write poetry. I mean, I never met shepherds who had much time for anything. They're just farmers and shepherds anywhere in the world. They work day and night. However, they are poetic people. I had one day when I went out with shepherds where I said, I did not want to translator. I just took a yellow pad of paper, and I wanted to write notes on my own observations. Early on in my time, I wanted to have some unpolluted by even my own questions. I didn't want to have- pollute any input.
And just, as you probably have heard, shepherds will have their own flocks, but they'll bring them together. The flocks will follow a shepherd by a sound, and they can combine them. And then they'll goat the end of having coffee or tea, they'll leave together. Well, we had a bunch of shepherds all come together. They all started making coffee, and then one of them took a little flute that he made out of a broken broomstick, a little plastic broomstick started to play, and the guys were just dancing and singing. And it was just natural. And I studied some Arab poetry, and there's just lots of poetry about the desert, about women written by men, about the stars, about sheep and goats.
What you read in the song of songs about these flock animals and fruit trees and all, there is something in that Semitic psyche that often expresses itself in Proverbs and in poetry.
Bill Hendricks:
Let me ask a pair of questions here. On the one side, what does a sheep mean to a shepherd? The shepherd looks at that sheep, what's going through his mind and what's his attachment? And conversely, if I could put it this way, what does the shepherd mean for the sheep? I mean, I've been told it's… I don't know if it's true or not, that sheep are very dumb. But to the extent that they even think about it, even if they don't think about it, what's the importance of that shepherd to the sheep?
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question, Bill. For the shepherd, I think it's important to regulate our sentiment down into pragmatic reality and to realize, we're talking about people for whom flock animals are their livelihood. There is a merchant…
Bill Hendricks:
It basically means their bank account in other words?
Dr. Tim Laniak:
It is, it's a mobile capital account, and it's at risk in an environment that has a lot of it… that's not very hospitable, and it's also hostile. They care about the flaws, making it through pregnancy to good quality, healthy births. They'd love to have twins. They'd love to have births twice a year. The animals need to be in good condition, so that they have good milk products and they have good fiber products. They look at them that way. I think one thing that maybe is important to realize is that when the Bible reflects the intimacy that is there between sheep and shepherds, there is a fundamental assumption in their world that this is a commercial enterprise.
And you could say that the affect side of it is a bonus. One of the things that I learned was that there's a difference between an owner and the hired help, the owner and the owner's family and any hired help. They actually try to hire people that are related to them. And if they're not related, I even met someone who was adopted as an adult. I asked a guy what his name was, and he told me his name. And he said, "That was given to my father by the family that we work for now. We're part of that household." I also learned that there are shepherds at very high levels of ownership, where there are thousands of flock animals. And in biblical times, in Abraham's time, there were shepherds in this old Babylonian period that numbered in the hundreds of thousands for the temple.
For the palace, and the temple, huge, huge numbers of animals. There is this commercial underlay. And the only reason I emphasize that is not because I think that that should dominate the way we view our relationship with God, but I think we ought to appreciate the fact that the ownership is a given. The intimacy is the bonus. And I think that God's sovereignty, God's ownership over us ought to be understood as a given, it's a fact. And whether or not we get the intimacy we want is it's like a negotiable in a grace environment. I mean, that's not something that you can expect. And also…
Bill Hendricks:
Well, that's a fascinating insight. To me, it gives a new layer to the saying of Jesus where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Right, right.
Bill Hendricks:
And if that treasure happens to be a sheep, that's just an interesting thing to think about.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Yeah. Well, I also tend to think that in the New Testament, there's a welcome into the family business. We're all working for the chief shepherd. We're under shepherds working together. And there is a sense that these are the assets of the kingdom, and they require the same level of sacrifice that Jesus made as the good shepherd. The assumption is that the sheep value the most in this business, and that we have been adopted not only as sons, but we've been adopted to work in the family business. And sometimes, I think we often separate the two. We want to get our justification separate from our sanctification and our service, but God doesn't just set Israel free. He sets them free, so they can be in a covenant. And in that covenant, they have a mission. I see that-
Bill Hendricks:
There's a stewardship.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
… all that wrapped up together.
Bill Hendricks:
A stewardship, yeah.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Exactly.
Bill Hendricks:
Now, what is the shepherd represent to the sheep? What is the shepherd made to the sheep?
Dr. Tim Laniak:
It's absolutely everything. A sheep and goats are raised typically on the margins of subsistence economy, agriculture. Right at the point when there may be enough rain for barley and maybe enough for wheat, you're out there. And that's partly because if you have enough rain for a really good wheat crop, for example, you might then choose to farm your grains, and also even vegetables. And you might even raise cows, like they do up in the northern parts of Gilead and Buchan. And you see the poetry in the Bible about them. They're already in this liminal space. They can manage to survive with the heat, but they literally need water every day. It's they do not survive.
Their body is not really made for the desert the way camels are. And then you add to that, they don't have any defense. They're out on the perimeter of any settled life where you have a lot of the predators; the hyenas, the donkey, the wolves, the and the biblical times, even tigers and bears. And throughout history, there have been a lot of these large predators that have been there, but this is a nightly affair that these animals that move in that are nocturnal predators. They're going to move in on flocks that are often just simply sleeping around a shepherd. There's no such thing as in the ancient world of having this nice pen, where you have a gate and fences.
This is just finding a little enclosure sometimes, or else, I've seen a big circle of sheep. And they're literally in concentric circles around a sleep in shepherd in the middle, and that's how they go through the night. And they have some guard dogs around the edge. They need help. They need help with any disease. They need help with any predators. They need help to find food, to find water. And even when they have it, I mean, it's terrible to say. But if they find a water source, and certainly if they find a cistern, they'll push each other in and drown. They need to be managed and completely. And they'll walk off a cliff too. I haven't heard any shepherds say they were stupid.
I hear lots of people in pulpits say that we're just like sheep, because we're stupid. I don't think so, Bill. I think the key is that we're dependent, and that we're prone to wander, to use the words of the hymn. Those are things that are typical of them. They follow the tail in front of them, they follow the trail in front of them. They don't have good vision. If they hear a shepherd, they'll move, but then they're looking the ones around them to know exactly which way to go. They are easily victimized by the environment and by their limits.
Bill Hendricks:
When the gospel says, "Jesus looked on the crowds with compassion because they were like sheep without a shepherd," yeah, there's the illusion to the Old Testament is equal, but that's a real statement of the vulnerability of the people spiritual.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Yeah. It also rips off of something that's pretty common in the prophets, and that is people that have bad leaders are often described as people without leaders, or people without shepherds. Jeremiah and Ezekiel go back and forth between, your shepherds didn't do this, or they'll just say, you didn't have shepherds, so you wandered. And when you wandered literally says Ezekiel, then you became prey for the wild animals. I'm sure Jesus was at least almost every time shepherding language is used in the Bible, it's obliquely at least referring to bad leaders. Jesus and John 10 has all the leaders in John nine in mind, I'm sure when he tells talks about himself.
These are all people that don't care enough and consequently people are really just leaderless.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I want to move to applying all of this to the topic of leadership, particularly leadership today. Before I do that, I must ask you to touch briefly on one of the aspects of your research that just floored me was how you brought out the idea that this image of leader is shepherd, this isn't just a biblical thing. I mean, it'd be fine if it was, but you show all the way back into recorded history that we have, all the way into not only the scriptures, but the surrounding cultures from which those scriptures in which they were written. And then projecting into revelation in the future, this motif of the shepherd is just everywhere.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Mm-hmm, yep. When I do consulting say about leadership in a secular or a business environment where people are not all believers, I just simply refer to ancient wisdom, because I can give you examples from ancient Babylon, ancient Assyrian sources, Egypt, Greece. I mean of all things in Greece, they use shepherd for warriors, military leaders. And right through to today, where I had Jordanians tell me that they not only called the king, the shepherd of the people, but they also call someone who's a classroom teacher, a shepherd with a classroom and a business person, a shepherd. It's just absolutely pervasive.
And I would say there's a reason why servant leadership has become a widespread assumption as the go-to for biblical leadership, because it confronts the standard human tendency to take advantage of one's leadership position and authority to serve oneself. So, that makes perfectly good sense. Jesus said, "Look, Gentile's lorded over you." But if you were to step back and to say, "What is the biblical baseline for talking about leadership? What is the go to?" And certainly if you get beyond scripture to say, how would any ancient person have thought about leadership? Metaphorically, they would always say shepherd.
Bill Hendricks:
Mm-hmm. Then let's start with the pastor, and the word pastor obviously just as a English word dates from pastoral images. And of course, Peter makes a big point that the pastor is the shepherd of the sheep. When you talk to pastors of congregations, what's the message that you try to link to for them to say, "If this is the biblical model of leadership, what are the implications of that for what you're doing here in this church?"
Dr. Tim Laniak:
There are a number of them. One of them is I'm afraid that because we did this little journey through Latin to pastor, and then it came into English rather than shepherd, we just kept the word pastor. We somehow seem to think that a pastor has many things to do, and shepherding might be one of them. And that's just redundant. It's just to be a pastor is to be a shepherd. I think one other thing that happens is that pastor sounds a lot like a title, and Shepherd carries a lot more of the freight of a role. And the role has to do with taking care of people. It's being responsible for their wellbeing, their welfare, the direction of the congregation and all.
And you can look at a congregation, there's always shepherds. The singularity of the pastor's role, that the sense that the title is only reserved for one person, I think it creates some unnecessary conflict and confusion. We have some large churches here like you do in Dallas, here in Charlotte, where I am. Pastor of a large church here said, "Look, I have 70 elders." And he said, "I gave them a copy of your book, While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks." And he said, "I told him, I want them to move towards viewing their role as shepherds." And he said, "You wouldn't believe how many of them said, I'm out"
Bill Hendricks:
Wow.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
"It's not what I signed up for." They were successful business people in a megachurch who said, "We've been here to consult with the CEO to make sure that you make wise decisions to keep you out of legal trouble. We did not sign up to care for people."
Bill Hendricks:
Wow. It's very transactional.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Exactly. And ironically, the word elder is just as dynamic and relational and non-official like shepherd is. But anyway, so that would help. The other thing I would say is in the book, While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks, I divide up the different tasks of the shepherd as really as all coming under different roles, providing compassionately, protecting courageously, and guiding with wisdom. I would say that shepherding is the most multidimensional, multimodal, multifaceted kind of role that you could have in a church setting. And actually in our society, we don't prize generalists. We prize and reward specialists, and we desperately need generalists.
Here we are in a form of human service if you just think of the sector we're in. We're in a form of human service where people don't know what to make of the title. You're often in a church where everyone in the church has their own idea of what your job is.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
And then you're trying to look inside, or you're trying to look in scripture to see what your job is. And it is, it's a big job because it does involve providing, protecting, and guiding. And you can't just simply delegate all these things out. You need to general contract and some of those things together with the other shepherds that are in the mix. And one of the things that I feel like God's called me to do is to affirm and encourage pastors for being those unique generalists in the kingdom that are actually representing God with the only institution on earth that has a perpetual lifespan.
The church is going to survive, not necessarily every local church, but every parachurch ministry could rise and fall, and that would be okay, but the church of Jesus Christ is going to be around. And that means this is one of those roles that needs to be healthy, robust, and intact. And I see a lot of people buffered around. I encourage people to take a journey you can actually do it every day. Ask yourself, how am I doing at provision? How am I doing at protection? How am I doing guidance? Because provision tends to come easily for people pleasers and helping type people, but protection doesn't. And then protection comes good for people that are more like watchdogs and people in the military and police.
And sometimes, nurture doesn't come well to them. And I think God's stretching us in pastoral ministry to be able to oversee a healthy environment that has all of those features to it. And I would say if you're doing daily inventory, before you ask yourself how you're doing on those three areas, there's a prior question. And that comes right out of Psalm 23 verse one. If the King of Israel bows down to the king of heaven and says, you're my shepherd, then he gets one thing that we have to get right every single day. And that is, is God the shepherd of this flock? Is he my shepherd? And do I take my cues from him as the owner? I've been adopted into the family, I've been giving a task, but do I presume to be the end of the food chain, so to speak, that people report up to me and that's where it stops?
Or am I actually showing people the real shepherd as someone who will come and go, not because I don't care, but because that's the way humans are? It has a lot to do with even succession for me.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, I can see that this way of thinking about one's pastoral responsibilities in essence calls for maybe a different scorecard for success than we've come to honor. Because really, I would think for a shepherd, the question is, well, how well are your sheep doing? Are they healthy?
Dr. Tim Laniak:
That's right. That's right.
Bill Hendricks:
Are they provided for? Are they protected?
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Exactly. Right, right.
Bill Hendricks:
Are you are stewarding them well?
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Exactly. I'll put in the best possible light. We've done a good job in the West, especially in the US, of analyzing ourselves. We're infatuated with ourselves. We take every possible personality test there is.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes, yes.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
And we take a job and there's a disc, and there's something else to help us know ourselves better, but we often will work on the assumption that I ought to only be doing what I'm called to do. And I certainly, having run a DMin program, I know a lot of a doctor ministry program. There's a lot of pastors who feel like I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm not good at, and what I'm called to do. And I understand the value of that. I know God's gifted us, and he doesn't expect all of us to do everything all the time. I get that. If you agree that I get that, listen to the fact that no shepherd I've ever met would hire someone who had a union mentality.
Bill Hendricks:
Right.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
I had shepherds who said, I said, "What are you looking for?" I asked a lot of shepherds, what are you looking for? And what I heard was, "We need someone who do whatever we ask him to do." I remember, just like it was yesterday, 9/11 happened, George W. Bush had become president, he announced his agenda. He was going to make friends with Mexico, use his Spanish, all kinds of things he talked about, but you know what, on 9/11 is job change because the nation changed.
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Some pastors have taken a church, they had a suicide and a miscarriage and terminal health all in the same month. Who gets to say what I do and what I don't do it? It's just what you said. The flocks become-
Bill Hendricks:
It's what the conditions…
Dr. Tim Laniak:
… your responsibility.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, it's what the conditions presented your flock with.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Right, right.
Bill Hendricks:
I love the word you used earlier, multi multidimensional or multidisciplinary.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Generalist has a bit of a pejorative tone in our culture, but multidisciplinary, I think probably captures it in a positive way. And that's what you're talking about. The question is not whether you can do masterful work when all the conditions are perfect. The question is, can you do passable work under very difficult conditions that may present themselves, but you've got this higher vision of, I got to answer to the over shepard for the condition of these sheep.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
And do you keep yourself involved, I like to say selectively and symbolically in most aspects of the ministry, so that you can be a good general contractor?
Bill Hendricks:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
I had one pastor, I just loved it. He said, "You know, when my church was finally big enough," he said, "I realized I'm a terrible counselor." He said, "I finally just hired a counselor, it was perfect." He said, "But you know what, I still counsel once a week for one hour." And I said, "Why?" He said, "I can't get too far removed from what happens in that setting."
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
"I don't want anyone to be harmed by my incompetence," but I think he was being humble. And I really appreciate his willingness to say, "If I only get reports about youth, if I only get reports about worship, if I only get reports from the counseling center, I'm actually getting the worst side of specialization."
Bill Hendricks:
I only get the good news.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Well, but also supposedly, I can teach and preach well.
Bill Hendricks:
Yes.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
I'm not preaching and teaching with any firsthand experience in all the aspects of the church's life that would otherwise helpfully inform me.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, it loses the relevance and it loses the engagement, the personal engagement that I'm with you in your situation.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Right.
Bill Hendricks:
One of the points that you bring out on your website there at the Shepherd Leader Ministries, Tim, that I think deserves just some emphasis for a moment, is the challenge that shepherd pastors, church leaders, they need to be in dialogue with others who are doing similar work. And you've actually created various forms of means online by which pastors can do that, so that they're not… if I could use the term lone rangers out there. They're sharing best practice, they're sharing needs, they're sharing prayer. Talk about that fellowship of the shepherds.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think shepherding is, it's an art, and I think ministry in general is often more about the art than about an artifact. You go through seminary, you can write an exegesis paper and get a grade on it, and it's done. You put it in your file, but ministry has moments when you are often at your best and the spirit moves. And there are times when you're at your worst and the spirit moves. And there are times when you make a mess of things, and there's that dynamic that we're in. In a way, it's like playing in an NFL game. You need to be a part of a team. And there's a lot of give and take, there's a lot of feedback sources along the way.
And you're not always performing at your best, but you need to keep a lot of the basics in mind the whole time. And this is one of the ways to anchor someone to the basics.
Bill Hendricks:
That's great. Let's take a moment and apply the leadership model. There are many Christians who are leaders out in the work world, CEOs and other bosses as it were, or just middle of a manager in a company or a supervisor over a work crew. Typically, we don't apply that shepherd motif to those jobs. But I think having looked at your research, that's something we need to revisit.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Yes. I would love to introduce you to a major manufacturing company that you would recognize the name of in the Midwest, who introduced in a voluntary basis, discussion groups around While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks. I think they probably had a hundred different groups go through it. And I was just amazed at the way in which the… and actually they went overseas with one of their affiliates did the same thing there. Absolutely no boundary at all, no barrier, no sense that this is something quirky, but I had a tour during one of my breaks of one of the buildings that had a manager of one of several of the processes took place for their equipment and manufacturer.
And everything he described about himself, his own journey, his own role as a leader, he framed in terms of shepherding language. I would think it's an HR dream come true-
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
… to have people think about their role in that way, because it is certainly comprehensive enough for anyone in any role. The only thing that changes is, and we all have to be culturally competent with this. When you're a parent, you have more to say in the lives of your children, for example. It would be viewed as invasive in some other settings if you were an employer or boss, you can only do certain things. But if your instincts are to be thinking in terms of providing, protecting and guiding, then at least you have some a gyroscope to help monitor whether or not people are being taken care of. And like you said, to judge yourself on the wellbeing of the group, that takes humility, but that seems to be the important outcome.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, there's an inherent ring of authenticity and life giving quality to what we're talking about here. I mean, who doesn't want a boss that is looking out for them, that's there to provide what they need to do a good job, protect them from various problems and guide them when they're trying to figure out what to do? I mean, that's a dream boss.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Yeah. I was in a meeting one time where I was the boss, and I was with a leadership team. We were talking about how to get some people's morale higher and whatever. People made some generic suggestions. Sometimes, it's like a financial incentive, someone else wants a day off. And I said, "You know, from what I know of so-and-so, I think their love language is really public affirmation." And I said, "But you know, for this other person, it's just money. Just give me the cash." I was leading this conversation about how to give everyone really what they needed. And one person said, "I have never been in a place where anybody ever talked about the love languages of their employees."
Whatever we do is going to be good, because just that level of interest, but-
Bill Hendricks:
Yes.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
… I mean, people's morale is definitely based on whether or not they're cared for.
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
And one of the things that I noticed about shepherds is it's this epic level of knowledge about their animals. And again, back before they had veterinarians and they had all these other things, they knew their flock animals well enough that they would know if there's a problem and a problem can spread if it's a health related one, but they also know if they were afraid. I have stories in the book of some of these shepherds, even in the middle of the night, they can feel a goat and they know which one it is.
Bill Hendricks:
And wow.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
And a father who's sick in the 10th who says, "Go, go, go, I want you to get the ewe." And he describes it in certain way, and his sounds so…
Bill Hendricks:
You know exactly who it is.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Wow. We got a couple of three minutes left. One final category of shepherds that you talk about are parents, and that almost deserves a whole podcast under itself. Maybe we can come back and do that. But just briefly, what would be some implications, obviously for parents as they think about that task?
Dr. Tim Laniak:
I think parents actually have the most opportunity to apply every aspect of the shepherding metaphor. And I would also say that parenting is the first context for all of us to learn to be as adults. It tends to be the first context to learn to be good shepherds. And a lot of what I wrote in the book came as a result of realizing my shortcomes. As a parent, it's a job that it's very hard to feel successful at, but it does require to keep stretching in all those areas.
Bill Hendricks:
Yeah, it certainly does. And you've mentioned the word humility earlier, and I think parenting is something that by its nature encourages humility. And sometimes that's painful, but you realize the day that you have that baby, you're in a whole new game of service and sacrifice. And how you acquit yourself there has a massive bearing on the condition of that, that little lamb that you've brought into the world.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Yeah, yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Well, Tim, I just want to thank you for not only writing the book, but again the massive research that you've done, and the fact that you went out and talked to shepherds, and it's helpful to realize, well, they're not exactly doing it as they did it 3000 years ago, just because even though the landscape hasn't changed, conditions in the world have changed, but it's clear that there's a deep reservoir of insight from this whole motif of shepherding that we can learn about leadership.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
Well, thank you, Bill. I encourage everyone to read the Bible with this lens on. And there are some other ministries that are starting to focus on shepherding, and I suspect that God wants to renew the interest and awareness of it for some pretty significant reasons.
Bill Hendricks:
Absolutely. And I do want to encourage you as our listeners to check out Dr. Laniak's website there at Shepherd Leader Ministries. Again, just a boatload of resources around this whole theme. You'll be a better leader as a result. Tim, thank you…
Dr. Tim Laniak:
It would be shepherd… Yeah.
Bill Hendricks:
Go ahead.
Dr. Tim Laniak:
I'm sorry, it would be shepherdleader.com Bill.
Bill Hendricks:
Shepherdleader.com. Excellent. Thank you, Tim, for being with us today. And I also want to thank all of our listeners for being with us today. Be sure and subscribe to us on your favorite podcast service. For The Table Podcast, I'm Bill Hendricks. Have a great day.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to The Table Podcast. Dallas Theological Seminary, teach truth, love well.
Darrell:
Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and you have landed at The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. And today our topic is the ethics that surround and the topic of in vitro fertilization, IVF. I've told someone today, if you can't live with initials in our modern world, you're in real trouble. And we have three guests today. I'm going to let them introduce themselves and then we'll dive in. Scott Rae, who, I guess we'll do this at the very, very start, he and I have known each other since we were five years old. So we go back further than we care to remember. Let's just put it that way. And so, Scott, welcome to the table. We're glad you could be with us.
Scott:
Thank you.
Darrell:
And then the other person by Zoom is Jeff Barrows, who I didn't give your position. I'm going to let you do that later. I'll go through and go around. And then Christina Crenshaw is here on my right. She's an associate at the center, formerly taught at Baylor University. So with that in mind, I'm going to ask the question I normally ask that leads off a podcast, and how did nice people like you get into a gig like this? And Jeff, I think I'll start with you since you're the doc in the room.
Jeff:
Well, I guess the short answer is I answered an email, but the long answer is that I serve as a Senior Vice President for Bioethics and Public Policy at the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. I've been in that role now about two and a half years. Prior to my life in CMDA, I was an OB/GYN practicing in a relatively rural area of Ohio, northwest of Columbus. I did practice infertility, did not practice IVF well, not trained on IVF, but did do a fair amount of infertility in my practice. So I think that probably helped get me to the table here today as well.
Darrell:
Well, thanks Jeff and Scott, give us your background, how you got into this.
Scott:
Yeah, I've been on the faculty, Professor of Christian Ethics at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University for 34 years, have a ThM from Dallas Seminary, and then a PhD in ethics from the University of Southern California. And I spent about 15 years as a hospital ethics consultant for a variety of both non-profit and for-profit healthcare systems here in Southern California.
Darrell:
Right. And Christina?
Christina:
Yeah, so my PhD is in education and woefully prepared me for this IVF conversation, but I do have personal experience with the IVF journey, so that is what brings me to The Table today
Darrell:
Today. All right. Well, thank y'all. First of all, I'll give you great thanks for giving us of your time and expertise as we do this. I'm going to start with the doc since he said he was an OB/GYN and that is, so you're there in rural Ohio, just practicing your medicine and trying to apply the oath that you swore as a doctor. And you said you sometimes work with infertility. Tell us about that and why this leads into the other discussion.
Jeff:
Well, infertility, unfortunately, is very common. And in fact, I think it's increasing in incidents. When I was practicing, the statistics that I would quote my patients would be that on average between 10% and 12% of couples would qualify as being infertile. And by the way, I'll give the definition of that. That usually means a couple attempting to become pregnant over a 12-month period of time without success. If the woman, the wife is over the age of 35, sometimes we'd cut that down to six to nine months so that it wouldn't shorten it the time that she'd have to wait, but very common.
So I would have patients that would come in and I would begin an infertility workup with them. And if I was successful in diagnosing, for instance, an ovulatory problem where they were not releasing an egg on a regular basis, I would begin treatment or some of the other types of problems in infertility that I could treat, I would do that. But then a lot of times there were instances where I could not find the problem using the usual infertility tests, and then I would send them down to typically Columbus where they would see an infertility specialist, not necessarily to jump right into IVF, but certainly IVF was and always is an option that would increase that couple's odds of being able to achieve pregnancy. So it was a relatively common thing that I dealt with when I was in full-time practice.
Darrell:
And how equipped did you feel like you were to go there as a doctor? I mean, is this something they did discuss in your medical school preparation or is this something… Sometimes in ministry we encounter stuff that we didn't do class on, so how did they help prepare you for what it is you were facing?
Jeff:
My training was solely in the science of infertility. And in fact, I did my residency in OB/GYN in the early eighties, and the first in vitro baby born in the United States was 1981. So I was being trained right as in vitro was coming into being. And so it was clear it was going to become fairly widespread across the country as it did. But in terms of the ethics on surrounding infertility and especially surrounding IVF, I had absolutely no training until I went into my master's program at Trinity in the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. And I have to make a confession up front, my thinking was far too utilitarian and not enough Christian until I went through that program. And it changed a lot of the ways that I now think about IVF.
Darrell:
Okay. So we go from the doc to the ethics theologian. He shows up in your program, I mean it's not your program, but theoretically, it's in your program. And what kinds of questions are you thinking about the go beyond the kind of question that is, well, we're a couple and we seem to be unable to have a child.
Scott:
Well, first of all, we want to acknowledge that, and I'm sure Jeff would agree with this too, there's much more than a medical side involved here. There's a pretty significant spiritual and emotional side to this. And Christina and you can speak to that too, I'm sure. But the reason I got into this was that basically my wife and I were in the middle of a four to five year period of infertility ourselves about the same time that I started studying this. And I soon discovered that in this field, what I study had a way of following me home. And it certainly did in this case.
I started studying this about the time that IVF was maybe 10 years old. And that the stuff of these surrogacy arrangements that often used IVF, that's the stuff of TV miniseries. And it was about that time that my wife and I began our own very painful journey. What we discovered quickly is that for people who hadn't been down this road, it was really easy for them to seriously underestimate the degree and intensity of pain that was felt by infertile couples. We went to our church. Our church did virtually nothing on Mother's Day or Father's Day to commemorate people for whom those are two of the worst days of the year. So there's a pretty significant pastoral and spiritual side that I would want to address to first and foremost before going into the ethical issues.
Darrell:
Okay, that's great to raise because it's with a lot of areas, there's what you believe and what you think about it, but how you actually relate to people is a pretty important part of the equation.
Scott:
Well, and I think to the degree that you have pastors and church leaders listening here, I challenge them to think really hard about all of the couples for whom Mother's Day and Father's Day are just terrible days for a variety of reasons, infertility being one of those. And so at least to acknowledge that, I think has a chance to bring some people in to the ministry of the church that might otherwise stay home on those days. I know my wife and I stayed home from church on those days regularly during that time period.
Darrell:
Interesting. And obviously the other side of that equation is the people who go through miscarriage and what that's represented for them as well, so that's a good word to open up with, Scott. Let me ask you secondly then, when I think about my own training, which predated in vitro, but still even afterwards thinking about the kinds of things that I would hear about in pastoral settings and that kind of thing, there wasn't very much help coming from the theological side on this that I can recall.
Scott:
Well, we at Talbot do have a course on this that almost all of our students are required to take. And I tell them right at the very beginning, my goal for this is for the people in your church to call you instead of me when they face some of these issues. And my job is to equip you to deal with this at the level of a local church because these folks, you walk through life with them, you are far better equipped relationally to deal with them than anybody coming in from the outside.
Darrell:
Okay. So that's the pastoral side. The next level of questions is what are some of the ethical issues that we need to consider? And we're going to loop back and talk about those down the road, but I just want to get them out on the table before I talk to Christina.
Scott:
Well, I think there are a handful of things that you need to wrestle with. One is probably the most basic one and that is there anything unethical or unbiblical about conception taking place outside the womb? And I think this is the objection that I think most of our Catholic brothers and sisters raise. Well, we'll get into the resolutions in a minute. That's one. Second is the standard of practice in IVF is to harvest as many eggs as possible, fertilize as many as possible, plant two, maybe three at most, and then freeze and save the rest for later use. But if you hit the jackpot on the first try, you may have eight, 10 embryos, children left over in storage. And so the disposition of those embryos, what to do with those is another significant ethical issue.
A third one has to do again with IVF being maybe too successful and you may have all the embryos that are implanted actually form successful pregnancies and then clinics will usually offer the option of some sort of selective termination at that point. Fourth ethical issue has to do with freezing embryos per se, regardless of things like attrition rate and success rate and thawing them out. Is it morally justifiable to freeze a human person in any case? Because I think most people would say we wouldn't do that to our two-year-old regardless of the reasons. And if we consider embryos, fetuses and two year olds persons, but on just a different place of maturity, then I think some of the same ethical issues apply to embryos as they would to fetuses in two year olds.
Darrell:
So they're actually behind all those questions. It strikes me, there's a premise that's pretty important and that is when conception begins and when is a person, a person?
Scott:
Well I think for one, I scripture's pretty clear on this in the first place, but I think this is something actually that science can tell us. I think you have a living human being from the point of conception that's a separate entity genetically and biologically from the mother. I think we ought to distinguish between the fetus being a part of the woman's body and being dependent on the woman's body. Those are two different things. The fetus is not a part of the woman's body. It's a genetically distinct entity that is housed there and dependent on the woman's body. But it's different fundamentally than being a kidney or a liver or a piece of tissue.
Darrell:
Okay, that's helpful. And like I said, I think that's an underlying premise behind all the other questions that you've asked that's actually pretty important. So we'll rotate. We'll come back to that because that's the starting point for all the conversations ethically, it seems to me. So Christina, after that wonderful brief exposition of the ethical challenges, we come to the whole personal side of the story, et cetera. So I'll let you fill that. Let's talk about some of the things that we've already raised, how personal this is and how this works at a human level.
Christina:
Yeah. And Scott, thank you for sharing a little bit of your journey. I think that that gives it more of credibility and clout that you are studying something that you have personally, you and your wife, have wrestled with. And I would say that bioethics is not something that I was particularly interested in my late twenties, but by the nature of struggling with infertility, I was thrust into a lot of these conversations. And to summarize my story and journey, I would start by saying to anybody who's listening, who's going into pastoral ministry and encounters a couple who are struggling with infertility, to know that this is not usually anyone's first choice, that people typically find themselves at the doorstep of fertility treatment by way of trying all other methods of conception.
So for us, it was a four year journey, similar to Scott's. We ended up having to go out of town. Waco, Texas didn't really have a robust clinic for the sort of treatment. And we did IVF and it was a very rigorous, expensive process. That's another ethic we could get into, that this typically costs anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 to do a round of infertility treatment. We had prayed about adoption, we went through adoption training and we realized that our window for fertility was very short, that adoption window is as much whiter and broader. We did a round of IVF and we harvested five embryos, which I think given the ethics of that IRB and that ethics committee at the hospital was a respectable number. Part of what happens behind the scenes that you don't really have control over is how many they decide are viable. And so a lot of prayer went into that as well. We implanted two, which is standard if you are under 30, particularly if you're under 35. And we ended up conceiving, but then we miscarried, which was heartbreaking.
So we had three that were frozen. At that time, I was finishing a PhD program and I had landed a tenure track job in California. My husband landed a position doing mergers and acquisitions in California, and we knew we were leaving, but we had these three frozen, so I won't say the name of the hospital, but we had to go before the ethics committee and we begged, can we please implant three because we don't want to just implant two and come back for one? And transferring from the embryos is a whole nother industry and facet that you have to consider to the IVF process. So they gave us permission to implant three and only one took, and that was our firstborn.
And I remember the doctor saying, "You have unexplained infertility. We can find nothing wrong with your husband. We can find nothing wrong with you, but based on the four years that you've been trying and the three rounds of IUI and the two rounds of IVF, we give you less than a 1% chance of ever being able to conceive on your own." So we, again, started the adoption process after that. And this is a different conversation, but I just want to say as a place of a miracle and praise, we did end up conceiving my second more naturally after that. So I want to give anybody listening, not a false sense of hope, but that just because you are infertile so to speak, doesn't mean that you will always be in fertile.
Darrell:
Interesting. So I'm going to go back to the doc, Dr. Jeff. In what you heard is sounds like what you heard on the one hand and secondly, how prepared are most doctors for what you are hearing?
Jeff:
Well, I assume you're going to want me to answer in terms of OB/GYNs that are dealing with infertility patients?
Darrell:
Well, let me start elsewhere first because OB/GYN probably has more likelihood of coming across this and being prepared for it than other doctors. So let's say you're in your normal internist or general practitioner doctor who you might see for a physical or something like that. How prepared do you think they are for something like this?
Jeff:
They're not going to be very prepared to talk in depth about not only the science and the workup, they would just assume refer to someone in their network in terms of the workup. But even to answer the ethical questions that Scott raised, very unlikely that they'll be able to do that and have really thought much about it frankly. And so even family physicians, I think most that are not doing it directly have probably not thought in detail and depth about what are the ethics. And many of them frankly will probably have differing views on when life begins and differing views of what I call the sanctity of the body, which is really what Scott got to. And the fact that God designed our bodies where fertilization would occur inside the woman.
And the other ethical issue that Scott didn't raise that I think also needs to be brought up and that is the use of gametes outside of the marriage. Do you use a donor sperm? In surrogacy, you might use donor eggs. Is that ethical? And I would say that's far beyond the average, not only the average physician that doesn't deal with infertility, but it was not something I thought about as an OB/GYN, as I said, until I got into the bioethics degree at Trinity.
Darrell:
That was embedded in the surrogacy that he raised as he went through the questions. And that actually was something I saved in my cache to come back to. So I'm glad you raised it.
Scott:
Yeah, comment on one thing that Jeff said. Raising the issue of egg and sperm donors I think is right. That's another significant ethical issue that doesn't affect every couple, but it does affect quite a few, especially if the woman is a bit older. She will often get really strong suggestions to have an egg donor because, for example, I consulted with a couple two weeks ago where the woman's 46 and they're on their second round of IVF and the physician basically wouldn't do IVF unless they were willing to have an egg donor be a part of it.
But I think it's true that physicians, they're just not trained in some of the ethical issues with this. And I think it's interesting, Jeff, you had mentioned you defaulted to a utilitarian position on a lot of these things in your practice. And the couples do that too because most of the couples that I've talked to, a lot of times they're just not open to any kind of ethical discussion that would put constraints on their likelihood of having a baby. I mean, their goal is to get out of this thing with a healthy baby and they'll deal with the ethics later or not at all.
Christina, you had mentioned the financial stuff, they're willing to take out second and third mortgages on their homes and to do all sorts of, in my view, financially irresponsible things simply to achieve the goal of getting a baby.
Darrell:
So Jeff, I'm back to you. So we've put several levels of doctor under the bus. What about the gynecologist?
Jeff:
The OB/GYN
Darrell:
OB/GYN.
Jeff:
Yeah. I think that I was fairly representative even as a devoted Christian. I mentioned earlier before we got on that I was preaching at churches. When I wasn't on call on the weekend, I was preaching. And so I was studying a lot of scripture, but the whole concept of IVF I had in my mind separated out and I hadn't asked the difficult questions. And really the coming down to is this the right thing to do? I mean, that's the essence of ethics is science says this is possible. Ethics tries to answer yes, it's possible, but should you do it?
And I hadn't really answered that even as, I would say, a very committed Christian OB/GYN until I got into my bioethics degree and was forced to really start thinking about it. And by the way, it's interesting because in my class at Trinity, we had an IVF specialist who came in and he was doing IVF without thinking about it as well. And through the course of his studies in our classes, he came to realize I have been doing something that is unbiblical and I have to hand it to him. He stopped practicing IVF in the middle of taking this degree. So I don't think it's common even committed Christian physicians to think in depth on this issue until they're forced to ask these questions.
Darrell:
Interesting. So Christina, I'm going to come to you next and ask it this way. And that is, how much did you give thought to these ethical questions that we're beginning to raise and that are on the table for us to be thinking about?
Christina:
I would say that I give a great deal of thought given what I had resources to think about because we did this process 10 years ago and this was in the throws of Octomom. Your listeners can Google if they're not familiar with her, but I think she's pretty mainstream. People know that reference. There was a TV show, John and Kate Plus Eight and they had their, I think, sixtuplets through IVF. And I did my research, I'm a pretty research-oriented person by nature.
Darrell:
I know that. That's true.
Christina:
So I was actually seeking medical journals, which is probably not the typical response, but because I was a doctoral student and I had access to medical journals, I started researching the first successful IVF baby was done in England. And then as I think it was Scott who relayed America two years after that. And so I knew that I was about the same age as the only successful IVF babies. And so I gave it a great deal of thought. I think the way I'm wired, I remember rereading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and really wrestling with the Lord, when does life begin and what is an interference in creation? But I think what was helpful for us and the older we've gotten, my husband and I, and the more we've matured spiritually, the more we've surrounded the contextual conversation with some ethics.
But the big rocks for us were what do we believe about conception? What do we believe about using our own bodies versus a surrogate that was not a road that we had to cross and what do we believe about human flourishing? And so we came to a conclusion that if we believed in implanting all of the embryos that belonged to his sperm and my egg, that we were enhancing our fertility journey more than we were interfering with the Lord's plan or will. And so I think that every situation has more nuance or different situations would have more nuance in that we didn't have to use any donor eggs or sperm, we didn't use a surrogate. I think those raise, as we've discussed, an entirely different set of ethics when we're bringing in a third party to the marriage.
But I would highly suggest anybody in the throes of infertility or anybody who is pastoring a couple or discipling a couple through medical infertility to ask the couple to come up with the big rocks, look at scripture, look at the whole of what we believe about life and to not compromise on those convictions that you're feeling the Lord is speaking to you. That was helpful for us.
Darrell:
Okay. Well, I appreciate you sharing that. Scott, so now I'm going to you and how many people did you meet who were couples who gave as much thought to that as is Christina and her husband apparently gave to this? Is that exceptional or unusual?
Scott:
It's pretty rare.
Darrell:
Okay.
Scott:
Most of them don't give serious thought to it until after the fact. And by that time, the proverbial horse is out of the barn and in some cases it's too late to make the kinds of decisions that they should have made beforehand.
Darrell:
So that's actually raising a good pastoral point. So let's pause there for a second. What can be the fallout, let me say it that way, what can be the fallout of the pursuit of this that someone may or may not have considered before they stepped into it?
Scott:
I'll give you an example that may illustrate this pretty well. We have very close friends who they tried and tried unsuccessfully, had IVF done and conceived with triplets. And they figured at that point their childbearing days were over. And especially because she developed lupus after that, which her physicians told her then further pregnancies were a pretty bad idea, but they had five embryos left in storage. And so they came to me and just said, "What do we do with these?" Because they hadn't thought about that beforehand. I said, "Well, you have a handful of options, most of which are not good ones. One, is that you can discard them, which is the moral equivalent of aborting fetuses. You can allow them to die naturally, which is unethical to do if it's possible to save them. You can donate them to another infertile couple, which I think is morally acceptable." But as my friend put it, he said, I don't like the idea of my progeny running around the area without my knowledge.
And so really the only option that they had available was to keep them in storage indefinitely. And I think that's what they chose to do, which all that does is kick the can down the road and force them to make a decision later. The only one of those options I think is acceptable is to put them up for adoption to another infertile couple. In the last 10, 15 years, embryo adoption has become a thing that's actually a viable option. And for couples who are considering a sperm or egg donor, and I think Christina, you're right about your hesitation to bring a third party into the matrix of marriage for procreation purposes. I always suggest that they adopt embryos instead because they get a lot of what they value out of natural procreation, which is the experience of being pregnant, giving birth, the bonding with the mother. There's no break in the relationship at birth when the child's handed off to someone else and that's not a knock on traditional adoption, but it does have some differences that I think are to the benefit of both the parents and the child.
Darrell:
So for clarity, when you adopt an embryo, what does that actually mean?
Scott:
Well, I would encourage your listeners, if you Google the Snowflake program. Christina, you're nodding your head, you're familiar with that? That's the largest embryo adoption agency in the world. They facilitated more than 400 or 500 of these in the last 20 years. And essentially, you take possession of embryos that another couple had left over and had left frozen. And you implant to however many is safe to do or however many children you want to have, although that's not always in your control and you implant them and then you formally adopt the children and go through all the same legal arrangements that you would in a traditional adoption.
Darrell:
It's just earlier in the process basically?
Scott:
Much.
Christina:
And a lot less expensive I would add too than going through the entire IVF process. But Scott, you could probably talk to this more than I could, aren't there a significant amount of frozen embryos available for adoption? Because that is part of the ethical dilemma as well.
Scott:
Yes it is. It's a good point. The demand exceeds the available supply. And the reason for that is because most couples don't designate their embryos for donation. Well, in fact, most couples who have embryos left over in IVF have this profound ambivalence about what to do with them. Because they know that the embryos, especially if they've had children successfully, they know that there's a big continuity between the embryos in the lab and those bouncing children that they're holding in their arms. But they also say, "Well, this is just cells that you have to look under a microscope to see." And there's something counterintuitive about calling embryos persons, even though I think they are. So most couples choose to simply keep them in storage indefinitely, which just shifts the ethical decision from the couple to the clinic about what to do with all these. Last count, they're probably close to a million frozen embryos in infertility clinics around the country.
Jeff:
I think that's right, Scott. They're about a million the last I read. And the estimates are that about 15% of those are really now getting into the category of being unclaimed. A lot of the infertility clinics, I've had these customers stop paying for the annual fee for the freezing and the clinics are struggling what to do with these. And that's really where I'm glad to see that some of these clinics are setting themselves up as donation clinics. So they'll take and do all the legal work to accept the embryo as a donation that then later can be put into an infertile couple.
Darrell:
I don't know who answers this question. It's a technical question. And that is, I'm going to use probably a crass illustration to ask it. And that, is there an expiration date on this? Is there good until 6/28 or something like that?
Christina:
I have heard about 20 years. But I will let somebody with a medical degree answer that.
Jeff:
I don't think anybody knows, nobody knows. There are embryos that have been frozen for 20 and 30 years and there have been live babies that have come out of those frozen embryos. So I don't think we have an answer to that. I was just going to say part of it depends. The freezing technique has changed as well over the last decade, especially. And the initial 20 to 30 years, they were using a slow freezing technique that had a mortality of about 20% to 30%. But in the last 10 years, they have perfected in a better way. I'm still opposed to it. I want to make that clear. But they use a fast freezing technique that's also associated with a process called vitrification that dries out the embryo. And so the mortality is actually less than 5%. And so that process has only been in use, as I said, for the last five to 10 years. And who knows how long those embryos will remain viable in that frozen state.
Darrell:
Scott, I think I heard you trying to comment. Go ahead.
Scott:
The longest time span that I'm aware of for a successful live birth from a frozen embryo is 13 years. Christina, you mentioned 20 years, that's probably the upper limit, I would say.
Darrell:
Okay, so this is the other side of the conversation in some ways. You've got all these embryos that are frozen, unclaimed sitting around, and if they've gone 20 years, I dare say they're likely to be sitting around. I mean, the idea that someone's going to claim them 20 years afterwards, not great. So that's another dimension to the question. I haven't been keeping count of how many questions this raises, but I think I'm on my second hand if I can say it that way. And so there are a lot of questions that are associated with this. We've got about 10 minutes left and our time is flying. So let's dive into the ethical parts of this. I've almost heard in the midst of the exchange that we're having that people tend not to think about the ethical dimensions of what's going on here. I'll just ask that as a simple question to start off with and then we'll go from there. So fair, most people don't think about the ethical dimensions of what's going on here?
Jeff:
I think that's true.
Scott:
I think that's fair. And I think most of their physicians have not thought seriously about it either.
Darrell:
Okay. That's fair. So let's assume… Now you gave a list at the start, Scott and I'm going to put a little bit of onus on you, but then you know I do this on a regular basis because of our friendship. So I see that little gleam in his eye. Here it comes again. Anyway, I owe you. You're right. Okay. We'll take care of that conversation first. So let's go through the list of questions that you raised and give us some help on how to think about each one of these in a pricey kind of way.
Scott:
Okay. First one was, is there anything intrinsically unethical about conception taking place outside the body? I don't believe there is. I view infertility as a result of the general entrance of sin into the world. It's not the way God intended, and therefore it's an appropriate area for medicine to be involved in. And even though IVF doesn't really treat anything, it's an end run around a problem, there's lots of medicine that's an end run around problems too, things like dialysis. It doesn't treat anything, it just is an end run around kidney disease. So I don't think there's anything immoral about that, as long as you follow certain guidelines, which are no throwing away embryos.
In fact, I would often encourage couples to limit the number of embryos that they create. And there are clinics that do this with things like what they call minimal stimulation IVF, which limits the number of eggs that the woman produces. I'm also aware of clinics that will do IVF one egg at a time, which guarantees you won't have leftover embryos. It may also guarantee that you don't have any pregnancies either, so that's a risk too. But I think it's on the couple to adhere to the principle that every embryo you create in the lab deserves an opportunity to be implanted.
Darrell:
So is there a way to do that in such a way that you say, "I'm going to preserve five embryos and if we conceive after the first two, the other three are available for adoption," is that how you do that?
Scott:
That's one way. The other way is just to limit the number of eggs that you would have harvested from the woman so that in your best estimate, you're not going to have any leftover. That's a bit more of a crapshoot.
Christina:
I think, Scott, what you're saying is that a couple should go in not planning on doing embryo adoption, but implanting all of the eggs that are created.
Scott:
That's the better option.
Speaker 1:
Okay. So the other would be a fallback option to prevent embryos from being left over.
Scott:
Right.
Speaker 1:
Okay. So that's question one. Let's keep going.
Scott:
So second one had to do with selective termination of pregnancies, that can be avoided just by the decision that you make. You just never implant more embryos than a woman can safely carry. And so that one is easy to avoid. Third one has to do, I think, with freezing embryos. Jeff, I'm encouraged to hear the new technology has significantly decreased the mortality rate on those. I'm not thrilled about freezing embryos per se, even if the mortality rate is real low. I suppose one way to think about that is that the reason, and I'll defer to your judgment on this, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but the reason that embryos don't thaw out successfully, I've heard this from our own OB, usually is because there's some sort of genetic abnormality in the embryo that would highly likely cause it to miscarry once it's implanted.
Jeff:
I think it raises the odds that there is a genetic/chromosomal problem. I agree.
Scott:
But not a sure thing.
Jeff:
Correct.
Scott:
Darrell, just to be honest, I'm ambivalent about that one. The standard of practice is that every egg gets fertilized, every embryo gets frozen. And whether they're viable or not is that is often a physician's judgment. I'm not quite sure what that's based on, but I don't think that has anything to do with the obligation to implant every embryo that's created in the lab. The other ethical issue has to do with the use of third party donors. And I think the scripture tilts for skeptically against that because bringing third parties into the matrix of marriage for procreation purposes, I think is a big problem biblically and theologically.
Darrell:
I call it the Abraham solution. Go ahead.
Scott:
Well, because yeah, the Abraham solution was the old fashioned way.
Darrell:
Exactly right.
Scott:
Which some of the early cases of surrogacy were done the old fashioned way too.
Darrell:
Right.
Scott:
But I think that's a problem that I would encourage couples not to consider that. Does that cover them all?
Darrell:
I think that covered the ones we were… Of course, the other premise that we raised at the beginning that we probably do need to come back to is the premise that's underneath all this, which is that when you have an established embryo, and I want to tackle this scientifically and theologically, because I think this is a very important question for a whole lot of reasons, even beyond in vitro fertilization. And that is that all the potentiality for life exists from the moment that you get an embryo. Most people debate that, but that's true both scientifically, as well as being a theological view. Now am I right about that? I'm going to ask Jeff first. Is that the right way to see the science?
Jeff:
Exactly. In fact, if you ask embryologists, regardless of their faith, lack thereof or whatever, about 98% of embryologists, people who study the embryo as their life mission, will say life begins at fertilization.
Darrell:
And that's because all the potentiality for life is already residing in the embryo. Isn't that the basis for that judgment or is that a way… That may be a poor way to state it, but is that-
Jeff:
I would say it's partly that, but more that this is a genetically unique individual. The genetic makeup of that embryo is different than any other individual in the universe. And so that's a unique individual. The only caveat to this is that it's possible for an embryo to divide, you get identical twinning, that throws a mess into all of that. But aside from that, that embryo is a unique individual genetically and has the capacity to grow and develop into, now I don't want to say into a human being, but as a human being from that point forward.
Scott:
The way I'd put it is the embryo matures into a fetus, which matures into a newborn, which matures into a two-year-old and so on.
Darrell:
The point that I'm making is everything that you needed to get to what everyone sees as life is already there in the sense of the material necessary to produce life.
Scott:
I'd put it like this, that from the moment conception is complete, the embryo has all the capacities it needs to mature into a full grown adult.
Darrell:
Yeah. Okay, so that's actually important. To me, that's the fundamental conversation in all this is you ask the question, life doesn't begin when it looks like life as we know it now, life begins much earlier than that, if I can say it that way.
Christina:
Yeah. And I think to Jeff's point, most embryologists don't disagree on that.
Jeff:
No they don't.
Christina:
It would undermine their entire field of medicine if they did. I think where the ethical dilemma is usually found is the wrestling on how then do we treat these embryos as potential human life for human flourishing.
Darrell:
Yeah. I know when I came across this, I'm on the board at Wheaton and we were in the midst of deciding what as a school we would cover as board of trustees, what we would cover in terms of medical care and medical treatment. And we ended up being, I don't remember the technical legal term, but we ended up being a supporter of another suit that was being made that was asking the same question from another school. And in the midst of doing the research for that as board members, we came across this embryological definition of life as a way of thinking about morning after pills and that kind of thing.
And I found myself going, well, this is something I hadn't thought about before, not really, not from a scientific point of view for sure. So I knew theologically the idea that conception starts at birth, but the science behind it, I had no idea about. And it really does, I think, it makes a difference in thinking about the question. So the distinction you made earlier on, Scott, between, what was it? It's not a part of a body, I don't remember exactly.
Scott:
Not part of the woman's body, but it's dependent on the woman's body.
Darrell:
That distinction is really an important distinction to be thinking about. Well, that seems artificial, but then I remind people we have children who are born on the other side of birth who are very dependent on their parents for their survival.
Scott:
That's correct.
Darrell:
Okay. And we don't blink about that. So I think that's the point of the distinction.
Scott:
Right, because after birth, the child is only just minusculey less dependent on the mother than before.
Darrell:
Right, exactly.
Scott:
It's just in a different location.
Darrell:
So I think all of this is important as we think about it. Believe it or not, our time is gone. So I want to thank you all for taking the time to discuss it. I think we've covered this as an initial foray into the space reasonably well. Certainly it's raised questions, some of which I hadn't even thought about before, so this has been informative to me. So I appreciate that very much. I'm assuming be informative to the audience and I just want to thank each of you for taking the time for being a part of this today.
Jeff, thank you very much for giving us a doctor's perspective.
Jeff:
My pleasure.
Darrell:
And Scott for the ethicist/theologian/been there, done that perspective.
Scott:
Something like that.
Darrell:
And Christina, for the same been there, done that perspective and in a thoughtful way, which is a really appreciative. One of the things I think Christina's remark shows is it's possible to be thoughtful about this as you go through it, which I think is an important point to be making. So thank you all very much and thank you for being a part of The Table. We hope you'll join us again soon. If you're interested in other podcasts that we do, you can see them at voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast. And we hope you'll join us again soon.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to the Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And our topic today is justice. And in particular we're going to take a close look at a particular ministry, the International Justice Mission. And my guest today is Melissa Russell, who's regional president of the IJM. I've learned that you can't exist in the 21st century without thinking about how initials work and abbreviation. So IJM stands for International Justice Mission and she's regional president of North America for the organization.
And we're going to be talking about justice but not in the way that you normally hear about it when you're into political discussions on race and that kind of thing but a more generic category that has to do with how people are treated and mistreated and abused in a variety of ways around the world. So with that as kind of a short introduction, my standard question to someone who's with us for the first time, it's the equivalent of getting initiated, is what's a nice person like you doing in a gig like this? How did you get into your work in the International Justice Mission?
Melissa Russell:
Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me on Darrell. I'm really, really excited to be here. I'm very honored that you asked and honestly, it all started in Texas. So I was living in Austin, Texas, working for the University of Texas at the time. My husband and I lived there. We went to school there. We helped plan a church in West Austin. And one day my pastor was giving a sermon and he was talking about certain types of violence that had happened around the world and that were still happening today. And my undergraduate degree is in journalism. My master's degree is in marketing and communication. I sort of fancied myself fairly well-read on global matters and the issues he was talking about today, modern day slavery in the millions, the rampant abuse of violence against women and children, particularly in developing economy countries, I just was not as familiar with it.
And he said one thing at the end of the sermon, which was this injustice exists in the world today, talked a lot about how God sees injustice and said, "If you want to see what God is doing in the world today to address these things, you should go to IJM.org." And I did. And I think at the time I think I probably gave a $10 gift. I was like very sacrificial for us. My husband had just started his own small business and so didn't have a lot of money to give but was so moved by the work when I went to the website. So my first action with IJM was actually one of being a donor and then eventually came on staff and have been there now 14 years, almost 15 years.
Darrell Bock:
That's great. Well, first of all, let me establish some connections between us. I'm a University of Texas grad as well, and although my wife is far more of a Longhorn than I am, her grandfather was president of the university at one point.
Melissa Russell:
Oh, that's wonderful.
Darrell Bock:
So she grew up a Longhorn. I guess I got adopted into the family because I was going to marry her and so it was a way of protecting my investment, was going to the University of Texas.
Melissa Russell:
Very well.
Darrell Bock:
Which worked. So anyway, so let's come back to your story. So you got involved in the International Justice Mission and you've had a variety of roles with them, is that right?
Melissa Russell:
Yeah, I did. Yeah, absolutely. I started off in Texas. I was working with our donors in Texas. That was my job, really working one on one, connecting their investment with the transformative work going on in the field. And then how long has it been? Since 2010? So about 12 years ago, moved here to DC from Austin to manage a team and then over the years that has just progressed into larger area of responsibility and now I lead all the work here in the US and Canada so the work here in North America.
Darrell Bock:
So it says you're regional president.
Melissa Russell:
I am.
Darrell Bock:
So I guess the next question, so how many regions are there? I mean the world's a big place, so how many regions are there?
Melissa Russell:
We have five regions. So there's Latin America, Africa and Europe, South Asia, Asia Pacific, and North America.
Darrell Bock:
So I was working through your webpage today and I'm just going to list the countries that got mentioned as I was roaming.
Melissa Russell:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
So I'll start. Bolivia, Guatemala, Kenya, Myanmar, India, Philippines, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Cambodia, Uganda. So I mean that's a pretty interesting array of nations from a variety of parts of the world. Well, actually I have two questions. I take it the United States is like a hub in terms of being a really important means of support for some of these other regions but I also think, and people don't think about this aspect of it, they probably think, "Well, if you're dealing with things like human trafficking and violence against women and other kinds of forms of injustice, that that goes on around the world but that's not quite necessarily so prevalent in the United States." And that would be misleading, wouldn't it?
Melissa Russell:
It would. I think violence against women and children and human trafficking exists everywhere in every country around the world. The IJM model works in places where there's laws against these things, but the laws are really not being enforced at all. And so we don't have a programmatic focus here in the US because within the Department of Justice, within local police departments, there actually are units in pretty much every major city to address a lot of this imperfectly. So by no means would I say that that's perfect by any means, but our model really is to address those places where there's little to no accountability. The structure exists so we can work within the structure, but we're trying to get people accountable so that you see the prevalence of these reduced significantly.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. I'm going to talk about the model in just a second. I'm just going to rattle off some statistics that I came across. You deal with both labor and sex trafficking issues and 90% of the labor trafficking, which is having people work for next to no wage in one form or another, 90% of that is in what's called the private economy. I found that interesting. On the sex trafficking side, that's a hundred billion dollar a year business. It's a huge number. And another interesting statistic is that 570 million women a year suffer some form of physical violence or abuse. And I did the math on that. I actually looked up the world population to do this. That means that in any given year, one out of every 15 women experiences some form of violence during the year.
Melissa Russell:
Absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
That to me is an amazing statistic. I mean, just think about the average pew row in your church. That means that someone sitting on that row has probably had that experience in the last year. I just find that absolutely mind-blowing. Another important statistic is that one out of every five women has experienced abuse at some point in her life. So those are just amazing statistics. 50 million people are in some form of slavery in the world. Now I'm taking your statistics at face value here.
Melissa Russell:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
The point is it's a very prevalent problem, isn't it?
Melissa Russell:
Absolutely. It absolutely is. And one that actually with specific and focused measures, especially on the economic side, can be really reduced significantly. Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So let's talk about the model that you have because I imagine that most people say, "So how do you deal with something so vast?" In fact, in one spot I noticed a little conversation that said, "How in the world can an organization like yours attempt to tackle something so large?" And in fact, I think the word audacious was used to describe even conceiving of the attempt. So next question is how do you attempt it?
Melissa Russell:
Yeah, well, so here's what I'll say. We are sort of in the third iteration of IJM's work. And I would say from the very beginning, that statement right there has always been said. The initial was, "You'll never be able to rescue one child out of a brothel," or, "One family out of a rice mill in South Asia." "You'll never be able to get a conviction for sexual assault against children in Guatemala. This will never happen." And I mean truly first and foremost, I think all things are possible with God, particularly a God who loves justice and loves to bring order to chaos. And so for us, I'll take trafficking for example. It really is a crime of economic opportunity. Someone somewhere is taking someone who's vulnerable, you could say children or women, and exploiting them for sex or for labor. And that's because laws in those areas are not being enforced.
It's not that laws don't exist in the places that we work. They truly just are not being enforced. And so if you can work in the community working on investigations, going undercover, working with the local police to conduct a rescue, working with local prosecutors to hold traffickers and owners responsible, if you can do that, it's very difficult, especially in the beginning, you certainly come up against corruption and you come up honestly against hopelessness but if you continue on in that process, you don't actually have to hold everyone accountable, you just have to hold enough people accountable where you make the cost of doing business too high to continue in that way. So you change the system through accountability.
And so that's really the reason you won't see the same scale of trafficking in Canada or the United States or the UK or Australia and other places, is there are laws and there is law enforcement and people are accountable. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it's a lot harder to find than in places where laws aren't being enforced at all. And so please feel free to pull on any thread there, but I mean that's the real simple equation, hold people accountable and they will start doing business a different way.
Darrell Bock:
So you said there were three levels. The first step is, "Well, you aren't even going to get one successful action." I'll just characterize it that way. What was step two?
Melissa Russell:
Yeah, so I would say, our first 10 years was just proving that it was even possible to provide victim relief, people who become survivors and can you even get this done? So that was really our first 10 years. I'd say we were able to prove that was possible. And you listed all the places where we work. And that is by strategic design because this is a model that has been developed and we want to be able to say, "It doesn't just work in Guatemala but it also works in the Philippines, it also works in India. And it doesn't just work in labor trafficking, it also works in sex trafficking, it also works in sexual assault." So various case work types in various regions to prove out the model, if you hold people accountable. That second stage of our work really was, "Okay, can we prove a model where not only you can rescue people out of violence and oppression, can you reduce the prevalence?"
It started in 2005, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave us a grant where they wanted us to measure that. And that was the first time for us to measure the reduction of the prevalence. Did the number of children in the Philippines who were sold for sex, did that actually reduce? And so we measured that over a number of years and after seven years we found you actually are able to reduce it by up to 79% in strategic areas just by holding people accountable. So that was our second stage. Can you reduce the prevalence? If you actually rescue people, if you hold them accountable, are you able to reduce that?
And we are now in our, I would say, IJM 3.0 which is, "Okay, we have this model. It works, it works in different places and different case work around the world. Now how do we scale that? How do we actually empower others to take this thing that God has entrusted with us, boil it down, teach it, share it? How do we get national governments more engaged in adopting the principles?" And so that's the stage we're in now and we do have a pretty audacious goal by 2030 to rescue millions and protect half a billion people.
Darrell Bock:
Oh wow. So I guess I would say the first stage was just to establish the credibility of what it was that you were doing.
Melissa Russell:
Yeah. And honestly, truly I would say just to prove that it was possible just to even provide victim relief. Could you get one child out of the brothel? It's so corrupt, it's so pervasive. Everyone said it couldn't be done in Cambodia. And so really just establishing the possibility I would say was IJM 1.0.
Darrell Bock:
And then the second step is kind of measuring, "How is this working? Is it actually working, et cetera?" Which actually kind of deepens the credibility because it shows not only that it can be done, but at what the situation is and what the pace is. And now that you've established those two things in place, this third step is saying, "All right, where else can we do it and how can we do it in more places?" Is that kind of the last step?
Melissa Russell:
Yep, that's exactly right. How can we do it in more places and how do we get it out there the fastest? I'm coming out of the pandemic, we could talk about a vaccine. There's one thing to develop a vaccine and I would say that's a lot. If you were to think of IJM's model as a vaccine against violence, especially in developing economy countries, we have the vaccine, we know that it works, now we're trying to be the organization… How do you distribute that vaccine at scale? And those are two different organizations. We'll still obviously continue developing it. We still are doing the work in the field, but we are trying to figure out, "How do we scale this work even to places that we're currently not, how do we give this to partners? How do we share it with national governments at scale?" So that would be the at scale part is what we're working on now.
Darrell Bock:
So I kind of have two questions. I'm trying to decide which direction to go. Let me go to the one direction first. I noticed in doing this list, I sometimes think about missions in the 10/40 Window and I think in particular about places like the Middle East and those kinds of places where some of these issues are also a very big deal. And yet I can look at this list of nations and go, "Well, yeah it's Asia, it's Africa, it's Latin America, but the Middle East seems to be one of the places that would be a challenge." Is that a fair look at what you've got here?
Melissa Russell:
Let's take Sharia law, what we're working on is actually enforcing the laws on the books. We're not going to want to have all of those laws enforced. The IJM model in that way at this point is not where it would best be applied. And so there does have to exist the structure of law enforcement, of a stable government, of laws on the books that you would want enforce. I'm saying in a very specific way.
Darrell Bock:
Right, yeah.
Melissa Russell:
And so that does not apply right now in the majority of the countries in the Middle East. It doesn't apply in typically post-war countries, the infrastructure is completely absent. We have a model that works and that works where those basic structures do exist, but they're not being enforced. So it's like they don't exist but the semblance of the structure is there.
Darrell Bock:
I see. So one of the things that you're looking at is you look at countries is to go, "Do they have, for lack of a better description, the substructure culturally to be able to apply some of the accountability that you're asking for?"
Melissa Russell:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Is there a structure with which we can work within to grow accountability?
Darrell Bock:
Because your assumption is that without, I'll say it this way, the indigenous cultural support for the effort, you're not going to get anywhere.
Melissa Russell:
Yeah, it's not to say you couldn't see change, but in the places where there is the semblance of the structure, there are people who are suffering and in pain and you can maximize and get there super quickly relatively speaking. And so in terms of how do we get to as many people who are hurting as fast as possible, that's one of the things we've learned about our model. I wouldn't say we always have a ton of cultural buy-in, and I should probably establish this, 95% of our staff are national. So when you're in Kenya, 95% of our staff are Kenyan. They're Filipino in the Philippines. So they understand the culture. This is their country, this is their community. They care very deeply about it.
But when you are living in a place where there is no hope for justice, where actually going to the police, especially let's say in Kenya where we work on police piece of power, is the most dangerous thing that you can do, there's not a lot of hopefulness. And so part of our job is proving that these systems can work, that accountability can happen and really shift that tide oftentimes from corruption to justice systems that actually do see justice.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, so you told me to pull on threads and every time you give an answer another thread shows up. So I'm still one behind. So let me try this and I'm shifting gears a little bit on you. A few years ago you spoke with us and talked about what you were doing in the organization and in preparing for this, you said things have changed. I'm assuming that the change is the move from category two of measurement to category three of scalability. Am I right about that?
Melissa Russell:
That's it, yep.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. So I guess what you're saying to us is a ministry like this has to grow kind of organically and respond as it, one, establishes its own identity and its own approach. And then, two, wrestles with, "All right, how do we do this? Now that we kind of have our hands around what it is that we're doing, how do we apply this effectively?" And that's part of maturing a ministry.
Melissa Russell:
We feel like we are stewards of something that makes a profound difference around the world because if you are not safe, nothing else really matters. One of the places girls get assaulted the most in Sub-Saharan Africa is on the way to school or actually in school itself. Sexual assault is one of the largest drivers of AIDS. If you, really in places like Uganda, empower a woman to grow her agriculture business but there's no accountability when someone comes to steal the land from the widow and orphan, all of these wonderful economic, education, health, economic sustainability, all gets undermined by violence. And so that is something to be a steward of. And so for IJM to say, "We have this thing. Oh my goodness, third party evaluators. This is incredible model, how do we get it as many places as possible?" That's a responsibility. We feel highly responsible for it.
Darrell Bock:
Okay, now everything about that's fast. I'm glad you mentioned orphans and widows because one of the things we do like to do every now and again is just mention how biblically connected this kind of a ministry is. And of course the Bible has a ton to say in many places about caring for the orphan, the widow. I mean the end of James chapter one talks about true religion being showing that kind of care. The issue of how God cares for the oppressed and the marginalized is very clear. The Gospel of Luke does nothing but talk about marginalized people along the way while it's telling the story of Jesus and the gospel. So all that is kind of underneath. Loving your neighbors yourself is kind of a major commandment. It's the great commandment. So all that is underneath everything that's being done here. Let me pull on another thread. So I'm shifting gears on you again.
Melissa Russell:
Right.
Darrell Bock:
You talked about the challenge of going to the police in Kenya and the thing that struck me when you were initially telling your story was I can imagine there are massive structures in place to prevent an organization like yours from being effective. And that one of the means that's done here, there are probably two that leap to mind, one is the amount of money that is available to these groups to block efforts like the ones you're talking about. So the corruption part if you will. And the second is the non-hesitation to use violence or to apply violence in order to protect the space. So one, have I missed anything? Because those seem to me to be perhaps the big two. And then secondly, how do you get over those hurdles?
Melissa Russell:
Yeah, corruption in all the places where we work certainly exists and I think part of the IJM model as you're working cases through the system… So if you could imagine a pipe as the justice system, so you've got investigations, you have prosecution and you have aftercare, and as you're pushing a case through the system like water, you get to see where all the holes are. You get to see, "Okay, on the investigative side, do police not have the capacity? Do they not have the skills? Are they benefiting from corruption here? On the prosecution side of it, that actually the laws aren't as they should be. How are judges complicit in enforcing the law?" And aftercare, which is honestly a huge component of accountability. People have to be cared for, they have to feel safe because they are going to have to testify against abusers. And if you're not well cared for in that aftercare process, accountability actually doesn't happen.
And so are there great services that address trauma? And you don't get to see that unless you are in the system. And typically the places of corruption, whether it's there's money that's benefited, which you're right, that is typically the case, it's not everyone. We use a statistic, it's just again a simple way of saying it, but probably 15% wake up every day, thinking, "How can I exploit the system the most to my personal benefit?" You probably have another 15% that's like, "I feel called to do good and justice in my community." And then the middle 70% is just like whichever way is going to win. "We're not going to put our neck out on the line for anything."
Not necessarily looking to be exploitive but not going to stick your neck out for that which is good. And so it's knowing by name, it's not a whole system, it's typically we know who those police officers are, we know who that judge is who continually refuses to enforce the law and trying to figure out ways to come alongside and address those capacity issues or those corruption issues. So that is part of the unique model that IJM has, hands on. And then you can delve into those programs that address the wider issues and then you can actually scale through work.
Darrell Bock:
So as my mind kind of dives into what you've been describing, it seems to me that there are two pipes, if I can say it that way.
Melissa Russell:
Sure.
Darrell Bock:
One pipe is the person who's the perpetrator in dealing with them legally, but the other pipe is the victim and how you come alongside them and care for them and in some cases encourage them to step forward with the risk that's involved there, et cetera. And so you're working, if I can say this, both sides of the track at the same time, right?
Melissa Russell:
Yeah, I mean absolutely. And I will say IJM, because there's no one ministry that does all things all the time, so we have great partners in the field, particularly on the aftercare side. We don't run aftercare homes, we run the counseling typically that goes into trauma focused care. So our social workers are deeply trained in that and embedding that. But we work with great aftercare homes, with great medical services because if you have been sexually exploited for so long, you have a host of healthcare issues that need to be addressed, teaching women and girls economic opportunities for after you're out of the aftercare home.
And so yes, you could put it into, but it's all part of the same system. So as much as we want to rescue people from slavery and oppression and give them great aftercare and put them into wonderful situations where they can thrive, what you most want is that it never happened in the first place. And so we truly, truly know that if you can provide justice, if you can provide accountability, you create communities where this doesn't happen in the first place, where people actually are free, where people actually are safe, where they don't have to overcome trauma because they never experienced it in the first place. And that is actually our ultimate goal.
Darrell Bock:
Interesting. So again, you've given me more threads than I have… I have to give one at a time. Let me ask it this way. So in the effort to try and create this environment where communities, if you will won't, go there, how much of the challenge is making… You gave a model earlier of there's 15% who are involved and could be called on the perpetration side, there are 15% who are trying to counter that, and then there's this vast sea of people in the middle, and in this case the middle is not a complimentary description probably, who are in the middle who just stand back and aren't involved. How much of this is a function, at least in part of, people not even being aware of or have a sense of how pervasive the problem is?
Melissa Russell:
That's a great question. Honestly, it depends on the community. So there are going to be some communities where it's so well known. I can think of Cambodia in the early 2000s where literally the sexual exploitation of children under the age of 12 was well known. Everyone knew where to go. But you land in Phnom Penh and people are going to point the way to… Especially if you're a western male who has come in, the expectation is you're there in Cambodia for a reason and as soon as you walk out of the airport, people are going to start directing you to where you can abuse children. That's so well known. I will say, especially I'm thinking of some of our work in South Asia, where we have many of our colleagues who would say, "I lived miles away from this brick kiln or this rice mill or this rock quarry and I really didn't know. I really didn't know."
I don't think that's the case anymore. I think we have seen so much change in India, so much change in the Indian government who is in so many ways actively looking for and trying to resolve this. They've put some resolutions forward by 2030 that they want to rescue at least 18 million out of slavery and oppression. But that's a huge systems change and that comes after months and years and decades of work bringing this forward, advocacy like you talked about in the beginning, and seeing systems change. So honestly it does depend on the community. I think in some places it's super well known, in other places it may not be, but that's part of the advocacy work that we do to bring that forward.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I think the first place where I came across this in my own travel and I'm just traveling, speaking and doing ministry and that kind of thing was when I was in Thailand. And I landed in Thailand and you walk into the churches and say, "So what do you deal with as a church?" And some of the churches and ministers I was talking to, this was one of the key issues that they were concerned about as churches. And I'm going, "Man, I can think of thousands of churches that I've been in where this isn't even on the radar."
Melissa Russell:
Right, right.
Darrell Bock:
People aren't thinking about this. I mean a local church in the US might have an outreach that deals with this and that kind of thing, but it's not something that's kind of in their face, if I can say it that way?
Melissa Russell:
Right, right. Their children aren't going missing out of ministry activities because they've been trafficked.
Darrell Bock:
Exactly right. So that's when it first hit me that there was something going on at a level that I had absolutely very little idea about before. I mean I think there are lots of people who hear about it and conceive in their heads what it might be like, but they really have no understanding about how deep and pervasive and then how it really is a form of entrapment. You were talking earlier about the care houses that are given for people who come out of these situations. We've done podcasts on that kind of ministry before.
Melissa Russell:
Right.
Darrell Bock:
And you're also right about the networking part of this, that it really involves many ministries that are focused on different aspects of the problem, working together and being coordinated in their effort in order to be able to actually deal with it. So all of that is significant it seems to me in thinking about this. So let me ask a very basic question. So someone's listening to this and they're hearing about this for the first time, they're back to where you were when you were in the church in Austin and you decided, "I've heard about this, I'm going to give $10 a month."
Melissa Russell:
Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
So what would you say to that person for whom this might be getting acquainted with the entire area?
Melissa Russell:
Yeah, well, first if you listened to the podcast all the way through, we've been talking about some hard issues. We haven't gone into explicit detail, but these aren't actually easy things to turn your eyes to. So first I would say thank you for listening all the way through and I would say there's great hope, right? I think one of the things that would be devastating is if we came on here and I just told you all the horrible things in great detail that happen around the world and the scale at which they happen and just left us there. That actually would be not helpful to anyone.
The hopeful thing, and especially at this point is there is a model, it does actually work and there is reason for great hope. IJM has existed for 25 years, I've been at IJM for nearly 15 of those and the way and the speed at which I think God is growing this work is one of hope, one that points to a God who cares very deeply for those who are poor, for those who are oppressed, and the God that cares to bring lots of order to chaos. And there are a few things more chaotic in this world than the justice systems in the places where IJM works. And so I think first and foremost I would just want to say there's a lot of great hope to lean into and to be encouraged by.
Darrell Bock:
And then I assume that kind of the way your story is, the more you get interested and become aware and the more you pursue understanding this, the more opportunity you see for maybe how you could perhaps get involved?
Melissa Russell:
Oh absolutely. I mean absolutely. We are at a critical point where we're trying to scale so certainly the power that exists, particularly in the United States and other developed economy, there's so much power. There's so much power of our governments to engage with other governments. The corporate power that exists here, part of my job is working with transnational corporations who have a genuine interest in removing slavery from their supply chain. The thing is no matter how good your audits are, no matter how diligent you are about trying to suss it out, if the country where your supply chain works, it does not enforce the laws, it's going to find the way. And so we've got Walmart Corporation and Foundation that's actively involved in helping to create sustainable justice systems in the places where their supply chains are because they know that it's going to exist for them if they don't. And so yes, absolutely giving money, the corporation involvement, engaging in advocacy with the government. Obviously we are always hiring and so if you feel called, as we're scaling, we're certainly hiring. So all of those ways are just phenomenal ways to be engaged.
Darrell Bock:
Now in the midst of talking about the various threads I've been pulled on, I had a thread on early that I never pulled on that's still sitting and I've remembered it. So that's good.
Melissa Russell:
Great.
Darrell Bock:
So I'm not full dementia here, but anyway, I've described your work as kind of consisting in four areas. You highlighted the idea of the protection that you try and give to people, but there's the advocacy work that you do, there are the studies that you pursue to kind of understand the area, there's the support that you give, which we've talked a lot about, and there's the rescue part. Talk a little bit about what the advocacy part is because I don't think we've developed that probably as much as some of the other stuff that we've talked about.
Melissa Russell:
Yeah, I mean we do advocacy everywhere we work in the world. And so as the regional president for North America, we're really engaged in moving corporations so doing a lot of advocacy with corporations and in helping them see they can have a ton of influence. It's one thing when IJM goes to a national government to engage in law enforcement, it's a totally different ballgame if you have high powered corporations also engaging in that conversation with you. It moves the ball a lot faster. So that's a form of advocacy. We work a ton with the US government. In terms of aid, there's something called the Trafficking in Persons Report that the state department puts out. And if countries do not show sustained effort in improving their trafficking in persons, it makes them ineligible for certain aid from the US government. And so we work with US government on that.
But of course, again, it's all pointing to protection. It's all under the umbrella of protection. It is not the responsibility of IJM, it is not the responsibility of a corporation. There is one entity that has the responsibility for the protection of citizens and that is the national and local governments. And our job is not actually to be there forever. Our job is to create the structure so that national governments own it and we actually do pull out. And we do pull out. We pull out of countries when our model starts to work in the case work that we are focused on. And so our teams in the field are also doing advocacy. They're doing advocacy with the local government, again, for law enforcement, for accountability, for making laws actually are correct on the books. So it's all advocacy. Truly, so much of what we do is advocacy. We're just pulling different levers based on the countries that we were in.
Darrell Bock:
And you also alluded to this earlier and I meant to deal with it and I'm coming back to it as well. You mentioned how many people that work with your organization are local and understand the culture that they're in, et cetera. So I guess my question is, so how does it work? You go into a country, you find some local people who are interested in the area and begin to talk to who? The government, the key corporations that are operating in the country, et cetera? Is that how you get started in a country?
Melissa Russell:
That's absolutely how you get started. We typically do an assessment. We go in, we talk to local government, we talk to stakeholders. We're trying to figure out where are the gaps. We initially do what we would call as a prevalence study. So based on the type of case work, which involves investigations, and this is critical, it costs money to do this but what you have to be able to show is that you have reduced the prevalence. We don't just want to measure our activity. IJM is not an activity only based organization. We are measuring impact. Ultimately, are fewer abused after the activities that you have employed? And so our assessments typically involve that initial stakeholder conversation, assessments and then if we've decided to go, we're going to do a baseline prevalence study so that we're able to show the effect of the work typically 3, 5, 7 years down the line. And that's how we do it. Yeah.
Darrell Bock:
When you talk about a case study, is that kind of what's involved in that or is a case study something different?
Melissa Russell:
Well, so a prevalence study is really just measuring a prevalence of the crime.
Darrell Bock:
Okay.
Melissa Russell:
And it's just getting a baseline. How many children in this area are being sold for sex based on undercover investigations? And again, it's typically involving a third party so that we can have a neutral assessment of how are we measuring this? We're going to do an end line study. So we do a prevalence study and then we do an end line prevalence study to see it if we've been able to reduce the prevalence of the crime.
Darrell Bock:
Okay. Now it strikes me that this kind of work is not cheap, that there is a cost associated with it because research is one of those tricky areas. It pays off but you also have to pay for it. So am I right about that? And I'm assuming that this grant that you received, and I'm assuming you've received other grants since, really helps to underwrite a lot of the work that you do.
Melissa Russell:
The grant that we received initially from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that required us to measure was great for us because again, if you're spending money on measurement, for us at the time, it meant we weren't hiring more investigators, we weren't doing more rescue operations. And that was a really difficult equation for us. But the foundation mandated, they said, "No, we are giving you money specifically for this because what you want to be able to show is a model." If we had not done that, if we had not done that, there would be no way we would be able to scale. There would be no way to actually say to the world, "Here is this thing that we do that really works, that addresses an issue that is seen so widely in so many different communities, in so many different types of case work around the world."
And so forever indebted to the Gates Foundation for requiring that level of rigor it is a standard for all the places that we work because we need to be able to show impact. And honestly, donors demand that you see impact. The donor of today, especially sophisticated donors who want to be wise stewards of their money, they want to know that this work is making an impact. And so in terms of direct relief, it could be high in terms of number of people directly really, but we are measuring protection. Not only how many people are you directly relieving, but how are you changing the system so that actually this many people are protected. So we've rescued and relieved over 76,000 people, which is quite wonderful and amazing and we celebrate that but we're protecting over 7.8 million people currently in our case work areas, where the justice system works and the prevalence is reduced significantly where people aren't being abused. Our goal is 500 million. So we're on our way to that. That is audacious, but we've got a plan.
Darrell Bock:
Yeah, you were going where I was in the process of doing the math and trying to figure out. So how much is left? A lot. And well, I want to thank you for taking the time to walk us through the work of the International Justice Mission and just the area of labor and sex trafficking and what it involves and how this ministry's connected to it. It's really terrific to hear what you all are doing and it's really just a pleasure and an honor for us to be able to share with people what y'all are doing.
Melissa Russell:
Well, thank you so much for having me. Thanks for asking great questions. I really appreciated it. It's been a wonderful conversation.
Darrell Bock:
Yes, I very much agree and we thank you for watching the Table. We hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to hear or see more podcast, you can go either to voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast or hendrickscenter.dts.edu and that will put you on our Hendricks Center page and then the Table podcasts are prominent on that page. So we thank you Melissa, again for being a part of our day and really enlightening us in this area. I really do appreciate it.
Melissa Russell:
Yeah, thanks Darrell. Thanks for having me.
Darrell Bock:
And we thank you for joining the Table and we hope you'll join us again soon.
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Dr. Darrell Bock Welcome to the table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And my guest is just a good old friend. Dr. Michael Easley Old? Emphasis on old, yeah. Dr. Darrell Bock [Laughs] That's right; that's right. Well, you know, you're just slightly behind me, I think, in age. Dr. Michael Easley I'm much younger than you. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, yeah, so – well, people get younger all the time. Dr. Michael Easley That's right. Dr. Darrell Bock [Laughs] Dr. Michael Easley We're not getting – what is it? – we're getting older, not old. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. So, anyway, Michael Easley who – you've done about everything you can do in ministry. Dr. Michael Easley Yeah, I can't land. Dr. Darrell Bock You've been a pastor. Dr. Michael Easley Yes. Dr. Darrell Bock You've help run a school. Dr. Michael Easley Yes. Dr. Darrell Bock You've been a pastor again. Dr. Michael Easley Yes. Dr. Darrell Bock And now you're doing podcasts. Dr. Michael Easley You know, when I was at the Moody Bible Institute, they were kind enough to give me a couple of radio programs, and it's, as you know, such a great platform to talk and interact with folks. And so, we started the podcast Michael Easley in Context after I left Moody, and it's one of these – the term "organic" – it just keeps growing and growing and growing on iTunes and SoundCloud and different mediums, and it's just a combination of interviews like you do.
Our byline is "taking the life as a Christian in the context." So, how do you do this in the context of your life? And then my shtick, of course, is understanding God's Word and applying it in the context of your life. So, in context of the text, in context in your life, so forth and so on. So, we have a lot of fun doing the podcasts. Dr. Darrell Bock Well, we do the same thing. One of the things that we talk about is trying to train leaders to have Biblical agility in shifting times. And so, it's – Dr. Michael Easley Yes, that's more succinct. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. [Laughs] Dr. Michael Easley You're better at that. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley I'll give you – you get one. Dr. Darrell Bock And the image is, you know, read and react. And I tell people it's like the football player spends all week saying, "All right, here's the pulling guard play, and here's where the hole is supposed to be." But then he gets the ball in the game, and he's gotta read his linemen and the defense to figure out where that hole is gonna be. Dr. Michael Easley Right. Dr. Darrell Bock And sometimes it's not in the same place that it was designed to be, and so you gotta be able to react with agility in order to know what's going on. Dr. Michael Easley You see this young African-American kid up in Washington State, high school kid who's blind? Dr. Darrell Bock Huh, no. Dr. Michael Easley Who's killing it? It's killing it. Dr. Darrell Bock Huh, huh. Dr. Michael Easley And he says he knows where the hole is based on his team. Dr. Darrell Bock Huh, interesting. Yeah, that's good. Dr. Michael Easley Yeah. Dr. Darrell Bock Oh, okay. Well, I hope we're not doing what we do blind, but anyway – Dr. Michael Easley Well, we have people helping you. Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly right, yeah. Michael and I, we go way back. We were in church together when I was teaching, and he was a student and we've just kept up. And so, our topic today is "What's Going On in the Church?"
But first, before we do that, let's talk a little bit more about In Context. How long have you been doing it? Dr. Michael Easley Well, the reboot of the podcast now has been about five years. In fact, my executive producer asked me, "Please, please, please tell them to go look at michaelincontext.com. We've got a new feature called Ask Dr. E." Dr. Darrell Bock Okay, all right. Dr. Michael Easley So, we've already got a host of questions coming in from all over the map on anything you wanted to ask Dr. E. about. And so, if folks want to – later on want to phone in and leave a phone message, we'll try to get to all the questions. Dr. Darrell Bock Oh, wow. So, you're gonna build some of the podcasts around those questions in particular? Dr. Michael Easley Correct, correct. So, now that we've planted a church some time ago, and I'm teaching more regularly week to week, the podcast will be as much Bible teaching, but we're incorporating more and more of these interviews/interactions. And, of course, what you learn as well with the podcast is involvement of people saying, "Well, what does Darrell think? What does Dr. Bock think about that?" Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, which I try not to tell them. [Laughs] Dr. Michael Easley Well, yeah, I'm more than happy to. Dr. Darrell Bock [Laughs] Yeah, I want them to think through how to think through it, but I don't want to tell 'em what to do. So, anyway – Dr. Michael Easley Well, that's where we're different. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley Depressed? Don't be. Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly right, yeah. So, okay. So, our topic is kinda the state of the church. Let's talk a little bit about what you're hearing, I mean 'cause you – you're like me; you've got your ear to the ground; you're listening to what's going on. How would you describe the state of the church in light of – there's no doubt that we're living in very challenging times. So, how do you see the state of the church? Dr. Michael Easley Let's go back to asking about Christianity in America, big umbrella. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay. Dr. Michael Easley So, how do we start there? Dr. Darrell Bock Okay. Dr. Michael Easley And you and I can look at churches in Texas. We were in Northern Virginia, D.C. for 12 years, Chicago for 4, middle Tennessee for 10 and counting. And I would say each one has a little different aspect and affect. My sense is – I call it "horizontal Christianity" – that evangelicalism, besides the terminology being gummed up and discussed today – "emerging" and "emergent," "purpose driven," "seeker sensitive," so forth – beside evangelical being sort of a tar baby right now, I think one of the challenges is it's an I/me/my church, "What do I get out of it?"
"My" is about my songs, my worship style. I/me/my – my children, my marriage – those things are important, but I think we've made a significant shift, Darrell from a vertical relationship to, "I'm to serve Christ and, with His people, serve people," to "I/me/my."
And just from a pastoral hack side of things, what I've watched is far more self-orientation – not wholesale, but that's one of my big concerns is that the church has lost its footing a little bit, need-driven programs, need-driven ministries which can have a place. But if we're off target about honoring Christ, Christ and His Word, explain the Scripture, making disciples, helping people – truly, not joking – learn to think critically, then we're off scale. Dr. Darrell Bock So, put – you're talking about kind of the dynamics within the church. Let me wrap some cellophane around that and say how much of that do you think is the fact that we have gone through – now, this is especially true of our generation – we have gone through mammoth changes in the larger culture in our lifetime.
I mean I tell – the way I like to illustrate this is I have two examples. One is the Telstar satellite, which is going way back. M-kay? I like you, by the way, when you illustrate, 'cause you go back to illustrations I get. Okay? They come back from my time. Dr. Michael Easley They do. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right exactly. Dr. Michael Easley Four track – four track. Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly right, vinyl records. I mean that was good. Anyway, so, and the pill. So, just think about those two things. One changed the way in which – the amount of information we get, how often we get it, where we get it from, et cetera. I like to say that the world is both bigger and smaller simultaneously. And the second is the pill changed the consequences of sexual engagement and the options that people had.
And so, I wonder if some of the – even the crying for need, et cetera, isn't a product, at least in part, of the disorientation that life has introduced into people's lives. Dr. Michael Easley And perhaps the lack of those of us behind a pulpit to know how to move with that. Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly. Dr. Michael Easley One of our well-loved professors – prof said, "You're not making the Bible relevant; it is relevant." Dr. Darrell Bock Right. Dr. Michael Easley The challenge, however, is we've got a group that is disconnected from the idea of truth and the way you and I learned it and the way we taught it. So, I agree with you that these mores have changed. I disagree with the trend of my peer, many who are jettisoning the Bible, "You don't really need to go to seminary; you don't need to exposit Scripture."
I'm going, "Well, if we leave the truth behind" – Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, where are we? Dr. Michael Easley And it's – that's the horizontal Christianity. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley So, I agree with you in that sense. And where the church perhaps has failed is not keeping its ear to the culture and the old – you know, how do you know a dollar bill? Do you study counterfeits, or do you study the real deal? Dr. Darrell Bock Right. Dr. Michael Easley I'm the guy that says, "Study the real deal, and you can spot the counterfeit." We're spending time like businesses, studying the counterfeit. We're studying the competitor. We're seeing what's working down the street. And I still think contextually, if you're making disciples first, the church will take care of itself.
And where the relational capital's changed is the way we made disciples. You and I sat under a mentor who taught. Now we must sit at a table and have a dialogue, because that – the mindset today seems to worship dialogue not truth. So, the goal for you and me, as an educator, is to help them dialogue to the truth in an open way, not subterfuge. But to be able to say, "Guys, you can't just go on your experience; you can't just go on your feeling. Feelings are valid for as long as you feel that way." Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm, fair enough, although let me throw in again a little bit of a wrench. Dr. Michael Easley I would be bored if you wouldn't. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay. And that would be this, that – and here's what I – part of what I think we're going through. Traditionally, the church, because it's been committed to Scripture, and also because it has emerged out of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, you know, in which standing up for Scripture was obviously very important and a lodestone, and appropriately so, for the Christian movement.
What we've tended to do is we've analyzed, "Well, here's what the Scripture says, and here's where the culture is, and the two things often collide." The problem is is that life, in a fallen world, is actually pretty messy, so that sometimes what you get are biblical values that also come into tension with each other. "How do I balance these things, because I live in an imperfect world, and I don't walk into an ideal space?"
And so, I might know how to analyze what the ideas of Scripture are and how that weighs against the failures of the culture. But I still have the problem on the other end of, "How do I relate to someone who's in that space well, in the midst of trying to get them to either react or respond biblically?"
And so, we've – we've gone with our ideas as our lead card, which is important. Ideas are a key part of the deal, but you've also got to think through relationally how you engage the person so you don't just shove them away but they actually come to sense, "You're challenging me because you want my best interests at heart." Dr. Michael Easley Obviously a couple of things. One of my monikers is "we're broken creatures in a broken context." Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Dr. Michael Easley And so, as broken people in a broken world, we all come to that level ground. I guess the differential that maybe you and I are going after is I'm not as concerned about engaging a culture; I'm not trying to engage X. There's a lot of discussion, "We need to engage this social segment, or this people group, or this sexual identity."
And my mind says, Darrell, "You gotta serve influence, and there's some people you have just the communication of life, your travel, your neighbors. Why can't you just be good human friends to those people and see how God will open those relationships to have and afford that conversation." And it's true in the church as well as it is in our communities.
Cindy and I just moved to a new community some time ago. And it's striking; nobody's trying to prove anything, 'cause we're all new. "I have been here for 30 years." Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley That thing. And they're very open to what each other – we're involved with. And some have children; some don't. Some have lots of money; some don't. And it's more we're part of a new neighborhood, and let's have a barbecue, and let's come over and sit on the back porch and in the winter put a fire in the fireplace.
And I think that just simple, basic community of meeting people where they are – forget about engaging them and understanding their worldview. They got marriages that have broken their hearts, kids that have broken their hearts. They’ve got cancer, they've got a tough job situation, upside down financially, that's the human condition. Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Dr. Michael Easley And I don't think we have to – I don't overwork it. I'm not as smart as you, Darrell. I don't have to overwork to the point where I – am I engaging them or not? But when we have that conversation where the fulcrum comes down, my point is not to beat 'em over the head, but say, "You know, I have a view of this book that God spoke, and it's reliable. And maybe it's complicated, and maybe there's an antinomy or a tension there; I'm not afraid to admit that or acknowledge it. There's a lot more we could talk about that's pretty simple to understand."
And I think loving them and being friendly to them and being kind to them, if they brustle back because they find out I'm a Christian or a pastor, I can't do a lot about that. I really can't. I mean I'm not an in-your-face kinda guy with the guy in the street. I might be – you and me, we'll be in our face 'cause we're on the same – we're on the same thing. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right, right. Dr. Michael Easley And that's part of friendship, too, is can we argue and disagree? Dr. Darrell Bock Right. Dr. Michael Easley Most people, I think, are willing to learn. Some of the Christians maybe have gotten a little, you know, stovepiped in their view. But I just think we make it harder than it has to be. Dr. Darrell Bock Interesting. 'Cause I mean I'm tracking with you all the way. I mean – Dr. Michael Easley Until – Dr. Darrell Bock Well, no, the point here is is that you're right, all relationships – I mean, in one sense, all politics is local. You know? And so – and all engagement, in a very real sense, is local. The hard part, I think, in thinking about what the church is is that the church is both a local and a corporate institution. It isn't just strictly local.
And the credibility of the church and how they care about people, and how they engage with people and all that is wrapped up in the way in which the church functions both as an internal community and the types of things that it's concerned with. Dr. Michael Easley So, as a pastor for almost 40 years on and off now, when you come to me with your program, and I don't say, "Aw, that's the best thing since buttered toast, man."
You know, I say, "Well, that's great, but we're doing 112 ministries." Dr. Darrell Bock Yes. Dr. Michael Easley So, I push back as a pastor a little bit saying, "The church can't be this – the church isn't doing this; the church isn't doing that; the church should; the church shouldn't." And as a defender of His Church, I want to say, "You've got a number of resources. You've got good and godly people, hopefully, on staff and in leadership; good and godly volunteers serving in different ways. The church can't do everything."
For example, we had a church in D.C. that was enormous, 112 ministries. To add one more ministry to that table, you're talking infrastructure, the money, resources, offices, staffing – the right staffing." You've hired and fired people, getting the right people to serve the Lord. Dr. Darrell Bock No, you're right. Dr. Michael Easley So, that's why I said earlier, the business model has taken over the church in many ways. We use the term "start-up," "launch," "Silicon Valley," "reproducible," all these things. This is Silicon Valley.
So, I'm going back to what did Jesus say? "Make disciples of all ethnos, and I will build My Church." Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. And I think my response to that would be, "Yes, and I get that, and that's a local body community that you're working with. And yet what you have are people in the church who are lawyers and doctors and politicians, et cetera. They work in those spaces and places. In fact, they're in those spaces and places more time in their lives than they are in you're building. Dr. Michael Easley No question. Dr. Darrell Bock And so, then the question becomes, "How do I equip them to be the best representatives of Christ where God has them in those spaces and places?"
Which means they are walking into these spheres and facing these kinds of questions and having to think through, "How do I best represent Christ in this particular challenge that my job is offering me," and that kind of thing? Dr. Michael Easley And that's the most fun part of ministry. Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly right. Dr. Michael Easley Because when we lived in D.C., the names I won't use, but men and women who were in office, elected-appointed officials, judges, attorneys, people that work with campaigns in D.C., you had about a 33 percent turnover every 18 months, 'cause administration was changed, military promotions and retirements.
And when you get to know these people, obviously one person, you can probably handle about 10 or 12 relationships outside of your really tight-knit group. Dr. Darrell Bock Right, right. Dr. Michael Easley My thesis, okay? Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley So, I've got friends in high places. I want to go see where they work. I want to go have lunch in their building. Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly. Dr. Michael Easley They're happy to have me down there. Dr. Darrell Bock Right. Dr. Michael Easley I go down there and see the Pentagon, or the Russell Building, or the Cannon Building, or some other thing in the government system. Or in Tennessee where people work, come see your office. I want to just meet your people. And then we go to lunch or coffee, and that, if it's used contextually, "How do I live as a believer in this?"
And I go, "Man, let's talk about that." I don't have the answer, but I have the relational capital as a friend and a co-follower of Christ to hopefully disciple him or her. Dr. Darrell Bock And you have the text of the Scripture to help show what the principles are – Dr. Michael Easley Which they don't – Dr. Darrell Bock That's exactly – which – depending – well, again, depending on how much experience they have with the church, they may or may not have it. But the question is, "How does the church prepare people for that level of" – that's what I consider to be engagement. In other words, I don't see engagement to be ideology and causes if I can say it that way. Dr. Michael Easley Okay, then that's typically what I hear. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay, and that's – Dr. Michael Easley When you engage X culture – Dr. Darrell Bock That's right; that's right. Dr. Michael Easley I'm going, "No, we don't." Dr. Darrell Bock No. We need to help people function – Dr. Darrell Bock Well, and corporate entities, because some of these people run entities. Dr. Michael Easley Right, but you're not going in – a friend of mine who owns a very large business, and he and I have very candid conversations about his challenges internally in hiring and firing and money and so forth. I'm not going to go share that with his staff. Dr. Darrell Bock Right. Dr. Michael Easley But he's asking me as a pastor and a friend and a brother in Christ. And, you know, a lot of times you know what the answer is? Dr. Darrell Bock Hmm? Dr. Michael Easley "Man, that's really hard." Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. Dr. Michael Easley "I don't know what to tell you, friend. I'm gonna pray with you." And you know what? That's all he needed to hear. Dr. Darrell Bock [Laughs] Dr. Michael Easley Right? Sometimes. Dr. Darrell Bock Well, sometimes, although other times it might be he's concerned – I've met lots of Christian people who are in this situation. They're running a company or whatever, and they say, "How do I have – how do I create – help to create the right kind of business culture?" Dr. Darrell Bock "How do I help people flourish in the job that they're in? How do I help the person, who doesn't know what Christ is all about, appreciate the work that they're doing, what we're doing, how their service works in such a way that they look at me, at some point, and they might ask, 'Where does that come from'?" Dr. Michael Easley So, my first job out of college was with a government thing called Deep East Texas Council of Government, DETCOG. Dr. Darrell Bock [Laughs] Dr. Michael Easley DETCOG, acronyms in the government. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, DETCOG. Dr. Michael Easley And that was the Regional Alcoholism Services Director, RASD. There were 24 COGs in the state of Texas, DETCOG was one. And as an RASD, I oversaw the money that came from the federal government to help alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers. That crossed halfway houses and all kinds of things.
I had to go around the circuitous route, 13 counties, and see how your tax dollars were helping those counties as a college grad. Ah. Dr. Darrell Bock [Laughs] Dr. Michael Easley And, of course, I didn't know what I didn't know. But I would go and hear these people's stories. And, you know, I wasn't very smart, Darrell. I had a big Bible in my office by my coffee cup. I was the first one at work every morning and made the coffee. That was like having a revolver on the table today. In that day it wasn't. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley In that day. And do you know how many people would come to my office at some point in time and sit down and close the door and say, "Can I ask you a question?" Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley And that's where I think we make Christianity too hard. And so, when we talk about this – I tell people all the time, "You got a sandbox in your office. You have a job, and you get to represent Christ, and nobody can tell you otherwise in your sandbox. You report to someone or some team, but you do your job to the best of your ability. You need help from time to time, you ask people to come alongside you. You have a problem, you complain up, not horizontally. All of these things that we know about how offices should conduct themselves. And just simple things like that, communicating clearly, processing your feelings."
So, again, I think I can – well, me – I think the Christian can go in and help another businessman or woman in their world. Say, "Do the best job in your sandbox you can for God's honor and see how He'll use that." Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Dr. Michael Easley And you've had this experience, strangers come to you – Dr. Darrell Bock Sure. Dr. Michael Easley – and say – Dr. Darrell Bock The story I like to tell about my first job is I was – I worked in a mailroom at The Galleria in Houston. Okay? So, you know where I'm talking about. Dr. Michael Easley I know it. Dr. Darrell Bock It's The Galleria Bank. Okay? That's where I worked. And that was back in – now again, this is gonna be an illustration that Millennials aren't gonna get, okay? I worked in an office where most of the people, their job was to file the checks in filing cabinets each month, because each month they mailed those checks back to the person, et cetera. Dr. Michael Easley [Whistles] Dr. Darrell Bock A mindless job. Dr. Michael Easley A mindless job. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay? All right. Absolutely a mind – and we're down there all day, and we're in a basement. There are no windows. Okay? So – I mean the more I describe this, the worse it gets. All right? Dr. Michael Easley Like seeing an elf – Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly. Dr. Michael Easley – in the mail room. Dr. Darrell Bock And our mail machine was located right off the edge where all these people were working, right over here. And we're trapped from 9:00 to 5:00 doing this work. Okay? I get to go up and help deliver the mail for a guy who had been there for years, et cetera.
But one day, it dawned on me there was this bulletin board, and on the bulletin board, I decided to put what I called "the verse of the day." So, I wrote up a verse of the day, but this is how I did it. The first one was, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." And then it was one question, "Does anyone know where this comes from?" Dr. Michael Easley How old are you? Dr. Darrell Bock I think I'm 18 at the time. Dr. Michael Easley Okay, wow. Dr. Darrell Bock I've just come to the Lord literally. Dr. Michael Easley Wow. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay? Dr. Michael Easley Gutsy. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay? I've just come to the Lord, and underneath it I put a saying on the tower at the University of Texas at Austin. Okay? And then underneath it I put, "Does anyone know where this comes from and what it's talking about?" Okay? And I leave it there. M-kay?
So, what does it do? It engenders all kinds of guesses. "Well, it's gotta be about this," or all kind of – and I'm just enjoying the conversation. Okay? So, I did this for a while, and mostly Proverbs and Psalms is what I would put up there. And then finally, one day, I decided, "Well, I want to see if this is really working. So, I'm not gonna put up the verse of the day and see if anyone notices. Okay? So, one day came along, and I didn't put it up there. About 9 30, not too far into the day, "Hey, Darrell, where's the verse of the day?"
I said, "I was just seeing if it made any difference." Dr. Darrell Bock You know? And, of course, what that did was open up a whole layer of conversation at work that, generally speaking, didn't take place and caused people pause, and it also communicated a respect for the Scripture. 'Cause here's something I deeply believe I think that the church is oftentimes communicated in a way that says, "It's true because it's in the Bible." Okay? 'Cause we think the Bible's inspired; God's speaking of course. But to someone for whom the Bible doesn't matter, the way to think about this, "It's in the Bible because it's true." Now, that's not the same – that's not the same kind of argument, but it is important in trying to reach people with the content of what Scripture is.
You know, the idea is, "Well, the reason God inspired this is 'cause He wants to tell us something that works." You know? And so, thinking through it that – so, I'm wrestling with all these relational features that you're talking about, but thinking about, "How do I do this for people who have – whose perception of what Christianity is has been absorbed by the culture?" And I like to tell people, "Well, if that's where their impression of Christianity is, we're probably talking past each other." Dr. Michael Easley We're in trouble. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. And so, how do we deal with that? So, it seems to me that giving people, if I can say it, skill in that area – when I think of culture engagement, that's the skill that I'm talking about. How can I walk into the spaces and places where I function, not just individually, but even corporately in the context of the work that I do or whatever, and ask the question, "What is the best way to be a God-honoring human here? And for the unbeliever, what is the best way to show what life is about here so that the gospel might be attractive?" Dr. Michael Easley You know, and I wouldn't disagree. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley When I hear you say "culture," I think of these broad stroke segments of engaging this culture and that culture. The terminology I'm using is just, I guess, a synonym to say relational context because it's not the group necessarily. I've got to encourage and help that man or woman in his or her sphere. Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Dr. Michael Easley I have a friend that owns a very large set of businesses in D.C. And he's been very generous to churches, to ministries that we know, and his Christian life is good, but I would not say, "Man, this guy's really killing it in the marketplace as a believer."
So, part of my friendship with him over the years has been encouraging him to live out his Christianity. And over the years, he's offered help for kids to go to private schools. He's set up funds in his company for, like, if a baby was born with some medical problems or whatever.
And little by little, he's got his camel's nose in the tent to say, "I can be a Christian, after all, I own this company. I employ all these people; I pay them all their salaries." I don't know that he put a verse on his office door, but they know that he's a believer.
The part of it that's helping him mature – I asked him one time, I said, "Why don't you have a Bible study for all your top-tier people?" And he was very nervous about that idea.
And he said, "Well, I don't know if I could teach it."
I said, "Well, that's fair enough. What if we got somebody to help you?"
And the more he thought about it, he said, "Well, if I do that, and then people come for the wrong reasons" – so, now we're into the ethics of how you run a business as a believer.
So, to your point, then, I think there are lots of ways – and I don't put the church as this amoeba that has to do all this. I put this back on guys like you and me and other men and women who know the Bible to be able to say, "This is exciting to see how God would use you in your sphere of influence. You don't have to be afraid; you don't have to cower; you don't have to worry about being politically correct. You can say, 'I'm sorry.' And if you're kind and loving and smile at the future, you're probably gonna have a pretty good opportunity to encourage those people toward Christ." Dr. Darrell Bock So, the issues of – to me, the issues of church leadership is about equipping people. Dr. Michael Easley Yes. Dr. Darrell Bock It could be people for ministry. And so, if you do that, you're going to – they're going to be interacting in these spheres. A pastor who pursues this will end up learning a lot about where his parishioners are. Dr. Michael Easley Oh, my word. Dr. Darrell Bock You know? Dr. Michael Easley When I started out with my first pastor job, Selectric typewriter, that was the computer of the day. Dr. Darrell Bock Right, exactly. Dr. Michael Easley I had a 8.5 by 11 thumb tacked out of graph paper on my wall. I drew a little hand bell curve. I put "young disenfranchised teenager that won't go to youth group," "widow/widower." And over weeks and months, I filled it in; I put adjectives that described them – lonely, hurt, worn out with a mom with three children, empty nesters feeling lonely and excited. And I had this thing – I wish I still had the document. It was over months, because when Michael was typing a sermon with real books and my Greek text and my Bible out – Dr. Darrell Bock You can thank us for that. [Laughs] Dr. Michael Easley But I was not preaching to, in this category, a 61-year-old man with four grown children, three of whom are adopted, with two grandchildren, and a partridge in a pear tree. I was looking at – these are the people that God has sitting in that room. And the other thing I tell you in pastors is now preach to the people you want. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, exactly. Dr. Michael Easley Not just identify who's coming, but who do you want them to be? Dr. Darrell Bock Right. Dr. Michael Easley So, it sounds kind of strange, Darrell, but it's probably true for you as well, because I use medical terminology, because I've been through four back surgeries, and I tend to know a little bit more about medicine than I should – I'm dangerous – I have a lot of medical professional friends. Guess where they come to church?
You run with attorneys, you talk to attorneys, you have interest in politics, interest in sports; those spheres of influence are so easy. And if you're – the term used "cultural engagement" – to me, I'm engaging a culture of people that have an interest in medicine, in sports, in computers and technology. And I'm like you; I want to go see where they work, because when I come back to the books, I can see that guy in his office, at his university, or his medical center, and I know, "That's where he's 40-50 hours a week." Dr. Darrell Bock And if I hear the two or three things that he's really wrestling with, I'm in a much better position to speak to his life. Dr. Michael Easley And I mention in the sermon, "I was talking to a friend this week, and he shared with me that he doubts about his salvation. This is a true story." And I said to the congregation, "You know, I remember years doubting if I was saved or not. How many of you have doubted with whether or not you were saved?" They raise their hands. Dr. Darrell Bock Yep, yeah, yeah. Dr. Michael Easley And all of a sudden, that guy feels like – Dr. Darrell Bock "I'm not alone." Dr. Michael Easley "I'm not alone; it's normal. You know what? It's okay to doubt. Now, what did Jesus say about doubting?" You know? Take me there. That to me isn't – why do they make it hard? Why does a church have to make a program? When they can just relationally, through God's Word, God's Spirit, God's people engage them. Dr. Darrell Bock But notice the other element that's in that which is you've made an effort to get – what I call this is getting a spiritual GPS on your audience. You know? You're figuring out what drives them. You're figuring out where their concerns are, where their tensions are, what they're wrestling with. You get to know them. That's really what you're doing; you're getting to know them.
And then it's having enough background or, if you don't have the background, knowing where to go to help get it, to be able to help speak into that. And even at points, as you're right, sometimes you'll end up and say, "Man, that's a good question. I don't know what the answer to that is." But it probably wouldn't hurt us to stop and think through and wrestle with, "What are our options here? You know? And what will best represent what Christ is, et cetera?"
To me, that's part of what engagement is about. And when you communicate – when you communicate to people that you care, and even if they're in the midst of making a bad decision, if you communicate in the midst of them you care, and they get that, they will care more about your challenge to them about the way to live. Dr. Michael Easley Oh, absolutely. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley So, for a number of years I taught a young adults ministry, and it was 60 percent women, 40 percent men. The women – this is seven or eight years ago now or longer – the women were doing master's degrees, Ph.D.s, M.D.s, physical therapy. The guys were playing video games and sort of like living as post-college, college flop-outs – drop-outs, sorry. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay. [Laughs] Dr. Michael Easley And it's part of delayed adolescence. Dr. Darrell Bock Delayed adolescence, yeah, yeah. Dr. Michael Easley And part of it's just social awkwardness. So, I would teach, and after I would teach, I would hang around till 10:00 at night. And you know who's standing there talking to me? These young women. Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Dr. Michael Easley So, I've got three daughters, Cindy and I, almost 39 years of marriage. You know, we're thick as thieves. She knows about this. My oldest daughter's very involved with me in all of this. And Hannah says to me – my daughter, she says, "Dad, you've got, like, 40 daughters; you know that?" Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Dr. Michael Easley And so, they're coming to me because I'm the safe old guy. Now, in this cultural context, and Me Too, and you can't touch anybody, I can't – so, these young women would come to me, and door open, all that type of thing, my secretary and assistant down the hall. I don't counsel women. I'll see 'em once, but in this evening session, we're talking for hours. And so, it was like 7:00 to 8:00, and they would stay till 10:00.
So, I'm sitting there with a couple of staff, and wholesome conversations, and these young women asking me questions, looking for that father to love 'em and encourage 'em. This is how weird it got.
So, some of them came to work for us at the church. One woman was 30-something years old; she was a schoolteacher. She taught a couple of years, hated it. [Laughs] Hated teaching. Dr. Darrell Bock Well, it's demanding. Dr. Michael Easley Wasn't her calling. Dr. Darrell Bock Horribly demanding. Dr. Michael Easley So, she comes to work for us. And she would come in once in a while, and she'd obviously done her hair. Now, you have daughters. Dr. Darrell Bock Uh-huh. Dr. Michael Easley You know what this involves. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, yeah. Dr. Michael Easley Doing their hair. Okay? She put makeup on. And I would tease her, "Do you have an interview today?" And she'd laugh. And this is literally what I would say to her, Darrell, I would say, "You know I'm like your father. I am a man. If I compliment your hair and say you look nice today, is that sexist?"
And they would say, "Of course not, Dr. E." And they would want to hug me. Now, we're in the wholesome nature of Christianity; to a young man, to a young woman we encourage them. But what happened? I listened to their story.
I wasn't afraid to talk to 'em, and it was always the same thing. It was heartbreaks. It was stupid boyfriends. It was, you know, whatever. Their friends were getting married, on and on and on. Some of them had been hurt when they were young, and you're just trying to love 'em as Christ loves 'em. I just think the sphere of influence that people have, we underestimate how easy it is just to be open and kind and say, "Man, I'm sorry." Dr. Darrell Bock Yep, which is why the fruit of the Spirit is primarily relational. You know, I mean, what we are – what we're talking about is however we may view where the church is conceptually, et cetera, what the church really needs is a good heavy dose of biblical, relational engagement.
And sometimes that means – well, one of my favorite passages is being – you may not know it from the podcast – "being slow to speak, slow to anger, and quick to listen." You know? Dr. Michael Easley Slow to anger? Dr. Darrell Bock Sorry, didn't mean to – didn't mean to step on your toes and say – yeah. Dr. Michael Easley Only certain people make me really [laughter covers speaker]. Slow to anger with most people. Dr. Darrell Bock Well, then I won't go to "love your enemies," okay? Dr. Darrell Bock But seriously, what we're – my – if someone were to ask me why I think the church is hurting, in part its credibility. I mean the church will always hurt with its credibility with the world. Jesus spent the entire second half of His ministry telling His disciples, "You follow Me, the world's gonna push back." But sometimes we help ourselves in this regard. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. And if you ask what enables us – what can push in the opposite direction, it's that the other person would have a sense that we're at least making an effort when Jesus says, "Love your enemies and pray for them," et cetera, that there's some sense of communicating to someone different than me, "The reason sometimes I challenge you is 'cause I actually do care about you." You know? Dr. Michael Easley Yeah. Dr. Darrell Bock And when we remove that element, that personal relational element, and we just simply take a stand, people can sniff that out. Millennials are really good at sniffing that out. Dr. Michael Easley They're very smart. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. And that damages our credibility in terms of our core message which is, "God is loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. You know, He cared enough to step down, when we were all rebellious, without exception" – Dr. Michael Easley Were you Crusade background? Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, Young Life. Dr. Michael Easley Okay. Dr. Darrell Bock You know? Dr. Michael Easley That explains a lot. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, yeah. Well, it's more than you realize. And so – but I'll talk to my therapist about that later. Dr. Michael Easley Oh, you should. Dr. Darrell Bock [Laughs] And so, that's kind of where we find ourselves. And I find that our tone sometimes is problematic, not because we shouldn't be confronting, and not because we shouldn't have convictions, but the way you do your confronting is as important as your confronting. Dr. Michael Easley Agreed. And one thing Cindy and I have talked about in recent months, and we all go through conflict and challenges, and there was something that happened to us in recent months, and this person was very unhappy with me, and they posted it on social media, which is always a helpful way to express your emotions. Dr. Darrell Bock That's exactly right. Dr. Michael Easley And so – and I've made my share of social media stick in the eyes. I think I've gotten better. But I wrote a very kind, neutral response. And I said, "I'm really sorry this happened."
And they responded back with a, "Well, you need to do better." Like a paragraph. You know? They were still mad. Dr. Darrell Bock How to fix your life. Dr. Michael Easley And, of course, my wife and daughter were talking to me about, "You should do this, and you should do that."
And I said, "You know, I don't know her. She's hurt. Her story is unknown to us. To say the right answer is not going to change" – I learned this years ago, you can't fact away someone's feeling. And hopefully, as I've gotten older, I've gotten a little more gentle toward people that are mad at me, or angry at something, or angry at the church.
I say, "Wait a minute, they're probably hurt. Somebody bit 'em; they were abused; some church took advantage of them; they were in a harsh, legalistic background – who knows? – fill in the blank. But just to see them as a wounded co-struggler as opposed to a person who's wrong – in this case they were; they were wrong and unkind in the post. But I can't get into a – well, you can; you can get into a jousting match on social media; it doesn't work. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right; it doesn't do you a bit of good. Dr. Michael Easley It doesn't prove anyone right; it just makes a bunch of people mad. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. So, the way – the way we relate to one another and the way we relate particularly in the context of conflict, which, of course, is inevitable in the world that we live in is an important lesson that people have to learn. And it's a hard lesson, and yet it's probably – we just went through Luke 6 in my Gospel of Luke class.
And the point that I made is is that the point that Jesus is making in the section where He says, "Love your enemies," is is what will mark out the church as being distinctive will be a different kind of love. And if we don't show that, we're no different than anybody else. And if the church – I think this is the lesson of liberalism – if the church is no different than the psychologist down the street, then why do I go to church?
And so, there's this core relational thing that the Spirit of God is trying to implant within us – that's why we get it; that's why the fruit of the Spirit is so relational – that is important to the DNA of any church community it seems to me. Dr. Michael Easley I refer to it, probably not super accurately, as Paul's great commission in Colossians 1:28 and 29, "For we proclaim Him, admonishing every man, and teaching every man with all wisdom so that-purpose clause-we may present every man complete in Christ" – and then I love this – "for this purpose we also labor, striving" – agónizomai – Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, exactly. Dr. Michael Easley – agónizomai – "according to His power which works mightily within me." Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly. Dr. Michael Easley And to me that's – that to me is the church. And I've been accused of being too Pauline in my view of church. Go figure that. But the proclamation of admonishment – and that goes back to we both know Rosaria Butterfield – Dr. Darrell Bock Right, right. Dr. Michael Easley – a good friend. Dr. Darrell Bock Right. Dr. Michael Easley Rosaria, who's come out of the LGBTQ discussion and is married and has children today and does a lot of good work, trying to help people – Dr. Darrell Bock Yep, we've had her on podcast. Dr. Michael Easley – and Rosaria says, "If you don't call out a sinner to repent, you don't love them." Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Dr. Michael Easley Now, Rosaria can stand there and say that in a way that you nor I can. Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Dr. Michael Easley But I can still be friends with a person who's LGBTQ and not be mad at them or screaming at them. But when they're screaming at the believer, and they're mad at the believer, then our poise – yes, we're to love, but help me, Dr. Bock, where, when something encroaches what we know is sinful and wrong behavior that is being sanctioned as okay, are you loving if you just say, "I want to understand how you feel?" Dr. Darrell Bock No, it's gotta be more than that. It's absolutely gotta be more than that. But it – you know, without getting to know the person and where they are coming from and how, perhaps, where those desires have come – I mean anything that I can do that can help me in those areas can also help me wrestle with how do I best communicate to this someone so that the care that I have for them comes alongside the challenge.
I like to say that the challenge of any engagement is always a tension with regard to anything having to do with the gospel and God's truth is the tension between the challenge of what the gospel says about all our lives. 'Cause God is constantly challenging all of us to be more and to be better. I mean, you know, even the Thessalonians are doing well. I want you to love even better.
And the hope that's built into the gospel – 'cause at the end, you know, when Peter, in that great passage in 1 Peter 3, where it says, "Be prepared to give a defense for the hope that is in…" He has all kinds of words he could choose to summarize what the faith is about, and he chooses the word "hope." I'm defending a hope. There is something very – there's something very good newsy about the gospel. There's something good about the gospel. So, how do I do that in such a way so that a person doesn't just hear the critique, but they see that what's being extended to them is an invitation? The 2 Corinthians 5 language says, "We beg you, be reconciled to God and Christ."
And the tone of that is interesting. See, God's pay grade is to deal with the heart and fix the person in terms of response; that's not my deal. So, the pressure's off me. All I need to do is be faithful in delivering that. And so, figuring out how to do that, even when someone is pushing as hard in rebellion as they can is I think a tough assignment – I'm not saying it's easy; it's a tough assignment – but it's the call of the church. Dr. Michael Easley The one line – and maybe we agree or disagree on this – is I think when it starts to injure other people, when it's false, I can empathize and get to know them and see their background. But if it's error or hurting other people, then I will call an – Dr. Darrell Bock It has to be called out, absolutely. Dr. Michael Easley Yeah, I will call, and I will say, "It's wrong," and call it out. You know, we all have family systems, and we have friends who've had to ask their children to leave. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. Dr. Michael Easley And the hardest thing a parent will ever do is say, "There's the door, honey; there's the door, son, and you can't live that way, and we're not gonna underwrite your sin. We have done all these things for years. You know where we stand. I'm not gonna preach a sermon to you; I'm not gonna make you go to youth group anymore. That is not even the issue. The issue is you've chosen a life, a path that you know is wrong, and there's the way you live it, not here." That's hard stuff, but I still think you can do it in a loving way, but it doesn't feel like love. Dr. Darrell Bock No. Well, 'cause confrontation sometimes doesn't feel like love. I mean I think it's important to do, and I think there are times to think about doing it, and then there are times to think – wrestle with what – when do you send the signal to that child who walks out the door, and you treat 'em like the prodigal, "I'm always here for you"? Dr. Michael Easley Which we tell parents all the time. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. Dr. Michael Easley "I'm always here, but there's gotta be some behavioral attitudinal change before you can come back and make this your hotel again." Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, right, yeah. Dr. Michael Easley "We're not gonna be doing drugs," or whatever the situation was. And yes, you know, not to get too personal, but that very conversation has come from Cindy and me on a number of occasions. We love you; we haven't gone anywhere; we're here." Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. I know it. I mean I've had the same – I had the same conversation with a sibling who asked me to participate in a service, and I couldn't do what they were asking to do because of the context in which they were coming out of. And I sat there and said, "This hurts me to do it." I was crying while I told her. You know? But I said, "I can't do this."
And so, I know what those conversations are, too. But the one thing that has to come with that – absolutely has to come with that is the communication of, "This is being done out of love. This is not being – this is not retribution. You know? This is being done out of – this is because I care about you."
And sometimes I think, in our pursuit to be right, we sometimes – Dr. Michael Easley We'll sacrifice. Dr. Darrell Bock – lose the modulation, if you will, that communicates that other element. And then the risk is we do damage. Dr. Michael Easley I think it's easier with the unbelieving community than the believing community. Because when the fall happens between believers that have different opinions – you know, we all have shopworn this passage, as Paul says, "If possible, so far as it depends upon you, be at peace with all men." Dr. Darrell Bock Right, right. Mm-hmm. Dr. Michael Easley Implication? It's not always possible. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. Dr. Michael Easley You can – I had it when I was – Dr. Darrell Bock But the onus is on you to do everything you can to go there. Dr. Michael Easley Yeah, yeah. I was at – when I was at Moody, and, you know, in leadership positions you make a lot of – I mean no matter what decision you make, you're going to make this group furious and this group happy. Dr. Darrell Bock Right, right. Dr. Michael Easley That's leadership. And I remember a "mantra" that I developed – bad word – a theorem I – it was, "Do the right thing in the right way and go home." And I would teach this when I would teach leadership conferences and pastors' conferences. And each one is very important. You have to do the right thing, but you can sure do it in the wrong way. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right, and then it's still wrong. Dr. Michael Easley Exactly. You can do the wrong thing in the right way – Dr. Darrell Bock And that's still wrong. Dr. Michael Easley But if you do the right thing in the right way – and the last one I learned later was – go home. Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Dr. Michael Easley Because tomorrow's gonna be there. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley You can't fix all these problems. You can't even fix your own problems. And the local church, to her defense, it's Christ's church, not ours. We have sinful men and women leading it. And this is why – you've been an elder – Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley – you know this – I tell people when they are asked or going to be voted on, I said, "I would think about that long and hard, 'cause you've just stamped the word "example" on your forehead and walked out the door and said, 'Live like I live; that's how a good Christian lives'" And you're also responsible for shepherding these people to live that way. And so, doing the right thing in the right way and going home as a Christian leader is, "It's gonna be there tomorrow, Lord. I can't fix it all today, but as best I could, with counsel, with wisdom, with Scripture, with experience, I did the right thing. I tried to do it the right way and the right time."
Go home because the church is His bride, the church is His responsibility. We're ambassadors – right? – and we can muck it up. Dr. Darrell Bock Yep. Dr. Michael Easley But what church wasn't mucked up? Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. And to the extent that we always remember that we're in a fallen world, and that this will be a tension-filled process until Christ finally fixes it all and ultimate vindication comes, we have to learn how to live with tension.
And I do think that one of the effects of our culture today that is a little bit misleading is you get the impression that every problem is what I call a 30-minute and 2-commercial problem. You know, I can fix it with the right – in 30 minutes. No, most – there are many things in life that aren't that easily resolvable. Dr. Michael Easley And for our younger generation, they don't even understand 30 minutes. Our younger generation is a social media blast, and it's – I don't know if it's true here at Dallas, but one of the number one – the highest trending hashtags in academics is TLDR – too long, didn't read. They don't even use notebooks anymore; it's done on the phone. Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Dr. Michael Easley And so, if it's too long, they're not gonna read just information; they're gonna react to a corpus of people that they follow, they like; they're in some social community with. And that's where I do think the clarion back to, "Let's get our nose in a book. Let's read it and see if we can figure it out and learn together."
I tell people the story whenever I go somewhere, whether it's in a small group or a businessman or a lunch, and I'll say a couple of things, "Can I share something that I've read this morning?" No one's ever said no. And another thing they've never said no to me, whether it's a hospital or a lunch appointment or leaving their office, "Hey, can I pray for you before I leave?" Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley No one's ever told me no. Dr. Darrell Bock Nope, that's right. Dr. Michael Easley I'll do it in a pre-op surgery, when they're all coming in to wheel out this person. I go, "Hey, can I pray for you guys for just a minute?" No one has ever told me no. Dr. Darrell Bock And many times, when you're all done, they'll say, "Thank you." Dr. Michael Easley Oh, they'll be crying. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley They'll be crying. I had this one, not too long ago, and I prayed for the – and I pray for the physician, the anesthesiologist, the staff; I pray it'll go textbook; I pray they'll have a great day; and I thank 'em for their training and their hours." And I'll have nurses and doctors saying, "I wish all my patients would pray for me like that."
I have a Jewish surgeon that I know, and he's done work on me, and he lost his wife. Forty-two years of age, she died. And I went to see him for a follow-up, and I said, "Dr. So-and-so, is this indelicate? And if this is improper patient/doctor thing, you stop me. I'm just really sad for you."
And his shoulders slumped, and he sat there, and I asked him a few questions, and I said, "I'm a Goyim Christian, and I know you're Jewish. Can I pray for you?"
He said, "I would like that."
I just think we make it too hard. I think we construct these monsters in our mind that may or may not be real, and the compassion, the connection, the caring about those people – so, all that to say, you know, I think we're afraid to walk around with big Bibles anymore for a lot of reasons, but at the end of the day, if this isn't His Word, it doesn't matter. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, and the only thing else I have in response is, "Amen," and the only – we make it hard sometimes because we aren't willing to invest the personal commitment and relational capital to make it easy. Dr. Michael Easley It takes time – Dr. Darrell Bock To make it easy. Dr. Michael Easley And in the young mindset, you're right, they're smarter; they're quicker; they're far more courageous than you and I were. Dr. Darrell Bock And usually more sensitive. Dr. Michael Easley Yep. And they have been – I mean they our progeny. Dr. Darrell Bock Yep. Dr. Michael Easley So, a part of that is understanding what we did and didn't do – Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. Dr. Michael Easley – as we groom them to become young adults. And so, in this whole process of the body of Christ – I mean wasn't there always a generation gap? Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Dr. Michael Easley The '60s – you know, antidisestablishmentarianism – Dr. Darrell Bock I can't wait for my grandkids. They'll be like us. Dr. Michael Easley What's the bumper sticker – "Have grandchildren first" – right? Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, exactly right. Well, Michael, I thank you for coming in and talking to us about this. I think this has been fascinating. I know I've enjoyed it very, very much. Dr. Michael Easley Dr. Bock, I appreciate your ministry. Dr. Darrell Bock Hey, well, likewise, and it's great to just sit across the table and just, you know, shoot a little theological breeze and see what happens. Dr. Michael Easley We'll do it. Dr. Darrell Bock All right. Dr. Michael Easley Blessings. Dr. Darrell Bock All right, thanks. And we thank you for being a part of the table and hope you'll join us again soon.
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Darrell Bock Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and our topic today is one of the sacraments or ordinances, we'll be talking about what that is, of the church, namely the Lord's Supper. And certainly it's the one element of the church service that is repeated in our worship and so we're going to take a look at the history of it, what it signifies, the discussion, some might say debate, that has operated around this material.
And I have two consummately qualified people with me to discuss this, Michael Svigel and Scott Horrell, both doctors, both teach Systematic Theology here at the seminary, and so I thank you guys for coming in and being a part of this conversation with us in which we discuss something that a lot of people go through but sometimes may not appreciate all the aspects of what goes into it.
So Michael, I'll start with you. First of all, what do we call it, a sacrament, an ordinance? What's the deal there? Michael Svigel Yeah, that's a great question. It's interesting, the doctrinal statement of our institution, Dallas Seminary, calls it both sacrament or ordinance, and then the statement sacrament and ordinance, because really in Protestant circles, those terms are sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes used with specific emphases. Ordinance usually emphasizes that this is something Christ has ordained for the church to do on an ongoing basis as well as baptism. Baptism is the one ordinance for conversion and then the ongoing observance would the Lord's Supper and Christ has ordained these things to be marks of the church.
Sacrament tends to emphasize that this is a sacred rite, that this does something for you spiritually, some special blessing, a means of sanctification, or something like that. In some of the I guess harder sacramental traditions, it's even viewed as a means of saving grace, your Roman Catholic traditions, for instance. But really, these two sometimes can be used interchangeably. Darrell Bock But usually, one would say that a sacrament conveys – Michael Svigel Something, yeah. Darrell Bock – something, so we're talking about something – and one of the views that we're going to be talking about in a minute is the memorial view of the Lord's Supper and if you have a memorial view of the Lord's Supper – Michael Svigel You tend to call it an ordinance. Darrell Bock That's right, versus a sacrament, because of the distinction that's going on there.
Now Scott, how is that in terms of introducing this and the distinction? Did we do okay? Scott Horrell Well, I think you did fairly well, yes. I think it's interesting that when you see the church pick up with baptism, which parallels the Old Testament circumcision as one was brought into the covenantal family, and then of course the Sabbath was an ongoing regular reality of the Old Testament, so the Lord's Supper, now you have two new visible signs that distinguish the church I would say from Israel but also distinguish the church in the world, these external realities that identify us as Christs. Darrell Bock There's an interesting phrase that comes in 1 Corinthians when the Lord's Supper is being discussed and it ends after he's gone through the elements. It says, "You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes," which means that the Lord's Supper is a statement. It's actually a message to proclamation. It's an affirmation, if I can say it that way, and I dare say that many people who think about the Lord's Table probably don't think about the fact that they're making a statement when they engage in the worship of taking the elements. Michael Svigel That's right. I mean really the Lord's Supper is a tangible, edible confession of faith. We are participating in symbolically the body and blood at least. Everybody thinks it's a symbol. Everybody knows it's a symbol of something. The question is is it more than just a symbol? And so we are confessing several things, the death of Christ, the real physical body of Christ, the real incarnation, and because we are continuing to participate in this prior to the kingdom, we're anticipating the return of Christ. So it's really a very rich image of a lot of things, not just one thing. Scott Horrell Yeah, I like really to call it the Grand Central Station of Christian faith because you have the pascal lamb, of course the whole Passover motif and the sacrificial realities of the Old Testament, but then of course our savior as the lamb of God, as Mike was saying, we then we look back and thank in this memorial sacrament our Lord's death on the cross, but in a way also as I partake of the Lord's Supper, again and again, I think but as the Lord gave his life for me, so we are part of a body of Christ, and in a way, the body of Christ relives this life in some ways. There are martyrs in our day that are giving their lives literally for our Lord and as I partake of the Lord's Supper, I should be willing to do that as well.
But then it arcs into the future as well as we look at the Lord's return and his physical lordship as he eats and drinks again or he waited until that great supper of lamb with apparently real bread and the real cup. Darrell Bock I've heard the phrase used of this meal, and it's a way I do like to think about this, as a kind of covenant reaffirmation, I'm reaffirming the relationship that God has given me by his grace and the means by which he provided it, and in that, there's an affirmation and it's not an individual affirmation. It's a corporate affirmation that we all make together as we partake together of the Table. What do you think of that way of thinking about things? Michael Svigel Yeah, I use the exact same image, that baptism is this rite of initiation into the covenant community where we become one member of this body, where we exercise gifts, and mutually encourage and build up one another, and then the Lord's Supper is that covenant renewal, that reconsecration where we together as one body are offering ourselves in consecration and really weekly, I believe originally it was a weekly reaffirmation of this baptismal pledge to live this Christian life as a disciple. Darrell Bock So we enter into our identification with the death of Christ. We reaffirm our role and participation in the covenant. I take it's the covenant that the death establishes, so we're thinking – Michael Svigel Correct, cup of the new covenant… Darrell Bock – cup of the new covenant here, so we could perhaps go into more detail. Michael Svigel We won't, though, not at this time. Darrell Bock [Laughs] That's right, but nonetheless, so Christ's death establishes the hope of the new covenant, two of which the key provisions are forgiveness of sins on the one hand and the idea of the law written on the heart or the idea of the spirit being sprinkled clean so that the spirit can come in, that kind of picture, so all that is at work.
Now that's a relatively simple summary and overview that we just went through to kind of orient people, but actually – Michael Svigel And fairly noncontroversial up to this point. Darrell Bock That's right. Now we're gonna shift gears and talk about the history of the way this has been viewed and I'm gonna use phrases like – one of the things of theology is that you need a translator to do theology, right, 'cause we use all these terms that only theologians use and sometimes not even in their spare time, and then everyone else goes, "What in the world does that stuff mean?" So we've got transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and we've got this whole spectrum of things, so let's just start with our terms and then we'll talk our way through kind of what the conversations have been.
So transubstantiation, the position of what segment of church history and then what's going on with that idea? Scott, I'll let you do that. Scott Horrell Sure. Transubstantiation is the official statement of Roman Catholicism and in many respects also Eastern Orthodoxy, that is that you have, as you partake of the Lord's Supper, you have the bread, typically unleavened bread, and you have the wine, and yet while visibly that is bread and the cup, the wine, yet that becomes in a miraculous way the actual flesh and blood of our savior. So it is transferred into or trans – what's the word I want to say there? Help me out? But it's made into – Darrell Bock Reconfigure [laughs]. Scott Horrell Even as you eat bread and drink wine, it becomes the Lord's flesh and blood and there's some strong scriptures that would point that way. Darrell Bock Are you thinking about John 6 and – Scott Horrell John 6. You want me to read it right now? Darrell Bock Yeah, well, you can if you want. Sure. We're into scripture reading. That'll work. Scott Horrell This is the famous NET Bible. I'm not sure who wrote it but – Darrell Bock That's exactly right, but it catches everything. Scott Horrell The debate is around the living manna falling from heaven and Jesus says he is the living bread that came down from heaven and anyone eats from this bread, he will live forever. "The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." And they begin to react very strongly and Jesus pushes it even further, doesn't he? "I'll tell you the solemn truth. Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood resides in me and I in him."
It goes on from there and of course at that point… Darrell Bock Which verses were you reading? Scott Horrell That's John 6 really starting with Verse 48 on down through 53. Darrell Bock Yeah, and the interesting thing is it's actually very graphic imagery that you're dealing with there because the idea of eating is the word that gets used for how cows chew cud. I mean it's also munching is almost a very graphic – Michael Svigel He lost a lot of his audience over that, almost his own. Darrell Bock Yeah, he sure did, right at the end. Yeah, that's right. Some of the disciples it said walked away because of the vividness of that imagery and of course the discussion that comes about John 6 is whether this is a direct illusion to the Lord's Table or whether this is in fact a very graphic description of his death and how we view it, and of course how you think about that obviously impacts then how you view the Supper.
So that's transubstantiation, and that was, as you said, it's the Catholic view of things, and the mass – this is probably worth spending a little time on. The mass is observed in the Catholic Church daily. Michael Svigel Somewhere in the world, at any given time, Christ's body and blood are being offered. Darrell Bock In the context of the Roman Catholic Church, yeah, and so some people ask the question why is the mass so central in Roman Catholic theology? I think it's a good question to ask and reflect on because the service in the Catholic Church is very much built around the Table in a way distinct from Protestant services. Scott Horrell Well, you're both thanking God for the sacrifice in Christ, but also, that is a reinstitution. That is a kind of sacrifice, as you say, of our Lord at every moment, as Mike's making clear.
Did you want to go back to the other forms of transubstantiation but – Darrell Bock We'll move on in a second. I want to stay here for a second. So the idea here is that you observe the mass. This is a very sacramental – to go back to our earlier language – a very sacramental view of the Supper because there actually is grace conferred – Michael Svigel Saving grace, yeah. Darrell Bock Not just any grace, it's saving grace. Michael Svigel This is the real thing, so you are by ingesting the bread and the wine which has in its invisible immaterial essence become not just body and blood but containing the whole of Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity, you are therefore ingesting elements that are life giving to your soul and body. So in late Middle Ages throughout the Reformation period, the Roman Catholics were accused, and not without reason, for an idolatry of the mass because the logic was if that really is after the consecration by the priest, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the divine God man, then should it not be adored with the same kind of worship you would show toward God?
And the Protestants responded to what they called the idolatry of the mass because of the logic of the theology where that led them, and it led them to, for all practical purposes, worshipping the bread and the wine. Scott Horrell Interesting. Darrell Bock Yeah, now I think I'd like to say, most people are almost completely unaware of in terms of the way the service is viewed and the actions that are undertaken.
Well, we've come now to consubstantiation. Okay, same set of questions. Who's associated with this view, and why did it emerge, and now we're probably in a mode where we're not only having to deal with why did it emerge but what is it reacting to, and again, Scott, I'll let you set the table on this, consubstantiation. I call this the over, under, around, and through view. Scott Horrell Well, you just said it. As the reformers broke from the Catholic Church, they carried much of their studies with them. Luther did not want to say this is actually now the flesh and blood of Christ that some actual substantive will change, but rather as you say, around and through, you're still eating the bread and drinking the wine, but there is a kind of hypostatic union of the two. Darrell Bock It's kind of like a Velcro attachment to the elements or something? Scott Horrell Hypostatic union is what we talk about, the two natures of Chris in one person, and so as in Christ himself, the divine subsumes the human, the two are living together in the one person of our Lord, Jesus, and so in the bread and the wine, there is the presence of the Lord that infuses or encapsulates, how can we put it, in and around, as you say, the actual substance, yes. Darrell Bock Yeah, 'cause consubstantiation means the substance is with the elements as opposed to the elements being transformed. Michael Svigel Becoming, yeah. One image that is used is the iron in the fire where Luther will say you put an iron in the fire and it starts to glow red. Well, the iron hasn't changed its substance but it has taken on the character of the fire, which is also an image used for the doctrine of Christ and the deity in humanity, so that same kind of idea Scott Horrell So infused isn't too strong of term and yet they are not confused, one with the other. Darrell Bock Okay, now obviously a reaction to some degree of Roman Catholicism without an attempt to completely go in a different direction, so what are we sharing and not sharing with Roman Catholic teaching when we go to consubstantiation? Scott Horrell Oh, you still see a very real presence of our Lord that's not strong enough – Michael Svigel In the elements. Scott Horrell – in the elements, themselves, but you're stepping away from the idolatry, as Mike's put it. You're stepping away from this miraculous transformation of these elements into real flesh and blood that would be the theme of transubstantiation. So con is close. You're stepping away, but you're not stepping away very far. Darrell Bock Okay, and so is there still a sacramental view of what's taking place? Scott Horrell Oh, of course, absolutely. There is the transmission of a saving grace though that by faith within Lutheranism that is transmitted to the believer as he partakes of that Lord's Supper or the Eucharist. Darrell Bock Okay, so there's something happening at the meal as well. Scott Horrell Absolutely. Darrell Bock Yeah, okay. Now I guess the next thing to do, and I know that there are more than these but these are certainly the big three, we've got Zwingli, I'll go ahead and introduce the figure here, and what is sometimes called the memorial view. I don't know if that's actually an accurate reflection of what he taught, but so let's talk about we're dealing with a spectrum here and I guess as we move down the spectrum, we're becoming less sacramental, if I can say it that way. So Zwingli's view, obviously another Protestant view but certainly different than Luther. How did Zwingli view the Lord's Supper?
And Mike, I think I'll let you handle this one. Michael Svigel Sure. Yeah, Zwingli was probably reacting even more definitely against Roman Catholic transubstantiation view, and so he took the bread and the wine as symbols. They did not contain or become the physical actual body and blood of Christ. He made a strong case that that would be a theological problem because it would mean that the physical human nature of Christ had taken on characters of divinity and could be everywhere present. He said that would be a problem because Christ is bodily at the right hand of the Father.
So he said it is a consecrated symbol. It becomes a holy thing for the purposes of our participation of the meal, and with that came this idea that it isn't doing anything in any automatic sense. You're not partaking of anything that is giving you blessing automatically. It is really a sermon without words, in a sense. It is communicating something in a memorial or a reverential kind of sense, so it's much more of something going on in your mind and your heart than what's going on on the actual Table. Darrell Bock Now it does strike me that this is a very almost personalized look at the Table and we lose or we risk losing a little bit of the corporate feel of the event in thinking about it. I mean when I heard the word memorial and maybe this is reacting more to the English word, I'm thinking about this being primarily a reflective exercise of one kind or another. Michael Svigel Sure. It's reflective, it's meditative, it's devotional, although he doesn't go really far. He doesn't take it out of the context of the community, it really depends on the individual's reflection and faith in response to that. Darrell Bock So not only do you lose the sacramental dimensions that the other views have that are not so much a part of this, but also there is I almost think the proclamation side of it gets underemphasized, if I can say it that way, because it becomes this more privatized experience almost. Is that fair? Michael Svigel Yeah. When you read Zwingli himself, he goes out of his way to shoe that he's not dismissing the significance of the Lord's Supper, ten things that this still is doing. I think in what becomes the tradition of the memorial view, that's where you go. It sets you off. The boat starts to drift pretty soon.
In my tradition, I'm in a Free Church tradition. I've heard more setups explaining everything that the Lord's Supper doesn't do and by the time you get to the end of that, you're wondering why you're even doing it. Darrell Bock It's kind of like those commercials for drugs that say take this drug and then there's 45 seconds of this may kill you by the time you're done, so you're more than welcome to have it.
I grew up in a tradition in which this was the dominant view and was kind of my initial take on the Supper. In all honesty, it struck me, as time has gone on and I've read the scripture and reflected on it, that I have the feeling it doesn't quite say enough. Michael Svigel It tells us what it doesn't do but it doesn't really start asking constructively why are we doing this? What does it do? How are we supposed to do it? What benefit do we get from this and what are we saying with it? Darrell Bock And of course sometimes in some services, the Lord's Supper ends up being like a tag on to the main service, and so you feel like, well, this is the appendix. Scott Horrell It's removable. Darrell Bock And so we've gone from a very different place versus the Roman Catholic mass where it's central and we've come to this odd place where we're kind of the, well, it's a nice thing to do and we're asked to do it, but don't ask too much more. Michael Svigel And historically, it feels like a pendulum swing, right? The Roman Catholics were taking it too far in this direction and we swing a little bit too far. Darrell Bock And this was a big deal in the history of the church. Michael Svigel It was. It split Martin Luther and Zwingli from having a unified reformation. Darrell Bock Now there's a very famous incident that took place in the history of the Reformation known as the Marburg Colloquy, and I'll try and set this up and I'm setting this up as a non-church historian, so if I botch it, just let me know. But my understanding is that the colloquy was a meeting of Luther and Zwingli. There was a list of 15 issues that they were supposed to discuss. Don't ask me to name what the 15 are, and they pretty much negotiates their way pretty successfully through most of the list and then they came to the Lord's Supper.
Now tradition is about this, in fact I've seen a painting in – there's a very famous painting in Germany that when you visit one of the sites, it may have been – I'm not sure if it's Marburg or somewhere else. Michael Svigel The castle, I think. Darrell Bock Where is it? Michael Svigel Maybe at the castle. I can't remember. Darrell Bock Yeah, I can't remember where it is either, but it is the famous incident of Luther taking his knife and carving into the wood – I don't remember if this is in Greek or in German. I think it was in Greek. We'll keep it that way. New Testament people will like that version of the story. Michael Svigel Or Latin or something, yeah. Darrell Bock Or Latin, who knows? The words, "This is my body," and saying, "Until you can tell me this doesn't mean what it says, we can't agree." So obviously there's something behind all that. What's going on? Michael Svigel Yeah, like we said earlier, Martin Luther held that when Jesus said, "This is my body," that bread and wine really did contain the body and blood of Christ, and so you were literally ingesting Christ's body and blood. So he shared that view with the Roman Catholic position, with some differences that we mentioned before. Whereas the other member at the Table was Zwingli, who we saw was a total opposite. This is Christ's body and blood are not actually present. It is a figure of his body and blood, and so they could not see eye-to-eye on that. They both accused each other of heresy's regarding Christ. Zwingli was accused of separating the deity and humanity of Christ, being an historian, and Luther was accused of mixing up the deity and humanity and saying the human nature and the bodily form could be everywhere present, and they left in absolute disagreement and disunity. Darrell Bock And so we weren't able to see a uniting of the Protestant Reformation as a result, so the ramifications of that obviously were very, very significant for the Reformation movement, which was already a minority movement and now it split. Michael Svigel They needed to be together at the time, yeah. Darrell Bock Yeah, and they were split as a result, so very, very famous event, and like I said, it's marked itself not just in church history but really in European culture to a certain degree because you talk to Europeans who know a little bit about your history and they're quite aware of that event. The Swiss Reformation and the German Reformation never came together because of that.
Now we've mentioned three views. Now those aren't the only views. There's one view that we haven't put out on the Table yet and that is the reform view of the Last Supper, so how did Calvin walk into this situation? Michael Svigel Yeah. Now Calvin is coming about a half a generation. He wasn't one of the original reformers, so he already had the debate in the background and in many ways, his position became a mediating position between Luther and Zwingli, and so Calvin agreed with Zwingli that this was not physically present in the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ. He saw that it would be a Christological problem, but he also said this isn't a mere empty symbol. This isn't doing nothing. This isn't just a memorial. This isn't just dependent on what we think of it.
Christ is, he would say, present at the observance of the Supper in a unique and life-giving way and in way that brings blessing, but I like to think of it more in terms of Christ is present in the same way that he was present at the Last Supper, as the host of the Supper, and by dining with Christ, you are participating in the blessing, and the partaking of him, and communing with him.
And he had this interesting line in his Institute, Book 4, where he says, "We are in a sense ushered into the presence of Christ by the means of the spirit who can transcend space." And so it's sometimes called the real spiritual presence, but that's a little bit of misleading. It's really the real presence of Christ at the Table with us by means of the spirit, and so he is the host of the meal and we are communing with him. Darrell Bock So would a description of this as a mystical meal be accurate? Michael Svigel In a sense, yeah. He is saying we are mystically but truly fellowshipping with Christ, and in that sense, the bread and wine become symbolically sacramentally or consecratedly, just as a man and woman are pronounced husband and wife and really become husband and wife, though nothing has really changed with them, they've been consecrated as such, the bread and wine which is common becomes sacramentally body and blood of Christ in an official sense and is functioning then as part of the sacred meal. Darrell Bock And one of the indications that something like this is going on is I take it the warning that comes with the meal that says that a person should really reflect on the spiritual state that they're in as they partake of the elements. Michael Svigel Exactly, yeah. In my tradition, that had a pretty I would say low, a very memorial view of the Lord's Supper. They would tell us what it doesn't do but then they would warn us and they would say, "But make sure you don't eat of this unworthily because you could get sick and die." And I thought, "That doesn't make sense. If you do it wrong, you die. If you do it right, nothing happens." It didn't quite make sense, especially when you see 1 Corinthians 10 talking about the cup of blessing that we bless. The New Testament has a bit richer understanding of the Lord's Supper. Darrell Bock You just reminded me of a question I didn't ask in the beginning that I probably should have, but sometimes we call this the Eucharist, so what's going on with that language? Michael Svigel Yeah, it's hard to find the term Eucharist. It means thanksgiving. It's hard to find that language specifically referring to the Lord's Supper clearly anyway in the New Testament. There are a couple of passages possibly. You do see it very, very early in church history, though, already with a document called the Didache in the first century – Darrell Bock Yeah, very early. Michael Svigel – refers to, but sometimes Eucharist is referring to the elements, but other times it's referring to the observance itself, which is bigger than just the ingestion of the elements. Darrell Bock And the idea here is almost that the meal is supposed to be some kind of a celebration or some type of thanksgiving – Michael Svigel Yeah, a thanksgiving. Darrell Bock – so that there's an attitude that comes with it that's more than reflection. There's an engagement there – Michael Svigel There's fellowship and there's – yeah. Darrell Bock – that you don't see when you just think of the memorial idea, and so it's an interesting phrase by which to describe the meal, and as you said, it comes in very, very early in terms of the way it's characterized because the meal is a part of the worship that you participate in.
So let's turn our attention here to some practical questions and that is I'll ask a simple question. Obviously the Roman Catholics observe this daily. Protestants observe this – Michael Svigel It depends on who you are, where you are, and when. Darrell Bock Yeah. At the church that I'm in, it has brethren roots, so it's weekly for us. I know churches that do it quarterly, churches that do it whenever. Scott Horrell In cell groups and not as a church together. Michael Svigel Annually, I've seen. Darrell Bock That's right. Michael Svigel Monthly is pretty common. Darrell Bock So what in the world is going on with that? Where is that coming from? Scott Horrell The Lord does invite us to do this regularly when we come together. I mean that's pretty clear. Darrell Bock As often as you eat and drink it, which is not very specific, I might say. Scott Horrell And I think the concern was that it might be done unworthily too often and therefore to restrict it to certain times, but that participation weekly, I'm in a church that does that as well, is one of the reasons I go to church. I love that time together. That is again, the holy of holies. That is the absolute center, along with the fellowship, and the other forms of worship, and so forth – Darrell Bock Opening up of the Word, of course. Scott Horrell – of my walk with God. So I'm not sure there's any strict way the New Testament puts it forward to be done in a prescribed way and yet it is described as usually I think the Lord's Day, Sundays, when the offering is taken when they come together, that would have been normative in the New Testament church. Darrell Bock Yeah, I'm also at a church that the way they build the service is to actually point towards the Table that comes at the end, not as an appendage, but very much as the high point of the service. Scott Horrell Climax, yeah. Darrell Bock And it's built up that way. The way in which the elements are presented to the body make that point on a regular basis and so that's how we observe it and I find it the same thing, that it's a nice, reflective, affirming time. We usually tie it to a creedal affirmation as well that it becomes a key part of the service for us. Michael Svigel We already mentioned some of the imagery, and the meaning, and the significance of the Lord's Supper with Old Testament imagery and New Testament meaning, this idea of reconsecration, and reaffirming your baptismal pledge, and all these things. The observance is rich enough that it doesn't need to get stale and you don't have to change your messages to point to the Lord's Supper. It's there and you can always make it work. It's a very rich image.
I'm a member of a church that does it monthly, although I and even the pastor both hold that historically, it's pretty easy to demonstrate that this was a weekly observance as an essential part of worship. Darrell Bock I've always found that variation interesting and along with the logistics of the meal. Let me talk about one particular logistical detail that everyone probably doesn't think a lot about but it probably does cross their mind. The whole idea of the common cup which strikes terror in anyone who's interested in things like germs and that kind of thing, so again, another different custom is in some traditions, you get a common cup. Everyone's drinking the wine in particular from the same cup, whereas in other traditions, these are separated. Is there any history to that other than hygiene or what's going on? Michael Svigel Yeah, common cup seems to be pretty common early on. I participated in common cup observance once when I was in Germany on sabbatical and we attended a small group service in the evenings, and it was interesting, as that thing was being passed around, there were a few that were doing intinction, which was dipping the element, the bread, into the wine and then partaking. By the time it got to us, my wife and I, we just sipped from the cup and prayed to God that everything was gonna be okay. But it was real wine, so that does change things a little bit. It can be awkward. Darrell Bock I have relatives who are in an Episcopal church and if you go to service with them, that's a common cup. Everyone comes forward and they do the little wiping of the edge before everyone partakes. Michael Svigel Yeah, to make you feel better. Darrell Bock That's exactly what that is. But there actually is an important symbol that's wrapped up in the idea of common cup. Michael Svigel Yeah. Think of the intimacy of the fellowship there. Darrell Bock It is the recognition – it's kind of the opposite of the risk on the memorial side – that this is something we share and – Michael Svigel Communion, yeah. Darrell Bock Yeah, don't take that too literally [laughs]. Michael Svigel I'm communing, right? Darrell Bock Yeah, so we all participate in it together. Scott, any observations on how we observe the Table? Scott Horrell I think there's such variation there. There's certain freedoms that we have in the scriptures, aren't there, for cultures and across time. As a missionary, we struggle sometimes in church planting. Well, okay, are we going to use the one cup or the many? You've got people with venereal disease and all the rest that are there, and yet, we tended toward the one cup. I began to move toward real wine for a lot of reasons. I think the fermented life of the grape has symbolism even as the unleavened bread, ironically, of getting rid of the evil as well and the purity of the bread, I think those have realities.
But sometimes it was hard to know what do you do, for example, after the Lord's Supper? In a new church plant in a foreign country, sometimes kids would start running up and grabbing the bread and eating it as a snack after church, the bread that we had just celebrated as the symbol of our Lord's death, or drinking the juice as grape juice. Darrell Bock And not necessarily doing so because they're being, how can I say, disrespectful – Scott Horrell Oh, no, not sacrilegious, no. Darrell Bock Because you're dealing with very poor people, I would take it, for whom a meal would be important? Scott Horrell Well, or just maybe undisciplined kids as well. There is a question what do you do? For many traditions, they put the wine back into the bottles and in a few cases, they sit behind the pulpit and drink it, and the bread as well. I would, as a church planter, say, "What do I do?" There's too much to eat sometimes. As we've mentioned before, it's nice to have a full church so that doesn't happen, but do you just throw it in the garbage? Of course not. And yet it's just a symbol but yet it is in some sense now sacred. Michael Svigel It's set apart from daily use, though. Scott Horrell Do you give it away to the poor? Do you burn it? What do you do with it? So I struggled with those things and I found that with more time, I wanted to in some way – I'm certainly not a consubstantiationist or something like that, but I wanted to treat that consecrated bread and cup in a reverent way, whatever else might be involved.
And I might add that, just to throw something in here, when we were talking about 1 Corinthians 11 and how partaking unworthily, which I would think if it's just a memorial and I'm not thinking much about it, so I take it and it's not a big deal 'cause it all depends on my faith, then why are some sick and even dead amongst you? So there's more going on than merely a symbol entirely dependent on my faith and my perception. There seems to be a stronger element going on there as well. Darrell Bock Yeah. There's a sense in which it's in the worship service for a reason and there's something sacred and set apart about what's going on, figuring out where that is on the spectrum and how that exactly works is something that obviously the church has been talking about for a long time and to some degree and certain circumstances debating, but there still is this sense that this rite – and again, remind people. This is the one rite of the church that an individual member goes through repeatedly. The rite is obviously is something that we do repeatedly. We sing hymns repeatedly, but this is the one commanded thing that Christ tells us to do to remind us I think how central Christ's sacrifice is, to point us to the grace of God that we're at the Table not because of anything that we have done but because of what he has done, those kinds of ideas.
And I think it's also a part and this is another element of the application, to get us to remind us that we are not entitled to the blessings that we receive from God, that God purchased those privileges for us at great cost and sacrifice, and sometimes I think we in the West in particular tend to think about our entitlements and that actually gets in the way of our spirituality. The meal is a wonderful reminder of the fact that it's his shed blood that brings us into fellowship with God. Michael Svigel And it's something you receive as well. You are receiving it from those who have prayed over it and have passed it around. You are receiving it together. It's also the one thing that we do in church that involved simultaneously all of the senses. Scott Horrell That's a good point. Michael Svigel You're tasting, you're smelling, you're hearing, you're whatever you're doing, smelling, I don't know, but all of these things are you're involved fully in this observance and you are, again, consecrating. You're supposed to be consecrating yourself. You're supposed to be reconciling with one another. Darrell Bock Okay, now consecrating yourself is another one of these phrases that we might throw in, but what exactly does that mean? Michael Svigel Yeah, many in the early church associated the coming to the Table with Romans 12 and offering your bodies as living sacrifices, that the Augustans said that the body of Christ that we offer at the altar is we as the body offering ourselves in consecration weekly to reaffirm – going back to this idea of reaffirming our commitment to discipleship, and to the Christian life, and to one another. In that sense, it actually is accomplishing something, reconciliation within the body as well as a continued reconsecrating or rededicating our lives to him. So in a sense in the early church, there was an altar call every week at the end of the service. There was a Table call to rededicate. Darrell Bock Yeah, but it was an altar call not to come to faith but an altar call to – Michael Svigel To reaffirm. Darrell Bock – reaffirm and reflect your faith. Michael Svigel Exactly. Scott Horrell I think in all this, too, complementing that, as we look at the soteriology of heaven, there we see the lamb, the lamb, the lamb, so over and over again, so the marriage supper of the lamb of course speaks to that in Revelation 19, what Jesus anticipated in offering this, but you look at Revelation 5, "And to the lamb you're worthy to take the scroll, to open its seals, because you were killed and at the cost of your own blood, you've purchased for God persons from every tribe, language, people, and nation." The Lord's Supper certainly arcs into the future, doesn't it? It's our hope, and so as we consecrate now, this is the lamb, what 27, 28 times in the book of Revelation. Jesus is the lamb. That becomes his title that tells us what he did on the cross before, what we will worship him forever and ever for having done for us. Michael Svigel Yeah, so it's anticipation of this kingdom. One of my colleagues, Glen Kreider, says that each time you take the Lord's Supper, you're hoping it's your last until the kingdom. Scott Horrell That's very nice. Michael Svigel And I like to say it's just enough to make you hungry for more and you're longing for that marriage supper of the lamb that's coming in the kingdom. Darrell Bock And of course the reminder is who is worthy? I'm back to the entitlement theme again. Who's worthy to receive this and to have done this for us? And of course it's only the lamb who is worthy and it's not something that, again, we bring anything or contribute anything to. Your picture of it's something we receive, it's the gift that we experience that's very, very important in thinking through this.
Okay, we're almost out of time here. Any last thoughts about things that we haven't said about the supper that perhaps should be said in terms of observing it or practical things that we think about as we do it? Obviously it's more than just sitting there and going, "Yeah, back there somewhere in the dusty past, Christ died for me." It's so much more than that. Scott Horrell Yeah, I guess one more thing still thinking theologically rather than practically at this point, but in heaven, as we look at that throne of God and the lamb over and over again and the myriads, and myriads, and myriads of worshiping the lamb for what he has accomplished forever. It just dwarfs all of our efforts, all of our supposed worthiness or lack of worthiness because we're purchased by God. It speaks of the grace of God that over arcs everything else, our simple faith in trusting the Lord symbolized in that taking of the Lord's Table has eternal effect. It's just overwhelming to me sometimes. Darrell Bock Yeah, and that's why I like the word Eucharist because it is – Scott Horrell Mm-hmm, thanksgiving. Darrell Bock – a sense of thanksgiving. It does engender in the reminder, in the reflection, in the participation, in the covenant affirmation, a gratitude that we're supposed to have that a great debt has been paid on our behalf, something we could not have paid for and taken care of on our own.
Michael, any final thoughts? Michael Svigel Yeah, I would say even that I hold that the bread and wine are symbols of Christ's body and blood, that they aren't empty symbols. They're accomplishing something. They have rich meaning that we really need to retrieve in our worship services. Darrell Bock Well, I want to thank you for coming in and talking about the Lord's Table with us. This is a rite that people regularly go through in the service that they think somewhat about but perhaps not enough and to have a sense of the history and what's gone into it is an important thing and to be moved to reflect on the goodness, grace, and kindness of God is something that's worth the time.
So we thank you for being a part of The Table and we look forward to having you back with us again soon.
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Mikel Del Rosario Welcome to The Table where we discussed issues of God and culture. I’m Mikel Del Rosario, Cultural Engagement Manager at the Hendrick Center. And our topic today is the resurrection of Jesus, looking specifically at the empty tomb. And we have two guests today. One guest in the studio is Dr. Darrell Bock, Executive Director of Cultural Engagement at Dallas Seminary and senior research professor of New Testament. Welcome. Darrell Bock Good morning, or good afternoon or whatever time it is where you’re listening. Mikel Del Rosario Well, it's morning somewhere. And coming to us via Skype is Dr. Gary Habermas. Dr. Gary Habermas is the distinguished research professor of apologetics and philosophy chair at Liberty University. Thanks for being with us, Gary. Gary Habermas Glad to be here. Good topic, good group of guys. Mikel Del Rosario Yeah, definitely one of our favorite topics to discuss, the resurrection of Jesus. And today we’re specifically looking at the evidence for the empty tomb. And the way we want to approach this topic is during Easter time a lot of Christians get into these conversations at family gatherings and places where people start talking to them about the Easter story that sometimes catch people off guard. And so our hope and our goal is to give people some talking points that they can use as they engage their skeptical friends in conversation about Jesus, about the resurrection and specifically about the empty tomb. And just to start off, Darrell, I wanna ask you to kind of set the stage for us in terms of how the empty tomb relates to the whole historical Jesus discussion. Darrell Bock Well, obviously without an empty tomb, there would not have been much preaching in Jerusalem because people would’ve simply said, “Oh, do you think he’s raised from the dead? Just go over there and look on in and you’ll see a body.” Only when they went to go to the tomb that Jesus was buried in, there was nothing there. So various explanations popped up for why that was. So the empty tomb is one of two pieces of material that you see after Jesus is crucified in the Gospels that are designed to communicate that he was raised from the dead. The second group are the appearances that are undertaken that various people experienced after he was raised. But the empty tomb is kind of the starting point and physical beginning of the preaching that Jesus was risen from the dead. And of course, the story of the women going to the tomb is where that reality kind of pops up in the Gospel stories and gets us going in terms of what happened to Jesus. Mikel Del Rosario And so for people who don’t believe that the Bible is inspired, who don’t look at the Bible as an authority, how do historians who don’t believe in Christianity how would they take a look at data and say is this historical or not? Darrell Bock Well there are a variety of ways people take a look at data. They sometimes will talk about what’s called multiple attestation, how many different kinds of witnesses from different source streams view this event. So you don’t just count Gospels, because the argument can be that Mark is feeding into what you see in Matthew and Luke sometimes. But it has to do with what comes, generally speaking for New Testament scholars, what comes from Mark, what do Luke and Matthew share. That’s the source often called Q, but what do Luke and Matthew share in terms of teaching. Then there’s the unique material of Matthew, the unique material in Luke, the unique material in John, the stuff that Paul supplies. There are a variety of source strands, and the more witnesses you have, the more credibility you have for the point. The argument is the deeper this goes across the tradition, the more likely it is to be early and have credibility. So that’s called multiple attestation.
Some people will emphasize a criterion called a dissimilarity where what Jesus did or what happened to Jesus is not like what Judaism believes and is not like what Christianity believes. That’s the strongest form of it. A variation goes it’s not quite like Judaism. It’s not quite like Christianity. And if you look at it, it actually looks like something that moves between the two moving from one to the other. That’s called the continuum approach and sometimes is labeled double dissimilarity. That’s another criterion that gets used.
A third one is called coherence. Anything that gets through particularly those first two and coheres with it can be credible. And another one that’s important is what’s called embarrassment. The early church would never create this kind of an event. This is one that does apply theoretically to the empty tomb because your first witnesses are women; we’ll probably come back to that in more detail. But that’s the criterion of embarrassment. The church would never make up a story where your core witnesses are people who culturally generally wouldn’t count as significant witnesses for a significant event and have credibility. So those are some of the criteria. I haven’t named them all but those are some of the key criteria that come up when people are asking how can I test on a kind of neutral standard that something has credibility. Mikel Del Rosario Yeah. That’s news to some people 'cause I think for a lot of people they think well you either believe the Bible or you don’t, right? And yet it’s possible for us to take a look at the data even with people who aren’t Christians, even people who don’t believe that the Bible is the Word of God and assess is this historical or not. Gary, I want to turn to you now. And I know many years ago you had a journal article come out and the journal for the study of the historical Jesus and you kind of summarized where the critical discussion was up until that point. On the empty tomb, where was critical scholarship at that point in time and where has it moved now, if it’s changed at all? Gary Habermas Well, let me back up. When I was in graduate school decades ago – Darrell Bock Before computers, right? Gary Habermas I’m sorry? Darrell Bock Before computers, right? Gary Habermas Oh, way before computers. Computers would be a what’s that kind of thing. And you could pick some topics that are apropos to our topic today. I mean the empty tomb would be one of them, but you could say was Jesus a miracle worker. And on topics like that when I was in grad school, Rudolph Bultmann hadn’t died yet; he died in 1976. This would’ve been about 1972, 1973, and the New Testament community was still taken by his research. And he was you know probably the most significant light on the horizon then. And if you said something like you believe Jesus was a miracle worker or you said you believe in the empty tomb, your classmates might judge you to be either evangelical or a conservative Catholic, but it was certainly a minority view.
Today, most scholars believe in some sense Jesus is a healer and an exorcist in some sense, and the majority believe in an empty tomb. So as I tried to say in that article, I tried to talk about trends from 1975 to the present, and the empty tomb is one of them that’s been on a fairly upward rise from that time. And today most scholars believe in the empty tomb from what I’ve been able to tell from a headcount from 1975 to date, French German and English sources, about 75 percent of New Testament scholars accept the empty tomb way more than when I was in grad school. And as Darrell just said, by far the main reason that critics give for the historicity of the tomb is the testimony of the women. And for a lot of people who may be listening or watching this, they may think well there’s some collusion here. These fellows are just agreeing to tell the story this way.
But we have to think about how the Gospels were written, how far around the Mediterranean would you have to look to find the next writer and so on, and when these writers sat down and wrote the account what’s the likelihood that all four of them would have begun by saying the women came to the tomb. And if we back up a little bit, it’s not just that the women came to the tomb; they’re practically the only ones present at the cross. They’re practically the only ones present at the burial with the exception of two very little-known disciples, Joseph and Nicodemus. They’re the first ones to come to the empty tomb, and they’re the first ones to see the appearances. So in the women, we have a uniting of both the two characteristics that Darrell mentioned, both the empty tomb and the appearances. All this with women.
Now when you think about where the Gospels were written, you think about different parts – I mean for example, the tradition that John was written to Ephesus. If you stretch these Gospels out around that are, why do they all tell the story this way, and why do they put a weak foot forward? You know it’s not true like a lot of people report. It’s not true that women could not testify in the court of law; they could. But there was pretty much an inverse relation between how important the fact was and whether they would bring women to testify that have a lot of to do with whether there were men present. Darrell Bock There were certain topics on which they were allowed to testify, but in a lot of ways they were viewed very much as second-class witnesses. Gary Habermas They were, so you’re definitely not putting your best foot forward. So why do four writers in four different geographical areas over you know a slightly spread-out period of time, why do they all tell the story the same way, when by telling the story that way you are – well use Darrell’s word, so you’re doing a secondhand evidential presentation of the story. Why do it that way? Real simple answer: It’s because it happened. Darrell Bock Exactly. And the way I like to tell this is imagine you’re the disciples in the period between Jesus’ death and the preaching of the resurrection. And you’ve got a dead Messiah and you’re having a meeting, 'cause remember that the liberal approach to this is to say, “Well they made it up.” So you’re in the meeting and it’s your PR group and they’re saying, “How are we gonna keep hope alive? We’ve got a dead Messiah, how are we gonna keep hope alive?” And so someone raises their hand and says, “Oh, I got a brilliant idea. Let’s ask this view that is a minority view in the culture at large resurrection, physical resurrection, not everyone believes it. In fact, a lot of people don’t. They think when you're quite dead and that’s the end of the story, or they think maybe your soul is immortal. But they don’t think about a physical resurrection. Pharisees believe that and maybe a few others, but not very many other people. So I got an unpopular idea, and the way I’m gonna sell this idea is I’m gonna send out to be my top witnesses people who culturally generally speaking don’t count as significant witnesses.” And everyone goes, “Oh, that’s a great PR idea. Let’s sign up on that one and let’s all agree that’s what we’re gonna do and that’s what we’re gonna say.” Gary Habermas Right. Darrell Bock It stretches credibility. The women were in the story because they were in the story. There was no real way to kick them out and tell your story. So that’s what I think we see in the Gospels. And I think it’s hard for people to remember, particularly people who aren’t used to reading stuff where the idea is the Gospel writers made up this material, to realize that if you say they were able to make it up, all your options are on the table. You could’ve had appearances to the apostles. You could’ve had appearances to other groups. One of the points I like to make is I find it fascinating that even though there’s testimony that Jesus appeared to Peter and Jesus appeared to James, we don’t have a detailed account about what was involved in either of those events. If you were making it up from scratch, those would be the first people whose testimony you’d want I would think. So those are the kinds of realities that historical scholars wrestle with and so the bulk of them when they look at those kinds of features go yep, the case for this is very strong. Now that doesn’t solve the next question, which is if I have an empty tomb, how do I explain it? What does it mean to have an empty tomb? That’s a whole ‘nother conversation. Just like I like to illustrate it if I were alive in 30 or 33 AD, which ever year you think that Jesus was crucified that gets debated between New Testament scholars, and three people were walking by Golgotha on the day that Jesus was crucified, someone could turn and say, “Look, three men are being crucified and the placard on one of them says one of them is Jesus of Nazareth.” Okay, and everyone would agree. I can see that. I can touch that. I can feel that.
But then the next part of the historical event that Christians like to talk about, he died for sin. Okay, now how do I touch, feel, or taste that you know? That’s the interpretation of the significance of the event. So I have an empty tomb and people believe that there’s an empty tomb and then there’s the explanation for how the tomb got empty and that takes on a variety of forms, including some of these more, for lack of a better description, theological explanations for its significance, and that’s a whole ‘nother level of conversation and a whole ‘nother level of debate. Mikel Del Rosario Mm-hmm. So, Darrell, you just mentioned the women and they wouldn’t make it up that way, that’s dissimilarity and that’s embarrassment. Darrell Bock Well it’s actually more dissimilarity. Well it’s dissimilarity to the culture at large, but it’s more embarrassment. It’s really is the criteria of embarrassment that is being appealed to there. Mikel Del Rosario Okay. Gary Habermas And by the way, the story that Darrell just told, picture that happening in four different places around the Mediterranean, because the earlier account Darrell made a really good point. When you’re counting sources, you don’t just say Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, that’s four. You don’t count that way. By the way, this is an aside, but as Darrell knows, the Gospel to the Hebrews does narrate the story very briefly of Jesus’ appearance to his brother, and it’s very similar to his breaking bread with the two men on the way to Emmaus. It’s a very similar account and it’s not that old a Gospel. But anyway, so picture that happening four times, and four times they bring up hey, we can see the women are the witnesses, and everybody four times says, “Wow, that’s the best option I’ve heard.” And all four of them sit down to do this poor option.
And let me say one more thing. In Luke and John, we have the story that in Luke only Peter is mentioned but later in that chapter that says, “Certain of us went,” so there’s plural, more than one. And in John, there’s Peter and John and they go to the tomb. Now if you really wanted to be crafty, you could be telling the truth and say Peter and John were the first two witnesses and they went to the tomb and found the tomb empty. If you wanted to, you could start the story with the men a couple of hours later. But no, they stuck to the story in four different places. Four out of four stuck with the women because they were primary even before Peter and John went. So I think this whole story is amazing because they all did the women at different locations, and they could have told the truth and gone with the men, but they didn’t; they told the story with the women. I think those are accounts are just amazing. Darrell Bock Yeah. And then there’s another piece to this and that is what happens when the women report that the tomb is empty, which you get in Luke. And when that happens, what you get is the reaction that you expect from your leaders, which is oh, we’re so glad you told us about the empty tomb, we’re rejoicing. No, no, no, that’s not how they respond. The story says they tell them and they thought it was a fairytale, basically that it was an empty fable. Actually, what they said to them was, “You’re suffering from post-crucifixion syndrome.” That’s PCS, that’s a disease you get when grief overwhelms you because someone close to you has been crucified. And they didn’t believe it.
Now to John and Peter’s credit, as John’s Gospel notes, they are bothered enough by this report to check it out; you know they don’t hang around to give the women a hard time. But the bulk of the response is no, no, no, this can’t be. And my point here is, again this is another example of the criterion of embarrassment, you’re commending your leaders by how you tell your story, and so you’re gonna create a story that has your leaders basically looking like buffoons in terms of the hope of the Christian Gospel and belittling these women who are testifying to something that really happened? You know most stories that you get like this when you get to the point where the hero does the miraculous, everyone goes you know hallelujah, end of story. That’s not what you get here.
And so that’s another dimension that adds I think to the level of the appearance of credibility and authenticity, 'cause they’re even critical of their own leaders and how they initially responded to the report of the empty tomb, which interestingly enough, ironically tells you how women’s testimony was viewed in the culture. Okay. It wasn’t taken seriously, and they had to be convinced by other means before they actually believed it. Mikel Del Rosario Mm-hmm, so that’s embarrassment on two accounts then. Gary Habermas One more example. When Paul reports the pre-Pauline creedal confession in 1 Corinthians 15:3 and following, there’s no women there. Darrell Bock Yes. Gary Habermas And many commentators think that’s because he, not Paul but those who came up with the creed, which is almost always said to be pre-Pauline, those who came up with the creed were a little shy about making the women the witnesses. And just like Luke and just like John, they do start with the men. They start with Peter, and then they talk about the 12. So they did skip the women and move on, and that’s our earliest source as far as that predates the Gospel. So it’s amazing, all these things. But one thing is for sure. When four out of four Gospels say it’s the women, that’s probably because the women were there and did something. And I can tell you in the literature, back to the article that you mentioned, the critics mention the women testimony far more than any other reason to believe the empty tomb. Darrell Bock Yeah, because like I said, there’s no way you would have made up a story, and this is hard for people who aren’t used to thinking about how skeptics handle the Bible, but there is no credible way to think about why women would be put in that initial key place if you were making up the story from scratch and you were just trying to, like I say, keep hope alive by propagating something that wasn’t the case. Mikel Del Rosario Mm-hmm. So the women were in the story because they are in the story. Darrell Bock Exactly right. Mikel Del Rosario That’s right. Gary Habermas By the way, the larger topic of reliability that is another pointer to the Gospel writers being accurate and historical and honest, that’s the way they told the story, because that’s because it happened that way. If they wanted to tell the story a different way to put a best foot forward, they could’ve done it, but they didn’t. I think that’s a reflection in a broader sense on reliability and how they told their story historically. Mikel Del Rosario Mm-hmm. We’re gonna come up on a break here in a couple minutes. But real quick, Gary, when you found the 75 percent of scholars that held to the empty tomb, is that 25 percent all world view issues? What was the issue with those? Did they just think the evidence wasn’t good enough, or what? Gary Habermas You know what we think a lot of times when someone disagrees with us and they’re big-name scholars, we assume that it has to be evidence; they don’t see good evidence. Now the critics do say that once in a while. They’ll say, “How come there’s no empty tomb recorded in 1 Corinthians 15:3 and following?” And there’s a dispute about whether an empty tomb is implied given a Jewish understanding. And by the way, both John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg both say that the empty tomb could very well be presupposed in that creed, although Dom goes on and says he thinks it was a mark in construct. But we think they’re doing things for reasons of facts, and very, very frequently it’s because of emotions and not wanting to support another viewpoint. I mean you know just look at what happened today with the “swamp” in D.C. and how a political program is going through that. According to commentators, they were right there three days ago and couldn’t pass anything. But today they have to pass it. What changed the facts? Everyone’s saying none, no facts changed. Why? Because there’s a lot of pressure and we gotta get something done. So there’s a great example of facts equal the facts but I feel differently today or someone’s pressuring me today.
And I really think far from scholars being immune to this kind of stuff, I think we vote with our moods sometimes. We don’t want the other side, whoever that is, to get the upper hand, and critics don’t like to tell the other side that they’re right. So I think largely it’s nonfactual issues that are keeping people from agreeing. But even so, 75 is way up from when I was in grad school, so I’m pleased with the change. Mikel Del Rosario Yeah. If you had two arguments that you wanted to use in a short space of time, you’d probably talk about the women and this whole idea that the preaching when on in Jerusalem. Why don’t you unpack that a little bit for us, Gary? Gary Habermas Well let me back up and say of the facts surrounding the resurrection of which Darrell started the program at saying the two most important ones are the tomb and the appearances, you know of all the ones we could line up, the relevant evidences, there are probably more facts for the empty tomb, in favor of the empty tomb, from a critical viewpoint, not taking some presupposition of inspiration or something. I have a list of 22 different critical evidences for the empty tomb, but I would say these two are the top two. Number one, we’ve done a great detail that why would anybody go with the women in four different locations around the Mediterranean? Why would they take that story – and by the way, critics think at this point, the four Gospels whatever you do with the synoptics, they’re not so dependent on Mark at this point. Critics say there’s either three or four independent accounts in the four Gospels. So again, you have this three or four times that make the same story.
I think the next one is just as important as the women, and that is if you’re gonna preach bodily resurrection, which was a radical idea in the ancient world, if you’re gonna preach bodily resurrection and there’s somebody in that grave, do it in Rome, do it in Ephesus, do it in Egypt, but don’t do it in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the last place you can preach that story if the tomb was occupied. And it would be so easy to disprove it. And by the way, critics say something like, “Well, according to your own book, they didn’t start preaching for 50 days.” In 50 days, the body would be messed up biologically and you wouldn’t be able to tell who it is. Two comments. Number one, Michael Cone and I have both interviewed scholars, you know doctors who work with bodies and causes of death, and the body would not be messed up in 50 days in a normal dry Middle Eastern spring environment.
But number two, here’s the key. If you found any body in the tomb, Christians lose. They didn’t say Jesus is in the tomb. They said, “Nobody is in the tomb.” They said, “The tomb is empty.” If you find a body in the tomb, you lose. They could only preach that message if there was no body or nobody, and that’s how it went. And so it was only on the presupposition, anybody could take a stroll and find out if there is a body there or not. If nobody else is there, you can look in; you can check it out. And they couldn’t do it. So if you’re gonna preach bodily resurrection, that tomb better be open. Whether you can identify the corpse or not, it’s irrelevant. There ought to be no corpse inside that tomb if your proclamation is not just that Jesus isn’t there but that nobody is there. That’s gotta be pretty much verifiable. And by the way, all the accounts going back to the early Acts sermon summaries in Acts 1 through 5, 10, 13, 17, they agreed that the preaching started in Jerusalem. So again, bad place to start if the tomb is not empty. Darrell Bock And let me add to the argument by saying not only is there evidence that it’d be a bad place to preach the message but to have the message be believed. In other words, you’ve got thousands of people who came to faith in that very city as a result of the preaching, and that wouldn’t have – I mean think about what the Jewish response would be, “Oh, you preached an empty tomb. Jesus is raised from the dead. No, no, go down, turn left, okay, take a right, then take a left and look in that tomb. You know that’s where he was buried.” And they would of course know where he was buried 'cause they know who buried him. They know which tomb it was in, and so for that very reason the fact that there are believers who come out of this situation in the midst of this preaching in Jerusalem in the very place where it happened means there’s gotta be an empty tomb. The fact that there’s a story circulating that says the body was stolen tells you there is an empty tomb that you’re dealing with, that people are having trouble coping with as the preaching is going on, so much so that there are a variety of suggestions as to why that tomb was actually empty. Mikel Del Rosario Mm-hmm. Is that a kind of enemy attestation kind of that – Darrell Bock Yeah, that’s an example of enemy attestation in the sense of reporting what the explanation was coming from the other side, which is conceding the fact that the tomb in which Jesus was laid is now empty. Mikel Del Rosario Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Why is there pushback sometimes on Joseph of Arimathea being a part of this story and that being his tomb? Darrell Bock Well you sometimes get Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus challenged as one they’re mentioned specifically in the Gospel of John. And so there’s questions about how multiply attested this is and so whether such a figure actually existed, that kind of thing. But here is the interesting part of material behind that. There actually is a tradition in Judaism that says if someone dies as a felon, they cannot be buried in a family tomb. This is why the Jesus tomb story couldn’t have been. And so what do we have? What we have in the case of Joseph of Arimathea going and asking for the body from Pilot is Jesus being buried in a tomb that’s not his family’s tomb, okay. It actually honors the Messianic teaching, granted it’s later but it honors the Messianic teaching in Sanhedrin, in the tractate Sanhedrin that says you do not bury someone who’s committed a crime in a family tomb. That’s part of the dishonor that they experience as the result of their death.
Now the irony is of course that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus bury Jesus in the tomb that they bury him in in order to give him an honorable burial and in order to show respect for him. But they do keep this one part of the Jewish tradition that fits the background. So that’s actually another little detail that tells you the story works because it fits into the cultural backdrop of what happens when someone is executed as a criminal they don’t get buried in a family tomb. So I see the detail as being actually pointing to the authenticity and actually showing awareness of this other tradition that we’re talking about. Mikel Del Rosario So when John Dominic Crossan says something like the corpses may have been left on the cross and Ehrman comes out and says it was standard procedure to leave them on the cross, are they just mistaken there? Darrell Bock Well no, it’s standard procedure to leave him on the cross, and what the text is telling you is that it was a special request in the case of Jesus, which Pilot honored. So I can have that be standard procedure. Standard procedure means that happens in most of the cases, but it doesn’t mean it happens in all the cases. Mikel Del Rosario Yeah, yeah. That’s good. Gary Habermas Plus, you have the problem with the Sabbath, buried the body before the Sabbath, so. Darrell Bock Yeah. Yeah, that’s why they’re rushing to get it done because they’ve gotta get it done before the Sabbath comes. Gary Habermas Right. If the crucifixion were on Monday, you could’ve left it up there for a while, but the crucifixion is just before the Sabbath so we have an additional problem. Darrell Bock Yeah, we don’t want an unclean body in a situation defiling taking place before we get to the Sabbath, so that’s why they’re rushing against the clock. And so they can’t do the work, and what’s going on here? They can’t do the work of burying the body on the Sabbath, so they’ve gotta get it done before the Sabbath comes and they don’t want to leave the body hanging there in public ‘til after the Sabbath. Gary Habermas By the way, just another side, Josephus says that even persons who are crucified were given a decent burial, which is a witness – well it’s a witness to what happened at Jerusalem in 66 or 70 AD. But it’s also a witness to the respect that Jews had for bodies and those who might complain that the body might not have been put in the tomb because it would’ve been a dishonorable burial has to deal with Josephus who specifically says that even crucified persons were given decent burials, so. Mikel Del Rosario Mm-hmm. Now sometimes people will push back on the entire notion of any of this being historical. I know you’ve debated some people, Gary, who say that this was embellished or it was myth; it was legendary. What’s the quick go-to with that kind of challenge? Gary Habermas That someone says what, that the whole story was brought into the Gospels too late? Mikel Del Rosario It could’ve been too late. It could’ve been embellished or could’ve just been made up. Gary Habermas Okay. By the way, a couple things. If Mark is the lead Gospel, that’s per Darrell’s comments earlier, for those who think that Mark is the lead Gospel of the synoptics, Darrell, you guys may have heard that one date has already appeared for this Markan fragment, and it has been dated to 80 to 110 AD. And some critics have said well that would push back the Gospel of Mark, and I might also note here that entirely apart from dating a fragment of a copy to as early as 80 AD, you’ve got two critics, two agnostic non-Christians, in James Crossley and the late Morris Casey who both on separate grounds, actually separate from each other and separate from the fragment, date Mark Crossley about 38 to 42 AD. Casey just says about 50. And by the way, Casey dates Matthew 50 to 60. So if the dates are coming back a little bit for the synoptics here and Mark in particular, if Mark can be brought back even earlier because you can’t have a fragment of a copy in 80 and somewhere else geographically and the book be written just a very few years before that, five or ten years before that, that’s gonna say something about the market source being earlier. So that’s one thing I would say.
One more thing I would note are the Acts sermon summaries. Again, Acts 1 through 5, 10, 13, and 17. Acts 13’s Pauline statement there is that Jesus was buried and his body did not undergo decay, as was the case with David. Sort of like Acts 2, only Peter is doing the preaching in Acts 2 and Paul in Acts 13. Those are early. Bart Urman dates the Acts sermon summaries to one to two years. He doesn’t specify which is which, but he dates them to one to two years after the cross. If the sermon summaries are one to two years after the cross, he specifically thinks that Acts 13 is among the earliest. Now he’s got other theological reasons for admitting that. But if the Acts sermon summaries are within the year or two and Mark has come back ten or twenty years, we’ve got two sets of very early arguments for what’s going on with the empty tomb, and of course multiple sources. Darrell Bock Yeah, let me comment on some of this 'cause this is important. I’ve hesitated to use the fragment argument yet because I want to see the evidence about the fragment, which hasn’t been put out yet. What Gary is reporting is stuff that has been circulating and has been said, but we haven’t seen the data for it yet so I’m a little hesitant to make much of that at that point. If it’s true, it’s interesting. But I wanna make another point that I think we sometimes miss in conservative circles and it goes like this. It does not matter what the dates of the Gospels are as much as the quality of the tradition that feeds them. And I think this is an important point, because sometimes we get into discussions about are the Gospels written 20 years, so 20 years after the gap if it’s in the 50s, or if you’re talking 38, 40 you’re even tighter; you’re within a decade. If it’s written in the 60s, which is where most people put the synoptic Gospels, that’s 30 years after. If it’s in the 80s, which is where most non-conservatives will put the Gospels, you’re dealing 50 or 60 years after the events that we’re talking about. The Gospel of John is put generally speaking in the 90s; you know that’s 60 years later.
Here’s the point I like to make. In what goes into the Gospels, there’s a tradition. If that tradition has been solidly communicated, it doesn’t matter when it’s written down, okay, because the tradition is older than the incorporation of the material in the writing. And so it’s actually the quality of the tradition that we get that’s important to the Gospel authenticity as opposed to the dates of the Gospels per se. And that’s important because if we think about the roots of that tradition in Christian circles, we have to use, in the words of that great theologian Chris Burman, we have to go back, back, back, back, back to the experience of Paul. The experience of Paul is, and this is something Gary teaches when he’s in public and I’ve played with it, and it goes the experience of Paul is within about 18 months to a couple of years of the actual crucifixion.
The experience of Paul takes place when he is an opponent of Christianity. The experience of Paul takes place because he’s heard the apostolic preaching. And the experience of Paul takes place so that when he sees the raised Jesus he automatically and instantly is able to process that message that the apostles were giving me that I was denying must now seem to be true. So that experience even predates when Paul has the experience. It goes back to the preaching and teaching he heard that allows him to process that experience. And so we’re literally at that point, in terms of the core tradition of a resurrection of Jesus, on top of the events themselves with someone who lived in the city where it happened. And this gap that we often talk about in relationship to when the events happen versus when the Gospels was written all of a sudden has shrunk down to being basically nothing.
In fact, when I do this on stage, I start off and go from one end of the stage to the other. And by the time I’m done with this explanation, I stand right next to where I’d marked that the crucifixion happened and I just take a little hop step to show we’re right up against the event now. So this is a very, very important part of the roots of the tradition, and the roots of that tradition can be shown to go all the way back virtually to the events themselves. Mikel Del Rosario Mm-hmm. I think it’s worth noting that the pushback is often not on the data itself, but it’s a pushback on the theological implication of the data, of the empty tomb. And as Jesus mentioned to the Jewish establishment, to the Jewish leadership at his examination, this had major ramifications. Yeah. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Absolutely, it did. There’s a core truth that challenges everybody, 'cause it says you’re accountable to God, Jesus has raised from the dead, God has done this, and the way to interact with what it is that God is doing in the world is interact with what he’s done with Jesus. Gary, I don't know if you have any more feedback you want to put on that description of Paul and Paul’s experience, but I actually think that’s one of the most important evidences for the quality of the core tradition of the church that we possess. Gary Habermas Right. No, I agree. I do this timeline lecture that I’ve done in one form or another 2,000 times now, believe it or not. And even when you start with 1 Corinthians, you’re only 25 years away. And so I’ve move it back, and the consensus New Testament position now as reported by Richard Bachman and others, the consensus New Testament position is that Paul received this material about 35 AD. And if you take a 33 crucifixion, it’s 38 AD, but it’s a plus five is the math. But that’s when Paul heard it, and if he gets the testimony from Peter and James, Galatians chapter 1 their discussion of the Gospel, if he gets it from Peter and James, Peter and James have it before Paul has it. In fact, Peter and James are reporting their own testimonies; that’s pre-Pauline. And then you have to go back before Peter and James to the actual events themselves, and this is where Jimmy Dunn says the creed had to be in existence just months after the cross.
So if the cross is in the spring, months is probably gonna be before the year is over. So you’re in maybe the fall of the year at the latest. I’m thinking about other people; there’s a number of New Testament scholars. I can go down the line and mention names, but there’s a lot of scholars that say 30 AD. Larry Hurtato says days after the event. This stuff is so early. I mean Jesus Seminar members. When you go back and look or John Dominic Crossan in his books will say that, by the way, multiple attestation for these sightings. Dom Crossan gives three independent sources for the empty tomb, and he doesn’t even believe it and he’s got three independent sources.
So the data here are very early. They’re from the people who walked by. They’re from people who are willing to give their lives, because while we can’t be sure of most of the martyrdoms of the apostles, we have very good data for James, Peter, and Paul, and some people think we’ve got a good source for John in the second century. So John comes into the seen in Galatians 2, so when Paul goes back in the late 40s, they’re specifically talking about the Gospel, Galatians 2:2. And the other disciples add nothing to Paul’s message, meaning they’re on the same page. I mean why do they give Paul and Barnabus a right hand of fellowship. I’ve never been in a church where we do that for heretics, so they must agree with them. In fact, Paul specifically says, “They added nothing to me,” so they agreed with the message of the Gospel. I think maybe the best thing Paul gives us is the testimony of the others.
Bart Ehrman he says, “Paul spent 15 days with Peter and James.” And then he pauses and he says, “I’d like to have spent 15 days with Peter and James.” And then he asks this question, if you don’t have an evangelical-type presupposition and think that at least a couple of the Gospels you can get back to eye witnesses, and even those where you aren’t sure, there’s still eye-witness testimony. If you don’t have that presupposition, what’s gonna be the earliest data we have? And Bart Urman adds there, he says, “Where do we get earlier than this? Where do we get closer to the eye-witness testimony than Paul’s talking to these fellows in Jerusalem?” To me that is the tightest connection on the empty tomb appearances report. Darrell Bock Okay, let me go one more 'cause you're talking about the stuff that’s been written. I’m talking about the experience of Paul at the Damascus Road. So the point that I’m making is he has to have enough Christian theology in his head, which he didn’t believe up to that time, to process what it means for Jesus to appear to him and what that means. And so my point is when Jesus appears to him, all of a sudden flash, breaking news CNN, Paul realizes that stuff that the apostles were teaching and preaching me that I was challenging all of a sudden I realize they had it right. And so we’re talking about the stuff that predates anything that’s written. It may well predate anything that’s in a creed, okay, because it relates to the moment Paul was opposed to these apostles and preaching was hearing them and reacting to what it was. They were saying in the streets of Jerusalem where that empty tomb resided that everyone could go by and point to and say that’s why we’re having this discussion, and so we’re off and running in terms of what the early church is teaching. Mikel Del Rosario Mm-hmm. And this is two years after the cross. Gary Habermas It’s gotta be pre-creed. Darrell Bock Yes. Gary Habermas ‘Cause creed takes a little while. It’s sort of like a musician who says, “Hey, I got some words to a cool song. Let’s get some music.” So you sit down and you pick some notes out. Something is gonna come before something else, and by the time you get the creed and proclaim it orally, the data on which the creed are based has to precede it. There has to be something there that you’re writing the song about in Philippians 2, Colossians one. Darrell Bock Exactly right. Gary Habermas Something’s gotta be there. And that’s why even Jesus Seminar members call this material pre-Pauline, which by the way, Mikel, I’m thinking you’re doing your dissertation on kind of a minimal-facts argument for the deity of Christ. When people want to say rarely but when people want to say Paul invented deity, you should stop and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. That message was there before Paul was even converted, so how was this a Pauline invention with Jesus being the simple Galilean farmer who didn’t have any idea about his own deity?” Darrell Bock [Laughs] Yeah, Paul is not responsible for his own conversion; something else was, so you know. Darrell Bock So yeah. Mikel Del Rosario Well, we are just having too much fun here, but we’re coming up to the end of our time. When you think about the women and you think about the preaching in Jerusalem, how early this was, how no one would ever make this up, we see just the richness of the evidence that God has left with us so that we can talk with our skeptical friends, people who don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God and say, “Look, there’s data here that’s good enough for us to take seriously and see what God has really done in Jesus.” So, Darrell, I want to thank you so much for being a part of the show today. Darrell Bock My pleasure. Mikel Del Rosario And thank you so much, Gary, for being a part of the show as well. Gary Habermas Thank you for the invite. It’s been very enjoyable. Mikel Del Rosario We’ll have to have you back on the show again sometime in the future to continue this discussion. Gary Habermas That’s right, we don’t want to leave it here, do we? Mikel Del Rosario No, we’ll pick it up again. So we hope you will join us once again on The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture.
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Darrell Bock Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. My guest is Christopher Yuan, who is a professor at Moody Bible Institute. We have affectionately nicknamed it Dallas North. I hope they won't be offended by that. But we send a lot of people up there, and you send a lot of people to us. So it's a good relationship. Our topic today is the issue of sexuality and the church, particularly same-sex issues. Chris wrote a book called Out of a Far Country with his mom talking about his experience of coming to faith. So I think I'm just going to begin by having you talk about that a little bit. How in the world did you get this gig?
Christopher Yuan Well, it's all miraculous. Anything that happens is really by the grace and infinite wisdom of God. Well, I wasn't a Christian, but from a young age I had these attractions that I never asked – never wanted. I even wanted them to go away, and they didn't. I came out in my early 20s. I was going to dental school and pursuing my doctorate in dentistry. I came out to my parents. Through that crisis, my mother and father came to faith. We weren't Christian. So they came to faith while I was going in the opposite direction.
While in dental school, I was experiencing all this freedom, and I got involved in just the wrong crowd and the party scene. I was going out to the gay clubs, spending most of my free time there. Unfortunately I also began experimenting with drugs, and to support my habit I sold drugs as well.
Well, I thought I could have both, have my cake and eat it, too. I thought I could party and be a graduate student. Well, as we should, I think, just logically know, that's not a good mix. So I eventually got expelled from dental school and then moved from Louisville to Atlanta, and there I kept doing what I knew how to do best. I was selling drugs, and I became a supplier.
Well, at this point my parents didn't know that I was doing drugs or selling, but they knew that I needed to know Christ. God had so radically transformed their lives that they knew that that was the main focus, not even my sexuality. That was almost a peripheral issue, but the core issue was my heart.
They prayed for God to do whatever it takes, and that whatever it takes came with a knock on my door. I was arrested, and the federal government confiscated the street value equivalent to 9.1 tons of marijuana. With that amount I was facing ten years to life.
I found myself in jail, and the first thing that I did, I got a phone call, I tried calling home, expecting an earful from my mom. Her first words were, "Are you okay?" Even though my parents were doing everything right and showing me love, but I think that was the first time that I was able just to be away from the world and realize that – all my friends had gone. I tried actually calling my other friends before that. No one answered, but only my parents – my mom answered.
I am reminded of what Paul says in Romans 2:4, that it's God's kindness, not God's anger or his wrath, but it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance.
Well, in prison one day I found a Bible in the trashcan and began reading it. It began to convict me. Really, I would never have picked up that Bible from the trashcan if it wasn't for the testimony and the witness of my parents, who lived the gospel before they preached the gospel to me.
I began reading it, and it brought God's truth to the reality of my sin. I realized that all along I had put my sole identity in my sexuality. It wasn't just what I felt. It wasn't just what I did. It was who I was. Everything about me was gay. All my friends were gay, my whole community. I lived in an apartment complex that was 90 percent or more gay. The community that I lived in, the town that I lived in, in Atlanta, Midtown, was predominantly gay men. I worked out at a gay gym. I went to a gay Kroger.
And this was such a part of who I was that I couldn't separate it from who I was. I realized that as I read God's word that my sexuality shouldn't be who I am, that my identity needed to be in Jesus Christ alone.
I also, as I kept reading God's word, had a paradigm shift because I had always thought that heterosexuality was the norm, not only the norm but God's standard. But as I read through scripture I realized that even if I had heterosexual feelings, I would still need to flee temptation and put to death my sin nature, as we all do.
I realized heterosexuality isn't the goal, but I realized that holiness is the goal. God says, "Be holy, for I am holy." So the opposite of heterosexuality is not homosexuality, but the opposite of homosexuality is holiness. I say the opposite of any sin struggle is holiness.
That really helped me to frame not only my experiences but my sexuality and my sin and the fact that I'm an image of God and the gospel and Christ in line with the way that God intended, that I am an image-bearer of God with infinite value because of – and due dignity, but I also have a sin nature.
That sin nature expresses itself differently in each person, and for me one of those expressions was my attraction to the same sex. I realized that that expression that was a result of my fall is not who I am, but it has to be something that I would put to death by the power of Christ.
So in prison I became a Christian. I was actually called to ministry while I was in prison and had the opportunity to go to Moody after prison because I never got my bachelor's before going to dental school before that. Then after that I went to get my master's in exegesis from Wheaton, and then I just received my doctorate in ministry a few years ago, which actually my doctorate was focusing on – it's the only study on reducing marginalization at Christian colleges and universities for people who identify as LGB or are same-sex-attracted.
Darrell Bock So that's produced a book as well, I take it? Christopher Yuan Yes, it was just released last year. Darrell Bock And the title of it is? Christopher Yuan It's a long title. It's Giving a Voice to the Voiceless: A Qualitative Study of Reducing Marginalization of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Same-Sex-Attracted Students at Christian Colleges and Universities. Darrell Bock Sounds like the title of a doctor – Christopher Yuan Yeah. Any doctoral dissertation has to be long, right? Darrell Bock That's right. You can't print it on the program when the student graduates. Christopher Yuan No, of course not. Darrell Bock That's great. So talk a little bit about your ministry now. You go literally around the world talking about these issues and trying to help the church deal with this. What would you say are some of the major themes that you try and inject into the conversation as you travel and minister in the wide array of settings that you do? Christopher Yuan Well, the contexts that my parents and I are invited to speak are Christian, either the church or a Christian college or seminary or a Christian conference. We're invited because people agree with our position. I'm not invited by people who don't agree to my position, whether they're unbelievers or even maybe more liberal Christians. I'm not invited. So these are people who understand – who have a high view of scripture, and they understand biblical sexuality, that sexual intimacy is reserved for husband and wife in marriage. That's not something that's just an isolated text, but it's a clear theme from the beginning of Genesis all the way through Revelation.
So they understand that component, but maybe what they might be missing or might not understand how to put in practical ways for their church to understand is how to minister to those within the church that might experience attraction to the same sex or how to then share Christ with those, because oftentimes we understand the truth. We understand morality. But then how that plays out in daily life is a little bit more vague. So that's the focus of our ministry of what we do.
Darrell Bock So you're trying to help both understand the nature of the issue biblically, because you do have a biblical studies background, and yet on the other hand deal with the pastoral realities of what it means. I say there are three levels to the conversation. There's the biblical level: This is what the Bible says. There's the legal/cultural element of this is what's going on in our world, and these are the laws attached to it. Of course there's been a big change in our lifetime on that score. And then there's the pastoral problem. That's the mom who walks into your office and says, "My son or daughter just came out. What do I do?" And putting all those together in some type of balance is actually a real challenge.
Christopher Yuan It is. Darrell Bock What we have found, and I'm sure this is your experience as well, is almost whenever we put up the banner and say, "This is our topic," people flock to hear because they're looking for help. Christopher Yuan Yeah, so true, because like we said before, this is not just a hypothetical situation anymore. It's not abstract. It is very real in people's lives. Whether they have a son or daughter or brother or sister or cousin or a loved one or neighbor who is gay, they love these people, and they want them to know Christ. So how do we do that? Especially our youth and young adults. They want to know, "Now that we know this truth, how do we apply that?" I think not only do we need to know what specific texts are and what we need to do ethically and morally, I also make a distinction, and I help people that come and listen, that we make this distinction between the biblical text like what Romans 1 or Leviticus says. But also we need to step back and look at theology because sometimes we'll look at the biblical texts and say, "Okay, this is what is right or wrong, and this is what we know is truth," and then we jump to the praxis part. We kind of miss the theology part.
What's the difference? When I went to Moody, we have the Bible Department and the Theology Department, and I was pretty ignorant then. I was a brand-new Christian. I was like, "What the difference? Aren't they the same?" It took me some time to realize the difference. One is looking at the text and even looking at the broad view of how the message grows and progresses. Theology is looking at themes throughout.
And so what I think is important when we're addressing theology before we get to the practice is to understand a very fundamental aspect of theology, which is who we are, anthropology. That's very simply that – I think many of our listeners and watchers will know – we're all created in the image of God. That's Genesis 1, and yet Genesis 3 comes along and the Fall. We all are sinners. We have a sin nature. We can't separate those two things.
And how does this apply to homosexuality? Well, first of all, if we are all image-bearers – all of us, Christian, non-Christian, those who are converted, who are yet to be converted, who will not be converted – if we're all image-bearers, well, that means that are loved by God simply for being an image-bearer of God and that we are all due dignity and respect. And so as an image-bearer to another image-bearer, whether they are Christian or not, I need to love that person because they bear the image. They are an image-bearer.
But then we can't just stop there, because oftentimes progressive Christians, they really love that "image of God" part, but they forget about Genesis 3. Nothing goes forward – we don't have the gospel, we don't have Christ, none of that – if we don't have the reality of the Fall.
The Fall is such a huge part that that has distorted the image of God. It hasn't erased it, but it's effaced it. The image of God is there, but it's been distorted. And so because of that and how that applies to homosexuality, it's that all of us, whether we have same-sex attractions or whether we have another temptation for sin, are all in the same boat. There is a democratization that happens when we recognize the reality of the Fall.
Darrell Bock Everybody needs Christ. Christopher Yuan Everybody needs Christ. Darrell Bock You talk about the theology part of this, and the theological part of it is certainly very, very important. You have some important things to say about identity, about being an image-bearer, about image-bearing being something that's shared between the man and the woman. We were in a brownbag earlier in which we broached this topic. But another element of this that I think is important is the idea of you look at Creation in Genesis 1, and it isn't until we get to the creation of the woman that the creation of humanity is complete. She is said to be a complement and a helper to the man in a way that completes and rounds out the Creation. The image of God is something that is both connected to and yet distinct from each of the genders, which is an interesting idea.
You were developing how you see Genesis 1:27. I'd like to let you repeat that.
Christopher Yuan Why this is so key, especially in relation to sexuality, is because Jesus is the one that ties that in in Mark 10 and Matthew 19, this parallel passage where Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees about divorce. "Can we just have any divorce for whatever reason," basically is what they're saying. And Jesus, instead of saying no, instead of saying, "Divorce is wrong," what does he do? He gives this robust theology of marriage from where? Genesis.
Darrell Bock Yeah he starts at the beginning. Christopher Yuan It's amazing. I love this passage and helping dissect it because I think it's amazing what Jesus is doing. He goes back and he says – we have so low Bible IQ in a sense, generally speaking, among Christians that when people say things, they don't know – they aren't able to say, 'Oh, this is what this person is saying.' " When Jesus says, "The Creator made them male and female, and the two shall become one flesh," that's just a really quick statement. A Jew, especially a Pharisee, who memorized the Torah, knew exactly what Jesus was saying.
He was pulling from Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24 about this not only – "In the beginning, God created in his image – man in his own image." This is from Genesis 1:27, these three lines. It's actually poetry. "God created man in his own image." That's the first line of poetry, all in Genesis 1:27.
And the second line of poetry, it's a repetition. As you know, Dr. Bock, Hebrew loves repetition as a form of emphasis. And so basically saying the same statement, but flipping it around. So it's subject, verb, object, "God created man," and then the preposition, "in his own image." And then he flips it around. "In his own image, he created him." So it's basically the same.
But then this third line, the tri-colon, is basically this new concept, but basically it's still the same. So it's all parallel, but it says, "Male and female he created," and then, "them." It changes the pronoun from "he" to "them," which brings in not only that God created man, Adam, human, in his own image, but then in the image of God, fronting it.
So first it's God, the emphasis upon God is the one who creates and is the one that created that. But then the second one flips it around, the emphasis upon the image that man is created in. And then the third line brings in the sexual differentiation, which we want to separate that so much, especially not only in light of sexual identity and gender identity, but almost to say that that's not important.
But there's no way around getting past the first chapter of the Bible and not seeing that this is not just a part of who we are. It is a clear ontological reality.
Darrell Bock It's not a footnote on the image of God. Christopher Yuan Not at all. I'm not saying that male and female is the image of God, but when you look at it, there's such a direct parallel that we cannot separate the image of God apart from sexual differentiation. It is so clearly connected in that verse of Genesis 1:27. Darrell Bock I think that middle line is interesting because on the one hand it says, "In the image of God, he created him." But the "him" here shouldn't be misread to be just about males. It's humanity. Christopher Yuan Adam, humanity. Darrell Bock And then out of that humanity there's this differentiation. The combination of the two together was designed in Genesis 1 to be that cooperative, relational element by which men and women were to manage the Creation. The exhortation coming out of that passage is to rule the Creation. It's to manage it well. I tell people the longer I study the Bible, the more important the concept of stewardship becomes in thinking about the theme of the scriptures. And so God has appointed men and women to manage the Creation well, to work as a team, to live in shalom, to be in shalom with God and to be in shalom with each other, to be at peace with God and at peace with other. In the midst of that differentiation and yet unity, they're supposed to achieve something that reflects the character and image and nature of God.
Christopher Yuan Amen. Also about that verse, what Jesus was doing in Mark 10 and Matthew 19, what he was doing is we got in Genesis 2 the two becoming one. We all know that really well. The beauty of what Jesus was doing with saying, "The Creator made them male and female," is that's clearly from the text on the image of God. So what Jesus is doing is he's actually linking marriage back to the image of God. It's really beautiful how you have in the beginning the one, the human, Adam, becoming two, and then marriage, then the two becoming one. It's the only time that you have one equals two and two equals one. It's beautiful.
Darrell Bock It's the new math. Christopher Yuan It is the new math. It's God's new math. We talk about marriage as being the mystery that Paul talks about in Ephesians of Christ and the love of church. What we have here is Jesus, the perfect theologian, going back to also saying, "Marriage, it is this union, this one flesh," which also it's cool how the one flesh from Genesis 2, that they become one flesh. Actually, right before that Adam is saying, "This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh." So it's this flesh coming back together that was separated to become male and female and now becoming one, and that is linked back to the image of God, which is quite beautiful.
Darrell Bock Another feature of course that Jesus is doing is that when he defines that this is marriage, he's dealing with the divorce question in Mark and in Matthew. He goes back to the beginning. "Well, let's go back and let's not talk about what separates. Let's talk about what God's intention was in bringing together." And in the midst of that, he actually defines what marriage is for us, which in the context of the same-sex discussion, sometimes you get people who are saying, "Well, Jesus never discussed same-sex marriage." In fact, no, he did. When he discussed marriage and defined it in the way that Genesis does, he also discussed same-sex marriage, and he excluded that phrase from being something that God sees positively.
Christopher Yuan Yeah. I don't know if you've heard this, David Gushee, how he responds. I don't know if it's in his book, but I heard him say something at a conference. I wasn't there, but someone else – I just was on social media. But the way he responds is saying, "Jesus, the answer to that was just divorce. So we shouldn't read more into it than what he was answering." And that's nonsense. Darrell Bock Actually, that is nonsense because the whole point of Jesus going back to marriage is the point Jesus is making. Christopher Yuan Also, another thing, as you know, being a Luke scholar, is that Jesus, when is he ever limited by the question? Darrell Bock Exactly. Christopher Yuan How many times throughout the gospels do we have someone asking a question, and he answers with this big kibosh? Darrell Bock Because he's redirecting the attention of where – Christopher Yuan The more important part. Darrell Bock Exactly right. Christopher Yuan Anyway, people might have heard that argument because it sounds very convincing. But if you don't go to that deeper level, you miss it. Darrell Bock Yeah, because his whole point in the answer is if you understood the intent of marriage, then the divorce question might be framed very differently. Christopher Yuan It's devastating. Darrell Bock Yeah. Let's talk on the practical side here. I think the way I want to go at this is to say what advice do you give to parents when I'll say the shock moment comes, that you have a child, they walk in, and they say to you, "I'm gay"? I just can imagine that's just a disruptor. Christopher Yuan It's devastating. Darrell Bock Yeah. And so what advice would you give? And alongside of it, what advice would you give to churches to help the parent who finds himself in that situation? Christopher Yuan In these situations, which are difficult, especially Christian parents who have raised their kids in the church and taught God's word to them and the truth about the gospel. It's never easy when a child walks away from God and walks away from the faith. So for me, really the main concern is ministering to the parent and helping them, first of all, recognize that they can move forward. Actually, oftentimes what I see in many parents is a lot of guilt and a lot of shame. I think sometimes part of that is placed upon actually by other Christian, and it's often unsaid: "What did you do wrong? You should have done something better."
And also a lot of it comes down to – and this is why I think the theological foundation is important because if we approach homosexuality as a developmental problem, that people have same-sex attractions because of something that happened in their childhood, we're not holding to orthodox Christianity because we know our sin problem doesn't stem from how we're raised. Our sin problem comes from the Fall. So that's really important to help parents see that.
Sometimes I just point-blank tell parents, "It's not your fault," because they're wracked with so much guilt. The father will think, "I wish I would have just stayed home more. I wish I would have went to his baseball games." Or the mother said, "I wish," whatever it is. We can play this game, and we can't change the past. Yes, parents could have done things differently, but that doesn't prevent your child from being a sinner.
Darrell Bock It doesn't change the reality. Christopher Yuan It doesn't change the reality. That's one of the first things that I just want them – and I have done that several times. Even in a few situations I say those words, and the parents just – they can't hold it in anymore, because they've felt that it is their fault. So that's one of the first things. But I also want them to realize that this isn't the worst sin. Some parents even will be okay with their other son who's living with their girlfriend. We need to realize that sin is sin. Though this is sin, it's not the worst sin, and it's not any sin that the blood of Jesus can't cover.
I think that's helpful to be able to take it down from the catastrophe shelf and bring it down to more – this is the world. We live in a broken world, and we need to just know how to best pray for our kids and also helping to frame what is our end goal? What is our telos with our child?
Is it that they would stop – that their gay son would stop dating his boyfriend? No, because even if he did and if he still doesn't know Christ, even if he got married with a woman and if he still doesn't know Christ, he's in the same situation, at least spiritually.
So we help parents, and this helps even the way that we pray because I think prayer is always important. With my mother, she prayed. She fasted every Monday for seven years, once 39 days, praying and fasting. And we need to make sure that we're also praying the right prayers because how we pray affects how we live and how we interact with a certain person.
I think that prayer shouldn't be even necessarily focused mainly on sexuality, but it needs to be on their faith, that they would come to know the real Lord, Jesus Christ. Maybe they have lived it, but they never really understood it and grasped it.
For me, I say my biggest sin was not being in a same-sex relationship. My biggest sin was unbelief. So recognizing that and helping parents to see that and then how do we move toward that?
My mother, it was not her preaching the gospel to me, but it was her living the gospel first. Just through their actions, they showed the gospel and the love of God. They waited for God to move in my life, and they knew that it was going to take rock bottom. Not everyone needs rock bottom. I did because I'm pretty stubborn.
But when that rock bottom happened with prison, I turned back home to the family. My parents then had this huge open door for ministry. So it's waiting for that situation to happen and just hoping that we have such a good relationship with that person, that loved one, that they will look to us.
So whether it's a breakup or whether they lose their job and they're down, but they think, "Wow, that friend of mine, there's something different about her." They reach out and pick up the phone, and then you have this open door for ministry.
Darrell Bock So what you're really saying in part here is that you want to keep the doors open. You want to signal your love, which you have stressed is not the same as approval. Just to make it clear, you said something in the brownbag that I thought was interesting. You go, "Don't say I love you, but …" because then the person, all they hear is the rest of the sentence. They don't hear the love. Say, "I love you." Show that you love them, and then in the way that you engage, there is the opportunity to show what your values are and your care for the person in the hopes that in a ministry of context that oftentimes involves patience, a door opens up and a real opportunity comes when the person comes to you and is ready to listen.
Christopher Yuan Yes, exactly. I want people to also understand that I'm not saying don't ever speak truth. We need to know when is the right time for that, especially when you have a loved one or a good friend that opens up to you about their sexuality. I think during that time, it's not – I don't think it's a good time to then speak about what is sin and what is not sin. In that very tender, private, sensitive moment, I think just listen. I think maybe later we can have these deeper discussions theology if they're a Christian or if they're open to that. But if they're not Christian, well, then why talk about morality if they don't – why talk about God's morality if they don't even believe in God yet?
Listening is really powerful, and I think we need to as Christians be better listeners because if we listen to others, then they might be willing to listen to us.
Darrell Bock Exactly. I often say that one of the key elements of any kind of engagement is getting what I call a spiritual GPS on somebody. You just listen, and what you're doing is you're listening for the places where bridges might exist to come back into the conversation later. Another important thing that I think is in the background here is what I like to call crashing the stereotype, which is people, particularly gay people, have an expectation of the way they think Christians will respond if they say something to them. When you don't respond with the expectation, that kind of throws the person for a loop.
You've mentioned this in your own testimony, that when you called your mom from prison you were fully expecting to get I think you said an earful, which I take you weren't exactly expecting compliments.
Christopher Yuan No. Darrell Bock And so when that didn't come and she simply asked, "Are you okay," which communicated all this care and love pouring out in the midst of your painful situation, all of a sudden you realized, "She really does care about me." Christopher Yuan Yeah, it was not what I expected. I think that we need to realize what people in the gay community are expecting. They are expecting for us to say, "You're living in sin. You're a sinner." Darrell Bock I call it Jimmy Cagney theology. "You dirty rat, you shouldn't be doing that." Christopher Yuan Exactly. We need to know the right time and even the right tone. Again, we're not not talking about sin. And I love a story about D.L. Moody. Someone said about D.L. Moody that only he was able to and had the right to talk about hell because he did it with tears. I don't think oftentimes when we talk about hell and sin we're doing it with tears, and we need to because it should really break our hearts what sin has done in the world in our own lives and in others' lives. So it really is tone, and it really is preparing the context for which the gospel can be – the best context for the gospel to be shared is in relationship. I think there's much that we can learn from how we evangelize the gay community with how we evangelize the Muslim community, because I think we're coming to a part where we're getting much better at understanding the Muslim community and being able to engage them.
What we do is we have contextualized the gospel for our Muslim friends and neighbors. We're not changing it, we're just contextualizing how we share it. The process in which we do that, we will not come at them right away initially and say, "You're living in sin. Muhammad is a false prophet." That's not a good way to share the gospel with a Muslim.
Darrell Bock That might cause a phaser shield to go up. Christopher Yuan Immediately. And yet we're okay with when you have a Muslim friend and people say, "I haven't talked about Jesus yet." No one says, "Well, you need to tell them." But yet we do that with the gay community. The reason why I think they're very similar is that the Muslims have this misunderstanding that somehow we are their enemy or we hate them, and they have reason to. We haven't been good neighbors, and we have history as well that unfortunately they remember with the Crusades.
The gay community, it's more fresh. They do believe we hate them. So we need to contextualize the gospel with them. That's why we come heavy with relationship initially to wait for that opportunity. That's not unbiblical to wait for that opportunity since it's God who brings that opportunity to open that door to then be able to share about – not about morality or immorality, but share about Jesus.
Darrell Bock Tone matters. There are a ton of texts that mention this, and I like to point them out. The 1 Peter 3 passage, "Be prepared to give a defense for the hope that is in you, yet do it with meekness and respect." And then Colossians 3 talks about when the opportunity comes that we're supposed to be gracious to all. Literally Galatians 6:10 says we're supposed to do good to everybody, especially to those of the faith. I tell people "all" is a technical term. You look it up in the Bible, it kind of means everyone. There's no one excluded.
So there's this way of engagement in which I think one of the challenges of this entire area is that the gospel challenges people. It does inherently. But the tension is how do I challenge someone and yet at the same time extend the hand of invitation that's at the core of the gospel?
The gospel is about hope. The gospel is about gaining a capability you wouldn't have otherwise. Romans 1:16 says, "We're not ashamed of the gospel because the power of God unto salvation," talking about the capability of God, the gift of the Spirit that enables us to walk in ways we couldn't otherwise. Or the ministry of reconciliation that we get from 2 Corinthians 5. We have this ministry of reconciliation.
So our goal is to reconnect people with the living God. That's the hope. That's the enablement. When we do that, we're challenging people, but we're always challenging people to enter into a space that will help them. I think sometimes the static of our critique and our challenge gets so loud you don't hear the hope. You don't hear the reconciliation. You don't hear the capability that the gospel is able to provide, and you never get to the positive side of your message. When that happens, you haven't done a good job of representing what the gospel is all about.
Christopher Yuan Amen. Darrell Bock So let's talk about churches for a second, and let's talk about two groups. We suggested a little bit about the approach that might be needed for people who are completely outside the church, and then there's a different approach that's needed for people who are inside the church. So let's talk about those in turn. Let's deal first with those who are inside the church, those who are open and wrestling. How do you best engage people in that spot?
Christopher Yuan Well, I think first we need to make sure that our churches are a place where it is a safe and redemptive place for people to be open about whatever sin struggle. That was part of my doctoral research. There's a huge sense of stigma and marginalization for people just because they have a same-sex attraction that they are less than or that there's really something very aberrant with who they are, and yet they're just a sinner like anyone else who's struggling with the effects of the Fall. Darrell Bock We all start in the same place. Christopher Yuan Exactly. Darrell Bock We all need Christ. Christopher Yuan I think we need to make sure that we are a place where people – the gay community, they celebrate coming out of the closet. I think there's a sense where we can almost learn from the gay community. I think Christians, we need to come out of the closet of whatever sin we're struggling with, but surrender to Christ. That's the distinction. We need to stop wearing our mask and pretending we're perfect, that we are broken. We all need Christ. That's important that we have that – I talk about that I believe it should be the church that's the safest place in the world. And the question is are we? Are we safe? So if someone is coming, I think I want to help them to realize – again, it's listening. We need to know where they're at because not everyone is the same. You might have some who think that they are just so different from anyone else, and they just want to be like the next person who doesn't struggle with this.
I want them to know, no, we all have some sin that we're struggling with. God can use that to refine us and strengthen us. But they're not so much different from the next person. The details of what struggle you might have might look a little different, but at the end of the day it's still sin. We still have to mortify our sin nature and our flesh and choose Christ over our temptations.
Some people might think, "Well, I wanted – God says I can never get married."
In those situations, I tell them, "Let's not even think about that. Let's just focus upon today, and let's grow in your spiritual knowledge of God and grow in that."
But don't limit God, because I think some people will say, "I can never get married, and so I'll just be single for the rest of my life."
I say, "You know what, we don't know. I know too many people who have been surprised by God."
They say, "This is the way that it's supposed to be," but then God changes. So I say let's not plan our future. Let's just live one day at a time. I think that's what Christ means by, "Don't worry about tomorrow."
But then on the other hand, we have people that want to get married because they think that's the solution. We want to move people away from the extremes and to realize that don't fixate on the future, don't fixate on the past, but fixate today that God has given us.
Darrell Bock There's another emphasis that you talk about regularly that I think is important here, and that is that the church needs a robust theology of singleness of the midst of all this. The tendency to elevate the family and elevate marriage to such an extent that you leave the impression that if a person is single, somehow they've fallen short of the glory and ways of God, which certainly doesn't reflect 1 Corinthian 7. There's a very important role for having what I consider to be a balanced anthropology and a balanced theology of relationships in which singleness is elevated as an opportunity to serve the Lord, to be fulfilled, all the things that come with it. Christopher Yuan We talk about marriage as something that points to God and points to Christ. I also believe that actually singleness lived well should point us to Christ in that I may be forgoing things presently, and not necessarily even by choice. For most Christian singles that I know, it's not by choice. But they are forgoing certain blessings and certain things of this world – marriage, physical intimacy, children – and yet if we are still able to have joy in our life, that gives glory to God. So just as marriage done well gives glory to God, I think singleness done well also gives glory to God. This is played out in our churches. I really think if we don't get singleness right, I don't even know if we're ready to address this issue of homosexuality or even sexual brokenness.
Darrell Bock I'm sitting here smiling inside because I'm sitting here thinking I know lots of churches that will not hire staff people who are single, which means they wouldn't have hired Jesus. Christopher Yuan Or Paul. Darrell Bock That's right. Christopher Yuan It becomes such a requirement, and sometimes it's unsaid. I know men who have graduated from seminary in Moody or in Dallas where they're single and they apply and no one hires them. They're very capable young men, but they won't be hired because they're single. It's taking I think a text out of context and also this misunderstanding that somehow single men are more dangerous than married men. That's such a lie. Darrell Bock Now we don't have a lot of time, but let's talk about the group that is outside the church and probably has a lot of stereotypes of what Christians are about. How do you step into ministry with this group? Christopher Yuan Well, I think we need to change our mindset into less thinking about a program that a church can do as a group to go in and think more about how the early church shared the gospel. It was one on one. I think that's a very effective way, not to say that open air is effective or even going as a group to a certain community. That's also effective, but I think we need to contextualize the gospel and realize that those programs or doing it as a group into the gay community wouldn't be the most effective way because there is a sense when – I believe in this herd mentality. When it's a group with another group, you lose the individual. You lose being able to get really down into each person's soul, in a sense.
I believe many of your listeners right now and watchers that they have people in their life. I can't reach that person as the mother or the friend or the coworker who has a gay friend and how they can reach them, because they already have something established, a relationship. I think that's really key, that we need to –
Darrell Bock Personalize that. Christopher Yuan Personalize it and equip in that way. I think that we need to preach from the pulpit. Go this week to your gay neighbor. Invite them out for coffee. I think that needs to be said because many Christians think, "I can't do that because I'll be condoning their sin." Jokingly I say, "You're not going to be condoning their sin because the last time I checked, we usually have sinners over for dinner."
Christopher Yuan It's nothing new. You're not doing the sin. You're just building a relationship and trust so that we can share the gospel. Darrell Bock Well, Chris, it's been fabulous to have you with us today on the podcast and to think about some of these things. We've tried to look at this from about every angle possible. We think it's one of the most challenging areas the church faces today, and you certainly have performed a wonderful service to the church, you and your family, by sharing your story and telling us about what's going on. We hope that these reflections on ministering in this context, both the theological basis of the importance of Genesis 1 and 2 as well as thinking through the matters of tone, help you think about how to minister, particularly in a personal way and a very relational way, with gay people who you might know who really have one particular area of sin. But we all are sinners and are in need of Christ.
So we hope you've enjoyed being with us today on The Table, and we hope to see you again soon.
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Darrell Bock Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I’m Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, as well as Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at the Seminary. My guest is Michael Burer. Michael Burer Hi, Darrell. How are you today? Michael Burer Really good. Associate Professor of New Testament Studies. We’ve worked together now for several years. Michael Burer Well, we need to be a little clearer. I was a student of yours. You were my doctoral advisor. You’re telling me what to do now. So it’s a little bit longer than just a few years. Michael Burer No, no. Anyway, so I’m trying to promote you to being an equal, but anyway – Michael Burer Oh, thanks. I’ll take that. Darrell Bock But Mike and I have discussed issues in Galatians and Paul before on The Table and we’re coming back now to take a look at a new topic. This is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. It has to do with the way in which the spirit of God is presented in the New Testament and highlights that particularly in the Book of Galatians. So Mike, why don’t you tell us about your walk with the Book of Galatians? Michael Burer Sure. I’m actually in the middle of writing a commentary on the Book of Galatians. Please don’t ask me when it’s gonna be done. As you know, sometimes that’s not easy to answer. I’ll just say – Darrell Bock These words can and will be used against you in a court of law. Michael Burer If the Lord wills I’ll have it done before I die. Darrell Bock There ya’ go. That’s a theological way to answer. Michael Burer But I’ve been writing on the Book of Galatians and before I really dove into it, my thinking about the Book of Galatians was probably similar to a lot of people. It’s a defense of the gospel. That Paul is explaining his theology about who Christ was, what Christ did for us, how we’re justified, but one piece that was never really talked about in my understanding was the role of the spirit. As I was diving into it and looking at particular passages I began to realize that there’s a lot more to the work of the spirit and what Paul is arguing than we like to give credit for.
So it made me ask a couple questions about myself, my theology, the way I’d organized my categories. So that was the genesis of me tapping you on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, why don’t we talk about this? I think this would be a good thing for us to wrestle with because Paul says some things that are pretty powerful about the spiritual work in ministry that I think would be really important for believers to understand.”
Darrell Bock I think we tend to think the gospel is a two-way operation. It’s something between the Father and the Son and it involves us and we tend to cut the third person, the Trinity, out of the equation. So I see there’s a note here that you’ve written to me. It says, “We ask how do I know I have the spirit and we answer because you believe the gospel.” Then you say, “Paul asks” – that means something’s going on, “How do you know the gospel is true.” He answers, “Because you have the spirit.” Flush out that difference for me –
Michael Burer Sure. I often times think about it this way. How do I know that the spirit is working in my life. I have to almost times say it by faith. Maybe I’m showing my own immaturity as a believer, but it’s because I have believed in the gospel and there are promises that the spirit has given to me. The spirit seals me. I’m baptized. I’m being filled by him, et cetera. But Paul’s dynamic or his question was really very, very different. He did not approach the spirit as a deduction, shall we say. Something that we can just believe by faith that we’ve got.
He actually approached it on the front end. It was actually the proof that he used to show that his gospel that he had put to –
Darrell Bock It’s the dynamic of salvation in some ways – Michael Burer Exactly. So that was what began to change in my mind about the role of the spirit. The spirit was not just a, shall we say, an afterthought or a theological deduction, the checkbox I can say – Darrell Bock Or a footnote. Michael Burer Yeah. It was the beginning in some ways of the spiritual journey that Paul is taking in Galatians – Darrell Bock In fact, it’s the purpose of the exercise in some ways, isn’t it? Be Jewish for a second. Bear with me, but you’ll appreciate this. Put on your yamaka. It fits nicely right here. I’ve got a good space for it and think Jewishly for a second. If you’re in the Old Testament and you’re unclean you can’t go to the Temple and fellowship with God. So you engage in a sacrifice or washing that restores that relationship, but the point isn’t just simply to say, “Oh, I’m clean now. I can go on with my life.” No. The point of being declared clean is you’re now put in the position of being able to fellowship directly with God again in the context of the Temple.
The salvation’s very much the same picture. You’re unclean. Forgiveness of sins cleanses you or washes you. Now that you’re a clean vessel, the spirit of God can come in and dwell you and enable you to walk with God from that point forward.
Michael Burer Sometimes I think we almost think of it in the sense of we get from negative ten to zero or we get into neutral. I’m going in reverse. But the picture I think is all together different. It’s we’re now moving in the right direction by the power of the spirit. We’re not just qualified. We are, in fact, given everything that we need – Darrell Bock We’re enabled. Michael Burer We’re enabled. Exactly right. Not just qualified, but we’re enabled. Darrell Bock Ephesians says at the very beginning we’ve been given every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. There is nothing that we lack. It’s like the question the disciples ask of Jesus at one point, “Give us more faith.” Jesus responds, “Wait a minute. This is not how much. You just have” – I’m gonna put the Texan twang on this – “Just put a pinch of faith between your cheek and gum, okay. Just have a little bit of faith” – Michael Burer That’s all it takes – Darrell Bock And you can do amazing things. So the issue is not how much. The issue is presence and utilizing what’s there. Michael Burer Exactly. So I guess when I came to Galatians I expected Paul to think of it kinda’ the way I did. That the spirit was a wonderful blessing, but not to focus his attention on it, but what he argues is really very different. That the spirit is the defining proof in the life of the Galatians that they, in fact, were on the right path. So what I wanted to talk about was unpacking that. Why does he make that argument? What is the end result? How are we to think about that even today in terms of our own walk with the spirit and in the lives of those to whom we minister.
Darrell Bock So my sense is is that this is one of the aha’s of working in Galatians. Michael Burer Yeah, very much so. I’ve had several of those, but this is one I think that to me had a real practical result. You and I both teach here at the seminary. We desire to both form our students academically, but also spiritually. It really made me reflect on the question how can I tell that I’m having a spiritual affect, positively forming my students in the image of Christ.
So a lot of what Paul addresses I think hits right on that particular question. It sort of gives us a way to diagnose our ministries and ourselves. How do we know that we are, in fact, all on the right path. It’s going to be because of the work of the spirit. Paul gives us some ways to unpack that and think that through and to actually apply it.
Darrell Bock What we’re talking about here when we talk about the work of the spirit, the phrase I like to use is enabling the spirit, it’s the indwelling ministry of the spirit that empowers us or enables us to walk with God. Part of the issue that’s happened in our time is is that our discussions about how the spirit of God works has launched out into different other areas, areas of controversy and I think in part we miss this most fundamental part of what the spirit is all about and why the spirit is important to Paul.
Michael Burer I agree. I hesitate to use a term like secret sauce, but it’s something that’s applied equally to every believer. So it has to be foundational and fundamental. I hope by this discussion we can discuss those contours and realize and, in fact, as a result, live more in accordance with what the spirit wants to do in our lives. Darrell Bock Well let’s go for this. Walk us through your aha moment. Michael Burer When you think about the Book of Galatians, you’re thinking about Paul’s defense of the gospel, as I said. So for the first couple of chapters, that’s largely what he does. We’ve read this many times. He appears to be, on the one hand, defending his apostleship. He has several statements, for example, in the very beginning in Chapter 1, he says that he is an apostle, “not from man nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and by God the Father.” Darrell Bock Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Michael Burer Yeah, there’s no clue who punches his union card. So he goes off on this defense of who he is and the message that he preached. So for the first couple of chapters it appears to be very much what we would expect. In fact, one place that we really love to go to is Galatians 2:15 through the end of the chapter ‘cause that is sort of the quintessential statement about justification by faith alone and not by works.
So if I could say it this way, just thinking it through and reading the text, in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, I’m in great shape. Paul’s matching what I think. He’s saying exactly what I would expect him to say, but when I get to Chapter 3 starting in Verse 1, he does something that really brings me up short.
Working through this particular passage was where I had my aha moment. So let me walk through it and I’ll point out some things.
He starts off by saying, “You foolish Galatians.” How’s that for being friendly to your congregation?
His point being is that they were being pulled away from the gospel by some opponents in their midst. It’s a little unclear if they’re Jewish missionaries or if they’re Christian Jewish missionaries, but somebody was pulling them away from the gospel message that Paul had preached to them.
Then he gets even worse. You thought the first statement was bad. He says, “Who has cast a spell on you?”
Darrell Bock Oh man. Darrell Bock That’s most likely metaphorical language about the power of their message and the fact that they were so quickly turned away – Darrell Bock And it’s spiritually dangerous for the territory that we’re in. Michael Burer Exactly. So that metaphor brings up all of those negative images. “Before your eyes Jesus Christ was vividly portrayed as crucified.” In other words, you’ve had the original message proclaimed to you vividly. How could you then turn away from it. “The only thing I want to learn from you is this.” Here’s where it gets interesting. “Did you receive the spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?” Paul basically sets up the spirit, the presence of the spirit in their lives as a proof.
Darrell Bock And the reception of the spirit is this indwelling that we’re talking about. It’s an illusion to the new covenant idea of God – Michael Burer Exactly – Darrell Bock — putting the spirit inside of you. It’s the point of forgiveness of sins. You’ve been cleansed so now your vessel’s clean and now God can enter in and empower you to walk with him. Michael Burer Exactly and they had experienced it. That was the thing. There was no doubt that they had experienced it. It’d be like him saying, “We were together at that moment and we all saw it.” This is the proof. This is the incontrovertible evidence that we’re gonna look to. What’s the deduction that we draw from it. His deduction that he basically asked them the question to force it, is that they received the spirit by believing what they had heard. So in other words, the presence of the spirit in their lives enabling them, granting them power to live in a holy way that God would be pleased with, that was the evidence that he was pointing to. To me that was really the aha moment because he didn’t go back and say, “Let me show you the historical proofs. Let me talk you about the apologetics of the cross and the empty tomb.”
He pointed to something that they had in their very lives at that moment, the work of the spirt, the enabling of the spirit –
Darrell Bock 2 Corinthians goes to the same place when it talks about you being the letters of the spirit being written on the heart. It’s a very similar idea that the spirit and the presence of the spirit is the indication that God has done something. That you’ve been born again. Michael Burer Exactly. The tone of this is that it’s undeniable. There’s no way that anybody could be confused about it. Darrell Bock And the way you got it was by faith. Michael Burer That’s right. Apparently the other people that had come in after Paul were preaching works. They were saying, “You’ve got to do something.” Again, there’s a little bit of a debate as to exactly the contours of that – Darrell Bock You gotta get salvation the old fashion way — Michael Burer Yeah. You got to earn it. So he’s driving home the fact that you have the spirit. Therefore, that confirms my gospel that I preach to you. Let me go a few more verses ‘cause he reiterates this in a number of ways –
Darrell Bock Go ahead. Go for it – Michael Burer “Are you so foolish? Although you began with the spirit” – I’m in Verse 3 now. “Are you now trying to finish by human effort?” So he knew and they knew that they had begun their new life with God in the spirit by the work of the spirit, through the enabling of the spirit. The argument that he’s saying is are you now trying to finish off and the idea would be completion, perfection, ending our maturity in Christ by doing works. No. His point is you’ve got to finish on the same path that you began in.
So he continues on a few more lines. “Have you suffered so many things for nothing if it indeed was for nothing.”
This next verse just blows me away. “Does God then give you the spirit and work miracles among you by doing the works of the law or by your believing what you heard?” God was doing something in their midst. That’s, again, incontrovertible proof. They could all say, “Yes, we agree God is doing something. He’s given us the spirit and he’s at work.”
He was forcing them to realize that was not from being obedient to the law or by doing. It was from believing in the gospel message.
Darrell Bock So the point here is they didn’t come along and say, “Well, if I fast for two weeks, then I can expect a miracle payoff on the other end.” Michael Burer No. God was graciously doing it already. They were experiencing the wonderful benefits of having the spirit in their lives and in their community. The paradigm shift to me was recognizing that Paul was pointing to undeniably the work of the spirit as proof that they were on the right track. We – I won’t say we. I’m not gonna pull you into this, but maybe I was thinking it’s all a matter of what we confess and what we believe, but this was a rhetorical tact. He could point to something about what they had experienced. The power of the spirit, the undeniable power of the spirit to change them and make them more like the Lord Jesus Christ.
Darrell Bock Now I’m listening to you and irony is popping in my head I’d like to get your reaction to. The irony is that almost sounds like James Chapter 2. Michael Burer I think what we would say there is is that James, you know in that famous passage about having good works and being justified. He’s looking at it almost from a different angle. He’s thinking about a different perspective on the problem. Paul is trying to wrestle with how do people get in and become children of God. James is saying, “If you’re confessing that, what do I expect to see?” Interestingly they both end up in the same place. We’ll talk in a little bit about the last two chapters of Galatians, but they both say that the one who is truly saved is going to be producing things that bring honor and glory to the Lord.
Darrell Bock In fact, the way I like to say it is when you get to what James is talking about, he’s basically saying, “Look, if you have faith and you trust God and you’re drawing on the resources that he has and if the presence of the spirit is present and the presence of the spirit is fruitful, look at what you’ve got. You’ve got a product on the other end.” Michael Burer Exactly right. Darrell Bock Or think about another metaphor that’s common in scripture that I don’t think we think enough about. The idea of the word of God being the word of the gospel that’s a seed that’s planted that eventually bears fruit. Michael Burer And it cannot not bear fruit. Darrell Bock That’s right. I like to say, again, using another metaphor, God doesn’t have us be born again to give birth to an abortion. So the whole point here is is that we have the spirit. When we have faith it’s working and that working inevitably produces a product. Now that product isn’t a requirement for salvation. It’s actually a proof that salvation has taken place.
Michael Burer Exactly. See, I think what we tend to do is we tend to ask ourselves maybe a different kind of diagnostic question. This is not a wrong thing to ask, but it just is not complete based upon what Paul is saying here. We tend to say, “How do I know that I’m saved?” Well, what did you believe? What was your confession, shall we say it. That’s definitely part of our Christian faith, but that’s not the sum total. What Paul is saying how do we know that we believe properly there’s the work of the spirit in our midst.
Darrell Bock There’s a changed life. Michael Burer Yeah, there’s a changed life. There are definite things that we can point to that show that I have the spirit working in me. As I was thinking this through I began to expand it out even to my own ministry. Like I said, you asked the same question. How do I know that I am having a proper effect on the lives of my students?
We get a great privilege of working with students sometimes for two or three years as they take our classes. The question that Paul would have us ask is not what are they knowing, but what are they experiencing.
Darrell Bock What are they becoming. Michael Burer Exactly. What’s the type of person that they are. If they aren’t changed in a certain direction, a spirit-led direction when they’re done with my classes, I’m doing something wrong and I need to step back and think about what I’m focusing on. Darrell Bock If their exposure to their time in the scripture here hasn’t changed even the way they think about where they’ve been, the way in which they interact, then the chances are we haven’t done our job because it’s the nature of scripture to challenge the way people live in terms of the extinct that they’ve come out of and things like that. It’s designed to change us. One of the remarks that I like to make is that Christianity is actually all about change and yet change sometimes is a four-letter word in the church. I go, wait a minute that doesn’t work. The whole point of the spirit coming into my life is to renew me, to transform me.
Michael Burer Right. It has to be holistic. Darrell Bock That’s right. Michael Burer My aha moment was Paul was not pointing to their transition of mind. He doesn’t use the word repentance or anything like that. He’s pointing to their transformation of life and that was equally valid as a proof that the gospel that they had believed was the right one. That to me was the aha moment. It’s not that it’s a matter of right or wrong in terms of which you focus on. It’s a matter of both and.
Darrell Bock That’s right. Michael Burer We have to have the confession. He would not tolerate – and there’s several verses that ______ — Darrell Bock Well he laid that groundwork in Chapter 2. Michael Burer Exactly. There is a content to this message, a person and events and the resurrection of our Lord that cannot be denied, but there’s also this change of life that cannot be denied. So that in many ways was the sit up and take notice moment as I was wrestling through this. Darrell Bock You said you had some other passages for us. Let’s go there. Michael Burer We’ve talked a little bit before and the last time we were together about Chapters 3 and 4. He says several things here that I think are really pretty potent to wrestle with. It’s a couple of passages that we’ve already looked at, but the point is is that there is a wonderful transformation that is guaranteed by those who respond to the gospel.
We talked before about Galatians 3:14. “In order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the gentiles so that we could receive the promise by the spirit of faith.” That word blessing is very powerful.
It’s referring to the work of the spirit. So the spirit that he’s pointing to, the spirit that he is referencing and saying, “We all know that the spirit is at work”, this is a powerful blessing from God that he designed from the very beginning for us to receive. It’s part of his overall plan of salvation that we receive the spirit and that we have a changed life.
A little bit further down towards the end of this chapter, he brings up another term. He talks about being an heir. So in Verse 29 at the very end of this Chapter 3, he says, “If you belong to Christ then you are Abraham’s descendants. Heirs according to the promise.”
Now he’s gonna flesh this out, but we have to start here with this idea of heir. He’s setting up this metaphor of a person who is an heir to a father or a parent –
Darrell Bock A child of Abraham. Michael Burer Yeah, exactly. Darrell Bock Abraham’s seed is the term here. Michael Burer Exactly. But my point is that the metaphor’s setting up that the heir is someone who’s going to receive something, but they’re also going to act a certain way. So in Chapter 4 he begins with this metaphor, pretty familiar metaphor about when we were children, when we were immature, when we were minors, we were under guardians and managers, but something has changed. The spirit has now been given and so, therefore, we’re now going to, shall we say, grow up into a new behavior.
So he’s playing with this metaphor of this new behavior, this new life in a lot of different ways.
So the point is there’s something that’s radically different that’s new that’s changed and that’s a proof that the gospel is true. What he’s wrestling with is these Galatians are thinking about turning away.
So he’s drawing them back to the fact that God had worked in them and that’s the proof that they don’t need to leave. They don’t need to leave his gospel. There’s nothing new outside of what’s been proclaimed that’s gonna bring them any type of benefit. In fact, it’s gonna be a negative if they turn away and go a different direction.
Darrell Bock Another important verse it seems to me is Verse 6, “Because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts who calls Abba Father.” The presence of the spirit builds the sense of relationship within the family that also drives at something else that Romans 8 talks about. Michael Burer Exactly. It’s a spirit of kinship because the spirit is crying out to our Father. So that’s something tangible that the Galatians would have felt and known and enjoyed and exalted in. So it’s, again, part of Paul’s proof. It’s not what they believed. It’s but what they’ve experienced that is powerful for them.
Darrell Bock So this engagement with the whole of life, this idea that what I believe shapes and forms me in such a way that I respond in a certain way is a kind of holistic reading of what it is that Galatians is talking about as it talks about salvation. Michael Burer In Chapters 3 and 4, what Paul did is set a theological stage. As he is wanting to do, he’s gonna lay out the theology and then really apply it to the lives of the people. His basic point to the Galatians is you have the spirit. The spirit has been at work in you. There is change that we can all point to and recognize. So, therefore, the gospel that you believed is right. Don’t turn away from it, but the danger is somebody could take that and say, “Oh. I am supposed to do something to make the spirit do his work.”
But Paul wants to set the stage a little bit differently. The spirit is going to do his work because God has given it and the spirit is completing God’s plan for our salvation. Our responsibility is to live in a way that’s yielded to the spirit. That cooperates with the spirit in a way.
So what Paul says is basically you’ve got the spirit. Now you need to participate with him in maturity and in living in a way that pleases the Lord.
Darrell Bock Well, let’s dive in and take a look. Where do we start? Michael Burer The central section where he begins to talk about this is in Chapter 5, Verse 13. I bet most of us, if we were to say, “Where does Paul talk about the spirit in the Book of Galatians.” We go to the fruit of the spirit, but he lays some groundwork ahead of time in front of that. So in Verse 13 he kind of rewinds a little bit and talks to the Galatians about the ultimate goal of why they were saved. He says, “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another.”
His point is is that we’ve got a choice now to make. If the spirit is at work in our lives and we are now free and not bound by sin anymore and automatically doing what sin requires of us, we’ve got a choice to make. Are we going to do what God desires or are we gonna do our natural desires which are only gonna pull us in the wrong direction.
So he gives some admonitions about loving one another. That’s pretty important. We’re gonna talk about that in a little bit about in Verse 14 the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment. Namely, you must love your neighbor as yourself.
Darrell Bock Before we get too far into that let me back up because I do think that Verse 6 also sets this up. One of the things you like to tell people is it’s important to keep the main thing the main thing. To not lose focus on what it is that are the most important things you’re supposed to be doing. Verse 6 is really a nice clue into that because it says, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision carries any weight.” That’s where they were focused. That’s what was causing all the static in Galatia was the debate about circumcision.
Then he says this. “The only thing that matters is faith working through love.” So that’s like your target.
Michael Burer Exactly. The question we’ll have here is, okay, is this our love for God or is this God’s love for us. I think the way to understand it is that it involves the spirit. The reason God gave us the spirit is because of ultimately his love for us. So it’s almost a cipher for what he’s gonna get to about how the spirit is at work and among us. Darrell Bock And when faith works through this love that’s been supplied as a result of God’s love. We love because he first loved us. I’m jumping around the Bible _______ cheat a little bit – Michael Burer We’re supposed to be in Galatians. Darrell Bock But if we’re doing those kinds of things, then you should be manifesting that which reflects the character of God. There are passages all through the New Testament that say when you do an act like God acts, you really do show yourself to be a son or daughter of God. Michael Burer Exactly. Can I go further down –? Darrell Bock Yep; go ahead. Sorry. Michael Burer So there’s these key admonitions that Paul has here really well known. We’ve heard them probably all our lives. I remember as a young man doing Bible memory verses and seeing some of these verses. So in Chapter 5 Verse 16 he says, “But I say live by the spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.” Now when I was a young man I always thought of this as the emphasis falling on live. I’m supposed to act and, as I can, get help from the spirit, but the emphasis is really different. It’s live by the spirit.
Darrell Bock It’s the whole phrase that counts. Michael Burer Exactly. It’s not just an extra little piece of information. It’s the sum total of what Paul is getting at. The Galatians have been given the spirit and so now they can actually live by the spirit. Darrell Bock Actually, in fact, if you sit there and think about it, if you took by the spirit out of here you couldn’t live. Michael Burer Exactly. Darrell Bock That’s the point of the passage — Michael Burer Exactly right. Now it gets a little further down and he says in Verse 18, “but if you are led by the spirit you are not under the law.” So he’s getting them to think through again that problem they were wrestling with originally about desiring to be obedient to the Torah in order to be saved and how that was fundamentally wrong. But then he gets into something that’s a real challenge. Academics like to talk about these vice lists and virtue lists ‘cause they show up in a lot of literature. Well these are some of the best examples within the biblical text.
So he starts off by talking in Verse 19 about the works of the flesh and these are bad stuff. He gives this laundry list, sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, idolatry, sorcery, et cetera, and similar things. He’s got this catch all in Verse 21 that shows even if I haven’t named it, there’s all kinds of things that fall into this category.
Darrell Bock And before you leave this list, the thing that strikes me is that when we tend to talk about this, I think we tend to talk about it as a laundry list that we think of of bad things that people do, but when we do that we risk abstracting it. What I mean by that is if you go through this list and you ask how many of these things are relational, how many of these things touch the way I interact with other people. It’s pretty obvious pretty quickly that almost every one of them does.
Michael Burer Exactly right. Even sorcery, for example. We tend to think of Harry Potter and witchcraft and stuff like that, but sorcery in the ancient world was used to get an enemy – Darrell Bock That’s right – Michael Burer To cause someone a problem, to get back at someone for revenge. So even that shows there’s this relational dimension that’s in play. Darrell Bock So the contrast, obviously, I think you’re headed towards the fruit of the spirit. Hopefully. I don’t wanna stay here in this vice part of this list. Michael Burer Yeah, it’d be pretty depressing, but his point is is that left to our own devices, these are all the kinds of things we’re gonna go into and there is a punishment. Verse 21 says, “Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” But here’s where he really hits home. In Verse 22 he says, “But the fruit of the spirit is love.” Now it’s very interesting that the word fruit is singular. The implication is is that this is the one thing that the spirit is going to produce, but it’s multifaceted in character.
The word fruit is also really critical. Just like you said about the image of the gospel being a seed that’s definitely going to produce, this means that if you’ve got the spirit, this will definitely be produced. There will be no doubt. The spirit will produce his fruit in you by producing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Darrell Bock Again, as we asked with the vice list, these are all primarily relational qualities that we’re talking about. It’s interesting and I’m gonna make this over dramatic and a little vivid, but it isn’t that the fruit of the spirit is the Nicene Creed or the Apostle’s Creed or something like that. The fruit of the spirit is expressed. It is demonstrated. It connects with people and engages.
Michael Burer Exactly. I think it’s important to say we’re not presenting this as either/or. It’s not that you have to have the confession or you’ve got to have the life change. It’s both. It certainly is both, but what really struck me is that Paul is here focusing on that latter part of the equation. Darrell Bock ‘Cause this is the landing point. The whole point of the exercise is to take you to this kind of place. Michael Burer Exactly. He wants the Galatians not only to be faithful to the gospel, but also to have a changed life. So he’s aiming for that latter thing mostly in the book. Darrell Bock Course the interesting thing is, particularly in the context of Galatians is is that when he goes through these relational virtues, which is what we’ve got here, and we’re thinking about if I’m relating in a virtuous way, who needs a law. Michael Burer Exactly. The law is meant to control. The law is meant to show where we are wrong, but if the spirit is guiding our actions, we know our actions are gonna be right. We know our character’s gonna be in keeping with what he desires. Now what’s really interesting is that’s sort of the theology of the work of the spirit. In Chapter 6 he gets into the particulars and some of these particulars are very powerful.
So Chapter 6, Verse 1. “If a person is discovered in some sin, you who are spiritual restore such a person in a spirit of gentleness. The spirit is gonna produce restoration as we care for one another in the body.”
Darrell Bock And a healthy kind of confrontation in some way. Michael Burer Exactly. ‘Cause you’ve gotta have the confrontation in order to bring the sin out to light and to deal with it. Carry one another’s burdens, Verse 2.
In Verse 6, “Now the one who receives instruction must share all good things with the one who teaches it.”
Darrell Bock Let’s back up. I know you’re moving fast – Michael Burer Oh, sorry about that. Darrell Bock No, that’s okay. Michael Burer Well I’ve already gotten my important stuff out. Darrell Bock Well, it says, “Carry one another’s burdens and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Now wait a minute. I thought we left the law behind. Michael Burer There is a lot of debate about exactly what this means, but one of the verses that we looked at before in Verse 14 of Chapter 5 was you must love your neighbor as yourself. Well, who said that? Who said that, Darrell? Darrell Bock You must love your neighbor. Well, it goes way back. Michael Burer It does. Darrell Bock It goes back to Jesus and then it goes back into the Old Testament. Michael Burer It does, but my point is is that Jesus talked about it. That’s exactly what Jesus said. What was the greatest law? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength – Darrell Bock And then he illustrated it with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Michael Burer And then to love your neighbor as yourself. So the law of Christ is what Christ taught us to do. How our love for God affects those who are around us. Darrell Bock It’s important to go to that Jesus passage because in that exchange with the scribe, another question – I love this passage ‘cause the passage is a lawyer. The lawyer asks one question. “What must I do to inherit eternal life.” Jesus asks him back, “Well what do you see?” The lawyer says, “Well, love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says, “Well do this and you will live.”
Unfortunately the guy’s a lawyer so he doesn’t ask one question. He has to follow it up. When he follows it up he makes a mistake ‘cause he asks, “So who’s my neighbor?” The text says he’s trying to justify himself.
So I tell people, “When he’s asking this question he isn’t just asking the questions on the surface. He’s asking another question that’s underneath it.”
The way I like to illustrate it is when my wife says to me, “Honey”, and beware of any sentence that begins with honey, “Are you going to the store?”
Michael Burer I bet she doesn’t really want to know your itinerary. Darrell Bock Exactly correct. Exactly right. I know the moment I say, “Yes, honey, I’m going to the store.” She’ll say, “Well can you go by and pick up X, Y and Z ‘cause that will save me a trip to the store.” And of course, “Anything you want, honey.” And it’s a moment of marital bliss. So that’s the way it goes. Michael Burer Few and far between, Darrell? Darrell Bock No, we’ll take them when we get them, right. So we’re in the midst of doing it. So when this lawyer’s asking, “Who’s my neighbor?” He’s really asking, “Aren’t there people who don’t count as neighbors? Aren’t there people I’m not responsible for? Off of that, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. Then he turns around at the end and he says, “Now go be a neighbor.” So I’m not supposed to concern myself with who I’m interacting with. I’m supposed to be a certain kind of person.
Michael Burer Exactly. Darrell Bock Galatians is gonna go to the same place. Michael Burer Exactly. That’s the whole point about him focusing on the fact that they’ve got the spirit. He can now say the spirit is going to produce these things. So it’s a matter not of doing them on our own. It’s a matter of, again, cooperating with the spirit’s work, as he said in the passages we already said, on being led by the spirit, on living by the spirit. The spirit is present in us and, therefore, the enablement is there and we have to be yielded to his work. Darrell Bock We skipped over something that’s probably worth going back to, which is the contrast in the passage in Chapter 5 is being drunk with wine versus being filled with the spirit. Michael Burer Oh yeah. The end of Ephesians. Darrell Bock Yeah. And a picture of Ephesians you’ve got this contrast that goes on when you’re talking about being filled with the spirit and the point here is that in the midst of that contrast, to follow the spirit is actually to be – I’m gonan use a gasoline term – be fueled by the spirit. It’s directing you. Just like wine directs the person who has had too much to drink. So the spirit is supposed to direct the person who is the child of God. Michael Burer Exactly. And the end result of the wine, of course, is bad things, but the end result of the spirit is only good things. Darrell Bock That’s right. Michael Burer So Paul’s point is to help the Galatians realize really that they’ve got the key to their understanding of the gospel, their spiritual life already. It’s there. They just need to recognize it, live in a way yielded to it and respond to his ministry and his prompting. Darrell Bock So we’ve exhausted the law of Christ. You actually don’t exhaust it. It’s just there and you live it out. So what’s next? Michael Burer Like I said, in this section in Chapter 6, he’s showing how that theology of the fruit of the spirit is gonna have real teeth to it, real shoe leather. So he talks about, for example, in Verse 3, having an attitude of humility towards ourselves. That is echoed in so many other places in Paul. I think, of course, in Philippians 2 about have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, even though he was in the form of God, did not think a robber to be equal to God, but humbled himself – Darrell Bock Jesus may have humbled himself too. Michael Burer Yeah. Darrell Bock Just maybe. Michael Burer Well even the Book of James. We talked about that earlier. About humble yourself before God and he will lift you up. So there’s gonna be some very practical outworkings in keeping with the fruit of the spirit. We’ve already mentioned Verse 6 about sharing good with those who teach with you. A good diagnostic question a pastor could ask about the work of the spirit in his congregation, is how are they responding to you as the minister. Are they sharing. Are they blessing and benefitting.
So the bulk of this section is just getting the details of life behind this theology of what the spirit is gonna do within the particular individual.
Darrell Bock Then the last two verses I think are very, very interesting because sometimes we think that works is another four letter word in the church. The passage that immediately leaps to my mind before we go to the section in Galatians is Ephesians 2:10. “For we as workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.” Michael Burer For good works. Darrell Bock So it’s like, okay, I think this is part of the package. You just gotta get it in the right place. Michael Burer Exactly. That’s a great way to say it. It’s a question of order. We always debate the ordo salutis. Part of that involves doing things that bring honor and glory to the Lord Jesus Christ by imitating his character, by having the spirit do his work in us. Darrell Bock So in that sense it’s a fabulous exhortation to say, “Look, the presence of the spirit is gonna have an impact.” This being a new creation means you’re gonna show yourself to be a new creation. Michael Burer Exactly. So he rounds out this section in Verses in 9 and 10 with a couple of admonitions. In Verse 9 he says, “So we must not grow weary in doing good for in due time we will reap if we do not give up.” Now this doing good is not amorphous. It’s defined by the good of the spirit. What the spirit is creating in us. What the spirit is prompting us to do.
Darrell Bock It’s the relational things he’s just described – Michael Burer Exactly – Darrell Bock — starting from the list of the spirit and the virtues all the way through the exhortations he’s just given us. Michael Burer So there is a sense in which we’re cooperating. We can’t say that our goal in the Christian life is to just simply let go and let God. There is a cooperation that’s involved and especially when it comes to these works. We’ve got to be obedient, to seek opportunity, to have endurance and to pray for that. So there’s a promise of blessing that comes if we stay consistent and strong in those good things the spirit is producing. I love the way he says it in Verse 10. “So then whenever we have an opportunity, let us do good to all people and especially those who belong to the family of faith.”
Darrell Bock Oh man. There’s a technical term in there. You know what it is? Michael Burer All. Darrell Bock All. Michael Burer How many is in all, Darrell? Darrell Bock That’s right. I’d say look that one up in the dictionary. I think that means everybody. There are no exceptions. Michael Burer Exactly. Darrell Bock All means all. Don’t make it more difficult than it is. Michael Burer Exactly. We talked about this a little bit when we met last time, but the all has to include Jew and Gentile within this church. It has to include not only innies, but outies. It’s everybody. Darrell Bock It’s any – Michael Burer Anybody’s, yeah. Darrell Bock Enemybody. Michael Burer I’d be careful saying that, but yeah. So it’s all just Paul envisions. The fruit of the spirit is going to grow and expand and touch everything in the world because believers are growing and doing good to those around them and it just expands the ministry of the spirit. It enables evangelism. It enables church growth. It enables everything that we want if we are functioning and living in a way in keeping with what the spirit is doing. Darrell Bock So let me ask you to apply this today. Who’s the all today? Michael Burer Well, I think we’d have to say the all is immediately the person to our right and the person to our left at church. Paul does mention those who belong to the family of – Darrell Bock Especially those of the family faith. Michael Burer But then it’s anyone who’s outside. Anyone who is not a member of the church. Anybody we come in contact – Darrell Bock Do you really mean anybody? Michael Burer Yeah, anybody. All. Darrell Bock All? Michael Burer The question I think that we have to wrestle with is how am I gonna know that the spirit is at work. The spirit is at work by producing these things that then touch the lives of others around us. So it becomes almost a diagnostic question. If my salvation has only been about me, myself and I, the unholy Trinity, then where’s the evidence. The evidence of the spirit is in me working and touching those lives, doing good to those around me in such a way that they see the patience, they see the gentleness, they see the kindness of the spirit that’s being produced in me.
So it becomes in some ways a diagnostic question. Again, it’s not that our confession is not important, but Paul here is not asking what’s your confession because that’s very clear. He established that from the very beginning. The question is what is the spirit producing in your life. What is tangibly the result of the spirit acting and working in your midst. Are you being led by the spirit. If so, you’ll see it. Are you living by the spirit. If so, you’ll see it.
Darrell Bock I think one of the interesting things is we keep bringing up Jesus is teaching here, but one of the things that Jesus said and probably the most ethical portion of his own teaching, which would be the sermon on the mount would be if your love doesn’t look any different than the world, then what’s the big deal. Even sinners love like that. Michael Burer There’s this sense in which everybody’s gonna love. There’s this self-preservation. There’s this community tribalism that we’ve gotta wrestle with, but the love that’s generated by the spirit reaches out. It’s a missionary kind of love. Darrell Bock And it’s exceptional. It isn’t the type of thing you would normally see. It’s something that requires almost supernatural enablement to happen. Michael Burer Exactly. Because in our sinful nature we can’t produce that. Left to our own devices we’re gonna produce the works of the flesh. Darrell Bock So our instincts may be to strike back. Our instincts may be eye for eye and tooth for tooth, but in fact, our response oughta’ be one of love and to some degree, a little bit of vulnerability that comes with that. Michael Burer I agree. We talked about that issue of confrontation. Part of that is I’ve got to be willing to accept the confrontation from my brother or sister as a sign of love from them when I’ve done wrong and I’ve got to be willing to submit to that restoration. Darrell Bock So we’ve got this exhortation here that says, “So then whenever you have opportunity, let’s do good to all people, especially those who belong in the family of faith.” And that’s kinda’ the application of everything we’ve been talking about. Michael Burer Yeah. It’s a very general statement, but it really summarizes everything that Paul wants them to know. Kinda’ to put a little bow on it, what Paul has done is he’s taken the Galatians not from a doctrine to conviction, but from experience to maturity in a lot of ways. He’s wanting them really to wrestle with the work of the spirit in their lives as the defining sum proof that they are, in fact, part of God’s family.
So that’s the paradigm he’s working with. So he’s using it as an opportunity to help them to go on towards that full maturity in Christ in the Holly Spirit and ultimately to produce these things that create a stronger congregation that show the love of Christ to those around and create an opportunity for the church to really be the church and to show the love of Christ.
Darrell Bock So when we really do good to all people that’s the aha of the aha moment. Michael Burer Sure. I hadn’t thought about that, but I think that works pretty well. Darrell Bock It might be the oh my and aha. Michael Burer Well, it’s certainly stretching. It’s a commitment to reach outside of our own borders. The spirit is gonna be driving us to do things that we wouldn’t necessarily do in our own flesh, but that’s when we can look back and say, “Yeah, the spirit’s been at work. The spirit has had his work in my life and I can see it. It’s tangible.” So that’s part of what the Lord intended to communicate through Paul is that part of our confirmation that we’re in the family is by the work of the spirit in our lives and the sign of maturity is participating fully with that work.
Darrell Bock The challenge of living out this life in which we’ve got a distinct kind of process going on and the presence of a distinct kind of love is something that the spirit produces. The spirit produces a fruit that is highly relational and Mike, we just appreciate you coming in and talking to us about this and helping us see it. Maybe some people out there had an aha moment while we were talking. Michael Burer I hope so. I appreciate the opportunity. Darrell Bock We thank you for joining us on The Table and reflecting on the scriptures with us and we hope to hear or see you again soon.
Mikel Del Rosario Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Mikel Del Rosario, Project Manager for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center. Our topic today is Jesus – the works of Jesus – and specifically the deeds of Jesus that are mentioned in the Nicene Creed. My guest in the studio today is Dr. Darrell Bock, Executive Director of Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center and Senior Research Professor of New Testament at Dallas Seminary. Thanks for being here, Darrell. Dr. Darrell Bock My pleasure. It's good to be in this seat instead of that one. Mikel Del Rosario Well, we are in a series on the Nicene Creed. This is the third part in our series, where we're kinda walking through the things that Christians believe. And many Christians affirm their faith through reciting the Nicene Creed, man people weekly. And we'd like you to help us unpack some of the things that the creed talks about in terms of the works of Jesus. And so let's take a look at these things that Nicene Creed mentions about what Jesus did. The section we're talking about today starts out like this. For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven. He became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. The third day he rose again according to the Scriptures. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will never end." And so one of the key parts of this creed is all about Jesus, because there was a lot of discussion about who Jesus was and how he's related to God the Father even the Holy Spirit. So this starts out by saying that for us and our salvation was the point of Jesus coming. How do we Jesus' mission presented in the Gospels?
Dr. Darrell Bock Well, just to set some context, we're in the second portion of this creed, which is confess that Jesus the Lord Jesus Christ, and he's the son of God. We believe in one God, and then it talks about the Father Almighty, then the son. It goes on to talk about the Spirit. In the first part it's talked about the person of Jesus, because of the challenge of Arianism really in its design to articulate the Trinitarian belief of orthodoxy and place the son in that conversation. And so this section is part two of the discussion of Jesus. Part one dealt with his person saying things like, "He is uniquely related to the Father as son, that he shares the same essence as the Father, and thus is truly God”. Now that's underscored by the career of his actual ministry. So we start off with this emphasis on where he has come from, that he has become incarnate and has come to Earth.
All this is being done so that we can enter into a restored relationship with the living God. When it says "for us and for our salvation," we're talking about this restored relationship with God that is a core part of what it means to be saved, to be delivered if you will and to be brought back into fellowship with the living God.
Although it's interesting, in the confession there's not anything explicitly about sin, and the cross, and how that works. I mean, it's alluded to certainly in his dying and suffering. There's no specific language about the soteriological details of how that works. This is the affirmation that Jesus is the key to salvation and that our salvation is a direct result of his work on our behalf as the one who takes our place and who bears sin for us.
Mikel Del Rosario And so for us and for our salvation, we see Jesus coming as a suffering servant? Dr. Darrell Bock Yes, in part. Yes, he's coming as a suffering servant. He comes as the Messiah. He comes in the creed as the son of God who takes on humanity. Probably in the background here are texts like Philippians 2 where it talks about him emptying himself and taking on humanity in order to do the work of God. Of course, that's part of an exhortation to be humble in the way we live, much in the way God has condescended to take on humanity in the person of his son. Mikel Del Rosario And how like the angel told Joseph that Mary'd give birth to a son and he would save his people from their sins. Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly. So we've got this emphasis on this divine saving activity. And because this is a creed and it's crisp and short, a lot of the details that go underneath it are not filled in. Mikel Del Rosario Well, then it starts talking about the incarnation a little bit more. The creed includes the idea that he came down from heaven, and it reminds us of Jesus being the one who descended in Ephesians 4. Where do we see Jesus indicating that he came from heaven? Dr. Darrell Bock Well, the clearest passage really for this probably is John 1, the idea that in the beginning was the word. The word was with God, and the word was God. And then later on it says, "And the word became," there's our verb, "Became flesh." So the idea here is this idea of you had the pre-existent word. He was disembodied, if I can say it that way, who takes on the limitations of incarnations and comes to Earth. So obviously, John 1's important. I've already alluded to Philippians 2, which says the same thing in a different way. It talks about him not seeking to hold onto – to grasp his deity – but emptied himself in taking on the form of a servant, talking about his taking on humanity. This is in, of course, Philippians 2:6-11, part of what most people regard as a hymn there. And so we've got these texts that indicate that Jesus consciously took on the role of becoming human on our behalf and ministering to the world that needed deliverance.
Mikel Del Rosario When Jesus says things like, "I have come," does that kinda allude to that as well? Dr. Darrell Bock It can. It can just be kind of a mission statement about why he's come. I've come for this reason. But it probably does allude to the idea of why he was sent. There's a ton of sent language, particularly in the Gospel of John. "The Father has sent me." He refers to himself as the sent one, that kind of thing. It has to do with being sent to this – to and for this mission and to accomplish these goals related to salvation that he has come to perform. As well as, of course, he models the way in which someone who's a human being can and should walk with God. Mikel Del Rosario So he came down from heaven, hints at pre-existence and deity as well. Dr. Darrell Bock That's correct. It suggests that he has a heavenly origin. He'd already confessed that he's true God, that he's light, from light, those kinds of things, to make the point. This is a divine figure who's doing this, and then he steps into Earth and takes on the incarnation and the limits of humanity at the same time. Mikel Del Rosario Well, as we walk on through, it goes on to say that by the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man. So here we're talking about how Jesus left heaven to come to Earth…Now for some of our skeptical friends, it's pretty hard to imagine that something like this could actually happen. But if we think about reasons why the church might make something up like this, would it help at all to help the Christian faith win Jewish converts? Dr. Darrell Bock No. The background for this – sometimes skeptics will make a point that this is being done on the basis of models coming out of the Greco-Roman world and really is a later development in the church. But I just don’t think that works. You are in the first century. The predominance of believers, at least initially, are coming out of a Jewish background. They don’t care for anything of the mixture of the kind of mythic stories where you get gods responsible for the birth of great kings, which is usually where the parallel is said to come from. And that's certainly not the way this passage is being conceived. Because in the Greco-Roman world, a human being gets promoted to the level of a god because of the quality of leadership that they give, the way in which they lead. It's a way of honoring someone by saying, "Oh, he watched over us like a god."
And with that promotion, you kind of go to the bottom of the pantheon. You don’t get to sit next to Zeus. But what is being depicted in the Christian faith is not anything like that at all. This is a declaration of God choosing to take on humanity. After all, if he's the creator, if he runs, manages, sustains a creation, he can handle the creation in any way he wants and desires.
He can be as creative with it as anything that allowed the creation to begin with. So that's the backdrop against which this is done. And then he steps in and takes on humanity this way. And Jesus doesn't go to the bottom of any pantheon, 'cause there is in one sense no pantheon to be a member of. There's only one God.
He's portrayed as sitting with God the Father in heaven, being part of this Trinitarian relationship. That's something God does on his behalf. And so the spirit is very involved in the virgin birth from the very beginning. And this is a unique doctrine. It doesn't have connections to either this Greco-Roman pagan background, and it certainly is a stretch for Jewish belief as well.
Mikel Del Rosario And in fact that was kind of an embarrassment, if I can say it that way. It caused suspicion on Jesus and Mary. Dr. Darrell Bock You know, they're creating a doctrine that in one sense steps into very controversial space if it's not true. These very difficult things, sometimes the apologetic is well, the reason they're there is because they were there. You wouldn't invent it this way, 'cause you're creating more problems for yourself than you really need to create for yourself if it isn't a real part of the story. Mikel Del Rosario And they didn't go around talking about the virgin birth all the time. It wasn't a key part of their preaching. Dr. Darrell Bock No. The two passages I mentioned are the two places where it's most explicitly mentioned. Although there are other places that hint about Jesus being pre-existent and coming to Earth or that emphasize his role as creator and then contrast that with the work that he did on Earth as Redeemer, Colossians 1 being an example of this. And so no, they didn't talk directly about the event itself, but they did talk a lot about the fact that Jesus came from heaven and took on humanity. There are a variety of ways in which that's said in the New Testament. Mikel Del Rosario And so what we have coming together here then is Jesus' heavenly origin and his being born on Earth. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. This idea that here is – I call it Jesus' in one in a gazillion, and a gazillion's a big number. This is the uniqueness of Jesus, and that is that he is both fully God and fully man now incarnate in a human body. That is contrast by the way to Docetism, which would say that it's beneath God to take on any kind of material characteristics, anything like that. It's an idea that's struggled with in some religions today, for Muslims for example. The idea that God could be human, and go through human functions, and have human limitations is something that they see as an affront to the doctrine of God. But in fact in the Christian faith, it's seen as actually an illustration of how committed God is to participate in his creation, to condescend to it, to be a reflection of it, and to care for those who are a part of it.
Mikel Del Rosario Well, now we move to the death and the burial of Jesus. The creed goes on to say that "For our sake, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried." And in Greek it says that this happened hyper hēmas either for us, or because of us, maybe even on our behalf. How do we understand that phraseology? Dr. Darrell Bock This is usually understood to be some type of substitution where he bears the penalty for our sin. He takes on that which we're unable to take care of for ourselves. So on our behalf or in place of us is the idea here. Obviously, we benefit from that. It becomes for us. But usually it's the substitutionary idea that's in view here. There's a variety of pictures that are applied to it. But again, the picture of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, "The one who bears our reproach," is a picture of what we're talking about here. The way in which sacrifices in the Old Testament were undertaken in which an animal suffers in our place. And in some cases, you put the hands on the sacrifice to show the transfer of the responsibility. Those variety of images inform what's going on here. The joke is you always have to wear your yarmulke when you read the New Testament. You gotta think Jewishly on what the Hebrew Scriptures in the Old Testament are saying, because that often forms the background for what's going on.
Mikel Del Rosario So that's the theological component of this. This historical component of this is sometimes people have questions about the historicity of the crucifixion. But from a scholarly perspective, basically nobody questions. This is one of the bedrock things about Jesus, isn't it? Dr. Darrell Bock Well, you do meet a few people who try and question this. Most people working even in classical scholarship recognize this is actually, for an ancient event, very well attested. Not only do we have the testimony of the Gospels, but we have a snippet of Josephus that most scholars recognize as authentic. It's debated, but some recognize as authentic. They talk about a death under Pontius Pilate. We have allusions as well in the Roman historian Tacitus in a work called The Annals, which also alludes indirectly – it alludes to the death directly, the death under Pontius Pilate. So it alludes to crucifixion as well. So Jesus is portrayed as having been slain under Pontius Pilate.
And everything about the Jewish response to Jesus in the official rabbinic documents assumes his life. And so those who argue that Jesus is a complete myth who's been made up by the early church, you're dismissing a ton of multiply attested testimonies to the fact that Jesus existed. That even applies to his death.
Mikel Del Rosario And nobody could've survived the full procedure. Dr. Darrell Bock Well, you're talking about the actual crucifixion itself. Mikel Del Rosario Yeah. Dr. Darrell Bock Yes, the crucifixion an extremely horrific way to die. It involved terrific suffering. It was so horrific that a Roman citizen could not be crucified. They were protected from this extreme form of punishment. It was a death that was designed to communicate shame and to scare people. This is the death that Jesus actually chose to undertake. It's his testimony before both the Jewish leadership, in particular before the Jewish leadership, that leads them to take him to Pilate for the charge of sedition. And so Jesus consciously produces the testimony that leads to his own death, because the Jewish leadership doesn't believe what he's claiming about himself.
Mikel Del Rosario And then it talks about the burial as well. We read about that in Mark 15 and Luke 23 that Jesus was put in this tomb that some people will say, "Well, weren't a lot of people thrown into shallow graves? How do we know Jesus was put in a tomb?" Dr. Darrell Bock Well again, I think that you're dealing here with traditions in which there are people still alive who went through some of these events. And so to put forward a tradition that's completely fabricated has nothing to do with the truth is a problem. And you never get any indication from Jewish sources that point to the idea that Jesus was just left to rot on a cross, which is what this alternative theory basically is, that he's taken like any criminal and put in a generic grave. The sense that we have is that he was really buried in a location that was determined – he was buried in a way actually that honored Jewish tradition. If you were a felon, if you were convicted as a felon, you couldn't be buried in a family tomb. And Jesus is not buried in a family tomb. He's buried in the tomb that is provided by Joseph of Arimathea, who's not a family member, but just a fellow Jew. And so that actually honors Jewish tradition. So just as Pilate was gracious in granting the body to Joseph, Joseph buries him in a way that fits with what Jews' tradition says about the way someone who had been crucified should be buried if they're going to get a separate burial.
Mikel Del Rosario So for us as Christians, we believe these things historically, and we believe these things theologically as well. Dr. Darrell Bock That's correct. They operate at both levels. Mikel Del Rosario Yeah, and so the creed is highlighting both of those things. Dr. Darrell Bock That's correct. Mikel Del Rosario So I think we're starting to see a snapshot of the Gospel that's being presented for us as we take a look at this creed and things that Jesus did. Dr. Darrell Bock Yes, that's very, very true. We're talking about a death for sin. We're talking about Jesus taking on humanity on our behalf, bearing sin as one who has walked with God perfectly. It's the langue of the Book of Hebrews. And so yeah, so we've set the table. Then all that's left is the vindication part. We've got a dead Jesus after he's crucified. But on the third day he rises from the dead. The creed moves on to confess this, of course, as we're gonna talk about. And that represents the vindication of God, because Jesus actually announced where he was going before the resurrection happened when he was on trial before the Jewish leadership.
Mikel Del Rosario Unpack that a little bit more for us, Jesus being vindicated at the resurrection. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, the point here is that there's a huge dispute going on before the Jewish leadership at his trial. The Jewish leaders think that Jesus is blaspheming God, that he is insulting God by the kinds of prerogatives that he claims for himself, things like forgiving sin. And that these claims about the tightness of his relationship to the Father are causes for offense. Jesus is claiming that God's gonna exalt him so that when the tomb goes empty – basically his answer at the trial when he talks about riding the clouds as the Son of Man and God ceding him as Lord at his right hand – combination of Psalm 110 and Daniel 7 – is God's gonna vindicate me. That vindication is God's vote in our dispute. So when that tomb goes empty, I've told you that God has taken me to his right hand to share in this judgment authority because that's the picture of Daniel 7 – the Son of Man rides the clouds to receive judgment authority. And so you're accountable, not just to the God of Israel, you're also accountable to me.
So you may sentence me to death, but one day this whole scene is gonna be reversed. I will not be the defendant, and you will not be the judges. But you will be the defendant, and I will be the judge. That's not gonna be a good scene if you crucify me. So that's the picture of the claim. So when the tomb goes empty – I often joke about this – Jesus says in effect you can write me at www.righthandofgod.com. I will be alive and will be in communication with the creation. I will be a part of God's rule and of God's kingdom, and we will go from there.
Mikel Del Rosario I wanna start out this section by talking about and older creed, much older than 325 AD, and this is the creed in 1 Corinthians 15 where the apostle Paul quotes this ancient creed from way before Nicaea, way before the New Testament documents were even written. Part of it says this, "That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. That he was buried, that he was raised up on the third day according to the Scriptures." Now by the time we get to 325, we read something very similar in the Nicene Creed. He's suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures. Do you know if this came from the same creed, or what's the connection here?
Dr. Darrell Bock Well, no. What's happening in the creed is that in spots it mirrors scriptural language. But it doesn't do it the way we do it today, which is when we do that, we might put in parentheses the verse that it came from. It just mirrors that language. And so that's what you're getting here. You're getting a mirroring of 1 Corinthians 15 language, particularly with the refrain according to the scripture. Mikel Del Rosario With a strong continuity, it kinda highlights the idea that this wasn't something the church was making up in 325. Dr. Darrell Bock No, the church is summarizing something that it's believed for centuries. It's articulating in very crisp form, the core teachings in this section about Jesus. But in the document as a whole, it's confession of the Trinity. And so this wording, which of course was originally written in 325 and then was updated in 381, is an attempt to allude back and show the scriptural roots. So every now and again you get a phrase, for example the creation of things visible and invisible. Interestingly enough, talking about God the Father – but in the New Testament that's the language that gets applied to the son – is another example of the same kind of thing. Mikel Del Rosario And so thinking about Paul receiving this, the church is very careful to be passing on what was handed down by the apostles. Dr. Darrell Bock That's exactly right. We're dealing here with the very core doctrine that goes back to the very earliest times of the church in terms of what's believed. Now there were a lot of ways in which those beliefs were expressed, a lot of terminology applied to it. And in the case of this creed, there's terminology that's explanatory, that's designed to develop what was believed. So that when we get to the discussion of the person of Jesus earlier on in the creed, we've got technical terms being used with regard to the one in essence with the Father and that kind of thing. Which took centuries really to sort out in terms of what's the exact way to express what this relationship is? But in this section of the creed where we're basically articulating things that Jesus did in his life and ministry, these you could almost go back to the Gospels and you could say, "Oh, that line is that passage. That line is that passage."
Mikel Del Rosario And when we think about Paul receiving this material, again he's the persecutor beforehand. Then he has an encounter with Jesus. As we're talking about the resurrection, how does the apostle Paul receiving this tradition, even converting to the Christian faith, how does that help us with the historical case for Jesus' resurrection? Dr. Darrell Bock Well, Paul was originally someone who didn't believe any of this, and who knew what the official Jewish position was against Jesus, and deeply held to it as a deeply held conviction. He got converted to the faith – he saw a vision of God. And actually in his mind, he basically completed what had already been promised to Judaism. So in his mind, it probably wasn't as much a conversion as we tend to talk about it as much as it was a change of mind about Jesus. Anyway, this experience probably took place somewhere around 18 months after the crucifixion itself and after the resurrection itself. So we're literally on top of the timing of these events with this high Christology that Paul confesses, that he believes that he is drawn to by seeing the risen Lord. We talked about that tomb being empty and what it meant.
So he would've recognized that that – he probably heard some of the preaching of the apostles in persecuting them et cetera, or certainly was aware of what they taught. All of a sudden it dawned on him, that stuff that I'm hearing from those guys, it's actually looks to be pretty true. And he got to spend a couple of days in reflection after that experience and then, of course, became one of the chief theologians with the first century church.
Mikel Del Rosario Yeah, so it's not the case that only Jesus' friends who missed him so much said they saw him. We have people like Paul who are enemies of the – Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, exactly right. And who knew what was going on in Jerusalem, knew the burial situation, knew what the official Jewish position was 'cause he held it. In fact, he had Christians arrested for what they believed and was responsible for that. Was a witness to the murder of Stephen. He's aware of all that is going on. And even in the midst of being aware of that, he became convinced that Jesus was who he claimed to be. Mikel Del Rosario Now on the one hand it was pretty surprising to Jesus' disciples that he would rise from the dead. On the other hand it's almost like it shouldn't have been that surprising to them as Jesus himself actually unpacked that all this was according to the Scriptures. Help us understand that a little bit. Dr. Darrell Bock Well, I think the problem here is that the belief in a Messiah in the earliest Judaism really had the idea that he would come and bring victory. They didn't have any association to the idea that a Messiah would suffer. So they were anticipating what I call the Arnold Schwarzenegger Messiah. It doesn't get as far as "I'll be back." It's just simply this powerful, victorious figure who's gonna conquer everything. The text says when he announced the fact that he was gonna suffer, and be given over, and rise on the third day, it says the disciples didn't understand this. And I don’t think that means they didn't get his words. They couldn't unpack the language of what he was saying. They couldn't get how that fit into the program. They didn't understand how it would be possible for a Messiah to suffer and rise from the dead. And the other issue here is that there is no view of a resurrection in the midst of history.
Resurrection is something Jews believe happened at the end of history in preparation for the final judgment. So you've got a couple of things that are going on here for which there wasn't the expectation. And sometimes if you don’t have the expectation, you won't see it. That's what I think is going on here. So Jesus would repeat himself. They wouldn't get it. And not only did they not get it, the didn't even get it at the end.
Because there's no indication that they really thought, "Okay, we'll just count to the third day." They're counting inclusively, each part of a day counts. We'll count on the third day, and then we'll just wait for something to happen. No, the women who went to the tomb went to the tomb to anoint a dead body. They were caught very off guard when they got to the tomb. Their services were no longer required.
Mikel Del Rosario Well, the women, again, a great example of more evidence for the historical resurrection – Dr. Darrell Bock Right. You wouldn't make up a story that says, "We're gonna sell a very difficult idea that most of the culture doesn't buy – the idea of a bodily resurrection. The way we're gonna do that is use people as witnesses, as the first witnesses who don’t count culturally as witnesses." Women, generally speaking, weren't viewed as someone whose testimony could or should be honored and approached. There are only very limited circumstances in which a woman's testimony counted in a legal and cultural situation. So you're not gonna make up a story that has a very difficult event that you're trying to prove and have the first people to vouch for it be people who don’t count culturally. Mikel Del Rosario That's kinda like the virgin birth thing as well. Why make it harder for the Christian message to be accepted, right? Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. The only reason that you got difficulties in it is because the difficulties were there and a part of the story. Mikel Del Rosario Yeah. Another question people tend to ask as well – if Jesus rose from the dead, where'd he go? And the next part of the creed actually says, "He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father." We see this language in Mark 14 and Mark 16, but help us understand what it means to actually be seated at the right hand of the Father. Dr. Darrell Bock Well, this is language that comes from Psalm 110:1. It's the language of exaltation. It is put in a context where clearly we're talking about a seating that takes place in heaven. Jesus is sitting with God in heaven. Now again, I alluded to this earlier. You gotta put on your yarmulke for a second. You gotta think Jewishly. There's only one God. There's only one God who receives honor and glory. There's only one God who's worshipped. There's only one God who runs things. So how is it that someone could sit with God and I say park with God in heaven, and share in his authority and his honor, be worshipped, et cetera? That says something about the person who's seated with God.
And so this right hand of God is talking about the position of authority that God has established for Jesus by raising him from the dead, showing who he is and who he was all along. In the midst of that, Jesus steps into a role of authority that he then exercise from that point on. So much so that the church confessed him as the Lord Jesus Christ, showing this authority that he possesses.
Mikel Del Rosario And in a monotheistic context, God doesn't share his glory with another. What's going on here? Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly. If someone can share the throne with God, can be seated with him, share the perceptions of him, do the acts with the authority that he possesses – I mean you're getting baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are religious rights being carried out in the name of the deity. Then you're communicating something about who you think Jesus is. Mikel Del Rosario Well, he came down from heaven once. Then he ascended. But the creed says he's coming back. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. Mikel Del Rosario The creed says, "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end." What are some ways that we see Jesus presenting himself as the eschatological judge? Dr. Darrell Bock Well, the key way that he does it is by the very name that he prefers to refer to himself, which is Son of Man. This is a title that comes out of Daniel 7. It's a unique image in the Old Testament. It's a human being. Son of Man simply means son of a human being, so it's like saying Carol's son, or John's son. It's a human being. It's a human descendant, but he's riding the clouds. Only God rides the clouds in the Old Testament. So it's a picture of a divine activity possessed by a human being who goes to receive judgment authority from the Father. That's from the ancient of days. So this is a picture of total authority, and this is the way Jesus referred to himself.
And then the church preached, particularly to gentile audiences, that God had appointed one to be the judge of the living and the dead. And so this judgment authority is another responsibility that shows who he is. It points to the fact that he is the eschatological judge, that he will be the one making the call in the end, so it's probably a good idea to be properly related to him.
Mikel Del Rosario [Laughs] That's right. Well, it reminds me of the Sermon on the Mount where he says, "People are gonna say to me, 'Lord, Lord. In that day,'" which is clearly at the last day. People are appealing to him as the eschatological judge using that term Lord, right? Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, When he responds and says, "Away from me. I never knew you," that's not what you wanna hear. Mikel Del Rosario No. [Laughs] So now we wanna talk about some of the implications of these truths that we've discussed together. We see Jesus' humanity and deity coming together in this language that we've been looking at. How does denying Jesus' deity, for example – whether someone in Islam, someone in Jehovah's Witnesses, or even critical scholars who reject Jesus' deity – what does that do to one's understanding of salvation in the Christian view? Dr. Darrell Bock Well, what it does is it disqualifies Jesus from being the Savior, so it kind of discounts that there is a salvation that's on offer from him. So he's able to have the authority to bear sin and to undertake the bearing of sin in part because of the position that he occupies. And then on the flip side, on the eschatological judge side, if he doesn't have the authority to be God, then it puts him in a difficult place in terms of the exercising of judgment. It certainly doesn't make sense at a baptism. Because if I baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, but the Son does not have the divine authority to – as the one who portrays what the washing of baptism represents, I've lost something there. So all these activities that the church has that portrayed the authority of Jesus get eviscerated by a denial of Jesus' deity. So Jesus is a divine Savior. He's not a human Savior. This is part of what makes Christianity unique. The reason the creed exists in part is to make the point you cannot believe authentically as a Christian and not believe that Jesus is divine.
Mikel Del Rosario And so think about if Jesus wasn't divine, then he would be reduced to a good example for us maybe. Certainly not someone who's mighty to save. Dr. Darrell Bock Or perhaps a great figure who has been connected to the salvation process. But Jesus in the New Testament doesn't allow you that option. I tell people really there are two options for Jesus in the New Testament. He either is who he claims to be, and so the exaltation really happened and God showed who he was, or he is a blasphemer. He's made claims far beyond what any human being should, and the Jewish leadership is right. Those are the two options on the table coming out of the New Testament. And the resurrection – and this why it's in all the creeds – the resurrection is God's vote in that dispute, and it reduces those two options down to one. You know CS Lewis has the famous liar, lunatic, or Lord – what's called the trilemma? And I tease people. I say, "That's way too complicated as far as the New Testament is concerned." Jesus is either from above, or he's from below.
Those are the two options. He will not allow you to have him occupy that middle space of being a religious worthy or a great example. He's not a prophet. That's not the category that he's put in. He either is responsible for executing the salvation that the program of the Father has laid out, or he isn't. And those are your two options on the table.
Mikel Del Rosario So he's not just the greatest man who ever lived. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. Mikel Del Rosario He's not just an exalted prophet. He's either the Lord of all or not Lord at all. Dr. Darrell Bock That's correct. And so this is simple math. You got two options. You take one away, you got one left. That's the picture of what you're getting. And the creed is trying to affirm that very, very clearly. The bulk of the creed really is about the Son. There's a one-sentence discussion of the Father at the start. There's a paragraph that covers the spirit and a few implications of the Trinity in the program of God at the end. But the bulk of this creed deals with the person of Jesus Christ on the one hand and the work that he performs on the other. Mikel Del Rosario Yeah, it's a very, very Christo-centric creed. Dr. Darrell Bock That's correct. Mikel Del Rosario So Jesus' deity is very strongly affirmed. How does denying Jesus' humanity now – we'll flip it. We'll ask how does denying Jesus' humanity affect the atonement? Dr. Darrell Bock Well, it gets in the way of his ability to represent us, his ability to identify with us, the ability to show that you can go through life as a human being and not sin. You can walk with God. And then to represent us as a perfect sacrifice in our place, all that is at risk if there isn't this connection, this solidarity with humanity that Jesus takes on in the incarnation. And so part of the core of what makes the work on the cross is possible is the fact that Jesus is a human being, dies as a human being to take on the debt that human beings have before God and to take their place as a human being on their behalf. Mikel Del Rosario That sounds a lot like what Anselm of Canterbury wrote about in Cur Deus Homo. Why did God have to become a man? Dr. Darrell Bock Right. Technically called penal substitution is what we're talking about. That he bears the penalty by becoming the substitution that bears that penalty on our behalf. And in the midst of doing that, our ability to be declared righteous and not be held accountable for sins that we have committed becomes possible. So this is a huge part of the program of God that Jesus be seen as human, and he be seen in taking on this representative role. It allows Paul to make the great contrast that he does in Romans 5 between people who are in Adam and people who are in Christ. Jesus is portrayed as a second Adam. But you can't be a second Adam unless you have basic Adamic qualifications, which means that you're human.
Mikel Del Rosario Yeah, so we see that in Paul as well. So we've kinda walked through the whole Gospel through the second part of the creed. We have who Jesus is, what he's done, and then the implications for us. What would you say would be – just from this portion of the creed – what would the implications be for somebody who's responding to this? Dr. Darrell Bock Well, obviously the key thing that's portrayed here is the sense of gratitude one would have for someone taking on a debt that really is their own responsibility. This is at the core of what grace is, and grace is supposed to be a terrific motivator for faithfulness toward God. I have a gratitude because I understand the debt that has been paid on my behalf. Jesus has a wonderful parable in Luke 7 in the midst of being anointed by the sinful woman, in which he talks about a man who has a small debt and a second man who has a much greater debt. They're both being forgiven, and he asks the Pharisee as he's telling the parable, "Okay, which one do you think would've loved him more?" And the Pharisee answers quite correctly, "I suppose the one who's been forgiven the greater debt."
And so the sense is, the greater my sense of appreciation for the amount of debt that God has canceled on my behalf on the basis of his grace, the greater will be my love, will be my gratitude, and my love, and my responsiveness to God. So I like to tell people if you're having trouble being responsive to God, it may be because you have a sense of entitlement, that God owes you this in some way. And the moment you move in that direction, you actually undercut the way grace works.
Because the way grace works is as I understand, someone has undertaken something for me on my behalf that he didn't have to undertake, and that actually removes me from a deep condition of need and debt, takes it out of the way. I would have gratitude towards that person. The illustration I like to use, imagine you had a huge debt like a house mortgage that you couldn't pay.
The banker, when you couldn't pay, instead of saying, "Well, we're gonna take your house 'cause you defaulted on the mortgage," says, "Here, I'm gonna write a check for the amount of that house. Go cash it, the house is yours." You'd probably tell your neighbors about that banker. That's the picture of the grace of God.
Mikel Del Rosario Yeah. This snapshot of the Gospel that we see in this section emphasizes Jesus' divinity and humanity. We see how he comes down from heaven, but then he's also born on Earth. Then we see his suffering and dying on Earth as well. But then his resurrection and his ascension shows us that his work of salvation for us is in fact efficacious. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. And then of course the latter part of this confession, the creed talks about his return 'cause he's not done. There's a judgment that he's gonna exercise. His kingdom is never gonna end. Once established, it's there forever and ever. And so this is someone to whom you're accountable. One of the core ideas coming out of the Bible, particularly for people who have no biblical background, who don’t understand Genesis, or Malachi, or Matthew, or Revelation, who really know nothing about the biblical story, the key way into conversation with them in the New Testament in the first century was, "Well, there's a creator, and you're a creature, and you're accountable in your relationship with him. It's an allusion to the idea of being made in the image of God or made for a relationship with God."
We're talking about reestablishing that relationship that has been broken by sin and the accountability that we have. So there's a reminder that at the end, everyone will give an account. You will become quite aware that you're accountable to God. And so you wanna think about how you approach that assessment that's coming one day.
Mikel Del Rosario Well, his kingdom will have no end. The kingdom was a huge part of his preaching. And how do we tie the messianic theme into the kingdom there? Dr. Darrell Bock Well, of course the Messiah's the one who delivers. There' s a rule that is anticipated that will cover the entirety of the Earth one day. It will come according to Revelation 20 in the thousand-year reign initially, and then a new heaven and a new Earth eventually. Where he will express his sovereignty across the creation, eventually he will bring us shalom that touches all the creation. That's part of the program. So the creed is alluding to the consummation of this kingdom promise in the resolution and restoration of the creation that one day is – actually the goal of the entire program isn't just to save individuals. It's actually to restore the creation to fullness and wholeness.
Mikel Del Rosario And so our response then to Jesus when we respond positively to him – actually we get to enter that kingdom now. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. We get to enter that kingdom now. We get the benefits of forgiveness of sins. We also get the benefit of the provision of the Spirit, which enables us to walk with God. This is the story of Romans. People are dead at the beginning, and they are declared righteous. And then they get the Spirit of God so they can walk with God, and they look forward to the consummation one day. Romans 8 looks forward to the day when creation stops groaning. Mikel Del Rosario Amen. Thanks so much for being with us today, Darrell. Dr. Darrell Bock My pleasure.
Dr. Darrell Bock Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture and our topic today is technology and how we use it and in some cases how we abuse it, particularly, in talking about fellow Christians. We wanna talk a little bit about social media and etiquette and the way in which we interact with each other and what that says to people who interact over media and look at how Christians interact with one another. My guest today is Gerry Breshears, who is professor of theology, that's theology of all kinds, Systematic, Biblical, and any other category you can throw into theology, at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon, so he's with us by Skype with all the technological disadvantages that come with that. That's, I guess, where we start. Sometimes technology is great, but sometimes it can kill us. Let me start off this way and I'm going to have a little bit of fun, just to launch in and that is, is technology in the Bible? How do we talk about it? Let's talk about the, I guess, technically speaking, the hermeneutics of even addressing this topic from a Biblical angle. Dr. Gerry Breshears Actually, technology is the Bible. In Genesis, Chapter 11, we see that the people of Babel have gotten some new technology, they've got the brick and they've got mortar of a different kind and they're able to put together the Tower of Babel and that's new technology. To update the story, all I have to do is put in an iPhone 6 or iPhone 7 and we've got it. Dr. Darrell Bock That was an answer I wasn't anticipating, so that's good. That means you're going to be a great conversationalist. Dr. Gerry Breshears I read the Bible, Darrell, I read the Bible. Dr. Darrell Bock It's true, technology is about the way in which we put things together and the various ways we go about achieving that and, of course, part of the creation mandate is the idea that we are supposed to manage the creation that God has given us and to be creative about the means by which that comes about. I'll accept your Biblical rootage there and hopefully what we have to say turns out better than just the Tower of Babel, but you never know. Of course, technology has really revolutionized the way in which people live. I can think about, and I suspect you have similar feelings, when I started teaching, and I'm in my thirty-third year at Dallas, I don't know how long you've been at Western, but probably, about as long or longer. Dr. Gerry Breshears Thirty-five. Dr. Darrell Bock When I started teaching, the idea of being able to look up resources on your computer, didn't exist. We used telephones, which – Dr. Gerry Breshears With cords. Dr. Darrell Bock That's with cords. That's right. Everything was wired in and cordless telephones were still 15 years away. It's amazing to think about the differences that have been introduced, really even in just the last ten years. I like to tell this story about the way technology works. When I did my first trip overseas to do doctoral studies, so we talking early '80s. The way I kept up with American sports was by listening to Armed Forces Radio on a shortwave. That's step one. Seven years later I went back to Germany for my first sabbatical and I could listen to it on the radio over the internet, just barely, but could do it, and the way I could do it is I could watch a scoreboard flip the score as the game was going on if I wanted to keep up with what was going on. It wasn't even radio, it was just visual graphics. The next time I went back, I had radio over the internet, that was seven years later. Seven years later, I had audio and video, sometimes black and white, and the last time I went, of course, I had full color, in fact, even HD. I could have been in my living room as far – that is kind of the story of the progression of what we're dealing with. I suspect you have similar experience in your own working with all this. Dr. Gerry Breshears Yeah, it's the same thing when I was teaching in the Ukraine the first time, I went downtown and bought an internet card that would get me 2.4 kilobyte connection and the last time I was there, like you, I had full HD and I could talk to my wife as easily as I could sitting next to her in the living room almost. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, it really is in many ways amazing how the whole technological scene has developed and how we do so much now through that. To the point now that a lot of people are able to work remotely from their work. My son does sports law from Manhattan, but he works for a firm in Munich and everything, just about, is done from a distance and without any problem and, of course, it's impacted education. Online classes, et cetera, have changed the way we think and are changing the way we think about education. It literally is omnipresent and you think about this as a theologian and theology is supposed to deal with everyday live as we need it and so what do you have to say to people who, obviously participate in technology, but are trying to think about how do I think about this in terms of what the Bible has to say? Dr. Gerry Breshears Scripture, of course, doesn't say anything specific about the internet and it doesn't say a whole lot about libraries for that matter, although there were libraries in the ancient world and well known ones and they're referred to occasionally in Scripture, but a big advantage of the internet has been the access to information on all kinds of different levels. I just routinely download podcasts from the best Christian preachers in the world. Dr. Darrell Bock We appreciate that promotion. Dr. Gerry Breshears Exactly. I can cyber stalk my students and I do and let them know that that wasn't very good or this is really outstanding. We have, through libraries, now we have full text access to much of the information of the world and I don't even have to walk across campus to the library. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, I literally had this conversation last week in our department, because we were informed that the Loeb Classical Library, which of course, is the great collection of Greco-Roman works and Latin works from the classics, is now available online to us and I've got 150 volumes in my library at home in my study and I've just recently have gone about gradually building it up to the point and I said to my wife, I'm done buying those, because I can look it up. I can write and travel and if I have to look something up, most anything that I need, I can now get access to without having to go to a library. It really has changed the way academics work. Dr. Gerry Breshears The other thing that has not changed; however, is the ability of people to process information accurately and that's been a downside. People cite as if they know what they're doing when they don't. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, that's true and the capability of misinformation to circulate through the internet is really a problem and it's even more a problem when people just post what they have heard or said and there's no attribution or anything put with it, so you don't know where it's coming from, what the sourcing is, whether it's accurate, all kinds of things. Some people think if it's on the net, it must be true, but that's not true at all. Dr. Gerry Breshears One of the things that's been really interesting for me to watch is how now in the day of internet access and archiving of everything, it's virtually impossible to be forgiven or to change what you're doing. You've always been – memory has always been there, but in the internet age, once you're identified with a certain kind of personality, you can never change that it seems like, because somebody always goes back and looks at the old stuff and cites it as if it was done last year. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, it is a different way of existing and it also means that most conversations that, many of which used to private, are no longer private. You always have someone looking over your shoulder about what it is you're saying and how you say it and what it means and I tell people when – there's this message that I do, it's the contrast between Romans 1 and Acts 17 and how Paul functions in a pluralistic world and I make the point, when he's writing in Romans 1, it's kind of insider talk. He's talking to the Church from the inside and he's telling you exactly what he thinks about the culture, because this letter is going to the Church and granted it ended up in the Bible, which means that it did have a very public sets of eyes looking at it, but basically in terms of Paul's intention, he was trying to talk to the Church about the way the culture was around them. Whereas, when we come to Acts 17, he's speaking publicly. He knows he's speaking publicly. The audience is part of the culture that he's talking about and his entire approach is different. Not that his theology is different, he still challenges them with what he believes, but the way he goes about it, is very different and the point I make when I talk about this passage today is that we can't have oftentimes clean exchanges like that where we know what the audience is that is listening to us because our audience inevitably is broad once we go on to the net. Dr. Gerry Breshears That's correct. Yeah, e-mails and letters that are sent via the internet, none of that is ever erased from the internet any more. Ironically, when I want to do confidential conversations now, I always do it by voice over a telephone that's much less likely to be mineable on the internet. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, and you just hope the government isn't listening. Dr. Gerry Breshears Today's government, what do they do with it anyway? Dr. Darrell Bock That's right. I won't go there. There really is a major problem in terms of how we interact with one another and that really is the gist of what we want to get to. Obviously, there are tons of benefits from being able to stay in communication with people, to stay connected over a distance in particular. I think the whole Facebook phenomena is an interesting way of interacting. I like to tell people who are my age, and when we talk about this particularly in relationship to education, that we grew up used to a certain way of relating and we had to adjust to the introduction of technology. My kids, who are now in their 30s, really grew up with technology from the very beginning. In fact, our household experimented, was picked out to be an experimentation, for the first games over the internet that you shared with a neighbor who wasn't there in your house. We were hooked up and asked to do this and my two girls and our son were part of this growing up group that played games over the internet with their friends online, back in the '80s, when it was first being developed, and they've grown up with this. This is how they've related all their life. There's no adjustment. It's the way they do it. They do it instinctively, again, just to share another story, I once was writing a book and was getting ready to look something up and I was – my son recognized I was getting up to go to my library to look up something and he said, "Dad, you don't have to go out to your library." He was aware of what I was doing and I said, "What?" He typed into his computer and lo and behold, boom, there it – and he instinctively knew that. It's clear we have a lot of information that we have access to, but the flip side of that is, of course, the quality and nature of that information. How do we get ourselves into trouble on the net? I guess that's kind of what I'm asking and you might share, if you will, some of your experience in this regard. DR. GERRY BRESHEARS I've been watching this for a long time and one of the things that happens is what I call the Pat Robertson syndrome. Those of us are a little older remember when Pat Robertson was a national figure, 700 Club and all that, but he got a reputation for being somebody who said outrageous things, so people would just watch him and of course, he spoke a lot, and inevitably, being a powerful, polarizing speaker, he would say something really, really stupid and then that would be picked out and played everywhere and there's a, I don't know what to call it exactly, a genre, really, on the internet that is that kind of a thing. It's a celebrity gossip magazine that we see in the checkout stand at the grocery story. Dr. Darrell Bock That's where you get yourself. There's gotcha journalism. This is where you get yourself. Dr. Gerry Breshears There's a group of that that does that around celebrity pastors and they just wait for 'em to say something and then they go outrage, ballistic, can you believe what's being said and it's all taken out of a context of a ministry and a life and it can be extremely, extremely damaging. Dr. Darrell Bock We've seen some examples of this recently and as we get into this, the point is not to say that some of the criticism that leaders get for how they handle the net and things that they say, may well be deserved. The question is whether the beating that they take in the process is deserved and what that means for us and in thinking about what you're talking about, that there are people who stalk these kinds of opportunities, let me raise a scenario that I'm very aware of and that is there are bands of atheists out there whose goal is to undercut anything positive that happens in the Church. They oftentimes, you talk about cyber-stalking; they often keep their eyes out for any kind of opportunity like this that they can exploit and pass through the net. I know that goes on and sometimes you think that the conversation that you're having with the person on the other edge of Facebook or on the other end of the blog that you're writing, is another believer and you're kinda having an inhouse conversation, when in fact, oftentimes you're not. Dr. Gerry Breshears That's correct. The recent episode with Louie Giglio, when he was invited initially to do a pray at President Obama's inauguration, some people went back and found this sermon that he'd done 15 years earlier, where he had spoken about homosexuality as a sin and that was trumpeted and ended up with his invitation being withdrawn because he was a person who could not be accepted in the public arena. It's crazy. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, and despite all the public ministry and service ministry that Louie had done and it was really the reason for the original invitation. Dr. Gerry Breshears Yeah, that happened. Yeah. All torpedoed by one statement he had made way earlier in a total different context. That's the evil of the internet and it can be done by anybody. I think what Christians did to Rick Warren after his son committed suicide in the depths of his depression, the hate speech that came back to him, the public blasting that came back on them, it was just – it's an embarrassment and a shame to see what happened to that couple. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, and I think people have got to realize that they have – own some responsibility for handling their public discourse responsibly when these kinds of situations come up. The reason I wanted to discuss this topic is because I actually find it very, very disturbing in terms of where the Church is. Another incident, since we're trotting out incidents right now, is my recollection of the way World Vision was handled when they went through their decision-making process. First, initially, to allow gay people to be hired and then when they changed their decision, and just the reaction that people had about that entire sequence of events as if, as you said earlier, it's almost as if, I'll say it this way albeit vividly, it's almost as if repentance doesn't count. Dr. Gerry Breshears That's correct. Dr. Darrell Bock That a person comes out and says I made a mistake, this was the wrong move, I've listened to the feedback, I've corrected the way I think, but it doesn't matter. The elephant with memory is in the room. Dr. Gerry Breshears Yep. Another example of that same thing was when Wycliffe was dragged out in the public for translation philosophy into a sub-Saharan African dialect that nobody in the world speaks, but it was rumored how they could translate the Son of God and drop the language Son of God and people went ballistic about that and very high quality organization, Wycliffe Bible Translators, was attacked viciously and some major groups dropped support for Wycliffe over something they really knew nothing about, but it's easy to get outraged because they don't care about the Son of God any more. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, because the thing that really makes this difficult is these kinds of moves get sound bitted, if I can coin a phrase, and in that process the one line Wycliffe isn't using the Son of God any more, has taken Son of God out of the Bible, however you wanna spin that, ends up casting a huge shadow over any of the details as to why that is or the linguistic issues that were involved and that kind of – we actually did an entire podcast on the Son of God controversy, translation controversy, in part to try and get the issues out on the table so that people would actually understand what was going on here and not succumb to the easy one liner, when, in the context, the other thing that's in the background here, is almost this, I don't know, fear or paranoia, I'm not sure what the right word is, or anger or frustration, it's probably a combination of all these things, come into play that drives the move to try and criticize in these kinds of ways. Dr. Gerry Breshears That's correct. A recent example, of course, is the whole thing with Mars Hill Church in Seattle and the controversy that raged up there for six, eight months very publicly. One of the things that I found just very distressing in that whole situation, of course, I'm close to it, I know many people up there and work closely with a number of them, were the public bloggers were accusing Mark Driscoll and top leadership there of bullying and mishandling funds and there was some legitimacy, of course, to their charges, but the way they were doing it, ironically, was bullying and if you look at the site ads on their blogs, they were making enormous amounts of money from groups that I would never be associated with, because of web traffic on their blog and somehow the self-criticism that says, I'm doing what I'm charging the person with and profiting from it, that's just a real problem for me. That is a huge problem for me, because I look at the text of Scripture and it talks about slander and gossip as strongly as it talks about immorality and mishandling of power. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, because you're dealing with people and their reputations and there's supposed to be a respect, I would say, for someone made in the image of God that they're handled fairly, justly, if you want to put it in a Biblical category and the way we interact with one another, the tone that we bring to the conversations that we have actually is very, very important and we have something going on tonally in our culture in which I'm afraid that sometimes the Church is mirroring what happens in the culture at large in terms of how people get treated and the Church is supposed to be different in terms of how we engage. Dr. Gerry Breshears When I look at Galatians, Chapter 5, and it talked about the acts of the flesh and we begin with pornea and impurity and debauchery, adultery, witchcraft, we get all that, but it goes on to talk about hatred and discord and jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissension, factions. Those things are in there just as much. Ephesians, Chapter 4, it says, "In your anger, do not sin, because you give the Devil a foothold." Dr. Darrell Bock In Romans I, you got gossip right there on the list. Dr. Gerry Breshears Yep, absolutely. Ephesians 4, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, every form of malice, be kind and compassionate, forgiving one another." Boy does that describe the blogosphere these days? I don't think so. Dr. Darrell Bock: Yeah, it is a disturbing trend, I think, and it undercuts not just the benefits of technology in such a way, but it really injects a, I don't know what other word to use, it's just stuck in my head, a poison into the relationships that people have about the Church, the way they think about the Church, et cetera. This is not to say that there isn't a place for legitimate criticism and engagement when the Church fails and it be a –
Dr. Gerry Breshears Absolutely. Dr. Darrell Bock Be a complete misread of what we're talking about to say, no, the Church gets a pass on all this. Absolutely not. Dr. Gerry Breshears There's all kinds of stuff in Scripture about entertaining accusations against the elders in 1 Corinthians, 1 Timothy, Chapter 5, one of the telling passages is 1 Corinthians, Chapter 6, where it says, "Don't take your disputes to the public court for judgment." Now at that point, it's talking about the law court, but today we take them to the court of the internet and the public arena and it becomes slander and gossip it seems many times, when those kinds of controversies should be dealt within the elders structures of the Church and perhaps within the denominational structures, instead of taking it out on the internet. Dr. Darrell Bock Yes, I think that what we see here is, and this is important, to distinguish between the right to criticize and the way to criticize and even the way to criticize well and appropriately and Biblically, if I can say it that way, and the way in which sometimes this gets done in which the right thing maybe challenged, but in a very wrong way and it's a very, very dangerous kind of precedence when our goal is to absolutely try and pull someone down without the appropriate processes in place. Dr. Gerry Breshears It's very true. When I look at what happened, for example, the Mars Hill thing, which is very recent, I see what the eventual resignation of Mark Driscoll and all that was involved there and now the dissolving of the entire corporation and handing everything off to individual churches. Ironically, the thing that accomplished that was not the blogosphere, was not the gossip out on the public arena, it was actually done by elders of the Church who did it according to Biblical standards, but the environment of the internet made that a very toxic environment and a very dishonoring environment, though there's the opportunity there to show the Grace of God in what's coming out of that. That toxic environment where anger was a virtue is a very un-Christian atmosphere it seems to me. Dr. Darrell Bock Interesting. Your premise would be that the way in which this eventually happened was through the appropriate elder oversight that took place. What would you say to the person who would say, yeah, but the only reason the elders really eventually took a hard look at that was because of the immense pressure that came on Mars Hill as a result of all the blogging and everything else that was going on? Dr. Gerry Breshears Being very close to many people involved in the Mars Hill episode, I'd say that's a statement of ignorance. The public arena actually make it more difficult to do what was being done by the former and current elders, and by a couple of outside involved people, like Paul Tripp. It was actually done as an internal thing. The blogosphere actually made it more difficult, because people became very defensive relating to each other. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay, in other words, it so damaged the atmosphere that getting at actually what was going on became more difficult. Dr. Gerry Breshears That's correct and reconciliation was much more difficult because every statement was exported. There was actually an inside source that was intentionally and deliberately removing privacy statements and feeding it out into sources in the public arena. Dr. Darrell Bock Interesting. This raises a whole 'nother issue and that is the way in which the internet can become a megaphone, if you will, for what's going on internally and where things are being sorted out sensitively, et cetera. It's not that different, if I can make an analogy, it's not that different than the way governments try and work sometimes in particularly sensitive areas where they use what's sometimes called back channels to try and get communication back and forth, so that they don't have to deal with all the static that comes from being in a much more public setting and environment. Dr. Gerry Breshears Yep, one of the areas you've done some great work in, Darrell, is speech act theory and anytime somebody speaks in this kind of arrangement, whether it's a government source or a church source, there's always an intention behind that revelation and a lot of times that's hidden. Statements are made for public effect or to put pressure on somebody else and that is all manipulative, it's contrary to the let's go straight to the person and talk with Grace with the Christian environment. Dr. Darrell Bock A lot of people end up expressing opinions and they're engaging in what I would call speculation about what's going on when they, in many cases, don't actually know what's going on. They've dealt with this snippet or that snippet, but they don't have the whole picture. Dr. Gerry Breshears Yeah, maybe 120 factors in a particular decision, 2 or 3 are brought out and then it seems so simple, because all you're dealing with is those and there's no responsibility that's involved in that either. That picture of being a person who's actually making a difference in the context of Grace, when you engage in what's going on, I think is a Biblical picture. The disengaged person from a distance who is making these kind of statements about churches and then repeating them, I can see nothing other than gossip as a category for that.
Dr. Darrell Bock We're doing a pretty good job of vandalizing the nature of the problem here and taking a look at how it can go awry and how the net is really in some ways perfectly configured for that kind of abuse and dissemination and I think abuse might be actually the right word in some cases for some of what's going on. Let's talk about it from the positive side and think through all right, so how should people, one, engage, one level, and secondly, reflect on what they see on the other. Let's take them one at a time. Let's assume that I have a legitimate concern about something that's going on in the Church and may even want, for good reason, to rally people about the issue or to at least engage. What are some dos and don'ts in thinking through how to go about that? Dr. Gerry Breshears One of the things is the basic principles of Matthew 18. Go to the person involved first, take two or three wise, spirit-led people with you, then it says go to the whole church and that kind of a process I think is a good way to do that. I just was this morning consulted by the friend who's in a church where it turned out the pastor is doing a couple of things, like he's engaging prostitutes and misusing funds, got a slush fund to pay for his trips to the local parlors and such. They just discovered this about a week ago. What they did first was they tried to go to the pastor; he wouldn't talk to them. No surprise. They took a couple of key leaders from the Church and then from the Church planning organization, nothing came there. They sent a note out via Facebook, ironically, to the people of the Church and called them to a public meeting, invited the pastor to be there. He didn't show up. They will end up dissolving the Church and starting a new church, a replant, but I think the way they went about this was a good way to do it. They tried to follow those patterns. The 1 Timothy 5 pattern, "Don't entertain an accusation against an elder except on occasion of two or three witnesses." They followed that. There's absolutely a place to confront evil in the Church. The Church does not get a pass to say, "Well, let's pray and just do nothing." That is not Biblical either.
Dr. Darrell Bock One the one hand, there's an appropriate way to do criticism and then there's a way that represents an abuse. Okay, you're on the other end of this now. You're not generating the response, but you're seeing things and dealing with that, maybe the above, I suspect is a little easier, but how do you deal with what you're picking up across the net and what should you remember about the net as you interact with this kind of stuff? Dr. Gerry Breshears The internet has some very responsible sources in it and what I wanna do is go to responsible sources. In the Mars Hill thing, for example, I absolutely refused to go to the blog sites, the sensationalistic blog sites, because the more I go to them, the more I increase their traffic and I end up actually making them money by going there. Instead, I went to responsible sources, whether just news service, Christianity Today, groups like that, who were covering the story, yes, but were doing with a charitable and trying to get both sides or all sides, as the case may be. I think that's a key thing, is go to responsible sources. Don't increase the web traffic for the most sensationalistic places. Dr. Darrell Bock Those sites, and I think you've mentioned Christianity Today, Religious News Service, and Christian Post, these sites are driven by people who are professional journalists, who generally speaking are trying to do their job very, very responsibly and you can see that even within the context of the stories, because what the stories will inevitably do, if they're journalistically well done, is they will give you both sides. They will give you the conversation that's actually taking place as opposed to only one side of the story. Dr. Gerry Breshears Yep. Like Christianity Today, which I really enjoy what they're doing there, they were trying every possible way, as responsible journalists, to talk to key people first hand with attribution as the story developed. I think that's the way it should be. Ironically, I knew we were gonna have this story, I saw a story in The New York Times on Sunday, November 9, that was characterizing WORLD Magazine as a muckraking Christian mag – Dr. Darrell Bock Yes, I saw the same piece this weekend. Dr. Gerry Breshears I thought, "My gosh". I know Marv Olansky. I know some other people that work with WORLD and there is a piece where they're trying to be the investigating journalist. Now they are not muckraking, but it's interesting that The New York Times would characterize them as a muckraking organization. That says something about the danger of being involved in this sort of thing and how important it is to do it well. Dr. Darrell Bock Yes, and it's another indication of the way our culture is working with this. It's hard for me to talk about this topic and not take a real step back, kind of get a bird's eye view, on the cultural influence of what's going on and the cultural influence of what's going on, it seems to me is is that we have developed a culture of – it's kind of a combination between the gotcha journalism that you sometimes see and the idealogical divides that tend to fuel our conversations where our goal is to defend a particular ideology or approach as opposed to working, if I could say this way more positively, towards some type of solutions or resolution of the tensions that we find. A person takes sides. They cherry pick evidence and in the process, they only hear one side. We have a joke in our office, there are the people who watch Fox News and there are the people who watch CSNBC and we're not sure they're living on the same planet. Dr. Gerry Breshears True. Dr. Darrell Bock If you look at the world through those lenses, you're looking at two very different sets of lenses and two very different ways of seeing things, but when does the actual legitimate conversation, without polemics, take place between those kinds of points of view? I think that cultural, almost world wide federation of wrestling feel to the way we grapple with ideas today, doesn't lead to healthy public discourse, nor does it lead to positive challenges when very legitimate issues are put out on the table. Dr. Gerry Breshears That's correct. I got accused in the public arena a while back of being a polytheist, which nobody who knows me would ever make that charge stick, but the irony was this discernment TV thing, put out the charge and if you go Google Gerry Breshears, it still appears on the front page and that was some time back. One of the things I would encourage people, as you're looking at various internet sites, look and see is there something there where they have contacted the person that they're charging stuff with, because, of course, that's Matthew 18, is go to the person privately. One of the things that struck me with Mark Driscoll is when all the stuff was going around and he was being blasted in all the criticism on the net, he did not do the same thing back. He didn't blog about the people. When you have issues with people, you pick up the phone and call them and talk to them. I think that's a much better way to do things.
Dr. Darrell Bock Yes. I agree with you and I think to me it's a disturbing way to interact, to just simply pump out the negative stuff and not talk directly to the people. Gerry, you'll identify with this, this goes way back, but when we were going through all the conversations that were happening on dispensationalism on our campus and some of that has gone through the web, so I've been like you the target, if I can say it that way. Dr. Gerry Breshears I did good, Darrell. Dr. Darrell Bock I know, but the interesting thing is how people would inevitably comment on motive. Why you did what you did. What the circumstances were. They didn't know. They didn't have a clue and low and behold, the speculation was miles off in terms of what the actual dynamics were. In fact, in this last week, on Facebook, I actually had to respond to someone who issued a challenge, but they tried to protect themselves. They basically said on this very point, they said, if this doctoral statement was signed disingenuously, basically was the deal, and if the leadership knew about it, that says something about the way these things happen and the way in which the slippery slope happens. That was the gist of what was said. That isn't quoting it, 'cause I'm trying to not make obvious where this was. I'm a part of this exchange in this Facebook group and I wrote back and I said, I cannot let this one go. I have to respond and I said, you realize that when you say this, you not only are questioning the judgment of the person who you think has signed a doctoral statement without integrity, but you're also questioning the integrity of the people who have oversight over that process and I came back and I said, this was part of a long series of conversations. Everyone was very aware of what was going on. There was a reflective process that was engaged in, et cetera. The person wrote me back and said, why did you let this get under your skin? I did say if. I didn't say this was the case and I said, yeah, but your ifs leave an impression and the impression is left there and I said, if you take the ifs away, then the whole thing shouldn't even have been mentioned.
That's the kind of situation that you deal with, so I think that's kind of a good specific example, if I can say it that way, of the way in which people manipulate the thought space, if I can describe it that way.
Dr. Gerry Breshears It really is and to make that kind of suggestion is to come to the conclusion that there's factual reason behind it and that just leaves the question and the Biblical word for that is slander. Such things should not happen. Dr. Darrell Bock I actually in my response said that basically that was what was being done. That's why I felt like I had to respond and the thing is this person in the response admitted, I don't know any of the details. I did say if. I wasn't sure this was, but see that's the impression. That's the, if I can say it, that's the aroma or maybe the stench that was left in the air, which then the person picked up upon and it's allowed to pass on from place to place to place. This reminds me of a joke that I often say to students when I deal with this, when I talk about the rumor mill related to the seminary and the joke goes, the rumor mill at Dallas Seminary is as fast as the omniscience of God, it's just not as accurate. The point that I'm very much trying to make is that you hear a lot, it's omnipresent, it's all around you, but you need to filter out that a lot of what you're hearing may not actually be true.
Dr. Gerry Breshears Yeah, and that's hard to do from somebody's who's watching from a distance, because they have even less context than the person who's making the charges. Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly correct. Dr. Gerry Breshears That's why I think we should avoid that sort of stuff, because when we go and read that, we're filling our minds with trash and I just don't think that's a good and Godly thing to do. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, and of course, we haven't even raised the larger theological question here of granted a person may think they're well motivated, granted they may think they're protecting the Church, granted they may think they're doing something positive, but the problem is that actually they are undercutting the integrity and unity of the Church by the way they're going about it. Not that they're raising questions, again I wanna make that distinction, but the way they're going about it undercuts the unity of the Church and that's one of the things Ephesians 4 tells us we're supposed to work hard to protect. Dr. Gerry Breshears That's correct and the thing that I've used as a guide in my own life, is I try not to invest energy in anything that I can't make a difference in. I don't need to know all the details that's happening in such and such a church or such and such an organization, if I don't have any connection with that organization. The need to follow that is just to indulge in gossip on the recipient side if not on the giver's side and again, scripture tells us not to do that. I need to use my energy well to do good and Godly things, which does include criticizing sin. I'm absolutely called to do that, but how we do it is critically important. Dr. Darrell Bock I think we've walked our way through this in a significant kind of way. Let's kinda turn the discussion a little bit and let's talk positively about what technology is able to do for us and let me start by tackling what I know that you work with a lot of online stuff, so do I and I wanna talk about an online experience that really changed the way I viewed online education. I was asked to teach a class in Perth, Australia. Now granted if you know your geography, Dallas, Texas, is some distance from Perth, Australia. They're not exactly in the same neighborhood. Anyone who's taken that Qantas flight knows what I'm talking about. I was asked to teach this class for Perth, Australia, this was about three summers ago and the way they did it, it was a hybrid. It was designed to be a hybrid class, which is that you interact over the net with your students first and then you go for a week intensive class where you're meeting with them face to face, 'cause of course, the criticism of online is is that you don't get to interact with the students at a personal level because you're not with them there physically. This is where I learned it's more complicated than that. I'm interacting for six weeks before I show up. I'm asking a question a week to the students and I'm asking them to interact with them and I'm interacting with them individually. Fortunately the class was of the size that you can do this, it was 12 students, and there's nothing Biblical in that number, by the way.
I'm interacting with 12 students, we're in effect in a chat room in which they are both interacting with each other and they're interacting with me. The thing that I tell people is, is that when I actually went to do that class, when I flew to Perth and walked into the room, I actually knew more about each student that I was interacting with, where they were coming from, what their strengths and skills and weaknesses were in dealing with the areas and what I needed to do as a teacher interacting with them in class, than I had ever had in any face-to-face class experience where the first day I walk in, I've got a new roll and I'm calling roll and I'm getting to know the students. It completely changed the way I thought about online and what technology's able to do.
Dr. Gerry Breshears Yeah, the technology adds a different dimension of interaction and I don't think there's anything that's gonna replace what happens in a classroom when you get a spontaneous immediate discussion going on with full person presence, I don't think we're gnostic. I don't think we're just minds and – Dr. Darrell Bock Absolutely agreed. Dr. Gerry Breshears But still, the sort of thing you're talking about, there is a chance for reflection and an engagement that happens via the chat room or by video thread. Things happen there that will never happen in the classroom, even in an active classroom like yours or mine, half the students never engage unless we call them out and I do. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right and you've made a great point that sometimes the student who doesn't say a word in class, because of the way the net is set up, they have to engage and step in. You do get to see them. Another thing that I sense you sometimes get in the net that you wouldn't get in a classroom is because the net seems to be so personal, one to one, even though I'm in a chat room, it's still one to one, I don't feel the presence of the class around me as I'm typing at my keyboard. You actually get the person probably coming out and revealing more about where they are, than they would if they were in a classroom of 30 people and they're wondering what are all my peers gonna think about. Even though the irony is, as soon as they type it and put it up on the net, everyone's seeing what they're saying, but they don't think about it that way when they interact on the net it seems like. They just say what they're thinking and so you actually get, I would say, often times a more direct glimpse of the person than you tend to get in a classroom setting.
Dr. Gerry Breshears The piece that happens in my classrooms is I get involved very personally with students and many of them end up showing up in my office later on for a discussion. They've become extremely personal, but that same thing happened online where there's the chat room kind of thing, the discussion threads or the video threads, but then they'll go offline and they'll send me an e-mail or Facebook message, private message, where they can be very personal and very private. There a lot of dimension that can happen there with online kind of thing. The other thing that happens online to education that's very helpful, is the student can go back and replay what I just said. When I say something that's incredibly profound, which happens about every ten years – Dr. Gerry Breshears Yeah, they say could you say that again in their classroom. I say, I really couldn't, but online, they can push replay and especially students who are slow processors or for whom English is not a first language, that can be extremely helpful for them. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah and you make the point that one of the things that online processes allow for is the student to kinda progress at their own pace as opposed to being locked into whatever the progress is on the syllabus, even in areas like language, that's very, very important, because when you teach languages, you're compressing a year's worth of instruction sometimes in a semester. You're moving pretty fast and if a student gets behind, the further you get, the behinder they get and the worse it gets and so it can become a problem in that regard. What I like to say is is that you've got to appreciate the nature of the medium that you're in. That each medium has certain strengths and weaknesses and you need to be aware of what they are. Certain ways of doing things are going to deliver certain things well and others things poorly. That's why I've always been a fan of the hybrid class, because I think a hybrid gives you a little bit of the best of both worlds. It allows the internet to do what it's able to do somewhat uniquely, but they also get at least a dimension of personal interaction that allows you to recover what otherwise you wouldn't get just being there and the distance and having an affective virtual class.
Dr. Gerry Breshears Another thing that happens through the internet, I know several people who are refugees from countries where they cannot go back because of political oppression and that sort of a thing, with today's technology, I know some people who are having extremely affective ministry in closed countries via some creative technology involvement that could never happen otherwise and I am just so impressed with what technology's allowing to happen in closed countries. That something like YouVersion, for example, which has who knows how many translations on it these days, people on cellphones in countries where there's absolutely no other gospel witness, can open up their Bibles and read it and people tell me, they're doing it in large numbers. Amazing results with technology. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, I think this is one of the great benefits of what technology gives to us, because you can minister to people from a long way away who would never be able to actually darken the door of your own school. They never would have a change to come to Portland. They never have a chance to come to Dallas and yet they can get at least snippets of feedback and input that are made available to them and then the irony is is the person ends up getting arrested in North Korea for leaving a Bible behind, doesn't need to do it, because the other amazing thing is that in most of these countries most people do have cellphones and do know how to access these kinds of sites if they're interested in doing so and are able to do so and are even able to do so with some awareness about how to protect themselves as they do it in case the government is nervous about that access. Dr. Gerry Breshears Yeah, and it can be done through chips that can be put in cellphone. There's so many creative ways to deliver sermons or instruction. It's just amazing. But the hybrid still, I think is the best way to do things, where there's the online connection, but then a living presence as well. That gives kind of the best of all the worlds. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, I think so, too. I think what all this, of course, means is that the value of the specific local campus, we already alluded to this in talking about the way in which libraries function today. The idea of physical – a confined physical space being the place where this kind of thing happens, is becoming less important as we think about the dissemination of education and information. Dr. Gerry Breshears I look at the algorithms that are involved in say a Google search or something like that, I can get some really good information on most any topic simply by Google search and we used to laugh at Wikipedia, but it's become a very good resource. I think it's as good quality as Encyclopedia Britannica in many cases, because of public accountability for what's put on there. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, I think that's basically correct and the amazing thing to me now is the amount of resources that you get access to. I used to do a class, or I still do the class, but I used to do a class on Second Temple Jewish Backgrounds. That means I was taking students through Apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, Mishnah, Talmud, all the first century, before and after resources that inform the way we think about Judaism so we understand the context of the New Testament. I used to have to walk into class with this huge stack of books that I would pass around to students when I – here's the Apocrypha, here's the pseudepigraphal, two volumes of pseudepigrapha, here's the one volume of the Mishnah. Couldn't bring the Talmud in, that would have had to have brought the cart to bring in all the volumes of that, but the point is is that – and the goal of the exercise was to have the student handle the book, see what it looked like, look inside, see what the structure of these books were, and give them some familiarity because I figured familiarity would breed usage, that if it wasn't a foreign object to them, then they might actually go and pull it off the shelf. This last year that I taught was the first year I had taught the course in which I didn't have to bring in a single volume. Everything was available on the computer. I could post it up on the screen. They could see it electronically. The beauty of it is, we could all access the same text at the same time, read it, and process it together. The advantage of that from a teaching standpoint is immense and it shows the way things have very much changed.
Dr. Gerry Breshears Something as obscure as the Dead Sea Scrolls just went on the internet just recently and anybody can go back and look at pictures of the original Dead Sea Scrolls. Of course, that means you have to have the scholarly skills to read and then to analyze what's going on, but the original sources are available and it's just great. Now we just got to do the work in educating so we can use them. Dr. Darrell Bock That's exactly right and it does change very much the dynamics of the way things work and the possibilities that exist and you can kind of read this in the way we're interacting with each other. To the naysayers who sometimes say that the introduction of technology takes us out of the classroom, removes the personal dimension, that kind of thing, that I think is an oversimplified, negative analysis of what actually is going on. Dr. Gerry Breshears Yeah, we have a Portland mythology of a guy sitting in the basement of his mother's house, blogging around, and those people exist for sure, but the other reality is the competent church leader who now have access to incredible resources to take up the work of the Church to a whole different level, if they have the education and ability to use that material wisely and well. Dr. Darrell Bock It's funny how this works, I was doing an Historical Jesus class this weekend that meets at my house on Friday evenings from 7:00 to 10:00 and we're all gathered around the table, it's 18 students in the class, and I had a Latin-American student who is obviously here working in a second language, has made the effort to come, and he was sharing with the class his fear of having come here, having learned what he's learned, having had the access to the resources that he has, et cetera, and going back and plunging into ministry and being separated from the library, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and he says, and I feel this responsibility now of what I know I need to do in order to study a passage and I'm not confident I'm gonna be able to do it. I looked at him and I said, if you think about this in terms of what you have access to technologically, because our students get the Logos package as part of their coming here, what you're able to do technologically, what you have access to, you don't have to be next to the library any more. I said, the way things have changed is, what used to take me two or three days to do in terms of research, because I had to go to the library, pulls books down the shelf, actually access it by hand, read my way through it, et cetera. I said, what used to take me two or three days to do, and in some cases, took me hours to just get organized to do, figuring out what it is I had to look up and where it was in the library and where it was on the shelf, et cetera. I said, now can take me only two or three hours and so you have access to all this material because of what technology is able to do for us. I said, don't despair. You're really in a much better place than the person – the person who graduated two or three generations ago, should have had your fear, but you don't need to have it. Dr. Gerry Breshears Yeah, the technological stuff, when I travel internationally to teach, even to fairly remote occasions, I got my little laptop computer here and with Logos and other things I have available on it and Bible Works, I've just got amazing resources – Dr. Darrell Bock Should mention Accordance as well. Okay, everybody got equal time. Go ahead. Dr. Gerry Breshears Absolutely. Dr. Gerry Breshears There's a lot of these things that are just phenomenal packages, each with their strengths, and many of us are multilingual in that sense, too. They're affordable for many people, not all, and just the resources that are available, but again, the responsibility to not just cite information, but to process and integrate it for wisdom. The temptation of people just to dispense information they get off of their computer, is still a big temptation that has to be overcome. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, that's a great observation. Just because you have access to the information, doesn't necessarily mean that the information that you have is good information. You still have to process what's going on. I love to use the example of Jesus' remark about being able to pass through the eye of a needle and the very well circulated tradition that this is some type of an illusion to a city gate that a camel actually can get through if the circumstances are right, to which I go, if you'll just read the context in which the response of the disciples is, what you have just said is impossible. Then you will get the sense that a city gate can't be in the background here and despite how well circulated that idea is, the idea probably comes from a medieval description of Jerusalem as opposed to a first century description of Jerusalem, that's where probably arose. Dr. Darrell Bock You still have to process the background information that you get access to. Do these sources come from the time period involved or do they represent views that go back that far or are you citing a source that's much, much later in time and does it – all those kinds of things still have to be done. Dr. Gerry Breshears The responsibility again to preach and not just dispense information so that you're working for transformation in your local community, that's still there, and it's still – in the date of downloading all kinds of sermons, the temptation is to use the intellectual resources of the web, and they're there, but we still have to take it, not just abstract teaching, but we have to preach for life transformation and community enhancement. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, and that's, of course, one of the values of why a seminary exists is the seminary helps you to actually put those skills together. I sometimes get the question, and not that this is supposed to be an ad for seminaries, but why come to seminary? Why not let the Church train the people for ministry in their own locations? There is some contextualized training that is definitely beneficial from being able to work in your own environment and your own context. No one can challenge that idea, but the flip side of it is when you go to a seminary, when you pool the resources and the expertise that's involved in the assembling of a faculty, some of whom have given their life to Old Testament, some of whom have given their life to New Testament, some have given their life to systematic, some have given their life to historical theology, some have given their life to talk about how preaching actually works, others to Christian ed, and you put that assemblage of faculty together, there is no church in the world, I don't care how mega they are, that is able to put that kind of a combination of resources available to the student as they're going through their education and reflection, helping them develop expertise in each one of those areas. Dr. Gerry Breshears Yep. Another resource for students, for seminaries, is where good schools, like Dallas and Western, are amazing resources for current pastors to come back to and get help as well. It's not just students who get resource help. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right and of course, the whole point of doing podcasts like this is to actually provide those kinds of resources for people, again, over the net, so that people can get updated. Part of what our philosophy in doing these is to actually help a local pastor who's out of school and away from the resource center, if you will, keep up to date with what's going on by getting access to conversations about books and resources and topics and that kind of thing, that are up to date that lets them know what's happening at the thought levels in various areas. Dr. Gerry Breshears One of the things that I keep watch on for myself, is how much I'm getting caught up in the latest fad, because it's instantaneous, 24 hour news cycle with the web, it's the temptation of the sensational or the new thing is even more involved and I can get a lot of energy wasted on the greatest new thing or the greatest new book that comes out, and again, that's where our wisdom to see, is this really gonna make a change or is this just the cool thing that's coming down the pipe this week? Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, I've got a whole category in my browser toolbar that's called emergent. It's all the emergent websites. I don't know the last time I actually went to look at some of those for that very kind of reason and, again, it isn't because that movement didn't have something to say or something to contribute, but it wasn't the be all and end all that you sometimes had the impression it was going to supply for us at the time when it emerged. Dr. Gerry Breshears One of the things that has come out of the whole Mars Hill brouhaha that we were talking about earlier, I've heard some pretty responsible people say the day of the mega church is done and I think, what a stupid statement. God has always worked in different kinds of churches. There are ups and down sides to any kind of church and, again, that's where the requirement that we have an educated discernment to assess what's going on and not just caught up in the latest news cycle is so very important. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, and this is a whole 'nother podcast we'll probably have to come back to, 'cause I know you do a lot of work in ecclesiology, but I get very disturbed at the sniping that takes place. This is actually very similar to the topic we were in in the middle of this podcast, takes place between the person who's in the small church and the mega church pastor and the way they shoot at one another sometimes. That's a very, very bad place to be. I do have a pastor friend who sends anything negative that comes across the net about a mega church, he sends my way to keep me up to date on what the latest complaints are about the mega church and my response often to him is to say, but how often are these mega churches reaching people and touching people and getting them to think about the gospel that your church is not touching and reaching? Don't forget that. Dr. Gerry Breshears The internet can be a temptation to get involved in this kind of criticism, because you can always find some friends who are actually just interested in muckraking kind of things, but they're on the internet and you can certainly gather them around. You can form a Facebook group of mockers and, boy I don't want to be involved with mockers. I want to be involved with builders. You can find those on the internet, as well, but choose who you search with and who you associate with on the internet just as much as you do in your local environment. Dr. Darrell Bock That's right and keep in mind that God works through different structures in different ways. They have different strengths. I'm reminded of an old story I like to tell of Campus Crusade doesn't do what InterVarsity does, doesn't do what Young Life does, but I'm sure glad they're all there, 'cause they're each reaching different groups of people, each of whom needs to hear what they're about. Gerry, our time has disappeared and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us about technology. I probably will have you back one day to talk about mega church versus small church and I do another one of these that relates to that, because I do know that ecclesiology is a love of yours and you've given a lot of thought to these kinds of questions and issues, but we appreciate you being a part of The Table and helping us sort our way through the technological web that now surrounds us in our lives and I'm so glad you could be a part of our time today. Dr. Gerry Breshears Appreciate it, Darrell, a lot. Dr. Darrell Bock Yep, and we thank you for being a part of The Table and look forward to having you back with us soon.
Dr. Darrell Bock Welcome to The Table. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And our topic, today, are Millennials' take on the church, and this is a response to an article by the man sitting at my left, here, Sam Eaton, who wrote a piece called "12 Reasons Millennials are Over Church." [Laughter] Sam Eaton Well, I wrote it [crosstalk]. Dr. Darrell Bock It's okay [crosstalk] yeah, you gotta take responsibility for it. So anyway, Sam is over at a ministry called Recklessly Alive – why don't you tell us a little bit about that ministry? Sam Eaton Yeah, so I started a suicide prevention and mental health ministry, where I talk about my experiences with that; I've been writing a book. A lot of people don't know, 2015 was a 30-year high for suicide rate in our country. And so I'm working really hard to change that, and give those people who've lost all hope the hope of Jesus. Dr. Darrell Bock Oh, that's great. And you're a public school teacher in Minneapolis, Minnesota? Sam Eaton Yeah, I teach K-5 elementary music – just, a lot of beautiful little kids who are in school right now. Dr. Darrell Bock That's great, so, well, we thank you for coming all the way down from Minneapolis to come see us down here in Texas – give you a little warmth, you know? True? Sam Eaton Yeah, thank you. [Laughter] Dr. Darrell Bock You're welcome – very good. And then, Nika Spaulding – now, I just got this long title for you. What is it? Director of Women's Equipping and Curriculum at Watermark Church, here in Dallas, is that. . . Nika Spaulding Yeah, it means I hang out with all the XX chromosomes at Watermark, that's what that means. Dr. Darrell Bock Is that what it is? [Laughter] Nika Spaulding Yeah, so, lead the Bible studies, and hang out with the women [crosstalk]. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, I know you do much more damage than that, so – [Laughs] Nika Spaulding I know – that's for another time, yeah. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, exactly right, so, we're glad to have you – I've been on their podcast, so I'm paying her back, now. [Laughter] So, anyway, so it's great to have you with us, Nika. And then, Kat Armstrong, who I just found out is a Houstonian like I am. And I love your way you describe yourself: you're a rookie parent. Kat Armstrong Yes. Dr. Darrell Bock So, what exactly does that mean? Kat Armstrong I have a four-year-old, so, I'm pretty busy, these days, chasing him around. I mean, I work fulltime, but, yeah, I'm a rookie parent: I don't know what I'm doing. [Laughter] Dr. Darrell Bock Okay, that's good. So, we look forward to the results of that right down the years, exactly, right, when we're in the post-Millennial generation, and they write a piece on why post-Millennials are over the church? Kat Armstrong Yes, we're not saving for college; we're just saving for therapy. [Laughter] Dr. Darrell Bock That's great. And you also run a ministry called Polished – tell us a little bit about that. Kat Armstrong I serve as the executive director, and I cofounded this nonprofit nine years ago, with another DTS grad. And we share the Gospel with young professional women that de-churched, un-churched, or over-churched. Dr. Darrell Bock I like that: "de-churched," that's an interesting phrase – I'm sure we'll be talking a little bit about that, as we move along. Well, that's our crew, here. Let me introduce what we're gonna talk about. As I mentioned, Sam wrote a piece, a while ago, called "12 Reasons Millennials Are Over Church." Now, I do a lot of speaking, and because I hang out in the seminary, I get asked a lot of questions about Millennials, when I speak. And it's usually coming from an older generation, the generation that I belong to. And usually the question goes something like this – it's expressed in a variety of ways, depending on how soft or hard the question wants to be asked, but basically the thrust of the question is: "Why don't Millennials get it?" or, "What's wrong with Millennials?" or whatever. And I find myself defending Millennials on a regular basis, because I hang out with y'all, and y'all are cool, and so – Nika Spaulding I know [crosstalk]. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, just awesome, right? Just awesome. [Laughter] Nika Spaulding [Crosstalk] we're okay. Dr. Darrell Bock And the point I like to make is that there are sensitivities that exist in the Millennial generation, that somehow we missed those genes on our end, and they're good traits, they're things that people ought to be concerned about and ought to listen to. And then I slip in on the side that as a Boomer I've got a few concerns, too. [Laughter] So, anyway, so this should be a fun conversation. The article opens like this: "Only four percent of the Millennial generation are Bible-based believers. This means that 96 percent of Millennials likely don't live out the teachings of the Bible, value the morals of Christianity, and probably won't be found in a church." And so, the article is an attempt to explain why, so you've gone through, really, 12 reasons that you think are aspects of why Millennials struggle with the church. And you've got some other statistics – further on it says, "Only 2 in 10 Americans under 30 believe attending a church is important or worthwhile; 59 percent of Millennials raised in the church have dropped out; 35 percent of Millennials have an anti-church stance, believing the church does more harm than good." So they're the least-likely age group of anyone to attend church, and this is so by far – this is something we hear about regularly. And Kat and I have gone through a period, after the election, in which we also discussed this issue more privately about what's going on, particularly with Millennial women. So we'll come to that down the road, but I'm just gonna dive in, okay? "Number one: Nobody is listening to us." I am. [Laughter]
Kat Armstrong You might be – you're one of the few. Dr. Darrell Bock I'm one of the few, huh? Okay. It says: "Millennials value voice and receptivity above all else. When church forges ahead without ever asking for our input, we get the message loud and clear: nobody cares what we think. Why, then, should we blindly serve an institution that we cannot change or shape?" And then, you do have suggestions for solutions: "Creating regular outlets for young adults; inviting Millennials to serve on leadership teams and boards; and hiring a young adults pastor who has the desire and skillset to connect with Millennials." So, that's a good start – fill it out: How do I do a better job of listening? Sam Eaton Yeah, just start by getting to know the people in your church. Millennials just wanna, man, they just wanna voice what's inside of them and what's going on. I think we'll talk a little bit later, but most importantly, they want people walking with them, not preaching at them. And if it's only a one-way conversation, I just don't feel like going, quite honestly, because I've got a lot of experience, too, that I wanna share and bring to the table. Not that I have all the answers, but I wanna be heard, I think, and that's just a human trait – I think everybody wants to be heard and seen. Nika Spaulding Yeah, and I think we were taught that our voice matters, right? You think about the education system – I'm sure you feel this – you know, gone are the days of rows, right, and everybody's facing the teachers. Now you go in the classrooms, and they're sitting in tables, there's collaboration, and we're taught that that's a really high value of our society. And so, when you walk into a church, and the only opportunity you have is pews facing forward, and there's not a chance for collaboration or to be heard, it can't help but be received, at times, that we're not being listened to, and that our voice doesn't matter. And so, I think we are the largest generation, and probably the most studied, right? So the research is out there to learn about us, as well as within your church. And so, for those hoping to reach Millennials, I think the information is certainly out there and available for them to look at. Dr. Darrell Bock And you're not as strange as people suggest, right? Nika Spaulding No, I'm not. [Laughter] No, we're pretty weird, but we're earnest, and I think people enjoy getting to know us, for sure. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, and I think "earnestness" is a good word, that there is a sensitivity to Millennials that I think drives a lot of their concerns at a relational level, that are important to the church. And so, from that standpoint, certainly worth turning an ear towards. Kat, any observations on that one? "Nobody's listening to us." Kat Armstrong I think, yeah, there's definitely a gap between the folks who have left, like, they've made their exit. And so, we also need to have conversations with folks who have completely left. And that just takes a lot of work. When it comes down to it, if – I'm married to a pastor, and Nika is a pastor – I mean, there are so few resources, so little time, and so many needs. And so many times we gravitate towards the people who have the loudest voice inside the church, and what Millennials, what's Sam's written about is that they've left. So, now the conversation's even more challenging, 'cause we have to go to them, start a relationship, and then really listen. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay, so that's one group, the group that kind of needs to be approached, and almost, in one sense, won back. And then there's another group that's kind of floating around the edges, still hanging in there, okay, but assessing, right? Kat Armstrong Mm-hmm. Nika Spaulding Absolutely. Dr. Darrell Bock And that's a challenging group, as well. Okay, well, I'm building the atmosphere, here, for this. [Laughter] "Number two: We're sick of hearing about values and mission statements." Oh man, I love this one. [Laughter] And then, I love the way you opened it: "Sweet Moses, people, give it a rest." Okay, so, enough about mission, okay. "Of course, in an organization, it's important to be moving in the same direction, but that should be easier for Christians than anyone else, because we already have a leader to follow." And then you talk about the core commandments of loving God and loving others. "So why does the church need a mission statement anyway?" So, "Solution: Stop wasting time on religious mumbo-jumbo, and get back to the heart of the Gospel. We're not impressed with the hours you brag about spending behind closed doors, wrestling with Christianese words on a paper. [Laughter] We're impressed with actions and service." I'm glad you don't say what you think. [Laughter] Nika Spaulding Sam is in that rare space where a blogger comes from behind the screen [crosstalk] in front of it, so – [Laughter] Dr. Darrell Bock Exactly right, yes, this is called an "outing." [Laughter] So, tell us what's going on, here. You're really about, rather than putting it in words on paper and having to rearticulate what you think is transparent and obvious about what we should be engaged in, we should be engaged in it, right? Sam Eaton Yeah, I think Millennials are drawn to authenticity and transparency. And, yes, we need a common mission, we need to know where we're going as an organization, but we're just not impressed with a ten-week sermon series on the new mission statement, for the third year in a row. It's just a little exhausting. We're impressed by service and action, specifically, serving the poor, which we're gonna talk about next. Nika Spaulding Yeah, I think as a pastor I can totally appreciate the mission statement, right? I mean, I think leaders have to remove confusion, bringing clarity. I think any mission statement that doesn't get at the heart of the Gospel is gonna be a miss, certainly, for this generation. But I think part of it is you're talking about the authenticity piece. When your mission statement is only an aspirational value and not a realized one, I think that is what becomes exhausting. That if the church says, "We care about the poor, we care about the disenfranchised, and we care about the Gospel," and then they do, then the mission statement works. But if the mission statement is, like you say, Christianese, these words that half the time we're not even sure what they mean, and then we don't see that movement, I think that is what becomes exhausting. And so, as someone on a church staff, I'm, like, "Well, hey, I think – " you know, I have goals I wanna put out there for my women, we have vision. I do sit in those meetings – they can go a little long, I can totally agree with that. [Laughter] But I do think to just go – for leaders to go, "Are we about this mission that we keep putting in front of our people?" Because there is the need to continue to clarify what our vision is, 'cause it leaks, it leaks out, and you keep doing that. But if you say you're about the poor, then be about the poor; if you say you're about the Gospel, then, gosh, I hope your church is evangelizing on a regular basis. And so, those are some of the things I think I'm seeing among our generation. So, Kat, what – I see you –
Kat Armstrong I totally agree. So, I think you really hit on something: I think it's integrity, for this Millennial generation. I think that they value integrity at such a deep part of their core. It's almost hard for me to talk about. I mean, I think that they – we're listening, that's what I think. And I think many times we look at Millennials and we think, "Ah, they're just Snowflakes," or, "They're whiny," or, "They're uncommitted," or, "They're fickle – " Nika Spaulding Easy, easy – [Laughter] Kat Armstrong I hear this a lot. I hear this a lot. And you know what it comes down to? Humans are broken, so I think that those problems existed in every generation. I think Millennials are serious about integrity in a way we've never seen before. So when they say, "Look, I hear your mission statement – I need it to actually align with the output. And then, also, if you say you're really about loving God and loving others, why do you have so much time devoted just to parsing a sentence that we're gonna put on a brochure?" I think a lot of it has to do with, "Let's have some integrity behind our words." Dr. Darrell Bock So, you're talking about a walk that comes alongside the talk, that's really in there. Yeah, I mean, you've got James on your side, probably Jesus, "the one who hears the word of God and does it," that kind of thing – those are probably good allies to have. So, that's point two – well taken. Okay: "Helping the poor isn't a priority." Now, this is a legitimate complaint, I think. "My heart is broken for how radically self-centered and utterly American our institution has become. Let's clock the number of hours the average church-attender spends in church-type activities – Bible studies, meetings, groups, social functions, books clubs, planning meetings, talking about building community, discussing a new mission statement – " and you've even got ". . ." which means the list goes on. [Laughter] "Now, let's clock the number of hours spent serving 'the least of these,'" and then, "Oh, awkward." "Solutions: Stop creating more Bible studies and Christian activity. Community happens best in service with a shared purpose. Survey your members asking them what injustice or cause God has placed on their hearts, then connect people who have similar passions. And then, create group serve dates once a month where anyone can show up and make a difference." I know I'm in a group that, occasionally, instead of meeting together for dinner and just sharing, actually tries, periodically, to engage in ministries around the city. We've gone into some of the ministries that are feeding the poor, and that kind of thing, but that's just a start. I mean, really what you're talking about is a regular commitment to reflect on what's going on. So let's fill that one out: Helping the poor isn't a priority – we need to see more of that.
Sam Eaton Well, let's start by clarifying: I'm not saying we shouldn't study the Word of God. Nika Spaulding Oh, okay. [Laughs] Sam Eaton We should be studying that every single day – you should be in a Bible study, you should be in a small group, but if that's it, you're kind of missing the point of this book. I just don't know how you can read James, or Matthew 25, "the least of these," and then just go back to your normal American life and not live it out, like we were just talking about. Yeah, and even more so, just – I'm just gonna let that go, so I'll pass it off to you – sorry. Dr. Darrell Bock All right, Kat? Kat Armstrong Okay, so, not to drive back this integrity issue, but I think it goes back to that again, of them saying, "Okay, I've read the book. I've read the Good Book. I've sat in a lot of sermons. I've filled up on the truth. And now I need to go out and do it." So, I think that they're really aligning their values with their speech, and we're starting to see – again, I keep using that word, but – integrity. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, and one of the tensions that I think we have is just that churches tend to create activities that operate around the church, but ultimately the church is designed to have an arrow that's going out. And so, it isn't designed for what's happening within the four walls; it actually is designed to be engaged in mission, engaged with other people, engaged in taking the Gospel out. And that is gonna require time and sacrifice, in order to happen. Nika Spaulding Yeah, and it's a really global generation, so when we talk about poverty, they're not just even looking in the local context. I mean, they're looking across the globe, and demanding accountability for government structures, and things like that, as well. And so, I think they feel the need. I mean, I think they're traveling, they're seeing things that they maybe only read about in past generations. And then they've been told their whole lives, "Hey, the church's job – " and this is sort of the culture I grew up – "the church's job is to care for the poor; the government's job is not," right? And so, now we're even in this political landscape of where they're going, "But the church is not – and you're telling me I can't vote for somebody 'cause that's not their – " you know, and so, it is getting even more muddy. And so, I think this issue is gonna continue to be something that the more missionaly-minded churches, I think, are gonna continue to see younger generations come in, because they deeply feel that burden for the poor. Dr. Darrell Bock The way I like to talk about it is, the world gets bigger and smaller simultaneously. And what I mean by that is that we're aware of far more, we're aware of what more is going on, because our news is much more global than it was, although American news is actually pretty tightly confined. I've lived in Europe, and you turn on a news broadcast in Europe, and you're looking at 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 countries in a 30-minute period. Here, if you go overseas, it's for a few minutes, unless you do a documentary or something like that. But still, the point is, there are a lot of needs out there that can be met. And actually, most ministry that's designed to be effective, and that you can really put your hands on and put a stamp on, that has an impact, is local. I mean, unless you're engaged in ministry through a mission organization or something like that, most people's experience is gonna be a local impact, have a local impact, and have a local ministry. Okay, well, we're behind, so let's see if I can catch up. [Laughter] Okay, "Four: We're tired of you blaming the culture – " I'm feeling a little beat up [laughter], but that's okay – "from Elvis hips to rap music – " oh my goodness – "from Footloose to twerking, every older generation comes to the same conclusion: the world is going to pot faster than the state of Colorado. We're aware of the downfalls of the culture – believe it or not, we're actually living in it, too. Solutions: Put the End Times rhetoric to rest; focus on real solutions and real impact for our immediate community; and explicitly teach us how our lives should differ from the culture. If this teaching isn't happening in your life, check out the book Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working, by Craig Groeschel." So there's even a direct suggestion, here. This one I'm gonna push back a little bit on, but I'm gonna push back in kind of a crazy way. I think you're right: I think that sometimes the church oftentimes does blame the culture, and most of the stuff that you hear about the culture is negative.
I like to tell my students that, when you look at the culture, you oughta look for the what I call the gropings for God or the gropings for purpose. That if you do that, you actually have the opportunity to build some bridges towards what the Bible is trying to pull us towards. And so, I do think that, rather than always blaming the culture or speaking of the culture negatively, we do need to do a better job of looking for those places where we can connect to the culture. But there's always gonna be that challenge, there, because the culture is something – Scripture does talk about it, a little bit; it calls it "the World," and that's generally not a positive recommendation. So, responses? I'll go anyway for this one.
Nika Spaulding Yeah, I think the World – , I've studied those, "Movies are gonna be the end of me," and things like that, right? But I think what you're getting at – and I think is so right, Dr. Bock – is, I think Millennials need help to interpret the culture. The option to not be in it is pretty much gone. I mean, things that our parents vigilantly try to keep us from being exposed to, we walk out of our houses and see. And so, rather than hearing it's evil and dangerous – because we have a hard time disconnecting the culture from those who are in it that we love as well – help us interpret it, help us see a world view in it. Help us to see, I think, the beauty that is in certain artforms, that maybe we would've said, "Please don't go see that," and now going, "Well, there is a redemptive message in that." And there's still a part of it that I do need to say, "Hey, that is of the World, and not of the things that are righteous and good and should be in front of me." And I think that kind of teaching requires nuance, and that's scary. And so, I think it's important that those who are teaching the Word can handle that kind of nuance and go, "Hey, here's how we're gonna help you navigate this world, that is utterly broken, and yet, has redemptive value throughout it that we can find and mine out of it and see."
Dr. Darrell Bock Any other thoughts? Kat Armstrong I love that you brought this up, Sam, I really do, because I think that, when we blame shift on society, I think there's – we double-click on it too much, that we think, "Okay, this is obviously society, obviously our culture has ruined this Millennial generation." When, I think a lot of times Millennials are living out exactly what they've been reared to live. And I think if we send them out and say, "This is your enemy, culture is your enemy, society is your enemy, they're proposing things to you that are not true," we can come back and go, "Okay, at the end of The Beauty and the Beast, all things were restored and renewed." You know, that's one simple example of a movie that we're hearing a lot of pushback on, that's "society" or "culture," and how it's ruining our generation. And at the end of the day, we can look at that, just like you said, and build some bridges to the Gospel, and nuance what we're teaching our younger generation on how to face culture. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay, five, really, really quickly: "The 'you can't sit with us' effect. There's a life-changing movie all humans must see, regardless of gender, and that, of course, is the 2004 classic Mean Girls." Nika Spaulding Obviously. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay, confession: I haven't seen it. Kat Armstrong What? Nika Spaulding Yet – not yet. Dr. Darrell Bock "In the film, the most popular girl in school forgets to wear pink on a Wednesday, cardinal sin, to which Gretchen Wieners screams, 'You can't sit with us.'" [Laughter] So, what exactly is this one all about? And we've got to really hustle on this one. Sam Eaton I've just heard so many people talk about church is like a high school, where there are clicks, and nobody is welcome. And I've lived that out over and over again; I've talked to my mom about it, who isn't a part of church as much anymore, and she feels the same way. So we have to find a way to be more welcoming, more compassionate, and get people connected, and stop blaming them for not being connected. Dr. Darrell Bock Okay, fair enough. But let me just stop and make a little bit of an observation: I think a lot of the aspirations that you talk about are aspirations that are shared across the church. That people want to have authenticity, that they want to have integrity, that they want churches to be better, more sensitive, more engaged, et cetera. Of course, one of the tensions that everyone has is the management of all the time that that takes, with rookie moms who raise kids, right, and that kind of thing. And so, one of the challenges is helping the church actually get there, and think about how to get there, and the prioritization that it takes to get there – we'll talk about that. So, "Six: Distrust and misallocation of resources. Over and over again, we've been told to tithe and give ten percent of our income to the church, but where does that money actually go? Millennials, more than any other generation, don't trust institutions, for we've witnessed over and over how corrupt and self-serving they can be. We want painstaking transparency; we wanna see on the church's homepage a document where we track every dollar." Oh, this is exciting, a webpage with an Excel sheet. [Laughter] So, "Solution: Go out of your way to make all your financial records readily accessible; create an environment of frugality; move to zero-based budgeting, where departments aren't allocated certain budget amounts, but are asked to justify each purchase. And challenge the church staff to think about the opportunity cost: could these dollars be better used to serve the Kingdom?" Nika, I'm gonna start off with you, since you manage part of a budget in the church [crosstalk] challenge?
Nika Spaulding So, no, I think you should tithe more, and ministers should get paid more, so – [Laughter] You know, this is an interesting one, because I feel the burden of not only leading Millennials, but also Gen-Xers, Baby Boomers, every generation. And so, the frugality part has a give and a take, as well. I mean, if I had uncomfortable chairs and very little resources, that maybe Millennials would feel more comfortable with, my older generation might not as much. But I do think what you're driving at is this sense of, it is really important that we manage our money well and that I can justify where every dollar goes. And so, we just have a rule where, if my budget went on the front of the Dallas Morning News, would I be comfortable with that? And I think that holds me to a different level of accountability, as opposed to, "Well, we can go eat at that fancy lunch that maybe 60 percent of my body can't even afford to eat on their regular basis," that does make people uncomfortable, and maybe rightfully so. And so, I think this is one where I would be uncomfortable with my salary going on the webpage – maybe not that level of transparency – but maybe more transparency is, I think, a broader issue. And so, especially when you think about debt, and I think that is part of, where, we're being told, "Hey, don't take on all this debt to buy this house, all this – " We're being lectured all the time of, "You guys are living beyond your means," and then you look at this $5 million debt of a building, and you kind of go, "Well, I mean, pot calling the kettle black, here, a little bit."
And so, I think where the money's going should absolutely – people have access to that. And then I think every minister's gotta go, "Do I feel comfortable with this? Would I feel comfortable telling the 20-year-old who just gave me the 10 percent of their $12,000.00 salary, and the 60-year-old who's a little bit farther along that also gave me 10 percent of their $150,000.00 salary, am I valuing their contributions, and am I taking those into consideration as we spend money?" And I think that's a huge call.
Dr. Darrell Bock Kat? Kat Armstrong We've gotten a lot of pushback with Polished, specifically when we launch new chapters, because we're serving Millennials. They want the Excel spreadsheet printed out; they want QuickBooks to output all of those documents, right; they wanna see the PNL themselves. And so we've learned that – we actually pass those out upfront to people who might volunteer with us, because of exactly what Sam's saying. They wanna know every category where we're spending dollars. And many times it's not because – it is because they wanna hold us accountable. It's also because they want to contribute, so they wanna go, "You know what, I know somebody who can do this video for us for free," or, "I work for a company that does this pro bono work." So, we've definitely felt that. It was scary at first, honestly, to put that much out there, but the truth of the matter is that you get a lot of buy-in when you can say, "This is where every dollar is going." Sam Eaton And I just wanna jump in quick. I think you'll find the nonprofit world is doing this a lot better than the church world. You can go to Compassion International, and on their homepage, you can see their tax returns from last year. And that gives me the freedom to give; I'm happy to give; I wanna give to them, 'cause I can see that that money is making a difference. Dr. Darrell Bock See what's happening with – exactly. Okay, "Seven: We want to be mentored, not preached at. Preaching just doesn't reach our generation like our parents and grandparents." That's something we need to talk about, okay? "See Millennial church attendance: we have millions of podcasts and YouTube videos of pastors the world over at our fingertips." I do think that makes a difference in this. "For that reason, the currency of good preaching is at its lowest value in history. Millennials crave relationships, to have someone walking beside them through the muck. Solutions: Create a database of adult mentors and young adults looking for someone to walk with them; ask the older generation to be intentional with Millennials in your church." I think what I'm hearing in this – tell me if I'm wrong – is, beyond the mere message at 11:00 on Sunday, there are relationships that we are really after, and relationships that mean something. Sam Eaton Let me clarify: I'm not saying don't preach the Gospel – of course, preach the Gospel, every Sunday. But what I'm saying is, if you're relying on that to drive Millennials into your church, it's just not gonna work. Because, if I'm struggling with fear today, I can sit at home in my sweatpants, and find 50 sermons by Francis Chan about fear. And so, yes, keep preaching, but also, come around us, mentor – I mean, mentoring is discipling, right? That's what we're talking about, here, is, "Teach me how to live these things out, don't just talk at me." Dr. Darrell Bock And I think the important thing here is that, what the local church can give that a Francis Chan may not be able to, at least quite to this level, is a localized form of the walk of faith, which is important in actually being in context. Now, that assumes that the pastor who's doing the preaching knows his congregation, and interacts with the congregation in a significant kind of way, which a whole other conversation. But still, the point is that there is a way to engage with people in their local setting. I tell my students, "When you preach and think, think about all the vocations that are represented in that room, from 9:00 to 5:00, on Monday to Friday. And do a little preaching into that space in time, because that's where most people's struggles are coming from, and that's what they're wrestling with." So it's an important conversation, it seems to me, to think about how to put together the relational aspects of what church is supposed to be, next to the message and content that's coming. You know, one of the things that the older generation does say regularly to the younger generation is, "There are content needs that also exist, here, that have to be dealt with, and have to be approached. And preaching, at least, is one aspect of doing that." But your response back, oftentimes, is, "Yeah, but preaching alone, words alone, aren't enough – we need to see it in practice." That's all very, very fair. Number eight: "We wanna feel valued." Now, I think you've said this in a variety of ways and in several spots. It says, "Churches tend to rely heavily on the young adults to serve – you're single; what else do you have to do?" This actually is gonna tap into something I wanna turn in kind of a gender direction, a little bit. And that is, not only is this a legitimate complaint, but sometimes the way we ask certain people to serve in the church is restricted by the way we perceive their value to be.
So, "We wanna feel valued. Millennials are told by this world, from the second we wake up to the second we take a sleeping pill, we aren't good enough. We desperately need the church to tell us we are enough exactly the way we are, no conditions or expectations." Then, "Solutions: Return to point one – listening, and go out of your way to thank people who are giving so much of their life to the church." So, appreciation for that value is also important. Floor is open.
Nika Spaulding Yeah, I think for the gender one, I mean, Kat and I have talked at length about this, and not only do I read the articles about why Millennials are leaving, but I'm also reading articles that talks about the massive exodus of women leaving the church, as well. And you have women today are more educated than we've ever been; they're CEOs of companies; Kat's a CEO of a company – she started her own ministry. And then let's take Kat, for example – then she walks into a church, and she's told, "Well, your husband can serve in this capacity, and we would love for you to hold babies," right? And there's a sense of, Kat's going, "I have real transferable skills and gifts that I'd love to use, and the margin to use them." And so, I think that's part of where transitional leadership is gonna be huge in the church, so we have to continue to make space for young leaders to not be looked down upon because they're young, but given opportunities to use their gifts, male and female. And, obviously, for what's appropriate for your particular expression of the church, and all of that. But where women can use their gifts, you know, you've got these lawyers and these doctors and these CEOs walking into your congregation, now – let's use them, let's deploy them; they have real skills and gifts. And so, I think that's really important, Sam, a point, just to see them and use them.
Dr. Darrell Bock And then, to affirm that contribution to the church is very, very important, and to keep your eye on that. Anything else on this one? Kat Armstrong You know, Aaron, my husband, was the singles pastor and young adults pastor, for several years; now he's the lead pastor. I've been working with young professional women, mostly single or young married. And overarching all of this is a conversation about just that word you used: value. "Do you really want us here? You say you want us," and then we haggle over, "Why they aren't coming?" right, but then when they do show up, everything's about families, families, families. And I have a family, and yet I hear that word on Sunday morning and my ears perk up, because I've brought a whole row of young professional women that have been divorced, or are going through a divorce, or are single and loving it, or maybe they're adopting – I actually have a girlfriend adopting a child, and she's single. So, I think that we're placing a lot of value – I've preached about this many times: marriage and motherhood, for women, have been elevated to a place of idolatry. And we've gotta start really, from the pulpit, undermining some of these idols, and elevating Mark 12:30 and 31, you know, that women, men, singles, married, divorced, whatever it is, we're called to love God, with everything, and we're called to love everyone. But we've really nuanced what that looks like in the church, and I think Millennials have just said, "Yeah, that's not my life – I can't even relate to anyone on stage that looks like me, talks like me, or has a lifestyle like I do." And so, like Nika said, we've gotta make some room on stage for singles, divorced, young married with kids, working women, men staying home – I mean, I know I'm stepping on some toes, but if we have a singular focus on Sunday morning, that's who we will attract. And what Nika hit on is that Millennials, specifically women, they've surpassed the amount of men obtaining advanced educational degrees.
Sharon Miller put this in Christianity Today, in 2011, and the title of her article was "Women Are the Newest US Mission Field." And it described at length that women are having children later in life, they're choosing to have less children, over 70 percent of them are going to work fulltime for the rest of their lives, and the church hasn't necessarily calibrated to that. So then, when we come, when Sam says, "We wanna feel valued," I know as a professional woman I show up on Sunday, and I don't – only from my husband have I heard sermons about women in the workplace, you know, applying the sermon as a woman to my job. So, I'll leave at that, but I think singles as well, there's a really significant amount of work we've gotta do – and you've talked about it in the podcast, before.
Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, we do a lot of faith and works stuff, and, actually, I had meetings last week with – over the last month, actually, I've had two meetings with two different women who work with women in the professional world. And we're talking about how do we make that space clear to people, and have people think through what that looks like from the standpoint of the church. We could spend a ton more time here, but time calls. [Laughter] Number nine: "We want you to talk to us about controversial issues, because no one is." Okay, I think this is the blackhole in this list. And what I mean by that: I couldn't agree with this more. This is what The Table Podcasts have literally been all about from the start, is to walk into those areas of – you know, life in a broken world is a life lived in tension. How do we help Christians walk into that tension, embrace the reality that's there, and then think through how to live in that context Christianly. That's really what we're all about. And so, the idea of stepping back from these controversial issues, because it's too political or whatever, I don't think that works for people. They're looking for help, and what they want, they don't want us to speak into the politics; they want us to speak into the spiritual dimensions of what's going on, and how to assess it. That most of the debates that we have are full of tension, and negotiating tension, and both sides, in some cases, are oftentimes raising legitimate elements. But what doesn't happen is, we don't put those elements side by side in relationship to one another in a way that's healthy, in terms of how we talk about them, et cetera. I'm talking too much about this one. [Laughter] But I'm just gonna open it. "We want us to talk about controversial issues, because no one is." That sounds like a cry for help, and in an appropriate way, with the hope that there is something that can be said, here. Am I reading that one right?
Sam Eaton Yeah, I mean, we're living in a culture that says the biggest car, the biggest house, the best body, is the way to happiness. And we know that's not true – at least, we're starting to figure that out, 'cause we're coming to church, that's what we're doing. But we need the truth. We need the truth – we can't sugarcoat what's going on and we can't avoid these things. Tell us what the Bible says about these issues, and then give us some space to wrestle with it ourselves, and let us talk to God about what the Bible says on homosexuality, or any of those issues. We wanna talk about these things. Nika Spaulding I think gone are the days, too, of propriety in our culture, where there were even some contexts where you didn't discuss politics. I mean, you didn't discuss in certain – and that is gone with – I mean, there is not a safe space for me that I'm not gonna get bombarded by some question of what happened in the news, any time I'm with young people. And so, I think that politeness that maybe is a bygone day era is just, it's gone. So, it's being discussed, so, if I'm gonna discuss it with my friend over coffee at the Starbucks, and then, my friend's not a believer and they ask me, "Well, what do you believe, as a Christian?" and then I come to my church and I don't feel like I can get help, that feels really scary. And it almost feels like it puts me in a position of defeat, you know, and so, I think that is where – Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, I think it raises the question whether the church has anything to say into that space, and that's a terrible place to be. Nika Spaulding Absolutely, yeah. An interesting statistic is so many – you know, Kinnaman talks about the three different types of Millennials, right? The nomads, the exiles, and the prodigals. And he's, like, really, only of the three, prodigals, they're leaving Jesus; the other two are staying with Jesus, they're just leaving church. And what they're doing is they're podcasting – they're listening to you, they're listening to others who are willing to take that conversation on. And it's a little safer space in here, I mean, there's no people [crosstalk] we're tied, right? [Laughter] And so – Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, right, and no one comments on Facebook about what we're saying. [Laughter] Nika Spaulding Yeah, yeah, so, but you can ignore those – it's the upfront facial meeting, after you've stepped off the stage. And so, I think it's gonna take courage, and I believe that there are ministers that are willing to be courageous. And I think that's gonna be the call of pastors, as they get equipped here and step out into the world, we're gonna have to be told, "Hey, you're gonna have to be courageous enough to talk about these issues that may land you on the front of the Dallas Morning News, but your people need it." Dr. Darrell Bock Kat, anything on this one? Kat Armstrong Well, I'm thinking of Russell Moore, right now. I don't know if I should bring him up, but what I've seen with the young professional women I work with – un-churched, de-churched, and over-churched – is they look at someone like Russell Moore and they're, like, "Yes, finally, someone who I feel like is articulate, highly intelligent, theologically trained, he's willing to talk about things that make people uncomfortable, he is totally fine saying, 'This is wrong. This is right. Somewhere in the middle is where we're gonna have to figure out how to coexist with each other.'" And I think you're gonna see even more of that, where, there's a real safety net in knowing, "If I need to come to a church and say, 'My tennis partner has transitioned, and now she is a man,' you know, how am I supposed to start a conversation with her/him?'" You know, seriously – Nika Spaulding Without binary options, right, "That's wrong. You're right. You gotta stop playing." Kat Armstrong Exactly. And so, I think, in many ways, we've talked a lot about Millennials and culture, and they're a product of culture – we're really in it. We're really in it, and for the purpose of seeing it all restored, all redeemed. So we need our ministers – and I'm thankful I'm married to one who's like this – to step in the mess with us, and go, "Yeah, I haven't waded through these waters – let's pull all of the information we can, from the left, from the right, from the conservative to the liberal – let's wade through all of it and try to figure it out." Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, and I think one of the hard tensions, here, is that we all know on the one hand kind of what the Bible says about certain things, but then you've got to live and relate to the people who aren't there. So, how do you do that pastorally well? I'd say one of the greatest challenges in mission – this has always been the case – is the combination and the tension between the challenge that the Gospel makes towards people and the invitation that's bound up in it. And being able to balance those two things well is actually at the core of doing any good evangelism and ministry. And so, that's often a hard balance to keep, because the fact is we live in a broken world and people aren't oftentimes where they ought to be. And so, how do you do that well? Okay, I'm gonna try and bound three together, here, as we wrap up. "The public perception. It's time to focus on changing public perception of the church within the community." This is what I call "Jimmy Cagney Theology," which is, the church's message tends to be heard as, "You dirty rat, you shouldn't be doing that," [laughter] and there's no good message in there. Okay, so, public perception of the church – I'm all aboard with what that represents. "Eleven: Stop talking about us unless you're actually going to do something." Okay, so, I'm talking about you, but I have you here, all right? [Laughter] And then, third, "Twelve: You're falling to adapt. Here's the bottom line: Church, you aren't reaching Millennials. Enough with the excuses and the blame. We need to accept reality and intentionally move towards this generation that is terrifyingly anti-church. The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change." And then you quote that great theologian, Bill Clinton [laughter], and –
Sam Eaton I made the conservatives really happy about that one. [Laughter] Dr. Darrell Bock So, really, this is the way I view this entire piece: It really is a heartfelt plea, from a Millennial who cares about the church, that the church do a better job in reaching people we all care about. Fair enough? Sam Eaton I got a lot of hate for this – I'm just gonna throw that out there – thousands of very angry e-mails and comments about what I wrote. Which has been tough – it's been tough to live in this tension of – this was my love letter to the American Church. It was, like, I love the Church like Christ loved the Church, and I wanna see it prospering, and I look around and I see my generation has left. And so, I just sat down and started having a conversation, "God, what – what? What are we missing?" and I felt it rising up even in me, a person who's been serving in a church very steadily for the last six years. So, that's kind of where I'm landing. Dr. Darrell Bock Mm-hmm, yeah, it's okay – I mean, we're hearing, you know – we say – this is something I like to say, that Christianity is ultimately about how God changes people and transforms them. But if there's no change, there's no transformation. So, how can we preach and teach transformation, and then not be willing to change? That doesn't make any sense at all. So, to be challenged to do better is not something that should threaten the church; it's something the church should welcome, particularly from a voice or a set of voices that says, "We really care about what goes on in the church." Kat Armstrong Sam, I wrote an article, recently, for Fathom Magazine, about repentance, and how reaching Millennials, the conversation will have to start with, "I am so sorry. You're right, like, what you just described to me, you're right. The US Census Bureau is backing it up, your personal experience verifies it – that's on us. We messed it up." And I think that is the bridge towards change, it's first accepting some responsibility and saying, "You're right, Millennials, you're right, and we're so sorry. Let us rebuild it together." On the flipside, I'm working with women who've exited, they're gone, and on the flipside I'm saying to them, "We're not the same without you, so we can't fix this without you. We've gotta have your voice, we've gotta have your presence, we've gotta have your perspective to do it." And so, we're in a hard tension – I even know for my husband and myself – in ministry, just, we're trying to bring people in who've left, but that requires them being willing to stay. And then we're also reaching folks who are, like, "They made their bed, and they need to lie in it, now. You know, they are lazy Snowflakes that just need to know the Word of God better." And we've gotta come together, and I think that repentance is the first step, really, in restoring trust. I think that trust is completely gone, with Millennials, and to bring them back in, we do have to be willing to say, "I'm sorry." And even in me writing that article, I got so much pushback about, "What do you mean? What do we need to be sorry about?" and I think that's the disconnect, Millennials are going, "See? That's why we don't feel heard, because, if you had a conversation with me, you would know why I left."
Tim Keller – now, Tim Keller didn't get as much heat about it, but – he published something, last week, that was online, and he said the best way to reach his city with the Gospel was to get to a point with someone who's un-churched or de-churched, and for him to be able to say, "I get it, now." And to be able to say to that un-churched person, "Is this what you mean?" and for them to respond by saying, "Yes, that's exactly what I mean," now, that is hard work. That means we're gonna have to put some defenses down, as the Church, and say, "I'm gonna take some ownership on this."
Dr. Darrell Bock Okay, now, we obviously just got started, but I wanna thank you all for coming in and talking about this. It's a very, very important topic – people do need to be heard, that's why we've had you on: we want you to be heard. And then, one little word of just encouragement: keep talking; keep listening. There are some things older folks are saying that also need to be heard, but that's another podcast. [Laughter] All right, so, thank you. And we thank you for being a part of The Table, and hope you'll join us again, soon.
Darrell Bock Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I’m Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. My guest today is Scott Horrell, Dr. Horrell, who is professor of systematic theology here at Dallas Seminary. We’ve been colleagues a long time and he’s a veteran of foreign wars here on The Table. We’ve had him for many different topics, and today we’re discussing the Nicene Creed and in particular, we’re looking at the part of the confession that deals with the son, and particularly the person of the son. We will be dealing with the works of the son later. Let me read this part of the creed and then we’re literally gonna go through it kind of a line at a time. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, so that note, before we even start, that begins and assumes the very beginning of the creed. We believe in one God and in one Lord Jesus Christ. Those are how those two kind of attach to each other because in the creed, the confession of the one God of course extends to the Father, Son, and Spirit. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of the same essence as the Father. And then the transition, towards his work, through Whom all things were made for us and for our salvation. And then we get into the list of His things that related to His incarnation. That’s the first half of the creed.
If you look at the creed, the discussion of the Father is very short. The discussion of the Spirit and all other things is relatively short, but the discussion of the Son is quite long and of course this tells us the background of the creed. So Scott, my opening question for you is let’s talk about the background of the creed, what it’s dealing with and why this middle section of the creed is so long.
Scott Horrell Well you have a long history of – from scripture, what, even in the first century, was beginning to happen in the church. So you have some who are – choose, who wanted to believe that Joseph was Jesus’s actual father. The Ebionites, they are called, they seem perhaps to be aligned with the Essenes, very aesthetic, separatist kind of a group. With the destruction of Jerusalem – and we don’t know much about them, but they scattered. There weren’t many to begin with, but probably into the upper Nile, southern Egypt or middle Egypt as we’d say today. And so they believed that Jesus was essentially a man and a good prophet, like John the Baptist. One to be revered, but not one to be worshipped. You have that extreme over here and yet on the other side, you have the docetic element beginning to enter in. These are the ones who wanted to believe that Jesus – this is a good Greek and Roman kind of idea – Jesus is an emanation of God. God’s the other indescribable, transcendent, ineffable God of sorts up there and that this God then works into or emanates down into this world. This world is contrary to God. The material world is evil. So it is the rational mind and all the rest that is true to what God is. And so Jesus was interpreted within that framework, as you well know, as a kind of vision of God, a – one that was not entirely human. Indeed this one who walked as a ghost would walk on the sand and leave no footprints. This one who was, in a sense, a god, not the God by any means. An emanation of god, yet not truly man. So all human or divine, but not man on the two sides.
And as we walk through church history, those were easy to get rid of, but we come to Marcionism and other beliefs. That was a docetic belief, where you have some that wanna say that Jesus was a good man, a Nazareth, and so good that God adopted him as Lord of the church. There were others that said no, that’s not good enough. We think that God is one person. They wanna protect the monarchy of God, the unity of God, of those who see God adopting is one form of that, but another form is to say well, God is one God, one person, but manifests Himself in different ways. The father sometimes, the son sometimes, the Holy Spirit sometimes, and that developed a little bit more. Sabellianism is where God is the Father in the Old Testament, the Son in the Gospels, and then the Holy Spirit as we hit Pentecost and move forward in history. God’s in this kind of migration, but God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Not as three persons, but manifestations or masks.
And then finally the really big question, as you know. You may have been asking this all along. That is Arius. Arius, an elder in Alexander, yet Arius was saying that the Son was the first creation of God, the highest through whom God created everything else, but that he is a creation and not the same substance as God. Not equally God as the Father, but a god, so to speak. And it is in that context, Arianism beginning to grow and the church not always clear on these things versus Alexander of Alexandria and his younger sidekick, Athanasius, and they were saying this cannot be. That following origin, in part, the Son has always been and is in fact eternally begotten of the Father. So it is in this context, Constantine had conquered the western empire, had moved, and finally in 324, conquered what he named humbly Constantinople after himself.
Darrell Bock We all should get the opportunity to do this. I think there’s a Horrell stadium somewhere in California. I’m proud of that, but –
Darrell Bock A relative or something like that. Scott Horrell There you go. Darrell Bock There you go. Scott Horrell But Constantine seems to have converted under Hosius, a Spanish bishop, and had Hosius traveling with him. And as they went through Rome and then finally conquered the eastern empire as well, he put Hosius in charge of resolving this tension between Arianism and really what we would call classical now Trinitarianism. Because the rift was fairly significant and Constantine himself wanted to bring unity to the church. In 325, through Hosius, he called a first ever – this comes after the persecutions of others. Now Constantine, sympathetic to Christianity, first ever really reunion of the leaders of the church to determine what do we believe and what we do not believe. And so Arius was present as was Alexander of Alexandria, and Athanasius, and so this creed is partially hammered out in 325. Now what we’re reading as the creed, as you well know, goes beyond that because this is really a 381 revision of the original 325 creed. Perhaps a little more background here would be helpful. Darrell Bock Okay, well, you’re going – you’re on a roll, so I’m not gonna stop you. Scott Horrell I don’t mean to be, but Arianism, though it was anathematized in the 325 Nicene Creed, Arius had a pernicious way of creeping back into the kingdom. And even persuaded Constantine himself toward an Arian view after the edict of Nicea, which was clearly Trinitarian. And so over the next several decades, we have emperors calling the shots on what is to be Christian doctrine. And so – in some ways – Arius would be put into a position or others who were Arian in their perspective or then regular Trinitarians. And Nicene Trinitarians would be put in place and you saw this oscillation back and forth as some were beginning to ask why are the emperors telling us what to believe as a church. You have Hilary Potiers in 365 writing a book on the Trinity in the west and in the east, you have what are called the Cappadocians. Basil of Caesarea, who was a little bit older bishop of Caesarea, in Asia Minor, by the way, not what we usually think of on the Mediterranean coast. And then his friend, Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil’s little brother, Gregory of Nyssa. And these were working through also the place of the Holy Spirit and with Athanasius, who was still alive during this time, working out to say east and west can come together around these terms that have – between Latin and Greek proved a little problematic. And saying we’re really saying the same thing if we understand what east and west are meaning by the Greek and Latin words they’re using.
Darrell Bock So part of the issue here was linguistic and the linguistic differences between the two languages and getting that sorted out and understood. Scott Horrell Yeah. So by 381, there was another council. Gregory of Nazianzus presided over at least the first part of that council and that’s what hammered out what we call now the Nicene Creed, which is in fact the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. Kind of a tongue twister there. Darrell Bock That’s right. Yeah, we just call it NC for short [laughs]. Scott Horrell There you go. Darrell Bock Thank you for the overview there. I kind of got a nice spectrum of what the options are running through the centuries. This is actually, in one sense, the culmination of a multi-century conversation that’s happening in the early church, in which different ways of trying to configure the relationship to the Father and the Son, and ultimately the Spirit are being articulated and trying to come to a common language about how to – one, how to express that and two, how to think about it. Scott Horrell Mm-hmm. What I see is right from the Scripture, there are two primary tracts. One orients around John 1, the prologue, and a Logos Christology, that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and was God. But then you have the baptismal formula as well, of the end of Matthew, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The church was dealing with both tracts and trying to put it together. Typically that baptismal formula, as you well know, became the framework with Justin Martyr and with early editions of what we call the Apostles’ Creed. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit trying to explain the Christian faith in light of that baptismal formula. As early as 150, we see both the Greek and shortly later, the Latin, first in the Greek versions of that Apostle’s Creed. And the churches working toward the language that capsulates what scripture is really teaching. Darrell Bock Yeah, and the easy way to think about this, ‘cause this is not easy thinking that you have to do, is to remember that Christianity emerged out of a Jewish background. It was absolutely committed to monotheism. There is only one god, but when religious rites are performed in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and you believe in one God, that is pushing you in a certain direction in terms of how you understand who God is. Because that is a divine category, if you will, of authority that’s being evoked as you engage in these rites in the name of or in the authority of this person whom you are appealing to. And so that kind of introduces the issue at one level very practical level where you go all right, we confess one god. We do. We perform religious rites in His name and out of His authority, and so if that’s in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, then we know which side of the divine human line or the divine creature line we’re operating on. That’s one dimension of it and then the other one that also is alluded to in the creed is the line between creator and creature. You’ve got the line tied to rites and to liturgy, for lack of a better term, that you’ve got, and then you’ve got these lines tied to the association with creation.
Thus, the appeal to John 1. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and then later on, the Word became flesh with all the background that that has. And that is deeply rooted in – the Logos theology is deeply rooted in Jewish language and expectation, that fuels into this. So that we get this phrase and this is an echo actually of 1 Corinthians 8. I’m looking at it, that we believe in one God and in one Lord Jesus Christ is an echo directly from 1 Corinthians 8:4-6, where we get a mini form of this what I call Binatarian confession there, where you get the mention of the Father and the Son explicitly.
Scott Horrell And you would argue that goes back to the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4. Darrell Bock Exactly correct. It’s rooted very much in the language of the Shema. This is the great monotheistic confession of Judaism, repeated in the synagogues from week to week, still repeated today. And so when Paul takes this language, in effect, splits it up between the God of Israel and the Lord Jesus Christ, he is making affirmation as he says there are many gods and many lords in the world, but for us, there is one God and one Lord, and he puts the Father and the Son in that category. That’s kind of the background that we’re dealing with here and Arius’ problem was he had a high view of Jesus. It’s just hadn’t promoted Him quite high enough. Fair enough? Scott Horrell Fair enough. I’m recalling probably six hours of conversation I had with someone who called this seminary and wanted to talk to me. He would not give me his name, but he was someone in the Jehovah Witness hierarchy. He kept insisting that no, he’s like God. He looks like God, but the essence of His attributes are not innate to Himself. They are given by the Father. He is a god, but not the God. Darrell Bock Yeah, it’s a common problem and the idea of thinking through who Jesus is and what He’s about is an important part obviously. In fact, it’s a core part of what makes Christianity Christianity. And it’s also, because of the centrality of the role of this figure as the redeemer, part of what makes Christianity a very unique expression. Not just to religion in general, but of monotheism in particular. Scott Horrell There’s an interesting survey. You’ve heard of the Lifeway Ligonier Ministries’ survey in the general public, but this comes from about 3,000 evangelicals and it was updated last September, at least as it was published in Christianity Today. And quite surprisingly, among professing evangelicals, 71 percent say, quote, Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. Woops, 71 percent, even though, a little disconnect here, they believe in the Trinity that God is one god and three persons. Ninety seven percent say that, but woops is right. And regarding the Holy Spirit, too, that He’s basically a force, not a person. Huge numbers there as well. This is not something merely remote to groups that would not call themselves classic Christians. This is very dear to our own churches. Darrell Bock Yes, and it’s actually part of one of the reasons why we decided to do a series on the Nicene Creed and talk in some detail about what is going in here. Because most people don’t quite have this aligned properly in terms of thinking through what it is theologically. Well, let’s begin to go through this a line at a time and we’ll kind of unpack what we have here and work on some of the detail. It says – it’s a strange way to begin though. This is the sentence that begins with a capital and in my – in the version that I’m reading here, and you normally don’t hear a sentence that begins and in one Lord Jesus Christ. There’s something hanging and so obviously we’re going back to the line that opens up the creed, we believe in one God and in one Lord Jesus Christ. And then we get God almost like an echo through the confession of Jesus, just to make clear what we don’t mean when we’re making this distinction, which is we aren’t attempting to separate Jesus from God. We’re explaining Jesus’s relationship to God. We get the only Son of God, begotten from the Father, God from God. That’s the closing that loophole in many ways, and then two lines later, it says true God from true God, just in case you didn’t get it. This confession is very clearly saying Jesus Christ is God and yet it uses the title Lord, which is interesting. Let’s talk a little bit about what’s going on there. This stepping into make clear that Jesus is God on the one hand, but using the title Lord for Jesus. What’s happening with that juxtaposition?
Scott Horrell You would know as well, Darrell, but for those who are listening in, Lord is a – Kyrius is the term that translates both Jehovah or Yahweh of the Old Testament, but also another term, Adonai, of the Old Testament. Kyrios translates both of them. Yahweh is used over 6,000 times and in Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, Kyrios is used for God over 6,000 times as well. It can be used in other ways. We talk about Lord Chesterton or something like that. It had other meanings, but when you’re speaking of ‘the’ Lord, that’s a very different reality. Over and over again, you have this confession that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of Gad, the Father. It seems that Jesus is included then in that one Godness of God and to glorify the Son is to glorify the Father, as Jesus well put it John 5 and John 6. The one Lord Jesus Christ is not a stepping away from this one God or from the Father as fully God. It is rather saying the Son participates in that Godness and we confess that as well. As Thomas, my Lord and my God, his confession in John 20. Darrell Bock So this title is huge. Its background comes from Psalm 110 and I – we normally don’t get pretty – very technical on the podcast, but I’m gonna take some time to do this here. Because in Psalm 110:1, if we were to read the Hebrew and translate it very, very precisely, we would have Yahweh said to my Adonai, to my Lord, and the distinction between the addressor and the addressee is pretty clear in that opening line. But what produced the Septuagintal translation was this tendency in Judaism to shy away from the personal name of God and to put a circumlocution in there to avoid pronouncing the divine name. So that even when this got translated into Greek, it has the Lord said to my Lord, this double use of Kyrios, which tightens the association in some ways and also makes the point contextually. We’re talking about someone being addressed to sit with God in heaven. And when you do that, who gets to share the thrown of God, who gets to share the glory of God, et cetera, boom, all of the sudden, you’re into a new conception and a fresh conception about the relationship between these two beings. And this is a text that Jesus himself appeals to.
Scott Horrell And stumps the Pharisees entirely. Darrell Bock [laughs] Exactly right. Scott Horrell How could David say that his son would be his Kyrios, his Lord? Darrell Bock Yeah, in a patriarchal world in which all the honor goes to the ancestor as opposed to the descendant, how is that the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson – I may not have enough greats in there – could get the honor. And so that’s what you’re dealing with as you deal with this text. This – and then there are other texts, Joel 2 perhaps being a famous example where the appeal is those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved, using this title there. Clearly if you’re Jewish, you’re thinking about what we’re calling on the God of Israel, but in the early church, in the speech in Acts 2, at Pentecost, Peter has a play on this in which he introduces this passage, but then later on has people calling on the name of the Lord Jesus and getting baptized in the name and the authority of Jesus at the end of that speech. Again, showing this liturgical connection in the authority of God with the person of Jesus, making these links that the creed is designed to underscore. Scott Horrell I think it’s fascinating what’s happening in actually modern Judaism in some of the rabbinic studies, debated of course among Jews themselves. But Benjamin Sommer at Cambridge University Press book, The Bodies of God, argues that God does proliferate. He can appear in more than one way, maybe even at the same time, and that – and he’s a leading rabbinic scholar in Chicago. He would argue that the doctrine of the Trinity was – is not inconceivable. In fact, it rather makes sense within intertestamental Judaism. Darrell Bock I like to tell students that this background, these texts that we’re talking about, that we’re gonna allude to here in a second, they aren’t inspired, but they do reflect the way people are thinking about God at the time – around the time of Jesus. The key text that the New Testament of course plays with is a canonical text. That’s the Daniel 7 text. That’s the Son of Man who rides the clouds, comes to the Ancient of Days, receives judgment authority, and of course in the Old Testament, the only figures who ride clouds are deities. You’ve got this human being doing divine stuff and so that’s part of what’s going on in Daniel 7, but out of that came some reflection in Judaism, in a text like 1 Enoch, which is discussed as to when it was written. But I’ve edited a book with James Charlesworth on the similitudes of Enoch, which we argued that this was a work that was written somewhere between the late first century BC. and early first century A.D. Jim actually believes that he – that its origins are in Galilee, which is even more interesting because then it’s floating around in the very area where Jesus ministered. And so you’ve – and it has this son of man figure who’s very clearly second authority in heaven, participates in the judgment, sits with God, is preexisted. It’s got all these traits, so that we see this reflection on Daniel 7 in Enoch, that is pointing to a very emerging and developing concept of this associative power. We’re not saying the Christianity took this idea, but we are saying that there are ideas like this around at the time that – so that when Jesus says it, he’s not stepping to completely unoccupied space. He’s working with conceptions that are around.
Scott Horrell I think another rabbinic scholar, Daniel Boyarin, would say that almost strongly. Now both Benjamin Sommers and Daniel Boyarin are Jews and scholars of Judaism. They do not confess Jesus. They do not believe that he is the Messiah, but Boyarin goes further, even to say that the idea of Trinity was in a – not per se, but the idea that God could also take form, be even human, was in the mixture of many different views of what this coming Messiah might be like. We quote at Christmas all the time, Isaiah 9:6, for unto us a child is born, a son is born, and his name will be Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace. El Gibbor, Mighty God, is only used one other time in the Old Testament. And that exact phrase, that’s a chapter later and it is absolutely Yahweh, Jehovah God. These kinds of things, as you well know, the Jews were struggling with. And so as we come to one Lord Jesus Christ and Son of God, it’s fascinating. Darrell Bock Yeah, and of course the sonship gets into the way in which the father and son relate to one another functionally. And so we often see portraits in the gospels where Jesus describes Himself as responding to the Father. He’s sent by the Father. The language is all through John. He does what the father says. We see this responsiveness that the Son has to the Father. That’s the way they’re relating to each other, but there – you also get Jesus saying things like before Abraham was, I am, which is an appeal to the divine name he’s attaching to himself. The Jews who heard that weren’t too excited about the fact that Jesus said that. They did react. And so there are these whole series of texts that are pointing to the fact that Jesus sees himself in these terms. And this Psalm 110 text, which started this conversation, is important because as we said, the picture is, at least in the way Jesus is using it, is of – he’s describing during his trial. In effect, he’s saying to them look, you may execute me. You may crucify me, but God’s gonna vindicate me and that vindication is going to involve my resurrection to his side. This is something he’s gonna do. If you’ve got a beef with this, you need to take it up with the divine complaints department and God himself. And if you wanna contact me, you can contact me at www.righthandofgod.com. I’m alive by the power of God and that’s gonna be the vindication. And oh, by the way, God is kind of – you may think you’re a judge, but God’s a judge in his own right and this is not a good thing that you’re getting ready to do. There are all kinds of things that are wrapped up in what Jesus is saying that points to his authority. And the empty tomb, of course, is God – what I like to call, it’s God’s vote in the dispute between the Jewish leadership and Jesus.
Scott Horrell I hear, a lot of times, people say Muslims say this all the time and many others do, too. Jesus never called himself God and I think it’s a fascinating question to stop and think about. What if He had? What if He had gone around and He did? But I’ll get back to that in a minute. What if he’d gone around saying I’m God and even proving it with majestic miracles and the Gnostic gospels making toast of anyone who disagreed? What kind of faith would that evoke? What kind of belief from the heart and trust would that be? I find it fascinating that the times Jesus did make clear who He was, was in the teeth of those who already wanted to kill Him. As you mentioned, John 8:58, before Abraham was, I am, there’d been a full chapter and more of debate and that’s on the – that’s in the temple courts, in Jerusalem, on the temple mount. And then again, in John 10, it’s again in the temple courts, in Jerusalem epicenter of Judaism, and I and the Father one. And again, they wanted to kill him. You, being a man, make yourself out to be God. And he could’ve diffused it and said no, you don’t understand. I’m just kind of one with God in a general way, but he let the strongest sense – in fact, he explained it later, didn’t he – stand. But the other time, before the resurrection, is they’re in the trial and I think the Mathian account, I find most fascinating. Because you have the high priest saying by the living god, I adjure you, are you the son of God?
Darrell Bock Right, he invokes an oath. That’s right. Scott Horrell And that son of God of course has multiple meanings in both Old and New Testament, but then Jesus quotes Daniel 7, as you’ve been saying. And so he connects son of God with the title of son of man, a divine title, and it, in a sense, it is the highest meaning of both phrases. Son of god, son of man, that is who I am and that is why they went wild, tore the – well, he – his expensive robe, no doubt. And the others simply went crazy, wanted to kill him. Darrell Bock They had to call in tailors afterwards to fix it. Scott Horrell Well, that was the beginning of the end. Darrell Bock That’s right, and this combination of Daniel 7 and Psalm 110, it’s wrapped up in that answer, is designed to really drive home the point. You’ve got this human figure riding the clouds, some that only God does, and then you’ve got this – a picture of this – coronation’s probably not the right word, but certainly this investiture, if I can say it that way, that you’ve got this seating on a thrown with God. And that juxtaposition leaves no doubt about what Jesus is saying. And I like to say when you read the gospels, that we give the Pharisees a hard time, but actually they’re pretty theologically astute. When Jesus makes a remark, sometimes they get it and the rest of the audience doesn’t. They don’t believe it, but they get it. They understand what Jesus is saying and react to it as a result. Sometimes they’re actually the clue as to the point of what it is that Jesus is making in their reaction, and that certainly happens here.
And then there’s another point that comes alongside this that I think is pretty important, that is something that’s happened in New Testament studies recently, at least in the last four or five decades, that I think is important. Because there are these great searches for what Jesus says. Does he speak of himself directly as God? Those kinds of things, but there are a whole raft of things that Jesus does that’s designed to show who he is. And so Jesus is kind of a show and tell guy. Sometimes He talks less and demonstrates more and that’s what you’re getting. He does things like forgives sins. He calms the winds and the waves.
Scott Horrell And they worship him. Darrell Bock And they worship him, that’s right. This is one of my favorites ‘cause it’s subtle. He takes the Passover, an established liturgy of the Torah, and totally changes its significance. Who has the authority to mess with a Pentateuch like that? Scott Horrell And Passover, all. Darrell Bock That’s exactly right. Yeah, so that’s another one of the same kind. You’ve got these actions that Jesus performs that’s designed – he’s the one who talks about the son of man being lord of the Sabbath. Now the Sabbath is no minor day in the Jewish calendar. It’s another Torah rooted creation tied, God ordained day. Who has the right to mess with the Sabbath? And Jesus is raising those kinds of questions consistently. He plays with how purity works. All these things are designed to give people pause and demonstrate who Jesus is. So much so that when he performs miracles, he can say things like if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. And of course he’s talking about his own authority as he’s doing this, his authority. Who has authority over those spiritual beings? There's a whole raft of things that are going on. We could talk all day about this part of the Christology, but there are other parts of the creed to unfurl here. Let’s go back. We’ve covered one Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve alluded to the Son of God through the picture of these passages and now we come to the phrase that’s probably extremely important because it’s actually mentioned twice. Begotten from the Father before all ages, and then it goes, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made. I think they’re trying to make a point there.
Let’s talk about this begotten thing. In fact, he goes on and says begotten, not made, of the same essence as the Father. Through Him, all things were made. This is putting Jesus on the creator side of the creator/creature divide. That’s for sure, but let’s talk about this term begotten because some people say begotten and go well, isn’t that born? Aren’t we talking about the –
Scott Horrell That’s why it says begotten, not made. There’s been a lot of debate around this over the last 50, 60, 65 years. Dale Moody and others. Some have said monogenes, one of a kind. So genos is not gennao, which means born. This can be a little confusing because the two words are sometimes – they’re close together, like in John 1, 13 and 14. It’s not begotten. It simply means one of kind. Most of our modern translations don’t use begotten anymore. A few do, but use one of a kind. Darrell Bock Unique. Scott Horrell Unique or one or only. Gennao, which is two N’s instead of one. Genos is G-E-N-O-S and Gennao is the verb, G-E-N-N-A-O, means to be born and many have said they’re not the same word. This doesn’t mean only begotten. It only means one of a kind. Some have tried to say this part of the creed is not even correct. It is a misappropriation of biblical language, but a lot of research has been done really in the last several years again to say but wait a minute. Genos and Gennao may be coming back to the same Indo-European root, the gen, which comes out of the idea of a descendancy. And we see mono genos or that word one and only, usually, even in Luke, for example, four times it applies to a son or three times to – two times to a son, once to a daughter. It seems very often to be used of offspring. And so I’ve always said that the Greek fathers could speak Greek better than we can, and they didn’t conflate the two, but rather they saw one implying the other very strongly. To be the one and only son of God means you’re the one and only in a way generated by God, but not in time. Origin rather brilliantly said we think in human terms. The father comes before a son, but when we speak of this one who, in the beginning, was with God and is God, or was God in John 1:1, we have to be talking about analogy here. And so when we speak of the begotteness of the son, we talk about eternal begotteness as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed says. Eternally begotten and not made.
Darrell Bock Not made, yeah. Scott Horrell Tough way to get your mind around it because we don’t think that way, but it is the distinguishing aspect in classical Christian faith between the Father, who is the un-originated origin, and the son, who is the eternally begotten one. And later, with this creed, came the idea of the spirit eternally proceeding from the Father, if not also the Son. Darrell Bock The picture here is of an eternal relationship. I like the phrase begotten, not made because it’s – what it’s underscoring is – Scott Horrell It’s beautiful. Darrell Bock – this is not – we’re not talking about a creature. We’re not talking about someone who at some point did not exist. He is – and then thinking Jewishly again, he’s on the creator side of the creator/creature divide. That immediately puts him into the category of deity and so all that is at work. Another passage that I think is important here is in Psalm 89. In Psalm 89:27, where the term firstborn comes up and gets associated with this terminology. I will appoint him to be my firstborn son, the most exalted of the earth’s kings. And what that juxtaposition of course does is it highlights the fact that we’re talking about a primacy here and at the same time, a uniqueness as opposed to a biological use of the language of born. And of course the firstborn in Judaism had this primacy in the family in terms of inheritance and family responsibilities, the passing on of the family, those kinds of things. And so it lent itself to this kind of figure and that’s what’s being highlighted here, is that Jesus is this figure who has taken on the uniqueness and the primacy. Of course that’s what the title Lord also suggests, points in the same kind of direction. That highlights, I think, part of what the creed is after as it emphasizes the fact that we’re dealing with someone on the creator side of the creator/creature divide.
Scott Horrell Absolutely. I think that – what we call high Christology’s of the New Testament. Certainly John’s prologue, John 1:1-18, where he’s even called the – probably one and only or Monogenes Theo, the one and only God or the only begotten God, if you translate it in classical ways, who’s made the Father known, who’s on the bosom of the Father. This is extraordinary language, but he’s created everything ever created as you see in John 1 and Colossians 1, starting with verse 15. Darrell Bock Yes, absolutely. Scott Horrell And Hebrews 1, again, he’s a creator of everything and the sustainer, as in Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1. Here’s the one, this son who is God in himself, but not to be confused with the Father is the creator of everything and sustains it. Everything invisible and visible in heaven and on earth, and everywhere else. And finally, it is for His glory and yet he brings this back to the Father’s glory as well. Darrell Bock Again, we could spend more time on this, but there’s one other concept I wanna get to before we’re done. So it says begotten from the Father, before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God from true God. Really underscoring this divine aspect of who Jesus is. Begotten, not made, and now here comes the next term that we’ve gotta discuss, of the same essence as the Father. Through Him, all things were made. Again, a consistently underscoring. This is a creator we’re talking about. When we say Jesus, we’re thinking – we’re on the creator side of things, but now we get to the issue of person as we talk about this and the term essence is an important term here. What’s going on with that term? Scott Horrell The whole idea of Trinity came out of the son’s relationship with the Father, as so very clear all through the New Testament. And yet he’s in personal relationship with the Father, and yet even he says there's only one God. How do we put that together? The Greek word is homoousios, the same substance or essence or the same nature. I like to say the Godness of God. Both the Father and the Son share that. The Nicene Creed really frames a mystery because you have the oneness of God, one essence, and yet the three persons. And I would argue in relationship, they love each other. They make each other known. They testify of one another. They are, in a sense, self giving, one to the other, even within the God head. There is the one nature. The eastern church tended to favor the Father from whom ever comes forth the equal existence of the Son and the Spirit. The western church, there are a lot of variations and a lot of mixture between the two. Even Calvin tend to say well, that would make the Son and the Spirit inferior to the Father then, wouldn’t it? They wouldn’t be completely God as the Father is God. That would be Aquinas. That would be to some extent Augustin. And even Gregory of Nyssa questioned that himself. Within that framework of Nicea, three persons, one essence. Some prefer to emphasize the three persons in relationship. Others prefer to emphasize the one essence manifest, but in real persons or some kind of consubstantial manifestation, each of the other, yet really distinct, within this mystery of the Trinity.
Darrell Bock Okay, I’m gonna go for a crass paraphrase here and see what you think of it. And it may need correction, but basically this term essence means that they’re made of the one stuff. Homoousios is a oneness of being, if you will. If you wanna get really, really literal. The one stuffness that is God is Father, Son, and Spirit, all existing simultaneously and co-functioning. I don’t know what other word to use and it’s a – we’re going to – Scott Horrell Where language doesn’t take us. Darrell Bock [laughs] And that’s the point. There's a mystery to this that is real that – and yet at the same time, there's this threeness and this oneness that is simultaneously being affirmed, that obviously is the core of this creed. But the same essence is the way of saying look, this is the same stuff that the Father is. This is divinity we’re talking about. We’re not talking about anything lesser or different. The distinction between Father, Son, and Spirit is a distinction of personhood, but it’s not a distinction of stuffness, if I can – Scott Horrell Yeah, very well said. You look at the New Testament and you see Son and Father, and that relationship that transcends time. Actually it’s that language of Son and Father that is the bridge right into the heart of the Trinity, as this tri-personal God of love and holiness. As you look at scripture, even Gregory of Nazianzus talked about three gold coins. Each is completely God, but if that’s all you had, you’d have tritheism. You also have the fact that each, without confusing the persons, each indwells the other. I’m in the Father. The Father’s in me. The Spirit comes forth from the Son and from the Father. And yet beyond that, there’s still the one essence that each shares completely. And so you have three tiers of oneness in all of this and we cannot forget that one essence or substance in which each shares. Darrell Bock Scott, I really thank you for coming in and helping us through this very full part of the creed. The last thought I wanna leave is kind of a devotional one, which is this, that we have direct connections to this one who has all this power and all this authority. And that the beauty of the relationship with the Trinity is the beauty of the relationship we also get to share with the one who’s the creator, God. Scott Horrell Yes. Darrell Bock We leave on a note of worship. I thank you for coming in and we thank you for being a part of The Table, and we hope that this exposition of the Trinity has been helpful.
Darrell Bock Our chapel today is going to discuss the most secularized part of the day that sometimes rarely shows up in a significant way in our churches. That is the time from 9:00 to 5:00 from Monday to Friday. Our guest is Steve Ramseur. Steve, I'm going to let you tell people what you do because you are there in San Antonio; you're not with us. So what are you doing in San Antonio from 9:00 to 5:00 five days a week? Steve Ramseur Hi Darrell. Good to see you again. I am the – a divisional president of a Fortune 500 company. I have about 4,000 souls that I look after every day; manage about $1.5 billion in revenue. That's what I do during the day. Usually from 5:00 a.m. until 7:00 a.m. I am a Dallas Seminary student. I'm taking two classes right now and then I'm also a husband, 30 years, with Angie. I have three kids. I think you've met Joshua and Grace and Riley. That's what I do.
Darrell Bock Okay. We're here to kind of tell your story about; what is a busy guy like you who is managing 4000 people – I can't even… That gives me my hairline. What is a busy person like you who manages 4,000 people a day – how did you end up at Dallas Seminary? And tell us a little bit about your story about the way you see faith and work mixing together. Steve Ramseur Sure. I think I need to – the big picture on this is I was saved in the workplace 29 years ago and I'm being saved in the workplace. I worked for a company out of undergrad and one of the men that I worked with, Mark Rieswig, asked me a question one day. He said, "Would you like to hear what the Bible has to say about a certain subject?" That led to about six months of him meeting me at lunches. We brown-bagged it and the Lord was pleased to save my miserable soul. I've been in the workplace ever since. So I guess my experience really grounds me in the workplace, but I think the key take-away is that I was discipled by this gentleman and others and have had a voracious appetite for the Word of God. The first book he gave me to read was John Owens' "Death of Death in the Death of Christ". I didn't know young Christians were supposed to read that.
Started reading that and started working on works of B.B. Warfield and Calvin's Institutes. So I just had an appetite for theology and for the Bible, but I was kind of out of place. There wasn't really a category for me in the church.
For the first five years, my wife and I were part of a church plant bi-vocationally in Seattle. We had a small congregation up there. They couldn't afford to pay either one of us so we were bi-vocational, teaching, preaching, and working during the week, during that secular 9 to 5 time period. I guess the feeling from my perspective as someone who is in love with the Lord Jesus Christ, who has a passion for the word of God, a hunger for evangelism and discipleship, as there was not really a category for me in the church, because you tell people that in the church, they say, "Well, you need to be in ministry. You need to go to…" I did some short-term mission work, but "You need to be in the ministry. You have that kind of passion."
There's not really a category for me in the workplace either because there is such a passion for the things I listed earlier. So you kind of feel a bit out of place; maybe broken or disconnected. Homeless would be the best way to describe it because you walk into church on Sunday morning and you're entering into a world where they don't really have a category, if you will, for someone who is working 9 to 5. There is a disconnect there up until about 28 years ago. Up until about two years ago.
Darrell Bock We will talk about that in just a second. So the point you're making here is, is that your 9 to 5 day wasn't getting addressed in a significant way to help you negotiate the life that you are living there, by much of what you are hearing from the pulpit. Steve Ramseur There was a silence. It was absent. There wasn't a – the best way I can describe it Darrell, is there wasn't a category. Darrell Bock Yeah. When I think about the preaching that I hear on a regular basis, we can talk about how family, we can talk about our neighborhoods, we can talk about our schools, we can talk about the ministries that happen in our churches. There are a variety of slots that tend to get addressed, but helping people think through what they are doing from 9 to 5 and why God has them there; in fact, that's the bulk of the population, specifically that they spend the bulk of their time. Steve Ramseur Yeah. Darrell Bock To leave that unaddressed is to leave this hole in life that people are living in the midst of and they're asking as good disciples, as I'm assuming you were, "How do I negotiate this part of my life?" What they're getting in response is, as you described it, silence. Steve Ramseur Silence and really a sense of homelessness. There wasn't a place where, within the context of the church – and I love the church. I want to make that very clear. But within the context of the church, and understanding that as a leader; I have a megachurch. I've got 4,000 souls I look after. As a leader, during the course of the week I'm dealing with exactly the same thing as my pastor is dealing with. The gentleman whose office is two doors down from me, and I think you know this Darrell, lost his son, 17 years old, a month ago. You and I are addressing a loss in the family for a mutual coworker. Last night I received a text from a lady that I work with in Chicago asking for some Scripture references to encourage someone that she works with there in Chicago. Dealing with marriage issues, divorce issues, all kinds of – the same things a pastor is dealing with day-to-day, literally, I am dealing with in the context of… As a leader in the workplace.
When I step into the church, what you hear about is how to be a good husband, a good father, and then how to serve within the church. So we celebrate the missionary who goes out or the – a nursery – a person who works in the nursery, we anoint them and send them out, but I've never seen anyone anoint a plumber going out into the work world and when your toilet is stopped up, you need a plumber, not a pastor.
Darrell Bock I think that's something we can all theologically agree with. Okay. So let's come to about two years ago and I want you to tell the story that you told me when we first met which is; you were contemplating leaving the workplace and coming into ministry because of your passion for the Lord and basically, he stopped you. What happened? Steve Ramseur So what happened was I found these podcasts on The Table, about the… A biblical theology of work. I've listened to every one of them at least twice. Some two or three times. I began to research the Scriptures, mainly Genesis 1 and 2, and began to see that there is a theology of work that works. Meaning a theology of work that I can apply every day in my – where I spend 50, 60 hours a week, that has a significant impact on the kingdom of God. I sat down with Dr. Bailey in his office just having a conversation with him and said, "I want my life to mean something. I want there to be some significance."
He looked at me and he said, "Steve, your life has meaning. What you are doing at work has meaning and what we need are more professionals who minister." So that's why I'm taking classes and doing these different types of things so that I can bring this theology of work into a pagan culture; we are living between the Cross and the Coming. During that interval, make a difference.
Darrell Bock So if I can get this right, you were toying with leaving. You listen to these podcasts – I'm appreciating the advertising that we're getting and taking advantage of it. You heard a message and that message was more than, "You can be an evangelist at work." Steve Ramseur The message brought me to tears. It was like coming home. I'd heard that the gifting that God – I love my job. That's one of the challenges that I faced because you either – if you are going to hear about work at all from the pulpit, you're going to hear one of three messages. Either there is deafening silence. Message number two is that you're giving too much time to work and neglecting your family and church and what really matters. Or message number three is that if you enjoy your work, that's really idolatry. What I heard from The Table and what I hear integrated into the classes at Dallas Seminary the last 2½ years, is no. A) God is a worker. That's what Genesis 2 tells us and that God has gifted us in a certain way that we can express that image of God in the mission he's called us to, where he's called us through our work. My work intrinsically has value and that was a seismic shift in my understanding of my mission in the workplace.
There are also evangelism… I officiated a wedding six weeks ago with a man who; in Seattle, who came to Christ 27 years ago on the sixth floor of my parking garage in Seattle, Washington. I discipled him long distance for five years. I was with his son who came to Christ through that and his two daughters come to Christ through that. So there is evangelism that comes out of that, but that's not why I go to work. I go to work because I am called to image God, his mission in Genesis 1:26-28, Genesis 2:7, 2:8, 2:15, et cetera. As I do my work, I'm carrying out God's first great commission.
Darrell Bock And that Great Commission is the Creation Mandate that says we are supposed to manage the earth well and apply our image of God in such a way that the garden is well taken care of, that God has placed us in. Steve Ramseur Yes the Oikonomia, that's what we are about. Evangelism today, and this goes back to where Dr. Bailey prayed; evangelism today in the marketplace is by invitation. What I mean by that is when you genuinely love people, when you work with them day-to-day, you get to know them, issues surface; opportunities surface. And out of that invitation comes a very natural opportunity to share and love them with the gospel. Darrell Bock Okay. We've got – we need to remind students of something. We've got microphones set up in the aisle so if you have a question that comes to mind, step up to the microphones and in a few minutes, we will be taking those questions. Go ahead and step up whenever you're ready with a question so I know that you have one. Steve, let me ask you this question. I know that you are working closely with your pastor to address the silence that you felt in the church. What are you doing with the pastor and how are you encouraging him about this time of day and how he addresses it from the pulpit?
Steve Ramseur Yeah, he and I sat down, give or take about a year ago, and we had this conversation at a restaurant not far from my office, about a theology of work and about my experience. His response to me was, "I need to repent." Now I hear – now you begin to hear – so he said, "Would you be willing to preach?" So last Labor Day I preached to back to back Sundays. One was “Your work matters to God.” The second one was “Your work matters to the gospel.” Now we are hearing more and more, from the pulpit, there is more and more around discipleship. When I meet with him or other pastoral staff, I ask them – invite them to come into my office. I introduced them around; this is my pastor. Introduce them around to the people that I work with so they can see and feel my work environment because I'm not sure –
You think about the apostle Paul who was a fairly good evangelist, he was bi-vocational and his first epistle, 1 Thessalonians, you find in all five chapters he is talking about work. He worked hard among us and we’re to model him. He understood because he was in the marketplace and then he would go to the Hall of Tyrannus. He would go and he would preach, but he was constantly integrated into the world of work. I think that we – you don't hear much about that model.
So that's kind of the conversation with the pastor. I view it as a partnership, Darrell. So it's integrated and seamless from Sunday to Monday and from Monday – and from Friday to Sunday to where he can move easily into my world and I can move easily into his world and it's exciting.
Darrell Bock So help us with the secular-sacred divide a little bit, because I tend to think that what we do is we take the workplace and we say – the message often that I hear, or indirectly, there may be not stated this way is; what you do on Sunday in the church, in the church walls, or in the ministries of outreach or in the evangelism programs that happened, that really matters. Everything else that you do is gathering energy for that stuff. Steve Ramseur Right. Darrell Bock I take it you are saying something else to us; something different. Steve Ramseur I'm saying that if you can disintegrate the Sunday-Monday, Monday-Sunday, by a barrier of secular-sacred and you disintegrate your work from your Christian life, you can also disintegrate your sex life. You can disintegrate your finances. You can disintegrate every other aspect of your life. I don't see that in the gospel. I think the incarnation, the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Jesus of his 33 years, 16 or 18 years, maybe – you are the New Testament expert – was spent as a craftsman, as a carpenter. All of his apostles were called from vocation; called out of work backgrounds. They knew what it was to put in a full day of work.
I don't see that disintegration in the gospel and I think it comes back to an integrated understanding of the atonement. The atonement is more than just Jesus and me. The atonement is cosmic in scope. It is universal and I think that our limited understanding of that secular-sacred divide is dangerous.
Darrell Bock One more question and then we got a student who is going to ask a question. It's this; so what advice would you give to pastors, not about how they handle the pulpit, but how they handle their business people? What do they need to do to get to know their business people better and to understand the 9:00 to 5:00 better? I'll be honest, I've never worked significantly in the workplace other than the summer jobs I did when I was in college. So I don't know, in many ways, what your world is like. So how can I, as a theologian or a pastor, bridge that gap in such a way that I end up being a help to you? Steve Ramseur Yeah. Well, I'm blessed to have a pastor who is willing to invest the time and ask the questions. He genuinely wants to know the work that I do, how that work affects the community; for me it's around the world given the work that I do; and spending time with me within the context of work. I think what would be very healthy Darrell, is if my pastor would spend say a half a day with me, or the pastoral staff, and walk through my day with me maybe once a quarter or something like that. That way he has some context for application and understanding what that looks like in real time.
Darrell Bock Yeah. As you know, Tommy Nelson of Kansas City, pastors at church. What he's done to do this, is he regularly visits a variety of people in his congregation in the way you just talked about; spending time with them where they work, gets to meet the people that they are interacting with. When his contacts are praying for a colleague, in many cases he knows the person they are praying for. He's met them. Steve Ramseur Yeah. Darrell Bock That kind of thing. In the midst of that networking, he has come to understand the variety of vocations that are sitting in his audience on a Sunday and the worlds that they live in that he is able then to address. Is that the kind of thing you are talking about? Steve Ramseur Precisely. After I preached the second sermon, Labor Day, a young man came up to me. And he has a lawn business, but he went to Southwestern Seminary, but he has a lawn business. He said, "I get all these great emails and correspondence on social media about what my friends are doing in the mission field and the pastor et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." He said, "To hear this from the pulpit, that what I do, taking care of lawns, has significance within the kingdom." He said, let me tell you a story. I will make this 30 seconds. He's been mowing this one elderly gentleman's lawn, who is housebound for about two years. He mows it on Thursday. He shares a glass of tea with him. He won't go near the church. One Thursday afternoon after he mowed his lawn, sitting down there with a glass of tea, the subject of the gospel came up.
This young man looked at him and he said, "What I'm about to tell you is going to change our relationship, but I want to tell you about Jesus Christ." He shared Christ with that man through the two years' worth of excellent work that he had been doing. He had an opportunity that none of the pastors would have to reach that man for Christ.
Darrell Bock Okay. We've got a student question here. So to the mic. Audience Hi. I'm a physician from Brazil and over there my experience in the workforce was that Brazilians didn't have work ethics. So when a brother in Christ knew that I was a Christian, there were some abuses in terms of, "Oh, you not fire me so let…" I was lax about something and you Xerox machines for worship, music, and that kind of stuff. In America, you have a much stronger work ethic. So Max Weber published about that. How do you suggest the international community at DTS to teach about that and preach about that? The work ethics and how our work can glorify Christ? A second aspect, also in this international aspect, how Christians in the workforce can influence their companies to go to areas that are poor, that are segregated, that are lack of – the two thirds of the world that lives under $2.00 a day?
Steve Ramseur Darrell, do you want to start on the first one? I have some ideas. Darrell Bock Okay. Yeah, the key thing here is having a church, one, that is aware of what theology work is and teaches it from the pulpit, teaches the people in the church about a work ethic. The work ethic that you might get if you just go outside might be, this isn't always the case, but might be: We are here for business. We are here to earn money. You are here to earn a job so please help us as much as you can. That isn't going to take you very far. There are other companies, and Steve can certainly speak to this, whose approach to business isn't just the exchange that happens between the business, the product, and the customer, but in fact is asking a profound question about: We serve people in this area. How do we serve best? We have people working for us in this area. How do we unleash their talents to work for us best? That's a different kind of question. It's a different layer of discussion. What it does is it gives people value in their work. In the midst of giving them value in their work, you get a better work ethic. People understand why they are there other than to merely be a piece in a cog.
That means not only do business people have to understand that, but theologians who teach in these areas have to understand that and communicate that logical affirmation to the people that they are teaching and preaching to. So that's my theological answer, Steve, but I'm handing it off now to a business person to fill in the gaps.
Steve Ramseur Okay. Well, mine is simple and I look at my theology of work really around three areas. The first is calling. The second is my commission. The third is community. I genuinely believe that God has gifted me in certain areas around business and I have a calling just as much to business as I did when I was a bi-vocational pastor in Seattle for five years. I come to work with a sense of purpose, something larger than myself. So the calling piece of that. The commission piece of that is to bear God's image and the fact that he's given me a mind to know him, a heart to love him, a will to obey him, but he's also given me a mission to go out into his creation and cultivate that. That's the commission piece of it.
The third piece, I do that in community. I think this gets to your second question. Third – yeah, second question. I'm blessed in that I traveled globally and we do great projects. We were the project manager on the World Trade Center redevelopment. We did the redevelopment of the Empire State Building. It took billions of tons of greenhouse gases out of the environment. We do redevelopment in communities.
So that's very hands-on for us. It's very real. It's tangible. It's tactile for us. We do that in the context of community and the workplace sets me in a community; I think of Acts chapter 17; that's unique and distinct for me. Darrell is not in this community. My pastor is not in this community. I am in this community with a clear calling, a clear commission, and it's exciting.
Darrell Bock Okay. We got another student question over here. Audience Hello. So after you teach about the theology of work, there is going to be some people that are bound to feel convicted or guilty because some of them already have a certain reputation. For example, in the workplace, being hot tempered or sometimes even being vulgar. How do you…? Is there a way to encourage them to still teach the gospel in the workplaces? Even for ourselves, some of us will have our own flaws like the ones I mentioned. How do you go about dealing with these issues as you are sharing the gospel in the workplace? Steve Ramseur You want me to – Darrell Bock I do have something. I'll start off Steve, since you're… I think that may be what you're asking. The idea that we share the gospel in the workplace by only when we talk about the gospel is misleading. We actually share the gospel in the workplace by how we do our work, by the credibility that we build for ourselves as a person and as a bearer of the image of God and as a representative of Christ in the workplace. Before I ever go to share the gospel, that person, particularly if they know I'm a Christian, is probably watching to see who I am and what I'm about. In the midst of how I do my work, I actually lay the groundwork for anything that I'm going to do or say when I actually get to the topic of the gospel. I think many people don't even think about that when they are thinking about how they do their work.
Steve.
Steve Ramseur Agreed. First of all, I'm the most flawed person in the room right now. So I come with my flaws and sins into the workplace. So first, I would say it starts with humility. It's what Paul says, "Consider others to be better than yourselves." Second, it starts with an idea and an attitude of servant leadership. It's stooping down. I think that any organization is measured by how they treat the least in the organization. I think Paul deals with that in 1 Thessalonians exhaustively where he talks about the fact that he worked night and day not to be a burden while we preach the gospel of God to you.
So here is Paul. He was in Thessalonica 51, 52. He had a trade. He was a tent maker. He's teaching them eschatology and he is working full-time. He knows this is a nascent church. He doesn't want to be a burden to them so Paul takes that burden by working, he is bi-vocational. Then he preaches the gospel. I think it's a perfect mix. He says, when you get to 2 Thessalonians 3:8, he says, "I want you to model this. I want you to model this in your work ethic and then the proclamation of the gospel is an outcome."
If you enter the workplace with an objective of proselytizing, people will see that as disingenuous. Like I said earlier, the gospel in the workplace is by invitation and it comes through love and through serving others and putting them above yourself.
Darrell Bock All right. Next question. Audience Yeah. I have a question for both of you. My name is Scott. I was a corporate guy for 15 years. Six years ago, my church asked me to come on staff so I've been a full-time pastor for six years. Love my job. Love the church, but I've actually wrestled with; was I making a bigger impact as a corporate guy managing the people that I managed? A.m. I less effective here in the church? Was I more effective there? So do either of you have advice or counsel on how to – one is not better than the other, but how do we go about deciding which – how we're going to make a more effective contribution to the community?
Darrell Bock This question actually allows Steve to fill in a gap in the story that he hasn't told yet. That is; you actually were wrestling with leaving your job and coming to seminary to do full time ministry. Why don't you take people through your process and your decision-making in where you ended up? Steve Ramseur Sure. I wrestled with this for 27 – the gentleman's name was Scott? Who is asking the question? Darrell Bock Yeah, I think so. Audience Yes. Darrell Bock Yes. Steve Ramseur So yes, I wrestled with that for years. I took one seminary class Darrell, from J.I. Packer in Seattle; took pneumatology from him. Just fell in love with it because the family and kids – it didn't happen, but that was gnawing and kind of nagging. It would be the thing I would think about when I woke up at 3:00 in the morning. Am I going against God's calling to be in the ministry full-time? That was the nagging question. My wife, who is the stable partner of mine, would say, "Let's step back and take a look at what's happened in the workplace." So Matt has come to Christ through that ministry. John, Joe, et cetera, their families; you are discipling these men. This is happening. God has given you skill sets in the business world and these other people are coming to Christ through this ministry and you probably should continue doing what you're doing.
Three years ago, she finally got sick and tired of me and she said, "You keep talking about seminary. Just go." So that's…
Well, that's what she said. She said, "I'm not talking about this anymore. If you are going to go, go."
Darrell Bock I think we'll use that as an advertisement for future students. Steve Ramseur What was beautiful about it though Darrell, as I expected to make that decision to go back, maybe take the route that Scott is taking, but because of the integrated theology and work inside of the classes – I mean, Dr. Kreider made the comment in his ST101 class; I can talk about it if you want me to. It's integrated into the curriculum. I saw, well, wait a minute. Maybe I can do both. Maybe I can actually be in the workplace serving the Lord and maybe this is exactly where he has called me. So I wrestled through that decision. What I would say to Scott is, you have a unique opportunity to spend time with the men and women in your church and show them how that faith and work is integrated, in a way that would be a much more significant impact that you could've made just in the workplace; and how you weave that into your preaching and your teaching and your discipleship of them. You send them out with that calling, commission, community type of theology of work. That's where you're going to make an impact.
Darrell Bock Okay. Next question over here. Audience High. My name is Logan. I don't recall your name, but I will always remember this chapel as the guy that looks like Matt Damon. You mentioned earlier, Sunday to Monday, Monday to Sunday kind of flowing seamlessly. Is that correct? Steve Ramseur Yes. Audience In the sense of… Okay. I think I'm tracking with you, but I had a conversation with Dr. Hatteberg a while back, kind of about this and he approached – he gave me advice to approach seminary and all the different compartments of my life as one big box; my quiet time, my marriage, my ministry, and then kind of drawing from that. Is that what you are kind of talking about as seamlessly flowing from workplace with ministry involved? Does that make any sense? Do you understand what I'm asking? Steve Ramseur Yeah, I'm understanding completely. I'm waiting for Darrell to… Darrell Bock Your go. Go. Audience All right. The awkward silence. Steve Ramseur I know exactly what – is Dr. Bailey still in the room? Audience Yes. Darrell Bock Yeah, he is. Steve Ramseur Okay. I forget which class it was; he drew up on the board, the circle. The balloon where he had work and church ministry and family. Is he nodding his head or is he – am I crazy? Darrell Bock Yeah. Steve Ramseur Okay. Darrell Bock He's still a happy camper. Keep going. Steve Ramseur Okay. What he said… I can't remember which class was, but what he said was, "Sometimes your balloon is going to be pushed this way; more pressure here, but it's going to come back to the center. Sometimes it's pushed to here." I had always heard, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, as kind of a hierarchical order. That illustration just rocked my world because no, it's not a hierarchical order. It's a unified, integrated reality that flows out of my identity in Christ. It's who I am by grace through faith in Christ alone. It's going to manifest itself differently in those spheres of influence that the Lord places me in. That illustration was as impactful as Dr. Kreider's this semester on an integrated understanding of the atonement which I don't have time to go into, but those types of theological concepts for Logan, take out the hierarchy.
Is Dr. Bailey still nodding or am I no longer a student?
Darrell Bock There is a smile on his face. Steve Ramseur Okay. Darrell Bock Yeah, the integration is the point. That your life is not siloed. It's not ranked. God has given each one of us a unique network. There is no one in this room whose sense of contacts and associations is the same with the person sitting next to them. God has you in unique places, uniquely relating to people in unique ways. When you see your life through that lens and say, "That is my ministry," it changes the way you think about your work and your associations. What I love about Steve is that he talks about having a megachurch of 4,000 people. He's talking about his workplace. So that is an integrated view of life which means that he never takes off his kingdom hat. His kingdom hat is always on the matter where he is, no matter what he's doing, no matter who he is seeing. That is the way I think God wants us to see our lives.
Over here.
Audience Steve, I've been in the Army for about 30 years in a bi-vocational ministry and just wondering what types of issues, as you're sharing Christ and integrating those things with other world religions – the Army obviously has got a lot of different world religions, denominations in it, but is there any tension there in your corporate workplace? Then when you are abroad, how have you been able to integrate your faith with the customs and religions of other countries? Steve Ramseur Thank you for your service. I'm kind of a military brat. My dad was 20 years in the Air Force so I know for an army guy, you don't consider us being in the military, but my dad was. We were actually in the military, so I appreciate that. So multi-culture; me, I've been around the world for a lot of different reasons.
The answer to your question is, yes and yes. What I find is that love transcends culture. What I mean by that is right now – and I'm going to say this again. I'll probably say it five more times. Evangelism today in the workplace is by invitation.
So when the tragedy occurred two offices down, I was doing my quiet time. 5:30 am I got a text message that one of my coworker's sons, 17 years old, died. I walked in the next morning as the pastor. We called the leaders together. We got in my office. There are five or six of us. We wept, we hugged each other, and we prayed. I closed my door, I spent time in the Word, and I called our office together and had to walk down in the conference room with a backdrop of a secular culture; comfort these people who are dealing with a very heavy, heavy loss.
Love transcends all of that. It transcends the religious barriers, the religious boundaries, and at the end of the day, this comes – is Dr. Kreider in the room? Is Kreider –
Darrell Bock Yes, he is. He just waved his hand so he says hello. Steve Ramseur Yeah, so this really was a big – I mean, the soteriology class this semester rocked my world. Darrell Bock It saved you, right? Steve Ramseur But his emphasis on the resurrection; that's where I went during this meeting. Obviously, 1 Corinthians 15 was the text, but in that given situation and in the continued ministry opportunities that we have had as a company, to him – because candidly, the pastor and the church and everybody who came together around the family at the beginning, they've gone away. He's going to be working with me, Lord willing, the next 10 or 15 years and I have the chance to minister to he and – I'm not going to say names, but he and his family, through this process. As I travel abroad, what I find – and this was… Dr. Hannah and I had dinner with two DTS grads; one in Dublin and one in Oxford. The one in Oxford ministers exclusively to Muslims. He is amazing. His name is Dr. Smalls. But he is finding the window way open with the Muslim community in Europe. So that was very encouraging.
Darrell Bock Yeah. I think we underestimate how important it is to understand and appreciate other religious traditions and the way they work for people. I find if I ask questions about a person's religious experience and get to know them to that lens, I actually open the door to real significant conversations about what drives people in life. Steve Ramseur Yeah. Darrell Bock Through that, then you have the opportunity. So rather than worrying about, oh, they are in the wrong box, I'm actually in a situation where; let me get to know this person. See what drives them. Why they find this religious experience meaningful, et cetera. Then I'm thinking about; what is it about the Christian experience that can step into that and offer even something more than what they may be getting now? That kind of thing. We're – Steve Ramseur There, that's dead on. Darrell Bock Go ahead. Steve Ramseur May I make one comment on that? Darrell Bock Yeah, sure. Steve Ramseur That's dead on. Listening is one very critical aspect to evangelism and really hearing where that person is coming from. Darrell Bock Yeah. Our time is up Steve. Let me have our group thank you for taking time with us. We do a faith and work chapel every semester. We do it because we think this part of the day is so absolutely significant and that the silence of the church in addressing people with this day builds a secular-sacred divide that is actually harmful to real discipleship.
Steve Ramseur _____. Darrell Bock So I'm hoping you're catching the bug of what we are… The disease that we're trying to spread here. Some diseases are not worth spreading, but this one is. Let me close this in a word of prayer. Father, we do thank you that you have made us in your image to image you. To image you in the places where you have us. Not just on Sunday. Not just on Wednesday night, but in the middle of the day from week to week, month to month, year to year, venue to venue. Our prayer is that as we teach and as we preach and as we live, that we will show your presence where you have us. Help us to do this well by your spirit. In Jesus' name, we ask it. Amen.
Steve Ramseur Amen. Thanks Darrell. Darrell Bock Thank you.