#161 | Inalienable: How Marginalized Kingdom Voices Can Help Save The American Church | Eric Costanzo, Daniel Yang, & Matthew Soerens

And I think sometimes in the American church, what's happened is we've. It's not even so much that we're actively explicitly telling another part of the global body that they don't matter, that we don't need them.

We've almost not realized that they're there.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your worship with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming, and I am your host. And today on our show, we're having another one of our deep conversations.

I want to start off today with a story. It's my story. When I was pastoring in Chicago many years ago, I was pretty freaked out.

I wasn't from the city.

I didn't grow up in the city. I was from a very small town, and the city freaked me out.

And even though that I went to school there, the idea of living there, it was kind of a jar to my system. I'm a small town guy. I was pretty intimidated by the big city. And plus there were all these cultures and I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know what to say. But yet God made it very clear that's where I was supposed to be. And he had me serve at this historic urban church that had fallen on hard times.

It was really kind of a gentrified community, and the neighborhood had changed. Not to mention that the church was landlocked, so there wasn't going to be a lot of facility growth.

Many people had moved out to the suburbs and were actually commuting into the church. But there were people still there that loved God and believed deeply in prayer.

And I was hired to do the youth ministry, which went about 10 kids now. I didn't know really a whole lot, but they gave me a shot. We prayed, we partnered together.

I recruited some leaders that had served in various capacities with youth over the years. And we became this incredible team. We continued to preach, we sought fellowship, and we really just loved on those kids.

And it was really an amazing work of God that happened. Because what happened is all these kids started to come, many of these different immigrants and refugees. The kids started to feel that love.

They could see it from all the different leaders that were there hear about the love of Christ. And it grew remarkably. And I was happy because God was working through his people as they prayed.

And really those dedicated sacrificial leaders, God was transforming this youth ministry and making it strong and stable. I loved it. I loved my time there.

But God called us away from that and he called us out to New England to go to a church that was really two years away from closing its doors. The church had split twice. They had fired their previous two pastors for incompetency. They had gone off the rails.

And while the church had split, what was left was really a faithful group of Jesus followers. They were older, there wasn't really any young people at the time.

There wasn't any diversity in the church body, although there was an immigrant church that was meeting that same location in the afternoons. So I did what I thought we could do. I organized prayer meetings. I sought to meet with people. I gathered these leaders around me.

I saw their love for God, I heard their prayers. And then I saw God starting to work in response to their prayers.

We started a partner with that immigrant church and the church began to grow and many more ethnicities started to come in and the church tripled in just in a two and a half year span of time. I mean, he brought some other incredible leaders who did much better work than I. It was just amazing to be a part of.

And fast forward a few years from that and I found myself in another church that was going through a very difficult time. Their leadership was pretty messed up at the time. Their leadership was also pretty discombobulated.

I mean, there were some really well meaning, just deeply committed Christ followers that were there. But what I noticed is that some of the leaders seemed to believe that their job was not to reach the lost. I mean, they said that.

That's what they said.

But when it came time to actually pract basically ministering to those who are broken, to those that lived in the community, to those of different ethnic backgrounds, it didn't translate. And I remember we had this young couple come to the church. They had driven from about 45 minutes away. They had two young children.

He was a lawyer, she was a stay at home mom. They were very conservative, both theologically and politically, and they let that be known.

And I remember getting into a conversation with them and just welcoming them to the church, trying to hear their story.

And at the conclusion of our conversation, they walked out the door and this had leaders standing beside me, just kind of commented to me and to himself and said, well, those are the kind of people that we want to reach. I was caught off guard and my head kind of became a little like a puppy, you know, like turning your head, wondering, what did he just say?

I mean, why don't we try to reach out to the people in our community? I mean, I'm grateful that they came, don't get me wrong, but I'm not trying to grow the church with these individuals.

I want to be able to reach the broken and the lost. I want to reach those who are awkward, who don't fit in anywhere, who are caught in the cycle of addiction.

I want to reach those from different cultures and different backgrounds. Well, needless to say, at the end of about two years, that leader that I was speaking to left, as did many of the other elders.

I mean, it got really bad. Half the church had left, leaving myself and a few other really dedicated, Jesus loving people.

And it really came to a huge head right after that group of people left. Just a few months later when we had the rains come.

And when they came, I mean, they came both physically, I mean, literally and figuratively, they literally came actually flooding the lower level of our church. And not to mention our whole lower level was devastated, needless to say.

And in addition to that, someone had stolen the copper from our air conditioning units and our church laptop all in the same week. And we weren't a very large church.

But those figurative rains came because World Relief had contacted us and they said, you know, we have been meeting at this church right now. It's the only church in the United States that we pay rent to. And not only do we pay rent, but there's no water there for us to drink.

We actually have to bring in our own water. And there's no heat. And this is in Chicagoland, there's no heat. So they had to bring in heaters every week and their own water.

It was crazy.

And so we said, we're going to partner together because we wanted to be able to reach the nations. So they started meeting in our facility. They started meeting there four days a week for about six hours of time.

And we did our best to meet with them, to engage them in their breaks, to learn their languages, to learn their names.

We tried to find resources in all of their languages, just wanting them to know who Jesus was, wanting them to know what, what God's plan and desire was for them. And remarkably, do you know what happened? One day, two African men walked into the service and sat down. And that began a change in the church.

Many followed after that. And it wasn't just from Africa, but all over the world. It all came to a head one day when a Muslim man walked in.

And suddenly all of our theoretical desires to reach people went by the wayside, because they were right there. Our church changed, and it was dramatic and it was wonderful. And we went from one English service to two English services with Swahili translation.

And then a Karen church started meeting at our location. And then a Spanish campus was birthed. Now, why do I share all that with you? For one, to give all the glory and praise to God.

Because when His Word is preached, when his people pray, and when they do what His Word says, there is renewal and there is revival. I wanted to share that with you because of the guests that we have on our show today.

Today on our show, we're privileged to have Eric Costanzo, Matt Sorens, and Daniel Yang. You see, they've written a book entitled How Marginalized Kingdom Voices Can Help Save the American Church and My Life.

And the ministries that I have been privileged to serve in are testimonies to that.

Eric Costanzo is a pastor and teacher from Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as the executive director of RisingVillage.org an organization with initiatives to help marginalized people become full participants in their communities. Matt Soerens is the U.S. director of Church Mobilization and Advocacy for World Relief.

And Daniel Yang is the director of the Church Multiplication Institute, which is a think tank for evangelism and church planting.

You see, I wanted to have them on the show because this conversation points you to the principles and practices that God revealed to us that helped us renew and revive our church. I mean, God did it from beginning to end, and we were so privileged that he used us to do. And he can help renew and revive you, too.

This book gives you a new vision for what God is doing in the world, especially here in the west. And it helps us to see and embrace our mission better.

This helps us and our mission here at Apollos Water, because we exist to help engage believers like yourself to rethink, reimagine, and then redeploy in their pursuit of Christ's mission for all of life.

Because we do need to rethink why God has brought the nations here, and then reimagine what our gatherings will look like, what our worship look like, what our mission looks like, and how our ministry practices are transformed all to the glory of God as we seek to accomplish his mission in the world today. And then we go about redeploying and building relationships, practicing hospitality.

How do we go about discipleship worship, so that God's kingdom might continue to flourish and expand as lives are transformed and the church is renewed all to the glory of God.

I want you to know that the conversation that you're about to hear is inspiring, but it also will be a little bit challenging because we do delve into a lot of the things that we see going on in our contemporary culture, and sometimes those can be politicized very, very quickly. But I want you to listen in to their hearts, to listen in to what God is doing.

And I want you to know that conversations like this are there for you to help water your faith so that you can water your world. But we can't do this without your financial support.

So I'm asking you to click on the link in your show notes so that you might be able to partner with us and that we might be able to continue to create content like, so that it might help water the world for Jesus so that your church might not only survive, but thrive in the way that he desires. And one last word before we get to the conversation. Eric actually had to take off in the middle of things.

So you'll hear him at the beginning, but you won't at the end, just in case you wondered why the conversation shifted slightly. Now, without further ado, let's get to my conversation with Eric Costanzo, Matt Sorens, and Daniel Yang. Happy listening.

Eric Costanzo, Daniel Yang, and Matthew Sorens. Welcome to Apollo's Watered.

Good to be here.

That was a lot of energy. Wow.

Thank you.

I actually pulled that back. Daniel. I pulled that back because this is exciting to have you three guys on the show. But before we get started, are you ready for the Fast 5?

Bring it. Let's do it. Come on.

Here we go. Daniel. Starbucks, Dunkin or something else.

Ooh. Always a locally brewed coffee. So something else.

Okay.

Matthew, Something else, too.

Okay.

Something else.

Oh, okay. Why something else for all three of you?

Local.

Yeah, Everybody wants to go support local.

Okay, what's your local, then? What's your local?

Oh, I think Matt and I might have the same one. I don't know. Matt.

Yeah, I was gonna say Enduro coffee here in Aurora is where I'd go.

Indero and Treadwell?

Yep.

Right across the street, there's a place called Little J's, and we all love it here at the church.

Oh, okay. That's good. And indiro, of course. Cody Lorenz is a longtime friend, so I know Cody really well, and maybe we could get some indiro around here.

That'd be good.

Very good.

All right, second question. Favorite genre of music. Go.

Ooh, man. Okay. 90s rock. Don't judge me.

I feel like I listen to like, npr. That's not a genre of music.

Well, that's good. It's acceptable. That's acceptable.

Matt Nye, pseudo intellectual. He's the real deal.

Just.

Yeah, he doesn't have to try.

Eric, you said classic rock.

Yeah, yeah.

What's your favorite band then? Pick your band.

Led Zeppelin, no doubt. No question.

Okay. Okay. All right, here we go then. Number three. And this one's going to take a little bit, but. Funniest cross cultural experience.

You're gonna have to explain it.

Man. Okay. All right. I don't know if this is funny or not, but I think the first time that I came on staff at a. You know, I'm Hmong.

I came on staff at a predominantly Anglo large mega church in the south. And a woman kept asking me if she. If I wanted a sandwich. A sandwich. And I asked her three times, what's a sandwich? I said, oh, a sandwich.

Yes, I would like a sandwich.

Matthew, about you.

My first thought was I. I was. When I lived in Nicaragua for a while, I had. Was mispronouncing a word that was a little too close to part of male anatomy.

But I don't really want to show. Let me go with.

When I moved into this apartment comple in suburban Chicago years ago, I invited my next door neighbor, who was this very lovely Mexican single mom, over for dinner. And I don't know, I thought it would be a good idea to make Mexican food. That was a terrible idea.

But it was really not very good Mexican food that I made. Also, she showed up an hour late, which is very culturally acceptable, but not my culture. And it was kind of burnt.

Anyway, she never came over for dinner again. But she started bringing me food every single day. Woman dropped food by my house.

Cause I think she concluded that I did not possibly know how to feed myself.

I like that one. Eric, how about you?

I will not tell the story using the appropriate or using the words where I was in. I believe I was in Ecuador and I was. I'm pretty decent in Spanish.

I'm not as good as Matt, but I was trying to say I need a line to ask the kids to get in a line. And instead I said, I need a woman's behind. Yeah, there are some specific language words that mean something in one village and not in the next.

I said.

What did I say? Why is everybody laughing?

I love it when the cultural stuff comes up.

All right.

Here we go, the fourth question. Strangest food you've ever eaten?

Oh, Northern Vietnam. I'm pretty sure I ate a dog.

Do you know what kind of dog?

No, I just saw them running around before, and then they were gone. I mean, and I don't tell that to be funny. It was just. I mean, it's just a matter of fact.

Matter of fact, it's a cultural thing. I know. It's just such a different cultural.

Yeah. And it's. I feel bad for telling that because it furthers a stereotype, but that's the first thing that came to mind.

All right, Matthew, I don't think I've done anything that exciting. I've definitely eaten heart, like cow heart.

On a number of occasions.

Not bad.

Okay, Eric, either turtle soup in China where you could see the claws. The turtle's claws floating, or guinea pig in South America.

Yeah, guinea pig. I've had guinea pig in Peru, too.

Yeah, Is that a delicacy?

Yeah, you get to pick your cute little guinea pig before, then it ends up on a stick.

Yeah, but I mean, it's a.

What we eat chicken. I mean, it's just pretty common.

It's a little. Got a little more fuzz on it than chicken.

Okay, here we go. The last question is this. If you were a restaurant, what restaurant would you be and why?

Ooh.

Momofuko. David Chang basically popularized ramen. At least upper, you know, hot, higher end ramen. Only because he's making tons of money, I guess. I don't know.

Matt.

You know, I was also gonna go in Japanese. I was. The first thing that came to mind is there's this, like, nice sushi place near us.

And I know they have these other places where there's, like, a conveyor belt that goes around and you just take things off the conveyor belt.

Oh, yeah.

I like that dynamic of food comes right by me and I just grab it and eat it.

That's Fun train.

Yeah.

Eric, Mine.

Mine would be Asian as well, but it would be, you know, really authentic Chinese food. That. That's my favorite. But if I'm actually so seriously Italian that I guess if I was a restaurant, I would have to be Italian.

My Italian blood just calls out to.

Me, oh, my wife is Italian, so I understand that. I don't think she could do anything else. But let's move on to the book. Now, let's talk about inalienable. This has only been out not too long.

But let's talk about how this book came to be. What was the story behind you three partnering together to write this book was.

A project that I had been working on for a while.

And I think some of the key themes in the book were things that I had felt like I wanted to put into print, but I was running into some roadblocks where I. I just wasn't. It wasn't coming together, and there were some gaps.

And so I reached out to Matt, and then Matt said, yes, I'd love to help you, but I have this friend Daniel, who I just think would. Would bring this. This project really, to where it needs to go.

And so I had not met Daniel before, and we actually didn't meet in person until we had been writing the book for several months. But we.

We obviously did a lot on Zoom, and it was just totally divinely ordained thing that the three of them came in and the gaps were filled, the project was unlocked. I dug some stuff out of the trash that I'd thrown away, and off we went.

And the title, Inalienable. How come it's inalienable? What was the significance behind choosing the title?

Well, I think a big part of it was, you know, and Matt, you. You can probably chime in too. You know, the.

The idea of hearkening to the Declaration of Independence, you know, the Constitution, which really talks about the founding of our nation, what makes it unique, and it uses the word inalienable and other. Other renderings it uses unalienable. But it's these ideas that what are the core things that are true to our identities as Americans?

And so it's a little bit of a words using that idea, because the premise of the book is we're actually referencing what are the core identities of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And so that was kind of the big idea behind using using that word.

Now the subtitle is how marginalized Kingdom voices can help save the American church, or why did you feel that the American church needs saving?

Yeah, I mean, the first chapter of the book, which we've kind of joked, if you only read the first chapter, it's kind of a depressing book. And if you read the whole book, it's a very hopeful book because we started on the problem and we felt like it.

We should be pretty blunt in our assessment of the American church for all that it's got going for, is in a pretty bad place in a lot of ways.

Some of that is looking at numbers, looking at decline of Americans who go to church at all, or who identify as Christians, and especially if you look at younger generations, some of that is also related to people not joining the church in younger generations, but also people leaving, particularly evangelical Christianity, which is the corner of the church that we're all rooted in. Then we looked at some of the reasons that we see that happening.

We can all think of some pretty bad public relations that the American evangelical has had in the last few years, maybe the last decade. Abuse scandals, leadership scandals, you know, hypocrisy, polarization politically.

That has just you know, become a situation where a lot of outsiders associate Christianity with politics more than with anything else. I think Covid has then just exacerbated that. And some of the tensions in our society have been exacerbated in some ways by elements of the church.

You know, we really wanted to look at that situation and say we think this is a troubling situation. We use the analogy of it's a sinking ship in some ways, but it's also a sinking ship that we may have been drilling the holes.

You know, it's not all self, it's not all people outside sort of in the culture.

It's also situations that within the US Church and especially the white evangelical US Church that, you know, is my part of it that we have some real responsibility for. And that's where we wanted to start the conversation.

I know some people will be, you know, pushed back on that and even the idea of reputation, some people will say, well, yeah, we're supposed to be hated by the world that's in the New Testament.

But the things that, that we find that we're often disliked for in our larger society are not often our theology or our culture, our distinct doctrines.

I'm paraphrasing Russell Moore here, but often times the people who, you know, have a negative view of American evangelicalism, it's not because they don't like what we believe. It's because they have evidence that we don't necessarily believe what we say.

There's been, you know, failures to live up to what we say we believe in a whole number of ways. So that's sort of why we think the American church needs saving. And then we pivot to where we see some hope.

And we think, you know, a God ordained way that God is using the church around the world to help bring some new voices into Christianity across the world, including here in the US we're.

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Can understand when we talk about these issues. As you mentioned, the American church does need saving.

Do you find that many people, though, within the church see that same thing and they agree with your assessment, or are you guys getting serious pushback on that?

I'll speak to it and then anybody else can jump in? I think it depends regionally, Travis, because depending on where you're at. So I grew up in Detroit. I lived a few years in Texas.

Those dynamics felt really different. And even the flavor and the traditions and the brand of Christianity felt very different.

And so I would say regionally, it'll feel like Christianity and following Jesus is flourishing and it's a part of your social identity. And then I think in other parts, we're sensing that in Chicago, you lived here in Chicago for quite some time. There's not a lack of visible churches.

But I do think that there is a sense in which, like, the, the witness and the testimony of the church is less of a. Like, it doesn't add value to who you are in your social identity as much as it would in other places.

So I would say, you know, our assessment about the American church needing saving, you know, our friends who are, you know, working alongside to help, you know, better the narratives around evangelicals. I think they would say, yes, of course.

Like, we see, we see you how evangelicals are being portrayed as a voting block and not as people on mission with Jesus. And then I think there are others who no question would say, what are you guys talking about? You're woke. You're pushing a social agenda.

And so I personally have felt that in the last 18 months working on this book and when it was released.

Yeah, being In Oklahoma and in Tulsa, which is the northeastern part of the state, we're kind of like. Like, we're not deep south, but we're not quite Midwest. We have a lot of influence of Texas. We're kind of like northwest Arkansas. I don't know.

We're a hybrid here. And we also are very multicultural city.

And so I think one of the things that has been a positive for me is I can appeal to folks in my own church and in our community here. They just need to look around and that they can see that around them there there's a lot of. Of very positive diversity.

And there are a lot of Christians of color and Christians from different parts of the world, and then a lot of, you know, white Christians too. And there's a. And of all different ages.

And so we can really just look around in our communities and see that there's a diversity to the body of Christ.

And I found that that has helped avoid a lot of the conflict and the name calling and the accusations of wokeness, which most people can't even define what that means.

We've been able to push around that by not necessarily putting together ideological arguments, but looking at real people who are around us and saying, this example is your neighbor. This is someone you know.

And it's really hard to hate that person when you look them in the eye every day and see, you know, a real, living, breathing person.

One of the things that I found really enjoyable about your book is that after you identify the problem, you immediately move to a greater lens, an expanded lens. Taking it from the American church. Instead, you focused it more on the kingdom.

What was the reason why focusing on the kingdom more important, rather than emphasizing just the church where it was, what was the significance on that?

I think the kingdom for us is bigger than the church. It's bigger than humanity, that we do narrow into those things.

We do want to speak to the role of the church, and we do want to speak to the real high value that the imago DEI places on every single life, from the preborn to the oldest person, and even beyond our physical lives. You know, we have value as people created in God's image. But the kingdom is so much bigger than that.

You know, the kingdom, as we talk about in that chapter, it's all encompassing. It's also headed in a direction. It's advancing as Christ leads us forward.

It's separate from the kingdoms of the world, but it includes the kingdoms of the world.

And so it felt like that was the place to start with a focus on this thing that Jesus talks about more than anything else, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. And how do our lives as we identify with Christ, are they best viewed through the lens of being citizens of that kingdom before any other kingdom?

What I find very interesting about that, Eric, and you guys are familiar with Jeff Christofferson's book talking about Kingdom, I would assume. And one of the things he mentioned in the book that I found very interesting, he said, we don't see the churches of Revelation still standing today.

You don't see Pergamum and Thyatira, meaning that the purpose of the church was to play its role in advancing, in essence, the baton and message of Christianity, to expand the kingdom, not necessarily portray our own brand. And I love that fact that you guys brought that back into focus because Kingdom does transcend our own ethnicity.

And I was talking with TV Thomas a long time ago, we were in India together, and he had mentioned to me I'd asked him the question, and what's the number one doctrine that you feel like has been neglected? And he said, the understanding of Kingdom. And I think that Kingdom. You guys are right on.

And I love that about what you've done and how you draw that out.

But being a white male in a more of a conservative evangelical tribe, the chapter that made me uncomfortable is the decentering of the white American church. That's the part where I went, oh, no. Oh no. And I'm not meaning to. I'm kind of walking through the book piece by piece.

But this is the part that I think makes a lot of white evangelicals uncomfortable. So who's going to attack this part on it? Not that I'm disagreeing with it, it just makes me uncomfortable and. Well, it probably should.

But tell us why we had to understand or talk about de centering the white American church.

Yeah.

You know, Travis, in choosing that title, it was a little bit to be provocative in the sense that the whole usage of the term decentering is popular now. But also, I think the very premise of that chapter is just speaking as a matter of fact, you know, Christianity, global Christianity has shifted.

It shifted four decades ago, late 60s, early 70s, and, you know, the large majority of Christians in the world today are not Western Europeans and Americans, you know, and so whether it's Africa, you know, South America, parts of China, and we don't, especially in America, think of Christianity as global, because when we say global, we think of like everybody else, you know, and when we even that whole idea that global is everywhere else except here, is a centering of America's version of Christianity.

And then if you look at America's version of Christianity, in some ways it is very centered around white Christianity in our world, white evangelicalism. And within evangelicalism, you know, the leadership tends to be male.

And so without having to use, you know, intersectionality, I think what our book is, what that chapter is really trying to say is that, like, there is a worldview that we have. We have not been living into. And so the best way that I can explain it is like you can only see what's in front of you, but the.

The person next to you can see what's a little bit of what's in front of you, but a little bit what's to the left of them or to the right of them, them. And if you don't, like, in a sense, decenter yourself, then you can't really see the breadth of what is out there.

And so you have to, in some ways decenter yourself and be willing to see the world from the person to the left or to the right of you. And when you do that, then you actually have a better perspective of what God is doing in the world.

And so the decentering of white American Christianity is not saying that Christianity in America and Christianity in the west, specifically among white people is less than or is fading or is no longer relevant. What it is saying is that it belongs in a greater context of global Christianity. And when you look at it from that perspective, I feel like.

We feel like it gets you closer to the kingdom expression of what Jesus is doing in the world.

I think sometimes people, and I've heard this a little bit, and, you know, they read decentering as canceling. Like, oh, you're, you know, you're saying the white church in the United States is like, out of fashion, doesn't matter.

And that actually speaks to precisely how we have centered ourselves, that we hear that we're not the only thing, and we think that that means that we don't count anymore. And we're not at all saying that the white church is important or white people don't matter.

I mean, two of the three of the authors of this book are white, but we are saying that we are not. All there is the church, that God created the church as one body with many parts.

We see that in 1 Corinthians 12, and it's particularly the parts that might seem honorable. The Apostle Paul says it needs special honor. And I think sometimes in the American church, what's happened is we've.

It's not even so much that we're Actively explicitly telling another part of the global body that they don't matter, that we don't need them. We've almost not realized that they're there. You know, we.

So many American Christians still think of Africa as a, you know, a continent to be reached as opposed to realizing it's a continent with more Christians in it than any other continent in the world. And that's not to say they figured everything out in Africa or in Latin America or in Asia.

But if we're not learning from what God is doing through the Holy Spirit in other parts of the world, we're limited to this very narrow slice of the whole of the body of Christ.

And we're arguing that we need to have a broader view that sees the world not just as a mission field, but also as a place where God is at work and could bring mission back to us as well and be teaching us what it means to follow.

Jesus, which is so instrumental in increasing our own faith and our own view of God. Right. If we only see God with our own eyes.

I mean, if I see God through your eyes, my vision of God increases because you see something in your own cultural viewpoint that I miss that are blind spots in my own culture. So it's really not a political thing at all. This is what I think that some people really confuse and they wanna put it in the political sphere.

This is basically a biblical faith issue where if we can get a hold of this, I mean, if we don't, our whole faith is diminished. Really, the glory of God is diminished. And if we embrace it, we're embracing God's plan because he wanted to reach all nations.

The Ponta ethne, that whole idea, when you guys mentioned that. But I know it does make people uncomfortable, the American church, where the American people don't see that qualifier, they just see church.

But it is an American church and there is an American gospel. Todd Johnson was on the show and we talked a bit about this, about the American gospel.

And while you guys didn't say this explicitly, what do you see as the American gospel as different or opposed to a global gospel?

I'll start. I think some of that.

That idea of what an American gospel is came up a lot when we interviewed global Christian leaders and asked them what they saw as maybe as blind spots within the American church or as idolatry within the American church or syncretism, which, again, we think of syncretism as this thing that happens in other countries where they blend parts of their culture with the message of the gospel and can't even discern the difference. But we do that in every culture, including in this culture. We just can't get in because it's the only water we've ever swum. Swam in.

I think, you know, some of those idols that were mentioned often were individualism, but that's part of the American culture, and there's some benefits to that in our culture. But we've played into how we read the gospel. Even literally how we read it. We read it in the singular, you know, second person.

Like this whole book was written to you, Travis, or to you, Daniel. But most of the New Testament was written in the second person plural, which we don't even have in English, unless you're talking y'all.

But, you know, you have it more in the South. But. But that dynamic, to read this as a community is something that I think a lot of global Christians realize that we maybe miss in the US Context.

I think that's one big example. We heard a lot would be around individualism.

And there is a sense of triumphalism that I think Americans have had as we've propagated the gospel around the world. Even if the content of the gospel has maintained biblical. I think, think there is a sense in which. Think about this. During.

After World War II, and there was a lot of nation building that was happening, and you actually see a large growth in the missions movement. And there's a combination of calling America to spiritual renewal.

And that was one of the big things that Billy Graham was preaching early on, was calling America to have a spiritual awakening. And you see a rise in denominations and with that, a rise of sending organizations. And one of the big slogans was, you know, bringing back the King.

And so it was this idea that if we preach the gospel to the ends of the earth, then Jesus is going to come back. And that coincided a lot with the rise of American world.

Right?

So the British Empire was diminishing. You know, America was growing as a. As a superpower and eventually took over the British Empire.

You know, there is a sense in which America arose as the. The missional gatekeeper of the world during that time.

And you almost kind of expect it because they play that role, you know, and in some ways, England was that like London was that for a bit. And that's why you see, you know, there's a strong tie between the Anglican Church and places like India and other places.

And so you almost kind of expect that, you know, it was a. It wasn't colonialism, because obviously colonialism had already.

And, you know, in name had been abolished at that point, but it was some version of that. And the best word that we might have for is some version of, you know, triumphalism.

And you almost kind of just expect that, you know, And I think that's something that every hub of power and influence has to always expect some level, like we. If we're not careful, we're going to be, you know, putting Saul's armor onto other cultures.

And a part of what we have sensed, and I think there's bodies and bodies of literature, at least in missiology, around this, is that we're coming to terms with that. Some of the language that is kind of thrown around is the decolonization of missions.

And again, it has probably less to do with content, although I do think there are some content things that we talk about in the book, things around creation and things around justice that is also the content of the gospel. But it's by and large, tone, and it's by and large learning to be less condescending in the way that we do missions around the world.

You talk about, though, being a partnership, trying to find this language of partnership, rather than, as you mentioned, colonialism, where it was our own culture being forced onto people at the same time.

And I know I'm not giving an exact definition of colonialism, but you really try to frame the conversation, and it's to our benefit to partner with other people around the world, because that really does extend, as Jackson Wu told me, it extends our mirrors so that we can see more around us and behind us. The more that we interact with people of different ethnicities and culture, our vision of God grows. Why is it so important, though?

I mean, yes, we have these blind spots, but what have you found those blind spots to be?

There's so many of them, and every. Every culture is going to have blind spots. I think that's part of the challenges to. For people to not be offended by that.

We all have to reckon with the fact that they're there and we're not born with them. They. They become just a part of our. That we're shaped by our. All of our education, our experiences, who raised us, where we were raised.

And, you know, I make a. I tell a story and in the Kingdom chapter about.

About.

It wasn't until I was 21 years old in a different country that I realized that I had never really been around Christians that were from different parts of the world, almost not at all, and had not been influenced by very many people who didn't come from my community and didn't have the same skin color.

And so I think we all have to just be able to acknowledge whether it's related to race or issues of engaging with different kinds of people or other divisive things that, that can polarize, that we all have blind spots. And some of those come from our Western education. But a great deal but just comes from our experiences in life.

And I think the three of us would say that one of the greatest gifts that God has given us is that cross cultural engagement that we've been able to have in so many different times in our lives that has widened our worldview, while at the same time we've grown deeper in our faith and we've grown deeper in our commitment to the church. So it's not as if that widening of our worldview has watered down our faith. It's done quite the opposite.

We've seen that our brothers and sisters in Christ from different contexts can help us see our blind spots and see things through a new lens.

And I think that's important that we, we're not trying to communicate when we talk about marginalized voices, that just because someone's marginalized, then automatically everything they say is right. Everybody has a blind spot. But that partnership really helps us, I think, sharpen each other on all sides.

And rather than seeing our brothers and sisters in Christ from the majority world, from the developing world, whichever term you want to use, the global south, rather than seeing them as our little brothers and sisters, we see them as equals. We see them as having just as much to offer as we do.

And then there are some areas where the American church is kind of drowning and struggling because of our blind spots. Well, maybe they're the exact fresh voice we need to hear to help us identify where some of those areas of course, correction can be found.

And then in a partnership, we can do the same for them.

In Samaria, as you mentioned that I thought of one of the things that we try to do here is we say that the gospel affirms something in every culture and it challenges something in every culture. And what we're trying to do is minimize those. We all have those, as you said before, those own cultural idols and idolatries that creep up around us.

And yet we can't remove our culture from us completely.

As I'm looking and reading through the book, it's saying let's draw attention and open our eyes a little bit to see what God is doing around the world and join him in that.

That.

But there's still going to be resistance because of the political rhetoric. People want to force you into one label or another. How do you counter those people who are calling it woke?

Because that's become the boogeyman word right now for a whole host of things. And I always want to know, define the term. And I'll tell you if I am, because I know how one person uses the term is different.

Just like when I interact with other people and they mentioned grace, I want to say, well, well, okay, we're saved by grace. Define grace for me, and then I'll tell you if we're in agreement. So let's start there.

How do you guys respond to those people who accuse you of being woke or when they try to cancel you?

Yeah, I mean, one thing, and this goes to one of those areas that Eric has mentioned where we need to be in partnership with the global church. I think that one of the blind spots for American Christianity, and it's rooted in our history, especially for evangelicals, is we feel this.

This dynamic where we have to choose between good theology and proclamation of the gospel on one hand, or pursuing social change and justice. You know, we think of those, and there's a whole history there with sort of the fundamentalists, like, mainline split.

100 years ago, most of the world's church didn't go through that split.

So if you ask them, should we proclaim the gospel or should we love our neighbors and transform unjust, just structures, they would say, yes, like, why on earth would we split those things up? We're called to love our neighbors as ourselves. And if we love our neighbors, we want them to know the hope of salvation in Jesus.

And we want them to have, you know, food to eat and all the basic things that we need for our lives. And we, you know, why would we divide those things? It shows the credibility of the gospel for us to, you know, to pursue both.

And I, you know, that will get you described as woke in some corners of American Christianity today.

For most of the rest of the world, Christians, they're not necessarily, you know, they don't see it as a binary choice where you need to choose one way or another to be a Christian, that both those things are clear out.

You know, integral mission, which is a phrase that comes out of Latin American theologians, is rooted in this idea that God cares about the whole person and he calls his people to live out the gospel both in what we say and what we believe, but also in what we do.

If there are places of criticism in the book, it's because, number one, we see them in ourselves, in our own tribe, like we're on the ship as many Matt was saying, the ship that we feel like has holes in it. We're still on that ship.

And number two, it's out of genuine concern that, you know, there is a generational backlash that is happening and is going to happen at greater levels if we don't at least talk about these issues. We don't have to find resolution.

As a matter of fact, I was listening to a podcast the other day, and the person being interviewed I just thought brought tremendous insight.

He says he you know, when you're dealing with big, huge issues in institutions, specifically Christian institutions, it won't be fixed by big, huge solutions. It's probably going to be addressed by little smaller, you know, solutions over time.

And I, and I do think that that's an important take to have when you're engaging people who, who see, you know, an issue differently than you.

And the last thing I'll say about this is whenever someone comes, because they either are trying to understand what I'm saying, like, I really do appreciate that, you know, if they disagree with me, but they really want to understand what I'm trying to say, what we're trying to say in chapter three there, I feel like I feel honored by that, you know, rather than feeling threatened, because that is a chance to really talk about, like, the substantial things that you're trying to say.

And so I think it's important that we facilitate conversations in that way, because within the body of Christ at least, like that very act of being willing to have those courageous conversations, even though you are on different sides of it, that's the witness to an unbelieving world.

In the fourth chapter, you kind of phrase it. I mean, you put it within the image of God. And you mentioned addressing these idols and reading those descriptions of idols.

I actually thought was very interesting.

The thing that I'm noticing, though, while I have seen that clearly within the American white Christian church, is that because that's what I've been a part of historically, but yet my last church was very diverse. And I saw those idols creep up there because, like you said, the gospel affirms something in every culture and challenges something in every culture.

But there is something unique about the American experience.

We saw people come from different backgrounds, from other countries that loved God, that had been in all night prayer meetings and sought God and then suddenly got money, and then God wasn't there anymore. That can be in any culture whatsoever. How do we confront these idols, though, that have become such a part and parcel of the church?

Whether it's, as you mentioned, Christian nationalism, You talk about materialism and consumerism and tribalism and partisanship. These are not little things. These are massive, gigantic idols. How do we address these?

I don't think idols are ever small. If they take a place in our lives of priority and worship and allegiance over God, then they're significant.

And these topics related to them are huge.

And, you know, the size of our homes and the assets that we own and their value and their worth, I mean, all of that has increased tremendously. And there's probably, if not already going to be a new version of the game of life that uses crypto or something, I don't know.

But it's always ever changing whatever we're going to invest our money in and make a priority.

And I think the only way to attack those things, and we really try to come back to scripture in every single part of that chapter, is to let scripture guide us in dealing with idols.

Because our idols are not, as we say, they often made of wood or stone or metal, though we could talk about some of our monuments and things, I guess there.

But they're still idols, and the Bible still gives us guidance on how to root those things out, to not ever give our worship or allegiance to something we create with our own hands or that is a created thing. That's that we don't put it in the order of the Creator.

And we also brought in some great, I think, global voices in that chapter and historic voices who had to deal with idolatry in some cases in the very physical sense of actually worshiping an object. But hopefully that scripture gives us some clear guides there that are inalienable. They're universal.

Even if the idols we're dealing with are a little more modern western, as opposed to ancient Near Eastern, there's still those biblical principles apply, which isn't easy.

Easy at all.

The struggle that I often have, though, is in bringing in the global voices, in drawing attention to it is one thing. Actually doing it is something else.

That was something where I could draw attention to it and people would agree but working it out on the ground became very, very difficult because you're interacting with not just different worldviews, but sometimes it's hard when you're in a certain culture, culture, you know, the people of your own tribe. Right. You know what they deal with, you know, sometimes with someone's playing you or not.

But when you get into a different culture, the forms of communication are very different. And there's not a one size fits all. There's always a spectrum. There's the good and there's the bad.

There's the people that play the system or play on it. And it becomes very, very difficult to recognize. As people have tried to, to adopt this, I think they'll say, I'm in, I want to do this.

I see the importance of it. But then start encountering that pushback.

Not from their own people, let's say, which they will, but when they start trying to work this out on the ground, that's where people become exhausted in trying to keep up and try to do it. What advice do you give to them as they're trying to work through this?

The first thing to probably not do is to make social media your first place of engagement. I think that's where a lot of folks get in trouble. Well, that's not to say don't post what you're learning.

I think social media is a good place for offering reflection.

But I've seen so many times when people get activated into something and they think that by engaging in online conversations that that's the way to further the cause. You know, I think probably the thing that I would, and I have advised people oftentimes is to remain in the posture of learning for a long time.

And there are places to be activated, there are places to advocate.

But, you know, because this is a long game for most people, and especially if this is not your vocation, if you're not in an advocacy, if you're not a Matt Sorens, you know, if you're not leading a church like Eric Costanzo, it's probably, you know, not your job to try to move the ball really far ahead, but then to try to examine, like, your own roots, your heart, and to try to better understand where Jesus is growing you and then to impact those that are closest to you in incremental conversations.

I think that's really important because that's where you test the waters of what you're actually learning, is when you're actually having real conversations with real people that you really care about.

And if you're seeing progress there, that's probably, probably because you're actually experiencing genuine change in your life because you really need that to bring that into the public sphere when you're actually engaging on these issues, because if it's not real inside, it's going to collapse really easily. And that's what's going to lead to the fatigue that a lot of people are experiencing right now.

What was the significance of really, it sounds cliche, but of really buttressing and supporting this from the scriptures yourself?

Well, I. We have to consider our audience, and we're a part of our audience.

You know, if I read a book that's dealing with that, that, that is saying in its title, it's about things inalienable where there's, there's no other. You know, these are, these are essentials. They're drilled down into the core and the fabric of, of the way God's kingdom is ordered.

And you're going to have to convince me with some biblical teaching. You know, Master Matt's, Matt and Jenny's book on immigration, Welcoming the Stranger.

You know, they, they do such a great job of speaking to people who, who study the scripture and apply the scripture because they have so much biblical content in it. And so we're a part of that audience.

We, we want to continually know that our feet are on solid ground with what we're thinking and believing, because any of us can get, get pulled off into something based on our emotions or our frustrations. But I want my feet to be on the ground in a solid study and application of scripture because I believe that's a firm foundation.

And so knowing that we're writing this to probably some people who have at least had some experience with the church, have some understanding of the Gospel, then we know that we're on solid footing and it gives us the right baseline. I think when we're talking to global Christians and others, where do we come back to? Instead say, this is why we believe this and why it's important.

It's not just our opinion, it's not just our experience. And so I think that, that, that's buttressing is a good word.

And also throughout the entire book, we just wanted to make sure we come back to, you know, we have a scripture index at the end because we quoted so much Scripture. And I think, I hope anybody who actually reads the book will find that to be foundational.

One of the things that you guys talk about that I know that you're going to get pushed back on, and I'm sure you already have, is you're Talking about systemic issues issues and talking about systemic structures within a society isn't always well received by those whose priority is soul winning. When you see people talking about soul winning and you've heard some.

I can think of one well known Bible teacher and he says the Bible never talks about structures like that, you know, that sin isn't a structure. He always talks about personal sin. How do you respond to that?

I think that, that, you know, when I read through the scriptures, I mean, often we're talking about systemic issues. We're talking about engaging government often in some ways or another.

You know, I, I read through the Old Testament and into the New and you see all sorts of examples of some of the heroes of our faith engaging government. I mean, God sent Moses to Pharaoh.

God had a purpose in placing Esther in this unique role where she happened to be married to the king Nehemiah in front of the king as well, you know, and takes advantage of the influence that he has to address a systemic injustice. And I think, you know, and that carries into the New Testament as well. You have.

And also an example that doesn't always go well, John the Baptist confronts a king that is, you know, perpetuating injustice. That's worth mentioning because we can use the happy stories of the first three I mentioned.

And you know, God will always bless this and everything will work out well in the end. And that's not necessarily a biblical promise.

That's not in any way just pit that against, you know, people wanting people to know Jesus and to be in a relationship with Jesus again, in my view, and I think this is true even just culturally, and you know, my generation, the younger generation, we lack credibility when we say that we believe that we, you know, this is the gospel message and this is the whole of the gospel.

When we then are indifferent to people who are suffering under unjust structures, the idea that we need to choose again, and this is something, I think a lot of the Christians in other parts of the world brought up to us is just not a biblical idea that we should either focus on individuals deciding to follow Jesus or on, on communities and societies being just places where people are, are treated humanely as people made in the image of God.

And that is, I mean, that's a classic divide in the, in American evangelicalism in particular and historically American evangelicalism kind of came out up in response to people who took a sole focus on social transformation and neglected proclaiming the gospel. But it's a mistake to think that, you know, to sort of swing the other way and think we can't touch structures or that it's not biblical to do so.

I think there's lots of examples biblically of some of God working through human beings to address unjust structures.

I was going to add to that. Yeah. A lot of times when folks say, you know, our job isn't to fix systemic issues.

And so there are no systemic structures that are propping up segregation anymore. But I think the overturning of Roe v. Wade is a good example, at least for some evangelicals to understand that. For those who felt like, like Roe v.

Wade was supporting a system that, you know, that said abortion is a constitutional right, I think they somewhat celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And that's a, that's a judicial, systemic, you know, issue.

But then they, we sometimes fail to understand that like systemic isn't always judicial.

You know, there are societal norms, there are family structures, there are social, religious structures, theological structures that specifically create role based functionality. So depending on your theology, women do certain things, men do certain things.

And so I think when you examine structures beyond just judicial structures, you can begin to understand that, okay, we actually function within order and some orders actually perpetuate certain kinds of things, good and bad.

And I think it's important for us to at least create an imagination for folks to kind of see that, oh, you know what, like, we lived in a very organized world, we function according to certain very social norms. And for some, those social norms create setbacks. And I think it's okay to talk about it in those terms.

But if we're only talking about political activation, then the, that's where I find that people say, oh, you know, we shouldn't be getting involved in addressing systemic.

Issues in the churches that we have to make this adjustment is not going to be easy.

Some would say just, hey, okay, let the church be what it is and we'll plant new churches that'll do these things because you can't possibly change the structure that's there or it's easier to turn a rowboat than it is the Titanic. And I know in the church that I served in, we had done exactly the principles that you were talking about and advocating in this book.

And God blessed it tremendously to see our vision of God expand. We learned from them. We weren't just teaching, we were learning.

And we Tried to have that posture of listening, but in larger churches that see this on the horizon, and I know that there are some that do. I've talked to, to a few of them and they've come and they've said we can't possibly do it.

They said it's too big of a shift, we'll lose all of our people, which means that we might lose our jobs for this. And as I've often referred to on this show, as one Indian man told me, it's one thing to buy the elephant, it's another thing to feed it.

And so we have these big structures that if we shift, the people aren't going to see the biblical part. They're going to go to the churches where they're hearing, they're, they're getting their voices or their ears tickled.

Can you refer to something in the book where you said you were in Texas?

You talk about some of the ministry methods and measurables that you had learned that you had to unlearn when you went up north to Toronto and you talk about talking to a man about the church and you were planting a church and he said, don't bring your American religion up here. I'm paraphrasing, so forgive me if I don't get that correct.

No, you got it.

Yeah. How do you respond to that? Because most of the churches that I interact with, with, they have those measurables in place. It's a well oiled machine.

It is a business and an organization more than it is an organism.

While they would give a nod to the organism part of it, they have to pay the bills, they have to get the money, they have to keep the people satisfied. And that's unfortunate, but it's a reality that I know it is for many churches.

How do you encourage them to be faithful and how to unlearn some of those measurables, if you will, those things that they use to measure their effectiveness?

Scorecards are important. Scorecards are a part of knowing whether you're a good steward and knowing whether you should continue to engage in a particular direction.

And so I think scorecards are sometimes know a biblical so meaning like you know, there, there aren't prescriptions around how to track metrics and those kinds of things.

And you know, most people who were trained at least at the seminary level, you know, they, you know, these are things that they learned kind of after the fact. It's not theological training.

And I think it's important for, for us to, to realize that whenever we're doing missions because Most people who are called into ministry, they didn't have aspirations to be a bean counter. They didn't have aspirations to be a project manager. They didn't have aspiration.

But in some ways, like because of the efficiency of how we train missionaries in the North American context, the nuts and bolts in some ways become intertwined with like, you know, the call and the why and those kinds of things. And I think, you know, in saying that, you know, there are two things.

One from the, from the practitioner perspective, the missionary, like, it's very easy for them to get caught up in the nuts and bolts. And then eventually, you know, you change. You write your newsletters to reflect what people are measuring.

And then potentially, you know, you kind of lose focus on the mission and you actually focus more on those who are supporting you financially.

But, you know, know, when you're approaching those who you're trying to reach with the gospel, you know, what we would say, you know, the mission field or your mission target, like, there's a very important understanding that like, you carry with you, especially if you're an American.

I would say, you know, in particular, if you're an American, that there is a, there is a perception and almost a, an assumption of power that you bring, which is kind of funny because I've never felt like a powerful person person. And I don't think that by, you know, calling me an American, you know, that automatically makes me powerful.

But in the eyes of the world, it does, you know, and I, I've grown up with this perception as somebody who's an immigrant, refugee, immigrant parents from Laos, that to be an American, there is a certain status that came with it. And you bring that with you when you go into the places that you want to do ministry. And you have to understand how that affects people, people.

And then when you, you know, add that to a religious construct or when you add that to, you know, the Bible or to Christianity, there's another layer that people now perceive you through.

And I think it's self awareness is key to understand how people perceive you because that's typically how we identify ourselves whenever we go into a place of mission. I'm an American, I'm here to bring you the God gospel.

And when you identify yourself in that way, people actually just see power structures and they don't see you, and they actually don't see the transformation that the gospel can bring to them.

They just see these social labels that you carry with you, and it creates a power dynamic, especially if those places are disadvantaged or materially poor. I Think it's important to understand those dynamics.

And so when that gentleman said to me, don't bring American religion up here to Canada, mind you, Toronto is only four and a half hours from where I grew up. What he was actually saying was that, you know, he was letting me know of the power dynamics that I was bringing as an American into Canada.

Matt, you mentioned at the beginning if you just read the first chapter, you'd go away depressed. But the, the book is filled with hope. As we wrap up our time here, I'd like to get a word just from each of you of hope.

One of the privileges I get with my job at World Relief is interacting both with a lot of immigrant congregations in the US and then World Relief works in various parts of Africa and in Haiti and Asia and other parts of the world.

And I've had a little bit of opportunity, that's not my primary role, to travel and see some of the work we're doing there in partnership with local churches.

And that's some of the hope that has been just remarkably hopeful to me in the last few years as I've occasionally sort of been pulling my hair out at the state of the American church. Not all of it, but there's moments when I read the news or read about something else that happened. I felt disoriented.

I think disorientation is an experience that a significant number of American evangelicals have felt in the last few years.

And for me, a lot of that hope has been, I mean, for my wife and I, it's been being part of a little Spanish speaking church here in Aurora that we kind of stumbled into on accident. Like they were doing a vbs and it was when my third child was born and I was responsible for the older two.

And it's like, oh, I could get rid of my kids for a few hours if they went to this vacation Bible school.

And, you know, we went and to the, you know, pick them up and wow, this church is serving like hundreds of kids in our neighborhood, neighborhood and bringing them the gospel. And, you know, and then, you know, we kind of slowly stepped our foot into that, that became our church.

And for me, in a role at World Relief, where I'm working with lots of churches across ethnic lines, but mostly white evangelical churches, you know, that we, we pray for immigrants and it's not controversial and we're not praying for like, you know, political things, just like they're immigrants who are at risk making dangerous trips and we pray that God would protect them, them and nobody gets upset about that. Was sort of refreshing because a lot of my job is sort of helping crisis manage when someone is upset in the church.

Because we mentioned, you know, something fairly innocuous about God's love for immigrants that's become controversial in a lot of the white event church in the last few years.

So I'd say for me, that's some of the hope that I want to bring with the book is part of, you know, where God has really, I think, helped me stay, you know, firmly in the evangelical church is by showing me that there's ways to be an evangelical Christian that are beyond just sort of the white American version of that, even within the US through some of what's happening with immigration, but then in traveling to Africa as well. And again, I don't want the takeaway to be like, the US Church is all messed up and they've gotten this figured out in Africa. It's all perfect there.

My African sisters and brothers would be very quick to tell you that's not the case, just that the blind spots aren't all the same. They have some important perspectives. That's been really refreshing for me to learn from, from Daniel.

I'm very hopeful when I talk to some of the young people that I'm mentoring and typically in that young, millennial, older Gen Z category, in some ways, they are developing new language for some of these things. They'll probably make some of the same mistakes that our generation, previous generations have made.

But I think they're starting, you know, their bottom is like, RC feeling. And I. I think that's a positive thing, especially for the ones who are thinking about, like, how to create new spaces.

You know, I, I don't advocate, like, the exvangelical movement. I have friends who are no longer evangelical, though, and.

But I do appreciate those who are courageous enough to be truthful with, like, their church hurt and church experience and yet are moving forward and trying to create a. For others.

To me, that that's really what gives me the hope that God is actually still working amongst those who, you know, are both inside the ship, those who have left the ship, those who kind of fell off the ship when it was rocking too hard, those who were kicked off the ship. You see, I just see God working across all of those people. And that reminds me that.

That, you know, it's really got God's work to save, and it's not ours. My. My prayer, you know, is that for those who are in our age category, which.

Which is kind of weird right now that we're like Matt's younger than us, Travis. But now that I say that, I feel like I'm really old and to say what I just said is actually an old person's thing to say.

But I realized that, man, I we need to keep it together. Because the biggest job that I feel like I have at this point is to be a hope giver and a hope dealer to the next generation.

And if all I do is deal cynicism and that's why we try to keep the book hopeful, then it doesn't give much for the next generation to build on. And I think you can only build on hope.

So in some ways, even despite my feelings, I choose to be hopeful because I know that's what the next generation needs.

That is a good word word to conclude the show on. Gentlemen, I want to thank you for coming on the show. It's been it's a very far ranging conversation.

One obviously that's not going to be concluded in just one podcast or even several different podcasts because of these issues.

But it is my hope that we will become much more holistic and biblical and following the principles that our Lord has laid out so that his kingdom might continue to expand in the hearts and minds of men and women all over the world. World, I want to thank you for coming on the show.

Thanks, Travis.

Thanks for having us.

This is a conversation that we all need to hear and need to have. We need to start thinking like missionaries where we are at Apollo's Watered. We think that the church in the west is stuck.

It's stuck in its old paradigms.

And even the new paradigms that people are using might grow for a bit, but in the end actually end up dehumanizing staff and the people that they mean to serve.

We are calling for a renewal, a reformation of sorts, and that requires rethinking what we're doing and why we're doing it, reimagining a better future where people are not being dehumanized and then redeploying so that the mission of Christ can continue forward. See, this is what our missio holistic approach is all about.

By looking to the scriptures, learning from the Christian past, listening to the global voices so that we might learn to embody, embody our faith where we are with all of who we are, and that we end up stripping the cultural layers of abuse and dehumanization and scandal from the church so that the message of Jesus might radiate.

Several years ago, I had a lamp outside of my garage that got to look really dim when I got up Close to it, I could see that it had been coated with dirt and grime so badly that the light couldn't shine through. Once I cleaned it, the light shone through again. I never changed the bulb. The bulb was the same, but the lenses had gotten dark.

You see, that's what we're trying to do.

By looking to the scriptures, by learning from the Christian past, by listening to those global voices and then learning to embody our faith where we are. We're cleaning the lamp of the church so that the message of Jesus might shine through. That's what we're all about.

And that is what will lead to the renewal of the church in the West. We need to be praying, yes, we need to be fasting, but we also need to rethink how we got here.

What are those things that we have kept and let smear our lenses over time that we may not even realize? But when we interact with the past, when we see what our brothers and sisters around the world are doing, that helps clean our lenses.

And then as we go to the scripture, we can see things through their eyes as well. And they help us to see things that we may not have seen before, but have always been there, there.

And then when we can see clearly, Jesus shines through. And then we water our worlds. That's what this episode is really about. And that's what I want you to take away.

And I want to thank you for listening to our show, for partnering with us, and I want to thank our Apollo's water team for helping to water the world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered. Stay watered.

Everybody them on a roll.