#272 | The Core of the Christian Faith with Michael Goheen

Today's episode is generously brought to you by the Lindenmeyer family. May the Lord bless your household, guide your steps, and reveal his presence in every part of your lives. Sam welcome to Apollos Watered.

In the Ministry Deep Dive podcast, we tackle the big questions few are willing to ask about ministry, culture, and the challenges you face every day. Ministry is hard. The road ahead isn't always clear. But with God, nothing is impossible.

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Refresh your soul, renew your vision and get ready, because it's watering time. Welcome back to Ministry Deep Dive. I'm Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host.

You know, this is a podcast that takes you beneath the surface to the heart of ministry, theology and a life of not life with God. What that's like. Today, though, we're going really down deep to talk about the core of the Christian faith.

We talk a lot about culture, we talk a lot about a lot of things that are going on. But if someone were to ask you, what is the very core of the Christian faith, what would you say? You know, for many of us, we don't know.

We kind of stumble through it. We'd think we know the answer, but we're not quite sure. And that's why today's guest is so important.

This is someone who has spent decades helping the church recover a holistic and biblical vision of the gospel, Dr. Michael Goheen. Mike is a theologian. He's been a guest on the show before.

He's a missiologist and the author of the new book the Core of the Christian Seeing Jesus or, excuse me, Living the Gospel for the Sake of the World. And I'm pretty excited to have Mike back on the show. Mike, welcome back to Ministry Deep Dive.

Thank you. It's good to be back, Travis. Looking forward to the conversation.

Well, you know the drill. Are you ready for the fast five?

Oh, okay. I've forgotten about that part of it, but I'm ready.

Okay.

I think I'm ready. I don't know about this.

Okay. We're not going to go too crazy this time. This time I want to focus it a little bit because you're a well read guy.

We've talked a lot of times over the last few years. I've gotten to know you. I've been just immersed in your work.

But the book that you recommend to others the most like what book do you recommend the most besides your own? One book?

One book, that's hard to say. I'm going to choose the book on the theology of the Book of Revelation by Richard Bauckham.

Okay. Wow, that was unexpected. Why that one?

Well, that book has, I think, transformed Revelation studies.

His deep dive into apocalyptic literature, his putting mission at the very center of that book, showing a whole way of approaching it that I think just makes sense of. So much of the book has influenced Revelation studies.

And when people read that book, they get a deep sense of the very kind of things I'm going to talk about in a very simple way by reading this as apocalyptic literature. What does it mean to conquer? Align yourself with God's mission?

It means bearing witness in your life and your words to that coming kingdom of God and resisting the idolatry of the empire. So I find that a very powerful and well written book.

I had no idea that book existed. But I'm going to get that book now. I'm going to get that book now.

I just taught the book of Revelation today, and all of us at the end are just. We're just sitting there enthralled with this book again and its power to forge form and shape us.

And that book has done that for me, and it's done it for a lot of people, and it's done for Revelation studies, quite honestly.

Awesome. Well, then we. We're gonna have to get him on the show to talk about this, so I'm gonna wait to see if we can do that.

But number two, and I think I already know the answer to this one, but I am still waiting to hear your answer. The most formative teacher or thinker in your life.

That is so hard to say because it depends what you mean by most. What I'm going to say is I'm going to. I'm going to.

I'm going to answer that in terms of the deepest or the most foundational, and as it happens, it's Herman Ritter, boss. And the reason I would say that is I went. This will get us probably into the beginning of the book.

When I went to Westminster Theological Seminary, I went with a fairly reductionist gospel. I went with a gospel. I'm a sinner, God is a holy God.

I'm therefore under his judgment, Jesus has died to take that sin upon himself and my penalty for that, so that I can be forgiven and justified. Now, nothing wrong with what I've just said. In fact, it's true. But that's not the gospel, or certainly not the gospel. In its fullness.

And so in my first class, I read Herman Ritterboss's the Coming of the Kingdom on the Synoptic Gospels, which demonstrated in a book this thick that the Gospel of Jesus was a gospel of the kingdom. And I thought, whoa, that blew my mind. And then in the next semester, I read his book, given the, I don't know, poor title, the Theology and Outline.

The Outline of Paul's Theology or something, which showed that this gospel, the Kingdom, was at the very heart of Paul's thinking. Paul wasn't, like, I was told, a reformed theologian.

Paul, in fact, was a rabbi looking for the coming of the kingdom and was unpacking that gospel for the various churches he had visited and was a rabbinic Christian theologian, if you want to use that language, that was unpacking the Gospel of the kingdom. And when I started to see how the Gospel of the Kingdom permeated the entire New Testament, it transformed everything for me.

So I'll say here, he was most foundational in that regard.

I did not know you were going to go that way. You went a totally different way than what I thought. But I like the answer.

I. I do these things on purpose, Travis, to mix you up.

Thanks a lot for that. I really appreciate it. Okay, all right, how about this one? A place in the world that always reminds you of God's beauty.

I. I'm good. I'm going to say something that. Okay, I'll answer that with this. With this caveat. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

When you go up on the Mount Mountain, look over Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, you see spectacular water, mountains, greenery, all coming together in unbelievable beauty. But what. But then what I want to say is this, is that in Rio de Janeiro, you also see almost like these, I don't know, diseased pieces. The.

The slums that exist all over Rio. And if you know the story there, those slums have become like their own countries, armed, and there's battles between them and so on.

It's a day, it's very dangerous. But there are all these favelas, all that are against the mountains in different places. And it reminds me of the beauty of God's creation.

But then at the same time, seeing those slums shows me what evil is doing to the beauty of God's world. But then what I love is they have a statue there of Christ, and it's a very famous one of his holding his arms up.

And I always look at that statue and I say, okay. Some people see that as simply one of the. One of the primary tourist Places to go in Rio de Janeiro, others go.

See Roman Catholics go there, and they see it as some kind of superstitious kind of symbol, and they can actually buy little trinkets in behind it where it brings them good luck. From this, this. This.

This Christ figure, I see it as God, Jesus holding his arms out over Rio de Janeiro and says, I love this city, and city belongs to me, and those favelas are going to be gone, and all the evil that. That mars my beautiful creation. So I think Rio de Janeiro is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

You teach there a lot, though, too, don't you?

I. I do. I teach in Brazil. We. I go there two, three times a year, do a lot of teaching there. And I love Brazil's beauty.

It's not my favorite part of the world. My favorite part of the world is the northeast of Brazil in places like Fortaleza and Recife. But. But the beauty of Rio de Janeiro is spectacular.

All right, number four. What's one practice that keeps your faith grounded and alive?

I would say Thanksgiving. I would say the practice of thanksgiving. Trying to find times where I go through my life, from birth to now. And Travis, I just earned 70, so I'm.

I'm officially a really old man now.

So in 70 years, all of God's goodness to me, and I. I find that sometimes I can walk for an hour and a half and get through half my life and another hour and a half to get through the rest of my life.

And dealing with God's good goodness to me, both in what I call creational goodness and then in God's redemptive grace, his goodness to me, that is something that keeps me fresh.

Question 5. If you could summarize the core of the Christian faith in one sentence, what would it be?

It would be understanding Jesus Christ in the context of the biblical story and interpreting the biblical story in the light of Jesus Christ.

That's a long sentence, but it's a good sentence. Well, then let's talk about the book, the Core of the Christian Faith. You've written a lot on the biblical story. You've written a lot on philosophy.

You've written a lot. I mean, on mission. This book, though, is, as it says in the back, a compelling vision for the church's role in God's redemptive vision, mission.

And, And. And you've had several other books you've talked about on the show, just with the church, missionary church.

I mean, we love that book, the Church and its Vocation. Another book that we absolutely love. But the core of the Christian faith. Let's talk about this one. Why did you write this one?

Yeah. Over the last 12, 13, 14 years, I've been developing theological education in a missional mode.

And I've been relying on the literature, the 60s, 70s, and 80s, which was trying. Which was trying to rethink Christian education, theological education, in light of the exploding church in the Southern hemisphere. They were.

They didn't. They. They saw Western theological education as failing its deep roots and rationalism. It was looking for new models in curriculum, in.

In pedagogy and structures and evaluation assignments. Just looking at a whole new way of focus, forming leaders for the church rather than simply forming minds.

And so I relied on people like Harvey Kahn, who was my professor of mission at Westminster, Leslie Newbegin, deeply involved in this, David Bosch, Renee Paidea, and many others who were advocating new ways of thinking about theological education.

And one of the keys they were asking was, number one, what is the core and the center that needs to be unifying, informing, and shaping theological education?

So I wrestled with these guys hard, and I came to see that what they were saying was the core and center of theological education, what it should be, and what I articulate in that book is what I call the fourfold core, or the formative core, or the core dynamic, the heart of the Christian faith that I think pumps blood into all the other theological disciplines.

Studying Scripture, systematic theology, church history, ecumenical studies, pastoral theology, cultural studies, as spiritual practices, all the dimensions you study in theological education.

This is the core that's unifying and pumping blood into all of them, because you can study biblical studies, systematic theology from many different angles. But I'm arguing that this is the core that kind of unifies that. And so that's what I've been working on for 14 years. And it's turned out in two ways.

Number one, into a theological curriculum for theological education, but also it's being used in. In a. In discipleship programs at a. At a, if I can say it, a lower level.

I don't like to use that language, but lower academic level, where it's in church groups. And so I wrote that book three times. The first time I wrote it kind of finished.

I wanted to convince academics this is the core that needs to be shaping our scholarship. I thought, boy, how many people are going to read that as scholars? You know? And so I brought it down to the level of what I call the master's degree.

Theological education was basically almost done that two summers ago.

And then two people, two friends, of mine convinced me this book's got to be written so that it can be read by intelligent people in the church, because we've got to use this to disciple people. It's people in the church that got to know the gospel of the kingdom. They've got to know the biblical story.

They've got to understand the missional and covenantal role of God's people in the story. They've got to understand the culture. It can't just be people studying master's degrees in theology or pastors or theologians.

And so I wrote it the third time, and that third time is what's come out. It's a popular level book.

It's not an easy popular level book, but it's a popular level book that can be read by people that don't have theological training who are going to be serious about their faith. So it's read, is written for discipleship. And maybe I can begin with, briefly with the story that I start in that book that drove me to write it.

During. During the time of COVID we continued our teaching. We had to space people out and so on, but we continued our teaching in person.

And something happened to me that's never happened to me before in my 40 years of pastoring and teaching and since, and that was that.

About every week, some pastor, often veteran pastors, pastoring for 20 years of large churches, they would just break down in tears and they would say, I can't take this anymore. And what was happening at that time, as we now know better, is three cultural streams were coming together.

Covid was challenging the deep idolatry of freedom we had where people said, you can't tell me what to do. You can't limit my freedom. And the church was splitting on these things.

There's a number of racial incidents around this time where black men being beaten or. Or even killed by policemen.

And so sort of the racist divide, where people said, well, we're not racist, and others saying, but yeah, our culture's racist. And so they were dividing over that.

And then the third thing was the political ideologies, because as Trump was coming, there was an increasingly division between the.

The political ideologies of Christian nationalism, or white nationalism, whatever you want to call it, and sort of what I call neo Marxist postmodernism, or woke or whatever you want to call it. And the churches were obviously dividing over that.

And what they were saying was, the problem is our people are more devoted to political ideologies, more devoted to their views on race, more devoted to their defense of an Enlightenment view of freedom or not than they are today the gospel. And they, they were saying, I don't know how to take this. I don't know what to do with this anymore.

I tried in one particular event that I record in, there is a pastor who, who said, he said they're more devoted to their progressivist or to their nationalist ideology than they are to the gospel.

And when I try to say there's insight in both of these, but both of them have to be critiqued in terms of their idolatry, what they do is they start accusing me of being on one side or the other. And really they don't want the gospel at all.

Their gospel has been so narrowed down, has become so individualistic that they have allowed the cultural spirits to be shaping them more than the gospel. And they, and they were just saying, we can't take it anymore, we're ready to quit. Thankfully, this pastor didn't quit, by the way.

And as far as I know, none of them that, you know. And usually there was a weeping of all the pastors. And I just never seen that before.

And as we began to discuss why is this, why is this, why is the church so susceptible to their idolatry, maybe in ways more than anywhere else in the world. And I think there's a lot of reasons, a lot of ways to answer that. But my one, my answer would be this. Number one, they have a very narrow gospel.

Their gospel is about an individual salvation in the future. And that doesn't speak to most of life.

It's not, it's a, it's a, it's a systematic theology that, that doesn't encompass much more than some teaching of the Bible that their tradition has.

Rather than a story that encompasses the entire world, the church has become a group of individuals that are benefiting from what Jesus has done for them. And you put that in a consumer culture. They are consumer religious consumers consuming what Jesus has done for them.

And church is going to consume preaching and worship. And they don't know their culture.

There's no critique of their culture, no sense that we live in a religious culture that is deeply, in many ways hostile to the Christian faith. And so we're convinced that the church hasn't been discipled well in these areas.

And discipleship has been Bible memorization, memorizing something about evangelism, learning how to pray, learning how to be good husband or wife, all really good things. But discipleship hasn't taken in these big things that has allowed the church to become susceptible to the idolatry.

Of our culture to forsake its calling, to not embody the gospel and live in the biblical story.

Pretty monumental. I mean, that's not a little thing that you're talking about.

I mean, we're talking about a reductionistic idea of the gospel itself, which many people even listening to the show right now are saying. What do you mean? It's not this. What do you mean?

And I think this is where I would encourage them to read the book, because it is the story of the kingdom. Jesus shows up in Mark, chapter one and says, repent. Believe in the good news, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Or what's the good news if he hadn't died yet? So this is where we have to situate that story. And I think there's been such a recovery of that. We're seeing more and more recovery of that.

And your work is a big part of that. When we're talking about this idea, though, of, of the.

The story that centers, I mean, we have the gospel, the gospel of the kingdom, and then the biblical story. What do you mean by the biblical story and how it really frames everything that we see in our understanding of this gospel of the kingdom?

What I mean is that if you read the Bible, it becomes evident first of all that it begins with the creation of the world and that it ends with the renewal of the creation. The language of Creation permeates Revelation 21 and 22, the renewal, the rest, and the language of a new Eden. So there's a restoration.

So what you have is a creation and a restoring of that creation to what it was original, meant to be, originally meant to be. And between it you have that creator God, who because of Adam's sin, sets out on a long journey that ends in that destination of restoration.

And that journey moves through, through Israel, a people that are being formed to be the new humanity. To be what Adamic. That is what Adam and Eve, Adamic humanity failed to be, to restore humanity to be what they were meant to be.

Their failure and the coming of Jesus Christ to accomplish all of that in his life, death and resurrection, his gathering of Israel, and is beginning to gather in the. The nations through the mission of the church that leads on to the consummation.

This is a story that runs through creation, fall into sin, Israel, Jesus, the mission of the church, on to the consummation. And it's a very unified story of God's plan and purpose. I'm studying Ephesians now, and I think they.

I think Ephesians uses five or six words in the first chapter to describe God's purpose, plan and his purpose and his will that he is unfolding in this story of the Bible.

So it was a unified story of God's redemptive acts in and through Israel, in and through Jesus the Messiah, and in and through the church to bring about the renewal and healing of the whole creation. That's what I mean by the story. And so that story is a claim to be the true story of the whole world.

That's an outrageous claim to be the true story of the whole world that encompasses the entire creation. All nations, all people.

In other words, at the end of history, every man and woman will stand before the judgment of Jesus Christ because this is the true story of the entire world. And so what I mean by that is that the Bible isn't a handbook of doctrine. It gives us doctrine.

It's not something that gives us ethics first and foremost. It's not a handbook of ethics. It does tell us how to live, for certain. It's not a bunch of historical stories. It does have many historical stories.

But all of that is unified in every story, every doctrine, if you want to use that language, Paul does.

Every doctrine, every story, every ethical injunction, every part, every person finds their place within that one unfolding purpose of God to heal and restore and renew all things that have been touched by the curse of sin and the power of rebellion.

So within that story, as you said, we're moving from creation all the way to the new creation. How many chapters? And you did talk about them, but you said there are six, is that correct?

That's what I would say.

Okay, so we have creation. That's the, the start of the kingdom, the rebellion. That's rebellion. Excuse me, the fall, rebellion in the kingdom, election, the choosing of Israel.

And then what's after that?

Okay, I, I. We tell the story in six acts in our drama of scripture. And I use the same thing.

So I boiled the story of drama scripture down to four chapters in this book and I do. Chapter one is God creates his kingdom. Creation number two, Chapter two, if you will.

The second act in the drama is rebellion in the kingdom, the fall. The third is the choosing of a people and God's choosing of a people to become the new humanity that will indwell the new creation. Creation.

And the Old Testament story is about God forming this community into the Old Testament. The Old Testament, sorry.

The Old Testament story is about forming this people, Israel into the new humanity as he works through that Old Testament story.

But the paradox, the heart of Act 3, Israel is on the one hand, they're called to be the new humanity, but at the other hand, the old humanity is still in their hearts.

So somehow, so they end up in exile and somehow God has to deal with that old humanity in their hearts before they can be the new humanity for the sake of the world. And God does that in the man that represents them as the Messiah. He does. So that's act four, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He deals with that sin. And now that gathered Israel, Israel renewed and healed, given new hearts, are sent into the world to gather the nations in.

That's Act 5, the mission of the church. And ultimately that moves on to Act 6, the consummation. So if you want just one word, Creation, act one, fall, act two, Israel. Act three, Christ.

Act four, mission of the Church, act five, consummation. Act six.

It's good to see that framing that take. Now, does that all that take, that takes into the whole story of the, the, the entirety of the Bible then, right?

Yes.

And then what goes after that?

So we talk about the biblical story and then you talk about a missional people, right, that we like to call the creation, the new creation community, which you've talked about. This is where the, the people that God has chosen to show what living under his rule looks like. Is that right?

Yes. And so I want to move from story to mission, like you've asked, but I want to make sure you don't miss the first part of my argument.

And that is you must start with Jesus Christ. Anybody that's a Christian and claims Jesus Christ must start with the person of Jesus Christ.

And if you start with the person of Jesus Christ, and you must, if God has done in Christ what he said he's done, then he's got to be the starting point for everything. And so if who is Jesus Christ? Well, a lot of opinions out there, even within the Christian church. What does Jesus say about himself?

I have come to make known the kingdom. That's why I was sent Luke 4. 43. And so he uses the language of gospel and kingdom to define his ministry.

And so if the gospel of the kingdom is about God bringing that story to its climactic moment, and that's what Jesus Christ is about, restoring the rule of God over the whole creation, then by starting with John Jesus, you are necessarily in the midst of a story. So my argument is you start with Jesus. Who is he? Well, he's defines himself in a sense, if you will, in terms of the gospel, the kingdom.

And if you, and if you speak of the gospel the kingdom in Jesus Christ, you are necessarily in the middle of a story. So gospel necessarily leads to story. Now we make the third, second transition from story, story to mission, as you've asked.

And that the way here is, I want to call on, and I employ Richard Bauckham's lovely book, Bible and Mission. And here's his argument. And I, you know, anything that's bad in the book is what I wrote.

Anything that's good in the book is what Richard Bauckham wrote about this. But here's what he argues. He says what you see in the story is what he calls a missional trajectory.

And what he means by missional trajectory is that it moves from the one to the many through a people. It moves from the one to the many through a people. And then he traces three examples, and I trace those examples on my own.

In my book, he gives a promise to Abraham and to one family. I will restore the blessing of creation to you. And through this one family, all families on earth will be blessed.

So the missional trajectory of the biblical story is blessing will move from one family to all families. The second trajectory is what Baghden calls the knowledge of God. We see in Exodus 19:3 to 6. The knowledge of God is. Is now given to Israel.

And this unfolds in the Old Testament story. Who God is, what he's doing in the world, how to respond to him. Within the covenant. This knowledge of God is given to Israel.

But the goal of that, giving the knowledge of God to Israel is not so that they could hoard it, but so that that knowledge, the missional trajectory, so that knowledge of God goes to all nations. And the language of all nations permeates the Old Testament. And Luke picks up on this. This is the horizon of the story.

But the third trajectory is the movement of the kingdom of God. The reign of God from one place, Zion, Jerusalem, where God sets his reign and sets his throne in a messiah over. In one place, over a people.

And the missional trajectory is to move from that one place to the ends of the earth. And so it's to spread out. Gregory Beal has written on a book on the Temple that uses this very theme of God's reign in the temple moving.

It was always meant to spread from one place to the ends of the earth. And so what you've got is a missional trajectory that moves, that moves blessing from one family to all the families of the earth.

The knowledge of God from one nation to all the nations of the earth. The reign of God from one place to the ends of the earth and the people of God play a role within that movement.

And their role is to embody the blessing, to embody the knowledge of God, to embody and live under the reign and kingdom of God, and to invite others into that. They are the people that will one day inhabit the new creation.

And their mission is to embody that in the midst of a world that serves other gods, and to invite others into that so they might one day inherit the kingdom of God.

So when you move from gospel to story, necessarily that story is a missional trajectory which gives the people of God a missional vocation to embody the end for the sake of the world, invite others in.

Well, this is where I find you adopted the two categories of gathered and scattered.

So, so you're talking about what it's like where we're being nourished on the word, we're taking of the sacraments, we are, we are worshiping together, we are fellowshiping all of the different parts that happen when we are together as God's people in the context of worship. And then how we go out into our vocations, how we, how we interact with the world, how we live our everyday lives.

And it has both of those present within there. But it also shows the dimension of why certain practices are needed that I think that the modern church has forgotten.

Like church discipline, for example.

When you don't have that ability to discipline and church becomes a justification only event to attract people to this very narrow salvation, then your spiritual formation itself becomes malformed because you really don't have a robust ecclesiology and your doctrine of the church you don't have. This is why you don't have membership or, or, excuse me, discipline or these other pieces.

And so that part gets dropped off as deemed irrelevant to the message of salvation.

But we're saying no, it's just as important because the reason that he gives it is because he understood that we were to show what living under the rule of God looked like into the watching world. Correct?

Right. Yes. And so there's two things I want to say.

Often we think of, we use the word church and what comes into our mind is this little congregation with a building over this place, place that do these certain things within the church building.

And okay, but when you look at this, going back to Ritter boss, the beginning of my thing, I learned from his book on Paul that the word ecclesia is used to describe those congregations and what they're doing.

But those congregations as pictures or advanced pictures, if you will, of the New humanity and ecclesia didn't only apply to them when they met on whatever day. They met on the Lord's day, Sunday for most of them, maybe the Jewish on the Sabbath as well.

But on the Lord's day as they met to hear the word of God and to pray and to worship.

That's not the only time they were church and then all of a sudden the church broke up and you know, I don't know what they were for the rest of the week, but then they became church again when they came back. No, they were the new humanity.

And they are all the time but as the new humanity designed, if you will, to be a people that are to be what Adam and Eve failed to be. The fullness of the image of God then now revealed in Christ in that image given to us to be the fullest of humanity.

What we desperately need is to have that new life of Jesus Christ, Christ that comes to us, that enables us to be the new humanity. And that's why we meet, that's why we pray together, that's why we hear the Word, that's why we receive the Lord's Supper.

That's why we, you know, are involved in discipleship. And that's what all that takes place in the fellowship of the church and the one anothering.

All of that is meant to nourish the new life of Christ and to bring glory to God in that worship. But then what happens when. When we leave that place? Place? If you want to, if you're talking about a place here for worship is not.

You stop being the church or the new humanity now.

You are to be the new humanity for the sake of the world and to live out and embody that life that has been nourished in the fellowship of the congregations.

To live out that new life in the midst of the world, in your marriages and families, in your living with neighbors, in your vocations, in the way you are a citizen and the way you spend money and deal with technology to live with as God's creation under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

And that's what it means to be the new humanity, to be formed in the image of God, in the fullness of our lives, in our cultural lives, in every dimension. And so that scattered gathered kind of distinction I think is very important for what we see in the New Testament.

You know, Acts 2:42, they met together, they consecrated, devoted themselves to the, to the word of God, to prayer, to the Lord's Supper and to fellowship. And that was Acts 2:42.

And that produced a life in the midst of Jerusalem, this power that's a powerful life, a joyful life, a generous life, a compassionate life. And because of that life in the midst of Jerusalem. And it says they enjoyed the favor of all people. And therefore the Lord brought more in.

He added to their number. And that just defines a people that are devoted to certain things by which God's grace and new resurrection life is channeled to them.

They embody that in the midst of the world, invite others in with their words and evangelistic words. And then ultimately God adds the number because it's his mission and his work.

So it's this great community we're talking about, this new creation community that comes together to embody this, like in its rhythms, in its life and its habitus, all of those different things are playing a part of it.

Why do you think in our contemporary culture we've really lost that idea of what the church is supposed to be, both in its gathered and in its scattered capacities?

I think a lot of what we've been talking about already, there's no big gospel, that the gospel is about the restoration of God's rule over all of human life.

Well, if the gospel is just about an individual salvation that's otherworldly and future, that's not going to touch, that's going to just make you an individual that's saved and going to heaven, not someone that's called now to be fully human.

So a narrowed gospel, a biblical story story that does not encompass the whole of creation and see what God is doing in that story to renew and heal all of life, of humanity and the whole creation.

And then I think a lot of times defining church by our theologies and our confessions sometimes, rather than their role in the biblical story, by tracing that role in the story, which is to be what Adam and Eve failed to be. When God chooses Abraham and says, I'm going to make you into a people.

And ultimately that people begins to encompass the nations, as Galatians says, as it moves out into the world to today, that people all the way through the story are to be a people that are to be what Adam and Eve failed to be.

So being the church is not being a religious community that does certain things together on Sunday, but rather it's to be a people that manifest what God intended for humanity as a sign, as a picture before the world of where God is taking the creation to invite them into it. We have a foretaste of the renewal of the whole creation that's coming.

And therefore we become a preview A movie trailer of what God intends of the movie that's coming when Jesus returns, we become actual footage of what's coming in the new creation.

And, and so when we don't have that story in which we see our role, when we don't have a gospel that's as big as the lordship of the creator God in Jesus, then we lack a doctrine of creation, for example. What happens is we just don't have that background that's needed to inform what the word church means.

This is where I find what you just said. It gets very lost in some of our contemporary Christian arguments when you said we don't have a good doctrine of creation.

We're not talking about evolution here. What we're talking about is so much more than that.

It's the idea of who we were meant to be as God's imagers within this kind of cosmic temple, the Garden of Eden, and how we were to live and fulfill the vocations, to stewardship, to act, you know, to, to exert dominion. Right.

Isn't that what we're talking about, the cultural mandate, as we're talking through these different pieces and not just talking about chronology?

Yes, absolutely. We're talking about a number of things that we. I realized back, I don't know what year it was.

I think it was the late 80s, maybe, maybe early 90s, that I had grown up in a Baptist church and I had no doctrine of creation. That might have sound shocking to you. Did I believe in creation? I sure did. At that time I would have been a six day creationist young earth.

And boy did I believe that God created the world just like that at a certain time. But the reality is I had no doctrine of creation.

What I mean by that, I had no sense of what it meant to be a bodily image of God that reflected him in my relationships, in my whole unpacking of culture, that I was reflecting him in literally everything I did. And that I was part of a community, a cultural community that was developing the potentials of God's creation. Creation.

And the goal of it was to mirror his glory more and more in the relationships and the cultural products and the whole civilization that we were building.

But I had no sense of what it mean, what it meant to develop areas of creation, technology, sports, academics, to develop those along the grain of creation according to the order. I had no idea of creation order, what that meant. I'll give you an example as a new Christian.

I was, I was a good athlete in high school and I loved and lived idolatrously for sports. But then when I became a Christian, I adopted this dualistic view that sports was not important.

It was over here in prayer and worship and evangelism that was over here. And I, I was so zealous as a Christian, I wasn't interested in sports. Well, I started realizing sports was an incredible gift of God.

He had put the potential for sports within the creation, buried it as it were, and the power to give great delight to human beings.

And we were to develop that dimension of creation, to bring delight to us, to thank God and to praise him for his creativity, what he's put in the creation.

And that sports had a certain order and that if according to that order it was very good and brought delight, but as soon as that got twisted, that dimension of creation could become destructive. That was just one area of creation where I realized I didn't have a good doctrine of creation. Therefore I didn't understand how idolatry twisted it.

Therefore I didn't understand that part of my vocation was to engage that part of culture in ways that bore witness to the lordship of Christ over it. So yeah, I had no, I didn't have a sense of the, of, of creation order, the word of God that orders the creation as it's developed culturally.

So that's just some of the things I very, when very good, the very good meant that every part was very good and the harmony of it was very good. And you serve one part of it, it begins to distort it. In other words, I, I had, I just didn't have any of that in my background.

Well then, now that we, we kind of have that understanding, I mean, and I know there's several works to even read on that to help draw that out because that part plays so much into our modern day conceptualizations of, as you said, the church. What does it mean? How do we go about it? We've contrasted so many of these different pieces. We don't see that they're a contrast.

They're just, they're, they're germination that falls its fulfillment over here. And I think so many people miss that as they go a part of it.

But now that we're talking about this new creation community, the church, this missional people that we've talked about, you move into the, the fourth aspect, which is, and my favorite, I have to say, is the missionary encounter with culture.

Yes.

Describe what you mean by a missionary encounter with culture before we get into the different parts of it.

Okay. I believe that one of the reasons that Americans today. Well, I like Canadians and Europeans and Western people in general.

But we're speaking probably to American audience here. One of the reasons that Americans have so been drawn so fully into the idolatry of their culture is that they do not see their culture as religious.

They see their culture as Christian at best, neutral at worst. And the reality is that it is deeply that it is as religious as a Hindu or Muslim culture that yes, the Gospels permeated and had an influence on it.

But at its core it's humanistic. And so we don't see this dory is in any way dangerous. But add to that there's a Chinese proverb, you want to know what water? Don't ask a fish.

You want to know about America, don't ask it. Don't. Don't ask Americans. And so we're swimming in it. And if there is polluted, we don't know about it. So what's happening?

Put those two things together, thinking our culture is neutral or Christian and therefore safe, and then being unaware of it. What happens is we are very vulnerable and susceptible to the idolatry of our culture.

And what happens is we're going to end up not fulfilling our vocation. So now let me answer how the fourth part fits in.

If Jesus Christ has come to make known that the God's rule over all of creation has come in him, and that that is the center of a biblical story that encompasses God's purpose for the world and that we as the new humanity are called to embody that purpose, purpose for the sake of the world. What is central to the biblical story is this fourth element, that we are called to do it amidst nations that serve other gods.

We are to say this is what it means to serve the living God amidst nations that say that serve other gods. And that's what idolatry is about.

And the reality is the Bible shows us that every culture of the world serves some gods and unifies their culture around those gods.

And it's explicitly clear in the Old Testament, for example, Deuteronomy 4, as they're about to enter the land, here is what's going to derail your vocation. That's described in the first part of Deuteronomy 4, that before the nations they see your wisdom and your justice.

Well, here's what's going to derail that mission, what's going to derail that? And the rest of the chapter is idolatry. The nations around about are going to draw you into serving their gods.

And the prophets show us that idolatry always moves to first of all, injustice, and secondly, immorality. So immorality is where we usually park, park when we talk about sin.

But the reality, I think the reality of the prophets is, yes, serve the wrong gods. It will mess up your culture and bring about injustice, and it will also lead to you being immoral people and so serving the wrong gods.

Well, if we are called to embody the new humanity in the United States, we've got to know what gods are being served. We've got to know the culture around us that is polluting us and destroyed, destroying our witness.

Because if we look like everyone else, if we look like everyone else in our culture and we say, good news, God is changing the world and he's beginning with us, they're going to say, but you don't look very changed. You know, that was Friedrich Nietzsche's critique. If you wanted me to follow your Jesus, you better look more redeemed.

And that's a pretty strong statement and rightly so.

If you want me to follow your Jesus, that's bringing a new kingdom, a new world into this world world, a world that will one day fill up this world, the new creation. Then why doesn't your new creation life look any different from the old creation life of your neighbor?

And it's often because we're serving the same gods.

We're allowing that powerful stream of our culture to carry us along, even as Christians, while we hold on to bits of the Christian faith that are true. So that's why it's essential fulfill your mission. You're going to have to know your.

Culture when you talk about these gods. And this is where I'm, I'm wanting our audience to kind of follow along these. Are we talking about it?

So we're talking about idolatry that we got, right? And we know that an idol is nothing, but at the same time, you've got the unseen realm that is working within it too. I mean, it's a. Both.

And would that be right? I mean, are we talking about demonic or are we talking about the, the, the gods of the nations? Like, I know that Michael Heiser had the view.

He talks about the divine council, and he mentions that in Psalm 86:2 when he talks about the gods that are there, he, he sees the, the Elohim, the, the different. They're, they're gods, basically, but they're like governors almost.

And you see in Genesis 11, where they're dispersed among the nation, the 70 nations, and then in Genesis 12, obviously we're bringing that blessing back to the whole humanity and even in the new creation community, the idea is coming together. It's a testimony to the gods there of their, you know, to the heavenly powers.

The manifold wisdom of God has been displayed to the reality of the new creation that's being laid out. But when we're talking about these. These gods, are we talking about actual spirit entities or are we just talking about how these.

Like a spirit of the age, or is it demonic? What is this?

I think Ephesians 2:1 and 4 gives us our best insight into this. Paul is wrestling with the Roman powers that have him in jail in Ephesus. So when he uses the word powers, he's thinking these political powers.

But he's also a Jew. And as a Jew, he knows very well that standing behind these political powers are spiritual powers of darkness.

And so I believe that you see in Paul what I call. I can't picture this. Imagine a Venn diagram with three. Three circles that have a common overlapping area. And here are the three areas.

The one is what he says, the world and by the world. He's talking about this age, but he's talking about cultures in this age that are shaped by systemic injustice, systemic idolatry.

You're talking about cultural idolatry in the way it's. And. And then he says, but there's also the powers of darkness. There's the spirit that is at work in those of disobedience.

So standing behind this cultural idolatry is the powers of darkness. But then the third circle is that we were in bondage to this, he says, because of our sinful nature.

So the reason that demonic powers using the various structural idolatry can hold us in bondage is because of our own sin. So let me use an example.

Our consumerism takes a good aspect of creation, and that is the development of all the good potential of creation to be enjoyed in our experiences and our goods. That's a good part of Genesis 1. But when we make that the goal of human life, that answers the question, what is the chief end of human life?

Well, to produce more consumer goods and experiences and enjoy them forever. If we see that as the goal of human life, that will make us happy, give us joy as a community we structure.

To say, to speak of consumerism is not to say a bunch. We're all individually greedy and looking for more goods and more experiences.

It's saying we've structured a whole culture around the production of goods and the distribution, distribution of those goods and the enjoyment of those goods and making that the chief end. And then the later generation is the goods can't satisfy. So we want consumer experiences as well. So consumer experiences, consumer goods.

It's constructing a whole culture around that chief end of human life. That's what we've done in the West. And so the God has become this good part of creation. It's.

Paul uses the language of powers and he's using it, I think, in different levels. It's powerful because God has put that power, as Abraham Kuyper puts it, he's put that power into the creation.

And that power is that if we enjoy the good things of his creation, they have purpose, power to bring delight and joy to us. He's put those powers and potentials in to be delighted in. They have power to.

But what we see is when those that power to enjoy the good creation, sex, money, political power, you name it, when that becomes in the control of demonic powers and we begin to structure a culture around the idolatry of that, what begins to happen is those powers, the power of the demonic power taking the powers put in the creation takes hold and grips our hearts and hold us, holds us in bondage. But because we're greedy naturally, then what's going to happen is the demonic powers can hold us in bondage by a structural consumerism.

And then we, we ourselves find ourselves in bondage to consumer society. So I think there's a complexity here of the powers. And when you read Colossians, you know, how can the powers simply be demonic?

Because in Christ's he reconciles those powers. So what's going on there? I think he's reconciling and harmonizing all the powers God's put in creation.

But the powers, demonic powers have been defeated once and for all Colossians 2:15 and are being led in a victory parade because they've been defeated at the cross. So I think the point is that Paul is aware that I'll just use the word sin broadly is powerful.

And it's powerful because demonic powers working through cultural structures and cultural idolatry is holding us in bondage to these things. So you can, you can call them gods.

Well, this is where I find that how we understand cultural apologetics come comes in because we understand cultural apologetics and we define it as the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience and witness within a culture so that Christianity can be seen as true and satisfying.

But this work requires identifying the structures in both the broader culture and the church culture discern to discern how it affects the communicability, authenticity and reliability or authenticity, viability. I can't remember the exact word there of the Christian faith, both explicitly and implicitly.

And so what we do is we're examining these structures because they are affecting and most people don't know how to identify those structures. And I think cultural apologetics is saying we need to be able to identify what these spiritual forces are that is keeping people along.

And I saw this in a church for firsthand that I was on staff on, and I likened it to the three main leaders, which I was one of them. And I said, one of you, the guy who is our vision guy, he's at the front of the boat. I said, it's like we're on this boat on this big giant river.

And he's pointing in the direction. He says, we're going ahead. And then the executive guy was like, hey. He was making sure the experience of everybody on the boat was great.

And I'm looking down the side of the boat at the river going, we're going over. We're going to be going over a waterfall. If we don't pay attention to where we're headed, this power is carrying us along and we don't realize it.

And so just not getting just people saved. I mean, that's not the end, all of it.

And that's such, even the language of the redemption of all of life is so difficult because we've been so ingrained in the kind of the Billy Graham era of American evangelicalism to have this kind of very narrow focus.

But by bringing it out into that broad range and seeing our engagement, then we can identify the idolatries that are carrying us along and that have permeated the church, that the church is in some respect.

And you wrote this in one of your books where you talk about a fragmented Bible where you said, we are theologically orthodox, morally pious idol worshipers if we don't have a continued story.

And what I think you meant by that, and I think is illustrated in a lot of our churches today, is that if we don't have this story right, we end up adopting these idolatries unconsciously, and it affects our witness and our satisfaction and it just plays within to the demonic powers because we just, we don't become any different than the world around us. Right. Isn't that correct?

Yes. And I, I, I compare and, and a friend of mine who's done work teaches this.

I use his illustration in the book that our culture is like a powerful flowing river and we're part of that. And we're just floating along on this lazy river. We're Going down on an inner tube, we don't realize the power being carried along.

And this is where my illustration is going to break down.

But what happens is if we are theologically orthodox, with all the right doctrine, with doctrinal pieces, and we're morally upright, where we believe that you don't commit adultery, you don't steal, you don't lie, and we are morally, we're warmly pious, we love Jesus and we pray and so on, those are all really important things, don't get me wrong.

But they become like if they're not part of a bigger story that has the ability to stand against the powerful cultural story, those discrete doctrines and moral maxims and devotional bits are like ping pong balls thrown into the powerful flowing river. And our lives are being carried along by this idolatry.

So we become morally upright, doctrinally, you know, theological, theologically orthodox, warmly pious idol worshipers because we're being carried along by the idols of our culture.

That's not a pleasant thought that I think many people have to bring that out and it can really alarm people.

Yeah.

How do we help then? People? Let me back up. We had Brian Miller on the show. He wrote a book called Sanctifying Suburbia.

And in it he was talking about how our cultural, where we live, our local places, actually help form our theological, or what we call here our gospel expressions. And many of our gospel expressions are catered to certain aspects of life.

And he talks about suburbia and the white flight that took place and how it was to this idea of the life.

Many of these denominations that had been in cities, their headquarters, moved with their people out into these parts to help kind of baptize that certain frame of life. So many people are carried along in this idea that the church is, this is what it means to be a Christian.

And then though they encounter someone from a different cultural background and they find themselves like, wait a minute, this is totally different. Why? And is that because then we can see it's through our interaction with Christians from around the world.

I mean, first of all through the scripture. But we also find the holes in our theological expressions when we encounter history or we encounter the global church.

Doesn't that help expose some of the holes because they bring out our idolatries?

Absolutely. The gospel will always be translated and contextualized and embodied in some cultural context.

And since every cultural context is to some degree idolatrous, us, we're always struggling with how to embrace the creational good in our culture. But then to reject the idolatrous narrative that shapes those creational good pieces.

That's always the struggle we're always engaged in, whether we express it that way or not. The trouble is, because this is our culture, we got blind. We're blind spots we don't see where we've adopted the idolatry of our age.

And it's inevitable. It's inevitable. Sanctification, if you will, is about struggling against that idolatry for the rest of your life. You'll never, ever get out of it.

So you're always going to be more. Sanctification is growing in being more faithful and standing against that as one part of it. And so I think, how do we see our idolatry?

That was going to be my next question, by the way.

This is the problem, and I think you pointed the way. I like to say there's. There's three basic ways, and that is three basically dialogues.

The first dialogue is with the church in other parts of the world. Now, I spend a lot of time teaching in churches in other parts of the world. And I tell them, I learn more.

From you, you learn from me.

And a lot of my teaching has come out of the fact that I've been challenged by people from so many parts of the world in engagement with them. And so listening to the church, the. They can see your blind spots. Brazilians can tell me I'm individualistic because their culture is less so.

And so the point is that they see our blind spots, we see theirs, and we've been happy to point those out for years, but they can see ours very clearly. The second is a dialogue with church history.

If there is a certain thing at a certain point in history here in our day and age, and you look at the rest of the church, and they've never believed that you better wonder if your novelty is all that orthodox. And I mean, that's the way I look at the whole movement with, With. With. With the whole gay movement and sexual identity and so forth.

And you look at church history and you look at the global church, and there's just, you know, there's one view, basically, but you find one other view in Western culture that's idolized freedom of sexual expression.

Now, you ought to be very suspicious of that one place ever in history and in the world where you see that, and I think that's generally true, that you're going to be critiqued by history and you're going to be critiqued by culture. I think thirdly, we're helped greatly by a dialogue with. With one another in different confessional traditions.

Pentecostals can see things in me, and I can see things in them that are problematic. What we're missing. Anglicans show me a lot of things, and so on.

In other words, the point is that what I call cross historical, cross cultural, and cross confessional dialogue helps us see our blind spots.

And I think I might add to that what Harvey Kahn has a fourth dialogue, and that's a dialogue with people that are in different socioeconomic classes or especially, you know, different people who are living in poverty can see things that people living comfortably cannot see as well about their faith.

We often talk about how a lot of prejudices take place across ethnicity, education, and economics. And a lot of those different avenues, and we've seen those work within the churches. This is why it's just so important.

But this is why one of the parts for new creation for us is we like to talk about how a church is proportionally represented, meaning that if your gospel expression lends itself to a fossil theology where you equate the form with the actual truth, and then you. You proclaim that truth, you might have a robust theology.

But if it can't be translated into the community in which you are in, then I would say your gospel expression is malformed. But then, like you said, the other side of that equation is that jellyfish theology, which you've talked about both of these. I mean, you're.

Where I got this idea from is where when we capitulate to the spirit of the age and we adopt these sinful pieces, like within the LGBTQ idea, and say, oh, this is God's created part. It's not. It's really not. So we have to be able to. To hold that intention. Where do we say, how do we affirm what the culture, the creational good?

And then we challenge the idolatrous parts of it. We call that the. The affirming challenge principle to have any type of proper contextualization as you go through there.

And of course, if wherever we are tempted to reduce the gospel, well, then what we call the pendulum principle kicks in and the next generation goes the completely opposite way. And it's. It is constant tension. And this is where we like to bring in Charlie, Charlie Davis's work.

He wrote a book called Multi Multicultural Discipleship, and in it he talks about a slider switch.

And he said, every culture, some cultures are high on experience and then low on knowledge, and other cultures are high on the knowledge and low on experience. And we're constantly adjusting it as we're encountering people to stay.

And that's just like with legalism and license, we're constantly having to use the bar of grace, if you will, on that tightrope of discipleship to, to keep us in check. So we don't go to legalism over here or license over here.

And this is where I find that it's so important because that's necessary to have that type of missionary encounter. It's, it's something where you don't, as you said, and we've heard it repeated over and over, you don't ask a fish how the water is. This is why.

How do we then do it? Well, the Bible has to speak to us. We have to be able to interact with different cultures and those. I love how you said the cross dimensions.

You said cross cultural, cross confessional, and then cross history, basically, as we bring those in.

Correct and cry. Yeah. And cross class, if you will, or cross class economic as the fourth.

Yeah, that's really good. That is really good. Well, Mike, we've, we've taken up a lot of your time.

What is a concluding water bottle for our audience out there that they're, they're, they're in the middle of the battle right now. They're trying to figure out, okay, what do I do with this knowledge? How do I apply this? What does it mean for my church?

What does it mean for my leadership team? What do you recommend next steps for them to really be able to implement this kind of bigger, I'm going to say missiolistic vision.

But this core mission that you have here, this core of the Christian faith, how can people then take the next steps necessary to, to apply it to their church?

Yeah, I mean, I, I don't, I don't want to plug my book, but.

What, that's what you're here for.

No talk about it. But I want to say that this book is, is designed to begin to get at these issues.

And there's a bunch of resources on my website that allows people to, you know, we like this. I've got some discipleship pastors to help me with some materials so that people, we talk about head, heart and hands.

And the way we're going to embrace this is not just if we discuss it and have questions, questions and talk about it and read it. That's good start for the head.

It's also practices that enable us to take it on board deeply in a, in a deeply way in our, our hearts as well, but also practices that we start acting out and living out doing so our heart, hands, mind, looking for ways to be and so I'd say go after this. You know, if you see if this is the kind of big things that we need, that starts to transform your life.

I've just seen enough people go through MTC and our discipleship program where this just opens up the Christian faith in a big new way. But I guess maybe I can end with a silly movie from Bartime that, that a lot of people have seen for, I don't know, 25 years ago.

What about Bob and that movie kind.

Of baby steps, maybe baby steps to the core parts of the Christian faith.

Baby steps. In other words, quit. You know, people, they hear it and they want it. They want it all right now.

Yeah.

That's not how the Christian faith works. It's growing in a slowly deepening understanding of the, of how big Jesus is in the gospel.

It's a slow understanding of how the big the story is, how it works, and how it's shaping us.

It's a slow understanding of what it means to be a missional people and to have this growing sense of our identity as a covenantal people, to live before the nations.

And it takes, it's going to take a lifetime to begin to probe and explore and exegete our culture and understanding what it is and what each listener wants to do is, if they're listening and seeing this is true, what opportunities do they have at their disposal? Where are they? What, in their churches? Not everybody's going to have the opportunities that somebody else might have.

And so asking what opportunities are in front of you to be more faithful in your calling and then to take those baby steps joyfully in a spirit of prayer. And what's most important, pleading with Christ to give us his resurrection, life and his wisdom. Because that is going to be what we need.

And hopefully books like mine and others lead to that. But what's most important is we come to Christ again and again in prayer, pleading for his life, pleading for wisdom.

And then when we stand up, we don't just assume it's going to come automatically. What are the next baby steps to grow in that, so we might be more faithful.

Amen. Amen and Amen. Those are good. That's a, that's a good. It's a good start. It's a good start. Mike, I, I thank you.

You've been a frequent guest on the show. We love your work. We heavily recommend it. We'll be writing a review for our website and so you can check out.

Mike's also one of our advisors at Apollo Swattered. We're so grateful to have his involvement.

And I would encourage you for those out there Apollo Swattered, we recommend this book, the Core of the Christian Faith, Living the Gospel for the Sake of the World. Brazos did this one, I think, for you.

Yes.

And it is a wonderful book. Get the audio. There's an audio book out there. Get it for Kendall. Whatever you need to do to get the book. It's a great book.

And it's, it's, it's right at the level that people, people within your church can read. And I would heavily encourage you to do it. But Mike, thank you for coming on. Ministry Deep Dive thank you.

Good to be here. Travis, it's S.A.

Thanks for joining us. On today's episode of the ministry Deep Dive, a podcast of Apollo is watered the center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics.

We hope it helps you thrive in your ministry and in today's culture. Let's keep the conversation going. Check out our ministry@apolloswater.org and be sure to sign up for one of our ministry cohorts.

Connect with others in the background battle. We need one another. And remember, keep diving deep and as always, stay wandered. Everybody.