#278 | The Reason for Church with Brad Edwards

Politics have become a source of meaning, significance and purpose in our life.

And when that is the case, when that happens, you will not be able to resist the anti vision that whatever political group that you identify with, that anti vision starting to backfill and reshape the way that you see God and neighbor.

You're gonna be defining yourself by what you're against more than what you're for.

And I can think of no greater catnip to Satan than that.

Welcome back to Ministry Deep Dive.

My name is Travis Michael Fleming and today we are gonna be talking about a subject that affects every one of us who loves Jesus and that is the church.

Now, we talk about Jesus all the time.

We talk about apologetics all the time.

How to get people to believe right.

But what if the church itself is one of the most powerful mechanisms to get people to believe right?

We hear it all the time.

Oh, I would go to that church if it wasn't for so many hypocrites that were there.

Or if that's a Christian, I don't wanna be one.

Well, we need to talk about what the reason for church is.

And that's why I am so delighted to have today, as today's guest, Pastor Brad Edwards of the Table Church in Lafayette, Colorado, off of his book the Reason for Church, following Tim Keller's book, the Reason for God.

So we have the Reason for God.

Now we got the reason for church we're delighted to have with us today.

Brad, welcome to Ministry Deep Dive.

Thank you for having me.

That is the most energetic introduction I've ever heard.

That's amazing.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Let's do this thing.

Are you ready for the fast five?

Let's do it.

Okay.

What's your craziest pastoral moment that you've ever experienced?

Number one, let's just get that out of the way right now.

Define crazy.

How about about the most odd?

The most odd?

Oh, man.

I mean, can I just.

And this relates to the book as well.

One of the.

It ended up go.

We ended up going 17 months, three weeks and four days, not that I was counting between being able to worship on a weekly basis because of either lockdowns and.

Or not having actually just not having a place to meet that just not Existing in our place.

But in the middle of one of those waves of people who left over that summer, I had two back to back conversations on the same day.

One family who ended up leaving because they were convinced I was a Bernie bro.

And then the other leaving because they were convinced I was enabling Maga.

Maga Christians.

And I have no idea still to this day what in the world it was I said that caused both of those.

But I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.

We all have those experiences where you're like, I don't get it.

Where did that come from?

I have no idea.

I'm just like, I'm.

I.

Maybe I blacked out for like a solid week or two and just don't remember.

I just.

It is, it is.

It was a very crazy period with a lot of crazy conversations.

So yeah, you need to have that.

Like, my church survived Covid.

It's like, I need to survive Covid.

Oh, seriously.

All right, number two, here we go.

Second one.

What is the author or book that has influenced you most?

Besides the Bible, of course, man.

I mean, it would have to be the book you've already mentioned.

The Reason for God by Tim Keller.

I was a pretty.

I was a brand new seminary student at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis and had only been a Christian for about two years at the time that I read it, I think.

And I remember reading it because part of my coming to faith was despite my head and through my heart.

And so I, you know, knew Jesus was alive and real and had a vibrant faith.

But at the same time I had a lot of intellectual objections to the faith still.

And because I was a skeptic, like, if you, if you've gone to college and you, you probably have had the experience of those, you know, open air preachers coming to a college campus and, you know, yelling at students like, you're going to hell because you're, you do all these terrible things, including drinking Bud Light instead of craft beer.

But maybe that was what I wanted to hear and I, I was the guy that skipped class to go and argue with that guy on a microphone and told them that their God is ridiculous and judgmental and, and didn't exist.

It was just a fairy tale and a figment of your imagination.

So, like, that was me.

So when I came to faith, largely through an existential crisis and realizing like everything I thought who I was was just a facade at best.

I still had a whole lot of, like, skepticism that I didn't know what to do with.

And so when Keller introduced the defeater beliefs, I realized that was my problem.

That was the thing that was that I didn't realize that my objections were not, like, as clearly intellectual as I thought.

They were actually more cultural assumptions and defaults that I was believing on the basis of faith, not well reasoned or coming to those conclusions because I've thought through them, but because I assumed them from the culture I grew up in.

Cause I was a fish swimming in water.

It was the only thing I'd ever known.

So just that his ability to, Gosh, to describe the experience of that skepticism and then show, without even bringing into scripture yet just how those beliefs functioned and operated in my life, but as well as how unsatisfying and unsustainable they were, that has shaped my ministry and my faith.

Honestly, more than probably any other book.

He was.

He is so missed.

Oh, yeah, he is so missed.

Yeah.

I love the biography that Colin had of him.

But just such a.

Just not just a giant, but just so applicable to understand the times.

So insightful, but, oh, and so much.

Okay, third question.

What's the one habit that you have that annoys your wife?

I'm trying to think of just one.

I would say, you know what?

I think she has grown to love this more.

But I have moments where I'm talking with her that she refers to as a galaxy brain moment.

And so if you've seen that gif where there's the guidance, I don't even know.

I think he's like a scientist or physicist, but he's like, well, and you know, it's like this galaxy behind him because his head's being blown that I.

That's kind of what I live for.

I don't understand a thing until.

Until I understand how it's connected to something else.

And so that means that I can.

Yeah, I'm add.

It's probably obvious now, but yeah, those moments of, like, when you're talking, you realize, oh, this is connected to this and this.

And like, oh my gosh, if we could just see this, then, man, it would change everything.

And she's like, cool.

Can you please turn off the oven?

We're done using it now.

Number four is great.

Number off to a great start.

I can tell.

This is.

This is awesome.

This is awesome.

Okay, number four, if.

If you were a restaurant, what restaurant would you be in?

Why?

If I was a restaurant or I owned.

You were A restaurant?

Yeah, let's just get.

We're going to get like really deep, right?

If I was a restaurant, I don't know, but it would have to be.

So if.

Do you speak any of Graham?

Yeah.

Okay.

So I'm a three wing, four.

So I have to be very effective and efficient and achieve things.

But they can't just be anything.

They have to be special and they have to be things that nobody else has done before.

Probably because they're smart.

And that's why I'm a church planter in Boulder County.

So if I were a restaurant, it would probably be some kind of Michelin rated.

Of course, you know, I'm not arrogant.

So it wouldn't be a three star, but it'd be a two star.

And it would probably be some kind of fusion between two kinds of food and style.

But one of them would definitely be American because otherwise what are we doing?

Maybe like burgers and sushi.

Because I feel like that's possible and there's not a good reason it hasn't been tried yet.

I'm just picturing, you know, when they put the, like an egg on a burger.

This is how you're putting sushi on a burger.

And maybe with some yum, yum sauce, maybe.

Okay, we're going here, so we're going to talk about this, right?

Like the sushi where like, it's like the, you know, it's like the spicy salmon and it's like chopped up and it's got gunk all over it.

Like, the heck with that stuff.

Like, give me some like good high quality fish.

And maybe if you put that in a burger form.

Okay.

Which I guess is just called a hand roll.

So maybe it's already exists and I should rethink my life choices.

So I don't know, I just, I love good sushi.

It's good.

Okay.

All right.

And I live in Colorado, so pray for me.

Yeah, there's no sushi.

Like my wife always tells me every time we go to a different state or travel, she's like, if you're in a state that's not next to a body of water, don't eat sushi.

Yeah.

I mean, we do have, we do have Rocky Mountain oysters, if you've ever heard of those.

But it's depending on the age of your audience, it might not be appropriate to discuss.

That's good.

Okay, okay.

I'm trying to think here.

Question number five.

Question number five.

What is the, the one memory that you hope.

Let's get a little.

Get a Little serious one here.

Okay.

What's one of the best memories that you think your kids will have of you?

Mm, Man.

So we've got two boys a little over nine and four and a half.

And this last summer, they were both.

Is kind of.

It was like the first time.

They're both old enough to kind of go camping just with me.

So we had a boys only camping trip, the three of us, and it was a blast.

And they keep like, probably once a month since then.

They ask, like, when are we going to do it again?

And it made an impact on them in a lot of ways, but also because over the two, three nights we were there, we saw nine Moose.

Seven of them come.

Came through our campsite, which.

So it was like, I don't know how I'm ever going to top that.

So the combination of, like, adrenaline pumping because, like, you don't want to be too close to Moose, um, and like, us doing it together and having, like, special hot chocolate and, you know, brats that they held over the fire.

It was a.

It was a really fun and special time.

Um, yeah, it was great.

That's a good memory.

But how many moose you said go through there?

We had.

So we had.

The first night we were there, we had a mama and her baby walk through, like 40ft, 50ft away, tops.

Um, and then the next morning, another five, including three.

Three or four juveniles from what we could tell, like, walked through one of the neighboring campsites and like, they had to get up and leave their breakfast because they walked right past their picnic table and everything.

And we were down there too.

And, and.

And got to see them.

And I.

No kidding.

The closest one was no more than 15ft away right there.

It was crazy.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

What did you do?

Did you just freeze?

Uh, nope.

We.

I got the boys in the car and.

And then had to like, like, like a.

Like a genius.

I left our dog at our campsite and didn't realize that the.

The moose were going to come like, straight through the neighboring campsite.

So I had to go back, skirt around and flank and get our dog, who thankfully did not start.

Start bark.

Barking, which is a minor miracle of itself.

She's a blue heeler, red husky mix, 50 50, and very vocal as a dog.

And.

But I got her dog and brought her back to our car and we were all safe and sound.

It was great.

But it was really exciting there for a minute.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

I don't even know what I would do.

I just.

Especially with my.

My dog.

Would have been killed.

Just.

He would have barked and gone crazy and scared the moose, and the moose would have attacked us in the car.

Because that's what my dog does.

Yeah.

His name is Spurgeon, by the way.

That's the name.

My name, my dog is Spurgeon.

So I'm still trying to figure out if that.

Like, I thought it was a compliment, but I'm beginning to reassess whether or not I should have named him, that I should have named him something like my enemy, you know, just because I'm yelling at him.

I. I heard Kevin Van Hooser, not a cat.

That's true.

That is true.

And he's a good boy.

Most times if there's no people, dogs, or animals around.

Yeah.

And you don't want him to do anything.

Yeah, he's a good dog.

It's like right now he's annoying our family because he.

He eats and then he goes to the couch when we're, like, eating together.

And then my wife catches him, like, wiping his face on the couch.

So it's just like, what?

She's like, stop it, Spurgeon.

And I'm like, I don't ever.

You know, I really should have rethought how.

Why I named him what I did, because I like Spurgeon.

But the more he does that, I don't like it here.

My kids yell outside, Spurgeon.

So anyway, hey, let's talk about your book.

Yeah.

The Reason for Church, as you.

As you mentioned, the Reason for God seemed to be the inspiration behind this.

Why the Body of Christ Still Matters in an age of anxiety, division, and radical individualism.

Even got Michael Keller to write the.

The Forward there.

Kudos to you.

And.

And you talk about all these different people.

So why.

Why write this book?

You're in Colorado.

You're doing a church plant.

Are you.

Are you trying to.

I mean, what made you go, you know what?

I'm going to write a book about this.

What.

What was it?

Well, primarily, it was an exercise of trying to process and connect the dots of everything that we had experienced.

But some of those dots first came up pretty early on in the process of planting the church.

I mean, the.

We.

And so in places, if you know anything about Boulder and Boulder county, it is a very radically progressive and secular place.

But it's not secular in the sense of being non spiritual.

It's very hyper spiritual.

And so we learned.

We noticed two things pretty quickly, but we didn't connect the dots really until the pandemic accelerated all these trends and made it more clear and easier to see.

But the two dots were.

First of all, we noticed that our neighbors were, in ways that surprised us and were beautiful, surprisingly open to the idea that God exists and maybe they might even need Jesus.

That was beautiful and wonderful.

But we hit a different roadblock than the one we expected, which is that they were highly skeptical that the church was as beautiful or good for anyone.

And so even though they were open and we could, I mean, still regularly have neighbors over and we talk about faith and we talk about all these things many times and won't come to church.

And it's because of this kind of anti institutionalism that is rooted in individualism.

Most pastors probably notice that the typical person walking through the front doors of their church went from expecting that church to shape and form them to expecting the church to be shaped and formed by them.

And that fundamental shift in posture of the typical person walking through the front doors of your church changes the starting point for all of ministry.

But it's really subtle and nobody knew it.

But just the reality of like, I mean, I ask pastors every once in a while still, like, when was the last time someone wanted to get, you know, a beer or coffee with you and talk about the problem of pain or, you know, the theological, you know, a theological anything.

And it's been years, but all the time people want to hear about what's the church's stance on blank political or social or cultural issue.

That is one of the symptoms downstream of that posture.

But what I didn't realize and what I didn't have an appreciation for until the pandemic, like I said, is those are two different symptoms of the same root of individualism.

And what I mean by individualism is not just this reality that, you know, the individual bears the image of God and is therefore has an inherent dignity, value and worth that is a good thing.

What I'm talking about is this, this kind of cultural assumption, like we were talking about defeater beliefs.

This cultural assumption that my dignity, value and worth, or my significance, meaning and purpose has to be achieved or constructed by me and myself only.

And we don't want to receive that, we want to achieve it.

And when that is the case, the whole purpose of the church exists in order to as God's ordained means of grace for us to receive his love and purpose.

And significance in Christ.

And so if that kind of fundamental difference of assumption is not meaningfully engaged, and if we're not meaningfully aware of that and tailoring how we do ministry to that starting point, we are gonna be missing so many people who just don't even have a category and don't even know or realize that that's what they're operating off of.

And that's basically the need that the book is intended to address is how do we do that?

What is the landscape of that cultural geography?

Well, there's so many different parts to that when you get into it, like the spiritual.

I mean, you have the defeater beliefs, which I loved how you put every chapter with that defe belief, and then you described what that defeater belief is.

But for those that aren't familiar or who haven't read the Reason for God, explain what you mean by defeater belief.

Yeah, so Tim Keller's the Reason for God.

These defeater beliefs that he like, each chapter was a different defeater belief, and they were these cultural assumptions that precluded or made impossible belief in God.

And so unless those defeater beliefs are addressed, then it's.

It's faith is going to seem weird and crazy even more than it already is.

Right.

And so the first chapters, five chapters of my book, each one is a different.

What I call a church defeater, which is the same kind of dynamic, the same, you know, cultural assumption, but instead of it precluding belief in God is it precludes or makes implausible any commitment or attachment or involvement, participation in church.

And so these are things that we believe largely around institutions in general, that when we encounter the church, we just have the same posture and see it through the same lens.

And that makes it really, really difficult to understand and fully apprehend and like, receive what the church has to offer, even if they are actually committed or engaged in some way.

Even for Christians who are operating off of these cultural assumptions, it really puts a very low ceiling on our experience or the fruit that we can experience in participating in a local church.

Let's zoom in on that.

Because, I mean, even even talking to just, you know, some of the pastors that I work with, and I work with a lot of different pastors, I'm amazed at just sometimes the lack of knowledge that a lot of pastors have anymore.

I mean, seminaries in some respect are answering questions that a lot of churches today aren't asking.

And you write about this, and this is where I found your work very just refreshing because you're putting language to I think what many people have been feeling.

But you talk about it even with chapter one, Spiritual Pragmatism, and you say the belief, the defeater belief.

Because churches exist to facilitate our personal spiritual growth and help us fulfill our unique potential.

Following Jesus faithfully may require leaving or switching churches for one that better meets our spiritual needs.

But you put then as the subtitle under spiritual pragmatism number one, you said how seeker sensitivity and self actualization reduce the church to a spiritual non profit.

And I was like, booyah.

He shoots me, scores.

Let's see what we go with this here because I think that it was well intentioned and it's had, it's been horrific.

The results over the long run have been devastating for churches.

I mean, is that kind of the whole.

And I've read the chapter, but for those that haven't.

Yeah, yeah.

Is that really that.

That is the trajectory you go, just spoiler alert for those that are out there.

You still need a book.

No, absolutely.

I mean, I want to affirm and agree with what you said about this was a very good missional impulse that drove and fueled seeker sensitivity.

We should want to reach our neighbors.

But the blind spot was kind of twofold.

Like one without understanding the way institutions are formative and participating in an institution like its meaning and purpose.

Participating is going to shape and form our affections.

It's going to shape and form our worldview and how we see the world.

Participating is going to reinforce the motives or incentives that we bring into it.

And so when the seeker sensitive movement started using, you know, Mark, what I.

What I call marketplace logic.

Right.

Which is this idea that we, you know.

Market theology, by the way.

Oh, no kidding.

Yeah, we call it market theology.

We.

Same thing.

Because I had.

Finish your thought and then I'll tell you.

No, no, you're good.

Go ahead.

Okay.

So we had on the show the church must grow our parish.

Have you read that?

No, I haven't.

So it's on Robert Schuller and he's the first one to introduce market techniques into the church.

Yep, yep.

He's also the first pastor to ever use debt.

And then he trained both Hybels and Warren in that attractional model because he's like, if, I mean, I call it, you know, the field of dreams model.

If you build it, they will come.

You build the building, people give to it.

Put these guys that are high achievers and CEOs of companies and have them form like these.

That'll be your board and not Getting into the character issue.

And, and really he was at the right place at the right time.

Basically, what I, in my opinion, what he did, and people can disagree, but I think that he was in the right place, the right time.

He was moving into Southern California.

All these people were moving across from it.

He redefines the gospel in therapeutic language.

And it's so subtle because he still maintains that he affirms reformed categories, even though that's not how he's not preaching because he was skilled in John Calvin, that was his education.

But he redefines the gospel in the process.

But he uses that market logic that Hybels and both Warren then take.

And it's the attraction model.

Get him in the door, get him saved.

But then you flatten spiritual formation when you do that, because you're looking at it as the event without the process.

Oh, man.

Well, I mean, I would, you know, in some ways I think it might even be worse, right?

Because when, like, I think again, I want to affirm the intentions, you know, of everyone who, you know, participate in the secret sensitive movement.

But when, when leaders, and by that I mean pastors, church staff, lay leaders, when you start to view congregants as customers, oh, that is going to change and shape the way that you relate to them, which will change and shape how they are formed in, in community.

Right?

And so when, I mean, I talk about this kind of, this example in that chapter of Bill Hybels had a sign hanging above his office that says something along the lines of, like, who is our customer?

What are their needs and what is our job?

And it's like, you know how, like, if we had a maybe instead of marketplace logic, a kingdom logic, that ask, like, who is our God?

What does he call us to and where is the need?

Right.

That is a completely different starting point.

And that will shape your church's liturgies, your decision making process.

That change upstream toward marketplace logic has had a, I would say, catastrophic effect.

Like, I would argue actually that very little of what people refer to as the deconstruction movement that's happening right now, very little of that would be taking place if not for the secret sensitive movement.

He shoots, he scores.

Like I look that sorry.

You just shook up my pop bottle.

That's all I gotta say is you just shook it up because you got me really hyped up right now.

Can I make it worse?

Well, okay, then I'm gonna go for it then.

I'll put sauce on it.

Okay, well, like something at the same time that this was happening.

And part of this because when you adopt the liturgies of the world around you within the church, you lose the ability to be a prophetic voice in the midst of that.

And so at the same time that's happening within the seeker sensitive movement, you have self actualization.

And you mentioned therapeutic before, that's been percolating up in the culture for a long time.

So when people, even Christians are walk into your church who are looking for a church that's going to help them fulfill their own, their God given purpose in life, then now the church becomes a means to your end instead of all of us being a means to God's ends.

And so that it really is that that created a perfect storm that made even like I'm a zennial, right?

So like I've got one foot in Gen X and one foot in millennials.

And I like to say that I only have the good parts of each of them, right?

But like self actualization is very millennial.

And so even though millennials are very anti consumerism because, you know, our boomer parents showed us all the ways that that's bad, we still treat this church as a spiritual nonprofit that is there to satisfy our spiritual needs.

It may not happen through the same kinds of programs now.

It'll be like spiritual practices and like, is it helping me like live out my life and my vocation and my work and like, those are good things.

But that's not why you go to church.

You go to church because of Jesus and that's, that's a big difference.

But we don't, we don't, we've really neglected that, an awareness of that.

You think though, that, okay, we, you know, we're, we've been busting on the boomers for a bit.

I mean, you even mentioned this in the book where it's like, this is a boomer kind of phenomenon and it really created church for only one generation.

This.

And again, it was reactionary.

It was reactionary to the institutionalism of the previous generation.

I call that that.

You know, it's the pendulum principle where they felt this went far and they didn't hit the fullness of life, they over compensated and went too far the other way.

And, and we're going to look back at our own time and our kids are going to be doing podcasts or whatever it is, holograms, you know, in the future when they're talking about us and what we did wrong.

But I look at them and I go like, there's so much stuff that I'm like, how did you miss it?

And it makes me stop and wonder that now, what are we missing that the next generation is going to say their generation messed up?

Because we all know that the church is a mess.

It's an easy target right now.

It just is because we've got so many different divergent things.

And I hear so many different guys tell me, like, can we just get back to the New Testament?

I'm like, yes and no.

I mean, for one, you're taking a picture of a bird in flight.

Acts two is followed by Acts three.

You know, they were embracing and having everything in common.

Okay, we do that now.

And everybody's like, it's socialism.

You know what I mean?

It's like, we're not in the first century anymore.

We're dealing with a different set of.

The cultural topography has shifted.

And so Christ is fixed, but the cultural topography is not there.

And so what I find, though, and maybe again, I find that you're a corrective in that you are kind of prophetically engaging.

What?

So many churches have been carried along in the current and baptized because they look at the churches that are big and growing, they think they've got the answer, let's copy them.

If we didn't have all these other issues, our facility, we had the right staff.

We had, you know, fill in the blank.

Rarely is the content of the Gospel anymore.

It's more like, what do people need?

Let's do a focus group on what people need.

It's like the Scripture shows what people need, but what part are we emphasizing?

Just like you and I just met.

It's our history.

But I don't find that the people around me are going, man, I'm saved by my works and I'm getting to heaven that way.

I've never heard anyone ever say that to me.

Now they use different language, though.

They are like, I have to fulfill my potential.

Yes, yes.

Totally different in the expression of it.

So the backdrop has changed.

The truth of the Reformation is, holds.

But what it's actually addressing in the language, that it's got new categories, same kind of thing, right?

I mean, that's what you're talking about.

In the book, am I way off?

No, no.

I think the language of.

In a secular culture, the insistence that we have to achieve or construct our own identity is secular, a secular way of describing self salvation.

It absolutely is.

And so that is the burden.

And it's destroying people in the same ways that a workspace gospel absolutely would.

And it's framed as good news.

And it's reinforced in every Disney movie that has come out since the Lion King.

I mean, I have a rant, a very well worn rut, road, Rutted road of a rant on Disney, in fact.

Well, that made it into the book too.

I was like, oh, I'm going to see how this preaches to parents who have kids that are watching Disney right now.

I mean, like, you think about, like, think about it this way.

Like, what is especially for our kids, what is celebrated?

What do they see that is celebrated?

And when you think about cultural narratives, that is another way of asking the question of what are the stories that shape and form us?

Is another way of asking what is celebrated.

Same answer.

When I look around and I think about the things that my sons are watching or reading or exposed to in school and what have you.

Mostly what is celebrated is younger people asserting their convictions that always happen to be right against anything traditional or what is expected of them by adults or parents or the culture or institutions.

Especially, oh my gosh, if there's an institution involved, you can bet that the villain is leading it.

Right.

Those narratives shape and form us to aspire to similar things.

And so the church has got to model and celebrate a redemptive narrative that says that God came down to save those who were asserting themselves against him and to save his enemies from themselves.

That is like, where is that narrative in the stories our culture is authoring right now?

It's just not there.

That, if nothing else, is evidence of our being in a very post Christian age right now.

But I do want to, like, you said something that really kind of perked my, my brain a little bit when you were, you were talking about how like, you know, let's get back to the New Testament or whatever.

I would actually argue that's going to start getting a lot easier pretty soon.

Yeah.

But primarily because the more post Christian we become, the more we start looking like pre Christian Rome.

Oh, yeah.

And part of the problem, like, and this goes to, like, what are the things that are our blind spots generationally that our kids are going to, you know, be talking via hologram or holotube, whatever about like, how we messed it up.

I think that's going to be our allowing the church to be reduced to a political action committee and the church caring more about political positions and teaching or preaching why a political position is, is right or wrong than it is about a gospel that transcends whatever politically is happening right now.

And as that's happening, we start.

And I wrote about this too, like how power is replacing trust as currency for relationship.

And when that's the case, like, we lose the ability to actually hear anybody across the aisle.

We lose the ability to relate to someone who doesn't already completely align with what we believe.

And then therefore, we lose the ability to even change our minds about anything.

And that is going to be absolutely essential.

Having a remnant within the American church that doesn't lose that ability is going to be essential because the more that power replaces trust as currency for relationship, the more we're going to start.

Culture's gonna start having narratives that might makes right that power and glory are the things that we should aspire to, not love and peace.

Well, isn't that where we're at, though?

I mean, just being honest, like, it is the power piece.

So I had James Davidson Hunter on.

Oh, yeah, man.

Oh, yeah, dude.

He, he was pretty raw on the show.

Just going to be real honest.

And I met James and he's.

He's a smart guy, just a smart guy.

And he talked about it.

He goes, like he said on the show, I don't identify as an evangelical anymore.

And I was like, oh, like, you know, mic drop kind of thing.

And I was like, in my head, I'm like, well, am I going to edit that out or how's that going to work?

You know?

And he's like, he goes, I'm still a confessing Christian, but he goes, but evangelicalism has become so tied because it's so toxic that it won't be used, be able to be used for a hundred years.

And I, and I, I, you know, of course, he's way above where I'm at.

I like, from seeing the trends of the culture and the arc and so on and so forth.

But he's like, it's so now a quest for power politically.

And then he talks about the spheres, right?

And he's like, he's like, the reason that Christians are so engaged in politics is because it's the only sphere on which they can actually execute some type of influence.

He's like, there's no other place that they can do that anymore in the public world.

His thought, he said, so they only have Politics remain.

But then Michael Ware, who came on, he's like, we treat our politics religiously and our religion politically.

Oh, man, that's, that's, that's so bad.

I think that's right.

I think that's right.

It is so good.

And it's because I think partly.

And again, this is where I go back to the.

And I mean, you're talking about individualism and doing cultural like, you know, we're talking about cultural apologetics.

Really?

Yes, absolutely.

That's what we're doing.

We're doing a deep dive right now on the deep structures.

Go and say, how do we get where we're at and what are the underlying beliefs that are underneath the iceberg.

Yeah.

That are propping it up that we don't even realize.

Yes.

And so I keep thinking back, I'm like, these are where we've all been educated on this.

We don't even know it until it gets challenged prophetically.

And so some way, shape or form.

But the other part is we syncretize our idols and we've taken Christian terms and tried to Christianize it and baptize it in a lot of respects.

And so you're just pulling that mask off saying, nope, sorry, that's bad.

Yeah.

I mean, no, absolutely no.

The pithiest, shortest summary of my book I can offer is that it's a cultural apologetic for the institutional church.

And both of those are very difficult right now for a whole lot of reasons.

But I would even, I mean, the political and religion connection I talk a lot about in the book in the chapter on uncivil religions and how politics have become a source of meaning, significance and purpose in our life.

And when that is the case, when that happens, you will not be able to resist the anti vision that whatever political group that you identify with, that anti vision starting to backfill and reshape the way that you see God and neighbor, it's going to change it.

And so it's going to make you.

You're going to be defining yourself by what you're against more than what you're for.

And I can think of no, no greater catnip to Satan than that than anti vision.

Because you will that you are.

You are walking into a place where you're blind spots are going to be massive because it's okay to be against something.

You can't be for anything and not be against its antithesis.

That's not the problem.

The problem is when it becomes the primary source of our identity in life, that when we are wrecked and Devastated when our candidate or our.

It sounds so trite now to say, like, when our policy doesn't get passed.

Because I would love for us to be upset when policy doesn't get passed right now because that would be an improvement from where we are.

We don't even care about the policy anymore because we're not even.

It's more about rooting for the right team than it is furthering the right solution.

And that is such a.

It's damning of our political moment.

Well, I think so too, because I also think that.

And this is where bad theology comes back to really bite.

That's been really embedded and it's where we've equated America and Christianity as the same.

I'm not saying that they didn't influence one another.

I mean, of course, have historically.

But it's when you can't be able to separate very well and you can't see your faith away from that.

That, to me, is when it gets really problematic.

And this is where I find that Christians also, we have also not taught a very good theology of suffering.

And it's all been about convenience and appealing to you because you're the customer, right?

You're the customer.

We want to meet your spiritual needs.

We want to take care of you, want to make sure you're comfortable, want to make sure you like the music, the light show and all of the different things.

And again, these were like, we want you to hear the gospel.

I understand it.

We don't want it, you know, don't want it to be bad because then they won't ever.

You won't ever get an opportunity for the conversation.

But the problem then I think became, is that you lose that prophetic edge to challenge someone in their belief system instead of baptizing it and not being away from it.

I mean, to stand against it.

We baptized it in some respect and really lowered the bar on what it meant to follow Jesus too.

We made it so easy.

And there's no unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood sermons going on anymore, man.

I mean, to maybe even take that theology is suffering one step further upstream.

I think that's absolutely right.

But I think that a theology of suffering is actually a.

A one dimension of something that we've.

That we've lost and just have not as a mar.

As most white, especially white American Christians have just not had an experience of, which is an ecclesiology of exile.

Right.

I'm, you know, taking our people through.

We're preaching through the book of the first seven chapters.

Of Daniel right now.

And it has been one of the, like, we're only two weeks in and it has already been one of the most like, robust, nourishing sermon series we've done.

I'm hearing really amazing like, feedback about how like, I didn't know I even needed this.

And what if I had to like, summarize how my posture as a pastor and how I see like my, what I'm called to in ministry pre versus post pandemic.

I think pre pandemic I was chasing revival, but now I'm focused on building a remnant, a faithful remnant in the midst of exile.

And I think one of the things that like the only reason the seeker sensitive movement could be successful, I think, like you said, right place and right time and during a season that we thought was normative, but I think is actually going to historically prove to be an exception of just incredible economic abundance.

Oh my gosh, yes.

And wealth that made even cultural differences because it just kind of like greased the wheels a little bit.

And without either, with both the political and cultural differences being deeper and without the economic grease to kind of make that a little bit easier and a lighter lift, I think we're starting to experience the spiritual reality that we have always been living in, but just didn't have as much of a daily ordinary experience thereof, which was exile and the New Testament.

To your point earlier of like, let's go back to the New Testament.

I agree.

Let's go back to first Peter 1, verse 1.

Right.

Peter writing to the elect, exiles in the diaspora.

Like, there you go.

That's the lens for which you read the rest of First Peter.

And that's a completely different kind of gospel emphasis than we have had for decades.

Well, this is why, this is why I think you're absolutely correct.

I, I agree.

I'm just saying, as I agree with you, because one of the things that we noticed is that the cultural topography has shifted in that it's not a Christendom culture in the way that, that it was for our parents and grandparents, where that Judeo Christian worldview was at the heart of it.

And that's what actually Hunter said.

He said, you know, our founding fathers, some, many of them were Christians.

Right.

And we know that they were, they weren't all Christians, but they all were influenced by a Judeo Christian worldview.

Sure.

In some way, shape or form.

And he's like, they created this cultural reservoir.

And he said that their conception of God was opaque enough that anyone could read their, their view of God into it.

And he said, and it was a hybrid Enlightenment from the very beginning.

He goes, you had Christian principles, but it's the only nation that was formed by the Enlightenment.

And he said that cultural reservoir continued to nourish subsequent generations, provided that they came from that framework.

He said, but that started to shift.

And it's challenging the cultural reservoir.

And then Christian Smith mentioned multiculturalism with all the different educational pieces.

I mean, it's just one.

There's so many different pieces to it, but it's eroded it over time.

So now we're living in a much more pluralistic culture, for better or for worse.

I think it's actually better, but some people think it's worse because they think it actually threatens American identity.

I could argue against that, but I actually think, like you said, that the New Testament was written to a pluralistic culture, so it actually makes a whole lot more sense.

So when I look at what we created, like mystical holism, what we did was, is looked at the hard earned work done on the mission field and what Christianity looked like in the first three centuries and try to apply it to the Western culture and give missionary glasses to the world to see those idolatries that are implicit within it.

But the problem is, is that the idolatries in many respects are coming in Christian terms.

Yes.

Oh man, now we're really getting there.

We're having some fun.

No, we're having some.

No, we are, we're like, well, I'm on a galaxy brain right now.

Here we go.

No, I mean, this is why I think Tom Holland, who wrote Dominion and is one of the co hosts of the rest of the history podcast, I think he is dead on the money, which is that even within the secular world, we are operating off of Christian assumptions, but the ways that we are defining those assumptions have been shifting and evolving.

I would even argue devolving.

And now, and like I wrote about this in chapter 45 on virtuous victimhood, compassion as an example of a Christian value and principle that has, instead of being a, something that we experience as a, as a response to the gospel, is now a moral authority on its own.

And when, when it, when compassion is a source of moral authority, it can be weaponized to coerce people to, to do what you want to do.

And we see this happening on both the left and the right.

Right.

One of the.

I Mean, it is just.

It is beyond frustrating to see things unfolding in Minneapolis, for example, and the way that it is described and the causes as described by people on the left and the right, they're both appealing to different groups, identity groups, identity politics, who are being victimized.

I either buy the, The.

The.

The mass immigration in general.

On the right, that's the argument, right, because people are losing their jobs because of this, and it's.

It's causing all this, These problems.

But on the left, the argument is that it's.

It's this, you know, whatever we do is totally okay because the way that Trump and the federal government are using force, it justifies how we're doing this because we're victims.

It's like.

No, no, no, no.

It.

Can we actually just have a conversation around, like, what actually the problem is here, which in some ways it's going to affirm and critique everybody, right?

Because if we actually do care about immigrants, we.

And I mean, I'm getting political here in a sense, but like, but, like, if we care about immigrants, we need to shut down the incentives that make human trafficking across the border, killing people, selling people into functional sex slavery.

Like, we, if, if we allow, if we don't have a secure border, we're.

We are incentivizing that very thing.

Okay, so, like, that's going to.

That, that argument is going to affirm and challenge both the left and the right, because that's.

We're actually caring about human beings and saying this.

It's not actually not loving of immigrants that we need to have a secure border.

But at the same time, if they're here, we should not be like, like, locking up mothers who got here legally.

Like, this is totally an overreach.

At the same time, like, all.

And now, like, I'm actually, like, experiencing and demonstrating why pastors don't want to talk about this, because it's actually like, if you actually talk about it in a way that is hopefully meaningful and not just playing, you know, rooting for one team or the other, it gets complicated really fast, which is.

Oh, my gosh, yes.

Yeah.

So if you want to blame any.

I guess what I'm saying is if you want to blame anybody, blame Congress for completely being asleep on the job and making this a problem in the first place.

Because this should have.

This is a problem Congress is supposed to solve.

But all of these different things that we're talking about, I mean, this is where, like, we can critique it.

Like, I mean, we do, right?

We have to.

Part of.

Part of Our job is to critique but also come up with solutions.

And that's the tricky part.

As culture becomes much more complex.

Culture has structure and direction.

I mean, creation has structure and direction.

It's moving towards something, and it becomes more complex as we go along.

So I find that there's this competing idea of what is the root love or the motivating love that causes an action or another action.

You know, that's because you've got Christian principles at root in a lot of different people.

But what is the overarching motive or movement on which they make those decisions?

That, to me, is where we are at.

So how do we then teach our people that?

Because they're being, they're being catechized by CNN and Fox News and huffpost and whatever, you know, whatever your news agency is, give me your, show me your news diet and I'll tell you your, your views.

And so I want to know, like, because to me, and this is where, again, we're talking about Keller earlier, kind of the third way idea, it's like you're neither right or left.

You have to be able to prophetically challenge each one.

And I know people are saying, oh, that's a cop out.

I don't think so.

It's a cop out to say that I'm going to subject biblical truth to your political agenda.

That's a cop out.

Yes.

Well, and I feel, I'm pretty convinced that the root of much of this, what we're talking about, is not a theological failure.

It's primarily an emotional neglect.

Right.

And what I mean by that is I just got done.

I just this past Sunday preached on Daniel 2.

So this is fresh in my mind.

But Daniel 2 is when, you know, Nebuchadnezzar has this dream of the statue made of four different kinds of metal, of gold, silver, bronze and iron mixed with clay.

And he tells his diviners and enchanters and magicians in the court, like, you need to tell me both what the, what the dream was and interpret it, because I'm not going to tell you what the dream was.

And they're like, well, nobody can tell you what the dream was.

He's like, well, then you're, you're dead.

I'm going to tear you limb from limb.

Right?

And I made the argument.

It's just like, well, that escalated fast.

You can just see those guys going, hey.

I'm like, nobody can do that.

Right?

I mean, but to be fair, Daniel said the same thing.

He says, but there is a God in heaven who reveals all mysteries.

And he has shown me what your dream was so that you, so that you may know what is to come in the latter days.

Like that is incredible.

Okay, but before we get there, right.

I argued and I'm convinced Nebuchadnezzar threatened to tear them limb from limb because that dream made him terrified of his own helplessness.

What does social media.

Is social media designed to do more than terrify you of your helplessness?

You are bombarded with more problems in the world than you have any agency to possibly address.

And you're given, you are shown and catechized with awareness of the worst problems in the world, the worst enemies in the world, so that you increase your engagement.

And that liturgically is just as a digital liturgy, to quote Samuel James, is just going to shift shape and form you even more like Nebuchadnezzar.

And we want to tear each other limb from limb as a result because we are afraid of that powerlessness.

And so what Daniel did, that was different.

Right.

And this is what it means to build a remnant.

I'm convinced this is what the church's job must be.

It must be to start by relying on God because we have a power.

We don't.

We're not like, See, we're not Daniel necessarily.

You know, Jesus is the true and better Daniel.

And he's not just going to the throne and asking for something.

He is on the throne.

And the Holy Spirit is actually advocating for and on our behalf at the right hand of the Father.

Right.

Like so, like we have something that Daniel didn't even have in that moment.

And we have a power that is greater than any helplessness we may experience if we use it, if we rely on it.

And let me tell you.

Because, because, because until we do that, that, that fear, that terror of helplessness doesn't go away.

But we can't, we will never be able to act faithfully while that terror is still there.

Because.

Right.

God says, like the most common command in all of Scripture is fear not, for I am with you.

Right.

So if we, if we skip that step, we are just going to participate in pre Christian Rome that is unfolding in our politics, and we're just going to be.

Might makes right.

And we're going to coerce until the other, the other party, whoever we deem to be our enemy, into oblivion.

And it's not going to work because we're going to lose our souls in the process.

This is where I'm going to show you something and put the folks at home if, you know, if they ever get this, I'm going to show this to you, but I'll describe it to you just so you can see it, because this is directly relevant to what you said.

So for those that are zooming in at home, but we're looking at the Christian faith and how it was two competing modes of Christian expansion.

This is under Walls's work, by the way, and I took it and put it in a diagram form.

But he basically said, you know, there's two ways that the Christian faith has been transmitted historically and every mode falls into this.

He goes, it comes down to the missionary mode or the crusader mode.

And his thought was, and I'm going to share this piece here, he goes, the missionary mode demonstrates the faith.

It invites people to investigate Christ, it explains who Christ is, and then they leave the rest of the Lord.

But he's like, the crusader mode demonstrates, invites, explains.

But the difference is one has earthly power, so it will compel, whereas the missionary mode has heavenly power, and I mean only heavenly power.

And that goes back to what you were saying, though, right?

Yeah, well, and one of the things I told our people too, is like, one of the many ways that our world is not the same as ancient near eastern Babylon in Daniel's time, right.

Is that we do still, for the most part at least, live in a democracy, which means that we actually are invited to participate in ways that are really good and amazing and we should avail ourselves of that.

Right.

But that does not mean we do it from a posture of compelling.

Right.

And so we should be advocating for things because, like, government is a good thing.

And, you know, Romans 13 says that, you know, we are.

We are called to submit to, to the government above us.

And that was, and that, that was when, like, we had.

The governing authority was Rome.

Right?

So, like, we've still got it better.

Even if it's bad right now, it's still better than when Paul was writing the letter to the Romans.

Right.

Um, and, and, and the government is called to wield the sword, but it's a call to do so justly.

And what, what, what I.

What blew my mind when I was studying up on Daniel 2 is how much the dream Nebuchadnezzar had has all of this imagery straight out of Psalm 2.

When, when.

Which starts, why do the people.

Why do the nations rage and the people's plot in vain?

And so at the end of the day, if we fail, we don't have to result to compulsion and coercion.

At the end of the day, we rest in God's not yet judgment that even if things are unjust now, it will not always be unjust and God will redeem.

But that is not on our shoulders.

It can't be.

We are only human and we are just as broken.

And if that doesn't like introduce some hope and humility at the same time, then we're not.

We're not.

We're doing something wrong.

Well, you know, Brad, I know we can talk all day, brother.

Yeah, seriously, we've only scratched the surface.

I'm gonna have to have you back.

We're gonna talk some more about this stuff.

But give me a clue.

A water bottle.

What's the water bottle that we want to give to our people?

Give me one thought, brother.

Okay.

If I could give one thing, it would be that you should add to your little.

Your overlapping Venn diagram there on the missionary side, generous hospitality because I am convinced, like, I mean this is why Tom Holland's dominion is so good is that when you look through history, what transformed the Roman Empire from the inside out was a consistent institutional like institution building posture of hospitality that where institutions became the means by which you scaled and increased the ability of Christians to be hospitable to the least of these to the.

To orphans, widows, sojourners and the poor.

And to the degree that if you're familiar with.

Oh gosh, what's the.

I can't remember the name of the Roman emperor something.

The apostate.

Is it James Julian the apostate.

Right.

He got mad at the priests in a pagan temple because he was trying to revive paganism to in what had already a post Constantine Rome.

Right.

And he got mad at them because they didn't show the hospitality that Christians did and therefore they were getting out.

They were basically being out competed in winning the affections of people.

It's hospitality that changes hearts and minds and gets.

Gets you a seat.

You get a seat at the table because you've invited other people to have a seat at the table.

Right.

And when we understand hospitality as relational and creational generosity, I don't care like what's going on in the world.

Every Christian and every church can give a taste of the wedding feast of the Lamb through relational and creational generosity with their neighbors.

Do it consistently and you'll be, maybe, maybe you won't be surprised, but I think most people would be surprised at how beautiful it is to our neighbors and how much that ends up being a, a different kind of greasing of the wheels toward people being open to the idea of church, whatever their objections are.

You just can't argue with hospitality.

One of the most basic building blocks that we have, something that anybody can do.

It doesn't matter if you have an apartment, dorm room.

I mean, just fight someone over house in and those and see what God would do in those relationships.

Brad, thank you for coming on the show.

For those that are out there that are still trying to debate on whether to get this book, you need to get it the Reason for Church.

It is a great book.

I am not paid to say this.

I just like the book so much.

Brad, you did a great job.

May God bless you and thank you for writing a book.

We look forward to having you back on ministry.

Deep Dive.

Would love to.

Thanks for having me, man.