Theology in the Raw - 677: #677 - A Conversation with Jon Tyson

Episode Date: June 25, 2018

On episode #677 Preston has a conversation with Jon Tyson. Jon is the Lead Pastor of Church of the City in New York. You can follow Jon on twitter @JonTyson and learn more about his church by visiting their website found here.

Hello, friends, and welcome to Theology in the Raw. I am here with my, I almost said good friend, we've never met, but somebody I've admired from afar. And from what he has told me, it's mutual. But I am here with John Tyson. John Tyson is a church planter, pastor, and I'm going to say a pastoral theologian. And I really mean that. I mean, there's some people that are theologians, but they're not quite pastoral. There's some people that are pastoral, but man, their theology is just like, eh. John Tyson's a real deal, and I'm going to let him describe himself because he may deny some of that, but I'm going to stick with it.

John, thanks so much for being on Theology in the Raw. Well, thanks so much, mate. I'm a big fan of this show. I recommend it to a lot of people. When you have the courage to take on John Piper on one or two light. Calling me a pastoral theologian is a real honor. I think I would describe myself like that. I certainly aspire to be like that, you know, to wed deep, thoughtful understanding and, you know, culture. Real quick, we are having some video difficulties and

neither of us have the best internet. I'm plugged in straight into the Wi-Fi, so there's nothing I can do about it. My John is in his closet in an apartment in New York City, so apparently the Wi-Fi out there isn't too great. We're just going to keep going with it, and we'll see if this works out on the video portion. This is both a video that I upload to YouTube and also a podcast, so worst case scenario, we'll cancel the video and just keep going with the audio. But let's just get, I want you to just describe your journey. Who are you? And specifically, like, I mean, I just, your ecclesiology or what you've done with the church and also churches and church planning in New York City is really, really remarkable. I mean, I've often said

that my ecclesiology is probably the closest to what you have done in New York City, even though I've never even said that to you. I don't know if you even know that, but from a distance, I'm like, golly, I don't know too much about it. But from what I can see, it's just like, I think you're doing something really remarkable here. But let's back up. You got a bit of an accent. John, where did you grow up and what brought you to America? Yeah, so I grew up in Australia. And I became a Christian when I turned 17 in a Pentecostal youth revival in the Assemblies of God. Hey, John, John, your audio is just really cutting out.

You know what I'm going to do? Let's go ahead and just – Okay, let me just try one other thing. I'm so sorry. No worries. Let me just try this. How's that? Oh, yeah.

We'll just keep going with it. Yeah, just keep going. And if it happens again for more than like five seconds, we'll just stop the video and just go with the audio. So you grew up in a Pentecostal background in Australia? Yeah. And so it was all about the move of God that was coming to Australia. And it was all about now, it was about revival, it was about the in-breaking presence. And then somebody actually gave me, you remember what cassette tapes, you're probably old enough, yeah they sent me a john macarthur expository teaching

through the book of philippians oh nice and i just remember listening to it just saying what is this what what is the word of god and i ended up going and visiting a church that uh that uh was sort of founded on expository preaching and i sat sat on the front row, weeping. And I'll never forget, the sermon was about why Jesus is better than Melchizedek. And I didn't know who Melchizedek was, but I just knew that Jesus was better than him. And I actually don't know if they knew what to do with me, because I had so much passion for God. And every sermon I heard, I was like, that's the best talk I've ever heard. And I just don't think that they sort of took it for granted, you know. So that sort of shaped my journey. And I

have spent a lot of time trying to integrate the power of the Holy Spirit with very, very sound theology. So the phrase I would use is theology that can't be dismissed, power that can't be denied. And I think that's biblical Christianity. And so I've been on it. Yeah. Well, I've noticed that in your preaching. I mean, you preach hour-long plus sermons sometimes as a couple of weeks ago, an hour and 27 minutes or whatever that was.

And you go so deep. Personal record. Yeah. I mean, you can tell in your sermons you're widely read. You study a ton. I mean, maybe I can't ask you how many hours of research you put in each sermon. But then you also have this very profound, I mean, unashamed, like charismatic thread through the entire thing, which I don't want to be stereotypical. But even my charismatic friends who are more on the intellectual side say, yeah, my tradition isn't known for doing deep biblical theology or research.

And I think I don't want to say every charismatic is like that at all. I mean, I'm mildly charismatic. But you seem to blend the best of both worlds, the kind of MacArthur, expositional, whatever. But then also you haven't left behind your Pentecostal roots either. Is that correct? Yeah, totally. So I had one of my mentors say to me, in the New Testament, so take someone like Paul who had rich, rich rabbinical training,

deep, deep sense of the story of God, the theology of the people of God, then his teaching on the nature of the church, the revelation God gives him about Jesus, the things he includes in the epistles, then his understanding of culture and his ability to just to move in broadly intellectual circles. He said to me, this is what biblical Christianity is. So the apostle Paul can go in Acts 17 and debate the leading thinkers of his day and then walk into a church service and see that someone has faith to be healed and heal them.

And he said, this is just like a seamless integration of following Jesus. And that phrase, like seamless integration, has always sort of stuck at my heart. And so I've tried to not pick and choose, but really integrate the best of the traditions that I've been exposed to and do something thoughtful and meaningful. That's the way to do it. That's the way to do it.

You ended up in New York City. Have you been you been there 13 years is that right 13 years man home sweet home and you uh were i could say discipled or mentored by tim keller before tim keller was tim keller right that's true i don't think you get discipled by tim keller i think you get mentored by tim okay so he did yeah he did a thing called um the fellows program and so i had the privilege of being one of the guys that went through the first version of that i hadn't written any books yet and um but that just shaped me profoundly i remember hearing a talk he gave called the gospel and yourself and it was like he he uses the phrase a god quake moving through the human soul and i encountered that under his teaching wow and i was just like what is this and it it that really really impacted me so you know i don't i wouldn't

say i love as much um what the gospelcentered movement has become, because I think in many ways, the overemphasis on idolatry and the lack of empowerment of the Holy Spirit and emphasis on new covenant realities, new nature sometimes gets distorted. But certainly those early days really, really impacted. What do you mean by gospel-centered movement? I think I know what you mean, but I would love for you to unpack that a little bit. You're talking about, if I can say, gospel coalition or something more specific or something different? I mean, that's the problem with language. Nobody in the gospel-centered movement can identify what they believe the gospel to be.

No charismatic can explain what they mean by charismatic. just like no charismatic can explain what i mean by charismatic so i think i mean um a research i i'm not sure i can articulate it because i don't think they've perhaps articulated it um but here's what it feels like in terms of discipleship your heart is an idol factory from calvin and all week long you wrestle with idols and you come back to church to hear the announcement of the cross spoken over you and to receive the, the reinstatement of right relationship with God. And you go back into an idolatrous world with, without a, with a, with a,

with a heart that is so prone to idolatry. And then you come back to the cross and hear the gospel announced over you. And then all week long, again, you struggle with the idols of our culture it's what i call a satanless gospel so if you don't have if you don't have satan in your theology your heart becomes satan and the only emphasis is on the wickedness of your heart and so the gospel then is primarily about your idolatrous heart coming back to hear the announcement of the cross and my theology is on on the other side of the cross it's about walking in the spirit and of course there's repentance but it's more about empowerment living in the spirit walking

in the spirit the fruit of the spirit and you go back to the cross rather than defaulting to idolatry and coming to the cross you walk in the spirit and then come back to the cross. It sort of feels like having discipleship. Would it be general, again, not to get stereotypical or project categories on it, but like a neo-reformed, like a neo-reformed kind of movement, the Mark Driscoll disciples maybe, and I mean, because I don't want to even name names.

I'm not trying to limit it to that. But that would be the general flavor of what you're saying is good and awesome and beautiful, but maybe lacks a little bit more emphasis on the spirit. Yeah, I think that would be true. The neo-reform movement is very, very wide. Right. So there's a lot of those guys

who I think are wonderful, wonderful people, but it is this like a sort of like a joyless soberness that is so suspicious and aware of sin. And it just seems less aware of what we have available in Jesus and the power of the Spirit, walk in the Spirit, that sort of a thing. So it's maybe perhaps a contrast on that. But now I'm leaking charismatic theology. All right, let's fast forward a little bit. You planted, you just

told me before, was it 10 churches in 11 years or 11 churches in 10 years, but it was more like a network of communities, right? Yes, I was involved. So I moved to New York. I planted a church called Trinity Grace Church, and that multiplied to 11 locations so it was 11 different congregations it was a multi-congregational model so we call them parishes but we invented the parish borders you know like the okay the church didn't define them we invented them based on missiology and we would basically say there's a there's a contextual missiology where at some point you bump into almost like an invisible cultural wall that sort of defines your ability to effectively minister in the same way to this group of people here. It's very place-oriented.

So we planted a bunch of those. And then a year ago, they, to use Presbyterian language, particularized into local churches. And so they already had their own pastors, their own leadership teams, their own budgets. So they particularized. I took two of those congregations, one that I had planted, one that I had sort of stepped back in to bring some health and recovery to, and just reconstituted those under a name. And that name is Church of the City. So now has your ecclesiology shifted or is it just you've moved into a new stage of your kind of role in that movement? I don't think my ecclesiology has shifted.

I mean, I'm more committed to incarnational place-based ministry than I've ever been. I mean, I live in a building with three other families with sort of light monastic rhythms. Like we pray, pray and worship together every morning. We each have a rule of life that we sort of tend to and, and talk about. So I'm, I'm, I mean, honestly, there's some days I don't leave my street. That's how committed I am to like location-based ministry. That's not, that's not hyperbole there's some days I don't leave my street so I do that too but that's out of laziness I just don't like to

no so I one thing that did shape one thing that did shape my understanding of place though is so I I was in many ways so I'm 41 now. I was in many ways like the typical church planter of my generation. I planted when I was 28. I was a megachurch youth pastor, which a lot of like well-known church planters come from. And I didn't want to redo a suburban megachurch. There was no, I'm not judging them or whatever. It was just like, I sensed the world changing.

So I wanted to go to a city. I wanted to do something urban. But I was basically the absolute best of the horse and buggy at about the same time that Henry T had just figured out the production belt for his car. And so when I was 28, the people who basically run New York now were 13 back then. So I didn't care what a 13 year old thought of my church. And it was right when social media was coming along. So I planted before the

iPhone, before Twitter, before any sort of social media. And I planted with one philosophy that was very effective back then. And, but just watching, watching people. I mean, I have a son who's about to turn 18 next month. I have a 15-year-old daughter. Watching them interact with the world, even though they love the place they live, made me say my strategy for discipleship has to shift and it can't purely be location-based. It's got to be online digital connection with incarnational community. So some of my location legalism has melted away

because I've just watched the nature of the city change. I've thought about that. Because the location stuff, I mean, it's like, of course, of course. Like that makes so much sense to me. The only thing I would – so I read a book a while back called Bowling Alone. Are you familiar with this book? Yes, Robert Putnam. I am, yeah.

And it got me to think – and I didn't do a lot of deep thinking, but I was like, man, it seems like I don't want to give in to culture, but our culture is not location-based any longer for whatever reason. And I think that's, as Putnam showed, it's to the detriment really of community and even our just well-being. community and even our just well-being. But at the same time, I feel like I've pulled back a little bit from, man, go to a local church, don't pass over four churches to go to that one down there. I'm like, well, the fact is we work 15 miles over here, we go to the market 20 miles over here, our friends are a half hour away. We just are in a non-location-based culture. But I think in your context, or even an urban

context where people do go to the market, they go to work, they live, they don't even own cars, like downtown Boise is like that. A lot of people don't even own cars because everything is there. Then I think that absolutely makes sense. But to say that that must be every kind of model wherever you are, I think we need to flex with the nature of the community where you're administrating. Yeah, missional ideology is the death of discipleship. I mean, when you were trying to superimpose this thing, I mean, it just becomes a legalism and it just doesn't produce good fruit.

The challenge with cities as well, though, is that the cities themselves are changing so quickly. You know, i have a friend who's a who's an african-american who's deeply committed to ministering to the poor and and um you know he's facing a real challenge right now because when he bought his house it was you know kind of in the hood to use his term and 10 years later the neighbor is gentrified and he's surrounded by a bunch of white folks and his house is like doubled in value. And he's buying $6 coffees at the local.

So now his heart is honestly kind of torn. Like if I'm really committed to a certain kind of place, but now the place is totally shifted and it doesn't match the demographic I care about. Do I sell my house and move somewhere else? So there's a lot of those conversations are happening. The city's changed. People are transient. It's not as clear-cut and simple as it was. So I do prefer a more – I prefer robust missiology and discipleship with a looser framing around how you would align that.

Before, it was pretty rigid. Can you say that line again? That's so tweetable. Ideological missiology is a death. Or what was that? What's that line? I can't remember. Are you saying that was on the fly?

You said that? Yes. I don't remember what I just said. Missiological idealism is the death of a desirable ship. If you're watching this, just rewind. And everybody, if you're watching this, retweet that. That was brilliant. Ideology is bad news in all of its forms.

I'm not a fan. And the older I get, the more I realize how flexible my ecclesiology is. I do have my preference or whatever things that I think are generally better than others, but I don't know. I'm just so not an ecclesiology Nazi anymore. And the beautiful thing about the New Testament

is I think it, if I can, I think I'm right here. The Old Testament had a very monolithic, I'm going to use ecclesiology. It's centered on the temple. It's here's the days you come worship. Here's the rituals. Here's whatever. It seems like the New Testament vision

is going against mono-ethnicity to multi-ethnicity and to go, rather than monolocation, I don't know if that's a word, to multi-location. It needs to resist ecclesiological sort of idealism. It needs to be flexible because it's going into outer reaches of the world. It's going into different cultures and different spaces. So the New Testament ecclesiology seems to be designed to have a little bit of a flexibility to it. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, even the shift from the temple worship or to synagogue post-temple worship.

Sure, yeah. That's a gathering place. And then church shifting to the home. Right. I mean, you want to talk about a shift right there in terms of what people experience and how that impacted, you know, participation and leadership and that sort of thing. So I think the church is at its best when it's flexible and able to respond to the spirit. Yeah. All right.

Let's fast forward to like last couple of weeks. You, I want you to retell the story. As I heard it, because I listened to a few of your sermons, you sent an email or an email. You asked your church, what are some key things that you want me to teach on? And yeah, go ahead and take it from here. How did you go about getting this series going? Yes, we're doing a series right now called Controversial Jesus.

And I basically had something I'd known for probably 20 years but I sort of resisted it because the way I had seen it done was sort of like a megachurch gimmick series, like hot topics, you know, with a roll-in bumper vid and then sort of like a 30-minute underdeveloped explanation that no real thinker would agree with. And I was just,

but I knew that there was something to that concept, the importance of asking the question, what are your people wrestling with? It's hindering their discipleship or causing concern. And how do you talk about it? So I just never did that from the pulpit. I would always like preach through books of the Bible or do series. And if it came up,

I'd address it. But I just sort of got to this moment where i felt like two things were required number one was pastoral courage which was this now because of political correctness things you're not allowed to say right and i thought i found myself in sermons censoring myself out of just not i mean just it would just subconsciously pop up don't say that don't frame it that way or whatever and i was like that that is i can't literally muting the word of god out of fear of what the culture will think of me and then secondly i just were meeting with so i was having the same coffees again and again and again over these topics i was like it's actually not even a good use of my time i mean i'm I'm just like, I need to, you know, I need to address this from the pulpit.

So I just basically sent an email out that said, what do you wish a pastor would preach on that you've never heard a sermon on? Like, what questions do you have about God, life, faith, culture, discipleship, et cetera? And then, so I took all of those and then just basically tried to categorize them and respond to them.

And they basically went like this, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, There's a few other ones thrown in. No rapture? Nobody wanted to know when the rapture is happening?

That's another generation. Wow. So that's led me to try and – so that they – honestly, I'm not making this up. They sort of fell into the categories of sex, money, and power. Okay, sure. It's not really a surprise. What about Jesus and gun violence someone uh i don't know if you've heard of this book it's called fight anyway phenomenal book on

jesus and and violence which i really recommend nice that you obviously wrote and uh so there was but those topics kept coming up and so we've categorized them in in sex money and power we're in power right oh you are so tell me which ones you've preached on sex. I've listened to two, maybe three of them. I did one on singleness. Okay. I did one on a concept called sexual formation, which is something Christians never ask, which is who am I becoming by what I'm doing with my sexuality?

Oh, wow. So instead of just counting it as, is this sinful or should I not do it? I'm asking by my sexual practice, what am I doing with my body, my mind, my heart, and my soul? And am I loving God and neighbor more through it? So that was on pornography, masturbation, cohabitation. Okay.

So that one was fun. What did you read in preparation for that? Who have you found helpful. What did you read in preparation for that? Who have you found helpful? What did I read? So that's the most prep I've ever put into a talk. Really? So I did 40 hours on that preparation. And that was exhausting.

So I read everything. I probably read 20 books on that. Oh, my gosh. Wow. And you end up, you might read a whole book and the yield will be two concepts and half a quote or something like like the yield is so low yeah well i i mean i part of my i have the joy really of of and a lot of people are jealous of this so i don't dangle in front of you but part of my job is to read a few hours a day. So I read a lot of books. What I found is a lot of times I'm reading a book just to see if there's anything there that's of value. And sometimes I'll read

an entire book and say, yeah, there's nothing there that's significant. I will never go back to that book again. But now I know that this book who might be well known, maybe the author's well known, maybe the topic has been tossed around. Like, yeah, there's nothing there that's really that great. And I could see it as a waste of time. But for every two or three books I read, I'm like, ah, it's not that great. There will be a book I'll read where it's like, oh, my gosh, that chapter on this was unbelievable. I never would have known that if I hadn't actually read the book. It's so interesting you say that because when I first moved to New York, I lived, the only person I knew in the city when I moved here

was one of the elders at Redeemer. And I hadn't actually heard really any Tim Keller teaching or anything then, but I had this friend. And so he said to me, hey, soon you're going to hear about Tim Keller and you're going to realize that he is the best, least known preacher in America. And he said, I've seen this happen again and again. Pastors come to New York and they try and beat Tim Keller. And he goes, I want to give you one piece of advice from knowing Tim well.

And he said this, don't read what Tim reads or quote what Tim quotes. He's like, read around who Tim quotes and read around what Tim reads. So he said, for example, it's exactly what he said. He said he might use one quote, but he read six books on that topic. And Tim Keller is Tim Keller versus other posters because he has, like a DJ, his crate is so full of understanding on that topic that he never used in that sermon. That the compound effect of that of 20, 30 years is you literally just think circles around everybody else on the issue because you've read so widely around it and that stuck me

so i i agree with you even though i read all of these books i never know how in a q a or in a past situation you're like actually thank you for mentioning that i did read this this book on this and there's something very very helpful for you in in this. There's real value for that. I have the tension is that I wish I could get the job where you read. I ache for that. Act six, leave me alone to study the word of God. Yeah. I mean, I go through seasons where I'll go two or three weeks a month

where I'm not reading anything. I'm just preparing. It's all output. It's refining this. It's email. It's speaking and stuff. So that's definitely not a 52-week thing. But the rhythm that I try to create is I try to do like two hours every morning of just not even note-taking.

I'll take notes in my book, but just read through as many books. I mean, because a lot of people do look for me for like the answer on all things related to sexuality and gender. Well, heck, I mean, that's a massive topic. But I do take that responsibility lightly. So I feel almost this pressure, really, but a joyful pressure of being like, I need to become an expert in everything related to this topic, which is impossible, but I need to do the best I can. I want to get back to just another comment and maybe even an

encouragement or even challenge to other people. That is so lost in our day and age when there's so much pragmatism in church planning and ministry. There's pressure to grow the church, to keep the people that you grew it with, income, pay the bills. The idea that a pastor would sit down and read, you know, where 90% of his study doesn't even go into the message. A pragmatist is going to say, well, cut all that out and just do the 10, you know, focus on the 10% that actually gets in there. And you're like, no, like part of your job as a pastor is to have a lot more knowledge than actually comes out. That's lost. That's the, my generation, our generation,

like in the eighties and nineties and seminary, like they pounded that into us. I don't see that as much anymore. The, the, the sermon prep, or even just the pastoral theologian kind of aspect of ministry just seems to be pretty rare. Would you agree with that? I mean, you're in a more intellectual environment, so maybe not. No, I think that's very, very true. And I think there's a real sadness there, because life is getting, you know, life is too hard for bad theology. That is true. I mean, people are just wrestling with such complexity, that if you don't have robust answers for it yes yes it's it's over and i think one of the gifts i i saw i saw a guy tweet this i think it was a guy named duke kwan oh yeah i know duke yeah he's awesome he tweeted

something i thought was very interesting he said pastors people don't know how to read the bible anymore and it is your job to preach hard things and show them how you arrived at your conclusion yes absolutely so that they could trust yes word of god and i was like that's exactly i actually really try very hard to do that yes which is to show people not just here's what the passage says but here's how to find out how to even get to the point where you know what it says. So that unfortunately makes for longer sermons. I mean, I could, I could, I could tighten them up, but on these, on these tough issues, I don't want to do four weeks on it. It'll be like a 90 week series on

the controversial Jesus. You've got to, you've got to cap it somewhere. So your next two sermons in the sex part of the series that you're doing, one was on same-sex relationships. Another one was on transgender identities experiences. So I just want to say up front, man, your sermon on same-sex relationships is, and I'm not a wide connoisseur. I don't go online and listen to tons of sermons. You're giving the sermons, not listening to the sermons. Yeah, exactly. I think it's the best sermon I've heard on the topic. It was so incredible. And then actually, I listened to the transgender one first,

which that's even more complicated and touchy. And you talk about dancing around political correctness and getting possible death threats if you say the wrong word. And you handle both of those so incredible. So I just want to tell my audience, I don't even care what side of this debate you're on. Go listen to those two sermons, the same sex relationships one and the transgender one. They were incredible. I would love to, from an inside perspective,

how, what was your prep like? How did you handle that? What's been the response like? Because I'm just blown away by them. Oh man, that's really kind of you. I mean, like I lean heavily on your material, so thank you. Oh man. The number one thing I was worried about, the number one thing that I'm so moved by is Jesus' compassion for the people.

Yeah. I'm just, I'm just so moved by it. And when I, you know, the first sermon I actually gave in the series, it was like controversial compassion. And I contrast the story where Jesus goes pharisee's house and the sinful woman comes in and he's like washing his feet and anointing him and then jesus tells the story of just like you don't you don't love because you don't think you've got a problem right and then jesus just like his his compassion is so moving i'm so compelled by the person of Jesus, his beauty, his love,

his kindness, his compassion, his courage. So Jesus does two things. He has convictions and he has compassion. And I was just trying to do those two things. I was trying to help people see what Jesus taught about human sexuality and his vision of why this is good news and Jesus' vision of discipleship and why it costs us all something. And then try and love people, man. I mean, that's the challenge. So I'm preaching that sermon with, you know, friends in mind. And I um i don't know it was a very very heart it was like an exercise of the heart man i mean

it's you know it's it's i'm about as welcome in our culture as a white supremacist man i mean people just think that you can't hold to what the church is basically believed for almost 2000 years and be a person who's thoughtful or kind right Right. Right. And I think I just have to bear that shame a little bit and just try and say, I think this is what Jesus taught. I gave all the reasons why, but I want it. I want you to,

to turn to Jesus because I believe this rather than turn away from him. So it was hard, man. How was it received? Two questions. How was it received? And do you have a lot of people in your congregation or say on any given Sunday that are LGBTQ or are say theologically affirming of same sex

marriage? I mean, or do you feel like you're preaching to the choir largely or no, this is like pretty diverse. Well, so, so how many sermons have you heard on this issue? How many,

how many sermons have you, how many sermons have you heard from the pulpit on Jesus and the trans community? The answer is going to be, as far as I can tell, three. There's going to be one from Andrew Wilson in the UK. There's going to be one from John Dixon for the Center for Public Christianity in Australia. And then the one I gave. There's no one talking about it. So here's what I think people appreciated. John, you obviously tried to research this. Thank you for taking the time. You cut out for a second, you there? And, um, there you are. There you are. Okay. Yeah. And the last thing I think, sorry, can you back, can you back up? You cut out, John.

So go back to where you said, where people said, John, thank you for taking the time to speak on this. Yeah, I think people appreciated like the level of research I did. Okay. And I think the fairness that I tried to characterize both sides of the debate on. Okay. Yeah. You know, so like, hey, this is, there's a reason that people believe that gender is a tool of oppression it's because gender has been used as a tool of oppression you know so like that we have to own that and acknowledge that but um so so i think people appreciated like the thoughtfulness

they appreciated the tone and um i haven't had any hate mail yet okay um but i've definitely had pushback. I mean, the reason I brought up how many sermons have you heard on this is because people don't know how to think about it, period. Right. So people in general want to be kind and compassionate. We have a 150-year narrative in this country of cultural inclusion. And then anything that feels like it's opposing that, you know like your visceral instincts jonathan hate talks about this like your moral instincts they're just like i don't want to you've got to

come from there is a default on that so i think um i think people didn't know how to think about it and i gave them something to think about and i think people are still thinking through it so i try to be really fair in that talk and put a series of books to read so you can see both sides of it and you can contrast them together. You know, I appreciate about that is you didn't list a bunch of like conservative books and then say, okay, now I'm going to give a progressive book. Now I don't agree with everything. Like always, you just said, hey, here's two books on each side of this aspect you should

read. Here's two books on this side of this aspect you should read. Here's two books on this side of this aspect. And really trusting, and maybe you can do this because you're in a very intellectual environment where people will be able to read stuff and think clearly through it. But I really appreciated the way you even said, hey, look, I've worked through both sides. Here's where I'm at. Here's why. But I encourage you to do the same thing. It wasn't a really, it was a properly authoritative sermon in the manner that sermons should be, but it wasn't indoctrinating in a negative sense. It was very much a pastoral educational moment. So I.

Oh, that's, oh, that's helpful. I mean, I literally, I was trying to in that passage, if someone was to say to me, like, why do you think the Old Testament still matters on this issue? Well, I'd like to explain to you, like, I can see why people would think that it doesn't apply for these reasons. But here's why I think that it does apply. And here's all of these reasons. I think these reasons are stronger than these reasons.

You know, so I mean, you're just trying to walk through the, walk through the Texas like that. Did you have anybody that left the church that you know of over it? Like, oh, I can't right now. No, honestly, I mean, even though we're just addressing these topics head on right now, I think people have a pretty strong sense. Hey, John, it's theologically conservative. That comes out.

I mean, I taught last summer 21 weeks through the book of Ephesians or something. And then, you know, it was the book of Nehemiah expositionally. And then it was the seven churches of the book of Revelation for Lent, at which point you've got someone being thrown onto a bed of sickness for sexual immorality and harass. So it's like, it's not like I'm not talking along the way. So most of the folks folks this didn't feel like a shock but it certainly gave them some food for thought i think yeah we're gonna wrap things up soon um but real quick what where where is john tyson gonna be in five to ten years or where would

you want john tyson to be do you want to uh bury yourself or have somebody else bury you in the church you're at now or do you have other and maybe you't, maybe you have dreams and stuff that you can't talk freely in case somebody at your church is listening to this. But yeah, I would just love to know generally, like what would you love to do in your next, you know, 40 years of ministry? If God would, like, if God willing, I would be exactly where I am doing exactly what I'm doing

with more space for study. Really? Yes. I mean, I want to be here in New York. I love this city. I feel like I have a covenant land oath with the island of Manhattan. That was a joke. I love it here. I mean, I'm thriving. My kids have been raised here. We're thriving. I've built a life with some of my closest friends and we genuinely love each other and just want to do it for the long haul. So want to give people if possible the gift of pastoral stability which is you know 20 years from now if you get up at a certain time in the morning you're going to find john prayer walking on ninth

avenue with a coffee and i want to give people that gift of stability now i don't know if the container is always going to look the same right but i i want to be here doing this i love this city i love these people i just want to serve god here you know can you be my pastor i will give you a job if you move to new york you want to be a theologian in residence in manhattan actually so i i had jonathan merritt on uh my podcast on this show just last week and uh i'm gonna tell him what I told you. I've been to virtually every major city in America, most of them at least. I've never been to New York City. And I love pizza.

I love pizza. And so right now, Chicago pizza is the best I've had. Now, my New York friends tell me I need to get out of Chicago and come to New York. Chicago pizza is real pizza. They know what they're doing. Okay, yeah. But it's not as good as pizza. I knew there was something coming.

New York is an amazing city, and you should come here. I mean, so I'll give you an example. You'll appreciate this. Not a lot of other folks would. I was researching my neighborhood. I live one street from where Walter Rushenbush pastored and wrote The Social Gospel. Really?

Yeah, man, I'm right around there. That church that still has Christ, the cornerstone. I still pray there every Saturday night for our church that now hosts CS Lewis plays inside of it in that church. So I'm in a neighborhood that has a very, very rich sense of history. And I. Now, but I try and touch the deep history of it and think about where it's headed and you know live well in the moment and shape it in some small way so you should come up for a visit man all right find an excuse for me to come out and uh yeah i'll make

the trip hey where can people where can people get a hold of you well because you you're very local church minded like i figure you have the, the voice, the gifts to build a big kind of national platform. And you have a platform. But I think your national platform is smaller than it very well could be because you seem to be so local church minded. I don't know if that's an even accurate description. But I want other people to hear you. Where can they go hear you and read your stuff? Gosh, I mean, on social media, I'm John Tyson, J-O-N-T-Y-S-O-N. And I basically tweet

in Instagram what I'm reading and what I'm doing. If you want to find our church, you can find our church online at church.nyc. So it's super simple. can jump on our podcast okay it's it's there but you know i've got my head down man i mean i just i want to you're not going to believe the source of this coming quote but i heard someone say home is the prize home is the prize influence isn't the prize conferences aren't the prize home is the prize and that was from hillsong church and i've always i've always taken that in my heart man home is the prize yeah so you're like you you never rise above the privilege of being a local shepherd in a congregation that's it man that's the stuff that's awesome so i mean i i love that in many ways um the things i do outside of the church

i do feel a sense of calling to them. I feel God give me this word. Now I'm just rambling, but I feel God like pay careful attention to the whole flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you an overseer. I was like, I'm going to stand before God and give an account for the souls of the people in this church. That's kind of sobering to me. So that is my focus for sure. Well, I hope people will check it out. Church of the City podcast, especially. Check out the website. Follow you on social media. John, thanks so much for being on Theology in a Row.

Mate, thank you for having me. An honor. Thank you.