Theology in the Raw - 686: #686 - A Conversation with Evan Wickham

Episode Date: August 13, 2018

On episode #686 of Theology in the Raw Preston talks with Evan Wickham. Evan is a singer-songwriter, pastor, and church planter. You can follow Evan on Twitter and his Facebook page. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, Theology Narah listeners. You are about to hear an interview that I recorded with my good friend, Evan Wickham. Evan Wickham is a worship artist. He is an accomplished musician. He is a pastor and a church planter. He's also, I would say, a theologian, even though he might deny that title. But you're going to hear us banter around about various issues and evangelicalism. You're going to hear us talk about the Benedict Option, about the benefit that Sunday morning worship music has for discipleship.

You're going to hear us talk about open theism. You're going to hear us talk about all kinds of things. I know you're going to enjoy this episode, so I'm excited for you to listen to it. If you are a regular listener to the show or even a new listener to the show and you have benefited from the show, please consider supporting the show through Patreon. You can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw and support the show for as little as five bucks a month. And in return, you get access to all kinds of premium content, including monthly podcasts that only my Patreon listeners can listen to. You can read blogs that I write once a month for my Patreon supporters. So there's lots of goodies in there for you if again, you have benefited from the show. Without further ado, here is Evan Wickham. A love forlorn, a body breaking.

The noise by our love. The noise by our love. What will become of us if all we want is blood? Father, make us one. New humanity. Jesus and your love. Let division cease. Spirit, grant us peace. Blessed Trinity, make us one like you are one. Greetings and welcome to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I am sitting here in my basement all alone but my good friend evan wickham is down in

san diego i don't think you're in a basement you don't have a basement where are you are you at home it's a garage it's a garage so he's in his garage i'm in my basement studio we should start like a band you're in the garage i'm in the basement this is like dude this is like yeah i have all my instruments here nice i have I have no, actually, I do have some instruments, but you don't want to hear them. Anyway, I am here with Evan Wickham and Evan is my guest on today's Theology in a Row podcast. And I'm really excited about this episode for several reasons. For one, as you're going to find out, Edivan is an all around awesome guy and gives me hope for the future of evangelicalism for various reasons.

But also, besides just who you are and your story, Evan, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you are a longtime listener of Theology in Iran. Going back to when I had, I think, a few hundred listeners, I feel like you were there. I think I've ever seen you on social media sharing my stuff. I'm like, I didn't think anybody was listening to this. And here's Evan Wickham sharing my stuff. Do you remember kind of the year or general time when you started listening to Theology in a Row? Well, yeah, I think I started listening when you came to Portland to do one of

your first faith, sexuality, gender forums at Imago Dei Church. Josh Butler was there. Right. Yeah. I came with a group from my church there. And then I was like, wow, this guy knows what he's talking about. I've seen his books. I haven't really heard him speak. But it was a great day and hooked ever since. I think it was 2000, I want to say 15. So about three years ago. I think it was in the fall sometime.

Yeah, if not 14, I think it was four years ago. Might have been. All right, so let's jump into it. Evan Wickham. Who is Evan Wickham? Tell me your backstory. For people that don't know who you are, yeah, get us up to speed on who you are and where you are at in life right now. Yeah, so, man, I grew up in Southern California, a child of baby boomers, saved out of the drug culture of the 60s, the full Jesus movement child thing.

My parents were in those Jesus people bands that came out of that movement. They were Calvary Chapel pastors and Calvary Chapel worship leaders. And so I saw the tail end of what many call, you know, the last quote unquote, great awakening of America or whatever, the Jesus movement. Is that what people call it? Do people? People within the movement call it that. Fair enough. So in the early 80s, it was, it was a great time.

And I feel like I grew up in spiritual Disneyland in some ways. Like my church campus, 20,000 people go into this thing. It was also my school campus was also my basketball camp was also my karate class. It was it was like this, this totally non realistic, but beautiful bubble that I lived in where the Bible was everywhere, but I didn't see anything else. And so I took a lot for granted. And it was kind of like, a lot of a good thing without a lot of mission. And so, yeah, kind of growing out of that into my teens and 20s, realized God had called me into the ministry, but it would look maybe more integrated with culture than I had seen before.

I married my high school sweetheart when we were 19. Wow. That's inadvisable. Really? No, it was great for us. Great for us. That's what everybody says who did that. Like, well, it worked for us, but it's not going to work for you.

Keep going, keep going. Sorry, keep going. No, so we had a bunch of kids. We have five kids now. So we were 19 years old back in 2000. And that's when we really started serving the church, youth ministry, worship ministry. And the worship ministry thing kind of took me out into the wider Christian world. And I got to see a lot of what the church was made of,

at least in America and some in Europe. And it was beautiful to see people worshiping the same Jesus. You could really see the Ephesians 4, 1 through 6 thing in Europe. And it was beautiful to see people worshiping the same Jesus. You could really see the Ephesians 4, 1 through 6 thing in motion. One Lord, one Spirit, one baptism. And the things that united the church globally were fewer but stronger than the things that seemed to be so valued in the bubble I grew up in. So that was really exciting to me to see that we can, oh, like this is what healthy disagreement looks like. Oh, this is what uniting around the creedal core gospel components looks like and allowing room for all kinds of disparity in the minors and disagreement.

And that was something I hadn't grown up around. And yeah, it was beautiful to see. And so I wanted to be part of like a local church that embodied that kind of unity and celebration of diversity. that kind of unity and celebration of diversity. And so, yeah, we were late 20s, and I felt the itch to plant a church. But at that time, I knew that I was going to plant a church purely because I was going to get it right, where everyone else got it wrong. And that's the worst reason to do anything I've found at all, ever. So we moved to Portland. We were part of the whole Jesus Church family. Back then it was Solid Rock.

John Mark Comer, who you've had on this podcast before, he is a dear friend of mine, goes back a decade, and he was really instrumental in shaping my theology and my methodology and ministry and in thinking about all of life. And so that's kind of the leadership in Portland that I came under to be shaped and sent back to San Diego to plant what is now Park Hill church in San Diego. When did you leave a Jesus church to plant the church?

It was a little over a year ago, right? I know there's a lot of kind of preparation and everything involved, but when did Park Hill actually start? Yeah. Park Hill was technically a replant. So there were like 60 or 80 people that were praying for something new in San Diego. Their former pastor was unhealthy. He would say, hey, I'm unhealthy. I can't do this. I just don't know how to leave. Pray for what's next. It was a typical kind of fading church in a big building in America, but they were praying like,

how are we supposed to transition gracefully? And when they heard the announcement that we were going to plant a church in San Diego, they're like, hey, why don't you take this building and whoever wants to join the new work, we realize it'll be a totally different DNA, but you take it, we'll cheer you on. And they they're okay with that that's not an easy thing to do for this leader this leader his name is rob amazing guy he was there 25 years and he was okay with that he was totally stoked to see us just completely rewrite the rules he moved he moved the non-profit organization out like he

completely moved the elders out. Everything was gone. And just the people and the place remained. And he said, go for it. It's kind of beautiful. Well, you know, and I was there a few months ago, preach at your church, was there, talk to people. And I was, every church has its problems. I'm sure you could have lots of stories you're not allowed to share on the air about pastoring. All I know is you have a wonderful congregation of people.

And in the short time I spent, I was just so impressed with, um, just the vibe, the tone, the passion, the authenticity, the several conversations I had with people,

uh, the theological diversity. I didn't preach the easiest message. And some people let me know that other people loved it. And I, but I love that. Like it was just, what would you describe before when I, or this is off the air, when I was talking about my theology audience, I was trying to describe all y'all out there who are listening to this. And Evan said, well, that sounds a lot like our church.

And I go, you know, I think it is a lot like your church. So, so has it been, I mean, so from the outside, I'm like, dude, you, this is, and you're still in the honeymoon stage, right? I mean, call me in five years and see how it's going, but sounds like a pretty awesome start of a church. Would you agree, disagree? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a unicorn situation in some ways um we thought we'd start in our living room where you can really get to know one another relationally i've heard you talk about church and how church looks and how church works and all that on this podcast and i i agree with so much of so much of it i can't even think of anything i disagree with on right now i'm sure

there's something but um that's what we thought we'd plant. Yeah. Something super close, but it started overnight with three to 400 folks. And I'm like, okay, this is not, who are we really? What's really happening here? Is this an event that people are excited about on Sunday? Cause that's not a church. Right. But it's been really cool to see people like there's like 17 communities that have slowly

formed out of that mass that are owning the DNA of the church and are understanding what it means to live holistically gospel-centered lives. And yeah, it's a unicorn situation in that a lot of, we are facing a lot of problems now that are a product of healthy church life and a product of more people around than you actually know. So there's all kinds of folks I'm talking to that have been there six months that I've never seen. They're like, oh, we've been here six months. We figured we'd finally say hi.

I'm like, oh my gosh, I hate this. I really want to know you. I want to know what's going on. Who are we? So we're still in the who are we phase. Right. And again, when did you start? It was like less than a year ago, right? Yeah. We officially launched on Christmas Eve, 2017. We'd been building up on Sundays through the summer before that, but official launch. Now, so let me go back a little bit in your story. You, you are, uh, you've been a worship leader for a number of years, still are. Uh, you've been a pastor, now church planner. You, you also, and you're not going to like the title, I'm sure, but you're a

theologian, right? I mean, on some level, you may say, well, I'm not like an academic professor, but you are, have an incredible theological mind. I mean, and you think on a very, very high level, you read a ton of stuff, you have a seminary, a master's degree in theology. Can you just describe, maybe go back and describe your theological journey? What makes you tick theologically? What are the things that gets you going? What are some things maybe you've changed your mind on? Or if, as I like to say, you know, progressed more toward the Bible on, you know, rather than drifting away, you know? Well, first of all, I'm in the last semester of my master's degree right now. So, I get that degree after this fall. But yeah, so what have I changed on theologically?

That's good. Well, I grew up in an environment where, you know, late great planet Earth, doom and gloom, have your newspaper open with your Bible next to it and just kind of count the days every New Year's Eve because white knuckle it to the rapture, y'all, or whatever. I wish that was an overstatement. I'm laughing because it's like people are like, no, that's an overstatement. That's a caricature. I'm like, no, no, that's pretty. Yeah.

Yeah. And an urgency about Jesus's return should always mark the church, obviously. Like we live in light of the imminent return of our Messiah. But when that drive, when, when, when it's almost fearful in the way that it drives the sermons and it drives the week in and week out, I think you lose sight of the mission in your city. And the fact that there are people that are like 12, 13 years old in your city, that we need to start training for like when they're leading the church. So like if Christ is coming back and it's going to be fearful, then why train the 12-year-olds?

Why train the 13-year-olds? That was kind of the ethos in some ways as we grew up. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. I definitely have shifted on violence. That's a big one. I think one of the hallmarks of what it means to follow Jesus is an acceptance of our role to be lands led to the slaughter. And that has all kinds of implications for how we unite with one another and

how we view our enemies and how we view our nation. That's probably the biggest one. And how that trickles down into pastoral ministry is super, super. I've noticed this. I thought that growing up in 17 years of ministry before I was a lead pastor, I thought that I had understood what it meant to lead people gently into new ways of thinking. Yeah.

But now that I'm leading a church, ways of thinking. But now that I'm leading a church, I don't, I'm barely scratching the surface about what it means to lead people gently into new ways of thinking. So that, yeah, with the violence question, and as you rightly said, that's intertwined with patriotism, nationalism, syncretism, and it's just a whole web of things we're trying to unravel. And I've experienced exactly what you said. It's hard to, and this is going to be an overstatement, but this is what I do on Theology and Herald just to make a point sometimes,

is it's almost irrelevant what the Bible actually says. Like you're not, like to go and say, okay, let's do a Bible study to progress in our understanding. I've learned that that just, especially with Bible believing Christians, like that just doesn't, this says you have to, you have to do something different. And I'm trying to figure out what the new way is.

Cause the Bible doesn't typically mean a whole lot. When I say Bible, I mean actually looking at what the Bible actually means rather than just kind of quoting verses. Like, you know, I don't know how many times I've gone into like the actual meaning of Romans 13. And it's just like, it's just almost irrelevant when you're talking to Bible believing Christians. Right.

So how has your progression in that topic landed with your, with your people around people you're leading? Maybe some of your people who watched little Evan grow up in your former church environment. And I mean, cause I know, I mean, this topic is, it's, it's one of, it may be even sometimes more volatile than the sexuality question, which is shocking to me, but, and any pastor, I know people like Brian Zahn or Greg Boyd or others who are pastors who started to talk about maybe a shift in their thinking. I mean, they almost, they lost thousands of people literally, and it was almost crushed the church. Anyway, all that to say, how has, describe to me the ripple effects in your network as you progress in your thinking on this issue.

Yeah, so I think the ripple effects are first being felt right now amongst our core church planting team. We don't have elder, we have elders, we don't have elders that fully agree on this. So there's not total unanimity amongst our leadership on how to articulate this, which creates a cool opportunity to always be praying together and always be considering, okay, we're coming up to Matthew chapter five. Jesus is going to command his followers to love their enemies. How will we articulate this in San Diego? We literally gather in the old Naval training center in San Diego,

highly militaristic town, highly sexually liberal town. It's got this hodgepodge of all kinds of stuff happening how do we progress move forward in teaching and leading people in this way and our elders aren't we're still working it out on how to actually trickle down that water so yeah so we're in that phase right now we We're writing, we're starting to write little policy papers and not too many. We like to keep it relational. Yeah. And too, cause I've, you know, I've talked with your elders. First of all, they're incredibly sharp. Don't think so. So some people have the image of here's this young, you know, um, uh, theologically, you know, like, uh, equipped pastor who has studied these

things. And he's surrounded by a bunch of like 70 year old men who are just full. That's not your, your elder team is sharp. I mean, a lot of them have seminary degrees. They've done a lot of research in this. They read tons of, so, so they're very well thought out. Um, but I want to know, do you think there needs to be unanimity on this particular question because you don't have i don't think you'd have any like robust like militaristic elders or just there there is a lot of commonality isn't there on the really broad brush strokes of this conversation absolutely there's there is a lot it just boils down to nuances like the attacker at the door situation or something you know like the hypothetical the hypotheticals. That's where we're like, I don't know if I'd actually,

I don't know if I really push came to shove. And so, yeah, it doesn't, I don't think we need unanimity on everything. I think that's the beauty of what we're trying to do at Park Hill. That's the beauty of what I saw when I started traveling as a musician and I saw the broader church actually talking about healthy disagreement and living towards living towards the loss with disagreement in the ranks. It was a beautiful thing. And I think that's I think that's how we're modeling it at Park Hill. And I think it is good. And I think that that unity to be around the majors is very much intact. Yeah. I mean, so to answer your original question, the two things that I think have shifted the most

are probably eschatology and then where the Christian has to wrap their mind around violence and how to respond to their enemies. Eschatology, meaning like the preacher of rapture, Hal Lindsey stuff, you don't embrace that anymore? Yeah, I mean, I Lindsay stuff, you don't embrace that anymore. Yeah. I mean, I, I just think,

uh, yeah, correct. I definitely view, I definitely view the imminent return of Christ as the, um, the thing that has driven every generation of the church. Um,

but you know, the biblical timeline of end time events, like where you have everything on a piece of paper that you post up on the wall. I actually think once you create that timeline, you've missed the entire point. Yeah. Yeah. And it's an imminent return that you're looking for. Yeah. Which has ethical implications. I've been reading through, you know, parts of the New Testament recently and just seeing how significant of a thread that is woven throughout New Testament ethics is the longing and hope and imminency of that return drives Christian behavior.

You know, and I notice it more because it doesn't resonate with my own life. I naturally am not wired that way. I'm very much in the moment, in the present. And it takes a lot of spiritual discipline or work to have that longing, that future longing speak into my current living. Anyway. Absolutely. Yeah. So you, I feel like you've progressed on some of the issues, haven't you? I mean, we talked recently about like women in leadership or leadership or even like the question of hell is, I know you're always thinking through that. Oh yeah. I'm like, I'd say I'm 80% annihilationist, 20%. 20%, there's an eternal

component to it. I'm yet to be 100. All of your arguments are incredibly compelling. still i still have a really really tremendous regard for um historical interpretation of scripture so so when i see when i see 2 000 years worth of um 1600 years 1600 years of the brightest and the best yeah uh interpreting any an eternality to the consequence of damnation sure i'm like oh i can't, I can't quite let, can't quite fully. But all the exegetical arguments are annihilation in favor of, you know what I mean? I think you're onto something, Preston. Well, I'm borrowing it from other people like Paul and Jesus and Jeremiah and stuff. Yeah, I mean, and I even feel the same way when it comes to providence.

Yeah, I mean, and I even feel the same way when it comes to providence. Like, I took a class at Western called Prayer and Providence, and what they had us do was read the best Bruce Ware on the Calvinistic model of providence, and then Jack Cottrell on the Wesleyan model of providence, what the Bible says about God the ruler, the great Armenian Jack Cottrell. And then Greg Boyd on God of the possible, which is his little treatise on open theism. And so that you have this spectrum, and the class was taught by both Brashears, who's a self-professed Kalminian, and then Todd Miles, who is a determinist, he's a compatibilist, he's a Calvinist. And they taught it together, and so you pay, it's worth like four hours of them just fighting in front of the students and it was so it was gold and then plus the papers on the three different positions and I came out with what I called on a paper open Calvinism you're such a

Brashear's disciple open Calvinist so I definitely I definitely see, I mean, gosh, the fact that God is a God who takes the risk at his own peril of creating people that would respond to him and in love. And, and, uh, what do you think about open theism? So I get this question a lot. I've, I've never read the, the kind of significant like God of the possible or, um, Oh, who's that other dude? The tall,

lanky, not pinnock, pinnock. Yeah. Pinnock. I think he's tall and lanky. Uh, and I,

you know, back in the nineties, there was like three or four books that were written on this. That were, you know, I, you know, my,

in my theological training, they had us read the critiques of those books, but not the actual books, which looking at the time, it made sense. It's like, why would I want to read the mistake? I just want to read the truth. Why read the error? Just fill yourself with the truth. And now looking back, it's just the, it's just so bizarre that that's was under the umbrella of education. But, um, so I've never actually read these. I get questions about it from time to time. What do you think about open theism?

And, you know, for me, anything is on the table until proven unbiblical, you know? So I'm kind of like, I don't know, I'm willing to learn, you know, I typically lean more reform, but the more I unpack some of my theological, you know, directions, I guess, you know, people say, yeah, that's not very reformed. Like, so be it. Like, I don't I'm not tied to the reform. I just happen to come from that and still resonate with a lot of things in the reform sort of camp. But yeah, what are your thoughts on open open theism? Is it heresy?

Is it dangerous, but not heresy? Or is it, no, this is a legitimate biblical option. And my assumption is there's probably a lot of misunderstanding of what open theism is even saying. I agree with your assumption. So much misunderstanding. And regarding it being heresy, I'll just copy what my church history professor said. We don't have any right to call anything heresy anymore, aside from what has been dubbed by the ecumenical councils as heresy. The most we can do now is find a view like neo-Marcionism or something and say that was dubbed heresy then on this date.

So heresy has a situational component. Something could be heresy at one point, not at another. I think so. That might be an inappropriate definition of heresy, but I totally think that heresy is something that has been, you need an ecumenical council to dub it as heresy. Like we don't have one anymore. Like we have 40,000 denominations and plus, you know, all kinds of stuff happening. Well, could Protestants even declare something heresy? I mean, because back when the idea, concept, word was even formed, like you said, they had the whole kind of representative of the church saying, we agree that this is outside the bounds of Orthodox. Protestantism doesn't have that, right?

Totally. We don't have the means by which any of us could claim anything is heresy in any meaningful way because there's no ecumenical council anymore. It's like a seven-legged octopus. You got Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Charismatic, Protestant, and Anabaptist, and I think one more, but Evangelical or something. And if we get together,

most we can do now is point back to a council. And open theism was not in, on the table back then, which to me is its biggest drawback, that open theism is so new in its articulation. And that obviously makes Christians scared, rightfully so. Well, what about, could, I'm just thinking out loud here, I could be speaking completely beyond

what I know, wouldn't be the first time, Pelagius, I mean, would he have held to certain views and promoted certain views that could be sort of correlated broadly with open theism? Could somebody say, well, because Pelagius' views were deemed outside the bounds of orthodoxy, therefore that's close enough to what we now call open theism? Would that be at all? Has that been argued? I would have to know more about Pelagius' views on the nature of the future. Okay. Because open theism is really, as it's articulated by Boyd, open theism is a claim about the nature of the future

and less about the nature of God himself. The future in open theism doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. And so God is omniscient. He knows everything. He knows everything in existence. And since the future doesn't exist, it's not that he can't know it. It's that it can't be known. That's an oxymoron. And so, God is totally in sequence with us. What about God being outside of time? I know we always say that and assume it. Is that even a

thing? I mean... And I'm not like a Boyd specialist or anything. I did spend a week with him and a bunch of guys in Carmel a couple months ago. And it was a great time. It was fun kicking things around, disagreeing together, agreeing together where we could agree. But his next big book, Boyd's next big book is how that God outside of time idea was one of the biggest, he argues, probably the biggest mistake in global philosophy going back to Aquinas in human history. Really? Yes. So it doesn't really predate Aquinas. That'd be huge for me.

Well, no, Aquinas Christianized it. Before that, it was this whole, you know, this Greco-Roman philosophical thing that has wrecked us. Oh my word. Yeah. So he's going to make people mad, basically. I'm trying to get Boyd on the podcast. I reached out to him on Twitter and he hasn't responded. He's a great hang. Yeah, it seems like it. I love his stuff. I mean, his stuff on nonviolence is so biblically compelling. I'm eager and a little bit nervous to read God of the Possible because everything I've read by Greg Boyd is very, for me, it's convincing because he is so exegetical. He's not a typical, I hate to say it, philosopher, theologian that kind of, you know, will make an argument for 30 pages without quoting the Bible and then, you know, sprinkle in a few verses. make an argument for 30 pages without quoting the Bible and then, you know, sprinkle in a few verses. Like he, he is deeply exegetical and very, and very, very, I would say evangelical

in how he reads scripture. Now I know, um, when it comes to like violence in the old Testament, he tends to do things. I'm like, oh man, this doesn't feel like the Greg Boyd that, um, that, that I know. But yeah, I haven't read a lot of them on that, so I don't want to speak out of turn. Yeah, that cruciform hermeneutic was the thing that he unpacked at our time in Carmel. Oh, really? Okay. Was it compelling?

It was really good. I agree with you. I think there's a lot to be admired about his desire to harmonize the God of the Old Testament with the Jesus of the New. And I think, I read your book Fight, and I think you just let the Bible speak and do that very thing. The God of the Old Testament is revealed in Christ. The Yahweh of the Old Testament, the triune God, sends his son to die. And the cross is then

a triune act of sacrifice and grief and dealing with wrath. But yeah, I think it's cruciform hermeneutic. It falls short for me in some ways, and I don't know if we want to get into that. I actually have his book, God of the Possible, under my computer holding it up right now. No way. It's that bad, huh? It serves as a... It's really great. No, I have... It's funny.

I have a Nine Marks book holding up my computer. Ooh. A God of the... A Greg Boyd book holding up my computer and then like a Pete Scazzaro Emotionally Healthy Church.

That is a... Take a picture of that and tweet that and see what the response... That is so awesome. Yeah. I love a tweet that and see what they're, that is so awesome. Yeah. I love a library that has books sitting on top of each other that probably completely disagree and come from different worlds.

Totally. Okay. So let's, I want to transition just a little bit. When you think just broadly about the state of American evangelicalism. Are you excited, discouraged, hopeful? Um, yeah, let's just go with those three. And then also like along those lines, where do you see the American evangelical church in five, 10, 15 years? I mean, there's so much from my vantage, it just seems like so much is escalating. It's like a simmering pot that the polarization in the sort of Obama slash Trump era, you know, these two kinds of violent swings and political leadership, which is tied

to culture, which is tied to the church, whether they like it or not. I mean, there's just so much going on. And I know I'm very close to the topic, but just the conversation about sexuality is just getting more and more heated and more and more just like go our separate ways kind of thing. Um, so that would be, I don't, I see a lot of volatility going on. Um, but also when I visit a lot of local churches, I'm like, this is, it's so exciting to see what God's doing among these people. There's a vibrancy and there's, so I don't know. I had this weird kind of like, I could be very pessimistic depending on how I look at everything, or it could be very optimistic.

And I want to ask you in particular, because you also are lots of different churches. You're not just in your church. Like you have a good kind of perspective, both through reading and also be worship leading and just traveling around. So yeah, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the state and near future of American evangelicalism. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely no specialist. I don't spend my

time researching this in any measurable way. But what I do see is music really unifying a broad section of the church right now. I mean, when you see Hillsong and Bethel and all the different worship songwriters out of Nashville, all writing for the same, really the same kind of vein of church. That church is unified around this experience of praising God and of worshiping God. And I don't think that's going anywhere anytime soon. I think they've become a very strong subculture. It's kind of like the Pentecostal thing. I mean, Pentecostalism is the fastest growing branch of the church

worldwide by like far. And Bethel, Hillsong, and all those guys are riding the soundtrack for that movement right now. And I know you asked about evangelicalism, but I think there are tons, probably the majority of Pentecostals with evangelical convictions that are just worshiping their faces off on Sunday, you know? And they're teaching their kids to do it too. But I'm more and more compelled with Rod Dreher's Benedict Option vision of the future. Really? Can you explain that? Can you explain that for me? Yeah, so Andy Crouch summarized his, Andy Crouch summarized Rod Dreher's two premises very, very simply. That book basically has two things going on.

Number one, because of social hostility and restrictive legislation, it's going to be harder and harder for Christians to practice the way of Jesus for over the next generation or so. So within a generation or so, it'll be, Christianity will be basically illegal to fully live out. He says that, the Ben Ops says like, let's anticipate. Yeah, I made it a little more, I made it a little more extreme, a little less nuanced, but that's kind of premise one. Because of social hostility and restrictive legislation, practicing the way of Jesus in the professional and public sphere will be more and more difficult, will be very difficult for Christians to do within a generation.

That's premise one. And premise two is because of meager, anemic discipleship pathways that the church has offered people, we've created a cancer from the inside out, which makes legal restrictions all the easier to cave into later on. the easier to cave into later on. So, social pressure from the outside, discipleship, anemia from the inside means, quote, within a generation or so, we're looking at a whole different Christianity in America, and Jesus' Matthew 10 warnings of persecution will finally mean something for Americans. I got tons of thoughts, questions, pushbacks, and agreements on all of that. I, man, so, uh, I want to go, I want to go back because in light of what you just said, if we go back to the sort of excitement about the worship movement happening, this is where I kind of see a tension.

Like I've been in environments all my life, really, where the, the, this is going to be a sound more negative than I mean, it's just the first term that came to mind, but the facade of worship energy happening does not match the vigor of discipleship happening Monday through Saturday. So when I, cause I see everything you're saying about the bent up and, and everything kind of going down, I do have one pushback with that whole thing in a second, but the discipleship component, I see that across the board. I mean, we all know that biblical illiteracy is at an all time rate in historic Christianity, even though access to the Bible's just, I mean, a thousand translations in my pocket. It's crazy.

That alone, it's like, okay, that's not decided. But it is a component. I mean, not even knowing the Bible does tend to lead to a non-biblical or unbiblical worldview. But you also have discipleship kind of crumbling. The church attendance keeps going down. of church attendance is keeps going down. Um, so when I see all that and yet the worship movement seems to be still just cranking it. I was in a church, a large church a while back and they showed a video of kind of the night. They had some sort of worship gathering for youth and there was probably, I would say over a thousand, maybe 1500 youth.

I mean, just the energy in that room was off the chart. Hands were in the air. I mean, just, it was the emotional energy was great. And I just, I did feel cynicism welling up saying, I know the state of discipleship among American youth and churches. I'm just, I'm sorry, I'm watching this saying I'm not the least bit impressed with this. Not at all. Like I could, any, anybody with good music and good kind of leaderships can whip up that kind of friend. Like, I'm not, I'm more curious, like, where are they going to be? Are they going to be among the

85% of 18 year olds that have nothing to do with the church when they're 28? You know, like, and what are we doing about that now? Because high energy worship or whatever, as authentic in me, I'm not, I'm not even knocking it as a thing. I'm saying it's, it doesn't reflect whether discipleship is actually happening. Is that a fair or is that overly harsh? And I don't, yeah. No, yeah, totally. The worship gathering and the volume of the music and the bass buried in the kick drum doesn't, you know, that doesn't dictate whether discipleship is really happening. But I do have a Pentecostal leaning when it comes to the ecclesia,

the church gathered. A friend of mine, Nick Drake, he's a Pentecostal Anglican over in England, and he wrote a master's thesis. A Pentecostal Anglican? Actually, no, that is happening in England. No, I've been in a church that would, yeah. Yeah, like Tim Hughes, Matt Redman, all those guys. Tim Hughes, my buddy, just planted Gas Street Church. Nick Drake is his worship pastor one of them and nick wrote

uh a paper for his master's thesis called as sermons are to protestants and mass is to catholics worship so is singing yeah to charismatics and they have a very high view for encounter with a capital E. And there's so much that can be done, and there's so much God accomplishes when those people are faithful to gather and do not forsake the assembly. And yeah, like life on life, discipleship, eat meals, make sure you know your neighbor well enough. Make sure you know your church members well enough

so that if they're being a jerk to their wife, you can call them out or whatever. All that life on life stuff needs to happen for discipleship to happen. I don't think they would say otherwise. Yeah. I don't know if they're helping themselves out with that analogy. Cause I would say, where has mass gotten the global Catholic church in terms of

obedience and discipleship? Whereas sermons for the evangelical church alone, you know, because we kind of mock that idea. Like you can't just be preaching sermons and think that that's, I don't know, just... That's good. That's a good pushback. You must be a PhD. I hear what he's saying though, is that we would still see intrinsic value. Catholics do this well, I think, and there is intrinsic spiritual value in the act of taking mass. We would say as Protestants, as Reformed kind of background, evangelical, there is intrinsic value in the service. I'm not,

and so that's all they're saying there is this isn't just a neutral thing. There is actual, there is, yeah, there is an encounter with God that is being embodied and put on when we could gather for specific singing and worship. I don't know about you, Preston, but I've heard tons of Reformed guys say, like, basically, explicitly say that the sermon is the primary means of discipleship. Yeah. You know what I mean? They do say of discipleship. Yeah. You know what I mean? They do say that. Yeah. Yeah.

So, um, I think the evidence just roundly goes against that. When we look at the state of discipleship and the number of sermons preached every Sunday, but yeah, they do. They do.

They do absolutely say that. So that's fair. Well, I mean, I, I think your pushback is good too. Yeah. Yeah.

And discipleship is more than the assembly. It is house to house. It's breaking of bread. Right. All of that. But you're arguing, and I know your church, I know your ecclesiology, you're arguing not for an either or, but for both. That this is a significant component of the discipleship process. By itself, it's incomplete and wouldn't produce disciples, but that doesn't mean it doesn't play a significant role in that. So, I actually,

I like that balance, you know. Yeah. Yeah, we are going for a both-and. I mean, communities during the week and gatherings on Sunday. And I think that rhythm, I mean, we're trying to pray, like pray together deeply over what more can be done in a commuter metropolis like San Diego, where everybody just wants a taco and sunshine and everybody just kind of wants to hang loose. Like, how do we create a culture of covenant commitment that is seen by the community as oh this this is the only way like we need each other how do you actually do that and i think i think the closer you get to answering that question right um the closer we'll get to an evangelicalism in the future that is uh vibrant but even the word evangelical now i'm i'm on the fence as to whether even to use it really let's go there let's go there because i i keep going back and forth in this.

I don't have like a big argument for or against. I just know it doesn't matter. Like I don't ever say, we're an evangelical church from the pulpit or whatever. There's so much baggage, so much political baggage with that, right? I guess. I just don't even say it. You know what I think? Like nobody needs that word to figure out if they're okay to be in our church or not.

You know what I mean? We're Christians who believe in the authority of the Scripture and that the Spirit is alive and active. We just go through Acts 2.42, and the entirety of the Scripture points to Jesus. There is nothing in the text of Scripture that God does not want to be as it is in the original autographs. Like, like, I don't, I don't use all the buzzwords. I mean, evangelical, inerrancy, sovereignty, those words mean now more than they were designed to mean. They're battle words.

And the term was forged, right? In the early, I think the early 20th century, when you had a lot of branches of the Christian church, just, you know, going away from the authority of scripture, you kind of distinguish, you know, mainline Protestantism, which was going very liberal from whatever. And I think back in the twenties and thirties and forties, when, for instance, Fuller seminary was founded under this banner of being an evangelical school, For instance, Fuller Seminary was founded under this banner of being an evangelical school. There was a certain cultural moment that created the necessity for the word. And I think it's gotten so muddled now to where it just means so many different things. If I just say Christian, depending on the context, that doesn't...

Are you a Coptic Christian? Are you Greek Orthodox? Are you a PCUSA? You know, like it's such an all-encompassing that to me to give some sort of perspective on the type of Christian evangelical, depending on the context, might be helpful. At least that's how I've kind of reflected on it. But even that, like in a post-Trump world, evangelical is like, oh, so you voted for Trump and you're, you know, a white supremacist. It was, it might be the, you know, in some people's minds, you know, and I'm like, yeah, I don't know. I'm kind of with you on, on whether or not it's a helpful word anymore. Yeah. I mean, I have theological

evangelical convictions, but that doesn't mean the same thing to the to the secular news reporter as it does to my buddy over a podcast yeah i mean whenever i see a term or somebody says are you this are you that my next question is always what do you mean by that and then when they try to explain it i'm usually like what do you mean by that that and that because if you're trying to figure me out that's going to take a relationship in a very long conversation over good coffee or craft beer it's not going to happen in a what label do you fit under um but oh hey i want to go oh go ahead go ahead oh i was just going to say in all of this everything everything you're saying right now i'm i mean if my wife were part of this conversation, she's constantly encouraging me lovingly. Because I love to push the envelope. I love to try to get people to where I'm at in my brain.

But she sees all the collateral damage in the process. She's constantly saying, just lead gently. She's like, imagine me eight years ago with you as my husband. Like she's constantly saying, just lead gently. Yeah. Imagine me. She's like, imagine me eight years ago with you as my husband. She's like, Park Hill Church is me eight years ago. So leave them gently. They haven't seen all the papers you've written and all the shifts you've made. That's a good word. Well, your wife is so relational.

She understands the way people are wired. And I could not agree more. I mean, I, I don't always do this. It depends on the forum too. There's certain avenues where I feel like I'm a bit more bold and maybe prophetic. Um, but in a, in a embodied pastoral ongoing environment, like a church, environment, like a church, I, I'm a big fan of, of baby steps, you know, or of don't, don't, if, if there, if the person is here and you think they need to be here, don't, don't go here to here, like go here to here and then maybe here, and then maybe, maybe reaffirm this. This is good too. Don't, don't leave this. Like, what about this? Well, I'm still biblical. Let's go see. You know, it takes a long way across it. Nobody is drop kicked into a new way of thinking and then having the humility that, okay, they're here, you're here. Maybe you need to be here.

You know, like maybe, maybe we haven't arrived. I've had to do that. I've had to, I've had to go back. I can't think exactly on what, but I remember the feeling of confessing that I'm wrong for thinking something. You know what I mean? Humbling, humbling. I need to spend five minutes reflecting on how that went, but. All right. So I want to go back to the whole Benedict option because I'm very intrigued by it. I need to read the book. I haven't read the book yet. I always hear about it kind of like open theism from a distance. I'm like, ah, I could see some stuff there that might be interesting. Um, but I, so

I would almost say, I think he's very much onto something. I think his, his prophecies might come true. I would have said that a year ago, but in the last year, I've just, and maybe it's based on some of the people I'm reading, like Jonathan Haidt or, or, um, Steven Pinker, or even Jordan Peterson, listening to podcasts by Joe Rogan and others who are, these are all political figures for the intellectual, political non-Christian figures for the most part. But there seems to be a reaction against the so-called radical left by people who are on the left. Hmm.

All the, I mean, like Steven Pinker is a flaming liberal. I mean, when he talks about Christianity, it's like, it's just insulting, you know?

I mean, but he, he would say things that would, I mean, he's gotten tarred and feathered by the radical left. Here is a, one of the top hundred public intellectuals in the world today, taught at MIT, Harvard, Stanford. Brilliant.

I mean, the guy is just off the chart brilliant. I mean, this is my conservative, we always say flaming liberal, but he's so liberal. He's so liberal. Like men and women have biological differences and that might lead to different interests and outcome in the number of percentage of males and females that want to work at certain jobs. And when there's fewer women in STEM jobs, that might not be discrimination. We actually live in a very progressive society where there's not much discrimination against women. I think it's inflated. This is all him talking and it shows tons of research and everything. You know, he says we, racism and hate crimes,

racially driven hate crimes are at an all time low in the history of the universe. Wow. Yeah. He gets killed for that. And it doesn't matter what facts he cites. And he's like, he's so liberal. So he's like, I'm not, this is just what the facts say. I'm not. And he, and so, so you take people like that or Jonathan Haidt or, I mean, Peterson's a whole different thing, but I mean, you have this massive, like pushback against the radical left, a push towards free speech, freedom of religion,

um, by, you know, people on the intellectual dark web, if you're familiar with that, And by, you know, people on the intellectual dark web, if you're familiar with that, who almost all of them would be liberals. So I don't know. I think there's this little swing saying, I think we're going too far, man. We are a nation of freedom and freedom of religion and freedom of't lead to, in 10 years, freedom of religion being threatened. I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, I haven't heard Hyatt. I've seen quite a bit of Peterson. Yeah.

I'm not like a fan, like total man crush peterson fan guy um but i i i think he's balanced and i think the way he critiques the circularity of the left is good and yeah um i wonder if roger would have written the same book had pet had done the Peterson thing two years before. Because yeah, I mean, Dreher is a little bit of an alarmist, but as Andy Crouch points out as he reviews Dreher, it's probably 50-50. He could go 50-50 on whether Dreher's alarmism is going to pan out. That's probably where I'd be at. I wouldn't say no way. And a year ago, I would have said like, oh, that's just the direction we're heading. But the last year has been a weird year, you know?

Yeah, if you want to see the smartest, cleverest Benedict Option Review, just go to andykrauts.com and find his Benedict Option Review. It's literally just those two premises. The first premise, will the government make it hard for Christians to be

Christians? And he says, percentage of Rodgers' book actually devoted to this claim, 20%. Percentage of the press coverage devoted to this claim, 80%. Oh, really? Okay. Percentage of social media buzz devoted to this point, 98%. Oh, so I didn't even know that. That's what the stigma around the book is. He thinks... And that's Crouch's stigma. And then it says percentage of Christians that should actually be terrified of this claim, 5%. But he goes to the second one, the discipleship anemia.

And he's like, percentage of the book devoted to this claim, 80%. Percentage of the press devoted to this claim, 10%. Wow, yeah. Percentage of social press devoted to this claim, 10%. Wow, yeah. Percentage of social media interested in that claim, 2%. And it's all rough estimates. But percentage of Christians that should be terrified that discipleship is shrinking, 100%. Don't you love Andy Crouch? I'm just so thankful for people like Andy Crouch and evangelicalism.

There's a few voices like that, that I just like, oh, they're so thoughtful and balanced. And he's a musician. Is he? He says he is. We haven't even talked about your music, bro. I mean, you're an amazing. So I want to go back to the worship thing real quick.

Cause you, you, you had a kind of a high view of Sunday morning worship, but you, and I want to say this cause you would never say this, but you are among, if not the best worship leaders I've ever experienced. And I say that my, okay. So just for my audience, when you came up here, I had you come in and lead worship at an event here a couple of years ago in Boise and my kids, I've told you this, who aren't, they, well, they weren't that like, like the,

like a passion for Jesus hadn't quite caught on yet. They're obedient. They're really good kids. My kids are good kids and they, they, and now they're like full on hardcore disciples of Christ. It's amazing. The last couple of years. But when you came up, my daughters were just floored and it wasn't, see, see, they, they actually, and I hate to say it, but some of the popular worship movements, they get really

cynical. They get really nervous when they see a lot of emotion, people doing like raising their hands. They're like, wait a minute, but that guy didn't even talk to me when I walked in. Why is he, you know, like they had this kind of like de-church cynicism. So they're not impressed with like over the top worship, whatever they, they actually hunger for meaning and authenticity. And when you lead worship, you are, you are so incredibly thoughtful. You're actually leading us with deep, profound theology woven together with authentic music. And I don't, I don't,

I'm sorry, bro. I don't, I'm sorry, bro. I don't see that hardly anywhere in the church, either. It's too over the top kind of trying to rev me up. Come on. Like, don't you love Jesus? And he better get up and wait, you know, like, or just kind of the mundane, like play a song, stop. It's silent for like 15 seconds and then they'll for our next song, you know, and I, you, you're an amazing worship list. So I don't doubt that you can create through the gifts that God's given you an environment where a true encounter with the living Lord is made more possible. So all that to say, and again, you wouldn't never say this and you may not even think this, but what the type of worship experience you're creating on Sunday morning is, doesn't exist in my opinion in 95% of churches around the country.

Wow, man. Yeah. The checks, the check we talked about for you saying that is in the mail. I just sent the check. It's good. It's off. Actually, I pushed cash to you for that because I would never say that. And you shouldn't really. I mean, but it's from somebody who has a hard time with church worship. I said this on the air. I really struggle with Christian worship. I hardly ever listen to Christian worship music. I'm tainted by the capitalism that lingers behind the scenes of the Christian music industry. I'm not a word Nazi kind of like picking apart, but I am kind of like typically not too impressed with, you know, the content that's being put out. Yada, yada, yada, yada. That's understandable.

Yeah, it's quite an industry. And there's a lot of amazing human beings that make up that industry. But yeah, it's not a church, it's a business. And when I say it, I mean, probably I refer to what it was when I knew it, when I would visit Nashville a lot. There's just great folks that are in offices that are just trying to figure out which songs work. The big conversation is which songs work. Which ones are going to catch. Yeah. And that's just how it works. But yeah, boots on the ground. I love leading worship, and I love when the people of God gather together. And I think I do. I've never said this about myself, but I think I do have a high view of song worship in a corporate setting. Really high view, like there's a presence

with a capital P that's a different kind of presence than the omnipresence where God is everywhere. I just, I just, I do. I count on that every Sunday. I count on the presence of God showing up and indelibly transforming people's lives and leaving them changed in some way. And I know that's different than discipleship. I know that feels more like osmosis, but it's not, it's encounter. It is a Pentecostal conviction. Yeah. We still ask God to heal people in gatherings. There've been a couple of claims that he's healed,

but I'm not like, you know, empirically verifying those healings or anything. We just still ask. We just ask that he would continually heal people's minds and bodies. And we do it during worship. We have a time after, after the teaching every Sunday where we open up the tables, people get bread and cup.

And then, and we just ask the Holy spirit to come and see what happens. And to me, you can get songs and sermons online. I mean, church needs to be more than songs and sermons. The gathering specifically needs to be more than songs and sermons. We need an encounter with the living Christ. I't think anyone i don't know i i think jesus saved me not i think an encounter

with jesus actually saved me not not that i read the right bible verse or that um or that someone convinced me that i was wrong i think it was an encounter with the living Christ. He came to me. And I think he comes to us in the gatherings. And there's a reason why Paul builds this whole argument in Ephesians for how the church should work. And then when he gets to chapter 5, he's like, all right, here's the brass tacks. Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. And here's the first tax do not be drunk with wine but be filled with the

spirit and here's the first thing i want to tell you ephesus that the spirit-filled church do is sing to one another make melody in your hearts with song hymns spiritual songs he didn't want to leave any genres untouched like he lays them all out um so singing is the first sign of a healthy church according to paul his whole argument leads up to that in Ephesians 5. I got that from Tim Mackey. Okay. So I want to close out our discussion. It's already coming up in an hour.

But where can – you've released a few worship albums, right? Is that correct? Do you have a website or something that people can go check out yourself if they're not familiar with it? My website's down right now. I took it down for a while while I went to seminary. I just kind of rebooted. But yeah, you can just go to iTunes. I'm on iTunes.

Okay. Evan Wickham, I guess. Evan Wickham, I guess. Dude, thanks so much for being on the show, man. Love, love, love what you're doing. And if anybody's in the San Diego area and you're looking for a church, consider Park Hill. That does have a website, I'm assuming, Park Hill Church. Totally. Totally. And it's just a really, it's a really cool thing what God is doing in

probably the coolest city in America. So really kind of jealous of your ministry. Thanks, man. Tacos and sunshine, baby. You've been listening to Theology in the Raw and my friend Evan Wickham. If you desire to support this podcast, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw and support the show. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. He is risen, risen. He has conquered, conquered death and hell Forever and amen

He is risen, risen like He said He's come alive again Forever and amen He is risen, risen He has conquered, conquered death and hell forever and amen.