Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1024: #1024 - Living As an Exile in Babylon: Jon Tyson

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

Jon Tyson is a Pastor and Church Planter in New York City. Originally from Adelaide, Australia, Jon moved to the United States twenty years ago with a passion to seek and cultivate renewal in the Western Church. He is the author of Sacred Roots, A Creative Minority, and The Burden is Light. Jon lives in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan with his wife and two children. He serves as the Lead Pastor of Church of the City New York. This podcast episode is a recording of a talk Jon gave at last year’s “Exiles in Babylon” conference, followed by our conversation together and audience Q & A. 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is John Tyson. John is a pastor, a writer, a speaker, and a friend of mine who I just have so much respect for. What you're going to hear is a recording of his talk that he gave at last year's Exiles in Babylon conference. He talks about what it is to live as an exile, what it means for our discipleship as a Christian to view our discipleship through the identity of being an exile, what it means for our discipleship as a Christian to view our discipleship through the identity of being an exile in Babylon. And it was a fantastic talk. It's followed up by a couch conversation that I had with him and some Q&A after that. If you would like to attend next year's Exiles in Babylon conference, you can go to TheologyNarod.com, find all the info there.

So please welcome back to the show, the one and only John Texley. I've been asked to talk about what it means to live and be a disciple in exile. And I want to share with some things with you. You may have heard me speak on before if you've heard me at all, but the things I carry as deep, deep themes in my heart, the things that no matter what I teach on haunt me and are always present. The things that I think,

and you've got to have your own version of these, but I think they're the things that enable you when you feel like what is the point of any of this to speak to your own heart to keep you going and to keep you in the game. So there are four things. The first one is a pastor. The second one is a church.

The third one's a university, and the fourth one is a revival. These four things I carry with me as reference points of ministry everywhere I go. They have haunted me. I take up space in my mind and I wanna share these with you or bring these back to the forefront of your attention

as ways to think about how to follow Jesus well in a time of exile. The first one, the pastor. This is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 1935, the German church is in a period of downward theological and ethical spiral. Hitler's coming to the scene and he has a kind of satanic momentum that if you were to be underneath it, you would have wrestled profoundly with it. Why not just go along? There's a lot of good values in here.

Look at the shame we experienced after World War I. A lot of pressure. And so Christians one by one, denominations, theologians, were capitulating and giving to Hitler and to the Third Reich the loyalty and allegiance that belonged to the person of Jesus. Well, several pastors gathered together with deep theological concern about what was happening. They wrote a document called the Barham Declaration which is about faithfulness to Jesus. They came up with the idea of the

confessing church remaining faithful in the midst of compromise and they decided to put a school together, a seminary to train young pastors in the way of faithfulness rather than the way of compromise. So a piece of land and a property is found and then the vision is cast and Dietrich Bonhoeffer is asked to leave this school. It's called Finkenwald. It's named after the place where they met. And in this school, it's where he dreamed up the content of life together,

if you've read that, the cost of discipleship. We often take these books away and try and apply them primarily in our context rather than understanding the place in which they were birthed, the convictions, the weight behind them. Well, this was the place where that weight was born. So he has this little training school for pastors

and it's based on sort of contemplative, monastic, culturally engaged, defiant, Jesus-centered discipleship. And it's intense. And it's so intense that one of his former students who hears about it comes to visit him because he's concerned that it's sounding like a little too much. He's like, I know Hitler's got some momentum. I know that the church seems to be compromising, but what I'm hearing you do in response, this feels like too much. So his friend comes out and he comes and sees what he's doing with his school. And they used to row together. And so Bonhoeffer takes him and they row across this river. Here's a picture of the river. I went there with my family to just sort

of stand there as a family and say, Lord, bring back the spirit of what this was in our life in New York. This is the river that Bonhoeffer rode along and he rode his friend who said that what he was doing that was too intense to a place where in the distance there's an airfield and Hitler was training his troops and planes were coming and going and it was just that sense Hitler is preparing for war with the world. So Bonhoeffer brings his friend and stands on the banks of this river and says this to him, pointing at what Hitler was doing. He says, he is building an army of harshness for war. He said, I think about the formation that what we are doing to respond to it.

And he points to his seminary and he points back to Hitler and this is what he says, this, pointing to his seminary, has to be stronger than this, pointing to what it is that Hitler's doing. And they get in the boat and they row back in silence. And I've thought about that image multiple times a day. Here is Bonhoeffer with his little seminary. Here is Hitler with a weaponized idealized society. And here is Bonhoeffer on the hills saying, my little seminary is going to produce disciples stronger than the Third Reich. Unapologetically gets in and goes back. The fruit of that will be the cost of discipleship and life together. And I want to say to us, we live in a time of history where the church has failed in its primary role to make

people who are disciples of Jesus. We live in a time of failed formation. This year, 1.2 million young people in America left the church. The primary reason was that they did not find the person of Jesus compelling. How do you take the person of Jesus and make him boring in a moment of history like this? We still have a formation rate where almost 70% of kids who grow up in the church abandon their faith when they go to college. And I want to say we're in a moment where whatever we've been doing is not working. It is time to not tweak. It is not time to debate. It is time to re-engineer the entire discipleship mechanism of what we're doing. On one side, the response in our cultural moment has been that of syncretism. People have gone over to the world and they've basically said,

let's just put Jesus into our current sexual framework, socioeconomic, sociological frameworks, and let's make Jesus a friend of our cultural moment. On the other side, you've got people whose response has been like, let's get the heck out of this dying dodge. Like, let's get out of here. Sort of the response of the Essenes.

Let's just like go be holy and fast and pray and call for the end times. And we don't have the luxury of either of those positions. We have to be in the middle. We have to live in the tension. Living in the tension is the position of the exile. It's the potential of like still being holy and in touch with the power of God in the age to come,

still caring about the world and engaging it deeply, but living in a potent way in the middle of it. And so we have to be people who have formation mechanisms strong enough, unapologetically where we can stand up and we can say what is happening in our churches will be stronger than the formation mechanisms of the world. Do you have that resolve in your spirit? Do you have the capacity to take

the criticism that comes with that kind of intensity? Do you have the willingness to be misunderstood and dismissed and not fit into cultural categories and have people leave? understood and dismissed and not fit into cultural categories and have people leave. You're going to need it. Because if we're going to see the kind of fruit that we long for, we have to be willing to have the kind of formation that makes it. I've carried that image of a pastor and a prophet on a hill in my heart. And I pray that you will too. The second thing, it's a church but it's a distinctive church. So I think for exiles and living in this time of exile, we must have unity that is stronger than division. This is Bonhoeffer's vision, we've got to have something stronger than the world. I think we've got to have unity that is stronger than division. Now when we talk about unity, I

want to say this, the church has tried every kind of symbolic unity that's ever existed. And it's borne, honestly, not that much fruit. And what I think the need of the hour is, is not just symbolic unity, which is like, hey, we all follow Jesus, isn't that great? And then we destroy each other on Twitter whenever we put one tweet that doesn't fit into the categories. Symbolic unity, which is, it's like, let's ignore our differences and ignore what we have in common and let's all just try and get along. That produces very little fruit, but substantive unity, deep, relational, functional unity. That's the thing that moves history. It's real unity with actual people in an actual community in an actual place. That's the thing that models the new humanity. And so I want to put a vision in your

heart of the potency of building true functional unity. Look, I say this so cautiously. I don't know what we can do about all the big problems to make the world look like the kingdom of heaven but I do know this in our local communities we can build functional outposts of the kingdom of heaven in our midst and I'm concerned that all of our energy is going to things we can't really do that much about other than have opinions rather than than doing the hard, costly, sacrificial work of building alternative communities in our midst. I know of no other community that's modelled this than Zinzendorf and the Moravians. This is my favourite community. Count Zinzendorf was a German noble. He had power, privilege, he had esteem, he had resources, but all he wanted to do was to serve Jesus.

He lived in a very socially stratified time of history where you would never go from being a count to being a pastor. And yet all he wanted to do was serve Jesus. So after getting his grandmother's estate, a beautiful piece of land in Germany, he has the opportunity to do this. There's a time of persecution,

primarily Anabaptists are being persecuted for their convictions. And so they somehow huddle on a piece of his land and they name a little village there called Hernhut. And it's not very impressive. I went there several years ago. If you see a picture of it, it just looks like, I don't know,

a quaint kind of little German village in the middle of nowhere. Very hard to get to. But he had a vision of building something potent in the midst of division. There was theological division, there was racial division, there was cultural division. And yet dumped on his land was this raw material of a church community. You had Calvinists, you had Armenians, you had high church, you had a lowians, you had high church, you had a low church, you had different ethnicities. And like a lot of things, they weren't up on the stage

talking about how much they had in common. You would have thought that their persecution would have driven them together. No, it only polarized them, blame and accusation. And so he gets a vision and he comes along and he starts meeting with people saying, can we not unite around the person of Jesus? He goes home by home. This is a village of three or 400 people. Home by home and praise. Let us have a spirit of unity.

Let us come to the Lord's table like Francis talked about and let us be one in Christ. So he does this, appeals, he fasts, he prays and they come together for a special communion service. This communion service happens on August the 13th, 1727. And I went to this village, to this memorial service on August the 13th and celebrated communion with the descendants of this movement to say,

Lord, I want this sort of unity in the middle of New York City. Well, they come together and as they do this, the presence of God comes down. Here's a simple principle. The fire never falls on divided altars. You've got to build something together that can contain the work of the Holy Spirit. So they, in a spirit of repentance, come together in Jesus. And as they do this, they said they could not tell for a period of 11 or 12 hours whether they were on earth or in heaven.

Now that is a proper last night of camp, Holy Ghost encounter. It's like, I don't know if I'm in heaven or on earth. But here's the thing. It wasn't just a charismatic experience. What ended up happening is they got a vision then of their unity, undoing, undoing the brokenness of the world around them and they began to send people out into mission.

They ended up being this tiny little community of three or four hundred people is what Richard Loveless says the most effective missional community in all of recorded church history up until their time. They heard that there was islands of people in the Caribbean where you could only access them, islands full of slaves, if you sold yourself into slavery. And so two of their young leaders says, if that's what it takes to get the gospel to these people, we'll sell ourselves into slavery. And that famous scene where these young men sell themselves into slavery to go and reach these people. And their famous line on the dock, may the land that was slain receive the water of his sufferings

and off they go. They start a 24-hour prayer movement that will go on to last 100 years, night and day, to pray for their missionary efforts. William Carey, when he is in Parliament, advocating against slavery, one of the great claims was that if we turn the slaves loose, if we eradicate slavery, they're gonna go wild and not know how to participate in society as a whole. Well, those two missionaries who went to the island started a revival, over 2,000 slaves were led to Christ on the island.

And it literally became a portal of the kingdom of heaven on earth. And so when Wilberforce is in Parliament and he's trying a portal of the kingdom of heaven on earth and so when Wilberforce is in parliament and he's trying to think of social proof that slavery can be overcome, he references the Moravian missionaries and what happened on that island as a reference point to take down slavery in the entire empire. John Wesley whose heart was strangely warmed, you'll remember, while crossing the sea on his mission to America, a storm rose up and he thought he was going to die, but the Moravians were there with a 24-hour prayer watch on the boat, ready to die with confidence,

and it shook him. So when he comes back to England and realises in his self-righteousness he doesn't know Christ, his heart is strangely warmed at a Moravian meeting. George Whitefield, who will go on and become one of the greatest revivalists in his lifetime, is at a Moravian all-night prayer service when the Spirit of God comes down on him and he is filled with the Holy Spirit. William Carey, who becomes the father of modern missions, hears stories of Moravians being converted, comes into the Baptist Missionary Society, throws down the Moravian literature

and says this, why can't we reach the heathen like the Moravians? Now let's pause for a second. The issues of their day that they've touched, the Moravians have played a role. Their tiny little church of a couple hundred people has played a role of providing living proof to deconstruct slavery in the British Empire. It's raised up one of the greatest revivalists of that time that changed the spiritual climate. In Wesley, he brought reformation in the church. Whitfield, one of the greatest revivalists.

And then the father of modern missions is actually the child of the Moravians. Mission movements, eradicating slavery, discipleship and revival, all birthed out of a tiny little unified church. Psalm 133, when it talks about how good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity. It says it's like oil poured on the head, running down Aaron's beard, and it's like the Jew of Hermon. These are two simple ideas.

There's a kind of spiritual anointing and authority that comes from this kind of unity. And you get access to the secret distant places that flow down to your location when there's the kind of unity that God wants. And I want to say this. I think we're at that moment where we have to build these potent, unified, committed, repentant, tight little churches.

Have we learned yet that large scaled churches, have we learned this yet? Do not necessarily mean that the kingdom of God is on the way. I'm not opposed to them, but I'm saying what we need is potency, not scale. All scale will come from the potency of unity. And so it's consciously covenanting with brothers

and sisters where you are, deep local repentance, real substantial unity. First it's a pastor with a prophetic vision, then it's a church willing to unite and out of that unity comes fruitfulness. Third thing is this, it's a university. This university is placed in a place of total despair for exiles hope has to be stronger than the despair around us these are dark days we have a war in Europe global pandemic gas is almost five dollars I paid over five dollars I only put twenty dollars in as a protest I was like decline of the church failures in leadership in every sphere that we look around you got a lot of young folks going like what what sort of future do we have kids are in college just asking like what is the point of the future but Jesus says in John 16 I've

told you these things so that in me you may have peace in world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I've overcome the world. God's vision is to have communities that can overcome and model hope, regardless of the hellscape they find themselves within. One of the things that strikes me about the prayers of the apostles in the book of Acts, they never prayed, sovereign Lord, make our circumstances easy. They always prayed, sovereign Lord, give power for us to overcome wherever we find ourselves. My favorite story of this, talking about a university is told by Philip Yancey

in his book, Rumors of Another World, which is my version of mere Christianity. He tells the story of Ernest Gordon, who was a British officer who was captured during World War II by the Japanese. And he was put to work building the Burma-Siam Railway through the jungle.

The Japanese had an honor culture, which means they would rather die than surrender. So for them, the concept that you would have British officers and military leaders who would surrender rather than kill themselves in battle. They dehumanized them because they didn't have a category for such cowardice. So when they put them in these camps,

they functionally became not just prisoner of war camps, but concentration camps. 80,000 people will go on to die in these camps, trying to build a railroad in the middle of nowhere for the Japanese to continue their invasions. And the spirit of the camp over the course of time, the cultural conditions brought out the absolute worst of every person in the camp.

Christian, non-Christian, did not matter. It was a kind of social Darwinianism. People were fighting, people were stealing food from one another. The weak were having their possessions stolen as they lay dying. It was hell on earth. On one particular day, there's a group of men and they're out digging and one of the soldiers lines them all up to make sure that their tools are there so no one's escaping. And he realises when counting the soldier that one of the shovels is missing.

So he stands them all up and he says, which one of you is trying to escape? Where's the shovel? And they're all looking around like, I didn't touch the shovel, man. You got the shovel. No one has the shovel. And he starts screaming,

if you don't tell me where the shovel is, all of you will die. All die. And as he raises his gun, getting ready to shoot everyone, one man steps forward and says this, I took the shovel. And the soldier beats him to death and they carry his body back to the camp. And when he got back to the camp, here's what they realised. That guy was the one guy that, in spite of everything that had happened, modelled the Christian life to them. When they got back to the camp, they recounted and realised that all the shovels were there.

The soldier had just miscounted. And so this one man who had modelled the way of Jesus to them gave his life. And he said that heroic act of death, when they were in a spirit of selfishness, began to create a completely different culture amongst the most hellish conditions on earth. Gordon says this, self-indulgence, laziness and pride were anti-life. Love, heroism, self-sacrifice, sympathy, mercy, integrity and creative faith on the other hand were the essence of life turning mere existence into living in its truest sense. These were the gifts of God to men. True there was hatred but there was also love. There was death but there was also life. God had not left us, He was with us calling us to the life of divine fellowship. And so here they are, they're in the middle of the most horrific conditions,

but one man reminds them of the way of Jesus in the middle of a selfish culture. And as that began to take root, another community was born. And so what ended up happening, and Ernest Gordon records this, they realised as they went around that each of them carried remarkable gifts. It's like God and His providence had basically dropped like a university faculty in the middle of the same prisoner of war camp. And so they began to say, how can we bring a different kingdom into the midst of this hell? So people began to gather around Gordon and it turns out he had a degree in philosophy. So taught philosophy and ethics and then they started a thing called Jungle University they realized that other people who there were who were economists and so they did economic theory there was math teachers and so they taught math natural science they went on to teach nine different languages including Latin

Greek Russian and Sanskrit so in the midst of this hell, they create Jungle University, which is this place of hope in the middle of total despair. They build a church and they began to host worship services to receive communion. They realise that there's talented artists and so they make paint out of stuff they find in the jungle and they put on art shows and curate art galleries for the Japanese soldiers. They realise that there's gifted musicians and so they begin to form a jungle orchestra and they're playing Mozart and Bach. They even put on a Shakespeare play

and in the middle of this community, they put this beautiful portal of another way of life. When they're eventually released, they forgive the soldiers who had brutalised them in an act of love. And many of them become friends and work for their lives on further unity. And Yancey says this, perhaps something like this was what Jesus had in mind when he turned again and again to his favorite topic, the kingdom of God. In the soil of this violent, disordered world, an alternative

community may take root. It lives in hope of a day of liberation. But in the meantime, it aligns itself with another world, not just spreading rumours, but planning settlements in advance of that coming rain. Look, I don't know what's happened to your community post-COVID, post-George Floyd, post this political chaos. And you may look at it and think nothing good can come out of this death but I want to tell you right now survey the gifts of the people that God has put in front of you you don't know who is carrying what you don't know what is possible out of your community and you the conditions may not change but your community may and God may produce a little school

of formation and discipleship and life and entrepreneurship and reconciliation that in the midst of the hell around you is a light of the kingdom of heaven. It's possible even in the midst of despair for hope to burn. A pastor, a church, a university, and here's the last one. It's a revival. It's a revival.

My favourite revival in the Bible is found in the life of Josiah in the Old Testament. Josiah is a miracle. Josiah is a move of God in the Old Testament. He's living at a time where there's been almost 100 years, 90 years without any models of what it looks like to follow Yahweh and covenant faithfulness. It's been almost 400 years since God's people have in a proper way honoured the story of God and practised redemptive rhythms. Josiah comes to power when he's eight years of age

and he becomes the king. When he's 20, he launches a major effort to eradicate the pagan high places, groves and images from Judah and from Jerusalem. When he's 26, he launches a project to cleanse and repair the temple. And he rediscovers the scriptures and reinstitutes worship in the temple

and recovers the covenant rhythms. It's actually extraordinary what happens. I mean, I could preach for an hour and 28 minutes or 26 minutes on this little thing right here. Because he starts a revival that bends time in God's redemptive calendar. And this is why I'm so hopeful for what's happening. I mean, it's Generation Z.

They're coming up and they have their eyes on something different than what they are inheriting. There's a kind of hunger that they have. They're looking around and they're saying, we do not want the idolatry that you have allowed to sit for generations to be in the land that will cast stuff over us again. So you see kids going up, tearing down the high places and getting in and getting underneath the systems and the structures that cause people to stumble and fall into idolatry. He goes back and

he recovers the temple. He finds the Word of God. And when he finds the Word of God, which had been missing, which is extraordinary, he finds the Word of God and he responds, not by saying, oh, well, God's kind, so we'll be fine. He's grieved and he falls on his face and just side note, calls a female prophet to try and help him interpret the Word of God in his cultural moment. Brings her in, realises that there's trouble, so it says he turns to the Lord with all of his heart and then he brings communion back or that he brings the Passover back and they celebrate it in a way that it hasn't been celebrated in 400 years. And so what he basically does is he gets back to the root of covenant loyalty to Yahweh. And the scriptures say this about him in 2 Kings 23,

Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his strength in accordance with the law of Moses. This was a young man who had a vision for a portal of the presence of God to be manifest at his time in history. Now, we are at a moment where, can I just, now I'm just gonna speak from my heart as I'm closing, speak from my heart. I don't know if this generation, I'm 45,

I don't know if millennials are gonna get a crack at it. I don't know. I think the decline may be very significant in our world and statistically the church is at a point of irreversible decline, according to Barna. But we may have a chance to create a window where we can raise up the next generation to thrive in exile.

We may not see the revival we long for. We may not see the cultural fruit and change we want, but we may be able to build a portal where our kids can live for God in a different way. God says to Josiah, the judgment is great, but it's not gonna happen in your lifetime because of the way you've turned to me. Now, I don't know if you've ever asked yourself this question.

Where did Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego come from? These teenagers roll into the heart of empire. Who gave Daniel the people skills to be like, hey, how's it going? Good, Daniel, we've got you here sort of on our like cultural elite track. That's great. I don't really appreciate the food though.

What I'd like to do is like a little vegan thing. I want just like a little 10 day experimental window here. Just you tell me, let's just try this out. Where does a teenager get people skills in the courts of power like that? Where do you raise up teenagers when everybody's bowing down where they say, ah, we appreciate the music, but we won't bow to your God.

And then where are we gonna heat the furnace up? And they're like, you can throw us in, God will save us or He won't, but we're gonna be loyal to Him. How do you form teenagers' hearts like that? The most extraordinary thing, at the end of the book of Daniel, it says this, and this is,

I carry this in my heart in New York. It says, at the hour of evening sacrifice, when Daniel was praying. Now, Daniel at this point has been in exile for 70 years. The temple is gone, but he is still ordering his heart by Jerusalem time in the middle of exile. 70 years and his internal character

is formed by what he experienced as a kid and his faithful. Well, where did that come from? Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are the children of the revival of Josiah. He built a window of holiness and repentance that raised up a generation that could thrive in exile. And I want to say this, when people tell me you need to calm down, I'm like, you need to calm up. You need to calm up. This is a moment to raise up kids who can thrive in the midst of secularism. This requires a Josiah level of repentance and

turning to the Lord and getting into the high places that have existed for generations and tearing these things down. Serious times require a serious response. And God has entrusted you with a serious moment in redemptive history. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be polished. It can be small. It can be scrappy. It can be agile, but it must be potent. It must have a vision and love of loyalty to God. It must have faithfulness to Jesus. It must have a counter cultural love. And I honestly believe with all of my heart that that's why you're here. It's because God knows that you're the kind of person who's going to live like that. You see, here's the thing. Bonhoeffer's little experiment didn't last that long, about two years.

If you want some encouragement, quite a few of those pastors that he's disciples went on and signed an oath of loyalty to Hitler. But here's the thing, that didn't matter. It wasn't a numbers game. It wasn't a chart that had to go up and to the right. All he needed in the midst of that time of compromise was a model of another way. And here's the thing, Hitler is dead. The Third Reich is gone from history.

It carries shame. Germans are still in repentance, feeling the weight of their shame. But I want to tell you this, Bonhoeffer is considered a modern martyr in the church. His books that he wrote have discipled generations long after he has came. And even though it didn't look like much, it was true. That man on the banks of the river was right. What he did in that tiny little school was stronger than Hitler and stronger than the Third Reich. Jesus gathers a few disciples and He puts them in a room, 120, like a tenth of you. And they're united and they're hungry and they're open and they're desperate, and they're hungry, and they're open, and they're desperate, and the fire falls, and it doesn't look like much, but 300 years later, the Roman Empire will be brought to its knees by the love of Jesus

and the faithfulness of his followers. And my simple prayer is this, is that in this moment, we'll be like those people, that what we build will be stronger than what the world is building, that we will be those potent Moravian type communities, not large, but fruitful and unified, that in the midst of the hell of our culture, we will build these schools of formation and life, and that we will turn to the Lord like Josiah, and so doing, raise up the next generation who can thrive in exile. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we come into Your presence and Lord, we come humbly.

Lord, we come with sincere hearts. Lord, You see where everybody is coming from. hearts. Lord, you see where everybody is coming from. You see the pain they carry. You see the frustration. You see the hurt. You see the dreams. Father, we just humble ourselves before you. And we just ask, would you use us, Lord, to be faithful? Holy Spirit, fill us, not just with faith, but with faithfulness. Lord, I pray that You would break down the final 10% of selfishness that we are holding back from being fully united, fully loving, fully committed. Lord, I pray that You'd remove any bitterness that is causing us to give into the way of the world rather than the enemy love of Jesus. And Father, I just pray, give us a vision to build a portal in time through the influences of our communities

that our kids may thrive and be loyal to you in a time of exile. We offer ourselves to you for faithfulness and love. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Man, how are you doing, man? I've got a bit of a cold. Thank you, man. Thank you for being here, man.

Seriously. I'm going to jump into the audience Q&A questions because there's so many good ones coming up here. First one is from John. No, from Norman. He's asking John. You're John. He's a bivocational pastor. Time and energy is tight. What wisdom would you give for ways to responsibly engage these issues without burning out or harming my family? Well, number one, I just want to say thanks for being

faithful and laboring as a bivocational pastor. I can't imagine that sort of level of tension that you feel every day. You've got to be informed, but you don't need to be an expert. You need to be an expert in love, which everyone has the capacity to do through the power of the Holy Spirit. You don't need to be an expert on cultural issues. I say this sort of cautiously and graciously. Racism's a sin and the kingdom of God doesn't have racism in it, okay?

You don't need to understand critical race theory to understand that. So you can take that simple theological truth and build a different kind of relationships and work for justice in meaningful ways. But that LGBTQ stuff, I don't understand, like human sexuality is challenging. Jesus makes demands on all of us,

but we will be the promised 100 times the family Jesus offers. There'll be space at our table at all the things that matter. And that'll be available for you. So you may not be able to pass out Greek words, but you can create a space at your table for people who are lonely to find love when they don't think so. You've got to be an expert at discipleship, but not in cultural issues. That's the thing I'd say. So put it into practice. That's a good word. Good word.

How do we transition churches in the Western world that act like businesses into disciple-making movements in a post-pandemic world? Oh, man, you're at the wrong conference for that. This is not a transitioning church's business look i i was wrestling with this this morning it's like uh i was wrestling with this this morning i was like okay lord you've put me at a time of history where for what i look i don't i couldn't care less about non-profit law. You think I'm like, oh Lord God, I just pray for a spirit of non-profit law to fill my heart.

I'm not up early caring about things like that. But I do know the credibility of Jesus is connected to organisational excellence. It's connected somehow. And so you can't naively pretend you don't live at a time of history where these these very very complex dynamics and then you need to figure out how do I how do I make discipleship the end of it I will say this in in empathy with the question the factory is broken the factory is broken the church factory millions of dollars thousands of people time programs energy and what comes out is like very little disciple it's inefficient and so gotta gotta fix the factory somehow and um i think it's put the emphasis on prayer put the emphasis on the reading of god's word put the emphasis on

love and community you can do those things through programs yeah programs, but put the emphasis back on those things. There's a lot of small churches that are not run like businesses, that are terrible. They're run like dysfunctional, small extended families. That's not the alternative either. So anyway, I'm not answering the question now.

So just simply having a big church, that's not the issue. It's much more intrinsic to the nature of how the church is run. I'll say this, to get certified organic is harder. So it needs to be more organic

because like, organic is hard. And so I think a lot of people are like, we just got rid of the machine and we're going to do organic. It's like, you want a hard organic life and it might be worth it.

But again, you've got to count the cost, put the emphasis on the right things. I'm agnostic on church sizes and structures somewhat. I care about the right things being present in the spirit. Yeah, good, good. John, is there a place, this is, this question, is there a place for calling out sin in public ways?

For instance, the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, the recent Hillsong documentary, is there a place for calling out sin in public ways in the unity conversation? Are these attempts, let's just say, the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, Hillsong, I haven't seen the Hillsong documentary, is that going against the vision for unity that we're trying to pursue, or is there a place for this? It's going against surface unity.

It's not going against biblical unity. I'll just say this. Number one, let's all just have the fear of God hit our hearts in a fresh way. Whatever secret sin you've got in your life, get it into the light. You know, I mean, I didn't like the rise and fall of Mars Hill.

I mean, what didn't you like about it? Everything. I didn't like the rise and fall of Mars Hill I mean what didn't you like about it everything I didn't like that it existed because so many people were hurt by what happened with Driscoll I didn't like the tone in which it was done it felt it didn't it felt very accusatory only to have Christianity Today turn around and have the exact same issues present in their own organization that felt very hypocritical to me the new testament's a mess man in effort i mean in corinth one dude's having sex with his step-mom the rise and fall of corinth i mean that could have been a thing you know what i'm saying so this is what i'll say and i'm trying to actually deal with this right now in my church by what standard because what you can do is you can

create punching bags that feel very cathartic they suck yeah you know doesn't mean you're following Jesus well pointing out someone else's flaws is not the equivalent of following Jesus well so I would say so I'm preaching through Jesus seven woes to the Pharisees right now and I'm like this is what Jesus says you should call out. And so we should have the standards of Jesus. And I sometimes feel like the standards are like megachurch versus small church or progressive church versus Christian church. As long as we've got Jesus setting the agenda of what's being critiqued, I'm very comfortable with it. But then I'm also have the fear of God that I may be doing the very things I'm accusing others of. It produces real repentance.

What about when people might say, you know, well, there were these abuses that happened and they've been hidden for so long. So exposing them in the light is a good thing. Because the opposite would be just letting these kind of movements or things keep going on and on and on because they're just not being called out enough. Yeah, I agree. I mean, if you were to say like the Mars Hill thing, I mean, that was in the light. Meaning that thing fell apart. It's not like it's going on now and it was an expose that nobody knew about.

Okay. The same, I think that some of the things with Hillsong who, you know, I mean, it's all getting too personal now on the stage. Wait till you see the next question. Okay. What I mean by that is like you've got to call out sin. You have to call out sin. The spirit in which you call out sin is very important

and we've got to make sure that if we have ungodly oppressive systems, that they should be identified and as much as possible dismantled and replaced with godly ones. That is very important work that has to be done. The spirit in which it has to be done has to be the spirit of Jesus. How do we create unity with people who have tied their faith to their politics and are unwilling to dialogue without arguing? I don't know if I know anybody like that. It's such a rare thing these days. Well, it sounds like the person arguing. So give me the question one more time. Yeah. how do we create unity with people who have their faith tied to their politics and are unwilling to dialogue? It sounds like the person who's asking the question

has their faith tied to a different version of politics than the person who they can't agree with whose version of politics they don't like. And what we often mean is like, how can I get unity with those dumb people whose views are different than mine? Like, how can I get unity with those dumb people whose views are different than mine? And that's a different question.

And I would say it is always, it's a war of attention. It's a war of attention. That's the war, where your attention goes. The culture doesn't tell you what to think. It tells you what to think about. So it's just creating the frameworks with which you can have whatever opinion you want. And it's the follower of Jesus' job to shove Jesus in the middle of all of that and refuse the cultural categories.

And so I think that's one way to say, hey, I want to talk about Jesus. No, I appreciate that, but what do you think Jesus means by that? I think that's one way is to say hey i want to talk about jesus no i appreciate that but what do you think jesus means by that i think that's uh one point the second thing i'd say is that you've got to be understanding man so i i spend most of my time in manhattan but i i own a it sounds a lot nicer than it is a country home in pennsylvania okay and um it's in Pennsylvania which basically means like it is in it is in straight up Trumpville okay so I'm with cultural elites in New York like radical sort of like secular leftist agenda and then I'm hanging out with people who are like Trump 2024 signs when I'm driving out there okay and I understand them both there's human fears underneath

this thing it's like there's human fears underneath it you know talk to a middle-aged white trucker who who fought in the military whose body hurts because he gave his body for a nation that people say doesn't matter and he's losing his job through automation and he's worried about his kids and it's like that dude's a person and he's got these deep cultural fears so again you try and get you try and humanize it you try and get underneath it and um and you try you get unity around what you agree and obviously what not what you don't agree and you may not be able to have like deep unity with that person that's it yeah that's good when it comes to political disagreement there's a book that i would like to recommend this wouldn't be theology and ralph i didn't mention it does anybody know what book i'm like to recommend. This wouldn't be Theology in a Row if I didn't mention it. Does anybody know what book I'm going to recommend?

Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind. I just used Haidt in my talk on Jesus' critique. It shows that these unwilling to dialogue, whatever the issue, there's about 10% of what's driving that is intellectual. About 90% is story, fear, hurt, assumptions, all kinds of underlying things that if you just, no, here's five reasons why that view is wrong,

you're just not going to go in. You've got to understand the person. I'm reading a book right now. I think it's called The Story Paradox, but it's unlike every storybook I've read because it basically says stories are what's wrong with the world. Say it again. The Story Paradox. Stories are what's wrong with the world. Say it again. The story paradox.

Stories are what's wrong with the world. The story paradox. So instead of being like, you know, we need to tell stories. We need to tell better stories. They're like everything wrong in the world is someone telling the story. So it's all about discerning the stories that we're telling to the world. So I agree with that. Addie asks, how can the church help people to reconstruct their faith in a cultural moment

where deconstruction is more accepted than following Jesus. I'm sure you, Russell, walk with people through this kind of stuff. Well, I mean, yeah, I'm just about to preach a whole series on this post-Easter, so it's like super fresh in my mind. Here's what I'll say. You have to acknowledge the pain

of the spiritual disillusionment that people are having. People are having very real, their paradigms have been shattered. Things they thought were true are turning out to be false. It's like it's a very painful experience to have something as intimate and as important as your faith and view of God shaken. So we've got to have tremendous compassion for people. And then number two, I'm also like, what are you going to rebuild it around? It's like, you've got to rebuild it around Jesus.

It's like, get in the Gospels, get in the Gospels and get the Gospels into you, you know, and make Jesus the centre. And Jesus has 49 or 50 commands in the Gospels. Try and obey Him. He says, if you have my commands and obey them, that's the one that loves me. So whatever you see Jesus telling you to do, do it in a way the spirit's leading you to do it. And then slowly rebuild with Jesus at the center. But it's like

to me, get in the gospels, read the gospels every day, obey the revelation you get in your reconstruction and the spirit will meet you. And I think you'll end up with a compelling faith over time. Good, good. All right. Last question. How can we faithfully live as exiles when our fellow church members live allegiant to Babylon? Feels like we are swimming against the current in our own church. Yes, we are.

You are, probably. That's probably true. Well, number one, you gotta do it in humility. You know, I'm always very nervous of like, they're living for Babylon, number one, you've got to do it in humility. I'm always very nervous of like they're living for Babylon. And I'm kind of like, I've got some Babylon in me too. We all do. It sounds like people are really disillusioned with the churches they're a part of.

That's sort of like the theme I'm sort of picking up. You've got to humbly try and be the compelling alternative. got to like humbly try and be the compelling alternative you know again it's it's it's a really mature person you know it's the classic story when I was young I wanted to change the world when I was in middle age I wanted to change others and when I'm old I want to change myself I feel that I feel that youthful energy brings reformation they see things in black and white they attack you need that that's how change happens but to try and hold that with the spirit I feel that. Youthful energy brings reformation. They see things in black and white. They attack. You need that. That's how change happens.

But to try and hold that with a spirit of humility and integrity, to try and not become self-righteous, become the thing that you're against. Most people become Pharisees when they try and attack what's wrong rather than humble prophets. So, yeah, just cultivate that spirit of love. And you may need to leave your church. That was a reminder.

Maybe time to leave the church. But be very careful when you show up at the... I was saying last night, one of the things a leader has to do is perpetually set expectations. People are disillusioned and hurt because what they expected didn't happen. And it's a leader's job to set expectations where people can be disappointed at the rate of reality. Because that's what's

going to happen. Jesus is the best at this. He's like, hey, I appreciate that, man. You're going to take up your cross daily and follow me. And this is amazing. We want to beat you right and you left. And he's like, yeah, the whole world's going to hate you because of me. And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he's like, when he says, can you be baptized with the baptism that I will be baptized with? And they're like, yes, we can. And he's like, yeah, you can, but not like you think.

I mean, so I think trying to help people's expectations be set around we're committed to Jesus, we're all broken here, we're trying to follow him with integrity. You know, let's expectations be set around. We're committed to Jesus. We're all broken here. We're trying to follow him with integrity. You know, let's love one another well. You know, I think that leadership expectations are very important in terms of setting that culture. Awesome. John, thanks so much for closing us out today, bro.

Oh, so good. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.