Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1053: Is Christian Journalism Exposing Scandals or Becoming Failure Porn? Patrick Miller

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

In this episode, Patrick and I discuss the question in the title. Reporting on scandals and abuse and the misuse of power is absolutely necessary. Sin needs to be exposed. Corrupt leaders need to be taken down. But is there a way of reporting on these issues that could produce unforeseen and unintentional damage for the church? Should we feed an audience hungry for failure porn with…failure porn, even if the said porn is accurate? Lots of nitty gritty questions here, and Patrick and I discuss them all with, what I hope is, honesty and humility. Patrick Miller is a pastor and cultural commentator who writes about politics, culture, and technology, contributing articles to Christianity Today, Newsweek, The Gospel Coalition, and other publications. His podcast, Truth Over Tribe is one of Apple's top news commentary podcasts, featuring interviews with leading Christian thinkers, writers, and scholars. He's the co-author of Truth Over Tribe: Pledging Allegiance to the Lamb, Not the Donkey or the Elephant. Patrick received a Master of Divinity from Covenant Theological Seminary, and pastors a politically diverse church, The Crossing. He and his wife, Emily, have two children. You can connect with him on Twitter: @patrickkmiller_

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Patrick Miller, who is a pastor and cultural commentator who writes about politics, culture and technology, contributing articles to Christianity Today, Newsweek, The Gospel Coalition and other publications. He is the co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, Truth Over Tribe, and is also the co-author with Keith Simon. Well, Patrick and Keith both co-host the podcast and they both co-wrote the book of the same name, Truth Over Tribe, pledging allegiance to the lamb, not the donkey or the elephant. Patrick received a Master of Divinity degree from Covenant Theological Seminary and pastors a politically diverse church called The Crossing. And Patrick has become a friend over

the last several months and we dialogue about lots of stuff kind of offline going on. And Patrick has become a friend over the last several months. And we dialogue about lots of stuff kind of offline going on. And this podcast is focused on, as the title suggests, Christian journalism and how it addresses typically celebrity accounts of abuse or scandal in the church. And yeah, I just had a wonderful conversation with Patrick. I hope you enjoy it. Please welcome back to the show the one and only Patrick Miller. Patrick, you've been stirring things up on Twitter in a good way. And we had this recent thread about, for lack of better terms, Christian journalism and specifically how Christian journalism, I'm thinking of Christianity Today, the famous Mike Cosper podcast, which I really loved, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, and then just many different forms of Christian journalism that is exposing abuses in the church. And I think that's clearly a good thing in and of itself.

I mean, we could just start there. But then you raise a question, you know, the whole failure porn thing, or not even failure porn, but beyond that, like, should we raise questions of if everything we're reporting on is abuse, could that create an unhelpful warped perspective of the church? And I'm going to leave it at that. Can you summarize that Twitter thread, how that went? Because I know you got some positive and negative feedback. I thought it was a provocative, great question to ask. Some people didn't even like you asking the question. But yeah, I'll have you summarize the of what the point you're getting at and

let us know how that went. First of all, it is interesting. There are questions that I've discovered you're allowed to ask and questions that you're not allowed to ask on the internet. As a rule, anything I write on Twitter that I don't want to go viral goes viral. And anything that I wish people would pay attention to and attend to, they will ignore. This Twitter thread was one of those things, you know, in retrospect, if I could go back and maybe unwrite it and take it off the internet, I might. And it's only for this reason. I think the case that needs to be made around this entire issue is really a case that can only be made in a long form format. And so you're just asking for critique and criticism when you write a, you know, 800 word thread or however long it was. It's just not long enough to have a in-depth

conversation or to really clarify your point. On the other side, I was grateful for it because in people's pushback, it sharpened me. I mean, it made me start asking questions that I wasn't asking previously, but at the core of that thread or the core of my concerns really come out of my experience being a pastor at a local institution. And it has to do with institutional thinking. And I realize it's not really popular to think about institutions. We're living in an age that's incredibly cynical about institutions where we kind of a priori believe that maybe institutions should be burned down, that they are a problem, that they're guilty until proven innocent. And so that's where I'm coming from. I'm coming from this as an institution. I mean, it's interesting talking to you because I mean, you're kind of an iconoclastic thinker. I mean, do you like institutions? I, like any question I get,

I'm going to say, what do you mean by institution? I think that term has largely thinking out loud here. I think the term has taken on, at least in my circles, an intrinsically negative connotation. Is a monastery an institution? What constitutes an institution? If you have a super amazing church with humble leadership that's serving the poor and providing healing in the community, is that an institution? How do people, when they say institution? Is it, you know, so I, how do people, when they say institution, what do you think they mean? They typically mean some kind of hierarchical,

highly structured, people at the top, they're untouchable and are wielding power. And they're just after typically profits, if it's a, you know, profit driven, whatever. I don't know. That's kind of how I feel people are using the term. Well, and I think that's actually really important because there are a million different

definitions of institutions out there. I think for my purposes, what I mean is an institution is any place or any living social organism where we live our common life together. It's a place of gathering. So that could be a workplace, that could be Fox News, that could be a church. You know, there's a lot of different kinds of institutions where people are living their collective life with one another. My concern really interestingly is actually it's a concern for justice and the welfare of people, because right now, I mean, everybody would agree we're living in one of the most depressed, lonely times in American history.

And, you know, Alexis de Tocqueville, he was a French writer who kind of traveled through America trying to figure out why did the revolution work here? And it really blew up in France. And the conclusion he comes to is that Americans have this kind of innate drive to collectively gather without actually a lot of hierarchy. You know, you didn't need the local magistrate or the local church officials. We just have this knack for gathering together to do good. And why I care about institutions on a really fundamental level, there's been great research by Robert Putnam, Tim Carney, fantastic books, but they've shown that beyond a shadow of a doubt, communities where you have higher levels of charitable giving and more local middle

institutions, that'd be things like churches, charities, rotary clubs, HOAs. Those are the kinds of things I'm talking about. Those are the communities where children are the most likely to rise out of poverty, by and large. It's not a technocratic solution, right? It's not like some welfare methodology, but that's where children are most likely

to rise out of poverty. They also show the lowest rates of depression and anxiety, the lowest levels of criminality, the lowest rates of depression and anxiety, the lowest levels of criminality, the lowest levels of alcohol abuse and drug abuse. It turns out that when you network humans in robust, trusting relationships, what you get is human welfare, human health. And it makes perfect sense, right? Because if you're a poor kid and you have no connection to anyone who could maybe give you a job so that you could make a living and be successful in your life. If you're, if you, if you lack a social network to catch you when you fall, that's not just your family, especially if your family is in poverty. If you

lack those things, there's really no way to, to catch you and to help you and to serve you when life hits the rocks. And that's part of my concern about institutions is that institutions, they need trust and we need institutions because without them we don't have human flourishing now that doesn't mean all institutions are good by the way no but you're saying at least at the base level what it what institution institution is it's it's an it's a neutral no it's neutral with the potential of major human flourishing without good good institutions, humans won't flourish. I mean, in a sense, I mean, just the word community is a positive spin on how you're defining

institution in a sense, right? I mean, so a community could be just hanging out in the living room. That's not an institution, but it's some kind of more organized community, for lack of a better term. Well, but think about what happens in your living room, or at least in my living room. I'll use my own house as an example. The people who are coming in and out of my house are largely people who I am networked with inside of a local institution. It might be people that I go to

church with. It might be the people that my wife works with. It might be the people who are on the school board with me. It might be the people, like there's lots of different places where I'm networked into relationships. And those are the natural places that come into my living room. So even my living room isn't divorced from this. I mean, you can even call the family itself an institution, kind of the fundamental atomic building block of institutions. But again, this is why I care.

I mean, like we're in a small city. And one of my favorite things about our church is if you're a refugee, if you're a ex-con who's just going on to parole or just leaving prison, if you're a single mom, if you're homeless and you're looking for services, you're looking for help, you're looking to figure out how do I take my next step in life and not kind of be stuck in place where I'm at. step in life and not kind of be stuck in place where I'm at, there's a good chance the first person you will meet in any of those groups is going to be someone from our church. And that, to me, is an example of a beautiful institution doing beautiful things for a community to, like I just said, help lift people up out of poverty, help reduce levels of depression and anxiety and loneliness. And so that's why I really care about institutions. Let's go back really care about institutions. Let's go back to your Twitter thread. So you're saying that a lot of the criticism was coming from a very anti-institutional mindset. Is that, or was that some of the

people that agreed with you? Because I could see it almost two ways. The anti-institution person could see you as addressing, perhaps even critiquing the institution of Christian journalism or I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Can you, can you unpack how the role of... No, that's super interesting because that was one of the things that did happen. I actually wrote a pretty long form article for a publication about the rise and fall of Mars Hill, leveling some of these critiques against it. And we can get into that podcast specifically in a moment. I pulled it from publication for one simple reason. I was afraid that media operators and other organizations that have all the exact same problems as a Christianity today has. In fact, I think many of them are more entrenched in those problems. I was afraid they were going

to pick this up and use it as ammunition to try to destroy the institution of Christianity today. And I didn't want that. And that was one of the ironic things that happened with my thread. I had people getting on and be like, yeah, this is why I stopped subscribing to Christianity today. This is why I only read first things or American reformer. And I'm sitting here, I'm going, no, no, no, no, no. You have completely missed the point. They all live in the exact same media landscape. And some of those organizations, by the way, have far deeper problems. The reason why I was critical of Christianity today is because I see Christianity today as I see them as fellow travelers.

Like I'm, I think, kind of smack in the middle of the kind of person that Christianity Today wants to reach. And I think it's a august institution with a long history, not a perfect history like any institution, that I want to see flourish and do well. Partially because I think it's kind of like the New York Times of Christianity. It's the news magazine of record. It's the news magazine that is presenting kind of the official picture of what is the church today, especially in the United States and especially for evangelicalism. And so I was writing as a friend, not so much as a foe. And so you're right. Like some people took this as an anti-institutional attack, and that's not what I was trying to do. But on the flip side, there were others who are very skeptical and

cynical about institutions. And to me, that is almost doesn't need to be explored because we are living in quite possibly the most anti-institutional era of human history. Again, I already said it. Like we, we are, you, if you're an institutional leader, especially if you're a church leader, like at this point, everybody's wondering like, where's the Mark Driscoll behind your eyes, ready to punch out and attack me. You know, you have to be proven that you're an institutional leader, especially if you're a church leader, at this point, everybody's wondering, where's the Mark Driscoll behind your eyes ready to punch out and attack me? You have to be proven that you're not guilty before I can assume your innocence. Now, so I'm going to try to play devil's advocate. Well, I kind of have several directions I want to go. Let me begin here.

When I listened to Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. In fact, I was expecting more of a simply one-sided Driscoll bashing. But I was impressed that they did have some nuance. They even had people that were saying, my life was – lives radically changed. And even – this might give me some emails. Do I need any more emails right now? Yes, I do give me some emails. Do I need any more emails right now? Yes, I do. Get the emails.

Even his toxic masculinity stuff, you know, and I rarely use that word. It't masculine they're therefore they weren't good men but they were they weren't courageous they weren't good human like they were they were to their own admission like they were not living good lives and this hyper masculine kind of thing did provoke some kind of stepping up and now again let me it was toxic okay it was bad but i mean like just never talking about how to be a godly man that's not the option too and they would have been left probably with a equally negative life on the other end or whatever i want to make sure i'm really clear with yeah i think i was clear was i clear with that i think i think you're clear i mean it has to be able to say in a vision of toxic masculinity, uh, which, you know, Mark Driscoll

might be the epitome of inside of that toxicity. It's, it's, it's not, it's not unalloyed, uh, toxicity. There's good things that are mixed up in there and those good things can do good things for people. But meanwhile, the toxicity can also do really bad things at the same time. And that's kind of what you're wrestling with, I think. Yeah. And even like, you know, gathering men together. I mean, like being a hard worker is a good virtue. Getting a job is a good virtue. Being a, you know, taking spiritual responsibility for your life is a good virtue. Not blaming everybody for your problems is a good virtue. You know, getting out of your mom's basement at 33 years old, no offense to those who are, if there's a good reason for it, but you know what I mean? Like stepping up and being an adult and being an adult you know so so there was some at least when i listened to that episode where you

just kind of the men's ministry or whatever i'm like oh yeah this is not gonna go well this is gonna spawn toxicity but there's i can pick out some good threads within that and if if the kinds of men that he was drawing in saying that i needed this kick in the butt kind of thing, this tough love, I'm like, oh, there is some good to that too. Let's just do it in a godly Christ-centered way, not in a book of judges sort of way. But we're getting off to a – oh, okay. So I would lean on the side of, you know what, I'm so sick and tired of the abuse of power in the church. I'm so sick and tired of these narcissistic, power-mongering Christian leaders that don't look like Christ. I'm sick and tired of the mean Pied Pipers leading, you know, let's expose it.

Let's blow up the system. You know, you mentioned I'm kind of more on the iconoclastic side. I'm like, yeah, let's just blow the whole thing up, rebuild, you know. So that's where i lean so when i heard the podcast rise and fall mars hill i was like this is good and it was more balanced than i was expecting and i had mike on and mike was a he's i mean i just had one conversation with him he's like amazing guy humble guy he was taking criticism saying yeah i probably could have done better with that i'm like wow that's that's impressive so i'm coming at this with a more of a positive view of... But then you raise the point. What's the statistic? You

said the top of the top 20 read Christianity Today articles in 2022, 17 or something were on abuses in the church. And are we dealing with an 85% open rate? Is that, are we dealing with an 85% open rate? Yeah. Yeah. So it's not, it's, it's, it's not quite that much. Right. So I looked at it and said, and again, partially this is subjective, right? Like what do you qualify?

And I didn't even say that was the interesting thing. I never, I don't know if I ever actually said the word abuse in the entire Twitter thread. I talked about scandal. And I was making the point that, you know, I think 14 of the top 20 were around scandal. And then I made the point, and I'm going to have the number slightly wrong here because I'm not looking at the tweet. I think it was like seven, eight, or nine, somewhere in there, were specifically scandal surrounding celebrities. So it was like you have this broad theme of scandal, specifically celebrities. And then within that, you have an even narrow category that we could probably draw into abuse.

And so I was concerned. In fact, I think we're kind of circling on my concern. It feels like we're caught in a catch-22 right now. On the one hand, to resist public accountability is to court unjust systems that lead to abuse. And so I want reporting on abuse. I mean, full stop. I just want to be crystal clear. We need to talk about this stuff. It needs to be a conversation. We need to think about how we structure our institutions so that they don't become fertile ground for abuse. What a worthwhile conversation. Amen to that. But the other side is that if we continue focusing much of our attention on scandal and abuse on the church, we're also going to welcome a local level institutional extinction

event, right? That leaves people psychologically ill and unnetworked and unconnected. It has all the negative costs of higher levels of loneliness, depression, criminality, drug abuse. I mean, these are the things that come when you tear apart local institutions. And so the problem is that the incentive structures

for local institutions and for these big media organizations, they're diametrically opposed to one another. Not intentionally. I'm not saying that they are, you know, big media orgs are against them. What I mean is when, if you're a big media org, what do you need to survive? You need a captivated audience, not just so that you can sell them ads, so that you can sell them subscriptions because you need revenue. And I'm not wronging that. There's nothing wrong here. But beyond that, you also need clicks, right? Because when people click to your page, they can see advertisements. And again, to have

an engaged audience that wants to continue to pay their subscription fee, you have to give them content that they want. And so they have a vested interest in giving a anti-institutional age, more anti-institutional content, because that's the thing that floats their boat. What do institutions need to survive? They need trust. There's nothing more that we need. We just need trust. And so when you have big media organizations that need clicks, which they get by tearing down trust, and you've got local institutions that need trust to exist, you can begin to understand why the incentive structures for both begin to collide at times and create this catch 22. And I don't even, I don't have a way out of it again, because like I just said, I want abuse coverage. And yet I also understand that if we destroy our

local institutions, there's a big cost. And I talked to so many pastors who said, I mean, here's the interesting thing. I loved the rise and fall of Mars Hill when it came out, I was all about it. And I had a lot of friends who were really critical of it. And I was actually pretty quick to defend it. I was like, no, we need to talk about this stuff. This is going to be healthy and good for the church. My, my attitude towards that podcast began to change in the aftermath. It was, it was kind of the blowback where I started having people come up to me and they were asking me questions as though I was Mark Driscoll, you know, and I'm sitting here thinking, I'm like, whoa, wait a second. Why am I holding the baggage for

a guy whose ministry was 10 years ago, who lived across the country, who has nothing to do with me? Why am I doing that? And it began to make me feel like the podcast was kind of a strip mining. And this is an exaggeration. It was a strip mining operation, right? It's like they came in, they, they, they, they ripped the surface off, they ripped all the minerals out and they got what they needed, which was clicks and views. And I mean, just, this isn't wrong. Just a fact, 20 million downloads in the first six months of that podcast, 10 million viewers. And it's still on Apple's top podcast charts. In fact, if you go to Christianity Today's marketing website, let's say you want to buy ads or sell.

I guess they're selling the ads. So you're buying the ads on Christianity Today. The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill is the marquee. You've got the top marquee, and underneath that is buy ads on the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. So it's still doing really, really well, right? And again, I don't have any problem with that. Right. They need revenue. There's nothing nefarious. And I know some people are going to think any money making is wrong. And I think that's ridiculous.

That's outlandish. But you're beginning to see the problem that I'm running into, because now what am I left with? I'm left with an abandoned strip mine. Everything is eroded. Everything is ugly. Everything's an eyesore. And so the people who listen to this podcast, they hear what happened at Mars Hill and they come to our church or, and again, I talked to lots of pastors, other churches, and they just assume this is another Mars Hill. And so now all of a sudden I have to lead an institution that looks like a strip mine that's eroded. That's an eyesore with people who don't trust me. And I think that's really corrosive to local trust. And that's my main concern is if, if you paint a picture of the church, which is even 50% scandal, scandal, scandal, scandal,

scandal, you can inadvertently, not intentionally, you can give, you can create mistrust inside of the local church. And the person who wins in that situation is the media org. The people who lose is everybody who lives and has their being in these local institutions, which now they feel like they can't trust, or they might disengage from, or they might leave. I mean, that's the cost that I'm talking about. There's so much here. I do want to linger on the financial structure. Are we destroying the institution by reporting on it or are the institutions destroying themselves by participating in abusive behavior that's probably one of the main rubber meat questions right it's i don't think it has to be a both and or i mean i think it can be a both

and i think um of course the if if when every time we read about another pastor falling or whatever, abusing authority, they're to blame for whatever. But if we spent the whole year talking about that and not the thousands of other faithful pastors who literally have given their life to ministry, who wake up every day, pray for their congregation for an hour, are visiting people in the hospital. And if we never report on that, if we only expose the abuse, that is creating, I would say, for the most part, an unintentional, but it is creating a narrative that you're saying does lead to maybe unhealthy forms of skepticism against the institution of the church. That's one point. That's kind of the heart of what you that's one point would you i mean is that is that that's kind of the heart of what you're concerned you're not again you're not at all excusing despite what some twitter people say you're not at all like downplaying or saying we

shouldn't report on this you're just at least raising the genuine question of what do we do when we are creating an unhealthy narrative based on truths but but they are still, you're hand selecting kind of these negative parts of celebrity churches. And we're not, why aren't we reporting on Billy Bob pastor in Indiana? There's actually probably a few Billy Bob pastors who's been faithful for 70 years a minute, or maybe that's, you know,

50 years of ministry who didn't sleep around, didn't abuse authority, who just loved on people, isn't no, did it with that for, you know, 50 years in ministry who didn't sleep around, didn't abuse authority, who just loved on people, did it for no celebrity status, you know? The Eugene Petersons that didn't happen to write the message or a book and just kept doing that kind of ministry in the context of a local church, you know? Yeah, you're making me think early on during COVID, there were some studies that were done to see people's perception of how many people were dying from COVID. studies that were done to see people's perception of how many people were dying from COVID. And amongst people who consumed mostly left-leaning media, I can't remember the exact percentage point, but I think it was something around, they believe that about 10% of the world's population had died to COVID.

And these are smart, intelligent, college-educated people, right? And so how did they come to that conclusion? Well, it wasn't because a news report out there said 10% of the world has died from COVID. It was because they were seeing so much reporting about COVID deaths that it gave them the impression that people were literally dying everywhere. And that's part of my concern in the midst of this is, yes, let's talk about abuse in the church. Yes, let's work on restructuring, but how bad of a problem is this really? And if I can pull on a thread here, one of the interesting

things that we also have to ask is the simple question. When you look at these top articles, the vast majority are about celebrities. And I just have to say, celebrity churches are entirely different from normal churches in about every imaginable way. The best celebrity churches, they try to model themselves like non-celebrity churches. And, and that really matters, right? Because even with like the Mark Driscoll thing, I'm like, yes, this is great. If you're listening to the podcast and you're a pastor and you're saying, Hey, where's the Mark Driscoll inside of me? And you're self-reflecting and you're thinking, okay, how can I change? How can I be transformed by listening to this? Wow. What a wonderful use of that podcast. But on the other side, you're not going to learn a ton because you don't have

a media empire. You don't have a church of 10 to learn a ton because you don't have a media empire. You don't have a church of 10,000 plus people. You don't have an elder board that's professionalized and whose job is to kind of keep you in the public eye. And so there's things you can learn from it, but in terms of like your local church of, you know, two, 300 people that you're pastoring, it's so radically different that even the lessons you draw may not be totally applicable to your situation. And why the, and again, this is why it concerns me. It comes down to the question of even in our abuse reporting,

we're fixated on celebrities. The things that are most newsworthy to us today aren't the abuse that happened at the little 300 person church. And I might actually, by the way, learn something from the abuse that happened at that little 300 person church because my church is closer to that church than it is to Mark Driscoll's church. We're not hearing those stories because the ones that get clicks, the ones that get attention are these celebrity narratives. And again, if you look through those top articles,

not all of them, but a good portion of them center around celebrities. Why would you bring it back to the financial structure that you need clicks to make money, which I want to just leave that as a neutral observation. I agree. I mean, I personally have some serious questions, but let's just say that that's just... It is what it is. You need clicks to financially keep... And I don't want to keep picking on CT, but for example, they need people to buy their magazine, right?

They sell, I've advertised on CT and you pay a buttload of money to put a little ad in their newsletter. Why? Because they have hundreds of thousands of people in the newsletter. It's just, it is what it is. So, I mean, but I do want to raise a question of like, what are people wanting to click on? And don't we know from, there's been studies done on this

right you're the expert in this area like that things like anger and and and outrage like that that is a may like a major motivation for people to click and keep clicking and and and get get sucked into the vortex of whatever media outlet that they're playing with is that has that been shown by the data oh yeah well okay so here's an interesting example, nothing to do with Christian media. The New York Times actually has an internal organization whose job it is to use surveys and some other things to, over time, determine the emotional reaction that different news stories will elicit in people. They then, so maybe this is going to make you happy or sad or angry or cynical, whatever the feeling is.

Then they go to advertisers and they say, hey, what do you want your ad to be on? Do you want to sell your product to someone who's angry about something, to someone who's cynical, to someone who's happy? And you can imagine, depending on your product, knowing the emotions of the person who's reading the piece could be a huge, I mean, it's a hot lead, right? You know that you can sell to that person. And so, yes, emotions are really at the core of what we do. I think my bigger problem in the midst of this, in one of the big pushbacks I got is that people said, look, CT can't control what their audience clicks. Like that's not their fault. So, so you can be critical of them and say, look at their top 20 most clicked articles, but they didn't choose that. And I understand the point. It

strikes me as being incredibly naive about how digital media works. That's kind of this idea where it's just the popular stuff rises to the top and it's no one's fault. What you have to understand is that in our current media environment, and I could go into a lot of depth about this, current media environment, and I could go into a lot of depth about this. It is designed to do a number of things. Number one, it's designed to target people and to target individual people. It needs to track people. So they use things called cookies and then pixels. The pixels allow them to connect what they're doing to places like Google and Facebook. And so that they can reach those people on their sites. And now like Christianity Today or Christian Post or whatever it is, they can reach people wherever they're at. And now like Christianity Today or Christian Post or whatever it is, they can reach people

wherever they're at. And they use things called funneling, which is essentially looking at what's the normal journey from someone who's never been on our website all the way down to subscriber, all the way down to regular reader, right? And they're tracking everything you do on their website. And they're designing content to funnel you down to the bottom of the funnel, because that makes you their most lucrative user, audience member is someone who's regularly reading. And again, I think this is neutral. Okay. I think it can be used ethically and

unethically, but what I can say is this is the norm. Yeah. It's neutral, but it is, it does raise questions, which it should. It's like, wow. Okay. It is is what it is but is this okay i think at least being aware should cause us to pause a little bit right i mean that's yeah well it makes me think of um was it lbj the the who coined the phrase the military industrial complex which spawned a lot of people's you know saying wait a minute i think it was uh eisenhower eisenhower yeah and and a lot of people have kind of said wait a minute are and i can't i can't um well i think this has been shown i think it's pretty shown i don't have the data in front of me because i'm just thinking of this off the top of my head but like you know our our economy is so wrapped up in the military that we kind of need a war like financially yes a country has this been i mean maybe some people will say yes and

i don't know but um if that's so my i guess my point with the analogy is finding dirt or exposing not finding but exposing well yeah finding and exposing dirt scandal abuse in the church is has become a primary revenue stream ultimately good i'm not saying that's bad, but we have to at least acknowledge like, ooh, if you need scandal to survive, then do you really want scandals to go away? What would happen if we solved all the abuse and scandal in the church? Would a popular Christian magazine that is often reporting on this stuff and making money off of reporting on it, again, not saying that's bad, but saying that's just an observation, not an argument. Could we at least say, ooh, there could be some conflict of interest here? That might not, there might be some unhealthiness there.

Well, I think it's a great question. And, you know, obviously you've got kind of news outlets that are entirely about abuse and scandals. Like I'm thinking of something like Julie Roy's, for example, you know, and if that's what your thing is, like as a news organization is we report about abuse and scandal in the church, part of me is like, okay, that's fine. Like, that's great. The question is every news magazine, every newspaper has a different mission, a different goal. And, you know, some most Christian news magazines, Christianity Today included, see themselves as being for the church. They're trying to tell the story of the church. And that's where it's like, you're not Julie Royce. Okay. That's not, that's not your mission and your goal. That's her mission, her goal. And there's a value and a place for that. So I'm not

critiquing her. But if you need more abuse and scandal, if you need to find more of it now, I want to be really clear. Cause you know, I've had the chance to talk to the president of CT and, you know, he was the first person to tell me we get more leads. I can't remember the number he gave me. He goes, you would be shocked the amount of leads we get. And we report on very, very little of those leads. He's like, we might choose to invest, you know, in 10 different abuse stories and only end up reporting five of them. Right. So if we have a picture of Christianity today, as an example, where they're just reporting every piece of scandal they can get, I think that's a false picture. Where I get really concerned here is, is, is a, it has to do something called audience capture. It's a way in

which your audience begins to shape the content that you write. So it goes back to this whole thing of like, you're constantly tracking your audience, you know what they're doing. And so these news orgs, everyone that I know of, um all have data analysts on their team. And their job is literally to cull through all the data that their website is gathering in. And then, again, say, hey, here's how here's the user journey people go on. And then take those insights both to marketing and to editorial. That's where it gets interesting, because now all of a sudden, editorial is being told, hey, this piece did really well. And it led to these results. And we need to do more of that because we need more of these kinds of results. And so now, all of a sudden, so like people think that like advertisers control, you know, media and they're totally wrong.

Audience controls media. Advertisers just want access to that audience. Audience capture is when the audience begins to shape what's happening inside of the newsroom. And the trouble with these incentive structures is that they're often invisible, right? Like no one's actually sitting down and saying, Hey, let's let the audience decide what we report on today. But you build systems that force you to do that. So you don't have to talk about it. And then accidentally or incidentally end up doing it. And again, I'm not, I'm not trying to throw CT under the bus, just an example. You know, I looked at mentions of abuse in the exact year

prior to the rise and fall of Mars Hill. And they had something, I think it was like around 110 mentions of abuse in the year before that podcast came out. And then I looked at their, this is using their onboard search function. And then I looked at the year directly after the rise and fall of Mars Hill, after their kind of quote unquote conclusion episode. I know we came up with later episodes later. That number over doubled in the next year and went up to something like 240 mentions of abuse in the following year. Now that could be totally incidental. I'll tell you what it's not. It's not that there was more abuse in that year. In the year before the rise and fall of Mars Hill, you had Ravi Zacharias, you had Kanaka camps, you had

the Hillsong stuff with Carl Lentz, you had the John Ortberg stuff, you had all of those scandals happen in the year before. So it wasn't for a lack of scandal, but that's why when I say like, I'm getting concerned about what audiences are clicking, it's audiences aren't, it's not an accident that audiences see what they see. It's not an accident that they're clicking on what they're clicking on. Part of that's out of your control. I totally admit that. But also when you begin to realize you catch fire with an amazing podcast that is all about scandal. And then the year afterwards, your mentions of abuse double like that. Just I think to the rational person, it just raises some red flags of what's driving the coverage here. And again,

it's coming from me as somebody who says, I want I want to talk about abuse. I think abuse is important. I don't think abuse is a good business strategy. I was just thinking I could probably make a ton of money if I did a series. So I went to like, um, well, you know, I'm not going to mention it because that, that lawyer is going to do the series now. Let me, let me just say like, you know, we, we all have, you know, if you've been part of a organization, of a organization, you know, whatever, like there's going to be pros and cons. And if there's been bad experiences and if you just went and really just created a narrative, narrative based on facts, like you can. What if you did? If somebody wrote a biography of my life and just highlighted all the fights I had with my wife, all the times I yelled at my kids,

all the time I said something just so stupid on social media. And if that's all you reported on, those are all facts. They could be 100% true. But if that's what you highlighted only, I would be a monster. And maybe I am. But that's this tension of you can say, create something that's factually true, but then create a narrative that is completely or largely one-sided would even be a minor way of putting it. Like you've created another person or another – it's actually not factually true even though you're reporting on facts because you're so selective in what you're reporting on. Is that true? I'm kind of thinking out loud here, but I mean, is that something that journalists, it's well known in journalism? I mean, I don't know. Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're hitting on something key, which is what, I want to ask people, what's your framework for the church? Like, how do you think about the institution

of the church? And if the lens through which you look at all church activity is abuse and scandal, like, like you're kind of coming in, uh, with where's the abuse happening? Is this relationship manipulative? Um, it's, you're going to see different things than you would see if you came into it saying, uh, the church is the bride of Christ and it's full of sin and problems and abuse that we need to address, but it's also full of beauty and glory and goodness. And we need to see all of it. And I'm not accusing by the way, CT or any organization of saying that I'm just saying when abuse becomes the framework for our engagement with the church, when scandal becomes the framework, we'll see things differently.

We'll describe things differently. We'll call things scandal that maybe shouldn't be called scandal. I mean, you and I've talked a bit about the whole Matt Chandler thing, but I think it's kind of a case in point. Again, I don't know, Matt. And so I have really no interest in saying like, Hey, this is what I think about the issues. I wasn't there. But what struck me in the midst of it is I thought, again, not knowing any of the details, I thought, wow, they actually just did the thing that everybody says you're supposed to do, right? Something bad happened. They immediately took it to the elders. They had an outside group come in and look at it and give them their findings. And then they acted on that group's findings to make a decision for him to have to step down for

a period and come back. Um, and so I'm looking at that saying, well, I mean, isn't this what everybody wanted, you know? And yet it's, I think the number two, you know, scandal story or number three scandal story on a major Christian news magazine. And I'm sitting here thinking like, well, where's the positive story of like, Hey, here were some good things that they did. And again, people are going to get on me and they go, now you're defending this guy. I'm like, I don't even know this guy. I'm just, I'm just observing. Okay. And I've already said too much publicly about that, but yeah, that, that even in the, uh, even in the montage of, I think it was on your Twitter feed, it was like a montage of like CT articles.

He's in the montage. See, I saw that. I'm like, okay, already I'm like, yeah, I've like this pastor raped, you know, this person, you know, whatever. And this person talks and this person is narcissistic and this and then Matt Chandler. And they're like, whoa, whoa, hold the phone. Are we just lumping all these together? First of all, that's just lazy journalism.

And it's actually, I mean, I would say, I would say, I mean, I've previewed it in more information than some people may have. They're just dishonest and unchristian. And I don't want to go into details about that. But I mean, that's just like, at least do a little more actual journalism and investigation into the things you're just kind of like lumping together. And yeah, that's the

challenge for journalists. You know, I mean, my guess is that the village wasn't going to go and talk to people in journalism. Again, this is part of living in an anti-institutional age. If you are an institution and you're caught in a situation like this, you really don't have a lot of choices, you know, about what you're going to say publicly, because again, you're caught in a situation like this, you really don't have a lot of choices, you know, about what you're going to say publicly, because again, you're already guilty until proven innocent and chances are you can't prove your innocence because you need to probably protect the identity of other people involved. This is part of institutional life. And again, I'm just, I'm trying to state the catch 22 here. One, one, one institution needs clicks. And in an

anti-institutional age where the audience captures the media, the thing that gets clicks is going to be scandal. That's just what we want. We want more, more, more, more scandals goes to the whole, you know, failure important thing. That's what people want. And so that's what we end up giving them, whether or not we're intending to give it to them. But the catch 22 is that the local churches, not talking about Matt Chandler, just the local churches that are healthy and normal. And of course they have bad things happen, bad things happen in every place, but I'm just saying normal, healthy churches, they, they end up holding the baggage for these celebrities or for these other denominations or whatever, uh,

that they have nothing to do with. And you know how hard it is to prove a negative? Like if someone comes into my office and says like, prove to me you're not a bully, how do you do that? I mean, we're laughing, but it's actually really hard to prove. And I talked to so many pastors, like I feel like I'm trying to prove to everyone that I'm not a big jerk all the time. And I can't, because you can't prove a negative.

It's just like, well, have you spent time with me? And that's why I always say like, well, have you ever seen me be a jerk? Like, do I do jerkish things? Is there something I need to repent of? No, no, it's just like, well, have you spent time with me? Like, and that's what I always say. Like, well, have you ever seen me be a jerk? Like, do you do it? Do I do jerkish things or something you need to repent of? No, no. It's just, you know, you never know what happens behind closed doors. Like with Mark Driscoll, a lot of this stuff was secret. And I'm like, I'm not Mark Driscoll. I don't know what to tell you, but that's not me. You know? And if it is me, like, tell me and bring it to the light and let's confess and let's deal with it there. But I'm not that guy.

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Do you have, okay, so we've been doing a lot of deconstructing. In your mind, do you have a reconstructed version of healthy journalism that would actually survive? I mean, that's, is there another more, I don't know the right word, better way to get clicks while exposing scandal when there's scandal and yet not feeding off of the masses' desire for scandal or whatever, outrage over scandal? You know, is there a better way in your mind that may or may not work? Maybe it's just an idea, but I mean, what would be the better version of what we already have? Yeah, I mean, if I was going to pull on two threads or maybe three threads and we can look at each one of those, one would just be talking about celebrity coverage. I think that has a real bearing on this conversation. Um, another thread would have to be, I w is it's what I would call responsible mining. You know, I already use the strip mining, uh, idea, responsible mining. And then the third one would just have to do with this whole audience capture thing. So I don't know if, which of those threads do you want to talk about?

Let's do the first one. Yeah, let's go in order. Those are all good. Okay. So I think the celebrity one, again, remember, because most of the scandals that we're talking about, these abuse scandals, they're about celebrities. The SBC would be the big exception to that. And that's something that I definitely want reported on. I want talked about.

That's actually something churches really can learn from. I read through a lot of those documents from the SBC. I learned a lot from them. So I'm like clapping my hands. This is fantastic. Now, CT didn't really break that story. It's actually the Houston Chronicle several years ago that broke it, you know, so, so we're not, we're not necessarily breaking new coverage. That's a great example, but see, it's not celebrity focused. I mean, there's celebrities involved because it's the SBC, um, but it's not celebrity focused. focused. Here's what I find interesting about celebrities. If you go back to the earliest newspaper in the United States, you can find it. It was published

one time a month. It was a monthly newspaper. And I love it because the publisher said something like it was like, and if there happens to be a glut of occurrences, perhaps we'll publish more frequently. About a hundred years later, the first daily newspaper is released in the United States. So this is the 1700s. About a hundred years after that, American interest in news becomes insatiable. And you begin to see newspapers like the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. It was an evening newspaper that released seven extras every single day. Now, why does this matter? Because it comes fundamentally down to the question of what's newsworthy. Like there was a time when people thought there weren't enough newsworthy occurrences in a single month to justify having another newspaper.

But then 200 years later, there's so much happening. There's so many events that we need seven newspapers in a single day just to cover what's happening in Philadelphia, you know, in a single, in a single city. And so what this means is that journalists, they need stories. If you've got to fill pages, you have to have stories. And this is how we get modern celebrities in the ancient world. You didn't have celebrities. You kind of had heroes and people rose to the surface. Your celebrities didn't come from newspapers. They came from the folk, like the stories that folk told one another. And now we have this prefab because people demand fame. They demand, you know, a new literary masterpiece every year, a new, you know,

crazy event every evening. We need people to fill our pages and celebrities are designed to do exactly that. They create pseudo events that are quote unquote newsworthy. They're great at drawing attention to themselves. And as they get more attention, their lives just de facto become more newsworthy, right? The more attention we give them, the more interested we are in what it is that they do. And so that's how we get the modern day celebrity. It really is a symbiosis between news media and its need for pages and newspapers or pages on, you know, digital pages and the celebrity. Now, why I think this really matters when it comes to Christianity is that, let's just take Mark Driscoll as an example.

In his first seven years of ministry, CT mentioned him five times. That's it. But he had a knack for getting attention, right? He knew how to do the pseudo event. He knew how to be the pseudo person. He was the cussing pastor. He was the drinking pastor. He was the, you know, just crazy out there pastor. And then in 2006, something shifted. He got a

primetime spot on TGC and now he's really kind of a full bore celebrity. Um, he's the guy. And I think over the next six years or seven years of his ministry, he was mentioned by CT 108 times, including, including a full length piece detailing his detailing his life. Now, when we look at his life and the downstream cost for institutions, the news media created Mark Driscoll. There's no way around it. You wouldn't know who Mark Driscoll was if he didn't get as much attention as he got. And that wasn't Christianity Today exclusively. It was the whole apparatus of news media making him a thing. And the downstream effects was that you got all of these male pastors who decided that they wanted to be, you know, terse, jerkish, let's do discipline, you know, spiritual trials. They all began to mimic him because we are mimetic creatures.

We want to copy. So here's what happens. Christianity Today helps create this monster, this celebrity monster. Institutions copy him and that creates unhealthy institutions downstream. And then he has this plagiarism scandal followed by, you know, internet bullying. And then it turns out he's bullying everybody in his life and the whole thing comes undone. And then the next seven years after that scandal, Christianity Today mentioned him, I think it was something like 126 times, culminating in a podcast. Now here's what's interesting. Who wins in this whole picture? Well, when he's being created, the news media wins because they've got stories and he wins because he's a celebrity.

Institutions lose because they're following a loser. Okay. Who wins when he falls? Well, now he's not winning, right? But who's winning? The news media is because it turns out we like to consume celebrities as much as we like to mimic celebrities. And so they're able to produce all of these articles.

And who's the loser in this situation? Well, it's all the institutions downstream who are left holding the baggage because everybody thinks you're just like Mark Driscoll And so we can't talk about the problem of scandal and how to report on abuse Properly without dealing with the problem that the vast majority of the coverage is about celebrities celebrities created by the media and then consumed by the media and again who holds the baggage it's the institutions and So one thing I would just say is like, what's healthy reporting look like? Stop talking about celebrities so much. December's Christianity Day had Bono on the front cover. Stop talking about celebrities

so much. You create them, they create bad downstream effects and you consume them and that creates bad downstream effects. Stop talking about them. We don't need to talk about them. Now that's going to be hard for you because every incentive structure is pointed in the opposite direction. That's what I'm saying. Like how, from a, just from a raw business perspective, the guy crunching the numbers at the end, you stop talking about celebrities. And then I would assume the numbers are going to go down and then people at the top of it, Hey, all right, we need to do something different. You know, let's, let's, you know, I, and so I, again, I think there's potentially deeper roots there. And maybe some of the roots are, let me refer to them as potential celebrity churches choosing not to become a celebrity church.

I've got a friend of mine. Many of you probably won't even know who he is. Britt Merrick, son of Al Merrick, one of the most world-renowned surfboard shapers. Merrick surfboards are global. When I went to Tahiti, the fact that I knew the son of Al Merrick, they were blown away. Anyway, he was a son, Britt Merrick. Do you even know who Britt Merrick is? Do you know that name?

Probably not. No. he was a son brit merrick like whoa do you even know who brit merrick is do you know that name probably not okay no yeah so he he um he's been he was a pastor for about 20 years out in the santa barbara carpenteria area um i mean a vibrant vibrant multi-site church doing crazy good work like one of those guys saw in the gospel amazing preacher wrote some books, just a great, just so well-rounded, reaching people, like, you know, like aware of the culture, but like still solid in the gospel kind of person, you know, but he chose, and he had, you know, they would podcast their sermons. They, and I, I'm pretty sure this is still true. Like they chose to not publicize their sermons after like early on. They did for a little bit and then they just said, you know what, we want to focus on our church. And he could have become a national kind of figure. I mean, he had that kind of those kind of gifts and he chose to not. First of all, he's kind of, he's just like an introvert. He just

doesn't care about that stuff. He's kind of anti, you know, so he deliberately went against that. Now, some people, here's the big pushback to that. It's like, wait, wait, if he's speaking truth, get it out there, right? I wonder if we should at least raise questions about that. And here I am on a podcast where my whole design is to reach people, right? if local churches should at least be sensitive to are we doing things that could be fueled by really good motives but could be feeding a celebrity culture that is leading to some of the problems we're creating i don't have the answer i don't know i don't know what the other option is or whatever like i don't want to i don't think i want to say all churches take

yourself down offline people get saved all over the place by listening to sermons online you know um have you thought about that i mean is there when driscoll is being created by cds i say hey, all churches, take your stuff down offline. People get saved all over the place by listening to sermons online. Have you thought about that? I mean, is there, when Driscoll is being created by CTS, he's not saying, no, don't report on me. I mean, that's a bad case because he obviously wanted all that, but I don't know. No, I think, of course, there's an institutional responsibility to say, hey, what's the job of our local pastor

and what do we want him to be doing or not doing? To me though, and I could be wrong, I think that kind of gets the responsibility upside down, right? Because like your buddy, he doesn't have the power to make himself a celebrity. Yeah, he could put his sermons up and maybe that would just be the thing that launches him into the stratosphere. But the only way you become a celebrity is someone has to pay attention to you. Someone has to write about you. Someone has to give you a platform and a place to speak. And again, I want to be really clear. I don't think all Christian celebrities are bad. I just don't think we maybe need as many as we do. And I actually think the rise and fall of Mars Hill

illustrates, we got to be really careful about the time at which in someone's life, they become famous because it can be really toxic for them internally. Like those are all really valid questions. Um, but I, I, I've kind of moved towards this model of thinking the church would be a lot healthier if we just had, I call them middle-class creators. If we just had a lot of like middle tier, like they're known in their little circle, but no one else knows who they are. Right. It's like, yeah. And their little circle people know who they are and they're having an interesting conversation, but they're not, they're not a nationwide name. They're not someone that everybody knows. And again, to Christianity Today's credit, I do think they have made an active effort to reduce the amount of celebrity coverage that

they're doing. And I think that's largely from, you know, their own reflections on these issues. And I do think that they're trying to create platforms for people who are kind of in that middle-class category of, yeah, you're not super well known, but you have wisdom and helpful thoughts. And that's why I don't want to get rid of celebrities. Like I want to be who I am without Tim Keller. You know, his work has been so influential on me personally. And I don't want to get up here and say, gosh, get rid of Tim Keller. Cause he, he made things awful for me. I just want to say that we need to have some, uh, we need to have a tempered approach to celebrities and, and understanding that the people who make celebrities really, really, it's not even the folk, it's not the church, it's the news. That's the place where celebrities get

made. Okay. So going back to your, I guess my original question from five minutes ago, like, what's the better model? Um, we talked about one of your, a couple of points. What was the second one that you touched on? I think the second one is, it's what I called responsible mining. Okay. Strip mining is kind of, you come in, you rip the surface off,

you get everything you can, and then you just leave behind something eroded and ugly. Responsible mining is you go into the mountain, and I'm not a miner, so sorry to all the miners out there, and this can be a terrible metaphor. You don't ruin the environment and the ecology around the mine, right? You go into one spot where you know the minerals are and you take them. And so when I think about scandal and abuse reporting, I think it's really important to, one, make sure that

you're making it clear, hey, this is in one place, in one time, and this is one kind of singular issue that we're dealing with. And not making overwrought statements about this being pervasive in the church or everywhere in the church, right? That's one thing. But the other thing is, this goes to the don't rip off the surface. A lot of people have asked reporters and others at places like Christianity Today, A lot of people have asked reporters and others at places like Christianity Today, hey, why don't you guys report more positive stories about the church? Right? Like, why don't you do it?

And I just have to say, I am totally underwhelmed by the responses to those questions. You know, I've heard responses that are along the lines of, well, you know, churches in America have historically given too much authority to pastors. This is just their reckoning. They're going to kind of have to live with it. And I'm like, well, I'm not concerned about pastors. I'm concerned about people who can't trust their institutions. Right. Like, or I've heard people say like, look, Jesus is the glorious one. So let's focus on him and we'll deal with our own sin. I'm like, well, yeah, I want to deal with our own sin, but like Jesus also loves the bride and we need to tell beautiful,

true stories about the bride. And if you want to have healthy institutions, you need to give models of healthy institutions in the public eye so that we know who to be like. Because again, we're memetic creatures. We copy and we follow what other people do. And so part of the strip mining is like, you can't, if all you do, if your primary focus on the church is negative, that's a huge problem.

I mean, even looking at CT's top 10 stories that made them smile, you know, I counted through them and I think three of them mentioned the local church. Now I don't expect all of them to mention the local church, but the majority really weren't about that. And so that's where I'm just saying, Hey, you need to do both. If you're going to have a 20 million downloaded podcast in six months, like where's the podcast that's telling a beautiful story of the church, right? Like you have this amazing gift, Mike Hosper, for telling stories. That wouldn't get the clicks though, right? I mean, in theory, I'm like, yeah, of course, let's not stop reporting on the scandal. Let's just maybe do more reporting on the positive.

But my guess is they wouldn't make the top 20 list the next year. I don't think. Maybe that's, maybe, I don't know. I mean, just would they, maybe it depends on how you do it. Um, yeah, you know, and so I think that, that relates to the third string, which is audience capture. And that has to do with who you see as being your core audience, right? If your core audience is going to be people who are deeply anti-institutional, who are deeply skeptical of the church, that's fine. That's your audience. That's going to shape the kinds of stories that you tell. If you see your audience as pastors, church leaders, people who are deeply committed to the church, they are going

to be interested in a different kind of story than the anti-institutional bunch. I also get the sense with some media organizations that it depends which side you're on. There's media organizations on the right who are always afraid of people further to the right of them. And then there's always, there's always media organizations that are kind of on the left and they're always afraid of people to the left of them. And, um, what I'm seeing in a lot of Christian media orgs is the latter. Well, I'm actually seeing both. I shouldn't say it's one or the other. It's like, they're afraid if they don't do like a kind of full Monty strip mining operation, someone further left them is going to come along and say, see, now you're enabling abuse in the church. And I want to say to them, no, like you need to take that hit. You're doing the reporting. You're the journalist. Do it responsibly. Do it really, really well. OK, and take the hit of you didn't go far enough.

Don't pass that hit down to the local institutions that had nothing to do with any of this to begin with. Oh man. But I mean, we're hitting on the catch 22, right? Like that's what makes this whole thing so challenging. One institution needs clicks and it needs attention to survive. The other institution, the church needs trust to survive. And I want to say both those institutions really matter. I want reporting on abuse, and yet I also want healthy local institutions. The one thing I will say is this, given the moment, the era in which we live, of just deep cynicism and mistrust about institutions, I think it calls Christian

journalists to be more careful about the way they attack institutions than they would be in, let's say, the 1950s when everybody trusted their institutions and believed in their institutions. In that environment, maybe it'd be a lot more important to go the extra mile and really deconstruct what's happening inside of the institution. Do you see a problem? We haven't really touched on this, but well it kind of touched on it but just even the well like i mentioned you know hand selecting facts can build a narrative but what about just some of the sloppy journalism as a whole and i say that as one who you know the few times i've been on you know the subject of a piece you know um i'm like that ain't accurate at all like you know i i know several good friends in in

who were part of ravi the ravi zacharias inside deep you know good friends and um the way even that's been reported on obviously ravi the abuser through and through you know but then some of the other people kind of swept up into that i'm like that's not actually accurate like you're mishandling you have not taken the time to do the the hard work of quote-unquote unbiased journalism you're just trying to like it sounds like you're just trying to like ride this story further well that's about you know you're you're trying to sweep other people in into this that and misreporting on stuff that's just not accurate, you know, and I don't need I'm not trying to want to give specifics because, again, I'm not. Yeah, but I don't know.

I haven't seen really good handling of a story like that, you know, across the board. But yeah. And, you know, again, I think I think abuse coverage is incredibly challenging. I think journalists are often up against a wall because the people who could tell the quote unquote full story or other side of the story in a complex situation often won't talk to journalists, right? And so you end up in a situation where the only people they have access to are people on one side of the particular issue. And I mean, I could point at a few stories where that's happened. You know, my sense reading a lot of the journalism that comes out of, you know, Christianity Today is I actually think they've got really fantastic journalists who do a really,

really good job in general with their reporting. And I really appreciate it. And so I don't really, I too have experienced, you know, someone writing about something that, you know, about me and me reading and be like, whoa, that is not at all accurate or true or what I was trying to communicate. And I wonder if that's just like the nature of someone writing about you. Like no one's going to say, describe you the way that you want to be described. Um, but I do think like there's a call for, for journalists to be responsible in like the other incentive structure that we have not gotten onto. and I hesitate to say it because you end up casting aspersions on individual people. And that's not my goal here, um, is in the Twitter verse, which is where most journalists live. I mean, literally the Washington post has a person on their staff whose job it is to work with reporters, to, to put their stuff onto social media in the most viral way possible. to social media in the most viral way possible. And reporters, they get captured by their own audience, right? Like, I mean, I've experienced, it's like a hit, you know, a little dopamine

burst in my mind when tons of people are retweeting something or liking. And so is it a shocker, by the way, that if people keep retweeting and liking all of your stuff about scandal or this particular topic, that you as a reporter are now even more incentivized, maybe not to report more stories, but to talk about it more frequently, to use it as your framework. Again, I won't name names, but like I think of a reporter at a Christian news agency who I looked at and I saw this happen. They didn't report much on abuse and they did something that got, you know, a lot of hits and attention. And in the following year, their mentions of abuse doubled, right? Now I promise that wasn't conscious on their part, on that individual's part, but it's just a fact like it did. And that's the hard part here is you

as a journalist also are a person who probably, whether or not you want to admit it, want some level of attention. And that's going to drive your coverage and your writing because you want to appeal to an audience who wants to share your stuff. And so again, like I think for a newsroom, it'd be really important to have very frank trainings and conversations around audience capture, not just the way that the, that the news magazine or the newspaper gets captured by the audience, but the way that individual reporters can get captured by their audience and become what their audience wants, as opposed to being interested in reporting on the truth. You know, so again, it's an interesting conversation to have. But it's just, it's a fact, like when you do one of these pieces or podcasts, it does really well. I've looked again and again, cause I'm just that kind of

person. Your, your Twitter followers explode, your engagement gets huge, you know, and what comes downstream from that in the form of book deals or fame or notoriety or speaking engagements, that's not small. And you can't pretend like it doesn't affect you. You should just be frank and say, yeah, this was weird that my Twitter followers doubled and that I got all these speaking engagements and now I'm making more money than I've made before, you know, because I did this thing. I mean, just in the publishing world, one of the first things they ask is, all right, give us your platform, Twitter followers, Facebook, Instagram, are you on TikTok, website view? I mean, it's like, and, and, you know, again, and I'm not, if I was in their shoes,

I'd probably be, you know, like we need to sell books. Who's going to buy your book? If you're a big name person, all right, you got the, you already got the name. If you're not, you know, well, how are people going to find this? You know, um, what is it now? I um what is it now say any book best book you know yeah but who's going to read it like who's going to get who's going to figure who's going to find it you know and i yeah that i've noticed like back and when i first was on twitter i i was uh i was it was kind of like the you know more of the wild west just kind of say provocative stuff i used to literally i used to say i said i used to... I used to just play with Twitter. Like, I would say stuff that I know

would pull people out of the woodwork with anger so that I can mute them. Because I'm like, I feel like muting some people today. So I'd say something like... Or I'd say something like, I want to find out where the envelope is. Like, I'd push the envelope really far

over something I was thinking about. And then when it went too far, I get all this like... I'm like, okay. So I went a little too far. Thank you. Appreciate it. I'm going to pull back just a little bit for my actual publication. So I would just use it and just really...

Now I look back, I'm like, dude, I... I almost didn't even realize that there's people out there listening. But I would get way, way more. When I when i have as many followers i do now we get way more retweets and likes and views and all this stuff and now i get hardly anything because i'm like hey here's a podcast i did with you know patrick you know um and it's uh when you're yeah when you're provocative when you say things that make one side that's another another thing. If you play into the polarization. If I said something on Twitter that very clearly was an attack on the right, those to the right of me, whatever that even means, all kinds of more left-leaning, you know, like the mob, right? They would just love it or vice versa, you know.

I could easily, I could do a tweet right now. I'd probably get thousands of likes and retweets because I know what's going to do that. I just don't do that anymore. First of all, because it's stupid, but it's... I also don't like, to your point, like I'm like, we're all, this is all, the whole thing's kind of rigged. This is me in my more cynical moments. This machine's rigged. Do I want to be another pawn in this rigged machine and play into that

system that's been created? Maybe unintentionally created, but I think there's some people behind the curtain pulling some strings too. And I don't want to... I don't know. I don't want to be a pawn in your moneymaking scheme too. It's kind of my attitude now. So I'm going to post vanilla stuff. And one thing I do on Instagram, i click on otter videos and you know just so my algorithms are all screwed up now i got like people on the black market trying to sell me otters you know but not really it's a good joke but you know but it's i i i'm so averse to being used by some system that i don't like that anyway no i think that's i think there's a lot of truth to that and and that's where i'm trying to be self-reflective. The best response is I've experienced the exact same thing. I mean, I just

told you like the things that go viral, the things I would never choose to go viral. And I often end up regretting that I ever said the thing to begin with, um, which is kind of your point. And I think part of it, you know, for me personally is even with the tweet we're talking about, I didn't think I was someone that people were really paying much attention to at all. So I thought I'm just a dude on the internet saying crap and like, that's not true. And so now I'm like, okay, I have to take that, that responsibility seriously. Um, because I'm not just some random dude, I guess. Um, but more importantly that the best response I got to my tweet, which is very critical of me, this response was, uh, it was by, uh, I think, uh, Joey Cochran, who's a really thoughtful guy and he said

he said patrick you know it's turtles all the way down and what he's talking about was there used to be this like uh mythological idea that the whole world was on the back of a turtle and like so everybody's like we're all on the back of this giant turtle and which of course led to the question is like well but what's that turtle standing on right because we're trying to figure out what we're on we're on top of the turtle what's it on and but what's that turtle standing on? Right. Cause we're trying to figure out what we're on. We're on top of the turtle. What's it on? And the answer was, well, it's on top of another turtle. Well, what's that turtle on? Well, it's on top of another turtle. And so it's just turtles all the way down. Right? Like that's your explanation of the cosmos is like, it's just more turtles. Right. And his point in saying that to me was I can talk about the

digital incentive structures for these news magazines. I can talk about the digital incentive structures for reporters, but it's turtles all the way down because they're exactly the same for me. Right. We're all, we're all kind of in the exact same universe. We're all living in the exact same incentive structures. And so it's easy to, you know, for me to point the gun at, you know, the, the, the, the, the news media organization is doing something that I don't like. And yet all of those exact same problems that I'm critiquing are true in my own heart. And I have to live within those exact same structures. And so that's why, again, for me, I just look at this and I say, look, I don't know if we can call them neutral because I think there are some definitely bad things about these

structures. I think the best thing we can do is be aware of them and be frank about the way that they're shaping our thinking and our reactions and try to set up guardrails in both our personal lives and in our institutional lives to prevent the excesses that come from those incentive structures. You cannot do that if you are unaware of them or if you deny them. And that's one of my big concerns with Christian media in general right now, is that, first of all, Christians have no idea, generally speaking, what those incentive structures are.

They don't even realize, like, when I go to this website, I'm being tracked and all the information is being given to Google and Meta. And yet it is. Trust me. I can show you. Right? Like, this stuff's all happening to you. You have no idea. And so as a result, we're really naive.

And so that's why I just want these organizations to be frank and open and say, yeah, we track you. We have funneling systems. We get ad revenue. We need to make sure that you're subscribed. We're tempted to give you things that you want because that's what's best for our business model. Like just be honest and then saying, here's what we're trying to do to make sure that our reporting still has integrity so that there is a barrier between the business office and the newsroom. Here's what we do to keep that barrier intact. Like just tell people. Let us know how you do it. And if you don't know how you do it,

then there's a good chance you're not, right? Those two things are just perforated and they're seeping into one another. I do have a question about, this is really for my own sake, and this is truly a genuine, honest question. Everything we've been talking about, how does podcasting play into this?

Because as we've been talking, I'm thinking, okay, even the whole celebrity thing, like churches trying to get online, I'm like, well, even the whole celebrity thing, like churches trying to get online, get online. Well, my whole thing is online. There's nobody local. For me, my entire podcast is by definition out there online. I don't put hardly any energy into promoting the podcast. My goal is to try to produce good content.

Good content that I like. People always ask me, why do you have this guest on, that guest on? I was like, I want to talk to produce good content good content that i like like people always ask me why do you have this guest on that guest on it's like i wanted to talk to him i don't know i wanted to talk you know we've been boxing back and forth i'm like hey i want to talk more about this let's do a part you know it's just something that i'm interested in not necessarily now sometimes my interests overlap with the popular populace and it you know it gets it gets a larger views but sometimes it's like i'll just have a buddy on that's not well known at all. I'm like, he's thinking through something. I want to talk through that.

So my motivation isn't to grow the podcast audience. And yet when it does grow, I'm like, wow, that's kind of cool. I got more listeners this year than last year. So is there any warning check? Any, oh, this is kind of the underbelly of the machine that may not be able to be fixed how much of that applies to podcasting like is there are there changes i need to make in

my podcasting methodology i i mean i i think i think the the key to me is that you're asking the question because again we just we can't be self-reflective about it if we're denying it like if i'm sitting here with my podcast you know know, truth over tribe saying, Oh, I don't pay attention to how many people download our episodes. I don't pay attention to what does really well and what doesn't do well. I would be lying to you. Like that is just a straight up absolute lie. Of course I pay attention to that. And of course that influences decisions that we make about things that we want to talk about. Sometimes that's conscious. I think more often than not, it's subconscious, right? But I, if I, if I deny it, then I'll never be aware of it and I can't resist it, you know, and ask questions

about why am I doing this? But I am curious, I mean, how long ago did you start Theology in the Raw? Uh, 2015. So it's been around for a while. Okay. Yeah, so you've been doing this for seven years. I will say this, and it's interesting it's 2015. I would have said 2014, but 2014 is kind of a break point in digital media in my mind because 2015 is when Jeff Bezos buys the Washington Post for the bargain basement price of $250 million, and he's the one who invents all of these uh our audience funneling targeting uh data analytics he invents all these strategies for the wapo because it's a failing newspaper and uh in

the years that follow they become really integrated into virtually every news magazine every newspaper inside of the country because they're so successful right they really really work and and why i say that is it is much harder today to break into any sort of, uh, public discourse than it was in the 2014 world. Um, even probably the 2015 world. And so there's also like this whole other dynamic here where it's like, you probably have some liberty to just be like, yeah, I don't really care what people are looking at and engaging with. Um, because people are already listening. They're already engaging. You started podcasting early enough that you're able to grow an audience. And there is like a, like a flywheel point where it's like,

you don't have to put as much energy into keeping the thing going and growing and reaching people. Um, and so, I mean, I think if you're just able to stay in that place of like, Hey, I'm not going to put all this energy into promoting what I'm doing. I'm just going to let it grow organically. That's great. I think the bigger problem comes for people who are starting up podcasts or media things in the present, because the only way you're going to break into that conversation is by implementing some of the strategies that all of these organizations are using. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I still, no matter what your strategy, I get that. And that's going to be difficult for people, especially if podcasting is so pervasive now. So everybody has a podcast and it's hard to... When I was doing it, there was like 10 of us. It's still, I don't know. I actually got this from Rob Bell. Focus on when you're trying to break into whatever. Focus on just producing good content don't don't don't think so much about is this going to get views oh this didn't give you like just produce

good content and let it let it go where it may and i know some people are like you know i want to make a living off this and the money pieces you know luckily for me it's always been a side hobby and and so i didn't even start doing patreon until it was my buddy evan wickham kind of for for six months kept saying you got to to do Patreon, got to do Patreon. People want to like it. Actually, people want to support what you're doing. Finally did that. So I didn't start even having any kind of revenue for probably until like, when do I start that?

2017, 2018. But it's always I've always had kind of another full time job. This has always been kind of a side hobby. And now it's become kind of integrated into my work week more kind of officially. But I think maybe that there's never been – I don't know. And I don't want to be self-deceptive, but my motivation is always like I like having interesting conversations with people. I think other people are hungering for that. That's kind of it.

I don't know. That's the premise. That's the goal, the mission. I didn't know i didn't think about it my mission until i think it's last year i wrote my mission statement is that's you know engaging in you know theological and cultural issues by having curious conversations with a diverse range of thoughtful people you know it's gonna sound self-congratulatory but i mean i i think that's i think that's good i think other people should do that you know like i think think not having a platform building as the goal, but producing good content, whatever that might be, as the goal.

And let the chips fall where it may. I mean, again, I'm on the other, you know, so mine's already grown quite a bit. So it's easy. Maybe people are like, wow, you're already kind of there. So it's easy for you to say. Maybe that's true. I don't know.

But you guys are, first of all, you guys are killing. I mean, your podcast, Truth of a Tribe, is the only i think it's the only christian podcast that i listen to consistently you know i'll dabble or whatever and nothing against christian podcasts but i you guys do such a great i love your podcast it's so good has it grown i'm curious how you're in the last year or so or whenever you started yeah no i mean truth of a tribe has grown tremendously i mean we launched it in august of 2022 Is that right? So six months? Yeah. No, no, that's not right. 2021? August 2021. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. It was, it was, we, so, so the podcast has been around for a year and like four months. That's how long we've been doing this. And it's,

it's for sure grown. I mean, we had another podcast before that. And so that, that helped, uh, you know, kind of interest and engage people in what we were doing. Um, but I mean, again, here's where I'm at when it comes to podcasting, if, and I'm with you. So like if you're going to produce cruddy content that isn't interesting, that doesn't help anyone, um, it actually doesn't matter how many strategies you build around it to grow and reach people. It's not going to go anywhere, right? You can't just do cruddy stuff. And you should care more about the product, like what you're making and what you're serving to people and trying to help people with what you're doing. Then I think you should care about how many people are following

this and engaging with it and downloading it and all of those issues. On the other side, like, and this would be my pushback is if God has, I'm gonna sound a little cheesy, but like, if God has put something on your heart to care about and to speak about and to share with the broader world, you know, I think if you're doing it well, you have a sense of responsibility to steward that, that message well. And I think part of stewarding that message is using like thoughtful strategies, not in a way that dominates your decision-making, right? Again, let's be clear. If the goal is platform building, I think that's really problematic. Um, but if the goal is to give helpful content and to make sure that people who would be helped by the content actually get access to it and hear about it. And that's going to require strategy and it's going to require, you know,

that doesn't just happen magically, right? If that's your goal, I think that's a good thing. And that's why I don't wrong these media organizations because I think in many cases, they do have good messages that they want to communicate to people. They want to help people and they're just using the best strategies they have to get in front of people. And we are living in a hurricane of static on the internet. And, you know, I just think it would be a huge bummer if every great Christian podcast that starts right now just says, hey, we're not going to build any strategy. We're just going to do our work the best we can because you're just going to get dominated.

You'll get dominated by Disney. You'll get dominated by Fox. You get dominated by Netflix. You get dominated by every, you know, Spotify exclusive podcast, like you're going to get dominated by all of those other podcasts out there. And now you've got Christians who are spending the vast majority of their podcasting time, you know, not even consuming any content that helps them grow in their faith. And so that's my heart behind saying like, yeah, let's put some strategy and thought into it because we actually want to help people and we need to combat the bad messages that

are again, dominating people's lives. But let's not make the platform and the size of the platform a goal. I mean, like with truth over tribe, I have a number in my head. There's like, when we, when, when we hit that number, it's, it's my threshold. It's like, we're done doing any promoting. Like it's just, it's over. Right. It was like, I, we don't need to be any bigger than that. Like we probably reached market penetration of the kinds of people that we're getting. And I'm like you. I'm privileged in the sense that I make no money off of Truth Over Tribe. It's not my day job, so to speak.

And so I'm not financially incentivized by the entire thing. But I think there are people who are and maybe should be because you should get paid for your work, in my opinion. So, yeah, it's complicated. Yeah. I mean, mine is monetized now, both through ads and Patreon. And the Patreon community has just become such a lifeline to me, not just their...

This is going to sound like I'm rubbing their backs or whatever, but somebody that's going to financially support Theology in a Raw, most of them have just amazing stories somebody that's going to financially support financially or theology in ira is is there been most of them has just amazing stories of how the podcast to to i mean it blows me away some of the like you know i want to leave the church and now i'm you know back in church or i want to leave the faith or you know or just whatever like just really amazing stories and um here's here's where the possible problem is is is I could, now that I have supporters and deep invested followers, do I play into that audience almost? Because I built a platform of

just having a diverse range of honest conversations. You know what? Somebody's offended, change a channel, whatever whatever now in the back of my mind i could say oh do i want to offend my patreon audience or this person might not like that and but the whole thing is like no i can't think like that because the very thing that drew them to the podcast was you know what i'm gonna have honest conversations and not everybody's gonna like it um so i i yeah so so for the first time really in the last couple years i'm kind of like i do have to battle like audience capture like making sure I don't do that because that's the very thing to capture my audience in the first place. No, that's exactly right. That's where,

for me, it's like the question isn't, are there incentive structures that are motivating you consciously and subconsciously? Because the answer to that's yes, it is. Do you know what they are? And again, what guardrails do you put in place to make sure that they don't take control? You know, they're there. And it's not always a bad thing. Like when I think about our podcast audience and the community that's in that podcast, I was like, those are, those are great people who I actually want to give them content that helps them and benefits them.

And I don't want to give them content that is useless to them or uninteresting or unhelpful. And so paying attention to them can be a really healthy thing, right? Because if all I care about is the platform, I mean, yeah, I guess you could just say like, what does the best and I'm going to go viral. But on the other side, if all you care about is the platform, you don't care about those people listening as human beings who, again, you actually want to help. And so, you know, I wish there was a silver bullet on this stuff. I'm a huge fan of just being honest. And that's where I think so many people in media

are just, they're terrified of what happens when people realize you're making money off this, you're getting attention from this, you're getting all of these personal benefits. They don't want people to know that that's happening because again, we live in a very cynical age and they think, gosh, if they found out, you know, what would the consequences be if they saw behind the curtain? And I'm just in a place now where I'm like, I will show you

everything behind the curtain. Um, and if that means you don't want to listen to me or engage with what I'm doing, great. That's fine. Like I'm, I'm totally okay with that. But if I don't do that, those things will control me because the minute you close the curtain, it's the wizard pulling the levers, right? And I don't see them anymore. And you don't see them anymore. And so now it's controlling me. And it's controlling what we're doing on the podcast. So that's where, again, for me, I think just being honest and transparent goes a long,

long, long way towards righting some of the wrongs that can come from this stuff. I absolutely agree. Dude, yeah. Thank you so much, man, for coming on the podcast, short notice and engaging in this conversation. And again, my summary at the end of the day is everything we talked about. There's just good, honest, complex questions

that should be asked as we move forward. And I think you do a great job with that. So thanks so much, man, for your podcast ministry, for your book, and for our ongoing voxing offline conversations that are thoroughly enjoying to me. So thank you, Patrick. Yeah, thanks for having me on.

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