Theology in the Raw - S2: Looking Back to 2022 and Forward to 2023!

Episode Date: January 1, 2023

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in a Row. This is a special New Year's Day podcast. Last year I did this. I did kind of a year-end review where I looked back on the previous year and looked forward to what we can expect for the forthcoming year. So I want to do that again for this year. So I want to look back on 2022, which had a lot of exciting stuff happen on the podcast and also look forward to 2023. Got a bunch of notes in front of me, some stats, some reviews, some random thoughts. So hopefully this will not come out too disjointedly. Let me begin with the theology in the raw mission statement that I developed last year, last December. I remember thinking about doing this kind of year-end review and giving an overview of Theology in the Raw, looking forward to the forthcoming year.

And I was like, I don't even know what my mission is for this podcast. I mean, I feel like I did. It was in me. It was kind of like in my bones. I kind of knew it intuitively what I was trying to do, but I didn't have like a really clear-cut mission statement. Like what am I really trying to accomplish here on the podcast? What is this podcast all about? And so I came up with one.

And I was wondering if I was going to change it or tweak it over the year. Sometimes you come up with something, a mission statement, and a couple months later you're like, ah, let's edit this. And a couple months later you're like, let's edit it again. And three months later, four months later, you're like, let's ditch it and rewrite it and come up with something new. I actually still love this mission statement. So here it is. The Theology in Raw podcast aims to help believers think Christianly about theological and cultural issues by engaging in curious conversations with a diverse range of thoughtful people. I don't think I want to change the word of that. I think that captures what I've been doing and what I enjoy doing and what I will

continue for the foreseeable future to continue to try to do. I don't always have Christians on the podcast, but my ultimate goal is more believers focused. It gets more under the broad umbrella of discipleship. It's not like evangelistic per se, although I guess it can, I think discipleship and evangelism can overlap quite a bit. To think Christianly about theological and cultural issues. I try to keep those in balance. I'm going to talk more about that in a little bit, you know, try to do some podcast episodes that are really just hardcore biblical studies or engaging in a theological topic. Other ones are much more cultural.

That balance, I'm going to try to maintain that balance. Engaging in, I guess this is probably the most maybe important, not important, but I mean more maybe unique part of the mission is engaging in curious conversations with a diverse range of thoughtful people. And I think that's where some people that have a love-hate relationship with the podcast, or maybe just a hate-hate relationship with the podcast, I think it's that point that can throw people off. This podcast is more like a conversation with a neighbor rather than a sermon from a stage. And I know we're trying to figure out like, what is the role of podcasting and Christian discipleship? What is an ecclesiology of podcasting in terms of like having conversations

with people? I don't think this is the only way to do it. I think even the podcast platform can be used in many different ways to engage people's discipleship journey. And so I don't want to prioritize having curious conversations with the diverse range of thought with people. It's like, this is the best way or only way to do it. This is just the way that I enjoy using the podcast platform. So I'm going to stick with it. I really love – not love like, oh, look how amazing my mission statement is. But I think it really captures in a really clarifying way what I have just kind of naturally been doing on the podcast over the

years and what I really want to continue to do. So let me share some stats with you. I don't, I'm not a huge stat person. I don't check the podcast stats very often, but I know some people like to kind of know numbers. So for those of you who are numbers people, I contacted one of my producers and said, hey, can you just give me a report on this year's stats? Okay. So here's a few highlights. In 2022, we had over 4 million downloads. And I don't, that sounds big and maybe it is. I just, I don't, I have nothing to compare it to. So it is what it is. We had over 4 million downloads. So that means the average monthly downloads came in around 350,000 a month. We released over 100 brand new episodes in this last year. And each episode averaged roughly

25,000 downloads in the first 30 days of release. The YouTube channel in 2020, right? Right. When COVID was really hitting us hard, I started, or I think I already had one. I like resurrected my old YouTube channel and tried to post regularly on YouTube. And, you know, I was told like, yeah, YouTube's where it's at. You got to get on YouTube. You got to be consistent. And I was really consistent, posted stuff. I was just doing it all on my own. And it never really kind of took off. I feel like I spent all this time and energy with minimal payoff. The podcast, as opposed to the YouTube, continued to get way, way more, I guess, listeners. But some people are... I mean, I think a lot of people are YouTube-only people.

And so I said, you know what? I'm going to stop trying to like be an expert on YouTube. Because I was doing all this like filming stuff. And like, I'm just not, that's just not my world. And I was spending, you know, we all had maybe more time during COVID. And I was like spending hours and hours trying to like get better at YouTube. And it just didn't really work. So, but okay, I'll come back to this in a second. But we, this year, one of the big highlights of Theology in Raw is we ended up hiring like a professional company to help produce it.

And don't think like sleazy institutional company or whatever. Like this is a group of awesome Christian people who already love the podcast. They resonate with it. They have great, they're real hands off. They're like, hey, you just keep doing what you're doing. We want to help produce it well and get the word out. And so they also took over the YouTube channel. So basically now they, they, they upload all the videos. Like the day that a podcast is released on the pod, the day a podcast episode is released, they also upload the YouTube video version of that podcast. So, I mean, some of

you might not even know that there is a whole, everything on the podcast is also on, on YouTube and, um, they create the thumbnails they do. They kind of promote it and everything. So yeah, the, so the YouTube channel now, now that I've given it up, now that somebody else is doing it for me, it's actually a pretty well oiled machine. So YouTube, let's see, received in 2022 over 416,000 views, 7 million total impressions, and 65% of the podcast views came from YouTube recommending the video to other viewers. So I got that's good. So some YouTubers are coming across the podcast, coming across The All General and then are being pushed over to the podcast to listen to it so that's great but I don't I mean when I look at stats on YouTube like I'll you know I'll see some guy like changing out his alternator you know and the camera angle is just horrible and

it's just totally not a professional video and it got it has like a half a million views or something you know so I don't I mean mean these YouTube stats still seem pretty dismal. In a sense, I can really care less. I'm glad it's serving the people that prefer YouTube over podcasting, over listening or whatever. So yeah, I'm glad it's up there. According to YouTube, check this out. The audience, my YouTube audience is 57% female

and the largest age bracket is 25 to 34 years old at 22.3% of the viewers on YouTube. So that's kind of cool because typically male podcasters have a largely male audience and vice versa for females. I think that's pretty true. So that's pretty cool. I'm glad that there are more female, not that it matters, but I'm glad it's not like 80% men and 20% women viewing the YouTube channel. The podcast continues to hover in the top 50 positions in all of religious shows in the U.S. based Apple podcast charts. So this doesn't include Spotify, but in terms of Apple podcasts, yeah, it's tip. I did check that periodically. You know, sometimes it's in like, it's like number 40 of all religions. Sometimes it's 70. Every now and then it'll spike. In fact, it spiked at one point to number eight of all religion podcasts.

And that's usually when Jackie Hill Perry shares it on her Instagram page. I wish I was joking around, but that's – Jackie, if you listen, that's pretty much true. Like whatever you mentioned, the Elgin Ra, it usually spikes to the roof for a couple weeks and then slows back down and settles around 40 or 50 in the rankings. Top downloaded episodes. The number one downloaded episode, twice as downloaded as number two. The number one downloaded episode was The Great Sex Rescue with Sheila Rae Gregoire and Rebecca Lindenbach at 62,209 downloads. Number two was the very next episode titled Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood with Amy Byrd at 35,000. Now, that might – no.

That's almost – probably that's because Amy Byrd is just super awesome. It might also be because his second episode following from Sheila's episode, Sheila and Rebecca's episode, which, yeah, that blew up quite a bit. And if you want to know why, you can go back and listen to it. And also, I think that is one. I mean, again, I mean, totally serious. I think that's one where Jackie Hill Perry did post it on Instagram or something, that episode. Anyway, number three, episode 9 episode, 944 parenting, LGBTQ kids. Number four, 949, the gospel new creation, rereading Paul heaven and the American,

American Christianity with NT, right? No shocker there. The next couple are Jesus and John Wayne with Dr. Kristen Cobus Dumaisumé. The next one, what number am I? One, two, three, four. So that was number five. Number six is a complementarian reading of the New Testament, Dr. Tom Schreider, episode 948. And how many more of these do you want? The next one, number seventh was episode 968, The Making of Biblical Womanhood with Dr. Beth Allison Barr. Oh, that's interesting. So you have, for those of you who know these names, this might be funny to you too, but you have Kristen Kobus-Dumé and Beth Allison Barr flanking Tom Schreiner, all talking about women in leadership, although Tom's going to be addressing

it from a different perspective. So sorry, Tom, but you're, you got, uh, Kristen right above you. Yeah. To your left or whatever out Beth Allison to your right, your sandwich in the middle being flanked by both of them. Anyway, interesting stuff there. Um viewed YouTube videos. So since I started YouTube, the top viewed video by far was Demons, Giants, and Other Gods in the Bible with Dr. Michael Heiser. I don't know how that one's gotten well over 100,000 views. I've had a, I've had more popular people on that one was a super engaged. I mean, Michael Heiser is no joke. I mean, he's, you know, um, that's some interesting thoughts that are well thought out and, and can be controversial. Some of them. Um, but even still, that's like, I've got a lot of people that are thoughtful and say

controversial things that it, you know, that doesn't get as many views as his does. I did create like a cool kind of scary thumbnail for that one. I was kind of proud of that myself, thanks to Canva. But yeah, so that one actually came in fourth this year. So even three years after or two years after I posted it, it still got 24,000 views in 2022. The top viewed video was a trans man's unexpected thoughts on trans related issues. Scott Nugent, who's a trans man, that's female to male. His video got over 2 million impressions, over 126,000 views. That was, I mean, can I be honest? If you don't know who Scott Nugent is, um, if you don't know who Scott Nugent is, Scott was in the famous or infamous, whatever you want to, I don't know how you feel about it, but the, the documentary, what is a woman?

Um, I was briefly in that documentary and Scott Nugent was played kind of a pretty central role, especially in the latter half of the documentary. And once that documentary blew up, I think Scott's might let that YouTube conversation with Scott Nugent kept kind of coming up alongside the, like when people are searching YouTube for what is a woman or Matt Walsh is the producer of it. Right. So I think that video kept kind of coming up and the more it got hit,

the more it kept getting shared and advertised. So that, I think that's why that one really blew up. Really provocative conversation. Really enjoyed talking to Scott. The second most viewed YouTube video slash podcast was when a trans couple both transitioned back to their natal sex. Number three was from Trans to Detrans with Daisy Shadra. Number four was the Michael Heiser one, Demons, Giants, and Other Gods.

Number five, The Rise and Fall of Marcia with mike cosper number six transgender and gospel conversation with heather screba and i'll save you the rest so lots of trans stuff there and honestly think a lot of those trans conversations were kind of feeding off each other which which might be why those got um got a lot of views. Personal highlights of 2022. I mean, aside from everything else going on in my life, personal highlights in terms of the podcast. I mean, for me, it had to have been Beth Moore coming on and celebrating the 1,000th. That's the hardest word for me to say. 1,000th episode. Can you say that? 1,000th. Oh, there it is. It's just hard to say fast. One thousandth. My one thousandth episode, Beth Moore came on. Beth Moore, I mean, she gets asked

probably a hundred times a day to be on a podcast. And I reached out to her early, said, hey, I got my one thousandth episode coming up. Is there any chance you could please, please, pretty please come on podcast? She agreed and really enjoyed that conversation. Really love talking to her. Um, I also obviously, I mean, maybe obvious to most of you, um, having NT around in the podcast, I've been asking him for years and, um, finally he said, yes. I mean that do again, these guys, people with a lot of name recognition they are so over the top busy it's they're it's crazy how many requests they get for stuff so um because some people ask me like oh you gotta have this person on you gotta have jonathan hyde on you

should have obama on or whatever like i'm like you know even somebody who has i don't know if you want to measure like twitter followers like than 50,000 Twitter followers, which isn't that many, is going to be super hard to get, let alone somebody who's got half a million or a million. But I do. I take a shot in the dart sometimes and ask pretty high-profile people to come on. Most of the time, I get no response. Or several months later, the secretary will say, yep, nope, sorry. But every now and then, you land people like Beth Moore and N.T. Wright and I was super stoked about that. Not because they're, see, here's the thing. Maybe I'll say this now. I mean, I was going to

say this later, but like, just so you know, my primary criterion is that the person is thoughtful. And I know that's a subjective statement. Contrary to what some people might think, they don't need to have a PhD. They don't need to necessarily be a scholar. But I want somebody who is a thoughtful person. I also like people that are a little contrarian in their thinking. People you can't really quite fit into a box, maybe. People who have said things that have maybe raised controversy, not for controversy's sake, but because they have said something thoughtful and provocative. It is possible. In Christendom, it's possible just in society to get a high platform without being thoughtful, just by stringing together tweetable statements or just doing something to get a platform.

There's people with big names that I'm like, yeah, I actually wouldn't want to have them on necessarily just because I don't find their ideas super interesting. So all I have to say when I'm saying Beth Moore is a super big name and N.T. Wright, that's not the main reason why I wanted to have them on. I want to have them on because they are thoughtful. I consider them to be thoughtful people. So I'll have people on that are not very well known at all that I find to be thoughtful. There's a lot of scholars that aren't that well known in popular circles that are just super thoughtful, super engaging. And I would love to have them on or even just non-scholars that are just doing good work. Some friends of mine that don't have a big name at all,

but I'm just like, I'd love talking to you because you have interesting thoughts that forced me to think hard, to think deeply, to love widely. Yeah, so I never have tried to have a big name on simply because, oh, it's a big name and maybe it'll get a lot of downloads or something. That's what's interesting is with podcasting and with YouTube, big names

don't guarantee more downloads. So even if I did care about that stuff, which I don't, that's not, it doesn't really work that way. Some of my most downloaded episodes are by people who are lesser well-known than other episodes by more well-known people that weren't downloaded as much. Another personal highlight of 2022 was of course the exiles of Babylon conference. I've talked about this before, so I don't need to kick a dead horse, but, uh, yeah, I mean, um, you know, in, in, it was in summer of 2021 that my, my wife and I, I think we're out kayaking in a mountain lakes. That sounds, I don't actually love it when people talk about their life, but it's like, sounds all glamorous.

Every morning we wake up at 5 a.m. We go kayaking in the blue mountain. No, it wasn't. We're just on a camping trip and we probably wanted to just get out and get a little peace and quiet. And so we went kayaking in the lake. Anyway, not as sexy as it sounds, but yeah, we were out in a kayak and talking about theology and not that we do that all the time. Um, and, uh, we kind of said, Hey, let's, I mean, just do a

conference. We kind of talked about it before. Let's just try it. I don't know, throw out a few emails, find a location, see what happens, you know? And the more we put time and effort into it um the thing kept getting bigger and bigger and more people were signing up and some speakers were asking to come out were saying yes to our surprise and anyway uh long story short i three of the best days of 2022 for me was was the conference it was yeah, it was so energizing for so many reasons, which I've already talked about. The speakers are great. The vibe was great.

You all who came, the thousand of you who came out were awesome. Loved seeing people face-to-face that, you know, I've been maybe corresponding with through social media, maybe some Patreon supporters or whatever. Like it was so good being in a room together for three days and doing like a Christian conference in a room together for three days and, um, doing like a Christian conference in a way that I felt like, you know, I kind of said like, I've been to loads of Christian conferences and there's all kinds of stuff. I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't do it that way.

And other things I'm like, yeah, I would want that or more of this or less of this or whatever. So my wife and I, um, were able to say, let's, let's do it the way we think it should be done. So that's what we did. We're going to do it again next year. I'll talk about that in a little bit. We started doing some ads last year. Was it last year or the beginning? Maybe it was the end of 2021. I am not a natural fan of marketing, advertising, and no shame on those of you who are in marketing or advertising. I don't think it's intrinsically bad. I just think that in a capitalistic consumer society that's profit-driven, profit over people, I get really nervous with ads, advertising.

I just, oof. And it really took some people to convince me saying, okay, there's a non-sleazy way to do ads. And even then, it was like a big wrestling match for a while. And finally I said, okay, I will do ads under several conditions. One of the big things I did is I checked with my Patreon community. So I've got, you know, a bunch of Patreon supporters who just support me out of their goodwill, uh, support the podcast. Uh, and I'll, I'll get to that in a little bit, talk more about Patreon. But, you know, it could look a little sleazy.

Like, wait a minute, are you double dipping? They're supporting you and now you're doing ads and getting paid for that. So I asked my Patreon supporters, I said, hey, think about doing ads. Here's all kinds of criteria that I will make sure are being adhered to before I do any ads. But given all that, what do you guys think about me doing ads? And all the people who responded were unanimous saying, yeah, if you do it a certain way, then yeah, that's totally fine. It just can get a little sleazy if it's really clear you're just promoting stuff for the money.

And then a lot of Patreon supporters are like, yeah, that doesn't really seem to fit your vibe. And they're like, yeah, that's not my vibe at all. And I wouldn't do that. So, um, check with the patron community. They, they were in support and I said, here's my commitment. They all like kind of resonated with this. Um, I will, I only want to support stuff I believe in or stuff that I myself, uh, maybe use, like I never want to produce a product, right? And after I get done recording the ad, you know, thinking to myself, I would never use that. Or yeah, I'm glad that's over. Like no, I only want to promote stuff that I believe in, stuff I use.

And so we actually screen out a lot of people that want to advertise that we're just like, you know what? It's just not a good fit. We get a list of all kinds of like products that people were like, Hey, would you want to promote this? I'm like, I want to be really, I want to actually believe in, for lack of a better term, believe in or use the product before I promote it. So for instance, I don't know if I should say this on the air, but like, you know, there's this ad and you'll probably know who it is. I'll just say that they, it's a company that deals with stamps. Okay. And I'm like stamps. I always thought to myself, like when I hear this ad come across other podcasts, I'm like, who, who would buy that? I don't even know what a stamp looks like anymore. When's the last time

I used a stamp? I don't, I seriously think it's been like eight years or something. I'm like, yeah, I would never do that. You know, I was getting advice from people saying, Hey, you should really promote this. You know, it's a good company. I'm like, I don't know. I just don't. Is that really for me? You know, uh, if I haven't seen a stamp in eight years, am I really going to promote it?

So finally I shot it over to my wife because my wife basically is the CEO of Theology and Raw. Some of you, I don't know if you know that, but she runs, she's, she does all the all the business side of it, the administrative, which is a ton of, a lot more work than anybody will ever know. So I shouted at my wife and said, can you check this out? Would you ever use this? And she goes, all right, let me check it out. And I said, do you ever mail packages and stuff? Do you even use stamps? She says, I mail stuff all the time. How do you not know this? I wait in at the post office, like several days a week. I'm like, Oh, we'll check this out. 10 minutes later, she calls me back, says I signed up for this. This is, this is so amazing. This will save us time, money. It'll save me waiting in line at the post office, all the

stuff that the, what I've been hearing about this company. I'm like, Oh, all right. Well, I guess that it's awesome. I can promote it because I'm actually, there's, I have, we have personal buy-in with this company. Um, I started using, uh, athletic greens a few months ago. I've been doing green powder, um, for probably 10 years. And, uh, you know, I keep seeing the advertisement for athletic greens. I, um, I've got friends that, that, that use it and it and they swear by it. It is among the more expensive greens, but after doing some research, I've come to find out, as with many things, you kind of get what you pay for. So this cheap pound of greens for $10 that I've been buying, the ingredients, you get what you pay for.

And athletic greens is more expensive, but the quality is incredibly good. And so I started taking it, broke down, started taking it. And I'm like, Oh my word, this stuff is so, you can just, just, you just feel, you feel the results and you know, um, the results can be verified through objective research on the ingredients. And there's lots of other greens out there, but this is like really good product. So I, in theory I would have, you know, no problem promoting it because I am personally, I'm genuinely supportive of the product because I'm buying it. We also, as you know, if you've been listening to the podcast, we promote other like more Christian ministries and organizations, One Million Home, Kairos Classroom, Denver Seminary, the Pour Over podcast and others we've promoted. These are companies and ministries that I've built relationships with. I've gotten to know.

Some of them I know really well on a relational level. So I very much am eager to promote what they are doing. So all that to say, I just want to give you a little bit of insight into my sort of philosophy of doing ads. I'm very nervous and vigilant about crossing that line of falling into the consumer consumerism and just promoting a product to get money, whatever. And so I am vigilant about not doing that, just so you know. So I hope the ads are not annoying. We try not to do too many. I think two, maybe if it's a longer episode, maybe three. We always kind of go back and forth on how many to do. But again, I will only promote something that I actually believe in.

All right, let's get to some reviews. I don't read reviews very often, maybe about once a month, if that. There's a big difference. month, if that, there's a big difference. There's a big difference between receiving good faith, critical feedback. I love that. I thrive on that. Whenever I write a book, for instance, I always send out a rough draft of the manuscript to five to 10 to sometimes, I think one, it was like 18 different people of different kind of people who might agree with it, people who wouldn't agree with it. And I thrive on getting just, you know, give me the critical feedback, shred this argument,

play devil's advocate if you have to. Don't sweet talk me, give it to me straight. So, you know, good critical, good faith feedback where people are actually trying to understand your argument, say, here's where I think it's flawed. Here's a better way. Here's a better argument that's superior to your argument. I love that world.

That largely doesn't exist in critical feedback online. Like I stopped reading like Amazon book reviews and stuff. And so I do read some podcast reviews because even some of the um critical ones are they're kind of i don't know they're they're really entertaining like so i got to i this i don't know what this says on my enneagram number whatever but i actually love reading now um like the one star reviews because they're just they're really yeah they're just they're great um so here here let yeah, they're just, they're great. So here, here, let me just, here's a few, let me start with some one-star reviews because this is, yeah,

let's get the good ones first here. Preston has, here's one from, the title is raw, but not much theology. Okay. Preston has a gift of speaking gracefully and kindly about the toughest topics. But after listening to this podcast for almost a year, I've become unsure of what his stance actually is on biblical truth. That's a lot of truth. The whole, like all of it. He zeroes in on people's emotional experiences without much challenge or exposition. When I read that, I was like, is it my place to challenge someone's emotional experience?

Or this other part's good here, or exposition of what these experiences mean in light of truthful theology. Maybe this podcast just needs a new name because it's currently misleading. Christians, please be cautious. Yeah, I would agree. Anybody should be cautious before listening to Theology in the Raw. There are certain types of people that I think shouldn't listen to it. That's why I like to make clear what my mission statement actually is and say, hey, if that's for you, go for it.

If not, change the channel. No one's like forcing you to listen to Theology in the Raw. Yeah, I wish I knew which biblical truth, that's a lot of truth, biblical truth that I've been unclear on. I could see, depending on one's theological persuasion, where they can get that. Somebody listening for almost a year, I think that's interesting. If it was a few episodes, then I could see where they're like, well, where do you stand on this issue? Because sometimes I don't feel the need to every episode saying, all right,

here's my stance, here's my doctrinal statement, and let's proceed to have a conversation. I just don't find that approach super interesting. Next review, the title is Heretical. I gave this podcast three episodes to see what it was all about, which let me just stop you there. You can't get what this podcast is all about in three episodes, but I don't see any biblical grounding and the podcast seems to welcome heresy. How do we define heresy? I don't know any Christian who's been on my show who would, for instance, deny the Nicene or Apostles' Creed. But even, I wouldn't be opposed to having them on if they did, personally, because again, this is a conversation

with my neighbor, not a sermon from a stage. And so if my neighbor didn't believe, was a Christian who didn't believe in the Nicene Creed, I would still talk with him and be interested in, hey, you're a Christian and you don't believe in the Trinity. Well, tell me about that. Like, that's actually interesting to me. It doesn't mean I endorse it because I'm listening. It just means I'm interested in how someone

can arrive at that position. This person didn't see any biblical grounding. Again, three episodes. I can see any biblical grounding. Again, three episodes. I could see where someone would get that from three episodes. I don't want to defend myself here. I could see that. Some episodes are more – I mean, some episodes aren't even interviewing Christians. So we're not going to discuss a lot of exegesis with somebody who doesn't even claim to be a believer.

Other episodes might be more focused on like cultural topics or like the co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, not, oh, Greg Lukianoff, you know, not a Christian. We didn't talk about the Bible. Didn't even talk about theology. It was talking about his book, which I found to be incredibly fascinating, very helpful, The Coddling of the American Mind. And there's other podcasts that are along those lines. Sheena Mason, The Theory of Racelessness. I thought it was fascinating. But yeah, again, we didn't talk about a lot of Bible there. So I can see where somebody would say that there's not a lot of biblical grounding. Just so you know, I do try to make a concerted effort to sprinkle in, let that one sit, sprinkle in various episodes that just

deal with the text of scripture, hardcore, in-depth, exegetical analyses of various passages or books or themes in scripture. Just so you, I mean, I don't have like a number a firm number in my head but maybe once or twice a month to try to have an episode that's just hardcore classic biblical studies because I mean honestly guys that really that is my first love like that's my PhD is the New Testament

I love like just digging into the text like even though a lot of my episodes are conversations around hot topics, cultural issues, people's stories or whatever, people's books sometimes, in my heart of hearts, like I just want to dig into the text.

And so I'm thinking of certain episodes with like Joey Dodson or Lynn Kohik, Madison Pierce and Amy Peeler both walked us through the book of Hebrews, Craig Keener on the Christmas story. And hopefully, I mean, hopefully there's been several episodes that are just hardcore, not really culturally focused. Just tell me what the text says. If you feel like you want more or less, I guess,

of that, just know that for me, I am intentionally trying to have those kinds of episodes from time, at least from time to time. Okay. Next review, not nearly questioning enough. Preston makes great strides toward, oh yeah, this makes great strides towards stopping blind hatred of LGBTQ plus people, but he stopped short of actually challenging Christianity's historical views on these topics. I mean, that's an easy response for me. It's because I believe Christianity's historic views are true. So I'm not going to try to correct people's viewpoints when they hold to a viewpoint that I actually think is biblical and therefore from the creator. So yeah, that one

might be misunderstanding from where I'm coming from. Silly podcast. All he does is promote and bring everything back to his book. I is a lot dumber after hearing him speak. He is a bro and people that piggyback off the gospel to make a quick buck are pathetic, not called to be a pastor or a teacher, but called to do a podcast because it's easy. I-T-S, no apostrophe. I don't have any response to that. I'll let it sit. Another person was upset that I had Brian Zahn on because he apparently is a heretical pastor.

Thanks, Brian. Appreciate that. I'll send this to you. I do. I did. So most of the reviews are four or five stars, which I appreciate. I always encourage people, never say leave a five-star review unless you believe it's worth five stars. I do encourage you to leave a review.

I will, you know, I want, yeah, I guess I don't want to contradict myself because I said I don't really read. I mean, yeah. Leave a good, thoughtful, critical review. How about that? Don't leave a thoughtless critique or reactionary critique. You know, if you could leave a review, make it thoughtful. It could be one stars. It could be five stars.

I don't really care. Just make sure it's honest and thoughtful. Okay, here's a five-star review who really enjoyed the episode I did with Josie, my daughter. So one of your favorites, you say. So yeah, hats off to my daughter, Josie. Got a lot of good feedback with that one. Encouraging, challenging, informing, lighthearted. I'm very thankful for the diverse guests Preston has on in every episode.

Next review, appreciate the many perspectives. Next review, same thing, highlighting the diversity of guests. That is something I do strive to do as well. I try to diversify the kinds of guests I have on. I strive to have on a close to equal blend of men and women. I try to have on diverse denominational backgrounds. I try to have on people of different ethnicities. I do love, as the mission statement says, engaging in curious conversations with a diverse range of thoughtful people. So even that word diverse is multi-faceted.

So I'm glad that a lot of the positive reviews resonated with that. And I would say some of the negative ones, they really came down to not resonating with that. They hear a guest or a viewpoint that they don't agree with and therefore they voted down the podcast. So just so you know, for 2023, looking forward, I'm going to continue to have curious conversations with a diverse range of people who I think are thoughtful. You may not think they're very thoughtful. I get that sometimes. Like, yeah, you had on that person and he was a joke or she was a terrible thinker or whatever. And that's fine. I mean, who is and who isn't a thoughtful person? It's a very subjective, you know, thing to consider looking forward to 2023. So I'm actually working on,

well, I just submitted a manuscript, my final draft of a manuscript for a book on, you know, does the Bible support same-sex marriage? So when that book is released in August, probably preceding that, I'll probably have some conversations surrounding that topic. I'm also doing ongoing research on a book on a Christian political identity. That's the next book I'm working on right now. Identity. That's the next book I'm working on right now. And so I'm going to keep having on scholars and thinkers who address that topic of Bible and politics. Yeah, how do you frame it? I like the concept of a Christian political identity, not like this verse teaches this about immigration or this verse teaches that about the death penalty. I like to step back

and just look at what is the Christian posture toward empire? What is the Christian posture towards secular and national politics? What is the Christian redeemed politic that we are to embody and embrace and promote and so on and so forth? So there's several awesome scholars out there who have been working on this for years. I'm thinking of Stanley Hauerwas, Jonathan Lehman, Richard Bauckham, Lee Camp, Richard Horsley, Michael Gorman, and many, many others. You know what I just had on, you know, just a couple weeks ago, Patrick Schreiner, who's got a great book on politics and the Bible called Political Gospel. Warren Carter does a lot of great work on reading the Bible in the shadow of the empire, if you will.

So I look forward to several guests along those lines. I love to have people on whose work I am digesting. That's another sub point I guess I should mention, because I like to have on a diverse range of different topics, different types of people, many of whom who have written books or done work in a certain area. I just don't have the space or time to read all the books written by people that I have on the show. Sometimes I'll have somebody on that just came out with a book that I haven't read and might not ever read just because I just don't have the time or space. But I heard it's a good book. I kind of know an idea about what the book's about. So I want to have them on not to digest with them their book, but to be introduced to their book via a conversation. So there's that

category. But then when I am doing research in a particular area, like politics in the Bible, or I also like to have on people whose books and works I have very much digested and taken notes on. So yeah, look forward to a blend of that. Also, my major ongoing research project that will eventually be a book is on what the Bible says about women in church leadership. If you've been listening to the podcast for more than even a couple months, you know that I have been engaging that conversation. I've got another part two episode coming up in a couple of weeks where I'm going to give an overview of 1 Timothy 2 and some research I've done with that passage. And so I've been having on different scholars and writers who are experts in that field. I do think I've been a little egalitarian heavy. And so, um, look forward to

maybe more complementarian scholars that I want to have on. I want to have on Bill Mounts, who wrote the word biblical commentary on the pastoral epistles, who, um, uh, is a complementarian. Sidney Park, who's going to be at the Theology in Raw conference. Claire Smith, who's a dynamite, uh, New Testament scholar is also a complementarian. And there's several Conference. Claire Smith, who's a dynamite New Testament scholar, is also a complementarian. And there's several others. I did have Tom Schreiner on early in the year, but I haven't had on two. And then, oh, Gary Beshears. Obviously, I had Gary on last summer. So I have had on some complementarians, but I really want to, just so you know, I'm trying to have on, for the most part, equal parts complementarian, egalitarian, because I'm trying to have on, for the most part, equal parts, complementarian, egalitarian, because I'm sorting through all of that.

So, oh, also coming up 2023, again, Exiles in Babylon. You've already heard this advertised on the show, so I don't need to say it yet again. Go to theologianrod.com. You can get info on the Exiles in Babylon conference on March 23rd, 25th in Boise. We kind of shot from the hip the first year, last year, and so we're trying to tighten things up. The stage presentations will largely be similar, different topics. We want to do different topics every year. So this year, it's future of the church, disability in the church, multi-ethnic perspectives on American Christianity. We touched on that a bit last year with the race conversation. And then we're doing a theological dialogue slash debate on the problem of evil and suffering. long form conversations, try to get some diversity and perspectives. And also, you know, half of what we're going to be doing on stage is a monologue. The other half are going to be conversations, including live audience Q&A. When you come to Exiles, you have a chance to ask an

actual question and hear what the speaker has to say. We are also ramping up our Gen Z evening. Some of you might not even know that, but it was kind of a last minute thing we threw in at the end last year where we kept getting emails from parents bringing their 18-year-old kid, 21-year-old kid, 15-year-old kid. And oftentimes you're like, yeah, they just have a lot of hard questions about Christianity. We're bringing them to the conference. So we ended up opening up our home and having all these Gen Zers come and hang out with us. We gave them dinner. We sent them bowling and stuff. So we're doing that again this year.

So the conference officially starts Thursday night, March 23rd. But Wednesday night, we're actually going to have a really sweet evening with all the Gen Z attendees of the conference. So if you are a parent, you've got somebody between the age, I mean, we don't want to put just airtight boundaries, but 15 to say 22, 23. They're interested to come in and have an evening where we're going to have a speaker, some cool music, some food, fellowship, just so they can get to know other Gen Zers who are interested in something like Theology in the Raw or maybe being dragged there by their parents, whatever the case may be. All the info is on our website, theologyintheraw.com. We also added a pre-conference where we're going to be dialoguing about women in leadership, whole complementarian, egalitarian

debate. Jay Newman's coming back with his Nashville barbecue, new and improved. And last year, I know that, well, I guess it's a good thing and a bad thing. I mean, apparently the barbecue was so good that a lot of people didn't get any of it. The lines were just tremendously long, good barbecue. It's not fast food. It takes time. And I jay was overwhelmed with how many people wanted barbecue i remember going out during lunch and it was like um the conference was gonna reconvene like in about a half hour and i looked and there was like a long line out to the road i'm like oh dude half these people aren't gonna get barbecue so jay's coming back he's gonna make it to where

hopefully jay you're listening there where everybody can get barbecue maybe he's gonna have a couple smokers, more help, whatever the situation is. We're going to improve the bathroom situation, which is kind of a mess. We're having an after party Friday night. It's a limited space, but if you sign up in time, you can attend an after party where me and other speakers

will be hanging out and shooting the breeze. So anyway, super looking forward to Exiles in Babylon 2023. A couple more things here and then let me stop talking. I feel like I have said this several times already, but just in case this might be the first time you're tuning in or maybe you haven't heard me talk about this, but I will maintain my commitment to having people on that you will disagree with. There's no way somebody can listen to Theology in a Raw for a full year and say,

I agree with everything everybody said. That's impossible because various speakers will contradict what other speakers said. So this is a podcast where you will hear things you disagree with. And I'm going to keep doing that. I'm going to hear things I disagree with. Sometimes I push back. Sometimes I don't feel like it's appropriate to do so. Sometimes I'm like, you know what? I'm not sure I agree with that, but I want to spend this episode just listening, maybe asking some pushback questions, or maybe just kind of trying to understand where they come from. I'm not going to do your thinking for you. I will approach various topics and conversations in a way that I feel like is appropriate in the moment.

Sometimes I get done with the podcast and the next day I'm like, ah, I should have said this, should have said that. I should have pushed on that a little bit or maybe I shouldn't have pushed on that too hard or whatever. That's the messiness of having a conversation with a neighbor, not doing a sermon from a stage. If all I did is produce my sermons, which I don't have a lot of sermons, but then this podcast would look very different. And some of you would stay, some of you would leave for another podcast. So I do fear that the walls of these echo chambers we have in our society and especially in the church,

I do fear that they might be getting thicker. There's a fear of, you know, ideas you disagree with being dangerous and harmful. And, you know, we saw that in some of the reviews, you know, and I hear that on both the kind of far left and far right, you know, instead of interacting with an idea, instead of actually engaging an idea and looking up sources and looking up evidence and then disagreeing with an idea because you have better arguments to the contrary, instead of doing the hard work of showing why you don't agree with this idea, I think more and more people seem to be resorting to that idea is harmful. Oh, that's based on pseudoscience without offering any proof or, oh, that's a dangerous idea.

That's going to hurt people. And I just think, honestly, could some ideas ultimately lead to harm, i.e., you know, Nazi fascism or whatever. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. At the heart of every evil movement are dangerous ideas. I just fear that that most often in our rhetoric today in 2021 is used as a lazy cop out. And so just so you know, any, I just, any critique that contains the word pseudoscience, dangerous harm, or something that ends in phobic or whatever, I don't even listen to that. It's just not an argument. It's just kind of a thoughtless disagreement. So let's do better.

Let's critically engage hard topics. Let's use our minds. Let's not coddle our American minds. Let's actually use our minds to engage difficult and maybe even strange or different ideas, ideas we're not used to. Of course, I guess somebody could say, well, isn't there some line? Would you have on David Duke on your podcast or the leader of Antifa? I don't know if that's even the thing, but I don't know if there's a leader of Antifa. Certainly there's Antifa. But yeah, no, I wouldn't have on David Duke or an Antifa leader largely just because I don't find those ideas very interesting to me. runs through my head is like if an idea is so bad that it doesn't even warrant engagement then shouldn't you simply expose it shouldn't you in one sense you could make the argument like shouldn't you quote unquote platform david duke to show all the world what a disjointed uncompelling hideous set of ideas he has like like if it's that bad, which it is,

then exposing it to the light is what you should do. So yeah, I just don't, the whole like rhetoric of you platform this person, you platform that person. I just, just so you know, don't send those to me. I don't listen to that. I don't even agree with the mindset that goes behind the kind of fear of platforming. Once again, I'm having conversations with neighbors, not preaching sermons from a church stage. So, and yeah, you know, sometimes I do take risks. Sometimes I'll say, hey, this person looks interesting. I'm going to have them on. And then afterwards, I'm like, ooh, yep. I'm going to get some emails about that one. You know, I would rather err on the side of having on a convert controversial voice, seeking to understand that voice than to fall

back into safe mode and saying, Oh no, this is going to make some people mad. Oh no, this is going to get some emails or, Oh no, some people aren't going to like this one or not like that one. Or, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to roll the dice, um, in the favor of taking more risks by having some open-ended, potentially risky conversations. Again, if I find their ideas to be at least interesting or provocative or something that I would like to engage in. Patreon. I know I mentioned Patreon quite frequently on the podcast. So Patreon is a platform where people who have been blessed by the show, enjoy the show can, uh, financially contribute to the work of theology in a raw. And in return, my patron supporters get, uh, various kickbacks or rewards that are behind a paywall. Uh, so we

have various tiers. We have, uh, uh, the bronze tier, five bucks a month, silver, 10 bucks a month, gold, 25 platinum, 50 diamond, a hundred. Gold, $25. Platinum, $50. Diamond, $100. And we have different stuff that people get in return for the level of support. We're revamping some of those tiers. I need to make sure I tell my Patreon supporters about this soon. Actually, they already know about it because I'm recording this before January 1st. And I will let them know about the revamping of the tiers as patrons grown. I,

you know, I'm periodically revamping the tiers. One of the things I added, I'm super stoked about is a monthly zoom chat with my gold level supporters. So it's a smaller group as you can imagine. And so once a month we just have an open ended zoom chat. So like in a couple of days we're going to be doing, I think the theme of this one is evening drinks together. So bring your favorite drink, orange juice, vodka, vodka and orange juice, whatever it is.

And we're going to have just a Zoom chat hangout at night. We did one kind of early morning last month. Didn't get a lot of people that one. So maybe I'll just keep to the evening conversation. So that's been one of my favorite things in this ministry is engaging. I want to say Patreon supporters. And the idea isn't like, oh, since you're supporting the show financially, therefore I like engaging with you. It's just, one thing about Patreon is it does create some necessary parameters around a certain community that I can try to manage because I can't just have

open-ended conversations with thousands of people listening to the podcast, but I can manage a few dozen or a few hundred. So yeah, I love engaging people who are listeners of the podcast. A lot of them have been really blessed and challenged by the podcast. So having certain parameters around that kind of them have been really blessed and challenged by the podcast. So, um, having certain parameters around that kind of community has been just super beneficial to me. Um, it helps me constantly realize that there's real people who I now know through names and faces that are listening to the podcast. So every time we record a podcast, I'm not just thinking of

some, you know, faceless community out there. I now have, you know, people that I've gotten to know over the years. All patrons get some sort of discount to the virtual pass for the Exiles Conference. All patrons are invited to be part of like a launch team. When I release a book, I always invite a bunch of people to be part of the launch team. Silver level supporters are invited to ask questions for the monthly Q&A podcasts and so on and so forth. There's lots of perks. Oh, they get access to a lot of the stuff I'm writing right now, like my pre-published thoughts, like all the stuff I've been talking about, like women in ministry and stuff. I've got a lot of that written out. So I don't want to just release

that to the public, but I do upload some of those papers and documents. And sometimes it's glorified notes to my Patreon supporters, so they can kind of see a written version of what I've been thinking through. So that is all for now. Thank you all for 2022, for your listenership, old listeners and longtime listeners and young listeners and fresh listeners. Thank you for listening to May This Podcast. May theology in a row continue to help you to think more deeply and love more widely. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.