Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep905: The Gospel of Multiethnic Reconciliation: Dr. Bryan Loritts

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

Bryan Loritts (D.Min., Liberty University) is the Teaching Pastor at The Summit Church. An award-winning author of seven books, Dr. Loritts has spent the bulk of his ministry serving and resourcing the multiethnic church. He co-founded Fellowship Memphis in 2003 and serves as the President of The Kainos Movement, an organization committed to seeing the multiethnic church become the new normal. In this podcast, we talk about the need of prioritizing a theology of race, looking to the Bible for guidance on the race conversation, rather than reading everything through the lens of partisan politics. Theology in the Raw Conference - In Person or Online At the Theology in the Raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme. Faith, Sexuality, and Gender Conference - Live in Boise or Stream Online In the all-day conference, Dr. Preston Sprinkle dives deep into the theological, relational, and ministry-related questions that come up in the LGBTQ conversation. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today a special guest, Dr. Brian Loritz, who is a pastor, author, speaker. He's the president and founder of the Kynos Movement, a teaching pastor at Summit Church out there in North Carolina and the author of several books, including his latest release, The Dad Difference, and several other books he's written have to do with ethnic reconciliation in the church, multi-ethnic churches. And that's what we talk about in this podcast. He is a, as you'll see, I mean, just as you'll notice five seconds into the conversation, Brian just oozes with wisdom and humility and grace and just biblical thoughtfulness, especially when it comes to the race conversation. And I very much enjoyed

this conversation. I think it is something that, well, I think it's something every Christian should listen to. So if you feel the same, do spread this podcast around to the far reaches of your social media corners. All right, without further ado, let's get to know the one and only Dr. Brian Loritz. All right, I'm here with Brian Loritz. I mean, most of you are going to be familiar with Brian's name. Written a ton of books, been a pastor, been um i mean just a just a leader in the country on so many levels but specifically brian i wanted to have you on because you just have navigated the race conversation so incredibly well and with like just grace and sensitivity and wisdom and um in a way that i mean if if i can just be blunt like i in a way that, I mean, if, if I can just be blunt, like I, in a way that I think can get

through to, for lack of better terms, the, you know, the evangelical church, primarily a white dominated evangelical church. Like, I just think you, you swim in those waters, you, you know, you, you know, the culture. And so anyway, uh, we're going to jump into that conversation, but thanks so much for being on the show. Can you give us maybe just a quick overview of who you are for somebody who doesn't know the name Brian Loritz, the three or four out there that might not know who you are? Yeah, Brian Loritz. I am a teaching pastor here at the Summit. the people of God, but also love kind of navigating the intersection of the gospel and race. And wherever I go, I try to really emphasize that and this whole idea of what I call ethnic unity. So, you know, I think the vision the Bible paints is broader than diversity.

I think diversity is just one step to a much bigger vision, and that is ethnic unity. And so I just think the Church of Jesus Christ should be on the front lines of doing that. I think the multi-ethnic church is one of the strongest apologetics for the veracity of the gospel. So when people see people coming together who normally don't within a local space and they are loving each other, man, I can't think of, especially in today's culture, a stronger witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ than that. So we just try to flesh it out within the context of the local church. And that's straight out of Ephesians 2 to 3. I recently read through it again, and obviously Ephesians 2,

but that's the first half of Ephesians 3 especially. But then that carries right over to Ephesians 4. And I more recently has been reading Ephesians 4, thinking the unity that Paul's talking about there. We all talk about unity and all this stuff in Ephesians 4, but that unity is, you can't divorce the concept of unity in chapter 4 without ethnic reconciliation, right, and unity in chapter 2. So you don't have unity until you have specifically ethnic unity. Is that fair to say? Oh, absolutely. In fact, you know,

most of the churches Paul started were multi-ethnic, right? So, you know, whenever Paul walks into a town, he's got two questions. Where's the synagogue? I want to preach Christ to the Jews. He's got two questions. Where's the synagogue? I want to preach Christ to the Jews. And then where do the Greeks or the Gentiles hang out, right? So Athens, it's Mars Hill. Ephesus, it's the Hall of Tyrannus.

You know, Acts 18.4, when he's in Corinth, it says that he reasoned or tried to persuade both Jews and Greeks. And so I think that's another important thing that people hear me say, Preston, and that is what drives Paul's quest for ethnic unity isn't really ethnic unity, it's missiology. Like Paul is saying, I want to reach this whole town with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul has a gospel greed, so to speak. He wants to see everyone come to know the Lord and then put them into this beautiful thing called the local church. And so that's important for us here. You know, our church here is in the triangle, 12 locations. And we just say, listen, what's driving this is missiology. We're 56% white in the triangle, 12 locations. And we just say, listen, what's driving this is missiology. We're 56% white in the triangle, 44% people of color in the triangle. We just want our sanctuary to look like our mission field. That's all that we're trying to do. But in today's highly

politicized culture, Preston, if you just lead with language like diversity or things of that nature, now people, because cultures hijack some language, they're going to be set on edge or whatever. But I've found even with fundamentalists, I'm not even talking evangelical, but with fundamentalists, Bible-thumping fundamentalists, that statement, hey, all we're trying to do is look like our mission field really helps to set people at ease. Yeah. So can you tease out the differences really quick between diversity and unity? And what does unity actually look like in the context of ethnic unity? unity? Yeah, that's a great question, Preston. So the Yoda in our kind of space is a woman, Jesus-loving black woman named Corey Edwards. She's assistant professor of sociology at the, she would make me say the Ohio State University. I lived in Ohio. You're spot on there.

So obnoxious, man. But anyways, she has been really, really helpful. And one of the things she points out, to answer your question, is there are three different types of multi-ethnic churches. At the most surface level multi-ethnic church, well, I need to even back up. When we say multi-ethnic church, we're not just being flippant with our language. We're talking about any church that meets the 80-20 rule, right? And so no one ethnicity meets more than 80%, and even those numbers are very specific. Sociologists tell us that the 20% number is the minimal threshold where minorities feel heard, valued, and esteemed. So we could talk forever about that. So when we talk about multi-ethnic church, 80-20,

a recent study came out in January that since 1998, the multi-ethnic church in the evangelical space in America has actually tripled. Wow. So now we're up to about 22%. Of evangelical churches would be considered multi-ethnic based on the 80-20. That's right. Wow. But to answer your question really succinctly, here's the problem.

We're as divided as ever. Why? Because this stat shows us you can be diverse but not unified. Right? Yeah. And so what's happening now is Corey Edwards says there's three kinds of multi-ethnic churches. At the most surface level is the multi-colored multi-ethnic church. Okay. Think of the NBA All-Star game where you got people who show up from different teams,

they play in the event, but when the event's over, they go back to their own teams. Got it. Right? So that's the, they go back to their own teams. Got it. Right? So that's the multicolored, multiethnic church. You show up to the event on Sunday. You do some programmatic things, but it really hasn't filtered down from the sanctuary to your dinner table to how you live your life. The second level, I think, is the most dangerous church in America in a very bad way. It's the assimilated multi-ethnic church. It's multi-ethnic,

but monocultural. So here you have people who are assimilating into a very monocultural way of doing things. And I actually think, you know, there was a New York Times article that came out, I think it was 2016, somewhere in there called A Quiet Exodus, which talked about minorities leaving multi-ethnic churches in light of the predominant prevailing message of Donald Trump and not speaking truth to power and things of that nature. It actually may have been 2018. So that's really harmful. The third level is what you want. It's the integrated multi-ethnic church. And this is a multi-ethnic church where there is the laying down of personal preferences and cultural norms for the good

of others and the glory of God. It's the laying down of personal preferences and cultural norms. So this is the Acts 15 church, Preston. So in Acts 15, the first church council actually dealt with the issues we're talking about, because what's happening is Paul is planting these multi-ethnic churches, preaching the gospel. He leaves. Judaizers come behind him telling these new Gentile converts that in order to be saved, you have to act Jewish. Right. Right.

So the Church Council convenes Acts 15, and what's their verdict? You don't have to act Jewish in order to be saved. In other words, what they said was, when it comes to the church of Jesus Christ, there is no ethnic home team. So this is the third level. So this is how you know you're not just diverse, you're living in ethnic unity. There is what I call an equitable dissonance, an equitable disorientation and disequilibrium. You know you're living in ethnic unity on the church level when everyone experiences at various points discomfort. If there is one group who is pretty much always comfortable with the style of music, with the programming, with the length, with the way things are done, you're not an ethnically unified church. Ethnically unified church is a indicator light, is equitable discomfort.

Right. is equitable discomfort. Okay. Right? And I think what's, well, I can talk forever about this, but even politically, if your political proclivities are never being challenged

within the context of a local church, then you're not experiencing ethnic unity. Oh, wow. I kind of want to stop and tweet that, but I don't want to slow down the conversation. Note to my audio engineer, go ahead and grab that and spin somebody out of it. In that threefold increase since, I think you said 1998. Are you seeing that third level increasing, that truly integrative ethnic unity? Or are you seeing a lot of assimilation within that? Or is it hard to kind of, I mean, give a stat on that? Maybe more anecdotally as you explore different churches and, um, yeah, the, um, the smell test would say when it's,

it's not that third level. Uh, it's, it's not that at all. In fact, you know, I'm getting together with a, um, with a group of sociologists. We actually think so. So that study came out January of 2021. That's when it was released. I actually think post-COVID that those numbers are going to drop precipitously because we've all felt it, right? COVID was just this perfect storm of quarantine life. So now we're socially and relationally distant from each other. Right. And, you know, Eric Mason says proximity breeds empathy, distance breeds suspicion. Oh yeah. So when I'm not, when I'm not relationally connected to you, I tend to think the worst of you. Yeah. Right. And then you pour on top of that George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor.

You have this huge cultural weight on top of the relational stuff. And that's not even including the health challenges and so many other emotional things that go along with that. So I actually think when the dust settles, we're going to be worse off relationally across the ethnic divide. I do want to dive into this kind of area. The last couple of years, post-COVID, George Floyd, the integration between, well, the politicalization of everything. And that spilled over in the divisions over CRT and all that stuff.

And it's a, it's a, I mean, it's a mess really. And I feel like it seems like Christians are thinking primarily through a political lens, not a, it's been hard enough to get them to read Ephesians, right? Through the lens that we're talking about, which once you, once you ask those questions about what is going on in this book ethnically, and then you go to many other passages, Galatians and Acts and all over the witch, once you ask those questions about what is going on in this book ethnically, and then you go to many other passages, Galatians and Acts and all over the place, and you're like, oh, this is not some subsidiary theme. This is a gospel theme. It's hard enough to get Christians to get there, but then now you add the politicalization of the race conversation. I don't even know if I have a question. I just want help. How about you to like speak into maybe the church and how can we move forward

with a Jesus satisfying, glorifying way of handling the race conversation without letting the political powers to be kind of dictate and shape our hearts in it. I didn't know yeah yeah you probably know what i'm dancing around yeah no this is actually what i'm i'm wrestling with in my latest book that i'm writing right now here's my argument in it and uh i very much subscribe to what uh and you know you you've, so maybe you can appreciate this. One writer says, I write to figure out what I think about a topic. Right. A lot of times people just think we come down with these refined thoughts, but I'm still wrestling with this. what you're asking. I think it's a fundamental breakdown. I think it exposed our faulty disciple-making framework, Preston, right? So my standard argument about COVID in

general is COVID is a gift in some senses, and I want to be very careful for all of you who've had loved ones who've died. I want to be sensitive to that. But there's some hidden gems in COVID because it was such a weight that whatever problems you had that may have been easily hidden, the weight of COVID just revealed all that, right? And especially relationally. Listen, you know, I'm used to traveling 100 to 150,000 miles a year. And, you know, COVID happens, all my travel gets shut down. And I remember sitting on the couch one evening about six weeks into COVID next to my wife going, Oh, shoot, I don't have a lot to say to her. And, bro, it was an amazing – it was a hard but amazing year. We went to therapy.

We worked it out. I don't know if we would have ever tackled these issues that were hidden by flights if it wasn't for COVID, right? So I think COVID has revealed some problems, and one problem we have in the West is a faulty disciple-making framework. And what I mean by that is discipleship in the West is primarily vertical, right? It's me and my relationship with God, and I want to show you how to have a quiet time. I want to show you how to pray, how to share your faith, how to read your Bible.

You and God, it's vertical. But remember, discipleship, the way we know it, is birthed out of the East. And the East is a lot more horizontal and communal and relational, right? So when Jesus comes to earth, the first thing he does is, I'm going to put a group together, right? And we're going to communally and relationally work these things out, and people are going to be very different in the group. You've got Simon the Zealot, who's their version of the Taliban, right next to Levi the tax collector, who in my context, we would have called

him Uncle Tom Sellout. You know, you're collecting money from oppressed people to give to your oppressors. I mean, it's just baffling. Well, I think the problem is we have not discipled well horizontally. We have not discipled people into a new humanity. So what Paul does is when Jews and Greeks get saved, had he followed Donald McGaburn and the church growth experts of the mid to late 20th century, he would have started two churches. Let's start one on the north side of town for the Jews, one on the south side of town for the Gentiles. That's just the easy thing. Y'all don't get along. Let's be very pragmatic here. That's just how we roll. Paul says, I'm not doing this.

I'm starting one church and I'm calling you to flesh out horizontally what God in Christ has already accomplished for you vertically, which is reconciliation. So the problem, at least one of the problems, the way I see it, Preston, is it's not what we think about race or it's not what we think politically. It's the comment section. And you read the comment section on these posts and you go, man, we just don't know each other well. Right. We're just not walking in relationships with others because, again, this whole idea of proximity breeding empathy. It's not that having a person of a different political view changes my political convictions, although at times it can. It now buffs off those hard, abrasive edges. Right. Same thing it did for me. I'll be honest with you, Preston. I think I

emerged from seminary. My homophobia was never challenged in seminary. In some ways, it was entrenched. What God used to buff that off in me is relationships. That's what God used. me is relationships. That's what God used. What God is using to refine me is being married to a person who's completely different than me. That is a means of grace. And that's why we need the ethnically other in our life. It's a means of grace. Hey, friends, I want to invite you to come out to the Theology in the Raw conference next spring, March 31st through April 2nd. It's here in Boise, or you can live stream it. Early bird registration ends on September 30th. OK, so you get a discount if you register before September, well, before October 1st. If you're coming out to attend the conference live here in Boise, all the information

is on my website, pressandspirantill.com. Again, if you are planning on coming out, you definitely want to take advantage of the early bird registration, which is about to end. Right. It's a means of grace. I'm curious. I often get the question when I say similar things about multi-ethnicity in the church you know what do you do when you're in a context or a geographical context i mean i live in boise idaho we call it white oh you know um it's uh i mean it yeah it's 90 i want to say 92 percent white caucasian maybe or maybe 89 maybe 7% Latino, which they live in a certain... Typically, there's a big Latino population the further west you go from Boise.

There's a decent refugee. We're one of the primary refugee resettlement cities. So we have, I think, 12,000 or 14,000 different refugees from about 40 different countries. So there's more diversity than I think people realize. But what would you do? How can you meet the 80-20 if your region is 90-10? Is your goal 90-10 then? But then you still have the danger of having a dominant ethnicity and therefore a dominant culture. Or I guess, let me ask you one more follow-up. Sorry, I asked too many questions at the same time.

Is it still healthy for a 90-10 church that's 90-10 because their surrounding region is 90-10 to have a flavor that reflects more of a 50-50 or, you know, even if that, like they still don't, the church called ecclesiological culture still doesn't feel 90-10, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, this is where I surprise people, Preston, because I don't think every church should be multi-ethnic. surprise people, Preston, because I don't think every church should be multi-ethnic. I think every church is called to engage its Jerusalem, the concentric circles that Jesus kind of draws.

You shall receive power, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, uttermost parts of the world. At the end of the day, you've got to love the one you're with. At the end of the day, you got to love the one you're with. You've been planted literally physically in a certain area. And I would say that's what you need to do. And so in your context, will you crack the 80-20 code? Probably not, because the environment doesn't lend itself towards that. Are there things you can do? I think every church is called to have a presence both locally and beyond its local space. So then you may likewise need to think through concentric circles. What is Judea or Samaria, the outermost parts of the world, and maybe a church planting missional engagement strategy that allows you to raise up, train, and unleash leaders with a broader vision in mind. But I think this conversation is important because oftentimes, and I wrote about this in my book a little bit, Insider Outsider, oftentimes I think the church planting movement and gentrification are accomplices to a crime. Okay. In that we move into an area that is just changing, and you've got great urban churches pastored by great urban leaders who have been

there for a long time, but they get completely dismissed or ignored, and all we want to do is to cater to the new demographic, right? I think, I think that's problematic. So I think if you look around you, you'll probably find vestiges of a community that existed long ago. And what does it look like to come alongside of them and to learn from them and things of that nature? You know, I do think even beyond the church conversation, I do think for our own growth, there's just something about submitting to being discipled by, being formed by people who are just different, and in our context, ethnic difference. So Reggie Williams, a scholar out of Fuller, he wrote a book called Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus. And it's a fascinating tale. I think it's actually his PhD dissertation. And he tells

the story of how Bonhoeffer at the age of 21, as we know, he's a prodigy, gets his PhD, crazy young, but then comes to, in the 1930s, comes to Harlem to study at Union, which is a part of Columbia University. Bonhoeffer says, at the time, I thought I was saved, probably wasn't saved, but because I thought I was saved, I was looking for churches that would kind of preach the gospel. He says, I couldn't find him among the white churches. So he joins the Abyssinian Baptist Church, a legendary historic black Baptist church that's still around today. In fact, the Godfather of Harlem, one of my guilty pleasures, it's a television show. The pastor, Adam Clayton Powell, his father was Bonhoeffer's pastor. So Bonhoeffer follows black leadership, immerses himself in the black church, teaches a black Sunday school class, befriends a guy named

Albert who takes him on a trip to the Jim Crow South, introduces him to Negro spirituals, which Bonhoeffer will take back to. Anyways, Bonhoeffer says this, I don't go back and stand up for the oppressed, marginalized Jews without first hearing the gospel to the oppressed in that black church. Bonhoeffer is just a testament to what shaped and formed me was relationships with the ethnically other. And again, I think for the good of our own soul, even if our community doesn't provide that, I guarantee you, there's some older ethnically other men and women who you would be wise to just sit at their feet and learn from. That's so good. I remember hearing bits and pieces of that story with Bon. I don't know where I heard it, but that's fascinating.

So that experience, he would say, was the engine driving what he ended up later on doing with the Jews. Absolutely. Because remember, all this madness is going on, and Bonhoeffer's here in America where compared to where he's from, this is easy street over here. Right. But being immersed as a minority in a majority black context and seeing the oppression, just God used that to form him. Brian, this will be another one that's hard to formulate. How would you help?

I'm going to create a fictitious person that's, well, it's more of a composite kind of person. They're a white, politically, let's just say conservative Christian who thinks like, hey, we elected a black president. We, you know, since 1964, blatant, I guess, racism is illegal. Redlining is not, you know, is not a thing or whatever. And like, I think we're doing pretty good on the race conversation. Why are there so many protests? And I've been accused of being a racist because I'm part of the white system. And people are, and then they read a little bit about CRT or maybe somebody's interpretation of CRT and like, wow, I don't like that. And how do you help that person who feels

like I don't have any bones with anybody? I don't feel like I'm a racist at all. And yeah, I'm being told that I'm, you know, I am a racist. You know, I don't think I am. Like, how do you help them understand maybe some of the more complexity of the race conversation? Does that make sense? And do you feel like that is a common kind of person that you come across? Oh, yeah, for sure. Right. And it's nuanced. So I want to be careful. You know, we've made huge legislative gains. Right. Huge. You know, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act. I mean, these are huge, incredible opportunities from a governmental perspective that's really come our way. But you got to also remember, though, the other side of it is, so when Brown versus Board of Education happens in 1954, right,

probably the most Supreme Court, consequentially, on the good side of things, the best Supreme Court decision of the 20th century. Right. But the Christian community in the South, the way they reacted was OK. But our kids still aren't going to go to those schools. So what we'll do is we'll start our own schools and price them out. and price them out, right? And so most Christian schools down South started between 1954 and the mid-70s are started as an alternative to government-mandated integration. Oh, wow.

Yes, I passed it in Memphis for 12 years. So that is something where it's not, that bypasses beyond the legislation kind of conversation. Yeah. Wow. Absolutely. Because what they did was they made it, they made the threshold economics and they played to the economic wealth gap and just said, we're going to price out the undesirables. Right. And so in some way, shape,

or form, that still exists today. So the economic disparities, you know, the wealth gap has not decreased. In some statistics, it says it's actually increased. And so the disparities are still there. I want to be very nuanced in this conversation, right? Because what's informing me is a biblical vision and a biblical worldview. People bristle when I say this. I don't like the phrase white privilege because it demonizes privilege for the sake of privilege, right? So if privilege was a problem, if privilege is innately bad, then Jesus Christ is innately bad. No one came to earth more privileged than Jesus. Philippians 2, that great kenosis passage, right? That though he was in the form of God, that though he was in the form of God, right, he came as God encased in flesh. You talk about privilege, right? So I don't think the issue is privilege. I think it's the stewardship of privilege, right? So listen, is there an advantage to being white in America in 2021? to being white in America in 2021? Absolutely. I mean, we've all seen the studies, right, that two individuals apply for the same job, same exact resume, but one is named Heidi and the other is named Keisha. Heidi, by the numbers, is way more likely to get the job than

Keisha. What do you call that? You got to call that something, right? And there's all of the kinds of markers that we could use. But I think what critical race theory does with this binary, and again, it's nuanced. There's part of critical race theory. That's great. People forget that critical race theory kind of really comes to the fore in the years after the civil rights movement in the legal realm, because we're going, wait a minute. There's some promises that were made in legislation that our communities are not reaping the benefit of. I don't know if you saw N.T. Wright's letter that he wrote, a little short letter. He said, in essence, secular ideologies, he didn't mention critical race theory, but secular ideologies, I'll add, like critical race theory, have gained a foothold because the church didn't preach a gospel, didn't preach or practice a gospel big enough to address these issues, right? So I think if the church just lived Acts 2, for example, if we just live that,

critical race theory is not an issue at all, right? And so, but I got to be careful here because this binary and then we get into intersectionality where the more categories of oppression, the more boxes I check, kind of the more benefits I get, the more virtuous I seem. That's incongruent with a biblical vision. Right. Right. So so I'm real careful to kind of just say there's some good things here, but there's some bad things here as well. And that what we have to understand is that race isn't fundamentally a governmental issue. It's fundamentally a heart issue that is still manifesting itself in different ways. And we've got to be able to speak to that. Now, what we've done as the Church of Jesus Christ is we've put all of our eggs in the governmental basket. When a vision says God has a three-pronged strategy for dealing with sin and providing human flourishing outside of the cross. It's the three institutions in order. It's the family, the government, and church.

What we've done is we want to put everything in a government box, and that's not the case. It all begins with the family. And again, this vision of discipleship in the family, where what I have to do as a parent is I have to disciple my kids with a robust discipleship, where I'm not only teaching them how to have a quiet time, but I'm giving them a robust anthropology and a vision of the Imago Dei, right? That's got to start in my home where I'm nipping racism in the bud. So when George Floyd happens, and I'm looking at one of my sons, true story,

who is in a rage, and he's saying all white people are bad. And I'm saying, well, let me stop you there. What about Uncle Adam, Aunt Nikki? What about Uncle Bobby, Aunt Heather? White, Jesus-loving people who we do life with, right? What is that? It's me taking ownership as a dad and nipping this in the bud, right?

And so I've got to give them that vision. There's the governmental piece. We get that. But government can change laws. It can't change hearts. This is where the Church of Jesus Christ steps in. And not only do we provide the answer to the heart, which is seen in the new covenant, but it should be the church that is on the front lines, helping the marginalized, giving a great vision for the poor

and disenfranchised. It should be the church. And instead, I think the critical race theory conversation, we've now taken steps back. That's so sad. All of that wouldn't have disrupted the church if we were already doing what only time white evangelicals are speaking up is in an anti-CRT. It's like, where have you been the last 30 years? Now you want to talk about race? Oh, yeah. that drives me nuts i i just said this the other night i was preaching at a conference you know i never hear from you on justice right right never hear from you but now you just can't shut up about critical race theory right right um and it's almost like what Jesus said to the Pharisees, you know, you guys tithe mint and cumin, but you neglect the weightier matters of the law. And he uses the J word justice. Right.

And so, you know, I think it was Randy Alcorn who pointed out there's over two thousand three hundred and fifty verses in the Bible that speaks to God's heart for the orphan, the immigrant, the widow, the poor. Over 2,350 verses. And I think I've got to be able to flesh that out, and we've got to be able to talk about these things as the church without being politicized. And that's the problem, Preston. I think everything's politicized. We've allowed Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon to disciple us more than Jesus. And I think that's the fundamental issue that we're having to deal with right now and that we're wrestling with. Hey, friends, I hope you're enjoying the content so far. And if you've been challenged, blessed, or cursed by theology in the raw, would you consider supporting the show for as little as five bucks a month through Patreon? This is a listener-supported show. You can go to

patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw, and you get access to premium content like monthly Patreon-only podcasts that I do. We do lots of Q&A conversations through the Patreon-only community. I also write a once-a-month blog for my supporters. And you get cool things like discounts on, I don't know, the Theology in a Raw conference that's happening next spring. If you're a Patreon supporter, you get some significant price cuts to the ticket price for that conference. And there's many other perks that come up. So again, patreon.com forward slash theology and raw. All the info is in the show notes. That we're having to deal with right now and that we're wrestling with.

That's been my hunch is that media outlets on the left or the right, which have become so polarized now. I mean, in my more cynical moments, I think, I don't know if it's cynicism or just truth, but like, you know, views are down. They're losing money. They need to clickbait titles. Psychological studies have shown over and over that if you ignite the anger and get people enraged, then they're going to read, read, read and click on ads. Like there's so much. You don't want to talk about power and money, you know, driving this whole machine. And yet it does seem like christians are just bathing in this

stuff and i would say it's a problem on both and i'm glad you you listen to two on the right two on the left and i'm like yeah because i'm i'm fairly apolitical in in many ways and so i do i try to listen to both sides you know and i'm like man both sides are neat i have to listen to both sides because i'm getting one narrative from this side, one narrative from the other, and it's just not helpful. Right. And I was going somewhere with this. been highly polarized that many Christians are being discipled through has just made the race conversation that we should be having incredibly difficult because all they hear is CRT. They hear this and that on both sides and they're so bathed in more of the secular conversation,

which is important and I don't want to separate the two. But like if I start talking about yeah social justice or ethnic reconciliation or hey you know we should have more diversity so that we can have more integrative you know ethnic unity like people are just gonna antennas are gonna go up what is this critical race theory you know i ain't talking about that like what if i didn't it's not even about that um i don't know how do you disciple people out of that? When you go into a church, it's like you feel the tension. The pro-Trumpers, the anti-Trumpers and everybody. How do you speak to them in that?

Well, so I mean to answer your earlier question, I think as far as just this, it just feels the most divisive it's ever felt in my lifetime. And you kind of go, what is that? I think one of the reasons, and there's many, one of the reasons I think is the blessing of Trump. The blessing of Trump. And that is, I think, yes, I think, I think, I think Trump gave people, see, I think the division was always there. What Trump did was he gave people freedom to express it. Like he gave people just the green light by his own example. I'm going to say what I think. I know it'll tick you off, but this is boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I think people got that green light on both sides. The Trumpers just going, all right, boom. And the rhetoric just went up to a whole nother level that never existed from a rhetoric standpoint before, but it was always in the heart. Like, like we, we felt these

things. We just, the political incorrectness of Donald Trump gave a collective freedom to be politically incorrect. So I don't know if we're literally more divided than we've ever been. I know that verbally we are, because now there's just this huge freedom. And this is why, to answer your follow-up question, I think the reason why I'm really hopeful for working these things out in evangelical spaces is that the assumption with evangelicals, the assumption is our starting place is the Bible. Like, if you can show it to me in the Bible, right, that's not where the culture is, of course. to me in the Bible, right? That's not where the culture is, of course. The culture, they look inward for meaning in life. Evangelicals say, no, no, no, meaning in life is found outside of yourself, in the scriptures, in a relationship with God, so on and so forth. So if I can show you Ephesians 2, and even before that, take you through an expository methodology of teaching

the scriptures. See, I don't even think I can get up today and just do a topical thing on race, and it'll yield a lot of fruit, right? Which, case in point, Preston, here's what drives me nuts in my world. Second Sunday of the year in January is Sanctity of Life Sunday. I can't tell you how many times I got up and I just preached the scriptures and made a case for why we should fight for life in the womb. And in evangelical circles, it's amen. You know, they're wanting to buy me dinner and wanting to give me a raise the whole night. The next Sunday, and Matt Channel and I talk about this all the time, it's a perfect bookend because the next Sunday is typically MLK weekend. And so that's where I do a message on life outside the womb. And we might talk about

a vision for ethnic unity. Every single time I'll have people get up and walk out. I'll be called a social justice warrior. I'll get email. I went, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Where was that last week? Right? But six years ago, you wouldn't have had that happen, right?

Because those categories weren't so volatile. Like you could have said, or... I still would have had it happen. It would have been significantly less pushback. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think the pushback goes all the way up. But my point is, that's when you take a topical approach. You're better served now just going, hey, we're just going to walk through Ephesians in chapter one, adoption, foreknowledge, election. Yes. Chapter two. Oh my. Look at what Paul does here.

And I think that's better received, again, because the assumption is if I can show it to you in the text. Right. So that's that's how I would start to make our way here. And then just letting people know this is a value of our church. That's what we did in Memphis. Hey, we're a gospel-centered, disciple-making, multi-ethnic church. And you're going to hear about this in the new members class. This is what you're signing up for. We're not going to bait and switch you.

This is what we're about. We're intentionally going to gather leaders together at this church who are ethnically different. These are things that we want you to go on this journey with us. I just got a couple more minutes, two more minutes, but can you give us a quick snapshot of how things are going at Summit? I know you're pretty new there. I mean, North Carolina, as you said, is a diverse area. What are your hopes and dreams over the next few years that take place?

What are the things that you guys are moving towards in this conversation? Yeah, so Summit's about a 12,000-person church. And about three years ago, J.D. stood up before the congregation and just said, look, man, there's a vision that we have here. We want to be 25% minority by 2025. And by his own words, he says that that was a conservative number, because, again, the actual numbers are 5644. And but he just felt like, man, I just have a heart. We're only reaching a part of the triangle.

We're not reaching as much of the triangle that God would have us to reach. So this whole idea of missiology driving things. And God's been gracious to this church since then. I don't know what the exact numbers were, but they were on the uptick. And then right before COVID, we were right at 19% minority, which, you know, we're about to crack that 80-20 thing. And we're running the numbers again in a couple of months to see exactly where we're at. Because I do think we've fell back a little bit ever since COVID started. So that's the vision. And they're putting their money where their mouth is. I mean, they've hired me. They understand that, you know, the pulpit's a powerful place.

So having minority representation on a consistent, substantive level has been huge. There's a commitment to hiring well-qualified minority staff where it makes sense and growing in that direction. So we're very much in process. In fact, we're kicking off a podcast called the Summit Church's Kainos podcast, which is a pastoral podcast in real time about how we're trying to flesh these things out with the hopes that people who eavesdrop in on the conversation will glean some nuggets for how to do it in their own context. So we haven't arrived.

We're very much in process, and we're very much hopeful. Brian, thanks so much for your wisdom and your grace and for being on Theology in the Raw. BrianLaritz.com, is that right? I was just on your website. Bunch of books you guys got to check out. The first one, I think I first heard your name through the Cross-Shaped Gospel. No, I heard your name before that, but that was the one that always stands out, Cross Shaped Gospel. And you've written how many books? I mean, quite a few. I saw them. Okay, cool. Yeah. So thanks so much, man. Keep

up the great work and thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate it. Thanks, Preston. Enjoyed it. you