Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep933: Theology in the Raw 2022: Looking Back and Pressing On

Episode Date: January 1, 2022

Happy new year! In this episode, I talk about the analytics of the podcast, which has grown like crazy over the years, my heart behind the podcast, its history and future, how I handle criticism, some of the most popular episodes, and I walk through the TITR mission, which is: “To help believers think Christianly about theological and cultural issues by engaging in curious conversations with a diverse range of thoughtful people.” Oh, and I read through several 1 star reviews. Theology in the Raw Conference - Exiles in Babylon 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. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Theology in the Raw 2022, looking back and pressing on. Happy New Year, everybody. My name is Preston Sprinkle. I'm the host of Theology in the Raw. And I wanted to give a New Year kind of summary, a New Year summary of the previous year and some thoughts for 2022. 22. I love podcasting. I thought it was going to sound like Oprah Winfrey. I love bread and I love podcasting. I do love podcasting. It's one of my favorite things that I do in life. I do a lot of different things. People sometimes wonder like, so what do you do? What's your day job? My day job, my primary job is running or helping to run, helping to run the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender. That is my full-time job. But I do set aside what used to be half a day on Tuesdays.

Now it's become pretty much all day on Tuesdays for the Theology in the Raw podcast, which has now turned into a bigger ministry. And that's something that you might hear more down the road, but we are exploring what Theology in the Raw can become as bigger, not just bigger, but like maybe broader than simply a podcast. So we're going to create, we're in the process of creating a separate website where we can have blogs, perhaps even have maybe possibly online classes or something like that, or just more material that resonates with the theology in the raw, I don't like the word brand. Way? The way? This is the way? The theology in the raw way? I don't know. That kind of fits the vibe of what we've been doing on the podcast. So I'm excited. I'm super excited about 2022. And in looking back on 2021, even though it was a crazy year, and it was a good year. It was actually a great year for the podcast. So I want

to give a quick shout out and thanks to the 452 of you who support Theology in a Raw through Patreon. Thank you so much for your support. It really does keep it going. There's no way I could take an entire day of work to devote to something that wasn't being supported. I mean, I used to be able to do that when it was just kind of like, you know, a quick and dirty podcast, a 15 minute little podcast that kind of do on the side, like it wasn't that big of a deal, but it's grown quite a bit and now has become a thing. And so my Patreon supporters have allowed me to devote more time and attention to it. So thank you so much for all of your support. Thanks to Miles Davis.

Not the, well, no, he is the Miles Davis. Miles Davis is my sound engineer, guy, producer. I just record the podcast and I send it to Miles and everything. And somehow it ends up in your feed. I don't even know how that happens. Like, Miles does an amazing job, both with the sound, correcting all the glitches that sometimes happen, and also making it look good on the other end. And so thank you so much, so much to Miles.

He's become a good friend over the years and an essential part of the Theology in Raw team. Thanks to all my guests who have been on the show. Sometimes we don't realize that taking an hour out of your day simply to have a conversation on a podcast, that should not go unnoticed. I turn down a lot of people that say, hey, can you be on my podcast? Can you do this? Can you do that? Whatever. And I'm like, I can't just take an hour out of every day to be on somebody else's show. That's a lot. That's an hour of work.

It's an hour of my life. And I would love to just sit around and podcast all day on other people's podcasts. And I try to do some. But it's not... That shouldn't go unnoticed. So thank you to all my guests who have given up an hour or so of their time to be on the show.

Some of them multiple times. Looking at you, Joey Dodson. We're now in our seventh year. Isn't that crazy? This podcast started... Well, it actually... I don't know if you guys know this. Some of you might, but this podcast started originally as a 15-minute radio show on the

Boise Christian Radio Network. That's not exactly what it's called, but it was one of the Christian talk radio stations here in Boise, Idaho. And I think it was August 2014, just a few months after I moved to Boise, went into the radio show, got to know them a bit. I was telling them about the Bible College that I was starting in Boise. They got pretty excited and then said, hey, by the way, we have an opening from 2 to 2.15 every day, Monday through Friday. And we want to know, would you want to host like a radio show? And I said, I don't even know what that means, but sure. And we started it as a 15 minute live radio show. And I titled it, What Does the Bible Really Say? My intro music

was Where the Streets Have No Name by U2. And that's where it started. It was just a 15 minute live radio show where I would just talk about what does the Bible actually say. So if you go back to the archives, I think the first, I want to say at least, well, I don't know, at least a hundred, at least a hundred, maybe even the first couple hundred episodes of Theology in the Raw were originally simply the radio show. And then later later that year maybe it's like a year later in 2015 my then sound guy at the time uh justin said hey um would you want me to turn these episodes into a podcast as well it wouldn't take much work and i said i don't know what a podcast is but sure go ahead and it turned into a podcast um a couple years later later, my time at the radio show ended and Jess, I believe it was Jess at the time, said, hey, even though you're not doing the radio show anymore, do you want to

keep doing the podcast? And I said, yeah, I really enjoy it. So I kept up with it and rebranded it Theology in the Raw. I believe that was, I want to say 2000, maybe around 2016. Maybe that's 20. No, I want to say somewhere around 2016 where it was no longer a radio show. It was podcast only. We're nearing a thousand episodes. I don't even know what number this is. 940 something maybe. And that's crazy. And some people say, you have almost a thousand episodes. But again, I remember I got a huge head start when I was doing it five days a week, 20 episodes a month, roughly at 15 minutes a pop for the first year or so. So that really gave us a good jumpstart. Since I've been doing it once or twice a week at an hour long episodes, the number of episodes being cranked out obviously

slowed down. But we're in our seventh year. I want to share with you some stats. I don't, I have never known the stats on the podcast. Like I just don't even know how to get ahold of it. Uh, part of me doesn't really care, honestly. Um, but over the last six months or so, uh, thanks to miles and others helping out, we've been able to access some of the statistics for the podcast. And I was looking over these and I was like, this is crazy. So total lifetime plays. So if you know anything about the podcast world, it's hard to measure. Like when people say, how many people listen to it?

It's like, what are you asking? Like how many people start an episode? How many people subscribe to it? How many people download an episode? How many people watch the whole thing or listen to the whole thing? I mean, there's so many different metrics to go into understanding the reach, if you will, of a podcast. So it's hard to, it's almost like you have to, there's several different questions to get to ask to understand the full reach of a podcast. So using several different metrics, in its lifetime, Theology in the Raw has over 4 million plays. 4 million plays since 2015.

Now, here's the thing. Since just in 2021, it's had over 2 million. That's insane, y'all. That means that in the last year, the podcast has grown like crazy. So 4 million total. Half of the plays of The Algenorov come just in the last year in 2021. Back in January, if you add up Apple and Spotify, the two main kind of platforms that it's released on, back in January, there was about 7,000 listeners. And again, I don't even know how to

measure that. I guess that's anybody who is subscribing, listening, downloading. I don't know. I don't know. 7,000 listeners. That was back in January. In December now, we reached about 20,000 listeners. So it's almost tripled in listeners in this last year. On Spotify, back in January, it had 2,654 followers. And now in December, it had 9,469. So almost 10,000 followers. So that's quadrupled in the last year. Some of the most popular episodes. I'm curious if you want to guess which ones they were, the most popular episodes. I think some of these probably won't be shocking. But the number one episode that had the most plays of all time, actually, of all time. But again, because there's been so much growth and listenership in the last year, basically the most popular episodes last year are also going to be basically the most popular of all time.

So the number one played episode of all time is The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill with Mike Cosper. Thank you, Mike, for coming on the show and the popularity and provocativeness and quality of your podcast, the rise and fall of Mars Hill has trickled over to produce what has become the most popular Theology in Raw podcast ever. 59,000 plays of all time. So Mike, your podcast, The Rise and Fall, is a thousand times more popular than that. But you've been heard over almost 60,000 times by people on Theology in Raw. Number two, pastoring people through politics and pandemics, Matt Chandler's episode. Number three, there's actually different metrics for this too. This might just be the Spotify ranking. Vaccines, pandemics, and the future of the world of Mark Sayers was among, I think about third, the third most popular

episode of this last year, at least. Maybe that, I think it's just on, I think that's just on Spotify. So some of you are kind of bummed out about that. I got a lot of critiques with Mark Sayers' podcast. So yeah, the Francis Chan episode was up there. Thabiti. Oh, Thabiti Anubale's episode, 58,700 plays, which was, in terms of how many, the most plays, that one was number two, right behind Mike Cosper. If you go all time

in terms of the rankings, I don't know how they measure this, but Julie Slattery's episode from 2020 came up as in one ranking, the most popular, the title of that one is Sex, Female Sexuality, and Fifty Shades of Grey. And that might have contributed to its popularity. I don't know. Just wondering. Okay. Here is what I'm super excited about. You ready for this? The sex breakdown. When I say sex, I mean biological sex, not having sex because that almost sounded kinky, sex breakdown. Anyway, males and females listening. Guess the percentage here. So I'm male and most male podcasters have a predominantly male listenership and vice versa for females. That's very typical.

Okay. Here's the breakdown for Theology in a Row. I'm so excited about this. 44% of you are females, 54% are male. Isn't that crazy? I don't know if that's shocking to you, but that, I mean, again, I would say the average male podcaster probably has 10% to 20% female listenership if, I mean, if that depends on the nature of the podcast. female listenership if, I mean, if that depends on the nature of the podcast. Almost half, almost half are females and those percentages don't equal a hundred. So maybe like 2% of you are intersex, I guess. I don't know. Or maybe refuse to answer. Almost half females. Here's why I'm excited about that. I'm going to share a little quick story with you. A few years ago, maybe it was like two years ago, and I apologize if I've told this story before. I don't know if I have on the live, on the public podcast. Maybe I've told this to my Patreon supporters. A couple years ago, two, three years ago, I came across a comment on social media, which I don't pay too close attention to stuff like this, but the person said it was a female saying um if you keep having only male guests on i'm gonna stop listening it was by a woman or something like that it was it

was like um until you have a female guest on i'm not gonna listen to your show anymore and i was like oh get over yourself like fine good oh no we're losing you know and that was my response like oh whatever then i thought i thought for a second i was like hmm really do i just have basically mainly almost all male guests so i went back and looked at a previous 10 20 30 episodes as oh my word she's right i that's not that's terrible that's terrible. That's not good. So I don't know if you've noticed, if you've been a follower for a long time, but over the last, I would say two years in particular, I have made at least a concerted effort to have on as many thoughtful, engaging women as I can. Now, I'm not going to do the whole like, oh, just because you're a woman, now you're qualified to be on the podcast. No, I want thoughtful human beings.

And because I believe that half of thoughtful people are females, then I need to, as a male host who apparently has been oblivious to the sex of his guests, like the sheer disproportionate number of men I've had on, I really want to make a concerted effort to have diversity in terms of sex on the podcast. It's still not where I want it to be, to be honest. I mean, it might be, I don't know, I'm going to guess maybe 70, 30 males to females on the show. 30 males to females on the show. But just so you know, I am trying, I am, I'm very aware. And every time I book a podcast, I ask myself, is this too much of the same kind of person that's on the show? I do want diversity. And we're not going to get to that more in a second, but all that to say, I am so thankful that almost half of my audience are females. I

think that's just healthy. It would be very unhealthy for me to have like 90% listeners that are male. I don't think that's intrinsically wrong. It's just for me personally, I'm very excited about the sex diversity. Age range, 10% of my listeners are 18 to 22, 27%. This is the biggest group. Most, a quarter of you are 23 to 27, uh, 25%, 28 to 34, only 19%, 35 to 44, and only 14% are in my age bracket, 45 to 59. That sucks. I, I turn 46 in a couple of days. January 4th is my birthday. I don't know if I, should I say that live? Now you can steal my social security number, credit card. I don't know. Only 14% of you are in my age bracket here. So that's interesting. Top cities. Seattle is number one. Seattle is number one. So congratulations, Seattle. You are the top

Theology in a Raw podcast city at almost, well, a little over 1,100 listeners. New York City, 830 listeners. Denver, 673 listeners. Atlanta, 672. Those are the top four cities. Those are the top four cities. Why do I share all these stats? For one, a lot of people ask about it. So I'd rather just say it on the air so I don't have to keep repeating it. Like how many people are listening? What's the reach?

What's your listenership like? So that's what my listenership is like. That's who is listening to this. I got to be honest, makes me super nervous. When I was doing the podcast early on, even the radio show, radio show, not many people were really listening. And I kind of enjoyed that. I'm like, I can kind of just talk and think and play devil's advocate and say stupid stuff. And nobody's really listening anyway. And before I looked at the stats recently, I kind of had that same perspective, same liberty.

And now I'm like, oh, crud. People are actually listening. That's a little freaky. So, um, you know, with, with the growth and yeah, it's grown tripled or quadrupled in the last year, basically with the growth, obviously comes a lot of more criticism. That's just the way it is. Um, people often ask me, how do I handle, uh, criticism? And we know it's an interesting question. I mean, let's be real. Like most criticism comes from just somewhere online.

Like my son's baseball coach doesn't criticize me. My neighbor doesn't know what I do. Like the workers, we just had some blinds installed in our windows. Normal embodied humans that I interact with on a day-to-day basis, it's not like somebody's knocking on my door and I open it up. They're like, where do you get off? How could you have that guest on this? It's just not like the real, not real,

but the embodied world that we live in is a thousand times less critical than the online world. So part of it is just knowing that. And part of it too, is like, I choose, like when it's online, then you have to go search it out. And I don't, like, I don't Google my name. You know, I don't, I don't, I, I, I, I am social media, and I would say fairly frequently, but it's typically tweeting. It's a tweet and run. It's like, here, think about this. I'm out of here.

I don't scan social media very much. Maybe now and then I'll get sucked into it or whatever. I typically try not to spend too much time on reviews, although I do check the podcast reviews. But I, you know, here's my general policy. So my general policy is I try not to spend a lot of time on social media accounts listening to critiques. And when I do do that, I assume every social media account is a Russian. Every critique is a Russian bot unless they prove themselves to be human by using humanizing speech.

That's been a general principle of mine for maybe the last three years. Basically, you're a Russian bot unless you prove yourself otherwise. And that's been really helpful. So like when people say things that are dehumanizing, I just assume it's not a helpful. So like when, when people say things that are dehumanizing, I just assume it's not a human. So like why get upset? Um, some of you are like, oh, that's funny. Did you know that, um, did you read this article? 19 of the top 20 Christian Facebook pages are created by troll farms in Eastern Europe. Why am I laughing?

It's so sad. According to the MIT Technology Review, it exposed that an – it gave an internal Facebook report from 2019 that Eastern European troll farm content was reaching 140 million users, United States users per month. Oh my word. Only 75% of these users had ever actually followed the pages, but they were popping up in their feeds apparently i'm not sure how that um works so yeah so it's not actually being cute and funny saying like oh i assume you're a bot unless you prove yourself to be human like that's actually kind of kind of true but yeah there's there's humans who speak in ways that sound like you know eastern european bots so i just assume you are one until you um

use speech in a humanizing way the way you would want people to talk if you if i sent somebody talking online that i would assume you would want to be talked in that way then that that's probably a human and i might i still don't really interact with people like on twitter and stuff so um i just i can't yeah and some of you like I don't think I've ever said this, but like my Instagram every now and then I'll check, like, I'll look at my requests or messages or DMs or Facebook DM. I don't think I've, I think I've checked my Facebook messages like once every year. And even then it's like overwhelming. So I just don't. So if you're trying to, if you ask me a question, I do apologize that, um, through a lot of avenues, I just don't have the bandwidth to respond. I wish I could. I wish I could spend all day responding to people because a lot of

really neat questions and thoughts and encouragements and personal questions people I can't respond to almost all of it. And I do focus my energies largely on my Patreon community who are incredibly thoughtful and awesome and kind and generous. And they're just awesome. I love them. I love hanging out. We don't hang out in person, at least most of them, but the conversations I have with them online in the Q&A podcast and stuff like I, that alone takes, you know, time and energy and effort and responding to private messages and public comments and everything just on Patreon.

So that's really where I focus most of my energies on. So, and also here's what I love about my Patreon community is they're not afraid to push back. They're not afraid to challenge me, to criticize me over something I said and criticize in a really humble, God-honoring way, humanizing way. So like I do depend on them if I'm getting off the rails or said something stupid or if they fact check me or whatever. Like I do pay close attention to their criticism. So because I do think listening to criticism is good and healthy. I think that's something you should do, but only certain kinds of criticism. So some of you asked me how to handle the criticism. I have developed a thick skin over the years. I mean, I've been talking about controversial stuff for a while. So I do.

Early on in my kind of like public engagement, I used to purposely stare at dehumanizing criticism so that I would develop thick skin. It was kind of like working out, like mentally and spiritually working out. And at first it was super hard. Like people just call you names. I've had people like make fun of my name and rip on my family and do this stuff. But after a while, it just, you develop kind of a resilience to it. And now it can become kind of, it can become kind of entertaining. And I don't know what to do. It's weird. I don't know why I find enjoyment reading, for instance,

I don't know why I find enjoyment reading, for instance, oh, like the one-star reviews on the podcast. These are awesome. I love the one-star reviews. In fact, here, I'm pulling them up right now. Some of these are, you'll see what I mean. Okay, here we go. This is reviews from the podcast. Raw, but not much theology is the title.

podcast. Raw, but not much theology is the title. 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. He zeroes in on people's emotional experiences without much challenge or exposition of what those experiences might mean in light of, and then it cuts off here. I don't have the whole thing. So that one's interesting. Raw but not much theology. Heretical. I love this one. One star review. I gave this podcast three episodes to see what it was all about. I don't see any biblical grounding, and the podcast seems to welcome heresy. All right. So, here's another one. Not nearly questioning enough one-star review. Preston is making great strides towards stopping blind hatred of LGBTQ people, but he stopped short of actually

challenging Christianity's historical views on these topics. Well, maybe because I believe in those views. I don't correct people who hold to a traditional view of marriage because I think that's the correct view. But silly podcast, another one story. Oh, I love this. This is my favorite. All he does is promote and bring everything back to his book. I don't know which book. I've written a few, but I is a lot dumber after hearing him speak. I shouldn't laugh. He is a bro and people that piggyback off the gospel to make a quick buck are pathetic. I agree with that. Not called to be a pastor or a teacher, but called to do a podcast because it's easy,

super easy. Believers Beware. I started listening to Theology in a Raw, hoping it was a biblically sound podcast to have a heretical pastor. Brian Zahn on his show is even very concerning. Thanks, Brian. Appreciate that. on on his show is even very concerning. Thanks, Brian. Appreciate that. Should we keep going? I listened. Another one. Sorry. Even educated people believe in the occult. Okay. I've listened to the program for about a year. I had my last straw when the host started offhandedly talking about the Enneagram as if they're ignorant of how the, quote, personality types of the original system were received by automatic writing and channeling spirits. The creator of it is, in fact, an esoteric mystic that doesn't actually, and then it gets cut off. Do I keep going? I don't know.

I can't stop. Preston's podcast is, oh, Talking Much, Thinking Little. Preston's podcast is, oh, talking much, thinking little. Preston's podcast has gone from being a helpful outpost of mindful biblical thoughts on topics to being useless blabbering on without much thought, substance, or integrity. Preston has taken COVID lightly. He thinks QAnon allegiance is a small little blip on the radar and his mindless thoughts on CRT, blah, blah, blah. It cuts out. Episode 822 was merely reaffirming the position

of conservative Christians on race. It isn't a mainstream liberal view, but it's certainly the mainstream conservative beyond race uh that's interesting so you have a conservative speaker on race and that's not good apparently um i don't know there was one i was looking for here that i read a while back ugh he just doesn't get it i think my wife wrote that one. Anyway, so yeah, I... Oh, two white men talking about... Yeah, that's an old one.

So, I don't know. Why am I reading one-star reviews on my podcast? Okay, here's a moral of the story. Yeah, there's a lot of one-star reviews. A lot of five-star. So, I'm skipping over all the five-star reviews. So, many of you left really great reviews. But if you haven't left a review yet, please leave an honest review. Anyway, all that to say, the criticism, the pushbacks, the growth,

and everything has caused me to revisit the mission of Theology in Iran. the mission of Theology in Iran. What is the mission, you might ask? Well, I didn't have one. This is so bad. This has been around for seven years. And literally the other day, I was like, what's my mission statement?

I don't have a mission statement. Aren't we always supposed to have a mission statement? Part of me is like, no, the podcast is just free-flowing conversations with interesting people that I want to engage in. And I hit record and some of the people can listen to it if they want. But even that's a mission. Even that idea has to have a mission. So I stole away one evening to a nearby dive bar when my son was at baseball practice and spent an hour figuring out what is the mission of Theology in the Rock. So here's a mission statement. I wrote a mission statement. This is probably one of probably 10 I could have written, like different ones, but

I honed this down and I want to walk through it with you because I think it's maybe important for understanding theology in the rock. Here's a mission. Our mission is to help believers think Christianly about theological and cultural issues by engaging in curious conversations with a diverse range of thoughtful people. How's that? I'm not a good mission statement writer. Some of you are experts at this stuff. But I like that. I mean, I've tweaked it. I've molded it.

I've edited it. I've trimmed it down, cut stuff out, changed words and everything. So I have spent a little bit of time on it. But I haven't paid somebody $1,000 to help me with it or whatever. I think that is a thing. People help you write your mission statement. But this is the Alden Ron. I'm that is a thing. People like write, help you write your mission statement, but this is the all neuron. I'm gonna spend a thousand dollars for that. But to help believers think Christianly about theological and cultural issues by engaging

in curious conversations with a diverse range of thoughtful people. I like that. Let's walk through this. So first of all, to help believers, I did this podcast while I have non-Christians listening. Thank you. Welcome all of you. And I sometimes have non-Christians listening. Thank you. Welcome, all of you. And I sometimes have non-Christians on the show. The podcast, I am directing towards believers. It's not evangelistic. It's not apologetic. It is more discipleship would be the category. I want to help believers to engage their faith better. Help believers think Christianly about theological culture issues. Christian, I like the word Christianly. I don't, this is gonna sound bad. And maybe this, this plays into some of the one-star reviews. The word biblically, I think has been hijacked

and overused. Anybody, I think it's so common for people to slap the word biblical on their viewpoints, regardless of whether they can show you from the Bible where they got it from. Well, we need to think biblically. Well, I'm being biblical. This is a biblical church. It's like, what is it though? What does that mean? I just think the term biblically is just too common and too – it just has kind of lost its power, I feel like, through people using or misusing it. I could say theologically, but the word theological,

like to think theologically about theological issues, first of all, it's a little redundant. Second of all, when I hear the word theologically, it sounds almost too cerebral to me or just like, I don't know, just thinking. But when I hear Christian, like I want to think Christianly, to think Christianly, that includes thinking, but also practice and posture and character formation. To think Christianly is never simply about just thinking. It's about believing and doing. It's listening and loving and so on and so forth. So again, help believers think

Christianly about theological and cultural issues. Okay. Theological and cultural issues, kind of like the female thing where I realized like, oh my gosh, I'm having way too many men on. Let's have some more women on. I do want to strike a balance. Just so you know, I do want to strike a balance between engaging in straight up theological or biblical topics. Like I love having guests on who are experts in like a certain book of the Bible and say, let's just talk about this book. Just help us. Let's unpack this book. Let's talk about this theological theme, this debate or whatever. I do want to make sure I'm having a healthy balance between biblical slash theological conversations and topics versus cultural topics. Yes, I want to talk about masks and pandemics and politics.

And I think the next episode with Peter McGowan will be on the future of like technology. We talk a lot about Tesla and space travel and so on and so forth. And that's more like cultural stuff. I want to make sure that there's a fine balance between cultural issues and biblical slash theological issues, just so you know. So if you feel like I'm too heavy in one direction or the other, just know I'm aware of that and I'm trying to strike a balance there. Help believers think Christianly about theological and cultural issues by engaging in curious conversations. That's my new favorite phrase. I love that phrase, curious conversations in an age where everyone is polarized and focused on defending their own viewpoint or the viewpoint of their tribe,

their denomination, their church, their political party. I want to become curious about the other. The other, the other person, the other viewpoint, other biases, other way of looking at things. And that other way of looking at things could be totally wrong. And that's not the point. The point is I'm curious about a perspective that maybe I haven't considered before. Because if I haven't really listened to it and talked to the person that holds it, then how do I know it's wrong? And yeah, I'm going to get to that here in a second. Being curious obviously doesn't mean agreement. I get curious when I go to the zoo and I see monkeys picking their butts or picking bugs out of each other's

hair or fur and eating them. That's interesting. Wow, really? You're going to do that? Ew, but I'm curious about that. This doesn't mean I think they're right or as good and beautiful and worthy of emulation. I mean, just because I'm interested in another person or species, I mean, just because I'm interested in another person or species, that just means I care enough about the person to know what they think about a certain thing, why they think the way they do, what's their reasoning. I heard that's a heretical view. Well, I want to understand it. Is it heretical?

What's their reasoning for holding to that certain view? I'm curious about my own faith, my own beliefs, my own passions and behaviors and presuppositions. I want to be around people that aren't like me, that don't think like me, that have a different perspective. I don't know. I want to, it might be because I'm reading Brothers Karamazov right now, and I'm just fascinated with Ivan Fyodorovich, the intellectual atheist in the story. That guy blows me away. Really fascinated with him. The theologically astute atheist. I want to interrogate my faith so that it can be tested and found more pure, more anti-fragile, more stable, and able to sustain me through these turbulent times. And if I just lock my faith up, lock my mind up in an echo chamber,

it's going to get weak. It's going to get fragile. A faith that lies uninterrogated is a weak and uninteresting faith. A belief system that needs to sit in the padded walls of an echo chamber protected against all opposition is a fragile faith on life support. That's about to die. I want to interrogate my faith. I want to interrogate your faith. I want to push back against your presuppositions about God, the Bible, race, church, immigration, health, sexuality, gender, violence, patriotism, politics, and so on and so forth. I want to have on guests that you won't agree with,

that will challenge your thinking, that will say different things, that will bring up different points of view. It's not, okay, so please, please hear my heart. My goal here is not that you would end up in a more oblivious state than when you first listed. Listen, I don't want to use the term, right? I don't want to further your deconstruction. The goal is that you would end up in a more anti-fragile, firm, robust, resilient state than ever before. Because an uninterrogated faith, an uninterrogated belief system, an uninterrogated view on race, immigration, politics, it's like our beliefs are like our immune systems. Like if they've never been opposed by germs and stressors in life, then they become fragile. And a fragile faith is destined to die. I want to strengthen your faith in God,

in the Bible, in a Christian view of race relations, of immigration, hell, violence, whatever it is. That's precisely why I want to challenge it because I want it to be stronger. precisely why I want to challenge it because I want it to be stronger. And so through a diversity of viewpoints, different opinions, pushbacks to your viewpoint that may be correct, may be incorrect, maybe getting at something we haven't thought about before, I want this engagement to help strengthen our faith. So I want to help believers think Christianly about theological culture issues by engaging in curious conversations with a diverse range of thoughtful people. So let me address the issue of platforming. And this is a critique that... And again, when I talk about critiques, it's overwhelming majority response to the podcast have been very positive.

Thank you and thank you. If all I got was nothing but critiques, I'd probably shut down the podcast, right? But knowing that this has had some positive impact on people's lives, then that's great. That keeps me going. then that's great. That keeps me going. But one of the critiques that doesn't come up a lot, but does come up enough for me to want to address it, is this issue of platforming. This is really kind of a new thing that, it's not new, the whole concern with platforming certain voices. I guess it's always been there, but that concern has so exploded over the last couple of years. And I have some ideas on why that is.

But this podcast has a diverse range of guests and viewpoints on. And especially when it gets to some touchier topics, sometimes I'll get the feedback of, I can't, should not have platform that dangerous or harmful. It's usually the word, it's usually harmful, right? You're platforming a harmful, uh, perspective. Um, So I, how do I put it? I simply don't agree with acknowledge that as a – I acknowledge that platforming is a thing. I just – that the mindset that goes into that fear, I do not share that point of view.

In fact, I think that being nervous about platforming this voice and that voice and that voice and this voice and that opinion is harmful and that one's going to lead to harm and that's a dangerous perspective that you're hosting there. Why am I not into that? Partly because that mindset, while it seems to be more, at least in my anecdotal experience, coming more from progressive people, progressive leaning, progressive type people. It really echoes the very thing that I grew up in, in fundamentalism. It's almost word for word. I don't think they use the word platforming, but like, whoa,

you're reading that book. That's a dangerous, but that's harmful. That's going to lead, people might become like amillennial if you give them exposed to amillennial viewpoint. So here, here, read exposed to amillennial viewpoint. So here, here, read this critique of that dangerous viewpoint. I'm like, well, wait, shouldn't we read the actual viewpoint? Shouldn't we listen to the actual person? And I want to see how they would respond to your critique. Are you strawmanning that viewpoint? Have you read,

have you read that book that you think is harmful? I get that a lot. The people that will say a book is harmful almost always haven't read it. It's just my anecdotal experience, I guess. So I don't think it's wrong. In fact, I think it's profoundly right to get outside of our echo chambers to actually listen to, actually listen to and understand and empathize with and even consider different viewpoints other than the ones you currently hold, especially if it's a touchy, sensitive topic. I mean, how the heck am I supposed to know what somebody believes if I don't ask them, hey, what do you believe? Well, that's a dangerous person. If they voice their views, then you're platforming a dangerous view. First of all, how do I know it's dangerous until I listen to it? Usually people say it's dangerous or harmful through just word of mouth or why I

heard somebody, this person I respect says it's harmful. Have they even read the book? Have they talked to the person? Have they asked questions? Have they got clarification? We live in a post-internet age. It's not like hosting a viewpoint that you think is dangerous or harmful is going to make it go away. It's just going to go somewhere. Better to engage it and correct it if it's that bad than to not engage it at all, in my personal opinion. So, yeah. So, I truly believe that the frantic fear of quote-unquote platforming so-called dangerous or harmful voices will only lead to more echo chambers, polarization, and misinformation. So I, and some of you are like, no, I don't agree with anything you said. And that's fine. Here's the thing about podcasts too. Like this is really a new medium. And I think some people

think it's almost like a church service or something. There's people that I have on the podcast that I wouldn't, if I was a pastor of a church, I something. There's people that I have on the podcast that I wouldn't, if I was a pastor of a church, I wouldn't say, hey, come preach next Sunday. Like, yeah, that's a different kind of mode of expression. I'm going to have on a lot more diverse people to engage in. So I think, I'm just thinking about this out loud, see if this works.

Like my podcast is more like a neighborly conversation. Like I don't, I wouldn't have all my neighbors preach at my church, but I'm going to engage in conversation with them. And so that's kind of what this is. Like you get to listen in on conversations that I'm having with my neighbors, my neighbors, my brothers, my doobie brothers, smoking doobies with my brother. that's a line from the office anyway um so curious conversations with a diverse range of thoughtful people i um and so a diverse range

let's talk about diversity so yeah i've already talked about uh i am trying to have more sex diversity over the last couple years um trying to have a lot more ethnic diversity, especially when I... I feel like deep down, I've always tried to have that or valued that. But I would say I've made a more concerted effort in the last two years to make sure that I am achieving that. I feel like before it was a desire. I valued it. Now it's kind of like a non-negotiable. Again, not because I think that simply being female or simply being, for instance, somebody of color that makes you intrinsically a better guess. I just think that wisdom and thoughtfulness, that white people don't have the corner marker on that.

wisdom and thoughtfulness that white people don't have the corner marker on that. And so as a white person, I need to find the people who are thoughtful and wise and engaging and have so much to say. And if I don't make a concerted effort to make sure I'm not diversifying those voices, then I'm ignoring the wisdom that is in existence out there. And I say out there because as a white person, I do have more white people around me. Well, do I? In my local community? That's kind of hitting, well, Idaho, sure. Yeah. So yeah, diversity and sex, ethnicity, age. Sometimes we forget about age. and sex, ethnicity, age. Sometimes we forget about age.

Obviously, I've had lots of diversity in sexual orientation on the show. Ableness, that's one I like to push into. Having people who have perhaps disabilities on the show to talk about their experience. The two podcasts I did last year with Brian Brock and then with Lamar Hardwick, Lamar's especially really blew me away, and I want to do more of that. That was fantastic. I really want to push into disability theology and grow myself in that direction as well.

Diversity, I do avoid the extremes, super progressive people, super conservative people. Not, not because I'm like against having them on the show, but I'm just, how do I, I just don't find that viewpoint interesting. Like if somebody is just, I don't know, if somebody is just repeating like tired old slogans foraged in the echo chamber of their tribe, I just don't find that viewpoint interesting. If within five minutes I can guess, you know, who you voted for, your view on vaccines, your view on masks, your view on Republicans or Democrats, your view on vaccines, your view on masks, your view on Republicans or Democrats, your view on politics, your view on whatever, I don't know, like the age of the earth, your view on sexuality.

Like if within a few seconds of talking to you and hearing the slogans come out, I'm like, oh, I already, you're just going to, you're stuck in this kind of tribal echo chamber. And you are giving more allegiance to that tribal identity than you are thinking through the issues. I love talking to people whose viewpoints go against their tribe, whatever tribe that is, where it costs them something socially to hold to a certain view. I find that perspective super interesting. But if somebody is kind of just really just far left, far right, and they're just repeating all the slogans, I just, that just doesn't, again, I grew up in that kind of world where it's like, you know, and you've heard about horseshoe theory, right? Like the more farther to the right you get, the farther to the left you get, you end up kind of sounding the same, the further extreme

you get on the progressive conservative spectrum. And so I found that to be, you know, I tell people like one of the reasons why I'm just really turned off by super, super, super progressive Christianity is because I was already raised in fundamentalism. It was intolerant of so many different perspectives and straw man, straw person the other viewpoint and made ad hominem arguments and wouldn't read that book because that's

a dangerous, harmful book and all these things. So, yeah. It's largely because I don't at all really resonate with fundamentalism is why I don't really resonate with progressivism. Like, not liberal. Like, classical liberalism I think is awesome and healthy and great. And I would probably be somewhere in that camp in terms of how I approach topics in life and so on.

But, yeah. So I make a firm distinction between, like, far far left, far progressive and liberal as a general posture. Anyway, getting off track. You know, with different guests, so a diverse range of thoughtful people. I do like minority perspectives. I'm not talking just ethnic minority although they wouldn't might include that but like people who yeah i'm fast like minority perspective people who are part of a certain group of people and i

and i don't don't not don't get too far down the identity politics road. But somebody who has some kind of group identity, who has a perspective that goes against the greater group. I've always been drawn to that kind of opinion. I mean, I kind of, I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm kind of like that. But like people who are reformed and believe in nonviolence that perspective fascinates me um people who are reformed and don't drink beer no just kidding um i um people of color who have different views on race than what you might hear on like cnn that perspective i do find fascinating especially like the thought the

really thoughtful ones the intellectuals and there's a good number of them out there um i find it fascinating that um lgbtq people um that voted for trump doubled between 2016 and 2020 i find that very interesting as somebody who really does not like Trump at all and think that he's, yeah, Trump's Trump. What do you say? I find that really fascinating. I find it fascinating when people are gay and hold to a traditional sexual ethic. I find it fascinating, as we learned a couple weeks ago in the podcast, when a lesbian marries a gay man and they follow Jesus together under a traditional sexual ethic. That's super interesting to me. I find it

fascinating that somebody as conservative as like Chris Date holds to an annihilation view of hell. Like that's interesting to me. It's interesting. I give you you get the point people who are oh there's an article from the edge of the inside I actually tagged this at the edge who wrote this at the edge of the inside oh it's by David

Brooks 2016 David I don't even know I think he's like a moderate conservative. Is that, is that, oh, it's blocked now. Like, I don't, it's behind a paywall. Anyway, he wrote an opinion piece, David Brooks from New York, New York Times, from the edge of the inside. Like you're part of this bigger tribe, sort of, but you're kind of on the edge of it. And you're not afraid to be critical of it. And you're not afraid to be critical

of it. You're not just going to toe the line. In fact, your tribal identity is not central to the way you think. Your mind is central to the way you think. And you do think independently. And you're not afraid to go with a viewpoint that makes friends the enemies because they want you to say something differently. I find people who think that way very interesting. So those are the kind of guests I like to have on. Sometimes I take risks. Look, you know. There's episodes you're like, huh, that wasn't typical feel. I take risks, dude. Sometimes I meet people kind of in passing or I get an email from somebody or I'll see a comment on social media and I'm like, I want to get to know that person more. I don't

know anything about them. This could totally be a disaster, a train wreck, but I'm just going to hit record, have a conversation with my neighbor. If you want to listen to it, then tune in. If not, there's thousands of other podcasts. Just go listen to another one. Just change channel. Sometimes some of the critiques of the podcast, I'm like, you do know you can change a channel, right? Like you, you don't have to keep like you. It's like, it almost feels like you made me listen to this harmful. Like, no, just stop. Just stop. Hit pause, change the channel. Like it's, you can do that. Um, it's not, it's even church service. You can walk out, but it's like, ah, it's a little awkward, you can walk out but it's like that's a little awkward you know here's just like click um yeah so sometimes i'll take a risk i'll read a book i'm like i want to have that person on it's like oh that was a flop i'm not even thinking of a specific person or

episode but like i'm like yeah there's gonna be some episodes where i'm like i'll have them on hit record i'm like that was not what i was expecting. That's okay. There'll be another podcast in a couple of days. We can make up for it. Did I cover it all? So I'm so excited. So that's, okay. So let's go back to the mission statement. We got to end with this.

Our mission, to help believers think Christianly about theological and cultural issues by engaging in curious conversations with a diverse range of thoughtful people. I'm going to keep doing that. And even though the podcast has grown like crazy, I want it to stay the same. I just told my wife the other day, I'm like, I'm a little bummed out with the growth. And she's like, why? Most people will strive for that. Because now I'm like, I don't want to get in my own head. I don't want

to self-censure. I don't want to edit episodes. I think I've edited like two episodes in the last five years. I don't do that. People are like, you'll clean this up, right? I'm like, I kind of nod. Yeah, I'll clean it up. No, I'm just going to send it out, dude. I don't want to think about a big audience out there because that thought,

I think, stifles genuine conversations. So just so you know, I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing for the last seven years. I'm going to keep engaging in topics with an open mind, firm center, soft edges, firm convictions, when we have evidence to form a firm conviction. And if we don't have that evidence, then that conviction shouldn't be so firm and we should invite counter evidence to challenge that claim. So I'm all, people say, like that one review,

I don't know his stance on biblical truth. My stance on biblical truth is I'll follow the Bible where it goes on every single topic. And sometimes it could take me a few years to really get a good understanding of what the whole entire Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic scriptures say about a certain topic. A slowly formed conviction is a strong one. A quickly formed conviction is sand. I just made that up on the fly. That's not bad.

I should, shoot. Well, it's recorded so I can go back and maybe tweet it. Maybe one of you, one of you guys can tweet that. Is that true? Like that, like we should be slow to form our convictions about certain things. So if I'm like having lots of conversations and you're not sure where I land, where are you on this? Where are you on that? CRT, what is your stance? I'm like, what am I, a lawyer? Like, I don't know. I'm doing a lot of listening, a lot of learning,

a lot of reading, a lot of misunderstanding out there, a lot of misinformation. Most people who have a strong opinion about CRT don't really know what it is, my humble anecdotal opinion. But yeah, I want to engage these topics and I'm going to keep doing so through curious conversations with hopefully a diverse range of thoughtful people. Hey, you guys, come. That almost sounded like it's a different recording. This is the same recording. The Theology of the Raw Conference, March 31st, April 2nd.

Space is filling up. I think we're over, last time I checked, over half full for attending in person. If you want to attend in person, I would highly encourage you to do that because it's going to be a very embodied experience. Lots of, so here, so I I talked about the nature of it? So we're going to have loads of talks. They're going to be shorter, typically. Some are a little bit longer, but most of them are going to be like

10 to 25 minutes. Then after somebody gives a talk, I'm going to sit down on stage, interview the person, 10, 15 minutes, TITR style. And then we're going to do a text-in audience Q&A.

You're going to get to raise questions, push back. What about this? What about that? You're going to get to engage the speakers. Obviously, with whatever it is, a thousand people, we can't do stand up Q&A. That's a disaster. I've done that. It's a disaster. But you can text in your question. We'll get to as many as we can. Worship is going to be truly multicultural, different. It's going to be in three or four different languages, I think. We have lots of diversity, ethnic, sex, age, viewpoints. There's not drastically different. Well, it depends on the topic. So we are having that debate on hell dialogue debate

annihilation versus ect on set that's gonna be on the saturday um the race conversation has some diversity there in terms of viewpoints um uh the sexuality and gender conversation is gonna be awesome i can't wait for that anyway the and then we have the after party so when i go to conferences can i admit i rarely like to listen. It's more about connecting with people when I go to conferences. I long for after it's over, it's like, all right, who do we get to hang out with and chat with?

So we created space. It only holds like 500 people, the after party on Friday night. So you have to get tickets for it. And that's selling out quick. I think we all have like less than 100 spaces left. So all that to say, I want to make this conference. Like in going to conferences for 25 years, I basically said,

what are the things I like? What are the things I don't like? I want to not do the things I don't like and do the things that I really like. So that's Theology in a Row, Exiles in Babylon. March 31st, April 2nd, sign up very soon if you want to attend that conference. And if there is space left by the time this recording goes out, I really invite you to come to the after party on Friday night. Free flowing drinks.

I don't know. Should I say that on there? Yeah. Come have a couple of drinks, get to know some people, have a great time. You can't live stream the conference and there's no limit on that. And if you have a church and you're like, man, I've had a few churches say, we want a lot of our people to attend this, but we can't fly them all out there. Is there something else we do? We do have watch parties. You can sign up for a watch party

and that's a lot cheaper. That's a cheaper way to do it. So as a church, if you want to say, we're going to have a watch party, come be a part of this conference and engage these hot button issues from a Christian viewpoint, then yeah, you can look at all the information on how to sign up, PrestonSpringle.com. All right, folks. Thanks for listening.

Happy New Year. Excited to dive into 2022 with you. Hopefully this will be a little better year than last year or the year before. Goodness gracious. All right, guys. Thanks for listening. See you.