Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep960: Debriefing the Exiles in Babylon Conference with Ed Uszynski

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

Preston and Ed debrief about Theology in the Raw’s first “Exile in Babylon” conference. They talk about the highs and the lows, the most memorable experiences, and the things they’d do differently. And many other things that happened during the event. –––––– PROMOS Save 10% on courses with Kairos Classroom using code TITR at kairosclassroom.com! –––––– Sign up with Faithful Counseling today to save 10% off of your first month at the link:  faithfulcounseling.com/titr or use code TITR at faithfulcounseling.com –––––– 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. www.theologyintheraw.com

How can people get access to this content? Is there some way still to do that? Yes, yes. So those who attended virtually, I think they have seven days to watch it. But I think we're actually going to close. I think we might have put a cap on that. So we hired a really good film crew

to film the whole thing with different angles and everything. So they're going to spend about, it's going to take about six weeks of editing. And then we're going to release a digital version of the conference that isn't just, it's not just the virtual, you know, just the one camera or whatever. It's going to try to mimic the live experience with closeup shots, different angles. Um, nice. It's going to be presented really well. You know, these guys are amazing. So that should be done, I think about six weeks from now. So people, and I think we're going to make it in bite-sized

chunks so that people can kind of purchase like the race three hours, the sexuality three hours, whatever, just in case they didn't, weren't interested in the whole thing. So yeah, the Theology in the Raw website, theologyintheraw.com. And then, yeah, look for that in six weeks or so. All right. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. This is going to be a different sort of episode. A little impromptu. A little impromptu. Unexpected. Let me set the context.

I'm not 100% sure when I'm going to release this. We're recording this Sunday. What's today? 3rd? April 3rd? 3rd, April 3rd. So I might release it the 4th. I'll check with Miles

and see if he can have a heart attack if I say, can you whip this thing out for tomorrow morning? But we'll see. So I'm here with Dr. Ed Yuzinski, longtime, longtime friend. And both Ed and I, well, yeah, we just did the Theology and Raw Exiles in Babylon conference, which I hosted. And Ed was a speaker there, taking part in the race conversation. And Ed and his wife, Amy, they hung out in Boise for a couple more days. And, man, we go back a ways. We go back a ways.

And we just decided, having done a three-day conference. We're the last two standing. We might as well pick up the scraps and see what came of it all. Why not? And I don't know if it was your idea, my idea, or maybe joint. We just kind of finished each other's thoughts anyway. But I was like, might it be cool to kind of debrief on the conference. But for me just to do that by myself isn't – I mean, it's not –

I'm sure that would be fine. But it's just by myself, and it could feel kind of disingenuine too. So I said, Hey, um, disingenuine, is that disingenuous? Disingenuous is what I, and I know that's true, but yeah. Well, because it's your conference, right? So, you know, is it just you kind of framing the questions the way I want them to frame, debriefing the way I want to debrief. So I said, hey, why don't you, can you debrief with me? You interview me and we just talk through, just kind of reflect on the conference.

There's no real agenda. I don't even know if this is going to go well or not. But both of us are, I don't put words in your mouth. I'm still exhausted, but extremely happy right now. Yeah. Happy is a good word. Satisfied. Satisfied.

Felt like we just got to be a part of something that was special. I've been around the ministry circles for a few decades now, so I go to retreats, conferences all the time, as I know probably a lot of our listeners do. And, you know, sometimes it's just about the content. When you go to an event, it's just about the content. But sometimes there's something additional where it feels like the community is having some kind of an experience together.

And I've felt that at different times uh you know in different places i definitely felt it in these last few days that there was just something qualitatively um exceptional going on that i know people probably didn't even want to leave you know you can only take so much content in so there is a limit to where it's like i can't do anything you could not have done any longer. I feel like it was the perfect timing, I think. Me too. Me too.

And yet still a longing for, like I said, something just qualitatively that was there that you want to capture and be able to reproduce and keep experiencing back home, in which we can talk about that. Why don't you talk about, again, because not everybody even knows what this was. I know you've been promoting it for months now, and it's been on social media. But what just happened? Who all took part in it? What happened?

How many people were involved? So it was a three-day, I guess it would be a 48-hour conference, Thursday night, Friday, all day, Saturday morning. It was a Theology in Raw, Exiles in Babylon conference, first time we've done anything like this. And it was... I wanted it to be a conference that... This is good. It's kind of helped me reflect on how I would even... It's almost like I felt in my heart what I wanted it to be. I don't know if I could even articulate in words what I want it to be, but I love the church.

I love good preaching. I love deep, deep theological dives. I love meaningful worship. I love authentic relationships. I love talking about the hard things. I love church unity. I love being able to disagree with other people while humanizing each other. I love genuine learning, not canned learning. And I think most people know kind of the difference there.

I like asking genuine questions and receiving informative responses that cause me to think. Just who I've been the last, I mean, hopefully forever, but especially the last 10, 15 years, you know, like I, yeah. So, so I wanted the conference to be that, whatever that is. Like, and, and honestly, I didn't have it real ironed out. I mean, I, I, the flow, the people and everything, everything was just kind of like wake up one morning and said, Hey, I think this person should be a part of it. I'll invite them.

And hey, maybe we should do this. Maybe we should do that. It didn't. There was a ton of time and effort into working out the details. But in terms of like the flow of the conference, that was just it just kind of was more intuitive to how we put it together. So, yeah, that's the outcome. You know, I said at the opening night that, you know, what's my goal? That we would love, that we would think more deeply and love more widely.

Like I'm a big heart and mind person. If it was just an amazing worship experience, which it was, I think, that I still would have been satisfied. I've been in amazing worship, um, environments, but I don't, and I've been in deep theological environments. I don't think I, and debating environments. I don't think I've been in one that kind of pursued all of those together and not see, I'm going to be so hesitant to even say, therefore we nailed it. That's not my intention. I just, I wanted to create an environment where we would not shrink back from talking about Greek words. Yeah.

You know, Sandy Richter doing her thing. And I've heard Sandy give that talk before at the theological conference. And the talk was amazing. The environment was dry and stuffy and boring. And I've been in Pentecostal worship services. Yeah. Well, you had all the raw materials that you wanted. And, uh, and again, I was just kind of thinking of a salad. You, you threw them all together, like a salad, mixed it up and we'll see how it comes out. Exactly. And there were, again, just maybe we'll we'll uh say what were the different segments

and if i'm if i understand what happened there were about a thousand people that were there in person and at least another thousand if not more that were participating online so it was a couple thousand people pretty close venue right we weren't all scattered out it was really interesting maxed out the place was maxed out it was i think 10 50 or 1100 is what we had okay in person that was like the fire if we had any more the fire department would have gotten a call yeah dang near standing room only and people were were in there the whole time right people were wanting to get in there on time and were enjoying it what were the different segments and we don't need to go into detail but again just so people know the kinds of things we were

talking about i think each segment kind of had its own vibe to it. And that, you know, even before I even mentioned that, it's kind of cool because I didn't have it really ironed out. It's not like I said, here's the three, four categories I want to talk about. Let's find the people. I would kind of find somebody, then think of a category, then find another person, think of a category. And so it kind of meshed together. It ended up turning out where I'm like, oh, I really want to do this every year like this, to where there's kind of four different main topics. You know, Thursday night, one topic. Friday morning, another topic.

Friday afternoon, another topic. I think I like the idea of having kind of a dialogical debate about a theological doctrine on Saturday and close us off with something else. So one of the more less defined themes was our political identity, our identity as Christians in the midst of politics. And then Francis Chan, the first night, focused more on unity in the church. I said a few words about just kind of what does it mean to have an exilic identity. Elie Bonilla kicked us off with a barn burner of a talk to open us up along those lines. And John Tyson on the back end talked about, kind of brought us back to that theme of living as an

exile. Friday morning, it was all about sexuality and gender, and one talk on women in the Bible. And then Friday afternoon was all in race. And then Saturday morning, we had a Friday afternoon was all in race. And then Saturday morning we had a, um, dialogical debate, uh, on, on the nature of hell, whether hell is eternal conscious torment or annihilation. Um, yeah, so some of the speakers and, you know, I know a lot of people listening already know, but we had, um, yeah, Ellie Bonilla, I'm kind of going to order Ellie Bonilla, uh, myself, obviously, uh, Francis Chan next morning, Jackie Hill Perry. Then we had, uh, four testimonies from Greg Coles, Tony Scarcello, Johanna Marie, and Kyla Gillespie.

Friday afternoon, I hope I'm nailing it. You're checking me? You're doing pretty good. Okay, okay. Keep going. Wow, I'm marinated. Friday afternoon, we had four 18-minute talks from people on race. So Ed gave an overview of critical race theory and basically said most of what we think about critical race theory is BS.

Most of what is said about critical race theory is just simply a caricature, sometimes just not true. Then we had Thabiti Anyabwale. We had Derwin Gray. And then, well, Derwin ended it. We had Kimi Katiti speak as well. Saturday morning, Gary Brashears and Chris Date had that dialogical debate. And then John Tyson closed us off with the XL talk. Wow, excellent.

Well, this is the webinar. I know, but I know. That was great. So let's just start here. Some general reflections. Like, just step back from it. It just ended. The dust has barely settled.

You're walking back from it it just ended the dust has barely settled you're walking away from it i mean things really did go uh uh pretty much without a hitch you know it wasn't like there was any significant redirect that had to happen what you just described is is what happened um and so what is what are just some general takeaways i have i'm pretty self-critical and a perfectionist and I would say I'm so satisfied and I rarely say that about books I've written, podcasts I've done I honestly, and my experience is different I'm managing the whole thing, my head is thinking time stamps and what I'm going to say and announcements and we went too long here and this, there's a lot going on in my brain on stage.

So I don't feel like I got to enjoy the conference the same way other people did. And yet, I was able to hang with speakers in the green room while we're like, when you set a point and everybody's like, oh, dang! And then you say something else, it's like, oh, I don't know, I don't know. Or like, oh, you better say this. So I got a different experience, which is amazing, too. So I had a wonderful weekend. But then you're always thinking about the next thing, too, right?

And you did a bunch of couch time with different people and interviewing them. And you know what? We forgot about street hymns, too. That was the only piece. Street hymns. We got that. Street hymns. Oh, my gosh.

Get some spoken word. Yeah. So street gave two spoken words, one on the first night with politics, a political identity, and the second one with the race conversation. That's second. Both of them. They were hot. First of all, I mean, nobody on stage was an average

or below average speaker. I mean, every time I heard a guy, I'm like, I was the best one so far and I heard another one so there's no I will say that the sheer talent I don't even want to single anybody out but like Ellie Bonilla and Street Hymns maybe because their talks were

so there wasn't a single wasted word good yeah they're both brilliant thinkers so there wasn't a thoughtless word and yet there's an artistry there yeah and 100 memorized yep you know i don't know if i'm so and largely made made up pretty close to the event let's just say like that i know that from having been their van driver that they were they were still refining lines and ideas as they were headed

to the stage so the talent that i mean it takes i write out something i could spend hours trying to memorize it and i'll forget 60 of it if i don't look at my notes and everything like i um and those guys they didn't they walked on stage confident as all get out because of they believe in what they're saying and they just blew the roof off of it. You mentioned that, Preston. I would say one of the things that kind of stuck to me, apart from the actual content, which you just wanted to take notes on every bit of everything that happened,

the couch times, the spoken word, the actual lectures, was just being blown away by the ability to process so much information. So I felt that with Dr. Brashears and Chris. Yeah, that was heavy. Yeah, and just the way they went through their material. You felt like you were with people who were using God-giftedness to serve the body, which again, maybe that doesn't sound like it's that big of a deal. But it was like every single person that went up there just felt like you knew what they were doing. And there was sort of a, I don't want to say an awe, but a healthy respect for the gift that they had.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, I think, you know, I wanted it to be different. Like to have, and we didn't talk about the worship yet. We can go there in a second. But to have worship in several languages with different styles too. I mean, there was a lot of, I guess, mainstream evangelical songs being sung, but there was a few that weren't that. For sure. And then some other styles that were in there, and I think there was like five languages represented,

four or five languages represented. And the talks too, all the way from like a held debate, which was deeply theological, Sandy Richter going, getting into the Hebrew and ancient Near East background of Deuteronomy 21 verses 22 to 27, whatever it was. It was staggering. It was a stunning talk. And yet very...

I mean, you could follow it. Yeah, it was clear. She's such a good communicator and so relatable and yet was going to some places that I've not been to myself. Right? I've not been to myself. Right? And so she was just a tour guide of the Hebrew literature and history.

Okay, but keep going. Well, so you have that, and then you have like street hymns coming out and giving an intellectually profound, prophetically challenging, borderline uncomfortable talk. Yeah. Reconciliation. I'm not even going gonna attempt to repeat but pushing like in his spoken word which is truly artistic and entertaining you could have been anybody and you would have been impressed just with the artistry of what he was doing yeah but then the content of what he was talking about reconciliation is when you had a prior relationship

we have not had a prior relationship. Yeah. And then he threw out like, what was that, conciliation or reparation or like, here's some other terms. So your heart is being moved by the artistry. Your imagination is being provoked. And your mind and heart is being challenged. Your version of Christianity is being confronted.

That's what I wanted, man. When I opened up saying I want this to be disruptive. I wrote down that word, and I'm not sure if that... I toyed with whether I should even say that word, but I'm glad I did, and I think now, I think people wanted, I think most of them wanted that, and I think leaving, it's like, oh. I would almost say, the one word, how would you describe the conference?

I almost want to say disruptive. Not in a negative, like it can be taken negatively, but do you? Let me say it like this and see if you agree or disagree. It was disruptive without being antagonistic. Yes. But yes. And I don't, maybe that one word isn word isn't the, I mean, cause it

was so encouraging. So I think, I think people were very encouraged too. Which just forced you to have to think and rethink in all those categories. Again, one reason why I say without being antagonistic, it was not a confrontation. It was, it was, um, taste and see, taste and see what you think in all, in all of those categories. Here's the argument for why we're thinking this way. And in some cases it was just people's personal stories that are disruptive. It's just to

hear someone's personal experience that forces you to have to rethink because you've not had that same experience. And so we were being challenged to maybe develop new categories, rethink categories that are already in place. I just felt like there was a lot of that going on for myself.

So I'm guessing that was true for most people that were listening, just having to rethink, not agreeing with everything necessarily. So that creates more questions that you want. And not feeling the need to. I think that's what people appreciated. There's strong opinions in the room. got strong opinions there's stuff set on stage i'm like yeah i'm not sure by that you know but but being but being but but welcoming the challenge maybe that's why sometimes disruptive is like if you're not welcoming the challenge you

can be disrupted in a offensive negative way but if you're wanting to be challenged then the word disruptive might be like yeah that's that came to be disrupted. Okay. So speaking of the content, and again, there was so much, we're still, I mean, we're less than 24 hours away from the end of it. Yeah, you're still in a little bit of a fog, a post-conference fog. But what did stick to you? I mean, I've been thinking about that for myself. What were the kinds of things that stuck to you content wise? Were there any, I mean, all,

again, all of it is worth thinking about more. Of course you do it all the time on this podcast, but were there any things that just kind of rose to the surface? I mean, there's all, there's so much and it's part of it's just the way my mind works. And I'm,

I guess it's easier to share this in the podcast because unless you're a first time listener, if you've been listening, you kind of know the strange place inside my – the strangeness of my mind. But yeah, so I'm constantly – even as I was talking, I'm like, I'd probably challenge that if I was in the audience. Okay. Like I'm constantly – maybe to a fault. So yeah, there's tons of stuff where I'm like, I'm not sure.

I would need to – I need more thoughts. You know, Francis is Francis. You know, he's Francis. Yeah. And just gave a, his talk might have been the most uncomfortable. Yeah. Talk about that a little bit. Well, he just comes out with the bread and wine, sets it on the table,

and just launches into the fact that for 1,500 years, the church has... This is his opening line, right? For 1,500 years, the church has kept the Eucharist at the center of worship, and then we replaced it with a pulpit, and that's where we are today. That was his first line. Yeah. And then goes into 15, 20 minutes of basically pretty much an Eastern Orthodox view of community, which is like real presence. Like maybe not quite, although he almost went full Catholic when I asked him on that. Uncomfortably for probably a lot of people, to your point.

Is the bread and wine the literal blood and body of Jesus? And he didn't 100% say yes, but he didn't want to say, yeah, it's just a mystery. There's something very real here. And I would have to go back and look at it. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but he definitely very much real presence. This is the body and blood of Jesus. Wait, is this his physical flesh? Well, I don't know. He seemed to be disenchanted with how easily the communion service in too many places has become trivial. Yes. It's just a symbol.

It's just a symbol. Nothing more. We're not Catholic. We're not Catholic. We're so scared of being Catholic, so it's not that. It's not that. Yeah, so it just sounds like he's been exploring what it means for it to be more significant and retrieving what it had previously been. That's why he started it there to say, this has always been the centerpiece of a worship

service for Christian people. And now in a lot of places, we don't even do it, or we do it once a month or whatever. Again, everybody's got their different ways of approaching it. But the thing that's in common is that it just becomes trivialized. It becomes secondary to the sermon. It becomes secondary to my experience of the music and worship. And here's where I'm 100. And I don't know enough about shows my lame cards.

I don't know enough about that topic to have strong opinions. I'm definitely not on the same. I think it's more than a symbol. The minimal study I've done, I'm like, yeah, it seems to be stronger than just a memorial, just a symbol. There's nothing really going on here. It's just a way for us to remember. I see John 6 and 1 Corinthians 11.

I think there's just stronger language here. And the weight of church history means something. I'm not, I don't know if I would be where Francis would be at, but here's the power of that message. I don't know if anybody knows it. Well, a couple of you know it because he did this, but after the service, these guys come up, they were so obedient to what he said. Did I tell you this? No. After his message, they left, went to the store, bought a bunch of bottles of wine and bread, brought it back. So they're like, all right, let's do this. Let's do this. And here I am running a conference where I'm like, my mind is like so excited that they're being obedient.

But they wanted to have communion for everybody. Well, and then they said, oh, we came back to, you know, they kind of ended and like, what can we do? And like, can we do it tomorrow or something? I mean, in my mind, I'm thinking I would have to cancel. Do I tell Jackie L'Perry, hey, all right, you're canceled because we're going to do community? Like, something would have to be canceled. This is the lame thing about trying to do an authentic conference. There still is time stamps. There still is lunch that, you know, there's still.

Well, there's people that left everything behind. And Jackie O'Perry, you just had a baby three months ago and she came very specifically to be able to speak to everybody right so i'm here i am and i'm exhausted at night trying to figure out like how do i nurture this obedience so we end up saying i don't even know i honestly don't know i said hey maybe tomorrow lunch we can i'll find somebody i think i told a buddy of mine's like hey let's get these guys a cardboard table we can have available to anybody who wants to take it. Just so – I don't know. But just stuff like that.

That's pretty rare where somebody would go out because they're so moved by what this person said and their response is just, okay, let's do it. Yeah. How about that? Yeah. Hopefully they didn't just go back to their room and get drunk for the next 48 hours. Here's another hard thing is Calvary Chapel doesn't allow alcohol at the premises. Oh, they don't? No.

Okay. So I was actually violating, unknowingly, even by me saying, hey, why don't you serve communion outside? I was violating their church stand. I would assume if it's, I almost said something really negative. I would assume they would make an exception for a religious practice as a Christian church. Okay. Right?

Can somebody push back on that? Push back on me if I'm being too, that a Christian church would make an exception for communion wine. church would make an exception for communion wine. If they say, no, we can't have communion wine on our premises, I would challenge that. I would significantly challenge that. But, whatever. It is my home church. I attend there, but I don't have any. Maybe I should have honored their policy, regardless of whether I have theological issues with it. Why would they not let it on there?

Do you know? I don't. I would need... My assumption is we have alcoholics here, and they could be a stumbling block or something. Which, again, I would challenge that logic, but I would assume that that... I do think it would be good. And maybe they did have a grape juice option, too. Okay. The early church didn't. No maybe they did have a grape juice option too. Okay.

The early church didn't. No, they didn't. So I don't... The point though... Jesus didn't make that... He turned... And I don't know what to do with that. And I'm not even saying that's right.

Am I saying Jesus wasn't right? I want to be very respectful for... I haven't had this history, like my family or me or anything, but I know people who have had horrific experiences with an alcoholic home where i want to i want to be very sensitive to to that issue too so yeah i don't know we might be getting too off for sure well we did dive into this probably deeper than we wanted to but the point of the whole thing was and we're about we were talking about being disrupted by content and and and what francis did at the very least had to make us all rethink the place of communion in our lives. Have we let it become trivial? Whether we're going to follow Francis

into his journey and where he's going with it was not so much the point, and it wasn't his point either. It was that this should not be relegated to some side issue. And that's disruptive if it's been that way for you as a listener. What would you do differently? And again, I know your mind's always thinking, you just said that you think kind of perfectionistically. Is there anything while it's still fresh that you think, man, I wish we would have done more of this or we're missing some piece of it? I don't think I actually fully answer your first question,

what sticks out the most or what was the most memorable. Keep going. And this is a very subjective, this is me where I'm at in my journey, my lack, my desires, my needs. So this is a very subjective opinion. For me, the worship was really huge for me. Okay. I have a hard time with Christian worship on so many levels.

It's hard for me to worship at church. Not my church intrinsically. Actually, we have an amazing worship leader, Noah Beamer, in our church. What is it that makes it difficult for you? I think there could be three elements. So aside from my church, because I travel to different churches and stuff, there's three elements. There's one, the way worship is led.

Number two, the content of what's being done, the songs and stuff. And number three, the response from the audience. Yeah. So here, all three of those were off the chart authentic and stuff. And number three, the response from the audience. Yeah. So here, all three of those were off the chart authentic and meaningful. The content of the songs, the way it was being led. Evan and Tanika just killed it. And then the response from the audience. I just fell.

I was in the front row. But they could have stopped singing, and I would have needed earplugs with everybody, almost every hand in the air. I know I need that. They could have been singing, and I would have needed earplugs with everybody, almost every hand in the air. I know I need that. They could have been... They were engaged. There was heat. There was a deep, deep, meaningful proclamation of the supremacy of God

like I haven't felt in a long, long time. Okay. Yeah. Even so, we went to church today, and Noah led worship and did an absolute off the chart. Just so he had the, the, like the heart,

he was worshiped on stage. It was powerful. The songs are great. Um, the response to the audience. I mean, it's, it's,

it's, you know, I live in Boise. It's just, it's a very kind of, it's more reserved and like, um, it just,

it felt for me, I was sitting in this almost the same spot and it felt, the audience felt very, very different. Yeah. Very different. Well, and especially, yeah, in contrast to a group of people that are coming together, and again, it's kind of that amount of transfiguration moment, right, where there's something really special happening among us. A lot of times there's more energy in a setting like that if it's being led well, if the content of the music is good, or the lyrics are leading you somewhere. And church just can tend to become mundane for everybody. Oh, here's what I know about myself, actually.

I might have just realized this now. I'm significantly infected by my community. Who's around you. Yeah. Some people are like, no, it's just me and God, me and God, me and God, me and God. I'm going to by my community. Who's around you. Yeah. Some people are like, no, it's just me and God, me and God,

me and God, me and God. I'm going to worship God, whatever. I don't even see anybody else around me. I'm like the opposite of that. Like I, I guess maybe,

maybe it's my ecclesiology. Maybe it's my personality. I don't know. Like I'm such a, I'm not an individual. I'm a, I'm a tiny piece of this body here. So if, if the body isn't doing something,

I can't, it's hard for me to, to, to do something like it's really hard, you know? So, um, and I just,

I don't know. I just, I've been just kind of jaded by just evangelical, mostly white kind of style of worship. But I know too much about people behind the scenes and the Christian music industry. I know about the, the, the, the involvement of money. I know too much about people behind the scenes in the Christian music industry. I know about the involvement of money.

I know about worship leaders. I know about lyrics and what... There's so much stuff there that just... It's hard for me. The industry side of it.

I want to balance being honest but not speaking too negatively. But I just, I don't know. And also, like, I don't, I've kind of given up conjuring up emotions that aren't arising naturally. Okay. And this one, you know, I had a very emotional worship experience and it was 100% felt like it was out of my control. Do Evan and Tanika, I guess, I didn't even ask you this.

Are they together normally? Do they, are they a band of some kind? She goes, Tanika goes to his church. Okay. I don't, I don't know if she, I don't think she's like the worship leader. Okay. I'm sure she leads and Evan sometimes leads. Evan's a pastor.

He's not the primary worship leader. I see. Okay. I think Evan sometimes leads. Evan's a pastor. He's not the primary worship leader. I see. Okay. I would assume they've done it before. Tanika does. As far as I understand, I apologize, Tanika, if I'm not getting this right, but I'm pretty sure that she, as part of her ministry, she leads multicultural worship. This was her cup of tea. I see. This was not out of her... This is what she does. Okay, so talk about that then. You already mentioned this, that we sang.

And it wasn't in... I appreciated this because it was not in any kind of a weird way or a forced way, but you mentioned that we sang in different languages. Yes, Swahili, French, Spanish, and English. Okay. And English was always up there so that we knew what we were singing in the other language. People actually really participated in trying to sing in other languages even without probably speaking those languages. What's the value in that?

If I had the kind of control, I would never have a worship service again that wasn't like that, ever. Explain that. Ever. It represents the kingdom of God. I would never have a worship service again that wasn't like that, ever. Explain that. Ever. It represents the kingdom of God. It's a foretaste of heaven. It's a primary goal of why Jesus died, to gather this multi-ethnic tribe together. And I think ethnocentrism or ethnic monism is a huge, quiet, underlying hindrance to our discipleship journey. And one easy, easy, easy, easy, easy way in which we can open up some categories

is by constantly singing in other languages. It reinforces ethnocentricity, anglo-centricity when we are only singing in English. Americans already have a huge problem thinking we're the best. Everybody else is, you know, well, they're poor people over there and all they're needy and they don't do the right theology. Like we have such a, it's just, it's ingrained into our bones. Anglo-centricity, is that even the right word? English-centric? Like the fact that we speak English, it's like even the right word? English, like the fact

that we speak English is like, well, that's kind of the main language. Everything else is like foreign languages. No one thinks of English

as like a foreign language if you're from America. So anything we can do to just spark some kind of disruption to loosen up these shackles that we have

to ethnocentrism and anglicentrism and maybe even white centrism. I think this is a low-hanging fruit that doesn't take a lot of effort to make people feel a little uncomfortable, to remind them that God's kingdom is global, to remind them that statistically, at the growth of Christianity in the global South, by 2050, one out of every five Christians in the world will be white. So singing a song in English with a bunch of mainly white people, that's going to be like, oh, yeah, that exists.

Wow, that's really unique. An outlier. It'll start to feel like an outlier. It's so interesting. Do you have any thoughts on that? Well, I've grown so accustomed. This is what I'm thinking as you're saying all that, and I don't disagree with you,

but what we've grown accustomed to doing when we hear that we're trying to break away from Anglo-centricity or just the way white people do it, there's a knee-jerk reaction to say, well, you're dogging on white people again. So there's something bad or something wrong with being white. There's something wrong with this being a normal to us. And I think we need to get away from that immediate reaction and that defensiveness to say, no, did you hear what Preston just said,

that this is actually a biblical reality that we need to get more in touch with, that there is a diversity. It's not because it's trending or it's being forced on us by some political element. It's going to be what heaven is. It is what heaven is right now. And yet we're so unfamiliar with anything other than our own comfortability. Because we would say the same thing if there was some other language that was so central to us that everything else seemed like a foreign language to us. Yeah.

Right? So we're saying English has been kind of the centerpiece and everything else feels foreign. But what if French or Spanish was the language to us that we had grown so accustomed to that everything else seemed secondary, we should intentionally break ourselves of that a little bit, is what you're saying. And if anybody said, oh, you don't like white people, I don't know what to say to you, because nothing I said

even implied that. No, they didn't, but you know that's how people respond. That's the knee-jerk reaction is to get defensive. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've given up on coddling people's stupid ways of interpreting. Not stupid. I shouldn't say that. Can you edit that out?

Not stupid. Just coddling people's interpretive sensitivity or whatever. And half the songs that were in other languages were also in English. Sometimes I tried to sing in other languages. Like Swahili is obviously really unfamiliar. So sometimes I would're also in English. Sometimes I try to sing in other languages. Like, you know, Swahili. Swahili is, you know, obviously my father's really unfamiliar. So sometimes I would just

sing in English. Yeah, me too. But to hear some people doing the Swahili, seeing the Swahili, there's just something symbolic going on here that's just powerful.

So yes, I don't think, I mean, and I'm not opposed to this sometimes, but yeah, I think, you know, if you're leading a song in a different language, have the subtitles there. For sure.

Just like we would do if we had a bunch of Spanish speakers that didn't know English. We would have Spanish subtitles. I would say we should probably go back and forth on that. But okay, if you sing them all in English, at least have the subtitles there. Did you find that it made you more conscious of what you were singing or at least paying close attention? I did too. Yeah, I didn't think about that. I was much more conscious of what I was singing.

I was, when I was, you know, singing in a different language, I was focusing on what am I saying in English. It just made me more mentally engaged with the process. I originally wasn't going to do worship. Well, not that I wasn't going to do. I just didn't. I was thinking I was just going to be

an intellectual conference. I was like, I think we should do worship if it's led right. And immediately I said, I will not do it if it's not going to be an intellectual conference, but I was like, I think we should do worship if it's led right. And immediately I said, I will not do it if it's not multi-ethnic. If it's just going to be singing the same kind of the greatest five hit songs and white evangelicals right now, I'm like, I'm not interested in that. I wouldn't do that. I would do no worship.

It definitely wasn't that, but I would say this too. The songs that they picked, and again, maybe this just goes into the gifting. Maybe it goes into God blessing it. But they were songs that even if you weren't familiar with them, they were easy to participate in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because sometimes songs get picked that are different or not the usual top five, and then nobody can sing them.

They can't engage them. But it didn't feel that way at all. It just seemed like the more time we were there, the more the heat in the room raised, you know, that you get when everybody's singing. The worship was my, and again, I hate picking out a favorite thing. It's like, what, you didn't like the speakers? I was blown away at literally every talk.

I mean, Derwin Gray, I can imagine going to Derwin Gray's church and hearing him preach every Sunday. I can see where people, okay, I'm not like attracted to preaching. I don't listen to a lot of preaching. You know, I don't know. I kind of like, after you've been around for a while, you're kind of like, I've heard good preaching, you know. I would never go to church because of a preacher. I think I would go to Derwin's church just to hear him preach every like oh my word oh my word so i was blown away all but i maybe i was expecting that

yeah and there was no surprise there really as much as it was off the chart amazing i was like i knew derwin was gonna be dirt well that's why you're asking yeah yeah that's why i you know um but the worship again i even that I expect to be good, but I didn't know it would be that. Yeah, power. I mean, power. I don't have a big enough word to describe my experience. Well, when you mess around inviting people to sing in different languages,

you don't know how that's going to go. People may just say, you know what? I'm not doing that. I don't feel comfortable with it. I'm not going to do it. That was not the spirit in the room at all, so I can see that. Anything else that stuck out to you as we've been sitting here that just kind of marked you?

A couple surprise moments. I knew I wanted theological depth, And even like, I specifically wanted Sandy to bring us exegetically deep. Pick a passage. Pick two passages and drill deep. I knew I would like that. I didn't know how that would go with everybody. Especially when you got really good preaching and motivation talks. They were also obviously intellectually sophisticated,

but to get a scholar in to do a deep exegetical dive and to have people blown away. And I've heard Sandy, so I knew she'd be clear, but it was just like, oh my word, you took us deep. You showed us that going deep into the text doesn't mean we lose out. We should be on the edge of our seat. Yeah. And the response I got from her, I mean, you sure heard like Street M's and Ellie in the back, they were like hooting and hollering and they were like taking notes and stuff

and blowing it. And then during the dialogue, her image of God thing, and they just feel the audience say, this is what rich, clear theological reflection looks like. It is worship. And so I was really excited about that. Even the hell talking, I've said it several times. I said it at the conference. I was most nervous about that.

I knew I would enjoy it. I'm into the conversation. I love all these word studies. But it seemed like people really were tons of people taking notes and trying to follow, and they were into that. They were. Yeah, and Sandy's time was right before lunch. It was right after we had just had a ton to think about

because of the sexuality and gender talk and conversation, and yet she was entertaining. She was. She was funny. She was funny. She was very normal. She was like somebody's mom, like several times referred to her kids, and you don't usually think of a Hebrew scholar being what she was to us.

It was wonderful. Okay, so I knew Jackie would kill it with her talk. I mean, I've never not seen her kill it. Thoughtful, poetic, courageous. Yeah. That's the one. Jackie Hill Perry, courageous. When I want a dose of courage, I'll plug in Jackie Hill Perry.

My conversation with her, I thought, that might have been one of my most enjoyable. Because here's this, I mean, God, rock star. She would hate it if I said this, but whatever. She's a rock star, right? Did I just say that? She's a rock star. Yeah. She's a genuine Christian, so she's not chasing celebrityism.

Like, I wouldn't say that about somebody who's, I could tell, they like the stage a little too much. Jackie doesn't need to ever be on stage. No, you could tell that. No, no, no, no, no. She would rather be with her family, hanging out. Which is part of what makes her a rock star, quite frankly. Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, she doesn't need it. But she's a gazillion followers and everything. She's a rock star. To have a genuine, just friendly conversation with her, I guess maybe that encouraged me. Just to hear her say that she loves my podcast and she considers me a friend. I mean, I know we don't hang out a lot,

but we've done a few things together. That inspired me, dude. It's like having a hero of yours say, hey, I've learned from you. I appreciate what you're doing. And we can banter around as friends and stuff. I was elated, man. Yeah, you could tell there was a personal aspect to that where she digs what you do and how you do it.

But you also could tell she was into your mission and your purpose. And she wants to support that and wants to be a part of it, even as an extension of what she's trying to get done. So I definitely felt that. I appreciated that she said a couple times, I don't know. I mean, people were bringing in questions, so we didn't even talk about that. How are we getting questions for the panels

and the conversations you were having? There's a text and Q&A platform, Slido. If you've heard me speak, you've probably seen Slido, where the audience texts in a question, and then they vote on questions they want us to address, and the most voted on ones get pushed to the top. Yeah, very cool. And great questions.

I had access to look at them. I mean, just really, really, really good questions. The kinds of questions that should evoke, and I don't know sometimes, even from scholars and experts, they're just such good questions. It's like, I need to think about that one a little bit more. She flat out, I don't know. I was waiting for her to kind of like, you know, because I've done that before.

I don't know. But here's 15 thoughts, you know? She said, I don't know, and she looked at me. I'm like, what next question? She's like, I don't know. It's not like she probably, of course, she could have had an answer, but she recognized, I think, the complexity of, I don't even remember the specific question,

but I remember thinking, that's a complex question. And I don't know is a really good answer. Let's start there, and we'll work our way from I don't know and see what we can come up with. I still felt, I think, did I answer? Or did we move on? No, you did. I probably didn't know either.

I still felt the need to say something. And she said, I'll take that. Well, we owe the audience some kind of an answer, right? I mean, there's something to think about with it. And I thought what you said, again, I wish we could remember what the exact question was. But I thought what you said was right on. And she was like, that's good enough. Let's move on to the next question.

Because there's always context to all these questions too, right? Everybody's got pictures in their mind and anecdotes when they send a question like that. And you're trying to guess, like, what is the need that we're trying to meet here with the answer? But whatever. It was great. All right. So now let's go. Would you have done anything differently?

In hindsight, and again, just kind of fresh off of it, Were there any things that just kind of popped you saying, man, we definitely got to do this next time. Or I wish we had done a little more of this maybe, or use the time differently. I mean, if I thought really hard, there was one, okay, I'm going to share a personal moment here. This is, I would like to hear it because you're, I guess, somewhat part of this. The race conversation. one, two, so two black men,

if you include me as the host, two white men and then a black woman, Kimmy. And she was probably the most quiet on the panel. And I'm kicking myself. I really wanted to, I thought of this the second we got done with, actually I thought of it towards the end of our conversation and it just didn't, I don't know, it didn't seem right at that point to ask but i

wanted to turn to kimmy and say kimmy and maybe she maybe she'll listen to this this is what i wanted to say to you kimmy i wanted to say um i want your honest thought here how do you feel about being on stage as the only woman here yeah Yeah. Do you feel apprehensive to talk? You have a rock star pastor to my right, Derwin, who has a thousand thoughts, and everyone's good. You, both of you probably had a gazillion thoughts on every question that jumped up, and you were even kind of like,

I'm going to try and let somebody else talk here. And Derwin's like, I got a sermon here, but I'm going to let you know. But you jump in. Thabiti was more the seasoned. He's the sage. He's the Gandalf over there waiting for everybody to talk. Then he preaches a sermon on Ezekiel out of his back pocket. He did.

That's intimidating. And I don't know. I don't want to assume. I don't want to assume anything. It's a genuine question. Is there some context here where this has been a common experience for men to control the conversation and for women? I don't want to say especially a black woman born who's only been in America eight years. I don't even want to.

That would be maybe a question I would have. Does that play a role play a role if not okay i don't want to make any assumptions but like yeah i wanted her i really want to ask like hey i'm but then that could also put her on the spot too and make her uncomfortable but like i want to say hey does this feel do you feel like you're you're actually giving a voice here do you feel like this is a typical experience where men are constantly jumping in and doing the talk? Do you have any thoughts on that? Is that valid for me? I don't even know if I said anything stupid in my question being raised, but that's where my mind went.

Yeah, and I don't know that it would have necessarily... She has so many thoughts. I've talked to her. She has so many. Every one of those questions, she had thoughts on. She did, for sure. It would have been an interesting conversation if we could have stepped away from it, even age-wise when you think about it. I mean, she's. It would have been an interesting conversation if we could

have stepped away from it, even age-wise, when you think about it. I mean, she's in her early 20s, and I think Derwin told me he's about to turn 50, 51. I'm 54, and Thabiti's older than us, and so that whole dynamic, and I actually, I did ask her afterwards. You did? I asked her how she felt, And I actually, I did ask her afterwards. You did? I asked her how she felt. Now that I think about it, I did ask her. What'd she say? She said that she was challenged by what was being said.

I didn't actually ask her if she felt like she couldn't get in. Now that I think about it, I wish I had asked her that. But she said she actually was encouraged by what was being said. Here's my question myself. But that's not the same thing as what you're saying. Yeah, no. Or asking. No.

Here's my, if I, and maybe I would have done it, if I questioned whether I should have done anything, did I set her up for that? I'm the one in charge of inviting people. Yeah. But gosh, would I do it? I don't, I would not, I wanted to put it on there. Maybe added another, maybe older season female or something

that they would have a strong voice. That's what I think would have been fair again to even ask Kim to do it. Did I actually set her up for that? Like am I partly – if she deep down did feel like, yeah, what am I going to do here? Like I'm going to set up a failure. Is that on me? That's a genuine question that next year I'm going to really think hard about.

Well, and you maybe wouldn't even notice it until we were all sitting up there. I didn't sense it until we were all on the couches, and I was thinking about even my own order. Like, you know, what is the order? The white guy leading it. Well, all these people are used to it. And going seven minutes over. Edit that out.

That's going to haunt me for the rest of the year yeah i went long in my 18 minutes that i was given uh but once we got to the couch you you just you definitely since the dynamic that you just said. You got two white guys, you got two black men who are preachers, who are used to having the center stage, and rightfully so. And you've got Kimmy, who does have great things to say. I loved her on your podcast, I told her that. But she's got to feel

some kind of dynamic pressures from that. And she's in a journey, she's in a process. I love, I love her mind, the way she's processing the race conversation. She, too, has a ton of courage. I don't know if you've spent time on her YouTube channel. She's bold and courageous and thoughtful. She's not willing to say stuff unpopular.

And then she'll say something else. So she might gather this kind of crowd because she's saying things they want her to say. And then she'll come around and say something else like so she might gather this kind of crowd because she's you know saying things they want her to say and then she'll come around and say something else and she even said she's her it hasn't her youtube it's kind of plateaued because she keeps losing people because she gets this kind of audience they're like oh yes you know say that you know and then she'll like she had a great youtube where she says i hate crt i can't stand it i feel so dehumanized as a black woman with this, you know, whatever. She went in, it was really thoughtful, and then she said other things that are a little different

than that, and that's what I wanted to hear, because she's not in some little box that, you know, everything she's going to say is going to check off all these boxes of this camp, whatever. Like, she's a thoughtful, independent thinker. Yeah. so we didn't get

that and maybe it wasn't set up well for that that my one my critique of that time and again i was participating in it but as i separate myself from it and just look at what happened it we might have been better served by having a strong by having her say she hates crt and let her go down that path of why, kind of like she even did on her podcast. I think it set her for filler. You have you, the beady, Derwin didn't really touch on it, but

that's intimate. If I was in her shoes and I knew deep down if I had some serious questions or I'm not sure I agree with that, am I going to voice that here? But she didn't necessarily know what we were going to say. She could have done it in her time, in her 18 minutes. So I actually ask her, here's, ahead of time, I'm not sure I agree with that am I going to voice that here but she didn't necessarily know what we were going to say yeah she could have done it in her time in her 18 minute time

well so I actually ask her here's ahead of time I'm like do you want to talk about this do you want to talk about that do you want to talk about how you used to be

see I hate the term woke but you used to be kind of woke and now you can't stand that whatever and like or do you want to do forgiveness because forgiveness

is a huge thing for her and that's what she went with I would love to talk about yeah so she picked a topic that kind of wasn't controversial controversial really but um uh for this audience i think it would have been interesting if there had been more of a contrast between crt gets a bad rap and kind of the angle that i was messing with yeah versus no here's why it gets bad rap and kind of the angle that I was messing with versus, no, here's why it gets a bad rap and it should. Here's the negative. Here are things that actually do represent CRT.

Here's why they can be destructive. Yeah. So I thought everything that was said was valuable to the discussion, but there was not enough of a contrast for there to be any kind of a debate about it. Yeah, it looked like the viewpoints were more, all the viewpoints were more in line than they might have actually were or could have been.

I mean, do you think, I mean, I did. I asked Votie Bauckham if he'd come out, and I mean, no. Do you think that would have been helpful for that conversation to have somebody, Votie, who's going to be very outspoken, who's going to say some very different things from everything else that was said? I personally would have enjoyed that, but do you think that would have been a win or not really? If this is what I thought about it personally. I want people to know that there is a spectrum, a wide spectrum of viewpoints among intelligent black thinkers,

all of whom hate racism, all of whom think slavery was an absolute atrocity, all of whom might even say there's lingering effects of things like redlining and all these things. Of the big picture stuff they would agree on, yet there's a wide spectrum of diagnosing the problem. What's the solution? How deep is the problem? Is there, like, and that's really what I wanted to represent in the race car. And I don't know if I did. I feel like it did seem like,

it did seem a little more monolithic than I was anticipating or wanted. Yeah, and you introed it that way, but that's not necessarily what we delivered, I would say. I think people would say, where's the difference here? Yeah, there was not necessarily a difference. And again, Thabiti wasn't even, I didn't feel like, he wasn't trying to make any major racial statements. He was saying, you've got to get your theological story right

to even understand what's happening sociologically. So he spent a lot of time just there. Who can argue with that? Yeah, you need to understand the story that you're supposed to be caught up in and God's story. So, no, I don't think there was enough of a contrast with that time. When you mentioned somebody like Avodi Bauckham coming on, I think if we were going to do that, it would be better served to do it

on Saturday morning where it really is set up to be a dialogical interaction. We'll do that next year. Well, I think that could be a question that we even ask ourselves here. Like, what would you do topic-wise next year that we didn't get to? Or how would you spin the topics that we did differently? Because you really could do the same things. And I'll say this just so I don't leave it. There were a bunch of people, maybe some of you that are listening,

that came up to me at the conference and said they gave me examples of where things being done in the name of CRT, let's just say that, were very negative experiences for them. Yeah. Okay? And so understandably so. So I was even kicking myself because I said that a theory, once it's born, goes in search of application. And sometimes that application is positive and healing.

And sometimes it's really negative and it's terrible. And these guys had experienced lots of terrible applications of things called CRT. So it might not be the CRT per se, but it's the fruit of CRT, would you say? Yeah. Some spawning of a... What I wish we would stop doing, and again, this podcast is not for us to go back and fix all that. I wish we would stop, in the church, using CRT as a label for the things that are happening.

Let's ditch that term. Not ditch it, but let's... Yeah. Let's not slap that on every... Race. ...tent to address race... Anything to do with race. race that you don't like. Anything to do with race gets called CRT.

That's what's agitating because CRT is something specific to the law and critiquing what's going on in law. That's why people who know what CRT really is get agitated by how now it's become an umbrella term that annexes everything that has to do with race under CRT. And that's wrong. That's wrong. Where things go bad is when progressive politics or other agendas get attached to a race issue. That's where things start to get messy. And I don't feel like we talked about that that would have been interesting to talk about

one of my questions I had written down I was a couple times trying to ask you but then our conversation kept going elsewhere and then it wasn't time Ed, what are some things that actually are ECRT that you would say these are in my opinion wrong and destructive

because you kind of hinted like hey, there's good, there's bad, whatever. But the way it's being framed is a caricature. It's BS. It's everything you're saying now, which I fully agree with. But you do know CRT. You know what CRT actually is.

I would love to know when you read certain aspects of CRT where you're like, yeah, that's not right. So for example, when critical race theory says we're going to center white or black voices or people of color voices and not always assume that white voices have a corner on all truth, because that's where that idea came from in the first place in the 70s and 80s. Definitely at that time, black voices were still relegated to a secondary status in a court of law for sure. That's what those guys were fighting against. So they said, no, we're going to legitimize and validate the black experience, the black subjective experience, and we're going to start putting some weight on that. Okay. And a necessary corrective, a just corrective. Well, so now here we are 40 years later or whatever, and I've been in situations

where the black voice is right no matter what in the room. Like there's some moral superiority invested in the skin color experience, which... Or the white voice is always wrong. Yeah, that's the flip side of it. The white voice is always wrong. And I've heard enough anecdotes of that to say, well, no not just that's not right that's that's that that precept or that tenant that idea that comes from original critical race theory taken to a negative extreme so that would be a part of critical race theory where i would say somebody with the lived experience has which i do see part of that like they do have more on homosexuality somebody who is actually gay does have something unique and more informative to say than I would.

When it comes to the experience, not when it comes to understanding necessarily sexual ethics, biblical anthropology or whatever. So CRT might say, no, unilaterally, they have more authority to speak on anything related to the race. Well, I'm saying that the real CRT would not say it that way, would not say that unilaterally they have more authority. They wouldn't, okay. They wouldn't say they have more. They would say they have authority that was not being granted before. That's what I'm saying. Authority in understanding the experience or understanding economics?

No, the experience. So when we're talking about something – I think that's fair. I think it is too. How is that not fair? But it's one thing to say here's a reason for the economic downfall or the position that many African-Americans find themselves in. Now that spills over into economics.

That's when Thomas Sowell, who's an economist, when he says, here's the financial trajectory we've been on for 50 years, it's because he's an economist that he brings something more value to say than somebody else who's not. Agree. But if you want to understand the pain of experiencing ongoing kind of racial discrimination racial discrimination like obviously the experience

subordination next to a black person he's describing his experiences he brings way more to the table than i do saying yeah yeah, no, here's my experience. What am I going to say? Anytime ideas make their way to an extreme place, they go bad for people. So again, whether it's critical race theory or any other theory, if it goes to an extreme, that usually is going to be bad. It's going to be unjust. At least that's the conclusion that I'm coming to. So all that to say, guys at least that's the conclusion that i'm coming to so all that to say guys are experiencing that but we didn't really talk about that you know and i think that could have been a that could have been an interesting debate to have and just put that out

in front of everybody they're just not i mean all the topics were complex but i would say the race well race and sexuality, gender. The sexuality and gender, we weren't trying to unpack a full, it was more like more story driven by purpose. But the race conversation was framed as a more, a little bit more of an intellectual. But there's just, I mean, gosh, yeah, we scratched the surface. What else could we do in three hours and with the complex conversation like that no and that's i just hope people didn't leave more frustrated than satisfied with any of these sections uh because i guess i guess what do you think people's expectations were now they think about you are you going to do an evaluation of

any kind to send out i I don't know. Maybe. Just to get feedback on? For me, everything is just like, I mean, Theology in the Raw is 20% of my work week. People don't even know that I actually have another full-time job. What is that? I'm the president of the Center for Faith, Sex, Money, and Gender. People thought, oh, yeah, I thought you'd give some talk. No, I run a... You're not a figurehead president? I run a massive organization. Yeah, no. I mean, and I have so many people in place that run...

So yeah, it's allowed me to spend all... So I spend Tuesday, Tuesday is my Theology in Raw day. I typically do three podcast interviews. I upload them. I send them to my audio guy. I write the summary. I plan the schedule. I invite new guests. I go to my YouTube channel. I schedule some posts. And then 5.30 hits and I'm coming home.

And that's it. I don't have time in my... Oh, so all that stuff, like evaluation. Sure, it's like, okay, even that, like, how do I – I got to write this email, contact this, do this, formulate the questions. Well, maybe we can get somebody to do that. But what do you think people were after? What do you think they were hoping to get?

I feel that this – hopefully this is just based on all the people I talked to. Okay. My sense, talking to people who talk to people that I think people weren't 100% sure they knew what they were getting into. But they came because most people listen to the podcast. Yeah. And they knew they weren't going to know. The vibe of the podcast is we're hanging out. We're having conversations.

And yeah, we, yeah. So it's our first time. So I also want to, this is a minor detail. This is so minor. But like even things like, you know, I just heard today that like the coffee person, the company we invited had like one iPad or something to charge people okay i'm so this is

a pet peeve here's two pet peeves of mine yeah if i want to be able to walk out and get a cup of coffee within 10 seconds give me give me folgers give me an iv drip i just i want some caffeine now and if i can't get that that is frustrating for me so I really I know it's a technical detail it wasn't really on us I mean we didn't we just had this good friends of ours who had this coffee and they brought like one person with an iPad or whatever and they ran out of coffee and like I'm like well wasn't there at least free coffee

like what do you say I forgot we decided not to have like free coffee because why would you have paid coffee and free coffee like I hate powdered creamer and even like in the green room we had powdered creamer. So I didn't drink the coffee. I didn't. I was like, I'll bring my own.

I hate powdered creamer. What is this, 1984? Like, come on. It affects the experience. The number one thing that gets complained about at Family Life's Weekend to Remember conference is that people don't have access to quick coffee. Exactly what you're saying. Yes, yes, 100%, 100%.

And real creamer. All right. Real creamer. And good coffee. Don't lay that water down crap that's like, come on. So that, I know my friend Jay Newman, he had, I mean, he took a huge, he's just starting this barbecue business. Yeah.

He does, I mean, they don't huge... He's just starting this barbecue business. Yeah. He does... I mean, they don't make a lot of money. He might be shutting it down after these last few days. Well, he took a huge... Nobody knows this. He broke down in Kansas. Did you know this? His smoker busted an axle.

He drove and he says, I think angels were holding my axle together because my smoker should have been toast in Kansas. They happened to get gas. I looked back, and the axle was hanging on by bare threads. I did not know that. They were delayed by 24 hours. I had to pay for whatever.

He comes out. He didn't want to buy too much meat. He didn't want to be left with meat because, one, what do you do with that? Number two, that sinks him financially. So he even bought that tent. He bought bought that for this he bought a spite he invested all a few thousand dollars into okay you know like taking a risk his wife sends him off he's got three little kids at home he drives from nashville here this was a big wow i don't know what people know but he had to sleep he had to to meet the demands he had to sleep all night he brought a

cot and a and a and a sleeping bag he slept two hours a night because he had to keep throwing wood in the fire also he only smokes with oak that's what that's he's lives by oak there's no oak in boise apparently he's like you guys don't have any oak there okay so all that wood was apple he's like i apple's okay it's not what i'm used to also apparently the humidity humidity affects the temperature of the fire affects the smoke affects the meat he says this is a very dry climate i'm used to smoking in and he gets bombarded with these people and he's just not prepared for this wow and so i know if people were i would have been i would have been upset like a wait in line for like an hour to earn lunch.

I put my preorder in, didn't get my meat and stuff. And so, again, that's not – it's not like I – it's their first conference. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm trying to make an authentic experience with this smoking meat for 48 hours. I remember I walked outside and I was like, my word. You had to take a shower every time you walk down i wanted my clothes i wanted to soak my clothes in that smoke it was so beautiful it was um but i know even that like so even next year he's like i think i'm gonna literally buy a bigger

smoker and just i'm i'm gonna be more prepared next year okay um i don't know i don't even know how the lunch trucks did i don't know we. We had, oh, here's another thing. We bought probably, I don't know how many hundreds of dollars, maybe a thousand dollars worth of desserts for the after party. Ah. No show. Four of the desserts. I didn't get any dessert.

No, no cheesecake. Okay. Chris is on, my wife's on the calling, calling, calling. Nobody's picking up. No desserts. Huh. What happened to it? I don't know. I don't know i don't

know but that's it's and i know i know probably most people most people maybe some people are like yeah go out exactly that's why i'm not coming back next year no but like those are little i i i hate it when stuff like that happens yeah it drove me crazy i was actually angry in the back room because i saw this little creamer for my coffee i'm like i'm not drinking coffee and putting creamer somebody go get me some i'll go get it i'll drive to walmart if i have to people like no no you're the guy i'm like then somebody will give me some you know and i didn't hear people complaining about it maybe again you know now that i think about it putting this out on youtube maybe people can fill the comment section with with their advice and what they wish was different and whatnot

and you can get feedback that way, but I didn't sense people were having a frustrating time with the food. But maybe they were. It was great food, I will say that, Jay. It was excellent. If you got to actually get it, it was great. The bathroom situation, the church, I don't, you know, church was built

30 years ago and they have like two bathrooms. I don't you know church was built that was tight 30 years ago and they have like two bathrooms i don't i don't even know how that met so we did get a couple porta potties even that i think next year we'll have six to ten porta potties because that's another thing yeah that's a it's a minor detail but if you're like i don't want to miss this talk i don't want to miss this talk but i really have to go to the bathroom yeah they announce a break. You go. And you're like, there's a line at the whatever. Or even, can I get really explicit? Yeah, you can.

Yeah, what happens all of a sudden? You drink a little too much coffee. You had some spicy food. And you got to go number two like 10 seconds ago. And you go, and there's a line. Or you go, and it's kind of, you know, some bathrooms aren't very private. And the last thing you want to do is just go and destroy the toilet. Man, nobody wants to go

in a porta potty. Nobody wants to go number two in a porta potty. I would rather do that than go in a stall where they can, if anybody looks up, they can see you

and they're just destroyed. People are right there. Yeah, no, it's uncomfortable, man. Yeah, so anyway, like that and that's, yeah, anyway. Food, toilets, no, that's all legitimate and I wasn't, you know, I didn't go back there a lot during the breaks now that I think about it.

And so maybe that really was more frustrating to people than what we felt. They kept coming back pretty quick, which is interesting, because I feel like every time we started a session, it was pretty full right away. I know the parking's not the best, but people were there. It was great. So it was good. The question, though, is what do you think they came there hoping to get? I think 50% of my response is I don't think they knew what they were hoping to get.

I think they... Here's the most... Let me get personal here again. I almost had an emotional breakdown. That language never comes out of my mouth. For whatever reason, God has created me very stoic. I'm an emotional, I'm a passionate person, but I don't get down. I don't have emotional breakdowns.

And I hate, I don't know how long, an hour and 10 minutes in. I just talked to so many people. I'm gonna, I talked to so many people that shared with me with tears in their eyes, that shared with me, with tears in their eyes, how listening to this podcast has saved their faith. Some people would even say saved her life. I talked to about half a dozen same-sex attracted females, lesbians that are on fire for Jesus. And they all told me from listening to the podcast,

talked to people that have been sexually abused by pastors, elders, parents. We're going to throw Christianity out. One person was part of like a Christian cult six months ago, listened to the podcast, talked to some, I think, Mennonite women with ankle-high skirts and head coverings that said, I've been faithfully listening to your podcast. I flew out here from across the country, and thank you for what you, I mean, and I hate, I almost don't want to mention, because I don't want to pat my, here,

I almost, that Friday night, you know, doing the thing all day, I'm on fire from the worship, and my mind's really into the go and hang out at the after party and talk to person after person after person after person, people I've never met, may never even see again,

to hear that this, you know, here you are where you're here this is what i look at this yeah you've got an unfinished ceiling here that paint jobs crap over there on my basement i've got a cement wall over here i've got my what is it my electro-motion machine i got a sock over there like this is just a unfinished basement i come down here and hit record and have a conversation with people and to know that something in my mind so simple is doing that and it's one thing to hear one person one person and to be honest i mean i get those emails pretty frequently but the look in the face to look in the humanity of people sharing their stories. It's like the emotional weight, it's almost like, I don't know how to describe it.

It was so overwhelmingly encouraging that it almost just, I don't know if people noticed, but in the after party, a good friend of mine, you know, kind of saw, he saw, he saw me and he kind of looked at me and said, and I was able to say, Hey, Oh, I need to go talk to my friend. I went, I went into the room and I just said, Hey, I just, I need to sit here for a second because I just feel my flesh. Just like, it's just, it was so overwhelming to me in a good way, but in a crippling way too. Can you help me understand that?

What am I going through there? Let me ask you this, Preston. What is it about the vibe of the podcast? What's going on on the podcast that you think people are tapping into that makes them say, that's helping me, that's setting me free, that is saving my life. It's keeping me in the church. What do you think is happening in that space? It's hard for me.

I would almost want you to answer that. Because for me, it's just, I'm just being me. I like to have interesting conversations. So I email somebody and say, hey, this book looks interesting. But sometimes I read it, sometimes I haven't. Or hey this book looks interesting but sometimes I read it sometimes I haven't or hey you tweeted something that sounds provocative or you know like my last podcast at least I don't know when this is going to come out but you know Dwight Hopkins he's like a world renowned expert on black liberation theology yeah I have an idea of what that is I've had a decent

experience reading James Conan and stuff but I always hear how it's just the worst thing ever. And so like, hey, why don't I email the black liberation theological expert and say, hey, let's spend an hour. I want you to explain it to me. And it was a beautiful – I was like, oh, my word. First of all, he's a wonderful man of God, super humble. I mean, the dude's got two earned PhDs, two earned PhDs and three master's degrees. This guy's a brilliant thinker.

The fact that he even said yes, sure, I'll come in your podcast. He doesn't know me for that. I don't think he knows me. University of Chicago professor. I grew in my Christian faith in the Al-Anon conversation,

but it was a conversation. Do you know how easy that is for me? To have a conversation? You know how hard that is for me? To have a conversation? You know how hard it is for me to prepare a sermon? Oh, dude. It'd take me 20, 30 hours to prepare a decent, halfway decent sermon. Even then, it might not be well. How long did it take me to prepare this?

Well, I emailed him. He said yes, scheduled it, had an hour-long conversation. Yeah. But here's what's encouraging, but also discouraging. Obviously, it's encouraging that people listen to stuff like that. And for whatever reason, they're like, Oh my word,

this gives me hope for Christianity. That's encouraging. That's equally discouraging. What in the world are we doing in the church? Yeah. Where that is profound. Yeah. That I, it makes me think like like, you can't just do that.

Obviously you can't have the world-renowned Black Liberation Deal, but to listen in on a conversation and ask questions and dialogue and just a genuine, curious dialogue like that, like, oh yeah, no, no. I grew up in a context where that's discouraged and you've given me a small light of hope. Like, I feel like that was kind of the theme over and over and over in all these conversations, and I'm like, I don't know how to process that.

Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, taking a stab at it for myself and what I feel, what I sensed from other people that I was talking to is that we just live at a time where people are not given permission to be honest about their

own mess. That mess looks like a lot of different things. They're not given, we're being forced all the time to become fundamentalists. Either progressive fundamentalists or conservative fundamentalists. Again, whatever labels we want to put on it, it's to be locked into a position that then doesn't allow people

to be accepted anywhere outside that position. And what you do is you go to people that are on both sides of, they take up sides on both sides of the middle, and you're okay with going in there and talking about it. You give people permission to be in process, to not have to have it all together, and to not have to embrace a label that just makes them feel stuck and smothered.

I felt like people could breathe. And you're an anchored dude. This is one of the things that I've realized about you, Preston, even as we've continued to have conversations over the years, is that you've got some lines drawn around yourself. You've made some choices about what you believe about different things. You're not just being tossed to and fro. I'm super opinionated.

I mean, it comes out here and there. Yeah, and you've said it yourself, that you come historically from a conservative background, and you don't reject every bit of that at all. Your Christianity is what I think would be called orthodox, and yet in that your love is expansive for people, and your willingness to value people's stories without rejecting them or judging them or trying to fix them is noticeable.

And that's the part that I think back to, what does it come to that you can't hardly find that anywhere, that you have to go to a podcast, for example, and that you don't necessarily always get that in your church. In fact, so many of these people, I think, got the opposite in their church experience. They got rejected. They got forced into some corner.

They got judged. And that's not the spirit of the gospel. So I think you represent, kind of a de-churched tendency, turnoffs with evangelical Christianity. Yeah. I've had my own kind of, I shouldn't say this term, but I'll just say it because that's what I do. But I've had my own kind of deconstruction of certain ideas and this and that. So I haven't had just a pie-in-the-sky church experience, but I've never really experienced spiritual abuse.

Okay, let me back up. I've never experienced sexual abuse from an elder. I've never experienced physical abuse from a pastor. So I know that's probably 15% of our audience right there alone. I haven't had that experience. But then I've never really had spiritual abuse. The stories that my audience tells me, my Patreon supporters, because we have a lot of dialogues and stuff,

when they describe some of their church experiences, I'm like, what planet? This is insane. Yeah. Insane. So I think maybe because I've been spared of that, it does, I don't know, maybe allow me to have these kind of free-flowing conversations, you know, without fear of repercussion or whatever. And I also wonder, I've often questioned, because my podcast is so

independent. It's just me. Me, my wife is involved with kind of the organization of it and stuff. I've got Miles, my sound guy. He's amazing, does all my social media. I've got people that help out behind. But it's really just like nobody, I have whoever I have on. I never have to check with anybody. I don't have a board. And don't have anything. Like, I don't. And that could be dangerous, but it also gives me the freedom to, I have no fear of, like, I could have the devil on.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a strategy. I shouldn't say that. But, like, yeah, I don't have, and nobody would, nobody would even know until it got published. Like, I wouldn't,

I guess Miles would know, who does my audio stuff. He might say, yeah, I don't know if you should have Satan on again. Like, that might – yeah, he might push back on that. But even he, like, he loves it. He's like – he's 100% where I'm at. Anything I send him, he's like, ah, that was interesting. He's like, so I don't have anybody that's like, no, you should do this or you shouldn't do that.

You shouldn't say that. There's been times when, when, you know, Chris will, she might listen to it. I, I, I might lean a little more raw and real and she might, there's been a couple of times she's like, I don't know, do you need to be that personal? You know, like we do have a family and, and stuff. And like, there are certain things that the whole world need to know, you know,

this detail or whatever. And, and I think that's, that's a healthy, that is a healthy balance. Okay. I mean, but how about let's state the obvious though, you have built this platform on having a ministry that engages a people group. And again, I hesitate trying to find what the right language is, but folks who will admit that they are same-sex attracted, folks that say they are gay, that they are lesbians, that they're homosexuals, whatever, again, whatever the right words are even, which is a subset of the population that has been soundly rejected by most people in the church, okay? And you, as a white male heterosexual coming from a conservative background,

are an outlier in saying, I'm going to love you as a person. In fact, not only am I going to love you, but I'm actually going to go to bat for you on things that I think need to be stood up for. And that just doesn't happen very often, Preston. In the race conversation, it's one of the great

one of the great pain points I think for black people who would align with the world of evangelicalism that too many white evangelicals too often do not stand with them about issues of justice and things that they legitimately could stand with them on

doesn't mean nobody ever does but it's rare enough that it really stands out when somebody is willing to do that with a marginalized population or a group of people that tend to be rejected. And I think you've said,

I'm going to stand with you and I'll even fight for you. And there's something to that that's super attractive when you've been in pain and when you can't find allies and you can't find anybody to stand with you. And there's something to that that's super attractive when you've been in pain and when you can't find allies and you can't find anybody to stand with you. Don't you think there's something to that? Yeah. I guess it's so... Yeah. No, you're probably right. It's helpful to hear that from

you. Because for me, when I look at my involvement with the LGBTQ conversation, I've learned so much about Jesus, about friendship, about grace, about resilience, about marriage, from hanging out with LGBTQ Christians, you know? Like, it's just, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. This is my talk at Revoice last fall. I was like, you know, for much of my trajectory in this conversation, it's been me helping the marginalized, me helping the other, me helping. And even that can have a, it can pick up this unintentional condescending. Yeah, there's something smelly about that. Yeah, it's like, after a while, it's like, and I was probably maybe, I don't know, maybe three, four years ago.

I'm probably even longer than that, where I just, I began to realize like, no, I'm the student here. I'm the disciple here. I'm learning. Like truly, like when I hang out with celibate gay Christians, and I'm going to say that and just, whatever, you don't like that phrase, figure it out. But celibate gay Christians who are so sold out to Jesus that they are committing their lives to celibacy. And yet, non-erotic intimacy for them is an essential. Guess who else that's an essential for? Every freaking human on earth. I was going to say. Okay.

Trick question. But how many straight, heterosexual, married Christians know that? Yeah. straight heterosexual married Christians know that. Yeah. We've been sold this bill of lies that, oh no, you can find all of your needs in your marriage. And then that's why marriages implode.

Like, you know, they just, you need intimacy among other believers and people in the community and friends and everything. And I didn't, no one coached me on that. You know who coached me on that? That really core need is celibate gay Christians. They did, yeah. Yeah. They're like, yeah, if I don't have community, I'm done.

Yeah. I need intimacy. I need authentic. I need to be able to say, hey, I watched porn last night. Hey, I can't stop masturbating. Hey, I'm addicted to alcohol. Hey, I'm doubting God, and they need to be real and cultivate intimate relationships because they can't survive without that.

But we all can't survive without that. I can't pour all that. I can't find all that in my wife, my spouse, but I was kind of told that I could, not explicitly, but marriages. You ask, okay, next time you – I i want you to you'll do this promise you well do this next time you meet a girl and a guy young christian couple who's engaged to be married and say we're getting married okay i want you to ask this question all right why we love each other well I love my kids

I'm not going to marry my daughter like why are you getting married and then you know you get the guy or girl you know I kind of want to have sex legally you know

that's fair you know but their theology of marriage is so anemic to an extent I want you to ask my friend Tony Scarcello who's same sex attracted who's been married for 8 years why he's married to his wife I want you to ask Lori Krie, who's same-sex attracted, who's been married for eight years,

why he's married to his wife. I want you to ask Lori Krieg, who's same-sex attracted to women, who's married to her husband, why they're married. They're going to give you a Genesis to Revelation response because they've had to understand, okay, what is the meaning? Here we are. I'm not attracted to that sex, but I'm committed covenantally. I'm covenantally committed to them. Why? Why are we going to keep forward? They've had to ask a deep theological

question. I've learned more about marriage, theology of marriage, from talking to my friends who are in what's called a mixed orientation marriage. So anyway, I... You know, that scares people to hear you even say that. It's a scary... Why is that? It shouldn't be. Well, because we're fundamentalists way more than any of us want to admit that we are taught to be... Let's just say this, because I'm not going to get myself in trouble.

I'm not going to get a Will Smith slap here, and I don't fully know what I'm talking about. I want to be careful with the gender sexuality thing. We just don't love people well, man. That's just it. I think I can say that comprehensively that why that's such a huge theme left for us in the scriptures is because by our regular nature, we don't do that well. We judge really well. We do. We hide our own sin and we judge other people's sins way easier than we love them by moving towards other sinners. We just don't do that well. Because for you to even say you've engaged the sex and gender conversation, the LGBTQ conversation, there's very few people, you know, how do we make these

kind of summary statements? Most people don't do that. They don't engage the conversation. That's true. They don't meet real people. Some people are doing it really well, but it's a tiny percentage. That's right. So all that to say, I think that's why people are attracted to a space where that's at least being held out to them. It's at least being dangled to say, you know what? It's safe for you to come in here and not be immediately rejected the moment that you share a sin struggle. It should be the church, right? I mean, we say that should be the definition of church everywhere. It's not right now. And so wherever we can find it, we hold on to it

and don't want to let it go. I felt that at the end of the conference. I felt very emotional with it ending the other day because at least in my mind, I was saying this is a space of people that have hurt for different reasons in their life, and they're clinging to Jesus. That's why they sang so robustly. They're still trying to learn about issues together, but they're safe to be here. I think that's what you represent to people and what the podcast represents. Yeah, yeah.

Keep doing it, man. There are some people there, man. That's a really interesting audience, man. A friend of mine transitioned 15 years ago. I'm not going to say her name. She wouldn't mind, but transitioned 15 years ago I'm not going to say her name she wouldn't mind transition 15 years ago trying to figure things out male to female

beautiful soul beautiful soul and she's just passionate about finding her way she actually read my book Embodied and now she's just rethinking rethinking her choice I didn't know what to now she's just rethinking. She's just like... Rethinking her choice? I didn't know what to put.

She's just like, wow, this is a complex... She's genuinely trying to figure out what does it look like to follow God faithfully. Okay. Nate, I got a small handful of people close to me. Well, I mean, that they're genuinely asking the most deepest, hard questions. What does it mean for me to follow Jesus faithfully? Met a, gosh, girl from Montana, same-sex attracted, on fire for Jesus. And I think it was a podcast I did she got a hold of and massive impact.

Talked to somebody on the East Coast coast flew all the way out here again same-sex attractive female young like 20 or something that I think she even said like your podcast saved me um and now is it my podcast the podcast because my podcast is has hundreds of other people on it you know so it's not even it's not me it's it's it's it's the space that you're creating. It's the space. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Thank you for that.

Another person I saw, Kyla shared her story. Kyla, my friend who transitioned several years ago, detransitioned, madly in love with Jesus. She's so nuanced and careful and passionate. She said she had tons of conversations with people who came up to her and just one person for like an hour talked to her and just didn't want to leave her presence because she was like you're

me I'm obviously trying to be really vague and yet in an audience of a thousand again not that it matters one way or the other but just even as I think about what I saw there I mean not everybody was gay not everybody was same sex Not everybody was same-sex attracted. There were a lot of male-female couples there.

There were a lot of, it just was really a crazy mix. I say crazy just because you rarely see this kind of mix of people. Progressive, conservative. I mean, when somebody- It was all together. There was a lot of the snap, the progressive snap. That's the snapping clap.

And there were things said that you hear a lot of snaps. Other conservative things said, and you hear a lot of snaps, other conservative things said, and you hear a lot of, you know, claps or however conservatives applaud. Yeah. But they loved each other. Like I feel like they weren't like, oh my gosh. I feel like they appreciated the fact that there was a spectrum of beliefs here. The non-essentials are we want to root our beliefs in the word of God

we believe in the supremacy of Christ over all things we believe in the orthodox creeds of Christianity we want to worship praising Jesus because we all have a story we have brokenness, we have hope, we have redemption there's such key themes that united the people there

I hope I'm not making this up you guys listening in your own heart say like, yes, that was happening or no, you're full of crap. Like I sensed that that was kind of, there was a spectrum of views there. There was a gay married couple there.

I don't know if you, like two men that were gay that came or one of them came, I think. And I clearly where I'm at on that. But if you don't believe in that, you're 100% welcome here. Yeah, you said that. I'll have a drink with you at the aft party. Multiple times.

Okay, so I mean, this is getting a little long. So maybe this will be our last moment. Yeah, let's bring us home. We've got dinner to go to, man. We've got a burger to eat. We've got to eat more. This burger is, this burger joint's. Can't wait.

Peanut butter bacon burger. Don't want that. Don't, no. Not putting peanut butter on my burger. It... Can't wait. Peanut butter bacon burger. Don't want that. Don't, no. Not putting peanut butter on my burger. It's not peanut butter. It's like a Thai peanut butter sauce. No, it's not me. They got some wings.

Amy will want that. Amy will, my wife Amy will like that. They have great beer too. So one of the things that crossed my mind is, man, would all these people hang out with each other next week if they found each other in different parts of the country? Would they keep the spirit alive, right? Would they keep the spirit alive that we experienced there if they found each other somewhere else in the country? So that's one thing that I was just dabbling with. But maybe a better question even to ask you is, what do you

hope people will go back out and do now that they are back off the mountaintop? You know, there's this almost a false experience that gets created in a camp. It's a summer camp. Yeah, it's a summer camp. Totally a camp experience, which is wonderful. But then you got to go back to real life. What do you hope people go back and do with all that they experienced? That's a great question. See, here's, I haven't,

I don't have this like written out. So let me, um, like I haven't really thought about that before. So much of this has just been us kind of in the moment shooting from the hip kind of, um, I, but I, I, I have thought about that in the last 24 hours between my sleep and naps and more sleep and more naps. So summer camp, I think venues that have nothing but heart and emotion tend to be a little more fleeting.

I do hope that the intertwining of head and heart would produce a little bit longer of a trajectory of discipleship influence, I hope. Some people, even as you listen to this podcast, maybe you're already down, you flew home, you got in a fight with your spouse, you found out your kids were cheating on their homework, whatever. You're just in the warp and woof of life, and you're just like, I just need to survive. I need to get home and disciple my kids or just be a Christian today. But there's things that are implanted in you, too, that may not take immediate effect.

They might pop their head up once in a while. So I think that's going to happen. What I hope – so I would be be happy with. I expect that. I don't expect these three days to be... To people to be living on that high until next year when we do this again next year in Boise. I did have several people say, hey, I have courage and a framework to do something like this in my sphere of ministry. I had youth pastors say, gosh, I need to be having these conversations with my students, and I'm going to do that when I get home. I had pastors say, wow, gosh, give a talk, and then go on a couch and have an interview, dialogue.

Maybe I can do that in my ministry. Wow. So wait, I can tackle the sexuality conversation. I mean, we even said, like, if you're not, you're being irresponsible, you know, even things like that. So I do feel like people that have a sphere of influence, which is everybody there, everybody there has some sphere of influence. Maybe it's one friend, Maybe it's 2,000 people that you're pastoring and everything in between. Everybody has a sphere of influence. My ultimate goal would be that people feel empowered, encouraged, challenged, and that they were given a framework to be able to do something like this. Not the all general this, but being able to have the hard conversations

with grace, humility, humanizing people who disagree, like just doing the essence of what we were doing in whatever that looks like. That's, if I get some, I'm hoping, I'm praying that I get some emails and messages and stuff from people saying, hey, because I attended this, here's what I've done and here's some fruit. That would be, if I hear one story like that, that would be a major win for me. Yes, sir. You think? Totally.

If you were my board chair, what would you say should be the result of this? What I just heard you say was that you hope people will at least want to go have these kinds of conversations, where we bring truth, bring some kind of content to the table and that we talk about it with each other, especially about difficult stuff. That's what I'm hearing you say, that they wouldn't be afraid to go into these hard spaces where real people live and be ministers. Really, take on the identity of a minister, no matter who

you were or how you think about yourself, to go home and be a minister to other people by creating space where this can happen. A word you didn't say, though, that I would add is hope. I just feel like hope was a theme, especially as we got towards the end. In a cultural moment that we find ourselves where there's so much hopelessness, where nihilism is more the vibe of the day, right? Where the political climate, the church climate, it's discouraging. It is publicized as discouraging. Let's just say that. What we see in media, social media, are messages that suck the hope out of you.

The gospel message and the way that I heard people talk about God and talk about God's kingdom and talk about the gospel in these last few days made me want to be an agent of hope to other people. Whether that's other believers or other unbelievers to kind of break free from the narrative of hopelessness that's out there and say, Jesus really does offer a better way. And it feels like this. It feels like a place where you can be safe to be yourself. And I'll be myself. And again, it seems so simple, but it's hard to find. So go home and be those kinds of people. That's what I got hit with.

By the time we got to the end, that's what I felt. That's a great word. Yeah. Because there's a lot of discouragement in the church, you know? There is. People feel like there's no hope of anything better, different. I want something different. I want something more authentic.

I want to have these conversations, and I just don't feel like they can have them. And I guess maybe it's one thing if they just came and watched on stage, but they were with 1,000, 1,100 people from all over the country. Did you know all 50 states were represented? Well, between the virtual and in-person, all 50 states were represented. Did not realize that. Wow. Wow.

And the world. We were having questions from Tokyo. Some of the questions were from Tokyo. Some were from France, Africa, New Zealand, all the place. So to show that you're not, maybe that's – so combined with the hope, you're not alone. There's a lot of people. Yeah.

A lot of people who want to be – have this kind of church. So we got to go get that burger, man. I mentioned that peanut butter bacon. How can people get access to this content? Is there some way still to do that? Yes, yes. Is there some way still to do that? Yes, yes.

So those who attended virtually, I think they have seven days to watch it. But I think we're actually going to close. I think we might have put a cap on that. So we hired, it wasn't cheap. Everything we want to do, I want to do it with excellence. So we hired a really good film crew to film the whole thing with different angles and everything. So they're going to spend about, it's going to take about six weeks of editing. And then we're going to release a digital version of the conference that isn't just, it's not just the virtual, you know, just the one camera or whatever. It's going to try to mimic the live experience with closeup shots, different angles. Nice.

It's going to be presented really well. These guys are amazing. So that should be done, I think, about six weeks from now. And I think we're going to make it in bite-sized chunks so that people can kind of purchase the race three hours, the sexuality three hours, whatever, just in case they weren't interested in the whole thing. So yeah, the Theology in the Raw website, theologyintheraw.com. And then, yeah, look for that in six weeks or so.

Sounds good. Let's go eat, man. All right. you