Theology in the Raw - The Kingship of Jesus and Pastoring a Mega Church: Dr. Mark Moore

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Exiles 25 will be here soon! May 30 - April 2! Register today to join us in person or stream online! https://www.theologyintheraw.com/exiles26Dr. Mark E. Moore is a bestselling author and the teaching pastor at Christ's Church of the Valley in Peoria, Arizona. He previously spent two decades as a New Testament professor at Ozark Christian College. Mark is the author of several books, including his most recent book The Missing Messiah: The Jesus We Can No Longer Ignore, which he co-authored with Kyle Idleman.Check out Kairos Classroom to learn biblical Greek and Hebrew! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

But if he's only your savior and not your king, you will be able to diagnose your spiritual ailment in three ways. Number one, eternity for you is after you die, not today. Number two, sin will be what you do in private, not what we do systemically in culture. It makes Jesus my savior, not the savior of us. So Christianity is all about my relationship with Jesus, not the church's relationship with making the world a little bit more like heaven. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. The Exiles of Babylon Conference is right around the corner, April 30th to May 2nd.

If you haven't registered yet and you plan on attending, please do so ASAP TheologyInTheRaw.com. You could attend live in person or you could get a virtual pass and watch it from your living room. My guest today is Dr. Mark Moore, who is a best-selling author and the teaching pastor at Christ's Church in the Valley of Peoria. in Arizona. He previously spent two decades as a New Testament professor at Ozark Christian College. Mark is the author of several books, including his most recent book, this one right here, if you're watching on YouTube, The Missing, the missing Messiah, the Jesus we can no longer ignore, which he co-authored with Kyle Eidelman. I really am enjoying this book. I get sent a lot of books, and so a lot of them I kind of open up, spend five seconds, and like, yeah, just not, this is a great

book. I just, you know, not really interested in it. So I grabbed this one. It came through the mail and I immediately went to the back and, well, I tell the story on the podcast, but I was really immediately impressed with the kind of level of scholarship of the book because it's a very popular level book, accessible book. You know, it doesn't, it's not like an academic book, per se. But, but Mark is an academic. And it really comes out in this book. It's a really engaging book about the kingship of Jesus that demands all of our allegiance. So really enjoy this conversation. I think you will too. Please welcome to the show for the first time. The one or only Dr. Mark Moore. Oh, Mark. Dude, I am absolutely loving your book. Okay. So I

get sent a lot of books, right? You know, publishers reached out, you know, hey, you don't have this person on. And most of them I say, you know, no, unless it's something, it's like, oh, this really, you know, piques my interest. And I grabbed her book. I was like, oh, this seems interesting. But I immediately, okay, dude, I immediately, what did I do? As a fellow scholar, I go to the back. I didn't even look at the introduction.

I look at the cover. I go to the back to the footnotes. And I see you citing the Dead Sea Scrolls, technical, like scholarly articles. But then I'm like, wait, this doesn't seem like an academic book. And I start reading. It's just so conversational. like, oh my word, okay, you got my interest now. Because if you, if you didn't have that, I would have just thought like, I don't know, like, you know, you're just talking about Jesus,

whatever, but like, oh, no, this, this, this, this is rooted in like deep, deep scholarship, even though it doesn't feel like that at all. So yeah, that's awesome. So what's funny about that is you are, you are only the second person to do that. Really? The first person that did that was my wife. We get the, we get the pre-release copy and she takes it right into the bath and, you know, She's in the bath like over an hour. So it's like she comes out of the bath and she goes, okay. Because she knows Kyle. Kyle, we knew Kyle before, like when he was a little kid.

Oh, wow. And when he was 18 years old, he comes to the college. He's in my class. So like, he's been, we've been dear, dear friends for decades. And now he's a student. He was a student of yours when you were teaching. I know. And now he's a grandpa.

It's craziness. I started teaching when I was seven. So anyway. So she, she looks at the. She comes out of the bath and she says, okay, I looked at the appendices. Did you do that or did Kyle? And I go, I think you know the answer to that. I think, yeah.

So what you just mentioned is how readable it is. That is 100% Kyle. Well, 90% Kyle. Okay. The scholarship is 80% me. Okay. Our, both of our superpowers, like, I'm not the best scholar in the world. I'm good.

I'm not the best. but I can get the depth of scholarship and get the cookies down on the bottom shelf. And Kyle, what he does, and I'm not as good at this, he will take the scholarship that he's very smart, but he will say it in a way that you go, well, I could have said it like that. Well, why didn't I say it like that? So it's been a really fun partnership bringing out, I think, the best of both of us. How would you summarize the gist of what you're doing in the book, the missing Messiah, the Jesus we can no longer ignore? Okay, I'm going to talk like Kyle does in a minute, okay?

Okay. And then I'll talk like me. I need to give you two answers. Kyle would say, Jesus is not your therapist. He's not your life hack. He's not your guru. He is your king. He's your Lord.

And until you make him lords, you're missing half of him. Now I'm going to talk like Mark. In the church, if you look at the history of the church, the Jews missed the Messiah because they were wanting a king. They were not expecting a savior. When the Gentiles came in, they didn't know what Messiah was. And so they translated it as Christ. But they didn't know how to define the word Christ. So they defined it as Savior, not as king.

The American church, based on Gentile culture, we have made Jesus our Savior and not our king. So the Jews missed him for one reason. We've missed him for another. And here's the consequence. If we could just dive like into the deep part of the pool immediately. if Jesus is your Savior. I mean, that's right. He is. He is.

But if he's only your Savior and not your king, you will be able to diagnose your spiritual ailment in three ways. Number one, eternity for you is after you die, not today. We're living eternal life now. We just don't recognize it because he's a savior someday, not Lord, today. Number two, sin will be what you do in. private, not what we do systemically in culture. So sin is, I got drunk, I slept around, I said a naughty word. But in the Bible, most sin was not personal sin. It was systemic sin of poverty and racism and

abuse. And when we minimize sin, the other thing it does is it makes Jesus my savior, not the savior of us. So Christianity is all about my relationship with Jesus, not our relationship. Not our relationship, the church's relationship with making the world a little bit more like heaven. So that's your diagnosis and we're sick. I love this is on page too. You said when the first followers of Jesus called him Christ or Messiah, they were not giving him a surname. They were making an explosive political, theological, and revolutionary claim. And they were saying that this carpenter from Nazareth was the promised king that Israel's been waiting for, the one who would establish God's kingdom, the one who would challenge every earthly power, the one who deserves total

allegiance. And that total allegiance part, I mean, you touch on some pretty sensitive stuff. You do, and I'm halfway through the book. So I don't know if you, I don't think you have like, you go into all the nitty-gritty specifics. But you, you kind of touch on some like political allegiances, which I thought was really helpful because, yeah. And as you know in the book, which is just, you know, very accurate that all these claims of Jesus being the king, the Messiah, the son of God. Like, these were political kind of categories, you know. 100%. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, a little bit about my background. So I did my PhD in Europe, mostly with Eastern European cohorts. So there's two things you shouldn't talk about in polite public conversation. One is religion, the other's politics. So I thought, I'm going to write a whole dissertation on the politics. of Jesus. Let's make everybody angry at you. Those from Eastern Europe, in my cohort, they said, well, of course Jesus was political. Those from the West, Australia, America, Canada, they go,

no, what do you mean? He's not political. Of course he was political. When you ride a donkey down the Mount of Olives into the temple, that's political. When you challenge the powers of the day. So, I mean, here's a specific example. And I'm going to go off camera for just a second. It's just right here. But I got, I got to show you this coin. This is one of the most political statements that Jesus ever made. This coin right here is a denari.

And I'm going to put it right up to the camera. And I don't know if we, if we'll be able to see it. But this, this dude here is Tiberius Caesar. Okay. And if you look really close, I think you can see the word D-I-V-I just at his forehead. Huh. Davis. That's divine.

Divine. He's coming to be divine. So this is the exact coin. When they were trying to trap Jesus in the temple, they said, should we pay our taxes to Caesar or not? Right. And he goes, well, I don't know. Do you got one of those coins? Someone flipped it to him.

He caught it between his two fingers. and that's not in the Bible, but I think it's probably... Preach as well. Jesus, I mean, think about this. That is blasphemy in their pocket. Yeah. All he would have had to say is, really?

You have blasphemy in your pocket, and you're asking me what to do with it. Give it back to him. So as faithful Americans, as, you know, nationalists, we go, what Jesus really meant was to pay your taxes but also go to church. Yeah. Oh, no. he was saying you have bought into an economic system and then complained about it.

If you really do believe in God, quit buying into the system. And that really is what the book is about. Quit buying into the system that is idolatrous because if you say you believe in Jesus, either you believe in him as Lord. So what that allows us to do, and this, I'll just get right to the point. It allows us to be Christian nationalists where when we die, someday that's when I rely on Jesus, but today I'm going to rely on a president or a political party that aligns with my views. If Jesus were to be put on the ballot for president of the United States,

there is no way I would ever vote for him because I would never insult him to demean him to the leader of one nation in one country at one time. I think it is a tragic mistake. And I've got dear friends that are on that train heading 90 miles an hour to destruction. So you have an academic background, but you're a pastor now. You pastor, I think, large church in Arizona, pretty conservative area. How does this work out when you preach this? Like, what? What? Oh, we get emails. Yeah. Here's what I would say, especially for, like, people have good hearts. And they have good minds.

They want you to tell them, okay, what do I do about the mess that we're in? Because we're in a mess. There's no question about that. We're in a moral malaise. We're in evil days. If you can, the reason I think the Christian nationalists are getting such a voice is because they offer clarity. And instead of just, okay, I'm going to get to heaven someday. No, there's something you can do about it today.

And look, we're also, we're a church that men are comfortable going to. We're not, we're not misogynist. We have women, pastors, and the whole nine. But men are comfortable because we're aggressive when we say, here's what you can do about it. And I do think that the men of God need to rise up and lead their families and lead their churches. But leading with the, sorry, I'm going to go back for just a second.

The whole philosophy of my dissertation was, this. Yes, Jesus was political, but not in the way you think. Right. Not partisan. Jesus, what differentiated him, is what all politics is about is the use of power. And every political system, whether it's communism or socialism or democracy, uses power for self-promotion and self-protection. Jesus never use power except for the powerless. And if you tell a group of dudes, that is like, we want to be knights in shining armor. We want to rescue the poor. We want to protect women.

We want to raise our children to be warriors. So this is not soft theology. In fact, it's way harder theology because you're using your power for the powerless, not for self-protection or self-promotion. And when Jesus is your king, only if Jesus is your king can you afford to do that? because you know the king who was the lamb that was slain is also the lion of the tribe of Judah. And when he comes back, it'll be on a warhorse, not on a donkey this time. If you've ever wanted to dive deeper into the ancient languages that the Bible was originally written in,

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free shipping at bowl and branch. B-O-L-L-A-N-D, B-R-A-N-C-H.com forward-slash-T-R with code T-I-T-R. That's Bull and branch.com forward slash T-I-T-R and use the code T-I-T-R to unlock 15% off. exclusions apply. You address a lot of like consumerism, you know, domestication of Jesus, the politicalization of Jesus in the negative sense of the term. And so again, you're a pastor. You're not just, you know, writing about stuff that you're not trying to work out in the context of a church. I assume you have to face and challenge and address these things all the time in a church. I assume people are struggling with all the things you're addressing in the book. How do you do that?

Yeah. I hear your question. And I'm a little bit, I'm embarrassed to say this. we get so i personally get way more uh praise than criticism everyone's going to get a nasty email now and then you didn't say this quite the right way who cares if you're if you are if you are clear about your vision it actually attracts people to that vision so in answer to your question how much blowback do i get far less than you would think and here's why i'm not trying to make jesus fit in to a small world, a narrow vision. A lot of people can make Jesus like what they want. They're therapists.

Oh, yeah, I need a therapist of Jesus. I need a life coach in Jesus. No, he's bigger than that. And when you make Jesus bigger than your problems, instead of trying to make him fit your problems, people actually see that and appreciate it. I'll give you a very clear example. after COVID, I met this woman coming out of church. And so just to set this in context, our church has 18 campuses. The sermons are all broadcast on video. We have, I think last weekend was like 51,000 people. So there's a lot of people.

Even at the broadcast campus where I walked out of, there's going to be 14,000 people on any given weekend at that one campus. So the likelihood that I'll see her again is thin. She goes, pastor, I'm hurting so bad. Post-COVID, I'm isolated, I'm triggered, like all the things. She's in therapy every week. And she said, what can I do? Therapy isn't helping.

What can I do? If you need therapy, get therapy. We want you to get the help you need. And it's valid. It's a God-given, I think, a spiritual gift. But I said, okay, I'm going to challenge you to do something. But I'm not going to tell you what it is until you promise me you'll do it. She goes, I'll do it.

And whatever you say, I'll obey. I said, I want you to memorize Romans 8, word for word. And it's going to take you three months to do it. And here's how to do it. I kind of coach her in the memorization process. I saw her two years later. And she goes, I got to tell you what happened. She said, I memorized Romans 8.

I did word for word. It took me three months to do it. At the same time as I finished it, my therapist fired me. She said, you don't need me anymore. Because the word of God had healed her along with therapy. I'm not demeaning either one. It is the word of God that healed her.

Fast forward another six months. And there's a sermon on tithing. And we approach tithing. Like we say to people, if you don't trust us enough to tithes to this church, please leave. Go find another church where you can believe in the leadership in time.

Because tithing is healing to you because it turns you from a consumer into a contributor. So this girl, is sitting there in church, hearing this, she goes, man, I would love to tithe, but I can't afford to tithe because I'm spending all my money on Thera. I can tithe. She said, I started tithing, and it transformed me from being a taker to a giver. And then I started volunteering. And then I started serving other people. It was the word of God that gave her a higher view of the love of God. Romans 8 talks about, we are more than

conquer us. And there's nothing in this world that can take us away from the love of Christ. It got into her soul. And it healed her soul. So she got out of therapy, which healed her finances so she could be a giver. And that opened her up to be in service. When you, so I've been long-winded here, when you give people a solution that's bigger than their problem, it raises them from a receiver to a giver, from a consumer to a contributor. I'm curious because somebody listening to that could, you know, say, okay, that sounds great, but, you know, I've been sexually abused by my dad or trafficked by my mom or has gone through, not just like, you know, I don't want to downplay COVID anxiety, whatever, but, you know,

there's different levels of the spectrum of things that could be considered trauma. some that like I don't know if that would be trauma you know I'm sorry you got a bad grade on your test but I don't know if that's trauma all the way to people that we I'm sure swap many many stories of people like oh gosh that's capital T trauma yeah you know and maybe they've been told you know we'll just go memorize a chapter in the Bible and you'll be fine you know I you're not saying that I just what would you say to somebody who has has gone through some serious stuff and reading the Bible or memorizing a chapter is just not, it's not fixed it.

It's not enough. That's right. It's not enough. Well, here's what I would say. There are levels of trauma. Psychosocially, however, all trauma is the same triggered trauma. In other words, your brain into trauma reacts the same way. matter how big the trauma is. Some, that doesn't minimize, like there's Auschwitz trauma and there's

my boyfriend broke up with me trauma. Right, right, right. But in the moment, it feels the same. And you adjust to depths of trauma. So all trauma is trauma and the solution to all trauma is the same, whether there's lowercase T, like, laughable trauma. I've got a, I've got a 12-year-old grandson. And what's capital T trauma to him is like, it's funny. But it's, but it's, To him, it's still a big deal. So we treated the same. Here's the solution to trauma. And this is not me as a preacher.

I'm actually leaning into Jordan Peterson, who, like, he's a world-renowned psychotherapist. He said, anybody who's experiencing trauma, the solution to trauma is to have purpose in life and meaningful contributions to other people. So the way I, as a pastor now, the way I preach this. that is to say the depth of your pain is the height of your platform. So those who have been sexually abused, sexually molested, in terrible kinds of ways, yes, they're going to have trauma. And yes, they'll need therapy. They'll need Bible. Like whatever we can throw at it. But the quickest way out of trauma is to quit focusing on yourself and focus on someone else. And the more people you help in their trauma, the more you will mitigate the effects of your own trauma. So again, Jesus, he's so

freaking brilliant when he told his disciples, son of man didn't come to be served, but to serve. His trauma, like nobody had more trauma than Jesus did on the cross. And yet it was his greatest triumph. In fact, Hebrew says it was through that that he learned obedience and became the son of God. So, hello, Jesus is still the model. Yeah. How long have you been past, I knew your church was big. I didn't know it was that big. What's that like? I don't even know what question to ask.

I mean, I can't imagine pastoring, you know, that many people. Obviously, when you're a pastor or that many people, it's a different sort of pastoring, you know. You can't hang out with tens of thousands of people every week. But what are some of the joys and what are some of the challenges of pastoring? Yeah. So let me, I'll just, I'll just pull off the veil and speak frankly. I was, I was a Bible College professor for 22 years. So my, my title was Pastor Moore or Pastor Moore. I changed that hat for Pastor Mark. And to me, it was an upgrade. In, so it was 17,500 people when I came, we've continued to grow. And I promise you, Preston, we're not that good. We are that consistent. And so for, for our, all you pastors out there thinking, well, how do I grow my church? It's not by being the better than other people. It's being by being more focused and consistent. We don't do a lot of things.

In fact, we only have four real ministries, the weekend experience, groups, which we push really hard groups, kids and student ministries. And then we have a sports ministry that is citywide, I think there's like 25,000 kids that are part of that sports ministry. Only 30% of the people who play on those teams go to our church. So it really is an outreach ministry. That's all we do. We don't try to do what we're not good at. So I would say for all of us, no matter whether you're a pastor or not, do the thing that you are most passionate about and that you can do with the greatest excellence and then be consistent with it. Again, we're not the best preachers. I'm a teaching pastor. The senior pastor preaches about 28 times a year. I'll be up about half of that. We have a third person on the

team. This is about half of that. So it's a team effort. And so what is it like to answer your question? What is it like? My role is teacher. But there's no one on our staff from those cleaning the bathrooms to those on the stage. No one is not a pastor. So I was talking with some residents yesterday. And one of the, he's the incoming resident. He's kind of in an interview process. He said, I want to be in production. I'm back a house. How, but you're saying I'm a production pastor. What does that mean? And so we talked about when I go to our campuses, I always go to the back of the room and thank the production people because you got to know who packs your parachute, man. And what I look for in our production guy, I want him to be doing absolutely nothing during the service. He has volunteers all across those lighted boards, pushing buttons, check and sound, doing lights, because his role is to be doing. to release a ministry to someone else, that's his church. That's who he pastors. So for me, I do pastor people deeply. Part of the people I pastor is the small group that I'm a part of.

There's about 12 people who gather together week, week by week, and just talk, have spiritual conversations. I also pastor, my family, obviously, and I also pastor, there's certain people on staff that I'm mentoring. That's my church. Nobody can actually pastor, you can, can't even know more than 125 people. We know that cycle socially. So the secret of the big church is to have layers of connections and you pour into the people who pour into people. Yeah, yeah. What are some of the challenges or things you just don't like about pastoring of, you know, such a large church, you know? And kind of a follow-up question, there's some people, some people listening who, whether they've been burned by a big church or maybe for various other reasons. They're just kind of anti-Meguchurch. You know,

and mega-churches have gotten, you know, bad rap over years, logic with scandals and leadership failure and all these things. Or just a hyper-focus on, you know, getting as many people at all costs, you know. And having read most of your, or almost half of your book, like, oh, he's not softening the message of Jesus to get more people. No. So which is different. I mean, most people who would write a book like this and talk like this don't have. large churches, quite honestly. So that's like a three or four-part question that they're out. But yeah. Yeah, in all fairness, I'm a contributor to the church. I'm not the one who built it. Our founding pastor built it. But he wasn't soft either. So I think people are attracted to,

well, here in Phoenix, I mean, we're the Valley of the Sun. We have golf tournaments and we've got sporting events and we've got, we're a foodie city. We're a music city. Everyone has something to live for. But you give them something to die for, now you're going to attract some people. So what was it like? So here's what I love, love, love about it is that we attract some weird people and truly lost people. I'll tell you one funny story. This guy comes up to me and he's a barrel chestered dude baldheaded, hence gorgeous. And he goes, you got to talk me into God. He's an atheist. And he was also a medical doctor. And I go, I don't need to talk you into God. If God's a big boy, he could talk you into himself if he wants to talk himself anything. And his wife was going to the

church. She believed in God. His kids go to the church. They believe in God. He goes, no, you need to talk me into God. I go, all right, why? He goes, because I've invited five of my neighbors to church, and they've all come, they've all gotten baptized. They love it. I feel like a hypocrite. So when an atheist feels like a hypocrite, because he's leading people to baptize. you got something going on that's kind of cool. I had another guy. He's Jewish, literally died three times. Heart attack died three times. And he wants to get baptized, but if he does, his family's going to excommunicate him.

And he goes, should I do it? Oh, by the way, his name was Joshua, which is the Hebrew pronunciation for Jesus. I said, let me get this straight. Your name represents Jesus. You died and rose again. And you're asking if you should be baptized. I think yes. The stories are what I love about it.

You're talking about sexual abuse. There's a woman who her story was told on 2020. Her father sexually abused her as well as all the other girls in the dormitory at their mission compound. It was bad. He's in prison. and to be able to share her story with the church. And you ask about resilience. It's a tough life for her.

Even now it's a tough life. She's married and divorced because her husband was abusive. Her kids are struggling. But here's the beauty of it. After we told her story, I've stayed connected with her, and I pastor her through some difficult times, you know, when she's feeling down. But she's doing okay right now.

She called me and said, listen, my car, broke down and I can't get to work. Do you have anyone who could loan me a car so I can get to work? Because if I lose my job, then I can't fix my car. I said, tell me about your vehicle. And I said, I want you to take it. I want you to take it to a mechanic. I get this mechanic who, he loves the Lord. They're just scraping by, but he's a reliable mechanic. I said, take it to him. And I call the mechanic, says, I'm paying the bill. Don't let her pay. He called me back and said, this car's not worth salvaging, it would take $5,000 to fix it. But I could sell it for $2,000. It's a terrible investment. So I called another guy, John. I know this is a long story.

It is a lot of weaving in, but you ask me why I love the big church. This is why. John builds custom dump trucks. It's crazy. Like he gets the sheet metal and builds two-speck, and he charges a lot of money. He not only tithes, he has given a hundred above-vers. the tithe, $150,000 last year, especially to projects like this. His goal this year is to give away 29 vehicles to people who need a vehicle. So I call John and say, I need one of your, I need a van. And so he says, fine. It'll be ready for you in two days. So she goes and gets the van. That's why I love this church. You got a woman who's brave enough to tell her story that brings healing to thousands of women, then she's in need for a mechanic. I find the mechanic for her who then

finds a car for her. It's just at scale, you can make a big impact. Now, what I don't like about it is that we're a target for attack all the time. And even right now, there's always some true, some not, like people get hurt in churches. I think, to be honest with you, I don't think people get hurt in larger churches anymore to scale than smaller churches. They're just bigger and they're just more public. But my greatest, if I'm to be completely honest, here's what I struggle with the most. Every Sunday I'm not preaching. If I'm not preaching in another church or here, I go visit three of our campuses. And I show up, not during service, but in the middle services. I just want to greet people to make a big church feel small, right? There will sometimes.

be people, well, often people like, hey, can I take a picture with you or, you know, will you sign my book or sign my Bible? And it's like, there's a role I play in that. But it is, it falsifies and it elevates me as a celebrity rather than a real person and a pastor. So I got a really guard against celebrity status. Yeah. How do you do, yeah, that's, is that just inevitable? Well, that was another question I had about the megachurch, is it often can be centered on. I mean, anecdotally, when I look around in megachurches, you know, the people that top, the lead pastor, teaching pastor, they're, you know, dynamic personalities. They're very entrepreneurial. They're just, ooze, just, they're just successful kinds of people.

You know, they're great communicators. Like, they're socially, usually very, you know, you want to be around this person. They have electric personalities and stuff. And so how do you avoid perpetuating that kind of celebrity cycle? Or is it just inevitable? I don't know. I'll tell you several things that I've done personally. One is, and it's even true on this book, I signed the royalties over to the church.

Okay. So there's not a financial, like, it doesn't matter how many copies this sells. I'm not getting any more money from it. That's one thing that I've done to protect me. The other thing, and our senior pastor has never written a book, the founding pastor has never written a book, which is why this church, Christ Church of the Valley, is the third largest church in the country that nobody's ever heard about. Because we're not on social. We're not trying to self-promote. God's called us to this valley. We know our people, and we're going to dive into our people and try to help our people find Jesus. So we do have a, we have to deal with like the publicity locally, but we're not a national. entity that we have to worry about, you know, some podcast blowing up about us. So that really helps. I'll tell you another thing that really, really helps. I have always tithed and more. And so I try to add a percentage to my tithe every year. I haven't kept up pace. But our senior

pastor, and this is his story to tell, but he's told it publicly, he tithes 50% of his income. So nobody is accusing him. of trying to get rich off the church. We just don't do that. Everything we produce as a church is free to give away. So if someone said, hey, we love your children's curriculum. How do we buy it? You can't buy it. When I go out to speak, I don't have a fee. There are people who will give a donation to be or to the church, but I don't have a fee. And so if you take the monetization out of the platform, that is a real protection from the celebrity status. The other thing is, this is, one of our core values is that we serve. And the way we articulate that is we pick up

trash. Everybody on staff picks up trash. If I'm walking around and I see a piece of trash on I can be in a conversation with somebody. I will reach down, pick it up and just put it at my, pocket. Sometimes if it's a larger piece, it's kind of funny. because we do have security for those who are on stage. And they're really subtle and behind the scene. So it's not like I got a gorilla next to me ready to beat off the – honestly, if I got shot for Jesus, it would probably be more effective than any sermon I could ever preach.

So that's not my concern. But sometimes they're uncomfortable with me picking up trash and they'll just give that to me. So it's such an interesting dynamic. One time, I know I'm rambling again, Preslin. I decide that I want to volunteer in every area of ministry or church. So one of them is ops where we've got food services. So people are outdoor eating after every service. It's really fun for families.

But there's a lot of trash. So you've got to empty the trash. So I asked the ops team, hey, can you give me a black shirt? Because they wear black shirts. Give me a black shirt. I'm going to be on ops today. They were so uncomfortable with letting me take out the time. trash that when they saw me heading to a trash can, they would run ahead of me and get it

and take it out so that it was empty by the time I got there. I still beat them to a couple of them. But that kind of servant-heartedness, even in the mundane things, I think it helps protect us from going awry. You said you get attacks locally or whatever. Like what is that? Is it on sexuality? It's usually a, you know, that's usually comes up. Or is there other things that, you know. Yeah, we have, it's been a couple of years now, but our senior pastor who, I mean, this is really, it cuts close to home for him because he has someone in his family, same sex attracted. And he was, we were very clear with the biblical stance as one man, one woman for life, sex anywhere else is, is out of bounds. And we're not picking on people with same

sex attraction or people with gender dysphoria. We're simply saying, for the community of God. This is the rules of God that make society foundationally healthier. And of course, you get attacked for that. We get attacked for, like, if we build a new building. But the honest truth is, and let me just say this because I know a lot of the audience

come from smaller churches. We love other churches and prize other churches. In fact, three years ago, our Christmas offering, You take a big offering at the end of the year. People have year in giving. It's going to be a big offering. We said every penny that you give, we're going to give away to another church in the city. Now, we're going to vet it, and we're going to make sure that it spent well.

But we took up an offering of $8 million and gave every penny away to other churches. It was actually the year before COVID or the year of COVID. So many of the churches came and said, listen, we were going to build a building with this, but we can't, like, that doesn't make sense anymore. What makes sense is technical equipment so that we can broadcast our services. We not only bought the equipment for them to broadcast services, we sent our video team to help coach them how to do it. So it was the right thing at the right time, but we are super fans of other churches. Yeah.

And a lot of churches are doing things that we can't at a smaller scale. And so we're never going to reach the Valley alone. So when you ask, even when you say, like, yeah, we are the biggest show in town, but we don't feel like we can do it without partnerships with other churches. Yeah, that's good. That's good. You mentioned you have, but just curious, women pastors, it's an area I've been thinking a lot through. Has it always been?

No. Have you always had it? Or did you make a shift? And if you made a shift, how did that go? I know we're darting all around from the missing Messiah, but... Well, so here's a principle that a lot of pastors need to... They just need to grab because they're... Pastors are afraid to lose the people they have.

Yeah. But if you're afraid to lose the people you have, you will lose the people you could have gained. So no matter... Let me, here's another rule of ministry. Whatever you do is wrong. There's always somebody going to complain about it. Whatever you do is wrong. So do the least wrong thing.

And do the wrong thing that will reach the right people. So when you ask what was the outcome of that, I don't even care. It was the right thing to do. And okay, now I'm going to talk theology here because this is the theology podcast. Typically, and I went through this back in my collegiate days, and our college was wrestling through this from a biblical standpoint. I taught from a nudics, which is Bible interpretation, for 20 years. So, like, I kind of am an expert in that area. When people make decisions about whether to have women pastors, they typically go to two passages, First Timothy 2 and First

Corinthians 14, which are the prohibition passages for women to keep silent. One of the ways of doing theology is declarative statements. There's a theological statement. This is what to do. The Another way of doing theology, and they're not contradictory, they should be complementary, is examples. Do we have examples of women doing specific things? Yeah, we have examples of women doing everything. You want to talk about preaching? Like, we will have guest speakers who are women. We would not have a senior pastor who is a woman because we believe that is an elder role,

and we still believe that elders is a male leadership role. But we want them to be married. Why? Because a man without a woman will probably make some stupid decisions. So for us, eldership is not a male role. It's a married role, even if the male is the one in the meeting making decisions. So if you're going to have, if you're going to talk about preaching in general, preaching is Eugenelion announcing good news. Okay. Who was the first person to announce the good news of Jesus' birth. It was a woman.

Who was the first person who announced the goodness of Jesus' resurrection? It was a woman. Do we have any examples of a woman teacher? Yes, Priscilla. Do we have an example of a woman church planter? Yes, Lydia. Do we have an example of a woman warrior? Yes, Deborah.

I mean, you could, if you look at what women actually did in the Bible and then you go to the early church, the pagans typically martyred, leaders of the church. And yet I think it's about 40% of the most notable martyrs were women. So clearly the pagans recognize these women are leading in ways, regardless of whether they have a title or not. So that's been our approach. That's good. Yeah. That's it. So you said he didn't care, but probably you lost people when you made that. So you made the change. You didn't always have women pastors and teachers. But now you do. Yeah. Well, and for the first, From a legal standpoint, there are some financial benefits from the IRS that pastors get.

So if we're asking a woman to do a role that a man is doing, but don't give her the same economic advantages, I'm sorry, but that's a litigatable offense. And if your church is doing that, you're making a legal error, not just a theological error. And there are some churches, no offense to those listening who do this, I would gracefully challenge. it that they would, a woman might be doing all the things the pastor's doing, but they would call her like a director and not a pastor. And I just, I don't see that in the New Testament at all. And it's, if you're like, I don't think the New Testament says women can be pastors, that's, you know, fine, you're being consistent. But if they're doing pastoral work and you just don't want to give her the title pastor, but you will call her direct, I just, yeah, that's a little.

But that's something like that would be she would also not, I think, I don't know, if she's a director or not a pastor, she would probably miss out on some of the economic benefits of. Yeah. Well, and let me, I'll say this. Those two passages that do say women should keep silent, both of them, the difficulty is in the Greek language, there's only one word for woman and it's translated as woman and wife, Gune. Likewise for man. It's on air. it's a husband or translated it as a man. So as a Bible translator, when do I shift from husband to man?

And the answer, it's clear, like ask any Bible translator this, the answer is clear where the context includes children, marriage, or a home, you translate it as a husband or as wife. Does the prohibition of women speaking in the body include a children? home or marriage. Both of them do. And I'll tell you how inconsistent we are. In First Corinthians, 14, here's the,

I'm translating it, you know, as I speak here, but I'm thinking the Greek. It says, well, actually, this is I think the NIV, I do not permit, I do not permit a woman to teach a man, but she should

ask her husband at home. Well, how can you translate onera's husband, but Gunae as woman. It's an inconsistency that comes out of a prejudice and that's way different saying, hey, look, this is what we say, and we say it, I hope clearly, a man should be the spiritual leader of his home. And if you're not, put your big boy pants on and lead at home. We say that. It's different than saying a man, a woman should ask her husband at home. A woman should not be her husband's teacher

is different than saying a woman should not teach a man. And since we have five different passages in the Bible written by women, am I not supposed to read those? Wait, what do you think of there? Five passages written by women? Yeah. And what's interesting is they're all poetic and they are all to have militaristic language.

Oh, you're thinking of like Luke 1 and 2 with Mary and Elizabeth and... Mary's Magnificot. Deborah's poem in Joshua 5. The Prayer of Hannah. The Proverbs 31, and I'm missing... Oh, the poem when they crossed the... Red Sea. Yeah, Exodus 15, Miriam, yeah.

Yeah, so Miriam... Marian, Elizabeth, Mary, and Hannah. And this is kind of funny. Proverbs 31 was written by King Lemuel's mother. Which in all likelihood was Solomon's grandmother-in-law, telling him what a good woman actually looks like. Wow. I never thought about that.

You could almost add, this is an exact parallel, but, you know, Lady Wisdom in like Proverbs 8, you know, speaking out from the Ruthops. And, um, obviously some metaphorical. But it's, it's interesting that wisdom, even as, as, you know, in early Judaism is often person as, as, as a female, a female voice. Um, uh, we were, we were talking, sorry, and we're darting around, but I think, it seems like you're the type of person that kind of enjoys that. We were talking offline about another project you're working on, kind of a prequel to, uh, your, your book, the Messiah, um, addressing some of the eye. titles that we're wrestling with, you know, technology and luxury. And we even kind of got into, I'd love for you to tease it out a little bit. You know, just the algorithmically wired world.

That's just so playing such a strong discipleship role for those of us who are living in this largely online world, whether we like it or not. And there's a lot of factors that are shaping our minds and hearts and bodies and emotions much more pervasively and aggressively than we even realize every time we open up our phone. Can you, yeah, expand on it a bit? What are you seeing? Yeah, so let me go back and just kind of put a backdrop behind this whole thing. the according to social scientists the most the most transformational invention of the last one thousand years was the Gutenberg printing press which allowed the distribution of information broadly and cross-cultural lines and across time i agree with that that was not

like nothing came close to transforming our culture as much as the Gutenberg printing press until the internet, which was in my lifetime. And then we had another one in 2009 that was equally transformative for all human culture, not just culture, but the way our minds process information. And that was the smartphone. 2009, the iPhone was released. But the iPhone was really not an effective instrument for social transformation until 2014 when they added apps.

Social media apps transformed the way we communicate. And you and I are going to text each other. My mother can't text. She's got an email. It's got to be an email. And her mother had to send a letter in the mail. Or, you know, you see, it's changing the way we communicate. Now we have another one.

And it is AI. The three modern. So you have 1453, Gutenberg Printing Press, and then you have 2009, and then you have 2025. Well, actually, I had the internet in. It's like 1990, 2009, and then 2025. In that span, I can't express in words how massive that is. on the precipice of the transformation of humanity.

And we're doing it poorly. Because the algorithms that are now wrapped into Facebook and Google are giving you information that is specialized just to you. It's catered just to you. So if you go back and think about any child star, Justin Bieber, They are, the paparazzi are so overwhelming. Every child star goes crazy. All of them have this season of like they can't take it.

Now every single middle school girl has the same level of internal pressure as a Justin Bieber or any of the other people who went nuts. Our brains are not capable of that. And now you add an AI that is knowing you better than you know your, True, true story, true story. There are men in our church that have fired their therapist because AI is doing a better job. There is a, we're dealing with this right now, a woman is divorcing her husband because he won't give up his affair with his AI girlfriend. Oh my gosh. That is going to be normative. I mean, not in five years. In next six months. That is going to be normative. How are we going to manage this?

So Kyle and I, the publisher hasn't accepted a yes, so who knows whether it'll see the light of day. But this missing Messiah is the answer to the problem. The problem we have of isolation, and it is massive. In fact, I would say the greatest detriment to the human species because of the way God wired us is isolation, loneliness. That has been exacerbated by social. media that makes us feel like we're connecting, but the synapses in our brain are not connecting, the emotional connections, the wiring and the chemicals of oxytocin and dopamine and seroton, they're not being fired in the same way. We are becoming brain damaged because of our investment in

social media. I'm not saying this. Psychotherapists are saying this. Within six months of the apps of 2014. Within six months, there was a 400% increase in self-harm in teen girls between the ages of 12 and 14. Okay, I'll stop talking simply to say that was our conversation. What are you seeing with this, Preston? Everything you're seeing. I mean, it sounds like he probably just alluded to the work of Jonathan Haight, who's done a lot on this. 100%. 100%. But it's not, it's like, yeah, I mean, him and others have just identified just such pervasive problems. And yeah, I'm seeing everything you are. And to add to that, I mean, it's, it's, um, I like to always frame things in the category of discipleship. Everything you're

saying and the pervasiveness of it is playing a, like an anti-disciples, a discipleship role. It's shaping our minds and hearts in ways that are just disastrous. I mean, it's, I don't overstate it, but I don't want to understate the, the ramifications of it. You cannot overstate it. You can't overstate it. And think about like, combine AI and sex. Like, you know, porn obviously is already one of the greatest pervasive damaging evils in the world, which, you know, influences sex trafficking and always harms women and children the most. And throw AI, and that's not slowing down, throw AI into that. And we're not becoming less sexual. We're becoming more. We're not becoming less technological. We're becoming more. We're not becoming more

disciplined with technology. We're becoming less. So you add all this together. And it's just, it's, it's, it's frightening. It really, you know, I just, I don't. So it's, I think it's, most people that I talk to, I, I've never heard anybody disagree with everything, you know, yeah, yeah, I know. Christian or not. So, so it's not, like, recognizing the problem isn't nearly enough, but how do we cultivate not just individual discipline, individuals with some level of discipline? That's hard enough. But how do we get the corporate body of Christ to not do that? Yeah.

To resist the dangers of all the stuff we're talking about while still living in a world that's just we are inevitably in a world with technology, AI and all these things. I don't know the solution to it. Well, we're actually working on another book after this that we'll talk about the corporate church and how the church should respond to it. Let me just say this after hundreds of hours of research. And it's not just my research. We have a team of people that are working on this book together.

The team's trump talent every day. So here's what I would say to you that Kyle and I have come to the conclusion before the – listen, the book never gets published. Here's what you need to know right now today. If you have a teen girl, she should never, never, never spend more than one hour a day on social media and only in the presence of adults. Never alone. Never in the bathroom. Never in her bedroom. A teen should never have a phone in their bedroom. Period. They charge it in the kitchen. They use it in the, you can use it in the backyard. Sometimes teens need privacy. I get that. But never in an isolated space alone. Second, if you're an adult, there is no reason for you to have. more than one social platform.

And you should never be on that social platform more than, I would say, an hour a week. I got completely off of social media three years ago. And my mental health, it just immediately got better. Now, you'll have withdrawals because you're an addict. Go ahead and admit it and just say, I'm an addict and get the help you need. So I would say for teen girls in particular, for boys, the problem is not. so much social media, it is gaming. And again, I would set the same rules for, never, never, more than an hour a day and never more than four days a week. Gaming is going to make your son

lazy and disengaged from life. And he will, it will not show, the problems will not show up until he's 29. And you will find him single and living in your basement. You don't want that. He doesn't want that. His future wife doesn't want that. So for God's sake, and the good if you humanity follow some simple, hard rules about technology. Do you preach this as a church? Are these things that you see? I think that I do think that isn't the answer, but certainly can help. I do think that this needs to be broadcast as loud and clear.

People are going to have different kinds of rules or whatever. And do you give a smartphone at 16 or 18 or social? Like for our family, we gave smartphones earlier, earlier than, you know, looking back, we probably wanted to. But we withheld social media until 18. We have three daughters and a son, and they were, we've made some adjustments as, you know, they've demonstrated certain levels of maturity or whatever. But we were pretty relentless in that regard. So that's just one way to do it. But, I mean, I think for leaders and churches to keep pounding this drum,

because this really is. We could talk about spiritual, you know, disciplines and prayer and Sabbath and how to be a good person, all these things. All these are really, you know, important. But if there's toxicity in the water at the very fundamental level, all of this kind of spiritual living stuff, we're trying to get, you know, people to integrate. It's just, it's, I think this is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed. over and over and over. I know one big church in Franklin, they've been doing a month long

church-wide, you know, 10,000 person church digital fast, you know, and, and I don't know. I'm like, I asked my buddy, Darrell, like, how did you, you have a very, you know, upper middle class, high class, wealthy, you know, comfortable church. How did you get them to do this? They said, we, we just didn't, you know, you can still attend church and not do it. We're not going to kick you out. but we just kind of said this is what we are doing. And when people have experienced it, as you said, they see the joy. They see their anxiety go way down. They have more life and meaning.

It's, you know, after the month, some people do, you know, a lot of them do go back on some level. Some don't. But they have now cultivated that rhythm of, oh, I can get by without this. Not only can I get by, but I'm actually experiencing a more flourishing life when I'm not just addicted to my phone. Yeah. Yeah. You'd mention Jonathan Haidt, and I'd mentioned Jordan Peterson. They did a podcast together on this very topic.

And from a psychological and psychosocial standpoint, let's forget about your Christian for just a second. From a psychological, sociological standpoint, we are destroying humanity as we know it through our technology. And if we don't get a handle on it, actually, this is what I love about the church. I am an eternal optimist. And Jesus said, the gates of hell will not prevail against the. church. The only people postured to really deliver this message and carry it out

are the people of God. And so the church is in the best possible position. And we're still swimming in this contaminated water, but we're in the best possible position to provide solutions to the technological malaise that we're in. Yes, I agree.

I agree. The church has a wide open the door to be the leading beacon of light in a growingly dark society in this specific area. I just, yeah, I want to see more churches addressing it head on and frequently, you know. But the solution ultimately, ultimately the solution really is the missing Messiah. Because if you get him right, all of a sudden you have a lord that can make demands of you. And you have, so I hate racism at all levels.

And we're trying to combat racism by identifying our distinctions. Like diversity, like I love diversity, but it typically does divide. What I need is something big enough that all of us are going to fight for the same thing. All of us are going to pull in the same direction. Then my diversity is, well, like on a football team, like if you're rooting for a football team, you don't care if the dude in the end zone is green. If he's open, you throw him the ball because the goal is bigger than the person. And at that point, then our distinctives become valuable.

and valued rather than divisive and demeaned. That's good. So missing Messiah, I think, Kyle and I feel very strong about it. We shared before the podcast, of all the books I've written, I think this is the most important message, and it is desperately needed today. Yeah. Well, it's such a clear, it's, again, I love reading between the lines, because I, you know, once I began with the footnotes. I'm like, all right, this guy knows, you know, One Q, Melchazadec and, you know, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and he saw. Okay, okay, okay. He's so he knows what he's talking about. But then I, you know, just the readability of it was just so, yeah, easy to read. I found myself laughing out loud a few times. I don't know if you were Kyle telling stories about your wife and loaded the dishwasher. I'm like, oh, I think I've had a couple of those. Actually, the loading the dishwasher was mine. All the rest of the funny ones are Kyle. Yeah.

Which she said, which is why she did not have access to be able to edit this chapter or something. That's like, that's hilarious. Mark, it was a pleasure to talk to you, man. Thank you for your book. Encourage people to check it out. It's, yeah, very accessible, very engaging and very, very needed. Thank you, man, for the conversation. This has been fun. We've kind of gone all over the place.

Yeah, I feel like I just, I just feel like I just met a new old friend. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. Great talking to you, man. Thanks for being a guest on the Linger-Raw. Thanks, thanks, bud.