Theology in the Raw - What Was the First Century Church Actually Like?: Dr. Nijay Gupta

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Dr. Nijay Gupta (DPhil, University of Durham) is a professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary and has written several academic books including A Beginner’s Guide to New Testament Studies, Paul and the Language of Faith, 15 New Testament Words of Life, and Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church. He has co-edited The State of New Testament Studies, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (2nd ed.), and The State of Pauline Studies. He's also the author of the recent book Strange Religion: How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling, which forms the basis for our conversation. Exiles In Babylon Conference: https://theologyintheraw.com/exiles24/ Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in a Row. My guest today is my good friend, Dr. Nije Gupta, who is a professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. He got his doctorate in New Testament at University of Durham. He's written several academic books, including A Beginner's Guide to New Testament Studies, Paul and the Language of Faith, 15 New Testament Words of Life, and Tell Her Story, How Women women led, taught, and ministered in early church. His recent book is this one right here, Strange Religion, how the first Christians were weird, dangerous, and compelling. It's a book that I actually endorsed.

Yeah, it's an excellent book. And Nije is just a sharp, sharp thinker. He's a man of the church. He's also a very, as I like to say, a very responsible academic biblical scholar, and he merges those two very well. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Nijay Kukudan. All right, welcome back to Theology in Raw, Nije. How are you doing this fine morning? I'm doing great. We're excited. I was mentioning to you offline that Northern Seminary recently hired Matt Bates, so we're super excited to have him join us. So yeah, living the dream.

Now, you teach at Northern Seminary in Chicago, but you've never lived in Chicago, right? Do you do this all remote? No. Yeah. Early in my career, you might remember this, I bounced around from job to job. I lived in Ohio, Seattle, Philadelphia, New York. And then I landed kind of a long-term job in Oregon at George Fox University, Portland Seminary. And then when Northern came knocking, we were wanting to stay settled in Portland. We love Portland. We're coffee snobs. My wife had a good job. My kids love it here. They're really kind of integrated into the sports kind of stuff here. And so we made it work. Most of our students are online. So I just swoop into Chicago and I teach a one-week

course. I go for various meetings, faculty retreat, graduation. And then my doctoral courses are taught here in Portland. Students will fly out here. We'll swing by the Bible Project, hang out with Tim Mackey and his crew. And there's just a lot of great people here in Portland. You know a lot of good people here in Portland. There's a lot of great people in Portland, man. I don't know what it is. I remember when I was... I've been out there several times, and there's just an atmosphere of camaraderie and authenticity and humility. I've never been around so many super gifted and yet also super humble leaders as churches

in Portland. And I'm sure there's arrogance everywhere, I'm sure. But the guys that I know are like, golly, they're just, yeah, super down to earth. And is it because of the kind of more anti-Christian culture that if you are going to be a Christian, you kind of stick together and you like are for each other? You're not like competing with other churches? That's always kind of the assumption. Yeah, that's a good question.

You know, as you know, a lot of this is leadership. And so there have been some kind of really influential Christian leaders here that have set a certain tone. So, for example, Kevin Palau of the Palau Association, Luis Palau, some of your viewers, listeners might know. He's one of the leaders of something called Together PDX, which tries to bring ministry leaders from different traditions together for learning. And you have the Bible Project, you have Rick McKinley, who's with Imago Dei, who's a great leader here. You have Gary Beshears from Western Seminary, who I'm sure you've interacted with on several occasions before. And they've kind of set the tone. Now we have kind of new emerging leaders, Chris Nye and others, John Rosensteil, that are doing a great job with that.

So it's really just what atmosphere you set up for ecumenism and saying, hey, let's all pull in the same direction. There are churches that are kind of objectors to what we do, and they don't want to, you know, play nice. And so we have, you know, you always have that. But when we have speakers come in like Scott McKnight, Lucy Pepiot and others, we get, you know, hundreds. We had a Holy Post event here recently. I saw that. Yeah. And yeah, and we got together. And so the CEO was like, are we going to get people? I'm like,

we'll get people. We'll get them. They'll come out. But I think, I do think there's that sense of like, we don't have Christendom here. So we have to, we have to, you know, lean on each other in a way that maybe it's not true in other places where you can kind of hide with people of your specific kind of sectarian interests. And here it's just like, you know, we really need to rely on each other. You just came out with another book, Strange Religion. I love your sub-data. How the first Christians were weird, dangerous, and compelling. I was fortunate enough to get an early copy of this. And here's my endorsement. I said, this is an absolute joy to read. The book is both academically responsible

and very practical. It makes me excited to be a Christian. Here's the book right here. It's a pretty rare gift with somebody that can be as academically thorough and responsible as you are. I mean, you're an academic, but your writing style is so clear and engaging. Sometimes academics, when they try to write popular level books and it's just it just doesn't like you just yeah you just you're trying hard but it's just it's just not working you know uh but this is i it's so so well written and it really was it was hard to put down like it you know i get asked to endorse a lot of books and most of them i just don't have the time but usually i'll kind of crack it open and just, let me just, a couple pages. And I did that with this one.

And you're a friend. So I'm like, well, I've got to make time for this. But I started reading it. I remember, and I all of a sudden, I'm like three chapters in. I was like, oh my gosh, I can't stop reading. This is so good. So what prompted you to want to write this? Like, was this, yeah.

Yeah. You know, this book came out of really just the struggles we've had in the United States since 2016, politics, race, the pandemic. And what's interesting is, you know, I talk in the first chapter, you remember a lot about Portland where I live, and this is a largely unchurched, to some degree, anti-Christian environment. If I stopped, you know, one of my neighbors walking their dog and I said, what do you think about Christianity? What they would say is Christianity amplifies and reflects

the worst things in society, racism, sexism, greed, narcissism, because they read the news or they watch the news. And Stephen Colbert talks about Christians sometimes, and Jimmy Kimmel will make fun of evangelicals. So what they know about Christianity is hypocrisy, greed, scandals. I mean, this is all the stuff in the news. And a lot of it's true. A lot of that news is true. And so in a city like Portland, where the motto is keep Portland weird, they think of Christianity as the opposite of that. It's the opposite of weird. It's so normal to be as to be sickening. And they think of it as the status quo that they want to be different from. And when you look at politics right now and how

the name of Jesus is used or God or religion, it is sickening and it is troubling. I know you feel the same way because of your work with kind of the exiles theme. You take the pandemic where here, Oregon was one of the most locked down states. We spent the most time with kids away from school and all of that. And I respect the health factors of that. But one of the challenges with churches is that shift to online church. And then when you opened up again, people go back to church, there was that feeling like, what does church really offer us?

And so many of the people I know here that went to church before the pandemic don't go to church regularly now. And the idea is there's really nothing special about church. It's kind of like a hobby where it's like, if I'm not skiing or the conditions aren't great for skiing or hiking, maybe I'll go to church. And the problem is, Preston, as a New Testament scholar, when I put that hat on and I look at the early Christians, I'm just dumbfounded by how weird and strange and odd and countercultural and backwards the early Christians are in a really refreshing way. There's a quote I have at the beginning of the book by the early opponent of Christianity, Celsus. And it's an exaggeration, but he says, if the people wanted to be like the Christians, the Christians would no longer want them.

Now, he is exaggerating and he's painting in a certain way, but basically what he's saying is Christians are weird. They're odd. And I just thought, how has it happened that American Christianity is so boring and off-putting to the populace that they don't look at us and say, I want to know more about these weird people. They say to us, oh, they act all prim and proper, and they're really hypocrites and liars and narcissists. And so the big question driving my book is, would our spiritual ancestors recognize us as their true descendants? And I think the answer is mostly no. Drop the

hammer there. I'm going to quote you early off a couple of pages in your book. You say, I do think pop Christianity in the Western world often reflects a, quote, chemically altered version of the Jesus movement that has been manufactured for cheap refreshment. That's a provocative, powerful, and creative line. What do you, can you tease that out a little bit? What do you mean by pop Christianity? Sure. Yeah. So I wrote the book and then I wrote it basically as a New Testament history, a bit of a New Testament history. So I don't do... The biggest question coming out of podcasts and book studies is, how do we fix this? How do we change that? And I don't answer any of that because partly I don't have the skills to do that. I'm not sort of a modern sociologist and ecclesiologist to do that. I could have guessed at it, but I really wanted to transport people to this ancient world they're unfamiliar with and drop them kind of in the war zone and then pull them out and say, how do you feel? But my editor, he said, Nije, you're going to have to

rewrite the introduction, really inspire people to read the book. So I thought about it for weeks and I came up with this analogy, which you read in the book. I went to Costco one time and I had a hankering to buy coconut water. And I lived in Philadelphia for a while and that was the first time I tried coconut water. And I knew coconut water to be clear. And so I go to Costco in Oregon here and there's a package of coconut water that's pink. And I thought, okay, that's really weird. So I pick up another package. It's also pink. So I look at it closely and there's actually a label that says, why is this coconut water pink? I thought, great. So I look at it and it says real coconut water. When you open a coconut and there's a liquid inside, it's clear. But within a few days, it'll turn pink because the sugars are oxygenated.

And so the bottle of coconut water you should be drinking that is natural should be pink or should be a little bit pink and has no effect on the expiration or the flavor. So then why are we seeing clear ones? Well, what they explain on their website is some companies will actually chemically alter the coconut water to make it clear, to make you think that it's healthy and natural. And I thought of that as such a great analogy for some forms of Christianity that want to trick you into liking something by making it more like something that you already know. And I think culturally what's happening is today, churches are catering to what we want and not necessarily what the early Christians did as a result of their convictions and their catechism and their theology. That kind of is the point of the book, is to say,

let's get back to what made them tick. And Preston, I think a big part of it, people have asked me to kind of do an autopsy of the church or diagnosis of the church today. I think the big difference to ancient Christians and the way we are is one of the reasons the ancient Christians were weird is they re-evaluated everything from scratch. They took apart the whole of existence. Kind of like Paul says in Philippians 3, I suffer the loss of all things. But he didn't stop being a Jew. He just had to re-evaluate his Jewishness in light of Christ. He didn't stop being a man. He just had to reevaluate his Jewishness in light of Christ. He didn't stop being a man. He just had to reevaluate his maleness in light of Christ. He didn't stop being a diaspora person, but he had to reevaluate that and so forth. And I think

too many Christians today, we just put the paint of Christ on the old walls of the world. And that's, I think, the biggest difference between what the ancients did and what we do. The hard thing is, is when we talk about the church in, say, America, it's just such a broad category. Are we talking like the Eastern Orthodox Church in America, the Catholic Church, the Baptist Church, the non-denominational, you know, high church, low church. When you talk about pop Christianity, are you thinking mainly of like non-denominational, mainstream, maybe more megachurch kind of model? Do you have a specific kind of church within America you're thinking of? And even then, it might differ from church to church.

Yeah, I tell people when they say, I don't like Christians, I say, we're a big, weird family. Find the part of Christianity that you feel like is the most genuine and true. But I am talking about kind of the most influential mainstream elements of Christianity, which tend to be evangelicalism. You got some Catholic influence in different parts of the country. I lived in Boston for five years. You know, certain, you know, rural parts have influence from Maureen of Baptist or Mennonites, something like that. But yeah, I'm talking about who are writing the books that make it to New York Times bestsellers. Which churches are going to be the ones that bring in the most people, have the most views on YouTube, things like that. They tend to be evangelical churches.

I'm critiquing my heritage. So when evangelicals do bad things, Preston, I apologize for my people. So I don't mention any of that in the book, but when I take aim at that and the things I say in social media, I'm talking about my people, my tribe. I don't use the word evangelical for myself, but I do broadly. It's become a political term and I don't want to be thrown in with Jerry Falwell and I don't want to be thrown in with kind of just jerky Christians. You and I stay in the UK. I'm like John Stock Christian. You know what I mean? I'm like Howard Marshall Christian. I'm like Nicky Gumbel Christian. I'm like sweet, nice, let's have a nice conversation and drink some tea. I'm not one of these hard-nosed jerks.

So I worry about that. I worry that it's kind of lost its meaning. I'm okay if people label me as that and they say, we're going to have evangelical scholar DJ Gupta speak. I'm not going to like poo-poo that, but I don't like using the term. I've thought about this over the years. I go back and forth on what, is it something we should reclaim and not let the bad forms of bad representatives hijack the term that once had a really beautiful connotation or, or is it just already been hijacked and you know, that it's just, is it worth our energy to try to reclaim it? And then the other question is what's an alternative term? Obviously you can say, well, I'm just a Christian, you know? Um, but even that, that's so broad. It's like, I mean, most

of the people on January 6th say they're Christians. You know, it's like the term Christian itself could fall in the same problems as evangelical. So, yeah, I don't know. That's why it's a genuine question. Like, I, yeah. I say like, I listen to these podcasts, Holy Post, Theology in the Raw. Then they can like triangulate me. Then they can like triangulate me. What almost is like, there's not a term, but kind of like what river of Christianity are you swimming in?

Who do you see as your tribe? Hopefully not echo chamber, but who are the people that you resonate with? Well, it's interesting to think about, you know, we had a Holy Post event here not that long ago. And they're starting to do regional events, which is really cool. It was interesting to see who shows up to that. And they tend to be disaffected traditional evangelicals, like myself, who grew up with Nikki Gumbel, or sorry, with Bill Hybels and all of that, but yet feel themselves kind of uncomfortable and awkward, you know, putting evangelical on like a voter registry. Not that we do that, but if you had to put that in there, I'd be like, Ooh, no, I don't want to do that.

Do you have an idea? What's an alternative term then? Or do you not have one? Is it just Christian? I mean, Orthodox confuses people because they think Greek Orthodox, if something Orthodox Christian, you know, confessional confuses people because they wonder like, is this like Westminster catechism? What are you talking about? So I don't, I don't tend to use a label, not because I'm like, I'm my own thing. Um, but because nothing really fits. Um, yeah. I mean, I usually just point to Scott McKnight. I say I'm with that guy over there. What's your, uh, your wife's a pastor, right? Or is she still a pastor? She's done ministry. She has two kind of careers. One is she's a marriage therapist,

so she's spending some time, more time doing that right now. So what church, yeah, I was going to say what church, I would imagine you go to her church, but if she's a full-time pastor anymore, do you guys, what church you guys go to? Yeah. We go to a non-domominational church by our house. Really good. Yeah, just non-denominational evangelical church. It's a wonderful church, but we also resonate strongly with Bridgetown. So when new people come to town, we often point them to some great things that are going on at Bridgetown as well. How's that transition go? I just had John Mark on. Well, I had him on last fall, but it was released like a month ago.

So it seems fresh to the public. But so yeah, John Mark was a pastor there for many years. And then now moved on to other things. So yeah, how's it going without John Mark? Is it good? I was never there in the John Mark era. So I have to say that I was never connected to that church, John Mark era. I preached at Bridgetown last summer. That was the biggest kind of dive in experience I've had. I got to say, it's got to be one of the most

inspiring church experiences in the whole United States. I've lived a lot of places. Really? And I just, the image I get in my head, they're a beacon of light. They're a beacon of light in a city that needs, I'm not saying it's like Portland's a cesspool, but because of the pandemic, because of the homeless crisis, because of the kind of turf wars that are going on in Portland, there's just so much devastation. And Bridgetown and Imago and a few other churches are just doing so many wonderful things in the city to bring light and hope. And I don't know if you feel this way, Preston, but there's some

churches that are really internally focused. And then there's some churches that are super externally focused. And it's hard to find a church that does a really good job with both. Yeah. externally focused. And it's hard to find a church that does a really good job with both. Yeah. Where they say like, we are a city on a hill, but we're just a really healthy city. And I just, I feel like God's doing some really cool things. Tyler was the right person at the right time. He's not a one man show. He's a collaborative leader. They have some charismatic elements. I'm like a Wesleyan holiness, a little bit of charismatics in me, a little bit of Bonhoeffer too.

But I got to say, yeah, it's something I will say, and I'm sure you experienced this since you're an academic that preaches like myself. It's intimidating to preach at the same church where John Mark Comer, Tyler Staten, and Tim Mackey regularly preach. There's nothing worse than going onto that stage, knowing what these congregants' experience is like and thinking, oh my gosh. These are just my clothing game is too weak. I was part of a collaborative preaching team that basically took over uh the preaching responsibilities at cornerstone in cb valley when francis chan left so yeah that that was like not fun at all i mean i probably prepared like 50 hours for every sermon i mean it was like

this has to be like perfect and engaging and every illustration, you know, like, cause the bar has been set so high. But it was good. It was good. Like I, you don't just wander on stage and, you know, do it. You're prepared. Okay. So let, with your book, there's several, I mean, your chapters, you focus on different areas from like, you know, what it's like being a Christian in a pagan environment where there's gods everywhere. You talk about the nature of worship.

The one that I really, the chapter I really love, I love all the chapters, but the household of faith chapter, the family practices of early Christians. What was distinct about the early church, specifically the early church family, against the backdrop of the broader Greco-Roman world? Yeah. I'm sure you feel this way since you've taught New Testament so much. So much of understanding the New Testament is understanding what the world was like to understand how different the early Christians were. Now, I have to be careful because in the book, I try not to go too far into Christian exceptionalism. They were nothing like the people around them. There's some similarities to certain things, but in many ways, they were nothing like the people around them. So, if you're talking about standard Roman religion, so the religion of the

Roman Empire, it was religiously diverse, but there was public state religion. In my first chapter, I talk about the goal of religion, the Roman religion, was to keep peace with the gods, pax de oram, peaceful coexistence with the gods. So think like the Olympians, Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Venus, all of that. And the idea was that the Roman world was ruled by the Roman gods. I mean, it was political. And it was almost like colonization. These are the overlords. And the emperor is actually, he was called Pontifex Maximus, the great bridge builder.

So he ruled, he stewarded, ideally he stewarded divine rulership. And so the whole goal of Roman religion had nothing to do with personal satisfaction, nirvana. It didn't even have to do with the afterlife. It was keeping peace with the gods, keeping the gods content and happy politically. And so religion was public facing. I mean, they had festivals, they had temples, they had altars, they had sacrifices. So when you practice Roman religion, by and large,

you're practicing it in public. At festivals, parades, ceremonies, meetings, et cetera, et cetera. And so if you were telling somebody, you say, hey, Preston, where are you going? I'm on my way to worship. They're assuming you're on your way to a temple or an altar or a sacred site or whatever. In the Roman world, if you wanted to worship, you had to, number one, be somewhere special. Now, you could just say a one-off prayer to Jupiter, and people did. But if you wanted to make sure that you were in a hotspot to get that connection, kind of like your phone, right? You could send a text, but on an airplane, you might not go through. So you want to send it from a place where you know you have a connection.

So you want to get to a hotspot, like a temple. Number two, you got to worship with a statue. This is one of the reasons that Christians were called atheists, is not because they didn't believe in gods. Rome didn't care what you believed in. It's that they didn't have gods. And to have a god was to have statues. And then it was also to worship the right gods, which include the Roman gods.

Okay. So the idea was you had to be somewhere special, like the great temple of Jupiter, Optimus, Maximus, and Rome, but there were temples in every city. You had to be with a statue and you had to work with a priest. And these were like mediators of divine communication and power. And here you have the Christians, you were talking about the houses. They broke from all the conventions of traditional religion. So it's like if I said to you, hey, I'm going to start a restaurant

and it's going to be a whole new kind of restaurant, but we're not going to have tables and chairs. We're not going to have a building and we're not going to have physical food. Be like, but all those things are actually what a restaurant is. So how are you going to, but the Christians didn't have temples. Now they had the Jerusalem temple, but here's something interesting. I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Nowhere in the apostolic texts in the New Testament do any leaders ever tell Christians

to go on pilgrimage anywhere. Now that is really strange because from the day you were born, if you were Jewish or if you were Roman or whatever you are, you save your nickels and dimes because one day you want to get to see the great temples, whether it's the Jerusalem temple or the Artemisian temple in Ephesus, whatever it is, you want to get there because you're going to be close to the divine. It's like going to Disney World for us, right? It's like the happiest place on earth. Well, these are the holiest places on earth. And the Christians don't do that. So one really strange thing about the Christians is no temples,

no material sacrifices, no priests. No one is really called a priest as a professional title in the first three and a half centuries of early Christianity. And then they meet wherever they can meet, specifically in homes. Now, this is one of the reasons that early Christians were labeled a superstitio, which means dangerous religion. So they had this category superstition, and then they had the category religio, religion. Rome had a tolerance policy, we'll let your gods come in, but they have to abide by certain rules and regulations. I make the analogy in my book to fireworks. In Ohio, where I'm from, around July 4th, you can stop by the side of the road, buy $200 worth of fireworks and blow your hands off in your backyard and scare everybody's dogs.

Not in Oregon. Yeah, scare everybody's dogs. But in the great state of Massachusetts, I lived in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for five years, only professionals can handle fireworks because they're too dangerous. And the Romans thought the same way about religion. You can't just have any Tom, Dick, and Harry running around worshiping whatever gods they want, wherever they want in the secrecy of their home. We had some ice storms here in Portland and the city had to put out a warning,

don't bring your grill into your house if you run out of power. People were bringing their grills into their house and turning them on and trying to cook food with their grills. And they said, no, that's dangerous. You'll kill yourself. That's how the Romans saw the Christians if they knew they were messing with spiritual power in the privacy of homes without cult professionals. But one of the innovations that the early Christians participated in was to say, because we have the spirit inside of us, because of the decentralization of religion that happens because of Jesus Christ, no one place on earth is more holy than another place. That was absolutely fundamentally insane in the Roman world.

Even the Jews who didn't have cult statues had material sacrifices. They had a temple. They had synagogues. And then there was this idea of, I want to go on pilgrimage. I want to go on a festival. I want to spend time in the temple, that sort of thing. The Christians didn't have that. What happened with the Christians is they engaged in a paradigm shift. And the paradigm shift was worship of God isn't like government. It's like family. This is something I just find really profound. In the ancient world, gods have names like Jupiter, Venus, Mars. But if you read the New Testament, God the Father, this is... I can't believe I hadn't thought about this till I wrote this book.

God doesn't actually have a name that's used in the New Testament. Yeah, Yahweh, it's Old Testament, that's fine. But he doesn't have an actual name that's used in the New Testament. So if a Roman said to you as a Christian, what's the name of your God? You said, we call him God. That's so bizarre. That's not what you would do. What about Jesus? I mean, or... Yes, yes. And that's true. He would have been viewed by Romans as a divinized human, which is fine. And we could talk about that. It's fine that he has a name because he was human. In the eyes of the Romans, he was human. He was a promoted human,

because he was human. In the eyes of the Romans, he was human. He was a promoted human, as far as Romans are concerned. As far as Christians are concerned, he's preexistent, all that. But God goes, Father goes by Theos, but he has a title and his title is Father, the most common title used for God in the New Testament. And then Jesus is the Son. So the whole paradigm shift is one to family. Christians call themselves brothers and sisters. And they had a family meal. And they had a kiss of peace, which was probably equivalent to a family hug. What we would do is you're having a family gathering at Christmas or Thanksgiving.

People come in the door you say hey uncle bob i haven't seen you a long time you give him a hug and the kiss and the holy kiss probably is that the holy part is this is not sexual and weird uh the and it's a kiss maybe reflecting a reversal of the betrayal of judas but it's not a weird kiss it's like it's like a warm hug it's like in france they do the same thing yeah exactly but in roman religion either it's like a warm hug it's like in france they do the same thing yeah exactly but in roman religion either it's sexualized or it's professional distance you keep your distance like when people approach big statues the roman world you don't want to get too close because you were afraid of getting zapped like one foot out of line or whatever lightning would strike you

or you know There was so much around what these statues could actually do to you. They could curse you with a blink of an eye, that sort of thing. But the Christians don't worry about that. They were worried about conscience. So I want to talk about the house thing. I don't think it was just practical that they met in houses. I think it was practical because they couldn't afford anywhere else. But I think theologically it was meaningful that they wanted people to view God as a loving parent rather than a mercurial, volatile overlord. That's, yeah. Gosh, so many thoughts.

overlord. That's yeah. Gosh, so many thoughts. So the familial nature of early Christianity, that was distinct in light of any other kind of religion. Even some of the mystery cults, they still didn't have like brother-sister language or that kind of like sharing a meal together. Like this was really distinct with Christianity in the first century. Yeah. The mystery cults, the problem is they're called mystery cults because they're mysterious. So we have very little information. Except for the critics kind of explaining

who they are really. Yeah. I mean, they may have met in homes and that was part of the privacy. Some of the evidence we have is they would meet in really weird natural locations

because they saw those as hot spots like caves. They really did want to be out of the public eye because they were semi-outlawed. It's kind of like a cult today, like a cult following. What is the line between let these weird people do their weird thing and this is illegal? This is kind of fuzzy. And I think it was fuzzy in the Roman world at what point they crossed over. Not sure if they met in houses. I do think a lot of early churches would have been viewed as mystery cults because of the secrecy

and privacy, but they still often had priests. They still had material sacrifices, sometimes human sacrifices. One of the big differences with mystery cults is it was all about access and privilege. So there were fees. And even though they allowed slaves to participate and the low class, the idea was we want to keep this pretty exclusive. Where Christians didn't have that mindset. They're just like the more the merrier so i think the house thing we're unsure about things like synagogues may have sometimes met in houses uh that that may have happened we're not sure there's some competing evidence on that um there are these things called greco-roman voluntary associations or clubs and they they might meet in a rich person's big house.

But all the latest evidence about Christians is, instead of calling them house churches, we might better call them home churches, because many probably met in apartments because of how poor Christians were. So you could get maybe 10 people in an apartment to meet for a home church, that sort of thing. Or like Priscilla and Aquila, because they lived in various cities, Ephesus, Rome, Corinth, and they would probably

buy or rent a workshop to do their work, and then they would have a living space attached to that. And that living space may have functioned as a house church that spilled out into the workshop. may have functioned as a house church that spilled out into the workshop. So yeah, I think they shared some of the home things with some of the other kind of fringe groups. But the big difference is nobody but nobody refused to worship Jupiter best and greatest. Except Jews found some workarounds, like with the emperor. They said, we won't offer sacrifices to the emperor, but we will offer sacrifices to our God for the emperor. And they got, because of the temple, because of the sacredness of their history, Jewish history, they got some passes on some of this. But the Christians, John Barclay has this

wonderful article where he says, one of the weird things about the Christians, they're not mappable. They're not an ethnos. They're not a people group. So you can't say, how old is your God? How long have you been around? Do you have sacred texts? They didn't have their own sacred texts. They were using the Jewish sacred texts, at least in the first century. They didn't have their own temples, certainly not after 70 AD. They didn't have anything to kind of nail them to in terms of a religious site. So with the mystery religions, if you said, do you worship Jupiter also? They say, sure, whatever. Yeah, we'll worship whoever. With the voluntary associations, yes. For the Christians, you couldn't pin them down that way. They'd probably be evasive if you asked them if they worship whoever. With the voluntary associations, yes, for the Christians, you couldn't pin them down that way. They'd probably be evasive if you asked them if they worship Jupiter.

And that's an important point to note, that it wasn't simply that they worship Jesus or whatever that was problematic. It was that they didn't also give homage to the Roman gods, right? But that was viewed as not... I mean, we had this strict separation between politics and religion. Back then, it was just all meshed together. So by not giving homage, right, to the Roman gods, that was seen as political treason. You are endangering the security of the Roman empire because you're not, you know, yeah, also worshiping the Roman gods. So yeah. So what do you do if you're a Roman centurion and you become a Christian? So think about the Roman centurion that says, truly this is the son of God. Let's say that was legitimate.

He becomes a Christian. You're worshiping idols every day, all day. And you're taking these flags into battle that have the image of Caesar, maybe a pagan god. You're exchanging money in coinage that has pagan gods on it. Everything you do, every ritual, every meal is to the gods. And what do the Christians do? We don't know, but I'm guessing some of them are doing it and apologizing to God later. Some of them are just mumbling so you don't hear what they're saying. I think very few are actually doing a full-on screw you to Caesar because,

I mean, are people quitting their jobs and things like that? Maybe. They're trying to figure this stuff out. This is new. I mean, Jews had to navigate this, but much of the church is Gentile. They don't understand the Jewish ways by the end of the first century. They're trying to figure all this out. How do you navigate this? How do you survive? You have this heart to share Jesus with people, but you also know that what you're wanting to do is extremely illegal and dangerous in Roman eyes. So going back to the house, if they met in homes, not just for pragmatic reasons, but for theological reasons, do you draw a straight line to say the church in America today that the home should play a much more significant role in the life and

rhythm of church communities today. The biggest difference is just the numbers, right? I mean, when you had, what, like five house churches? The Church of Rome, I think, was what they meant in about, according to Romans 16, three or five different homes or something like that. Let's just say they were fairly large homes holding 30 to 50 believers. You have a few hundred believers in Rome. It's not that many.

So you can get away with meeting at home. But when you have, you know, I live in Boise. Boise is 25% Christian, last time I checked. That's, I mean, let's just say 100,000 people that are going to church on Sunday out of 600,000 people in the valley, roughly. Yeah. I would say yes and no. It should affect how we think about our spirituality and no, I'm okay with innovation and the way things morph and change based on society. So let's go to the no first.

Christians have always been innovators. They've always jumped on the bandwagon of the latest cool thing. And I think often that's good, like open air preaching. I think of John Wesley, when he and George Whitefield were buddies. And Whitefield started in their time, which was kind of mid-Reformation, you preached in a parish. You preached in a building to a group of congregants and you tried to invite people in, attractional, let's get them into the parish. field, United States, he's trying to go out there and preach in the open air. And this was seen as crazy. Like anything could happen out there. People could walk up and that sort of thing. They could throw, you know, smelly rotten eggs at you and tomatoes and things like that. It was, it was, uh, it lacked civility, the open air environment, because you get farmers and who knows, you know, whoever out there, uh, and, uh, Whitfield was willing to do it. Wesley wasn't, and he got warmed over to it.

And once he started doing it, he's like, okay, this is great. And that's when he made the famous statement, the whole world is my parish. So Christians have always done that radio publishing, all of that. I'm okay with that. There's so much we can do that people couldn't do before, like the internet and recording things and all of that. Uh, so I'm, I'm okay with that. AJ Sw the internet and recording things and all of that. So I'm okay with that.

AJ Swivota and I, we have a podcast. We often go back and forth. Is a megachurch inherently worse than a small church? Narcissism exists in both environments and poor leadership exists in both environments. The problem is you amplify it in a bigger environment. So there's that. But I do think big churches often lose one of the cornerstone values of these home churches in the ancient world, which is intimacy and friendship. And the idea that you could go to church, I'm an introvert, so when I go to a mega church, you could go to church. I'm an introvert, so when I go to a megachurch, you could go to church, sit there for an hour, and leave without talking to anybody and not having anyone say your name,

I think would be unthinkable in the ancient world and would defy some of the very purposes for which they were gathering. So I think what we can learn from the home churches is full integration of the Christian worldview and theology and spirituality from the minute you wake up to the minute you go to bed. inside-outside differentiation because the Roman world had a separate religion for in the household. Your primary religion in the household was to the lares, which was the spirit that protected the family and let's say the belongings of the family. The panates, which protected the storehouse, the kitchen, the pantry. Vesta, goddess of the hearth that protected the home fires, things like that. That was the religion of inside your house. And then the minute you step out, now you're in Caesar's territory. Just like I don't think about my governor when I'm inside my house, but I think about it when I'm outside my house because inside the house, I am protected in that space from a lot of what happens out there.

Right? And so this idea for Christians had everything should be fully integrated, everything. I think we're missing that. What I would recommend to the modern church is, I'm not against big gathering, but I don't actually see that as church. I see that at, I would actually liken what we do as a big church, let's say over 100 people, I liken that to the festivals, the Jewish festivals, where this was a spectacle, you get people coming in, it's a celebration, you're singing, there might be instruction, you're learning from the great rabbis of the day. That's great. People need to be taught. from the great rabbis of the day. That's great. People need to be taught. But church, the community,

when Martin Luther was translating the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into German, because at that time it was mostly in Latin for the priests, he wanted a translation for the common folk, which was not the norm of the time. He was deciding what word to use for church, ecclesia in Greek. There was a German word, kirche, which means church, but he chose gemeinde, which means community, which means sharing, sharing, sharing in common or sharing as one. And this is, I think that was a brilliant choice on his part to say this should be a community. So when you gathered as a church community in a home, you couldn't avoid each other. You were there. And Howard Marshall, who's one of my favorite New Testament scholars of the 20th century, he has this great article I have my students read

from the 1980s. And he argues that he doesn't think the church gathered to worship God. I do think they did. I think he's wrong about that, but I think he's also right with his second point with what he affirms, which is they came together for what he calls mutual upbuilding, mutual upbuilding, which means, uh, they came together to practice reciprocal spiritual gifts to invest in one another personally. So the idea that you would have one or two or three people do all of the stuff up front, and there would even be an up front, was not a first century Christian concept

of gathering or even worship. So what I would want to change about the church, and Bridgetown is actually a good model. I remember talking to one of the pastors there and I said, how do you feel about the megachurch thing? You're one of these really influential churches. And one of the pastors told me over lunch, he said, because of practicing the way, which is John Mark's approach and the stuff that Tyler's doing, they have more people in small groups than come on Sunday morning. I'm like, okay, as long as we're setting the message that being together as a body of Christ is about reciprocal mutuality in relationship and not the audience stage. I'm not against the audience stage as long as we understand that's more like the festivals, and that's great. It needs to happen. We need teaching. We need instruction. We need encouragement. Some people are gifted like a Preston Sprinkle with speaking to a great number of people, inspiring them, great biblical wisdom,

but we're atrophying Christians by not teaching them how to practice their spiritual gifts. Every day I say to my kids, have you worked out today? Because I don't want them sitting around on their devices. And because if you're not getting stronger, you're getting weaker. is. And because if you're not getting stronger, you're getting weaker. And we haven't really sent that message to people in the church. This is what's expected of you every single week, that you're coming and you're participating and you're giving and you're contributing. And you have something to offer. We can't leave in the hands of professionals. We can't leave in the hands of professionals. Yeah. I know you've talked about this at John Mark and others. I love that conversation. Yeah.

He's been, last time I talked to him, just the centrality, even of the meal and the theological significance of, of the meal and how God has even designed meals to bring people together and, and foster intimacy and relationship. I've seen more and more people talk about, yeah,

the centrality of the table. Like the table is a starting place of that's where everything flows out from the table. I would ask you, Preston, I don't think all churches need to transition to being house churches, home churches. I don't think so. I do think it works with things like Young Life. Look at what Young Life does with houses. It's's amazing. Alpha, the Alpha ministry uses homes. There's clear success there. I would think the transition we need to make is asking a high priority question. How are we sending the message to our churches that intimacy, friendship, and cultivating

your gifts, every single person, is a cornerstone priority? Often I see small groups as sort of bonus for the super Christians or for the touchy feely Christians. We got to say, no, this is absolute. Now you and I, I remember the conversation you had, I think it was with John Mark, where you're kind of like, I don't know if I want these people speaking into the, I'm with you. I'm with you a hundred percent. And that's part of the reason I'm a seminary professor is I get to have these richly intimate conversations with students. And they have small groups time. I think that's okay. I think there's a lot of good in finding those spaces

that work for you. I know you're close friends with a Joey Dodson or some of your other folks who are able to say, how are things going? Are you surviving? I heard this happened. I think that's great. I do think the isolation that we're often experiencing in churches is hurting what we think church is and the best of what we can actually offer people. I've just been wrestling with this for a couple of decades now. I've gone through my kind of anti-big church stage to just anti-institutional church. And I've even tried to start a church in a barn that didn't even have chairs or heat. Yeah, I just try. But my goal is, and now I just, as you, I speak and travel a lot.

And I've experienced such a wide diversity of kinds of churches, both theologically, denominationally, size, leadership, kinds of churches, both theologically, denominationally, size, leadership, and just seen, even in the last couple of years, been in some very, very large churches that have very humble leaders that aren't sleeping around with the secretary, that aren't abusing their power. And this is where I just like, I like what you said, like, I don't, a small gathering can have narcissistic power-dominating leaders and a megachurch can have an actual humble, foot-washing-oriented leader. I've been in big churches that are highly justice-oriented, that are doing amazing.

They're utilizing the size of the church to create waves in society that are what I would say resonates with the vision of Jesus. And of course you read the news and you see, you know, the opposite, megachurch lead, you know? So it's just, this is where I'm just like, you know, I don't want to pick on a distinct size. I do, but what you're church is not fostering deep, intimate community, if that's not an essential part of the church, then I would say it's missing a key ingredient of discipleship, especially in a time when loneliness is at an all-time high uh discipleship is at an all-time low um this is a study that came out from barna 10 years ago that i was part of and just hearing past pastors so this doesn't

mean like ridiculous pastors saying yes we're falling yes we're not doing yes yes decide yeah no people aren't being and they're recognizing that whatever we're doing, discipleship is not happening to the level that they would want. But most churches, and I resonate with the leaders that are like, we do small groups, we plan all this stuff and nobody comes. Or like my church, they've got a bunch of small groups and stuff. I've never been. I have not had a good experience in, how do I say it? Church-organized small groups. And I don't know why, just I go to the kind of intimacy and depth and thoughtfulness and meaningfulness that I long for a meal-centered small group of Christians when I attend many, not all, but small groups

you know the organized kind of small groups it's just not well let me you know I think I can I think my quite but it's that the leaders they're like what it what more could we you know where we're doing funerals or doing weddings or we're doing all these things and then we create all these things and then people could even still complain about the music, and those small groups isn't intimate. All right, well, what do you want me to do? So I can understand the frustration of leaders saying, I don't know what else we can do. Yeah.

You know, we... I think two things are going on. One is, you know, I think because we're professional academics, we're kind of oddities in the church. So when people say, you know, oh, what did you think of the sermon? I'm like, I'm not the targetities in the church. So when people say, oh, what'd you think of the sermon? I'm like, I'm not the target demographic. I have so many pastor friends because I teach at a seminary. I'll joke with them when I visit their church and I'll say, I'm going to bring a book to read during the sermon. If it's boring, I'm going to read my book. And it's a joke. I do do that, but it's a joke because we've heard so much and we know the wrong things they're

saying. We know the things they're saying that are technically incorrect, but with Augustine, I say, love of God, love of neighbor covers a multitude of sins. But I think we're often so critical that we have to realize we're kind of oddities in the church and the preacher doesn't have us on their radar when they're preaching. And I think that's good. They shouldn't be worried about impressing me if they're quoting N.T. Wright and Brueggemann. I get a little worried about that. And it happens sometimes. But I would say this, when I look at the Roman church, first century, they seem to have had affinity groups. So one group may be language-oriented. We do Greek. Another group may be Aramaic. One group may have said, we're going to meet in a Jewish style. Another group said,

we're going to meet in a more Roman style. And Paul basically says, that's fine. That can be good and healthy as long as you don't condemn and judge each other. This is Romans 14 and 15. healthy as long as you don't condemn and judge each other. This is Romans 14 and 15. And there was some understanding, I think, that they come together as a larger group and experience ecumenical fellowship because he's saying, greet so-and-so. There's interaction between them. And I think it's okay to say, I need an affinity group because one of the things I have a hard time with, Preston, is if I'm in a small group with lay people, they often are scared to talk because I know too much. And I don't try to set up that atmosphere,

but they're just like deferential. Like, what does DJ think? Because he has a PhD. I don't like that. I just want to be the guy in the room. But also I cringe at what people say. So maybe I need an affinity group that's going to be more academic. Or at least people where we kind of experience the same sorts of things.

And maybe it's not a physical group. Maybe it's a Zoom group or a FaceTime group or whatever it is. I noticed the students, my students often feel that way. They bond so much with their fellow summary students. They're going through the same things. I think having an affinity group, I'm not asking you to just knock on doors with your neighbors and say, let's have a potluck every Thursday and study the Bible. Because again, you're going to end up being this magnet of what does Preston think? You don't want every Thursday to be another part of your job. You want to be kind of off duty.

And I think I can do that with my colleagues. I can be off duty. So I think finding that right group of people is important. I think in some ways, we academics are outliers, and we have to just recognize that. But what I am realizing is as a 40-something male, I fit a demographic where I don't have that many intimate friendships. And I work with a spiritual director. I've worked with them for three or four years. And I work with a spiritual director. I've worked with them for three or four years. I can't tell you how transformative it is.

I hate that I have to pay somebody, but it's worth every penny. But I can't tell you how transformative it is to have somebody, in addition to my wife, that I tell everything. You know, I mean, before he even has a chance to ask me, I'm just spilling my guts to him. There's a tissue box next to me and I'm just blubbering like a baby laying on the couch. I can't tell you how transformative it is to have those people in your life that you can tell everything to. And I'm not expecting to do that to a bunch of strangers. And I'm not expecting Christians to do that to just anybody. So you might have to find those people. I do think it can't just be an affinity group in your life because there's going to be a lot of

backpack padding. I do think you need to have ecumenical relationships to kind of brush off some of our natural narcissism and learn about who other people are. But I think we have an intimacy crisis in the United States. I'm not a professional on this. I think we have an intimacy crisis. I think the church is poised, as who we've been for the beginning, to solve that problem precisely because we're a family movement. We're a home movement. It doesn't have to meet in a physical home. The early Christians went through a technology innovation, I say religious technology innovation, where it's like moving from landlines to cell phones, where we said, you don't have to be at a temple. You can be anywhere. You could be at a McDonald's. You could be at a Starbucks. You

could be at your local coffee shop, whatever. Now, I want to get back to the meal thing, Preston. You brought that up. I do criticize a lot of my pastor friends for doing the little wafer, the terrible tasting wafer and a little bit of juice. I think what happened is a lot of evangelicals caught onto this because it was kind of hip and cool. And without fully understanding sacramentalism, without fully understanding the more mainline approaches to the church service. So I think they kind of get shoved in there as kind of a nice community ritual without fully understanding it. So I'm a little critical of that. I do think that it's a problem that we've moved away from the actual meal.

I understand the practical challenges. But I think the idea of a meal is a few things. You can tell me if I'm wrong since you're an expert on this too. A few things. One is economic leveling. Because in the ancient world, rich people ate rich people food and poor people ate poor people food. So to sit at a table and eat hot dogs and drink lemonade would say rich people can do it and poor people can do it. Now, okay, vegan dog, whatever you want, Preston. But no, you're a meat eater.

I know that. I think this idea of economic simplicity of saying we eat the same food, we're the same kind of person, we're made of skin and bone and muscle and blood. Like, yes. I think another thing is looking people in the eye. We're sitting in rows. We're not looking people in the eye. You know, every now and then a kid will be turned around because they're holding them and I'll kind of make faces at them, that sort of thing. But the idea that you're actually looking people in the eye, I just

think that needs to happen. We need to be looking at people in the eye. I think touch. Now, you know, we live in a germ, you knowworried society and I don't want people hugging and kissing me, but touch would have been a part of the holy kiss. Touch would have been part of the community gathering. And we want to do it safely. We want to do it in our own way, in our own culture. But how many people touch you in a given day? I think we can figure out what's essential theologically and figure out how to do it in our way, in our culture. But to not do it would be a mistake. With the cracker and juice thing, I get it because it's a large setting. Like I go to church, the room holds about over a thousand people. people what are you gonna do have a meal with a

thousand people my my my health code violation my on paper solution to this and what i mean is like if i just think theologically not necessarily practically but my quick solution is everything you're saying is although that large gathering is not prime primary church rhythm, that is a celebration. Yeah. But your primary church rhythm should still be in smaller settings. And then that's where communion should happen over a meal. But because we view the large gathering as church, like this is your primary thing. If you can also make it to this small gathering, then that's good.

That's great. You should do that. But we still say, if we miss the Sunday gathering, we miss church. Yeah. There's a box that we check and the box is got to make it a church, but the statistics of that are pretty low. I mean, regular churchgoers are about two times a month. So it's still, even though statistics are low, I think we have a busyness epidemic. You know, I live in a big city and we're just constantly on the move. I'm always thinking maybe in 10 years when I'm an empty nester, I can spend more time with people. But we got to change that paradigm.

We got to say, what is influencing my life? What is actually influencing my life and who I am? Who are the people? What are the places? What are the experiences? Some of my favorite moments are getting some people together for watching a soccer game, eating nachos, having some fun drinks, things like that. And gosh, there's no reason that we shouldn't have spiritual experiences like that given the food-centered nature of our society, that it actually parallels well the food-centered nature of Roman society. Is that too idealistic to say, if the rhythm of

your church is like small gatherings, that's the main thing we're doing, the big gathering is a celebration. So the main thing we're doing, that's where you have, that's where you celebrate the Eucharist as part of a meal. I don't know, like, is that on paper? That sounds great. But it's just, it goes back to our other question of like, well, how do we flip the mindset? I think one of the problems is training. It's not just about eating. It's about fellowship. It's about friendship. It's about Christian ministry. We have to train people in that. I don't know how many people really know their spiritual gifts. And I'm not talking about these really strict things, but really understanding who God has made them, what they can offer to one another in love and friendship. I value so much some of my Christian friends who are doctors. And when I can't get a doctor's

appointment, I'll text them and be like, can I send you a picture of this weird thing, text them and be like, can I send you a picture of this weird thing, this weird scar or whatever, and you can tell me. We need those in every area of life. I think we have limited spirituality to this really narrow thing of preaching or teaching. But to say like, Philemon, Philemon has this gift of apparently just being a great host, just being a really, really great host, except to Onesimus. But he has this, he refreshes the heart of the saints. I don't know, maybe he makes great refreshments. I don't know what he does. But this idea that everyone has something to contribute and everyone must contribute. What if we started church there rather than, hey, come hear this great sermon. And if you get a chance, high five somebody on the way out.

So I know you said you're not arguing that we should all become house churches, but what's wrong with those that are a network of house churches? Would you say that that actually is, is there anything that they would be lacking that they should add? Or is that actually not a hundred percent necessary, but actually coming closer to the first century church? Let's take it the other way. What are some of the bigger churches offering as an advantage that the smaller churches can't? I'd say things like when you build a big, you have a big budget, you can do like divorce recovery ministry, purity ministry, you get, you kind of have some professionalism to it that allows for, you know, you could do retreats, you know, things like that. Um, planning the kind of big retreats that think about

evangelism, evangelism, a little bit, you know, you think about the bigger churches that are investing more in youth groups, evangelism, things like that. I don't think smaller churches can't do those things, but it's almost like a homeschool network where you're going to have to combine with some other churches to say, how are we going to reach youth? How are we going to do a retreat? How are we going to... Some of the big churches offer the kind of structures that allow for these vivifying programs of life that I think are really, really good. I think it's great. I remember a church saying, we're going to hire a nurse or talking about hiring a nurse full-time to look for some of the healthcare stuff. Getting creative like that, saying, how can we take care of people? I think smaller churches,

I wonder if a lot of small house churches start out as just people like you and me saying, ah, I'm going to start a church in my house. And it's this sort of homegrown thing. A bunch of grid disgruntled people. Rather than, there needs to be good training. There needs to, these people need to be seminary trained if possible. They need to know Greek and Hebrew. Like some of those things, like if there's that, that would be a big boost.

That would be a big help. Consistency, you know, organization. People thrive with consistency and organization. Rather than, I'm going on vacation, we're not going to be able to meet at my house, you know, things like that. We need to be able to. So I think some of the bigger churches have that infrastructure that people need. Some of the programs that are really helpful. Some of the youth stuff, like Vacation Bible School, those kinds of things.

My wife was in youth ministry, children's ministry for a while. I can't tell you how important these ministries are at reaching young people. And so house churches, I don't think it's impossible. I just think that they have to be really, really thoughtful about maybe combining with other churches to put on some of these things. My buddy pastors at a pretty large church in Missouri. And this is the church that came to mind when I was thinking of a church that really is outward focused with a lot of justice initiatives and stuff. And they, oh, I'm going to forget the dollar amount, what they even did, but they got a passion of relieving healthcare debt.

So people, I didn't realize, the people just have tons and tons of healthcare debt. So they joined with an organization that had a matching, and they gave away millions of dollars, millions in their county to relieve healthcare debt. And that's something that, yeah. You'd have to get a bunch of small churches. Well, something going on here in Portland is churches joining kind of a network where they want regional churches so people aren't traveling 30, 40 minutes outside of their area.

But then there's going to be some unified training and maybe even support if a church is struggling. The network will support that church. So there's unity and diversity. The diversity is the church began indigenously as their own church, but then there's unity of training and support. And these churches come together for staff training and encouragement. I've done some like day staff teaching on various theological topics. I love that. I love the balancing of unity and diversity,

allowing there to be neighborhood or regional indigeneity. Even with the names of the churches, they don't try to call themselves the same thing. But at the same time, they have a spirit of unity in training and maybe a general theological statement, things like that. I would love if more churches had that mindset of, let us be ourselves, but we want to partner with you and be a part of this network. Nije, always a pleasure to talk to you again. Encourage people to pick up Strange Religion, How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling. It's an awesome book. Thanks again, DJ, for your wisdom, your heart, your humility,

and for being a guest yet again on The All-General. Thanks so much. I haven't gotten Exiles yet. I plan to read it, and I think we're pulling the same direction. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.