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(upbeat music)
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- This is Undaunted Life, a Man's Podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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Our guys today we got a special guest on the podcast.
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His name is Tom Rainer.
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So he is an author, church consultant and former pastor
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and the founder and CEO of church answers.
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So church answers is an online community
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and resource for church leaders.
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And prior to founding church answers,
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Rainer served as president and CEO
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of LifeWay Christian Resources,
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which most of you are familiar with.
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And before going to LifeWay,
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he served at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
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for 12 years where he was the founding dean
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of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism.
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He is a 1977 graduate of the University of Alabama
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and earned his masters of divinity and PhD degrees
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from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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And he's also written three number one best-selling books.
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So those are I Am a church member, autopsy of a deceased church
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and simple church.
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And he's also the author of the brand new book
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which is out now called I Am a Christian,
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discovering what it means to follow Jesus together
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with fellow believers.
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And I really enjoyed my time with him today.
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He's also the host of the Rainer on Leadership Podcast.
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There, nailed it.
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Guys, all that will be in the show notes.
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But I really enjoyed my time with him today
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'cause we weaved into all these other different subject matters.
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I talked to him about,
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how did you become a church consultant?
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Because I don't know that I've ever specifically talked
1:30
to one of those, I really liked his answer to that.
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But we looked at some trends
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while he was running this consulting firm
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for about 15 years about,
1:37
what did healthy churches do during that time period?
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We also looked at what were the churches
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where the men were flourishing, right?
1:43
So it's men's ministry versus man-friendly churches.
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We also talked about the seeker sensitive model,
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kind of the TED talk church versus the expository teaching
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and preaching church.
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And so we got into the details there
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kind of what has the, what has the trends been
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since the early 2000s in those areas.
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But then we spend most of our time on the new book,
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I Am a Christian.
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What that book was about.
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We talked specifically about different cultures
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and different belief systems
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and kind of how the church in modernity
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is downstream from culture.
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We talked about, you know, church heard
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and how that's become kind of a catch-all category
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even if there's not actually church heard going on.
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We talked about the importance of the local church
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'cause you have a lot of people out there saying,
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"Ah, the local church isn't really that big a deal.
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That was something they needed 2000 years ago.
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But I'm gonna do me, I'm gonna do my own thing now."
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You know, we got into, you know,
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how we need to be evangelistic even in our relationships.
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We talked about the liberalization of seminaries
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and there's probably a bunch of other stuff
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that I can't quite remember at this point
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but I really did enjoy my time with Tom.
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So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
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Tom Rayner, welcome to The Daunted Life of Man's podcast.
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Thank you for having me, great to be with you.
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And this is my first time on this podcast.
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So I'm interested to see what you say and what you ask.
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So we'll find out what happens.
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We're gonna find out because if you only come on once,
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we can just assume that everyone's like,
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all right, Tom didn't like Kyle.
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So we'll see what kind of trouble we can get into today.
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But let's find a soft place to land at least here initially.
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So you're a pastor, author, and church consultant.
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But I'm assuming you didn't want to be all those things
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whenever you were growing up as a little boy.
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So how in the world does someone become all of those things?
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Well, present tense, I am not a pastor.
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Okay. I was in the business world.
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From there, I went to seminary.
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Then I became a pastor of four churches.
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From there, I went to be dean of a seminary.
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So I went to the world of academia
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where I was a terrible match, terrible match
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for the world of academia, but it was a good 12 years.
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So I stayed long enough and enjoyed my time there.
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From there, I went to be president of a company called Lifeway.
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And then this phase of life,
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I am president, founder and CEO
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of a company called Church Answers.
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So that's my background, Kyle.
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Most of it's pretty boring.
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So I don't really have a whole lot more to say.
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My three sons will tell me, hey, come on, dad.
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You are one of the most boring people we've ever heard.
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Just make it short and simple.
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So that's what I'm doing.
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Well, you at least kept it short and simple here,
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but I disagree with their assessment,
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at least from the stuff that I know about you
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and the writing that you've done.
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But I do want to dig into what you did
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from, I believe I have the years, right?
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From 1990 to 2005, you led the Rainer Group,
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which was a church and a nominal consulting firm.
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And so I'm sure a lot of people out there
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and a lot of people in our audience have never met
4:13
or talked to somebody that does that
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as their actual living.
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But there's a lot there that I want to kind of dig into
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before we get into some of the other reasons
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why we're having you on today.
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But one thing that I was really curious of
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when I found out that you did church consulting
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is what trends have you seen or I guess did you see
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during that time period, a decade and a half?
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What healthy churches were doing at that time?
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Like if you were to deem a church as being healthy,
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what were they doing at that time?
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And I guess since 2005, what trends have you seen
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in terms of healthy churches?
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- It's really simple, Kyle.
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I mean, I probably oversimplified.
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I wrote a book called Simple Church a few years ago
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and the whole purpose behind that book was to talk about
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churches being too complex and too busy.
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And really when it comes down to the things
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that we saw in these churches, number one,
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they stayed true to the Bible.
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And so they were, they were adherents.
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They were followers of the Word of God.
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So they stayed true to that.
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That is one of the clear things we saw
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in these churches that were healthy.
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A second thing, very simple too.
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They were not only obedient to the Great Commission,
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but they were intentionally obedient
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to the Great Commission through strategic means.
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So they didn't just simply say,
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we believe that we need to be making disciples of all people.
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We also believe that we're going to come up
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with a plan to do so.
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So they really acted on their belief.
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Now, they were certainly aware of the culture around them.
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They were not culturally ignorant.
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They were not culturally insensitive.
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They realized that culture shifts
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and they have to make changes
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on a methodological basis in their churches.
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And so they made those changes.
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And again, the changes would depend upon
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which era you're talking about,
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but they made those changes without compromising
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who they are and if I go back then who they were.
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If I fast forward to 2023,
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where we almost start the point of this recording,
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if I fast forward to that,
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then the big issues are still the same.
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Some of the methodological issues have changed.
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And that has been the case.
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I did my first consultation when I was 19.
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Let me say that again.
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I did my first consultation in 1988.
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So where were you in 1988?
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- I was two years old.
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- Okay, that tells you the difference
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in the age of this old man.
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My first consultation,
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I did not know that I was doing a consultation.
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I got a call from a friend.
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I was a pastor in St. Petersburg, Florida.
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And he said, our church is declining.
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I heard you have a doctor or something like that.
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Does that mean you can help?
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I said, no, it's not the kind of doctor that can help.
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It's really a meaningless doctorate.
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I said, but I'll come over and look.
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And basically here's what I found out about his church.
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The church on the inside,
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I didn't look like the church on the community
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on the outside.
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So it was a predominantly Anglo church
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and a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood.
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So it was common sense just from my perspective.
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Hey, friend, your church does not reflect the community.
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And God put you at this address for a reason.
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And there's a reason that you should be reaching
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out to the community and to his credit,
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the church began to change.
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They became intentional about reaching the Hispanic community
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and even more so.
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They became intentional about putting Hispanics
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in positions of leadership in the church,
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eventually even the pastor of the church.
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So I got a check, just a very small check
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from this church about two or three weeks later.
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And I called him up and said, what's this check for?
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He said, well, for the consultation you did,
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I said, what's the consultation?
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- Oh man.
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- I really did not know what a church consultation was.
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- Yeah.
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- Well, he told a few friends about my consultation
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and they told a few friends and lo and behold,
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I am a consultant, whatever that means, I am a consultant.
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- You know what's funny about that is I've talked
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to other consultants that are, you know,
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in the insurance world or the business world or whatever.
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And a lot of them didn't set out to do that.
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This was before social media and trying to be an influencer
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and trying to do all these different things.
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They were just people that knew how to help people.
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And those people value whenever you can give them
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something of value and usually in even the economy
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we're in now, you will pay people for that privilege.
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You will pay people for helping you do a certain thing
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that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to do.
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But one thing as well that I found interesting
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and it would love to hear your feedback on
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from your time as a consultant, but also in the kind
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of thereafter, you know, from the early 2000s to now,
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it seems like there's been a movement again,
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I was born in '86, I haven't been seeing this for as long
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as maybe you or anyone else has.
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But we went to this seeker-sensitive model in churches.
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These TED Talk churches that, you know, love to do,
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you know, TED Talk, you know, help you with life stuff.
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And we sprinkle a few Bible verses on top
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so we can keep our taxes exempt status.
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You know, the expository preaching is a little bit rough
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and you're like talking about people sin into gravity
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and that really makes them feel icky, you know,
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this heavy Bible emphasis discipleship-focused church.
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But I mean, the very first thing you said, Tom,
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in terms of the healthy church was true to the Bible.
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- Yeah. - And it's like,
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you know, I listened to Alistair Begg talk here recently
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in a recent sermon where it's like,
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you can't tamper with the scripture, guys.
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Like that's not your job.
9:09
Like you don't have the credentials to do such a thing.
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So have you seen that, has the seeker-sensitive model
9:15
always been a thing, but just maybe not that popular?
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Give me a little bit more on that.
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- Well, first of all, Kyle, we can look at a number of ways
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to view it.
9:22
First of all, we can talk about the difference
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between seeker-sensitive and seeker-targeted.
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- Okay.
9:27
- Secret-sensitive model is a recognition of culture
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and the culture around us.
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I know for many people,
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seeker-sensitive means a compromise watered down model,
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but for many churches,
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it just means we recognize that there are people around us
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who are not believers and we're going to make certain
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that we begin to do things that recognize their presence
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in our churches.
9:45
That's seeker-targeted, then becomes the model
9:48
where you start compromising
9:50
and you start watering down the gospel.
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But let me tell you what, I have not seen,
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oh, I'm going to say certainly pre-COVID
9:57
in the last five or six or seven years.
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I have not seen a growth in the seeker model.
10:03
What is happening these days is,
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cultural Christianity is dying.
10:09
And by cultural Christianity,
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it sounds like an oxymoron,
10:12
but what I'm talking about with cultural Christianity,
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I'm talking about people who felt
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that they needed to be attached to a church,
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be a member of a church, be associated with the church,
10:21
but cause it was the culturally accepted thing to do.
10:24
It was good for my business,
10:25
it was good for my politics,
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it was just good for me to be accepted in my neighborhood.
10:29
Well, cultural Christianity was dying before COVID.
10:33
And when people got a chance to be away
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from the gathered church and the church's doors
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were not opening during the worst of the pandemic,
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they said, I don't need to come back.
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And so that remnant of cultural Christians
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is no longer there.
10:48
The only way that churches are going to effectively reach
10:52
the people in their community and beyond
10:54
is that they realize that the world around them
10:56
has changed from a receptive field to a mission field.
10:59
There are no longer the vast number of people
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who will come to church just because it's the thing to do.
11:05
The way that we'll start reaching people
11:07
is with a mission set mentality.
11:10
And believe me, once you get to that mission set mentality,
11:13
you start, and I would use air quotes,
11:15
but that would be so silly,
11:17
you start doing church in a way that is thoroughly biblical
11:20
in a way that does not compromise.
11:24
And it's for that reason that the sicker movement
11:26
is beginning to wane or has wane,
11:28
it's because we have to reach people
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with the hard, true gospel of Christ.
11:34
And that's what's going on in the world today.
11:36
And quite frankly, the number of churches that are closing,
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it's hard to know of a certain, but pre-COVID,
11:41
we were saying there was around 8,000,
11:43
now we think it's as many as 12,000 a year.
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And that trend is going to continue
11:47
until we fully wake up to the fact that we're in a mission field
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and we have to act like missionaries more than ever.
11:54
And I'm talking about the North American congregations right now.
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- Well, Tom, it's almost like it's a time period
11:59
where the weed is being separated from the chaff a little bit
12:02
and to where like, you know, when I'm invited to come
12:03
and speak at other people's churches or things like that,
12:05
it's typically in a ministry context,
12:07
which I'll actually do about in a second.
12:08
I always tell the people on staff
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or the people that, you know, invite me to come.
12:11
Hey, look, I'm the burn it down and walk away guy
12:13
because I don't live here, right?
12:14
Y'all live here, y'all go to this church.
12:16
So like, I'm gonna burn away all the nonsense,
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like all the masks and all the, you know,
12:21
the stuff that people, you know, the stiff arms.
12:22
And y'all got to deal with the ashes.
12:24
It's kind of like that's what we're gonna see a little bit
12:26
with Christendom specifically here in the United States.
12:28
And one thing I jotted down as well is that this is
12:31
that trend that you're describing should be a signal
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to pastors to stand on the words of scripture
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unapologetically.
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And that's one thing that I encourage men to do is
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if you want your pastor to speak out
12:40
and talk about these really hard subjects
12:42
like abortion or transgenderism
12:44
or the acceptance of the LGBTQ revolution or pedophilia
12:48
or any of those types of things,
12:50
why don't you set up a meeting with your pastor?
12:51
Say you need five minutes, you go into his office
12:53
and you say, look, sir, I know if you start talking
12:55
about these things, the slings and arrows
12:57
of culture are gonna be coming your way
12:59
and I'm willing to stand between you and those arrows
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because I'm here for you.
13:02
And then you get about 10 of your friends
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and you have them set up five minute meetings thereafter
13:07
and you all go in and tell them the same thing,
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which is kind of backing into the thing
13:11
that I wanted to ask you about,
13:13
which is men's ministry versus man-friendly churches
13:17
because churches typically do one of two things.
13:20
They either don't do men's ministry at all
13:22
'cause they don't care or they do men's ministry
13:24
like once or twice a year they'll do a men's event,
13:26
like a chili cook off or a, hey, let's go cut wood
13:29
in the woods or something like that.
13:30
But it's not, that's programming, that's not ministry.
13:33
But then the churches that have the most vibrant environments
13:37
for families and children and the discipleship
13:39
and catechism and all that are typically man-friendly churches,
13:43
churches that think of the men
13:44
when they put together the sermon content
13:46
or pick out the songs and the lyrical content
13:48
and the key with which it's sung in or toned or whatever,
13:52
whatever that is.
13:53
So talk to me a little bit about what you saw
13:54
because this is what I think about all day every day
13:57
into a degree, it's what I feel like I was put on this planet
13:59
to talk into, but you've got the credentials
14:01
and you've got the experience with these healthy churches
14:04
where men are focused on and centered on
14:06
and that trickles down to the rest of the family.
14:08
So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
14:09
- Well, you undoubtedly know, Cal,
14:12
you undoubtedly know the plethora of stats on churches
14:16
that have men-focused type of ministries
14:19
where the father, the husband, the man
14:22
has a key part of the church.
14:24
You know the stats, you know the stats that are
14:26
talk about what happens to their families
14:28
versus those who don't have men who are leading
14:31
in such a way in their families.
14:32
So all of that is true.
14:33
When we look at a consultation,
14:35
when we look at a church in a consultation, I should say,
14:38
we see that again and again and again.
14:40
But I will tell you this, most of the churches
14:43
that call us in a sicker state.
14:47
I'd say about 80% of the churches say we're sick
14:49
and we need to get well, the other 20% say,
14:51
we think we're well, we want to be better.
14:53
But for those 80% that are sick,
14:56
we will go into the church and men will be
14:58
in a distinct minority.
15:00
Not only is it not a church for the men,
15:05
but they are not there.
15:06
And so these churches that are less healthy
15:09
have fewer men altogether.
15:11
And so that is a reality that we see in these churches.
15:15
And usually we have to start with the pastor
15:19
and basically do what you did and it may be not the same
15:24
matter that you talked about where someone goes
15:27
and takes five minutes, but we have to say,
15:29
look, everybody wants to be different and make a difference.
15:33
But you are not going to reach men who are going
15:37
to reach others who are going to have healthy families
15:41
unless you have such a uncompromising,
15:43
undiluted position that they know that they are standing
15:46
for something and they stand for something that is important,
15:50
not only makes a difference, but makes an internal difference.
15:54
So I probably, in fact, I shouldn't say I probably,
15:57
I know I don't have the knowledge of men's ministries
16:00
like you do, but I can say from a high level point of view,
16:04
when we go and talk and go and help churches,
16:07
that is something we see right away
16:09
in the 80% of churches that call us that are not healthy.
16:13
- Well, and Tom, with that, I love all that perspective.
16:16
One thing is also, you don't want the pendulum to swing
16:19
so far in the other direction, to where in order to be
16:22
a godly man, you think that you got to eat beef jerky
16:25
and have a beer and drive four wheel drive trucks
16:26
and get in fist fights and do all those different things,
16:28
which I check a lot of those typical boxes.
16:30
Like I like to do those things.
16:32
Those are things that I'm attracted to,
16:33
but that's not what makes me a man.
16:35
Like, you know, I've heard people say before,
16:37
that's what makes me awesome.
16:38
It doesn't make me a man.
16:39
And so you have some of these ministries
16:41
that swing way over to that side.
16:43
And, you know, that's why at this ministry,
16:44
we talk about, you know, seeking the lion of Judah
16:46
because the church seems to have cornered the market
16:48
on Lamb of God.
16:49
I think we all get the point,
16:51
but we forget about the Lamb or the lion of Judah.
16:54
And that's to the detriment of the men,
16:55
but it's also to the detriment of children specifically
16:58
because children should grow up learning.
17:00
This is when the lion is appropriate
17:02
and this is when the lamb is appropriate,
17:04
that the men that I'm around,
17:05
they're capable of being the lion,
17:07
but they're only showing me the lamb.
17:08
You know, that, and that leads to
17:10
a tremendous amount of health within the church,
17:12
but also within these individual families.
17:14
And there's a whole lot more
17:15
that I would love to get into about that,
17:16
but I do want to talk about the new book.
17:18
And that is the new book.
17:19
Thank you so much for sending this over to me.
17:20
It's called, "I am a Christian."
17:22
- Oh, you got the author copy.
17:23
I mean, the advanced copy.
17:25
Hey, Cal, I've got the hard back.
17:27
- Oh, why you gotta flex like that, okay?
17:30
Like, I'm okay with the floppy book, okay?
17:32
'Cause then I can write in this and not feel bad.
17:34
But hey, how about you just send me a box of those
17:36
and that'll be like you made it up to me, okay?
17:38
You know, I might just do that if you ask.
17:39
- Let's go.
17:40
I'll ask nicely whenever we're off air,
17:42
but I really appreciated this guy.
17:44
Obviously, if you can see this, it's a short read,
17:46
which shouldn't matter to you.
17:47
You should be reading anyway.
17:48
But the thing about this is,
17:50
well, I'll just read this quick quote from the introduction
17:51
and then I'll let you tee up the book.
17:53
But who am I really?
17:54
If we were playing the icebreaker game right now
17:56
and I asked you to identify yourself
17:58
in one comprehensive sentence, what would you say?
18:01
I haven't always been as bold and forthcoming
18:03
as I'd like to be,
18:04
but if you asked me that question today,
18:06
my response would be I am a Christian.
18:08
What exactly does that mean?
18:10
So the first question of the day, Tom,
18:12
in terms of this book is what is this book about
18:14
and what do you want people to get out of it?
18:16
- This book is simple.
18:18
My dominant spiritual gift is ignorant.
18:20
So I do not write complicated books.
18:23
I do not write long books
18:25
because I'm not able to write long books.
18:27
I write all these short books.
18:29
From the first one was called,
18:30
I am a church member to this one today
18:32
called I am a Christian in terms of the short books
18:35
that I have written.
18:36
And this has really two major threats to it.
18:39
What does it mean to be a Christian?
18:41
What does it mean doctrinally?
18:42
What does it mean behaviorally?
18:44
What does it mean in our relationship with others?
18:47
But the other major thrust of it,
18:48
what does it mean in the context of the church?
18:51
In fact, the subtitle of this book
18:52
is discover what it means to follow Jesus together
18:55
with fellow believers.
18:57
I am an unapologetic advocate fan of the local church.
19:04
So when it comes down to it,
19:06
the local church is getting a bad rap.
19:09
Certainly it's got weird people in it.
19:11
I know 'cause I'm a church member.
19:13
I know that I am one of those weird people.
19:16
And certainly it has people in it who are argumentative
19:20
and sometimes do bad things.
19:22
It's full of sinners just like me.
19:24
But the church after the gospels begins in Acts two
19:29
and we talk about the church.
19:31
We either see letters to the church,
19:32
written in the context of the church,
19:34
or written to the leaders in the church,
19:35
all the way to Revelation three.
19:37
The local church is God's plan A
19:40
and for his mission and he didn't give us a plan B.
19:43
And so I am an unapologetic advocate of the local church.
19:48
And so this book especially has the angle, if you will,
19:53
the emphasis that I am going to be a Christian,
19:56
but I am going to be a Christian in the context
19:58
with other believers.
19:59
We are going to serve together.
20:01
We are first Corinthians 12, Body of Christ.
20:04
The word members came from first Corinthians 12.
20:07
I am a member of the Body of Christ.
20:10
And if I'm not doing my part, then the church is weaker.
20:13
If they aren't doing their part, the church is weaker.
20:15
But what happens when people who are part
20:18
of the Body of Christ, who are Christians,
20:20
begin to do things together for his glory is unlimited.
20:24
It is totally unlimited.
20:26
This book is simple and as basic as it is,
20:29
is a reminder of how we're supposed to be living
20:32
our life as believers in the context of fellow believers.
20:37
So somebody said, is this a continuation
20:40
of the earlier book I wrote, I am a church member,
20:42
in some ways, but it incorporates that
20:45
and it becomes its own stand alone.
20:46
Here's what it means to be a church member
20:48
as a Christian.
20:49
Here's what it means to be a Christian as a church member.
20:51
That's my thesis, that's a long thesis.
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21:22
- No, no, I appreciate that.
21:23
There's beauty and simplicity.
21:24
I mean, one of my favorite people to read,
21:26
that's kind of in the same vein
21:28
in your writing style in this book
21:29
reminded me of him as the great Phil Robertson.
21:32
And the things that he says, like he says it,
21:33
kind of in a very palatable way, a very digestible way.
21:37
And it's good to have, you know,
21:38
the books from the Carl Truman's
21:40
and the Jordan Peterson's and all those things
21:41
where it gets really, really deep.
21:43
But then it's also good to have one of these
21:44
almost as a palate cleanser
21:45
because it still has a lot of impact.
21:47
So I wanna actually dig into some quotes
21:49
and some of the different themes of this book.
21:50
And guys, just as a side note,
21:52
there's no way even with the short book
21:53
that we're gonna be able to get into everything
21:54
that was in there.
21:55
The book is in the show notes.
21:56
You should pick up a copy for yourself.
21:57
I mean, he's gonna send me a box of them.
21:59
So I mean, I can maybe do a giveaway
22:00
and send some out to you guys.
22:01
- I'll send you a box of them.
22:03
You send me your email address.
22:04
I'm gonna send you a box, dude.
22:05
- We will make it happen, Tom.
22:07
All right, I wanna read this quote
22:07
from the intro and get a little bit more context on it.
22:10
In today's culture, many false belief systems
22:12
are vying for our hearts and minds.
22:14
The conflict can be both confusing and overwhelming.
22:17
Right now, perhaps more than any other time in history,
22:20
we need to understand the urgency of the moment.
22:23
So the church, Tom, seems to be downstream from culture.
22:27
And that seems to have some very degrading effects
22:29
on the foundations of Christian belief.
22:31
I think probably the most impactful question
22:35
that Satan ever asked in history was,
22:37
did God really say?
22:38
Right, going back to the garden.
22:39
And we live in a time right now where that's,
22:41
well, did God really say that about homosexuality?
22:44
Did God really say that about gender?
22:46
I just covered a new story recently
22:47
where there was a person over in the UK
22:50
at a prominent school over there
22:51
that talked about how Jesus was transgender.
22:53
And he provided evidence via artwork
22:55
and things like that, that Jesus was actually transgender
22:58
and had a transgender body.
23:00
And that's because not only is the church downstream
23:02
from culture, but the church is taking entire heaping spoonfuls
23:06
of postmodernism, eating it and pretending it's ice cream.
23:09
And that's a little bit of a cumbersome issue.
23:11
But what have you seen?
23:12
And I guess, why do you think we should really focus
23:15
to understand the urgency of the moment?
23:17
Well, the urgency of moment is if we don't know
23:19
who we are in Christ, if we don't know what the Bible says
23:22
we are in Christ, we have lost the battle immediately.
23:25
So for us to say that we are Christian
23:27
and we don't understand exactly what that means
23:30
and what the Bible says about being a Christian,
23:33
as you say, being downstream from culture,
23:35
culture will then flood us.
23:37
We'll be inundated with it.
23:38
And what will happen is we will become light culture
23:42
instead of being the salt, the light,
23:44
the metaphors that go on and on in the midst of culture.
23:48
So the first thing that I would say is,
23:50
look, they're all these false belief systems.
23:52
They have been around for quite a while.
23:53
Like since the beginning of the world,
23:56
certainly you see them all throughout the Old Testament
23:59
in the New Testament, that is nothing new.
24:02
But the Bible has been very clear,
24:04
we shall take a stand and we shall be the type of people
24:07
who not only know that we are Christians,
24:10
but know why we are Christians
24:11
and why we believe what we believe
24:13
and why we do what we do.
24:16
That's when we become this type of force in culture
24:19
that begins to make a powerful difference.
24:21
And by the way, to be someone that is different from culture
24:26
does not mean that we're a jerk.
24:28
Did that mean that it doesn't mean
24:30
that we're turning off all of these people
24:32
where we cannot have some type of social relationship
24:34
with them quite frankly.
24:37
In some of our research, I'm almost hearing my middle son
24:42
in my mind right now.
24:44
Dad, don't talk so many statistics.
24:46
You're so boring.
24:47
So I'm gonna try not to talk too many statistics.
24:50
- I don't mind the statistics.
24:51
You write down whatever you want.
24:53
- Well, I'm gonna talk about this one.
24:54
We did a study.
24:56
We've been doing a study.
24:57
It's called the longitudinal study
24:58
where you do it every so often.
25:00
So you can see the trends that are taking place.
25:02
The first ones were published in two books,
25:04
called Surprising Insight from the Unchurch
25:06
and the Unchurch Next Door.
25:07
Those are older books.
25:08
But we've continued the research.
25:11
And one of the things that we did is we actually
25:13
sent our research team out, research teams,
25:16
out to invite people who are not connected
25:19
to church to church.
25:21
And here's the amazing thing.
25:23
And this took place over many, many months.
25:25
Here's the amazing thing we found.
25:26
And we're still finding it pretty much the same today.
25:29
When you invite someone to come to your church
25:31
and you offer to go into the church building with them,
25:33
85% said yes.
25:35
I mean, that's culture.
25:37
I mean, these may have been transgender people.
25:40
These may have been people who have sexual more ways
25:43
different than the scripture.
25:44
These may have been people who are antithetical
25:47
to everything you believe.
25:48
But because you're willing to go and say with you,
25:51
they are responding.
25:53
So one of the things I can say about culture is,
25:55
yeah, be different than, but don't be intimidated by it.
25:58
Because these people are really deep down hungry
26:02
for what you have to offer through Christ.
26:05
So don't be shy.
26:07
Go out into the world and tell them who you are
26:10
and why the you are that person.
26:12
- I think that's an incredible thing
26:13
and a wonderful thing for you to communicate to people.
26:16
'Cause that does give, it gives us pause and saying loves
26:19
to kind of whisper in our ear.
26:20
Don't ask that person, it'll be weird.
26:21
Like they've got purple hair in a nose ring.
26:23
Like they're never gonna come with you.
26:24
But those are the people that you need to be spreading
26:26
the gospel to.
26:26
One thing that came up while you were talking as well
26:28
before we move on inside the book is there's this new trend
26:32
and I've had some people in the show recently
26:34
and I've talked about this.
26:35
They say this statement, they think it sounds smart
26:38
and nuanced and makes them sound intellectual.
26:40
But it actually means the opposite.
26:42
They'll say things like, you know what?
26:44
I wanna be known for what I'm for.
26:46
Not what I'm against.
26:47
And it sounds cute.
26:49
It really does.
26:49
It would look good on a T-shirt or a bumper sticker.
26:52
And then they try to, you know, wax poetic
26:54
about how Jesus never really, you know,
26:56
talked about people sinnily, talked about forgiveness
26:58
and love and all that, which is really an abiblical mindset
27:01
if you actually read the text that we see
27:03
in the New Testament and see the lives that were changed.
27:05
But gosh, there's this like therapeutic deism
27:09
that we're seeing in culture right now
27:11
from these people that are just like,
27:12
they wanna have the happy's.
27:14
They don't want you to make them feel bad.
27:16
And so they don't wanna talk about abortion
27:18
because it's way too divisive.
27:19
And they don't spend that extra five seconds
27:22
realizing how they can talk about the issue in a way
27:24
where people don't feel condemned,
27:25
but they also understand the level of depravity
27:28
if you engage in that particular act.
27:30
But can you talk to me a little bit about that
27:31
and how that maybe comes back to who we are
27:33
as a Christian?
27:35
- Did you just make up that phrase therapeutic deism?
27:38
Have you used that before?
27:39
- So I heard someone else say there's another word in there
27:42
that would have made me sound extra smart,
27:43
but like there is kind of this,
27:44
I think it was maybe culturally therapeutic deism
27:47
or something like that, but that's where we are
27:49
to where it's like. - I've never heard that.
27:50
I need to turn off the podcast and write down a few things
27:52
and go write an article and say, I heard this somewhere.
27:55
- Don't give me credit either.
27:56
I'm a ginger, no one likes me anyway.
27:58
So it's just kind of how it goes.
27:59
But yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
28:00
- Well, there is this perspective
28:03
and you stated it right.
28:04
And I understand the sentiment behind that statement.
28:08
I wanna talk about what I'm for instead of what I'm against.
28:11
And quite frankly, the people who will say those words
28:14
are the same people who will say,
28:15
list to find gospel is good news.
28:18
It is not bad news.
28:20
But look, this is stating the obvious.
28:23
We only have good news because there's bad news.
28:26
And bad news means we've got to confront that
28:30
in that reality.
28:31
Bad news means we've got to call sin for sin.
28:34
It is not us being that type of person
28:37
that is calling sin, sin.
28:39
Usually the type of people that rub someone the wrong way
28:43
is how they say it as much as the fact that they say it.
28:46
But even if you say it in all the palpable ways
28:49
and you're rejected by Christian, I mean, by culture,
28:52
you still have to take that type of stand.
28:55
And so it is going to be hard.
28:57
It's going to be impossible for us
28:59
to be an evangelistic force
29:01
unless we start communicating clearly
29:04
why people need forgiveness.
29:07
Because you cannot state the gospel
29:10
without talking about sin.
29:13
If all you talk about is salvation without a context,
29:18
all of a sudden you do not have the full gospel.
29:22
- Exactly.
29:23
Well, and that's the thing is like,
29:24
I understand there are people that spend,
29:26
they only want to talk about depravity.
29:28
And it's like, okay, I get it, I'm a depraved sinner.
29:30
No, no, no, you're really a depraved sinner.
29:32
Okay, I just acknowledged that I agree with you.
29:35
But again, when you don't talk about it at all,
29:37
because if, okay, I guess it's the difference
29:40
between saying I'm not healthy right now versus saying,
29:43
I'm a sinner or saying that like I'm like,
29:46
you're a sinner, you're not a mistakeer, right?
29:48
A mistake is I turned left when I should have turned right.
29:50
But a sinner means like from the jump,
29:53
from the moment I came out of the womb,
29:56
I was bathed in this sin nature.
29:58
No one teaches a child, I got a two year old.
30:00
No one teaches him to lie.
30:01
No one teaches him to be rude or to interrupt
30:03
or to be selfish or any of these other things.
30:05
And so I don't want to get off on too much of a tangent
30:07
because I want to keep coming back to the book
30:08
because there's a great quote from chapter two
30:10
and the name of that chapter is I am a church member
30:13
and I'd love to get you to talk a little bit more
30:14
about this, so here's the quote.
30:16
Please read the next sentence carefully.
30:18
The New Testament does not have a plan
30:20
for growing us as Christians outside of the local church.
30:24
From Acts two to Revelation three,
30:25
the New Testament is all about the local church.
30:28
It leaves no doubt that God wants local congregations
30:30
to be at the center of Christian ministry.
30:32
And a little bit later in the chapter you say,
30:34
your role is to serve not to be served.
30:37
Your role is to minister not to demand a ministry
30:39
for yourself.
30:40
Your role is to put others before yourself,
30:42
not to seek to get your own way.
30:44
Oh, how big of it of you, how mean?
30:47
You gave me the sads whenever I read that
30:49
because isn't the local church supposed to be
30:51
about me and my needs, Tom?
30:52
Like I go back to 10 years ago when LaCray,
30:55
you know, a big rapper in the Christian game,
30:57
he released church clothes.
30:59
And this was this kind of this whole mixtape about,
31:01
you know, he doesn't need to go to church.
31:02
He doesn't need the local church to kind of,
31:04
he's going to do his own thing
31:05
and not that he was the reason for this
31:07
but there's a lot of people in our current day, Tom,
31:10
that they don't think they need the local church
31:11
because the local church is not serving them.
31:14
How did we get to this place of such selfish narcissism?
31:17
- Well, we got to this place from the fall.
31:20
So it is nothing new, but it has infiltrated
31:24
and it has infected the church.
31:26
And I recently recorded a resource called
31:31
autopsy of a deceased church.
31:34
I wrote a book on that same title of 10 plus years ago.
31:38
And basically here's what we did, Cal.
31:40
Our team interviewed people who had been members
31:43
of churches that had closed.
31:45
And we asked pastors and church members
31:48
of these deceased churches what happened in their churches?
31:52
What took place?
31:53
If we could distill it down to the number one cause of death,
31:58
this is an autopsy of a deceased church.
32:00
And if we could distill it down
32:02
to the number one cause of death,
32:04
it was churches that worship the unholy trinity
32:08
of me, myself and I, self-centered Christianity,
32:12
me-centered Christianity.
32:14
These churches failed because they weren't asking
32:18
what they could do for others,
32:21
for the sake of the glory of God,
32:23
they were asking what can the church do for me?
32:26
To be fair, the church should minister to members.
32:29
Ministry is something that does happen in the body,
32:32
but we were talking about people who were arguing
32:34
about the style of music, the color of the carpet,
32:37
who were talking about the length of the sermon.
32:39
And you know the list, I don't need to go down
32:41
all of those me-focused types of items.
32:44
The number one cause of death in churches
32:48
that we looked at in autopsy of deceased church,
32:51
the number one cause of death was a church
32:53
that became self-centered.
32:55
And it was admitted by these members and leaders
32:58
and pastors of the churches that had died.
33:02
And so we did hundreds of those interviews
33:04
and that theme came back again and again.
33:07
Another theme that came back that you would think
33:09
would be obvious and I think they're closely related
33:11
to each other, we stopped believing or at least studying
33:15
the word of God to see what it had to say.
33:17
- Of course.
33:17
- So we left the foundation of the word of God
33:19
and we were unbiblical in the way that we did church.
33:24
That to me is the reason why we should be saying,
33:28
we love the church, we love the local church.
33:31
It's imperfect, yes.
33:32
But it is God's mission for us.
33:35
It is what He has given us.
33:36
I can guarantee you that Corinthians was not perfect
33:39
but neither was the Corinthian church
33:41
but neither was the church at Philippi as joyous as it was.
33:45
None of those churches were perfect.
33:47
And so when it's all said and done,
33:49
we are imperfect people in imperfect local churches
33:52
until we become perfected and we see Him face to face.
33:56
First Corinthians 12, members of the body of Christ.
33:59
Here's what you're to do.
34:00
You're supposed to function for the good
34:02
or the greater body, okay?
34:04
Then what happens?
34:05
First Corinthians 13, love chapter.
34:07
Now we're talking about, okay, what is our heart?
34:10
What is our attitude?
34:11
The entirety of first Corinthians 13,
34:14
certainly don't mind it being read at weddings
34:15
but it needs to be read in church services.
34:17
This is what the body of Christ should be acting and doing
34:21
and how they should have a heart for others.
34:25
And that is what it means to be a Christian
34:28
in the context of other believers.
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35:00
And I think for a lot of people as well,
35:02
they are looking at their church.
35:03
They go church shopping, which I don't think was a category
35:07
of things to do on the weekend before like 10 or 15 years ago.
35:11
And again, it's this me centric view
35:13
and it leads to this me centric view of who Jesus is.
35:16
I've heard people say recently, well, you know,
35:18
people they like me because they like my Jesus.
35:21
They like my version of Jesus.
35:23
And I'm like, if you hear someone say that to you,
35:25
you should worry about whether or not
35:27
you're presenting the whole of Jesus
35:28
because people don't typically hear about Jesus and think,
35:31
yeah, I'm a depraved turd.
35:33
I need Jesus to save me.
35:34
Like it takes a work of the Holy Spirit
35:37
to soften their heart.
35:38
Like so trying to make Jesus attractive,
35:40
that is not your job.
35:42
Like that doesn't mean put no effort
35:44
into your church service.
35:45
That doesn't mean look like a slob when you're on stage
35:47
with the microphone attached to your face.
35:48
But at the same time, it's like,
35:50
we aren't people of the Bible, Tom.
35:52
Because, and I think part of it,
35:53
it's because it's so easy to read the Bible.
35:55
That's why we don't do it.
35:56
Like I've got two tabs open on my curse,
35:59
on my browser right now, better Bible translations.
36:02
I got a stack of them over there.
36:03
And I got a stack of them over here.
36:04
But just like most Americans,
36:05
there's, you know, a big layer of dust over the top of it
36:09
that you have to blow up before you crack it open.
36:11
And I've gone huge stretches of my life,
36:13
writhed and dug into the scripture at all.
36:15
And I said, ah, it's fine.
36:16
I'll go to church on Sunday.
36:17
Or I'm gonna listen to a podcast with my favorite preacher.
36:20
And we forget that that is not a book.
36:23
That is not a collection of ancient writings.
36:25
That is God speaking directly to us.
36:28
- So true, so true.
36:29
- Like, I'm saying this to me, Tom.
36:32
Like I'm not holding myself.
36:33
I'm not hovering above my own commentary.
36:35
I'm like, my God, how many years have I spent
36:38
not looking at the word of God?
36:39
Because I had other things better to do.
36:42
But I do also want to get into something
36:45
that you talked about in chapter three.
36:47
Cause I think, you know, the,
36:48
the rubber really started meeting the road
36:50
right in the intro.
36:51
Like there was like 17 things I wanted to ask you
36:52
about the intro, but I didn't want to be ridiculous.
36:54
But also in chapter three, I saw that as,
36:56
as a high point, at least for our discussion today.
36:59
Chapter three is called I am a disciple.
37:01
So I'm going to read this quote here.
37:02
My team at church answers deals with a lot of hurt
37:05
in churches, members hurting each other,
37:07
members hurting pastors and staff, pastors and staff
37:10
hurting members, pastors and staff hurting each other.
37:13
So a lot of hurt there.
37:15
The problem that I see not, not with what you wrote
37:18
is with this catch all category that has been created
37:20
in modernity that I only heard about this year.
37:23
And that's called church hurt major air quotes
37:25
for those not watching this on YouTube or rumble church hurt.
37:29
And so church should be Tom,
37:32
a pastor that sexually abuses one of their flock,
37:35
a pastor that lies about money and steals money, you know,
37:40
and a youth pastor that's doing weird things with youth,
37:43
like that's church hurt.
37:45
People that are being put under church discipline
37:48
when there's no biblical basis for that.
37:50
But what's happened, Tom is this is morphed to be,
37:53
well, the church hurt my feelings.
37:55
I complained to the church and they didn't automatically
37:57
change everything that they do as a church
37:59
based on my singular complaint.
38:01
Oh, the church isn't letting me sin.
38:04
They said that I can't live with my boyfriend
38:06
and sleep with them before we get married.
38:08
They said that they wouldn't honor a marriage
38:11
between me, a man and my boyfriend who is a man,
38:14
those types of things.
38:15
And so we've created this big enormous tent
38:18
that everybody can hang out under where they get to,
38:21
you know, I guess deal in the currency of our day,
38:23
which is hurt and damage done by people's words
38:26
that they use.
38:27
So well, I guess what's our call as people
38:30
that want to be to the truth and to do things well
38:34
and to do things biblically when you have so many people
38:36
trying to hop in and say, oh yeah, I was hurt too.
38:39
- Well, I deal with a lot with pastors
38:43
who are on the receiving end of these complaints.
38:46
They are the ones that if we were to look
38:49
at this church hurt phrase, again,
38:52
I'm learning things on this podcast, I did not know.
38:54
I didn't even know if church hurt was a thing.
38:56
So now I've learned that they are on the receiving end
39:01
of some of the most ridiculous types of complaints.
39:04
For example, I was talking to a pastor yesterday
39:08
and he said, well, we lost another family.
39:10
And I said, well, what happened?
39:12
By the way, this is a good church.
39:13
It's a gospel centered church.
39:15
It's a biblical church.
39:17
I said, what happened?
39:18
He said, well, the family came to me
39:21
and said they were not being fed.
39:23
And I know this pastor, I know how he preaches
39:26
and I know that he was feeding them.
39:28
That was just their excuse
39:30
because he was not doing their bidding.
39:33
I said, what did you do with it?
39:35
He said, I was loving to them.
39:37
I told them that I didn't agree with what they said.
39:42
But if they have to go, they have to go
39:44
and I will still love them.
39:45
And that's my point on this is they did not focus
39:49
an enormous amount of energy on this silliness
39:53
that is going on in the church.
39:55
They were pastoral, they were kind, but they moved on.
39:59
And so I learned from pastors like that.
40:01
And when I hear pastors say that,
40:03
I know that they can feel pain when people say that.
40:05
I know that when they lose a church, remember,
40:07
they can feel the pain on that.
40:09
But they move on.
40:12
Here's the thing about it.
40:13
In a church, you're going to have carnal Christians
40:15
or at least Christians who are very low
40:17
on the maturity scale of where they should be.
40:20
They're going to do that.
40:21
You're going to have nine Christians in your church,
40:23
whether you know that they're nine Christians or not.
40:25
It is going to happen.
40:27
And whether it's a policy being compared to Paul
40:31
or whether someone telling a pastor
40:33
that he preaches too long or that the sermons
40:35
are not effective, it's going to happen.
40:37
So one of the recommendations I have with the world
40:40
that are, let's say the church world,
40:42
is this is a reality, it's going to happen.
40:46
Don't let it be your focus.
40:48
It's a lot of silliness,
40:50
but you don't treat it as silliness
40:52
when they're telling you that, but then you move on.
40:54
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41:24
- So there's so much more that I want to get into there.
41:29
To a degree, shouldn't pastors almost gird their loins
41:34
a little bit more, like I understand,
41:35
I don't want to be too demonstrably critical
41:39
of a job that I've never been in, right?
41:41
So I don't understand the weight
41:43
because when you're talking to a pastor,
41:45
you're literally dumping the worst part of your life
41:47
on top of their head and trying to get them
41:49
to help you deal with it.
41:49
That's got to be a tremendous amount of weight.
41:52
But for a lot of pastors that burn out,
41:54
that go on these destructive,
41:57
whirlwinds and make these horrible decisions in their life,
42:01
I feel like it's because they're not adequately
42:04
taking care of themselves.
42:05
They're not exercising.
42:06
They're not eating right.
42:08
They're not getting an adequate amount of sleep.
42:10
They're not taking sabbaticals.
42:12
They're not leaving the pulpit for more than one weekend
42:15
at a time and maybe they do that once a year.
42:17
So I guess, 'cause there are quite a few pastors
42:19
that listen to this, to this,
42:21
what would be your list of prescriptions of like,
42:24
hey, here's how you can prevent yourself from burnout.
42:26
Here's how you can prevent yourself
42:28
from taking this negativity and then defining it
42:31
for you as a person or whatever.
42:33
- Well, you certainly are right
42:35
in mentioning physical condition, emotional shape
42:38
and those types of issues.
42:40
I wanna go back to the first major church conflict.
42:44
The first major conflict was in Act six
42:47
and it was the Grecian widows being overlooked
42:49
in the distribution of food.
42:51
It was a legitimate need.
42:52
widows who had become followers of Christ
42:55
usually had been abandoned by their families
42:58
and they did not have support for their physical needs.
43:02
And so when the Greek widows were not getting food
43:06
and the Jewish widows were getting preferential treatment,
43:09
it was a legitimate issue.
43:10
So there's legitimate conflict in the church.
43:13
It's coming together.
43:16
We always know that,
43:17
we typically know the result of this.
43:20
They appointed seven,
43:21
full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom to deal with this.
43:23
So they equipped people to do the work of ministry.
43:26
But here is the prescription specifically
43:29
for leaders of church.
43:31
Churches, it is in Act six, four.
43:34
We will give our attention to prayer
43:38
and the ministry of the word.
43:40
Kyle, I gotta tell you,
43:41
in most of the cases where I see burnout
43:43
and I don't want to have a universal claim to this,
43:46
but in most cases where I see burnout,
43:48
they have stopped their prayer life
43:51
and they're not personally in the word of God.
43:54
So you're talking about girding your loins
43:56
and being equipped.
43:57
Certainly those other factors are important,
43:59
but almost without exception,
44:01
I can point to pastors who are going
44:04
through the motions of activity, leadership,
44:07
but they're not depending upon God through prayer
44:10
and the ministry of word.
44:11
Act six, four is the prescriptive basis
44:14
of scripture for church leaders.
44:17
- I think that's a great word.
44:19
And again, to all the pastors that are listening to this,
44:21
like you know that,
44:24
like that shouldn't be breaking news to you,
44:25
but even things that are obvious
44:27
we need to be reminded of,
44:28
'cause there are people that obviously intellectually know
44:30
that getting sleep is a good idea,
44:31
but then they still try to get by
44:32
getting four or five hours of sleep every night.
44:34
So it's obviously a good word.
44:36
- I wanna ask you one more question about this book
44:38
and it's from chapter five and it's called I Am a Witness.
44:40
And there's a short quote here I'd like to ask you about.
44:43
- Okay.
44:44
- Your relationship with an unbeliever must at some point
44:47
evolve into a gospel conversation.
44:50
So I think people forget that last part.
44:53
- You guys really do.
44:54
- They try to be nice to people.
44:56
They're neighborly, they're favorily like to do favors
45:00
for these people and trade favors and things like that.
45:03
And there's this idea,
45:04
I don't know if that came from like late 90s church camp
45:07
or something like that, but you know what?
45:09
I'm just gonna be a really, really nice person
45:11
and have a positive disposition
45:12
and people are just gonna come to me and ask me,
45:15
how do you have such a positive disposition?
45:17
Why are you so nice all the time?
45:18
And then I get to have that gospel conversation.
45:21
And I just gotta ask, has that ever happened?
45:23
Like in the history of the planet,
45:24
has anyone ever just came up to you?
45:25
'Cause they're like, you smile a lot and your shirt's clean.
45:27
Why do you like that?
45:28
And then you go into this long explanation
45:31
and expository description of what the Bible is
45:33
and what the gospel is and all of that.
45:35
But I think that a lot of conservatives,
45:37
a lot of Christians, a lot of people
45:38
that are really, really nice people,
45:40
they love doing the caring for people part,
45:43
but gosh, they always stop short of telling people
45:45
why they're doing what they're doing.
45:47
And I guess it's like, why do we forget that part?
45:50
Why did we forget the last part
45:52
of turning this into a gospel conversation?
45:54
- Because we're not confident that we can do so
45:56
in the power of the Holy Spirit.
45:58
We are fearful for the wrong reasons
46:00
that we're going to offend someone
46:02
when we give them an offensive gospel,
46:05
the offense of the cross.
46:07
You nailed it though, evangelism in lifestyle only
46:12
is not complete evangelism.
46:15
Evangelism must tell the truth about the gospel.
46:19
You remember what happened to Peter and John?
46:21
They're in prison for telling people about Christ.
46:25
This is in the first four chapters of the book of Acts.
46:27
They talked about this man who had been healed,
46:31
who had been crippled from birth,
46:32
and people were saying, what happened, what happened?
46:34
Well, guess what Peter and John did?
46:36
They said, I'll tell you what happened.
46:37
Instead of saying, isn't it a great thing
46:39
that we connected with him and we feel good
46:42
about the fact that he has been healed?
46:44
No, they said, here's what happens is Jesus
46:47
and they proclaim the gospel.
46:48
Well, the religious leaders of the day said,
46:50
you keep doing that, dudes,
46:52
and we're going to throw you in prison.
46:53
We may kill you, but they wouldn't stop.
46:56
They threw him into prison.
46:57
They had an opportunity for a last offense,
46:59
and they got before the Sanhedrin, and they looked up,
47:02
and they said, what do you have to say?
47:03
You can't keep talking this name.
47:05
That was the way they refer to their gospel proclamation.
47:09
You can't keep talking about this name.
47:11
And Peter and John looked up and said,
47:14
"We cannot stop telling about everything
47:19
"we have seen and heard."
47:21
They knew that the gospel was not the gospel
47:24
without telling about Christ.
47:27
They had done a good deed in the power of Christ.
47:30
A man had been healed, but it had to be accompanied
47:34
with the truth behind who healed him.
47:37
That's the gospel.
47:39
- And I think what this lends itself to as well
47:42
is I think you're right that people don't think
47:43
they're equipped to have that conversation,
47:45
but what I would argue is that indeed,
47:47
they're not equipped to have the deep,
47:50
theoretical, philosophical apologetics question.
47:54
But I know people that don't have a brain
47:57
that could lightly toast a piece of bread on both sides.
48:00
I've put myself in that category before,
48:02
but I've studied apologetics
48:04
and I know how to deal with a lot of those answers.
48:06
And as Paul tells us in the New Testament,
48:08
we need to be ready to stand and give an apology
48:10
to give an argument for why we believe what we believe.
48:14
And so I think it's incumbent upon us
48:15
to study church history, and theology,
48:17
and all these other different things.
48:19
But at a different, like we also also have to be careful
48:21
with saying like, or be comfortable rather,
48:23
we're saying, yeah, I just don't know.
48:25
Like, I don't know why that is.
48:26
I can give you a philosophical argument
48:28
as to why bad things happen to good people.
48:30
But I can't tell you specifically
48:32
why your 17 year old niece died of cancer.
48:35
I can't give you an answer to that.
48:37
All I can tell you is that the God that is real
48:39
is a God of love, and he sent his son here
48:41
to become the propitiation for your sins and mine.
48:44
And that is the only way that you will see the father
48:47
in your afterlife.
48:48
And so I think to a certain degree,
48:50
it's like you need to let the gospel
48:51
stand on its own two feet.
48:53
You don't need it to depend on your level of recall.
48:55
Like, how quickly you can bring a verse out
48:57
or how quickly you can suggest a book for somebody to read
49:00
and how I think that that's important.
49:02
- I can't write that down again.
49:04
You need to let the gospel stand on its own two feet.
49:07
Would you send me your book of quotes?
49:09
I would love to.
49:10
I'll send you several of my books.
49:11
You send me your book of quotes.
49:13
- Okay, what's gonna be funny about that?
49:14
Is this gonna be a pad about like this?
49:16
And I'm just gonna jot down the last four or five things
49:18
I said that I thought was piffy.
49:19
And I'll send that over to you
49:20
and give you my John Hancock on it.
49:22
But what I think this gets to a discussion of as well,
49:24
and this has been a big problem for me.
49:25
So I'm just gonna ask you this question selfishly.
49:27
I don't even care if my audience cares.
49:29
But there have been huge stretches of my lifetime
49:31
where I didn't read the Bible because I thought,
49:35
well, you're not supposed to just read the Bible.
49:37
You're supposed to study it.
49:38
And it's like, well, I don't have time to study it.
49:40
And so since I don't have time to study it
49:43
and to compare translations
49:44
and to look at the original Greek and all that,
49:46
then I'm just not even gonna read it
49:48
because I got to this point to where it's like,
49:50
man, it could take you an hour to read a four,
49:53
you know, four verse story in the Bible,
49:57
just looking at the different comparisons
49:59
and the different commentaries.
50:00
And so it almost like ties you down a little bit.
50:03
So what would be your advice to me specifically
50:05
when I get into that mental mode of,
50:07
gosh, I just don't really have time for that right now?
50:09
- As you know, I deal with pastors.
50:11
I've said that three or four times in this podcast.
50:13
And what you just described is what happens to many pastors.
50:20
They stop reading the Bible from a heart perspective
50:23
because they think they're supposed to read it purely
50:26
from a cognitive or steady perspective.
50:30
They're used to looking at the Bible
50:31
to prepare sermons and other biblical teaching.
50:34
And so they get to the point where they say,
50:37
I'm exhausted, I cannot just,
50:39
they may not be saying it consciously,
50:41
so I got to be careful.
50:42
But they're saying it in some way or another,
50:44
I cannot just read the Bible
50:46
and let God speak to me and just let it flow.
50:49
If they stay in the Bible,
50:51
only from a steady perspective,
50:53
it is almost the same thing as they're not being
50:56
in the Bible because it is not letting God speak to them
51:00
from the flow of scripture.
51:02
I am all for a deep study of scripture.
51:04
I love expositional preachers.
51:06
I love to listen, like you said, the Alistair bag.
51:09
He's one of my favorites.
51:10
I love to listen to those who have dug deeply,
51:13
but I also love to hear from people who are immersed
51:17
in the word where the Spirit is speaking
51:19
just as they read it on a devotional level,
51:22
just as they read it as they would
51:24
in a conversation with God.
51:26
Remember it's God's word and when someone speaks,
51:30
they're not necessarily trying to exegeek for you.
51:33
They're trying to talk with you.
51:35
God's word is a conversation
51:37
and this is a conversation from the true and living God.
51:40
We can take time to listen and just relax a little bit
51:42
and not worry about the multiple translations and the depth.
51:46
There are times for that, but there's also times
51:48
just to listen to what God has to say through his words.
51:51
I would advise someone who is maybe doing that
51:54
to start going through the Psalms again and just read them
51:58
and say, "God just speak to me through these."
52:00
They'll even make it through them during the imprecatory Psalms
52:03
because they will allow God to just speak to them
52:05
and then get back in that devotional heartfelt way
52:08
of reading the word of God.
52:10
- I love that and one thing that's been a helpful thing
52:14
for me and my brain is I've tried to stop saying the Bible says
52:19
and I've tried to replace that with God says through his word
52:23
because that's different because the Bible is a thing.
52:27
The Bible is something you can set on your table.
52:29
The Bible is an app that you can open on your phone,
52:32
but that's not all it is, it is that,
52:34
but it's also God speaking to us through his word,
52:38
through his apostles, through the fathers of the faith
52:42
and those different things.
52:44
And so I think that gives you a little bit of a different,
52:46
I guess, level of anointing as you're preparing yourself
52:49
to go into Bible study.
52:50
Like again, it's not the Bible says,
52:52
it's God says through scripture.
52:53
God says through the Bible, like those types of things,
52:55
they just frames it a little differently.
52:57
Now, I'm looking at the clock here.
52:59
I know we're running out of time.
53:00
I have like 47 other things I wanna ask you about,
53:02
but I wanna end with this.
53:03
And it may seem like a little bit of a divergence
53:05
from some of the stuff that we've talked about,
53:07
but I wanna talk about the liberalization of seminaries
53:11
across the United States
53:12
because there have always been liberal seminaries.
53:15
There have always been people that have been fairly loose
53:18
with the scripture and the meanings of words.
53:20
And I'm obviously very, very skeptical of anybody
53:24
2000 years after a particular thing was written,
53:26
coming to me and saying, aha, I have figured out
53:29
what this word actually means and wouldn't you know it?
53:32
It agrees with my political sensibilities.
53:34
How interesting.
53:35
But I've read this guy's tweet a lot
53:37
and I've talked about it on my show.
53:39
There's a guy that's a faculty member
53:40
at North Wind Seminary.
53:41
I had never heard of North Wind, but this guy's,
53:44
yeah, this guy's name is Dr. Kevin Young.
53:46
And I read this in just the deep level of heresy
53:48
is astonishing.
53:50
I've realized that for me,
53:51
gay marriage actually points to a more beautiful semiotic
53:55
of Christ and his church than a mere hetero one.
54:00
God's kingdom is diverse in makeup, experience and belief,
54:03
but one thing unites above all, love, right?
54:07
And so you read that and it's like, okay,
54:10
this guy's not only saying that, you know,
54:12
a gay marriage and gay relationship is okay,
54:14
but it actually provides a more beautiful semiotic,
54:17
a more beautiful picture of Christ
54:19
and his dedication to his bride, the church.
54:22
You don't get this from a strict conservative reading
54:27
of what the words actually say in English,
54:29
much less what they were meant when they were written down
54:32
in Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic.
54:35
And this is a concern for me because obviously Gen Z
54:37
is the most liberal of all the generations that we've seen.
54:41
Their grasp of truth is interesting.
54:43
The moral liberalism of the things that they believe.
54:46
They think that, you know, you're too judgmental
54:48
if you have standard views on particular things.
54:51
But I think a lot of this is because we have these liberal
54:54
seminaries that create people like a Raphael Warnock
54:57
who is a reverend and now a United States senator
54:59
or still a United States senator
55:01
who doesn't believe in the resurrection
55:02
and doesn't believe that a woman should be kept
55:04
from killing an image bearer of Christ
55:05
that is currently residing in her stomach.
55:07
So do you see this getting any better in the future?
55:10
What can we do about it?
55:11
- I see it coming in waves.
55:13
Now, what the next wave will be remains to be seen.
55:16
You're talking about Gen Z,
55:18
but you're talking to an old geyser right now.
55:21
So I am a baby boomer.
55:24
I came through the '60s.
55:26
My most formative years were the '60s,
55:30
the civil rights riots, the assassination of Kennedy
55:34
and all of those things and Whitstock as well.
55:36
I came through that era
55:38
and I came from a liberal Methodist church as a child.
55:42
I became unchurched as well.
55:44
When I became a follower of Christ
55:46
through the gospel sharing of my high school football coach
55:49
and I ultimately, since God was pointing me
55:52
to a seminary to study for ministry,
55:55
one of the first things that happened was
55:56
I went to my denominational seminary.
55:59
I conservative denomination called the Southern Baptist
56:02
convention and I went to the mothership
56:06
in Louisville, Kentucky and as a student in the '80s,
56:11
I sat in class and heard that the resurrection was not real.
56:16
I heard that the virgin birth,
56:19
particularly as portrayed in Isaiah,
56:22
whether it was Deutero Isaiah,
56:24
Trito Isaiah III, the three author myth,
56:27
I heard I sat in classrooms,
56:30
but I also saw the pendulum swing the other way
56:35
where biblical truth became the standard.
56:38
And those professors who had drifted off
56:41
in the shadow of German theologians were not there,
56:45
but Bible believing professors were.
56:48
I cannot emphasize enough how important the training grounds
56:53
for our pastors and other church leaders is
56:57
or far the future of our churches.
57:01
The good news is, I've seen the waves come and go,
57:04
the bad news is I don't know if we're going to see
57:08
that type of reformation in the United States,
57:11
I don't see signs of it.
57:12
And so the cultural drift,
57:14
you know, a seminary naturally drifts to the left.
57:17
It only supernaturally pulls back
57:19
to the right in biblical truth.
57:22
And so if you just let something go without accountability,
57:25
without any type of sense that we are going to make sure
57:28
that this is what we teach and preach,
57:30
it will drift left naturally.
57:32
And those students who are trained there will become pastors,
57:36
they will become alumni and they'll pull their entire
57:38
denomination or whatever their network or movement is
57:41
to the left.
57:42
I am, I was encouraged to find that when after the 80s
57:46
that we begin to see things turn around,
57:48
I then became a dean of that same seminary years later.
57:51
And I saw the revolution where Bible believing truth took place.
57:56
I'm not seeing those things right now, Cal,
57:58
but I don't have the few of the future.
58:01
If I'm looking from a human perspective,
58:03
I would say it looks bad.
58:04
From God's perspective, I will continue to have hope.
58:07
But that drift has happened in many places
58:10
and it certainly has happened in American seminaries
58:12
and colleges and universities.
58:13
- And the thing is, is God doesn't need a particular
58:17
seminary, he doesn't need a particular denomination,
58:19
he doesn't need a particular political party.
58:21
He can get done what he needs to get done, right?
58:23
Whether we're in the way or not.
58:25
And I'm looking at the clock and we are unfortunately
58:27
out of time, I've really enjoyed our conversation today
58:29
and everything we've talked about,
58:30
but that's all for me.
58:31
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
58:33
- Nothing off my chest.
58:33
I'm greatly appreciated to be here.
58:35
It's always good to talk to someone
58:36
that's 50 to 60 years younger than I am.
58:39
- Sounds good. Well, Tom Rainer,
58:40
thank you for coming on a Daunted Life of Man's podcast.
58:43
- There you go guys.
58:44
I hope you enjoyed my interview with Tom Rainer,
58:45
but before we let you go,
58:46
we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
58:48
Add on Daunted Life, our mission is equipping men
58:49
to push back darkness with content
58:51
that for just spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
58:53
So the links I've got for you today,
58:54
I've got a link to Tom's books, all of them,
58:56
but then specifically I've got links to I Am A Christian.
58:58
I am a church member, autopsy of a deceased church
59:01
and simple church.
59:02
And then also a link to his company,
59:03
his website, churchanswers.com.
59:06
All right guys, thanks so much for listening to the show.
59:07
We do appreciate it.
59:08
Wherever you're listening to this,
59:09
please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five star
59:11
of you.
59:12
If you want me to come speak live at your event
59:13
or on your podcast, you shoot me an email
59:14
to info@undontin.life.
59:16
That's I-N-F-O @undontin.life.
59:18
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook
59:20
and check out our website for everything else,
59:22
including how to donate to keep more content
59:23
like this coming your way.
59:24
Just go to www.undontin.life.
59:27
And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns Red
59:29
for allowing us to use their music for our content.
59:31
The music on this podcast is our song "Cutting the Tides,"
59:33
which is off their 10th anniversary
59:35
re-recording of their album, "Leveler."
59:36
The links are in the description.
59:38
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
59:40
Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
59:43
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
59:46
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
59:49
(upbeat music)
59:51
♪ I know I'm dying ♪
59:53
♪ Let the heart end up ♪
59:55
♪ I know you want ♪
59:57
♪ As I start to be dead ♪
1:00:00
♪ As I first go ♪
1:00:04
♪ You'll be reduced ♪