# How to Follow Jesus in a Culture That Doesn’t with Jon Thompson

An episode of [Between Sundays with The Chandlers](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1687888418), 6 Oct 2026, 49 min.

Audio: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/audio2.redcircle.com/episodes/35edb3d4-00a8-4cfd-b5de-dd79fc37a264/stream.mp3

Jon Thompson joins Matt and Lauren to talk about what faithful Christian witness looks like in a complicated cultural moment. They get into revival, why Christians are tempted to retreat from people who think differently, the importance of actually loving our neighbors, and Jon’s framework of love, word, and power. Jon’s new book, Presence: Resilient Witness in Times of Retreat and Revival, is available now. Plus, Matt tries a dad joke. It does not go particularly well. ORDER MY LATEST BOOK Becoming Like Jesus is a book about “progressive sanctification” that takes it beyond church words into the honest conversation so many Christians have navigated. Rooted in the Beatitudes, this book unpacks the lifelong series of highs and lows that the Holy Spirit uses to shape us into a person who looks like Jesus. FOLLOW and SUBSCRIBE: Follow Lauren | Follow Matt | Youtube | Website | Newsletter If you’ve enjoyed this episode, one of the best ways to support the show and make sure others find it, is to subscribe and leave a review. Thank You! Thank you to our Sponsors Global Christian Relief GCR comes alongside persecuted Christians with prayer, Bibles, and real help so the church can endure and shine as a light for the Gospel. Stand with the persecuted Church and be a lifeline of prayer and support. — visit https://bit.ly/GCRMatt to learn more. Human Coalition For just $26, Human Coalition can help reach a woman before the abortion industry does and offer her real, compassionate support. Right now, there’s an opportunity to do even more. A generous donor has provided a $100,000 matching gift, so every gift made through December 31 can go even further. So don’t wait. Give $26 today at humancoalition.org/chandler and help show the next mom that she is not alone. Christian Marriage Cruises Ready to invest in your marriage, rest, and reconnect? Join licensed marriage therapists Caleb and Verlynda for a faith-based marriage retreat at sea—visit christianmarriagecruise.com/sundays to reserve your spot today. The Unimaginable Some questions only suffering can teach us to ask, and only God can meet us in.If you or someone you love is walking through devastating loss, The Unimaginable is a faithful companion for the journey...reminding you that while grief may never fully disappear, you never have to carry it alone. Available at MoodyPublishers.com or wherever books are sold. – Editing and support by The Good Podcast Co. For sponsorship inquiries, email sponsor@thegoodpodcast.co

## Transcript

[0:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And he doesn't come in unique power, but it was still called to be faithful.
[0:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So what I was trying to work out in present says, if he doesn't come in great power, how do we use love word and power, the gifts to do this?
[0:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And if he does come, how do we adjust to that?
[0:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And how do we live in that tension really well?
[0:30] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Hey guys, welcome back to Between Sundays with the Chandler's.
[0:35] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Elsie, you got a dad joke for us?
[0:38] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I do not.
[0:39] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I came, I'm prepared for the dad joke, but you have one.
[0:42] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I mean, I am a dad, I do have jokes.
[0:45] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Let's just change it up.
[0:46] \[SPEAKER_02\]: We can, that feels crazy to me, but I'm... Do you agree?
[0:49] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You're the dad?
[0:50] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So here would be, here would be one that I personally like.
[0:53] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Mm-hmm.
[0:54] \[SPEAKER_02\]: What's worse than rain cats and dogs?
[1:00] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I don't know, can you tell me?
[1:01] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Hailing cabs.
[1:04] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Okay, that would hurt.
[1:06] \[SPEAKER_01\]: That would be real good.
[1:07] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You just saying I think it's, I think it's good.
[1:10] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Wow.
[1:11] \[SPEAKER_02\]: This is why you do it.
[1:12] \[SPEAKER_02\]: That's why I don't do it.
[1:14] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Oh, I don't know.
[1:14] \[SPEAKER_02\]: This is your thing.
[1:15] \[SPEAKER_02\]: It's not a thing.
[1:16] \[SPEAKER_02\]: It's not a thing.
[1:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Hailing cats.
[1:18] \[SPEAKER_01\]: That was great.
[1:18] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Today John Thompson wrote a great book on convergence.
[1:20] \[SPEAKER_02\]: He talks in that book about gift-chint-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-tent-
[1:32] \[SPEAKER_02\]: not been given to me by the Holy Spirit.
[1:33] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I think he gave it to me to Stuart.
[1:35] \[SPEAKER_02\]: He didn't give it to you to Stuart.
[1:36] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah, to equip the Saints.
[1:38] \[SPEAKER_02\]: That's right.
[1:39] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Hey, this week we have a newest friend, but I consider a good friend.
[1:46] \[SPEAKER_02\]: John Thompson on with us all the way from the Toronto area in Canada.
[1:51] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And so, hey, John, how are you?
[1:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Great.
[1:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thanks for having me.
[1:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's great to be with your audience.
[1:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Listen, I want to say this.
[2:00] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I don't know that anyone in this season of our lives is teaching us as well as biblically and as
[2:13] \[SPEAKER_02\]: challenging, challengingly.
[2:16] \[SPEAKER_02\]: As you, I have just been devouring your books and handing them out to anyone who, to everyone, just give me a box of those and our elders, our exact team, friends, and so thank you for your good faithful stewardship.
[2:36] \[SPEAKER_02\]: of what God's done there in Toronto, uh, and then through and in you, I'm just such a such a big fan.
[2:45] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So thanks for being on.
[2:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thanks.
[2:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's the best intro to a podcast I've had.
[2:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thank you.
[2:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Okay.
[2:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thank you.
[2:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, we'll take very kind man.
[2:53] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I don't know if it was just you and me and Lauren sitting around the table, uh, I've got
[2:59] \[SPEAKER_02\]: billions of other questions, but I do know presence just came out, which is a day.
[3:06] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Look, today, it's launching today, one recording this.
[3:09] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I was, yeah, I was some of the happy few that got an early copy.
[3:14] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And honestly, before I saw the tagline,
[3:18] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I thought the book presence was going to be about like John 15 presence of God ordering your life around that goodness and that.
[3:28] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So then when it came in and I read the tagline, I had to readjust my expectations for really what the book is about, which is basically, if I was speaking to pastors, I would say it's about contextualization,
[3:43] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And evangelism, but it's really about how to live faithfully in this current moment that we're in.
[3:54] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And so I would love for you to kick us off.
[3:56] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Here would be my question, like, why this book now?
[4:00] \[SPEAKER_02\]: What do you seen in Toronto and you travel quite a bit?
[4:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: What do you seeing around the world that kind of stirred more of this up to write this as,
[4:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This, I'm writing bookfire right now.
[4:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is book for Emily.
[4:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[4:16] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[4:16] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So what, what do you seen?
[4:18] \[SPEAKER_02\]: It's your church in yourself as you travel that made you, that made you go a presence.
[4:24] \[SPEAKER_02\]: It's necessary right now.
[4:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yes, so some of your audience won't know.
[4:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I've been a pastor for 29 years in Toronto.
[4:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Toronto is for a larger city in North America, most multicultural city on the Earth, more than Hong Kong, more than LA, more than Singapore, and so it is awesome and difficult and wonderful to do ministry up here.
[4:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: because we got the whole family.
[4:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Everyone's here, good, bad, happy, and sad.
[4:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so you asked the question, why the book now?
[4:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's interesting, this was in me 10 or 12 years ago.
[4:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I would say that 80% of what I write in this is going to be true a hundred years from now.
[5:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There's just these are non-negotiable realities in every context for 2,000 years in the church.
[5:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But what I found fascinating is, you know, because you both know a little bit of my journey.
[5:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In the early 2000s, when I was a youth pastor here, I just knew we were going to lose.
[5:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I just was watching politically religiously and I was like, we're going to lose.
[5:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I know what we're going to do.
[5:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We're going to try to use politics to win.
[5:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We're going to try to use better HR, better strategy, which by the way, fine.
[5:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But I'm like, so I started this journey trying to go okay, like in every culture on earth where Christians have been for 2,000 years during really dark times, really awesome times, and large boring times, where was our always guaranteed power, which, you know, we've talked about that started my conversation by gifts and disciplines, et cetera.
[5:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then, as I was looking around in the last five or six years, I'm seeing significant loss and retreat globally for the church.
[5:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I'm seeing revival happen at the exact same time.
[6:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then I'm seeing a lot of people by the way call things revival that aren't revival at all, because everyone's using that word, like slang, and they shouldn't because it's an actual thing.
[6:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's not what you want it to be.
[6:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I was like, how do we deal with the dissidents of losing and then winning?
[6:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then trying to work at how I witnessed in a pre-Christian post-Christian decrystion, repaginizing, nominally Christian moment where you've got post-moderns and modernists and spiritualists and religious people.
[6:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it's like every conversation we have, every second, whether online or with a neighbor, I have to pivot the golfs
[6:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: and a lot of people not do it well, not think through it well.
[6:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I just said, I think it's time we have like a really robust conversation about, okay, why the Incardation Matters will get to that in a minute.
[6:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: How do we do this well?
[6:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Because it's really, it causes cognitive dissidents.
[6:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like one moment I'm talking to a Muslim who says Jesus is only a prophet.
[6:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The next moment I'm talking to a Mormon who says we're worshiping the same Jesus, but we're not the next moment.
[7:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm talking to a new ageer.
[7:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The next moment I have a witch who's wanting to talk about power.
[7:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The next moment I'm talking to an atheist.
[7:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: who says it's all intellectually false.
[7:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The next mode of transgender activist is accusing me of said, and so the church doesn't do well with complexity.
[7:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I'm like, this is complex.
[7:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And how do we witness well?
[7:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then the second half of the book, I asked a bunch of heart questions like, you know, am I like Jonah who don't even wanna go to these people?
[7:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I'm forced to.
[7:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then like, middle finger to them, and I all God burns them.
[7:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then what's the difference between that?
[7:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then God sing to Daniel, you have to live there.
[7:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But the real thing for me, the heart check was when I read this conversion of Levi, where it's not just I preach and get out.
[7:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it's not that I live beside.
[7:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I have to go eat with.
[7:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so there's a heart question I was asking, and then last idea is, love word and power, the gift category is Bobby Clinton used that really helped me.
[7:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I said, how does love word and power help three doors remain open to conversion of many because most churches only like one of them, and we're feeling big time in this conversation.
[8:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's good.
[8:03] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Men, so much of that resonates with me.
[8:06] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I want to keep asking questions about the book, but I'd also be really curious for you to define for us revival, because you're right.
[8:16] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I'm hearing it everywhere.
[8:19] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Churches are like, when I,
[8:22] \[SPEAKER_02\]: When I was a kid there was revival meetings at church as well as I became a Christian at First Baptist Church of Texas City they had a revival every year and it was this scheduled thing on the books and we do something in our church called consecrate which is a three-day sacred assembly and those spaces are almost always filled with tears and filled with often.
[8:46] \[SPEAKER_02\]: full altars and they tend to be highly emotive and certainly the spirits doing something in the room, but define or talk a little bit about for us like when we're talking about revival, what are we talking about?
[9:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, so I mean, I think both you know this about me.
[9:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I try to be really precise with language because I understand that I can't replicate something if I don't understand something.
[9:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I also work really hard for us to talk well with each other and as Christians, we speak different languages though we have the same Lord.
[9:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So we have to have a great upon words.
[9:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So when I say that, and you say that, we mean that thing so we can actually talk about it.
[9:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So for me, the language we've used here for about 25 years is this renewal, revival in a waking, or three different things.
[9:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And they're interchangeable in penicostal circles, in fundamental circles, charismatic circles, even in catholic circles, they use these words.
[9:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So for me, renewal, use is the rediscovery of first love.
[9:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: you know how Jesus when He speaks to the seven churches and I always believe Jesus is uniquely speaking to congregations of leaders or listening.
[9:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I think it's in the Ephesus conversation where Jesus says, I have, you do all this incredible stuff, but first love, I find one an individual through the Spirit, Re encounters the first love of Christ.
[10:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is a renewal moment.
[10:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's not revival, it's not awakening and I think a lot of times in those consecration moments you talk about like the
[10:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: re-evaluate their first love.
[10:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Wonderful.
[10:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If I can pause their for a moment and just expand on one thing that's in convergence, that is connected to this.
[10:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There are guaranteed places of encounter recording the scriptures where Dr. Godo was draws close.
[10:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: God is on the present.
[10:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He's everywhere.
[10:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's awesome.
[10:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But there are moments, there are in places and environments of I go there.
[10:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He is present.
[10:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So we're two or three gather my name.
[10:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I am there.
[10:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, we teach all the time when the gospel's proclaimed, he's uniquely there because it is literal power.
[10:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Doesn't matter if someone accepts that Jesus is uniquely there in the giving of the gospel.
[10:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We would say that Jesus is uniquely at communion.
[10:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We don't go all the way as Catholics, but we would say he is, he's the one at the table serving us.
[10:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's memorial and communion, literally to be with.
[11:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We call it, you know, spiritual and counterism.
[11:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I preach this on Sunday.
[11:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We would say every time there's a baptism,
[11:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Jesus is uniquely close because someone is literally putting on their wedding ring and vows are being given.
[11:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It'd be really weird if the groom wasn't there for the vows, right?
[11:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I grew up in a tradition where it was just like a symbol.
[11:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, whether sprinkling or dunking, trust me, the groom is right beside it.
[11:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like I come with, like, sort of all around baptism because I, I'm a little nervous how close he gets because it's, it's broad, right?
[11:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I would say that spiritual gifts when you use a spiritual gift,
[11:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: it's guaranteed power because I'm accessing a well that's not me, it's the spirit and we're working that's at guaranteed place.
[11:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Spiritual disciplines, if you're a Christian, is a guaranteed place and suffering for the things of the gospel is a guaranteed place.
[11:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So the reason why I bring that up is all of those things, adjust our expectations of what is normal.
[11:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I'm like, when I show up in any of those environments, I'm not looking for glory clouds and show far as blowing.
[12:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it's just like, he's there.
[12:06] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah.
[12:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I say to myself, whether I like it or not, whether I'm excited or not, it doesn't matter who's preaching.
[12:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He is so present and I just make expectations.
[12:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I find that biblical adjustment of expectation beyond excitement and too old to be excited.
[12:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I know I am, but I'm really encouraged, but I'm not always excited, but I'm really encouraged.
[12:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so to me, all I'm saying is when I go to a place like that, a lot of renewal happens in those spaces when we suddenly realize he's there great.
[12:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Revival is a sovereign decision by God to draw close.
[12:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I, you know this in, in presence, I talk about how the Mount of Transfiguration is the definition of revival.
[12:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's God started.
[12:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There's a profound undoing.
[12:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The one you've been walking with and you've seen profound things.
[12:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Totally undoes you.
[12:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There's a trembling, a shaking, a confession of sin, the Lordship.
[13:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like, there's all these categories that go beyond a renewal, normal, normalcy, guaranteed moment.
[13:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then there's sovereignly ended.
[13:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And the reason why we have to be careful with this,
[13:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: is because God starts them in God ends them.
[13:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If we pray, He does not, He's not our genie, He's not a light, He's not a bug attracted to some light, you know, He's not like, wow, they're really prepared now in coming.
[13:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You'll notice all through the scriptures in Church history, God always gives a promise of His unique coming before He comes.
[13:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And someone just agrees with him.
[13:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Then he shows up and everyone's undone.
[13:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Then he walks into the room, like close-wise, but he does it to mark you for the rest of your lifetime.
[13:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Charismatic love, quoting like wrestling with God, the old-night wrestling before he's called Israel.
[13:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Interesting, God promised he was gonna do that.
[13:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A few chapters earlier.
[13:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It wasn't the wrestling that brought him down.
[13:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It was God saying I've decided this.
[13:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When leaders are others listen, they just say, oh, you've decided to do this situation.
[14:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm just agreeing with you, then he shows up and then you're marked.
[14:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So just because people are coming back to Christ or lots of people are weeping, that's not revival.
[14:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And the reason why I'm concerned is because I feel especially in your country, there's this angst and fear that you're losing.
[14:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so there's a lot of people putting a lot of energy in the politics and stuff, which is all going to burn.
[14:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so that now they're like, all the answers revival, if we just pray enough, and he comes where he's wanted, and all this stuff, which is true.
[14:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But wonder if he decides not to come?
[14:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And he doesn't come in unique power, but it was still called to be faithful.
[14:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So what I was trying to work out in present says, if he doesn't come in great power, how do we use love word and power, the gifts to do this?
[14:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And if he does come, how do we adjust to that?
[14:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And how do we live in that tension really wealth?
[14:51] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I love it.
[14:51] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I, the refrain, and I don't, I was tempted to like try to find and replace to see how many times you typed out incarnation first, confrontation second.
[15:07] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So what does it look like in a relationship where disagreement already feels like unavoidable?
[15:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[15:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, so we've got tension in the family and tension outside of the family.
[15:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So the first thing I was trying to wrestle down is a lot of us tend to idolize our church culture as ultimately true.
[15:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So, you know, I mean, you've lived this in a much larger way than I have, but big church versus small church, host church versus micro church, you know, all the blogs and all the wasted things again that are going to burn on judgment.
[15:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They so much of its useless and it's a lack of understanding of it incarnation, the brilliance of our Lord.
[15:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: our God was his idea was that every single culture could have the truth embedded in their own flower garden.
[16:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so the idea I used in the, it's not a misyological idea is that you have a husk and a seed.
[16:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The seed cannot change.
[16:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The gospel cannot change.
[16:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The authoritative scripture cannot change to try you nature of God cannot change, but the expression of that in multiple
[16:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I think so much of what's happened because I want to know who's on my side by the jersey they're wearing.
[16:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it's hard to tell who's on my side when the church feels so different, but that's the brilliant.
[16:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So what I was trying to say inside is, we need to understand what's non-negotiable and then we need to understand what is the cultural expression of church.
[16:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And why a monastery and a mega church are actually not in contradiction with each other.
[16:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They're actually both needed at the same time.
[16:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[16:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But this is the brilliance of our movement.
[16:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You should lead a mega church, and someone else should lead a host church.
[16:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And these are not in contradiction.
[16:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The incarnation demands adaptability on mass, which makes it hard, because we want to say, well, this is the good thing.
[17:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So that's the first thing.
[17:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The outside conflict is when we're dealing with so many people that disagree with our ethics, our theology, our understanding,
[17:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, Jesus sat with people, eight with people, was with people and people like why did you write another book on that?
[17:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's so obvious.
[17:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm like, it is and it's not.
[17:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's true.
[17:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's actually like even a lot of pastors listening again.
[17:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, I've read.
[17:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I don't know if a lot of us have really thought this through because incarnation demands not just preaching or living beside but being with
[17:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I just don't think a lot of us make the transition from Jonah to Daniel to Levi.
[17:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I get it.
[17:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's hard.
[17:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's difficult.
[17:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But it's necessary.
[17:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And if we're going to win the West back, and it might happen through revival, it does praise God.
[17:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm all in.
[17:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But if it doesn't, I'm still responsible to actually be among people with people and in relationship with people that violently disagree with everything I believe.
[18:08] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[18:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I just feel an evangelicalism, especially these days.
[18:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There's the shadow.
[18:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I said there's four ghosts that stole her haunting us.
[18:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[18:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it's the zealots, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Oceans.
[18:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And they're all in our culputs.
[18:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, the Sadducees are like, well, we'll just play with Rome and we'll play the game.
[18:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I see that in multiple churches.
[18:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The Pharisees are like, you know, I'm contaminated by people's presence.
[18:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I just, I just see this everywhere and I'm like, I used the example of COVID, not to be political, but I remember it came to me.
[18:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, I was in Canada.
[18:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I was in lockdown for two years.
[18:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You guys didn't even believe in COVID.
[18:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think you lost that for a day.
[18:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, I can text you, you just pulled out your guns and your detectives.
[18:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
[18:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm not disagreeing with you.
[19:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I just say it's complicated.
[19:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But for me, this came home when I was in the grocery store, when everything was shutting down, and I remember I was going to go grab a piece of fruit, and people were wearing masks and I remember panicking and going, so if I touched the fruit and put it in a bag someone else is touched,
[19:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Am I going to get hurt in my kids?
[19:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's how most evangelicals now think if I am around then thus I am contaminated.
[19:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, this is this is the first critical thing.
[19:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[19:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Which I think a lot of pastors out of fear are promoting by mistake.
[19:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yes.
[19:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A lot of people are becoming a see-ins.
[19:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let's all be monastery to weigh and deal with that in God, you know.
[19:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So, and then there are zealots.
[19:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There's a lot of people with sorts.
[19:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And, and I'm like, I wrote a chapter in the book,
[19:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And, and I mean it because I, Jesus is meek strong, but meek, and I just keep falling in love with his weakness, not his explicit power.
[20:00] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[20:01] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I love that.
[20:02] \[SPEAKER_02\]: What distinguishes, I'm trying to be helpful to people who are listening.
[20:15] \[SPEAKER_02\]: from accommodation.
[20:18] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So you wrote quite a bit about that and I would love for people just here from your mouth because some of the, like, I know where I am, words like nuance or things like that are actually categorized or complexity are categorized as accommodation.
[20:41] \[SPEAKER_02\]: that it's not nuanced, you're making accommodations for sin and for sinners.
[20:48] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And so what distinguishes for those of us who are in this, we're trying to live in carnationally, we want that relationship first, and then sometimes you just don't know like,
[21:04] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Like I know, it's not at our first dinner, I don't think that I might want to dive into that subject with you, but do I just stay silent in that moment when you're droning on and on and on about, you know, drag queens and elementary schools is it.
[21:23] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So where's that?
[21:24] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Help us kind of navigate the on the ground realities of the complexities.
[21:32] \[SPEAKER_02\]: that are going to occur if we're living this way you're calling us to.
[21:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[21:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So first of all, I would just ask this question beyond all the complexity.
[21:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One is the last time any of us set down and ask Jesus to reveal to us if we love the person we're upset about.
[21:49] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[21:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No, before we get to anything like, do you have a deep, profound, passionate love for all the people that really violate everything you hold?
[22:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Question one, like, if it's not there, it doesn't matter what I say.
[22:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like, I just want to say that.
[22:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I know that's what we all say.
[22:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I know that's the bumper sticker.
[22:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm just not sure if we believe it.
[22:17] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[22:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So like second of all, I mean, again, I live in a very post-Christian world.
[22:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And at very, I don't live in a part of the world where you live, where there's large versions of nominal Christianity left, you live in a place that still is Christian dumb in some ways.
[22:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's Paul, I say in the United States, it's pocketed Christian dumb.
[22:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There are pockets of it, and your half their rest will you have is you're trying to make sure people that claim to know Jesus know him.
[22:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Where I'm living, I'm like, they don't know him.
[22:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: at all.
[22:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I'm much more comfortable with all the stuff that you will, I'm not you to y'all there are freaking out about because the great word y'all, you're using the wrap-up y'all.
[22:59] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah, thank you.
[23:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But I'm just like, so so I don't have expectations.
[23:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: that my country will be Christian, okay?
[23:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I don't.
[23:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And now, don't get me wrong.
[23:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think informed laws from a Judeo-Christian worldview are excellent.
[23:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But, but again, what's the mistake?
[23:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Why don't we get to learn from history?
[23:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Europe is Christianized itself through law and ethnicity.
[23:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it never converted the heart.
[23:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[23:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And now there's a massive resurgence of paganism.
[23:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Why?
[23:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Because the heart was never converted.
[23:32] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[23:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So you can, again, a country to be political.
[23:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You can pass a thousand laws in Texas or from your Congress or Senate to make you feel safe.
[23:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But do you want to feel safe?
[23:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Or do you want to
[23:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so to me, my responsibility is to grow my children up in the faith and to teach them reality, but not hide them from the world.
[23:58] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[23:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I mean, my children have grown up, they've never been in a Christian system.
[24:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's not wrong, Christian said it was a great.
[24:05] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah.
[24:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But, and we've taught them the difference between, again, accommodation.
[24:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I talk about this, like, for example, we're really concerned about the injustice that happened to our indigenous communities up here, because it's really bad.
[24:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Our history's really bad.
[24:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I've got no problem with my kids learning in Dejina's history, but then we said to them, but you don't participate in smudging, like you don't get marks, because that's moving from information to activity.
[24:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I'm just saying there's so many Christians who are so self-protective of something that's not going to be an eternity.
[24:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So my great call is, I'm not asking for we the church to compromise, but I do not expect the world to look like us for they're not saved for sure.
[24:56] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I did, one of the things that is interesting to me, that that would be maybe the right word.
[25:05] \[SPEAKER_02\]: is because and and not meant for like I am under no illusion like the Lord called me to the older brother more than the prodigal son.
[25:17] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Right.
[25:18] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I mean it's been a quarter century of trying to help people understand they're probably not Christians in order for them to become Christians.
[25:27] \[SPEAKER_02\]: But what that creates environmentally
[25:31] \[SPEAKER_02\]: is where you do have someone that's like legitimately pagan or like when you see a man dressed as a woman or a woman dressed as a man, it's so shocking to the system.
[25:46] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Like I remember we were we were
[25:50] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And it, like, bent our brain, what we were seeing.
[25:53] \[SPEAKER_02\]: We just went to a market and tried to have lunch, what we waited for our flight home.
[25:58] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I was shocked at what we drank in that day in Toronto, versus what I would see in Dallas, during June, during Pride Month.
[26:09] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And there is something specifically in those pockets of
[26:17] \[SPEAKER_02\]: that it's freakish from the onset in a way where I think if you're outside of those pockets, there might be some level normal sea around it, and so I've wondered how that is challenging for people in those pockets of Christendom, man, I'm going to go all week and I'm not going to see a transgender person.
[26:42] \[SPEAKER_02\]: That's by and large truth.
[26:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Sure, and that's it's not just on the sexuality side of thing.
[26:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's everything.
[26:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's multiple faith, multiple religions, multiple worldviews.
[26:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so here's what I would say.
[26:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is why I wrote presents because at this moment we're reaching the younger and older brother in real time.
[27:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And you might live in Dallas where my experience is very different than yours.
[27:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But when you go online, it's not true, and this is what I keep saying to my friends.
[27:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So you might live, I would call it a sheltered life where you are an insulated life.
[27:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so you have a series of issues you need to deal with.
[27:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But when you go online, you need to listen to what we're going through because it is our world.
[27:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's right.
[27:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so you can act sheltered and Dallas, but two minutes later when you're online, you're in Toronto.
[27:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so the question is, how are you prepared to witness well and to use, you know, love, hospitality power the evidence of the spirit and intellectual engagement well to multiple people because I'm convinced that some people are loved in the kingdom, some people are fought in the kingdom, some people are encountered in the kingdom.
[27:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They all need to eventually encounter the true living, living, Jesus, and repent.
[27:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But, but again, if, if the average Christian in your world is not prepared for the world and here's the problem, you've got too much of a bit, I don't mean the, I mean y'all have one of the largest
[28:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Voice is globally.
[28:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So you're sheltered, freaking out about the world, about your sheltering this and everyone's listening to you, and actually the gospel's getting damaged by your reaction to the world, even though you feel safe.
[28:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I'm like, we need you to get more complex so you help all of us.
[28:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: because you're not just dealing with Dallas, when you go online, you're dealing with me.
[28:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And my friends in Kenya, and my friends in Berlin, and my friends in Hong Kong.
[28:44] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I love how you bring together that love, intellect, spiritual power.
[28:49] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I'm back that I always think filipa.
[28:52] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I think that's what we're seeing at the birth of the church of Philippa, but say more about that kind of triangle there of love, intellectual power, in regards to evangelism, as we're incarnational about the kingdom of God.
[29:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, so I find that basically, like, they start like gift categories, right?
[29:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let's do the quick definitions.
[29:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Love demonstrates the love of God.
[29:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Word clarifies who God is, who he's not, what he likes, what he doesn't.
[29:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Power evidences him in the room.
[29:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So love, word, and power.
[29:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Okay.
[29:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In evangelism, we tend to be comfortable with one or two of those categories.
[29:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So my point is, when you look at the gospels, it is fundamentally clear that all these three things are never in contradiction with each other.
[29:38] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[29:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: regularly, there is ongoing shock and cost mortality.
[29:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Christians are having lunch and dinner and relationship with everyone that they should not be with, and it's through the act of love and hospitality that people start encountering the love of Christ.
[29:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: At the same time, there are others like Paul and Apollo's right, who are like you've got darkest doing one thing, and then you've got Paul and Apollo's in real time, intellectually verifying the history of the resurrection of Jesus, white's logical, white's coherent, acts of 17, Paul's and Athens.
[30:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He's debating Epicurians and Stoics, interestingly to the uncomfortability of many pastors listening.
[30:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He's quoting multiple
[30:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Look, he's actually quoting pagan hymn writing and he's quoting poetry from Crete.
[30:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So he's engaged in the culture, but he's intellectually verifying at other times, people are being set free from the demonic, people are being healed.
[30:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so my point is by gift, but beyond gift.
[30:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This should be the point of the spear and evangelism where it should be as normal for a Muslim to have a dream and demons to be cast out of someone as a nurse who's in a hospital who's a Christian praying over someone and loving them as John Lennox is an Oxford at the same time defending this.
[30:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is what every church should be.
[31:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is not unnormal.
[31:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This should be normal.
[31:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So to me, I'm like, why do I not see the average church?
[31:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: supporting, clarifying, programmatically supporting, but also personally encouraging love warden power at the same time.
[31:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, usually it's fear and theology, but I'm just like, listen, they amount of people have come to faith here because they were witches.
[31:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then they realized the power we had was sweeter nicer and better and stronger.
[31:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's amazing.
[31:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[31:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, just a few weeks ago, we had a new age or an answer to faith.
[31:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, we had a former Muslim in the tank.
[31:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You renounced that.
[31:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We had a person come out of addiction.
[31:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then we had five kids who grew up in a car, three kids in a Christian home.
[31:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I said to our congregation, see, this is, this is it.
[31:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: brought up in the faith, loved in the faith, encountered the faith, intellectually brought into the faith.
[31:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so we need all three all the time.
[31:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so in presence, I spent a lot of time unpacking all of those.
[31:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But I want to be clear for you, some of you who are doing this.
[32:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I jokingly said this with the Perry's yesterday, with someone who's got a big ESP study Bible who's like doing this one talking.
[32:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I just said, I just wanted to say,
[32:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: our job as leaders, I'm going to bang this drum until I die, is not to dismiss experience.
[32:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's to interpret it.
[32:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's right.
[32:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so my starting point is never to dismiss someone's experience.
[32:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm looking for the bridge that's there.
[32:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I love that our culture is becoming pagan.
[32:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: because there's so many more obvious bridges to talk about spiritual power.
[32:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh my goodness, yes.
[32:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm so glad that secularism is collapsing.
[32:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm so glad that people are realizing hustle culture and it's sloth culture is sucks.
[32:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Because they're getting tired.
[32:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, I set this the other day, you know, it's fine if you wanna be in part of the sexual revolution or, you know, it's great when you're young, but you're gonna get old.
[32:56] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[32:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And you're going to get old and you're not going to look good and you're going to be tired and used.
[33:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And then you're going to be like, what?
[33:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I'm like, when that tiredness shows up, and when there's beauty all around us, and when people are deeply religious, the first thing I'm not going to say is, well, you're wrong.
[33:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm going to like, tell me about, tell me about your spiritual power.
[33:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Tell me about your belief in God, because that natural thing begins like an accent to get me halfway across the bridge.
[33:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We don't need to build bridges.
[33:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is my point.
[33:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We just tend to burn them.
[33:29] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I heard you reminded me when I was getting my masters, I had the opportunity to hear from David Brooks, the op-ed writer for The New York Times, and he was sharing with my class his conversion journey.
[33:46] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And he said, I mean, this so resonated with me,
[33:50] \[SPEAKER_02\]: He said, I had heard all the arguments, I had read all the texts, but when I saw the beauty and the life of my Christian friends, I was persuaded.
[34:03] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I thought goodness sakes, like when I saw the beauty in the life of my Christian friends, it wasn't this man's brilliant, you know, multiple time New York best selling author, New York Times best selling author, and was convinced
[34:21] \[SPEAKER_02\]: of the resurrected Christ by the beauty in the life of his Christian friends.
[34:27] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I think that speaks to what you are saying there.
[34:31] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Talk a little bit more about those natural bridges.
[34:35] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I'm curious that people who are watching, they'll be able to put that together and understand what you met there.
[34:41] \[SPEAKER_02\]: When you're talking about the bridges already exist, we don't build the bridges, we just don't burn them.
[34:47] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So talk about, because that's a beautiful part of your book
[34:51] \[SPEAKER_02\]: You know, where these bridges are and how to navigate that aspect of it.
[34:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, I think there are so many bridges that exist.
[35:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So number one, I always say this.
[35:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The first thing is there is the bridge of religiosity, 95% of human beings are religious.
[35:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so if they're religious and I'm religious and by the way, Christians are religious, stop seeing when our religion, of course we are, it's an endowed religion, it's an animated religion.
[35:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Um, and right when someone says they're religious, there's multiple bridges with someone says they're spiritual or they have extreme power, multiple bridges, beauty and nature, multiple bridges like, uh, philosophical tradition, multiple bridges, what evangelicals need to reach get back to is what we abandon in the reformation art.
[35:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: beauty, art art art like art and beauty, point to something transcendent.
[35:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I keep saying this to my children.
[35:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I said atheism is like walking into one of my favorite museums like the portrait gallery in London, looking at art and saying I have no interest in the artist.
[35:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Most people aren't even like that.
[35:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They want to know the artist.
[36:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I'm like, I'm continually in our community, but I also think, you know, as people hopefully read the book, they're going to go, oh my goodness, from ethical world views to religiosity, to spiritual power, to spiritual experiences, to the innate big things like, why am I here?
[36:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There are all these bridges, and if we would slow down and not talk.
[36:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: and find the bridge, and then engaged.
[36:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now that's not saying they're going to embrace Jesus when she crossed the bridge.
[36:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I mean, they laughed at Paul, and Acts 17 and mocked him.
[36:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But he did everything in his power in that context, right?
[36:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: To show them the logic, the beauty, and the relatability of the gospel, as much as Jesus did with Nicodemus.
[36:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so, like, I think this is, again, you're dealing with a deemus and I'm dealing with the stoics, but the thing is where I live, I've got Nicodemus and the stoics.
[36:53] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah.
[36:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[36:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And the Epicurians.
[36:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[36:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: All at once.
[36:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But I, I just, I think there's such hope for this moment.
[37:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But we're putting most of our eggs in something that's not guaranteed, which is revival or the other thing that has nothing to do with the kingdom ultimately, which is politics for sure, that's that's reality here.
[37:27] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Where was that hard for you?
[37:29] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Was there either a backstory or a, yeah, was there a people group who are your Ninevites and how did that kind of shape?
[37:43] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Your own personal journey there, how did that shape kind of your learning in this and in the writing of this book?
[37:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, so in those chapters, I was talking about how, you know, Jonah runs from the presence of God.
[38:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He actually runs from the temple, which is what's so striking.
[38:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He runs from the guaranteed place of encounter too.
[38:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I didn't know this, but Tarsh, where he was running is the beaches in Spain, which I find hilarious.
[38:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like, of course, he's going to stay beaches.
[38:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's right.
[38:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: To Spain, who not go like that at the wall in the olive oil and the great beaches, what?
[38:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like, but here's the thing for me, I have found through my life, because I'm a third culture kid.
[38:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Remember, I was born in Oschoa, which is outside of Toronto, but I grew up in Ecuador.
[38:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I've been to 40 countries.
[38:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so for me, there have been multiple moments whether it's some ethnic groups and or some people in politics and or some people with power that have really bothered me.
[38:45] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[38:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And that's not saying the whole, see, I, again, you were talking about how nuances is viewed as a dangerous thing as compromise.
[38:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But I've learned over the years that it's like me saying all Americans, how inappropriate.
[39:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There's hundreds of millions of you.
[39:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I can't say that, but I have had multiple struggles.
[39:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I mean, there are people who to test our faith, who have murdered Christians, who have hurt me per life at interactions in my life with some people of certain ethnic backgrounds, they've really wounded me and said things about me.
[39:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: that weren't true.
[39:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so it's like when you get hurt, it's like when you get go through a horrific divorce, to ever trust someone relationally again, takes double or triple effort.
[39:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So if you've been hurt by a group or you've been perceived by a group, it takes so much more effort.
[39:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I've continually been praying that my heart, that my heart would be deeply
[39:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I actually actually want them to be my brothers and sisters.
[39:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I don't know some days.
[39:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, I...
[40:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I see the danger of what's happening in the West.
[40:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I understand the complexity of terrorism and Western value.
[40:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like, I'm not ignorant of this, but the thing I keep wrestling with, I'm like, Lord, in your sovereignty, because we're a bit more reformed on this call.
[40:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I'll use that small R here without an angry, because we hate angry Calvinists.
[40:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They suck, but I'm like, in your Providence Lord, in this moment in time,
[40:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You've brought the nations here.
[40:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: How dare I respond with anger.
[40:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Mike, my great-grandmother spent her life interseeding for the nations.
[40:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: and they're here and my response is, why don't I, I don't even know what, I don't know how, I don't know what to do with that.
[40:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I have the opportunity to speak to any person on earth in my country right now, and I'm not comfortable all the time, and sometimes I am afraid for my country and my kids, but to even that, like, so many of your listeners, you're afraid for your kids, you're afraid for your kids, and I'm like, who do you trust?
[41:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Do you trust in the Lord?
[41:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I thought we dedicated our children body and soul to the Lord.
[41:16] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[41:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So like, I desperately want my Muslim friends to know I love them.
[41:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I want my gay neighbors to feel completely comfortable and at home in my home with my children.
[41:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now, that doesn't mean I agree with everything at all and in time we talk about that.
[41:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But I should be like oozing the truth of Christ and the grace of Christ at the same time.
[41:39] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah.
[41:45] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I think you're right, a lot of us fear for our kids and it's you're right.
[41:55] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It's like it's like the disciples on the boat with Jesus who are looking at the wind and their waves and they're
[42:10] \[SPEAKER_01\]: What are we gonna do?
[42:11] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I feel that.
[42:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I don't want to be, I don't want to lack compassion for those who feel, but, you know, there's some really dangerous things and scary things, but you're right.
[42:23] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Like, the Lord, we believe He is sovereign, and in His sovereign plan, their people have come to our nation.
[42:31] \[SPEAKER_01\]: and what an opportunity we have to love them and to meet them where they are and to share the gospel with them and who knows what there might be a Muslim man or woman who becomes the next, I don't know, like Jonathan Edwards and starts preaching some future vibe on awakening, you know.
[42:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But that's so in my church right like we have 55 nations on a Sunday.
[42:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We have 13 nations on staff and that's reflective of where I live.
[43:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I understand that.
[43:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But here's the thing.
[43:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: 50 to 55% of those coming to our nations right now are Christians.
[43:08] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah, yeah.
[43:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So first of all, like when I'm in Europe, I am celebrating and hearing Canada that God, when when the church in the West was dying,
[43:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I'm like thanking God for my Congolese brothers and sisters and my Nigerian brothers and sisters and my Sri Lankan brothers and sisters because they came and when the church was about to collapse, they opened the doors again.
[43:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's the first thing.
[43:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The second thing is that it's not just me telling them the amount of Christians that have humbled me and taught me the gospel.
[43:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: from around the, like, this is the mission field is not from, you know, 1905 anymore, that perspective.
[43:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The mission field is everyone to everywhere, everywhere, everyone.
[43:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[43:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's the Filipino nanny witnessing to the person, you know, shopping in Irwan and L.A.
[44:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: who's going to bring that person to Christ?
[44:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[44:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Right.
[44:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's, you know, it's, it's, we've, again, there's so much fun pack, but my, my point is this, I, I would beg your audience to slow down and see the God moment we have.
[44:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There's such a moment for incarnational truth telling, love telling, hospitality and encounters them.
[44:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And we actually have the answer.
[44:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I keep reminding myself, on I worse than best days, I have more in common,
[44:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: with someone who's a Christian who I struggle with, then anyone who looks like me.
[44:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[44:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Because they're, they're my real family.
[44:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's right.
[44:40] \[SPEAKER_02\]: It's true.
[44:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Not my socioeconomic background, not my ethnic bias.
[44:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They're my, we're fighting for revelation seven on this side of the corner.
[44:49] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[44:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Not later.
[44:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so, I don't know.
[44:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I mean, I'm sure some of your people call me a woke Canadian, but I think I'm a biblical incarnation list.
[44:59] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah, yeah, I feel so much of what you're saying.
[45:03] \[SPEAKER_02\]: It resonates in my heart as being good true and beautiful.
[45:09] \[SPEAKER_02\]: It's not been uncommon for me to say from the pulpit.
[45:13] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I have more in common with an Iranian Christian than I do in unbelieving American.
[45:18] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yes.
[45:18] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I've said that dozens times over the years.
[45:22] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And I think,
[45:24] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I have never really gotten pushed back on that.
[45:26] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I have gotten plenty of push for other things I've said, but I think we know that in our heart, I think the living out of it can be a bit more challenging for people in this moment.
[45:39] \[SPEAKER_02\]: We find ourselves in, but yes, yes in a man.
[45:42] \[SPEAKER_02\]: In fact, Lord and I have a dear friend who moved here from Iran with his parents.
[45:49] \[SPEAKER_02\]: After the revolution,
[45:51] \[SPEAKER_02\]: and they hired a woman to teach him English and she used the Bible to teach him English and ended up becoming a Christian and then ultimately lost his family over becoming a Christian and then became a pastor, a proclaimer of the good news, eventually reconciled with his family.
[46:12] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Although I don't think they'd become Christians, but this is just like the ordinary
[46:19] \[SPEAKER_02\]: that like tutor, who's in love with Jesus, like using the Bible to teach this Iranian kid English.
[46:30] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And now you've got to go, that's one of the better preachers that I know, he actually pastors our very first church plant now.
[46:38] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And, you know, has built a beautiful congregation out there and so I loved her willingness to lean into, you know, in the 70s when he got her during that revolution, it wouldn't, wouldn't all that warm and friendly towards the Iranians that came in.
[46:53] \[SPEAKER_02\]: If you remember what happened during that revolution with the American Embassy, and I just thought what a beautiful picture of what the kingdom of God is like.
[47:03] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I would love for you, I kind of do this in my head sometimes, if people buy presents and I hope they do, and they read it and put it into practice.
[47:15] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Like a year from now, what would your hope be for what their life would look like, maybe what they would be experiencing in their own relationship with Christ?
[47:25] \[SPEAKER_02\]: If they read it, put it into practice a year from now, what would you hope the fruit of that would be?
[47:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, four things.
[47:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One, if it really happened in a year from now, I think the very first thing would be that they would see the world as a very different place than they did today.
[47:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They would really have a kingdom perspective that maybe they didn't have before or a fuller one.
[47:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Second of all, they'd be really clear about the love word and power thing and where there's was to function.
[47:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Where their assignment is in that, three that they would live less fearfully and more engaged with people that are not like them.
[48:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And lastly, and most importantly, I think internally, they would begin to celebrate multiple other churches they struggle with because they realized, though there's some theological disagreements, it was God's plan all along to have diversity to reach diverse people, and they'd be less critical and more joyful in the kingdom of God and what the church was up to.
[48:28] \[SPEAKER_02\]: man, I love that, John.
[48:31] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Again, thank you so much for being with us today, like I said it at the beginning, learning so much from you right now.
[48:40] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And so grateful for your faithfulness and your ministry.
[48:44] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And keep going.
[48:45] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I'm looking forward to being in the same room with you at some point face to face.
[48:49] \[SPEAKER_02\]: In carnationally, one might say yes.
[48:54] \[SPEAKER_02\]: And so, eager for that,
[48:58] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Thank you guys.
[48:59] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Thanks friends.
[48:59] \[SPEAKER_02\]: God bless you.

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