Questioning church and theology: an interview with Fr Deacon Chris, an Orthodox priest (almost), part 1

Murray and Josh sit down with good friend Chris Hawthorne to talk about his journey towards the Orthodox priesthood. Chris attended Murray's ministry school in the early 2000's and he and Josh have crossed paths many times. Like many, he discovered something severely lacking in his faith. This went un-answered until he encountered a spiritual father in the Orthodox Church. Now he is almost a priest. Tune into part 1 as they dive into Chris's story of encounter, beauty, and transformation.

For more about Voices from the Desert, visit out Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/VoicesfromtheDesert

Transcript

00;00;17;23 - 00;00;28;00
Joshua Hoffert
Chris, you can thank me that you didn't have to go through a family intervention. Okay? So. Well, there you go. You owe him. Yeah. At least I don't think you had to go through one. Maybe. Well, I don't know.

00;00;28;00 - 00;00;38;09
Chris Hawthorne
But I'll tell you that either keep this in or edit it out. But there we had our own little tete a tete at a club. Where are we at? Oh, yeah? Yeah, we had a mutual.

00;00;38;09 - 00;00;39;18
Joshua Hoffert
Friend.

00;00;39;20 - 00;00;45;27
Chris Hawthorne
Who likes to rip off Band-Aids and say metaphorically, no. And he's like, so Andrew.

00;00;46;00 - 00;00;48;18
Murray Dueck
He's. Oh, no, he set you up. I mean.

00;00;48;24 - 00;00;53;05
Chris Hawthorne
I don't know why. That was just in the moment you thought, hey, here's my opportunity. How do you. I love.

00;00;53;05 - 00;00;53;21
Joshua Hoffert
This guy.

00;00;53;22 - 00;00;54;11
Chris Hawthorne
How do you feel about your.

00;00;54;11 - 00;01;02;11
Joshua Hoffert
Brother joining the Orthodox church? I do, like, a lot.

00;01;02;13 - 00;01;05;26
Murray Dueck
Well, up. Do voices from the Dead Zone.

00;01;05;29 - 00;01;10;07
Joshua Hoffert
Those are. Those are chosen to serve.

00;01;10;10 - 00;01;15;02

000.

00;01;15;05 - 00;01;18;25
Murray Dueck
With that little off note there that can go well.

00;01;18;25 - 00;01;34;04
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. All right. You got to get that right. I was editing an episode up in the, in our, dining area the other day, and Aaron heard the guy, right? My wife doesn't listen to the podcast. Like, she's like, I already have. I already have lots of conversation with you. I don't need to listen to the podcast.

00;01;34;05 - 00;01;39;17
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. That's right. And she she has listened to lots of melody before. So, you know, she's like, oh that's right.

00;01;39;17 - 00;01;40;07
Murray Dueck
Yours were.

00;01;40;11 - 00;02;02;00
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. You got the answer. So so she was editing episode and she heard the intro for the first time. I think. And and actually, by the way, those of you that have been listening, you'll know we're kind of, you know, 3 or 4 episodes into our new season that we have a new intro track. So it sounds a little bit to.

00;02;02;01 - 00;02;03;12
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah, Murray has even heard. Yeah.

00;02;03;12 - 00;02;05;27
Murray Dueck
Because we're still I, I was going to say I haven't even heard this yet.

00;02;05;27 - 00;02;16;18
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah that's right. Well so I'll play it for uma. And anyway, she's like, that is so cheesy. And then the.

00;02;16;22 - 00;02;18;10
Murray Dueck
There's what makes it so wonderful.

00;02;18;10 - 00;02;19;19
Joshua Hoffert
You know, the kind you see.

00;02;19;19 - 00;02;21;08
Murray Dueck
Just you she's.

00;02;21;09 - 00;02;22;28
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. That's right. She shook her head.

00;02;22;28 - 00;02;27;10
Murray Dueck
And one can never do it. Church, man. You got to do it. You got to go somewhere.

00;02;27;13 - 00;02;51;18
Joshua Hoffert
That's right, that's right. So this is our outlet, right? This is Murray and I. This is our outlet for the Coyote Alley. Yeah. That's right. That's right, that's right. So, well, we we have an awesome episode planned for today, don't, Wimmer. So we do. Yeah. Long time friend. Yeah. And, you know, like, goes back with Murray more than 20 years now.

00;02;51;20 - 00;02;52;17
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. Yeah.

00;02;52;17 - 00;03;12;21
Murray Dueck
It's shocking how fast time goes because I was. Yeah. I was thinking about back in the day, Chris Hawthorne, who? You'll meet here in a minute. No, let I'll let to, I'll let Josh introduce him a little more fully. But he was in my class back in, like, the year 2000. So, and it's funny how journey, you know, journey moves us on, so this is going to be great.

00;03;12;23 - 00;03;12;28
Murray Dueck
I'm.

00;03;13;02 - 00;03;30;21
Joshua Hoffert
I'm just looking forward to, I met Chris, so we've got our our, our friend Chris Hawthorne here. And. Yeah, for those of you that are watching the video, whether you're on the Patreon that we've just started or whether you're watching later on YouTube, you'll see that he's got a little bit of a color on them.

00;03;30;21 - 00;03;52;09
Joshua Hoffert
And I think the last time I don't even remember that color is on a dog collar or no, I did refer to it as a karate belt earlier and, you know, so, I call our our good Anglican friend Colin typically wears a collar when he's on the episode. I don't know, didn't my camera father Mike wore collar or not, I, I don't remember if he did it on.

00;03;52;12 - 00;04;13;11
Joshua Hoffert
I can't remember. Anyway, but there's a reason why we mentioned father Mike when we have Chris on, and we'll get to that in a second. So, we've got an awesome episode planned for today. And, Chris, I met Chris in person, probably about, I don't know, maybe 8 or 9 years ago. Yeah. And unfortunately, I ended up moving across the country.

00;04;13;13 - 00;04;31;08
Joshua Hoffert
And so, yes, that was our friendship when we met. And we had planned to get the families together and all this, and then all of a sudden I was gone, and, but but, you know, we share an affection for each other. And one of the reasons for that is, his his brother is a very good friend of mine.

00;04;31;10 - 00;04;32;24
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. He's your younger brother, right?

00;04;32;28 - 00;04;34;19
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah. Like two years.

00;04;34;21 - 00;04;43;12
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. That's right. Yeah. He's not smaller than you, though. He's like, no, your brother's pretty jacked up, man. Yes. Yeah. We're from.

00;04;43;12 - 00;04;45;05
Chris Hawthorne
Different stock. I think.

00;04;45;07 - 00;05;02;06
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. Well, yeah. You mean just to say your brother spend some time, as a bouncer? Yes. And. Oh, yeah, I remember him when he. When he told me about his martial arts training. And he told me that he'd studied to vendo. I thought it was like a, you know, like an anime term or something. Yeah.

00;05;02;09 - 00;05;03;05
Chris Hawthorne
Something made up.

00;05;03;05 - 00;05;25;24
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah, it does sound like it. Right? But he's like, yeah. You learn how to incapacitate someone with as few strikes as possible. Yes. And, so that's that's Chris's brother. And I've known Andrew for a number of years, but my introduction to Chris was actually through a Facebook message. Yeah. Chris sent me a Facebook message. This would have been, probably 2016.

00;05;25;24 - 00;05;47;12
Joshua Hoffert
No, 2015, 2016 somewhere in there. Because I was I was writing articles on the Desert Fathers and I was working through I'd set aside 52 Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers, and I wanted to work through all of them to try and figure out a what were the what were the highlights of the teaching. Because I'd read so much about the Desert Fathers, I've been so impacted by them.

00;05;47;19 - 00;06;17;07
Joshua Hoffert
So I was working through them, going. Nobody taught me about these things when I was growing up, and so I wanted to help people engage with them. So I started writing these articles on the Desert Fathers, summing up, you know, Anthony the Great, what were some of the key highlights of his teachings? And I think if you were to sum up Anthony's teachings, you would have to probably land on humility as one of the key characteristics of what he what he taught and, which, you know, he learned in his struggle in the desert for 20 years in an old abandoned fort.

00;06;17;07 - 00;06;30;10
Joshua Hoffert
And, you know, he's got the whole culmination of his journey where he's God. Why, why, why? And then the Lord looks down on him from a rooftop and goes, I wanted to see how you would respond. Right. You know this. So he's got this interaction with.

00;06;30;10 - 00;06;31;29
Murray Dueck
I've been watching your struggle.

00;06;32;00 - 00;06;59;24
Joshua Hoffert
Watching your struggle, and and so I wanted to be I wanted to help recapture some of those things for my jellicle friends who had never seen anything like that. Yeah, yeah. And, and never heard of them. They're just like, I had never heard of them. And so so then I was knee deep in writing these things and blogging about them and putting them out there and posting to Facebook and all this, and I'd put quotes out, stuff like that and, hoping to inspire people a little bit.

00;06;59;24 - 00;07;24;25
Joshua Hoffert
And along comes this little message from Chris Hawthorne. And I go, I know that name like I Hawthorne. I wonder if he's related to Andrew and Jerry, New Jersey's dad. And, and and he said, hey, you I'm just wondering a bit about you. It was something like this. I'm just wondering a bit about you, because you seem to know a lot of the people that I know in the charismatic church that we were all that I was going to.

00;07;24;27 - 00;07;34;15
Joshua Hoffert
But you don't seem to be all that charismatic. You're writing about the Desert Fathers and so what? What's your you know, what's your deal and what's your deal? Yeah, I ask.

00;07;34;15 - 00;07;35;23
Murray Dueck
That about you every week.

00;07;35;25 - 00;07;53;28
Joshua Hoffert
That's it. Yeah. So I was like, oh like wonderful. So we chatted a little bit and then around the same time, I don't remember if I told you this one, maybe I did, I was, I was out with Andrew having dinner or something. Just the two of us or drinks or something like that. And Andrew started bringing it up.

00;07;53;28 - 00;08;11;09
Joshua Hoffert
He's like, hey, I don't know, like my brother has gone to the Orthodox Church. It's gone. Really? Yeah. You've gone to the dark side. And he was like, these guys, I think you might be joining a cold. I don't know what's going on. And I had been, you know, I'd been studying these things at all. And I was, I was like, okay, Andrew, it's okay.

00;08;11;10 - 00;08;30;24
Joshua Hoffert
It's, you know, it's okay. And so I, I talked him down right from intervention, you know, like, maybe we need to have an intervention. Whatever. Now, he didn't say that. I talked him down from the cliff. Yeah, yeah. And, maybe a little bit like, you know, Pierro, what's who is who is it? The, Silwan.

00;08;30;26 - 00;09;00;19
Joshua Hoffert
Pure over the abyss. And then. Yeah. Take a step back. Three steps back this point. Yeah. That's right. So maybe it's a little bit like that. You know, I like to think of myself in that light. In that light. And, And I handed him a copy, that I had just gone through that I think Murray recommended, which was a, just a short book with a bunch of quotes from the from the, the file Kalia and, and said, you know, they're not all that weird.

00;09;00;19 - 00;09;20;27
Joshua Hoffert
Okay. Just here, read this and I and not look it captured me because of the Macarius quote about the hard lions and tigers and dragons and all things. And the apostle had that simplicity. Yeah. And, and that it really, you know, that was one of those ones that just was like, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about when it comes to the inner journey.

00;09;21;00 - 00;09;46;09
Joshua Hoffert
And, and I actually, I think Macarius, the 50 homilies are probably one of the best teachings on the life of spiritual transformation. That's, that's out there, like, even like if you if you were to hand it to a charismatic person with a modern translation, they'd have no idea it was written 15, 1600 years ago. It's so pertinent.

00;09;46;11 - 00;09;54;18
Joshua Hoffert
And they would go, oh, you know, who's this guy? So, oh, well, he was an Orthodox monk. And but, you know, I didn't realize that they talked the same way. And,

00;09;54;20 - 00;09;56;04
Murray Dueck
Yeah, that's always the comment.

00;09;56;04 - 00;10;14;14
Joshua Hoffert
Isn't it, that it is possible. So that introduced me to Macarius. And so I introduced Andrew and talked him back from the edge that Chris was now joining the Orthodox Church, and maybe he's joining a cult now. That's okay. They're not a cult. They've been around for longer than we have. Yeah. And, and, well, I guess the Mormons have been around for a long time.

00;10;14;14 - 00;10;16;14
Joshua Hoffert
The Charismatics this a little.

00;10;16;14 - 00;10;29;12
Murray Dueck
Talk, a little time chart. I saw, of, I like a timeline of church development. And you see the vineyard, 1978, the Orthodox Church at 33, you know.

00;10;29;12 - 00;10;36;14
Joshua Hoffert
It? Yeah. Like, wow, that's a little different. Like. Yeah, it is pretty funny. So, so that so that, you know, you can.

00;10;36;14 - 00;10;37;19
Murray Dueck
Grow a vineyard, guys.

00;10;37;19 - 00;10;45;26
Joshua Hoffert
You know, but you can, right? So you, Chris, you can thank me that you didn't have to go through a family intervention. Okay. So y well.

00;10;46;00 - 00;10;47;02
Murray Dueck
There you go. You owe.

00;10;47;02 - 00;10;50;29
Joshua Hoffert
Him. Yeah. At least I don't think you had to go through one. Maybe you set it up or. No.

00;10;50;29 - 00;10;59;01
Chris Hawthorne
Well, depends. You can either keep this in or edit it out. But we had our own little tete a tete at a pub where we had.

00;10;59;08 - 00;11;00;20
Joshua Hoffert
Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had.

00;11;00;20 - 00;11;08;22
Chris Hawthorne
A mutual friend who likes to rip off Band-Aids, let's say metaphorically so. And he's like, so, Andrew.

00;11;08;24 - 00;11;11;04
Murray Dueck
How do you. Oh, no, he set you up nicely.

00;11;11;07 - 00;11;11;17
Joshua Hoffert
I mean.

00;11;11;21 - 00;11;27;29
Chris Hawthorne
I don't know whether it was intentional or just in the moment. He thought, hey, here's my opportunity. How do you feel? Like this guy, how do you feel about your brother joining the Orthodox church? And, what started as a theological conversation turned into a very heated argument very quickly.

00;11;28;01 - 00;11;29;03
Joshua Hoffert
Really? Oh, yeah.

00;11;29;03 - 00;11;32;29
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we're both we both take our faith seriously. So, I mean, you got that.

00;11;32;29 - 00;11;35;15
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. That's true. Right? Yeah, that's very true.

00;11;35;15 - 00;11;38;21
Chris Hawthorne
But he resolved probably as quickly that as it started.

00;11;38;29 - 00;11;40;29
Joshua Hoffert
We were were both good guys. Yeah. You guys are.

00;11;41;02 - 00;11;44;27
Chris Hawthorne
Also and fast forward to today and like yeah there's no issues like it's all good.

00;11;44;27 - 00;12;01;02
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah yeah yeah. You guys yeah. You speak very highly of each other for sure. Yeah yeah yeah. And and he was I mean he was he didn't know right. So he was. Yeah. He's intimately concerned. What's my brother getting involved with. And I think that's a good that's a good brotherly thing to do I think so yeah.

00;12;01;04 - 00;12;06;09
Murray Dueck
No. Is your mum and dad both go under the church now too I think I, your mum is writer.

00;12;06;10 - 00;12;10;27
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah. My mum was, Chris made and became orthodox about a year ago now.

00;12;11;00 - 00;12;11;13
Joshua Hoffert
Really?

00;12;11;13 - 00;12;12;28
Murray Dueck
Wow. Isn't that cool?

00;12;12;29 - 00;12;16;11
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah, but your dad still goes to the same old charismatic church, right? Doesn't, you.

00;12;16;11 - 00;12;26;14
Chris Hawthorne
Know, he he's kind of a real steady Eddy kind of guy. He he. Yeah. What he likes. And I think he's comfortable where he is. He'll he'll come and attend with my mum sometimes.

00;12;26;20 - 00;12;33;06
Joshua Hoffert
Sure. Yeah, but but he's been, he's been going to the same church for like 30 years at least. Yeah. Like it's something like that.

00;12;33;09 - 00;12;37;24
Chris Hawthorne
He's just he's a man of routine. He likes what he looks like. Yeah.

00;12;37;24 - 00;12;41;10
Joshua Hoffert
He's he's he's there's a beauty. There's a beauty in that. Right. There's absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

00;12;41;12 - 00;12;46;21
Chris Hawthorne
There's something to be said about simplicity simplicity and, and consistency.

00;12;46;23 - 00;12;58;19
Joshua Hoffert
You know, for sure. For sure. Yeah. So. So if you hadn't caught it yet, this is our friend Chris Hawthorne. And Chris is a, a priest in waiting. Is.

00;12;58;19 - 00;12;59;01
Chris Hawthorne
Well, you know,

00;12;59;08 - 00;13;00;15
Murray Dueck
That's a great way to.

00;13;00;17 - 00;13;01;14
Joshua Hoffert
Quickly,

00;13;01;17 - 00;13;02;10
Chris Hawthorne
It's up to.

00;13;02;12 - 00;13;03;21
Joshua Hoffert
The Lord, good lord.

00;13;03;21 - 00;13;04;05
Chris Hawthorne
But,

00;13;04;08 - 00;13;26;15
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah, yeah. So he serves as a as a deacon in the church of the Holy Nativity, right? That's correct. Church of the Holy Nativity in Langley. Yeah. And, this is Father Mike's church. So many of you would recognize the name father Mike. He's been on the podcast a few different times. And so, Chris, has been going to Father Mike's church for at least the last ten years.

00;13;26;15 - 00;13;27;25
Joshua Hoffert
I don't yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

00;13;27;28 - 00;13;38;17
Chris Hawthorne
We've we have we started attending like 2013 maybe and usually brought in in 2014, 2015. So yeah. Yeah.

00;13;38;18 - 00;14;00;18
Joshua Hoffert
Right. And so now you're and and I mean the whole journey you and deacon to the training for priest and all that stuff, you're, you know, we want to dive into all of that because we're we're just I'm intensely curious. And this is one of the things that we maybe we can start here. Is you in in 2000 you attended Samuel's Mantle.

00;14;00;20 - 00;14;07;26
Joshua Hoffert
Which is the training school that Murray started. Now what 30, 30 years ago. Now at this point.

00;14;07;29 - 00;14;10;08
Murray Dueck
20 year 2000 year 2000.

00;14;10;09 - 00;14;10;27
Joshua Hoffert
Oh so you were.

00;14;11;00 - 00;14;13;10
Murray Dueck
Langley Vineyard, okay. Were area Chris met.

00;14;13;10 - 00;14;20;13
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah, totally. Right. Okay. Which is where Andrew was going to and. Yeah. And that's your title too, right. So yeah.

00;14;20;14 - 00;14;21;26
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah, yeah, totally.

00;14;21;28 - 00;14;40;06
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. So what? You know what, tell us about those early years for you and what what the charismatic vineyard, what your background was like there. What was that like for you growing up there? You mentioned your years of rebellion. Yeah. And, yeah. Tell us a little bit about that.

00;14;40;11 - 00;14;48;28
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah. I had probably a pretty serious come to Jesus moment. Around September 11th, funny enough. So.

00;14;49;00 - 00;14;50;00
Joshua Hoffert
Okay. Right. Yeah.

00;14;50;06 - 00;15;01;21
Chris Hawthorne
I had grown up in the faith. In fact, my family attended the vineyard back in 86 when it was Gary Best and Brian. Yeah, Brian Dirksen was a young man at that point. So. Yeah.

00;15;01;21 - 00;15;02;18
Joshua Hoffert
So all right.

00;15;02;19 - 00;15;31;09
Chris Hawthorne
I grew up there, but I kind of walked away for a while. But yeah, September 11th comes around. I'm pretty dramatic moment, I think, for the Western world in general. Totally. Yep, yep. Deeply. Revelatory for me, I suppose. And so, yeah. So I, got back into, church, kind of rededicated my life to God as best as I could, and then kind of threw myself in full force as far as, like, okay, let's do Sunday school, let's do youth group.

00;15;31;15 - 00;15;38;16
Chris Hawthorne
Oh, hey, Samuel's mantle is a thing. That sounds good. I need that. And so, like, if it was available to me, I was in, What?

00;15;38;18 - 00;16;03;19
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. What was the what? You. So was the revelatory moment, Was it directly related? It was. It just happened to fall in the same time frame. Was it directly related to that? No. Tell us a little like. Yeah, I'm curious that because if you one of the things we've talked about on the podcast is that when you look at the journey of people in Christian history, actually I'm, I've got this new theory, it's not the new, but.

00;16;03;20 - 00;16;25;15
Joshua Hoffert
Oh, that and I'll say this, that, Sola feed my salvation by faith alone. Is it? We should probably re characterize it as sola of a lot Latino salvation by revelation alone, and that God reveals himself, and now it's up to us to respond. It's not about our faith saving us. It's his revelation saving us. So that.

00;16;25;17 - 00;16;42;22
Joshua Hoffert
So I'm curious, like you look at people, people throughout history that had significant moments, like you can come through the that they they're touched by the Holy Spirit, like Anthony the Great, touched by the Holy Spirit, that the preaching of the word when he walks into a church at 18 and goes, I hear you. Here's Isaiah. Yeah.

00;16;42;29 - 00;17;03;16
Joshua Hoffert
Isaiah 18 is it preach that, those your sins are as scarlet. I'll make them white as snow. I think that's Isaiah. I can be wrong, but I know it's in Isaiah. And then that that totally transforms his life. Right. And, and he goes and he sells everything that he has the, these the preaching is on the rich young ruler.

00;17;03;16 - 00;17;33;11
Joshua Hoffert
And he's just thoroughly impacted by the preaching of the word. Right. But then like Pachomius, who is a disciple of Anthony the Great, has an encounter with Christians in the city where he's serving in the Emperor's army and they are living in poor conditions, and Christians come and take care of them. And so he resolves after after his encounter with the Christians in the city, he resolves to go to the first church he finds after his service is over and dedicate his life to the service of Christ.

00;17;33;11 - 00;17;56;00
Joshua Hoffert
Right. But then. And then you have, you have many others who talk about like, plague of the harlot, right where she, Or is it. Yeah. Mary the harlot. Sorry. Mary the harlot, is refused entry into a church. And here's many years of. Yeah, yeah. Mary of Egypt. Yes. Yeah. Refused entry into a church.

00;17;56;00 - 00;18;17;25
Joshua Hoffert
And then here's a voice coming from the icon of Mary telling her, you know, you can't come in here because of all the things that you've done. And so she has a direct personal encounter. And that radically transformed transforms her life. So we, you know, that's metered out through all these different ways. So I'm curious, you're you're, oh, you know, yours is metered out through 911.

00;18;18;01 - 00;18;20;00
Joshua Hoffert
So, yeah. Yeah. So what happened?

00;18;20;00 - 00;18;23;17
Chris Hawthorne
That's yeah, I'll tell you the details around that. So,

00;18;23;20 - 00;18;24;27
Murray Dueck
In my late.

00;18;24;27 - 00;18;42;16
Chris Hawthorne
Teens or early 20s, I was like, moving away from a group of friends who were, just doing unhealthy stuff in general. And in my move to try to get healthy, I kind of distance myself. But then I get into this really dark place where I'm just alone. I'm isolated. So I was in a pretty dark place to begin with.

00;18;42;22 - 00;19;12;05
Chris Hawthorne
Wasn't going to church, hadn't figured out anything, really. And so nine, 11 hits and all that built in rapture theology that we're raised with, it's, it's just tweaking me out. And so I'm like, I had, like, a complete, like, full blown panic attack, probably the whole day. So I just, miss, And so long story short, after a day of just being in that state, I'm, like, physically and mentally exhausted.

00;19;12;05 - 00;19;30;00
Chris Hawthorne
Emotionally exhausted. And so I'm in my parents house in the basement, where my dad had his Bibles and all his books. And I'm, like, talking out loud to God because. Because I'm desperate. I'm like, just a mess. And so I'm like, I haven't figured out this whole Christianity thing. I'm pretty much an idiot. Can you help?

00;19;30;01 - 00;19;37;03
Joshua Hoffert
You can't doom scroll at this point, right? So couldn't supposed to. Thank God I couldn't do this.

00;19;37;05 - 00;19;56;13
Chris Hawthorne
So I didn't I didn't know what to do. So I'm just like like a drowning man grabbing a stuff. So I grab a Bible, I close my eyes, I'm flipping, and I decide to just, you know, do the whole point my finger down. So I open my eyes and I remember exactly it's left page, middle of the page, left hand column.

00;19;56;15 - 00;20;13;06
Chris Hawthorne
It was just wow. It was John 14. Do not let your heart be troubled. Trust in God. And then it goes on to say, you know, it's all the things I basically needed to hear. I have a feel for you. All these things. So in that moment, there was a pretty profound sense, that I had not experienced previously.

00;20;13;06 - 00;20;16;13
Chris Hawthorne
I'm like, there's someone here present with me.

00;20;16;15 - 00;20;16;25
Joshua Hoffert
Right?

00;20;17;02 - 00;20;29;01
Chris Hawthorne
So that, yeah. So, an amazing amount of peace came on at that point. And so, yeah, growing up, it was weird. So I grew up in a very charismatic church, but my most profound, charismatic experience happened outside the church.

00;20;29;03 - 00;20;29;13
Joshua Hoffert
Right.

00;20;29;15 - 00;20;30;21
Murray Dueck
Oh, isn't that interesting?

00;20;30;24 - 00;20;38;10
Chris Hawthorne
Right? Right. Or at least the one that kicked started me heading back in the right direction. Yeah. So I was back.

00;20;38;12 - 00;20;42;26
Murray Dueck
And, you know, for all you guys listening, that's basically how Saint Augustine got saved.

00;20;42;29 - 00;20;45;10
Joshua Hoffert
Just just so you know. Yeah. That's so true. Yeah.

00;20;45;11 - 00;21;01;27
Murray Dueck
Because I was taught at Bible school by teachers just to mark that. I remember that they're like, yeah, they flipped the Bible open and pointed their finger down and it said Judas hug absolve. And they flipped it open again. And the bad passage that God would do likewise, you know, that you would always. So the but Saint Augustine here, he can't convert.

00;21;01;28 - 00;21;19;20
Murray Dueck
He doesn't know what to do. He hears this child's voice. It says, pick up and read. So he picks up the scroll there and basically does the same thing. And he reads this first and goes, that's it. And becoming a Christian, he gets saved. It's Frank. It's a it's a little more dramatic than that. But I'm like, so for the for those of you that.

00;21;19;20 - 00;21;24;10
Murray Dueck
Yeah out there. Yeah. Little old God Saint Augustine one of the biggest converts around.

00;21;24;13 - 00;21;26;20
Joshua Hoffert
So there we go. You know about.

00;21;26;23 - 00;21;28;25
Murray Dueck
Like that man.

00;21;28;27 - 00;21;30;18
Chris Hawthorne
So yeah that was your on things. Yeah.

00;21;30;18 - 00;21;30;22
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah.

00;21;30;22 - 00;21;43;23
Chris Hawthorne
For the heading in that direction. And so at that point because it had been such a profound experience, I was like, okay, I just want more of this. So if there was, something going on at church, I was like, yeah, I'm in, I'm in.

00;21;43;25 - 00;21;44;20
Joshua Hoffert
Right.

00;21;44;22 - 00;21;46;03
Chris Hawthorne
So. Right.

00;21;46;05 - 00;21;50;18
Joshua Hoffert
So when you when you, then you joined Samuel's mantle around that time?

00;21;50;20 - 00;21;59;17
Chris Hawthorne
It was probably shortly afterwards, at the very least. Yeah. Yeah. And so that was like a what at that time it was what, like a weekly thing, like a once a week thing I think went.

00;21;59;17 - 00;22;05;26
Murray Dueck
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably went to 911 was a year 2000. Right. Was it or is 2000 and.

00;22;05;26 - 00;22;07;18
Chris Hawthorne
One 2001. Yeah.

00;22;07;20 - 00;22;11;09
Murray Dueck
Yeah okay. So yeah that was our second year, being in the church. Yeah, yeah.

00;22;11;10 - 00;22;13;04
Chris Hawthorne
There you go. There you go. Right.

00;22;13;06 - 00;22;14;13
Murray Dueck
So yeah.

00;22;14;15 - 00;22;34;28
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah, yeah. So that and so like, I think I was just always hungry to like anything that got me reading scripture, praying anything. I was like, yeah, I'm in. I mean, so, you know, I don't know what that says about my personality, but I was like, I think I just was really hungry for a different way of seeing the world and finding meaning and hope and all the things that we're, we're looking for and hunger for.

00;22;34;28 - 00;22;36;00
Chris Hawthorne
So yeah.

00;22;36;02 - 00;22;39;15
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what were those? What were.

00;22;39;15 - 00;22;43;12
Murray Dueck
Those first? Remember talking about these things back in the day as you bring it up I'm like oh yeah.

00;22;43;17 - 00;23;07;05
Joshua Hoffert
Oh yeah yeah. What what were those first few years like being involved in you know with Samuel's mantle, prophetic ministry. You know, the the okay, we we've we've captured a, a view of the of God, his majesty. His Majesty is mysterious. Yeah. One of one of our one of my good friends likes to say God is bigger than previously thought.

00;23;07;08 - 00;23;15;17
Joshua Hoffert
Right. And so that's not I would I would imagine that that's kind of what your experience like was back then. What was it like? Yeah. Well, in a personal level.

00;23;15;19 - 00;23;21;17
Chris Hawthorne
It makes it made a lot of sense because it validated what I, what I had experienced personally. You know, that God was.

00;23;21;17 - 00;23;22;05
Joshua Hoffert
Right.

00;23;22;05 - 00;23;29;23
Chris Hawthorne
And could be perceived in a real and in often a tangible way. And so I felt like I, I found a tribe, you know, okay.

00;23;29;27 - 00;23;31;00
Murray Dueck
Oh, what is it?

00;23;31;03 - 00;23;46;05
Chris Hawthorne
They normalized it. And then we were kind of on a journey together, you know, you know, more or less. I mean, we met once a week, but it was very friendly, very warm environment. Mary was and still is a very safe person. And so. Yeah. Oh thank you. We're kind of we were kind of on this kind of journey together.

00;23;46;05 - 00;23;50;09
Chris Hawthorne
And it was it was exciting. It was it was yeah. It's good.

00;23;50;12 - 00;24;06;18
Murray Dueck
And the prophetic is always in me. Your dad, Jerry, has always been a prophetic guy. You know, I know him a little bit, even from the early days of the vineyard. Right. He's you know, that's probably why your whole family ended up in the vineyard. You guys have that DNA in your in your in your family. Right.

00;24;06;18 - 00;24;19;26
Joshua Hoffert
So and you know, I wonder I, I maybe I'm maybe this is jumping forward a little bit. That's all good. More but we can we can we can go around murder. Murder. You keep us on track because you know the story to the,

00;24;19;28 - 00;24;21;13
Murray Dueck
You're asking the wrong guy to keep.

00;24;21;19 - 00;24;43;04
Joshua Hoffert
Tracks, right? You're asking the wrong. I'm the other wrong person to keep us on track. For the the tangibility of God. Yeah, right. That was a good statement. Yeah, it was a good statement, I would imagine. And I want to jump too far forward. But I imagine that in the Orthodox Church, you just get more of that, like, right?

00;24;43;04 - 00;24;51;24
Joshua Hoffert
Like his his presence is kind of in, in the, in your, in the liturgy. It's kind of infused into everything. Well, yeah, they're.

00;24;51;27 - 00;25;14;25
Chris Hawthorne
Very, sensory kind of reality to orthodox worship. So. Yeah. And I mean, it's it's really accessible in a sense too, because the kid kids are coming in and they can engage in a very simple way. Right? So we lighting a candle, we're smelling the incense, we're kissing all the icons and all the things right about. So there is a very bottom experience.

00;25;14;27 - 00;25;33;04
Chris Hawthorne
You know, it really. You feel really grounded in yourself in those kinds of spaces. So yeah. And I mean, and if you're reading any Orthodox, lives of the Saints or any literature, there is a very real sense of, yeah, God's real, you know, it's not. Yeah, yeah, it's matter of fact.

00;25;33;07 - 00;25;54;14
Joshua Hoffert
So yeah, I, I remember visiting a, or at my, the Orthodox monastery I was telling you about and, I, you know, in a way, I love that you just kind of show up and there's no training about how you're supposed to engage. You're just, like, assumed. You're just going to get swept up into the into the liturgy.

00;25;54;14 - 00;26;16;27
Joshua Hoffert
And I was only person at the, no, actually, I think I was with a friend, but it's just the three monks doing the liturgy. And it was the early morning on the six, five, six, and one. And it was the liturgy was to the, the third finding of the head of John the Baptist. Haha, yeah, yeah, third finding the third.

00;26;17;00 - 00;26;17;29
Joshua Hoffert
All us, you know.

00;26;18;04 - 00;26;19;12
Chris Hawthorne
Heads of our saints.

00;26;19;14 - 00;26;21;17
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. Not my my.

00;26;21;19 - 00;26;26;15
Chris Hawthorne
But someone comes in, forcibly sacks our town and takes off with our stuff.

00;26;26;16 - 00;26;50;27
Joshua Hoffert
Takes off, and then eventually you find it. And I found his head off. Yeah, they had, got it. I had to Google it afterwards because I was like the third finding of the head of John the Baptist. What the heck is that about? Right. Yeah. And anyway, but my my point in saying that all is that that one of the reasons why the relics of the saints were so profoundly important is because they were looked at as carrying the essence of holiness, right?

00;26;50;27 - 00;27;08;03
Joshua Hoffert
The the physical, the physical, tangible. Oh, yeah. Presence of God in the saint was there in the bones or whatever, right. Or in the cloak or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And that's a totally different way of seeing the world, really, when you start to be confronted with it. Yeah.

00;27;08;06 - 00;27;32;00
Chris Hawthorne
It is kind of dialing the dial up to 11 in the sense, especially when you get to flex because like, there's nothing more like earthy than seeing the skull of someone that that is a saint that you read about. And it's like, right. The I actually had the blessing last summer. They, unearthed the the grave of Saint, Raphael of Brooklyn.

00;27;32;02 - 00;27;57;02
Chris Hawthorne
And, I wasn't there for the, the unearthing, but I was there afterward. And they had his skull and in a glass jar there for veneration, which I'm not familiar with. Orthodoxy. And I'm still acclimatizing to the culture. Right. I believe I'm bought in theologically, and I'm starting to get a sense of things, but there is still something very different.

00;27;57;02 - 00;28;01;18
Chris Hawthorne
Being a Western person, being in the presence of body parts, right?

00;28;01;22 - 00;28;02;21
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah.

00;28;02;24 - 00;28;26;26
Chris Hawthorne
You're right. It's a skull in the jar. So you have to go. Okay. But it was unbelievable to think, okay, this is the saint I read about. And then when I was on Patmos, in 2019, Patmos being the island that John was exiled to, where he had his revelation that became a book of revelation. Yeah. I got to see the chains of Saint John that he was.

00;28;26;26 - 00;28;36;20
Chris Hawthorne
Oh my God. Yeah, exactly. I wasn't anticipating that, but we were brought to a monastery and brought to their reliquary, and the translator told us, oh, these are the chains of Saint John.

00;28;36;23 - 00;28;37;10
Joshua Hoffert
Oh, my.

00;28;37;11 - 00;28;59;22
Chris Hawthorne
Wow. Exactly. So. And there's a part of your brain that can't quite like you're seeing it. You're hearing it. You just you've got no gauge for these things, like. But it really brings home. Oh, oh, this is, this is another level of reality, you know, goes well beyond this pious story. Okay. So yeah, I mean orthodoxy is very tactile, intangible.

00;28;59;22 - 00;29;20;03
Joshua Hoffert
And like, you know, there's something there's something to that. I, I was in, Munich, about a year and a half ago. Two years ago? Yeah. My, my family and I were doing a trip to Singapore. We were working with some churches out there, and we had a ten hour layover in Munich. And so we took the, the bus into the town happened to be in October.

00;29;20;10 - 00;29;41;05
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. So October Fest had just begun, which was wonderful. We went down and had beer and protein and, and, you know, beer crisp autumn morning actually was kind of morning, you know, we're having a beer and there's tons of people out. It was wonderful. Anyway, great experience. We wandered the city, so we ended up in, Saint Peter's, which is the big church in the middle of Munich.

00;29;41;10 - 00;30;01;22
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah, it's a Catholic church. And they and as were wandering through, they had a few different displays where they had the bones of a saint, the whole skeleton. And one was Saint Mendieta, I think was a woman. Okay. Maybe the 1600s or something like that. Yeah. But the other one was Saint John. Aratus, the desert father from the fourth century.

00;30;01;22 - 00;30;22;12
Joshua Hoffert
They had his bones entombed and you could see them. And I was like, just stumbled upon it. I had been, I had I'd read and studied about Saint on Aratus and I was like, what the heck? Its bones are right here. You know, this is crazy, right? I know there was something to the profound nature of seeing this right in front of me.

00;30;22;12 - 00;30;43;11
Joshua Hoffert
Right? And there's there's something unsettling to the Western mind, too, I think, just of death and decay. Yeah. And then there was something. We're so far removed from it. Right. But I was like, I, you know, I was I was wrestling with different emotions and thoughts like, this is amazing. Like, I want to touch them, but I'm not allowed to reach into the glass case and it's all under lock and key.

00;30;43;11 - 00;30;54;28
Joshua Hoffert
And yeah, I'm like, this is this is wow. Like, it's almost like, thank you, father, for arranging this. I didn't think I was ever I never considered the fact that to be able to see that. Yeah. So they, they feed from them.

00;30;55;00 - 00;31;23;22
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah. There definitely is a very strong, physicality to Orthodoxy that adds a layer to our I think Gen general desires Christians to want God to be real. Right. Because I think and that's what you were talking about before, you know, that's the back door, our back alley. We share, right? The Charismatics and the Orthodox both have this strong desire and belief, I think rightly place that God is real in all the ways that that word means.

00;31;23;22 - 00;31;27;22
Chris Hawthorne
Like here, present and manifest and all the things you know well.

00;31;27;22 - 00;31;51;16
Joshua Hoffert
And and I think, you know, there's something there's there's definitely something to that and there's something that is, that's kind of germane to human to being human that I don't, I don't think we get away from that. And, and even though our culture tells us it's weird and all that kind of stuff, but there's like, I remember, my, my oh, he's been on the podcast before.

00;31;51;16 - 00;32;21;18
Joshua Hoffert
My friend Colin, the Anglican priest. Yeah. So we were talking about communion, and, you know, the presence of Jesus in communion and, call coming through, presence of Jesus in communion. And you know, how they Anglicans look at that and how the Orthodox look about the how they, how the Catholics and and then how the evangelicals, you know, symbol versus real presence, whether that's a mystery, whether whatever, you know, we were talking whatever, that's different ways whatever they whenever that means.

00;32;21;18 - 00;32;38;10
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. And and he said, you evangelicals like you, you don't believe in the presence of Jesus, like in the it's just a symbol. So but I bet you if you took a bunch of evangelicals and you told them to put the elements on the ground and stomp on them, you'd have a problem doing it.

00;32;38;13 - 00;32;41;16
Murray Dueck
Yeah, exactly. Good, good good, good.

00;32;41;16 - 00;33;07;00
Joshua Hoffert
Well, you know, because there's something in us that goes. But that's not okay. Those things are holy, you know, and and so I think there is, there is. Yes. This and and that's the thing about like we find, we kind of find ways to fool ourselves into thinking, oh, you know, the, the, the, you know, lots of evangelical churches would look at the sanctuary as a holy place set apart.

00;33;07;01 - 00;33;16;27
Joshua Hoffert
Well, it's just a building, so, but, you know, but then as soon as you're like, well, I can't see a swear word in here. That would be bad. Yes. Right. You got to act differently here.

00;33;17;04 - 00;33;24;13
Chris Hawthorne
And so. Right. Maybe we should pay attention to some of those unspoken kind of things in us that go hang on a second and they hang.

00;33;24;13 - 00;33;25;07
Joshua Hoffert
On a second.

00;33;25;08 - 00;33;26;00
Chris Hawthorne
They give us pause.

00;33;26;00 - 00;33;44;00
Joshua Hoffert
Wait. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Or or or the charismatic guys are like, well, there's, you know, we're going to put flaggers in front of it and they're going to flag. And you know, people are going, well, that's weird, but there's something about it that moves me and I don't know what, you know. And it's like, well, we've all of a sudden we've looked at it and go, there's more meaning to this than we think.

00;33;44;00 - 00;34;12;22
Joshua Hoffert
And it's not a symbol because I'm engaging with something. And then and I love one of the things I love about, well, the Orthodox in the Catholic and is going, you guys go, yeah, of course. Like, duh. Yeah. Of course. And then, hey, by the way, hey, we've been doing this for 2000 years, and we're still doing the same thing and saying there's there's a way that encounter encountering God is metered out through physical, tangible reality around.

00;34;12;22 - 00;34;14;12
Chris Hawthorne
Us. Mentality. Yeah.

00;34;14;19 - 00;34;17;05
Joshua Hoffert
Sacrament ality. There you go. Yeah, yeah. That's right.

00;34;17;05 - 00;34;37;03
Murray Dueck
You know, I, I think just for those listening, it might be good to think about this too. I kind of maybe even a deeper level because, we just have it passed out. It's such a different way. I mean, we would we would believe. Hey, anointing oil. Yeah. That God's on that, you know? What about baptism? Yeah, that's a physical thing.

00;34;37;03 - 00;34;44;16
Murray Dueck
That's water. Yeah. I'm going in there. That the God's on that Paul prayed over cloak clause. They put him on people. They got healed.

00;34;44;24 - 00;34;49;12
Joshua Hoffert
Hey of televangelists will wipe their claws on sweat and send them to people for.

00;34;49;12 - 00;35;05;09
Murray Dueck
Who is going to beat people with his jacket? You better believe it. But I remember father Mike said to me about about, Paul and those claws. He says, what do you think they did with them? Throw them in the trash when they're done? No, they kept them. Yeah, right. Because because the presence was on. They kept them.

00;35;05;12 - 00;35;09;05
Murray Dueck
And that becomes a relic, right? Because the presence of God was all in it.

00;35;09;07 - 00;35;33;09
Joshua Hoffert
It's funny about, Yeah. Yeah, it's it's funny just thinking this is a side note to that modern culture. We it's so easy to discard something and not consider it precious. Yeah. Because we just look. Yeah, it's just made in China, you know, it's like we're we're it's the same thing when we look at like, this is interesting where we look at, like, you know, in the charismatic context.

00;35;33;09 - 00;36;00;04
Joshua Hoffert
And Chris, you'd be familiar with this too, is we look at something like in first Corinthians 12, it talks about how we might get a word of knowledge as one of the spiritual gifts, right? That, that and and how we think, well, that means in the, in a prophetic, charismatic teaching, we would go, oh, well, that means, that you're going to know something about someone, their address, their phone number.

00;36;00;04 - 00;36;21;21
Joshua Hoffert
You know, something. Yeah. And that's how we typically shot. I'm not I'm not saying that's wrong or anything, but I'm going. The thing is knowledge. And this is where we totally we totally are removed from what the scriptures actually say. And our present experience is the the knowledge and knowledge in the ancient world was very difficult to come by.

00;36;21;24 - 00;36;26;06
Joshua Hoffert
It wasn't easy to come by. And today it's like it's at the touch of our fingertips.

00;36;26;06 - 00;36;26;25
Chris Hawthorne
The Google search.

00;36;26;28 - 00;36;47;05
Joshua Hoffert
So, so knowledge must mean something special, like their date of birth or whatever. Right? Where back then when Paul's talking about knowledge, he's probably not envisioning that because he's going. Knowledge is something that is very difficult to come by. And if someone knows something about the world, it's like, wow, you knew that. That's that is.

00;36;47;08 - 00;36;47;19
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah.

00;36;47;19 - 00;36;52;28
Joshua Hoffert
And it was a difficult thing to acquire. And today is an easy thing to acquire. And so, yeah, we I.

00;36;52;28 - 00;37;05;18
Chris Hawthorne
Mean, even still to there's different, different ways of looking at knowledge like knowledge as a data set versus knowledge as like sure maitri. And so like there's layers and layers of like yeah. What does it mean to know.

00;37;05;20 - 00;37;27;07
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And the more yeah the more I read that stuff a more I'm like, I don't know if you're reading this and seeing what the original author's intended and what the Holy Spirit wants us to see because of the lens we've pulled over ourselves. And Western culture has pulled over us. Yeah. And. Yeah. And I yeah.

00;37;27;09 - 00;37;39;02
Chris Hawthorne
There's all those layers of accretion and and culture and various things that you just take for granted until, until something else kind of pokes in from the side and you're like, oh, wait a second, maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been there.

00;37;39;02 - 00;38;01;09
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. Yeah, I think I you're yeah. That's right. You're wearing the, the clothes to prove that you've been there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so what was the when when on that trajectory, you're in the vineyard church. You're part of Samuel's mantle. You're you're learning these things. You're you've found your tribe. You don't feel alone anymore in the same sense.

00;38;01;09 - 00;38;11;19
Joshua Hoffert
Right. So what was your first introduction to, like, where where did you learn? Like, the Orthodox Church was a thing, right? Yeah.

00;38;11;20 - 00;38;17;20
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great question because, I mean, we don't have a great PR campaign, as I'm always saying, we don't. Yeah.

00;38;17;23 - 00;38;30;03
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. That's right. Yeah. That's right. So, evangelical church spends buku money on making great PR campaigns and they're bleeding people left, right and center. Yeah. And, you know, so.

00;38;30;05 - 00;38;49;22
Chris Hawthorne
We're all wanting, people to, you know, totally encounter the reality. Jesus. So, you know, hey, you know, you do what you can. But my I'm trying I'm trying to remember when. Exactly. Because it was kind of an organic process. Because at the time that it was on, on the map for me or or showed up on the map for me.

00;38;49;22 - 00;39;17;13
Chris Hawthorne
I was working, with youth for Christ, also known as Youth Unlimited. So I was doing like, working with community kids and trying to help them in all the ways that you can help a human being practically, emotionally. And then if they're open to discussions about, the faith. Yeah, 100%, we'd have those discussions. But in that process, you know, community kids, don't know about, like, polite Christian cultural, you know?

00;39;17;13 - 00;39;19;00
Chris Hawthorne
Okay. Yeah.

00;39;19;02 - 00;39;20;16
Joshua Hoffert
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

00;39;20;18 - 00;39;42;19
Chris Hawthorne
And so they'll just call you on it if it's, you know, of course, they're like, no, I don't believe in that. And so I had I had to start wrestling a little more harder than I had previously. So there's a bit of that. And then at the time, too, I don't know where I was at or why I was at this place, but I was like that really having, like, a real what we would have called a dry season, you know, but.

00;39;42;21 - 00;39;44;21
Joshua Hoffert
But dark night of the,

00;39;44;24 - 00;39;49;12
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah, yeah. And that had lasted. Oh, goodness. Like, probably five years of this.

00;39;49;12 - 00;39;58;04
Joshua Hoffert
Are you allowed to say that as an Orthodox because it's a Catholic guy? Yeah, it's a Catholic guy. I mean, know the cross is a bit controversial to the Orthodox guys, right?

00;39;58;07 - 00;40;02;28
Chris Hawthorne
Well, I mean, we can talk about that. I the idea is pretty universally human. So.

00;40;03;00 - 00;40;04;09
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. That's right. Very well.

00;40;04;09 - 00;40;08;06
Chris Hawthorne
Said. I don't need to say that is necessarily from what he was expelled.

00;40;08;08 - 00;40;13;04
Joshua Hoffert
Or we've tracked it back to, we've tracked it back to Mona's, the Bishop and stuff. So that's not what I'm.

00;40;13;04 - 00;40;29;16
Chris Hawthorne
Saying, right? Like it's a yeah, yeah idea that you're in a dark or dry place, whatever that might look like. It's pretty universal. Yeah, yeah. So I was there and I was trying to make sense of it as a charismatic and and not I was not sitting with it. Well, it was.

00;40;29;16 - 00;40;50;25
Joshua Hoffert
Up to what? So let let's just just as we're as you're going through that, let's just dive into that a little bit. Right. Because because the charismatic experience. Yeah. What you pick up culturally and you can correct me if this was if this wasn't what you pick up culturally is that, is that for a spiritual person, you're always supposed to be up here?

00;40;50;27 - 00;40;59;05
Joshua Hoffert
That's the this is like the height of. Yeah. I remember the first time I read about the theory of dispassion. I was like, what? Yeah.

00;40;59;08 - 00;41;00;24
Chris Hawthorne
Sounds a little Buddhist, right?

00;41;00;27 - 00;41;21;26
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. Like what? Like one. Yeah. And so. So what was it like being in that low dry season and being in an environment where you were considered Uber spiritual if you were the most quote unquote alive, right. Like what was your experience like in the, in your church, in your community at that point?

00;41;21;29 - 00;41;42;25
Chris Hawthorne
It was honestly, it was really tough. And for other you've kind of already, you know, highlighted, because, yeah, it's not. And that was the thing that really actually probably made it even more hard. It wasn't explicit. No one explicitly would say, if you are not feeling this or this or this or this, you're a bad Christian. In fact, you're probably talking about it.

00;41;42;25 - 00;41;53;08
Chris Hawthorne
They would probably try to, you know, steer it in a way to kind of normalize it. Right. But implicitly, culture non-verbally, 100%. That was a thing like.

00;41;53;10 - 00;41;53;26
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

00;41;53;27 - 00;42;07;08
Chris Hawthorne
Right. So and so yeah, I wrestled with with anger in terms of like, why do we teach this and show shame? Because I was like, well, clearly I'm not a good Christian, you know?

00;42;07;08 - 00;42;07;27
Joshua Hoffert
Right, right.

00;42;07;27 - 00;42;17;15
Chris Hawthorne
And vacillated back and forth between those two things, trying to wrestle with it theologically or emotionally. And then while this is happening, my kids are three and one.

00;42;17;18 - 00;42;19;03
Joshua Hoffert
And I test them.

00;42;19;05 - 00;42;41;00
Chris Hawthorne
Verbally out with my wife and I'm realizing, yeah, I'm modeling what I believe and think about the church. This is not good. I better figure this out pretty darn quick. Right? Right. So I don't know how long it was. It was probably a good couple of years of this real wrestling and frustration and trying to go and so it brought me down to some real core questions like, so what is the point of church?

00;42;41;00 - 00;42;53;26
Chris Hawthorne
You know, so I went to like my pastor friends and my youth pastor friends. Everyone had an answer, but it was it was a little crazy realizing how much of a variety of answers there were. Variety of.

00;42;53;26 - 00;42;54;14
Joshua Hoffert
MH.

00;42;54;20 - 00;43;08;18
Chris Hawthorne
Right? And so right. It didn't sort it out from there was something that really stuck out. So yeah. And around that time Brad Jr. Zach was okay, okay. About his own journey. Right. And so Brad.

00;43;08;19 - 00;43;10;14
Joshua Hoffert
He's he's Bucky's orthodox now, right?

00;43;10;14 - 00;43;14;14
Chris Hawthorne
He's. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I believe he's a reader. His, he that's right.

00;43;14;14 - 00;43;14;20
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah.

00;43;14;21 - 00;43;30;06
Chris Hawthorne
We have similar robes as this. Yeah. So he was on his own journey. And because he was well known in charismatic circles and I respected him as like, okay, so I was reading along and so he, he probably played a pretty big role in putting it on the map for me. I just was saying like.

00;43;30;06 - 00;43;30;18
Joshua Hoffert
Okay.

00;43;30;20 - 00;43;32;06
Chris Hawthorne
Brad Jr. Zach.

00;43;32;09 - 00;43;32;23
Murray Dueck
Oh, yes.

00;43;32;23 - 00;43;42;15
Chris Hawthorne
Yes. Is blogging at that time kind of put Orthodoxy on the map for me? Yeah. After that, you know, it's it's a Google here or Google there.

00;43;42;17 - 00;43;44;05
Joshua Hoffert
Everywhere a Google Google. Right.

00;43;44;08 - 00;43;52;29
Chris Hawthorne
So all this stuff is coming in and it's, it's opening the horizons up to questions. I had didn't even know I had. Right.

00;43;53;04 - 00;43;53;21
Joshua Hoffert
Oh yes.

00;43;53;21 - 00;44;15;15
Chris Hawthorne
Yes. Yeah. And so this is about a, a two year process of, of reading, of thinking about new concepts theologically, new ways of seeing stuff. And then Father Michael came on the radar. Yes. And that guy. Yeah. Right. And so we had a whole bunch of one on one coffees where I would ask questions, what does the Orthodox Church believe about this?

00;44;15;17 - 00;44;23;26
Chris Hawthorne
And, he was well, it's kind of like this, and it's kind of like this. And for the first while, I just thought he was being evasive.

00;44;23;29 - 00;44;25;21
Joshua Hoffert
So it was,

00;44;25;24 - 00;44;56;18
Chris Hawthorne
But but as things went on, I realized how much, paradoxes within are Orthodox here. Yeah, Orthodoxy is paradoxes. Father Thomas Hopkirk said so. Yeah. Yes. It made it answered questions that I didn't know I had and and brought a broader, scope of vision. So, yeah. So once that was on the table, I didn't know at the time, but like, my time was limited right in where I was.

00;44;56;21 - 00;45;13;13
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah. Like, it was a matter of time before I knew I was going to be switching switching camps or. What do you want to call it? Which was a bit of a shock at first. I mean, it isn't. It isn't. Sure, I try to avoid the word conversion around my friends because it sounds too hard, right? Yeah.

00;45;13;16 - 00;45;30;14
Chris Hawthorne
Right. Or or almost got an implicit judgment to it. And I don't mean that, but there was for me a pretty dramatic shift that started happening. And so I was like, what does this mean? And and we, my wife Rob and I, we had to wrestle that out because I was working for an evangelical organization at the time.

00;45;30;14 - 00;45;31;03
Chris Hawthorne
And so, like.

00;45;31;09 - 00;45;31;22
Joshua Hoffert
Yes.

00;45;31;25 - 00;45;38;02
Chris Hawthorne
Any kind of switch could mean, okay, new job. Right. So yeah, the.

00;45;38;02 - 00;45;41;05
Murray Dueck
Big deal, little kids. Yes. Absolutely. Right. Begin.

00;45;41;10 - 00;46;09;08
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah. So we had had some hard questions to ask ourselves. But yeah, that was kind of kind of the shape of things. And eventually we started visiting and it was like one Sunday holding the tivity one Sunday at our, our church and then eventually because and then we would do this to we would keep the kids in our church regular church for stability and the other one would get to visit and eventually both owned up to each other that we didn't want to be back at the other church with the kids.

00;46;09;08 - 00;46;30;03
Chris Hawthorne
We'd both rather be there. There you go. Yeah. So we had that, and so we thought, okay, so I guess is if that's the case, I guess, you know, we need to have some bigger conversations. So, yeah. Wow. Yeah. That was 20 2014 2013. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. But it was you. You nailed it right at the outset.

00;46;30;03 - 00;46;44;03
Chris Hawthorne
There was this, emotionality to to what it meant to be a Christian that, I mean, I'm very naturally an emotional person. So it it really worked for me for a period of time until it right anymore.

00;46;44;05 - 00;46;44;13
Joshua Hoffert
Right?

00;46;44;13 - 00;46;53;17
Chris Hawthorne
It didn't. And then once it didn't. Yeah. There was the anger, the shame. Yeah, it was it was a bit of a mess for a while. There.

00;46;53;19 - 00;47;13;24
Joshua Hoffert
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What, what would you say was the could you point to when it comes to coming out of that low period. Right. And. Oh yes. Starting, starting to go. Maybe there's not something wrong with me or maybe everything's wrong with me. I'm finally okay with it. Right.

00;47;14;00 - 00;47;41;05
Chris Hawthorne
Well you know and that was the piece I think Orthodoxy. It didn't, it didn't suggest that things were going to quote unquote, get better emotionally like better. Right. But it normalized it. I remember I mentioned I had problems with Father Michael, where he talks about, the Church Fathers comparing the journey of the Israelites out of Egypt and through the desert to the Promised Land.

00;47;41;05 - 00;48;02;06
Chris Hawthorne
As this is the lake, this is the the spiritual life of all of us. You know, we start a journey and it's wonderful and very emotional. You know, we're becoming free. All the bad things are behind us, and we're heading toward the promised land. And then we get to the desert. And what does it look like? Well, it looks like I'm grumbling a lot.

00;48;02;06 - 00;48;11;25
Chris Hawthorne
I feel like I'm going in circles. I feel kind of lost. Lost? Right. But I'm. What is it for? It's a preparatory stage for the promised Land, right?

00;48;11;26 - 00;48;12;11
Joshua Hoffert
Amen.

00;48;12;12 - 00;48;30;25
Chris Hawthorne
Yeah, yeah. So we don't have to feel ashamed that most of our life is a struggle because that's normal. And I was like, oh, okay. So I don't I don't I don't emotionally feel any different, but at least I don't have to wrestle with any kind of shame or anger, because I realize that the spiritual life is a struggle.

00;48;31;00 - 00;48;53;15
Chris Hawthorne
Right? And so it has moments of this and up and down, and that's normal. So when it's good, thank God, and when it's bad or hard, thank God. And so I was like, okay, I think I can do this. You know, it's either I can be, you know, a crappy Christian over here and feel bad about it, or I can be a crappy Christian over here, and at least it's on.

00;48;53;17 - 00;48;54;09
Chris Hawthorne
It's on me if I.

00;48;54;09 - 00;48;56;14
Murray Dueck
Feel saved in community.

00;48;56;16 - 00;48;57;09
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah, right.

00;48;57;09 - 00;49;10;16
Chris Hawthorne
You know, and that's. That was the other thing too, right? Coming, coming to this reality that, you know, we're saved together, you know, like my brother is my life. Is Saint Cyril on set, right? Oh, yeah. My brother is my. And so the I.

00;49;10;18 - 00;49;12;11
Murray Dueck
Wow. I've heard that that's.

00;49;12;14 - 00;49;33;21
Chris Hawthorne
The idea that my spirituality you might hear here we gonna go we might upset some people here. My salvation is tied to how I treat you, how I love you or fail to love you, right? I mean, but that's just like, you know, that's Jesus in the parable of the goats and the sheep. You know? Right. What do you do unto the the least of these you do to me.

00;49;33;21 - 00;49;40;01
Chris Hawthorne
Right? So, of course, you know, my spiritual health is, is is tied to you, which is like.

00;49;40;03 - 00;49;40;18
Joshua Hoffert
There were this.

00;49;40;21 - 00;49;57;07
Murray Dueck
Yeah, one monk saying I but could have been Celine, but I because I don't remember who it was. But I'm like, Josh, I should write these things down because Josh, it's like he's got it. He's got it down in footnotes. And he and he goes to his, his, his, his abbot and he's weeping and he goes, I can find brother so-and-so in my heart.

00;49;57;10 - 00;50;17;04
Murray Dueck
And it is such a big deal to him that he's crying like, you realize as well, he's not there. I've judged him and and like, wow, you know, it's all right. I think, maybe it was father solution said, a few charismatic, you like, know this will make more sense to you. He's asked what is a sure sign of being filled with the Holy Spirit.

00;50;17;07 - 00;50;26;10
Murray Dueck
And he says, a sure sign of being filled with this Holy Spirit is to love your enemies, because it's only by the power of the spirit that you could do. So I'm like, yeah.

00;50;26;10 - 00;50;26;19
Joshua Hoffert
Wow.

00;50;26;19 - 00;50;28;26
Murray Dueck
Okay. Like that's true. Yeah.

00;50;28;28 - 00;50;38;00
Chris Hawthorne
That'll be one for for Saint. So he's very much like, that's just some friends of the Holy Spirit with that. Yeah. Look, just like the.

00;50;38;02 - 00;50;41;11
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah I know it's like the Florida mercy. Yeah.