Bay Area Theology Podcast
Theology from the Bay, for the Bay.
The Bay Area Theology Podcast features conversations that seek to discern and discover the presence and purpose of the Christian God at work in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Bay Area Theology Podcast
Episode 5 - Pursuing Much Joy in Our Cities and Throughout the Bay Area with Phillip Lee
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In this episode, we are joined by Phillip Lee, pastor of Hope Community Church in Fremont and serves as the Executive Director for CityServe in the Fremont Tri-Cities.
Philip shares a bit of his story -- how he came to know and love Christ, how he pursued a call to ministry and was given opportunities to serve and lead at a very young age, yet he saw God bless his ministry.
As we talked about the Bay Area, we discussed the effects and results of sin as well as the power of the Gospel power to change lives. We discuss challenges and stresses that pastors experience in ministry and the necessity of keeping a clear and Christ-focused mindset. We also dabble a little bit into the differences between Presbyterians and Baptist and how various traditions may address things differently given the situation and timing.
There are some parts of this conversation you will want to take with you. You can listen here or on Youtube.
More information about CityServe can be found here. And more about Compassion Network can be found here.
To learn more about this podcast and more that we are doing, you can go to bayareatheology.org.
This is a podcast of Bayseed Collective. Learn more at bayseed.org.
This is Theology from the Bay, for the Bay.
You are listening to the Bay Area Theology Podcast. Theology from the Bay for the Bay. This podcast has been brought to you by Bayseed Collective. Learn more about it at Bayseed.org. In this podcast, we host conversations with local ministry and thought leaders on theology, ministry, culture, and life in the Bay Area with Dr. Cameron Schweitzer and Ricky Blaha. Everyone's a theologian. That's right.
SPEAKER_05Everyone. Hi guys, welcome to the Bay Area Theology Podcast. This is your host, Cameron Schweitzer, the director of Gateway Seminary here in the Bay Area, professor of theology. Today, my esteemed guest is Philip Lee, Dr. Reverend Philip Lee, and the director. Are you the director, executive director of CityServe?
SPEAKER_08They call me executive director.
SPEAKER_05Phil, thank you for coming and thank you for taking time to chat with me about theology here in the Bay Area. So, as we mentioned ahead of time, can you spend a little bit of time introducing yourself to our listener out there and uh tell us about your life story and how you went from I've totally forget wherever you're from to now be pastoring a precious hearing church here in the San Francisco Bay Area?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's a joy and privilege to spend time with you, Cameron. I appreciate you. You're a voice and a means by which I am deeply sanctified always, and I always learn something from you.
SPEAKER_05Sanctifying voice, oh boy. I would have said yes, I am a voice, but then you added the sanctifying voice.
SPEAKER_00Definitely am a voice, I'll give you that. God sanctifies through different means.
SPEAKER_05That's right. I'm the uh Balam's ass. So that's me. So we're said it. Now I'm just you yourself said it.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, well, you know, born and raised in Denver, Colorado. Really? So you can take the guy out of Colorado, but you it's gonna be hard pressed to take the Colorado of the guy, you know.
SPEAKER_05What does that mean? You have no accent, like you're not actually the warm clothing.
SPEAKER_08The accent comes out when I pronounce mountain versus mountain. Mountain. See, this is how okay, this is an insider trick here, okay? You know you're from the 303, you know you're from the Denver area. If you pronounce mountain as mountain.
SPEAKER_00Mountain.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Instead of mountain.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_00That's pretty cool. I've never heard that before. Really?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, that's that's cool. And uh sorry, guys.
SPEAKER_05What does it mean that you can't take the Denver out of the guy, but you can take the guy out of Denver? What in the world did that entail?
SPEAKER_08I'm gonna love dogs. I'm always gonna wish I had a Subaru. Uh, you know what I mean? Like I love hiking, mountaineering, camping, snow, okay, skiing all my life. So uh all the things. The Broncos, yes, tried and true. You know, Denver is a huge sports city, right? You got the Rockies, you got the Avalanche, you got the Broncos, you got the Nuggets. Apparently, now's the the time to be a Nuggets fan, but I unfortunately haven't been keeping up. Yeah, so born and raised there, and then uh grew up in a Christian house. So my parents came to faith a year right before I was born, right? And so I grew up with their faith.
SPEAKER_03And did that you're Korean, right?
SPEAKER_08Korean Americans.
SPEAKER_03Did they immigrate or you immigrate with them?
SPEAKER_08No, I was born here. I was born in Denver, and my parents immigrated in '84. For work, school? Yeah, school. My dad wanted to uh pursue computer science, and there was a program at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and it was a flagship kind of pioneer program by IBM. And so he had the privilege to get accepted to that program and moved our family over here. And my parents, uh, as I mentioned, they were not Christians when they came. And they were also not expecting to have me. So when they got pregnant with me, my mom actually, uh, you know, not knowing much English, was actually considering an abortion. Oh my word. Yeah. So she went around the Denver Mentor area trying to find a Korean-speaking gynecologist, and there was only one, and it just so happened to be she was a Christian. Wow. And so uh in that consultation, you know, my my mom is young and afraid, and we're very uh not well to do financially, and all our money is going to my dad's program. And so, and I also have an older brother, five years older. So my mom is telling this gynecologist her her fears and worries and her thoughts, and then she just tells her, hey, this is not a mistake. God has a purpose and a plan, trust him, and begin to pray. And from that appointment forward, one by one, God just started to send people and all sorts of resources and opportunities that just made no sense. My mom got a letter in the mail one day from a distant aunt. She hadn't talked to in months or years or whatnot. And then that aunt said, uh, I had a dream that you guys needed a certain dollar amount of money, and that was the exact amount of money she needed to pay rent for that. Oh my word, that's awesome. And so all these things started happening, and then so lo and behold, by God's grace, I was born. Um, came to faith when I was in the eighth grade. By the time I was in the eighth grade, I had tried to find my meaning and purpose and all sorts of different things, and never really found my purpose and place.
SPEAKER_03Were you guys going to Korean church?
SPEAKER_08We were. We're going to a PC USA church in northern Denver.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Korean only or like multi-ethnic? What was it?
SPEAKER_08You know, at the time it was it was only Korean. Uh, and also at the time, uh the church was less about being a church, more about being a like a social gathering place, right? For immigrants and peace finding people that speak your language and from the same country. And so that was, you know, one of the reasons my parents went, but I had a a very stringent, uniquely uh fundamental youth pastor at the time. You know, he was one to rebuke my cousin for wearing jeans on a Sunday. I had another friend who didn't shave and led worship, and he got reprimanded for that.
SPEAKER_05And so my initial What would you have said if you're like, hey, this the text says let your beard grow long?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, right? Greet each other with a holy kiss, right? These kind of things.
SPEAKER_05So this was a conservative PC USA church.
SPEAKER_08It was uh with the exception of this oral robbers graduate youth pastor who uh you know had a different stream of thought.
SPEAKER_05But he was like hyper conservative.
SPEAKER_08He was, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Simply now the PC USA is considered more progressive Protestant than true, yeah.
SPEAKER_08But a lot of Korean PC USA churches I've noticed are are not still pretty conservative, yeah. Because you guys are a very conservative people. I think so, yeah. Whereas Kelly would say traditional kind of family system values and things like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So, anyways, you're under under this youth pastor going to PC USA church.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, and how'd you come to faith? Me myself, I was uh getting mixed up into some uh poor quality friends in many ways, you know, kind of dealing drugs and getting in fights. Oh my gosh, really? Yeah, and I was I was a rebellious as a middle schooler? As a middle schooler, man. Did you win? As a scrawny little Asian kid, I did it. Yeah, I my grandmother, who did a good portion of raising me at that time because my parents were so busy working, she had a dream that I was burning in a lake of fire. And she said, You need to go to my church's youth retreat. Please, I'm begging you. And I was like, I don't know, this youth pastor is kind of crazy, and I don't really know about this church, but I went because I loved and honored my grandmother. And on the last night of the youth retreat, they sang Matt Remon's heart of worship. And that chorus was used by the spirit to just prick me into the direction of repentance and interest and fascination about why do I feel guilty? Why do I feel like I need to say sorry to Jesus for the way I've been living? I don't understand these things. I haven't really spent time in my in the Bible or even amongst Christian friends. And so that took me on a journey of exploring faith in Christianity until I met two youth pastors, my junior year of high school, and they introduced me to the doctrines of grace and spent a lot of time discipling into what is the true gospel. And following about a year of discipleship under uh, you know, with their friendship and discipleship, two things happened. One is I believe I was born again at that time, and number two, I started to feel a deep frustration about how I was first exposed to the gospel. And I started to want to do what these guys did and wanted to share the gospel of grace in a very articulate and relevant way. How old were you at the time? I was a senior or so in high school. And um, and so I started I went to my high school Bible club, FCA, and I started just taking as much time and opportunity as I could to share the gospel. Wow. And I barely knew anything. One of these youth pastors moved on. Um so I went to college and um was wondering what I'm supposed to study and what I'm supposed to do with my life. I just have a fire for the gospel. And then my sophomore year of college, one of these youth pastors moved on from his job to a different church, and he invited this young 19-year-old kid to take his place as a youth pastor of a small Korean church.
SPEAKER_02No way. Yeah. Were you in Colorado still in Denver?
SPEAKER_08Still, Denver. Where were you going to school? I was going to University of Colorado, Denver, studying psychology eventually. How many kids were in that youth group? Man, we had 17 souls. Wow. Yeah. And there I was 19 when I stepped in, and the oldest one was 18. So you're like friends, pretty much, right? Wow. Over the course of six years, as I finished school and even started some seminary at the time, um, this group uh of young high schoolers went to college and I saw them graduate college. And by the end of six years, we started to have like a young adult ministry brewing. At the time, I was also doing uh classes at Reformed Theological Seminary Online, virtual campus.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_08Um, having been raised and discipled during college by some staunch Reform Presbyterians. Okay. And then um in year six, I was uh while we started the started to see the burging of a young adult ministry, I was also interim young adult pastor of a sister church of ours, going there in the mornings and then coming to our church in the afternoons. And then so we had this vision as we were finding ourselves burning out, my volunteer team and I. What if we were to merge these two together and start something new? Yeah. And that's kind of what we did. How old were you at that time? I was young 20s, man.
SPEAKER_00I was like, so you were a youth pastor at one, interim pastor at another, and it and it was that relationship that kind of brought the two together and into uh a merge. That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_02And I was like 40 young adults at this point, 30.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, yeah, exactly. Actually, right around 30 to 40 young adults, but multicultural and also uh multi-socioeconomic. So the sister church that I was entering at was uh in a tough part of Denver. And so uh we quote planted ministry planted uh in English ministry with the blessing of these two churches, and we didn't have language for like church planning, we had none of this, none of these things. We just had a love for the Lord and we saw opportunity and we planted it, and over the course of two years, we saw like a times two, three kind of growth that God just blessed of the young adult college age? Yeah. Uh and you're all their age. I'm 25. Yeah, I got people older than me for some reason sitting under my teaching and whatever. I'm I'm a young 20-something year old, and we got people walking in just randomly, like, yeah, I saw some signs, I'm coming in. We got people just excited to share the gospel with their friends, most of whom never heard of Jesus before or refuse to hear Jesus. That was year six, and so after two years of planting and serving and seeing God grow, I had to finish seminary. So I had to make a decision: do I take a an MA and uh stay in Denver, or do I pursue the MDiv and finish off the degree on campus at a RTS site, physical location? And that that's what took me to Atlanta. So I went to Atlanta for a total of nine, ten years. Uh in that time finished seminary at RTS and stepped in as a next next generation pastor of a PCA church there for a few years.
SPEAKER_00Were you part of uh another church while you were in seminary there, or was as far as like a leadership or anything, or was it just uh you were just a member of a church going to seminary at the time?
SPEAKER_08Yeah. So while I was finishing my degree in Atlanta, I was uh a next gen pastor of a PCA church. PCA church, yeah, in the suburbs, and then um finished off seminary there, and then also uh a couple years after that went back to seminary. But so that that time was formed namely by deep, deep Presbyterianism, and a lot of my Presbyterian convictions were solidified and kind of codified at that time. Uh and then 10 years serving in the the South, uh, there was an opportunity to plant a similar ministry as I planted in Denver in Seattle. And so in 2020, went to Seattle to help a Taiwanese church plant before COVID store? It was the week of COVID, actually. Oh my god. Yeah. So March 2020. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Uh went out there and you moved in March 2020 to Seattle.
SPEAKER_08Yep, pretty much. Yeah. So did that for three years. And at the end of which that wonderful ministry was more or less kind of a youth college ministry, and I I figured they would be better blessed if they just had a you know college pastor or youth pastor. So then I kind of wanted to still serve and and do adult ministry. I wanted to use some of my passion and skills in like revitalization or or planting. And my brother was here in the bay, he had been in the bay for about 15 years. And so um I was just, you know, just curiously searching Fuller's sort of you know, job board one day, and there was opportunity at Hope Community Church in Fremont, looking for a very particular kind of pastor to come in. Uh, under the guidance of the RCA, Reformed Church of America, they wanted uh preferably someone who was uh kind of multiculturally inclined and someone who understood demographic challenges of an older church, and that's kind of the demographics I had served in the South, but also had a passion for planting and revitalization.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_08So I candidated and and uh as I was interviewing, I remember one of the nights I was driving through just the different cities in Fremont, and my heart just kind of went out for the city. I don't know what it was, but the Lord just was pulling me and drawing me into the city. If you go near to the bay before you get to the like the the bridge, Don Edwards or the Coyote Hills, Coyote Hills, and there's like an overlook over there, right? And I had just Googled and found that place and was just taking a stroll over there, and there's a certain point in that hike where you can kind of see the tri-cities. And as I was looking over, I just felt the the Lord's kind of convicting me about the need here in the bay, and and that was it, you know. So I moved here in uh 2023, 2024.
SPEAKER_02So what's your role to church officially?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I'm the solo pastor.
SPEAKER_02Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_08And because of that conviction to see uh to see much happen in the city, as soon as I landed, uh that was like my first thing is I got connected with people in the city, in addition to trying to learn the church. And as I was getting to know the city and partnering with people in the city, there was an organization out here called City Serve that had sort of the same mission and vision that I eventually wanted to lean into because of my love for the city. And their their interim executive director about a year and a half ago asked me if I'd consider taking his place as the net as the next executive director.
SPEAKER_00And I'm just curious, coming from a uh Denver, coming from Denver, which is a metropolitan area, uh, and then Seattle as well, um, what surprised you about the Bay Area or what surprised you about Fremont and like what has been maybe a challenge in uh in a way that maybe was unexpected, and then maybe what was what's been a blessing to you about being in the Bay Area?
SPEAKER_08I think particularly the Tri-Cities area is very different than maybe the Greater Bay in the sense that I had assumed the Bay Area as in a as a whole was much more like San Francisco than actually what it is, because I realized East Bay and even Tri-Cities is totally different than the culture of San Francisco proper. So that was number one. Um my expectations were to I thought I was gonna meet similar hostilities as the kind of hostility I met in Seattle. Actually, there's there's just more um of kind of a blanket, lukewarm tolerance, uh almost a normalization of okay, you're an evangelical Christian, okay, that's fine. You know, and then um for my church itself, I think it was I I had we we have a very close partnership with a special needs organization next door called Friends of Children with Special Needs. And I through that partnership had realized just how much of a need there is in that community, especially in the tri-cities and in Alameda County. I think it's like one in five families have someone who is a special needs child or adult. Yeah. Some of the economic struggles I I had a sort of a distant understanding of, but as I see it more close, up close and some of the stories and the cycles of poverty and how just the extent of that have been really sobering on how to think about meeting those challenges. So then at the same time, all of the kind of expectations of Silicon Valley as a culture, a microculture in or a maybe a macro culture in the Bay Area, those are all kind of true, I think.
SPEAKER_01You know, like what?
SPEAKER_08Very success-driven, highly educated. Um I would I would argue a bit synchronistic, you know. Uh there's a pursuit of virtue. There's a lot of movement-driven things that are focused on the bettering of humanity and flourishing of humanity, whether technologically or health or um recreation. And so how the how the gospel and how a church and gospel movement can meet those things, um, those were kind of new to me that I had to really, you know, think more critically about.
SPEAKER_00You said that um when you came across Citizer that it kind of um kind of fit a profile of something that you were hoping to be involved with in uh the ministry here in the Bay Area. Explain a little bit what your expert maybe not your expectation, but what your aspiration was when it came to being involved in a ministry like that, and then specifically, you know, what uh I mean, I'm on the egg uh executive board of the of Cityserve with you. And so um, so I kind of I kind of heard a lot of what you've shared over the last couple of years. But um, yeah, just share how Cityserve in your mind fit kind of a niche of something you were looking for, and then what you hope to see come out of it as you continue in that role as the executive director.
SPEAKER_08I think it really comes down to uh a love for people and a place. And you know, as a bit of a reform guy, I really appreciated what Michael Horton said in his book, People in Place, and how our theology of place shapes the way that we lead our churches. And uh I had always felt as a result, the success of my church should be measured in some sense by the flourishing of the city. And so uh Citizer had had the same approach, and the means by which they wanted to serve the city best is by serving pastors and churches. And that was my heart too. You know, I hope I'm a good Presbyterian in that sense and want to see a city flourish by seeing churches flourish, and churches flourish best than most, I think, when pastors flourish. And um, you know, having seen just a a myriad of different pastoral stories of people coming in and coming out, I was able to bring in, I think, just a deep love for revitalizing and a focus on pastoral flourishing to see holistic city and church flourishing.
SPEAKER_01So, what is CityServe for those who aren't familiar with that that ministry, if you could explain it, what it is, what it does.
SPEAKER_08City Serve, in short, is a network of churches that mobilizes uh a volunteer force in the direction of the needs of the cities that have been identified through a subsidiary called Compassion Network. Compassion Network is a subsidiary reports to CityServe, it's guided by CityServe, and their sole job is to create relationships and identify opportunities for the volunteer force of the churches that are part of the network of City Serve to step in and lean into.
SPEAKER_00Man, you have that dialed in. That uh that was that was I was like, that is that is quite the description, and I I love it, but it was just dialed in. That was great.
SPEAKER_05So, what would that look like practically? Like, that's a great idea. But then what would Citiserf practically do to fulfill that vision or mission?
SPEAKER_08On the compassion network side, they are identifying needs as practical as I need someone to take my elderly grandmother to a hospital, you know, some kind of appointment to we just had a baby, so we need a crib and a year's worth of diapers. And then Compassion Network will public uh will uh broadcast those needs to the entire City Served network. And then as a City Served Network, my job and the job of the board and others is to mobilize and identify the right kind of people in the churches to meet those needs. There's like a systemic cyclical thing there too, right? So uh part of what we do is uh we host luncheons that help activate and generate a lot of energy towards a love and a care for the city. And that those kind of luncheons happen three times a year. We also uh do a leadership breakfast once a year to help uh keep our relationship with the city very warm so we can have access to the table when needed to speak into the needs of the city. And the ultimate hope is that we're just as a on the city served side is that we want to continually be the means by which churches in this tri cities know what are the needs of the city, like actually the actual needs, the people and the faces and the families behind those needs and the actual real rule. Ways to serve those people and meet those needs.
SPEAKER_00CityServe was kind of the original City Serve here in the Tri-Cities, owned the domain Cityserve. And um, and then uh over the course of the last 30 years, other places have uh taken that name and vision and have uh implemented their own version of what that might look like uh throughout the country. And so much so that there's a national city serve now. Uh we just sold the the domain to the national city serve because uh that grew out of this. It grew out of this. So now uh the tri- the city serve that we are a part of serves the tri-cities. When we say the tri-cities, we were talking about Fremont, Union City, and Newark. Um, we've also had uh neighboring communities be interested in either like uh learning from us what we're doing, uh, to do the same thing with what where they are, or even starting new organizations patterned after what we're doing. From your perspective, like what are the things that you feel are transferable from what we're doing, what you've experienced to other parts of the Bay Area?
SPEAKER_08Not much because there's nothing new under the sun, but you know, one of the privileges that I inherited was just a legacy of a network. You know, we we cannot mention CDSer without mentioning Sherman Williams, who started the network uh good 40 plus years ago, and then uh Terry Inman, who started Compassion Network some 20 years ago. And their hard work of building the relationships both with churches and the city uh was so formidable that what I inherited was a lot of trust from the city, from churches, and from volunteers and those in between. And so what we could transfer, I guess, in some ways, are how we run our food and security programs on the compassion network side. We can uh certainly give, and and this is you know, one of the things we're doing very recently is kind of coming alongside of an organization called City Team to coach another network in the East Bay, South Bay area on how to create spaces, whether that's panel-based or workshop-based, where pastors can feel really encouraged and find it uh worth their time to come to something like a luncheon. And those things, I suppose we can do some sense of transferring, but because we are not a, you know, cities serve national, they have their pipeline, they have real clear staples of objectives. Since we have much more our staple and our objective is relational, we are very flexible, and I think that's our strength, is we can adapt when culture sort of shifts and the needs of the cities begin to shift. So in that sense, maybe what we can transfer is yeah, some of those programmatic things and relational things, but at the end of the day, uh we we are a product of God's grace and favor, his love for the local church, his use of people who are willing to be used by him, who have given him their yes and obedience.
SPEAKER_05Well, before I get into the theological questions I have for you and uh for a network like this, I want to get back to some of you said of you said it very modestly that you were in Atlanta and you did some more, you went back to seminary. So I know that you got your doctorate, doctorate ministry, right? At Emory, and Emory is not a joke of a seminary. So talk to us about your your doctoral program, um, what you studied, and then what you did your uh doctoral project on.
SPEAKER_08It was um motivated first and foremost by Paul Tillich's work in his book, The Courage to Be. You know, Paul Tillich is a, I'd say, a progressive Presbyterian who focuses on three theological anthropology. And uh I really appreciated uh the depth of thinking he put into uh what it means to sit with unresolved sin. And in some ways you can look at that and say there's some theological issues that I would have as a more conservative Presbyterian on some of that, but his capacity was almost like Nowinian. It reminded me of Henry No Nowen and sort of his capacity to also sit with something uncomfortable. And I I wanted to learn and wanted to embody the ability to do that a little better. Um okay, I just wasn't sort of like you went to study with him there. Oh, that would have been amazing, yeah. So uh one of the reasons I went to Emery for some of this was um uh honestly, it was it was kind of my under my first time understanding of like black scholarship and uh liberation theology and these things that I had kind of avoided as a quote good Presbyterian, you know, uh and I realized I was kind of uh shooting myself in the foot by putting a you know, turning a blind eye to some of these things I wanted to learn. So the primary work was fueled by kind of a theological anthropological investigation on what at the deepest levels is sin and what drives sin, and how do we, when you see or you're in the presence of long-term sin, or maybe we can even use certain language like strongholds of sin, addiction, uh family issues, you know, family of origin issues that are gonna be extensive and layered, multifaceted, how do we approach these things in somewhat of a pat practical pastoral manner? And so a big focus on my project was to utilize what our Roman Catholic friends have written extensively about, uh, namely in the area of triple concupiscence and the three primary desires that motivate sin. And even Protestants would, even though we don't use that necessarily that same language, when you read think read things like Pisca Zero's work, uh there are the same kind of paradigms that identify, or if you're an Augustinian, you identify that the inordinate loves that drive simple behavior are not easily fixed or even easily identified. So there's a project exploring all those.
SPEAKER_05So unpack that triple con concupiscence. Like what what are the three heads? Yeah, so you just drop that as if like, you know, just triple concupiscence and I mean I know our Catholic friends and disorder loves and aggasting, you just moved on. So you gotta unpack that a bit because that seemed to have been a key part of your work.
SPEAKER_08I'm sure it's review for our our uh if there's any Roman Catholic friends, but um, you know, it's the love of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and less part of life. And so it's an echo of first John and Genesis, and uh for me at the root of it was more so investigating the desire part. Uh, how do desires get broken? And uh also on the on the more pastoral practical side is what does the practice of confession do to concupiscence? And when I think about for the Roman Catholic rhythms of sanctification, disciplines of faith, they have to confess, and that's part of their experience of the means of grace. And I never grew up with that. You know, Presbyterians, we have our means of grace or sacrament prayer in the word, and confession isn't in there, but the more that I kind of investigated confession, I realized the power of it does do something, even in an anthropological way. May I use it?
SPEAKER_05I mean, I think the Bible says something about that. Confess your sins one to another. I don't know. I could be wrong, but we don't do a good enough job as Protestants of publicly confessing our sin or not so public, but you know, orally to one another in a public format, verse like, I'm just gonna confess my sins to God. And Catholics get that right. I'll be on the record for saying that there is an important aspect in confession, like you said, anthropologically, and we can use our fancy through the word harmatologically as it regards the doctrine of sin. So, what would you say that you found as you as you work out the sort of theology of center harmatology to teach everyone a fancy word today? Um, how confession plays a role in that, and specifically what role confession plays, both in the uncovering of it and then in the treatment of it.
SPEAKER_08I think ultimately confession is the means by which we experience that. Galatians 5, 1, liberation, freedom for freedom's sake. I think layers of confession will first maybe begin with like uh honesty. Honesty, I think, can deepen into a sense of transparency. And I think a lot of even evangelicals can get to those two levels. Honesty is I had a bad week. Transparency is as a result of having a I had a bad week because of this thing that happened, and then I yelled at my spouse. The layer beneath I'd say transparency would be vulnerability, where I give you keys, where I deputize you and give you permission to access why I did what I did. Why did I get angry about that? Why did I, why did I uh lust in this way? And I give you the permission to tinker around some of those inordinate desires. And the more that you press into me and cause me to confess more, ultimately on the other side of that I hope and pray would be liberation.
SPEAKER_05Well, yeah, how often though, like in that, would someone even be cognizant of that deeper layer of disordered desires? And I wonder to what extent even that prodding of loving brother searching for confession is also self-discovery.
SPEAKER_08100%. Yeah. Uh and that's not natural to us. I think Genesis three is uh I would say uh obviously very theologically uh anthropological. And so we're always, I think, gonna embody the inclination to cover ourselves with fig leaves. We're gonna want to feel shame. And I think the enemy is gonna definitely uh capitalize on that continually. So confession and um the layers and practice of that, I think, are always gonna disarm what the enemy is gonna weaponize.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, because the enemy wants you to cover yourself, right? To hide your shame, to run from God, to run from others, and to fall within yourself and that sort of home of fig leaves. Yeah. Thinking that there's covering in their safety. Yeah. And there's not.
SPEAKER_08And so where I I could disagree with like Paul to like on a lot of theology. I was gonna ask you about that.
SPEAKER_05Like, I mean, uh I was like, are you with open theism or process theology?
SPEAKER_08But his ability to sit there, I thought on the on the other side of like the practical of the what kind of what does your sanctification Christian life look like on the other side of those things? I wanted to be able to get to that place of sitting with, you know, he says neurosis isn't uh the diagnosis of certain sinful beh patterns and behaviors, although some more conservative Protestants would call it that. But he says neurosis is your inability to actually sit with your sin. At the moment and to the extent that you can sit there and say, I have sin in this moment, yet I am not ashamed, I don't feel fear. Uh to super oversimplify what he would say was that would be a better, richer understanding of the gospel than someone who's feeling you know a lot of other things about it. Now, if you take what I just said to a certain extreme, absolutely a little bit of heresy up in there, yeah, for sure. But I think it's a the kind of uh bringing that in into what he was intending to do to sanctify the church would be to say the gospel is sufficient enough and Jesus uh is so omniscient enough that he is not surprised with your sin. When you sin and and in that moment, right, uh when you sin, Jesus is not saying, I can't believe you did that, I'm so shocked, how could you do that? Although we maybe echo those things in our head and heart as if we were Jesus, or we say those things on behalf of Jesus to ourselves, what Jesus is saying is, I I knew that. And while you're still a sinner, in that very moment I I died for you. That's right.
SPEAKER_00What was it that uh motivated you to kind of pursue that? I know that you said you were interested in studying with a particular person or going down a particular pathway that uh someone else had already, you know, laid out for you. But uh what was it? Was there anything specific that kind of got you interested in that as a subject uh to pursue?
SPEAKER_08Yeah. So um one of the keystone marks in my story actually is uh around the time uh six, seven years into my time in Atlanta, uh I had gone through a very difficult divorce. And that was a time and season where I had to rediscover and re in some times reconstruct so my understanding of identity in Christ.
SPEAKER_06Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_08That put me into proximity with a lot of stories of brokenness and a lot of people who have gone through something similar. And so it was namely through that, is when I would meet with people, you know, prior to I think experiences of trauma, uh, or for folks maybe who the extent of their experience of trauma is more based on difficulty versus um sort of external uh suffering coming down and kind of being uh an imputation of suffering, let's say, from God's providence. When something like that happens, I think uh almost as a survival mechanism, we have to get to a place of like what do I do with these two impossible realities? Right? The gravity of my sin and the goodness and holiness of God. And the gospel that bridge the gap when I first came to Christ has to do a much bigger and greater work than simply just bridging a gap. It needs to make sense in my body, needs to make sense in every nook and cranny of my thoughts that are constantly at work trying to condemn me or underplace sin or overplace sin. So it was namely through the that experience of unique suffering, uh self-inflicted in many ways, that caused me to want to be able to talk about this without fear, without shame, and without powerlessness and saying, Oh, sin won, that's my story. Good luck to the rest of you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What do you think is a helpful? I I know that we already mentioned, like for instance, you said uh the Catholics got it right when it comes to uh our manner of confession to each other and so on. Um and I think that there is a there is something, uh even even though we're not Presbyterian or Catholic, um we we practice a intentional um form of liturgy and in here at Redeemer. And um, you know, we have a a corporate prayer of confession that we do each week. There's something of value in taking moment a moment of time to not just confess and and pray alone, but also to together as a body of Christ um speak words of confession um in prayer um beyond maybe that particular part of like the corporateness or the corporate body element of confession and recognition of sin. What are some of the other things that you feel the church at large can uh learn from what you've studied? Like what are some of the things that we probably that we neglect, or what are some of the practices that would be helpful for us to implement in uh the body of Christ that would actually uh help us to know how to confess our sins uh to one another or to uh to partake in the process of confession and repentance and healing that maybe we're we avoid or that we ignore uh in in the church at large.
SPEAKER_08So for myself, coming from like an Asian American background, a big challenge to that question was the stigmatization of therapy and counseling, uh, or even support groups. But all three of those things, which are I would say are distinct and different, are absolutely necessary. I I would argue you can you can submit these three things as examples and means of what Paul means when he says pericoleo. I think uh this idea of carrying each other's burdens necessitates at minimum not just questions, but a kind of investigative, thorough, forensic kind of leaning in that we now call counseling. I think uh mental illness is absolutely real, and um we need to use the gifts of God's common grace in medicine and psychology and urology to understand how to diagnose certain things, uh, whether clinical depression, uh bipolar disorder.
SPEAKER_00I think that's interesting. I I'd actually like to hear your more of your thoughts on that. So I grew up in tradition where psychology was um taboo and uh honestly approaching anything from uh anything outside of the scriptures, like the scriptures were the answer for everything, like no matter what it is. And um, I think that in in some sense it sounded good as long as I was in that environment where everybody, you know, were was thinking or saying the same thing. Um, and I think that also there was an environment, uh I was very sheltered in the sense that um I grew up in the South for the most part, um, very monocultural, very uh I tell people I don't think I knowingly met a Democrat until I was 25 years old. Um, and then there was just always a there was just a very, very narrow demographic of people that like filled my life. And so like it was easy to be able to come up with biblical solutions to all the problems that you might experience within that circle. Um then moving from there to Baltimore, Maryland, I had a whole nother set of experiences. Then I coming out here to the Bay Area. Um, the Bay Area, I meet people from all over the world, people from all different backgrounds, people from like it's the widest um economic discrepancy, you know, in in society that I've ever been a part of. And and you just start seeing these problems everywhere, and you start realizing the Bible is sufficient, the Bible is like everything that we need for life and godliness, but there is also some very, very practical things and important things that we are able to take advantage of through psychology and through careful study of who we are, how we were made, how we're made up. And so I just speak into that a little bit. I I mean maybe it it might just be more like the air that you breathe, but it honestly it's not something that I was familiar with growing up a whole lot. So speak, speak to the relationship of like the sin problem that exists within the world around us, um, and then the tension between, you know, what part does the Bible play in helping us to solve or to approach that as and then and then conversely, like what part would psychology or um counseling, secular counseling or whatever also play in that as well?
SPEAKER_08I similarly having come from spent time in the south, and also as I mentioned about my uh growing up in an ethnic church.
SPEAKER_05So is that is the thing in like a Korean church, the whole shame honor thing, like you would not show anyone your struggles, your stains, your warts, right? Even though everyone might be having the same things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. And I can see that in the south too, where there's some of that you gotta do. Honor, shame culture is much stronger there. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's a different approach, like there's not like family. I guess there's family attached to it, but it's just like you let people see what you want them to see, and you are super friendly on that surface level, and then there's just a place that you don't go, and it's you know, it's a protected space. So yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_05No, so as you were saying before I interrupted you.
SPEAKER_08No, I I agree, and I I think that dichotomy between maybe what some would call like uh quote secular psychology versus Christian or biblical uh counseling, I think that's kind of a f false dichotomy in some ways. Yeah, in the sense that we I don't think there's any conservative traditional Christian who wouldn't believe that the sin, the effects of sin are noetic, absolutely, that they impact all of life. And so you absolutely need uh scripture to inform those things as much as you need scripture to sanctify in other ways too. But I think there's a cultural component for sure, as you're mentioning, but I also think that because most modern psychology curricula, especially in the secular institutions, does come from a perspective that is a little say hyper-secularist, right? The father You're being modest. The father of modern psychology, we for some reason appropriate to Freud. But there were so many side quote psychologists prior to Freud, of course, that spoke of the issues of the mind. And so I maybe in many ways we could even say the first kind of means of psychology was scripture and the gospel, that there is a difference between a darkened mind and a darkened understanding. Well, what does Paul mean when he says that? And there's this sort of a distinction there. So in many ways, I think churches need to recapture what I would say uh the secular world or academia has co-opted, which is psychology. I would say psychology belongs to the Lord, it belongs to us, and we need to come back to be the the champions of that and the the lead voices on how to speak well into that. I think there's a little bit of that happening now. I think that's why voices like John Mark Kilmer are so popular in common that's he's taking time to pause and be introspective and whatnot. But I think we we need to have a more diversified expertise on how to speak about issues of the mind. And I say that as an example of what I'm saying, also is when we look at data on how much uh how quick patients are being prescribed certain medications, you know, that's kind of what other solution does a secular. Worldview have than to alter the chemistry of the mind.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's great. We just had a a lady that was uh unhoused that made residence in our uh property here at the church the last two week and a half, two weeks. Um, and it it is a challenging. You could tell that she'd been through some really hard things. Matter of fact, if you gave her any time, any of your time at all, she would um probably tell you a dozen stories in less than 10 minutes. And um, it was pretty, pretty remarkable. But, you know, it was interesting because one of the things that we hope to do, and I think that what we're called to as a church, and I I will just say this as a as a very small aside, I'm taking an old testament class right now, going through the prophets, and when you start seeing all that uh Yahweh says to his people about their approach to the poor and those who are in poverty and those who are, you know, it's just like these all these categories of people that have been neglected by God's people and that are being abused or taken advantage of or whatever. And uh it's just like this heavy burden of just like, what do you do with a situation with uh a lady like this who is uh who is you know taking up residence in in our uh church property space? What do you do with that? Because I think on one side we want to care for her, we want to be able to reach out to her at the same time, there's just a disconnect there. And I think that in some ways, you know, I think I I would speak for, I'll speak for myself. Our church is not equipped to be able to handle all the uh the solutions for the problems that we faced in trying to care for her. We did a lot for her. We we you know provided her with food, provided her with coffee, provided her with uh we just actually transferred her to a local hotel, gave her a room for several nights, and bought her a bunch of groceries and stuff like that. Um, but then it's just like that's not really dealing with the problem. And uh so I don't know. I'm I'm I I'm curious because it just seems to be this uh struggle and this dynamic. I know Jesus said the poor you have with you always. Um, and so there is a sense in which this is kind of a a problem we're not gonna solve. We're not gonna fix it. Deuteronomy said that Deuteronomy said that too. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05You know, let there be no poor among you. And then it says not much later, and there'll always be poor among you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I mean, what what what do you feel that the church did we call Cityserve a Compassion Network with this situation? I don't know if we did. Okay. Yeah, we did call Citizer, yeah, or we called Compassion, yeah, for sure. So I'll make sure I plug for you, Langan. So I'm just curious, like uh with with all that being said, and obviously there's there's I think that's to some extreme. That's not what every church is in every place is going to be dealing with all the time. But what do you feel is uh an appropriate approach for churches to be able to look at and say this is part of what we're called to do, what we're capable of doing, and then what does the church need beyond uh what we're able to uh to be able to offer to somebody like this?
SPEAKER_08You know, historically Presbyterians for that reason um have been connectional, that even one person's this one individual's needs can't be met simply by one, two, maybe even twelve churches. You need an entire connection. A presbytery? A presbytery, perhaps even a general assembly of synods. Yes, in so that that's the first thing is uh whether, you know, even if you're congregational, that's fine, at least be affiliated in a network of churches. You know, the body of Christ is gifted differently, and we mean that not only in terms of individual membership, but members as churches. So each church, I think, doesn't need to be a a jack or jane of all trades, but can specialize in the place that God has called them to serve. And if that in necessitates an expertise on mental health, and if God has blessed your congregation with counselors and therapists and so forth, well, that's a church that I think we should be in network with and fellowship with in some kind. That's great. Yeah. You know, I just saw something this morning. Uh it was a life way research um post that talked about how one of the leading causes of pastoral burnout was that many pastors didn't have counseling courses in their training and they didn't know how to counsel properly. Now I'm I don't know exactly when this research was was done, but I have found that that to be very true. That a lot of pastors counsel based on experience and reaction versus proactive training. I do think that's important that we even as a network, we really need to start making resources on mental health and some formidable theological training on mental health more accessible.
SPEAKER_05I think the challenge though, especially as someone who serves as a seminary professor and is in a place where we talk about curriculum, is at what point do you recognize that you're in over your head? And there and like you said earlier, there's a certain sense in which quote unquote secular psychology and counseling is very quick to prescribe medicine, to think you know, the biochemical reason is enough because they don't think about and this is what I was gonna say earlier to to make a connection here about I don't think, and this, you know, coming from the perspectives I have, I don't think there's anything wrong with psychology or psychiatry or counseling, but it's about knowing the assumptions that people bring into the conversation from those perspectives. Do they have a secular humanistic worldview? What's their anthropology? What's their eschatology? You see what I'm saying? Like, you know, psychology, therapy, those are tools, right? Those are medical tools, but it's how do you wield them because of your vision of who we are, your vision of the future, your vision of the world. That's going to shape how you interact in these things. So, again, there's nothing wrong with psychology or therapy, just like there's nothing wrong with use of medicinal aids like this lady. I mean, she might need it. But a person who's struggling with anxiety at 16 years old probably doesn't need to be prescribed anxiety medication, right? They need to, like you're saying, they need to confess and dig in deep to figure out, well, why do you feel anxious? What's the root causes of that? What are you afraid of? What are you believing? At what point do you have to recognize in your training what you're capable of versus where you're in over your head and you need to refer? And at gateway, we're actually undergoing a sea change in our counseling program. And we used to have what was called a Master of Arts in Christian counseling. And you having some training, you know what that would entail. Like that's a that's a bridging of secular psychology and psychiatry with biblical Christian methodologies and assumptions, trying to, you know, merge those bridges and those worlds, a blended model. And the lady who's leading the program retired, and we have this new guy coming in named Jordan Williams, who's A C B C trainer, the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. And so now that as you're shaking your head, you know it's a very different perspective. And now at Gateway, we're moving from an MACC to a master in biblical, a master's in biblical counseling. And he's even changing the lingo of all the courses. And it's not just the lingo that matters, but it's the assumptions and it's the goals and it's what the classes will teach the students. And so to your point, he he's like, we're not a place, we don't offer a master's in marriage and family therapy. We don't have a master's in psychology or psychiatry. We're a place that are training pastors to know how to disciple their people and engage in the conversations they can in terms of mental health issues or relational issues or spiritual psychological issues, but then know at what point do we refer out and say I'm in over my head. And as I go back to my counseling class that I took in seminary, I was required to take one. How often Dr. Brace drilled into our heads, you need to refer. You need to refer and know when you're in over your head. So when you think about like this this life way research of pastors are burning out because they don't know how to counsel, I'm wondering, is it because they never received even a class or no training at all? Did they forget what they learned? Or are they trying to do things that they're not equipped to do? So I guess in my my question to you then, with someone who in this network in your press retrieve, you interact with a lot of churches and people of different stripes and denominations. What do you think it is? As it regards pastors dealing with counseling issues, and that may cause them to burn out as if they didn't get the training, they forgot their training, their training was wrong, they're in over their heads, they're doing it the wrong way.
SPEAKER_08I think it's probably a collection of all of that.
SPEAKER_04All the above, test question, A, B, C, D, E, right. All the above, none of the above A and C.
SPEAKER_08You know, there is, I think you're hitting on a probably a more systemic cultural thing about why we what are the common person's expectations of a pastor and why. Or perhaps a more important question is what are the expectations of a pastor from a pastor? And I think we are growing up, uh, you know, you we in the room, I think we're similar age. We grew up with the rise of like multimedia pastors, uh, pastors who are easily accessible online and we saw their platforms, we saw what they were doing or what they seem to be doing. And I think that put a lot of expectation on our shoulders on who we are supposed to be, what we're supposed to do. I hope that some of this data and research is not is less uh indicing peep pastors of doing something wrong, but just more you know, placing a mirror on our face and saying, Hey, uh, do you see why now like there's something broken in the system?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's great. I do love the fact though uh that you said uh, I mean we we had the lady that we were trying to help here, you know, we we very quickly, one of us here at the church said, Well, I think we have a a connection of churches that we'll find some way of getting a solution to you. And very quickly we did we determined that uh we really don't have uh the resources in a family of churches to help. And I do think that that is the advantage, because as I was even as you were describing, like one, not even one, two, maybe not even twelve churches, but like a host of churches, and I thought, man, that would that sounds great. Like that sounds like a great way of being able to like share the burden of you know the situations that we find.
SPEAKER_05You know, because we're in a network of Baptist churches here in the Bay Area, we say we have 200 in our association, but it's a network, it's an of like there's no is there like you call up the head of the the the synod or the press retreat and be like, hey dude, I need you to call all the elders, like like and how quick does information move and then like a gathering, like assemble and they all come together. Like, I just how quick does that happen for for your own? No, I'm just wondering, like, do you have the as the conch cell of anchorman? The team assembles, like I'm just wondering how quick does information travel and then how fast can action steps be taken? And in a denominal national structure like yours, that is top down to a certain question.
SPEAKER_00Now we're gonna get into the Presbyterian uh Baptist discussion, which is good.
SPEAKER_03So you're starting to understand I'm bobbing away, but I'm talking about this conversation. Don't worry, man.
SPEAKER_08I would wonder, is that the responsibility of a denomination first versus a network? Uh, what are the distinctions between the two? To me, I I see the the approach of helping someone with a certain particular need. I I can see that as uh falling in the jurisdiction of both. So if you are in network fellowship with churches that have those resources, that's probably your go-to, whoever's more readily accessible. Denomination, I would say, primarily for um the kind of Presbyterian that I would pro that I identify as is more so for the peace and purity of the church, less so for resources of accessibility and services. Yeah. But I would say that if you are a good Presbyterian church, your theology of city and how you view culture and your relationship to your actual city, not like the metaphorical city, should necessitate a kind of relationship that allows and I would almost say requires you to know who to call in that situation. You should be the primary exeg of your city, not the real estate agent, not the chief of whatever, but it should be the pastor, right? So to me, I I if if I'm doing a good job of of serving and leading my church as a Presbyterian, I would know who to call because I love my city and I know the services that my city provides. And then if it's a situation that's beyond the the uh services of a city, then yeah, you call your network or your denomination. But I would not say that that is the responsibility of a denomination necessarily, primarily. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I do think that too, I think uh honestly the uh one of the takeaways I've had from this, not that this lady shouldn't be served or loved or cared for, um, is that um we're not gonna solve the problem of sin. Try like we can't solve the problem of sin. Like there can be so many things uh that happen that we do to try to help care for this lady in her situation, whether it's uh a Silicon Valley billionaire who's seeking after fulfillment and happiness and you know the American dream um and is finding, you know, and has been found wanting or is left empty, or it's an unhoused person that has been uh gone through terrible situations in their past and have uh been victims, both victims and uh perpetrators of um, you know, the their their of their environment, their family or their you know, whatever the people that have been close to them, no matter where they're at, the both of those problems, the billionaire, the unhoused person, the poverty, number one, they're not gonna be solved without Jesus. But then number two, they're not gonna be solved in this lifetime. Um, and so I think that's another big part of it too. Like you have to almost be like you almost want to feel like you can put a um like when I dropped her off at the hotel and gave her the food and did all that, you kind of want to feel like oh, it's done, you know. Um, and it's not, you know, it's not done. I mean, she even said, Well, I'll I'll be back. Like, okay, yeah. Um, you know, and it's it's not done. And so in some sense, there is a there is a reality that we have to believe in that um the answer, the the fix to these problems that we're encountering are not gonna come in this life. Um they're not gonna come to us now. And I think that's important.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, Jesus said the poor you will always have with you, right? And something that you had mentioned, Cameron, also that you know is kind of symptomatic also of our how ill-equipped we can be is you mentioned eschatology when talking about mental health. Of course. I would wonder if we asked an average pastor, make the connection for me between eschatology and mental health. I'm not sure if many would, but that is such a huge understanding, right? It's a fundamental, I would say, one of the four key pillars of the gospel, the renewal of all things, and how that truly actually causes change in our understanding of things. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And recognizing what, as Ricky's saying, what can be changed, how can it be changed, and then what cannot be changed, and when will what cannot be changed be changed? And so, like if you have an over-realized eschatology, you may, as we were joking earlier about uh one of our other pastors saying sometimes he thinks that he might be a post-millennialist. Like if if you have an, I would argue, if you have an overrealized eschatology thinking that more of the new renewed age can break in now, then I think you'll do more things in terms of gospel ministry or active, you know, what you might call like what's the word, like service-based ministry or mercy ministry, or like people get engaged in politics because they think more can be accomplished now. And then a year later, five years later, 10 years later, you're like, wait, shoot, the world's still screwed up and all my activism did nothing. Right. All my service to the poor did nothing. And then so I wonder too, like, is that leading to burnout? Because your eschatology matters with like what you think can be achieved and how it can be achieved in the timetable on which it can be achieved versus what cannot be achieved. And I think that's really important to understand, and that's why I would say eschatology is extremely significant when you think about psychological, sociological, relational issues. And a psychologist who thinks who who has a honestly a solipsistic or a fatalistic, atheistic worldview where nothing matters, we're just atoms spinning in the void. It's like, well, then you're gonna die and you're gonna become dust. So like there there is no hope. So, like, okay, well, the best I can give you is medication. Because if you're, you know, if you're anxious about death, well, if I believe that you die and nothing happens, like, well, then I can't help you. The best I can do is, you know, you know, give a little band-aid to your mental illness and just say, huh, move on, whatever, don't think about the next life. So of course, what you assume about creation, about humanity, about the future informs how you treat people and relate to people in the here and the now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I was gonna say as well, if you don't, if you don't learn to exegete your culture and your story, the the environment that you're in, two things. I would say if you're not humble and and willing to learn when it comes to your theology, uh and realize that even though I've believed something or I've uh affirmed something to be true, um, if I'm not allowed, if I'm if I'm not willing to say, you know what, I'm gonna hold that lightly, I'm gonna believe in it, but I'm gonna hold it lightly in the sense that there might be, I might be wrong. There might be another, uh, there might be something else that I need to learn that's going to help supplement or to uh transform my theology in a way that changes the way that I think about things. And then if you take that, but then also if you learn to let the world that we live in, which I think is revealed, you know, it's the revelation of God to us throughout um both gender revelation, special revelation, if you let the world around us help us to remind us that God's in control, that he is in all things and he is working something out that he has already planned from the beginning from the foundations of the earth, um and he is working all these things out. And I I become both a student and a servant of of what of what Christ is doing. Um and I think that that's I think that's a big part of it because I mean the reality is we just we know we had a conversation with David Bush uh uh on worship, and we were talking about different songs that are wrapped up in a particular eschatology, you know, and if I believe that, and if I believe that, for instance, you know, Christ is coming back into rapture and all this stuff's gonna happen, I'm gonna be pulled out of here and I just have to hold on until he comes back and then I'll be free of all of this. Uh or if I believe, you know, whatever it is, whatever my eschatology is, I it's going to it's going to inform the way that I approach the various um situations. And I think that there's ways in which we need to say, okay, I think this is what it is, I believe what it is. Best of my understanding, this is what it is. Um, but I need to be a student of theology. I need to be a student of God, both and then, and then I need to figure out how God might be forming me and changing me in order to be able to be more like God.
SPEAKER_05Well, that's I think what you and I were talking about that at our lunch two weeks ago, right? That like, and why we want to have this podcast and start putting stuff out in the Bay Area is that theology matters because what you believe about certain things, whether you are thinking about what you believe about certain things or not, you are a theologian, you're either a good or a bad one. And that informs how you think, that informs how you act, that informs how you feel, all of it. And so it's better for us to think through these things and help others think through these things as we're counseling them, because they don't recognize, like you said, what they believe about the future shapes how they feel now, and how they feel shapes how they think and how they act. How would you see that your your studies on hermatology and and sin and confession and triple concupiscence? Like, how does this affect the way you're pastoring now in in in your church here in Fremont?
SPEAKER_08I think number one um changes the pace and also number two changes what you measure, where it's less, you know, there's such a cliche thing to say, of course. It's not about numbers and budget and all the things. It's more about health, holistic and uh depth of intimacy with Christ. Not um that union with Christ can be something further enhanced more than what Christ has authored, but our experience and encounter of that, whether through eschatology or any other means. So number one is you could be really excited about something good and that could be a revelation of a disordinate love. You could be really, really ashamed of something bad, and that similarly has the same root. Um there's an absence of the gospel in both. And to get the gospel into those deep, deep places, it's gonna require a lot of time. Yeah, and then a lot of um prioritizing relationship and meeting with people and sharing stories over a long course of time, the whole Eugene Peterson's a long obedience, which ironically was a Nietzschean phrase, I believe, right? Really? I believe he appropriated from a Nietzsche. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so that kind of sense of like go slow, and then um Mirisal Wolf wrote a book called Exclusion and Embrace, and the whole thing is about how to similarly I would say he's much more conservative than Tillik, but it's the same notion of embracing trauma as is, where where you meet someone in their place and not necessarily prioritizing a solution, but the church is all about solutions versus process and relationship. And maybe we can change that and we can be a place, especially in the Bay Area where everyone is working so much and so fast. I wonder if we can embody a kind of presence of Christ that we can actually be the body of Christ, a presence where the hurried and rushed soul isn't uh not to sound too JMC, but can can feel the permission of not having to perform and pretend to go at a certain pace to keep up with the innovation of the Silicon Valley.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_08That's good. Wow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's quite significant.
SPEAKER_05I think too, and this I I've thought about this a lot with burnout and pastors, is not having that mindset that you do of like what's achievable in a given time frame. And I heard someone say who it was is that pastors overestimate what they can do in a year, but underestimate what they can do in a decade. And there's that that misappropriation of like you they flip it. And so they think what they ought to be doing over 10 years, they think they can do in a year. And so then they get burnt out because of that. And they do in a year what only can be done in 10 years. And there is that sort of confusion of ends and means and timelines. And I think that's that's awesome, though, that you've that you've recognized that.
SPEAKER_00There's some of that that I think that um as part of uh Bay Seed and starting Redeemer Church here, um, I I've used the example of uh or I've told the story and used the example of uh the idea of coming here to the Bay Area to plant Redeemer Church, being like coming to a dry and weary land to plant a garden, a great organic non-GMO, non-hormone garden in a dry and weary land, right? And uh the idea of being able to like look around and say, man, there's a lot of land that can be gardened and that can be farmed. And so, you know, you start putting all your efforts into like doing as much as you possibly can. Meanwhile, the garden that you originally started to till up and plow and plant kind of goes to the wayside and it just kind of takes its own, it you know, takes its own life form on. And you realize there's you're not really going to uh be able to accomplish what you need to accomplish in all these other areas that you're feeling drawn to or view as an opportunity until this first garden is actually flourishing, until it's growing and producing fruit. And that growth doesn't happen by any means of anything that we can do, right? It's something that God has to do. And so there's a part of I think what we do oftentimes, we do have goals, we have like uh agendas, we want to get this done, we want to have this done, we want to be able to accomplish this. Um, and uh, although we want to, you know, take our cues from the providence of God and say we're gonna follow God's lead, I think that we often find ourselves realizing that God's God's you know, God's taking a stroll on his time at his time and at his pace. Yeah. And we need to stop running ahead.
SPEAKER_08That's what I love about what what we're creating here and the necessity of what we're creating here with a space and a place for let's to use the word theology to happen from the bay for the bay. The reason why that's so important is because theology will always remind us within theology that's eschatology, which you you were saying it teaches us what to do and how to do it. But theology as a broader category teaches us who it is that is getting things done, and that's God. And when we think about the gospel, I think we think of 1 Corinthians 15 and the first couple of verses there, the preaching ministry, that is which of first importance in the scriptures. But the evidence that the gospel is rendering effect later on in that passage is when Paul says, I worked harder than ever all of you, but it was not I, but the gospel. Oh, that's great working through me.
SPEAKER_05God who worked in me. Yes, the mystery of compatibilism, if we put it in theological terms. I love that verse, Phil. That's actually one of my life verses.
SPEAKER_08That's fantastic. I love that. We are both the recipient and the conduit, but if the order gets changed on that, then I think things get problematic.
SPEAKER_00That's right. It affects a lot of things because you look around, we live in a place where innovation is happening. Entrepreneurs are going to venture capitalists and they're getting they're wanting to turn things around as fast as they possibly can in order to prove a concept or to build a company or or you know be the first in a in a in a race to try to accomplish, you know, one thing or the other. And when we look at what the church is all about and what we do and the the cues that we should follow in order to keep pace with what God has called us to do, I think oftentimes we get way ahead of ourselves and we are missing the opportunities that God has for us in the present, like what what I'm supposed to be doing right now, not necessarily what goals I'm supposed to be achieved by the end of the year and and or what what I hope to see in a decade. I mean, I think there's I think there's opportunity. I think there's things that are helpful for us to think about and anticipate with excitement and hope that God is accomplishing. And I think we ought to, you know, work in a way that doesn't look like uh, you know, uh we should we should we should work in faith and believe that God is going to accomplish his work through us, but we have to be content with being where we are right now.
SPEAKER_05What do you think about this? So, like as before I move to ask you some theological questions as regards City Serve and some queries I have of what I hope we talk about. On this point of pastoral burnout, you know, I've worked almost 11 years now in the seminary from when I was in my early 20s to now into my mid-30s, which I just can't believe. But I've sat like this, not in a podcast, but like across the table, so to speak, from thousands of people in ministry or aspiring ministers. And part of my gut feeling as to why I think a lot of pastors get burnt out is that they don't have the right understanding of what ministry actually is or what ministry actually would entail. Okay. And I wonder if that's why well, counseling is what's leading to burnout, because they didn't think counseling is a significant part of what they'd be doing. Let me put it like this I can't tell you, dude, how many times I've sat across, and it's usually the younger pastors, like 40 and below. And if I were to ask them, hey brother, what's your favorite thing about pastoral ministry? Okay, nine times out of ten films, what do you think the young pastor says?
SPEAKER_08Preaching is correct.
SPEAKER_05Nine times out of ten, a young pastor says, My favorite thing about pastoral ministry is preaching. And because of me working for the seminar, I just have to sit there with like a straight face, but on the inside I am dying. And then I look back and I think of all, and I wonder what it'd be like for you. I look back at all the guys that I went to Cal Baptist with, and then even some guys in seminary, but it's mostly the people I knew from Cal Baptist. The vast majority of them aren't in ministry anymore. I don't know how many of them aren't even Christians anymore. I hope very few, if none at all. But how many don't make it and burn out? Because for them, pastoral ministry is they get to be in front of people and speak, and they get to be the rock star and they get to feel good. Because it feels good to have a hundred people watch you, even better to have 500 people watch you. So, what do you think about that? How how many young guys might be burning out because they don't think correctly about what pastoral ministry actually entails?
SPEAKER_08For me in this season, I'm really committed to wanting to encourage the heck out of a handful of young pastors that I've identified that I have just a huge vision for.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_08And giving them as many opportunities as I can think of to learn something or grow in some way or be challenged. But using whatever assumptions that I can think of that would burn a pastor out. Some of the things I'm trying to do for these younger guys is have a genuine friendship with them and make them feel like they're not alone. Number two is uh get them resources that other people aren't going to think about getting them, even if it's like uh, you know, a book or certain something that they would not think of reading on their own or something. Um, but then also like opportunity to experience something that they wouldn't have naturally experienced, whether it's a conference or a relationship with someone, an interaction with someone. Um even like uh last year or at a certain conference, I used whatever uh opportunities God had given my way to introduce a younger pastor to someone who's kind of a well-known pastor. And that experience uh I think really emboldened and kind of encouraged. So yeah, the answer to that, I I would also like to know from others uh what is that? And then also like what can I do now as a younger pastor to help both my peers and those coming after me to rethink about this as a long game.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I'd say as a means of encouragement, it's interesting too. Like I said, when you sat by the room, how over the last decade, how many times I've sat across the table from a pastor? I'm I it's in the thousands, how many one-on-one meetings I've had. So that's like sort of my I would say fairly extensive anecdotal experience. It's the older pastors, usually 40 and on, who if I ask that same question to, you know what they say? Pastoring. It's the people. I love spending time with my people. I love shepherding, I love counseling. It's like those are the guys that last because they know what pastoring actually is, which is people and caring for people, soul care, counseling, discipleship. It's not the one time a week where you get to stand up and say, Hear ye the word of the Lord. Like if that's your conception of what pastor ministry is, you will burn out. Because guess what? The throngs are not gonna come. People are not gonna come after up in every week, every week say your sermon was the best. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna repent of all my sin and I'm gonna stop, you know, being mean to my wife and complain about how much this church sucks. Like it's just not gonna happen. It's gonna be the same people week in, week out, who good job, brother, and then they'll talk about how much it sucks afterwards.
SPEAKER_08But I do think those who would say that later in life, those pastors who say it's the people, I'm sure if they were asked when they were younger, they probably would have said that the same thing. Teaching, yeah. And then experience teaches them otherwise. And it's not that we want to throw the baby out of the bathwire in some ways. That's good. I wonder if Jonah was young, which is why maybe he had whatever energy and brashness to do what God called him to do. I've heard that all the disciples, when they were called, were younger. And so uh there's a certain kind of energy that comes with preaching ministry and a boldness that I used to have that I didn't have. But you're absolutely right in that if that becomes the primary objective, and um, and depending on your theological stream, if that's your primary means of discipleship, I would say that's probably not a holistically healthy way to do ministry. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I think what I would say is like when I found a lot of comfort in reading like 2 Timothy, um, and Paul's writing to Timothy, uh, all the encouragement that that Paul gives to Timothy. Um, there there are moments where he says, you know, um, exhort, rebuke, um, um, all these things they they're supposed to be doing in all, you know, long suffering and patience. And he's tea he's telling him, you know, these are the things that you need to be doing. You the same things that you've learned from me, commit to faithful men. There's like all these pastoral things, uh, qualities that ought to be coming out of a of um Timothy as a pastor. But I think also um, you know, he acknowledges the fact that he's gonna face like people who are going to be wolves in sheep clothing. He's gonna you're gonna face trials, you're gonna face people that are gonna get caught up in all kinds of heresy and philosophhy and all kinds of stuff. And he's just like, this is what pastoral ministry is gonna be like. Um, and I think there is a there's a for me, when I uh, you know, at a very difficult time, uh I I God was very kind to me. I went through was going through a very difficult season in pastoral ministry, or I went to a workshop on preaching and the text that we were working through was 2 Timothy, and it just like got to marinate in it for like three days straight. And it was just it was just uh ointment to my soul. But just being able to realize that, you know, life is uh as a pastor is very, very hard. And there are those moments where you're gonna preach that best sermon that everyone's gonna remember and they're gonna talk about, and you're gonna think, man, how did that happen? You know, how did how did those words come out of my mouth? You know, but then there's gonna be a lot of times where it's just gonna be, you know, it's gonna be hard. It's gonna be really difficult and it's gonna you're gonna have scars when you come out of it, you know. And I think that the reading um Second Timothy is just a beautiful place for people to go to recognize, you know, if if if you like preaching, sure, that's part of it. And I hope you become a good preacher. I think God's word, God's word deserves that honor uh of devoting yourself to being the kind of preacher who you know is faithful to the word of God. If you read 2 Timothy and it doesn't make you squirm or if it makes you want to just run for the hills, then maybe maybe that's not your calling, you know, or or if you're not running to God and saying, Hold me fast, you know, help me with the work that you've called me to do. And if if if this is it, hold me fast, you know. I think there's a turn in everyone's ministry where they're just like they have to decide whether they're going to like step into 2 Timothy and embody that and listen to Paul's voice, or whether they're gonna say, I'm I'm gonna become a salesman, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna go the other way.
SPEAKER_08That's right. So well, the interesting to know is in light of what Ricky's saying, is how do you encourage and get the next generation excited for pastoral ministry, but also be realistic with it biblically.
SPEAKER_05I fear right, like it's interesting that you said this was happening for you when you were a teenager. You're starting to sense that call. Um, I started to say, I don't know about you, Ricky, but I mean I also started to sense that call when I was 17, 18 years old. I've heard this story a lot. It seems to be like late teens, early 20s, God starts calling men into the pastor to the missions field, which is really cool. But like if I'm being honest, when I was young and you had the this, you know, your struggles of pride and ego, you thought like God's gonna call me to like pastor this church and I'm gonna get to preach to like hundreds of people and I'm gonna lead a mega church. Like, you don't ever talk to a young guy or someone who's trying to give a word to a young guy. Essentially, they say to you, like, you know, you're gonna go pastor church of 75 people for decades, and no one will know who you are. But it's I can't tell you how many times I've read the essay or heard the story of like, yeah, I got a word or the vision or something, and I'm gonna lead a megachurch and we're gonna have thousands of people, we're gonna change the culture. And so, like, that is an unrealistic expectation that will lead to burnout. And so I think to your point, we have to help as those who are in seminary or in these networks and leadership positions of like, we have to help people have a brutally honest recognition of what pastel ministry actually entails and how preaching and teaching is an important part, but it's not the only part. And there's a lot more varied ways to engage in the ministry of the word, other than in a forward-looking, I'm at the front capacity. Like what you do with those young men that you're ministering to, that's the ministry of the word. Opening up the Bible and helping them see certain truths from the text, that's the ministry of the word. It may just not be as quote unquote sexy as you get to be in the front and um having everyone listen to you. I mean, because there is the the like psychological Freudian way to think about why would someone want to preach. And I remember there was this girl I was dating before I was got together with my wife, and she had a father who for a season was engaged in pastoral ministry and he kind of neglected the family. And so she had a very low view of pastoral ministry, and that's part of why we didn't work out. But uh, she she asked me one time, point blake, and this is a very Freudian way to think about why someone would want to preach. She said, Cameron, do you just like to be up there so people look at you? Like, do you just want people to be listening to your voice and no one interrupt you? And I thought, ooh, that was how many young men unconsciously would say yes, and that's why they do it, because they want people to look at them and they want to be the center of attention. And as a pastor, you're kind of the celebrity of your own little kingdom. And so I think we have to help young men get away from that unbiblical, egocentric, self-centered thinking and recognize that preaching is a is a ministry of pastoral ministry that God gives you for the sake of sanctification, edification, and instruction. But it's not all that you'll be doing. And when I hear some men talk about, yeah, I spend 30 hours a week on my sermon, I think that is insane. What are you doing for 30 hours? Like there are other things that you should be engaged in. Yeah, but to your question, Phil, I I think part of it is helping them really in two senses. One, have a biblical understanding of what pastoring is. What is pastoring, biblically speaking? And then secondly, they need to be, I would say, in mentorship relationships with men who've gone the distance and not, you know, big sexy names who, you know, lead the mega churches. That's that's one to quote dumb and dumber, what are my chances? Like one in a hundred? More like one in a million. So we're saying there's a chance. Like, yeah, brother, there there is a chance you could lead a mega church, very unlikely. And then, like I heard Piper say one time, you guys have no idea what God does to me behind the scenes to keep me humble. So, like you have no idea the kinds of things that God will do to you if you lead a mega church and what he might do or allow the enemy to do to make you humble. God keep us from what we heard happen to our brother here in Fremont. Yeah, I resonate. Like I get just it makes me every time I think about him, I I I I have to pray for him. Like, but that's that's an attack of the devil. So I think we we need to help young guys know, or whoever's getting into ministry know what what is the Bible's depiction of what pastoral ministry actually looks like. And then second, what does it look like to get mentorship from older pastors who've led normal churches and have had normal, faithful lives and help have them talk. I just think of what Jesus says when that parable where essentially talks about you know going through the kingdom in this immortal line of he says, you know, well done, my good and faithful servant. That's so important. It doesn't say fruitful, it doesn't say famous, it says good and faithful. And so of course, well, oh, we just want to be faithful, we just want to be faithful. But I I think sometimes we forget the first part. Good, like morally good, virtuous, and holy. I think just as much as we want to train young men to have a biblical understanding of the pastorate, a mentor who helps them understand real world, what does it look like the pastor? We have to help them recognize that beyond just having the skills they need to be faithful, they need to have the kind of characters that ought to be growing in goodness and helping shepherd them towards a cultivating of a good heart, of a good mind, of a good soul. So that's that's how I would answer your question.
SPEAKER_00I think another big part of that is um I think that we look, you know, it's like uh was it C.S. Lewis that said we're chronological snobs. Yeah. Like we think that this moment is the greatest moment in all of history. Uh, I think if we look back at the people who have actually gone before us who were quote unquote great pastors or people who moved thousands to come to Christ, or, you know, led mega churches. I think that you look at them, and I think that if you were to, if you had the opportunity to follow their life back to where uh they were saved or they were called, and then you were to figure out what was the um what was that pebble that started that avalanche of work of God in their life that brought them to where they became this massive, you know, mound of snow that like moved trees and you know, whatever. My point is I think that we need to realize that the work of God is multi-generational. Um, it is something that as I see God bringing people into my life, like Daniel and other people, I'm looking back and I say, you know what, it might be that 50 years from now, maybe 20 years, maybe 10 years from now, no one will ever remember my name. You know, they'll never know what I did. And I'm I've come to the point where I'm like, I'm fine with that. I'm fine if my lane, my name gets lost and nobody remembers me. But there might be somebody that God uses in my life to touch and to be able to help uh guide them to Christ and to follow his will in their life. Maybe they will be a mega church pastor, not that that's the be-all and end all and that defines you know greatness. Yeah, but God may use somebody else to transform thousands of people, you know.
SPEAKER_05You don't know who who that is or what you will be, but you want to be focused on faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_05And so I feel like too many young pastors think everyone's gonna know my name. What I'm gonna do is gonna quote unquote echo through eternity. And that's true in a certain sense. But I think in the selfish sense that people think of it, it's like I'm gonna be known forever. That's a problem. They go and think I'm gonna lead a mega church, I'm gonna be the next John Piper, I'm gonna be the next John MacArthur, or like a prospective seminary student I was talking to recently, and several emails to me has said that I want to be used for the winning of millions of souls. Like, awesome. That might might God do it. But dude, if you go into ministry thinking doesn't use you to save millions of souls, you're gonna be quickly burnt out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And so we just have to help young guys recognize like what ministry really looks like, and that if God then decides to bless their ministry such that they become the next gray glory, Billy Graham, you know, fill in your mega church pastor, praise God. But really, who they're probably gonna be is like Pastor Bob down the street, who's pastored a church of a hundred people between 75 and 150 for like 30 years. And when he dies and those people die, no one's gonna know who Pastor Bob was. Eternity will know because he's been faithful and good. But you know, he's not gonna have a national following and hundreds of Thousands or millions of people listening to his sermons or reading his tweets or books.
SPEAKER_00I'm interested, uh, Phil. Well, I'm interested. I was gonna say, I was gonna kind of take this in the kind of like more personal direction with you. Um, you talked about back when you were a teenager and um you had a youth pastor that was kind of pouring into you the um doctrines of Presbyterianism and and grace and like how that uh continued to be a the fuel for the fire that was burning in your soul as you continued to pursue uh what where God has led you to now. I'm just curious, you know, going back to that point, obviously may have been, you know, moments of um aspirations of grandeur and other things that that that that came into your into your mind or your vision, but I'm just wondering going to the theological side of that, like what when you said that, that was interesting, especially for a teenager to recognize that I know you're probably looking at it in hindsight. I tell a lot of stories, you know, in hindsight and kind of redefine it in the way that I know things are now. But I'm just curious, like what were the things that really got you excited and motivated that kind of led to your calling in what you were doing? I know you kind of told that story story already, but I'm just wondering on a theological level, what was their theological journey like that brought you there?
SPEAKER_08I think number one, it was um bringing clarity to the word of God in a way that was winsome and articulate. And these young men were able to contextualize the gospel in a relevant way without compromising what the gospel was. That's probably the biggest thing that got me was I had been hearing uh going to church once in a while to my parents' church. I heard the Bible being taught in a way that was very biblical, perhaps, but was wildly disconnected and irrelevant. And also because it was irrelevant, I didn't know how to go forth and utilize it or share it with other people. But when these two guys uh who are mentoring me articulated the gospel in a way that made sense and was memorable, my frustration was number one, yes, I I wish that I heard this sooner. And and uh I can't believe there's so many alternative me f voices out there sharing the Bible in such a harsh way. But there was also the frustration was also kind of rooted in like an angst of like, this is so good and so satisfying. I need to share those with as many people as I can. And it's almost a frustration of I don't know if I have enough time in my life, and I'm a young teenager, like my life isn't long enough, and I can't do enough to share this as much as I can. Around the same time, there was a movie called Schindler's List. You guys remember that? Oh, yeah. There's a scene at the very end. Schindler looks down at his blazer, and there's a small pin, and it's like a gold pin with the Nazi crest on it, and he says, and he starts to weep and break down. He says, This could have bought one more. Yeah, just one more. Yeah, yeah. I didn't do enough. Yeah, and that kind of resonated with me too. Like, I I had that burden of like just one more. I just want to share the gospel with one more. So it was activating the word of God to the extent that it excited me and put a burden for the lost on my heart. Yeah. But then also along with that, just like you're saying, these young guys had the wisdom to uh mentor and shepherd me into a way of clearly articulating that with others uh without bashing them over the head with the Bible.
SPEAKER_05You're talking about how they were training you and helping you think through like winsomely sharing the gospel with others, right? Now you lead this organization, City Serve Compassion Ministries, which seems to be very much mercy ministry focused. And so there's often a debate of like to what extent should the church be engaged in gospel ministry, and to what extent should it be engaged in mercy ministry? Right. And now there are those who say the church should only engage in God, there are some who'd say it's only gospel ministry, only word ministry. And then there's some who would say on the other side, like, no, the church should only engage in mercy ministry, and they're theological underpinnings of both groups. You obviously would not say either bifurcating, but you so so how do you make sense of that ecclesiologically and theologically as you lead this organization, as you pass to your church, how do you think through the the local church's obligation or a network of local churches' obligation to engage in both the ministry of the word and the ministry of mercy?
SPEAKER_08I think the objective is more so about holistic church health than it is about one paradigm or another practice. In one season of a church, if there's been just a hyper focus on ministry of the word and there's been a deep neglect for the city, perhaps pivoting for a season to mercy ministries and really pouring all your energy, and that means reorganizing your budget in that direction probably seems like a really healthy thing to do. But then let's say there's a church that has only done that for a long time. Well, it sounds like you should probably pause those things and spend a hearty season just rich, deep biblical uh exegesis and scavenging the word for every nugget of truth and gospel.
SPEAKER_05Sorry, let me clarify for what I meant by that. By gospel ministry, I meant going out and doing evangelism. So, like some, as you think about outreach to your city, some churches would say like we only should be sharing the gospel, doing evangelism, doing missions. That's the way we help our community. And then there are others that say the way we help our community is we feed the homeless, we take care of the needy, we, you know, clean up the streets, mercy ministry. So that's what I'm talking about. That that sort of what is the outward ministries of a local church or an association of churches, and how do you walk that line? That's that's more what I'm getting at, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I I've always been an uh a fan of the phrase the gospel is uh for all of life and all of life, um, or in all of life for all of life. And so to value a human being such that you want to feed that person would want to also probably burden you to share with that person the gospel. So I don't think it's as you mentioned, there's not a dichotomy necessarily there. Um, but it should be both and actually one fuels and complements the other. But as in this organization, one of the temptations is to maybe want to answer that question. And the reason I say it's a temptation is because a network necessarily shouldn't answer that question. That job belongs to the church. The network is just a fellowship, it's the space where these churches come to connect and collaborate and support each other. But that question needs to be answered at the root level of is your church holistically on mission?
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_08Are you guys doing all those things, right? Both word ministry of the word and um sharing. So um if a church says, Well, we're we're weak on evangelism, so we're gonna chalk that up to our network, I would say, Well, that's pretty fundamental for a church that you need to be your definition as a church should probably include evangelism and serving the poor.
SPEAKER_05So what is there one that should be primary? If you only do one, what should you do?
SPEAKER_08Well, you put me on the Presbyterian spot, but of course, you know, Presbyterian's gonna say the ministry of the word. Okay. Right. But the reason I guess I'm hesitant in that, and I'm thankful for my time at like places like Emory, uh, where I learned that Or they'd be more on the other side, right?
SPEAKER_05Like the church, because they believe in universalism and they're not exclusivistic in any sense, right? So I I should define universal meaning that everyone will eventually be saved through Christ and no one's going to hell, right? Versus exclusivism, which would say only those who confess Christ are gonna enjoy the presence of God forever, and those who don't will be judged for their sins forever. So at Emory, right, you're exposed to the other side of the spectrum.
SPEAKER_08Having come from RTS, which is the other side of the spectrum. Right. Yeah. And so there's kind of a a both end. I I was reminded in those uh doctoral days of Martin Luther King Jr.'s letters from our Birmingham jail and how many churches responded to his plea to partner by saying this is not a gospel issue. You know, our ministry priorities to the ministry of the word, the pulpit ministry. And systemically, that just was not a solution systemically to the problem that um a lot of these pastors and churches were misunderstanding. Yeah. Okay. And so to avoid that, yeah, I think it's both and and in many ways, that's not just the issue for the church, it's issue for the for the Christian. Every single Christian has to wrestle with this personal tension and struggle. Are is your head, heart, and hands collectively embodying the gospel, right? Or is it just one or the other? Yeah. An emphasis in one or the other, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, that's that's good. But I do think that like on a on a very practical ministry level, uh it's one of the things that we've tried to articulate with Citiserve and Compassion, is that Citiserve is kind of the umbrella or the ministry in which compassion comes from, come, comes out of. Um, and so Cityserve would be a collection of pastor, and it's kind of recently been brought into more ministry leaders in the tri-city area. Um, I think that that would be more of the pastoral, more of the gospel presence side of our engagement in the community, whereas Compassion Network is specifically and uh targeting those who are in poverty or those who are needy or those who are outcast. And so there is a sense in which part of the work that we are seeking to do through City Serve and Compassion, which um Philip is our executive director of that, is to say we need both pastors who represent their gospel communities and who are seeking to share the gospel in the places that God has called them. And we need this uh adjacent organization that is seeking to care for the physical needs of the people and showing compassion as well. We're trying to, by unifying pastors and churches and through that serving the needs of the poor and the hurting, uh, we're trying to accomplish that balance in a collective way, in a collective uh group of churches and pastors. And so um I think in some ways, the way that we can embody that as individual churches and members of churches is by being involved in an organization like City Serve uh and Compassion Network as well.
SPEAKER_08A lot of that I think is gonna come back to in a very rudimentary sense, kind of your where on the five-point spectrum of like Richard Nieber's Christ and culture do you fall on? And if you have a certain perspective, you're gonna always be focused on one or less focused on the other, right?
SPEAKER_05But those who are unfamiliar, could you explain what that five-point system is?
SPEAKER_08Uh if I can boil it down to just three, it would be like, is Christ against culture, Christ for culture and in it, and pretty much more or less of the same, or is Christ above culture and doing a more transformational work, right? And so if you believe in, I would think most missional evangelical Christians would be of the third saying that Christ wants to transform culture, then absolutely you as a church and therefore as a network are gonna do that. But if you're falling on the other side, you're probably gonna be you know, so it's the the question of the priority of this uh where does your prioritization play? Uh how do you prioritize your ministry? I think is more so a question of like, what is your view of culture? What is your view of your your city? Why do you exist in your city as a church? A network, City Serve, we want to uh be a space where we're constantly encouraging people to love their city. And this year, uh our mission is really focused on like bringing joy to the city, not happiness, but an Acts 8 kind of joy where as the church is getting persecuted, as people are going through extraordinary amounts of suffering, the gospel cuts through all of these things and is able to produce a citywide joy that nothing else can produce, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I want you to riff on that a little bit because Philip, I love hearing you talk about that. You've I think I've probably been in your presence a dozen times when you brought it up. And every time you do it, I just get so excited and hopeful for what God can do in our city. So kind of riff on that a little bit for me.
SPEAKER_08I think God needs to be known for who he is now more than ever, and he's a God of joy, but joy is something that is so misunderstood in our day and age. And so um what we want to do is see Acts 8, though it's not a prescription and a description, we want to see that happen yet again, first and foremost, by being a means by which the gospel is prioritized in the local church, by reprioritizing prioritizing it in the local pastor. That if the pastor is not fully convinced that he made it all, uh we lost it all, he gave it all, and so we get it all. If you're not fully and finally convinced by that, then you're gonna have some other priority in your church that's gonna create, I think, on the long term, something unhealthy. But when the gospel becomes central, your affections for the place where God has placed you, not just in your congregation, but in your community and city, are gonna grow such that you want nothing less than the joy of both your congregation and your city by means of the gospel entering into both. That's right. So uh as a network, uh, we want to be a champion and a cheerleader for getting gospel joy deep into the hearts of every single pastor so that gospel joy bleeds into every single church, and then we're fully convinced, yeah, it'll get into the city.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome. It'd be great to say, you know, next time we get voted the happiest city in America, to say what is the secret? Like there's gospel joy. There's gospel joy, it's breaking out the city of free minds.
SPEAKER_05All the churches are breaking out with ecstatic joy that's centered on Christ and disdains the things of the world. Well, our conversations run on, and there's much more, brother I'd love to talk about. And we're gonna have to have another conversation. I think it'd be fun to do a Presbyterian baptistic nuancing of issues and talking of issues. There's a lot of questions I'd want to ask you about that. But uh, what a better note to end on than joy. Surprised by joy. I hope we're all surprised by joy. Might the god of joy give us a but uh thank you, brother, for joining us here on the Bay Area Theology Podcast. Thank you uh for those of you who've listened. If you want to learn more about Cityserve, please reach out to our brother Phillip and Cityserve Bayarea.org. Just Google Cityserve in the Tri City. And if you're in Fremont, Newark, a Union City, and you're pastor and you want to be a part of this great network network in which we find ourselves, please reach out. But with that said, we'll see you guys next time. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thanks.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to the Bay Area Theology Podcast. If this conversation encouraged you, be sure to subscribe, follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone else who would benefit from it. You can find more episodes, resources, and information at bayarea.org. That's Bayarea Theology.org. If you are interested in learning more about the Bayseed Collective or helping support the work that we are doing, go to Bayseed.org. That's B A Y S Eed.org. At Bay Area Theology, we believe that healthy ministry begins with healthy theology. Our hope is to cultivate thoughtful conversations that strengthen the church here in the Bay Area and beyond. This has been Bay Area Theology, theology from the Bay for the Bay.