SPEAKER_02: This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_02: For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
SPEAKER_01: Please have a seat.
SPEAKER_01: My name is Blake Hartcastle.
SPEAKER_01: I'm the spiritual formation pastor here at Grand Parkway.
SPEAKER_01: And Neil gave a prelude.
SPEAKER_01: If you walked in just recently, we're doing it a little different.
SPEAKER_01: We are going to have a conversation.
SPEAKER_01: You get to eavesdrop in, so don't feel bad about listening in, leaning in.
SPEAKER_01: And what we're going to uh discuss and unpack really is what God has put through many times in the scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Lisa, we come on up here.
SPEAKER_01: She's going to we heard I'm going to have a conversation.
SPEAKER_01: I want to let you know this is a community group Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're part of a community group, especially if you're a leader, listen in.
SPEAKER_01: You will not be receiving community group questions today.
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: Well, what am I going to do?
SPEAKER_01: What are we going to talk about?
SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad you asked.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to talk about what you think about while we have a talk.
SPEAKER_01: And so everyone, well, people in my community group, I'm trying to look for you.
SPEAKER_01: I know you some of you guys are in here.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what's happening.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone in community group, you need to bring two questions to your community group that came to you during this time.
SPEAKER_01: And people in my community group, I'm going to be such a great leader.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not giving any of my questions to all of you have done all your questions.
SPEAKER_01: So if we don't get to mine, we don't get to mine.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what's happening.
SPEAKER_01: So I want you to listen in.
SPEAKER_01: Let me start with this verse from Galatians 6.
SPEAKER_01: Paul writes, he says, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you into the grace of Christ and you're turning to a different gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.
SPEAKER_01: As I said before, and now say again, if anyone's preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you've received, let him be accursed.
SPEAKER_01: And so the conversation Lisa and I are going to have today is uh it's one that's believers have needed to talk about for a very long time.
SPEAKER_01: And that is a constant barrage of false gospel, a constant assault, a constant enticement to a different, another gospel.
SPEAKER_01: It's not life-giving, it's damning.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why it's so serious.
SPEAKER_01: So Lisa, welcome.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me here.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't recognize her, you probably went around this weekend.
SPEAKER_01: So we're we're glad you're here.
SPEAKER_01: Um give us uh just some brief kind of summary of uh you're on this platform because God did some, I guess really some work of suffering and cause you to confront belief gaps, and that out of that work, he's using you.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let me invite others to join me in this.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this is a a story that was totally unexpected in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I've been a flaky artist my whole life.
SPEAKER_00: I never dreamed that I would be in front of an audience talking about apologetics and theology and false gospels or any of that.
SPEAKER_00: But I grew up in a Christian home.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, as the pastor mentioned before, my parents gave me the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I've loved Jesus as far back as I can remember.
SPEAKER_00: Even as a child, I knew that the Bible was God's word.
SPEAKER_00: I may not have been able to articulate that intellectually why I believed it, but I just knew in my bones that I could live my life by God's word.
SPEAKER_00: And so I was very involved in ministry growing up, and then of course went into uh the contemporary Christian music industry for a while.
SPEAKER_00: And it really wasn't until after all that that Zoe Girl came off the road, and my husband and I began attending a church in the heart of the Bible Belt, Middle Tennessee, where we were living.
SPEAKER_00: And the pastor of the church invited me to be a part of a really small study and discussion group.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, this is going to be like seminary.
SPEAKER_00: You go to this class, you'll come out on the other side with this seminary-level education.
SPEAKER_00: And what I didn't know at the time, and I wouldn't learn this until really just a couple years ago, was that the pastor had already been through the process of deconstruction, which Pastor Neil mentioned earlier, and he was hoping to convert his audience, his congregants, to progressive Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: And he was very good at it.
SPEAKER_00: And so over the course of the time I was in the class, all the things that I had believed about God and Jesus and the Bible were picked apart and explained away.
SPEAKER_00: And after we ended up leaving, it really threw me into my own faith crisis.
SPEAKER_00: All the doubts that he had planted had been just kind of festering in there and they took root and they grew.
SPEAKER_00: And I found myself sort of snowballing into my own deconstruction.
SPEAKER_00: And so it wasn't until uh I cried out to God, I just said, Lord, if you are everything I've ever thought you were, if Christianity is real, if this is true, then please send somebody who can answer these questions.
SPEAKER_00: And long story short, through a really providential series of events, I discovered the study of apologetics and theology and church history and archaeology and science and all these different disciplines that came together to convince me and persuade me intellectually now that the Christian worldview is true, that the historic claims Christian Christianity makes are actual.
SPEAKER_00: They are, they exist in reality.
SPEAKER_00: And so then the Lord led me to help others with that as well.
SPEAKER_00: And so the relevant point, though, is how this touches on progressive Christianity, is that the church that I was at where this all happened, years later, they rebranded themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They took down the Apostle and Nicene Creeds, they wrote their own creed, and then they said, we are now a progressive Christian community.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's when I thought, okay, I really want to study this.
SPEAKER_00: I want to know how do we identify and define progressive Christianity?
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the journey the Lord's had me on since then.
SPEAKER_01: And so this is the only guy in the whole world that's doing this, only church that's teaching this.
SPEAKER_01: Um we only need to talk about this one guy, is that right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's yeah, you got nothing to worry about, right?
SPEAKER_01: Uh but really it's pervasive.
SPEAKER_01: And the uh where is where are we likely to encounter progressive Christianity?
SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, maybe pause and say, so progressive Christianity, is this like a uh this is an okay version of Christianity, or is this is this a misnomer?
SPEAKER_01: Is this not Christianity?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: So uh let's let's take a moment, maybe define it so people can can understand what we're talking about when you use the the phrase.
SPEAKER_00: I use the term histor um sorry progressive Christianity because that's the term that progressive Christians use to describe themselves.
SPEAKER_00: And so for the sake of clarity, so that everybody knows what we're talking about, that's why I use the term.
SPEAKER_00: Although I would argue it is not Christian, and it's not even progressive, it's regressive.
SPEAKER_00: And yet this is the term that's used, so that's why I use it.
SPEAKER_00: But no, it's it's actually not Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Many people are sort of under the impression that progressive Christians are just a group of Christians who might be focusing more on grace, or they might be changing their minds on some political issues or some social issues.
SPEAKER_00: But what I hope to communicate and through my book and through the through the speaking that I do is that this is not just a group of Christians that might just be embracing the messy authenticity of their lives right now.
SPEAKER_00: This is a completely different description of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's a different description of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a Jesus who can save you, and therefore it's really a different gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It's that different gospel that Paul was talking about.
SPEAKER_00: And so to define it, it's very hard to define.
SPEAKER_00: Progressive Christianity is very slippery in the sense that there's a broad spectrum of beliefs that fall under that umbrella.
SPEAKER_00: It's very fluid, it's constantly changing and evolving.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's very hard to pin down just based on what progressive Christians believe, what the movement is.
SPEAKER_00: The reason it's hard to define is because it just doesn't work like historic Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Historically, Christians have been creedal people.
SPEAKER_00: So even before the New Testament was written, there were these really early creeds that Christians knew, like this is what's keeping us all on the same page.
SPEAKER_00: Well, progressive Christianity doesn't work like that because it's not really so much about what you believe, it's it's about what you do, what causes you're advocating for, what protests you're marching in, what kind of advocacy work are you doing.
SPEAKER_00: It's really more of a works-based gospel, not so much a grace-based gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And so just to succinctly define it, I would say that progressive Christianity is a movement.
SPEAKER_00: It's a group of people coming up and out of the evangelical church who are open to re-examining, redefining, and in most cases rejecting core essential definitions of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about the essential doctrines of the faith.
SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned uh it's it's actually not progressive, it's not Christianity, it's regressive.
SPEAKER_01: Is it regressing to uh I was king of my life?
SPEAKER_01: I thought Jesus might be king.
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm king of my life.
SPEAKER_01: Is that the regression?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you could regress it all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting to me that when the serpent approached Eve in the Garden of Eden, his question was, did God really say?
SPEAKER_00: And so he was questioning the word of God in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's very interesting if you fast forward to that same serpent trying to tempt Jesus in the wilderness in Matthew 4.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, he says, you know, if you're the son of God, turn this stone into bread.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, how does he, how does he fight?
SPEAKER_00: He fights by using the authority of the scripture, but then the devil quotes scripture back to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He says, It is also written.
SPEAKER_00: And then this time the devil's not really asking, did God really say?
SPEAKER_00: Because he quotes the actual scripture correctly.
SPEAKER_00: But this time the serpent was asking, did God really mean?
SPEAKER_00: Because he was trying to twist the interpretation of that when he tried that with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So I think you can regress this thing all the way back to the Garden of Eden, trace it through, but even just go to the inception of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Jude says to contend for the one faith.
SPEAKER_00: There is a one faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's there's not, you can't just do whatever you want and call it Christian.
SPEAKER_00: There is a gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Paul warned against a different gospel.
SPEAKER_00: So what is that?
SPEAKER_00: And if you go back to the beginning and you define that, that starts to go off the rails almost immediately.
SPEAKER_00: We find Paul and Peter, you know, getting into a little squabble over, you know, how Peter was sort of being intimidated by some of these people that were bringing in a more works-based gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul had to oppose Peter to his face.
SPEAKER_00: So we see this sort of heretical movements pop up from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And you can actually look at some of the ancient heresies, like the the circumcision party that we find there right in our New Testament, early Gnosticism, which really you were saved by knowledge, not by grace.
SPEAKER_00: And you can trace through all of these church hist the heresies of church history, and you can find seeds of of those things in progressive Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's what I mean when I say regress, if it's regressing back to old heresies.
SPEAKER_01: Um Peter is uh he's fearing the Jews.
SPEAKER_01: And so what what would be appealing to us?
SPEAKER_01: What would trick us into a kind of embracing or or just kind of side hugging progressive Christianity?
SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the temptation is because in progressive Christianity, you're not gonna get in trouble with culture because they affirm all the same things that culture does.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna be right in line with culture when it comes to things like gender and sexuality.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine how tempting that would be, especially for a younger generation who is growing up being told, not only are you wrong if you believe what the Bible says about sexuality, but you're actually hateful and harmful and you're actually hurting people.
SPEAKER_00: Like when I was in high school, if you held to a biblical sexual ethic, they might have thought you were old-fashioned or a goody two-shoes or something.
SPEAKER_00: But kids today are being told you're actually causing people to become depressed and to harm themselves.
SPEAKER_00: And so the pressure to capitulate on those things, but still maintain the Jesus part, the Christian part, I would imagine is just overwhelming because you can be a progressive Christian and basically you're not saying anything different than the world is saying.
SPEAKER_01: So in addition to social pressure, what are what are the ways that uh we encounter progressive Christianity?
SPEAKER_01: What are the ways that it comes to us?
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is a fascinating question because it's really, you mentioned it's pervasive.
SPEAKER_00: It really is everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: And I think a little bit of history might help us understand this.
SPEAKER_00: So does anyone remember the emergent church back in the late 90s, early 2000s?
SPEAKER_00: Anyone remember that movement?
SPEAKER_01: We got two people.
SPEAKER_01: Good job.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this was a movement that a bunch of church leaders came together to basically reassess the methods the church was using to reach a culture that had really changed in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_00: And so in the beginning, you had people who were more theologically liberal and people who were more theologically conservative.
SPEAKER_00: Well, then there became a clash between the conservatives and the liberals because the liberals they didn't really want to pin down what Christianity was, they didn't want to have a belief statement, and they were kind of leaning toward those sort of theological conclusions.
SPEAKER_00: And so the conservatives were kind of pushed out of that movement, but then the conservatives pushed the emergent church out of the evangelical church.
SPEAKER_00: There's all this sort of battles going on.
SPEAKER_00: One example of this, do you all remember when Rob Bell wrote the book Love Wins that questioned the doctrine of hell?
SPEAKER_00: And John Piper famously tweeted, farewell, Rob Bell, right?
SPEAKER_00: That was like the tweet heard round the evangelical world.
SPEAKER_00: And so I think things like that were successful in pushing that stuff out of the evangelical church, but that happened right at the same time of the rise of the social media platform on the internet.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not like the emergent church really went anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: They were just sort of forced online, but they grew massively while all the people in that movement were still attending more conservative evangelical churches.
SPEAKER_00: So then it was coming into those churches.
SPEAKER_00: So progressive Christianity doesn't show up on your church's doorstep and say, Hi, we're progressive Christians.
SPEAKER_00: We'd like you to think like us.
SPEAKER_00: No, it happens really on the grassroots level, through a small group level, maybe a new pastor higher, and it kind of all trickles down and sort of the little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump.
SPEAKER_00: And so today we have major Christian publishing houses, publishing books that are written by progressive Christians.
SPEAKER_00: So you might go to a Christian bookstore and pick out a book that looks good.
SPEAKER_00: There's a really good chance it's written by a progressive Christian because there's no real lines of distinction in those sort of bigger categories.
SPEAKER_00: All the time down my social media newsfeed, I'll see conferences.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you'll have one or two really solid Bible teachers and then one or two completely openly progressive Christians, and that's very confusing to someone like me who, you know, because I study the movement, for but for the average Christian, they may not be aware.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that biblically sound speaker isn't aware of who this other person is and what they're actually teaching.
SPEAKER_00: So it really is so pervasive.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's virtually in every church, it's in virtually every uh publishing platform, uh social media site.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's very, very difficult to completely root it out of everything.
SPEAKER_01: It's in music, Christian music supposed.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's huge in Christian music, yes.
SPEAKER_01: So as a as a you know, former performer artist, as an author, do you get angry at these musicians and these publishing companies and the authors?
SPEAKER_01: Like, do you want to fight them?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it was funny you asked me this in the first service, and I was like, no, not so much anger, but then later I got a little angry.
SPEAKER_00: So I think you are angry.
SPEAKER_00: No, I think I don't feel angry, I feel frustrated.
SPEAKER_00: It's very, very frustrating to me when I see a trusted, time-worn, respected Christian publisher start publishing books that teach that Jesus is really just a model and example of somebody who grabbed hold of this divine Christ consciousness, and we can all do the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it really frustrates me because you think that they should know better.
SPEAKER_00: They really should.
SPEAKER_00: But again, you have so many different departments, different person might be acquiring this author, and then the higher-ups may not even know about it.
SPEAKER_00: So there's just so much going on, but I do feel I do feel frustrated, and I think there is a righteous indignation that rises up when you think that there is some duplicity on uh like intentionality in that.
SPEAKER_00: I think there are progressive Christian leaders who know exactly how to talk to evangelicals.
SPEAKER_00: They know how to use the words that make you relax, but they have different definitions for those words.
SPEAKER_00: They know how to present something to where if you're progressive, you can filter it through that label, but if you're more conservative, you can filter it through that label, and everybody's happy and nobody's offended.
SPEAKER_00: So I think stuff like that is is probably frustrating and maybe a little bit of righteous indignation rises up.
SPEAKER_01: And that last category of those who they're pretty aware what they're doing.
SPEAKER_01: Um, these are the wolves preying upon the sheep.
SPEAKER_01: These these are the enemies of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's I mean, I know that feels uncomfortable to say something like that, especially in a culture where one of the greatest virtues is this idea of tolerance and like just be nice.
SPEAKER_00: Like we all just it's really important that we're all just really nice, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of where our culture is at.
SPEAKER_00: So to hear somebody go around calling people wolves sounds very shocking, but remember, those are the words of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus predicted that there would be wolves come in.
SPEAKER_00: He said they're gonna look like sheep, they're gonna act like sheep, but Jesus said inside they're ravenous wolves.
SPEAKER_00: And he said you'll recognize them by their fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And when you look biblically what Jesus meant by fruit and what the whole New Testament lays out, good fruit and bad fruit, good fruit is not just something that makes you feel happy or at peace in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Good fruit is obedience to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: So if there's a teacher coming in that's advocating for sin or making you feel okay about your sin, according to Jesus, that's a wolf.
SPEAKER_00: And we have a lot of those in progressive Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there certainly may be a measure of self-deceit where maybe they are very sincere about what they're teaching.
SPEAKER_00: They really believe what they're saying is right and good.
SPEAKER_00: But the message that they're preaching is is a message that's going to lead you away from the real Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You mentioned for uh especially young people, this pressure to um approve of everything, or you know, you do your life and just you know, let's let's be friends, let's not ever have conflict.
SPEAKER_01: What does that look like for old for grandparents, for uh other adults?
SPEAKER_01: How are they experiencing kind of this social ether of progressivism?
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is one of the interesting things in researching the movement of progressive Christianity, is you would almost expect that it would be most prevalent among young people, but that's actually not the case.
SPEAKER_00: It's really everywhere, from the young to the old.
SPEAKER_00: This is a message that's really catching on like wildfire, because our culture is we I mentioned a postmodern culture in the last service, and I think it's really relevant here that we understand what that is.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a culture that has rejected the idea of absolute truth.
SPEAKER_00: If absolute truth exists, nobody can really claim to know it.
SPEAKER_00: And so then when you go around claiming to know what the truth is, especially about matters of God and religion, it's actually considered very confusing and kind of arrogant because our culture as a whole really doesn't believe that you can claim to know what's true.
SPEAKER_00: You know what's true for you is true for you, what's true for me is true for me.
SPEAKER_00: So this postmodern approach to truth that would just say, look, there nobody can claim to know the grand narrative of everything.
SPEAKER_00: We're all just gonna try to live our truth and do our best, but Christianity doesn't work like that.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is rooted in absolute truth.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Paul even said, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain and you're still in your sins.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the resurrection of Jesus has to be an absolute truth for Christianity to even be a tenable worldview.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work like other religions where some guy was sitting in a cave or under a tree, received some sort of, you know, transcendent message of rituals that people can do, things that can help them in their lives, and they're like practical steps and things like that, or philosophies.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is not a philosophy, it's it's a gospel message that is unique among all other religions, and it stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus being a real event in history.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is what Paul is saying.
SPEAKER_00: If if Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain, and you're still in your sins.
SPEAKER_00: And so for Christians, postmodernism cannot coincide with Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: So we have to get back to talking about the nature of truth.
SPEAKER_00: Truth is something that lines up with reality.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we don't always perfectly know what that is, but our goal should be to try to line up with We believe with reality.
SPEAKER_00: And our culture, that just sounds like a foreign language to our culture right now.
SPEAKER_01: Will God ever reveal to someone or say something to someone that conflicts with what he's already said in his word?
SPEAKER_00: No, and this is a this is a great question because in progressive Christianity there's this sense in which the people who wrote the Bible, they were just doing the best they could in the times and places that they lived in to figure God out.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore we can look at what they wrote and we can analyze it.
SPEAKER_00: We can have a snapshot of what those people believed about God.
SPEAKER_00: But we've evolved more.
SPEAKER_00: God has revealed more to us.
SPEAKER_00: So we can look back at something that Moses wrote, or we can we can look at Paul and we can say, well, Paul had these biases against women or something.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he said what he said about women, or maybe he had these sexual hangups.
SPEAKER_00: Or I've even heard, you know, maybe Paul was gay, and that's why he was so adamant about homosexuality or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: So there's always this sort of psychoanalysis of the biblical writers, which also, by the way, is a very postmodern.
SPEAKER_00: Postmoderns don't interact with actual truth claims, they look for the power grab underneath the truth claim.
SPEAKER_01: Which is kind of a power grab, actually.
SPEAKER_00: Which is a total power grab.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's there's this sense in which, you know, we've evolved more now.
SPEAKER_00: So what God might reveal now could contradict something earlier.
SPEAKER_00: That would be progressive Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: But historically speaking, we believe as Christians that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
SPEAKER_00: He does not change.
SPEAKER_00: So the eternal truths of God's word are not going to change.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly, God revealed those things at different times to different people.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly, uh, Paul understood more about, say, the atoning work of Jesus on the cross than perhaps Abraham would have.
SPEAKER_00: But what we mean when we talk like that, and that's called progressive revelation, which is different than progressive Christianity, we're saying it's more like bricks in a house.
SPEAKER_00: So the bricks that, you know, God revealed and then the canon was closed, it was fully revealed, all of those bricks build upon each other to make the same wall.
SPEAKER_00: So there's not going to be a later revelation in scripture that's going to contradict an earlier one.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is internally coherent and consistent within itself.
SPEAKER_00: But in progressive Christianity, you're free to say, oh, I think Jesus disagreed with the prophet, you know, in Hosea, or and Jesus made corrections to things.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this real disjointed approach in progressive Christianity to God's revelation.
SPEAKER_01: We have lots of uh tweens and teens in this service.
SPEAKER_01: Um what could dramatically impact their experience of Christ in the church with respect to I'm in this I'm being baptized in this culture of progressivism, what would you say to them?
SPEAKER_01: Here's something that would dramatically change the projection of your life.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, if I could just be the boss of every young person, and if I could just say, just do what I say.
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
SPEAKER_00: I know I'm not the boss of you, but if I was the boss of you, if I could persuade you to trust the Bible, live your life by God's revealed word, because he did reveal himself to us in his word.
SPEAKER_00: Now, for me as an adult, I had uh a lot of questions about that because in the class that I was in that I mentioned earlier, the pastor was able to intellectually persuade me that not only was my Bible not reliable, but I didn't even have an accurate copy of what they originally wrote.
SPEAKER_00: So this really knocked the legs out from under the Bible for me.
SPEAKER_00: So there were years where I was studying the scholarship on all that.
SPEAKER_00: How were the manuscripts copied?
SPEAKER_00: How do we know what was originally written?
SPEAKER_00: How do we know if we have an accurate copy?
SPEAKER_00: And even if we have an accurate copy, how do we know that it faithfully reveals like, did they tell the truth?
SPEAKER_00: Did they make it the whole thing up in the first century?
SPEAKER_00: And so I had to go on a long journey to seek out the answers to those questions.
SPEAKER_00: So what I would say to young people is if you have questions about that, focus on those because God exists and he revealed himself to us.
SPEAKER_00: This is how we get to know him is through the revelation of his word.
SPEAKER_01: And so if he wants us to know him, he wants us to know him.
SPEAKER_00: He's actually revealed himself to us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I understand there could be doubts and questions about how trustworthy that is.
SPEAKER_00: And I would I would encourage you to ask those questions, go on that journey because there's great answers for all of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I studied that stuff for years and came out on the other side more convinced than ever that the Bible is completely reliable.
SPEAKER_00: But I understand some people have to go on that journey for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: But my urgency for young people would be focus on the Bible, settle on the Bible, and let the Bible be your authority.
SPEAKER_01: Does that also apply for anyone who's not a tween or a teen?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, we got a lot of clap for the clap for the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Um in your early career, you were a performer, songwriter, singer.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, did you know at that time?
SPEAKER_01: Were you just uh always a nerd and I want to be an apologist, but I'm stuck singing?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_00: I it's it's really funny because I I mentioned earlier I've always been a flaky artist.
SPEAKER_00: I never saw myself as an intellectual.
SPEAKER_00: I I mean, my parents, let's just be honest, they were really glad I graduated high school.
SPEAKER_00: They were like, all right, we got her through high school.
SPEAKER_00: I was just not a good student.
SPEAKER_00: I hated studying.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't even I did love reading.
SPEAKER_00: I always loved reading and writing, but I just didn't apply myself.
SPEAKER_00: And so I didn't think I was very smart to be able to learn all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: But I, you know, the Lord is so faithful and so good.
SPEAKER_00: This was a dream I never could have dreamed for myself.
SPEAKER_00: I always thought my main thing was going to be music.
SPEAKER_00: I had a very specific dream for myself with music.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so honestly thankful and glad that God killed that dream because what I do today is more satisfying.
SPEAKER_00: It brings me more joy and fulfillment than anything I ever did in music, ever, with hands down, without question.
SPEAKER_00: But I never would have thought of this for myself.
SPEAKER_00: So that's another thing for young people who are listening.
SPEAKER_00: The world is telling you make this big dream for yourself and break down every wall to make sure it happens.
SPEAKER_00: You know, don't give up on your dreams.
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes God wants us to give up on our dreams because it may not be his dream.
SPEAKER_00: It may not be what he has planned for you.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: You can actually live unfulfilled in certain areas like that, like you've got this dream in your heart that's never fulfilled for the rest of your entire life, but you can still have a deep abiding joy in living in the presence of Jesus, knowing that you will be with him forever.
SPEAKER_00: That's the good news.
SPEAKER_00: That's the promise we have as Christians.
SPEAKER_00: The world is telling you hustle, fight hard, never give up, make all this stuff happen, run over whoever you have to run over to make it happen.
SPEAKER_00: But it's also temporary, even if you get that thing.
SPEAKER_00: There are major celebrities who will tell you, I wouldn't wish fame and money on my worst enemy because it's not what you think it is.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't always dream the best dream for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: So, especially for young people, it's okay to let your dream die.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay to live in faithfulness to Christ in a very simple, humble life where nobody ever even knows your name.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's so countercultural, though, because we live in such a culture of the hustle, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's it's all about the hustle.
SPEAKER_01: So everything that the father has in his heart for you is more satisfying than everything you had in your heart for you?
SPEAKER_01: What's the relationship between apologetics and worship?
SPEAKER_00: This is a great question.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and I also want to add, can I add one more thing?
SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, I also want to say that if the father's dream for me tomorrow was to completely stop all of this, I would be totally content with that.
SPEAKER_00: Because my satisfaction is not in what I do.
SPEAKER_00: My satisfaction is in him, and that can happen anywhere in any scenario at all.
SPEAKER_01: You can also amen.
SPEAKER_00: We take amens and collapse, and so now what was the other question?
SPEAKER_01: Uh relationship between apologetics and oh in fact, maybe define apologetics, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but a relationship between that and worship.
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, great question.
SPEAKER_00: So apologetics is really simple.
SPEAKER_00: It just means giving a reason for what you believe, and everybody does it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Christians do it, vegans do it, Muslims do it, Buddhists do it, everybody on the internet does it.
SPEAKER_00: So it just means you're giving a reason.
SPEAKER_00: And actually comes in the Christian sense, it comes from uh, I believe it's 2 Peter 3.15.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Peter 3.15 is also significant, so I always get them mixed up.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter's writing to the persecuted Christians in Asia Minor, and he says, always be ready to give a reason for the hope that lies within you.
SPEAKER_00: And that word reason that's translated into English comes from the Greek word apologia.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we get the word apologetics.
SPEAKER_00: And it means a reasoned defense.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not really talking about telling people what Jesus has done in your life, although all of that stuff can be an important component to sharing the gospel, but that's actually not the reason.
SPEAKER_00: The reason is it's a reasoned defense.
SPEAKER_00: And so we are obligated as Christians to be able to explain these things why Christianity is reasonable to people.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what apologetics does.
SPEAKER_00: It combines disciplines like science, history, archaeology, philosophy, and looks for reasons in all those disciplines to come together to say, hey, this is why we think Christianity is true.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the relationship between that and worship is that at least in my life, the more deeply I studied these reasons, it also is going to lead you into a deeper study of who God is and his nature and his character and how he's revealed himself in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so for me, it has created a deeper sense of awe in my worship and it's really deepened it.
SPEAKER_01: Is there a rhythm to uh an experience of doubt, like life transitions?
SPEAKER_01: Is that part of what God's woven into the world to invite us to examine these things and or be fully alive and awake to Him?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that we don't need to be afraid of doubt if it's honest doubt.
SPEAKER_00: I think there are two kinds of doubt.
SPEAKER_00: There's doubt that is seeking truth, and then there's doubt that is just seeking justification for unbelief that's already there.
SPEAKER_00: And I think those are two very different things.
SPEAKER_00: So in Romans 1, the Bible talks about how everybody who's ever lived can look out into creation and actually know some things about God, about his divine attributes.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why we're without excuse.
SPEAKER_00: So everybody has the opportunity to reject God who's ever been born.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh I think that Paul works this out and goes all the way into unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: They suppress the truth in unrighteousness because they actually know it, like it's in all of our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: So when we disbelieve, when we engage in unbelief, that's a sin.
SPEAKER_00: But doubt is different.
SPEAKER_00: Doubt bubbles up in the context of belief.
SPEAKER_00: You don't doubt something unless you believe it.
SPEAKER_00: And I think we see Jesus being very tender and merciful toward doubters.
SPEAKER_00: Jude tells us to be merciful toward those who doubt.
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that doubt is actually a healthy part of growing in maturity as a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a doubt, if you come across something in the Bible that you're just like, what was that all about?
SPEAKER_00: That's an opportunity to go deeper with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's an opportunity to say, okay, Lord, I don't understand this.
SPEAKER_00: This really doesn't seem to line up with what I know about you.
SPEAKER_00: Help me with this and wrestle with God on those things.
SPEAKER_00: Look deeper.
SPEAKER_00: Learn about the cultural context that was written in.
SPEAKER_00: Look at who, you know, who that was applying to and why.
SPEAKER_00: And look, maybe look at some faithful uh scholars, what they've written about that, how they've wrestled with that question and take that to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think we should push our doubts down.
SPEAKER_00: When we push our doubts down, they can start to build up and then just all come exploding out.
SPEAKER_00: But but I do think it's important to diagnose what kind of a doubt it is.
SPEAKER_00: If this is honest doubt seeking truth, you're gonna be fine.
SPEAKER_00: But if it's just seeking justification for unbelief, that's different.
SPEAKER_01: So honest doubt, good, other kind is just false nobility, so I can feel good about my sin.
SPEAKER_01: The um what's the balance between thinking biblically, feeling biblically, and acting biblically?
SPEAKER_00: Thinking, feeling, and acting biblically.
SPEAKER_01: Head hard hands.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think that, oh man, everybody, I the only reason I'm saying that is it's such a loaded term, biblically Christian, you know, like a biblical Christian, because even progressive Christians will say, I'm a biblical Christian, because they just use the Bible in such a completely different way.
SPEAKER_00: So I think that first thing is how what we think the Bible actually is.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the Bible is our authority, it's the inspired word of God.
SPEAKER_00: When in that verse where it says all scripture is inspired by God, that word inspired by God is three words in English, but it comes from the Greek word uh theostanus.
SPEAKER_00: I probably pronounced that terribly, but it literally means God breathed.
SPEAKER_00: So God breathed his word out onto the page.
SPEAKER_00: The words on the page are inspired by God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the highest authority of the divine voice.
SPEAKER_00: So what we read in scripture is God's word.
SPEAKER_00: We need to think about it that way and come under the authority of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how we feel about it can sometimes be in conflict about how we think about it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where I think if you come across something that makes you, you know, feel like, wow, that's that's a rough thing for me to think through, stay there.
SPEAKER_00: Don't just move on or push that to the side.
SPEAKER_00: Wrestle with that, engage with that.
SPEAKER_00: And then acting, you know, the the application of a scripture, every scripture in the Bible applies to us in one way or another.
SPEAKER_00: But I think some of the problem with the way we think and feel about scripture is we jump to application before we even figure out what is this saying?
SPEAKER_00: Who was it said to, who said it, what did they mean to communicate?
SPEAKER_00: Like we need to think about all those things before we figure out how this applies to my life, because we can just go to a verse in the Old Testament that says, you know, uh take all the sheep and put them out in the whatever, and then, you know, like that's obviously doesn't mean it's not a command for you to go get a bunch of sheep and do something with them, you know.
SPEAKER_00: So we have to interpret it properly.
SPEAKER_00: We have to, but I think all of those things will line up when we come to the scripture with humility and under its authority.
SPEAKER_01: If you had two minutes to talk about anything you didn't talk about this weekend, or we haven't talked about yet, what would that be?
SPEAKER_00: Two minutes to talk about anything that I didn't talk about.
SPEAKER_01: Here's your boss has my boss.
SPEAKER_00: Um man, um well, I would say that here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: As Christians, a lot of this can seem overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: We can feel like, oh man, we live in the craziest culture ever.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, we don't.
SPEAKER_00: We really don't live in the craziest culture ever.
SPEAKER_00: If you study that first century Greco-Roman Empire, I mean, talk about a crazy culture.
SPEAKER_00: That was a crazy culture in so many ways.
SPEAKER_00: And the Christians who thrived in that culture had to face a lot of the same topics we face today.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there was abortion and infanticide in the first century Greco-Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this is why those early Christians were, there were so many women in that early Christian movement, because it was the Christians that would go out and rescue the baby girls that were left out to die, because that happened all the time.
SPEAKER_00: So we live in a culture that feels crazy, I think, because we've gotten to experience a relative amount of freedom as Christians to live out our beliefs pretty much unchallenged.
SPEAKER_00: And that seems to be changing.
SPEAKER_00: And so we are feeling the pressure, and I think a lot of Christians are sort of figuring out like how vocal should I be, how how much should I speak about this or that.
SPEAKER_00: And I just hope to encourage you that God is not asking anything of us that He has not been asking the church to do for 2,000 years.
SPEAKER_00: Every generation of Christians has had false gospels to contend with, spirits of the age to contend with.
SPEAKER_00: And we are not, this is nothing new, it's just new to us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we need to keep in mind that we have the same word of God that the church has had for 2,000 years, and we have the same Holy Spirit to empower and indwell us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we can do this, right?
SPEAKER_00: We can speak truth in a culture that's allergic to truth because we know that we have the real story.
SPEAKER_00: And that is a story that is not oppressive to people, regardless of what society might think right now, but it's actually life-giving and hope-filled.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that we need to live the beauty of that message out, even if it feels a little bit awkward, because we've just really not had to do that with any significant pushback until now.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Uh if you're a guest here, just relax.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, how we conclude our services, Lindsay's gonna come and play and sing a song over us and give us really space for the spirit to uh not just run out of here, but let me get let me get some concreteness out of this.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, things I want you to consider.
SPEAKER_01: There won't be questions on the screen, remember?
SPEAKER_01: You're thinking these questions, you're writing these things down.
SPEAKER_01: Um what what doubts, what doubts are stirring in me?
SPEAKER_01: What's uncharted territory I need to explore?
SPEAKER_01: Um what's God bringing up that you've been putting off?
SPEAKER_01: Who who has come to your attention of someone who you're new newly concerned about in their faith?
SPEAKER_01: Holy Spirit, we ask that this is time you would uh you would come and get clarity for us.
SPEAKER_01: That we wouldn't just be able to bow our heads for a minute and zone out, but that you would meet us face to face and would bring thoughts to our heads and feelings to our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: We trust you.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Father, we want to acknowledge who you are and who you've always been.
SPEAKER_03: We're not come to enthrone you, you've always been enthroned.
SPEAKER_03: You are God alone.
SPEAKER_03: It's why the gospel says, that's why Jesus, you said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
SPEAKER_03: No man comes to the Father except through me.
SPEAKER_03: There's not many ways to God, and all roads don't lead to God.
SPEAKER_03: There's one way.
SPEAKER_03: So there's an exclusivity to our faith, to Christianity, and yet there's a universality to it at all.
SPEAKER_03: It's exclusive in that we have to come only, we come to God through his son Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: And it's universal in that it's open to everybody.
SPEAKER_03: And this is what makes Christianity so compelling and so right and true.
SPEAKER_03: It's the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_03: Let us have a reason for the hope that is within us when the opportunity comes for us to engage in conversational apologetics.
SPEAKER_03: Let us be winsome, free, enjoyable people so that you're accurately represented in our culture, God.
SPEAKER_03: This is our prayer.
SPEAKER_03: Pray it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_03: And everyone said, Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Thanks for your attendance today.
SPEAKER_03: Let me just remind you, we have a resource center that was set up uh for my women's weekend.
SPEAKER_03: They have great books that were specifically selected uh to accompany what was taught this weekend and what you heard this morning.
SPEAKER_03: I want to point to a couple of them real briefly before you're dismissed.
SPEAKER_03: The first one is a book.
SPEAKER_03: There's no more of these, they're all sold out.
SPEAKER_03: But uh, if you want, it's called A Student's Guide to Culture.
SPEAKER_03: Uh what I love about this book is every chapter, there's not a chapter in this book that's longer than 10 pages.
SPEAKER_03: And if you have a child, you need to read the book.
SPEAKER_03: You should read the book, and your kid can read it and you have conversations with it.
SPEAKER_03: Here's another one.
SPEAKER_03: It's entitled, So the Next Generation Will Know: preparing young Christians for a challenging world.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, you cannot just send your kids to baseball practice and dance and swim and soccer and think they're going to be okay.
SPEAKER_03: They're they they they're swimming in a culture that is immersed in a false narrative.
SPEAKER_03: So a great book, so the next generation will know.
SPEAKER_03: This is one of my favorite books I've ever read.
SPEAKER_03: Uh I use a quote from this book in counseling all the time.
SPEAKER_03: I sit, I give it to people and say, hey, just sit down, read this quote three times a week, and just and write down any questions, thoughts, or feelings that stirs up in you.
SPEAKER_03: The book is called The Ragamuffin Gospel by a man named Brennan Manning.
SPEAKER_03: And here's why it's one of my favorite books.
SPEAKER_03: Brennan Manning was a Catholic priest who became a uh a closet alcoholic.
SPEAKER_03: Uh and he and he just he just left and he just said, I need to go to rehab.
SPEAKER_03: I'm a broken down drunk.
SPEAKER_03: Uh and he discovered the grace of God.
SPEAKER_03: Uh and so if you struggle with grace, this is an incredible book.
SPEAKER_03: The Ragamuffin Gospel.
SPEAKER_03: There's still some of those left.
SPEAKER_03: Uh here's another great book by a man named J.I.
SPEAKER_03: Packer called Knowing God.
SPEAKER_03: Um, and he just basically unpacks what it means to know God, to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_03: And then lastly, this is my wife's favorite book.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, if you ever get in a conversation with my wife, she'll bring up spiritual disciplines.
SPEAKER_03: This is a book by a guy named Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline.
SPEAKER_03: There's plenty of these left in in the resource center because it has the word discipline on it.
SPEAKER_03: And people are like, that ain't sexy.
SPEAKER_03: Uh basically, spiritual disciplines are practices that we undertake that help us to do what we cannot by nature do, naturally do.
SPEAKER_03: Things like fasting and prayer and study and solitude and silence.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: You feel that right there?
SPEAKER_03: All the air left the room.
SPEAKER_03: Fasting.
SPEAKER_03: We're starving right now.
SPEAKER_03: Shut up so we can go to lunch.
SPEAKER_03: Uh anyway, spiritual disciplines are things that help you become who the Bible says you are because you don't drift into that, okay?
SPEAKER_03: One last thing.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, I want to make you aware that if you're a podcast listener, and most of you are, you need to go to alisachilders.com.
SPEAKER_03: It's like alisa childer, elisachilders.com.
SPEAKER_03: Great resources there.
SPEAKER_03: You can get this the last book I want to recommend.
SPEAKER_03: You can get a copy of it.
SPEAKER_03: It's sold out.
SPEAKER_03: Uh it was sold out this weekend, uh, and we had tons of them, but it's called Another Gospel.
SPEAKER_03: Question mark, just another gospel.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, and you can get it there, and if you get it on her website, the the copies are signed.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, she's also currently working on another book uh that will come out.
SPEAKER_03: Marcy, do you know the name of it?
SPEAKER_03: I married an old woman.
SPEAKER_03: Do what?
SPEAKER_03: Pretty little liars.
SPEAKER_03: I think pretty little liars is a show that we don't want to endorse at church.
SPEAKER_03: I'm just saying.
SPEAKER_03: All the students are like, yeah, I watch that every time.
SPEAKER_03: Pretty little lies.
SPEAKER_03: We'll go with something like that.
SPEAKER_03: But listen, if you it's Alisa is just a her website is a great resource, okay?
SPEAKER_03: She's got all kinds of different resources on there, uh, interviews, podcasts on different topics that you would find interesting.
SPEAKER_03: And as a student, you would find interesting as well.
SPEAKER_03: Elisachilders.com.
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, if you're a guest, thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_03: Uh next Sunday kicks off uh Holy Week with Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_03: I'll be preaching.
SPEAKER_03: I haven't done it in a while, so pray that I remember how to do it.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Somebody saw me in the lobby and I walked in.
SPEAKER_03: They said, Hey, are you a visitor?
SPEAKER_03: So I punched her in the throat and walked on.
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, that's a joke.
SPEAKER_03: Uh hey, hey, thank you for your presence today.
SPEAKER_03: Stand to your feet.
SPEAKER_03: We'd like to dismiss it.
SPEAKER_03: We'd like to close our service with a spoken blessing.
SPEAKER_03: So hold your hands out.
SPEAKER_03: Your your God gave you a mind because he created you to love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_03: Your mind is not about being disciplined or being intellectual or born smart.
SPEAKER_03: It's about exposing yourself to the right things so that your mind craves more of the right things.
SPEAKER_03: Depart now and give yourself to this beautiful reality.
SPEAKER_03: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Bless you.
SPEAKER_03: You're dismissed.