October 2, 2025 • 45 mins
Is it possible to grow in our Christian faith without engaging the doubter or the skeptic? And if growing in our faith means growing closer to the doubter, how do we do that without compromising what we believe to be true? Preston Ulmer will teach us how to rebuild the impression the other person has of us as Christians. Discover the power of authentic Christianity.
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S1 (00:00):
Hi friend, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
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(00:22):
Doctor Sam Storms. You know, he tells us that so
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to remember the Scripture that reminds us that while we
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everything's all been worked out while we were yet sinners.
That's when Christ died. For us. Love is an action word,
(00:44):
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(02:10):
something today that really changes your perspective and makes you
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Hi friends, this is Janet Parshall. Thanks so much for
choosing to spend the next hour with us. Today's program
is prerecorded so our phone lines are not open. But
(02:31):
thanks so much for being with us and enjoy the broadcast.
S2 (02:34):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (02:36):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (02:38):
Americans worshiping government over God.
S5 (02:41):
Extremely rare safety move by MH 17 years.
S6 (02:44):
The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S5 (02:48):
Over the.
S1 (03:02):
Hi friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall.
Thanks so much for spending the hour with us. Hey,
you just heard all that noise in the marketplace. We
talk often about the fact that there's some pretty shabby,
counterfeit ideas that are being bought and sold to the
highest bidder. There's also truth in that marketplace, but I'll
tell you what marks the marketplace more than ideas. It's people.
And here's what I know beyond a shadow of a doubt.
(03:22):
You walk around in that marketplace of ideas, you're going
to find all kinds of people for whom they don't
have a clue who Jesus is. In fact, they would
categorically call themselves a skeptic, a sinner, a seeker. Uh,
maybe they'd even call themselves an agnostic, or perhaps even
boldly declare themselves to be an atheist. And because John
17 reminds us that's exactly where we're supposed to go
(03:43):
is out into that mess, that muck, that mire. That
world turned upside down where good is called evil and
evil is called good. You're not to circumnavigate it. I'm
hearkening back to my friend John Bunyan, who said Christian
and faithful must needs pass through it, which is fancy
English talk, for it ain't no detour. We walk right
smack dab into the middle of that upside down world,
and John 17 reminds us that when Jesus was talking
(04:06):
to his ABBA father, his daddy, he said, my prayer
is not that you take them out of the world.
So into the world is exactly where we're called. I
have a question. You may use a lifeline or call
a friend. You can talk among yourselves on one hand
right now, quietly in the voice inside your own head.
Name five non-believing Christian friends that you have. Hmm. Can
(04:31):
you do that? Well, if you can't, you're not alone.
All the data out there says we tend to insulate.
We tend to pull ourselves in if 92% of us.
And that's a staggering, almost incomprehensible, unbelievable, troubling, troublesome number, 92%
of us. Once we come to faith in Jesus Christ,
we don't even talk to anybody else. We have no
substantive faith conversations once we come to faith in Christ.
(04:54):
I don't get that. If Peter and John said, we
can't stop talking about that which we've seen and heard.
If the Scripture says, out of the overflow of the heart,
the mouth speaks, how can you keep this news to yourself?
So you got the news, and then you have the
person who has a perception of who you are as
a follower of Christ. They themselves are on a journey.
Don't let their title scare you one iota. How do
(05:14):
I know that? Because God's placed eternity in the heart
of every single one of us. And when they put
the cat out at night and pull the sheets under
their chin, they're asking the big questions too. They might
not want you to know. They're asking the big questions,
but they are. But mostly they're reading you the living epistle.
What is it about you that draws them closer to
that inner circle where they're going to find not truth,
(05:35):
but just the one who calls himself truth? Or what
is it about us that actually makes them step back
rather than step in and step closer? That's what we're
going to talk about this hour. We're going to tell
you something about the Doubters Club, and we're going to
talk with Preston Elmer on that, because he happens to
be the founder and director of the Doubters Club, an
organization that teaches Christians and atheists to model friendship and
(05:57):
pursue truth together. He also serves as the Director of
Network Development for the church multiplication network CNN. That's the
church planting arm of the Assemblies of God, and before
he joined CNN, he served in ministry for years as
a youth pastor, a youth adult pastor and church planter.
He also has two, not one two master's degrees one
in religion, one in divinity, and his experience in education
(06:19):
led him and his family to plant a church in Denver, Colorado,
where he also founded the Doubters Club. He joins us
today because there's a continuum here. He's written a book
called The Doubters Club good Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists,
and the Spiritually Wounded. Preston, the Warmest of Welcomes. Thank
you so much for the gift of one hour of
your time. I can't give it back. And the older
I get, the more I realize what a priceless commodity
(06:41):
time is. So thanks for giving it to us.
S7 (06:44):
You're welcome. It's a pleasure to be on your show.
S1 (06:46):
Thank you so much. Okay. Of course. Inquiring minds want
to know what's the difference between a degree in religion
and a degree in divinity? Entity.
S7 (06:53):
Well, one takes two more years than the other, I guess. Uh,
and other than that, it's just for my own sanity.
I just needed to keep learning, uh, because during my undergraduate,
I actually left the faith. And so I tell people,
the master's degree were actually for me. They weren't for you. And, uh,
so that's the difference, I think two years difference. And
(07:15):
I just needed I had a lot more questions. I
needed to keep learning.
S1 (07:18):
So if I were to open a syllabus and I
wanted to pursue one of these two is when you
talk about getting a master's in religion, is it like
comparative theology and how does that differ from a Sibelius?
For Sibelius, a syllabus for divinity.
S7 (07:34):
So the religion was more it's going to be some
of your basic courses around world religions. Um, and just some,
you know, homiletics, exegesis, some basic courses about how do
you preach the Bible, how do you study the Bible,
those sort of things. Master Divinity has more electives. It
could be, uh, you could be specialized in different areas.
(07:54):
And so for me and it has more diving into
the biblical languages. So that was that would be the
actual difference according to the syllabus.
S1 (08:04):
Wow. What was your focus in the Master's in Divinity?
S7 (08:08):
Yeah. Well mine was actually apologetics. So it was the
role in history of apologetics when it comes to evangelism.
So my whole thesis was on, um, was on that actually.
S1 (08:21):
Well, can I linger here because you had to write
a paper on it. So I bet you got a
lot to say. You know, there are a lot.
S8 (08:26):
Of the church.
S1 (08:29):
We grade on a curve here. So you're okay?
S8 (08:31):
Okay, good.
S1 (08:31):
My question is there has been. Unfortunately, the pendulum goes
back and forth in the church capital C universal. And
sometimes we go through this horrible situation where we are
anti-intellectual that it's faith and not reason. And that will
get into our conversation about the Doubters Club for sure,
because we create this false hypothesis that it's an either
or proposition. So when we talk about apologetics, some people
(08:54):
will push back because they're thinking, look, just give them
the Word of God. You don't need to have to
give a defense. You just give them the Word of God.
Give me a 32nd elevator speech. Why are apologetics crucial
in the world of evangelism?
S7 (09:05):
Yeah, well, apologetics is actually, you know, it's the ability
to defend the faith, but especially in a culture that's
going to be hyper critical and it's a thinking culture.
So what used to be asked in the mission field
is now asked next door. And we need to be
able to say, okay, this is why I think the
way that I think. So I think apologetics actually for
(09:25):
the maturity of the believer. And when it comes to evangelism,
it's going to help the unbeliever think, okay, maybe there
is reason to explore this.
S1 (09:34):
Yeah. Excellent. You couldn't have given a better answer. Thank
you for that, Preston. When we come back, I didn't
miss it. And I'll bet the people listening all across
the country didn't miss it. I want to go back
to your undergrad years, and I want to find out
why you walked away from the faith. And I think
that's important, particularly if you're going to challenge us to
engage with the skeptic and the atheist. So I want
to find out what caused you to step back. Preston
(09:54):
Ulmer is with us. He's got a brand new book
out that is so germane to the days and age
in which we live. I like particularly what he said,
questions asked on the mission field and are being asked
over the back fence. And by the way, it's a
much more sophisticated kind of tribe, if I can use
that word. My buddies growing up worked with New Tribes
Bible Institute that's now called ethnos 360. And of course,
there would be kinds of questions there that wouldn't have
(10:15):
had a 21st century spin to them. Zephaniah 317 tells us,
God loves us so much that he breaks out in
song over his children. That's why I've chosen the steadfast
love of the Lord as this month's truth tool. Learn
to know the everlasting, unchanging, soul saving love of God.
Ask for your copy of the steadfast Love of the Lord.
(10:35):
When you give a gift of any amount to in
the market, call 877 Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58
or go to in the market with Janet Parshall. Preston
Ulmer is our guest this hour, founder and director of
the Doubters Club. Not to be confused with Fight Club.
That's a whole different story. But this doubters club, which
(10:56):
is so perfect for the 21st century in the post-truth
world in which we find ourselves, that's an organization that
teaches Christians and atheists to model friendship and pursue truth together.
He wrote a book that bears the same title, The
Doubters Club Good Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists, and the
Spiritually Wounded. So when last we met, Preston, you talked
about your undergrad and why you walked away from the faith,
(11:16):
which is when you pursued not one, but two masters.
It was about helping you get it all together, really
step into the world of apologetics. So something very powerful
happened between undergrad and grad. But first, tell me what
caused you to step back in your undergrad years?
S7 (11:31):
Yeah, well, it's a great question. And I guess it's
not as uncommon as I thought it was. I used
to think that, man, this is this is a weird
testimony to say I left. Well, I was actually in
a Bible college to to say that I left the
faith in Bible college. And the more I speak on
college campuses, the more I realize that's not as uncommon.
So I started having questions. I was on a preaching team.
(11:54):
I mean, I was doing all the ministry you could
be doing. And I started to have one summer I
was having these questions is between sophomore and junior year
in Bible college. I had questions about the existence of God,
and then they just started to snowball, became more existential questions.
I mean, I remember actually, when I took a philosophy
class a year later, I realized I'm not crazy. There
(12:17):
are crazy people who live before me who asked and
wrote about this stuff that I'm thinking about. And, uh,
and whenever I had these questions, I had well meaning people.
They had good intentions, but they just gave really bad advice.
So I had one person tell me, sleep on the Bible. Uh,
whenever I had these questions, they're going, you need to
get the word of God in your head like osmosis, right?
(12:39):
And I'm like, oh, and I don't know if it's
because I, I read or I slept on the NIV,
not the ESV. Whatever it was, it didn't work. Um,
another person told me, listen to more worship music. And
here's the deal. I like worship music, but I also
like other music too. And so there's nothing more frustrating
than when you're leaving the faith and you have Hillsong
(13:01):
playing nonstop in the background. And, uh, and I again,
well intentioned people. Really bad advice. And so I thought,
if this is what it means to be a thinking
person is that Christianity can't handle just some basic questions.
I'm out. I cannot do this. So I left the
faith and it was, uh, it was a philosophy professor
(13:24):
who heard about my questions about a summer this summer
that I had, and he said, hey, uh, I would
like to help you answer those questions. And at the time,
I was really suspicious, like, he's just trying to convert me.
And then he said this thing that set the trajectory
for the rest of my life. And you'll see a
correlation between this and how we do the Doubters Club.
But he said, he said, I don't care where you
(13:46):
land as long as you're honest. He said you don't
ever have to think like me. He just had. He
thought I had integrity in this journey of seeking. And
he believed that if God is truth, the closer I
get to truth, the closer I get to God. And
it took a while, but then I came back and
I realized, wow, this is a vibrant thing, this relationship
(14:10):
with Jesus. And it's based now on confidence, not on certainty.
There's a lot of shifts that happen in my life
in that process, but that's kind of the history of
how I left the faith.
S1 (14:20):
Yeah, that's so crucial, Preston. So some would say that
they are either repelled by Christianity or step back from
it sometimes by the people that you and me, sometimes
by the ideas. For you, it sounds like it was
more the ideas. Were people ever a reason for you
to step back as well? Because sometimes people, when they
devolve their faith, will say the hypocrisy. Well, that's people.
(14:44):
That's not ideas, that's people. So is hypocrisy a factor
in this?
S7 (14:48):
So for me it started intellectual. And then you start
to look for more personal reasons. And that's when you
get into oh wait, well this doesn't line up. And
what that person said doesn't look like how they acted,
those sort of things. So I would say it wasn't
the initiator for me. It was it was definitely a
driving force towards the end. And it took that crucial
(15:11):
role of his name's Jeff Magruder of Jeff to step in.
And for me to see an authenticity with someone, I mean,
that was crucial. But I would say, yeah, I think
that for a lot of stories it's reversed. It starts
highly personal, and then they start to go, okay, there
are intellectual objections I have, but for me it was reversed.
S8 (15:31):
Yeah. Wow.
S1 (15:32):
So let me linger on this point because I think
it's huge. And I know God didn't make me in
charge of the world, thank goodness, because I couldn't do
it at all. But I do angst over this. And
you talk about apologetics. So let's go to our brother
Clive Lewis. All right, C.S. Lewis, he said this, and
I quote it all the time over there. And my
friends are going to collectively groan because I'm going to
say it for the millionth time. But he said famously,
(15:52):
Christians are the best argument for and against Christianity. I
love that because it's so personally convicting. It's like, oh
my gosh, what am I doing to be in the way?
What an incumbent. I find that when I was a
kid growing up in Sunday school, your life might be
the only Bible some people will ever read. And I'll
tell you what that's stuck to that little kid's heart.
And I still think about it as a grandmother to
this day. That. Wow. Well, what if what if I'm
(16:13):
doing something that gets in the way of the gospel message?
If I'm a living epistle, if I'm an ambassador for Christ,
if they don't see Christ in me, I don't want
to be responsible for having somebody turn away. I can't
worry about anybody else's witness, but I can certainly worry
about my own. This might seem a little bit like
a rabbit trail, but I think this is a huge issue.
What do we have to. But it factors into our
(16:35):
whole dynamic of how we talk to the skeptic and
the atheist. I want to start by looking in my
own spiritual mirror. If I am that living epistle that
they are reading. I'm going to make mistakes. I also
am keenly aware the person looking back at me in
the mirror is a sinner, so I'm going to blow
it sometimes. So how do I. I don't want to
take the license of liberty, you know. Thank you, Brother Paul.
(16:56):
To be able to do whatever I want to do
and not worry about the fallout. But I don't want
to be so uptight and restrictive that I'm so worried
about somebody else stumbling that they're never going to come
to the foot of the cross. Help me find a
healthy balance in how I approach that.
S7 (17:09):
Yeah, I was actually Janet just in, uh, Seattle, uh,
probably two weeks ago teaching on this. And, uh, and
what we found is stats over the last three years
from the majority of, um, of any sort of survey
when it comes to religious circles, stats are showing us
that hypocrisy is the number one way reason people are leaving. Now,
(17:31):
here's what I say. When Christians know their identity in God,
they can live more authentic before man. Authenticity is what
will change the game, which would boil down to do
we know how accepted and loved we are before God.
I think that's a question that changes the game.
S1 (17:47):
Wow, that is huge. Boy, if you don't hear anything
else in this conversation with Preston Elmer, I hope you
take that away. But we've got more time and so
much more to dive into. Preston Elmer, the founder and
director of the Doubters Club, also the author of the
book that bears the same title, The Doubters Club Good
Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists and the Spiritually Wounded back
(18:07):
after this. The Doubters Club that's the name of the
brand new book by Preston Elmer. The subtitle says so
much good Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists, and the Spiritually Wounded.
(18:29):
By the way, Preston Elmer founded and directs something called
the Doubters Club, that is an organization that teaches Christians
and atheists to model friendship and pursue truth together. Preston,
let me go back because it was so good and
I was coming up to a break, and I want
to make sure that people heard it because it was
very important. You gave stats. You just talked about this
in Seattle, Washington. You gave some stats. Number one reason
(18:49):
people go, ah, thanks, but no thanks is the issue
of hypocrisy. So you talked about being our authentic self.
Say that concluding statement again if you'd be so kind
because it's crucial.
S7 (19:00):
Yeah. Well we're talking about what's going to change that
stat right. And I would what I said was when
we learn how to be our authentic self. So we
that goes down to an identity issue. When we know
who we are before God, then we could be authentic
before man. And that who we are means God accepts
us with our doubts, our questions, our imperfections. When all
(19:21):
that starts to be more and more grounded in our soul,
then authenticity starts to be more and more visible to
the people we live life with. And I think that's
when people say, I really do want whatever it is
that you're living with. And that's when we talk about Jesus.
S1 (19:36):
Exactly. Boy, that statement again, forgive me for harkening back,
but you're bringing back a lot of basic ideas. I
learned a long time ago in Sunday School, and that
was that idea about living in such a way that
it really compels people to say, I don't know what
you've got, but I want it. And I think the
word um, authenticity was not so hot back then, but
I think what they were conveying was this whole idea
(19:56):
of transparency and authenticity, which I think is hugely important. Okay,
so let me go down another track, which is extremely important.
I started out by giving these troubling statistics about we
don't befriend nonbelievers. Now I'm lucky I'm in Washington, D.C.,
I can't turn around without bumping into somebody like that.
And I praise God for that, by the way, I
see them on a regular basis. I coalesce with them.
(20:17):
I debate them on national television. It's okay and it's cool,
and it's a mission field, and I praise God for it.
But generally, we tend to cluster in our own protective circles.
Tell me why you think that is and how can
we rack, rattle and roll that paradigm? Because if we
don't change it, your book is useless and so is
the club.
S7 (20:34):
Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, the club is trying to
change that. I think it goes back to, you know,
when I was in, uh, youth group, there's a saying
that a lot of people listening to this would remember.
They can even quote it. Show me your friends and
I'll show you your future. And somehow that mentality taught us,
if you have people who think, look, or act different
than you, you're compromising the future God has for you.
(20:56):
When when the reality is our growth, the more we
grow towards the heart of God, the more we should
grow towards the prodigal. That's where his heart is. So
when it comes to living within our Christian bubbles, you
know we make it such a priority to go to
everything that's within the walls of the church. We make
it such a priority to protect ourselves and our ideas,
(21:18):
and in doing so, we actually live within us versus
them mentality. It becomes more toxic than we think. Yes.
And when we read the Jesus story, it's not us
versus them. There's not even those categories. If you had
to give those categories, it would be for Jesus, us,
for them every single time. And he brings a group
of people together that don't think like one another. I mean,
you have Peter the Zealot who's like, you know, I
(21:41):
don't think that was his first time cutting off an ear. Okay.
The night before the crucifixion. Uh, and then you have Matthew,
the tax collector. I think Peter was practicing. You know what?
What he's going to do to Matthew when Jesus isn't around.
You have this circle of people that aren't like each other.
And Jesus goes, this is the kingdom of God. And
so we have to get outside of the walls of
(22:03):
the church. And I know that that's something people keep saying.
But Doubters Club is obviously an effort to get us
to do that, but not just to get outside the
walls of the church, but to do life with people
that are not like us at all.
S1 (22:14):
Yeah. And by the way, for anybody who subscribes to
that idea that somehow it's an us and them or
it'll rub off on us, or it dilutes or taints
our God. I'm sorry, but did we does missions live
in a whole nother category then? Because you're going to
people who aren't like you to share a message they've
never heard before. I mean, this is maybe, maybe part
(22:35):
of the problem is that we have this arcane idea
of what constitutes a mission field, and if it's over
there and it's got a foreign name and a foreign address,
then somehow its missions. But you fail to see the
guy who carpools with you as a mission field.
S7 (22:49):
That's exactly right. And we we think, you know, well,
God just can't be around sin, so we can't be
around sin. And I'm like, well, he came and lived
in the midst of sinners. And by the way, aren't
we all right? Aren't we all imperfect? That's not to
justify a lifestyle where it is just to say like
we we have to do life with people, not like us,
(23:12):
because God did life with us and we're nowhere near him.
I mean, this is Philippians, right? That he. Right. We
didn't consider equality with God something to be grasped. So anyway,
I'm right there with you.
S1 (23:22):
Yeah, boy. But you know what? I take comfort in this.
The writer of Ecclesiastes one. Smart guy. Nothing new under
the sun. So the Jewish believers don't want anything to
do with the Gentile believers, right? And then the Jews
don't want anything to do with the Samaritans. So we've
been real good at us and them ING since we
walked out of the garden. So this is for the
sake of the gospel. We have really got to get
over this. Here's the other track on this and I
(23:44):
hear it all the time. I if I engage, okay,
I've gotten over the fact that my faith won't be diluted.
I know what I believe and why I believe it,
but I'm going to start talking to this person and
they're going to ask me a question that I don't
know and I don't want to be marginalized, rejected, made
a fool of, hey, the Washington Post called us poor, uneducated,
and easy to command. I don't want to give cannon
fodder to that idea. So we retreat because somehow we've
(24:06):
misaligned the idea that if they reject something we say
it equates to the rejection of the gospel. Help us
tear down that wall.
S7 (24:14):
Yeah, well, this objection of what if I don't know?
The answer is one that I hear all the time
when I'm traveling. And here's here's the truth. We don't
have all the answers. And people who don't know God
do have answers that we don't have. And I'll say this,
they have questions that we should be asking. My my
response is, what if you searched for the answer with them.
(24:36):
You don't need to go get it and then bring
it back to them and act like you're in an
ivory tower looking down on them. Get the answer with them.
Start a friendship around these crucial conversations and explore it together.
Closer you get to truth, the closer you get to God.
S1 (24:50):
Wow. And you just gave the working definition of a friendship,
by the way. Do it together. That's what friends do, right? Boy,
I just love that. Oh, this is going far too quickly.
I am so glad you're not listening to this conversation
by accident, by the way. Maybe God has placed somebody
in your life and you're going, man, I'd really love
to talk to them, but I don't know how. I
don't know where I begin. Then you're not listening by accident.
(25:11):
This is a divine appointment. More with Preston Elmer and
the Doubters Club right after this. What is in the
market mean to you? Is it a trusted source for news?
Your go to place for relevant discussions on current events?
I'm glad to have you in our listening family, and
I want to ask you to take a next step.
(25:32):
Will you become a partial partner and help us continue
here on your station. When you do, you'll get personal
emails and information from me. Become a partial partner today
by calling 877 Janet, 58 or go online to in
the market with Janet. What a great and timely conversation. Listen,
you know if he's also not just Savior but Lord
(25:55):
in your life, then you want to be faithful. You
want to be obedient and you've got the cure for death.
How do you keep that good news to yourself? It
is why Peter and John said, we can't stop talking
about that which we've heard and seen. It should just
pour out of us. And I don't know about you,
but I think five minutes, once you've put your feet
on the bedroom floor, five minutes by poking your head
out of your little tent, boom! The world sends you
(26:15):
about 14 gazillion clues that it's hurting. They want to
know if God is real, if he loves them, if
he can bind their wounds, if he is a God
who's good despite circumstances that look to the otherwise. So
don't think for one minute, not no matter how clear
a declarative statement someone makes. I am an atheist. I
am an agnostic. I'm a skeptic, you know, start with
the very beginning. God is not willing that any should perish. Okay?
(26:37):
Just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts. If you don't
know Dragnet, you'll have to Google it. But let me
move on. So this person does want to know if
God is real. Blaise Pascal said it. He said there
resides in the heart of every man a God shaped void,
and only a personal relationship with him can fill it.
So you start with the presupposition. Regardless of what the
person is saying, that they want to know if God
is real. So why have they stepped back? Why are
(26:59):
they wounded? Why have they decided that the questions are
not being answered? I'm not interested in moving into that
more concentric circle. Francis Schaeffer talked about that. He talked
about pre evangelism starting in the outside of the culture
and moving into the center until you find truth, and
then you introduce them to the one who is called truth.
So there are a lot of doubters out there. And
Preston Ulmer knows that full well. He had his own
(27:21):
dark night of the soul came out of it, not one,
but two master's degrees, by the way, decided that after
he fell in love with Jesus all over again, that
he wanted to fall in love with working for him.
So he does. He not only founded and directs the
Doubters Club, which is an organization that teaches Christians and
atheists to model friendship and pursue truth together. But he
also serves as the director of network development for the
(27:42):
church multiplication network CNN, that happens to be the church
planning arm of the Assemblies of God, and before that
he was a youth pastor, a young adult pastor, and
a church planner. And he and his family planted a
church in Denver, Colorado. In addition to the work he
does with the Doubters Club, which, by the way, happens
to be the name of his brand new book, The
Doubters Club good Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists, and the
(28:07):
Spiritually Wounded. All right, so there's so many things that
you talk about in your book that I even with
one irreplaceable hour of your life present, I'm not going
to be able to cover it all. But if I
get people curious enough to read it, I will have
done my job. You offer this intriguing idea because you
talked about just before the break, the idea of going
on a journey together to discover these answers. You know,
(28:28):
there's a kind of a J.R.R. Tolkien aspect to that
that came to my mind the minute you were talking
about that. So the befriending, the mentoring together. Let's. Why
don't we why don't we pursue that answer together? And
then you become friends with each other, with one another.
And Lord willing, it does lead to a conclusion of truth.
And then they are introduced to Schaefer said, to the
one who is known as truth. But you say, and
this is part of it, this is inviting the non-believer
(28:51):
into real life, not a church service. Now, there's nothing
wrong with inviting a non-believer to church, but that edifice
represents the go no go point for the skeptic in
so many cases, or the atheist or agnostic, you know
you what you're saying is, well, I'll give you another
Sunday school saying, I guess it's old school week for me.
I remember growing up hearing you want to be winsome
(29:12):
in your evangelistic style, win someone to you so you
can in turn win them to Christ Jesus. I've never
forgotten that. So how do I start this real life
outside the church relationship? And is there something shadowy about that?
Is there something wrong with starting an experience outside the church?
S7 (29:28):
Oh no, there's nothing wrong with it, I, I would say. Now,
I always tell people, look, I plant churches for a living,
so I love going to church. I love those sort
of things. But, uh, whenever it comes to people who
are skeptics, atheists, agnostics, all those, if you picture a
number line, the Engel scale zero would be salvation positive ten.
(29:49):
Let's say Billy Graham fully surrendered life unto the Lord.
James Engel in the 70s said, what about the negative tens?
And those are the people that I say. I think
those are the ones. Those are the ones that Jesus says,
leave the 99 for the negative tens, the ones on
the negative side of the scale who want nothing to
do with God. So in the book, I lay out
this idea that there's five the five eyes of relationship. Impression. Intention.
(30:14):
Invitation into real life, not just a church service initiation,
initiating conversations that matter, and then imitation. How do you
imitate Christ together? So I just say, at whatever point
you are with a friend, someone who doesn't think like you,
maybe you're rebuilding the impression that they have of you.
Maybe you've told your neighbor seven times in the last
seven months we got to get together for a barbecue. Well,
(30:36):
it's probably good to apologize and to just be good
on your word. Rebuild the impression that they have of
you because you want to talk about trust. Like be
a trustworthy friend, talking about big concepts. Your intention, not
having ulterior motives. You know, I think that we were
taught we want to befriend people so that they become
a Christian. Yes, that's an ulterior motive. We want to
(31:00):
befriend people because they have the image of God in them.
They deserve the dignity of human friendships, and the detour
guides people who are with them through divorces and and
anything that just sidelines them. So although I have an
ultimate motive, I want everybody to know God. I don't
want ulterior motives. So that's the second I. The third
one is what are the natural rhythms of your life?
(31:20):
Invite them in on it. The fourth one is ideas
on how do you initiate conversations that matter. I tell
people all the time, Janet, I say this part feels
weird for Christians, but it's actually weird if you do
it the other eyes. It's weird to just talk about
sports and the weather. Again, you gotta start talking about
stuff that matters, right? And, uh, and the last one
is it's not immersion. That would be the positive side
(31:42):
of the scale. And we're all for baptism, but it's imitation.
Are there missions that you can join together? Because we
know living on mission stirs affection. And, uh, so whenever
I talk about these five eyes, I just say, whichever
eye you're at, stay there for a month or two
and then move to the next one. Take the pressure
of conversion off of you and just be an authentic friend.
(32:06):
With people on the negative side of the scale. It's
a long answer to your question.
S1 (32:10):
Oh no. But it's a rich answer. And by the way,
you then take multiple chapters of the book, The Doubters Club,
and take these five eyes and break them down even
more thoroughly, which I think is superb. Well, we've talked
a little bit about the impression because we were talking
about the hypocrisy issue. Um, so let me go to
the intention one and dig a little bit deeper here.
How to renovate the intentions you have of the non-believer.
(32:32):
I think you touched on this also because this is
the us and them kind of category. And if we don't,
that's right again. Gosh Preston, I grew up with pastors
who would literally weep from the pulpit for the lost.
We don't do that anymore. We're pointing fingers. And as
you say, we categorize it's us versus them. It's a
it's a kind of, um, tribalistic approach to our fellow
man rather than and you didn't use the word, but
(32:52):
I thought it when you said it. Imago dei I
love this person because the image of God resides within
that person. And I love to quote this line out
of Fiddler on the roof. They're having this great conversation,
Lazar Wolf and Tevya. And he says to him, you,
I like your ideas. I wouldn't give you a kopeck for,
but you I like. And I thought, that's such a
perfect example of saying, I don't have to agree with
(33:14):
what you believe, but am I conveying the idea that
I value you as a human being? You know, we
have this thing in Washington where you can go get
your picture taken on the corner of just about every
street with a cutout of the current president. So tourists
line up and they've got vendors on the street corner.
And there's your. Take your picture with whoever the president
is or the first lady. And people love to go
home and say, look, I met the president. I met
(33:34):
the first lady. That's who we are to a lot
of skeptics and atheists. We are the cardboard cutout. If
we're not engaging them, how do they even know who
we are by how we're characterized on Netflix? No, that's
not the PR department for the faith, right? So how
are we going to change the impression if we don't
start reaching out? And by the way, Preston, I think
we're the ones that have to start the reaching out,
(33:56):
not for ulterior motives, but because that's what God. That's
what God calls us to do.
S7 (34:01):
Yeah. That's so good. And and that's what, you know,
the clubs themselves are actually gatherings. They're gatherings where you
have two co-moderators, one's a Christian, one's a not not non-Christian.
And they're they're modeling friendship over the topic that the
club voted on the time before. And there's a bunch
of theological misfits, you know, 15 to 20 is an
(34:21):
ideal group. And they don't meet in churches. They meet
in coffee shops or microbreweries or wherever. There's going to
be a natural gathering place. And they sit and they
talk and they model friendship. They laugh together, and then
they ask challenging questions. Because here's the here's the goal.
We want to better understand you. And there's a cognitive
mirroring effect. When I say I want to understand you.
(34:42):
What's happening is I move from the resistor part of
their brain forward. And so they're thinking, okay, I want
to better understand you as well. So in the doubters
club settings, although we talk about really deep issues, the
goal is build trust. Build trust with one another. Because
when I build trust with them and I understand them,
believe it or not, I'm going to pray for them more.
(35:03):
I'm going to I'm actually going to think about them more.
I'm going to serve them more. And my life becomes
more like Jesus when I intentionally try to understand the
people who don't know him. And so in doubters club gatherings,
a lot of times we get challenged of our intentions.
They go, okay, what's the motive here? Do you want
to convert everybody? And I say, no, the vision is
(35:24):
I want to model friendship and pursue truth with you,
and I try to tell them if I'm wrong, I
would want to know it. And we live in a
place that says I'm right, I'm right, I'm right, and
everyone in the Doubters Club. The irony is they all
think they're right.
S1 (35:38):
Right, exactly.
S7 (35:40):
But if we get to a place where we say, okay,
what is the truth and how do we find it
on this specific question? So of all the doubters, clubs
that have launched around the world, that's the goal. And
when you talk about the ulterior motives, we have to
constantly keep clarifying, hey, this group is not a church.
We're trying to accomplish something entirely different here.
S1 (35:58):
Wow, Preston, I have two important questions to ask you.
And I don't want to ask because I'm coming up
to a break. So let me take a break and
come right back. But I want to go to what
you just said before, because I want to make sure
people listening don't misconstrue what you just said, which is
the idea of doubts, because there are going to be
people saying, wait a minute, I'm standing on the Word
of God. You know, I've read it through, I believe
(36:18):
it to the Bible. And so I'm not going to
have any doubts. It says it, I believe it. There
is no room for a doubt. Let me talk to
you about how you contextualize that within the conversation of, quote,
a doubters club. And then I want to ask you
a really dicey question about not the skeptic, the cynic,
the seeker, the atheist, but the other believers who know
that you have befriended a skeptic, a seeker, an agnostic,
(36:40):
an atheist, and they begin to vilify you for some
of the reasons we talked about earlier. So let me
get your take on both of those when we come back.
Preston Ulmer is with us. His brand new book is
called The Doubters Club good Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists
and the Spiritually Wounded. Much more right after this. We're
(37:18):
visiting with Preston Ulmer, the founder and director of the
Doubters Club that puts Christians and atheists together, helps them
to model friendship with one another and pursue truth together.
He's also a church planter, by the way, and he's
got a brand new book that hearkens right back to
what he founded. It's called The Doubters Club, and it's
a marvelous book to help you. And I learn how
to have good faith conversations with skeptics, atheists, and the
(37:39):
spiritually wounded. So, Preston, you know, for some people this
is dangerous new territory. And I don't want them to
turn off when they hear something that's new and sounds
threatening to them. So let me go back to what
you just said about doubts. Hey, we're all going to
have doubts. No, I'm not going to have doubts. I'm
talking to an atheist who's seeking. I'm a born again,
spirit filled Christian. I believe the word of God. There
are no doubts there. So talk to me about that,
(38:01):
because there's truth in that. When you say we all
have doubts, I can have some pretty good hermeneutics. I'm
doing excellent exegesis. And what does that mean about having
doubts in this conversation with my atheist friend?
S7 (38:15):
Yeah. Well, first of all, if they're listening, don't turn
this off. Just listen. Just hear me out for a second. Uh,
I do think that doubt in the Christian life is unavoidable.
I think it's biblical, and I think it's healthy. And
here's why. I think that we have been taught that
your faith is as strong as its absence of doubt. Uh,
(38:36):
and this is kind of a certainty seeking model of
faith that if I could make myself psychologically believe something
enough without any questions and suppressing the questions, that I
can somehow impress God enough that I'm going to have
a miraculous outcome. Well, the reality is that's not authentic,
and that's not what we see in Scripture. I mean,
you see, God name an entire nation Israel after Jacob
(39:00):
wrestles with him and his name turns to Israel. And
Israel means to strive with God. Or a lot of
commentators will say, God wrestlers. So you have God naming
a whole nation God. Wrestlers would be one way that
we can see it. It pleases him, I think, because
you can't wrestle from far away. If I wrestle with
my kids, I have to be in close proximity with
them to do that. I think God likes that. I
(39:21):
think that there's an authenticity and there's a striving that
happens to get to know them. I also think that
faith actually needs doubt. You know, faith is the ability
to commit in the face of uncertainty. And we don't
have certainty when it comes to most important decisions in
our lives. So when I married my wife, if someone said, hey, Preston,
(39:42):
do you know that when you're 50 years old that
things are still going to work out? Well, I would
have to say, well, I don't know. I don't know
for certain. And if they came back and said, well,
then why would you marry her? Well, because I make
a commitment in the face of uncertainty based on the
confidence that I have. That's exactly what faith is. So
it's why we get on planes. It's why we get
(40:03):
in cars. We don't have certainty when we do things.
We have confidence. And our faith is the ability to
commit in the face of uncertainty. So when it comes
to our relationship with God, I think that when we
see doubt as, uh, it's not allowed in, than what
we really do is we're compromising what we talked about earlier,
the authenticity before him. And when you read the scriptures,
(40:25):
you just see so many questions and you actually see
God honoring and dialoguing with the people who have those questions.
S1 (40:34):
Yeah, I love that. What a great answer. All right,
here's the dicey question. When one decides dicey one. Okay.
Exactly right.
S9 (40:44):
All right. So you step out of your comfort.
S1 (40:46):
Zone and you as a follower of Christ, take to
heart exactly what you've said, and you understand that it's
into that messy, upside down world that we've been called
to go and you befriend in this friendship model, someone
who holds an antithetical worldview, and then you begin to
hear derision coming from fellow brothers and sisters in the faith. Um,
(41:06):
and they'll do it in some pernicious way. This is
the voice of experience, by the way. They'll sometimes do
it in very public ways, where you will be vilified
because you have decided to befriend someone, as together you
are pursuing truth, right? Um, and by the way, I
don't know how you win the lost if you don't
start out with a friendship. By the way, I doubt seriously,
I'm going to be able to throw him a track
(41:27):
with the four spiritual laws and say, call me when
you're done. You know, it's going to have to be
a kind of a friendship model, but you run in
the church. I'm going to put it all out there.
You run the risk of being vilified by some if
you befriend a non-believer, because we have cloistered in our
own little silos. So give us some courage, you know,
for again, this goes back to the weeping for the lost. Okay.
(41:47):
Do I care about their unbridled tongues, or do I
care about the fact that this person has a one
way ticket to hell without Jesus?
S7 (41:54):
Yeah. So I, I will answer your question with the story.
I was in LA, uh, just last week, and there's
a Q&A with a bunch of pastors. There's some sectional
meeting with pastors from that area in California, and someone
asked me the same question. Pastor said, you know, if
I actually do what you're talking about, they said, what's
my board going to think about me? And what are
the people going to think about me that I'm trying
(42:15):
to pastor? And I responded by saying, and I wasn't
trying to be facetious. I just said, you know, do
you ever read the Gospels and see Jesus compromising his
reputation by the people he's hanging out with? And I
think the answer, obviously is, well, yes.
S9 (42:31):
I think all the time.
S7 (42:33):
All the time. So much so, by the way, that
he said that people were saying of him, he's a glutton,
he's a drunkard. Well, why were they saying that? Well,
because he's hanging out with the gluttons and the drunkards.
So they're actually when you follow Jesus. Close enough. Janet,
there will you know you're doing it right when the
highly religious people start to associate your reputation with theirs.
(42:55):
Is that not the cross, though? Is it not the
cross that he became sin? He looked like a thief
because we are the actual thieves. Is it not the
heart of the gospel that when we follow Jesus, we go?
My reputation is nothing. I'm all about being with the
people who don't know him. And if that means that
(43:16):
the highly religious start to think that we've compromised and again,
think that we've compromised and they're going to they're going
to throw our reputation under the bus because we're following
Jesus so closely, because he's in the middle of the mess. Well,
then so be it. That's what sent him to the cross.
I think that's part of bearing our cross, by the way,
if we don't pick up our cross daily, we can't
follow him. Well, that means our reputation is not always
(43:39):
going to look pretty.
S9 (43:40):
Wow.
S1 (43:41):
Oh, I love the answer. Okay, only all the hours
gone far too quickly. Preston, talk to me about how
we redefine progress. That's the last I. The imitation. You know,
for a lot of people, uh, progress is defined by you.
Accepted the Lord as your personal savior. Touchdown. Right. That's
the end.
S9 (43:56):
Goal.
S1 (43:56):
Yeah, but you say you have to redefine this, so
talk to me about that.
S7 (44:00):
Yeah. I love how you said touchdown because I would
say this. Don't go after a win all the time.
Ask yourself how do I score right. And here's how
you score one more conversation. Relationships are built on conversation
after conversation. So the question is how do I have
one more conversation with this person? That's the score. You
don't have to win every time.
S9 (44:19):
Yeah.
S1 (44:20):
Amen. Well, it goes back to the idea of I'm not,
you know, some people plant the seed, some people water,
and some people are there for the harvest. Right? Just
start start with the seed planting. And if you get
that one more conversation, maybe it's another chance to plant
another seed. Preston. Wow, what a fabulous book. The hour
flew by. There's a gazillion more questions I would have
liked to have asked you, but they're already answered inside
the book The Doubters Club, so let me strongly recommend
(44:42):
it to you. Go to In the Market with Janet Parshall,
click on that red box. It says program details and
audio takes you right over to the information page. There's
Preston's handsome face. There's a link to his Twitter account
because he's got a great one. And on the right
hand side, there's the book The Doubters Club. Click on
through to learn how you can get a copy for yourself.
My heartfelt thanks to a great and memorable conversation with
(45:03):
Preston Ulmer and with you friends. We'll see you next
time on In the Market with Janet Parshall.
Hi friend, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
of In the Market with Janet Parshall, and it is
my most sincere hope that you are edified, equipped, enlightened,
encouraged and then it makes you just want to get
out there in the marketplace of ideas and influence and
occupy until he comes. But before you start listening, let
me just take a moment of your time to tell
you about this month's truth tool. It's called The Steadfast
Love of the Lord by my friend and frequent guest,
(00:22):
Doctor Sam Storms. You know, he tells us that so
often we struggle with this idea of feeling like we're
loved by God, or that somehow we've done something that
separates us from the love of God. But we fail
to remember the Scripture that reminds us that while we
were yet sinners, not perfect, not all put together, not
everything's all been worked out while we were yet sinners.
That's when Christ died. For us. Love is an action word,
(00:44):
and that's what Doctor Sam Storms reminds us in his book,
The Steadfast Love of God. I don't know about you,
but with the headlines of the day, being reminded of
who God is is about the most precious news I
could hear on a regular basis. And I'd love for
you to have a copy written by a man who
understands the Bible and always delivers rich theology. So just
call 877 Janet 58. When you give a gift of
(01:05):
any amount, because we are listener supported radio, we're going
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Scroll down on the page. You'll see the cover of
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make Your Donation and we'll send it to you again.
(01:27):
Listener supported. And when you give a gift, it keeps
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(01:50):
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So 877 Janet 58 Eight, 77, 58 or online at
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And now with all my heart, I hope you hear
(02:10):
something today that really changes your perspective and makes you
excited about being a follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the program!
Hi friends, this is Janet Parshall. Thanks so much for
choosing to spend the next hour with us. Today's program
is prerecorded so our phone lines are not open. But
(02:31):
thanks so much for being with us and enjoy the broadcast.
S2 (02:34):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (02:36):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (02:38):
Americans worshiping government over God.
S5 (02:41):
Extremely rare safety move by MH 17 years.
S6 (02:44):
The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S5 (02:48):
Over the.
S1 (03:02):
Hi friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall.
Thanks so much for spending the hour with us. Hey,
you just heard all that noise in the marketplace. We
talk often about the fact that there's some pretty shabby,
counterfeit ideas that are being bought and sold to the
highest bidder. There's also truth in that marketplace, but I'll
tell you what marks the marketplace more than ideas. It's people.
And here's what I know beyond a shadow of a doubt.
(03:22):
You walk around in that marketplace of ideas, you're going
to find all kinds of people for whom they don't
have a clue who Jesus is. In fact, they would
categorically call themselves a skeptic, a sinner, a seeker. Uh,
maybe they'd even call themselves an agnostic, or perhaps even
boldly declare themselves to be an atheist. And because John
17 reminds us that's exactly where we're supposed to go
(03:43):
is out into that mess, that muck, that mire. That
world turned upside down where good is called evil and
evil is called good. You're not to circumnavigate it. I'm
hearkening back to my friend John Bunyan, who said Christian
and faithful must needs pass through it, which is fancy
English talk, for it ain't no detour. We walk right
smack dab into the middle of that upside down world,
and John 17 reminds us that when Jesus was talking
(04:06):
to his ABBA father, his daddy, he said, my prayer
is not that you take them out of the world.
So into the world is exactly where we're called. I
have a question. You may use a lifeline or call
a friend. You can talk among yourselves on one hand
right now, quietly in the voice inside your own head.
Name five non-believing Christian friends that you have. Hmm. Can
(04:31):
you do that? Well, if you can't, you're not alone.
All the data out there says we tend to insulate.
We tend to pull ourselves in if 92% of us.
And that's a staggering, almost incomprehensible, unbelievable, troubling, troublesome number, 92%
of us. Once we come to faith in Jesus Christ,
we don't even talk to anybody else. We have no
substantive faith conversations once we come to faith in Christ.
(04:54):
I don't get that. If Peter and John said, we
can't stop talking about that which we've seen and heard.
If the Scripture says, out of the overflow of the heart,
the mouth speaks, how can you keep this news to yourself?
So you got the news, and then you have the
person who has a perception of who you are as
a follower of Christ. They themselves are on a journey.
Don't let their title scare you one iota. How do
(05:14):
I know that? Because God's placed eternity in the heart
of every single one of us. And when they put
the cat out at night and pull the sheets under
their chin, they're asking the big questions too. They might
not want you to know. They're asking the big questions,
but they are. But mostly they're reading you the living epistle.
What is it about you that draws them closer to
that inner circle where they're going to find not truth,
(05:35):
but just the one who calls himself truth? Or what
is it about us that actually makes them step back
rather than step in and step closer? That's what we're
going to talk about this hour. We're going to tell
you something about the Doubters Club, and we're going to
talk with Preston Elmer on that, because he happens to
be the founder and director of the Doubters Club, an
organization that teaches Christians and atheists to model friendship and
(05:57):
pursue truth together. He also serves as the Director of
Network Development for the church multiplication network CNN. That's the
church planting arm of the Assemblies of God, and before
he joined CNN, he served in ministry for years as
a youth pastor, a youth adult pastor and church planter.
He also has two, not one two master's degrees one
in religion, one in divinity, and his experience in education
(06:19):
led him and his family to plant a church in Denver, Colorado,
where he also founded the Doubters Club. He joins us
today because there's a continuum here. He's written a book
called The Doubters Club good Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists,
and the Spiritually Wounded. Preston, the Warmest of Welcomes. Thank
you so much for the gift of one hour of
your time. I can't give it back. And the older
I get, the more I realize what a priceless commodity
(06:41):
time is. So thanks for giving it to us.
S7 (06:44):
You're welcome. It's a pleasure to be on your show.
S1 (06:46):
Thank you so much. Okay. Of course. Inquiring minds want
to know what's the difference between a degree in religion
and a degree in divinity? Entity.
S7 (06:53):
Well, one takes two more years than the other, I guess. Uh,
and other than that, it's just for my own sanity.
I just needed to keep learning, uh, because during my undergraduate,
I actually left the faith. And so I tell people,
the master's degree were actually for me. They weren't for you. And, uh,
so that's the difference, I think two years difference. And
(07:15):
I just needed I had a lot more questions. I
needed to keep learning.
S1 (07:18):
So if I were to open a syllabus and I
wanted to pursue one of these two is when you
talk about getting a master's in religion, is it like
comparative theology and how does that differ from a Sibelius?
For Sibelius, a syllabus for divinity.
S7 (07:34):
So the religion was more it's going to be some
of your basic courses around world religions. Um, and just some,
you know, homiletics, exegesis, some basic courses about how do
you preach the Bible, how do you study the Bible,
those sort of things. Master Divinity has more electives. It
could be, uh, you could be specialized in different areas.
(07:54):
And so for me and it has more diving into
the biblical languages. So that was that would be the
actual difference according to the syllabus.
S1 (08:04):
Wow. What was your focus in the Master's in Divinity?
S7 (08:08):
Yeah. Well mine was actually apologetics. So it was the
role in history of apologetics when it comes to evangelism.
So my whole thesis was on, um, was on that actually.
S1 (08:21):
Well, can I linger here because you had to write
a paper on it. So I bet you got a
lot to say. You know, there are a lot.
S8 (08:26):
Of the church.
S1 (08:29):
We grade on a curve here. So you're okay?
S8 (08:31):
Okay, good.
S1 (08:31):
My question is there has been. Unfortunately, the pendulum goes
back and forth in the church capital C universal. And
sometimes we go through this horrible situation where we are
anti-intellectual that it's faith and not reason. And that will
get into our conversation about the Doubters Club for sure,
because we create this false hypothesis that it's an either
or proposition. So when we talk about apologetics, some people
(08:54):
will push back because they're thinking, look, just give them
the Word of God. You don't need to have to
give a defense. You just give them the Word of God.
Give me a 32nd elevator speech. Why are apologetics crucial
in the world of evangelism?
S7 (09:05):
Yeah, well, apologetics is actually, you know, it's the ability
to defend the faith, but especially in a culture that's
going to be hyper critical and it's a thinking culture.
So what used to be asked in the mission field
is now asked next door. And we need to be
able to say, okay, this is why I think the
way that I think. So I think apologetics actually for
(09:25):
the maturity of the believer. And when it comes to evangelism,
it's going to help the unbeliever think, okay, maybe there
is reason to explore this.
S1 (09:34):
Yeah. Excellent. You couldn't have given a better answer. Thank
you for that, Preston. When we come back, I didn't
miss it. And I'll bet the people listening all across
the country didn't miss it. I want to go back
to your undergrad years, and I want to find out
why you walked away from the faith. And I think
that's important, particularly if you're going to challenge us to
engage with the skeptic and the atheist. So I want
to find out what caused you to step back. Preston
(09:54):
Ulmer is with us. He's got a brand new book
out that is so germane to the days and age
in which we live. I like particularly what he said,
questions asked on the mission field and are being asked
over the back fence. And by the way, it's a
much more sophisticated kind of tribe, if I can use
that word. My buddies growing up worked with New Tribes
Bible Institute that's now called ethnos 360. And of course,
there would be kinds of questions there that wouldn't have
(10:15):
had a 21st century spin to them. Zephaniah 317 tells us,
God loves us so much that he breaks out in
song over his children. That's why I've chosen the steadfast
love of the Lord as this month's truth tool. Learn
to know the everlasting, unchanging, soul saving love of God.
Ask for your copy of the steadfast Love of the Lord.
(10:35):
When you give a gift of any amount to in
the market, call 877 Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58
or go to in the market with Janet Parshall. Preston
Ulmer is our guest this hour, founder and director of
the Doubters Club. Not to be confused with Fight Club.
That's a whole different story. But this doubters club, which
(10:56):
is so perfect for the 21st century in the post-truth
world in which we find ourselves, that's an organization that
teaches Christians and atheists to model friendship and pursue truth together.
He wrote a book that bears the same title, The
Doubters Club Good Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists, and the
Spiritually Wounded. So when last we met, Preston, you talked
about your undergrad and why you walked away from the faith,
(11:16):
which is when you pursued not one, but two masters.
It was about helping you get it all together, really
step into the world of apologetics. So something very powerful
happened between undergrad and grad. But first, tell me what
caused you to step back in your undergrad years?
S7 (11:31):
Yeah, well, it's a great question. And I guess it's
not as uncommon as I thought it was. I used
to think that, man, this is this is a weird
testimony to say I left. Well, I was actually in
a Bible college to to say that I left the
faith in Bible college. And the more I speak on
college campuses, the more I realize that's not as uncommon.
So I started having questions. I was on a preaching team.
(11:54):
I mean, I was doing all the ministry you could
be doing. And I started to have one summer I
was having these questions is between sophomore and junior year
in Bible college. I had questions about the existence of God,
and then they just started to snowball, became more existential questions.
I mean, I remember actually, when I took a philosophy
class a year later, I realized I'm not crazy. There
(12:17):
are crazy people who live before me who asked and
wrote about this stuff that I'm thinking about. And, uh,
and whenever I had these questions, I had well meaning people.
They had good intentions, but they just gave really bad advice.
So I had one person tell me, sleep on the Bible. Uh,
whenever I had these questions, they're going, you need to
get the word of God in your head like osmosis, right?
(12:39):
And I'm like, oh, and I don't know if it's
because I, I read or I slept on the NIV,
not the ESV. Whatever it was, it didn't work. Um,
another person told me, listen to more worship music. And
here's the deal. I like worship music, but I also
like other music too. And so there's nothing more frustrating
than when you're leaving the faith and you have Hillsong
(13:01):
playing nonstop in the background. And, uh, and I again,
well intentioned people. Really bad advice. And so I thought,
if this is what it means to be a thinking
person is that Christianity can't handle just some basic questions.
I'm out. I cannot do this. So I left the
faith and it was, uh, it was a philosophy professor
(13:24):
who heard about my questions about a summer this summer
that I had, and he said, hey, uh, I would
like to help you answer those questions. And at the time,
I was really suspicious, like, he's just trying to convert me.
And then he said this thing that set the trajectory
for the rest of my life. And you'll see a
correlation between this and how we do the Doubters Club.
But he said, he said, I don't care where you
(13:46):
land as long as you're honest. He said you don't
ever have to think like me. He just had. He
thought I had integrity in this journey of seeking. And
he believed that if God is truth, the closer I
get to truth, the closer I get to God. And
it took a while, but then I came back and
I realized, wow, this is a vibrant thing, this relationship
(14:10):
with Jesus. And it's based now on confidence, not on certainty.
There's a lot of shifts that happen in my life
in that process, but that's kind of the history of
how I left the faith.
S1 (14:20):
Yeah, that's so crucial, Preston. So some would say that
they are either repelled by Christianity or step back from
it sometimes by the people that you and me, sometimes
by the ideas. For you, it sounds like it was
more the ideas. Were people ever a reason for you
to step back as well? Because sometimes people, when they
devolve their faith, will say the hypocrisy. Well, that's people.
(14:44):
That's not ideas, that's people. So is hypocrisy a factor
in this?
S7 (14:48):
So for me it started intellectual. And then you start
to look for more personal reasons. And that's when you
get into oh wait, well this doesn't line up. And
what that person said doesn't look like how they acted,
those sort of things. So I would say it wasn't
the initiator for me. It was it was definitely a
driving force towards the end. And it took that crucial
(15:11):
role of his name's Jeff Magruder of Jeff to step in.
And for me to see an authenticity with someone, I mean,
that was crucial. But I would say, yeah, I think
that for a lot of stories it's reversed. It starts
highly personal, and then they start to go, okay, there
are intellectual objections I have, but for me it was reversed.
S8 (15:31):
Yeah. Wow.
S1 (15:32):
So let me linger on this point because I think
it's huge. And I know God didn't make me in
charge of the world, thank goodness, because I couldn't do
it at all. But I do angst over this. And
you talk about apologetics. So let's go to our brother
Clive Lewis. All right, C.S. Lewis, he said this, and
I quote it all the time over there. And my
friends are going to collectively groan because I'm going to
say it for the millionth time. But he said famously,
(15:52):
Christians are the best argument for and against Christianity. I
love that because it's so personally convicting. It's like, oh
my gosh, what am I doing to be in the way?
What an incumbent. I find that when I was a
kid growing up in Sunday school, your life might be
the only Bible some people will ever read. And I'll
tell you what that's stuck to that little kid's heart.
And I still think about it as a grandmother to
this day. That. Wow. Well, what if what if I'm
(16:13):
doing something that gets in the way of the gospel message?
If I'm a living epistle, if I'm an ambassador for Christ,
if they don't see Christ in me, I don't want
to be responsible for having somebody turn away. I can't
worry about anybody else's witness, but I can certainly worry
about my own. This might seem a little bit like
a rabbit trail, but I think this is a huge issue.
What do we have to. But it factors into our
(16:35):
whole dynamic of how we talk to the skeptic and
the atheist. I want to start by looking in my
own spiritual mirror. If I am that living epistle that
they are reading. I'm going to make mistakes. I also
am keenly aware the person looking back at me in
the mirror is a sinner, so I'm going to blow
it sometimes. So how do I. I don't want to
take the license of liberty, you know. Thank you, Brother Paul.
(16:56):
To be able to do whatever I want to do
and not worry about the fallout. But I don't want
to be so uptight and restrictive that I'm so worried
about somebody else stumbling that they're never going to come
to the foot of the cross. Help me find a
healthy balance in how I approach that.
S7 (17:09):
Yeah, I was actually Janet just in, uh, Seattle, uh,
probably two weeks ago teaching on this. And, uh, and
what we found is stats over the last three years
from the majority of, um, of any sort of survey
when it comes to religious circles, stats are showing us
that hypocrisy is the number one way reason people are leaving. Now,
(17:31):
here's what I say. When Christians know their identity in God,
they can live more authentic before man. Authenticity is what
will change the game, which would boil down to do
we know how accepted and loved we are before God.
I think that's a question that changes the game.
S1 (17:47):
Wow, that is huge. Boy, if you don't hear anything
else in this conversation with Preston Elmer, I hope you
take that away. But we've got more time and so
much more to dive into. Preston Elmer, the founder and
director of the Doubters Club, also the author of the
book that bears the same title, The Doubters Club Good
Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists and the Spiritually Wounded back
(18:07):
after this. The Doubters Club that's the name of the
brand new book by Preston Elmer. The subtitle says so
much good Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists, and the Spiritually Wounded.
(18:29):
By the way, Preston Elmer founded and directs something called
the Doubters Club, that is an organization that teaches Christians
and atheists to model friendship and pursue truth together. Preston,
let me go back because it was so good and
I was coming up to a break, and I want
to make sure that people heard it because it was
very important. You gave stats. You just talked about this
in Seattle, Washington. You gave some stats. Number one reason
(18:49):
people go, ah, thanks, but no thanks is the issue
of hypocrisy. So you talked about being our authentic self.
Say that concluding statement again if you'd be so kind
because it's crucial.
S7 (19:00):
Yeah. Well we're talking about what's going to change that
stat right. And I would what I said was when
we learn how to be our authentic self. So we
that goes down to an identity issue. When we know
who we are before God, then we could be authentic
before man. And that who we are means God accepts
us with our doubts, our questions, our imperfections. When all
(19:21):
that starts to be more and more grounded in our soul,
then authenticity starts to be more and more visible to
the people we live life with. And I think that's
when people say, I really do want whatever it is
that you're living with. And that's when we talk about Jesus.
S1 (19:36):
Exactly. Boy, that statement again, forgive me for harkening back,
but you're bringing back a lot of basic ideas. I
learned a long time ago in Sunday School, and that
was that idea about living in such a way that
it really compels people to say, I don't know what
you've got, but I want it. And I think the
word um, authenticity was not so hot back then, but
I think what they were conveying was this whole idea
(19:56):
of transparency and authenticity, which I think is hugely important. Okay,
so let me go down another track, which is extremely important.
I started out by giving these troubling statistics about we
don't befriend nonbelievers. Now I'm lucky I'm in Washington, D.C.,
I can't turn around without bumping into somebody like that.
And I praise God for that, by the way, I
see them on a regular basis. I coalesce with them.
(20:17):
I debate them on national television. It's okay and it's cool,
and it's a mission field, and I praise God for it.
But generally, we tend to cluster in our own protective circles.
Tell me why you think that is and how can
we rack, rattle and roll that paradigm? Because if we
don't change it, your book is useless and so is
the club.
S7 (20:34):
Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, the club is trying to
change that. I think it goes back to, you know,
when I was in, uh, youth group, there's a saying
that a lot of people listening to this would remember.
They can even quote it. Show me your friends and
I'll show you your future. And somehow that mentality taught us,
if you have people who think, look, or act different
than you, you're compromising the future God has for you.
(20:56):
When when the reality is our growth, the more we
grow towards the heart of God, the more we should
grow towards the prodigal. That's where his heart is. So
when it comes to living within our Christian bubbles, you
know we make it such a priority to go to
everything that's within the walls of the church. We make
it such a priority to protect ourselves and our ideas,
(21:18):
and in doing so, we actually live within us versus
them mentality. It becomes more toxic than we think. Yes.
And when we read the Jesus story, it's not us
versus them. There's not even those categories. If you had
to give those categories, it would be for Jesus, us,
for them every single time. And he brings a group
of people together that don't think like one another. I mean,
you have Peter the Zealot who's like, you know, I
(21:41):
don't think that was his first time cutting off an ear. Okay.
The night before the crucifixion. Uh, and then you have Matthew,
the tax collector. I think Peter was practicing. You know what?
What he's going to do to Matthew when Jesus isn't around.
You have this circle of people that aren't like each other.
And Jesus goes, this is the kingdom of God. And
so we have to get outside of the walls of
(22:03):
the church. And I know that that's something people keep saying.
But Doubters Club is obviously an effort to get us
to do that, but not just to get outside the
walls of the church, but to do life with people
that are not like us at all.
S1 (22:14):
Yeah. And by the way, for anybody who subscribes to
that idea that somehow it's an us and them or
it'll rub off on us, or it dilutes or taints
our God. I'm sorry, but did we does missions live
in a whole nother category then? Because you're going to
people who aren't like you to share a message they've
never heard before. I mean, this is maybe, maybe part
(22:35):
of the problem is that we have this arcane idea
of what constitutes a mission field, and if it's over
there and it's got a foreign name and a foreign address,
then somehow its missions. But you fail to see the
guy who carpools with you as a mission field.
S7 (22:49):
That's exactly right. And we we think, you know, well,
God just can't be around sin, so we can't be
around sin. And I'm like, well, he came and lived
in the midst of sinners. And by the way, aren't
we all right? Aren't we all imperfect? That's not to
justify a lifestyle where it is just to say like
we we have to do life with people, not like us,
(23:12):
because God did life with us and we're nowhere near him.
I mean, this is Philippians, right? That he. Right. We
didn't consider equality with God something to be grasped. So anyway,
I'm right there with you.
S1 (23:22):
Yeah, boy. But you know what? I take comfort in this.
The writer of Ecclesiastes one. Smart guy. Nothing new under
the sun. So the Jewish believers don't want anything to
do with the Gentile believers, right? And then the Jews
don't want anything to do with the Samaritans. So we've
been real good at us and them ING since we
walked out of the garden. So this is for the
sake of the gospel. We have really got to get
over this. Here's the other track on this and I
(23:44):
hear it all the time. I if I engage, okay,
I've gotten over the fact that my faith won't be diluted.
I know what I believe and why I believe it,
but I'm going to start talking to this person and
they're going to ask me a question that I don't
know and I don't want to be marginalized, rejected, made
a fool of, hey, the Washington Post called us poor, uneducated,
and easy to command. I don't want to give cannon
fodder to that idea. So we retreat because somehow we've
(24:06):
misaligned the idea that if they reject something we say
it equates to the rejection of the gospel. Help us
tear down that wall.
S7 (24:14):
Yeah, well, this objection of what if I don't know?
The answer is one that I hear all the time
when I'm traveling. And here's here's the truth. We don't
have all the answers. And people who don't know God
do have answers that we don't have. And I'll say this,
they have questions that we should be asking. My my
response is, what if you searched for the answer with them.
(24:36):
You don't need to go get it and then bring
it back to them and act like you're in an
ivory tower looking down on them. Get the answer with them.
Start a friendship around these crucial conversations and explore it together.
Closer you get to truth, the closer you get to God.
S1 (24:50):
Wow. And you just gave the working definition of a friendship,
by the way. Do it together. That's what friends do, right? Boy,
I just love that. Oh, this is going far too quickly.
I am so glad you're not listening to this conversation
by accident, by the way. Maybe God has placed somebody
in your life and you're going, man, I'd really love
to talk to them, but I don't know how. I
don't know where I begin. Then you're not listening by accident.
(25:11):
This is a divine appointment. More with Preston Elmer and
the Doubters Club right after this. What is in the
market mean to you? Is it a trusted source for news?
Your go to place for relevant discussions on current events?
I'm glad to have you in our listening family, and
I want to ask you to take a next step.
(25:32):
Will you become a partial partner and help us continue
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emails and information from me. Become a partial partner today
by calling 877 Janet, 58 or go online to in
the market with Janet. What a great and timely conversation. Listen,
you know if he's also not just Savior but Lord
(25:55):
in your life, then you want to be faithful. You
want to be obedient and you've got the cure for death.
How do you keep that good news to yourself? It
is why Peter and John said, we can't stop talking
about that which we've heard and seen. It should just
pour out of us. And I don't know about you,
but I think five minutes, once you've put your feet
on the bedroom floor, five minutes by poking your head
out of your little tent, boom! The world sends you
(26:15):
about 14 gazillion clues that it's hurting. They want to
know if God is real, if he loves them, if
he can bind their wounds, if he is a God
who's good despite circumstances that look to the otherwise. So
don't think for one minute, not no matter how clear
a declarative statement someone makes. I am an atheist. I
am an agnostic. I'm a skeptic, you know, start with
the very beginning. God is not willing that any should perish. Okay?
(26:37):
Just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts. If you don't
know Dragnet, you'll have to Google it. But let me
move on. So this person does want to know if
God is real. Blaise Pascal said it. He said there
resides in the heart of every man a God shaped void,
and only a personal relationship with him can fill it.
So you start with the presupposition. Regardless of what the
person is saying, that they want to know if God
is real. So why have they stepped back? Why are
(26:59):
they wounded? Why have they decided that the questions are
not being answered? I'm not interested in moving into that
more concentric circle. Francis Schaeffer talked about that. He talked
about pre evangelism starting in the outside of the culture
and moving into the center until you find truth, and
then you introduce them to the one who is called truth.
So there are a lot of doubters out there. And
Preston Ulmer knows that full well. He had his own
(27:21):
dark night of the soul came out of it, not one,
but two master's degrees, by the way, decided that after
he fell in love with Jesus all over again, that
he wanted to fall in love with working for him.
So he does. He not only founded and directs the
Doubters Club, which is an organization that teaches Christians and
atheists to model friendship and pursue truth together. But he
also serves as the director of network development for the
(27:42):
church multiplication network CNN, that happens to be the church
planning arm of the Assemblies of God, and before that
he was a youth pastor, a young adult pastor, and
a church planner. And he and his family planted a
church in Denver, Colorado. In addition to the work he
does with the Doubters Club, which, by the way, happens
to be the name of his brand new book, The
Doubters Club good Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists, and the
(28:07):
Spiritually Wounded. All right, so there's so many things that
you talk about in your book that I even with
one irreplaceable hour of your life present, I'm not going
to be able to cover it all. But if I
get people curious enough to read it, I will have
done my job. You offer this intriguing idea because you
talked about just before the break, the idea of going
on a journey together to discover these answers. You know,
(28:28):
there's a kind of a J.R.R. Tolkien aspect to that
that came to my mind the minute you were talking
about that. So the befriending, the mentoring together. Let's. Why
don't we why don't we pursue that answer together? And
then you become friends with each other, with one another.
And Lord willing, it does lead to a conclusion of truth.
And then they are introduced to Schaefer said, to the
one who is known as truth. But you say, and
this is part of it, this is inviting the non-believer
(28:51):
into real life, not a church service. Now, there's nothing
wrong with inviting a non-believer to church, but that edifice
represents the go no go point for the skeptic in
so many cases, or the atheist or agnostic, you know
you what you're saying is, well, I'll give you another
Sunday school saying, I guess it's old school week for me.
I remember growing up hearing you want to be winsome
(29:12):
in your evangelistic style, win someone to you so you
can in turn win them to Christ Jesus. I've never
forgotten that. So how do I start this real life
outside the church relationship? And is there something shadowy about that?
Is there something wrong with starting an experience outside the church?
S7 (29:28):
Oh no, there's nothing wrong with it, I, I would say. Now,
I always tell people, look, I plant churches for a living,
so I love going to church. I love those sort
of things. But, uh, whenever it comes to people who
are skeptics, atheists, agnostics, all those, if you picture a
number line, the Engel scale zero would be salvation positive ten.
(29:49):
Let's say Billy Graham fully surrendered life unto the Lord.
James Engel in the 70s said, what about the negative tens?
And those are the people that I say. I think
those are the ones. Those are the ones that Jesus says,
leave the 99 for the negative tens, the ones on
the negative side of the scale who want nothing to
do with God. So in the book, I lay out
this idea that there's five the five eyes of relationship. Impression. Intention.
(30:14):
Invitation into real life, not just a church service initiation,
initiating conversations that matter, and then imitation. How do you
imitate Christ together? So I just say, at whatever point
you are with a friend, someone who doesn't think like you,
maybe you're rebuilding the impression that they have of you.
Maybe you've told your neighbor seven times in the last
seven months we got to get together for a barbecue. Well,
(30:36):
it's probably good to apologize and to just be good
on your word. Rebuild the impression that they have of
you because you want to talk about trust. Like be
a trustworthy friend, talking about big concepts. Your intention, not
having ulterior motives. You know, I think that we were
taught we want to befriend people so that they become
a Christian. Yes, that's an ulterior motive. We want to
(31:00):
befriend people because they have the image of God in them.
They deserve the dignity of human friendships, and the detour
guides people who are with them through divorces and and
anything that just sidelines them. So although I have an
ultimate motive, I want everybody to know God. I don't
want ulterior motives. So that's the second I. The third
one is what are the natural rhythms of your life?
(31:20):
Invite them in on it. The fourth one is ideas
on how do you initiate conversations that matter. I tell
people all the time, Janet, I say this part feels
weird for Christians, but it's actually weird if you do
it the other eyes. It's weird to just talk about
sports and the weather. Again, you gotta start talking about
stuff that matters, right? And, uh, and the last one
is it's not immersion. That would be the positive side
(31:42):
of the scale. And we're all for baptism, but it's imitation.
Are there missions that you can join together? Because we
know living on mission stirs affection. And, uh, so whenever
I talk about these five eyes, I just say, whichever
eye you're at, stay there for a month or two
and then move to the next one. Take the pressure
of conversion off of you and just be an authentic friend.
(32:06):
With people on the negative side of the scale. It's
a long answer to your question.
S1 (32:10):
Oh no. But it's a rich answer. And by the way,
you then take multiple chapters of the book, The Doubters Club,
and take these five eyes and break them down even
more thoroughly, which I think is superb. Well, we've talked
a little bit about the impression because we were talking
about the hypocrisy issue. Um, so let me go to
the intention one and dig a little bit deeper here.
How to renovate the intentions you have of the non-believer.
(32:32):
I think you touched on this also because this is
the us and them kind of category. And if we don't,
that's right again. Gosh Preston, I grew up with pastors
who would literally weep from the pulpit for the lost.
We don't do that anymore. We're pointing fingers. And as
you say, we categorize it's us versus them. It's a
it's a kind of, um, tribalistic approach to our fellow
man rather than and you didn't use the word, but
(32:52):
I thought it when you said it. Imago dei I
love this person because the image of God resides within
that person. And I love to quote this line out
of Fiddler on the roof. They're having this great conversation,
Lazar Wolf and Tevya. And he says to him, you,
I like your ideas. I wouldn't give you a kopeck for,
but you I like. And I thought, that's such a
perfect example of saying, I don't have to agree with
(33:14):
what you believe, but am I conveying the idea that
I value you as a human being? You know, we
have this thing in Washington where you can go get
your picture taken on the corner of just about every
street with a cutout of the current president. So tourists
line up and they've got vendors on the street corner.
And there's your. Take your picture with whoever the president
is or the first lady. And people love to go
home and say, look, I met the president. I met
(33:34):
the first lady. That's who we are to a lot
of skeptics and atheists. We are the cardboard cutout. If
we're not engaging them, how do they even know who
we are by how we're characterized on Netflix? No, that's
not the PR department for the faith, right? So how
are we going to change the impression if we don't
start reaching out? And by the way, Preston, I think
we're the ones that have to start the reaching out,
(33:56):
not for ulterior motives, but because that's what God. That's
what God calls us to do.
S7 (34:01):
Yeah. That's so good. And and that's what, you know,
the clubs themselves are actually gatherings. They're gatherings where you
have two co-moderators, one's a Christian, one's a not not non-Christian.
And they're they're modeling friendship over the topic that the
club voted on the time before. And there's a bunch
of theological misfits, you know, 15 to 20 is an
(34:21):
ideal group. And they don't meet in churches. They meet
in coffee shops or microbreweries or wherever. There's going to
be a natural gathering place. And they sit and they
talk and they model friendship. They laugh together, and then
they ask challenging questions. Because here's the here's the goal.
We want to better understand you. And there's a cognitive
mirroring effect. When I say I want to understand you.
(34:42):
What's happening is I move from the resistor part of
their brain forward. And so they're thinking, okay, I want
to better understand you as well. So in the doubters
club settings, although we talk about really deep issues, the
goal is build trust. Build trust with one another. Because
when I build trust with them and I understand them,
believe it or not, I'm going to pray for them more.
(35:03):
I'm going to I'm actually going to think about them more.
I'm going to serve them more. And my life becomes
more like Jesus when I intentionally try to understand the
people who don't know him. And so in doubters club gatherings,
a lot of times we get challenged of our intentions.
They go, okay, what's the motive here? Do you want
to convert everybody? And I say, no, the vision is
(35:24):
I want to model friendship and pursue truth with you,
and I try to tell them if I'm wrong, I
would want to know it. And we live in a
place that says I'm right, I'm right, I'm right, and
everyone in the Doubters Club. The irony is they all
think they're right.
S1 (35:38):
Right, exactly.
S7 (35:40):
But if we get to a place where we say, okay,
what is the truth and how do we find it
on this specific question? So of all the doubters, clubs
that have launched around the world, that's the goal. And
when you talk about the ulterior motives, we have to
constantly keep clarifying, hey, this group is not a church.
We're trying to accomplish something entirely different here.
S1 (35:58):
Wow, Preston, I have two important questions to ask you.
And I don't want to ask because I'm coming up
to a break. So let me take a break and
come right back. But I want to go to what
you just said before, because I want to make sure
people listening don't misconstrue what you just said, which is
the idea of doubts, because there are going to be
people saying, wait a minute, I'm standing on the Word
of God. You know, I've read it through, I believe
(36:18):
it to the Bible. And so I'm not going to
have any doubts. It says it, I believe it. There
is no room for a doubt. Let me talk to
you about how you contextualize that within the conversation of, quote,
a doubters club. And then I want to ask you
a really dicey question about not the skeptic, the cynic,
the seeker, the atheist, but the other believers who know
that you have befriended a skeptic, a seeker, an agnostic,
(36:40):
an atheist, and they begin to vilify you for some
of the reasons we talked about earlier. So let me
get your take on both of those when we come back.
Preston Ulmer is with us. His brand new book is
called The Doubters Club good Faith conversations with skeptics, atheists
and the Spiritually Wounded. Much more right after this. We're
(37:18):
visiting with Preston Ulmer, the founder and director of the
Doubters Club that puts Christians and atheists together, helps them
to model friendship with one another and pursue truth together.
He's also a church planter, by the way, and he's
got a brand new book that hearkens right back to
what he founded. It's called The Doubters Club, and it's
a marvelous book to help you. And I learn how
to have good faith conversations with skeptics, atheists, and the
(37:39):
spiritually wounded. So, Preston, you know, for some people this
is dangerous new territory. And I don't want them to
turn off when they hear something that's new and sounds
threatening to them. So let me go back to what
you just said about doubts. Hey, we're all going to
have doubts. No, I'm not going to have doubts. I'm
talking to an atheist who's seeking. I'm a born again,
spirit filled Christian. I believe the word of God. There
are no doubts there. So talk to me about that,
(38:01):
because there's truth in that. When you say we all
have doubts, I can have some pretty good hermeneutics. I'm
doing excellent exegesis. And what does that mean about having
doubts in this conversation with my atheist friend?
S7 (38:15):
Yeah. Well, first of all, if they're listening, don't turn
this off. Just listen. Just hear me out for a second. Uh,
I do think that doubt in the Christian life is unavoidable.
I think it's biblical, and I think it's healthy. And
here's why. I think that we have been taught that
your faith is as strong as its absence of doubt. Uh,
(38:36):
and this is kind of a certainty seeking model of
faith that if I could make myself psychologically believe something
enough without any questions and suppressing the questions, that I
can somehow impress God enough that I'm going to have
a miraculous outcome. Well, the reality is that's not authentic,
and that's not what we see in Scripture. I mean,
you see, God name an entire nation Israel after Jacob
(39:00):
wrestles with him and his name turns to Israel. And
Israel means to strive with God. Or a lot of
commentators will say, God wrestlers. So you have God naming
a whole nation God. Wrestlers would be one way that
we can see it. It pleases him, I think, because
you can't wrestle from far away. If I wrestle with
my kids, I have to be in close proximity with
them to do that. I think God likes that. I
(39:21):
think that there's an authenticity and there's a striving that
happens to get to know them. I also think that
faith actually needs doubt. You know, faith is the ability
to commit in the face of uncertainty. And we don't
have certainty when it comes to most important decisions in
our lives. So when I married my wife, if someone said, hey, Preston,
(39:42):
do you know that when you're 50 years old that
things are still going to work out? Well, I would
have to say, well, I don't know. I don't know
for certain. And if they came back and said, well,
then why would you marry her? Well, because I make
a commitment in the face of uncertainty based on the
confidence that I have. That's exactly what faith is. So
it's why we get on planes. It's why we get
(40:03):
in cars. We don't have certainty when we do things.
We have confidence. And our faith is the ability to
commit in the face of uncertainty. So when it comes
to our relationship with God, I think that when we
see doubt as, uh, it's not allowed in, than what
we really do is we're compromising what we talked about earlier,
the authenticity before him. And when you read the scriptures,
(40:25):
you just see so many questions and you actually see
God honoring and dialoguing with the people who have those questions.
S1 (40:34):
Yeah, I love that. What a great answer. All right,
here's the dicey question. When one decides dicey one. Okay.
Exactly right.
S9 (40:44):
All right. So you step out of your comfort.
S1 (40:46):
Zone and you as a follower of Christ, take to
heart exactly what you've said, and you understand that it's
into that messy, upside down world that we've been called
to go and you befriend in this friendship model, someone
who holds an antithetical worldview, and then you begin to
hear derision coming from fellow brothers and sisters in the faith. Um,
(41:06):
and they'll do it in some pernicious way. This is
the voice of experience, by the way. They'll sometimes do
it in very public ways, where you will be vilified
because you have decided to befriend someone, as together you
are pursuing truth, right? Um, and by the way, I
don't know how you win the lost if you don't
start out with a friendship. By the way, I doubt seriously,
I'm going to be able to throw him a track
(41:27):
with the four spiritual laws and say, call me when
you're done. You know, it's going to have to be
a kind of a friendship model, but you run in
the church. I'm going to put it all out there.
You run the risk of being vilified by some if
you befriend a non-believer, because we have cloistered in our
own little silos. So give us some courage, you know,
for again, this goes back to the weeping for the lost. Okay.
(41:47):
Do I care about their unbridled tongues, or do I
care about the fact that this person has a one
way ticket to hell without Jesus?
S7 (41:54):
Yeah. So I, I will answer your question with the story.
I was in LA, uh, just last week, and there's
a Q&A with a bunch of pastors. There's some sectional
meeting with pastors from that area in California, and someone
asked me the same question. Pastor said, you know, if
I actually do what you're talking about, they said, what's
my board going to think about me? And what are
the people going to think about me that I'm trying
(42:15):
to pastor? And I responded by saying, and I wasn't
trying to be facetious. I just said, you know, do
you ever read the Gospels and see Jesus compromising his
reputation by the people he's hanging out with? And I
think the answer, obviously is, well, yes.
S9 (42:31):
I think all the time.
S7 (42:33):
All the time. So much so, by the way, that
he said that people were saying of him, he's a glutton,
he's a drunkard. Well, why were they saying that? Well,
because he's hanging out with the gluttons and the drunkards.
So they're actually when you follow Jesus. Close enough. Janet,
there will you know you're doing it right when the
highly religious people start to associate your reputation with theirs.
(42:55):
Is that not the cross, though? Is it not the
cross that he became sin? He looked like a thief
because we are the actual thieves. Is it not the
heart of the gospel that when we follow Jesus, we go?
My reputation is nothing. I'm all about being with the
people who don't know him. And if that means that
(43:16):
the highly religious start to think that we've compromised and again,
think that we've compromised and they're going to they're going
to throw our reputation under the bus because we're following
Jesus so closely, because he's in the middle of the mess. Well,
then so be it. That's what sent him to the cross.
I think that's part of bearing our cross, by the way,
if we don't pick up our cross daily, we can't
follow him. Well, that means our reputation is not always
(43:39):
going to look pretty.
S9 (43:40):
Wow.
S1 (43:41):
Oh, I love the answer. Okay, only all the hours
gone far too quickly. Preston, talk to me about how
we redefine progress. That's the last I. The imitation. You know,
for a lot of people, uh, progress is defined by you.
Accepted the Lord as your personal savior. Touchdown. Right. That's
the end.
S9 (43:56):
Goal.
S1 (43:56):
Yeah, but you say you have to redefine this, so
talk to me about that.
S7 (44:00):
Yeah. I love how you said touchdown because I would
say this. Don't go after a win all the time.
Ask yourself how do I score right. And here's how
you score one more conversation. Relationships are built on conversation
after conversation. So the question is how do I have
one more conversation with this person? That's the score. You
don't have to win every time.
S9 (44:19):
Yeah.
S1 (44:20):
Amen. Well, it goes back to the idea of I'm not,
you know, some people plant the seed, some people water,
and some people are there for the harvest. Right? Just
start start with the seed planting. And if you get
that one more conversation, maybe it's another chance to plant
another seed. Preston. Wow, what a fabulous book. The hour
flew by. There's a gazillion more questions I would have
liked to have asked you, but they're already answered inside
the book The Doubters Club, so let me strongly recommend
(44:42):
it to you. Go to In the Market with Janet Parshall,
click on that red box. It says program details and
audio takes you right over to the information page. There's
Preston's handsome face. There's a link to his Twitter account
because he's got a great one. And on the right
hand side, there's the book The Doubters Club. Click on
through to learn how you can get a copy for yourself.
My heartfelt thanks to a great and memorable conversation with
(45:03):
Preston Ulmer and with you friends. We'll see you next
time on In the Market with Janet Parshall.
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