What happens when the gospel you were handed no longer makes sense of the pain, beauty, or complexity of the world you’re actually living in? In this conversation, I sit down with Nicholas McDonald, pastor and author of The Light in Our Eyes, to explore the tensions between disillusionment and hope, escape and embodiment, cynicism and renewal. Nicholas brings a pastor’s heart, a theologian’s depth, and the honesty of someone who’s wrestled with real questions and has found the freedom, beauty, and love that Jesus can bring. We talk about what 40 million people walking away from the church actually means, why so many are rejecting not Jesus, but a culture of fear and power, and how the recovery of ancient practices, communal faith, and a more embodied gospel could help us reimagine the way forward. From Zechariah’s silence to Jim Henson’s Muppets, from dispensational escape theology to communion as resistance - this conversation covers a lot of ground, and all of it matters. So join us as we find the light of Christ has been present all along.
Nicholas McDonald is the Associate Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian church in central Indianapolis and has served in ministry for over fifteen years. His previous positions have included roles in youth ministry and four years as the Campus Minister of Reformed University Fellowship at the University of Missouri. McDonald received his degree from Gordon Conwell Seminary and studied creative writing at Oxford University. He's the author of Faker, and the forthcoming book "The Light in Our Eyes: Rediscovering the Love, Beauty and Freedom of Jesus in an Age of Disillusionment". He lives in Indianapolis with his wife and their three children.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nicholas McDonald (00:00):
Jesus isn't merely trying to help us escape
(00:03):
from the world he's created. Heis inviting us to renewal, and
he invites us to personalrenewal and reconciliation. To
him first and foremost, but he'salso interested in renewing
everything around us. He caresabout everything our hands
touch. I Joshua,
Joshua Johnson (00:31):
hello and welcome to the shifting culture
podcast in which we haveconversations about the culture
we create and the impact we canmake. We long to see the body of
Christ look like Jesus. I'm yourhost. Joshua Johnson, what
happens when the gospel you arehanded no longer makes sense of
the pain, beauty or complexityof the world you're actually
living in? In this conversation,I sit down with Nicholas
(00:53):
McDonald, pastor and author ofthe light in our eyes, to
explore the tensions betweendisillusionment and hope, escape
and embodiment, cynicism andrenewal. Nicholas brings a
pastor's hearts a theologiansdepth and the honesty of someone
who's wrestled with realquestions and has found the
freedom, beauty and hope thatJesus can bring. We talk about
(01:15):
what 40 million people walkingaway from the church actually
means, why so many are rejectingnot Jesus but a culture of fear
and power, and how the recoveryof ancient practices communal
faith and a more embodied gospelcould help us reimagine the way
forward, from Zachariah silenceto Jim Henson's Muppets, from
dispensational escape theologyto Communion as resistance. This
(01:39):
conversation covers a lot ofground, and all of it matters,
so join us as we find the lightof Christ has been present all
along. Here is my conversationwith Nicholas. McDonald
Nicholas, welcome to shiftingculture. Excited to have you on
thanks for joining me.
Unknown (01:56):
Yeah, I'm really glad to be with you, Joshua. I'd
Joshua Johnson (01:59):
love to know you know your book, the light in our
eyes, it's fantastic, but itreally takes us through a whole
journey of disillusionment,deconstruction into some
reconstruction, finding somehope, freedom, some love of
Jesus. And so it's a whole,whole journey. Why is this
(02:20):
fascinating to you. Why did youembark on this project to figure
out where we are as a cultureand how there is a way
Unknown (02:29):
forward? Well, number one, we're in a bit of a moment.
So 40 million people have leftthe church over the last 10
years. That's more people thancame to faith in the first Great
Awakening, the Second GreatAwakening and the Billy Graham
crusades combined. So this is acrisis, and it's also very
(02:51):
personal to me. So a lot of thisbook is about my journey. It's a
book I wish someone had writtenfor me 15 years ago, 20 years
ago, as I was feeling like I hadlost my way, so I had grown up
in the evangelical church, andin many ways, appreciate a lot
of what I grew up in. But therewas a moment in my high school
(03:14):
years where two things happenedin the same season right before
college. One was that I took atrip to South Africa, and I saw
poverty for the first time. Imean, really destructive, people
living in sheds, eating chickenbroth for dinner, which was the
result of apartheid, which wasan ostensibly Christian
(03:37):
movement. So that upended a lotof my categories, and came back
home, and two weeks later, thisis just before heading to
college, my youngest brotherdied in a drowning accident, and
I felt like at that time, it waslike someone had pulled the rug
out from under me, and all thecategories I had for my own
(03:58):
faith just were not fitting intothe sort of bubble that I had
grown up. And so for me, I feltlike I'm not finding the answers
to these really big, hardquestions in the church. So I
walked away for many years,walked away from the church.
Didn't feel like the church hadanswers for me, and the book I
(04:21):
needed was a book that said youare right about the problems you
see. And okay, and there's sothere's lots of good books
saying you're right about theproblems you see, but they don't
offer any hope or a way forward,necessarily. And that's not
their job, not academic. Booksaren't meant to do that. You
know, I'm thinking of greatbooks like the color of
compromise and lots of thingsthat have exposed the ugly
(04:44):
underbelly of this thing we'veinherited. That's that's great,
but it's not their job to giveus hope. As a pastor, it's my
job to give you some hope. Ialso didn't want to write a book
this would not have been helpfulfor me at the time. If someone
had said, Hey, you're wrong towalk away from the church, and
here's why all of your.
Objections are wrong. Oh, thatwould not have been helpful to
me. So the voice I needed wassomeone saying, Hey, I affirm a
(05:06):
lot of the things that you'reseeing that are wrong in the
church, and I can present to youa better, hopeful, bigger, more
global, historic picture of thegospel than maybe you've
experienced in your AmericanEvangelical culture growing up.
That's what I needed, and Ithink that's what maybe 20
million or 30 million of those40 million people are looking
Joshua Johnson (05:30):
for. Why do you think they're looking for that?
One of the things that you saidthat you believe and you think
that they're really, not reallyrejecting Christian orthodoxy,
but they're rejecting a cultureof fear and power and political
entanglement, which you callbully evangelicalism. So why is
(05:52):
it? Is it that and like, whereare people at? What have you
seen in the the research of,what are they walking away from,
and what are they trying to holdon to? Still? Some
Unknown (06:03):
of this comes from the research. So Michael Graham and
Jim Davis book The Great Dchurching show, statistically,
most people who have walked awayfrom the church would still hold
to what we would call the tenetsof evangelicalism. They would
say, I still believe the Bibleis authoritative. I still
believe in the atonement ofJesus, and yet they're not in
the church. So I think we needto ask ourselves, why? If that's
(06:28):
not it, then why? And it's sosome of it comes from research.
Some of it really comes from myown experience working with
college students. So I didcollege ministry at the
University of Missouri, startingin 2016 which was quite a year
to start college ministry inspeaking to college students.
One of the things I picked upover the years was a certain
(06:50):
vibe that was different than thevibe I had growing up, which was
this kind of pervasive cynicism,fear, anxiety, and so I always
think of the one example of thatI used to, as a youth pastor in
the 2000 10s, make fun of themovie Tangled, because I would
be poking fun at this narrativethat Okay, so this, this thief,
(07:14):
comes along, Flynn Rider, and hehas all these bad habits, but he
finds this, you know, woman in Atower, and then all of a sudden,
those bad habits go away. Itjust doesn't that's not the way
life works. Like this is, you'vejust married a kleptomaniac, and
he's going to end up stealingthings from your father's palace
at some point. And so this was astory hotel in the 2000 10s to
(07:35):
optimistic young, you know,millennials who'd be like, upset
that I had upended that veryoptimistic story about marriage.
I tried telling that story againto college students in 2016 and
their expression was like, Duh.
So what like we? We know this,this is obvious, like, we don't
have hope in anything. So I hadlots of conversations about this
(07:57):
with college students and andwhat I was finding was that
college students were lookingfor hope. They're looking for
hope. And what they werehearing, especially in 2016 to
2020 from the evangelical world,was fear, cynicism, this kind of
apocalyptic view of politics andlife that assumed the world was
(08:21):
going to get worse and worse andworse going to hell in a hand
basket. I remember one of thethings, I'm jumping back in time
a little bit, but one of thethings I heard when I was part
of the trailer park church thatI talk about in the book a
little bit, is the pastor said,you know, the world is like a
sinking Titanic, and our job isnot to polish the brass and the
(08:45):
titanics to throw lifepreservers to people and help
them get saved. This was thedefault assumption of
evangelical culture. The world'sgetting worse. We need to panic
and figure out how to protectwhat we have. And that was
exactly the opposite of whatthose college students needed to
hear. So I'm watching them andseeing them and feeling with
them how it is that they'releading the church, and they're
(09:08):
going back to their homechurches, and they're getting
more of that, and it's just it'sthis vicious cycle of I'm
looking for hope a church isoffering them more fear and
cynicism. That's not where Iwant to place my faith in hope.
Joshua Johnson (09:22):
I mean, one of the things that they're offering
the church was offering hope inthen, is in really an optimistic
view of of faith without namingthe reality. So let's name the
pain points, name the pain ofwhat people have been going
through. I think is important aswe we walk through this so that
(09:43):
we actually acknowledge thatthere is some pain, and we don't
want to gloss over things. And Ithink some in some pockets of
the church, we've glossed over alot of the reality of life, and
the good news of Jesus is thathe actually impacts in the. He
He touches the reality ofeverything, and it's can lead to
(10:06):
something beautiful. Even themidst of suffering and pain and
doubts and disillusionment,there's something beautiful
there. What is the pain point?
So let's name that,
Unknown (10:15):
yeah. Well, that's well said, there's a lot of pessimism
about life outside the churchand maybe a lot of naive
optimism about what is insidethe church. So both of those
realities are happening at thesame time. I would say for me
that false optimism about lifein the church and pessimism. So
it happened at the same church.
I just mentioned the trailerpark church. Well, I'll tell you
one story that I thinkencapsulates the culture of the
(10:37):
church. So I was working with alot of youth, maybe 70 to 80
different high school and juniorhigh students, and they were
coming from pretty low incomebackground, and so we would
spend some time together. Andnow the church was a King James
only church, so these arestudents who can barely spell
their own names, and I'm tryingto teach to them out of the King
(10:59):
James Version of the Bible. Imean, that's, that's hard,
that's a hard job. So, you know,I was fine trying to do it, but
I had suggested to the pastor atsome point, hey, maybe there's
some other things we could dofor these students, besides only
teaching them the Bible.
Obviously, I'm here to teachthem the Bible, but in order for
them to even read this KingJames Version Bible, we need to
(11:21):
teach them how to read, andmaybe there's some other things
we could do to give them somemore holistic help. And the
pastor looked at me and said,That's not your job. Your job is
to get them in here and get themsaved. One particular moment
that stands out to me is I wasplaying some Christian Rap at
this church, because the rapculture that we are in as we're
(11:43):
playing this Christian Rap youthgroup and I were meeting
downstairs, and I hear thisthunderous, sort of booming
footsteps from upstairs, and II'm like, something's gone
wrong. So I start to walk up thestairs, and the pastor meets me,
and he's just, he's this beetred, he's very angry. And I had
no I sincerely had no idea whathe could be angry about. And he
(12:04):
listened to the music for asecond, and he said, What is
this crap? I said, Well, it'sChristian rap. You know, I
thought maybe some of thesestudents, this is what they
listened to. I thought thiswould be a good way to bridge
the gap. And he looked at me andhe said, If I can't understand
it, it's not Christian whichironically became sort of my
thesis statement for whatevangelicalism is right now, if
(12:28):
I can't understand it, it's notChristian, and that attitude of
exclusion has almost become ourdefault mission. We assume our
mission is to protect thisculture that we have, and that's
kind of an ugly thing, you know.
So to naming some of the thingsthat are ugly inside the church,
I was watching that happen inreal time with those students,
(12:49):
and it was hard to watch
Joshua Johnson (12:52):
you walk through some of these cynical dreams
that you talk about, where thechurch wants to do something,
and it really rubs people thewrong way. People start to say,
maybe that's not, not right. Andso I want to walk through some
of those so that we could justname some. You know, one you
(13:13):
talk about exclusion, whichguards purity by pushing people
out. How is the church doingthat, and what is the what does
that do for people's faith?
Unknown (13:24):
Yeah, that cynical dream of exclusion. Well, I
think that particular pastor'swords put it, put it very well,
you know, if we can't understandit, it's not Christian. And so
the default mission of thechurch becomes, if it doesn't
sound like something I'mfamiliar with, that come if it
comes outside of my culturalcontext, then it's not Christian
so, so one of the things I talkabout in the book is going to
(13:47):
worldview camp, which was aninteresting experience for me.
It was a week my mom had becomea Christian when I was maybe
eight years old, and so she'slike, I don't know this is a
Christian thing. Go do it. Soshe has no idea what world view
campus. She sends me out there,and I have no idea what it is.
There were no marshmallows orcampfires. I know that there's
(14:08):
no hiking. It was Bible classes,turns out, which was a bit of a
disappointment. So I get toworld view camp, and what we are
taught at world view camp is,there's there's a Christian way
to think about everything inlife. There's a Christian way to
think about science. Here's theway you think about science.
There's a Christian way to thinkabout politics. Here's how you
think about politics. Herethere's a Christian way to think
(14:32):
about dating. We don't date, wenever date. We court each other,
you know. And there's all thesesort of things that I've you
know as a 14 year old were alittle bit compelling to me.
It's like, oh, Jesus cares aboutall these things, but part of
what deconstructed in my mindyears later was going to South
Africa, seeing people outside ofour context, and realizing, Wait
(14:55):
a second, a lot of those thingsthat were called Christian. Are
just a very Caucasian, Westernway to think about everything.
And so as I started to pull atthose threads and think, Huh,
maybe, maybe I don't agree withthis quote, unquote, Christian
political take on things. Doesthat mean I'm not a Christian?
(15:16):
That's what they're saying.
They're saying I don't have aChristian worldview. If I don't
have a Christian worldview.
Maybe I don't believe in Jesus.
Maybe, maybe, if that's tied tothe resurrection, but maybe the
resurrection isn't a thing, youknow. So all these things got
bundled together in being aChristian means looking like us,
being like us, thinking like us,in a way that, you know, it just
unravels, you know, if you'renot willing to buy into the
(15:39):
whole subculture. It unravels.
And I think a lot of thedeconstruction process for folks
can begin there. It's turningopinions about culture and
politics and things like thatinto orthodoxy. Those things are
not what the global, historicchurch has ever said. These are
the important things. So it's akind of legalism, is another way
(16:00):
you could put it. It's a kind oflegalism. But I thank you.
Legalism that I think is
Joshua Johnson (16:03):
pervasive. So walking through that, what are
some of the things that you'velearned from the global church
and people around the world thathas helped get you into a space
of like, I'm actually rooted insomething ancient, historic, and
it's a global family. It doesn'talways look like this white
western evangelical world thatthat the Christian world is much
(16:28):
bigger and broader than Ithought it was.
Unknown (16:32):
My first exposure to that world was I had the
opportunity when I was incollege to go abroad for a
couple of semesters and study inEngland, and I was not going to
a church, but some friends wereand I was lonely, so I joined
them at a church one Sunday,which called itself an
(16:54):
evangelical church. But when Iwalked in and I heard what was
being talked about just did notfeel at all like the
evangelicalism I had grown upin. And whatever it was they
meant by evangelical was notwhat I had learned evangelical
was there were people who hadvery different political
(17:14):
viewpoints. They were veryengaged with thinking about some
of their third world papers.
There's just a different kind ofa culture there. And it made me
start to think, Huh, maybe thething that has been called the
church or evangelicalism orChristianity, for me, maybe that
was just one small slice of whatChristianity really is. And what
is fascinating is that I beganto dig into the history of that
(17:38):
word evangelical. And I foundone of the things I talk about
in the book is that if you goback just 150 years and you
looked at what an evangelicalwas, that person would look like
an anti Evangelical, right now,right? So, so 150 years ago,
evangelicalism is aboutcollecting orthodox groups of
believers to work for whathistorian Richard Lovelace calls
(18:03):
historic or he calls aspiritual, cultural and social
renewal. That was the project.
And so Karen swallow, prior,who's written the forward to my
book, which I'm super gratefulfor. She in her book The
Evangelical imagination, shedetails, all right, what did it
mean to be an evangelical 150years ago? It meant you were
(18:24):
fighting for abolition. It meantthat you were an animal rights
activist, right? I mean thatjust does not map onto the
picture. You are advocating forpoor children to have an
education. It was this holisticvision that Jesus wants to renew
society and wants to renewindividuals in him. He wants to
(18:46):
reconcile, as Paul says, allthings to himself. And yet, when
you talk about those kinds ofthings, and Jesus being
interested in those sorts ofthings in a American Evangelical
context, well you get treatedlike you're a heretic. And I
just began to ask, why is that?
What changed? And there, thereis, I can go more into this, if
you want to, or we can, we canmove into a separate topic.
(19:07):
There is a whole history of whyAmerican evangelicals flipped
the script on that, and why wetend to be very much out of
alignment with Evangelicalsaround the globe. So that's one
thing. And I could talk morepersonally about how the global,
historic church is impacting meeven now as well. But
Joshua Johnson (19:25):
well, I think that. I think it's important for
us to realize when did thathappen, what was happening, and
why is it different than therest of the
Unknown (19:35):
world. One turning point that I think is super
helpful is you look at what theevangelical church became after
the Civil War. There's a nightand day difference between
evangelicalism before the CivilWar and after the Civil War. So
there's, there's a little bit ofa long, complicated history
there. But essentially, what itcame down to was this, before
(19:56):
the Civil War, as I described,evangelicalism was seen as this.
Somewhat optimistic, hopefulmovement that Jesus wanted to
renew all of society, and sothat's what it was. Now, after
the Civil War took place, therewas a huge divide in the
Protestant church in Americaabout, how do we take care of
(20:18):
the black population? How do wehandle reparations? The southern
church uninterested, thenorthern church mixed. And so
what started to happen was, asthese disagreements took place,
there was a very youngcharismatic preacher named DL
Moody who came up with asolution, and his solution,
(20:38):
which was based on a wholetheological system that was
created by a man named John,John Darby. And I've got a
whole, got a whole history ofhim in the book, but, but in
essence, DL Moody's propositionwas, well, what if Jesus just
didn't care? What if he justdidn't care about these justice
(20:59):
issues? What if he didn't careabout reparations? What if the
church's mission was purelyspiritual, and it was only to
help people escape this earth toget to heaven? This is a new and
not new idea. You can see it inearly, early church heresies,
actually. But this was Moody'swhole proposition, and the
(21:20):
reason why it was compelling isbecause he thought, well, here's
how we can unite the northernand southern churches. We can
commit together to this kind ofspiritual renewal, but we will
leave aside the social, culturalcomponent of it. And that is how
American evangelicalism becamethis very spiritualized
movement. That is what I what Icall in the book we're committed
(21:44):
to the gospel of escape. Want toescape the earth, to go
somewhere else, which isradically out of alignment with
what evangelicals around theworld believe. Well,
Joshua Johnson (21:54):
I think that's our eschatology needs. Needs a
little bit of of reframing andrestoring. You talk a little bit
about dispensationalism. Youtalk about it's about escaping
this earth, where we want to goto heaven when we die and the
earth is going to burn, and wedon't need to do anything here,
because it's all going to goaway anyways. So the only thing
(22:17):
that matters is where we go. Youknow, when we die, hopefully we
go to heaven. What's a bettervision for us? A better
eschatology, a better way toview what is going to happen and
what our role is now in this newnew Heaven and new Earth that is
going to come
Unknown (22:37):
the controversial part of the gospel in Paul's day. You
know, if Paul had said to theGreco Roman society that Jesus
mission was to help us allescape our bodies, to go off to
heaven, to be perfect souls,that would not have been
controversial. I mean, theChristian faith would have been
far less controversial, becausethis was the widely believed. I
(22:58):
mean, it was the doctrine of theday. This is Plato. This is
Gnosticism. The thing that wascontroversial about Paul is he
said, Actually, I think Jesus isinterested in our bodies. He was
a resurrected human being, andso Jesus project isn't to rescue
us from the earth, but it's tobring renewal and restoration to
(23:23):
all things. And that particularmessage, we don't realize this
without the cultural context,but that side of the message got
Paul in far more trouble than ifhe had preached what we preached
today, because that was seen ascrass, dirty, unethical to think
about the body as a good thing,and so in the book, this is part
(23:43):
of what I try to return us to,is that Jesus. Jesus isn't
merely trying to help us escapefrom the world he's created. He
is inviting us to renewal, andhe invites us to personal
renewal and reconciliation tohim first and foremost, but he's
also interested in renewingeverything around us. He cares
about everything our handstouch. Why does this matter?
(24:06):
Well, I remember one particularconversation I talk about in the
book a little bit with a studentnamed Michael. And Michael was a
college student, and he was verytroubled. He's kind of an
artist. He liked to createthings. He was super funny. I
just enjoyed him so much as aperson. And so we're talking one
(24:26):
day, and we're walking aroundcampus, and we go up to this,
this top of a building that washis favorite place to be, and
it's fall time. We're lookingover the beauty of creation. We
can see these beautiful trees.
And as Michael starts todescribe to me what he pictures
as the evangelical gospel, whichis that none of the beautiful
things we're looking at matter.
(24:50):
He starts to describe how hefelt guilty for being an artist,
because that didn't feel like hewas living into the mission of
trying to get more kids insideof his youth group. That was the
thing he was. All to be doing.
He felt guilty because he likedpretty girls. And he's like,
that's not, that's not spiritualenough to like pretty girls. And
so we started talking about,where does all this come from?
What? What do you think thestory of the gospel is? And it
(25:11):
all came back to, of course, thestories that Jesus wants to
rescue us from being human,which is a, it's kind of a cruel
message, actually. And so as westarted to talk it through, I
gave him the good news thatJesus did not want us to escape
our bodies, to go elsewhere, buthe wanted to renew everything,
and that Jesus cared about hisart, and Jesus is the designer
(25:34):
of sexuality. And Jesus isinvested in all these things and
wants to bring resurrection tothem. He was just like you could
see tears in his eyes. And just,no one has ever told me this. No
one ever told me that my bodymatters, that my desires matter,
that my world matters, and Jesuscares about all of that. And so
yeah, this, this makes an impacton on everyday life.
Joshua Johnson (25:57):
It makes, it makes a huge impact on everyday
life, that what what we do here,matters who we are, matters
Jesus himself became one of us,became human and is still human
in a resurrected body, humanbody, which is crazy that he's
there. Do you talk aboutrestoring ourselves? What do you
(26:21):
mean by restoring? And why is itimportant that we actually
restore?
Unknown (26:27):
Well, one of the words I try to avoid is reconstructing
faith. I'm not interested inreconstructing faith because
first of all, that sounds like alot of work. I still was the
onus on me, like, Okay, I'vedeconstructed my faith. Now you
go do all the work toreconstruct your faith. Well, I
think, I think the good news isbetter than that, actually. So
(26:51):
one of the one of the metaphorsthat I use in the book comes
from a couple of conversationsI've had with folks who have
been going throughdeconstruction. And the metaphor
I hear oftentimes is, well, Isort of picture Christianity
like a room that has beendecorated for me, and it's my
(27:11):
job to take down the decorationsI don't like and redecorate it
in a way that I like. There'ssomething beautiful about that.
I think there is something trueabout the fact that Jesus allows
you to be you. You know hedoesn't ask you to fit into this
particular cultural mold. But atthe same time, it's a bit of a
limited picture. Because whenJesus describes being part of
(27:33):
the church, does he describe itlike being in a room alone, by
yourself? Thankfully, not here,right? He talks about being part
of the church like, Hey, you'repart of this village. You're
part of this group of people.
You have many houses, you havemany fathers, many mothers, many
brothers, many sisters, who'veall come before you. There are
resources in the church that canhelp to retell the story of the
(27:53):
gospel to you in ways that maybethe American context gets a
little bit wrong sometimes, andthat that is really a huge part
of my story. You know, a lot ofthis book is centered on the
prayer of Zechariah in Lukechapter one. I had never heard
this prayer growing up. No oneever prayed this prayer, but it
was maybe seven years ago Istarted to pick up the Book of
(28:14):
Common Prayer, which is aresource that's used all around
the world by Christians allaround the world. And one of the
things I noticed straight awaywas they're praying the prayer
of Zechariah every single day,all year long. And I thought,
What in the What is this? Thisdoesn't make any and as I read
that prayer, I thought, well,Zechariah is simply preaching
(28:35):
the gospel of Jesus here in areally beautiful way, and that's
why we pray it every single day.
But that version of the gospelthat Zechariah prays, it doesn't
actually square very well withthe version of escape that we
proclaim, and so no wonder it'sbeen dropped from our liturgies,
right? And so, so that beginningprocess of, okay, maybe, maybe
(28:58):
the church is telling a story isbetter than the story I've been
told. And can I let Jesus Churchbring renewal and restoration to
me, rather than me trying tofigure out this whole thing by
myself?
Joshua Johnson (29:12):
Since you mentioned Zechariah, and I was
going to get into just walk usthrough what that prayer is and
how it helps
Unknown (29:17):
us. Yeah, so Zechariah is prayer is a beautiful poem.
Part of the reason why I loveZechariah story is because, in
many ways, you meet him assomeone who, I imagine him as a
bit of a cynic and a skeptic. Ithink we can see that a little
bit and his response to so he'schildless. He and his wife
Elizabeth, are childless, which,in ancient Israel, this is, this
(29:42):
is an all encompassing problem.
This is not a side problem. Thisis your wealth. This is your
future. This is, this iseverything. And so to be
childless was seen as a curse.
It was seen as being forgottenby God. And so he's really he
has a miserable life, and he'svery old, and he's looking at.
The end of it, and he has thisdream of having a child, and
(30:03):
then at some point, this angelcomes to him and says, Hey,
you're gonna have a child. Andhis reaction is, I don't think
so, right? And you can almosthear how the cynicism has
calloused him and built him up.
But that's I can grab onto that,right? I relate to that, like,
Yeah, well, this is how I wouldrespond this seriously. Like, I
don't I don't think so. SoZechariah goes into this period
(30:25):
of silence before his son, Johnthe Baptist, is born. And I
think in the past, I would havethought, oh, Zechariah, he's
being punished for not believingright away. And maybe, maybe
there's an element of beingdisciplined there. But actually,
I think that period of silencebefore the promise is fulfilled.
I think it's a gift. It givesZechariah this creative space
where, when he starts to speakagain, he comes out with this
(30:48):
brilliant, beautiful declarationof, here is what Jesus is coming
to do. He's like the sunlightthat is going to return color
and life and beauty to theworld. And it's this beautiful
picture, not of us leaving theEarth, but of Jesus as this
brilliant sun that rises on allthings and brings them to life.
(31:09):
And that picture was reallycaptivating to me, like Jesus is
like the sunrise. It's like whenI'm walking around in downtown
Indianapolis, and it's dark out,and I can't see anything, and
then I see the sun start to riseon the horizon. All of a sudden,
I can see these beautifulmurals, and I can see trees, and
(31:30):
I can see people standing up andwalking their dogs. It brings
everything to life again. Andwhat if that's what Jesus came
to do? And it just, it capturedmy imagination. And I thought,
well, this is why. Why do wehave this? This is what the
church all around the world issinging every day. I want, I
want some of that, right? That'sgood stuff.
Joshua Johnson (31:51):
Yes, we want the light of Jesus. So take us in.
So Zechariah is prayer. It helpsus process our cynicism.
Disillusionment brings us into aplace of hope and knowing that
the light of Jesus can actuallymake things new and can restore
things, walk me through some ofyour own story of how did you
(32:14):
walk through those places ofcynicism and doubt into a place
of hope and finding the love ofJesus and what it actually
looked like in your life.
Unknown (32:26):
Well, I'm very thankful I've been very lucky to have so
i The irony of being burned bythe church and hurt by the
church, and I have a lot of thatthat I talk about in the book,
all kinds of different badexperiences with the church,
but, but the irony of not justthe church but being a human is
that humans are the people whoscarred you, and humans are the
(32:49):
only people who can help you,right? So, so you get scarred by
communities, but you also haveto get healed by communities.
And so I am so thankful that Ifeel like I've been in several
Healing Church communities overthe years, of people who have
the wisdom to know they can sortof see past this little blip on
(33:10):
the screen that we call Americanevangelicalism, and are living
into that bigger, broader storyand but what's been a real
privilege to me, I think beingat my current church, Redeemer
Indianapolis, over the last fewyears, is watching so many other
people go through thatexperience of I'm no longer
interested in this Americansubculture, but coming to
(33:32):
Redeemer, they find somethingthat is renewing and restoring
for them. So So one guy I hadthe privilege to meet with over
the last few years. His name isJoseph, and Joseph, he had a bad
experience in the church growingup, and was part of the college
campus ministry, and all of hisfriends deconstructed and left
(33:54):
during the pandemic. A wholeother topic of conversation is
like, how isolation led to a lotof this D churching, but so, so
all of Joseph's friends left,but Joseph's a little bit duty
bound. Okay, so he started. Hejust kept coming to church, just
because that's what he'ssupposed to do. And he's so
Joseph is a very intimidatingguy, super intellectual.
Sometimes I'll say things and Idon't, you know, I just talk
(34:17):
sometimes. And he's like, whydid you say that? I don't know,
just leave me alone. I'm justdaunting. It was very rigorous,
but, but he had all these big,big questions, you know, and
very, very analytical and super,super bright. But the really
fascinating thing about Josephis that he would say finding
(34:37):
renewal for him, what he wantedit to be was I wanted to come to
Redeemer and get all myquestions and my questions
answered. But the thing that Ifound renewal in is the fact
that at Redeemer, every singleweek, I get down on my knees and
I confess my sins in verytangible ways, and then someone
feeds me communion and says,Jesus loves you. You. Yeah, it
(35:00):
was this amazing, like, hot, youknow? And the way he would put
it is, he said, It's not thatthe questions I was asking
didn't matter. It's just that,in light of Jesus love, they
became quieter. There's goodanswers out there. Now, how's
that tied to the story ofrenewal? Well, one of the
reasons we do communion everyweek is because we believe that
(35:21):
Jesus doesn't just care aboutyour soul. He cares about your
body, and he wants to love yourbody. And every single time you
take communion, it is Jesussaying, I love you, and I want
you to taste it, and I want youto drink it. I want you to
experience it. And I think theonly way, the only reason, maybe
I'm getting controversial here,as surely I am, but I think the
(35:42):
only reason we stepped away fromdelivering those physical
elements with the preaching andthe reading of God's word is
because of this side gospel ofescape, right? We need all of
it. Our bodies need the love ofJesus, and our brains and our
souls, everything, and sowatching him go through the
story of renewal and restorationthat has been so sweet to just
(36:03):
see dozens of those stories overthe years, and get to bring that
to those folks.
Joshua Johnson (36:08):
So much of this conversation, it's been about an
embodied gospel, and not just anintellectual or escape gospel,
but it is embodied like ourbodies matter what we do here
matters the beauty and thejustice, the peace of God in the
(36:32):
city matters in our community.
It all comes together like it'sall he's here with us. How do we
move towards embodiment like,what does that look like for for
you, how do we how are we awareof our bodies, where we're at
and what we do matters? Whatdoes that look like for such a
(36:53):
rationalistic, heady type ofculture that we live in?
Unknown (37:00):
So we do that on Sunday mornings. I would say through,
you know, we use our bodies inworship. At Redeemer, we stand
up, we sit down, we kneel, wetake communion. One of the
things I love about the way weembody even our worship service
is my friend Kyle. He's anartist here in Indianapolis, and
one of the weird, quirky thingsabout our church is that we have
(37:22):
a sanctuary that's attached to agiant art gallery that houses
artists from all overIndianapolis, most of them, some
of them are Christians. Most ofthem aren't. So when you walk
around the church, it's notprecious moments. It's sort of
like will make you go, Oh, wow.
I didn't know that should benext door to a sanctuary. So as
a wild place, we also have somany wonderful, weird, wonky
artists that are part of ourcongregation. And one of the
(37:45):
things that Kyle has helped meto see is that when we're going
through seasons, like literalseasons, fall, winter, spring,
summer, this is God teaching usabout who he is. And so we were
doing a series on theIncarnation one one year. This
is actually last year. And oneof the really tactile,
(38:10):
beautiful, bodily things we didwas we asked our artists to, all
right, help us think about theincarnation. And so we walk into
our sanctuary and we have 3dsculptures of pregnant women,
and it's like, I mean, it'swild, you know, and it's all DNA
woodwork. It almost took meaback, like, whoa, whoa, this,
should this be in the sanctuary?
(38:32):
But it was this beautifulreminder that these are all
things that Jesus had and was apart of, you know, and he cared
about all those things. And whatKyle would say is, okay, you
don't have to be part of achurch with lots of artists to
have that experience. If youjust, if you just pick up a very
basic version of the book ofcommoner prayer, it will walk
(38:52):
you through the year and helpyou think about, Okay, what does
the season mean? Let's, let'slive the story of Jesus. Let's
think about the incarnation andthe dead of winter. Let's think
about the resurrection when allthe other flowers are springing
forth in spring. It's a verysimple thing, but even following
the church calendar has beenthis very embodied way for me to
(39:14):
pray where you know, as I'mthinking about a psalm, I can
step outside and I can thinkabout what is creation doing
right now? Is telling the storyof Jesus, and so that would be
another practice that I foundsuper, super healing for me to
think about embodied faith. Ithink one of the things that can
really help us to embody thegospel is recovering the
(39:36):
practice of hospitality. And byhospitality, I don't mean a
fancy spread that impresses allyour friends. I mean just this
expectation, really, that theearly church had, you know, one
of the qualifications for beinga pastor in the early church
was, Are you hospitable? Whichactually, back in those days,
man, do you let poor people livewith you? And so that's, you
(39:59):
know. That was but that was arequirement that you you open
your home, that you're withother people. And so one of the
stories I tell is my friendLuke. He he and I met at college
ministry one year in the halland the dining hall. And is
pretty random, but Luke was nota Christian. He had left the
(40:21):
church years before he graduatedhigh school, and as we started
talking, I invited him to aBible study. He said, Okay,
fine, I'll come. But there wasone particular night where I had
this I loved my freshmen. Theywere kind of weird and awkward
though. I said, Hey guys, it'sreally cool that we meet for
(40:42):
Bible study. Like, really,really cool. But there's other
cool things we could do, liketalk to each other. And so I
said, What would you guys liketo do just as a community? And I
said, Well, I only make pizzasat your house. And so I said,
Fine. And so I put together thispizza party. Luke, who was not a
Christian, came over to thepizza party, and I just thought
it was the weirdest thing I'dever done. It was a weird night.
(41:03):
So we had maybe just seven oreight freshmen at my house were
making pizzas. You know,students are talking to me about
their math homework, and onestudent is over talking to my
dog because he doesn't want totalk to people. And the whole
thing, I'm thinking, this is aterrible failure of an event,
like, what am I doing here? Butyears later, when I talked to
Luke, he became a Christian in areally radical, beautiful way, I
(41:26):
asked him, you know, Luke, what?
What really moved the needle foryou on wanting to become a
Christian? Probably, like asermon I preach, right? Or
probably like a really coolBible study they put together.
And he said, Yeah, that stuffwas good. But he's like, you
know, it was the pizza night atyour house. That's what really
sold it. For me. It's just likeonly God could put this weird
community together. I think, Ithink there might be something
(41:47):
to it, but, you know, that'swhat it was. It was just
embodying the gospel in a placewe're just, we're eating
together, being humans together,which is, it's kind of a rare
thing in our era of people beingstuck to their phones. So just,
just creating spaces like that,I think
Joshua Johnson (42:03):
hospitality and food is so important. It's so
important to the gospel and toour faith. That's why I love
like the story of on the EmmausRoad, where Jesus encounters
these disciples. They don't knowwho he is. They call him
foreigner, stranger, like he'snot even and so here's this
random foreigner that arewalking with them, and they
(42:26):
invite them in to stay. And youknow, it was through the
breaking of the bread, it wasthrough the meal that that they
discover it was Jesus. Jesus isthere with us. This is just
common practice. It's like youhave a foreigner among you, you
invite them in, you let themstay like this is it's
hospitality, but then youactually see Jesus in the midst
(42:47):
of it. And so even the story ofyour your pizza party, which
seems silly, like Jesus wasthere with people talking to
dogs, and, you know, all thestuff. And I so I just love the
picture like that, hospitalityand eating with people does more
(43:08):
than we ever think it could,
Unknown (43:12):
absolutely and part of the moral of that story is we
should throw more parties. Theydon't have to be good parties.
It was kind of a bad party, butyeah, Jesus was there, and he
was working in Luke's heart. Andreally it goes back to that, as
you said, Joshua, so Well, thisembodied vision of the gospel.
Jesus cares about us being witheach other in real life. And I
(43:34):
love that story in Luke, becauseit's one of those moments where,
you know, I preached on thatparticular passage a couple of
years ago, and it blew my mindstudying it, because what I
realized Luke was doing this is,as he's transitioning to writing
the book of Acts, and what he issaying, and this is going to
connect both of our storiestogether. Is he's saying, I am
(43:55):
still going to be with youthrough the bread and the wine.
So when you break that together,how does me being with you? It's
a it's an ingenious way for Luketo communicate that when you
break bread together and takecommunion together, Jesus will
be present. So as one of myfavorite stories,
Joshua Johnson (44:12):
yeah, it's so good. So we've talked about some
cynical dreams. We've talkedabout reasons why people are
disillusioned or deconstructing,and you actually walk through
stages, which is really helpfulthe beginning your book. So I
want people go read that. Ithink it's really helpful for
for you, as you're thinkingthrough people leaving or de
churching and what it lookslike. But we haven't talked
(44:35):
about the Jesus dreams. And sowhat are some of these dreams of
Jesus? These Jesus dreams for usthat bring us some hope, that
give us a new vision, orrevision us and restore us into
what the gospel looks like andwhat Jesus is doing here and
(44:56):
now.
Unknown (44:57):
The three words that I use to describe Jesus dreams
are. Jesus dreams about love, hedreams about freedom, and he
dreams about beauty. Those arewords that I feel like we can
all resonate with, right? Wedream about those things, but
really, what I'm doing, onceagain, is I'm just stealing from
church history on those threeparticular categories. Jesus is
(45:19):
our priest who's come to show ushis embodied love. He is our
Prophet who's come to give ustrue freedom, and he is our King
who's come to bring beauty tothe world, his Shalom and by
bringing his justice and so andso. This is but this is also
when I talk to people who areleaving the church, I think
(45:39):
sometimes we in the church thinkif people are leaving the
church, it's because they havethese desires for things that
Jesus doesn't have. I think Iwant to say, I think Jesus does
have those things, and I thinkthey're better and truer than
the versions that we're pursuingout there, but we as the church
have got to say, hey, Jesus hasthat hope that you're looking
(46:00):
for it's not you're not going tofind it by pursuing love, the
way the world pursues love orfreedom, the way the world
pursues freedom or beauty, theway the world pursues beauty.
But those are things Jesusactually cares about, and so I
want to point you back to whatJesus says about those things.
So for example, when we talkabout freedom. Freedom is a big
(46:23):
word that folks use when theytalk about deconstruction. I
want to be my truest best self.
And I think the church tends tosay, No, you shouldn't be your
truest best self. Well, I thinkwhat Jesus would say is, I do
want you to be your truest andbest self, but the way you do
that, you're not going to findthe resources to do that inside
of yourself. You're going tofind the resources to do that
(46:45):
when you are connected to me.
And so one of my favoritestories that has helped me to
get around my head, around thisparticular dream of Jesus, is
I'm a huge Jim Henson fan, hugeMuppets fan. I've seen
everything Muppets, even theweird stuff, the super I go deep
on Dark Crystal labyrinth, allof it. I mean, it goes deep, but
(47:06):
there's this beautiful story inJim Henson's biography where
he's talking about taking theMuppet Show on the road. So the
Muppet Show is sort of the waythat Jim Henson became Jim
Henson, in many ways. And sohe's taking the Muppet Show on
the road, and he has all theseMuppets that are putting these
skits together. It's like aSaturday Night Live with
Muppets, and nothing is working.
I can't get anything to work. SoFauci the bear, he's he's just
(47:30):
telling bad jokes. And Gonzo,he's doing stunts. We don't know
why it's not coming together.
And so Jim Henson is watchingthese skits, and they're all
falling apart, and he can'tunderstand why they're not
landing. And then he has thisidea, which is to take one of
his Sesame Street characters,which is the character which was
actually just Jim Henson, it wasjust him in Muppet form, Kermit
(47:52):
the Frog, and he puts Kermit theFrog in the middle of all these
skits. And everybody on setsaid, everything just clicked.
Every single Muppet becamethemselves because Kermit was on
stage. So what I want to say tosomeone who's leaving the church
in the aim of freedom is I wantto say, I want you to have
freedom, but you will not havefreedom until Jesus is center
(48:14):
stage in your life. He can bringyou that freedom that you're
looking for out there, but cantruly only be found in the words
in the life of Jesus. And sothat's one dream. We could talk
about all Jesus dreams, but Ithink that's, you know, that's,
I think that's the task rightnow, is to say Jesus loves your
dreams. He actually thinks thatyour dreams are too small, not
(48:35):
too big. He cares about thosethings, but you can only find
them through him. Our
Joshua Johnson (48:39):
culture finds, finds who we are inside of
ourselves, and not from outside,not from Jesus or the community
of God. We find who we are onthe inside. And I think we're
struggling to figure out how wecan do that and what to do, but
this vision of like restoring,like walking through the ancient
(49:04):
tradition that we have in thechurch, and it's, you know,
centuries old that we're here,then we can stand firm and be
rooted in something is, isreally, I think, miraculous for
us, especially in our day andage and our culture, where
everything comes from theinside. You said that, hey,
you're hurt by community, butyou could only be healed in
(49:25):
community. You could only behealed actually, from what comes
from outside of you, not frominside of you. And so that's one
of the things that it's, Ithink, a difficult thing to move
people from trying to find whothey are from the inside to say
it actually takes you connectingwith people on the outside and
(49:48):
with with what true communityis, and what Jesus actually
says, and the actual story ofthe Bible and the scripture, and
not just what our own littleculture thinks and feels. I have
a couple of questions for you.
Nicholas, one I would love toknow, what is your hope for the
light in your eyes, if you talkto your readers, what do you
hope that they would get fromthat?
Unknown (50:09):
I want to have a conversation with you. That was
the conversation I wish someonehad had with me 15 years ago. I
want to I want you to feel thefact that your concerns and some
of the things you feeldiscomfort in from your
particular context are probablyvalid, right? So I do want to
(50:29):
say that period like they'reprobably valid. And yet I also
want to say to you that Jesus,Jesus was disillusioned in many
ways with the religiousinstitutions around him. And
Jesus said, Hey, your dreams aretoo small. I have bigger dreams
for you, and I want you to findhope. I want you to find hope in
Jesus. Because I do think a lotof us are like Zechariah. We're
(50:51):
just that. We've been hurt toomany times. We've had our
expectations unmet too manytimes. Many of us have
experienced real abuse andtrauma from a church that says
your body doesn't matter. Thosethings go together. Guess what?
If the story of the Gospel isthat your body doesn't matter,
that is a culture ripe forabuse, and so many of us have
felt that and seen that, and yetJesus cares about your story,
(51:13):
cares about your body, and hewants to give you hope
Joshua Johnson (51:15):
if you go back to your 21 year old self.
Nicholas, what advice would yougive? I
Unknown (51:19):
think I would say, Stop trying to write a book right
now. I don't know that's Youdon't know anything. That would
be one thing. I think probablywhat I said to you earlier, I
think I would say youexperienced a lot of hurt by
people, and yet you're onlygoing to find healing through
people, you know, good, trusted,safe people, and so don't walk
(51:44):
away from community, but findthe right
Joshua Johnson (51:46):
community.
Anything you've been reading orwatching lately, you could
recommend,
Unknown (51:50):
yes, a book I'm reading right now. There's a book by Dan
Danielle called the meaning ofsingleness, and we have been
preaching on singleness in ourchurch, and this book is just
blowing my mind, because whatshe's doing, essentially, she's
saying, Okay, here's whereevangelicalism now isn't right
now on marriage and singleness.
Here's what the church throughhistory has always said about
(52:13):
these things. And she's comingat this from a reformed
evangelical standpoint, and kindof saying, I think we're maybe
way out of line and seeing thebeauty of singleness and the
beauty of marriage and whatthese things even mean in the
first place. And I love a booklike this, because it situates
you where you are, and then itsays, And here's actually a
(52:33):
better, bigger, more beautifulvision of what Jesus has for
people who are single and peoplewho are married, and I've just
found myself challenged andinspired, and it's made me
convicted at times, and it'sbeen fantastic, so would highly
recommend
Joshua Johnson (52:50):
so go get the light in our eyes. Nicholas is a
great writer. He's funny, he'srelatable, he walks through
things. He's actually highlyintelligent in a lot of these
things as well. So there'sactually deep wisdom in this
book, but it's actually a funbook to read. It's not just
(53:11):
something you have to getthrough to get to the meat, but
it's actually a fun book. So goget this book. It is great.
Nicholas, Is there anywhere elseyou'd like to point people to?
Unknown (53:21):
Yeah, if you want to connect with me online, you can
do that at my substack calledthe bard owl, B, A, R, D, and I
write weekly posts, and it's aplace where I also actually
giving out some more resourcesfor the book if you're a
subscriber. So it's good placeto get discussion guides and
some supplemental content aswell.
Joshua Johnson (53:40):
Great. Well, check out Nicholas, substack,
the Bard, owl and Nicholas.
Thank you for this conversation.
Thank you for walking us throughthis de churching,
disillusionment, deconstruction,but then walking us through a
there is some cynicism, there'ssome pain, there is some hurt,
there are some real things thathave happened and it's real and
(54:01):
it's valid, but there isactually some hope in Jesus and
he has a bigger story and abetter story for us and a bigger
dream and a better dream for us.
It was a fantastic conversation.
Really enjoyed talking to you.
So thank you so much,
Unknown (54:15):
and it as well. Thanks.
Joshua. You
Jesus isn't merely trying to help us escape
(00:03):
from the world he's created. Heis inviting us to renewal, and
he invites us to personalrenewal and reconciliation. To
him first and foremost, but he'salso interested in renewing
everything around us. He caresabout everything our hands
touch. I Joshua,
Joshua Johnson (00:31):
hello and welcome to the shifting culture
podcast in which we haveconversations about the culture
we create and the impact we canmake. We long to see the body of
Christ look like Jesus. I'm yourhost. Joshua Johnson, what
happens when the gospel you arehanded no longer makes sense of
the pain, beauty or complexityof the world you're actually
living in? In this conversation,I sit down with Nicholas
(00:53):
McDonald, pastor and author ofthe light in our eyes, to
explore the tensions betweendisillusionment and hope, escape
and embodiment, cynicism andrenewal. Nicholas brings a
pastor's hearts a theologiansdepth and the honesty of someone
who's wrestled with realquestions and has found the
freedom, beauty and hope thatJesus can bring. We talk about
(01:15):
what 40 million people walkingaway from the church actually
means, why so many are rejectingnot Jesus but a culture of fear
and power, and how the recoveryof ancient practices communal
faith and a more embodied gospelcould help us reimagine the way
forward, from Zachariah silenceto Jim Henson's Muppets, from
dispensational escape theologyto Communion as resistance. This
(01:39):
conversation covers a lot ofground, and all of it matters,
so join us as we find the lightof Christ has been present all
along. Here is my conversationwith Nicholas. McDonald
Nicholas, welcome to shiftingculture. Excited to have you on
thanks for joining me.
Unknown (01:56):
Yeah, I'm really glad to be with you, Joshua. I'd
Joshua Johnson (01:59):
love to know you know your book, the light in our
eyes, it's fantastic, but itreally takes us through a whole
journey of disillusionment,deconstruction into some
reconstruction, finding somehope, freedom, some love of
Jesus. And so it's a whole,whole journey. Why is this
(02:20):
fascinating to you. Why did youembark on this project to figure
out where we are as a cultureand how there is a way
Unknown (02:29):
forward? Well, number one, we're in a bit of a moment.
So 40 million people have leftthe church over the last 10
years. That's more people thancame to faith in the first Great
Awakening, the Second GreatAwakening and the Billy Graham
crusades combined. So this is acrisis, and it's also very
(02:51):
personal to me. So a lot of thisbook is about my journey. It's a
book I wish someone had writtenfor me 15 years ago, 20 years
ago, as I was feeling like I hadlost my way, so I had grown up
in the evangelical church, andin many ways, appreciate a lot
of what I grew up in. But therewas a moment in my high school
(03:14):
years where two things happenedin the same season right before
college. One was that I took atrip to South Africa, and I saw
poverty for the first time. Imean, really destructive, people
living in sheds, eating chickenbroth for dinner, which was the
result of apartheid, which wasan ostensibly Christian
(03:37):
movement. So that upended a lotof my categories, and came back
home, and two weeks later, thisis just before heading to
college, my youngest brotherdied in a drowning accident, and
I felt like at that time, it waslike someone had pulled the rug
out from under me, and all thecategories I had for my own
(03:58):
faith just were not fitting intothe sort of bubble that I had
grown up. And so for me, I feltlike I'm not finding the answers
to these really big, hardquestions in the church. So I
walked away for many years,walked away from the church.
Didn't feel like the church hadanswers for me, and the book I
(04:21):
needed was a book that said youare right about the problems you
see. And okay, and there's sothere's lots of good books
saying you're right about theproblems you see, but they don't
offer any hope or a way forward,necessarily. And that's not
their job, not academic. Booksaren't meant to do that. You
know, I'm thinking of greatbooks like the color of
compromise and lots of thingsthat have exposed the ugly
(04:44):
underbelly of this thing we'veinherited. That's that's great,
but it's not their job to giveus hope. As a pastor, it's my
job to give you some hope. Ialso didn't want to write a book
this would not have been helpfulfor me at the time. If someone
had said, Hey, you're wrong towalk away from the church, and
here's why all of your.
Objections are wrong. Oh, thatwould not have been helpful to
me. So the voice I needed wassomeone saying, Hey, I affirm a
(05:06):
lot of the things that you'reseeing that are wrong in the
church, and I can present to youa better, hopeful, bigger, more
global, historic picture of thegospel than maybe you've
experienced in your AmericanEvangelical culture growing up.
That's what I needed, and Ithink that's what maybe 20
million or 30 million of those40 million people are looking
Joshua Johnson (05:30):
for. Why do you think they're looking for that?
One of the things that you saidthat you believe and you think
that they're really, not reallyrejecting Christian orthodoxy,
but they're rejecting a cultureof fear and power and political
entanglement, which you callbully evangelicalism. So why is
(05:52):
it? Is it that and like, whereare people at? What have you
seen in the the research of,what are they walking away from,
and what are they trying to holdon to? Still? Some
Unknown (06:03):
of this comes from the research. So Michael Graham and
Jim Davis book The Great Dchurching show, statistically,
most people who have walked awayfrom the church would still hold
to what we would call the tenetsof evangelicalism. They would
say, I still believe the Bibleis authoritative. I still
believe in the atonement ofJesus, and yet they're not in
the church. So I think we needto ask ourselves, why? If that's
(06:28):
not it, then why? And it's sosome of it comes from research.
Some of it really comes from myown experience working with
college students. So I didcollege ministry at the
University of Missouri, startingin 2016 which was quite a year
to start college ministry inspeaking to college students.
One of the things I picked upover the years was a certain
(06:50):
vibe that was different than thevibe I had growing up, which was
this kind of pervasive cynicism,fear, anxiety, and so I always
think of the one example of thatI used to, as a youth pastor in
the 2000 10s, make fun of themovie Tangled, because I would
be poking fun at this narrativethat Okay, so this, this thief,
(07:14):
comes along, Flynn Rider, and hehas all these bad habits, but he
finds this, you know, woman in Atower, and then all of a sudden,
those bad habits go away. Itjust doesn't that's not the way
life works. Like this is, you'vejust married a kleptomaniac, and
he's going to end up stealingthings from your father's palace
at some point. And so this was astory hotel in the 2000 10s to
(07:35):
optimistic young, you know,millennials who'd be like, upset
that I had upended that veryoptimistic story about marriage.
I tried telling that story againto college students in 2016 and
their expression was like, Duh.
So what like we? We know this,this is obvious, like, we don't
have hope in anything. So I hadlots of conversations about this
(07:57):
with college students and andwhat I was finding was that
college students were lookingfor hope. They're looking for
hope. And what they werehearing, especially in 2016 to
2020 from the evangelical world,was fear, cynicism, this kind of
apocalyptic view of politics andlife that assumed the world was
(08:21):
going to get worse and worse andworse going to hell in a hand
basket. I remember one of thethings, I'm jumping back in time
a little bit, but one of thethings I heard when I was part
of the trailer park church thatI talk about in the book a
little bit, is the pastor said,you know, the world is like a
sinking Titanic, and our job isnot to polish the brass and the
(08:45):
titanics to throw lifepreservers to people and help
them get saved. This was thedefault assumption of
evangelical culture. The world'sgetting worse. We need to panic
and figure out how to protectwhat we have. And that was
exactly the opposite of whatthose college students needed to
hear. So I'm watching them andseeing them and feeling with
them how it is that they'releading the church, and they're
(09:08):
going back to their homechurches, and they're getting
more of that, and it's just it'sthis vicious cycle of I'm
looking for hope a church isoffering them more fear and
cynicism. That's not where Iwant to place my faith in hope.
Joshua Johnson (09:22):
I mean, one of the things that they're offering
the church was offering hope inthen, is in really an optimistic
view of of faith without namingthe reality. So let's name the
pain points, name the pain ofwhat people have been going
through. I think is important aswe we walk through this so that
(09:43):
we actually acknowledge thatthere is some pain, and we don't
want to gloss over things. And Ithink some in some pockets of
the church, we've glossed over alot of the reality of life, and
the good news of Jesus is thathe actually impacts in the. He
He touches the reality ofeverything, and it's can lead to
(10:06):
something beautiful. Even themidst of suffering and pain and
doubts and disillusionment,there's something beautiful
there. What is the pain point?
So let's name that,
Unknown (10:15):
yeah. Well, that's well said, there's a lot of pessimism
about life outside the churchand maybe a lot of naive
optimism about what is insidethe church. So both of those
realities are happening at thesame time. I would say for me
that false optimism about lifein the church and pessimism. So
it happened at the same church.
I just mentioned the trailerpark church. Well, I'll tell you
one story that I thinkencapsulates the culture of the
(10:37):
church. So I was working with alot of youth, maybe 70 to 80
different high school and juniorhigh students, and they were
coming from pretty low incomebackground, and so we would
spend some time together. Andnow the church was a King James
only church, so these arestudents who can barely spell
their own names, and I'm tryingto teach to them out of the King
(10:59):
James Version of the Bible. Imean, that's, that's hard,
that's a hard job. So, you know,I was fine trying to do it, but
I had suggested to the pastor atsome point, hey, maybe there's
some other things we could dofor these students, besides only
teaching them the Bible.
Obviously, I'm here to teachthem the Bible, but in order for
them to even read this KingJames Version Bible, we need to
(11:21):
teach them how to read, andmaybe there's some other things
we could do to give them somemore holistic help. And the
pastor looked at me and said,That's not your job. Your job is
to get them in here and get themsaved. One particular moment
that stands out to me is I wasplaying some Christian Rap at
this church, because the rapculture that we are in as we're
(11:43):
playing this Christian Rap youthgroup and I were meeting
downstairs, and I hear thisthunderous, sort of booming
footsteps from upstairs, and II'm like, something's gone
wrong. So I start to walk up thestairs, and the pastor meets me,
and he's just, he's this beetred, he's very angry. And I had
no I sincerely had no idea whathe could be angry about. And he
(12:04):
listened to the music for asecond, and he said, What is
this crap? I said, Well, it'sChristian rap. You know, I
thought maybe some of thesestudents, this is what they
listened to. I thought thiswould be a good way to bridge
the gap. And he looked at me andhe said, If I can't understand
it, it's not Christian whichironically became sort of my
thesis statement for whatevangelicalism is right now, if
(12:28):
I can't understand it, it's notChristian, and that attitude of
exclusion has almost become ourdefault mission. We assume our
mission is to protect thisculture that we have, and that's
kind of an ugly thing, you know.
So to naming some of the thingsthat are ugly inside the church,
I was watching that happen inreal time with those students,
(12:49):
and it was hard to watch
Joshua Johnson (12:52):
you walk through some of these cynical dreams
that you talk about, where thechurch wants to do something,
and it really rubs people thewrong way. People start to say,
maybe that's not, not right. Andso I want to walk through some
of those so that we could justname some. You know, one you
(13:13):
talk about exclusion, whichguards purity by pushing people
out. How is the church doingthat, and what is the what does
that do for people's faith?
Unknown (13:24):
Yeah, that cynical dream of exclusion. Well, I
think that particular pastor'swords put it, put it very well,
you know, if we can't understandit, it's not Christian. And so
the default mission of thechurch becomes, if it doesn't
sound like something I'mfamiliar with, that come if it
comes outside of my culturalcontext, then it's not Christian
so, so one of the things I talkabout in the book is going to
(13:47):
worldview camp, which was aninteresting experience for me.
It was a week my mom had becomea Christian when I was maybe
eight years old, and so she'slike, I don't know this is a
Christian thing. Go do it. Soshe has no idea what world view
campus. She sends me out there,and I have no idea what it is.
There were no marshmallows orcampfires. I know that there's
(14:08):
no hiking. It was Bible classes,turns out, which was a bit of a
disappointment. So I get toworld view camp, and what we are
taught at world view camp is,there's there's a Christian way
to think about everything inlife. There's a Christian way to
think about science. Here's theway you think about science.
There's a Christian way to thinkabout politics. Here's how you
think about politics. Herethere's a Christian way to think
(14:32):
about dating. We don't date, wenever date. We court each other,
you know. And there's all thesesort of things that I've you
know as a 14 year old were alittle bit compelling to me.
It's like, oh, Jesus cares aboutall these things, but part of
what deconstructed in my mindyears later was going to South
Africa, seeing people outside ofour context, and realizing, Wait
(14:55):
a second, a lot of those thingsthat were called Christian. Are
just a very Caucasian, Westernway to think about everything.
And so as I started to pull atthose threads and think, Huh,
maybe, maybe I don't agree withthis quote, unquote, Christian
political take on things. Doesthat mean I'm not a Christian?
(15:16):
That's what they're saying.
They're saying I don't have aChristian worldview. If I don't
have a Christian worldview.
Maybe I don't believe in Jesus.
Maybe, maybe, if that's tied tothe resurrection, but maybe the
resurrection isn't a thing, youknow. So all these things got
bundled together in being aChristian means looking like us,
being like us, thinking like us,in a way that, you know, it just
unravels, you know, if you'renot willing to buy into the
(15:39):
whole subculture. It unravels.
And I think a lot of thedeconstruction process for folks
can begin there. It's turningopinions about culture and
politics and things like thatinto orthodoxy. Those things are
not what the global, historicchurch has ever said. These are
the important things. So it's akind of legalism, is another way
(16:00):
you could put it. It's a kind oflegalism. But I thank you.
Legalism that I think is
Joshua Johnson (16:03):
pervasive. So walking through that, what are
some of the things that you'velearned from the global church
and people around the world thathas helped get you into a space
of like, I'm actually rooted insomething ancient, historic, and
it's a global family. It doesn'talways look like this white
western evangelical world thatthat the Christian world is much
(16:28):
bigger and broader than Ithought it was.
Unknown (16:32):
My first exposure to that world was I had the
opportunity when I was incollege to go abroad for a
couple of semesters and study inEngland, and I was not going to
a church, but some friends wereand I was lonely, so I joined
them at a church one Sunday,which called itself an
(16:54):
evangelical church. But when Iwalked in and I heard what was
being talked about just did notfeel at all like the
evangelicalism I had grown upin. And whatever it was they
meant by evangelical was notwhat I had learned evangelical
was there were people who hadvery different political
(17:14):
viewpoints. They were veryengaged with thinking about some
of their third world papers.
There's just a different kind ofa culture there. And it made me
start to think, Huh, maybe thething that has been called the
church or evangelicalism orChristianity, for me, maybe that
was just one small slice of whatChristianity really is. And what
is fascinating is that I beganto dig into the history of that
(17:38):
word evangelical. And I foundone of the things I talk about
in the book is that if you goback just 150 years and you
looked at what an evangelicalwas, that person would look like
an anti Evangelical, right now,right? So, so 150 years ago,
evangelicalism is aboutcollecting orthodox groups of
believers to work for whathistorian Richard Lovelace calls
(18:03):
historic or he calls aspiritual, cultural and social
renewal. That was the project.
And so Karen swallow, prior,who's written the forward to my
book, which I'm super gratefulfor. She in her book The
Evangelical imagination, shedetails, all right, what did it
mean to be an evangelical 150years ago? It meant you were
(18:24):
fighting for abolition. It meantthat you were an animal rights
activist, right? I mean thatjust does not map onto the
picture. You are advocating forpoor children to have an
education. It was this holisticvision that Jesus wants to renew
society and wants to renewindividuals in him. He wants to
(18:46):
reconcile, as Paul says, allthings to himself. And yet, when
you talk about those kinds ofthings, and Jesus being
interested in those sorts ofthings in a American Evangelical
context, well you get treatedlike you're a heretic. And I
just began to ask, why is that?
What changed? And there, thereis, I can go more into this, if
you want to, or we can, we canmove into a separate topic.
(19:07):
There is a whole history of whyAmerican evangelicals flipped
the script on that, and why wetend to be very much out of
alignment with Evangelicalsaround the globe. So that's one
thing. And I could talk morepersonally about how the global,
historic church is impacting meeven now as well. But
Joshua Johnson (19:25):
well, I think that. I think it's important for
us to realize when did thathappen, what was happening, and
why is it different than therest of the
Unknown (19:35):
world. One turning point that I think is super
helpful is you look at what theevangelical church became after
the Civil War. There's a nightand day difference between
evangelicalism before the CivilWar and after the Civil War. So
there's, there's a little bit ofa long, complicated history
there. But essentially, what itcame down to was this, before
(19:56):
the Civil War, as I described,evangelicalism was seen as this.
Somewhat optimistic, hopefulmovement that Jesus wanted to
renew all of society, and sothat's what it was. Now, after
the Civil War took place, therewas a huge divide in the
Protestant church in Americaabout, how do we take care of
(20:18):
the black population? How do wehandle reparations? The southern
church uninterested, thenorthern church mixed. And so
what started to happen was, asthese disagreements took place,
there was a very youngcharismatic preacher named DL
Moody who came up with asolution, and his solution,
(20:38):
which was based on a wholetheological system that was
created by a man named John,John Darby. And I've got a
whole, got a whole history ofhim in the book, but, but in
essence, DL Moody's propositionwas, well, what if Jesus just
didn't care? What if he justdidn't care about these justice
(20:59):
issues? What if he didn't careabout reparations? What if the
church's mission was purelyspiritual, and it was only to
help people escape this earth toget to heaven? This is a new and
not new idea. You can see it inearly, early church heresies,
actually. But this was Moody'swhole proposition, and the
(21:20):
reason why it was compelling isbecause he thought, well, here's
how we can unite the northernand southern churches. We can
commit together to this kind ofspiritual renewal, but we will
leave aside the social, culturalcomponent of it. And that is how
American evangelicalism becamethis very spiritualized
movement. That is what I what Icall in the book we're committed
(21:44):
to the gospel of escape. Want toescape the earth, to go
somewhere else, which isradically out of alignment with
what evangelicals around theworld believe. Well,
Joshua Johnson (21:54):
I think that's our eschatology needs. Needs a
little bit of of reframing andrestoring. You talk a little bit
about dispensationalism. Youtalk about it's about escaping
this earth, where we want to goto heaven when we die and the
earth is going to burn, and wedon't need to do anything here,
because it's all going to goaway anyways. So the only thing
(22:17):
that matters is where we go. Youknow, when we die, hopefully we
go to heaven. What's a bettervision for us? A better
eschatology, a better way toview what is going to happen and
what our role is now in this newnew Heaven and new Earth that is
going to come
Unknown (22:37):
the controversial part of the gospel in Paul's day. You
know, if Paul had said to theGreco Roman society that Jesus
mission was to help us allescape our bodies, to go off to
heaven, to be perfect souls,that would not have been
controversial. I mean, theChristian faith would have been
far less controversial, becausethis was the widely believed. I
(22:58):
mean, it was the doctrine of theday. This is Plato. This is
Gnosticism. The thing that wascontroversial about Paul is he
said, Actually, I think Jesus isinterested in our bodies. He was
a resurrected human being, andso Jesus project isn't to rescue
us from the earth, but it's tobring renewal and restoration to
(23:23):
all things. And that particularmessage, we don't realize this
without the cultural context,but that side of the message got
Paul in far more trouble than ifhe had preached what we preached
today, because that was seen ascrass, dirty, unethical to think
about the body as a good thing,and so in the book, this is part
(23:43):
of what I try to return us to,is that Jesus. Jesus isn't
merely trying to help us escapefrom the world he's created. He
is inviting us to renewal, andhe invites us to personal
renewal and reconciliation tohim first and foremost, but he's
also interested in renewingeverything around us. He cares
about everything our handstouch. Why does this matter?
(24:06):
Well, I remember one particularconversation I talk about in the
book a little bit with a studentnamed Michael. And Michael was a
college student, and he was verytroubled. He's kind of an
artist. He liked to createthings. He was super funny. I
just enjoyed him so much as aperson. And so we're talking one
(24:26):
day, and we're walking aroundcampus, and we go up to this,
this top of a building that washis favorite place to be, and
it's fall time. We're lookingover the beauty of creation. We
can see these beautiful trees.
And as Michael starts todescribe to me what he pictures
as the evangelical gospel, whichis that none of the beautiful
things we're looking at matter.
(24:50):
He starts to describe how hefelt guilty for being an artist,
because that didn't feel like hewas living into the mission of
trying to get more kids insideof his youth group. That was the
thing he was. All to be doing.
He felt guilty because he likedpretty girls. And he's like,
that's not, that's not spiritualenough to like pretty girls. And
so we started talking about,where does all this come from?
What? What do you think thestory of the gospel is? And it
(25:11):
all came back to, of course, thestories that Jesus wants to
rescue us from being human,which is a, it's kind of a cruel
message, actually. And so as westarted to talk it through, I
gave him the good news thatJesus did not want us to escape
our bodies, to go elsewhere, buthe wanted to renew everything,
and that Jesus cared about hisart, and Jesus is the designer
(25:34):
of sexuality. And Jesus isinvested in all these things and
wants to bring resurrection tothem. He was just like you could
see tears in his eyes. And just,no one has ever told me this. No
one ever told me that my bodymatters, that my desires matter,
that my world matters, and Jesuscares about all of that. And so
yeah, this, this makes an impacton on everyday life.
Joshua Johnson (25:57):
It makes, it makes a huge impact on everyday
life, that what what we do here,matters who we are, matters
Jesus himself became one of us,became human and is still human
in a resurrected body, humanbody, which is crazy that he's
there. Do you talk aboutrestoring ourselves? What do you
(26:21):
mean by restoring? And why is itimportant that we actually
restore?
Unknown (26:27):
Well, one of the words I try to avoid is reconstructing
faith. I'm not interested inreconstructing faith because
first of all, that sounds like alot of work. I still was the
onus on me, like, Okay, I'vedeconstructed my faith. Now you
go do all the work toreconstruct your faith. Well, I
think, I think the good news isbetter than that, actually. So
(26:51):
one of the one of the metaphorsthat I use in the book comes
from a couple of conversationsI've had with folks who have
been going throughdeconstruction. And the metaphor
I hear oftentimes is, well, Isort of picture Christianity
like a room that has beendecorated for me, and it's my
(27:11):
job to take down the decorationsI don't like and redecorate it
in a way that I like. There'ssomething beautiful about that.
I think there is something trueabout the fact that Jesus allows
you to be you. You know hedoesn't ask you to fit into this
particular cultural mold. But atthe same time, it's a bit of a
limited picture. Because whenJesus describes being part of
(27:33):
the church, does he describe itlike being in a room alone, by
yourself? Thankfully, not here,right? He talks about being part
of the church like, Hey, you'repart of this village. You're
part of this group of people.
You have many houses, you havemany fathers, many mothers, many
brothers, many sisters, who'veall come before you. There are
resources in the church that canhelp to retell the story of the
(27:53):
gospel to you in ways that maybethe American context gets a
little bit wrong sometimes, andthat that is really a huge part
of my story. You know, a lot ofthis book is centered on the
prayer of Zechariah in Lukechapter one. I had never heard
this prayer growing up. No oneever prayed this prayer, but it
was maybe seven years ago Istarted to pick up the Book of
(28:14):
Common Prayer, which is aresource that's used all around
the world by Christians allaround the world. And one of the
things I noticed straight awaywas they're praying the prayer
of Zechariah every single day,all year long. And I thought,
What in the What is this? Thisdoesn't make any and as I read
that prayer, I thought, well,Zechariah is simply preaching
(28:35):
the gospel of Jesus here in areally beautiful way, and that's
why we pray it every single day.
But that version of the gospelthat Zechariah prays, it doesn't
actually square very well withthe version of escape that we
proclaim, and so no wonder it'sbeen dropped from our liturgies,
right? And so, so that beginningprocess of, okay, maybe, maybe
(28:58):
the church is telling a story isbetter than the story I've been
told. And can I let Jesus Churchbring renewal and restoration to
me, rather than me trying tofigure out this whole thing by
myself?
Joshua Johnson (29:12):
Since you mentioned Zechariah, and I was
going to get into just walk usthrough what that prayer is and
how it helps
Unknown (29:17):
us. Yeah, so Zechariah is prayer is a beautiful poem.
Part of the reason why I loveZechariah story is because, in
many ways, you meet him assomeone who, I imagine him as a
bit of a cynic and a skeptic. Ithink we can see that a little
bit and his response to so he'schildless. He and his wife
Elizabeth, are childless, which,in ancient Israel, this is, this
(29:42):
is an all encompassing problem.
This is not a side problem. Thisis your wealth. This is your
future. This is, this iseverything. And so to be
childless was seen as a curse.
It was seen as being forgottenby God. And so he's really he
has a miserable life, and he'svery old, and he's looking at.
The end of it, and he has thisdream of having a child, and
(30:03):
then at some point, this angelcomes to him and says, Hey,
you're gonna have a child. Andhis reaction is, I don't think
so, right? And you can almosthear how the cynicism has
calloused him and built him up.
But that's I can grab onto that,right? I relate to that, like,
Yeah, well, this is how I wouldrespond this seriously. Like, I
don't I don't think so. SoZechariah goes into this period
(30:25):
of silence before his son, Johnthe Baptist, is born. And I
think in the past, I would havethought, oh, Zechariah, he's
being punished for not believingright away. And maybe, maybe
there's an element of beingdisciplined there. But actually,
I think that period of silencebefore the promise is fulfilled.
I think it's a gift. It givesZechariah this creative space
where, when he starts to speakagain, he comes out with this
(30:48):
brilliant, beautiful declarationof, here is what Jesus is coming
to do. He's like the sunlightthat is going to return color
and life and beauty to theworld. And it's this beautiful
picture, not of us leaving theEarth, but of Jesus as this
brilliant sun that rises on allthings and brings them to life.
(31:09):
And that picture was reallycaptivating to me, like Jesus is
like the sunrise. It's like whenI'm walking around in downtown
Indianapolis, and it's dark out,and I can't see anything, and
then I see the sun start to riseon the horizon. All of a sudden,
I can see these beautifulmurals, and I can see trees, and
(31:30):
I can see people standing up andwalking their dogs. It brings
everything to life again. Andwhat if that's what Jesus came
to do? And it just, it capturedmy imagination. And I thought,
well, this is why. Why do wehave this? This is what the
church all around the world issinging every day. I want, I
want some of that, right? That'sgood stuff.
Joshua Johnson (31:51):
Yes, we want the light of Jesus. So take us in.
So Zechariah is prayer. It helpsus process our cynicism.
Disillusionment brings us into aplace of hope and knowing that
the light of Jesus can actuallymake things new and can restore
things, walk me through some ofyour own story of how did you
(32:14):
walk through those places ofcynicism and doubt into a place
of hope and finding the love ofJesus and what it actually
looked like in your life.
Unknown (32:26):
Well, I'm very thankful I've been very lucky to have so
i The irony of being burned bythe church and hurt by the
church, and I have a lot of thatthat I talk about in the book,
all kinds of different badexperiences with the church,
but, but the irony of not justthe church but being a human is
that humans are the people whoscarred you, and humans are the
(32:49):
only people who can help you,right? So, so you get scarred by
communities, but you also haveto get healed by communities.
And so I am so thankful that Ifeel like I've been in several
Healing Church communities overthe years, of people who have
the wisdom to know they can sortof see past this little blip on
(33:10):
the screen that we call Americanevangelicalism, and are living
into that bigger, broader storyand but what's been a real
privilege to me, I think beingat my current church, Redeemer
Indianapolis, over the last fewyears, is watching so many other
people go through thatexperience of I'm no longer
interested in this Americansubculture, but coming to
(33:32):
Redeemer, they find somethingthat is renewing and restoring
for them. So So one guy I hadthe privilege to meet with over
the last few years. His name isJoseph, and Joseph, he had a bad
experience in the church growingup, and was part of the college
campus ministry, and all of hisfriends deconstructed and left
(33:54):
during the pandemic. A wholeother topic of conversation is
like, how isolation led to a lotof this D churching, but so, so
all of Joseph's friends left,but Joseph's a little bit duty
bound. Okay, so he started. Hejust kept coming to church, just
because that's what he'ssupposed to do. And he's so
Joseph is a very intimidatingguy, super intellectual.
Sometimes I'll say things and Idon't, you know, I just talk
(34:17):
sometimes. And he's like, whydid you say that? I don't know,
just leave me alone. I'm justdaunting. It was very rigorous,
but, but he had all these big,big questions, you know, and
very, very analytical and super,super bright. But the really
fascinating thing about Josephis that he would say finding
(34:37):
renewal for him, what he wantedit to be was I wanted to come to
Redeemer and get all myquestions and my questions
answered. But the thing that Ifound renewal in is the fact
that at Redeemer, every singleweek, I get down on my knees and
I confess my sins in verytangible ways, and then someone
feeds me communion and says,Jesus loves you. You. Yeah, it
(35:00):
was this amazing, like, hot, youknow? And the way he would put
it is, he said, It's not thatthe questions I was asking
didn't matter. It's just that,in light of Jesus love, they
became quieter. There's goodanswers out there. Now, how's
that tied to the story ofrenewal? Well, one of the
reasons we do communion everyweek is because we believe that
(35:21):
Jesus doesn't just care aboutyour soul. He cares about your
body, and he wants to love yourbody. And every single time you
take communion, it is Jesussaying, I love you, and I want
you to taste it, and I want youto drink it. I want you to
experience it. And I think theonly way, the only reason, maybe
I'm getting controversial here,as surely I am, but I think the
(35:42):
only reason we stepped away fromdelivering those physical
elements with the preaching andthe reading of God's word is
because of this side gospel ofescape, right? We need all of
it. Our bodies need the love ofJesus, and our brains and our
souls, everything, and sowatching him go through the
story of renewal and restorationthat has been so sweet to just
(36:03):
see dozens of those stories overthe years, and get to bring that
to those folks.
Joshua Johnson (36:08):
So much of this conversation, it's been about an
embodied gospel, and not just anintellectual or escape gospel,
but it is embodied like ourbodies matter what we do here
matters the beauty and thejustice, the peace of God in the
(36:32):
city matters in our community.
It all comes together like it'sall he's here with us. How do we
move towards embodiment like,what does that look like for for
you, how do we how are we awareof our bodies, where we're at
and what we do matters? Whatdoes that look like for such a
(36:53):
rationalistic, heady type ofculture that we live in?
Unknown (37:00):
So we do that on Sunday mornings. I would say through,
you know, we use our bodies inworship. At Redeemer, we stand
up, we sit down, we kneel, wetake communion. One of the
things I love about the way weembody even our worship service
is my friend Kyle. He's anartist here in Indianapolis, and
one of the weird, quirky thingsabout our church is that we have
(37:22):
a sanctuary that's attached to agiant art gallery that houses
artists from all overIndianapolis, most of them, some
of them are Christians. Most ofthem aren't. So when you walk
around the church, it's notprecious moments. It's sort of
like will make you go, Oh, wow.
I didn't know that should benext door to a sanctuary. So as
a wild place, we also have somany wonderful, weird, wonky
artists that are part of ourcongregation. And one of the
(37:45):
things that Kyle has helped meto see is that when we're going
through seasons, like literalseasons, fall, winter, spring,
summer, this is God teaching usabout who he is. And so we were
doing a series on theIncarnation one one year. This
is actually last year. And oneof the really tactile,
(38:10):
beautiful, bodily things we didwas we asked our artists to, all
right, help us think about theincarnation. And so we walk into
our sanctuary and we have 3dsculptures of pregnant women,
and it's like, I mean, it'swild, you know, and it's all DNA
woodwork. It almost took meaback, like, whoa, whoa, this,
should this be in the sanctuary?
(38:32):
But it was this beautifulreminder that these are all
things that Jesus had and was apart of, you know, and he cared
about all those things. And whatKyle would say is, okay, you
don't have to be part of achurch with lots of artists to
have that experience. If youjust, if you just pick up a very
basic version of the book ofcommoner prayer, it will walk
(38:52):
you through the year and helpyou think about, Okay, what does
the season mean? Let's, let'slive the story of Jesus. Let's
think about the incarnation andthe dead of winter. Let's think
about the resurrection when allthe other flowers are springing
forth in spring. It's a verysimple thing, but even following
the church calendar has beenthis very embodied way for me to
(39:14):
pray where you know, as I'mthinking about a psalm, I can
step outside and I can thinkabout what is creation doing
right now? Is telling the storyof Jesus, and so that would be
another practice that I foundsuper, super healing for me to
think about embodied faith. Ithink one of the things that can
really help us to embody thegospel is recovering the
(39:36):
practice of hospitality. And byhospitality, I don't mean a
fancy spread that impresses allyour friends. I mean just this
expectation, really, that theearly church had, you know, one
of the qualifications for beinga pastor in the early church
was, Are you hospitable? Whichactually, back in those days,
man, do you let poor people livewith you? And so that's, you
(39:59):
know. That was but that was arequirement that you you open
your home, that you're withother people. And so one of the
stories I tell is my friendLuke. He he and I met at college
ministry one year in the halland the dining hall. And is
pretty random, but Luke was nota Christian. He had left the
(40:21):
church years before he graduatedhigh school, and as we started
talking, I invited him to aBible study. He said, Okay,
fine, I'll come. But there wasone particular night where I had
this I loved my freshmen. Theywere kind of weird and awkward
though. I said, Hey guys, it'sreally cool that we meet for
(40:42):
Bible study. Like, really,really cool. But there's other
cool things we could do, liketalk to each other. And so I
said, What would you guys liketo do just as a community? And I
said, Well, I only make pizzasat your house. And so I said,
Fine. And so I put together thispizza party. Luke, who was not a
Christian, came over to thepizza party, and I just thought
it was the weirdest thing I'dever done. It was a weird night.
(41:03):
So we had maybe just seven oreight freshmen at my house were
making pizzas. You know,students are talking to me about
their math homework, and onestudent is over talking to my
dog because he doesn't want totalk to people. And the whole
thing, I'm thinking, this is aterrible failure of an event,
like, what am I doing here? Butyears later, when I talked to
Luke, he became a Christian in areally radical, beautiful way, I
(41:26):
asked him, you know, Luke, what?
What really moved the needle foryou on wanting to become a
Christian? Probably, like asermon I preach, right? Or
probably like a really coolBible study they put together.
And he said, Yeah, that stuffwas good. But he's like, you
know, it was the pizza night atyour house. That's what really
sold it. For me. It's just likeonly God could put this weird
community together. I think, Ithink there might be something
(41:47):
to it, but, you know, that'swhat it was. It was just
embodying the gospel in a placewe're just, we're eating
together, being humans together,which is, it's kind of a rare
thing in our era of people beingstuck to their phones. So just,
just creating spaces like that,I think
Joshua Johnson (42:03):
hospitality and food is so important. It's so
important to the gospel and toour faith. That's why I love
like the story of on the EmmausRoad, where Jesus encounters
these disciples. They don't knowwho he is. They call him
foreigner, stranger, like he'snot even and so here's this
random foreigner that arewalking with them, and they
(42:26):
invite them in to stay. And youknow, it was through the
breaking of the bread, it wasthrough the meal that that they
discover it was Jesus. Jesus isthere with us. This is just
common practice. It's like youhave a foreigner among you, you
invite them in, you let themstay like this is it's
hospitality, but then youactually see Jesus in the midst
(42:47):
of it. And so even the story ofyour your pizza party, which
seems silly, like Jesus wasthere with people talking to
dogs, and, you know, all thestuff. And I so I just love the
picture like that, hospitalityand eating with people does more
(43:08):
than we ever think it could,
Unknown (43:12):
absolutely and part of the moral of that story is we
should throw more parties. Theydon't have to be good parties.
It was kind of a bad party, butyeah, Jesus was there, and he
was working in Luke's heart. Andreally it goes back to that, as
you said, Joshua, so Well, thisembodied vision of the gospel.
Jesus cares about us being witheach other in real life. And I
(43:34):
love that story in Luke, becauseit's one of those moments where,
you know, I preached on thatparticular passage a couple of
years ago, and it blew my mindstudying it, because what I
realized Luke was doing this is,as he's transitioning to writing
the book of Acts, and what he issaying, and this is going to
connect both of our storiestogether. Is he's saying, I am
(43:55):
still going to be with youthrough the bread and the wine.
So when you break that together,how does me being with you? It's
a it's an ingenious way for Luketo communicate that when you
break bread together and takecommunion together, Jesus will
be present. So as one of myfavorite stories,
Joshua Johnson (44:12):
yeah, it's so good. So we've talked about some
cynical dreams. We've talkedabout reasons why people are
disillusioned or deconstructing,and you actually walk through
stages, which is really helpfulthe beginning your book. So I
want people go read that. Ithink it's really helpful for
for you, as you're thinkingthrough people leaving or de
churching and what it lookslike. But we haven't talked
(44:35):
about the Jesus dreams. And sowhat are some of these dreams of
Jesus? These Jesus dreams for usthat bring us some hope, that
give us a new vision, orrevision us and restore us into
what the gospel looks like andwhat Jesus is doing here and
(44:56):
now.
Unknown (44:57):
The three words that I use to describe Jesus dreams
are. Jesus dreams about love, hedreams about freedom, and he
dreams about beauty. Those arewords that I feel like we can
all resonate with, right? Wedream about those things, but
really, what I'm doing, onceagain, is I'm just stealing from
church history on those threeparticular categories. Jesus is
(45:19):
our priest who's come to show ushis embodied love. He is our
Prophet who's come to give ustrue freedom, and he is our King
who's come to bring beauty tothe world, his Shalom and by
bringing his justice and so andso. This is but this is also
when I talk to people who areleaving the church, I think
(45:39):
sometimes we in the church thinkif people are leaving the
church, it's because they havethese desires for things that
Jesus doesn't have. I think Iwant to say, I think Jesus does
have those things, and I thinkthey're better and truer than
the versions that we're pursuingout there, but we as the church
have got to say, hey, Jesus hasthat hope that you're looking
(46:00):
for it's not you're not going tofind it by pursuing love, the
way the world pursues love orfreedom, the way the world
pursues freedom or beauty, theway the world pursues beauty.
But those are things Jesusactually cares about, and so I
want to point you back to whatJesus says about those things.
So for example, when we talkabout freedom. Freedom is a big
(46:23):
word that folks use when theytalk about deconstruction. I
want to be my truest best self.
And I think the church tends tosay, No, you shouldn't be your
truest best self. Well, I thinkwhat Jesus would say is, I do
want you to be your truest andbest self, but the way you do
that, you're not going to findthe resources to do that inside
of yourself. You're going tofind the resources to do that
(46:45):
when you are connected to me.
And so one of my favoritestories that has helped me to
get around my head, around thisparticular dream of Jesus, is
I'm a huge Jim Henson fan, hugeMuppets fan. I've seen
everything Muppets, even theweird stuff, the super I go deep
on Dark Crystal labyrinth, allof it. I mean, it goes deep, but
(47:06):
there's this beautiful story inJim Henson's biography where
he's talking about taking theMuppet Show on the road. So the
Muppet Show is sort of the waythat Jim Henson became Jim
Henson, in many ways. And sohe's taking the Muppet Show on
the road, and he has all theseMuppets that are putting these
skits together. It's like aSaturday Night Live with
Muppets, and nothing is working.
I can't get anything to work. SoFauci the bear, he's he's just
(47:30):
telling bad jokes. And Gonzo,he's doing stunts. We don't know
why it's not coming together.
And so Jim Henson is watchingthese skits, and they're all
falling apart, and he can'tunderstand why they're not
landing. And then he has thisidea, which is to take one of
his Sesame Street characters,which is the character which was
actually just Jim Henson, it wasjust him in Muppet form, Kermit
(47:52):
the Frog, and he puts Kermit theFrog in the middle of all these
skits. And everybody on setsaid, everything just clicked.
Every single Muppet becamethemselves because Kermit was on
stage. So what I want to say tosomeone who's leaving the church
in the aim of freedom is I wantto say, I want you to have
freedom, but you will not havefreedom until Jesus is center
(48:14):
stage in your life. He can bringyou that freedom that you're
looking for out there, but cantruly only be found in the words
in the life of Jesus. And sothat's one dream. We could talk
about all Jesus dreams, but Ithink that's, you know, that's,
I think that's the task rightnow, is to say Jesus loves your
dreams. He actually thinks thatyour dreams are too small, not
(48:35):
too big. He cares about thosethings, but you can only find
them through him. Our
Joshua Johnson (48:39):
culture finds, finds who we are inside of
ourselves, and not from outside,not from Jesus or the community
of God. We find who we are onthe inside. And I think we're
struggling to figure out how wecan do that and what to do, but
this vision of like restoring,like walking through the ancient
(49:04):
tradition that we have in thechurch, and it's, you know,
centuries old that we're here,then we can stand firm and be
rooted in something is, isreally, I think, miraculous for
us, especially in our day andage and our culture, where
everything comes from theinside. You said that, hey,
you're hurt by community, butyou could only be healed in
(49:25):
community. You could only behealed actually, from what comes
from outside of you, not frominside of you. And so that's one
of the things that it's, Ithink, a difficult thing to move
people from trying to find whothey are from the inside to say
it actually takes you connectingwith people on the outside and
(49:48):
with with what true communityis, and what Jesus actually
says, and the actual story ofthe Bible and the scripture, and
not just what our own littleculture thinks and feels. I have
a couple of questions for you.
Nicholas, one I would love toknow, what is your hope for the
light in your eyes, if you talkto your readers, what do you
hope that they would get fromthat?
Unknown (50:09):
I want to have a conversation with you. That was
the conversation I wish someonehad had with me 15 years ago. I
want to I want you to feel thefact that your concerns and some
of the things you feeldiscomfort in from your
particular context are probablyvalid, right? So I do want to
(50:29):
say that period like they'reprobably valid. And yet I also
want to say to you that Jesus,Jesus was disillusioned in many
ways with the religiousinstitutions around him. And
Jesus said, Hey, your dreams aretoo small. I have bigger dreams
for you, and I want you to findhope. I want you to find hope in
Jesus. Because I do think a lotof us are like Zechariah. We're
(50:51):
just that. We've been hurt toomany times. We've had our
expectations unmet too manytimes. Many of us have
experienced real abuse andtrauma from a church that says
your body doesn't matter. Thosethings go together. Guess what?
If the story of the Gospel isthat your body doesn't matter,
that is a culture ripe forabuse, and so many of us have
felt that and seen that, and yetJesus cares about your story,
(51:13):
cares about your body, and hewants to give you hope
Joshua Johnson (51:15):
if you go back to your 21 year old self.
Nicholas, what advice would yougive? I
Unknown (51:19):
think I would say, Stop trying to write a book right
now. I don't know that's Youdon't know anything. That would
be one thing. I think probablywhat I said to you earlier, I
think I would say youexperienced a lot of hurt by
people, and yet you're onlygoing to find healing through
people, you know, good, trusted,safe people, and so don't walk
(51:44):
away from community, but findthe right
Joshua Johnson (51:46):
community.
Anything you've been reading orwatching lately, you could
recommend,
Unknown (51:50):
yes, a book I'm reading right now. There's a book by Dan
Danielle called the meaning ofsingleness, and we have been
preaching on singleness in ourchurch, and this book is just
blowing my mind, because whatshe's doing, essentially, she's
saying, Okay, here's whereevangelicalism now isn't right
now on marriage and singleness.
Here's what the church throughhistory has always said about
(52:13):
these things. And she's comingat this from a reformed
evangelical standpoint, and kindof saying, I think we're maybe
way out of line and seeing thebeauty of singleness and the
beauty of marriage and whatthese things even mean in the
first place. And I love a booklike this, because it situates
you where you are, and then itsays, And here's actually a
(52:33):
better, bigger, more beautifulvision of what Jesus has for
people who are single and peoplewho are married, and I've just
found myself challenged andinspired, and it's made me
convicted at times, and it'sbeen fantastic, so would highly
recommend
Joshua Johnson (52:50):
so go get the light in our eyes. Nicholas is a
great writer. He's funny, he'srelatable, he walks through
things. He's actually highlyintelligent in a lot of these
things as well. So there'sactually deep wisdom in this
book, but it's actually a funbook to read. It's not just
(53:11):
something you have to getthrough to get to the meat, but
it's actually a fun book. So goget this book. It is great.
Nicholas, Is there anywhere elseyou'd like to point people to?
Unknown (53:21):
Yeah, if you want to connect with me online, you can
do that at my substack calledthe bard owl, B, A, R, D, and I
write weekly posts, and it's aplace where I also actually
giving out some more resourcesfor the book if you're a
subscriber. So it's good placeto get discussion guides and
some supplemental content aswell.
Joshua Johnson (53:40):
Great. Well, check out Nicholas, substack,
the Bard, owl and Nicholas.
Thank you for this conversation.
Thank you for walking us throughthis de churching,
disillusionment, deconstruction,but then walking us through a
there is some cynicism, there'ssome pain, there is some hurt,
there are some real things thathave happened and it's real and
(54:01):
it's valid, but there isactually some hope in Jesus and
he has a bigger story and abetter story for us and a bigger
dream and a better dream for us.
It was a fantastic conversation.
Really enjoyed talking to you.
So thank you so much,
Unknown (54:15):
and it as well. Thanks.
Joshua. You
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