TMR 318 : Rev Phill Sacre : Plausibility Structures & The Church

"The absolute key thing which God needs from the Church is a commitment to the Word of God."—Rev Phill Sacre We are joined once again by Rev Phill Sacre—an ordained minister (Church of England), housechurch leader, and blogger on Substack—for a conversation on "Plausibility Structures and the Church." Our conversation grows out of a podcast series that Phill produced late last year called "How the church was sabotaged", in which he reflected upon a 1980s book by the famous Christian thinker and writer Os Guinness. Though published over 40 years ago, Guinness's "The Gravedigger File: Papers on the Subversion of the Modern Church" caught Phill's attention because of its apparent prescience on a number of important cultural issues facing the church today. So, please join us as I "get in on the conversation", and we discuss what's happened to so many modern churches, and think about ways in which we might "push back" in the culture to reveal the Gospel's "plausibility structure" to church and world alike. (Phill is a Christian minister. Ordained in the Church of England, he formerly served in a parish on the Essex coast, but now leads an independent housechurch. He also runs the online ministries "Understand the Bible" and "Sacred Musings : Thinking Christianly about the World" on Substack.) [For show notes please visit https://themindrenewed.com]

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Follow everybody. Julian Charles here of the Minds Renewed dot com.
Coming to you from the depths of the Lancashire countryside
here in the UK, and today I am very pleased
to welcome back to the program Reverend Phil Saca, who,
as most of you will know, he's been on TMR
many times before, is a Christian minister ordained in the
Church of England and formerly based in a parish on

(00:30):
the Essex coast here in the UK, but who now
runs a house church. And he also has a number
of online ministries including Understand the Bible dot UK and
Sacred Musings now, the archive of which is still on
YouTube up to a certain date, but it's now transferred
over to substack, so you can find Sacred Musings now
at Philsacre dot substack dot Calm Loop. Put that link

(00:54):
of course in the show notes. Phil. Good to be
speaking to you again after all these difficulties we've just
had trying to connect. We're speaking, I believe.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yes, thank you and thanks for having me back. And
I'm sorry about the listeners. This is about the third
attempt to try and have the conversation technological issues, so
hopefully at least if it doesn't sound brilliant, or at
least it's a conversation that you're able to listen to.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yeah, I was wondering if we were getting some sort
of spiritual opposition actually to our connection today. It does
cross one's mind. Yeah, so great to be speaking to
you again, and I wanted to check with you. You know
what the reasons are for you having changed the way
that you're doing things, so you don't do quite so
many podcasts, and of course you've shifted over to substacks,
so you know why have you made these changes.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Well, for one, I wanted to move away from YouTube
because well, a couple of reasons. Firstly, YouTube, it has
been well known, are not a good free speech platform.
I encounter quite a bit of censorship as I was
doing the Sacred Musics podcast when I was particularly when
you were looking at things like the COVID vaccines. I

(01:59):
got sent to a couple of times for medical misinformation.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
And also the thing is with YouTube, it tries to
squeeze you into its mold. You do feel that the
whole goal is to gain the algorithm so that you
get more people liking your videos or what have you.
And I know that doing a podcast is not quite
the same, but I just felt that sort of pressure,

(02:25):
Whereas with substack, I think it's different. They value you
as a creator, you know. The idea is if you
appreciate someone, then you can subscribe, you can become a
paying subscriber. It does make you feel much more like
you're a valued creator. With YouTube, you feel like you're
an ant, and if you have any problems, such a censorship,
you can't get in touch with anybody. So substack is

(02:47):
a much nicer platform for creators, especially if you're writing
about the kind of things which I do and that
we do.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah. Yeah, I haven't experienced very much when I haven't
used YouTube for quite some time there. But what I
found interesting was that I had a couple of videos
that were up there on YouTube for I don't know,
six or seven years, and then I suddenly during COVID
received these messages saying that these have been removed. And
they didn't give me a reason why, but I know
because somebody was critical of vaccines in that particular interview,

(03:14):
and I thought how ridiculous that was. You know, I've
been up for years. It just hit an algorithm and
that was that, and yes, there was no given reason
for it at all. Yeah, And something else you said
before we get on to what we're going to talk
about today, you said that, to a certain extent, you've
become a little bit fed up with that pattern of
social criticism, and you really want to concentrate more on
ways to rebuild in the productions that you're doing. And

(03:37):
I do sense that as well. So I do hope
that we will also be able to talk about how
we might encourage people to rebuild rather than just trying
to analyze problems that we see with the way the
church has been et cetera. Well, okay, so what we
are going to be talking about today comes from really
a series of very thought provoking podcasts that you've finished

(04:00):
a couple of months ago, presentations really over there at
Sacred Musings, which you called How the Western Church Was Sabotaged,
which is a rather intriguing title. I was attracted to
that immediately. And in that series you are responding to
a book by Oz Guinness, very well known Christian writer
and thinker, and that book is called The Gravedigger File,

(04:23):
which is published I believe back in the nineteen eighties. Well,
obviously quite a while back, but you made the point
that even though it was published forty odd years ago,
you say, it has a lot to tell us about
the church today. And I listened to that series and
I enjoyed it very much, and essentially, as I said
to you in the email, I want to get in
on the conversation, so hence the podcast today. So that's
what we're going to be talking about, some of those
issues thrown up by the book and your reflections upon it. Okay,

(04:46):
so I've not read this book. I admitted that to you.
I feel like I don't need to read it now.
But that's very lazy of me. But could you tell
us briefly something about it and why you thought it
was worth quite so much of your time? As I
say eight podcasts?

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Well, the book is kind of like a modern or
perhaps as you say, relatively modern screw tape letters. So
it's written as if it is someone is from a
some kind of shadowy department, maybe the government, or some
kind of organization that wants to see the church sort
of destroyed or sabotaged. So it's written from that perspective,

(05:25):
and it's written as one man giving sort of advice
and thoughts to someone who's about to join and explaining
his thoughts and about the history and so on.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
That's a literary device to achieve that that's not saying
there is such a shadowy organization that's actually trying to
do this.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Y's exactly. It's written. It's written as if it's non fiction,
but it is fiction obviously. Yeah, OK, and yes, So
what I thought was worth the time in the book
is a lot of the things os Guinness picks up
on are things which have gone on in the last
four decades, I think, to cause the problems which exploded

(06:03):
or as they exploded, but you know, the problems which
kind of manifested themselves clearly during COVID and during lockdowns. Now,
why was it that the church just rolled over completely
when it came to the lockdowns, you know, being ordered
to close by the government, which was the first time
it's happened in the UK for about eight centuries. You know,

(06:27):
why was it that the church just rolled over? Why
did the church go along with vaccine mandates? Why did
so many Christians just simply not see any problem with
what the government was saying. That's what I think the
book helped me to see that the trends that were
in motion through the twentieth century had then become manifest

(06:50):
over the last few years, but they were happening through
the twentieth century. So what Osguinness helped me to do,
what the book helped me to do, was to put
the pieces together, I think, and look at how we
got to where we are, which I think is a
really good question to ask, because when you know how
we got to where we are, then you can start

(07:10):
to think, well, we took a wrong turn back then
you know we need to go back to then and
start to go the right way. If that kind of
makes sense, Yes.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
It does. And this word culture seems to encapsulate a
lot of this. This is certainly how you start when
you talk about it. I don't know whether is that
how he starts with the book, just giving an overview
of the culture in which we live or which people
did live I suppose in the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, I think he looks a lot at the culture.
I mean, it's difficult now because it was, as you mentioned,
it was a few weeks ago that I ended that series. Yeah,
he sort of circles round and looks at the same
things from several different angles. So one of the big
things is the interaction of culture and the church. But
that's sort of thread all the way through the book,

(07:58):
really not sort off. He starts with culture and then
moves on, but it's kind of an intertwining thing which
is continual through the book.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, Okay, it kind of covers everything, doesn't it. It's
really tricky to know where to start. Okay, let's start
with some aspects then of culture. So one of the
things that you picked out quite early in your discussion
of it was this social dimension to faith, the social
dimension to believing. You know, I think a lot of

(08:27):
people tend to think that believing, certainly from an apologetical
point of view within the church. You know, believing is
a rational thing, isn't it. You know, you perhaps a
listen to a sermon or something like that, and you're
affected by the message, and then the spirit, of course,
in connection with that message then may bring a conversion
about it and all that sort of thing. Whether you know,
that rational side is very much there and should be there,
but I think we tend to forget that. Actually there's

(08:50):
a big social dimension to believing itself. Should we start there,
because then that was a very important point that you
brought out.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yes, and it's about the plausibility structure. Faith comes in
a plausibility structure, and what that means is your beliefs
will seem more or less plausible depending on what other
people believe as well. So if in a society in general,
the Christian faith is sort of promoted as it has

(09:21):
been previously in this country, then Christianity and Jesus will
seem plausible to a greater or lesser extent, but much
more so than it would be in say a Muslim country. Basically,
it's a herd instinct, isn't it. You know, we follow
our friends, we follow the direction that other people kind
of lead us, and if other people are kind of

(09:41):
broadly Christian, then that will be plausible to us. But
if it isn't, then it won't be plausible. And what
os Guinness does is he talks about that dimension of belief, which,
as you say, is often overlooked very much.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
So, Yes, indeed that this is an idea that goes
back to Peter Berger, isn't it the sociologist.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
I believe, So I haven't read Peter Berger, but I
think that's ginness mentioned him right.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yes, I came across the term actually through reading some
Leslie newbegin you know, the missionary bishop, and of course
he did a lot of work in India. Obviously he
experienced that very much, you know, the clash there between
the culture in which he was ministering and the seeming
plausibility of Christianity as he was preaching it. And in
our culture, I get the impression that a lot of

(10:25):
people are taking what they feel to be true, sort
of privileging feelings over rational engagement with material. Not obviously
not everybody, but I do get the impression that our
culture is sort of tilted in that direction where what
feels to be true seems to be more important than
what the scripture says, or what a doctrinal position is,

(10:47):
or what evidence that may be placed in front of people.
But it just kind of doesn't feel right. And part
of that feeling is, as you say, what they perceive,
everybody else around them is feeling or thinks or they
I think those people think, you know, what's on the TV,
what's on the radio, etc. This is a very very
powerful thing which I think a lot of people are
not aware of, and we should be very aware of us. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
I mean, if we may take a concrete example, think
back to when the Conservative government said that they were
going to legalize same sex marriage. Now, bear in mind,
at that moment that there hadn't been a mass demonstrations
outside of Parliament by gay people saying we want to
get married. There hadn't been a big sort of civil

(11:32):
rights movement or anything like that. But at that moment
when the government said we're going to legalize same sex marriage,
I think most people just suddenly said, oh, okay, fair enough,
and it just felt right to them. Now why did
it feel right to people? And the answer is because,

(11:54):
over the course of the twentieth century, the concept of
marriage has been so eroded that it was just about romance.
You know, that marriage is just finding someone to love.
You know, children don't really matter so much, but it's
just about you know, your own personal fulfillment. So what
that did when I think it was twenty thirteen about

(12:17):
term twelve years ago when the government announced that same
sex marriage, I think that was one of those moments
when people realized in terms of that social dimension, that
things had already changed, and that exposed it. But I
think that that's completely right it's the plausibility structure can
change without anyone explicitly saying anything. And you are also

(12:39):
right that people intuit it. It's sort of beyond the conscious.
People just feel. And I think that in the case
of gay marriage, it felt right to people, even if
they didn't logically think it through. And I experienced this
and perhaps you did, and others did too. When you
were trying to talk to friends and family about this,
that people just would not want to listen because all

(13:02):
they could think of was, well, how mean can you
be to deny gay people marriage? And they wouldn't think
through the wider implications. And that's just one issue.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Indeed, I think it.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Happens in many many ways that you know, gradually people
feel something is right, and that feeling I think happens
on a collective basis. You know that it's much easier
I suppose to spread a vibe if I may use
that word or a feeling, then it is to spread
an intellectual argument.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yes, well, I felt a similar thing really with preaching
in the past, when I've been preaching, particularly about things
like the bodily resurrection of Christ or you know, the
Second Coming, things like that, where it's been very difficult
to get that message across. I've tried to be as
coherent as I can, to use evidence from the Bible
and use apologetics to try to get rid of some

(13:54):
of the defeatters that people have in their minds, you
know about well that couldn't possibly be the case because
of science, this and full of etc. Tried to do
that as much as I think is suitable, but even
so I still sense a tremendous resistance in many churches
because there's that sense, well, we just kind of feel
that that doesn't fit. I think that a lot of

(14:15):
people are feeling that doesn't fit with the world we
know around us. It doesn't matter what you say, you know,
there's just particular issues like that, particularly supernatural issues that
can cause these problems. It's very difficult to know how
to deal with that, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, And I think this is another insights which again
I couldn't name the sociologists, sure, but basically it is
that people do not think rationally. We like to think
we think rationally, but most people make their minds up
and then rationalize afterwards. That most people do not consider

(14:53):
an argument fairly from both sides and then rationally choose
what they believe is correct. Paul will go with what
feels right rather than think things through sort of logically
and rationally. There are some people who do think things
through logically and rationally and change their minds, but they
are few and far between, and especially in today's world

(15:13):
where I think, and this is the point that Osguinness
was making that I think it's almost encouraged today to
think in that sort of more emotive way, not to
think through from the ground up, but to try and
think in terms of what feels right, the vibe that
you like. So, yeah, it's really a significant thing to
realize that we are not rational creatures and that the

(15:37):
power of ideas beyond our conscious minds, but just in
terms of perhaps an emotional sense can influence this in
ways that we don't perhaps fully appreciate. And you say
you've recognized that in preaching. I guess in a sense
as Christians, that is the great struggle, isn't it. If

(15:57):
you think what Paul the Apostle Paul said, you know,
the God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers.
Apologetics is sometimes presented as oh, you just need to
present a better argument, So you just need to present
your arguments more logically and coherently. But that's not true. Actually,
there's a spiritual dimension, and I guess you could say

(16:18):
the emotional and spiritual tie in together because they're beyond
the conscious mind. So we need God to help us,
I believe when it comes to even thinking rationally.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yes. Indeed, however, I think it's fair to say that
many churches are quite bad at detecting this. I think
you use the example of a fish in water. I
don't know if that came from the book. So, just
as a fish is so familiar with the water in
which it swims that it doesn't notice that it is
infactoing in water, so we can be so familiar with

(16:49):
the cultural context in which we swim, so to speak,
that we're not aware of how the culture is impacting us,
how it's molding us. Indeed, somehow we've got to shift
that and actually pay attention to the culture in which
we live in the broadest sands, which is a pretty
uncomfortable thing to do. How do we go about that?
Would you say, so this is turning to the positive side.

(17:11):
We've recognized there's a big problem here. How do we
go about that in our churches.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
Would you say, let me just give you an illustration
of how difficult that is.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
If I may, Yes, for sure.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
When I was at college, at Bible College, I did
a whole module or several modules actually about cultural engagement
and it was about trying to analyze culture from a
biblical perspective, and it was really helpful. But the person
who led taught the course and the people I did
the course with, pretty much all of them went along

(17:42):
with the COVID narrative. And you just think, how do
you not see that? You know that this is one
of those things about culture, but you know they wouldn't
touch it. And I think this is partly the power
of things being labeled conspiracy theories. The things I've actually
realized over the last few years is that the word

(18:05):
conspiracy theory has got such a power to it because
people don't want to be conspiracy theorists. But you know,
if you think, well, why don't you want to be
a conspiracy theorist? What is it that you're afraid of?
You know, are you afraid of the truth? And I
think this goes into your question, how do we as
Christians kind of combat this? Well? I think one way

(18:28):
to combat it is to really pay attention to the
evidence and to the truth, because I through the last
couple of years particularly, I've changed my mind on quite
a lot of issues. Let's say, I mean, I think
we mentioned this before, but nine to eleven where I've
looked into the evidence around nine to eleven and all

(18:48):
of a sudden, I've seen things which I wasn't prepared
to see before. But the problem was that what went
on before was so I just I averted my eyes.
Really I look the other way. So I think the
first thing years to make sure that we really do
pay fair attention to all of the evidence, not dismiss
something because it's a so called conspiracy theory or because

(19:11):
we don't like the people or the tribe that it
comes from. You know, we have to look at the evidence.
We have to look very carefully at what's really there.
Would you rather than what we prefer to believe?

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Sure, would you say that you didn't look at that
evidence before because you particularly did not wish to be
considered by others as a conspiracy theorist? Was that part
of your calculus as it were?

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Absolutely? Yeah, I think I remember in about two thousand
and four or five. I remember coming across some websites
saying that nine to eleven must have been a sort
of inside job, and I looked at it a little bit,
but then I thought, you know what, this is a
bit crazy. I'm just gonna you know, I don't want
to be a conspiracy theorist. And I think that was

(19:53):
what was in the back of my mind. That was
the reason I didn't pursue it any further. Yes, And
you could see this with COVID, you know, with the
COVID vaccines, for example, you will have conversations with people
and it was just clear that they were content to
rest with what the government said, even if they perhaps
under the surface, might have suspected that something was wrong,
because they didn't want to be called a conspiracy theorist.

(20:16):
So yeah, I definitely think there is a real power
to the so called conspiracy theorist, you know, not wanting
to be that.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
A great irony with that is, you know, you can say,
I often say that conspiracy theory the accusation, you know,
is a feature of social engineering. But of course in
order to say that, then that involves a conspiracy, because
somebody somewhere has done some engineering, as it were, to
make sure that you think the right thoughts.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
Yea, so yes, that was the first thing about not
looking at the truth. The second thing I would say
is to try and have a broader grasp of history. C. S.
Lewis wrote a famous introduction to Athanasius on the Incarnation.
On the inclarination is well worth reading, but his introduction

(21:00):
to it is amazing. What he says is that two
heads are better than one, not because they're free from error,
but because they are unlikely to both go wrong in
the same direction. And especially that is true if you
are thinking about someone from one hundred years ago or
two hundred or three hundred people from the past. They

(21:21):
had different errors to us, and so we may be
able to see their errors now, but they help us
to see our own and our own culture assumptions. So,
for example, the last few weeks I've been reading, I
read a book called a Victorian Miniature by Owen Chadwick,
and it's just a collection of diary entries and he

(21:42):
sort of puts it into a narrative, but it's a
collection of diary entries from a squire and the vicar
in a kettering him in Norfolk from the mid nineteenth century.
And what was fascinating to me about that was just
reading through their disagreement and everything. But it was a
different world. But what I realized when I looked at

(22:04):
that is we've lost so much as a society and
as a culture. You know, you read that and you
can't help but think, you know, so much has changed
and not for the better in our society today. But
it's opened by looking at even our own culture but
one hundred and fifty years ago, even looking at this
little village and Orthoit, you know, you start to realize differences. Yeah,

(22:26):
And so that's the other thing that it's looking at
the truth and looking at how different people have seen things,
different cultures through history. You realize that our own culture
is not infallible.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yes, I think you also mentioned the Puritans actually in
your podcast, and it did remind me that I did
have a little period of reading some of that sort
of material. I read some Richard Baxter and there was
a there's a book called A Sure Guide to Heaven
by Joseph Elina, which I found really tough going because
it was demanding such a high level of Christian living

(22:56):
that I'm not sure, I can live up to that,
but Neevertheless, you know, it was instructive to see that
different perspective from all those hundred years ago. And you
mean you also mentioned you mentioned C. S. Lewis, and
you mentioned Francis Schaeffer, and talking about history, Schaefer of
course delves back into the world of philosophy, doesn't he
very much? And of course art history as well. So
all these perspectives do give you a much broader picture

(23:18):
of Christian living and Christian thought across the ages. So
it's remarkable, isn't that we've had those voices Shaefer and C. S.
Lewis and A. Skinneis and others. And I just get
the impression that so many churches have kind of ignored
what they've been saying all these years. They've been pointing
these things out to us, but seems to be pretty
much left behind.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And that's one of the things
that over the last well, particularly since COVID, I think
that as I've been looking into their writings, I've seen
them from a new perspective. For example, I read Lewis's
novel That Hideous Strength.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yes, I've not read that.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
It's very good and it's fascinating now because you can
see the kind of things that he was saying in
action in today's world. And I can't understand how someone
writing about eighty years ago or thereabouts could have that
level of insight. But this is the thing that you know,
we were not listening. I mean, even someone like Francis Schaeffer.

(24:19):
One of the interesting things about Shaeffer is that there
are parts of the church, I think, particularly in America.
I think is a bigger thing in America than in
the UK. I didn't come across his writings until I
was at college and then after, but even I think
in America where his writings are still kind of held
to be you know, a good thing that I think

(24:39):
people don't listen to what he had to say about
culture and about the church. That he wrote a book
called The Great Evangelical Disaster talking about all the failings
of the church, and I mean a lot of the
things that we've been talking about, but particularly moral issues.
You know, how the church has not stood up in
a moral sense against things happening in the world, things

(24:59):
like abortion, and I think a lot of churches, evangelical
churches have just quietly airbrushed that from his canon. They
don't talk about it, or just kind of take it
as red And this is what mystifies me, really, that
we've had these prophetic voices for one hundred years or
more speaking to us about what's happening in the world.

(25:20):
We might add to that salt Janitsen coming out of
the Soviet Union and seeing the same things happening in
the Western world that happened in the Soviet Union. He
was saying that, he said that I watched his Harvard
address not that long ago on warning to the West,
and yet we were not listening. It's just as if

(25:41):
he didn't say it. And I wonder if part of
the problem is that the people who were perhaps in
charge of denominations, church leaders, denominational leaders, and so on,
political leaders, they had a vested interest in not listening
to what people like him were saying, because to acknowledge

(26:02):
what he said would be to acknowledge a problem. And
if they acknowledge the problem, they might lose their positions,
they might lose their influence, they might be outcasts. There
were all sorts of reasons why I think they had
perhaps an incentive not to listen. I think they were
too firmly embeddied in the establishment, and to criticize might

(26:23):
be to lose face. It sort of plays into what
we were saying just a moment ago about how we
can combat this sort of spirit of the age, this
cultural thing. One of the things is are we willing
to be outcasts? And I think what we've learned is
that many people are not.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
I mean, as soon as you start diagnosing problems, that
puts you in the negative camp, doesn't it you're a naysayer.
You're somebody who's looking for faults. So a number of
things you brought up. I think you brought up drive
in churches, which I've never heard of before. Actually, no
political correctness. The feel good services has to be a
sort of fun and light and smiley, nothing too challenging.

(27:02):
People attending church because well it's something they go to
like a club. And you know, once you start looking
at these elements and being critical, then it can be
as if you're somebody who's trying to drag down But
we're not trying to do that. Are We were looking
at these faults and these trends in order then to
say how can we change that? And that is so
so difficult to do because you have to start with

(27:22):
that negative conversation first. I've got a quote here from
Leslie you begin. I think this really jumped out at
me because I think it does show where we should be.
It doesn't tell us how to get there. Let me
just quote this. He says, it is no secret. Indeed,
it has been affirmed from the beginning that the Gospel
gives rise to a new plausibility structure, a radically different

(27:43):
vision of things from those that shape all human cultures
apart from the Gospel. The Church, therefore, as the bearer
of the Gospel, inhabits a plausibility structure which is at
variance with and which calls in question those that govern
all human cultures without exception. I love that quote, so

(28:05):
he said. That's when he says, that's what the church
is certainly does what the Church should be. Inhabits a
plausibility structure which is at variance with and which calls
into question those that govern all human cultures without exception.
And yet we don't so often see that the Gospel
does give rise to a new plausibility structure. It's as
if the Church is there, speaking and living, but is

(28:28):
still inhabiting the plausibility structure of the world around, and
yet it needs to sort of explode from within and
say no, this is the truth and now critique the
world and invite the world into that gospel centered structure.
I don't know how to get from a to be
or to start speaking to other people about that and saying, look,
this is the state we're in. How do we get
from a to be? Because immediately I feel that people

(28:50):
are going to say, oh, well, you know, there's a
lot of good that goes on already, you know, and
I know there's a lot of good that gus already,
but that's not the point. We can celebrate what we
have still say, but it's not good enough. I think
I'm going to get that.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
I think the key thing that you just said there,
which is in the new bigging quote about what the
church should be. But with the church, there is a should,
There is a truth. There is a thing which you
can measure the church against, and that is God's designed
for the church, and that is through the scriptures. That

(29:23):
is the thing that we the church. Unlike the rest
of society, we do have a plumbline or you know,
something to a straight edge. With which we can measure ourselves.
That is what I've come to understand, especially over the
last few years, that when I or and other people
have been critical of the church, it is not critical

(29:46):
in the sense of saying, you know, this is just
a load of rubbish, but it is saying we are
not measuring up to the standards that God has instituted,
and that this church is not being what God wants
it to be. And one of the things which I've
come to especially I think through reading Ozguinness's book, is

(30:07):
that the church, if the Church was being the church
in the way that the Church should have been always,
then we wouldn't have had the problem. But that through
the well, I say, through the twentieth century, I think
probably through the latter part of the twentieth century, when
life got comfortable for many of us in the West,
when the church just became a lifestyle choice. Then what

(30:30):
happened is effectively that the church gave up on discipleship
and just you know, church became going through the motions
and just showing up on a Sunday. But we didn't
really realize that because the context of society we could
do that and get away with it. But now that
things have changed, now that the context of society has changed,

(30:52):
that's exposed the flaw. And well, certainly for myself and
I think many other people have realized that what we
were doing was not really church, No, it was just
empty that I think that this is where God has
stepped in. And we have to remember this that at
the end of the day, we believe in God. We
believe God rules to the church. You know that at

(31:14):
the end of the day, it's not about my ideas
or your ideas, or Francis Shafer's ideas or something like that,
but it is God's ideas and if he is wants to,
he will break through and he will correct as he
did many times in the Old Testament with Israel, as
he will do with his church. He wants the church
to be pure. That's the thing here. We have a God,

(31:35):
we want to follow him, and we want to do
what he wants, not what we want in the church.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Sure, and two key aspects of getting back on track
would be obviously prayer, including inviting God through his spirit
to be involved in everything that's going on with us
and in us, but also a serious return to the
scriptures as our plumb line as you say, this significant
tool that God has given us. It seems to me

(32:01):
that here we come up against another problem because, as
you mentioned in your presentations, too often churches have not
correctly used this tool, so that we've ended up hampered
in our analysis of the world around us. So I'm
thinking here of ways in which the scriptures this tool
can be misused or misunderstood. And there are so many

(32:21):
ways that we can go adrift here. When I was
briefly at Theological College, long term listeners will know, I
was told that the Bible is basically a resource among others,
you know, pick and choose which resource you're going to use,
you know. And there can also be a tendency with
some people to ignore the Bible altogether or to largely
shelve it in terms of personal reading by leaving it

(32:43):
to the experts to deal with like ministers, they preachers, presbyters, deacons, etc.
Rather than reading it much for yourself. There are churches
whether teaching is so poor that some people can be
left with an almost Sunday School way of looking at
the Bible. You know, they learned the Bible stories as
a child, and they've not really been in to go
much beyond that by attending Bible studies or things like that.

(33:03):
And then there's the hyper skeptical side of things, where
the Bible can be undermined through modernistic higher criticism approaches
to the Bible or postmodern approaches that deconstruct its message,
you know, ignoring the fact that, of course there's actually
a huge amount of high quality evangelical scholarship these days
that's more faithful to the scriptures. So there are many ways,

(33:24):
aren't there, in which this tool that we've been given
by God can, so to speak, be ripped out of
our hands.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, absolutely, are minded to reminded of a verse in
the Bible. I can't remember where this comes from, which
is my probably undermines what am I going to say?
That it's one of the prophets, and the Lord talks
about a famine of the Word of God, a famine
the word of God. I can't remember which one of
the minor prophets I think, But I've come to understand

(33:52):
and believe over the last few years that the absolute
key thing which God needs from the church is a
commitment to the Word of God. We have to accept
what the Word of God says, even if it's inconvenient,
even if it conflicts with what we want. We need
to accept what God says. And this has been all

(34:12):
the way through the centuries. You know that Augustin talked about,
you know that the word of God, John Risistan and
many many of the early church fathers talked about the
fundamental nature.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Of the Word of God.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
So all the way through the history of the Church,
the Word of God has been central. And what I've
witnessed today, as you say, I completely agree with, so
many people are undermining it in all sorts of different ways.
You've got the people, as you mentioned that your college,
who say what the Word of God is a resource,
so they don't say it's the key sort of cornerstone.

(34:47):
They are also what I've noticed in my own sort
of ministry is that even people Christians, people who want
to follow Jesus, but who take the Bible as sort
of about an advisory. Oh well, that's in trusting that
the Bible says that I'll think about that, I won't
do it. You know, I won't believe it because I
haven't been persuaded. It goes back to how we started. Actually,

(35:09):
you know about the culture and the plausibility structure that
if the Bible says something which conflicts with people's plausibility structure,
you know, what they prefer to believe, then the go
with what they prefer to believe.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
No, And I think that's one of the major things
which God needs to do if we are to witness
sort of a revival and if we are to witness
a real spiritual awakening across this country and across the world.
Is a commitment to the Word of God, even if
it conflicts with things that we've been told or things
that we think through. But we need to say, well,

(35:45):
what does the Bible say? First? And almost but that.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Doesn't so many that doesn't been putting your mind aside, though,
does it? Because I think some people could listen to
what you're saying and think, well, okay, so the Bible
says this, I'm not going to think about it. That's it.
That's it. But it's not quite like that, isn't There
is dynamic going on there. You know, we are bringing
all our experience and our understanding to interpreting what the
Bible is saying. But it's at the end of the

(36:08):
day that the Bible does have that first position. We
are struggling with what God is saying there. There's no
point in which we're saying shifted aside because we really
want to believe something else that's rather different. It has
to be an authentic tussle that's going on there in
which the Bible has central place. That's how I see this.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, yeah, and I think there is a logic to
it as well. If you believe that the Bible is
as some people do wrongly, I believe. But if you
think that the Bible is just a document that was
written over centuries by many different people and it has
no coherence, you will be the judge of the Bible. If,

(36:46):
on the other hand, as I believe, and I think
this has been the witness of the Church through the centuries,
that there is one author that stands behind the Bible,
that's God through the Holy Spirit, the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit, then you would expect there to be a
logical coherence to the Bible. Yes, And if you see
problems and contradictions, that doesn't mean it's wrong. It's just

(37:08):
an opportunity for us to explore.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Deeper exactly and to go further absolutely.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
And what I found is that there is a logic
to the Bible. There is a logic to it, but
sometimes you have to go beyond the surface. But it
doesn't mean it's a fruitless endeavor to seek that logic
and to seek what God is saying to through the scriptures.
It is wrestling as Israel, he wrestles with God. No,
it is that we wrestle with the word of God.

(37:35):
We don't always get it right, but it must correct
us if we come to understand that God is saying
something to us which we're wrong about.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
And that's quite a bit of work, and so it
should be Well. The second thing I wanted to discuss
with you is this whole business of secularization, the process
of secularization rather than secularism as an ideology. And I
think Ozgar you say it does talk about this distinction,
very important distinction in the book. So this is something

(38:04):
that's been going on and a lot of people in
the churches have been sort of sucked into that, not
that they would have embraced a secular ideology, but they
just find themselves sort of functional secularists because it's been happening,
a process has been happening. Do you want to say
something about that? And perhaps tell us what you would
mean by the secular.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
Sure, I can't quite remember Osginness's way of defining what
secutor is. But secular basically comes from the Latin word
which means this world. So it's focused on this world
rather than be eternal, and particularly in the way that
he's thinking about it in the book, is thinking about
this world without God, without the transcendent. He uses that

(38:44):
phrase actually, which I really like, a world without windows,
which I think adequately describes the world that we live in.
It's a world without windows into other worlds. It's a
world where all that is and all that ever shall
be is that for all scientific world. And although that's
not what I would argue, the majority of people believe

(39:06):
or say they believe, it's the way that most people
live their lives. More or less. You know that this
world is all there is and all there ever will be.
And so secularism is a philosophy of living which is
focused on this world, and any morality that we have
is entirely down to subjective norms rather than objective sort

(39:29):
of transcendent truth, So that secularism as a philosophy, Secularization
is said, is actually the process by which we start
to function in a secular way focused on this world
I mentioned I think about I've been thinking a little
bit about education over the last few months, especially my

(39:51):
eldest daughter is due to go up to secondary school
and we've actually been thinking about what to do and
maybe homeschooling, which I'd really like to do, but that's
kind of by the bar. But education. If you think
about education, and even from when I was young, the
idea is, you know, you just teach children without reference
to God. You know, you teach them that, you teach
them English, you teach them history, and everything is completely

(40:15):
without reference to God. That God is totally absent in
the majority of schooling. And that's been the fruit of secularization.
It's not that there is a sort of secularist philosophy
which they have been intentionally aiming towards. As such, God
has been stripped away, stripped away, stripped away, and it's

(40:37):
happened at education, it's happened in politics and in so
many areas of life. It's just this idea that we
can do life together without reference to God at all.
If there was one insight from the book which I
found most helpful, I think it's that one, this idea
that secularization has already happened, and it's just thinking that
we can do life without reference to God at all.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
Yes, and you mentioned science there. I got the impression
from the presentation that you were making that you felt
that the world of science and technology was perhaps responsible
for that secularization process. Or would you say that that
was just two features of a trend that was happening
over the last several hundred years.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
That's an interesting question. I don't know that I would
say it was responsible solely, but it has played probably
a big part, possibly the majority part. And I think
part of the reason is I mean we mentioned earlier
reading the Puritans or reading One of the things you
realize when you read that is so many children died

(41:43):
in infancy, so many mothers died in childbirth. Death was
so much more a part of your experience of life,
and it's very difficult in those circumstances to think that
we can overcome death. You have to have a philosophy
which was you to deal with death, the death of
those dear to you. Now, because of technology, because of science,

(42:07):
we've overcome some of those those things. Obviously, death hasn't
been overcome, but far fewer children die in infancy than
in previous generations, and that has enabled us effectively to think, oh, well,
we can do it. You know, science can save us,
technology can save us. And although I wouldn't say that

(42:29):
those things were the only thing that's been going on,
I think they have perhaps played a very big part
in what's going on. And this is also something that
Osginness talks about, is about that technolog knowledgizes can't say
the word technology.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Yes, I agree they've played their part, and I don't
think they explain what's happened, certainly not completely. I don't
believe the old sort of secularization theory, where you know,
as the world becomes more scientific and technologically advanced, so
religious and however you define that necessarily becomes increasingly pushed
to the sidelines. Because as we know, Christianity is still

(43:07):
growing in many places, Islam is growing, and there are
even sociologists who are predicting that Christianity in Islam will
outstrip all other beliefs in the decades to come, even
in places with plenty of science and technology. And we
also have the fact that although in the West generally speaking,
people are becoming less Christian, They're not necessarily becoming less spiritual.
I know, again that depends on how you define these terms,

(43:29):
but you know, there is a lot of interest in
spirituality in a general sense. So it's a much more
nuanced story, isn't it than just saying, oh, well, as
you've become more scientific, you throw off all these superstitions,
humanity enters its secular paradise. I don't really believe that.
I think it's a bigger story than that. And one
of the things that perhaps the only thing that I
got out of Charles Taylor's massive book Here a secular age,

(43:52):
which which extremely difficult to navigate, and I have to
admit to everybody that I did give up on it.
There was something that I did get out of it.
If I've understood Charles Taylor correctly, is that this business
of saying, you know, as science advances, religion necessarily retreats,
and humanity can get on with what it wanted to
do all along. He calls that a subtraction story, a
kind of myth, because he thinks that a lot of

(44:14):
what has been driving this process of secondarization is actually
a change in the view of the self of the
human being. He talks about the self having become unembedded,
whereas in the past, each self understood itself and therefore
experienced itself to be embedded in a grand narrative or
a large picture which included the divine or God, or

(44:37):
the world of spirits, whatever it was, and most people
would not think outside of that because that was just
the reality in which they understood themselves to exist. And
then you know, over the hundreds of years, with the Renaissance,
the Enlightenment, and the modern era of humanism, etc. There's
been a change in the perception of the self such
that we are now unembedded or disembedded, which I suppose

(44:58):
does relate to what you've been saying about a windowless universe.
Now we're this autonomous self, not embedded in anything, looking
out into this windowless state of reality. And so I
think there's quite a perception there that goes beyond just saying, oh,
you know, secondarizations just because of science and technology. I
think the two things are going hand in hand there.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
I think those two things are related. You mentioned the book,
was it Charles Taylor? If I may mention another huge book,
The Rise and Triumph of the mod erhim self by
Carl Trupan. I haven't read the book. He wrote a
shorter version, more aimed at by people as it were,
which is what I read in this worth reading, and

(45:40):
he also did a series of lectures about it. But yes,
the self, I agree, it's a huge thing which has changed.
It's interesting to reflect on why that might be and
what relation that has with technology, because one of the
things is, obviously, if we believe in a God, if
we believe in the Christian God, then we are made
in the image of God, and that kind of is

(46:03):
a two way thing. We as human beings believe in God,
but also we believe in the value and dignity of
human beings as made in the image of God. If
you take away God, you end up with, well, what
just an animal? And I think this is where I
think the technology thing comes in, because I think what

(46:24):
we are seeing now and you might look at people
like uvil Harari and others seeing human beings like cattle
to be controlled. We are just programmable things, and that
we just need to be programmed in the right ways.
And this is why you've got the nudge unit and
other things going on. Just programming us. You need to

(46:44):
be herded in that way, You need AI to point
you in that direction. You need these messaging all the
time to make sure that you do the right things,
and so on and so forth. It's a very technological
view of human beings. Actually, it's not a view of
a human being being made in the image of God,
who has moral agency and responsibility and free will. Talk

(47:05):
about free will, but let's use the word for the
sake of argument, free will.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
No.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
It is scary, though, isn't it, Because you know, modern
man might think, okay, well, you know, I've escaped the
divine threat that I can't be just free in this
universe to do as I wish, and then finds him
herself naked. There's nothing there. You've escaped or escaped to
what to a kind of prison of your own making.
It's it's a cold, unfrightening place to be in an

(47:33):
unembedded or disembedded universe.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Totally in a sense, it is exactly what the Bible predicts.
There's a verse in the Psalms. I think this is
actually I read this yesterday and I think it's Psalm
one hundred and fifteen, which talks about those who make
idols will become like them, and I think if our
idols are technology and sort of lifeless things, then we

(47:58):
will become life less. You know. It's the great irony
that is seeking to escape from God. In seeking, you know,
a sort of life apart from Him, we actually lose life.
It's a great tyrony. I think in the scriptures that
those who seek it elsewhere will actually find death. And
it's actually only those who give up their lives, as
Jesus said, you know, those who give up their lives

(48:20):
seek him who will find life.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
You said. In connection with this, again picking up some
ideas from osgarn is that this trend of secularization also
leads to a privatization of religion. And I thought this
was really important actually as the outside world, you know,
because less the religious retreats into the private self and

(48:44):
the intimate space is like the home family. And I
think you even talk about the workplace as well, that
the corporatization of the workplace feeds into this as well.
So it's as if we sort of escaped into a
private sphere both in the church and within ours, which
kind of exacerbates the whole problem. Then because the plausibility

(49:05):
structures of the world around us are going to be
even more the divorced from what we believe to be true.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Yeah, I think the privatization or he also uses the
word miniaturization, which I really like. There's a quote which
he gives. It says that the Christians of old used
to say, if Jesus Christ is not Lord of all,
then he's not lord at all. That sums it up
for me. Jesus has to be lord of everything. We

(49:33):
know that in this world Jesus is not lord of
everything in the sense that there are those who do
not confess him. Governments do not confess him, people do
not confess him as lord, and so on. But as Christians,
we want him to be. That's our desire, that should
be our prayer. And I think what's happened is this
secularization process has basically said, well, let's find common ground.

(49:57):
You believe in God, I don't believe in God, so
let's meet in the middle and we'll just go about
our business as if God doesn't exist. You know, they say, well,
it's okay for you to have private religious beliefs, but
it doesn't have to affect the way that we do business,
or the way that we do politics or you know,
TV or anything like that. And this is where COVID,

(50:20):
I think again, was a bit of a game changer,
because what COVID did is it exposed the fact that
the government were not governing in a Christian way. They
departed very far from the original ideals of you know,
you might think of people like John Locke and others.
They departed very far from the Christian faith. And they
thought that had no relevance at all to what happened

(50:42):
during COVID and what I witnessed in churches and talking
to other Christians during that time. So a lot of people,
far too many thought that what the Bible said and
what you know, God would think about those things is
to be irrelevant to how we responded as a church.
That the only thing that mattered was what the government
was saying, what the experts were saying. You know, this

(51:05):
secular age, and it is because of this privatization that
you know that the church is just in the Christian
faith has just been put in a smaller and smaller box.
And you know, it's just I think pragmatism really is
a big part of it. You know, just that it
doesn't matter what you believe, you know, we just go
out in the world and we get on with it
and don't think about God at all. And it's infected

(51:27):
the church so much that people don't even realize that
it's happening.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Yes, So William Lane Craig actually says something about this,
that religious faith is often seen to be something that
should be just a personal mattered it's got nothing to
do with matters of fact, and therefore shouldn't have anything
to do with the culture generally. Obviously, he's criticizing that view,
and I was reminded of that recently when Tim Farron
had a tweet where he was criticizing Lord Faulkner for

(51:53):
speaking out against Shabahn and Mahmoud. Who's the Justice Secretary,
isn't she. I believe she had said something to do
with the assisted Dying bill, and Lord Faulkner said that
she should not impose her religious beliefs on others. You know,
it was inappropriate for her quote here somewhere, Oh, this
is from the Guardian. Actually, Cabinet ministers should not impose

(52:15):
their religious beliefs. That's right on others in their objections
to assisted dying. A leading proponent of changing the law,
has said, in response to an intervention from Shabahna Mahamod
Charlie Faulkner a labor pier, that's right. And then Tim
Farreran said, you know how this is staggering. Actually, you know,
the idea that the world views informed by faith are
somehow illegitimate. This is shallow and illiberal, this approach. And

(52:37):
I thought he's right there. Everybody should be allowed to
express their views, however they know, whatever worldview it is
that informs those views, because that's the essence of democracy,
isn't it. But somehow, because it's something religiously motivated, that's illegitimate.
So that's quite an extreme secularization that's happened there.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
It's extreme, and it's also an extreme blindness because he
thinks that his views aren't religious indeed, as if such
a thing were possible. You know, because this is what
I've been saying for a long time and many other people,
like Dominion by Tom Holland and so on, that our
views in the West are so shaped by Christianity that

(53:16):
people think they're common sense, but they're not. You know
that it comes from a certain worldview, as you say,
and this is what Francis Shaeffer saw, and that many
others of course. But you know, this is the power
of world views that people think that everything they believe
is just common sense, basic stuff, but it's not. It

(53:37):
comes from a place, and that place, for those of
us who grew up in the West, is Christianity by
and large, even if we may have departed from that
in many ways now. So, yes, I think it's an
extraordinarily arrogant and blind thing for Lord Faulknness to say.
I had to laugh really because it's almost comical.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Yeah, okay, So we understand that the church itself in
many ways has become privatized. Obviously privatized doesn't mean anything
to do with the business model here, but we've sort
of retreated within ourselves and that there are big consequences
to that, are they not. We seem to have muted
our external voice in speaking out to the world. There's

(54:18):
very little that's prophetic. There's not a lot of critique
that goes on. Is there a sense that we've also
muted our internal voice as well? So we talk less about,
as you were saying earlier, history and theology and tradition,
these things perhaps seen as divisive or whatever. There's a
muting that goes on. This is just something personal to me.
Each person in the pew, as it wears, has their

(54:40):
personal internal voice, and I wonder whether going along with
that is a narrowing of the gospel to my personal
needs rather than broader considerations as well. And to get
that sense sometimes sitting in church that even the preaching
is directed to what the preacher perceives as being the
individual needs of each person rather than let's say, addressing

(55:02):
worldview issues or know what's going on in the broader culture.
This privatization thing is very real on many different dimensions.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
I think, yeah, I think that what you say there
that if you think that what's happened over the secularization
has been saying, well, let's meet in the middle and
let's just do what we need to do in order
to get on. That's been the methodology. And I think
that's even come into the church now, as you rightly

(55:33):
say that there are so many divisive things in the
world that we think, well, let's not talk about those
divisive things because the Bible probably doesn't have much to say.
You might have your views, I might have my views,
let's not talk about that, and it's just led to
a hollowing out of relationships, a hollowing out of our
view of the world, and it has, as you also

(55:56):
point out, led to this sort of the gospel is
there to make me feel better about myself? Yeah, you know,
it's the kind of this narcissistic way of looking at
the world, which is, you know, when I go to church,
I want to be lifted up. Now, I want to
feel better, I want to be encouraged, and I want
all my needs to be met. But I want to

(56:19):
do that in my way. I want to do that
in the way that I choose, rather than by letting God,
the Living God, step into my world and changing me.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Yeah. Yeah, okay, So not wanting to be negative all
the time? How do we flip this round? Okay? So
you know I sense that need to you say in
your presentation of this, to push back the sense of Okay,
so we're privatized, we've been atomized, and we're sort of
looking at and we're scared to talk to each other

(56:51):
about various things. But that means necessarily that we've got
somehow well repent I supposed to turn around to overcome
that and then push back out into the world with
our stronger relationships. Let's say, to close the word colonization,
to sort of recolonize the church itself, to recolonize the
public sphere, to push back out. That's the feeling that

(57:13):
I have that we need to do that, but it's
so difficult to imagine how that could be done any
ideas well.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
The word I think which has been missing, conspicuously missing
in the church for a long time, has been discipleship. Yes,
I think, I mean, I think churches have talked about it,
but I don't think a lot of churches have really
been doing it, which is to say, following Jesus and
listening to the Word of God in prayer and in

(57:42):
all of the things that church should be doing, but
just doing it in a seeking to do it in
a deeper way than the way that has been done.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Does a lot of talk about evangelism in certain quarters,
isn't there? But you don't often hear much talk about discipleship.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
No. And actually I did a video on Understand the
Bible a few months back about how I would say,
actually we should put a moratorium on evangelism because I
think it's not helping. We're not doing discipleship, so what's
the point of doing evangelism. But yes, I think what
we have done here when we left our old church,

(58:16):
when we left the Church of England, the only option
that seemed available to us was to start a house church,
and that's what we've been doing the last eighteen months,
give or take. And I feel that it is almost
like doing church for the first time in terms of
the relationships we have, the conversations that we have. You know,

(58:38):
we're able to talk about a lot of the issues
in the world which we couldn't do in our old church,
and we're able to get to know each other in
a way that we never got to know people in
our old church. As well. When you strip away all
the stuff which is accumulated in traditional church is you know,
the flowers, the flower water, you know the hit books,

(59:00):
the rotors. There's so much you know that the churches
just have accumulated over the centuries.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
None of which is bad in itself, no not.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
But I think when you start thinking that that's church
and not simply people getting together to worship the risen
law Jesus Yes and listen to his word and building
relationships with one another under those kind of terms. Then
I think that's the problem. You know, we need to
focus back in on what really matters with church, and

(59:30):
we need to focus back in on discipleship, I believe,
and in helping one another to follow Jesus in these days.
I think that is the way out. Actually it's through
the church, but not the church as the institution which
has gone wrong, but the church as in, you know,
the true church, you know, just following Christ together. I

(59:52):
think that's the way out of this.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
And in your case, you very much felt that you
had to start again in order to achieve that. You
spent some time I'm trying to work through that from
within the Church of England. Didn't you Did you get anywhere?
Did you feel it was just going nowhere?

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
To be honest, I'm glad I've left the Church of England,
especially with everything that's happened in the last year and
seeing justin Well be resigning. But it goes back to
what we were saying about the culture. You don't realize
how much it affects you until you can step outside
of it. That's what I realized with the Church of England.

(01:00:30):
It just kind of encourages you into a certain mindset
and you don't realize how much it affects you until
you're out of it. This is not again, I don't
I'm not if there's anyone listening who is in going
to a Church of England church or what have you.
I'm not saying we all have to upsticks and leave immediately, no, sure,
but I am saying we need to be very aware

(01:00:51):
of the effect that it's having, and I think we
need to be open to the fact. We must be
open to the fact that God may choose to bring
about some kind of renewal and if he does, it
will be outside of the church. And that's how it's
been for me that in the end, you know, we
needed to leave. That was the right thing. And I

(01:01:12):
don't think that what I wanted to do in terms
of building that kind of church, that kind of community,
could have been done within the church. But that's you know,
I don't want people to listen to this thinking, oh,
Phil just telling me to leave the Church of England.
You know, I don't want to. I'm not encouraging anyone
to do any one thing, but for me, I felt
that I had to go.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Yes, and I feel myself in both camps really because
I am still a member of the Methodist Church. I
still attend, not regularly, because I also have this relationship
with people in a stand in the park, et cetera
that's ongoing. So I feel both, you know, I'd like
to be able to go back into Methodist Church and
make a difference. I still don't see how that's possible.

(01:01:52):
I'm still looking for something new, et cetera. I'm sort
of looking at what you're doing and thinking, yes, that's
really exciting, but also hoping, you know, and praying that
something can still happen in the situation with which I'm familiar.
So it's going to be different for everybody, of course.
So have you got to the point in your community

(01:02:12):
as it is at the moment where you feel that
you are to go back to that metaphor pushing back,
you know, away from the privatized space of religious experience.
Let's say, do you feel that you and your community
have a sense of pushing back out into the world
to counter the secularity of the world around you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
I have to be honest, I don't feel that just
at the moment. But that's not to say that it's
not there. I suppose it's just because we are quite
few in.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
Number, Yes, just at the moment. Yes, But I.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Do feel that we are wanting to put Christ first
in everything, and that that will in the end lead
to exactly what you say, you know, to that pushing back. Yes,
but I think that what we are building, I believe
God is building, is something which the government cannot step into, right,
And that's the thing. We are building, a community, I

(01:03:04):
hope and trust, which does not belong to the government,
does not belong to any institution, but belongs to God,
and which will be worth standing up for and standing
up for our our rights, or however you want to
put it. So, I think that we are on that journey,
if we haven't quite reached the destination.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
If there is a destination, you have a vision for growth,
but you're not setting any numbers on that. Yes, And
a vision for freedom, not freedom from Christ, of course,
but freedom from the world around insofar as that might
actually inhibit your life in Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
Oh, yeah, absolutely, I think Galatians five to one, it
is for freedom that Christ has set us free. And
do not let yourself be burdened again by a yoke
of slavery, and I think that is I was going
to say that's our motto. It's not our motto. It
would be that's a good one. Yes, that is exactly
what I'm I guess. It's that freedom to be the

(01:04:02):
people and you know, the community that God calls us
to be, without the hindrances of any government or organization
or institution. No, but just freedom to say, this is
what the Bible says we should do. We're going to
do this. No one's going to tell us otherwise. We
just free to belong to God and to do anything

(01:04:22):
that that entails.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Well, this is, in a sense an ongoing conversation, isn't it,
Phil Because we've been talking in these terms probably about
for conversations now, I think something like that. Think it's
I think it is. You know. I do hope that
what we've been talking about today has been helpful and
it hasn't come over as to negative. But I do
think it is necessary to go through this process in

(01:04:44):
order to see how things should change and how they
can change. I don't know in my own experience how
that is going to happen. Even though I've said that
many times to you before, it's still the case, but
I do hope and pray that things will shape up
in the future. But you know, thank you for this
comp and for the you know, the exciting example that
you present, although as you said, it's not going to

(01:05:06):
be the same for everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
Yeah, thanks Julian, And you know, watch this face because
I think God is working and God is taking us somewhere.
We're not there as yet, but I believe everything that's
happened has been on the way there. We're still seeking
to see God's hand kind of unveiled, but I think
we will and I think things are maybe you know,
not far off actually, but that's that's my own sense.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Have you connected with other people who are doing similar things,
not necessarily in your area, but more broadly.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
I fear people have been in touch with me, and
people have written me some encouraging things and talked about
you know, I think a lot of people feel very
let down by the institutional church, actually yes, and feel
perhaps open now to something different in a way that
they might not have done ten years ago. So I
think from that perspective, you know, what we are, what

(01:06:00):
we're doing here is maybe trailblazing, but perhaps not that
different to what's going on in other places. I mean,
you think, look at what's happened in China. You know
that the missionaries are expelled to China in the nineteen
forties and fifties, and a whole lot of house church
has happened. And look what's happened, you know, forty million
Christians in China. Now, yeah, we have to trust that

(01:06:20):
such a thing could happen here as well. Absolutely, yes,
just look into the future rather than looking behind.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
Yes, absolutely well. Thank you very much indeed for having
this conversation. It's always very inspiring, and you know, I'm
very grateful to you for your time in having this discussion.
Thank you very much, Phil, and thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
I'm sorry about the technological issues.

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
Oh gosh, yes, I know. It's amazing, isn't it. That's
just the way it is. But I think in the
end we did get there. And although you do sound
not quite as fantastic as you did before, at least
you're not breaking up, so I could understand everything he
was saying, which is the main thing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
Great.

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
Yeah, yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Thanks very much. Then, Julian obviously speak to you're.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Saying, yeah, bye bye bye. Show notes for this pro
Graham can be found at the Mind Renewed. theMIND Renewed
dot com podcast, music by Anthony Rayjakoff, attribution non commercial
shaer like four point zero International. You have been listening
to me, Julian Charles and my guest, the Reverend Phil Saka,
and I very much look forward to speak to you
again in the very near future.