Transcript
WEBVTT
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And welcome back to Pastor Plek's podcast.
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I'm your host, Pastor Plek, and joining me from none other than Eastside Community Church is none other than Pastor Holland Gregg.
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Welcome back to the show.
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Thank you so much Honored to be here as always every time here on.
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Pastor Plek's podcast.
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It is pretty much the greatest thing ever for you to be here, and so what I wanted to look up was something that you sent me.
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It was a pretty amazing text and I'm going to read it for everybody.
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It actually was just a text to a link, but the link was great and it was from Josh Howerton, who is a pastor up in the Dallas area at Lake Point, and so he's gotten in some trouble for a lot of stuff, but this one was actually non-troublemaking.
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It was actually one of the coolest things I've read in a long time, so I'm going to read it for everybody because I think it's really cool.
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This is more a pastor nerd out.
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Yes, special pastor nerd out.
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Episode we're doing is more pastor nerd out.
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Yes, so special pastor nerd out, we're doing a special pastor nerd out.
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I just asked two non pastors to join us and I think it was too nerdy for them, so we're going to jump in.
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It's called negative world missiology, okay, so if you don't understand what that means, this might be a really troubling podcast.
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You're going to explain it right.
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I'm going to try and explain it, but I'll probably ask you to do it because you're way better than me.
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So he goes extremely insider baseball pastor tweet here.
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After hundreds of hours of conversations, group texts, closed door cohorts and pastors of thriving churches, there's an exciting sense.
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A new missiology is taking shape, fitted for what at Aaron Wren has called negative world.
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All right If rent is correct.
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That sensor see seeker sensitive, which is what I, you know, if we were to be honest, our church in the past was a seeker sensitive Bible church Like I don't, I wouldn't, you know, I'm like, yeah, we were trying to.
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Uh, when we well, at least when I got here in 2012, we wanted to be as unoffensive as humanly possible.
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Okay, and it was a positive world missiology.
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Meaning I think the positive world missiology meaning I think the positive world missiology is there's a positive spin towards christianity in the world at large.
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Is that fair?
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yeah, that the surrounding culture is like thanks positively of church and christianity.
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Okay, that's a good thing yeah, then there was a keller cultural engagement strategy, which is the neutral world missiology.
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All right, so that meant so he was always like for the third way there's, like conservatives, they got it wrong.
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They're too conservative.
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Left leaning people, they're too liberal, they got it wrong.
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But there's a third way of following Jesus and that, as we have seen, um is problematic because, well, it, there's not very many people who are actually going the, the right wing conservative.
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Um, I guess there are, but I, I feel like he was too.
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It doesn't fit for the a neutral, we're no longer in a neutral world missiology, it might be the best way to put that yeah okay.
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And then he says based on a million private convos, which I'm kind of thinking is a slight exaggeration because he just went through hundreds of hours of conversations, but maybe that was like a million people for five seconds.
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Anyway, there you go.
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Yeah, he suggests nine shifts from a positive world missiology to a negative world missiology.
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So he goes look, acts 17 was winsomeness, and I think the primary word for the past 25 years has been be winsome.
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Would you agree with that?
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I haven't even been a Christian for that long, but as long as I've been a Christian it's been a big idea.
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Winsome was the word.
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That was the word.
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Everyone talks about how they got saved.
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They always mention some winsome guy who was happy.
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Fun ball was not offensive and they were drawn to that and it worked.
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More, so not just happy, but appealed more to the intellectual elites of society, of society, you know the, the leaders of institutions and educators, and uh, you know, like winsome being like I can fit in with the kind of elites of society and you know they'll, they'll allow me into their space.
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I think that was kind of the strategy of winsomeness is like I can rub shoulders with people.
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Let's, let's try to present this third way to where you know, um, the secular world will want to give us a hearing and eventually, maybe we can lead them to Christ, and I think what happened, though, is uh, uh, the eventually we'll lead them to Christ never really happened, and what happened instead was um, a uh, the the church, um winsomeness approach ended up leading toward more progressive Christianity.
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Yeah, it did, and so let's talk about this, and I know that usually so back in the day, back in the past 20 years, everybody would quote Acts 17 as a way to evangelize.
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And even within Acts 17, it said a few people came to Christ, but most people were like nah, what else you got Right?
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I think that Acts 17,.
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So Mars Hill or the Areopagus and Paul's appeal to the Greeks?
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That's what you're talking about, right, yeah?
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Okay.
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So now, yeah, and remember, he goes like hey, and he quotes from their poets and he goes all over the place for that, because in general there's zero like hey, we want to hear what this guy has to say.
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He's been invited in, he seems smart.
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He sounds smart, he's given a forum and then people go what's he talking about?
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He seems to be advocating foreign gods and, like again, most of the people like, dismissed him, but some believed, and then there was.
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And then he compares it to the Acts 2, apostolic boldness.
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And so you remember, apostolic 2 boldness is Peter at Pentecost, preaching the streets repent and be baptized.
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Repent, repent, believe in the Lord Jesus and be baptized, or be baptized in the Lord Jesus, in the name of Jesus.
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And I think that's wild to kind of see like the apostolic boldness of Peter the 3000 people to be saved.
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Now, why do?
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Why do you think that people shifted from the apostolic boldness, even within acts itself?
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yeah, I don't know.
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See, you know this, the way he worded it here, kind of pits those two against each other, whereas I would go like I think paul really tried to do just whatever the right thing paul, peter, john, the apostles were.
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They're just, you know, doing what they thought was the best thing to reach the people.
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And I don't think pa Paul lacked apostolic boldness at all His approach in Acts 17, you know he said that God has appointed a man who's going to judge the world and you know he, he didn't shy away from um hard truths.
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And when he's with Agrippa, when he's with anybody he's, he's always talking about like.
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Paul was bold and he he died for it.
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You know, um, but I think what happens is some people see one aspect of Paul's ministry and go look in and then try to build an entire philosophy of ministry around that just Acts 17 and not Acts two, you know, whereas we got to take both of those things in tandem.
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So I don't think there's anything wrong with um being winsome in certain situations, but when you make that the entirety of your philosophy of ministry, then you're going to miss out on some stuff, and I think this is this is what I'm seeing as far as the pendulum swing of our of church culture.
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So tell me if I'm wrong.
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It's like if anyone's winsome, they're wrong.
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In fact I've heard a lot of um pastors say like if you're winsome, you've caved to the culture and you're.
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You know, you're a sucker and you need to boldly preach against sin and it might, that might be the right answer in that context, but it might not be.
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And I think that's where I think the struggle is, um knowing the right thing.
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But I do appreciate howerton here of saying there's a shift like the general, it used to be more winsome, less calling out sin, and I think now we're at a place that's more calling out sin.
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Okay.
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So I don't think it was ever not calling out sin at all.
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I think it's to me it was a hesitancy to call out certain sins that would get you in trouble with a particular group, so with a, for instance, tim Keller.
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You know, kind of the third way is him winsomeness guy.
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Tim Keller did a lot of really wonderful things in his preaching and teaching ministry, but you know, when it comes to okay, find a sermon where he was really bold and clear about homosexuality or abortion or some of these things that tend to be like left leaning People take them as cultural political issues.
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His strategy was to avoid those things so as not to upset those people and um, rather than just take them head on so I think you and I have been always doing that.
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Yeah, I think so too.
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Um, so it's not really anything new, but maybe it's.
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I think the way it's been worded is new and so that, yeah, there's things where it's like, uh, I mean, I mean I think it is new.
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I tried to be winsome and be like hey, you're in sin, but I don't know Like yeah.
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Does that make sense?
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The idea of saying like, okay, there's these certain things that we're not going to say, because if we do, that's going to ruffle feathers here and so we're going to be really soft and nuanced and winsome, but these sins are acceptable sins to critique.
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We can talk about racism.
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When I was sort of like I would put jokes in a sermon.
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That was winsome.
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But what you're saying is just not talking about controversial subjects at all.
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That's the wimsomeness.
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That's what is being critiqued about it.
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I'd say, like the good thing is being able to be.
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I was like man, I kind of like being winsome.
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But when I realized, oh, I've been, I've never like shied away from that stuff because I feel very comfortable in the zone of talking about homosexuality.
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I feel very comfortable in the zone of talking about homosexuality.
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I feel very comfortable in the zone of talking about men being men and women being women.
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So I haven't felt that tension.
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Probably where I didn't know, if I'm honest, how to respond was when critical race theory was kind of coming out and not knowing exactly the right tone to take.
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We'll come back to tone.
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We'll come back to that, but keep going.
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Yeah, I think I was confused there and I felt like I had to do a lot of reading.
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I went through and I did read White Fragility.
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I read Ibram Kendi you know it's Robin DiAngelo and then Ibram Kendi's book, and then I read Votie Bauckham's book on fault lines.
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Fault lines yeah, and.
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I just really I was like, okay, this is.
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It was really helpful for me to get at least an understanding of what right, wrong, where am I?
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How do I as a pastor?
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And it really got back down to anthropology, which my anthropology hadn't.
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I didn't have to come across race in the past because I don't want to say like I was completely just unaware, but it just wasn't something that came up.
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And what I think what happened with 2020 is race was elevated to this thing and you, you know, I'd never been called like my existence was racist, and so it made me question, like even like guys like matt chandler, david platt, were kind of going this way of like, um, yeah, very like, you know, uh, racer, racially charged, kind of calling out white people for sucking, and I was not, and I was kind of like man, white people for sucking, and I was not, and I was kind of like man, maybe I do suck.
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You know there was a part of that where I was like I don't you know I didn't.
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I wasn't prepared for that, like I was for the sexuality stuff.
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I'm not sure I think in seminary I was really way more down that road because I in downtown Dallas there's a huge gay population I was forced to interact with and get a lot of my theology straight.
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But I but I've been around black people and Hispanic people and Asian people.
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I grew up a little bit in Japan, I was in the army, which is super multi-ethnic, and so race as like a factor of something to judge people by wasn't something that I sort of was really being able to deal with and I kind of had always assumed the colorblind message of you know, we don't judge people on the by the color of their skin but the content of their character was sort of like the way forward.
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And so when I was confronted by all of this, your whole, you know systemic racism, I wasn't really prepared for that.
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Anyway, I'm just saying that that's where I didn't know, I think for me just personally not knowing how to be winsome and, um, I think I probably just didn't talk about that stuff in that category cause I wasn't comfortable with it.
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Yeah, yeah, I, I think there's um, uh, a lot of this stuff.
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You know, from 2020 to today, these last four years, is uh, a lot of pastors got caught off guard.
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You know, just like, how are we supposed to think about this, talk about this?
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I didn't learn, you know, uh, about this kind of stuff.
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In seminary, I learned about the Trinity and the you know, the hypostatic union.
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I learned the you know, but now we're having to deal with things that are and at the time I was dealing with epidemiology, which I didn't even know what that word was before COVID.
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So I was like I'm not an epidemiologist, here's the decision we're making, Nobody knows.
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And I, that was really where my focus was, and then the race stuff snuck up on me on the backside and I was getting confronted with a bunch of questions that I wasn't ready for and I had to do a ton of reading to catch up.
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So now I have a proper anthropology and a proper Imago Dei, a proper understanding of what a solid good like the church should reflect the community, but not at the expense of compromising gospel, compromising the Imago Dei, compromising.
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You know, each man should answer for his own sin, not for the sin of his father.
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That kind of stuff was.
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It, was I had to be, stuff I knew but I had to be reminded of.
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Yeah, Okay, so anyway, I think that that's really good.
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So that's the winsomeness to apostolic boldness.
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Then two from left.
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Here's from like left leaning people, irreligious seekers, and right equals moralistic Pharisees.
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That's the way the, the past winsomeness world was to.
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Right is unsaved God fears and left is secular Pharisees.
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So, um, I think this is what's wild to on the right.
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Unsaved God fears.
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We have a lot of those at our church, yeah.
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Do you have a lot of those at your church?
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Um, no, and what I mean by unsaved God fears, it's usually people have some it's usually Catholic background, they have some church background and they're coming to church because they they are, they're like Lydia, uh, from um, Acts 16.
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Uh, they're like Lydia from Acts 16 and they are, they're seeking, they want a place of prayer, they want to be comforted.
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They're like Lydia from Acts 16 and they're seeking, they want a place of prayer, they want to be comforted.
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They're not ready to move out from living with their boyfriend or girlfriend yet.
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And so I hammer that, I come with a hard repent and believe to that.
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But then also he says the left, secular Pharisees.
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Can you describe what a secular Pharisee is secular?
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Pharisees.
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Can you describe what a secular Pharisee is?
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A Pharisee, you know, having the reputation of being like the elites and the ones who kind of um, bind people's consciences to things, traditions of man, um, but in the Bible, you know, they were the religious, but he's, he's saying that it's the secular um, pharisees, um, meaning the people who are not church people but who have, you know, this um high kind of uh, speak, in a way, you know, of having the moral high ground and of binding people's consciences to that.
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That if you, you know you have to um, think this way and talk this way and they, just they determine what blasphemy is and that, and determine what blasphemy is and what's okay to say and what's not okay to say, and but it's the secular world doing this.
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That again is uh, the, the, the winsome route is like, okay, let's try to cozy up next to that and um, then maybe we can win them over, like because it used to be with, like, uh, pharisees, you could agree for the most part on the right law, but wrong tact, in in, in, winning.
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But now with the secular Pharisee, it's completely evil.
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So it's like, um, men should have the right to be women and women should have the right to be men, like, that's, like you should.
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If you don't believe that you're a bigot, yeah, um, and we're going bigot, yeah, and we're gonna cancel you and we're gonna cancel you.
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White people are guilty yeah, and, if you like, are not repentant and forever repentant.
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There's nothing you can do to stop being white, other than be sorry and guilty your entire life.
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You need to live in the guilt of your systemic racism if you think you ever.
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If there's ever, it's solved.
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And the solution to systemic racism is to reverse racism, and so that is like a part and parcel of the secular Pharisee.
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To kind of put that on.
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Really white Christian, straight people would be probably the best way to put that.
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Yeah, so okay, that's secular Phariseeism.
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Okay, so three, is the ripest mission field being on the left to the ripest mission field being on the right?
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Yes, this is exactly the reason why I love this is I've noticed this, and I think that's because I don't know if we I don't know if we've done anything different or if my preaching style has like drawn God for you.
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I don't know what I don't want to say.
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It's me or whatever, but for some reason, um, we have a lot of loss, we have God fears in the congregation and I'm trying to win them.
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Um, and they're the ripest mission.
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I would totally agree with that.
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There are people that are voting for Trump.
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Uh, there are people that are like you know they, their morals, are probably in the absolute gutter, um, and they don't care, but they know something's wrong with culture and they're rebelling against whatever that is.
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These, they can sense secular Pharisees and Pharisee ism, and they want righteousness and they don't know what it is.
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And so when you're able to declare truth boldly, I think they respond to it.
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You're, you're anything you see on that.
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So my my thought on this.
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You know it's talking about left and right and um, well, when we think about those categories, the right tends to accord more with nature, natural law.
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So in terms of, let's say, like, um, marriage and sexuality, for instance, um, the left is really intent on pushing.
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I'm not saying, uh, these are pretty broad categories and I think we can talk about is is major.
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you know, majoring on um is is major, you know, majoring on um, homosexuality, lgbtq stuff, transgenderism, all you know, and uh, and there's people who are like, okay, I'm not a Christian, but I just know that that's not right.
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Right, I know, you know, there's people who, even they're not Christians, but they go, you can, you can recognize, like how God has made the world to function well, even as a non-Christian, that's what the idea of a God-fear is.
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Someone going.
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Okay, I see something of value.
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There's something about this that is like I want to submit my life to, because something in me recognizes this is how things are supposed to be.
00:19:10.273 --> 00:19:20.134
And so, again, they're very broad categories, but on the right and the more conservative, and stuff tends to be more aligned with nature and natural law.
00:19:20.134 --> 00:19:31.276
And so I think that right now is our culture moves rapidly left and is really rejecting and subverting natural law, nature, how God has designed things to be.
00:19:31.276 --> 00:19:34.484
There are people who are going OK, where is some community?
00:19:34.484 --> 00:19:44.323
That's that's actually, you know, fitting with what I think is more right, according to you know one of the probably just the anecdotal stories of this is, uh, john Milton.
00:19:44.343 --> 00:19:55.423
I don't know if you remember him from when you preached at our men's retreat, but he's like seven feet tall and uh, he, he said for the first time I found it was when I came to your church.
00:19:55.462 --> 00:20:03.006
I found out it was okay for me to be a white, straight man, and he was like it was the most refreshing experience.
00:20:03.026 --> 00:20:16.069
I didn't believe in any of the God stuff yet, but I just was drawn to that and I think that's why we're seeing young men more attracted to the church now than young women.
00:20:17.111 --> 00:20:39.479
Yeah, because the place where young men are being affirmed and saying you are called to lead, you need to rise up, be a man that's a good thing Is in the church, and where it's like, hey, you're a bad person, you need to repent for your manness, and it's toxic, everything about you is evil and the patriarchy is bad, and so anytime you offer leadership, we don't want it.
00:20:39.479 --> 00:20:49.134
You need to fall in line with the heels, and I think that's where the struggle that we're watching the culture face and we offer, as the church, a hope there.
00:20:49.134 --> 00:21:01.971
Okay, he goes in and say from a preaching strategy from a church lost people love to attend, which is kind of the classic Andy Stanley ism um, which is it's interesting.
00:21:01.971 --> 00:21:14.628
That's probably where you'd see, like the North point model is where they've kind of slipped and they went left because it was a church that lost people tend love to attend and then it became they were appealing to the left.
00:21:15.080 --> 00:21:15.662
Yeah, and when?
00:21:15.662 --> 00:21:23.307
When that's, your priority is to again in a positive world, neutral world, where people go hey, church has value in society.
00:21:23.307 --> 00:21:28.095
If I'm struggling or something like that, you know, a church is a good place to go, where I can find help to.
00:21:28.095 --> 00:21:33.244
Where a negative world, where people are just like church oh you mean the bigots, you mean the judgmental people, oh you mean the.
00:21:33.244 --> 00:21:35.186
You know, so we're in a negative world.
00:21:35.567 --> 00:21:36.147
Um, the?
00:21:36.147 --> 00:21:43.375
A church lost people love to attend kind of makes sense as a practical strategy for reaching people in a positive world or even neutral world.
00:21:43.375 --> 00:21:57.846
But, um, it doesn't really make sense for negative world, because lost people are like, why would I go to church?
00:21:57.846 --> 00:21:59.106
I mean, it's just like it's not a, it's not something that people are thinking about.
00:21:59.106 --> 00:21:59.349
But the.
00:21:59.349 --> 00:22:05.453
The deeper problem with it is um, you're just building your strategy on how to attract people rather than you know like, um, uh, what is what is the Bible?
00:22:05.453 --> 00:22:06.875
Say the church is supposed to be?
00:22:06.875 --> 00:22:11.585
Um, so I think that's an even deeper problem and it could be a problem with everything he's saying here.
00:22:11.585 --> 00:22:13.027
We could do the exact same thing.
00:22:13.027 --> 00:22:14.068
You could swing in 20 years.
00:22:14.068 --> 00:22:19.817
You could swing back and go oh man, let's do away with the seeker sensitive and go to this.
00:22:19.817 --> 00:22:21.462
And if all you're trying, to do let's go.
00:22:21.502 --> 00:22:22.246
No instruments.
00:22:22.779 --> 00:22:24.945
Yeah, if all you're trying to do is just create, okay.
00:22:24.945 --> 00:22:26.971
Well now, in negative world, how do we attract people?
00:22:26.971 --> 00:22:30.671
You're doing the same thing as the North Point Andy Stanley did in positive world.
00:22:30.671 --> 00:22:40.574
So I think these trends are really good to identify and and learn things from, but the answers I think you know really needs to be okay, just what.
00:22:40.574 --> 00:22:42.864
What is God's word call you to do and be as a?
00:22:42.903 --> 00:22:43.105
church.
00:22:43.105 --> 00:22:44.210
Yeah, so it goes.
00:22:44.210 --> 00:22:47.102
A preaching strategy is from a church lost People love to attend.
00:22:47.102 --> 00:22:49.772
To instruct the wise, correct the foolish, drive out the evil.
00:22:50.013 --> 00:22:52.544
Okay, what I love about that is that's just biblical wisdom.
00:22:52.544 --> 00:22:57.094
That is what Proverbs and the New Testament epistles, the pastoral epistles, call you to do.
00:22:57.400 --> 00:22:58.743
Right, yeah, so it's like it's.
00:22:59.968 --> 00:23:09.884
yeah, I love it too, and and I think drive out the evil is not something that people would have said, you know of like Well and as true.
00:23:09.904 --> 00:23:18.192
So at our, you know, at our church, as you know, we do church discipline, and so driving out evil is hard but necessary.
00:23:18.192 --> 00:23:20.463
It's part of shepherding a flock.
00:23:20.463 --> 00:23:30.114
It's part of shepherding a flock, drive out the evil, like we can no longer associate with you as a brother because you are living in unrepentant sin.
00:23:30.114 --> 00:23:33.477
So anyway, so that's a wild reality.
00:23:33.557 --> 00:23:34.534
Okay yeah, I would say drive out the.
00:23:34.534 --> 00:23:34.962
You know that's a wild reality.
00:23:34.962 --> 00:23:36.036
Okay, yeah, I would say drive out the un.
00:23:36.036 --> 00:23:36.826
You know the unrepentant?
00:23:36.826 --> 00:23:38.890
Um instruct the wise.
