From Progressive Christianity to the Gospel: Discipleship in a culture of deconstruction

[Music] hmm [Music] hey everyone welcome to a special live episode of the elisa childers podcast i want to say a special hello to everybody watching on facebook and everybody watching on youtube and we'll just get this out of the way from the start here's an easy little thing that you can do to help us get this conversation into the news feeds of more people if you're on facebook go ahead and click like and leave a comment if you're on youtube you can click like also even better you can subscribe and click that bell icon to be notified every time we release a new video and just little things like that leaving a comment leaving a like that helps more people find out that we're having this conversation and they can join in with us and so we're talking about deconstruction today and i'd like to start by defining that word because i think it's one of those words that people use but they don't always think very deeply about what they mean when they use that word and so often the process of deconstruction can start with a particular doubt maybe it's a doubt about the goodness of god as he's presented in scripture maybe it's a doubt about the textual accuracy of the bible itself maybe it starts with a doubt about what the church has historically taught about sexuality and then the process of deconstruction begins with a doubt like that but it's like dominoes once that doubt falls it hits another one and then that falls and that falls it can move from biblical accuracy quickly into what you were taught all your life about the end times or what you were taught about hell or sexuality and then it's like these dominoes just begin to fall and another metaphor that i think is a really good and apt metaphor for deconstruction is the idea of a sweater i often hear this in deconstruction story so somebody who grows up in the church and when their beliefs are questioned and as they begin to pull those beliefs apart and discard those beliefs it's kind of like when you have a sweater with a little fray in it and the thread is sticking out so you grab the thread and nothing happens so you keep pulling it and you keep pulling it and eventually you don't have a sweater anymore you just have a pile of yarn and so i think in many ways uh that is kind of like the spiritual type of deconstruction that many christians are going through today many deconstruct all the way into atheism or some type of agnosticism others deconstruct into a type of progressive christianity or a broader type of spirituality and so my guests today have special insight into this process of deconstruction one from the perspective of someone who's been through that deconstruction and the other from the perspective of a pastor who has a passion for discipleship in general but especially in regard uh to those who are going through that process so we have a story of a contemporary christian music artist who deconstructed he met a local pastor this pastor took an interest in him loved him and discipled him back to historic christianity and so i'm going to introduce you to my guests one by one today so that you can hear their stories we are going to open this up for q a after we have a bit of discussion between ourselves so if you have a question for dave or for pastor bobby who i'm going to introduce you to in a moment please in the comments write question in all caps that will get our attention so we know that that's a question and not just some chat going on in the chat box so again if you have a question write the word question in all caps and then your question and we'll try to get to as many questions as possible as we go through this live stream process so the first guest i'd like to introduce you today is dave stovall and dave is the musical director at harpeth christian church in franklin tennessee he's also a recording artist and a producer he's previously played in bands and the band's audio adrenaline all you 90s kids remember audio adrenaline and waverly he actually just wrote a very provocative series of blog posts on renew.org called losing my faith in progressive christianity because in dave's story his deconstruction involved him deconstructing into progressive christianity so without further ado let's say hi to dave hi dave how are you hey lisa hey everybody thanks so much for having me on again oh it's great to have you yes in fact for those of you if this is your first introduction to dave we have a podcast we recorded where he tells his story in depth so you can go back through the archives to find that but dave for those who are unfamiliar with your story i would love it if you would tell us just you know it doesn't have to be the in-depth version but just the sort of helicopter flyover version of what it was like for you growing up in the church going through this process of deconstruction what your beliefs were when you were in uh progressive christianity and then what it looked like for you walking back out of that okay you know the last time we talked um you encouraged me to do he said to map out a minute version of my story five minute version of my story in ten minutes and i was like yeah i'm gonna do that but like i'm still working on the 10 article 12 15 article version of it so i haven't done it yet so i'll do my best um so i i grew up in the bible belt in alabama red bay alabama and i went to a southern baptist church growing up and um you know looking back super legalistic and i'm not here to hate on southern baptist churches like there was a lot of things that we did well uh when it came to like coming together but i just grew up with this faith that was leaning really hard on our pastors everything that he said was just gold no matter what and i remember thinking when i got into college and some of these questions started coming up about um the bible or about certain behaviors it just threw my faith off a little bit uh specifically things about like alcohol like i'd always grown up thinking you don't drink alcohol you don't say cuss words and you don't smoke cigarettes that's how you know you're a christian and uh and i just stayed away from those things but i started meeting people that partook in those things but they also were really good christians and it just threw me off and so i started looking through the bible myself and finding out that a lot of these southern baptist traditions have been handed um weren't like as solid as i thought they were they weren't like you know so solid in the bible that you can base the whole thing on they were more like uh gray areas and but they were taught with so much confidence from the stage that it just made me start having this doubt against the faith that i was had grown up in and so now all that started shifting in college and um and i just i had some experiences where i couldn't feel god's presence in my life as much as i had before when i was in college and i didn't know where he was and i didn't know what that meant i thought maybe that meant i wasn't a real christian or maybe it meant that god wasn't there at all and i tried to open up about my doubt with some of my friends and mentors and stuff like that and i felt like i was kind of shut up being like you know something's wrong with you like don't don't talk about that stuff and if you're talking about that there's something wrong with you so don't do it and um so i just locked that part up and moved on and just kind of wrestled with it on my own and that's when i started touring the country and my band waverly and stopped going to a local church and so i'm out there on the road with four or five other guys and we're talking about the lord and you know we're reading the bible occasionally we're reading books about the bible even more and we start um what i would look back and call now discipling each other but through the filter of our own thoughts and feelings about god's word rather than letting god's word be the authority over our thoughts and feelings and so that took me in a pretty far away place where you know with this the being becoming cynical with with kind of looking under the hood of the church with touring all over the country and kind of seeing some of the dark side of the christian industry christian music industry all of that kind of was the perfect storm for me to start um isolating away from the church and i felt different than especially people back at home that still went to these southern baptist churches and because of the books i was reading i felt more enlightened and so i just felt like a different christian and you know fast forward you know some odd years i'm somebody who hasn't been going to a local church if i've gone it's like i've swooped in to lead worship or or sing a song here and there because i wanted to help out and then i've gone on the way and i'm reading all these books and listening to these speakers and i wouldn't have called them this at the time but what they were they were progressive thinkers they were people that thought that our own thoughts and feelings were over the word of god and it was up to us to kind of pick apart and choose like this is uh something that fits in our culture super well this part doesn't so we're just going to move forward and to me hearing that i was like oh my gosh you know i i never wanted to leave christianity but i also felt like this stuff wasn't matching up and i didn't know how to reconcile the two so hearing about progressive christianity really helped me in that moment so i was like i can move forward and i don't have to believe in a god that hates gay people or believe in all these other things that i was having trouble believing and at least you told me to mention specific things and i'll mention some of those now like um i didn't really know if satan was real i thought maybe satan represented evil that was in me and so i stopped believing in an actual being named satan even though jesus had had conversations with him and referenced him i somehow just did away with that um i wondered why jesus came you know i wondered if you know was jesus really the son of god or was that something that was applied to him later by his followers to support this narrative um that was a lot like other narratives from other mythological uh type religions and stuff at that time so i was really kind of questioning all of that um i still loved god i just didn't know what to think about him and about really who he was and you know trying to shorten the story but eventually was at a place where i was done touring and i didn't know what god wanted me to do next and i was going to move home to alabama and that's when i met bobby harrington and we sat down and we talked briefly about me possibly leading worship at his church and i'm thinking man these guys seem pretty conservative compared to where i'm at but i don't know there's something here and i had gotten to a point in my spirituality where i was like god i literally don't know the way forward but i want to know the real truth now will you please show me the way and it was around that time that i met bobby um and you know we started the friendship and i'm not sure what he saw in me that made him made him want to bring me to his church to lead but we started a relationship that was real a real friendship you know we're still friends today but on his end it was more um than just a friendship it was about discipleship and he really pointed me back to scripture walked me through how we got the bible why we can trust the bible and one of the big shifting moments for me that he said was um you know who better to understand what jesus meant than the the apostles the disciples that were actually physically with him you know we should trust their words over you know 20th century white american authors right and i was like dang you're right and so that kind of began a second deconstruction for me where i needed to tear apart some more that i had rebuilt on my own and bobby started walking me through rebuilding it one block at a time in a very gentle way that has really helped me and changed my life and it brought me back to a much stronger faith than i had before and something that looks more much more like historic christianity than even what i was given in the southern baptist church growing up so i don't know how much time that was lisa how did i do that was great that was very good um i love how you call that almost like a second deconstruction because you've even said before and i'm paraphrasing because i can't remember the direct quote but you have said something along the lines of i had to deconstruct my progressive christianity i i because those were views you realized at a certain point and i don't want to put words in your mouth but what i gathered from what you were saying even on our other podcast and here is that even your progressive christianity was something that you sort of just caught because it was given to you but you hadn't really thought very deeply about why you believed certain things were true about the bible or about some of these questions you were going through so you had to deconstruct that as well which i think is an interesting way to to look at it and uh we're going to bring pastor bobby on here because one of the things i knew i wanted to do after i interviewed you the first time is i knew that i wanted to talk to you and bobby together because one of the biggest i would say topics that i am emailed about one of the first things people always want to talk about when i'm at a conference is hey i have somebody in my life who has deconstructed and i don't know what to do i don't know how to talk to them i don't know how to love them i do love them but they don't feel loved by me and i don't know how to make them feel loved all kinds of questions surrounding how do i engage in relationship with someone who's going through this process and i think your story with bobby is just so so so awesome so with that we'll go ahead and introduce everybody to our next guest and this is bobby harrington who is the lead pastor of harpeth christian church he's also the point leader of renew.org and discipleship.org these are both collaborative disciple-making organizations that bobby heads up so bobby hi there how are you hey great to be with you thank you for hosting us alisa well it is always great to talk with both of you and bobby you and i have worked together on some projects in the past and uh you're the one who introduced me to dave and shared his story with me for the first time i'd love to hear the story of dave and your meeting from your perspective dave's kind of told us what was going on on his side of things what was going on in your mind on your side of things okay great well as dave described it we were at a season where we needed some pinch hitters to lead worship and so at the time one of my co-preachers uh found out about dave and uh i said okay well i'll meet him i'll have lunch with him and so i met david lunch and i can remember he was just transparent you know i kind of like rob bell he said and you know he just kind of told me about himself but the thing that josh had told me about dave is what i had seen and that is that dave was just a you know he was a genuine guy who was trying to be authentic about it i've met a lot of progressives who have an axe to grind and that wasn't dave stovall so uh i invited uh dave to come and lead worship and we began a relationship and one of the things that we believe in alisa that i think is really important for everybody uh we call it intentional relational discipleship and what we mean by that is that um we when we enter into one of these kind of relationships and it can it can just be that you enter into a relationship with somebody and you're open like you don't have an agenda other than you're open and you're praying that god would use you to help them follow jesus and that's kind of how i was with dave just prayerful and open and then we we needed somebody to help lead worship and and uh so i just thought well let's see where god takes it and uh he came and led and we started this relationship and because dave was open and because you know i with my background i've had to work through a lot of questions and all that i i wasn't i'm not intimidated by the questions in fact i really appreciate them because when it's a genuine person asking you know hard questions we can deal with that because they're really in a truth seeking mode so we just like we would go to hockey games i invited dave to a hockey game my wife and i invited them into a small group with us so uh cindy and i had dave and summer uh in the small group you know we try to go out for lunch regularly and and and really the way jesus discipled people is he entered into a relationship and it's a genuine relationship where it's life on life and hopefully the thing that comes out is the love of god for a person because if we're being intentional believing that we could really help them to follow jesus but it comes out of any other motive than love people will sniff that out and so it was just like i genuinely love dave and uh so in this intentional relationship then there are some things that i found to be really important and that we really help people with and dave mentioned some of those so maybe i'll pause there and and you can ask me questions well one of the things that really stands out about your story of the two of you meeting each other was dave you mentioned that just before you met bobby you had prayed this really earnest prayer like lord whoever you are i want to know who you really are and it seemed like you had really opened your heart up to the reality of who god is no matter what where that might lead or what that might entail and so there's this openness and i think something that's really key in the success of your relationship and what happened there was dave's honesty with you bobby yeah because i'm speaking from the perspective of somebody who has been in the music industry the pressure to just give the right answers and not really let yourself be open to to share maybe something you're really questioning or something you're struggling with i think that for public christians that is probably the number one thing that ends up leading people into sin leading people even into like a secret type of sinful lifestyle or leading them into deconstruction that continues to snowball without any vulnerability or openness and so i think that really stands out about your story and that's a that's a testament to you both because dave you were open with with bobby to let him know where you were at but bobby it didn't scare you away because you perceived this uh genuineness about dave you you perceived that he was an honest seeker and so i'm curious to ask you bobby if dave would have come to you and maybe he was open but you could tell like he was out the door he he doesn't want anything to do with historic christianity how might your response to him differed from how you did respect you know i would have um my typical what i'll try to do you know i try to be praying about things and all of that and then what i'll do is uh try to fill somebody out a little bit um because if somebody's not really open and a lot of people get really hard when they're deconstructing and it's like you know it's not it's it's not productive uh i'm talking to somebody yesterday and we were talking about somebody else who's really you know in a bad place they're not really open and she said yeah she won't listen to it'll probably take her about 10 years before she realizes the way she was thinking is is really not going anywhere and so openness you know it's like jesus said he who has ears to hear let him hear and um i just think that's important but i do think we shouldn't be too quick to make a judgment about somebody like like i like the idea of kind of just testing it out because sometimes people will ask hard questions because they think you can't answer them or they think they're unanswerable and one of the things i really believe in is being authentic when you don't know it's okay not to know yeah years ago i studied under a christian philosopher and he quoted this great line he said if we ever feel like we have to pick between jesus and truth let's go with truth because we're going to arrive at truth and find that jesus was already there and i think that the you know just a like if you really believe the gospel it can handle a lot of scrutiny and i think we should you know the people need to know that that that questions and doubts uh are really important they're really okay yeah and jesus is the truth so it's like you don't have to actually choose between the two but i think sometimes we construct jesus in our own image and call that truth that's right so dave i'd like to ask you um just if you have any general thoughts at this point feel free to share those but even more specifically i'd also like you to comment bobby said you know we like the questions we welcome the questions were there questions you had that you thought oh this is really gonna stump him like he's not gonna have an answer for this was there anything like that as you were going through your process um oh man i'm having trouble thinking of one uh well first i wanted to i wanted to add something to what you were just talking about like when we met up at chewie's bobby yeah and uh you were like you know meeting me and trying to figure out who i was is um you know i got to that point with god where i was like i really just want to know the real truth no matter what and the last thing i wanted was to have a job where i was pretending to be something else because even though i wasn't pretending to be a completely different person when i was in waverly or audio adrenaline there were there was an element of i've got to say the right thing i need to be on all the time you know when somebody asks me how we're doing at the merch table i'm not going to say you know i'm kind of doubting the whole thing i'm not going to say that so that's the last thing that i wanted so part of me when we sat down at you he's thinking you know i'm just going to be super honest with him and and so that they can just you know say x and move on so i was like yeah like i'm gonna i'm gonna throw like the you know i'm gonna throw out rob bill's name and see what happens and uh i was just really shocked that y'all you know wanted to get to know me more i was like this is cool you know like this could shape up to be something where i never have to pretend and that's what it's turned into i just get to be the real me as a worship leader like every sunday and and during the week and that's such a beautiful thing um i'm drawing a blank on like things you know that we gotta make sure that you present uh you know authentic thing here in the sense that i don't want to act like i couldn't answer any questions because there's always questions a person can't answer but i think that and for your audience to know it's okay not to know but to say you know i really care about you and even though i can't give you an answer right now on this i'm gonna check it out and if you would would you let me get back to you on that yeah and i i think that that that's better than trying to bluff it yeah that's it's wise advice and one of the things i've observed go ahead yeah go ahead sorry i'm thinking one of the reasons why i didn't just come up with a list of questions to bobby was because our home group we were going through some renewed material which i don't think it was renewed at the time how to trust and follow jesus and stuff that material actually goes through a lot of the stuff true like one of the one of the big things i came in thinking was you know what about cosmic child abuse like why did it please god to crush jesus what's that about you know like and i probably would have come in with one of those questions like that but going through um trust and follow jesus answers a lot of those questions and kind of helps reorient um like your own hermeneutic about how you approach the bible because that is secretly what progressive christianity does as you're reading the books listening to the podcast is things are sounding more and more familiar things are sounding more and more right and true to you it's actually a thing called illusory truth effect which is really crazy thing you should look that up but you end up thinking things that sound familiar that must sound that must be true because that sounds so right it makes so much sense you start believing all those things that you're shifting your hermeneutic around inside your heart without realizing that's what you're doing and i think it's something that i've been trying to make sure i mention as i'm going forward because i have progressive christian friends still is that some people say progressive people just are arrogant and they just want to fit in and i just want to say my experience is not like that it's actually much more subtle than that like the arrogance about like we would say it's arrogant to approach scripture and decide what's right and wrong about it like paul was wrong it's an arrogant thing to say but these people have landed there after being diligent about searching and researching and hours of reading and go you know they're not just landing on it saying this sounds right and it helps me fit in with my friends and i don't have to need i don't need the bible anymore like that's not the attitude in most cases that i know of it's more of a humble approach which breaks my heart even more it's like man i want so bad for you all to come back and see that if you were to ask god to just lead you to what the real truth is i would you know bet a million dollars he's going to lead you back to jesus the same way he did with me if you would do that that's a good point and i'm really glad you brought that up because that's something i've even told audiences this when i go and speak about progressive christianity you know i do think there's pride underneath that i do think there's maybe unintended arrogance because it's so self-focused i think that's a sort of a natural thing but to your point about uh how sometimes and i've even seen this especially in the last few days where progressive christians are characterized like oh they're just trying to fit in they just want to be cool um in my i know that's not true because i read their books and i see the intense journey that so many people have gone i think you know there probably are a lot of progressive christians on the lay level maybe that it's just much easier to say oh yeah we we're we're cool we're good with that you know but there are a lot of progressive christians that have done deep work as far as they know the bible they know their arguments they're they're searching the scriptures to you know and so yeah i'm glad that you that you made that point because it's not a matter of just being cool um although i do think there like like i think there's a deeper issue of possibly pride and arrogance as it could be with all of us like we're all vulnerable to that and also uh as far as rather than saying oh it's just that they want to be cool i think that the the deep pressure to feel like you're being good like you are a good person and then when the world and when the culture is saying you are a bad person if you don't believe this that can be incredibly disorienting and confusing especially when the bible isn't really the the center of your authority anymore and um and so yeah i think there's sort of different factions in progressive christianity as far as i can tell where you have the much more theologically literate scholarship oriented uh sort of group and then you have the the sort of not as into that kind of stuff and group but at the same time we have our groups like that too so you know it's not just the progressives that do that um but someone is asking like this might be a good time to bring this question in and dave i'm curious to get your answer for this because i've answered this question i answer this question almost daily and i'm curious to see how you would answer this question this is from jeff davis on youtube can you reduce progressive christianity into a few key points ideologies that every progressive aligns with what would you say that would be if somebody said like just what is it what is progressive christianity okay so i don't think you can reduce it down to a few things that like all progressives will share because it seems like it's kind of different and they all kind of land on their own like i said this in my my articles that i ended up at like a custom tailored fit version of christianity for dave stovall and i never felt better um but i i think that there are definitely with me that would be in common with some of my progressive friends would be um the main one being your what you think about what the bible is saying trumps what the author may have meant if that makes sense so it's like you know paul um talking about women being quiet you would first kind of think well that doesn't sound right that doesn't fit with our culture uh what are we gonna do with this instead of like going further with that um you would just think that doesn't sound right um that like makes me feel weird you know i think about it when i read that and so i'm just going to say that that's cultural and you could even uh google that and you could find articles that would support that that viewpoint that's one and then i think maybe at the root of it is that you want to just you want to just love everybody but the definition of love would be you want to accept everyone like for who they are um which is a twisting of how jesus does it i think which is like of course he accepts everyone as they are but then he begins the process of making them like him because that's the ultimate best thing for anyone i don't think that you necessarily do that in progressive christianity um it's kind of like you're doing things to get yourself healthy and better i know i was doing tons of stuff to stay healthy mentally you know new agey things like meditation um [Music] mantra type stuff whatever that makes you a better person and you're just kind of accepting everyone as they are but i would say like the crucial thing is that scripture doesn't have the high authority in your life um that it does in historic christianity anymore yeah and that leads to all kinds of different places and i'd love bobby to get your thoughts on something i'm about to say because i think this is a good time to address the topic of historic christianity because we see we see this ex-evangelical hashtag and i think it's a very deceptive hashtag and i'll tell you why because nobody has a problem with somebody becoming a non-evangelical that's not the problem nobody's freaking out over somebody saying you know i'm just not going to label myself evangelical anymore but i still hold to the gospel and you know uh historical type christians who might be found in the eastern orthodox church or the catholic church they're not going to label themselves ex-evangelicals so there's there's sort of it's it's been co-opted a bit it's not just about leaving evangelicalism it's really about abandoning the historic doctrines of the faith and they use the evangelical hashtag because they've been raised in the evangelical church but i've said from the beginning when i've analyzed progressive christianity the opposite of progressive christianity is not evangelicalism now i do identify as an evangelical at the moment but you know that could go anywhere that could go off the rails who who knows i'm committed to the gospel not evangelicalism yeah and so talk to us about historic christianity we're not talking about you know southern baptists from 1950 on when we talk about historic christianity yeah let me just say a couple of things about that that i hope will be helpful one of the my observations that i have is a lot of people are reacting against the overstatements of evangelical tribes so like dave mentioned you know it's wrong to drink it's wrong to have a cigarette and there's this whole list of behaviors or beliefs that you know that the only right belief is that the world was created in six literal 24-hour days that's the only right belief and so you have and i could list these out but this reaction against that where people realize wait that that's not working that doesn't work and so they label that evangelical and they then in overreacting to overstatements they feel like the whole thing's just wrong and one of the things that we teach and this is part of what we went through with dave is that we teach a breakdown of doctrines in scripture and let me tell you why this is important by describing something that is a halfway house that a lot of people believe but ultimately it won't satisfy they say it's either essential or it's not important right and then come up with a very reductionistic gospel that's essential and everything else well you know this person has this idea that person has that idea and all of a sudden truth isn't that important to you anymore and all of a sudden you know that's fine to believe what the mormons do it's fine to believe what the catholics do and and uh so that's not going to be helpful uh if you really want to honor god according to orthodox historic christianity so what we teach is there's essential elements that are written in blood there's important elements that are written in ink and then there's peripheral or personal what paul calls disputables in romans 14 that are written in pencil these are things where you know in a local church people are just going to handle differently or they're not that clear like i think one of the things that is a third bucket issue it's it's written in pencil is are the creation days literal 24-hour days or is the day j theory better there are people who believe in the integrity of scripture who are devout followers of jesus and on that issue they differ so you want to be careful that you have clarity uh and uh and so i can pursue that more with you if you want but let's focus on the gospel yeah because i think one of the things that's really important today not only is the gospel the core of salvation so we want to make sure we you know cling to that but it's also the center of everything else and when you go back through the centuries uh you will find although sometimes there's different lights on the gospel but that the gospel is not like a disputed thing in its core elements it's there in the apostles creed and the early version of that was written as early as you know 200 it's in the rule of faith in the 100s and 200s the gospels there in the nicene creed again there's other stuff maybe that surrounds it but the gospel is the thing that is kind of the cornerstone of anything that's historic christianity and the good news on that i'll just add this because i do think in deconstructing deconstructionism is that how we get to believe what we believe is important and i'll just say this the evidence for jesus and the death burial and resurrection which is at the heart of the gospel the evidence for that is extremely strong in history and in uh various other ways of looking at it one of the things i do at least is i take people to israel and uh when we we do it we just we just focus on the life of jesus and it's blown me away the significance and substance of the evidence for jesus and the core teachings of the gospel yeah that's good stuff and i want to make a comment here on the death burial and resurrection of jesus because uh i've i've started to make the point that we we often say that and we think you know that's the gospel death burial and resurrection and it is when those words mean what they've always meant but i've heard many progressive christians say well i affirm the death burial and resurrection of jesus but then when you ask further questions well they actually don't believe in the blood atonement of jesus yeah we actually don't believe his death was salvific and it's uh in in and i'm not even going to get into the weeds of penal substitutionary atonement but just the idea that his he died in your place in any kind of broad substitutionary sense they they don't mean it like that and then that's christ right sacrifice of atonement for sin and then you know resurrection takes a more metaphorical so they can say i affirm death burial and resurrection but that's where we're at in our culture is that words just don't have much meaning anymore which is why we have to drill down yeah we really do uh lisa let me just tell you uh one of the things uh that's really good about what you're doing here is that when people become progressives they don't like being pushed on this they like to they like to act like they're well educated and informed and and broad but in my experience of having some good relationships with people who became progressive you start pressing them on what do you mean by the resurrection of the dead and then you start saying well what you believe is not uh orthodox christianity you know people didn't believe that that's not part of the apostles creed it's not part of the nice like what you're believing it's not in any sense something that you can say you have in common with the roman catholic church the orthodox church or historic protestantism yeah i'm going to take this comment from abigail because i think this is a good comment here abigail says i think some conservative christians need to extend compassion toward progressive christians in order to understand them and not bully them or condemn them uh abigail thank you so much for that thoughtful comment and i think that what we're seeing displayed between the relationship between bobby and dave and their story of dave coming into church as a progressive christian we're seeing that that you know bobby did he showed compassion he loved them he tried to understand them um i think and but i'll add something to this too one of the difficulties about calling progressive christianity out is that in the mind of so many people in culture disagreement because of the way that everyone has redefined the word love they view disagreement as a personal attack or they view it as some kind of intolerance toward them or bullying toward them even if that's not the intent or even what's actually carried out i i only say that because if i you know if i go on facebook and i might want to address something somebody like jenn hatmaker has said or something i i try very very hard to never do personal attacks to never see this person you do a great job thank you i really try to do that in fact if anybody finds a clip of me doing an ad hominem or a personal attack where i'm calling somebody a name or calling you know please tell me and i want to repent from that and i don't want to do that but i have found that just by bringing the idea out and saying here's why i think this is false here's why i think this is dangerous even here's why i think you should run from this um often that can be perceived as bullying in that world so i think that's something that that we need to keep in mind as well as we you know we can't let people kind of change the rules and then say okay well we'll play by this new set of rules by just not saying anything um we're we're trying to rescue people from false ideas that have life and death consequences because if christianity is true then we have to speak out you know it doesn't matter if it's not true if it's not true it doesn't matter just live your life do it do what works for you right but we want to we want to expose bad ideas because we love people and we want them to be living in the fullness of who god created them to be and so that's uh that's something that we do but bobby go ahead yeah no i was just gonna add something one of the things that um because uh dave and others like him are teachable like they they genuinely wanna know and they don't presume one of the things you run into uh when you're a pastor is people presume can easily presume things about you and so they don't engage in an honest conversation um but because dave was open to the honest conversation uh and because we had a relationship that's really good but let me tell you something that a lot of people miss and this is the game changer so it involves a relationship a genuine relationship we're trusting that the holy spirit is present but we've got to get to the mind we've got to get to what people really believe in second corinthians chapter 10 of the apostle paul is writing to the church in corinth and he's talking about how it's a spiritual warfare and you get ready for this idea oh it's a spiritual warfare it's going to be all this spiritual stuff and what he says is no it's a battle of the mind he says we take captive every thought so he's talking about his role in discipling people we take captive every thought and make it obedient to christ so at some level there is no deconstructing deconstructionism or constructing faith without getting to the mind yes and one of the problems that we face is a lot of evangelical christianity has been anti-intellectual that's right and it hurts us now i'm not talking about overly intellectual or anything like that but in the journey with dave and you know in the group that we had there for a while it was uh dave and summer and we had a lesbian couple and uh then several others and it was just you know it's a relationship it's an environment we're caring about each other but we're trying to get them into the word of god i'll get to that in just a second and also some key ways of thinking about the truthfulness of scripture so um yeah i can tell you more about that but let me pause there yeah dave do you have anything to add yeah i was gonna say um the thing that really helped me out in the beginning bobby was how curious you were about the way that i thought um and that didn't mean just about the bible like you were like what tv shows you watch you know just curious about me and then but we would also get down to the way that i thought about certain things about the bible and if anything ever came up that you obviously knew was bad in my thinking you know you wouldn't be like i don't know about that you would literally take the bible and open it up and ask you to read it and we'd read it and you'd say what did the author say and uh there's no wiggle room there it's like well he literally said this and you know you would help me pick apart things and you know with the knowledge that you have about the background about you know the authors and where we get the text who it was written to you was really helpful for me for you to explain to me uh certain words and like why they mean that um you know i wrote in my latest blog about how interested i was in the could also means because that's what progressive christianity does this word could also mean you were kind of do that um with words but you would have uh it was much weightier what you were saying because it wasn't like they could have meant this they could have meant that and then here's all this doubt and question that's going to go along with that in your brain now go have fun with that it was like this word has always meant this before and this is the way they would have interpreted this word when this was written so that's how we need to interpret it now like that kind of thing was huge so curiosity and being willing to open up the bible and and and read it together and and let that be awkward for me you know just kind of sitting in that together that was helpful hey uh elisa let me mention something because i'm a bit concerned um like the idea is that there's not a lot of people out there who can spend as much time as i have studying and and doing all this and i came from a non-believing background and you know really had to work through all all the stuff and still to this day i really you know i want to know for myself what's true and right but in a local church or somebody's joining us and they're watching and they're concerned about a loved one the most important thing is always going to be the relationship it's got to start with genuinely loving them but then you need some tools so i just want to mention and i wasn't planning to do this so i just want to mention two tools one is you want to have content that you cover that gets to the mind but like what what are we really believing here like what's the foundation i've had the privilege of really rubbing shoulders with and coordinating disciple making across the nation and the churches that have the best people with the best backbone have systemic practices of making sure that they get them into the basics like the core gospel on a regular basis yes and here's what i say i say to the people in our church to say like we have this material here dave was talking about trust and follow jesus uh it's people say well i already know this well well good the question isn't do you know it can you teach it are you teaching it like in the people you're working with are you teaching it to your children because it's got to be so well known what hebrews 6 calls the elementary teachings you've got to know them so well and be able to explain them and show them so well that it helps you to be grounded so that's number one the second thing and i really want to encourage if there's any pastors or church leaders watching this you've got to get in your church a place we'll just use this expression for deep discipleship so for us we have a class we call digging deeper i think it actually wasn't something we decided we were going to do because we said well this will really help people what happened is that we hired a student pastor student minister and he wasn't very well educated in the bible and we knew of churches that had this leadership training and because i've spent all this time like i knew that's not going to be hard for me and we had an elder in our church and so we started this class we said we'll just invite anybody and so now we're having like 30 people every week from 6 30 friday morning until 8 o'clock and we we do a deep dive we we do a deep dive uh which you can't do in a sermon i can tell you i'm a preacher you know you can't do it on sunday morning the way you like but you do this deep dive and you and you then you get at what people really it's what paul said in second corinthians 10. we take captive every thought and we deal with it we say what's really true and right it's good and that those two things discipling material for relationships where you make sure you're covering on a on a systemic basis so that everybody can teach the elementary teachings and then you have deep discipleship training in the church every church can do that and i really believe we're living in a time where every church has to do that and more that's great here's a question from keith holland and i'll throw this out to either one of you whoever wants to answer i think this is an important question it's deconstructing young people often connect their doubts to legalistic elders how can i help them avoid associating bad people with historic christianity that's a great question it really is dave do you want to take it or do you want me to what was it how can i help them say the last part again can i see the question deconstructing young people often connect their doubts to legalistic elders how can i help them avoid associating bad people with historic christianity because there's a lot of bad stuff in our history for sure yeah let me tackle that and then you can add to it dave because okay you know i work with a lot of churches across the country and you know first of all let me just say this scripture really teaches about the importance of elders in a local church but paul told timothy don't be hasty and laying hands on and a lot of times you get bad elders and it really makes it difficult uh for people i think the that peop you have to find a way to engage people in disciplining relationships outside the core programs of the church when you have that in other words like uh in my early days when i was following jesus i actually became a follower of jesus at the university of calgary in canada i went off and studied the bible got a bachelor's and a master's degree and i came back and worked with my dad's trucking company for five years and uh we would often bring people to church and it was like oh this is bad and so we just started to develop practices where you want to honor the leaders of your church because god teaches that but everybody who's with us can carve out time during the week to have discipling relationships where you get to be the primary discipler who's guiding and loving and doing life with people and sometimes that's the best way because the average person can't get rid of a bad elder but they just need to find a way to be in discipline relationships where that bad elder is not dominant anything to add there dave that's pretty much what i was going to say was that person just needs to be the genuine christian in their life but not just like that pops up here and there but like an intentional disciple maker yeah in their life yeah hey so would it be okay to mention the book yeah no in fact i would yeah i want to mention this book because you know discipleship being so important bobby has a book i've got it right here it's called disciple making disciple making the core mission of the church which is i know bobby that's your heart this is like your bread and butter right here um and just give us a we i want to get to a few more questions here but give us a little bit of a fly over what this book is about what are people getting if they if they get this book i'll be real brief with it the reason i'm bringing it up elise is not just um you know because i wanted people to look at the book it's actually more rooted in this i personally don't believe that we're going to be able to help people the way god wants us to without going back to intentional relational disciple making and i think churches have to do that so the book is a short book it'll it'll help you to see how god intended that the local church would be a disciple making would be involved in an intentional relational disciple making but some people are not in context where that's going to happen you can still get into these relationships and that book will just be a good introductory guide to do it here's what i believe i believe that moving forward the challenges are far greater than people realize i think alisa you're on you know kind of the leading edge of trying to help people and we've talked about the intellectual engagement but the intellectual engagement which is absolutely essential won't go very far without christ-like loving relationships and the combination of those two is intentional disciple-making yeah that's good here's a question from lori carroll chandler my former pastor preached that noah's ark maybe didn't happen maybe just a story to make a point is this a red flag of moving toward progressive christianity dave you look like you want to answer that i think so any can you show the question one more time anytime that's the phrase maybe just a story to make a point that's a huge red flag you know somebody told me about genesis they're like uh and i don't remember which progressive thinker said this but they were like the story of genesis doesn't have to be literally true for it to be true because man falls every day and it's deeper than literally true and you're like yeah but like i kind of want to know like is it is this so literally true that's where one of the you know jesus thought noah literally lived that's right okay so that that's a huge that was a huge shift for me is i finally landed on the point where i was like if jesus if he believed it was true if he referenced it as a real thing example jonah that i'm going to believe it's a real thing even though i read through jonah and i'm like what is what's happening in the last chapter of this story it sounds like a fable with a moral and it would fit better in that box than in a literal thing but i'm like jesus referenced jonah yeah he referenced these people as real and you know he's he's the one that's making the rules so i'm with him yeah and i have a blog post or it's actually a series of two blog posts on my website called eight things jesus believed about scripture and of course whatever jesus had to say about scripture was in reference to the old testament but he said my words will never pass away so i think we have hints in the new testament that he he was commissioning a new testament to be written as when he speaks to his disciples saying the the spirit of truth will come and will bring to remembrance everything i've taught you and my words will never pass away stuff like that so i think we have you know reference for the new but we know exactly what jesus thought about the old testament and in my blog post in fact there's a great book that i want to recommend to everyone called uh i think it's called christ in the bible by john wenham uh yes it's not a big thick book it's it's you know it's it's you can get through it and it's a great book that just died he's a great scholar dives in 45 1970 for the year i was born so was that book so yeah when when i came to faith that ended up being a really helpful book just on this whole question yeah you can just say this too when you talk about like when i'm dealing with people who don't believe and i'm trying to lead them how to construct their faith from a non-believing background we've already talked about you want to focus on jesus the historical and archaeological the evidence for jesus is incredibly strong the evidence for the gospels is really strong and it's out of that place that we build our understanding of the old testament it's out of that place because jesus said he was going to give his teachings to the apostles that we build our doctrine of helping people to understand the rest of the new testament so the good news is the foundation on jesus god in his providence and i i don't think any of this is an accident the evidence is so strong that that becomes the building place and then we say well what did jesus think about noah like we just said or what did jesus say about giving his teachings to the apostles and you build it that way yeah and and this is really an important question it's a great question because you know you might think jonah doesn't really matter noah's ark doesn't really matter you know jesus is what matters but here's the thing if you can explain away miraculous events in the bible what's to keep you from explaining away the resurrection i mean what's the difference and and i love the way frank turek comes to talk about this type of topic because he says you know the greatest miracle in the bible if you ask people they're going to say oh it's the resurrection it's actually not no the greatest miracle in the bible is creation if and i think it was norm geisler who said if god can make water out of nothing it's no problem turning water to wine so if creation is true then jonah noah's ark none of that is implausible i mean god created everything out of nothing so you know we have there's no reason to no if there were literary reasons like jesus told parables we know those are those are stories he told to make a point like when he's telling a parable those weren't literal story like things that happened in history but that's because it's it says this is a parable he told parables but unless there's a really good literary reason to say that a story in the bible is a parable or something like that then if we explain it away as non-miraculous then that's a snowball why not just go to the resurrection then yeah yeah it's the proclivity to diminish the teachings of the bible when you when you notice that i think this all started with that question it's the it's the tendency to like diminish scripture it's that that starts to go to bad places and that at the heart of it is a lack of a sense of the holiness of god because you know it's a it's not a small thing to just make light of scripture yeah that's true that's good all right we're going to go to a couple more questions here before we close out tonight uh baptized by jesus wants to know in progressive christianity do they water baptize [Music] i have a way i would answer this but what do you think uh so i think the church i think one of the churches i was at before harpist will be considered a progressive church i'm not sure if they're actually officially that or not but they did water baptisms so yeah i think churches are doing a lot of the progressive church if they're on the way to becoming openly progressive they're still doing the same things but i don't know if they're openly progressive what they do now i honestly don't know that well that's i think that yeah that's kind of how i would answer too because it's not like there's a denomination called progressive christianity where everybody sort of does the same thing and there's actually not that many churches that identify themselves like we are a progressive christian church a lot of progressive christians go to mainline denominations now there's more and more happening of course we know of a church bobby in nashville where this happened it started as an evangelical church it rebranded it's a progressive christian church now and so i think we're starting to see that happen and i don't know what they're doing now but like dave said a lot of times they they want to appear to be the right version of christianity the historic version so they'll do the sacraments they'll do communion they'll even do like um i read a story of it wasn't just one church but several churches who on ash wednesday they they used stardust and like glitter instead of ash to make the point that you are stardust and that's what they would have you say when they put the ash on the forehead for ash wednesday so there's a lot of sort of similarity that they'll do to maintain appearances that it's historic but can i address this because yeah something that i i learned so i was discipled by a guy uh princeton phd guy uh one of the world's leading experts in ancient ephesus you know the whole timothy and did timothy really mean what he did about women and all that well anyway i spent so much time with this guy and he had spent a lot of time uh broadly looking at christianity told me something and and i'm like wow that is so helpful and he said the more progressive you become in your theology the more likely it is you want to be liturgical because your belief systems are no longer your security so the liturgy becomes your security so on the way toward progressive christianity and you see this in some main mainline denominations pretty strongly they get very rigid around their liturgy but their beliefs would be like totally crazy interesting i went to a seminary and it was really interesting uh they really fussed that the speaker didn't use gender appropriate terminology and and the the professor would say that and then the next sentence we're in the gospel of matthew and he says yeah matthew's wrong here about this like whoa well so we know that you're you're sure about some things but you're not sure about others and then just a lot of time was spent around the liturgy and the way they did it is what gave them security yeah yeah i've observed that as well and um like for example in my book i talk about nadia boltz-webber's church was she's not the main pastor there now but they do all they sing hymns they do liturgy they do baptism they do a lot of the sacraments um and yet what they teach is is just completely the opposite of historic christianity as far as the gospel is concerned and sexuality and so um that is definitely something like don't just because somebody does the liturgy or just because somebody sings a hymn or does baptism it doesn't mean that that could be just more like a novelty for them it could be more of like you know and for people who've been in it for a while they they don't want to come right out and say you know i just want to throw away this christianity stuff or if you're a pastor and you spent your whole life getting trained and you know you know this is what you do and so you still want to be it you're you're going to be it's the liturgy that's going to give you the meaning hey elisa some of the people are going to listen to this because they know us and i just want to put in a plug for your book okay i think you've done a really good job and i'm so grateful uh for you and thankful for your leadership oh thanks bobby the things that you're saying so i encourage everybody uh lisa childers another gospel get that book thank you bobby that's very kind thank you for that let's let's do one more question and then i'll let each of you sort of maybe encourage our viewers tonight with just an ending thought but the question we'll end with here is from musicalblonde91 and it says what do you do when the preaching is expository and biblically sound but the layman have socially liberal opinions that aren't biblical uh i'll jump in here first it's interesting you take it so you're gonna find this more and more so here's the deal people are being discipled every day okay and most people are in a social media bubble five to seven hours a day and they're being discipled all the time then they come to church and there is no way that one or two hours on a sunday is going to out disciple all the discipling throughout the week but so people are going to be attached to churches but they actually don't believe what those churches do and i mean you know i'm going to say this unless there's a shift back to a disciple making emphasis in the church that's you know sunday through the next saturday people's minds will be discipled by the world so it's the new reality and and the best way the best antidote for that is to invite people into disciplining relationships where you look at the word of god together it's good all right final thoughts here guys we get uh i know that people are wanting so much some encouragement some hope on how to respond to people in their lives that they love that are going through deconstruction i'm sure there are people watching that might even be secretly deconstructing and they're afraid to tell anyone they don't know what to do um just what kind of encouragement or hope would you would you leave our viewers with tonight dave we'll start with you we'll let bobby close it out tonight okay if you're deconstructing just know you don't have to do it alone and you actually need to reach out to somebody and i would say pray and even fast about who to pick out to talk to because if you pick out somebody who's secretly progressive then that's how they're going to disciple you ask god to find somebody for you that will disciple you and come under them and just let them lead you and be open and honest even about the crazy thoughts um because if you don't get them out they're gonna have so much power over you and you're just gonna be trapped there and and it hurts it really hurts to deconstruct i know that feeling and i've been there so no you're not alone there is hope for you and there is a way forward and it doesn't have to look like making stuff up it can actually be something that you join back into historic christianity that's good and i want to add something before we go to bobby because people ask me sometimes like what did you when because when i went through my deconstruction people say well what what was it like for people around you what were they thinking and i remember the first time somebody asked me that i thought i didn't tell anybody i it was all inside i didn't think i could tell anybody for a couple of reasons number one i didn't want anyone else to doubt their faith i didn't want to be responsible for someone going through their own deconstruction and second of all i just thought people would think i was weak or that i i wasn't a real christian or that i had a fake faith or that i was just this kind of small-minded person i was just a ton of reasons that i didn't really open up to anyone about what's going on it everything that happens i chronicle this all in my book but everything that all of my deconstruction process was deeply internal i if i did sort of crack the door open with anyone it was always like very guarded because i just i didn't want to bring anybody down i didn't want to cause them to doubt their faith and there were just so many so many reasons and and taboos around it back then i think i'm so thankful that people are talking about it now so that there can be a more open environment to you know more pastors like bobby where people would say i don't this is really scary what's happening because you're right dave it hurts it's very painful i've even heard um people who have deconstructed all the way into atheism say there's like this terror when you're deconstructing and i i feel that really deeply because i felt it i went through it i understand it and so um i'm so glad that there is a more open environment for people to talk about i think if we keep talking about it and pastors can can be encouraged by you your story today to say you know like we can we can do this so so bobby what let's close this out tonight what would you encourage us all with in this conversation so i want to mention something that i think is really important and it's the whole spiritual world behind all these things and the whole what we're seeing in north america really is um demonic and there's forces in the spiritual realm i don't understand all that but i just know the bible teaches that and if if you're looking carefully you can see it so i'm gonna i'm gonna end with a a story of hope and optimism that's caught up with an exhortation what we've been saying throughout this is it's got to be relationships of genuine love and then at some level you've got to get to the mind and really disciple the mind in the context of a relationship of give and take but a lot of people are not going to let you do that they're not going to you know let you engage in those conversations so i want to tell you a story about somebody who's very far away that was my sister and uh i remember my sister talking about like your beliefs to me and how different they were from her beliefs and i realized just how terrible it was so it was in a process where god's really helping me to see what it means to be lost without jesus and it was years ago but i started i wasn't sure what to do but i felt this inner conviction just pray pray for her and and my family at the time so i started praying every morning and every night i would just pray because i loved her so much and uh i couldn't do anything like we had a relationship but she didn't want to talk about the things of god so i started to pray every morning and every night and here's my prayer i prayed god whatever it takes whatever it takes for her to come to genuine faith in you oh dear lord would you please do it and i was just like really bold and i was persistent i mean i'm talking about persistence for months and in this case a couple of years then in one week my sister um she lost her job she was in training to be in the canadian olympics in equestrian my dad had to sell the horse she couldn't keep the horse and uh her boyfriend broke up with her all in one week and she tried to take her life and was rescued at the last minute and then it's just like the doors open up she came and she spent a month with my wife and i she lived with us and it was like we had this relationship she was in a place where she listened and i'll never forget the morning when she leaned over to me and she said i'm ready to surrender my life to jesus and i just think god moves and we we need to believe that he moves and he hears and answers prayer sometimes it's persistent desperate whatever it takes god prayers but god hears our prayers and the holy spirit is alive and uh god will work in the lives of his children and we we just have to hold out belief and confidence in that it's good well i want to thank my two guests today uh bobby harrington and dave stovall thanks to everybody who's listening to this or watching this again it helps if you click like leave a comment subscribe on youtube click the bell icon to be notified every time we release a new video we'd love for you to be a part of the conversations we're having over here and don't forget to check out bobby's book disciple making the core mission of the church check out renew.org and discipleship.org and thanks so much for being with us tonight

Channel: Alisa Childers

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Length: 76min 8sec (4568 seconds)

Published: Mon May 24 2021