WEBVTT
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Wide-ranging discussion today with Gateway Seminary Bay Area Director Dr.
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Cameron Schweitzer. We're going to talk about how dangerous hypocrisy and Christian
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conspiracy theories can be,
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how loving your enemy factors into politics, how and why you should roast your
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own coffee beans, and America's greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards.
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One theme that kind of weaves its
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way through the whole episode is the sufficiency of Scripture. And as Dr.
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Schweitzer says, Specifically how the sufficiency of Scripture ought to inform
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the way that we do all aspects of ministry. Including politics. Including politics.
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Advice, soul care, and resources that work together to build up your local fellowship
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and the broader kingdom of God.
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Join hosts, Pastor Chris Cole and Dr. Chase Thompson from the Great Commission
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Association, led by Dr. Mike Stewart, as they explore the frontiers of ministry
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and aim for the goal of making every church flourish.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome in to episode number 26 of the Every Church Flourishing podcast.
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Our goal here is to help your church thrive, bear fruit, flourish wherever you
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are. And if you are in the Central California area, really anywhere in California, potentially,
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We want to connect with you. This podcast is part of the Great Commission Association
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Family of Churches, which is a group of SBC churches in California that does
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ministry together and encourages each other.
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And if you're a church leader, you're a church pastor, you're tired of going it alone.
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Hey, you know what? We want to partner with you.
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So contact us through our website, which is gcasbc.org. That's gcasbc.org.
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And tell them the ECF podcast sent you.
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Today, Pastor Christopher Cole and I are going to finish out our interview with
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Gateway Seminary Bay Area Director Dr.
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Cameron Schweitzer, and we're going to talk about a ton of interesting and really
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deep church-related and theology-related topics, and you are going to
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Want to, I think, hang on to the very end where Cameron educates Chris and I
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all about the benefits of roasting your own premium coffee beans.
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And honestly, I can't wait to try the prime rib of coffee after spending pretty
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much every day of my life apparently drinking the bologna or the spam of coffee.
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We're going to pick up the interview with Dr. Schweitzer right in the middle.
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And he's telling us all about the Bay Area Theology Symposium coming up,
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like I said, in San Francisco later this year.
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And it's going to be covering topics like Christian nationalism,
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Leading politically polarized churches, and honestly, it sounds like all sorts
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of controversial things that pastors and church leaders have to deal with.
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So let's jump into the interview.
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So, Cameron, the symposium is going to aim to equip pastors and leaders and whatnot to
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deal with all of the political polarization that we're seeing right now and
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also discuss some really hot button issues at kind of the intersection of politics and theology.
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And would you say those are some of the core theological issues that we need
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to be thinking about? Or would you say there are other theological issues that
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you would say, hey, we've got to really sort of think and engage on those?
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So that's an important ministerial issue, especially in California,
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especially the Bay Area, where you have strong political opinion.
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We, at the seminary, others have learned that a lot of pastors are asking the
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question, how do I lead through these tumultuous political times?
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What do we do with that? What do we do when in our church we have someone who
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wants to advocate Christian nationalism?
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And on the other side, we want someone who wants to overthrow all of the American
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system and try to advocate for communism.
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Like, what do you do with that? How do you lead through that?
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So we felt like we had a ripe opportunity to address a very controversial but
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important subject of how do Baptists in the free church tradition think about
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the relationship of the church and the state and how our theology should inform our political views.
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But to your question, I've thought a lot about what are some of the most important
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pressing issues in theology today.
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And just to name a few, I would say having a clear and robust understanding
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of the sufficiency of Scripture, and specifically how the sufficiency of Scripture
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ought to inform the way that we do
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all aspects of ministry. Including politics. Including politics,
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right? So there's a difference between the necessity of scripture,
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right? The Bible's necessary.
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No one who's an evangelical Bible-affirming person would say the Bible's unnecessary.
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The controversial point comes in is that in our actions and in our ministerial
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actions, are we showing that we believe that the Bible is enough,
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that it's the Bible alone?
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And I'm concerned that a lot of our ministries are showing that we don't necessarily
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believe that the Bible is sufficient.
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So I think having a full-orbed understanding of the doctrine of sufficiency
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and how the Bible applied to all matters of life and practice and ministry is
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sufficient for all we need for life and for godliness.
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I would also say, and Chris and I were talking about this earlier,
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that there is a need for a call to holiness.
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I mean, the pastors in the West can look at the statistics for pornography use
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or divorce or alcoholism, whatever.
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Like we are a church that is not solely focused on holiness like we ought to be.
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Let me put it like this, that I was reading a study recently done by Barna that
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I was in in the last year or so, and who knows how many hundreds or thousands
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of people Barna talked to in the midst of doing this study. But it was essentially
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this, that they were asking the people to whom they were speaking.
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So they were talking to three different groups of people, Christians,
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people who practice non-Christian faith, and people who are atheists or agnostic.
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So they asked the atheists and agnostics and non-Christian faith practitioners a series of questions.
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They asked Christians similar but different questions. And so they asked the
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practitioners of non-Christian faith and the atheist agnostics,
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what's the biggest reason that you don't consider the Christian?
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And do you know what the overwhelming 60 or 70% answer was? Hypocrisy.
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That they don't live out what they say they believe. So that's a matter of holiness,
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discipleship, virtue, what have you.
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Then they asked the Christians a similar question. Why do you think that people
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of non-Christian faiths are not drawn to Christianity or consider Christianity?
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Again, you want to know the overwhelming answer? 60, 70%? Hypocrisy.
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So by our own lips, we admit that we are not living out our faith in such a
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way that it would draw unbelievers.
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It's not winsome.
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It's not winsome. We are not an otherworldly alien exile-like figure journeying
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through earth. And let me put it this way.
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Over the last couple of years, I was asked to design and then teach an online
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apologetics class on the early Christian apologists.
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So this was an early apologetics historical theology class where we are looking
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at early figures like Clement or Justin Martyr, Augustine, things like that.
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Men who wrote the early Christian apologetic works of the first few centuries in Greek and Latin.
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And what's very stunning among all of these apologists is that their most common
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argument for the legitimacy of the Christian faith is, look at the way we live.
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If you look at the way we live, we are not like the rest of you.
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And that even the leaders, people of philosophical training,
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you see some of the ways that they talk about why Christianity is gaining ground.
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And they say, well, they take better care of our wood as an orphan than we do.
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They have a common table, but not a common bed.
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And so that all the apologists recognize, even the opponents of the apologists
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recognize, that the reason the Christian faith was winsome and compelling is
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that they had an ethic that showed that what they believed mattered and made
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a difference in their life.
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And so to me, I see one of the biggest issues facing ministry leaders and the
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church in the West is a lack of serious engagement in the necessity of holiness
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and in the importance of holiness.
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And that we as Protestants who fully affirm the souls of the Reformation sometimes
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don't know what to do with texts like Hebrews where it says,
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and pursue the holiness without which you will not see the Lord.
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And so we struggle as Protestants to what do you do with those conditional statements
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about holiness, which, of course, the Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox church
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takes up and says, see, you say the Bible is sufficient and necessary,
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but what do you do with a text like this?
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And so I really think that we need to have, as individuals, as churches,
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a recognition that we ought to,
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you and I were talking earlier about, a season of repentance,
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renewal, consecration of recognizing as individuals and as a corporate body,
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we are not living out the Christian faith that, like Jesus said, teach them to obey.
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Right. You know, it's interesting what you just said. I'm reflecting as I think
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here. I want to go a little bit maybe off our script or plan here.
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Because you raised something that just I think is so important,
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the idea of the sufficiency of Scripture and how it hits in different angles to the,
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let's say, theologically progressive liberal person that wants to dismiss or
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diminish Scripture and deny that Scripture speaks to certain issues,
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say biblical sexuality, what do we do with homosexuality, and so on, right?
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There are other angles to that, too, because the pragmatist wants to say,
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well, you know, Scripture doesn't tell us how, and it's true,
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there are many things Scripture doesn't tell us how to do, but yet we are going
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to create theological argumentation.
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Or evidentiary sort of, you know, presumptions saying this, and we need to add
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this, this methodological,
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restriction or this methodological progression or tool that we think that we've
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decided has become pragmatically necessary, so we add to the Word of God, or the legalist,
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that adds to the Word of God going beyond Scripture.
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You know, Paul writes in Corinthians, he says, you know, I want to warn you,
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brothers and sisters, to not go beyond what is written, which speaks to the
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issue of the sufficiency of Scripture.
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Do we believe Scripture is sufficient to do that which God intended it to do.
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It's obviously, you know, the Bible is not a book of astrophysics.
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Yeah. It's not a computer coding textbook. So, there are areas that it is not
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pretending to be sufficient for versus life and godliness, right?
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Which is one of the places it speaks very deliberately to its own sufficiency.
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All we need for life and for godliness. Very clear.
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And I would add, for the Christian ministry.
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Yeah.
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For the practice of Christian ministry.
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Okay. And so I just think that that's such a key point for maybe for us just
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to sit with for just a second and just say, as we think about the theological
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issues, what is the importance for a believer to,
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use scripture as the lens through which we view these contemporary issues versus
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the other way that we are often perhaps pragmatically prone to do,
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or experientially prone to do, where we look at a worldview and then we view
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Scripture through that worldview.
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Yeah. Or we have a culture that we've adopted that we then look at Scripture through that culture.
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Or we have a fear or a bias or an insecurity about something, And now we look
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at scripture through that lens of our own insecurity, our own bias,
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and now we're going to examine the word of God through something else.
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How do we teach people to flip that script and teach them to look at,
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the politics through scripture, not the other way around, or to look at,
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hey, how do we handle this not in a culturally biased or inherited way,
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but we look at the Word of God and we let the Word of God speak to all cultures at all times,
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or we let the Word of God address our insecurities and fears rather than being
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driven by those things when it comes to the sufficiency of Scripture.
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What do you think, Chase? I mean, you've not said much. You're a well-trained pastor, scholar.
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I just love throwing these jump balls up there.
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I'm going to let him jump first. Yeah.
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So fortunately, I'm the editor of this podcast. So if what I'm about to say
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is over the top or controversial, boop.
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The only people that hear it is the four of us. I think, Pastor Christopher,
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you are delicately challenging.
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What are the pervasive political attitudes in this country right now,
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which is one among Christians, which is one of pragmatism, that we will support
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this person, this issue, this way.
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Because it's essentially the lesser of two evils.
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Can you define pragmatism for everyone?
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Pragmatism is a very practical approach that sort of often can ignore moral
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dimensions and other things like that, right? Am I missing anything in my definition of pragmatism?
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To just add, pragmatism is a view of truth that says something's true if it works.
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Yes.
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Right, versus saying something's true because it either corresponds,
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in this reality, that's called the correspondence view of truth.
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Like this table has a black tablecloth, right? Well, that statement that,
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you know, does that proposition agree with reality?
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Is this a tablecloth and is it black? Yes, correspondence. There's also a coherence
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view of truth, which is this idea, does this proposition, this statement, does it cohere?
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Does it fit with the rest of your worldview? Does it make sense?
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It's metaphysics and then epistemology.
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But then pragmatism, which is where a lot of Americans lie, is that something's true if it works.
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Yes. That's a significant statement. But of course, if something's true,
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there's a sense in which it will work, right?
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But versus saying, if it works, then it's true.
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And that's how we know truthfulness. And so then that's where you had someone
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like Rick Warren a few years ago when this was being debated on the Southern
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Baptist Convention floor of whether they're going to be disfellowshipped or not.
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And a lot of people were very sad to see Rick act the way he did and say the
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things he did, because essentially he came out and said, look at what Saddleback
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did. Look at the purpose-driven ministry. Look at our numbers.
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How can you say we're in the wrong? Yes. That's a pragmatic statement.
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That's a pragmatic argument that we're right. What we've done is right because
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of the results that we produce. That's pragmatism.
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And like you're saying, Chase, that's what drives a lot of ministerial thinking
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is, do we do this? Well, we'll only do it if it works and if it shows results.
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Is that sort of what I thought you were getting at?
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Absolutely, yes. And it drives a lot of Christian political thinking right now
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in the way we vote, and more than the way we vote, the way we advocate.
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And I think that's sort of along the lines of what you're talking about is what
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we see now, at least what I'm seeing, I can speak for myself,
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is Christians advocating for things out of a sense of pragmatism that
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Is hypocritical in many ways to what the Word of God says and what we believe.
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And I think we're going to see a pretty astounding harvest of that in the next 20 or so years.
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We had the moral majority rise up in the 80s and in many ways advocated for
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some good things, some pragmatic things.
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And then it turned out that many of them were hypocrites. And
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we've seen since the 80s and 90s a tremendous slide in Christian adherence,
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statistically, Barna, Lifeway, etc., in the United States of America.
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And I'm not necessarily saying that's the fault of the moral majority,
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but when I grew up, Christians were not so much hated for their political beliefs,
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their political stances, their moral beliefs, their moral stances.
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But yes, we talked about hypocrisy and pharisaicalism, but I feel like it's
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exponentially greater now because too many Christians have bought into especially
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political pragmatism, but other kinds of pragmatism as well, and not a
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sola scriptura, Bible-only driven worldview that informs of our actions.
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Can I answer your question now, Chris? Sure, go for it. So to go to your question,
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Chris, about how do we help Christians, again, address this issue of how do
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I think biblically first rather than culturally or politically or sociologically
00:16:29.715 --> 00:16:30.815
or psychologically first?
00:16:30.815 --> 00:16:35.015
So the first thing to recognize is that in this process, we have to both affirm
00:16:35.015 --> 00:16:38.455
in ourselves and recognize and then help others to affirm and recognize that
00:16:38.455 --> 00:16:42.655
we all have worldviews and presuppositions through which we read the scriptures.
00:16:42.655 --> 00:16:47.535
So it is impossible to have a naked view of the Bible outside of your own beliefs,
00:16:47.535 --> 00:16:50.055
outside of your own cultural baggage and experience.
00:16:50.055 --> 00:16:54.095
The way that I put it when I teach intuitive philosophy is that imagine that
00:16:54.095 --> 00:16:58.055
all of us are born with glasses on. Now I don't know about the two of you or
00:16:58.495 --> 00:17:00.607
If you have contacts, how blind you might be,
00:17:00.910 --> 00:17:04.520
without your glasses i'm so you're quite blind i'm okay it's my left eye that's
00:17:04.520 --> 00:17:07.680
pretty bad if i if my right eye went blind i'd be like essentially blank my
00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:11.260
left eye is terrible my right eye is 20 20 but just imagine that all of us are
00:17:11.260 --> 00:17:15.530
born functionally blind but that then we have on upon our face
00:17:15.870 --> 00:17:20.170
fuse a set of glasses that then give us 20 20 vision of the world it's like
00:17:20.170 --> 00:17:22.660
how a fish doesn't know it's wet because it's always been in the water in the
00:17:22.660 --> 00:17:26.550
same way we all have worldviews these glasses that have been fused to our face
00:17:26.550 --> 00:17:30.120
that have been informed and shaped by who we were born to?
00:17:30.120 --> 00:17:34.080
Who are our parents? What culture do we find ourselves? What time do we find
00:17:34.080 --> 00:17:38.950
ourselves in? What kind of socioeconomic status do I have? What race was I born into?
00:17:39.290 --> 00:17:42.880
What religion was I brought up in? What kind of experiences did I have as a
00:17:42.880 --> 00:17:44.720
child, traumatic or good or otherwise?
00:17:44.720 --> 00:17:49.240
And all of these form the glasses that we have on our face that then shape and
00:17:49.240 --> 00:17:53.240
inform and color the way we view the world so that it's impossible to have a
00:17:53.240 --> 00:17:56.870
presuppositionalist or a naked worldview view of the world.
00:17:56.870 --> 00:18:00.830
It's fundamentally impossible. So we have to be aware that we all have a framework,
00:18:00.830 --> 00:18:04.790
a grid through which we view and interpret and understand the world.
00:18:06.150 --> 00:18:10.650
And what's really helpful to begin to understand what your worldview is,
00:18:10.650 --> 00:18:14.170
is you want to then talk to people who don't share your world.
00:18:14.170 --> 00:18:17.770
You want to befriend and have conversations with people who are from different
00:18:17.770 --> 00:18:21.880
races or different socioeconomic backgrounds or different countries.
00:18:21.880 --> 00:18:26.320
And from my own experience, This is where I really began to see some of my worldview,
00:18:26.320 --> 00:18:30.190
some of my challenges that I didn't know I had until I married into an Egyptian family.
00:18:30.190 --> 00:18:34.980
Then I began to see some of my own cultural perspectives, my own cultural baggage,
00:18:34.980 --> 00:18:37.650
my own ways of viewing the world that I as a Christian had
00:18:37.950 --> 00:18:42.480
unjustifiedly viewed as the biblical way of doing something or the biblical
00:18:42.480 --> 00:18:45.800
way of viewing something, which then I came to recognize that that's a cultural
00:18:45.800 --> 00:18:49.448
way of understanding that biblical truth. But there are other cultural ways
00:18:49.772 --> 00:18:53.234
of understanding that given biblical practice or Christian historical practice.
00:18:53.234 --> 00:18:57.184
So it's very important to befriend and talk to others who are from a different
00:18:57.184 --> 00:19:02.134
community, a different race, a different country to begin to helpfully see the
00:19:02.134 --> 00:19:05.224
kinds of glasses you have on your face. It's also very important,
00:19:05.224 --> 00:19:08.134
as C.S. Lewis would commend to us, to read old books.
00:19:08.674 --> 00:19:11.784
For every new book you read, you should read an old one, or at least one to
00:19:11.784 --> 00:19:16.914
every three, because what's very helpful is to then listen to the witness of history
00:19:17.234 --> 00:19:21.604
and to view how someone like an Augustine in the 4th and 5th century conceived
00:19:21.604 --> 00:19:23.694
of the Christian faith, or to read of a
00:19:24.274 --> 00:19:28.674
Eastern Orthodox father from the 12th century, from the Byzantine Empire,
00:19:28.674 --> 00:19:33.594
to read Aquinas, to read any number of theologians or biblical scholars you
00:19:33.594 --> 00:19:37.105
could think about over the last few centuries, to then begin to help you,
00:19:37.244 --> 00:19:39.543
they who are from a different historical
00:19:39.735 --> 00:19:43.414
setting, to then helpfully see your own historical setting.
00:19:43.414 --> 00:19:46.054
And then you can begin to see what's relative, what can change,
00:19:46.054 --> 00:19:49.314
and then what's true and endures. As one of my philosophy professors used to
00:19:49.314 --> 00:19:54.299
say in college to tangentially bring it to this idea, what is true will endure,
00:19:54.584 --> 00:19:58.891
while what is false will recur. He said bad ideas recur, good ideas endure.
00:19:58.891 --> 00:20:02.881
And so reading history and people from different stages of history will help
00:20:02.881 --> 00:20:07.121
you to see those things of what's relevant in all times and all places and what's
00:20:07.121 --> 00:20:09.091
irrelevant in different times and in different cultures.
00:20:09.091 --> 00:20:13.031
So we have to do better at Christian worldview thinking, both in our own lives
00:20:13.031 --> 00:20:14.641
and in the lives of the people that we're leading.
00:20:15.190 --> 00:20:19.791
And then once we begin to have a sense of what our own cultural perspectives are,
00:20:19.791 --> 00:20:23.411
our personal perspectives are, knowing that we can never view the Bible or view
00:20:23.411 --> 00:20:27.851
our lives, ourselves outside of those perspectives, then you humbly and contritely,
00:20:27.851 --> 00:20:31.561
and as best you can, begin to read the Bible to try to figure out what do
00:20:31.901 --> 00:20:34.031
I, what am I, what do I think the Bible's saying?
00:20:34.031 --> 00:20:35.271
And this then goes to your question,
00:20:35.271 --> 00:20:38.811
is we need to train ourselves and our people to go to the Bible first.
00:20:38.811 --> 00:20:41.141
Like you and I were talking about earlier with people on the mission field,
00:20:41.141 --> 00:20:43.581
with a new Christian from a Hindu background or Muslim background,
00:20:43.581 --> 00:20:44.681
what's the first thing they tell them to do?
00:20:44.681 --> 00:20:47.521
Read your Bible. Read it every day. Read it for at least five minutes,
00:20:47.521 --> 00:20:50.741
and then 10 minutes, And then in an hour, like listen to it when you drive,
00:20:50.741 --> 00:20:55.091
you have to help yourself and your people have a thoroughgoing knowledge of
00:20:55.091 --> 00:20:57.491
the Bible so that they know it from front to back.
00:20:57.491 --> 00:21:00.441
They know its story. They know its theology. They know its characters.
00:21:00.441 --> 00:21:01.851
They know its ethical commands.
00:21:01.851 --> 00:21:05.951
And once they have a full orbed understanding of the biblical worldview,
00:21:05.951 --> 00:21:07.501
its doctrines, its ethics,
00:21:08.961 --> 00:21:12.491
Then they can begin to think through how the Bible informs how they ought to
00:21:12.491 --> 00:21:15.571
think about a given topic or how they ought to approach a given decision.
00:21:15.571 --> 00:21:17.069
What's biblical worldview thinking?
00:21:17.203 --> 00:21:20.411
So then this is where I would provide a framework for what I call Christian
00:21:20.411 --> 00:21:23.621
decision-making, or you can call it Christian thinking.
00:21:23.621 --> 00:21:27.491
You want to have this grid of, does the Bible speak to this?
00:21:27.491 --> 00:21:31.661
And if it does, then you have your answer. Does the Bible strictly speak against it?
00:21:31.661 --> 00:21:33.561
Then you have your answer, right? And then you'd want to go,
00:21:33.561 --> 00:21:37.441
is there a theological argument I can make from the scriptures that help me
00:21:37.441 --> 00:21:39.341
think through this given issue?
00:21:39.341 --> 00:21:43.951
Is there a historical tradition that will help me think through this issue,
00:21:43.951 --> 00:21:46.961
like the Protestant tradition or the greater traditions of the creeds that goes
00:21:46.961 --> 00:21:49.681
all the way back to the 4th century. If you're thinking about a decision you
00:21:49.681 --> 00:21:52.416
have to make, you want to then think through, okay, what's called the...
00:21:52.718 --> 00:21:55.758
The conscience principle, like, is my going against this is going to afflict
00:21:55.758 --> 00:21:58.718
my conscience? As Martin Luther said, what doesn't proceed from faith is sin.
00:21:58.718 --> 00:22:00.898
It's neither good nor right to go against your conscience. We've got to think
00:22:00.898 --> 00:22:03.578
about that. We then got to think about the Christian witness principle.
00:22:03.958 --> 00:22:07.608
How am I believing this thing or acting out this decision? How does that affect
00:22:07.608 --> 00:22:11.058
the way that my non-Christian neighbors or friends or coworkers or family members
00:22:11.058 --> 00:22:12.708
will think about my Christian faith?
00:22:12.708 --> 00:22:15.658
Am I harming my Christian faith? And then you also want to think about the weaker
00:22:15.658 --> 00:22:18.718
brother principle. Am I doing this particular thing? Am I harming the weaker
00:22:18.718 --> 00:22:20.992
brother's conscience? And if so, then don't do it.
00:22:21.370 --> 00:22:26.153
So I hope that helps. Like, that's a framework to help people think through
00:22:26.153 --> 00:22:30.513
biblically how they should think about given topics, how they should approach given decisions.
00:22:30.513 --> 00:22:35.123
Yeah, and I think that that's sort of, you know, key to really understanding
00:22:35.123 --> 00:22:40.573
when we talk about the sufficiency of Scripture, we are not saying that my lenses
00:22:40.573 --> 00:22:42.433
that I was born with are sufficient.
00:22:42.433 --> 00:22:42.889
That's right.
00:22:43.080 --> 00:22:48.413
In fact, we're saying we practice an epistemological humility that we are actually
00:22:48.413 --> 00:22:52.803
saying it is very likely that my frame is not perfect.
00:22:53.363 --> 00:23:00.173
I love one of the early Baptist confessions, 1644, the preamble to the 1644
00:23:00.173 --> 00:23:05.593
London Baptist confession, if my memory is correct, is that there is a preamble
00:23:05.593 --> 00:23:08.233
statement that our Baptist forefathers said.
00:23:08.233 --> 00:23:14.883
They said, because this is not scripture, it must by necessity contain error,
00:23:15.363 --> 00:23:18.928
which I just think get such an astonishing level of humility, right?
00:23:19.155 --> 00:23:23.383
They were like, that does not negate that this is from our best minds,
00:23:23.383 --> 00:23:24.713
our best understanding.
00:23:24.713 --> 00:23:31.183
But they started with the assumption that while Scripture is sufficient, and it
00:23:31.603 --> 00:23:36.616
is not just sufficient, it's sufficiently revealed and applied by the Holy Spirit
00:23:36.848 --> 00:23:41.453
in living and active ways, the humility that is required for us is to say,
00:23:41.453 --> 00:23:45.423
my frame that I came out of is likely insufficient.
00:23:46.083 --> 00:23:51.773
And my worldview is likely insufficient, and therefore, I need to be cautious
00:23:51.773 --> 00:23:56.463
about being hyper-dogmatic about anything that Scripture is not explicitly clear
00:23:56.463 --> 00:24:00.236
on, so that I'm not either adding to or taking away from the Word of God.
00:24:00.743 --> 00:24:05.463
And trying to trust in the sufficiency of Scripture means that I am not trusting
00:24:05.463 --> 00:24:11.607
in the sufficiency of Augustine, or Lutheran, or my 21st century Western
00:24:11.915 --> 00:24:16.561
American context and how that shapes our understanding of the sufficiency of
00:24:16.561 --> 00:24:20.471
Scripture, how we make decisions and apply it in the framework that you were
00:24:20.471 --> 00:24:24.631
talking about, which I think was very, very helpful. But we're off topic probably.
00:24:25.071 --> 00:24:28.721
Let me add one more thing to the off topic part, because Cameron said something
00:24:28.721 --> 00:24:30.931
a few minutes ago that I think is really important.
00:24:31.811 --> 00:24:35.521
Whenever I get to church on Sunday morning, one of the first things I go do
00:24:35.521 --> 00:24:40.581
is find my wife to evaluate usually my collar or my shoulder.
00:24:40.581 --> 00:24:44.751
I have a wounded shoulder, and I can't always fix my collar properly,
00:24:44.751 --> 00:24:47.314
so she can see it and fix it.
00:24:47.587 --> 00:24:51.571
And you were talking about the worldview lens we have. And what I'm about to
00:24:51.571 --> 00:24:58.232
say is not to say we should take off our biblical worldview and live out of other worldviews, but
00:24:58.533 --> 00:25:03.634
Here's an easy practice that I've adopted over the past, I don't know, 15, 20 years.
00:25:03.974 --> 00:25:09.054
I have certain friends on Facebook that are, one of them is an atheist named Robert.
00:25:09.054 --> 00:25:13.904
One of them is a progressive female pastor named Charlotte. I've never met either
00:25:13.904 --> 00:25:18.654
of these people in my life. I vehemently disagree with their point of view on
00:25:19.534 --> 00:25:22.024
sports, theology, politics.
00:25:22.114 --> 00:25:24.124
I love how sports gets in there.
00:25:24.124 --> 00:25:27.959
Well, yeah, Robert is a Clemson-Auburn fan, so boo his.
00:25:28.261 --> 00:25:32.994
But I read his posts all the time because he's a highly intelligent professor,
00:25:32.994 --> 00:25:39.633
a thoughtful person who is an atheist and can't stand Christians by and large.
00:25:39.917 --> 00:25:46.504
And he has really sound reasons sometimes for not liking Christians,
00:25:46.504 --> 00:25:48.555
most of which boil down to hypocrisy.
00:25:48.857 --> 00:25:54.524
And as a pastor of Christians, I want to read what progressive people who completely
00:25:54.524 --> 00:25:57.742
dismiss the Bible say about biblical Christians.
00:25:57.997 --> 00:26:00.974
I want to read what atheists who
00:26:01.614 --> 00:26:05.677
don't believe in God and have negative experiences with Christians all the time,
00:26:05.886 --> 00:26:10.674
I want to read and understand where they're coming from, not so I can adopt their
00:26:11.054 --> 00:26:16.835
glasses, their lens, so that I can help equip our people, our church members—
00:26:17.143 --> 00:26:22.912
to be good newsers, to bring the good news to them, to understand what these
00:26:22.912 --> 00:26:24.432
people are thinking and living.
00:26:24.432 --> 00:26:29.452
And quite frankly, so many Christians, not in the Bay Area, but often in the
00:26:29.452 --> 00:26:33.692
South and other places, we live in a bubble of Christianity.
00:26:33.692 --> 00:26:38.482
And yes, we're to be in the world, but not of the world, but we don't understand
00:26:38.482 --> 00:26:40.845
the world, and therefore we don't understand the mission field.
00:26:41.153 --> 00:26:49.872
And we live too much in our glasses and not enough in the missional call of the scripture.
00:26:49.872 --> 00:26:53.112
Yeah, yeah. I agree. And this is where sometimes, as we were talking earlier,
00:26:53.112 --> 00:26:56.612
Chris, about the frustrations we have as California Southern Baptists with what
00:26:56.612 --> 00:27:00.172
we see go on in the larger convention or people who come from not California.
00:27:00.172 --> 00:27:04.242
Our experience of the convention of Southern Baptist life is very different out here.
00:27:04.242 --> 00:27:07.402
And to your question earlier about what are some of the most important theological
00:27:07.402 --> 00:27:09.632
issues facing us today, I think this is one of them.
00:27:09.632 --> 00:27:16.062
That there is an inaccurate and very passionate conflation of cultural Christianity
00:27:16.462 --> 00:27:20.822
with biblical truth, and that where people are conflating their interpretation
00:27:20.822 --> 00:27:23.352
of a text with the inerrancy of that.
00:27:23.352 --> 00:27:28.562
They think the text means this, and then that this ends up becoming the inerrant truth.
00:27:28.562 --> 00:27:32.292
And so that therefore to disagree with that is then to be a heretic,
00:27:32.292 --> 00:27:36.812
or to be a liberal Christian, or to be whatever, you know, apostatized word
00:27:36.812 --> 00:27:39.342
you want to put in there, a negative, you know, bugaboo word.
00:27:39.842 --> 00:27:43.242
And that to me is such a significant issue as I'm looking around at ministries,
00:27:43.242 --> 00:27:46.429
I don't name them on the air, but like ministries I think of that have made
00:27:46.804 --> 00:27:50.235
what I call theological triage drift, right? You've heard of like first-tier,
00:27:50.235 --> 00:27:53.385
second-tier, third-tier issues, where I'm seeing people take what are second
00:27:53.385 --> 00:27:55.395
and third-tier issues, and they kind of float up.
00:27:55.735 --> 00:27:59.585
To second become one and a half or one, or three become two and a half or two,
00:27:59.585 --> 00:28:01.255
and you're like, what is going on here?
00:28:01.255 --> 00:28:05.495
And I'll put it this way. Marrying into an Egyptian family helped me to see
00:28:05.875 --> 00:28:09.335
that the strong argument for cessationism,
00:28:09.755 --> 00:28:13.565
I usually find tied to Western European or English, tight-lipped,
00:28:13.565 --> 00:28:16.335
socially appropriate ways of viewing the world.
00:28:16.335 --> 00:28:20.895
And I just have to ask someone who is a strong cessationist,
00:28:20.895 --> 00:28:25.475
who has very emotionless experiences in church, like, when was the last time you danced?
00:28:25.475 --> 00:28:28.995
I mean, if you're a pastor who's in his 50s or 60s, did you joyfully dance at
00:28:28.995 --> 00:28:31.515
your daughter's? I've been to a wedding in the past where there was no dancing.
00:28:31.975 --> 00:28:34.155
And so to me, there are just things
00:28:34.155 --> 00:28:36.715
that I've come to realize that people believe, and I was one of them.
00:28:36.715 --> 00:28:39.895
It's like, well, this is a biblical view. It's not cultural, it's biblical.
00:28:39.895 --> 00:28:42.415
It's like, it's cultural. And I wish there was more, like you said,
00:28:42.415 --> 00:28:46.405
intellectual humility to recognize where the text is the text and my interpretation
00:28:46.405 --> 00:28:48.215
of the text is an interpretation of the text.
00:28:48.215 --> 00:28:52.305
And we have to be more charitable in recognizing those different interpretations
00:28:52.305 --> 00:28:55.295
and then being more open to correction from history
00:28:55.655 --> 00:28:59.965
or from other cultures that are not Western or white, that have something important
00:28:59.965 --> 00:29:03.335
and profound to say about the biblical view of.
00:29:03.335 --> 00:29:06.355
So I think that's a significant issue in Western Christianity today.
00:29:06.355 --> 00:29:09.485
Well, I know we're drawing this thread out, but that triggered a thought in
00:29:09.485 --> 00:29:17.291
my mind, which is, what happens when we take what is clearly explicit and sufficient in Scripture—,
00:29:17.877 --> 00:29:24.661
as the way of being like Jesus, and we dismiss or diminish it because we have
00:29:24.661 --> 00:29:29.086
adopted one of these other worldview frameworks. Let me give you a practical
00:29:29.249 --> 00:29:31.530
example of this last night, right?
00:29:31.530 --> 00:29:35.971
Scripture is very clear. Are we to love our neighbors as ourselves?
00:29:36.471 --> 00:29:41.551
Are we Ephesians chapter four? We are to let no unwholesome word proceed from
00:29:41.551 --> 00:29:46.951
our mouth, but only such word as is good for edification according to the need
00:29:46.951 --> 00:29:50.931
of the moment that it may do what? That it may give grace to those who hear, right?
00:29:51.571 --> 00:29:56.141
Those are clearly explicit. Or Galatians chapter 5, what is the fruit of the Spirit?
00:29:56.141 --> 00:30:01.221
Love, joy, peace, patience. Paul defines love in 1 Corinthians chapter 13,
00:30:01.221 --> 00:30:03.601
love is patient, love is kind, right?
00:30:03.601 --> 00:30:07.951
We all know those things inherent, but just within the last 48 hours,
00:30:07.951 --> 00:30:11.455
a gentleman stood on a national stage outside the White House,
00:30:11.612 --> 00:30:15.261
having engaged in martial combat, and then stood up and said,
00:30:15.261 --> 00:30:22.111
Jesus Christ is Lord, and then immediately derided a former president's spouse as a man.
00:30:22.811 --> 00:30:27.581
So there is a worldview that allows that, that says that's okay.
00:30:27.581 --> 00:30:32.431
I can say Jesus Christ is Lord and publicly humiliate and say something that
00:30:32.431 --> 00:30:37.951
is fundamentally just not true in order to mock or deride someone that I don't
00:30:37.951 --> 00:30:39.251
agree with politically.
00:30:39.871 --> 00:30:45.511
And the way of somehow being okay with saying, I believe scripture is sufficient.
00:30:45.511 --> 00:30:49.111
I believe Jesus Christ is Lord. I believe these things, but I don't have to
00:30:49.111 --> 00:30:51.471
be loving and kind and patient.
00:30:52.911 --> 00:30:58.241
To me, I don't understand your view of sufficiency of scripture because Jesus
00:30:58.241 --> 00:31:01.133
said it very clearly. You're to love your enemies.
00:31:01.586 --> 00:31:05.816
So, even if you do disagree with this person politically, you may hold very
00:31:05.816 --> 00:31:08.166
strong different oppositional views.
00:31:08.166 --> 00:31:13.546
How could that be justified as being part of the way of Jesus Christ?
00:31:13.546 --> 00:31:18.726
And I think that destroys our witness. It makes our witness not compelling.
00:31:18.726 --> 00:31:23.376
Of course. And I think it actually diminishes the sufficiency of Scripture because
00:31:23.376 --> 00:31:26.995
those people then turn around and say Scripture is sufficient. Yeah.
00:31:27.566 --> 00:31:31.346
We've got to do an episode, speaking of what you said. we got to do an episode
00:31:31.346 --> 00:31:35.406
or two or three on Christian conspiracy theories. Because if you guys spend
00:31:35.406 --> 00:31:36.826
any amount of time on social media...
00:31:37.006 --> 00:31:38.706
This is Chase's world, man. He loves this.
00:31:38.706 --> 00:31:44.076
Dude, there are... People act like they are plugged in and know the UFC fighter
00:31:44.076 --> 00:31:46.446
you're talking about. He's sure of what he said.
00:31:46.946 --> 00:31:50.316
You don't know, buddy. You don't... I mean, that's just insane.
00:31:50.316 --> 00:31:55.616
And it aggravates me to no end that we proclaim Christ as the way,
00:31:55.616 --> 00:31:58.576
the truth, and the life and the only way of salvation out of one mouth.
00:31:58.576 --> 00:32:06.666
And then with great confidence say, the government is killing us via chemtrails.
00:32:06.666 --> 00:32:10.286
And look, I'm sure some of those conspiracy theories are true.
00:32:11.006 --> 00:32:14.636
I've studied the history of conspiracy theories. Some of them will end up being
00:32:14.636 --> 00:32:18.976
true. But we know the Word of God is true. And to spout off all this stuff that
00:32:18.976 --> 00:32:23.691
has, I don't know, a 4% chance of being truth and combine it with your Christian witness—
00:32:24.765 --> 00:32:26.662
That's what grinds my gears. Yeah, I bet.
00:32:26.812 --> 00:32:28.032
It's very frustrating.
00:32:28.032 --> 00:32:30.902
Well, Chase, we should take this back to where we kind of wanted this conversation.
00:32:30.912 --> 00:32:35.561
Let's be a little more vanilla and traditional. Let's talk a little bit about the Nicene Creed.
00:32:35.845 --> 00:32:39.282
I think what happened is Cameron got us excited. Got us riled up.
00:32:39.892 --> 00:32:42.042
Riled up. Riled up. Love it.
00:32:42.042 --> 00:32:45.792
The upcoming Bay Area Theology Symposium.
00:32:45.792 --> 00:32:51.532
That's right. The last one that happened in 2025, which I did not attend, but I attended online.
00:32:51.532 --> 00:32:55.592
I know I watched the YouTube videos, was slightly less controversial,
00:32:55.592 --> 00:33:00.932
I think, slightly less likely to result in violence. But it was around a very
00:33:00.932 --> 00:33:04.972
significant topic, which is the Nicene Creed.
00:33:05.492 --> 00:33:10.722
And so tell us a little bit about the 2025 Bay Area Theology Symposium.
00:33:10.722 --> 00:33:16.342
And why was the Nicene Creed, this statement of faith from almost 17,
00:33:16.342 --> 00:33:17.292
well, no, 17... 70 years ago.
00:33:17.832 --> 00:33:18.457
70 years ago. 1701.
00:33:18.457 --> 00:33:24.922
1701, yeah. Why was this so important? Why have a symposium on this statement of faith?
00:33:24.922 --> 00:33:28.902
Yeah, so two things. So one is like an anniversary, and well,
00:33:28.902 --> 00:33:29.732
not like an anniversary.
00:33:29.732 --> 00:33:32.842
One reason was the anniversary, and two was the contextual controversy.
00:33:32.842 --> 00:33:35.652
So one, last year was the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed.
00:33:35.652 --> 00:33:38.302
So if there's ever a time to talk about it, last year was the time to talk.
00:33:38.302 --> 00:33:40.552
And there was conferences all over America, all over the world,
00:33:40.552 --> 00:33:42.432
on the enduring relevance of the Nicene Creed.
00:33:42.432 --> 00:33:44.212
And then secondly was the contextual
00:33:44.212 --> 00:33:46.812
situation in the Southern Baptist Convention over the last few years.
00:33:46.812 --> 00:33:51.472
There's been debate as to what extent, if at all, we are Nicene-affirming Christians
00:33:51.472 --> 00:33:55.672
as Southern Baptists, and to what extent, if at all, we can add the Nicene Creed
00:33:55.672 --> 00:34:00.162
or the Nicene Constantinoplean Creed as an addendum or as a part of the Southern00:34:00.162 --> 00:34:01.692
Baptist Faith and Message 2000.00:34:01.692 --> 00:34:05.172
And it's interesting that one of the scholars who is spearheading that effort00:34:05.172 --> 00:34:09.322
is now a theologian at not a Southern Baptist seminary college anymore.00:34:09.322 --> 00:34:10.375
I'll just put it that way.00:34:10.554 --> 00:34:11.942
That is an interesting story.00:34:11.942 --> 00:34:13.010
It is an interesting story.00:34:13.446 --> 00:34:15.463
But they could do that research offline.00:34:15.463 --> 00:34:17.933
They could do that research offline as to who I'm speaking about.00:34:17.933 --> 00:34:19.393
And not a fan of the SBC.00:34:20.753 --> 00:34:23.723
Not a fan of the SBC anymore. They're saying that we are nicene denying,00:34:23.723 --> 00:34:26.913
which as I say, it's the introduction to the book that's coming out from that conference.00:34:26.913 --> 00:34:31.653
Any accusation that Southern Baptists are functionally or practically denying00:34:31.653 --> 00:34:38.813
nicene creed is just asinine. It has no basis in reality or in the creed of our denomination.00:34:39.153 --> 00:34:43.403
You would have zero luck going to the convention hall of the Southern Baptist00:34:43.403 --> 00:34:48.153
Convention annual meeting, going around with a hot mic, asking pastors about,00:34:48.153 --> 00:34:51.073
they may not even know the Nicene Creed itself, but you just ask them the doctrinal00:34:51.073 --> 00:34:53.333
statements of what the creed affirms, they would totally affirm it.00:34:53.333 --> 00:34:54.983
Because if they couldn't affirm it, then of course we would say,00:34:54.983 --> 00:34:58.593
if you don't believe that Jesus is the son of God, you can't be in our convention.00:34:58.593 --> 00:35:02.073
So anyways, there was over the last few years, significant controversy as to00:35:02.073 --> 00:35:06.423
whether or not Southern Baptists can affirm the Nicene Creed, or are we creedal at all?00:35:06.423 --> 00:35:10.293
And to what extent ought we to be creedal? And so with that controversy roiling00:35:10.293 --> 00:35:13.563
last summer, I just felt sort of like what God said to Isaiah,00:35:13.563 --> 00:35:15.573
here I am sent, or Isaiah said to God, here I am, send me.00:35:15.953 --> 00:35:18.893
And did you not find yourself appointed for a time such as this?00:35:18.893 --> 00:35:21.633
And I looked around and said, well, I want to call together some of my friends00:35:21.633 --> 00:35:25.953
and colleagues to address this question in California from a Baptistic perspective00:35:25.953 --> 00:35:30.993
of, can we still affirm and champion the thought of the Nicene Creed in the00:35:30.993 --> 00:35:33.753
21st century for Baptists who live and do ministry00:35:34.133 --> 00:35:37.163
And believe the things they do in California in the 21st century?00:35:37.163 --> 00:35:40.987
And Because the truths of the creed are biblical.00:35:41.230 --> 00:35:44.823
They're just put in a way that's helpful and beautiful. It's true and it's beautiful.00:35:44.823 --> 00:35:47.213
And so that, and it's biblical. So then of course we want to champion.00:35:47.213 --> 00:35:51.383
And we live in the stream and the shadow, so to speak, of the great truths that00:35:51.383 --> 00:35:55.663
that creed, that those men put together 1700 years ago, that we are Christians00:35:55.663 --> 00:35:59.545
and not Arians or Jehovah's Witness or Mormons.00:35:59.863 --> 00:36:03.186
Because we believe that the Son is not of similar substance to the Father,00:36:03.186 --> 00:36:05.056
but of the same substance of the Father.00:36:05.056 --> 00:36:08.596
He is true God from true God, light from light, true God from true God,00:36:08.596 --> 00:36:12.776
even though as he became incarnate and became man for us and for our salvation.00:36:12.776 --> 00:36:17.286
And so we wanted to spend some time joyfully reflecting on how the theology00:36:17.286 --> 00:36:21.596
of the Nicene Creed, which is biblical theology, has clear roots in the scripture00:36:21.596 --> 00:36:25.176
and ought to inform the way Baptists think about particular theological issues.00:36:25.176 --> 00:36:28.606
And so we had a few people address those topics. And then we also had folks00:36:28.606 --> 00:36:32.886
like James Westbrook or Keith Booth address questions like, how does the creed00:36:32.886 --> 00:36:36.096
shape the way we think about preaching or church planting?00:36:36.096 --> 00:36:39.846
Or Chris Wozniacki from LA addressed the question, how does the creed shape00:36:39.846 --> 00:36:41.336
the practice of youth ministry?00:36:41.796 --> 00:36:46.136
And so we came away with the book that's going to now be called True God from00:36:46.136 --> 00:36:49.716
True God, a Baptist Celebration of the Nicene, or a California Baptist Celebration00:36:49.716 --> 00:36:51.456
of the Nicene Creed, which will come out next year.00:36:51.916 --> 00:36:54.436
For those who couldn't attend the conference or watch this stuff on YouTube,00:36:54.436 --> 00:36:56.196
which will be up soon, read the book.00:36:56.196 --> 00:37:00.996
And what we're showing is that Baptists can affirm the great tradition because it's biblical.00:37:00.996 --> 00:37:06.476
And it's still as relevant today because we have people who are proto-Aryans00:37:06.476 --> 00:37:10.746
living in our midst today who deny the full deity of the Son of God.00:37:10.746 --> 00:37:12.146
And that's extremely significant.00:37:12.146 --> 00:37:17.766
So to that end, let's just quickly, if you were trying to summarize this man-on-the-street00:37:17.766 --> 00:37:24.546
style to someone that is a Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon or even a modalist,00:37:24.546 --> 00:37:26.956
Yeah. Modalism's quite— Modalism, Patrick.00:37:26.956 --> 00:37:28.602
That's modalism, Patrick. Yeah, yeah, yeah.00:37:29.113 --> 00:37:32.492
So we had a lot of modalism out there, right?00:37:32.976 --> 00:37:39.136
So how does the Nicene Creed speak to and remind us of the great scriptural00:37:39.136 --> 00:37:44.037
truths that would contradict the theological positions of these groups?00:37:44.316 --> 00:37:49.653
Yeah, I would just say, read it. It was written in such a way to be memorized.00:37:49.653 --> 00:37:54.703
And were that more churches said this every week or once a month and memorized it.00:37:54.703 --> 00:37:58.293
Because it was the grid, to talk about those glasses, it was the grid through00:37:58.293 --> 00:38:02.853
which early Christians were discipled and trained to view the world, to view the scriptures.00:38:02.853 --> 00:38:08.373
It was in the box that allowed them to say, well, given tough passages, can't mean that.00:38:08.373 --> 00:38:11.503
That like when the scriptures say the firstborn of creation,00:38:11.503 --> 00:38:14.953
well, it can't mean what the Arians think it means. It has to mean something.00:38:14.953 --> 00:38:17.533
And so I honestly, if I was talking to one of them on the street,00:38:17.533 --> 00:38:19.263
I would just probably get out and just read it with them.00:38:20.184 --> 00:38:23.773
So just read this and let's talk about it. And then I'd take them to a few passages00:38:23.773 --> 00:38:26.053
in the Bible that affirm these very things.00:38:26.053 --> 00:38:29.133
I'll just put it this way, that there's not only proof text,00:38:29.133 --> 00:38:31.553
but as you and I were talking about earlier over lunch, there's a story of the00:38:31.553 --> 00:38:35.483
scripture. there are stories in scripture that implicitly convey theology.00:38:36.003 --> 00:38:40.113
And beyond, you know, it was the seven, eight, or nine theos statements of the00:38:40.113 --> 00:38:44.213
New Testament that ascribe the word theos to Jesus Christ or the Son of God.00:38:44.213 --> 00:38:47.883
There are just stories all over the New Testament, all through even the synoptic00:38:47.883 --> 00:38:52.133
gospels that show that Jesus of Nazareth was both true God and true man.00:38:52.133 --> 00:38:56.713
And the Sunday of the Nicene Creed Conference, so the day after at my church00:38:56.713 --> 00:39:00.763
in Union City, I preached a sermon, which I called a Nicaean sermon,00:39:00.763 --> 00:39:06.363
where I was showing from the scriptures how what you could call the logic of Nicaea00:39:06.743 --> 00:39:11.283
was forced upon the fathers because of the logic of the New Testament.00:39:11.283 --> 00:39:15.093
And if you want to listen to this sermon, it's up on YouTube through Redeemer00:39:15.093 --> 00:39:19.053
Church of Union City's YouTube page, or it's going to end up living as one of00:39:19.053 --> 00:39:21.543
the appendices in the book coming out next year.00:39:21.543 --> 00:39:25.013
So it's called a sample sermon that I put into the book to be helpful.00:39:25.013 --> 00:39:29.073
But in the story of Jesus stealing of the storm, as I highlight in the sermon,00:39:29.073 --> 00:39:33.503
that story highlights that Jesus of Nazareth was true God and true man.00:39:33.503 --> 00:39:37.993
Because he was so tired as a man that he fell asleep and was so asleep that00:39:37.993 --> 00:39:42.743
he slept through a fierce storm that was causing professional fishermen to fear00:39:42.743 --> 00:39:44.726
for their lives. Yes. So that's...00:39:45.009 --> 00:39:49.025
Truly a tired man. And as we know from the scriptures, God does not sleep.00:39:49.465 --> 00:39:55.127
So Jesus as man slept, truly man. But then he arose from his frightened followers.00:39:55.360 --> 00:39:59.675
And what did he do? He spoke a word and stilled the storm. And then the text00:39:59.675 --> 00:40:03.005
highlights that the men were exceedingly more afraid.00:40:03.485 --> 00:40:06.575
Why? Because what's more scary than a storm that can take your life?00:40:06.575 --> 00:40:10.585
The man who stands up and stills that scary storm, because he's then more powerful00:40:10.585 --> 00:40:11.925
than the storm. He's the Lord of the storm.00:40:12.565 --> 00:40:17.265
So that even though that text doesn't say, and the man who is true man and true00:40:17.265 --> 00:40:20.435
God got in the boat, it's interesting that in Mark it highlights,00:40:20.435 --> 00:40:22.479
he went into the boat just as he was.00:40:22.636 --> 00:40:26.075
And Mark alone highlights that. Well, why is that? Because there wasn't anything00:40:26.075 --> 00:40:30.225
particularly special about Jesus of Nazareth when he left the teaching ministry00:40:30.225 --> 00:40:31.635
to then get into the boat to go to the other side.00:40:31.635 --> 00:40:32.505
He didn't put on a cape.00:40:32.505 --> 00:40:36.845
Didn't put on a cape. He didn't start to gleam gold or to radiate anything special.00:40:36.845 --> 00:40:41.735
He was just a normal looking man, just as he was. Tired from a full day of projecting00:40:41.735 --> 00:40:44.725
his voice to hundreds or thousands of people listening to his teaching.00:40:45.305 --> 00:40:48.715
That man, just as he was, got into a boat in the middle of a storm,00:40:48.715 --> 00:40:50.095
stood up, stilled the storm.00:40:50.095 --> 00:40:51.565
I love the fact that Jesus just took it.00:40:51.945 --> 00:40:56.005
And he was so tired. And that's why one of my former professors said to young00:40:56.005 --> 00:40:59.195
men who are so inclined to think they're holy because they sleep less and work00:40:59.195 --> 00:41:02.945
more. He said, sometimes the holiest thing you can do is take a nap and trust00:41:02.945 --> 00:41:05.051
in God because he neither sleeps nor slumbers.00:41:05.359 --> 00:41:08.665
But anyways, in that story, then that man, true man, stands up and shows he's00:41:08.665 --> 00:41:11.165
true God because he calms the storm. And as we know throughout the Old Testament,00:41:11.165 --> 00:41:13.445
it's only the true God who can calm the elements of the earth.00:41:13.770 --> 00:41:19.195
So that story presses upon the readers the logic of the Nicene Constantinoplean00:41:19.195 --> 00:41:22.459
Creed, which says he is true God from true God and true man,00:41:22.593 --> 00:41:25.965
who for us and for us on salvation came down and incarnated from heaven.00:41:25.965 --> 00:41:28.605
So that's how I would help someone think through that issue.00:41:28.605 --> 00:41:31.695
There's the proof text you can go to, but then there's just stories all throughout00:41:31.695 --> 00:41:35.535
the New Testament that Jesus of Nazareth does things that show he is truly man00:41:35.535 --> 00:41:36.914
and shows that he's truly God-made.00:41:37.275 --> 00:41:39.515
Do you want to say anything about Edwards before we get to coffee?00:41:39.747 --> 00:41:43.803
Wow. Yeah. So you brought me on this podcast as a quote unquote Edwards scholar.00:41:43.803 --> 00:41:47.583
Yeah. Well, we're going to have to have you back again. This was our trick to get you to come back.00:41:47.583 --> 00:41:51.743
Okay, good. Yeah. I'm an Edwards aficionado. I'm a novice who's always trying00:41:51.743 --> 00:41:54.953
to grow in my knowledge of Edwards. But yes, Edwards is my dead mentor.00:41:54.953 --> 00:41:58.214
He's my dead friend. I do believe that he's America's greatest theologian.00:41:58.498 --> 00:42:02.453
And it's important for people to recognize that pre-Civil War,00:42:02.813 --> 00:42:06.873
Jonathan Edwards is one of the most, if not the most studied American and historical00:42:06.873 --> 00:42:09.663
figure, like in terms of secondary literature written on Edwards.00:42:09.663 --> 00:42:12.223
More than Washington, just as much, if not more than Lincoln,00:42:12.223 --> 00:42:16.213
it's amazing the ocean of literature that exists on Jonathan Edwards.00:42:16.213 --> 00:42:20.083
So he is, for good reason, America's Augustine, because who else can write works00:42:20.083 --> 00:42:23.759
like Freedom of the Will, but then also write something like The Nature of True Virtue,00:42:23.991 --> 00:42:27.683
or The Life and Ministry of David Brainerd, or Religious Affections,00:42:27.683 --> 00:42:29.973
or Preach Sermons like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,00:42:29.973 --> 00:42:31.633
or Heaven is a World of Love.00:42:31.633 --> 00:42:35.700
I mean, he has an unparalleled generational00:42:35.990 --> 00:42:39.805
trans, like excellent mind, like luminescent. I mean, one of the top 10,00:42:39.805 --> 00:42:42.085
if not top five minds in the history of the Christian church.00:42:42.085 --> 00:42:45.735
And he was America's greatest theologian, both because of what he produced,00:42:45.735 --> 00:42:49.965
but that also in his disciples, how they affected the founding of the American00:42:49.965 --> 00:42:54.715
nation in the new divinity and then other strands of the Edwardsian thought.00:42:54.715 --> 00:42:57.005
So, I mean, he is America's Augustine.00:42:57.005 --> 00:43:01.995
All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Edwards has, let's say, social limitations,00:43:01.995 --> 00:43:07.645
social relational limitations, great theological mind. We will have to have you back for that.00:43:07.645 --> 00:43:08.619
Talk about Edwards, yeah.00:43:08.812 --> 00:43:13.505
But we know that you have many social things that you like to do,00:43:13.505 --> 00:43:19.675
and we kind of want to just end with that. We know that one of your passions is roasting coffee.00:43:19.675 --> 00:43:20.414
That's true.00:43:20.553 --> 00:43:27.675
So tell us, what do you like to roast and why, and what drew you to roasting coffee?00:43:27.675 --> 00:43:29.845
And what does it look like? Yeah, I'll talk about that process.00:43:29.925 --> 00:43:30.689
How are we roasting that?00:43:30.845 --> 00:43:34.235
Yeah, so let me just put it like this. Assume you grew up in a house,00:43:34.235 --> 00:43:39.094
where you were poor or really poor and your experience, you never went out to eat.00:43:39.361 --> 00:43:43.155
And because you were so poor, you had to live on food stamps or WIC or what00:43:43.155 --> 00:43:48.086
have you. And your only experience of meat was bologna or spam. Okay.00:43:48.243 --> 00:43:51.275
And then let's say one day a friend of you, a friend of yours,00:43:51.275 --> 00:43:53.825
you're in college is like, Hey, I know you grew up like this.00:43:53.825 --> 00:43:56.725
I want to treat you. And they take you to a prime steakhouse,00:43:57.025 --> 00:44:00.815
Fleming's name, your prime steakhouse, whatever. And you sit down to have your00:44:00.815 --> 00:44:04.195
first ribeye steak and you'd say, oh my, this is what meat is.00:44:04.195 --> 00:44:06.045
What I had before wasn't meat. Okay.00:44:06.665 --> 00:44:09.735
And so that's how I described coffee. Like really good coffee.00:44:09.735 --> 00:44:14.845
If you've only been drinking Folgers or Yubon or Keurig coffee,00:44:15.225 --> 00:44:17.301
that is the bologna of coffee. Okay.00:44:18.245 --> 00:44:22.205
It's coffee adjacent. It is to meet what bologna and spam is to meet.00:44:22.565 --> 00:44:26.165
Your bologna does have a first name though. Sorry. I had that jingle in my head.00:44:26.421 --> 00:44:30.955
So the first time I was introduced to really good what's now called third wave00:44:30.955 --> 00:44:33.520
coffee i just thought this is what coffee tastes like00:44:33.834 --> 00:44:38.864
And anytime I've had someone over who drinks a cup of my roasted coffee ground00:44:38.864 --> 00:44:41.654
and prepared correctly, I've had them ask like, did you put something in this?00:44:41.654 --> 00:44:44.334
Like, is this coffee? But yeah, this is what real coffee is like.00:44:44.334 --> 00:44:51.534
And so I got into it over a decade ago from a former family I was close to who roasted coffee.00:44:51.554 --> 00:44:55.874
I'm like, oh, this is really good. So it's not that hard. And so I bought my00:44:55.874 --> 00:44:59.244
first coffee roast, which I still have, which is an old popcorn popper called00:44:59.244 --> 00:45:01.684
the Airbenderie, 16,000 or something like that.00:45:01.684 --> 00:45:04.984
It's a coffee maker from the 80s. If you grew up in the 80s or 90s,00:45:04.984 --> 00:45:07.234
you probably saw the air poppery.00:45:07.234 --> 00:45:10.014
And it's this thing that's like white with like a black top.00:45:10.014 --> 00:45:14.204
It's got this yellow hood, okay? And the thing is, it has to be a terrible popcorn popper.00:45:14.204 --> 00:45:17.534
It has to be so strong that it blows popcorn kernels all over the room.00:45:17.534 --> 00:45:21.154
It has to have strong wattage and airflow. And the slots have to be on the middle.00:45:21.154 --> 00:45:25.144
So that's why I first started to learn how to roast coffee was with this popcorn popper.00:45:25.144 --> 00:45:28.174
It takes three to six minutes to roast about a quarter cup of coffee.00:45:28.174 --> 00:45:31.884
And then I really got into it. and then one year with my tax return,00:45:31.884 --> 00:45:36.574
I bought a little bit more expensive machine, which looks like an air toaster00:45:36.574 --> 00:45:38.464
oven with a turnstile inside.00:45:38.464 --> 00:45:41.594
And then this takes like 10 to 15 minutes to roast like half a pound of coffee.00:45:41.594 --> 00:45:45.254
And coffee undergoes a really interesting chemical, a chemical transformation.00:45:45.254 --> 00:45:48.994
So that think of it like when you buy dry beans from the grocery store,00:45:48.994 --> 00:45:52.886
like how a dry black bean wound up looking different from a cooked black bean,00:45:53.193 --> 00:45:57.444
Both in texture and in color and in size, but it's more significant than that with coffee beans.00:45:57.444 --> 00:46:01.284
So coffee beans, when they're unroasted are tiny green and hard.00:46:01.284 --> 00:46:03.824
And then as they undergo the road as heat is applied to them,00:46:03.824 --> 00:46:07.614
they undergo this interesting chemical change where they began to expand,00:46:07.614 --> 00:46:11.965
change their color, release their oils and have chemical reactions and the sounds of popping. Okay.00:46:12.081 --> 00:46:15.984
So it will go from green to grayish, to light yellow, to yellow,00:46:15.984 --> 00:46:19.094
to light brown, to brown, to dark brown, to then to black. And like when you00:46:19.094 --> 00:46:21.874
go to Starbucks, their coffee is terrible and over roasted. Yeah.00:46:22.159 --> 00:46:26.410
They've gone to like Vienna, terribly dark roast. And at that point you've roasted00:46:26.410 --> 00:46:31.460
all the flavor out of the coffee. So anyways, I really enjoy Ethiopian or Kenyan00:46:31.460 --> 00:46:34.592
coffees that are known as fruitier coffees, livelier coffees.00:46:34.756 --> 00:46:37.700
You just have to come over and try my coffee. And there's nothing like...00:46:37.700 --> 00:46:39.200
So all our listeners are invited to your house.00:46:39.580 --> 00:46:41.880
You're all invited to my house to eventually have coffee with me.00:46:42.240 --> 00:46:46.680
But the feeling of satisfaction you get of knowing like I roasted that coffee,00:46:46.680 --> 00:46:48.240
I ground it, I prepared it.00:46:48.240 --> 00:46:52.460
And it's as good, if not better, than a really fancy coffee shop I go to.00:46:52.460 --> 00:46:57.290
There's a sense of accomplishment in that. And so I just enjoy the process,00:46:57.290 --> 00:47:00.780
both science and art, of roasting coffee and enjoying good coffee.00:47:00.780 --> 00:47:02.051
Where do you get your beans?00:47:02.224 --> 00:47:05.270
Very important question. So in the Bay Area, there's actually a supplier you00:47:05.270 --> 00:47:07.480
can drive to and get them if you don't want to pay for shipping.00:47:07.480 --> 00:47:12.600
It's called Sweet Maria's, and it's in Oakland. And so the thing about unroasted coffee is00:47:13.140 --> 00:47:16.570
if you go to like a nice coffee shop where they sell freshly roasted coffee00:47:16.570 --> 00:47:21.200
now with inflation, you're probably going to pay $18 to $25 for like 10 or 1200:47:21.200 --> 00:47:26.480
ounces of coffee, if not more nowadays, where you can buy unroasted green coffee anywhere from00:47:27.320 --> 00:47:31.420
high fours to like mid-teens for good coffee.00:47:31.420 --> 00:47:34.140
Great's going to be in the 20s and 30s per pound, but that would then be like00:47:34.140 --> 00:47:38.010
a $10 or $15 cup of coffee if you got like a Geisha or a Hawaiian Conan.00:47:38.010 --> 00:47:42.320
But for the most part, you can buy unroasted green coffee, $6 to $8 a pound.00:47:42.900 --> 00:47:45.520
And then you roast. It's a fascinating process. It's really,00:47:45.520 --> 00:47:49.340
really cool to do, to see it, to smell it, to hear it, and then to enjoy it.00:47:49.537 --> 00:47:51.500
Okay. The proof of the pudding's in the eating.00:47:51.500 --> 00:47:55.580
Yeah. I'm kind of excited to give this a shot. So we're going to do this again.00:47:55.708 --> 00:47:56.700
We will. This sounds fun.00:47:57.100 --> 00:48:01.810
And we left a ton of meat on the bone. We probably have 10 or 12 questions in00:48:01.810 --> 00:48:05.800
our rundown that we did not get to, but I think We went deep rather than wide,00:48:05.800 --> 00:48:08.120
and I'd always rather go deep rather than wide.00:48:08.220 --> 00:48:08.373
That's right.00:48:08.855 --> 00:48:12.944
Yeah. Dr. Cameron, we are so glad you are here. We're glad you're a friend of00:48:12.944 --> 00:48:14.973
GCA and our association.00:48:15.176 --> 00:48:19.054
Thank you for coming on Every Church Flourishing, and we can't wait to have you back.00:48:19.054 --> 00:48:19.984
Thank you for having me.00:48:19.984 --> 00:48:24.754
For God's blessings and goodness to be on your ministry, to be on Gateway Seminary.00:48:24.754 --> 00:48:27.924
We're grateful for your leadership there and for all the good work you're doing00:48:27.924 --> 00:48:33.714
to equip and encourage leaders and pastors to help their churches flourish and00:48:33.714 --> 00:48:35.834
to help them reach their community.00:48:35.834 --> 00:48:37.241
Thank you, brothers. Amen. It's been a pleasure.00:48:37.601 --> 00:48:42.008
So the genuinely funny thing about that interview is we've had it planned for00:48:42.008 --> 00:48:47.688
weeks, and one of the major things we wanted to talk about was Jonathan Edwards,00:48:47.688 --> 00:48:51.313
the early American theologian, pastor, and writer.00:48:51.545 --> 00:48:56.018
All three of us are big fans of Edwards to one degree or another, and Dr.00:48:56.018 --> 00:49:01.138
Schweitzer actually wrote his PhD dissertation on Edwards, but we got so carried00:49:01.138 --> 00:49:05.568
away talking about every other topic, we really didn't have time to go deep on Edwards.00:49:05.568 --> 00:49:11.928
So we genuinely plan on having Cameron back very soon. Hopefully we will go deeper on Edwards then.00:49:12.008 --> 00:49:18.168
Well, before we say goodbye for another week, let me highlight a few GCA events that are going on.00:49:18.168 --> 00:49:22.038
You can find all of these on the very front page of our website,00:49:22.038 --> 00:49:29.137
which is gcasbc.org. That's gcasbc.org.00:49:29.322 --> 00:49:35.798
Coming up, September 19th, we have a ladies' conference called Flourish,00:49:35.798 --> 00:49:38.291
an equipping conference for women in ministry.00:49:38.506 --> 00:49:42.618
That is going to be at Partner Church Journey Christian Fellowship,00:49:42.618 --> 00:49:47.655
which is at 317 Foothill Boulevard in San Luis Obispo, California.00:49:47.863 --> 00:49:52.848
We also have a Great Commission Association Evangelism Workshop,00:49:52.848 --> 00:49:54.898
which will be August the 1st.00:49:54.898 --> 00:50:00.428
So much sooner, that's going to be at First Baptist Gilroy, and you can sign00:50:00.428 --> 00:50:08.328
up on our website, gcasbc.org, and the Great Commission Training Institute, which is an00:50:08.788 --> 00:50:14.147
Online church leader and pastor training school that the GCA runs.00:50:14.379 --> 00:50:19.818
The Great Commission Training Institute gives you excellent training for church00:50:19.818 --> 00:50:22.001
leaders and pastors at a...00:50:22.304 --> 00:50:31.495
Really great, great cost, and the upcoming next class starts August 25th at 7 p.m.00:50:31.495 --> 00:50:37.035
It's a seven-week class, and it is taught by yours truly, and you can find out00:50:37.035 --> 00:50:41.269
much more about it at GCASBC.org.00:50:41.507 --> 00:50:49.309
It only costs $50 per course if you are a GCA church or GCA pastor or leader,00:50:49.559 --> 00:50:55.115
or $75 dollars per course, which is still a great deal for non-GCA churches.00:50:55.115 --> 00:51:00.715
So check that out at our website, gcasbc.org. The podcast has its own website00:51:00.715 --> 00:51:02.774
where all of the episodes are available.00:51:02.926 --> 00:51:05.596
That's everychurchflourishing.com,00:51:05.909 --> 00:51:08.625
And it would be awesome if you would leave a review for the show.00:51:08.945 --> 00:51:13.983
Maybe we'll send some swag your way. Thanks for listening. Good day to you, and Godspeed.
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