Joshua Noel engages in a profound dialogue with Christian Ashley, delving into the intricate and often painful subject of Church Hurt. The conversation unfolds with Christian recounting his personal experiences of disillusionment within the church, yet emphasizes his unwavering commitment to a more conservative Christian tradition. This episode serves as a poignant exploration of how individuals can grapple with their faith amidst adversity, illustrating that the journey through hurt can lead to a more resilient belief system. We further examine the complexities of maintaining faith in a community that may harbor imperfections, asserting that personal convictions can remain steadfast even when faced with challenges. Ultimately, this discourse invites listeners to reflect on their own journeys and encourages a thoughtful engagement with the nuances of faith and community.

The dialogue between Joshua Noel and Christian Ashley unfolds with a profound exploration of Church Hurt, delving into Christian's personal experiences and steadfast adherence to a conservative Christian tradition despite the adversities faced. The conversation encompasses an examination of the complexities inherent in the interactions within church communities, particularly those that cause emotional and spiritual distress. Christian articulately describes the dynamics of his involvement with various churches, emphasizing the pivotal role of leadership in shaping congregational experiences. He recounts his formative years in the Southern Baptist Church, where early spiritual awakening was marred by challenges in church leadership, particularly under figures who exhibited a lack of nurturing and understanding. Through his reflections, he elucidates the notion that true leadership within the church should foster growth and healing, rather than perpetuate feelings of inadequacy and bitterness.

As the discussion progresses, the conversation navigates through broader themes of church culture and the importance of addressing church hurt with grace and humility. Both speakers engage in a critical analysis of the current state of the church, addressing how institutional failures can lead to disillusionment among congregants. Christian emphasizes the necessity for churches to prioritize genuine community and support, advocating for an approach that embraces vulnerability and authenticity. In advocating for a return to foundational Christian teachings, he posits that the essence of faith lies not in the perfection of its adherents, but in the unwavering grace of Christ that calls for reconciliation amidst human fallibility. This episode serves as a clarion call for greater empathy and understanding within church contexts, challenging listeners to reflect on their roles in fostering unity and healing within their communities.

Takeaways:

• Christian Ashley articulates how his experiences with Church Hurt have shaped his faith journey and commitment to a conservative Christian tradition.
• The podcast discusses the importance of acknowledging church hurt while still striving for personal healing and community involvement.
• Listeners are encouraged to seek supportive church communities that prioritize love and understanding in the face of adversity.
• Joshua Noel and Christian Ashley emphasize that church hurt is often a complex interplay of personal experiences rather than a singular traumatic event.
• The conversation highlights the necessity of forgiveness in the Christian faith, even in the wake of painful experiences within the church.
• Both speakers reflect on the significance of questioning and reconstructing faith as a healthy part of spiritual growth.

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Listen to Christian Ashley on Let Nothing Move You:

https://let-nothing-move-you.captivate.fm/listen

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Check out Christian's book, "Lost Time":

https://www.starvingwritersguild.com/product/lost-time-paperback-/42?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false

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Read Andy Walsh's book, "Faith across the Multiverse: Parables from Modern Science":

https://a.co/d/0byzgeQV

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Hear more from Joshua on Be Living Water:

https://be-living-water.captivate.fm/listen

Foreign.

Hebrews, chapter 12, verses 12 through 17 in the New American Standard Bible Therefore strengthen the hands that are weak, and the knees that are feeble, and make straight the path of your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

Pursue peace with all men and sanctification, without which no one will see the Lord, since to it that no one will come short of the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble and by it many be defiled that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal for you know that even afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.

The Book of Hebrews explains the centrality of Christ for Hebrew believers and Jesus during a certain time and place.

Specific Context in this pericope of Scripture the author just finished speaking about the many people of the Old Testament who suffered for faith but did not see the fulfillment of the law in Christ.

The author then instructs readers to be disciplined in faith, just as Jesus was loyal unto death.

Here the author is encouraging readers to both strengthen those amongst themselves in the church, as well as to make peace with all men.

After this section, the writer goes on to explain the importance of unity and peace.

He then instructs people to prioritize love in our missions of the church.

Christian Ashley how might we understand this instruction to strengthen our brothers, make peace with everyone, and remove bitterness in our own context Today you remember that at.

One point in time, depending on our Christian journey, we were the ones who were weak.

Not that we are ever always going to be strong, but that our responsibility is to look after those who have been hurt, look after those who need help, and at that same time, a part of helping them is to get rid of the Esau's in our midst to think that they're all right, who think that they're still going to get what's theirs, but while they're there, all they do is cause problems.

So a good part of looking after the week is looking after those who are weak and are not willing to admit they're weak.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey guys, welcome to the Whole Church Podcast.

Possibly your favorite church Unity podcast.

Possibly not.

That's totally cool.

We're not a competition with the other Unity podcast because that's self defeating.

I'm weird.

TJ says I'm weird enough without adding anything, so we're gonna leave it be for now.

Speaking of tj, I am Joshua Null, one of your co hosts.

TJ Tabiri.

Sjuan Blackwell is the pot almighty, the co host with the absolute most who's not here today because it's his birthday.

Wish him happy birthday.

It'll be late, but wish it to him anyway because he deserves it as well as any love you could possibly send his way.

He deserves all of it.

And I am here, of course, with wonderful guest Christian Ashley.

Today I'm gonna be talking with Christian about his experiences with Church Hurt and how he has made it past those experiences while staying true to a more conservative tradition in Christianity compared to myself and many others.

But, you know, there are some so conservative they even think he's like crazy progressive.

You know, it's a spectrum, guys.

Yeah.

Christian, welcome.

Welcome back.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, yeah, he's.

He's a longtime guest, first time listener.

Christian has received his masters of Divinity at the Southern Baptist Theological Semin Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

He's the author of several fictional works, such as Lost Time, which is a store, kind of like a dystopian American vampire story.

I think that might be accurate.

If not, no one's going to correct me.

It's not like the author's here.

He's also host of like a million podcasts, including Let Nothing move you Friday Night Frights.

And he's one of the hosts of Systematic Ecology as well as me and TJ too.

So a lot of us over on Systematic Ecology, if you want to check it out, other stuff you might want to check out, you can go to our website at the Whole Church podcast.

You can purchase one of our T shirts.

It helps promote our show, raise money for podcasting needs, and it gets others to know about the importance of our mission to educate and unite the modern church.

A lot of good being done by simple T shirt purchase.

Pretty easy stuff.

My favorite, there's like a dark green one that says like the whole church on the front and the back has like the Trinity knot.

Talking about the oneness of God and also the oneness of the church.

Really cool shirt.

Fun design.

Also, I just like the color green.

Just being honest with you, I mentioned like a million shows that Christian's on.

They're all part of the Amazon podcast network as well as this show.

Some of the other ones I do be living water.

That's over there.

Brandon Knight has my seminary life.

You've got Page and Pixel with Paige and Pixel on it.

You got Leah and Christy Robinson doing theology on the rocks.

There's all kinds of good stuff.

So make sure you check out the network.

There's a link for the website for the whole artwork down below as well.

Or if you're on Apple Podcasts, you can, like, go to where the podcast is and it has network, and you can just click and see it'll.

Which is also pretty convenient.

All right.

All of that out of the way.

Christian.

Holy sacrament.

We got to get silly here.

You can't be anything other than united when you're being as silly as I like to be.

Like, it's like you're laughing together, so you have to be united.

We're forcing it upon people through laughter.

Yeah.

Today's a pretty easy one.

Just because I was watching a movie.

Christian, if instead of Planet of the Apes, some other animal were to take over, it would be like Planet of the Blank.

What do you think the funniest species defined as rulers of Earth would be?

I'm gonna give a partial answer just because, like, the way the question came up is, we were watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and my wife pointed out, you know, a lot of your, like, dermatology and, like, cosmetics experiments are actually done on beagles.

And, like, man just be so funny.

All beagles want is food.

And then they just bark.

Just come back and there's no food left, and everyone's screaming.

That's it.

I just think it'd be pretty funny.

Very Christian.

Take us home.

I mean, there's so many answers to this question.

That'd be great.

The one I settled on is pangolins.

I just think it'd be so funny if mankind was God gone and God had uplifted the pangolins to become you.

Created in his image.

And no, not penguins.

Pangolins.

Armored mammals.

It's like, what's their society based around?

Eating ants and termites.

Fantastic.

With long, long tongues.

It'd be perfect.

I just.

It would be pretty incredible.

Incredible.

Yeah.

I also.

See.

But this is, like, more just like they do the movies.

I think it would be hilarious if silkworms took over.

Specifically.

I just hate silkworms.

They're the things I despise the most.

So, like, I just imagine it's like a horror film.

You come back and it's just silkworm.

And the horror is just.

You will be forever annoyed.

Yeah.

Also, how exactly your.

Your biggest bugaboo is silkworms.

What?

What, did they burn down your house one day?

They're just.

I don't want to explain it.

They just bother me.

Okay.

You continue being yourself.

My.

My brother, it's like a whole lot inside joke.

He just like, every now and then, if I'm doing something, he's like, you know, being a real silkworm right now.

That's a great brother right there.

Yeah, yeah, is what it is.

You know, I hope there's, like, a silkworm enthusiast listening who's gonna, like, write me a real nasty email after this.

All right.

Silliness aside, onto what TJ calls the real show, I think it's all the real show, but it's fine.

Christian, you've been on, like, a lot, but as Marvel has told us, every episode is someone's first episode.

So for those who don't know you, could you maybe just briefly share what church tradition you come from and what's led you to where you are today in the faith?

Yes.

I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, as I said many times before to other people.

I was born on a Thursday.

I was in church on Sunday.

My mom and dad were very serious about that with me and my siblings, you know, making sure that we were there, we were attending not for the sake of attending, but, you know, for the sake of growing in faith.

I came to Faith when I was six years old.

After one particular sermon, my dad took me aside, asked me what I thought about, you know, who I was, what it meant to love Jesus and everything about that.

And as much as 6 year old can understand what they're getting into, Like, I agreed, and I accepted Jesus as my Savior.

Then I got baptized soon after that and continued to be in the church.

We moved different churches, and there I met a great group of guys who are.

I'm friends with to this day, working with them.

We were in youth ministry together.

And it was around the time of when I was 16 that I first felt a call to ministry.

And I said no, because who wants that kind of responsibility?

Who wants to be the guy in charge?

Not me.

I much prefer being the guy, you know, behind the scenes, making sure things are run smoothly.

No one has to ask any questions.

You know, things just get done.

But God said, yeah, you're good at that, but you're also good at what I'm telling you to do.

And I just kept telling him no.

Went to college, met Joshua there.

Made some really great friends there in that ministry.

Met a church we'll be talking about today as well.

In the midst of all that, tried for years to find something in my chosen field of creative writing.

Failed utterly and miserably to find a job there.

Went back home, went through Some more struggles here.

And then finally came to the point we realized, okay, I cannot run someone without unlimited stamina.

I broke down to my parents, confessed the truth that what I think why God is allowing me to fail all this time is because I'm not doing what he told me to do.

And that, of course, being going to seminary.

And so I went there, studied under some of the most brilliant people I've ever met in my life who really cared about me.

It wasn't just a job to them.

Helped out in the church while I was up there, came back, and now I'm in the midst of the in between where I'm searching for a job, have not found one yet in my chosen field again.

But at the same time, I think it's kind of fair.

I stole about 16 years from him.

If he decides to make it last a little longer, that's on me, not him.

Yeah.

That is where I am.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's been a privilege to be part of the journey with you.

Everybody's out there looking for a pastor at their church.

Hit us up, let us know.

I'll let Christian know.

That's fine.

So, Christian, you've mentioned on here before, plenty of times.

I think we've talked about it before, just in a different context that you've experienced church hurt before.

Most recently, you talked about it.

There was a roundtable on missiology that you mentioned it on, which had my brain thinking about, because, like, we've had a couple authors on recently who's talked about church hurt and some similar stuff, who.

You know, typically those conversations are happening from progressive Christians or people who used to be conservative who are now more progressive Christians.

You're still a pretty conservative Christian.

So I thought it would be interesting to kind of hear someone who's still part of that side of Christianity who acknowledges he did experience this.

So before anything else, could you maybe unpack a little for those listening who aren't aware?

What were your.

What was your experience?

So the church that Joshua and I went to while we were in college together was called Crossway.

And one of the leaders, the leader there, Tom Parkus, who I believe to be an actual man of God, who I believe to be an actual Christian, saw me, tried to uplift me in his way of doing things because he saw natural talents in me that he wanted to grow in me.

He also saw a lot of pride, correctly identifying a lot of pride.

And part of what he would do is whenever I came to him, hey, you know, I talked to this person about coming to church or like I had this experience, you know, talk to someone about my faith, they go, oh great.

And like sweep it under the rug.

Because in his opinion, the best way to go about a prideful person is to never acknowledge.

Not, not never acknowledge, but for me specifically not acknowledging any achievements I did because I could look like I'm someone who's like, look at me, I'm serving God.

Look at what I just did.

And he had met several people in the past alike and like that.

And every size is going to be all sizes fit his ideals of things.

So he would downplay everything that I did.

I'd go up to him and ask, what am I doing wrong?

And he wouldn't like explain himself well to me.

He would deny me chances to serve in places in the church.

I'd served a little bit in the children's ministry.

I wanted to help out with the youth in the college.

And I was told no again and again because I was also not the kind of man that he saw a Christian man should be.

I'm going to be purposely over the top.

But his ideal man was a man who carried his wife and his two and a half children with one hand, a steel beam in the other, with some log and wood and lumber in the other, while also throwing a football at the same time.

Joshua knows that's not me.

I.

He's underplaying himself.

He can beat the entire Carolina Panthers blindfolded, one man football team season Christian.

Ashley.

No, I'm not a physical guy.

I'm not made for physical labor.

Like I can do it for a time, but like I'm going to get winded really quickly.

That's because part of me, you know, I'm lazy.

That, that stuff that needs to change.

I'm not going to deny that.

I'm not agreeing with that part.

I just.

The whole thing is funny.

He's also allergic to the outside.

That doesn't help either during a time of year.

But that's, that's just not who I am.

I'm the person.

I'm a.

More of a scholar study things also counselor.

Working with people one on one, you know, getting them to understand scripture.

I mean, that's why I started Let nothing move you was, hey, I understand this.

I can teach.

This is a way for me to bring that out into the world to be challenged, but also to bring hope to people who want to understand their Bible better.

Like that's one of the reasons why I went to seminary because that's where I want to be job wise is in that same position, looking after those who are sick and afflicted, helping people in the middle of, you know, unhealthy relationships or marriages that are starting to fail or something like that.

But also, you know, bringing them into the Word and everything.

That's why God put me on this earth.

But all that did in that time with him is it killed me spiritually.

I was never good enough.

Nothing I did mattered is what it felt like.

And I would have other people say, hey, so grateful for the help you've given us here.

But, like, it was never the guy in charge, you know, the one person you would expect to do that.

And I have since forgiven him, because I do believe that if you're going to be in this job, you better forgive the people who hurt you really well.

But that also means I haven't forgotten.

And I think that's an important lesson as well, that people need to learn.

Forgive and forget is not a biblical principle.

So that's one second church I went to when I came back home, actually spun off of another one, called it Divine.

And I really enjoyed it.

It was, like, perfect.

Like, had a bunch of friends younger than me, but also younger, single, trying to figure things out together.

Most of them had never really, like, been a church.

It was more different than what they were expecting, so it was easy for them to get there.

But one of my friends, Karai Rowe of the Foreign Saints podcast, we'll get to him later on, actually, as part of this, too.

He found out other people were doing things they shouldn't be, and he got kicked out of the leadership there.

And I didn't know this, and he didn't understand exactly why either, until years later, and that church died, and the pastor there that I fully trusted to look after me and look after everyone there was in an illicit affair with a younger person.

I was very upset with everything that happened there, but the church died.

And here I was.

I still had another church to go to, but I lost the entire community that I had.

And someone who was acting very hypocritically saying it the entire time, never do this.

Never do this.

It's not what God was desires from anyone in leadership and yet was actively doing it.

And I will say more recently, not specifically any church, but plenty of churches that I've interviewed with that I've talked to have hurt me immensely because I didn't stick up to their ideal image of what a pastor is supposed to look like or be.

The fact that I'm not married is a huge buzzkill to a lot of them, you know, as if Jesus and Paul weren't married or anything like that.

Paul, there's others.

Peter's the one that's questionable, right?

Peter was married.

No, he had a mother in law.

Paul was questionable.

Peter we know was married.

Might have been married, like depending on how you interpret matters.

Yeah, Jesus definitely not.

Yeah, yeah.

And there's other things like, you know, if I don't have a certain eschatology, then suddenly I'm the devil or anything like that.

And it's hard not to take all that personally because this is not me.

I, I don't like interviewing with people.

I don't like dealing with all this nonsense.

I just want to get out there and do the work.

And that's part of the game you're playing when you're going for pastorship, whether that be lead associate youth.

I'm open eyed all three of them and a lot of resentment and bitterness has built in me as a result of that that I'm still working on.

Once again I've forgiven everyone, but that doesn't mean I still don't feel the feelings I felt and feel.

Yeah, yeah, I am.

It is an interesting topic when you don't like, I don't know, so many times you hear people talk about church hurt.

It's like there's this one story, something terrible happened, they left the faith and they came back to something else.

And, and I don't know, I've heard that version of the story a lot and I don't want to dismiss that stuff.

Like I think it's important but like it's so weird to me cause I'm like, I couldn't point, like there's like the thing that hurt me the most.

I know which experience I've had that hurt me the most.

But like there's constantly still, the church is still people.

And that's where I actually do find Augustine's whole thing of like there's the seen and the unseen church.

Like I actually think that's actually really helpful language.

Like some of the people in the building might not actually be part of the church and some of the people who aren't in the building might be part of the church and we're just not acknowledging it.

Like I think that language is actually really helpful.

But like even thinking like experiences like that I've had experience I've had of friends who pastors, lied about them to fire them and say things about their wife that wasn't true.

I know somebody right now even and this is still challenging because I'm like, I don't even know.

Like, I'm not part of that tradition, so I shouldn't care.

But, like, I know somebody who currently is about to be the director of a church camp who has, like a couple years ago they found out was cheating on his wife with somebody who by the time he was cheating was of age, but when they first started talking was not even 18.

And I'm like, why is this person at a kid's camp as the director where I acted like it's fine?

And my personal opinion on that one is because he was the kind of guy who can lift his wife over his arm with one arm and throw football with the other.

And all that stuff that Christian said.

And I'm getting to a point, church, it is weird.

So, like, we do, we have to consider the fact that there are people who are different, even like leaving theology and stuff out of the conversation for the moment.

There are going to be people who are called to pastors who are more intellectual.

There are going to be people, which is hard for me because I've seen this misused so poorly.

There are going to be people who are the football playing, masculine type, who are still called ambassador and like, to understand different, like pastors don't all look the same, deacons don't all look the same, etc.

Etc.

You know, and to accept that we all have different gifts, we all are going to do it a little bit different.

And that's like part of church unity is that diversity and that that's important.

And then even with like church hurt going, hey, yeah, like there are some times where the experience is so much and it's like traumatizing, so that becomes the story.

And there are sometimes where it's just little things constantly, and one isn't more important than the other, but it's important to recognize, like, it's not always some big traumatic, singular event that caused church pain, hurt, whatever.

Sometimes it's constant stuff, sometimes a little bit of both.

I think in Christian's instance it might be a little bit of both because you can point to a few specific things, but it sounds like there's also just a lot of constant things of people being people.

Yeah, There was never one grand moment.

Like you see in a movie, you'd be like, this is the betrayal scene and I get stabbed 42 times or whatever in the back.

Like, thank you for the 40.

It was a combination of things.

Anything for you, buddy.

Yeah, yeah.

So then we mentioned this before.

Like, a lot of times it is people Then they realize it.

They come face to face with this.

And I think I kind of did this.

It just wasn't as dramatic as I typically hear other people talk about me.

Other people just tell their stories in a way that's more coherent.

But, like, people get hurt, so they deconstruct and like, what part of my beliefs do I really want to hold on to?

And then they reconstruct.

Here's a part of the faith that I find useful, and they put it back together and usually end up in a more liturgical Catholic Orthodox Church, or they end up in a more progressive mainline denomination Christian you've experienced church heard have not yet become Catholic Orthodox or mainline progressive Protestant like me.

What's your secret?

My secret is, I mean, let me preface this.

What I do not think those people are weak.

And that could be easily be misled in what I'm saying.

I want to start off really strong there.

It's not what I mean.

I think that people in weakness seek things to comfort them, Seek things that, oh, I was hurt here, but if I go here, that's not happening in the same way, or I'm not going to experience it in the same way as what they'll think.

And you will find in more progressive on that side of things, people more willing to listen, people more willing to be open to ideas that other churches wouldn't.

And then they come together as a result of that, you know, because they find peace and safety with each other.

Well, I desire peace and safety too, but I also desire to be correct.

And I'm not saying that that automatically means they're worse than me, that they're fools for heading in the past, that path they went on.

That's part of that, is if I'm going to take this thing seriously, this faith that I have, well, why do I do that?

Is the Bible true?

Is it inerrant?

Is it inspired?

Is it written by men?

Does this book belong in the Bible?

Many, many questions like that.

What is a church supposed to look like?

Is it supposed to have a worship service?

Is it.

Are you supposed to.

When you.

When you take communion, how is it supposed to be done?

I asked those questions to myself.

And I'm not saying, once again, those people haven't asked those questions.

But the questions led me to a different way because I think that's exactly what scripture is saying, do it this way.

And just because someone who said the exact same things that you're believing right now said those same things, that doesn't discredit truth.

It means an Idiot mortal being was acting like a foolish, sinful idiot mortal being.

And pastors, members of the church, no one is excluded from that.

I'm not excluded from that.

So I went this direction.

Not because it just gave me comfort again.

Yeah, this gives me comfort, don't get me wrong.

But it gave me comfort because it's true, not because I thought it was true.

And conservative churches, for the most part, if they're doing their jobs lean where I do, because that's what we're going to base everything we do off of.

However, as we've seen in the past, and I've seen in my own legalism takes effect.

Personal feelings and desires get taken into effect, and that kind of ruins the process for other people.

So no wonder people leave more conservative settings when the wrong people lead incorrectly.

Yeah, I don't think there's really an answer to this question.

But so, like, for myself, pretty much the opposite thing, I think was true.

I think for a long time, like, well before I started admitting it to myself, I was like, I don't.

I don't buy this biblical inerrancy thing.

I don't buy.

There were a lot of things I had already questioned that I didn't really believe, but I felt like I had to believe them because my identity was wrapped up in this thing.

Right.

Like, my job, career, perspective was to be a pastor in a certain tradition.

My, you know, friends were all part of this tradition.

My family's all part.

So, like, I felt like I couldn't leave it.

So I think for me, that pain thing was actually more just like, gave me permission to admit to myself what I had already changed my mind about.

Like, I don't think it actually did any changing of the mind.

It was just a. Yeah, I no longer feel like I have to pretend for these people.

And I think a lot of people are probably in a similar boat.

And then I think there are probably a lot of people who, again, not saying they're weaker or anything like that, reiterate all the things Christian said because he's wise who, you know, they do experience.

They, you know, were harassed in certain ways, they were mistreated in certain ways in a certain context, and they see that doesn't look like that's happening over here.

So they go over there, and maybe it's not happening over there.

Maybe that place has a different set of issues.

I think the thing is, if you're in.

See, thing is, like, I don't have a lot wrong with the elca, which is why I'm Part of the elca.

So I'm not going to use myself an example.

I.

Because I can't think of anything and that's just my own down shortcomings.

But if you're in an independently ran church who's prioritizing being an independent church without a hierarchy, whatever, there are certain things of, like pastor worship getting into his head too much.

Egos really become, I think, a more predominant problem in that setting.

I think it's easy to be hurt from something like that and say, okay, well, that's not happening when a more hierarchical church.

But then when you go over there and you see those hierarchical churches, a lot of times there's more pushing stuff under the rug and hiding stuff so that it doesn't look like the system's falling apart.

But that's not what you were hurt by.

So you're probably not looking for that issue.

That's just one example.

But I think there's a lot of that.

Like, if you're hurt by one thing, so you're only looking at that one thing.

Well, another church who has seven other problems, but that's not one of them, it's gonna look great because you're not looking for those other seven problems.

You're looking for things that hurt you.

And that's valid.

But I do think that happens a lot.

Yeah.

Okay.

So Christian, is there a correct path forward?

Like, do everyone need to just sign on and agree we're going to avoid the whole deconstruction thing completely?

Do everyone need to say, all right, we're going to deconstruct, but promise that we're going to reconstruct to the exact same church and beliefs that we started off on?

Is there a correct answer?

When you experience church or you have these questions, whatever, is there a correct way forward?

I will say the construction, the initial construction is perfect and flawless.

That of course, being Jesus Christ and his teachings, the God who revealed himself through scripture.

That is the perfect and flawless thing.

However, the perfect and flawless thing that is the cornerstone of our belief has been used and abused by people who maybe someone had, well, intentions and ended up in a bad way, or someone who took it for their own means, or someone who misinterpreted something and caused problems.

And that's what inevitably causes deconstruction.

And if you've never had a deconstructive moment in your life, you've found a perfect church, which is an impossibility in this world ruled by, you know, finite mortal beings.

So I know every single person has had to have Experienced some point of deconstruction in their lives.

It's whether they engage with it or not that is my issue.

I don't think you can avoid it.

And I'm not going to tell you not to to avoid deconstruction, because I think one thing I'm really big on in my show is the idea of doubt not necessarily being a negative thing.

Doubt in my history has always led me to a stronger faith than my lord, because I recognize, oh, that same guy who made the universe allowed me not to think that he was real, allowed me not to believe in what he was saying.

What greater love could there be?

And that he gave me all this.

What a loving father who allows his son to say, I don't know about you, and yet still loves me despite that.

So, yeah, deconstruct doubt, but do them well.

I'm big on systemic ecology for talking about the decon recon switch.

I think that's probably why you put some of that there in the questions, Because I love when you can say, hey, there's some flaws in the system we've set up.

My favorite video game of all time is Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic two the Sith Lords.

And what that is is a huge deconstruction of what Star wars is.

This whole Force thing being this mysterious entity force, literally, that guides people.

What's that all about?

What if we took it away?

Well, would still people still be good?

Would there still be Jedi around?

Are the Jedi a good thing or to sit, the bad thing, necessarily?

And then you come to the end where it goes, yeah, these things are good because this is what they do.

They.

They bring hope for the galaxy.

They help people in need.

You know, Jedi actually are actually using the Force correctly.

The Force being, you know, working through them and all that.

It's like there's a reconstruction that comes in there for reconstruction, for me came.

Well, this was the construction.

This is holy and perfect.

I have seen how people have used and abused that.

I don't want to be them.

I don't want to cause problems for other people.

So let me come this way, because what was set up is perfect.

Let me, an imperfect man, do the best I can to maintain that perfection, to bring that perfection to other people, knowing I never will.

And yet at the same time, going to people when I screw up and saying, I made the wrong call, I hurt you, Please forgive me.

Which is something very few leaders I've ever had have done for me, and the good ones have, because they recognize I screwed up.

And I want to learn from that and then use his word correctly to go and lead others to go and do the same.

That's where the reconstruction comes in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it's also the way we use these words.

One is wrong and two, even colloquially, seems to get confused because certain people mean different things.

And like some people, they hear deconstruction mean you're leaving the faith.

And some people here, well, I'm just asking questions about what I believe and, like, clarify terms when you're talking with people, that's just generally good advice.

But when I think about, like, how I understand it in the colloquial sense, I look at, look what Jesus did when he's like, well, you've heard it said.

But I say, when you hear him, like, temping the tape, the tables over at the temple, all this stuff like that was Jesus saying, this is what you guys have been doing.

Let's tear it down.

Let's deconstruct some of these ideas.

Jesus does isn't just say, now leave it all behind, no faith.

He says, okay, let's develop new ideas.

What are the greatest commandments?

Love your neighbor as yourself, love God.

Right?

And it's like, Jesus does that.

Deconstruction, reconstruction.

Now, I'm a Lutheran.

I have to bring up Martin Luther.

But, you know, if you think about the whole Protestant Reformation, not just Luther, but, like, what did they do?

They said, what beliefs are we doing right now that led us to do this, these terrible actions?

Because clearly some beliefs that led us to this are wrong.

A professor used to say, orthodoxy leads to orthopraxy.

If our actions are this bad, something's wrong somewhere.

And the Reformers, they ask questions about it, they challenge it.

They deconstructed them.

What did they do?

They reconstructed.

They said, okay, let's clarify in our Bibles, what does this mean?

How are we translating these words?

Is the Bible available to everyone?

Is it justification by faith alone?

What does that mean?

Deconstruction, reconstruction?

And as Protestants, Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, whatever, we find that really important.

Even the Catholics.

I did interview with Allison.

I can't remember his first name.

Dr. Allison Greg.

Yeah, yeah, Dr. Greg Allison.

And, you know, his wife came from a Catholic family, and he has the continual Reformation.

And he writes a lot about, like, the Catholics even did they look back at the Reformation and they don't go, we're not going to be Catholics anymore.

But they have also changed things that they realized they were wrong about.

What is that deconstruction reconstruction.

At a macro level, these things are important.

I have a lot of, personally, I have a lot of respect for fellow Christians who deconstructed who said I could ask questions about what I believe.

I'm not going to believe it just because my parents told me I'm not going to believe it just because my tradition said I'm going to ask questions and really deconstruct this thing.

I have a lot of respect for people who deconstructed it and reconstructed it and don't agree with me whether they reconstructed to the exact same thing, but they actually bothered asking the questions.

Great.

They decreased and reconstructed and said, you know what?

Actually, I don't think I believe the faith at all.

Cool.

I have respect for that, even if I disagree with them, if that makes sense.

Because, like, you're honestly asking questions, you're trying to engage that relationship part of the faith, which is kind of the whole thing.

You're not supposed to just believe it because you were told to from somebody else.

It's like, I feel like that deconstruction reconstruction is necessary for relationship with God.

I just don't.

I don't like people do things just because they were told to or walk away just because it got hard.

I'm going to point to C.S.

Lewis, going to shock everybody.

Surprise.

Yeah.

I think it actually might be a mere Christianity that he says this, but he talks about questioning your faith being a good thing.

And so here's like, when he thinks about faith, he's like, where he thinks of it as a virtue is not.

I'm never going to ask these questions because I'm going to just believe what I was told.

But rather asking those intellectually and engaging with them seriously is important.

But not letting those emotional moments, the moments you feel weak, the moments you feel the doubt because you're angry at something somebody else in the church did, not letting those get to you.

That's what faith is.

Not never asking the questions.

It's just never letting those emotional moments, those moments of weakness be what caused you to leave the faith.

By all means, if you ask questions and realize you're wrong, sure.

Leave the faith.

That's not what faith is.

It's about not letting those moments of weakness, the moments where you feel hurt or anger or sad, not letting those moments take you out is what Lewis is talking about.

And yeah, as always, I seem to think he's right, but I'm still not Anglican for some reason.

Yeah.

Sometimes it just leads people to different answers, man.

Sometimes the wrong answer Sometimes the right ones.

That was.

That was a Christian telling me that he thinks my beliefs are dumb.

Anyway, so.

Have some of the reasons that people have deconstructed or, you know, whatever with their faith today.

I have some listed.

I'm going to just read off a list of these that I've read in other books that these are the main reasons people deconstruct in our own time.

And I just kind of want to get your opinion on the list as a whole, not like each one individually.

So I'm just going to read these, see what you say.

All right.

The Bible seems to be anti science or anti evolution.

Christians support Donald Trump, who was clearly not loving.

So they.

People might see the whole faith as just a charade because it's really about being Republican.

Christians responded poorly to trauma that they experienced.

Church hurt, whatever.

The church has responded to Covid in a way that's caused a lot of people to get sick and lose loved ones.

Church hurt in their own life or in others was minimalized or explained away.

They were told God didn't do what people did kind of as a reason that the place they experienced real pain they should go back to spirituality seemed fake or forced or in some instances was explained away.

Like it's not about being spiritual at all somehow.

And then lastly, we hear a lot of the church preaches love, but never shows it.

So Christian, just as a whole, how do you respond to some of those reasons that people question their faith or maybe even walk away sometimes?

My goal is never to walk up to a person who would say any of these things.

And immediately I'm going to do an investigation and a witch hunt and figure out whether they're lying to me or not.

I'm going to work under the assumption in good faith that these happen, that someone said something like this to them and that ruined them.

Imagine telling Andy that the Bible is anti science or God doesn't believe in science or anything like that.

That'd be a stupid thing to say because he's a really smart man who's earned his degree and then and his doctorate and then some.

Shout out to our friend Andy Walsh and I'll try to link his book down below so people can see who we're talking about, because I can't remember.

The title, what I would ultimately say after acknowledging their hurt, saying, you're allowed to feel hurt, you should feel hurt.

Especially, you know, these things happen to you.

Do they contradict what Jesus said?

Does you getting hurt contradict anything that Jesus said?

Does someone acting in a Sinful manner contradict anything Jesus said.

The answer is no.

Jesus remains who he is, regardless of what his followers or so called followers say.

He is truth.

He is love.

So when someone who called themselves a Christian or is actually a Christian does something terrible, all I have to do is go back to what the man, God himself said.

It's like, you need me.

You need me to die for you because you're not good enough.

Because nothing you can ever do is good enough.

Your sins keep you away from me.

And yet I decided, because I love you, to die for you so that you didn't have to endure what I had.

So I'm not downplaying anything you ever went through.

I'm not saying you have to go straight back to that church that hurt you.

I would say go find a different church and then recognize that that church, like the church you were in, isn't perfect.

You're going to be let down.

Your pastor is going to say something you disagree with.

You're going to have a disagreement with another mom over how to raise your children or something like that.

Like these things gonna, are gonna happen.

It's how do we approach them and how does the church treat that issue?

If you have an issue like that, bring it up to leadership.

If you don't have leadership that's responsible, leave.

Because if they're not responsible, they don't love you.

Yeah, like, it's not a crime to leave a church if you're leaving for the right reasons.

If you're losing because, oh, I was passed over for a promotion, maybe, maybe not.

Depends on the situation.

If you're passed over because you know you don't like the worship song, I mean, okay, like, is the church still solid?

Like, you still get work done there, Maybe not leave them, but like, if you're hurt, like, I've left multiple churches.

That was part of my testimony.

I have not accepted jobs at multiple places who would have taken me because I knew who they were through the interview and go, oh, I'm not a good fit for you.

You wouldn't listen to me and I wouldn't be able to lead you.

Well, not say some dictator and take over everything.

But like, no, I'm still ahead, honcho.

It's not the elders, it's not the deacons, but we need to work together.

And I'm not here to micromanage you.

I'm not here to tell you how to live all your lives correctly.

And the only way that I see things.

But if you're going to do that to Me, we're not going to work together.

So other things too, like church, Bible being anti science.

Like, is it.

Have you read the book?

Have you really?

Have you read the book?

Cover to cover.

The Bible loves science.

Yeah.

You can argue about creation and evolution every day or how we're supposed to treat people, blah, blah, blah.

You know what?

God made this earth and he made everything in it, including the scientific laws that we have in place.

That is a wonderful, beautiful thing.

If anyone says otherwise, they're not reading the same book you and I are.

Correctly.

Or the political leader of any stripe, Donald Trump, can't stand a man.

That's another reason some churches find me offensive, because I don't align perfectly with that.

You know what that means?

We're not going to work out well together because you're serving a man who God allowed to be there.

But God allowing someone to be in charge doesn't mean he approves of every action he makes.

Quit misinterpreting scripture.

And that goes for anyone.

It didn't mean he approved everything Bush did, Obama did so and so forth.

It means that God allowed them to be in charge.

So don't twist it to be something that's not.

And once again, regardless of who we put up there, does that contradict anything Scripture says?

No.

Does it contradict truth?

No.

So I would also say to people real quick in all this, for those who've experienced legitimate hurt, find help as best you can.

If you afford therapy, go to therapy.

If you need someone else who's really spiritual that can counsel you extremely well, go to them.

Like, find a way to let that out.

Otherwise it's just going to bottle inside of you forever and ever.

And I can speak to this as it's happened to me.

There's some of the people I've had to work with in my life who claim the same Jesus I do.

It's not healthy.

Speak out about it.

This is therapy to me, to an extent.

Yeah.

I2 churches like family and I think some of the things to remember is it's meant to challenge you, but it's not meant to hurt you, pull you back.

You're not meant to be in an abusive relationship.

If a church is constantly belittling you, making you feel hurt, that's not the same thing for church.

Making you feel challenged and you're uncomfortable because they keep talking about stuff that you don't like.

But it's biblical.

Deal with it.

If it's the other people in the church don't like all the same things you do.

That's a great thing.

Diversity is important, stay there.

But if it's you're feeling hurt, you're feeling abused, you're feeling constantly put down, that is a different thing than being challenged.

And I think much like with family and this gets hard, the political thing gets hard.

I do think the last 10 years we've seen a lot of churches actually are worshiping a political party and we've seen that on both sides, in my opinion.

And in a way that's a good thing because it lets us know which churches are actually Christocentric and which churches are political centric with some religious language around it.

Find those Christ centered churches.

One of the reasons we used Hebrew at the beginning, I love that it's just a book that's like, hey, keep Jesus center pretty, pretty easy.

If you think about that's how you know what a church is doing, right?

Is it keeping Jesus the main thing cool.

If you're challenged and they're keeping Jesus the main thing, you're not feeling hurt, stay there, be challenged.

That's great.

People are people.

Next thing Christian.

Yeah.

What other advice might you have for people who have either been mistreated or hurt in church?

Like let's say someone who feels like they could never see step flip in a church again after what's happened to them or what they've experienced.

What advice or what piece of wisdom might you offer them?

Don't let their hatred and mistreatment of you turn into hatred and mistreatment of yourself.

Don't let them win.

They're losers.

Anyone who sins against you and when you sin against them, that also makes you a loser.

But let's focus on you for right now.

That's being the one wrong.

They're losers.

They're acting incorrectly, they're acting sinfully.

God is going to punish them on his time.

They may not seem like it because we live in a finite state, but what's that in light of eternity?

Don't ruin the rest of your time you have left here simply because someone else ruined it for you.

Beat them.

Win.

Go to church.

If it means just starting online and looking at churches in the area and seeing if they're good before you step in the doors.

Do that.

I'd rather you did that than nothing.

Because doing nothing always hurts yourself.

Living on your own as a lone wolf Christian, I have to remind myself of this.

Day by day is anathema to loving God and loving myself.

We are meant for community.

The church was created by God.

It's not some Human construction, because we want to control it, is created by him to help us work around each other and work for each other.

And that means find a place that's going to look out for you like you're looking out for them.

And that's going to be hard.

It's going to suck.

They may say, oh, you did that in the past or you're out.

Leave them, they're not worth your time.

Find the real people, the people who aren't going to compromise.

People are actually going to teach you well and love you well as you're loving them well.

And I will say, because I kind of, I don't want to say teased.

I mentioned this earlier, a little bit more light hearted, but sometimes it is just feeling a church that doesn't feel the same as what you were in.

Like if you were traumatized by a church that looks like it has all the bells and whistles like a Catholic church, maybe try a super low liturgical church.

It's going to feel different and that might help.

It might not.

That's okay.

Vice versa, if you were at a church that didn't feel like that, maybe all the liturgy and stuff will make it feel so different sometimes on the kind of psychological level that just allows you to bypass some of that.

Also, there's a lot of websites about church homes, small groups, that kind of stuff.

You can find a place where you don't even have to go into the building because I know some people truly do have trauma and it's just hard to do that.

If you need help, please reach out.

I have access some of these websites.

I'd be glad to share them with people who might need that.

I don't know.

I felt like that was important to say, so I'm just gonna include that Christian.

Do you have anything else you might want to add about church?

Her deconstruction, reconstruction, the topics we touched on today.

If you've experienced legitimate church hurt, never listen to a single person who said you didn't.

If you've explained yourself fully once again, don't let them win.

Find people who are going to love you for the creature created in the image of God that you are.

And it's gonna once again, it's gonna take work.

Work.

It's going to take time, it's going to take heartache.

But I'd rather go through all of that if it meant I got to the finish line at the end.

I'm also going to do an annoying showing my my old Pentecostal roots here, pray.

I have known people who left church, didn't want to go back because they had heard.

Who found real Christian community at a bar.

Who found real Christian community at a house church.

Who found real Christian community at Comic Con?

Sometimes like, hey, I think you should try to find it yourself.

Do for yourself what you can.

Sometimes just pray.

God might just let a community show up where you least expect it and that's cool too.

God also wants the best for you.

So I think prayer really does work.

Pentecostal stuff out of the way.

All right, Christian, you know, we do have to do a practical action.

What's something you think anybody listening right now could go do that help better engender Christian unity in the church today?

He's slow to listen, slow to answer, quick to listen in the regards of okay, someone is speaking about church hurt to you or you're speaking church hurt to them.

Listen, I love solutions.

They're my thing.

But a part of getting actual solutions is actually being willing to listen to the person, not just having the answer ready right off the bat because sometimes they don't need to hear it right that second.

Learn other people and learn how to actually answer them well and listen to them well.

And if everybody did that, listened especially to these stories of church hurt before just coming up with a quick answer or throwing out a God didn't hurt you people to, you know, whatever cliche out if they listened, what would change in the church in the world around us?

I think more crimes would be exposed in the church.

I think righteousness would be delivered to those people they're actually be listened to instead of talked at by would help immensely for their desire to actually come back to church.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

I like that.

Amen.

Barely barely God moment.

We always do God moments before we wrap up.

Just a place we've seen God in recently.

TJ likes to make me go first.

He's not here so he.

He won.

I'm going to be lame.

I'm wearing a T shirt right now.

For geeks on a roll it's a tabletop role playing game we we do on another podcast this mech ecology Chris and I were part of one recently made some some superheroes and different characters do a Bible study on saga songs together and Christian inadvertently not part of the planned game Made me think of like what role does sacrifice play even in romantic love And I don't know I've been thinking about that so my God moment is currently still happening.

Yeah.

So Christian, what about you?

Oh also it's TJ's birthday so that's a blessing for everyone who's alive.

And that's my third one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm gonna add two.

I will say recently I mentioned Karai Rowe, the Foreign Saints podcast earlier.

He and I, he's been fighting a group of people known as the polypals for a while.

People who believe that the Bible preaches polygamy and polygyny and that we're the woke losers who won't listen to reason because God really wants me to have that extra woman or two on my side.

And we did an episode that's just released as of today.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Where we just ripped him to shreds.

And I needed that so very much.

Just, you know, sometimes you just need an easy enemy to beat up when they say stupid things.

What a thing to say on a church unity podcast.

I'll say.

We had a.

Listen.

We had an.

I think it was Michael.

No, who was it there?

There was somebody on our show once who did actually talk about a project they're doing of like, I think it's real difficult mission work.

When you go to a place where polygamy is already established, and then they're like, what do we do with relationships?

From starting there is weird.

Like, that's a whole different conversation.

Trust me, you'll have a good time listening to that one, because I had a great time.

And second, you know, as I mentioned, last time I was in here, went up to Chicago to go see my niece and brother, help them move.

My mother and I went up there and I had an absolute blast with them.

Was loving on that little girl and making sure she was taken care of.

Just feels so good.

You never feel as good as you do when a two and a half year old wraps her arms around you and says she loves you.

I just want to go to Chicago and see Brandon Knight.

Yeah, unfortunately, we weren't able to meet.

He was extra busy.

I had a lot of stuff going on.

But you know what?

It was still nice to talk to him over the phone.

Yeah.

Ironically, that's also part of why we're doing this episode.

I'm buying time to have Brandon on the show soon.

So there we go.

He rescheduled.

And then I was like, hey, wait a minute, I have an idea.

And Christian was like, oh, yeah, I know that he's down for ideas.

Well, that was just.

All right, everyone else, you were just on.

You've just.

You've been on a lot the last two months.

All right, all right.

Well, with that, guys, it is funnier time to start wrapping this one up.

We do want to thank everybody for listening.

If you made it this far, consider sharing with a friend cousin enemy especially your cousins enemies again.

You know cousin enemies.

Yeah cousin enemies especially.

Go to our website guys.

Purchase one of our T shirts we mentioned earlier promote that helps promote their show, helps raise money for podcast needs.

It lets other people know about the show and the importance of our mission to educate unite the modern church.

A lot of good done and buying a simple T shirt again.

My favorite the Trinity Knot one.

There's also a few other good ones like different languages and stuff and cool prints.

Check it out.

I think it's worth looking at all of them personally.

Link in the show notes for the whole church website and you can see all that.

Also check out the other shows on podcast network, most of which have Christian he does a lot of shows Friday night frights Let nothing move you Systematic ecology what I don't like probably a million other things.

Not really sure you can also hear me and be living water and I I do.

I really like Paige and Pixel.

Check that show out.

We hope you enjoyed this show.

Coming up, we're going to be interviewing Pastor Robin Jennings, author of Expressions of the Soul, Celtic Christianity in Life with God.

Then we're going to have on Jason G. Green.

He's the author of Too Precious to Lose Informer, associate counsel to the Obama administration, United States of America stuff.

After that, we plan to have a short break for a week or two before we begin a series on the behind the scenes of ministries from the local church, featuring Brandon and I.

We're talking about publishing.

We're going to talk about how we get homilies prepared, how a church literally gets built.

That episode is being put together.

Organ pipes is an episode I have.

We have a how.

How organs get built coming up.

And finally, at the end of season one, we'll have Francis Shane on probably.

If somebody tells him, don't ask him.

Yeah, hurry up.

Francis sat.