The conversation between Travis and David W. Smith uncovers the often-unspoken yet pervasive power of money—specifically Mammon—in ministry today. Together, they probe how Mammon functions not just as personal greed but as a system, an idolatrous force that flattens spiritual formation and distorts churches as they drift toward a market-shaped theology.

Smith traces the historical and theological roots of Mammon, arguing that its influence extends far beyond personal finances and into the very structures of our lives. He warns church leaders of its subtle seduction and calls for communities shaped by loyalty to God rather than the lure of material success. Throughout their dialogue, Travis and Smith emphasize the need for a deeper, more holistic vision of discipleship—one that resists consumerism, challenges cultural assumptions, and re-centers the gospel as the true measure of flourishing. Their exchange urges listeners to engage Scripture and culture with fresh eyes, embracing a countercultural faith that confronts the creeping idolatry of wealth.

Takeaways

• Travis Michael Fleming and David W. Smith explore what it truly means to choose between God and Mammon, revealing how wealth and materialism quietly shape spiritual life and ministry.
• Smith emphasizes that the worship of Mammon is not simply about money—it reflects a wider cultural idolatry that reshapes Christian values, priorities, and commitments.
• Listeners are invited to examine their own financial choices and ask whether their lives reflect service to God or obedience to Mammon’s demands.
• The discussion highlights the need for Christians to recognize the socio-economic systems that subtly mold their worldview and ministry effectiveness—and to critique how those systems influence their faith.
• Smith shows how Mammon’s growing power has seeped into church practices, bending them away from the gospel and resulting in a weakened, compromised discipleship.
• Ultimately, the conversation reminds the Church that resisting materialism opens the door to rediscovering the true demands of the gospel and cultivating a more authentic, faithful community.

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Dan and Darlene, you're an example to many of what it means to follow Christ, even if you are.

Green Bay and Wisconsin fans love you both and thankful for all that you do.

So I think there are signs of hope, but it kind of underlines the importance of the Church of Jesus Christ being equipped for that moment, ready to respond to it in a way that is consistent with the gospel.

And that means, I think it basically means in many situations, repentance, recognition of our serious compromises.

We've been unaware of the fact that that was what was happening.

But if there comes a revelation of the true demands of the gospel and the choice to be made between God or Mammon, then if we respond to that in obedience to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, I suspect there's a wonderful opportunity before us.

Welcome to Apollo's Watered.

In the Ministry Deep Dive podcast.

We tackle the big questions few are willing to ask about ministry, culture, and the challenges you face every day.

Ministry is hard and the road ahead isn't always clear.

But with God, nothing is impossible.

We come alongside pastors and ministry leaders like you, exploring obstacles, uncovering opportunities, and sharing practical ways to thrive.

Our vision is simple to see thriving ministry leaders and churches noticeably transforming their world.

So let's dive deep together.

Refresh your soul, renew your vision, and get ready, because it's watering time.

Today on Ministry Deep Dive, we're stepping into a conversation that every church leader, and honestly, every disciple of Jesus, needs to wrestle with.

We talk a lot about mission, discipleship and renewal on this show.

But there's an issue that's underneath the surface of the.

Of all of it that often goes unaddressed, and that's the power of mammon.

Yes, we're talking about money.

My guest today is theologian and missiologist David W. Smith, author of the book God or the Critical Issue Confronting World Christianity Today.

And together, we're going to explore how mammon, money, wealth, and the systems around us can quietly shape our gospel expressions, our ministries, and even our hearts.

This conversation isn't about budgets or fundraising.

This is about what forms us in our world today.

It's about what we love.

It's about the forces that either can propel the mission of God forward or deform it without even noticing.

So, David, welcome to Ministry Deep Dive.

Thank you very much.

It's a pleasure to be able to interact with you.

Thank you for the invitation.

I am looking forward to our conversation.

Now, we like to get to know Our guests on this show.

So, are you ready for the fast five?

Sure.

All right, here we go.

If you could master any skill, what would it be.

To learn?

French.

Why?

I've not been very good at languages, and I've always regretted not being able to speak a second language.

I learned a language in Nigeria, but for a very relatively small group of people.

I would love to be bilingual or trilingual.

You and I share the same problems where neither one of us is a good or language.

But I had a young man in my church, and you would know this being in Africa, he spoke nine languages, and that made me feel even.

Even worse.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Number two, what is the most unusual place you've ever eaten a meal.

That has to be in Nigeria?

At various places in southeastern Nigeria where I was working.

And not just unusual places, but unusual meals.

And I can remember some of those very, very distinctly.

Is there one of them that stands out?

I'm just curious.

Well, there were stray dogs that were consumed, and I think I may unwittingly, on one occasion, have partaken in one of those meals.

All right, number three.

What is a book, movie, or show you secretly love but are a little embarrassed to admit?

Oh, golly, that's.

This is the time.

To be honest.

I think we have a show in Britain which I believe originated in America and probably with Donald Trump, called Dragon's Den.

Oh, that might be like the Apprentice.

What we.

I think that's what they called it kind of show.

And it's the.

The very antithesis of everything that we're going to be criticizing in this discussion.

But I have to admit that it makes good television.

Okay, how about this one, then?

Number four, if you could travel anywhere tomorrow, where would you go?

I would.

I would go back to Nigeria.

Oh.

I've not been back for quite a long time.

I often wonder whether I've got one more visit back to the place where I taught in me, and if I could go there instantly, that would be it.

Oh, a lot of things are going on in Nigeria right now.

Indeed they are.

Yeah.

Which is one of the things that makes it difficult.

Yeah.

All right, number five, what's something you tried once and will never do again?

Probably horse riding.

What happened?

I don't think I fell off, but I felt distinctly uncomfortable and I needed to be rescued.

And at this stage in life, there's absolutely no possibility I'll ever have a second try.

So, full disclosure.

Talking about horseback riding, I was at a Christian camp with my family a few years ago, and I'm about 240, 250 pounds in America.

I'm not a little man, but I'm not huge either.

And I was on this horse and they didn't have a horse that was big enough for me.

So they, they got this horse for me to ride.

They found one and as I'm riding along, I start sliding off and I fell off the horse and they felt so bad they stopped.

They had trail guides and then they put me back on the horse and then again I fell off in one and within a five minute period.

I'm a terrible horseback.

I'm a terrible horseman.

We have, we have a lot in common.

All right, let's talk about your book.

This is a fantastic book.

I was very pleased when I saw that Langham Academic had this book, God or Mammon?

But when you're talking about mammon, you're not just talking about money.

What are you talking about when you use that term?

Mammon?

Yeah.

No, it's, it's money.

Money is a crucial aspect of what I think is intended by Mammon, but I think it's misleading.

It's often translated as money.

I think in the NIV it translates money.

And I think that's misleading because I think it narrows down the reality of what that term actually signifies.

I was greatly helped by Jacques Ellula on this.

And he stresses the fact that we must not neglect the parallel between what Jesus is saying about mammon and what is implied in the worship of God, so that you're immediately looking at something much bigger than simply money.

To worship God demands the whole of life.

It means the surrender of everything to him as our Lord and our guide and our enabler.

And Mammon must have a similar reach.

And I think this is what makes the term and the concept and the need to address this so pressing and so urgent in our 21st century.

Because it seems to me that within my lifetime I have actually lived through a period in which I think it's possible to have witnessed the increasing power of this system, which must be identified as an extreme form of idolatry, which in all kinds of ways, it seems to me, creeps into every nook and cranny of life and within the church presents us with such a problem.

Because often our concept of the gospel, our way of articulating the gospel, just misses this dimension.

And the extent of the challenge that is demanded of us by Jesus.

Demand that we choose either God or.

Or mammon.

Let's draw that out because many of our listeners right now are saying, I'm not sure if I'm following you.

We need money to do ministry.

We need to be able to fundraise.

We need money.

But you're challenging the very system because the system actually starts reshaping.

People, ministries, churches, everything.

Is that what we're talking about here?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think it's probably helpful if I just say something about my own background and how I came to wrestle with these kinds of issues.

And I ministered in the city of Cambridge for 11 years.

Very privileged to be there.

Crucial place.

Was blessed to see significant growth and the opportunity to engage with a whole series of international students, including many Americans, some of whom came back to the States to become quite prominent in leadership.

And then I went to Nigeria with my wife and two small children, sailed on a Nigerian cargo ship which took five weeks from London to a small port in the southeast of Nigeria.

And that was utterly transformative.

I mean, so many people have this same testimony.

It compelled me to ask all kinds of questions.

One of those questions was concerning mission itself.

I think people in my congregation in Cambridge were really pleased that we were going to Africa because they said things like, so good to have a real missionary again.

By which they meant someone going where there are straw huts and the kind of images of traditional mission.

But I found both the journey out to Nigeria on that ship and the work in Nigeria just undercut so many of my assumptions.

The journey out, I talked with a radio engineer who kept on asking me why I was doing this, why was I leaving comfort and security in Cambridge to go to a rural location in southeast Nigeria.

And on one of the occasions, at the end of the conversation, he said, he was very honest, and he said, actually, we don't need what you're bringing anymore.

What we need is science and technology.

So I had that dimension of a modernizing Africa.

But then once there, I found myself in a very traditional community where modernization was still only in its relatively early stages.

And I encountered a form of Christianity that related to the context in which the villagers around me were living.

Simple, poor, profound sense of community, deep sense of the reality of the spiritual world, different ways of conceiving things like sin to what I had been used to.

And so I had to almost begin from scratch, go back to the beginning, question my inherited, strongly Reformed theology, not because I now felt that that was somehow misleading, but just that it didn't understand these questions.

And in that process, I not only found myself adapting or attempting to adapt to this new cultural context, but becoming much more critical about the context that I had left behind.

Now again, this is, I think, very familiar missionary experience.

These issues were heightened for me when we actually returned to the UK and we came back after nearly six years in Africa and suddenly I realized what seemed to me at that point, enormous changes that were taking place in the culture.

I actually realize now that they were already happening when I left, but I wasn't aware of them.

I think it was being in a cross cultural context that gave me a new set of lenses with which to see my own culture.

And with the background of a simple society, of the experience of spending time in the slums of Lagos from Africa, these new lenses enabled me to see modern Western culture in a completely new way.

And at that point, I think this issue of the power of mammon and the demand of Jesus that we choose one or the other, that really came home to me.

You're right.

I think your story, I think of Leslie Newbegin being in India for so long and him coming back.

I think of anyone who has worked with a different culture.

You do get a new set of lenses.

I tell people, whenever you go on the mission field or even a short term mission trip, don't think you're going to bless them.

They're the ones that are going to teach you.

Absolutely.

You're going to learn so much more from them.

And this is where I think the global church helps us to be able to see the world differently.

And this is why I think your book is so vitally important.

Now you, you say though, that this economic system, this mammon, is shaping our discipleship.

Can you give an example for our, for our listeners of how money subtly forms the way Christians think and live without them realizing it?

I think we live in a system where we can't exist without money, we can't exist without employment, we appear not to be able to exist without significant income.

And the demand for an increasing income goes on growing in ways that create all kinds of difficulties and social and economic divisions within communities.

And it's so easy for us just to take that for granted because that is the way that the world is.

And I think the language of mammon, the language in the Apostle Paul about the impact of the powers, all the language, much of the language that we've used in evangelical circles that has become very familiar about spiritual conflict and so on, all of that relates to this world that we are discussing.

But we have inclined, I think, to narrow it down both in the sense that we've made it, we've limited it to personal experience and we've Ignored that in the African context, this sense of the reality of the spiritual world was so profound.

And I think in Western Christianity, that's a crucial dimension that we have lost.

And all this language about the powers, this struggle with a system which was an imperial system.

I mean, in writing this book for me, I think one of the most important things that I wanted to stress was the urgent need to take account of context.

And context, for me has probably become a much overused word.

Context.

In terms of Scripture, we're usually aware of context when we're dealing with the Old Testament because the existence of a series of empires is obvious.

We're less aware of it, I think, when we move into the New Testament.

And my personal discovery, perhaps the most important personal discovery for me in all the things that I've written culminating in this book is the significance of context in the New Testament and the reality of that imperial world of which we are vaguely aware.

But when I look back on my own training, for example, to become a pastor, we were very concerned with the relationship with Judaism, but hardly conscious at all of the relevance of the Roman Empire to our understanding of the Gospel.

I think that's been one of the great changes that has taken place in the last 10 or 15 years, that the recognition of empire in the New Testament as well as in the Old Testament has become much more widespread and helped us to then relate that to our own context, which is also, I think, increasingly imperial.

You, in your book, trace really the history of mammon.

I mean, you walk through this because, as you said, you've really brought out the context.

I'm looking through the biblical roots of it.

Chapter two, Tracing the roots of it, Resisting Mammon, Prophets and Wise Men.

Chapter three, you have a pause even for reflection.

The Lament of Isaiah.

Then you get into chapter four, God or Mammon, The Ultimate Decision.

And then chapter five, the original revolution from Galilee to the Roman Urban World, Turning the world Upside Down.

The collection.

And then you go into the historical struggles, which I thought was fantastic.

Not only did you just root this in the scripture, but you even start going through church history and seeing how this is affected, over.

Affected us even today.

And then you conclude obviously with world Christianity and the great unraveling.

You know, I still think as I'm.

I'm talking to you, and there's so much that I'm taking for granted right now because I've read your book, I'm familiar with your mentor, but I don't think a lot of those people out, out in our audience may be aware of who your mentor was, because I think if we might understand who he is a little bit, we might understand a little bit further, get a further insight into this book.

Who was your mentor?

Thank you for asking that question.

When I was in Nigeria and really struggling with.

Well, I was struggling with can I remain evangelical.

I had developed such a deep concern for social justice, for a recognition of the forces that are creating so much misery and pain and death, especially on the African continent.

And I happened to come across an article by Andrew Walls, who I'd not heard of before.

And I can still remember my excitement at reading this article because it really addressed the kind of things that I was struggling with.

And I thought to myself, we were kind of coming toward the end of our time in Africa and I'd not done degree level studies.

I'd done a Bible college course which equipped me well for exposition of Scripture, but didn't address these kinds of questions.

And I thought, if only it were possible to study with Andrew Walls, that's the way in which I think I could get my head sorted out and begin to respond to these crucial issues.

It's a long story and I can't go into the detail, but it happened.

We came back and I remember going up to Aberdeen to talk with him.

He was immediately so gracious and kind and really helpful in facilitating the possibility of me studying with him in Aberdeen.

So I ended up there for seven years.

I did the MA degree undergraduate degree in three years and I. I did courses with Andrew.

I did courses with Kwame Bediaco, who at that time was teaching part time in Aberdeen.

And Andrew in particular was just an inspiration to me.

His teaching was wonderful, but he had an immense scholarship, I think probably the greatest scholar I've ever come across.

But he wore it so lightly and there was such humility about him that I've always looked back on him with such thankfulness as a real model.

And he picked up.

And it's there in his writing, as you will know, all kinds of themes that have become enormously important.

The emphasis on world Christianity, on the growth of the church in the global south, of which, of course I was aware I'd been serving a church with more than a million members.

And that changed my understanding of mission.

The theme of what he calls reverse migration, that he talks first of all about the great migration by which particularly European peoples fanned out across the whole world and changed history, and then sees the migration taking place now as the reverse of that, but also as within the purpose of God.

And I think in his scattered articles on that theme.

There's just a wonderful theology of migration, which on both sides of the Atlantic we most desperately need.

And then perhaps thirdly, his concept of conversion and the distinction between conversion and proselytization, that making a proselyte is a form of conversion in quotes, by which you bring somebody to express Christianity in the same way that you do.

And Andrew says that's basically a Jewish model, but it's not what the apostles did.

They crossed over into other cultures, planted the seed of the gospel, and then allowed gentiles to evolve a form of discipleship which was both faithful on the one hand, but absolutely relevant to their own particular cultural context.

And I kind of look back now, I think, on modern evangelical history, and I think we've been using the language of conversion, but very often what we've been doing is proselytizing.

And it seems to me that this issue is going to be absolutely crucial for the future, because I think we're now in a situation where modernity is beginning to run its course.

And there are very encouraging signs.

I don't want to go off track here, but we could talk about things that are occurring in the discipline of sociology.

My son is a sociologist, so I have long conversations with him.

And whereas when I was doing my degree studies looking at secularization, the strong secularization thesis that this was inevitable, it was the unfolding of history and it would become universal, was really strong.

That has now receded.

And in its place there's a language being used within sociology that is recognizing the failure and the dangers of a modernity that lacks any sense of the holy or of transcendence.

So I think there are tremendous opportunities awaiting us.

But conventional evangelicalism, with its narrowed down gospel and its particular understanding of conversion, I think we'll be ill equipped to meet the opportunities that lie before us.

I could not agree with you more.

With our very individualized gospels, with our very small understanding of what the Bible talks about, to be a disciple of Jesus and understanding what it means to be a part of his people and the breadth and depth of his people, we have in.

In some respect right now a religious isolationism or a tribalism that is sought to re.

Just establish itself.

And it's not interacting with people outside of their own confines because they have deemed them to be wrong on some cultural issue, religious issue, what it might be.

But.

But even in their way of articulating the faith, I find that oftentimes they don't always articulate what the Bible says is true, but what their specific ethnic group deems to be cohesive to keep that ethnic group in which their faith came from was.

But we might be getting too far into the technical language of.

This is the kind of thing that I think.

I know you and I love, but I'm trying to translate this into our audience here for a moment.

So stay with us.

For those who are saying, I'm not following.

Following you.

I'm not a global Christian scholar.

Hey, that's okay.

We're just glad to have you to be a part of the conversation.

But I want to talk for a moment about Andrew Walls, because he really pioneered a whole study of a whole new study, really the study of non Western Christianity and the transmission of the Christian faith.

And this is where it's so important for today.

And I'm going to illustrate this in his posthumous work that came out, I don't know, two or three years ago.

It was phenomenal.

It talks about the two modes of Christian expansion and it says the crusader mode and the missionary mode.

And it's like a Venn diagram for those who.

At home, you have a Venn diagram that overlap and they use the same language.

They demonstrate.

They both demonstrate.

They both use the same Bible.

But it really comes down to their interaction with power.

The way that he illustrated it.

And I like to.

I even have a picture of it.

Maybe I'll put this up on the screen later.

But in the picture of this power piece you have, the missionary is relying on a heavenly power because it has no earthly power.

It's there at the permission of another, whereas the crusader mode has cultural power.

And they don't have to rely on heavenly power, so they will actually use power to compel.

And so what we're seeing, that's where Christian nationalism comes in, by the way.

Let's get really relevant to where we're at.

This is where this is so vitally important for our contemporary discussion.

And what David's talking about is not only just the power piece that's there, but this mammon aspect is shaping even our Christian expressions now.

A couple of episodes ago, we did an episode on here with sociologists of religion, Mark Mulder and Gerardo Marti, and it was talking about the business of American Christianity where it's been reduced.

It's been reduced.

Been reduced because we're giving people what they want rather than what they need.

And what's happened is we have a malformed gospel expression in the contemporary evangelical church that has now, because it's been originated in the west, it's gone around the world so we have to be able to prophetically critique this, and this is what this work does.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but that's what we're talking about, isn't it?

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, there's an American sociologist you will know, Peter Berger.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And he wrote a book called the Sound of Solemn Assemblies.

I think it was one of his early books in which it was a critical evaluation of American Christianity.

And he talks about churches as not having a distinctive ethic of their own.

But how does he put it?

Articulating the ethic of society in general, but with a greater solemnity.

It's a kind of humorous comment of his, but it's making a very, very significant point.

Andrew Wall says of British Christianity that it lost critical contact with its own culture.

And that's a really interesting phrase, I think.

And maybe that applies equally, if not more so, on the other side of the Atlantic.

Oh, of course.

Yeah.

Well, I think what you've stated there, we've said this on the show multiple times, and it's the old trope or saying, if you want to ask how the water is, don't ask a fish, because we don't realize our own culture.

So let me illustrate this even further.

I want to go back again, because what you're saying there, we've lost critical contact.

So what we're saying is if you have missionary glasses, and I'm talking to pastors right now, you put on missionary glasses, you're going to see your cultural different.

Culture different.

So if you and I, or anyone today.

That's in my listening voice, if we were.

Let's say we were in a Western nation and we were to get on a plane and go to India, and we've never been to India before.

Everything is new.

The smells, the sounds, everything is new.

And you're.

You're trying to figure out the lay of the land, and you're going to ask questions, why do they do this?

Why do they do that?

Why do they do this?

And some things you're going to be appalled by because it's so different from your culture.

We're saying that those things exist in our culture.

Yeah.

Today.

Yeah, yeah.

And so one of those things is the rampant materialism and how we have taken the Christian faith to baptize.

And I'm going to say this in our context.

The American dream.

Yeah, yeah.

And the materialism and the consumerism.

And you actually mentioned that you were.

You were quoting Zygmit Bauman.

Yeah.

And liquid modernity.

And he talks about that, doesn't he not?

I mean, we become consumers in every which way.

Is that right?

Absolutely, yes.

And he's been one of my most important sources, I think.

I mean, what I love about him is that he's a sociologist, so he's using the language of sociology, but he speaks that in a way that is accessible beyond his own discipline.

Yeah, it's refreshingly different.

And I think that distinction between what he calls solid modernity, there was a form of modernity that still had important values, recognition of the importance of society, but that's been left behind.

And we find ourselves now in what he calls this liquid world.

And I think it's that that is causing this reaction.

Because the other thing sociologists are talking about is a converging series of global crises.

Not just one, but many.

And though that converging series, what they call the poly crisis, poses a terrible threat to the whole of humanity and of course, to the future of the globe, the earth.

And that's why, and this is so encouraging that where I think it has never happened before, I'm seeing people ask really big questions to which the gospel, when it's articulated faithfully, can make a very significant response.

I think there's the potential for a real day of opportunity ahead of us.

I was recently back in my old church in Cambridge celebrating their 200th anniversary.

And I was interviewed on the Sunday morning and asked a series of questions, the last of which was, how would you pray for us in the future?

What would you want for this church where you spent 10 years of your life for the future?

Well, it's 50 years since I was there, and I could see enormous change in that 50 years from the congregation that I worked with.

It's been enormously blessed and it's in such a crucial location at the heart of the city of Cambridge.

And I felt I had to say, when I think about that and see the transformation that has taken place, I find myself asking, what will it be like in 60 years time from here?

And I think I can't predict that.

But what I see happening in the Western world is this series of converging crises.

And I think things could become really difficult for us.

And we might find that in 60 years time we would have to ask the question, not just do we have a faith that makes life worth living, but do we really have a faith for which we would be willing to die?

So there are big issues here in what we're talking about, because if we really engage in this Critical work, this criticism of culture on the basis of the revelation of Jesus Christ given to us by, in the gospel, then in the world as it is governed by Mammon and with enormous powers controlling that system and maintaining huge differences within society.

To begin to critique that, as incidentally, the new Pope is currently doing, we might find ourselves being surveyed, watched over, controlled, and we might have to face being part of the suffering church.

This is a reality.

And I want to again bring this out for a bit for our people, to help them understand what we're talking about here.

Because some I know are having talked to so many different pastors, they're still not grabbing because they want that, they want the practical.

What do I do with this?

I don't understand what to do with it.

I actually had a guy say, hey, I love this stuff, but I don't know what to do with it when I'm done.

Yeah.

Let me put it this way.

I read a fantastic book called Dark Academia by Pete Fleming, who's a Kiwi out of New Zealand.

I'm not sure what his faith background is.

It's a short book.

But he's lamenting on what Mammon has done to the university.

And what he means by that is he talks about being in a faculty meeting and the faculty chair just sitting with his head in his hands, crying.

And he says, you know, if you wanted to live a life of thought and really intellectual probing, don't go to the university.

He actually says this, he says, because it's no longer about that.

It's about money and it's run by people who have never been in a classroom.

And it's all about what the value is.

So that's in the university.

Let me tell you what it looks like in the medical field.

I'm talking to a doctor and my son was there for an appointment.

The doctor rushes in and I've had several friends who are doctors and they get 15 minutes with a patient and they have to rush out.

And I talked to one doctor friend who said, I don't even have a moment to go to the bathroom because I have to meet my quota.

And it's.

I have to, because time is money in our culture.

We don't even think about it anymore.

When you put that into the church, though, now you're getting into a different place because if you start marketing the gospel, you then are susceptible to the rules of the market and the gospel becomes a product.

And it's no longer about the long term crock pot spiritual formation.

Now it's an instapot of results.

And so you have to do what gets results.

That's what we're talking about right now.

Is that right?

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

And this is where your book, I think is so critical because it takes us through.

This is not a new issue.

This is something that has carried us along.

It is stronger.

And I think you mentioned this in the book, but it's stronger than a pope, political leader, everything, even with COVID shutting it down.

I remember in America we had senators that said we have to get the engine generate moving.

And they meant economically, because we are part of this.

And as the German sociologists.

We're talking about sociologists.

Harmut Rosa has written a book called Social Acceleration Theory.

The more things we add, the faster it gets.

And then we're on this merry go around that we can't get off of, but it's killing every one of us.

And this financial system, that's what it's doing in ministry.

So you're saying we have to be able to prophetically challenge this idolatry because it has a trickle down effect, not just for in our churches, but it actually trickles down globally.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Talk about that a bit more on how it affects people globally and what you mean by that.

Can I just pick up the reference to Rosa?

Yes, please do, go ahead.

I mean, I'm reading him at the moment.

I hadn't read him when I wrote the book, but I cannot believe this guy, you know, having studied secularization when it was dominant, the big theory was dominant.

Now to see a book by him with the title Democracy Needs Religion.

Yes, I read that.

That is a complete transformation.

And that's why, you know, we're talking about things here that are very difficult, but there are grounds for hope.

Yes, and I think we can see signs of.

I mean, there's a famous poem, isn't there, about the retreating tide of Christianity.

I think we see signs of the tide turning not just in the church but within academia.

And I think Rosa's work is just so amazing in that sense.

And my son tells me that in what has been a very secular department of sociology in Glasgow, that this man's work is causing enormous discussion.

So I think there are signs of hope, but it kind of underlines the importance of the Church of Jesus Christ being equipped for that moment, ready to respond to it in a way that is consistent with the gospel.

And that means, I think it basically means in many situations, repentance, recognition of our serious compromises.

We've been unaware of the fact that that was what was happening.

But if there comes a revelation of the true demands of the gospel and the choice to be made between God or Mammon, then if we respond to that in obedience to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, I suspect there's a wonderful opportunity before us.

Yeah, the global South.

Well, exactly the same kinds of issues in a very different context.

I have a very strong link with Christians in northeast India who are facing enormous problems.

They have been Christian as the result of Christian mission.

They were never part of India.

They became part of India through the British Empire as the result of the British Empire.

And now they find themselves in a situation where they've lost most of their traditional culture and they find themselves dominated by an increasingly hostile Hindu nationalist government.

So their big question is, who are we?

Who are we now?

You know, what is our identity?

And I think that's an issue for Christians in many parts of the world, indeed for many of us in the Western world, with migration that we've talked about, there are huge numbers of Christians who are caught between identities.

So they are asking this question as well.

Who are we now?

And maybe, maybe that's a positive thing.

Maybe that's the outcome of Andrew Wall's reverse migration, that in the purpose of God.

That creates a situation in which all of us are compelled to ask that question, who are we as Christians in this particular historical context?

And that may give us the opportunity to recover what is really a radical gospel that can resist and challenge the idolatry of our times.

You know, it's interesting.

We've done a lot on this show with immigration, and we've talked about the global migration and what's gone on.

And in the us, I've said God is doing one of two things with it.

It's either, I mean, ultimately his purposes are to help those people who are coming in, and many of them are Christian, are reviving churches.

I think you see that in the uk and I think we're seeing that in France.

I saw an article the other day where they.

They said all these evangelicalism is now growing in France.

But it's interesting, as I look at who they are, they're people from the global south that are coming in the same in the UK as you're seeing a lot of younger people into the church.

And in America, though, it seems like we're trying to get rid of those people because we think they're a threat.

When I'm like, they're not a threat, they're an ally.

Yeah, yeah, potentially.

Potentially, indeed.

And that's the risk.

That's the risk is that you.

You bring in individuals.

And again, we're not.

I'm not talking.

Discussing public policy.

I'm looking at the things of God, because I think these people can either be reached with the gospel because they're now being confronted with it, or they are going to renew the churches.

I think we see that even in Germany with many of the diaspora peoples, there's a renewal.

And I think if communities could see that now, and I'm not just talking about in urban centers, suburbia, in rural areas, we're seeing this all over here in the United States.

But my question is, this is our individualized gospel, and I already know the answer to this.

Can it handle the weight of a global need of a different culture?

And I don't think it can.

This is where they're coming in and causing us to go back to the scriptures to say, what is this gospel?

And then we find that radical nature.

Do you think that's true?

That's why we need the global church to help us have a more holistic gospel?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, talking about this, believers in northeast India.

One of my former students, I supervised his PhD went back to his people in northeast India.

His thesis was entitled Can God Save My Village?

And it was the question asked by villagers who were suffering terribly, seeing their houses burnt.

And so asking that critical question, is this just, you know, Western words, or does it really make a difference?

And he's been working there in a way that has been just truly wonderful, providing education for kids who've lost their parents and housing for those who've been burned out of their homes.

You know, really tough stuff, actually.

And I was teaching a group of half a dozen students, and they were just fantastic.

We were looking at the issue of identity and the context of a traditional society.

And I, I suggested to them that they might think about two models of society.

One, we call the civic model the nation state.

So the thing that has been developed in the Western world with the coming of modernity, and the other would be the ethnic model, which is their own traditional background.

And I put between those two models the word hybrid and suggested that they and millions of people in the world are trapped between those two models.

And I, at the end of the course, I asked them if they could envisage a different alternative model to those two.

And I just had fantastic responses.

I wonder if I could quote something to you.

Go for it.

This is from an essay from a young woman who is doing a PhD in philosophy in Northeast India.

She did a previous article for me in which she described the life of her grandmother, who is still in the village, living in traditional time, so life governed by the seasons.

And she said, that's been my world, but now I'm in a different world and I have to adapt to what she called capitalist time.

And I realized that capitalist time is more and more going to control my life.

So trapped between the two, but moving more and more into the modernizing India.

And when she came to write this article about a vision for, she called it a vision for humankind.

This is what she said in the essay.

Difference is not merely a fact, but an ethical concept.

To encounter the other as truly other without reducing them to the same is what makes respect and justice possible.

And then this wonderful sentence.

Solidarity grows not by erasing uniqueness, but by weaving diversity into coexistence.

Belonging in such a society would be neither irrevocable as in the ethnic model, or fully revocable as in the civic model.

It is relational and transformative.

We are born into shared human families, but we continue reaffirm our belonging through choices and relationships with others, human and non human alike.

This expands the circle of belonging beyond humanity itself, recognizing that rivers, forests, animals and future generations are not outsiders, but fellow members of our moral community.

And I just thought, here's an example of what Andrew Walls used to talk about, learning from the global South.

And maybe, Travis, these issues that we are wrestling with as Christians in the Western world, maybe it's people like this girl in a remote place in northeast India are going to really help us and give us a different kind of way of reading scripture and of developing an evangelical theology.

That is a very good word.

You know, we've had a.

We've.

We've had a huge discussion today about a lot of different things that are going on in the global church.

We've talked about Mammon, we've talked about just the church.

I want to hear from you for a moment before we, we head off today.

I want to hear what you see going on in Nigeria right now, because that's in the news all the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, it's a strange country in one sense.

Again, you know, you have to look to the past and the role of the British Empire putting together different peoples who had clearly identified communities and distinctive cultures and languages, and suddenly they become a nation state, which is a concept unheard of by them.

So in a place like Nigeria, you've got all kinds of tensions, tribal tensions, but the major tension, of course, between the north and the south, with a largely Christian south and a historically almost solidly Muslim north.

And that's the major issue.

I think I've spent quite a lot of time in Jos on the.

On the plateau in Nigeria, Bang in the middle, really, and been there when there's been outbreaks of violence.

I think I would want to say that the situation is more complex than it is sometimes presented.

You know, you hear a lot about the suffering of Christians and the persecution of Christians, and that's a reality, but it's not the whole story.

When I was there, there was an outbreak of terrible violence in Jos, and I was teaching in a seminary and I had a phone call to say, get in your car and come straight back to where you're staying in the city, because if you don't do it now, you probably won't get back.

And then they said you are likely to meet roads closed by mobs.

If it's a Christian mob, provided you can repeat the Lord's Prayer without a mistake, you'll be safe and you can get through.

And I think that illustrates the point.

There are two sides to this, really.

I've got a former student there who came to do a PhD in Islamic studies in Edinburgh, and he's now gone back.

He's got his PhD.

He's gone back and he's just committed to trying to engage the two members of the two faiths in genuine dialogue and conversation about peace and mutual recognition.

He's very unusual in this sense because most people don't react in that way.

But I think he can be the great gift of God to Christians, in Joss in particular.

So, yeah, there are real difficulties there.

I don't know whether that country can hold together.

But there are Christians like him who in their particular context are seeking the kind of deep understanding of the gospel that we've been talking about in this conversation.

Well, it has been a delightful conversation.

I've thoroughly enjoyed talking about these issues.

I hope that our listening audience.

I hope that you have also found this enjoyable.

If you're looking to join the conversation, we'd love you to do that.

There are so many different books out there, wonderful books that can help really expand your categories.

Your understanding of the gospel will also be deepened.

And this is one of them.

God or Mammon.

I would encourage that to go get this.

It's through Langham Academic.

You can order it online.

It's a fantastic book.

We will be posting review on our website@apolloswater.org But David Smith, I want to thank you for Coming on our show, Ministry Deep Dive.

Travis, thank you so much.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

And I've been stimulated, challenged, and really helped by the conversation.

Thank you very much.

Today we wrestled with the tension between God and Mammon, exploring how money, not just as a resource, but as a system, can shape and sometimes distort our faith and ministry.

This happens to every single one of us who is a ministry leader today.

So here's my question, though.

What do we do with this?

Right?

We can talk about all of these amazing things, but what do we do with it?

Well, here's some practical steps.

Number one, I want you to reflect on your own finances and priorities.

Are you serving God or Mammon in your decisions and in your desires, your aspirations?

This is a tricky question because we have to start to examine why do we really do what we do and what are we trying to convey?

What is image are we trying to convey to others about ourselves?

Secondly, examine the systems you participate in, from your work to your church to your community, and ask how.

How do these things actually shape your values and your witness the people around you?

They actually shape how you think and see the world.

And oftentimes they're driven by mammon.

How are we driven?

Are we driven in the same way?

Number three, let's take some small, intentional steps to realign.

This could be generosity, transparency in our finances, or advocating for justice in the systems around us.

I know that seems like some other language.

People might accuse me of being woke.

I don't care about all that, quite honestly.

I care what does the word of God say and what do I see God calling me to be and do where I'm at?

And here's my encouragement to you.

If you really want to go deeper into this kind of conversation and learn more about this, I would encourage you to check out Dr. Smith's book God or Mammon?

And explore the links in the show notes.

And while you're there, make sure that you sign up for our newsletter to stay connected with Apollo's water and join us as we continue equipping the church to live faithfully in every sphere of life.

And join me next week as I chat through with theologian Craig Bartholomew about the ways the story of God shapes our lives, our communities and the culture around us.

We'll explore how scripture isn't just something to study, but a lens through which we engage the world with hope, wisdom, and faithful imagination.

Thanks for listening.

See you next week.

Thanks for joining us on today's episode of the Ministry Deep Dive, a podcast of Apollo's Water, the Center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics.

We hope it helps you thrive in your ministry and in today's culture.

Let's keep the conversation going.

Check out our ministry@apolloswater.org and be sure to sign up for one of our ministry cohorts.

Connect with others in the battle.

We need one another.

And remember, keep diving deep.

And as always, stay watered.

Everybody.