In today's conversation, Fleming and Bartholomew address the pressing issues facing ministry leaders today, particularly the challenge of navigating a fast-paced cultural landscape that often leaves little room for deep reflection and spiritual formation. Bartholomew draws from his extensive academic background to illustrate how theological education can inform and enrich pastoral practices, while also critiquing the tendency to separate academic inquiry from the lived experience of faith. He shares insights on the importance of cultivating a biblically informed worldview that empowers believers to engage critically with societal issues such as economics and cultural identity.

Their discussion encourages listeners to embrace a more integrated understanding of theology that is not merely theoretical but is deeply rooted in the realities of human experience. Pastoral leaders are urged to reflect on their own spiritual journeys, recognizing that true ministry flows from a place of authenticity, humility, and a commitment to embodying the Gospel in all facets of life.

Takeaways:

• The conversation emphasizes the necessity of integrating academic rigor with theological practice in the church.
• Travis and Craig explore the implications of a holistic view of Christ that informs every aspect of life, including economics.
• They discuss the importance of patience and slow spiritual formation in a culture that prioritizes immediacy and instant results.
• The speakers highlight the disconnect between academia and the church, advocating for a collaborative approach to theology and ministry.
• Craig stresses the significance of understanding biblical narratives as foundational to shaping a coherent theological expression.
• The episode elucidates the challenges faced by pastors in modern ministry and the need for a reflective and intentional practice of faith.

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Today's episode is brought to you in part because of the generosity of the Zimmerman family. May God bless you and have a happy 25th anniversary.

You know, we have to ask ourselves, does. Does this Christ that we follow, does he illumine all of life? And does that illumination include healthy economics?

You know, and so there's got to be some way where that kind of work is being done. As well as the businessman's breakfast.

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.

Pastors and ministry leaders out there, and anyone who is trying to navigate today's cultural chaos, you're about to hear a conversation that will make you rethink how the church forms its people.

My guest today is none other than Craig Bartholomew, a theologian, storyteller, and scholar who has spent decades helping the church recover its biblical imagination.

He's the author of the Drama of Scripture, Living at the Crossroads where Mortals Dwell, and he currently serves as the director of the Kirby Lang center for Public theology in Cambridge, UK. Dr. Bartholomew, welcome to Ministry Deep Dive.

Thank you very much, Travis. It's great to be with you today.

Okay, so are you ready for the fast five?

I'm ready, yeah.

Okay, we go number one. What is the funniest or most awkward cultural cross cultural moment you've ever had?

Yeah, there's not one that comes to mind. But I. I have lived in various cultures. So I was born in South Africa and then. Did my doctorate in the U.

Well, I did my second degree in the UK at Oxford and then later my doctorate in the uk Then to move to Canada. And one does. I mean, I don't. I can't think of one, but I do remember one has this cold feeling coming over one often that there's something.

Although the language is similar, it's a very different culture. So. Sorry, I can't think of one.

No, that's okay. Well, how about this one then? What was the one thing when you came? I mean, you were in Canada, but you came into the US quite a bit.

Let me ask you this, because most of our audiences in the U.S. what was one of those cultural differences? You went, wow, Americans really are different.

But I think one thing that really struck me, which you see everywhere in the US that you don't see in the UK or South Africa, is people flying the American flag in their property, their grounds. And it's a type of nationalism which always sort of jarred me when I saw it. So that was one thing that I found very different.

Interesting. But if pastors could steal one superpower from scripture to survive modern ministry, what would it be?

I think undoubtedly what Jesus and then Kirkegaard and others call the one thing necessary, which is quiet attentiveness to Jesus, and that it positions the pastor not as the superpower business person who's going to work the kingdom into existence, but it positions him in silence and quietness before. So it's the Mary Martha story. Right. So the one thing necessary as our.

Culture gets faster and faster, that's the one thing that I think many of us have lost. We get so caught up in the busyness. As Harmud Rosa says, that is just the acceleration theory.

It just gets faster and faster, and we get more and more anxious. This is a counter liturgy, a practice Sabbath.

Yeah, it is. And. And I think it's, you know, a thing we need to think hard about is how to. How to escape that. Because I think, you know, as I've.

So I was converted into vibrant but activistic evangelicalism.

And so that sort of activism, if you connect it with the sort of speed of contemporary culture and that, I mean, it's sort of acceleration on an unprecedented scale. And then this gets deeply into our DNA. And I think a big question is how to get out of that.

It is the difficult part.

I remember Carl Poliani writing about that in the Great Transformation, where he said, we've created a society that just gets faster and faster, but we become dependent upon it. So how do we get off?

I think, Leslie, New Beginning. Once, when I heard him speak, he was talking about modern culture, and it's like it was him or Bob Coatsford used this.

I think Coatsford used this illustration of having a tiger by the tail. And then the question is, do you hang on or do you let go? And it's as though you're in bad shape, whichever you do.

And I think New Beginnings and sort of came out of where he looked as though he was sleeping, but he wasn't, and said, well, which is it? You know? And I think it is that sort of sense of we've taken hold of something that has taken hold of us.

And, you know, what are the practices that can loosen that hold? I think is a very critical question, especially for the pastor, you know.

But I think all of these thinkers, you know, share with your organization, Travis, a very deep connection to the church. And that's far. It's not nearly as common as it should be in academic circles nowadays.

I remember, you may recall the famous German theologian Helmut Thielicke, and when he was a tube, again, I think he said all his faculty preached regularly. So that was a time when the connection between really hard academic work and the work of the church was integrated.

But on both sides, it's become very disintegrated. So I think academics often look at the church now with disdain.

And then the pastors and the laity look at academics and think, well, what good are they? And I think that's very unhealthy. So we need a context where.

And in my opinion, so just as an example, a spin off of my current research, is a project on the Ten Commandments.

And so what we did at the outset of this project, and I learned this from Bob Herzvaard rather than me as an academic and my colleagues as an academics, producing work and then telling the church. This is what you need.

What we did was we held a consultation with about 20 stakeholders in churches, and then we said to them, this is what we are thinking about now.

Tell us what you perceive you need at the outset of the whole thing so that the questions and the impetus is emerging from the gathered community, which is primary, and then the academic work, which I see as equally important but secondary, is emerging in relation to the needs of the church.

All right, well, here's the next question. What is the most ridiculous misconception about theology you've ever encountered in a church setting?

Well, I mean, let me just tell you. I can think of one example, but I won't name names. But this is not just in a church setting. This is.

One of my favorite biblical scholars of all times was once asked, what is biblical exegesis? What has theology got to do with biblical exegesis? And basically his answer was, nothing.

And this, by the way, I won't mention the name, but it's one of my great heroes. I love his work, and in the 20th century, one of the great, great evangelical biblical scholars. But there is this.

So you get it in academic circles, you know that when it comes to working hard on the Bible or the kind of research I'm doing, that really theology has got absolutely nothing to do with it. You Just get the right tools and you just go ahead, you know. But then you also get this.

I think what happens to me sometimes is I'll meet church folk and they'll say to me, so you may know Mike Keen and I wrote Drama of Scripture which has been a surprise bestseller. There's a whole story to this.

But the SPCK in Britain produced a more church friendly version under the same title that was then republished in America as True Story of the Whole World. And more recently that was retrieved and published again.

And then a woman friend, Paige Vanoski, approached me and we produced a book called the 30 Minute Bible, which is really something like drama at a very, very accessible level. And the whole idea is that 30 minutes a day for 30 days will take you through the whole of the biblical story.

You know, now the kind of thing that it's not uncommon to happen to me is that church people will. Oh, Craig, that's your most important work. So, so the hard, you know, the, I mean, the work I'm doing at the moment is incredibly hard work.

It's, it's demanding, it's stretching and all sorts of things and, and that, that church people, oh, well, you know, that's irrelevant. It's this kind of accessible work.

And, and I think what people don't understand is that, you know, to explain something simply and truly, you've got to know it very, very, very well. And too often in, in our pragmatic consumer culture.

We are years ago, you know, Frankie Schaefer, Francis Schaefer's son, wrote a book whose title has always resonated with me, Addicted to Mediocrity. And I think if you look at a lot of evangelical church life. It has so many signs of the mediocre. And I think this dishonors Christ.

And what it shows is we have a very small view of Christ, whereas if we had a biblical, this monumental view of Christ as from whom and through whom and to whom are all things. You know, then we would want to give our best.

And so in order to explain complex stuff very simply, you know, if you're not going to misconstrue it, you've got to do very, very, very hard work. And so the, the example I use, Travis, and I mean, your questions have got us ranging all over the place, which I think is quite glori.

Is, you know, if you think of World War II. So of course I live in England, I'm a South African but also a British citizen.

And it's remarkable to think, you know, it wasn't that long ago, that of course now we have the war with Ukraine. So the sounds of war are back on the continent of Europe, but you know, World War II, World War I, and then not too longer, World War II.

And so of course, what is critically important is you have the soldiers and infantry and air force and all that in the front lines. But then not far from Oxford, at Bletchley park, you had a group of nerds as it were, working to solve the Enigma code.

And the point is that in the context of a healthy understanding of spiritual warfare, you really do need both. You know, and I think we.

Adversely affect our witness if academics think they are somehow better than practitioners, and if practitioners think they are the real deal, and they don't need academics.

So.

My desire would be that we build that bridge again between practice and reflection and that the one is feeding off the other and the other is feeding off the one. And then the rising tide would lift both boats.

That's exactly what Apollos water is trying to do.

Absolutely, 100%. So you guys are doing all sorts of fascinating and important, important stuff like cultural apologetics and that. And you know what?

We would sort of remind you guys, not that you need reminding that, you know, cultural analysis is a very difficult thing to do. Well, it requires nuance, it's not easy, it requires a sense of history, and it requires interdisciplinary insight and all those sort of things.

So if you are going to help the church to become culturally aware, then, you know, there's got to be what are the questions that parishioners and church people are asking? And then, you know, monumentally serious reflection which is then feeding back and made accessible.

And you see, I think the world has always understood this. So if you think, for example, of America at the moment, there's a lot of worry about the economy, there's a lot of worry about affordability.

And then around the globe, I mean, all of us have watched with bemusement and this whole tariff policy.

Now what the world does is it finds its best economic thinkers, puts them in chairs at universities, and says, now think for the rest of your life about these issues. What the church does is it sets up the businessman's breakfast. Now we need the businessman's breakfast.

There's no disparagement of that, but somewhere, you know, we have to ask ourselves. Does this Christ that we follow, does he illumine all of life? And does that illumination include healthy economics?

And so there's got to be some way where that kind of work is being done as well as the Businessman's breakfast.

You and I are of the same mind.

Well, this can't be a good thing, right?

So I had Christian Smith on not too long ago, and we had a conversation about his newest book, why Religion Went Obsolete. And it's. Even though this is right before, I would say there's this.

There's a slight resurgence, but I don't think people realize exactly what's involved in that resurgence yet, because it hasn't borne out and because we're in a period of time that I like to call racehorse journalism, where everyone's just documenting what's happening every moment. There's not the needed reflection of how things actually transpire over time.

But I just got done reading a fascinating book, as you're talking about economics by a kiwi, Pete Fleming, and he wrote a book called Dark Academia.

And he was saying that in the book, and I don't know what his faith background is, but he's basically saying in the book, he said, if you want to go into higher intellectual thought or intellectual inquiry, don't go into academics or go to the university, he says, because it's no longer that. And in his respect, he calls the neoliberal capitalism has flattened it and made it susceptible to the market.

And I think within the principles that we're talking about is. Yet the market has its own rules, its own sphere, but when you cross that and it becomes.

It becomes the determining factor of your theological and gospel expression, then it becomes malformed. And so I think of CS Lewis when he was asked near the end of his life how to summarize his ministry, and he said two words against reductionism.

And I think what we're trying to do is say we have to understand what a biblical understanding of economics does, because when it does, it enables the flourishing of people and it doesn't flatten our gospel expression, but enables the flourishing of man, even in the church itself. Wouldn't you. Would you agree with that? Or what would you say to that?

Yeah, yeah. No, no. 100%. So. And, you know, they're. They're cultural analysts.

I mean, I think of Jurgen Harbmas, for example, and others who've sort of, you know, pointed in this direction where one part of society sort of takes over all the other spheres, if you like.

And so then, I mean, this is, you know, Eugene Peterson, who's one of my great heroes, he says in his remarkable book Working the Angles, that American pastors are leaving the pastorate in droves now. They're not changing jobs. What they're doing is they're transforming the pastorate into a business.

Now, of course, there's an economic or business dimension to the institutional church that you ignore at your peril, because a church has to function and people have to be paid, and we need to be responsible in that. But to have a sort of neoliberal, capitalist model of the church where. Basically, you know, how do you maximize profit?

Which really would be, how do you grow this thing as fast as possible and have the biggest mega church and. And so on and so forth. I mean, there you can see the. A deviant economics has taken over church philosophy, and then it produces a deviant church.

And then the terrible thing with that is it fails to witness to the Lord Christ.

So we just did an episode with Gerardo Marti and Mark Mulder. Mark Mulder is at Calvin. Gerardo Marti is at Davidson University. They wrote a book called the Church Must Grow or Perish.

And it's examining Robert H. Schuler's legacy to evangelicalism. And I see him as one of the granddaddies of the church growth movement. But he's the first one to use debt and marketing within pastoral ministry.

And he trained, of course, Bill Hybels and Rick Warren. And that has then again, the tip of the mountain, and it's all spread down into the church.

Now, he brought some innovation, which I think was good, but which I think, though what you just said is true, and I differentiate it slightly. We call that a market theology because he adapted his theological expression to the market in the context.

Now, he thought he was doing it to reach people. I think he again, what I call the pendulum temptation.

He saw a fossil theology, and then he overcompensated and then ended up baptizing certain cultural idolatries in the process. And this is what I try to tell people. The church is an organism and it's an organization, but it's not a business.

And what I mean by that is it does have organizational principles that can translate across different spheres. But as an organism, it has to be what I call the crock pot.

Whereas most church expressions and gospel expressions today especially, that uphold the marketing theology, look at it as an instapot, because spiritual formation doesn't take place in an instant pot. I mean, it can, but moreover, it's the slow steady as Eugene Peterson, the slow steady. What does he say in the same direction?

So actually, that is an extraordinary quote of his, which he gets from Friedrich Nietzsche, of all people, that the long obedience in the same direction always produces great things. You know, so it is The. The problem with that, see, it's not exotic, you know, to use a sort of colloquialism. It's not sexy.

It doesn't provide instant gratification. It's long and it's slow.

I mean, Peterson says sometimes in your spiritual life you have to camp at a certain part of the mountain for months, you know, so. But it is the real deal, you know, that's the. I do think, you see, I think, as well with.

So I think where as an academic one can help with some of these things is if you're talking about Schuler's legacy or the purpose driven church or whatever, you know, my approach would be that there are real important insights in these movements. So. And then, you know, the task of Christian scholarship is not just to identify the deviants, but also where the genuine insight is.

And you don't want to lose those genuine insights, you know, So, I mean, I grew up in apartheid South Africa and, you know, I was converted at the age of about 14 and into very, very vibrant South African evangelicalism. But we were in a culture that was systematically structured around race. And the evangelicalism I was in had nothing to say to that.

I have learned so much from that. Because if you have a look at what's going on in the world today.

And the role of countries like the United States as a superpower and the United Kingdom in some of these terrible things going on in the world, and then you ask, well, where is the evangelical witness in relation to this? It takes me back to apartheid South Africa.

I mean, racism was staring us in the face every day, and we prided ourselves on being gospel, Bible people, evangelism, church planting, but we nothing to say to this idol staring us right in the face. Now, at the same time, I have no doubt that the churches I was involved in the spirit was doing remarkable work.

So, you know, it just means that church life is messy.

And I think one of the things we can do this is, you know, in our previous discussion, you referred to JH Bhavank, which is subversive fulfillment is his approach. So you identify the goods of idolatrous culture as well as the deviation. And I think one can apply that to church life as well.

And then, you know, when we look at these models, you know, we rightly say, o, you know, there's something here that is off. But we also need to have a look and say, yeah, but what's on.

And what is happening here that we need to hold on to and to affirm is a very genuine insight. Which.

Is usually because, as you said, I mean, there's this overcorrection that takes place. Like, we saw a bad, we saw good, went too far. So we have to redeem the good, but challenge the bad that's in it.

Even within those models, like I said, Schuller actually had some good that came out.

His innovation, his adopting of certain technologies, his understanding of contextualization, and we're never going to get it completely perfect on this side of eternity. We're all doing it imperfectly and messy. That means we don't start. You know, I think of the Jesus with the.

The parable, and I don't want to misquote it, but where he's talking about the guy who buries his in the sand and he doesn't do anything with it. No, we're all trying to do something, hopefully, with it, and we're all trying to figure this out as we go.

But this is where I think, as you mentioned, and I think this is so important, the interdisciplinary nature of things.

Like, on our show, we've had artists, we've had poets, we've had filmmakers, we've had a lot of sociologists have come on the show, Bible scholars, theologians, missiologists, historians, because we're all. I mean, we've even had social media influencers because we're all as. As Peterson talks about.

And I can't remember which book he does this in, but he talks about the angels going around the throne saying to one another, holy, holy, holy. And he said he likened it to the four corners of the earth saying to one another. This is what I see about God. What do you see?

I look at that also from an interdisciplinary standpoint.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we. Because we need those insights. We. We need one another. We are a community and we are the body of Christ.

Well, yeah. And so I think this is a bigger, richer. I mean, it's also that parable of the, you know, the blind guy with the elephant, you know, the.

So, you know, the. The elephant is a complex, massive creature, you know, and then you. You need different insights to.

And I do think, you know, that this is when we say, you know, one holy Catholic and apostolic church. And I'm using Catholic here with a small C. Then. But. But I. Yeah.

What I love about what you've just said, Travis, it goes against, you know, you do, if I may say so, I live in the world of academia, and then often I get invited to speak at seminaries or churches, and I can tell that the whole landscape has shifted. It's like, the questions I get at a seminary are totally different to the questions I get in the academic world.

And I have to say to myself, oh, yeah, I'm back on church land again. But I think the scary thing is that. On church land, in evangelicalism, there's always the assumption that they have the truth.

And then often in academia land, there's a similar arrogance that they have the truth. So I think uphold the fact that Christ is the truth. And Leslie Newbiggin would say, you know, Christ is the clue to all that is.

But what I love about that is it's a clue that we have to devote every fiber of our being to pursuing. And then the truth, you know, is a person. But it's also, as Neubigan says, it fits with the nature of the world.

So it's personal, but it also fits with the nature of the world. And. And then it requires all of us, you know, together to go after that truth. And so I think we. We must get away from that unhealthy sense that.

And, you know, this gets built then into the DNA of the pastor. You know, the pastor is the authority on everything, and the pastor, you know, any question that anyone in the congregation has, the pastor. So.

And then it becomes a kind of distorted Catholicism, if you like. Whereas I think one of the things you get this in the church fathers, Calvin Coper is, God is our father and the church is our mother.

And what I say to people is, which I think is a very beautiful metaphor, is when you are born again, and you must be born again. I mean, we want to affirm that you've got to come alive to God in Christ by the Spirit.

Then initially, like any newborn child, you see your mother as infallible. But if the mother is healthy, as you mature, the mother herself will be telling you, I'm not infallible. Only the father is infallible, you know.

And so then we position people in a way that they can come to grips with their own imperfections, the imperfection of the church, and yet still love the church as Christ loves his bride.

Do that. In a culture where we inherit traditions that become the authority rather than the Scripture.

Because I have found that people are more faithful to their tradition rather than the Scripture itself.

And they fail to understand that their tradition was formed in a certain cultural topography to answer the heresies or the challenges in that moment that forced them to articulate it. But there is somewhat depending on what the issue is. I mean, if we're talking about the deity of Christ, there's not A debate.

But how certain things have been expressed and articulated, the cultural topography shifts and we have to then reinterpret. Re articulate. That's a better way to put it.

Re articulate that gospel expression according to the backdrop of unbelief that has been exhibited in that cultural moment. Would you agree with that? Or how do we navigate that?

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think that is. That is absolutely correct.

So, I mean, one thing that always strikes me in when I work on Old Testament prophets is that God's word is always contextual. You know, he doesn't. You know, some Presbyterians may lament this, but he doesn't drop the Westminster Catechism from heaven and say, here it is.

You know, and we just lost our Presbyterians.

But we. We love our Presbyterians. But what he does was, you know, he immerses himself in the life of an ancient Near Eastern nation.

And the Old Testament I see as the kind of residue of his journey with that ancient Near Eastern people. And then he becomes incarnate in Christ. And I was just working on this today, actually.

It's so interesting that, you know, the Pentateuch is just full of God, Yahweh speaking, you know, and, you know, if you read Leviticus and God said, and God said, and God said, actually, that is very, very rare in the New Testament. And so there's really very few places where the Father speaks from heaven because, of course, the Son is incarnate in our midst.

But when he does speak. He says, you are my beloved Son. Listen to him. And as one commentator says, that's all he needs to say.

Now, I think a danger in our evangelical churches is we tell people Scripture is fully trustworthy as God's Word, which I absolutely affirm. But we make a move that our interpretation of Scripture is equivalent to that fully trustworthy authority. You know, and then. So, of course, then.

And I remember this, as a young convert, I would go to church and, you know, of course we've all got to have our Bibles open because, you know, Scripture is the supreme authority. And then I would look at the text and listen to the preacher, and I couldn't work out how the preacher got what he got out of the text.

But of course he's the authority, and so it must be there to. And what that is actually teaching me is how not to read the Bible.

So I think really good preaching, you know, people should go home saying, wow, now I understand how to read that passage much better for myself, you know, and then, yeah, so we have to you know, tradition. All of us academics, all of us operate within traditions.

So my good friend who died recently, the aesthetician Kelvin Searfeld, he has this notion of. Satan following someone walking in the snow. And Satan has got a broom and he's rubbing out the footsteps in the snow.

And this is to try and make you think that you operate just with the spirit in the Bible and you've got the truth, whereas all of us operate out of traditions. You know, our church has a tradition.

It might be Presbyterian, it might be the church that says it has no tradition, which is itself a tradition, you know. And so the more conscious you are of that, then again, you can ask questions like, okay, what is the great strength of my tradition?

And then you can also ask, but you know, it's not the only evangelical tradition. Are there strengths in other traditions that I can learn from?

And your congregation, with time, has got to become aware of these things so that Christ rules over his church through His Word, not through, you know, necessarily what we tell people is his word, you know, so. Yeah, so, but the pastoral ministry, I mean, is, is extraordinary and exhilarating, but enormously responsible.

Well, as you just mentioned.

We'Ve inherited traditions, but we have to evaluate all of those traditions in various ways, first through the Scripture itself, to make sure that we're accurately understanding that tradition as we engage with history and with the global church.

I would say, but going back to number one, and this is where I find that your work is so important for our contemporary moment, is you root things in, and I would say two ways because they're interconnected. One is the biblical story that you have shown that actually shapes our theological expression.

And when we don't have the shape of the story correctly, then our gospel expression becomes malformed in some way, shape or form.

But secondly, in creation itself, which is where that story originates, I mean, you give an overarching kind of the framework and then you zoom in on creation because that then gives us, I mean, it sets the stage for everything else. What precipitated your approach in seeing the story and creation itself that didn't come out of nowhere.

What were you then seeing that caused you to go back to want to understand?

Yeah, so, you know, a lot of this is. One'S own personal pain and struggles, you know, so, so you, you get. And this is the church as your mother stuff that we're talking about.

So I was converted as a teenager, a sort of, you know, I was intelligent. I was playing sort of high level tennis in my province in South Africa. And that, and then you get converted.

And the message, what you are told by your mother, but they don't tell you this is not necessarily what the father is saying, is that the only thing that matters is verbal evangelism. So your conversion, which is so radical, yields this sort of almost an unbearable burden for an adolescent.

So suddenly, what do you do when you're going on secular tennis tours? So it disables your natural development as an adolescent. It takes no account of that.

And then it puts you under this terrific pressure that the only thing that matters is verbal evangelism. And you know, and then, you know, when, when you leave school, well, what do you do?

Well, the only real choice is the full time service of the Lord Christ, which is defined as not going to a university but going to a seminary that the, the denomination says is acceptable. And you know, and so you go through. So what it does is it sort of withdraws you from cultural eng.

And in the process it malforms you as a human being. And so. You know, then along the way, either you, you sort of carry on down that route.

And then of course you're in the midst of a context like I was, where, you know, the people who say they've got the Bible, the truth and the gospel have got nothing to say to the racism that's staring them in the face every day, you know. So through a slow process, I discovered that my faith is a worldview is the word that I would use that you know, that when you come to Christ.

A theologian friend of mine used to say, Christ stands with his face to the world, an expression that I love. And I would say he stands with his face to his world. You know, it's from him, through him and to him.

And so there was this dawning realization that Christian faith is comprehensive because of who God is and who Christ is. It therefore relates to all of life. And that includes politics, which was the no go zone for most white South African evangelicals.

Apart from Romans 13. The government appointed by God, we love the government and so on.

They may be racist bastards, but they're appointed by God and we think they're wonderful. And now we carry on with our evangelism. So it took years for me to undo some of that stuff.

And when I was at Oxford, I mean, I still had this terrific sort of burden. And then what I realized was at Oxford, which was so liberating, is try and be human, build relationships wherever you can.

And when I did that without trying to force evangelism, and then I found that I had more evangelistic opportunities than I'd ever had before. So it was Hans Roeckmacher says this. You know, I used to always ask my students, Rouckmacher's question, why, to what end does God save us?

And Ruhrtmarker's exquisite answer is to make us fully human. You know, so the so.

And I think that this is, you know, if we're not being formed to become more fully human, then people won't be able to hear what we're saying because our lives will contradict that so loudly.

But it's when our lives are becoming more fully human that I think in Peter we have a model of evangelism where it calls forth questions, and then we can give a reason for the hope that is within us.

This is why we do cultural apologetics. To miss your holism.

I know I shared that with you before the show, because cultural apologetics, of course, is the work of establishing the Christian imagination, voice and conscience. How are we being heard? How are we being articulated? But mystical holism for us offers this is what the new humanity should look like.

And including our leisure, our politics, our economics, as that permeates down. Because you're right, I think we do have to show people what the new humanity looks like.

I think back to Alan Kreider's work, just for a moment, where Kreider talked about one of the four key characteristics of the early church and why it grew in the first two centuries. Post Acts, you've got patience. They said Jesus was never in a hurry, and we won't be either.

Well, fast forward till now where everyone's in a hurry, including people in the church. And I understand part of us, we're on the merry go round because our jobs, our lives in somewhat dictate it. However, this is where we offer Sabbath.

That's a subversive fulfillment. That is the part where we're saying, no, we're not going to be completely formed by the culture, but we're going to show a better humanity.

We're going to show how to relax, we're going to show how to have leisure, we're going to show how to spend our money, how we love our children, those counter narratives, because the world is always conforming us to a desired end. Is that what we're talking about here?

That we have to show another way to live differently in a world that's constantly trying to conform us to certain image? And that is also showing the. The idea of the restoration of all things? It's a. It's a picture, a foretaste of it?

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

And, you know, in our discussion before doing this, I think you had a slide which struck me as very important, and that is to distinguish between human being and human doing, you know, and every now and again, it's not a sort of common experience I have, but every now and again you meet someone and you feel, you know, just the. The formation of the person. Makes them. So it just draws you in.

Yeah.

You know, it is the. And I think this is the incarnation, you know, that the word became flesh.

And in a sort of midrash on that, I would sort of say, and the word has got to keep becoming flesh, you know, and it's got to become incarnate in our flesh and then. But that's a long, formative work by the spirit.

And you see, my sense of a lot of modern evangelicalism is, okay, you're converted, now you're ready to save the world, world. And then we rush out into the world with all the unsanctified baggage, and we work it out, and it's a horrendous mess and everything.

Whereas I think that slowness is the. And you see this with Apostle Paul taking time out before his major mission begins.

Well, we wouldn't have much room for that nowadays, you know, and so I do. So I think the, you know, it is that retrieval of a type of formation. And then I think what I find is that, you know, that.

That frees it to your humanity to manifest in the most ordinary ways of everyday life. So I learned this from someone years ago.

You know, the way I engage with the person when I'm leaving the supermarket and paying, you know, the way I drive, you know, you can always tell if you're stressed, okay, because you're getting infuriated with other people. But there's a sort of ordinary glory to spirituality, which can make a difference, I think. In a sort of hidden, very, very beautiful way.

So just that people know that today they were seen by someone, today someone was kind to them. You know, we're in a world. I mean, just look at the world of American politics, for example. I mean, it would be hard.

Personally, I find it desperately, desperately sad. But it would be hard to think of that as a kind world, you know.

You know, you've articulated a few different things. Number one, I think of the. When I look at our American political piece right now, I look at it as the gospel in enemy mode.

And it's like a Christian nationalism that has been inflamed, and it's the last Desperation of Christendom, in my opinion, that it's losing cultural power and it's doing everything it can to. To re articulate what it sees as a Christian worldview.

But it's my belief that you can't instrumentalize the gospel without syncretizing it to something else. And in doing so, it becomes vastly compromised.

I had James Davidson Hunter on, and we were talking about the formation of the culture and how it created a cultural reservoir.

It's the only culture that was born during the Enlightenment, but it basically fused the Christian faith with enlightened principles and it created a civic religion or civil religion, a cultural reservoir of sorts where it was opaque enough that people could see into it and their own view of God. But as pluralization has challenged that reservoir. And with popular postmodernism drawing on. Christian Smith's work, you see just various scandals.

You see various misunderstandings of a gospel plus a gospel reduction where you have this kind of baptized gospel of hurry or an eschatology of hurry that's been introduced in the 19th century with the Rapture, where it was, we have to go fast, we have to go fast, we have to go fast. It's just been one thing after another that's played a role in the formula to lead us in our moment.

However, God is still on the throne and that he, even in the midst of our. Our, you know, our futilities, our desperations, our confusions, he's still bringing creation to a desired end. And that's what I find to be.

To be extremely illuminating.

But you also articulated that what we call the missiolistic continuum is where God is concerned just as much about who you're becoming in the process as the task that's being accomplished, which is something that we feel has been slowly lost.

You don't hear about, especially in the circles that I've been in and the traditions I come from above, union with Christ, we don't hear about that anymore. We hear about the task, but we see people.

And this is where I think your work comes in with Goheens, with the Drama of Redemption, where you said, if we don't get the story right, we can be morally upright, warmly pious idol worshipers on a Sunday morning because the story actually gets subverted or brought in into the Western materialist story. And for those that are out there listening, you may not be familiar. I would encourage you to read a lot of their work.

Living at the Crossroads contours of the Kyperian tradition, especially the doctrine of creation, has been phenomenal at this point. What do you hope that God does with your work when everything is said and done?

You stand back at the end of your life before you step across the threshold of eternity, if you have that opportunity to think through that way.

Yeah. So I think a thing that helped me a lot as an author and just, you know, the other thing is being converted into activistic evangelicalism.

I don't think I've ever been in a church that recognized the calling of the writer. So, you know, so it took me. It's taken me decades.

So, you know, if you're not careful, you're in a church culture that's always trying to squeeze you into a hole, you know, and. So it took me decades to realize when I'm relaxed and refreshed, this very strange desire to write emerges.

But I've never, never been in a church context that has understood that calling.

And so I think, because, of course, you know, or the other thing I do hope for is I say to my doctoral students that, you know, they must receive what they can from people like me and then run so fast with it that in 20, 30 years, the thing will have advanced so much that they will barely acknowledge that they worked with me. So that's a different desire. But I think one has to. You know, you prepare your loaves and your fishes as best you can, and then you offer them.

In the service of Christ and for the sake of the world.

And then there is a sense in which you let it go at that point because you can't control the reception of your work, however good or misformed or whatever it is you have to leave aspects of. Now, of course, people try and control the reception. They market the thing and all sorts of things which have their place. But in a sense.

One has to say to the Spirit, okay, I've produced these loaves and fishes.

You know, the loaves look a bit funny, but they are edible, and please, blow on them and then do what you wish with them, you know, but use the work not to advance my reputation, but to exalt and. And enhance the reputation of Christ in his world.

It's, you know, progress.

Right. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, the sort of celebrity culture that we have nowadays, you know, it's not going to be, oh, my goodness, well, he got crucified, you know, so this is our new hero. It's, you know, we. We want different things. Yeah. So. So I think it is. That's the John the Baptist approach, you know, I.

And we must decrease so that he may increase. And I mean, the. The messages as that happens, we become more fully human. And, you know, so then, you know, life becomes.

Has all its glory because we are creatures and not the Creator, and we are signs pointing away from ourselves. And in the process, we become ourselves. So it's. It's a beautifully sort of paradoxical.

I want to thank you so much for being so gracious with your time, but because. Because our ministry is called Apollos Water, the show is ministry Deep dive. But we like to give people what we call a water bottle.

One concluding thought that they could take away from this and perhaps apply in their life and their ministries. Maybe it's a perspective shifter. Maybe it's just an essential truth to hold on to.

What is one water bottle that you would like to give our audience today?

Yeah. So, you know, I think maybe this would be a good one, which I think everyone listening to this podcast will know. And that's John 3:16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believed in him should not perish, but have eternal life. And. It took me a long time to realize that eternal life is biblically.

It's not life accompanied by harp music in the clouds that goes on forever as a disembodied soul, but eternal life actually is the life of the age to come. It's human life redeemed and brought to wholeness and perfection. And so I think.

This is the water bottle, that if the Spirit is at work in your life, you will be as an embodied human being becoming fully alive. And so, you know, it's a strange.

And this mustn't be misconstrued, but it means Craig or Travis will be becoming more Craig or more Traverse, as God intended that to be. And in my opinion, this is really, really good news.

I like that. And I. I agree that's partly what our ministry is about. And again, it's been influenced a lot by you.

I want to thank you so much for giving your time so generously. I would encourage all of those that are out there who are unfamiliar with Dr. Bartholomew's work to get some of his books.

What would be one that you would recommend people start with if they're unfamiliar with your work?

So I think what people will find is that I have written. And do research and supervised research across a very wide range of things.

So I would just say to people, of course, Drama of Scripture I think is an important book that Mike and I wrote. But yeah, I think if people have a look, they'll see in my publications that, I mean, I've edited a book on pilgrimage.

You know, I've written a book on prayer. And Luke. I've written a book with a title that I did not choose on preaching. And. So I've ranged across, which I love.

I mean, and all that range is now returning to the Old Testament, you know, so. Yeah, so C.S. lewis said this, you know, generally read what you enjoy. And so I would say have a look.

And if there's anything that looks like you would enjoy it, then read it.

That's a good word. Thank you so much for being again, so generous for your time and coming on Ministry Deep Dive.

Okay, that's absolutely my pleasure.

Thanks for joining us. On today's episode of the Ministry Deep Dive, a podcast of Apollo was watered 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.