Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Church and Parachurch in the Digital Age || Mikey Lynch || SLP494

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Church and Parachurch in the Digital Age || Mikey Lynch || SLP494 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hello and welcome back to the Speak Life Podcast, and a very happy new year to you all.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new to the Speak Life podcast or Speak Life in general, my name is Thomas Thoroughgood, media producer here on the south coast of England, where we have our studio.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And at Speak Life, we are all about seeing all things through the lens of Jesus.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we do on this podcast.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: We speak to a variety of people, mainly Christian but some not, about current issues from a Christian perspective.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And to kick off this brand new year of the Speak Life podcast, we have a conversation that Glenn recorded with Mikey Lynch.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Mikey Lynch works as the editorial director of the Gospel Coalition Australia's website.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he has written a new book called The Vine Movement, supporting Gospel Growth Beyond Your Church.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So this is really a conversation about Parachurch.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Do we need it?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, why?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: What can it offer?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: They also talk a little bit in this conversation about the internet and this digital age that we're living in and what that has meant for parachurch ministries.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Glenn from SpeakLike.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Hi Glenn, how you going?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh really well, thank you.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you introduce yourself uh to us and especially uh get us excited about your new book, The Vine Movement?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I work as the editorial director for the Gospel Coalition Australia's website and also lead the staff team for AFES, which is like your UCCF um down here in Australia, um, with a staff team at the only university in um in Tasmania, the University of Tasmania.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: So just at our Hobart campuses, lead that team.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, I've just had a book come out with Matthias Media um earlier this year all about the relationship between church and parachurch.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's I don't know if this sometimes the cameras reverse things.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure if that's how it works here.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: You can see that the Vine Movement, it's called.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: Picking up on the um, you know, there was the Trellis in the Vine book and then the Vine Project.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: So it's kind of running with that that theme.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um I as best as I know, it's the most comprehensive book on that parachurch topic uh so far that's been released.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because I I kind of I don't know, I I thought more had to be said on the topic um in general, but also a lot of the stuff out there is little articles, little workshop, you know, a half a half a week in a curriculum on global mission in the local church.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I mean?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's in bits and pieces.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I thought it would be really helpful to try and pull a lot of that in one place, both on the theology, but then also the kind of the history, because there's been such a multicoloured history of different kinds of kind of not church ministry things um over the last two millennia.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so I wanted to try and do a bit of that uh kind of the history and and practice of all the different sorts of parachurches that are out there as well.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, but anyway, that's get excited.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: I I think it's a really useful resource, and I don't think there's anything quite like it uh out there.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it might need to it might need to be in conversation with um certainly the there's quite a bit of criticism, I know, from certain quarters, certainly in the UK, about parasite ministry.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they will say things like, Well, the church is God's mission strategy for the world, and you know, Jesus has given us these communities of faith gathered around Word and Sacraments.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Why, why should we even have uh parachurch organizations in in the first place?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll I'll give you one story.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: A friend of mine um uh is a church leader.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: There was an elderly member of his congregation who died, and in going through her finances, it it turned out that she gave to something like 13 or 14 parachurch organizations, and she wasn't giving to her local church.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he presented that to me as an example of isn't this the sort of the parachurch overreach in in this age where there's uh a million ministries that are taking resources away from where God's mission strategy actually is, which is the local church.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, Mikey, defend yourself and and defend me because I'm I'm part of a parachurch ministry myself.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, I think it can go in both.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: There's kind of two variations of it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: On the one hand, there can be um there are those that we can maybe get come back to the idea that there are some on the parachurch end who want to say um all parachurches are different expressions of church, you know, so that there's the the apostolic band is as much church as the local church and and speak life is as much church and you know, so there's that version which kind of wants to say everything's church, um, and so there's no such thing as parachurch because it's all just different expressions of the church, building on the kind of Ralph Winters sort of take.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but yeah, then there's the other the there shouldn't be such a thing as parachurch, it should all be the local church, and maybe an extreme version of that is like um Steve Timmys and um Tim Chester's book, Total Church, where they even said counseling and world mission and theological education, all of it should happen, not just in the denomination, but actually in the local church.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, all of those things should take so that's kind of an extreme end there.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting, they had to publish the book with a publisher.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: That was it, not itself a local church.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that wasn't published by Crowded House.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, so I I I try and uh make the case for the fact that on the one hand, the local church and you know the other structures associated with it are God ordained in a way the other things and organizations Christians might do aren't.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: So on the one hand, saying yes, there is a divine uh ordaining of the institutions of the church.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: But then I th I think by recognizing that in the first place the Lord of the church is Christ Jesus and He's reigning on high and rules through his spirit, that means that actually our vision of the universal church always sort of should um relativise human institutions and structures, even the church, even the local church, which is a divinely sanctioned one, it's a divinely sanctioned this world, imperfect human expression.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so you kind of see, I think, both of those things in Acts, where on the one hand you do have leadership and councils, and mission gets slowed down in order to do things in good order, to a certain extent.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: But on another extent, the gospel makes its way to Antioch before the apostles quite know what's going on, and they have to send people, you know, Paul and Barnabas to find out what's going on after the fact, you know, and so there's a there's a catch-up dimension going on, and I think what you see in Acts, you could drop a pin at any point in church history, couldn't you?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: And you'd see that there are the formal structures, but then there are this leading beyond that in in a whole range of different ways over over the centuries.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: So so I guess I'm trying to argue, you know, for a sense of going, let's put a center on the local church as important, and other and other things should recognize the importance of the local church, but not in such a way that absolutizes the local church.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: So we you know, we want to be saying to that that woman, do give to your local church as a central expression in ordinary circumstances of um of your you know Christian theology and identity.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: And we we shouldn't police every single cent you give as if it or every single well, whatever it is, centime or uh whatever it is we're up to now.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, uh, we shouldn't have to police all of it.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that we'll recognise there'll be other expressions of generosity that go beyond the um you know the the local church giving.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have like an overarching like paradigm?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like how how should we think of that that interrelationship between church and and parachurch?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: What are sort of the categories we should think in?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so um on the one hand, you begin with the categories of your your ecclesiology, if you're addressing a question to do with church, right?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and an understanding of ecclesiology actually does begin, you know, with the most foundational thing, always ought to be the universal church, uh, you know, centered around Christ, bought by his blood, known before the creation of the world, heavenly, eternal, um predestined, you know, one holy Catholic, apostolic, all these things, right?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: And you begin there, um, and your your local churches and your bishops and your sacraments, they're all secondary to that.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you've got to have that kind of 1 Corinthians 13 lens on the church of going, well, actually, there's a whole lot of things, you know, with the various gifts and you could say the various offices of the church that are temporary and that fade away.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so in that sense, uh, the highest office is son and daughter of God, isn't it?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: Because that one doesn't fade away.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: And the love uh that is associated with it doesn't fade away.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas the offices of bishop or deacon or evangelist and the uh the gifts and various ministries, yeah, and even then the structures of individual local churches and interchurch um denominational courts and whatever else, that stuff fades away.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: So gotta begin there, um, which already then doesn't that that's already kind of undermined um the primacy of bishops or pastors or elders or deacons or denominational constitutions.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um begin there, but then say the same Lord who is the Lord of that universal church expresses and manifests that church in time in local fellowships.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so we express that eternal reality, heavenly reality in time in local fellowships.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and and I guess that's the second thing is to go a definition of the local church.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um for me, um, I make a case to say that it's not simply any group of Christians gathered round the word engaged in edifying an evangelism that's church as church, um but it's it a church is a formal uh gathering of Christians, you know, or formal community of Christians who gather, you know, so it's uh there's something formal about it.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: I even in that famous you know, Matthew 18 that people quote, you know, two or three are gathered, Jesus is with them.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's interesting, even in that passage, uh there's still a concept of church.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: Because Jesus says, talk to the two or three, confront a brother in sin, two or three, and if they still won't listen, uh tell it to the church.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: So conceptually, Jesus uh is still distinguishing between the two or three with whom Christ is in their midst, uh, and the church is this more formal body that you escalate you know discipline to eventually.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a it's a part it's a part of church discipline that's happening in in Matthew 18.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like like this this this is how the church is being the church.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and yeah, the context of it is not Jesus saying in a blanket way, um, wherever two or three are gathered in your name, there I am in your midst.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Although you can you can make an application of Matthew 18 to that, and you can extend his teaching from Matthew 18 to that situation, but the situation he's envisaging there is church discipline.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah, it's a it's a very churchy thing.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: And there are a few things you can say are are peculiar, you know, are the points where it becomes especially in practice, we all end up with some kind of formal church.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: Where does discipline take place?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: How is membership recognised?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, how is leadership recognised?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: Like those seem to be three pretty you know concrete things that you you say, well, you're a leader, but of whom?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: You belong, but where?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um you you no longer belong because you've done something wrong.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: That requires some degree of a boundary.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: So so if there are two poles, the universal church and then the local formal fellowship, um uh as as two two sort of things, um, then I think there's a strong case to say that the local church is the God-given structure for discipline, for leadership, for the ministry of the word, for the expression of that um universal church.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but it's it's incomplete, it's temporary, it's imperfect, it's it's secular in the sense that it's of this age, it's led through imperfect spirit-led people in this world.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so it we we must never make it as if it were the universal church, like make the the big capital C Catholic, Roman Catholic type era, where you over-associate any human expression of the church um with the universal church.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so then that opens the space for the many other things that Christians will do in terms of good deeds and evangelism and ministry and fellowship that go beyond uh the local church.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and I think there it's helpful for your definition of parachurch to be pretty broad, to basically say it's any you know, any Christian ministry beyond um the earthly church, you know, that that that the that institutional earthly church.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Loads of questions there.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean, even on the Roman Catholic side of things, um they they very much have a space for sodalities, they very much have a space for um friaries and monasteries and um and and and all sorts of parachurch, if if you like, kind of ministries that happen with within even a very institutional structure like the Roman Catholic Church.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um Yeah, there you go.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: So even even they, you know, like it very quickly, you know, had to make space for those, yeah.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and the missionary efforts of the medieval church um are uh I would say uh a great um advertisement for the Vine movement, you know.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Why why was there a church in Britain um if not for missionary bishops sending you know missionaries to um to do their thing and missionary bands to yes, to establish local churches, but also to to establish schools and um and and many other ways of extending the ministry of Christ, um not not simply in local church expressions of Word and Sacrament?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it's always been a thing, hasn't it?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: The the the sodality, the the the parachurch ministry has always been a a thing.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: How do you though um how how did those expressions of the ministry of Christ be governed?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we ensure that they are truly Christian ministries?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've met some ministries that claim to be Christian ministries, and I've got serious doubts about which Christ they're even talking about.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: So how how do we solve that problem?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, look, it's it uh the Roman Catholic history is interesting because you see there the same as you see in any other wave of this history where to some extent it's an absorption of what was happening anyway, and then to go, oh, since this is happening, how do we manage it?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's kind of good this is happening, so how do we harness it?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's going too far, how do we rate it in?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not as if they came up, you know, they they came up with a perfect thing, you know, at various points, you know, like the fourth ladder in council, they said, No more, that's enough.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: No more new orders, you know.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: So there's various points where there's attempts to control in various ways too.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so yeah, it's a perennial challenge in various ways.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think again, going back to saying if there is a centrality of the local church and the formal offices, uh as in like elder, beacon, so on, being given to the church, um, then that should, in in all but extraordinary type circumstances, have um have a central place in how you recognize someone uh you know as a as a member in good standing or as a as a leader in good standing.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: And the most normal way to do it is that you have people in your parachurches who are also ordained as leaders uh within your church structure.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean that's the neatest way to do it.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: But even if you're not ordaining, um there there's the simplest version is to say you don't appoint someone as a leader on a camping ministry or you know, in the working within a speak life without a reference from the church they go to.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: But that's the simplest version of it.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that low bar often doesn't get met.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: Often people are appointed to quite significant roles of influence when they actually may not have any home church or may not be in good standing in their home church.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: No one maybe they get asked for references, but no one calls up the reference who actually asks.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, they go put your name down, you know, are they in good standing?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: Often those, those, even that bare minimum doesn't get met.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there's the the famous example of the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, which was declared to be a church for tax purposes.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, right.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um really?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: So for uh entirely for financial reasons.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: For for tax purposes, they declared themselves to be a church.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: And but it also helped uh Ravi himself to be able to say, are you a member of a church?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I am the church.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um and away he went, and and the the lack of accountability there was was absolutely grievous.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, there are there are low bars that we ought to meet, and there are there are also high expectations that we ought we ought to have.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: How how do you reflect on some of the the failures that have been quite prominent in in parachurch ministries uh in the in the last couple of decades?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean we we've been saying that parachurches have always been there to some extent, and that is true, um, to some extent, and it has had their its failures in the years gone by as well.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, often new orders, say again, in the medieval church and so on, they were started because the last one had gotten gone worldly, you know, and the new one gets started as a renewal movement, whether it's the Franciscans or whatever else.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um so but there's there's been a massive increase in the number of parachurches.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there was a huge boom in the Victorian era, it just went bananas then, but then even still further since the 1970s, it's it's exploded still more.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: So there's been these modern waves.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I um I think you guys talked about a bit of this on your um with your podcast with Andrew Wilson, you know, about just some of the even just the secular structural changes, like the way not-for-profits are regulated and recognized, you know, things like that um can speed up the way these things uh are founded.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: So, like the very early Protestant mission societies in England were established by royal charter, you know, and that was really the only mechanism for establishing a charity was you get the queen or the king to, you know, kind of recognize it as a legitimate body to could to gather and hold funds in trust.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: But within a century, suddenly it became normalized to just have a constitution and have a board, and and you then established and and off you went.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then suddenly that speeds things up a great a great deal.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then when you add in tax breaks, these kinds of things, that speeds it up still further.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: So that has been a massive increase, and yeah, with that, the scope for the sinful nature to run right has increased too, and it's it's it's depressing, isn't it, Glenn?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's been really depressing being a Christian this last 10 years.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's not like they said it was going to be when we first started going into ministry, has it?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's been really disappointing.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's it's just so many heroes have been shown to have clay feet, so many organizations that did such good, have also been shown to sort of cover things up um or mishandle things, or worse.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, um, but the the thing is, yeah, parachurches have had their issues for sure, and often their governance structures are thin and their accountability loops with other churches and organizations are weak.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, their wealth enables them to sort of charge ahead and and hold others to ransoms just subtly, you know, you know, if you get on their wrong side, that'll cost a lot.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um but our denominations haven't been perfect either.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: They've been far from perfect.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not as if our denominational structures solve the problem um because there have been you know all those all the cover-ups and the mishandlings all through, you know, and and the drifting into total liberalism, you know, all sorts of things through denominational structures as well.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um I mean, certainly it seems from the Royal Commission stuff in Australia on institutional abuse that especially hierarchical structures, whether parachurch or church, salvos, Catholic, Anglican, Hillsong, particularly seem to have a challenge.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_03: If there isn't some distribution of power in your governance, that's exposing it.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's not to say that the Presbyterians and the Baptists are without their because again there's been exposes with the Southern Baptists in America.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I guess that highlights the fact that even if your governance distributes power, it can still become in practice you know, ruled by the few, can't it?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: So even though you have congregational meetings and elderships and so on, in the right contexts, the the the powerful can still make it more hierarchical.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: Just as in an Anglican or a Salvo setting, you can distribute power, even if your constitution is is more linear, you can actually distribute power very well in practice.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not only a parachurch issue, but certainly parachurch.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Church has brought with it the recklessness of capitalism and late modern capitalism of just going if we can then we should.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: Certainly it seems to have been what it became at Mars Hill in Seattle, listening to that podcast, you know, that Mike Cosper did, that it really did become hey, we could, so we should.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: And it like almost this kind of um manifest destiny thing going on there, which is uh really alarming.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: So paint a picture then about what is possible with parachurch ministries, like like what's what is the blessing that they can be to to the broader church?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know what, it's funny, because on the one hand, they obviously we most immediately think they allow Christians to partner at a breadth, including often a breadth of doctrinal difference and and church background difference, you know, that we can connect on what we do agree on for a certain cause of good deeds or evangelism at a at a greater breadth.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so that's certainly one.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: You get to get Christians crossing those divides um of denominational divides, regional divides, even sometimes socioeconomic and cultural divides, because you're you're linking arms for a particular purpose.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's certainly one.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um another is actually funnily the opposite.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like you could actually get together on a narrower platform.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think denominations should be too tight in their theology.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_03: But maybe there is a place for people getting together and thrashing out some niche area of theology, you know, at a some colloquium or something, I don't know, that that you shouldn't waste time with on a denominational level.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Or you know, I I I can think of in my own denomination, the Church of England, you might want to gather together with a subset of the Church of England for a number of different reasons.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Which has always been the case.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you feel that your denomination might be going in the wrong direction.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: Christians who are really into homeschooling, you know, get together.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's and a church, I don't think, should be like you must homeschool, but there could be a space for Christians with a narrower vision of a way of living the godly life, getting together and scratching that out.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so so it can connect us broader, can connect us more niche.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it it it mobilizes people who may not have as much room to serve in many formal church structures, younger people, women often, um, people of uh you know, for who, whatever number of reasons, may not have that same opportunity to serve as meaningfully.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: Then there are just so many things that are just so hard to do.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like we were joking earlier, you know, Timmons and Chester for all their total church, published total church with a Christian publisher, because publishing is a complex and expensive exercise.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um I've spent a bit I've I've uh gone to Reformed and Presbyterian churches my you know my whole Christian life since I was converted.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: And um, it's quite interesting there that that the Reforms and the Presbyterians will go, well, you know, we've got this strong vision of what the church should be and church order and church structure, and so everything should be managed by that.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: We have our mission society, we have our theological college, it's all managed.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but even those things, they're a kind of parachurch.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: They're just a denominational parachurch, and they're relatively new.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you go back and look at the minutes of the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland, only back a few hundred years, they're pretty brief because they're not doing much.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it took them a long time to get a mission society going, and let alone now you look at if you went to you know your average Presbyterian church's minutes, it's hundreds of pages along with all their committees.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: But that's a relatively new evolution.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I guess that's a there's it's just so many good things to do.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: There's so many good deeds that we can do in the world, and parachurches facilitate that in a way that it would be difficult for a local church or even a denomination to get to it all.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I guess in some cases, should it be the denomination's job?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: We've had issues in Australia as the churches declined in member membership and attendance, where we have these gigantuan charitable businesses in aged care or whatever, that actually become complex liabilities on many levels.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: You've got this tiny little denomination managing this massive multi-million dollar.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: At what point do you go, oh hang on, why should the church have what makes elders and moderators the best equipped people to run aged care businesses?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so there are times, and even the local church, when you think of a new ministry, rather than going, how does my church start, you know, we should start this?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well, maybe you shouldn't start it.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you should partner with a parachurch that's already doing it, or even a non-Christian organization that's doing it.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_03: But not, you know what I mean?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: Not everything needs to be branded with your brand and housed within your infrastructure.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Hi folks, it's Thomas Thoroughgood here, media producer at Speak Life.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: You might recognise my voice as the guy who does the filler bits on the podcast.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of my job to think of how we can include you more in the work of Speak Life and bring you behind the scenes, if you will.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have a very exciting thing called the Speak Life Discord number.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's a normal learning platform where you can interact with other Speak Life supporters and the Speak Life team.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: We have bonus content, creative theological discussion, and lots of fun along the way.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to join that, you can just go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash gear.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, back to the podcast.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, right right now in Eastbourne, we're gearing up.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're a small town on the south coast of of England, and um, you know, seven different churches partner together to offer um a shelter, uh the winter night shelter, you know, beginning December 1st and running to the end of February.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: And a different church is the the shelter for each night.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, there there's just a really tangible, obvious way of how you can club together as churches to serve a town.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And interestingly, Eastbourne has 45 Christian charities in a town of a hundred thousand people.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's kind of extraordinary.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's a the there are clifftops quite near where where we are that are actually famous, tragically, as as suicide spots.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I I think that it's it's kind of the suicide capital of Europe, actually.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and yet there is an Eastbourne-based beachy head chaplaincy, and they patrol, they patrol that area of of Clifftop 24-7, you know.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: And listen, yeah.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: And again, you know, no single church can do this, but uh but a church community, there are there are 60 plus churches in in Eastbourne, but a a church community can do, you know, something that literally one one church alone cannot do that.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there's a really tangible example of what the church can do together beyond uh the local expression.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: But the the one thing that I really think of when I think of parachurch is the the ability for mission to happen, because if local churches are not already in existence, um you we need to partner together in this.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone who says that parrochurch is just parasite is actually the beneficiary of parachurch ministry in in their Christian history, if you if you just trace it back.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: And right back from Acts, you have is it in Acts 15 um and the Council of Jerusalem where they say, you know, Moses has been preached in every city.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, how has Moses been preached in every city?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: There have been, like, even even in you know pre-New Testament times, there have been all sorts of missionary bands that go out, and you think of the prophets going out, and then then you think of Paul and his apostolic band, and then you think of all sorts of missionary orders down through medieval church history, and then you think of the modern missions movement, and you think of William Carey and and everything from then, and then you think of the explode, and then you think of Billy Graham, and then you think of like mission doesn't happen really without that that broader expression of of the Church of Jesus Christ, I would say.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Have I have I got that right?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it is helpful to go, the gospel its Yeah, the Gospel itself adds a volatility and a fragility to the human institution of the local church in this age.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: Because the gospel says Jesus is the Lord of everything, the whole world, and He's now poured out his spirit on all, so every single one is a prophet, and every single one is a son of you know, uh is a priest, prophet, priest, and king, you know.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: But that that means that even the God-ordained structures of the church can't quite contain it because there is the spirits at work in all of us, and at work in all of us lifting our eyes up to see, like you're saying, that the need for the gospel to go to the nations.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: Then you add into the fact just that we're in a world where Saul persecutes the church and they scatter.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_03: Or um, or whatever, you know, that that people movement happens.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's one of the other ways that Moses gets preached in every town, is that Jews travel for whatever reason of persecution or economics or whatever.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then as they travel, they bring their faith with them.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and with the gospel, because Jesus is in heaven and that's our temple, there's no sense in which we have to get back somewhere else where God really meets with his people.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: Wherever we go, whereas much in the Lord's world, um, you know, heaven's his throne, earth's his footstool, you know.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: So so everywhere we go, whereas much in his world.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, and so it it always does push us out and and push us beyond in that way for sure.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so mission is mission's a huge one, and it's in every age they're seeing new potential for it.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: So those early monastic orders, weird.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's weird for us, they're going off to be alone, but they're going off in often pretty near to inhabited areas to often areas that were previously abandoned, so there were already structures there.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so they were, in a sense, repurposing urban decay and creating new forms of connectiveness where people would go from the the inhabited areas to then to go and visit the hermits.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so there was this, they created, you know, that was one version of it.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: The um uh the Cistercians, I think it was, um, it seems partly became popular because the huge Benedictine monasteries, all the land had been kind of chewed up in the UK for that, but there were these little pockets increasingly that needed you.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: So we needed a new model of monastery in order to kind of make viable something that the Benedictine structure couldn't make work, and then Franciscans, as as you get the merchant economy and things become towns become a bigger part of of your life.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then William Carey, his um uh you know, uh his case that we should uh use means.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: What's the means that he argues for?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, he says, just as the merchant East India Company or whatever gets together interested people to throw in money for a common cause to get up a ship to send it to India um for the cause of finance, shouldn't we also get together godly interested parties and start a chartered company, basically?
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: So he's seeing there's this new form of um mobility and use of capital, and goes, well, let's use that means, the means of the chartered company, and just have the chartered mission company to do it for a godly means and and on and on and on it goes, right?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so so yeah, we we part of our contextualizing, and uh like we were talking earlier, you've got to be careful about the sinfulness that comes along with this.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, every contextualizing brings with it, you know, so the monasteries brought with it that weird Gnostic sort of strange view of sex and the body and all sorts of strange things there, a very cultish approach to power and so on.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh that early modern um, you know, uh colonialism, you know, infected us to greater or lesser extent in our missionary movement.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then the modern cap late capitalism has infected our modern.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: So we need to contextualize, which means both adjusting to use these tools, like the internet or whatever else, but beware of the wisdom of the world, the power of the world, and so contextualize in that anti-contextualize, you know, the 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 anti-contextualize it, where you go, oh, I need to be a fool and weak in the way I contextualize with these means that I use, um, rather than be strong and powerful um and contextualize in in a non-gospel, non-cross-centered way.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I mean?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and that that kind of speaks to uh a William Carey saying, let's um obey the freedom of the spirit and let's use means the way that you know um the East India Company, if the East India Company can kind of mobilize to um bring capitalism to India, can't we can't we mobilize to bring the gospel to India?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Although you know it was kind of chronologically the other way around.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: But but in in terms of there there is a goodness to this um the individual spirit of releasing the and liberating people to do what they ought to do.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's that is a there is a great um sense of that, and I think the gospel brings that both to church and world.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: There is also the atomization and the individualization and scattering to the four winds that has also happened.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you mentioned technology and you mentioned the internet.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think social media um really exacerbates that and tribalizes us.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: And is there is there a space for big tent evangelicalism, let's say, in a social media world?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um when we are being weaponized against one another, and there are a lot of calls for people to actually, okay, it's really difficult just in a social media environment to have a big tent.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let us localize, let us go back to our denominational kind of um centers, you know.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it is that move going on, is that is that a is that a healthy word to us that actually may maybe we've become too fragmentary and we need to just go local?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's funny, isn't it?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so what what are we calling fragmentary?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: It gets tricky, doesn't it?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because even low, you know, you could see that going local as fragmenting, or you could see it as finding a more viable unity at a local level.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: Look, man, these these are these are the questions where like I mean I just can't help but as I look in at at say the United States, because the country is so gigantic, isn't it, in terms of population, in terms of land mass size, um, no wonder it's so difficult to to uh unite it in some kind of sensible political direction.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like it just you know, is how big is too big for human creatures to cope with?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then, yeah, as you add in instant access 24-7 to information to everybody, how how can you manage that?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there is certainly some sensible in in thinking local to a fair extent.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_03: I think that it's interesting that it gets harder really to sustain meaningful church.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_03: National is about as far as we get, and even then that seems you know, since our population's gotten so big and and so on, like it seems even that's pretty hard to presume to run these worldwide church fellowships just seems like a lot of a lot of money spent on a lot of hotels and a lot of airfares.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like there does get a point where you just go trying to sustain church infrastructure internationally just does it does decay.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: And and perhaps there's a case for that even nationally, to go, yeah, to what to what scale can you really scale up a denomination before it stops being it almost stops being church.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like it just does become the business of the governance of the yeah.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I think it is it's a helpful question to ask.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm certainly um certain national efforts or large scale efforts are definitely needed for things like good deeds and education, things like this, you know, that um and yet a certain degree of federal, you know, federalizing where you kind of give power down through the system to the local level, I think is really important as well.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_03: Big Ten evangelicalism and all that kind of stuff.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, I don't know.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's it's always gonna be just complicated.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: I think we always want to find one another and learn from one another.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: But I think like I mean, say with the Gospel Coalition Australia, we're a fellowship with the Gospel Committee Coalition USA, but I'm really glad that we're not the same constitutional company or multi-corporation.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like we're a we're a separate, we have a separate constitution, separate government body.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: We could dis disassociate if we wanted to entirely.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I mean?
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's a healthy thing.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: And that enables us to actually um for then those two countries to uh correct, rebuke, call out, separate, chart different courses while still being in a in a degree of fellowship as long as that is possible.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: Denominations are now wrestling with that, aren't they?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: When do you get to a point where a denomination is so diverse that it really is it it it needs to be blown apart?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really sad thing.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: But sometimes that's a wave two piece in the end.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like sometimes you go, let's stop fighting, let's split the thing up.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: We either leave or we carve carve carve up what's left.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because it doesn't lead to love for us to keep fighting over the one thing.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: What do you reckon?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: Where have you come to a place of where you go, you're you know, you go, I'll I'll I'll stop trying to uh see and identify and connect with anything too global or too you know.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_03: You want to, right?
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: Because the gospel is the gospel for all the world.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: And you want to have a world for the world.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the dangers of social media is it just flattens all distinctives and it makes you think that whatever you read, these these 280 characters that are coming to you from someone you've never met before, that that person is definitely identifying the the hobby horse that you are riding.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you you retweet them, and all of a sudden you're like your your horses are riding in totally different directions because you're in totally different contexts.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: And what what they mean by any um term that you that that sets you off, and that the algorithm is like trying to set you off.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um it could be it could be like a completely different you know mentality or even gospel.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and like sometimes there are unities that are that are happening that aren't really unities, sometimes there's disunity happening when it there really shouldn't be disunity happening, and that's that's largely how the algorithm you know is is tilted towards conflict.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and yet, I mean, I I wrote a little article for TGCA a few months ago, kind of defending the Twitter sphere, because one of the responses to say things like when Gospel Coalition Australia published that Josh Butler article that rightly got criticized, um, was that some people who didn't like the criticism complained, oh the Twitter sphere just off they go and they get outraged and angry.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I I kind of wanted to defend the Twitter sphere because I thought actually, in that case, I thought Christians sure, there were people just getting furious and losing their heads and being foul-mouthed and unfair and you know, all the things that the Twitter's so good at.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: But but there were also a whole lot of thoughtful, measured, wise biblical scholars and uh, you know, uh abuse survivors and pastors and evangelists across quite a spectrum saying really sensible things about different things that they thought was uh problematic with that article that I thought was really helpful and I was really I thought it was I learned a lot and I was encouraged by it.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: So there is also an emerging consensus, even in the the dumpster fire, which is Twitter.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I felt the same when I've connected with, I don't know, like other interests, art or or film or whatever, where yes, there's the the maniacs losing their minds, but then there's a it's amazing how you go, wow, I feel like I'm kind of mates with some random person in wherever, you know, because we happen to have the like the same films and have the same opinions and it could be really nice.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: So there is a there's a good version of it at this exact same moment.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: But it just we need a lot of wisdom, don't we?
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_03: And it and it it just stretches us so it's so hard to have context when you're you have to have a take, an immediate take, and then use your platform, Glenn, to immediately declare something about your take on everything.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have the world silence is violence.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: You're complicit, yeah.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_03: And that that's yeah, that's that's i immense.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's interesting about the Joshua Ryan Butler thing is is that like different people will have seen different things and different people will have experienced different parts of the pushback.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and and have read, you know, and and so like you know, it's it's the same with like news, unfortunately.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like what like the news that you're reading is not the news that I'm reading.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, even if we're in the same city, and that that is just wildly flat fracturing.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, but I've actually got I've got sort of like some social media which is mainly Christian leaders, other social media which is mainly people in more of the arts communities, and say that the conflict at the moment in um in Gaza, it's like two different worlds, you know.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's it's helpful for me in a sense to be able to hear both sides, but it's it's chalk and cheese to a significant extent how people are talking about the exact same event.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: And they're both citing experts, scholars, news, you know, reputable sources.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's exhausting.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: And uh one thing to do is to broaden the platforms we're talking about, because I I think that um podcasts, for instance, or long-form YouTube is a very different environment to Twitter.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and with the Joshua Ryan Butler thing, you could you could get a Preston Sprinkle on and get into conversation, um, Beth Faulkner and and and Josh himself and and like have a conversation for an hour and a half.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and it and it takes and it takes a a very um a very skilled kind of um mediator type person like Preston Sprinkle to to host that kind of thing.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I but I think um that that is a a healthy counterpoint to to simple Twitter, where so much is the thumbnail and the title and the framing and the five words of copy that that you know uh are added to to whatever it is and and out it goes.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: The flip side then with YouTube, because we can keep going about this, can't we?
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_03: That YouTube then brings its demon other half is I could just go down a rabbit hole of one of these demagogues who goes, does long-form YouTube and talks to camera and can indoctrinate me at the extreme right or the the extreme left, you know, and I just I can go down a yeah, so so that long form thing, I agree, it can really helpfully complexify, but it can also create this eccentric expertise where it's like you know, so gosh, actually Hitler did have a lot of good things to say.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: Suddenly I'm you know finding myself or you know, gosh, I'm suddenly questioning the very givenness of the human body, you know, and um and so that's that's the that's the flip side with long-form YouTube, isn't it?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the helpful counterpoint is not one social media platform versus another, but actually um the real world and touch grass and talk to a human being.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, because again, you think you can sort of Israel Gaza and oh my goodness, your your head is in that space.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: You can then you know walk to the shops and actually engage with other human beings and it's that's a a refreshing timeline clamps to just you know every now and again deal with reality.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I think there's I mean, on a whole other different level, it is helpful for us as Christians to both hear the things like in your book where you talk about these these deep frames of values that bubble up from the gospel, shoot through society, um, but also again realize we have our own latent risks, don't we?
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and our belief in the noetic effects of sin means that conspiracy theories sound familiar.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_03: The fact that there is a hidden secret agenda that will just, you know, that's hiding the truth from you, you know, that that it or or our belief in God as a single God, you know, can make us uh liable to authoritarianism in the wrong contexts, or our belief in the end of the world can lead us to that kind of millenarian madness and so on.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: So that's helpful too, I reckon.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: You can also like John Dixon's Bullies and Saints thing, isn't it, where you go, you know where things go bad.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh and so you end up with like militant monastic orders and things.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um you get to know where the the risks are in our own worldview structure, and to go like I largely it's it it when it's done well, it it's brings good, but it has its it has its own, there's the ways the devil can twist the good in Christianity that perhaps is you know in some ways unique to our Christianity.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like like forgiveness, but some of the cover-ups with abuse was a misapplication of forgiveness, wasn't it?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_03: So it's good for us to know those things to get know what's the ways that um that what's fundamentally good about our thing can be poisoned so easily by the enemy.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, Mikey, your book, The Vine Movement, is out now.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: What do you hope for this book?
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I I hope that it helps kind of bring this conversation up in this kind of way.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_03: To we've been talking both theology, haven't we, as well as I guess, sort of variations of political science and history and whatever.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think we need, you know, as leaders, it's hard being Christian leaders now, but we've got to be across all that stuff.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so I hope it encourages good theology as well as good governance in the way we all work together.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: So we're not just using simplistic slogans, simplistic theology, um off-the-shelf governance that that might be fine if you're running a soccer club, but it's actually risky if you're running a you know serious evangelistic ministry.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I hope it does that.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um I hope it there's plenty of encouragement in it, you know, like we've been talking about these stories, whether it's the Ionian mission monks or the you know, the best of the salvos or the Methodists or whatever.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, I hope it just is refreshing to go, yeah.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, I I do love, I love that camping ministry I was involved in.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: I love that student ministry.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: I get you know, I love that good deeds work I get to do, uh, you know, whatever it is.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I hope it kind of uh warms our heart to go, yeah, doing Christian things is good.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: I like it.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um I hope it does that.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_03: And um I guess I'd love to see it just being something that's just on the shelf for anyone who's in deep with whether paid or ordained, or just as a volunteer in deep with running these kinds of organizations, whether on a parish council or on the board for a Christian school or not-for-profit.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because it's kind of written to be a bit of a dip in, dip out.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_03: So you can go, oh yeah, what's what are some of the principles related to chaplaincy or um academic freedom in theological colleges, or the risks with broadcasting and blogging, or you know, let's you know let's go into that.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I hope it's useful in that way.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I I of course, I guess for the the Bible college theological college people, I've tried to put in the footnotes so we can kind of get back to the sources a little, because a lot of the stories you get told when you're at your campus ministry about Whitfield or William Carey or whoever, you never get the footnote.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_03: So you're left going, but what's the full story?
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so I've tried to just footnote back to some of the just the standard history texts often and occasionally the primary sources.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so where people are going, Yeah, what was the deal with John and Charles Wesley and their disagreements about the Lord's Supper for the Methodist missionaries?
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_03: Then I hope I can kind of give give you a cut page number for some of those things so that we actually don't just hear the you know the fireside story version of these things, but get get access back to some some more serious telling of the story in its context, you know.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: And how can people catch up with you online?
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm on Twitter in the dumpster fire there, uh Mikey underscore G underscore lynch.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh where where else can you find me?
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: I my blog, which I don't really blog much anymore.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_03: Remember blogs?
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, but uh my blog was called Christian Reflections, and I still have a Facebook page, and I guess that's what happened to the blog.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: I just Facebook page it now, so you can find Christian Reflections.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I think it's XN Reflections or one word on Facebook, um, and and a sort of short-form blog there and on on Twitter.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_03: So they're too easy.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, like I'm regularly writing for the Gospel Coalition Australia, so you'll find some of my stuff up there.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_03: The Vine Movement books also on if you love this um this Aussie accent.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um I also narrated the audiobook, so you can get a hold of that on the Audible and Spotify books and whatever else, um, and you get the unabridged version there.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_03: Matthias Media cut out my chapter, Glenn, on monastic orders.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so it's you can get it for free on their website um as a PDF, but it's not in the public, it's not in the book.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: You've got to get, yep, where's the audiobook?
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's all there.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's the director's card.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: The audio book.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: So um so you can you can get the the religious orders chapter and the miraculous ministries chapter are either on the Matthias Media website as a PDF or in the full um audiobook version.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: Or yep, all the book is you know on all the ebook platforms or Matthias Media.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_03: You can get uh um get a print version.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: Great.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I hope people catch up with you online and get the Vine Movement.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: Mikey Lynch, thanks so much for joining me.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Glenn.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: Cheers, man.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there we go.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: Glenn Scrivener interviewing Mikey Lynch about his new book, The Vine Movement, supporting gospel growth beyond your church.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do subscribe to the Speak Life podcast on your podcatcher of choice, and we will be back soon.