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Mike Cosper on the Dangers of Ideology in the Church · Future Christian

0:07
>> Paul: Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast, your source
0:10
for insights and ideas on how to lead your church in the
0:13
21st century. At the Future Christian
0:16
Podcast, we talk to pastors, authors,
0:19
and other faith leaders for helpful advice and practical
0:21
wisdom to help you and your community of faith
0:24
walk boldly into the future. Whether
0:27
you're a pastor, church leader, or a passionate member
0:30
of your faith community, this podcast is
0:33
designed to challenge, inspire, and equip you
0:36
with the tools you need for impactful ministry.
0:39
And now for a little bit about the guest for this episode.
0:43
>> Loren: Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today,
0:46
Martha Tutarnick welcomes Mike Cosper to the
0:49
show. Mike Cosper has been creating
0:52
music, radio shows and podcasts for
0:55
more than 20 years. He produced and
0:58
hosted the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill
1:00
podcast and is director of podcasts at, uh,
1:03
Christianity Today. He now co
1:06
hosts a weekly podcast called the Bulletin.
1:09
Cosper also leads cohorts for church
1:12
leaders and is the author of four books,
1:15
including Recapturing the Wonder and the Church
1:17
in Dark Times. He and his family live in
1:20
Louisville, Kentucky. A reminder. Before
1:23
we start today's episode, please take a moment
1:26
to subscribe to the podcast, leave a
1:29
review, and share Future Christian with a friend.
1:32
You can connect with Martha Loren and Future Christian
1:35
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1:37
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1:39
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1:42
us a message with comments, questions, or
1:45
ideas for future episodes. We appreciate
1:48
your voice and how we faithfully discern the future
1:51
of the church.
2:00
>> Martha Tatarnic: Welcome to Future Christian. I'm your host
2:03
today, Martha Tatarnic and it is a
2:06
privilege to welcome Mike M. Cosper to the
2:09
show because I've spent so much time listening to your
2:12
podcasts. Mike, I feel like I've been in
2:15
conversation with you for a long time
2:17
before now, but, uh, this is actually my first
2:21
opportunity to speak with you, and I'm really
2:24
excited to get to do so. Welcome.
2:27
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, I'm grateful to be here. Thanks for having me.
2:30
>> Martha Tatarnic: Okay, so let's just, um, frame our
2:33
conversation today with a couple of opening questions. We
2:36
ask all of our guests a little bit of background before
2:38
we get into the details of, uh,
2:41
the work that we're exploring today. But can
2:44
you just share a little bit with our listeners?
2:47
Mike, something, um, about your faith journey, what
2:50
it has looked like in the past and what it looks like
2:53
now.
2:54
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, so, grew up in the church,
2:56
um, grew up with Christian parents,
2:59
um, more or less the
3:02
kind of life that you look back and you
3:04
say, uh, I don't know, a time when I wasn't
3:07
um, a believer, um, which
3:10
as a Southern Baptist where
3:13
crises, ah, uh, of conversion are kind of part and
3:16
parcel of the Christian life. Um, uh, uh,
3:19
that's, that's a funny, a funny story. But, but
3:22
that's definitely who I was. Um, um, when I
3:25
was 19, I, I joined
3:28
the team of a church plant
3:31
in Louisville, Kentucky where I, where I still
3:34
live today. And um,
3:37
um, and then about a year after that this
3:40
was, that would have been in 2001, I came on staff,
3:43
I was on staff at that church for about 15 years
3:46
and served as a pastor in a variety
3:49
of roles. Left
3:51
ministry in 2015,
3:53
um, and have been doing
3:57
media in one form or another
3:59
for uh, about a decade since
4:02
then.
4:04
>> Martha Tatarnic: Okay, well thanks for that
4:06
overview. Is there a
4:09
spiritual practice that you are
4:12
finding particularly meaningful in your life right
4:15
now?
4:16
>> Mike Cosper: You know, um, for me
4:19
it's the lectionary.
4:22
Um, I'm again
4:24
like, I'm a Southern Baptist, I'm
4:27
still a Southern Baptist. But um, just
4:30
having the daily rhythm of
4:33
reading widely in the scriptures,
4:36
uh, has been very, very important I think to
4:39
sort of grounding me in a
4:42
larger story. Um,
4:44
so yeah,
4:47
that's probably the central practice of my life.
4:50
And then outside of that,
4:52
um, I try to do an annual retreat where
4:55
I do a silence and solitude retreat and
4:58
I look forward to that a lot.
5:01
I talk for a living, right? Like I'm a podcaster so I talk for
5:04
a living. So having, um, having
5:07
something on the schedule where it's like, hey, for three or four days
5:10
you're not going to talk, that's
5:12
fantastic.
5:13
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, I really respect both of
5:16
those answers. I mean I'm a dyed in the wall
5:19
pretty much Anglican and we live
5:23
and breathe the lectionary. It's hard for me to imagine
5:26
any other way, but uh, that doesn't
5:28
prevent me from feeling very blessed by
5:31
it. And yeah, when you know,
5:34
you're constantly creating content and
5:37
having things to say, it's really nice to be able to
5:39
just shut up.
5:41
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I make a lot of noise in
5:44
my life and it's nice to not
5:47
have to make noise for a few days for sure.
5:49
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, yeah, I hear that. Okay, well,
5:52
without further ado, let's get into
5:56
the meat of our conversation.
5:58
Um, now we're primarily going to be talking
6:01
about your new book, the Church in
6:04
Dark Understanding and Resisting the Evil that
6:07
Seduced the Evangelical Movement. I've got my
6:10
copy right here and you can't quite
6:12
tell from the video, um,
6:15
but it's very dog eared. I had a lot
6:18
of notes as I was going through it. Um, but
6:21
I do want to take a bit of a step back before we
6:24
get into the book because,
6:26
um, many of our listeners,
6:30
and myself included, have
6:32
probably been very familiar with your work
6:35
on the superb podcast the
6:38
Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. That's how I came
6:41
across your voice and your offering
6:44
in the church. I would say that, uh, that
6:47
podcast series really should be mandatory listening for
6:50
anybody in church leadership.
6:53
And um, your book really
6:55
takes us into a deeper dive of some
6:58
of the dynamics that you excavated in that
7:01
podcast. So maybe, um,
7:04
for listeners who aren't familiar with
7:07
it or who just need to be
7:09
refreshed on the background, um, can
7:12
you just share with us what led you
7:15
to the Mars Hill project and what you were hoping
7:18
to illuminate with it?
7:20
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, so like I said, I was part of. A.
7:24
Part of a church for about 15 years, serving on
7:27
staff. Um, we were connected
7:29
to the Acts 29
7:32
movement. Um, so we weren't planted by Acts
7:35
29, but we joined them. I guess
7:38
we were part of the network from
7:40
2004 or so to about
7:43
2010.
7:44
>> Martha Tatarnic: Acts 29 is a church
7:46
planting collective.
7:48
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, it's a church planting network that
7:51
um, essentially
7:54
Mars Hill sat at the center of that network.
7:57
And um, so
8:00
it gave me kind of a front row seat to
8:02
Mars Hill and um, the
8:05
leadership issues there and sort of,
8:09
um, the broader milieu that
8:12
it was a part of.
8:14
Um, my own church definitely
8:17
went through its own season of sort of
8:20
leadership turmoil and troubles.
8:22
And so in trying to sort of understand
8:25
and process what I had gone through,
8:28
I kept coming back to the Mars Hill story,
8:31
um, because I had seen, you know, there were a variety
8:34
of sort of parallels
8:36
and similar issues there. And
8:39
m. Yeah, so in 20, I
8:42
guess it would probably. It was probably as early as 2019
8:45
that I first started talking to some former Mars Hill pastors
8:48
about the possibility of doing a podcast to tell the
8:51
story of the church and what had gone wrong.
8:54
And
8:57
one, uh, thing led to another and 2021, we
9:00
launched the series.
9:02
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, I mean one of the things that
9:05
you do keep raising as a
9:08
question, I think, through, um,
9:11
the podcast series, and then of course that you
9:13
delve into more in the book is
9:16
like, why do we keep doing
9:19
this? Like, this is. It's a very
9:21
particular story. And I think that the podcast is really
9:24
effective because of how, you
9:27
know, particular you are about the landscape of
9:30
Seattle and the
9:33
specific characters that, um,
9:35
were very involved in the life of the community
9:39
and the forming of that community.
9:42
But at the same time. Like, you're naming these dynamics
9:45
that keep cropping up.
9:47
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, for sure. And
9:50
really, like the church in Dark times,
9:52
um, is an extension of
9:55
that inquiry, so to speak.
9:58
Um,
10:01
I knew so many of these Mars Hill
10:04
pastors, um, in
10:06
a way that was very similar to. To what I had
10:09
seen at my own church.
10:12
Um, I was so aware of
10:15
the fact that, like, these were decent
10:17
people. These were good people, beyond
10:20
decent. These were good people who
10:24
would then find themselves on the side
10:26
of a, um,
10:29
church discipline hearing where they
10:33
punished and humiliated and ostracized
10:36
somebody who had really done nothing.
10:39
Done nothing more than sort of, you know,
10:42
question. A decision from Mark
10:44
Driscoll. I had seen similar things,
10:47
and I was trying to understand how
10:50
does this kind of stuff happen? And,
10:53
um. Yeah, so. So I guess I'd say,
10:56
you know, one thing led to another, and,
10:59
um, it led to me
11:02
working on this book as a result.
11:05
>> Martha Tatarnic: Well, let's get into that
11:07
specific dynamic,
11:10
um, because in your
11:12
book the Church in Dark Times,
11:15
um, you really
11:18
kind of drill into that
11:21
specific dynamic how it is that
11:24
good people almost sort of
11:27
knowingly do the wrong thing. Right.
11:30
Um, it's not that people
11:33
didn't know that there were, uh,
11:35
some toxic dynamics at work in
11:38
the person who's at the helm of
11:41
the community. Um, it's not
11:44
that there wasn't. Um.
11:47
You know, I think in your
11:49
analysis that in the example
11:52
of Paul Petrie that, uh,
11:54
you come back to a number of times in the book.
11:57
So this is a person who was a leader in
12:00
Mars Hill and raised
12:03
what sounds like some pretty
12:05
reasonable, just critical
12:08
pushback to, um, some
12:11
governance stuff at the church and
12:14
got completely. Not just fired, but
12:17
excommunicated. A huge amount of
12:19
spiritual trauma, um, done
12:22
to him and his family as a
12:25
result. Um, and
12:27
that, you know, there's this
12:30
sense of people knowing
12:33
it's not necessarily the right thing to do,
12:36
but that they feel like there's
12:39
a greater objective,
12:42
a more important objective that sort of
12:45
makes it okay to do the wrong thing.
12:48
Um, and you talk about that as
12:51
ideology. So can you
12:54
just give us sort of the
12:57
thesis of the book? What is it that you mean by
13:00
ideology? How does ideological
13:03
thinking lead to potentially
13:05
disastrous decision making?
13:08
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, certainly. Um, yeah.
13:11
So,
13:14
um, when I talk about ideology, I always
13:17
try to sort of distinguish, like, there's like,
13:19
lowercase I, ideology, which is
13:22
just sort of our
13:25
worldviews, our systems of thought,
13:28
um, uh, the way we think the world
13:31
operates. Uh, and then there's capital
13:34
I, ideology. And this is a
13:37
very Modern concept. And
13:40
um, I think it
13:43
was Miroslav Volf who framed it this way.
13:46
And um, uh, apologies to
13:49
Dr. Volf if I get this wrong, but I think it was
13:51
Miroslav Volf who said that
13:54
ideology in that larger
13:57
sense, like capital I ideology
14:00
is this little idea that's going to change the world.
14:03
It's like if you have this one little
14:05
concept and the simpler the better, and if
14:08
we implement it fully, it's going to change the
14:11
world. So
14:13
in the political realm, it
14:16
was, um, um, you know, the, the
14:19
ideology of communism was that the, the
14:22
problem with the world was, was capitalists and,
14:25
and the bourgeoisie. And if we could sort of eliminate them,
14:27
then everything, you know, socialist utopia was on
14:30
the, on the horizon.
14:32
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, for sure.
14:32
>> Mike Cosper: For the Nazis it was, you know, Jews were the
14:35
problem. Right. Um. What,
14:38
what's fascinating is there's a thousand
14:41
iterations of this kind of
14:43
ideology. This, this little idea that's going to change
14:46
everything. And evangelic been
14:49
seduced into adopting it,
14:52
um, time and time again.
14:56
Um, Mars Hill is a great example of
14:58
it. The ideology at Mars Hill was
15:01
that the problem. You know, Driscoll would say this
15:04
constantly. 90hm percent of the world's
15:06
problems were because of young men.
15:09
And so if you could reach young men with the gospel,
15:13
um, then their
15:15
conversions and them being sort of
15:17
redirected, oriented to the church, et cetera,
15:20
that would, that would change everything, that would fix everything. You'd
15:23
reach the city, you'd reach the world, you'd do the rest.
15:26
What, what makes it an
15:29
ideology is that it comes with
15:32
this sort of ironclad circular
15:35
logic where every
15:38
criticism can then get sort of chewed up
15:41
by, um, by, by that
15:43
ideology, by that logic. And so,
15:46
you know, if the problem with the world is young men,
15:49
and this is we're going to reach young men and we're going to build the whole
15:52
church around it. If you show up and you criticize
15:55
the church at any point. Well, your
15:58
problem is, you know,
16:01
you're, you're a feminist, you're
16:03
anti man, you're not,
16:06
you know, you're not sufficiently evangelical, uh,
16:09
in the ways that Driscoll would have,
16:12
would have announced. And the logic of that could sort of chew you
16:15
up and spit you up as it went. Spit you out
16:18
as it went. And
16:19
um,
16:22
I think there's countless examples of this. I mean, there's something
16:25
similar that goes on with Bill Hybels
16:28
and sort of the kind of cult of
16:31
leadership around Hybels as well. But,
16:33
um, if you want to
16:36
understand how does the church get to a place
16:38
where, um,
16:41
where good people are justifying evil
16:44
activities? Um, it
16:47
often comes with a
16:49
core idea like this that
16:53
they're rallied around and defending.
16:56
>> Martha Tatarnic: Now, is it fair to say that
16:59
wrapped in that, again, kind of
17:02
specific ideological idea for Mark
17:05
Driscoll and Mers Hill, that
17:08
generally in the church
17:11
and in, um, church
17:13
leadership, there's
17:16
a broader
17:19
ideological principle which is around
17:21
growth. Right.
17:25
And that becomes like, part of what is
17:27
ironclad as well. Like, if the church is
17:30
growing, if you're seen as
17:34
reaching new people with the, uh, gospel,
17:37
you know, converting hearts,
17:40
then how can you
17:42
challenge the means to that
17:45
end? Like, is.
17:46
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, 100%. I mean,
17:48
um, the. The Great
17:51
Commission is. Is very compelling, you
17:54
know. Um, and. And
17:57
so when. When you're looking at the world in a way where it's
18:00
like all of life and
18:04
all of ministry, it's all this
18:06
cosmic battle between good and evil, and the
18:09
stakes are that people are going to go to
18:12
hell for an eternity. And just
18:15
to be really clear, like, I don't deny, like,
18:18
you know, I don't deny the
18:21
importance of the Great Commission or any of
18:23
that. Um, what happens though,
18:26
that. Where it starts to kind of turn awry
18:30
is that
18:32
churches and church leaders begin to think
18:35
of their particular
18:37
ministry and their particular work
18:40
in a way that, um,
18:44
it's almost like you take God's
18:47
providence out of the equation
18:50
and you say the burden is on us to figure
18:53
out how do we implement this Great
18:55
Commission, how do we reach this city, how do we
18:58
transform things? Um,
19:01
it's, you know, there's. There, there's
19:03
a. And, and I, I talk about this a bit
19:06
in the book. Like, there's a certain
19:09
godlessness to the church
19:12
growth movement which says, here's
19:15
a formula. And if you implement the
19:18
formula effectively, you're going to reach, you know,
19:21
your whole city. You're going to. You're going to transform the whole city. You're going
19:24
to grow your church.
19:25
Um, uh,
19:31
it's as though we've sort of mechanized
19:34
evangelism and,
19:37
um, the work of the Gospel in a way where it's
19:39
like, look, just obey the formula.
19:43
And what comes out the other side of it is going to
19:45
be, you know, this, this radical
19:48
transformation. Now, on. On the one hand, what part of.
19:51
What's complicated about all of this is like, it
19:54
kind of works, right? Like Mars Hill grew,
19:57
they got to thousands and thousands of people.
20:00
It worked for Bill Hybels.
20:02
Um, but the, the
20:05
question. The question you have to start to ask
20:08
when these things fall apart on the back end, and I hope
20:10
that the church is doing some reflection on
20:13
this. Is, um.
20:16
What. What exactly have you won people
20:19
to? What is the gospel that you
20:21
have won them with and transformed
20:24
them? And,
20:26
um. So,
20:28
yeah, so I think there's a lot of sort of.
20:32
I could rant for a while on this, but I think there's a lot of sort of
20:34
downstream consequences to
20:37
winning people to a. A kind of ideological
20:40
vision of the church rather than
20:43
the gospel itself.
20:44
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I
20:47
appreciate the complexity that you always build into
20:50
all of your work, because it isn't
20:53
that God doesn't get in there too. You know, like, there
20:56
are lots of amazing stories
20:59
of people's lives being
21:01
sincerely, um, met by the
21:04
living God at Mars Hill and at,
21:07
uh, you know, sort of any of these examples.
21:10
But, um, I think
21:13
what you're calling us to is
21:16
to be accountable for,
21:19
um, how
21:22
we get there.
21:24
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, no, thank you. That's kind.
21:27
And it's extremely important to
21:30
me. I mean, I think,
21:32
um. One of the things that was
21:35
interesting about them, you know, just for a little behind the scenes of the
21:38
Mars Hill thing, one of the things that was. That was
21:41
really, really important to me at the outset of that
21:43
project was to tell the story
21:46
in such a way that
21:49
members of Mars Hill could see
21:52
themselves in it. Um, and what
21:55
I mean by that is that, like, there's a way to tell
21:58
the Mars Hill story where you, you know,
22:01
you create this kind of caricature, cartoonish
22:04
version of the church and its members and
22:06
Driscoll himself, um,
22:09
where people. People from the outside can look in and
22:12
go, why on earth would anybody have ever
22:15
been a part of this thing? And I think it was
22:18
really, really important to me to tell the story in such a way
22:21
that Mars Hill members could say, yeah,
22:24
that's why we were there. That's why it mattered to us. That's
22:26
what was so significant about it.
22:30
And, you know, by God's grace, like,
22:32
that's. That's how the thing unfolded. I
22:35
mean, part of the. Part of the
22:38
comedy of the creation of that whole series was the
22:41
fact that, um, we got,
22:44
you know, we got, I think, five
22:46
episodes into it, and a number of
22:49
people who had
22:52
refused to talk to us, um, for the
22:54
series came around about five episodes in and
22:57
said, okay, we're ready to. We're ready to talk. And we had
23:00
to, like, throw the whole storyboard for the series out the window.
23:03
And we were producing it in real time,
23:06
um, because. Because we had new
23:09
Voices that we needed to include. Those people came
23:12
around specifically because of the episode
23:15
that we did on men and
23:17
masculinity and what masculinity meant at Mars
23:20
Hill. Um, they heard
23:23
that episode and they were like, okay,
23:26
you understand why we were there, so
23:29
we'll share our stories now. And,
23:32
um, I mean,
23:35
I'm proud of that. I'm proud that we were able to sort of tap into
23:38
that and honor their
23:41
experience by telling the story honestly,
23:44
because it's very tempting to caricature the whole
23:47
thing.
23:48
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, for sure. And, you know, as a
23:50
listener, um, who is not familiar
23:53
with that world at all, to be honest.
23:56
And I do want to get into that a little bit more as well.
23:59
Like, I'm mainline through and
24:01
through.
24:02
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, no, I'm sure it's a very strange world if you're
24:05
mainline through and through.
24:06
>> Martha Tatarnic: But no, I really, like, I felt like I could
24:09
locate myself in the story as well.
24:12
I felt like one of the exciting things as a
24:15
listener was that sense of the story
24:18
expanding and deepening in real time
24:21
as. As you're going along. Like, it,
24:24
uh, it was quite a remarkable,
24:26
um, uh,
24:29
yeah, multiplication of grace
24:32
that sort of got lived
24:35
out through the podcast. It was. It was really
24:38
interesting. Um, I want to come back to your
24:40
book though, because, um,
24:43
in your book you really,
24:46
ah, get into
24:49
a conversation with an
24:51
interesting companion. Um,
24:54
Jewish social theorist
24:56
Hannah Arendt. I
24:59
hope I'm pronouncing her name somewhat correctly.
25:02
Um, her life's work was devoted to
25:05
understanding how the Western world could have given
25:08
birth to a culture that would be capable of
25:10
murdering 11 million people in
25:13
Nazism.
25:15
Um, what drew you to
25:18
her work, and what do you
25:20
think her insights offer us
25:23
in Christian leadership?
25:26
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, um, uh, well, so
25:29
first of all, I think you're doing a great job with,
25:32
uh, the name, so well done.
25:34
Um, yeah, Hannah Arendt. I mean,
25:37
she's. She's just a fascinating figure in
25:40
the 20th century. And,
25:42
um, uh, so, yes, she
25:45
was a German, Jewish social
25:48
theorist. Um,
25:50
she ended up fleeing Germany in
25:52
1933, um, after the
25:55
Nazi takeover. She, um,
25:58
was briefly imprisoned and questioned by the
26:00
Gestapo for subversive
26:03
activities. She ends up fleeing to
26:05
France. She's there until essentially right
26:08
before the German takeover of,
26:11
um, France, she's briefly
26:14
imprisoned in a, um,
26:17
what was essentially like a proto
26:20
concentration camp in Gurs in France.
26:23
Um, the vast majority of the people who were imprisoned there
26:26
ended up going to Auschwitz. They were actually
26:28
eventually sent to Auschwitz. But,
26:31
um, um, she ends up,
26:34
you know, kind of in a similar way that she sort of
26:37
talks her way out of the Gestapo.
26:39
She's um, part of
26:42
this um, conspiracy, uh,
26:45
inside the campingur to
26:48
create false documents to get
26:51
out and um, escape to England and
26:54
then eventually to the US and she spends the rest of her
26:57
life trying to understand how it
27:00
was that the very people that she
27:02
knew and loved, right, like
27:05
Arendt was this
27:07
brilliant young intellectual in
27:10
Germany, um, in 1933,
27:13
um, she was actually having an affair with Martin
27:16
Heidegger at the time.
27:17
Um, she was trying to figure
27:20
out how these people that she knew
27:23
and loved could be transformed into
27:27
collaborators, contributors, supporters
27:29
of the Nazi project, including
27:32
um, as you mentioned, including the
27:35
death camps themselves. And
27:38
um, what's so interesting
27:41
about Arendt is that in 1950 she writes
27:44
a book. She publishes a book called the Origins of
27:47
Totalitarianism. And
27:50
reflecting on what took place, she
27:53
essentially describes all of
27:55
um, the sort of ultimate result
27:58
of
28:01
the Nazi ideology and everything else as
28:04
radical evil. It's this sort of
28:07
unforeseen, um,
28:09
incalculable evil that emerges
28:12
in the world. And then about a decade
28:15
later she goes to Israel
28:17
to cover the trial of Adolf
28:20
Eichmann. Um, Eichmann was one of the
28:22
primary architects of the Final Solution,
28:25
um, and he had been kidnapped from
28:27
Argentina and taken to Israel to stand
28:30
trial. And she has this incredible
28:33
revelation when she encounters
28:35
Eichmann because she can't get over
28:38
the fact that Eichmann is just incredibly
28:41
normal and kind of stupid
28:44
and um, um,
28:47
and that you know, his
28:50
defense of himself is essentially this
28:52
perpetual appeal to cliches and
28:55
catchphrases and you know,
28:58
very simplistic ideas. And it
29:01
changes the way that she thinks about the whole
29:04
history of Nazism and
29:07
um, the Final Solution, where she essentially
29:09
says, you know, this is where people will be familiar with
29:12
the phrase the banality of evil.
29:14
>> Martha Tatarnic: The banality of evil, yeah.
29:15
>> Mike Cosper: Where this emerges for the first time
29:18
is she, you know, she, she coins the phrase while,
29:21
while talking about Eichmann because she's like
29:24
th. This very normal
29:27
careerist, self interested guy,
29:30
administrator. Uh, yeah, yeah, this
29:33
bureaucrat became, became this
29:36
monster. And how, how does
29:38
that happen? And so
29:41
when I was making the Rise and Fall of Mars
29:44
Hill, um, I
29:46
remember the interview, I was having a conversation with somebody
29:49
and we were talking about the Paul Petrie
29:52
thing and they basically said yeah, it was like
29:56
for a decade we had been told church
29:59
leadership is this one thing,
30:02
this is the structure for it, this is how it should be
30:05
done. And then all of a sudden we
30:08
turned on a dime because the mission was
30:10
so important. We couldn't stick to this,
30:13
you know, arcane structure of our church polity.
30:16
We had to vote on something new and different.
30:19
And, um, you know, Paul objected to
30:21
that. And it. That was the first time I thought
30:24
about Arendt because,
30:26
um,
30:29
what happens in dictatorships always
30:32
is there sort of comes a moment for the
30:35
dictator where they say, hey, we have to suspend the normal
30:38
rules. Right? Um, the normal
30:41
rules of democracy and the way
30:43
we're governed. We need to suspend all of that
30:46
because there's this crisis, whatever the
30:49
crisis might be. The crisis is so
30:52
urgent, we have to deal with that.
30:54
And in the church, we do that
30:57
with the mission, we do that with evangelism,
31:00
we do that with, again,
31:02
this cosmic battle that we're a part of. Uh,
31:05
m. Trying to. Trying to,
31:08
um, win people's souls before, you
31:11
know, before they go to hell. And again,
31:14
I'm still an evangelical. I still think those
31:17
convictions are real. But this idea that we suspend the
31:20
rules for the sake of the mission,
31:23
for the sake of the growth of the church, is
31:25
extraordinarily dangerous. And I think time and
31:28
again, you've seen examples where that's
31:31
happened and you've seen what. What the results
31:34
are, and Mars Hill is the pinnacle example
31:37
of it. So I think the parallels between
31:40
kind of the cult of personality that takes place around
31:43
a leader like Mark Driscoll and the cult of
31:46
personality that takes place around
31:48
dictatorship are very clear.
31:52
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I want
31:54
to come back to what you said a little
31:57
bit earlier about wanting to make
32:00
sure that, um, your portrayal of Mars
32:03
Hill was not a caricature that the
32:06
people of Mars Hill could see themselves in
32:09
the podcast. But I think the
32:11
corollary of that is that
32:15
listeners who aren't part of the
32:17
Mars Hill story, um,
32:20
don't walk away thinking, well, that's about
32:23
other people who aren't like me, and I would
32:26
never do that. And, you know, it's.
32:29
It's kind of an interesting spectacle, but
32:32
there's no, like, takeaway. Right.
32:35
And, and I. To me, that
32:37
is, I think, an important,
32:41
um, an important
32:45
insight in the banality of evil as well,
32:48
is that, um,
32:51
like, we shouldn't hear the
32:54
story of Nazi Germany
32:56
without doing some
32:59
interior work in our own souls and
33:02
our own capacity to
33:04
participate in things that,
33:07
um, are absolutely
33:09
horrific. Right.
33:11
So. Sorry, do.
33:15
>> Mike Cosper: No, let me. Yeah, I mean, if I can just
33:18
jump in, I would just say, like,
33:20
yeah, I think it's so critical,
33:24
um, I think it's so critical for people
33:27
who heard that series
33:29
to resist the temptation to
33:31
say, wow, those people are crazy.
33:34
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah.
33:35
>> Mike Cosper: Um, because the reality is,
33:38
if you had been there, if you had been in those
33:41
pews, if you had been in those community groups, if you had
33:44
been part of the scene in which that
33:47
church emerged, um,
33:48
um, the, the
33:51
predominant likelihood is that you would have been
33:54
drawn into it, totally compelled by it, devoted
33:57
your life to it, and been burned
33:59
horrifically, as so many of those
34:02
people were in the aftermath. So.
34:05
>> Martha Tatarnic: Well, yeah, and the other component
34:08
that I kept coming back to and listening to
34:11
it, like, I'm a church leader, you
34:14
know, um, and as I said
34:16
before, like, I am,
34:20
um, mainline through and through. Um,
34:23
there's a lot about the evangelical
34:26
church culture that is quite foreign to me
34:29
and certainly, like, I
34:32
wouldn't see myself as having a ton in common
34:35
with a Mark Driscoll. And I really
34:38
like the levels of
34:40
celebrity and the
34:42
platforms and kind of
34:45
the, the reach
34:47
of a Mark Driscoll is
34:50
in a, uh, different universe from
34:53
anything that most of my
34:55
colleagues or that I experience.
34:58
And yet at the same time, like,
35:01
I, I felt
35:04
like I needed to do some soul searching
35:07
with regards to his story. Because,
35:10
yeah, like, our churches
35:13
might be smaller, but they can
35:16
also be very personality driven.
35:21
Um, and mainline leaders
35:23
can also very much
35:26
succumb to messiah complexes
35:29
and to feeling,
35:32
you know, that,
35:35
uh, as you said earlier, that
35:38
kind of, like, godless,
35:40
um, agenda of
35:43
like, it's all up to me. It's all up to me
35:46
to, to save this thing.
35:49
I, I think any of us in church
35:51
leadership should be able to
35:54
relate to that weight
35:57
of expectation that gets placed on us
36:00
when, when we're at the front of the
36:02
church. So,
36:04
like, what are. What are.
36:07
What's kind of a different model from
36:10
that, like, cult of
36:12
personality? Because I think it can trip us
36:15
all up.
36:16
>> Mike Cosper: No, I, Yeah, I appreciate
36:19
the way you're framing this because I think it's. I think it's just
36:22
so. I think it's so key that,
36:25
um, Christian leaders keep
36:28
in mind that, you
36:31
know, this is not unique to mega
36:34
churches. This is something that is a
36:36
temptation for all of us. Um,
36:39
one of my favorite podcasts of all time
36:42
is, uh, an episode of this American
36:45
Life, um, that I think. I think it's called
36:48
Petty Tyrant is the name of the episode. Or Petty
36:51
Tyrants. And in this
36:54
episode, they,
36:56
um, uh, they told the story
36:58
of, uh, a guy who was
37:01
essentially the.
37:04
He was like the superintendent of
37:06
maintenance for a school system.
37:10
And you hear that and
37:13
you think, how could that guy be
37:16
like a petty tyrant?
37:19
But they tell this story of the
37:22
way this guy just like, had a
37:24
stranglehold over the entire school
37:27
district and everybody was subservient to him.
37:30
And he ran his,
37:33
you know, he ran his team with this
37:36
sort of mob like, sense of
37:39
loyalty and discipline and militancy
37:42
and, um, all the rest. And
37:45
it's a wild story. I mean, it's a crazy story.
37:48
But for me, as somebody who had been inside
37:51
of an unhealthy church,
37:54
uh, with a leader who had an unhealthy
37:57
grasp of his importance and the role of
38:00
leadership and all the rest, it was just also totally
38:03
believable and familiar.
38:05
Um, and I love
38:08
referencing it because I think it
38:11
reminds us of
38:14
the. The church's problems are.
38:17
They're ultimately like just deeply
38:20
human problems. We have a problem with
38:22
power. Power is an incredible
38:25
temptation. Um,
38:27
and it also reminds us of the
38:30
fact that, like, I
38:32
think. I mean, I think the reason a
38:35
Mars Hill can happen
38:38
is because people are lonely and isolated and
38:41
they're looking for purpose and meaning. And someone like
38:44
Mark Driscoll comes up with an
38:47
extraordinary amount of
38:49
charisma and conviction
38:52
and says, give your life away
38:55
to this and you'll
38:58
be happy on the other side of it.
39:01
And, um,
39:04
it's the same way that, you know, it's the same way
39:07
that, um. Um.
39:10
Populist movements of all stripes kind
39:13
of end up working. Um,
39:17
David Foster Wallace said, you know, we're all dying to give ourselves
39:20
away to something. And. And smart leaders have a
39:23
way of, um, of tapping
39:25
into that desire and saying, like, here's your
39:28
purpose, here's your meaning. Here's what you're supposed to give yourself away
39:31
to.
39:32
Um.
39:35
Yeah, I'm sorry, I feel like I've lost your original
39:38
question. But, um.
39:41
Um. I think
39:43
that's certainly what the book is about, is how does
39:46
that happen? And really sort of tracing
39:49
it back into even
39:52
just the history of modernity and trying to
39:55
understand why are we rootless?
39:58
Why are we lonely and isolated? Why are
40:00
we so vulnerable to
40:03
people who show up and say, I have a
40:06
wonderful plan for your life.
40:08
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah. Yeah. And I really appreciate
40:11
how thoroughly,
40:13
um, you explore all of those
40:16
different dynamics. There's a thread that I'm really
40:19
interested in pulling on with you.
40:22
Um, I
40:25
interviewed last year Michael
40:28
Graham, who was one of the authors of the Great
40:30
Deterging. And,
40:33
um,
40:36
you know, I think that the research
40:38
in that book, um,
40:41
highlights a, ah, reality that we're all facing
40:44
across the evangelical and mainline
40:47
world, which is decline right
40:50
across the board in people
40:53
interested in institutional
40:55
religion. Um, and
40:58
this feeling that, like,
41:01
something that we love, uh,
41:05
and care about is
41:07
disappearing in front of our eyes.
41:11
Like, to what degree do you
41:14
feel like that background of
41:17
secularism, of,
41:20
um, anxiety for the church's
41:22
survival plays into,
41:26
I think, both,
41:29
um, the hero worship of a Mark
41:31
Driscoll who comes along and seems to
41:34
have the answers, and then the success to back it
41:37
up, but also then,
41:40
um, feeling threatened by critical
41:43
voices that might try
41:46
to, you know,
41:48
um, break that
41:51
facade in any way.
41:53
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean,
41:58
I think the rise of secularism plays a huge
42:01
role in all of this.
42:02
Um, something I talk about
42:05
in the book is, um,
42:08
uh, the philosopher Charles Taylor.
42:11
He has this concept that he refers to as
42:14
bundled identity. So, like,
42:17
if you're born 500 years ago, you
42:20
know, you're Bavarian, you're a
42:22
baker's son, you're betrothed to the
42:25
butcher's daughter, you're Catholic, you know,
42:28
you can kind of go down the line of all these identity
42:30
markers, you know, where.
42:32
>> Martha Tatarnic: You'Ll live your whole life.
42:34
>> Mike Cosper: Exactly. None of those things are questions,
42:36
right?
42:37
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah.
42:37
>> Mike Cosper: Um. Uh, not only are they not questions,
42:40
like, the thought of
42:42
questioning those identity markers is never going
42:45
to cross your mind just because of the structures
42:48
of society and the, you know,
42:51
what he refers to as the social imaginary. Like,
42:54
that's all just kind of baked in and locked in.
42:56
And what modernity does is
42:59
it unbundles all of that. And
43:02
so unlike this guy born
43:05
500 years ago, you know, when.
43:08
When we come of age, we have to figure out, well, what am I
43:11
doing with my life? Where am I going to live? Who do I
43:14
love? Do I love men or women? Like, you
43:17
know, um, you can just kind of go down the line
43:20
of all of these questions. And
43:23
on the one hand, you can look at, you
43:25
know, all of that and the Industrial Revolution and
43:28
all of these things and say, hey, there's a lot of positives, right?
43:31
>> Martha Tatarnic: Like, a lot of positives. Yeah.
43:33
>> Mike Cosper: You know, as, uh, um, as. As.
43:36
As, you know, the guy, uh,
43:39
as Owen Wilson says in. In Midnight, uh,
43:43
in Paris, like, these people don't have antibiotics.
43:46
Right. Looking back in the past, like, yeah,
43:48
we. We love modernity. I love air conditioning. I love
43:51
antibiotics. Like, there's a lot of positives, but the
43:54
negatives are that all
43:57
of that unbundling,
44:00
it doesn't just give us questions, it gives
44:03
us anxiety. Because even when you answer the
44:06
questions, I'm going to live here. I'm going to do this, I'm going to marry this
44:09
person, I'm going to do whatever,
44:11
um, you're left going, well,
44:14
did I make the right decision? Um,
44:17
did I marry the right person? Did I choose the right
44:19
religion? Did I move to the right city? Did
44:23
I take the right job? And
44:26
that anxiety creates all kinds
44:29
of problems for us.
44:32
Um, and with it,
44:36
um, comes this loosening
44:39
of connections to institutions that are
44:41
meaning making, whether that's the state or
44:44
the church or the family or whatever else,
44:49
our, uh, bonds with those meaning making
44:52
institutions have grown weaker and weaker.
44:55
So when a charismatic person comes along
44:58
and says, I've got a story for
45:01
you, I've got meaning for you, I've got purpose for you,
45:04
I've got a direction for your life,
45:07
um, it's profoundly compelling.
45:10
And once somebody
45:13
locks in on that, I mean, this was something that the Mars Hill
45:16
guys would talk about all the time.
45:18
They would say, you know,
45:20
um, I remember one guy
45:23
saying, I resonate
45:26
with,
45:27
uh, he said, I remember talking to
45:30
a Vietnam vet and
45:33
that guy saying,
45:35
um, of course I don't miss
45:38
the war because I don't miss having bullets
45:41
fly by my head. But
45:44
I do miss waking up in the morning having a purpose.
45:48
And these Mars Hill folks kind of feeling the same
45:51
way. Like, they don't miss Mark, they don't miss
45:54
the manipulation. They recognize it for what it is
45:57
now. But that sense of
45:59
purpose and meaning, the way it bonded
46:02
them with one another, they miss all
46:05
of that. And I get that. And I think that's
46:08
a, that's a
46:11
phenomenon of modernity, for sure.
46:15
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah. I just want to open up
46:18
your book here because there's this one little
46:20
part that, um, I just keep
46:23
coming back to.
46:25
Um, the
46:28
book of Revelation tells
46:31
a much larger story in which
46:33
ambiguity about the church at
46:36
Ephesus future is ultimately
46:38
overshadowed by the defeat of the devil and the victory of the kingdom
46:41
of God. It's a clear, sobering message
46:44
that our communities may not last forever
46:47
and that redemption doesn't depend on
46:50
them. An honest church mission
46:53
statement based on these warnings would be
46:56
so and so community church here in fear and
46:58
trembling until God removes our lampstand.
47:03
I think that that contrast
47:06
between kind of the biblical
47:08
reality of just how
47:12
fragile, um, our human
47:15
efforts really are and how dependent
47:17
upon the grace of God they
47:20
actually need to be.
47:22
Um, you can see why
47:25
that's not the mission statement that most of us go
47:28
for. That, like, having that
47:31
much more. Um,
47:34
yeah, do this and you'll be successful
47:37
and you'll know what your life is about.
47:41
Um, and we'll have the numbers to show for it. Like, of
47:44
Course, that's such a
47:47
compelling antidote to all of that
47:51
modern angst that you talk about.
47:56
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, no,
47:57
um, I was just talking to somebody
48:00
about this yesterday and
48:05
um, uh,
48:08
they said if you could offer one prescription for
48:11
pastors who are trying to figure out how do I not
48:14
get sucked into the
48:17
grandiosity, uh, of
48:20
ideology and all the rest, what would it be?
48:23
And I thought about it for a minute and I
48:25
said, I said, well this is very, this is
48:28
very, it's very on brand for me
48:31
in terms of its sort of crushing
48:33
morosity. Um, but,
48:36
um, my.
48:38
Sorry, my headphones unplugged.
48:41
Um, my prescription would
48:44
be to remember your death.
48:46
Um,
48:50
I, um, I mean I feel
48:53
like so much of what,
48:56
so much of what happens around
49:00
celebrity pastors and
49:03
um, uh, the, the whole sort of
49:05
church growth phenomenon and all of this, it's like,
49:09
um, it's Tower of Babel stuff.
49:11
It's let's make our name great, you know?
49:14
Yeah. And you know,
49:17
at the end of the day, like,
49:20
one reason I think the Mars Hill story is so darn
49:23
important is because
49:26
by 2013, when
49:28
you removed M. Mark from the church,
49:31
the church collapsed.
49:33
>> Martha Tatarnic: Mhm.
49:34
>> Mike Cosper: That's horrendous. That's a nightmare, that's
49:37
disaster, that's failure on every level. And
49:40
that, that should be the most damning
49:43
aspect, uh, of that story for anybody who's trying to sort of
49:46
assess what happened there in Driscoll,
49:49
is that the church couldn't outlive the
49:52
guy. That's
49:54
horrific. And so if we're not
49:57
building our ministries in such a
50:00
way that, I
50:03
mean, I think it was the Moravian missionaries had the
50:06
phrase preach the gospel, um, preach
50:09
the gospel, die and be forgotten. If
50:12
that's not in our minds,
50:14
that we can be
50:17
forgotten and that
50:19
ministry can sort of move beyond us
50:22
or move on after us. It has to,
50:25
it has to. Um, then
50:28
we've truly gotten this whole thing
50:31
backwards. And unfortunately, I think
50:34
the reality of where the, the church is in North America
50:37
and in the west in general,
50:40
um, there are a lot of churches
50:43
that are really built on the backs of
50:46
personalities and
50:48
um, death is going to be,
50:51
death is going to be a cold awakening
50:53
for all of them.
50:56
Um, and
50:59
bad news. You're not going to escape it.
51:02
It's like, and that's where it's like,
51:05
the tradition is such a gift to us
51:08
if we actually paid attention to it. Because Ash Wednesday
51:11
every year ought to be reminding pastors of
51:14
like, dude, don't make this thing about yourself.
51:17
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, your dust, man.
51:19
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, Exactly.
51:20
>> Martha Tatarnic: You're going to return to the dust. All of us go down
51:23
to the dust.
51:24
>> Mike Cosper: I say dude, but I use the
51:27
universal non gendered dude. Men, men,
51:30
women, the non gendered dude. It applies to all.
51:33
>> Martha Tatarnic: It certainly does. Yeah. So remember your
51:36
death. Celebrate, um, Ash Wednesday.
51:40
What are some other, um,
51:42
some other acts of resistance?
51:45
Because like we've
51:49
identified very clearly. I think we're all
51:51
susceptible to um, these cults
51:54
of personality. I think we're all
51:58
susceptible, uh, to the, the
52:02
arrogance of getting. Thinking that
52:05
it is about us. Um,
52:08
and I think that we'd all
52:10
like lots more certainty,
52:13
um, and people
52:16
showing us
52:19
the road of success. So the
52:22
last part of your book does get into
52:24
practices of resistance. Do you want to name
52:27
any others to that list?
52:31
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, no. Uh, I talk about
52:34
a number in there. Um,
52:36
um, the book ends
52:40
with an emphasis in particular,
52:43
uh, on the practices of
52:45
worship. And
52:49
I try to sort of delineate worship as
52:52
something broader
52:54
than um,
52:57
uh,
52:59
the sort of revivalistic,
53:02
um, experiences, like
53:05
trying to look at worship as something that is
53:08
um, really about orienting
53:11
yourself around a particular story. And I
53:14
think that's the key thing in all of this.
53:16
Um,
53:17
um. In the modern era,
53:20
people who are lonely and
53:23
purposeless, uh, and searching
53:27
get drawn into,
53:30
whether it's a populist political
53:32
movement or uh, a sort
53:35
of church growth phenomenon or
53:38
a cult or whatever, they get drawn
53:41
into those things because of all of the, you
53:44
know, all of these sort of historical,
53:46
um, um, historical, uh,
53:49
things we've been talking about here.
53:52
Um, the church's cure for that
53:54
is not to provide like a
53:58
counter narrative in the sense of, well, here's
54:00
a populist. I mean Mars Hill was a populist
54:03
movement in a lot of ways.
54:06
And that was no solution because that thing's going to fall apart
54:09
the minute that mark leaves.
54:12
Um, what the church has to offer is something
54:15
that's, that's, that's this
54:18
bigger story, this, this larger narrative
54:21
to find meaning and purpose inside of.
54:23
And I think, I think worship and liturgy are
54:26
a key way of doing that. Um, I
54:29
think, I think creating culture and
54:32
storytelling are a really key way to do that
54:35
as well. I mean, one of the reasons, I think,
54:39
you know, for me personally, one of the reasons
54:42
doing the Mars Hill podcast was so important
54:45
was um, I
54:47
felt like it was a way to
54:51
shine a light on the
54:55
futility, um, and
54:57
toxicity of these
54:59
phenomenon and
55:02
um, maybe to get some Christians to think about their
55:05
faith in a bigger and broader
55:07
way, um, to point to
55:10
a better and more beautiful church. That is
55:13
possible outside of this kind of thing.
55:16
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah. Uh, I
55:19
mean, just kind of following up on
55:21
that for a moment, like,
55:24
how has your work been received
55:27
in the evangelical world? Like,
55:30
do. Does what you have put
55:33
together, does it feel threatening to
55:35
some people? Like, has it?
55:40
Yeah. What's the reaction?
55:42
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, um, great question.
55:45
Um,
55:49
what's encouraging is that I would say
55:52
that by and large
55:55
the vast majority of the reaction has
55:58
been a recognition of the
56:00
truth to the story and a
56:03
recognition of the,
56:05
um, the. The reality of the
56:08
issues and the challenges. And so
56:11
I'm. Overall I'm. I'm very encouraged
56:14
in terms of the way people have responded to it and all of that.
56:16
>> Martha Tatarnic: I'm glad to hear that. That's really good.
56:18
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah. No, I was,
56:21
um. I wasn't surprised
56:24
by that. I kind of expected that people would
56:27
hear the thing and go, yeah, this makes a lot
56:30
of sense. Um, plus I think
56:33
the nature of kind of how we told the
56:36
story because we focus so much on kind of telling it
56:39
from the inside, focusing on leaders who are
56:42
actually really a part of the
56:44
movement, um,
56:48
it makes it, I guess, um, it makes it hard to
56:51
argue with.
56:52
>> Martha Tatarnic: Well, and it wasn't an expose like
56:55
it was a number of years after the
56:58
whole thing collapsed. So it's not like you were trying to bring it
57:01
down in the midst of its, like.
57:03
>> Mike Cosper: Right. We weren't breaking news with it. We weren't. We weren't
57:06
telling people things that for the most part, we
57:09
weren't telling people things that weren't already kind of a
57:11
matter of the public record. I mean, I think in the
57:14
last three episodes, we did
57:17
have some things in those episodes that had not been published
57:20
or talked about before. But for the most
57:22
part it was all pretty much out there.
57:25
So it was really about
57:28
challenging people to just sort of reckon with the reality of
57:31
it. Um, that said,
57:35
there were a handful of
57:38
folks who,
57:39
um. There were a handful of folks
57:42
who were very unhappy with what we
57:45
did. Um, uh, I'll never
57:48
forget. So in the midst of this,
57:52
I got invited to go speak at a,
57:55
um, um,
57:57
uh, or. Or to do, uh, like a Q
58:00
A, like an on stage Q and A at a conference,
58:03
um, for some very, very, very large
58:06
churches. And I had been invited by.
58:09
I'd actually been invited by the pastor of,
58:12
you know, um, I won't name
58:15
drop any of these folks, but like, I was invited by the
58:18
pastor of a very, very large church, one of the largest
58:20
churches in North America, asked me to come and do this Q
58:23
and A with him at this, at this
58:26
event. And
58:28
um, I, I get
58:30
there and um,
58:33
I'm looking at the schedule and
58:36
uh, this is a fault of mine but like,
58:39
for, for events like this,
58:42
I often don't pay a lot of attention to what is on the
58:44
schedule. You know, I just sort of like, right, I know I'm speaking,
58:47
I'm going to do my thing, I'm going to show up and do it and then I'm going to go
58:50
home. And um, so I didn't really
58:53
pay a lot of attention to what else was on the schedule. And I get there
58:56
and I'm looking at the schedule and
58:59
I see that uh, our
59:01
Q and A is right before the main
59:04
speaker for that evening. And it just so happened that the main
59:07
speaker for that evening was another
59:10
big time megachurch
59:13
guy, um, who
59:16
the weekend before in his sermon
59:19
to his church of, I don't know,
59:22
40, 50,000 people had denounced me
59:25
from the stage.
59:28
And so I'm looking at the schedule going,
59:31
um, oh wow. Like I'm the opening
59:34
act for, you know, for, for this
59:36
guy. And um, so in the
59:39
green room before the, you know, before the session, he comes in
59:42
and um, when he realizes who I am, he
59:45
says, uh, you know, he makes some snide comment
59:48
about um, uh, I, uh, hope you
59:51
don't make a podcast about the dumb things I said in my
59:53
30s. And you know, I
59:56
said, oh, well, were you in the habit of
59:59
saying these kinds of things? And I, you know, threw some Driscoll quotes
1:00:02
at him, um, just to be
1:00:04
clear. But it was, the hostility was real. It was,
1:00:07
it was, it was thick. And, and then,
1:00:10
and then I just felt this incredible irony because
1:00:13
I did this Q and A.
1:00:16
Um, I did this Q and A.
1:00:18
And the last thing that
1:00:21
they asked me was,
1:00:23
um, if you had one piece of advice to
1:00:26
give pastors, um,
1:00:29
who don't want to become the next Mark
1:00:32
Driscoll, what would you tell them? And I told them that
1:00:35
Moravian missionary quote, it's one of my favorite quotes,
1:00:38
preach the gospel, die and be forgotten.
1:00:41
And uh, I said, I think pastors need to remember
1:00:44
their death and they need to embrace a
1:00:46
posture that says, you know, preach the gospel, die and be
1:00:49
forgotten. And I
1:00:52
walked off stage laughing at the irony
1:00:55
that, you know, people
1:00:58
sort of, people reacted very positively
1:01:01
to that.
1:01:01
>> Martha Tatarnic: Mhm.
1:01:02
>> Mike Cosper: And I walked off stage laughing at the irony that
1:01:05
right after they had reacted so positively
1:01:08
to that, the introduction
1:01:11
began for this
1:01:14
celebrity pastor guy with I don't
1:01:17
know how many campuses and video streaming
1:01:20
and you know, this, that and the Other,
1:01:22
um, whose. Whose
1:01:25
entire empire is really built
1:01:27
around his personality.
1:01:29
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah.
1:01:29
>> Mike Cosper: And. And if he gets hit by a bus tomorrow,
1:01:32
they're in big trouble.
1:01:34
Um, so.
1:01:37
Yeah, so he was not a fan.
1:01:39
>> Martha Tatarnic: Okay.
1:01:40
>> Mike Cosper: That's a long answer to your question. Um,
1:01:43
there have been a few encounters like that that have been fascinating
1:01:46
to me, and honestly have
1:01:49
ultimately just sort of led me to,
1:01:52
uh, a deeper and deeper conviction that
1:01:55
what we did was the right thing and it
1:01:58
mattered.
1:01:59
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah. Yeah. I would be really
1:02:02
surprised if a few buttons didn't get pushed
1:02:04
because of the level of truth telling
1:02:07
and, you know, it should ruffle a few
1:02:10
feathers, I think.
1:02:12
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah.
1:02:12
>> Martha Tatarnic: Um, okay. I want to
1:02:15
wrap up with one more question before we
1:02:18
take a break and go to our closing
1:02:20
questions. On your
1:02:23
podcast, um, you
1:02:25
always concluded your description of the
1:02:28
project with the note that along
1:02:31
with excavating the growth and collapse of this
1:02:34
church, this is also a podcast
1:02:37
about God showing up in broken
1:02:39
places and the mystery of God showing up in broken
1:02:42
places. So
1:02:45
can you just say a word about where
1:02:48
you see God showing up
1:02:51
right now in all of the ways that
1:02:54
the church can get things so horribly
1:02:57
wrong?
1:02:58
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great
1:03:01
question. Um,
1:03:06
I.
1:03:10
Yeah, uh, I'm sorry. I'm trying to think about how
1:03:13
to formulate this answer.
1:03:17
You know, one of the.
1:03:21
One of the funny ironies in my
1:03:23
life post, um, Mars
1:03:26
Hill is that,
1:03:31
uh, I have a bunch of family members
1:03:35
who, around the time I was making
1:03:38
the show, um,
1:03:41
showed up on the doorstep of a
1:03:45
sort of. Sort of infamous
1:03:47
celebrity pastor. Let's put it that way. The kind of
1:03:50
celebrity pastor where, when you see the
1:03:53
name, you know,
1:03:55
um, there's been plenty of scandal
1:03:58
around this person.
1:03:59
>> Martha Tatarnic: Okay.
1:04:00
>> Mike Cosper: Um, and they
1:04:03
just wandered in the doors of that
1:04:06
church, um, on an Easter
1:04:08
Sunday because they were looking for a church, and it was the big church in
1:04:11
town and kind of where things were happening.
1:04:14
And they all had a
1:04:17
radical and beautiful conversion experience.
1:04:20
They got baptized that day.
1:04:22
Um, and, you know, it's been quite a few years,
1:04:25
and they're still there and they're still connected.
1:04:28
Um, so
1:04:33
I love that fact. I love that
1:04:35
they're there. I love that that happened. I love that they've
1:04:38
encountered grace and that,
1:04:41
um, uh, the message of the
1:04:43
gospel has cut through to their hearts in
1:04:46
an environment like that. Because
1:04:50
I would have, you know,
1:04:54
I could talk to you for an hour about the reasons why
1:04:57
I'm concerned about that
1:04:59
guy and what he's about and what his community
1:05:02
is kind of about. Um,
1:05:05
but the gospel breaks through and
1:05:09
I'll say this too. One of the great
1:05:12
ironies about, um, the
1:05:15
rise and fall of Mars Hill, lots of people listen
1:05:18
to that show and make assumptions that
1:05:20
the voices they're hearing have all
1:05:23
deconstructed and abandoned the faith. And you know, they're all
1:05:26
bitter and angry and they hate God and all the rest
1:05:28
now. And,
1:05:31
um, with maybe
1:05:34
one or two exceptions,
1:05:38
that's not true of any of those folks.
1:05:40
Um, almost every single person
1:05:43
that you heard on the rise and fall of Mars Hill
1:05:47
is still going to church. They're still tied into a
1:05:49
community. They're still people of faith.
1:05:52
They still believe that Jesus died and rose again
1:05:55
on the third day. Um,
1:05:58
and,
1:06:00
um. And yeah, they're rough
1:06:03
around the edges, but you know what? They were rough around
1:06:05
the edges before Mars Hill collapsed. That's kind of what
1:06:08
Mars. That's part of what made Mars Hill such a
1:06:11
remarkable and interesting and beautiful place.
1:06:14
So, um,
1:06:16
I just see constant evidence of God showing
1:06:19
up in the midst of it. And it's,
1:06:25
I think, what I wrestle with,
1:06:29
I do genuinely wrestle with
1:06:32
what's the duty of someone that's a
1:06:35
journalist like me,
1:06:38
what's our duty for.
1:06:42
How do I put this even,
1:06:44
um, what's our
1:06:47
duty to truth telling versus what's our duty
1:06:49
to sort of
1:06:52
honoring, um, the experience
1:06:55
of victims in these different
1:06:57
places versus what's
1:07:00
our duty to hold out the
1:07:03
gospel as a hope that shines above
1:07:06
and beyond all of it.
1:07:08
Um, but that said,
1:07:12
I'm just always
1:07:15
happily surprised by the way the gospel seems to continue
1:07:17
to break through.
1:07:19
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, I think that,
1:07:22
um, there's a lot
1:07:25
of. You could
1:07:28
feel a lot of cynicism about
1:07:31
these patterns and
1:07:33
um, you know, about the ever
1:07:36
thus sort of nature of
1:07:39
these stories of
1:07:42
how wrong we get it as
1:07:45
Christians and as church communities.
1:07:47
But, but you can also walk away
1:07:50
with just a profound sense of
1:07:53
the ultimate truth of
1:07:55
God's power.
1:07:57
Um, even,
1:08:00
well, in response to that sinfulness, you know,
1:08:03
in response to how wrong we get it for
1:08:06
sure. Yeah. Okay, well,
1:08:09
let's take a break and uh, we'll come back
1:08:12
for a couple of closing questions,
1:08:15
um, as we wrap up our conversation today.
1:08:21
Welcome back to Future Christian. I
1:08:24
am going, um, to wrap up my conversation
1:08:27
with Mike Cosper with a couple of
1:08:30
rapid fire closing questions. So these
1:08:33
are questions that we ask all of our guests on Future
1:08:36
Christian. And you have the
1:08:38
choice about how seriously you want to take these
1:08:41
questions. Um, you
1:08:43
can take them with a grain of salt
1:08:46
or you can take them very seriously. It's up to
1:08:49
you. So, Mike, if you were made
1:08:52
Pope for a day,
1:08:54
what would be on your agenda for that day?
1:08:58
>> Mike Cosper: Goodness. Pope for the day. That's a really.
1:09:01
Pope for the day is so specific. Right.
1:09:04
Um, because I'm not like the emperor,
1:09:06
um, and I don't have a magic wand,
1:09:09
but I can adjust doctrine.
1:09:12
Um, you
1:09:14
know, I mean, the funny thing
1:09:17
is, and this surprises people sometimes
1:09:20
because some
1:09:23
people think that, um, the rise and fall of Mars
1:09:26
Hill was like, ah, uh,
1:09:30
an unsubtle attack on Reformed
1:09:32
theology. But I'm actually very reformed. In fact, I'm.
1:09:35
I'm probably more reformed in. In terms of my
1:09:38
convictions than I. Than I was before
1:09:40
I, you know, um, before I made
1:09:43
the show. Uh, not. Not having anything to do with the
1:09:46
show. So all of that to say if I'm
1:09:49
Pope for the day,
1:09:52
um, I'm probably doing something with the 95
1:09:55
theses that.
1:09:56
>> Martha Tatarnic: Okay.
1:09:57
>> Mike Cosper: Undoes a lot of Catholic, uh,
1:10:00
doctrine very quickly.
1:10:04
>> Martha Tatarnic: All right. You're gonna have fun on that day.
1:10:07
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah.
1:10:09
>> Martha Tatarnic: Who is a, uh, theologian
1:10:12
or historical Christian figure who you would want
1:10:15
to meet or bring back to life, have supper
1:10:17
with?
1:10:20
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah, this one's easy. Thomas, um, Merton.
1:10:23
Um.
1:10:23
>> Martha Tatarnic: Oh, good.
1:10:24
>> Mike Cosper: So. So I live in Louisville,
1:10:27
Kentucky. Um, uh, about an
1:10:29
hour and ten minutes down the road from us
1:10:32
is the Abbey of Gethsemane, which is where
1:10:35
Merton lived, uh, out his
1:10:37
monastic life. I, um, think
1:10:40
Merton was so
1:10:43
dialed in. I mean, the irony of me saying this is
1:10:46
about Merton right after saying I'm super
1:10:48
reformed, um, now I'm going to advocate for
1:10:51
a Cistercian monk.
1:10:54
Um, I think. I think Merton was so dialed
1:10:57
in to the
1:11:00
challenges of modernity and what that
1:11:03
meant for the soul, what it meant for identity.
1:11:06
Um, Uh,
1:11:09
I also think Merton was somebody who was just so.
1:11:13
He was just,
1:11:15
uh, he
1:11:17
so understood,
1:11:20
and he was the best articulator of
1:11:23
modern angst, of trying
1:11:26
to understand, like, uh, how
1:11:29
do I live the Christian life in this world
1:11:32
where identity is contested in all of
1:11:35
these weird and bizarre ways?
1:11:38
Um, and, you know, just
1:11:41
his humanity, his generosity,
1:11:44
his interest in other people. I. I just
1:11:46
adore the guy. And I, um, love his
1:11:49
writing. And, yeah, it's.
1:11:52
That's very easy for me. I would just. I'd.
1:11:54
Yeah, I'd walk a mile on broken glass to have dinner
1:11:57
with, uh, Thomas Merton.
1:11:59
>> Martha Tatarnic: Okay. I love that answer. And I do love
1:12:02
the contrast to the. The first answer. I think
1:12:05
that's great.
1:12:07
>> Mike Cosper: Yeah. My first answer is Martin Luther,
1:12:10
and my second answer is Cistercian monks.
1:12:13
>> Martha Tatarnic: So, you know, I feel like there's room
1:12:16
for all of it and they'd probably enjoy chatting with each other
1:12:19
too, so.
1:12:20
>> Mike Cosper: Oh yeah. I mean, put those two together at a dinner table,
1:12:23
that'd be a lot of fun.
1:12:24
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, I think. So, um, what
1:12:27
will history remember from our current time and
1:12:30
place?
1:12:32
>> Mike Cosper: Hmm.
1:12:34
You know, I,
1:12:36
um.
1:12:39
Gosh, that's a great question.
1:12:41
Um, it's a hard
1:12:43
question. So I think we're living
1:12:46
in this, uh, moment of
1:12:49
populism on both the right and the left,
1:12:53
especially in the U.S.
1:12:56
um, that is,
1:13:00
I guess I'd say, like the outcome of it is
1:13:03
uncertain. So
1:13:05
hopefully not that.
1:13:08
Because if we're remembered for the
1:13:10
populist moment, it means something
1:13:13
went even worse from where it is right
1:13:16
now. Um, so that's my fear,
1:13:19
I would say with that fear
1:13:22
is my fear about,
1:13:24
um, and this is
1:13:27
where my journalist hat comes on.
1:13:29
Um, uh,
1:13:31
likewise. I hope this moment isn't
1:13:34
remembered for what's happening in Eastern Europe right
1:13:37
now. Um, because I think that
1:13:40
if the, if the war in Ukraine
1:13:42
goes badly, um,
1:13:45
if Ukraine doesn't win more badly.
1:13:48
Right, yeah, exactly. If Ukraine doesn't win,
1:13:51
um, we're looking at
1:13:54
a much more significant
1:13:57
conflict in a year or two down the
1:14:00
line from here.
1:14:02
Um, so hopefully neither of those
1:14:04
things,
1:14:07
um, positively. I don't know.
1:14:10
Uh, I'm not a big Elon Musk fan,
1:14:13
but what SpaceX is doing right now is kind of
1:14:16
awesome. Yeah, hopefully we'll
1:14:19
remember this era for,
1:14:22
you know, we'll forget Elon being weird
1:14:25
on Twitter and we'll just, we'll remember him
1:14:27
for, you know, um, efficient electric
1:14:30
cars and uh, uh,
1:14:33
renewable rocket, uh, technology.
1:14:36
Because man, I don't know if you saw the video of
1:14:39
SpaceX landing their own booster rocket
1:14:42
back on the launcher.
1:14:43
>> Martha Tatarnic: Uh, no, I did not, I did not see that.
1:14:46
>> Mike Cosper: Utterly incredible. Amazing.
1:14:49
Um, and
1:14:52
economy transforming, frankly.
1:14:55
Um, hopefully we remember
1:14:57
that. Right. In fact, actually
1:15:00
given the question, um, sorry I'm
1:15:03
ranting now, but Elon's
1:15:06
the perfect example. It's like, hopefully the
1:15:09
past looks back and they remember elon
1:15:12
Musk for SpaceX and Tesla. They don't
1:15:15
remember Elon Musk for,
1:15:17
um, his investment in right wing
1:15:20
populism.
1:15:21
>> Martha Tatarnic: Yeah, yeah. Okay, well this is
1:15:24
a, a very, um,
1:15:26
balanced answer as well.
1:15:29
And time will tell.
1:15:31
>> Mike Cosper: We will. Yeah, it sure will.
1:15:35
>> Martha Tatarnic: In the future. Yeah. Where can people find
1:15:38
more about you?
1:15:40
>> Mike Cosper: Where can they connect with your work?
1:15:43
Yeah, so, um, I'm on Twitter. I'm
1:15:46
on Twitter more than I should be. Um, my,
1:15:49
my wife is constantly encouraging me to get off Twitter.
1:15:51
So. Okay, um, but I'm on Twitter at Mike
1:15:54
Kosfer and um, reachable there.
1:15:57
And then I
1:15:59
um, I work for Christianity Today and
1:16:02
produce podcasts there.
1:16:04
Um, I'm the co host
1:16:07
of a show called the Bulletin, which is a weekly
1:16:11
news and issues show.
1:16:13
Um, it's also a show that we
1:16:16
do. Um, it's also a show where we
1:16:18
do um, like weekly deep
1:16:21
dive one on one interviews on
1:16:24
specific topics as well. So subscribe to the
1:16:27
Bulletin wherever you get your podcasts. You'll
1:16:30
find me there. And um, I write and
1:16:33
contribute at CT on a fairly regular basis
1:16:36
as well.
1:16:37
>> Martha Tatarnic: And make sure to pick up your copy of the book
1:16:39
the Church in Dark Understanding and
1:16:42
Resisting the Evil that Seduced the Evangelical
1:16:45
Movement. I highly recommend it. I assume that
1:16:48
people can get that wherever they get their books.
1:16:51
>> Mike Cosper: Wherever fine books are sold for sure.
1:16:52
>> Martha Tatarnic: Okay, well we always. Yeah, thank you
1:16:55
so much. I really appreciate your
1:16:58
insights and uh,
1:17:01
all of the um, journalistic
1:17:04
research that has gone into years of work
1:17:07
really with the book and um, the
1:17:09
podcast and your writing.
1:17:12
Um, it's an a, ah,
1:17:15
really important offering to the life of the church. We
1:17:18
always conclude with the word of peace. So
1:17:21
Mike, may God's peace be with you.
1:17:24
>> Mike Cosper: M. Thank you. Also with you.
1:17:33
>> Loren: Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian Podcast.
1:17:36
The Future Christian Podcast is produced by resident Resonate
1:17:39
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1:17:41
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