Latest / Preacher Handshake / Episode 2 - Zach W. Lambert

Transcript

Episode 2 - Zach W. Lambert · Preacher Handshake

• 0:00
  Hey everyone, I'm Evan. And I'm Hannah. And this
• 0:02
  week on Preacher Handshake, we talk with Zach
• 0:05
  W. Lambert, the lead pastor and founder of Restore,
• 0:08
  a church in urban Austin, Texas. Under his leadership,
• 0:11
  Restore has grown from a founding team of five
• 0:13
  people to over 1 ,000 members. Zach is the co
• 0:16
  -founder of the Post -Evangelical Collective,
• 0:18
  where he serves as a board member And he's also
• 0:20
  on the board of Restore Houston, the Hub Garage,
• 0:23
  a nonprofit supporting single moms, the Austin
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  Church Planning Network, and the Multifaith Neighbors
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  Network. I loved our conversation that we had
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  with Zach. Zach is such an interesting person
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  because... For a lot of people like myself, I
• 0:36
  first got to see who he was and the kind of pastor
• 0:39
  he was online through his social media. He has
• 0:43
  kind of this evangelical flavor, if you will,
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  but is very subversive and uses, I think, the
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  power and the privilege that he has to be really
• 0:52
  inclusive and really aware of the people around
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  him. This conversation was great because we talk
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  a lot about deconstruction and reconstruction,
• 1:00
  which was super helpful and super relevant. I
• 1:04
  love the ways that he was able to kind of address
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  the important things about that conversation,
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  but also looking at it in like a new kind of
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  fresh way so i learned a lot was really thankful
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  for his honesty and then one of the things that
• 1:19
  kind of surprised us that uh i really love that
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  he did is at the end of our conversation he actually
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  asked us like okay what are you know maybe some
• 1:27
  critiques that you have of this which took us
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  by surprise but i think was so fun and just goes
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  to show that like he is really dedicated to the
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  craft of preaching and is really looking for
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  ways to connect with people um and he really
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  cares about all of this. So yeah, it was a great
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  conversation. I'm excited for people to hear
• 1:45
  it. Yeah, I love that he asked for feedback because
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  part of why we did this podcast comes out of
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  our own practice of critiquing and giving feedback
• 1:54
  to one another. And we didn't go into this expecting
• 1:57
  to offer our own feedback to preachers as they
• 2:00
  came in. That seemed maybe not super hospitable,
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  but he asked for it. And it was such a fun practice
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  and a reflection of his humility and desire to
• 2:08
  grow. I wanted to ask Zach to this conversation
• 2:11
  because beyond social media, I met him through
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  his post -evangelical collective. And it's this
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  gathering of Christians and churches who are
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  coming out of the evangelical space and holding
• 2:27
  a justice -oriented, affirming theological position
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  and trying to figure out how do we move forward
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  together. So with that, please enjoy our conversation
• 2:37
  with Zach Lindberg. Thank you so much for joining
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  us and being a part of this conversation as we
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  think about the craft of preaching and what it
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  means to try to speak for God, with God, for
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  the people of God today. We're really grateful
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  that you're here. Absolutely. Thanks, Evan and
• 3:02
  Hannah. I'm excited to be here, and I love talking
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  about preaching, so I'm super excited. Cool.
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  We do too. So we're all in good company here.
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  So we'd like to start by asking this question
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  of what's your relationship to preaching? Yeah,
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  I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church. And
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  so my initial exposure to preaching was some
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  pretty impassioned Hellfire and Brimstone style
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  preaching, which I think even as a young kid,
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  I found the content to be somewhat terrifying
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  and abhorrent. But I found the actual like act
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  of preaching to be mesmerizing. You know, the
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  pastor I grew up. Under here in Austin, it was
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  a Southern Baptist megachurch. And we just called
• 3:48
  him Preacher. Everybody just called him Preacher.
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  You know, that was like his name. Even to this
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  day, my parents will say, hey, do you remember
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  Preacher and Barbara? Because that's his wife's
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  name. And so he was, you know, like literally
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  his identity was as a preacher. And he was this
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  kind of classic old school Southern Baptist,
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  big mane of white hair, you know, pounding the
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  pulpit. And it was just, like I said, mesmerizing.
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  And so I think I kind of fell in love with like
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  the act of preaching and public communication,
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  even when I was like really struggling to engage
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  with the theology and the practice of faith that
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  I was exposed to as a child. But then I didn't
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  actually become a Christian until later in life
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  at 17. I went to college to play football. And
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  after I got hurt and couldn't play anymore, I
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  had kind of a crisis of like, what do I want
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  to do? And this kind of public speaking mass
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  communication came back up where I was like,
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  I'm really interested. And then I'd taken one
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  kind of intro to public speaking class. And so.
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  I was a sports and leisure studies major because
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  I was going to be a football coach. So I was
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  like, who cares? So I switched my major to communication,
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  took a bunch of public speaking classes, and
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  then became a youth pastor at the same time at
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  19 years old. And so even when there were like
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  two kids, when I first got to this little church,
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  there were two kids in the youth group. I would
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  stand up before them and preach to those two
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  kids. And I'm sure it was terrible. But I just
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  continue to really enjoy it and fall in love
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  with it. And I've always been kind of a student
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  of it, too. And I would say one last thing is
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  a student, not just of preaching, although that
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  certainly. But then the two other main mediums
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  would be political speeches and stand up comedians.
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  So those are the three that I think I use to
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  kind of hone my own kind of communication abilities
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  and feed my love of public speaking. We could
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  go off forever and talk about stand -up comedy
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  and preaching and the relationship there. I have
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  a friend who's a comedian, and he talks about
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  how annoyed he is and how easy it is for me to
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  get laughs because the expectations are so low.
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  There's so many connections there, but that's
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  another conversation. But they get to reuse material
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  constantly, right? So you tell them that. I can't
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  get up and say the same thing the next week.
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  People will riot. That's right. Man, thanks so
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  much for sharing. I'm so excited that you're
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  here and excited to learn more about your preaching
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  style. So tell us a little bit about the congregation
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  and the context for what you preach most often.
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  I know you said you kind of do some other speaking
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  things, but who are the people that you're regularly
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  addressing? What are they like? Tell us about
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  them. Yeah, two main categories of people. The
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  first one is in the context of our church restore
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  here in urban Austin, Texas. We launched nine
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  years ago, almost exactly. We're recording this
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  in late February of 2025. We launched in late
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  February of 2016. So we just celebrated nine
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  years. And that group is really what I would
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  call like a. an actively deconstructing and reconstructing
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  group as they are wrestling with faith. It's
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  most people who have been through really difficult
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  spiritual and or church traumas, but I've kind
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  of refused to give up on faith or Jesus or scripture.
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  And so that's the main context. There were about,
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  well, there were five of us that initially kind
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  of got Restore off the ground, and then about
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  22 adults that were a part of the launch team.
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  And the story I tell all the time is that of
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  those 22 adults, I think all but two had been
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  out of church for an extended period of time
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  before coming to be a part of our launch team.
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  So some six months, some 25 years. And so we've
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  always been this kind of, you know. de -churched
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  and kind of re -churching group. And so that's
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  my main context is preaching to those folks.
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  And now that's different nine years later, as
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  far as like numbers and who's there and, you
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  know, lots of changes have happened over nine
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  years. But I would say that kind of, you know.
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  core value of people that are actively moving
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  through deconstructing harmful parts of faith,
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  reconstructing a healthier version and more Christlike
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  version of faith. That's who I'm mainly speaking
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  to. And then the kind of secondary audience is
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  we have a lot of people connected to Restore
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  Online. And so that could be through live streaming
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  or watching, you know, the sermons later, listening
• 8:19
  to the podcast later, or clips via social media.
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  And I would say I'm informed by feedback I get
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  from the second space as well. But it's definitely
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  I think we've made the decision to preach primarily
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  to the first space and then kind of consider,
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  but in a secondary way, that second space. Yeah,
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  I was curious about that, because like as you're
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  you have this massive online audience of people
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  engaging with you. even if it's just sometimes
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  to like be trolls, but you have all these people
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  who are engaged and hearing you. Yeah. And how
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  you think about communicating, knowing that it's
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  going beyond the walls of Restore or even the
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  online community of Restore is really interesting
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  to me. But it sounds like your focus is, okay,
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  these people in this space, and then there is
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  results coming. people engaging beyond that as
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  well. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's the
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  correct way to put it. And maybe it's actually
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  even kind of three categories of people where
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  it's like, you know, restore folks in the room,
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  restore folks that primarily engage online. Some
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  are homebound here in Austin. Some are a part
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  of, you know, from all over the country, some
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  of all over the world, but they would still consider
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  restore their church home. They're in maybe online
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  small groups. Like they're very much a part of
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  the membership. And I would say. I'm considering
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  that group primarily. And then there's this kind
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  of secondary audience that is people who are
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  just kind of consuming the content online, which
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  is great. Like I'm, I'm so excited to be able
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  to, you know, to provide that and I hope that
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  it's helpful. But it's definitely not made. you
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  know, particularly for that second group, if
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  that makes sense. I think it's probably helpful
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  to combine those first two groups of restore
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  people in the room and restore people that are,
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  you know, actively engaged and what would, you
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  know, probably call themselves church members,
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  even though they don't live here in Austin, or
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  they do in their hometown. What is your preparation
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  process typically look like? Weekly preparation
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  process is Monday mornings. We have, so I work
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  on Monday. Some pastors take off Mondays. I take
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  off Fridays and Saturdays. So I kind of get like
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  an actual weekend. I'm an Enneagram three as
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  well. So if I take off Monday, I just feel like
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  I didn't accomplish anything and I'm behind,
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  you know? And so I, I just, I tried to do that.
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  Couldn't do it. So Monday mornings are our church
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  staff meetings. So we have staff meetings really
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  from. around nine till usually a little bit after
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  lunch. And then Monday afternoons, I try to get
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  at least an hour in. It'd be nice to get two
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  of really just reading. So I open up a big document
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  that I have in a Google Doc where I have our
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  whole year planned out, find that specific Sunday.
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  rereading through the text. The hope is that
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  when you open that document, there are already
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  notes there, you know, that I've made over the
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  year of prep and stuff. I've written down quotes,
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  you know, exegetical notes from the text and
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  things like that. So it's a good day when, you
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  know, Monday afternoon, I open it up and I'm
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  like, oh, there's three pages of notes. And it's
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  a bad day when I'm like, oh, it's like, you know,
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  one Dorothy Day quote. That's great, but I probably
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  need more. And so I'm trying to read a lot on
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  Monday afternoons and I note take, but I don't
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  write on Monday afternoon. That's kind of a rule
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  for me, but I find that if I'm disciplined about
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  that Monday afternoon time, my brain will start
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  doing work, even if I'm not like specifically
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  writing or reading, you know, it'll start the
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  process and I'll be thinking about it. Then I'll
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  be noticing things from, if I'm listening to
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  a podcast or an audio book or even in conversations
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  with people, oh, that relates back to what I'm
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  talking about this week. And so then Tuesday,
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  Wednesday, Thursday morning, I very specifically
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  block out. I get to the office about 730 after
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  dropping my kids off at school until lunchtime.
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  Those are my three big writing blocks. And so
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  then I have to be done Thursday by noon because
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  that's when I have to send all of our notes into
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  the tech team and they build the slides and do
• 12:09
  all that stuff. And I will say COVID helped me
• 12:12
  become really disciplined about this. The first
• 12:15
  few years of our church pre -COVID, The guy that
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  I... planted with, his name is Matt Gonzalez.
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  He's our worship pastor and also led our kind
• 12:24
  of tech production stuff. And he'll tell you
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  those early years were brutal because I was sending
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  manuscripts like 3 a .m. on Sunday after staying
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  up and writing. It's just like early church planting
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  years and there's never enough time or whatever.
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  But COVID really allowed us to say, okay, this
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  Thursday at noon really is the deadline. And
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  it affects everything. Like we have another staff
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  member that writes discussion questions for small
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  group, another staff member that writes a preview.
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  for the weekly email. So there's like a lot.
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  And that was purposeful. I kind of like put a
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  lot hinging on that Thursday at noontime to provide
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  some accountability to make sure I really did
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  have it in. So that's kind of the weekly rhythm
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  of how I prep. And then I don't touch it again
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  until Saturday night after I put my kids to bed.
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  I'll, you know, get my iPad out and I'll read
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  through it usually once, but sometimes twice.
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  in a manner like I'm speaking it out loud, make
• 13:15
  little adjustments to phrasing, wording. And
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  I think I've said this or alluded to it, but
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  I manuscript. So I write the whole thing out.
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  I don't read it when I preach, but I stick fairly
• 13:25
  close. I learn it pretty well and stick fairly
• 13:27
  close to it. So I read through it on Saturday
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  night, check phrasing and things like that. And
• 13:32
  honestly, Sunday mornings are too hectic really
• 13:35
  to do anything with it because we're in a portable
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  environment. We meet in a middle school. We started
• 13:43
  two services back in January of 2024. So we're
• 13:46
  about 13, 14 months into that. And so it's just
• 13:49
  like a lot going on. And so I have to get that
• 13:52
  time Saturday night or, you know, if I don't,
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  I open it up when I get onto the stage on Sunday
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  morning and I'm like, I don't remember this very
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  well because I haven't looked at it since Thursday.
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  So that Saturday night time is important. I have
• 14:04
  a really similar process and I've developed that
• 14:05
  kind of Thursday deadline as well. And I always
• 14:08
  take Friday off. And like when I'm disciplined
• 14:10
  with that, like the gift that it is to my family
• 14:13
  too, to be able to disconnect where there were
• 14:16
  times where I didn't have that. And so I'm like
• 14:18
  never fully present because I'm stressed about
• 14:21
  the sermon. And so it's hanging over you. Yeah.
• 14:23
  Right. I mean, it's just, yeah. Yeah, no, you're
• 14:25
  exactly right. That's been such a gift for my
• 14:27
  wife and kiddos. I really hate the Thursday deadline
• 14:30
  sometimes until I'm doing like these one -off
• 14:33
  kind of preaching engagements where I am setting
• 14:36
  my own deadlines and I'm waiting to the last
• 14:38
  minute. And then I'm so stressed out because
• 14:40
  it's like running up to the deadline. I'm like,
• 14:42
  oh, there is a reason that I plan ahead usually.
• 14:47
  That's well said, Hannah. I totally agree. So
• 14:49
  I am intrigued by the fact that you just mentioned
• 14:53
  that you have your whole preaching kind of calendar
• 14:55
  laid out like in a year in advance, which sounds
• 14:59
  like a dream to me. I would love to be able to
• 15:03
  just like plan out things like that. So tell
• 15:05
  me like, what's the intention behind that? How
• 15:08
  do you do that? Is there multiple people speaking
• 15:11
  into that? How do you select kind of what that
• 15:14
  looks like for a year? Yeah, great question.
• 15:17
  So like Evan alluded to earlier, You know, we're
• 15:23
  kind of a non -denominational church space. We're
• 15:27
  part of this kind of post -evangelical movement.
• 15:29
  And that's my background as well, kind of non
• 15:33
  -denominational, formerly evangelical spaces.
• 15:36
  And so we do not use... I can't even remember
• 15:41
  what it's called. That's how low church I am.
• 15:43
  The little book. The lectionary, yeah. The lectionary,
• 15:46
  thank goodness. Oh, my mainline friends are going
• 15:49
  to make fun of me for that. I'm in a doctoral
• 15:51
  program at Duke right now with all these high
• 15:53
  church people. And oh, they're going to make
• 15:55
  fun of me for not remembering what it's called.
• 15:57
  But because we don't have that, it always just
• 16:01
  kind of felt like. OK, we're doing a four week
• 16:03
  series. It's week two. That means we start a
• 16:06
  new series in two weeks. I need to come up with
• 16:07
  something new. And it was early. It was probably
• 16:10
  the first two years of Restore where we were
• 16:12
  doing it just like kind of series to series with
• 16:14
  not a lot of just like planning. And I think
• 16:17
  we chalked it up to like we're young and organic
• 16:19
  and spontaneous and it's great. But that's it
• 16:22
  was incredibly stressful. So. What we switched
• 16:25
  to was we actually theme our entire sermon series
• 16:29
  year from August to May. And then we do some
• 16:33
  kind of different stuff every summer. But I'll
• 16:35
  explain that in a second. As far as people speaking
• 16:37
  into that process, like you asked, Hannah, there
• 16:39
  are a number of people, our staff team, our small
• 16:42
  group leaders. and our leadership team all about
• 16:45
  this time actually i got an email from our executive
• 16:48
  pastor lindsay earlier today with here's some
• 16:51
  ideas i have for next year's theme um so it's
• 16:53
  already starting and we're constantly kind of
• 16:55
  talking about it in meetings and it's all like
• 16:58
  what are you hearing from people in your spheres
• 17:00
  at restore what are you feeling what are you
• 17:03
  hearing from people in small group what do they
• 17:05
  need what are they walking through that kind
• 17:07
  of stuff And so then we'll pick a theme and that
• 17:10
  goes through a number of kind of revision processes
• 17:12
  with people to make sure we're doing a good job
• 17:15
  with it. And it's a real like, you know, difficult
• 17:19
  needle to thread, so to speak, because it has
• 17:21
  to be broad enough that you can do it for nine
• 17:24
  months, but then narrow enough to keep people's
• 17:26
  attention. So I'll give you some examples of
• 17:29
  ones we've done. The first one we did was called
• 17:31
  Year in the Story, and it was kind of a metanarrative.
• 17:34
  you know, theme where we went, started in Genesis
• 17:36
  and kind of hit big blocks all the way through.
• 17:39
  Um, we did a year in the greatest commandments,
• 17:41
  but the fall and love God and the spring and
• 17:43
  love your neighbor. Uh, we did a year in the
• 17:46
  life of Jesus, uh, in 20, 22, 23 coming out of
• 17:50
  COVID, we did a year of healing and wholeness.
• 17:52
  Um, cause that was really a lot of people are
• 17:54
  just like, I don't know, you know, I'm still
• 17:56
  really struggling. Last year, we did a year of
• 17:59
  Bible stories for grownups. And then this year,
• 18:02
  we're in the middle of a year of discovering
• 18:03
  God's kingdom. And so it's all kind of kingdom
• 18:06
  themed stuff. So like to give you an example
• 18:08
  of the series inside of Year of Discovering God's
• 18:10
  Kingdom, we did Kingdom Origins, which was like,
• 18:13
  where do we first see the kingdom of God popping
• 18:14
  up in Genesis? We did Kingdom Resistance, which
• 18:17
  was these, you know, Hebrew scripture stories
• 18:19
  of resistance leaders in the kingdom of God in
• 18:22
  the Old Testament. We did a Kingdom Politics
• 18:24
  series around the election. What are the politics
• 18:26
  of Jesus? How does that inform how we live? We
• 18:30
  did a... kingdom manifesto which was about the
• 18:33
  sermon on the mount which is i think the one
• 18:34
  we're going to talk about here in a little bit
• 18:36
  and now we're in the middle of a kingdom ethics
• 18:38
  series talking about these kind of cornerstone
• 18:40
  ethics of the kingdom of god so that's the process
• 18:43
  how it starts that usually starts in the in the
• 18:45
  spring and then usually try by May or June to
• 18:50
  have something pretty much nailed down for the
• 18:52
  next August. And then May is, you know, that
• 18:55
  year before is wrapping up. And then over the
• 18:57
  summer, we do this thing that we've been doing
• 18:58
  now for six or seven years called Summer Mixtape,
• 19:01
  where we bring in a bunch of different guest
• 19:03
  preachers. And it does two things. It gives me
• 19:05
  a break and gives me the ability to work on the
• 19:08
  next year's theme, to plan everything out and
• 19:11
  to have because I want by July to have every
• 19:13
  week planned out, even if it shifts, you know,
• 19:15
  to have at least every week planned out by that
• 19:17
  time. And then also we're a church that really
• 19:20
  values diverse perspectives and voices. And so
• 19:23
  it allows us to be very intentional about doing
• 19:25
  that for a period of time and not just kind of
• 19:27
  randomly. So that's how we do summers. And then
• 19:30
  we usually do this one last thing in the summer,
• 19:32
  which is. a hot seat Sunday is what we call it.
• 19:36
  And so it's either me or last year, it was three
• 19:39
  of our pastoral staff take questions that are
• 19:42
  submitted beforehand. And then we had another
• 19:44
  person moderate. We don't see the questions beforehand
• 19:46
  and they just kind of ask them to us on stage
• 19:48
  for an hour. And it's more conversational and
• 19:51
  fun. So yeah, we try to do creative things like
• 19:54
  that as well. I love just the vision behind that.
• 19:57
  And I imagine that being able to have your staff
• 20:01
  just be on the same page about that so far in
• 20:04
  advance probably gives a breath of fresh air
• 20:06
  to all of our friends who are doing like the
• 20:08
  background type work who are not waiting on us
• 20:12
  preachers until the very last minute. But also
• 20:16
  I think just such great clarity for your congregants
• 20:19
  too, that they're able to see kind of where you're
• 20:21
  going. Yeah. And that's really, I appreciate
• 20:24
  that you brought that last point up because I
• 20:26
  didn't say this, that was. the main origin. I
• 20:29
  mean, it was like, like I told you, it was stressful
• 20:30
  to keep picking series, but one of the main origins
• 20:33
  was it felt like we had. our forever vision and
• 20:36
  mission, you know, this is like what we're always
• 20:38
  trying to be about. And then we had the current
• 20:40
  four week series, but there wasn't any kind of
• 20:42
  thing in the middle, you know, to keep your attention
• 20:44
  for a semester or a year or something like that
• 20:48
  to try to really measure some like discipleship
• 20:50
  and growth. And so that was a big thing for it
• 20:52
  is to try to help immerse people into a concept
• 20:55
  for a period of eight or nine months. And it's,
• 20:58
  it's really been a gift with that. Yeah. So let's
• 21:03
  jump into the message. We're looking at this
• 21:07
  sermon that you gave. on Matthew 5, the Sermon
• 21:11
  on the Mount, where you're talking about, you've
• 21:12
  heard it said, but I say to you, and this whole
• 21:15
  passage in Matthew 5. So one of the things that
• 21:19
  you use pretty heavily throughout this message
• 21:22
  is this kind of metaphor of deconstruction, reconstruction,
• 21:26
  which is a metaphor that's obviously familiar
• 21:28
  to, it seems like a lot of the people in your
• 21:31
  context, and certainly some of others in other
• 21:36
  contexts, but This maybe is an idea that's critiqued,
• 21:40
  some by evangelical mainstream culture, but you
• 21:45
  use this idea of bricks and building this spiritual
• 21:48
  house. And it's a really intriguing idea. So
• 21:51
  we've put together a clip of this. So let's take
• 21:53
  a look and listen to that. And the building of
• 21:55
  your house most likely took place when you were
• 21:57
  young. Whether it was through growing up in church
• 22:00
  or being exposed to Christianity through relationships
• 22:04
  or media. And those early beliefs and practices
• 22:07
  were the first bricks laid in place. And they
• 22:10
  ended up serving as a foundation for your house
• 22:14
  of faith. Then as you continue to grow, you read
• 22:17
  things and heard things and were exposed to different
• 22:19
  people and ideas. And as this was happening,
• 22:22
  you added even more bricks to your house of faith.
• 22:25
  That whole process is called construction, right?
• 22:28
  You're building up this house of faith. But then
• 22:32
  somewhere along the way, we begin to have questions
• 22:37
  about one or usually more than one of those bricks
• 22:42
  in our house of faith. Something we believe bumps
• 22:46
  up against something we learn or we experience,
• 22:50
  and we find ourselves unable to reconcile the
• 22:54
  two. When something we believe comes into conflict
• 22:56
  with something we experience, we have a choice.
• 23:00
  Ignore our experience and just choose to believe
• 23:03
  what we've always believed or make a change to
• 23:06
  our house of faith. The latter forces us to take
• 23:10
  the brick out of its place, hold it up for examination,
• 23:13
  and then decide, do we want to put it back in?
• 23:16
  Do we want to chisel it a little bit before we
• 23:18
  put it back in, change it up? Do we want to throw
• 23:20
  it away completely, or do we want to throw it
• 23:22
  away and then replace it with something different?
• 23:25
  This process is called deconstruction. You're
• 23:28
  taking the bricks out. You're trying to figure
• 23:30
  out what to do with them. And I would say to
• 23:33
  you that it's a universal experience. I loved
• 23:37
  how you use this image and you carry it all throughout
• 23:41
  the message of the bricks as you're using that
• 23:44
  to talk about what has become a term that people
• 23:49
  like to define in all kinds of ways. And so you
• 23:50
  really give some structure to it, no pun intended.
• 23:54
  And you use a lot of examples of it that we didn't
• 23:57
  show in this clip, but I hope that the listeners
• 23:59
  watch the whole sermon because it's so helpful
• 24:03
  to hear all the ways that you did that. But I
• 24:06
  want to hear from you as you're talking about
• 24:07
  your context and folks who are familiar with
• 24:12
  this experience and journey and your own familiarity
• 24:14
  with it. Why did you think this was the place
• 24:17
  you wanted to start to help get their minds around
• 24:20
  where you're going? Yeah, great question. This
• 24:23
  isn't for most people at Restore, not a new concept,
• 24:26
  as Hannah said. We've been talking, honestly,
• 24:30
  we've been talking about deconstruction and reconstruction.
• 24:33
  probably since like 2017, 2018, when it kind
• 24:36
  of first began to be used and the kind of context
• 24:39
  it gets used in a lot now. But as you alluded
• 24:43
  to as well, it's become something that is disputed,
• 24:46
  the meaning of it, the reasons why, all that
• 24:50
  kind of stuff. So it's something that I like
• 24:51
  to engage with every so often. This is probably
• 24:55
  the longest treatment I've done in years on it.
• 24:58
  But I like to engage with it every so often because
• 25:00
  I think it's helpful and because it is so disputed.
• 25:03
  And I think I try to be understanding of why
• 25:06
  it's disputed. I didn't talk about this a lot
• 25:07
  in the sermon just for time period. But you have
• 25:09
  Jacques Derrida. the French philosopher who kind
• 25:13
  of was the father of like deconstructionism.
• 25:15
  And when people see it through that lens, which
• 25:18
  is kind of just the tearing down of all institutions
• 25:21
  or understood knowledge or whatever, I understand
• 25:24
  why people. you know, deride it, decry it, because
• 25:28
  it doesn't, like they don't want that to happen
• 25:30
  to Christianity, to their faith, to other people's
• 25:32
  faith. I get it. But I think the way that it's
• 25:35
  like colloquially used in our context and culture
• 25:38
  is this idea of like, we all have some things
• 25:42
  in our house of faith that aren't working. that
• 25:45
  come into conflict with something we experience.
• 25:47
  And we have to do something about that. And so
• 25:50
  I think that's the importance of really going
• 25:53
  deep and trying to explain this. And I think
• 25:56
  also back to the conversation we had a moment
• 25:58
  ago, knowing that this does go out farther than
• 26:01
  the people in our room, knowing, A, that there's
• 26:03
  going to be, you know, first time visitors there.
• 26:05
  They're going to be people who are relatively
• 26:06
  new over the last six months to a year who've
• 26:08
  never heard us talk about this. And so I want
• 26:10
  to make sure they don't feel left behind. But
• 26:12
  also, again, knowing that it's going to go out
• 26:14
  more broadly, it's important, I think, just give
• 26:16
  a little bit of context so that people aren't
• 26:18
  just like, oh, look, there's Zach talking about
• 26:20
  deconstruction again. You know, what a heretic,
• 26:23
  which is fine. Like, I get that a lot. So I deal
• 26:25
  with it. But I think for me too, one lens that
• 26:30
  I use a lot when I'm preaching, our church, I'm
• 26:33
  36, our church is mostly 10 years either side
• 26:37
  of me. So a lot of millennials, some Gen Z, a
• 26:40
  lot of people that have complicated relationships
• 26:42
  with their parents and grandparents around things
• 26:45
  of faith, especially if they grew up in faith
• 26:47
  and now their faith looks really different from
• 26:49
  the one they grew up in or the one their parents
• 26:51
  or grandparents continue to practice. And I think
• 26:53
  about it through that lens in the sense that
• 26:55
  I want them to be able to take a sermon like
• 26:57
  this, not just be moved by it in the moment,
• 27:00
  but be able to send it to their mom and say,
• 27:03
  hey, I know you're sending me all these articles
• 27:04
  about how terrible deconstruction is, and I've
• 27:07
  struggled to articulate why I don't think it's
• 27:10
  terrible. Here's an example of why. This is what
• 27:13
  I mean when I say deconstruction. And I do that
• 27:16
  for whether it's affirming theology or women
• 27:19
  in ministry leadership or something like that.
• 27:21
  I always think that through the lens. Could somebody
• 27:23
  send this out? to a more kind of evangelical
• 27:26
  or even fundamentalist family member and have
• 27:28
  them maybe disagree, but at least like give it
• 27:31
  a good faith understanding and feel like it's
• 27:33
  represented in a helpful way. So that's some
• 27:35
  of why I think I spend a lot of time with the
• 27:37
  metaphor. So I think it's hopefully helping people
• 27:40
  actually understand what we're talking about.
• 27:44
  That's so helpful to think about not just helping
• 27:48
  people in the moment, but giving them a language.
• 27:51
  And in our time to be able to take it and actually
• 27:53
  share it and use it, it's really thoughtful and
• 27:57
  helpful. Yeah, you spent a lot of time with this
• 28:01
  idea. And so I could tell that it was very important
• 28:04
  to you and important to the people that you were
• 28:06
  speaking to. You can definitely tell that you
• 28:10
  have in mind kind of this third audience, this
• 28:12
  kind of like second space that you're talking
• 28:16
  to. But one of the things that I think is really
• 28:20
  powerful is you talk about maybe some things
• 28:24
  that cause people to deconstruct. which I thought
• 28:27
  was very bold to be able to just like name those
• 28:30
  things to say like, hey, the KJV maybe is not
• 28:33
  the most accurate translation. We have like these
• 28:37
  scenarios where some of our spiritual leaders
• 28:39
  have failed us. The political party you thought
• 28:43
  was going to be great is conflicting with your
• 28:45
  faith. There are these unchristlike people, you
• 28:48
  know, you give these examples. I can think of,
• 28:51
  you know, so many things that. helped start my
• 28:54
  deconstruction. And I'm sure those that you are
• 28:58
  in your congregation also have their own kind
• 29:01
  of things. Why did you think that it was important
• 29:03
  to specifically name those things? I know sometimes
• 29:08
  I wrestle with like, how much do you describe?
• 29:11
  How much do you say when it comes to maybe these
• 29:14
  things that are just the tip of the iceberg for
• 29:16
  some people? How did you think through that?
• 29:19
  Yeah, this is a pretty old school communication
• 29:21
  technique for me, or at least an adaptation of
• 29:24
  it, which is this idea of like you have to build
• 29:26
  need for people to listen to you. You know, I
• 29:28
  mean, a lot of people that are sitting in the
• 29:30
  seats at Restore, the need is already there in
• 29:32
  the sense that they're a part of a community.
• 29:34
  You know, we have some, you know, relational
• 29:36
  capital with them and stuff. So they're going
• 29:37
  to listen. But I still think through the old
• 29:40
  school, like, you know, you got eight seconds
• 29:42
  to catch people's attention stuff. I think through
• 29:44
  the like, you know, five minutes in people better
• 29:47
  know intuitively. consciously or subconsciously,
• 29:50
  why they should be listening to this, like why
• 29:53
  it actually hits and applies to their own lives.
• 29:55
  And I think that there's a certain magic in describing
• 29:59
  things very specifically that probably only hit
• 30:04
  a couple of people in the room and offering very
• 30:07
  broad things that probably hit 90 % of people
• 30:09
  in the room, you know? So that's what I'm always
• 30:12
  trying to do during that need building section
• 30:14
  is I'll be like, hey. How about that KGV? You
• 30:17
  know, and I think a lot of people, I mean, some
• 30:19
  people grew up with it and some people probably
• 30:20
  went to a Bible class and were like, oh, I learned
• 30:23
  that it's a not accurate translation at all.
• 30:25
  But that's niche. You know, I mean, like not
• 30:27
  that many people it hits, but it's memorable.
• 30:30
  You know, Rob Bell talks about this all the time.
• 30:33
  He talks about how the details are actually what
• 30:35
  make things really memorable. You know, so it's
• 30:38
  not just like the story of the lady who was trying
• 30:41
  to get on the bus. It's the story of the lady
• 30:43
  who was wearing the red coat. running late and
• 30:45
  stepped in a puddle and was trying to get on
• 30:47
  the bus. That's what actually sinks in. And so
• 30:51
  the thing of like, I'm looking at a KJV, my friend's
• 30:53
  got a KJV Bible. He goes to a freshman theology
• 30:56
  class. That's memorable. But then I also still
• 30:59
  want to give something that's broad enough of
• 31:01
  like, have you ever seen somebody be a Christian
• 31:03
  and be not Christ -like? Wow. Like we have all
• 31:07
  experienced that. Have you ever had trouble with
• 31:09
  politics that like claim the name of Jesus? Yeah,
• 31:12
  we've all. So I try to, I think that's where
• 31:14
  the magic is in like some examples with real
• 31:17
  specificity and then some examples broad enough
• 31:20
  to where it's both memorable and hits everyone.
• 31:24
  And next in the sermon, you're going to bring
• 31:27
  forward how deconstruction and demolition are
• 31:30
  different. And you pose a little contrast there
• 31:32
  and then kind of reveal Restore's commitment
• 31:35
  to helping people reconstruct those houses. So
• 31:39
  I'm gonna play that clip. Other people go through
• 31:42
  such an intense deconstruction process, usually
• 31:45
  due to deep religious trauma or so much deconstruction
• 31:48
  so fast that they essentially take the whole
• 31:51
  house down. They throw it all away. That's called
• 31:56
  demolition. Way beyond deconstruction. Maybe
• 32:00
  you've been there. I guarantee we all know people
• 32:02
  who've been there or who are there right now.
• 32:05
  Our goal here at Restore is to really kind of
• 32:08
  avoid both of those polarized destinations. Instead,
• 32:12
  we want to walk with people through their deconstruction
• 32:16
  and reconstruction journey by creating a safe
• 32:19
  space to doubt, to ask questions, to be open
• 32:22
  about what you're going through. Sometimes you're
• 32:26
  going to decide to keep a particular brick. Sometimes
• 32:28
  you're going to distort it completely. And sometimes
• 32:30
  you're going to chisel it a little bit or replace
• 32:33
  it with something new that more accurately reflects
• 32:35
  what you've come to know as the truth. That process
• 32:38
  is called reconstruction. And it's vitally important.
• 32:42
  In fact, I believe that creating spaces where
• 32:44
  people can be fully supported as they walk through
• 32:47
  the difficult process, often painful process,
• 32:50
  of deconstruction and reconstruction is a core
• 32:52
  function of any healthy faith community. So I
• 32:57
  used to do a lot of college ministry in Texas
• 32:59
  near a school that had required Bible classes.
• 33:04
  And there was great faculty there with really
• 33:06
  good biblical scholarship. And it was being handed
• 33:09
  to... usually freshmen coming out of like fundamentalist
• 33:12
  experiences. And so they're like, minds are just
• 33:15
  being blown constantly. And I was really committed
• 33:19
  there to like, how do we create a space, maybe
• 33:22
  the only space where a church community can walk
• 33:25
  with them in their questions and let them wrestle
• 33:27
  with it and really play a role in their deconstruction
• 33:32
  and reconstruction that they were, they were
• 33:34
  experiencing the deconstruction. They were disoriented
• 33:36
  and they were tempted to go to like either. College
• 33:40
  is the devil or I don't need Jesus, right? Like
• 33:43
  those are kind of some of the options that seem
• 33:45
  to be prevalent to them, those extremes that
• 33:47
  you mentioned. For you, what role do you see?
• 33:51
  You talk about this being vital to a healthy
• 33:53
  church. What role do you see preaching play in
• 33:58
  this process of helping people walk through deconstruction
• 34:01
  and doing this reconstruction? What's the help
• 34:06
  with preaching and maybe what are some of its
• 34:07
  limits? Good question. Hannah, I think, alluded
• 34:11
  to this earlier in a really helpful way. We're
• 34:14
  trying to give people language, I think, through
• 34:16
  preaching, common language for our community
• 34:19
  and for beyond. And so, you know, even whether
• 34:23
  it's going deep into the. house of faith metaphor,
• 34:26
  or it's talking, it's even linking Jesus's work,
• 34:31
  which I think we'll talk about more in a second,
• 34:32
  right? His idea of you've heard it said, but
• 34:35
  I say to you, as this is deconstruction and reconstruction,
• 34:38
  you know, doing that, I think gives us just common
• 34:41
  shared language, shared understanding, and even
• 34:44
  shared ways of interpreting scripture. This applies
• 34:47
  much. much more broadly beyond the Sermon on
• 34:50
  the Mount as a way to engage with the text, right?
• 34:53
  So I'm even doing little kind of exegetical coaching
• 34:56
  during a sermon like this. And like I said, I'm
• 35:01
  someone who tremendously believes in preaching,
• 35:03
  love preaching. I think that in a lot of more
• 35:07
  progressive, quote unquote, whatever that means
• 35:10
  to people, church spaces, preaching is, I think,
• 35:15
  unhelpfully You know, like I think I think it's
• 35:20
  sometimes it's like made fun of even like, oh,
• 35:23
  my gosh, they're up there talking for 30 minutes,
• 35:25
  like, you know, talk for eight minutes and then
• 35:27
  sit down or it's it's you know, it's it's properly.
• 35:32
  Given limitations, there are limitations to preaching
• 35:35
  for sure. And I was going to say, even as someone
• 35:38
  who tremendously believes in preaching, I know
• 35:41
  that there are limitations. I would say preaching
• 35:43
  is the start of a conversation, not the end of
• 35:45
  a conversation. So my hope, whether it's in one
• 35:48
  of our small groups or whether it's in the lobby
• 35:50
  after church or whether it's at lunch or at dinner
• 35:53
  with your family that day, that the sermon is
• 35:55
  prompting some kind of conversation, some kind
• 35:58
  of deeper engagement with scriptural text. with
• 36:02
  your life, with faith, with Jesus, all those
• 36:04
  kinds of things. So I think that preaching can
• 36:06
  do tremendous good. And I think I'm still like...
• 36:11
  you know, one great speech can change the world.
• 36:14
  Like I still believe that. I don't have any illusions
• 36:16
  that I'm making any of those, but I still like
• 36:18
  think, you know, I think about like, you know,
• 36:21
  I have a dream speech or, you know, Obama at
• 36:24
  the, was that the 04 DNC? Like, you know, there
• 36:27
  are these speeches that you're just like, oh
• 36:28
  my gosh, that's going to live forever. Gettysburg
• 36:31
  Address, whatever. Right. And so I still think
• 36:33
  they have tremendous power, but. Still, even
• 36:37
  those ones that I just referenced were the beginning
• 36:39
  of a conversation, you know, giving you shared
• 36:42
  language, giving you some direction. But then
• 36:44
  you have to actually move that forward, both
• 36:46
  intellectually and tangibly in your life. So
• 36:50
  I think, does that answer? That's kind of, I
• 36:53
  think, the kind of amazing parts of it, but also
• 36:55
  the pretty significant limitations of it. Yeah,
• 36:57
  you're definitely in good company too. I think
• 37:00
  there's kind of this stubbornness of like not
• 37:03
  willing to give up preaching, even as we move
• 37:05
  into spaces where maybe... worship looks a little
• 37:09
  more creative and a little more collaborative.
• 37:11
  There's still just, I think, this really beautiful
• 37:13
  part of preaching. One of the things that I think
• 37:16
  is really interesting, and that I'm thankful
• 37:18
  that you do in this, is you talk a lot about
• 37:21
  the reconstruction process. I think, rightfully
• 37:25
  so, maybe one of the critiques of this deconstruction
• 37:28
  kind of idea is that people say, well, but you
• 37:30
  have to reconstruct at some point. And I love
• 37:33
  that you kind of bring that in and you talk about
• 37:35
  that. One of the things, and maybe this is just
• 37:38
  a personal thing, is coming out of, you know,
• 37:42
  spaces that are maybe a little more fundamentalist.
• 37:45
  I think I have hesitancy sometimes to be too
• 37:48
  prescriptive in the way that I'm reconstructing.
• 37:51
  So, you know, as you're thinking about like,
• 37:54
  what bricks, so to speak, are we giving back
• 37:57
  to people, especially in light of like the harm
• 38:00
  that... can and does occur when people in churches
• 38:03
  are too prescriptive with things? How do you
• 38:05
  navigate, you know, what bricks you're giving
• 38:07
  people? Yeah, you laid out the tension really
• 38:10
  well. I think the critique from, you know, the
• 38:13
  right, so to speak, is, you know, you don't do
• 38:17
  any deconstruction, you don't do any reconstruction.
• 38:18
  It's all just tearing things down. And again,
• 38:21
  like you said, there's maybe some validity to
• 38:23
  that. And then the critique from the left is.
• 38:25
  Sometimes you can't do any reconstruction because
• 38:28
  you cannot prescribe someone's deconstruction,
• 38:30
  reconstruction journey for them, or it's just
• 38:33
  another form of religious and spiritual manipulation.
• 38:36
  And I think that there's truth to that, too.
• 38:38
  So I'm trying to, I think, live in that tension
• 38:40
  of saying, OK, how am I helping people deconstruct
• 38:44
  harmful beliefs, reconstruct healthy beliefs?
• 38:46
  But the question is, who decides? Who decides
• 38:48
  what's harmful and what's healthy? And so I think
• 38:51
  for us, we are attempting to decide that in community.
• 38:55
  We have developed a culture, a set of shared
• 38:57
  values to say things like inclusion, things like
• 39:02
  justice work, things like generosity. These are
• 39:06
  shared values that we have developed as an entire
• 39:09
  church to say these are healthy expressions of
• 39:12
  faith and really all undergirded. on the person
• 39:17
  and work of Jesus. And so that, I guess, to answer
• 39:19
  your question more specifically, the brick that
• 39:21
  I think we're constantly trying to help people
• 39:23
  with to use, you know, Pauline language is like
• 39:26
  the cornerstone, Jesus Christ, you know, on which
• 39:28
  everything else is built. And so that's when
• 39:31
  we did our year in the life of Jesus, I mentioned
• 39:33
  earlier. That was what we kept saying almost
• 39:36
  every Sunday was like, hey, we're spending a
• 39:38
  year just walking through the life and teachings
• 39:40
  of Jesus because Jesus should be the foundation
• 39:43
  upon which everything else, everything else in
• 39:45
  the Christian life is built. Now, again, we're
• 39:48
  very open if like you are. not calling yourself
• 39:51
  a Christian, not identifying as a Christian.
• 39:54
  You are still fully welcome in our community
• 39:57
  and things like that. But we are also balancing
• 39:59
  that with like, we're still a Christian church
• 40:01
  that's founded on the person and work and teachings
• 40:04
  of Jesus. So that's what we're going to be talking
• 40:06
  about. And if you want to be about that, that's
• 40:09
  awesome. Even if you're not all in, if you want
• 40:11
  to hear about it. explore it, whatever. So I
• 40:14
  think we try to, again, live in that tension
• 40:16
  too, of like, we're not prescribing, this is
• 40:18
  exactly how you have to live. We are attempting
• 40:21
  to say, this is what we think it means to be
• 40:24
  a Christian in the sense of a little Christ,
• 40:26
  a follower of the way of Jesus as best we can.
• 40:29
  And I think there's just the last piece of it
• 40:32
  is there has to be some general humility of knowing
• 40:34
  that we're probably going to get things wrong.
• 40:36
  We're probably going to get corrected. I get
• 40:38
  corrected by our people all the time and I'll
• 40:41
  get up and say, hey, I, Totally. It's mostly
• 40:43
  ignorant. You know, like I didn't think about
• 40:44
  how saying this would actually come across to
• 40:47
  this population or this individual person. And
• 40:50
  so thank you for bringing it to my attention.
• 40:52
  You know, we're going to do better next time.
• 40:54
  So it has to still be this humility paired with
• 40:58
  this invitation for critique all the time that
• 41:02
  I think that allows you to get to a place where
• 41:05
  I think you're trying to emphasize the right
• 41:06
  things, but knowing that you're probably not
• 41:08
  going to get it right all the time. Yeah, what
• 41:10
  an incredible demonstration of like humility
• 41:13
  and the way that that is so difficult so often,
• 41:16
  but so necessary, especially living in these
• 41:19
  contexts where like that tension comes and we
• 41:22
  don't always have the right answers. So after,
• 41:25
  you know, kind of orienting this deconstruction,
• 41:28
  reconstruction language, you turn to the text,
• 41:31
  the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, and you
• 41:34
  talk about this process that's all over scripture,
• 41:37
  deconstruction and reconstruction, and the fact
• 41:39
  that Jesus is kind of, in a way, confronting
• 41:43
  some of the attacks on deconstruction. So let's
• 41:46
  listen to that. One of the most influential evangelical
• 41:48
  megachurch pastors in the world said people deconstruct
• 41:52
  because it's, quote, the sexy thing to do. I
• 41:57
  don't know what kind of deconstruction he is
• 41:59
  into, but it's not been my experience. But all
• 42:06
  of that is simply not true for two primary reasons.
• 42:08
  Number one, nobody chooses deconstruction. It
• 42:11
  chooses you. It happens to you. No one wakes
• 42:15
  up one morning and says, You know what? Today
• 42:19
  I'm going to question everything I've ever believed.
• 42:21
  Nobody does that. Nobody does that. When something
• 42:25
  you believe comes into conflict with something
• 42:27
  you experience, that's when it starts to happen.
• 42:31
  And then number two, if deconstruction is sinful
• 42:34
  and demon -influenced, then Jesus is guilty of
• 42:38
  leading us toward sin and Satan because right
• 42:40
  in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, he
• 42:43
  teaches us. how to deconstruct and reconstruct
• 42:46
  our faith. I love how you engage with this criticism
• 42:50
  that is ridiculous and your congregation responds
• 42:55
  to it in that way. And you really tease out the
• 42:59
  implications of what this initial criticism would
• 43:04
  be. How did you decide to engage with that sexy
• 43:09
  quote and to bring it forward for your people?
• 43:14
  Oh, watching, listening to that back cracks me
• 43:17
  up because the, you know, I did deliberately
• 43:20
  choose to engage with the sexy quote. I did not
• 43:23
  write, pre -write the, I don't know what kind
• 43:26
  of deconstruction he's into joke that came in
• 43:29
  the moment. And my wife was like, what is wrong
• 43:33
  with you? But it was, you know, it was just fun.
• 43:38
  I think I chose it because there is some, a fairly
• 43:44
  small percentage of our people who know the quote
• 43:46
  and know the pastor and people who were significantly
• 43:51
  influenced by his ministry even, right? And that's
• 43:53
  how they know it. And have walked away from that
• 43:56
  for a number of different reasons. And so it's
• 43:58
  a little bit of a nod to, hey, I know some of
• 44:01
  you, like you heard this directly. But then it's
• 44:04
  also, I think, tried to be broad enough to say,
• 44:07
  most of us, if we've heard deconstruction decried,
• 44:10
  it's probably been in some like, well, people
• 44:13
  just want to do it to sin. People think that
• 44:16
  it's cool, all that kind of stuff. And so I think,
• 44:20
  again, like there's specificity, some people
• 44:22
  who've actually heard that exact quote, and then
• 44:25
  there's broadness enough to where this could
• 44:27
  relate to quite a few people. And then lastly,
• 44:30
  I mean, very candidly, I chose it because it's
• 44:32
  like funny and memorable and ridiculous, you
• 44:35
  know? And so it's, I wouldn't say like a straw
• 44:38
  man, like it's easy to knock down, although I
• 44:41
  think that is true. And I think exposing some
• 44:43
  of the like ridiculousness of the anti -deconstruction
• 44:46
  movement is important. But I also chose it just
• 44:50
  because like it's interesting, you know, like
• 44:52
  people will remember that piece of the message,
• 44:55
  even if they can't quote like exactly where it
• 44:59
  happened or, you know, the next few sentences
• 45:02
  or whatever. They'll remember, oh, there was
• 45:04
  that sermon where Zach made that joke about sexy
• 45:06
  deconstruction. And I'm going to try to go back
• 45:09
  and watch it or send it to someone else or something.
• 45:11
  So it's a little bit of a communication technique
• 45:13
  as well. Yeah, that's helpful. One of the things
• 45:17
  that I think is really interesting that you do
• 45:19
  is I did pick up on the fact that when you were
• 45:23
  quoting this person, you didn't give like their
• 45:26
  name, which was so interesting to me because
• 45:29
  then later when you are using other illustrations,
• 45:32
  you specifically like give them credit. That's
• 45:34
  part of the thing that you're doing. So I think
• 45:38
  I have an idea of maybe why you did some of that,
• 45:41
  but I'd love to hear from you about like, how
• 45:42
  do you discern which voices to give credit to
• 45:46
  and who are you elevating, so to speak, in your
• 45:51
  messages, especially knowing that there are some
• 45:53
  people who maybe are going to go then and look
• 45:55
  up these people online and follow some of the
• 45:58
  things they're doing. Yeah, I think you said
• 46:00
  it pretty well there. I think I'm trying to name
• 46:02
  people who. even if I'm not like fully endorsing
• 46:05
  everything they've ever done, I'm mostly naming
• 46:07
  or quoting people that I want to expose our people
• 46:10
  to in a positive way, you know? So one thing,
• 46:15
  like every time we bring in a guest preacher,
• 46:18
  I'd stand up and introduce them. And I say some
• 46:20
  version of. hey, we are not alone in this. There
• 46:23
  are people doing this similar work all over the
• 46:25
  place. And one of the things that we want to
• 46:27
  do as a leadership at Restore is introduce you
• 46:29
  to trusted voices of people that are doing similar
• 46:32
  work. And so when I quote somebody by name, it's
• 46:34
  usually for that purpose. I want to help people
• 46:37
  engage with it. It's not like... You know, some
• 46:40
  people are like, oh, you don't do it because
• 46:42
  you don't want to get sued or something like
• 46:43
  that. And that's not it. Like I'll say Matt Chandler's
• 46:47
  name right now. It makes no difference to me.
• 46:49
  I think what I'm not doing in that moment is
• 46:52
  mostly trying to be distracting. So part of it
• 46:56
  is like I don't want to elevate someone if I
• 46:58
  don't think that their stuff is worth elevating.
• 47:01
  But part of it is also because. you know, I said,
• 47:04
  there's going to be a percentage of people who've
• 47:06
  heard the quote and know what it is. There's
• 47:08
  going to be a, if I say the name, there's going
• 47:10
  to be a much larger percentage of people who've
• 47:12
  never heard the quote, but know who Matt Chandler
• 47:14
  is. And they're going to get super distracted
• 47:16
  by the fact that, oh, my Matt Chandler said that
• 47:18
  I used to listen to Matt Chandler sermons or
• 47:20
  my friend goes to whatever that church is called.
• 47:24
  So like it's, it's, that's where I'm more like,
• 47:26
  I'm going to lose people. if I say this was Matt
• 47:29
  Chandler. Now, if I'm going to spend more time
• 47:33
  on something, then I will use more of a name
• 47:35
  for a negative example, but I'll talk more about
• 47:37
  why. I think last year I did a longer segment
• 47:41
  on something that Driscoll had said, and I talked
• 47:43
  about it. I talked about this disgraced former
• 47:47
  megachurch pastor who's now planted another church,
• 47:49
  who was fired for abusing people. I will go into
• 47:53
  it if I'm attempting to try to make a point,
• 47:55
  but just a quick drop like that, it's mostly
• 47:58
  because I don't want people to go off in their
• 48:00
  mind somewhere else. We want to share what is
• 48:04
  part of the sermon where you're really... pulling
• 48:06
  out Jesus's kind of relationship with deconstruction
• 48:09
  and what that looks like. And so we're gonna
• 48:11
  share that now. To put it another way, the Sermon
• 48:14
  on the Mount in this text, Jesus is correcting
• 48:18
  bad biblical interpretations. If he was here
• 48:22
  on earth today, I wonder what commonly held biblical
• 48:24
  interpretations he would be correcting. I have
• 48:27
  some ideas, but that's a sermon for another day.
• 48:31
  Now, if this whole Sermon on the Mount section
• 48:33
  sounds like it's going to be a little bit pot
• 48:34
  -stirring to you, just get ready, because it
• 48:37
  absolutely is. In fact, Jesus kind of anticipates
• 48:40
  the pushback he's about to get. So he starts
• 48:42
  off by saying this, Do not think I have come
• 48:44
  to abolish the law or the prophets, as the Jewish
• 48:48
  scriptures of the Old Testament. I have not come
• 48:50
  to abolish them, but to fulfill them. So Jesus
• 48:54
  knows he's probably about to hear an angry chorus
• 48:57
  of don't listen to this radical guy. He doesn't
• 49:01
  even believe the scriptures are true. He doesn't
• 49:04
  even care about God's word. Jesus is saying,
• 49:07
  no, I believe they're absolutely true. I just
• 49:10
  know that you all have so often misinterpreted
• 49:13
  and misapplied them that you have completely
• 49:14
  missed God's purpose. for your lives, for our
• 49:18
  community, and for the world around you. Jesus
• 49:21
  is saying, I haven't come to abolish these scriptures.
• 49:23
  I have come to help you understand them better.
• 49:27
  One of the things I loved about your exposition
• 49:31
  of this is you start with this idea of things
• 49:33
  that you would go back and try to correct. And
• 49:36
  you invite them to kind of think of what they
• 49:37
  would correct in their head. And to me, it felt
• 49:41
  like you were almost disarming the reaction to
• 49:44
  Jesus to be able to say, oh. I'm already doing
• 49:47
  this. Is that what you were going for? I just
• 49:50
  thought it was so effective. Absolutely. Thank
• 49:52
  you. Yeah. The hope is that's already happened
• 49:53
  a little bit with the brick metaphor and the,
• 49:57
  you know, why did you deconstruct? Here are some
• 49:59
  reasons other people deconstructed. But yeah,
• 50:01
  that's the hope is to disarm a little bit. And
• 50:04
  then the hope is also to say, again, this is
• 50:07
  broader than this text. You know, we're going
• 50:10
  to engage with, you know, four or five things
• 50:12
  that Jesus engages with. But there's so much.
• 50:16
  that we can engage with. And I think I, you know,
• 50:20
  I could have made the point, we do some version
• 50:22
  of this almost every Sunday. You know, we talk
• 50:25
  about this is an unhelpful way to interpret this
• 50:28
  text. This is a helpful way to interpret this
• 50:30
  text, you know? So yeah, it's almost a nod to
• 50:33
  that as well. Like, hey, we're in this work,
• 50:34
  we're doing this, you know? Yeah, I love that
• 50:38
  you are able to kind of like give that nod and
• 50:41
  also not like, lose kind of like what your audience
• 50:46
  is maybe engaging with and then kind of you go
• 50:49
  through this whole section where jesus is giving
• 50:52
  these um you know instructions you've heard it
• 50:55
  said but i say to you and you go through them
• 50:57
  really quickly um but two of the the big teachings
• 51:00
  i think uh that you cover are ones that maybe
• 51:03
  have historically been used against women uh
• 51:07
  in more kind of conservative fundamentalist spaces
• 51:09
  maybe uh these passages about lust and and about
• 51:13
  divorce. And in both cases, I really love that
• 51:16
  you spent time giving attention to the fact that
• 51:19
  Jesus is really instructing people not to commodify
• 51:22
  others, not to abuse them, especially to those
• 51:26
  who are maybe the most vulnerable. So, you know,
• 51:28
  women and others. I'm curious that you deal with
• 51:32
  both of those so quickly and so effectively that
• 51:36
  it's almost like disarming where I'm like, oh,
• 51:38
  I can't be mad about anything you said, but we're
• 51:40
  already moving on. Did you wrestle more with
• 51:44
  like saying more about some of those things,
• 51:46
  especially knowing that like some of those things
• 51:50
  maybe are a bit challenging for people and like
• 51:52
  harder for people to swallow? Did you get pushback
• 51:55
  about not spending as much time on some of those?
• 51:59
  No. No, I didn't get pushback, but mostly that's
• 52:02
  because most of our people are there already,
• 52:06
  you know, and that's why I'm not spending a ton
• 52:08
  of time on them. Although I will say I would
• 52:13
  have liked to. You know, I mean, I think each
• 52:15
  of the this could have been five sermons. And
• 52:17
  this is a little bit different from a normal
• 52:19
  sermon in that it is pretty dense as far as like
• 52:24
  topics, so to speak. But it's a little bit I
• 52:27
  kind of had to deal with that this whole series
• 52:29
  because the Sermon on the Mount is such a quick
• 52:31
  hitting thing that, you know, I could do a 10
• 52:34
  week sermon on the Beatitudes. But at some point,
• 52:37
  like we're going to all just kind of be exhausted
• 52:39
  by that. And so I did one sermon on them and
• 52:41
  that felt like that was a lot. And so I think
• 52:44
  I'm really someone who tries to build a central
• 52:48
  thesis and stick to it, which is why really the
• 52:51
  central thesis of this is, you know, deconstructing,
• 52:54
  reconstructing kind of a thing. And then here
• 52:56
  are some examples of it that Jesus gives. But
• 52:58
  to your point, I and I have done singular sermons
• 53:02
  on how we understand divorce in scripture or
• 53:05
  how we understand lust in scripture or how we
• 53:08
  understand anger, you know, more holistically,
• 53:10
  those kinds of things. And so. My hope is that
• 53:15
  if somebody is relatively new, hasn't heard us
• 53:18
  engage with that, or this is really different
• 53:20
  maybe, excuse me, from what they've heard before,
• 53:24
  that they'll come and say, I've never heard that
• 53:26
  about divorce. Do you have more? Then I can say,
• 53:29
  here's another sermon. Here's a book or an article
• 53:32
  I wrote or something and let them go a little
• 53:34
  bit deeper. But that is kind of my least favorite
• 53:38
  part of this sermon, honestly, is that I had
• 53:40
  to go. so quickly through things that I think
• 53:44
  deserve more attention. I appreciate you saying
• 53:46
  that it was effective. And I do hope that it
• 53:50
  is done in a way that is hard to, you know, not
• 53:54
  hard to argue with, I guess, but that makes sense
• 53:56
  enough that you're not just like, that was ridiculous.
• 53:58
  But I think it is, it is something I would have
• 54:01
  liked to spent more time on for sure. But it
• 54:04
  does reflect like, sometimes I'm talking with
• 54:06
  like, young preachers so it's important to remind
• 54:09
  them like hey this isn't the last time you're
• 54:10
  gonna preach you don't have to say everything
• 54:12
  you know that this is a conversation in community
• 54:15
  over time but then those little nods to it like
• 54:18
  even just like two weeks ago i made just a nod
• 54:21
  to our lgbtq siblings and some guests were there
• 54:26
  who had like never heard that before in a church
• 54:29
  and that was the thing that they wanted to talk
• 54:31
  to me about and why they came back you know so
• 54:33
  like There's so much power, and you still have
• 54:36
  to do those nods, I think. It does sometimes
• 54:38
  feel like, oh, is that enough? I don't know,
• 54:40
  but it's about being faithful in it all. You
• 54:43
  spend some time unpacking one of these teachings
• 54:49
  on enemy love, and I want to share that clip.
• 54:53
  This idea of enemy love is a revolutionary concept.
• 54:55
  It was revolutionary back in the first century,
• 54:58
  and it's still revolutionary today. I preached
• 55:01
  an entire sermon on loving our enemies back in
• 55:03
  November during our Kingdom Politics series right
• 55:05
  around election time. So if you missed that,
• 55:07
  you can go find it. It's on YouTube or podcast
• 55:09
  or anything like that. I'm not going to rehash
• 55:10
  the whole thing today. But the thing I do really
• 55:13
  want us to see here is that Jesus says our faith
• 55:17
  is best measured not by how we love our friends,
• 55:22
  but by how we love our enemies. As Dorothy Day
• 55:27
  says, I really only love God as much as I love
• 55:30
  the person I love the least. Our faith is best
• 55:35
  demonstrated not by the way we treat or love
• 55:39
  the people who are nice to us, the people who
• 55:43
  agree with us, but by the people who don't. It's
• 55:50
  important to point out that Jesus doesn't say,
• 55:52
  tolerate your enemies. He doesn't even say, be
• 55:56
  nice to your enemies. He calls us to love our
• 56:00
  enemies. If anyone had the right to hate their
• 56:03
  enemies, it was Jesus, right? But he doesn't.
• 56:08
  Do you remember after he was illegally arrested
• 56:11
  and beaten up and mocked and hung on a cross?
• 56:13
  Do you remember what Jesus did for his enemies?
• 56:17
  We refresh it for you. Luke 23. When they came
• 56:20
  to the place called Calvary, they crucified him
• 56:22
  there on the cross, along with the criminals,
• 56:25
  one on his right and the other on his left. Then
• 56:27
  Jesus said to them, Father, rain down your angels
• 56:31
  of wrath upon them. Are you reading along? That's
• 56:35
  not what it says. Father, forgive them, for they
• 56:41
  know not what they are doing. At the height of
• 56:47
  the enemy's hate for Jesus. As they had just
• 56:50
  continued to inflict violence upon violence upon
• 56:54
  him. He calls for their forgiveness. When Jesus
• 57:00
  says love your enemies and pray for those who
• 57:02
  persecute you. He wasn't preaching empty words.
• 57:05
  This wasn't just a sermon for him. He actually
• 57:08
  did it. And that means for us. that we do not
• 57:13
  get to decide who is worthy of love and who is
• 57:15
  not. Jesus decided that 2 ,000 years ago on a
• 57:18
  cross. He says that every single person is worthy
• 57:22
  of love, friend, enemy, and everyone in between.
• 57:26
  I love this, like the energy that you have in
• 57:30
  this section. And, you know, you preach generally
• 57:32
  sitting at a table on a stool, and yet there's
• 57:35
  this movement that comes forth. In this part
• 57:40
  of the sermon, and it reminded me of the African
• 57:42
  -American tradition of preaching, which I think
• 57:44
  us white preachers need to listen to and sit
• 57:46
  under. And there's this movement that always
• 57:50
  goes to Calvary in kind of traditional American
• 57:54
  black preaching. And this sermon really rises
• 57:58
  to this story of the cross here at this point.
• 58:00
  I think you're really beautifully bringing that
• 58:03
  energy and that turn for people. Is that typical
• 58:05
  for you? in your preaching? Yeah, I think so.
• 58:11
  I, I, you pointed it out and I think you, you
• 58:15
  guys are, are pros to even just notice this,
• 58:18
  but I've been really heavily influenced by black
• 58:21
  church preaching and, and, but it's one of those
• 58:24
  that like, I've been heavily influenced, but
• 58:26
  I have to do it in a way that is like my own,
• 58:28
  you know, not in a kind of a colonizing way that
• 58:32
  sometimes happens. And so. Yeah. I mean, whether
• 58:35
  it's like reading James Cone or bell hooks or
• 58:39
  people like that, or it's listening to Jackie
• 58:42
  Lewis or William Barber. I listened to a ton
• 58:45
  of Dr. King. And yeah, I think that there are
• 58:49
  these really effective both communication techniques
• 58:52
  and there's always this kind of drawing back
• 58:55
  to the cross. I had a mentor that talked about
• 58:57
  how the cross should be this like magnetic pull
• 59:00
  for us in every sermon that we should be kind
• 59:03
  of encircling and coming back to it all the time.
• 59:07
  And I think that, yeah, the black church tradition
• 59:09
  does that incredibly well. And I want to make
• 59:12
  sure that we're doing that too. But it always
• 59:15
  needs to look a little bit different. And to
• 59:17
  that point, you know, reading that Luke 23 passage,
• 59:21
  I didn't write out like the I'm going to read
• 59:24
  it wrong on purpose thing. You know, that wasn't
• 59:26
  planned. That was a moment where it's not like
• 59:29
  I felt like I was losing people, but it's a moment
• 59:31
  where I think I've read this verse a lot of times,
• 59:34
  you know, and we talk about the gospel or the
• 59:36
  cross almost every week. And so just in the moment,
• 59:39
  like what's a little something I can do to make
• 59:41
  sure this like. people don't just like, oh, he's
• 59:44
  talking about Calvary again, like make sure they
• 59:46
  still stay checked in. And so I'm also trying
• 59:48
  to make sure we do, even though we're always
• 59:50
  bringing it back to the cross, balance that with,
• 59:52
  are we doing it in creative ways? And I got,
• 59:55
  I don't remember who that was, but I got a heck
• 59:57
  of a laugh when I read the wrath of God thing.
• 1:00:00
  I went up to, her name's Tiff. I went up to her
• 1:00:02
  afterwards and I was like, goodness, thank you
• 1:00:04
  for that. That was such a great, because I mean,
• 1:00:06
  we do not have a very expressive crowd. um get
• 1:00:10
  some laughs and stuff but not a lot of amens
• 1:00:13
  not a lot of like go preachers you know which
• 1:00:15
  i'm always trying to get people to do but uh
• 1:00:18
  so any anyway anything like that always helps
• 1:00:21
  you know as your communicator yeah and it was
• 1:00:24
  so effective i think like it's wild but in the
• 1:00:28
  church we can lose sight of the scandal of the
• 1:00:31
  cross like how wild this is and so by you really
• 1:00:35
  subverted the expectations by, by flipping the
• 1:00:39
  text. And it really made it come alive to us
• 1:00:41
  to see like, oh yeah, this is wild. This is what
• 1:00:44
  it says. So I just thought that was really effective
• 1:00:46
  and really helpful. Thanks. Appreciate it. I
• 1:00:49
  also love that you got that verbal feedback.
• 1:00:51
  There's nothing more awkward than making a joke
• 1:00:53
  and either nobody gets it or you just get the
• 1:00:56
  blank stares. I'm glad that people were on board.
• 1:01:00
  I was laughing at the same time too. So as I
• 1:01:04
  appreciate that you're talking about some of
• 1:01:06
  these other influences that you've had specifically
• 1:01:09
  like African -American traditions of preaching.
• 1:01:12
  But at the end, you get like very practical,
• 1:01:15
  which I think is something that maybe like evangelical
• 1:01:19
  pastors seem to do constantly, but more like
• 1:01:22
  maybe mainline white preaching especially doesn't
• 1:01:26
  always do. So I'd like to listen to that and
• 1:01:28
  like ask some questions about that practicality
• 1:01:31
  that you bring in. Almost every time he got up
• 1:01:34
  and he said, you thought it was this way. I'm
• 1:01:38
  actually telling you it's this way. Both in this
• 1:01:42
  passage and throughout the rest of Scripture,
• 1:01:44
  Jesus demonstrated these three important things
• 1:01:47
  that we need when walking through a process of
• 1:01:50
  deconstruction and reconstruction. I want to
• 1:01:51
  leave you with these very practical as we continue
• 1:01:54
  to try to work out and disentangle our faith.
• 1:01:58
  The first one. Jesus says that we need healthy
• 1:02:01
  community as we work through a process of deconstruction
• 1:02:05
  and reconstruction. The process is hard enough.
• 1:02:08
  Don't make it even harder by going through it
• 1:02:10
  alone. If your community responds to your questions
• 1:02:14
  by telling you to just have more faith, it may
• 1:02:17
  be toxic. If your community equates doubt with
• 1:02:22
  sin, it may be toxic. If your community ever
• 1:02:26
  says that God hates you or hates some other group
• 1:02:30
  or hates any human, it's definitely toxic. Run
• 1:02:35
  from toxic community, but please do not turn
• 1:02:37
  your back on community completely. Like I said,
• 1:02:41
  we're far from perfect, but I'm really proud
• 1:02:43
  of the healthy community that we're continuing
• 1:02:45
  to build here at Restore. So if you don't have
• 1:02:47
  someone to walk through this process with you,
• 1:02:49
  I would love to offer that to you. Thing number
• 1:02:53
  two, Scripture. Now, a lot of people want to
• 1:02:58
  throw Scripture away when they're deconstructing,
• 1:03:00
  and I totally understand why. Because through
• 1:03:03
  this process, we often realize the way in which
• 1:03:05
  the Bible has been weaponized against us, against
• 1:03:08
  people we loved, used to oppress and marginalize
• 1:03:11
  entire communities. But I'm just going to be
• 1:03:13
  really honest with you. I don't think that the
• 1:03:15
  answer is throwing the Bible away. The answer
• 1:03:19
  is learning to read it in healthier ways. Better
• 1:03:23
  ways. Like Jesus said, he didn't come to abolish
• 1:03:27
  the scriptures. He came to help us understand
• 1:03:30
  them better. That's number two. Number three,
• 1:03:33
  this is the last one. Jesus. At the risk of sounding
• 1:03:37
  cliche, and this is the Sunday school answer,
• 1:03:40
  it's the most important one. Jesus is the cornerstone
• 1:03:45
  upon which... Everything else in the Christian
• 1:03:47
  faith is built. He is the lens through which
• 1:03:50
  we must understand and interpret everything that
• 1:03:54
  we engage with. Scripture teaches that the fullness
• 1:03:57
  of God has been revealed to us in Christ. That
• 1:04:02
  means that if anything in our house of faith
• 1:04:05
  contradicts the words and works of Jesus, we
• 1:04:08
  must choose Jesus. One of the things I love about
• 1:04:12
  your preaching and Restore and the post -evangelical
• 1:04:15
  collective that you helped lead is how the deconstruction
• 1:04:20
  from white evangelicalism didn't mean you got
• 1:04:25
  rid of any good things that you've learned, right?
• 1:04:27
  And using these kind of really practical action
• 1:04:30
  steps at the end feels like a kind of hallmark
• 1:04:32
  of a non -denominational white evangelicals preaching.
• 1:04:37
  Do you always aim to have takeaways like that
• 1:04:39
  for your people? And maybe are there other...
• 1:04:43
  bricks to use your metaphor from your evangelical
• 1:04:46
  preaching background that you've kept or you've
• 1:04:49
  reshaped? Absolutely. The answer to your first
• 1:04:52
  question is yes. Always try to have something
• 1:04:53
  very practical at the end. You know, Sunday,
• 1:04:57
  two days ago, I preached a sermon on This idea
• 1:05:00
  of what does it look like to do justice work?
• 1:05:03
  And I was in Romans 12. And I mean, kind of the
• 1:05:06
  whole last 20 minutes was like, here are practical
• 1:05:09
  options for justice work that Paul lays out.
• 1:05:12
  He's like, if you're a prophet, speak boldly.
• 1:05:14
  If you serve, serve with integrity, like that.
• 1:05:16
  So I'm always really trying to end at that place,
• 1:05:19
  a very practical place. And that does certainly
• 1:05:21
  come from my kind of evangelical background.
• 1:05:24
  And then to your second question. Yeah, I think
• 1:05:27
  that evangelicals do some things really well.
• 1:05:30
  I would say the easiest way to put it is accessibility
• 1:05:33
  and practicality. Those are the things I think
• 1:05:36
  they do so well. So by accessibility, I mean,
• 1:05:38
  it doesn't matter if you have been in church
• 1:05:40
  your entire life or you've never been in church
• 1:05:42
  before. You walk in off the street to an evangelical
• 1:05:44
  church. The signs tell you where to go. There
• 1:05:47
  are people greeting you. There's donuts and coffee.
• 1:05:49
  There's stuff for your kids. There's, you know,
• 1:05:52
  a band probably that like sounds interesting.
• 1:05:54
  There's a sermon that makes sense, you know,
• 1:05:57
  and then there's very practical things like,
• 1:05:59
  oh, hey, is your kid addicted to his iPhone?
• 1:06:02
  Like come to this class on Tuesday night. You
• 1:06:04
  know, I mean, it's like they want to help your
• 1:06:06
  actual life. And sometimes it's. you know ridiculous
• 1:06:09
  where it's like oh you know what does the book
• 1:06:11
  of james have to teach us about financial management
• 1:06:14
  you know and i'm like probably not he just says
• 1:06:16
  like all the wealthy people should die so probably
• 1:06:18
  not like that shouldn't be our go -to um but
• 1:06:21
  so but but i think you know evangelicalism does
• 1:06:23
  those two things really well um But to speak
• 1:06:28
  bluntly, I think they do Bible and theology mostly
• 1:06:31
  pretty poorly. And so how do we take really like
• 1:06:34
  much better Bible interpretation, much better
• 1:06:37
  holistic theology and marry it to the kind of
• 1:06:41
  accessibility and practicality of. Yeah, of evangelicalism
• 1:06:46
  and make sure that it's still, you know, like
• 1:06:48
  I said, undergirded by the work of Jesus, radically
• 1:06:50
  inclusive for all people, especially kind of
• 1:06:52
  historically marginalized communities, justice
• 1:06:54
  focused on our endeavors, all those kinds of
• 1:06:56
  things. I think that's actually, you know, again,
• 1:07:00
  I'm very biased, but I think that is going to
• 1:07:02
  be the future of at least one arm of the church
• 1:07:05
  if we're able to kind of continue moving forward.
• 1:07:08
  in more Christ -centered ways is this place that
• 1:07:11
  has this really good, helpful, better theology
• 1:07:15
  and Christ -centered theology, but it still kind
• 1:07:18
  of makes sense for your average everyday person.
• 1:07:22
  Yeah, I love that. Sounds like the book that
• 1:07:24
  you just wrote about that too. Yes, I appreciate
• 1:07:29
  the plug. I see it on your bookshelf, so I had
• 1:07:34
  to bring it up. It is behind me right there,
• 1:07:36
  yeah. yeah did you know these are these are fake
• 1:07:40
  uh you know public i don't know if you know this
• 1:07:42
  but publishers send you like you know it's got
• 1:07:45
  your cover on it but it's somebody else's book
• 1:07:47
  because you know mine's still in the editing
• 1:07:49
  process so that's just a little don't tell anyone
• 1:07:52
  don't tell anyone but that's uh that's what they
• 1:07:53
  do so that's not actually my book but it's the
• 1:07:55
  cover wow but good just insider secrets right
• 1:08:00
  here i'm curious who your book you got is it
• 1:08:03
  driscoll I didn't know who the person was. It
• 1:08:07
  would be too perfect if it was. It would be too
• 1:08:10
  perfect if it was. Yeah. And it's like pasted
• 1:08:13
  in such a way that I think they ripped off the
• 1:08:15
  first few pages. So I can't actually tell like
• 1:08:17
  what it was called originally or anything like
• 1:08:19
  that. But yeah, I'm grateful for whoever book
• 1:08:23
  sacrificed itself to allow me to hold it up on
• 1:08:26
  socials. But yeah, the book's called Better Ways
• 1:08:29
  to Read the Bible. the subtitle is transforming
• 1:08:32
  a weapon of harm into a tool of healing. And
• 1:08:34
  so, yeah, you know, the, the number two on the
• 1:08:37
  takeaway, we just listened to scripture. That's,
• 1:08:40
  that's a very mini version of what the book is
• 1:08:42
  about, which is, I don't think the answer to
• 1:08:44
  bad Bible interpretation is to throw the Bible
• 1:08:46
  away. I think it's better Bible interpretation.
• 1:08:49
  And, and so I, in the book. I engage with these,
• 1:08:53
  you know, four biblical kind of lenses of interpretation
• 1:08:56
  that we've been given a lot of times in more
• 1:08:58
  fundamentals or evangelical spaces, like a lens
• 1:09:02
  of moralism. The Bible is just a rule book or
• 1:09:04
  a lens of hierarchy. The Bible tells us who's
• 1:09:06
  in charge and who's not. How do we identify and
• 1:09:09
  discard those? And then what does it look like
• 1:09:12
  when those are applied to scripture and it's
• 1:09:13
  really harmful? What are stories, all that? And
• 1:09:16
  then what are four healthy lenses to replace
• 1:09:18
  them with? So it's lenses like the Christocentric
• 1:09:21
  lens, but I just call it Jesus lens that I talked
• 1:09:23
  about at the end of that sermon. um, a lens of
• 1:09:26
  fruitfulness, which is using the fruit of the
• 1:09:29
  spirit to evaluate our beliefs and behaviors.
• 1:09:32
  Is it producing more love, joy, peace, patience,
• 1:09:34
  kindness, et cetera, in me and in the world that
• 1:09:37
  we should be using that as an evaluative tool
• 1:09:39
  for our biblical interpretation. So yeah, that's
• 1:09:42
  what the book is about. It honestly came out
• 1:09:44
  of nine years of preaching and people being like,
• 1:09:46
  how do you know that, you know, and, um, how
• 1:09:49
  did you like land on that interpretation? And,
• 1:09:52
  you know, it'd be like, I'm going to give you
• 1:09:54
  five, pretty dense books to go through. And like,
• 1:09:57
  you know, I know people are like, yeah, I'm not
• 1:09:58
  going to do that. And so I felt like there were
• 1:10:01
  some great books about like, you know, problem
• 1:10:04
  passages. Maybe there's some great books about
• 1:10:06
  biblical genre. I give out inspired by Rachel
• 1:10:08
  Held Evans constantly. There are some great books
• 1:10:11
  about kind of how we got the Bible and the canonization
• 1:10:13
  process, but didn't feel like there was one resource
• 1:10:16
  to say, here's kind of a very lay pop biblical
• 1:10:19
  interpretation thing that I'm going to apply
• 1:10:22
  to some passages, but it's really, to be used
• 1:10:24
  broadly for any kind of, you know, scriptural
• 1:10:27
  engagement. Great. I feel like that's so helpful.
• 1:10:31
  I'm excited to, to get my hands on it. Ah, thanks,
• 1:10:34
  Anna. I appreciate that. So what are you both
• 1:10:36
  proud of in this sermon? Um, I think the, probably
• 1:10:44
  the house of faith bricks metaphor thing, um,
• 1:10:48
  as you can tell listening to it, it's not like
• 1:10:51
  I didn't write it that week. I mean, it's been
• 1:10:53
  something that's been in development for years,
• 1:10:55
  mostly through conversations with people as I
• 1:10:57
  try to describe and give language to what people
• 1:11:01
  are walking through. So one thing I do at Restore
• 1:11:03
  is I offer to have... coffee or a Zoom or a phone
• 1:11:06
  call with every person who comes once. So every
• 1:11:09
  new person, anything like that, like we've created
• 1:11:11
  a margin in my schedule to do that. I'm doing
• 1:11:13
  like four this week. And so I hear people's stories
• 1:11:16
  a lot. So having these common and a lot of it's
• 1:11:19
  like, you know, the whole nobody wakes up every
• 1:11:21
  morning and says, I'm going to question everything
• 1:11:23
  I've ever believed. People are like, I'm struggling.
• 1:11:26
  Something I believe comes into conflict with
• 1:11:28
  something I experienced. I don't know what to
• 1:11:29
  do. And so being able to give them that language,
• 1:11:32
  you know, is I think been really helpful. And
• 1:11:34
  it's, It's a lot of like, I didn't come up with
• 1:11:37
  all of it, you know, exactly. It's been like
• 1:11:39
  collaborative, testing it out in conversations
• 1:11:41
  and then being able to give it in a sermon like
• 1:11:43
  this with some depth. Again, the hope is that
• 1:11:45
  it allows people to have some shared language,
• 1:11:48
  some understanding of what it is that they're
• 1:11:50
  actually walking through. So we don't really
• 1:11:53
  very often get to. think about the sermons we've
• 1:11:56
  preached before or get feedback on them or go
• 1:11:58
  back and reflect on them. But as we've done that
• 1:12:01
  with this one with you, are there things you
• 1:12:03
  would redo or do differently looking back? I
• 1:12:08
  think I would have actually liked to spend even
• 1:12:11
  more time at the end around what does it mean
• 1:12:15
  to do these things practically, you know, because
• 1:12:18
  I think you give the three points, but The first
• 1:12:21
  one's like, be in community. I think it was like,
• 1:12:24
  people are like, I don't, what is that? It's
• 1:12:26
  like very buzzwordy, you know? So I wish I think
• 1:12:28
  I would have spent more time in like, hey, here's
• 1:12:30
  some ways to, you know, work this out in community.
• 1:12:34
  Here's some ways to evaluate if the community
• 1:12:37
  in right now is healthy, you know, some deeper
• 1:12:39
  ways of doing that. You know, how do we actually
• 1:12:43
  engage with scripture more? What does it look
• 1:12:45
  like? Because I'm just saying, make sure you're
• 1:12:47
  engaging with scripture in healthy ways. And
• 1:12:48
  like you said, Evan, it's not the only sermon
• 1:12:50
  I'll ever preach. And I wrote a book about it
• 1:12:52
  and all that kind of stuff. So obviously there's
• 1:12:54
  more resources, but I always just want to make
• 1:12:56
  sure, especially if it's the only time somebody
• 1:12:57
  hears it, that they have enough practical advice
• 1:13:00
  to be able to go and do something. So that's
• 1:13:03
  probably the thing that I think I would lean
• 1:13:05
  into more of. I don't know if we have time, but
• 1:13:08
  I would love to hear from you two what you think.
• 1:13:11
  Like what you would have do differently or what
• 1:13:13
  you would coach me to do differently next time?
• 1:13:15
  Because I always want to get better. Yeah, that's
• 1:13:18
  a great question to turn on us. And one, you
• 1:13:20
  know, the reason we put this podcast together
• 1:13:22
  is because we used to do this together where
• 1:13:24
  we'd pick each other's sermons apart and other
• 1:13:25
  people's sermons apart. And we would try to be
• 1:13:27
  nice, but also try to be honest. And yeah, I
• 1:13:31
  don't, you know, off the top of my head, I don't
• 1:13:33
  know that I have too much feedback. But I do
• 1:13:36
  think, I mean, I had maybe two questions of.
• 1:13:39
  You know, it's pretty dense, which you mentioned
• 1:13:42
  earlier. And I don't know that there's anything
• 1:13:45
  I would change about that. I think I would just
• 1:13:47
  think through, man, how much can my people absorb
• 1:13:50
  as you're moving through that and pointing them
• 1:13:52
  to other resources? And I think those last three
• 1:13:55
  points may be a tighter connection to like...
• 1:13:59
  the text, how that's coming out of Jesus says
• 1:14:01
  these things. I was, I found myself wanting like,
• 1:14:04
  okay, where, where are you pulling those from
• 1:14:05
  exactly? Cause I wasn't always seeing it. Um,
• 1:14:08
  Hannah, you have anything? Yeah, I know you're
• 1:14:10
  really putting us on the spot here. Um, I think,
• 1:14:13
  uh, uh, sometimes I would get the reputation
• 1:14:16
  of maybe not, uh, of probing too hard, but, um,
• 1:14:21
  No, one of the things I was thinking about, and
• 1:14:23
  this is kind of just from my own, I think, preaching,
• 1:14:26
  is there would be times where I would like craft
• 1:14:28
  this really beautiful, wonderful introduction
• 1:14:30
  and like set everything up really well. And then
• 1:14:33
  realize that I'd been preaching for seven minutes
• 1:14:35
  and hadn't mentioned like the text for the day.
• 1:14:38
  And I think I noticed, like, I think you mentioned
• 1:14:40
  at the beginning. And then you do this really
• 1:14:43
  great section about like deconstruction and reconstruction,
• 1:14:46
  which is so helpful and so relevant to what you're
• 1:14:49
  saying. And then I think we get to Matthew five
• 1:14:52
  and I was like, oh yeah, that's like the context
• 1:14:54
  that we're working with here. So I think that's
• 1:14:56
  maybe something that like, just as I was thinking
• 1:14:59
  through it, I was like, oh, it might've been
• 1:15:01
  more helpful to have more of that up front, but
• 1:15:04
  you definitely brought it back in the end. So.
• 1:15:07
  No, those are both really helpful. Yeah. I think
• 1:15:11
  re -listening to it too, I noticed, Evan, to
• 1:15:14
  your point at the end, I said something to the
• 1:15:16
  effect of, you know, these are three things that
• 1:15:19
  Jesus gives us. And I actually had a little like,
• 1:15:22
  oh, but is that right here? Like, you know, how
• 1:15:26
  does he give us that? Because that statement
• 1:15:29
  I don't think is actually explained very well,
• 1:15:30
  I realized. Yeah, so I think I totally agree
• 1:15:33
  with that. And then Hannah, 100%, I think there's,
• 1:15:36
  I would have liked to drip a little bit more
• 1:15:39
  Sermon on the Mount stuff throughout the initial
• 1:15:42
  opening, or maybe just do a little bit more up
• 1:15:46
  front and then come back to it kind of a thing.
• 1:15:47
  Because yeah, I think the hope is that, yeah,
• 1:15:49
  you can continue to weave it all the way throughout.
• 1:15:52
  And I think I'm probably better at weaving. metaphors
• 1:15:56
  and examples throughout and bringing them back
• 1:15:57
  at the end. That's where I'm naturally better
• 1:15:59
  than, and really kind of getting dense into the
• 1:16:02
  text for a period of time and then hopping out
• 1:16:04
  of it. And I think if I could balance that with
• 1:16:07
  dripping the text throughout too, that probably
• 1:16:09
  would take it to another level. So I appreciate
• 1:16:11
  both of those. That's super helpful. Well, thanks
• 1:16:14
  for asking. I think, you know, one of the things
• 1:16:16
  that we hope for preachers is a willingness to
• 1:16:19
  like. ask and receive and get feedback. And it's
• 1:16:22
  so helpful when we're open to it, even though
• 1:16:25
  sometimes it's painful, but so vital. I had my
• 1:16:29
  mentor who really, I was in the kind of tail
• 1:16:35
  end of seminary. He's one of the best preachers
• 1:16:37
  I've ever been around. I was working in his church
• 1:16:39
  and he made this offer to me after he heard me
• 1:16:42
  preach for the first time, like to young adults
• 1:16:44
  or students. He never, I didn't preach actually
• 1:16:47
  on like the main stage, quote unquote. until
• 1:16:50
  after I left. So he didn't ever let me do it.
• 1:16:52
  But he said, hey, Zach, if you will, if you'll
• 1:16:54
  record any sermons, like from class, from youth
• 1:16:58
  group, whatever, I will sit down with you. I'll
• 1:17:01
  take an hour. I'll sit down with you and I'll
• 1:17:03
  go through the sermon and critique it. And so
• 1:17:06
  I used to just go set up a camera up in a room
• 1:17:08
  and I would just preach to a camera and then
• 1:17:10
  I'd take it to him and say. what do you think
• 1:17:12
  and he would just for an hour you know like we
• 1:17:16
  would be watching it and he would pause every
• 1:17:18
  like 15 seconds well that wasn't good, was it?
• 1:17:20
  Nope. You know why? You know? And so I feel like
• 1:17:23
  those, I mean, and it made me so much better
• 1:17:26
  and having an athletic background, the whole
• 1:17:27
  like watching film and all that stuff is like,
• 1:17:30
  that's what you do. And so I feel like after
• 1:17:33
  those experiences, yeah, any, no feedback is
• 1:17:37
  difficult anymore. Like he broke me of any kind
• 1:17:39
  of like ego I had in sermon sitting down and,
• 1:17:42
  and just, he'd pause it again and you'd just
• 1:17:44
  be like, don't pause it right there. Don't pause
• 1:17:47
  it again. You know, and give me more. more critique.
• 1:17:50
  Watching the play black is like the most brutal
• 1:17:52
  part of my week sometimes, but so helpful. So
• 1:17:56
  necessary. Yeah. So you clearly have a very,
• 1:18:02
  a very passionate, just like feeling about preaching
• 1:18:08
  and clearly are dedicated to this craft of preaching.
• 1:18:13
  So why do you think that preaching matters today?
• 1:18:17
  Yeah, I just, I think it's a little bit of, well,
• 1:18:22
  I don't know. I was going to say it's a lost
• 1:18:24
  art, but that's like trite. And I don't even
• 1:18:26
  know if I mean it. I think in the spaces that
• 1:18:28
  we're in, I think that it's undervalued. I think
• 1:18:33
  most of us came from spaces where it was overvalued.
• 1:18:36
  And I think that the pendulum has swung to where
• 1:18:38
  in a lot of kind of more open, inclusive, progressive
• 1:18:42
  -ish church spaces, it's actually become undervalued.
• 1:18:47
  I don't think we can, you know, we do communion
• 1:18:49
  every Sunday. I don't think you can overvalue
• 1:18:50
  the table. I don't think you can overvalue worship
• 1:18:53
  or anything like that. I think you can maybe
• 1:18:54
  like overvalue production and stuff like that.
• 1:18:56
  But I do think that the sermon has kind of, you
• 1:18:59
  know, been put in a place where in a reaction
• 1:19:02
  to it being overvalued, it's now become, you
• 1:19:05
  know. kind of tossed aside. And so I think I'm
• 1:19:08
  still such a big believer in it can actually
• 1:19:10
  make a tremendous difference. As I said, it's
• 1:19:12
  still the start of a conversation. It's not the
• 1:19:14
  end of it. It's not the end all be all. But I
• 1:19:16
  think the ability to be in a room together, you
• 1:19:20
  know, whether it's online or in person and hear
• 1:19:23
  some kind of common content, you know, like we
• 1:19:27
  talk a lot about this idea of, again, back to
• 1:19:30
  having these conversations with maybe your parents
• 1:19:32
  or friends who disagree or something like that.
• 1:19:35
  The best way to have these conversations is with
• 1:19:37
  shared content. The worst way to have them is
• 1:19:41
  just kind of this random ideological way because
• 1:19:44
  it just gets sideways. You're talking about different
• 1:19:46
  things and it just becomes ridiculous. But if
• 1:19:49
  you have this like shared piece of content, you
• 1:19:51
  can actually get to a place where you are able
• 1:19:54
  to like talk about something, you know? And so
• 1:19:58
  I think when. trying to give our people shared
• 1:20:01
  pieces of content, again, whether it's for their
• 1:20:03
  parents or small groups or whatever, then that
• 1:20:06
  actually allows them to ask some good questions,
• 1:20:08
  to grow, all those kinds of things. And I try
• 1:20:11
  to be very like, I don't have all the answers.
• 1:20:13
  This isn't the end all be all. But it's just
• 1:20:16
  kind of where I am currently right now to hope
• 1:20:18
  to frame it in a way that doesn't go back to
• 1:20:21
  the overvaluing. But I still believe in it. And
• 1:20:24
  I like I said earlier, I still believe that like
• 1:20:27
  one great speech can really like change the world.
• 1:20:29
  And like I said, I don't have illusions that
• 1:20:31
  I'm doing that or that I'll ever do that. But
• 1:20:34
  I think there is a piece of it that every time
• 1:20:36
  I walk up to that little table and sit down on
• 1:20:38
  my stool, I think this really matters, you know,
• 1:20:41
  and this could be a moment where it doesn't change
• 1:20:44
  the world, but it's the beginning of changing
• 1:20:47
  someone's life. You know, it's what God uses
• 1:20:49
  to do that because they're this, you know. queer
• 1:20:54
  person who grew up in a space where they were,
• 1:20:57
  you know, condemned and marginalized. And now
• 1:20:59
  they got to hear a sermon about how Sodom and
• 1:21:02
  Gomorrah is not about that at all, you know,
• 1:21:04
  and they're like something clicks and they're
• 1:21:06
  like set free to pursue Jesus fully. Like, and
• 1:21:11
  I get enough of those stories that I don't think
• 1:21:13
  I'll ever stop doing this. Zach Lambert, thank
• 1:21:17
  you for your time, for talking, preaching with
• 1:21:19
  us. It's been a blast. Oh, thanks, Evan. Thanks,
• 1:21:22
  Hannah. This was a gift. This was a blast. Like
• 1:21:26
  I said, I do podcasts all the time for different
• 1:21:29
  things, usually about church or the book or whatever.
• 1:21:32
  But this is so much fun to talk about preaching,
• 1:21:34
  this thing we all get to share and do. So thank
• 1:21:36
  you so much for having me on. Thanks for listening
• 1:21:41
  to our episode with Zach Lambert. We hope you
• 1:21:43
  enjoyed it. To listen to his full sermon or to
• 1:21:46
  find out ways to keep up with Zach and his work,
• 1:21:49
  you can see all that information in our show
• 1:21:51
  notes. And be sure to share and subscribe and
• 1:21:54
  tell your friends if you enjoyed this episode.
• 1:21:56
  Also, you can email us with questions you may
• 1:21:58
  have or recommendations for preachers that you
• 1:22:01
  want to see on here at our email, also in the
• 1:22:04
  show notes. We'll see you again in two weeks.