Latest / Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association / Episode 26: The Danger of Hypocrisy, Christian Conspiracy Theories, Baptists and the Nicene Creed, How Does Love Your Enemies Factor Into Politics? With Dr. Cameron Schweitzer of Gateway Seminary

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Episode 26: The Danger of Hypocrisy, Christian Conspiracy Theories, Baptists and the Nicene Creed, How Does Love Your Enemies Factor Into Politics? With Dr. Cameron Schweitzer of Gateway Seminary · Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association

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Speaker2: Wide-ranging discussion today with Gateway Seminary Bay Area Director Dr.
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Speaker2: Cameron Schweitzer. We're going to talk about how dangerous hypocrisy and Christian
0:10
Speaker2: conspiracy theories can be,
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Speaker2: how loving your enemy factors into politics, how and why you should roast your
0:18
Speaker2: own coffee beans, and America's greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards.
0:23
Speaker2: One theme that kind of weaves its
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Speaker2: way through the whole episode is the sufficiency of Scripture. And as Dr.
0:31
Speaker1: Schweitzer says, Specifically how the sufficiency of Scripture ought to inform
0:36
Speaker1: the way that we do all aspects of ministry. Including politics. Including politics.
0:59
Speaker1: Advice, soul care, and resources that work together to build up your local fellowship
1:03
Speaker1: and the broader kingdom of God.
1:05
Speaker1: Join hosts, Pastor Chris Cole and Dr. Chase Thompson from the Great Commission
1:10
Speaker1: Association, led by Dr. Mike Stewart, as they explore the frontiers of ministry
1:14
Speaker1: and aim for the goal of making every church flourish.
1:17
Speaker2: Hello, everybody, and welcome in to episode number 26 of the Every Church Flourishing podcast.
1:24
Speaker2: Our goal here is to help your church thrive, bear fruit, flourish wherever you
1:29
Speaker2: are. And if you are in the Central California area, really anywhere in California, potentially,
1:34
Speaker2: We want to connect with you. This podcast is part of the Great Commission Association
1:39
Speaker2: Family of Churches, which is a group of SBC churches in California that does
1:44
Speaker2: ministry together and encourages each other.
1:47
Speaker2: And if you're a church leader, you're a church pastor, you're tired of going it alone.
1:51
Speaker2: Hey, you know what? We want to partner with you.
1:54
Speaker2: So contact us through our website, which is gcasbc.org. That's gcasbc.org.
2:04
Speaker2: And tell them the ECF podcast sent you.
2:07
Speaker2: Today, Pastor Christopher Cole and I are going to finish out our interview with
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Speaker2: Gateway Seminary Bay Area Director Dr.
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Speaker2: Cameron Schweitzer, and we're going to talk about a ton of interesting and really
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Speaker2: deep church-related and theology-related topics, and you are going to
2:23
Speaker2: Want to, I think, hang on to the very end where Cameron educates Chris and I
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Speaker2: all about the benefits of roasting your own premium coffee beans.
2:33
Speaker2: And honestly, I can't wait to try the prime rib of coffee after spending pretty
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Speaker2: much every day of my life apparently drinking the bologna or the spam of coffee.
2:45
Speaker2: We're going to pick up the interview with Dr. Schweitzer right in the middle.
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Speaker2: And he's telling us all about the Bay Area Theology Symposium coming up,
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Speaker2: like I said, in San Francisco later this year.
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Speaker2: And it's going to be covering topics like Christian nationalism,
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Speaker2: Leading politically polarized churches, and honestly, it sounds like all sorts
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Speaker2: of controversial things that pastors and church leaders have to deal with.
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Speaker2: So let's jump into the interview.
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Speaker2: So, Cameron, the symposium is going to aim to equip pastors and leaders and whatnot to
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Speaker2: deal with all of the political polarization that we're seeing right now and
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Speaker2: also discuss some really hot button issues at kind of the intersection of politics and theology.
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Speaker0: And would you say those are some of the core theological issues that we need
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Speaker0: to be thinking about? Or would you say there are other theological issues that
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Speaker0: you would say, hey, we've got to really sort of think and engage on those?
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Speaker1: So that's an important ministerial issue, especially in California,
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Speaker1: especially the Bay Area, where you have strong political opinion.
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Speaker1: We, at the seminary, others have learned that a lot of pastors are asking the
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Speaker1: question, how do I lead through these tumultuous political times?
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Speaker1: What do we do with that? What do we do when in our church we have someone who
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Speaker1: wants to advocate Christian nationalism?
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Speaker1: And on the other side, we want someone who wants to overthrow all of the American
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Speaker1: system and try to advocate for communism.
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Speaker1: Like, what do you do with that? How do you lead through that?
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Speaker1: So we felt like we had a ripe opportunity to address a very controversial but
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Speaker1: important subject of how do Baptists in the free church tradition think about
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Speaker1: the relationship of the church and the state and how our theology should inform our political views.
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Speaker1: But to your question, I've thought a lot about what are some of the most important
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Speaker1: pressing issues in theology today.
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Speaker1: And just to name a few, I would say having a clear and robust understanding
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Speaker1: of the sufficiency of Scripture, and specifically how the sufficiency of Scripture
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Speaker1: ought to inform the way that we do
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Speaker1: all aspects of ministry. Including politics. Including politics,
4:49
Speaker1: right? So there's a difference between the necessity of scripture,
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Speaker1: right? The Bible's necessary.
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Speaker1: No one who's an evangelical Bible-affirming person would say the Bible's unnecessary.
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Speaker1: The controversial point comes in is that in our actions and in our ministerial
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Speaker1: actions, are we showing that we believe that the Bible is enough,
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Speaker1: that it's the Bible alone?
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Speaker1: And I'm concerned that a lot of our ministries are showing that we don't necessarily
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Speaker1: believe that the Bible is sufficient.
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Speaker1: So I think having a full-orbed understanding of the doctrine of sufficiency
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Speaker1: and how the Bible applied to all matters of life and practice and ministry is
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Speaker1: sufficient for all we need for life and for godliness.
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Speaker1: I would also say, and Chris and I were talking about this earlier,
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Speaker1: that there is a need for a call to holiness.
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Speaker1: I mean, the pastors in the West can look at the statistics for pornography use
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Speaker1: or divorce or alcoholism, whatever.
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Speaker1: Like we are a church that is not solely focused on holiness like we ought to be.
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Speaker1: Let me put it like this, that I was reading a study recently done by Barna that
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Speaker1: I was in in the last year or so, and who knows how many hundreds or thousands
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Speaker1: of people Barna talked to in the midst of doing this study. But it was essentially
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Speaker1: this, that they were asking the people to whom they were speaking.
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Speaker1: So they were talking to three different groups of people, Christians,
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Speaker1: people who practice non-Christian faith, and people who are atheists or agnostic.
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Speaker1: So they asked the atheists and agnostics and non-Christian faith practitioners a series of questions.
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Speaker1: They asked Christians similar but different questions. And so they asked the
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Speaker1: practitioners of non-Christian faith and the atheist agnostics,
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Speaker1: what's the biggest reason that you don't consider the Christian?
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Speaker1: And do you know what the overwhelming 60 or 70% answer was? Hypocrisy.
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Speaker1: That they don't live out what they say they believe. So that's a matter of holiness,
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Speaker1: discipleship, virtue, what have you.
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Speaker1: Then they asked the Christians a similar question. Why do you think that people
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Speaker1: of non-Christian faiths are not drawn to Christianity or consider Christianity?
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Speaker1: Again, you want to know the overwhelming answer? 60, 70%? Hypocrisy.
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Speaker1: So by our own lips, we admit that we are not living out our faith in such a
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Speaker1: way that it would draw unbelievers.
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Speaker0: It's not winsome.
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Speaker1: It's not winsome. We are not an otherworldly alien exile-like figure journeying
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Speaker1: through earth. And let me put it this way.
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Speaker1: Over the last couple of years, I was asked to design and then teach an online
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Speaker1: apologetics class on the early Christian apologists.
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Speaker1: So this was an early apologetics historical theology class where we are looking
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Speaker1: at early figures like Clement or Justin Martyr, Augustine, things like that.
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Speaker1: Men who wrote the early Christian apologetic works of the first few centuries in Greek and Latin.
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Speaker1: And what's very stunning among all of these apologists is that their most common
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Speaker1: argument for the legitimacy of the Christian faith is, look at the way we live.
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Speaker1: If you look at the way we live, we are not like the rest of you.
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Speaker1: And that even the leaders, people of philosophical training,
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Speaker1: you see some of the ways that they talk about why Christianity is gaining ground.
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Speaker1: And they say, well, they take better care of our wood as an orphan than we do.
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Speaker1: They have a common table, but not a common bed.
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Speaker1: And so that all the apologists recognize, even the opponents of the apologists
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Speaker1: recognize, that the reason the Christian faith was winsome and compelling is
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Speaker1: that they had an ethic that showed that what they believed mattered and made
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Speaker1: a difference in their life.
8:00
Speaker1: And so to me, I see one of the biggest issues facing ministry leaders and the
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Speaker1: church in the West is a lack of serious engagement in the necessity of holiness
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Speaker1: and in the importance of holiness.
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Speaker1: And that we as Protestants who fully affirm the souls of the Reformation sometimes
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Speaker1: don't know what to do with texts like Hebrews where it says,
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Speaker1: and pursue the holiness without which you will not see the Lord.
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Speaker1: And so we struggle as Protestants to what do you do with those conditional statements
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Speaker1: about holiness, which, of course, the Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox church
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Speaker1: takes up and says, see, you say the Bible is sufficient and necessary,
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Speaker1: but what do you do with a text like this?
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Speaker1: And so I really think that we need to have, as individuals, as churches,
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Speaker1: a recognition that we ought to,
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Speaker1: you and I were talking earlier about, a season of repentance,
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Speaker1: renewal, consecration of recognizing as individuals and as a corporate body,
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Speaker1: we are not living out the Christian faith that, like Jesus said, teach them to obey.
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Speaker0: Right. You know, it's interesting what you just said. I'm reflecting as I think
8:57
Speaker0: here. I want to go a little bit maybe off our script or plan here.
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Speaker0: Because you raised something that just I think is so important,
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Speaker0: the idea of the sufficiency of Scripture and how it hits in different angles to the,
9:11
Speaker0: let's say, theologically progressive liberal person that wants to dismiss or
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Speaker0: diminish Scripture and deny that Scripture speaks to certain issues,
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Speaker0: say biblical sexuality, what do we do with homosexuality, and so on, right?
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Speaker0: There are other angles to that, too, because the pragmatist wants to say,
9:32
Speaker0: well, you know, Scripture doesn't tell us how, and it's true,
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Speaker0: there are many things Scripture doesn't tell us how to do, but yet we are going
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Speaker0: to create theological argumentation.
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Speaker0: Or evidentiary sort of, you know, presumptions saying this, and we need to add
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Speaker0: this, this methodological,
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Speaker0: restriction or this methodological progression or tool that we think that we've
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Speaker0: decided has become pragmatically necessary, so we add to the Word of God, or the legalist,
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Speaker0: that adds to the Word of God going beyond Scripture.
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Speaker0: You know, Paul writes in Corinthians, he says, you know, I want to warn you,
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Speaker0: brothers and sisters, to not go beyond what is written, which speaks to the
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Speaker0: issue of the sufficiency of Scripture.
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Speaker0: Do we believe Scripture is sufficient to do that which God intended it to do.
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Speaker0: It's obviously, you know, the Bible is not a book of astrophysics.
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Speaker0: Yeah. It's not a computer coding textbook. So, there are areas that it is not
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Speaker0: pretending to be sufficient for versus life and godliness, right?
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Speaker0: Which is one of the places it speaks very deliberately to its own sufficiency.
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Speaker1: All we need for life and for godliness. Very clear.
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Speaker1: And I would add, for the Christian ministry.
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Speaker0: Yeah.
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Speaker1: For the practice of Christian ministry.
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Speaker0: Okay. And so I just think that that's such a key point for maybe for us just
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Speaker0: to sit with for just a second and just say, as we think about the theological
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Speaker0: issues, what is the importance for a believer to,
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Speaker0: use scripture as the lens through which we view these contemporary issues versus
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Speaker0: the other way that we are often perhaps pragmatically prone to do,
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Speaker0: or experientially prone to do, where we look at a worldview and then we view
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Speaker0: Scripture through that worldview.
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Speaker0: Yeah. Or we have a culture that we've adopted that we then look at Scripture through that culture.
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Speaker0: Or we have a fear or a bias or an insecurity about something, And now we look
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Speaker0: at scripture through that lens of our own insecurity, our own bias,
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Speaker0: and now we're going to examine the word of God through something else.
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Speaker0: How do we teach people to flip that script and teach them to look at,
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Speaker0: the politics through scripture, not the other way around, or to look at,
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Speaker0: hey, how do we handle this not in a culturally biased or inherited way,
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Speaker0: but we look at the Word of God and we let the Word of God speak to all cultures at all times,
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Speaker0: or we let the Word of God address our insecurities and fears rather than being
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Speaker0: driven by those things when it comes to the sufficiency of Scripture.
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Speaker1: What do you think, Chase? I mean, you've not said much. You're a well-trained pastor, scholar.
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Speaker0: I just love throwing these jump balls up there.
12:23
Speaker1: I'm going to let him jump first. Yeah.
12:25
Speaker2: So fortunately, I'm the editor of this podcast. So if what I'm about to say
12:29
Speaker2: is over the top or controversial, boop.
12:32
Speaker2: The only people that hear it is the four of us. I think, Pastor Christopher,
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Speaker2: you are delicately challenging.
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Speaker2: What are the pervasive political attitudes in this country right now,
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Speaker2: which is one among Christians, which is one of pragmatism, that we will support
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Speaker2: this person, this issue, this way.
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Speaker2: Because it's essentially the lesser of two evils.
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Speaker1: Can you define pragmatism for everyone?
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Speaker2: Pragmatism is a very practical approach that sort of often can ignore moral
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Speaker2: dimensions and other things like that, right? Am I missing anything in my definition of pragmatism?
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Speaker1: To just add, pragmatism is a view of truth that says something's true if it works.
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Speaker2: Yes.
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Speaker1: Right, versus saying something's true because it either corresponds,
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Speaker1: in this reality, that's called the correspondence view of truth.
13:24
Speaker1: Like this table has a black tablecloth, right? Well, that statement that,
13:28
Speaker1: you know, does that proposition agree with reality?
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Speaker1: Is this a tablecloth and is it black? Yes, correspondence. There's also a coherence
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Speaker1: view of truth, which is this idea, does this proposition, this statement, does it cohere?
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Speaker1: Does it fit with the rest of your worldview? Does it make sense?
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Speaker1: It's metaphysics and then epistemology.
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Speaker1: But then pragmatism, which is where a lot of Americans lie, is that something's true if it works.
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Speaker1: Yes. That's a significant statement. But of course, if something's true,
13:52
Speaker1: there's a sense in which it will work, right?
13:54
Speaker1: But versus saying, if it works, then it's true.
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Speaker1: And that's how we know truthfulness. And so then that's where you had someone
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Speaker1: like Rick Warren a few years ago when this was being debated on the Southern
14:03
Speaker1: Baptist Convention floor of whether they're going to be disfellowshipped or not.
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Speaker1: And a lot of people were very sad to see Rick act the way he did and say the
14:09
Speaker1: things he did, because essentially he came out and said, look at what Saddleback
14:12
Speaker1: did. Look at the purpose-driven ministry. Look at our numbers.
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Speaker1: How can you say we're in the wrong? Yes. That's a pragmatic statement.
14:19
Speaker1: That's a pragmatic argument that we're right. What we've done is right because
14:23
Speaker1: of the results that we produce. That's pragmatism.
14:26
Speaker1: And like you're saying, Chase, that's what drives a lot of ministerial thinking
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Speaker1: is, do we do this? Well, we'll only do it if it works and if it shows results.
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Speaker1: Is that sort of what I thought you were getting at?
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Speaker2: Absolutely, yes. And it drives a lot of Christian political thinking right now
14:43
Speaker2: in the way we vote, and more than the way we vote, the way we advocate.
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Speaker2: And I think that's sort of along the lines of what you're talking about is what
14:52
Speaker2: we see now, at least what I'm seeing, I can speak for myself,
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Speaker2: is Christians advocating for things out of a sense of pragmatism that
15:02
Speaker2: Is hypocritical in many ways to what the Word of God says and what we believe.
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Speaker2: And I think we're going to see a pretty astounding harvest of that in the next 20 or so years.
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Speaker2: We had the moral majority rise up in the 80s and in many ways advocated for
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Speaker2: some good things, some pragmatic things.
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Speaker2: And then it turned out that many of them were hypocrites. And
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Speaker2: we've seen since the 80s and 90s a tremendous slide in Christian adherence,
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Speaker2: statistically, Barna, Lifeway, etc., in the United States of America.
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Speaker2: And I'm not necessarily saying that's the fault of the moral majority,
15:46
Speaker2: but when I grew up, Christians were not so much hated for their political beliefs,
15:52
Speaker2: their political stances, their moral beliefs, their moral stances.
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Speaker2: But yes, we talked about hypocrisy and pharisaicalism, but I feel like it's
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Speaker2: exponentially greater now because too many Christians have bought into especially
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Speaker2: political pragmatism, but other kinds of pragmatism as well, and not a
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Speaker2: sola scriptura, Bible-only driven worldview that informs of our actions.
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Speaker1: Can I answer your question now, Chris? Sure, go for it. So to go to your question,
16:22
Speaker1: Chris, about how do we help Christians, again, address this issue of how do
16:25
Speaker1: I think biblically first rather than culturally or politically or sociologically
16:29
Speaker1: or psychologically first?
16:30
Speaker1: So the first thing to recognize is that in this process, we have to both affirm
16:35
Speaker1: in ourselves and recognize and then help others to affirm and recognize that
16:38
Speaker1: we all have worldviews and presuppositions through which we read the scriptures.
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Speaker1: So it is impossible to have a naked view of the Bible outside of your own beliefs,
16:47
Speaker1: outside of your own cultural baggage and experience.
16:50
Speaker1: The way that I put it when I teach intuitive philosophy is that imagine that
16:54
Speaker1: all of us are born with glasses on. Now I don't know about the two of you or
16:58
Speaker1: If you have contacts, how blind you might be,
17:00
Speaker1: without your glasses i'm so you're quite blind i'm okay it's my left eye that's
17:04
Speaker1: pretty bad if i if my right eye went blind i'd be like essentially blank my
17:07
Speaker1: left eye is terrible my right eye is 20 20 but just imagine that all of us are
17:11
Speaker1: born functionally blind but that then we have on upon our face
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Speaker1: fuse a set of glasses that then give us 20 20 vision of the world it's like
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Speaker1: how a fish doesn't know it's wet because it's always been in the water in the
17:22
Speaker1: same way we all have worldviews these glasses that have been fused to our face
17:26
Speaker1: that have been informed and shaped by who we were born to?
17:30
Speaker1: Who are our parents? What culture do we find ourselves? What time do we find
17:34
Speaker1: ourselves in? What kind of socioeconomic status do I have? What race was I born into?
17:39
Speaker1: What religion was I brought up in? What kind of experiences did I have as a
17:42
Speaker1: child, traumatic or good or otherwise?
17:44
Speaker1: And all of these form the glasses that we have on our face that then shape and
17:49
Speaker1: inform and color the way we view the world so that it's impossible to have a
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Speaker1: presuppositionalist or a naked worldview view of the world.
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Speaker1: It's fundamentally impossible. So we have to be aware that we all have a framework,
18:00
Speaker1: a grid through which we view and interpret and understand the world.
18:06
Speaker1: And what's really helpful to begin to understand what your worldview is,
18:10
Speaker1: is you want to then talk to people who don't share your world.
18:14
Speaker1: You want to befriend and have conversations with people who are from different
18:17
Speaker1: races or different socioeconomic backgrounds or different countries.
18:21
Speaker1: And from my own experience, This is where I really began to see some of my worldview,
18:26
Speaker1: some of my challenges that I didn't know I had until I married into an Egyptian family.
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Speaker1: Then I began to see some of my own cultural perspectives, my own cultural baggage,
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Speaker1: my own ways of viewing the world that I as a Christian had
18:37
Speaker1: unjustifiedly viewed as the biblical way of doing something or the biblical
18:42
Speaker1: way of viewing something, which then I came to recognize that that's a cultural
18:45
Speaker1: way of understanding that biblical truth. But there are other cultural ways
18:49
Speaker1: of understanding that given biblical practice or Christian historical practice.
18:53
Speaker1: So it's very important to befriend and talk to others who are from a different
18:57
Speaker1: community, a different race, a different country to begin to helpfully see the
19:02
Speaker1: kinds of glasses you have on your face. It's also very important,
19:05
Speaker1: as C.S. Lewis would commend to us, to read old books.
19:08
Speaker1: For every new book you read, you should read an old one, or at least one to
19:11
Speaker1: every three, because what's very helpful is to then listen to the witness of history
19:17
Speaker1: and to view how someone like an Augustine in the 4th and 5th century conceived
19:21
Speaker1: of the Christian faith, or to read of a
19:24
Speaker1: Eastern Orthodox father from the 12th century, from the Byzantine Empire,
19:28
Speaker1: to read Aquinas, to read any number of theologians or biblical scholars you
19:33
Speaker1: could think about over the last few centuries, to then begin to help you,
19:37
Speaker1: they who are from a different historical
19:39
Speaker1: setting, to then helpfully see your own historical setting.
19:43
Speaker1: And then you can begin to see what's relative, what can change,
19:46
Speaker1: and then what's true and endures. As one of my philosophy professors used to
19:49
Speaker1: say in college to tangentially bring it to this idea, what is true will endure,
19:54
Speaker1: while what is false will recur. He said bad ideas recur, good ideas endure.
19:58
Speaker1: And so reading history and people from different stages of history will help
20:02
Speaker1: you to see those things of what's relevant in all times and all places and what's
20:07
Speaker1: irrelevant in different times and in different cultures.
20:09
Speaker1: So we have to do better at Christian worldview thinking, both in our own lives
20:13
Speaker1: and in the lives of the people that we're leading.
20:15
Speaker1: And then once we begin to have a sense of what our own cultural perspectives are,
20:19
Speaker1: our personal perspectives are, knowing that we can never view the Bible or view
20:23
Speaker1: our lives, ourselves outside of those perspectives, then you humbly and contritely,
20:27
Speaker1: and as best you can, begin to read the Bible to try to figure out what do
20:31
Speaker1: I, what am I, what do I think the Bible's saying?
20:34
Speaker1: And this then goes to your question,
20:35
Speaker1: is we need to train ourselves and our people to go to the Bible first.
20:38
Speaker1: Like you and I were talking about earlier with people on the mission field,
20:41
Speaker1: with a new Christian from a Hindu background or Muslim background,
20:43
Speaker1: what's the first thing they tell them to do?
20:44
Speaker1: Read your Bible. Read it every day. Read it for at least five minutes,
20:47
Speaker1: and then 10 minutes, And then in an hour, like listen to it when you drive,
20:50
Speaker1: you have to help yourself and your people have a thoroughgoing knowledge of
20:55
Speaker1: the Bible so that they know it from front to back.
20:57
Speaker1: They know its story. They know its theology. They know its characters.
21:00
Speaker1: They know its ethical commands.
21:01
Speaker1: And once they have a full orbed understanding of the biblical worldview,
21:05
Speaker1: its doctrines, its ethics,
21:08
Speaker1: Then they can begin to think through how the Bible informs how they ought to
21:12
Speaker1: think about a given topic or how they ought to approach a given decision.
21:15
Speaker1: What's biblical worldview thinking?
21:17
Speaker1: So then this is where I would provide a framework for what I call Christian
21:20
Speaker1: decision-making, or you can call it Christian thinking.
21:23
Speaker1: You want to have this grid of, does the Bible speak to this?
21:27
Speaker1: And if it does, then you have your answer. Does the Bible strictly speak against it?
21:31
Speaker1: Then you have your answer, right? And then you'd want to go,
21:33
Speaker1: is there a theological argument I can make from the scriptures that help me
21:37
Speaker1: think through this given issue?
21:39
Speaker1: Is there a historical tradition that will help me think through this issue,
21:43
Speaker1: like the Protestant tradition or the greater traditions of the creeds that goes
21:46
Speaker1: all the way back to the 4th century. If you're thinking about a decision you
21:49
Speaker1: have to make, you want to then think through, okay, what's called the...
21:52
Speaker1: The conscience principle, like, is my going against this is going to afflict
21:55
Speaker1: my conscience? As Martin Luther said, what doesn't proceed from faith is sin.
21:58
Speaker1: It's neither good nor right to go against your conscience. We've got to think
22:00
Speaker1: about that. We then got to think about the Christian witness principle.
22:03
Speaker1: How am I believing this thing or acting out this decision? How does that affect
22:07
Speaker1: the way that my non-Christian neighbors or friends or coworkers or family members
22:11
Speaker1: will think about my Christian faith?
22:12
Speaker1: Am I harming my Christian faith? And then you also want to think about the weaker
22:15
Speaker1: brother principle. Am I doing this particular thing? Am I harming the weaker
22:18
Speaker1: brother's conscience? And if so, then don't do it.
22:21
Speaker1: So I hope that helps. Like, that's a framework to help people think through
22:26
Speaker1: biblically how they should think about given topics, how they should approach given decisions.
22:30
Speaker0: Yeah, and I think that that's sort of, you know, key to really understanding
22:35
Speaker0: when we talk about the sufficiency of Scripture, we are not saying that my lenses
22:40
Speaker0: that I was born with are sufficient.
22:42
Speaker1: That's right.
22:43
Speaker0: In fact, we're saying we practice an epistemological humility that we are actually
22:48
Speaker0: saying it is very likely that my frame is not perfect.
22:53
Speaker0: I love one of the early Baptist confessions, 1644, the preamble to the 1644
23:00
Speaker0: London Baptist confession, if my memory is correct, is that there is a preamble
23:05
Speaker0: statement that our Baptist forefathers said.
23:08
Speaker0: They said, because this is not scripture, it must by necessity contain error,
23:15
Speaker0: which I just think get such an astonishing level of humility, right?
23:19
Speaker0: They were like, that does not negate that this is from our best minds,
23:23
Speaker0: our best understanding.
23:24
Speaker0: But they started with the assumption that while Scripture is sufficient, and it
23:31
Speaker0: is not just sufficient, it's sufficiently revealed and applied by the Holy Spirit
23:36
Speaker0: in living and active ways, the humility that is required for us is to say,
23:41
Speaker0: my frame that I came out of is likely insufficient.
23:46
Speaker0: And my worldview is likely insufficient, and therefore, I need to be cautious
23:51
Speaker0: about being hyper-dogmatic about anything that Scripture is not explicitly clear
23:56
Speaker0: on, so that I'm not either adding to or taking away from the Word of God.
24:00
Speaker0: And trying to trust in the sufficiency of Scripture means that I am not trusting
24:05
Speaker0: in the sufficiency of Augustine, or Lutheran, or my 21st century Western
24:11
Speaker0: American context and how that shapes our understanding of the sufficiency of
24:16
Speaker0: Scripture, how we make decisions and apply it in the framework that you were
24:20
Speaker0: talking about, which I think was very, very helpful. But we're off topic probably.
24:25
Speaker2: Let me add one more thing to the off topic part, because Cameron said something
24:28
Speaker2: a few minutes ago that I think is really important.
24:31
Speaker2: Whenever I get to church on Sunday morning, one of the first things I go do
24:35
Speaker2: is find my wife to evaluate usually my collar or my shoulder.
24:40
Speaker2: I have a wounded shoulder, and I can't always fix my collar properly,
24:44
Speaker2: so she can see it and fix it.
24:47
Speaker2: And you were talking about the worldview lens we have. And what I'm about to
24:51
Speaker2: say is not to say we should take off our biblical worldview and live out of other worldviews, but
24:58
Speaker2: Here's an easy practice that I've adopted over the past, I don't know, 15, 20 years.
25:03
Speaker2: I have certain friends on Facebook that are, one of them is an atheist named Robert.
25:09
Speaker2: One of them is a progressive female pastor named Charlotte. I've never met either
25:13
Speaker2: of these people in my life. I vehemently disagree with their point of view on
25:19
Speaker2: sports, theology, politics.
25:22
Speaker0: I love how sports gets in there.
25:24
Speaker2: Well, yeah, Robert is a Clemson-Auburn fan, so boo his.
25:28
Speaker2: But I read his posts all the time because he's a highly intelligent professor,
25:32
Speaker2: a thoughtful person who is an atheist and can't stand Christians by and large.
25:39
Speaker2: And he has really sound reasons sometimes for not liking Christians,
25:46
Speaker2: most of which boil down to hypocrisy.
25:48
Speaker2: And as a pastor of Christians, I want to read what progressive people who completely
25:54
Speaker2: dismiss the Bible say about biblical Christians.
25:57
Speaker2: I want to read what atheists who
26:01
Speaker2: don't believe in God and have negative experiences with Christians all the time,
26:05
Speaker2: I want to read and understand where they're coming from, not so I can adopt their
26:11
Speaker2: glasses, their lens, so that I can help equip our people, our church members—
26:17
Speaker2: to be good newsers, to bring the good news to them, to understand what these
26:22
Speaker2: people are thinking and living.
26:24
Speaker2: And quite frankly, so many Christians, not in the Bay Area, but often in the
26:29
Speaker2: South and other places, we live in a bubble of Christianity.
26:33
Speaker2: And yes, we're to be in the world, but not of the world, but we don't understand
26:38
Speaker2: the world, and therefore we don't understand the mission field.
26:41
Speaker2: And we live too much in our glasses and not enough in the missional call of the scripture.
26:49
Speaker1: Yeah, yeah. I agree. And this is where sometimes, as we were talking earlier,
26:53
Speaker1: Chris, about the frustrations we have as California Southern Baptists with what
26:56
Speaker1: we see go on in the larger convention or people who come from not California.
27:00
Speaker1: Our experience of the convention of Southern Baptist life is very different out here.
27:04
Speaker1: And to your question earlier about what are some of the most important theological
27:07
Speaker1: issues facing us today, I think this is one of them.
27:09
Speaker1: That there is an inaccurate and very passionate conflation of cultural Christianity
27:16
Speaker1: with biblical truth, and that where people are conflating their interpretation
27:20
Speaker1: of a text with the inerrancy of that.
27:23
Speaker1: They think the text means this, and then that this ends up becoming the inerrant truth.
27:28
Speaker1: And so that therefore to disagree with that is then to be a heretic,
27:32
Speaker1: or to be a liberal Christian, or to be whatever, you know, apostatized word
27:36
Speaker1: you want to put in there, a negative, you know, bugaboo word.
27:39
Speaker1: And that to me is such a significant issue as I'm looking around at ministries,
27:43
Speaker1: I don't name them on the air, but like ministries I think of that have made
27:46
Speaker1: what I call theological triage drift, right? You've heard of like first-tier,
27:50
Speaker1: second-tier, third-tier issues, where I'm seeing people take what are second
27:53
Speaker1: and third-tier issues, and they kind of float up.
27:55
Speaker1: To second become one and a half or one, or three become two and a half or two,
27:59
Speaker1: and you're like, what is going on here?
28:01
Speaker1: And I'll put it this way. Marrying into an Egyptian family helped me to see
28:05
Speaker1: that the strong argument for cessationism,
28:09
Speaker1: I usually find tied to Western European or English, tight-lipped,
28:13
Speaker1: socially appropriate ways of viewing the world.
28:16
Speaker1: And I just have to ask someone who is a strong cessationist,
28:20
Speaker1: who has very emotionless experiences in church, like, when was the last time you danced?
28:25
Speaker1: I mean, if you're a pastor who's in his 50s or 60s, did you joyfully dance at
28:28
Speaker1: your daughter's? I've been to a wedding in the past where there was no dancing.
28:31
Speaker1: And so to me, there are just things
28:34
Speaker1: that I've come to realize that people believe, and I was one of them.
28:36
Speaker1: It's like, well, this is a biblical view. It's not cultural, it's biblical.
28:39
Speaker1: It's like, it's cultural. And I wish there was more, like you said,
28:42
Speaker1: intellectual humility to recognize where the text is the text and my interpretation
28:46
Speaker1: of the text is an interpretation of the text.
28:48
Speaker1: And we have to be more charitable in recognizing those different interpretations
28:52
Speaker1: and then being more open to correction from history
28:55
Speaker1: or from other cultures that are not Western or white, that have something important
28:59
Speaker1: and profound to say about the biblical view of.
29:03
Speaker1: So I think that's a significant issue in Western Christianity today.
29:06
Speaker0: Well, I know we're drawing this thread out, but that triggered a thought in
29:09
Speaker0: my mind, which is, what happens when we take what is clearly explicit and sufficient in Scripture—,
29:17
Speaker0: as the way of being like Jesus, and we dismiss or diminish it because we have
29:24
Speaker0: adopted one of these other worldview frameworks. Let me give you a practical
29:29
Speaker0: example of this last night, right?
29:31
Speaker0: Scripture is very clear. Are we to love our neighbors as ourselves?
29:36
Speaker0: Are we Ephesians chapter four? We are to let no unwholesome word proceed from
29:41
Speaker0: our mouth, but only such word as is good for edification according to the need
29:46
Speaker0: of the moment that it may do what? That it may give grace to those who hear, right?
29:51
Speaker0: Those are clearly explicit. Or Galatians chapter 5, what is the fruit of the Spirit?
29:56
Speaker0: Love, joy, peace, patience. Paul defines love in 1 Corinthians chapter 13,
30:01
Speaker0: love is patient, love is kind, right?
30:03
Speaker0: We all know those things inherent, but just within the last 48 hours,
30:07
Speaker0: a gentleman stood on a national stage outside the White House,
30:11
Speaker0: having engaged in martial combat, and then stood up and said,
30:15
Speaker0: Jesus Christ is Lord, and then immediately derided a former president's spouse as a man.
30:22
Speaker0: So there is a worldview that allows that, that says that's okay.
30:27
Speaker0: I can say Jesus Christ is Lord and publicly humiliate and say something that
30:32
Speaker0: is fundamentally just not true in order to mock or deride someone that I don't
30:37
Speaker0: agree with politically.
30:39
Speaker0: And the way of somehow being okay with saying, I believe scripture is sufficient.
30:45
Speaker0: I believe Jesus Christ is Lord. I believe these things, but I don't have to
30:49
Speaker0: be loving and kind and patient.
30:52
Speaker0: To me, I don't understand your view of sufficiency of scripture because Jesus
30:58
Speaker0: said it very clearly. You're to love your enemies.
31:01
Speaker0: So, even if you do disagree with this person politically, you may hold very
31:05
Speaker0: strong different oppositional views.
31:08
Speaker0: How could that be justified as being part of the way of Jesus Christ?
31:13
Speaker0: And I think that destroys our witness. It makes our witness not compelling.
31:18
Speaker0: Of course. And I think it actually diminishes the sufficiency of Scripture because
31:23
Speaker0: those people then turn around and say Scripture is sufficient. Yeah.
31:27
Speaker2: We've got to do an episode, speaking of what you said. we got to do an episode
31:31
Speaker2: or two or three on Christian conspiracy theories. Because if you guys spend
31:35
Speaker2: any amount of time on social media...
31:37
Speaker0: This is Chase's world, man. He loves this.
31:38
Speaker2: Dude, there are... People act like they are plugged in and know the UFC fighter
31:44
Speaker2: you're talking about. He's sure of what he said.
31:46
Speaker2: You don't know, buddy. You don't... I mean, that's just insane.
31:50
Speaker2: And it aggravates me to no end that we proclaim Christ as the way,
31:55
Speaker2: the truth, and the life and the only way of salvation out of one mouth.
31:58
Speaker2: And then with great confidence say, the government is killing us via chemtrails.
32:06
Speaker2: And look, I'm sure some of those conspiracy theories are true.
32:11
Speaker2: I've studied the history of conspiracy theories. Some of them will end up being
32:14
Speaker2: true. But we know the Word of God is true. And to spout off all this stuff that
32:18
Speaker2: has, I don't know, a 4% chance of being truth and combine it with your Christian witness—
32:24
Speaker2: That's what grinds my gears. Yeah, I bet.
32:26
Speaker1: It's very frustrating.
32:28
Speaker0: Well, Chase, we should take this back to where we kind of wanted this conversation.
32:30
Speaker2: Let's be a little more vanilla and traditional. Let's talk a little bit about the Nicene Creed.
32:35
Speaker2: I think what happened is Cameron got us excited. Got us riled up.
32:39
Speaker0: Riled up. Riled up. Love it.
32:42
Speaker2: The upcoming Bay Area Theology Symposium.
32:45
Speaker2: That's right. The last one that happened in 2025, which I did not attend, but I attended online.
32:51
Speaker2: I know I watched the YouTube videos, was slightly less controversial,
32:55
Speaker2: I think, slightly less likely to result in violence. But it was around a very
33:00
Speaker2: significant topic, which is the Nicene Creed.
33:05
Speaker2: And so tell us a little bit about the 2025 Bay Area Theology Symposium.
33:10
Speaker2: And why was the Nicene Creed, this statement of faith from almost 17,
33:16
Speaker2: well, no, 17... 70 years ago.
33:17
Speaker1: 70 years ago. 1701.
33:18
Speaker2: 1701, yeah. Why was this so important? Why have a symposium on this statement of faith?
33:24
Speaker1: Yeah, so two things. So one is like an anniversary, and well,
33:28
Speaker1: not like an anniversary.
33:29
Speaker1: One reason was the anniversary, and two was the contextual controversy.
33:32
Speaker1: So one, last year was the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed.
33:35
Speaker1: So if there's ever a time to talk about it, last year was the time to talk.
33:38
Speaker1: And there was conferences all over America, all over the world,
33:40
Speaker1: on the enduring relevance of the Nicene Creed.
33:42
Speaker1: And then secondly was the contextual
33:44
Speaker1: situation in the Southern Baptist Convention over the last few years.
33:46
Speaker1: There's been debate as to what extent, if at all, we are Nicene-affirming Christians
33:51
Speaker1: as Southern Baptists, and to what extent, if at all, we can add the Nicene Creed
33:55
Speaker1: or the Nicene Constantinoplean Creed as an addendum or as a part of the Southern
34:00
Speaker1: Baptist Faith and Message 2000.
34:01
Speaker1: And it's interesting that one of the scholars who is spearheading that effort
34:05
Speaker1: is now a theologian at not a Southern Baptist seminary college anymore.
34:09
Speaker1: I'll just put it that way.
34:10
Speaker2: That is an interesting story.
34:11
Speaker1: It is an interesting story.
34:13
Speaker0: But they could do that research offline.
34:15
Speaker1: They could do that research offline as to who I'm speaking about.
34:17
Speaker2: And not a fan of the SBC.
34:20
Speaker1: Not a fan of the SBC anymore. They're saying that we are nicene denying,
34:23
Speaker1: which as I say, it's the introduction to the book that's coming out from that conference.
34:26
Speaker1: Any accusation that Southern Baptists are functionally or practically denying
34:31
Speaker1: nicene creed is just asinine. It has no basis in reality or in the creed of our denomination.
34:39
Speaker1: You would have zero luck going to the convention hall of the Southern Baptist
34:43
Speaker1: Convention annual meeting, going around with a hot mic, asking pastors about,
34:48
Speaker1: they may not even know the Nicene Creed itself, but you just ask them the doctrinal
34:51
Speaker1: statements of what the creed affirms, they would totally affirm it.
34:53
Speaker1: Because if they couldn't affirm it, then of course we would say,
34:54
Speaker1: if you don't believe that Jesus is the son of God, you can't be in our convention.
34:58
Speaker1: So anyways, there was over the last few years, significant controversy as to
35:02
Speaker1: whether or not Southern Baptists can affirm the Nicene Creed, or are we creedal at all?
35:06
Speaker1: And to what extent ought we to be creedal? And so with that controversy roiling
35:10
Speaker1: last summer, I just felt sort of like what God said to Isaiah,
35:13
Speaker1: here I am sent, or Isaiah said to God, here I am, send me.
35:15
Speaker1: And did you not find yourself appointed for a time such as this?
35:18
Speaker1: And I looked around and said, well, I want to call together some of my friends
35:21
Speaker1: and colleagues to address this question in California from a Baptistic perspective
35:25
Speaker1: of, can we still affirm and champion the thought of the Nicene Creed in the
35:30
Speaker1: 21st century for Baptists who live and do ministry
35:34
Speaker1: And believe the things they do in California in the 21st century?
35:37
Speaker1: And Because the truths of the creed are biblical.
35:41
Speaker1: They're just put in a way that's helpful and beautiful. It's true and it's beautiful.
35:44
Speaker1: And so that, and it's biblical. So then of course we want to champion.
35:47
Speaker1: And we live in the stream and the shadow, so to speak, of the great truths that
35:51
Speaker1: that creed, that those men put together 1700 years ago, that we are Christians
35:55
Speaker1: and not Arians or Jehovah's Witness or Mormons.
35:59
Speaker1: Because we believe that the Son is not of similar substance to the Father,
36:03
Speaker1: but of the same substance of the Father.
36:05
Speaker1: He is true God from true God, light from light, true God from true God,
36:08
Speaker1: even though as he became incarnate and became man for us and for our salvation.
36:12
Speaker1: And so we wanted to spend some time joyfully reflecting on how the theology
36:17
Speaker1: of the Nicene Creed, which is biblical theology, has clear roots in the scripture
36:21
Speaker1: and ought to inform the way Baptists think about particular theological issues.
36:25
Speaker1: And so we had a few people address those topics. And then we also had folks
36:28
Speaker1: like James Westbrook or Keith Booth address questions like, how does the creed
36:32
Speaker1: shape the way we think about preaching or church planting?
36:36
Speaker1: Or Chris Wozniacki from LA addressed the question, how does the creed shape
36:39
Speaker1: the practice of youth ministry?
36:41
Speaker1: And so we came away with the book that's going to now be called True God from
36:46
Speaker1: True God, a Baptist Celebration of the Nicene, or a California Baptist Celebration
36:49
Speaker1: of the Nicene Creed, which will come out next year.
36:51
Speaker1: For those who couldn't attend the conference or watch this stuff on YouTube,
36:54
Speaker1: which will be up soon, read the book.
36:56
Speaker1: And what we're showing is that Baptists can affirm the great tradition because it's biblical.
37:00
Speaker1: And it's still as relevant today because we have people who are proto-Aryans
37:06
Speaker1: living in our midst today who deny the full deity of the Son of God.
37:10
Speaker1: And that's extremely significant.
37:12
Speaker0: So to that end, let's just quickly, if you were trying to summarize this man-on-the-street
37:17
Speaker0: style to someone that is a Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon or even a modalist,
37:24
Speaker0: Yeah. Modalism's quite— Modalism, Patrick.
37:26
Speaker1: That's modalism, Patrick. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:29
Speaker0: So we had a lot of modalism out there, right?
37:32
Speaker0: So how does the Nicene Creed speak to and remind us of the great scriptural
37:39
Speaker0: truths that would contradict the theological positions of these groups?
37:44
Speaker1: Yeah, I would just say, read it. It was written in such a way to be memorized.
37:49
Speaker1: And were that more churches said this every week or once a month and memorized it.
37:54
Speaker1: Because it was the grid, to talk about those glasses, it was the grid through
37:58
Speaker1: which early Christians were discipled and trained to view the world, to view the scriptures.
38:02
Speaker1: It was in the box that allowed them to say, well, given tough passages, can't mean that.
38:08
Speaker1: That like when the scriptures say the firstborn of creation,
38:11
Speaker1: well, it can't mean what the Arians think it means. It has to mean something.
38:14
Speaker1: And so I honestly, if I was talking to one of them on the street,
38:17
Speaker1: I would just probably get out and just read it with them.
38:20
Speaker1: So just read this and let's talk about it. And then I'd take them to a few passages
38:23
Speaker1: in the Bible that affirm these very things.
38:26
Speaker1: I'll just put it this way, that there's not only proof text,
38:29
Speaker1: but as you and I were talking about earlier over lunch, there's a story of the
38:31
Speaker1: scripture. there are stories in scripture that implicitly convey theology.
38:36
Speaker1: And beyond, you know, it was the seven, eight, or nine theos statements of the
38:40
Speaker1: New Testament that ascribe the word theos to Jesus Christ or the Son of God.
38:44
Speaker1: There are just stories all over the New Testament, all through even the synoptic
38:47
Speaker1: gospels that show that Jesus of Nazareth was both true God and true man.
38:52
Speaker1: And the Sunday of the Nicene Creed Conference, so the day after at my church
38:56
Speaker1: in Union City, I preached a sermon, which I called a Nicaean sermon,
39:00
Speaker1: where I was showing from the scriptures how what you could call the logic of Nicaea
39:06
Speaker1: was forced upon the fathers because of the logic of the New Testament.
39:11
Speaker1: And if you want to listen to this sermon, it's up on YouTube through Redeemer
39:15
Speaker1: Church of Union City's YouTube page, or it's going to end up living as one of
39:19
Speaker1: the appendices in the book coming out next year.
39:21
Speaker1: So it's called a sample sermon that I put into the book to be helpful.
39:25
Speaker1: But in the story of Jesus stealing of the storm, as I highlight in the sermon,
39:29
Speaker1: that story highlights that Jesus of Nazareth was true God and true man.
39:33
Speaker1: Because he was so tired as a man that he fell asleep and was so asleep that
39:37
Speaker1: he slept through a fierce storm that was causing professional fishermen to fear
39:42
Speaker1: for their lives. Yes. So that's...
39:45
Speaker1: Truly a tired man. And as we know from the scriptures, God does not sleep.
39:49
Speaker1: So Jesus as man slept, truly man. But then he arose from his frightened followers.
39:55
Speaker1: And what did he do? He spoke a word and stilled the storm. And then the text
39:59
Speaker1: highlights that the men were exceedingly more afraid.
40:03
Speaker1: Why? Because what's more scary than a storm that can take your life?
40:06
Speaker1: The man who stands up and stills that scary storm, because he's then more powerful
40:10
Speaker1: than the storm. He's the Lord of the storm.
40:12
Speaker1: So that even though that text doesn't say, and the man who is true man and true
40:17
Speaker1: God got in the boat, it's interesting that in Mark it highlights,
40:20
Speaker1: he went into the boat just as he was.
40:22
Speaker1: And Mark alone highlights that. Well, why is that? Because there wasn't anything
40:26
Speaker1: particularly special about Jesus of Nazareth when he left the teaching ministry
40:30
Speaker1: to then get into the boat to go to the other side.
40:31
Speaker0: He didn't put on a cape.
40:32
Speaker1: Didn't put on a cape. He didn't start to gleam gold or to radiate anything special.
40:36
Speaker1: He was just a normal looking man, just as he was. Tired from a full day of projecting
40:41
Speaker1: his voice to hundreds or thousands of people listening to his teaching.
40:45
Speaker1: That man, just as he was, got into a boat in the middle of a storm,
40:48
Speaker1: stood up, stilled the storm.
40:50
Speaker0: I love the fact that Jesus just took it.
40:51
Speaker1: And he was so tired. And that's why one of my former professors said to young
40:56
Speaker1: men who are so inclined to think they're holy because they sleep less and work
40:59
Speaker1: more. He said, sometimes the holiest thing you can do is take a nap and trust
41:02
Speaker1: in God because he neither sleeps nor slumbers.
41:05
Speaker1: But anyways, in that story, then that man, true man, stands up and shows he's
41:08
Speaker1: true God because he calms the storm. And as we know throughout the Old Testament,
41:11
Speaker1: it's only the true God who can calm the elements of the earth.
41:13
Speaker1: So that story presses upon the readers the logic of the Nicene Constantinoplean
41:19
Speaker1: Creed, which says he is true God from true God and true man,
41:22
Speaker1: who for us and for us on salvation came down and incarnated from heaven.
41:25
Speaker1: So that's how I would help someone think through that issue.
41:28
Speaker1: There's the proof text you can go to, but then there's just stories all throughout
41:31
Speaker1: the New Testament that Jesus of Nazareth does things that show he is truly man
41:35
Speaker1: and shows that he's truly God-made.
41:37
Speaker2: Do you want to say anything about Edwards before we get to coffee?
41:39
Speaker1: Wow. Yeah. So you brought me on this podcast as a quote unquote Edwards scholar.
41:43
Speaker2: Yeah. Well, we're going to have to have you back again. This was our trick to get you to come back.
41:47
Speaker1: Okay, good. Yeah. I'm an Edwards aficionado. I'm a novice who's always trying
41:51
Speaker1: to grow in my knowledge of Edwards. But yes, Edwards is my dead mentor.
41:54
Speaker1: He's my dead friend. I do believe that he's America's greatest theologian.
41:58
Speaker1: And it's important for people to recognize that pre-Civil War,
42:02
Speaker1: Jonathan Edwards is one of the most, if not the most studied American and historical
42:06
Speaker1: figure, like in terms of secondary literature written on Edwards.
42:09
Speaker1: More than Washington, just as much, if not more than Lincoln,
42:12
Speaker1: it's amazing the ocean of literature that exists on Jonathan Edwards.
42:16
Speaker1: So he is, for good reason, America's Augustine, because who else can write works
42:20
Speaker1: like Freedom of the Will, but then also write something like The Nature of True Virtue,
42:23
Speaker1: or The Life and Ministry of David Brainerd, or Religious Affections,
42:27
Speaker1: or Preach Sermons like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,
42:29
Speaker1: or Heaven is a World of Love.
42:31
Speaker1: I mean, he has an unparalleled generational
42:35
Speaker1: trans, like excellent mind, like luminescent. I mean, one of the top 10,
42:39
Speaker1: if not top five minds in the history of the Christian church.
42:42
Speaker1: And he was America's greatest theologian, both because of what he produced,
42:45
Speaker1: but that also in his disciples, how they affected the founding of the American
42:49
Speaker1: nation in the new divinity and then other strands of the Edwardsian thought.
42:54
Speaker1: So, I mean, he is America's Augustine.
42:57
Speaker0: All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Edwards has, let's say, social limitations,
43:01
Speaker0: social relational limitations, great theological mind. We will have to have you back for that.
43:07
Speaker1: Talk about Edwards, yeah.
43:08
Speaker0: But we know that you have many social things that you like to do,
43:13
Speaker0: and we kind of want to just end with that. We know that one of your passions is roasting coffee.
43:19
Speaker1: That's true.
43:20
Speaker0: So tell us, what do you like to roast and why, and what drew you to roasting coffee?
43:27
Speaker2: And what does it look like? Yeah, I'll talk about that process.
43:29
Speaker2: How are we roasting that?
43:30
Speaker1: Yeah, so let me just put it like this. Assume you grew up in a house,
43:34
Speaker1: where you were poor or really poor and your experience, you never went out to eat.
43:39
Speaker1: And because you were so poor, you had to live on food stamps or WIC or what
43:43
Speaker1: have you. And your only experience of meat was bologna or spam. Okay.
43:48
Speaker1: And then let's say one day a friend of you, a friend of yours,
43:51
Speaker1: you're in college is like, Hey, I know you grew up like this.
43:53
Speaker1: I want to treat you. And they take you to a prime steakhouse,
43:57
Speaker1: Fleming's name, your prime steakhouse, whatever. And you sit down to have your
44:00
Speaker1: first ribeye steak and you'd say, oh my, this is what meat is.
44:04
Speaker1: What I had before wasn't meat. Okay.
44:06
Speaker1: And so that's how I described coffee. Like really good coffee.
44:09
Speaker1: If you've only been drinking Folgers or Yubon or Keurig coffee,
44:15
Speaker1: that is the bologna of coffee. Okay.
44:18
Speaker1: It's coffee adjacent. It is to meet what bologna and spam is to meet.
44:22
Speaker1: Your bologna does have a first name though. Sorry. I had that jingle in my head.
44:26
Speaker1: So the first time I was introduced to really good what's now called third wave
44:30
Speaker1: coffee i just thought this is what coffee tastes like
44:33
Speaker1: And anytime I've had someone over who drinks a cup of my roasted coffee ground
44:38
Speaker1: and prepared correctly, I've had them ask like, did you put something in this?
44:41
Speaker1: Like, is this coffee? But yeah, this is what real coffee is like.
44:44
Speaker1: And so I got into it over a decade ago from a former family I was close to who roasted coffee.
44:51
Speaker1: I'm like, oh, this is really good. So it's not that hard. And so I bought my
44:55
Speaker1: first coffee roast, which I still have, which is an old popcorn popper called
44:59
Speaker1: the Airbenderie, 16,000 or something like that.
45:01
Speaker1: It's a coffee maker from the 80s. If you grew up in the 80s or 90s,
45:04
Speaker1: you probably saw the air poppery.
45:07
Speaker1: And it's this thing that's like white with like a black top.
45:10
Speaker1: It's got this yellow hood, okay? And the thing is, it has to be a terrible popcorn popper.
45:14
Speaker1: It has to be so strong that it blows popcorn kernels all over the room.
45:17
Speaker1: It has to have strong wattage and airflow. And the slots have to be on the middle.
45:21
Speaker1: So that's why I first started to learn how to roast coffee was with this popcorn popper.
45:25
Speaker1: It takes three to six minutes to roast about a quarter cup of coffee.
45:28
Speaker1: And then I really got into it. and then one year with my tax return,
45:31
Speaker1: I bought a little bit more expensive machine, which looks like an air toaster
45:36
Speaker1: oven with a turnstile inside.
45:38
Speaker1: And then this takes like 10 to 15 minutes to roast like half a pound of coffee.
45:41
Speaker1: And coffee undergoes a really interesting chemical, a chemical transformation.
45:45
Speaker1: So that think of it like when you buy dry beans from the grocery store,
45:48
Speaker1: like how a dry black bean wound up looking different from a cooked black bean,
45:53
Speaker1: Both in texture and in color and in size, but it's more significant than that with coffee beans.
45:57
Speaker1: So coffee beans, when they're unroasted are tiny green and hard.
46:01
Speaker1: And then as they undergo the road as heat is applied to them,
46:03
Speaker1: they undergo this interesting chemical change where they began to expand,
46:07
Speaker1: change their color, release their oils and have chemical reactions and the sounds of popping. Okay.
46:12
Speaker1: So it will go from green to grayish, to light yellow, to yellow,
46:15
Speaker1: to light brown, to brown, to dark brown, to then to black. And like when you
46:19
Speaker1: go to Starbucks, their coffee is terrible and over roasted. Yeah.
46:22
Speaker1: They've gone to like Vienna, terribly dark roast. And at that point you've roasted
46:26
Speaker1: all the flavor out of the coffee. So anyways, I really enjoy Ethiopian or Kenyan
46:31
Speaker1: coffees that are known as fruitier coffees, livelier coffees.
46:34
Speaker1: You just have to come over and try my coffee. And there's nothing like...
46:37
Speaker1: So all our listeners are invited to your house.
46:39
Speaker1: You're all invited to my house to eventually have coffee with me.
46:42
Speaker1: But the feeling of satisfaction you get of knowing like I roasted that coffee,
46:46
Speaker1: I ground it, I prepared it.
46:48
Speaker1: And it's as good, if not better, than a really fancy coffee shop I go to.
46:52
Speaker1: There's a sense of accomplishment in that. And so I just enjoy the process,
46:57
Speaker1: both science and art, of roasting coffee and enjoying good coffee.
47:00
Speaker2: Where do you get your beans?
47:02
Speaker1: Very important question. So in the Bay Area, there's actually a supplier you
47:05
Speaker1: can drive to and get them if you don't want to pay for shipping.
47:07
Speaker1: It's called Sweet Maria's, and it's in Oakland. And so the thing about unroasted coffee is
47:13
Speaker1: if you go to like a nice coffee shop where they sell freshly roasted coffee
47:16
Speaker1: now with inflation, you're probably going to pay $18 to $25 for like 10 or 12
47:21
Speaker1: ounces of coffee, if not more nowadays, where you can buy unroasted green coffee anywhere from
47:27
Speaker1: high fours to like mid-teens for good coffee.
47:31
Speaker1: Great's going to be in the 20s and 30s per pound, but that would then be like
47:34
Speaker1: a $10 or $15 cup of coffee if you got like a Geisha or a Hawaiian Conan.
47:38
Speaker1: But for the most part, you can buy unroasted green coffee, $6 to $8 a pound.
47:42
Speaker1: And then you roast. It's a fascinating process. It's really,
47:45
Speaker1: really cool to do, to see it, to smell it, to hear it, and then to enjoy it.
47:49
Speaker1: Okay. The proof of the pudding's in the eating.
47:51
Speaker2: Yeah. I'm kind of excited to give this a shot. So we're going to do this again.
47:55
Speaker1: We will. This sounds fun.
47:57
Speaker2: And we left a ton of meat on the bone. We probably have 10 or 12 questions in
48:01
Speaker2: our rundown that we did not get to, but I think We went deep rather than wide,
48:05
Speaker2: and I'd always rather go deep rather than wide.
48:08
Speaker1: That's right.
48:08
Speaker0: Yeah. Dr. Cameron, we are so glad you are here. We're glad you're a friend of
48:12
Speaker0: GCA and our association.
48:15
Speaker0: Thank you for coming on Every Church Flourishing, and we can't wait to have you back.
48:19
Speaker1: Thank you for having me.
48:19
Speaker0: For God's blessings and goodness to be on your ministry, to be on Gateway Seminary.
48:24
Speaker0: We're grateful for your leadership there and for all the good work you're doing
48:27
Speaker0: to equip and encourage leaders and pastors to help their churches flourish and
48:33
Speaker0: to help them reach their community.
48:35
Speaker1: Thank you, brothers. Amen. It's been a pleasure.
48:37
Speaker2: So the genuinely funny thing about that interview is we've had it planned for
48:42
Speaker2: weeks, and one of the major things we wanted to talk about was Jonathan Edwards,
48:47
Speaker2: the early American theologian, pastor, and writer.
48:51
Speaker2: All three of us are big fans of Edwards to one degree or another, and Dr.
48:56
Speaker2: Schweitzer actually wrote his PhD dissertation on Edwards, but we got so carried
49:01
Speaker2: away talking about every other topic, we really didn't have time to go deep on Edwards.
49:05
Speaker2: So we genuinely plan on having Cameron back very soon. Hopefully we will go deeper on Edwards then.
49:12
Speaker2: Well, before we say goodbye for another week, let me highlight a few GCA events that are going on.
49:18
Speaker2: You can find all of these on the very front page of our website,
49:22
Speaker2: which is gcasbc.org. That's gcasbc.org.
49:29
Speaker2: Coming up, September 19th, we have a ladies' conference called Flourish,
49:35
Speaker2: an equipping conference for women in ministry.
49:38
Speaker2: That is going to be at Partner Church Journey Christian Fellowship,
49:42
Speaker2: which is at 317 Foothill Boulevard in San Luis Obispo, California.
49:47
Speaker2: We also have a Great Commission Association Evangelism Workshop,
49:52
Speaker2: which will be August the 1st.
49:54
Speaker2: So much sooner, that's going to be at First Baptist Gilroy, and you can sign
50:00
Speaker2: up on our website, gcasbc.org, and the Great Commission Training Institute, which is an
50:08
Speaker2: Online church leader and pastor training school that the GCA runs.
50:14
Speaker2: The Great Commission Training Institute gives you excellent training for church
50:19
Speaker2: leaders and pastors at a...
50:22
Speaker2: Really great, great cost, and the upcoming next class starts August 25th at 7 p.m.
50:31
Speaker2: It's a seven-week class, and it is taught by yours truly, and you can find out
50:37
Speaker2: much more about it at GCASBC.org.
50:41
Speaker2: It only costs $50 per course if you are a GCA church or GCA pastor or leader,
50:49
Speaker2: or $75 dollars per course, which is still a great deal for non-GCA churches.
50:55
Speaker2: So check that out at our website, gcasbc.org. The podcast has its own website
51:00
Speaker2: where all of the episodes are available.
51:02
Speaker1: That's everychurchflourishing.com,
51:05
Speaker2: And it would be awesome if you would leave a review for the show.
51:08
Speaker2: Maybe we'll send some swag your way. Thanks for listening. Good day to you, and Godspeed.