Episode 086: An Interview with Tom Holland Pt. 1

In this episode we sit down with best-selling writer and historian Tom Holland to talk about his breathtaking book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. This is part 1 of 2.

This book was very personal for me… I was raised Anglican, and enjoyed the Bible, but generally found it less interesting than dinosaurs, and eventually the Romans… so when I started writing history, I started writing about the Romans… but the more I wrote about them, the stranger they became to me…

I started realizing that this was so because of deeply Christian assumptions I held… Dominion is an attempt to try to explain where I come from and where the world I live in comes from…

The earliest sources we have for understanding Christianity are Paul’s… and they are obsessed with the crucifixion… the idea that this God suffered a monstrous death on the cross is a massive stumbling block…

Moreover, the idea that this God has brought about a new covenant and that the law can be written on the heart changes everything… it feeds into the idea that our understanding of what is good can be progressive… [which is a very modern idea]…

Further, to die on the cross is the worst death imaginable… it is a humiliating death… to be publicly exhibited on an instrument of torture is a kind of billboard advertising the power of Rome… to suggest that the man who died on this cross is identical with the one God of Israel is madness…

When you see it all in this light, you see how blasphemous Paul’s message is not only to the Jews but also to the Romans…

In the 11th century, the Church is set up as the world’s first sovereign state, which means that everyone under the church has the right to appeal to the Church for law, justice, and order, even over the heads of earthly rulers…

To do this, you need frameworks of law… Christianity didn’t have a body of law at the time, and so institutions called universities pop up with scholars who look to the Church’s canons to construct a divinely sanctioned justice for those who appeal to them…

The core idea of their justice was Christ’s teaching that the rich have a duty to care for the poor… they start extrapolating the implications of that… the responsibility of the rich to the poor means that the poor have rights…

The [Christian] universities are all of a sudden constructing the idea of universal rights… the Enlightenment thinkers and writers are building off of those maneuvers…

Episode 085: Chasing Wisdom

In this episode we sit down with Pastor Daniel Grothe to talk with him about his book, Chasing Wisdom (released on April 21st). Grab your copy over at Amazon!

This is the first book I chose to write because this is how I was raised… my parents would take us to nursing homes, and tell us to ask good questions… I thought everyone did that… it was instilled in me from an early age…

I asked Eugene Peterson if I could come and spend a day with him… he responded “yes, but not so fast…” At the end of his life, my last visit with him, I told him that the best four words he could have said to me was “not so fast…” He didn’t want it to be a touristy visit…

In the book I call this “holy presumption…” Steve Jobs tells a story about personally calling Bill Hewlett when he was twelve years old, asking for computer parts, and Hewlett said yes… and the rest is history…

For me, my assumption is that the worst thing that can happen is that they say no… I’ve got thick skin; I can handle that… the best thing that can happen is that they say yes…

I grew up playing jazz… what you find in any jazz quartet is that you’ve got a number of players plus a soloist, someone who carries the lead line…

In order to be a great soloist, you have to know all the scales in all the keys, as well as all the great jazz standards… you have to “know the book”, which means that you can show up in any situation and play anything…

I think life is like that… you need to pay attention and do your work so that when the world shifts, you can improvise…

Wisdom is being able to think on your feet in the actual conditions of your life and make wholesome decisions… it’s all about nuance…

I think you’ve got to know the Scriptures… but I think you also have to have some people who have lived it… you have to have guides, sages, people whose lives haven’t crumbled… Eugene was that for me…

I’m a charismatic kid by birth, and I won’t throw the baby out with the bathwater… I grew up with a conviction that the laying on of hands matters… life is passed on through touch…

One of the great ways life is restored is when we have trustworthy persons lay their hands on us… there’s an impartation there… if you find someone who has lived a holy life, let them pray the prayer of faith over you, and your life will be strengthened and secured…

Episode 084: Pastoral Wisdom for Coping with Covid

In this episode we sit down to talk about how Covid-19 has impacted us as well as some best practices we’re learning as we navigate this. (Also, in a related conversation, Andrew and Glenn sat down this same week with Dr. Mark Mayfield to talk about Covid-19 from a mental health and family perspective. Listen to that conversation here.)

The key to this entire thing is to simplify yourself really quickly, to get back to the basics… this is when you go to blocking and tackling… you need to lead in a steadfast way…  

We need to be aware of how emotionally fragile everyone is… we’re home, but we’re not decompressing… we’re all a little fragile and thin, and we need to be aware of that…  

I actually think we’re doing a better job pastoring people now than what we did before… we’ve made personal, lingering phone calls to over 4,000 people in our congregations… the best thing we did wasn’t live streaming, but getting on the phone with our people…  

The creativity in connection… our congregations are using Zoom as a digital lobby, allowing us to see people’s faces between services… 

I think this virus is making us more human… there is going to be a hunger for church gatherings unlike any other time I’ve ever seen in my life… there is a longing for the gathered church…

I think church attendance is going to skyrocket, and the churches that are ready for that are going to grow… I can see 20-30% growth happening… the Spirit is using all of this to shape and form a new church…  

Many pastors right now are producing too much content… if you’re going to go online, have something to say…  

I think it’s wise that we love our neighbors and NOT meet… in this time right now, defiance is foolish… pastors shouldn’t politicize this… this is a human issue… it’s a chance for us to be pro-life from womb to tomb by staying home…  

Our messaging needs to be simple right now… most of the Bible is written by and to a people under duress… so let the text speak to people… simplify and shorten your services…  

Clarity of message is huge right now… this isn’t the time to do a deep, multilayered exposition of this or that…  

When the quarantine lifts, pastors need to start thinking “micro”… have you deep-cleaned your building…? How are you going to make hand sanitizers available…? How are you going to dismiss people…?  

Pastors are used to thinking at 30,000 feet, but I think it’s going to be the small things that will make us prosper over the next several months…