Podcasts about Another Gospel

Another Gospel!

Paul identifies the problem in the churches of Galatia.

Sermon Outline/Slides: Another Gospel

Flashback Episode: Year in Luke – Episode 1: When looking at how Luke’s gospel opens, discover why we should pay attention to Luke, and why it is beneficial for us to have multiple records of Jesus’ life and ministry. Join the discussion on the original episode's page: Click Here.Listen to this episode and/or subscribe on ReflectiveBibleStudy.com...

Various Verses. Today, we will be taking a look at the dangers of falling for another Gospel. Paul warned us in Galatians 1:8-9 that there is no other Gospel, and if someone presents another Gospel, they should be accursed. That's some pretty strong language, but is exactly what is going on in our nation today. People are creating a false Gospel, and calling the true Gospel evil.

Despite the fact the world proclaims with one loud voice, “You are enough!” that has never been the way it has played out in my life. And do you know what? It's liberating to admit that fact. Join me today as we discuss why we should reject that self-affirmation for the lie it is. Show Notes VERSES CITED: - John 10:10 - "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life...." - Romans 3:23 - “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." - 2 Corinthians 12:9 - "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” - Philippians 4:13 - "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” - 1 Corinthians 1:25 - "For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God...." - James 1:5 - "If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives to all generously & without reproach...." - 2 Corinthians 5:21 - "God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become...." - Ephesians 1:7-8 - "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with...." - Romans 8:29 - "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son...." - James 1:4 - "Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” - Revelation 5:12 - "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive... honor and glory and praise!” - Ephesians 2:4-5 - "We were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of His great love for us, God, who is..." - 2 Corinthians 3:5 - “Not that we are adequate in ourselves so as to consider anything as having come from...." - Ephesians 2:8-9 - “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift...." - Romans 9:16 - “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.” - Philippians 2:13 - "... it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose." - Philippians 1:6 – “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion....” - Romans 6:13 - "...offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life...." - 1 John 1 8-9 - "...If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us ...."   RELATED LINKS: - I Am Not Enough (& Why It's Liberating to Admit It) - blog post I wrote in 2017 - Confession of an Unlikely Convert - book by Rosaria Butterfield (her personal testimony; published in 2014) - The Gospel Comes with a House Key - another great book by Rosaria Butterfield (2018) - Another Gospel? - must-read book by Alisa Childers (2020) - Live Your Truth - another wonderful book by Alisa Childers (2022) - You Are Not Enough (& That's Okay) - book by Allie Beth Stuckey (2020)   STAY CONNECTED: - Subscribe: Flanders Family Freebies -(weekly themed link lists of free resources) - Instagram: follow @flanders_family for more great content - Family Blog: Flanders Family Home Life (parenting tips, homeschool help, lots of free printables!)  - Marriage Blog: Loving Life at Home  (encouragement in your roles as wife, mother, believer)  

Send us a textWho are you listening to? Why does finding a voice matter? Who are the voices of this generation of Christians?In this episode, Brody sits down with Jon Rouleau to discuss how influential voices for Christians have changed from generation to generation. They dive into the importance of finding faithful voices to speak into your life, and give some of their own recommendations.Another Gospel by Alisa ChildersThe Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark ComerIron on Iron: Youth Ministry ConferenceBe Strong: Snowbird Men's ConferencePlease leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith. Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

Joel Looper talks with Word&Way President Brian Kaylor about his forthcoming book Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity. He also discusses messianic and apocalyptic rhetoric in Trumpism. Note: Don't forget to subscribe to our award-winning e-newsletter A Public Witness that helps you make sense of faith, culture, and politics. And order a copy of Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism by Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood. If you buy it directly from Chalice Press, they are offering 33% off the cover price when you use the promo code "BApodcast."

Additional scriptures related to this episode: Regarding Satan working through many individuals to accomplish his goals this includes leaders in high offices. Ezekiel 28:11-19, and Isaiah 14.Isaiah 53:3, John 1:14, John 3:16, John 14:6, Hebrew 12:2, 1 Timothy 2:5, Gal 1:9, Genesis 3:4, 2 Corinthians 11:4.

Joel Looper is an adjunct professor at Baylor University and the author of the new book, Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity in which he offers his fellow evangelicals a unique theological argument for resisting Christian nationalism. Using church history, Scriptural reasoning, and even analysis of Russian Christian nationalism. The book argues that another gospel, (which is actually not the gospel at all), has colonized American evangelicalism, explaining that decolonization requires a renewal of the Church's own gospel-centered political vision. Joel delves into the complexities of Christian nationalism, its impact on American evangelicalism, and the theological arguments against it. He shares insights from his book, discusses the importance of community, and reflects on the upcoming 2024 election's potential consequences for evangelical identity. Throughout the episode, Rachel and Joel explore the nuances of Christian nationalism and the importance of differentiating its various definitions. They stress the need for open dialogue and critical thinking to navigate these complex issues. You can find out more about Joel and his work at: https://www.joellooper.com Connect with Us on Social Media: Twitter: www.twitter.com/_indoctrination Facebook: www.facebook.com/indoctrinationpodcast Instagram: www.instagram.com/indoctrinationpodcast YouTube: www.youtube.com/rachelbernsteinlmft Your reviews and ratings on Spotify and Apple/iTunes are greatly appreciated and help the show reach a wider audience.

Send us a Text Message.In this episode of Faithful Politics, hosts Josh Burtram and Will Wright interviewed Joel Looper, a researcher, writer, and teacher at Baylor University. Looper, who holds a PhD in divinity with a focus on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's views on America, discussed his latest book, "Another Gospel," which examines Christian nationalism and its impact on the evangelical church.Looper shared his background, growing up in an evangelical church in Michigan, and how his observations of political and religious dynamics, especially around the time of Trump's rise and the January 6th insurrection, motivated him to explore Christian nationalism. He argues that Christian nationalism, which conflates Christian identity with national identity, is akin to the "another gospel" Paul warned about in Galatians. Looper explained that Christian nationalists prioritize American political concerns over the universal mission of the church, which he sees as a dangerous distortion of the gospel.The conversation also delved into the historical and theological roots of Christian nationalism, drawing parallels between first-century Jewish nationalism and contemporary American politics. Looper highlighted the importance of understanding these issues within the broader context of church history and scripture.Additionally, the interview touched on Looper's insights into Russian Christian nationalism, suggesting that similar dynamics are at play in both the U.S. and Russia, where national identity is closely tied to religious identity. He emphasized the need for Christians to engage in politics with integrity and to prioritize their spiritual allegiance over nationalistic fervor.The episode concluded with a discussion on the challenges facing the evangelical church today and the importance of returning to the teachings of Jesus to navigate the complex intersection of faith and politics.Buy the book: Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity (https://a.co/d/4JrFWer)Guest Bio:Dr. Joel Looper is a dynamic communicator, writer, and researcher with extensive teaching experience. He holds a PhD in divinity from the University of Aberdeen, where he focused on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's views on America. Additionally, he earned dual MA degrees in theology and New Testament from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. Currently, Joel teaches at Baylor University and serves as the denominational coordinator for Shalom Mission Communities.Joel is the author of several works, including "Bonhoeffer's America: Land Without Reformation," which explores the church's role in modern society. His writings have been featured in numerous academic journals and media outlets, such as the Los Angeles Review of Books. His latest book, "Another Gospel," delves into the concepts of Christian nationalism and critiques the evangelical church's involvement in this movement. Joel brings a wealth of knowledge and a fresh perspective to discussions on faith, politics, and society.Support the Show.To learn more about the show, contact our hosts, or recommend future guests, click on the links below: Website: https://www.faithfulpoliticspodcast.com/ Faithful Host: Josh@faithfulpoliticspodcast.com Political Host: Will@faithfulpoliticspodcast.com Twitter: @FaithfulPolitik Instagram: faithful_politics Facebook: FaithfulPoliticsPodcast LinkedIn: faithfulpolitics Subscribe to our Substack: https://faithfulpolitics.substack.com/

Dr. Voddie Baucham's book, It's Not Like Being Black hits the shelves. Everything from the logical conclusions of the gay movement to the chilling reality of its origins, there is much we as believers can learn from Voddie's book. Learn more about the book here: https://itsnotlikebeingblack.com/ 3:30 - Implications of equating sexual identity to race and its impact on discrimination against Christians. 7:12 - Progression towards normalization of pedophilia in culture and the potential consequences. 11:15 - Rising concerns about the Marxist idea of social justice leading to a war against Christianity and traditional values. 14:48 - Impact of Kinsey's book on traditional sexual morality and perception of sex. Consider getting yourself a copy to dive deeper than what was discussed on today's podcast! https://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-Like-Being-Black/dp/1684513642 We hope that today's episode has been helpful in your walk with our Lord. -Grounded team

There is only one gospel--and we must never distort it. From his expositional series in the book of Galatians, today R.C. Sproul solemnly calls us to defend the good news that we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Get R.C. Sproul's Commentary on Galatians for Your Gift of Any Amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3325/galatians-commentary Meet Today's Teacher: R.C. Sproul (1939-2017) was known for his ability to winsomely and clearly communicate deep, practical truths from God's Word. He was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew's Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Don't forget to make RenewingYourMind.org your home for daily in-depth Bible study and Christian resources. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts

The post Are you preaching another gospel? appeared first on Key Life.

Dec 2023 https://m.facebook.com/NewBeginningFellowshipChurchTB/ Website https://www.newbeginningfc.com/

Sit down with Jonathan Youssef for a compelling conversation with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, authors of The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is. Why It's Destructive. How to Respond. This discussion examines the pervasive and unsettling movement of faith deconstruction sweeping churches today. Whether it's affecting your loved ones, straining relationships, or stirring doubts within you, this episode provides crucial understanding and guidance.Together, we will try to understand the core aspects of the Christian deconstruction movement, its origins, the meaning of deconstruction hashtags like #exvangelical, and why it attracts so many people, particularly those disenchanted with traditional church teachings.Alisa and Tim offer strategies for thoughtfully and empathetically engaging with those questioning or abandoning their faith in Christ, emphasizing responses grounded in a biblical worldview.Whether you are seeking to support a loved one in turmoil, understand the dramatic spiritual changes around you, or find answers to your spiritual doubts, Alisa and Tim provide valuable insights and answers that promise to enlighten, challenge, and encourage.Listen and gain tools and confidence to address deconstruction with clarity and love, ensuring your faith and relationships can withstand the challenges of these transformative times.ALISA CHILDERS is a popular speaker and the author of Another Gospel? and Live Your Truth and Other Lies. She has been published at the Gospel Coalition, Crosswalk, the Stream, For Every Mom, Decision magazine, and the Christian Post.TIM BARNETT is a speaker and apologist for Stand to Reason (STR). His online presence on Red Pen Logic with Mr. B helps people assess flawed thinking using good thinking, reaching millions monthly through multiple social media platforms.After you listen to this episode, you may have questions. We would love to hear from you! To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/CandidAlso, join the conversation on our social media pages:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpodTwitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpodTRANSCRIPT:This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 246: The Deconstruction of Christianity with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett.Jonathan: Today, we have quite a special situation. We have two of my favorite guests that we've had in the past, Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett. And they have teamed up and have written a book together, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It's Destructive and How To Respond. Thank you guys so much for taking the time. We're all across the nation and different nations here. Thank y'all for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.Alisa: It's great to be back with you.Tim: Yeah, it's good to see you.Jonathan: Well, I think before we jump in we've Alisa and I and Tim and I, we've separately had conversations around this area, but I love the way you break down your book into these three parts: Exvangelical, Deconstruction, and Hope. But just again for those who are new to the terminology, let's define deconstruction and separate it and define exvangelical, and then we'll talk about the reasons for the writing of the book.Alisa: Which one you want to take, Tim, exvangelical or deconstruction?Jonathan: You each get one.Tim: All right. I'll start with deconstruction. You know this is a tough definition to nail down. In fact, this took quite some research and quite some time. In fact, I actually changed my mind on how I was using the term. At least initially when I started teaching in deconstruction a few years ago, I thought there was a way that we could use the word deconstruction in a healthy way and there was a way we could use it in an unhealthy way. And we were seeing this kind of thing happening, especially on social media. You'd have people like Lecrae or John Mark Holmer or other notable evangelicals using deconstruction as a healthy way, here's a good way to do deconstruction.Tim: That's right. And on the other hand, there's a whole lot of this other stuff that's very unhealthy. That's how we originally thought until we did serious research into what's going on in this deconstruction space, especially on social media where we're seeing a movement or an explosion. And what we saw there was that there isn't anything healthy. In fact, there are defining characteristics of the deconstruction explosion that are unbiblical and just completely wrongheaded.So at the end of the day, where we landed on this—and again, we say this is the hardest sentence we wrote in the book, but here's where we landed on our definition of deconstruction: It's a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without requiring Scripture as a standard. And all those words are important in that sentence. So it's a process, but it's a very specific kind of process. It's a postmodern process. Whereas where you would think (this is what many claim) is that they are on a search for truth, what we're finding is that it's not really about truth—in fact, by postmodern we mean that there isn't a goal of truth; there's actually a denial of objective truth, that objective truth cannot be known. And so there's that on the one hand. On the other hand, you have this rejection of Scripture as an authority. And so when we put those things together, we think these are the defining characteristics of what deconstruction is all about. And we can kind of go into more detail and give some examples of where we've seen that, but that's a starting point.Alisa: Right and then the exvangelical hashtag is often used synonymously with and at least in conjunction with that deconstruction hashtag. And it's a little bit of a tricky hashtag because it doesn't simply mean, at face value, no longer evangelical. But it's not like you have people who were raised Presbyterian and they become some kind of more liturgical Anglican or something and they use the ex. They are not using the exvangelical hashtag for that. What we're seeing with the exvangelical hashtag is that, first of all, it's very difficult to define what evangelical is. And that's kind of a word like deconstruction that's defined in a hundred different ways. So there's the Bevington's Quadrilateral that characterizes the evangelical movement under four pillars of personal conversion, emphasis on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, biblical authority, and evangelism. And yet, if you ask people in the deconstruction hashtag what is evangelical, those beliefs are in the background for sure, but what they primarily see is God, guns and Trump. It's what is perceived in their minds to be this unholy alliance between evangelicals and the political right. And so it's all kind of mashed together, along with things like spiritual abuse and purity culture and conservative politics. It's all kind of this ball that all gets kind of mixed together and then it all gets thrown out as exvangelical. And so in some cases they're conflating evangelical with the historic Christian gospel, and in other cases, they might actually be throwing out some cultural things that are Americanized that aren't necessarily a part of the gospel. And it can be kind of like a mix of both. But it's important like when Tim talked about the shift of authority, its' like the only thing that matters for the exvangelical and deconstruction is that they are leaving behind what they perceive to be toxic beliefs. And so as best as I can analyze are it's any belief outside of yourself that you would be asked to submit to, surrender to, kneel to that is not necessarily something that resonates with you inside.Jonathan: Interesting. So you're the ultimate authority, which goes to the deconstruction definition of Scripture being the authority.Alisa: I do think it boils down to that, yes. Jonathan: Do you find this is a uniquely American phenomenon? I don't even know if phenomenon is the right word to use there.Tim: That's a really good question. I think that there's a few reasons why we're seeing this in particular in North America. It's happening in Canada, too, not just the U.S. I think that we're seeing a culture that's dominated by a philosophy of relativism on the one hand and then on the other you have this kind of explosion of social media within the last decade or so. And I think bringing those two things together in particular—And then maybe a third thing, and that is the American church and how we have, I think, neglected the life of the Christian mind. We used to say the church teaches what we believe really well but not why we believe it. So us apologists, we're trying to train up the church in why we believe these things. But to be honest, when you look at the research now that's coming out in the last couple of years, people who identify as evangelical, I think it was in our book we say 42 or 43 percent of U.S., so Americans, who identify as evangelical do not believe that Jesus is god. They think He's just a good moral teacher. Hold on a second! So these people identify as evangelical but they're not Christian. I mean, this is crazy! So you have, on the one hand, Christians, people who are professing to be Christians because, hey, I was born in America or I was born in Canada. That's the default, right. It's like in your genetics or something. Yeah, so you have that on the one hand, so there's no real understanding or foundation for what real, orthodox Christianity is. Then you have this dominant culture, I mean, it's coming from every direction, this idea of relativism. It's literally the water that many of your young people especially are swimming in, and they don't even know they're wet. And then of course you have social media, this platform now, where I have access to, I mean, the world. I have access to memes and TikToks and these, for many, they think these are compelling arguments. I can't tell you how many times I'm sitting here at my desk and I get a message coming in. It's a meme or a TikTok video that someone sends me and says, “Hey, can you respond to this? I don't know what to say. I don't know how to respond.”And I watch the video or I read the meme and I think, Really? This is not a good argument. It's not even close. Usually, it's not even an argument. And so when you bring all those things together, I think that makes America susceptible to the deconstruction movement for sure.Alisa: there's also the Trump element in the American version of deconstruction. It's just such a huge part of that that is so uniquely American. But as Tim said, I think deconstruction is happening everywhere. I know progressive Christianity is happening. Even in the Middle East I've gotten emails of people wanting my book to be translated into Farsi because it's even coming into the Middle East. So where there is progressive Christianity, there is dn. But I suppose it's just taking on maybe a different type of flavor here in America.Jonathan: Well, and even the Trump effect has ripple effects around the world to where people in foreign nations see Trump and think, Oh, well, he's their definition of Christian. Let's talk about the prevalence. Because I think there are some who think this is just happening out in large cities or this is not affecting everyday people. There can be a disconnect to just how much influence this is having. And it can be people who are watching and consuming these things that aren't even talking about it with their family because they know how the family will react when there's genuine questions and doubt. So tell us a little bit about what you're seeing with the prevalence of both of these concepts entering into homes.Alisa: Well, I think we're in a different world now, so this is an interesting anecdotal piece to this. When I go out and speak I'll often ask an audience, “How many of you have heard the word deconstruction in the context of faith?” And the older the audience, the fewer the people have even heard of it. And yet, when I go speak to students it's 90 percent. But it blows my mind. Even at women's conferences where women … the ages are 20 to maybe 60, 70, you might have 20 percent raise their hand that they've even heard of the concept.And so what I mean by we're in a different world is decades ago you had to get a book deal. There was major exposure with ideas. And so I think that there are some of us who are still living in that world and don't realize the prevalence of some of these ideas on social media. For example, we have many posts documented in our book where it's somebody that nobody's ever heard of an probably never will know their name, but their video has millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and if you think about the reach of that versus somebody that you might have seen on TV decades ago or maybe in a Christian bookstore even or in the catalog that they would send out, that's a lot of people. But social media can reach so many people with a message where it's not even necessarily surrounding a particular personality.And so I think the prevalence of it is on social media, so someone's exposure to it is probably going to be directly related to what types of social media they have and how often they engaging with it. Tim: And the other element to this, the older folks who have exposure to it, is because they have a loved one, usually a younger loved one, who is going through it and now we're just, as we label it, this is what it is, deconstruction, they say—it clicks. Oh, that's what my nephew is going through, or my grandchild or my son or my daughter or whatever. So it does kind of filter up to that older generation. They're seeing the aftermath usually. It's like why is my grandson no longer following the Lord? Well, it turns out they went through a process called deconstruction. Jonathan: Well, and I imagine some of the reactions can be unhelpful, and that's why, again, I think it's important that books like yours are out there and podcasts and stuff that you guys are producing is out there, so that there's a heightened awareness but also a helpful response. Because we do have a response and a calling, but we need to make sure we're doing it in a right and biblical way.I wonder if we could come to the origins of this. I know Carl Lawson writes in the foreword in your book about technically the beginning is, when Demas, who fell in love with the world, abandoned Paul and the ministry and the faith. But I mean in this particular area, is it with social media? Was there a particular person or is it just postmodernism in general? Where do you find your origins to these movements?Tim: Well, it's true that we could trace this thing past Demas. We can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, always. But just more recently in the 1960s we see postmodern philosophers like Derrida in particular, who is the father of deconstruction. Now of course, his application of deconstruction was to textbook religion. He argued that objective meaning, objective truth, could not be known, and that there was no actual truth, so the reader could import just as much meaning as an author of a text. And what we traced in our research is we saw there is a connection here. In fact, we discovered a book by John Caputo, who is a scholar and actually follows Derrida and applies Derrida's philosophy not just to textbook religion in general, but in fact, to Christianity. And he wants to do this postmodern move even on the words of Jesus. And so he gives application in his book. What would Jesus think about, say, homosexuality today? Well, He would look around the world and see loving, monogamous relationships and He would be affirming. Even though Derrida says, yet, in the first century, no, Paul and Jesus, they had a certain view on this, but we're going to bring new meaning to the text. In fact, the way Derrida describes this is Derrida says the text actually never arrives at a meaning. In fact, he has this analogy of a postman delivering a letter, and it's like the letter never arrives at its destination, and in that sense, Christianity has not arrived. There is no set fundamental beliefs that you need to hold to—in fact, they are always changing, never arriving.So this is kind of the history, and of course there's lots of people who don't know who Derrida is, they don't know who John Caputo is, and yet, they are taking a page out of his playbook. They are thinking in terms of that kind of postmodern philosophy as they look out at religion. It's not what is actually true corresponds to reality; instead, it's there is something else going on. Oftentimes, it's personal preferences are the authority, or maybe they're looking at the culture and saying, “Yeah, look, the culture is more accepting of sexuality and so we ought to be too.”Jonathan: Yeah, just like in the days of Noah. Help us understand who are some of the primary voices behind this today? I know we talked about how when you're on social media it can be a lot of nameless, faceless people who just have an opinion and they want to create an argument or a non-argument that has an effect on people with their emotions. Are there any that are writing or have some influence as, you know, even by way of warning people, hey, be careful of so-and-so because it tends towards this trajectory?[24:42] Alisa: Well, I would say there's, in my mind, and Tim might have some others, but in my mind there's one figure in particular that is, in my view, the most influential, although he's not primarily promoting quote/unquote “deconstruction,” is Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr, his ideas, his universal Christ worldview, is—Interestingly, when I was researching the coaching and therapy sites, I found all the ones I could find online of people offering services to coach you through deconstruction or even offer you therapy through your deconstruction—and by the way, these therapy and coaching sites are not helping you to remain a Christian; they are not interested in where you land, they just want to help you along your subjective journey.But even the ones that aren't claiming to be Christians, there's always this recommendation—I looked at all the book recommendations, and there is a Richard Rohr book there every single time, even among those that don't claim to be Christians. And so what Rohr has done, I think, is, especially among people who want to retain the title Christian but might be more spiritual but not religious, or some sort of a New Age-y kind of Jesus is more of a mascot kind of thing, Rohr has really given them a worldview to put in place of what they've turned down. And he does talk about deconstruction in his book, Universal Christ, and he says it's like the process of order, disorder, and then reorder. Well, that sounds good at face value. You're taught a certain thing, and then something messes it up and as an adult you have to do some digging and some work and then you reorder. But that's not exactly what he's talking about. His order stage is what he calls “private salvation,” your private salvation project. In other words, Rohr doesn't believe in personal salvation, he believes in universal salvation, he's a universalist. So he's saying that's like the kindergarten version of faith, this kind of Christianity where you have personal faith and you have this God of wrath and judgment. All of that just needs to be disordered so that ultimately you can reorder according to his worldview.Now I bring up Rohr because he's so influential. I mean, he makes his way into so many of the deconstruction conversations. But beyond Rohr, it's tough because there can be platforms that swell up and get really big, and then I've seen them shut down after they have maybe 20,000, 30,000 followers, even up to hundreds of thousands of followers. I've seen several of these platforms just kind of get burned out and they shut down. So it's hard to say, but I would say Derek Webb, Caedmon's Call, is an important voice in there. You've got—Well, Jon Steingard was for a while when he ended up shutting down his YouTube, but he was the lead singer of Hawk Nelson. He was commenting for quite a while. Jo Luehmann is pretty influential. Who else, Tim?Tim: Well, there's—I put them in different categories.Alisa: The NakedPastor.Tim: The NakedPastor for sure. So there's guys who, and gals who have deconstructed and posted that they've deconstructed online. So that would be someone like a Rhett McLaughlin, who 3 million people watched his video four years ago. He's been keeping people updated every year; they do kind of an anniversary thing. That sparked so many people on their own deconstruction. Now what's interesting about Rhett is he didn't necessarily tell you how toTim: Yeah. And that was enough for some people to say, “Maybe I should do this too.” Now there's other platforms out there, and all they do is criticize Christianity, or they mock Christianity. Those are big on TikTok. I mean, there are massive platforms that have half a million followers and millions of views, okay, and I could go down and list some of those for you. But the point is they're not necessarily talking about deconstruction and the process, but they're just saying, “Hey, here's what you guys believe, but here's my mocking, here's my criticism.” Then there's this other stream, and this is the NakedPastor or Jo Luehmann and others who aren't just mocking Christianity or criticizing Christianity but they're trying to advocate for a certain kind of process, okay, and that's where you're going to get a little more detail on how this deconstruction thing works out. And so they've been, in fact, Jo Luehmann and the NakedPastor, David Hayward, and—Jonathan: Joshua Harris. Didn't he do a course through that?Tim: That's right. Joshua Harris, when he—again, on Instagram. That blew up. There were like 7,000 comments in response to him just posting, “I'm no longer a Christian.” And you could see the responses, and I'm telling you, there were many who said, “This post is what set me on my deconstruction journey.” So there's at least three different categories of influencers out there, and they're all playing into the same thing, deconstruction, but they all are coming at it from a different angle.Jonathan: Alisa, for those who are familiar with your story, how is this movement different from the path that you were on?Alisa: This is a great question because I've actually changed my mind on how I talk about this. So over ten years ago I had a faith crisis that was really agonizing. It was years long. I landed fairly quickly in going through some apologetics arguments, knowing that God existed, but just the doubts that would nag at me were just years of this agonizing research, reading thousands of pages of scholarship, just trying to figure out if what I believed was actually true. And it was propelled by a progressive pastor. I didn't know he was progressive at the time, but I was in a church where there was this class going on and it set my friends, a bunch of my friends, into deconstruction. And so when I wrote my first book about my journey, I actually called the process that I went through deconstruction because it was horrible, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It was agonizing and I had to kind of de-con-struct. If you just take the word at face value, and then build back from the beginning.But interestingly, when I would go online and I would talk about my deconstruction, deconstructionists would come on and say, “No, you didn't deconstruct.” At first, that was so confusing to me. I was like, “Well, were you there?” I mean, it was like this horrible, agonizing process.Jonathan: I'm the ultimate authority here.Alisa: Yeah, right, I know. And they said, “Well, you didn't deconstruct because you still hold to toxic theology. You still have toxic theological beliefs.” And that's when I realized, oh, okay, so this isn't just—even though I knew it wasn't a good thing, I knew it was a horrible thing because, again, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, but it wasn't about truth. It's actually about leaving behind these beliefs that they think are toxic. And let's say you completely do hard work of years of studying and you decide that you are a sinner and that Jesus did die on the cross for your sins, that the Bible is God's Word and that what Jesus claimed about Himself is true and that He proved it by resurrecting from the dead, if you hold to those beliefs, along with the biblical sexual ethic, you have toxic theology and you've got to go back to the drawing board and start over.So that's when I realized, okay, there's more to this. And so I actually correct myself—Jonathan: There's a goal.Alisa: Yeah. I correct myself in the new book and say I don't actually use the language of deconstruction to describe what I went through because I was on a truth quest. I wanted to know what was true, whether I liked it or not, whether it resonated with me or not. In fact, what was interesting in the class I was in where all my friends ended up deconstructing, and I mean all that I know of, there might be two that I lost touch with that maybe didn't, but most of the people that I know of did. And everything in that class was all about what resonates with me. I mean, we would … they would talk about Bible verses and say, “Well, that just doesn't resonate with me,” and they would toss it aside. And I was like, “You can't just do that.”And so I didn't deconstruct, and so I corrected my language on that and really changed my mind about what I think it is. And I think what I'm hoping to set the example for others is people who are wanting to use the word because it was trendy—because I really had a thing about that. Why am I using the word? Why am I hanging onto the word? And I had to realize there's no reason for me to use that word. Because what I did was search for truth. I tested all things, held fast to what is good—that's biblical. I don't need a postmodern word to describe that. And so that would be my journey with this word and kind of my relationship with it is that I've changed my mind; I didn't deconstruct. It was—Jonathan: You re-entrenched.Alisa: Yeah, they just think I circled some wagons and found some people to agree with me. Which is so interesting to me, because they weren't there. And that's the thing. Pete Ens, I've seen the comment from him, “Oh, Alisa doesn't know … she doesn't understand deconstruction, she doesn't get it.”And I'm just like, “Were you there? You weren't there. You have no idea what I went through.” But it's like they're so quick to say, “You have to respect my lived experience,” but they are the first ones that will not respect your lived experience if you land at historic Christianity for sure.Jonathan: That makes sense. You guys have spent hours on places like TikTok researching what leads people to deconstruct and what they all have in common. What are the common threads that you've noticed through that?Tim: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, some of the factors that we've noticed that kind of launch people into a deconstruction are things like doubts, unanswered questions. Virtually all these stories have some instance of suffering or pain, and we've all been through that. There's church hurt, there's spiritual abuse. Now we've got to be careful about that a little bit, because sometimes it's a real abuse that happens, of course, we would all want to say that is horrible and we stand against that. That is not of God. And so when a pastor engaged in that kind of thing, he needs to be held accountable for it.But then on the other hand there is what we might call perceived abuse or perceived harm. And this is where things like teaching the doctrine of hell. In our research, we found that that's called, you know, teaching your kids, it's child abuse. If you say that Jesus died for your sins, that's considered toxic and abusive to tell someone that, yet that's the gospel message. So we want to make sure that we distinguish between those things.Of course, we just mentioned earlier about politics and Trump and all that stuff. So there's these different elements that you'll see peppered within these stories. Now we want to be quick to say that not all deconstruction stories are alike. In fact, they are often very unique, and that's because every single person is unique. So if you've heard one deconstruction story, then you've only heard one, you haven't heard them all. But there are these common threads.One question that we asked when we were doing our research is why is it that two people can grow up in the same house, they can go to the same church, the same youth group, they have the same parents, they experience some of the same trauma, suffering, whatever, and yet one will deconstruct and the other maybe becomes an even more faithful believer. What's going on there?And what we found is it comes down to—at least one element—a faith foundation. What is it, what is your faith foundation? And of course, this is going to be different for different people, and what we need to be asking, we're challenging the church to ask, is what does it mean to be a Christian? Oftentimes, you know—and this is a question I was asked when I was in university by my friends who were not believers, “Tim, why are you a Christian?” And I honestly shot back, “Because my parents are Christians.” That was my first response. I knew that ain't right. That was embarrassing. I'd grown up in the church. I'd done all the church stuff, and yet I did not have a strong Christian foundation and a strong Christian faith. And so I, at that point, was very susceptible to this kind of deconstruction, right, because I could—if TikTok was big at that time, I could have watched a video and, “Okay, I'm outta here. This has been refuted.”So I think that all those things that I mentioned earlier can make you a good candidate for deconstruction, but they don't have to lead you down the path of deconstruction. This is why it's really, really important that the church needs to be helping to develop and disciple Christians so they have a strong foundation so when that crisis hits, they are able to stand firm in their faith. So let me ask this question. There may be a simple answer. Is the faulty foundations that people are building on essentially, I mean, is the answer anything but Christ? Is it in the institution of the church or in the leadership in the church or your favorite Christian singer? Is it … do you find those the main threads that came back?Alisa: That's an interesting question. I think, you know, when I think about foundation … Because I was trying to think through this question even within my own context. So one of my sisters was not a Christian until she was an adult, and she would say that openly; that's part of her testimony. She grew up in church. We grew up in the same home, we had the same discipleship, the same youth pastors, pretty much the same experiences growing up, same environment, and yet our foundation was different because I was a devoted Christian as far back as I can remember. I mean, I don't even remember a time where I didn't absolutely know that the Bible was God's Word and Jesus was who He said He was. And yet, for my sister, she grew up in the same environment but had a totally different foundation. she did all the things, she cooperated with it, but She never personally trusted in Christ.Jonathan: Going through the motions, yeah, okay.Alisa: Yeah. And she may not have even realized that. You might have asked her at 12 years old, “Are you a Christian,” she might have said, “Well, yeah,” but she didn't know that she wasn't until she actually got saved as an adult. And so I think the foundation is more of a personal thing. The way I see it is the level of understanding you  might have had. We have a lot of this sort of seeker-sensitive model that's over the past few decades has gotten really big. I'm not saying it's wrong to have a large church or try to be sensitive to people who are seeking, of course. But some of those seeker-sensitive and megachurch models really watered-down the gospel, really sacrificed discipleship for numbers. And I think that that has resulted in a lot of people growing up in churches that maybe—And I'm not … We don't speculate on this question in the book, were they really saved, were they not because we don't know the end of their story either, but I do think even right now we have a lot of people in our churches who maybe may not be Christians because they may not be getting the gospel, they're not getting Bible teaching. And they might like the community and even like and believe certain things about it, but everybody's foundation is maybe going to be a little bit different. That's kind of how I see it.Jonathan: Well, I mean, not to steer us theologically, but I mean it has to be the work of the Spirit in the life of a person, and that's all in the sovereign timing of the Lord. I wonder if sometimes in this American evangelical mindset from an older-generation perspective we have this understanding that my children should be Christians and they should be following the ways that I direct. And then I should start seeing spiritual fruit in their life. Like, well, I don't know. I mean, is there something wrong with that happening at a later point? Just thinking from a parental, a parent's perspective. Maybe I've gone into the weeds there a little bit.Alisa: Like Tim said, each deconstruction story is unique. I would say it like this. Every deconstruction story is unique and yet they're kind of all the same, too, in certain points. I know we're getting in the weeds a little bit, but as a parent, I wouldn't want to push my kid to say they believe something they don't really believe. I'd want them to come to that on their own. And that might come later, certainly, yeah.Jonathan: And there's a level of you want your child to be honest with you, and I think sometimes we can put a false expectation on your child to be going to be at a certain place when they're just not ready for that yet. And so what they're actually deconstructing is deconstructing whatever that false view—again, as you said, there's different stories of deconstruction. But ultimately, if you deconstruct and never return back, to your point, there was never faith to begin with. You experienced the benefits of a covenant community or whatever it is. As Hebrews says, you were tasting but you weren't of that, you know … not all Israel is Israel.Do you think it's potentially because parents are unwilling to engage in the hard questions of the faith? Or do you think perhaps there is always just people who are going to rebel against Christ? Is it all of the above? In your research, I don't know if you're working with people who have gone through it and then interviewing them. Are you tracing things back to a particular point? I think we all want to say, “Where does the blame lie?” Are you finding that?Tim: I think it's all of the above. A lot of these stories have unanswered questions. In fact, Alisa did a debate on Unbelievable with Lisa Gunger, and she makes this really tragic statement where she said, “Questioning was equivalent to sinning in our church. If you questioned the pastor, you questioned his teaching, whatever, you were in essence sinning.”So confessing to your questions is confessing your sins. And that mentality, I mean, we wrote a whole chapter called “Questions,” In that chapter, what we're trying to do is a little bit of a wake-up call. We're trying to rattle the church a little bit and say, “Hey, we can do better. We ought to be the place where people feel safe to ask their questions and express their doubts.” And I hope that everyone listening to this hears that. Tim and Alisa are not against questions—in fact, we're apologists. We travel around and we're doing our best to answer questions, so we're not against that, and we want the church to be a safe place.And I mean we give an example of Tim Keller. At the end of his sermons, his services, he would do like a 40-, 45-minute Q&A time where he would just stick around and, okay, come on up. And in New York City, where you have like diversity of people, diversity of views coming in, you're going to have skeptics, you're going to have atheists, you're going to have whatever coming in, asking their hard questions. And when you think about it, the way we have our churches structured, at least most of them, there isn't really a Q&A time. That would be like a very special thing. Maybe every few months the pastor will take questions or something. Jonathan: A special treat. Yeah, yeah.Tim: That's right. But for the most part, that's not there, and that can give a lot of people the impression that questions aren't allowed here. You just listen to what's spoken, do what you're told, and that's the end of it. So I think that's part of it. But you also mentioned, yeah, maybe there's a rebellious heart, too. You can't read the Bible very far without seeing someone who has a rebellious heart. So we—Tim: That's right. Just a couple of pages in. And so you end up seeing that this is a realistic element that we need to be talking about, too, and that's why we devoted an entire chapter to the deconstructor, because there are things about the deconstructor that are important to be aware of from a biblical anthropology perspective. And so there certainly are people who are seeking answers, and we want to be there to provide answers. But then there's also these questions out there that are seeking exits. And you see lots of those. You see them in Scripture and we see—When you've got Richard Dawkins saying, “Well, who made God?” Richard Dawkins should know better, you know. When my four-year-old asks that question, okay, fair enough. But when you have an academic from Oxford asking that question as if it's legitimate of the Christian God, something else is going on.Jonathan: I remember Keller teaching on Job, and he says Job is filled with questions, right, but the issue was that he never left God. He didn't say, “I have questions and now I'm going to go over here and ask them.: But he kept asking the questions of the Lord in his particular situation. And he was saying that questioning can be a good thing because it's, as we talked earlier, all truth is Christ's truth, so there's nothing to be afraid of. You're not going to get an answer where it should cause difficulty. But rather, you're sticking close to the source and you're going to get your answers within reason. But rather than going—And it's interesting, because that's what these TikToks and all these things are creating is new avenues for you to go and ask questions and find a story that resonates with you, right, that's the big terminology that we were using earlier. So that resonates with your story and how you feel, and then where did they land? How do we invite this sort of cultivating an openness for asking of questions? Is it let's have a Q&A session at the end of church? Is it, you know, we need to start training our parents to have them understand that your kids asking questions is a good thing because they're coming to you versus no, everything is fine and I'm going to go to YouTube and find the answer because I think you're going to be mad at me or whatever it is. Help us think through that from a church perspective. Alisa: Well, I think starting with the parents is a great place to start because if we can train parents to be the first person to introduce some of these difficult topics to their kids, we know statistically the first person to introduce the topic will be viewed as an expert in the eyes of the child. So when we as parents are the first people to talk to our kids about gender and sexuality and all of these different things—and promoting an environment where we're not weird about it, we're not acting awkward about it, then we want to be the Google. I want to be Google for my kids. And that means I'm going to be really honest when they ask their questions and sometimes give more information than they wanted.My daughter, she jokes with me like “I know I'll get a straight answer from you with whatever I ask.” And so maybe even training parents to ask your kids questions like “Hey, what's your biggest question about God?”And parents don't need to be afraid of what their kids say, because it's perfectly fine to say, “Wow, I've never really thought about that. Let's think that through together,” and then go do some research and continue to engage with your kid about it. But I think in the home, if we can start there, that's a great place. And then the church can help come around parents with even youth groups doing Q&As and pastors doing Q&As. I think that's a huge way to promote that environment from the home, all the way through the church culture.Jonathan: Okay, let's do a little sort of engaging with others segment here. What would you say to those who are seeing their loved ones go through deconstruction or exvangelical. What would you say to them? Buy our book.Tim: Yeah, that. And I mean the first thing that I would say is stay calm. It can be not just earthshattering for the person going through deconstruction, but the loved ones of those deconstructors it's often earthshattering. We talk about this in the book, actually. To find out that my kids who I've raised in the church come to me and say, “Dad, I don't believe any of this stuff anymore, I'm out,” that would be crushing.And I would want to remind myself: stay calm. I've heard so many stories, and they're actually horror stories, where a child comes to a parent and says, “I'm deconstructing” and the parent just loses it. “How could you do that?” And they overreact, and of course that's not going to help. That's the first thing.I would want my kids right away to know that they are loved, period. That this doesn't change my love for them. It's not “I love you, but let me fix your theology.” It's “I love you, period. You're still my daughter. I'm still your dad. That's not going to change.”And then another thing just to add is say thank you. It must have taken a lot for that individual, if they come to you and share that they've deconstructed, it must have been a big deal to do that. So I would say, “Thanks for sharing that with me and me being the person that can be there for you.” So those are introductory things. Obviously, relationship is going to be so important. It's not necessarily that you're going to be able to maintain the relationship. We've heard stories of people getting no-contact letters from their loved one saying, “Your theology is toxic. I don't want anything to do with you and so we're done. Here's my no-contact letter.”But if they're willing to stay in your life, then we want to do whatever is possible to  maintain that relationship without compromising truth. Truth is absolutely necessary. But you want to be in that relationship as long as possible, because that's where you're going to be able to have probably the best impact.Its' interesting you brought up Job earlier. And Job's comforters started on the right track. They were there and they sat with Job—Jonathan: Silent.Tim: Silently for seven days. And then it was when they started to open their mouths they got themselves into trouble, and I think we can learn something from that. So we want to hear, “Hey, tell me your story.”One of the first questions I would want to know is, “What do you mean by deconstruction?” If they're using that word, I want to know if they just mean, “Hey, I'm asking some questions. Hey, I don't know if I believe in this view of creation, baptism, and maybe I'm changing.”Okay, that's different than what we're seeing online, okay, this idea of a postmodern process. So I want to nail down, okay, what are you going through and what kind of process or methodology are you using to go through it? I want to be able to identify those things.And of course, in the book we talk about this idea of triage. If you have a gunshot wound to the head but a broken finger, they're treating the gunshot wound to the head, right, the thing that's more serious. And in a similar way, once you understand where this person's coming from, you've heard their story, you're going to be able to do some triage. Okay, what's the most important thing in this moment? Is it that I answer all these questions that I'm having? Is it that they just need me to be with them because they are going through something? And I think that's important because sometimes we miss the mark. Especially as apologists, oh, let me answer that question. Let's go for coffee. I'm going to fix your theology and then we'll be back on track.Jonathan: We're going to fix the problem, yeah.Tim: That's likely not going to happen. And then finally, I would just say continue to pray. We cannot underestimate the power of prayer. If someone is going through deconstruction, what they need is God. They need the Holy Spirit. And so let's petition God on their behalf. Let's pray that God does whatever is necessary to draw that person back to Himself.Jonathan: All right, now thinking for the person who is considering deconstructing their faith. And again, that could be a myriad of different positions along that path, but what are the things you would want them to know?Alisa: Well, so here's what I would say. If someone is considering deconstruction as if it's like an option, “Oh, maybe I'll deconstruct my faith,” and there's no crisis that's actually throwing you in deconstruction, I would say you don't need to do that. There's no biblical command to get saved, get baptized, and then deconstruct your faith. You don't need to do that. If there are some incorrect theological views that you—maybe you grew up in a very legalistic stream of Christianity. Maybe you grew up in the Mormon church. Maybe you grew up as  Jehovah's Witness and you need to go to Scripture, make Scripture your authority, and then get rid of beliefs that were taught to you that are not biblical. I want you to know that that is a biblical process and that is what you should do.Jonathan: This is what we call disentangling, right, that we were talking about.Alisa: Yes. In our book, we would call it reformation. But yeah, Jinger Duggar calls it disentangling. I don't care what you call it. I would just really encourage you to not use the word deconstruction, because deconstruction is a very specific thing that isn't about getting your theological beliefs corrected according to the Bible, and so we want to be reforming our faith according to Scripture. And so if you need to disentangle, as Jinger would say, or reform beliefs that were unbiblical, please do that. And that can be a very long process. It can be a difficult process. But if someone is listening who's maybe propelled into deconstruction through some church abuse or whatever it might be, my encouragement would sort  of be the same. It's actually good for you to get rid of beliefs that led to abuse, that Jesus stands against abuse as well. But I would just encourage you not to get sucked into this sort of deconstruction movement, because it's not based on absolute truth. It's not based on Scripture. And it's not going to lead you to any sort of healing and wholeness spiritually. And so whether you're just considering it intellectually or you're just interested, I would resist it. And that's … There's going to be well-meaning evangelical leaders that will tell you you can deconstruct according to the bible, but I don't think you can. And so let's keep our language and the way we think about this biblical rather than bringing in a postmodern concept that just clouds the … muddies the water and causes confusion.Jonathan: All right, this is good because this goes to the next level. What do you say to those who believe that Christianity is toxic or patriarchal? What's your word to them? And then the follow-up to that would be for believers. When do we engage and when do we not engage with people who are kind of promoting that sort of ideology?Tim: I would want to ask some questions, like what do they mean by toxic, what do they do they mean by patriarchal, to nail down those definitions. Are they appealing to something objective or are they appealing to something subjective based on their own personal preferences? I think it's really important that we start with what's true before we can look at whether or not something is toxic, or harmful, or whatever. In the book, we give the example of you stumble upon someone who's kind of beating on someone's chest, and in that moment it may look like they're being abused, but you come to find out that actually they've had a heart attack, and that person is not beating on their chest, they're doing chest compressions, doing CPR. That totally changes how you see that action, right? It goes from being, hey, that's harmful and toxic to, wait, this is lifesaving, this is lifegiving. So I think that's really important, when I see a deconstructionist talk about how hell is causing child abuse, I want to know, first of all, if there is such a place as hell. For them, it's not even on the table; it's not even the question, right, because it's a totally different philosophy, a totally different worldview. I want to look at is this true?I give the example of I told my kids not to jam a knife into the wall socket. Well, why not? Because there's electricity in there and it could electrocute you and kill you. So any good parent warns their kids about that. Or touching the hot stove, these kinds of things. Is it harmful for me to tell them not to do that? Everyone agrees, no, that's not harmful; it's not toxic. Now, it would be toxic if there was no such thing as electricity. If I'm just playing these games where I'm trying to torment my kids so they're scared to do whatever, to actually make them terrified of the stove or something. No. Okay, the reason that they need to be careful around this hot stove or not stuck, stick stuff in the wall outlet is because there are dangers. And if hell really is this kind of danger, then we ought to appropriately talk about this issue. Look, I'm not talking to my three-year-old about eternal conscious torment. You know what I'm saying? Obviously, there is some appropriate when the time is right. Sexuality, we appropriately talk with those … about those issues with our kids. But we do talk about those things, and that's because they're true, and that's were we start.Jonathan: That sort of answers a little bit of the next question, which is that you both dedicated the book to your children. And we're, I think, we've kind of addressed it in terms of being available. But in light of everything that you know and all that is going on with deconstruction and the questions and the struggles of the next generation, how are you taking this and applying this as you raise your children?Alisa: Well, I know that this research has definitely affected how I parent. In fact, I went through a phase in the early stages of the research where I would hear myself saying things, and I was like, “That's going to end up in their deconstruction struggle.” And I found myself almost becoming way too passive for it was probably just a couple of months when the research was so intense, and it was new. And it was like, oh my gosh, all these things i'm saying to my children is what people say they think is toxic and that's what they're deconstructing from.And then I swung back around and I'm like, no, it's my job as a parent to teach my kids what's true about reality. Just because maybe culture things that 2 + 2 = 5 now doesn't mean that I need to cower and say, “Well, you know, I'm not going to be too legalistic about 2 + 2 + 4.” No. 2 + 2 = 4. You can believe what you want, but this is what's true. And so I actually, you know, what I've started to do is tell my kids “Look, it's my job as your mom to teach you what's true about reality. And what you believe about God and what you believe about morality is in the same category of science, math, logic. These are facts about reality. It's my job to teach you. Now, you are the person who chooses to believe it or not.”And so what I've tried to do is really engage my kids in conversations, but knowing also that statistically they might deconstruct one day. I have to leave a lot of that to the Holy Spirit, and also to try to model to my children what a real believer looks like. I think that's a huge, a huge element in parenting is letting our kids see us repent to them if we sin against them, in front of them. Reading our Bibles on a regular basis together, praying together as a family. Not just being Sunday Christians. Here in the South it's real easy to just be that Sunday Christian and then—Jonathan: Haunted by the ghost of Christ.Alisa: That's right. And then you just live like He doesn't exist the rest of the week. And that's the thing about the Bible Belt. Certainly, people aren't acting  … like doing pagan sacrifices during the week. They are pretty much good people. But it's just not relevant to their lives until Sunday comes around. And just being different from that in front of our kids is something I've really tried to engage. And just engaging their questions without pushing them, I think, is a huge thing. Like you mentioned earlier, is letting them have their own story and their own journey. And even as my sons wrestled with the problem of evil for about two years really intensely, I really didn't want to push him. And I just validated that that's a good question, that's an honest question to ask, and let's talk to the Lord about it, let's think through some things. But trying not to push him to just settle really quickly so that he can work this out for himself, with discipleship and the guidance of parents. But that's one of the ways it's really affected my parenting.Tim: That's so good. Yes and amen to all of that. Jonathan: Okay, I second that. All right, give us some hope. This is your part three. Part three. This can all sound pretty scary and off-putting and you need to block it out.Tim: It really really does seem hopeless, especially if you spend any time kind of typing in hashtag deconstruction or hashtag exvangelical. I mean, I would go into my office here and start working and writing and I'd come out and I'd just be like … my mood has changed.Jonathan: Spiritual warfare, for sure.Tim: My wife knew it, oh yeah, my wife saw it and my kids could see it. It was really discouraging. And so I feel for those parents who have that loved one who's going through this, and many do, so we wanted to make sure we end the book on a hopeful note. And one of the things that we were thinking about—in fact, I think it started with a phone call. I called Alisa, and I remember I was sitting at my dining-room table and I had a sermon that I was going to give on deconstruction. And I'm like, Alisa, I need to end this thing with something hopeful because it is so … And I had, actually, a parent reach out to me before I gave the sermon, saying, “I really hope that you're going to give us some hope.” Because they have a child themselves, a young adult, who's deconstructing. I'm thinking, okay, what is it Alisa? Help me out here.And we just started talking back and forth and so I don't know how this came up, but eventually we started thinking about Easter weekend, right, we're coming up to it. Of course, you think about what was going on Friday night. It's like Peter's there; he's seen his Savior, his Messiah being crucified, and his world is turned upside down. We could just imagine what that was like to go through this traumatic experience. And then, of course, it jumps to Sunday and Sunday brings with it resurrected hope, right? And you have the angel shows up, tells the women, you know, go and tell His disciples AND Peter. Like Peter really needs to hear this. Friday night, he denied the Lord three times. It was a bad night for Peter. But he's going to receive this resurrection hope on Sunday.Well, we actually titled the last chapter “Saturday” because we think that a lot of people are living in what could be described as a Saturday. Now again, we're not told much about that particular Easter Saturday, so we can only speculate, but really, I mean, what kind of questions were the disciples, in particular, Peter, asking? Were they starting to doubt some of the things that they had been taught, maybe like trying to explain away some of the miracles they had seen? It wasn't supposed to happen this way, was it? And so there's self-doubt, there's all this trauma that they've experienced. Now of course, Sunday was just around the corner. We think that, look, if that hope can come for Peter, then it can come for you and your loved one, too, right? We don't know what that Saturday looks like. It may not be tomorrow. It may not be just one 24-hour day. It could be months down the road; it could be years down the road; but we think this is a message. Because if it can happen for Peter, it can happen for your loved one. And I think that can move us from a state of “This is completely hopeless, what good can come from this? How can this be undone,” to a state where, no, we can be hopeful. Jesus rose from the grave after being dead. And when that happened, Peter's faith is restored. “Do you love me?” He says, “Yeah, I love you.” Three times, kind of like paralleling the three denials.Jonathan: Exactly.Tim: And then the Church is built on this confession. So I mean that brings me hope, and hopefully it brings hope to others who are going through this.Jonathan: Just one final question. Have you seen anyone who's been restored out of this?Alisa: You know what? I have heard a few stories, but these are people that have platforms. So I have several people that are part of my Facebook community who have said they deconstructed into progressive Christianity but have been brought back. I have had a couple of people on my personal podcast who had deconstructed. One is a guy name Dave Stovall. We actually tell his story in the book. He was in the band Audio Adrenaline, and he deconstructed into progressive Christianity and then a local pastor here in town discipled him back to the historic Christian faith and had all these difficult conversations with him and engaged him in conversation. So I think we are seeing some. We're not seeing a lot yet, but I think a lot of the stories maybe are just more private, where people aren't necessarily shouting it on social media. But yeah, the Lord's at work, absolutely.Jonathan: That's good.Tim: Yeah, I can echo that, too. We've been … A I travel around teaching and speaking, I'll have people come up to me and usually you get a lot of people saying, “Thanks for hits information. I had no idea this was going on.” But this one guy, he said, “I went through deconstruction.” And he said, “It was when you put up your definition of deconstruction that you had me because that”—Alisa: Wow!Tim: I thought he was going to push back and be like, “But that's not how you define it. Instead, he said, “You had me as soon as you put up your definition.” Why? “Because,” he said, “that exactly described the process that I was going through.” And yet, here he was on that Sunday morning at church kind of completely kind of turning a corner and willing to say, “No, I'm willing to follow the truth wherever it leads.”And that led him to affirming that the Bible is God's Word, and now he's trying to align his beliefs. And of course, that's a journey we're all on. I have false beliefs right now; I just don't know which ones are false, right? I'm always trying to correct my mistaken beliefs and make them align with Scripture. And praise the Lord, that was the journey he was on.Jonathan: Oh, amen. Well, the book is The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It's Destructive and How To Respond. Alisa Childers, Tim Barnett, thank you, guys, so much for being on Candid Conversations. I've really enjoyed our talk today.Alisa: Me, too. Thanks so much.Tim: Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thanks for having us.Jonathan: God bless.

Galatians | Galatians 1:6-12 | Cody Cline

Join us on this weekend episode of the Raising Godly Girls Podcast as we dive deeper into the crucial topic of guiding girls back to the Truth amidst doubt and drift. In this episode, AHG Founder & Executive Director, Patti Garibay, engages in a thought-provoking discussion with special guest Alisa Childers. As a wife, mom, author, and former member of the award-winning CCM group ZOEgirl, Alisa brings valuable insights into intentional Christian parenting through doubt and deconstruction. Discover practical strategies for fostering open dialogue, countering negative influences, and equipping parents to address complex theological concepts. Tune in for an empowering conversation that will inspire and equip you in your journey of raising up Godly girls.  Learn more about Alisa Childers and her work, visit alisachilders.com.  Find an American Heritage Girls Troop near you, visit americanheritagegirls.org       Add even more Biblical wisdom to your parenting quiver, visit raisinggodlygirls.com

Clinton, AR 2023

The Deconstruction of Christianity What exactly is deconstruction? The movement has been defined in many different ways. Today's guests co-authored a book to clear up the confusion. Alisa Childers, author of Another Gospel?, and Tim Barnett, creator of Red Pen Logic, sit down with Todd and Carl to discuss the true nature of faith deconstruction, which is sweeping through our churches and is disrupting, dismantling, and destroying the faith of so many. “Sadly, because of the Biblical illiteracy in our culture, because we live in a mic-drop world where someone just makes a claim and then they drop the mic and walk away as if they won an argument…that's why these things are so persuasive, and they get so many likes and so many shares and such a following.” – Tim Barnett Alisa and Tim will help you understand what deconstruction is, where it comes from, why it is compelling to some, and how it disorients the lives of so many, as well as how to think through the main issues and explore wise and loving ways to respond from a biblical worldview. Don't miss this important conversation.  Tyndale Press has provided a few giveaway copies of The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It's Destructive, and How to Respond for our listeners. Register here for the opportunity to win.   Show Notes: To purchase a copy of Alisa and Tim's book: https://reformedresources.org/the-deconstruction-of-christianity-what-it-is-why-its-destructive-and-how-to-respond-softcover/ Red Pen Logic: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmIwZDSKSeNboqWKtgX7UrA Tim's website:  https://www.str.org/tim-barnett Alisa's Website: https://alisachilders.com/

KWR0039 – Departing the Faith for Another Gospel Kingdom War Room   The seeker-sensitive, mega-church model has gone off the rails biblically.  Paganism, carnality, and secularism have taken over the pulpits, and these assemblies have become goat farms instead of pastures for the sheep of God!   Hosts:   Dr. Michael K. Lake:  Scholar-in-residence, Strategic Remnant Learning Center – BLA, Host of Biblical Life TV, Co-Host of the Kingdom Intelligence Briefing, and best-selling author.  http://www.kingdomintelligencebriefing.com   Dr. Mike Spaulding:  The teaching pastor of Calvary Chapel of Lima, OH, the author of Upsidedown in America, more than ten other books, and the host of Soaring Eagle Radio and Dr. Mike Live.  https://www.drmikespaulding.com/

For additional notes and resources, check out Douglas' YouTube channel.

What is the chief end of man? For many today in our postmodern culture, it seems to be to glorify the authentic self and enjoy it for as long as you can. Scripture has warned us that in latter times, people will become lovers of themselves. Today, the self sits at the center of the social-media movement known as "deconstruction." Our guests again this week Alisa Childers and Tim Barnet, help us break down and understand the foundational and contradictory aspects of this anti-Christian phenomenon and how we can intelligibly respond to it.Alisa Childers: As a lifelong church-goer, follower of Jesus, and former CCM recording artist with the Dove award-winning group ZOEgirl, Alisa experienced a period of profound doubt about her faith in her mid-thirties. This questioning launched an investigation and her journey from unreasoned doubt into a vibrant, rational and informed faith. She is the author of  Another Gospel, Live Your Truth, and coauthor of The Deconstruction of Christianity. She hosts the Alisa Childers podcast. For more information, visit: AlisaChilders.com.Tim Barnett is an apologist and speaker with Stand to Reason (str.org). Tim holds B.S. in Physics from York University, a B.Ed. from Ontario Tech University, and a M.A. in Philosophy from Southern Evangelical Seminary. For eight years, Tim served on the staff at Cedarview Community Church. He is coauthor of The Deconstruction of Christianity and currently the host of Red Pen Logic with Mr. B.Related Links: Free access to some related Watchman Profiles: Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Atheism by Dr. Robert M. Bowman: watchman.org/Atheism Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Agnosticism by W. Russell Crawford: watchman.org/Agnostic Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Naturalism by Daniel Ray: watchman.org/Naturalism Additional ResourcesFREE: We are also offering a subscription to our 4-page bimonthly Profiles here: www.watchman.org/Free.PROFILE NOTEBOOK: Order the complete collection of Watchman Fellowship Profiles (over 600 pages -- from Astrology to Zen Buddhism) in either printed or PDF formats here: watchman.org/notebook. SUPPORT: Help us create more content like this. Make a tax-deductible donation here: www.watchman.org/give.Apologetics Profile is a ministry of Watchman Fellowship For more information, visit www.watchman.org © Watchman Fellowship, Inc.

Mike's 5: Non-Toxic Masculinity, Another Gospel?, Becoming Us, Prayers in the Night, and The Making of Biblical Womanhood.Ryan's 5: Allah, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotions to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, Marriage, Scripture, and the Church, An Oral-formulaic study of the Qur'an, and The Hiddenness of God. Bradley's 5: Dune, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 12 Rules for Life and The Porn Myth, Orthodoxy, Catholics in Exile: Biblical Wisdom for the Journey Home.Support the show

In this episode, we welcome Alisa Childers back to the show. She is a former Contemporary Christian Music recording artist turned Christian Apologist. She was part of the all-female Christian pop music group ZOEgirl. After her music career, she found her way into the world of Christian apologetics. She's an outspoken opponent of “Progressive Christianity”. She is the author of Another Gospel? A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity and Live Your Truth (and Other Lies): Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed. In this interview, we discuss the new book that she co-authored with Tim Barnett called The Deconstruction of Christianity: What it is, Why it's Destructive, and How to Respond, the most nefarious component of the deconstruction movement, how Christian deconstruction essentially aligns with Leftist politics, how advocates of deconstruction just want everyone to end up leaving biblical Christianity behind completely, how most Christians and churches are not equipped to fight back against the deconstruction movement, how politics is upstream from religion for most Christians, how Calvinism potentially gives more firepower to deconstructionists, what we should do if we find out that someone close to us is in the process of deconstructing, and much more. Let's get into it…  Episode notes and links HERE. Donate to support our mission of equipping men to push back darkness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is deconstruction? Is it a normal, healthy process of examining our faith, or is it something more?Join me for a deep look at this important topic in today's church, with authors Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett as we discuss their new book (releasing today worldwide), The Deconstruction of Christianity.From Amazon.com: A groundbreaking book on the true nature of faith deconstructionAlisa and Tim help the reader to deconstruct the deconstructionists and thus to respond to them, both with arguments and with love and sensitivity. This is a timely book! -- Carl Trueman, author of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern SelfA movement called ‘deconstruction' is sweeping through our churches and it is affecting our loved ones. It has disrupted, dismantled, and destroyed the faith of so many, and this book can help you not only understand what's happening but also stand your ground and respond with clarity and confidence.Maybe you have a loved one who is deconstructing their faith, and you are struggling to know how to respond;Maybe you are trying to understand the radical spiritual makeover your friend or family member is going through;Maybe your relationship with a loved one has been strained or even cut off because of your “toxic” Christian beliefs and you don't know what to do;Maybe you're experiencing doubt yourself and facing hard questions about truth, God, the Bible, theology and the gospel.Some who leave the faith feel wounded by the church. Others feel repressed by some of the moral imperatives found in Scripture. For some, it leads to a custom-made spirituality. For others, deconstructing their faith leads them away from the truth into agnosticism, atheism, the occult, or humanism.In this seminal book, Alisa Childers, author of Another Gospel?, and Tim Barnett, creator of Red Pen Logic, will help you understand what deconstruction is, where it comes from, why it is compelling to some, and how it disorients the lives of so many. You will be able to think through the main issues around faith deconstruction and explore wise and loving ways to respond from a biblical worldview.Leave a voicemail with your question or comment!Five Ways You Can Support this show:Pray for us!Subscribe, like, and share it with your friends! (We even have a YouTube channel!)Leave reviews and comments wherever you listen to podcasts!You can become a paid partner of the podcast and get special bonus episodes and lots more content by clicking here. Visit one of our affiliate partners and consider using their products (we use them every day):Support and boost your immune system with Armra! Use DRLEEWARREN code at checkout for a discount!Improve your gut health, immune system, and protect your brain with Pique!Other Helpful Links:Click here to access the Hope Is the First Dose playlist of hopeful, healing songs!Be sure to check out my new book, Hope Is the First Dose!Here's a free 5-day Bible study on YouVersion/BibleApp based on my new book!Sign up for my weekly Self-Brain Surgery Newsletter here!All recent episodes with transcripts are available here!

Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden, human beings have been walking away from God. Call it backsliding, falling away, or deconverting, the terms are all a variation on the them of unbelief. The popular term in social media today is "deconstructing." Our guests this week and next, Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, are authors of a new book, The Deconstruction of Christianity. They will help us understand the basics of this social-media movement and insights about how we can respond to it.Alisa Childers: As a lifelong church-goer, follower of Jesus, and former CCM recording artist with the Dove award-winning group ZOEgirl, Alisa experienced a period of profound doubt about her faith in her mid-thirties. This questioning launched an investigation and her journey from unreasoned doubt into a vibrant, rational and informed faith. She is the author of  Another Gospel, Live Your Truth, and coauthor of The Deconstruction of Christianity. She hosts the Alisa Childers podcast. For more information, visit: AlisaChilders.com.Tim Barnett is an apologist and speaker with Stand to Reason (str.org). Tim holds B.S. in Physics from York University, a B.Ed. from Ontario Tech University, and a M.A. in Philosophy from Southern Evangelical Seminary. For eight years, Tim served on the staff at Cedarview Community Church. He is coauthor of The Deconstruction of Christianity and currently the host of Red Pen Logic with Mr. B.Related Links: Free access to some related Watchman Profiles: Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Atheism by Dr. Robert M. Bowman: watchman.org/Atheism Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Agnosticism by W. Russell Crawford: watchman.org/Agnostic Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Naturalism by Daniel Ray: watchman.org/Naturalism Additional ResourcesFREE: We are also offering a subscription to our 4-page bimonthly Profiles here: www.watchman.org/Free.PROFILE NOTEBOOK: Order the complete collection of Watchman Fellowship Profiles (over 600 pages -- from Astrology to Zen Buddhism) in either printed or PDF formats here: watchman.org/notebook. SUPPORT: Help us create more content like this. Make a tax-deductible donation here: www.watchman.org/give.Apologetics Profile is a ministry of Watchman Fellowship For more information, visit www.watchman.org © Watchman Fellowship, Inc.

On today's episode, we chat with Alisa Childers! Alisa was born in the San Fernando Valley, CA to Karen and her husband, pioneer Christian artist, Chuck Girard. While still a young woman in the late 1990s, Alisa and two friends formed the group, ZOEgirl who signed with Sparrow Records in 1999. ZOEgirl went on to become one of the fastest selling debut artists in the label's history, even winning the New Artists of the Year at the 2002 GMA Dove Awards. After seven years together, the group amicably split and remain friends. Today, Alisa is a wife, mom, an author and speaker and writes a popular apologetics blog for doubting Christians and honest skeptics. Her first book, “Another Gospel? A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity” was released in October 2020 and describes Alisa's journey over the last several years as she wrestled with questions that really strike at the heart of what it means to be a Biblical or historic Christian.  Her new book, 'The Deconstruction of Christianity', hits shelves January 30th. In this seminal book, Alisa Childers, author of Another Gospel?, and Tim Barnett, creator of Red Pen Logic, will help you understand what deconstruction is, where it comes from, why it is compelling to some, and how it disorients the lives of so many. You will be able to think through the main issues around faith deconstruction and explore wise and loving ways to respond from a biblical worldview. alisachilders.com @alisachilders christianmusicguys.com @christianmusicguys --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/christianmusicguys/message

Join Mary Lowman and Alisa Childers as they converse about how historic Christianity can stand up to all our doubts and criticism. Among other things, Alisa is the author of the best-selling book Another Gospel? In their conversation, they talk about her book, progressive Christianity, and how to strengthen our own faith in our ever-changing world. I know you'll be encouraged and challenged, so please join us.

A new MP3 sermon from Mount Zion Bible Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Another Gospel Subtitle: Chapel Library AudioBooks Speaker: A. W. Pink Broadcaster: Mount Zion Bible Church Event: Audiobook Date: 1/17/2024 Length: 23 min.

Mary Danielsen chats with Russ Miller of Creation, Evolution and Science Ministries (CESM) in the first half about how rampant deception begins with turning away from the simplicity of the true gospel. With so much biblical illiteracy in the church, more people at looking at fictional representations and "what is right in their own eyes" to make a Jesus in their own image. Using the text of 2 Corinthians 11:3-4, we learn of Paul's concerns that his readers (including this generation) would find themselves beguiled and bewitched just as Eve was and their/our minds would be corrupted. We will look at some of the ways this can and will happen at an increasingly rapid rate. Are we willing to tell people that they "have the wrong Jesus" and explain what that means? It's not just the cults, such as Mormonism, that have the wrong Jesus. In the 2nd half of the podcast Mary will look at some headlines about a variety of issues we are facing here in early 2024. Watch Stand Up For The Truth on YouTube !

Support The Becket Cook Show on Patreon! In today's episode, I chat with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett about their new book, “The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It's Destructive, and How to Respond.” A movement called ‘deconstruction' is sweeping through our churches and it is affecting our loved ones. It has disrupted, dismantled, and destroyed the faith of so many, and this book can help you not only understand what's happening but also stand your ground and respond with clarity and confidence. Maybe you have a loved one who is deconstructing their faith, and you are struggling to know how to respond; Maybe you are trying to understand the radical spiritual makeover your friend or family member is going through; Maybe your relationship with a loved one has been strained or even cut off because of your “toxic” Christian beliefs and you don't know what to do; Maybe you're experiencing doubt yourself and facing hard questions about truth, God, the Bible, theology and the gospel. Some who leave the faith feel wounded by the church. Others feel repressed by some of the moral imperatives found in Scripture. For some, it leads to a custom-made spirituality. For others, deconstructing their faith leads them away from the truth into agnosticism, atheism, the occult, or humanism.   In this seminal book, Alisa Childers, author of Another Gospel?, and Tim Barnett, creator of Red Pen Logic, will help you understand what deconstruction is, where it comes from, why it is compelling to some, and how it disorients the lives of so many. You will be able to think through the main issues around faith deconstruction and explore wise and loving ways to respond from a biblical worldview. Buy the book here: https://amzn.to/47T68kh    The Becket Cook Show Ep. 147This Episode of The Becket Cook Show is available on YouTubeJoin the Patreon! Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

You may have come across the terms “deconstruction” or “exvangelical” in recent years, or have perhaps seen high-profile Christian leaders walk away from the faith.But what is deconstruction, and why does it seem to be a growing problem?On this episode of the podcast I'm talking with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, who have just written a new book together called The Deconstruction of Christianity: What it is, why it's destructive, and how to respond.”Alisa is a wife, mom, author, podcaster, blogger, speaker, and worship leader. She's the author of two other books “Another Gospel” and “Live your Truth and other lies” which we have had conversations about on previous episodes of the podcast.Tim has worked as an apologist for Stand to Reason since 2015. Tim trains Christians to think clearly about what they believe and why they believe it.He's also the host of the popular YouTube Channel “Red Pen Logic with Mr. B.”On this episode we'll talk about:What's deconstruction isWhat factors into a person's decision to walk away from the faithThe role of social media in fueling this phenomenonHow we can rightly respond to those in our lives who are struggling with or have walked away from the faith they once professed.Listen to our conversation and see the show notes at ReasonableTheology.org/DeconstructionGet the newsletter at ReasonableTheology.org/Subscribe. The weekly email includes:the latest article or podcast episodea helpful theological definitiona painting depicting a scene from Scripture or church historya musical selection to enrich your daythe best book deal I've found that week to build your library.Support the showGET THE NEWSLETTEREach edition of the Reasonable Theology newsletter contains my latest article or podcast episode PLUS: A Theological Word or Phrase Explained Quickly and Clearly A Painting Depicting a Scene from Scripture or Church History Audio of a Hymn or other Musical Selection to Enjoy A Recommended Book or Resource to Expand Your Library SUBSCRIBE HERE

A pro-gay conference was held recently at a mega-church that has many Christians lamenting. Today, our guest will teach us why this was preventable BEFORE it was lamentable. How do we recognize creeping heresies in the Church today? How do we realize when another gospel is held up as biblical truth? Now, more than ever, followers of Christ must learn how to discern and our conversation today is designed to teach you how to do just that.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest never thought she'd doubt. But when she came into contact with progressive Christianity, everything she'd ever believed about God, Jesus, and the Bible was picked apart. Describing an intellectual journey that left her on the brink of despair, our guest will share how God helped her reconstruct her faith. Join us to learn how to recognize and respond to the dangerous ideas of “progressive Christianity”.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION“…the number-one rule of acting is, ‘Do not seek approval from the audience.' People don't realize that. You can't do stuff to get applause. You have to live in the truth.”~Chadwick Boseman (1976-2020), award-winning actor When we “think we are most free, we are most coerced by the dominant beliefs of our own culture. For it is a powerful cultural fiction that we not only can, but must, make up our deepest beliefs in the isolation of our private selves.”~Robert Bellah (1927-2013), UC Berkley professor of sociology “Christianity is the only major faith built entirely around a single historical claim. It is, however, a claim quite unlike any other ever made, as any perceptive and scrupulous historian must recognize. Certainly, it bears no resemblance to the vague fantasies of witless enthusiasts or to the cunning machinations of opportunistic charlatans…. [For Saul of Tarsus] it is the report of a man who had never known Jesus before the crucifixion, and who had once persecuted Jesus' followers, but who also believed that he had experienced the risen Christ, with such shattering power that he too preferred death to apostasy. And it is the report of countless others who have believed that they also—in a quite irreducibly personal way—have known the risen Christ.”~David Bentley Hart, philosopher and scholar, in The Atheist Delusion “God accepts only the forsaken, cures only the sick, gives sight only to the blind, restores life to only the dead, sanctifies only the sinners, gives wisdom only to fools. In short, He has mercy only on those who are wretched…. Therefore, no proud saint, no wise or just person, can become God's material, and God's purpose cannot be fulfilled in him. He remains in his own work and makes a fictitious, pretended, false, and painted saint of himself, that is, a hypocrite.”~Martin Luther (1483-1546), German reformer “Like wheat and tares, true ideas and false ideas have grown together throughout church history, and it's up to faithful Christians to be watchful and diligent to compare every idea with the Word of God and see if it lines up.”~Alisa Childers in her book Another Gospel? “We need the gospel…. We need the life-giving, identity-establishing, purpose-defining gospel of Jesus Christ.”~Eric Mason, Philadelphia-based pastorSERMON PASSAGEGalatians 1:1-5, 11-24 (NASB) 1 Paul, an apostle (not sent from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead), 2 and all the brethren who are with me, 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen. 6 I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; 7 which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! 9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! 10 For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. 11 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it; 14 and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. 15 But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, was pleased 16 to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus. 18 Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother. 20  (Now in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying.) 21 Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22 I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea which were in Christ; 23 but only, they kept hearing, “He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they were glorifying God because of me.

TODAY'S GUEST:  Alisa Childers is a wife, a mom, author, apologist, and speaker. She was a member of the award-winning CCM recording group ZOEgirl and has been published at The Gospel Coalition, Crosswalk, The Stream, For Every Mom, Decision magazine, and The Christian Post. Her book, Another Gospel: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity has become a best-seller. I highly recommend her outstanding podcast. Live Your Truth - And Other Lies We've all seen the memes that populate the internet: live your truth, follow your heart, you only have one life to live. They sound nice and positive. But what if these slogans are actually lies that unhinge us from reality and leave us anxious and exhausted? Another Gospel? author Alisa Childers invites you to examine modern lies that are disguised as truths in today's culture. Everyday messages of peace, fulfillment, and empowerment seem like sentiments of freedom and hope, but in reality they are deeply deceptive.  In Live Your Truth and Other Lies, Alisa will help you to • uncover the common lies repeated within progressive circles • hold on to the soul-restoring truths that God's Word offers • be empowered to live in the way your Creator designed you MORE The Unshaken Faith podcast with Natasha Crain and Alisa Childers. Your Favorite Guests on Stand Up for the Truth! (List & Links) I attended the Asbury Revival and Here's What I Saw Next Step for Apostate Churches: Discuss Removing God's Gender $100 Million Ad Campaign Aims to Get Young Adults to Reconsider Christian Faith 200 Resources You Can Trust!– Be Equipped and ‘Connect the Dots' NEWSBYTES SUPPORT STAND UP FOR THE TRUTH PODCAST WITH BRAND NEW GEAR!

In this podcast, J. Warner moderates a panel discussion on the topic of why are Christian ‘celebrities' leaving the faith or deconstructing their beliefs. The panelists are Alisa Childers, a former singer of ZOEgirl and an author of Another Gospel, John Cooper, the lead singer of Skillet and an author of Awake and Alive to Truth, and Dave Stovall, a former musician of Waverly and Audio Adrenaline and a worship leader at Journey Church. They share their insights and experiences on how to deal with doubt, how to discern truth from error, how to respond to cultural pressure, and how to stay faithful to the historic Christian faith. This podcast was created from a session at the 2022 National Conference on Christian Apologetics hosted by Southern Evangelical Seminary.

We often refer to the Colson Fellows Program on the Strong Women podcast. This week, we're excited to share the testimonies of six Colson Fellows-in-Training, all of whom are also Strong Women listeners. They share the highlights of their experiences as Fellows-in-Training, what prompted them to join the program, and what they would say to listeners who are considering the Colson Fellows.     Colson Fellows Program  Alisa Childers Unshaken Faith Podcast  Another Gospel by Alisa Childers   How Now Shall We Live by Chuck Colson  Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis    Help us equip individuals and institutions to bring restoration to their spheres of influence—for the advance of the Kingdom and the flourishing of culture. Give to support our fiscal-year-end goal at colsoncenter.org/fye23!    Strong Women listeners, we're excited to offer the Colson Center National Conference...ONLINE! Use promo code Strongwomen (all one word) to get $5 off the $49 ticket price. For one low price, you can experience all the main stage talks, breakouts, and panel discussions from our annual Christian worldview conference at your own leisure. Visit colsonconference.org for full event details and registration.     Erin and her husband, Brett, run Maven, which “exists to help the next generation know truth, pursue goodness, and create beauty, all for the cause of Christ.” Check out more about Maven here: https://maventruth.com/   The Strong Women Podcast is a product of the Colson Center, which equips Christians to live out their faith with clarity, confidence, and courage in this cultural moment. Through commentaries, podcasts, videos, and more, we help Christians better understand what's happening in the world, and champion what is true and good wherever God has called them. Learn more about the Colson Center here: https://www.colsoncenter.org/   Visit our website and sign up for our email list so that you can stay up to date on what we are doing here and also receive our monthly book list: https://www.colsoncenter.org/strong-women  Join Strong Women on Social Media:   https://www.facebook.com/StrongWomenCC  https://www.facebook.com/groups/strongwomencommunitycc/  https://www.instagram.com/strongwomencc/   

Alisa Childers is an American singer and songwriter. She's best known right now for being an Apologist. Prior to becoming known as an Apologist, she was known for being a singer in the all-female Christian band ZOEgirl. She experienced a period of profound doubt about her faith in her mid-thirties. She felt uncertainty and didn't know where to find answers to her questions, or if answers existed at all. She began to investigate her faith intellectually by taking seminary classes and reading everything she could get her hands on. This began her journey from unreasoned doubt into a vibrant, rational, and informed faith. She has written a couple books that have been extremely impactful in mine and my family's life, as well as thousands of others. The first one she wrote was called “Another Gospel” where describes the journey she took over several years as she wrestled with questions that struck at the core of the Christian faith and found the truth. This book is very powerful! Her most recent book,“Live Your Truth & Other Lies,” goes through things we say as Christians that are not true and how that affects our life. If you want to hear ongoing Bible teaching, if you're interested in the historicity of the Bible and the doctrines of the Christian faith, listen to her on her podcast “Alisa Childers Podcast.” She's able to network and interview with many experts in different aspects of the Christian faith. She herself is an expert! I highly recommend following her on any of her platforms. You can learn more and follow Alisa Childers through the resources below: - Website - https://alisachilders.com- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/alisachilders/- Alisa Childers Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-alisa-childers-podcast/id1260262855 - Alisa Childers YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@alisachilders - Unshaken Faith Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unshaken-faith/id1657921515 - Unshaken Faith Conference - https://unshakenconference.com - "Another Gospel?" - https://amzn.to/3JJJ3qC - "Live Your Truth and Other Lies" - https://amzn.to/3JLEtbm Mentioned in this video: - "Is the Enneagram a Trojan Horse in the Church? With Marcia Montenegro" - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/81-is-the-enneagram-a-trojan-horse-in-the/id1260262855?i=1000570504204 - "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth" by Gordon D. Fee - https://amzn.to/3Tp14Oj- Voetberg Music Academy - Use coupon code YOUTUBE for 10% off each month - https://www.voetbergacademy.com - The Growth Initiative: Now open for enrollment! www.nowthatwereafamily.com/thegrowthinitiative Save $150 by purchasing the Get it All Done Club Home Management Course and Growth Initiative for Men together: https://www.nowthatwereafamily.com/offers/S3GJdvSm/checkout - Top 5 Tuesday Join our weekly email list to keep up to date with the highlights of what is going on in our family life. https://www.nowthatwereafamily.com/top-5-tuesday-newletter - Homeschool Course: https://www.nowthatwereafamily.com/homeschool Get It All Done Club: https://www.nowthatwereafamily.com/get-it-all-done-club - Looking for more Now That We're A Family resources? We got 'em! Website: https://www.nowthatwereafamily.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/nowthatwereafamily/OUR FAMILY MUSIC ACADEMY: https://www.voetbergmusicacademy.com Use coupon code: YOUTUBE for 10% off each month - Is your life just too complicated to ever feel peaceful? Check out Katie's Free Home Management Masterclass:https://www.nowthatwereafamily.com/get-it-all-done-club