Podcast appearances and mentions of skye jethani

Does God think people are toxic? Skye Jethani shares a life-changing truth about God's actual perspective of us and what motivates him to engage with those others would choose to avoid.

Do you feel disconnected to God or find your relationship with him strained. Maybe this short meeting can open your eyes to the potential pitfalls you may be in, that ultimately lead to a dissatisfactory way of relating to God. Hopefully it also will shine a light on the beginnings of a life giving way of relating to God too!

Kaitlyn and Skye Jethani are back to explain the egalitarian stance. What Bible verses at first glance seem complementation, but may reveal, with context, a more egalitarian view? What else do people overlook in our desire to find a clear “role for women” in the church?   0:00 - Theme Song   3:21 - Biblical Exemples   7:20 - Prescription vs Description   16:18 - Looking for Scriptural Logic   20:36 - Sponsor - Zocdoc - Stop putting off those doctor's appointments! Go to https://www.zocdoc.com/KAITLYN   22:02 - Egalitarian Reading of Corinthians   29:24 - The Historical Church Perspective   36:26 - What's Lost with the Complementarian Argument?   38:42 - Resources   41:02 - End Credits   Resources: Discovering Biblical Equality: Biblical, Theological, Cultural, and Practical Perspectives by Ronald W. Pierce, Cynthia Long Westfall, and Christa L. McKirkland: https://a.co/d/bTqtG6m   Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women's Ordination by William G. Witt: https://a.co/d/9C53kJo   Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ by Cynthia Long Westfall: https://a.co/d/dNtFT9z

Kaitlyn and Skye Jethani go over the different kinds of complementarianism, the verses used to justify it, and how weird this becomes in practical application.   0:00 - Theme Song   2:30 - What Does “Complementarian” Mean?   7:43 - Nature vs. Culture   17:17 - Sponsor - Dwell - Listen to scripture throughout your day. Go to https://www.dwellbible.com/CK for 25% off!   18:56 - Sponsor - World Relief - Get the “Prayers for Such a Time as This” prayer guide for free through this link to join a community of believers in praying for refugees and other vulnerable people: https://www.worldrelief.org/KAITLYN   20:30 - Biblical Justifications   44:40 - Books on Complementarianism   47:50 - End Credits   Tell Her Story: How Woman Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church by Nijay Gupta: https://a.co/d/czUeSpI   Women in Ministry: Four Views (Spectrum Multiview Book Series) by Bonnidell Clouse, Robert Clouse, Robert Culver, Susan T. Fox, Walter L. Leifeld, and Alvera Mickelsen: https://a.co/d/0evVUea   Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism by John Piper and Wayne Grudem: https://a.co/d/erWUkcF   Neither Complementarian Nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate by Michelle Lee-Barnewall: https://a.co/d/1zzEXau

This is our unabridged interview with Holy Post. Can you do insider critique with a sense of humor? You might know Phil Vischer as the creator of the beloved children's show VeggieTales, or Skye Jethani for his work as a pastor, speaker, and author. Both of them are long-time public Christian voices. These days, though, they find themselves hosting the Holy Post podcast, doing the hard work of insider critique of a Christian subculture that, in recent years, has boiled over with white nationalism, Trumpism, and many forms of injustice. In this episode, they discuss how they try to do their work with intelligence, care, and humor. Show Notes Resources: The Holy Post “What If Jesus Was Serious about Justice?” by Skye Jethani Francis Collins on Stephen Colbert Similar Episodes: Russell Moore and David French: How Should Christians Do Politics? David French: Conservatism Without Trumpism Francis Collins: The Road to Wisdom in an Age of Distrust Transcript Want more NSE? JOIN NSE+ Today! Our subscriber only community comes with bonus content, ad-free listening, and early access to tickets for our live shows. Great Feeling Studios, the team behind No Small Endeavor and other award-winning podcasts, helps nonprofits and brands tell stories that inspire action. Start your podcast at helpmemakeapodcast.com. Subscribe to episodes: Apple | Spotify | Amazon | Google | YouTubeFollow Us: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTubeFollow Lee: Instagram | TwitterJoin our Email List: nosmallendeavor.com See Privacy Policy: Privacy Policy Amazon Affiliate Disclosure: Tokens Media, LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Can you do insider critique with a sense of humor? You might know Phil Vischer as the creator of the beloved children's show VeggieTales, or Skye Jethani for his work as a pastor, speaker, and author. Both of them are long-time public Christian voices. These days, though, they find themselves hosting the Holy Post podcast, doing the hard work of insider critique of a Christian subculture that, in recent years, has boiled over with white nationalism, Trumpism, and many forms of injustice. In this episode, they discuss how they try to do their work with intelligence, care, and humor. Show Notes Resources: The Holy Post “What If Jesus Was Serious about Justice?” by Skye Jethani Francis Collins on Stephen Colbert Similar Episodes: Russell Moore and David French: How Should Christians Do Politics? David French: Conservatism Without Trumpism Francis Collins: The Road to Wisdom in an Age of Distrust Transcript Want more NSE? JOIN NSE+ Today! Our subscriber only community comes with bonus content, ad-free listening, and early access to tickets for our live shows. Great Feeling Studios, the team behind No Small Endeavor and other award-winning podcasts, helps nonprofits and brands tell stories that inspire action. Start your podcast at helpmemakeapodcast.com. Subscribe to episodes: Apple | Spotify | Amazon | Google | YouTubeFollow Us: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTubeFollow Lee: Instagram | TwitterJoin our Email List: nosmallendeavor.com See Privacy Policy: Privacy Policy Amazon Affiliate Disclosure: Tokens Media, LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Skye Jethani is an award-winning author, speaker, and co-host of the Holy Post Podcast. Skye has written more than a dozen books and served as an editor and executive at Christianity Today for more than a decade. His voice has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post. To listen to the final 25 min of this episode, where Skye and I debate the question "should Christians vote," go over to patreon.com/theologyintheraw.com to become a member, where you can access this convo and other premium content.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WELCOMEWelcome to the Everyday Disciples podcast, where we discuss what it means to follow the way of Jesus in everything, everywhere, every day.  This month, we are talking about what it means to be purposeful in prayer.WHAT IS PRAYEROur English word prayer derives from the Latin word precarious, which is fitting since we tend to most often pray in the precarious moments of life. But it is not just the precarious moments that cause us to pray. It is also those moments of wonder and awe that move us toward our Creator. A FEW FORMS OF PRAYERLiturgical - Wrote prayers such as scripture or written prayers passed through generations.Intercession - Praying on behalf of another person or for another person.Tongues/Praying in the Spirit - A gift of the Holy Spirit that we are directed has a time and place to be used (1 Cor.14:27).Worship (music or otherwise) - Adoration, confession, supplication, thanksgiving.Prophetic - Praying out what the Lord is speaking to you for someone else or people groups. WHAT WAS JESUS PATTERN OF PRAYER?Jesus modeled patterns and practices of prayer by prioritizing it in his life:At His baptism, He was praying (Luke 3:21-22)In the midst of popularity, He would withdraw and pray (Luke 5:16)Before major decisions, he would prayer, like when calling the disciples. (Luke 6:12)In times with his disciples, He prayed. (Luke 9:18)He would take close disciples away with Him to pray (Luke 9:28)Before Jesus was betrayed, He was praying (Luke 22:39-41)As Jesus was praying, His disciples asked Him to teach them to pray. (Luke 11:1)RWHERE TO START“Pray as you can, not as you can't” - Dom ChapmanPRAY THE LORDS PRAYER - Matthew 6:9-13PRAY THROUGH A PSALMJOURNAL YOUR PRAYERSPRACTICES FOR THE MONTH:1.   SET A TIME AND A PLACE TO PRAY2.  TRY A NEW PRAYER PRACTICE:Pray Scripture, Pray with others, Meditative Prayer, Read a book of prayers, Write your prayers, use Lectio 365 guided prayer, etc. 3.   MID-DAY PRAYERPause in the middle of your day and prayer through the Lord's prayer. Matthew 6:9-13RESOURCES:Praying the Bible by Donald WhitneyPrayer: Finding the Hearts Home by Richard FosterHow to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People by Pete GriegPray Like Monks Live Like Fools by Tyler StatonA Praying Life by Paul E. MillerOld Paths New Power by Daniel HendersonEvery Moment Holy Volume I, II, III  by Douglas Kaine McKelveyWith by Skye Jethani

The brain science showing that rest is a pre-requisite to doing justice, why it's essential we remember that Christ both saved us AND killed us on the cross, and the best laugh Skye's ever gotten from the improv stage.Links Mentioned:Skye JethaniSkye Jethani on LinkedInSkye Jethani on XSkye Jethani on InstagramSkye Jethani on YouTubeWhat If Jesus Was Serious about Justice?Holy Post MediaDavid French on XDallas WillardG.K. ChestertonAndrew Young Books on AmazonFannie Lou Hamer | BritannicaThis Is UsAarti SequeiraSimply ChristianThe Return of the Prodigal SonFour Thousand WeeksFive Mere ChristiansJordan Raynor

Psalm 23:4. This sermon is drawing on Skye Jethani's fantastic book "With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God"

Jess gets right into the thick of it today--we're talking about the state of the American Church! Taking a look at her own upbringing as an evangelical, Jess looks at the disconnect between megachurches and building deep community, what Gen Z can actually teach us about how to move forward in the church, and how all the answers to these questions and more come from the ability to serve from a place of rest.Curious to learn more about the topics mentioned? Follow the links below to research and various articles on the evangelical industrial complex and where Christianity is at in America today.Skye Jethani on the Evangelical Industrial Complex: (behind a paywall) https://www.christianitytoday.com/2012/02/evangelical-industrial-complex-rise-of-celebrity-pastors/Barna, State of the Church: https://www.barna.com/research/changing-state-of-the-church/Barna, Trends Surrounding Churches: https://www.barna.com/research/current-perceptions/The Network Journal, Some Things Gen Z Cares About: https://tnj.com/gen-z-most-important-issues-today/Instagram: @the.honestlyjess.showYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thehonestlyjessshow

Jess gets right into the thick of it today--we're talking about the state of the American Church! Taking a look at her own upbringing as an evangelical, Jess looks at the disconnect between megachurches and building deep community, what Gen Z can actually teach us about how to move forward in the church, and how all the answers to these questions and more come from the ability to serve from a place of rest.Curious to learn more about the topics mentioned? Follow the links below to research and various articles on the evangelical industrial complex and where Christianity is at in America today.Skye Jethani on the Evangelical Industrial Complex: (behind a paywall) https://www.christianitytoday.com/2012/02/evangelical-industrial-complex-rise-of-celebrity-pastors/Barna, State of the Church: https://www.barna.com/research/changing-state-of-the-church/Barna, Trends Surrounding Churches: https://www.barna.com/research/current-perceptions/The Network Journal, Some Things Gen Z Cares About: https://tnj.com/gen-z-most-important-issues-today/Instagram: @the.honestlyjess.showYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thehonestlyjessshow

Skye Jethani joins Kaitlyn for the next episode in our Lent and Easter series - answering the question “Why did Jesus have to die?” Skye and Kaitlyn discuss theological responses to this question, how reading the Old Testament helps us understand the New Testament better, and how Jesus' death says something about the depth of evil and the even greater depth of God's love.Skye Jethani joins Kaitlyn for the next episode in our Lent and Easter series - answering the question “Why did Jesus have to die?” Skye and Kaitlyn discuss theological responses to this question, how reading the Old Testament helps us understand the New Testament better, and how Jesus' death says something about the depth of evil and the even greater depth of God's love.   0:00 - Sponsor - Dwell - Listen to scripture throughout your day. Go to https://www.dwellbible.com/CK for 25% off!   3:15- Why Did Jesus Have to Die?   7:51 - God's Character   13:20 -  Sponsor - Hiya Health - Go to https://www.hiyahealth.com/CURIOUSLY to receive 50% off your first order   15:10 - Sponsor - Fabric by Gerber Life - Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at https://www.meetfabric.com/KAITLYN   16:35 - Why Sacrifice Jesus?   23:00 - Why Die on a Cross?   29:55 - End Credits

 In his first month in office, Donald Trump has broken international agreements with allies, ended all foreign aid, voted with America's enemies in the UN, posted a plan to turn Gaza into a Trump casino and resort, purged the Pentagon of military commanders, appointed podcasters and conspiracy theorists to his cabinet, and threatened to invade or annex Canada, Greenland, and Panama. David French and Skye Jethani discuss various theories to explain Trump's approach to governing, and find one model that makes a lot of sense in an article by Jonathan Rouch. Then they contrast it with what the Founders said was necessary for the republic to survive—virtue. Finally, they discuss how the decline of virtue in American leadership may be the fruit of the church's failure to make disciples. 0:00 - French Friday's Moving to The SkyePod! 1:27 - The Theme Song 2:23 - Ukraine and Trump 8:11 - Trump 1.0 vs Trump 2.0 16:43 - Triumphalism's Shelf Life 25:53 - Bureaucracy vs Mob Boss 32:38 - Megachurches and Patrimonialism 39:38 - American Democracy and Christianity 55:52 - Prophecy's Role in MAGA 1:05:00 - End Credits One Word Describes Trump (Article by Jonathan Rauch): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/corruption-trump-administration/681794/ Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy by Jonathan Rauch: https://a.co/d/26wdqNC  Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America by Jeffrey Rosen: https://a.co/d/6Crl6Hk  

I'm excited to have Skye Jethani back on the podcast. When we talk about justice, we often think in binary terms - judgment or mercy, punishment or forgiveness. But as Skye argues, the biblical vision of justice is far more nuanced and holistic. At its core, justice is about the proper ordering of relationships - between humanity and God, as well as between individuals and communities. It's not just about retribution, but about restoring the shalom, the wholeness and flourishing, that God intended for his creation. This understanding upends many of our assumptions about justice, both in the church and in society. He challenges the popular American Christian idea that justice is something the government does, not the church. And he unpacks how this bifurcation between the "vertical" and "horizontal" dimensions of justice has deeply distorted our theology and our engagement with the world. But Skye also offers a compelling alternative - a vision of justice that holds together judgment and mercy, individual transformation and systemic change. It's a vision rooted in the cosmic victory of Christ on the cross, where the powers of evil were defeated and a new order was established. This is a conversation that spans creation, Christology, and the church's role in pursuing righteousness. Skye draws on Scripture, church history, and his own experience to paint a rich, nuanced portrait of justice that challenges us to rethink our assumptions and expand our imaginations. So join us as we reckon with justice.Skye Jethani is an award-winning author, speaker, and co-host of the Holy Post Podcast and co-founder of Holy Post Media. Skye has written more than a dozen books and served as an editor and executive at Christianity Today for more than a decade. Raised in a religiously and ethnically diverse family, his curiosity about faith led him to study comparative religion before entering seminary and pastoral ministry. With a unique ability to connect Christian thought and contemporary culture, his voice has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post, and he's spoken to audiences throughout the world as diverse as the U.S. Naval Academy, The Chautauqua Institution, and the Lausanne Movement.Skye's Book:What If Jesus Was Serious About Justice?Skye's Recommendations:How Far to the Promised LandThe Ballot and the BibleSubscribe to Our Substack: Shifting CultureConnect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.usGo to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeConsider Giving to the podcast and to the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowEmail jjohnson@allnations.us, so we can get your creative project off the ground! Support the show

When we look around, it’s clear—our world is filled with injustice and systems that fall short. Does Jesus truly care about what’s broken in our world? When will He make right all that’s wrong?  Author and podcaster Skye Jethani explores the heart of Jesus for justice and reveals how justice is at the heart of the Gospel! Find hope in your struggles for justice on this edition of Equipped! Today's resource:  What if Jesus was Serious about Justice? Equipped with Chris Brooks is made possible through your support.  To donate now, click here. This month's featured resource:  His Needs Her Needs: Making Romantic Love Last

During a recent Fox News interview, Vice President J.D. Vance cited “an old school and very Christian concept” to justify rejecting refugees and ending international aid. Bishops from his own church disagreed. The Holy Post crew explores the concept Vance was citing, how he misunderstands it, and why his interpretation undermines the entire New Testament. Kaitlyn interviews Skye about his new book, “What If Jesus Was Serious About Justice?” They talk about the link between justice and worship, what it means to have a heart “far from God,” and why the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is biblical but taught in a proudly unbiblical way in many churches. Also this week, Phil returns to Twitter and learns who Margaret is.   Holy Post Plus: Bonus Interview with Skye Jethani: https://www.patreon.com/posts/121522392/edit   0:00 - Sponsor - Bushnell University - Equip yourself to be transformative in your community! Go to https://www.bushnell.edu   0:49 - Show Starts   3:20 - Theme Song   3:42 - Sponsor - Faithful Counseling - This episode is sponsored by Faithful Counseling. Give online therapy a try at https://www.faithfulcounseling.com/HOLYPOST and get 10% off   4:45 - Sponsor - AG1 - Heavily researched, thoroughly purity-tested, and filled with stuff you need. Go to https://www.drinkag1.com/HOLYPOST   6:09 - Inauguration   7:27 - Tariff Fight!   12:03 - Twitter's a Dirty Aquarium   17:29 - Who's Margaret and Should She Care?   20:52 - The American Council of Bishops   24:22 - Augustine and Ordo Amoris   31:56 - Scripture and Ordo Amoris   37:36 - Case for Christian Nationalism   43:23 - The Resurrection Disrupts Politics   48:22 - Sponsor - Blueland - Get up to 25% off your first order by going to https://www.Blueland.com/HOLYPOST   49:28 - Sponsor - Pique - Pique's tea is a superfood in a cup! Comes with a frother and glass beaker—get the starter kit at https://piquelife.com/HOLYPOST   51:08 - Interview   53:05 - Justice and Social Justice   1:01:10 - Oppression Beyond Identity   1:09:55 - God's Justice and Mercy   1:14:42 - Penal Substitutionary Atonement   1:22:45 - End Credits   Links Mentioned in News Segment: JD Vance is Wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others: https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/jd-vance-wrong-jesus-doesnt-ask-us-rank-our-love-others?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic/christianity Other resources: What if Jesus Was Serious About Justice by Skye Jethani: https://a.co/d/gFydI1K   Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/   Holy Post Plus: www.holypost.com/plus   Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost   Holy Post Merch Store: https://www.holypost.com/shop   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying  purchases.  

God calls us to live with intention and go beyond the bare minimum in our faith and actions--finding purpose and meaning in every aspect of life!BOOKS:- "What if Jesus was Serious" by Skye Jethani: https://www.amazon.com/What-Jesus-Was-Serious-Teachings/dp/0802419755- "Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus" by Louis Tverber

Welcome to The Culture Translator podcast. Today, we are posting an interview with Skye Jethani. An award-winning author, speaker, and co-host of the Holy Post Podcast, Skye has written more than a dozen books, and also served as an editor and executive at Christianity Today for more than a decade. Raised in a religiously and ethnically diverse family, his curiosity about faith led him to study comparative religion before entering seminary and pastoral ministry. We'll be talking today primarily about his series on miracles and wonders, published originally on his With God Daily platform, which provides daily devotionals for people who hate daily devotionals.  For more parenting resources, go to axis.org 

Mike Erre joins Phil and Skye to discuss how to survive the holidays. What's the best way to engage (or disengage) a contentious relative who wants to argue about politics, and how do we remain united as churches and families in these divided times? Professor, author, and preacher Tony Campolo died last week. Shane Claiborne returns to discuss his friendship with Campolo and his legacy of challenging the American church with the “red letters” of the Bible. Also this week—what's the real goal behind protecting public nativity displays, and disappointed political witches.   0:00 - Intro   1:33 - Show Starts   2:50 - Theme Song   3:12 - Sponsor - Wheaton Graduate School - Learn in a rich, rigorous Christian environment - https://www.wheaton.edu/holypost   4:20 - Sponsor - BioLogos - Go to https://biologos.org/podcast/language-of-god/ and check out the Language of God podcast!   5:24 - Interview    6:42 - Political Witches   12:54 - The Liberty Council's Annual Report   17:19 - Tony Campolo's Passing   26:35 - Being Grateful   46:03 - Favorite Conflict-Deflection Topic   54:05 - Sponsor - Aura Frames - Exclusive $45-off Carver Mat at https://www.AuraFrames.com. Use code HOLYPOST at checkout to save!   55:43 - Sponsor - Glorify - Sign up for the #1 Christian Daily Devotional App to help you stay focused on God. Go to https://glorify-app.com/en/HOLYPOST to download the app today!   56:48 - Interview   1:06:34 - Dealing with Pushback   1:12:00 - Where “Red Letter Christians” Comes From   1:20:46 - What Tony Was Like to Be Around   1:29:15 - End Credits     Links Mentioned in the News Segment: Witches Report Their Spells Against Trump Aren't Working: “He Has a Shield” https://cbn.com/news/us/witches-report-their-spells-against-trump-arent-working-he-has-shield   Liberty Council's Friend or Foe Campaign: https://lc.org/newsroom/details/111124-friend-or-foe-christmas-campaign-2025   Tony Campolo's Story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRBM_YY_YX0   Other resources: With God Daily with Skye Jethani: https://www.withgoddaily.com/   Voxology Podcast with Mike Erre: https://pod.link/1049250910   Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/   Holy Post Plus: www.holypost.com/plus   Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost   Holy Post Merch Store: https://www.holypost.com/shop   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.  

Following Jesus is never done by itself. Many things go together with following Jesus, and there are a few things that certainly don't go together with that. In this message, Pastor Scott Savage closes out our Way of Jesus series by sharing 5 things that go together with Jesus. This message is based on Matthew 7:13-29.

Following Jesus is never done by itself. Many things go together with following Jesus, and there are a few things that certainly don't go together with that. In this message, Pastor Scott Savage closes out our Way of Jesus series by sharing 5 things that go together with Jesus. This message is based on Matthew 7:13-29.

"What if much of what you've been told about Heaven was incorrect?" Host Curtis Chang is joined by Skye Jethani, author and co-host of the Holy Post podcast, for a conversation about the widespread misconceptions of Heaven. Together, they unpack why many of us have been asking the wrong questions about Heaven. For instance, rather than asking “Is Heaven real?" or “Who is going to Heaven?” Christians are called by Jesus to make Heaven more real in the here and now, including in our vocation, family, and even how we care for the Earth. Join them in this shift from a Heaven-focused faith to a Christ-centered practice that brings Heaven and Earth closer together than you might have imagined.   Join the Redeeming Babel Team: Marketing Manager Job Opening   Join us for the following The After Party/Good Faith virtual events: October 28th pre-election podcast recording November 4th all-comers election eve noontime prayer November 6th post-election podcast recording   Listen to Songs For the After Party, get sheet music, lyrics, and prayers for your church. Bring The After Party course to your church or small group!  Enter to win the Good Faith Book Giveaway: The After Party Edition!    Referenced in this Episode Read what N.T. Wright believes the New Testament says about Heaven Watch The Bible Project video about the overlapping of Heaven and Earth Read about the Heresy of Eusebius Read Richard Mouw's essay Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy Read an excerpt from Andy Crouch's Culture Making about  "culture as the furniture of Heaven" More From Skye Jethani: Check out Skye's work at The Holy Post  Subscribe to Skye's daily devotional With God Daily  Explore Skye's books including What If Jesus Was Serious About Heaven?

In this episode of The ProGrace Podcast, Angela recaps some of our previous guests' most helpful advice as we enter the last few weeks of a contentious election season. Hear from Kaitlyn Scheiss, Skye Jethani, Andrew Hanauer, Christy Vines, Amy Peeler, and Laura McAlpine on ways we can prioritize people instead of politics. Episodes featured: Andrew Hanauer from One America Movement: https://www.prograce.org/podcasts/the-prograce-podcast/episodes/2148861711 Kaitlyn Schiess, author and speaker: https://www.prograce.org/podcasts/the-prograce-podcast/episodes/2148628778 Dr. Amy Peeler: https://www.prograce.org/podcasts/the-prograce-podcast/episodes/2148341917 Skye Jethani: https://www.prograce.org/podcasts/the-prograce-podcast/episodes/2148027627 Christy Vines from Ideos Institute: https://www.prograce.org/podcasts/the-prograce-podcast/episodes/2147994081 Laura McAlpine:https://www.prograce.org/podcasts/new-conversations-about-abortion-the-prograce-podcast/episodes/2147946246 Conversation guide link: https://www.prograce.org/ndod Leaders Cohort interest list: www.prograce.org/groups

We hope you've been blessed + encouraged today. For all updates + news, head to www.denverunited.com. For more information or to submit a prayer request, head to www.denverunited.com or email us at info@denverunited.com.

In the last few years, various groups of evangelicals have gotten together to write position statements on cultural subjects for believers to sign onto in an effort to establish and gain consensus on some controversial things. Some have been good, some not so good. The latest one, called the “Confession of Evangelical Conviction,” aims to establish principles around political thought for Christians. The lead author of the statement is Skye Jethani, who co-hosts the Holy Post podcast with Phil Vischer, whom you probably know as the creator of Veggie Tales. Today, Alisa and Natasha talk through several of its major points using it as a case study of how commonly heard statements about politics within the church right now can sound good but are actually quite misleading.

Skye Jethani on X: "In the coming weeks, churches will be reading this Confession of Evangelical Conviction. I was the lead author of the statement. I'm grateful to the wise women & men who helped me & the hundreds of leaders who've added their names to the statement. https://t.co/ocDTetkHnB" Public School Can Be a Training Ground for Faith Christianity Today on X: "With their massive campuses and thousands of congregants, megachurches are a symbol of evangelicalism in Dallas. And crises within them can impact a significant portion of the Christian community https://t.co/nw9QAleZtS" Matt Smethurst on X: "The only perfect church is the heavenly assembly, which does not meet at 10:30 a.m. on Sundays a short drive from your house. So until you join the throng around God's throne, you're called to belong to a church where others will get things wrong—and so will you. — Sam Allberry"See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For the first time in decades, the Republican Party has removed all pro-life language from the party platform. Trump has also called for less free-trade, more government regulation, and he is indifferent about Russian aggression in Europe. At the same time, the Democratic Party is embracing patriotism, law and order, tax cuts, and retreating from its more progressive social and environmental policies. What's happening? David French and Skye Jethani discuss the realignment of the parties and whether this is a permanent change or just temporary rhetoric. Plus, French explains why he decided to endorse Kamala Harris after voting for write-in candidates in 2016 and 2020. 0:00 - Theme Song 0:17 - Episode Starts 2:20 - Would French Voting Third Party Be Just as Controversial as Voting Kamala? 14:00 - Trump Betraying Pro-Choice is No Surprise 19:50 - Are The Parties Flipping Sides? 33:45 - What Happens to the GOP When Trump Leaves? 40:50 - Is the DNC Actually Changing? 59:08 - End Credits Other resources: David French on Voting for Harris to Save Conservatism: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/11/opinion/harris-trump-conservatives-abortion.html David French's Pro-Life Case for Harris: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/19/opinion/harris-trump-conservatives.html Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/ Holy Post Plus: https://www.holypost.com/plus Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost Holy Post Merch Store: https://www.holypost.com/shop The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Sign-up for my free 20-day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com--Series: Double-Sided WisdomDevotional: 1 of 5“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” (John 5:39-40)My readers frequently tell me that they love my ability to extract wisdom from God's Word and apply it to their work. I love that too, of course. But one of my greatest fears is that in our well-intentioned pursuit of living by “biblical principles,” we will become what author Jen Wilkin calls “Bible-worshippers” rather than “God-worshippers.”That's the red flag we see Jesus raising in today's passage. Commenting on these verses, pastor Skye Jethani articulates this danger poignantly: “Discovering and applying [biblical] principles does not actually require a relationship with God….the Christian can put these new principles into practice without God being involved. God can be set aside while we remain in control of our lives. He may be praised, thanked, and worshipped for giving us his wise precepts for life, but as with an absentee watchmaker, God's present participation is altogether optional.”Is that convicting to you? It is for me. And those words bring me to the first piece of double-sided wisdom of this series: the biblical commands to Study the Word AND Seek the Author.The biblical evidence for the “Study the Word” side of this double-sided wisdom is clear: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). “I cannot truly be a God-worshipper without loving the Bible deeply and reverently,” says Jen Wilkin. “Otherwise, I worship an unknown god.”But study of God's Word is a means to an end, and the end is God himself. That's the flip side of this double-sided wisdom and what Jesus was getting at in today's passage. “Eternal life” is not found in God's Word, but in Jesus Christ—the Word who became flesh.So, how can we hold this tension well? How can we study the Scriptures while ensuring we are seeking the Savior above all else? Here are three ideas.#1: Calculate how much time you spent studying the Word versus seeking the Author this past week. Of course, there's no biblically prescribed ratio of Bible study to prayer. But this quick analysis can be a helpful diagnostic of where you're at today.#2: When you close your Bible, open your heart in prayer. Martin Luther was a master at this. As much as Luther loved the Word, he loved God more and refused to finish his “quiet time” before conversing with his Father about what he just read. To see how Luther did this, read page 18 of Redeeming Your Time for free here.#3: Resolve to spend more time listening to God than any other teacher of the Word—including myself. Because while biblical principles are good and valuable, they are worthless without a relationship with the One who authored them.

"An award-winning author, speaker, and co-host of the Holy Post Podcast, Skye has written more than a dozen books and served as an editor and executive at Christianity Today for more than a decade. Raised in a religiously and ethnically diverse family, his curiosity about faith led him to study comparative religion before entering seminary and pastoral ministry. With a unique ability to connect Christian thought and contemporary culture, his voice has been featured  in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post, and he's spoken to audiences throughout the world as diverse as the U.S. Naval Academy, The Chautauqua Institution, and the Lausanne Movement." [https://www.withgoddaily.com/about/]   Help sustain the work of RLC: www.redletterchristians.org/donate/ To check out what RLC is up to, please visit us www.redletterchristians.org  Follow us on Twitter: @RedLetterXians Instagram: @RedLetterXians Follow Shane on Instagram: @shane.claiborne Twitter: @ShaneClaiborne Intro song by Common Hymnal: https://commonhymnal.com/   

Following the attempted assignation of Donald Trump, some are saying that God saved his life for a divine purpose. Phil, Kaitlyn, and Skye discuss the selective use of Christian rhetoric surrounding the former President. Then, multiple speakers at the Republican convention used anti-immigrant language associated with the “heritage Americans” movement. We examine the movement and its link to the isolationist and racist policies of the 1920s. And Skye welcome Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, to talk about the Palestinian Christian community in the Holy Land and the impact of the war in Gaza on the church.   0:00 - Go to https://biologos.org/integrate and use code SUMMER50 to get 50% off your order. This code expires August 31st, so head there now!   0:36 - Intro   1:52 - Show Starts   3:14 - Theme Song   3:38 - Sponsor - Hiya Health - Go to https://www.hiyahealth.com/HOLYPOST to receive 50% off your first order   4:42 - Sponsor - The Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club - To get a Full-Size artisanal olive oil for just $1 shipping, go to https://www.GetFreshHOLYPOST.com   5:54 - Update on Lisa Vischer   6:55 - RNC, Biden Dropout—The Apple Cart is Upset!   9:52 - Messianic Interpretations of the Trump Assassination Attempt   18:26 - What Events Do We Assume Are Divine Intervention?   25:50 - Why is Trump Still Winning?   31:45 - The Politically Unengaged, Patriotic, and Exhausted   37:00 - Heritage Americans   45:38 - Reputational Challenges Facing Harris   50:42 - Sponsor - Better Help - Get 10% off your first month at https://www.betterhelp.com/holypost   51:50 - Interview   53:16 - The Christian Palestinian Community   1:04:47 - Palestinian Christian Reactions to October 7th   1:10:20 - The American Church's Effect on the War   1:16:52 - The Positive Impact of Palestinian Christians   1:22:47 - End Credits   Links Mentioned in the News Segment:   Kaitlyn's Appearance on NPR: https://www.npr.org/2024/07/15/nx-s1-5040606/trumps-assassination-shooting-god-religion   Skye Jethani's Racism and Immigration Video: https://youtu.be/cgfp5ngxqBI   Other resources: The Other Side of the Wall: A Palestinian Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope: https://a.co/d/aFLu0I9 Christ at the Checkpoint https://christatthecheckpoint.bethbc.edu/munthers-blog/   Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/ Holy Post Plus: www.holypost.com/plus Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost Holy Post Merch Store: https://www.holypost.com/shop   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.  

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/w2rB6NZogbgThe American church is in crisis. After numerous scandals, distrust of the church is at an all-time high. Young people raised in the church are leaving at an alarming rate. And, in a society where loneliness and spiritual hunger are rampant, people are turning elsewhere for help. In this edition of The Roys Report, host Julie Roys welcomes Skye Jethani for a wide-ranging discussion on the crisis in the American church. Skye, a former editor at Christianity Today and former pastor, has for years co-hosted The Holy Post, a popular podcast. Recently, Skye wrote the provocatively titled book, What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church? In it, he looks at what the Bible really says about the church, then compares that with some of the prevailing beliefs and values popular in the church today. For example, the church is commonly referred to in Scripture as a family—but in modern America, it's become a corporation. In its pursuit of expansion, influence, and power, the church has sadly lost the essential Christian virtues of faith and love. As Skye writes, rather than feeling like valued members of God's family, today, many church members feel like replaceable cogs in a ministry machine. Is it any wonder that the church is suffering, and is it any wonder that people are leaving? For people who've had negative experiences in church and have lived through congregational crisis firsthand, this lively conversation brings clarity and hope. Guests Skye Jethani An award-winning author, speaker, and co-host of the Holy Post Podcast, Skye Jethani has written more than a dozen books and served as an editor and executive at Christianity Today for more than a decade. Raised in a religiously and ethnically diverse family, his curiosity about faith led him to study comparative religion before entering seminary and pastoral ministry. With a unique ability to connect Christian thought and contemporary culture, his voice has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post. Show Transcript [00:00:00] Julie Roys: There’s no doubt the American church is in crisis. After numerous scandals, the distrust of the church is at an all-time high. Young people raised in the church are leaving at an alarming rate and we have a society where loneliness and spiritual hunger is rampant, but people are turning elsewhere for help. [00:00:21] Julie Roys: Welcome to The Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roy-. And today I’m going to be discussing the crisis in the American church with Skye Jethani. Skye is a former editor at Christianity Today and a former pastor. He’s also co-host of the podcast, The Holy Post. [00:00:40] Julie Roys: And he’s a speaker and author of numerous books, including the provocatively titled, What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church? In the book, Skye looks at what the Bible really says about the church, then he compares that with some of the prevailing beliefs and values popular in the church today. For example, the church is commonly referred to in scripture as a family, but in modern America, it’s become a corporation. [00:01:05] Julie Roys: And in its pursuit of expansion, influence, and power, the church has sadly lost the essential Christian virtue of love. As Skye writes, now, rather than feeling like valued members of God’s family, many church members feel like replaceable cogs in a ministry machine. Is it any wonder that the church is suffering, and is it any wonder that people are leaving? [00:01:28] Julie Roys: I’m so excited to speak with Skye about the church, not just because he’s a great thinker and teacher, but because he’s my brother. Skye attends the same house church that my family attends, and I’ve seen his commitment to the church on a day to day, week by week basis, and it’s because of people like Skye that I haven’t given up on the church, even though I’ve had a ton of negative experiences. I still believe in the church. I still see her beauty. And so I’m so excited to share this podcast with you. [00:01:49] Julie Roys: But first I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Talbot Seminary and Marquardt of Barrington. Are you passionate about impacting the world so it reflects biblical ideals of justice? The Talbot School of Theology Doctor of Ministry program is launching a new track exploring the theological, social, and practical dimensions of biblical justice today. [00:02:16] Julie Roys: The program equips students with the knowledge, skills, and spiritual foundation needed to address social issues with wisdom and compassion. Justice has become a key issue in our culture, but more importantly, it’s an issue that’s close to God’s heart. While it’s clear the Bible calls God’s people to pursue justice, we must be guided by His Word within that pursuit. Talbot has created this track to do just that. As part of this program, you’ll examine issues such as trafficking, race, immigration, and poverty. And I’ll be teaching a session as well, focusing on the right use of power in our churches so we can protect the vulnerable rather than harm them. So join me and a community of like- minded scholars committed to social change and ethical leadership. Apply now at TALBOT.EDU/DMIN. Julie Roys: Also if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquardt, are men of integrity. To check them out just go to BUYACAR123.COM. [00:03:26] Julie Roys: Well, again, joining me is Skye Jethani, a former pastor who now co-hosts the popular podcast, The Holy Post. He also speaks and writes books, including one that we’re offering to listeners this month called What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church? So Skye, welcome, and it’s just such a pleasure to have you. [00:03:50] Skye Jethani: Thanks, Julie. I’m happy to be here. [00:03:51] Julie Roys: And you may be surprised to know this, but I’ve actually mentioned you numerous times on this podcast. Do  about this? [00:03:58] Skye Jethani: I do not, because I have to confess, I’ve not listened. [00:04:01] Julie Roys: You haven’t listened to our podcast? Well, that’s okay, but I’ve listened to the Holy Post. I’ve actually been on the Holy Post, which has been really fun. I’ve mentioned you because I use this term that you coined called the evangelical industrial complex. And so whenever I do that, I try to give you credit. I say, , this isn’t my term. This is Skye’s term. [00:04:24] Skye Jethani: I don’t need credit, but you’re appreciated. It isn’t like I get a kickback or anything from every time it’s spoken, but. Yeah, I think it was 2012 I wrote an article that I first used that phrase, and it just took off. A lot of people have used it since then. [00:04:37] Julie Roys: Well, it’s a great term, but for those who are listening who haven’t heard it before, what is the evangelical industrial complex? [00:04:45] Skye Jethani: Right. So it’s a riff off of President Eisenhower in his farewell address to the country. It’s on YouTube. I recommend people go watch it. It’s very interesting, but he gave a televised address to the country where he warned about the military industrial complex. Of course, Eisenhower, having been a general and the commander of the forces in Europe during world war two had a lot of credibility when it came to military stuff. [00:05:08] Skye Jethani: And his concern was that there was this permanent arms industry that had been developed after world war two and the military industrial complex, he said, needed a perpetual conflict and warfare to continue its business model. And so I kind of adopted that phrase, but talking about the evangelical industrial complex, which is this financial money-making industry that constantly needs celebrity leaders, celebrity pastors in particular, and big events to perpetuate its business model. [00:05:39] Skye Jethani: And so it tends to elevate leaders who may be quite talented but lack the character or the maturity to handle large audiences or significant influence. But the evangelical industrial complex will prop them up, publish their books, get them on the big stage, build a big platform for them in order to make lots of money off of this person’s talent and reputation. [00:06:06] Skye Jethani: And then we’re shocked when they end up cracking under the pressure or falling into some controversy or their church implodes. And especially when I was working at Christianity Today, And I got around the country and I was seeing kind of behind the curtain in a lot of these places. I was noticing that tendency over and over and over again, where it wasn’t the Godly mature tested people who were given platforms. [00:06:27] Skye Jethani: It was young, attractive, talented people who were given platforms. And so looking at this in different angles, like I just said, this is about making money. This isn’t about really building up the church. And so that’s the evangelical industrial complex. [00:06:42] Julie Roys: And there’s so much that you just said; just in those few paragraphs about the church and some of our assumptions about the church, the fact that we can have an industrial complex, the fact that we have so many financial interests, and we’re going to dive into a lot of that today. [00:07:01] Julie Roys: And I love your book because you take all of these things that are kind of, we’ve just adopted because we swim in this soup, right? And we don’t even know kind of these false ideas about church that we’ve imbibed. But they’re there. And when you begin to contrast them with scripture, you’re like, Oh my word. [00:07:19] Julie Roys: But as I mentioned in the open, you and I, not only know each other professionally, but we go to the same church and we go to a house church, which is a very unconventional form of church. And I know for me and a lot of others within our house church, we’ve come because there was some sort of, I would say many of us are church refugees. [00:07:44] Julie Roys: Something happened at the church that we were at. And I know I’ve talked about this before on this podcast that for us, it was losing trust in our leaders because of a sexual abuse coverup at the church. And so that was very concerning. Your story, I’m guessing, is a bit different, and I realized as we jumped into this, I mean, I know your former church, and I know some stuff that happened there, but I really don’t know your story of why you came to this house church, which is really, in some ways, unconventional form of church, but if you read the New Testament, it sounds awful lot like what they were doing back then. So, what’s your story? How’d you get there? [00:08:24] Skye Jethani: Quite by accident really. I was at the same church for 20 years and for, I don’t know, six, it’s hard to, to find, but I was on staff at the church for quite a few years. And then when I was at CT, I actually split my time between staff at the church and Christianity Today. [00:08:41] Skye Jethani: So these convoluted timeframes, but overall 20 years. And probably, uh, gosh, trying to get dates straight in my head. A few years before we landed at the house church, my wife and I were struggling, honestly, at the church. And I saw, I think partly because of my own ministry background and from my years at CT, where I had been around the country and seen behind the curtain at all kinds of different issues, I had growing concerns about what I saw happening at my own church. [00:09:12] Skye Jethani: And I took some of those concerns to some of the leaders. They did not share my perspective. They thought I was making a mountain out of a molehill. So in those years, my wife and I kind of decided, well, we’re going to take a step back from like deeper involvement because I was, I just saw yellow flags and yet this was our community. This was the people we loved, people we’d known, our kids were all born and raised in this church. So we were committed to the community, but I just decided as previously having been a significant leader there, I was going to take a step back. And those are hard couple of years because I was constantly told, well, should we be somewhere else? [00:09:52] Skye Jethani: I really wanted to be at a church where I felt like I could contribute my full strength and enthusiasm to the work of that community, and it just wasn’t going to happen at our church in that season. Then 2020 happens and the pandemic hits, and it’s like, Oh! God caused the global pandemic. So we don’t have to go to church and feel awkward anymore in this situation. [00:10:30] Skye Jethani: So like everyone else, our church closed. And so everyone moved online or figured out other alternatives. And a few months into the pandemic, Brady Wright reached out to me, who’s also part of our house church and a mutual friend. And he and I and our families have been friends for a long time. And he said that he knew a bunch of families that were all struggling with just feeling isolated. And it was still warm out. And he asked if we’d be open to gathering in someone’s backyard under a tree, social distance for like a fellowship gathering where we would read scripture, pray for one another, and just have a very, very rudimentary kind of worship gathering. [00:10:53] Skye Jethani: So we started doing that in the spring and summer of 2020. And the people came from different churches, but we said we needed fellowship. And a lot of us were connected through Young Life. And then as we got into the winter months, we realized, well, we actually really like doing this with each other and our churches were still closed. [00:11:12] Skye Jethani: And most of us were maybe engaging somewhere online, but not in a meaningful way. And then by 2021, the church that we had been a part of all those years went through that significant crisis that it kind of finally blew up. And I had concerns that this was coming for years and then it did. [00:11:37] Skye Jethani: And so when people found out that my wife and I had been a part of this little under a tree gathering thing. And then in homes, after the weather got cold, some of those refugees started showing up at this little house church. And then there were other churches in our area, like yours, where people were struggling, and they ended up coming. And before you know it, Brady and I are looking at each other going, this was just supposed to be a COVID fellowship, temporary thing under a tree. [00:11:59] Skye Jethani: Um, But now we realize there’s a bigger reason for this, and there are people who need this place to feel connected and heal and a different way of approaching the basic functions of a Christian community. [00:12:21] Skye Jethani: So fast forward, we’re no longer at that church that we were at, obviously, for 20 years, I’m no longer ordained in that denomination. And this house church has just become our community and home. So we didn’t go into it as refugees from a church. We came into it just because of COVID, but it all kind of aligned with a number of years of suspecting things were coming. And then when they did, I think we were just a little ahead of the curve. I saw what could happen and it did. So maybe God was just sparing us from a more acute pain had we stayed more engaged. [00:12:50] Julie Roys: And we were church refugees, and I kind of knew this, but when we lost what was our church home, we spent about two years visiting tons of churches in the area and it just grieved me because I saw the same sort of system at every church that I just didn’t believe in anymore. [00:13:13] Julie Roys: I still believed in the church, I still believed in God, but I didn’t believe in the system anymore. We’re going to dive into that and actually in your introduction, I like how you talk about the church has changed. Our idea of what the church is, it’s just dramatically changed in 50 years. [00:13:33] Julie Roys: And I would a hundred percent affirm that. The church that I’m seeing everywhere right now, that’s called the evangelical church is not the church I grew up in at all, not even close. So talk about that change and what sort of prompted that change. [00:13:51] Skye Jethani: Gosh, I guess it depends on where you want to start the timeline. It’s probably older than 50 years, but I think one of the significant changes that happened at some point in the mid-20th century was sort of the professionalization of pastoral ministry. [00:14:08] Skye Jethani: And I don’t mean professionalization as in professional training. I think that’s very valuable. But here’s what I mean. Throughout most of Christian history, a pastor or minister would spend most of their time during the week out in the community. They met people in their homes, in their farms, in their factories, in the hospitals and the prisons, wherever they were out in the community, engaging people. [00:14:29] Skye Jethani: And then those people would congregate on Sunday. And the minister would lead them in sacraments and in teaching of scripture and all that. But he or she knew their sheep because they were out in the community. And at some point we flipped a switch and we said, if you desire to be ministered to, you now need to come to where the minister works. [00:14:51] Skye Jethani: You need to come into the church office, the church building, and we, the ministers will create a plethora of programs for you and your family to minister to you. And that was done, I think, with very good intentions and there’s an efficiency in that. But I think what it unintentionally did is it caused those of us who are ministers and our pastors to lose touch with the reality of our sheep. [00:15:15] Skye Jethani: We lost touch with what do people's lives actually look like Monday through Saturday? Because the only time we ever saw people, it was on our turf, on our terms, in our programs, and in our building. And once you made that switch from pastoral ministry out in the pastures, to pastoral ministry in the professional setting of the pastor in their building, well then it’s just a matter of how do I scale this factory? How do I make more programs? How do we make bigger worship services? How do I get more people into this system? [00:16:03] Skye Jethani: And then you get the explosion of mega churches and all of that. That was a big wake up call for me, even, after spending a number of years on staff at my church and then beginning to work outside, I realized, oh, I had no idea what the lives of the people in my church were actually like, because I only saw them in my context. I never saw them in their context. So I think that was a big change. And then you just get this massive growth of the institution because you add into this concoction the sacred secular divide. And a lot of people in ministry think that the only work that really matters ultimately is ministry. [00:16:23] Skye Jethani: So if something’s going to matter, it has to happen under the church umbrella, which is how you get like exercise facilities in a church. It’s how you get auto mechanics in a church. It’s how you get all these because it has to be under the church to count and you get these monstrosities ministries and in some communities that’s necessary. [00:16:43] Skye Jethani: I don’t want to completely diminish that, but a lot of places it isn’t. And then you need more and more professional people to manage and run these huge things. And that becomes the system that you’re talking about. You’re like, wow, this becomes really self-serving rather than ministering out into the community. [00:16:59] Skye Jethani: I think that’s one reason is just the simple professionalization of what happened. There’s a lot of other pieces of this we can unpack, but I think that one doesn’t get enough attention. [00:17:07] Julie Roys:  Yeah. And the church has become a corporation. It’s not  the family that a lot of us knew the church has. And I do think there were good intentions with things. Like I remember the first time we went to Willow Creek, which is the big mega church in the Chicago area, much less big now that everything’s happened with Bill Hybels But I remember going and the thing that struck me, because when I grew up in this little church, it was a great family, really great family, but nobody became a Christian there. Right? Like nobody came to the church and became a Christian. And I saw Willow Creek putting on these amazing shows on Sunday morning, very attractional model. And I remember inviting my boss. I was doing this little sales job in between college and graduate school. And I invited my boss, and my boss became a believer. [00:17:59] Julie Roys:  And then we started doing Bible studies and we used to fill up two rows of people on midweek. Like we’d have a sales meeting and then we go to Willow. And literally there were dozens of people became believers through that. So I mean that at first I was just like, this is amazing. It’s like the para-church church. I saw all of these para church type outreach ministries, that model coming into the church. But then some really unintended consequences we really weren’t thinking about it necessarily biblically, we were thinking about it pragmatically; how do we reach people? [00:18:43] Julie Roys: And that’s kind of how we got there, but really, what is the church, right? I mean, that’s what your book is getting to. What is the church? And I think you rightly say a lot of people think of it as an event, as a building, as an organization. So biblically, let’s go back down to our roots, right? And what is the church? [00:19:02] Skye Jethani: The simplest answer is it’s a community of women and men and children who have been redeemed by Jesus and are living in communion with him and one another. That’s it. And that obviously can take different forms and structures and different cultures and times, but that’s it. I think your observation that megachurch function very much like a parachurch outreach kind of ministry, I think it’s accurate. And I’ve been a part of a number, especially as a college student, a number of parachurch organizations like Campus Crusade CRU now, InterVarsity, Navigators, and at least in my time connected to some of those things. They’re very careful not to call themselves a church because they understand that we may be a ministry, we may do outreach and Bible studies and other things, but we are not a church. [00:20:05] Skye Jethani: But the funny part is when you go to some churches that more or less function like parachurch ministries. they embrace the name church. And I wrote a piece many years ago for Leadership Journal, where I was arguing that these very large churches shouldn’t really be called churches. And I started calling them VLMs, which is a new one. It’s a very large ministry. And I tried to come up with a name that wasn’t disparaging because they are doing ministry. They are reaching people like your colleagues, like they’re doing good work, but there’s something chafed on me about calling it a church when the historic definition and functions of a church community were really not present. But they were preaching the gospel. They were teaching scripture. They were engaging non-believers, all that great. But the functioning of a church in many of these places was not actually happening. [00:20:44] Skye Jethani: Para church organizations recognize that about themselves and stayed away from the label of church, but these mega churches and other ministries embrace the church name. All the while they weren’t really functioning as churches. [00:20:56] Julie Roys: And I think the pastor wasn’t functioning as a pastor. I mean, we have pastors who are basically preachers, but they’re not pastors. They’re not shepherds. [00:21:04] Skye Jethani: Right. Exactly. Yeah. [00:21:06] Julie Roys: You wrote one of the chapters is on, whose church is it really? And it reminded me of an experience I had last fall. So I was doing some investigating on a church where Albert Tate was the pastor. It’s in Monrovia, California, and he had admitted that he had an inappropriate texting relationship, but then his staff started complaining about bullying, about spiritual abuse. [00:21:33] Julie Roys: They found out that they really didn’t have any say. They didn’t own the church the way the bylaws were written. Albert, and a few of his key guys that he put on his board owned the church. I remember at this very contentious town hall meeting that I went to where they were basically the people were demanding their church back, and they were talking about Albert going on this sabbatical, and he came back really quickly. I forget how it’s several weeks. And then he said, and I’m just going to quote, he’s like, I’m not sure if a month would have made any difference, like saying if I had stayed on my break for a month longer. And unfortunately, I still feel like this is my church. And the place erupted. I mean, people were saying it’s our church, it’s our church. [00:22:25] Julie Roys: And then somebody was saying, no, it’s God’s church. But the way that we think about our church, I mean, there, it was really coming to a head, and it really was a matter of who owns this church? And we’ve got legal ownership, and then we’ve got spiritual ownership. So speak to that, because I think we have really messed this one up. [00:22:46] Skye Jethani: Yeah, and there’s a lot of pieces that intersect with this, because there’s different polities, there’s different church structures and governance structures, depending on your denomination and theology and all of that, it gets complicated. There’s some denominations in which they might have congregational polity, but the denomination owns the building, and it goes on and on like in the denomination I was a part of they were congregational in their polity, but the licensing and ordination of clergy was handled by the denomination. So there was some oversight. And one of the things, I used to have stronger opinions, I guess, about these matters, but as I’ve gotten around and had my own experience and just perhaps mellowed a bit with age, I’ve realized I have not yet found a church structure that cannot be abused. [00:23:33] Skye Jethani: They all have weaknesses, and they all have strengths. Some I think are better than others, but none’s immune. So if someone’s looking for a silver bullet of how do we structure these things to avoid abuse? Good luck. The best you can do is try to mitigate against it in your culture and environment by choosing certain models versus others, but they can all be abused. [00:23:56] Skye Jethani: But what you’re getting at in the story that you mentioned, and I’ve seen this up close as well, especially within evangelicalism, so much of our tradition is rooted in charismatic personalities and lowercase C charismatic personalities so that we tend to associate a church with its visible leader, the person in the pulpit. [00:24:22] Skye Jethani: I remember Outreach magazine, I think it was Outreach magazine years ago, used to do an issue every year on like the top hundred churches in the country or something like that. And they measure just based on size, based on attendance. And it was like a centerfold, a fold out. big thing and they’d list all these churches in this chart And there was the name of the church and then there was just a headshot of the senior pastor That was the visual representation of that church [00:25:02] Skye Jethani: So it is a structural problem, but it’s also a people problem We do that we do that because we tend to pick a church based on do I like the preacher? If that’s the criteria you have for picking your church, you’re reinforcing that same idea. And what really grieved me was when I realized, despite the rhetoric, despite the theology, despite all the words about we’re a body and it’s blah, blah, blah. When people in leadership, John Ortberg used to say that everyone has their mission, and then there’s the shadow mission. [00:25:28] Skye Jethani: There’s what you say your mission is, and then there’s what your mission really is. And what I discovered in some of these places is, you might say your mission is the health of the church, or it’s the growth of the church, or it’s the service of the community, whatever it might be, glorifying God. The shadow mission in an awful lot of these places is to protect the pastor and to maintain the pastor’s status and reputation. [00:25:50] Skye Jethani: And that for me to speak about the system being broken is when I lost trust and hope. Where it ceased to be about what’s best for the body, and it became what’s best for the figurehead who represents the body, not Jesus, but the pastor. Again, there’s a bazillion stories of how this happens. [00:26:15] Skye Jethani: I don’t want to point the finger just at the system because we are complicit in creating that system. Because I think for a lot of us, we get a lot of satisfaction after saying that’s my pastor. That’s my leader. Look how great my guy is. Look how many books he’s published, look how popular his radio show is. And I’m a part of that. So there’s something we get from that, which props them up. [00:26:36] Skye Jethani: And somewhere else I wrote about it as being like the relationship between an animal and a zookeeper. They both benefit. The animal gets fed in a safe place to live. And the zookeeper gets the satisfaction of. , being in charge of all these animals. And if you’re content with that model, we’re going to continue to have this dynamic where the leaders are synonymous with the church. And then the church does everything it can to prop up and protect its leader, and it’s really unhealthy for everybody involved. [00:26:57] Julie Roys: That’s interesting. And it is true that it’s comfortable for us because when we go to a church like that, everything’s provided for us, and we don’t really have to bring anything to the table. And that’s been one of the challenges with our house church, hasn’t it? We're like, nobody signed up to facilitate this week. Nobody signed up for worship leading. And it’s like, okay, yeah, we’re going to have to bring a little more to the table if we’re going to keep meeting. Again, biblically speaking, there’s commands about when you meet together, you should bring a psalm, you should bring a word of encouragement, you should bring, I mean, all of these things. [00:27:34] Julie Roys: We’ve gotten into a very consumeristic way of looking at church and of approaching it. And it’s on us. You’re right. You’re a hundred percent right. It is on us. And I think we don’t think of the church. as God’s church. But if we do think of the church as God’s church, then I think it also changes our expectations of who should be in that church. [00:27:59] Julie Roys: You mentioned how a lot of churches, when they plant a church, they’ll talk about their target audience, for example, which implies you can either be in their target or not be in their target, right? So, if you’re not in their target, then do you count? I mean, do you matter? A lot of assumptions there. But when we think about church and we think about who’s coming, how should we perceive that? [00:28:29] Skye Jethani: Yeah, I think that the breakdown here is the way our culture defines hospitality. Again, it’s become an industry; there’s the hospitality industry in the modern world. And so what we usually mean by hospitality, and this trickles down even to our homes, like when we think about do you have a hospitable home? You think, well, if I’m going to have guests, I’m going to find out what do they like? What do they want? I’m going to accommodate to their needs. I’m going to make sure that they're vegan or whatever it is. And we’re going to customize our home to fit the people who are coming. The hospitality industry has taught us, whether it’s airlines or hotels or resorts or whatever, find out who you’re marketing your resort to, and then give them what they want. Customer is king. And megachurches and the seeker movement came along, and they adopted that same approach. Well, we’re going to go after unchurched Harry and Mary, famously was Willow Creek’s thing. And they had this middle-class, middle-aged people, and they tailored a church around what they wanted. [00:29:30] Skye Jethani: That’s very different from the ancient world’s understanding of hospitality. Paul commands us to be hospitable to one another, and so does Peter, and it’s a very ancient idea going back to Abraham being hospitable to the strangers who are angels who came to his home. [00:29:46] Skye Jethani: In the ancient Near East, hospitality was not about catering or changing your home or community to accommodate your guests. It was instead, welcoming guests into the normalcy and flow of your home as it is; it’s been authentically yourself but welcoming those guests into it. [00:30:15] Skye Jethani: So, I’ll give you one example. When I was in seminary, some classmates of mine did an experiment where they took 2 television monitors to Northwestern University, right? This. secular university in Evanston, the north side of Chicago. Julie Roys: Where I got my graduate degree. [00:30:36] Skye Jethani:  Right. One monitor they showed a Catholic mass, and the other monitor they showed a very contemporary mega church worship gathering. And they asked students as they came by, hey, if you were ever to go to church, which one of these would you go to? And this would have been probably 1998-99 in that timeframe. The overwhelming response of the students was the Catholic mass. And then they asked them, why is that? And they said, well, that looks like a rock concert. I can get that anywhere, but that looks sacred. That looks holy. [00:30:54] Skye Jethani: And what they were getting at was, the mega churches said, we’re going to accommodate to the culture and give people what they want. But increasingly with my generation, and I think the younger ones, it smacks of pandering. It smacks of, well, you’re changing who you really are in order to be who you think I want you to be. [00:31:13] Skye Jethani: Whereas the Catholic mass, a lot of these students was like, well, they’re being authentic to who they are. That’s Christianity. They’re not trying to. I mean, goodness, the Catholics just started doing the mass in English not that long ago. They were very slow to accommodate, but that was seen as authentic. [00:31:28] Skye Jethani: So I think that the challenge for us today is not how do you change the church to be what the culture wants you to be? It’s how do you be authentically Christian in your church community? But how do you make it As accessible as possible to the people who might come in? [00:31:49] Skye Jethani: So in our case, like when we gather, we take communion every Sunday when we gather. I know plenty of seeker churches that would say, you don’t do that because it’s off putting to non-believers who don’t understand it. I would hope that if someone came into our community, and I’ve seen churches that do this really well, who take communion regularly, they explain what this is, what it means, why we do it, how to do it, the significance of it and invite people to participate or not, depending on their theology [00:32:13] Skye Jethani: . That’s being hospitable. It’s not changing who you are to accommodate people’s expectations. It’s welcoming them into who you are and to the normal flow of your family and household. And I think that’s a better approach and a more faithful approach than polling the community and finding out what they want. [00:32:29] Julie Roys: Absolutely. And I love that we do communion every week. I think a lot of churches have forsaken this. In fact, you talk about the, what is it, The coffee bar versus the Lord’s table? Like in a lot of these churches, the coffee bar has become more appealing than the Lord’s table to these churches. Again, because I think their mentality is we’re doing church, and this is where I feel like evangelism, which is such an important thing, but it’s almost superseded worship. [00:33:04] Julie Roys: Like, we forget why we come together. We don’t come together to reach the seeker. Not that God, obviously Jesus cared. He left the 99 to get the one. But we come together to worship God; that’s the primary. And so the table, describe, beyond what you’ve talked about, but theologically, why is the table so, and by the way, our RESTORE conferences, every single one, we always end with communion, which I’ve had people come up to me and say, Oh, you shouldn’t do like anything that might trigger people because they were hurt in the church and communion, that's something that’s very churchy. [00:33:46] Julie Roys: And I’m like, we have to redeem these symbols. We can’t throw them out because these symbols are there. God gave them to us because our souls need them. And we need to have this communion with one another and with Christ. I know this is a conviction of yours. It’s very deeply held, but why is the table like a non-negotiable for us as believers when we meet? [00:34:13] Skye Jethani: Let me give you two reasons, although there are more. One, is I think it is the practiced embodiment of the gospel. It is not just the verbal proclamation of the gospel, which is obviously valuable, but it’s the embodiment of the gospel. And in the sense that it’s not just a memorial to Jesus' death, which certainly it is that; my broken body, my shed blood, but in sort of an Ephesians 2 kind of way. [00:34:54] Skye Jethani: There Paul talks about how on the cross God has reconciled us to one another. He’s talking about Jew and Gentiles there. He’s broken down the wall of hostility and he has reconciled us to one another and made us one new person. And then together reconciled us to God through the cross. So It’s not just when I sit alone and take a little juice and a little bread, and I kind of think about the cross and my community with God, it’s when I am sitting side by side or standing side by side with my sisters and brothers, realizing I’m one with them because of the cross, and he has reconciled us to one another, people, maybe who I share something in common with, in an earthly way, but some whom I don’t. [00:35:31] Skye Jethani: And so when we don’t practice communion regularly, I think we can easily fall into the trap of losing the horizontal dimension of the gospel. And we make it simply vertical. It’s just me and God. And we forget, no, it’s the reconciliation between brothers and sisters happens first, Paul says, and then we’re reconciled to God, the father of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. [00:35:56] Skye Jethani: If you’re going to make an offering at the altar, and there, remember your brother has something against you, leave the offering, go be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift to God. He always puts the horizontal reconciliation ahead of the vertical, and we have so lost sight of that. And we don’t think that’s essential to our gospel, but it is. [00:36:11] Skye Jethani: So the table is critically important because it is the embodiment of that full gospel, the horizontal and the vertical. And when we don’t practice that, we get really warped. And it just leads to terrible things in the church. Then the other reason, the second reason, and this gets a little bit more into that coffee bar versus communion table thing is, virtually everything in our society is designed to make us narcissistic consumers. [00:36:41] Skye Jethani: It’s all about me. It’s what I want. And when I go to a coffee bar, I don’t drink coffee. I drink tea, but when I go to a Starbucks or whatever, like there’s infinite options and I pick what I want and I’m the one in charge and I order it and I get it. And a lot of churches have that in their foyer or communion area or common area, whatever might be fine. [00:36:58] Skye Jethani: I’m not against coffee in church, but the table I’m no longer in charge. It’s Christ’s table. It’s not my table. And even if I’m officiating and I’m a pastor at the table, it’s still not my table. It’s Christ’s table. He welcomes us there. This is his body. This is his blood. This is about his kingdom and his family. [00:37:18] Skye Jethani: And it’s a reminder that I am not in charge, and I belong to something other than myself. And so those two realities of the gospel, I think are antidotes to what we get bombarded with in our culture of the privatization of our faith. It’s just me and God and the hyper narcissism of it’s what I want that matters, not what God wants. [00:37:41] Skye Jethani: For me, the practice of communion inoculates me to a degree against all of that cultural garbage and realigns me to the gospel of Christ again. So to not practice it regularly, I think is to lose one of the greatest graces that Christ has given his church. And especially in our context, we need to do that. [00:38:03] Julie Roys: I love about the table too, especially this is probably why I absolutely love liturgical worship, which is something I loved about our previous church because it was Anglican and I love the liturgy, but I love the table because it reminds us of what’s coming, like the wedding feast that we’re looking forward to. [00:38:27] Julie Roys: I think way too often especially in evangelicalism, it’s like our goal is to get people saved and then it stops. Like we forget that ?we’re saved to be part of this community that’s being redeemed and has this glorious thing that we’re anticipating. And I think most Christians forget we’re anticipating something. [00:38:48] Julie Roys: You just get the sense like, Oh, you got saved. You’ve arrived. And then, well,  you should become discipled; that’s important because as you point out, we haven’t really defined what disciple is but that’s important, but we forget. Man, we are just passing through. We’ve got this glorious, glorious feast that we’re awaiting, and it is going to be a family and it’s going to be a family affair where everyone’s gathered. [00:39:15] Julie Roys: I love that part of it. And I love that it takes us out, like you’re saying, out of our present context and reminds us who we are and where we’re going. So love that part of it. And you touched on this when you said, You were hinting at the transactional nature that we come to church with, and I hear this all the time. I’ve probably said it myself. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of this. But we look at church and we say, and if we go and we don’t feel like we were especially inspired or something, we’ll say, I didn’t get anything out of that. [00:39:54] Skye Jethani: Mm-Hmm. . [00:39:54] Julie Roys: Talk about why that’s really not the way we should be approaching church. [00:39:59] Skye Jethani: Oh, gosh, Julie, I wrote my very first book on this whole thing, which no one read. It’s called The Divine Commodity and it’s all about consumerism and the church. With a weird thread of Vincent van Gogh all the way through the book, which is why no one read it. [00:40:16] Julie Roys: That sounds very interesting though. In a dark sort of way. [00:40:19] Skye Jethani: We live and move and have our being in a consumer culture. Everything is measured by its value to me. It’s interesting. Like, there’s an economist who argues that America really transitioned into a truly consumer economy in the 1950s. And it’s the 1950s where you begin to see a massive spike in divorce rates. [00:40:43] Skye Jethani: Now, there’s a lot of factors into that. It’s not just economics, but I think it’s a factor. Because what Consumerism tells us is that the world exists to satisfy my desires. And when something doesn’t satisfy my desire, I’m justified in changing it, whether it’s a product from a shelf or a spouse that I said I was committed to. [00:41:03] Skye Jethani: So we measure everything that way. Most of us don’t even think twice about it. Of course, that’s the right way to live. Of course, that’s what the world is all about. And so we come into our church communities or even our relationship with Christ and we go, well, what have you done for me lately? And is this beneficial to me? And am I getting something from it? We don’t challenge that ethic in most of our churches. We never point it out, we never go, Hey, this might be the way economics works in our society, but it’s not the way the most important things work. This isn’t the way we should think about our children. [00:41:34] Skye Jethani: This isn’t the way we should think about our spouses. And this is not the way we should be thinking about God. And Certainly not the way to think about his church, but we do. And in a weird way, the first amendment has reinforced that idea. We have no established church in America and I’m grateful for that, but it also means there’s a free market of religion in the United States and the religious institutions that are out there are all competing for part of the market. They’re competing for customers. And in that setting, the customer’s King, you give them what you want. So it ends up reinforcing this mindset over and over and over again. I can’t just shake my fist at the culture and go big, bad consumerism. [00:42:12] Skye Jethani: But what I can shake my fist at a little bit are churches and ministers that aren’t speaking about this dynamic and helping people be formed out of it into the values of the kingdom of God. And instead we either stay silent about it or flat out reinforce it and advance it in a weird way. So yeah, things like communion, like commitment, like relationship, like service are antidotes to some of that mindset. [00:42:38] Skye Jethani: But it’s hard. And I find myself in that posture all the time as well. You can’t escape it. It’s just part of who we are as 21st century modern people. But that’s where it’s on the shoulders of church leaders and institutions to help form us and give us a vision of a different way that very few are doing. [00:42:58] Julie Roys: Similar to that is I think this idea that when we come to church, we do so, and we’ve heard churches build themselves this way. We come and experience God, and worship has become, and it’s interesting to me because worship was so huge in my development as a Christian. As I remember being in high school and I got discipled by these, Oral Roberts/Jesus People like wacky charismatics who were druggies maybe 10 years prior to meeting me. [00:43:32] Julie Roys: But they were so on fire for the Lord, and we would get together, and we would pray and worship and literally we’d be there for 3 hours, and it would seem like 10 minutes. It was just an amazing. I didn’t realize up until that point that you could have that kind of intimacy with God and that kind of communion with him. [00:43:51] Julie Roys: So worship was huge to me in my experience of God. What’s been challenging now. And even I look back, we were in a Vineyard church for a long time, and I used to love to invite people and I would see them come into the worship and they just start crying and they don’t even know why they’re crying, right? [00:44:08] Julie Roys: They’re just crying because they’re moved. But now I’m seeing so many of these worship experiences that are, they’re amazing emotional experiences and it’s making me check; like I have a check now because I see these kids raised in their hands and they’re praising the Lord. [00:44:32] Julie Roys: And then the rest of what they’re doing throughout the week has nothing to do with the Lord has nothing to do with worshiping the Lord. I see these ministries that are built on worship, like Hillsong and Bethel. And now we’re seeing just such horrible manipulation and corruption and abuse within so many of these churches. [00:44:52] Julie Roys: And so the whole experiencing God thing,  it’s hard to even parse out, like, is the music affecting me? I think if you try to parse that out, then you’re kind of killing the experience itself, right? So, you destroy it. [00:45:16] Julie Roys: But I think this idea that we have to go to church to experience God. has been baked into evangelicalism where it’s at right now. So address that and why we need to really change our focus when it comes to worship. [00:45:28] Skye Jethani: You and I were very different high school students. [00:45:31] Julie Roys: We were. You were here, I was here, right? [00:45:35] Skye Jethani: Yeah. So I was the worst kid in the youth group in high school because I was such a skeptic. I used to get dragged to these big worship events in Chicago for high schoolers in the early 90s. And I just thought these are the most manipulative and emotionally charged. I just didn’t buy it. I never bought it. And that’s just, that was my own baggage and problem. But let me say, I think the problem is not necessarily these gatherings. [00:46:02] Skye Jethani: I think they can be beautiful in many, and I’ve been a part of some that are just amazingly gorgeous times of communion with God. The problem is not the gatherings. I think the real problem is what we expect to get from them. And here’s the metaphor that I’ve written about elsewhere that I find helpful. [00:46:23] Skye Jethani: In 2nd Corinthians chapter 3, Paul references Moses on the mountaintop of Sinai when he meets with the Lord. And if you remember the story from Exodus 34, when Moses came down the mountain to meet with the people again, they all freaked out because his face was glowing, right? The radiance of God was shown on his face. [00:46:44] Skye Jethani: And in Exodus, it says that Moses put a veil over his face. So that people wouldn’t freak out anymore. Well, Paul, when he’s referencing this in 2 Corinthians 3, adds a little bit of rabbinical tradition into the story that’s not actually in Exodus, but Paul was familiar with. And he said, no, the real reason that Moses put a veil over his face is because he didn’t want the people to see that the glory was fading away and that is was only temporary. [00:47:09] Skye Jethani: And so when you piece these things together, you get a sense of what was really going on here is every time Moses would go up the mountain and meet with the Lord, he would take the veil off and he’d kind of get recharged another zap of God’s radiance. [00:47:20] Skye Jethani: And he’d come down and everyone would see, Oh, he’s been with the Lord. He’s glowing. And then he put the veil over cause it fades away. And I think that’s a little bit what we’ve gotten caught up into, is an external mountaintop kind of communion with God. Moses' experience on the mountain was real. It was genuine. It was good. It was full of God’s presence [00:47:38] Skye Jethani:. The problem that Paul’s pointing out is it always faded. It was temporary. And so you have to go back over and over and over again. And he contrasts that with the new covenant in Christ, which he said is not. about an external glory. It’s about his spirit within us, transforming us from one degree of glory to the next with ever increasing glory. So we can take the veil away. [00:47:59] Skye Jethani: And this is the core problem. I think in an awful lot of consumeristic American evangelical Christianity is essentially what we have done is rejected the new covenant in Christ in favor of the old covenant in Moses. And the reason is if we really buy the new covenant in Christ, You don’t need a 50-million-dollar mountaintop to encounter God, and you don’t need a dynamic preacher to encounter God, and you don’t need a huge worship band o genuinely encounter God. What do you need? You need to cultivate a deep abiding presence with his spirit, the kind that Jesus talks about in John 15. Abide in me and I will abide in you, just as a branch abides in its vine and bears fruit. That’s New Testament spirituality [00:48:53] Skye Jethani: But if you want a big ministry, and if you want thousands or even millions of people buying your albums and coming to your church and doing anything, then you need old testament spirituality. You need to convince people that the only place that they’re really going to have an experience of  God is on the mountain that you’ve built and that you hold the toll road to accessing. That’s old testament spirituality and it’s really lucrative .But it’s not what we’re called to in Jesus. [00:49:13] Skye Jethani: So that’s what worries me is we’re creating kind of worship junkies where they need another hit and the glory fades and they’re like, Oh, my life, I felt really transformed after going to that big event, that big conference, that big whatever. But yeah, a week later, the glory fades and you’re back to the person you always were. [00:49:29] Skye Jethani: And then you go, I guess I need to go again, or I need a bigger thing or a better church or a better speaker. Whatever. And all the while we’re ignoring what we’re called to, which is who’s teaching me how to really commune with Jesus? Who’s teaching me how to pray? Who’s teaching me how to confess my sins? Who’s teaching me how to really live in step with the spirit day in and day out so that I might truly be transformed from one degree of glory to the next? [00:49:51] Skye Jethani: Very few of our mega ministry settings are designed to do that kind of work. They’re designed to give us a show and make us feel great. And to be fair, again, sometimes those are genuine encounters with God, just like Moses was, but it always fades. That’s the problem. [00:50:09] Julie Roys: I’m thinking back to when I was at Vineyard and there was a saying that John Wimber had that I absolutely loved. He would say pretty much everything else in our experience with God is something that he does for us. Worship is the one thing that we do to him, that we give back to him. And I think rightly understood, it comes from that communion with God that you have, that then when you have the chance to verbally express that, it's very much like in a marriage relationship. [00:50:44] Julie Roys: When you have that opportunity to physically express that love to your spouse, it’s extraordinarily meaningful because why? you already have that love that you experienced one for another. And so then that Physical expression becomes so meaningful But if it were just the physical expression without the love, I think that’s where a lot of people are at really in the way that they’re relating to God, [00:51:07] Skye Jethani: Right. Yeah, if we developed a genuine communion with God throughout the week, and then we gather with our sisters and brothers on the weekend and express that, that’s wonderful. I think too many of us again, schooled as consumers don’t have that communion all week long. And then we show up on Sunday going, light me up, make me feel good, give me that charge so that I can go into my week and feel encouraged or blessed or whatever it is I’m looking for. That’s not worship [00:51:34] Julie Roys: We don’t want to disciple people on how to maintain that in their private life because then they don’t need us. And yeah, so good. Well, there’s so much more we could talk about. Before I let you go talk just briefly about leadership and you’ve touched on it somewhat, about the celebrity pastors. You also used a term that’s become somewhat of a buzzword within the church is something called servant leadership. [00:52:05] Julie Roys: I have a feeling that’s much more about the upfront and not like the shadow mission shows whether that servant leadership is actually a thing. But talk about that leader and the approach that leader should have. How a leader should serve within a body, and why maybe we should be suspicious of those who come along and say, they’re visionary leaders and they’re going to impart their vision to us, for the church. And I know I just gave you a big one, didn’t I? [00:52:37] Skye Jethani: It is a big one. And there’s so many landmines in this. I generally don’t like using the language of servant leader because especially again, in American evangelical culture, the assumptions behind it are misunderstood. So let me unpack that a little bit. [00:52:57] Skye Jethani: Usually, when we think of servant leader, we think of a person with authority or power who nonetheless does humble acts of service, right? So it’s the pastor who’s out there shoveling the snow o ,the church leader, who’s still taking out the garbage and you go, gee, look at,  pastor Steve, isn’t he humble? And he’s a servant leader and he’s doing that thing. Just like Jesus washed the disciples feet. In my view it’s great. I’m glad a pastor does that. I certainly wouldn’t want to disparage it, but I don’t think that’s really what servant leadership means. In John 13, that scene where Jesus washes the disciples feet, what he’s really doing there is not only humiliating himself, he’s humiliating his disciples. They had been arguing about who’s the greatest. And then Jesus strips naked and starts washing their feet, taking this grotesquely humiliating role. And he gets to Peter and Peter’s like, there’s no way you’re washing my feet. And he says, if you don’t let me wash your feet, you can have no place with me. [00:54:03] Skye Jethani: Which is like, wow, that’s a pretty strong statement. What’s going on there? In that culture the relationship between a rabbi and a disciple was well established, and a disciple’s identity was completely defined by who their rabbi was. So when Peter and John and James and the others, when they left their fishing boats and their toll booths and all the other things they were doing to become a follower of Rabbi Jesus, Peter especially was thinking, this is a pretty good deal, because I’m leaving a meager fishing business to become the disciple of the most powerful guy I’ve ever seen, who’s probably going to take over the world. [00:54:41] Skye Jethani: And that’s why, am I going to get to sit at your right on your left? Where am I going to get, like, this was a great deal. Cause my rabbi is like bigger than Moses. And then he sees his rabbi do the most humiliating and embarrassing task imaginable. And so what Jesus is saying to Peter is, If you think this is humiliating to me, it’s even more humiliating for you, Peter, because I’m your rabbi, which means you’re even lower than me. [00:55:05] Skye Jethani: And then at the end of the whole scene, he says, I, your teacher and rabbi have done this. You should do likewise. I think the message he’s really saying there is stop caring what others think about you. And love in a self-sacrificial way, take up your cross, die to yourself and follow me. [00:55:37] Skye Jethani: So when I then look at what does that mean in 21st century American church world, nobody is going to look at a pastor shoveling snow or taking out garbage and go, Oh my gosh, what a loser. Most church worlds go, Oh, that’s great. He’s doing something noble and kind and helping out and everything. No one’s going to think he’s a humiliated nothing because of that. So what I’m looking for is a pastor who has given up on their own reputation, who’s doesn’t care how many followers they have on Twitter, who’s not worried about, are they going to have a bestselling book? [00:56:00] Skye Jethani: Isn’t counting how many people showed up every Sunday because that’s a stroke to their ego. It’s where they have truly died to themselves. They know who they are and where they’re going, like Jesus did at the beginning of John 13. They know they belong to God, and they know they’ve been called by him, and they’re set free then to love sacrificially, without caring about their own reputation and ego. So that's, I think, a better definition of a servant leader, the person whose ego is not driving their ministry. That’s hard to spot without real relational connection and knowing somebody well. [00:56:44] Skye Jethani:  I’m all for that kind of serpent leader and it’s rare. I’ve known men and women like that. Sometimes they have an ecclesiastical title. Sometimes they don’t. But they are the salt and light in the church today. And I pray that God will bring us more of them because we desperately need them in the American church. [00:57:02] Julie Roys: I love that. That’s so good, Skye. Thank you. Well, we have to wrap this because I’ve got my grandson’s first soccer game coming up and I’ve got to boot out of here to go see that. [00:57:15] Skye Jethani: I actually have a soccer game tonight too for my high school daughter. So I’ve got to do that too. [00:57:19] Julie Roys: But this has been really good and really rich. I so appreciate this book that you’ve written. Like we said, we’re offering that to anybody who gives a gift to The Roy’s Report this month. Just really grateful for you, Skye. And I think people, when they hear this, they’re like, wow, that guy’s in your church. And we have like so many people who are deep thinkers like this in our church. And it’s been an incredible gift. And it’s been an incredible thing to iron sharpening iron, which we’ve had that opportunity. So just feel blessed to have you as my brother and just appreciate this time we spent. [00:57:57] Skye Jethani: And thankful for all the good work you and your team at The Roy’s Report are doing in helping people navigate a really difficult season in the church and hopefully find healing and deeper communion with God and one another. It’s valuable, valuable work. I’m grateful to have a small little role in this podcast now as a part of it. [00:58:15] Julie Roys: And you’re going to have to watch this podcast now. It’ll be your first. [00:58:18] Skye Jethani: Yes, I probably will. [00:58:20] Julie Roys: Well, blessings to you. And thanks so much. [00:58:22] Skye Jethani: Thanks, Julie. [00:58:23] Julie Roys: And thanks so much for listening to The Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And just a reminder, we’re giving away Skye’s book, What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church? to anyone who gives a gift of 25 or more to The Roy’s Report this month. As I often say, we don’t have advertisers or big donors at The Roy’s Report. We simply have you. The people who care about reporting the truth and restoring the church. So if you’re passionate about our mission, please go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATED. Also, just a q

As the Supreme Court releases a slate of new rulings the justices appear to be sending a message: "Congress, do your job!" David French explains to Skye Jethani why congressional leaders are increasingly reluctant to take votes or pass laws, how this is making the presidency dangerously powerful, and why the courts are saying it's unconstitutional and harmful to democracy. Then, David tells why his former denomination canceled him—with some members even calling him a "heretic"—despite his full agreement with all of their doctrine and positions. Why are so many churches being driven by fear and non-essential beliefs?   0:00 - Theme Song   0:17 - Episode Starts   1:17 - Garland V. Cargill   5:34 - Trump Changing Statutes   9:20 - Obama Changing Statutes   13:50 - Congress Refusing to Pass Laws   20:33 - Why Congress Doesn't Want to Pass Laws   29:51 - How Low-Information Voters Feed Into This Ecosystem   32:06 - The Right Thing to Do vs Appeasing the Mobs   42:05 - When Every Issue is Considered a Fundamental   49:16 - When Every Issue is a Foreground Decision   58:16 - What a Partisan Fears   1:01:20 - Capitulation is Not Peace, the Center Does Not Hold   1:07:23 - End Credits   Other resources:   Advisory Opinions on Recent Supreme Court Decisions: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/living-anachronism/id1490993194?i=1000659362706   Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/   Holy Post Plus: www.holypost.com/plus   Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost   Holy Post Merch Store: https://www.holypost.com/shop   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.  

Louisiana has passed a law requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom. Supporters say it's about respecting history, law, and the country's religious heritage. Critics argue it's completely unconstitutional. What's really behind the new law? John Dickson says secularism in Australia is ten years ahead of the U.S., and there are valuable lessons the American church can learn from his country about how to thrive in a post-Christian society. Also this week—after two more megachurch pastor scandals we have to ask what's wrong with our ministry culture. And whales display a dirty new defense against predators.   0.00- Intro   1:41- Show Starts   2:34 - Theme Song   2:56 - Sponsor - Hiya Health - Go to www.hiyahealth.com/HOLYPOST to receive 50% off your first order   4:02 - Sponsor - World Relief - Visit https://worldrelief.org/holypost/ to download your family refugee guide and learn more about the Path Community   5:08 - News of the Butt   10:30 - Tony Evans and Robert Morris Step Down from Senior Pastor Roles   25:25 - 10 Commandments Must Be Displayed in Louisiana Classrooms   46:50 - Lisa Vischer Update   51:50 - Sponsor - Better Help - “This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/HOLYPOST and get on your way to being your best self.” www.betterhelp.com/holypost   52:58 - Sponsor - Go to https://www.withgoddaily.com/ to sign up for Skye Jethani's devotional, With God Daily   54:35 - Interview   1:31:23 - End Credits   Links Mentioned in the News Segment:   Sperm Whale Poop Cloud https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/marine-animals/sperm-whales-defensive-defecation-on-orcas Louisiana's Ten Commandments Mandate https://religionnews.com/2024/06/21/louisiana-mandates-the-ten-commandments/?utm_medium=social David French on the Ten Commandments https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/18/opinion/ten-commandments-classroom-louisiana.html   Other resources: The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta: https://a.co/d/0cE3A6CW   Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/ Holy Post Plus: www.holypost.com/plus Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost Holy Post Merch Store: https://www.holypost.com/shop   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.  

Why Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday and what it means for your work, how a biblical view of heaven assigns untold dignity to the work you do today, and how to use everything from Altoids to doorframes to cultivate an awareness of God's presence at work.This episode originally aired on September 28, 2022. Because you all loved it so much, we are re-releasing it as a part of our Fan Fave Flashbacks series this summer! Would you like to be a guest on the Mere Christians podcast when we begin new episodes this fall? Share your story with our producers at jordanraynor.com/mcLinks Mentioned:Skye JethaniSkye Jethani on TwitterSkye Jethani on LinkedInHoly Post PodcastWith God DailyWhat If Jesus Was SeriousFuturevilleWithThe Practice of the Presence of GodA Church Called TovThe Bomber MafiaTrumanLord Willing

After working for the Department of Homeland Security, and more than twenty years as a counterterrorism expert, Elizabeth Neumann says the greatest threat to the U.S. is no longer international Islamic terrorism but domestic Christian extremists. She discusses her new book, “Kingdom of Rage,” with Skye and how conspiracy theories and violent political ideologies have infiltrated American evangelicalism. Also this week, the Southern Baptists debate which is the greater threat to the faith—the Nicene Creed or female pastors. And new data says drinking and smoking has plummeted among teenagers. Should we thank churches or smartphones?   Holy Post Plus: https://www.patreon.com/posts/106023283/   0:00 - Intro   1:22 - Show Starts   4:15 - Theme Song   4:37 - Sponsor - Hiya Health - Go to www.hiyahealth.com/HOLYPOST to receive 50% off your first order   5:42 - World Relief - Visit https://worldrelief.org/holypost/ to download your family refugee guide and learn more about the Path Community   6:49 - Why Phil Was Expelled from Bible School (It's Less Scandalous Than You Think!)   9:42 - The Annual SBC Meeting and Women Preaching, the Law Amendment   13:48 - Conservative SBC and Why Churches Split    19:26 - Motivations Behind Doctrine Changes matter   31:38 - Drinking, Smoking, and Chewing Tobacco Uncommon Amongst Gen Z   37:18 - Drinking's Down, Depression's Up   42:07 - The Church Community Stands Out in an Age of Loneliness   47:13 - Sponsor -  Go to https://www.withgoddaily.com/ to sign up for Skye Jethani's devotional, With God Daily   48:51 - Interview   54:04 - From Focusing on International Threats to Domestic Threats   58:13 - The Mainstreaming of Replacement Theory   1:04:54 - How Neumann Avoided Radicalization   1:09:40 - The Needs That Make People Susceptible to Radicalization   1:18:18 - The Scale That Makes Domestic Radicalization a Huge Threat   1:25:04 - End Credits   Links Mentioned in the News Segment:   The SBC's Proposed Law Amendment https://religionnews.com/2024/06/07/southern-baptists-mull-second-vote-to-amend-constitution-to-exclude-women-pastors/   Does Going to Church Keep High Schoolers from Drinking and Smoking? https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/does-going-to-church-keep-high-schools?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1561197&post_id=144063583&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=6smb2&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email   Other resources: Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace: https://a.co/d/64NM0N6   Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/ Holy Post Plus: www.holypost.com/plus Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost Holy Post Merch Store: https://www.holypost.com/shop   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.  

The verdict is in and Donald Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts in the hush money trial. Skye Jethani and David French discuss the political implications of the guilty verdict. While neither believe the verdict will have any impact on Trump's base, David thinks it could erode support among supporters on the bubble, but Skye remains unconvinced. Then, they discuss how we should address the legacies of historical heroes who left behind complex and sometimes troubling legacies. Is it appropriate to honor and celebrate certain aspects of these figures, or should their significant flaws compel us to dismiss them entirely? Plus, Skye and David talk about their new favorite tv show, Shogun.   0:00 - Theme Song   0:18 - Episode Starts   0:47 - Trump Verdict   7:27 - Who's Actually Energizing Their Base?   16:22 - Justice Alito and the Flag   23:08 - The Politics of Officials Flying Flags   29:47 - The Complexity of American Historical Figures   41:40 - Facing the Sins of the Fathers Through Maturity   47:06 - Shogun and Cultural Divide   1:01:10 - End Credits   Other resources:   Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/   Holy Post Plus: www.holypost.com/plus   Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost   Holy Post Merch Store: https://www.holypost.com/shop The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.  

Here is the trailer for Kaitlyn Schiess's new podcast, Curiously Kaitlyn! It'll make you laugh. It'll make you cry. It'll make you actually be able to understand profound theological truths like never before! Follow today so you don't miss out!

Lately, there's been lots of talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)—sometimes as a virtuous initiative and sometimes as a boogeyman. Even Elon Musk weighed in, presenting it as a threat to our safety. Is this just another baseless moral panic? What are the potential pitfalls of DEI? David French joins Skye Jethani to discuss the issue. Plus, David French introduces, “The After Party,” a new curriculum to help Christians engage politics in a more thoughtful, humble, and hospitable way.   0:00 - Theme Song   0:18 - Show Starts   0:32 - D.E.I.   37:32 - Sponsor - Fabric by Gerber Life. Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at www.meetfabric.com/HOLYPOST   38:50 - The After Party   1:01:48 - End Credits   Other Resources:   This is the Actual Danger Posed by D.E.I. - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/14/opinion/dei-diversity-unconstitutional.html   The After Party - https://redeemingbabel.org/the-after-party/ Other resources: https://www.holypost.com/   Support us and find premium content by going to https://www.patreon.com/holypost   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.  

Happy New Year friends! We are so excited for 2024 and all that it holds for us! Several months ago I read a book and immediately knew I wanted to start off 2024 on The Happy Hour with the author. Have you felt like you do a lot for God, and you still feel disconnected? Do you ever feel like you are reading your Bible all the time, and doing all the right things, yet still live in so much fear? Do you find yourself desperate for control? If any of that is you, you are not alone! On today's show Holy Post Podcast Host and author, Skye Jethani challenges us to stop living our life under, over, from, and for God, and start living life with him! An award-winning author, speaker, and co-host of the Holy Post Podcast, Skye has written more than a dozen books and served as an editor and executive at Christianity Today for more than a decade. Raised in a religiously and ethnically diverse family, his curiosity about faith led him to study comparative religion before entering seminary and pastoral ministry. With a unique ability to connect Christian thought and contemporary culture, his voice has been featured  in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post, and he's spoken to audiences throughout the world as diverse as the U.S. Naval Academy, The Chautauqua Institution, and the Lausanne Movement.You guys, if you're anything like me, this conversation may start off with a lot of conviction, but hang in there! There is so much hope in all of this too! Skye reminds us that from the beginning of time God has shown his people patience and grace while he waits for us to simply come be with him. SHOW LINKS:WithWhat if Jesus was Serious About Heaven?What if Jesus was Serious about the Church?What if Jesus was Serious about Prayer?What if Jesus was Serious?The Holy PostPivotSkye JethaniConnect with JamiePre-Order Why Can't I Get it Together?

We often associate fundamentalism with strict religious beliefs and practices. But David French says fundamentalism isn't really about what someone believes, but how they believe it. He talks to Skye Jethani about the three traits that mark every form of fundamentalism—including the non-religious variety: certainty, ferocity, and solidarity. They unpack the legitimate desires that draw people into fundamentalism, and what's happening in American culture that may be driving more people to embrace the extremes of fundamentalism on both the right and left. Plus, they share the antidotes that can protect us from this trend. 0:00 - Sponsor - World Relief - Visit https://worldrelief.org/holypost/ to download your family refugee guide and learn more about the Path Community   1:17 - Theme Song   1:34 - Characteristics of Fundamentalism   34:34 - Why Fundamentalism is Growing   48:34 - Free Speech and College Campuses   1:08:38- End Credits   Other resources: David French: https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench   Why Fundamentalists Love Trump https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/opinion/donald-trump-fundamentalists-evangelical.html   https://www.holypost.com/   Support us and find premium content by going to https://www.patreon.com/holypost   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

A number of cases are being fought in the courts right now over whether Donald Trump violated the 14th amendment and if he should be allowed on the ballot in the 2024 election. David French and Skye Jethani discuss the history of the 14th amendment, break down the current cases against Trump, and talk about the likelihood of the Supreme Court hearing the case, and what decision they might make. Then, they talk about new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and his view on how the Bible informs his politics. Have Evangelical Republicans lost their way by focusing too much on what they think the Bible says about issues and policies, and not enough on what the Bible actually says about virtues?  0:00 - Theme Song   0:17 - History of the 14th amendment   14:00 - Current lawsuits against Trump   30:40 - Likelihood of the Supreme Court hearing the case   46:10 - Sponsor - Hiya Health - Go to www.hiyahealth.com/HOLYPOST to receive 50% off your first order   47:20 - The Evangelical approach to politics   1:04:37- End Credits   Other resources: David French: https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench   ‘MAGA Mike Johnson' and Our Broken Christian Politics https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/opinion/maga-mike-johnson-christianity.html https://www.holypost.com/   Support us and find premium content by going to https://www.patreon.com/holypost   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.