Gospelbound

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What We Can Learn from Unlikely Converts Jun 30, 2020

Show notes

I don’t know that any religious conversion is more unlikely than another. After all, we’re only born again because a perfect man who is God died on a cross and rose from the dead on the third day. That’s not a likely story. We’re all equally dead in our transgressions before Jesus saves us.

But I know what Randy Newman means in his new book, Unlikely Converts: Improbable Stories of Faith and What They Teach Us About Evangelism [Read TGC's review], published by Kregel. We all know someone who’d really surprise us if he or she professed faith in Jesus Christ. And his book draws lessons for our evangelism from those stories.

Newman is a senior teaching fellow with The C. S. Lewis Institute in Washington, D.C., author of the bestselling Questioning Evangelism, and veteran of more than 30 years in campus ministry. He writes that coming to Christ takes time, that people tend to come to faith communally, that they come to faith variously, and that nothing is too difficult for God. And he joins me on Gospelbound to discuss more observations from these unlikely converts as we seek to share Christ in a contentious age.

This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a changing ministry landscape, Southeastern’s four-year master of divinity and master of business administration program was built on a foundation of rigorous theological training and practical vocational training. Learn more at sebts.edu.

Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.

Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.

Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

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How to Prepare for the Most Intense Opposition We've Faced Jun 17, 2020

Show notes

It’s going to get worse before it gets better. We’re facing opposition far more intense than anything Christians in the United States have experienced in the last century.

That’s the message from Luke Goodrich in his new book, Free to Believe: The Battle Over Religious History in America, published by Multnomah. Goodrich, the leading religious-freedom attorney at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, has fought and won in the Supreme Court. But he’s concerned that we’re not prepared for the changes that now confront us.

He writes: “We’ve long lived in a country where religious freedom was secure, and we didn’t need to give it much thought. Now we’re realizing the country is changing and we might not enjoy the same degree of religious freedom forever. If we don’t start thinking about it now, we’ll be unprepared.”

Goodrich joins me on Gospelbound to help us get ready. We discuss how we can suffer with joy, what we can learn from the Quakers, why some courts seem so incredulous about Christians acting as Christians, and more.

Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.

Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.

Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Man Who Tackled the Klan Jun 16, 2020

Show notes

Jerry Mitchell remembers what so many others want to forget. For more than three decades, he worked as an investigative reporter for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi. During that time, his dogged reporting helped put four Klansmen in jail after they had eluded justice year after year for their heinous crimes in the 1960s.

Mitchell tells this story of justice delayed and finally done in his new book, Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era, published by Simon & Schuster. Mitchell captures so many of the complexities and contradictions of the Deep South. For example, he writes this: "This was Mississippi, a place where some of the nation's poorest people live on some of the world's richest soil, a place with the nation's highest illiteracy and some of the world's greatest writers,” and I might add as a resident of Alabama next door, a place also known for being first in religion and last in just about everything else. A place like much of the South where the churches are full and where racism has so long flourished alongside.

Mitchell joined me on Gospelbound to discuss what compelled him to seek justice, the Christian pretensions of the Ku Klux Klan, and whether the gospel can finally bring healing to this beautiful and broken land.

Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.

Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.

Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

An Emotional History of Doubt Jun 09, 2020

Show notes

Everyone agrees that we’re drowning under a rising tide of atheism. Right? Actually that’s how author Alec Ryrie describes early 17th century Europe. We’re talking about the century following the Protestant Reformation, a century marked by wars of religion fought between Protestants and Catholics, and civil war in England. It’s the century that gave us these words: “What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever” from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. What seems to us as an era defined by religion seemed to many at the time to be marked instead by unbelief.

Atheism and religious skepticism has a long history in the West, as Ryrie shows in his new book, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, published by Harvard University Press. Ryrie is professor of the history of Christianity at Durham University and president of the Ecclesiastical History Society. He traces doubt from the blasphemous lips of gamblers to the poisonous pen of Nietzsche. He identifies anger and anxiety as the emotional hallmarks of doubt, through a massive transformation effected by World War II until our own day.

Ryrie joins me on Gospelbound to discuss doubt, Reformation-induced incredulity, and how Hitler became the potent moral figure in Western culture and the swastika overtook the cross as packing the biggest emotional punch.

Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.

Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.

Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Join Challies on an Epic Journey Through Christian History Jun 02, 2020

Show notes

Tim Challies visited 25 different countries in his memorable year. And I think he may have even eaten McDonald’s in each of these countries. He attended worship services on every continent. He searched high and low for the artifacts that would help him tell the story of 2,000 years of Christian history. And he brings us along that journey in his new book, Epic: An Around-the-World Journey through Christian History, published by Zondervan.

I loved following along on social media as he traveled north and south, east and west. I admire his zeal to introduce us to long-lost heroes of the faith, and even to warn us against some wrong turns in the journey. This book matches what we’re doing with Gospelbound, searching for firm faith in an anxious age. Because he looks back on God’s faithfulness even as he looks forward to what God might yet do before Jesus returns.

Challies writes, “If I learned anything from my journey around the world, it’s the simple truth that the Lord is always at work.”

Indeed, he is. Challies is the noted blogger of challies.com and author of several books, including Visual Theology and The Next Story. He joins me on Gospelbound to share more about this remarkable journey around the world and how we might grow in faith by learning from the past.

Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.

Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.

Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When You're Found, You Can Fail (and Other Augustinian Insights) May 26, 2020

Show notes

I don’t know how exactly to describe Jamie Smith’s new book, On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts, published by Brazos. I just know I recommend it.

Smith himself describes the book as one last take at Christianity for someone tempted to leave the faith behind. Augustine is the guide—so ancient he’s strange, so common in his experiences that he feels contemporary.

Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin University and author of many thought-provoking books. And he is himself an excellent guide to Augustine. Yet in this book he goes beyond telling us about Augustine. Smith uses Augustine to help us answer our deepest questions and satisfy our deepest longings.

“Humans are those strange creatures who can never be fully satisfied by anything created,” Smith writes. “Though that never stops us from trying.”

Smith joins Gospelbound to discuss conversion as compass, authenticity as loneliness, and ambition as bottomless.

This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a changing ministry landscape, Southeastern’s four-year Master of Divinity and Master of Business Administration program was built on a foundation of rigorous theological training and practical vocational training. Learn more at sebts.edu.

Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.

Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.

Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tim and Kathy Keller Share the Secret of a Great Marriage May 19, 2020

Show notes

“God is in the longest-lived, worst marriage in the history of the world.”

That’s from Tim and Kathy Keller in their short new book, On Marriage, part of the How to Find God series with Penguin Books. They continue: “God is the lover and spouse of his people. But we have given him the marriage from hell.” But God has been faithful even when we were not. He sealed this union with us through Jesus Christ in his cross and resurrection. Tim and Kathy write, “Your marriage to him is the surest possible foundation for your marriage to anyone else.”

The gospel grounds what Tim and Kathy write not only in this new book but also in their previous works The Meaning of Marriage and The Meaning of Marriage: A Couple’s Devotional. I work with many young couples preparing for marriage, and their work is the first resource I hand them. You want to know the secret of a great marriage? Then you need to understand the mystery of Christ in the church, in Ephesians 5:32.

Any great marriage on earth points toward that one in heaven. If you’re looking for the One, you’ll only find him in Jesus. The gospel saves us from expecting too much from marriage, which makes us more likely to get divorced, and from expecting too little, which makes us less likely to ever get married in the first place.

Tim and Kathy join me on Gospelbound to discuss the link between decreasing marriage and decreasing religiosity, how to know you’re ready to get married, how to raise children to prepare them for marriage, and more.

Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.

Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.

Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We Need Formation, Not Performance May 12, 2020

Show notes

We may not agree on much any longer. But this we seem to share in common: we don’t trust institutions. Just the drop in Americans’ confidence in organized religion should concern us: from 65 percent expressing a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in organized religion 40 years ago down to 38 percent in 2018.

Less trust in institutions means fewer close friends. We spend less time with others and feel more disconnected. Through online media we’ve never been exposed to so many competing views, and yet somehow we’ve never been so ignorant of what others believe. The old men who used to volunteer with the Lion’s Club now sit home alone at night watching Fox News.

Yuval Levin argues that we thrive inside institutions where we develop relationships of commitment, obligation, and responsibility. And he sees a particularly important role for churches. He writes this in his new book, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream, published by Basic Books: “A recovery of the ethic of community also stands the best chance of beginning in the kinds of communities that first form out of common religious convictions.”

Levin is the founder and editor of National Affairs and has written for many prominent publications. I previously interviewed him on his excellent book The Fractured Republic. He joins me on Gospelbound to discuss a wide range of topics: how populism combines with identity politics to resist restraint, the lure of cynicism and outsider politics, our pervasive culture war, the culture of celebrity as the enemy of integrity, and much more.

This episode of Gospelbound is sponsored by Southeastern Seminary, equipping today’s ministry leaders with the Word of God, a philosophical foundation, and care for the lost through their Masters program in Ethics, Theology, and Culture and the Ph.D. in Public Theology. Learn more at sebts.edu.

Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.

Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.

Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From Mother to Son on Race, Religion, and Relevance May 05, 2020

Show notes

Jasmine Holmes has been called everything from a cultural Marxist to an Uncle Tom. And other derogatory names I can’t repeat on this podcast. Thus is the fate of anyone who seeks to transcend our cultural, religious, political, and ethnic tribes.

She lays out a gospel-centered, transcendent agenda in her timely new book, Mother to Son: Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope, published by InterVarsity Press. If I had to select a representative quote from the book, it might be this one: “The lure of relevancy is strong in any clique, but when it comes with a gag order on truth it isn’t worth it.”

The book compiles letters written by Holmes to her first-born son, Wynn. She frames the book theologically by the already/not yet. You see that perspective in her hopes for Wynn. She writes:

Though this life will sometimes make him feel less than human, he is more than a conqueror through his Savior. Against all odds, we want to raise an optimist. Someone who knows that he might receive the worst that this world has to offer and still believes the best. Someone who cultivates glorious respites from the cruelty of the world by the grace of God.

Holmes contributes to The Gospel Coalition among other publications. She teaches Latin and humanities in a classical Christian school in Jackson, Mississippi. And she joins me now on Gospelbound to discuss all the easy topics from politics to race to police brutality to abortion and everything else you’re not supposed to bring up in polite company.

Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.

Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.

Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Pastor, You Can't Give What You Haven't Received Apr 28, 2020

Show notes

Harold Senkbeil has the secret of sustainable pastoral work: “You need to realize that you’ve got nothing to give to others that you yourself did not receive.”

That’s his main message in a new book called The Care of Souls: Cultivating a Pastor’s Heart [read TGC’s review], published by Lexham Press. Senkbeil is an executive director of DOXOLOGY: The Lutheran Center for Spiritual Care, and a veteran of nearly 50 years in parish ministry, seminary teaching, and parachurch leadership.

Senkbeil argues that we’ve focused so much on winning souls that we’ve neglected to keep them. Just look at the attrition rates for people who grew up in the church but drifted away. He advocates for a priority, then, on pastoral care against models of pastoral ministry as activity manager, CEO, or unlicensed therapist.

Nevertheless, he recognizes that many pastors lack spiritual depth and awareness to take up the challenge of pastoral care. We try to give ourselves, but we quickly run low on our own resources of empathy.

He writes: “No matter how compassionate and empathetic a pastor is, there’s just no way he can come up with what it takes to feed the sheep of Christ effectively, much less tend to their spiritual heartaches, bruises, and injuries.”

Senkbeil joins me on Gospelbound to discuss how he learned these lessons the hard way, why Christian living is more caught than taught, and what he’s seen as the biggest change in pastoral ministry over the last half-century.

Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.

Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.

Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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