The King's Hall - Big, Fast, & Famous

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Brian here with a big announcement from New Christendom Press.

00:00:03.860 Possibly our most important book yet is now available for pre-order.

00:00:08.300 It's called The Longhouse, How Feminism Conquered the West and Made Us All Miserable.

00:00:13.400 And in it, Eric and I take you through the dark history of feminism,

00:00:17.240 what it's done to everything from politics to church life to the economy,

00:00:21.220 and what to do about it.

00:00:23.040 Pre-order it today at newchristendompress.com slash longhouse.

00:00:26.600 And as a thank you for pre-ordering, you'll get 10% off automatically.

00:00:30.900 We'll also be signing the first thousand copies, so pick yours up today.

00:00:37.060 I am the god Thor.

00:00:39.200 I am the war god.

00:00:41.320 I am the thunderer.

00:00:43.120 Here in my northland, my fastness and fortress, reign I forever.

00:00:48.120 Force rules the world still, has ruled it, shall rule it.

00:00:51.940 Meekness is weakness.

00:00:53.820 Strength is triumphant.

00:00:55.020 Over the whole earth still it is Thor's day. Thou art a god too, O Galilean.

00:01:01.280 And thus, single-handed unto the combat, gauntlet or gospel, here I defy thee.

00:01:07.640 Excerpts from The Challenge of Thor, a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

00:01:14.760 A little more than 1,300 years ago, the region we now know as Germany was a battleground between

00:01:20.340 the missionary efforts of the Anglo-Saxon Christian Church and the Germanic pagans living

00:01:25.360 in the Frankish Empire. These pagans were worshippers of the old Norse gods, mainly

00:01:30.360 known by their Scandinavian names Thor, Odin, Freya, and more. That pagan world was a bloody, 0.97

00:01:37.320 brutal world, full of tribal conflict, murder, warring, human sacrifice, and all manner of 0.99

00:01:44.120 barbaric violence. Into that world, a Benedictine monk named Boniface, along with a cohort of

00:01:50.100 his Christian brothers, boldly defied the pagan gods, seeking the freedom of the Germanic pagans

00:01:55.740 from the bloodthirsty wraiths demanding their worship. To show the supremacy of the Christian 0.95

00:02:01.120 god over the pagan idols, Boniface determined to walk after the prophet Elijah in his showdown 0.91

00:02:06.840 with the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. Sometime around the year 723 in the town of Gaismar,

00:02:13.420 Boniface strode up to a great oak tree, a tree known to the locals as Thor's oak,

00:02:18.160 dedicated to the worship of the Norse god of thunder

00:02:21.340 and declared his intentions to chop down the tree in Christ's name. 0.92

00:02:26.440 The Germanic pagans laughed.

00:02:28.680 They knew that if anyone so much as broke a twig from their sacred tree,

00:02:32.000 Thor would surely strike that one down with his lightning before the branch hit the forest floor.

00:02:38.220 But Boniface set his face, determined to make the attempt.

00:02:42.380 The tree before him, he stripped to the waist,

00:02:44.560 took up his trusty axe and began to rain blow after blow into the trunk of the sacred tree.

00:02:51.020 Some accounts say that a mighty wind began to blow out of nowhere,

00:02:54.280 felling the tree with a great crash before Boniface could even complete the task with his axe.

00:02:59.640 Either way, the astonished pagans,

00:03:02.180 seeing the apparent impotence of their god to stand against this axe-wielding servant of Yahweh,

00:03:07.800 converted to the Christian faith and submitted to Christian baptism.

00:03:11.800 Best of all, Boniface and his companions used the timber from the mighty tree to raise a house for Christian worship,

00:03:18.520 right there in the green groves of the converted pagans.

00:03:22.260 After several decades of courageous missions work in the Germanic fields of the Frankish Empire, Boniface was martyred,

00:03:28.880 pouring out his blood into the dark earth of the Germanic forest, a final gift to the lost pagans,

00:03:35.120 in hopes that even they would turn and bend the knee to Christ. 0.67

00:03:38.700 Now he looks on from the great cloud of Christ's witnesses

00:03:41.640 as many of his spiritual descendants continue to walk in his footsteps,

00:03:46.180 taking up the weapons of their warfare in high defiance of the crumbling and retreating demonic empire.

00:03:52.100 And so, though Thor may thunder his challenge to the crucified Galilean,

00:03:57.340 throwing down his bloody gauntlet,

00:03:59.400 in the end, the Galilean's gospel proves the mightier.

00:04:03.680 The King's Hall podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world.

00:04:15.160 The story you just heard, the story of St. Boniface and Thor's Oak,

00:04:19.160 is going to serve as something of a framework for where we're going here in the first season of the King's Hall podcast.

00:04:25.360 So this podcast is aimed at Christendom, right?

00:04:28.800 it's aimed at making self-ruled men who will make godly households that will build fruitful churches

00:04:34.160 and businesses and villages and towns and cities and nations. And so you can think about this

00:04:38.800 project as something of a blueprint for building a cathedral, basically. If Christendom is a

00:04:43.940 cathedral, where do we start? How do you lay a foundation that will hold this thing up for a

00:04:50.620 few thousand years? What's a flying buttress? How do you make one? Who's going to carve the gargoyles

00:04:55.300 basically on this thing and how. So we're going to be talking in the first season about how to

00:04:59.760 build that cathedral, how we can build the next Christendom in, and maybe even with, in some cases,

00:05:06.300 the rubble of that last one. And that's where the Boniface story comes in, because right away,

00:05:11.120 you know, the first day when you pull up to the job site for this cathedral, you're going to find

00:05:16.680 out two things very quickly. First, that the pagans have built a bunch of shrines and they've

00:05:22.380 planted their green groves in high places, and generally occupied the place where we fully intend

00:05:27.320 to build. And we're not interested in retreating to some remote corner of the world to build this

00:05:32.880 cathedral. Christendom isn't going to be put up on a remote island somewhere that they haven't

00:05:38.000 gotten to yet in some kind of effort to avoid, you know, clashing with them. No, Christianity

00:05:43.540 is a religion of conquest. In the Old Testament shadows, we see God built a temple and called the 1.00

00:05:51.340 nations to that temple. But the New Testament substance that all of that pointed to, I could

00:05:57.880 say, is a people who are God's temple, and God is sending his temple to the nations now, and he's

00:06:05.420 making his temple out of the nation. So Old Testament, you have physical temple, come to

00:06:11.000 this temple and worship Yahweh. New Testament, the substance revealed by all of that shadow and type

00:06:16.440 is that we are God's temple. We're living stones, Peter says, built up into a structure for his own

00:06:21.320 possessions. And so we're sent to the nations to make this temple out of the nations. So we're

00:06:28.380 going to be playing offense in that plan, right? The scriptures make that plain, go and make

00:06:32.880 disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy

00:06:37.240 spirit, teaching them to obey all Christ commanded in all of that. That's offense talk, right? We're

00:06:43.560 going to play some defense along the way, but that's fundamentally offense. And so like Boniface,

00:06:49.720 we're going to need our acts to confront the pagan gods.

00:06:54.340 But there's another reason that we need Boniface and his acts, 0.75

00:06:56.980 because secondly, when you show up to this job site to build this cathedral of Christendom, 0.96

00:07:01.880 the job site is also cluttered with evangelical strip malls,

00:07:07.320 megachurch shantytowns, and all sorts of Christian clutter too, right? 0.95

00:07:13.240 There's not just pagan clutter to be confronted and removed 0.89

00:07:17.240 and to clear the way for this cathedral. 1.00

00:07:19.060 There's Christian clutter. So we've got grifters over the town square, hawking microwavable five second, you know, you know, six easy steps to Christianity sorts of things. Others are protesting the whole thing. They're mad that we're trying to build a cathedral at all because the Antichrist is coming and it's all going to burn. But it's not just pagan works that will need to be cleared away for this building project. There's a whole lot of shoddy work done by Christians, too. 1.00

00:07:45.000 Somewhere a while back, you could say someone put linoleum over the hardwood to mix the metaphor. 1.00

00:07:50.920 And so in these first few episodes, really before we get into the blueprints for this Christendom

00:07:54.480 cathedral, we're going to need to do some demolition work, which is Eric's favorite kind

00:07:59.760 of work, right? We're going to need to tear some things down. We're going to need to look back over

00:08:04.340 our shoulder and ask where it was that things went wrong and why, lest we repeat the same errors.

00:08:11.640 Judgment begins with the household of God, and so we need to start there.

00:08:15.760 So after we do that, then we'll turn our sights in the next episodes after that 0.95

00:08:19.180 on the pagan idols and ask which gods we need to poke in the eye 0.91

00:08:22.480 and whose oak trees we need to chop down, et cetera. 0.99

00:08:25.520 But first, we want to sink our acts into that strip mall 1.00

00:08:28.400 that the Christians have put up on our job site. 1.00

00:08:30.760 And so we'll be looking at some of the models of Christianity 0.99

00:08:34.500 that won't work going forward.

00:08:37.360 These models of Christianity that will not produce a cathedral, 0.79

00:08:39.900 will not produce Christendom.

00:08:42.180 And so we're not going to reform those models.

00:08:44.540 We're going to knock them down.

00:08:45.400 We're going to say no from the beginning to those models.

00:08:48.900 And so the first one that we're going to set our sights on,

00:08:51.300 you might call the big, fast, and famous model,

00:08:55.840 which is not original to us.

00:08:57.500 I think the first time I heard that was from a guy named Zach Eswine,

00:09:00.620 which I think he's four lady pastors and stuff,

00:09:03.260 so probably don't, you know.

00:09:05.840 But this isn't original to us.

00:09:08.120 The big, fast, and famous model, though, is what we're going to turn our sights on here in this first episode.

00:09:12.880 So, guys, what do we mean by big, fast, and famous?

00:09:16.160 What are some examples of this mentality?

00:09:24.900 In 2023, Indigo Sundries became one of our sponsors.

00:09:28.380 At the time, their business was little more than a side hobby, generating a couple hundred dollars a month.

00:09:32.960 But because of their partnership with us and because all of you chose to support them,

00:09:36.420 They've grown enough to make it their full-time livelihood. 0.56

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00:09:47.560 and grow your company, we'd love to partner with you.

00:09:50.020 Email us at advertising at newchristendompress.com.

00:09:58.260 Yeah, I think fundamentally you've got like the thousand plus member megachurches.

00:10:03.480 You've got celebrity pastors.

00:10:05.280 really what we've seen over the last couple

00:10:07.460 decades really starting in the 70s is sort of like

00:10:09.500 Hillsong worship so it's really

00:10:11.500 like going to a rock concert

00:10:13.220 and a lot of stuff that's really practical

00:10:15.420 like moving away from traditional

00:10:17.120 pastoral discipline, ecclesiology

00:10:19.720 but also moving

00:10:21.560 to things like

00:10:22.920 every week in church

00:10:25.400 if you're at Hillsong we perform

00:10:27.280 different music because the main

00:10:29.420 point of it is actually to sell albums

00:10:31.760 Spicy

00:10:33.400 Spicy, that's right

00:10:35.340 So I think a lot of that, too, is, you know, for my money, I think a lot of it got driven by Billy Graham, actually.

00:10:42.640 So really, a change in the 20th century was you had this fixation with mass media.

00:10:48.440 So mass media, people started to realize we can reach a lot of people really quickly.

00:10:54.500 And I think that's what fuels, you know, you get into people like Rick Warren in the 70s and 80s.

00:10:59.380 You get into Bill Hybels, and then it takes you to Mark Driscoll.

00:11:02.320 and really what it was all about is we can build a platform almost overnight if we have the right

00:11:07.300 technological yeah tools and franchise it yeah if using franchise models i think fundamentally

00:11:13.360 big fast and famous to me is about what happens when brand marketing comes to church oh so i'm

00:11:19.240 gonna leave it with that and i'm gonna kick it to dan because dan i think you could help unpack that

00:11:22.900 you've seen it i went to business school you're a business those two z's actually you know when i

00:11:29.580 When I started to define this, I realized that with any philosophy that we're going 0.98

00:11:34.060 to critique in these shantytowns, you're claiming they're shanties anyway. 1.00

00:11:37.960 Yeah. 1.00

00:11:38.300 They think that they're pretty great.

00:11:40.060 Oh, yeah.

00:11:40.380 You've got like the Crystal Palace or Crystal Cathedral.

00:11:43.180 That's right.

00:11:44.260 They think the linoleum belongs over the hardwood. 0.98

00:11:46.540 Shantytown. 0.87

00:11:47.140 That's what it is. 0.92

00:11:48.220 Shantytown.

00:11:48.700 No, when we're critiquing any philosophy and we're going to be critical of it, we're 0.53

00:11:53.940 going to have to untangle goodness and truth from badness and lies.

00:11:59.300 that's good it's kind of like gum in your kid's hair there are good parts and there are bad parts

00:12:06.320 and you're trying to untangle it and so you mean the hair is the good part uh yeah i mean you don't

00:12:11.340 want to yeah like your daughter you don't want to have to shave little daphne's head oh man i mean

00:12:15.660 those golden locks so for example you look at big fast and famous okay that's this is what we're

00:12:21.900 critiquing if you were to ask pastors from almost any denomination do you want your church to grow

00:12:29.360 they would say yes i mean almost yeah they say doesn't doesn't jesus want my church that's right

00:12:35.940 i want my church to grow uh so church growth is seen as a good thing and a lot of times it is it

00:12:43.280 is a good thing um but where things get sticky like the vending machine gumball that you should

00:12:49.080 not have bought that is in little Daphne's hair in this illustration yeah is how how are you going

00:12:55.840 to grow it how are you going to grow it and and so kind of piggybacking off of what you said Eric

00:13:01.000 yeah was that church growth for the sake of church growth is the ideology of cancer wow that's crazy

00:13:09.360 yeah because it spreads fast it spreads fast yep and it's just growth for growth's sake so you

00:13:15.080 really get into Dan you really get into what kind of growth is it because one of the things I thought

00:13:18.940 about as we were preparing for this is Mars Hill, right? We've been listening to the Christianity 0.58

00:13:24.660 Today podcast, hating most of it, loving a lot of what Mark did actually. But what's interesting to

00:13:30.040 me is 15,000 people were part of the Mars Hill, the immediate Mars Hill movement. Mark steps down

00:13:37.860 and it's done overnight. So I immediately said to myself, that was not healthy growth.

00:13:42.480 it could not have been like Redwood style, deep rooted, healthy Christian, sanctified growth,

00:13:49.340 right? Yeah. And so the way that these, these models typically follow is, is like a marketing

00:13:54.000 campaign. Yeah. And so again, this is sticky, right? Because we have things like we want to

00:13:59.340 be known as, as being respectable and having being well, well thought of by outsiders to a degree,

00:14:06.320 obviously. Um, so there's good and then there's bad cause you have branding, right? You have a

00:14:11.800 brand yeah uh paul the apostle had a brand he was known right but he didn't foster his brand

00:14:17.600 through marketing or his social media page or or whatever and so there's there's both the good and

00:14:22.920 the bad but i think that with this big fast famous model what you really have is these churches that

00:14:30.540 have turned where else are you trying to get people to buy your product it's it's in business

00:14:36.900 and so they have turned to the business world like you said to have marketing campaigns

00:14:41.600 brand management, value ads like child care, coffee shops, programs. You have entertainment,

00:14:48.460 dynamic speakers, music, which we'll touch on later, and even public relations campaigns through

00:14:54.820 painting houses or social welfare type programs that are pretty much PR campaigns.

00:15:01.420 Right. They're basically built on sounding the trumpet before you as you give.

00:15:06.140 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what those are because that's what businesses do. They sound

00:15:09.960 the, why else would they do it? They exist to make money. That's their internal logic. So

00:15:15.860 of course they're going to sound the Trump. Well, and the thing is, is all of these,

00:15:19.180 you can see at every step, why I say, why I prefaced there's good and bad, like social

00:15:23.840 welfare is actually good to a point. It depends on the purpose. And so what these churches

00:15:30.740 incentivize, they get, right? Yeah. I mean, that's just a rule. They get customers is what they get.

00:15:36.760 And customers are there for socio-religious goods and services.

00:15:41.840 And it's really customers in a world of customers.

00:15:45.120 And so you can begin to see why this is more of a strip mall version of Christianity than a cathedral.

00:15:53.240 It's because they relate to the church as customers.

00:15:57.600 Yeah, it's a consumer-driven model.

00:15:59.860 Yes, they don't produce.

00:16:01.400 They basically say, okay, the pastor is essentially the CEO, and he has some other pastors on his board that are like the other executives, and they dispense religious goods and services in exchange for giving.

00:16:16.460 Or attendance, man.

00:16:17.340 Or attendance, even.

00:16:18.480 That's right.

00:16:19.100 If you've ever been in leadership at a church, the number of times people try to leverage their attendance to get you to do what they want, it's unbelievable.

00:16:27.860 Yeah.

00:16:28.280 I'll take my tithe.

00:16:29.120 You know what?

00:16:29.460 I'll take my tithe elsewhere.

00:16:30.420 Yeah.

00:16:31.520 You're like, well, can you imagine a son saying that?

00:16:34.500 Well, I'll take my chores elsewhere.

00:16:36.780 Not mine.

00:16:37.700 Oh, you will?

00:16:38.800 Oh, good.

00:16:39.700 No, you won't.

00:16:41.580 I'll help you pack your socks, as my mom said.

00:16:44.480 That's right.

00:16:45.100 Even, you know, back to Eric's point, when you were talking about the, that's not redwood tree growth,

00:16:49.440 talking about when Mars Hill exploded, and there was certainly some seeds that blew to the wind

00:16:54.860 and took up in some other congregations that were started.

00:16:57.100 But, you know, if you think about it, it's it's you could you could say that the trunk of the tree at Mars Hill was Mark.

00:17:05.300 He was the trunk. Christ wasn't the trunk. The church wasn't the trunk.

00:17:09.720 A guy was the trunk. And so when the guy died or when the guy gets disqualified or when the guy gets leaves in scandal or whatever, then the tree dies.

00:17:18.040 And the true church, it's not like that because Christ is the trunk.

00:17:22.120 Right. Right. He's the vine where the branch is. And so we grow off of Christ.

00:17:26.620 And so we're all disposable.

00:17:27.920 Like any of us can die.

00:17:30.320 And if we're doing this thing right,

00:17:33.300 any one of the pastors at our church should, 0.99

00:17:35.300 you know, should be able to die. 0.99

00:17:37.040 That sounds bad. 1.00

00:17:38.320 Should be able to die or move or, you know,

00:17:40.360 even Lord, you know, God forbid, be disqualified.

00:17:43.940 And the church should be able to continue 0.60

00:17:46.360 and other men step in. 0.93

00:17:48.120 Right.

00:17:48.880 Yeah, it's interesting.

00:17:49.680 It kind of gets into the next question

00:17:51.120 that we'll dive into, Brian.

00:17:52.240 But why is this model so toxic to future Christendom?

00:17:55.760 Yeah.

00:17:56.220 I think that you can look back at it and I've done a lot of this recently looking into the

00:18:01.500 Young Restless and Reform Movement, which is just one, you know, one iteration of Big Fast and

00:18:06.420 Famous and not always even the biggest, the fastest or the most famous. But by and large,

00:18:12.140 all the famous celebrity pastors that I grew up with, like they're gone. They're donezo. Yeah.

00:18:16.940 So, you know, you think about CJ Mahaney, you think about Josh Harris, you think about the

00:18:22.800 scandal that's rocked the church because of these guys you know what happened to acts 29 what

00:18:27.580 happened to mark mark driscoll um it's mostly bad stuff so it would seem like okay in a movement if

00:18:33.480 you had like one guy that fell apart you would go well you know maybe it's an anomaly yeah but when

00:18:39.840 you got darren patrick killing himself you've got oh yeah just a very very sad history of what

00:18:45.120 happened to that movement that's when i want to go back and i want to say there's something in

00:18:49.540 that concrete mix in the foundation that is not working because you can read the history of the

00:18:55.180 early church and it's not like that. Right. I think one of the things too, and Brian, I want to get

00:19:01.660 your take on this. It seems like this whole model of doing church, there's part of it that's

00:19:07.460 plausible. So I was talking to David Murrow recently, pretty interesting book really about

00:19:12.800 this type of church movement, which is called Why Men Hate Going to Church. But like there's

00:19:18.300 comments in there like he would say, you know, we need to do TED Talks and not sermons because

00:19:22.380 these really sell well and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. That sort of thing actually changes the

00:19:26.700 way that you do church and has an impact on, again, what's toxic. So I guess speak to that.

00:19:32.740 Why is that so toxic? Yeah. And I think once you get into the root DNA, that when you get down to

00:19:40.180 the foundations and you say, what's the guiding principle here? And as soon as you admit that

00:19:45.400 the guiding principle is something like as we're going to get as many people as possible,

00:19:49.420 as fast as possible, however possible. And usually they'll say short of sin. I think even like Perry

00:19:55.680 Noble, is that the name of the guy? Yeah. Or maybe even Rick Warren said something like that,

00:20:00.620 as many as possible, as fast as possible to be introduced to Jesus, however possible,

00:20:04.580 short of sin. It's this like normative principle on steroids, where instead of discovering

00:20:10.500 the foundational mission and methods of the church in scripture, and then fleshing those

00:20:16.240 out and simply obeying them and trusting, well, God probably knew what he was doing when he

00:20:20.820 established his church. Instead of that, we're saying, well, you know what, let's just sort of

00:20:25.320 say, what is Jesus really trying to do? Get a lot of people. Hey, you know what? Businesses do that.

00:20:32.160 Marketing does that. All sorts of other things do that. So let's say, oh, the scriptures are good.

00:20:37.840 we're still going to, we're going to incorporate the scriptures. We're going to preach the

00:20:40.820 scriptures still. And, you know, we're going to give advice from the scriptures, but fundamentally

00:20:44.400 we're just going to sort of distill down the mission and then try to pursue that mission

00:20:49.360 disconnected from the methods that God has established. And what happens is that very

00:20:55.940 quickly, I think men one overestimate in pride, the, the, their own ability to come up with

00:21:02.680 better methods than God's methods. That's the most proud, arrogant thing ever to say,

00:21:09.160 you know, God really didn't give us everything needful for the man of God to be trained in

00:21:13.580 righteousness and equipped for every good work, like the Bible says. But, you know, maybe we have

00:21:18.260 some other methods that are going to work. And so fundamentally, I think that what it does is it

00:21:22.460 elevates hubris. It elevates human ingenuity and pragmatism over principle. It ends up elevating

00:21:31.160 personalities then over communities, centralism, this mothership model built around personalities

00:21:37.220 over decentralization, lots of people, all of these principles you get in the scripture, like

00:21:41.920 leaven versus conveyor belts, right? All of these things, if you just discover the mission and

00:21:47.840 methods of the church in the scriptures, you'll get all of these actually, you know, the principles

00:21:54.100 that work. It's not like the scriptures don't work. They just take time. They say like, let's

00:22:00.100 let's operate on a very short time horizon. Let's think in six months, how many new attendees can

00:22:05.760 we get instead of, Hey, what is going to produce a church here in this city that in 100 years or

00:22:12.140 500 years will not only be here, but be stronger than it is today. Yeah. I think that model is

00:22:20.040 diametrically opposed to the normative means of evangelism within the covenant arc that God has

00:22:25.500 made like the way that he relates to people through the old and new covenant was not primarily through

00:22:31.100 those sorts of means of the mega church the big fast and famous model which is get as many people

00:22:36.680 in the door as possible we'll water it down so it's more palatable we'll wrap it up in whatever

00:22:40.980 dressings that we can yeah to make sure that people can swallow this thing and really they

00:22:44.980 become hucksters i mean yeah carpet baggers yeah and it's really sad because you do have gifted men

00:22:50.860 We're really strong leader types and they adopt a philosophy that is, 0.55

00:22:54.300 like I said,

00:22:55.160 diametrically opposed to the normative means of evangelism.

00:22:59.180 And here's why I think it's so toxic is this is a hot take by me.

00:23:04.040 Let's hear it.

00:23:04.740 Yeah.

00:23:04.920 I mean, 0.96

00:23:05.180 it might be garbage, 0.97

00:23:05.980 but the normative way that people have been converted and are united to God 0.99

00:23:12.380 covenantally is through fathers.

00:23:15.700 It's through fathers,

00:23:17.300 both in the old and new covenant.

00:23:19.200 you have instructions and promises to fathers and to their sons and so when the gospel is preached

00:23:28.220 even to men you know that aren't in covenant with God and they repent who becomes saved who is

00:23:34.860 commanded to be baptized and such it's their families and so this is kind of the the arc that

00:23:43.240 you see throughout scripture and and what the big fast famous model does is it neuters the

00:23:48.920 paterfamilias yeah it neuters the father and it replaces him yes with this personality yes and so

00:23:57.020 you can see why christians then turn and they support things like statism yeah it's just that

00:24:02.940 writ large because it becomes not a a father-son sort of relationship but it becomes who can give

00:24:10.300 me the best bang for my buck yeah so dan i want to ask you you said that it neuters fathers the

00:24:16.600 father-son relationship. My question would be how? Yeah, absolutely. So when you're buying

00:24:22.400 religious goods and services, you're trying to get the best value from your money and from your

00:24:26.180 attendance. And it does this functionally in so many ways, other than just the way that it

00:24:30.780 evangelizes people, is through things like programs. So we're going to separate your

00:24:35.380 children from the congregation for worship. I mean, that's nuts. Or how about this? Because

00:24:41.520 we trust the experts. We're going to send our kids to the state to be educated, right? Instead

00:24:47.420 of obeying Ephesians six, that says fathers raise your kids in the pie day and new thesis of the

00:24:52.760 Lord. Even, even growing up, I wasn't expected to attend the main congregational service until I was

00:25:00.640 literally on staff at the church as a worship leader at like maybe 17 or so. And that's when

00:25:06.240 I started attending the adult service because they had so that, you know, basically the goal

00:25:11.360 is if you're going to get customers, you need to make it as eat, make the customer experience as

00:25:14.700 easy as possible. So what's hard parenting, disciplining your kids. Let's take the little

00:25:20.300 kids out. Okay. You know, little kids, that's good. We've got them in kids ministry, but what

00:25:24.840 if we, you know, teenagers can be tough too. What if we took, what if we had a youth group

00:25:28.660 replicate a youth service at the same time as the adult? Well, when you're a pragmatist, you're,

00:25:32.720 you're trying to always speak to where the person is.

00:25:36.760 Even,

00:25:37.320 even Rick Warren said something,

00:25:39.180 I'm going to butcher this,

00:25:40.000 but essentially like people who have their needs met will come to your

00:25:43.780 church is,

00:25:44.680 is,

00:25:44.940 is essentially what it is as in like the people themselves know what they

00:25:48.780 need most.

00:25:49.640 Exactly.

00:25:50.340 Like just follow your heart.

00:25:52.000 Yeah.

00:25:52.120 Like their, 0.71

00:25:52.580 their,

00:25:52.940 their loves are properly ordered already.

00:25:55.220 They already know the good,

00:25:56.120 the true and the beautiful.

00:25:57.020 No,

00:25:57.820 no,

00:25:58.060 they don't.

00:25:58.360 Why do you think that the most popular novels sold in America today are 0.90

00:26:01.960 like trash romance novels. And it's because people don't know what is good. People need

00:26:07.480 their sensibilities and their loves and their moral values and their aesthetic values trained

00:26:13.260 by the really trained by the beautific vision, trained by God himself as our fountain of wisdom

00:26:22.100 and goodness and truth and beauty. And, you know, if you if instead you say, let's do demographic

00:26:29.080 studies on the culture figure out what people like and then let's let's make the church look

00:26:33.500 like that you know what you're doing you're literally making the church in the image of the

00:26:38.580 culture yeah it's literally what you're doing instead of telling all of the people you guys

00:26:44.120 you were jacked up you need to be made in the image of the god man right yeah totally backwards

00:26:50.800 yeah that's why we like this story of boniface so much yeah i mean because that's what he comes

00:26:56.080 into this germanic people and he says uh you all are bloodthirsty pagans and you need the the one

00:27:01.980 true and living god and so i'm gonna go chop down your your idol your big god tree yeah he didn't 0.91

00:27:07.960 say you know what these people really like trees let's make a sanctuary environment that is shaped

00:27:15.480 like the oak tree and maybe we could put like instead of the communion table we could have

00:27:20.580 like branches coming up and holding up the communion you know and it seems like these

00:27:25.140 germanic pagans really like face tattoos to you know celebrate the the people they've killed in

00:27:30.260 battle from the opposing tribes i know it sounds bad guys but maybe we should think about priestly 0.85

00:27:36.280 face tattoos it seems like you're saying that their culture was bad right cult human cultures

00:27:42.060 are bad and they need to be reformed according to this okay what this made me think of something

00:27:47.360 and i'm going to lose it if i don't say it so i'm just going to jack up the model the outline and

00:27:51.040 I'm going to say this. Why is this model so toxic to future Christendom? And I'm thinking about

00:27:55.160 Mark again, Mark Driscoll. And when you do everything Dan just said, and you make the,

00:28:01.860 you replace the father with this big centralized single celebrity figure, and whether that's Mark

00:28:07.600 Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Paul Washer, I mean, even take good guys, R.C. Sproul or, you know,

00:28:13.720 Calvin or whoever, you make one guy that that father of everybody, eventually, and then you,

00:28:20.080 especially if you then marry that idea to the idea that what we need is cultural influence

00:28:26.200 and marketing, all of a sudden, it's really easy for that guy to justify almost anything.

00:28:31.880 Think about what Mark allegedly did with his book. I think it was Real Marriage.

00:28:37.160 When they bought it onto the New York Times bestseller list with church funds, I think they

00:28:42.080 spent like a quarter, allegedly, quarter million dollars or something of church money to buy

00:28:46.160 enough copies of his book to get it on the New York Times bestseller list. Can you think about

00:28:52.700 how easy that line of thinking is? If success is as many people as fast as possible, well, then

00:29:00.200 we need cultural influence. We need to be seen as serious and important writers and thinkers and

00:29:04.820 authors. So you know what helps? Endorsement by the New York Times. Well, all we have to do is

00:29:08.960 put a quarter mil into it and we can get that. You just see how like you grease the skids in this

00:29:13.520 model to as many as possible as fast as possible however possible short of sin ends up dropping

00:29:19.220 the short of sin part pretty quickly to build the platform of the father replacement celebrity yeah

00:29:25.720 and then you'll basically do anything you'll just do anything i mean mark you know in you know in

00:29:31.480 the christianity today podcast again mark will talk about things like i am the brand yeah um and

00:29:38.180 he really was that's the thing he was he really was the brand but it's also interesting i think

00:29:42.380 from a so my background is in journalism and we used to always have a saying I know it was coined

00:29:47.520 by somebody big fast and famous I don't know but it was called the medium is the message right I

00:29:52.920 think there's a book to that title that's right but the whole point was the way you deliver the

00:29:57.060 message the way that you treat your people in the congregation what you're actually doing and Brian

00:30:01.240 you hit on this earlier you're actually changing the message right so when you're Andy Stanley

00:30:05.900 you know I started watching TED talks recently because I haven't really watched a lot and I

00:30:11.360 want to say like what is this about yeah what is when people say ted talk sermons like what are

00:30:15.880 what are those ted talks come out like 20 years ago we're on the cutting edge okay all right

00:30:20.500 bleeding edge so the other day i found ted talks i started listening to him simon cynic i literally

00:30:27.600 my first ted talks of all time and um i know it's so pathetic but what was interesting to me i was

00:30:33.100 like this is andy stanley this is what he's doing he's taking 12 minutes of your time he's telling

00:30:37.940 three cute stories um some insightful things he makes you laugh a little but what hit me about it

00:30:43.960 is it's not really deep it doesn't really challenge you in the sense of like a sermon

00:30:48.800 would call you to repentance yeah um and i but it's also very popular like you can sit there

00:30:54.300 and go oh that was clever and interesting again i think it gets to this issue of if that's going

00:30:59.580 to be your methodology it's going to change your message yeah just like praise and worship music

00:31:05.660 which entered the church, that utterly changed how we saw the worship experience from something

00:31:10.440 that we interact in and with, and we sing and the congregation sings. Well, now it becomes

00:31:16.080 something that we just stand there and watch. And now when you tell people, hey, sing, turn up your

00:31:21.220 volume, they're like, what are you crazy? Turn up the music. I'm not supposed to be doing this.

00:31:26.340 So it's utterly changed what we do. And the last thing I'll say is just this whole conversation

00:31:30.300 made me think about J.I. Packer. I mentioned the Redwoods earlier, but I think it's in a quest for

00:31:35.280 godliness he was talking about the puritans and he said our age is like frail little trees the

00:31:39.680 puritans were redwoods and so i think that the thing is is if you want to cultivate the kind

00:31:45.120 of christians that shape the culture that's not going to be a weak shallow christian right like

00:31:50.640 and what you see across america is we have the type of church and christians overall who are

00:31:55.860 like well fauci said to do it so i do it yeah we love your neighbor that's the depth of my theology

00:32:02.160 Yeah. A lot of this is actually, to me, centering on an idea or a contrast between two models that I think is important and that starts to get to the center of why this model is so toxic, why it tends to replace fathers with celebrity figures is because if you think about it, what we're talking about with Christendom, this cathedral of Christendom, is to shift the metaphor to the cathedral as the people of God, the temple, the living stones.

00:32:28.580 the temple is built out of individual bricks that are living stones, right? Individual

00:32:33.880 men and women and children and households. So fundamentally, this whole idea of Christendom,

00:32:40.460 if it's done right, isn't built on a single celebrity pope figure. It's built on lots of,

00:32:44.800 this is why, lots of self-ruled men who rule well and therefore win the world. Really what

00:32:50.580 we're talking about is decentralization versus centralization, in a sense. What we're talking

00:32:58.460 about with Christendom and Christianity, properly understood, is a whole lot of yeast-like

00:33:04.520 multiplication, where you have, the thing is a living structure built of millions and billions

00:33:11.720 of people, of human beings. And the health of that organism isn't going to be determined by

00:33:18.740 one little brick somewhere, right? Or even the model for what each brick ought to be isn't going

00:33:24.380 to be built by one little brick. It's going to be built by lots of households and men and women who

00:33:29.900 are being shaped in the image of Christ. So when you look at a lot of these models, one of the

00:33:35.140 tells that you'll always find is that things tend to be ultra, ultra centralized. They're a mothership,

00:33:42.640 not a forest right there they're they're a single big and often you know plastic redwood tree even

00:33:49.160 it's not real it's fake instead of this big vast forest don't you think a lot of that brian is just

00:33:55.200 copying corporate culture and what i mean is when you read about the history of like you know

00:34:01.920 businesses in america dan you could speak to this probably too but like even walmart when it first

00:34:06.960 started wasn't what it is today and now we've gone to this mega globo corporation that dominates

00:34:12.080 everything. I would argue America was actually stronger at many points when you had distributed

00:34:16.660 power, property, et cetera. Yeah. Well, even the foundations of democracy were dependent on

00:34:22.440 widespread property ownership, people who are well-educated. Yeah. The Reformation brought

00:34:27.280 about a lot of this. We've changed the fabric of our culture by treating people like consumers. 0.99

00:34:33.940 Yeah. Would you rather have 100 million households, each with a quarter acre garden,

00:34:38.120 growing a diverse local crops or 15 mega farms growing all the food in america it's it's the

00:34:44.680 anti-fragile philosophy again because centralization is very fragile it is it looks

00:34:50.500 strong yeah we've seen that with supply chains yeah but it's not chains yeah with like meat

00:34:55.780 shortages there's only a few packing houses or butchers or i i can't recall where the weak spot

00:35:00.680 was but essentially there are only a few of them and so all of a sudden during covid we had no meat

00:35:04.940 or the prices went up really high

00:35:07.080 because they're shutting them down

00:35:08.340 since it's so centralized,

00:35:10.000 since it's almost impossible

00:35:11.500 because of regulations

00:35:12.500 to open your own packing house.

00:35:15.240 And so the centralization model

00:35:17.540 is very fragile.

00:35:19.200 That's why you see one man falling.

00:35:22.000 The whole thing crumbles.

00:35:23.260 Yep, yep.

00:35:23.800 It's because it's so completely centralized.

00:35:26.380 Christianity is anti-fragile. 0.79

00:35:28.700 The whole thing is built on people dying. 0.97

00:35:31.420 Right.

00:35:31.780 And that's how we win.

00:35:32.980 Yeah, we win by dying. 0.99

00:35:33.940 we win by dying in fact you kill us you're helping us yes in fact anything you do to us

00:35:39.320 according to romans 8 28 to 36 you're actually helping us okay take away all our money well 0.90

00:35:44.140 he's working famine together for our good and poverty and you know kill us he's working our

00:35:48.160 death for our good well pardon the interruption but we wanted to give a quick shout out to our

00:35:53.460 first patrons first supporters of the show over on patreon nate norris emmanuel drake josh bishop

00:35:59.900 Thomas Stone. Thank you guys. We appreciate your support. If you want to become a supporter of the

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00:36:22.400 remember, you guys, we get more of what we support with our dollars, what we vote for with our

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00:36:42.420 and you enjoy the show to jump on board there. But with that said, let's get back to the episode.

00:36:48.980 So this also gets to one of the reasons why I think that this big, fast and famous model

00:36:55.300 ultimately is deeply patronizing to men particularly is because men, like if men are

00:37:01.680 being made in the image of Christ to be self-ruled by the spirit of God, to build households, to

00:37:07.800 go about their vocation Christianly, it is so deeply patronizing when you say, no, just come

00:37:14.180 and we've done it all for you. It's easy. You don't have to do any, you don't even have to 0.98

00:37:18.160 break a sweat to come to church. Like we'll give you some football jokes even to like make you feel

00:37:22.580 included. And it's so deeply patronizing when you give men a vision of essentially globo homo 0.96

00:37:30.600 statist hegemony where it's like, look, you guys just watch your TV, go to your job. It won't 0.97

00:37:37.780 really be that meaningful, but I mean, you have to do something with your time. And then, you know,

00:37:42.620 we will give you this church on the weekend that you can go to bring your family. We'll do

00:37:45.800 everything for you. We'll disciple your kids, your wife, you know, don't, you won't have to

00:37:50.200 lift a finger gents just kick back it's like to a man who actually understands what god made him 1.00

00:37:56.640 to be and do that's just like so deeply patronizing yeah it really is emasculating and it's interesting 0.66

00:38:03.820 too because again you like you think of the special forces uh it's really hard to get in

00:38:09.220 until people really want to be in it i've always said that with men it's like people like we just

00:38:13.560 need to keep lowering the bar for men and it's like i think you actually have to do the opposite

00:38:18.020 You have to raise the standard to what God's standard is.

00:38:21.740 But I'm really fascinated by this question of how we're actually reshaping the church

00:38:27.500 by the way that we try to be big, fast, and famous.

00:38:30.680 And I want to throw this out there.

00:38:32.440 I know, Dan, you're a Proverbs guy.

00:38:34.900 Yeah, sure, man.

00:38:35.740 All men are Proverbs men.

00:38:36.920 I think the manly men.

00:38:38.420 So one of the things I thought of, it's kind of so simple you could almost miss it,

00:38:41.440 but Proverbs 13, 11 says,

00:38:43.380 Wealth gain hastily will dwindle,

00:38:45.760 but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.

00:38:48.360 I think it could be said about the church, right,

00:38:51.260 that we want to build long and slow.

00:38:53.720 I literally had that on my screen.

00:38:55.640 I'm so proud of you right now.

00:38:56.700 Brian and I, as we talk about investing,

00:38:58.680 that's our like, oh yeah, yeah, short-term losses.

00:39:01.140 Well, you know, it's a-

00:39:02.080 But long-term is what it's in.

00:39:03.700 Yeah, that's right. 0.67

00:39:05.020 Russia invades Ukraine.

00:39:06.920 All the stonks go down. 0.97

00:39:08.780 Just wait, just wait.

00:39:10.060 Big time harassment.

00:39:10.980 Putin, no!

00:39:12.080 come on. No, you take it away, Brian. You had it written down. Well, no, I pulled it up earlier

00:39:18.260 when we were thinking, we were talking about this. I was like, you know what? It's like

00:39:20.400 Proverbs 13, 11, because there's a principle under that. He's talking about finances that

00:39:24.420 wealth gain hastily is going to dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase

00:39:28.320 it. That's true of finances, but the principle underneath that stands. And it's that the fall

00:39:35.700 and sin, what it makes us constantly want to do is try to find cheat codes for the world that God

00:39:40.880 made where it's like wisdom is essentially understanding that God made a world full of

00:39:46.740 rules and laws and principles and patterns. He made that they're built in, they're baked in

00:39:50.900 just as much as math is baked in. Those are built in and wisdom understands that those exist. It

00:39:56.920 does the hard work of the glory of Kings to search them out. Yeah. And then it does the even harder

00:40:01.840 work of not just knowing them, but trying to live at peace with them. Yeah. And this is one of those

00:40:06.600 principles that if you try to basically parent like this, as an example, you say once a year,

00:40:14.220 I'm going to sit each of my kids down and I'm going to have a big, long talk with them about

00:40:17.940 all the bad things they did this year. It'll take about 15 minutes and then I'll give them,

00:40:22.600 you know, one big spanking for all that stuff because it says spare the rod, you know, spoil 1.00

00:40:26.840 the child. And then that'll be good. They'll get 18 or so of those before they leave my house. 1.00

00:40:32.040 and well I'm not talking about spanking a one-year-old anyway but the scriptures instead

00:40:38.980 are like no not one big thing once a year 10,000 acts of small discipline and parenting all the

00:40:44.180 time that's what produces godly children the dollar cost averaging into the market over a

00:40:50.820 long time horizon is what produces durable wealth right and so many times we don't want to do this

00:40:56.780 We just want to like, no, I'm going to ape into, uh, you know, whatever it is.

00:41:01.820 Dogecoin.

00:41:02.400 Jamey or yeah.

00:41:04.260 AMC, you know, AMC.

00:41:05.740 And then I'm going to diamond hands, baby.

00:41:07.280 But so I can be wealthy in a, in a, in a month.

00:41:09.680 We lost some people.

00:41:10.600 We did.

00:41:10.900 I'm sorry.

00:41:11.500 So let me bring it back.

00:41:12.680 So John Calvin said this about church growth.

00:41:15.220 Okay.

00:41:15.380 He said the excellence of the church does not consist in the multitude, but in purity.

00:41:22.000 It's not the number of people, but the purity of the church.

00:41:25.080 and what's central what is the central message of christianity is the gospel and the very thing

00:41:33.260 that we're trying to like sugarcoat and stuff down people's throat is the thing that the 0.79

00:41:39.600 scriptures say is a stumbling block for the jews and it's foolishness to the gentiles yeah and so 0.98

00:41:45.900 we have to actually change the central message of Christianity into something that's more 0.95

00:41:54.560 palatable instead of saying, no, no, this is, this is your, your job. You're, you're supposed

00:42:00.240 to come and die. Well, and that's Dan, that's, um, I was reading, uh, Jesus and John Wayne, 0.95

00:42:05.740 highly recommended, highly, highly not recommended book. Fired. We just edited out everything.

00:42:11.380 everything um yeah it's interesting though historically i think that she is right about

00:42:16.360 one thing in there where she talks about really with billy graham they started the christian

00:42:20.900 bookstores um christian radio and one of the things they realized was to reach all these people

00:42:26.940 from across all these denominations they had to find what they called a core message we might call

00:42:32.020 it gospel centered today but they had to find a core christian message that was basically so

00:42:37.600 watered down that like anybody would approve of it yeah within christendom like even loose

00:42:42.560 christendom anyone would approve so again it's this idea that you you actually have to change

00:42:47.480 the message uh it reminds me uh in seminary we were reading uh a tim keller book uh i think it's

00:42:54.320 called the worship matters about the worship wars yeah and that sort of thing one of the things i

00:42:59.580 hated most about that book though that tim keller said uh was really just like it's just a style

00:43:04.800 issue. Oh, so the medium is the message. Yeah. The medium is the message. It's a style issue.

00:43:11.600 Here's where I would, I would push back though. I would say, what is your heart? Is your heart to

00:43:16.560 preach the full unadulterated? We'll get into this theological maximalism. Is that what you're

00:43:22.360 trying to do? Or are you trying to say, look, I just want, I want this to be as palatable as

00:43:27.320 possible because what it drives at is you can only have one. Yeah. You can only have one Jesus. I was

00:43:34.240 struck by this this week Jesus John 5 says this very thing how can you believe when you receive

00:43:38.960 the glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that comes from the only God are you

00:43:43.800 in your ministry fundamentally you have two choices one of two choices you're either going

00:43:48.140 to serve God and seek his glory or you're going to seek the glory of men and I think correct me

00:43:54.460 if I'm wrong Dan but the big fast famous is all about the glory of men yeah I mean it's kind of

00:44:00.000 Built into the name, which some might say is unfair.

00:44:04.120 But the whole, when you're observing these models,

00:44:07.460 especially after they've failed,

00:44:09.680 and there are some that are still going on,

00:44:11.980 but it solely relies on the approval of men.

00:44:16.020 That's why you have to change the message,

00:44:18.140 is because people then approve of it.

00:44:21.920 I mean, maybe Brian Sauvé is not the nicest guy in the world on Twitter.

00:44:27.380 Maybe he's not.

00:44:28.040 maybe he is right though maybe he's right about a lot of these tweets that people get upset over

00:44:35.160 and then christianity starts to respond like the pagans with the same narratives

00:44:41.660 and they're so worried about the perceptions of men yeah versus fearing god

00:44:47.520 just to say this is one of the things i get commonly i think eric does we've probably all

00:44:53.680 gotten it is that a lot of people will be like, Hey, you know, brother, I agree with what you said,

00:44:58.060 but is it really helpful right now in this moment? Because don't you realize you're just

00:45:01.860 alienating a whole lot of non-Christians from the, and here's the fundamental error. It's a big, 0.65

00:45:07.240 fast and famous error. We're going to talk about it even in the future, as we talk about revivalism

00:45:11.340 and decisionism and other models that we need to knock down. But fundamentally that error is to

00:45:16.060 think that you can basically, by small degrees, work somebody into the kingdom, you know,

00:45:23.760 culminating in them bending the knee to Christ, where it's like, you basically say, let's edit

00:45:28.880 the message. Let's make, what is this, what is the least that somebody has to do to become a

00:45:33.540 Christian? What's the minimum? What is the bare minimum? The minimum, right? Absolutely. Okay.

00:45:37.600 And Brian is saying, chop, chop, chop. Yeah, that's right. What is the minimum we have to do

00:45:42.540 to get the germanic pagans to worship us well you know what they just need to let's start with

00:45:47.040 christ is lord and they're like okay christ is lord this is probably not germanic but christ

00:45:51.020 is lord alongside thor well we'll talk about that later you know no you can't they're a little

00:45:58.080 rough around the edges yeah you can't edit out stop sacrificing your people to the god okay let's

00:46:03.340 just do one sacrifice a month and then we'll we'll whittle it down and it's like what we want to do

00:46:09.200 is edit the edges, the rough edges off of the message until it's more palatable. And it's just

00:46:14.920 such a sneaky, smarmy, patronizing bait and switch. You're treating people like idiots where 1.00

00:46:20.700 you're like, Hey, it's like the Mormons at the door when they don't tell you about Kolob and 1.00

00:46:24.640 they don't tell you about how, you know, Oh, actually there's a ton of gods. And we believe

00:46:28.640 that God had sex with Mary and all these other things. They just tell you, we're here to tell

00:46:31.860 you about the Lord Jesus Christ. Another, another Testament of his gospel. You know, he died for

00:46:35.840 your sin on the cross. Do you want to become a Mormon? That's how they do it now. They just, 0.97

00:46:39.960 they round off all the hard stuff. And, and the lie there is that, is that basically you can

00:46:46.380 trick people into becoming a Christian and then disciple them later. And it's like, no, pretty 0.75

00:46:52.280 soon they're going to find out. They're going to say, wait a second. The Bible says all these

00:46:56.080 things about like, it seems like Romans one is saying that lesbianism is bad. You don't like

00:47:01.240 the gays and and and here's the thing is that instead of doing that what we should be doing

00:47:06.280 what we should be doing is saying uh you know something like okay where is the culture deeply 0.78

00:47:14.220 enslaved to false gods all right that's where we need to go because that's where they're enslaved 0.86

00:47:20.180 that's where we need to pronounce freedom to the captives well don't you think brian like

00:47:24.680 that's where we you and i particularly run into so much trouble on social media is

00:47:29.180 i'm actually looking for the idol like where's the idol we're idol hunting yes and i'm like

00:47:34.840 thor's oak where can i go poke it in the eye chop chop and most people think like you're the most 0.86

00:47:40.840 contentious person this is what i get from most people how dare you how the hell do you think you

00:47:47.480 are so so thanks mark mark driscoll throwback but like that is the response yeah but but but it's

00:47:53.820 interesting what you're saying though because it's it's a fundamental misunderstanding about

00:47:57.180 what we're trying to do yeah what we're trying to do is say world you're enslaved to all kinds

00:48:02.040 of wraiths and demon gods and they hate you and they're promising you freedom but they're really 0.91

00:48:07.240 delivering you self you know think about something like transgenderism they're saying be freed be 0.99

00:48:12.780 freed from the this this cage of a body that you've been given it doesn't match your inner 0.99

00:48:17.780 child or your inner spirit and so be freed from it and all you have to do is take these pills and 0.95

00:48:23.420 this hormone injections and cut off your genitals and you have to rearrange your body with plastic 0.65

00:48:28.200 surgery and then you will be free and happy and then the suicide rate remains the same for 0.95

00:48:34.060 transgender people after conversion post-conversion therapy and post-conversion so you go what what 1.00

00:48:40.000 the christian ought to do isn't walk in and be like let's not bring up the tranny stuff yet 1.00

00:48:43.460 let's not bring that up because it would alienate them let's just lead with that that's where they're 1.00

00:48:47.780 enslaved. That's where the shackle is. Paul, it didn't go into the, and Peter, they didn't go

00:48:54.960 into the town squares and say to the Jews, you know, let's not bring up the whole, they crucified

00:48:59.660 Jesus thing. Instead, they were like, you crucified the Messiah, right? You did. And when they preached 0.80

00:49:07.040 to the Gentiles, the result was that it was so clear to the Gentiles that Paul and Barnabas

00:49:11.580 were rebuking them for their worship of Artemis, that for several hours, they chanted nothing but

00:49:17.020 glorious is Artemis the fair or whatever

00:49:19.280 it was that they actually, I can't remember. Artemis of the Ephesians

00:49:21.500 something like that. Yeah, for hours

00:49:23.560 why? Because they understood that Paul

00:49:25.380 was actually telling them that

00:49:27.320 their God was an

00:49:29.320 nincompoop and that they should worship the true

00:49:31.360 and living God. Oh, it's huge.

00:49:33.300 So I want to ask a question about this because

00:49:35.100 it relates to something that I mentioned earlier

00:49:37.140 about Tim Keller's book

00:49:38.600 but I want to ask you guys

00:49:40.380 we tend to think today

00:49:43.080 that culture is a taste

00:49:45.280 issue our music yeah the way we dress uh you know you call it a dress uniform dress code whatever

00:49:52.160 we've gotten in trouble for talking about modesty online but but i want to ask as we get into some

00:49:57.960 of these specific issues why are these elements of culture music as a form of culture why is it

00:50:04.640 not irrelevant and the way i want to ask that is when you look at the big fast and famous model

00:50:10.660 it actually music changes right so right so i want to kind of like describe what music has

00:50:17.180 become in the church today yeah let's hear from the sweet psalmist from ogden the sweet psalmist 0.93

00:50:22.580 from ogden you are gay why are you gay why are you gay yeah you know the medium is the message 0.98

00:50:31.960 so when you walk into a church service it's just imagine follow it with me here maybe we'll do some 0.97

00:50:35.480 sweet you know cue some sound design you walk into a service and you know you're you're five

00:50:40.800 minutes late they've gotten past the cheesy announcements from the hip youth pastor with

00:50:44.100 the faux hawk and so they're doing the worship music and you hear a serene warm synth pad

00:50:50.440 playing underneath i hear it now i hear it now the angelic tones of the road and then you know

00:50:56.940 on top of that you hear amplified very loudly and beautifully and with perfect compression

00:51:02.060 this is breathy female angelic vocal coming over you call me oh wait copyright never mind i won't

00:51:08.280 sing it yeah don't do it and she's singing something about you know maybe like how you

00:51:12.500 just need to take that next leap of faith whatever it is you know because god will grant us the

00:51:18.560 victory and you hear that and and you you you see the people swaying to the music and you can you

00:51:24.660 can kind of hear them a little bit but you know you mainly just hear this band that is wow this

00:51:29.660 is a good band up there they're so well produced and and then the lights kick on when the tom rolls

00:51:34.520 kicks in and and and the the kick drum thuds on the floor and the tinkling cymbals come in and

00:51:40.020 and you hear and it's just feel the spirit feel it like and okay here's the thing the medium is

00:51:44.620 the message a lot of people want to say all of that is like the seasoning packet and and really

00:51:50.760 the substance is the ramen it's the brick of ramen who cares what seasoning packet you put on it man

00:51:55.660 as long as the lyrics are good. No, absolutely wrong. Absolutely wrong because we are not

00:52:01.880 Gnostic. We're not just brains floating around there thinking about the information input of

00:52:07.420 lyrics. It's not what we are. We're embodied souls. We have voices of eardrums. We have emotions. We

00:52:13.880 have a limbic system that's pumping different hormones into our brain as the result of different

00:52:17.700 sounds because God made a world where sounds change us. What is all of that saying? Well,

00:52:24.860 you know what it's not saying? It's not saying sing to one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual

00:52:30.040 songs. It's not saying the main thing I should think when I walk in and hear that the worship

00:52:34.100 of the church, if I'm obeying the scriptures, is the singing of people to one another, not them

00:52:40.280 hearing somebody else sing to them. It should be sing to one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual

00:52:46.120 songs, making melody in your hearts to God. And so what we should be hearing is the thundering of

00:52:51.740 voices. Fundamentally, God made it that way because we're not Gnostics. We're actually

00:53:08.180 changed by our contribution, by our singing. Worship is not receiving spiritual goods and

00:53:13.400 services from religious professionals and musical professionals. It's us coming to worship the

00:53:21.740 I mean, that's just one little facet of critique.

00:53:24.320 We could talk about the vapid, you know, the vapidity of the lyrics and all kinds of other

00:53:28.980 things, but I think it's one angle of critique against this musical culture.

00:53:32.440 Yeah, I think it's a really good point.

00:53:33.660 I even think of something very simple that you mentioned, like participation, right?

00:53:38.040 If you are required to participate and you are one of many voices carrying what's happening,

00:53:45.020 participatory worship is very different than spectator worship.

00:53:49.320 It is.

00:53:49.620 So, Dan, I want to ask you a question because you guys have actually, like, at the church, there's been a transition.

00:53:57.380 Yeah, so it's interesting me talking about the music ministry since I have nothing to do with it almost at all.

00:54:02.140 Other than that thundering bass.

00:54:03.520 Yeah, but Dan is the sweet baritone of Ogden. 1.00

00:54:08.640 You are gay. 0.97

00:54:09.820 I was like, yeah, so it's interesting. 0.94

00:54:14.660 I'm talking to Brian Sauve, across the table from Brian Sauve, who is, like, he does the

00:54:20.120 music.

00:54:20.520 He is a musician.

00:54:21.720 He's actually very, very good.

00:54:23.780 You should check out his music, actually.

00:54:26.380 Thanks, Dan.

00:54:26.800 He sings Psalms.

00:54:27.700 Where can they find it?

00:54:29.120 You know, you can find it other than my name, Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, Deezer,

00:54:33.780 T-Doll, all of them.

00:54:35.440 All of them.

00:54:35.920 Well, I've never heard of any of those.

00:54:36.900 Sign up on Patreon, though.

00:54:37.980 Support Brian.

00:54:38.740 Whoa.

00:54:39.120 I support Brian.

00:54:40.240 Brian is working on an album right now.

00:54:42.860 He's working on an album and he's going whole hog.

00:54:45.680 He is taking everything that he's made from his music and throwing it into this to actually get it produced.

00:54:54.700 Professionally.

00:54:55.420 Professionally.

00:54:56.080 Yeah.

00:54:56.240 Not just like him in the basement.

00:54:57.780 So I don't spend like a hundred hours producing music with YouTube videos, not knowing what I'm doing in one hour, actually writing Psalm settings.

00:55:04.440 Yeah.

00:55:05.100 Yeah.

00:55:05.340 So anyway, so the evolution of our singing at church has been really interesting because the target years ago, we had different leadership, was more big, fast, famous.

00:55:22.900 Mars Hill was the target.

00:55:24.940 Cool band.

00:55:25.560 Yeah, cool band.

00:55:26.440 We're talking like 2009, 2010, 2011, that time period.

00:55:30.900 Was there some affliction tees and like emo glasses and stuff?

00:55:34.020 Not only that, there was rap.

00:55:35.660 No.

00:55:37.260 There was rap.

00:55:38.240 No, there wasn't.

00:55:39.720 Cue it.

00:55:40.340 There was rap.

00:55:41.440 Mister, should I call you mister? 1.00

00:55:43.160 Why are you gay? 1.00

00:55:44.600 So that was the history of our church. 1.00

00:55:47.320 We have been reforming.

00:55:49.760 We're not fully there.

00:55:52.320 These guys, they got to take this seriously.

00:55:54.200 I'm sorry.

00:55:54.560 Yeah, you're right.

00:55:55.400 This is the first time somebody gave us the control of a soundboard, Dan.

00:55:58.200 Yeah.

00:55:58.480 Yeah, someone, you gave it.

00:56:00.020 You gave yourself control.

00:56:01.760 I said you should give me the soundboard because I wouldn't use it.

00:56:04.800 never use it. Brian told me to do it. Okay. So we went from singing bad music. I mean,

00:56:10.400 actually a lot of hymns, a lot of the, I mean, a lot of the, but again, it was the content medium

00:56:15.180 sort of question and where we have since gone and it is absolutely glorious. And the barrier of

00:56:23.540 entry is high. That's another difference is that when you enter our church service, it is robust.

00:56:30.080 you need a bulletin to know what is going on and it's not just Tuesday at a coffee shop right

00:56:35.780 where they might have some spoken word like poetry kind of garbage going on we are singing

00:56:41.720 in psalms hymns spiritual songs in a lot of times four-part harmonies yeah even fuging

00:56:49.340 and fuging different parts singing at different times and it is it is absolutely glorious yeah

00:56:56.960 What it is, is it is 17th century Christianity, cathedral Christianity, oil painting Christianity,

00:57:05.980 and not microwave popcorn Christianity.

00:57:10.160 Yeah.

00:57:10.440 And that's the difference.

00:57:11.480 It's not, we're singing songs that were written hundreds of years ago and are so good that

00:57:17.140 they're still around.

00:57:18.200 Yeah.

00:57:18.460 And David's Psalms that are 2,700 years old, 3,000, I think 3,000 years.

00:57:23.700 Anyway.

00:57:24.280 Yeah.

00:57:24.600 And what does that say?

00:57:25.580 Well, it's at the four parts.

00:57:26.820 what does that say it says that we want the men to be able to sing as men we don't want you know

00:57:31.800 you walk into if i went to a phil wickham recording one time where he's recording a live acoustic

00:57:35.660 album thing at costa mesa california and the guy is a musically virtuosic in his voice i mean he

00:57:41.620 probably has like a five octave range and then pitch perfect just brian well continue anyway

00:57:48.780 the guy he's a great musician and very few men could sing along with him but when you say to

00:57:56.540 the men. There's a barrier of entry, men. We actually won't patronize you. We think that you

00:58:00.200 can do hard things. We think that you can learn how to sing glorious, thundering bass parts,

00:58:05.380 and they're going to be written for you to sing. And all the way up, we're going to have for men

00:58:10.740 with God made men with higher voices to like the tenor is not effeminate. A tenor is gloriously

00:58:15.660 masculine when he's singing as a tenor. A soprano is gloriously feminine when she's singing her

00:58:21.680 part. And so we're saying this music is actually from the ground up built so that everybody can

00:58:27.320 sing. It's built. What else are we saying? We're saying that apparently the worship of God is

00:58:32.660 something that actually should require our effort. We every Tuesday at night, we get together nearly

00:58:38.080 every Tuesday and we work on this. We literally practice. Why? Because the whole church is a

00:58:42.700 choir. We're commanded. Every Christian is commanded to sing to one another. So apparently

00:58:47.680 instead of showing up and being like, yeah, but parts are hard. Like it's so much easier if people

00:58:54.540 could just like, I don't know if you could just sing like to me and I'll mumble a little bit

00:58:59.580 sometime, but it would sound really good if I don't do anything. What is that saying? It's

00:59:03.340 saying the worship of God should basically take no effort. We sing Psalm 134 in a round.

00:59:08.320 In a three-part canon. And the first time Brian did this, I thought he was insane. He gets up

00:59:13.600 front and he's like okay here's what we're gonna do you know psalm 134 behold bless the lord all

00:59:18.520 you servants of the lord okay we've sang it right and here's what we're gonna do this section over

00:59:23.900 here sing it and then repeat the last line and section two start to sing it and then section

00:59:29.820 three all at different times and then you'll unite at the end and it'll be great and i was like

00:59:33.720 this guy is nuts people are gonna leave our church well every decision we make we're like

00:59:38.860 how many people are we going to leave lose but anyway and the thing is it is like i get jazzed 0.94

00:59:45.740 i'm like psalm 134 is coming yes it is good oh yeah because as as we have practiced and everybody

00:59:51.680 knows like what to do and if you come in having never experienced the visitors they have no idea

00:59:56.700 what's going on but i guarantee you they're experiencing the same thing that we are and

01:00:01.500 that's where you have everybody sing the song together and then you're almost disjointed and

01:00:06.660 And then you reunify in worship of God, singing Psalm 134 that you said was written thousands of years ago in worship to God.

01:00:16.020 And we've replaced it for some chick on stage that's probably really hot and maybe not even that modest, which I've experienced singing too high.

01:00:24.900 She's not wearing a head covering.

01:00:25.780 She ain't wearing no head covering.

01:00:27.560 No, that's actually, so in preparation for this and stuff we've been talking about, I went back and I was watching all these, the most popular Hillsong videos on YouTube.

01:00:36.660 And one of the things I realized was like, you look in the audience and it's like these

01:00:40.500 young guys in a trance and there's this like 10 to 10 lady up front singing and you're

01:00:45.940 like, well, I think I actually know what's going on here.

01:00:50.480 Yeah, right.

01:00:51.460 No, that's a good point.

01:00:52.360 You see all these videos, the B-roll they get.

01:00:54.180 If I go on to our like video B-roll service and type in worship, you know what comes up?

01:00:59.180 Men in skinny jeans.

01:01:00.540 No.

01:01:01.160 Swaying with their hands lifted with purple lighting and smoke machines.

01:01:04.340 singing or, you know, like emoting along with this.

01:01:09.120 And guys, here's the point we're not making.

01:01:12.520 We're not saying that musical excellence is bad.

01:01:14.940 We're not saying that artistry is bad.

01:01:18.000 We're not saying that aesthetics are bad.

01:01:20.240 We're not even saying, like I would even go so far as to say,

01:01:23.280 we're not even saying that embodied responses to God and worship are bad.

01:01:26.820 David danced before the Lord.

01:01:27.840 But what we are saying is, and in fact, sometimes we sing that we are,

01:01:31.880 you know, making melody on the harp

01:01:34.000 and clashing cymbals.

01:01:35.500 Raise your hands and spin it.

01:01:36.080 Oh, no, different one?

01:01:37.160 Please, please, please.

01:01:38.600 Whoa, whoa. 1.00

01:01:39.920 You ugly. 1.00

01:01:40.800 I just want- 1.00

01:01:41.360 Absolutely, 100%.

01:01:42.880 See the light in-

01:01:44.540 Okay, now, guys, I was a staff megachurch worship leader,

01:01:49.860 so once Dan triggers these songs,

01:01:51.400 it's like a code word. 0.97

01:01:52.000 Should we burn him as a heretic? 1.00

01:01:53.440 I think we should burn him. 1.00

01:01:54.320 It's like a code word that goes off 0.99

01:01:55.700 and my Russian sleeper agent skinny jeans, 0.53

01:01:57.900 you know, days come back

01:01:58.980 and all of a sudden I'm like,

01:02:00.020 my glorious you know what it's it's it's almost if you watch the rise of youtube channels certain

01:02:07.680 youtube channels it's the same thing it's like some dude in skitty jeans and and some hot chick

01:02:12.560 yeah it's marketing it's just marketing and it's disgusting and we're not saying that the beauty

01:02:17.840 is bad to close the loop on this what what we're saying bubble gum in the hair there's good gum in

01:02:23.340 the hair again i'm actually saying my point isn't that we should spend less effort on the excellence

01:02:28.040 of the worship, but that we should spend much more because it's not eight people on a band.

01:02:32.160 But where is the excellence?

01:02:33.100 Yeah, it's the people.

01:02:34.600 It's the people.

01:02:35.600 Someone should walk into our services and they should get a sense after they overcome

01:02:39.700 the weirdness of it.

01:02:40.920 They should get a sense of the utter holiness and transcendence of God, that he is a God

01:02:45.220 who is worthy of a people spending a lot of their time, apparently, to do something with

01:02:49.860 no seemingly practical purpose, like learning four-part harmonies to produce rich vocal

01:02:54.420 textures to the glory of this God that they say they worship.

01:02:57.480 it should be like wow these people keep telling me that their worship is them ascending to the

01:03:02.920 heavenly mount zion surrounded by the firstborn enrolled in heaven and festal shouts of angels

01:03:07.120 and i could see it i can hear it i'm experiencing it right now because when i i'm i'm you know in

01:03:14.440 this scenario the visitor's seated right in front of dan and when psalm 98's playing all of a sudden

01:03:19.220 he's like the victory have won the victory have won and he's like maybe the victory has been won

01:03:26.160 by their God. I think he believes it. He seems to believe it. You know, what's great about the

01:03:30.720 centralization versus, uh, the non-centralized model then is that visitor that comes to the

01:03:36.040 church. Who does he ask what's going on? He doesn't ask. He doesn't have to go to the pastor.

01:03:40.140 He can say, Hey guy, that's sitting next to me. Why do you kneel during confession?

01:03:44.240 Why is there wine during communion? Why, why are you not singing the melody of this song?

01:03:49.720 And anybody should say the answer. They should be able to know it because we love our people

01:03:55.740 enough to disciple them in how to worship the holy and living God.

01:03:59.740 Yeah.

01:04:00.300 Yeah, that's huge.

01:04:01.160 So that's music.

01:04:02.580 One of the things is building too.

01:04:04.900 Yeah.

01:04:05.760 Space.

01:04:06.620 Talk about the difference.

01:04:08.360 You know, when I first read, I think, Angels and the Architecture, I thought, wow, so this

01:04:13.480 is Doug Wilson and who else?

01:04:15.040 Douglas Jones.

01:04:15.680 Douglas Jones.

01:04:16.900 Our architecture actually says something about what we believe.

01:04:19.400 So what's the difference between, what type of church do you typically see with a mega

01:04:23.440 church versus this older we're using this word cathedral right but why is that more significant

01:04:30.200 than just again a lot of people today will say well that's just a preference choice right but

01:04:35.380 it actually says something about our theology yeah it says something about who you expect to

01:04:39.340 come here and why they're expected to come here and and basically the mega church architecture

01:04:43.520 and just as a preface don't think if you're if your church meets in a strip mall or whatever

01:04:47.140 we understand like not everybody has 10 million dollars high school gymnasium we met in a cafeteria

01:04:51.520 when the church started.

01:04:52.580 So now we, by God's grace,

01:04:54.020 have this glorious 100-year-old historic church building,

01:04:57.060 and it's glorious, and we love it.

01:04:59.740 But when you think about what the megachurch architecture,

01:05:02.060 I'm talking about when they actually have a choice

01:05:04.640 and they're building from the ground up

01:05:06.080 with a $100 million budget,

01:05:07.340 what do they choose to build?

01:05:09.040 Well, they basically choose to build a conference center

01:05:12.460 crossed with a mall.

01:05:15.500 That's essentially what they build, right?

01:05:18.220 A theater conference combined with a mall.

01:05:20.920 I've even heard people say, I went to one church in the Midwest and I thought maybe it was like they purchased an old warehouse, but it was like a warehouse style building, concrete floors, nothing on the walls.

01:05:33.960 It just looked like a big box store, like a Sam's Club that was empty and they turned into a church.

01:05:38.920 But I talked to the pastor and the staff there and I said, why did you choose to build a church this way?

01:05:43.940 Because, you know, of course, I'm thinking in the cathedral model.

01:05:46.260 and they said to me well it was the cheapest square footage that we could we could possibly

01:05:51.020 build yeah and so i was thinking okay but going back to something we talked about in last episode

01:05:57.260 it definitely is not the type of building you walk into and you go whoa no right it's not a

01:06:02.980 transcendent experience no it says it says something about the ephemerality of the what

01:06:09.140 they're doing what are we doing well we're doing something ephemeral we're doing something that

01:06:12.520 is fundamentally no different from what you're doing in all of these other environments

01:06:16.360 Whereas if you walk into a cathedral,

01:06:19.040 and some of this is like there is overlap here

01:06:20.980 with Roman Catholicism and baggage there.

01:06:23.800 And so I'm not saying like one-to-one,

01:06:25.280 let's adopt all of this.

01:06:26.140 But you walk in, you say, well, there's the narthex,

01:06:27.960 there's the nave, there's the atrium,

01:06:30.000 there's the portico, there's the bima,

01:06:31.580 there's the altar.

01:06:32.900 And every single, there's the aisles.

01:06:35.160 Everything has a purpose.

01:06:36.940 And every purpose is connected to something

01:06:38.840 that the people are doing

01:06:40.060 and that they're supposed to do here.

01:06:42.220 And it's stuff that they don't necessarily do

01:06:44.700 in other contexts in their life.

01:06:47.720 It's saying that when we gather on the Lord's Day

01:06:49.540 as the hosts of God, as the armies of God

01:06:51.880 to worship the living God and ascend the mountain together,

01:06:54.100 we're doing something that is different.

01:06:56.840 So when people say, all of life is worship, man,

01:06:59.720 I can worship God on the mountain,

01:07:01.480 there's a nugget of truth in that,

01:07:02.900 and there's a huge lie buried.

01:07:04.860 The truth is, yes, do all of life, whatever you do,

01:07:07.260 eating or drinking, work hard to do it for the glory of God.

01:07:10.420 But when we actually say,

01:07:12.000 what is the corporate worship of a people?

01:07:13.580 That's a different thing.

01:07:14.700 It's actually a different thing when we come for word and sacrament and when we come for singing and fellowship, we are doing something that is actually distinct.

01:07:23.760 And I think the expectation there, something I've heard James Jordan say is, you know, people continually say in the seeker sensitive, the big, fast and famous model, well, we want church to feel normal.

01:07:36.440 We want people to walk in and feel comfortable.

01:07:38.260 And James Jordan would actually say, no, I want you to feel very uncomfortable here.

01:07:41.660 Exactly.

01:07:41.980 And this gets to the heart of culture building is if you're going to build a separate culture that is its own cultural engine and a driving force in the midst of paganism, it has to be robust, powerful, other.

01:07:57.000 It has to be in that transcendent other category.

01:08:00.040 That's right.

01:08:00.560 You should walk in and feel like, wow, I've never experienced anything like this.

01:08:04.060 Yep.

01:08:04.460 And apparently there is something about me that does not yet correspond and match this vision that's in front of me.

01:08:10.300 Yeah.

01:08:10.520 And it's beautiful and glorious and I want to be conformed to it.

01:08:13.440 Yes.

01:08:13.800 I want to be the kind of person.

01:08:15.340 It's like when you listen to classical music, maybe as a teenager, and if you had good parents,

01:08:20.240 sometimes you're like, I know my parents want me to like this, but I like other music better.

01:08:27.180 But I know in my heart of hearts that there's something glorious about this,

01:08:30.900 that if I were a more interesting person, if I were a better man, I would appreciate this.

01:08:36.760 Yeah.

01:08:36.900 And so then you work to appreciate it and you can, because it's truly glorious.

01:08:41.480 Sounds like legalism.

01:08:43.760 Daily legalism.

01:08:44.900 Here's the thing.

01:08:45.620 If I define culture, you know, the cultist being worship, right?

01:08:50.180 The culture is formed by your worship.

01:08:51.760 And so the big, fast and famous model where it fails is that it's still worshiping the

01:08:56.580 same thing that you worship every other day, which is consumerism.

01:08:59.520 Yeah.

01:09:00.100 It's just consuming things or observing things.

01:09:02.800 It's not actually changing anything about your life.

01:09:04.140 No, no, it's not.

01:09:04.900 like Brian said earlier about the men that go there and they're like,

01:09:07.500 don't worry, we got it all taken care of. 0.99

01:09:09.200 You just sit there, observe, watch your football, you know, retire and die. 0.72

01:09:13.720 Like that's your life mission versus what we're supposed to do is say,

01:09:17.500 hey, the elders, the pastors, the people leading worship

01:09:21.880 are actually leading the people in worship.

01:09:25.020 That's right.

01:09:25.340 They're not performing worship for your benefit.

01:09:28.320 You know, the people are actually doing things.

01:09:31.200 And that's actually one of the core problems

01:09:32.880 that the Reformation needed to answer 0.88

01:09:35.080 and where megachurch and high Roman Catholicism

01:09:38.280 at the time of the Reformation overlap

01:09:40.000 is that they were both providing

01:09:42.740 a fundamentally similar model

01:09:44.420 where you had a religious professional class

01:09:46.740 providing you with spiritual goods and services

01:09:48.340 in exchange for something.

01:09:50.160 And instead of the people of God

01:09:51.780 coming to participate robustly, 0.89

01:09:53.860 so yeah, of course, they're going to gatekeep

01:09:55.960 and they're going to say,

01:09:56.940 no, you cannot put the liturgy in the vernacular,

01:09:59.820 in the language of the people,

01:10:00.920 because then they would get all uppity

01:10:02.720 and start participating. No, they're here to observe. They're here to receive only. That's

01:10:07.980 not worship. Worship is sacrifice, right? Do we come before God empty-handed? No. We come to Romans

01:10:14.780 12.1, present our bodies as living sacrifices. So megachurch Christianity ends up repeating the 0.97

01:10:21.320 errors of Roman Catholicism by essentially removing the people in very important ways

01:10:28.440 from the worship of God and the sacrifice of the people to God.

01:10:32.320 Does that make, am I crazy?

01:10:33.440 Or do you see that?

01:10:34.040 No, I mean, even our slogan that we're, you know,

01:10:36.320 we're trying to make self-ruled men who rule well.

01:10:39.000 Yeah. 0.93

01:10:39.320 What the mega church model does, 1.00

01:10:41.300 the big fast famous model does is it makes ruled men. 0.92

01:10:44.780 That's right.

01:10:45.380 Not self-ruled men.

01:10:46.700 It makes ruled men.

01:10:47.740 By incompetent CEO type overlords who are not actually respectable.

01:10:52.380 Actually, it's still patriarchy. 0.98

01:10:53.800 It's an evil patriarchy. 0.60

01:10:55.300 Here's the thing.

01:10:55.840 When you get that model, again, the goal of that model is to get as many people as fast as possible by whatever means.

01:11:02.780 What are you trying to get them to do? 0.94

01:11:04.820 Again, the least possible thing to say that they're a Christian, which is what? 0.96

01:11:08.440 It's decisionism. 0.98

01:11:09.840 It's decisionism.

01:11:11.000 It's emotionalism.

01:11:12.100 It's revivalism.

01:11:13.600 We're going to talk about that next time.

01:11:15.200 Because often, that's why it's so deeply patronizing.

01:11:17.500 It's because it's not telling men, come into the church because we actually know what a real man is.

01:11:23.320 We know what a real woman is.

01:11:24.380 We know what, we know what a person is and we're going to equip you for all of Christ

01:11:28.440 for all of life so that you can now go and be a King and a queen, right?

01:11:32.240 Roll up your sleeves.

01:11:32.740 There's work to do.

01:11:33.680 And we need your sword.

01:11:34.900 Don't sit down and just receive actually here's stuff to do.

01:11:38.120 You're a King's man.

01:11:39.540 So, so next episode, we're going to be talking about that and, and to land the plane here

01:11:44.340 on the big fast and famous fundamentally, the reason that we would reject the big fast

01:11:48.100 and famous model is for no reason less than it is not the model that Christ gave to us

01:11:53.560 for his church. Yes, we're post-millennial. Yes, we're going to see big things happen. The kingdom

01:11:58.560 of God is going to be vast, but it is not going to be a plastic redwood tree. It's going to be a

01:12:05.200 world-swallowing forest. It's going to be a world-swallowing forest where Christ redeems

01:12:09.560 literally, you guys, billions of men and women, remakes them in the image of his son,

01:12:15.780 makes them self-ruled, able to rule themselves, godly and dignified in every way, fruitful in

01:12:20.140 every way. And then he will have his glory on earth. So we're thankful that you've joined us

01:12:27.740 again here in the King's Hall. And our hope is that the Lord would use this work for your good

01:12:32.560 and the good of your people. Remember this week, Festin Alente, remember to make haste slowly,

01:12:38.640 and we will see you next time.

01:12:50.140 The King's Hall

01:13:20.140 if you'd like to support the show and get some extra content.

The King's Hall - March 04, 2022

Big, Fast, & Famous

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