BONUS： Our Personal Testimonies With Jon Harris, AD Robles, & Joel Webbon
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Summary
In this episode, I sit down with John Harris and A.D. Robles to talk about how they started the Gospel Coalition, why they started it, and what it means to be a woke pastor. John Harris is a pastor, author, YouTuber, podcaster, and writer. He is also the founder of The Gospel Coalition.
Transcript
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Hey guys, real quick, before we get started, I have a small request.
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If you've been blessed by our content and you like this show,
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would you take just a brief moment and leave us a five-star review?
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This is quite possibly the most effective thing that you can do
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to ensure that this content gets out to as many people as possible. Thanks.
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All right, welcome. This is something that's a little bit out of our normal wheelhouse and context,
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But today I'm very, very privileged to have John Harris and A.D. Robles live in person in our studio.
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We're stoked to have you guys. Thanks for coming.
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Cool. All right. So this is what we wanted to do.
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We talked about, all right, what content should we do?
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And we think that it might be helpful for your followers, my followers, your followers.
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A lot of people sometimes just want to know, what's your personal story?
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why did you turn on the camera and start talking about the gospel coalition you know why did you
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feel it was necessary to address these kinds of topics why is it that you got into this ministry
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or whatever you want to call it that you find yourself in today so not origin story maybe from
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birth eight pounds six ounce maybe not that far back but but where is it that kind of began this
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journey of YouTubing, Gab, Twitter, writing books, podcasts, all that kind of stuff. So
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anybody want to go first? Yeah, I'll go first. So, you know, my story, I always answer this
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question slightly differently because I, depending on where I'm at in life, I emphasize certain parts
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of it. But really what it boiled down to for me is that I had been aware of social justice and
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sort of woke stuff in other areas right so one thing i used to follow a lot of atheists you know
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online just because i was always interested in apologetics and stuff like that and there was
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some there was a woke movement in atheism called atheism plus and i remember thinking wow this is
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so crazy and and even some atheists you know would come out against it and and i really liked that
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and all of that um and then right around trump's election which i was not even political in any way
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during that election. And what I mean by that is I didn't vote. I never even considered voting.
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Like it just wasn't something I thought about doing. I cared about politics, but it wasn't
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active. Right. But right around that time, I started seeing a lot of evangelical leaders who
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I'd read their books and been to the conferences and things like that. And they sounded identical
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to these atheism plus people, except they would replace, you know, Jesus for the principles of
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atheism that are very rigid as you as you know so but they were saying the same thing it just was
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in a different context and I remember thinking to myself like this is just really weird and so
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what I would do is I would put out a video every so often just to you know some thoughts about
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you know responding to an article or something like that and you know basically like my mom
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watched it and maybe a few other people would watch it um and so but I never considered that
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this was you know going to be something i would do long term until one day i put out a video about
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the mlk 50 conference which you know featured people like matt chandler and russell moore
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and things like that and i did some content about that um and i'll never forget the response to it
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first of all it went kind of viral for my context viral for me means you know at the time it was
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like 100 people watched it you know like that um but the responses i kept getting were either
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really positive like over the top positive or over the top negative and i thought that was so
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interesting in fact somebody that i i knew personally who i knew knew me personally uh
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said you know it was like something about white privilege or or or i forget exactly what it was
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but it was just like like dude you know me like what's going on here so i knew that there was
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just like a visceral reaction to it and that's when i decided to put more content out and um so
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it was it was at that point i knew that i'm on to something here like you don't get like the
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absolutely hot reactions and then the absolutely cold reactions for the same video unless there's
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something really deep going on here and that's kind of why i started doing it 80 when was that
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what year was that you remember i don't remember what was mlk 50 18 i think so we're probably
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talking like four years ago okay and i had been doing it for probably six months leading up to
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that. But again, very kind of, you know, just every now and then I'd pull an old Nine Marks
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article out and talk about it. And, and that's, that's how it happened. It was just sort of by
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accident. And the reactions kind of spoke for themselves that I was on to something.
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Well, I remember sitting in seminary at Southeastern being very frustrated that I was
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hearing all kinds of what today we would describe as woke nonsense. And a friend of mine sent me a
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video of this guy named A.D. Robles. And it was very encouraging because I felt very alone. And
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I know the other students who felt similar to myself felt the same thing. Like there's no one
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out there representing what we believe. And it's like someone had turned a switch on and all of a
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sudden it's either you're pacified or you're on this woke train. And so what inspired me to do
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content was you know you have a voice like ad out there but there just weren't a lot of voices there
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was hardly anyone and i could see even among the men who taught at southeastern uh who were against
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what was happening at the school they were very just i i don't i'm trying to choose my words very
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carefully here because i don't want to read into their hearts too much but they didn't want to do
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much about it really for whatever reason okay so some of them have retired since then or tried to
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transfer out or you know these kinds of things but there wasn't any pushback on that local level
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at my school and I didn't see much pushback in a wider sense in evangelicalism so I did not have
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the intention of building a platform or anything like that I really didn't think a lot of people
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would see my videos but I thought well at least at Southeastern if I make a video about my experience
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there and what was happening there, it would let students who feel the same way I do about
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Because I thought it's happening in evangelicalism, but I didn't know how widespread.
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I figured you can just go to another school maybe and avoid this.
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And they're not really telling you on the front end what's going on.
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So maybe they'll find my video and see, okay, this is what's happening and then steer clear
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Or at least if they come, they know what they're getting into.
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So after some wise counsel and praying about it, I had already graduated.
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I made this like hour and a half long video, which, I mean, that's pretty long.
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And I didn't think a lot of people would get too invested in that unless they were really thinking about going to the school.
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Like I wouldn't watch an hour and a half, right, unless I was going to go.
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I put it out there and the views just kept going up.
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and uh i think by like the first week it had hit like a thousand views or something crazy and i
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just thought what in the world is going on here and i thought well you know what i'll spend a few
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more weeks just making videos about this topic because i'm getting emails from people all over
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the country or facebook messages i guess and some emails from people saying john like i saw your
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video it's happening here it's happening in like it was from everywhere especially in the southern
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Baptist convention. And I was just blown away by, I was like, this isn't just at Southeastern. This
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is like way worse than I thought it was. So I said, we'll take a couple of weeks. So I took a
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couple of weeks, talked about social justice. I figured, I think, you know, that'll be it. And
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then, and the views just kept going up. People kept asking more questions. And what became a
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few weeks has turned into now, I guess that was like January, 2019. It's turned into now a few
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years. So we're still talking about it. It's taken on different forms, but that's probably
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been the primary driving force in my content has been social justice issues in the church.
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And I believe God opens doors. He put this door there. He opened it. And I do believe that this
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is something that's benefited a lot of people to help them think through some of these issues.
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They don't have the time sometimes to put in all the research and also just to be a voice to push
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back against this a bit and to say like there are people you're not crazy like there's people just
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like you who see the same things no this isn't biblical and so it's an encouraging thing for
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the people that already uh feel feel that you know the way that i felt about it so um so yeah
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we'll see where it goes i don't know for how much longer it'll happen and but for right now there is
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this this opening this platform to talk about these things and i'm just grateful that you know
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God, you know, would use me in this way, even though I feel weak, I feel, you know, sometimes
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incompetent to do it, but the Lord uses the weak things and I've seen his grace throughout this
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whole journey. Yeah. Joel, do you mind if I just jump in and say one quick thing? Cause I, you know,
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me and John were talking at lunch earlier today about, you know, how much longer we're going to
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do the content and stuff like that. And something that I picked up on really early on, and I think
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John, maybe just based on what you said, you kind of picked up on this as well.
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There's a disconnect right now, I think, between the person in the pew, the regular Joe in the pew and the church leadership, because I think there's this tendency for the leadership to think it's all going to blow over.
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You know, it's not that big a deal. It's not that bad.
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In fact, I even spoke to one guy. I'll never forget this conversation.
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This was shortly after John MacArthur kind of started going hard against social justice.
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and I think at one point he had said that in his opinion this was the greatest threat to the gospel
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he's seen in his career which is that's pretty intense language for his lifetime right and he's
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an older man 240 years that's well I mean he's seen a lot and he's been involved in a lot of
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controversy so um you know he's he's fought back against all kinds of in you know insane things so
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for him to say that was a big deal and I'll never forget talking to an elder who I I knew knew me
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And I knew, like, cared about me, but he was very against my tone and my, you know, naming names and stuff like that.
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And I said to him, I said, look, just go with me for a second.
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Let's just say you agreed with MacArthur that this was the most dangerous threat to the gospel in the last 100 years, like you said, right?
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wouldn't you think it'd be appropriate to name names and to maybe if if necessary use tone that
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maybe during peace times you wouldn't use but during war times you would and i'll never forget
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he looked me square in the eye and he said no and and to me like it just didn't there's such a
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disconnect between that this is the greatest threat to the gospel we read paul talking about
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the threats of his day and he gets aggressive he names names he does all these things and
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you're telling me that even if you grant that it's still not appropriate to get a little upset about
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it a little bit animated the person the pew is not like that they understand the threat they're
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they're worried they have anxiety and maybe some of that is something that's sinful we should
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consider but um as long as that disconnect between the person in the pew and the evangelical leaders
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that are out there exists um there's going to be people in on youtube and on the podcast universe
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that are going to step into that gap you know if pastors were taking this seriously as as they
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should in my opinion i'd gladly stop talking because that's that's that should be their realm
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in my opinion yeah well go that kind of like leads into my story but in terms of the people
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in the pew and a disconnect you know between the clergy and the the congregation in my experience
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it's like okay i think it's like half and half so yeah half of the people in the pew i i would say
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maybe half of the people in the pew are like that like the walls are coming down the enemies at the
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gate what are we doing you know the city's on fire um it's it's time to go to war it's time
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to actually defend ourselves um but then at the same time you know my story is you know i i for
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me it all started as church planting as a pastor and we started as a vineyard church and i came a
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long way since then but i started as a vineyard church and then we were acts 29 i was actually
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into Acts 29 as a Acts 29 pastor for about four or five years, um, left after Eric Mason wrote,
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uh, woke church. And so that was like end of 2018 left Acts 29. Um, but that decision to leave Acts
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29. And then what I began to start railing against from the pulpit in 2019, um, cost me about a third
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of my church. Um, I like we, our church didn't grow. We shrunk, we lost. And it was 100% of the
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people in the pew saying the same thing that that for you the pastor was saying but for me it was
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the congregants saying it to to the pastor there your tone your tone your tone your tone and your
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tone gentleness charity gentleness charity and i remember one of the things that i would tell them
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as i'm taking you know meeting after meeting after you know uh family after family is leaving our
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church and all these meetings uh 90 of them without exaggeration um primarily being led by
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the wife and not the husband. So he's pretty quiet. And the wife's the one who actually has
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the problem. And they're talking about tone and talking about charity and these kinds of things
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and naming names. Is that really appropriate? And, you know, I picked for 2019, coming off of 2018,
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leaving Acts 29, seeing, you know, what was brewing, the storm that was coming. I picked
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first Timothy to preach to, you know, Hymenaeus and Alexander. I've handed, you know, or in the
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very beginning, it's like, um, Timothy, I charge you, um, or, um, or I, I, um, I, I'm encouraging
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you to charge certain elders, certain men, certain leaders in the church, not to teach any different
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doctrine. And so, you know, that was like second sermon in the series and boom, people left. And
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then 2000, uh, or when we got to first Timothy chapter two, verses nine through 15, I slowed
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down instead of speeding through it. I did four weeks on that text. I only planned to do one week,
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but I ended up doing four weeks and talking about the callings of men and women and the
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distinction between the genders. One of my big lines was, it's not male and female roles he
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assigned them, but male and female natures he designed them. The difference goes all the way
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down to the way that we're made. And I started talking about how, and that extends, I believe,
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that extends beyond the home and the church. If husbands are the head of their homes and then men
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as elders and i would argue for a male diaconate are are the head of churches but then when we step
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outside of homes which is the building block of any society is the family so that so we're saying
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that an entire society is made up of even in a non-religious um uh culture a a entire society
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is made up of the building blocks of families and men are explicitly called in scripture to lead
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those but then women when we step out of the home women start leading their husbands you know like
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it just doesn't make any so i was like all right the civil magistrate bears a sword the sword is
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a phallus it belongs to men like and i started just you know and i mean i know those are strong
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statements but i started thinking beyond the home of the church and say let's start there but i think
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the implications i think we do need to to be more careful the further we get away from what scripture
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explicitly says home and church but to act as though this is exclusive to those realms is
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foolish and so i started preaching on that and started preaching on false teaching started
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preaching on critical race theory started calling out matt chandler you know all those kind of
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things and lost a ton of the church and it was all tone tone tone and one of the things that i said
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was um i remember telling people i said um um a man will always be uh labeled as harsh if he has
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the gall um to to fire off a round at someone who's charging if if his um comrades in that
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moment are sitting on a blanket in the middle of a meadow thinking that they're having a picnic
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right right so like the first guy to fire off around with a platoon when when everybody else
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still thinks that this is just a drill right that that we're not actually at war there's not actually
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a threat the enemy's not at the gates and this guy has the audacity to fire off around and then
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everybody you know looks up from their sandwich and they're putting you know from the little
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picnic that they're having and they see somebody bleeding you know uh laying down they're like
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what did you do what's wrong with you it's like well i like we're at war right and they're like
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no we're not and so i don't really think it's like here's explicit biblical principles of why
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you cannot you it is inherently sinful to speak like this or to use this phrase or to call out
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in it it is all 100 what you said it's um that that pastor lied to you i he lied to you because
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he knew where he was smart enough to know where you were going with the question of course he did
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exactly so he saw he saw your sneak attack coming so he he just blatantly lied to you but the real
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answer is of course it's okay to name names and and to use strong language because the bible says
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it's okay and the only reason everybody has a problem with it is because at the end of the day
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we're not arguing about what's permissible in terms of of rhetoric we are arguing about whether
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or not we're actually at war thanks so much for listening but real quick before you go do us a
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small favor, take a moment and leave us a five-star review if you enjoyed the show. This is undoubtedly
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