How Christian Community Empowers Gospel Witness

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Philip Ryken
Well, good afternoon, and welcome to this TGC 23 micro event on evangelical renewal for Gospel Mission. We’re so grateful that you’ve joined us. How we’ve been thinking about this session is a little bit like this. Imagine that there’s a table in a hotel lobby where a few friends are just debriefing on what they’re experiencing at the conference, talking about ministry in the church and about how to respond. And you’ve had an opportunity just to pull up a chair next to our conversation. Maybe once you’ve listened in for a little while, you’ve gotten up the courage to put a question on the table or make a comment. We want to have that kind of conversation with you today, and something that’s very solutions focused on a lot of the challenges that we’re facing in the evangelical church today. Want to very briefly introduce our participants today, or actually ask them, them to do so, and mention, please your connection with Wheaton College. My name is Phil Reich, and I’m the president of Wheaton College, where I serve Since 2010 and it’s been my privilege to serve on the council of the gospel Coalition since 2006 Steve, why don’t you go first?

Steve Dewitt
Steve DeWitt, senior pastor Bethel Church, Northwest Indiana. I’m also a council member with the gospel coalition, and I’ve served at Bethel for 26 years as senior pastor. My wife, Jennifer, is in the third row over here. Phil, I noticed you didn’t introduce your wife. Did you want to say something about her?

Philip Ryken
My wife is sitting next to your wife. Yes, yes. So

Steve Dewitt
I’m trying to develop that around the table. Feel here for you. Perfect. Okay, now

Philip Ryken
what about your Wheaton connection?

Steve Dewitt
Yes, let’s get to the wheaton connection. So I am about halfway done with my Doctor of Ministry degree at Wheaton, and so I’m a student, and these are professors, so you’ll notice I’m going to be very deferential to them. My future grades depend on that. So

John Dickson
I’m John Dixon. I’m not from around these parts. I’m a newly appointed professor at Wheaton, Professor for Biblical Studies and public Christianity, where I’m just trying to Bumble my way through to help Americans reach out to a rapidly changing American culture. So it’s a privilege to be here, but it’s a brand new privilege.

Philip Ryken
And I’ll give you John’s full title. He is the gene Kwame Distinguished Professor of, as he said, Biblical Studies and public Christianity. And those are two things we want to bring together in this conversation, understanding the scriptures and how we live out our Christianity in the public sphere. Dr bacote, I’m

Vincent Bacote
Vince bacote. I’m a professor of theology, and I direct our Center for Applied christian ethics at Wheaton. I’ve been at Wheaton since January of 2000 so I’m a calendar years person.

Philip Ryken
And for those who have sometimes wondered and maybe seen Vince’s name in print, Please pronounce your last name properly for everyone to hear again.

Speaker 1
Well, I thank you for that opportunity. Phil Bay coat, so think Bay isn’t like body of water, or for those of you of a culinary type of inclination, bay leaf and then coat like everybody’s gonna be wearing month from now.

Philip Ryken
So maybe you’ve noticed a lot of frustration and consternation with the Church and its witness in the world today. And there are all kinds of examples that we could give of that I’ll just mention a couple things as I travel around the country, as I often do, in connection with my work at Wheaton College and other ministry. I talked have talked to pastors in many different communities who notice a lot of sorting going on, people leaving one church, going to another church, not so much even for principled theological reasons, but often for political connections or ethos, a cultural tone or stance sorting that’s going on for political and other cultural reasons more than spiritual, biblical theological reasons. That’s a common conversation I have with pastors around the country. I’ve noticed a lot of articles in the last few years, including some that have appeared on the TGC website about the disintegration, fragmentation, splintering like we’re running out of synonyms here. You can’t write another article on this topic because we’re out of terms that you can use to describe the disunity of the evangelical community. I recently read a report coming out of Dallas deep dive into the convictions of young people. This was part of a collaboration for youth ministry in the Dallas area, and one of the things they were wrestling with. How many young people were leaving the church, either late high school, college after college, and the three main reasons for young people leaving the church, they found the teaching of the Church irrelevant to contemporary issues. They found church communities unloving and also inauthentic. Now, there are remedies for that which we want to talk about, but that’s a snapshot of one of the things that’s happening in our culture. We had an interesting, interesting conversation just in the last day or two with members of the board of the gospel coalition, just about the experience of pastors over the last few years, and Collin Hansen was making the point that we’ve moved from pastors are bad, sort of in a fall of Mars Hill, abuse of power, spiritual dynamics that are not healthy. So pastors are the problem. They’re bad to during the covid era, it’s kind of bad to be a pastor because of a lot of the criticism and conflict within church communities to the situation now where it’s not a calling that you want to go into, calling that is not of interest to young men who are would even think about going into gospel ministry. That’s a bit of a trajectory we’ve been on. Those are just a few of the kinds of problems that we’re witnessing the church that are maybe discouraging for people in ministry, negatively affecting the witness of the church in our culture. One of the things that just a little thing that we did with my leadership cabinet Wheaton College last year, typically when we have our weekly three hour leadership meetings, we read Scripture together as well as spend time in prayer. We decided last year to read through First Corinthians together, mainly for this reason in a time of disunity, we wanted to be reminding ourselves of the unity that we have in Jesus Christ and that we’re called to as a church. And even with that expectation, I was surprised at how strong the Unity emphasis is in Paul’s instruction to the Corinthian church, there should be no divisions among you. The apostle Paul says it’s very sweeping, challenging language. So in a time of disunity, we have a very strong call from the Holy Spirit to be leaning into unity as a church. And so we want to be not focused on all the problems and analyzing all the problems that’ll probably come up in that’ll probably come up in some of our comments. We want to be focused on, what should the people of God be doing in a time like this? What should our witness look like? And I wish I had thought of this term before submitting our title for this session, people have been talking about the fragmentation of the church. We want to talk about the DIS fragmentation of the church that’s overall our theme. We’re going to have a few short talks from our panelists and then enter into vigorous discussion. Probably you’ve noticed there’s a slido code up on the screen. Feel free to start putting your questions in. We probably won’t get to them, probably for 45 minutes or so, but we will get to them, and we want your comments and questions to be part of the discussion. Let me invite Dr baycote to take the lectern. He is an alumnus of the Citadel, which is an interesting story in itself, as well as Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Drew University. He’s an Abraham Kuyper scholar, and you may see him quoted and writing widely in various periodicals, as well as doing book publication. He also is a terrific tennis player, which I know from being on the other side of the net with a wicked, wicked spin serve that takes a really high bounce and is hard to handle, but hopefully his remarks today will be coming right at you.

Speaker 1
Thanks for the introduction, Phil. I always tell everybody that I blame Federer for everything that’s wrong with my game, because he looks like he’s not trying, and he just breathes and tosses his hair right. Well, it’s great to be here and it we do have an opportunity amid a challenge. The challenge is a reputation challenge, a reputation problem that we have. And one of the ways to think about that reputation problem is to say that we have a problem with good news people being associated with being scandalous people. Now chances are that maybe some of you are like me. You’re kind of an optimistic, perhaps naively optimistic person who thinks, Okay, maybe that last scandal really is the last. That scandal. There’s nothing else that could possibly happen. There can’t be any more stories that could happen. But this is a group that does believe that the reason for the good news is also because you believe in sin. So we shouldn’t be surprised if more are coming down the pike, unfortunately. And of course, the scandals range from the typical things like it has to do with sexual abuse, hiding sexual abuse, whether it has to do with misguided politics, whether it’s, you know, antagonizing those that are abused. Honestly, you can fill in the blank and give us the scandal of your choice. And here’s what the problem is. The problem is not that people outside the church don’t think that human beings do those things. Is that people who are committed to the Bible and who are talking about the truth of the Bible, and who are saying that people ought to believe behave like they believe their truth of the Bible, that they are intention with the thing that they are proclaiming. And oftentimes it’s people who are very loudly talking about believing certain things, who are then behaving in ways that create that contrast. This is a big credibility problem. This is a reputation problem. And of course, we have, I’d say, in the last decade or so, at least, a sense where a term like evangelical is not associated with believing the good news as much as being associated with certain political commitments, and the way that people understand those political commitments leads people to something like what I heard the other day after I preached in a church across the street from from Wheaton, this person said to me, because I had mentioned talking about transforming our witness for evangelicals, this person said she used the term Evangelical, and she was talking with me about, well, what’s the solution? And then she told me that, here’s something that her neighbor said. Her neighbor said, I’m so glad I actually know you like because I thought you were if I didn’t know you, and you said you were an evangelical Christian, I go, I think you’re one of those insane Christians. And I was telling someone that story this morning, and they shared a similar anecdote. And the way that some of you are nodding your heads, it sounds like some of you have had a similar experience, if that’s what people are thinking about, people that are associated with the gospel, people that are supposed to be associated with good news. People are really having dissonance about good news people, right? They’re thinking that good news people are anything but good news people. I think one of the reasons that we wind up with the scandal is because of something that that it’s been a problem for a long time, but I don’t know how often we talk about it, and that is that often, even though people proclaim certain things and proclaim that they believe these things about the truth of the gospel, they also have commitments that are on the same level of that as that purported commitment to God, and those other commitments really wind up being the things that are revealed when scandals are revealed, we see that they have other loyalties, rather than the loyalty that they proclaim to have. I’m not saying that they don’t have a commitment to Jesus, but it seems like that’s not their only commitment, and the relationship between their commitment to Jesus and the way that they’re living their life is disconnected. So what’s one of the ways to respond to that, if we’re thinking about how churches can move forward into being more good news people in practice and not just in confession. One of the ways I think about that is there’s some things I’ve been observing in the book of Philippians, particularly Philippians three, verse 20. So in verse 20, Paul is telling them, you know, we are citizens of heaven, and from there, we are waiting for a savior. He’s saying this to people that are in Philippi, which is a Roman colony with all the rights and privileges of being Romans. And of course, if you’re in contact, we have the rights and privileges of being Romans. And and you’re thinking about where salvation comes from. The word on the street is that if you want salvation to come, Caesar is supposed to be bringing it to you. You really hope Caesar would show up. And Paul’s saying, but if you belong to Jesus, you’re really waiting for somebody who’s really going to bring salvation, who’s really in charge, who’s really made all of this the one who is going to come said everything right, and who’s also going to transform our bodies, just like his body was transformed in the resurrection. And if we’re citizens of that of heaven, citizens of the kingdom, if Jesus is our king, then our loyalties ought to really be reflecting the fact that this. Who we’re really committed to. And I think one of the challenges is to think about how, in our spiritual formation, in our churches, we are consistently reminding people of this truth. You say you believe this? Does your life say you believe this? Because I think the one of the ways to think about this is helping people to emphasize this commitment to Jesus, while also helping them to unveil what the competitors are, what the other gods are, what are the other things that are also saying, Hey, I’ve got something that’s great for you, immediate for you. And if you pledge allegiance to this, I promise you, you’ll have all of your problems resolved. And so getting people to turn attention to how they have other loyalties. I think this is a very important thing, because I do think one of the interesting things that’s happened in recent years is there a lot of Christians who live their lives like they’re fearful people, and they’re fearful about the future. And I always think to myself about those people, did you go to church on Easter? If you went to church on Easter, what happened? What were you worshiping about? What were you singing about? What was the message about? Because if it was about Jesus, who’s overcome death, if Jesus who’s secured your salvation, Jesus who has overcome death and is going to overcome everything else when he returns, if this is the person to whom you say you have allegiance, Why do you act like God cannot handle history? And why do you turn to people that give you the illusion that they can handle history and your life shows really that you are trusting those other obligations, rather than obligations that come from the one who made all of this. And so how in the formation of your church are you helping people to think about what they really believe about Jesus and what their commitment really is to Jesus, but also what other commitments are right there, and those other commitments are rivals to their commitment to Jesus. To me, that’s very, very important. And I think if we do that, and people really begin to have lives that reflect that, at least they’ll begin to admit that part of the challenges that they are feeling, that tension between that commitment to Jesus and these other rivals that are often really close To you, right and and so if people begin to have a formation like that, I think it might begin to manifest itself in the ways that they live their lives. And if they live their lives that way, with this commitment to Jesus, just like with the Philippians, what Paul’s telling them is, Hey, you are in a world where everybody thinks Caesar is the great Savior, but I’m telling you, Jesus is the great Savior. That’s who saved you. That’s why there’s a Philippian church. If, like the Philippians, we are heeding those kinds of words about waiting for the true Savior, Jesus, who’s already saved us and who’s transforming us. If that’s who people begin to see is our clear first loyalty, then you will have a real scandal on your hands, right? The scandal of loyalty to God, loyalty to your savior, loyalty to the one who sometimes may not look like he’s winning,

Speaker 1
but who is the winner and who makes us the winner? It’s like something I heard Richard Mao say something once. He said that sometimes when he was on a trip, he would buy, like cheap novels or cheap horror stories. And he says, sometimes in the novel, or if it was a mystery, what he would do is he would read the end of the book. Why? Because then he would know the end of the story. And the thing is, all the people in our churches, they know the end of the story, but they act like they don’t, right? But if they did act like they knew the end of the story, then they’d really be scandalous people.

Philip Ryken
Thank you. Vince, just going to ask each of our panelists maybe to make one comment in response one thing that occurs to me. So there are different metaphors for the church in the New Testament, the body. It’s like a household. I’m not sure citizenship is something we talk about as often as we might and it. Strikes me that there are certain practices that cultivate healthy citizenship, celebrating your king, that could be one, being very careful of seditious speech and tribalism within the kingdom, might be worth our thinking a little bit more about what are the practices that cultivate that primary loyalty and primary citizenship, and it’s part and parcel of the work of kingdoms in the world. You can’t be loyal to two kingdoms at one time. You’ve got a higher loyalty. So what are the practices that are conducive to that that might be worth our further reflection? Steve, John, any comments you want to make?

Steve Dewitt
I think if we when we get in our discussion, it would be helpful for me and everyone listening to if he had any practical helps on how we help our people actually do that. You know, like we say all day long, that it’s about Christ and you know, it’s his glory, and then they sit on their favorite political commentary TV shows all week long. How do we how do we convince them that Jesus is better than political victory and better than political ideology? How do we, practically, as leaders in the church, do that? Maybe we could circle back to that. Give you some time to think about that

Philip Ryken
reminds me a little bit of what it was like when we lived in England for three years, and it made me I love England, but it also made me more patriotic for the United States. And every night, at 11pm it was the start of the new day in Frankfurt, and Armed Forces Radio would come on at 11pm and it would start the new day with the national anthem. And I would sometimes stand up, put my hand on my heart and sing along with it. And that’s when we’re in a far place, living in exile. How do we cultivate that love and affection and remember where the primary Kingdom is John.

John Dickson
I was struck by Vince’s idea that we’re the death and resurrection people. We’re the we’re the Easter people. And I’ve had my head in the second to fifth centuries for the last couple of years just reading and rereading the early Christian literature. And perhaps the most striking thing about that literature is how cheerful they were at losing, because they knew they’d won. So the the early Christian documents are full of this sense that Christ has already won, and the governors are against us and people are dying. But isn’t it great that we’ve already won? The early church got a lot of things wrong, but I think they got that posture beautifully right.

Philip Ryken
And do you see us getting that right or wrong today? And what are some of the signs of that?

Speaker 1
Well, I’d like to believe we’re getting it right, but I do think here’s one, I think one of the biggest problems we and this will sound this will not surprise you. Give me what I do at Wheaton, but we really do have a bifurcation between theology and ethics. In other words, I mean, ask think, if you think about what a lot of times evangelicals do, well, we’re good at getting people to speak about truth and to be cognitive about truth, but when it comes to how people are living out their day to day decisions, they’re not thinking about how these things that they believe orient them toward the way that they live, they actually kind of okay. Here’s the thing, it presents itself, and I’ll try to figure it out and be pious in however I figure it out, but I get my cues from the ways that other people do things and and so I think the fact that there is, you know, the good thing of emphasizing truth, but it winds up honestly playing out like we really are good at articulating abstractions and then having bad improvisations when it comes to how we’re living it out doesn’t mean that there’s nobody that does it, because it doesn’t make news when good things happen, but there’s enough things that are happening that are strangely inconsistent, and so I think one of the ways that we’re not doing is, like I said, I think being a culture of fear, I think part of the problem is the thing that most, at least the United States, that most Americans believe, no matter what your political affiliation is, or whatever. You believe that it’s your right to have a comfortable life, to basically have a kind of realized eschatological experience of your own making, if you do enough of the right things. There’s entire industries built around that. And so I ought to have this kind of life, a life that most people in world history. Never had, but it’s your right as an American, to have those things. And so I think the cultural formation leads to a deformation in the church in terms of people’s expectation about how they’re supposed to have with the library perspective, they’re supposed to be winners. And so we don’t, we don’t know how to be losers. And please understand, Kuiper is my guy, he was Prime Minister, okay, but the idea that whatever we are having that’s positive, that somehow it’s supposed to be like, in a major way, instantiating like, almost like the experience at the end in the present, that creates a false expectation, because whatever we do is really maybe a glimpse of what’s coming everything else, it’s very imperfect. It’s very imperfect. I think a lot of times people think I should be having that perfect thing and and my belief in the gospel should be sponsoring my boutique version of what that is. And I think a lot of times that’s what people believe. They wouldn’t necessarily tell you that, but it’s just in the air. Everything around us tells you do these things and you will have the life you’ve always wanted. On

Philip Ryken
the gap between our theology and our ethics, you introduced the theme of scandal at the beginning. And I’ve long had the thought that one of the things I want to try to do in my own individual Christian life is not add any additional scandal to the scandal that the gospel already is. And that’s probably a helpful way for us to think communally as well as individually. And I think when you hear young people saying, one of the reasons we’re leaving the church is because we see in authenticity. What they’re saying is we will not tolerate that gap between theology and ethics, and in some ways, how people behave and actually what they live out has a bigger impact on how people are thinking about the Christian faith. That’s that’s why it really that’s why it really matters. Well, we’re blessed to have John Dixon in the United States. Now I’m just curious how many people are familiar with John’s ministry. Just a few people. We are so excited at TGC and at Wheaton College to introduce you to John Dixon, who’s been a leading apologist for the Christian faith. You’ve heard him say that he lives in What did you say the second and third century? That’s his area of scholarly expertise, how Christians lived out the gospel in the early centuries. But he is a very keen observer of contemporary culture. I really encourage people to look at his or listen to his undeceptions podcast. Sounds like a good title, related to our theme of dis fragmentation, undeceptions, but he’s an apologist for the Christian faith in our current moment, and really has a calling to come to the United States and give us a view from the future of where things are heading culturally, and maybe what we can do about it. John, let’s let’s hear your thoughts on learning from a post Christian society and please, please welcome John Dixon,

John Dickson
I’ve got a kind of postcard from a foreign land for you. Australia is about 10 years behind America on pretty much everything except secularization. We are 10 years ahead of you. In fact, a very famous historian and cultural observer, Patrick o’ Farrell, famously described Australia as the world’s first genuinely post Christian society, and what he meant was a society that has been shaped by Christianity, to be sure, but where a majority of the population has turned its back On the Christian faith or grabbed hold of Christian themes, but put them in a secular key. I think this has been true of Australia, well, all of my life, but we, just two years ago, passed a very interesting statistical threshold where it was confirmed in our census that a minority of Australians affirm any connection with the Christian faith. We had dropped from 2011 61% of Australians ticking, you know, Anglican or Catholic or whatever, down to just 44% in 2021 that is a huge drop, and of course, the no religion folks climbed from 22% in that 10 years to 39% now it’s probably too soon to say that America is a post Christian nation, but there are some interesting. The trends those declaring themselves to be in any way associated with Christianity dropped 15% in 14 years from 2007 where 78% of Americans said, Yeah, I’m some kind of Christian, down to 63% in 2021 and the no religion crowd have grown from 16% to 29% here’s the thing, that trend is identical to Australia. You’re just 10 years behind. What an amazing thought that 10 years from now, Christians will be a minority in this country, even in the surveys, we know that not all those who tick Baptists are actually believing, but it’s something statistically significant is happening. Imagine America as a country that is shaped by Christianity, for sure, but where only a minority confess themselves to be Christian. So what I want to do is I want to offer a few reflections. Specifically, my kind of postcard from Australia is four temptations that face Christians in a rapidly secularizing culture that I’ve seen in Australia, and I can only guess that it’s true here. And then I want to read a passage of scripture that speaks to all four temptations and offers a different path. Temptation number one in a secularizing culture is perhaps the most obvious one. It is the temptation to compromise. This is an attempt to relieve the cognitive dissonance between the culture out there and the beliefs and practices of my Christianity, which are on the nose, which are troubling to wider society. So to reduce the dissonance, I adjust my beliefs and practices. And often this starts out as a missional program to the Jew. I become a Jew. To the Greek. I become a Greek, and I adjust, I flex, and then pretty soon, it really is just accommodation to culture. Now I’m at the gospel coalition, so of course, that’s not a threat here. Let’s hope the second temptation in secularizing times is to withdraw again. This is often described as tactical. The thought is Christians are so annoying in secular society, let’s not be noisy. And the image that’s sometimes offered is that of a monastery open to everyone being faithful, but not zealously pursuing the public to withdraw. The third temptation is very different, and I see this in a very different kind of Christian in Australia. You can be the judge if it’s true here, and that is to attack the world, sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of threat to attack the world. The sense here is that the world is a backsliding Christian, and we have moral authority over a backsliding Christian, and so we have moral authority over a backsliding nation. That’s the kind of assumption. And the analogy that might be appropriate in this context is that of a prophet, a prophet who speaks to Israel, castigates Israel, the covenant people, for not living up to the Covenant, the attack, I think real questions can be raised about that model about the biblical worth of the Prophet model to a nation. But maybe that’s for Q A, because I want to talk about the fourth and final temptation, and that is to slander. What I mean is Christians, evangelical, broadly speaking, slandering one another. In secularizing times, I see it all the all the time back home. And there are two forms of it. There are the you might call progressive evangelicals or open evangelicals or generous evangelicals. I don’t know what the language is, who are slandering the Conservatives as those right wing bigots? Yeah? Now sometimes it’s because conservatives are right wing bigots, but often it’s just because these more generous evangelicals are trying to win points with secular society by saying we’re not with those guys. We’re the nice guys. But actually, more and more, I see another kind of slandering from the other side, conservatives fighting fire with fire back at the generous or progressive evangelicals over minor differences, slandering them as unfaithful and. Perhaps the analogy that comes to mind, I sure that people in this situation would accept the analogy, but I think of it as like a platoon under fire. And when a platoon under fire, you cannot tolerate any dissension in the ranks, because the threat is so great. And so what we do is we look at our brothers and sisters that believe the gospel just as we do. Are Bible people, but they have a slightly different view on X, Y or Z, and we cannot stand it. We cannot Brook dissension. I’m not sure the scriptures would commend that. With this in mind, I want to read a passage that I go back to all the time, because I think it speaks to all four temptations and offers a path forward, one, Peter three, of course, written to Christians under fire in the Greco Roman world. See if you can hear these temptations being addressed, one Peter, 38 Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart and a humble mind. Slander. Will not do. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless For to this you are called that you may obtain a blessing. In other words, attacking the world is not an option. We bless when reviled For whoever desires to love life and see good days citing Psalm 34 let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit and so on, picking up at verse 13. Now who is there to harm you? If you are zealous for what is good, but even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them. Do not be troubled. How could withdrawing be an option for Christians, but in your hearts, honor Christ, the Lord as holy. No compromise, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asked you for a reason for the hope that you have again, no withdrawing a front foot, yet do this with gentleness and respect. No attacking having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. So I want to propose a different analogy for Christians in culture, for Christians doing gospel work in a post Christian environment, not the monastery, not the Prophet, not the platoon under fire, but the good guest at a neighbor’s dinner party. You are thrilled to be seated at the table. You are part of the conversation, always wanting to engage, and sometimes your funny views will mean that you are shouted down, and you laugh and cheerfully reply, always conscious that you don’t own the home. It’s not your table. You haven’t provided the food. You’re a guest at the dinner party, an open, cheerful guest always looking for the invitation next week as well.

Philip Ryken
Thank you, John. Let’s thank John for his so one of the things I like about how this conversation is shaping up, we’ve got a few metaphors to work with for the Christian calling in the world in this moment, kingdom, citizenship, cheerful guesthood. Also some really good scriptural anchor points. Philippians, chapter three, I know Steve, when you give your remarks, you’ll give us another scriptural anchoring point. Boy, so much in first. Peter three, one of the things you mentioned early on, John was this idea of cognitive dissonance. And maybe, if, if my temptation, and have to say, I look at those temptations, there’s a little part of me that’s tempted in all those different directions. So some of us, some of our churches, may face one of those temptations more strongly, but I think we see all of them operative in the church today. Um. So when we want to diminish that sense of cognitive dissonance, that’s the temptation to compromise with culture. But actually that cognitive dissonance can really be helpful for people evangelistically And apologetically, a sense that this Christian person is counter cultural. How do we make the cognitive dissonance attractive, rather than something that people just dismiss or it’s a turn off for them, by

John Dickson
being cheerful, and when people ask you for your view, just honestly giving you a view, without anxiety, without defensiveness, and when they laugh at you, I think you’re an idiot, you just sort of say, well, yeah, I’m in a very big club going all the way back to Jesus.

Philip Ryken
So one of the things that helps us be cheerful is that sense of church history, but also that sense of fearless eschatological destiny that Vince was also talking about, save this question for later, because I want to come back to it. I would love for you to tell a story or two about times when you’ve really felt under fire in a public setting or in a personal conversation, and just how you’ve how you’ve handled that, because I bet you’ve got some stories to tell. Oh, man, he’s not going to wait. He’s going to tell a story right now. Go for it,

John Dickson
but you want me to save it for later.

Philip Ryken
They want one now, I’m keen to hear Steve. All right, Steve, or Vince, what do you want to hear from John Dixon? Or what reflections I

Steve Dewitt
want to hear the story he was about to tell? How many people want to hear John’s story? Yeah, go

Unknown Speaker
ahead. All right. Well,

John Dickson
I mean, where to begin? My goodness, I’ve had some awesome, very public ones that were very scary, and then some very private ones. I remember being in a cafe at my favorite beach with a pastor friend, talking about how we were reaching out to others in our wider area, and I saw this woman looking at us, and I assumed she was a Christian interested in two pastors talking about reaching out to Sydney, and then she got up, paid her bill, walked over to our table and said, you want to convert the world. Do you? How dare you? And all the cafe were looking at me. It was one of those occasions where you think of the perfect comeback about three hours later, but at the time, I was completely dumbfounded. She stormed out, and here was I, a professional evangelist, absolutely dumbfounded by this, this woman who was outraged at the thought that we might want to bring people to Christ. So there’s a good failure moment.

Philip Ryken
Well, I mean, I’m encouraged by it. Actually,

Steve Dewitt
I think we’re all encouraged by that. That tell us another failure story. We like this Well,

Philip Ryken
I mean, usually I think of a better response, like 24 hours later. So that’s the difference between a skilled apologist and evangelist. You only think of the good rejoiner Three hours later. That’s how you’re really you know, you’re really skilled. But

Speaker 1
a question to think about later is, Can guests have influence in terms so if we see ourselves as guests, what kind of influence can a guest have? Right?

John Dickson
How many dinner parties was Jesus the guest? Yeah, yeah, that’s

Speaker 1
good, yeah. Very nice. Very nice. So, but the reason I’m saying this because some because a person may hear you say guest, and think so if we’re guests, that means any type of cultural influence we’re kind of stepping back from. In other words, I think sometimes people either feel the options are either a strong triumphalist inclination or a version of a withdrawal inclination or, of course, I mean, you know, if they’re reading haruwas or something, they might be thinking alternative witness. So I’m not seeking to be an influence, except very indirectly, but it but is there a kind of active influence that the guest can have? So that’s something that that I was yes, let’s talk about it later. All right,

Steve Dewitt
I’m going to add, if you heard his stat, it’s shocking, dismaying. You know, to think about TGC, 2033, okay, 10 years from now, where, if your stats prove true, in the US, where this is a even different culture that we’re living in only emphasizes how right we need to be on the point that you’re making this is not going away. We can, you know, withdraw bear head in the sand, tell everybody they’re going to hell. But getting right what you’re saying is one of the great challenges of the church and. Leaders of the church, not not in 50 years like right now, the next 10 years will be shaped largely by what you’ve shared with us.

Philip Ryken
I so agree with that, and I one thing I’ve reflected on a little bit is, you know, we’ve all been greatly blessed by the fact that God brought Don Carson and Tim Keller together in friendship with a vision for the church. And they were already seeing trends in the church that were concerning and all of them have become more acute. The Gospel coalition is needed even more today in 2023 than it wasn’t in 2005 I think you’re saying like 10 years from now, it may be needed even more so. And there’s a part of me that would love to live in much easier times for the church, but there’s a part of us that needs to get excited about the fact that it will become clearer the difference that it makes to live for Jesus, and that’s part of the challenge and part of the opportunity of our of our witness. Obviously, we’ve got a lot of themes. I’ve got so many things I want to get into. Hopefully you’re coming up with your questions, putting them on. Slido, we’ll start getting into those soon too, but we haven’t had a chance, really, to hear from Steve DeWitt. I love hearing Steve DeWitt on moody radio. If you’re in the Chicagoland area, you’ve probably heard some of his messages or some of the brilliant short in between bits that they put on on the news as well, or on the on moody radio as well. Very interestingly, Steve is about to publish a book on loneliness, which I’ve had a chance to look at. I’m pretty excited about it, actually, because I think loneliness is a bigger issue for many of us, then we really have had a chance to take a deeper dive in the Scriptures with so that’s something to be looking out for. If you don’t know, Steve used to be the most eligible bachelor in in the evangelical church. He was probably the only what mega church pastor that was single until you were 4044,

Steve Dewitt
44 but who’s counting?

Philip Ryken
Just imagine how many people in his church tried to set him up with somebody

Steve Dewitt
I’m married and I’m not allowed to comment on that. Now, those are all forgotten,

Philip Ryken
but this is also something Steve’s written about publicly. Just some of those challenges, the blessings of marriage. But that doesn’t necessarily mean loneliness is over either. So it’s really thoughtful treatment we’re looking forward to that Steve thinks he’s a little better than me in both basketball and golf, which he is, so he has a right to think that way. Steve come and talk to us about surpassing the glory of Christ and pastoral resilience. And Steve’s going to bring his pastor’s heart to our conversation. Absolutely,

Steve Dewitt
I tell you what I feel the burden of what we’re talking about, because I know that in this room, probably mostly leaders in the church, many pastors in the church. I’m one of you. I’m in the trenches with you. What I’m sharing with you today is really out of my own experience and my own conviction. I’ve been a pastor for 31 years, and made many mistakes along the right way, learned a lot of things along the way, and I want to talk with you about resilience in ministry. It’s one thing to say that the trends are going bad and you know, the world’s going to hell. It’s another thing to figure out, okay, how am I going to make it as a leader and a pastor with the culture changing the way that it is? I’d like to introduce it with something a little weird that happened this summer. You may know that if you live south of the US and Canadian border, we experienced Chicago in particular. We experienced all this smoke that was coming down from Canada. Do we have any Canadians in the room. We have a few over here. What are you smoking up there? Exactly, whatever it is, there’s a lot of it going on. They they blame the wildfires. But we know the truth. We know the truth. So anyway, so all this smoke came down. If you live on the Eastern Seaboard, you saw it as well. And in our area, it made for some cool sunsets, except for when it was bad. And when it was bad, they’re canceling outdoor, you know, pro sports. And you know, if you have asthma, it was a terrible summer, all this smoke coming from Canada. Here’s my point, fire in one area obscured the sunlight in another area. This is a very fitting metaphor for pastoral ministry these days, because there are all these cultural fires that are burning, some of them in the church. Many of them outside the church, and we as leaders are left to deal with the smoke. And if you haven’t noticed, the smoke finds its way into the church, the fires out there fade, the sunlight in the church now, we may be lovers, not fighters, and so we’re like, I’m not going to deal with this. I’m averse to conflict, so I’m going to ignore it. But there’s a coughing sound in your congregation. Your people are gagging, and maybe the smoke alarms are going off in your church as well. Further, we have church members and sometimes family members, who are not fighting the fire with us, but rather pouring gasoline on the fire. Any arsonists in your church? Yeah, right now, there’s a face coming to mind, or maybe 100 of them, and how frustrating it is to have people within the congregation who are adding to the problem. So what is at risk here is that these cultural fires over there are causing us to lose sight of the gospel, sunlight within the church. And let’s be honest, I think we’re all a little tired of fighting fires at this point, and yet, as John has so wonderfully encouraged us, the worst is yet to come. Thank you, John for that good word. Fact to tell you how bad it is right now, recent surveys say that in evangelical churches, roughly half of pastors are seriously considering quitting the ministry. So think back to last night, that big room, 6500 people in that room last night, if their hearts could talk and if the stats are accurate, 3000 of the 6000 last night, quietly in their heart are wondering, is this whole gig worth it? And maybe that’s you here today, a recent article, maybe you saw it written by a Presbyterian pastor in the Chicagoland area went viral because it was him explaining why he’s quitting the ministry. And what’s noteworthy is all the pastors who reposted his article and caused it to go viral, I think largely thinking to themselves, I feel his pain. And so I want to talk with you about what keeps us in it. What keeps us in it? If you’re, if you’re one of the 3000 thinking about not staying in it, what could and should keep us in it. And I want to say to you that your resilience in ministry, our resilience in ministry, is directly proportional to the degree to which Jesus is worth it. Jesus is worth it. Do you feel that way? Will you feel that way in this upcoming election year? Yippee, Skippy, right? Well, time will tell. What I’m trying to say is that Jesus has to be our ultimate why. So where do I get this from? I want to talk to you about surpassing. This is Philippians, three very familiar passage. You’ve all preached this passage probably many times. But here’s what it says the apostle Paul, but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the here it is surpassing worth of knowing Christ, Jesus, my Lord, for his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I might gain Christ. Now my focus is on that word surpassing notice. It is the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. And in context there in Philippians three, Paul has just listed, really the things on his resume that were in the I’m awesome category. And Paul had quite a list. Don’t you think? Very impressive list, ministerial list. He could sit into all of that. And he compares the I’m awesome list with the assessment of the value of knowing Christ, Jesus, my Lord. And there Paul says, in my assessment, knowing him, having him. He is far greater than all the things on my resume, all the matters of my ministry. He is far greater. He is far higher. He is far worth it, far better. And this assessment is what kept him in the ministry, don’t forget. He writes Philippians from jail, and yet he is there rejoicing that he knows Christ. In fact, in a few verses, he says, famously, therefore, I press on toward the price. There’s that resilience in ministry. I continue to press on. So if you’re here today, you need a little resilience. Hopefully the conference is providing it, but I want this session to provide it for you. Where do we get it from? Well, you might say, I don’t think you realize how bad it is in my church right now, and we all have stories that would be a fund if we need filler time here. Dr reichen, let’s let’s see who can outdo the worst story of the last three years. But you might think to yourself, it feels like I just keep losing. I’m just constantly losing. And Paul can relate to this. Notice he says, for his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and what things is he referring to in context the list of accomplishments on his resume, it is that I’m awesome list all those things that the old Paul had derived his sense of worth from. He says, I count those now as loss and friends, we’re tempted to do the very same thing. Maybe you’ve had this moment in the conference. It’s That awkward moment when you have pastors gathered together and you have that sort of like, Hey, how’s it going at your church? And you know that sort of feeling inside where you’re like, am I going to be polite, or am I going to be honest? And generally, we’re polite. Great. We’re in a season of amazing at my church. How about you? And

what? Comes out of our mouth in that moment is really our performance resume. This is going great, and that’s going great, and that’s going great, and it’s so easy for us to derive our resilience from what we perceive to be going great. And we see it, Paul here, he he basically burns his resume, and God helped him do it. Why are all half of all American pastors considering quitting, and maybe half of the room here? Why? Why is half the room here considering quitting ministry? And I think we would honestly say we’re just tired of all the drama, the covid drama, the racial drama, the political ideology drama, all of the associated dramas of the last year, it’s just been drama, drama, drama. And we have all suffered losses as well. We’ve lost people from our churches to other churches that they liked their politics better. We’ve lost people to online church, if you want to call it that, we’ve lost people to other other churches for various reasons. We’ve lost people just to the cultural abyss, just poof gone. He had all of it up, and the last three or four years have been the hardest years of pastoral ministry. Every pastor would say that, and honestly, I’m really tired of all of it. And you drive by Duncan and it says hiring you it. Which brings me to this word surpassing. And that’s, that’s the takeaway I want you to have in your heart, surpassing. It’s their surpassing worth of knowing Christ. And that is a measurement word. It’s the opposite of his, like barely just okay, no. Paul says I’ve lost everything in my resume. In fact, he has relinquished it for the gain of knowing Christ, Jesus, and that’s why I would say at the heart of all of the drama of the last three years in terms of the leader in the church’s heart, it really comes down to Christology. What do you really believe about the worth of serving Jesus and His Church? How worth? How worth it is Jesus? Yes, is he kind of worth it, barely worth it, or surpassingly worth it? Check your heart. Check your heart. I would say an image of this would be like a firefighter, going back to the smoke analogy, who goes into the burning building and is breathing pure air through those masks and the and the tanks while helping other people who are choking on the smoke. That’s a picture of pastoral ministry. Warren Buffett famously said, you don’t know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out. And I would say in pastoral ministry, you don’t know who believes Christ is surpassing until the fire burns and the smoke rolls in. So resilience in ministry directly connected to whether we believe Jesus is worth it or not, and the urgent need that we have, especially as as John shared in the coming years, who’s going to be here in 10 years that’s in this room right now, it’s going to be the people that think Jesus is worth it, because it’s only going to get harder and more challenging, and I want all of us to make It is Christ the surpassing. His surpassing worth the functional motive for your ministry. We have to do it for him. Final picture of this few years ago, a kind member of our church made arrangements for us to spend the night my wife, Jennifer here, the lovely Jennifer in the third row, to spend the night on the 86th floor of a skyscraper in in downtown Chicago. Well, as fate would have it, it was one of these, these times when this crazy fog rolls in off of Lake Michigan. Happens occasionally, and sure enough, there we are. The crazy fog is is rolling in, but once it fully came in, this was the view from our room. Go to the next slide.

Leaders, we desperately need the view from above the smoke and the fog and what gospel ministry is. It’s just inviting. It’s living on the 86th floor in our hearts and inviting our people to enjoy the surpassing view with us. Amen.

Philip Ryken
Thank you, Steve. Let’s thank Steve.

So thank you, Steve. Just really strikes me, ministry is difficult. So difficult that unless you have that view, unless you have that gospel oxygen, unless you have that surpassing worth calculus, you will get to a point where it’s not worth it. The good news is it doesn’t take it. Jesus is so surpassingly worth it that it doesn’t take that much of actually authentic connection with him to refresh, renew, realize he is worth it. What are some of the ways that we can cultivate that just in a practical way, cultivate that worthiness of Jesus, and in a way, it connects to what we’re talking about earlier too. Because how do you cultivate an awareness of your kingdom citizenship? Well, it’s your relationship with the king that’s primary to it. What are some of the ways to cultivate that, either for ourselves or for our congregations? Well, it

Steve Dewitt
has to be in our heart if our people are ever going to get it. I mean, so that’s where you know the desperate need in our churches is for people to have a great, grand view of the glory of Christ and the leader, the pastor, needs to drink from that fountain and to share it with, you know, with their church, one thing we do in our in our church is we often talk about that. It’s one of the slogans of our church. It’s all about him. Hit that over and over, and many of our services with you know, on your way. And remember it’s all about him. And kind of develop a deep, robust Christology that admires and loves the beauty of Christ and places that before the people, so that they, you know, they see that he is worth it themselves in their life, and then connecting the person and work of Jesus with them in the in the practicalities of their of their life, which is what we heard earlier as well. I I think that the pulpits are probably the primary mechanism and means by which we can help our people see that. At, and this is where that application portion of your sermon is so important as well. I suspect gospel coalition type churches are robustly theological, very expositional, but you gotta put the cookies on the bottom shelf for people and help them understand what does this mean in everyday life, and to tell stories like I appreciated that story, John, that you shared about what it means to live in culture. And you know you don’t always, you know always succeed, but your heart is you want to represent Christ faithfully in the day to day of life. So I would encourage very careful application in your sermons and the regular dripping in in the ministry of your church, the glory and the beauty of Christ, he is so worth it. People

Philip Ryken
Vince, comment or question for Steve. John, can you pass me the iPad so that say I’ve noticed a few people have pulled up their chairs to our table and probably want to jump into the discussion with their questions. So, so one

Speaker 1
of the questions I was thinking about is connected to the book that you have coming out. And I was gonna, I was gonna ask you, after it was over, about that article for the pastor from your First Presbyterian in Arlington Heights, what about also the role of people around the pastor? Because of because of the if you have the loneliness and isolation, it seems to me that that can intensify attention to other things that are distracting you from that surpassing worth of of Jesus for various reasons. What about having others around you that are also helping you and encouraging you to do that, because the isolation, I think, is also a big part of challenging the resilience.

Steve Dewitt
Well, the stats are, half of church, half of pastors are thinking about quitting. Half of them are thinking about quitting because they’re lonely. They feel abandoned. They feel isolated. They don’t can’t talk to anybody. There’s nobody, uh, sort of holding their arms up in ministry. And they think, why do I want to do this anymore? I would add that, you know, this whole matter of loneliness, I think, is part of the secret sauce for gospel ministry in the days ahead, because the the cultural trends that John mentioned, you know the back door, is that people are increasingly feeling abandoned and isolated in the day to day of life, which the church, of all institutions in the world, is ideally suited to meet that need. And I think mobilizing our people and our churches relationally is how we get a seat at the table as a guest. And even better, you know, have them over to our place and to, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, I said to my church recently, you mean, after 2000 years and covid and everything else, we’re just basically back to the the parable The Good Samaritan. In many ways, I think we are, which means that we, you know, there’s sort of this ancient latent memory of what it meant to minister to people and to love our neighbor as ourself. And I think that’s going to be, you know, in 10 years, one of if we’re going to be good at anything, we should be good at that.

Philip Ryken
One thing I wanted people to know is we have been talking about having on the TGC website just a concerted emphasis on what’s good about pastoral ministry, and just reminding people in ministry why we do this and what’s beautiful about it, and just really encouraging the souls of pastors so we have a heart for this, I think, as a ministry, just another thing to note is, yeah, there’s there can Be loneliness in ministry for a lot of reasons. Also, a lot of pastors wives are lonely, and that’s another part of this that we don’t want to neglect and just be aware of that. That’s that’s part of this as well. There are challenges in the role that we need to be sensitive to. I don’t want us to get sidetracked on this question, but I think it’s a good one for us to at least touch on. And I’m going to pitch this to John. First of all, is the term evangelical still helpful to use in the broader world? Is there a better alternative term? We are unashamed in using the word evangelical at Wheaton College. That’s even in our doctrinal statement. I think it is still useful, but it has its limitations. What’s an Australian perspective on this,

John Dickson
it’s difficult. Our media in Australia is so ignorant of Christianity that they know more about the word evangelical from its political usage in America. Are the evangelical block that they have heard about since the 1980s than they do about the descendants of British evangelicalism, which is majority evangelicalism in Australia. So actually, there are a lot of Australian evangelicals who balk at calling themselves evangelicals when engaging in public, because it’s such a damaged word in public, as a result of the political connections that are really only true of American evangelicalism. By the way, in British evangelicalism, there’s no evangelical block. They you can’t really work out how British evangelicals vote. I just interviewed Vaughan Roberts from st ebbs last week in Oxford, and I asked him this exact question, and he said that not only will no Evangelical, just about no evangelical pastor, ever encourage to vote for a particular candidate, there is just no way of knowing how evangelicals will vote, because they’re all over the map. That is also true in Australia. VAUGHAN said to me, there’s no way that I’m giving up the word evangelical. He wants to fight for it. Good on him. A lot of my friends who more engaged with secular society, certainly when I was in Australia, in the media and so on, I would, I would talk about myself as a classical Christian more than an evangelical Christian.

Philip Ryken
I find myself adjusting a bit my terminology based on the audience. It may just be enough for me to call myself a Christian in certain contexts. In higher education, I often use the word Christ centered. We’re a Christ centered college that distinguishes it from us, from colleges that have a Christian Christian tradition, or come out of a Christian tradition, and it sounds orthodox enough, or like you’re really serious about your Christian faith, it communicates enough. And there may be other contexts in which I do use the word Evangelical, but yeah, Vince,

Speaker 1
I think there’s the words worth keeping because it means good news. But like you said, I do think because of the connotations and associations that people have with it being so politicized that if you can read the room, you have to think about when you would drop you would use the term. So sometimes I think the strategy is tell people what you think, say you’re a good news Christian, and then say, That’s what I mean when I say Evangelical, because then they because then you, you’ve, you’ve explained to them what it is without bringing the term into it. If there are other contexts, I might say I’m one of those evangelicals. Here’s what that means. I you know, after the whole 81% thing in 2016 my initial response was, No, I’ll just convince people what it really is like. If you’re going to talk about what jazz music really is, here’s what pure jazz is, right? And then I learned that this was a fool’s errand, so I so now I’ve got this other strategy, but I think the term is worth keeping because of what it means. Otherwise, you’re losing something we talk, we say, with people of the evangel, and you’re letting people use it who didn’t even go to church, who don’t they’re defining it because of some combination of political ideology, national identity, and some resonance with Jesus of a sort, then, to me, that’s that’s not something that I want to give up

Philip Ryken
in, in a way sometimes our vocabulary can either add to a scandal or take away from it and be clearer or less clear about who Jesus is. Alright? Last comment on Evangelical,

Steve Dewitt
well, I was gonna actually ask you a question, okay, at some risk, but I’ll note I am the only one up here not on the wheaton payroll. So I can, I can walk to the cliff’s edge here.

Philip Ryken
I mean, do you want the doctoral degree or not? DeWitt, we’re about to find out.

Steve Dewitt
So the classic definition of an evangelical arts a classic, but a common one is anybody that liked Billy Graham. I think today the definition would be anyone who likes Donald Trump, and you think about the implications, and that’s a generalization, but the implications of even that difference of those two personalities, do you agree with that? Clarify that? What do you think Bill

Philip Ryken
Well, what I think is, so we often need to clarify our terms. So some of what you’ve heard is like Billy

Steve Dewitt
Graham was an evangelist. Here’s what. I went to your college. Yeah,

Philip Ryken
I certainly believe that anybody that likes Billy Graham is an evangelical. I’m happy with that part of that. I’m I’m very committed to communicating clearly. This is, I’ve never said this publicly before. This is some my wife doesn’t even know. Yeah, it’s not that exciting, but it’s just something. But I was thinking about this recently, and this shows kind of what an odd person I am. So I in my freshman year in high school, I had a communications class. All freshmen took it, and we had a sort of textbook on communications and communication theory and the giver and the receiver. And I just really took on board. If you want to communicate a message, you need to understand where the person is coming from, who is receiving your message. Like that made sense to me as something to hold on to. So I like to explain things in ways that people can understand. If you need the cookie on the bottom shelf, I want to help put it on the bottom shelf, if you can, if it helps, you actually to reach for it, I’m going to put it just within reach. Like, that’s what I try to do in a lot of my communication. The problem with evangelical is it has denotations and connotations. It does mean, good news, it’s a biblical term. We don’t want to give up on a biblical term, but it also has political connotations. Maybe for some people, it does connote Donald Trump. Then if I just use that without explaining it, I’m actually miscommunicating what I really want to do is communicate clearly and All right, so this is I’m changing. I’m going to try to relate the subject, but I’m changing the subject, and I’ll admit it. Here is something that is so interesting to me about Jesus that relates to this. How are we connecting to people in our culture in a way that they understand who Jesus is, John, you were you were challenging us to get the second invitation, because we’re a cheerful guest. It is so striking to me that apparently Jesus was the kind of person you invited to parties, even if you weren’t yet on board with him, ethically or in other ways, he was just the kind of person you would invite. So when some people hear evangelical they’re not thinking of a Jesus they want to invite over. So how do we become more like Jesus in that way? So when I think about being like Jesus, I’m not usually thinking, Okay, how do I make myself more the kind of person that a secular person wants to invite over for a conversation. So John, can you help us in that area? It really has to do with the attractiveness of the gospel. How do we become more like that Jesus? So cheerfulness maybe is part of it? Yes,

John Dickson
it is. I’m so struck by the way, your key passage, Philippians three and my key passage one, Peter three, even though we didn’t consult both, pin the whole exhortation on the majesty of Christ in your language, the surpassing worth of Christ in one

Philip Ryken
Paul’s language, actually, not Steve’s, but yes,

John Dickson
Paul’s language. Everybody

Steve Dewitt
knows that. Phil, you don’t have to point it out.

John Dickson
And in one Peter, the language is set apart Christ as Lord in your heart, always being prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you for the reason for the hope. In other words, the degree to which you have set apart Christ as Lord in your heart will be the degree to which you don’t fear what they fear, the degree to which you will answer everyone. So I think this is a spiritual thing. I was saying, Amen, amen to your talk, and yours is as well, that where the death and resurrection people. So I have this little just practice. Read the Jesus stories from the Gospels of Jesus interacting with the outsider. Go through the Gospels and read them and meditate on them, and think as you go through Jesus with Zacchaeus, Jesus at Simon the Pharisees house, the introduction to the parable of the lost son. You know, all the sinners and tax collectors were gathering around him, and the Pharisees grumbled, why does he eat with sinners taxes? You read all those passages and then imagine yourself embodying that same spirit toward the outsider. So a devotion to gospel passages is one little practice that I adopt in my life, and I recommend it.

Philip Ryken
Let me just say one thing about Philippians three just connecting all three passages, it strikes me in connection with what John and Steve have been saying, Vince you were pointing us to our citizenship is in heaven. From it We await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So he now Jesus is appearing in this context, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. In other words, the view of Jesus that you get in that passage also is an exalted Christ who has things in subjection to him who is glorious, powerful. I mean this, there’s a thread running through all three of these passages. Vince, go ahead, jump in.

Speaker 1
I think it’s one thing I’m thinking about, about, can you mention telling the stories of Jesus? I wonder how much there’s also a the ways that people are talking about Christian faith. And I say this as a theologian, okay, so I mean to me, being a public relations person for theology, and theology and ethics together is really important, but it’s interesting. I think I wonder if people’s commitment to getting doctrine right is such a thing that I want to make sure I get that right, that I wind up kind of maybe unintentionally marginalizing the narrative. In other words, I want to get conceptual things right. I want to make sure. Make sure I get justification right. Make sure I get atonement right. Make sure I make sure I get, you know, that I’m right, the right side of whatever battle that is. And because of such a commitment to get those things right, it’s as if there’s not time to talk about what you just talked about. And so sometimes there are people who criticize evangelicals by saying that, you know, they’re always with Paul, and they don’t think about Jesus. And then people have a very selective Jesus, that they that they articulate, that they try to pit against Paul. And my point is, is that there’s not any argument between Paul and Jesus, but a lot of times what people are getting communicated, I think, is conceptual things that come out of Paul and related to certain particular doctrines, and Jesus is instrumental to those things. But the narratives about Jesus, the shape of Jesus, even though it’s right there in Philippians, the shape of life in the Christ hymn there, the narrative is often, I think, kind of marginalized, while people are wanting to get certain points of information right. And we need those those doctrines. But those doctrines are not antithetical to narrative

Philip Ryken
and and we need those doctrines animated in a Christ like life that is attractive to people across the spectrum in a relational way, lived out, embodied. That’s one of the things John’s been pointing us to. All right, Steve, you’re going to be surprised by this question. Are you ready for it? You don’t know John was talking about some of the temptations, withdrawing, compromising. There’s a question about homeschooling. What are your thoughts on the large number of evangelical families who are transitioning to homeschooling? How can pastors help families discern if their desire to homeschool is based in fear or if it is truly best for their kids? So I think this is a homeschooling question that’s coming out of some of these polls, and within our cultural context, how should we think about the educational decisions for our children? It comes up a lot in congregational life. You sure

Steve Dewitt
you want me to answer that? One is that I didn’t see, okay, no, all right, well, but so it’s a practical decision that plays out or it

Philip Ryken
I think it’s a relevant question, is when we think about our own testimony and witness in the world, we’re also thinking, we’re not just thinking about 2033 we’re thinking about 2043 and the young people in our churches and in our homes that are going to be living in that world. We want to be fearless. But how do we think responsibly about those educational choices?

Steve Dewitt
Well, I think that decision, first of all, every parent is is responsible and free to make what they believe to be the best choice for their for their child, and people are going to come to different conclusions on that. And I think in a church, a local church, everybody needs to respect everybody else’s decisions on that I would, I would say this just speaking for my, my wife and I, we have two daughters, 10 and eight. They currently are in a Christian school. Our hope is that they will spiritually be ready for Crown Point High School, which is what we hope will happen, but we’re, I’m also not going to throw them to the spiritual wolves, and you know, we’re going to decide it each year. I actually got that advice from you one time. It’s funny you bring this up, because probably 10 years ago, I asked Phil about this question, and he said, and I’ve, I’ve told this to many people in our church, that that you and Lisa make a one year commitment to your children. You evaluate each one individually, what is best for them. And when I asked them, they had one in public school, one in Christian school, and one that was being homeschooled, and I think that I commend that approach, what is best for that child, spiritually. And you know. In the end, I want my kids following Jesus, and that path of discipleship is super important. I think many parents just like, okay, the kids are going to school. We need to think about that, pray about that. It’s

Philip Ryken
a prayerful decision, and it depends on so many different things, the community you’re in, the temperament of the child. And it’s true, we actually didn’t have anybody homeschooled, but I had one child who’s much more contrarian than the others. It was much easier to put him in a public school context, because I knew he would be much less influenced than the other children would be. So it does depend on, you know, how ready they are for it as well. All right, John, just a quick question. You said earlier you came up with a good response to the woman in the cafe three hours later. Was that rhetorical, or did you actually have a good rejoinder? Because people really want to know, well,

John Dickson
I’m ashamed of it. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. Isn’t characterized by gentleness and respect at all. But

Unknown Speaker
of course, she was like, Really, we

John Dickson
want to convert the world. How dare you? My thought later was, well, you’ve just demonstrated why we need to, but, but that was the flesh speaking.

Philip Ryken
Maybe it did need to percolate a few more hours just,

John Dickson
of course, the right response was to say, Can I shout you a coffee? Because I need to hear what your complaint is.

Philip Ryken
Yeah, exactly, and, and, yeah and what’s the fear behind it? And it just helps me in a lot of areas, not just evangelistically, but just in a lot of things in ministry, when people have a criticism, it does sometimes tell you something about you, about how you’re coming across. There may be something, it always tells you something about the critic, what they value, something about their life experience. And usually it’s important to take a deeper good and they’re

Steve Dewitt
always being honest. Yeah, you know, if they praise you, they you know, they may or may not being honest, but if they criticize you, it’s always from

Philip Ryken
really what they think. Yeah, yeah. All right, changing gears here, Vince, I’m going to start with you on this one. It has to do with politics. Does political emphasis in the church help or hinder the transformative work of the gospel? And how do we discern between idolatrous Christian nationalism and responsible Christian citizenship. So just two comments before you dive in on that, I mentioned that Dr Bay Coates a scholar of Abraham Kuyper. And for those who don’t know, outstanding reformed Christian journalist in the Netherlands, you could give us his exact dates,

Unknown Speaker
1937 and 1920

Philip Ryken
thought so became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, right? 1901

Unknown Speaker
in 1905 right? So,

Philip Ryken
and really a model, but not a perfect one, definitely not, but definitely a model, right? Yes, both. So this is an area of expertise for Dr baycote, I’m super interested to your answer on Christian nationalism and Christian citizenship, because TGC has asked me to do a short video giving an answer to that tomorrow, which all of them will be able to see. So you’ll know where I’m getting my good answer from. So let me pull out a pen and you can

Speaker 1
first in terms of political emphasis, to me, it’s, what does that mean in a church, is the first thing. And also, where is that church, and what’s the relationship that the people in that church have to the even the local political leaders, is anybody, is the mayor at your church or town council people at your church? Do people in your church, go to town council meetings. In other words, is there any involvement at all, actually, as citizens? So

Philip Ryken
what would be a healthy relationship locally? Let’s start local. Let’s leave national elections out.

Speaker 1
Yeah, I think encouraging people well first helping people to understand that if you’re in the United States, you have political agency that most people haven’t had in world history, and that but, but also because of that, you’re not going to find a lot directly in the Bible that is telling you about how to function in a republic like ours, in terms of, here’s what you do in a republic like ours. No that you’re going to if the experience of most people you know in the times of the Bible is more like what’s happening in first Peter in more of an exilic situation. So, so I think the question is, how are people thinking about, you know, what politics even is, honestly? Then I would say, Okay, you’re in the United States, this place with greater political agency, where you tell Hey, every little boy and girl, one day you two could be president, et cetera. We say all that stuff. Then I would say, I would just encourage people to think about how politics. Can be one of the ways that you’re seeking the good of your neighbors and and so how is our formation in the church helping people to do that, which would include the formation of people that might be the people that go into public service, but I would be wary of people thinking that the pastoral staff has competency in how you’re supposed to be doing public policy. So the idea that your expertise about public policy is coming from the pulpit, I think, is is one more thing to add to the things that the pastor was talking about from Argent heights. So, so that’s part of it. Terms of Christian nationalism thing, the first thing I would say about that is, to me, it’s important for people to think about both, how do you love all people in the world if you’re supposed to love your neighbor as yourself, and there’s no asterisk besides neighbor, that’s the first thing. And then in your more local context, how do you seek good for the country that you have, and have a proper loyalty to your country without a worship of your country. To me, that’s the difference between nationalism and proper patriotism. And I think if you’re in the United States, because of the way people sometimes think about the relationship with the United States to the faith, people need to remember that whatever you think about it, the Bible doesn’t say anything about a country on this side of the Atlantic. So we shouldn’t be thinking about the United States as some kind of special country, like another Israel or something like that. Because some people their formation says, Hey, we’re the Judeo Christian country. Here’s this narrative, etc. I’m fine to say that we’ve got Judea Christian heritage, but seeing that most of the history of our country, included, by law, antagonizing people who look like me, I think, you know, it’s like, well, what do you want to say about that Judeo Christian heritage? I mean, because if you’re doing that, then you’re trying to stage getting going into exile, if that’s the way you’re going to treat people. So that’s not what people are thinking about when they’re thinking about liberty. You know, the a lot of good things, I think, are positive American exceptionalism things, but we’re not exceptional because we’re completely good. So I think there has to be the kind of commitment to your country that you seek its good, and you seek its good, which means that you want to help the American experiment to be a continually refining experiment, but you’re also that refinement means that you’re also willing to be critical, and you’re unafraid to be critical of it, and you should be unafraid to be critical of it in the first place, because you don’t worship it right, because it’s not saving you.

Philip Ryken
Steve, you seem super excited about this coming election year, so you’ve been thinking about politics in your congregation. What do you want to jump in with?

Steve Dewitt
Well, I I’m I have to believe that most of the pastors here can relate to our experience at Bethel Church, when when covid hit, and we had, like, a couple days to get ready for the depending on where you were in the country, what level of shutdown, isolated place, all these things, it really revealed where your church was at in their understanding of the relationship between the church and Caesar. And for us, it revealed, I would say, a lot of weakness, that because all of a sudden, you know, the is that an authority I gotta listen to? Do I care about what they have to say? Do I need to submit to them or not? And our discipleship and pastoral leadership after that was kind of like trying to put the pieces back together from Romans. So this year, we are preemptively going to do a message on I’m doing a message one year before the presidential election, entitled something like, how to not lose your faith in an election year, and to proactively put into place, what is the relationship between between the church and government, between the church and Caesar as a way to hopefully diminish the rancor and the politicism within our congregation. And I would commend for all of you to consider something like that, otherwise you’re disoriented on the other side of it and dismayed, proactively disciple your people in that and that subject, say the title of the series again, well, it’s one message. Oh, it’s just a single message. I’m

Philip Ryken
doing a series on Crown Bethel, Crown Point, it’ll be on YouTube or something, right? If pastor wanted to hear what you said, they can get it. Yes,

Steve Dewitt
but you have an excuse on the one year ahead of time that you can say, I’m doing this because it’s one year ahead, right? And I think your people will listen. It

Philip Ryken
feels less pointed. What you’re so you’re committed to expository preaching. What text are you going to take? Do you know yet for that message? It’s

Steve Dewitt
September. Phil, I

Philip Ryken
haven’t got to that quite yet. So Steve’s a planner, and it’s interesting. Probably Romans 13. Yeah, maybe. And so Romans 13. It’s like that was a verse that a lot of evangelicals, evangelicals championed until it seemed inconvenient during covid, and then there were a lot of ways to kind of get around it or explain around it, which is human nature. So, yeah, go ahead. Vince, yeah,

Speaker 1
just real quick. I think one of the things thinking about seeing that TGC is an ecumenical type environment, or a sort of ecumenical environment. I also encourage people to think about, what is your tradition? How do you understand where your tradition comes from, and what’s been the way that your tradition is talked about all of this, and to what extent has that been part of the formation of your people? Because it’s an opportunity to help acquaint people with where they are in terms of what kind of church that they’re in, because if you’re a Mennonite, you’re going to be a little different. Not a whole lot of Mennonites here, I understand, I mean, but if you’re a Mennonites can be very different than if you well, there’s Kirk over there. Kirk’s a Lutheran, sorry, Kirk. Uh, we’re not sorry. Oh, he’s holding it up. All right. There we go. But, but the point is, is that those traditions, you know, people have been thinking about this for a long time, and that’s often part of the DNA of the traditions that people have. And so this is, this is an opportunity to actually understand better where you are, because where you are. I mean, if nobody’s talking about two kingdoms like they might in Lutheran context, well, are you talking more about, hey, we’re, I’m in this baptistic context where, you know, local church autonomy, and also, you know, there’s a certain kind of independence that we have, very different than what Lutheran might say, and certainly what a Presbyterian might say. And if you’re an Anglican, at least historically, it’s very, it’s very, very different. So I think those types of things are important to be thinking

Philip Ryken
about. So let’s get a perspective from halfway around the world, John, you’ve you said something that has been very helpful to me, having lived overseas the United States, growing up, like pretty much everybody within my theological orbit, had the same political viewpoint. We got to England, and it was very different, like how things lined up, what you just assumed. And these were people that were just as committed theologically on evangelical orthodoxy, reform tradition, had a very different political makeup. I know you don’t want to criticize Americans, but you’ve been here long enough to learn how to appreciate baseball, so you probably have some observation. What do you think is just good counsel you’ve come in as a brother from the outside. What are some things that Christians should be thinking about in their political engagement, or what should people in ministry be thinking about? What

John Dickson
have you observed? Well, I have a raft of thoughts. Let me just offer them, it seems to me, and perhaps I speak as an ignorant foreigner, it seems to me, there is no biblical mandate for political influence as the gospel influence in the world. It is also clear to me, just practically And historically, that the church doesn’t need any political influence in order to do gospel work. And having said that, I think Christians engaging in politics is a wonderful thing, but I want to relegate its importance compared to preaching the gospel and living a gospel community in the local church that is the true spiritual action of the world, thinking biblically and historically. It seems to me that there are only four tools that Christ has given the church to change the world. One is prayer, the other is persuasion, then there is service and suffering. I think these are the tools given to the church to change the world, and these are the tools you see the early Christians using, and they radically changed the Roman Empire with these four tools. So when I think of a new situation where, sure, people have handed Christians the keys to the condo, right, I still think those four tools should be the tools that we use in politics, prayer, persuasion, service and suffering, and with a heavy emphasis on persuasion. So I didn’t mean to imply with my dinner guest analogy that we should withdraw. I’m all for being the cheerful, open, engaging guest,

Philip Ryken
sometimes provocative, sometimes provocative,

John Dickson
but when you’re shouted down, you don’t get all sort of my rights. You just you offer your generous reply. And so politically, so long as people are engaging using the tool. Persuasion only, not backroom deals, not bully tactics, not horse trading, not betraying But relying on persuasion politics is fantastic,

Philip Ryken
and when you use the word persuasion, you’re including proclamation of biblical truth, right? That’s part of it. That’s the context. That’s what we’re using to persuade, yeah, okay, let me, let me shift gears here, probably starting with Steve on this one. Where is the balance, balance between resilience in ministry and resilience in a local church? At what point do we say this church is too much, even if we say Jesus is worth continuing in ministry elsewhere? So this is a kind of question I like because you’ve given us a really strong exhortation, like, hang in there in gospel ministry, Jesus is worth it. But that doesn’t mean there’s never a time when it’s time to make a transition, or you’re maybe in a harmful context. Do you have any like rules of thumb for helping people either worshiping in a church or providing leadership in a church, about when the costs of ministry. It’s not just that you’re not it’s not a matter of whether you’re willing to keep suffering for Jesus. You are. But there may be reasons why God is calling you to another place. How do you how do you wrestle with that?

Steve Dewitt
Well, I’ve been at Bethel for 26 years, so I’m a fan of sticking it out, and in large part, I’ve outlived my my critics, as Napoleon said, There’s nothing. There’s no sweeter smell than the rotting corpse of my enemy. That’s an overstatement in pastoral ministry.

Philip Ryken
You know, it’s this kind of analogy that’s really gotten Steve where he is in ministry.

Steve Dewitt
I’m just feeding off the historian here next to me. Well, I think that you have to decide, can I lead here anymore or not? And if the sheep do not want to follow you, then I would say the time has come for, you know, for a transition. I appreciate that question. You know, the statistics that I shared were not people that were going to quit their church, it was people that wanted to quit the ministry. And I think that there is certainly room for noble transitions that in some ways can be a somewhat of an indictment on, you know, just pig headed church people that won’t listen to God’s word. They won’t follow the leadership. I think when you get to that kind of toxicity point, then, then I think it can be something that is to the glory of God, to to transition, but stay in the ministry. Okay, stay in the ministry. I read, I think it was this jet that that, you know, the F 35 that crashed last week. They were talking about how they’re sorry to lose the plane, but they were glad to save the pilot, because they invest so much in to the pilots, in the in the US Air Force, that to lose a pilot is a tremendous loss. And I think you may not fly that particular jet anymore, but we don’t want to lose you as a as a pilot, pastor, and there’s other jets, and you can be of service. I love

Philip Ryken
that love that analogy. There’s always a risk in a sort of public panel like this. We’re speaking sort of in a general level, and Your situation may be unique and really needs care for what your situation is. So don’t, don’t make too much of what’s said in a public panel like this. I’ll just also say, if you’re in a tough ministry situation, maybe a change needs to come, but it may not be leaving. It may just be in the area of the support that you need or the approach that you’re taking, and at least give that an opportunity the Holy Spirit like I can’t do this anymore the way that I’m doing it right now, but there may be something that God has for me, maybe something I can learn about how I approach this that will enable me to persevere so that maybe needs to be taken into account somewhere in the discussion as well. I’m interested in this question, John. I’m going to start with you on this. Not going to read the whole thing, but if you really want to see it, it’s there on slido, with some of the giants in Christianity having died or are a bit older. So all right, Tim Keller died. Everybody in ministry that you know is older than they were a year ago, so we don’t need to mention any names there. But also, yeah, there have been scandals, and that’s touched TGC as well. Is there any concern about not having faces of Christianity who are prolific in writing? And speaking preaching. You know, there is a bit of a temptation with a gathering like TGC, where you’ve got people up on a stage, people speaking to a lot of people, which is a very different context than sort of the average local church that we think wrongly about success in ministry, faithfulness in ministry. What really matters in ministry? Steve, do you want to jump on in this? John, what are your thoughts you know, in having you write, you publish, how do you how do we think about all of that, and how do we think about what it means for the church?

John Dickson
I wonder whether Tim Keller’s one of Tim Keller’s greatest legacies will be the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics, because the group of people that have been assembled there is astonishing, and they are much younger than the oldies and are doing fantastic things. So I am hoping that the Keller center will be able to become a platform to encourage Christians to engage with the gospel, to engage the wider world in a thoughtful, generous, Keller esque way.

Philip Ryken
That’s one thought I have. Yeah, so, and I’m just to add to the encouragement of that, so that, for those who are not familiar, we have 24 younger apologists who are part of the work of the Keller center. And something very significant happened this spring. Those apologists come from the UK. They come from Australia. They come from the United States. You’ve seen some of their writings. You’re going to hear Andrew Wilson tomorrow. Is it Jeremy treat, who’s a Wheaton alum as part of this group? Or Rebecca McLaughlin? I mean, there’s just a really gift. Sam Chan, most people in the US don’t know, but you know, from Australia, what an outstanding ministry He has. They had an opportunity to have a deep conversation with Tim Keller. In the month before he died, Tim was at Johns Hopkins going through his treatment. He wasn’t able to meet with them in person, but he was able to have a kind of passing of the torch, sharing of a legacy. And what we really need is we need, we don’t need just one outstanding cultural apologist. We need 1000s of Christians that people want to invite over for dinner because they’re cheerful. We need 1000s of Christians who understand in a healthy way in Christian engagement with politics without making it idolatrous like we need more of all of this, and God will bless us with leaders, speakers, writers, and we can keep praying for that and for their influence in the life of the church. Any comments on this one? Steve, do you want to get in on

Steve Dewitt
it? Who’s of Apollos? Who’s of Paul? You know, the temptation has always been to towards celebrity in in the church, and you so appreciate Paul going, you know, I’m glad I didn’t baptize anymore of you, because you’d all be like talking about how Paul baptized you, and he really fought against that sort of celebrity culture. I think about the rise and the fall of Mars Hill. The podcast, which everybody probably has their own opinion on that, but I’m on the panel. I can share mine, which is that, in my local context, it was damaging and it fed the the fuel, which was mentioned earlier, that pastors are the problem and the already skeptical evangelical culture is sort of fed into that cynicism that I think overall, has been has been unhelpful. There’s lots to say about that, but it does get at the fact that there is this tension that we have in organizations like TGC between people like Tim Keller, John Piper and others who we all admire, all love to come to conferences and listen and hear and and you know, are so blessed by that And by them, and also a robust anthropology where we recognize that guy up there, preaching, amazingly gifted by the Holy Spirit, is a sinner as well, saved by the grace of God as well. And that in the church, the Spirit gives the gifts. And Corinthians, you know, they they got it all messed up. They had certain gifts. They were really, you know, thinking that was so awesome. And I think we we just need to get back to what Paul was saying to the Corinthians about deep appreciation for the gifts of the Spirit and those that possess them. Without any celebrities in the church, we don’t need celebrities.

Speaker 1
We don’t but I think one thing to keep. Mind also is, some people their gifts bring them to those places, right? And the question is, how do we help people to get if they’re there, when they get there, that they’re not, the people that are are being set up to flame out in some protect spectacular way. I think that’s one of the things to be. Because sometimes, if you’re just a really gifted person, that type of thing happens and so, and which doesn’t mean the person needs to be, you know, have a particular kind of ministry, but sometimes this stuff just appears because of gifting. And so I think part of the way of thinking about it is also alright. So what, what are we doing so that when people are moving in that direction, or things are just happening, and sometimes they happen fast, how are we helping those people to not be the person that prominence is a setup for, you know, the next scandal, I think that that’s one of the things that to also think about. I think sometimes when people criticize celebrity cultures, like, yeah, I understand that. But sometimes, why does somebody wind up being there? Well, because all these circumstances and their gifting together worked out for them to have that prominence. So so we, I think we have to be to be aware of the fact that some people wind up being that way. And then what are we doing so that when we know that that can happen? And one of the just an observation you said about that came to my mind when you’re talking about people that are that are up there, on on big stages. It is an opportunity, I guess, to ask people when they’re excited about that is to say, are you projecting onto those people everything? You are aspiring for yourself and holding them to expectations you don’t hold for yourself, or you’re, you’re, you’re giving yourself a break, but you’re not thinking about, I hope that there are people in that person’s life that are helping them to manage all of that well, rather than to be intoxicated by all that. In fact, that that’s one of the things that Kuiper didn’t do well. He was a genius, but he knew he was a genius, and he never really was able to to cultivate a successor. So and he he was brilliant, but he was arguably insufferable, so his picture’s in my office, okay, and I don’t yell at it, but, but, but, but I think that’s an important thing to recognize, is that great gifts can be greatly intoxicating, and if people are that way, then who’s helping them to say, hey, you know you’re drinking your own Kool Aid right now? Right is someone saying that to people? Are people? And are people helping them to say, you’re getting people around you that just say yes to you all the time. You need people around you to say, you realize that’s crazy. You realize that’s a fast track to flaming out. And if that’s not happening, then we shouldn’t be surprised that the flame outs happen.

Philip Ryken
Yeah, which was one of the lessons of Mars Hill, if you’ve listened to that, Steve,

Steve Dewitt
I was going to actually give it to you, Phil, because you’re the president of Wheaton College, you run in circles that are some of the personalities you’ve known, etc. Do you have any observation? Yeah,

Philip Ryken
well, just a couple. So let me start with this sort of the same heart that you expressed for people in ministry, in the local church in your remarks. That’s That’s my heart as well. And one thing that occurs to me is, if Tim Keller had never gone to New York, if he had never published a book, if he had never spoken at TGC, on the one hand, there are benefits that we all would have lost because we’ve been blessed by that ministry. But his ministry was just as faithful, just as important, just as celebratory of the surpassing worth of Jesus Christ when he was pastor of a local church in West Virginia and caring deeply about people who knew him as Tim Keller, but didn’t know him as Tim Keller. So there’s a I think, just recognizing, even for somebody like Tim Keller, there is ministry that is just as beautiful and just as faithful and very humble out of the way places, and that’s just as valuable to God. I think that’s one of the things we need to just have a healthy understanding of ministry. A couple things that have helped me, one, so here’s an example. I had an I was preaching at founders week, at Moody, and I was preaching after David Platt. David gave a terrific sermon, and I knew halfway through the sermon, my sermon is going to be good. It’s going to be helpful. It’s going to be beneficial. So it was plat then flat, it was not, it was not going to be as good, or have a in one sense, or have as much of an impact, or make as much of a connection as what David did. God gives me the grace to praise God for David Platt and his ability to preach. So just being able to like turn into praise, any thought of what somebody else can do Praise God. So I think that that’s something for us each to cultivate. And to me, it’s always going to be an identity in Christ issue that prevents you from being too elevated when people are praising you too, deflated when things don’t go the way that you hope they would in ministry, and probably, like a lot of people in ministry, there has never, ever been a message that I have given that I thought was everything it could be, everything that I wanted it to be, everything that I imagined it might Be, everything that would really measure up to the surpassing greatness of Jesus Christ. There’s always this gap that you have to live with between the reality of who you are in ministry and what you’re able to do. What helps me is more specifically what the Westminster larger Catechism says about our acceptance in Jesus Christ because of his priestly ministry. How is Christ a priest? I don’t have the whole thing memorized, but this is the gist of it. Christ is exercising a present intercessory ministry at the right hand of God, where he is praying on our behalf and our persons and our works are acceptable to God because of the intercession of Jesus Christ on our behalf. So part of what maybe a way to connect it, part of what helps us to see the surpassing greatness of Jesus and actually be people of good cheer, is to know the implications of the Atonement and the ongoing intercessory work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, not just for being saved in our personhood, but also for everything that is less than it should be in ministry. So that’s what that’s what helps me, and I think really should empower everything that we’re talking about in our own lives for ministry and in the life of the church, that’s the that’s more of the Jesus that we need to live out, and the one that is on our behalf in ministry with, with all of its ups and downs. If you came today hoping that we would have all the answers for how to help the church, so sorry. We did as best we could with with the time we had, in the questions we had, but hopefully you go away with a sense of there is hope for us in Jesus. We have an important calling for the unity of the church and for our witness in the world. Just speaking personally, I’ve been encouraged and in some ways inspired by your comments and examples. Let’s thank our panels and panelists and God Bless You.