Episode Transcript
[00:00:25] Speaker A: The recovering fundamentalist podcast starts in three.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: You know what makes women scoop?
[00:00:29] Speaker C: It is called Jesus was not a bartender. High back.
[00:00:33] Speaker D: Two. You have lost your mind.
[00:00:37] Speaker C: Long tongue heifers have given me a lot more trouble than heifers wearing bridges. And you know that. Say amen right there. One. Let me tell you something, bozo. They'll be selling frosties in hell for this. Boy puts on a pair of pink underwear. Amen. I suck my thumb till I was.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: 14 years of age.
[00:00:54] Speaker C: High bag.
[00:00:57] Speaker D: Hey, everybody. Thanks for tuning in to the recovering fundamentalist podcast. We're your host, Nathan Brian. And I'm JC. It's good to be here with you guys. Long after we are gone, that intro will live on in me. I was trying to think of a different word, but it'll live on. I love it. Every time I hear it, I'm like, it's so good.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: It's definitely notorious.
[00:01:23] Speaker D: There it is. That's the word I was looking for.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:26] Speaker D: Oh, goodness. Well, hey, Brian. Welcome to the recovering fundamentalist podcast. I feel like you're a guest with us.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like a guest. I have really missed you guys. I really missed being a part of the follow up to the let us pray documentary. But you guys did a great job. And you stated our discussed with what those people experienced and you stated the fact that there is hope. And I thought you guys did a great, great job.
[00:01:56] Speaker D: You also missed two incredible interviews with Greg Steer. That dude's awesome there to share. And you missed like episode 150 to 175. So we're glad you're back.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: I didn't miss that many. Come on, man.
[00:02:11] Speaker C: Wasn't quite that bad.
[00:02:12] Speaker D: I haven't been on in like a month and a half.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Hey, you don't have wi fi in the highways and Hedges, man. I've been out in the highways and hedges.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: Come on. So all those Easter eggs we planted for Brian JC to see if he really listened to podcast. He hasn't answered one of them.
[00:02:27] Speaker D: Yeah, he doesn't listen. I got to be honest, I don't listen either.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Easter eggs.
[00:02:33] Speaker D: Go listen.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: So you left secrets.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: We asked you questions and told stories about you and you haven't mentioned one of.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: I did. I did listen. And I heard right up front you started talking about me. But I just thought that was. You guys have verbally abused me for so long that it's become like the normal don't. I don't think about it anymore. I don't notice it.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: All in love, you know you miss us, Brian.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: I did. I missed you terribly. When I was listening to the podcast where, you know, did the follow up, man, I felt like I was really missing something. I miss being here.
[00:03:10] Speaker D: We're hoarding with us.
[00:03:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: When we have a co host who's like the brains and everything you say is profound, sometimes we just have to record without you because no one remembers what we say. So it was nice because you called me and in like five minutes talking about your view on that episode, you said way more profound things than I said. So it was nice to not stand in your shadow for once.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Brian, you know, you're going to have to repent for the rest of the day for lying.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: I'm serious, man. I get a lot more out of what you say than I get out of what I say.
[00:03:48] Speaker D: You're being too sweet.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Nothing I say is profound. And that's why we have great guests on that's right. That they can say profound things.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: That's it.
[00:03:56] Speaker D: Everything you say is on Google. So I'm excited about something.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: What is that?
[00:04:01] Speaker D: I don't know.
Chat GPT we are going to be having a Christmas Eve special on Christmas going to air at 09:00 p.m.. Eastern, and then it'll be live after that for on demand. But I'm excited about this one. Christmas is my favorite time of the year and it's just awesome opportunity for us to get together with the RFP fam and many others. And we've got some special guests coming on this year, Chosen Road. They're going to be opening up with just an incredible bluegrass Christmas song. We have a couple special guests. Mark Lowry is going to be on. He wrote a little Christmas song years ago, and you're going to get to hear the story behind that. President Mark Milioni from Baptist Bible College. He's going to be with us and many others. It's going to be a great night. We've got a big announcement that we're going to be sharing with you on that night, and I'm just fired up. Christmas Eve, 09:00 p.m. So nothing better than gathering around and listening to the recovering fundamentalist podcast on Christmas Eve. Nothing says merry Christmas like listening to us.
It's coming on Christmas Eve. I'm excited about that.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Hey, by the way, have you guys seen the video clip recently? It's a huge orchestra, and I was told this guy was on the Voice. He may have even won the voice. Have you heard him singing, Mary? Did you know?
It's unbelievable. Mark, you know we love you. I even love your little dog. And I appreciate when you let my girls know the clothes that your dog's wearing. And we don't have a dog, so they're living vicariously through that. You're so awesome and such a super nice guy. But Mary, did you know, had never been taken to the highest pinnacle until this guy, whatever his name is. Fellas, he sung that song and I mean literally broke both ends off of it. It was unbelievable.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: I haven't heard it yet. I would like to hear that. Send me that link, Brian, I think his name's.
[00:06:04] Speaker D: He went to Lee University. I'm pretty sure it's really good.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: It's unbelievable, man.
[00:06:11] Speaker D: That boy's getting some royalty fees from that song. Pentatonix has done it. Mary, did you know? Yes.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: I wish I'd written it.
[00:06:19] Speaker D: She knew.
I'm excited.
Hey, we also want to thank free life soap for the only sponsor of the recovering fundamentalist podcast all these years. You could check them out today. Makes great stocking stuffers. Go to recoveringfundamentalist.org. Click on the free life soap tab. Use your promo code RFP. Get 20% off of your order, guys. Can you believe it is almost 2024?
Year number five is getting ready to start for the recovering fundamentalist podcast. That's unbelievable.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Yeah. I can't believe it. But I did stand up in church two Sundays ago and said in my introduction, I was like, first of all, I just want to say that I can't believe it's almost Christmas time. Where is 2024 gone? And everybody in the church started laughing. And it's just one of those moments. I didn't know if I had my shirt on inside out or if I said something, but I just kept going. But the first person that came up to me after church let me know that it was 2023, not 2024. So this week I had my introduction already pre written. All I had to do is get up and say, hey, I know what year it is this year. I know 2024 is not here yet. I don't have dementia. I just said it wrong. But the problem with that was it was in my notes. I actually typed out, where has 2024 gone?
Maybe I do have a little touch of something.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Nathan, I can make you feel better. A friend of mine in North Carolina pastors a church. About five or 600 people stood up on a Sunday morning. His fly was unzipped. It was so bad that his white shirt was sticking out of the fly of his pants. His wife, they were in the back waving their arms, trying to get his attention he wouldn't notice them. He didn't see them. And it just so happened that day. His sermon title was, you ain't seen nothing yet.
[00:08:15] Speaker D: Oh, no.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: And he preached the whole sermon, you ain't seen nothing yet. With his fly open, the crowd kept laughing. And what made it worse is he thought they thought he was funny that day. So as they're laughing and responding and reacting, he was just getting worse and worse and worse. And at one point in time, he actually left the platform, stood up on the front pew. So now his fly is eye level with everybody.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: He said, you ain't seen nothing yet. And everybody just busted out laughing.
[00:08:53] Speaker D: Oh, my.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: I don't feel so bad about mine anymore. Brian got the year wrong.
[00:09:00] Speaker D: Yeah. You know what I'm learning is the older my kids get, the more that they make fun of stuff that I say in the pulpit, or they are quick to let me know. You two have been telling me that your families make fun of you all the time for stuff that you say in the pulpit. My son came down Sunday and he's like, dad, do you know what you said? No. He's like, you said, jesus wrapped Joseph in swaddling clothes and laid him in a.
Oh, no, I definitely said that. I also said that Jesus was born in. Raised in Bethlehem. So, yeah, I'm loving.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: You were close.
[00:09:32] Speaker D: I was.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Got all the names.
[00:09:33] Speaker D: Journey.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:35] Speaker D: You know the story. I'm just adding a twist.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:39] Speaker D: Oh, goodness. Well, we are excited today to have a guest with us, and Nathan has actually written up an incredible introduction for you. I just want to introduce our guests.
This is the first time in the history of the Recovering Funnels podcast that we're actually reading an introduction of one of our guests. And so, Trevin, congratulations. You have made it to the pinnacle of awesomeness of recovering fundamentalist podcast. Trevin Wax is the vice president of research and resource development at the North America Mission Board. He's a visiting professor at Wheaton College. He's a former missionary to Romania and is a regular columnist of the Gospel Coalition and has contributed to the Washington Post, Religion News services, world, and Christianity Today, which named him one of the 33 millennials shaping the next generation of evangelicals. Some of his books are rethink yourself. This is our time and gospel centered teaching. Him and his wife have three children, and we're excited to have Trevin Wax on the recovering fundamentalist. Yes, we are today.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Trevin, welcome, guys.
[00:10:51] Speaker C: It's really good to be here. Thanks for having me on.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Have you ever been interviewed on a more scattered introduction than you have to take the cake.
[00:11:03] Speaker C: Yeah, there we go. Interviews. But I would say this one definitely is one of the more scattered introductions. But yes, very entertaining when you have.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Our intro and then you have three guys with add that love to talk over each other, best friends. I mean, you just never know what's going to happen.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: Yeah. My first question about Brian's story that I just heard was with the guy that said that the church hadn't seen anything yet. It was like, is there a video clip of this? Because I think it go viral. And the pastor could make a lot of money.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: He could.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: I can check with his family and ask. And by the way, if we take the cake, guys, I like, so that. That means good.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: That's a compliment.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Yeah. So apparently the recovering fundamentalist is the best. We take cake.
[00:11:53] Speaker D: Listen, if Mark Ward can sit in a room with us and record four episodes, as scattered as we are, I think anybody can make.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. Well, Trevin, Brian, JC and myself, we know a little bit about your background, but it was a surprise to us when we found out that you were raised in fundamentalism. So would love to hear your story of growing up in fundamentalism and the good, the bad, the ugly of what that looked like and just introduce us to yourself.
[00:12:24] Speaker C: Yeah, for me, I don't think of myself as necessarily, I haven't been raised in fundamentalism as much as I think of the first ten years of my life.
My church, my school was independent Baptist, and that's where I learned the gospel.
That's where I realized really quickly that what goes on at church and what it is that we are singing about and hearing preached.
I just realized very quickly because of the ethos, the environment that I was growing up in, that there are eternal things at stake in what we're actually saying we believe at church. And I can remember some of my earliest memories are being in church with all these other people, all these different generations of people, and me standing on the pew at like five, six years old because I wasn't tall enough to see otherwise, and singing he is Lord. And hearing that across the auditorium, across the sanctuary. And I remember vividly when I was baptized. I was eight years old when I got baptized.
And so for me, my first ten years, it was really just, I got a really strong dose of the Bible. I learned Bible verses in school. We learned Bible verses in church. We learned, you know, and so I grew up in that sort of independent baptist environment. And it wasn't for me that I would think of myself as being raised in fundamentalism, it was just, this is the Christianity I know. Like, this is just all there is.
I think what changed for me, and I started to see the kingdom was bigger than the little place that I had grown up was. My parents joined a southern baptist church plant when I was in 4th, 5th grade, around that time. And of course, that caused a lot of drama in the church to some extent, because it was like, why would you leave the perfect place to go to an obviously imperfect place? But because I was still in that christian school, I suddenly had this dual identity.
My church context was one in which there was more expository preaching and there was a real emphasis on the text, on Christ centeredness, on things like that. Culturally, it was somewhat different.
Music wasn't really contemporary, but they were a little more open to just different styles and things like that and worship. The Bible translation was different, all that kind of thing. That was never really an issue for me. But my teenage years were challenging because I was in a fundamentalist school and at the same time was in a southern baptist church. And so I had to deal with recognizing that they weren't aligned in every way. And a lot of the things that the school and that preachers and teachers and people would talk about were things I didn't agree with anymore or I had never really agreed with anyway. And so I basically had to kind of forge that identity of thinking for myself, even as a teenager, to say, I know what my teachers are saying here, they're just wrong.
I would debate back and forth with them. And sometimes it kind of put me in that spot where I had a little bit of a bigger view of what the kingdom was, rather than what just was in that particular environment.
My teenage years were such that I kind of had that dual experience happening at the same time, but was really formative in shaping for me because it gave me the opportunity to think for myself, to figure out why I believed what I believe, to kind of grow into my relationship with the Lord, to get closer to him and to recognize both the good things from my upbringing and some of the things that the church, I think, is just that the church gets wrong and sometimes separates unnecessarily.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: From other believers about, well, in fundamentalism, you have to share your pedigree. So we need to know how fundamentalist you really are.
[00:16:57] Speaker C: Well, I think the question for me would be, so from the standpoint of the fundamentals of the faith, if you're talking about those books that came out, I'm down for almost everything in those. I mean, a little bit of question on exactly the way some of the people took some of the end time stuff. But overall, the fundamentals of the faith in the eyes of the world, I am a fundamentalist because I believe all the fundamentals of the faith and think they are vitally important and believe liberalism is an acid that eats away at orthodoxy.
From that standpoint, I'm still a fundamentalist. From the standpoint of the kind of fundamentalist kind of culture environment we're talking about, I'd have to go back more to family than just than myself because my grandfather was the printer for the sword of the Lord in Illinois and moved to Tennessee when the sword moved to Tennessee in the. If John Rice and the sword of the Lord had not moved to Tennessee, I would probably not be here right now because my parents met at the independent baptist church that they were a part of. It was the same church that John O'Rice went.
So basically, my upbringing, my family story, if you go back just a generation or so, is really interwoven with the fundamentalist movement.
If you're talking about pedigree, I guess I would say John Rice is in my sort of family history as a really influential figure. And to the point that you listen to my grandparents talk about, they were both Bob Jones graduates, and there was a fallout between John Rice and Bob Jones, Jr. And, I mean, I remember grandma telling me it felt like a divorce in the, like it was just such a difficult situation when that took place and them feeling like they had to pick sides and stuff like that. So they would talk about their experiences as well back in that time and in that movement. And it's just really fascinating to look at that history.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Wow. So you said something a moment ago when you were talking about the fact that now you're able to look back and see the good in your upbringing while you acknowledge the bad and those things that were wrong, you're able to see that there was good along the way.
Unfortunately, in our audience, we're finding that there are a lot of people who move from the place of fundamentalism to no faith at all.
They can't see themselves existing in the christian world outside of fundamentalism, or they discredit all of the christian world as a result of their time and their experience in fundamentalism. I know deconstruction is something that you've talked a lot about that you've been heavily involved in. So a couple of questions. The people who deconstruct, are there people who are genuinely followers of Jesus Christ, and deconstruction is the result of confusion.
Would you say the majority of people who deconstruct were never believers in the first place, and they actually need to come to know who Jesus Christ really is and not the Jesus that their religion or their religious heritage preached. So can you talk just a little bit about deconstruction? And how would you encourage those in our audience who are struggling, having left fundamentalism with where they land on a genuine relationship with Jesus, who, by the way, hasn't failed just because they've been religiously failed in the past?
[00:20:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I hesitate to answer a question like that with a blanket answer because every story is so different, and every person's faith journey or deconstruction journey or however they describe it is just so different. So to want to say, well, I think most are probably were never actually believers, or to say most, they actually still are believers, but they're not in church or what.
I have to think pastorally, and I have to think about the person across the table from me in conversation rather than in sort of the overarching picture of things like that.
What's sad to me, when I think about the deconstruction phenomenon, there's lots of reasons, there's lots of motivations. I don't think anybody knows their heart well enough to know even why, to be able to untangle all of the reasons why someone moves away from the faith or may think they're walking away from Jesus or the church.
I will say what's frustrating to me and what's really saddening to me is, and this can happen, and this tends to happen more in fundamentalist circles, is certain things can be put on the same level with the fundamentals to where there's no real distinction between what are the actual essentials of the faith and what are cultural things or things of wisdom or areas that we. Well, this is kind of where we land, but here's why, and other christians may disagree, because those get flattened. And it's all one type thing. What I saw happen, even with some of the people I went to school with, is basically, if you grow up and basically Bible translation is on the same level as the virgin birth. Well, once you suddenly realize the Bible thing, that's a croc, that's a conspiracy theory. Then suddenly, well, then you wonder about the whole. It all starts to unravel because they've all been on the same level for you. It's the same thing with Bible music and women wearing pants, or it's on the same level as contemporary christian music or whatever it might be. If you can't notice the distinctions between these things, what happens is when one of those pillars starts to fall, then everything else begins to unravel. And I've seen that happen in a lot of people's lives. And what's frustrating to me is I think some churches, in thinking they're taking a strong stand, are actually setting up the stage for people when they actually realize that some of the things that they've been told didn't necessarily pan out or were not necessarily as big of a deal as it was made to be or whatnot. They're not able to disentangle some of those traditional things from the actual essentials of the faith because everything is on the same level.
I think that's one of the challenges that's difficult for me, is when I look at someone and they're having a really hard time disentangling and they wind up deconstructing instead.
But I'm always wanting to pull people back to Jesus as the center of the faith. It's ultimately all about him. And I don't think that if I'm sitting across the table for someone who's questioning Jesus, wondering about mean, what I want to do is encourage them, lead them back into God's word, into the gospels where they can encounter Jesus afresh. Because at the end of the day, he is the one who is pulling people, drawing people back to himself. He's the one.
And God still works through his word. And so whatever I can do, even if they're not willing to go to church for a while or whatever, if I can just go back to know at the end of the day, because that to me is where I want people to be able to disentangle maybe a difficult or a bad church experience from Jesus himself.
Jesus had the harshest words against those who were misusing the temple or those who were. I mean, you think about Jeremiah and his words about the bad shepherds in Jeremiah, you think about that being if you can somehow line up the heart of God with justice and righteousness in the church and you can recognize that God shares that heart and the same God of compassion towards us. To those who've been bruised or hurt by the church in some way, that God is still working there and working in his church and working through his church and working, obviously speaking to us through his word, then I think you can set the stage for a better conversation that could lead to someone being drawn back, maybe not to exactly the same place where they left or where they felt like they were let down by the church, but still to come back to Christ and then eventually to recognize his bride is still there. And even with all the warts and.
[00:25:33] Speaker D: Blemishes, she is know, Trevin, that's exactly why we started the recovering fundamentalist podcast. It's our mission that has been since day one to help and encourage those whose lives have been negatively affected by fundamentalist legalism in the church, and then to challenge those that promote tradition over scripture. I mean, that is the heartbeat of what the recovering fundamentalist podcast is.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll never forget, JC, when you called me, I think it was like 02:00 in the morning, and you were like, have you ever listened to a podcast? And I was like, yeah, you're like, we need to do one. And I remember you went looking for something on x fundies or something like that, and he couldn't find anything.
[00:26:17] Speaker D: Legalism.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: Yeah. The only thing he could find on being a former fundamentalist was atheistic in basically people that have completely left the faith. So that was really our heart of man. No one's talking about this. Let's encourage people who are leaving fundamentalism like we did, or the wrong kind of fundamentalism like we did, to turn to Jesus, turn back to the Bible, rather than just saying, oh, nothing was true. Because of what I was taught in the pulpit was wrong, because everything that.
[00:26:50] Speaker D: Was out there was all this is what the church did to me. There's no way that God could love me because of this. And because of that, I don't want anything to do with him. And so it was all just deconstruct, deconstruct complete from their faith. I'm like, hold up. We still love Jesus. We still believe the fundamentals of the Bible. The gospel is our foundation, but we're so caught up in man made ideologies and traditions and preference preached as, yeah, get away from that. And that's know the podcast has been going, and I'm so glad there's tons of podcasts out there now talking about this exact thing.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Yeah, and Trevin, I haven't read your book yet before you lose your faith, but I know that was written to address this problem, and you can mention that. But I honestly think that your work on gospel centered teaching and your work on the gospel project, which all of us have used at one time or another and are still using, I think that is probably the answer to the problem of deconstruction. Because if you truly root these kids in the gospel, and if they're taught that as a child, that keeps them from going that direction. Can you speak into that?
[00:28:08] Speaker C: Yeah, first, before you lose your faith. I've got one chapter in there that's a multi contributor book. And basically I'm just writing heart to heart to someone who's considering walking away, really encouraging them to doubt their doubts, to actually interrogate their doubts as much as they're interrogating the faith that they think about walking away from.
So that's what that's about for gospel center teaching and for the gospel project.
At the end of the day, the power is in the message, right? The spirit is working through the gospel. So the gospel center teaching, I really wrote just for Sunday school teachers and for small group leaders who are tasked with getting into God's word once a week with different people, whether they're teaching young people, children, college students, whether they're adults, teaching adults. But asking the question, okay, this is a buzword, gospel centered. Like, what does it actually mean to flesh that out and to ask the questions, okay, how does this passage of scripture fit, or how does this whatever we're studying in the Bible, how does it fit into the overarching narrative of scripture? That's number one, because you need that worldview. I think you need that understanding both of the Bible's big storyline and also how that corresponds or doesn't correspond with what the world says to be true about our world. So that's asking that question. It's like helping you put the whole Bible together. Rather than just seeing these little isolated stories, you see them as connected to this bigger story that's all about Jesus. The second question of asking is about how this points to does even if you're in the Old Testament, what's the road that you're going to get to where you're eventually going to show up Jesus there?
That second question is meant to keep us from slipping into a moralism because you can still talk about Jesus a lot and not actually be presenting him as know. Joel Osteen talks about Jesus a lot, but he's a little bit more like a life hear. Sometimes fundamentalist preachers teach about Jesus a lot, but he's as legalistic as the Pharisees who he was.
You know, Mormons talk about Jesus and it's still a cult. So at the end of the day, you can talk about Jesus and not actually be presenting him as.
So I'm asking the question, how does this point us to Jesus, both in terms of storyline and in terms of root, when we're telling someone to live a certain way? Because the Bible does. How is that flowing from the gospel, how is that rooted in the gospel? Because otherwise our minds immediately default back to self justification. This is how I prove I'm right with God. This is how I stay right with God.
We just immediately go back to, I've got to keep all the rules to make sure that I'm good with God and that I'm not going to get smacked again or something like that. And that's not the relationship that God is having with us or the kind of relationship that comes from the gospel itself. And then the last question I'm asking is, how does this point us toward mission? Where does this move us?
What is this passage of scripture doing to equip us to be the people God has called us to be? So my goal has been with the gospel project for kids, students, adults, has been to take that sort of dna of gospel center teaching and just flesh it out in terms of curriculum and been one of the privileges of a lifetime to work on that. I think at one point, at its height, it was about 1.7 million people were using that every week. Every week. And to be able to work with that team and work on that resource was just really one of the things I look back on and just wowed that God gave me the opportunity to help start that.
[00:32:02] Speaker D: That's awesome.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: So talking about kids, the gospel deconstruction, all of those things.
If I can just ask maybe for you to clarify, to give clarity to a difficult question.
As a pastor, I have parents now who are constantly saying, I'm watching my young person leave the church. Not only leave the church, but leave the faith.
How can you explain to parents the difference between bringing your children up in the church and bringing your children up in Christ?
Because so many parents are saying, I've brought them up in church, but somewhere from the church to the home, there's a breakdown. Can you speak to that since you work with the gospel project? And the heart of that is to point children to the gospel, which is a beautiful thing, by the way. I appreciate the weightiness of the gospel project as a great resource.
How do we point parents to bringing your child up in Christ is different than bringing your child up in the church?
[00:33:13] Speaker C: Yeah, I'd want to be careful about putting a dichotomy there, because if the church is the body of Christ, then bringing a child up in church is one way that we're seeking to bring them up in Christ. I think what happens today, though, and I think this is what you're getting at, is a lot of parents, it's just easy to think that you're sort of outsourcing discipleship to the church or to the christian school even, or that basically your responsibility is to put them in the right environment and then everything else, like the youth pastor helps take care of that and the children's minister or the sunny school helps teach them this thing or that thing.
I think that's a simplistic way of seeing that. And I don't think that's a problem just in sort of fundamentalist type churches. I think that's a problem across evangelicalism, really. Is this idea that, well, if I take them to church, they'll get the right moral sort of bearing and ballast and they'll be all right in the end. At the end of the day, though, I don't want my kids to just be happy, successful, balanced, successful adults.
I get that a lot of parents, that is kind of what they're hoping for and that I just don't want my kids to embarrass me somehow or whatnot. At the end of the day, though, I want my kids to love Jesus. I really want them to love Jesus. And so having them be part of a church is one aspect of that, but it's just one aspect of that. And so when I think about the, I know I've told parents, and as I'm looking at different statistics and surveys and things like that, it's interesting. There's no formula that means your kid's going to turn out being a Jesus. Follow a Jesus loving Christian, train up a child is a proverb, not a promise. So there's all sorts of, I don't think we would say that the father and the story of the prodigal son is necessarily bad because he had one prodigal who left and he had one basically Pharisee who stayed.
That's the picture of God.
Some parents, I think, may be overly harsh with themselves because they're blaming themselves because one child is wandering or straying or whatnot, or building a testimony, as we like to say that as well.
But it is interesting if you look at the different things that have been common in the lives of children who have stayed and not left the church in college or in their 20s. Lifeway research did a survey a few years ago of kids. They were like in their 20s, late twenty s, thirty s, and basically that never left the church, never left the faith. And they looked what were the commonalities in these families? And there were several things that were right at the top. I mean, reads the Bible on their own, was the number one thing, like, if you can get your kid to love the Bible and to want to read the Bible, not because they have to, but because they're memorizing for a test or a Sunday school thing or an awana verse thing, but because they see that as spiritual sustenance by the time they're in their teenage years. And I don't just mean, like, legalistically assigning. You have to read this to where they develop a taste for it. That's the number one thing.
Knowing how to pray. Praying is, of course, number two, serving in the church was number three, I think, not just going to church, but recognizing that they have a role, that they have a contribution to make to the church. They're not just consumers, but they're running the soundboard, or they're passing out bulletins, or they're taking up the offering, or they're helping with children's church or whatnot.
They're volunteering at VBS and whatnot. Those elements being involved in missions was on there. But the other one, the one that was really surprising, was listens predominantly to christian music as kids and teenagers. So don't underestimate, Augustine said, we sing the faith into our hearts. And I think there's something to be said. I don't know about you guys, but I can remember all the top songs when I was a senior in high school, every word one of those songs comes on the radio. If it was like, I remember what was big in CCM at the time, and I remember what was big on the radio, secular music at the time. I don't forget those. I have a hard time memorizing new songs today. But you bring me a song from 1999, and, man, I got the whole thing. There's something about the impressionability of our testified of love.
[00:37:47] Speaker D: Sorry, I just broke into some 90s cream.
[00:37:49] Speaker C: Testified of love. And look, you know the most, right?
[00:37:52] Speaker D: I do.
[00:37:53] Speaker C: See, it's real. It's real. No, but there's so much to be gleaned from just christian music being a big part of growing up that you, as parents, as dads and moms like you sing. I remember my dad would take us to school in the morning, and he put on those old, like, Marinatha cds.
They weren't amazing from a quality standpoint, but dad would be singing these worship songs just like, fist pumping the air kind of worship songs. And I think that's formative. And dad didn't even have a great voice or anything. It was just like us saying that dad loves God and dad is going to praise him outside of the church really cares. I think all of that stuff is stuff that contributes. Once again, though, there's no formula. If you think if you just do all the right things, suddenly that kids are going to turn out loving Jesus, that's just not the way relationships work. It's not the way that Christianity works either. But there are some things that I see that say, hey, this is kind of deuteronomy six, like repeating the truths as you go in and on your out. And while you're on the way or in the car, discipleship happening in the everyday rhythms of life and not being relegated to just Sunday morning.
[00:39:18] Speaker D: Man, that's good. My kids hate when we go on trips because I'll put on this 90 ccm and sing every word of it.
Velasquez to Avalon, to Bob Carlisle. I love that 90s stuff.
[00:39:31] Speaker C: That's good. The late 90s was a good season for CCM. It really was.
[00:39:36] Speaker D: Theme song came from the 90s. Carmen who's in the house? JC.
[00:39:40] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:39:42] Speaker D: I always dreamed of being a WWF wrestler, and that was my theme song when I walked out.
[00:39:47] Speaker C: Somewhere, someplace on video is me in inner city Knoxville with my youth group, lip singing Carmen's the champion while it was being acted out. Let's go somewhere. Me as like a 15 year old. If you've ever heard my voice, you can hear me now. Sounds nothing like Carmen narrating the champion. But somewhere on video that exists. I haven't seen that in a long time. Hope never too.
[00:40:14] Speaker D: But it's out there you got to see someday. Trevin Brian does some incredible interpretive movements to every casting crown.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: It's a gift.
You can try to run from a gift, but you just can't hide from it.
[00:40:30] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:40:30] Speaker D: I love what you just said.
Majority of my time in the last 20 years in ministry has been in student and college ministry. And one of the things we always said was, we want you to own your faith. If one of the most heartbreaking things watching as a youth pastor and college pastor is when they get to college, how many people, their faith is as shallow as a chicken coop. I mean, it's a mile wide and an inch deep. It's mom and daddy's faith. It's youth pastor's faith. It's what felt good while they were in high school. But then when they get to that first philosophy class and that professor starts poking holes in their faith, man, it looks like swiss cheese. Because they don't know who they are. They haven't owned their faith. And I believe that what happens a lot of times, even in college, is that they get these counterfeit gospels and they start listening to all kinds of half truths or different truths or different ways and analogies, and they get mixed up, and because they don't have a foundation to stand on, they start believing anything and everything. You wrote a book called the Counterfeit Gospels, and the heart of our christian faith is the gospel. And when those messages start getting twisted and changed and lost, we lose the power of our faith. I'd love for you to just tell us, what are some counterfeit gospels that you have seen?
[00:41:49] Speaker C: Yeah, so in that book I go through several different kinds and different flavors. I mean, one of them is what I call the therapeutic gospel, which is basically, God exists to make me happy, right?
God just wants me to be happy.
And I think a lot of people, if you look at the moralistic, therapeutic deism which is dominant in our society, a lot of people have that view of life, right, of that view of faith. That's what it's there for. And of course there's some truth to that, because God does want us to be happy in him, and as he defines happiness, to find our happiness in him, not in what he can do for us only.
But it goes wrong when that becomes the purpose of faith.
Moralism is a clear one, obviously, since the time of Galatians, all the way to the Augustine and Pelagis debates, to the reformation. I mean, the moralism of God blesses me because I do the right thing, God saves me. It's all about behavior change. That's really what God is after.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: I'm sorry, is that the one that you would say aligns closest with legalism, or legalism is a form of that for sure.
[00:43:13] Speaker C: What's funny about it is that it doesn't show up, though, in just the kinds of strict legalistic churches you're talking about. People wind up with moralistic view whenever, for example, life doesn't go the way that they think they should. They feel like God didn't hold up his end of the bargain, so it doesn't matter. Moralism is the default setting of the human heart. So it shows up in more legalistic forms. Yes, it can show up in fundamentalist type churches. Yes, but it's just everywhere good people go to heaven when they die, even though that is not something that's taught in fundamentalist churches. The idea, though, that basically Christianity is all about do's and don'ts is something that can take root in any kind of. I mean, whether it's IFB or Nazarenes or some southern Baptist or wherever it might be. So it's just something to always be looking for, I think, is moralism, some of the other counterfeits. I mean, there's the judgmentless gospel that basically sort of functional universalism that's out there. There's ways of privatizing and personalizing the gospel to where it's not really public news. It's just sort of a personal, private type thing. There's activist gospels where everything is all about the impact that the church is making in the world, almost like the social gospel in some way, where it's just all about doing good things and changing the world through politics or whatever it might be. I include churchless gospel in there as well because I feel like we live in an age when most people think of their faith only in terms of only as individuals, and they don't recognize that the church is not an afterthought in the purposes of God. It's not the fine print at the bottom of a gospel presentation. Oh, now you must join.
To become a Christian is to be welcomed into the family of like, that's the whole reason why we have adoption, that's why we have even justification has a horizontal element to it.
When Paul confronts Peter for the way he was disassociating with other people at the table, there was a horizontal aspect to justification that is on display there in.
Yeah, the churchless gospel was another one as well. But going back to what you guys said about the college situation, I honestly don't know that it's the philosophy class or the psychology class itself. What's happening intellectually that is the most dominant or the primary reason why people drift from the faith in college.
I think it's actually more about the environment than it is necessarily the teaching. In a secular school especially, you're living in an environment in where God is irrelevant.
God is just absent.
He makes absolutely no difference in the ethos of the place. So I am less concerned about sort of the mean atheist professor in a movie like God's not dead, and way more concerned about the nice, moral, very kind atheistic professor who lives a life completely on the horizontal level without any idea of transcendence and seems to be fine with that. That really rattles the faith of someone who thinks all the atheists are the mean guys, the new atheist types that are coming after them, bullying them and things like that.
The main reason people, I think, college students drift away from their faith in college is because they stop going to church.
That's where the breakdown happens, they think campus ministry will cover that, or they think that they just kind of get out of the habit or whatnot. And if you go weeks, months, years without being with people who every Sunday morning believe Jesus Christ was really raised from the dead, well, that seems to become less plausible to you as you begin to be in this environment and you breathe this air of God's irrelevance all day long, all the time. And so that's really where I think the college we've got to raise the bar on. Hey, when we send a kid off to college, we need to connect them with churches in the area and follow up with them and care about them as parents, as youth pastors, as whatnot. That they be involved in congregation during those college years if they're going to stay strong.
[00:47:39] Speaker B: Hey, I've never heard anybody say that before, but me and my wife did that for both of our two older kids who went to college. We instinctively knew. I even called pastors, had conversations with them, sent my kids some options. We even went and visited churches with them the first time to make sure. So I just had a big time flashback there to six, seven years ago when my first son went. And then when my daughter went for a couple of years into lanaga, that that was the most important thing to us. One went to a public college, one went to a christian college. But in both of them, we were just absolutely dogmatic that they needed to be plugged into a church and they had the option, but we did a lot of research to make sure that there were some good options.
[00:48:28] Speaker D: You know, another side of that, Trevin guys, is a lot of churches don't necessarily know what to do with college students.
A lot of churches look at them as glorified volunteers. Like, okay, they're not in student ministry anymore, but hey, we need you to serve in the nursery. You're young, you have a lot of free time, you can drive, and a lot of churches, sadly, when the college students show up, it's, hey, just come sit and volunteer. And so I think there's a push there for churches to pay attention to this demographic that is very like, they need some structure, they need some stuff that's for them, that's going to speak into their world right there where they're at, other than just looking at them as a glorified volunteer, they're out of student ministry. But now they've got put. This is the opportunity where I always said kids ministry is where you're learning about Jesus. High school and middle school is where it starts formulating in your life, but college is where you start putting it to action. And now that they're putting their faith into action, it's like we're just like, hey, go volunteer in the nursery, which is great, but there's nothing for them. And this is speaking as a college pastor. I mean, we wanted to create a home away from home for college students that was welcoming them in, but involving them in part of the church, not replacing their church, not saying, hey, you got to join us here and tithe and be this where that came as a result of being part of who we are. But I just think there's a lot of churches, and I'm speaking as a pastor now of a church plan, that I'm guilty. I have nothing for college ministry. But we have some small groups. There's some older adults that are adopting them, if you will, while they're coming in and giving them opportunities to learn and to grow. And I just think that's a demographic that the church fails a lot of times is because we don't know what to do for them.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: I think also, we forget that conformity happens in community.
[00:50:20] Speaker D: You're right.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: And evil communication does corrupt good manners. And I think I see a lot of our kids going away to college.
And right now, the atmosphere is not only is it okay to be gay, it suddenly invites you into this close knit community. You become a victim of some kind where you need other people who are living that lifestyle to rally around you. It's now no longer just acceptable to be transgender. It's now becoming actually almost hero status you're given because you're so brave to let your true identity be known. And I hear people asking the question, how is this happening? It's because conformity happens in community. And when you are not around a community of believers who are speaking truth into your life on an ongoing basis, which is something that all of us desperately need. Even when you look through the New Testament, you see how believers influence one another and live life together. And Paul writes to the church, this is not just for an individual. This is for the church to adopt and to accept this truth and to then perpetuate this truth. So, I think this deconstruction thing that you're talking about, and, by the way, thank you for talking about it. It's desperately needed. Thank you for bringing not only a gospel centered, educated voice to the conversation, but also a person who cares about it. So, thank you for that, because this is a serious issue, and the church needs to equip the saints for the work of the ministry of effectively discipling the next generation.
[00:52:07] Speaker C: Yeah, I really am passionate about this and feel like the next season of the church, our witness, needs to be one of rebuilding and reconstructing. And so then the name of my podcast is reconstructing faith rather than deconstructing faith. And it's more of a narrative style podcast, like a documentary kind of a podcast, where we're talking with different guests about different topics and challenges and things that are being faced. One of them obviously, dealing with the next generation, but also the crisis of masculinity in our society. Everything to the d churching phenomenon that's taking place. And the sex abuse scandals and crises that have really is a scourge in multiple denominations, in multiple groups. And what does that look like? It's interesting.
The very first episode of the first season that we did, I talk about how when I was a missionary student in Romania, there was an american pastor who would come and visit us and pour into us as students and would encourage us and equip us. And I asked him, hey, tell me, this is 20 years ago now. I was like, hey, tell me, who are the pastors I should be listening to in the United States to kind of keep abreast of what's going on back home and whatnot? And he recommended Rob Bell and James McDonald.
And what is fascinating to me is, just a few years later, of course, Rob Bell is basically out of ministry for doctrinal reasons. James McDonald now is, I won't go rehash all of the drama around James.
And that pastor who recommended those two to me is now in jail for sexual abuse of a minor. And so I think, okay, I was like, early 20 something, wanting to know who to look up to. And all three of the people in that little scenario that I would have looked up to are out of ministry. And it's just heavy thinking through.
This is the situation that we're in. And I have to ask myself, I'm like, well, no wonder there are people my age and others who are deconstructing. I mean, heroes are shown to be villains, and you're trying to figure out how you make sense of what's going on in the church in all sorts of horrifying, sometimes horrifying situations.
But we're in that moment, though. At the end of the day, my passion is this. We've got to be able to do two things at the same time.
Remove the rot and fortify the foundations. And a lot of people think you can only do one or the other. So conservative types are prone to defend the rot because they think they're protecting the institution.
Progressive types tend to blow up the entire thing, foundations and all, because they want to purge the institution. And what is necessary for our generation is to. No, no, neither one of those impulses serve us well. We will not defend the indefensible.
That actually does not reflect well on Jesus Christ and actually leads to more crises of faith in the future. So we will resist that impulse to protect the reputation of the church at all costs. We can remove the rot and do whatever we need to do to take a sledgehammer to some of the walls and remove the rod if we have to, and even take it down to the studs if we have to. But at the end of the day, we're also not going to do what happens on the progressive side, which is to blow up the foundations, to basically dispense with orthodoxy as it's been handed down for 2000 years. And to say that these fundamentals don't actually matter when they do, you don't have a house without that. And the progressive tendency is just to keep bombing the rubble and at some point you got to build something. And so my passion with that podcast and with this season that we're in is asking that question of how do we rebuild?
Even if we can't rebuild every part of the wall like in Nehemiah's day, is there a portion of the wall that we have a passion for and a gift for that we could help reconstruct? You can't do everything, but you can do something, almost everybody can do something to help rebuild the witness and the health of the church in the next know.
[00:56:31] Speaker A: When I look at the world right now, I think about guys, I think about Peter walking on the water in the gospels that we're now living in a world of waves and wind, and everywhere you look there's big waves and there's strong gusting winds. More importantly than ever, I think we just constantly need to be arrows pointing people to their need to keep their eyes on Jesus.
Right now I'm easily distracted. I need to keep my eyes on Jesus. And if we keep our eyes on him, he's altogether lovely. If we keep our eyes on him, he's altogether holy, he's altogether caring and compassionate, he's altogether righteous. He never fails. And I think we have to keep the message of Jesus preeminent, just as Jesus belongs in that place of preeminence. Keep your eyes on kind. I catch myself saying that now to people all the time, if I can.
[00:57:29] Speaker C: Add one thing to that analogy, I love when you have that analogy of the storm and the wind and whatnot. There's one other picture to have is of a tree that's standing tall but is very deeply know. I know we think, Trevin, you mean, you know, we just need to be rooted in the Bible, rooted in the. Yes, yes and yes. But we also have got to be rooted in church history to be able to keep our bearings. When the wind is blowing significantly, the tree that is most rooted is the one that's going to stay standing. And so when I say church history, I mean obviously we've talked about my past. I don't look though at the independent Baptist movement as necessarily being my roots. I look at my roots in the apostolic witness of the New Testament. I look all the way back through church history. Irenaeus is mine, Augustine is mine. Luther, Calvin, Knox, Zwingli, they're all mine. Like I look all the way back through the reformation and beyond. Anselm is mine. I can look back and we have so many roots that go way down deep. Not because church fathers or people throughout history got everything right. They didn't in lots of cases, but because the essentials of the faith we can see passed down to us for 2000 years. And once you recognize just how deep this faith goes, then I think we're more likely to stand tall when the winds are blowing and able to look at Jesus like you just said, like every other generation before us. Because it's not like we're the first generation with cultural winds blowing. We're one of a long line know of faithful saints that have gone before us.
[00:59:09] Speaker A: Amen to that.
[00:59:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I love the title of your new book, the thrill of Orthodoxy. And it's actually on my list. I haven't got to it yet, but looking forward to reading that. But I experienced that in my life because I grew up hearing in the IFB world of what true Christianity was and how everybody else was getting it wrong. And then I remember joining a southern baptist church and starting to read more broadly and then going into seminary and discovering church history and then discovering guys like you. Early on I read gospel centered teaching and that transformed the way I was teaching kids in a church ministry and a parachurch ministry. So I can just relate to the title of that book because orthodoxy should truly thrill our hearts. And I haven't been given the gift to live in any other generation. I can study them, I can learn from them, but this is the time God has given me. He set the boundaries of where I live and the time I live. And he expects me to be faithful with that. And I appreciate your contribution to this conversation and many other conversations because I want to believe right. I want to live right. I want to practice right. I want to love right. All of those different areas really matter.
[01:00:36] Speaker C: Yeah. For me, I know a lot of people when they think orthodoxy, they don't think thrill, they think, oh, that's like a doctrinal checklist. What do you mean?
But when you really understand what the Bible is teaching, what the church is taught historically, what we consider to be those fundamental affirmations of the faith, going back to the part of fundamentalism that can be and should be recovered, rediscovered, is never getting over. The miracle of the gospel, the miracle of your own conversion, the miracle of Christ's death, atoning for your sins, the miracle of him actually walking out of the grave on Easter morning. I mean, it's astounding when you think about what we actually believe. I was on a call recently.
I'm a Keller center fellow with a bunch of people. We were talking with a woman who's a scholar who recently has converted to Christianity. And what the best part of the entire conversation was. At the end of the conversation she said something like, because she's such a recent convert, she's like, I still can kind of see things from the way I saw them before I was a believer. And she kind of made the point. She's like, and here we are like 2000 years later and I'm saying I actually believe that something that happened with a crucified man in the first century is taking care of my sins. She's like, guys, that's crazy. It is crazy.
And everyone in there was like, yes it is.
And yet for 2000 years people have been believing this message, continuing to put their faith in Christ.
We believe Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead and our lives have been changed by it. And with billions of people around the world, we confess the same Jesus as Lord. Like, what in the world? If that doesn't get us excited or we don't look at the gospel and actually think about the implications of what it is we're teaching, then we're missing one of the major aspects of one of the best parts that God has for us when it comes to our faith.
[01:02:42] Speaker A: That was so good.
[01:02:43] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm ready to run. I don't run.
Oh man, you've got a bunch of books and your podcast just as we're wrapping up here. Will you let us know where we can get your books where folks can find your writings, your podcast, your website. Let us know all that stuff.
[01:03:00] Speaker C: Yeah, you can find any of my books on Amazon or wherever you get books. Barnes and Noble Lifeway, wherever you find books there. The podcast is called reconstructing faith and it's a labor of love. We only do a certain number of episodes a year because it's, like I said, documentary style. So it's a little more on the production side of things. But good idea.
Really an enjoyable part of just thinking through together with other people. Like what does this next season of the church look like? I write regularly for the Gospel coalition. I have a column there. So if you just go to trevonwax.com, it'll take you to my column at the Gospel Coalition and you could sign up for an email newsletter if you want a know. Couple times a week I like to share different things. I'm reading the articles that I've posted and things like that. Just a way to keep in touch with people as they read.
[01:03:54] Speaker A: Hey, and thank you for the work you're doing for the sake of missions and advancing the gospel. There's a lot of us in the church world that's benefiting from your faithful work and so I'm grateful for that.
[01:04:07] Speaker C: Well, I appreciate you guys having me on and thanks for that encouragement.
[01:04:11] Speaker D: Well, Trevin, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. And be sure to go over there, folks, and get all of his stuff. Hey, do you read any of your books on audiobook?
[01:04:21] Speaker C: I do, actually. I like to read my own books on audiobook because I don't like how other people read my books.
[01:04:27] Speaker B: I've listened to a few of them and he does a good job.
[01:04:29] Speaker D: I love when the author reads to us. I listen to all of Greg Steer's books and it's like he just read them to me. It's great. Go and get his books. Check out his website. And man, thank you so much for being here on the recovering fundamentalist podcast. RFP Fam thanks for being here. We'll see you on Christmas Eve, 09:00 p.m.. Eastern. It's going to be a great time. Tune in and that's it. You all have a good week.
[01:04:54] Speaker A: Be sweet.
[01:04:57] Speaker B: Peace.
[01:04:57] Speaker D: Thanks for listening to the Recovering fundamentalist podcast. Be sure to stop by our social media, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Give us a follow. Also go to our website, recoveringfundamentalist.org. That's recoveringfunamentalist.org. There you can find recovering fundamentalist swag. You can get your t shirts and hats. You can join our x fundy community, see where we're going to be having some meetups. It's the recoveringfundamentalist.org. Be sure to join us next time for the Recovering fundamentalist podcast.
