Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Famous words mistakenly attributed to Peter Drucker.It doesn’t matter who said it, it is TRUE. We can glibly talk about changing culture, but culture is a hard thing to change. Yet, if you want real and lasting change, you must do more than change policies, you must change cultures. I could think of no one better to talk about this topic than my friend, Tammy Dunahoo. Tammy hold the title of Vice President – Senior Director of Leader Culture+Care for The Foursquare Church.
Tammy Dunahoo has served The Foursquare Church in multiple roles since 2003, including general supervisor, Arkansas District supervisor, vice president of Women in Leadership Ministry, on the National Church Health Initiative team, and multiple boards and committees. She serves on the Foursquare board of directors, the cabinet, and on the board of trustees of Life Pacific University (LPU). Besides these roles, Tammy pastored with her husband, Gary, for 38 years.
Tammy’s greatest passion is to educate, train, mentor and sponsor emerging generations.She loves to see young leaders, women and men of every people group, living out their God- given design, and creatively and effectively engaging culture. Her role includes serving the president and partnering with him in architecting culture with a specific focus on discipleship and leadership development, diversity and NextGen.
I think you’ll really enjoy this conversation and I hope you find it helpful to your specific context. Enjoy!
If you’re enjoying this podcast, spread the word by sharing it with your friends and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. I encourage you to send me your feedback or suggestions for an interview. Help me help you. You can email me at jroper@foursquare.org, or direct message me on Facebook. You can also submit any feedback or questions here. Don’t forget to subscribe in Apple Podcasts or where ever you get your podcasts.
As always, you can connect with me on Facebook or Twitter. It’s your life, now go live it!
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is a celebrated spiritual writer and sought-after speaker. A native of North Carolina, he is a graduate of Eastern University and Duke Divinity School.
In 2003, Jonathan and his wife Leah founded the Rutba House, a house of hospitality where the formerly homeless share community with the formerly housed. Jonathan directs the School for Conversion, a popular education center that works to make “surprising friendships possible.” He is also an Associate Minister at the historically black St. Johns Missionary Baptist Church.
An evangelical Christian who connects with the broad spiritual tradition and its monastic witnesses, Jonathan is a leader in the Red Letter Christian movement and the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. He speaks often about emerging Christianity and faith in public life to churches and conferences across the denominational spectrum and has given lectures at dozens of universities and seminaries, including Calvin College, MIT, Bethel, Duke, Yale, Princeton, Jewish Theological, Perkins, Wake Forrest, St. John’s, DePaul, and Baylor.
Now, he is making his big break as a guest on this podcast! I hope you enjoy this interview. You can connect with Jonathan through the School for Conversion or on his website.
If you’re enjoying this podcast, spread the word by sharing it with your friends and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. I encourage you to send me your feedback or suggestions for an interview. Help me help you. You can email me at jroper@foursquare.org, or direct message me on Facebook. You can also submit any feedback or questions here. Don’t forget to subscribe in Apple Podcasts or where ever you get your podcasts.
As always, you can connect with me on Facebook or Twitter. It’s your life, now go live it!
Hey everybody! Today I am giddy! I am thrilled to be able to have Dr. Miroslav Volf as a guest today. He is probably one of my favorite living theologians. I think you will enjoy this week’s episode as we explore his book Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation.
Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and is the Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He was educated in his native Croatia, the United States, and Germany, earning doctoral and post-doctoral degrees (with highest honors) from the University of Tübingen, Germany.
He has written or edited more than 20 books, over 100 scholarly articles, and his work has been featured in the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century, Sojourners, and several other outlets, including NPR’s Speaking of Faith(now On Being with Krista Tippett) and Public Television’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.
Prior to his appointment at Yale Divinity School in 1998, he taught at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek, Croatia (1979–80 and 1983–90) and Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California (1990–1998).
A member of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. and the Evangelical Church in Croatia, Professor Volf has been involved in international ecumenical dialogues (for instance, with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity) and interfaith dialogues (on the executive board of C-1 World Dialogue), and is active participant in the Global Agenda Council on Values of the World Economic Forum.
Miroslav regularly teaches and lectures in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and across North America. He has given over 30 prestigious lectureships at universities around the world, including Harvard University; Oxford University; Stockholm School of Theology; Duke University; Calvin University, University of Birmingham.
If you’re enjoying this podcast, spread the word by sharing it with your friends and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. I encourage you to send me your feedback or suggestions for an interview. Help me help you. You can email me at jroper@foursquare.org, or direct message me on Facebook. You can also submit any feedback or questions here. Don’t forget to subscribe in Apple Podcasts or where ever you get your podcasts.
As always, you can connect with me on Facebook or Twitter. It’s your life, now go live it!
Hey everybody! Today, we have Wendy Nolasco on the podcast. Wendy is the general supervisor for U.S. Foursquare Church. It is said she is able to leap tall egos with a single bound, able to freeze water with a single stare, and she’s able to bring peace with a single word. I don’t know if that’s true, but what I do know is true, is she is a leader, a learner, and a passionate gatherer of people. In my time of getting to know Wendy, my respect and admiration for her has only grown and increased. I think you’ll enjoy this podcast as we talk about some very meaningful leadership lessons.
If you’re enjoying this podcast, spread the word by sharing it with your friends and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. I encourage you to send me your feedback or suggestions for an interview. Help me help you. You can email me at jroper@foursquare.org, or direct message me on Facebook. You can also submit any feedback or questions here. Don’t forget to subscribe in Apple Podcasts or where ever you get your podcasts.
As always, you can connect with me on Facebook or Twitter. It’s your life, now go live it!
DISCLAIMER: You may think this about politics, but it is not. It is about something far deeper. It is not about being a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Socialist, or member of the Bull Moose Party. It is not about specific policies or personalities. It is about returning to the God who is above, outside, and Wholly Other than us, and his radical call to come, drink deeply of the waters of life, and there find healing for your soul. OK, now carry on.
“How did we get here? I don’t want to have anything to do with any of the Christians I know. How did we come to this?” It was not the first time someone said that to me. It was just the most recent. It happened while Debbie and I were talking with some friends. The subject comes up a lot these days. I’ve even had pastors ask me to start support groups for pastors and leaders who look at the Christian community and say, “How did we come to this? I don’t know if I can pastor people like this any longer.”
How did we come to this?
I tried to answer my friend’s question. After a long jeremiad about the cultural, ideological, and theological movements of the last fifty years of evangelicalism, my wife looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, “You are not making any sense…” She was right. I had launched into a lengthy stream-of-consciousness screed about how we arrived here, none of which could be explained in a tweet or an Instagram photo.
My incoherent mixture of theological, social, and cultural issues, laced with historical references and pivotal events, became an avalanche of information burying the essence of the truth: We are here because we have forsaken the fountain of living water and have hewed out cisterns for ourselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jeremiah 2:13).
Once we replaced the fountain of living water with our broken water holes power became our religion and identity politics became our creed. We invented new beliefs; re-wrote history to add legitimacy to our claims; and created new models and stories to give meaning and purpose to justify and explain our initial turning away.
Forsaking the fountain of living water is now justified and defended by a thousand moving pieces that include theological and doctrinal arguments; histories both true and fabricated; and role-models with talking-points who have become our new pantheon of unseen witnesses.
This pantheon of witnesses include historical figures who have become mythologized. Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes to mind. Bonhoeffer was a faithful witness who has become a folk hero to many who would reject him were he to walk among us today.
Hollywood was kind enough to add a few witnesses to our new pantheon: John Wayne, William Wallace (Braveheart), and Rambo are among those who became examples of what masculine Christianity ought to be, what “real Christians” should look like. Promise Keepers, Wild at Heart, and more than a few of my sermons included clips and quotes too many to mention. I, after all, wanted to die in the saddle with my boots on while I fought for freedom, even if it meant being the lone, misunderstood, and violent hero for Jesus.
The evangelical models of “real Christians” were supposed to represent for us strong, rugged, tough men who take action to defend freedom and use violence against injustice. No one bothered to notice these models were an actor pretending to be a tough guy, a fictionalized story of a man we know almost nothing about, and a movie character who resorts to violence. No one noticed we substituted pursuing being pure-in-heart peacemakers who love our enemies with being warriors pursuing glory and power to crush the enemies of God. No one noticed our leaking water hole.
Evangelicals were looking for a hero, a defender who would rescue us like a damsel in distress. Someone, anyone, who could play the role of a rugged, tough, principled but misunderstood successful businessman fighting for truth and justice and the American way. We would say of this person, “Surely, here stands before us the Lord’s anointed.”
It makes perfect sense for those whose models are actors pretending to be heroes using violence to avenge themselves to support someone like this. It would be a dream come true. It would not be an aberration; it would be the culmination of a long ideological transformation.
We evangelicals can no longer tell fact from fiction. Our models are illusions, and our justifying stories are lies. Consequently, we are now suckers for outlandish lies and conspiracy theories like QANON, plandemic, stolen elections, utopian promises, political salvation, and false prophecies spoken in the name of Jesus. Left-winged, right-winged, or middle of the bird, we are all guilty. The lies we have held to have become the idols of our destruction.
Once untethered from the fountain of living water, it was only a matter of time before evangelicals started believing QANON is real and the news is fake. We love the lies that comfort us and hate the truth that confronts us.
The models we uphold and the stories we tell shape who we become. Evangelical Christianity, if it is to survive, needs to reject its false images and real lies and return again to the fountain of living water. Let us turn again with our whole hearts to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Let us return again and again to the fountain of living water and drink deeply, that our souls may be healed and our minds renewed.
We have defamed Jesus Christ long enough. We are sorry. I am sorry. May these days be the end of our error. May today be a new day to look unto him, the author and finisher of our faith.
*** Interested to learn more? I highly recommend, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Broke a Nation,” by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
Debbie and I serve as the FMI Global Associate Director for MENACA and Europe. We focus on cultivating disciples, leaders, and church planting movements.
Debbie and I serve as the FMI Global Associate Director for MENACA and Europe. We focus on cultivating disciples, leaders, and church planting movements.
