Hey everybody! Welcome to the podcast. I have a confession to make: I have a love hate relationship with social media. Some days I feel really good and I check Facebook and I want to pull my eyes out. Some days I mess up and post something. I posted a really controversial post a while back (you can read it here). After I posted that I wondered: “why is everyone online so upset?” This week, I wanted to invite my friend Doug Bursch on the podcast. He has written a book called Posting Peace: How Social Media Divides Us and What We Can Do About It.
In his book, Doug Bursch provides a spiritual examination of why social media divides people and how Christians can address polarization through a ministry of peacemaking. Digital media dehumanizes and disembodies us, dulling our ability to know when to speak and when to remain silent. But healthy online communication is possible through a constructive posture of reconciliation.
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!
Is there a way to walk faithfully through doubt and come out the other side with a deeper love for Jesus, the church, and its tradition? Can we question our faith without losing it? Today, we are going to explore this with Dr. A.J. Swoboda, author of the newly released book: After Doubt: How to Question Your Faith without Losing It.
Dr. A. J. Swoboda (PhD, Birmingham) is assistant professor of Bible, theology, and World Christianity at Bushnell University. As well, he leads a Doctor of Ministry program around the Holy Spirit and Leadership at Fuller Seminary. He is the author of a number of books, including the award-winning Subversive Sabbath (Brazos) and his new book After Doubt. He is married to Quinn and is the proud father of Elliot. They live and work in Eugene, Oregon.
Dr. A. J. Swoboda has witnessed many young people wrestle with their core Christian beliefs. Too often, what begins as a set of critical and important questions turns to resentment and faith abandonment. Unfortunately, the church has largely ignored its task of serving people along their journey of questioning. The local church must walk alongside those who are deconstructing their faith and show them how to reconstruct it.
After Doubt offers a hopeful, practical vision of spiritual formation for those in the process of faith deconstruction and those who serve them.
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!
Hey everybody! Welcome back to a new season of All In! I wanted to give fair warning that we will be talking about some fairly controversial topics in this week’s episode. It is my privilege to welcome Dr. Kristin Du Mez, author of the book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. I read this book recently and it put together a number of pieces that had been building in my mind, but I had not yet been able to put them together. I had been a lifelong member of the Republican Party since 1988 until 2015 when in my estimation, it became a personality cult. I’ve tried to figure out how evangelicals have come to support systems, structures, and persons that are very questionable in their relationship to what we value as Christians. So I wanted to explore this with Dr. Du Mez and get her input as a scholar and leading thinker.
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.
