Transcript for CNLP 645 | Jon Tyson on Secularism, Responding To The Cultural Obsession with Identity, Generational Differences in the Church, Aging Well in Leadership, Tech, AI, and Discipleship

Someone had just said, I can't wait for your church to rethink your sexual ethics. And I was like, hey, with all due respect, you think I haven't thought this through? You think I'm sitting here to ill of my thumbs? You think when you drop something that you saw on a YouTube video about the World homosexual not being in the Bible, I've never heard that. I've never heard that. So again, I think there's an assumption of your ignorance. They're not saying that because they're ignorant. They're saying it because they've just learned it. And it's exciting for them. And they want to test that. They're saying that because they care about people and they're worried that people who are not thoughtful are holding on two positions that are harmful for others. So you know, it's in secularism. There is no higher good than human flourishing. And so I think a lot of gent, the way secularism shows up in Gen Z, is that the ultimate good as human flourishing. And so somebody said, like, you're harming someone with that idea. That's like the ultimate trump card, your position does harm. And so yeah, I mean, this is, you know, you to money, this is like human flourishing is the highest good of life and self-actualization is the point of existence. And that's a lot better than hedonism, man. And it's just not the kingdom of Jesus. There's something above human flourishing, which is the glory of Jesus and the kingdom of God. And so I think I don't think we've done a good enough job teaching Gen Z about the kingdom of God. If they're meant to be seeking this first, we owe them to tell them what it is that they're meant to be seeking. And I do not feel like we have done that. I feel like we've shown them a shallow version of modern church.

Thank you so much might always enjoy talking with you. Yeah, so.

I tell you, I've been in a series of meetings this past week and one of the things that people talk about a lot, but I have felt and observed, is generational differences in the church. I felt it. It's almost like walking into a wall in terms of values and preferences and understandings. And, you know, people have talked about that. I've talked about that before, but like watching it happen, giving Gen Z folks more space at the table, not just to be there, but to shape, to speak in, giving them confidence to say what they really think, those sorts of things. It leads to some confrontations and some misunderstanding and so I've noticed that. That's been a huge thing. I think I am seeing The increase of secularism, not as an academic ideology, but as a functional way that people navigate reality and live, creating identities and building their world without even a thought of God as a reference point in any of it. That has normalized so quickly, and it has cemented in ways that have been very, very surprising to me. And I'd say another big thing would just be suspicion of authority in general, but a high suspicion of spiritual authority.

Well, what Tim said, and these are all just paraphrases, no exact quotes, was the essence of sin and how sin maps itself out in secularism is not any particular moral violation. It's not the breaking of rules as such. It is the construction of an identity without any reference point towards God. So in Romans chapter one, when Paul's going to map out to the great city of Rome, I mean, you imagine writing a letter to Christians in the city of Rome. You think, if you've ever been to Rome, you think about the Palatine Hill, you think about all the temples, you think about the military, you think about the sports, you think about all the nations, a huge huge city. Paul starts by saying, they did not acknowledge him as God or give him thanks. So, all worship is rooted in a sense of, I recognise I'm created independent and therefore, my response is gratitude and worship. Compared to idolatry, which says, I am self-defining and entitled. I've made myself and I have obligations to nobody beyond myself. That's the essence of how modern people, I think, in many ways that we're talking about form their identity. The sin is that there's not a reference point towards God. So the thought that there is a way you should have to live, that you cannot have identity options as a blank slate for self-expression. That just sounds like cultural heresy. And so I see a lot of people who absolutely live their life by self-definition without reference point to the Creator. So for example, we're now playing the role of the Creator. Jesus says in Matthew 19, have you not read the Creator made the male and female? Now in the modern world we're saying, I am the Creator. I can make myself male or female. There's no reference point to any sort of divine design. blowing of the stingsions and boundaries. I think, yeah, Philip Reath, who's obviously been mentioned on your podcast before, he talks about cultural anti-culture and anti-culture is the annihilation and hunting down of any settled convictions. Culture is organizing chaos for flourishing. and anti-culture is hunting down boundaries and convictions and destroying them. And I think that's what we're seeing with identity. There's no ordering the raw elements of life under some divine vision. It's just radical self-expression based on whatever economic, sexual, political, even theological categories that you want. So that's, I mean, I think we all know that. But how that makes that hard? Is to tell one of these people, I have good news for you. There's a way you're supposed to be and you have to change. And for a lot of people that does not come across as good news, that comes across as oppressive, restrictive, harsh, controlling, bigoted. And so I think it was Liatar who said postmodernism is a suspicion of meta narratives. And I think there is an acute suspicion of anybody who tells you how to live your life. So yeah, I mean, that is happening a lot. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there would be some some universal that what happens in New York does get distributed to other places. I think in some sense, shared media consumption has has, New York has lost its global importance. in some areas because everybody's looking at the same YouTube videos and whatever's going viral. So there's definitely a great flattening location or flattening that social media has done for us, which has staggering implications. But there will always be a local reality to where you live. I think one thing that, you know, maybe you see on the news, that I feel like, hugely, are the migrants who are here in New York City. 180,000 migrants who've come here in the last 18 months, two years. You think about, I don't know if you're still in Canada, but there's there isn't hundreds of cities over 180,000 people in Canada. And maybe even in the US, there's not. So they just, you know, 180,000 people that the city is in, anyways, paying for. trying to integrate and build new lives here. And that is causing a lot of chaos. The systems are not designed to support that many people. There's a lot of heartbreak, a lot of terrible stories, a lot of pain, a lot of controversy. That is a real factor. I mean, that affected my life this morning at 6 a.m. I mean, you're talking to people, you're meeting people, you're seeing people on the streets, you know, there's whole families asking for money, sitting there begging, you know, there's other folks who are being horrifically discriminated against in the workplace because they're very little agents who defend themselves. There's a lot of exploitive labor and work conditions, incredible economic challenges, and Church, you know, what role does a church play in that? Many of these folks don't speak English. And so you try to offer support. And anyway, that's something that I don't think when people think New York City, Manhattan, they're thinking that. And I think that's something that we would think and pray about a lot. I think another one people are sort of thinking through is AI. New York is a creative industry. What it's doing for content in terms of writing, even art, automation a lot of those things I think there's I think a lot of New York is a thinking about what are the implications of that cost of living I mean it's just stupidly prohibitive almost everywhere but especially in New York yeah what's it's sort of at that point where it's like can you build a life here long-term Probably not, not for most people. You gotta be really successful. And often that success is gonna put you through a gauntlet of about a decade where your schedule is choked out. And so yeah, I think I see that as something. But I think a lot of people would say it's the best and worst of times in New York. It's amazing. You know, I was out on the street on 9th Avenue right before I came up here. Sun shining, it's a beautiful winter day. It's clear people are walking around, a lot of joy. Yeah, I think New York is leaning into the realities of, you know, technology and immigration and the economy, economy, not at meta levels, but on very, very personal and profound levels. So these big news headlines, we feel those on a very, very personal level around us quite a bit.

Well, honestly, it's a root tension with us. We don't own any facilities. I've been here in 19 years. Pack up, tear down. Four services on a Sunday. There are three venues as a church. And no matter how you gamify it or talk about Jesus taking office out of Rome and washing people's feet and having a servant's heart, 19 years of doing the same stuff in the city like New York where you can't even park properly is frustrating. So we don't we don't control most of our leases. So we can't serve the poor. We can't bring like our offices where I am right now. I'm in Hell's Kitchen. We can't, there's security guards at the front desk. We can't bring the poor in and care for them and officers. So a lot of our stuff has been through partnerships. You know, I think we've had a more external focus on partnerships. How do we empower other churches? How do we give resources to other churches? We've increased our giving to people we think are serving the city well. I think that's, it's an outward focus and it's an inner frustration. It's probably what I feel. That church has grown a lot since COVID. So we feel growth is drains. We've got all the system strains. Many ways we're in an access moment. You know, a lot of like whose job is it to do what? Good growth problems. But all of that put together does make for some challenging leadership.

I think a big one. So number one, I want to say, I feel torn on both sides. I'm 47. I'm an old 47 man, not a young 47. What does that mean? What do you mean? Well, I don't know. I just got a lot of mileage on this model. So we'll be some example. Some of our older folks sort of can't believe the way they're talked to. So there's just no assumption of cultural respect. There's no, you think you deserve something because you've been breathing there a few years longer than me. Now no one would say that, but you know, I mean, an example would be when I get done preaching some of the things that people say to me. It's just like, hey, you don't have, you believe you have a full right to say whatever you want to any person in the world without any filter. And, you know, I don't, you know, take that to heart that often. I want to engage, you know, I want to give a warm welcome and make people remember how non-defensive and open I was, but I think those are the personal things are very, very real. Um, the amount of technology jokes people make about me is staggering. Like, um, hey, John, you know, they make Facebook ads. Hey, you want Facebook this morning? You know, I'm not on TikTok and I think I'm cool on Instagram. They're like, I'm just realizing. And I think other folks are realizing the, we are not the edge. Now, here's why that's hard. Our church has never had more influence of momentum than this moment. And so you can build a world at my age where you feel like you're the center of it. But if only you could realize the center of your world is on the side of the stage of history. To know what I mean. And so you've got to lean into the future because the future is here more than we already know. It's the classic. You were one of the first people I heard point this out. Everybody was talking about reaching millennials and you're like, Millennials drive many fans and have kids. You got to go off to Gen Z. It's sort of like that. The future is more present than what we're aware of, but we're still building for the past, even by a few years. And I think I definitely feel that around the table. Another thing I feel around the table is like a biblical world for you. Not even biblical knowledge. A lot of people listen to podcasts and Bible apps, there's a lot of Bible input, but there's not a lot of discernment. And so there's a lot of younger folks who have not been taught properly how to think in a godly way, battle of reality. And I think there's a lot of secularism in there, won't you?

You look like you've got less mileage on you than Maymite. So I can.

I might we could do a whole podcast on midlife. I've just done a huge I've got a course. that I do up past as events called Ministry and Midlife because there's almost no theology of ministry for Middle-H people and a lot of the crisis is happening in ministry. I've been called spiritual warfare, cultural change, lack of accountability and really it's the leaders internal life not having the tools needed to make it in the second half of life. But it's a different issue but it's certainly a very, very prevalent one.

Well, if you have a proper midlife crisis, it should feel as awkward as your teenage years. It is a second adolescence. The first half is really about accomplishment and success. It's called heroic thinking. In your 20s, you're like, why did the generation before tolerate this, do this? I'll show them. And then when you get a little older into your 30s, you know, like, why do my parents have such a bad marriage? Why do they just love each other and work it out? And then in towards your late 30s, you're like, wow, it's really hard to accept another person as they are and not try and change them. Well, I actually think I may be the one that needs to change. So you shift from heroic thinking to the second half of life, which is really defined by meaning and wonder. So I listen, similar to you, there's very, very few worldly accomplishments I'm interested in. You know, you speak it enough stuff. You just kind of like, hey, look, there's not there's not a conference on earth right now. If I got to speak out of it, would probably move my heart. I try to do it to serve Jesus, but I'm not chasing those sorts of things. I realize life is hard. What I'm chasing is meaning. Who am I really? Not who why we show us? Find joy and accept that and then wonder life beats the stuffing out of you. And it's very easy to get cynical and lose vision and joy. And so it's a quest to re-enchant your heart. But to do that in midlife in a mature way is more than hobbies and great vacations. It is a real sense of trying to find God in the world in a new way. And anyway, so yeah, there's a lot, there's not a lot of tools for that in ministry under the press through ministry. So yeah.

Well, you know what's so interesting? Well, I think one of the things you would said maybe we'd touch on is like, you know, like, what have you done? I cultivate resilience. It's interesting. You said two hours because I have found for about 23 years of my life that it takes me about two hours in the morning to be the man I want to be in the day. And that two hours is, I've got a little template. I listen, I'm a, I'm a organized guy that I've got a little tempered like his my perfect day, his my perfect day, his my perfect week, broken down into perfect morning, perfect afternoon, perfect evening. And my perfect morning takes me two hours to get through. And it's so different than one people think. It's looking at photography. It's reading poetry. It's reading a panic. It's Smith Wigglesworth, daily devotion, or so I get a little dose of panacostal faith. It's reading our John Frames, our small theology, so I'm getting, you know, I'm really understanding who God is. It's like the Ode Devina. It's low thought. It's receiving the father's love. The zero-contending urgency, a sense of duty, and it's exactly like you're saying, it's offered me standing there with coffee, sort of looking off into the horizon lost in thought. And so if people would say, where do you get time to do it? And I would say, I can't not do it. It's not even an necessity for me. Like, I can't live the life I'm called a live. And the demands that are on my heart without having a well to draw on a daily basis. And it just takes me about two hours to sort of run the script. That's just how long it takes. So it's not prescriptive. It's just an observation, but it's a Maybe this something there.

Okay, tell us if it's your slam. And not, I mean, yeah, I mean, he definitely had some cognitive decline. I mean, it's, I've been around a lot of great leaders. He was the genuinely most sage-like in the truest archetype of sense of that word. He was a quiet, content, half an eternity, half in the room, quiet, authoritative man. He was liberated from a single thing to prove. And I mean, it was, It was a really, I mean, we took, yeah, we took time to debrief that. We spent a day and a half, I don't know how, I can't remember how long it was exactly. And then we spent two and a half days debriefing it. Because it was really kind of a jarring experience. There's not a lot of men that are like that. And yeah, I think we have an obligation. I mean, I, there's a, there's a massive generational mantle transfer through death. and ministry failure happening right now. And some of the guys getting it are not quite ready for it. And I look around New York, I'm in. Gosh man, there's not a, I feel like a young father. Now I've got adult children, you know, my, both my kids in the 20s. But I look around and I'm like at some point you've got to say, Lord, I'm not quite ready. But there's not, but I feel like I'm up a little bit. Now, again, I don't think that difference with someone like Plyther and Kheller is these men were raised pre-social media. So whatever fame they had, both of them had fame, Kheller's fame was a tape circulation. Subscriptions to redeem as literal cassette tape ministry. And so that will draw your attention away. but only incidentally. And there was not pod, there was not podcasts, there was not a publishing mega-like today, there's no social media, there's no blogging. So these men were formed in a kind of deep contextual faithfulness that this generation has not will not cannot be formed in. So we have to, we have a lot of catching up to sort of imitate the conditions of depth, stability, lack of external awareness that those folks have. That's how they were, I remember talking with Keller, and he said, and I just published my first book, and he was like, none of you have got anything to say until you turn 50. And I remember just going, oh, I was going to ask you to endorse. And I was like, and I think he published, reason for God, like in his mid 50s. I think it was 57.

Yeah. And I think he left it too late just personally. But he was, but when he arrived, he could, he could just hang it in any level. And I think I, I do agree with got a, we've got to ask God for new spiritual fathers and mothers to come up. But we are way more underformed and deformed than they were by the cultural mechanisms. We have particularly around posturing.

It's a very, very important question. There's a real tension there. There's a tension on forgetting the past out of a desire to be relevant. And you don't want to be relevant. You don't want to, I have negative desire to try and be a young cool pastor. Negative negative, negative, so I never If I tried to dress cool, my wife would say, what are you doing? Why are you dressing like that? I basically wear a uniform and it is a non-observable, non-cool uniform. So I don't want to be one of those older guys trying to be cool and relevant and keep up, but I also don't want to get stuck in the past. I mean, I've got a very high appreciation for jazz music. Nothing will bring me more joy than going to you know, Birdland is literally at that window. And man, I would kill to just sneak over and get a 530 PM set, get one drink, sit at the bar and take in a show. I think that's cool in the next generation cares about that. And the vast majority, it's like talking about Bob Dylan. They're like Bob, who I don't care about the war years. I don't care about peace in the 60s. It's irrelevant to me. It's very, very hard. So I was thinking this morning, I was watching in an elevator and older leader interacting with the younger leader. And this guy I thought was doing it really well. And he just sort of acknowledged that he wasn't a main feature in that person's audience. He just sort of acknowledged, I got an older generation. He's my demographic. I may not be the man to reach you. So I'm going to be really good at who I am. You know what I think stunned this really well? I called McDonald. Oh yeah. You know, he's just kind of like how man? You can try and get teenagers to care about it, but I just don't think they will. It's for their loss. But I think he's just kind of like if you read his books, who just sort of say the oldie, you get the more you realize it's about relationships, you're living in the past. Your best days are not ahead. what's coming up is sickness and frailty. And yeah, heaven is I guess, but so it's tough to get that. So I guess the answer I would say is this, I'm trying to be timeless. I'm trying to be helpful. I'm not trying to be cool. I'm trying to be wise. I'm trying to be trusted. I'm trying to be stable. And if if that helps younger folks and they feel like he feels like my dad a bit, but he feels like a young dad and I'm grateful for it. And older folks feel like maybe he's a young sage man. He's emerging into a really thoughtful leader. I'm happy with that, but what I don't want to do is chase trends and try and be relevant and try and have the kids think I'm cool and give it, give it to someone who is cool and mentor them and love them and help them with their character and mature them.

I'll start with my space.

I just want to think, yeah, I think it's very interesting. When people say to me, like, what do you love doing, Sean? Like my favorite thing is between 20 to 50 people and four days, two days and on and off three days and on and off four days, that's when you get to that final layer of defense. And just go and deep with people. I cannot take deep human connection. And so look, I'm not, I'm not worried that I'm going to run out of content. I'm not, I'm not that the worst AI gets the better it gets for in person to site worship. Now, I'm not anti online to site worship. I love that there's never been a better opportunity to leverage technology ever. There's no threat. So if you if your job is being an internet celebrity, you're going to have a challenge. If a crowd of market, but if your job is like, just cycling people in person and loving them and doing human community, these are the most beautiful days of the church is almost ever had. It will only get better and better. So the future will be a dual response, but I'm very excited at my age to meet with people a few years either side of my life and just process becoming like Jesus together. Just being honest, going there, opening our hearts, getting closer to the surface, and I'm very excited about what that means for the church.

Well, I mean, it's deep connections. Everyone's got sort of shallow connections, but all that's doing is really doing is producing. It's making us knowledgeable, but not wise, connected, but lonely. And I think this is a beautiful moment to say, we're here, we love you, and we've got space at the table. I think it's a beautiful moment.

Well, I tell you the most, can I tell you the most shocking thing from that whole meeting? The most shocking thing from that meeting. Say it was a good group of young pastors who were there. Many whom you would know. And everyone's like, thank you Eugene for just pasturing 300 people. Thank you for keeping the church small. Thank you for just having the vision of being a shepherd. Thank you for not caring about size. And at some point, all of these accolades sort of shook him a little bit. And he said, very quiet, raspy voice. Hang on. Do you think I kept the church at 300? I couldn't grow it past 300. That was my leadership limit. That wasn't a philosophy of ministry. That was the limit that God gave me. He said, the lady who came in after me was a way better leader in the church group at 600. And it was like, it was interesting watching people who would sort of moralized a leadership limit or capacity at some deep profound conviction. And it was just like, oh, really, really interesting. What I loved, what I think happened in my heart was this sense. Dear God, let me finish well. Let me finish well, it seems almost impossible to finish well these days. I mean, if you look at the Christian magazines, now the one of my mentors, just a guy that really impacted my philosophy of ministries, just having a fair and being fired. And I just maybe want to finish well, maybe want to be godly. Maybe want to be kind and patient. It made me want to invest in younger leaders. It made me want to be strangely present. Maybe want to talk about Jesus and poetry. You know, and to be a grateful man. It was really, it's really hard to explain. the depth of his presence. He said, we talk about charisma, charisma is four things, strengths, warmth, intelligence, and energy. And as in the world, sort of defines it. So he gets them as strong with their warmth. They know a lot like a good energy, like, wow, that's charismatic. He was so charismatic. And basically, he's just warm and kind, you know what I mean? It was here to wait to him. So it really I would describe it as an anointing. He had a sense of the presence of God, not like a panacost, whether he was panacost or his early years. He was also a butcher, which I love. But he had an anointing. He was under the shadow of the Almighty. And if he got near him, you could feel it. It was beautiful man.

But the gift he gave us was how to recover. And all of these folks do not see, they're not recovering well.

I have seen that.

I think I sounded that table man.

Exactly. It was in his house.

Well, I think that he's that built that house, and I just sort of maintained and added over the years.

And the thing you notice about it is the beauty of Montana, not the scale of the home. It's like, what, what your caught up in is Montana, which got made. So it's, it's well-ordered.

This is a Z. That's it. That isn't man in the second half of his life right there.

Well, I listen, I've got no complain about it. It's, it's how a generation grows up. So I'm not, I'm not upset or offended or how could they, these are my kids age, you know? It would just be things like, you know, I'll spend, I'll read 15 books on a topic and put 100 hours of read, like really thoughtful analysis on something. and then speak on something and someone should say, you haven't thought this through. Like, that's not even biblical. That's not even biblical, and then they'll call it, have you read that book? And I was like, oh, yeah, I did read that one. It's just sort of like, it's an assumption that you know nothing. It's rather than like, wow, I assume you've really thoughtfully prepared and carefully worked through this. And, you know, it's a classic, you know, someone had just said, I can't wait for your church to rethink your sexual ethics. And I was like, hey, with Audrey respect, you think I haven't thought this through? You think I'm sitting here twirling my thumbs. You think when you drop something that you saw on a YouTube video about the world homosexual not being in the Bible, I've never heard that. I've never heard that. So again, I think there's an assumption of your ignorance. They're not saying that because they're ignorant. They're saying it because they've just learned it and they're exciting for them and they want to test that. They're saying that because They care about people and they're worried that people who are not thoughtful are holding on two positions that are harmful for others. So, you know, it's, um, in secularism, there is no higher good than human flourishing. And so, I think a lot of gent, the way secularism shows up in Gen Z is that the ultimate good as human flourishing. And so, somebody said, like, you're, you're harming someone with that idea. That's like the ultimate trump card, your position does harm. And so yeah, I mean, this is, you know, you to money, this is like human flourishing is the highest good of life and self-actualization is the point of existence. And that's a lot better than hedonism, man. And it's just not the kingdom of Jesus. There's something above human flourishing, which is the glory of Jesus and the kingdom of God. And so I think I don't think we've done a good enough job teaching Gen Z about the kingdom of God. If they're meant to be seeking this first, we owe them to tell them what it is that they're meant to be seeking. And I do not feel like we have done that. I feel like we've shown them a shallow version of modern church. I think we've shown them soundbites. I just don't think they've had a beautiful theology. So part of the great project of my life would be to talk about Jesus and the kingdom of God as the main priority. Just Jesus and the kingdom of God.

Well, I mean, in many ways, I'll be very kind in the moment. Um, I'll be discerning in the moment. It depends on the situation, you know, is this person coming? Is this a social media grab by donning agents, social media meant nothing good happens?

Yeah, if happens online, there's no no response. I mean, I say, hey, look, go back, I've taught on this. I did an hour and 20 minute talk and Jesus in the gay community. If you listen to that, I'm happy to engage on any point on it. Um, But if it's in person, I'll say, hey, yeah, tell me the number one thing I'm trying to do is not my opinion versus your opinion. The number one thing I'm trying to do is like, hey, how do you read these texts? because my assumption is you want to follow Jesus because you're talking about Jesus in this. So how do you interpret these texts? Now they may have not been used appropriately about to dismiss them because people have been hurt by them is bad theology. We don't do that to any other issue. The Trinity's hurt people in cults, therefore we don't teach on the Trinity. These have become, you know. So again, but you can't weaponize verses. So I want to talk through the text. How do you read Romans one? What do you think Jesus meant by Matthew 19? And I'll be honest with you, I would way rather engage with someone who disagrees with me and just really thought it through than someone who agrees with me and hasn't done like deep work on this. You know, I'm not looking for a tip to rouse the fan base or to rally the base. So I go, I want to be pastoral. I want to be thoughtful. And I want to understand where they're coming from. Hey, is this an issue you've wrested with personally and you're trying to figure out if there's a place for you in that church? Do you have a friend you care about or family member? I'm trying to discern where they're at.

Well, it would be, you know, Gerald sits, he wrote water from a deep well, and I think he wrote a resilient faith. He basically said, the key to the church's current moment is the second century Christians in the Roman Empire. And it's basically generative suffering love. That's sort of the approach, man. Create the world you want to see. You will be persecuted to doing this. Do not get better. Suffering love well. I think that's really my approach. I think my approach is really, I don't get to, I'm trying to inherit, I'm trying to be faithful to the deposit I've received. I want to Stuart that well. I want to make it about Jesus and not Jesus and politics or Jesus and purely an ethical vision or Jesus and human life. I want to talk about Jesus first. And then I want to build a beautiful community of people who model the way of Jesus in such a way that you ask, is this space that they have for me? You know, I've been thinking, I've been thinking so much about this one scene in the life of Jesus that is just so It is so beautiful. I am fixated on it. Jesus is having a meal with a Pharisee. And a sinful woman goes to the Pharisees' house, brings a bottle of perfume, a nice Jesus' feet, and then washes his feet with his feet, with her perfume in here. And the Pharisee says, if this man was a prophet, he would know who's touching it. And I just thought for a moment, Who is Jesus that the most sexually shamed outcasted person in a religious society is willing to endure the shame of going into the house of the Pharisee to be in the presence of a holy man who will show a grace? How did Jesus do that? That is what I want to do for the future. I want to offend Pharisees, welcome sinners, and still be a holy person that does not change my theology. And I think... I mean, how did Jesus do that, man? That is it. The emotional field he created, the compassion, the kindness, the dignity. So to me, I've just, I've spent a lot of time, like, how do we create a church where that happens? How do we create a church where we don't lower our standards? How do we create a church where people know what we believe? But our love is so strong. It's stronger than the love of the tax collector who will love you because you're like them. We will love you in your difference. That at church has not been good at that. I don't know if I'm good at that, but I am a result that the church should be like that.

I mean, I have two immediate thoughts on it. Number one, that feels like a very challenging long-term solution. It's probably works fine in the short term. You've got to have clarity on key issues, you know, I mean, I think you just do that to our humans cohere. But then here is Jesus with a zealot and a tax collector, and they're both his disciples. And so Jesus somehow had a way to offend everybody's vision, elevate everybody's vision, surprise them with what it looks like to live in that vision. And then the real risk was when he ascended in Pentecost, they're in the room and he's physically gone. And so the Holy Spirit comes and then their baptize and crisis in them and that same spirit is internal. So I like that idea. It all depends on what you can sit at, again, what are primary and secondary issues. I think you can have disagreement on cultural issues. I don't know if people in the modern world think you can have disagreement on cultural issues, you know? So just as true. In secularism, there are no secondary issues. There's only primary issues. And the issues that we draw our morality, identity, and our sense of worth from. So that makes it very very challenging. It is a messy time man. It's a messy time because there's so much ideology and so much failure of the church and often the ideologies are addressing the failures of the church, but then not the biblical solution to what the church would do. And so, you know, you've lost the moral authority to sort of rage against the ideology because the people who don't believe what you think that you believe are sort of living the thing you should do better than you are. That's the challenging environment. So again, the future is decided.

Yeah, that sounds about right. But again, I mean, that is, that's because We no longer have a sacred sense of identity formation. It's only cultural identity formation. And so that sounds right. No, it's just sort of an interesting study that was done this morning. It was on shopping and it said, I had a tell which generation you're in based on this one question of your shopping preferences. You're at the checkout. Do you want to talk to a human to scan your goods or do you want self checkout? And everybody above Gen Z wanted a human and Gen Z said, if they took away self scanning, I would stop shopping there. And the response was, I don't like the human interaction. That's fascinating. What do you read into that? I just read this at generation or difference. That's what I read.

You are. Oh, yeah, man. I got a young staff, man. I passed her a young church. I am 47, my wife's 45. We are regularly the oldest people on the room by a decade plus regularly. And you know, I've got to say, I love it. I love it. I wouldn't trade it for the world. I'm grateful. I do want to just call forth in prayer, mothers and fathers to come help us. But I do love it. I don't think I'm seeing anything a lot more than we've talked about. One thing I've noted, you know, I'm always studying revival history. I read something about revival every day. most revivals even if they had an older leader saw break through by handing it over to the next generation. And so I mean, Evan Roberts is in his mid 20s leading the Welsh revival. But the Welsh revival broke open because a teenage girl stood up and testified in a meeting. And I said, there's a cloud over the nation of Wales. And when she testified, the rain started to fall. Even in the Hebrides revival, a duck in Campbell, there was praying Donald who was a teenage boy and duck in Campbell. In meetings, we'd look at him and say, I can't get a breakthrough in prayer, praying. And that's definitely something I'm noticing is you've got to give Jens a serious spiritual responsibility. And it's, look at Jesus trusting. It's clean a lot of love to teenage fishermen. That's like you've got to give it over. My one observation I have is about retiring earlier. Now look, I've known plans to retire soon. I've got a lot of energy, but it's about giving away. The emphasis and the influence more quickly. One pattern, my best mate Darren Whitehead and I talk about, he was hybrid number two, knows the ton of sort of people from that world. It's a lot of these guys that had spectacular failures. If they just let it go five years earlier, all there would be remembered for was once in a generation leaders. Something about grasping in those final years or scandals catching up to them. I want to let it go earlier. I want to give it away and I want to be there to support. I don't want to bail. I want to be there to support from behind and offer wise counsel. But I do think we tend to leave it five years. So if you build a big church in the past senior pastors, final years of legacy, here's my legacy. Those five years are often the very thing that the Gen Z leaders will have to spend breaking down before they can get back to zero before they can do what God's doing now. Uh, not always, but there's something in that that we should consider the order we get, you know.

I think this was him. Maybe it was Hibos. I can't remember. But they said this three reasons why people stay too long. They haven't saved enough of a retirement, so they need to keep working. They don't have a sense of identity beyond the task that many of these founding pastors have done for so long. And they don't have a ministry to go to next that feels meaningful. And so you've got to start building like the financial resources and the sort of the third act career that you're going to have. And then figuring out what it's like to be God's man at that age of your life or God's woman at that age of your life. And I think We should take a little bit more about that, the order we get to.

What I see as good is the openness of Gen Z. I see that as a very hopeful thing. You know, I was out as brief. I mean, it was just absolutely beautiful. I mean, oh God. That gave me a lot of hope, a lot of spiritual hunger. You know, the good news about secularism is that it's a failing story. Jesus and the kingdom of God have never looked better for an anxious overwhelmed and burden generation. To have Jesus come to me or you who are weary heavy laden and I'll give you rest. Learn from me. That's good news. So I'm, I think I'm excited about that. I'm interested in what technology does for discipleship. I obviously think there's a ton of downsides. But it is a glorious moment. for technology in the church, for discipleship in the church, to access to learn and have our deep questions, answers and all that sort of stuff, very excited about that, very excited about digital evangelism. You remember that study, I think it was called The Great Opportunity, by the Pontus Foundation. They had a phrase in there that I've used, you know, I'm looking for a hundred digital Billy Graham's You know, one kid on TikTok can get more than Billy Graham did his entire live preaching ministry. We need a leverage that I was telling our team the other day. We need a budget where we literally have 10 creatives in a room doing digital evangelism all day every day in the room next to us. Like that is a massive mission field. My vision is that kids are teenagers on the train going to school in New York City, having encounters with a Holy Spirit where Jesus comes through a TikTok video and they're arrested by the presence of God. I believe in that in the deepest part of my heart. Luther, Luther, failed monk. Mary's a nun. Talk on the might of the Catholic Church with a printing press end. He did all right. So again, I want to leverage it. I'm so excited about that. I don't want to do it. It's not me. It's not like, hey, team, put me on TikTok. It's like, let's help you figure out how to reach your generation. Very excited about that. That being said, I've took concerns the same time. One is a lack of discernment. So much content, so little wisdom. Ignorance of history and heresy. And so you get a lot of people, you know, I'm in a lot of prayer meetings where I just want to put my hand up, say excuse me, that's 100% heretical. I don't mean even false teaching. I mean, that was condemned by the church fathers in the third set. That's like not biblical. And then the whole room is like, you give me an example of that. People who don't believe in the Trinity, but don't know it. You know, people who don't believe in the Trinity, I assumed universalism. Do you know what I mean? A human universalism. An aversion to the wrath of God. You can say, if someone says, oh Lord, please have mercy on them, they're under your judgment immediately. A love correct is going to come in the next prayer. Thank you, Lord, for your great love. It's like no one can just handle the fact that we rage against injustice, but we just cannot comprehend that God who is the source of all justice would do the same thing. So, like a discernment is a concern, and here's an interesting one, though I'm very sympathetic to it. It's an over-emphasis on Sabbath. Really? Yeah, I've written about Sabbath, one of the most popular talks of ever-given is called Resmus Resist Exorption. But Sabbath is in the context of a six-day work week. I was told people like to, you know, you committed to like the biblical view of Sabbath. I'm like two works six days. I saw when I, you've got an American view of work. I can enjoy the five day weekend, but it's not biblical. Go to Israel. Go to Israel. Go to Israel. And they're working six days a week because that's what the Bible says. I'm not advocating working six days a week. My simple point is, I think the job market has changed so much. And there's been so much confusion. in our culture and so much exhaustion and so much legitimate trauma in our culture. People have lost their capacity to work hard and long, or the church has not provided the theology of work. So it's sort of a typical person is saying it like this. They wouldn't say these words, but the emphasis is like this. Oh, what a work, a whole secular evil world we live in. We have to endure it all week. And then we have this wonderful gift of Sabbath. That's not biblical. Biblical is, thank you God that you made me in your image that you have given me gifts to build culture, repair the world, and cultivate beautiful things for your glory in the good of others. Please help me do this work for your joy. And then thank you that I get to reflect at the end of the week and rest with gratitude for what has happened. So Sabbath is not an escape from the curse of the work. It's a mechanism to enable you to do it for the glory of God and do it for the long term. And I get sad because I don't want Gen Z to miss out on the beauty of finding a sense of coal and doing it well and having a place in the world and blessing others because you're good at what you do and you share it with others. So I think we need to recover a little bit of a theology of work.

It's 100%. When people are unemployed, they feel shame. When they're under-employed, they experience frustration. When they're employed, they feel digged aty, like a mornin' at living here. When they have a career, they have a sense of accomplishment. But when you have a vocation, you get a sense of divine favor. And that's what we need people to have. Like, what have you made me to do in the world? We need a theology of creation and vocation to come back again. And with Genzy being so creative, I'm like, I want to, I want to help them map that on to God's will for their lives and not make them think that they have to escape it.

You know, I basically try and if someone else is doing a great job, like if there's, you know, I just try and shape in this thing. I'm not sure. I'm trying to sort of like solve problems and feel gaps a little bit. And one of the things I've really sort of fallen into, if it was like a divine assignment, is fatherhood and men's ministry. And it just, it was not something I was looking for. I did this right-of-passed journey with my son. It was like one of the most beautiful life-changing experiences of my life. I wasn't really going to do anything with it. I had dinner with Pete Greg. I just come back from walking the Camino 500 miles across Spain with my son. And he said, hey man, that wasn't for you. You get to get that off your laptop. That was for a generation of kids. You need to put that out there. So I did that. And that's probably had more favor than anything I've ever done. And that was a divine accident. And then I had so many dads reaching out saying, my dad never did this for me. Do you have anything for men? So yeah, I've got the sink of the primal path. It's like a five year ride of passage journey, proper deep discipleship to form adolescent boys in a godly men. But then I've thought of this thing called forming men with Jeff Symbethky. And this has another level of favor on it like anything I've seen. And it's a combination of like psychology, theology, spiritual formation, and like brotherhood and fatherhood. That's in a very rare combination. Yeah, I tell people, I'm not an alpha male. I'm a beta male. I don't think I've ever shot and killed an animal. I don't like killing stuff. have a track, I have a Honda. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not a, I'm not a, but I used to be a butcher and I'm from a working class background. So I get those dynamics, but I'm a thoughtful intellectual urbanite. And yet, this is just getting like a resonance and it's on my information. I've got a conviction that Gender matters. It's not just a social construct, it's a spiritual reality. It's a part of the grain of the universe. And that men need spaces. Women need them too, but I think women have done better than men in the last 20 years. Men need spaces to be vulnerable, honest and open. Deal with their shame in failures. And then given a vision of how to move forward. And I am seeing such accelerated transformation in the lives of these men. I feel like I've got, I'm almost struggling to know what to do with it. So we've got a non-profit, we've got a bunch of curriculum coming out for men, and it's not like there's a lot of good curriculum, but a lot of it's 20 years old, and the changes in gender and culture and faith. It's almost like speaking a different language. So there's definitely core themes, but for whatever reason our language is like hitting a sciatic nerve in men's souls right now. So we wrote a book based on the seven core issues we see men wrestling with them well today, and we just try and address it. So that's what the book's about. It's called Fighting Shadows. Yeah, it's called Fighting Shadows. And it's, I'll give you the big idea of the book. Okay, I'll give it to you in two minutes. Satan is always overplaying his hand. And there's a scene in when Jesus and Peter are talking, where Jesus says, Simon, Simon, Satan is asked to sit you like a wheat, but I've prayed for you. that your faith may not fail, and when you've returned strength in your brothers. That word fail and Greeks are clever but it's where we get the word eclipse from. And here's Satan's strategy. He wants to eclipse God. He wants to put something between you and God so it looks like God has disappeared and all you are left with is the problem. And so Jesus says, I've prayed for you that that will not happen when the eclipse passes. Strength in your brothers. And I think Satan basically tries to show you can stand and position your hand in such a way the sun disappears. The sun's not gone, but it looks like it. and Satan's strategies to put things in front of the eyes of men where it seems like God disappears and all they have is their problems. So, it's a book on the seven core issues we see men wrestling within the modern world and then how to respond to them.

Apathy's one of them, like men a lot of men just can't get traction in their souls. On the other side, ungodly ambition, the ones who do can't get a governor on it. Obviously, last loneliness is a huge one. May or loneliness is that epidemic proportions. But may or loneliness, many Christian men feel like they do not have a group of men they can share their struggles with. They're fully isolated. And so just yeah, helping men become friends again. It's a beautiful opportunity. I'm getting a lot of joy working in that space.

I just talk to you offline and it's this. This is it.

You're very good at that. It's very good at that. And I appreciate you having me on this.

Thanks, cheers, Matt.