10 Years of Rethinking God Biblically: Conrad Mbewe, pt. 2

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder and I'm here to commemorate the 10th anniversary coming up for our Behold Your God study, Rethinking God Biblically. You're about to hear the interview with Conrad Mbewe and Conrad is the only man that contributed to the study that I did not know prior to asking him to contribute.

One thing I want to say about Conrad's visit here, when he filmed for us he also preached on a Wednesday evening and his sermon was on repentance. I believe it was on Psalm 51 and A .C. Floyd, one of the employees with Media Gratia, his wife Chelsea was converted through the impact of that sermon.

Conrad spent the night with us during that time and you know he was very gracious, very kind, but I noticed about Conrad there was no downtime for Conrad. As soon as he finished supper and speaking with us he excused himself and he went to his bedroom and got his computer out and he wrote an article for the city newspaper, he wrote something else for the churches, he wrote this for that, you know he answered emails.

He really is a man who God has entrusted with extraordinary influence and so I hope you benefit from his interview, but as you do remember to pray for Conrad and the wonderful work God is doing through him in Africa.

The Gospel as More Than Self-Help

What passes for the gospel in our day seems to have more in common with Pop's psychology and self-help books than the glory of Christ described in the scriptures. How do you see this as being linked to the low view of God?

Yeah, I think all of us if we've gone through appropriate training in evangelical conservatism need to see all aspects of life through the spectacles of creation for redemption. I think when we lose that we end up with very superficial disconnected dealings with the fallen world.

We lose sight of God in all this. One of the reasons why, for instance, entertainment has become such a big part of so-called evangelism is because, again, we've lost the main greed that there is a God who has made, the fall has essentially been a rebellion against this God so that we are no longer keeping him as the summum bonum, the highest good, and consequently seeking to relate to him as such.

Instead, we want to be at the center of all things and that's the corruption, that's the fall. And then seeing that in redemption, in Jesus being sent, we are being brought back to God, to the center of all things.

The failure to process everything through that lens is what's making us have a man-centered evangelism and consequently decisionism. So that the gospel becomes, you are sad, here's happiness. But that's a travesty of the gospel.

If I could use the image of a rebellious son in a home who is now bitter in his bedroom, and I'm his uncle, I go into that bedroom in order to deal with it. And instead of making him see that as long as he's in rebellion against his father, he will never know true fulfillment.

I'm instead wanting to somehow still make him happy, still wanting to remove the bitterness, the sadness, without making him confront the real source, and it is that he has got his center of gravity wrong in the home.

He needs to apologize to his father, be an obedient son to his father, allow the father's molding hand to bring him into a position of real responsible citizenship in God's world. Instead of me doing that, I'm instead going to him and trying to multiply the number of toys in his life so that he can be happy in that bedroom.

I'm missing the whole point. And I think that's what the Christian church is wrongly doing as it's dealing with evangelism. It's now all about how you can be happy. And consequently, the evangelism is no longer to do with real repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Forget the repentance. It's simply God loves you and he's got a wonderful plan for you. And this is the way you ought to live in order for you to be happy. We're missing the whole point.

Holiness as Relationship to God

The Western church seems unsure that personal holiness is essential or even helpful in reaching the lost. How do you see a biblical rethinking of God's character influencing personal holiness?

Yeah, again, first of all, I've mentioned a number of times before, Christianity is primarily about God. Even when you speak about the phrase holiness, biblically speaking, holiness is first of all a separation for God's own use.

So it's not so much simply a thermometer that shows morality or immorality, righteousness or wickedness. It's primarily about a relationship for God or to God. And it is because God is a righteous being that therefore that separation demands morality and righteousness.

But it's primarily about God. Now, the moment you realize it in that sense, the primary question that comes in then is what kind of God is there? Who he is? Who is he? What is his character? Then you reflect that back onto yourself, onto your church, onto your family life, etc., etc.

And that's what, to a large extent, for instance, saves people from legalism. Because if all you're thinking about is a moral standard, without thinking about an actual relationship with the God whose moral standard you ought to be concerned about, you end up being weighed down with do's and don'ts.

And unfortunately, a growing list of do's and don'ts. And that will kill you. It reduces you, for instance, to a Pharisee as well. One who has no real heart in terms of love, but who simply wants everybody around you to arrive at a certain moral standard.

You end up with Christians being reduced to factory products coming out of some Chinese factory. All looking exactly the same, dressing exactly the same way, spending their time in exactly the same schedules, and so on.

Voting for the same party, and all the rest of it. That's not God's world. That's not the way God has made his world. It's primarily about a relationship with him, which then bounces back to how does God want me to live my life today in a growing relationship with him.

So, I would really say that we again need to go back to the God who is there. Let me quickly try and apply it to my own African context. One of the areas that really bothers me is the reality that God is light, in him there is no darkness at all.

In other words, the whole issue of integrity, being transparent primarily to God, first of all, and consequently seeking to be transparent to others. Now, again, if you miss the fact that holiness and godliness is first of all an issue of my relationship with the God who is, you cannot have biblical integrity.

You cannot have biblical transparency. But when I first of all recognize that it's about my relationship with God, it doesn't make me perfect instantly, but it puts my first struggle to be a struggle with trying to be honest and sincere before my God, because he already knows me anyway.

And consequently, when I'm having dealings with him at that level, then it becomes completely absurd for me to try and then live a double life with fellow human beings. It's just crazy, because I really want to, first of all, please my God, and that's where all my battles are lost and won.

When I come to deal with human beings again, and I just want to be who I am. And I really think that getting back to the African application that I'm talking about, we as Africans generally tend to think in terms of intermediaries.

We don't want to relate to God directly. So we have God, then we've got angels, and then we have the spirits of our ancestors. And those are the ones we tend to deal with a lot more in a direct way. Are they happy with me or are they not?

If they are, then they will represent me to the higher beings and so on. Now, that to me becomes a recipe for hypocrisy, because I'm dealing with those whose values are more cultural than biblical. And it just messes me up completely as far as issues of integrity are concerned.

So instead of thinking, is God happy with what I'm doing? I'm thinking, is this in line with my cultural norms? Because that's what's going to make my ancestors happy. And I keep seeing that it's what ferments the hypocrisy, lack of integrity, the failure to break the bark of corruption that's so rampant back home.

So if only our people can see rectitude or righteousness as first of all about my immediate relationship to a personal being called God, who has revealed himself in scripture. And as I'm being transparent to him, then I can't see myself following another value system on the ground, whether cultural or not.

I think it's likely to be a great help. But if we feel that invariably we have church on Sunday and on Monday, right back to ancestral worship as a way of life. But on the outside, it's all still rules and regulations and everything else.

That's not biblical Christianity at all. I'm sure you can find its application in your own Western context, yeah.

Worship Shaped by the First Half of the Ten Commandments

What means do you use to promote the highest views of God in the church you shepherd? What things do you see in modern religious practice which you feel dangerously distract from focusing on God in the corporate setting?

Yeah, I've recently published a book and it's published in the U .S., Foundations for the Flock. Really, it's material that I have taught our own congregation over a period of about slightly more than 20 years.

What the publisher simply did was to get my little booklets and compile them into one relevant to the life of the church. There are a lot of others that I've done relevant to other areas. And one of the issues that I had to wrestle with much earlier in my pastoral ministry was essentially what is worship.

And it was because it's very easy to simply copy what is happening. But you need a principle by which you can process everything. And I've never forgotten, it's now many years ago, again meditating and thinking through issues, coming to this conviction that worship must begin with who God is and how he wants to be related to.

Now, the moment you say that and you think that way, it changes a lot of things. It means I don't come to worship corporate worship thinking, what is it that I'm going to enjoy? That's a wrong question altogether.

It's what does God require of me? And what I found particularly helpful then was to look at the first half of the Ten Commandments and recognizing that what God was essentially saying to the people of Israel in providing them with those commandments was this is the way I want you as a corporate body to love me with heart and mind and soul and strength.

So he dealt with issues of the object of worship, for instance. You'll have no other gods besides me, so invariably it's about me, God, being the center of your affections, your attention, your time, and so on and so forth.

He dealt with, for instance, the matter of worship, that you are not to make for yourself graven images. In other words, I cannot be represented by anything. The moment you make something to represent me, you are reducing on my glory.

You're stealing from who I am, and so on. So what I did then, speaking about my own local church congregation, was particularly to take us through the first half of the commandments to show how God is saying that this is who I am.

I am the Lord, your God, who has taken you out of captivity. This is the way I want you to relate to me, to worship me, and so on. So it helped me to think correctly, and then I brought it to the congregation of God people.

It's become a principle by which we think through the modern fad in worship, whatever it is that's become the in thing. Thankfully, even our own young people have processed that now, so that they are the ones who tackle their friends, who are either coming into the life of the church, or who they meet with elsewhere, and they're all excited about this new thing.

They ask them, yeah, but is that what the Lord requires at your hands, or is it something that's really feeding your own passion? So I would say that that's really what I have tended to use over the years, simply the first half of God's commandments.

A Layperson's Role in a God-Centered Church

What can a layperson do to encourage a high view of God within the local church?

Where I come from, Christianity has only really been established in the last 100 years. The pioneer missionaries largely brought the Christian faith to us towards the end of the 19th century, and mainly the first half of the 20th century.

And so most of the Christians that we know relate to in our evangelical Christian context would be first generation, or at the most second generation Christians. The first generation would have largely been responding to what you'd call a foreign faith, but seeing in it the true God, but not quite processing the implications of that in terms of the African culture itself.

So in a sense, they were learning to see and obey, but not turning around to say, okay, we are the Christians now, how do we then relate to our environment, to the way in which we govern our tribes, the way in which we relate to our chiefs, the way in which we handle creation, the way in which we bring up our children.

Yes, there was the aspect of a clean break from what was clearly related to things like witchcraft and so on, and ancestral worship, and seeking that our children may believe in the true God of the Bible.

But now, as we are dealing with the present generation of Christians, that's where we are now wrestling with, what does it really mean to be a Christian in Africa? To be a Christian who is African? And the tendency, again, is to simply buy into what is out in the West and baptize it with our own phrases and then deal with it.

But what I have found is, again, getting back to the central issues, God has revealed himself. He has made the world, man is falling in rebellion, is given a savior to bring us back to himself, and now therefore we ought to bring that redemption into all aspects of life, so that all aspects of life return to a God-centeredness, not simply as a method or formula, but because that's why he made his world.

It's about him, it's to his glory. Now, it's challenging the present generation of first-generation professional Christians to think through their world as fathers, mothers, career men and women, relating to their own tribal systems, which the West doesn't know anything of.

We still have chiefs, and we relate to them. We've got our clan systems, and they're not wrong, it's just that we have to think through them. Israel had its clan system, and God had worked through that for centuries.

So to process all that, to see how far is it God-honoring, where does it now begin to foster that? The fallenness of human beings. Therefore, as a Christian who is now part of that system, how do I honor the true God of heaven as I'm involved at that level?

Those are the challenges that as pastors back home in Africa, we are having to have dealings with. Again, refusing to simply come up with how-tos, and wanting to begin with the first principles of who God is, his character, as revealed in the scriptures.

How do we carry that through as salt and light in the various facets of life and living in Africa? My answer might be a little spread out, but that's because the application of it is really spread out.

Zambia, for instance, is presently undergoing a major change. We've come from a sort of socialist platform for our economy into a more capitalist approach. A lot of investment is coming in. The general talk now is about small-scale and medium-scale enterprises and so on.

Of course, it's Christians who are getting involved in all this. Again, the need for them to think God's thoughts in the midst of this changing context so that it's still all about God, his owner, his glory.

It's about his character coming through all this. It's what we are processing our people through. I'd like to say it is exciting because it's at a period of major change for our people.

Holiness, Sorrow, and Ministry to Different Life Stages

Western churches have adopted a marketing strategy to reach buried groups within our memberships. How do you see a biblical rethinking of God as necessary in ministering to the entire body of Christ?

What I've tended to do again back home is to think of a basic equation. That equation arises from the nature of God. I'll explain. The equation is basically holiness produces happiness. Sin produces sorrow.

It's because God is a moral being. What it means, therefore, is that when we think in terms of either evangelism or addressing Christians in terms of where they are, it is important to recognize the fact that in thinking of redemption, the rebellion against God has produced sorrow and suffering, or it is a matter of time it will produce it.

The reason why, yes, we need to speak to people in their categories is because that fallen world has brought its challenges in those categories. For instance, let's talk about a father in the church who is now a Christian.

If he doesn't shepherd his children, if he doesn't shepherd his wife, suffering and sorrow, it's a matter of time. I'm not saying if he shepherds, that won't happen, but if it does happen, it's going to happen in a context where God himself will provide the balm, the cushioning.

He will provide a sense of direction that will bring meaning there. If a father doesn't do that, if he's just busy with his own career, making the money, coming home late, consequently building his mansions, building his financial empire, well, it's a matter of time.

He's going to hit terrible sorrow, terrible suffering, and he will not find the cushioning that he otherwise would have found. As we think in terms of ministry, yes, we must challenge people according to the terms categories in which they are to recognize that God is giving them responsibility according to who he is, and that at any point in their lives, they need to respond to those situations accordingly.

That's what's going to give them a firm footing for life. That's what's going to enable them to give a foundation for the next generation that's not going to be destructive to that generation. Here are young people with the deluge of the computers and workstations and so on, and all that that's bringing to their lives.

It's very easy for them to lose a sense of the importance of time. Again, I need to let them see that time is a gift from God for which I am responsible. Now, a person coming to the end of his life is not an old man.

He's waiting for eternity. He's on the opposite end of that time. My ministry to him in that sense would be slightly different. Again, it must be from God's perspective. Again, I must be saying to him, this is the way holiness will look to you because of who God is.

For him, therefore, it is the need to leave a legacy for the children and grandchildren that he's leaving behind as he goes on to meet his maker. Holiness will produce felicity, happiness for the ones that he's leaving behind.

For the young people, I'm saying to them, God has given you this gift called time. Prepare right now for years to come rather than wasting it all with these games that are not really real on these major screens, whiling away your hours and so forth.

So there's a sense in which there must be some ministry in categories, but always thinking God's thoughts in the lives of these people at their stage in life.

The idolatry manifested in churches who believe themselves to be careful and healthy bodies. Where are people within churches embracing an idolatrously low view of God?

Earlier on when I spoke about the church in Africa being so many thousands of miles wide but an inch deep, I mentioned that what we're seeing is a sad decline of what once was a robust evangelicalism.

This question, I think, touches on that issue because the church in Africa, by and large, when you go to an average Christian church today back in Africa, that's apparently successful. The number of things you find there which are clearly just idolatry, one of them is pampering to the love of human beings for entertainment.

When you look at what is supposed to be worship, it's basically what a former generation used to call a disco. People are just dancing their time away. That's all. You may think it's bad over here. It's nothing compared to what it is back home in Africa.

It's the worst thing in the world. Worst form of dancing that you will find out there in the world that's basically been imported into the church with people whistling and clapping and just having a nice time.

Then after that, they say, okay, preach. It hasn't prepared you. It hasn't prepared the worshipers to hear God's word at all. The people are now tired, wanting to sleep, and then they're asking you to preach to them.

It's the craze that will take place in the days of Moses and Aaron when he made the golden calf. Then everybody was dancing away. Then Moses came down the mountainside and was very upset with what he found there, the reveling and so on.

Then there's also the health and wealth kind of teaching. Again, it's bad enough over on the American continent. When you cross over to Africa and they then put it into the waters of the African context, the idolatry becomes worse.

First of all, it becomes the equivalent of the African witch doctor, the power that he was demonstrating of the powers that want to destroy your life. Come to me. I have some magic powers that will destroy the destroyer in your life.

That's what is now happening in the church. People are rushing in their thousands and tens of thousands to these guys who are supposed to be preachers, but basically are performers of some apparent powers.

Again, it's not church. It's not we've come to yield our lives to the living God. We've come to abandon our sin that we may be worshipers of the only true God. Again, we've come for protection, some charm that we can get from this servant of God.

That's what Christianity is becoming. Of course, add to that the poor wanting to become rich. We have our fair share of the poor there. It's just terrible. It's terrible. It's all idolatry at the rock bottom.

It's human beings having abandoned the one true God. They're no longer thinking of him primarily. They're thinking of themselves and it is nothing but superstition baptized with Christian terms.

Why Pragmatism Undermines True Biblical Christianity

Respond to the pragmatist who may participate in this study and see truth in it, but says we are too invested in our programs to change and why would we change anything since it's working to bring people into the church?

Yeah. Again, when we think in terms of pragmatism, what is wrong is not so much what is done as a fruit of pragmatism, but it's the foundation from which what is done is being done. In other words, it's working from the premise that if something works, if it produces the results, then it's good and therefore let's go that way.

If this is what will bring the people to church, then let's do it. Now, that's a wrong way of thinking. I keep saying we need to begin with the fact that not just the earth, but the whole universe in its vastness is about God revealing himself, his glory, his beauty, his majesty, his power, his love.

It's about God and once we have been mesmerized by this, we want to worship him. If we keep those things central and we find that in declaring all of these things, we are not, as it were, attracting the population, it's going to throw us back to God.

It's going to make us more prayerful. It's going to make us say, Lord, reveal yourself because ultimately it's not just about God having revealed himself in creation. It is about God revealing himself by his spirit in opening blind eyes to see him in what he has made and also in his word.

Therefore, what it does is it, if we begin in the right place, it makes the church a praying church. So, one of the proofs that we are not really being godly is that a lot of the successful churches go to their prayer meetings and they find a handful of people.

They're not interested in calling on God to hallow his name, to extend his kingdom, to cause his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. They're not interested. That's not, again, biblical Christianity.

That's the fruit of pragmatism. We've got a pastor with powerful qualifications. We've got a beautiful church, a beautiful choir or band. We put everything right. We've advertised on the TV, on the internet, in the local paper.

It's drawing in the crowds. We've got wonderful programs for young people. Is God revealing himself? Are souls coming under true conviction of seeing, turning to God in genuine conversion, knowing him, living lives that are God-centered, glorifying him in all aspects of life?

Is this happening? Is God himself melting human hearts and bringing them to himself? Only he can do it and he does it as God's people come to the end of themselves and employ him to, as it were, fold his sleeves and make bare his holy arm in today's world.

That to me is what should make us shun pragmatism. It's not that we therefore should not have good buildings and everything else. It is the premise on which we are moving. If God's people recognize that this is about God and seek him and pray and do everything because they want God to come down and honor his name and then they are doing all this, yes, all they are doing is seeing the two sides of the shield of truth, the sovereignty of God and human responsibility.

But it's coming from the right premise and it's not the premise of pragmatism. It's the premise of true biblical Christianity because it begins with God.