Theological Education in a World that Hates Christians

Well, a problem right now, in addition to not knowing the times we're in and acting as if we can have this affable, winsome, sort of tease people with truth, and maybe a few years from now they'll express enough interest for us to let on that the reason why we are the way we are is we're

Christians. We don't have time for that. I mean, not that we ever did, right? But we don't have time for that in this world that hates

Christianity. Striving for superior theology and denominational unity, one joke at a time,

Your Calvinist Podcast begins now. Welcome back to Your Calvinist Podcast.

My name is Keith Foskey, and as always, I'm your Calvinist. I'm your Calvinist.

I'm glad to have you with me today as I'm going to be talking about an organization that is very important to me and has had a huge impact on my life and ministry.

The Founders' Ministry is a ministry that's committed to preaching and teaching and equipping people in regard to the historic

Reformed Baptist faith. And years and years ago, when I was being introduced to Reformed theology, and particularly

Calvinistic theology and Baptist history, I came across this organization. I went to a conference.

It was, I think it was in Tampa, and Steve Kreloff was there and Roy Hargrave was there.

But there was another man there whose name was Tom or his name is Tom Askell. And I was introduced to Tom and to the

Ministry of the Founders and all the things that they were doing. And I was really encouraged by it. Well, fast forward a few years, and I thought

I was going to leave the church that I was in because Calvinism had become a huge issue.

And I thought people wanted me to leave. And I called Tom and Tom encouraged me to stick it out. He encouraged me to stay and to fight the fight and to push forward and continue preaching the truth.

And so I'm very grateful to Tom Askell and the Founders' Ministries, not just because of what they're doing now, but because of what they've done in my life in the past.

And I wanted to share that with you as I introduce today the topic of the show, because what we're talking about is the subject of the

Institute of Public Theology, which is now the teaching arm of the

Founders' Ministry. And I have with me today a leader in this group, one of the representatives of the

IOPT, Scott Callahan, who's going to share with us more about this important new opportunity for education in the

Christian life. Scott, thank you for being a part of the show today. Well, thanks so much,

Pastor Keith. It's wonderful to be here. Absolutely. And just for the audience's sake, can you tell us again a little bit about your background and what your title is with the

IOPT? Right, so I'm the dean of the Institute of Public Theology, and before being with the

Institute of Public Theology, we were cross -cultural international missionaries to the

Chinese and Asia. And I did theological education via Chinese. So speaking

Chinese, speaking in my academic field, which is Old Testament and Hebrew and Aramaic.

And before that, I was a U .S. Navy chaplain. So there have been many things I've done in ministry to this point, and I really just can't believe that I have this amazing opportunity to be a part of the

Institute of Public Theology. And I'm so thankful to be able to share about it with you today. And so just really briefly, what is the

Institute of Public Theology? It's just as you said, this is the theological education work of Founders Ministries.

And it started, we're in our third year now, it started just a few years ago as the founding faculty, which was

Tom Askell, president of Founders Ministries, who has had this kind of impact in your life and certainly mine as well, profound impact.

And Tom Nettles and Vodie Bauckham, the founding faculty, getting together and just kind of noticing that sort of the traditional ways that we've just expected leaders to be trained up for our churches have failed us, by and large, in the last few years.

And that sounds like a bold claim until you step back and remember what you sort of don't want to remember about the last few years, about vast swaths of evangelicalism sort of falling flat on their face in the midst of what, from a church history perspective, was a pretty minor pressure.

Of course, I'm referring to the COVID crisis and everything happening at the same time right then.

And, you know, you had disgraceful criticism of John MacArthur, for instance, for holding church services on Sunday, as if this were the last thing that a

Christian should do from previously dependable voices, you know,

Christian voices. So this isn't where I'm not even talking about the continual critics that we all expect, but Christian voices criticizing people for having church, simply doing what all of us just a few years ago would have said is expected from the book of Hebrews, not giving up meeting together regularly.

So anyway, in that atmosphere of just really contemporary evangelicalism losing its mind, the founding faculty said, you know, we need to rethink the training up of leaders to the degree that we're not only talking about the pastor, we're certainly talking about the pastor of a church,

Christian leaders in that sense. But also think about your non -staff elders, meaning the ones who aren't getting paid, the deacons, the

Sunday school teachers, serious Christians. Think about the kind of people who have microphones and fill large conference centers, say in women's ministries and so forth, and how often we hear really bad advice, really bad non -biblical teaching, waste of time kind of stuff from prominent people because it's just simply not biblical, not founded on trust in the authority and sufficiency of Scripture.

So it became a natural growth from what Founders Ministries has been doing for 40 years, because as many of our viewers may know,

Founders Ministries exists for the recovery of the gospel and the reformation of local churches.

So what better way to help with that than in leadership training? So just a key thing as I try to share about the

Institute of Public Theology with people, whether online in this sort of format or in person or in churches, a key thing for people to know is that we want to support the local church.

We want to found everything we do on trust in the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. And those two aspects are actually quite rare nowadays, because the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, if you think about it, is so disarming to us sinful human beings.

We don't want to admit that we have absolutely nothing of value to offer when we get up and speak for God, except for His own word.

Yeah. We don't want to admit that because we're really into our creativity. We're really into our past experience.

You know, our ability to tell an engaging story and so forth. But we are utterly replaceable.

And if we're being faithful, we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, you know.

So the Institute of Public Theology is training up Christians to have a public voice. And so that's why it's the

Institute of Public Theology. Because if you think about it, the mission of the church, the Great Commission, is public.

There seems to be a stream within evangelicalism that wants to take Christianity private, to make our faith an aspect of spiritual formation, where we have these exercises and these completely extra -biblical, un -biblical, anti -biblical practices that take us into the inner world.

Yeah, I mean, I can go on on that. And we will later in the show. Yeah, later in the show,

I do want to get to some more of that. I want to dig down into that. But keep going. I just letting people know this is the direction we're going today.

Yeah. Great. You know, this inward focus that we're being told that's where the riches of Christianity is means we don't engage anymore.

We don't do what Jesus says of being disciples who make disciples, you know.

And if you think about it in the Great Commission, the often ignored actual Great Commission, Matthew 28, 18 to 20, make disciples is the command.

You must go to the people you're making disciples of for this to work. That's the going part.

And then we actually get an explanation of what you're supposed to do when you get there. Baptize.

Teach. And so here we have the Institute of Public Theology teaching disciples to teach in accordance with the word of God.

So I couldn't be more excited to be a part of this amazing work with Founders Ministries. And we've gotten to the point we can talk more about individual aspects of this.

We've gotten to the point now where we have, for the last year, begun offering actual degree programs with IOPT.

And, you know, it's just it's a fantastic thing to talk about because it's such a needed resource for leadership development in the church.

Amen, amen. And I'm excited to talk to you more about it, but something you said has already got my attention.

And I know you told me this before, but you just reminded me of it. And that is your history of you as a teacher.

And obviously, you're a well -educated man. Obviously, you're teaching. Teaching is your heart, but your ministry was to the

Chinese people. And so you were translating from the original languages into Chinese. Is that what I heard you say?

Well, speaking Chinese to teach. OK, OK. So this is actually not done very often, so I have to kind of explain it sometimes.

Yes. Oh, OK. So you speak Mandarin. Is that what it is? Mandarin Chinese?

That's right. And, you know, what I discovered in doing this is that there may be and I have no firm grip on this for numbers, but there may be 10 or fewer people in the world who actually teach the biblical languages.

So, again, my area is Old Testament, Hebrew, Aramaic. So I'd be teaching Hebrew and Aramaic in Chinese without reference to any

English resource at all. So that is extremely rare. But this got me to thinking, you know, that that the present state of missions practice in the contemporary church tends to be

English centric, actually. Yeah. And not really taking seriously. Go ahead.

Oh, no, please finish your sentence. And then. Yeah. Oh, so I was just going to say and not really taking seriously the language dynamic that we don't want the the pastor of the host nation, we don't want him to feel that he needs to go through English to get to the

Bible. You know, and that's really the message we send when we when we firstly we just throw a

Bible in his hands, something like that, and it's our English Bible or even when we only provide a quality translation in the local language.

And we sort of hold back the riches of actual training in the

Bible as it was given, meaning in the original languages. So we just sort of hold that back and say, you know, this this is for us well -resourced

Christians from rich countries. This is not for you. That is so paternalistic, that kind of thinking, and it just, you know, it gets me going whenever there's disrespect, you know, because I've seen it disrespect, for instance, against Chinese saying, well, you don't need this, you know, that kind of thing.

What you need is the smart Western guy to come in and tell you what you need.

No, the world church needs the word of God, you know. Amen. Well, it just caught my attention.

My wife did English as a second language for Chinese students for about three years with a company called

VIP Kid. And she worked with Chinese students and fell in love with the Chinese people through that meeting students and learning.

And so I know when she hears this, she's going to be super excited that you worked with them as well. I look forward to hopefully meeting meeting you one day.

Maybe we go out to lunch. My wife would have a thousand things she'd want to talk to you about because her heart is just just in love with with the

Chinese people. And we pray about what they face in regard to having to struggle through being able to being able to practice their faith in a country that is suppressing it.

So, yeah, just grateful for thankful for what you've done in that for sure. So I want to ask you this question as another way of sort of getting to know you and letting the audience get to know you.

And this is just something fun that I do with all of my with all of my guests is I do a would you rather question.

And this is sort of one of those, you know, we talked about it before the show, one of those old youth group questions like you ask a question just to get to know someone.

So if you had the choice, Scott, would you rather and this is you're in a time machine.

You meet Marty McFly. He's going to take you back to wherever you want to go. But you can only go one place. Would you rather sit in Geneva under Calvin and hear him preach a sermon?

Or would you rather sit in England and hear Spurgeon preach a sermon?

If you had a choice and you get to go, you only get to go to one, you get to go back in time. Marty McFly and Doc Brown are taking you back in time and you only get to sit with one.

Which one would you choose? And and let's just say language is not an issue, which is because I was going to say if you go, obviously you can understand

Spurgeon and not Calvin if you don't if you don't speak his language. But let's just say language wasn't the issue. Right, so I get the universal translator from Star Trek to exactly that's in that proves that you and I are good friends because we just yeah, we can nerd out on stuff like that.

Yes, right, right. Well, I've been actually to and I think the original location burnt down, so I haven't been in the actual structure, but I've been in Spurgeon's church in London.

So to have heard him, this man who is so detested by the communists of his day and who's left such a mark on just the practice of preaching and reinvigorating people's understanding of the need for expository preaching,

I would need to go with Spurgeon on this. And then I wouldn't need the translator, I assume. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I wonder, you know, sometimes I listen to British people and I don't really understand English very well.

Right. All right, Scott, well, we're going to take just a second. I have a little thing I'm going to throw in here to remind people of some important things, and then we'll be back in about one minute.

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slash your Calvinist and leave a donation. Most importantly, we want to make sure that everybody who hears this podcast hears the gospel.

The word gospel means good news, and that good news has to be preceded by some bad news.

And the bad news is this, that we are all sinners. Sin is breaking God's law. So we stand guilty before the

Lord of the universe. But the good news is God sent his son into the world to pay the penalty for everyone who would believe in him.

Jesus came into the world, lived a perfect life, and he died a substitutionary death for everyone who will believe.

And he calls us all to repent of our sin, to turn from our unbelief and trust in him as Lord and Savior.

And if you've never done that, I encourage you to do so today. Now back to the show. All of life is theological.

You don't understand life. You don't engage life rightly if you're not thinking theologically about it because it comes from God.

Our culture says the church is fine as long as it stays in its lane. You can't do that because the

God who created the world created the world and everything in it. And he created it all for his glory.

Anyone who's serious with Christ, wanting to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and wanting to be challenged beyond what they have access to right now in their local setting would do well to come and take courses here at IOPT.

We're talking about a faculty here and an overall institution that's founded upon trust and the authority and sufficiency of scripture.

I think people who come will benefit from seeing that they're not alone, that there are a few thousand years involved in the kind of witness that we want to bear in the world.

All right, guys, we're back and we're continuing with Scott Callaham from the dean of the

Institute of Public Theology. He's talking to us today about the importance of a solid

Christian education, especially regarding the fact that many of the traditional schools that once were held up as the mainstays and the places where everyone would need to go if they wanted a quality education, many of them have gone off the rails, as he mentioned in the introduction.

And so we're going to talk a little bit more about why the institute exists, why it was created.

And I just have a few questions I'm going to go through, and these are going to lead us to some conversations. Scott, the first thing

I want to say, you've sort of answered the what is it and why was it created. But I do want to ask this question.

Do you consider the institute a seminary? You mentioned y 'all started a degree program.

So are you are you putting yourself out there as an actual seminary? Short answer, yes.

OK, yes. And we have we have friends who have seminary in the name of what they're doing, and we love them and actively cooperate with them.

That just was not the choice of the founding faculty at the time because of the overwhelming need to emphasize public theology, this idea of retaking the public square as the place for the proclamation of the

Christian faith. So this, you know, in our present day, you see this as Rosaria Butterfield standing up at the school board meeting.

And challenging, you know, saying the emperor has no clothes, people, you know, let's actually talk, you know, thus says the

Lord belongs in the public square. And so, you know, this is the spirit of the Institute of Public Theology is reinvigorating the idea that Christians are supposed to be actively engaging in their lives, in their jobs, you know, seeking out opportunities to be public witnesses for Christ.

Amen, amen, love it. OK, well, so with that, what degrees are you guys going to be offering?

And I know I have the I have the pamphlet here, and I'm assuming these are available if people want to get one, if people are curious or I guess the information's online, right?

Yes, so Institute of Public Theology dot org. And certainly if you'd like to receive this information so you can give it out, you know, at your church, we'd love to do that.

Love to send it out to anyone who requests these pamphlets that just show the progression of how one could go through a course of study with us.

And actually in the process, you find out about the fantastic world class faculty we have and really the unique opportunity to engage in a theological education program that's going to bring you along.

This isn't a money making machine where we kind of just leave you to your devices.

And then whenever you decide to finish, then you get some sort of certificate. We want to actually partner with your local church as your primary place of ministry in this mentoring process, in this discipling process, as someone receives their theological education from our faculty.

And we want to see you occasionally as well, if possible. And when I share that with people, it's not to place a burden on people to travel to beautiful Cape Coral, Florida twice a year, because that's no burden at all, believe me.

But there are some people who we recognize we'll never see. Like we have a faithful Reformed Baptist pastor in Bolivia where his salary for an entire year wouldn't buy the plane ticket.

That sort of thing. So on one hand, we want to really emphasize that we want to see people twice a year for our intensive classes that we have.

And there are some classes that are not even offered intensively because it wouldn't be appropriate for the subject matter.

But we want to see people a couple of times a year, if possible, so that this can be a true human partnership.

We don't want to be leading our lives, talking to people through a flat screen. Sure, sure.

And just even right now, I mean, we can feel the disconnect here, even though we're talking to one another, we're talking through the camera and there's sometimes a delay and there's some, you know, all of those things.

It doesn't feel like we're in the same room. And so I get that and I get the value of that. How long is it?

So you said you have degree programs and this is something I'm actually thinking, you know, kind of, you know, if I were going to do it, what would be what are the preliminary things that are required?

And then what does a course term look like? How long does it take to get a master's or I don't even know if you're doing a doctorate.

So what would that look like? So the flagship degree would be the Master of Divinity. And if a student were to be full time, like take everything when it's offered first time, this kind of thing, then it's structured to be the length of a

Master of Divinity being done in a traditional way, three years. There are many people who can't do that.

And so this is also an important message for people who may have had the fleeting thoughts of being involved with the seminary, but think it's too big of a load for what they're doing in life, being the

CEO of some company, being a full time pastor, this sort of thing. Well, you don't have to be a full time student to be a four credit student.

That's an important thing to say. So, you know, I just think of right now my friend who is a medical doctor who is studying

Hebrew with me, we're in Hebrew 2 and we're about to be done with this first year of studying

Hebrew. Well, so he's in a hospital rotation. We're not going to see him, you know, lots coming down to Florida, but he's in a hospital rotation in Maryland, for goodness sakes.

Well, however, he can usually make it to our Thursday night one or two hour meeting that we have synchronously online so we can hammer out areas that he's having difficulty with in just doing the assignments in Hebrew in the learning process.

So, you know, there's a there's a great amount of flexibility built into our program as we're bringing people along.

And we encourage people not to overload. But let it soak in. And as far as soaking in, if I could just share about that a little bit.

Yeah, absolutely. My specialty area is Hebrew and Old Testament, like I said. Therefore, my specialty area does not cover what some of these classes that we've offered, what the subject matter has been.

So I just think back to sitting in for Jim Renahan's class on the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession.

And he is the author of these amazing books on the First and Second London Baptist Confessions.

And basically he taught the red book over the course of a week. And I was just riveted every second.

In fact, so much so that I think he misinterpreted the look on my face as wanting to say something.

I'm like, no, keep going, because he was able to put this amazing synthesis of theology into a historical context that helped to show what the framers of it were going through and what they were thinking at the time that they put this this document together.

And it's just a joy as a Baptist Christian to see what the

Baptists of that many years ago were thinking as they put together a confession that they all commonly confessed and what that meant to have that confession in that time.

And now, as we so many centuries later are looking at it, can see the genius of it as well, because who would ever believe that in 1689 that it would need to be spelled out that marriage, in God's design, marriage is one man and one woman.

Why would you need to say that in 1689? But they did, you know.

So that's just an example of of a class that, as all of them have, deeply impressed me.

I mean, another one I'm thinking of is we had Carl Truman come and teach with his textbook here,

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Can you imagine being in the classroom? I read that last year.

That's interesting. I read that last year. So that's I was very excited when I saw that he was there. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine being in the classroom and having back and forth engagement with the author of that book?

So that's the kind of opportunity one has with the Institute of Public Theology. So earlier you said that this is not just for pastors.

You said that it's for the Sunday school teacher. It's for the lay elder. It's for the serious

Christian. So is there a is if a person wasn't interested in doing the

MDiv, because that may be too intensive, can they take individual classes? And is there is there anything is there anything else available for them,

I guess, is the question, or is the MDiv sort of the the main thing? Well, so the degrees go from bachelor's level onward to master's, so we're really excited about the bachelor's and the interest that it has raised, because there are actually plenty of people who could benefit from serious engagement with the issues of our day worldview, ethics, theology, who haven't been to college yet.

So, you know, just the high school education coming into the bachelor's level, it's a very exciting opportunity to to sit in the same classroom that I've just been describing for the

MDiv students as well. And then there are some people just due to their situation in life where they're saying, well, you know,

I had a Master of Divinity or whatever. I went to seminary 20 years ago, but just due to the pressures of life,

I've never used that biblical language training that I received.

It it was there 20 years ago. It's no longer there. What do I do? Well, an example of what you could do is you could come to us with the

Institute of Public Theology and we have the graduate certificate in biblical exposition where we're just doing the biblical languages.

So I'm, of course, really excited about being in Hebrew, too. Right now we're going to have a Hebrew and expositing the

Old Testament class, which is using the Hebrew we've learned for the preaching of the various genres of scripture.

And then coming up in September, we begin our Greek series of instruction. So a great time to come into the

Institute of Public Theology is this year as we're embarking upon our Greek training. And the thing is, a person might say, well, that that sounds good for the scholar kind of person.

But what about your average pastor? Actually, part of the follow through, I think, in being someone who trusts in the authority and sufficiency of scripture is really going where that line of thinking leads of, you know,

I really need to set aside myself as much as possible and my preconceptions and get let the word of God sink in so deeply that it's going to change me.

You know that I'm going to notice the details and where the author of some New Testament book is actually leading in his course of argumentation.

The best way to do that is to approach the Bible through the original languages. So we're so excited that we can do that with the

Institute of Public Theology. So you see bachelor's level certificates as well as the

MA and the MDiv. So we have a wide swath of training options available. I think you mentioned, can someone take one class?

Well, sure. You know, sign up for, say, the graduate certificate in public theology and take one class.

And we welcome people if they feel it's the best thing to do in their life circumstances to try it out with an audit where you're not expected to write a paper or even to say anything in class if you don't want to.

But try it out. Experience this for yourself. And I think you'll agree that this will be the beginning, really.

This will be part of a wonderful journey of discipleship with your local church. If a pastor wanted to do the expository preaching course and start in the

Greek course, could they come in with no Greek background at all? I mean, is that possible? Or is it something that they would need to have previously had, like you said, 20 years ago or whatever?

Could someone come in and have, you know, they don't even know the Greek alphabet. Would they be able to come in and do it?

Right. Start from zero. That's right. And so I don't want to scare anybody to think that they're going to be expected to cram in a language in a week.

So this is an example of a class that there's these weekly parceled out opportunities to learn.

And that's how you want to do a language is so that it soaks in to your mind. So, for instance, in my Hebrew teaching right now,

Monday through Wednesday at a time of the students convenience. So like right now we're on a lesson. They watch my prerecorded teaching videos.

And, you know, some segment, some idea they didn't understand, they can rewatch it. And, you know, you don't have that opportunity in class to to say, hey, can you just say everything you said once again?

You know, that kind of thing. Or if someone doesn't get my explanation, they can watch the instructional videos of the textbook author.

And then I mentioned with my medical doctor friend Thursday nights that we meet for an actual live discussion to make sure people understand the material.

And then Friday we have a quiz. And then so repeat. And it's amazing how you make your way through the material.

It's a different way of studying than for many other subjects. But if you just do it a little bit a day when you can, you actually make huge progress.

I mean, I'm so amazed at these students who when we started, of course, didn't have any

Hebrew knowledge at all. We had to learn the alphabet at the beginning with a song. And so forth. But how they're getting.

I still remember the song. Yeah. Oh, well, good. I have another song for that.

Yes. But that these students, even before we finish the

Hebrew and now then move on to the exegesis class, that they're really noticing details in the text.

And as they are for their various ministries, as they're getting ready to preach and teach their they're going to their Hebrew Bible.

And that just feeds the enthusiasm as you're able to do that. You're not looking for some insight, some brilliant insight that no

Bible reader has ever seen, because that's not how it works. But you're getting a really firm grip.

You're getting a grasp on the message that doesn't have any translation loss.

That that's the thing is whenever you're going between languages. And I feel this, especially having been a Chinese speaker and done preached in Chinese, taught in Chinese, that there's you have to reformulate when you're going from one language to another to to approach what was being said in the first language.

And it's tough with a Bible translation where you can't be going on and on and on to explain one verse in a

Bible translation. So there's going to be some degree of meaning loss, you know, not not on a doctrinal level, but there's going to be some degree of you're not following as closely with what the author is saying unless you're able to do it from the original languages.

So just so excited that we can offer that with the Institute of Public Theology. Amen. Well, tell us about your teachers who obviously we have you, you're doing the

Hebrew and the Aramaic and I guess also the Old Testament exposition class.

But who else are the teachers? And you said the founding faculty are Tom Askell and Vodibachum and Tom Nettles, which

I'm thankful that I've had the opportunity to meet all three of those men, great men of God. Tom, obviously, with his teaching background is or both

Tom's, but Tom Nettles specifically with his teaching background is is an amazing gift to the church that God has given.

So tell us about like if we took certain classes, who would be who would be taking classes with?

So a quick tour of our faculty would include, I'm just thinking back to December, we had

David Schrock come and teach systematic theology one. He's one of the powerful biblical truth voices of our day to meet meet challenges in the public square with his field of expertise, his systematic theology.

He's taken on the strange infiltration of Marxist racist ideas into the evangelical church.

He's taken it on and at a fairly early stage in the in the present day discussion. So David Schrock would be an example.

And our next course to come up. So coming into this next quarter here is Mark Coppinger, Logic and Rhetoric.

Oh, my goodness. I mean, did I ever have a class in that in my training at any point in life?

No. You know, so looking forward to that. And then the following week we have Chad Vegas. It's one of the founders of Radius International come and do a missions class.

So I'm in dialogue with him about his syllabus even right now today. And then, you know, looking ahead to the rest of the year, of course, you wouldn't want to miss the

Old Testament survey, too. That's with me. But, you know, think about I've already mentioned

Karl Truman and Jim Renahan. We've had Ben Dunson. Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to meet

Conrad and Bewe. And you mentioned meeting the Toms, Tom Nettles and Tom Askell and Bodhi Bauckham.

But Conrad of Bewe came and was one of our key speakers for our National Founders Conference.

And he has taught our That the World May Know preaching class. So we were just discussing about about wrapping up that class here and had the wonderful opportunity to meet him.

And and actually that that brings up something. In the personal interactions that you can have with this world class faculty that I'm talking about, you're meeting men who have really engaged on the spiritual battlefield.

The way that Tom Askell describes this is they have mud on their boots, you know, and I've because because I've done this myself, they've left blood on the spiritual battlefield.

You know that they've really they've really expended themselves for the kingdom of God.

And what you discover in theological training with such men is that there's an immediate applicability element that's that's you don't have to peel back too many layers to get to.

It's just right there. So we have had Jim Oreck and Richard Barcelos also in the past as our as our adjunct faculty.

So you put together that list and what Tom Askell says is he would put this faculty against any basically as far as a quality comparison for men you can trust.

Where the you don't have to question where they're going to come out, say, on the

Dallas statement on social justice, that kind of thing. There won't be any wavering on what should be some fairly clear issues of the faith nowadays that we have successfully muddied in the evangelical church.

You don't have to question. And instead, you can critically engage from the beginning and think about how we all need to change to be in conformance with the word of God.

Well, good deal. What you've mentioned a few times and I picked up on it that, you know, obviously there's the issues with the traditional seminaries.

And you mentioned in the introduction about how COVID brought a lot of things to light.

And I think I know what you mean. And we're going to dig into that a little bit. But even in this, just what you just said, you know, you don't have to worry about where these men are going to come out and where they're going to stand on issues like the

Dallas statement. I remember when the Dallas statement came out. I remember a friend sent me a copy before it before it really hit, you know, was asking for people to read it and sign it.

And I remember thinking and I did sign it. And I remember thinking this is going to be a this is going to be a dividing point.

And it wasn't just a few months later. I was sitting sitting in a group of pastors who met public or in Jacksonville.

We have a group of reformed pastors who sort of get together and have this conversation. It was called our forum. And in that there was a man who had great took great issue with the

Dallas statement. And I mentioned I had signed it and he sort of got kind of upset with me. So, yeah,

I mean, you never know, even if somebody calls himself reformed, where they're going to land on things like this. You never know where people are going to be.

And so there is some there is some encouragement to hear you say, you know, you know where these guys are going to stand.

But but why do you think covid and this is sort of getting into a personal opinion of yours,

I just want to hear your thoughts. Why do you think that was the the impetus to bring all this to light and to really draw the lines?

Because, I mean, I see lines drawn all over the place. I'm on Twitter. I'm on a lot of social media. I talk to a lot of people and it just seems like the lines are drawn everywhere.

So why do you think that was? Right, right. Well, I should lead firstly with saying that I'm not an anti -institutionalist in that we want to affirm the good that is in the training programs that many of us have been through in seminaries.

You know, so right up front, I received a world class theological education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in which trust in the authority and sufficiency of scripture was in the air.

You know, it was the air we breathe. So, you know, we're not in this an iconism, you know, tear down the the the institutions that exist.

But what we are getting at mainly with the question, I think, is recognizing the times we're in.

OK, so the times we're in right now, this is this is the men of Issachar who understood the times and knew what

Israel should do kind of things. The times we're in require action and they require action with wisdom of reading the times.

So we don't exist in a Christian era in which it was you were generally viewed as a moral person and it was basically a good thing.

You're a good citizen. You're a good neighbor. If you go to church. We don't exist in an era in which, oh, that's good for you.

I'm not interested at all, but it's good for you to be a Christian, that kind of thing. The era that we're in right now, we're kind of waking up to realize the era we're in right now is it's a negative.

For you to be a convictional Christian, there's no social cost to proclaiming that you're not that kind of Christian, the one where the

Christian faith makes any difference in your life at all. You know, that kind of thing. There's no cost to that. That's the best kind there is to our culture.

But there's a social cost, which I think just there was a confluence in God's sovereignty of events during the

Covid era that brought these issues to the forefront. So you have very significant issues that it seems that those who were completely undependable during that era just sort of want to pretend didn't happen.

So there's like this span of years that it's as if it dropped into a black hole for certain people.

You know, you listen to them up to 2019, hit pause, 2023 resume, and you wouldn't have known that there were that span of years in which the entire tenor of what they had to say, their entire message changed.

It's extremely disturbing. OK, so what are you talking about, Scott? Well, this is this is interesting because the

Covid era in the United States was an era of almost no pressure whatsoever from a church history standpoint.

So we didn't know how great the pressure would be. Would John MacArthur be thrown in jail or not?

We didn't know, you know. I appreciate what he said about he was ready to do his jail ministry.

He never had the opportunity to do that in life. You know, what a guy. We didn't know what would happen in the end.

It was very slight pressure. And there was this strange way of behaving that we had never seen before about pastors said, you know, voluntarily segregating their congregations, having separate services for people who didn't have a certain medical treatment during that time and speaking in a way that gave such deference to the pronouncements of civil authorities without the backing even of common sense, let alone theology, you know, during during that time.

So it's just kind of a strange thing to observe from people who we would have expected to stand on the same stage with the guy they were criticizing,

John MacArthur, for having church during COVID.

So what's the problem? Well, a problem right now, in addition to not knowing the times we're in and acting as if we can have this affable, winsome sort of tease people with truth and maybe a few years from now, they'll express enough interest for us to let on that the reason why we are the way we are as we're

Christians, we don't have time for that. I mean, not that we ever did. Right. But we don't have time for that in this world that hates

Christianity. You know, we haven't seen anything yet as far as the the vector that we're driving along for the opposition to the

Christian faith, hence the importance of the Institute of Public Theology. So there's that. But there's also this troubling thing that I mentioned about the formerly dependable leaders, that they're incapable, it seems, of repentance.

Of admitting, you know, I mean, hindsight brings some clarity, right, just admitting that they were wrong and moving on.

Incapable, pretend it didn't happen, is the is the strategy, you know, and there are some fantastic exceptions, but not many.

To this, what Tom Askell calls metanoia phobia, to use the the Greek word for repentance and then phobia.

So it's a beautiful word that goes together there. But just this allergy to doing what we're supposed to be doing as Christians all the time of repenting of our sins, that's an issue in our contemporary day.

And it just casts doubt upon who we can trust. So so personally, I think we need to enter into an age in Christianity of the de -celebratization of the faith.

And what I mean is don't just automatically trust what anybody says, you know, be the Bereans that the

Bible talks about, the noble Bereans who checked what Paul said. And it was a lot harder for them to do that than it is for us, you know, who carry the

Bible with us on our electronic devices. They had to go to the scrolls. I mean, you know, like they were serious about this, checking up on on Paul.

So, you know, those are some of the things that are happening now. And so what happened with me actually is not what happened with everybody.

OK, so on the mission field. At the time that the covid crisis was making the worldwide church go crazy, there was an issue with the leadership of the school that I was teaching for.

Where we're doing all this interaction through the screen instead of in person and the screen dynamic, people were very eager to make this just sort of the normal way we do things, you know, talk with people through the screen instead of being in the same room with them to the degree that all of a sudden one day at this seminary, there was this announcement, hey, gather together some elements.

We're going to do the Lord's Supper. I'm like, what? This isn't even church.

Yeah. What what are you talking about? I mean, you know, but just this there was a there was a stop of critical thinking and there was just like we're going to be in this strange environment, this inhuman environment of not talking to each other in person.

And we're going to just adapt our lives to this. We're going to sit in our cell, our monks cell, you know, and sort of tap on the wall.

To to talk to each other instead of just saying, wait, wait, wait. What does the Bible say?

Does the Bible have anything to say about how we should conduct our lives as Christians? Yes, the Bible does.

You know, so there's so this slight pressure, this very slight pressure of covid,

I think, unmasked. Casual Christianity, meaning kind of the folks who they were not of us and they departed from us during those days, people who have tasted of the heavenly gift, you know, people who have been around the work of the

Holy Spirit and kind of liked the seeing the effects of the

Christian life. But they themselves had not been regenerated even to be able to take their primary guidance from the

Holy Spirit inspired word of God as their instinct instead of themselves, instead of just going with the flow.

So in a way, the covid era was a merciful grace gift from God because of how clarifying it was, you know, for all of us to rethink where we stand and also to just in our distress pray, you know, call out to God for reformation in our churches.

And I think the fact that we did not have widespread prayer during covid of,

God, would you please intervene? Would you please change hearts? Would you please heal us?

You know, there are some people in our churches who who are deathly ill and who are dying. Would you please heal us?

Would you change this world? I don't think people turn to God.

I think that they deified the trillions of dollars dumped into medical treatments during that time and the results, you know, that they listen to formerly dependable kind of people telling them, you know, our messiah has arrived in the form of a syringe.

And it was such a strange time. And in my case, you know, I think it may have been different from some of the audience because it was experienced on the mission field.

So I wasn't in the United States at the time. But those are some thoughts about how some things have gone really wrong in our recent memory.

And we all want to forget. I mean, it's so unpleasant, right? We want to forget, but we dare not.

Yeah, and I think, too, about, you know, obviously a lot of what we're talking about in regard to the changes of the last few years or covid and and and the you mentioned the syringe and all those things.

And obviously all that is is is has had a profound impact on the way people behave, profound impact on the way the world works.

I remember the day that Florida officially like went on lockdown.

I was working at the church and I went to get lunch with a friend. We walked into an Arby's and all the chairs were up on the table and there was a sign that said you can order food, but you can't sit here and eat it.

You can't you can't be here. You can't be in public. You have to take the food and leave. And I looked at my friend and I said,

I said, I don't think the world's ever going to be the same. I said, because this this is I had never experienced it.

I was 40 years old. I'd never experienced anything like that in my life where the whole world just shut down and you couldn't sit in a restaurant.

You couldn't sit. And again, they were telling us you couldn't go to church. You couldn't do anything. And so obviously it was profoundly impactful just in that regard, but also something else.

And I think this is where I think founders really had the finger on the pulse early on.

And that is CRT and the and the issues of CRT. I remember my wife and I went to a founders conference where Bodie Bauckham was speaking and he was speaking this.

I don't remember what year it was. I was the year CrossPolitik was there. Toby Sumter was preaching also.

So if you remember what year that would have been. But Bodie preached on hegemony,

I think was the word that he used that was talking about hegemony. And I remember my wife just looked at me and it's like, what is he even talking about?

What is this issue of cultural hegemony? And, you know, we went back to the hotel room that night and I told her,

I said, I think they are because this was before those that language was in the was in the was really in the churches.

You know, this was sort of a sort of preempt, preempting that. And I remember saying to her, I said, I think I think they see something that's coming.

I think they see something that's the issues coming and having that level of wisdom. You know, obviously he wrote fault lines and things that was, you know, about that.

And so, you know, I just I count him as sort of being somewhat prophetic, you know, not not truly prophetic, but somewhat, you know, insightful and God giving him insight into what was coming.

And so not only was covid, I kind of see it all converging. Right. You have covid, you have

CRT, you have the, you know, all of these things. And and so I think all that just sort of came together.

And you're right, you're right. And in my case, you know, my my personal experience, again, was different because it was on the mission field.

And what the mission field tends to experience is a time delay where the absolutely atrocious, unbiblical ideas of the

West, it's common, but it's just not simultaneous. So we hadn't hit the wave of the horrible ideas of critical race theory except for being spread by American pastors in Singapore.

So American pastors, yes, were spreading absurd, racist thinking in their sermons.

And I experienced that in Singapore, you know, the most blasphemous nonsense we experienced in a formerly reliable situation.

I mean, I'm not making it up, OK, but during the height of the race riots in the

U .S., I experienced a sermon series at my church in which the music used female imagery for God, calling

God our mother and our sister, and called the cross a racist lynching of Jesus.

What in the world is that, you know, that so, yeah, that's

I mean, you know, you say that and it could that have happened? That happened. Now, at my insistence, those songs have been edited.

But as far as I know, I'm not looking into it. But the absolutely atrocious and racist sermon series is probably still online from that time, you know?

Yeah, and probably lauded by a certain subsect of people who would call themselves

Christians, probably exalted as one of the best sermons ever. Right, exactly.

And and so you're talking about the prescience is really God's grace in enabling founders and others to raise the issue of Marxist thinking invading, of course, from the left.

That's where it comes from, into Christianity before it became the major cultural force that those historical circumstances allowed.

OK, so that's a whole other incredibly important issue. And the

Institute of Public Theology, for instance, is training people in worldview and ethics. So Vodibachum is our worldview and ethics teacher to recognize not well.

So not to be people who do interpretation of the culture as cultural interpreters, but as biblical interpreters.

So where's our standard? Right. Our standard is the Bible. And now we're going to do our interpretation of culture based on the

Bible. And when we have the Bible as our non -negotiable standard, it doesn't take long to realize that the vocabulary and the thinking of major Christian leaders flipped overnight during that era.

So troubling, you know, and you absolutely. So let's talk bottom line.

Are you allowed to treat people differently based on their color, on the color of their skin from a biblical worldview?

Never. It's not a single passage in Scripture. And it's amazing the counterintuitive, non -factual, it's just like it totally doesn't make any sense use of Scripture to attempt to justify that, such as the unequal distribution of food to the widows.

Remember in Jerusalem, there were the Greek speakers and probably Aramaic or Hebrew speakers. And just, you know, one group, the

Greek speaking widows, wasn't getting enough food. So there's the whole issue of we need to have some attention paid to this by people other than the apostles, because they're pretty busy with the ministry of the word.

So they appoint the deacons and all this really, you know, huge significance placed on the fact that the people chosen had

Greek names. Well, Paul had a Greek name. Peter had a

Greek name. Everybody had a Greek name. I mean, you know, don't read too much into this fact right here.

And it certainly wasn't an ethnic problem. They're all Jews. It's just an issue of not being able to effectively talk to each other because of, you know, the

Diaspora Jews are speaking Greek, the ones originally in Jerusalem are speaking Aramaic. But it's just bizarre how there's nothing about treating people differently based on the color of their skin at all in that passage.

But the atrocious reverse engineering of thinking along those lines from that passage and many others.

So the thing is, as an Old Testament guy, I frequently want to encourage people, let's get all of the

Bible into our proclamation. You know, so there's so much false teaching going on.

And as my friend Justin Peters has pointed out, every book in the New Testament directly addresses false teaching except for Philemon, he says, because it's too short to get around to that, you know, and that's not what the book is about.

Well, there's a good amount of warning about what false teachers are going to do in the

Old Testament. So if I can just share briefly, my son and I are reading through Jeremiah in our daily

Bible reading, and we're hitting upon Jeremiah facing these jokers, these false teachers.

And what they're saying sounds great. You know, things are going to end up great for you

Hebrews. And Jeremiah's message doesn't sound great. It's going to be, no, no, you're staying in exile.

You're not going to be delivered back in two years. You know, like, I wish it were true. You know, he says, amen to the false teacher.

I wish that were true. But he also says to the false teacher, you have spoken, you have revolted against Yahweh.

You have presumed to say things in the name of God when

God did not send you that message. And that's revolt against him. So it's active rebellion against God to say things in his name that he did not say.

Where's the quaking in our boots about that in the contemporary church? Saying things in the name of God, getting up to preach, having a microphone, you know, making some pronouncement by some religious liberty commission or something like that, saying things in the name of God that God did not say.

That's revolt against God. That's rebellion. And it just goes back to Romans 14, 23.

Whatever doesn't proceed from faith is sin, you know, and should be taken seriously.

So, of course, there's your clarion call, right? To come back to trust in the authority and sufficiency of scripture.

And it's amazing how people think that that's limiting. Well, yeah, I mean, it's limiting because it's reigning you in as the sinner who wants to proclaim his own cool ideas.

But instead of viewing it primarily as limiting, how about setting you free to know that what you're saying on behalf of God is the word of God when you're preaching the word of God?

Amen. So, I mean, you know, the question about CRT, it's amazing the infiltration that thinking has had in the church and in contemporary culture.

And the way forward has got to be theological. You know, so we have outposts like here in Florida of recognition of the other utter inhumanity of treating people differently based on the color of their skin.

And injustice and evil, which you can say those things. Where does that sense come from?

It comes from a Christian worldview. You know, so we, the church, should be leading in that public discussion and not only be thankful for elected officials who think similarly.

Absolutely. So, as we think through, and we're getting close to the hour mark, so we'll probably be drawn to a close soon, but I have a few other questions

I want to go through with you just quickly before we close. As we think through what the

Institute of Public Theology is trying to do, and that is trying to provide, as it were, not necessarily,

I don't know if the word is an alternative to traditional seminary, but provide a solid resource to people who want this training.

And we've already said, you know, it's for people who are, you know, who are pastors, but it's also for people who are not pastors who want to go and just increase their study.

What are your thoughts on the overall, if you will, the overall state of education in evangelicalism today?

And the reason why I'm asking this is, if you look at like the Ligonier survey that goes out, right?

Are you familiar with it? I'm sure. The Ligonier survey that goes out every few years, the

Ligonier Theology Survey, kind of shows the abysmal perspective of the modern theological thought of the average

Christian. And so with that, my question is, you know, what role is the

Institute of Public Theology hoping to fill in that? Do you think that this is, what do you think of that?

And do you have thoughts on what you hope you guys are going to accomplish in that? Yes, well,

I think it's pretty clear with that survey and any other you care to look at that there's a state of biblical illiteracy among evangelicals.

I mean, it's terrifying the number of evangelicals, for instance, who believe that Jesus sinned in his life, for instance, just sort of basic gospel fact kind of ideas.

You know, we're not quizzing people, name the four gospels, but we're, you know, biblical

Christian faith is shallow or not present in contemporary evangelicalism.

So there are explanations for that. But the question here is what role is

IOPT hoping to play? We're hoping to play a role in the reformation and return to trust in biblical authority that we're not alone in this, of course, that we want to link up with faithful partners.

I so much appreciate, for instance, you mentioned Ligonier being able to go to their conference and their open door welcome to us as Baptists who are very much in line on the important doctrines of the

Christian faith. I am the person who they would need once John MacArthur has passed from the scene to come and debate whoever the successor to R .C.

Sproul is on baptism. That's me. So please invite me someday. Hey, maybe

I could set that up for the show. Maybe I could have you come on the show and debate someone. I would, I'd do that.

Be happy to do it. Well, maybe I'm the king of baptism. Hey. But, you know, we recognize that we're among friends, you know, when we're in groups like that, because, you know, there are plenty at the same time of people who recognize what time it is.

That expression we're starting to hear more and more, what time it is, where there's a need for rethinking about how we're going to engage publicly.

Now, we don't want to lose the loving presentation, right?

But it's got to be true love. True love is where you're like, you know,

I'm really sorry, but what you're doing is hurting you. It's hurting other people.

And it is an abomination to God. And there's a reason, because God loves you. And he has in his word the way things should be.

And I just want to share that with you right now. This kind of approach versus, you know, being obsessed with being nice and being winsome and in doing so being deathly afraid of ever causing offense.

You know, we're going to cause offense. And, you know, if it's inadvertent and unnecessary in some circumstances, then that's something to repent of, right?

But there's a necessary offense at being gospel people that why not link arms with other gospel people and be offensive together instead of, you know, having our own personal rough edges that then can cause people to, you know, kind of approach things atomistically where different Christian leaders are approaching things in an uncoordinated way.

No, let's link arms. Let's try to help each other, right, when there's a misstep, like a famous pastor currently suggests that you go to your grandson's transsexual wedding.

Let's help each other get through these times of adjustment to recognizing we're living in different eras than ones we grew up in.

We're living in an era in which the culture is utterly against Christianity. And it's going to get worse.

So right now, how do we set the stage for just within our churches, set the stage of faithfulness for this generation and those that follow?

And that's what IOPT is doing with our comprehensive biblical authority and sufficiency -based confessional 1689

Second London Baptist Confession approach to Christian worldview training.

And really just, you know, I'd welcome folks in the audience. You and I have connected, Pastor Keith, because I've been in your audience, you know, connecting with folks in your audience about being like -minded people who indeed walk together through the challenges that God and His sovereignty is bringing us through in our present age.

We want to do that at the Institute of Public Theology. Well, amen. Amen. One last thing

I want to ask, and then we'll begin to wrap up the show. I'm a firm believer that the local church plays a huge role in educating its people.

And even in our church, you and I have discussed the fact that we've produced a little teaching program we call our

Sovereign Grace Academy. But obviously, there is something that you guys are providing, which is more than the average church can provide as far as the level of education and level of teaching that is available.

And obviously, you have, as you said, world -class teachers that are filling these various roles.

What are you doing in partnering with local churches, with the IOPT, in trying to make this accessible to people in the local churches and local church pastors?

What are you guys doing to partner with them? Well, accessibility is the question.

And so accessibility, we've covered geographic accessibility. Obviously, if people are in Florida, please come as often as you can to our classes.

But accessibility to the local church would include our teaching method, as well as keeping our tuition as low as we possibly can.

So at present, our tuition is $300 per credit hour, which, if the church is willing to sponsor that cost halfway for a student, then we presently have a donor matching situation, where then the student would need to buy the books to engage responsibly in the class.

But you see that that has driven down the cost significantly. And then the student is also provided, through our partnership with Lagos Bible Software, a fantastic starter theological library that then, in their ministry in the church, is able to apply what they're learning all the time under the supervision of that pastor.

So we encourage the student, of course, to stay in the church and not necessarily to move to be with us here in Cape Coral, Florida, and have the church be the primary place of ministry.

And we won't be bringing folks on as students who don't have their church's endorsement.

And yes, this is someone who we see the call of God upon the person's life to increase their understanding of the

Bible and engagement with the cultural issues of our day as a serious Christian. So that's a dialogue

I have with pastors. I'm always taking very seriously what the pastors are saying in their endorsement or not of someone who's an applicant at the

Institute of Public Theology, because we are for the church, and we are exploring actually more church partnership models to sort of throw open the doors of what we're doing to engage even more folks in the church.

Say, for example, a whole elder board, all your elders, all your deacons, all your Sunday school teachers, this sort of thing, as IOPT students.

Because there's value. There's value. And that's why I say come and audit a class with us.

There's value to doing that kind of thing. But there's also value to engaging in a program like this with others, where you're sitting around saying, hey, what do you think about this?

You know, and having a dialogue, having dialogue with your pastor about, say, what

Bodie Baucom has said in class. So all of these things, we're not usurping in any way the role of the local church.

In fact, we're magnifying the role of a local church in the life of an

IOPT student by just what we feel like we're doing here, serving the church and raising up leaders for the present and future generations.

Well, that's awesome. And that's very good to hear. I'm encouraged by that, again, as I said before.

I really believe in the importance of people staying connected to their local church, even when they're seeking out a solid and robust biblical education.

And so I'm glad to hear that and glad to hear that you guys are encouraging that. Well, Scott, as we close out,

I do want to ask this question. I know we've already talked a little bit about this, but if people want to get in touch with the

IOPT, if people want to get in touch with you directly, if people want to engage and begin this journey with you guys, what's the best way that they can get started?

What's the best way they can connect with you? And I'll give you some time to speak directly to the audience.

Right. So just very simply, instituteofpublictheology .org, and you just go to that website and right at the top is

Apply Now. So that begins the conversation with us. If you're like, well, what am

I applying to? Right on the academics tab there, you see the various certificates and degrees that we've talked about.

And I'd love to talk with applicants anytime about their specific questions about what we're doing here at IOPT.

Anything that comes to mind. So that's really the easiest thing to do is go to the website and give us a call right there, the phone number on the website.

Send us an email, get in contact with us, and you can be sure that on the other end of the line are people that you could trust, people who are with Founders Ministries.

And this is the work we're doing in friendly cooperation with other like -minded theological educators to, as you say, fully support the local church at a level that we can kind of hand off.

You can hand off the baton to us from training programs that you have going on in your church right now.

And therefore, you can free perhaps the pastor to do what we were doing as we were talking about the

Acts passage of the deacons helping the pastor. Let us be your deacons in the realm of theological education to carry on and then enrich the state of biblical knowledge and engagement in your church in partnership with you.

Amen. All right. One last thing, Scott. I need you to talk to Tom Askell and Voti and Tom Nettles, and I need you to get me an honorary doctorate in humor.

I think you should work that out for me. I think I should get a certificate on my wall from the Institute of Public Theology, Doctorate of Comedy.

I would be very happy if you would sign that for me. You know, we have a fantastic graphic designer.

I'm already getting ideas. Well, thank you, Scott, for all that you're doing and for being on the show today and sharing this with our audience.

I'm hoping that this will be something that many of our people would be interested in and hopefully would further the cause of the kingdom as you guys are working toward doing that.

So thank you for being here. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely.

And I want to thank you, audience, for being a part of Conversations—or rather, Your Calvinist—I keep messing up the name.

Thank you for being part of Your Calvinist podcast today and being with me and Scott as we talk about the importance of education and specifically with the

Institute of Public Theology. I want to also remind you that we have many other videos on the channel, so please stick around.

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