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Alright everybody, welcome back to the channel. I am sitting here on Wednesday, the day before I leave for the TruthScript conference with John Harris in the Adirondack Mountains. I'm looking forward to that.
It was a great time last year. I'm looking forward to spending some time hanging out with people this year. It's going to be great. I will be speaking on Friday morning about being a cheerful warrior, you know, having joy in the fight.
I'm looking forward to it. I think I've got a nice presentation for it. It's not a sermon. It's not a sermon. It is an oration, if you will. But we'll also do a little Q &A and stuff like that. I don't want to hear myself talk too long.
But yeah, it'll be good. I'm planning on coining a term. So if you want to hear a new term that I think we should start adopting on the internet, especially with a lot of these interactions with... Yeah, I'll leave it there.
I've coined a new term, so you'll get to see that. I think it's a good one. It'll be funny. It'll be fun. Anyway, let's continue with this Jen Wilkin thing. We'll see how far we can get with it. Who knows?
Maybe we'll finish it. Maybe we won't. I've got to be honest. I was having a real good time with this. I've been kind of dreading continuing though. I don't know. It's lost its appeal at this point. So hopefully we'll let Jen talk a lot more and she can give us more pearls of wisdom on how to combine the best elements of church and HR departments.
That's what we're doing here. HR departments. Corporate HR departments. Because no one really gets loving your neighbor like a corporate HR department. That's what we need to bring into the church. Corporate HR.
Candidates are going to think of. And so the work that we had to do just around even filling positions that we said, no, this could be a man or a woman, was a lot. But we've done it. Our staff is now 50 -50 men and women.
And men are still. Everybody take a deep breath. Men are still in all of the roles that they should be in. But we take an employment survey every year to sort of gauge workplace satisfaction. And two years ago, the question that says, I believe my gifts are used here and I feel fulfilled on this staff.
Historically, it had been answered very differently by men or women. The men had answered it high and the women had answered it significantly lower. Two years ago, it evened out. And then this past year, the women actually surpassed the men in workplace satisfaction.
And the question is asked if you could take another job at another church.
I was not expecting that. It really is corporate HR. We took a workplace. Did you hear that? That was just too good. We took a workplace survey and traditionally men have scored way up here and women down here.
And then it evened out. And now the women actually have more workplace satisfaction. How much do you want to bet? Did you hear the guys in the background? Wow. Wow. The women have more workplace. The more women you bring in, the less men like it.
Wow. How much do you want to bet that they are not going to do anything about that? Because if women are dissatisfied, oh yeah, emergency, five alarm, fire. Call up the HR departments of corporate America.
Figure out what to do. We got to fix that. The men have a low workplace satisfaction. Who cares? That's actually a sign that it's working. It's too funny, man. It's too funny. Wow. Amazing. Workplace satisfaction surveys.
I got to be honest. I deal with HR all the time. I'm a recruiter. I'm a headhunter. So I'm not in HR, but I have to deal with HR. It's part of my job. HR is always the most dysfunctional, awful, like makes you want to slit your wrists kind of department to deal with in any corporate situation.
I've only worked for a corporate company for a brief time, you know, eight years in my career. I guess that's not that brief. But and luckily it was a very low HR type environment. So I did deal with some of this.
And every time I did, I just wanted to blow my own brains out. Obviously, metaphorically speaking, I didn't really want to. But but anyway, but yeah, there are some companies that are just like corpo HR heavy.
And it's just the it's just absolutely the worst. It is. There's nothing good about it. There's no advantages. It's all disadvantages. Horrible. But of course, so that Jen Wilkins, like, oh, that sounds great.
We got to bring that into the church. Give him a survey. Give him a survey. What's your workplace satisfaction like?
Similar. Would you consider it? And the men were like, I mean, you know, maybe. And the women were like, heck no, because we know that because we rule the roost here.
There's a lot of estrogen around here. And even the men, there's a lot of estrogen. The men are like, get me out of here. There's too much estrogen here. Oh, man, that's just too funny. Too funny, man.
I was not expecting that. She really is the HR lady of Village Church.
She's like the past. Right. We know we have a good thing.
So it's been we know we have a good thing when the men's satisfaction in their job is plummeting. This is what she just said. When the men's satisfaction, their job is plummeting. But the women have high satisfaction of job.
That's how we know we have a good thing. The men are like, I got it. Yeah, sure. Get me another job. I'm out of here. The women are like, oh, no, never. Heck no. As you said, heck no, I wouldn't leave.
That's how we know we have a good thing.
And hard. OK, so so, Jan, I really respect and honor that the process, as you articulated, was particular to Village. All right. But I'm wondering if I could get you to speak outside of that context just a little bit and provide us with some helpful core principles that you think could lead to establishing some common.
Honestly, I've been I've been trying to think between the four of them, which one I'd say Donatello, which which kind of hurts me because Donatello is a great turtle. They're all great in their own right.
But I think the glasses and sort of the nerdiness kind of make him a Donatello.
You know, probably can't fight like Donatello on the ground between people on either side of the issue. So maybe some of those things are specific to Village. But in terms of what you've witnessed in broader church circles, what do you think are some things that could be helpful?
Well, I'd say the biggest and most overarching important principle is you can either land more conservatively or more. I hate this word, but liberally on this issue. But you have to land because what has often been the case is it's like, well, I mean, I think a woman can do that or maybe not.
But, you know, or in this case. And so you can imagine if you're a woman with a leadership.
I hate this word liberally. She knows it's liberal. She knows it's liberal. She's not making it. This is what I kind of respect Jen here a little bit. I'm not going to lie. I've actually grown in my respect for her.
Yeah, she's still I mean, it's still a poser, obviously, but she's been pretty honest in this. Pretty honest indeed. And the only thing she's still lying to herself about is the pastors and elders, you know, only being male thing.
She's still lying to herself about that. But, you know, baby step. She'll eventually come to terms with that, too. But she knows it's liberal. Do you know it's liberal? My audience knows. My audience knows is liberal.
Does Gospel Coalition know this is liberal? I don't know. They still they might think this is this is conservative. This is conservative Christianity. She's I got I got to be honest with you. I still cannot stand her.
I still oppose her. I still think that she's bad for the church. I'm not saying that. But I do have a little bit more respect for her. She's being a lot more honest than a lot of women are when they're doing this kind of stuff.
A lot more honest. Probably because of all the estrogen.
It means that you are constantly having to diagnose and then chameleon to the version of male female theology of the person who is in charge of a particular space.
And so it may not like this advice to you do have to land the plane. You can't be squishy here. And I got to be honest. I think that's really good advice. You know, you have to decide, am I going to become a liberal or am I going to follow the word of God here?
You know what I mean? Am I going to become a liberal and I'm going to start interpreting the Bible liberally? Or am I going to follow the word of God here? Because a lot of people try to play that squishy squish in the middle.
And that's that's lukewarm. And I got to be honest with you, the Bible, you know, it's a different context, of course. But the Bible does not care about your lukewarmness. The scripture has negative things to say about your lukewarmness.
You might as well go all the way, basically. So, yeah, I agree. This is actually good. Good advice. You do have to land the plane.
Just not where your senior pastor may look at it one way. But if there's an associate pastor who looks at it differently and it's his environment, then you've got to figure out what he wants. Try to do that.
If he's more liberal on it than the senior pastor is, and then you go and do what he's told you to do. And the senior pastor finds out about it and then penalizes you because you're obviously a harpy feminist trying to take over the church.
So one of the things that I always try to say is clarity is kind, right? Just be clear. Land. Stay where you land on things. Because otherwise, the women in your church are walking through a minefield.
And that's not fair. That's not thriving. That's not flourishing. It's not brother-sisterhood for sure.
Good advice. Absolutely good. Clarity is kind. You know, I don't like to use little phrases like that. You know, that's not my thing, but that's a good one. Clarity is kind. That's right. That's right.
You should be landing the plane here. You should not be laying it where she does. You should not become liberal. You should not decide we're going to have a more liberal interpretation of this. She's honest about it.
Her and Village Church are liberals. It's as simple as that. They're liberals. It's not just that they have a liberal interpretation. They're liberals. They've decided that they're going to go with the liberal interpretations.
And so it's only a matter of time before that degenerates further and further and further. Village Church is in big trouble. It's as simple as that. Until they get some real masculine male leadership that actually is going to stand on the Word of God and say no to women when they need to.
They're in big trouble. Village Church is in big trouble. SPC is in big trouble. She's right about this. This is good advice. Good stuff, Jen. Hats off to you.
And then once you've landed somewhere, make sure that you haven't just written a good paper. Make sure that your practice is in fact beautiful. This is one of the breakdowns that I see in this whole conversation.
We have people who have written entire volumes on this who would say, that is exactly what I meant to say. And yet we have thousands of churches that have been influenced by those volumes who do not have a beautiful practice associated with it.
So something either is wrong with the theology or has not translated down to the practice. And that's actually the job, I believe, of every local church to do the work on that.
Do the work. Well, I love the way that your elders listened. My wife is a therapist and we speak at Family Life Things. And she often says that listening is like one of the best gifts you can possibly give somebody, whether it's your spouse or somebody else.
Could you dive in just a little bit more to the role or the blessing of listening in this conversation? And maybe in light of living in a context where we just don't listen well. Yeah, you know, this is an interesting one because so often the definition of not listening well is you didn't do what I wanted you to do.
So you didn't listen, right? And that's typically what you get. I know you're not listening because you're not doing what I want you to do. And it could be that they are listening, but they are not going to do what you want them to do because what you want them to do is sinful, stupid, foolish, wrong, you know, whatever.
And so I want to caution you not to fall into that trap. You're not listening unless you're changing, unless you're doing a beautiful practice or whatever the heck she just said. According to who, beautiful practice?
I don't know what she's talking about. Nobody knows. So, you know, it's not like you haven't listened to Jen. If you don't go and, you know, tell your pastors, you know, you need to send out a survey to make sure the women that work at your church, which why are they working at your church anyway?
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's not for me. It's for you.
Well, I mean, listening is what builds relationship and it's what builds trust. And so I think that often the fundamental piece that is missing in the conversations that need to happen is relational trust because men in leadership have been told you ought not to have a relationship of deep trust with a woman who isn't your wife.
That is, even if it's possible, it is professional suicide for you. And so then what you find is that we're operating out of a place of fear instead of out of a place of love. And we do exist in a hyper-sexualized culture and we don't get to pretend like we don't.
We don't get to do whatever we want and interact with each other in whatever way that we want to. But there's actually a lot of room in the way that we operate for us to operate from a place of Christian freedom instead of a place of fear.
This is the worst advice that she has for you in this whole thing. I mean, she's got a ton of bad advice. And I got to say, you know, I'm being fair with her as much as I know how to be. I mean, the last piece of advice she gave was fantastic.
I agree with it. This is hands down the worst advice in this entire episode, chock full of bad advice. Do not have deep emotional relationships with other women besides your wife. Do not do it. Do not do it.
It's as simple as that. That is reserved for your wife. It's as simple as that. You're not going to be meeting with women and having deep emotional conversations with them because Jen Wilkin says that that's the only way to love your neighbor or your brother or your sister.
That is false. That is a recipe for disaster. That is inviting trouble. There are lots of people that will take advantage of that. And even if they don't, it's still not a good idea. It's not a good idea.
It's the stupidest piece of advice that I've heard in the year 2023. Jen Wilkin is wrong about this. That's all I'm going to say. I'm not going to mention it again, I think.
Well, the question of, well, I remember I was on a panel one time being asked about, like, well, I know how to mentor, you know, the young men who are coming up through my church. But I'm just not really sure, like, how am I supposed to mentor the young women?
You're not supposed to.
Because the Bible specifically addresses this. The older women teach the younger women how to love their wives and how to keep their households. It's already there. We have a word from the Lord on this.
The older women of the church are a gift from God to the younger women of the church. It's as simple as that. It's very simple. Unless you've decided that you're going to now have a liberal interpretation of the scripture, which, unfortunately, Village Church and Jen Wilkin have decided that.
Maybe they weren't always like this. I'm not saying she was always like this. I probably think she probably was. But who knows? I'm not saying Village Church was always like this. I have a feeling they probably were.
But who knows? But they've landed the plane on the liberal side. And she admits it. She says, that's what we've done. I hate the word liberal, but that's the fact. She admits it. Let's see what she has to say about that, because I'm pretty sure it's not going to be what she says.
I always kind of giggle a little because I'm like, are you having, like, weekly slumber parties with the men? Like, what is so different about the way, you know, there are a thousand. And if you are, I have follow-up questions.
But, you know.
Are you sleeping with each other? She's trying to be too cute here. No. But what they are doing is they're meeting for dinner. They're meeting for coffee. They're alone together. Yeah, they are doing that.
And that would be completely inappropriate for a pastor to have an 18-year-old girl come to him. I'd like to be mentored. Okay, great. Meet me for a drink. Oh, I guess if she's 18, it wouldn't make sense.
You see what I'm saying? 21. Let's call her 21. Stop being obtuse intentionally, because you're a smart lady, Jen. You're a smart lady. Stop acting like you're a fool. Stop acting like a ditz, because you know exactly the kinds of things that they're doing.
They're not having slumber parties, obviously.
There are so many ways for us to have interactions with one another that are in no way scandalous, that no one would look at and critique or question. There are so many ways, but we lack any imagination around it, because we have been told that those are verboten, that those are just off the list.
I think some of this is just thinking.
It's not that we can't think of anything that would potentially work. We could think of some things, but it's not necessary, and it's not smart, and the Bible specifically gives us the solution to this.
Specifically. Specifically. She's telling you to be stupid. This is the thing. Jen Wilkins is like, here, all of your wisdom that you've gained over being a young man and being an older man, throw it out the window, because feminism is the new thing.
We're all equals now. Throw all the wisdom that you've gained, just toss it out the window, because it's irrelevant. It's irrelevant. It's feminism now, and if you don't do it, then you're a misogynist.
She's telling you to be stupid. She's lady folly in the streets, telling you to be a fool. The simple turn here. That's what she's doing. She's the simple turn here.
Don't be stupid. Thinking, well, why do I think that? Why do I think that I can't meet with a couple of women, or maybe it's two women and two men who need mentorship? Why do I think one-on-one is where the real magic happens in a mentorship?
Aren't there some meaningful ways that I could extend help and training?
Is she really asking the question why someone might want to meet one-on-one as opposed to in a group of two men and two women? Why someone might want to meet one-on-one with someone over a counseling issue or a discipleship issue instead of two men and two women at the same time?
Is she really so dense that she can't think of a single freaking reason why someone might want that? She's not so dense. That's the point. She's lying to you. She's lying to you in service of feminism.
That's what she's doing. Of course, there are obvious reasons why a young man or a pastor might want to disciple a young man privately, 21-year-old man, 22-year-old man, something like that, privately, meeting for coffee, something like that.
There's a lot of reasons why someone might want to do that as opposed to a group setting.
To people in groups or in settings where literally no one is going to go, oh, that's probably the beginning of an affair. And so when all we're fearing are the big blow-up stories, for one thing, having had a front-row seat to a number of those, I'm sure we all have in our time in ministry, here's what I can tell you I have noticed.
If someone wants to have an affair with someone, they're going to do it. They're going to find a way, and they're going to make it happen. And so for the rest of us who might never be tempted toward that or act on any of that, to say we have to rob ourselves of the joy of having familial relationships with both men and women feels like a massive overcorrection.
Wow, well said. The only thing that I have left to ask is what have we not covered in the span of this that you think is important? It's just so, that guy, man, he's just not my kind of guy.
I think I would ask, so one of the things that I do in my role or have done is interview potential candidates to work at the church. And one of the questions on our application is, who has had the greatest impact on your spiritual formation?
And so people list who you would expect. They're like R .C. Sproul, John Piper, Tim Keller. And I'm always curious to see if anyone will list a female. And occasionally I'll get my mom, which I do. I really appreciate that moms show up on that list sometimes.
But I wonder, does it concern us that those lists are all typically male? Do we see that as acceptable or is it perhaps a poverty in the family of God? And I wonder if 10 years from now we might be able to see that the spiritual influence on a next generation has been formed by both church fathers and church mothers who were well instructed in the deeper truths of our faith and who were able to pass on the good deposit.
And not just that, but who were able to model a uniquely fatherly and a uniquely motherly role in a way that brought health and wholeness to sons and daughters.
I don't think the males of evangelicalism are starving us of motherly—. There are so many women of the male gender in leadership of the church. It's unbelievable. I don't think we're missing out on that, Jen.
In the family of God. I don't want this to be driven by what we've done wrong or by what we lack. I want us to see the beautiful vision of the church as the family of God and say, what should it have been like in Eden?
What will it be like in the New Jerusalem? How can the church live that way now?
We know what it would have been like in Eden. Adam was in charge of Eve. Adam was responsible for Eve. Adam was the leader. Eve was the helper. We already know what it would have been like in Eden. Yeah.
You guys get it. That's really good. I really appreciate you. And by God's grace, I do think that you're one of the people that when people give their list of spiritual formation—. I didn't know any better.
I'd say this guy's stoned. People do. Jen, that's so amazing, man. So thank you for what you've done and the ways that you've invested. And I am excited to announce for anybody who doesn't know it that we have a capstone episode of As In Heaven live at TGC on spiritual formation in the church.
And our two guests are going to be Jen Wilkin and Colin Hansen. We did a live capstone episode like this last year with season two with Tim Keller and Erwin Entz. And I am so thankful and excited to be able to step into spiritual formation because this is a lot of—.
I mean, this is your main thing over at the Village Church. And you and Colin have thought through it really well. So if you're listening and you're going to be at TG—. There it is right there. We're going to stop right there.
Jen Wilkin's main thing at the Village Church is spiritual formation. Guys, Jen Wilkin is a pastor at Village Church. And I'll just stop here and say to the SBC, you've got to get your stuff sorted because liberalism is upon us.
The conservative resurgence was not the final word. You know what I mean? You guys have a huge fight ahead of you. This time I think the odds are stacked against you big time. I don't know about the history of the conservative resurgence.
I don't know what it was like back then. But I do know that when it comes to the institutional power in the SBC, this is the standard. This kind of covert feminism, which is really not all that covert when you think about it.
This is ruling the day. You guys have a huge fight on your hands. You need to win the fight. But also you need to have plans for if you don't win the fight, what do you do? Because I don't know how you guys could take part in this.
I really don't. This is a real situation you guys have on your hands. And if anyone wonders what the problem with the SBC is when it comes to the liberalization of it, this podcast is a huge kind of like an aha type moment for anyone that's in the SBC.
I hope you found this series helpful. I hope you found this video helpful. God bless.
