Differences between men and women with Amy Hall | Rapp Report Weekly 005 | Andrew Rappaport | SFE | Striving for Eternity

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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April 10, 2018

00:00: This is a point where our culture is very confused because they see roles as conferring value.
00:06: Hierarchy is a beautiful thing. It's a good thing. It brings out the best in everybody when it works well.
00:12: And if there was one thing I could get people to take away from this, it's the beauty of that. It's the beauty of leadership and the beauty of submission and the beauty of hierarchy.
00:20: And our culture is just missing out on this. Welcome to The Rap Report with Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.
00:33: This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
00:46: Today, I don't wanna do a very long monologue because we're gonna have a special guest on and I wanna take the time.
00:53: We're gonna deal with a lot of different topics. The main topic we want to deal with is this issue of what's called complementarianism and egalitarianism.
01:03: And let me define those and give you a little differences. So egalitarianism is the idea that because of Christ, men and women are equal.
01:12: And in that equality, it is equal in every way, including roles and functions within the church and society.
01:21: Where complementarianism has the idea that there is a complementary role between the male and female.
01:27: And there's certain things that the men are, by God's decree and order, would have as a role that women would not, such as pastoring a church, such as being the head of a household.
01:43: These are things that we end up seeing in scripture that just are a difference in function, but it does not change in any way.
01:51: Male and female being somehow not on equal playing field or one being superior than the other, as many argue.
02:00: And we're going to discuss these things with a friend of mine who we got together with and to chat it up about these issues from Stand to Reason.
02:11: I didn't tell this story with her there, but when I was out at Stand to Reason, what you end up having when you have a very well -known speaker, they end up having the idea that people want their picture and things like that.
02:26: I was out at the radio station for Stand to Reason with Greg Cockel sitting in the studio, and I had already said up front to Melinda.
02:34: Melinda was someone who ran really Stand to Reason and did like everything there,
02:40: I think. It sure seemed that way. But Melinda was someone who I had been praying for for years, just knowing her online and following along with the ministry and being in touch with the ministry.
02:53: So it was very interesting. I get out to California in the studio, and I had told Melinda before I left the studio
02:59: I wanted to get a picture with her. And so we get done wrapping up in the studio.
03:05: I think Greg and I were going to go grab a bite to eat, I forget, but basically what we end up is we get done, we're walking out, and I said, hey,
03:13: Melinda, that photo, can we get that photo? And so I have my camera out, and this is before the days when you had a cell phone as a camera.
03:23: And I hand the camera to Greg. Now, Greg, being the person who most people want to have a picture with, assumes that I want to get a picture with him, and he hands the camera to Melinda, who she refuses and says, no,
03:39: Greg, he wants a picture with me. And this is one of these episodes,
03:45: I don't have Greg coming in and doing this episode. We have someone else, and you're gonna hear from Amy Hall.
03:51: I'm gonna let her introduce herself a little bit for those who are not familiar with her. And she's one of the people who've been at Santa Reason and has done a lot over there, has a lot of good things to say, specifically on this topic of complementarianism and egalitarianism.
04:09: And I think this is gonna be helpful for you. I hope you're going to learn a lot, but I hope that the one thing you see, as we're going to discuss, is the idea of balance and really working within the way that God has ordained us.
04:26: And so without further ado, well, maybe a little bit further, because we're gonna play a commercial, and then after that, we're going to get to the interview with Amy Hall.
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04:45: That's right, the art and science of interpreting scripture. The bad news is somebody attending might be really upset to discover
04:52: Jeremiah 29 11 should not be their life verse. To learn more, go to strivingforeternity .org
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05:29: Get your copy at whatdowebelievebook .com or at the strivingforeternity .org store.
05:34: All right, well, welcome to this portion of the Rappaport. I have with me a special guest from a ministry that I love and have been following for many, many years, and it is
05:45: Stan Theresen. And my guest is Amy Hall. Maybe you don't know of Amy Hall. She's not the speaker that most people know of with Stan Theresen.
05:53: Most people think of Stan Theresen and think of Greg Koukl, or maybe Brett Konkle, or one of the other many, there's been several actually, speakers who've come out of Stan Theresen.
06:02: Amy's more the writer. She's the one you're gonna read, not hear as much, but she does a weekly podcast called
06:08: Hashtag STR Ask. You'll hear her on with Greg, and they're going to give a short, now, if you don't know
06:15: Greg Koukl at all, Greg and short answers don't kinda go along together.
06:21: I'm just saying, but she has the job of keeping him answering questions within a few minutes, which is not an easy task.
06:28: I don't always do well at that, at getting him to stop talking. Well, I think more what he gets you going,
06:34: I've noticed recently, like he gets in, you just start thinking things, almost sounds like, oh yeah, which actually is what caused this conversation because that came out of a conversation you and Greg had that we'll get to later on, but to introduce yourself to our audience, could you share how you came to know
06:50: Christ and a little bit about yourself, the ministry that you have at Stan Theresen? Well, first, thank you. I'm looking forward to this conversation and this is gonna be great.
06:59: So I, how did I come to Christ? Well, these stories are never short ones, but to make it as simple as possible,
07:05: I grew up in a Christian home, but then in high school, I pretty much, I stopped going to church.
07:11: I never rebelled, like did crazy things. I was very well trained. I wanted to do what was right, but I definitely kept
07:19: God at arm's length and just kind of ignored him and told myself, well, maybe he doesn't even exist. And then I, in college,
07:25: I started to question, well, is it true? And so I started looking into it. I think someone gave me mere
07:30: Christianity and that's what started me thinking about it intellectually. And so I did a lot of study over a year and at the end of it,
07:37: I was convinced that Christianity was true, but it wasn't until a few months after that, that God, I feel like that was the point where God really opened my eyes and changed my life.
07:47: And I wanted to be with him. I wanted to follow him. He became the center of my life. So that's like the nutshell story of how
07:54: I became a Christian. And then I ended up working in the film industry for 10 years and I got my master's degree in apologetics at Biola, started volunteering at Stand to Reason.
08:04: And now I've been working at Stand to Reason for I think 11 years now. And I am writing for the blog and editing and I answer questions people send in and I do the hashtag
08:14: SDR Ask podcast and a little bit of speaking here and there. Well, I've appreciated a lot of things that you've written and I appreciate you trying to keep
08:23: Greg in line for four minutes. No, you're right. It's probably my fault that it goes on.
08:31: Well, look, look. That's OK. That's OK. And we can't say it's not partly Greg's fault because, you know,
08:37: Melinda had the same problem. Well, Greg has a lot of great things to say.
08:42: What can I say? For folks who don't listen, there was one, I should have actually looked it up, but there was one where Greg answered every question without the timer going off.
08:52: And even he was surprised. Yes, that wasn't too long ago, actually. Yeah. Which one it was, though.
08:57: So what we wanted to talk about, you had a conversation with Greg that got me thinking and it was it's really on men and women's roles.
09:04: There's been some differing views on this. I know there's a podcast called Theology Gals who have actually
09:11: I think they've done three or four episodes just on the issue of men and women's roles and complementarianism.
09:18: And I I've watched the reaction from some of their shows and seeing reaction on both sides that have been
09:27: I like those that are appreciating what they're doing. They're giving, I think, a biblical view. But I've seen a lot of people get emotional on this subject.
09:34: So what I what I'd like to do is I'd like you to explain some of your views.
09:40: And really, the thing that got us having this conversation was that conversation you had with Greg and some insight that you had that really sparked my thinking.
09:48: I know you you've studied this. So if you could give some of your views. Yeah, well, my views have changed so much over the years.
09:54: I am a complementarian now. I didn't start off that way. And it's understandable that people have emotional reactions to this.
10:02: If this is framed as I'm sorry, you can't do this because you're a woman. That's I mean,
10:08: I mean, just imagine someone saying that to you about something. There's there's an understandable emotional reaction to that.
10:15: So it's taken me a long time to observe and think and read and think about what the
10:20: Bible says to come to my conclusion. And the way I like to frame it is the roles that God has given us, given men the leadership role in the family and in the church.
10:30: This is not because women are lacking something. This is because women have positive gift, special gift that men don't have.
10:38: And it's it's because those gifts work best in certain situations and don't work well in other situations.
10:44: Whereas the gifts that God's given men also work best in some situations and don't work well in other situations.
10:50: So the way I look at this is that the roles God has given me are because of the positive, good gifts that he's given me.
10:56: And I think that helps a little bit for people to understand. Just to start with, that I'm not just saying that women are missing something that they need or they're not as good as men or anything like that.
11:07: I don't believe that at all. And I mean, look, we are somewhat stereotyping, right? Because it's a generality.
11:15: I mean, I jokingly will tell people I'm married. My wife is an engineer by trade. She's more the stereotypical man because she's very, very, very task oriented and not emotional.
11:28: I think the only time I actually saw her emotional was when she was pregnant. And I don't know that she knew what to do with her emotions.
11:35: But so just to stave off the people who are going to be saying that we're stereotyping.
11:41: Yes, yes, we are. Well, yeah, of course, they're going to be, if you've got trait A and trait B, and you're going to make a generalization saying this trait is generally held among women.
11:52: This is generally held among men. Obviously you're going to have people that cross that spectrum and are different places.
11:57: But that doesn't determine how we decide how these things work. I don't think everyone neatly fits into any one category.
12:04: But I do think that there are specific things that very truly you will find among women and then other things that you'll find among men
12:12: I think have bearing on leadership. And the thing is, I don't think, when we look at the church, we look at 1
12:17: Corinthians chapter 12, you see that some are gifted to be teachers. Not everybody. Not everyone's going to be a hand or an eye or a foot.
12:25: And that's what that whole chapter is trying to deal with, is that God has gifted everyone within the church to serve in a specific function in that church that no one else can do.
12:35: God has uniquely gifted every single person. So I think the fact that we might see a difference that he has ordained because of gender wouldn't be something that would be unusual.
12:45: No, and I also think that this is a point where our culture is very confused because they see roles as conferring value.
12:53: So as Christians, we understand that we have intrinsic value, that we don't have different value based on our different roles or gifts or whatever it is we have.
13:03: The truth is that we are equally valuable and that is true regardless of what our roles are.
13:08: And this is something that our culture has a hard time understanding because they don't think of value this way anymore.
13:14: Like we see this in all sorts of ways in our culture. They think value is instrumental value, which means that we get value based on what we can do or are doing.
13:22: So that's where the confusion first comes in. They don't understand the idea that we can have in the body, an eye, a foot, a leg, or all these different parts, and they're all necessary.
13:32: They're all valuable. They all have honor, according to 1 Corinthians 12. And this is where we're coming from.
13:39: I have always used the example from military and I think more and more in our culture, people don't understand the military, so it doesn't have the same effect.
13:46: But even though you can have two men in the military, one outranks the other. By his position, he has certain authority that comes with that.
13:55: The problem is that I think people end up seeing that and say, well, if you have a different authority, you're somehow superior.
14:02: And this idea somehow, if a woman is supposed to submit to a man, it somehow makes her less of a person.
14:09: Which by the way, if anyone wants to look in that passage in Ephesians that everyone says, because I have guys that would come to me for counseling.
14:16: It's like, well, look, my wife's supposed to submit to me. And I go, okay, let's go a couple of verses earlier. Oh, look at that.
14:21: Everyone in the church is supposed to submit to one another. It's like they skipped that one, right?
14:26: We're all supposed to be submitting. Yeah, I mean, the Bible has a lot to say about leadership.
14:31: A lot to say besides the idea that there is equality and value between the people who are preaching and the people who are serving in various ways.
14:41: It also is very clear that a good leader sacrifices himself. Husbands are called to love their wives the way
14:46: Christ loves the church. That means that being a leader is not lording it over them and demanding they submit.
14:52: It's sacrificing themselves and serving the woman and giving their life.
14:59: That's a huge thing. And Jesus also is very clear about what leadership is in Christianity.
15:05: When he washes the feet of the disciples, and the text actually says that because he came from God and was going back to God and he loved them to the end, he washed his feet.
15:14: So he actually connects his high position with the service of washing the feet of the disciples.
15:20: And that's a huge thing. And he says, our leadership is different from the leadership of those outside the church.
15:26: We don't lord it over them, we serve. And again, this is why I think our culture goes crazy when they hear one verse about women submitting to their husbands.
15:35: They're doing it outside of the context of equal value, of servant leadership, of all these different things that Christianity also involves.
15:43: My wife, you probably don't know the same. My wife is from Hong Kong. So she's Asian. I didn't know that.
15:49: I don't think I've met her. No, you haven't. She hasn't made it out to California with me on the many trips
15:54: I've done. But the thing is, is that what ends up happening is when we're in churches, people think that because she's
16:01: Asian, somehow she is just naturally inclined to be submissive. And she's very quick to say, no, that's not true.
16:09: And we had a Bible study, a lady's Bible study that was at our house. I wasn't there, obviously.
16:16: But the thing that came up, my wife had told me that one of the things is that the women were discussing this issue of submitting to their husband.
16:23: And she ended up bringing up the fact that because they asked her, she's the pastor's wife, they wanted to get her opinion.
16:29: And they said, well, do you find it wrong that you should have to submit to Andrew? And she was like, if you understood the scriptures there, if I'm submitting to him, he's loving me like Christ loves the church.
16:40: Why wouldn't I want to submit? And that's the thing that I think a lot of people don't, they don't realize the other side of it.
16:46: Her view is if I'm loving her the way Christ loves the church, submitting is going to be easy because I have her best interest in mind at all times.
16:55: The thing I always say is it's actually harder for the male position there because the men's position is to love their wives like Christ loved the church, something that none of us could do.
17:05: And yet in that Ephesians passage, I just want to read that very last verse of Ephesians 5
17:10: I think that when we see this, the way this is, really you see it bare from the
17:15: Greek, but you end up saying, I think that for men, and this is what I tell them, if you're expecting your wife to submit to you,
17:21: I think it's your fault if she doesn't. Because this is what it ends up saying, last verse. However, let each of you love his wife as himself and let his wife see that she respects her husband.
17:33: Now in the Greek, it reads almost as if it's, however, let each one of you so love his wife so that the wife would respect him.
17:40: So in other words, I think that the husband has the responsibility to love his wife in such a way that her natural response is to want to submit and respect.
17:50: And that's an aspect I think a lot of people avoid in this discussion. Yeah, that's a great point. It's a really good point.
17:55: I think, again, our culture is so against the idea of hierarchy at all, but I can give a great example if we want to take it out of this kind of emotional, touchy issue of marriage.
18:06: I think about this in terms, I'm a musician. I play the flute. And one thing that has to happen when you're playing instruments is there has to be hierarchy.
18:15: There has to be submission. Or this just does not work. I've been in groups before where people haven't granted authority to whoever was leading to lead.
18:27: And you get a mess and nobody's happy, even the person who wouldn't submit. So when
18:32: I look at what's happened to me when I've played in flute groups and in concert bands, first of all, the leader has to lead.
18:40: You need a leader. When nobody is leading, you don't get anything done. There's no harmony.
18:46: There's no working together. But the leader also has to bring out the best in the other players. Tyrants don't work in this situation either.
18:54: I've been part of groups where the leader was so demanding and harsh that nobody could play well because he made them so nervous and he upset everyone.
19:02: And that doesn't work at all. And then also the players have to play. If everyone isn't contributing their role, then it doesn't work either.
19:11: But then finally, you have to have players who follow. I was in a group once. It was a quartet. And one of the other flute players,
19:17: I guess she was upset that she wasn't first chair. And so she wanted to be leading. She would not follow my lead.
19:23: And the whole thing fell apart. So you need leaders. You need leaders and you need people to submit.
19:28: And you need everyone to contribute their gifts in that situation.
19:34: I've also been part of a band where nobody was first chair. And you'd think, oh great, now there's nobody.
19:41: There's nobody has to submit to anyone else. Well, it was terrible because what happened is who decides who has a solo?
19:47: Who tells someone when they're out of tune? Who does all these things? It didn't work. And there was confusion and there was discord.
19:55: And it just doesn't work. Hierarchy is a beautiful thing. It's a good thing. It brings out the best in everybody when it works well.
20:02: And if there was one thing I could get people to take away from this, it's the beauty of that. It's the beauty of leadership and the beauty of submission and the beauty of hierarchy.
20:11: And our culture is just missing out on this. What you just said is really what we're seeing in corporate America. It used to be a time that people had a boss.
20:19: Then that boss became titled a supervisor. Now the term that people use is a coach.
20:25: And what they're doing is they want everyone to feel empowered. So everyone makes the decisions. And the boss is now just a coach to kind of coach people so that they can make good decisions.
20:35: But the decision -making is no longer being at the higher levels. It's being driven down. And everyone's supposed to be in on the decision.
20:43: And it doesn't actually make decision -making easier. Collaboration does not always work for decision -making because some people don't give in.
20:51: Some people don't. They can't see any other view but their own. And sometimes - There has to be someone to make the final decision.
20:57: Exactly, exactly. Because what you have is people that all want their decision. And you have to have a kind of a tiebreaker.
21:04: Now, okay, so we're talking leadership. We're not so much talking about the issue we want to talk about, right?
21:10: So men and women's roles, specifically in the church even. You had pointed out how what we see is a lot of our culture almost trying to reverse what is the effect of the fall.
21:22: And I don't think people often think through that aspect of it. And I think that if we look in the culture today,
21:30: I think a lot of people are kind of almost becoming overbalanced or out of balance too far the other way.
21:36: In anything where we see women taking on a role, it's like, well, we have to almost accept that.
21:43: I think that when we think of the fall and how that affected the relations between male -female and specifically when it comes to views of leadership and all, that plays a role in it.
21:53: And I think that a lot of people don't think through that. There was a curse. We're subject to that.
22:01: Okay, sure. Yeah, and I'd love to talk about some of the differences I've seen also. I think that we are actually created to be different.
22:08: I think there are some people who think that the reason why the men are supposed to be leaders in families and churches and that the women are supposed to submit is because of the fall.
22:18: I actually think that God created us to work that way and that because of the fall, we've twisted that so you see the men abusing their leadership and you see the women abusing their role.
22:29: But I actually think there are, like I said at the beginning of this podcast, that there are actually positive things about women that make this work and positive things about men.
22:39: And one of those things in the family and in the church, these are both institutions that are maturing people.
22:46: There's discipline involved. There's nurturing involved. And that's why I see those things as different than say a business when it comes to the roles of men and women.
22:55: I wouldn't say that a woman should not lead a company, for example. Although I do think because of some of our gifts that that is difficult in some ways, which
23:04: I can talk about. But I think specifically when we come to the church that has to uphold standards of doctrine and behavior and the same in the family that this is where these differences come into play.
23:16: So for one thing that happens is that men tend to emphasize standards. They see the macro situation and women tend to emphasize compassion for individuals.
23:26: So they see the micro situation first. And so what we see is that when men are making the rules, they're looking at the overall picture.
23:36: And when women see that there's an individual who doesn't quite fit or is upset about it, or what we want to do is we want to make that person happy.
23:45: We want to be the peacemaker. We want to connect with that person emotionally.
23:51: We want, and these are all great, great things in micro situations. When you're in a micro situation, you want people who are peacemakers, who look out for others' needs and see how they're feeling and try to make them feel better.
24:06: And this is a beautiful thing. But when you apply it to upholding standards and making rules, now you're thinking more about how other people feel than what's true.
24:16: And in fact, I saw a long time ago, there was this study that was done where they had these men and women playing a game.
24:25: And what would happen is they would give a mild shock to one of the other players. And then they would measure how the man would react and how the woman reacts.
24:34: So when somebody who was playing fairly got shocked, both the men and the women had a reaction of empathy.
24:39: But when one of the cheaters got shocked, the women still felt empathy, but the men didn't.
24:45: They actually were, I guess, glad about it. So what the article concluded that I read about this is that, oh, men are terrible.
24:53: Look, they wanna see bad people suffer. And I'm looking at that thinking, no, don't you understand what just happened? Men care about justice.
24:59: They care about justice. And they're able to mete out justice without being swayed by feelings of empathy.
25:06: That is a huge thing. That's an important thing in a family. That's an important thing in a church. Or you're gonna start changing your doctrine to fit what people want.
25:15: You're gonna do all these sorts of things. You have to be able to appreciate justice and uphold standards.
25:21: And I think that is a huge difference between men and women. And I also think part of this issue is that women, we're very empathetic.
25:30: We can see things through other people's eyes. Again, this is a huge gift. It helps us to adapt to others.
25:37: It helps us to keep cohesion in a group. Being able to see through someone else's eyes and see how they're seeing things is a huge gift.
25:46: But again, if you're trying to uphold doctrinal standards, if you are making your decisions based on how other people are seeing this, rather than on the truth, you're gonna run into problems.
25:56: And this is what we see in denominations where women are in leadership and kind of dominate in leadership.
26:03: You'll see the doctrinal standards start to slip because they're empathetic. They are nurturing, again, all good qualities, but not good when you're trying to uphold doctrinal standards.
26:12: Not good if it's out of balance. Son, you're saying, I haven't thought of this before, but as you're saying it, which is, by the way, folks, a good reason to read her blogs because this is what a good blogger would do, right?
26:23: Cause you to think. So the thing that I ended up, I'm thinking about our culture, right? Our culture we're seeing is clearly moving toward feeling over thinking.
26:32: And growing up post -Holocaust as a Jewish person, it was drilled into us exactly what happened in the
26:41: Holocaust, things like that. I'm very much aware of the need for a culture to, like what
26:47: Hitler did, to get people to shut their brains down and just feel their way through things. I wonder how much of what we're experiencing in our culture is really, we've seen for a long time, a feminizing of the men and a kind of a suppression of masculinity in our culture.
27:02: And it's becoming a thing where maybe that's playing into this feeling over thinking in our culture as well.
27:09: I definitely think that's true. I definitely do because women are, okay, here's just a fact, men are stronger than women.
27:17: No, I'm gonna disagree. As someone who trains Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu, not that I roll with the women,
27:24: I try not to do that. But we have one of the girls who refuses to roll with other girls.
27:30: She wants to go with the guys because she's like, hey, if I'm gonna get attacked on the street, it's gonna be from a guy. But there's not too many guys that want to roll with her because she hurts them.
27:40: Well, all things being equal, training and everything. Women are very aware that you are stronger than we are.
27:48: And that causes a certain amount of fear. And I think what women have been doing in our culture for a few decades now is we've been trying to, rather than help you channel your power and your strength into ways that are good and serve the community and serve us, we try and break your power down and emasculate you so that you won't be scary to us anymore.
28:12: And I think that's a lot of what's going on. There's a woman, she's not a Christian. Her name is Alison Armstrong.
28:18: And she has an organization where she basically has looked at men and women and has really good insights.
28:27: I don't agree with everything she says that she has some new age ideas, but she has been very observant about all these things.
28:33: And my hope is that if she can recognize the differences between men and women and help us to appreciate those things and to build them up and not try to tear them down, if she can recognize that, then
28:44: I think our culture is capable of recognizing that. It's just a matter of being able to admit they're true.
28:50: Because that's a huge part of this too. I realized a long time ago, men have a natural authority about them.
28:56: If I'm gonna be leading a group in any situation, I have to work a lot harder to get that authority.
29:02: Whereas a man can walk in and people will automatically give them that authority. That's just how things work.
29:08: I can fight against that. I can be angry about it, or I can just say, well, that's how things are. You know, women will say to their kids, wait till your father gets home for a reason because he has that natural authority.
29:19: He doesn't have to work as hard for it as I do. And I've had to, you know, there've been times when I've, we used to have comments on the blog and I had to manage the comments.
29:27: And that was really draining for me because I just wanted everyone to like me and to get along and all this.
29:33: But I had to tell people when they were doing something wrong or I had to, you know, kind of discipline them in some way. That was hard on me.
29:38: That's not my natural thing. I could do it in that situation, but it took a lot out of me. There are just these natural differences that we should be working with rather than fighting against.
29:49: See, and I think, and this is something you said earlier, but, and this is what really sparked me is because it almost is as if we are trying to fight against the way
29:58: God created us. Because we don't, like you started with, right? We don't like being told there's something that we can't do, right?
30:07: And we want to balance that out. We want to fix that. But the real question is, does it need fixing? Would things work better if all of us served in the role that God designed for us?
30:18: And it may not be the role we want. Some people, I've had this where I've had people that come to me,
30:24: I feel I'm gifted to be a teacher. And my thing is when people do that, I say, okay, let's put you in with the kids. Because if you can't keep the attention of the kids and you can't explain to the level for kids, you're not gonna, you know, the adults can fake it.
30:37: Kids don't fake it really quickly. But the reality is there are people who desire something that they're not equipped for, trained for, skilled for, and gifted for.
30:50: And I really think a lot of what we see is people trying to, in so many areas, rebel against the natural order or the order in which
30:58: God established. We see this in our culture big time. In so many, I mean, look, we have to redefine what marriage is because we don't like that.
31:06: And there's absolutely no reason to redefine the word marriage because they could call it civil union.
31:13: That word exists. Why do they want to change the word marriage? It's very simple. I mean, it's a constant attack against the way
31:21: God has established things. Well, and it goes back to belief in God because if we all came, if we're all evolved, if we're not created, if there's no purpose for our bodies, if there's no way we're, no purpose we're supposed to fulfill, then of course we can create things the way, any way we want.
31:39: Our nature is malleable. We can do whatever we want. And you're right. You're absolutely right. That's what we're seeing right now.
31:45: People are trying to recreate human nature to match their desires. And it's not, in the end, it's not going to make them happy because we can't fight against our nature.
31:54: And it's silly to fight against our nature. But again, we're fallen and that's what we do. It almost seems like we make people angry.
32:02: Wait, that just described most of society. Yikes. I mean, look, a different topic.
32:09: But when we see people that are suffering with transgenderism, you end up seeing people who make a radical change to their body and they think this is going to fix everything.
32:19: And the statistics show how many people get more depressed after that because they put all their hope in this surgery or chemical that was going to fix all their problems.
32:30: But that wasn't really where the problem was. The problem was something internal that needs to be dealt with.
32:36: And now in our society, we're not allowed to talk about it. Right. Literally. I think California is trying to pass a law right now that you can't have any counseling for gender dysphoria or trying to accept your own gender and that sort of thing.
32:50: That law is very interesting what's going on in California. Because really what it is, is if you have someone who, say you have a teenage girl or preteen, actually, that was, you know, raped as a young child,
33:05: OK, there's going to be some side effects to that that are going to affect her. One of the things for many is that's been happening is people will turn to rejecting all men.
33:15: Well, now you can't deal with that rape issue and say, oh, well, this is like we need to help you work through that because now all of a sudden it's dealing with same -sex attraction and therefore it's off limits in counseling.
33:28: The really scary thing, we had a man sexually abusing a young girl. We would say it's wrong.
33:34: But now if a man does it to a man, we can't counsel against that. That's strange. California is not known for their wisdom.
33:42: I'm saying this as a Californian right now. Yes. You know,
33:48: I would say that many of us would want California to succeed from the union just to balance out the rest of America.
33:55: But I do live in New Jersey, so we're not far behind you, just saying. You know,
34:02: New Jersey is not exactly the bastion of conservatism. My son moved to Texas and he gets out there.
34:09: He went to college out there to start. And he's like, Dad, you know, everyone has guns out here. I was like, yeah, welcome to America.
34:17: What was your move like from the position you had to a complementarian position?
34:23: So I guess specifically, like, what was it like making that move? What were the things that really convinced you? What were the things you struggled with in that?
34:30: I guess I can go back to college. I mean, I took a women's studies class in college and my professor wanted me to major after that.
34:37: So I learned, you know, all these ways I'm being held back and being oppressed and all these things.
34:44: And so that kind of that attitude lasted for a while.
34:49: But then when I got serious about following God, I read the
34:54: Bible and then I had to make sense of it. And my attitude has always been that I try,
35:01: I start with what the Bible says and then I struggle with how to make sense of it. I don't try to make sense of what
35:06: I'm seeing and then try to fit the Bible into it. So that's how I always come at these things. So I had to really think through all of this.
35:14: It is very emotional to have someone say, you can't do something. And so it takes a while to work through that.
35:20: And it's taken me a while to observe men and women and how they act and what their gifts are.
35:28: And just as a reminder, I don't think, I mean, I think the same is true for men. I think that their gift and their strengths are also weaknesses in other situations.
35:36: There was one time when I was working at a camp and we had a group of girls, I think they were junior high.
35:42: They might've been sixth graders. I think they were sixth graders. And one of them was upset and they were all standing around in this circle crying.
35:48: And my boss came over and his solution was to say, stop crying. I thought, that is not going to work in this situation.
36:01: So again, this is like enforcing the standards and being very logical and that sort of thing works well in a macro situation.
36:10: But when you get to a macro situation, that can be a real weakness. So I don't wanna make it sound like women's strengths are the only ones that are weaknesses.
36:18: Men's strengths are weaknesses too when used in the wrong place. So I just had to kind of watch what was going on around me and be honest about that.
36:26: But again, I was coming from my understanding of what the Bible said and struggling to make sense of that rather than the other way around.
36:34: Yeah, I think the one thing I'm hearing throughout with what you're saying, it's that there's a balance between men and women.
36:41: If I was left to my own without my wife, I would end up starting thousands of projects.
36:47: Oh wait, no, I already do that. But I wouldn't finish any. I don't like starting things.
36:54: I have lots of ideas. I like starting projects. My wife is the person who's gonna be like, okay, we do one thing and when that's done, then we start a next thing.
37:02: We don't even think about anything else. Well, there's a balance there. I say no to pretty much nothing.
37:08: I mean, if someone asks me to do something, I'm like, yes, I'll do it. I mean, I'm willing to help everyone, which is the problem.
37:13: And so it's my wife who's like, no, no, you're gonna say no to this. You can't do that.
37:19: We need that balance. And people think like, well, as you're saying, I don't wanna be told
37:25: I can't do something. But the reality is sometimes we need to be told we can't do something. And you know,
37:30: I would say that I have some, you know, if you're going on the continuum from female, generally female traits, generally male traits,
37:39: I certainly have some more male -ish traits. I have kind of a strong personality and that sort of thing.
37:45: But what I also realized is that, you know, maybe it is the case that I could lead a group better than the man who's leading the group, depending on who it is.
37:57: I mean, that might be the case in any one situation. Well, that might be the case for any woman in one situation. But what I realized is that there's wisdom in saying the leadership will be men.
38:07: And I'm willing to let that go for the sake of the church. I think for the sake of the church,
38:12: I want men in leadership who are going to hold the doctrinal standards and discipline.
38:18: And even if maybe I might, you know, I might be able to handle certain things that other women wouldn't,
38:24: I still don't feel like I should push myself into that situation. I am giving that up.
38:30: And after all, that's what we do as Christians. We give up certain rights. We give up ourselves for the sake of others.
38:36: And so I'm willing to do that for the sake of the church, just as part of all women here on earth.
38:42: I'm just saying I'm going to support the men in leadership. And that's just, that's how
38:47: I think about that. Well, I mean, you're bringing up the proper definition of tolerance, which is like foreign to our culture these days.
38:55: But realistically, there are times, even take the male -female part out, there are times when
39:00: I'm in a Bible study and someone may be saying things or trying to teach something. And I may know more about the subject, may be able to teach it more effectively than they could.
39:11: But I don't, I'm not going to sit there and overstep the bounds because if someone else is teaching, and I'll often do this in different scenarios and different Bible studies where I just sit and I'll let the instructor know who's ever teaching.
39:24: If you want my input, you're going to need to ask because I don't want to come off. I've had that in the past where someone's trying to, they've studied, they've tried to teach, but maybe because God has gifted me as a better teacher than them, people are going to turn to me.
39:39: And I realized that that could happen. So there's a time where I have to step back, even if I could teach it better, maybe, doesn't mean
39:45: I should, which is strange for us to think about. Right, this doesn't just apply to women. You're absolutely right.
39:51: Christianity is not about asserting yourself and getting what's yours and all that sort of thing.
39:57: As a whole, as we talked about Jesus sacrifice, well, Jesus sacrificing himself on the cross, number one, but also setting aside his advantages and his authority to serve others, not assert his dominance over him, but to serve others.
40:15: And you're right, men have to do that just as much as women do. This is a whole attitude for Christians. This isn't just something that women do in Christianity.
40:22: And let's take a look at a passage that I referenced earlier. This is Ephesians five, starting at verse 15.
40:29: Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise or as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.
40:38: Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
40:43: And do not be drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit, addressing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody with the
40:53: Lord in your heart, giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another with reverence for Christ.
41:05: Now, why did I read the whole thing and not just the last verse? Well, Amy knows because we never read a Bible verse, right?
41:12: If you're not familiar with that, that's something you should check out from Stand to Reason, right? We read context.
41:17: But if you look at the context, that's talking about how we are to live our life. The time is short, but we are to be submitting to one another, not doing what we see on social media, trying to dominate each other, but trying to hear each other out.
41:30: So before we get to some other thing, I want to talk about a little bit about Stand to Reason. But before we do that, we're going to play a game, which
41:37: I haven't warned you about, but that's okay. You're not on the hot seat, I am. But before that, anything else on this topic that you want to cover?
41:46: I think I just want to say that we need to have grace for each other in all sorts of ways in this situation.
41:53: First of all, men, you need to have grace for women. Women, you need to have grace for men. We're both going to fail.
42:00: Men are never going to love you as Christ loved the church. Women are never going to submit as the church submits to Christ, or maybe they will because the church has also fallen.
42:08: But also, if you have friends who are not complementarians and you really strongly feel that they're being unbiblical, or you have friends who are complementarian and you really strongly feel that they're hurting women, let's just have grace for people.
42:22: We're all trying to follow what God would have us do. We all want to do what is best for the church, what is right, what is just.
42:31: We all want to do these things. And so let's just have grace for each other on this issue and less anger.
42:38: We should not be like the world. The world right now, the way people are arguing and debating is really ugly.
42:43: And so I would hope that anyone who's listening to this and maybe disagrees, or anyone who wants to share it with somebody who disagrees, just please have grace for your friends and your fellow
42:52: Christians on this issue. And let's represent Christ well to each other in this.
43:02: Christian, are you ready to defend the faith when false religions ring your doorbell?
43:08: Do you know what your Muslim and Jewish friends believe? You will if you get Andrew Rappaport's book
43:15: What Do They Believe? When we witness to people, we need to present the truth, but it is very wise to know what they believe.
43:22: And you will get Andrew Rappaport's book at whatdotheybelieve .com. Striving for Eternity is a
43:29: Christ -centered ministry focused on equipping people for eternity. And they provide speakers and seminars that come to your church with expertise in theology, hermeneutics, world religions, creation science, evangelism, presuppositional apologetics, church history, and expertise in sexual abuse in the church.
43:47: For details on their seminars and to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
43:53: Striving to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. All right. With that, we're going to play a game.
44:00: Okay. It's time now to start the Spiritual Transition Game.
44:07: Now, Amy, I am sure you have not been familiar with this because you probably don't listen to my podcast enough.
44:13: I have not heard this. So what this is, so I get to explain it to you while explaining to the audience who may be new and not know what it is.
44:20: Many people, well, you work for someone that says he likes to put a stone in someone's shoe, right?
44:25: There's a common thing that Greg will always say. If you've, and I'm sure you have, if you go to a restaurant with Greg, Greg will always try to get the restaurant, the waiter or waitress's name as a way of just starting conversation.
44:38: I'm a little bit, and Greg knows this, I'm a little bit more purposeful in it because I go a step further.
44:43: See, I don't just ask for their name. I want to get into a spiritual conversation. So I actually just ask them, not only for their name, typically what
44:49: I do is, you know, say their name is John. I'll say, well, John, we're Christians at this table. We're going to be praying for our meals. Is there anything
44:54: I can pray for you? Well, that automatically starts a conversation. By the way, Christians, try that because the things that are going to happen when you do that, it's amazing to see what waiters and waitresses start telling you.
45:06: And when they realize you actually are going to pray for them, they start really telling you what they want prayer for and start bringing other waiters and waitresses over.
45:14: Happens all the time, but it starts conversations. And most Christians that I know have difficulty getting into a spiritual conversation.
45:22: And we're usually fine. And in fact, I'll give a quick story, Amy, you may not know. Taking Greg in New Jersey when he was out here in Jersey, we were handing out gospel tracts and sharing the gospel.
45:32: What I was doing, and Greg probably didn't pick up on this, I was starting conversations with Greg next to me.
45:38: And as soon as the conversation switched to spiritual, I walked away. And he handled it fine once it was there. But he's not, he's just, no, there's nothing.
45:45: This is back to that balance thing, right? He's fine with answering questions. It was starting those conversations and getting them into the spiritual that we need help with, training as Jim Wallace would say, right?
45:56: We need to be trained. Part of the training is this, is learning to transition from the natural to the spiritual.
46:01: And so at this point, nothing here is going to be edited until we're done with this game. So we will see how well
46:07: I do. Amy is going to give me something. Who knows what? Only she knows. And I am going to have a few minutes to transition from whatever she gives me to the gospel.
46:17: Sometimes I do well, sometimes not so well. But it's a game you guys could play. And as Amy's thinking of something, the advantage of playing this game is that you learn to be able to change any conversation to guide it into a spiritual one.
46:30: The more you play, the easier it becomes. Now someone could go, well, you made that look really easy. I've been doing it for 30 years.
46:36: If you do it for 30 years, maybe you can make it look easy. No, that's hard because I'm still only 25. I'm just saying.
46:42: Well, okay, my wife is 25. I'm going to be 50 years old in a few weeks, but my wife is 25.
46:48: I'm not an idiot. So Amy, if you could give me something, object or whatever, and I'm going to have to transition from whatever you give me to the gospel.
46:58: So do you want me to start a conversation or just give you a topic? You could just give me a topic. Okay. The recent cricket scandal in Australia.
47:09: Oh, wow. I don't even know what the scandal is. Okay, you're gonna have to explain. They were changing the, they were sandpapering the ball to affect the game.
47:17: Oh, okay. Well, A, I have never watched a cricket game. So they were setting the balls down. What does that do? What does that change?
47:23: Well, apparently, and this is fascinating to me. I had no idea, but apparently in a cricket game, they use the same ball through the whole game and the ball changes throughout the game.
47:31: And as it changes, it changes the way they can hit. It changes trick things they can do. So they wanted it to happen faster and they were sandpapering it.
47:39: And they caught, people caught on because they, it was, they were being able to do these hit or throw, or I don't know what it was, too soon in the game.
47:46: And I'm not a sports person at all, but I found this very fascinating. Well, I've never, the closest
47:52: I came to cricket was when we used to play softball after work, a bunch of engineers playing softball, always fun.
47:59: But one of them was from India and he played cricket. I guess the difference in cricket is after you hit the ball, you run to the pitcher's mound or something.
48:05: And this guy, and with your bat in hand, I'm at the pitcher's mound, I pitch, the guy hits the ball and his chase is coming after me with a bat.
48:12: I mean, I throw my gloves down. It's like, okay, it's on. I'm in a fighting stance. I don't know why this guy didn't hit him with the ball.
48:18: What's up? But, you know, whether it's sanding the ball down, whether we saw this with, you know,
48:23: I forget who the guy was because I don't follow football, but there was a guy that was accused of deflating the football.
48:29: You end up seeing, or if you do sports, follow sports, I follow mixed martial arts.
48:34: You can see it in baseball. You can see it in all these sports where people are doping, where people are trying to get some advantage to be better than the other person.
48:43: It's part of what we see in any sport where someone is going to try to get some edge to be better than the next person because when we are doing things based on our works, on our efforts, we're always going to try to find some way to kind of cheat the system.
48:57: And when we look at things, if we look at almost anything, you're going to see people that are always trying to cheat the system so they can get ahead.
49:05: You know, that's not really just. In fact, if we look at an absolute just system, there wouldn't, it wouldn't be an allowance of any of that.
49:11: We wouldn't allow efforts that are to count in that way. The reality is when every one of us was to die and we face
49:19: God, he's going to look at us and say, what have you done? And every one of those things we're going to say, well, look at what I've done, done, done, done, done.
49:25: And he's going to say, yes, but compare it to what I did when God himself came to earth and died on a cross and paid the fine, nothing we do could ever compare.
49:33: And what are we going to do? We're going to look at the works we do. And this is one thing to make every world religion except Christianity is a human religion, manmade religion, because it says, look what
49:41: I did. And ultimately what every person does is say, what I do should count more than what the rules are by God's standard.
49:47: And when we are trying to cheat in cricket or in football or in any other sport, it's no different than standing before God and saying, but look at what
49:55: I did. I want this achievement to count more. The most important achievement is the one that Jesus Christ, God Almighty did on the cross.
50:01: That's how I would do it. And there it is. And you were worried about that game.
50:09: I can't believe you did that. I have, I have had, I go to, I went to a conference once and a woman just literally walked up and she knows that I do this.
50:17: And this was years ago. And she literally just walked up to me and went artichoke hearts, gospel go. I was like, okay.
50:25: And there was a group of people that I was talking to at the time. So it was like, Hey, no pressure. And the others were like, what is she doing?
50:31: Like, that's a weird way to just walk up plugged into a conversation and do that. But the reason
50:36: I do it, my pastor taught me to do this when he was training us to be leaders in the church. And it was to be able to no longer pray,
50:44: Lord, give me a gospel conversation. His thing was, you can make it. You can create a gospel conversation.
50:50: It just takes training. And the thing is, the more you play the game, maybe some of the listeners, or maybe even you would have thought a totally different way of taking the cricket, the shaving of the ball and cricket to the gospel.
50:59: But you know what? There's times where we play these games and I've had times where something will come up and I can turn the conversation to a spiritual one.
51:07: In New York city, I'm talking to a gentleman and an ambulance went by. And because that siren, his head just turned and he's looking at the ambulance.
51:15: I remembered something that someone else said while playing the game with a siren. And I used his line.
51:21: Now I use it every time that this happens. I just say, you hear that siren? That's like a warning. It's trying to warn you of a danger to come.
51:27: That's the exact reason I'm here sharing this with you. It's a warning of a danger to come. And that gets the person's attention right back in.
51:33: And I found it to be very helpful because in New York, there's lots of sirens going off. Can I ask you a quick question about that?
51:41: Do you find that people are generally open to talking to you, even in New York? Yeah. Oh, in New York, definitely.
51:47: New York, every, it's, well, where I go in New York, it's very spiritual. Everyone's spiritual in Union Square, New York.
51:54: But I think a lot of it is how you approach them. I don't approach them with a sandwich board. Actually, Greg is, when
52:01: Greg gets asked on the radio, I've heard a couple of times where people will ask him about open air preaching or street preaching. And he'll say there's very few people that do it well.
52:09: Basically, he'll mention me and Ray Comfort. And the reason I think he sees it, he sees it as more of an art form that, you know, it's how you approach the person.
52:17: A lot of it is the approach. And that's why at Striving for Eternity, what we teach is an ambassador evangelism.
52:22: It's not just the evangelism and what the words you're gonna say, but it's also how you carry yourself, how you conduct yourself.
52:28: And so what we end up teaching is three parts. One is we realize the person we're gonna talk to is gonna be naturally defensive when you're talking about them being a sinner, accountable to God.
52:40: So I teach people to use humor, be polite. It disarms their defenses. However, I know that I could be defensive as well.
52:47: So we teach people to disarm our own defenses by asking good questions. And the book, by the way, that I always recommend people get for this one point is called
52:55: Tactics by your boss, Greg Koko. We actually buy lots of copies of them and have those for people.
53:02: So because it is probably the best one in learning how to ask good questions and guide through conversation.
53:08: And then the third thing I say is to avoid being judgmental by learning how to use the law.
53:14: And then I referenced some stuff from Ray Comfort in Living Waters. And I think that if you keep the conversation where it's lighthearted, it's enjoyable, the person's more willing to open up and talk about things.
53:24: It's gonna be how you start a conversation. That's why I love people with tattoos because they're making a permanent statement.
53:32: But clothing, jewelry, things like that, some that you can start a conversation about without being in your face and immediately triggering their defensiveness or offending them.
53:43: I say that I teach that I want the gospel to the offense because it is offensive, but I wanna remove everything else.
53:50: I want it to be only the gospel that's an offense. If there's anything I can remove from my own self being an offense,
53:56: I wanna remove that. Those are all great points. I worked in the film industry for 10 years.
54:02: So I had tons of opportunities to talk to people. And I did find what you found is that they were willing to talk as long as I wasn't being defensive or upset.
54:12: And that was a huge encouragement to me. So I'm glad to hear that's true even when it's someone you don't know. I don't want people to be afraid to talk to people.
54:19: Yeah, even when I'm in New York and I have literally this has happened, I've had two guys in tutus dancing in front of me.
54:25: That's funny. I mean, just look, they think it's gonna upset me. I had one person who in New York where I was going,
54:31: I'd go every weekend into New York and one of the guys who was regular there would get upset because they would do things.
54:36: One guy, I've had the same heckler for going on 13 years now. Oh my gosh.
54:42: Okay, he's a vile individual. And he pays the homeless to heckle us.
54:48: But what he would do with this other gentleman is he would strip down to his underwear and gyrate in front of him. And it would infuriate this guy.
54:55: And he would get angry. And he's like, why does Solomon not do that? I said, because the very first time Solomon did that to me,
55:00: I yelled, quick, everyone get a collection together. This guy can't even afford clothes. And he ran off and got his clothes on and got dressed and never did it again.
55:08: I just laughed at it. It's like, I'm not, you know, I don't expect him to act like a Christian, but I'm going to use it.
55:15: I'm not gonna be offended by it. I'm just going to, you know, say, all right, you know, this is something that happens, especially in New York.
55:24: Sometimes we get too defensive with it. And we get, you know, look, the message we're gonna proclaim is important.
55:29: It's not something that we should take lightly, but we don't have to be the offense in it.
55:35: And I learned, I'll tell you a quick story of my own stupidity. So this is where I learned this lesson. This is going back maybe 20 years ago,
55:42: I think. But I'm sitting there and I'm standing and sharing the gospel in the open. I'm standing actually on a ledge and just sharing with people.
55:48: And this guy comes up to me and says, he just walks up and says, Christians are stupid. I said, okay, how can you defend that?
55:55: And he says, he goes, I'll prove it. He says, how many chromosomes are there in a human being? I'm like, okay, 46.
56:00: How many from the mother? 23. How many from the father? 23. He goes, see what an idiot you are. You can't divide 23 by two.
56:07: And I went, I'm like, that's so stupid. You don't divide 23 by two. You divide 46 by two.
56:13: And I was like, you're being an idiot. And he walked off because I insulted him and that gave his pride. So I said, oh, okay.
56:19: And he could walk off. And I did, Amy, exactly what I'm sure you would do in that situation. You'd realize you did something wrong.
56:25: I realized I did something wrong. I repented. And I asked God for a second chance. Please forgive me. And so sure enough, out from the left side, the guy walks up, he looks at me and says, are you still stupid?
56:35: And without hesitation, I turned and said, are you still an idiot? And he walked off. Oh, no. And I'm like, oh,
56:42: Lord. Okay, I'm a little hardheaded. Three times? What do you say, Lord? But this time here was the thing.
56:49: I decided that if I saw him, I had a game plan. I knew exactly what I was going to say so that I wouldn't feel that pressure.
56:57: So what happened? Sure enough, about 20 minutes later, from the right side, here he comes. He walks up. He turns to me and says, are you still stupid?
57:04: And I just got off the ledge where I was preaching. I walked over to him. I said, sir, what I said to you was rude and inappropriate.
57:10: Would you please forgive me? And he was like, you're still stupid and walked off. I learned something valuable that day. I could be offensive and I could prevent the gospel from going forth.
57:20: And from that day on, I said, how can I improve in the way that I share the gospel so that that doesn't happen again?
57:26: And that's when I learned I could get defensive and asking questions and not allowing my defensiveness to come in. They're going to try to find ways to push me away so that they can feel better about their offense before God.
57:37: My job is to make that hard for them. Yeah. And as you're talking, I'm thinking about our earlier conversation about men and women.
57:45: And I think as a woman, I have an advantage in that situation and I have a disadvantage. My disadvantage is it's really hard for me to not feel bad when people are mean to me.
57:55: Although I'm much better at this now, just because I've had to be. But I also think that women have an advantage when they're on one -on -one with somebody because they are able to make that connection and feel that empathy.
58:07: And that keeps them from just like going after them and getting angry. Plus, I also think when
58:14: I'm talking to men, I think they probably treat me a little better than they might a man too.
58:19: So there's a little interesting difference that I've seen. Well, and here's the encouragement for women is, you know, it's an interesting thing when you're evangelizing on the street.
58:29: The women that we'll go out with can have a one -on -one conversation with almost anybody. Where when I approach a woman,
58:35: I know that if I just walk up to a woman and go to give her a gospel track or anything, they're going to be naturally defensive and it's almost threatening.
58:44: Except for one time. I'll tell you, this was the greatest evangelism thing I've ever done or tool that I've ever used is
58:50: I got this little Segway Mini and it is the coolest thing because I go on the boardwalk and I can just roll up to people, hand them a gospel track and they're so, it's like, oh, wow, look at that.
58:59: They're so distracted that it's kind of takes everyone's defenses down and I roll up to people, hand them a track and I like back up a little and, you know, that's been the most fun in evangelizing.
59:09: And I've given out more tracks when I'm on that thing, but more and more, I can't use it places. But, you know, the thing is, is that a woman can approach another woman where when
59:18: I approach a woman on the street, it's, they're immediately a little bit. It's threatening. It's threatening. Now, on the same side, the flip side to get this right.
59:26: Some women have the issue where if they're going to approach a man and trying to share the gospel, sometimes the guy has an ulterior motive and they'll pretend to be listening because they're hoping to get a phone number.
59:37: We've seen that as well. You know. Hey, you got it. You got to use whatever advantage you have. Because that gets them to listen.
59:44: Well, it gets them to listen, you know, but it is a thing where, you know, I have like,
59:49: I have strict rules on our evangelism team where I do not, especially in New York, I don't want women like being alone talking to.
59:56: It's amazing how I had one of the women who we used to go out with evangelizing. She is a,
01:00:02: I think she's now a third or fourth degree black belt jujitsu. So she could hurt me. She's actually my bodyguard.
01:00:08: When we go out, if anything happens, I'm like, okay, Melissa, you're in charge, right? So the reality is, she could hurt people more than I could.
01:00:16: But she's talking to a guy that was just getting a little bit too close and I saw it and I just moved right next door. It's amazing how just me standing next to her saying nothing, back the guy up.
01:00:24: And afterwards she said, thank you. And I'm like, for what? Like, if he tried anything, you'd put a hurting on him. Like there's nothing he's getting away with.
01:00:31: She may be really, you know, tiny, but yeah, I have, you know, pretended to try to come behind her and put her into a rear naked choke and it wasn't good for me.
01:00:40: But isn't it interesting how the differences between men and women affect everything we do?
01:00:45: Everything we do. Would you consider donating to Striving for Eternity? This ministry is one that tries to reach out to some of those smaller churches that most people, most speakers want to avoid.
01:01:00: But by our monthly donors, it allows us to get into smaller churches and provide for them the seminars and conferences that usually only larger churches can do.
01:01:10: We can do that because we have monthly supporters who on a regular basis support us so we could support others.
01:01:18: Would you consider being one of our monthly supporters today? You can go to strivingforeternity .org
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01:01:54: So let's talk in the last segment. I want to talk about Stand to Reason to help promote that and what you guys are doing there because I've been following Stand to Reason probably for I want to say like 15 years now.
01:02:05: Oh, that's about when I started volunteering. That's why. I knew you were volunteering at twice. You knew I was back there in the warehouse.
01:02:13: I've been out there. I had the privilege of coming out there, even attending one of your staff meetings many years ago.
01:02:19: I've gotten to meet you and some of the others over there. A great team of people. I'm not saying that just because you're on.
01:02:25: I actually say it when you're off. But talk about Stand to Reason, the mission.
01:02:31: There's a lot of similarities between your mission and what we do at Striving for Eternity. And I think a lot of people who are followers of Striving for Eternity who don't know
01:02:39: Stand to Reason, not only should be, but will enjoy the mission over there. Yeah, so Stand to Reason, we exist to train
01:02:46: Christians who understand what they believe and why they believe it and be able to articulate that in the public square, friends, family, publicly, whatever it is.
01:02:56: So what we do to accomplish that, we have a few speakers, Greg Kokel and Tim Barnett and Alan Schliemann, and they speak all over the world.
01:03:05: Actually, Alan was just speaking to Palestinian Muslims and Christians for hours and hours just a couple of weeks ago in the
01:03:13: West Bank. So they go all over the world. We have a website and we have a blog on the website, which
01:03:19: I edit and I write for. And the website is str .org?
01:03:25: str .org, yeah, str .org. We have a podcast. So we have the main podcast and that's a call -in and we have two one -hour episodes a week.
01:03:33: And then we have the shorter hashtag STR podcast, which is about 20 minutes and that's two days a week also.
01:03:39: And that longer podcast is called Stand to Reason? Yes, yes. So does Alan have his own also?
01:03:46: Yeah, so the guys, yeah, they each have their own too. And they talk about whatever their mentoring letter for that month was.
01:03:52: I don't know if they're still keeping up with that because I haven't been watching, but they have done that in the past. So it should still be there. We also have a student apologetics conference and we have one in Costa Mesa, California, one in Dallas, Texas, and one in Birmingham.
01:04:06: And actually that one's happening in a couple of weeks coming up. And that's a great time.
01:04:11: Almost 2000 students come to each one of those. And that's called Rethink? Rethink. Rethinkapologetics .com
01:04:19: is the website for that. And so basically what we wanna do is we want, one thing that's kind of unique, except that you were talking about doing the same kind of thing, but not every apologetics organization does this.
01:04:30: We're very focused on teaching people how to use the information they have. We want to help people.
01:04:36: We wanna give people the tools that they need to take this information that they're learning from all sorts of different places and use it in conversation in a way that gracious.
01:04:45: And so we wanna give people confidence. We wanna help people think clearly and we want them to do this with grace and have good conversations with people.
01:04:52: And you mentioned Greg's book, Tactics. I think that really encapsulates the unique aspect of Vandereason.
01:04:58: That book is so helpful. It just helps you answer anybody's challenge. Even if you don't know anything about the subject, it will help you to have a good conversation.
01:05:07: You know, years ago I was writing, before Tactics came out, I was writing a book on how to evangelize. And two books came out.
01:05:12: One was from a friend, Jason Lyle, The Ultimate Proof of Creation. And then Greg Koukl came out with Tactics.
01:05:18: And I've told Jason this, and I told Greg this. A large part of what I was trying to say in my book was basically encapsulating those two.
01:05:25: So now all I do is like, why should I bother? Just get these two, here you go, right? One's just, I've actually done, and if you want, unfortunately we didn't get, the whole thing was never caught on video.
01:05:36: But if you have ever dealt with someone that just is constantly talking over you and doesn't give you a chance to say anything,
01:05:42: Greg Koukl's not a steamroller. And he gives tactics. So how do you deal with someone that's a steamroller? So first thing, establish rules.
01:05:48: Second thing, shame the person, right? If they are not following the rules. Third thing, walk away. Just be done with it.
01:05:54: A great example of that on the street was I was at University of Connecticut. We had a professor that, it was actually the video, it was
01:06:01: UConn professor goes ape. One is the video where the professor's just coming after one of my friends,
01:06:06: Scott, who was preaching and just goes, I mean, he loses it. He tried to say afterwards he was pretending he was street playing.
01:06:13: No, he was angry. But afterwards I tried to, you know, he's got this crowd of students and I'm trying to establish rules.
01:06:21: So I said, right, typical steamroller. So I said, all right, how about I ask you a question, you answer it, you ask a question, then
01:06:28: I answer it. Is that fair? He's like, fine. So I asked him, okay, can you explain to me how you can get new information that's beneficial and reproducible into DNA?
01:06:37: He's going for about 20 minutes. And he, at that point, he goes, now Andrew's going to say, I haven't answered his question. I'm like, yeah,
01:06:43: I've given you 20 minutes. So at that point he recognized that he's not following the rules. So what I did was shame him.
01:06:49: And I pointed out what he was doing, how rude he was being. Here's a bunch of students who don't like the Christian message. You know what they did?
01:06:54: They clapped for me when I said this. And he was shocked. Me like, there's the video has, there's one video out there that has a look on his face.
01:07:00: And he's like, his mouth is open. His eyes get big. He's like looking like you're clapping for him. He couldn't believe it because everyone in the audience recognized
01:07:08: I gave the rules and he was breaking them. And then they decided to, some of the
01:07:14: Jewish kids decided, I didn't, until I saw the video, I didn't hear this. But one kid goes, are there any
01:07:19: Jewish people or any other Jewish kids? Any other Jewish people? A couple of like three kids come out and they start doing a
01:07:24: Jewish dance. Now I happen to be Jewish. So I knew that dance. So I grabbed the ringleader without knowing that he had said, hey, any
01:07:31: Jewish people. But I knew what they were doing because they were singing Haba Nagiva. And so I knew exactly what it was.
01:07:37: So I grabbed the ringleader and said, look, this is how you do this. And there's a way, it's basically a Russian Jewish dance where you cross your arms and two people go down on their knees and kick their legs out.
01:07:46: People have seen it on TV. So I grabbed the ringleader and go to do that. Now I'm trying to preach and get the crowd on, you know,
01:07:52: I want the crowd on my side and here's someone trying to distract me. What do I do? I grabbed the ringleader and I'm using what he's doing.
01:07:58: He wants to dance, fine. I could jump in and dance. But meanwhile, the professor's just sitting there and now I've ignored him.
01:08:04: I've just, I basically, I shamed him. Now I've ignored him and I've taken over the crowd. This guy starts, he's like, oh, I can't,
01:08:09: I can't do this, I can't do this. So I start doing the dance by myself, but ended up having, I had the crowd now on my side.
01:08:14: I've now ignored the steamroller and was able to talk to the crowd. And, you know, those are some of the things and I know let someone trying to dance in front of me, distract me from the mission of being able to get the audience and share with me.
01:08:26: One of the things, and actually Greg had reviewed a chapter, it's coming out in a new book that you guys will probably be familiar with when it comes out.
01:08:33: But, and I'm trying to remember the final title, but it's like sharing the gospel with Mormons or sharing the good news with Mormons.
01:08:39: And some folks you guys over there know, Sean McDowell is one of the editors of this book. I ended up when we were doing this, it was supposed to be something that was gonna be just self -published.
01:08:50: And I suggested, hey, let me get in touch with Jim Wallace. He's from a Mormon background. He may have some input.
01:08:56: We ended up expanding, expanding it. And then now it's picked up by a publisher. And so in that, it's all these different tactics of how to reach
01:09:03: Mormons. And the thing that was interesting is in there, I have a chapter on open air evangelism, standing up and how to do that.
01:09:10: And one of the things I say when I do this, that I gave it to Greg to actually review my chapter and he picked up on this one line.
01:09:18: So this is really neat. But I have a goal in evangelizing in the open air like that. One is the first and most important to share the gospel unadulterated, not ordering it down in any way.
01:09:27: But a second goal I have is to get one professing atheist to tell another professing atheist to shut up.
01:09:33: In other words, I want to conduct myself in such a way that someone that disagrees with my message so appreciates the way
01:09:39: I'm going about it that they're offended when someone else speaks out against it. And that's the goal that I end up having.
01:09:45: That's a great attitude. That's a great goal. Because whoever gets angry loses. Yes. Yeah.
01:09:51: So I mean, and this is why I think Greg appreciates the way that I do it and Ray does it. I hope more would start learning to do it that way as well.
01:09:59: We are trying to train up others to have a good attitude when doing that. But Amy, I want to thank you for your time.
01:10:05: Any closing points that you want to close out with? I just keep doing what you're doing. Our culture needs people who know how to have conversations.
01:10:14: We are not doing well at that. So whatever you can do to teach people about that, I am all for.
01:10:20: And I really appreciate that you're doing that. Okay. And folks go to str .org. Check out the blogs.
01:10:25: You can check out the podcast. There are tons of articles. Actually, if you go on to str .org,
01:10:32: you'll be able to see there's some different categories. And in every one of those categories, you click on a category and it's like, oh, 2 ,000 articles on this topic.
01:10:39: You know, 3 ,000 on this. Plenty of stuff out there. If you want to start reading, you can start reading lots of good material.
01:10:45: So they have podcasts, they have blogs, they have articles out there. You can book a speaker. They have, as was mentioned, three different speakers right now.
01:10:53: And I mentioned Brett Kokel, but he's now off on his own. Right. He's got his own thing now. Yeah, which is one of the things that I love about Santa Rosa.
01:11:01: One of the things is, you know, when I started out in ministry, Greg Kokel really discipled me and trained me in a lot of ways.
01:11:07: Not as closely as he did some of the other speakers, but the whole idea of working with people, not against people and bringing people in, training them up so they can go out on their own and not make mistakes.
01:11:16: Some folks who are familiar with Striving for Training know that we've done that with other ministries. This is where I got it from. A lot of the way that I conduct myself when
01:11:23: I'm at a speaking event comes from training that Greg gave to me. So I'll say that Stand to Reason has had, and Greg specifically, has had a major impact on just the way
01:11:32: I do ministry. And so I can't recommend them strongly enough for you to go to standtoreasonstr .org
01:11:39: and check out the materials that are there. So we really appreciate that. And so Amy, thank you for coming on.
01:11:44: I know you drove into the studio for this, and in LA, that is not a small thing.
01:11:50: I mean, if anyone has not been to LA and driven there and seen the traffic,
01:11:56: Greg jokingly will say the radio show is a typical LA commute, and I agree.
01:12:02: Two hours is not unusual to get just 20 miles or 10 miles or five miles. Luckily, it didn't take me two hours.
01:12:10: But thank you. Thank you for having me on the show. I really enjoyed our conversation. All right. Well, folks, remember to go out and strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.
01:12:20: Go to strivingforeternity .org