Matt Chandler: From Woke to Broke

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast. I'm your host, Jon Harris. Matt Chandler is in the news, and we've talked about Matt Chandler before because he was,

00:22

I say that past tense, I know he still somewhat is, but he was in the past more, I would say, influential as an evangelical pastor, part of what

00:32

Phil Johnson called Big Eva. Now, I think it's called regime evangelicals or regime evangelicals on X, but he was part of that industry, and he was very big on pushing social justice type ideas.

00:47

That's why I've talked about him and written about some of his teachings in my book, Christianity and Social Justice.

00:52

But some things have changed, and I saw an interview with him. There's clips of it that are being passed around online of him and Lecrae talking about a number of topics, but among them, the political things come up, and right and left, and whether Christians fit into these categories or where Christians fit in.

01:15

And of course, Matt Chandler articulates a third way type of transcending political categories to be this

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Christian community that at the end of the day, though, still is going to promote somewhat of a social justice flavor.

01:28

And he doesn't go, though, hard woke in that particular episode. It's hinted at that little things are hinted at.

01:35

But overall, what I saw with Matt Chandler is he still has the same theology.

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He still has, I think, the same incorrect soteriology, which I want to focus on that a bunch because a lot of the clips going around online are focusing on the politics, but they're missing,

01:51

I think, the big, big thing, which is Matt Chandler soteriology, which is how he marketed and how

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TGC and Tim Keller and all these groups marketed their, their leftist ideas.

02:03

They package them in this gospel wrapping paper. So I want to talk about that because he still has that. And I think that's the big thing people are not focusing on, which

02:11

I think we should focus on more because I'll explain why explain why when we get there. But the other thing is that Matt Chandler just looks beaten down.

02:21

He sounds beaten down. That the fresh optimism that the aggression, or even if you don't want to use that word, there was a energy behind him that it just not there.

02:35

He says he's tired. And, and I don't know fully, you know, what's going on in his personal life.

02:41

I don't know if anyone in the public realm who's not friends with Matt personally would know those kinds of things.

02:47

But, but, you know, you can gander a little bit about some of the things that have publicly happened in the last few years since he pushed hard for social justice stuff.

02:57

And in fact, the Me Too movement has really done a number on him as well. And so, so one aspect of the woke movement, actually,

03:05

I would say, kind of chewed him up and spit him out. And I don't know if that's what is going on here.

03:13

But I, I say in the title, Matt Chandler from woke to broke, not because I'm saying he's not completely woke anymore.

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You know, I don't know exactly where he's at. I'm assuming he's, he is still somewhat social justice that comes through.

03:26

But it's not though, that he's broke financially, obviously, which that's how the phrase is usually used.

03:32

I'm saying that he has gone from a very energetic, let's go get them. We're going to really jam through and the

03:39

Acts 29 network, and the places where he's influential in evangelicalism, a hardcore social justice agenda, especially on racial stuff.

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I'll talk about that more. But he's gone from that to now just a broken, more passive sounding.

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It's sad to be honest with you, a man who wants, I'm kind of glad he's been somewhat,

04:05

I guess, cut to size. He's not as influential, but he still does have influence. And he just doesn't sound like he's doing that well.

04:15

And, and I think that part of the reason for that has to do with some paradigm shifts that have taken place since 2020, especially in the evangelical world, because he's not alone in being kind of cast asunder as a one a one time father figure in that movement to now, really not being as relevant.

04:39

And like I said, he still has some relevance, but he even talks in this about he regrets not having a college ministry because that's one of the weak areas in their church.

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And it was 20 somethings when he started out. And now, you know, what's happening demographically, and I can tell you what's happening demographically.

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As far as the larger shifts are concerned, at least yeah, Gen Z is not going for what TGC, Matt Chandler, and those guys were selling.

05:04

That's really the bottom line. Gen Z is a different animal, I think. And they're going to be hard left, or they're going to be hard left, right, they're much more polarized.

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And Matt Chandler is still trying to repeat this third wayism. And it's not going to work.

05:19

And I think that's, that plays into the loss of relevance, as well as maybe the me to hit jobs and things like that.

05:26

And then not not all of that, by the way, with Matt Chandler is much is necessarily a hit job, there may be some legitimate things, actually.

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And I'll talk about that a little too. In fact, when the craze podcast came out, I think it might have been the same day was

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July 11. The there was a story that broke. Well, another podcast was breaking a story or at least revealing something

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I suppose that had been unrevealed previously about Matt Chandler's dad. And this is, I don't want to get into endorsing that particular message and saying

05:56

Matt Chandler's dad, which is what this podcast was saying is some kind of a dangerous predator, because of something he did years and years ago.

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I don't know all the full details on that. But there's definitely a problem and a track record the village church has, it seems with people in staff positions who are threats or have inappropriate relationships with women, and they tend to, you know, somehow it's not handled, right, it's handled with kid gloves, or it's, it's viewed as, well, you'll see in this case, that it's something that the church looks at and says, well, that was years ago.

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And there was not apparently a necessity to inform those who were responsible for the hiring process of Matt Chandler's dad.

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So it's kind of a mess. And you know, I'm well aware that there's media outlets who do not like Christians who may be trying to overplay things.

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But the track record we've seen isn't great. And so you have that going on. And he's just a he's a beaten down guy at this point.

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And so I want to examine I want to do kind of like a, a post kind of post game talk,

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I suppose, you know, the young wrestlers reform, the big Eva, the TGC Alliance, nine marks, and I would say, as part of this movement would be acts 29 network, of course, nine marks has a little more going for it, because they have this ecclesiology thing that will make them more evergreen.

07:24

But the movements and the conferences and things that were spawned, you know, T4G from this young wrestlers reform movement, they have kind of gone away, or they're fading.

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And I want to examine why that is, I want to examine why, you know, there was this enthusiasm, and then they went woke.

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And now, it's like the Empire is somewhat crumbling, still there, still influential, and especially some older millennials, but it's just, it's going down.

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And I think Matt Chandler knows that I think he senses that. And it comes through in this interview.

07:58

So I'm not gonna play the whole interview, but I am going to play clips from it with him and Lecrae. And I'm going to discuss what

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I think this means, because I was a guy who, you know, my friends, especially I wasn't a big Matt Chandler friend, but my friends who were going from places like Calvary Chapel to reform theology,

08:12

Matt Chandler was influential in that. And I remember them sending me a lot of Matt Chandler sermons, and I thought he was a positive influence at first.

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And now I'm looking at it. And I'm thinking, I don't know what, what

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I was missing. At that time, I obviously wasn't listening to all his sermons. And maybe that's the issue.

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But, but there's obviously was some flaws, if not some, some major flaws, obviously, with the woke stuff, there definitely was.

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And with the soteriology, there definitely was. And somehow, early on, I wasn't quite seeing that I was just seeing like, oh, this is a, for God's sovereignty and salvation.

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That's great. And now I'm looking at it. And I'm thinking, Oh, no, there, there were some big things there. And so I want to talk about that, you know, what that is, because so many of my friends who really liked him now, they would never listen to him.

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And I wonder how big of a scale that is. And if we can learn from some of these mistakes, we can also avoid maybe doing them ourselves.

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And I, I'm going to admit something here, I am slightly concerned, more than slightly, I'm concerned that there are those more on the political right, who are doing something similar to Matt Chandler, different style, different way of appealing to people different aesthetic, different political stances.

09:33

But are there are people on the right embracing the same incorrect soteriology to justify their right wing views, quote, unquote, are there people on the right, who are in danger of doing the same kind of, maybe not necessarily third way ism, but the same idea that your allegiance should be your identity should be wrapped up in the church and what the church does.

09:59

And maybe it might be in a more post millennial, which by the way, I wonder if Matt Chandler is that because he said some things that sounded like it, but, but, but more of a post millennial kind of framework, theonomic framework, but yet at the end of the day, like you're still denying some natural identities that God has, in fact given to us and placed us in and families and nations and communities.

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We I don't want to make the same mistake that I saw those guys making. And so I think if we could examine what they did, and why they were riding a wave of millennials, do people who are right now building their platforms want to ride a wave of Gen Zers, who might be very disgruntled and overreacting some of them to some of what they've seen in TGC, and that whole movement?

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Do you want to just go kind of with what they're doing? And like, we're just going to be really hardcore and conquer for Christ and be very aggressive with it and unapologetic.

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Those are actually those are good things. But do we want to then follow that all the way to its conclusion?

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And, and what I mean by that is, even those who are just trying to define themselves in relation to or against what the compromise they saw, do we want to just follow that that negative identity in a sense and say, like, well, we're just, we're going to be against those things.

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I realized my part in all this, too. I mean, I've critiqued these guys, and I'm gonna do it again.

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I'm gonna critique Matt Chandler today. But I am acknowledging that we are in the phase right now of needing to build very positive understandings of who we are, where we fit, what we should do in the

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United States as Christians, primarily who I'm talking about. This applies to those probably in other Western countries as well, though.

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And that's why I'm grateful for guys, even though there seems like they're universally hated in Big Eva, but guys like Steven Wolf are trying to at least attempt to answer these kinds of questions.

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And, and that's what I want to, that's what I want to get at. And this is one of the things I'm writing about in my next book is

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I'm trying to answer some of these questions as well. And I think there's an answer, I do think, and the answers aren't necessarily all that complicated and hard.

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But if we react quickly without thinking things through, then we end up getting into a situation where we can make the same mistakes as those guys made.

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And we didn't change our soteriology, we didn't change our understanding of what culture, ethnicity, responsibility to people who are in proximity to us, we didn't really work out all of those things.

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And so we end up doing the same thing that they were doing or something similar from the right. And I think that this can, and does happen.

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I don't think it's prevalent, necessarily. That's why I say I, you know, I said slightly concerned and say I am concerned, but it's, it's somewhere between those two.

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I mean, I'm, I'm concerned, but it's not, you know, like code red or anything. I'm just, I'm just realizing that in the social media sphere, especially, it's so easy to build a platform so quick, as many of these guys did,

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Matt Chandler included, with a couple of good sermons, and a couple of good hot takes, and you have a following.

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And if you're really sure of yourself, you know, that's kind of, that's where you're at. And, and I think some of these things, it's like we, you know, the church councils used to meet, like, we need a church council, really, we need like,

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I don't know who would be called though, that's part of the problem, who would be the mature people to lead us through some of this, but there needs to be some real grappling with some of the errors of the past 10, 20, 30, even 50 years, post -war years.

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And where did evangelicals go wrong? How did, what was flawed about the neo -evangelical movement?

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You know, I, you know, I see Carl Henry claimed by both sides, right? You see Francis Schaefer claimed by both sides, same thing with guys who kind of predated the world war

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II era, like Abraham Kuyper and C .S. Lewis, these guys are claimed by both sides. And you see, you see some of the same arguments, the same justifications, and then landing politically in different places.

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So I want to talk about that a little bit too. So we'll see how far we get. This is probably gonna be a longer episode because my intro has now been going on for 14 minutes and I haven't even started playing any clips, but we will, we will start doing that.

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The question I have though, before we start playing those clips is really this, are you coming to the Fundamentals Conference?

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If you're a guy, you should be coming. I mean, people come from California, so, you know,

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I don't know what your reason for not coming is. I mean, look, I am realistic and I understand that, plug in my mic here.

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I understand that some people have financial concerns and those kinds of things. We don't want those things to be a problem. So I would say, reach out to me.

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The email address is actually on the website at fundamentalsconference .com if that's an issue for you.

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But we do have some really great rates. It's a really great time. And the teaching is phenomenal. The outdoors are phenomenal.

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The facilities are phenomenal. And the men who come are phenomenal. You're going to meet some really great guys if you come.

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Fundamentalsconference .com. Email me if you have a question. My email is on the website. So check it out.

15:13

All right, well, let's start here. And just by way of review, I want to play some things for you.

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I don't know if we'll get all the way through them, but let me start with this. This is Matt Chandler from, this was years ago now.

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It's actually becoming part of history, which is making me feel a little bit old. I think this must have been 2018 or 2019 when he came out with this, if I'm not mistaken.

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But this is a video that Village Church put out of Matt Chandler talking about white privilege. Some of you are familiar with this.

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Some of you might not be. And I'm just doing this as a reminder. The video is Matt Chandler from woke to broke, meaning broke in.

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This is the Matt Chandler that used to have more energy and was just really adamant and pushing hard for social justice stuff.

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And this is what he looked like. So growing up, here's what that looked like for me.

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When I sat in school growing up and learned about the history of the United States of America, I opened up our books.

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I had to write reports. I saw in those books and read the stories of and wrote reports on people who looked like me.

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And then when I turned on the television, by and large, at any moment in time, when I turned on the television, what

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I saw was people who looked like me. And then when I got magazines or when

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I got books or when I played with toys or what I saw repeatedly were people that looked like me.

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At almost any given moment, I was surrounded by people who looked almost just like me.

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And so really the entire experience of my life has been one of I can easily find people that look like me.

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Almost all my understanding of what made America great is because of efforts and the work ethic of people like me.

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And I come from a lower class Anglo family. And so my story is kind of the

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American dream. Pulled myself up by my bootstraps, worked hard, learned to work hard from my daddy, yada, yada, yada.

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I could go on and on there. But what happens in that kind of upbringing, which is fine, is that there were some lenses put over my eyes in which

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I saw the world through those lenses, not knowing what those lenses are. And so if I could kind of just be straight at what

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I'm talking about is that I have grown up with this invisible kind of bag of privilege, this kind of invisible toolkit that I can reach in there at any given moment and have this type of privilege that a lot of other brothers and sisters don't have, don't possess.

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And so what happens when you have my upbringing and even my current reality is that you're forced to, if you're not careful, if you don't let the gospel kind of purify your heart, if you don't lean on the word of God to shape your understandings, you begin to judge harshly those who can't quite get to where you are.

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And you will begin to see that getting people to where you are is what's normative. And so if I could just kind of lay it all out there, what

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I'm talking about right now is white privilege. And so I listen, and I know some of you are already reaching to kind of click out.

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Nothing makes Anglos more angry than the idea of white privilege. But let's just talk for a second, if you'll give me just a second.

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So white privilege isn't overt racism, right? Instead, it's just this unique kind of experience of life and predominant culture.

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So again, let's go back and talk about it. Growing up throughout your history books, if you learned anything other than white people built and made

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America great, it was during the month of February. It was condensed, and it was kind of a millimeter of depth of really what other kind of ethnicities contributed to what's now modern day

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America. And even if you are, and then when you open up your newspaper or you grab a magazine, you're going to see

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Anglos portrayed mostly in a positive sense, right? If you go to buy your kids toys or go to buy them a little book, it's going to be pretty easy to just find kids that look like them on the cover.

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So we don't know what it's like to have to look around Barnes and Nobles for 15 minutes trying to find a book about a little girl growing up that looks like our little girl, or like a little boy growing up that looks like our little boy.

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We've never had to struggle with that. We don't get anxious every time we open up a newspaper about how we'll be portrayed.

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These are aspects of, it's an invisible air that we breathe, a type of lens that we wear.

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So what happens is when things blow up, we can look at African Americans or Asians or Hispanics, and because of the lenses in which we wear and how we've been shaped by this invisible force, we tend to expect, why can't they just?

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Why won't they? And what we're saying in that moment is we're harshly judging. And we're expecting, if they would just look like us, if they would just do what we've done, then none of this would happen.

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And it's a really kind of terrible judgmental place to sit. And so what we want is we want the truth of God's word and the beauty of the gospel to wash over us.

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We don't need to feel bad about our experience in the predominant culture. We just need to be aware of it so it doesn't shape how we interact with the world around us.

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We know that when all's said and done, there are sons of Adam and sons of God, right?

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There are those who have sinned and are outside the covenant promises, and there are those that have been bought by the blood of Christ and are inside the covenant promises.

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So that when all's said and done, there's the race of Adam and the race of Christ, and we're going to identify with the race of Christ regardless of skin color.

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And so what we want is we want to live in such a way that shows that we understand that God has brought together in Christ men and women for every tribe, tongue, and nation on earth, every ethnicity, every language, every culture, and has created a new culture of mutual submission and joy in the differences found in one another as it rounds us out more as the people of God.

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Okay, so you heard that, and it's terribly confusing if you really think about it, because there's this reality he ends with that we all are part of these different nations, and yet at the same time, the gospel somehow erodes these differences into just there's the sons of Adam and there's the sons of God.

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And in a spiritual sense, of course, there's a truth in that. There's those who are going to be under judgment because they don't have

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Christ. Those are the sons of Adam, and there are those who are the sons of God who've been adopted into his family by way of the merits of Christ.

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So there's two truths, but he's conflating them. He's conflating spiritual and temporal categories, and it makes things very confusing.

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And at the same time, he's telling Christians in that video that if you're white, you don't understand.

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Sit down, listen. We were used to this from 2020. It's the standpoint theory stuff, and you don't really have a say.

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You could ask questions, but you really shouldn't be making pronouncements about issues involving justice and race and these kinds of things, even though Matt Chandler somewhat does that, because you don't have the experience.

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So you have this invisible bag of privilege that's been handed to you, and you just don't see. You have these lenses. And this was pretty typical of Matt Chandler.

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I'll give you another example. This is from ACTS 29. If you remember, ACTS 29 did a whole panel.

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I believe this was 2014, 2015, somewhere in there. So this is one of the shootings,

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I think, that happened in Dallas, and I can't remember exactly who it was. But right after that, there was a panel that ACTS 29

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Network put on. Matt Chandler, obviously, the one driving this and hosting this. And here's a little bit about what he said.

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And so what I thought we could do with our time, what I wanted to do with my time is just ask some brothers to come up here, and I just want them to talk to us, because how they feel matters and how they see matters.

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And we are not, I'll say it, I know it, we are not in a position to understand.

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So we must try to seek it. I cannot, with the education

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I have, the background I have, and life experience I have, be an expert in this space.

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But I can say that I'm not, and I can try to learn. I want you, as we have the conversation today, to kind of look for these things in your heart.

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If when our brothers are speaking, you begin to think in your mind how you could explain to them of why they shouldn't feel that way or why they shouldn't think that,

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I would just flag that in your mind as an example of what I'm talking about. Because I think when you go, oh, let me try to explain to them why they shouldn't, that's just bad pastoral ministry at any level.

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Privilege is a real thing. That is called privilege. When you can look back and say, well, we're Irish, here's our seal, here's our crest, here's our family, and you have 13 % of the population that, for the most part, cannot do that, that's privilege.

24:28

And that's what it's like to be a black man in America. One of my earliest shaping of white people, and this is,

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I'm not endorsing it as, I'm not endorsing it, but it's my shaping, is my mom telling me white people crazy, right?

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Just regularly, white people crazy. And would teach me that because I was 50 pounds ago, a pretty good athlete and enjoyed worldly popularity and all that good stuff, was teaching me

24:58

I couldn't trust white people. And she would tell me if I go out, she knew I was going out to a party, say somebody was having a party at their lake house, which meant they were white because we don't own no lake houses.

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And so she would say, she would always say, boy, be careful. And I was like, well, we're just going to be at the lake house, you know, doing what we do.

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And she would say, no, you can't do what they do. She said, because if something go wrong, they're going to go home.

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You're going uptown and I can't come get you out of jail. You can't do what they do.

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And they can't be trusted. Now, I know that's a stereotype. I know that's broad and all that good stuff, but that was shaping and it would be proved over and over again that I couldn't trust and I couldn't do what white folk did.

25:51

The reason why I got my doctorate degree, to be honest, why I did a hard master's degree and a doctorate degree was so that people in Christianity would at least respect what

26:07

I have to say because of my degrees, um, which that's why

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I got them, not just to get a biblical education, but to, but because I believe

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I have dignity and I wanted my theological education to communicate that dignity even before people met me.

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And sometimes I've been confronted with the fact that I am still a nigga with degrees. Um, and so, uh, and so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm working

26:37

I want to be done, um, with white evangelicalism as a whole. Uh, because for the few brothers like yourselves, there's been a thousand to tell me otherwise, when you have,

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I'm going to stop it right there because this just goes on for a while and I need to play a lot more in this particular podcast episode.

26:59

But if you look at the intro to Eric Mason, who you just heard talking there in his book woke church, he credits

27:05

Matt Chandler and gives an example. His first example of a woke brother, a woke Christian is

27:10

Matt Chandler. And this, because Matt Chandler, after one of these shootings that was supposedly caused by racism, but there wasn't evidence for it happened,

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Matt Chandler texted Eric Mason and just wanted to make sure that Eric Mason was doing okay.

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You know, cause this was against the whole black community, according to the media narrative.

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And that's a woke brother, that's Matt Chandler and this whole entire panel, which was very formative for many acts, 29 pastors, uh, who started to wonder whether or not there was something wrong with acts 29.

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It was, it was, uh, somewhat informative in that manner. You know, uh, what, what was going on, what really,

27:50

I think, clued them into that was the fact that Chandler hosted this panel. And if you keep watching the panel, they say you're, as a white person, you really shouldn't even ask them about stopping racism or what racism is or white privilege or any of these things.

28:05

You need to go research it yourself at the same time though. You're not supposed to research it yourself in a vacuum because you need these black perspectives.

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And it was like, it was horrible. You need these black perspectives, uh, to understand racism, quote unquote, but at the same time, you can't, uh, even approach the black perspectives unless you do this work yourself.

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It was contradicting, uh, contradictory and frustrating for people in that audience who are actually thinking through it and not just emoting their way through it.

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And Matt Chandler, of course, is sitting back and nodding his head and endorsing this whole thing and playing, playing whatever role he's supposed to play in this woke paradigm.

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Obviously it's called woke now, the social justice CRT infused woke paradigm. So that was

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Chandler, uh, not long ago. That was Chan, that was part of his legacy. I would say, uh, of Matt Chandler.

28:55

And it's not just that initial support for the sovereignty of God and salvation, which I think hooked a lot of young guys in young guys, meaning guys who are now mid age millennials and older millennials, but it's, uh, it then transferred into this really supporting social justice.

29:13

That's really what he was known for. That's, and I'm not saying that's all he talked about, but there's a lot of people that left his church over it.

29:18

There was, I remember there was a popular blog or at least a viral blog, a blog that went around. I want to say 2020 from a police officer.

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Uh, I think it was actually the wife of a police officer was pretty extensive and it just outlined how unwelcomed they felt at the village church and how, and it was all related to this.

29:37

It was all related to my husband's a police officer. And it's like every time there's a racially charged shooting, according to the media,

29:45

Chandler wants to get up there and talk about how racist America is. And, uh, there's a problem with the policing and, uh, and without, with little understanding of what actually is going on.

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And this happened of course, across the board, which is why many of you listen to this podcast and have been for years because I started addressing these things that I was saying, something's really wrong here.

30:03

So that's the Matt Chandler. Some of you are familiar with, some of you are not perhaps if you're a new listener, but that's who

30:09

Matt Chandler, a part of at least who Matt Chandler is. Now I did write a little bit about Matt Chandler, and I'm going to say this before I get to, uh, this new video of him a few days ago with Lecrae, but I just want to highlight this and maybe a few quick things

30:27

I wrote about this in the book, Christianity and social justice religions in conflict. And it's, it's one little section, but I, uh,

30:36

I talk about how Matt Chandler, the popular pastor of the village church in Dallas, Texas framed George Floyd's death as part of a quote, demonic evil unquote, which characterized the

30:44

United States and posted a black square on his Instagram account. So, so he, and it's all cited for you.

30:51

If you want to go check out these links in order to uproot racism, Chandler asked his followers to reject a quote and listen closely, a truncated gospel understanding of the gospel, a truncated understanding of the gospel unquote, which failed to quote, expose injustice unquote.

31:06

However, when addressing the violent riots, according to Chandler, he scolded those who quote, pointed out all the flaws in this current movement, meaning

31:14

BLM, uh, while abandoning the church's responsibility to protest against injustice.

31:20

In other words, he was on board with BLM. He was as much as a

31:25

Christian, I suppose, I guess, suppose can be he's on board with BLM. What they're doing is in even these violent riots, which, you know, they're, he calls his words, not mine.

31:36

You know, it's wrong to really, uh, to point out all the flaws when the church isn't somehow protesting against injustice.

31:46

In other words, the church has a political responsibility here to be activists. The church needs to be activists and why the motivation for the church being an activist in support of BLM and that whole narrative is because of the gospel, because there is a holistic understanding of the gospel that includes activism.

32:03

And it's a truncated or partial or half gospel that doesn't have that and ignores those things.

32:10

And so the Christians who were not out there being activists, they didn't really have the full gospel. That's what

32:16

Matt Chandler taught. He was aggressive with this stuff up until very recently. And I think he's still, that's still part of,

32:21

I think who he is, but, uh, you're going to get a different flavor a little bit when you watch this video. And I don't know exactly why that is.

32:30

Uh, there, there is a story going on right now. I'll just, uh, I'll show you this came out like,

32:37

I think the same day. Uh, let's see if I can pull it up. Here it is. This is from, um, religion news service, which is a very left -wing publication.

32:45

So always take whatever they say with a grain of salt, but they're reporting on bodies behind the bus.

32:51

So a podcast and two former members of the village church in Denton, Texas alleged that church leader employed a, uh, church leader employed a custodian for five years, despite knowing he had previously admitted to sexually abusing a child.

33:06

The custodian they said was Steve Chandler, the father of Matt Chandler lead pastor of its umbrella church at the time, the allegations have sparked controversy online with some calling the church's decision not to inform the congregation until 2019 unacceptable and others calling for the resignation of Matt Chandler, a popular author and acts 29 executive chairman.

33:26

If you have drawn comparisons to Hillsong church and Brian Houston, who was charged in Australia with concealing his late father,

33:33

Frank Houston, sexual abuse of a young man, man. And I have to, I'm going to stop here real quick and just say something.

33:41

Matt Chandler, if you listen to him, he references this. In fact, even in that panel, uh, that I just played for you,

33:47

I didn't play you the exact clip, but Matt Chandler talks about, he references and says that he has dad issues in that panel before he, before the panel starts when he's addressing the congregation in the video

33:57

I'm about to play for you. I don't know if we'll play the clip, but Matt Chandler in the, it's like an hour, it's over an hour.

34:03

So we're not gonna play the whole thing. But at one, at one point, man, Matt Chandler makes, I thought it was an odd comment about mega church pastors wanting to impress their parent, impress their fathers or show that to their dads, they can be successful.

34:17

Um, so I'm not saying that he, I'm not, I don't know what the nature of his relationship exactly is with his dad.

34:24

Uh, it is, it is interesting though. I suppose the reason

34:30

I bring it up is to say that, um, there may be some deep seated issues with Matt Chandler, uh, that go back to that relationship.

34:39

At least he seems to allude that there's some issues he has because of that relationship. And, and, and this may make sense of at least some of the things that the village church has done over the years that don't make sense when you consider them just approaching it from common sense and even the way it looks as far as optics goes.

34:58

Um, here's an, uh, just, this was a lawsuit. I think it talks about it at the end that happened at village church.

35:06

There was a, uh, there, it just says in the end of the article, this is the latest string of allegations involving the village church affiliated entities in recent years in 2022,

35:14

Matt Chandler took a three month leave of absence. You'll remember me talking about this following reports of online communication with a woman who is not his wife.

35:21

So there was sin there, but he didn't say what it was. And then in 2019, the village church faced a lawsuit involving allegations that he, former youth minister had molested a child at a church camp in 2020, the criminal charges against the youth minister were dropped.

35:36

And in 2022, the village church reached a settlement in the civil case. So, uh, these are just some examples of like the, something seems off at the village church.

35:50

And if there's people in the audience who go to the village church, maybe you can put in the comments your explanation or what you see here, but it seems odd, especially for a church that would be, uh, has been more on board with social justice stuff, uh, to have these, uh, well, maybe it's not weird for them to have the allegations against them.

36:10

There's, there's actually quite a bit. And some of them aren't public of, uh, more woke churches. I know that have issues along these lines, but, uh, as far as the way they've handled it, uh, it is a little strange, uh, some of these situations.

36:23

So that, that could be contributing to, uh, Matt Chandler's demise in some ways and why he comes across the way he does in this particular video with Lecrae.

36:32

There's actually, and I'll say this too, before we play the video, there's actually some good things. I think in this video, he actually gives some, some good experience based advice on some things, but there's still some major flaws in it.

36:44

And it's, it comes across as a guy who is, he's going to go with the thing that he's been doing for years, right?

36:51

He's not going to re -examine things probably in ways he should. He's just going to keep going, but boy, is he beaten down and tired?

36:59

That's the sense I get from Italy. So, uh, we'll play different parts of this for you. Um, I think we'll start, man,

37:08

I'll just briefly tell you, they start talking about the formula, Matt Chandler's formula, and I'm not going to play these clips, but that he communicated to the simple man, the common man.

37:18

And, and this was really not just him, but this was kind of a young restless reform formula is we're going to, this is going to be not deep exegetical preaching.

37:28

This is going to be, or expository preaching. This is going to be layman level terms.

37:33

And so you can understand and apply. And that was part of the formula, whether good or bad.

37:38

I mean, some of you might think that's the problem. I don't know that that was the problem actually with that whole movement, but that is one of the things they did.

37:44

And I will tell you one thing that's that can, if you're not careful orient you, uh, cause obviously you do have to communicate with people, but if you're thinking about people in the lowest common denominator, and what's going to get me the biggest, uh, audience for those who don't want to do the work, if it, if it translates into that people who aren't willing to do the theological work and with, with the time that they got has given them and they just want to show up and feed me, then you are naturally going to be predisposed.

38:13

I would say to veering in a direction where you're trying to, uh, appeal to the masses and that can very easily lend yourself into following social movements.

38:27

And that can happen on the right or left, but who often, who is the one that controls, uh, most of the, the institutions that are influencing the media, the government, the education, all it's the left, right?

38:40

So this naturally is going to be something that will veer towards the left. I think there's a populism and a common man approach that actually veers more right and Orthodox.

38:50

Uh, but it's not going to be the kind that you will find necessarily in a suburban setting or a, especially a city setting.

38:57

It's, it's, it's not going to be cosmopolitan. I can tell you that much. And that's where Matt Chandler is.

39:03

So, uh, so they talk about that and then they talk about the success in the past tense, which I thought found was interesting of the young restless reform movement.

39:10

Like this was something that happened and it's not happening really anymore. And that sort of sets the mood for the rest of the podcast.

39:18

Uh, Matt Chandler talks about how a pastoring and the Bible belt is harder because people just don't know that they're not saved.

39:23

And that's true to an extent, but the challenges I, I, I, I'm in an area that I, it's much harder guys.

39:30

I think in a pagan area to pastor in so many ways that that's one thing you don't have to deal with as much people don't aren't under the illusion they're saved when they're not.

39:38

But, but Matt Chandler talks about, you know, the hardships of pastoring and the Bible belt. So these are some things that happen in context before we get to this clip.

39:45

And I think I'm going to start about 15 minutes in time period. So let's, let's go, let's go about 15 minutes in here.

39:53

Brothers were friends. Yeah. Um, and so, so I kind of think about that season maybe differently than others.

40:01

Um, I, I just think that if you're unwilling to lean into those deeper wounds and let the

40:11

Holy spirit minister and work in those places and you, you do ministry out of a place of brokenness.

40:20

Um, and, and I think you can be doing ministry out of a place of brokenness if you're doing the work to address that because we're all fallen creatures.

40:29

And, right. And, and what's funny is all the guys you're referencing, we almost all have the same backstory. Um, none of us grew up in homes where dad was kind of scratching our backs and telling us we were good men.

40:40

And we, we all were like, we, we all wanted to win to show dad he was wrong.

40:46

Ah. And, uh, by the, in the context here, Matt Chandler is talking about the leaders of the young wrestlers, reforms,

40:52

Neo reformed big Eva kind of movement. And this is a very telling comment.

41:00

Uh, I told you before on the other two videos, uh, or the other video that I played for you, Matt Chandler also talks about having these dad issues.

41:08

Essentially. Uh, I just, uh, I, I wonder if there's something,

41:15

I haven't had time to really think about this deeply, but if what he's saying is true and if, if this applies to other people, if this applies to, let's say

41:23

Mark Driscoll and David Platt, and, uh, I'm trying to think of some of the others who are, you know, JD Greer, who are in that around the same age, kind of up and coming in that movement,

41:34

Francis Chan, you know, what does this say about that movement? If they had bad relationships with their dad, and this is kind of like part of proving dad,

41:43

I can do something. I can be successful. I don't know exactly. And I'm very curious to see what people say about this.

41:50

There is something to it though. I think I really believe that. I think that this, there, there is something about that whole movement that attracted a lot of guys from broken homes too.

42:02

Uh, there's a, there was a confidence they exuded that I don't know if it was always rooted in something deeply tangible.

42:10

Uh, you know, there was somewhat of a, a rejection of my parents, eschatology, my parents, soteriology, uh, my parents' culture.

42:20

You know, I think I saw this when I was sitting in seminary at Southeastern, I remember in class, uh,

42:25

David Platt's book was one of the required readings and people ate that up and just, I can give you so many actually different experiences

42:31

I had there with guys who, you know, they were rejecting everything about their upbringing as far as like, um, now the thing is you can't actually escape your upbringing.

42:39

That's what it completely like, you're, you're still going to be like your parents and other, like, we're not fundamentalists.

42:45

And then they become like the biggest, like separatistic minded people against fundamentalists.

42:50

And you're like, the thing you didn't like about fundamentalists is the thing you're doing. Uh, but, but a lot of these guys, uh, they, the

42:56

American dream was terrible. It was awful. You know, mom and dad got a boat, they went on vacation, they spent all their money and robbed from the third world.

43:03

And we're going to be the ones to go into the inner cities and go into the third world. And many of these people seldom actually did, but some of them did, uh, and tried and all the stories

43:14

I know were, were not, they were failures for the most part, the mentality that they went in with, uh, has really not funny, but it's just, uh, it's sad.

43:22

Really. I don't know what, I don't know how to react to that. It's it's because some of these guys were so arrogant about it. There is this part of poetic justice, but they, uh, they rejected so much of the theology of their parents and they wanted a different kind of Christianity.

43:35

And part of it was like, I didn't have a good relationship with mom or dad and really dad.

43:41

And so the boomer generation, those would be their parents. These guys are, uh, like slightly older than me.

43:48

And my, my dad and my grandfather got married and had kids a family.

43:55

Uh, we, our generations are a little tighter. They're like, you know, 30 to 35 years apart.

44:01

Uh, so you had to leave, but you live long in my family, which is good. So, you know, grandparents are able to enjoy their grandkids for years, but, um, but, but all that to say, like these guys are slightly older than me.

44:11

And so if you're, you know, at that 40, I think Matt Chandler must be around 50.

44:17

He's, he's maybe a little older, but if you're that like 40 to 50, uh, range, your parents were boomers and, and we know some things characterize that generation.

44:28

Uh, there was a selfishness that oftentimes is attributed to the greatest generation and the silent generation wanting to give them what they did not have material prosperity, pushing them to get degrees where they got their minds polluted.

44:42

And they ended up, uh, being kind of part of the free love and that kind of stuff. But once they settled down and had families, not all of that left them.

44:50

And there was a selfishness to some of the way they acted, but not, not, that doesn't explain everything.

44:55

Uh, some of it's just a bitterness. Some of it's just a, a resentment that, uh, you know, either it's dad's fault because dad was playing around with boats and toys and not with me or, uh, it's, uh, or he abused me or he ran around and broke up the family, uh, cheated on mom or, or it's a resentment, uh, about, you know, dad, dad's generation and their political views and, uh, them and just buying into the leftist framing that says that they're, that that generation was stealing from the third world and, you know, really propagating the, uh, colonialism and domination of America and responsible for all the problems in the world.

45:41

That narrative also, I think took, uh, in among the older millennials and, uh, maybe some young Gen Xers.

45:49

And so I find this fascinating if that's true, if what Matt Chandler has just said, but I don't know,

45:56

I don't know to what extent it is and what it's not, but you look, I mean, look how haggard he looks in this and how he's talking about his hangups and his problem.

46:03

Like this is not the Matt Chandler at all that you remember at all. Like the Matt Chandler I remember was going on stage and rebuking everyone and positive about where he's coming from.

46:14

There was nothing shaky about it. It was, there was this sort of masculine sense of, uh, where we're on the right side of things and those other people are in the wrong side.

46:25

And this is what the word of God says, thus sayeth the Lord. Uh, of course he got wrong. He got into wrong territory when he started going down the

46:32

CRT stuff, but that was the Matt Chandler. And look at this guy. I mean, this guy is beaten up.

46:38

I mean, he's a little, he's older, but he's, he just looks like he's aged. There's stress on that face. And he's talking about his hangups and he's talking about his dad issues.

46:47

And he's talking about, uh, just, you know, how, you know, I'm part of this whole movement that we all have these problems and I'm super, you know,

46:55

I'm very weak. You'll, you'll find if you watch the rest of this and I need these men around me and I, you know, there's these little lions, he calls them these sins that, uh, and they get big and it almost seems like he's talking about himself.

47:06

They get big and they cause problems eventually. And you feel like you can't say anything because the church is so big and you don't want to ruin it.

47:12

And it's like, man, like what, what happened? What happened? Like where, how do we go from A to B?

47:20

So anyway, he says that I thought that was a kind of a weird comment, but then you get to, uh, let's go about 28 minutes in or so.

47:28

And he starts talking about, uh, me too. And, and then the

47:33

George Floyd stuff, actually, this is a long clip. So I might interject, but you're finding them in this moment of their story.

47:40

And so I think so much of it is refusing to be gracious to other people. It's Jonah.

47:46

I want justice for everybody else, but mercy for me. That's what it reeks. And I'm not talking about abuse.

47:52

I'm not talking about that stuff. That's a whole nother level of evil. Most of the stuff I'm hearing is not that stuff though.

48:00

It's just like, yeah, that's people. People are like that. And Christians are being made different.

48:07

Notice something too. And the whole interview is kind of like this. Uh, there's, there's some few moments of somewhat levity at the beginning and the end, but you hear

48:15

Lecrae trying to kind of laugh and, and be a, uh, and actually I have to say this Lecrae's woke and stuff.

48:20

And I've created, he's actually a pretty good podcast interviewer. I have to say, I was actually impressed. I was like, well, Craig's pretty good at this.

48:26

So props for props go, but Lecrae's trying to diffuse and lighten the mood.

48:33

And he's, he's given me like, you know, maybe they're forced, but some giggles, some, some laughs and Chandler's not like the, what you used to see where Chandler, he was hardcore, but he also had this sort of levity.

48:46

He was always a serious guy, but there was this levity. He sometimes had to like, you don't really see it. It's like gone.

48:52

It's like whatever that was that life, uh, just seems gone to me. They're not necessarily different in this moment.

48:57

They're creatures of their moment in time in history who are being made more like Jesus over an extended period of time.

49:06

And sanctification isn't up into the right. It's more like a coil around along a horizontal plane, which means every

49:16

Christian I know has regrettable days. Even guys that have been following Jesus for 35 years, they have weak moments.

49:23

They have regrettable days. They say things that they wish they could take back. They, that's everyone.

49:28

That's good. Um, and then when it comes to fallen pastors, I would just say, we are talking about such a small group of the overall, overall pool.

49:39

I mean, there are thousands and thousands of pastors who are faithfully shepherding and walking alongside, uh, their people right now.

49:50

Yeah. And, and when you pick these eight, Oh, I think

49:56

I might've missed, uh, where he, he does talk about some me too stuff and makes this offhanded remark about how, uh, you know, you could just be accused.

50:05

It doesn't matter. Uh, you can just be accused of something and, and that's enough. And I'm not sure

50:10

I might've missed it. Uh, and if so, uh, I just wanted to signal that he doesn't seem to be completely on board with the me too stuff.

50:18

Uh, he doesn't really critique it, but he just acknowledges there seem, you know, and I think it's because that he's been steamrolled by it probably, uh, to some extent.

50:27

Uh, and, uh, and, you know, and, and maybe, you know, cause I don't know all the ins and outs, but you know, whatever this relationship was with the, with this woman that he had to step down from ministry for a period of time, you know, maybe, maybe there's some legitimate problems there, but we don't have proof.

50:42

We don't know what exactly was going on. Some people, I remember like boss Davidian and Jonah, um,

50:48

Harris and, uh, Sheila, uh, George, uh, Gregory on Twitter, we're all kind of just jumping down his throat and assuming it was bigger than perhaps it was.

50:59

And so, uh, so anyway, he talks about that briefly. Um, but he, then he gets into, we're going to get into some of the George Floyd stuff here.

51:05

You got to lead with humility, but, um, if you're always worried that someone's going to accuse you of being controlling, you're never going to do anything.

51:14

If you're always living under the fear that, that someone might accuse you, uh, of being heavy handed, then

51:24

I don't, I don't know how you're going to lead. Um, and, and so walk in humility, walk in accountability and then lead with conviction because that's what people follow.

51:35

Convictional leadership, not fearful. I hope nobody calls me something mean online or, and it's honestly,

51:43

I'm saying that tongue in cheek, but it's actually more serious than that right now. You don't need to be guilty. You just have to be accused.

51:49

That's true. That's true. And you had it there and yeah. Oh, that was, I guess that was a cliff, so I didn't miss it. You're out of there.

51:55

I wonder with you specifically, I I've seen historically,

52:02

I, I, I take you to be a very nuanced person. Try to be right. Like where I can be well in as a, as a human being, maybe not as a communicator all the time, but as a human being,

52:11

I'm like, oh, you're, you do a little bit of this. You're doing Brazilian jujitsu. You go to SUDED.

52:17

You know, it's all these different things. You have these perspectives on these things. That's you as a human being, as a person.

52:24

Yeah. But is it difficult to flex that nuance when you have people who have expectations on a regular basis?

52:36

So case in point, you had some very, um, you know, very like profound and strong opinions about what happened with George Floyd.

52:49

Yeah. But at the same time, you have a congregation of people who could vehemently disagree with you.

52:58

And you're, you're, you're towing a line here. A lot of times with people being like, hey, are you, are you over here?

53:04

Are you over here? What side of the track are you on, man? Like pick a side. Like, do you feel pressure? Do you, do you not care?

53:10

Like, how do you process that? No, I totally feel pressure. Okay. Uh, I I'd be lying if I didn't, I feel the pull.

53:16

Sometimes I think that's, what's most exhausting about this journey that the Lord has me on. That was a telling comment right there.

53:24

And you look at his haggard face and how he says that. And you realize going through taking that political stand that he did and some of the he's,

53:36

I mean, people have left his church over this and he has not, it hasn't caused him a self -reflection where he realizes his error in this.

53:43

He, he's still holding to the media narrative on George Floyd. He's still holding to social justice and he somewhat justifies himself in this, but you can tell that he's just been steamrolled.

53:55

Um, I had to make a decision as a younger man, um, who

54:01

I belong to and do I belong to a specific tribe?

54:09

Am I their boy or am I the Lord's? And am

54:15

I the Lord's boy? And so I am naturally curious.

54:20

That's how the Lord built me. I'm still curious. I still, um, like even if we land in very different theological places,

54:28

I'll help me understand that. Help me understand how you're seeing it. Where are you getting that? Help me under and, and not necessarily to fight you about it.

54:35

I want to, I want to understand. Um, and so that's a big driver for me.

54:40

Yeah. I want to understand this. Uh, I'm, I'm not cynical by nature.

54:46

So my lead foot isn't, um, they're heretics. I mean, my lead foot's like,

54:52

I need to understand what's going on there. And, and so I, I started where I started and I started seeing things in the tribe

55:02

I was in that were not just confusing to me, but frustrating.

55:08

Um, and so I moved towards, I didn't like the answers. I was confused by them.

55:15

Um, and, and then I could see things in the text, uh, that had historically been interpreted a specific way.

55:23

Yeah. Um, I began to feel some of the tension of hypocrisy that if I talked about abortion, my, my tribe would be like, go, we love that.

55:34

You're fearless. You go. But then if I talked about race, I was getting political and I'm like, wait, we just sent 200 people to DC to March, but now

55:44

I'm political. I mean, I was feeling all that tension and then I had to answer the question in that season.

55:53

Do I belong to the Lord or do I belong to the village? Do I belong to the Lord or do

55:59

I belong to the stream or tribe? Do I belong to the Lord? Who, who am I going to please here?

56:04

Yeah. Um, and, and those are still things that can happen to me where the

56:11

Holy Spirit's going to be like, yeah, we'll probably get some blowback from that. Yeah. You, I'm here. Yeah.

56:17

You, you want, and I've honestly at times felt permission to not look like I, I haven't always felt like the

56:22

Lord's like, no, you're doing this. Right. I have oftentimes felt in those moments. And, and I think he's doing that honestly to protect the village and protect me.

56:31

There's only so many shots to the head. Anybody can take. Yeah. It's just the truth. Yeah. There's only so many times you get punched upside the head and, and come back from that.

56:40

Yeah. And so he's admitting there's a limit here. He's admitting that he's, he's not somewhere between shot one and whatever number of shots that it takes to take someone out.

56:52

Uh, and I just, yeah, I mean, I can't keep, I can't help but keep commenting on the way he sounds and looks and it's so different than what

57:00

I remember. But, uh, it is a lot of it does seem to be as the way he's attributing it wrapped up in that political controversy, at least in part.

57:09

I think there are times that the Lord's not asked me to enter the fray and then there are times he's invited me in.

57:16

Uh, and so what I'm trying to do imperfectly the best, best I can is where I'm invited into the fray, weigh the cost and then either get in there or save that for another day.

57:29

Notice how subjective this is. It's, it's really a communication going on in Matt Chandler's mind between him and the

57:38

Lord, as far as what issue that he gets involved in. And I do think there's some truth to this.

57:43

You have to choose your battles and you don't want to die on pills that aren't worth dying on. I think about this too, but there's, you know, how do you distinguish between marching in Washington for abortion, right?

57:57

And then he encouraged all the Christians, you know, in 2020 that they needed to be out there marching for social justice.

58:06

And if they didn't do that, they couldn't complain about the violent protest. They needed to be protesting, right?

58:12

How, so he gets upset at Christians for not doing this and having a, an incomplete gospel, but then he also thinks, well, you should choose your battles and maybe it's not always prudent to get involved in certain issues or certain marches.

58:27

It, for a pastor, I don't know that it gives the best direction for your congregation. It's better probably to at least give them your rationale.

58:34

How is it that you go about processing this and give some principles, even if there is a subjective element, which is

58:41

I have a limited bandwidth and what are the issues that affect our area and our church and that kind of thing.

58:47

You still need to give, here are some principles that God helps us use to get our priorities in order.

58:56

So we know this issue is more important than this issue, or you know, this level of activism is more important than this level of activism.

59:05

And the, I'm not saying these are easy things to necessarily all sort out, especially in a changing political climate, but there are some universal things

59:13

I think God does give to us to help us understand. And there's also just some common sense things.

59:19

You know, if the media is getting all bent out of shape, are they, what do you think of the media? The media is generally on the wrong side of things.

59:26

The media is going to give you a, you want to talk about lenses. The media is going to view things as how does this get, move the ball for us in the direction we want to move it, which is really for a

59:38

DEI leftist type narrative. And you know, Matt Chandler doesn't seem to bring that wisdom.

59:45

He doesn't bring principles from scripture about this. It's seems just subjective. It's flat.

59:50

It falls flat is what it is. And it answers, or it opens up more questions than it answers. So that's how

59:56

I've tried to navigate it. Yeah. You, which is, it's tough. I've been in the same position and it's tough.

01:00:04

And I, and people will still say, you know, why are you in this fight?

01:00:10

Get out of this fight and preach the gospel. And, uh, and I love something that you said.

01:00:15

Now something y 'all realize too, is these two guys have totally bought into the woke stuff, at least on the racial issues to the point that you have

01:00:24

Lecrae campaigning for Raphael Warnock in Georgia. Uh, who's, you know, down the line, you know, adamantly pro abortion and all the rest and is obviously the person he was running against was not.

01:00:35

And Lecrae thought this issue was important enough that he's gonna, uh, campaign for him, not just vote for him.

01:00:42

So these guys have, they take it a little bit of hits mostly at Chandler. Lecrae's got,

01:00:48

I think more of an audience that probably would be sympathetic to his leftist ways.

01:00:53

But both of these guys have taken some hits in the evangelical world because evangelicals are tend to be conservative and their elites aren't, but they do, they tend to be that way.

01:01:03

And so they're, they're getting some, you know, on social media, some blowback and that kind of thing. And they're sensitive to it.

01:01:08

That's what you're seeing here. They're very sensitive to it. It's hard to go through that. And, and so Lecrae, uh, is saying, and what the, one of the things they're doing is they're consoling themselves with,

01:01:17

Oh yeah, it's just so hard. It's so complicated and, and consoling themselves with the Lord wanted us to do this.

01:01:23

We're on a mission from God with this particular issue. And so those people in their comments don't really matter.

01:01:29

Of course they hurt us, but they don't really persuade us into any self -reflection because this is what the

01:01:34

Lord wants us to do. And not a whole lot of justification beyond that, even with everything that's come out about the autopsy of George Floyd, what he actually died of, uh, the biggest insurance payout in United States history, even more than hurricanes or the

01:01:50

BLM riots of 2020, not even thinking through the social cost of those things. I mean, it really shouldn't be this difficult in hindsight to look at that and say, yeah, that was a mistake.

01:02:03

That was bad. I regret that. I apologize for that. I'm sorry for those. I led down that path and I'm going to try to do better.

01:02:11

And here are the reasons ABC, why that was a bad thing that this far out, that should not be a hard thing, but they're still clinging to it.

01:02:18

They're still saying that they were doing the right thing because you're right. I don't get in every fight. You know, I don't, there's some fights.

01:02:24

It's all we do. Yeah, exactly. It's like, it's like, you know, you're not going to see me saying, save the whales.

01:02:29

I'm not going to, that's not my, I'm not going to get in that fight. I don't, there might be legitimate reasons for it. That's not my fight.

01:02:35

I don't, you know, but you said something and I thought it was very potent. And you said, oftentimes, you know, people are just saying, well, you just need to preach the gospel, you know?

01:02:47

And it's like, but you don't tell that to sex traffickers. You don't say, Hey, go preach. By the way, this is their favorite. I found not just them, but the social justice activists in the church, this is their favorite argument to respond to.

01:02:59

This becomes the straw man for all the arguments against their position. Someone like myself who's saying, Hey, this is standpoint theory that contradicts the clarity of scripture.

01:03:08

It's really the inerrancy of scripture. Uh, this makes hash meat out of interpreting scripture.

01:03:14

Uh, you know, someone who says that this is inaccurate, you're believing lies about social conditions that just aren't true.

01:03:22

And then you're going out and fomenting more damage and hurting your neighbor, not loving your neighbor as a result of an overreaction to that lie.

01:03:31

Uh, someone like myself who says you're a part of a movement that is striving for a kind of utopia, diversity, equity, inclusion, status quo that is not achievable.

01:03:42

Um, you know, all these critiques that I've brought and that many others have brought, they generally aren't responded to.

01:03:48

What's responded to is this kind of knuckle dragging, just preach the gospel.

01:03:53

And I admit there's guys who are critical of social justice and they're also, by the way, same people who are critical of quote unquote

01:03:59

Christian nationalism and the new right and the dissident right. They tend to be the same people. And, uh, they will say things like this.

01:04:05

You're just supposed to preach the gospel with really no concern for those of us who have children that are dealing with temporal realities we must navigate.

01:04:13

And, uh, and it is somewhat insulting. It is, it does come off as you're in an insular bubble and you have the luxury of thinking that these social realities won't harm you.

01:04:23

Uh, and you have you and just preaching the, or, or, you know, let's say you, uh, you're someone who, you know, honestly, you're, you're a believer.

01:04:32

You might, maybe you're not cushioned by these things, but you are, you're, you're someone who is being affected by high crime or jobs being taken by migrants and these kinds of realities.

01:04:45

But, uh, you know, you just really do believe you've clung to the teaching that the, if you just preach the gospel, that is going to rectify all these things.

01:04:53

Cause as soon as people understand who the Lord is and you know, maybe they obey his commandments, these, and there's this like bit of truth to that, right?

01:05:00

Like if everyone was saved, there probably would be better conditions, but you also, you have to reckon with the fact that Christians who become saved must also follow the law of God.

01:05:11

They must also, and this is even more important in some ways for our current context, they must take seriously the order of Maris, uh, meaning the order of loves.

01:05:19

Augustine talks about this, but this is, you know, you can say this is part of the law of God, I suppose, but, uh, this is part of your natural instincts though.

01:05:25

This is something that transcends whether you're a Christian or not. Christians especially should take this seriously, but even the pagans give their kid a fish when he asked for one.

01:05:32

So you should be caring for your people and doing the best for your people and your region, your area and your family.

01:05:38

And, and, and that shouldn't, that should go without saying that should be something built into you. That's a natural instinct

01:05:43

God's put there. That's what we're missing a lot of today. And there's all kinds of liberal theories and, or, and teachings and really slogans is what it is.

01:05:53

It's, it's propaganda that's out there to persuade you not to do those things, uh, not to take those responsibilities seriously.

01:06:02

That's what, that's the main thing we need to be talking about and trying to overcome at this point, I believe, but you know, it's like not even in their vocabulary, they're not even thinking in these terms.

01:06:13

They are, they're just responding to people who think that the gospel, you just put, enter the gospel and it just solves all these problems.

01:06:20

And the gospel is supposed to solve the greatest problem we have, which is our sin problem that separates us from the father. It does solve that problem.

01:06:28

The good news is that you do not have to do anything to merit the favor of the Lord and you can't do anything first of all, but there's nothing you should cease the striving to do good things because your righteous deeds are filthy rags.

01:06:40

Jesus has already accomplished and made a way for you to be forgiven with the father. There's a mysterious element to it, but that's the gospel and he'll give you a new heart.

01:06:48

He'll change you. You'll be filled with his spirit. If you simply humbly surrender to him, that's, that's the life -changing message that doesn't inserting that does not make a strong border.

01:06:58

It does not change policies that necessarily affect the people in our communities.

01:07:04

There needs to be some law and there needs to be some care and concern for the natural realities

01:07:09

God has put in place to get to that point. So anyway, I'm, I'm talking probably too long about this, but they really like to respond to the knuckle dragging kind of low, uh, low information takes on this.

01:07:23

And, uh, and so that's what you see here, but you're going to see an interesting thing that Chandler does with this.

01:07:29

And I would submit to you, this is the most important clip in the entire podcast.

01:07:35

And it's the most, it's the neglected one too. No, no one's talking about this online that I've seen. All these other clips have been shared.

01:07:41

This one hasn't. Here's what, here's the clip. It's the gospel and that'll stop sex trafficking. You know, you don't, you, you take action.

01:07:47

Yeah. And I thought that was very, very powerful. Have you, like, do you arrive there supernaturally?

01:07:55

Like, wow. Or are you asking questions and you get there? How did, how are you, how do you land the plane to some of these places?

01:08:00

Well, I mean, I think honestly, the, the gospel speaks into every issue, the gospel, like the gospel of the kingdoms about making a whole different kind of community.

01:08:11

Yeah, there it is. Listen to what he says next. I want you to pay attention to how he, he talks about the gospel and he shifts it to what the gospel of the kingdom.

01:08:20

This is what Jim Wallace does is what people like Walter Strickland, liberation theologians do this.

01:08:27

Unfortunately, you know, Stephen Wolfe on X as there's been a controversy sort of brewing and I kind of jumped into the fray because I, I've been,

01:08:35

I've been a little, I've been, let's just say a little critical of some people. I think they're both at the Ezra Institute if I'm not mistaken, but Doc Sandlin.

01:08:42

And I think the other, I think Joe boot was the other guy. And I think I'm actually just speaking at a conference with Joe boots. So maybe, maybe we'll get a chance to talk to him about some of this.

01:08:49

I don't know. I'm assuming I'll be able to meet him. Uh, that, but, uh, but anyway, long story short, they use very similar language to what you hear of Matt Chandler saying here as well, which is there's this gospel of the kingdom and that gospel is what's the purpose.

01:09:05

It's, it's these laws. It's to create a community governed by these laws. And, and, and what, it's an interesting thing to me because what it is is, um, they take the gospel of the kingdom and it's like, this is the gospel that belongs to the kingdom.

01:09:20

This is gospel. That's part of the kingdom. This is how this is the entry gate into the kingdom. You gotta be a

01:09:25

Christian. You need to receive the merits of Christ. The gospel is the, that's the good news of the gospel, the merits of Christ.

01:09:32

This is what the gospel Paul preach and gospel. And Paul talks about in the book of Galatians that those who try to add to this to make circumcision part of this law, part of this, they're heretics, they're false teachers, they're corrupting the gospel.

01:09:46

Right? But then when you whip out this, well, Jesus talked about the gospel of the kingdom. You can start adding works and law and, and all these things.

01:09:55

And so actually I made, um, a Twitter post. Now I was responding to people on the left,

01:10:00

I suppose, but I was also, this is in the midst of this, this, uh, this thing, Stephen Wolfe was calling post mill theonomic libertarianism.

01:10:07

And I was thinking about them too, when I put this out there, cause I was like, this is also the response to them. Uh, but let's see if I can find it.

01:10:14

I said, most confusion I've seen over the definition of the gospel involves conflating it with the manner in which it spreads or the fruit it bears.

01:10:22

Preaching the gospel is not the gospel. Applying Christian ethics to situations is not the gospel.

01:10:27

Enjoying the benefits of living a Christian life is not the gospel. Yet these things are connected, uh, but as means and results.

01:10:37

So in other words, they don't conflate them with the gospel there. The fruit of the gospel is not the gospel, right?

01:10:43

So I said, I hear social justice influenced Christians, like you're about to hear from Matt Chandler, especially make the gospel about things like racial reconciliation or fighting racial disparities.

01:10:53

Some will even go so far as to claim Paul's gospel in Galatians was an individual gospel while Jesus was a gospel of the kingdom intended to establish his reign through our works.

01:11:04

That's key. Establish his reign through what our works. And Matt Chandler, by the way, get right after this.

01:11:12

I don't know if I'll get into it in this video, but he talks about revelation and his interpretation of revelation and how this,

01:11:17

I don't know if he's, I don't know where he's at, but he, he talks about that essentially it's supposed to be a motivating thing.

01:11:24

You're supposed to look at that book and it motivates you to kind of get busy, get to work. And it flows right from, uh, at least in his mind, his understanding is you have the gospel of the kingdom.

01:11:34

We're going to set this thing up. That's the gospel. And, uh, and this is part of building the kingdom of God, making it ready for these, these eschatological realities.

01:11:45

Some of you are bristling at this cause you're saying, I believe that I'm on the right. I'm not Matt Chandler. Well, I would just,

01:11:51

I guess the only thing I'd say is like, maybe reflect on this a little bit. I'm not trying to tell you to change your eschatology.

01:11:57

Okay. But, but do reflect on where you put the gospel in this whole sequence.

01:12:03

What is it intended to, what is it? First of all, what is the definition of it? And then what is it intended to accomplish?

01:12:11

Uh, and, and I think if you really think about it, if you study the scripture on it, I don't, I don't think you're going to come down where Matt Chandler comes down.

01:12:17

Anyway, I wrote, I said, not only does this pit Paul against Jesus, but it reads into Jesus, a Marxist political playbook that hijacks the convicting element of the law, and he uses it to guilt people into building a second tower of Babel confusingly labeled the kingdom of God.

01:12:31

Yet the gospel was never about our efforts. It was always about his. The gospel is the power of God to salvation for those who believe

01:12:38

Romans one 16. The good news is that God has made a way to transport sinners from the domain of darkness into his kingdom of God.

01:12:45

Uh, more specifically, it is what Jesus accomplished on Calvary's cross, crying. It is finished the satisfying, the wrath of God against the sins of unbelievers and conquering the curse of death, thus proving his claims were true and his mission was accomplished.

01:12:57

It is those who are poor in spirit, knowing that they had nothing to offer God from their works and relying on him to make a way that, um, uh, inherit the kingdom of God.

01:13:07

According to Matthew five, three, the kingdom of God is within the hearts of those who believe the gospel Luke 17 21.

01:13:13

And it was not with the Pharisees who thought they could keep the law, but didn't realize how high God's standards actually are.

01:13:19

Matthew five through seven. So they had the law, but they weren't part of the kingdom, right? Uh, it's, it,

01:13:27

I think it's clear in Jesus's teaching when he talks about the kingdom of God, these are the humble who approach

01:13:32

God saying, I got nothing. I got no works to offer you for this thing. Uh, it is, it is within the hearts of those who believe that's the gospel there, or that's the,

01:13:43

I should say, uh, that's, that's, that's what really identifies or signifies exemplifies membership in the kingdom, the belief.

01:13:58

What we're seeing today are modern Pharisees trying to convince us that the gospel is about our political activism, our works, i .e.

01:14:05

at best, this could be fruit of the gospel, but it is not the gospel. The efforts of man will always condemn, but the grace of God brings life.

01:14:12

So that's my two cents on this whole controversy. Now listen to what

01:14:17

Matt Chandler says and see if my critique fits. It's not so to, to preach the gospel as though it's just individual salvation is reductionistic.

01:14:28

The kingdom of God is God forming a people that reveals his beauty and grace, his truth, beauty, and goodness to the world around him.

01:14:40

And, and this has been his plan from day one. Um, and so the gospel does create individual children of God, but it also creates a community that's meant to operate a specific way.

01:14:55

So, so the argument just preached the gospel on really any of those subjects. I'm just like, this is the gospel, the gospel.

01:15:03

Look what he did. He just conflated the fruit of the gospel. Hey, it creates this community. These people are all, uh, part of the same family now that they're received into that community by way of their belief.

01:15:14

And then he just conflated that with that. This is the gospel. This is the gospel. Uh, that community is that the laws of all the whole thing that is the gospel.

01:15:23

Well, creates this kind of community. The gospel saves people into the family of God who are now ordered by family law.

01:15:31

This stuff's family law. It doesn't save, but the saved are moving in this direction, which is why

01:15:38

Paul rebuked Peter when he downshifted back into his racism and said, this is out of step with what the gospel, this is out of step with the gospel.

01:15:49

He doesn't mean. So he goes to Galatians. So why did Paul actually rebuke

01:15:54

Peter? Was it for his racism that was out of step with the gospel? No, it wasn't for racism.

01:16:01

It was because Peter was giving cover to people who did what added works, added law to the gospel.

01:16:09

It's, it's, it refutes the point, very point Matt Chandler's trying to make. So he twists the whole story around.

01:16:15

That's it's, it's, it's mind blowing that a guy who knows scripture supposedly would even make this error.

01:16:22

I'd like to suggest something to you. Okay. I'm going to finish the clip, but I'd like to suggest something to you. There is a critique out there among, and it's mostly among the more theonomic.

01:16:32

I don't know what words to use. I'm going to offend people no matter what. And I'm not trying to, okay. Cause I, let me, let me just say some nice things about theonomy for those who are already offended.

01:16:41

I've read a lot of Greg Bonson. I, he's my go -to theonomy guy. And you know, and I've read some Rush Dooney and I've read who, you know some of the stuff from like Gary DeMar and I'm trying to remember the guy's name,

01:16:55

Gary North, you know, I've, I've read a lot of this stuff. Right. So at one time I was a lot more enthusiastic about it. And I, and I there's some reasons, especially not so much the

01:17:04

Rush Dooney, but the bonds and stuff. I'm not, okay. I'm not really there anymore, but I would say this about them when

01:17:10

I'm looking through case laws in the old Testament. And I want to even just think about like, how would the principles in here apply?

01:17:15

I'm going to probably go to theonomists about that. They they've actually put in some work and time into thinking through some of these things.

01:17:21

I think there's a lot of wisdom to glean from theonomists. I can work with them,

01:17:26

I think. And I've seen a lot of people making a similar transition to the one that I kind of made, although I have a different story, but I've seen a lot of people who are kind of hardcore in that world, seeing the realities of open borders and other things and globalism.

01:17:39

And they're, they're saying, wait a minute, like my, my people in place matter to me. And that doesn't seem to fit this paradigm as much.

01:17:46

And so they're keeping the good things they learned and they're, they're going another way. Some of them will use terms like general equity theonomy, which is,

01:17:53

I think a way to water down. Like they're, they're trying to expand it to make it compatible with maybe an older conservative viewpoint, like a paleo con viewpoint or something.

01:18:01

And, uh, or, or they're just saying they're not really that anymore, but they've learned from it. And I, so that's kind of where I'm at too.

01:18:07

Okay. But I have nothing against like, I can work with a lot of theonomists, right?

01:18:13

So I'm not out hunting theonomist or anything. I just don't know what else to call the critique that I'm about to tell you about.

01:18:20

There is a critique out there about the gospel coalition and this whole young restless reform movement that says this, those guys are just a bunch of anti -nomians.

01:18:29

That's the problem. They didn't like the law of God. And because they didn't like the law of God, they were embarrassed by it. They, uh, they, they left that out.

01:18:36

Maybe they, and then, and some will even say they had a truncated gospel because they didn't like the law of God, which is that you're getting a dangerous territory.

01:18:43

Once you start, you know, you're getting to Matt Chandler's territory, when you start doing that. But I would submit to you that I don't know that that was actually the issue.

01:18:49

I do think there is an issue with them not liking like the character of God. They didn't seem to care for the

01:18:55

God described in the Bible. They wanted a nicer, more winsome God. I would agree with you there, but I actually think that if anything, they're more neo -nomian like they're not anti -nomian, they're neo -nomian.

01:19:09

They have a new law and like the Pharisees that they are jamming down your throats.

01:19:15

DEI is part of this, but that's who they are. I mean, they're all about the law. You look at, listen to what

01:19:22

Matt Chandler's saying. I mean, he's all about the law in this clip. You don't see anti -nomianism as far as like, he's not saying that we can live freely and the law is the problem is that law.

01:19:31

He's saying, no, the solution is the law, but it's what I say it is. That's what the law is. It's a neo -nomian kind of thing.

01:19:39

And so many conservatives seem to miss this. So many conservative outlets that are critical of the gospel coalition that have, you know, some of them even like my critiques of this stuff,

01:19:50

I think, but they've jumped to this, like, you know, they were against the law. That was their problem.

01:19:56

And that, and so they draw some of the wrong lessons from that whole era. The lessons they draw are more like, we need to be more about the law and we need to, you know, gospel law, kingdom of God, more about the kingdom of God.

01:20:10

And I'm thinking like, I don't get the law, right. Okay. That's a lesson to draw, get the law, right.

01:20:16

It's not DEI. It's what God has said himself. There isn't this overarching love narrative that overrides his actual laws.

01:20:22

He's got real laws. That's number one. So obviously do that, get the right law down. It's God's law.

01:20:28

It's from the Bible, right? And then of course we have natural law. We have the instincts that God has rightly given to us.

01:20:34

And we see this assumed in much of scripture. But I think the second thing is to, the lesson you should draw is stop conflating the kingdom of God, right?

01:20:45

And these realities that will be present in revelation where yeah, all tribes, tongues, and nations are around the throne of God. There's no marriage anymore.

01:20:51

There's certain earthly realities that will change and certain ones that will be retained. But it is a different reality, right?

01:21:00

Don't conflate that with what we're trying to, with what your responsibilities in the temporal world necessarily.

01:21:07

Don't say like, man, because Revelation 7 says it's multicultural. It's gotta be all these different people, tongue, tribe, and nation at my church.

01:21:15

That's ridiculous. Or, you know, I don't know. I'm trying to think of other examples here. Like, you know, there are neither

01:21:21

Jew nor Greek nor slave nor freemen. And so, you know, therefore, you know, people will read back into this things like egalitarian assumptions about male and females.

01:21:33

They'll look at it and they'll say things like, you know, labor relationships from the past they don't like were wrong and Christians should be condemned for heresy that are influential today like Jonathan Edwards because he didn't take that passage seriously.

01:21:46

And what are they doing? They're conflating. They're taking these heavenly things and they're trying to say that that's, they're flattening the earthly realm and the heavenly realm and they can't separate the responsibilities that we have in these different realms.

01:22:01

And so what I would suggest is don't go down the gospel coalition vein. If there was one error that I could sum up the gospel coalition, it was that it comes through loud and clear in the intro to their as earth as in as is on heaven podcast,

01:22:17

I think, or as in heaven podcast. I don't remember where they kind of like flip. If anyone's seen it, they it's like a

01:22:25

I don't even know how to scribe the intro to that podcast. But what they're trying to do is they're trying to say like, we can immunitize the eschaton.

01:22:33

We can, we can bring this thing down to earth. And and this would be for a longer podcast.

01:22:40

I don't think that's what Jesus is saying in the Lord's prayer.

01:22:46

He's not saying that you need to flatten all your earthly identities and relationships and connections and proximity to one another and responsibilities, obligations, attachments, because we have a different reality coming.

01:23:01

Yeah, of course, the gospel is going to form new connections with people that, hey, that's my brother. You know, this is the whole

01:23:07

Nigerian woman thing. Remember, Doug Wilson talked about more having more in common with a Nigerian woman who doesn't speak his language, who lives in another country, then he does his next door neighbor who probably shares a lot in common, but isn't a

01:23:17

Christian, like, in the sense that you're gonna be spending eternity together. Sure. Other than that. I mean, you share a lot more in common with your next door neighbor whenever we're talking about temporal reality.

01:23:26

So that was, I think, the gospel coalition mistake. I think that's a mistake that's being made in some of the reaction to the gospel coalition.

01:23:34

It's a misdiagnosis of what their error actually was, in my opinion. Peter's personal salvation.

01:23:41

Yeah. He means the kingdom of God making its way through the ancient world. Yeah. And so, again,

01:23:46

I think it's an easy straw man argument that happens all the time. I was just on a podcast with a guy out in, well, he's in Seattle now, he's in San Francisco, former

01:23:56

NFL player, and we were talking about taking care of the body. And then it popped up there. It was like,

01:24:02

I didn't know Matt Chandler didn't preach the gospel anymore. And I was like, well, this is an implication of the kind of community

01:24:08

God's building, not, you know, nobody's gonna get saved by spinach and sleep, you know, some

01:24:15

Pilates going for a walk. Yeah. But God cares about our physical health. Right.

01:24:21

He does care about our physical health and stewarding our bodies towards the good work of his kingdom.

01:24:28

I hate that little phrase. It just shows how we've reduced the gospel to this single moment of conversion rather than the gospel being for all of life, for all of life.

01:24:41

That's good. Your book, The Overcomers. Yes, sir. Okay, so you've written. Okay. There's so many things

01:24:48

I could say and we don't have time, but I'll say this. Some will say the critique that I talked about before of people who want to, from a more reformed, sometimes theonomic perspective, want to critique gospel coalition and people like Matt Chandler.

01:25:06

They'll often say that it's antinomian, but they'll also say it's Anabaptist. And I think I know what they're talking about. There is this

01:25:12

Anabaptist element where Matt Chandler wants to talk about this community that's being built, right? He's not talking about the

01:25:17

United States of America. He's not talking about Dallas, Texas. He's not talking about something shared with unbelievers. He's talking about something in the church.

01:25:23

This community is being built. And this community kind of sits on the outside of that, of the world and can judge and can set an example for them of how they're supposed to live, but they need to join the community.

01:25:37

So there's this separatistic sort of thing going on. But what was the context of what Matt Chandler was talking about there?

01:25:44

It was, I took this stance on BLM and George Floyd. Well, that's, I mean, he tried to persuade

01:25:51

Christians that they ought to be out there being activists. There's tension.

01:25:57

There's tension here. You need to be involved in that world that, and that is not the world that is

01:26:05

God is building a new community in, right? That's not the church. You need to be involved as activists, petitioning that world to change its laws, to change its arrangements.

01:26:15

That's apparently how you produce change. But then he reels it in and says, actually, though, that's the gospel because it creates this unique community where God's law is respected.

01:26:27

These two things cannot really go together, but this is the recipe gospel coalition has had for a long time.

01:26:32

This is why some people can look at it and see Anabaptist and some people can look at it and see Neo -Cyperian.

01:26:38

And there's this fusion -ism going on. They take from both. They do take from an

01:26:45

Anabaptist stream, it seems like, where it's all part of building the new community. And it's, you almost get a sense it could be utopian at times.

01:26:54

And then at the same time, and with these spiritual realities, right, attached to that community, but it's, but there's an integration with the physical as well, but it's separate from the world is the point.

01:27:04

And at the same time, they will look at the world and say, but we ought to be involved in changing that.

01:27:13

And that somehow fits into our being this, it fits into what

01:27:19

God's doing in creating this new community as well. So it leaves this confusion where you think marching for BLM is part of the gospel.

01:27:28

I mean, what else are you supposed to draw from that? And that's part of God building his community. That's where Jim Wallace has wound up.

01:27:34

That's where Ron Sider wound up. That's where people like Richard Mao wind up in some ways,

01:27:39

I would say. And that's where you wind up. And of course, Ron Sider coming from an Anabaptist background, you got

01:27:46

Richard Mao coming from a Neo -Cyperian Dutch reform background. And somehow, and they both get affected by leftism and they meet somewhere in the middle.

01:27:56

There's differences, especially early on, but then you see that there's this dance that happens with the gospel coalition where these things end up living alongside each other, where the

01:28:07

Anabaptists who are leftists aren't quite as separatistic necessarily, and the ones who reject

01:28:13

Anabaptism, and they look at the church as this more spiritual reality, but we're ingrained into this temporal world.

01:28:23

They end up appealing to certain Anabaptist arguments to make their case when it suits them. So I would surmise that there's an inherent contradiction as well going on.

01:28:33

And that Chandler actually just demonstrated it for us. I don't think most people would probably pick up on it though.

01:28:39

It just sounds good because it sounds familiar because you've been hearing this kind of propaganda for years, but it doesn't make sense when you actually think about it.

01:28:46

Is God building the kingdom in the church itself or is God building the kingdom through activism for BLM?

01:28:55

It'd be much easier to, I think, just take the... I think this is the right approach, obviously.

01:29:02

This is the approach I've taken. I think this is the traditional two kingdoms approach, but I think it's much easier to just say, yes,

01:29:11

God is crafting a spiritual kingdom with... And these outlets or these...

01:29:17

I forget what the word... Someone just used this recently. Ron Dodson on Twitter said something about this. Outposts, I think is the word he used, are these churches.

01:29:26

These are where the saints gather. And that's what they're for. Now, obviously there's weed among the tares and so forth in that temporal sense, but there's a universal church and there's these outposts for it.

01:29:38

And so that exists. And at the same time, we live in this physical or this temporal world where there's these realities

01:29:46

God has placed into it, these connections, responsibilities, arrangements, and hierarchies.

01:29:52

And we operate within that. And when we go out and we are an activist or we support a political...

01:30:00

Even if we vote, what we are doing is we are trying to exert a, hopefully, a

01:30:09

Christian moral understanding. So we're applying Christian ethics and the use of the law that restrains evil, even for unbelievers, even for a government that bears the sword.

01:30:20

We are working to make sure that sword is sharp, that the laws that are being applied are

01:30:25

God's laws. At the same time, we are also promoting the responsibilities and the cares and the loves and the concerns we have for the us, the corporate body that we are a part of.

01:30:38

And I'm not talking about just the church. I think the church as a part of an outpost of the eternal world, but in the temporal world does have interest in the temporal world because of this, but we're also advocating on the part of our families, our regions, our people, that kind of thing.

01:30:54

So that's what we do when we go home. We're active. We're not under any illusion that in doing that, we are building the kind of thing that is happening, that is being built in the universal church that one day will stand around the throne of God.

01:31:10

We're not building the same thing. We can set conditions so that, for example, so that churches are not hampered by laws that outlaw some of their teachings.

01:31:20

We can make sure that the laws are set so that they're not persecuted as much and that kind of thing.

01:31:28

So there's things like that, but that is very, what I'm articulating to you is very different rationale than what you're hearing coming from Matt Chandler.

01:31:36

Hopefully that's clear as we're an hour and 30 minutes in. I'm probably gonna have to do some follow -up podcasts.

01:31:42

I've talked about this stuff before, but it's kind of been a while. So, all right, let's move on. I don't know that there's much more

01:31:47

I want to talk about with this. He does talk about that evangelical culture hates itself at one point.

01:31:53

And I thought that was really rich because Matt Chandler has been a guy who really goes after evangelical culture for not being sensitive on racial issues.

01:32:02

But then he complains like that evangelical culture hates itself too much. I'm not going to play that clip. You can watch it if you want.

01:32:08

But he around, I think it's the 49 minute mark or so, he starts talking about the third way.

01:32:17

And I just want to play that for you. You can fill in that last little word politically with anything else. On any topic, you've got these two fringes, right?

01:32:26

You've got this far right side, this far left side. You've got them. I'm never going to give an ounce of thought to those folk.

01:32:34

I'm not going to be able to win them no matter what I say. They're going to misinterpret. They're going to misapply. That's just permission to play in leadership now where you've got to get up and say stuff.

01:32:43

Then there's this group of men and women that deeply love Jesus and are confused at what it looks like to follow him.

01:32:52

I'm going to aim right at that. I'm going to do a six week series called

01:32:58

Thrones and Thorns, and I'm just going to go right at it. We've been going too long.

01:33:06

I'm not going to play anymore. But he makes the argument that you got the far left, you got the far right. I can't please those people.

01:33:12

I'm not even going to try. I'm just part of this middle third way, if you will, a part of this

01:33:18

Christian thing that transcends that. That's pretty much the gospel coalition, Tim Keller -ish thinking.

01:33:26

We've had this for a long time. There's this transcendent truth. It's reality that's in the church.

01:33:32

I'm going to cater to those people. It's a way of taking the moral high ground. I would say if I was in Matt Chandler's position, it would make me feel good to think that it's fringy people that disagree with me.

01:33:49

It's the people who really care about the Lord. They're confused. They're just trying their best. Those are the salt of the earth people that I'm trying to communicate with.

01:33:58

I would submit to you that I think an accurate reading of the situation is probably there's actually people who are on the right and who make up the majority of evangelical churches who do not appreciate being told things like the police are part of a systemically racist organization when they're a police officer because they know it's not true.

01:34:21

They're not the far right. They are salt of the earth people that might be confused at what someone like Matt Chandler is saying.

01:34:32

They're being pummeled by the left at every turn. That's the way I see it.

01:34:37

I think that's the way most people who aren't cushioned, who have jobs, especially in the secular world, are seeing it.

01:34:43

You got people like Matt Chandler who are just out of touch. They're operating on a very old paradigm, if you will. The paradigm they're operating on is there's right and there's left.

01:34:54

Maybe there's some good and bad with both of those things, but we can take the good and the bad. We can be

01:35:00

Christians. That's going to have elements of both. Maybe you're conservative on marriage, but you're progressive on racial stuff.

01:35:08

That makes a Christian. That's what I think someone like Matt Chandler, in a simplistic way, that's what these people end up doing.

01:35:17

The paradigm we're in now is more so friends and enemies. It's not like you have well -intentioned people or equally nefarious people necessarily on both sides, and they're equally wrong or equally good.

01:35:31

What you have is you have the regime who holds a hammer. I explained this to someone the other day, friends and enemies.

01:35:39

I was going back and forth on X. You miss out on some of the controversy. Sorry for those watching.

01:35:47

My knee just hit the table and my camera's connected to it. No, we did not have an earthquake. Anyway, I was going back and forth with Joel Berry last week on X.

01:35:58

I said it publicly. I said, I just think that it just seems like Joel Berry, he really wants to somehow pigeonhole, frame people who are on the dissident right as the thing that separates him from them is they have some kind of racial animosity driving them.

01:36:18

Something nefarious is beneath the iceberg. He's trying to tease it out.

01:36:24

Anyway, someone was asking me about that, a friend of mine who might listen to this podcast. I was like, well, it's basically like in my line of questioning,

01:36:33

I'm trying to determine, is he a friend or enemy? He's like, well, wouldn't you and someone like a Joel Berry, would you agree on 90 % of stuff?

01:36:40

I was like, yeah, probably. Probably would agree on a lot of stuff. I said, here's the thing though.

01:36:46

If you have a guy and I'm not saying whether or not

01:36:51

Joel Berry fits this, but it's an example that I can use to, let's just say for sake of argument, let's say this is what he's trying to do.

01:37:00

This is what I said that I suspected it looked like, at least. Let's say that he's trying to, with that 10 % of things we might disagree on, he's finding something that he can bring a hammer down, but that hammer isn't his hammer.

01:37:13

He might think it's his. The hammer actually belongs to the left. This is something that they can cancel you for, end your career, and it can follow you the rest of your life.

01:37:22

This is why people operate with anon accounts. They're trying to avoid, they want to be able to say the truth, but they want to be able to also feed their family.

01:37:31

You got guys, I don't know if Joel's in this category, but you got guys like Jordan Peterson's in this category, actually.

01:37:38

I don't remember. There's some guys recently who are complaining about this. I don't remember who, but they don't like anon accounts.

01:37:44

These anons, these horrible anons out there. I'm like, yeah. There is a downside. You can say whatever you want, but at the same time, man, if I had a corporate job and I relied on that to feed my family, but I wanted to get a message out there,

01:37:57

I'd probably be considering being an anonymous account because of this, because there is a real hammer. Where does the hammer come from?

01:38:04

Well, it comes from the business world. It comes from Hollywood and the entertainment industry. It comes from the political establishment.

01:38:10

It comes from the education system, every institution of any merit.

01:38:17

It comes from the medical establishment. Every institution is united with this hammer, that they will beat you if you are racist, quote unquote, in their minds, misogynistic, quote unquote, in their minds, anti -gay, quote unquote, in their minds.

01:38:33

There's some exceptions, I would say, with the homosexual thing, just because in certain, there is this, still,

01:38:40

I think in the United States, because of this Christian influence, there is this understanding that, well, some Christians do disagree with that.

01:38:47

There might be, at least in some quarters, you'll end up getting some grace, or not grace, but they'll give you a little bit of a pass, whereas they won't on the other two, but in some places they won't at all.

01:39:02

If you're in San Francisco, it's all the same. Died in the world left, they don't see any difference.

01:39:08

You're a bigot no matter what. That's the hammer I'm talking about. Friends and enemies becomes the real distinction.

01:39:14

You could agree with someone. You could be like, we're both on the right, but if that person's willing to try to turn you in for being too much on the right, or for being too out of step with what the left considers to be egregious sins that are worthy of cancellation, then that person's not necessarily your friend.

01:39:33

They might agree with you on things. You could also have someone who you only agree on 50 % of stuff, but they would never do that.

01:39:38

They would never turn you in. They would never bring a hammer down and they would defend you if someone was trying to cancel you. That's the paradigm we're in.

01:39:44

It's not what Matt Chandler's saying. It's not like you got, well, you got right and you got left. I'm not saying that paradigm doesn't exist at all, but I'm saying that that's not the main thing anymore.

01:39:55

It's not whether you're on the left and Christianity just needs to figure out how it transcends these things.

01:40:02

It's more like you got the regime with their hammer and then you got everyone else.

01:40:10

Are you with the regime? You could be in agreement with me on 90 % of stuff, but if you're willing to do their dirty work, you're with them.

01:40:18

Are you with the regime or not? That's the paradigm I think that is driving the latest interest in Christian nationalism and the new right, because the new right and the dissident right,

01:40:29

Christian nationalists, whatever you want to call them, they recognize this about the regime, that they're evil, that they don't have our best interests in mind.

01:40:37

They want to import the third world. They don't care about our children. They don't care about babies. They don't care about profaning the sanctity of marriage.

01:40:44

You don't care about the immorality that exists in our schools and on our streets. They are an evil, evil regime and we should not cede any moral authority to them.

01:40:55

We shouldn't legitimize any of their moral authority. We should partner with people or at least be cobelligerent if we can't partner with people who seek to bring them down a notch, to reduce their influence and authority.

01:41:07

That is the real defining thing. They are the enemy and that is in a common sense prioritization of the enemy of the church too,

01:41:17

I would say. That is a common sense way to look at what the Christians are facing and even what your just normal, average, decent

01:41:25

Americans are facing. I think that's what the dissident right brings. They're like, okay, we're not squabbling over these little things that we get canceled for on the left.

01:41:35

We want to, and I even say left because the left is one that owns the hammer. The regime is the left, is the hammer.

01:41:44

Whether you're slightly leftist leanings or not, if you're willing to go against this, if you're willing to be against this, we're going to be cobelligerents in some fashion, most likely.

01:41:57

We can't maybe endorse everything you do. I don't know, but we're not going to counter -signal you for your views just because you're necessarily out of step with us on something.

01:42:12

We're not going to come after you when you're against that same hammer.

01:42:20

We're still trying to figure this out. This is very new, but we're still trying to figure out how to live in this paradigm. Matt Chandler is still thinking it's like George W.

01:42:27

Bush running in 2008 or something, or 2004. It's not that.

01:42:33

It's not even Mitt Romney in 2012. This is different. We are in a survival mode here.

01:42:40

Christians are coming up with a positive vision for what they would want to replace. The hammer's got to go.

01:42:47

What are we going to put up in its stead where we have influence? I think that's an important thing to think through. What Matt Chandler's doing is he's not even thinking in those terms.

01:42:55

It's not even thinking in terms of, okay, this hammer that the left has is a problem. What do we replace it with?

01:43:03

What's the Christian political theory? What's the Christian political tradition? What should things look like? He's more just sidestepping the whole thing by saying, well, those squabbles are really just left and right.

01:43:14

They don't matter compared to what we're doing in transcending this squabble as Christians creating this great community that God wants us to create.

01:43:27

That involves apparently marching with BLM. Hopefully, that brings some clarity to some of you who have been trying to work out these things theologically and figure out what is going on.

01:43:38

What is the change? The sea change is written all over Matt Chandler's face. His face speaks more in his tone than the words out of his mouth.

01:43:45

He is a burdened man. He is a man who's gone through some stuff.

01:43:52

He's on the other end of it. I think the wind has been taken out of his sails. Whatever man that we used to know is not there anymore.

01:44:01

There's perhaps some wisdom that he has, but there's also a lot of the same folly being continually propagated.

01:44:08

He hasn't learned from those mistakes. He's still consoling himself with, he did the right thing on many of these issues.

01:44:15

It was those who critiqued him who that he tends to, I think, straw man and misunderstand that we're in the wrong.

01:44:24

This is why I think we may talk about these guys here and there because of the significant things they did and the part they played a decade ago or two decades ago.

01:44:36

I think it's getting to a point though where, and you might've already noticed this on the podcast, I'm going to be talking about them less and less.

01:44:43

They are starting to fade into irrelevancy and conditions can change, but I see that as the trend.

01:44:52

Your Matt Chandlers aren't going to be making headlines or headlining conferences. You're just not going to see that kind of thing.

01:44:58

They know that there's been somewhat of a defeat going on to their plan and they don't know how to rationalize it.

01:45:04

They don't have the categories it seems to make sense of it. But people, a lot of people on the more dissident new right

01:45:10

Christian nationalist side are starting to figure out what's going on. And they are, people are flocking to that.

01:45:17

People are also flocking to the more hardcore evangelical left. I don't know if,

01:45:22

I don't know to what extent they are, but I know that, you know, like, for example, like how often do you hear me talk about people like Jamar Tisby or Thabiti Anabwile anymore?

01:45:30

You know, I don't, I don't really talk about them much anymore. And part of that is, is they've kind of left evangelicalism as, as a movement,

01:45:39

I mean, and they, they got their own things and they're more on the political left now. I mean, they're, it's fusing with the

01:45:45

Al Sharptons of the world, really. And so, you know, I don't even know if I want to call it, I guess you could still call it the evangelical left if you want, but there's a lot of Balkanization going on right now.

01:45:55

That's the current situation we live in. So this was a hour and 45 minute podcast, but I will close with just saying, look, come to the

01:46:06

Fundamentals Conference. If you enjoy my podcast, if you enjoy, especially, you know, these long form conversations, fundamentalsconference .com

01:46:15

is going to give you an opportunity, not just to meet me, but to meet other brothers in Christ of like mind.

01:46:21

And we can have long conversations. We can go on hikes. We can talk to each other. There's plenty of access you have to me and to the other speakers.

01:46:28

September 27th through September 29th, September 27th through September 29th in the

01:46:34

Adirondack mountains at beautiful Camp of the Woods in Speculator, New York. Sign up now, fundamentalsconference .com.