10 Questions to Ask Pastoral Candidates on Social Justice

Welcome to Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna talk today about 10 questions that you can ask a pastoral candidate concerning social justice.

If you're a Christian, if your church is looking for a pastor, which I happen to know a lot of churches right now are doing just that,

I think there's a generational thing going on. Baby boomers are retiring. And so there's that.

At the same time, there's been a lot of friction, political friction, theological friction, and pastors have either left or congregations have given pastors the boot.

That happens a lot less often. But there's just a lot of churches open for pastors right now.

And I've had a lot of emails from people inside some of these churches asking, what do I say? What do I do when there's a pastor we're looking at?

And I just wanna ensure that not only are they gonna sign our statement of faith, but they're not going to sign our statement of faith, come into the church, and then start pushing social justice, and we'll have more friction.

We wanna avoid that. So I get that. I understand that. And so that's why I'm doing this podcast. These are 10 questions, and there could be a lot more.

These are just 10 I jotted down today. And these are really based on a lot of the things that I have gone over in my book,

Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict. It is out, by the way. You can go to Amazon and get it.

By the time I post this podcast, you could probably go to ChristianityAndSocialJustice .com.

That's ChristianityAndSocialJustice .com. And there you can find the Amazon link, but you can also get an autographed copy.

And I know those will be available, I think, on something like October 10th or 11th. I'll be shipping some of those out.

So a little bit of a delay on that if you're watching this late September. But I would encourage you, if you want the autographed copy, it does probably support me a little more to do it that way, and I will be shipping those out.

But if you want the Amazon copy, this is what I do. I'll just tell you what I do usually when I like a book. I get the

Kindle edition, because I can search the Kindle edition. There's a search feature. If I wanna find out what did the author say about, I don't know,

Derrida, Foucault, Marx, some figure or some issue, Black Lives Matter, I can type it in on my

Kindle app on the computer, and it'll come right up all the places an author mentioned Black Lives Matter, let's say.

And I can go look and find the sentence or the paragraph that I was looking for. So I usually do try to get a

Kindle version, and that's with me all the time. I can carry it on my phone if I have the Kindle app. So, and I do have that.

So get the Kindle version. It's like 10 bucks from Amazon. And then you can go get an autographed copy, a hard copy of the book.

I like feeling the paper. When I'm actually reading, I like having that. So research, Kindle's great. Reading, I love to have that hard copy.

And you can go get an autographed copy of Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.

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I'm gonna have more on the book later this week. I've already been reached out to by a number of media people wanting to interview me about it.

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jonathanharris1989 .com. And if you have a video and it's just you talking, maybe keep it short, 30 seconds to two minutes, tops two minutes.

I would say 30 seconds would be better. Just saying how much you appreciate the book or if the book meant something to you or if you liked it.

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And I wrote it thinking that. These are the things I want someone to know about this. So if you've read the book, if you are gonna read the book, these questions,

I think, will just make a lot of sense to you. You'll be able to articulate them. And if a conversation gets started in a, let's say, a past oral candidate search committee meeting, then you can, you'll have the ammunition, you'll have the understanding you need to navigate those discussions.

But without further ado, let's go through the questions. Here they are. And this graphic, this

JPEG image will be available if you go to any of my social media outlets.

I'm gonna be posting it on those places. So that'll be free for everyone. 10 questions to ask a pastoral candidate concerning social justice.

All right. So you have a pastoral candidate you're looking at. You like a lot of the things you see, but you just wanna make sure that they're on the same page with your church on the issues of social justice.

And so I've tried to hit a few of the key things, a few of the areas that I think are important because let's just face it.

If you ask, hey, are you for social justice? Do you agree with critical race theory? You're gonna get the answer they know you wanna hear.

They're gonna say no. And then they probably, often they push critical race theory under a different name, or they just, they have a lot of the assumptions that critical race theory has, but they just don't think that they agree with critical race theory because of some difference somewhere along the line.

So being more specific, asking good questions, very important when you're in a process like this, because you don't wanna be two years down the track and you have a pastor and people have gotten to know him.

And then all of a sudden he starts pushing the church in this leftward direction. So number one, do you believe it is part of the mission of the local church to be more culturally diverse?

Do you believe it is part of the mission of the local church to be more culturally diverse? Now, you could also ask, do you think our church needs to be more diverse?

That's another way of asking it. You've been around, you've seen our church, do you think it needs to be more diverse? Ethnically, culturally, whatever that means.

Let them answer the question. A lot of this is trying to give more open -ended questions, trying to get a discussion going if possible.

So if they say, yes, it does, well, what do you mean by that? Why do you think that? Are there barriers that you're seeing that are preventing people of different cultures from coming in the church?

If so, why? Those are the kinds of discussions you're gonna wanna have, and it'll help you to get into whether or not, and this is the key question here, whether or not they believe that it's a primary mission, that it's actually the mission of the church to be diverse.

Because it's not, it's a result generally of a church, a church that pursues the gospel and pursues truth and preaches the

Bible. Oftentimes, you're gonna have a lot of different kinds of people that are attracted to that, because God brings them. Hopefully, the people in your church are reaching out to those kinds of people.

But it's people that you're after, it's souls that you're after, it's making disciples that you're after. It's not targeting certain demographics.

It's not going fishing with a certain lure and saying, I just really, we have too many bass in the boat, we really just need to get a bunch of panfish and catfish in here, and we need different lures to do that, because we're looking for some ratio, we're after a style, we're after a certain kind of optic.

You wanna stay away from that. Instead, what you want is just, we're gonna go out there with a fishing lure that catches all the fish, because that's what we're commanded to do, to make fishers and men.

And if we get more bass, then that's fine. If we get more catfish, that's fine. We can certainly ask questions like, is there something we can be doing better to attract all the fish?

But that should be the emphasis, is the gospel and making disciples. That goes to every person.

It's people that are valuable. It's not people of certain ethnicities that are more valuable or less valuable. And it shouldn't be some kind of a, that the church must reflect the exact ethnicities that represent in our local community.

Or more often than not, I see pastors or social justice advocates who say, well, the church needs to be even more diverse than the local community, because it needs to be a witness for, somehow that's a witness.

To show your diversity means you're doing something right. Well, you wanna get away from that assumption. That is a secular social justice assumption.

That doesn't mean that you're doing something right, necessarily. The spirit of God is gonna move where the spirit of God is gonna move.

And you just wanna be as open as possible. And sometimes, let's face it, sometimes there's going to be different styles that some people won't be as attracted to.

For instance, I'll give you an example, hymns. Hymns will attract a certain demographic more than another.

If you do R &B music in your church, or like hip hop or something, you're gonna attract another kind of demographic, perhaps.

Now, that's not very, hip hop's not very participatory as far as congregational singing. So you probably don't wanna do that.

In fact, I remember when I was a teenager, this wasn't hip hop, but it was more the Christian rock thing. There were people who, in the church

I was going to, really wanted to emphasize that. Let's have a lot of Christian rock, let's get some young people on stage.

I remember there was an event once where they got a bunch of garbage cans and put graffiti on them, and this whole thing, gotta smoke machines.

And the whole idea was to try to get people into the church who were from the world, who were secular, who were young, and this is gonna get them interested.

Well, what you're doing, though, is you're sacrificing the actual, you're sacrificing the rest of the congregation when you do that.

You're not trying to be the body for everyone. You're also doing this.

You are sacrificing participation for entertainment.

So people can't really participate in that music as much. They can jump around and things, but they can't, as far as worshiping, as far as understanding the words, singing the words, looking at one another, in a dark room where there's smoke everywhere, it's very hard to do that.

You're also trying to communicate to them that you're identifying with them when you do that. I identify with the culture you're part of, so that's why

I got graffiti up here or something like that. And we have to be careful with those kinds of things.

I think the churches are in cultures, but that doesn't mean that we're going to try to pick one subculture or one, whatever's in vogue, and try to make that,

I mean, this is the era of the seeker -sensitive church. They try to make, put their best foot forward for showing the world that they're just as cool as them.

And there's mission drift. When you do that, Jesus is the person that needs to be the right in front.

That's the, if you want to draw a card, it's Jesus. If you want to be attracted to the church, it's because we got Jesus here.

We have the Holy Spirit's here. We have scripture here. These are the things that you want emphasized, right?

Those things, those extra things, those unnatural things, and people can spot it when it's unnatural and it's fake.

And these are the kind of things that you may get a crowd, it's possible, but is it going to be, what you attract them with, you're going to have to keep them with.

So I've gone on too long about that one, but my whole point is that if you're trying, if you have a pastoral candidate who says, yes,

I really think the mission of the church is to be more culturally diverse, or that's part of it, then I would say that's a no -go.

I wouldn't, they already have the whole purpose wrong. Purpose of the church, God's going to make the church as diverse as he wants it.

Revelation, every tribe, tongue, and nation, that's God's job. He's going to do that. We need to go out there and do everything we can to attract men and women from everywhere that's around us, in the life that we live, whether it's, no matter what ethnicity they are, we're going to be after them because they have a soul, not because they're a certain color.

So hopefully that makes sense to people. If you start making it about a color or a social location or something like that, then you've lost the emphasis.

That's a result, not part of the mission. It's not the end in and of itself.

So number two, do we gain a better interpretation of scripture when we study with people from different ethnicities?

This is checking for standpoint theory. Does the person, are they postmodern? Do they believe that truth is subjective to some extent and that people from different social locations are going to be able to offer better interpretations because of something like their level of oppression or something else?

You want to know that with a pastoral candidate going into that, when they're coming into your church.

Do they believe that? Do they believe that someone who let's say is from,

I don't know, we'll just pick Jamaica or something, that they're going to have a better interpretation because, oh, I don't know, they come from a different culture.

Maybe they have, there's more poverty where they came from. And so you must listen to their insight because of the fact that they are from a different social location.

How about this? How about people are able to offer up insights in a Bible study, no matter who they are, and you take them to heart and you listen to them and you compare and you evaluate and you use the principles of hermeneutics to determine whether or not it's a good evaluation, if it's a good interpretation.

Compare it to what other scriptures say. Try to figure out what the authorial intent of the book you're reading is.

Go through the broad sweep of scripture, figure out the general themes. I mean, these are the things you learn when you're in a hermeneutics class, or at least you used to, grammatical, historical hermeneutic.

Try to approach it that way. And you're not going to be shutting someone down because they're of a certain ethnicity or a certain gender or something like that.

If they have an insight they want to share with you, listen to it. See, maybe they're onto something that you might've missed, that's possible.

But what you don't want to do is favor certain social locations over others and say, well, clearly they have a better grasp of this because I don't know, they went to prison.

And in prison, we're reading a prison epistle from Paul, so therefore they went to prison. Therefore, we should just all listen to them because, well, they've had the same experience.

Well, yeah, maybe they have some insights. It's possible they do. But their social location does not give them an advantage.

I like to use the analogy of brain surgery because I think it makes it more clear.

So if you're a brain surgeon, right, do you want someone, do you want to make sure that the textbooks that your doctor has read in medical school were, and maybe even the people operating on you, do you want to make sure that they're diverse or do you want to make sure they know what they're doing, that they've actually put in the time and study?

In scripture, we find the Bereans are commended because they search the scriptures, right? We're supposed to be approved workmen who should not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

It's the effort that you put into it. And of course, the Holy Spirit's involved in this process, but it takes work.

It takes work to study the scripture, to understand what it says. And that's the emphasis you see in scripture.

You don't see, well, you know, what do the Jews think? What do the Gentiles think? What do the different, I don't know, areas that Jews come from?

What did they all think of what a certain passage said? And then we'll figure out the meeting. No, and we wouldn't do that in other areas of our life.

Might they have an insight? Sure, you can listen, but it doesn't automatically give them an advantage because they're from a certain social location.

And that's not the way that we should be approaching scripture. It's a postmodern understanding that says that certain social groups are better equipped.

It's really gnostic in a way. They're better equipped. They have knowledge that's not available to the rest of us.

And no matter how much study, we can't really arrive there because, well, you know, they just were born.

It's innate in them to have this advantage. So make sure that the pastoral candidate coming in doesn't believe that.

And that's a good question to ask. Do we gain a better interpretation of scripture when we study with people from different ethnicities?

Here's another one. Number three. Is it necessary to hear the stories of abuse survivors in order to know how to handle abuse in the church?

Is it necessary to hear the story of abuse survivors in order to know how to handle abuse in the church? Same kind of question, okay?

And you might not think it is, but let me explain. If you are trying to figure out how to handle abuse situations or prevent against abuse, then you're gonna wanna talk to who?

Well, we have the scripture, right? That's the first thing. We have the scripture and that gives us, for the church, that's gonna give us the principles that we need to understand the nature of abuse, why people abuse other people, what to do about it, how to handle sin in the church.

But you're really gonna want people who understand how to apply the scripture and those principles to life.

That's what you're gonna be looking for. You're gonna wanna consult the elders about these kinds of things. There is a tendency today to want to consult abuse victims.

And not to just get their story because of something specifically that happened in your church, perhaps, and you need to know the details of it to tell the police what's going on.

No, I'm talking about like Caring Well -type conference stuff where, and Believe Women, Me Too kind of stuff, where we automatically must, no matter what we know,

I mean, you could be a police officer who's investigated these things for years, but you don't hold a candle, in this way of thinking, to someone who has experienced abuse, or they say they have.

And so you'll find conferences where the pastors are in the audience. They're sitting down, they're listening, and they're getting all the wisdom from people who have experienced abuse.

Now, there's nothing wrong with listening to someone's story. There's nothing wrong with gaining even some insights from, oh, okay, that's interesting.

You were abused by the sound guy and there wasn't enough oversight because they were,

I don't know, in a booth or something, and it was private, and no one was going in there and checking up to see what was going on.

Okay, well, we need to make sure that there's, I don't know, a window screen there or something so people can see what's going on in there.

And obviously, after you do the church discipline and everything else you need to do on the guy who did the abuse.

So there are things like that where if you're in a specific situation, you're listening to a story, you can pick up different things.

That's not what's really being communicated in CaringWell, though. CaringWell and that whole movement, that church two movement, what they're trying to say when it gets down to it is that people who have experienced abuse, women specifically, are authoritative on not just the specifics of their story, but in general, they're authoritative on the very subject of abuse.

And they are better equipped to help churches navigate and deal with and prevent abuse than a pastor or a police officer or someone who's actually worked in that field.

And it has a Bible, by the way, and knows how to use it. That's their, I mean, they'll platform people that really the only claim to fame they have is, well, they've been abused.

And that's who's the one teaching the pastors how to deal with this. And that's very, and they've actually had some people that are very unstable, like just emotionally unstable.

And it's come out later on. They've been platformed by the

ERLC to do these conferences. And then we find out, okay, well, they've got a big problem and they're completely irrational and going crazy on social media and stuff.

And this is the person that's training the pastors, training the denomination to deal with abuse. So that's the situation

I'm talking about. I think this question, is it necessary? The key word is necessary to hear the stories of abuse survivors gets to the bottom of that.

It's not necessary to know how to handle abuse in your church. You have the word of God. You don't have to hear the stories of abuse survivors.

It may help, but it's not necessary to hear these stories to know how to handle abuse in the church.

So standpoint theory, we're checking for standpoint theory. If you just ask, hey, do you believe in standpoint epistemology? Do you believe in post -modernism?

Do you believe truth is subjective? You're gonna probably get the right answers. You gotta ask questions like this to really find out what someone believes.

All right, number four, do you believe the church is characterized by abuse? So this gets at the whole systemic sin stuff.

And really, what do you think of the church? Is the church the bride of Christ? And I'm talking about the church universal, the church as a whole, the church, maybe you could say in America or in the

Western world, if you wanna say that, if you wanna be a little more specific, but do you think the church is characterized by this?

Is this what the church is known for? Is this something that's just happening all over the place? If it is, that's a problem.

That's a real problem, because that means you've got a bunch of Christians running around, pastors running around, saying that they're

Christians, that they're part of the church, and really they're involved in this pattern of sin, which would mean if it's such a pattern of sin, that they're not

Christians. So it's very important how you view the church, what you think of the church, and if you believe the church is characterized by abuse, if that's in its nature, it's in its

DNA, then you're probably at the church to change it, to bring it into the 21st century, to make it more equitable and diverse and inclusive and these kinds of things.

It'll give you a little hint to figure out where that person is. Now, if they say, look, the church, there have been tragic abuse cases, of course, and that's, you know, we're sinners, and what do you expect?

I mean, there's people in the church who are tares. It's gonna happen. That's very different than saying the church is characterized by this, fundamentally what the church is and is an abusive institution.

If you get that sense from someone, that they think that they're there as the Superman or superhero of some kind to save the day, to get the church into a situation where it's less abusive, but also more inclusive and all the rest of, you know, what their agenda might be, then you wanna run away from that person.

That person isn't there because they respect your church and maybe they wanna reform a few things here or there.

They're there to revolutionize your church if that's what they really think the church is. Because why would you wanna be part of an institution that is characterized by that?

Who wants to be part of that? I've said this before. When you say that the church is, you know, we've been racist our whole, you know, for centuries, the church is just this horrible, racist, abusive institution, oppressive towards women, oppressive towards LGBTQ people, horrible place.

But look, now you should join the church because, you know, we're fixing it now. That's like saying, you know what?

You know what the Ku Klux Klan is like, right? But you know what? Now we've reformed, we've reformed our ways. So why don't you join us?

It's the same kind of thing. It sounds ridiculous when I say the Ku Klux Klan, but if you treat the church like it's like that and you're there to make it different, to reform it and stuff, then what's gonna actually change?

What kinds of things are going to be different as a result of this pastor coming? So you're, and that's one of the questions you wanna find out.

What do you wanna change about this place? And I'll give you an insight into what they think of the church as a whole, or even, you could even make it the local church.

If they think the church is characterized by abuse, it'll just give you a window into what they think and maybe what direction they're gonna go in.

Number five, is it wrong for the church service to operate using cultural norms developed in Europe, such as hymns,

Bible translation, architecture, et cetera? This is a question to figure out, again, where do they want to change your church?

And if so, how? If they have such a problem with hymns, why do they have a problem with hymns? If they have such a problem with,

I don't know, the architecture and they wanna change the stained glass windows or something, if they have such a problem with the way that people dress, you wanna know why that is.

For social justice activists, everything's whiteness that they wanna change. It's part of whiteness, which is basically is

Western civilization, European norms. Now, listen, the

Bible gives us directives, the Bible gives us command, the Bible gives us principles, but those principles are gonna work themselves out a little differently depending on the culture you're in.

That's just true. And so if you're in a context, like more of an

English context, then the English manners and the way that biblical truth and the social customs of England have kind of grown up together, they're gonna influence, the

Bible is going to influence those customs and it has, but those customs themselves are going to be part of the thing you take into account when you apply scripture.

Saying even things like good morning, good day, shaking someone's hand. I mean, there's so many things that we take for granted that are the result of the culture that we live in.

And people who want to rip down whiteness, quote unquote, wanna come in and they wanna change a lot of those things.

Maybe not shaking hands, but maybe, could be. I mean, with COVID now, it definitely could be. But I'm thinking of a specific situation, even right now,

I knew of someone who told me that they had a family come to their church and then immediately wanted the whole church to change for them.

And they don't want hymns sung anymore, or not as much at least. You gotta take into account our preferences.

We want, and it was, I guess, African -American types. I don't know if it was spirituals or it was modern gospel music, but you must do this.

And basically, we're like, we're gonna make this an issue in the church. And the whole issue, and what they did was they used racism as the wedge to do it.

It's racist if you sing all these English hymns and our family wants this other style.

Now, and as I understand it from the situation, I wasn't there for this, but the pastor told me that it wasn't coming, it wasn't a gracious, like, hey, can we incorporate some of our styles along with what you're doing?

It was a demonization of the hymns that were being sung. So you wanna make sure if you have a pastor coming in, you wanna know what they're gonna wanna change, but you're gonna understand their thinking.

If they think that whiteness is such a bad thing, well, where do they locate it in your church? Do they see it in your church? And a question like this, is it wrong for the church to service, to operate using cultural norms developed in Europe, such as hymns, in the

Bible translation, maybe you use the ESV, the architecture, that's a good place for you to start figuring out whether or not they wanna change those things.

And if they really wanna change those things, there may be legitimate reasons to change some of those things. I'm not saying there isn't, but there is also an illegitimate reason.

And if the illegitimate reason is just because they're European, just because, and that's evil somehow, then you know you got a social justice activist on your hands.

Number six, is it sinful to be sexually attracted to members of the same sex? Pretty obvious question.

Obviously the desires of our heart, God looks at those things as well. Hebrews talks about rooting out the very desires that we have, the epithemia.

These are things that, attractions that are evil because they're disordered.

These aren't even the attractions that, I'll say this, I don't think Jesus Christ would have had these kinds of attractions because it would have been sinful for him.

Was he tempted in all points as we are? Yes. Every category for temptation, he had those temptations, but there are certain sins that are predicated on other sins.

Romans 1 really shows us this kind of, the stepping stones that you go down to reach levels of depravity.

And what's happening right now is that many Christians are trying to accommodate the

LGBTQ plus movement by saying that, well, we know the Bible says that you can't do these things, but you can't have the desires.

It's fine to have the desires, right? And that needs to be rejected. The desires to do evil things are,

I mean, they're wrong. It's just as, lust is evil. When you lust for someone who isn't your wife, that's evil.

But to say that you're hardwired with a general desire though for something that God says is sinful.

And I don't wanna say what I'm thinking of saying, cause there's probably kids in the car perhaps as you're listening to this, but just think about the act that that entails.

When someone says that they desire, they have same sex attracted desires, what kind of act are they talking about?

What do they want to do with someone of their same sex? Just think about that.

I mean, that's what we're talking about. I don't wanna paint a picture here, but it's an evil act.

And when you say you have desires for these kinds of things, you are in, you wanna pray that those would be taken away from you.

You wanna fight against those, you wanna mortify those. You wanna never give up on that, on fighting those things. And maybe you will fight it for the rest of your life, but there's never a time to give up and say, that's just my orientation.

No. So that's a question I think you can get into a lot of depth with, but it's gonna really,

I remember Marcus Hayes, the first Baptist church in Naples said that from the stage when he was asked the question about is homosexuality a sin?

He said, well, yes, but I don't think it's a sin to be same sex attracted. So you've developed a category that is not in scripture.

You won't find it in scripture other than the lust of the flesh and desires that are not in keeping with God's commands.

I mean, you're not gonna find a permissible, well, same sex attractiveness is fine. You won't find it, it's not there.

So we've developed this extra category, not from the Bible to try to accommodate the world.

And if your pastor, pastoral candidates doing that, you don't want them as your pastor. All right, number seven, should Christians repent for complicity and systemic sin?

If they say yes, ask them to define systemic sin. So this would be like, you live in America and pay taxes and don't do enough to fight against racism, whatever that means, right?

Complicity and systemic sin. You have white privilege, so you're just complicit in an evil system.

You wanna know right off the top, what do they believe about that? Jesus said sin comes from inside, right? So if you have sinful desires, you hate other people because of external features, that's sinful.

But if it's just, you happen to live in a certain area, and which really is all that's required.

I remember Ron Sider said this years ago, that basically to benefit from global trade patterns is sinful, like that's sinful.

No, it's not. We call sin what the Bible calls sin, okay? And if you're gonna make another category for a certain type of sin, so that you can accommodate what the world is saying is sinful, you don't want a pastor like that.

You want a pastor who only believes what the Bible says about sin. So, and if they say yes, ask them to define what systemic sin is.

What's systemic sin? Tell me what that is. Is it an evil heart that creates a law?

Or is it just, I happen to be living in a country that has a certain law that's unjust, and I just didn't do enough somehow.

I should have been an activist, and I wasn't an activist, therefore I'm in systemic sin. That's not biblical. Number eight, is racial reconciliation part of the gospel?

Ask them to define racial reconciliation if they say yes. So, this is a question to try to, you're checking for critical race theory at this point.

If racial reconciliation is part of the gospel, what do you mean by that? If they say, well, I just think that no matter what ethnicity someone is, they should be able to get along.

If they're in Christ, they should practice the one another's towards one another. That's all I mean by racial reconciliation.

Okay, all right, that's fine. Might not wanna use that word just because of the way it's being used by a lot of people, and the way that it comes across to a lot of people, but okay, that's fine if you wanna say that.

Now, if what they mean by it though is racial reconciliation means that you gotta de -platform certain people and platform others.

You need to get rid of things that are like white Jesus, like Jarvis Williams says, gotta get rid of that white

Jesus. Gotta get rid of those cultural norms that Europeans produced.

You gotta get rid of, I don't know, what does he say? You gotta do some kind of a reparations thing, platform certain people.

Then, and that's part of racial reconciliation. Well, you're in critical race theory land at that point.

You've just shown that what, you've just determined at least for this pastoral candidate, if they say that, that it's not really racial reconciliation thereafter, in the first sense of using the word, the first good illustration

I gave. What they're after is some kind of a revenge, some kind of a socialistic kind of, the church is gonna be redistributing privilege and money and these kinds of things.

That's what they're after. They're after some kind of a scheme that's not biblical. And you need a test for that.

So good question to ask, is racial reconciliation part of the gospel? If they say yes, what is racial reconciliation?

Number nine, is it the church's job to fight economic or social disparities between minority and majority groups?

Is it the job of the church? Should the church be involved in, well, look, there's people impoverished from this social group, more at a higher rate than this social group.

Does that mean we need to put more effort into this social group? By, I don't know, doing some kind of charitable work or does it mean that our offering needs to be redistributed somehow so that people who are afraid, look a certain way, a certain ethnicity, they get,

I don't know, some kind of a benefit. I mean, these kinds of things are happening at certain churches.

And the reality is it's not biblical. We help those in need, right? So that's the question, is someone in need?

Not, are they in need? And by the way, what color are they? So that's what you're checking for. Number 10, what are your thoughts on the

Bible's teaching on gender roles and slavery in the ancient world? Now, I wanna expand on this a bit because this,

I think this is actually one of the best questions, to be honest with you. And this will really, I think, get to the heart of a lot of things. This will show you what they think of the

Bible, what they think of Christian ethics, what they think of the God whose character flows out through the commands he's given.

His character is exemplified in those things. What does the Bible say about gender roles?

What does the Bible say about marriage, about the office of the pastor? Do they believe that there is a creation norm for men to take on the role of leadership and women to be helpmates?

Do they believe that this is something rooted in creation? Do they believe that marriages, oh,

I'm talking about marriages right now, do they believe marriages and those relationships between husband and wife, is that rooted in creation?

Or is that just something arbitrarily that God has commanded without any kind of design behind it?

Because there is a design behind it. So you wanna find that out. What do they think about gender norms? And then, what do they think about, and this will really test things, what do they think about slavery in the ancient world?

And this could be Hebrew slavery or Greco -Roman slavery. You look at the laws that were put down in ancient

Israel to regulate slavery. Even as they were being saved, the Israelites from the Egyptians, they were, that brutal slavery that they were in,

God's giving them the commands for the Passover and saying, you can include your slaves in this. People don't focus on those things, but there are barriers.

There are barriers for abuse. There is a biblical way in the ancient world for slavery to work.

And you see that in the nation of Israel. I didn't make the rules, God did. These are his laws.

If someone, a pastoral candidate is coming in and thinks that God's laws for that time were wrong or unjust somehow, you've got a social justice activist on your hands.

Now, you could also talk about Greco -Roman slavery. You could talk about the kind of slavery that existed in Paul's time and Jesus's time, and it had many abuses attached to it.

It was not biblical, did not meet the biblical standards, yet there were commands given for masters in how they were to treat their slaves.

So masters were to self -regulate themselves to obey God's commands in this labor relationship.

So do they think that that was wrong or unjust or didn't go far enough or something?

What do they think about God's commands? And the question is not, should we have that kind of slavery today in the 21st century?

The question is for the times in which the Bible was written, what do we think about these?

What do we think about the commands that God laid down for the situations that existed at those times? And if there's any hesitation whatsoever on the commands of God, then look,

I'm just telling you straight up, I'm not comfortable with that. I would not be comfortable submitting myself to someone who they themselves are not comfortable with the commands of God.

And so you want someone who's gonna preach the commands of God, preach them without apologizing for them.

And it's fine if they wanna explain the context of those times, that what existed in the ancient world is fine, but you can't get away from the morality that God prescribed.

And so these are the 10 questions that I thought of, that I thought these are good questions to ask somewhere along the line, if you are vetting someone who could potentially be a pastor.

And this will be available, like I said, I'll put a link in the info section for the Patreon link for those who want to just get this graphic.

Maybe you wanna remember this stuff for the situation like that. Again, Christianityandsocialjustice .com.

If it's not up yet, it will be up very shortly. You can also go to amazon .com if you can't find the order form for the autograph copies, and you can just order there a hard copy, or you can get the

Kindle version. Christianity and Social Justice, Religions in Conflict is the name of the book. Please leave a review.

Please do that. It does help apparently. I was negligent on my last book. I didn't really ask people that much, but please leave a review, let people know about it.

Hey, buy a few copies. Buy one for your pastor. Buy one for, I don't know, someone you know who would benefit from it.