My mentor preached at my ordination service. He was the third preacher to preach in the service. When he stood to preach he said,

“I am the preacher who preaches after the preacher who preached after the preacher who has already preached.”

Knowing Rick, he made that observation during the service and thought it might be a moment of levity. It was.

I am the interviewer who interviewed after the interviewers who have already interviewed. But, I may have read the book before the interviewers who have already interviewed.

Last year Jason called and said, “Hey, would you want to make a trip to the Boundary Waters, BWCA, with Tony Jones?” “Sure.” 

One of the prerequisites before arriving in Minneapolis was to read the pre-publication manuscript of The God of Wile Places. We would have conversations around the book over evening campfires or as we took turns paddling with Tony, our guide. 

We cobbled together a group and last September we undertook a trip for which I thought I was prepared but was not. If you have never portaged a canoe over at least one portage trail of over 1000 feet of rock and mud, uphill then downhill, while carrying a 60lb pack, then you would not have been ready either. I had never portaged anything before.

And, I have never written a book and wondered how it would turn out. Friends liken it to birthing a baby though I would expect a mother or two would object. But, like birthing a baby, there is the working and waiting to see how your nurtured child fares as he or she grows.

I half apologized to Tony for the late arrival to the podcast marketing team.

“We are in month two.”

“Crickets,” he said.

The delay of this interview is not strategic. If Tony is counting on my little part of the Interwebs to rocket sales in month two, he will likely be sorely disappointed. 

But you, dear reader and listener will not be.

Tony gives me about an hour to talk around his book. Yes, around and of course about. What I mean is that I want you to both listen to the interview, buy the book, and purchase the audiobook. I don’t want to give the book away to you in the interview.

If there is a teaser, this is it: If you must choose a format, go with the audio. There is nothing like hearing a person’s story in their voice. I don’t know which format produces more for the author, but you will thank me after listening.

Why? Like Tony, all of us have been pigeonholed for one decision or another, for one rumor or another, for one doctrinal position or another. Often without a conversation. For example, when D.A. Carson published the book, Becoming Conversant with Emergentbut refused to have a conversation with those he condemned. 

Take a listen.

For those still unsure, even demotivated by my little intro, let me give you this one: Tony may have headed into the woods but he has not left Jesus behind.

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Sharing Your Faith Is Not A Single Format Opportunity

Those who know me know I am a talker. The corollary is that I tend to process my thinking out loud. Now you know why posts are sometimes infrequent and my podcast frequency is worse.

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My penmanship is terrible. Were my maternal grandmother alive, she would be pounding the Like Button. I don’t recall if it was my senior year of high school or my freshman year of college. I had to type a paper for an assignment. Nan, as we called her, offered to type it for me. I dropped it off to her. When I returned to pick it up, she said she would gladly do that again for me but never to leave her a draft with such poor penmanship. 

Lesson learned. 

I never took her another draft. Period.

Who has time to improve their penmanship at that late date?

Nan had great penmanship. She never sent a birthday card or anniversary card without including a handwritten note. Hallmark could never capture all that she wanted to say. The handwriting in her journals is a work of art.

My first podcast of the new year is not about perfect handwriting. It is about letter writing. Specifically, my new virtual friend Curtis Freeman wrote Pilgrim Letters: Instruction in The Basic Teaching of Christ. Curtis wanted to talk to his son about faith in Jesus Christ. His son was unsure he was ready for that kind of conversation. Curtis asked his son if he could write him some letters. The result? Pilgrim Letters.

We all may know someone who prefers to communicate the more serious and particular things of life by handwriting a note. I do. If you do, then you will find my conversation with Curtis helpful. You may even pick up Pilgrim Letters and Pilgrim Journey: Instructions in the Mystery of the Gospel. 

Enjoy.

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Marv Levy takes his dry humor around the globe in the comedy series The Reluctant Traveler. Levy’s travels leave him perplexed and curious. His episode-ending reflections include themes he picks up along the way. Often sounding surprised, he finds that folks living in Finland enjoy life outdoors, even if it is cold. Smiles greet him, and he cannot figure out why. After a few episodes, you get the feeling that he may enjoy a habit he never dreamed he would.

Maina Mwara describes his recent book as a project that called him. And after our conversation, I wondered if Howard Hendricks could be described as The Reluctant Mentor. Not resistant but reluctant. 

Mentoring hit the craze level some years ago in Christian leadership circles. Books on mentoring, how to be a mentor, and successful mentoring became the rage. I recall receiving a free book or two at a conference on the subject. The desire to be a mentor has a dark side. It feeds a nascent narcissism that may be latent in all of us. “You need to listen to me.”

Like Hendricks to those who saw him as their mentor, my mentors have not self-identified as such. I have recognized they are my mentors. The relationship developed into a mentoring relationship. Rick did not tell me one day as Darth told Luke, “I am your mentor.”

Reluctant does not mean resistant. Influential does not always mean intentional. Relationships predicated on a contractual arrangement seldom reach the depths of mentoring relationships. And lack of intention does not mean accidental. Christian discipleship is organic, not programmatic. “Don’t pluck the weeds lest you pluck the wheat also.” Time and interactions are the soil in which mentoring relationships emerge.

Howard Hendricks’s story as an influential mentor rises from within an uncomfortable context, reaching diverse people, and results in an investment that yet survives his short sojourn. Remember, no matter how long we live; it is like a vapor.

Pick up a copy and observe what it means to be an influential mentor. You don’t need a program. You only need an interest in people.

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We deconstruct everything so why the bugaboo?

Mark Driscoll famously attacked deconstruction, or Deconstruction, with the caricature that the goal is to reduce everything to its nub so it may be dismissed. He used the schtick to strike fear in those who dared question what they had been taught, particularly at Mars Hill. 

We all know how that turned out. Just this week, I listened to a sermon where Driscoll was the illustration for the need to deconstruct what preachers say. “God hates sin and the sinner.” It is as if the Serpent returned upon hearing that “God so loved the world” and whispered in the congregation’s ear, “Did Jesus really say he loved the world?”

My friend Greg Hortin joins me for another conversation on deconstruction, or Deconstruction. When we listen to policymakers and elected officials, how do we discern what they are saying, or not, with the words they choose? This has become important in Oklahoma, given the rhetoric of our State School Superintendent and his constant use of “woke ideology.” Listeners need to interrogate the language – that is, deconstruction or Deconstruction.

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Claims that the Woke Left is indoctrinating students in Oklahoma Public Schools have been a talking point of Oklahoma State School Superintendent Ryan Walters since he began his campaign. Once elected, erasing the Woke Agenda has been his ongoing mantra. My friend Greg Horton posted about the claims of indoctrination on his Facebook Page, to which I remarked everyone indoctrinates. We decided to have a conversation about the subject.

*Greg suggested a warning that he uses salty language in our conversation. Some editing has been done. Other words remain.

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“Is healthcare a right or privilege?”

Maybe the question needs a better frame.

Recently I was talking with my friend Marty about healthcare, high deductibles, and treatment costs. Amidst the ongoing cultural battles occupying congressional talking points I wondered on Twitter when would our legislators take up one of the more crucial human needs. Dr. Kevin Driver was quick to respond. He included a willingness to have a podcast conversation on the intersection of theology/ethics and healthcare.

I dusted off the mic, reminded myself of the best recording settings, and set up the Zoom conversation. What resulted is today’s podcast.

When we think of the ideas that undergird talking Christian about healthcare what comes to your mind? Give us a listen and hear what Dr. Driver offers.

If you find the podcast helpful, share it with your friends. Share it with your pastor friends as well as folks you know involved in leadership that touches on the pastoral. Also, consider heading over to iTunes, login, search for patheological and give us a five-star rating and a kind review.

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I tried to work in one of my favorite lines from Cold Mountain into the title.

I imagine God is weary of being called down on both sides of an argument.

Next week Messengers to our denominations’ annual meeting may hear proposed Resolutions on Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality. One feature of the debate over the past couple of years has been working out just how the conception of race as a social construct should inform our awareness of the way racialization has become part of the legal structures of the U.S. legal system thereby making it normal to subordinate non-white people. Some disagree with this assertion having opted for a derivative definition of CRT.

In this episode, Brad and I talk about my own difficulty understanding and agreeing that race is, in fact, a social construct. What caught my attention is that both those who see the benefit of CRT analysis and those opposed agree – race is a social construct. Even Christians agree. However, at that point it is a matter of disagreement as to who’s side God is on when it comes to the usefulness of such a conclusion. It is here where I would echo Jude Law’s character, Inman.

Where interests intersect is what some refer to as common places.

Bradly Mason joins me as we continue our series of conversations on Critical Race Theory. On this episode we discuss the common places, areas where shared interests converge in search of understanding, if not action. I should note here that I have been helped, and indebted to, Brad for taking time out of his schedule to have these conversations.

In the past week a couple of friends, pastor types, who resisted any benefit of CRT, have found these conversations helpful and admit to drawing conclusions without exploring the original sources and ideas. One young friend sent along a document dated to the Wilberforce era where the conditions that gave rise to CRT, the organized subordination of others, existed before Derrick Bell’s seminal essay just more than 30 years ago.

If you missed our previous episodes you will find them here:
The Danger of Mediating Ideas
When the Law Does Not Deliver
Can Two Walk Together

If you find the podcast helpful, share it with your friends. Share it with your pastor friends as well as folks you know involved in leadership that touches on the pastoral. Also, consider heading over to iTunes, login, search for patheological and give us a five-star rating and a kind review.

The post Common Places: A Conversation with Brad Mason appeared first on patheological: The Podcast for the Pastor-Theologian.

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Near the end of our last conversation on the subject of Critical Race Theory, Bradly Mason remarked that race is a social construct for the subordination of other human beings. His statement did not go without notice. One listener sent a series of questions. If Mason asserted that race was a social construct and Founder’s Ministry agrees with that assertion, then how is it Founder’s views CRT different than Mason. Or, how is it that two agree but cannot walk together?

Here are a couple of the questions: When did race become a social construct in the United States? When did it stop in the United States?

During this third episode in our ongoing series on the subject of CRT, we utilize these questions to talk about how race has been used. You might find it interesting that Mason points to a source that describes how the category of race is used by one European group to subordinate another European group where skin color was not the issue. Subordinating one group to another was the economic goal. How is that not what occurred in the United States, I wondered?

One gnawing matter for me is that when we discover a habit that is inconsistent with the life of Jesus, no matter how I come to learn of its presence within me, how is it I don’t see that as an occasion for sanctification? In other words, if CRT exposes the way other humans beings have been subordinated and that laws intended to change that reality are ineffective, what is wrong with the question, “How did this happen?” Isn’t this the same question post-holocaust philosophers and theologians asked after the efforts to exterminate, subordinate, one group of people by another?

It is clear that a movement is at work to empty CRT of its origins, its history, and infuse it with all perceived cultural evils that must be avoided at all costs. This has actually been stated as a goal. Most call this obfuscation or watch the hand over here so you don’t see what the hand over there is doing. Even some in my denomination seem firmly entrenched in this position. I have yet to see any leaders address the origins and aspects of CRT. Really all we see is an attempt to make this analytical tool the worst thing to come along. And yet, those same Christian people claim to find analytical value in an atheistic worldview. Confounding, I know.

If you find the podcast helpful, share it with your friends. Share it with your pastor friends as well as folks you know involved in leadership that touches on the pastoral. Also, consider heading over to iTunes, login, search for patheological and give us a five-star rating and a kind review.

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In our best Schwarzenegger voice, “We said we’d be back!”

Sojourner’s interviewed Nathan Cartagena on teaching Critical Race Theory to Evangelicals. When asked about the different assumptions students have when taking a class on critical race theory now that CRT is such a lightning rod subject he noted,

Oh yes. When I first started teaching, most people had never heard of critical race theory, and they certainly weren’t familiar with an acronym. Now, the teaching is harder. People are carrying a whole host of ideas about CRT, the overwhelming majority of which are completely false.

What would it mean if pastors and church leaders paused to explore the roots of a theory that grew out of trying to answer the question, “How is it the new law did not make the difference it promised?” Wouldn’t there be a bit more sympathy knowing that this is also a question that could have well originated with the Apostle Paul who wrote to Roman Christians pointing out that,

For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.

On today’s podcast I am joined once again by Bradly Mason, @AlsoaCarpenter. We take up the task to give a genealogy of ideas, the “Where did this come from?” by looking at Derrick Bell’s essay, Serving Two Masters: Integration Ideals and Client Interests in School Desegregation Litigation found in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. For those, like me, that recall when your public school district desegrated, you know that desegregation did not necessarily obtain integration. If you carry that further, one may realize that the educational goals aimed for in desegregation rules did not materialize. Civil Rights advacates, and Critical Legal Scholars, began wondering how is it the law did not accomplish its aim.

Litigation ensued to insist the goals remain at the forefront and not the simple satisfaction that white and black students attended school in the same building. Going back to legal decisions led to a critical look at laws past that seemed unable to achieve their end and a theory as to what happened resulted. Nothing nefarious. But, the questions remain uncomfortable in light of the annual statistics that leave some wrongly concluding that the issue rests solely with the person and not with the structure. And this will hopefully whet your appetite to understand the intellectual history that developed in light of our social history.

For pastors wondering about the helpfulness, or not, of the insights into our legal system consider again what enabled the Apostle to see the ineffectual nature of the law to overcome the Powers of Sin and Death. Until Revelation came, Saul was content to let things be as they were. What if, the way things are, keep us from seeing what could be when a legal theory revealed to us ways we ourselves were blind to the other, to our neighbor? At least give us a look-see or listen.

if you missed our first conversation, here is the link: The Dangers of Mediating Ideas: A Conversation with Bradly Mason

If you find the podcast helpful, share it with your friends. Share it with your pastor friends as well as folks you know involved in leadership that touches on the pastoral. Also, consider heading over to iTunes, login, search for patheological and give us a five-star rating and a kind review.

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Pastor, do you have time to read the near 500 pages of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement?” Maybe you have time between weekly sermon preparation, pastoral responsibilities, and any administrative tasks that accompany your particular ministry setting. Try as we might to be aware and versed in every developing subject, it is not possible.

Think of it like this. Many of us entered seminary with the goal of learning the Biblical languages. We enter small church pastorates where the time needed to translate and exegete those passages diminished as we served as preacher, pastor, music leader, and discipleship coordinator while giving time to our families. Bible software like Accordance and Logos provide us with quick tools, shortcuts, to those textual resources. We trust the developers to take account of the most recent scholarship with regular updates of our preferred Greek New Testament, for example. Should we learn their product offers shoddy parsing or less than robust dictionary entries, we look elsewhere; or not.

At this point we are assigning those sources with an authority on which we plan sermons, Bible studies, and other writing where we will take up textual nuance as important. We do this with other subjects about which we know little.

Take for instance the current controversies circulating around Critical Race Theory. We look for those from whom we may learn since we don’t have the time to give to reading original sources. What matters is who we choose as our authority on the subject. If our authority has never read an original source then maybe we should look for another.

Enter Bradly Mason. The pandemic gave Mason the opportunity to give a year to reading original sources related to Critical Race Theory. EDIT: Bradly has been writing on Critical Theory and Critical Race Theory for at least two years. This past year provided more time than usual given the pandemic restrictions. It should also be noted here that per my last podcast episode with Carl Raschke, Critical Theory and Critical Race Theory have different genealogies (origins). Armed with a degree in philosophy and logic he has assessed the brouhaha over CRT and found it lacking in substantive critique. The issue: many are critiquing something about which they know too little. As you will find in our first conversation, it seems quite an ethical tar baby to at once offer a critique of something you read about from secondary sources who utilize ideas for an altogether different purpose.

Think of bearing false witness. Mason wants no part of breaking that commandment, even if @Asloacarpenter has been accused of such in the Twitterverse. Most of the pushback on Mason has come from those who have read his articles. And, it is also true that his critics have inspired him to respond with posts that address specific issues.

Here are some places you may find Bradly’s writing:

Bradly Mason’s personal website: https://alsoacarpenter.com
Front Porch Series on CRT begins here: The Christian and Critical Race Theory (A Series)
Bradly Mason on Twitter

If you find the podcast helpful, share it with your friends. Share it with your pastor friends as well as folks you know involved in leadership that touches on the pastoral. Also, consider heading over to iTunes, login, search for patheological and give us a five-star rating and a kind review.

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