Ep.73 - When Christians Can't Get Along

A Twitter war rages between "Progressive Christians" and "Conservative Christians" if you haven't noticed good for you!  However, this Twitter spat highlights a more significant issue that has plagued Christendom since the time of Christ.  Why do we struggle so much with diversity within the body?  In this episode, Kirk introduces us to a helpful new concept called "missional diversity" that if properly understood and applied can significantly aid the American church in finding more appreciation for diversity in the Body and less vitriol between members of the Body.  Enjoy!!

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right, everyone, and welcome back to yet another episode of the Christianing Podcast. As always, thank you, thank you, thank you for tuning in, for downloading, and giving us a listen. Today, excited, excited about the episode today. Um, yeah, got here, got to this episode concept in a roundabout way, and I wasn't entirely sure where, what direction we were going to go, but the more and more I dug in, the more and more excited I'm getting about what we're going to talk about today and what we're going to be sharing today. I don't know. It could be, uh, the beginning of, of something, um, Significant. We'll see. This episode may turn into a series of sorts. We'll just see. We'll just see. But first, let me set you guys up, set the table with kind of how my brain got around to doing an episode of when Christians can't get along. Which, again, that's a pretty common theme, typical theme, typical complaint within the church, even outside the church. We just can't seem to get along. For me, that's been recently kind of inspired. I spend time on Twitter. I don't recommend it. I don't know if it's good or bad, but it's a place that I've found just some kind of mental material. It's a place where I go and just kind of see how the world is responding to things. And recently... Within the past few months, my feed has kind of morphed. I don't know how these algorithmic things work. It was a change, I will say, since Elon Musk took over. I don't know if that's good or bad, but at least my feed changed. I don't know how it selected me for this conversation, but... I feel like I was drawn in. I guess I post every now and then about current event kind of Christian topics, and the AI probably thought I was a great candidate to get in the middle of progressive versus conservative Twitter. Not politically, but politically. Christian-wise, progressive Christianity versus conservative Christianity. So, man, my feed started because now you have two feeds on Twitter. You have your following feed and then you have your For You feed, which mirrors a lot of social media kind of outlines. So I was on the Every time I go on the For You feed where it kind of curates and it selects tweets and different people that it thinks you would be interested in, I'm kind of in the middle of... I kind of get thrown into Michigan Sports Twitter, which, yeah, if you follow me on Twitter at all, you'll see me commenting on a lot of University of Michigan sports, but Detroit professional sports. So I get thrown into those mixes. And then... And then just kind of out of the blue, I was thrown into... My feed just was populated by these strong, progressive, what I'd say we would label as progressive Christians. And they're kind of a very strong pushback against the conservative Christians. And I get those folks pop up on my feed. Maybe it's because I've... I try to follow people from all camps, so maybe that's how I got there myself. But I've been kind of recently just really kind of taken back by this progressive Christianity versus conservative Christianity. And really just, man, I guess I didn't really realize how much of a... of a national issue that is for the American Christian Church. There are just some strong, strong divides when it comes to Christianity and how people feel Christians should handle certain issues. Obviously, the issues are typically highly divisive. controversial you know when it comes to like LGBTQ plus when it comes to Black Lives Matter when it comes to Christian nationalism and you know all these kind of heated heavy-weighted issues man Twitter is the place to see where the divide is you know and I know it's been a little like eye-opening so I've just it's been settling in on my in my spirit for weeks now and not really sure what direction I was thinking, you know, just my mind would go a million different places. And then recently, you know, as you know, I label my episodes just based on as current topics as I possibly can. And, you know, I've been kind of you know, dialed into this, the Tyree Nichols tragedy, like I'm sure, you know, you guys have been as well as, you know, news media has, you know, kind of, that's been the lead the past few days. And so in this warped reality that is the brain of Kirk Scott, all these issues have come together into one place. So I'll try to lay out how we got there. And hopefully that'll make sense and it'll set up a case for an important concept that I want to lay out for you guys today. And this concept may guide a direction here on the podcast. We'll see. We'll see what kind of the spirit leads here. But what kind of where this all came to head was, you know, I've just been really wrestling with... Tyree Nichols situation like so many people are when you have what isn't an entirely uncommon theme in the news media where another victim of police brutality is highlighted. Excuse me, I'll probably have to be taking some water throughout this episode. So anyways, you know, kind of So it's not very uncommon that news media would be picking up on a police brutality situation. But what is unique is this one, as we all know, you know, we're grappling with the reality that race wasn't the overt factor that it typically is when media presents us a police brutality case. Because obviously all five officers were black, Tyree Nichols, black. But that's really intrigued me that even with that kind of different reality, it's still remaining very on the forefront of not just news media, but kind of the collective conscience of America. And I think that's a good thing. You know, that it may dispel some of the... conspiracies that you know all of media institutions are only narrative driven and if it doesn't meet your narrative it doesn't get coverage so so this is you know so there could be some silver linings in in that aspect but but i've been kind of watching as people have been wrestling with uh the racial nature of this one since we know the typical uh refrain is white police officers tragically abuse you know black alleged criminals and or Hispanic you know whatever the case may be and this one obviously a different completely different racial twist but and what's even crazier is the behavior seems even more egregious Like it's this, the footage of this seems just a million times worse than even the George Floyd footage, which is, you know, it's really morbid to kind of try to, you know, compare these things. And, you know, maybe I shouldn't, but that's just kind of what it seems to me. And that's, so that's even a different twist. And so all I have to say is I've been chewing on this kind of, One of the many conclusions that I'm coming to, and this is not a comprehensive conclusion, and I'm not saying this conclusion is perfectly accurate, but it's just a place my mind goes is when I look at Memphis and Based on the reporting, I'm listening to all different sources of reporting from Washington Post, New York Times, to conservative outlets like Daily Wire, things of that nature. That's always, I want to get as broad of a perspective as I possibly can. And the fact pattern that I'm pulling from all of these sources kind of combined is that Memphis, like a lot of metropolitan areas, have... have used kind of a single-factor analysis to improve their police departments, largely in wake of the George Floyd tragedy. But even, I think it goes before that, where those concerned with police deaths, police brutality, things of that nature, there's... there's often kind of a single factor analysis where it kind of goes something like this, white cop, black victim. So the solution is to make sure that that racial imbalance is eliminated. So Memphis in particular, and this was reported on a New York Times article that I saw, Memphis in particular in recent years made a concerted effort to make sure that police force, you know, it's Memphis is a 64%. And this is the stats that were reported in the article. It was 64% African-American population in the city. That's, that's a significant, that's a majority. And so they, they've been working hard to get, to have the police force reflect, reflect that, that, that demographic in the community. And so the police force now has grown to be, I want to say it was 56%, if I'm remembering the stats right, 56% officers are African-American. And most recent chief of police hire African-American woman, who I'm sure by now you've heard her speak in press conferences and so forth. So just watching that, it's... and kind of seeing that you would look on one hand and, you know, depending on what lens you're looking at this, at the Memphis Police Department through, you would say that's progress. That is steps in the right direction as far as representative government in community is making sure the community, the governing authorities over community represent the demographics within the community and you'd be like, that's, that's huge. And so, but yet it produces one of the most horrific of, at least in my kind of limited, you know, experience, it produces one of the more horrific images of police brutality. This one, doesn't leave really, you know, unless more footage comes out or something, you know, that I'm not aware of, like this one leaves zero room for anything other than criminal behavior, criminal activity, which I know, you know, during the Derek Chauvin case, there was a case brought forward to kind of say his behavior was wrong. negligent but not criminal so to speak you know again i'm not you know you can look at our episode on that um before i'm not trying to make uh make a case either way there but this one it's just unless much more evidence is produced it's it's a pretty you know cut and dry case here of of clear criminal activity by the police officers and and to me i was just led to think through is this what happens when you address complex issues with low-level single-factor analysis when you when you take something like um police brutality in in communities that that have higher crime rates and and there's um you know different racial factors at play and and think things of that nature you know is is this what happens when you kind of, so to speak, because your, your analysis has been so low level when I mean by low, I just mean low on the, on the kind of, you know, cognitive scale of, of depth of thought, you know, like very surface level has kind of been the, the media analysis and, and the political analysis of these issues over the past few years that, that, It didn't solve the Memphis Police Department. It didn't prevent kind of improving diversity when it comes to a racial standpoint and having better representation from the racial community. It didn't solve, it didn't foolproof the police department from having what appears to be a significant, significant, tragically epic failure here. And so that's just kind of, that's my current event tie-in that I was thinking through. And then I kind of applied that to where I've been chewing on this progressive Christianity versus conservative Christianity and just thinking through how are we doing the same thing to try to address our lack of unity problems within the Christian church, where we kind of think the same way on low-level single-factor analysis in order to solve some of our unity issues within Christendom. And we'll think cultural factors that can run along racial, socioeconomic lines. We'll go down that path. that kind of train of thought. We'll go down stylistic train of thought, meaning like, you know, these certain types of people, like these certain kinds of styles. We'll go down methodological, like, you know, this type of church and the way they approach their liturgy and, you know, music, hymns versus contemporary, you know, all these kind of, what I would say are kind of low level, surface level single factor analysis that leads us to come to solutions to what are very, very complex issues. And so Lord brought me back to Galatians chapter two, and that's going to be our word of the day as just laid it on my heart. And I was like, ah, Galatians two, I've already done I've already done an episode on Galatians 2. I kind of feel like I exhausted everything there is to kind of pull out of there. That was the episode on Galatians 2. I believe it was titled, When You're Arguing With Another Christian, I believe. It's something to that line. I need to promote my own episodes a little bit better than what I do, so sorry about that. But I dug back in, and Lord, the Spirit just kind of brought me, you know, go back a little further into the chapter, you know, where I took you guys before. I started in verse 11, and the Spirit just said, start verse 1 and see where this takes you. And man, my eyes just, boom, instantly opened to a concept I never really even considered before. And And I did a quick Google search, and this concept we're going to talk about today, as far as I'm aware with a quick basic search, it's not even a thing yet. So maybe today we're going to make something a thing in the church. We're going to create a thing, and maybe it'll become something in the church. Who knows? Maybe it could be at the ground level of some... helpful concept that helps bring greater unity amongst the body. And what kind of brought us here and the reason why I said all this stuff that we've talked about so far is that this does require all of us, this concept requires all of us to go a little bit higher in the cognitive scale of understanding. Bloom's taxonomy, I'm in education, so I study this stuff, I know this stuff. Bloom's taxonomy, it's this hierarchy of understanding. And as teachers, it's more difficult to teach at those higher levels. It's more fun, it's easy to stay at the low levels of understanding Listen, repeat after me, memorize what I just said and regurgitate it. That's a very low level cognitive exercise and too much of education is involved in that. And the reason why is because it's so much easier on the instructor. And it makes kids have the experience of success because, oh, I got an A on this test. Well, where did you learn? And that low-level cognitive ability doesn't stick with you. That's why we all say after high school, like, I don't remember anything that I was taught. Not that the teacher didn't teach anything. It's just it was on such a low cognitive level that your brain didn't have to exercise much in order to get it, in order to grasp it. So it's just like exercising your body like... The easier it is on your muscles, the less strength is going to be retained. When we get shredded, we get ripped. Those are when we're in the gym pushing our muscles to absolute max. The same with education. Sorry for the rabbit trail, but it's stuff we don't think about. So really, if we want to go any direction to solving our unity issues and having an answer for why Christians can't get along and we actually want to see something different, we do. All of us. And it's a collective. It's not just one group that can think deeply about this stuff. It's all of us. We have to push a level deeper. And so that's what we're going to do today. And And kind of the concept that I was able to pull over out of Galatians 2 is what I'm calling missional diversity. Now, those two words in and of themselves aren't brand new to Christendom at all. Missional is a big, big buzzword. Diversity can be a big buzzword. But kind of putting them together into one cohesive, well-defined concept, I haven't seen that yet, so... If we're the first in on it today, praise the Lord. If we're not, if someone else has already gone there, that's great too. So today, I want to give us the case for missional diversity. What is it and why is it so essential right now in our faith? So that's where we're going to dive in. Let's read Galatians 2. For your sake, we'll start in verse 7, even though, you know, just for the, I guess, the sake of the length of the podcast here, we won't go all the way back to verse 1. We'll go 7 to 14, and man, there's just some amazing stuff that I didn't see in here before, or I saw it before, but I didn't quite see the gravity of the application, man. That's why, just read your Bibles, read them over and over and over and over again, and And the more well-known a passage is in your mind, the deeper you'll be able to get stuff out of it. And the more eye-opening moments you'll be able to have. There's no other book like it. So, Galatians 2, 7, we're jumping into an already kind of established train of thought that Paul's laying down in this chapter. He says, On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised... Just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised, for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles. And when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. So at this, just quick context, at this Galatians chapter 2, Paul's kind of running through his testimony, kind of what after Damascus, after the road to Damascus, and he kind of walks through his discipleship as sort of a testimony of validation that, number one, he's kind of has a deep expertise in the subject matter that he digs into in Galatians, justification by faith, and kind of his unique background, you know, to this and the authority that he speaks with. It's just a fascinating chapter to kind of see how Paul lays this out. He's just kind of given the story of how his ministry came to be and how it was validated by people like Peter, James, John. So that's 7 through 10. And then verse 11 says, But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. So here we have the juxtaposition. We see Paul lays out how he was validated given the right hand of fellowship, we'll talk about that a little bit later, but how he's validated by Peter, James, and John, and kind of what he says the pillars, what Paul called the pillars of the Christian church at this time. Like these are the godfathers. And so Paul went to them to have his ministry, quote unquote, recognized, validated, so that he could move forward in unity with what God was doing in all of the church. which is a crazy concept in modern evangelical circles. Like that's, man, that's probably its own episode at some point. So now this verse 11, you see this unity being put to the test. They were able to find unity and we're going to talk about how they were able to Come to unity. And then we see verse 11, how immediately this unity is put to the test and how it's resolved. Crazy. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles. But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party." So the tension came that Peter went to Antioch, where Paul was kind of the lead pastor, so to speak, and was a converted Gentile community to Christ. They weren't Gentiles. They weren't Jewish in their kind of upbringing and lifestyle, but then they came to faith in Christ through Paul's ministry. So Peter goes up there to kind of check out, to visit Paul, their friends. And so while he's up there visiting, spending time, he's doing what Paul does, and he's eating with the Gentiles. But when James comes up, To visit as well, he noticed Peter changes, that he draws back from eating with the Gentiles, and he separated himself. And so then at that point, he ate with, I assume, James and other, I would say, Jewish Christians that were also there, part of the community. And so verse 13 says, Paul says,"...and the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas..." This is Paul's dude who was given the right hand of fellowship with Paul,"...was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?" So Paul kind of asserts a gospel authority. We'll talk about that as well in order to bring resolution to this issue. And his judgment is sound. It's spirit-led, so it resolves the issue. Just fascinating stuff. But in this concept of... missional diversity just kind of popped off the page as I was digging into this. So what we'll do here is we'll define what missional diversity is. Basically, there's four components to what I believe I would consider missional diversity. And then as we step these out, as we walk these out, we'll highlight each one and how why missional diversity could be a part of the solution to what ails the Christian church today, where you jump on Twitter and you see this venom being spewed between the progressive Christians and the conservative Christians, each one claiming biblical authority, but each one and this is what grieves me the most, not representing the grace of the gospel to each other. It's really kind of, it can be kind of depressing. So first we'll dive into the four components of missional diversity, just so you can kind of understand what I believe Paul is laying out here in the goodness it is for the modern American church. So First component. Well, the four components, there's variety, equality, authority, and priority. Okay, so those are the four. Variety, equality, authority, priority. So first, variety. We see very clearly in chapter 2, verse 7, we see a variety of different missions. Okay? Verse 7, he says, On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised. So, what is defined here are two distinctly different missions. One, a mission to the uncircumcised masses, and the other to those in Israel that had been raised in Jewish tradition and converted to the Christ, the dynamics that are at play in those two different missions could not be any more different. That's why God calls two separate people very strong, like two of the heroes of the faith, Peter and Paul. to be the kind of the leads, the initial fathers of these two separate ministries. And he doesn't, it's interesting, he doesn't call one person to do both, or he doesn't call both of them to do both. Be like, hey, it's all, we're all, you know, kind of these kind of cheesy bumper sticker ethics that we get in American Christianity, where it's like, we're all God's children, you know. So that's kind of the... the low-level thinking that gets us in continued trouble. It's like, well, we all are trying to follow the same book, so we kind of treat everyone homogeneously in the church. But what we see here in God's unfolding plan of redemption, we see that he calls two distinctly different people with different backgrounds, different life experiences, into two different missions so that's so important for us to understand first and foremost about the mission of the church and i'll parallel that to kind of where we're at today there's there's a variety of people groups that god is calling ministers into and he has called since The time of Christ ministers into, he calls, you're primarily called to a people, not a position. So that's a whole separate episode that we'll probably do one day because I've been sharing that a lot with people that I'm helping mentor right now. So that's... So important for us to understand, if God's put a calling on your life, the primary heartbeat of that calling is a people group, a community. He will call you to a community. That's what you see played out all through the book of Acts. God moving and calling Paul at the first missionary to different communities, different people groups. The role, the positions that he holds in those communities changes community by community. He talks about that. In some places, his position is tent maker, but he's just kind of a lay person who is... volunteering his gifts as a leader and an apostle in the word. Other places, he's an established elder. Other places, he's a vocational pastor where he talks about this community supported me, so he didn't have to support himself. So there's people groups. You're primarily, if you're a minister of the gospel, which we all are to a certain degree, but if you're trying to follow what you believe is a calling on your life, the focus of that calling will be a people group. And as we know here in America, there's a variety of people groups. In Galatians, there's two that were identified. The Gentile, the circumcised, and the uncircumcised. And Jew and Gentile. Now, gosh, we can... There's so many different markers of different types of communities. It's hard to even start defining because there's so many of them. But it's so important to understand first the variety. That there's going to be a variety of missions going on at the same time. And that's the trick. That's what we... all of these variety of missions is happening at the same time, just like Paul was ministering to the Gentiles while Peter was ministering and discipling Jewish Christians, all at the same time. And so why is that so important? Because right now we kind of take the wisdom of one type of mission and we try to enforce that across all the other types of missions, all the other varieties of missions. We take... oh man, this is what I preach to my community. These are the messages I share. This is the plan I've kind of been using and the cultural realities that this is how we address cultural realities in our context. And because it seems right in that context that that ministry is ministering, because we're in this global world now connected by social media, We enforce those ministry strategies and priorities across all different varieties. And I think that's the first thing that, I mean, if we could let go of that, that would help tremendously and let Galatians 2 kind of Be your guide in Acts 15. This is a major theme throughout all the New Testament literature. It's all over the place. I'm just showing you where I think it's the most clearly defined and laid out. Number one to missional diversity is variety in mission. Understanding that there's... literally thousands of different people groups with different cultural dynamics at play. And all those missions are going on currently at the exact same time. So there's going to be a variety in our approaches to each of these people groups. That's huge. Next. So, first, variety. Number two, equality. Each mission to each people group is equal in value. We see that laid out in verse 9. And when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me... They gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. So this right hand of fellowship, it was this ritual in the early church that symbolized just a deep partnership and covenant. Basically, this was Paul and Barnabas' official inclusion into Christ. the church into the the ministry of the church of jesus christ and so what it it spoke to to paul and barnabas equal value equal value and you know equality that they were the same even though they were going to a different variety of mission it was basically going to be treated the same as the first mission which was the apostles starting in Israel but now as they saw the God pushing outside of Israel they knew they needed soldiers on the front line and Paul obviously was the first one so equality so when you see variety of missions out there to a variety of different people groups we also at the same time have to give it equal value in our minds. And we struggle with that as fallen Christians, because typically the work that we're involved in is like the seminal, most important work in all of the kingdom of God. That's our fallen nature. That's our self-centeredness. And so we have to fight that. We have to battle that. And be like, no, these ministers that are being called out to other people groups... just as important as everything that i'm doing okay so there's variety there's equality equality solves the kind of the the lesser value issue that happens the belittling that happens you know out there it's like we we can we can do that when when we see ministers called you know to like And I'll just call it like it is. There are ministers that are called to people groups where LGBTQ plus is a major factor in that community. I'm around, you know, I live right next to Palm Springs and our favorite vacation spot, like our home away from home is Laguna Beach. Both those places are heavy places. heavy lgbtq plus uh communities those you have like i was thinking once of you know what it was like to you know i prayed through like planning a church at laguna beach because obviously it's it's an area that would be ripe for some some good gospel ministry but i was thinking about what concessions i would have to make in order to be welcomed in that community to have a to say to have a building that would be welcomed in that community there would there the, the gay rights, you know, that would have to be addressed because it's, it's a, it's a preeminent value, not just because there's, there's, uh, homosexuals in the community, but because it's, it's a community value. It's very clearly, um, articulated, you know, same, same Palm Springs. I've got good friends that have administered in Palm Springs for years and years and years. And like, if you don't understand, um, really, if you're not ready to embrace the homosexuality aspect of Palm Springs, like you're, you're not going to last long, you know, ministering the gospel in Palm Springs. And I really, you know, took that to heart, you know, so what we can do in sinful contexts is if we're in a context to where say that issue isn't, you know, there's kind of, there's, there's thinking that, you know, is in kind of, there's just a natural, you know, you know kind of maybe conservative community you know let's say you're ministering in rural Oklahoma or Texas or something where where that is where you know gay rights are not an issue at all and there's actual you know belief you know against such things you're not only are you not going to have to make any sort of you know understanding and concessions when it comes to LGBTQ plus issues um you're probably going to be vocally upholding the biblical standards of gender and marriage and things like that. You're going to have to go kind of the exact opposite. So where equality comes in is understanding that that ministry, if you're on the conservative side of it, that ministry to the LGBTQ community, communities is just as equal as what you're doing in rural Oklahoma, even though there's different, what you believe may be more biblically aligned political mindset there. It's still a people group. Both are people groups in desperate need of the gospel because our conservative political mindsets don't save us just as much as our Our homosexual lifestyles can't save us. Neither can save you. So both ministries need to be had and therefore they're both equal. All right. I hope this makes sense. I tried to break this down into kind of the most, you know, kind of bite-sized chunks as I thought I could in a way that even my simple mind can understand it. So I hope if I can get it, I'm pretty sure you can. So third component is authority. In order for there to be peace, in order for there to be tension, in order for there to be the ability to resolve conflict, there has to be an authority. There has to be an authoritative voice that transcends, that corrects, rebukes. That has to exist. As much as we resist authority, even as Christians, it has to be there. And we see in 2.14, we see a clear authority. In verse 14, where Paul says, But when I saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel. The gospel becomes the authority. Not this tradition, not this theological perspective. it's just, let's boil it all down. Like if you're reformed or you're a minion or you're, you know, uh, you're Baptist, you're, you're this or that. None of those, those are, those are, you know, context to, to understand and to take into account. But the authority, as far as is a ministry moving into the wrong is, is a, uh, Is a missional variety, a variation, a minister who's going off into their calling, are they heading into the wrong? The only thing that is authoritative is what Paul said is, is their conduct not in step with the truth of the gospel? So the gospel becomes the authority. And not just kind of the gospel as this kind of nebulous concept, but an experience, right? the the people that you're ministering to you look at their experience and are they gaining an experiential understanding of the gospel is is what they're experiencing from the christian community can that can you draw a straight line to the gospel truth of salvation through grace by faith not by works can you draw us to what they're actually experiencing so and paul's instance he's seeing no what they're experiencing is not gospel because he's seeing um christians show up in the name of christ pulling back from their certain aspects of their relationship with the gentiles the the non-circumcised believers and they would they wouldn't eat with them because you know it makes sense so many of of the orthodox jewish laws had to do with eating and food and so Being able to keep the law was more important than being in relationship with a fellow brother in Christ. And he's saying what the Gentiles were seeing, they're like, oh man, they're in a position to feel less than because they weren't holding these kind of ceremonial rituals. He's like, no, no, no, no, no. In this context, no. where we're predominantly Gentile, we can't let that experience. That experience actually kicks the legs out of our gospel witness when we're trying to preach that salvation is by grace through faith and not works. What you're doing is you're putting a work into their ability to be in relationship with you. And they're going to confuse that with Christ. And so... The authority is the gospel. We always look at a context and we look at the variety that someone's ministering in and we're asking, are the people that are learning about Christ, are they experiencing the manifold wisdom of the gospel? Hope that makes sense because that's key because then you have authority to come in and we need to be corrected. I need to be corrected. You need to be corrected. This minister needs to be corrected. So it's clear Paul knew exactly what he was analyzing and he knew the authority that he was standing on when he leveled a critique. Man, that would really change the critiques that are going on out there right now. So we have variety, we have equality, we have authority, and we have priority. And this is, I think, the last key that unlocks the goodness of missional diversity and unlocks the goodness of what it can do in the modern American church. The context of the mission determines what is given priority in ministry. The context of the mission determines determines what is given priority in the ministry. Look at verse 15. This is after, I'm sorry, the second half of 14, sorry. When he said it, when he saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, he's saying there's an authority here that we can all agree upon. I said to Cephas before them all, If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? That's what Paul is saying is, Peter, we're not in Jerusalem. We're not in Jerusalem. If we were in Jerusalem, people would readily understand based on the context of Jerusalem, the cultural realities of Jerusalem, that people are going to be separated by their kosher diets. It's going to be understood. So the context of that ministry that you do, Peter, where we kind of separate the believers based on whether they're trying to be kosher or not, that's Understood just in the context. Here you're in Gentile. You're at Antioch. You're up here where none of that is understood. There's no background. There's no understanding of any of that. So guess what? Here the priority is the context. So guess what? Here you're going to exercise your freedom in Christ to live like a Gentile. Because what you eat doesn't save you. What you eat doesn't save you. So you have freedom. You have freedom to sit with a Gentile, even though if you're trying to eat kosher and you're trying to keep Jewish traditions as it pertains to food, you can do that individually. But corporately, you have to sit with all your brothers and sisters in Christ. You see, that's what just blows my mind about this passage. It's just so genius. It's so important. It's just so necessary that even the Apostle Paul prioritized kind of his aspects of his ministry based on the context of the people group that he was called to in that moment. Wow, if we could give each other freedom to do that. Instead of trying to claim superiority based on your context, if you're in a conservative... If you're ministering in the Bible Belt where there's these age-old, generations-old routines and fundamentals of community life there... you're going to prioritize, you know, different aspects of your ministry than if you're in like crazy, you know, liberal left wing Southern California community somewhere. Like it's, and that's, what's awesome is that's okay. That's okay. That's, we try to We try to create biblical standards where there's not biblical standards, where the gospel is very clear. We have freedom. Just read the whole book of 1 Corinthians. It's just this manual of how to exercise freedom in all circumstances. It's an amazing book. But what we do is we give priority to the things that we're most comfortable with, and then we enforce those priorities ourselves. on people in different ministry contexts. We don't have to do that. The context of the mission determines the priority. So yeah, if you're in this community that has this kind of long-standing traditions and experiences, there's freedom you have in Christ to engage concessionally and vice versa. Because the bottom line is trying to get all the varieties of missions to the same understanding that none of our cultural traditions and our cultural understandings save us. None of them do. Only Christ can save us. Whether you're on your high horse, conservative, Republican, look at us, we're going to build a country that reflects biblical values. Even if you succeed at that, none of that saves you. Only Christ can. Or if you're kind of in left-wing liberal Democrat land and where it's just like our compassion for all people and our embracing of all genders, ethnicities, and sexual orientations, that's what makes us so noble and good. The message is the same. None of that saves you. None of that can save you. Only Christ can save you. You see, the gospel is the same, but in order to have that gospel be experienced in the different cultural contexts, there has to be different approaches. So let me make a proposal before we close. Let's just sit and thank God that he sent ministers of the gospel to all these different types of people groups. I'm so grateful because I know that I could only be effective in maybe a couple different types of people groups. And the longer I minister, the more keenly aware I am of that because when I try to branch out and go into different places, I'm like, oh, thank God. Somebody who's going to be way more effective than me is here because I'm terrible. I open my mouth and it's like people think I'm speaking a different language. You know, it's just it ain't working. You know, so missional diversity, hopefully, if understood correctly and applied correctly, can help us. Thank God that he has this genius plan of sending different types of people with different types of backgrounds, different types of passions and convictions into different people groups. And all these missions, even in the diversity of them, they're all equal in value. They're all submitted to the authority of the gospel, the saving work of Jesus Christ. And that authority can be submitted to in a variety of different ways because of a salvation based on grace, not works. And we can allow people to minister in different priorities than what we would use in our current context. It's just, I don't know. I hope you get as excited as I do about maybe seeing an American Christendom that is that can just have this freedom and just enjoy as opposed to Twitter battle with each other. Be like, wow, that's, that's remarkable that you're able to reach that people group. And I could never do what you're doing. I can never really, I wouldn't be comfortable, you know, kind of doing the things that you have to do, but, but you're there and not only are you comfortable, but you're loving it and you're thriving in it. Like, I don't know. It's just, it's just amazing. It's awesome. So yeah, Like I said, this could be the beginning of something. I do have a kind of continuing down this vein. I'm trying to line up different interviews with different people on this progressive versus conservative spectrum. So I think our next episode you'll be hearing from someone who agreed to talk to me from the progressive camp. And we're going to get an opportunity to apply some missional diversity. So yeah, enjoy it. I'm looking forward to what the Lord does kind of with this. So until next time, thank you all for joining. Share, like, subscribe, do all that good stuff. Get the word out if this has been useful, helpful. But as always, until next time, we love you. Christian Well, everyone. Have a great, great week.