The CHRISTIANing Podcast
The CHRISTIANing Podcast
Ep.74 - When Christians Can't Get Along Pt.2
In this episode, Kirk has a great conversation with Pastor Zach Lambert of Restore Austin. Restore Austin is a church that intentionally provides a safe community for all people including those from openly LGBTQ+ lifestyles. Zach's convictions push him into the feared "Progressive" zone of Christian Twitter, where he openly shares his beliefs and how they shape the ministry of Restore Austin. Kirk and Zach dive into the progressive v. conversation debate and specifically LGBTQ+ questions and how Restore attempts to remain biblically faithful while wholeheartedly affirming those from typically denounced lifestyles in the Christian faith. Enjoy!
To hear Zach's sermon he referenced on the show click here
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SPEAKER_01:right, everyone, and welcome back to the Christian Inc. podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to another edition where we take the theology of Sunday to the reality of Monday. And hopefully we all walk away being able to Christian well at the end. So glad you tuned in. Was blessed this episode to have a conversation with a new friend that I was able to make. I'll let you just tune into this conversation that I had with a pastor as we do part two on when Christians can't get along. I had the opportunity to connect via Twitter with a pastor who would fit under that Twitter progressive camp that we talked about last episode. So if you're new to the podcast or you haven't caught up yet, tune in to part one because it kind of lay the foundation for this conversation you're about to listen into. And I'll just say... We were able to meet for less than an hour. So we both, I know, left a lot of meat on the bone with the kind of deep topics we were talking about. But also just tune into part one because I just in my heart was screaming missional diversity, missional diversity the whole time. Obviously, I didn't have time to break that all down for our guest. But yeah, hopefully you check it out. But enjoy this conversation. Have an awesome, awesome week. All right, everyone, and welcoming in today, we got Mr. Zach Lambert of Restore Austin. Do I have that correct? Restore Austin? Yes. Correct. Awesome. Pastor of Restore Austin. And so just kind of following up on our last episode, talking about why when Christians can't get along. Thought it'd be awesome to just have a conversation with somebody I came across on Twitter. I'll kind of read one of the tweets that got me kind of interested and had me reach out to Zach just to kind of explore. And we'll get into, Zach, we'll probably get into like the labels and stuff first because I kind of want to see where you fit on that kind of stuff. But first, Zach, just kind of, Tell us a little bit about yourself, Restore Austin, and kind of what you're doing down in Texas.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I appreciate you having me on, Kirk. I grew up here in Austin, where I'm at again. I spent my first 18 years here. I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, kind of at the height of the conservative resurgence or the fundamentalist takeover, depending on how you look at it. And Uh, my, my pastor was definitely very involved with that kind of a hellfire and brimstone, um, social, uh, kind of culture warrior guy. Um, it was a mega church here in Austin. One of the first ones, my grandparents had been at it since the very early days. My dad grew up in it and then we grew up in it. Um, And had a lot of difficulty with that kind of version of Christianity and experienced a lot of kind of church hurt, culminating with being 12 or 13. I was like formally kicked out of the youth group at the church we were at, which was another Southern Baptist church at the time, where the youth pastor took my parents aside after a Wednesday night and said, your son is asking too many questions and causing other kids to doubt their faith. and pushing back on core beliefs that we have and disrupting our Bible studies with these questions. And so he's not allowed to be a part of church anymore, youth group related things anymore. So my parents still made me go on Sundays, but I didn't have to go to Wednesday nights or youth camps or anything like that anymore. Part of me was really relieved because I kind of hated it. but part of me was also really, I think hurt in that. Um, it confirmed something in me that I'd been feeling that I didn't really have a place in what at the time, what I thought was like all of Christianity. Cause I was, you know, 12, I had a pretty narrow view of what Christianity was. Um, and that's where a lot of my friends and family were. And so it was difficult. Um, spent a lot of time kind of over the next five or six years evaluating that, um, ended up as a longer story, but ended up coming to faith as a 17 year old through a, a series of events. After an overdose and some other things that had happened, I started just kind of asking some existential questions about God and reality and life and began to read the Gospels again, really kind of for the first time. Going through the Gospel accounts and realized I knew a lot about the beginning and the end of the story about Christmas and Easter, but I really did not know anything about the life of Jesus and the work and the way of Jesus. And yeah, I began to kind of fall in love with with following Jesus. And that's when I kind of attempted to become a follower of Christ and have been trying to do that ever since. I went to college out of high school to play football. That was going to be kind of my path, but I got hurt as a 19 year old, had a career ending injury and through that got involved in a church, was initially hired as a youth pastor there as a 19 year old. And I've worked in churches ever since, graduated from college, Got married and we moved to the Dallas area. I went to Dallas Theological Seminary, a master's of theology from there. Worked at some churches in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for about six years. And then we moved back here to Austin. My wife's also from this area. in summer of 2015 to start Restore, our church that we launched in February of 2016. So I don't know when this will be released, but we're recording it in February. And so we're coming up on seven years as a church. Yeah, which has been great. So our church is a place where anyone has a seat at the table and everyone can experience the extravagant love of Jesus. That's kind of the vision statement we use a lot. We've got core values and kind of core markers of what it means to follow Jesus and all that stuff. I would say when we started, we would probably be, you know, 2014, 2015, we're kind of getting everything going before the formal launch in 2016. We would have probably been on the edge of the evangelical tent. But, you know, 2016, I think, and then subsequent years saw the evangelical tent shrink quite a bit. And I think we moved outside of it. more so as we kind of leaned more into who we felt God was calling us to be. And so that resulted in us being kicked out of a few different networks and denominations that we'd originally started with for our first three or so years of being a church. And so currently we're a non-denominational church. We do work with a network of other churches that kind of fall under this post-evangelical banner. And I'm pretty involved with those folks. But that's just been over the last couple of years, so. Yeah, that's a little bit about where I come from and our
SPEAKER_01:church. Wow, that's a great quick summary, but you hit a lot. And like I said, I'm going to try to be disciplined because there's so many trails. I jumped on your website and I'm so curious about so many things. And maybe if this goes well, maybe we can have a few conversations because I just know our time won't be enough to really dive deep into this. how curious I am. But just for everybody else's sake, kind of the tweet that I wanted to give a flavor of what caused me to reach out to you, Zach, which is a huge appreciation that you'd actually kind of take a cold Twitter DM and respond to it. That doesn't happen a lot. So I really appreciate that. But you tweeted out, I think it just kind of encapsulates kind of like what got my curiosity started. You said, I believe in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus. Scripture is inspired by God. The Apostles' Creed is true. I also believe Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ plus folks should be affirmed. God desires justice and flourishing for all. And I'm not alone. There are tons of us, which I just a clear, direct statement. And we won't have time. I don't want to dive into all the categories that are presented there. If we have time, we'll try to maybe go a little bit deeper in the LGBTQ plus kind of conversation. I think just as an illustration of where kind of maybe alternative thinking can take you when it comes to, let's say, non-traditional thinking. I don't know the best way to phrase it. I'm hard to
SPEAKER_03:offend, Kirk,
SPEAKER_01:so
SPEAKER_03:you're
SPEAKER_01:good, man. I appreciate it. You never know. So kind of where I've been, kind of where my head has been, I'm a passive Twitter observer. I was thinking about this yesterday. I'm like, I'm more of a commenter. I comment stuff and my comments on tweets get like thousands and thousands of views. My actual tweets are much, much less than that. So I'm a Twitter commenter, I guess, by trade. But this progressive versus conservative Twitter kind of war that's going on in it and You know, we can go any direction with that. But so a tweet like that that I read, like, I think would fit under that progressive Christian mantra, quote unquote, label. So I think starting there is that. For me, labels are only useful as far as efficiency of language. Totally agree. when it goes to stereotyping and stuff, like, yeah, that's, I don't want it, but I do, you know, there, there does come a point where you don't have five hours to kind of describe yourself, you know? So sometimes you just have to throw out like progressive or conservative just to get the conversation started. So, so like when I read that, I'd be like, okay, that, that fits in this progressive Christian. Okay. So did you, do you accept, like, where do you go with, with that kind of labeling and stuff?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I don't love the label. I wouldn't use it about myself. I wouldn't even probably use it about our church just because it means so many different things to so many different people. You know, there are a lot of people that come to our church that would say, I'm looking for a progressive church. And I heard this was one of them. For people like that, it makes sense. What they're saying is non-traditional or non-evangelical or something like that. That's probably a more accurate version of what they're trying to say. But progressivism has a long history inside of Christianity. That's why it means so many different things to so many different people. Liberalism inside of Christianity means so many different things to so many different people. I went to a very conservative seminary, kind of a bastion of conservatism inside of the evangelical seminary world, and got their flagship Masters of Theology 120-hour degree thing. And so I feel like there are things that I can speak to across these lines that I want to be helpful in. So when it comes to, you know, conservatism and liberalism inside of Christianity, what I was always taught and I think I still hold to this is that liberalism really describes more of a denial of like creedal theology. So like a denial of the resurrection, a denial of maybe a virgin birth or the deity of Christ, things like that. And so like if you were on our website and saw our doctrinal statement, we're not anywhere close to liberal. And so sometimes my worry about progressivism is that or the label progressive Christian is that it can be lumped in in that same scope of liberalism. Right. So like some people use progressive and liberal interchangeably. And basically, a lot of times it's used by conservatives or fundamentalists to describe liberalism. people who have left what they consider the actual like core of the faith of Christianity. And, or at least at the very least pushing to say, progressives are in the process of leaving the core of Christianity. And so to take it back to the actual tweet, that's really the purpose of that tweet is to say, Because I would say, I guess, the first half is very conservative. The second half is very progressive. My point in saying that is to say there are lots of people, myself included, I pastor a church filled with them, and I interact with thousands of them online every week, of people who hold to these core theological things that have defined Christianity for thousands of years, the things that I mentioned in that tweet in the first part, But also that actually their faith conviction, their attempts to follow Jesus have led them to a place of being more, quote unquote, progressive on maybe some social issues that I describe in the second half of the tweet. And so the attempt is to, number one, help people give a voice to what they're feeling. You know, people online to be able to say, oh, this does describe me, too. And it's really helpful to know that I have a place. I have a pastor who sees me. I have all of these things when maybe they don't feel like that, right? That's really why I use social media primarily to try to give folks like that a home and a voice. And then secondarily, it also allows people who are maybe more conservative traditional, not just theologically, but also maybe politically or socially, to see that the outcomes of holding maybe some core conservative theological stances are not necessarily the same outcomes that exist in their lives, right? So they might agree with the first half of the tweet and not the second half. But what the assumption is, is that anybody who agrees with the second half of the tweet probably doesn't agree with the first half. And the point of the tweet is to say that's not true. There's lots of people who hold both of these things simultaneously and not even necessarily intention. They hold the second half because they hold the first half. And realizing that maybe the first half has led a conservative person to something different politically or socially or something like that, but that it's just as applicable to say that the first half has led to the second half of the tweet for people like me and others. I guess that's really what I was trying to do with the tweet specifically. And it got your attention a little bit. So I guess, I guess on some level it was accomplished, but I don't know about fully. There's things that you can only say in 180 characters that get a little messed up, you
SPEAKER_01:know? No, no. I like, like I said, it, it, it engaged my curiosity just cause I'm, I'm already in, in this, in this space in my head, you know, kind of working, working through these things from a, from a societal you know impact but uh yeah you're right like that that's one of my things like one of my things that I'm what I see on Twitter I don't see and you can push back on this me personally I don't see it anywhere in my real life I don't the conversations that I see on Twitter and I've I run a large Christian school where we have all kinds of denominations and faiths even. We're not a covenant school where families have to sign. So I feel like I have a pretty representative understanding of the way people dialogue with each other, at least in Southern California, which is there may be, like I put in our notes, there may be a geographic kind of change. Southern California, we're maybe a little more comfortable. There's so much diversity of thought around us. If you're not comfortable with it, you've probably already moved to Texas or whatever. But that's kind of one of my cautions of people that spend a lot of time on social media and they get so frustrated and worked up. I really don't think that that's representative of what's going on in the real.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So, no, but that's super helpful, that explanation. I think you helped me find a lot of commonality with where you're coming from. I like that distinction of progressivism from liberal theology, I guess is what you call it. Because you're right, now that in our current world that politics has now just, it's engulfed everything.
UNKNOWN:Right.
SPEAKER_01:everything's been pushed into the political sphere you know like it was heading that way and then covet i think took it over the ledge and then now everything is you know so so yeah i think most people would would read that tweet and just like you said assume okay progressivism liberal theology this person's not really even attempting to hold to like traditional doctrines of the creeds and things of that nature. So how do you see, I kind of laid out kind of the way I kind of see, how do you see the conservative versus progressive debate in general? Is this helpful? And I think the question that's in my heart is, do you see a desire to find commonality anymore? And I'll just... Again, just to kind of tee you up a little bit, this just happened last night. I'm terrible at Twitter just because I'm not great at such short. So I'm constantly commenting and then like, yeah, that's not really at all what I meant. Back on it, rightfully so. But the whole Grammy Satanist thing. Sure. I was just trying to make what I felt was a very just very basic point of like christians against satan that's like still common ground right that was kind of the point i was trying to make and i i fumbled my words and stuff so it opened the door for people to you know obviously there's this pushback that there's all these conservative christians that hated the grammys and stuff like that i'm just like okay i i can see that i can see kind of the the hysteria around it but at the same time like there still is this common ground of jesus good satan bad right and i couldn't i couldn't even get an amen i couldn't even get a you know so so that just kind of left me a little discouraged like is there like is it just the fact that i might be agreeing with you know kind of trumpy folks or whatever that causes the other side to say not a chance you will not get me to just you will never get me to say amen to anything that i think smells like it sure yeah
SPEAKER_03:yeah gosh it's a great question um and there's a lot to it um Yeah. I'm, I'm generally anti-Satan as well. So maybe, you know, we can find common ground there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think here's the way that I really see the, the larger problem and then more specifically I answer how I try to engage with it and then how I use Twitter specifically and then social media more broadly. Twitter is the thing I'm certainly most active on. So here's what I would say. The, the discourse is, online and the divide that it brings between conservatives and progressives, politically, religiously, all that. And like you said, those categories have been conflated quite a bit in unhelpful ways, I think. But I don't think that it is... I think you're right. It's not completely representative of the street corner or the local coffee shop or something like that. These are not conversations. There's a lot to that. One is that people are much more emboldened behind keyboards than they are in person. Another is that social media rewards antagonism with popularity, right? So like, you know, real basic understanding of how humans work is that what you celebrate people will emulate. So if what is celebrated on Twitter is, is antagonism is things being pushed by algorithms that you're going to disagree with so that you'll engage and comment on it because very basically what Twitter wants you to do is stay on Twitter. That is the basic premise of what Twitter wants you to do. It wants you to stay on Twitter. The easiest way to get you to stay on Twitter is to be in some kind of an argument with someone that is requiring you to either stay on all the time or come back over and over and over again to check a rebuttal that was made, an engagement that happened, back and forth. That is the easiest way to get you to be on Twitter. Probably the second easiest way is something that's called doom scrolling, right? Where like there's just so much bad news on your timeline that you just are continuing to scroll through and absorb it and absorb it and absorb it. So Twitter understands that those are the two things that lead to their preferred outcome, which is you staying on Twitter. And again, that kills the discourse as well. There's a really great book, that I probably have somewhere on my bookshelf behind me, but it's called Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein. Ezra started Vox. Yeah, he's great. He's a progressive political commentator guy, but the book is very grounded and just like, here's research and facts about how we got to where we are. It came out a couple of years ago. And essentially what it argues, which is what we're seeing on Twitter and played out online in many social media spaces, is that there essentially, from a political standpoint, there's no benefit to running a issues-based campaign, a campaign that focuses on what you'd like to accomplish, things like that. And no matter what people say, like online, no matter how many times they say, I wish we just wouldn't attack each other. I wish we would just stick to the issues. No matter what people say anecdotally, all of the research indicates that people turn out to vote and they give money based on voting against a candidate rather than the supporting of a candidate, right? So what turns out voters and what raises money is antagonism. And so you're seeing this circle of fuel. You have the algorithm side of it that I just mentioned, you have the political side of it that's affecting our overall discourse. And so this is what's happening and I find it to be fairly unhelpful. So I think that's happening more broadly. How it connects to how I'm using social media though, and you'll see this if you're engaged with my Twitter specifically, is I very, very rarely comment on people that I disagree with on their tweets. I almost never quote tweet someone and present an alternative opinion. I just don't do that, mostly because I just don't find that it's helpful. What I'm trying to do, though, is talk about things that people are talking about, but in very specific ways that engage with a certain community that doesn't feel like they have people to engage with or community or whatever. And so what that ends up meaning is that I engage with people in my comment section all the time and people with differing views and all of that stuff. But literally, like, I don't remember the last time it's probably been years since I've gone to some random person's tweet and commented under it and said, like, I disagree with this. Right. And here's why you're an idiot. Or even if it's nice, just saying because that is not at all what I'm using social media for. And so this may sound a little bit contradictory to what I was just talking about from the algorithms and me thinking that's not great and all that stuff. But honestly, I care very little about what a like really conservative pastor thinks about my tweets. Like that's not, that's not my audience. Right. So like if I'll, I'll talk to, you know, pastoral community here in Austin of somebody who's a very, very conservative or even fundamentalist pastor here in Austin who has been sent something that I've said online or a sermon of mine and they're really angry and they want to argue with me about it and they want to go to lunch and they want to whatever. I just tell them, no, I don't have any desire. You are not my target audience. And that's true, not just of how I use social media, but that's true of our church too. So there are a million churches in every city in America that would be a great fit for a very traditional, conservative, evangelical to walk into and feel at home. There are not many churches like Restore for people who maybe that tweet that you read earlier described them. There are not many places for them, right? And so we are unapologetically, and that's who we are too, so that's obviously a part of it. We're unapologetically creating a space for those folks. So I'll give you one quick example about how that works practically, and then I'll let you ask more questions. But really early on, we were in our core team stage. We had about 25 adults on a core team. Pre-launch, we were kind of building everything, doing preview services. We had this one family who was a part 22 of our 25 adults did not come directly from another church. They've been out of church, de-churched for a year, two years, 10 years, maybe since they were kids, right? That's who we started with and that's who we've kind of always been. And like I said, who we've been unapologetically for trying to reach. But there was a family who had been recommended by a buddy of mine in San Antonio, and they had gone to his church, and it was a much more traditional evangelical church. They'd moved up to Austin, and so they'd gotten plugged in with our core team. Husband, wife, I think they have four kids, three or four kids. They were like literally the only family who was giving consistently on the core team. They were the only family who like had more than one kid on the core team, right? Like they were a huge part, you know, six people on a core team of maybe 40, including kids, the only consistent givers. And I remember they came to core team gatherings, you know, four or five times. Then the husband asked me to go to coffee. And he had a number of different questions that he wanted to know about the church. Um, some of it theological, but the vast majority was kind of like practical or even situational. So what would you do if X, Y, or Z happened? And I remember he asked me this question about what would you do if a gay couple walked into the church and they were holding hands in the lobby. And, um, I knew what he was asking, but I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, would you ask him to stop holding hands? And I just said, no, no, we're never going to be a church that does that. And I said, can I ask why you would want that? And he decided, I just don't want my kids to see that. And in that moment, I was really like, oh, we're about to lose this family. But there was a decision to make really early on that builds culture and influences decisions that we've made now for the last seven or eight years. And that was to say, hey, man, we're never going to be a church that does that. In fact, we're going to be a church where queer people are fully included in every part of it. So if you need a church where your kids are not going to see queer people engaging with each other, gay people holding hands, whatever that looks like. There are a ton of churches where you can go and I can even give you some recommendations of ones that, you know, I know the pastors or whatever, and you can go to those places and fit in. But for that gay couple who maybe is giving church one last try because they've been through so much at the hands of Christians and churches, like they are going to be the ones that we are going to like cater toward, not you that doesn't want to see, you know, your kid doesn't want to see a gay couple holding hands. So, That is really how we've done Restore, and that's kind of how I've done social media, too. So do they stick with you? They did not. They left.
SPEAKER_01:I figured as much. Yeah. Well, good. I think that's a good segue, because like I said, I love your distinction of not liberal, theological, progressive, just in how we think non-traditionally and approach things not traditionally where you take like lgbtq and i think like that's where people would say okay you those lines are blurred now you know um so i think you you kind of you you got into it but i think where i want to start is just just kind of set the stage like i was on your church website and you spoke it like um affirmation you know that was in the tweet affirmation of lgbtq plus what does that mean practically because i know like in churches or they you have to have some level of policy you have to have some of structure and so Affirmation can mean a lot of things from a policy standpoint.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_01:It's a great question. Every church I know is everybody's welcome, but then it's not really. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03:Really, really great question. So I preached a sermon back in April. It's like a 50-minute sermon about all of this that I can give you as a resource if you have people that want to go deeper into it, but I'll give the high-level explanation. So you have... affirming and non-affirming theology, which is really just biblical interpretation. Non-affirming theology is what most of your folks are going to be used to, which is, okay, there are six passages in scripture that seem to condemn homosexuality, homosexuals in general, maybe, but at the very least, homosexual activity or homosexual sex. And so those six passages, the non-affirming view would say they're there, they condemn this, so it's bad, right? Most people would not read the Old Testament ones in a literal way like that it would require stoning and stuff like that. So it's really the three in the New Testament that most Christian modern kind of non... super crazy fundamentalist Christians would focus on the New Testament ones and say, look, it's here. It's a list from Paul. It's a list of bad stuff. So it's a bad thing, right? That's like non-affirming theology. That has a bunch of practical implications and non-affirming churches about what that means, where the ceiling is. Gay people can come, but unless they're celibate, they can't serve or they can't become a member or they can't get baptized. Like there's a million different ways to do it practically. Affirming theology basically says these six passages are not talking about these kind of covenantal monogamous same sex relationships or queer relationships that we have today. They were condemning something else that existed because those types of relationships didn't exist in the first century culture or the Near Eastern culture. And so it's probably, you know, 20, 25 percent of scholars that would argue like an affirming theology. theological standpoint, although that number is, is continuing to grow. So there's a lot more to be, you know, dived in, dove into, I don't know what the past tense of that. There's a lot more to dive into in those two spheres. But your question was about practicality. So in, in practicality, our church restore does not have like affirming theology as a part of our doctrinal statement, right? Like it's not like a core creedal issue. Like our doctrinal statement is very much just a, a, kind of a modernized version of the Creed, of the Apostles' Creed specifically. But there are very practical questions about this. So the term that we use to describe Restore is that we're fully inclusive, which means that your sexual orientation or gender identity is not a factor on whether you can fully participate in any and every aspect of the church. So that includes attendance and service and worship. Teaching and leadership and eldership and marriage and baptism, all the sacraments, all that kind of stuff. Right. So your sexual orientation, gender identity is not a factor in whether you can do that. So we would, you know, I would perform a same sex marriage or a heterosexual marriage. They would not be barred from that sacrament. because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. So very practically, the idea is there is no ceiling on you inherently because you're either a member of the LGBTQ plus community or you're in an LGBTQ plus relationship or whatever it is. There is no ceiling on you in full participation in the church.
SPEAKER_01:Gotcha. No, that's... And that's like the ceiling is a great way to put it. That's where you typically... see the all are welcome but you know right yeah this is where that that that ceiling gets set and um you mentioned you know the three new testament passages um so and i don't know if if my view i feel like it's it's pretty normal you know not from a conservative progressive standpoint but just how the gospel actually works and how like take like the book of romans actually was written um and so let me let me kind of get get your feedback on
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_01:kind of the the way i've tried to characterize you know homosexuality and things of that nature first of all completely understanding uh just personally i have done the full gamut of the theological spectrum in my personal convictions i've i've gone from crazy liberal theology to reformed Calvinist, I've, I've done the whole gamut, you know, where I sit today is, is trying to reject as, you know, like you said, rejecting as much of those cultural labels as possible, just trying to hold true to what I, to what I, I think is a truly gospel centered view, not, not in the reformed sense of, of a theological camp, but in the, what is the Bible actually trying to present? And yeah.
UNKNOWN:Um,
SPEAKER_01:so again i guess my my struggle has been personally you know because i've been the the inclusive voice um you know for for a long time of my ministry um and then i kind of came to some of these kind of realizations that i didn't have a great answer for it with with that mindset was um you know you said in um affirming non-affirming theology that's that's helpful language i think the first time i'm hearing about that um and i think i think the gospel is purposely trying to completely steer as far away from that whole depiction as possible because i the issue that i've seen with homosexuality because you know that's starting in the 80s and 90s and so forth was uh the the the whole kerfuffle of it was do we say it's a sin or not and like that that's not even that's like That's like, you know, we just watched LeBron James become the scoring champion last night. To me, that's like asking the question, does LeBron James play basketball? It's not even a question worth answering because it's so dumb. Because the only question that matters when it comes to LeBron James is, is he the greatest of all time? That's the question that actually means something. Because to ask, does he play basketball? It's like, just move along. I don't, you know, so... so that's why I don't put any weight to that discussion because the gospel is trying to get us to all understand, especially in Romans that, and he, and he says it explicitly in chapter two, like homosexual, like that's all of us. Like the gospel is trying to get us to identify as much as possible in sin as we possibly can. I think that's Jesus's whole point in, in the sermon of the Mount, you know, talking about like, um, you know, lust. Like, no, you don't even know what lust is. Like, I'm trying to get everybody who reads this book to category themselves in wretched sinner that, according to Romans chapter 1, before we can get to the good news, we have to say the bad news is an object of God's wrath. Like, because without that bad news, the good news is kind of just fluffy. And, you know, the gospel is not fluffy. So, I guess... That's kind of my hesitation is, so then Paul takes it, you know, what I see is kind of a sermon illustration. He says like, okay, just so you know, just how far you, Zach and Kirk, are willing to go, you're willing to kind of deny just the natural relations with opposite sex. That's how far... of a sinner we all are. So asking the question, is homosexual LGBTQ activity a sin? It's the dumbest question, in my opinion, because that's not the point of the gospel. The question is, do me and my heterosexual sin identify with that? And it's become this kind of hierarchy of sin. That's what I push back against. And that's where I have compassion and understanding for anybody progressive voice that they don't find their place in the church because they're like, because they're like, I don't, in the Bible, I don't see a hierarchy of sin. Amen. Praise Jesus. But, but the point is we're all supposed to see this, this kind of depiction that Paul lays out and say, Ooh, that's me. That's me. That's in my heart, just like it's in anybody's heart. So, you know, my saying is we're all the same height that the cross, you know? And so that's where my version of inclusivity comes is that I whatever your particular sexual bent is or mine is like heterosexual sin is the same as homosexual sin but I'm not I think where we made the mistake is we've culturally done terrible because I think it has been Christianity heterosexual is good that's you know as long as you're heterosexual you are sin free sexually and it's like no no no I can mistreat my wife I can sin against my wife just like any, anybody, you know what I mean? Like, so I don't know, it's kind of long and rambling, but what, where does that resonate with you? What am I missing there?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Um, I mean, I agree with some of that. I disagree with some of that. I think the idea that, um, you know, we, we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, I think is a core part of, of the gospel and the Christian faith. Um, We just did a four-week series on sin in December, walking through what sin is, how it started, how it affects all of us, how it's built into our personal lives and our systems and structures in our world, and all of that stuff, right, and how God is keen on eradicating that. What I would disagree with, I think, would be that... I think there's a differentiation and we probably just believe different things theologically, but I would say that there needs to be a differentiation between the object of God's wrath being sinful humans and the objects of God's wrath being sin itself. I think that God is angry at sin and not at his children. I think he hates sin because it hurts his children. And that's why he's so serious about eradicating it both through the cross and through kind of sanctification processes, right? Because These are things that hurt his kids. And so like my theological understanding, even of the return of Jesus for the second time is that Jesus is returning to fully eradicate sin and the evil incarnate behind sin, not to eradicate humanity or sinful humanity even. So I think that's where I think we maybe have like a little bit of a differentiation, but I think overall your main point stands of the, We've all chosen to give in to the influence of evil and chosen sin in different ways. What I would say, though, is I do not think that heterosexuality is inherently sinful. I do not think homosexuality is inherently sinful. I don't think that heterosexual marriages are inherently sinful, and I don't think homosexual marriages are inherently sinful. I think that they can be, and they almost always are in some way, Right. But I think where we've gotten in trouble and where I just don't see this backed up in scripture is to say that, well, heterosexual marriages are sinful only when sin happens inside of them. Whereas homosexual marriages are sinful inherently. Like they're just simple because they're together, no matter if they are the most God honoring, glorifying self-sacrificing couple that's ever existed. Just the fact that they are of the same sex means that it's inherently sinful. And so what I'm teaching is not that like, you know, queer people are don't sin, you know, or that they don't need repentance and a savior and all of that stuff like that. And that is part of the ridiculousness of Twitter and stuff is I get accused of that all the time of like, you don't teach repentance and, and, all of that stuff. What I don't teach is that you need to repent of being gay or being a part of the same-sex community. I don't think there's anything inherently sinful about that. Just like I wouldn't tell you I don't think you need to repent of being heterosexual. I think you need to repent of the sexual sin that you have engaged with throughout your life. You need to repent of the sins that you've engaged in in your relationships and your marriage and all that stuff, just like a homosexual couple or a queer couple would need to, but they're not inherently sinful. I think that's where I'm really trying to help people take that step is to say, and that's why we use the language of fully inclusive and that's why we use the language of your sexual orientation or gender identity is not a factor in whether you can fully participate in the life of the church family. There could be queer people at Restore that wouldn't get to participate in something because of some choice that they've made, right? Like just like a heterosexual person would. Like if somebody is just like unrepentantly hurting someone else in our church, like abusing someone else, right? Like they would be barred from participating in aspects of the church, right? Matthew 18, taught matthew 18 we've practiced matthew 18 your brother sins against you you go to them you tell them your fault the whole thing right so if you're unrepentantly hurting someone you know straight or not straight um doesn't really matter what i'm teaching and what i'm trying to help people understand my perspective interpretation of scripture is that same sex um or let's just say overall lgbtq plus membership in that community relationships inside of it sexual behavior inside of it is not inherently sinful. It can be, and it often is just like heterosexuals often are. Um, but it's not inherently sinful.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. I think I have no problem, uh, agreeing with that. Um, I think again, it's, it's always a battle of nuance and distinction and, um, yeah, I heterosexual is like, my marriage isn't inherently sinful it's just i make it sinful because of
SPEAKER_02:right
SPEAKER_01:because of the condition of me my wife makes it simple because of the condition of her the actual union um where i would and here i want i want to get your your take on this because this is i'm just fascinated because i really get people to really nerd out with this stuff with me people like kirk just okay that's enough out of you um the only reason i make it this i would make a distinction from a heterosexual to a homosexual from a theological standpoint is again from my my what i try to be truly gospel centric in my understanding of scripture is when i read scripture i see God's so passionate about the redemption of his people that he understands what he created. He understands that humans, we don't just learn auditorily. We have to learn experientially. So he weaves the gospel story into our human relationships. And that's very clear Genesis to Ephesians 5, you know, in my opinion. So the whole point of the marital covenant from a theological standpoint, is to affirm the story of how Christ redeems people. That's its purpose. When I do premarital counseling, I'm like, you are a gospel billboard. That's what you are. That's the purpose of your marriage. The purpose of your marriage isn't a misreading of Genesis 2, like you're lonely and God gave you the gift to solve your loneliness. No, no, God... That was not obviously what he was after in creation. He was after a complete understanding of who he is by male and female coming together as one so that all of godliness could be actually experienced by his creation. Because if we just had men on this planet, oh, good God, how terrible would that be?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then Ephesians 5 takes it a step further after the fall and says, okay, well, guess what? Jesus came to redeem. And so marriage is now our primary metaphor for that redemption story. And God gets to be the, in my opinion, I'm perfectly comfortable with him being the authority of selecting how gender plays in that story. And it's my job as the creation of the creator to submit to the way he's decided to tell his story because I care more about the redemption of people than I do care about my political, social preferences. So that's why I would say I would separate from a gender standpoint heterosexual marriage just because the gospel billboard needs to not just be heard through the word of God, but God wanted it to be experienced through, through the human experience of relationship. Cause that's how we all actually learn. You know, so that's where that, that's my conviction that kind of pulled me out of my kind of like all marriages are, need to be treated the same from a theological standpoint, where am I out to lunch on that? You know, what do you think?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'm at here, here on out to lunch. I think a lot of people agree with you. So I just, I don't see how a monogamous, covenantal, same-sex relationship does not also display the metaphor of Christ and the church that Paul uses and God's creation. I think that's probably where we differ.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. And I think I can see... Obviously, I'm taking interpretive license to draw my conclusions. And I'm willing to admit that. Like when you say you're going straight back to Scripture. And this is what I appreciate about listening to you. You're pulling it back to Scripture and saying, okay, well, this is what it actually says. And I think there does need to be humility in myself and all of us to understand that. you know what these convictions that there has been some interpretive license that has gotten me to that place. And
SPEAKER_03:I would say too, I mean, I, Oh God. Okay. I was going to say, I, I appreciate the humility. I, I feel the same way. I mean, I think that we have to have, it's good to have conversations like this that are bathed in humility. Here, here's my, my big, goal for the church. It's twofold. So number one is that wherever a church lands on this theologically and biblically, whether that's affirming or not affirming, whether that's, you know, whatever that looks like even inside of those two, because it's not like a very clear binary, whatever that looks like, my advice, and I coach a lot of churches and pastors through this, including a lot of conservative ones, my advice and hope is that they would just be clear. Our church is about 15% LGBTQ, according to the last survey that we did, I would say every single one of those 15% of people, they have been really hurt, not by a church that's like, no gays are welcome, because they never went to that church, but by churches who said, everybody's welcome, everybody can belong, everybody's a part of the family, and then they hit some invisible ceiling that was never expressed in, like they tried to get their kids dedicated, or they tried to get baptized, or tried to join a small group, or they tried to teach in kids ministry, and they were told, oh, I'm sorry, you can't because you're a same-sex couple or because you're gay or because you're trans or whatever it is so wherever that leads an individual church leadership just like be very clear because clear is kind of saying here is where the ceiling is for people who are not following this sexual ethic here is where the ceiling is some churches do that most churches have something that's kind of covert that really is not out about that, right? Like that doesn't really, you can't find it anywhere. If you ask a pastor about it, they say, let's go to coffee and talk about it. They can't just like send you an email instead. And I think realizing how traumatizing that is to like make a queer person with a bunch of church hurt, like go to coffee with you before they can even hear if they can fully belong in your church. So that's my hope number one. My hope number two is that people that have theological disagreements like you and I, like say we were on a church leadership team together and we were making a decision about the first thing I just talked about. What's the ceiling? How much can queer people participate? My real hope is that, and I think we're moving this way, is that churches would be able to see this similarly to how we currently see divorce in most churches, which is to say there's a lot in scripture about divorce, about when it's okay and when it's not. There's conflicting stuff about when Jesus said it was okay Okay. And Paul said it was okay. And Moses said it was okay. And Jesus seems to say, if you get remarried after divorce, you're in like this permanent state of adultery. It wasn't a biblical reason. And there's lots of conflicting and different interpretations and all that stuff in there. Right. And for us, we've always kind of said, or what we're saying now is, you know what? I don't know if I look at a divorced couple or remarried couple and I say, I don't know if I'd have gotten divorced in that situation. I don't know if I would have gotten remarried after a divorce like that. I don't know exactly what I would have done. I think I would have tried to stay together. I think I would have done things differently, whatever it is. But for the most part, in most churches, we do not say that that difference between what we would have done if we were in their situation means that they cannot fully participate in the life of the church. So what I want is for us to be able to get there with queer people to be able to say, you know what, if I was gay, and you know, maybe I would remain celibate because I feel like that's how scripture teaches what I what I should do. Maybe I would try to be in a mixed orientation marriage. I'm a gay man, but I would try to marry a woman because I think that's what I'm supposed to do. I don't know exactly what I would do if that was my situation, but this person has chosen to try to make a life with another person of the same gender. And even though I may not interpret the Bible the same way, I may not do what they would have done in that situation if I had been in it. I don't think that should mean that they're unqualified from engaging with any area of the church. So that's really my hope is that we can and I'll get there because I feel like we've gotten there with some other things that we disagree about. And I wish we could get there with this.
SPEAKER_01:No, I hope number one, I, I, I think that's so, I love your statement. Clarity is kindness or however you, you know, being clear as kindness, you know, that's, I think that there's a huge implication in that one. And that's huge. And, and hope too. I, I, you know what I mean? I can, I would love to, Yeah, that's a place I'm not afraid to let my mind go and see. But no, I think those are fair hopes to at least explore. You know what I mean? So, no, that's great. Do you got to get rolling or you got time for one more? We can do one more quick one. Okay, quick one. Because this is another one that's just on my mind. And Do you see any difference between ministering to the individual versus the pride movement, like trying to address for your congregation, the pride movement as a whole? Yeah. Yeah. It's a great
SPEAKER_03:question. I mean, I think you do this with like the Black Lives Matter movement as a whole too, right? Like I think I'm pretty careful to not speak to like, you know, full endorsement of massively things with a lot of breadth to them, right? Like, I know tons of people that engage with pride parades and pride movements in a myriad of different ways. And I don't feel comfortable being like I fully endorse every single thing that's ever happened at a pride parade, right? Like that would be a crazy thing to say. I think my understanding of the pride movement overall is that it's a movement toward inherent dignity and equality for queer people. So the idea of there was a time in our country and it's still a time in our churches where queer people were not able to have the same level of rights as non-queer people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. And so the idea of pride is to say that the kind of core idea of pride is to say people have inherent value, inherent dignity, inherent worth. They're made in the image of God. And there should be equality to them based on that. I realize that there are aspects of pride movements of pride parades that have gone much far beyond that, that I think can, can certainly be damaging. But I think that we don't have to like endorse every float at the pride parade to be able to say, I agree that queer people should be treated with dignity and equality in every aspect of our society. So that's probably how I would engage with it. I don't like, feel a huge need as a pastor to like speak to the nuances of the entirety, entirety of the pride movement, just because I don't think that's even really necessarily possible because it's so, it means so many different things to so many different people and people engage with it in such a myriad of ways.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. That's, that's fair. I mean, the reason it's been, I bring it up and then I'll let you go. I don't want to, I don't want to blabber on is I've been personally invited, you know, personal invitation to go to pride events and things like that. Cause I do have, you know, loved ones, um, you know, are, are there and LGBTQ plus and, um, and I haven't gone yet because of like, my line is a family research council, like organized a, a family pride parade. I wouldn't go to that in a million years.
UNKNOWN:Um,
SPEAKER_01:because i just i have a i just i don't think christ is wanting us to take pride in our sexuality like our the whole push i believe of especially the new testament is to just push into this identity of christ which is so hard for us it's so hard for us to to find our identity in christ and then we're going to put in like but but in order to fight for these rights and things of that nature we have to elevate you know, our sexual choices, you know, to a level of, you know, having a pride, you know what I mean? That's where I was just like, for society at large, for humanity at large, especially for Christendom, that's where, that's kind of where I've kind of drawn my line as far as like, I'm going to be consistent in this. I'm not going to go to heterosexual pride, you know, specifically pride and, you know, the pushback would be, but your life is heterosexual pride. And I don't see it that way because I never put, pride in my family. You know, I don't overtly be like, look at my family, look at how awesome it is. You know, that's no, that I don't, you know what I'm saying? Existing. Totally.
SPEAKER_03:And I think, yeah, I mean, I think that's a fair perspective, like a hundred percent. I, I would just say, I think it is, I think we have to do a check of how much, how much privilege comes with decisions that are made like that as you and I are, are both, straight white guys and have not experienced, you know, general inequality or a lack of opportunity specifically based on race, gender, sexual orientation. And so when you have people that have experienced that, the idea of a pendulum swing is, you know, it's a lot of times how societal change happens. And like you look at, even like black power movements and stuff like that. Right. And, and the black lives matter movement overall. And, and the response to black lives matter being that, that all lives matter. And, but then the response being, well, all lives can't matter until we make sure that black lives matter. Right. And I see pride in the same way of saying, well, there's never been an issue with heterosexuals, right? Like we've never, society's never had like a, a different category for you. There's been no, um, you know, natural disasters and pandemics blamed on heterosexuality before. Like it's a different thing. And so the idea of having to stand up and say, no, there is nothing wrong with my sexuality. In fact, it's, it's worthy of being celebrated just like heterosexuality has been celebrated, um, for all these times. Um, I understand why that's happening. I get your perspective completely, but I understand why the pendulum swing would be that.
SPEAKER_01:No, I completely understand the intention and the desire. I will definitely let you go, man. We'll leave it there, but I hope you enjoyed yourself. This was super interesting. I
SPEAKER_03:did, Kurt. Thanks, man. I appreciate your posture and curiosity and all that. And I learned from you too. And yeah, I appreciate the work that you're doing both at the school and through the podcast. So keep it up. Thank you, Zach. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01:And maybe another one in the future someday if you have a spare hour. Sounds good, man. All right. Take it easy. Thank you. All
SPEAKER_00:right, you too. Bye-bye.