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Tell Me More is a weekly podcast hosted by Katy Reed Hodges and Luke Stehr, where they unpack the Sunday sermon with Dr. Dennis Wiles. This podcast is designed on the premise that Dr. Wiles always has more to say than can fit in a 35 minute sermon - so we have fun discussing it here each week. We hope that in listening you are educated, encouraged and more connected to the pastor and his teaching!
Welcome to another episode of Tell Me More. Today, doctor Wiles and I sit down with Rafael Anzenberger, who is the executive director of the French Baptist Union of Canada, and we catch up on his sermon, but also what the ministry context in Canada is like and what we can learn from kingdom work there. We hope you enjoy it. Alright. Welcome to Tell Me More.
Speaker 1:If you are listening, you can not see, but we don't have Katie with us today. We have doctor Rafael Anzenberger. Mhmm. Of the Union Iglise Baptiste Francophonse du Canada. Oui oui.
Speaker 1:Or the French Baptist Union of Canada. Like it. And we also have doctor Watts. That's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:He's here. But if you weren't here this Sunday, we had a guest preacher. We did. Okay. We did.
Speaker 1:So I wanna I wanna ask, doctor Wiles, why why guest preachers in this series? Because you are one of the first in this series. And why this guest preacher?
Speaker 2:What a
Speaker 3:great question. Why why would we have guest preachers at all is what I'd like to know.
Speaker 1:I mean, we can talk about that. There's some there's some solid methodology there.
Speaker 3:Is a whole another podcast. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:I can feel counseling coming in.
Speaker 3:Well, when we were planning this series, I just felt led to lead us in a conversation about evangelism back during my study leave, you know, back in July a year ago. And not really sure how we were going to do it, but just felt like it it was the topic that we needed to address and, just praying through it all. So then I met with the engagement team of which you are a part.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And we just discussed, you know, a lot of times when we are in the engagement month in November, it's not been uncommon to have a guest speaker to come and speak during the engagement month. Last year, Cindy did a nothing. She did. We've had numerous speakers through the years, missional experts, if you will. But we decided to connect the emphasis on evangelism in the fall and our engagement month in November and let them really kind of blend in together.
Speaker 3:And as we were having that conversation, we felt like at y'all's encouragement, really, what if we brought someone in during the evangelism series before we ever get to engagement? And as we talked about that, and we had been praying about what God was saying to us, we all felt led to ask Rafael to come be our speaker to be the first other voice, if you will. And then my schedule changed a little bit. You know, I wasn't I didn't know at that time I was gonna be in Canada. I didn't even know for sure I was gonna be in Italy because all of that was still up in the air.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. And so it turned out that, I'm actually gonna be out for two Sundays. This next Sunday is one of them. And but we decided it didn't matter. So we're going to bring in three evangelists to lead our church during this conversation.
Speaker 3:Rafael is the first one. Oza Jones, who is our evangelism director for Texas Baptist, who's no stranger to our church. He'll be our evangelist who preaches next Sunday. While I'm in Canada, I will be actually visiting Rafael and his ministry. I'll start in Toronto, as you know.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Make my way to Montreal. And then I'll be back. And And then the next week, I'm going to be in Assisi, Italy for the flourishing retreat for all these churches. The leaders of the churches that are in the pilot project with flourishing in the church with Harvard and Baylor.
Speaker 3:We're all gathering in Assisi, Italy. There are 80 of us. And there are churches there are 12 churches here in Texas. There are 12 in California. But then we have churches in Austria, in Germany, in Switzerland, and in Italy.
Speaker 3:And their leadership teams are going to be at this retreat. And we've all taken the flourishing in church survey and all the data is in. And our researchers have compiled answers to questions. What is what is a flourishing Christian? And looking at the different categories of spiritual formation and what have we learned from all these churches that have answered those questions.
Speaker 3:What is a flourishing church? Pretty similar kind of data aimed at church. And then how does flourishing spill over into the community in terms of ministry and mission. And it's the first time this kind of data has ever been actually compiled, real hard data with real churches involved in a longitudinal study and multinational, if you will. And so we as leaders, we don't know each other.
Speaker 3:So we have met already with the with the leaders in the Texas part of the study. But we don't know the leaders from these other nations or from California, and so we're going to do some retreat together. Kurt Grice is helping to lead it. He's doing the devotionals for us. But I'll be out that Sunday.
Speaker 3:And so we asked Gary Stidham. And Rafael Gary used to be the leader of our Baptist Student Ministry here Arlington. And he's an evangelist and he now trains student ministers for Texas Baptist. We have student we have ministers on a 130 campuses in the state of Texas doing evangelism and mission. And Gary trains all of those now.
Speaker 3:He's very good at it. He's excellent. Done training for our staff. So, these are three different evangelists. Y'all y'all are all three very different people.
Speaker 3:And and I would say, can you say do evangelism? Do evangelism a little differently, and it's gonna allow our church to hear these three different voices to offer us training and encouragement, inspiration around this whole conversation. So you were you were the lead off hitter for in terms of guest speakers. So And That's kinda how we got there.
Speaker 1:What a great lead off hitter. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So thank you so much for preaching yesterday. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:You know, I think we got to hear your passion for scripture and for engaging people with scripture. I have, you know, gotten to know you and your family over the past few years, but our listeners don't know you. So could you just tell us a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3:Who is Rafael
Speaker 1:You're not from Canada.
Speaker 2:No. Actually, I'm not from Canada. I'm from France. And for those who ask questions about my last name
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It is not German. It's Alsatian. It is like if you would say somebody in New Mexico, why do you have a Spanish name? Surely, you're from South America. I would tell you the same thing.
Speaker 2:It is it is bordering Germany, but it's been a French territory since the king with fourteenth. So we are very much French, although it depends, you know, who is playing the best during World Cup soccer. And then our hearts, you know, sometimes go to Germany if the French team is not, you know, delivering up to standards. But this is where I grew up. I grew up in Strasbourg, which is a city well known to the church historians because that was with Geneva, a bedrock of the Protestant Reformation.
Speaker 2:Martin Busser, especially, who was reformer of that of that city. Grew up in a in a family that had historically pastors, both serving in the reform church and in the evangelical church. We had a Mennonite branch and a reform branch with both, you know, an Anabaptist Anabaptist tradition and then a reform tradition, so the two branches of the Protestant Reformation. I'm married to an American citizen, Karen. She's Wonderful.
Speaker 2:From Philadelphia, Delaware area, and we have four kids, two studying in Canada and two studying in The US. We've started our ministry thirty years ago in Africa in the country of Chad, and then we served in in Europe for for fifteen years. I did my theological studies at Columbia International University in South Carolina and also a business degree in Strasbourg.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:So how did you find your way to Columbia International University?
Speaker 2:It was actually interesting connection. My my great uncle is was the director of SIM Africa, which is a mission agency, and he had a lot of graduates from from CIU. And I was always hearing those stories about those incredible missionaries, graduate of of CIU. And when we were on the mission field in Chad, actually, I was serving there with the Evangelical Alliance mission team, and and three quarter of the workers in Chad were were CIU graduates. And we're very impressed with the caliber, not only their their persona Mhmm.
Speaker 2:How they were centered in the gospel, and they're also very effective as a cross cultural workers. And it was quite it was quite a a given that after this experience in Africa, we would go and do our studies at at at CIU.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. So you you had already graduated from Strasbourg?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I graduated with a master's in business, and that's how I was able to then operate a a hospital, a missionary hospital in Chad. It was my first encounter with cross cultural missions work.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. It's fascinating. Mhmm. Okay. And so and then several years ago, you made a move out of France and to Canada.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We the the story is is quite simple. The French speaking world is about 350,000,000 people. Of course, they're not all live in France. It's France, of course, Switzerland, Belgium, but also it's French speaking Africa.
Speaker 2:It's the Caribbeans, The Pacific, and Quebec. There is about 8,000,000 French speakers in in Quebec. There's actually a quarter of the Canadian population that speaks French. They not all live in Quebec. There's the Acadians who are on the East Coast who unfortunately had to be displaced in 1755, still very traumatic for the Aiken community, and those migrated to the Caribbeans and some of them migrated to Louisiana, hence the Cajuns.
Speaker 2:And then so the Cajuns are descendants from the Cajuns. Sixteen o two was the first colony in in New France, Nova Scotia. So we are servicing this 25 of the Canadian population, and the study shows that there's only 3% of practicing Christians among French speaking Canadians. That's all theological and and Christian traditions aligned from from Pentecostal to charismatic to Anglicans to Catholics. That's 3%.
Speaker 2:So it does qualify as a sort of an unreach or under evangelized people group. I started working with Quebec since 2008. That was actually the four hundred year anniversary of the city of Quebec. The colony started there in sixteen o eight. And as a European, you know, I'm I'm very much familiar with what we call secularity, the the withdrawn of religion on the public square.
Speaker 2:Also, the fact that there's other competing narrative in the public square, Muslims, and then other faith tradition, but also imminent religion, like ecology is very big in Europe. But when I landed in Quebec City for that campaign, I was 32 years old. I just started my ministry as an evangelist, proclamation evangelist. I was just stuck by the the hardness of the soil. I was coming from France, was already complicated, but Quebec was something that I've never experienced before.
Speaker 2:And I I felt a burden to equip the church in in that season, and and so it's not too much of a surprise that I ended up actually going back four years ago and moved permanently with my family there to to service that incredible territory, which is sort of a lab on how to do gospel engagement in a highly secular context.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's been so fun to work with you over the years and take groups and kind of get exposed to learning. I think one of the things that stands out to me, and I I don't want us to miss, is that Quebec is different than The United States. But secularism is here as well, and so I think sometimes we can sit in Texas and think, oh, well, we're not secular.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:You know, I was looking at data just this past week. I think over half of US Christians are now qualified as non practicing. So over 50% of Christians in The US are non practicing Christians. It's something like 25% of people who identify as evangelicals actually practice, and that means they attend church 1.5 times a month. So secularism is here, and I think the way that I like to think about it, and we've talked about this, is it's really just this idea that life can be lived well without God, and it allows space for all of these narratives to come in.
Speaker 1:But that's a temptation in The United States as well, that we can live life well without God.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, the the study about flourishing from Harvard and and BU is quite extraordinary in that sense because it shows that which is completely counterintuitive for the secularization theories, that belonging to a faith community is actually a factor that increases flourishing and happiness. Who knew that actually believing God was actually conducive
Speaker 1:for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Conduccing for flourishing. Yeah. And and that's that's that's very much something we use a lot in Canada. We're actually creating the Canadian Institute for Flourishing
Speaker 3:Oh, really?
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And we're using the Harvard study, you know, to to to actually petition towards municipalities and said, don't throw God out of the window because actually it's a flourishing factor. And if you want to have happy people in your city, you need to give a close look to the health of those faith communities. And it's almost like, you know, god comes back into high secular space through the backdoor of a Harvard study, which is quite interesting. Fascinating, isn't it?
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:I'd say that probably the the way the way secularity is is maybe different from from from Canada to this side of the border is what Charles Tellers called the third the third tier of secularity, which is how people start questioning your belief. Right? You you can you can believe in God. That's okay. But then when you are coming to high secularity space like like Canada or higher education in The US, then suddenly your beliefs are attacked.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And that's a new condition. It's like Mhmm. Why is it you still believe in God? Have you not read church history books?
Speaker 2:And did you know that religion is abusive and so forth? So the new atheist movement was very much critical of faith, plural faith in in The UK. And and the questioning of the belief is is a marker whereby Christians are who who used to actually be able to to to to to be Christians and not be questioned around their faith, suddenly are questioned about the hope that they have within them. And that's where apologetics plays a key role about how do you articulate that and make it understandable to somebody who has no clue what actually you're believing into, and his oral reference point is that of an abusive church. And so how do you make the gospel clear in a society that has already decided that this is not how you should construct a society?
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Well, how do you do it?
Speaker 2:Well, that's it's not that complicated, actually. You know, often we say in Christianity, there's Christ. And if you remove Christ from Christian, then you're left with Ian, and Ian can't do too much about that. And so it's going back to the word of Jesus, you know, and when when secular people read something like the sermon of the mount, they're just astounded by the profoundness and the wisdom that comes into this. Now, of course, when we go into passages like you need to handle the other cheek, you know, they're like, that cautioning abuse?
Speaker 2:And then you hate to to to work with them to go beyond the theory of victimization about what does it mean in order to forgive your enemy. Mhmm. And that's where they're confronted with the fact that canceling culture will not lead you. It's it's like it's like justice without grace.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? And so the sermon of the mount is is flipping the narrative around, and when they encounter the words of Jesus, they've most of them say, we've never heard anything like this. Mhmm. So the younger generation is recapturing the word of Jesus. So that's that's the key for us.
Speaker 2:Scripture engagement, as we did yesterday in the sermon about the seven signs, as my good friend Dominic Russo, who wrote a book about rereading scriptures in a secular age, is probably the best way to to reach out to these people because they think that they understand and they know what they're rejecting, but they have no clue.
Speaker 1:Right. So how do you I mean, you walked us through the seven signs of Jesus yesterday in your sermon. If you haven't listened to it yet, please go back, listen. So so good.
Speaker 3:It's really good.
Speaker 1:How do you, you know, initiate that moment in a relationship of walking someone through the seven signs of Jesus or walking someone through the sermon on the mount? How do you how do you do it? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Well, it's it depends of where you are. Right? I mean, in Europe, we we have people who are quite obnoxious, especially in France, and so they think that they know everything, and we just call on their bluff.
Speaker 1:I've never met an American who thinks they know anything.
Speaker 3:No. No. We don't have that here. You're
Speaker 2:very humble here. So you usually say, well, I mean, you're you're debunking Christianity, and you think you know all about that. Have you ever read, actually, a biography of Jesus? And most would say no. They never read the Koran, but they have an understanding of what the Muslim faith they never read the Bible nor the Gospel, and they think they understand what Christianity is all about.
Speaker 2:And we said, look. If you wanna be serious and intellectually honest, at least, you know, read a biography of Jesus. And then after that, you can make your point. But what is it about someone who would reject something without having gone to the primary sources? And that works very well with people who are, you know, from the academic field and so forth.
Speaker 2:So we said try it out, and the seven signs of John is an opportunity for them to confront their thinking about what religion is, Christian religion is, and what the words of Jesus are. And right from the get go with the kana miracle about Jesus being at the heart of the party, that already throw their social imaginary out of the window. You know, they think about the church being a sad place for sad people who comment about sad things. And here, you start the first sign of John about Jesus being at the heart of the party. And when the wine is running out, then here he is, and he's giving new life.
Speaker 2:And so we said this is this is who God is. Your image of God probably does not square with what actually Jesus says who God is.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:It's really good. Know? And I think, you know, the teachings of Jesus, the person of Jesus, the words of Jesus, I do think sometimes we make it a little more complicated in our context because he is the one who's actually changed the whole world. And so pointing people to him is is really at the heart of evangelism, discipleship, formation, mission. Most everything that we do is centered around him.
Speaker 3:And I think when you read Paul, you know that little phrase in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, how many ever times he uses it. He he had that sense that everything revolved around Jesus. And I think that's that's what I've heard from you, and I think that's a I think that's a great strategy because it's always worked. You know, he's the one that transforms people's lives. So I think Dallas Willard in his book, Divine Conspiracy, says it well when he says, I don't think that even as Christians, we take Jesus that seriously.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I mean, he's God. Right? Mhmm. So let's start by saying that he's the greatest theologian Mhmm. Of all.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And I'm always a little bit skeptical, you know, the way we we look at the gospels as being, you know, good stories for our kids and the Sunday school curriculum. Mhmm. Then when you're an adult, then you need to camp more into the epistles. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But the epistles were written by folks who encountered Jesus, the living God. Mhmm. Jesus, the theologian. Right? First Thessalonians, the first chapter.
Speaker 2:It's amazing to see the practicality of Paul's understanding of how churches function, and you can actually read the Jesus disciple making strategy within the first chapter of first Thessalonians. And so I do think an anti right and has helped us to do that in Dallas World to to recall rediscover maybe the words of Jesus to a secular age. Not as good for your soul and my soul, but it is the best for the soul of that society.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Well, also, know, let's talk about your role right now and what you're doing specifically. In Montreal, in Quebec. You're you're partnered with lots of folks, but our church has begun a partnership with you all. Luke has been there, and we've had other church members who've been there.
Speaker 3:I'll be there next week. So let's talk a little bit about what it is that you all are doing, the strategy that you're using because in some ways, we we don't wanna think this way as Americans. We don't wanna think that y'all are somewhat, ahead of us quote unquote in in dealing with secularization because we wanna believe that we're not ever going to be there, you know? But in some ways, you are dealing with with issues and challenges that are already present in various places in America. I mean, we I think if you were to take a group of Texas Baptist, you know, folks that are just very good, solid Texas Baptist people and and move us for two months to Oregon or move us two months to Maine or move us for two months to, you know, densely populated South Florida or move us to wash the state of Washington.
Speaker 3:You you know I mean? In other words, I think I think we would be shocked at how secular
Speaker 1:I think that depends on your age here.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, I'm talking about older ones who are more committed and I mean, who are more lifelong invested and kinda feel like we're okay. I think if if we were to transplant that group of people, I think they would be shocked though at just how secular our culture really is and how lost it is and how, if I can say this respectfully, how irrelevant people believe the church is. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think if you're my age and you're currently raising children or you're younger than that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think Not a shock. Yeah. I think you're y'all are a little more familiar with but I don't I would even argue that there are some people your age who have been so immersed in this for so long would also be a little shocked. It might be.
Speaker 3:You know? So but so we're just interested in what you're learning. I believe our partnership with you, Rafael, I believe it's missiologically strategic for you all, and that's what we want it to be. And we wanna learn and we wanna support because you're we're not coming to you with, here's what we're going to do for you. We're coming with more of a what do you need, what can we learn.
Speaker 3:But I would also say whether we like it or not, we're needing to bring some of that back here because we're encountering some of the very same issues. That's a whole lot of stuff there, but it's
Speaker 2:just No. I
Speaker 3:just our connection with you that I think is important.
Speaker 2:I think what what Europeans and Canadians bring as a good news to The US is that secularization is not necessarily an evil thing. Mhmm. And what secularization will do as a historical process is scrap nominal Christianity Mhmm. From from the public square so that the people who would say, well, I was born Baptist, you know, kind of thing, but I don't practice. I mean, those who would say, I I am a Christian, but I'm not a practicing Christian, those go away.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Okay. And the reality is that actually you cannot really build for the future around people who would claim that they are Christians, but not practicing Christians. Mhmm. I think one of the temptation is that you actually make secularity a gospel message, and we've seen actually evangelical churches moving into being a therapeutical, you know, gospel and promising that people would be delivered from the consequence of their sin or not not sin.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And hence then, secularity is inviting itself inside the church. So you can't see secularity outside because there's already inside. Mhmm. And so you've you've boiled the frog as you were Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Going at it. So but coming from Europe and Canada where Christians are only a minority, when I'm talking minority, 3% in Quebec, I'm talking about 2% in France. Once you get to the end of Christian nominalism, what you find are militants. What you find are people who believe into the red letter of the gospel. You know, they they cling to the word of Jesus.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And it's like it's like Gideon, Operation Gideon. You know, defined with those who are left, the remnant who are left, who are passionate to continue to bring the gospel to the world. And so how do you operate as a minority? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And that's that's that's the the the the the question that is an anxiety driven question for most Americans because they don't want to lose what they have or what they had. And so as European, we said, what is it exactly that you had? What is it exactly that you had? I mean, I just watched recently a documentary on on Billy Graham, and I I've had the privilege to be associated with the the Billy Graham Association. And Layton Ford is a Canadian, you know, was was my mentor as part of the the the Lausanne conversation.
Speaker 2:He introduced me to to great thinkers like Michael Green and Michael Cassidy, global global leaders. And the one thing that I've that I've learned from Billy is that he wanted to go to New York City. He was not just happy to go to Los Angeles, which was already quite secular at the time. Mhmm. You're thinking about Hollywood and so forth.
Speaker 2:But his heart was actually to go to New York City, and there were only very few Baptist and evangelicals actually in New York City. Mhmm. So he gave the keys of this New York campaign to Layton Ford who is that the time 23 year old married to Jean who is 24, and they go with a team of 12 people rent a flat and Billy says, go and mobilize the Catholics and the Anglican and the Episcopalians to run a campaign. He's a Baptist. Right?
Speaker 2:He's a Baptist. And so he's he's giving the keys to a Canadian to actually go to the mainline churches and put together this campaign, which was a profound success. I mean, they were supposed to stay three week at the Madison Square Garden, and we know the story. Well, they rented for seven, eight weeks, and so there was a great revival. So BD was was concerned, you know, to go to places where it was complicated, and people would say, don't go there.
Speaker 2:You know? You have so much to do in the South. And and he was he was he was very prophetic in that sense. Mhmm. And when you visit, for those who haven't done so, if you go to Charlotte and visit the farm, you'll see that Billy was very concerned about continuing to bring the gospel into hard places.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And so I think it is it is it is what kept him fit. Mhmm. You know, when the queen Elizabeth asked him, why do you think that God would choose a farmer's boy, you know, from North Carolina to impact so many nations? And he said, well, when we'll be in heaven, I'll take you to Jesus.
Speaker 2:I said, the queen Elizabeth has a good question for you. Might answer. Why is it that you chose me? And he was always completely surprised that God would use them, but I think what kept him fit is his heart and urgency to continue to bring the gospel in hard places. You know, Nikki Campbell said something quite profound.
Speaker 2:He said, as Baptist, we all believe that we need to evangelize, but only a few of us are really convinced that it's urgent. And so the urgency of continuing to bring the gospel into hard places, I think this is our task, and we need to be serious about it. And if Canada can be a sandbox for you to to to learn how we do that Mhmm. Again, you know, going back to the word of Jesus, not that complicated, and then introducing the word of Jesus to people who think that they know, but they don't. It's it's it's it's not that complicated, and it's very fruitful.
Speaker 2:Maybe this is a way to also then counteract the phenomenon of secularization within our own pews. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, when I was in seminary working on my doctorate in the I was in the PhD program at Southwestern back in the day before Luke was born, and we we had this there was a debate among some theologians and historians at the time on the value of civil religion in The US primarily. And it was couched in a broader conversation of, you know, like the idea of Constantine's sword. Know, that Constantine takes over the world and the Roman world and then he decides that he's gonna give favored status to Christianity which I think you can you can document that. And the question is, the old idea of that Constantinian symbiosis, was that a good thing? In other words, did it really bless the state as well as bless the churches?
Speaker 3:There's no doubt that it created freedom for es and the church grew tremendously. But the church was already growing tremendously. And Constantine, you could make the argument that he actually just acknowledged what was already a reality rather than being the linchpin for making it happen, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Which then led to the conversation here when I was in seminary of, well you know, you go to any kind of political rally in The US and you'll get to the end of it and the person that is running for office or the person that's in office will typically say, and God bless America, America and everybody claps. But the question was which God, who is this civil religion God? This God that kind of provides a veneer if you will over the public spaces in our society. And so when that begins to erode, a lot of, Christians have were sent into kind of a state of panic. It was like, wait a minute.
Speaker 3:You you can't you can't you can't remove you can't make that to you can't make me feel bad because I wanna say God bless America or I wanna have prayer in public schools or I wanna post the 10 commandments. I mean, in other words, this idea of how do you take Christianity and put it in the marketplace, some people's argument was well, it needs to be in power. It needs to have this veneer that just covers the whole society. And so, would argue that we had that for a season in in The US. Now, that's no longer really the case, but there are some people that's what they're nostalgic for And you guys have given up on that a long time ago, you know, in Canada.
Speaker 3:And I'm saying that respectfully. And I think that that sometimes we still grapple with that here though in some pockets. It's what is it? What are you really longing for? And for some people, it's that.
Speaker 3:It's it's to have that that authoritative seat at the table or the veto power in the culture if you will and favored status, all those kinds of things. When actually the Gospel seems to have flourished historically when it doesn't have that. It's it's really quite fascinating and it and it feels for some people counterintuitive. How can the gospel, you know, flourish if we're not actually in control when actually that seems to be when the gospel has been most effective. You know?
Speaker 3:I think
Speaker 1:Dallas Fuller calls us the upside down kingdom.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I I have the privilege to also work with the suffering church, you know, in persecuted places. And when I go to the Middle East and North Africa, and I I walk with my colleagues, pastors, theologians, evangelists, church planners, there's so so much fragility.
Speaker 2:Right? I mean, they can be squeezed, thrown into prison. I've got actually some of my students who are currently now servicing in prison in Algeria. And so that we want to we want to then rescue them, right, that this is the syndrome, this is messianic syndrome and so of course we want to to make sure that there's everything we can do to get them out of jail but that's not actually that's not what they're asking. What they're asking is continue to be faithful to the gospel and when I see that kind of attitude persecuted for their faith knowing that their life could be taken at any moment, surprisingly enough, this is where the gospel is really flourishing Mhmm.
Speaker 2:In that sense. So I I I don't say this, you know, with I say that with gravitas, and some would say, a good persecution would do the Western church a good yeah. Well, let's not pray for persecution on that. You know? No.
Speaker 2:Of course not. But but we need to learn from the suffering church. You know, what does it mean actually to walk when you can't operate with power? Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think Kenosis, Philippians two, you know, that everybody has the mindset that was in Christ Jesus. And so the the mindset is not up up up. It was down down down. Right? Philippians two is down down down.
Speaker 2:I heard one day a leadership guru, an evangelical leadership guru, you know, saying leadership is up up up. And I I turned to my colleague who was a New Testament scholar, and he said, if I'm recalling, the only one who went up, up, up as a leader is called Satan, and he went down, down, down pretty quickly. Right? Yeah. And so what about leadership is down, down, down, and then let God, you know, bring you up, up, up.
Speaker 2:And so those I mean, it's it's complicating complicating for for the the Western Western church. Church. It It is. Is. I've I've got friends who Catholic priest or Anglican priests that got so aggravated when the government shut down their churches during COVID nineteen.
Speaker 2:That was the very first time that they heard about the fact that their places of which it would be closed down on television. There's, like, no phone call from the prime minister to the archbishop of Paris and say, well, by the way, are you okay if we close? They they learned it like everybody else. Mhmm. And that's when they they they discovered that they became a minority.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And my my take on them is that it's not because you're moving into a minority that all things is lost. Mhmm. Probably, you're entering into a phase of flourishness that you haven't encountered before, but you'll have to operate, you know, in a different way. Down down down is probably the pathway to up up up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think it's to summarize, it's safe to say that the state is a terrible witness for Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah. No. It doesn't marry well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. But the church, its people Right. Particularly when they operate from a place of service are an incredible witness.
Speaker 3:And I think that I think the challenge that we have in The United States context, and you all have joined us in it, but but if you think about it, if Canada is viewed as an extension of The UK, there's a state church in the heart of of England that that was spread throughout their their provinces and as they colonized the world. But you think about The US, The US is established upon a principle of of religious liberty and the separation of those two authorities in our lives, if you will. And so I've always contended that this is a grand experiment that I'm not sure has ever been attempted on this scale, and that is a free church and a free state. And and primarily a protestant perspective, an ethos underneath it all because if you think about it, even though Roman Catholicism has taken hold in The US, in our origin and in the history of The US, Roman Catholicism was a minority. And if you study history, you can They had Maryland.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So like if you go back and even look at the election of nineteen sixty, that was one of the points of contention that Richard Nixon rose with about John Kennedy. The question was, okay, if you elect John Kennedy as president, can the pope call him as and tell him you're going to do x y z and you have to do it? And and man, there was an angst in the in the American ethos of, well, wait a minute now. You know, we can't have a a quote unquote foreigner telling our president what to do.
Speaker 3:So Kennedy had to come out and say, I'm not I'm not going to do what the pope tells me to do when it comes to governing our country. That sounds a little foreign to us right now, but that was actually a real issue because this church this country had a protestant ethos under it. But it's still this experiment, I guess, is what I would say, Ralph, about on how you've got this free church in a free state. Okay? Well, now here we are two hundred and fifty years in, and how are we?
Speaker 3:You know? What what's the what's the what's the status? What's the the health of the church? What's the health of the state? And I think it's still to be determined, to be honest with you, because you don't have it's not a persecuted church, not a suffering church, but it's not a state church, and it's in this massive country with 300 and something million people, and you're in this free society.
Speaker 3:And so I think that has come with its own challenges. And now I would say Canada is somewhat in that same category now, started differently. Right? I mean, it has a different background and root system.
Speaker 2:Yes. Is European country in a sense, and we shouldn't be surprised that Canada is, you know, merging more and more with with European in terms of economy and politics because there's there's a straightforward alignment there. Right. But I I I'd say though Canada is is very still North American in a sense that it most of the the people were living in Ontario and Quebec until very recently. I mean, the the the western conquest is is pretty recent.
Speaker 2:It's a it's a new country. You go to Vancouver, all the buildings are brand new. The only place where you can actually attest to historicity is Quebec City. You still have buildings from sixteen hundreds, but the Western Of Canada is is very, very new. So you see Alberta, We call it Alberta is the Texas of of Canada.
Speaker 2:I mean, they're very much same kind of industry, oil, of course, and then and then cowboys and a lot of evangelical churches and conservatives in many respect. We call it the Bible Belt there. And Albertans are are looking at what's happening in Ontario and also in Vancouver and say, you know, do we really want to be as secular as those? So I think there are still places in Canada that have a little bit of the same idea of separation of the two as it was in The US. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But for for the Ontario and the Quebec and the Maritimes that has tradition going all the way back to sixteen hundred and seventeen hundred, still very much European in that way. And and so the question of faith in the public square, it's it's it's a complicated one. If you approach it from the vantage point of ethics, right, if you argue that the reason why the society is collapsing is because we removed the 10 commandments, you know, from from from the school rooms. Well, I mean, this this can't be heard by a complete pluralist society where the Christians only make 3%, and then actually, your kids go to school with Muslims and atheists and ecologists and all, and they actually go fine well. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So you can't really argue from a vantage point of ethics and say, we need to go back. Right. Because, again, this nostalgia of what was, what actually really was. Right. You know, was this actually really church or was it power in the clothes of church?
Speaker 2:Right. Right? Right. So again, that's that's the critical, you know, we need to be we need to be careful about nostalgia. And as our prime minister would say, nostalgia is not a strategy.
Speaker 2:So Right. But then when we move to what we call public theology, public theology is is still retaining Christian ethics, but arguing on the public square about Christian ethics from the vantage point that we have people who have no clue what we're talking about, and why is it that the 10 commandments are ethically better than any other options? See, I think Dallas Willard would say more than the 10 commandments, we should post the sermon on the mount Yeah. In every classrooms.
Speaker 1:Which I don't know if you knew. Texas actually has the 10 commandments in every classroom.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:But it's an edited Yeah. This is the tricky part that I don't think people realize. By having the 10 commandments, we've allowed the Bible to be edited. Yep. Because it is an edited version by the state.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 3:Oh, most people don't realize that, but it is true. And I don't want the state editing my bible. No. It's it's interesting. Well, you know, I would say this, Rafael.
Speaker 3:We're grateful for you. Our partnership with you is really just beginning to materialize. We're honored to come alongside you all and Thank you. Support your work financially, which our church does. But we want it to obviously be way more than that we believe the Lord is just really starting to nurture.
Speaker 3:And and I believe it I hope it's going to be symbiotic in the sense that it'll be beneficial to you. It's already being beneficial to us and and I believe that's only going to continue. So I'm I'm very excited about it. I'm happy to that I'm gonna get to come and see your work with my own eyes, you know, so that I can, just There's something about incarnational ministry to me that just is is transformative. And so I'm pretty excited about that, but also have other churches with us.
Speaker 3:But we're looking forward to what whatever it is that God has in store for us in this work together, and we're we're grateful to be walking alongside you.
Speaker 2:Well, you for the hands of association, and I trust, you know, every dollar that you invest in Canada is is really servicing the interest of the kingdom and we are very happy to be friends on the journey and to continue to learn from one another again I think that's that's the genius of Billy Graham who called on a Canadian to organize the crusade in New York City with 23 year old, and sometimes Europeans and Canadians can help you do things on this side of the border That's right. Because we've been there, and we know how to operate in those in those spaces, and that's how the Gospel Flourish, I believe. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Well, and you and it's been beneficial to us already just through our friendship and partnership. But even as late as yesterday, your investment in the the spiritual life of our church, I believe, will bear fruit for the kingdom. So thank you for Thank what you've done for us.
Speaker 1:Agreed. Well, thanks for listening everyone, and we will be back next week, hopefully, with Oz Jones. Mhmm. Let's see. It'll be great.
Speaker 1:So we'll see you next week.
Speaker 4:Thanks for listening to the Tell Me More podcast today. You can subscribe to this podcast on your app of choice, or you can visit us at fbca.org to find out more information about the podcast and our church. Thanks for listening. Have a good day.