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Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative helping Christians to faithfully live out their faith in their work. We recognize most of life is not lived in black and white but rather lived in the gray, lived in the nuance.
You can find more, including complementary spiritual exercises, at www.collaborativeorlando.com/nuance.
I think the spirit filled life is the most important thing to the integration of faith and work because if you don't have the holy spirit in control of your head, heart, and hands, things are not going to go well in terms of being able to integrate those two things.
Speaker 2:In the last episode of Nuance, we explored the findings of a new report from the Gospel Coalition called the AI Christian Benchmark. Well, today, we turn to the broader work behind that study, the mission of the Gospel Coalition, and also one of its key ministries, the Tim Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, and to the personal vocation of the man leading this work, and that is my guest, Michael Graham. Friends, today, technology is accelerating in so many ways, and institutions are shifting. And so it is part of our call at the Collaborative to see that faithful men and women to Christ are well equipped for their work in the public square. And I can't think of an organization that has a similar mission and does it so well than the Gospel Coalition.
Speaker 2:So Michael, thanks for sticking around for another episode.
Speaker 1:It's good to be here. Thank you, Case.
Speaker 2:So Michael's a good buddy. He is serving as the executive director of the Gospel Coalition's Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He has served in pastoral ministry and is also the author of the great de churching with Jim Davis. We had Michael here on a show about a year ago on that very book, and he's working on another book with sociologist Ryan Burge that will look at the role of spiritual communities and the rate of growth or decline of spiritual faith across the country. We'll certainly have him back for that.
Speaker 2:Well, so Michael, if you would, tell us a little bit about your vocational journey and then what called you why why did God call you? How did he call you to the Gospel Coalition?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I've had a very roundabout path in work and ministry, that's had me both, you know, in the church and in nonprofits and as a missionary and also working in tech and finance. So, I've always been somebody who's worked pretty heavily in the intersection of operations, finance, tech, and, church and missiology. So it's kind of
Speaker 2:That's all good mix.
Speaker 1:Yeah. All over the place. And so I'm definitely more of a generalist than a specialist, which in the AI era, it's good to be a generalist. It's, you know, the it's the specialist jobs that the AI is kinda coming for. So, yeah, I I've worked as an overseas missionary with Campus Crusade for Christ, now called crew, had about fifteen years in church planting or executive pastor work in the local church, six years as CFO of a tech company that wrote mobile software for the DOD and the VA, and then four years at at the Gospel Coalition working at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.
Speaker 2:And they brought you in for that particular role. Correct?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So yeah. So my boss Colin Hanson, who's the editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, they wanted to create two new departments at TGC. One, after each of our respective cofounders. Our two cofounders were D.
Speaker 1:A. Carson and then the late Tim Keller. So the Carson Center is the Carson Center for Theological Renewal. Their focus is on biblical theology, which is, you know, D. A.
Speaker 1:Carson's specialization as a New Testament scholar. Mhmm. And then the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics is the focus there is on how how can we make the gospel clear and comprehensible and compelling to people, especially in the West and especially in highly secular areas.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:So the idea of cultural apologetics is, you know, there's kind of three questions that people mainly have about our faith. You know, is Jesus good? Is Jesus true? And is he is he beautiful? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And so classical apologetics focuses primarily on the is Jesus true question. Right. Cultural apologetics focuses a little bit more on is he good and is he beautiful? And all three of those questions, they all deserve answers. So it's not like one form of apologetics, you know, is better than others.
Speaker 1:Sure. Sometimes, you know, with the ebb and flow of culture and society, sometimes the questions, the nature of the questions that people ask kinda tend to change. So Yeah. The simplest way to understand the Keller Center and its relationship to TGC, the Gospel Coalition, is we're essentially like the r and d department. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So we take, you know, big ideas of the day. We throw them against the wall. We see what sticks in terms of how we can help the church. So the broader mission of the Gospel Coalition is there's all sorts of things that churches, whether that's their senior pastor or all the way down to just I'm just a regular churchgoer. There's all sorts of resources that churches can't create themselves.
Speaker 1:These are resources that they don't have the time to create or they don't have the expertise to create, or they don't have the resources to create. Okay. And so what we try to do is we try to create resources that churches need urgently to be able to advance their their evangelism and discipleship, but that they wouldn't have the resources to create themselves in and of themselves.
Speaker 2:And has this mission remained the same since Keller and, I mean, Keller and Carson came together? Or has it evolved to meet the needs?
Speaker 1:Nope. It's it's exactly the same from the outset. So you can read our foundation documents that were published in 2007. So that includes our a statement of faith and then our theological vision. The theological vision is kind of like the hands and feet.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So there's the ideas and then there's, you know, how those ideas play themselves out. And so
Speaker 2:Tell us about how they play themselves out, specifics of TGC product.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, you know, we create resources that are in whatever medium, you know, that people consume mediums. So whether that's articles, podcast audio
Speaker 2:I've done some articles.
Speaker 1:Yep. Short form video, long form video, books, live interactive cohorts, and then in person conferences. So everything from the URL to the IRL
Speaker 2:dude, that's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Only us really nerdy people get that but that's really good.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, you know, and all of that is we don't ever wanna be more important than somebody's local church. Everything that we do is exists to serve local churches all around the world. So, yeah, that's that's our aim. And so the Keller Center is basically we're the r and d department.
Speaker 1:K. And so we're just trying to try to innovate, you know, and one of the big knocks on evangelicals in particular is that we're often five, ten, fifteen years behind on major conversations in culture and society. Mhmm. And so the aim of the Keller Center is to take us from being behind on those conversations, bring us up to at least current on those conversations, and then even other conversations that we think, you know, are maybe a year or two Yeah. On the pike.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We we wanna be bringing those conversations up today. So I'll give you an example of that. One example is what we already talked about AI. I think we were right on time.
Speaker 1:I don't think we were ahead of time on that. We were publishing on this in '23 and '24 a lot, but nobody read it. The another subject that would be a good example of something that we care a lot about is medical assistance in death. Sure. You know, that's like the politically correct way to say Euthanasia.
Speaker 1:Doctor assisted suicide or euthanasia.
Speaker 2:It's coming up more and more.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that's already that's already the law of the land and has been the law of the land in The Netherlands for decades. It's now the law of the land in Canada. It's going through the House of Lords and House of Commons in The UK right now and that conversation will probably come come to America in the next one to three years. And so we would like it's a it's one of those subjects where depending on how you frame it and when you look at the polling, it looks like about 80% of Americans Sure.
Speaker 1:Would be supportive of this, including almost half of the people who go to church Yeah. Which is scary
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because it's not good and we have all sorts of, you know, good reasons why, you know, this wouldn't be good. But that would be an example of a subject that we care something deeply about where we wanna get people thinking about these things before it's a national conversation Yeah. Before it's politicized and these kinds of things so that we can we can be ready with good answers that are biblically rooted, sound, grounded, ethical, you know, before it becomes something that's like a very polarizing wedge.
Speaker 2:When I was a pastor at First Presbyterian Baton Rouge, there was a woman in our church, she was an elder and a law professor at LSU. And over the course of my time there, she converted to Roman Catholicism. And you can imagine for our Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, she actually was from a very well known historic legal family. Her father, I believe, may have been on the state supreme court. But her conversion really resonated far and wide.
Speaker 2:And I asked her why. And she said, you know, Case, the differences over communion, baptism, hierarchy, these sorts of things didn't weigh on me so much. But I'm just so grateful for the Roman Catholic literature, thinking, and approach to life issues.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There is a broad conversation that's gone on for centuries that now equips and feeds Roman Catholics to answer such cultural questions. And it made me realize, you know, from seminary to now, boy, I know a lot about abortion, but I'm not so equipped as a pastor when and I've had this happen. Couples come in and ask me if they should do in vitro and freeze ten eggs and only use two. And euthanasia, like, I know what my moral conviction is, but I'm not so sharp and clear on my theology and pastoral care in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, those are challenges because it's like, there's like three eras of being pro life. There's beginning of life, pro life issues Right. Middle of life and then end of life. And it's good for us to have consistency across all three of those things.
Speaker 1:But I think in the in among Protestants and evangelicals, you know, there's been, maybe not as much focus on middle and end of life, and those things will probably come home to roost for us in the years to come if we don't play catch up.
Speaker 2:So Yeah. So good. So over your time there, how have you seen the Keller Center shape and mold its not maybe not just its mission, but even its approach to this mission. Because you started it. Right?
Speaker 2:And it is in year four, I bet it you might not have imagined you'd be doing some of the things or thinking about some of the things at year four as you did year one. Tell us about that journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, you know, so I work underneath, you know, Colin Hansen. He's our executive director, I'm our program director. And so
Speaker 2:Oh, sorry. He's the executive director of the Keller Center. Yes. Got it. Got it.
Speaker 2:Got it. To be clear. You're program director.
Speaker 1:So I'm I think I'm like operations and he's like big picture vision.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So there were a number of areas that before Tim passed that were areas that that Colin and Tim had discussed of areas of focus. A lot of these things you can find in Tim's How to Win the West Again Mhmm. Document. You can download that for free from Redeemer City to City.
Speaker 2:We'll put it in the Yeah.
Speaker 1:Put that in the notes. He also Tim also gave a couple really helpful interviews right before he passed. One was with Mere Orthodoxy on, their podcast, Mere Fidelity, I think nine areas, that Tim had high hopes of where the church would, you know, projects that that the church would lean into. So, a lot of the things that we're continuing to do are are really downstream from some of those conversations that we had with Tim, you know, before he passed. The everything really just boils down to how can we help regular Christians be able to tell the gospel story as effectively as possible in light of how culture and society continues to evolve and shift over time.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. So, you know, the message doesn't change, but culture and society changes. And so, you know, sometimes that means how we talk about those things in order to be understood by the people who we're speaking to. Sometimes we have to talk a little bit differently so that people can actually understand what we're saying. And so a lot of the work at the Keller Center is helping to bring people up to speed on how is culture and society changing and how does that you know, what does that mean for us in terms of how we communicate the, you know, the central tenets of, you know, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the gospel of the kingdom of God.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Mhmm. Tell us about some of your programs. How you help equip pastors and lay leaders.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, you know, kind of the nerve center for the Keller Center is, you know, our our URL, and it's a pretty easy URL. It's just the kellercenter.org. The kellercenter.org. But the you know, what you'll the the main mediums, that we, you know, communicate are gonna be long form articles and essays.
Speaker 1:So kind of in the style of the Atlantic. That's one. A second medium is, podcast. So the, my my boss, Colin, his podcast is called gospel bound. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Gospel bound. And what he does is he interviews authors who have written really interesting books recently, and he talks to them about, you know, kind of the the themes and theses, of those books and tells positive stories about, you know, how how is it that, you know, people who are, you know, bringing the gospel to bear on important aspects of, you know, life, culture, society, these kinds of things. So podcast audio, long form articles. Then we have, something called cohorts. Here's what a cohort is.
Speaker 1:Imagine, once a week for six to eight weeks, you're talking about a subject that's really interesting, urgent, and but where you can't necessarily go and take a class on it at a seminary or a college.
Speaker 2:So I've done some of these. They're great.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, some examples of that would be, you know, like later this year, we'll do a a cohort on artificial intelligence. We have a cohort that's on six of the biggest, cultural apologists in church history.
Speaker 1:So cohorts are basically really unique content typically taught by one to six very well known people, people who you'd probably recognize.
Speaker 2:And well equipped. I mean, experts.
Speaker 1:And and who are sharp and, you know, good teachers. Yeah. And all that's done live over Zoom. It's it's recorded for people who can't make it live, you know, and wanna watch it asynchronously.
Speaker 2:Well, and I was shocked. I mean, thousands around the world. I mean, this wasn't 12 pastors getting together. I I expected a much smaller experience, but it was amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But, I mean, the cool part is is, yeah, you get the ability to, you know, to ask direct questions to people who you recognize or whose books that you've read or Yeah. You know, those kinds of things. And then there's, you know, it the in real life conferences that we have. So on even numbered years, like 2026, we have our women's conference.
Speaker 1:So that's in in June, always in Indianapolis, Indiana. Mhmm. And then on our odd numbered years, we have our national conference, and and that's not gender specific. Mhmm. And so we we're always doing typically 20 to 30 breakouts or other very specific sessions from just our department.
Speaker 1:That would be, you know, they'd probably have like a 150 breakouts or Sure. You know, something.
Speaker 2:And I love the the book room. It's worth what do you call it? The
Speaker 1:Yeah. The yeah. The yeah. The bookstore. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Mean, it's all the major publishers come and they lay out all their former and latest hits and for nerds like us, I can just spend hours walking around looking at books. Is it gonna be Indianapolis again?
Speaker 1:Yeah. We'll be in Indianapolis for the indefinite indefinite
Speaker 2:Come home. Come to Orlando.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Those conferences used to be in Orlando. I loved it. When it was here, it was so much more convenient. Although, that being said, there's there's all sorts of direct flights from here to Indianapolis that usually aren't that expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But it's Indianapolis. Well, now, we do talk about faith and work, certainly. Our emphasis is for folks in the marketplace and government and health care education, etcetera. But I also, for the years we've done the work of the collaborative, have had a heart for people in ministry.
Speaker 2:Like you say, you were on work with crew for a number of years, we would years ago go out to crew and Wycliffe and do different workshops and such because just because you work at a church or a Christian ministry doesn't mean there's still not the same issues of the workplace and the same issues of the worker and how he or she understands Jesus' call and their gifts and their contribution to the kingdom. Sometimes it might be easier. It might be more explicit. Talk to us about your integration of faith and work. What are some of the pressures that you experience and even how the Lord meets you in that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think sometimes the temptation can be to think that, oh, well, people who are in vocational ministry, they don't have to work hard to integrate, you know, faith and work. Mhmm. But you still have to do those things, you know. You still get, you know, everybody who works in ministry, you know, you still got emails that you have to write and phone calls you have to make.
Speaker 2:And HR to deal with.
Speaker 1:You know, and and HR to deal with and spreadsheets and, you know, TPS reports, you know, all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:What's that TPS?
Speaker 1:That was my allusion to the film office space. Oh. The the reports that everybody hated to fill out an office space. Anyways, so, you know, and and I've worked on both sides of the fence here, you know, of, you know, having six years, you know, in in kind of startup land, you know, doing CFO work Mhmm. You know, working with, you know, federal government contracts and, you know, doing, you know, kind of full stack accounting.
Speaker 1:So, you know, both of those things require a lot of integration. It's just the integration looks a little bit different. You know, when you're when you're working in a secular environment, the how you treat other people Well, I mean, I guess, how you treat other people is really probably the the number one thing that's downstream from living under the power of the holy spirit. Yeah. So, you know, the I think the spirit filled life is the most important thing to the integration of faith and work because if you don't have the holy spirit in control of your head, heart, and hands, things are not going to go well in terms of being able to integrate those two things.
Speaker 1:And then I think the first piece of fruit that comes from somebody who's well integrated on these things is is the fruit of the spirit, and the fruit of the spirit comes across in how you treat other people. I've always been of the mindset that you can't treat clients well until you've treated your teammates well. In other words, a different way to think about this as a this is a core foundational principle for me. Yeah. My teammates are my first clients.
Speaker 1:K? Mhmm. So and if I don't treat my teammates well, there's no way I'm gonna be able to treat my clients well.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:And so so for me, you know, the integration of faith and work really is about, you know, first and foremost, how do how am I treating my teammates and the people that I have to work with? And then flowing from that, then how do I treat the people who are external to the entity that, you know, that I'm working for? Now these principles also you know, these all these these same principles work in ministry too, you know, because, you know, the people that I work with at at TGC, like, you know, do I wanna make raving fans of clients? Yes. But in order to do that, I need to be I need to make raving fans of the people who I work with too, and they need to have an amazing experience of, you know, what it feels like to work with me.
Speaker 1:And so I think it's important to bring a pastoral quality into how we relate to other people to the extent to which those people are willing to relate to us. Wow. So I think that there's kind of six key awarenesses that occur in the, you know, in the Christian life, and those six key awarenesses are first, God awareness, You know? So, you know, do we have you know, is the Holy Spirit in charge, you know, sitting on the throne of our heart? Yeah.
Speaker 1:And is he is he driving our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions? The second thing is self awareness. You know, are we in touch with our own story, you know, are we aware of that and do we have people who are helping us?
Speaker 2:The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Everything. The the next awareness is others awareness. So others awareness are are we paying attention to the story of other people and what's going on in their life. The fourth awareness is awareness about how other people are experiencing us.
Speaker 1:So it could be easy to to mix those two up Sure.
Speaker 2:Four. Sure.
Speaker 1:Other others awareness is you're reading, you know, you're paying attention to somebody else's story. The awareness of how other people are experiencing Yeah. You is the ability to read social cues as to how you are coming across to other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Huge one for me to learn over the years.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This this has been the most painful one for me over the
Speaker 2:years. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And then fifth and sixth are emotional awareness and cultural awareness. Mhmm. Each one of these awarenesses are kind of like function like a Venn diagram where there's overlap. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Emotional, you know, awareness overlaps with self awareness. You know, they all overlap with each other in some way shape
Speaker 2:or form. But
Speaker 1:here's what I find and here's why I rehearse those six things Mhmm. Is when you possess those six things to some meaningful level
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:What happens is people experience you as being far more trustworthy. And so, you know, the the trust, you know, like like we said in the, you know, kind of in the last episode, in the AI era, you know, trust is the single most important commodity, you know, that there is. And so, you know, when it comes to having those six key awarenesses Mhmm. When when you are growing in each one of those areas, what happens is is people experiencing experience you as being more trustworthy, which means they they allow you to be more persuasive.
Speaker 2:Sure. Sure. And a better leader.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and it allows us to be better leaders. It allows us to be better in our work in the office. It also allows us to be more fruitful in in the the work that we're trying to do, you know, if we have outward facing business activity.
Speaker 2:Michael, thank you. You know, your work is impacting tens of thousands if not more and will be enduring. So I'm honored to hear about it and I know you're a blessing to those listening and watching.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Case.
Speaker 2:Friends, let me encourage you to go check out our show notes, and there will be links to Tim Keller's How to Win the West as well as the different organizations we have mentioned here. Please share. Make a comment. Give send this conversation to someone in your life that needs it and would be blessed by it. Join us at our website, wecolabor.com.
Speaker 2:Give us your email, and we'll send you a copy of Zeitgeist, our journal on faith, work, and culture. You'll also find us across the various social media platforms. My thanks to Michael and Shandy Kelly for their support of this program. See you next time. I'm Kaye Thorpe, and God's blessings on you.