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"Upstream" is a podcast where lively conversation meets deep faith. Each episode, we dive into the currents of today's society, exploring important topics through a Christian lens. Whether we're discussing family values, ethical dilemmas, or personal growth, our goal is to provide insights that resonate with real life while rooted in our faith. So, grab a cup of coffee and join us as we navigate these waters, always striving to move upward and onward in our spiritual journeys. Together, let's discover how faith shapes our lives in the modern world. Tune in to "Upstream" for a fresh perspective on the things that matter most!
Hey. Welcome to Upstream. You are joining me, Zach Patterson. I'm, one of the pastors on staff at Calvary Chapel South Bay, and I'm joined with some friends here. To my right is pastor Chet Low.
Chet Lowe:Here I am. You're here.
Chet Lowe:I'm so excited to be here because
Zach Patterson:I already introduced myself.
Chet Lowe:Oh, sorry. Yes. Zach Patterson. Yes.
Sherry Worel:That is
Zach Patterson:Oh, you're not talking about me.
Chet Lowe:I I you know what? It's we're all unified. Yes. But, I am here with a dear, dear friend who I know you're about to introduce.
Zach Patterson:Yes. Miss Sherry Worrall.
Sherry Worel:Well, thank you. Yes.
Sherry Worel:Yes, Sherry. I know. What is all this? I'm getting set up for something really bad.
Chet Lowe:Absolutely. We're gonna ask you for money later. That's alright.
Sherry Worel:I left my checkbook at home.
Zach Patterson:It's alright. We take cash, credit,
Chet Lowe:and everything. An iWatch. We've got a little machine
Sherry Worel:on the way out.
Zach Patterson:And and we took IOUs. You can come back. Oh.
Sherry Worel:Perfect. Perfect.
Chet Lowe:It's so great to have you.
Sherry Worel:It's great to be up here, I gotta tell you.
Chet Lowe:Amen. Well, and then we got someone else.
Zach Patterson:Yeah. Adonis Reeves.
Adonis Reeves:Hi.
Zach Patterson:Miss Adonis Reeves, the one and only Adonis Reeves. We know you from we see you on stage all the time.
Adonis Reeves:Oh.
Sherry Worel:Yes? No. Yeah.
Zach Patterson:No. We do.
Adonis Reeves:No. I don't be so fun.
Chet Lowe:I think
Sherry Worel:you should
Chet Lowe:do an Adonis fact. Adonis, you love to be on the stage, don't you?
Adonis Reeves:Here's a fun fact about Adonis. Every time I'm on stage or before I go, I wanna throw up.
Sherry Worel:Fun fact.
Chet Lowe:You know, it's so funny. No one would ever believe that.
Zach Patterson:That's true.
Adonis Reeves:It is what is true.
Chet Lowe:But it's so good that people hear that because, really, it's the Lord that you're up there and doing that.
Adonis Reeves:Yeah. I love people.
Chet Lowe:Yeah. That is
Adonis Reeves:They also make me throw up.
Sherry Worel:So I'm okay. That may need to be edited out. Yeah. They'll make me throw up.
Adonis Reeves:There are so many people that will stay watching this because of that fact.
Zach Patterson:That people make you throw up. Yes. Yeah. Because they're at home listening, and it's like, I'm just gonna stay here.
Sherry Worel:Yeah. This is comfortable.
Chet Lowe:Yeah. And I think one of the things, Sherry, our body doesn't know you, but, I want them to. You are just a profound figure in the kingdom of God. For those of you that don't know, Sherry was, the founder and the president, teacher, chairman of, Stony Brook School down in Orange County. How many decades has it been in existence now?
Sherry Worel:A few.
Chet Lowe:No. Come on. How many decades?
Sherry Worel:Let's see. I repurposed at 35 years. So I've been in my repurpose mode for the last 5.
Chet Lowe:And what exactly does repurpose mean, Ms. Worrall?
Sherry Worel:It means that there's nowhere in our Bible a teaching about retirement. And instead of retiring, I shifted into a new role. I played chaplain at school, which means I get to sit, read, study, and think, and teach the Bible. So
Chet Lowe:amen. Best part of the world. How many students are does Stony Brook have?
Sherry Worel:Between 56100, I I think, right now.
Chet Lowe:And it's a k through 8 school?
Sherry Worel:Preschool. Go pre the 3 year olds up through 8th grade.
Chet Lowe:Amen. Well, my son went. Zach's kids went.
Zach Patterson:Yep.
Chet Lowe:And then we moved up to LA. Yes. You did.
Sherry Worel:It was an easy drive up, though. It's not that far. Wow.
Zach Patterson:You must have hit the right time.
Sherry Worel:Yeah.
Zach Patterson:I did. And I would and I would boast on Sherry just for a minute. I mean, when we moved from from San Juan Capistrano from the school, when we moved from Orange County up to LA County, one of the most difficult things for my family was leaving Stony Brook
Sherry Worel:and
Zach Patterson:just the legacy of faith there. And, it's not just a place to learn. It was, like, relationship and community and spiritual growth. So, I I know you've you've left a major impact that's still making impact there. So, it's my wife's jealous right now.
Zach Patterson:She's like, wait. You're with Sherry today? I'm I'm thinking
Chet Lowe:of my own son too, Zach. Timon loves Jesus. He loves Jesus. And I I mean, I'm not gonna bring any credit to my parenting. I mean, I am going to give credit to he was in an influential year while he was at Stony Brook, and you all invested Jesus into him.
Chet Lowe:And that's what I love about that school, and that's your legacy. Wherever you go, Sherry, we've had countless hours together, just with lunches, doing upstream. This is not our first go around. We've done this before. But every time I leave, I've left with something about Jesus that's fresh and new for me, and so I'm excited for our body to get to know you.
Sherry Worel:Yeah. I'm excited to be here. You know you're you
Chet Lowe:know you're a part of our body. Right?
Sherry Worel:I'm happy to be here. Happy to be
Zach Patterson:the body. Oh, wow. I I realized so I had, like, parent pride when my kids could answer, like, so many bible questions. Right? I'm like, I'm a pastor.
Zach Patterson:This is awesome. And so I'm taking credit for it, and then they started saying things that I'm like, we didn't talk about that. And wait. Is that even true? I need to, like, fact check that.
Zach Patterson:And then I realized it was coming from Stony Brook, and I was very humbled. I I was like, okay.
Chet Lowe:Now, Thomas, I don't know if you know this about Sherry and I. We have a very special relationship.
Sherry Worel:Special. Yeah.
Chet Lowe:That's a
Adonis Reeves:good relationship. So excited to, like, watch and learn and
Sherry Worel:Well, we have,
Chet Lowe:we always land around the same airport.
Zach Patterson:True.
Chet Lowe:Yeah. But we
Sherry Worel:have Not necessarily landing from the same direction. Yeah.
Zach Patterson:We're definitely not always on the same plane.
Chet Lowe:Definitely different flight paths. And what I love about theology is it's been developed by debate. I mean, The beauty of theology is that people have gotten together in counsel like this, and they have studied the word of God and then communicated in order to develop the theology. For example, the trinity. The trinity is not necessarily a term that is found in the Bible.
Chet Lowe:It's a developed theology through much debate and a concrete commitment to the word of God. And that's what I love about our connection is that both of us are committed to the word of God, and, both of us see things very differently.
Zach Patterson:It's wonderful.
Adonis Reeves:It's the body of Christ.
Sherry Worel:Yes. At
Chet Lowe:work. Now when I was at Coast Hills, I would always call Sherry. She attends Coast Hills. I would always call Sherry. Hey.
Chet Lowe:I'm thinking about doing this. Well, that's a little risky. So I just so appreciate your your knowledge of the word of God, your commitment to Jesus, your investment into the lives of others, we're just really glad you're here.
Sherry Worel:Yeah. Amen. Well, I am humbled. The last 2 weeks I've been teaching in bible study on humility, and I'm humbled by your kind kind comments. And by the way, the net effect of Stony Brook's a bunch of people who for a bunch of years have invested themselves trying desperately to reflect the character of Christ.
Sherry Worel:So Mhmm. All the nice things you said will reflect back on them.
Chet Lowe:I think that's the one thing I took away as a leader. That's your leadership. Your leadership is team. You do things in a way that is with team, and you're developing other human beings, and you're investing Jesus into them. And that has impact on me.
Chet Lowe:I'm a leader. And I know I can't I mean, sorry. Not only do I know, everyone knows I can't do this without Zach.
Sherry Worel:So everybody needs a Zack. It's,
Chet Lowe:I mean, it's such a gift. And everyone knows, like, I mean, it's like if you know what goes on behind the scenes, we've got Alison that is helping, Dan that's on the film, Brandon that's trying to run my life, Adonis that's trying to keep me on
Sherry Worel:the straight line. Lots of luck, Brandon. Lots of luck. Yeah.
Zach Patterson:Yeah. Maybe he does need a raise. You're right
Sherry Worel:about that.
Chet Lowe:So great.
Zach Patterson:Good. Well, I mean okay. So we're getting to know one another, but we're also here for a purpose. So, like you said, Upstream is something that we have done before, but we're kind of relaunching it. We haven't been together for a while.
Zach Patterson:I mean, it's important that people know what is Upstream. Why would I even listen to Upstream? What's the point of for them investing their time and and being a part of and I think that's our prayers that they're a part of the conversation where it's not just a teaching. We're not just going to read the scripture in one person who's gonna lay it all out like you said, Pastor Chet. There's, hey, let's talk about that.
Zach Patterson:What are some of the different views on that? How are people interpreting that? What's that look like in life today? So, I think upstream's really that. It's a spiritual conversation, whether it's on, maybe a topic that the church is facing today.
Zach Patterson:That's kind of what we're gonna do today a little bit, but it could be a a current event, something that's going on in the world and a biblical worldview kind of thing where we just go, hey. What does that mean for a Christian? How do we interpret that? What should that look like in our life?
Chet Lowe:And the name is important. Right? Upstream. Like, Christians are swimming upstream. It's a battle.
Chet Lowe:Yeah. We are going against the flow of the world, and we wanna equip people with biblical truths to be able to know why they believe what they believe. And, we understand that some things are just difficult to wrestle with. Sherry, I was just with a friend of mine, and we're gonna be dealing with deconstructing our faith. And I was just with a friend of mine, a couple of days ago, and, I'm watching him ask questions that are really, really great questions but very difficult.
Chet Lowe:Like, why would God create humans when he knew that some wouldn't make it to heaven? There's a lot of young people asking those kinds of questions, and because they can't, get answer, and sometimes I feel like the church is afraid of those kinds of questions, that, we back away from them. But I, pray that Upstream will tackle those kinds of questions to give people tools to be able to accomplish a great conversation and not afraid to enter into those conversations. Have you had those kinds of questions? For sure.
Sherry Worel:And and to your point, one of the things I hope happens out of this this process is that not only, you know, people realize we invite questions, but they will realize that Christianity is not a set, a template that that gets placed on their life. This is it. This is how you this is what you think. This is what you do. But they'll recognize just in the representation of the 4 of us that there are there are variations and different edges to this and a different overlay for that and a different set of glasses for this.
Sherry Worel:And, you know, we're not joining a tribe. It's not tribal here. It's Spirit led. It's, yes, we use this unequivocally as God's inerrant word, but we recognize that the the putting on of that Christianity, I'm choosing a black and white blouse. He's got white and something you, you know, dressed up with your blue.
Chet Lowe:I thought you were gonna say, you're in a black and white blouse, and he's in a white blouse.
Sherry Worel:No. No. No.
Chet Lowe:I was hoping you were gonna say that. That is Because that would be a whole other podcast that
Sherry Worel:I was saying.
Chet Lowe:My point being,
Zach Patterson:maybe one day,
Sherry Worel:that there is room for understanding, individualized, and that people listening to this that that maybe don't identify with what my comment might be can identify with an aspect of your comment, and that's okay.
Chet Lowe:Yeah. And, and, and, Adonis, what would you say, in our world, going swimming upstream? I mean, you have found yourself working in the world. You've Yeah. You want to reach Hollywood.
Chet Lowe:You have a vision of what God's calling you to do. How is this important for you to equip Christians to swim upstream?
Adonis Reeves:I think just building off of what Sherry was saying, it's not a template, it's a table. And being able to gather at a table and just talk, I think that's one of the things that has, been our greatest hindrance, but also it's our greatest, in a lot of ways, desire. Is someone there to sit and talk with me? Is it safe for me to share x, y,
Sherry Worel:and z? Great
Chet Lowe:word. Great word.
Adonis Reeves:And so I just think just us being here at the table is laying a foundation, but also, an invitation.
Chet Lowe:Zach, do you think Christians are afraid to talk about some of these issues that are facing the church?
Zach Patterson:Say yes. Well
Sherry Worel:I agree.
Zach Patterson:Obviously, I'm gonna say yes now. No. I I actually think there are some extremes. So I think you have, on one extreme, people who just wanna brush over all the challenging, controversial, like, the things of faith that, sorry, but require getting a little messy. It requires getting a little dirty because it's not just this clean, cookie cutter Sunday school.
Zach Patterson:Great. I can grow up and believe that, and everything's gonna work out. And then you have on the other extreme, people who might be a little more focused on, the controversy and the topic
Chet Lowe:that And they just love to debate. Yeah. Then even
Zach Patterson:getting into the word and just having their devotions every day and trusting that the Lord is gonna lead them and the spirit's gonna teach them. And so, you know, I mean, for me, that's one of the things I love about this table is being able to come together where it can be a conversation, but it can also be like, hey. Let's actually talk about what the word says about that, not just what culture is saying, though we care about what culture is saying. Or
Chet Lowe:Yeah. In our context before, sure, you've had a lot of mic drop moments, where I'm going at something, and you'll just pull out scripture. I'll be like, okay. I'm done.
Sherry Worel:How exciting.
Chet Lowe:But that's I love conversation that gets us to the word. Yeah. And I think that asking and you said something about messy. Asking messy questions, I think, is where we're at in the 21st century world. People are leaving faith because they don't have answers, and the culture is communicating to them, that you are the answer.
Chet Lowe:So if you think this is the right thing for you, then it must be right. And that's what I think we're going to deal with. Yep. But being messy, I think, is important for the church. Mhmm.
Chet Lowe:I got a phone call today, and it was an apology. Someone called and said, hey, I I think I need to owe you apology. I was just talking to someone. They're homeless. They're living on the street, and they are a mess.
Chet Lowe:So I said, you need to go to Calvert Chapel South Bay, but I don't even know if they'll wear clothes when they come into church. Like, this was the conversation. And I just started laughing. I go, that would be a blast. I mean, I just love the mess, and I love that people are saying, hey.
Chet Lowe:I'd like to recommend a church for you to go to. Mhmm. And so I said, it's not messy at all. I said, if people are offended by the fact that a homeless person comes to church, then they can find a different church, because we need to be the the we need to express the heart of God who came to seek and to save the lost.
Sherry Worel:Amen.
Chet Lowe:All the lost. Even I told the church a couple weeks ago, even your enemy. Yeah. God even loves your enemy. Yeah.
Chet Lowe:So Amen. Amen. Well, good.
Zach Patterson:I think we're gonna jump into some of that today, just as we talk about deconstruction and what that looks like in culture.
Chet Lowe:I've got one last question for you, before we jump in. How long are these sessions going to be so that the people know, hey. I can commit to this and listen to this?
Zach Patterson:It probably depends on how long it takes me to close out you and Sherry at the end when you're in the middle of, like I'm just Okay. That's a great point.
Sherry Worel:That's a great point.
Zach Patterson:You know, we try to keep the conversations to about 30 minutes. Excellent. Okay. So in a 30 minute, someone can do a car ride and they can get to work. Although, in in LA, we could do it for, like, 2 and a half hours or so.
Zach Patterson:You just never know. But, that way, it's enough time to really get into something, But, also, you know, people committing an hour to something is pretty challenging in the world we live in. So Yeah.
Chet Lowe:When we were in Dallas, I told someone that I was about, you know, 5 miles from the church. And he goes, wow. That's close. Would it take you about 7 minutes to get there? And I'm like, just what's happening to you?
Chet Lowe:We don't talk in miles in California. We talk in time. Yeah.
Adonis Reeves:So true.
Zach Patterson:Yeah. Anywhere from 12 minutes to 35 minutes. Oh.
Chet Lowe:I've had a 45 minute or one time, so I get it. For sure. Let's jump in.
Zach Patterson:Yeah. I'd love to pray just before we get in, and then, I'll toss it up to you guys. So, God, we are we're thankful, Lord, that we can, learn from you. God, we know that you've given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, but sometimes it takes a little digging, and it takes a little sifting, and it takes a little bit of time and some effort to, get to understanding of what your heart is and what that looks like for us today. So, God, I just pray for the conversation for, every one of those here at the table, but also those who are listening.
Zach Patterson:Lord, would you just help us to grow in faith? So, God, would you bless the time, and our conversation? In Jesus' name, amen.
Adonis Reeves:Amen.
Zach Patterson:Amen. Well, I mean, as we already said, the the topic is, deconstruction or deconstructing one's faith. So I really kind of wanna throw that out there because I think it's important that we at least get a working definition of what are what are we gonna talk about today. So if we're talking about this, people may already come in with some preconceived ideas of, like, oh, well, that's that's a really bad thing, and the church is against it. Or it's like, no.
Zach Patterson:That's a a great thing. You know, I'm maybe I'll just, like, read a verse just to start it off. But in 1st Thessalonians, we read, hey. Do not quench the spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything.
Zach Patterson:Hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. So there's a, I think, in deconstructing, there's a little bit of, like, a, hey. What do I believe, and is it true? Why do I believe it?
Zach Patterson:There's kind of a shaking of faith, but I wanna throw that out for you guys. What are we talking about? And maybe I'll start with actually, I'm gonna start with Adonis because I think you spend a decent amount of time with, especially, young women that you're counseling, young women that are facing just life in the world they live in. Like, what are we facing in faith that is even creating this thought of, like, deconstructing?
Adonis Reeves:Yeah. I think if we were just to summarize it, it's belief. Do I believe? And why do I believe what I believe? In some ways, the pros of that can be solidifying if you are inviting Jesus to the table.
Adonis Reeves:But if you're doing all this, asking questions and seeking and trying to find all of it, It can be overwhelming without the spirit at the table. But sometimes church people I mean, people don't feel like the church is a safe place to ask, to bring the doubts, to bring the whys. Because sometimes they can feel like they're put in a box of, like, what's wrong with you? Why don't you just believe?
Chet Lowe:Yeah. And when the church should be the safest place. Mhmm. Do you remember John the Baptist? He was doubting.
Chet Lowe:He was questioning. The great John the Baptist, who wasn't afraid of anybody, sends a message to Jesus in Matthew 11. Are you the one or not? If anyone can handle a hard question about faith, it's Jesus. He's not afraid to deal with hard questions of faith.
Chet Lowe:And Zach, I think it's important to recognize, deconstruction comes from a philosophy of deconstructionism. And, let me back up a little bit, which really and when I was younger and I don't know, Sherry, if, you would if you sorry. I was gonna say if you remember this.
Sherry Worel:But when things but when I
Chet Lowe:but when I was younger,
Zach Patterson:you were She was also younger.
Chet Lowe:Yeah. But still older than me. I was younger. I was like, how do I get out
Sherry Worel:of that
Chet Lowe:way? Yeah. I tried to help. But, relativism was, you know, it was everything is relative to what you think, and from that, we now get deconstructionism. And the idea behind it, it it it there's no meaning.
Chet Lowe:Someone who is has a philosophy of deconstructionism, they see meaning as, subjective to their individual way of looking at life. The world doesn't have inherent meaning to find out. There's no absolute truth. Truth is defined by where I'm at in my culture and in my context, and thus, your culture and context must have been truth for you, but that was your culture and context. But now I'm not in that culture and context, and the world doesn't have inherent truth or absolute truth.
Chet Lowe:Mhmm. So I can make up my own truth in my culture and context. I might gain some wisdom from you, but it doesn't mean that it's truth for me.
Sherry Worel:I I think it's really important at the beginning here that we realize that a definition of deconstruction, it's on a continuum. It's not one solid definition. Yep. Not everybody that struggles with deconstructing their faith fits you know, a a a single definition. This whole thing started way back in the sixties with a a French guy.
Sherry Worel:I was gonna quiz you and see if you knew who the guy was, but I'm moving on. There was a French guy, Miche. That's very close. Very close.
Chet Lowe:Anyway See, I blame him for everything.
Sherry Worel:Anyway, this the the whole thing started with an idea of of trying to find the hidden assumptions in a literary text. And so it went out of the literary arena into the spiritual arena. Can we pull apart the cultural stuff, the the the aspects that don't fit for us and then look at it? And but what's happened is the the conversations that I've had about deconstructionism always define it as as, you know, this one thing. This person is is pulling apart.
Sherry Worel:They no longer have faith, and we need to help them to get back to their faith. I think there's a underlying here, underlying idea here that this was a a systematic process in the literary world and and came into the spiritual world, and there are all kinds of people who are doing it very differently. Everything from rejection, and really we're looking at deconversion, all the way along the line to just some Doubting Thomases. Mhmm. You know?
Sherry Worel:So one definition is not gonna fit them all.
Chet Lowe:Yeah. Yeah. And I, I will add to that and say, you look back on church history, and I'm gonna even refer to our own Calvary Chapel history. When Chuck Smith was, and if I wanna apply a broad definition, deconstructing, denominational
Sherry Worel:Absolutely he was.
Chet Lowe:And he started reaching out to the hippie movement. It was the church that said, no way, Jose. Yep. We're we're not going there, and you can't take this church there. So in some sense, thank God he did because there was some real reaching into a world that was a real dark place that no Christian was even penetrating.
Chet Lowe:But on the other side, then you've got a Rob Bell in the Emergent Church who went to the next level of deconstructing faith and getting rid of hell, getting rid of consequence, getting rid of judgment. God is love, and so there's no way that loving God would send, anyone to hell. And when no one when God doesn't send anyone to hell, we kinda send ourselves, by rejecting God. So I think that, and I actually think, Sherry as well, what a ploy of the enemy to start in the literary world and then kind of just jump on over like a fire does across a river into the spiritual world to make people start doubting faith.
Zach Patterson:Yeah. That's a, I mean, that's a a great point, and I love that you highlighted the fact that because there are people listening, and it's like, well, they may not even realize they're deconstructing their faith. But as we talk about it, it's like, oh, I do have some of those questions.
Chet Lowe:And Zach, that's a great point. I think that some people have learned a faith that is already deconstructed and think they believe something that's true that may be deconstructed faith? Can you unpack that a little bit? In our culture today, things have changed. And, people are believing things to be true about the Bible because they don't know the word of God, and someone else has told them something.
Chet Lowe:For example, if we were to take the issue of transgenderism, and we were to, and we won't go into that today, but if we were to take this issue, the truth of scripture is God created the male and female. But to deconstruct that, that was true at that time. But now we live in a different culture, and we have science to be able to change that truth. So the new truth is he may have created male and female at that point, but now god accepts all people. And that's an an, something that's very true, but it's okay for me to believe that, you know, even though it's created male, a new truth is I can be female because science affords me that opportunity.
Chet Lowe:Another issue
Sherry Worel:to making my point about this continuum is that, we live in a different world than the world of 3 generations ago.