Church Hurts And

Men, Macho and Ministry-Dr. Pete Alwinson

I love the Socratic method. It’s part of what makes me a curmudgeon. It went out of style a long time ago as the premier didactic tool of education, but I had the good fortune of having some professors who didn’t drink the cool-aid of modern educationalese and still taught that way. One had to come to class prepared knowing the professor would likely challenge their knowledge and arguments for or against the issue under discussion.

“What do you think about that Mr. Bash?” might come out of the professor’s mouth at any moment, making daydreaming quite a perilous activity.

I snuck in late to a special event one time which was featuring one of those aforementioned professors. You knew him, Pete. His name was R.C. Sproul and hundreds of people were in attendance. As he was apt to do he broke into a Latin phrase to make a fine point which always got people’s attention wondering if he had lost his mind. Like quoting Latin is going to make something clearer, right?

In dramatic fashion he turned his back on the audience and walked toward the blackboard he would use long after they went out of style, raising his hands in the air he said, “What does that mean, BASH?”

This wasn’t my church. I was a stranger there. So much for my trying to sneak in late inconspicuously. Immediately turning 50 shades of red I responded with the right answer from the middle of the crowd, wanting to sink through the floor only to have my professor say, “No! It means…” and then he went on to say loudly with the microphone exactly what I had said. He was such a turkey.

What does that have to do with today? Men, Macho & Ministry? I want to do a bit of that Socratic method with our guest, even play the devil’s advocate, if you will.

Really? In this day and age to focus on men? Doesn’t this guy know that’s as out of fashion as the Socratic Method?

Dr. Pete Alwinson, California native, but has made Orlando home for decades, has a ministry to men that keeps growing. Talk about bucking the trend. Doesn’t he know that there’s not much difference between men and women? It’s the 21st century. And in church too? Bet he believes only men should be leaders in the church and the Bible ought to keep its sexist language and that God has a beard like a grandFATHER.

Why in the world would someone focus on men and church in this day and age?

Welcome Dr. Alwinson to Church Hurts And.

Mental Illness, Addiction and Hope with Dr. Jim Stout

It was the watershed moment in my life. I don’t say that just looking back. I knew it at the time. A decision had to be made and there would be no turning back. I was mentally, spiritually, and physically exhausted.

I had studied, laboriously studied. That’s what I do when I get stuck in a corner. I figure I must be in that corner because I didn’t know enough.  Then I feel stupid. How can you not feel stupid if you are stuck in this corner? Smart people don’t get stuck in corners like this, do they?

Then I became an expert. I talked to more people about it. I read more. Now it felt like I was stuck in the corner with a suicide vest on. My only option out was to blow myself up.

Have you ever felt stuck in a corner by something in life like that? Had I been the suicidal type, it would have been the end of me.

Now I’m not going to name names or tell you where the bodies are buried, but I will give you the category. It’s called “Mental Illness”. In so many ways that defy definition because rational categories seem to elude it. 

If I keep trying to talk about this I am going to get myself in trouble so I have brought into the show today a man who is just crazy enough to understand what I am talking about, and just rational enough to make more sense out of it than I can.

Dr. Jim Stout from Costa Mesa, California is a husband on one for over 50 years, a father of two, grandfather to 6, long time pastor, author, speaker, and handler of therapy dog “Thunder the Wonder Dog”.

Welcome, Rev. Dr. Jim Stout to Church Hurts And.

www.churchhurtsand.org

You can hear more from our guest here: drjimstout.com

Clarity in Confusion with Kent Burklow

 

I watched a humorous video the other day which showed a horse race with a mock announcer calling out the silly horse names which were made analogous to the trending solutions for the virus called Corona. “Shelter in Place” is rounding the curve followed closely by “Daily Briefings”. Here comes “Doctor Fauci” … you get the point. It was hard not to laugh but as one got weary of the point being made, hopefully, they stuck around for the ending. To paraphrase: “And coming from nowhere to take the race is “WHO THE HECK KNOWS” by a head.

Confusion. Have you ever experienced a time where the world together stood in common confusion? What is the best thing for the country to do? What is the best thing for the national government to do? What should states do and what should local officials do? 

Laws and rules and advice vary from expert to expert, medical minds intersecting with legal minds, and politicians never stopping with opinions. And then it all gets personal. What do you do? And we talk about the church here, what should the church do? Really we are asking, “How do we find clarity in the midst of confusion?”

We have a guest today who is uniquely qualified to help us navigate this subject. Currently, he is the CFO at Effcon Laboratories which means he plays around in the middle of clinical trials with money. Doesn’t that sound fun? Back in the days of the biotech boom, he was with Genentech, and in between, he worked with churches a lot. His life has produced results so that lots of people seek his advice on lots of things, so let’s find out why.

Now from Atlanta, let me bring on J. Kent Burklow. Welcome Kent, to Church Hurts And.

www.churchhurtsand.org

Generations Style Now with Ryan Gaffney

Since the world seems very upside down these days, let us begin with an upside down story. Many people do not realize that most prestigious universities were begun with one of their primary emphasis being to train ministers. Harvard and Yale were Puritan schools. Harvard was named after a Christian minister. Yale was started by a clergyman. Princeton defined Presbyterianism for a long time finding its roots in The Log College designed specifically to train ministers. One only has to check out the old crests and latin slogans of many schools to discover the truth of this.

There certainly is an irony to the fact that most of these schools morphed into institutions overtly hostile to any version of classical Christianity. By the early 1900’s farmers having saved for a lifetime to send one of their children to college got back a confident faithless adult child. Soon Bible Colleges started to pop up, assuring parents this faithless transition wouldn’t occur there.

But now the story gets even weirder. Churches themselves started to imitate what happened in the colleges & universities. More and more traditional beliefs were falling away as sophisticated thinkers assured people that no one with a brain really believes many of the things in the Bible any more. 19th Century Philosophical Liberalism was turning into the story of 20th Century mainstream churches. Intelligence was being measured not by what one believed but by what they didn’t believe. Gone were the Sunday School stories of a Creation mandated by God, Moses and the burning bush, Jonah and the whale, Noah and the Arc let alone Jesus walking on water and a gravestone rolled away. We knew better now. 2000 years after the time of Christ we had it figured out. Those poor ignorant people who for 1900 years believed in a God who created something out of nothing and sent his son to redeem mankind just didn’t get the truth.

By the time the 1970’s rolled around churches were pretty well divided between those who were more “Bible believing” and those more what we will call “Progressive”. For many, these issues just weren’t doing anything for them spiritually, emotionally, or in any way really, and the decline of church attendance got momentum. It was boring, irrelevant, faithless and passé. 

But… then some young baby boomer church leaders decided that the issues weren’t so much intellectual ones as they were stylistic. Princetonian sermons with three alliterated points and a poem weren’t relevant to real life. Hymns and responsive readings were boring. Creeds in unison seemed meaningless. But what would happen if we took a biblically based message with relevant application for real life and combined it with music we actually listened to and dropped out the boring liturgy, maybe even throw in a drama or multi media show?

Orange County California had some of the first churches developed with many of these thoughts. The Chrystal Cathedral was a precursor of sorts to the movement and Robert Schuller a mentor to a few. Calvary Chapel certainly comes to mind. South Coast Community, now Mariners was another. Later on Saddleback took the lead. That’s the kind of church many Millennials saw as typical church. Let’s talk to one of them today.

Ryan Gaffney, Woodbridge High School Grad in Irvine and then Concordia University in Irvine and then Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He now pastors College Park Presbyterian Church in Orlando, Florida.

Jews, Conflict and Culture with Dr. Carl Moeller

It is hard to describe the tension in the air and in the spirits of Americans at the time of this broadcast. After three months we were tired of the shutdown caused by the virus called Corona, perhaps even more tired of the endless pundits discussing reopening the country, when the air got sucked out of the room by the senseless murder of George Floyd on May 25 and then the protests turned to riots and the pundits kept going and going and I’m tired even describing it. It’s been painful.

I’ve really have had to focus to keep myself from losing my serenity during this time. How easy it would be to get wound up over big issues of which I have no control. People I talk to all have a lot of opinions about the virus, about race, about authorities and bias as virtue signaling has taken over Facebook, family groups, and almost all public discourse. I’m tired, but it got me thinking.

What would it be like if this stress didn’t go away? What would it be like to live daily under conditions where events outside of your control might impose at any moment in dramatic ways? As I often do, I went to the Bible, and soon I was thinking about that land where so much of the Bible played out. In my lifetime, I can’t think of a place more synonymous with conflict and stress and charges of bigotry and bias and international virtue signaling than the Middle East. One might even think that “Powder Keg” is defined as the number one adjective for the Middle East.

So lets calm things down, if you are following my clear train of thought (virus, shut down, pundits, George Floyd, Middle East), now let’s add church into the equation. If you grew up in a Church you probably heard some teaching about Israel and some attempt to apply that to the modern-day. Some churches are just go-go Israel, the Jews are God’s people and we need to stand behind them no matter what. God said so. It’s in the Bible.

Other churches find the connection between modern Israel and Ancient Israel a stretch at best and have far more empathy for the causes of the Palestinians. But know this, no matter what you heard emphasized, it probably didn’t come with a lot of flexibility toward the other viewpoint.

But let’s get more personal yet. If you came from a churched family, What were you told about Jews growing up? 

And then in the news, in the very back pages, at the very bottom was an announcement which you may have overlooked. The Joshua Fund hired a new Executive Director. Paul, I bet you missed it. Well, you may not know that guy or The Joshua Fund and we are going to correct that right now.

Welcome, Dr. Carl Moeller to Church Hurts And.

Come visit us at ChurchHurtsAnd.org

You can hear more from our guest here: TheJoshuaFund.com

 

Plagues, Pandemics and Churches-Carl Trueman

Today we are asking some bigger questions! The famous theologian and boxer Mike Tyson once said: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” I like that. It rings true today as much of America and the World cowers in their homes in this storm of an invisible virus called Corona. We’ve been punched in the mouth and any plans we had have been put to the test. We’ve heard from more medical experts than ever before. We’ve listened to economists by the dozen wax eloquent guessing about the future. But I think something else has been going on to, and it is something that usually takes a punch in mouth. We are asking some bigger questions. Who’s in charge here? How could this happen in our sophisticated scientific age? What can I do? What should I do? What if it gets me?

It’s in times like this that I find some wisdom in look backwards. Has anything like this happened before? How did the Church handle it? What did they do right? What did they do wrong? So today we have one of the most qualified people I know to help us do exactly that. His name is Carl Trueman. I could take the rest of the show introducing him by listing his degrees and books but anyone can just google his name for that. Let me just say his specialty is Historical Theology which is a soup with history and theology all mixed together and it can be pretty healing stuff if it is cooked properly.

Welcome Carl… Rumor has it that you grew up in Dudley England which is a lot like growing up in Pittsburgh from what I can tell? The title of this show is “Church Hurts AND…” For a lot of people who’ve been hurt or disillusioned by the church, they might think that is largely new to period of history. Might you be interested in removing that illusion from us as a bonafide expert in Historical Theology? So…tell me what times in history have come to your mind in recent weeks in the midst of this Corona Virus… Can you tell us a few stories of when people and the church faced anything that felt like this? 

churchhurtsand.org

Denominations, Change and Culture with Dr. Doug Rehberg

The numbers aren’t good. They really aren’t. Church attendance. Church membership. Religious affiliation.  All down. Gallop tells us that in the past 20 years church membership has gone down a percent a year. 20 years ago 70% of Americans were church members. Now it is 50% and I probably don’t need to tell you that the younger a person is the less likely they have any religious affiliation.

If we dig into that a bit we discover some more trends that are no longer breaking news. Mainline Denominations are leading in this decline. We also discover that this trend is not world wide. According the Guardian “religion is on the wane in western Europe and North America, and it’s growing everywhere else.” Interesting.

To help us navigate these swirling waters we have a guest today uniquely qualified to speak on the subject. He’s a mainline Presbyterian pastor who has never bought into the status quo although he is so buttoned down he makes L.L. Bean apologize for their trendiness. 

Dr. Doug Rehberg started out as an economist with a MPA degree from George Washington, even worked for the EPA before turning religious and getting another masters, this time to Princeton for his Master of Divinity Degree and then got his Doctorate in Divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary. Maybe he can help us sort out this morass of change and tell us what it means.

Welcome Dr. Rehberg to Church Hurts And.

Communism, Culture & Church (II)-Teodora Papazi

More stories from half way around the world, Teodora makes us think about life in America in a different way. What would it be like living in a former Communist country that still has plenty of remnants effecting daily life? How do people look at church that is so different than the American experience?

Communism, Culture & Church-Teodora Papazi

Church Hurts And begins in a unique way in this two part interview with Teodora visiting Orange County for the first time from Calarasi, Romania. Where is Romania? Teodora weaves us through the past 50 years from a very personal perspective helping us think about life in a different way. She adds a fun twist to Church Hurts And...

Hurting, Hunger & My World with Devlin Donaldson

Paul, today is unique. I’m not sure I’ve ever spoken to an audience when I was more sure of their common condition including uncertainty, confusion and fear. This Corona virus has thrown this world for a loop and everyone is struggling to get perspective.

I really believe we have today a guest who might just be perfect to help us do that. He has quite literally been around the world more than a few times and not on luxury cruise packages. Meet Devlin Donaldson, currently the President and CEO of VisionTrust.

Devlin, welcome friend. Would you give us the elevator speech for VisionTrust for those who are not familiar?