The Unpacking: Whole-Life Discipleship, Part 3

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0:00 I'm your host, Michael Langer,

0:01 an ordained minister and founder of Faithful Presence, a ministry in Washington,

0:03 D.C., equipping servants and leaders to flourish in their faith and work. It is good to be with you.

0:24 We'll be right back. Because there are so many wise people out there, people who are much smarter, who thought a lot more about various topics than I have. And so I think the best thing for me to do is to just bring those people in and

0:53 listen to what they have to say so that they can help us in this journey of whole life discipleship and living in a posture of faithful presence. As a teaser, I want to just tell you about our first three guests. First one we're going to have is Reverend Patrick Allen. He's a longtime friend of mine.

1:09 We went to seminary together at Covenant. We've been in ministry about the same amount of time, and he is the spiritual discipleship director at Chapel Gate Presbyterian Church here in the DMV. Before that, he was a youth pastor, so he has seen kind of the progress of discipleship all the way from junior high into adult,

1:27 who he serves now. And so he's going to come on and talk a little bit about the role of spiritual discipleship. whole life discipleship and how that plays out, not just in Washington, but also in the local church. Then we're going to have another friend of mine, Dr. Dan Sartor,

1:42 who I became associated with and became friends with. Their family and our family are friends. We have kids about the same age. Dr. Sartor specializes in trauma therapy. He's a licensed clinical therapist and And specifically, he specializes in trauma therapy for youth. So Dan is also on the board of advisors along with Patrick Allen.

2:05 And Dan's going to talk to us a little bit about the role that emotional discipleship plays in whole life discipleship and the various facets that impact emotional discipleship. So really excited to have him on. And then after that, we're going to have another friend of mine, Tracy Matthews. I serve on her board,

2:23 and she serves on my board of advisors, but I serve on her steering committee for a ministry she launched about five years ago called Attune to Grow. Tracy and her team, including her cohort Aaron, work with churches and leadership teams, Christian leadership teams, to develop healthy relationships between them.

2:46 So the first three guests I just could not be more excited about. I'm looking forward to interviewing each one of them. But today what we want to do is talk a little bit about these last two facets of whole life discipleship. We've covered spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational, ideological,

3:05 and today what we want to do is cover cultural and missional discipleship. Starting with cultural discipleship, here's the reality. It seems like the church has just been at odds. with culture, so to speak. Basically, for as long as I can remember, and certainly before that,

3:25 the church has always found itself kind of at odds or dissonant from culture. And part of that is We are not of this world, and that doesn't mean we're extraterrestrial aliens, but this is what Scripture says about us, is that we are here as elect exiles.

3:44 And so the question that we have then is, how do we live within the culture that we're in? And it is true that the Bible is helpful. It is totally sufficient for salvation. It is certainly helpful in guiding us in our cultural conversations, but we need to remember as we look at Scripture,

4:03 that we are not living in the ancient Near East, nor are we living in the first century. We are living in the 21st century, and there are different cultural norms here. That doesn't mean that the Bible needs to be kind of, I would say, reinterpreted or changed, that the truths of the Scripture should change,

4:24 but that the manner in which the church engages culture and should look different than it did in the ancient Near Eastern times of the Old Testament, or even in the New Testament times, or even in the 1960s. Because we have moved from modernism to post-modernism and now are decidedly, I would say, post-Christian.

4:47 One of the things that I frequently talk about when I visit churches is about the perception of Christianity to those who would consider themselves outsiders. I don't think it's helpful to use the term unbelievers because they do believe in something. They don't believe what we believe,

5:03 but calling them an unbeliever I don't think does justice to the fact that they absolutely have a worldview. So let me give you an example. Imagine that you're living in a neighborhood and someone moves in next door and you think to yourself, you know, I want to welcome them. I want to show them Christian hospitality.

5:20 So I'm going to walk over, make them some cookies or maybe a meal, introduce myself, and just make them feel welcome. And I'm going to make a point that while I'm doing that, I'm going to mention that I'm a Christian. I'm going to make sure I can work that in some way, maybe an invitation to church,

5:35 whatever it is. And we leave there thinking, okay, now what's just happened is that person that I've just talked to knows that I am a person who is trustworthy, who they can count on, who is hospitable, who is kind and gracious. And if they're ever looking for something, they're probably going to look me up.

5:53 But here's what empirical research studies show. They asked non-Christian people, hey, what are the things that you think of? What are the six most common character traits that that occur to you when someone identifies as a Christian. And here's what they were. Hypocritical, judgmental, too political, anti-gay, culturally archaic, and focused only on getting people saved.

6:20 That comes from a study and a book called Un-Christian by the Barna Group, which, as you probably know by now, I really, really enjoy, and I have been very blessed by their research. But what this uncovers is that there is a cultural disconnect between what we

6:38 believe outsiders think of us and how they perceive us and how outsiders are actually perceiving us. And how might it change the way that we interact with them, kind of our starting place, knowing that they are predisposed to think that we are hypocritical, judgmental, too political, anti-gay, culturally archaic, and focused only on getting people saved.

7:02 What would happen every time we came in contact with a skeptic or seeker with that understanding, with the belief that this is how they're going to see me, so I'm going to engage them in a way that takes seriously the fact that this is their perception of me?

7:19 A more recent study by the Barna Group found that most people today— the overwhelming majority of non-Christians believe that Christians, especially evangelical Christians, and by evangelical, I do not mean the politically affiliated term. I mean Christians who believe in the gospel, that most people who are unaffiliated with the church believe that Christians, evangelical Christians,

7:47 are irrelevant and extreme. They believe that the church and Christians are one of the biggest problems facing America. And we believe that we are one of the biggest blessings of America. And so again, I think it's helpful for us to understand how we are actually perceived and start

8:08 from there instead of starting by assuming that everybody thinks we're awesome and that everybody believes that that Christianity is just waiting to bless everyone, and that everybody's life will be better if they engaged with Christianity, because that is just not how they see it. And again, this is the result of empirical studies that they have done

8:34 So you can say, well, that's not accurate. No, it is accurate, and it is true, and we need to get our heads around it if we're going to engage in cultural conversations or in conversations about the gospel with the culture around us. Again,

8:50 it might be helpful for us to remember and to recognize that apart from the United Kingdom under King David, that Christianity, that the people of God, even in the Old Testament, were frequently on the downside of power differentials. They were frequently seen as the outsiders.

9:11 The people of God were chosen not because they were the most or the greatest, but because they were the least, because God decided to shower his love on them. That's the reality. For 430 years, the people of God were slaves in Egypt. And they were brought out of Egypt and into the promised land, where again, under David,

9:34 the kingdom was united. It began to fall apart, to break apart under Solomon. And then eventually, Rehoboam and Jeroboam, the kingdom split. And eventually, over generations, the kingdom just completely fell apart to the point where they were sent into exile. In Babylon,

9:54 in what must have been seen by them as the worst possible place that they could go to Babylon. And yet they're told to live there as elect exiles for 70 years. And then fast forward to the New Testament, where you have, again, God's people living under Roman rule, and the disciples, especially Paul and Peter,

10:19 make it clear that they see themselves as exiles. And so this reality is the reality that we live in today. We are elect exiles. We are living in a world that does not necessarily look to us for wisdom, for guidance. I think the wisdom in 1 Peter is certainly more applicable to today,

10:47 at least from where I'm sitting, as he's writing to these elect exiles, people who have no political agency, who are seen even then as as being irrelevant and extreme. There's a lot of lessons that we can take away from a letter like 1 Peter. But yet, in each one of these cultures,

11:07 the people of God have been called to live in a posture of faithful presence, to carry out the mission of God in each of these locations. And just one quick example, one of the things that is true about first century Jerusalem is it was ruled by Rome, of course, but infant daughters were not seen as really valuable.

11:31 There's a famous letter that is preserved, I forget the name of the gentleman who wrote it, at this point. But what he did is he was forward deployed, member of the Roman guard. He was forward deployed and he wrote back to his wife, if it is a boy, keep it. If it is a girl, throw it out.

11:48 And by that, what he meant was go put it in the garbage heaps to die. And one of the things that Christians were doing in the first century is they were going out to these garbage heaps to taking these children and taking them into their home. And that wasn't completely unheard of.

12:06 Roman families would even do this occasionally if they needed a house slave. But Christians would do it in the first century and adopt them as their own children. That was living in the culture, recognizing their place in the culture, and yet blessing the culture. And that's what we're called to do.

12:26 It's also helpful, I think, to understand that Jesus was canceled. You know, we live in cancel culture today. Jesus was absolutely canceled. And think about this. Think about the people who canceled him. He was canceled by the Romans. He was canceled by the Pharisees, the Jews. He was canceled by the Sadducees. And why? For different reasons.

12:50 For the Romans, they kind of didn't even understand what Jesus was even all about. And so they were more inclined to get rid of him as being a political dissident, somebody who could cause them trouble, someone who wasn't willing to give the honor to Caesar that they thought Caesar needed.

13:09 But the real people who canceled Jesus were the Jews because he wasn't doing what they thought should be done. He was hanging out with sinners and tax collectors, with questionable women. He was going to see people who they had decided were unclean and shouldn't be doing. acknowledged in any way, let alone touched or spoken to.

13:34 And so Jesus steps into this world and says, no, no, no, this is the gospel. This is the way God's word should be playing out right now in this culture. And the Jews of his time said, we are done with you. We want nothing more to do with you. You are canceled.

13:52 And the way that we're going to cancel you is we're going to nail you to a cross. That's how cancel culture worked in the first century. It wasn't just, I'm going to block you and delete you and tweet you up. It was, I'm going to actually pin you up on a cross.

14:05 That's what they did to cancel him. And then you have Paul at the Areopagus in the book of Acts. And when Paul interacts there, he has been canceled by many, many people. He's visited many Many different cities have been thrown out of them.

14:21 He writes in 2 Corinthians about all that he has endured to engage culture in the first century. But when he shows up at Areopagus in Rome, which was a place where ideas were discussed by the leading thinkers of the day, by the philosophers, Paul engages with them by quoting to them their own poets.

14:41 When scripture records that Paul says, in him we live and move and have our being, he is quoting from a poet that they knew. And so he is actually using the contents of their culture, what their culture has created to communicate with them a manner in which they will understand that that was his appropriate way of

15:06 engaging the culture that he was living in at the time. One of the things that we need to think about is who are the people who can help us to engage the present culture that we're in? And, you know, depending on what your faith background is,

15:20 maybe you're going to find somebody on this list that you really enjoy, or maybe there's some other folks that you enjoy that maybe you would say, hey, these should be on the list. But here's the ones that have really impacted me considerably over the course of the years. I want to say C.S. Lewis is absolutely amazing.

15:37 Virtually everything that he wrote was contextually located to the church, specifically a church dealing with unspeakable suffering that they could not have imagined in the context of World War II. And how do we think about a God, God being real and true in the midst of Nazism, the slaughter, wholesale slaughter of a group of people,

16:03 the young men of many countries going to war and dying. And how do we think about the reality of that in the context of God? And even more so, how do we think about Christianity when postmodernism is moving us away from the truth claims of Scripture? And so it is into that culture that C.S. Lewis speaks.

16:28 Another one is Francis Schaeffer. Francis Schaeffer is a Presbyterian, was a member of the PCA, and he is one of the people that I kind of was drawn to early on in my Christianity in 1984, 1985. Somebody gave me, I think it was The Church Before the Watching World, and then another book called Escape from Reason.

16:48 And these were, I mean, they were a little bit beyond me, but they did require some work. But they were extremely helpful in understanding the kind of why Christianity can endure throughout time. Most recently, I would say Tim Keller, who is absolutely phenomenal on any manner of topics, but specifically on how Christians should be engaging culture differently.

17:11 There's also Andy Crouch, wonderful, again, speaks a lot, writes a lot about culture. But a person who I'm inclined at some point to just have an entire podcast where all I do is read his book, What Are Christians For?, is Jake Meter, This guy, he writes for Mere Orthodoxy.

17:30 I don't know where he's been all my life, but oh man, he is so helpful. Here's what he says. He says, the problem is mostly not with ordinary Christian people half-heartedly following Jesus and willfully choosing to ignore certain commandments. The American church is filled with ordinary people who love Jesus and seek to serve

17:52 him and their neighbors in their daily lives. I have benefited from their kindness and generosity on many occasions. The problem is much more complex than that. It's the way our vision of the Christian life has too often been implicitly conditioned and defined to leave the characteristic idols of the Western world untouched, unscathed and unchallenged.

18:19 This is how Christian people, often without even realizing it, are denied access to the life-giving power of Christian piety and discipleship by the very institution that ought to introduce them to it, the church. He is just so spot on. He's basically saying, listen, part of the issue with Christians and engaging culture is they don't actually

18:42 understand what it means to be a Christian, and part of that— Failure is the church. The church has not done an adequate job of fully discipling people, and so I'm very, very appreciative of the work that Jake Meter is doing. You should absolutely pick that book up. It's called What Are Christians For? And again,

19:01 I just want to—we're going to talk about this more here in a minute when we talk about missional discipleship, but the real question is, is the role of Christians to change the world or to bless the world? That's really the critical, critical issue. Another person who I really like on this topic is Kevin Van Hooser.

19:21 He put together a book several years ago called Everyday Theology, and in it he says this, And again, here what's being said is that the role of the church is in in its cultural engagement to actually disclose truth and to disclose it in a way that culture understands. They may not agree with it,

19:52 but they can at least accept it instead of just having it kind of jammed in their face in a way that they just shut the whole thing down. So this manner of cultural engagement is so important. Because, and here's why, creation, pay equity, poverty, gender, race, infant care, end-of-life care, criminal justice,

20:15 as we discussed in our last episode, these are all ideological matters, ideological concerns. but they are also cultural issues. And so we have to have our ideological discipleship inform our cultural discipleship, and our cultural discipleship has to inform our ideological discipleship. How we treat women, minorities, and yes, of course, even LGBTQIA+, plus individuals.

20:46 The church has got to have this conversation about how we do this appropriately, biblically, and within our current cultural context, because that is why we are here to be salt and light. And yet what so often happens is the church's response to culture is either to completely accommodate to it or to basically wage war against it.

21:11 And if you've been on Twitter, if you see any of the denominations, Southern Baptist Convention, Presbyterian Church in America, Christian Reformed Church, you name it, they're having this discussion. Basically, you have camps within each of these denominations that are saying this denomination is doomed because the way they are engaging culture.

21:31 This is a topic for maybe two or three future podcasts, but there are people within each of these denominations who rightly are saying, hey, listen, we got to be very, very careful about the way we engage the culture here, the way we speak to the culture here.

21:45 But there are other people who say any type of engagement with the culture here, any type of reorienting our message to the culture here is means that we are doomed, means that we've gone over to the dark side. And I think a lot of this is based in fear. Dr. Richard Pratt,

22:01 who is the president of Third Millennium Ministries, I was recently at a dinner for them at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., and Dr. Pratt said this, if Turkey can survive post-Christian culture, so can we. That was so helpful. And he pointed us to what it says in Scripture,

22:20 which is that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That the gates of hell will not prevail against the Christian church. And so we need to stop acting like that verse in Scripture is not true, because Scripture is true. And again, One of the things that the church has recently started to do, the conservative,

22:42 the Orthodox part of the church, which I would say I belong to, simply dropping the name woke on any idea that you don't like to shut it down is not helpful. This is what one author might call the musk ox response. And musk ox are a type of animal that when they are threatened,

23:00 what they do is they get into a huddle, they put their heads together, and they just start kicking outward at anything that moves. So this musk ox approach, this kind of Christ against culture approach is the way a lot of people experience Christianity and why they have come to the conclusion that Christianity is hypocritical, judgmental, too political,

23:20 anti-gay, culturally archaic, and focused only on getting people saved. That's how they got that. The other approach that the church takes sometimes is to basically become a chameleon, to blend into culture so that it is virtually undiscernible. And if we're going to be salt and light,

23:36 then that cannot happen because we are here for the life of the world. So that's cultural discipleship, and I would just say that you cannot have missional discipleship without cultural discipleship, because all mission takes place within a particular culture. So what is missional discipleship? Our confession, the confession that I subscribe to, Westminster Confession of Faith, says this,

24:03 "...the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." And so while this is the end, that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, that's the purpose, that's the ethic of man, this is the end. And what happens here is that Scripture paints a multifaceted picture of the means

24:24 by which we do that. How do we glorify God and enjoy him forever? Genesis 1, 28, the creation mandate says to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. And that is repeated over and over again in Genesis. Even as mankind moves further into the fall, that creation mandate is not taken away.

24:47 In Genesis 12, after mankind's attempt to build a tower to the heavens and say, you know, we really don't want to go anywhere else. We're just going to stay here on the plain of Shinar forever and build a tower to the heavens so that we can make a name for ourselves and impress our God.

25:03 What happens in Genesis 12 is that God calls Abram and he tells him to go from the place that you are to the place that I will show you. And he tells them, through you, I will bless people, that you will be a blessing.

25:17 So we have this language early on in Genesis that the purpose of God's people is to bless the world. Jeremiah 29, 7 says, a verse that we use a lot here at Faithful Presence, says that what the prophet says, the prophet Jeremiah says to the people who are going into exile in Babylon,

25:37 the worst place they could imagine, 10 times worse than Vegas, so to speak, was, hey, here's what I want you to do when you get there. Get married. Give your children, your sons and daughters in marriage. Build houses. Live in them. Plant gardens. Pick the fruit of those gardens.

25:55 Seek the welfare of the city into which I have sent you. And in their welfare, in their flourishing, in their wholeness, in their peace, in their prosperity, you will find yours as well. That this is the posture the church was supposed to. This is what missional engagement does. meant?

26:12 How can we understand the culture in such a way that we can seek the welfare of the city into which I have sent you as my elect exiles? In Scripture, in the New Testament, Jesus says to his disciples, as he's going to be with the Father, he says to them, as the Father sent me,

26:31 so I am sending you. And this, of course, begs the question, well, how did the Father send the Son? What did the Son do while he was here? Oh, He healed the sick. He comforted those who were mourning. He brought children to him. He went to places that he was told, we don't go there.

26:50 Our people are not there. Those aren't our people. And if you associate with them, we are going to cancel you. That's what he did. That's where he went, proclaiming the good news. And that's what he calls us to do. Another mission statement in scripture comes in Matthew, where Jesus tells his disciples,

27:06 go and make disciples of all nations and teach them to obey all that I have commanded. In the book of Acts, we have Luke's view, Luke's picture of the ascension that we just heard in Matthew. And what he records, Jesus says, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, which they knew, Judea, which they understood, Samaria,

27:32 which was a place they did not enjoy. They did not like those folks. It would be like if Cub fans went to the south side of Chicago to hang out with White Sox fans. It's just You know, you just don't do it. You would think, what's the purpose of this?

27:47 It would be like Republicans going and hanging out with Democrats or Democrats going and hanging out with Republicans. Why would you do that? What would possibly be the gain of engaging with those people? And then finally, in 1 Peter, we have this, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of the one who called you out of darkness

28:08 and into his marvelous light. That these are all mission statements. All of these are mission statements. What is the role of the church? How do we go about glorifying God and enjoying him forever? Sadly, the missional focus of our branch of the church, again, often referred to as evangelicalism,

28:29 has definitely seen a rise in kind of the manner in which we engage culture. And honestly, I don't think that it has been overly helpful. So what I want to do now in maybe the course of the next 10 minutes or so is I just want to talk about maybe how we got to where we are,

28:48 at least in this idea of the role of Christians is really to change the world. And again, I do believe that Christians are supposed to engage the world, but this concept that our ultimate role is to change the world is one that has taken on, I would say, an unhelpful preoccupation within the church.

29:09 Douglas Hyde wrote a book back in the 1940s, 50s. called Dedication and Leadership. And Douglas Hyde is a Christian. He's passed away a number of years ago. The book was actually published for the very first time in 1966, it says here inside the front cover.

29:26 Here's the things you need to know about Douglas Hyde aside from him being a Christian. He converted in the late 50s, early 1960s. He converted to Christianity and in in britain joined the catholic church there but before converting to christianity he had been a communist and his primary role was promoting and

29:45 advancing communism within great britain within england And he was very successful at it. But what this book, Dedication and Leadership, talks about is Douglas Hyde saw, when he came into Christianity, kind of, I would say, an apathy towards cultural and social engagement in And he was perplexed by this because he thought, well, you know, listen,

30:10 communism asks for the whole of life from somebody, and yet Christianity is supposed to be asking for that. It seems like that's what it's asking for. And yet we have people basically sitting around and doing nothing. And this idea just kind of drove him further and further to do this cross-examination of communism and Christianity.

30:31 He writes this in his book, Dedication and Leadership. He says, and to the world about him all the time, everywhere. Yet in practice, although Christianity has taught him that total dedication is something to be admired and something to which one should aspire in one's own life,

31:15 a communist may be the first person totally dedicated to his mission that he has met. Or, if that is putting it too harshly, the communist may be the first person dedicated that he has met who is not wrapped up in his own salvation but is devoting himself to the transformation of society and to changing the world.

31:38 And so you can hear Douglas Hyde's passion and his concerns about what he perceived as the apathy of the church in engaging culture. But here's where I think he's wrong. I don't believe that Douglas Hyde had a full grasp of the grace of the gospel, of the role of Christ, in what Christ means when he says, behold,

32:00 I am making all things new. I believe that Douglas Hyde had an overly hyped-up sense of what mankind's role, and so when he says, yes, the role of the Christian is to change the world, I don't believe he's correct. I believe he's wrong. But this idea of Christian engagement in culture is correct, but the emphasis on change,

32:23 the priority of change, the necessity of change, and a Christian's role in it, I think, is where Douglas Hyde goes a little bit too far in saying that. So I want to clearly critique that. The book that we've referenced a couple different times is a book called To Change the World by James Davidson Hunter.

32:41 Again, it was very formative for me, very formative for many people. And effectively in that book, he makes the case, hey, listen, Christians have a tendency to sit around and complain about culture. They're complaining about the arts. They're complaining about Wall Street. They're complaining about all these various places. But what's interesting to me, James Davidson Hunter says,

33:00 is Christians have abandoned all of these institutions, and so they're just criticizing from outside. And one of the things he encourages in his book is that Christians, when invited to sit down at the table, have a seat and start participating in the decision-making process. So this idea of changing the world, and in fact,

33:21 the term faithful presence comes from this book. But again, as helpful as James Davidson Hunter is, I do believe the overemphasis on Christian's role in changing the world is a step too far. I'm more drawn to the work of another friend of mine, Dr. Greg Forster, who also is on our advisory board. And he says this,

33:47 so how is it that Christianity has so dramatically lost its impact on American civilization? How can it begin the process of rebuilding that impact? Should we even try? Or is cultural impact more dangerous than it is desirable? In this book, I'm going to propose some answers to these questions.

34:09 The centerpiece of my answers is the joy of God. If Christianity is going to have a distinct impact, it needs to rely on what truly makes it distinct, the work of the Holy Spirit in our minds, hearts, and lives. That's what makes Christianity unique and gives us a unique opportunity to

34:33 to bless our unbelieving neighbors through the way we participate in the salvation we share with them. I want to read that last sentence again. That's what makes Christianity unique. And it gives us a unique opportunity to bless our unbelieving neighbors through the way we participate in the salvation we share with them.

34:55 The book is called Joy for the World, and effectively what Dr. Forster is making, the point Dr. Forster is making, is that the purpose of Christians is to bless the world, is to be, as a pastor friend of mine once wrote, that the purpose of the Christian church is to be pink spoons,

35:14 to be constantly offering foretastes of the gospel to those around them, that that's our purpose. Not necessarily to change the world, but absolutely to ask these four questions, the four questions of faithful presence. What is good that requires support and protection? What is broken that is awaiting restoration? What is missing that is awaiting creation?

35:42 What is evil that requires opposition and elimination? Those questions, those questions matter. Asking those questions is what helps us to know how shall we go about engaging our culture in this present moment? What is it that we're supposed to do? Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a wonderful book, kind of a taxonomy of the various approaches of Christians to culture.

36:09 But one of the things that I've been most—one of the people that has helped me the most to kind of think through this is Miroslav Volf, who wrote a wonderful—it's a term I like, wonderful—it was a wonderful, amazing article— a treatise on 1 Peter called Soft Difference, and he writes this. He says,

36:28 "...we should not lose sight of the rich diversity within any given culture, and therefore of the multiple ways in which the gospel relates to it, such as being against culture, converting the culture, subverting the culture, and in some sense being even of the culture all at the same time."

36:48 What Wolf is saying is that there is not one posture towards culture that Christians should take, that in the process, in the mission of seeking to bless the world, there are different times where we will need to be against culture. We will need to be affirming culture. We will need to be asking of culture.

37:09 What is good that requires our support and protection? What is broken that is awaiting restoration? What is missing in culture that is awaiting creation? What is evil that requires opposition and elimination? And so if you fall into one of these particular camps of Christ against culture, Christ above culture, Christ renewing culture, and you say, well,

37:28 this is the only way I'm going to engage it, then you are— truncating and inhibiting our ability, your ability, the church's ability to properly engage culture, and that is why we are here. And so that is what we have for cultural and missional discipleship. We will be back in a week.

37:50 And again, what I want to do is just give a teaser on a couple of our next guests. We have Reverend Patrick Allen to discuss spiritual discipleship. We have Dr. Dan Sarter discussing emotional discipleship. And Tracy Matthews of Attuned to Grow, helping us to understand the importance of relational discipleship.

38:08 If you like this podcast, we'd love for you to give us a like. helps us out with the algorithms, helps people to find us, which is, you know, the purpose that we're here for. But until then, this is Michael Langer saying, may our God in heaven be with you.

38:22 May he make you one as he and his son are one so that the world may know that he loves them and sent his son for them. Amen.