Hey leaders, it's Kerry Nuhuff. I'm on the road this week, and we decided to do something to serve you as podcast listeners. A few months ago, I did a series on pastoring in a partisan age, and with the election right around the corner, we are re-issuing those episodes. I really hope you enjoy, I hope it's helpful, and I hope it's just in time as you lead your congregation and the people you care about through a very, very critical time. The Art of Leadership Network. The percentage of people are going to be mad at you on an ongoing basis is probably higher in 2024 than it was in 2016. Welcome to the Kerry Nuhuff Leadership Podcast. It's Kerry here, and I hope our time together today helps you thrive in life and leadership. Well, today, the one and only Ed Stetzer, Ed's got a lot of views. I really appreciate them. And this is part three of our series on pastoring in a partisan age. Man, we got a fall coming up. You know what's at stake? I want to help you. That's why we're doing this series. So we're midway through right now. We got more interviews coming up. I did a solo episode, and I want to put more resources in your hands. So I created a free guide you can use as we explore how to pastor in a partisan age. I turn the key insights and concepts you hear in this podcast and other resources into actionable steps. So if you want to start leading with unity through a divided time, download the guide at churchconflictguide.com or click the link in the description wherever you're listening. That is a free bonus to you as a listener. Today's episode is brought to you by compassion and by church.tech. If you bring a mission focus to your church, you'll see God use your church to impact the world. To do that, connect with my friends at compassion. Find out more at compassion.com/carry. And if you want to start feeling confident using AI for ministry ethically and responsibly, go to church.tech and use the code carry for an exclusive discount of 25% off your first three months. Well, Ed Stetzer is back on the podcast. We talk about how to lead in an age of outrage. Why is everybody so upset? Why Ed thinks 2024 will be more divided than 2020? And what happens when your political win matters more than your moral views? Ed Stetzer is a dean and professor of leadership in Christian ministry at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. He serves also as distinguished visiting scholar at Wycliffe Hall at Oxford University where he teaches twice a year. He has planted, revitalized, and pastored churches, trained pastors, and church planters on six continents, earned two master's degrees, and two doctorates has written hundreds of articles and a dozen books. He is regional director for Lausanne, North America, the editor-in-chief of Outreach magazine, and regularly writes for news outlets such as USA Today and CNN. His national radio show, Ed Stetzer Live airs Saturdays on moody radio and affiliates. Ed serves his local church, Mariners Church, as scholar in residence and teaching pastor. And in his spare time, he sleeps. Sorry, I just thought I'd add that in. Wow, what a bio. Well, we have an incredible conversation and I'm so glad you tuned in for it. Now, you may be familiar with Compassion International's work to release children from poverty in Jesus' name, but did you know that partnering with Compassion helps you fulfill your church's call to the Great Commission? As a pastor, I trusted Compassion because they empower local churches not only locally like where you are, but around the world to disciple children, and they're a bridge for your church to share the love of Jesus with others. So you can bring this mission focus to your church and then watch God use your church to impact the world by going to compassion.com/carry. That's compassion.com/c-a-r-e-y. And I want you to check out church.tech. I know we've heard about AI and you've all got concerns about using it ethically and responsibly, and you should. So I recently sat down with Josh Burnett. He's the CEO of church.tech, and I asked him how pastors can leverage AI ethically with church.tech. Here's what Josh had to say. Yeah, pastors are right to be concerned about using AI ethically, and we are too at church.tech, which is why we built it in a way that allows pastors to take the content that they've already created and take it further than ever before. So we can generate small group leader guides, children's ministry lessons, parent resources, even social media content, and a whole lot more with the click of a button. But that's because we're using AI to take your sermon as the basis of the content and build that content. The whole purpose of this is to help pastors spend more time doing the one thing that AI can't do, which is be with people and make disciples. So visit church.tech and use the code carry. You will get an exclusive discount of 25% off your first three months. Just on check out at church.tech. Use the code C-A-R-E-Y. Get an exclusive discount for your first three months, 25% off. And now my conversation with Ed Stetzer. Ed, welcome back. Thank you. I always enjoy our conversations. And you have a way of saying meaningful things in a way that really make me think twice. You always come from a really interesting perspective. So a couple of years ago, I want to start with a quote of yours. I'm going to quote you to you, which is always dangerous. But I think you'll like this one. You wrote, "We've entered a new age, one defined by polarization and tribalism, amplified by new technology and online platforms." First, I don't disagree. And second, what fostered that new age? What were the genesis factors for it, Ed? Yeah, I think it's a good question. And you can see sort of the rise some of this. Actually, with the Canadian, I was with the Canadian. And even some of the elections in Quebec, where some of the earlier notices, people were seeing a rise of nationalism and a rise of division. This would be before 2020. And you could see, I wouldn't have guessed though, and here's the reality. If you went back to 2015 and said, "This is what we're going to experience," I don't think anybody would have gotten it right. So the rise of polarization certainly has to be connected in some way, but not the only way, to the rise of technology, because what has happened, it has empowered people to find one another, and in finding one another, they actually have spoken to one another, created echo chambers in which the depth of their views has grown, whereas they might be interacting with people who might have different views. And they might say, "Well, maybe there's another side to this. You might go your whole life without interacting with the other side to this." So I think you have a confluence of situations. You've got technology, you've got a pushback against just the globalization and migration, a rise of nationalism. Those are all pushback, but those, I don't think that could have happened in the past. But I think technology helped that to accelerate. So I think what caused it, people will look back for a long time. I think you could probably start to feel it. The fullness of it, maybe even under the Obama administration, I think people increasingly felt their, particularly people on the right, conservatives felt their views, not just were dismissed, but were sort of, they were seeking to be run out of the context. We go from the beginning of the Obama administration, where Rick Warren would pray at an inauguration to, at the end, Louis Giglio quietly withdrawing from praying at the inauguration. So I think what happened was people in the more conservative side, people of angelicals in the US, conservative angelicals in the US said, "You know what? If we're not going to be welcome here, we're going to go a different direction. We're going to fight a different way, combine that with technology, combine that with rising nationalism, combine that with a hundred other things you end up with." Well, combine that with COVID and how people responded to it. I'm in California, and it's interesting how stronger the response is against some of the more progressive ideas in California, I think in part because they felt their voices were squashed and in COVID in ways that wasn't in other places. So it's also too, one of the things it's hard to explain. Alberta is different than Toronto, you know that, it's different than Ontario. But it's not the same as when you compare California to Mississippi. I mean, the level, you know, Alberta's still, they may wear hats, they may look like Texas, but Albertans are still Canadians and the Quebecois are still Canadians, but they might not look at a minute. Where in the US, it feels like different countries. Yeah, that's really interesting. So I mean, I think 80% of listeners to this podcast are American. Maybe she's not the Canadian references also. Well, that's all right. But you're right. Somebody once explained to me if political spectrums were on left to right, right being, you know, zero to 10, zero being QAnon on the far, far right and 10 being, you know, almost communist on the left, that Americans divide somewhere between a three and an eight or nine. Canadians almost like super conservative in Canada is like a five and super liberals like a seven. Right. You know, like, so we don't quite have the Bernie Sanders. We don't quite have the QAnon. We're just our range is different. And you're right, Albert is a little bit like Texas or they like to think so, but it's not like Texas. And Quebec, I don't know about Quebec, Quebec's just Quebec. Quebec's just Quebec. They're not sure they want to be with you anyway. So exactly. They've been threatened to break up for 50 years. So, you know, it's one of those things. But the thing that really interests me, we have seen this in Canada. We've seen this in a lot of places in the West is Christians have fallen for the partisanship and the tribalism hook line and sinker, not all, but a lot. What do you think it is about Christians that have made us so susceptible to the cultural tides of the moment and the partisan divide? Yeah. I mean, I think that's okay. I think this again, you need to explain a little bit of America. The Americans are hoping. Americans are listening and hoping I explain this to you. Because there is the assumption, you know, I talk to Australian friends and I teach in the UK twice a year. There's a different feeling in a two-party system than it is in your multi-party democracy. Right. So in a two-party system, the politicians know that they need to put together an alliance of people. And that alliance of people on the Democratic side might include public sector unions and unions in general. It might include more progressive activists and more, it might include secular people, it might include people in the LGBT community. And they sort of need to stick together. Now, you would be surprised to know that, you know, my dad grew up as a, I grew up with my dad being a union iron lather in New York City. And the idea that unions would have allied with the most progressive forces of our society would have been a strange thing to think of 50 years ago. But it created a political alliance. And then people said, we're going to stick together because we're you win when we stick together. And on the conservative side, Republicans, particularly after the Southern strategy, the Republicans drew people from the South, disproportionately religious people. And you know, and what we saw with Trump is, is he actually drew from the Rust Belt in ways that prior candidates had not. So they created an alliance. So when you're looking from Canada, and you're like, well, you know, we have eight or nine parties to vote for. Yeah. But but if Stephen Harper were to win again, it was, you know, first alliance, I think in Calgary, he wouldn't be seen as an existential threat to the progressive side of you still have national health care. You probably still have, you know, you probably still have legalized abortion. And so whereas in the US, because these parties have sort of formed these two alliances, over the last few decades, they've moved substantially. The, and I think, you know, it's easy. Again, you'll see, because you know, the news is going to portray rightfully so, the Republican Party has moved to the right. And in some ways, people object to using the term right because it's more like it's nationalistic. It's populist. It's hard to describe as Paul Ryan would say he was a traditional conservative or Jeb Bush would say that that's not really conservatism. That's populism. You know, so, but certainly, I mean, the Democratic Party has moved substantially to the left to to the place where, you know, where for many Christians, they see, again, you need to hear this because again, people are listening right now, they're like, well, you know, can't we just see the two parties as equal? Well, I think that that when Coach McCartney stood up at Promise Keepers at the wall on the mall, the national monument, I was there a million men, a lot of maybe some of your listeners were there. And he said, man, we're in this, we're Republicans and Democrats and independents. And I think in many ways, that was a different day. Now it's harder because statistically, and people can get mad at me, but these are just numbers. Math doesn't care about your feelings. The more religious you are, the more conservative you are, politically, as a whole, the more likely you are to be a Republican, the less religious you are, the more likely you are to be a Democrat. That's just that is literally simply math. They're outliers are the African American community, but some correlation even there when you talk about levels of religious practice and how it expresses self and social conservative issues. So, so, so here's the thing I don't want you to miss, right? How did we get so caught up in America in political parties? Well, yeah, I think that evangelicals, by and large, found their views best advocated for and represented in a Republican party that intentionally remade itself to address its social conservatives. And therefore, they ended up in that direction. So statistically, you know, and again, you, I mean, instead of take a, it takes one Google search to say Ed Stetzer was publicly vocal that that President Trump was a was a bad idea. But the evangelicals didn't listen to me just so we're crystal clear and overwhelmingly voted for President Trump. And I think in part, because it's in part, I think it's more than that. I think the part that I'm going to get to that makes me disappoints me in part because they see the alternative to the Republican party being the Democrat party, which, which is to them perceived as anti-faith, very, very radical, on views of abortion. Again, remember that Roe v. Wade would put the U.S. in a grouping of seven nations that were the most extreme in the world on abortion, including North Korea, China, and others. So not a, not a mainstream position, pretty radical and issues of gender ideology. So for a bunch of them, for people that, and again, this is really, people get mad at me because I'm, I'm not somebody who said that I didn't use the word never. You know, I was pretty clear. I thought President Trump was just because of character and other issues was, I think we could have chosen better and, and again, but evangelicals didn't listen to me. But that being said, I think that there's a whole lot of people who said, man, I, I can't vote for a party that advocates these things, whether it's from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden. So I have to vote over here. And I could totally understand that where I got concerned. And I think you probably share that concern. I, I, I, Christians around the world do, and I just return from Europe and, and over and over again. The first question they ask me is, there's 330 million people in your country. Are these the best two you could find? But anyway, that's a complicated process. But for me, I would say to them, I'm concerned when I see people who excuse the immoral behavior, who who dismiss the obvious character problems that are there and, and, and, and just our wholeheartedly enthusiastically, I want to be in that lane as an evangelical Christian. And we see that we see some Christian leaders have done that that disturbs me. I, I think that, I think that that that, when you talk about partisan, man, if you, if you've turned your church into an ongoing political rally, I think you've made a mistake. However, if your church is unsure what you believe on the biggest issues of this day, and one of the biggest issues of this day has to be gender and sexuality. If you're people that you're unsure on that are unclear, I think clarity is kindness. And when you teach on those things that we do at my church, and, and I'm guessing you do it yours, people see those as political when they're biblical issues, which do indeed have political ramifications, which have led to the overwhelming majority in a two-party system to end up on the more conservative party, even with all the, the bad things that come with it. Again, people, again, don't send me letters. I'm just talking about math and what caused the math. And the reality is, if you are a, if you're a, an atheist, irreligious, you're almost always a Democrat. And if you're, you know, vangelical, who's super engaged or almost always a Republican, and there are things that have caused that, I think the caution I want to say is, man, don't, don't define your ministry by things that are how we, you know, because we all, when we vote, we make a complex series of discussions about what's the best way to advance what we think is the best course of action for our country is, is for me, I want to teach these biblical issues. So I teach about, I'm answering these questions too long. I apologize. But I'm teaching issues about life, and I'm teaching issues about how we speak about immigrants and refugees, and I'm teaching issues about, about morality and sexuality and gender. And I'm, I'm teaching about, you know, how, how we deal with issues of, of, of race and injustice that are here. And, and from all those things, people have to then make a voting decision, which, which I will respect, because that's how our democracy works. But I also understand why people end up more in one party than the other in evangelicalism in 2024. There's a lot of things I want to follow up on. But what I'd like to ask is you're known, generally, as a conservative, right, theologically conservative, probably politically conservative. I would love to know what happened, you know, what kind of feedback did you get when you spoke out against Donald Trump? Because you did that not as a leftist, but as a, as, as one of the tribe, what, what happened to you when you made that pronouncement in past elections? Well, I'm trying to remember some of the context. So, you know, I was asked to be on Trump's advisory council. So, and I wrote about that later. Yeah. But they reached out to a lot of evangelicals to try to be on the advisory council. I didn't think it was helpful. I'm very pleased I made that decision, not to. I mean, I think at the end of the day, I mean, I don't know, I know you hear stories about, you know, my life was ruined or things of that sort. I mean, people disagree with me. Some, sometimes people, I think part of the challenge today is, is that for some Christians, and it's not, it's not like the overwhelming view. For some Christians, they are unable to separate some ideological and voting decisions from theological ones. So, I'm, I am theologically conservative. I'm a conservative evangelical. And so, the fact that I was not supportive of President Trump, meant, for some people that, that meant I was supportive of the other, you know, but the thing is, it's kind of hard to, like, if you Google Ed Steter in Hillary Clinton, you'll see CNN references, you'll see this where over and over again, you know, I pointed out just how, how far we went from Hillary Clinton once said, we want abortion to be safe, legal, and rare, to where it's a central reality of abortion and extreme, and a very narrow, you know, group of countries in the world. So, and similarly, you know, I've written about Barack Obama, Joe Biden, I mean, again, I couldn't, and I've been very clear, I think people opportunity in terms of your. Well, I think you should call balls and strikes. And I think some of the people who people got upset about, all they became obsessed with was, was Donald Trump. Well, I just, I got to tell you, I think the Biden administration, and their support, for example, of the Equality Act, the Equality Act, is the biggest threat to religious liberty in the United States in our lifetime. And, and yet, it's just casually supported and endorsed by the Biden administration, in part because they know it won't pass. But, but, you know, the Biden administration has adopted policies that are pretty shocking, that, that Jimmy Carter would be shocked by. And so, I think that, and I think it's hard for people to remember that Barack Obama, when he was at the civic forum at Saddleback, said he believed that marriage was between one man and one woman, because that's what the scriptures teach, as Barack Obama in the first term. And then later, it changes mine, I think citing the Golden Rule, or something of that effect. So, I guess for me, I mean, I've been, I get a lot of hate mail, but most of the hate mail, I mean, not a lot, I get some. But most of it is driven by the fact that people don't have, I think, the ability to say that someone could be theological, conservative, and think that, you know, that President Trump was a bad choice, and President Biden was a bad choice. And, but also, I mean, it's on other things, too. I think that there are still times in places where past racism still injects itself into the present in systemic ways. So, wait, what that theologically, can we think that? Because what happens is, people tend to, they correlate, they, that's me, they correlate things. So, I do think that, you know, COVID is, COVID was real, and it was a, it was a real pandemic. Well, okay, if you think that, now, I think that many places overreacted, and I was, you know, I never, I think mandates were like not, I'm never sport mandates. But what happens is you sort of get, and they're like, okay, this person's not on our side, because our side's all in for this political view. And I guess, you know, you don't want to simplify things, but I refuse to tie my allegiance so tightly to the, to the, you know, to the donkey and to the elephant that's tied to the lamb. And I know that's simplified. But at the end of the day, I'm comfortable, and my conscience is, is settled, that, that I want to be, I am a theologically conservative, and you are right, you ask if I'm politically conservative, I would be on the political conservative side of things. I, I, and I think that that does probably better for a country long term. I think, I think time and history has proven that thing. But I also think, for example, I think taxes are too high in California. That's not a shock. I think taxes are too high in California. But Jesus never gives us the right marginal tax rate. So I, like, I don't spend a lot of my voted, according probably to that, what I believe. But my public view of California would be around, we got to continue to advocate for liberty. We, we have, you know, just really shocking abortion laws here, that among many other things, how do we care for the poor? How do we crowd downtrodden one out of three homeless people in America are in California right now? How do we deal with our homeless crisis? So I think there's, as a Christian leader, I'm not a politician. So I, you know, I think in general, taxes are too high. But that doesn't mean that that's a driving part of my ministry, where some of these other issues, I think we're seeing the destruction that comes from a poor understanding of sexuality and gender. And, and I think we see a lot of it in California, and I want us to be the people of God who teach a countercultural message about some of those issues. I probably sound like very conservative to you. But at the same time, I know you care about similar to these issues as well. I think then the seeker movement, and we're both old enough to remember that. And the seeker movement, our idea was you'd sort of hide out, and not hide us too strong. It sounds dismissive of what they're doing. You wouldn't talk about publicly controversial things. And I think a lot of people sort of carry that into, you know, when we lost our homefield advantage and maybe we'll hide out in the basement and this will pass. I don't think that's the way to go. I think clarity is kindness. But I think partisanism actually confuses biblical clarity. So you want to be biblically clear, not partisan. And just so we could define the word partisan as overtly and overtly connected to one party rather than teaching the scriptures that, indeed, in the world in which we live, people may end up choosing their parties on the basis of that. And now a quick word from one of our partners. Today's episode is brought to you by Preaching Cheat Sheet. A recent study showed that 46 percent of pastors say one of their biggest struggles is feeling like attendees don't absorb or use what they preach. Did you hear that? 46 percent of pastors feel that way. Look, I get it. Okay, we've all been there, but if you feel this way more often than not, I would love to help. I have a free 10-step Preaching Cheat Sheet that outlines you guessed at 10 simple steps to help you get the most out of your sermon prep. Each step ensures that your sermon and delivery are clear. In other words, you're ready to go before you get into the pulpit. You don't sit there at lunch going, could have done this, could have done that. Get that done first. Over 30,000 pastors have downloaded copy to help with their sermon prep. It's something I still use to this day, even after decades of preaching. I love filling out each of the steps as I write my sermon. And then I sit down to review the message the night before, and I can go in with reasonable confidence that this message is going to land, or at least that I have done my best. So I'd love to get a copy for you for free. If you want to be more confident on Sunday mornings, visit PreachingCheat Sheet.com. That's PreachingCheat Sheet.com to download your copy for free. And now back to the conversation. I want to unpack that a little bit. So clarity is kindness, tribalism and partisanship confuses it. Yeah. Let's go there. Yeah. So I think where it confuses it, like, all right, so let's say that I want to, I take a clear biblical stand on some issues about the confusion of sexuality and gender in our world today, which we do and I do and partake. But I mean, I wrote in the pages of USA Today, you know, defending biblical sexual ethics. And I can assure you that was a very long two days. It became the most read article on USA Today before, I think they put it on the very top article on the very top right was my article. It happened when Oral Roberts University made the sweet 16, which is a basketball tournament I learned. And because I don't know anything about sports, but my most read article ever was a sport club. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know anything about it. Also. So I want to be clear on that issue. But when, for example, I'm clear on that issue, and I think that biblical morality matters, right, we could put up the 10 commandments. We could say, thou shalt not commit adultery. Well, I think those 10 commandments would would be great applied to political candidates as well, because that's what the evangelicals used to do. We used to say that you were morally disqualified if you lived an immoral life that you're the private life couldn't be separated from the public life. And what happened is, it's actually a survey that I cited a few years ago about this. Evangelicals used to at the highest level, say, I'm paraphrasing, it was a PRRI poll that the personal lives of public officials, you know, matter and highest level was evangelicals. And then it flipped. So and now it's the lowest level. So evangelicals are willing to overlook the immorality of public officials at a higher level than at least this was a few years ago when this poll came out and I wrote about it. So what I would say is, I think that what you're saying is, is that my political win is more important than my moral views. And I don't think that's the case. So I think if you're going to vote for, and I think either side, let's say if you're going to vote for President Trump, I think it is right to say that this is a deeply flawed man who has exercised shockingly bad character multiple times. Now mind you, I think you could say about Joe Biden, that, you know, I mean, that just, I mean, the policies are so, well, I've already gone through that shocking and egregious. And also talks about the character issues that are there. I mean, it was going to take a lot of googling to see, you know, the character issues that have been throughout decades. So, so what I would say is, is you become partisan when it's like, nope, nope, nope, nope, I'm going to put all that aside. And as long as we win, and as long as our side wins, because our side has the right party platform. Well, what I would say is, if that's where you are, if you're like, if, if, and again, because I'm politically conservative, right? So if you're going to say that this approach to governance is better than that approach to governance, I still think it's good to say, and man, we're really in a really bad situation with somebody who really has evidence bad character. And partisan people ignore any facts to the contrary. And, and I think that, I think that people sense that in the church, if you get up, and also too, you know, here's one thing I would say too. And again, this is, this offends people when I say it, because I mean, I've said it in public and people get offended, is that if you want to reach the uncharged, which I assume that that's something you want to do, the uncharged are overwhelmingly Democrat. Again, don't get mad at me. It takes a simple Google search. I think you have Michael Ware on coming up. We kind of crossed swords over this when he was running the Obama campaign, and they called the God Gap. And I was, well, the reason there's a God Gap is because some of these policies that you're pursuing. And so, but what I would say is that it's just the unchurch heavily lean Democrat. So maybe if every time they come to church, they hear how stupid Democrats are, and every time they look at your social media, they see how stupid Democrats are, it's going to be harder to reach them. So I think you can be clear, clarity is kindness, hold biblical values, explain those across a cultural divide that sees them negatively. But the reality is, at the end of the day, your views, my views are out of step with contemporary culture. So let's be the convictional minority. Let's say what we believe in, why let's not, I guess what I'm saying is, partisan becomes that sort of tone that overwhelms your life in your ministry. And I'm guessing people listen to Carrie Newell podcast. They're not like, they haven't overwhelmed their life in ministry with partisan rhetoric. But I bet right now they're thinking of somebody in their town or their city. And so you're doing the series because you want people to avoid that. And I think the way you avoid that in big picture is be clear on what you believe on biblical issues. Know that in America in 2024, people are going to assume that that makes some political statements because these things do have political ramifications, but also speak up on some of those other issues. So when I, I mean, I teach about these things, I mean, I teach about life and I teach about, you know, God's designed for sexuality. And I teach about the Amago day and how we speak of immigrants and refugees. And, and I, for example, big issue here, it's not as big where you are in Canada, but big issue here is the border and immigration we haven't even talked about it. Well, here's the thing, I think Christians can disagree about the best border policy. That part of the problem is there's a whole lot of people right now who, because of they correlate that with theological whatever. So I think Christians can disagree, but we shouldn't disagree that we don't want to speak of immigrants and refugees as, as one, as animals or as, or, you know, or more. So, so how we speak of that and I, and I want, you know, so, so I think all of those things, I think if President Trump wins, it could be in and around the issue of immigration. And I would just say that that, you know, we, even if you share President Trump's views immigration, how you articulate those, there are people as your pastor and church leader, there are people in your congregation or friends and family of your congregation about whom you are speaking. And I just want to speak that way. And that's true when it comes to sexuality, that's true when it comes to immigration. That's true when it comes to every issue. I think pastors have a higher calling than partisan rhetoric. Well, and I think, you know, what you're suggesting, and I want to spend some time on reconstructing or constructing a view that isn't as partisan, but, you know, kudos for you because it takes a lot of courage. You know, if you're going to resist labels, you're doing a lot what Keller would talk about. He's saying, you know, conservatives care about, you know, low taxes and they care about right to life. Liberals tend to care about sexuality, doesn't really matter. You can do whatever you want. And they're into redistributing wealth. And he said, you know, a biblical worldview actually does care about sexuality. And it actually speaks to right to life. And it speaks to love for the immigrant and racial justice. And it speaks to like it fuses. It takes issues from the right and the left, but it reinterprets them in a fresh gospel centered way. And it sounds to me like that's in measure what you're doing that just because I happen to vote one way and my party doesn't fully reflect my views on XYZ. I have a responsibility to teach through what the scripture teaches on XYZ. Is that basically what you said? I think that's, I would not probably frame it the same way that Keller does. I'm badly paraphrasing. No, no, but I don't think, you know, I mean, again, I don't think that the two parties that were at a place where we were a few decades ago, where the two parties were sort of like, you know, Christians could end up here, Christians could end up there because some of the major issues of our day have been articulated in ways that are increasingly polarized. So however, I don't like when I see the modern Republican party, it disturbs me at multiple levels. When I see the Democratic party, I'm shocked at how far it's moved in just a few decades. So I think that you can. So most of what you said, yes, what I would probably take out of that equation is the idea that there's some sort of, you know, well, they're like this and it's okay and they're like that and that's okay. And I think that the parties have moved themselves far too away on issues, not just issues of taxation, it's issues of liberty and religious liberty and public access and more. You know, so I think that's worth saying. However, I do think that when I teach about these things, the things that I choose to teach about are the things that I choose to receive complaints about. So when I choose to teach on sexuality, I know I'm going to offend some people when I choose to teach on immigration. And of course, why would you not teach about what the Bible says on these topics or and the Bible's actually got some some things to say. I think sometimes people sort of try to apply thing anyway, we won't get into all that because that's a complicated conversation. But I think teaching on all of these things is good. Now, don't misunderstand. You know, my church is a Mariner's church. So we primarily teach through, you know, books of the Bible now, you know, so we're in Colossians now. So but my I'll be talking from Colossians, but probably after this airs and I'll be talking about, you know, let your how your speech, you know, how your speech matters. I'll be talking about some of these issues. So I will address some of these issues because these are the issues of our day. The preacher should take what is the, what the text means and apply it to things that people are asking about. What does it mean in this situation? And certainly when it comes to the moment we live in, people are asking, well, how do I speak on some of these issues? You know, Colossians chapter four, you know, how do I, how do I speak, you know, speak and make it known as I should? How do I act wisely towards outsiders as Colossians four or five, making the most of the time? So again, I'm going to address some of the pressing issues of our day. But but I'm primarily, and you pass those in church leaders, my role primarily is to teach people the word of God to help them walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, their disciple and more. But I think the danger on that, the other side is I'm going to hide out in the basement. I'm not going to address any cultural issues. And they go home and say, okay, but pastor, my kids are struggling with these questions and you're not addressing these questions at all. And I think, you know, there's not one single inch of all human domain over which Jesus has not cried, that's mine. And that includes, that's Kipra by the way, that includes our political life. So I think teaching about issues and, and letting people think through together with us, the ramifications of their vote really does matter. I think, I think we all probably have a different meter, like a sensor of when it's too far. And my, I would imagine, I could be wrong, Kerry Newhoff. But I imagine that you might find my teaching and preaching because the center in Canada is to the left of the center in the US. The sensibilities in Canada are, it's a different filter. But, but I think that you have to, in your culture, in your time, you have to exegete the cultural moment. And I think Christians are asking, what do I do? What do I believe? And how does this impact my vote? And I think that's a good thing to teach. Well, and I think there's a difference between the audience you're in, like preaching in California, at least if you're reaching some unchurched people, is going to feel different than preaching in Texas is going to feel different than preaching in Toronto, for sure. Because you have to understand how, how is your audience going to hear this? So I want you to speak to, two groups of pastors. There is, and I think you're bang on correct. And the real reason I want to do this series is to help find our way through a number of different interviews from a variety of perspectives on how to preach in a partisan age and lead in a partisan age without being swallowed by the partisanship. If that makes sense, you know, like, like just taking some line that came down from Washington, regardless of who's in power and saying, this is what we believe, or something you read online. So there's a group of pastors who have put their head in the sand, ignored it, and hope it goes away. You're saying, another guest are saying, that's not the best response. The church can do better. There's another group that tried in 2016 and tried in 2020. And particularly in 2020, coming on the heels of COVID, got destroyed, like lost half their church because they tried to say something and they said it the wrong way or they said it too loud or too soft or too nuanced in one direction or another, you know, through no intention of their own, just suffered tremendous personal and congregational loss. Maybe start with that group. What would you say to that pastor as they think about what's ahead in the next few weeks and months about the fact that perhaps they're gun shy to do so. I think 2024, and I don't know when these these broadcasts, but I think 24 24 is going to be worse than 2020 and 2016, but we're prepared better for 2024 than we were in 2020 and 2016. So a couple of things happen. First, we've experienced and are experiencing what I call the great sort. And the great sort, I wrote this in an outreach magazine column, people can Google and find it pretty easily. The great sort is that increasingly people are choosing their churches based on ideological rather than theological factors. So in other words, if my church, you know, when it says about race or what it said about COVID or what it said about what it says about politics, I want a church that more aligns with those things. So it might be somebody who, like me, as a conservative evangelical, uses the word inerrancy to describe his view of scripture as you know, I've got all the biblical Bonafide, I teach it a conservative angelical seminary. But you know, but my church wasn't as aggressive on these topics as you like. So people sort of themselves out. And this happened 20, I mean, 2016 some but 2020, most churches had a in the US had people leave to go to churches to the right of them. And, you know, and I call that the great sort and some to the left of them, you know, because well, you didn't say enough or you need to get more involved in this, you know, let's become more driven by these social concerns that we have. So so the great sort has mostly taken place and most pastors and churches also learned that probably they made some mistakes in 2020. They might have, they might have said, you know, we should have articulated this more clearly. For example, I think some people, you know, they jump on bandwagon or they use shibilets too much, you know, and and the end result, people are like, well, those shibilets, which, you know, Old Testament reference to words that are like code words that mean something else. And then those words changed meaning and people were like, well, wait a second. Didn't you think that? You know what? I want to go to a church that's more aligned with where more online. So I think we've sort of learned, I hope we've learned, that we want to articulate these things biblically. We don't have to jump on shibileth bandwagon or more. We want to choose what we say carefully and when and how we say it carefully. So I think it's probably going to get more divided in 2024. Again, I'd be surprised if it didn't. But again, I think your church probably the most vocal people have already made a decision to go if they're going to go. And what I would say is you can a steward, steward, you've been through a painful thing. You've been talking about one group of pastors who lost a lot of people. You want to steward your voice. And I'm not saying you didn't steward your voice. Well, last time, I don't know where you are. And that looks very different in Rome, Georgia, than it does in Sacramento, California. So you want to steward your voice carefully. You want to frame things around biblical rather than ideological categories when you can. I'm not saying those don't have some overlap, they do. And again, I would just, I would avoid the bandwagoning and the shibileth that I think became an issue for some people in the last few years. You know, what are the other realities that's different from 2024? I mean, you've seen the Barna data that says, you know, how many pastors have seriously given consideration, leaving ministry, a lot of them actually left when it was 42%, a lot of them left. I am working hands on with a lot of next gen leaders. They're 30 to 40 years old. They took over from an incumbent pastor who sometime in 2020, 2021, those two years stepped out. And this is their first rodeo. So the congregation shook down. A lot of churches have found that probably 30 to 40% of their people are new since 2020. When you see those dynamics, what comes to mind and what advice do you have for those leaders? Yeah. So the great sort also was kind of accompanied simultaneously. Some people went to the most ideologically driven people who their church choice is going to be driven ideologically, have made that ideological choice. So that's probably the worst of that. The most extreme people have already shifted. Yeah, though I imagine they would call themselves extreme, but yes, the people who are very driven views. Right. Yeah. That's where they have the strongest views and they've probably done that. So what seemed to happen is that, and we saw, you know, we talked about some of this in some of the research we did in an after, in and immediately after COVID, is for some, I talked about the third, the third, the third, and a third. So I'll quickly describe. So in, because most churches from 2019 to 2021, their giving was actually up in 2021. And their giving was up most, not all, but most churches giving was up and attendance was down by the time they got to 2021 and 2022. So what seemed to have happened, if you take a church of a third, let's say a hundred people, let's say it's a hundred Pentecostals in a wonderful church, I was someone was talking about, last time I preached in Canada, I was with the Canadian said, you preached at a wonderful Pentecostal church, miracle family tabernacle in a time old church, I think it was, in the GTA there. And so like a hundred Pentecostals, the most involved people in a Pentecostal church sit up front. That's why you want to preach at a Pentecostal church, because they're right there, amen, and they're all in. Well, it seems that in COVID, the most involved people got more involved and they gave more and they stepped up, they stood out, et cetera, et cetera. In the middle third, they kind of stayed the same. Some of them were impacted by the great sort. They're like, why did my pastor say that and not this? I'm going to go to a church that's more like I am aligned with ideologically. And then the back third of a church, let's say a church of a hundred, Pentecostal church of a hundred on a given Sunday, a back third's 33 people on a Sunday, but it's really like a hundred and 50 people who rotate in and out of the church, they come. Christmas Easter, one, three, seven times. So what seems to happen is, is those people who were loosely connected now are mostly, if not completely and perhaps permanently disconnected. So we lost the back rows of a lot of churches and a lot of those people then went to see what's going on at other churches. And I will tell you too, what we finding in America, it's actually disproportionately helped larger churches. So what's happened is some of the largest churches have suddenly become much larger because people who were loosely connected to a church of 200, when they got disconnected, they said, well, I'll go check something else out. There's already a trend to larger churches. I'm not saying it's good. I'm saying it's a trend. So we have seen that. So what you have is a new opportunity kind of, so again, the third, remember the third, front third got more engaged, more involved, middle third kind of hold on, some went with the great sort, back third disconnected. But then there's a new third that's kind of come from those other churches. I wish there was a great evangelistic harvest going on. Now I do think there's some numbers that show us that young people are more open and we're seeing some more gospel response. But what happened is you see all these sort of new people who loosened their connection to their church during COVID in the following years. And now we're like, well, let me try something else out. So it's a huge assimilation opportunity. I wish it was an evangelistic opportunity. I still think there's evangelistic opportunity there. But I think church wise churches are teaching where they are, what they believe, helping people move in a pipeline to greater involvement and engagement and really seizing this moment because, I don't know, those loosely connected people, they're going to disconnect again in six months. I think Gary McIntosh, one of my faculty, and he wrote in finding them and keeping them years ago, he said that you got about six months and then they disconnect and they try to connect somewhere else. So this is the time to try to connect with some of those people. So man, there's so much there. One of the things you said, I don't think I can let this go, you mentioned that most unchurched people lean left. Now, Ryan Birds, I'm sure you've seen his data show that 17% of the people who, I think it's roughly 17, 18% of the people who use the term evangelical are actually secular these days. It's a political term, right? And it's the most educated people who tend to go to conservative churches, the least educated who tend to be unaffiliated, which is really some interesting trends. But I mean, and what you just said about church growth really being consolidation, transfer growth, it's just, well, we move from this small church to another large church. Do you think the church, that one of the things at stake and the bit of a loaded question, so take it where you want, is that we're kind of huddling down. We're finding people who believe what we leave, who think what we think that outreach is at stake, that we may not be doing a very good job of living a world, leading, reaching a world. And the reason I want to ask that question is a lot of the people I know in ministry are actually sincerely interested in reaching unchurched people. And I'm just wondering how you do that, where maybe their starting point is very different politically than where yours might be. Yeah, I think that is part of the cultural divide. Now, that's not, you know, the unchurched are not one thing. There are things, there's a group of things. But as a whole, there's really no statistical question that unchurched people tend to be more progressive as a whole. But I think that as churches, we're not like reaching the whole, we're reaching our community. And for example, in a whole lot of places, one of the most unchurched demographics is young, disaffected men and who are actually tend to be more conservative, who are kind of pushing back against the cultural moment and are not sure how to without getting canceled or more. So I mean, I would say, and you know, the great deterching talks about that. I think that's helpful. Actually, John Stott talked about that. We see this a lot in the UK where they say we have these strong evangelical bastions in, you know, Oxford and Cambridge, which is true. You know, you can walk around Oxford and there's all, there's evangelical ministry here and evangelical ministry here. You go into that blue collar, you know, rural area, and you know, highly deterched and unchurched. And young men are often among those who are at the most unchurched. So what I would say is, is it's, so if I were looking for a receptive, responsive group of people today, I would, I would ask the question about those, those irreligious kind of unsure about their future young men. I think they're, you know, they're being drawn to the, you know, I mean, sometimes in the, in the worst example, being drawn to the undertates of the world, but also the Jordan Peterson's of the world, right? So not in the same category, which is so we're clear as the worst example. And so what, what does the gospel speak to them? And, and how are churches going to engage them to look around and say the world's not fair to me. I've, I'm losing opportunities. The world seems to gone mad. So, but again, let me come back to your question. I gave it a little aside there because I think it's important. But as a whole, the, I have a graph that I use in Christians in the age of outrage. And I kind of explained that there are four quadrants of quartiles, quartiles, and at about 25% of America's are, are convictionally Christian. They use the word Christian, and it kind of shapes their lives. They're Catholic, they're Mormon, they're evangelical, not making a theological category. Just saying they use the word Christian, and it really is important to them, 25% or so. Maybe a little lower since I wrote the book, because it was a few years ago, about 25% of Americans are congregationally Christian, Christmas, Easter, married, buried. About 25% of Americans are culturally Christian. And at that time, it was 75%. I'd lower those numbers now, but, but kind of 75%. And then 25% was non-Christian or other. And it's higher now. So, but what's happened is, is that those nominal Christians, those loosely connected, the cultural Christian, the congregational Christians, they've changed their views over the last couple of decades. So now, if you're like, to use research terms, if you're like, highly religious, convictionally Christian is what I wrote this in a USA Today article, if people are interested. Yeah. But the chart wasn't, the chart was in Christians the age of average. And you're now on the wrong side of the cultural divide, according to the culture, because, because you're religious people, cultural Christians, and even loosely connected people in churches, like the Christmas, Easter people, they're all on the other side and more progressive. Like America has changed its mind about same-sex marriage with exception of very few states, changes mind about, well, all kinds of things. So you're on the other side of the cultural divide. So what do you do at that point? Well, I mean, this is not an unusual place for Christians for 2000 years. And as the world has seeing that its own, you know, collapse of the modern experiment all around them, the failure of the current world situation, we can say, hey, yep, we are different, we believe different. Here's what we believe. We're not hiding it. Here's what happens when you believe what we believe and how you're changed by the power of the gospel and the limitations before you. And until such time, we're going to be your friends and we're going to be your neighbors and we're going to be your coworkers. And we're going to be the ones who love you and show and share the love of Jesus to you. We're going to be winsome. There's a bit of a war on winsome right now and some quarters of the Christian discussion. Let me just say that being winsome is not a cultural engagement strategy that changes with the time being winsome is the way of Jesus. So to be like Jesus engaging a broken and hurting world that finds our views, perhaps out of touch, perhaps dangerous, depending on what state you're in or what person you're dealing with, but we continue to show and share the love of Jesus to them. That's the countercultural message that I think is going to make the difference. And let me just say too, you know, I'm a missiologist. So I'm always talking about engaging culture. I'm not a politician. I don't teach political theory. I think there's all kinds of different ways that people are going to try to advocate for some of these things in the public political sphere. What I'm talking about love in your neighbor, and I think that's something every pastor can teach every church member to do, and that's going to build the bridges they might look at and carry they do. They might say that angelicals are bad, but they know that neighbor who goes to that Wesleyan church every week is the one who mowed their lawn when they were sick and checked on them when their daughter wasn't doing well. And I think that's ultimately how you break through some of the narratives of the day. Yeah, and that goes back to we're preaching a biblical worldview here, not a partisan agenda, right, which okay, I want to do a bit of a lightning round, really intriguing conversation. But let's let's break this down into super practical. If you're going to completely blow this election, the season has a pastor, and you wanted to blow up your church and have all kinds of unintended consequences, what would you do? In other words, what is the worst thing you could do? Some just just a short bullet list of some of the worst things you could do worse thing or things more than one. You can you can give us a couple of words. So I would say I would say turning your church into an ongoing political rally. You're just not going to reach people are different than you. You'll attract a crowd who agrees with you, but you're not going to reach a lot of people are particularly different than you. That's being like hyper partisan, and that's their second thing is ignoring the issues. Your people in your church want to know like, where are you on some of these issues right now? Like they're having to deal with these things at work. Like they're they're going to work and you're, you know, you're a pastor, you're loving Jesus, and no one's pressing you at church that you have to align with things you don't agree with, but they are at work. So what, how then shall I live pastor? I mean, so, so not answering some of those questions because you're afraid of the political ramifications of those things. So what I would say, there's ditches on both sides, I guess you would you would often say. And so I think being being courageous means you're probably going to take some people off. And what I would say is if you went into ministry, you know, because you didn't want to make people mad, you chose badly anyway. You know, if you wanted to make everyone happy, you go sell ice cream. But you know, but but here's what I would say. The number, the percentage of people are going to be mad at you on an ongoing basis is probably higher in 2024 than it was in 2016 or 2050. So you just have to, I mean, that's just part of being a leader is to speak up on some of these issues. But what I would do is I would constantly come back to, well, how would you teach the Bible differently on this subject if you were me? And if the answer is they, the Bible says these things and you're teaching those things that the Bible says. Now, again, your audience is broad. I'm really making evangelical assumptions there. Yeah. But but I think you if you hold the Bible as authoritative, and it is the source and the guidebook and the directions for life and engagement, then I want to keep rooting everything I say and drawing everything I from out of the scriptures and then say to people, well, I don't know where what you would disagree with, because this is what the scriptures teach about partiality in James or about life in the Psalms or about, or about, you know, about the importance of men and women from every tongue, tribe and nation in the book of Revelation and more. So teach those things. What you do when you make the mistake is, is, is often you try to tie them in in ways that, that are already like associated with the whole group of people who hold these views, etc. So I say these words, I'll probably make some people happy, but I'll make some people unhappy, say what the Bible teaches, and you'll make lots of people unhappy, but you'll do it to honor the Lord. So let's do it flip side. A couple of the best practices. If you're heading into the fall and you've led local churches numerous times turn around churches, etc. threats us. So you've been there. What are some things that you would say? This is 100% what I'm going to do. Don't know how it's going to land, but I'm going to try it. Yeah. So I was the interim teaching pastor at a church in Chicago from 2016 to 2020. And so, and it's a really conservative church called the Moody church there in Chicago. And so I started before the 2016 election, and I ended during COVID. They called somebody by a zoom for the bee, like it was, you know, because it was there and all that stuff. What I would say is, is I'm not saying we did it perfectly, but a couple of tricky things. So I was a public commentator. So, and I was in 2016, you know, I interviewed Marco Rubio and Ben Carson, like I was interviewing all the presidential candidates about their faith, etc, etc. You know, I was writing about these things pretty regularly. And I had to pretty regularly stand up at Moody church and they're very gracious and say, you know, I'm teaching the Bible here. I'm a public commentator out there. And I think people were able to sort of see the distinction between those two. Also, it was a urban church, multi ethnic church, you know, wonderful at so many levels. I would say today it would probably harder to do that. So what I would say to you is that for most pastors and church leaders, don't do what I do or have done do what I say. Because if you kind of, I think in 2024, you probably have to make a choice if you're going to be unless you're like really partisan, like if your church is really partisan, you're really partisan, you probably can't be a public commentator. And so even for me, like I see my role having shifted in ways that I'm, for example, one thing is, you know, evangelicals didn't listen to me. So I'm okay saying, you know what, I shared what I thought was my conscience. I'm comfortable before the Lord, what I shared. But I also recognize that, you know, that my, I didn't persuade, you know, truckloads full of people. And so, you know, for me, right now, more much more my focus is, is I think long term, these extremes, as you called earlier, aren't going to last. And I want to, I'm working here to continue to grow an institution that's creating well spiritually formed leaders who can navigate the cultural moment, because I think healthy vibrant churches are long term going to make a bigger impact than the current partisan enthusiasm that comes through. And I think is probably going to crest in 2024. That could be wrong. I would love to know a little bit more about that. You say, on the one hand, it's going to be worse. On the other hand, it's not going to last long. I think it's going to be. So I think it's going to be. And of course, a lot of it depends on who wins. And I have my guesses, but you know, I think the fools tell you their presidential guesses at this early. But I think ultimately, we go through these waves. America was probably more divided in the 60s than it is now. And eventually, people are like, you know, these extremes lose elections. And I think if, well, give me an example, I think if some of the really extremes of the Democratic Party, which I've mentioned earlier, were not there, they would have a better chance at actually winning. And I think if some of the extremes of the Republican Party were there, you know, they'd have a better chance of winning. And I think what happens is the party that loses realizes it and says, you know, we got to rate me retool some of what we're thinking. So, but I don't know, you know, I don't know if that's going to happen. But I think that eventually, people we either got to pull apart as a country or we're going to figure out another way to make this work. And, you know, a lot of people think that movie Civil War could be real life. Well, I mean, the fact that California and Texas are on the same side in that movie, I can assure you is not real life. I live in California. So maybe some of us in California, but not not California as a whole. So for what I would say is, I think just past cycles show us that it peaks and then it has to decline and people re-engage themselves. And so I don't know what that means. You know, will that mean the Republican Party will return more to the party of, you know, like a George W. Bush or Jeb Bush? I don't know. There's a lot of people who would say that would be the worst thing that would happen. But I, you know, I don't know. But my guess is just by past patterns, not from the current practices, you know, by past patterns, these things tend to wane these cultural convulsions. I wrote about this in an article too. And I talked about how they last four to six years and I think we're getting near and it'll start to decline. But I think this will be the worst of it. I think 2024 will be worst of it. But again, maybe who knows, right? No one had on their list COVID, you know, what they call a black swan event as something you can't predict for the future. And here we are, I just came back from Ukraine. So like as a war in Europe, there's a war in the Middle East and we're all just waiting on our watches for a war in Asia. So like everything, you know, it's not going well, Kerry, it's not going well at it. But I think the political division, while we're probably peaking 2024. But who knows? I, you know, I sat recently in the floor of the House of the representative's, I was there for a briefing. And people who follow American news, it was when it all sort of fell apart that day, when people were yelling at each other, there was no speaker of the house, everyone walked out, stormed out. And then we went into this meeting that I can't quite share the deal. I wasn't anything like super, super secret, but I'm not supposed to share the details of where I'm just sitting. I was sitting in the chair when you watch the State of the Union message. It's where the joint chiefs of staff sit. I was sitting right in that chair looking across the house of the representatives. And I said to myself, you know, and I maybe, maybe, I mean, I said to myself the wrong term, but I just was praying, the Lord hasn't promised that this will endure forever. And, you know, the kingdom will endure forever. God has chosen the church to make known his manifold wisdom in the world. And that's probably a shift, you know, for I was trying to inform Christians in 2016, 2020 was great to do that. But I think ultimately, as I'm getting a little older, I want to spend my time building up an institution that builds up the church, like the Talbot School of Theology and the churches that we're engaged with. Because I think ultimately, if this spins more out of control, which I think is a very real possibility globally with wars and more, I still think that God has chosen the church to make known as manifold wisdom, Ephesians 3, 10. I still think that my ultimate allegiance is there. If sitting on the floor of that House of Representatives, if this nation can eventually tears itself into pieces, I'm going to still show and share the love of Jesus. I'm going to still put my faith energy and focus on what God is doing in the world and join Jesus on his mission. So I guess for me, and that would be my exhortation to pastors and church leaders, that the temporal is appealing. But the eternal is far more valuable. And choose your, steward your ministry in line with those truths. And I think ultimately, you'll make it through 2024 and into years beyond focused on the good news of that gospel and the advance of his kingdom. Wow. Can you say that one more time? I said it at spur of the moment. So I don't know. Oh, you did. That was really good. Well, we'll play back the tape and have a look at it. But I think I guess it's, it just has to do with, you know, you've got a certain amount of time and a certain amount of energy, totally a certain amount of focus. And I can tell you that I definitely could feel the draw. And I would find that I would get asked to write things and invited to things. And they would always, they, they, particularly when, when they, they agree with your critique, oh, come, come here and talk to us. And what I would say is, I mean, I could have spent my life and I've actually seen some peers who spent their life going down that lane. And I think regret it. For me, you know, I guess I was at Wheaton College at the time. The slogan for Wheaton College was for Christ in Kingdom. And I, that, that resonated with me. And I want to spend my focus energy for Christ in Kingdom, recognizing that a lot of those things are countercultural, even in our cultural moment, and make people mad at you. But you keep showing and sharing the love of Jesus. I think it'll make a difference. That is a really good place to wrap up. And I think we have a similar heartbeat on that. Ed, we covered a lot. Thank you so much. Is there a final word, final thought? Yeah, I would say that I get that it's easy to be discouraged in these days. We don't pick the days that we lead. But we pick of whether or not we'll be faithful in the midst of those. And, and, you know, there are Christian leaders from the 60s who stood up for the civil rights movement, and it costs them a lot. There are Christian leaders who worked against slavery in it. It costs them a lot. And there are Christian leaders who worked against poverty, and it costs them a lot. And there are Christian leaders who spoke up about life, and it's cost them a lot. And what I would say is you want to first steward the voice in the place that you have. But I'm trying to live my life in ministry now knowing that, you know, I'm 57 years old. So, you know, 15 years from now, I'll be finished. And I want to look back and say, I stewarded that that I had. I was a man of courage, and a man of wise stewardship. And that's my exhortation to people is that I want you to lead your people. Well, it's harder and it's probably going to be the last few years have been harder than any years. I mean, I, I missed the days of the 90s when, you know, it was so easy. It was so easy, man. It was hard. This is complicated. But this is not a surprise to the Lord Jesus. And in 2000 years of church history, it's been complicated more than it's been simple. So don't pine away for the 90s, but instead seek to be faithful and fruitful in the time and the season God has us. I think if you steward your voice well, and if you rely on the scriptures and teach and anchor yourself to the truths of the Word of God, you'll be able to navigate this political season. It's a good word. I've been thinking a lot about the next decade ahead too. I got a couple years on you. So thinking about the next decade and I'm in a similar tribe, similar vein, like, how do I use this to have an impact that is healing for the church rather than just more division and just more shrapnel flying in every direction? I love that heart. Ed, can have a lot to talk about next time you and I see each other and get together for breakfast or lunch or something like that. But I want to thank you for sharing your heart with leaders today. So you do have a book. It's called Christians in the Age of Outrage. Fantastic resource, well thought through. It's still available. I know it's like six years old, but guess what? The outrage hasn't gone away. So a very relevant work. Anywhere else in particular, you want to direct people to? People go to Edstetzer.com and of course, Outreach Magazine, I serve as the editor and I'm finishing my new book in August on the future of Evangelicalism, which will address some of these issues as well. Cannot wait to read it. Ed, thank you so much. Well, I hope these conversations are starting to help. You'll notice I asked some of our different guests some of the same questions and a lot of different questions. And the goal is by the time we're done this series, you're going to have a much greater sense of calm heading into the fall. You're going to have some tools in your toolkit to know what to do with the conflict that probably is going to erupt in your church, if not in your community. And you're going to be able to lead with greater confidence. That's what we're doing in this series. And we're going to continue that next time. We've got N T Wright coming up still, Michael Ware and Sharon McMahon, as well as Mark Sarah. So we got a lot coming up on this podcast. I think you're really going to appreciate the different perspectives. Make sure you check out compassion so you can position your church to impact the world. Connect with them there at compassion.com/carry. That's compassion.com/C-A-R-E-Y. And if you want to feel confident using AI for ministry ethically and responsibly, go to church.tech and use the code C-A-R-E-Y for an exclusive discount of 25% off your first three months. So also coming up on the podcast when we get back to, well, actually our 10th anniversary, Jim Collins and Mark Clark and I also have a really fun conversation. Lisa Turkers, Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, Henry Cloud, and a whole lot more coming up on the podcast. And finally, I got a free guide. I know this is going to be a really nerve-wracking time for a lot of leaders. So I put together a guide that will help you have healthier conflict in your church and as a leader. So I turned some of the insights and concepts I've discussed on this podcast plus a lot of other stuff into a free guide for you. So if you want to start leading a more united church and united community in the face of a divided world, go to churchconfleguide.com or click the link in the description of this episode wherever you're listening. We'll get that to you right away. Hey, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating and review. Tell a friend, share the link, share it on social, send an email of the email that we sent to you telling you what the episode was about, whatever that looks like for you. Please help us get the word out when you do that. We get incredible guests like the ones we have on the show all the time. Thank you so much for listening and I really hope today's conversation helped you identify and break a growth barrier you're facing.
