Deconstruction: Problem or Prophetic Voice? : Scot McKnight & Tommy Preson Phillips

Full-Text Transcript

As pastors and ministry leaders, how can we engage with the deconstruction of one’s faith in a way that truly reflects Jesus?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Scot McKnight and Tommy Preson Phillips. Scot has been a professor of New Testament for more than four decades and has written over 90 books. Tommy is the pastor of Watermark Church in Tampa, Florida, as well as a songwriter and recording artist. Scott and Tommy collaborated on a new book entitled Invisible Jesus. Together, Scot, Tommy, and I contrast the prevailing view that many ministry leaders have about those who are deconstructing their faith with what many deconstructors are actually experiencing in their faith journey. Tommy and Scot also offer some words of hope, encouragement, and support for pastors who are experiencing deconstruction in themselves, in their family members, or in the people they serve. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another insightful episode of Frontstage Backstage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each and every week, I have the privilege of sitting down with trusted ministry leaders and diving into a conversation, all in an effort to help you and ministry leaders just like you embrace healthy, sustainable rhythms for your life and ministry. Giving you the opportunity to flourish in both your life and leadership. We are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network. Each week, not only do we have a conversation, but we create an entire toolkit around the conversation to give you and the ministry leaders in your local church an opportunity to really dig more deeply into the topic that we address.  You can find that toolkit at PastorServe.org/network. You can find that for this episode and for every single episode that we do. Now, in that toolkit, you’ll find a lot of different resources, including a Ministry Leader’s Growth Guide. In that growth guide, you’ll find insights and questions that you and your team can wrestle through, talk through, discuss, and really work on how this topic impacts your particular context. So, we encourage you to check that out at PastorServe.org/network. Now, at Pastor Serve, we love walking alongside of ministry leaders, and if you’d like to learn more about how you can get a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, you can get information for that at PastorServe.org/freesession. Now, if you join us on YouTube, go ahead and give us a thumbs up and take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We absolutely love getting to know our audience better, and we will be praying for you and for your ministry. Whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe or to follow so you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. I am really excited about today’s conversation. At this time, I’d like to welcome Scot and Tommy to the show. Scot and Tommy, welcome.

Tommy Phillips
Hey. Thank you, Jason.

Jason Daye
Yeah, it’s good to have you guys. Now. I’m excited about the conversation we’re diving into because I think it’s a topic that is vitally important for every pastor or ministry leader who’s serving today. We’re going to talk about deconstructing and what that looks like, what people have perceived it to be, what some believe it to be, and views and perspectives on that. But then, Scott, you and Tommy both provide a very enlightening perspective in your newest book entitled Invisible Jesus. One of the things that you posit is this idea of people deconstructing and if it’s a problem that needs to be fixed, or is it perhaps a prophetic voice within the church, something that we actually need to pay more attention to and listen to? I love that perspective. So, to start off, I’d like us to begin with just thinking about pastors and ministry leaders in general, whenever they come across this idea of deconstructing one’s faith, what is sort of the prevailing view of those who are deconstructing by pastors and ministry leaders here in the US?

Scot McKnight
Tommy gets to answer first. He has more hair.

Tommy Phillips
That’s true for now. Okay, so I think, for the most part, a lot of pastors are in denial about what deconstruction is, and until you sort of fall into it, until you sort of go through it. Because, I mean, I’ve heard Brian Zahn say that it’s like something you catch, like a cold. You don’t mean to. You read something you can’t unread. You hear something you can’t unhear it. It kind of sticks. It puts a seed in your brain. It begins to grow, and it begins to sort of threaten some things that you just take for granted. One of our arguments is that we don’t think the deconstruction is coming from, the vast majority of deconstruction today is not coming from a place of sin. It’s not coming from a place of dark hearts and people looking to get away with anything. It’s people trying to deal with information that they have received that contradicts the way that they were raised to look at the church. The way that they were raised to look at the Bible and text, God and Jesus, and the entire Christian faith. Oftentimes, people, as they begin to understand who Jesus is, and they begin to sort of study the Sermon on the Mount. They begin to understand the signs of the spirit, of the fruits of the Spirit growing in us, and they begin to realize that the things that are oftentimes holding them back are errant views of God. Errant views of how they read the Scripture and errant views of what it means to be a Christian. As they begin to correct these things, they realize that they found themselves out of line with the teaching of their church or with their pastor, and it creates this tension. Oftentimes, a lot of pastors will talk about how people just want to deconstruct so they can run away, do whatever they want, and sin however they want. But what we have found is that most people are deconstructing to find a more loving, a more Christ-like way to follow Jesus. They feel like they want to become genuinely better people. More loving, faithful, joyful, patience, and kind people. But they can’t do that with the theological structure that they have because it almost turns them away from these things. So as they begin to follow Jesus more closely, things that they held to before begin to fall apart. So one of our arguments is that people are oftentimes, today, leaving the church so that they can follow Jesus because the church is keeping them with all of its misuses of power, all of its abuse, all of its political alignments with just Babylon if you will. They are coming to find that the longer that they stay in The Church, the less Christ-like they become, the more bitter they become, and the more enemies they have. So what you’re seeing is massive shifts in generations where they’re leaving the church, they love the teachings of Jesus, they hold on to them, and they’re trying to follow Christ, but they can no longer do this in the church because the whole time the church is berating them, calling them rebellious, and pushing them away. So I think for the most part, a lot of pastors are in denial about what deconstruction is, and we’re comforting ourselves by saying, well, they just don’t want to listen. I think they’re actually listening to Jesus. I think they’re actually trying to follow the Spirit, and the church won’t allow them to do that.

Scot McKnight
This morning, Chris and I are walking by a church in our local village. I won’t give you the name of the church. The church sign is, “Are you feeling disconnected? Try church again.” I thought to myself, that might be the problem of why they’re disconnected. I wanted to cross out church and say, Try Jesus again, and maybe for the first time. Of course, I’d have to break glass to get to it. But I’m totally with what Tommy has said there. I thought that was an exceptional answer. This is the passion of our book, right there, is that these, I would say that pastors, instead of telling those people they need to listen, I think the pastors are the ones who need to listen. The leaders need to listen to these voices that might just have something significant to say to them if they will embrace it.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s super helpful, but at the same time, it’s an incredible challenge because it is one of these things that if we were to take seriously, what the heart and the cravings of someone who’s deconstructing in their faith going through what you described there, Tommy. If we were to take it seriously, that means we really have to look hard at ourselves. We have to look hard at the church and that can be challenging because it’s much easier, as you said, Tommy, and much more comforting for us to kind of be like, No, we’re good. We’re good. We just have to try to convince everyone else that we’re good and it’s not to say that there aren’t good churches or there aren’t churches that are doing Kingdom work, right? So we get into this place of kind of a self-awareness of the church and who the church is today, in the US. Where does that come into play, and how does that impact the way that we minister, which means how we view people who are wrestling with deep questions of the faith? So for pastors and ministry leaders whose initial reaction would be that they’re fearful of people who are deconstructing, what could help a pastor or ministry leader step back and move into a space of being open to internal critiques, or being open to self-awareness of how the church is being the church today?

Scot McKnight
Well, I guess I’ll start with this one. I would say it begins with humility toward oneself, that they don’t have all the answers. Humility toward one’s Church, which isn’t the perfect church, and humility toward the tradition that informs that church, and there is a tradition. They can pretend that there isn’t, unless it’s a brand new church, and even then, there’s a tradition behind that. Humility enough that can be a character trait of a person, so that when they hear criticism, they don’t immediately go into defense mode. They go, What can I hear here that could be useful to us? You know, church, churches are stuck because it works, not because it’s vibrant and vital and flourishing, but because it works. Church that works is not the same thing as church that is alive for Jesus.

Jason Daye
Tommy, do have any thoughts on that? On what a pastor or ministry leader can do to have a little self-awareness, introspection, and those types of things?

Tommy Phillips
A lot of it has to do with listening. I think we’ve just gotten… I was reading something the other day, and they talked about how what the church has really taught a generation, my generation, of Gen X. What we really learned growing up was knowing. We didn’t learn thinking, we learned here’s everything you’re supposed to know, and we knew it. Then people would challenge us, and we wouldn’t listen because I already know this, and I don’t need to rethink this. I’ve already got a fully working structure. I mean, I remember growing up and I had, because of my faith structure, answers for everything. I knew why there were different languages in the world. I knew why there were rainbows. I knew everything because I had learned it all from the Bible, right? And then there’s suddenly this moment where you’re reading and you come to realize…

Scot McKnight
That was a good one.

Tommy Phillips
You come to see that, no, that’s actually not how we got languages, despite what your pastor taught you or your Sunday school teacher taught you. But I didn’t listen to anybody. I couldn’t listen to anybody because I already knew and I learned it from the Bible. I mean, you can’t challenge the Bible. So wherever these people are getting this other evidence from, it’s not the Bible so I win no matter what. It’s this arrogant way of carrying yourself like I’m the one with the power. I’m going into the world, I know all about God, and I’m here to tell everyone all of the things that they’re missing, and all the things. We never stop and listen because people, again, have read something that they can’t unread, and they’re coming to you, their pastor, and they’re like, there’s so much evidence for this, and I don’t know how I can still follow Jesus when you told me that in this hand I hold both. Like my struggle was like evolution. I had a massive deconstruction problem that started because I suddenly realized that the earth is older than I thought it was and I didn’t know what to do with that. It sent me into this faith spiral because I thought, if I let go of this, I’m letting go of Jesus because Jesus believed in a young earth. It was all there. So you’ve been taught that people who ask those kinds of questions, they’re not in here, they’re out there, and suddenly you start to feel like you’re one of them. You start to feel like you’re on the outside. What you need in that moment is for a spiritual leader to sit down to point their ear towards you and say, what are you doing? Without judgment. What are you dealing with? Also, when people bring criticisms to the church about hypocrisy they see, or coercive, abusive power structures, or abuse of money, lack of care for the poor, exclusion, and all these things, we don’t tend to listen and say, Okay, I need to learn to listen to people with an ear that says is what they’re saying true. Like, when was the last time a pastor sat down. I want our audience to ask this, as a pastor, when was the last time you let somebody bring a criticism to you and received it as if it was true from the start? Ask yourself, okay, maybe the Spirit of God, who is active in this community, is active in this person, they’re bringing this to me, and I’m listening because one of our big arguments is that this is a movement of God. I think originally, I think the title was going to be called The Prophetic Voice of Deconstruction Aand Zondervan hated that.

Scot McKnight
That was my title.

Tommy Phillips
Then it was going to be Losing Our Religion, but Russell Moore still hated that. So, at some point, you need to stop and listen to the people in your church and say, is God speaking to me through the body? Have a little humility and listen and say, is this such a thing that we can’t be in community together? Can I pastor this person well? Have I contemplated the things they’re bringing me? Just honestly learning to have humility, sit in it, listen, and not think I have all the answers right now, and my job as the pastor is to give them the answers. That’s not your job. Your job is not to give them answers. Your job is to bring them to Jesus and let Jesus work in their hearts. That means you’re present as the presence of Jesus with them. You have with you on the fruits of your tree, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. All of these things come into play. But instead, what we usually receive from pastors we talk to about our problems is, that you just need to get it right. We’ve got the answers, you’re just not listening, and it’s just not true.

Scot McKnight
Jason, this book began with Tommy’s master’s thesis on the “I am” sayings of Jesus. So it was Jesus-centered at the beginning. I don’t know if you brought up much deconstruction in the original thesis. It’s been so long. But we started developing all this, and now the word deconstruction has a little bit more presence than the “I am” sayings, but they’re in every, or almost every, chapter. So it’s about Jesus. So we like Invisible Jesus as a good title.

Jason Daye
Yeah and the subtitle, A Book About Leaving The Church and Looking For Christ. I mean, that’s just one of those things that kind of captures people and you guys alluded to that. Now, you did talk about this being a movement, and I’d like to lean into this because I think this is absolutely fascinating as we reflect on the history of the church. Historically, the church has experienced seasons of deconstruction, absolute deconstruction, right? Yet, when it’s happening in our time, in our place, I guess because of our proximity within that, the challenge is to look back and say, Wow, the spirit has been at work through the church, time and time and time again, leading the church through a period of deconstruction. Talk to us a little bit about that kind of historical perspective, and how that can maybe encourage us as pastors and ministry leaders, as we find ourselves in this space, a unique space, in our time. How can that be an encouragement? What can we do with that? How can we better wrap our minds around this and maybe encourage our colleagues through this when we look at the historical record of the church?

Scot McKnight
Well, my friend Phyllis Tickle wrote a book. I can’t remember what the title of it was.

Tommy Phillips
It was The Great Emergence.

Scot McKnight
The Great Emergence. But I remember she had this idea that every 500 years there’s a garage sale or a rummage sale. I remember thinking, Well, it probably wasn’t every 500 years. But her point is that this doesn’t happen every five days. This only happens every now and then. She believed that the church was going through a similar rummage sale at the present time. I think in 200 years, we’ll know if that’s what happened. But I really believe that there’s a big sorting out of things going on right now in the church. The young generation, Tommy’s age and younger, is fearless about this in some ways, and they’re courageous. They’re saying, No, we’re going to we’re going to start over with this and this and this. I think, as a 70-year-old, not too far from being 71 if you want to start counting numbers, but I think that there’s something really serious going on and I really like it, and I’m encouraging those who are pushing forward with some fresh foundations for what’s going forward. I don’t like burning everything down. I just don’t think that’s the wise way to go. I think it ought to be coherent with and consistent with the direction of the Spirit in the history of the church, but this is a time for some serious evaluation.

Jason Daye
On the idea of, since you brought it up, Scott, not burning everything down, I think this is something to lean into a little bit here, and I’d love to hear both of your perspectives on this. Because some people, they pick up a book, like Invisible Jesus, or they jump on a podcast, or are watching a video of people talking about this, and I’m like, Oh, these people, Scot and Tommy, they’re just out there, they’re just throwing rocks or whatever. We can kind of just push these things aside, put our heads down, and continue in the ways that we are, and just say, everyone else has an issue. But it does seem that there is this opportunity to really try to listen, as you’ve said. Really try to be humble and not turn these things off, right? Not dismiss them. Not be so quick to dismiss them. It’s interesting because as I was reading through the book, and you guys are talking about people going through stages of deconstructing and those types of things. One of the things that struck me was that throughout my lifetime, I’m Gen X, too. Throughout my lifetime, I’ve heard I believe this. I’ve heard people say this to me. I’ve said this to other people. But every young person at some point in their life has to own their own faith, right? You can’t just adopt the faith of your grandparents, your parents, your youth pastor, or whomever it is. You have to own your own faith. It seems like people say that, and I think they mean that, but it seems like the deconstruction process is part of that, and is people saying, Okay, wait a second. I need to own my own faith. I need to assess things. I’m curious, what are your thoughts in regard to this idea of just understanding, contemplating, seeking, asking questions, and holding up some mirrors as part of deconstruction? If that is what it is, why is it so challenging for the church to accept deconstruction as what you posit, as a positive that can help us without discarding or burning everything down, but embracing some things, growing, and making some course correction? Why is that such a challenge?

Tommy Phillips
I think it’s because oftentimes they’re not asking the right questions. When I was growing up, even in my early years of pastoring, I think the questions of the church that we were trying to answer were, what happens when you die? How can you be sure you’re going to heaven? We wrote a chapter about that as well. We had all these little very sort of 21st-century evangelical sort of questions, like 20th-century evangelical questions about mostly sin and about the afterlife. But we didn’t ask questions about what it means to be Christ-like and I think that’s where we’ve really gone off the rails. Deconstruction happens when you begin to ask questions like the old Max Lucado question was like, What would Jesus do? You know what I mean? We were all wearing those bracelets, but we never really meant it. When they passed us our faith and said, Hey, this faith is yours now, and you can practice however you want. Then we started to, and we started getting really attacked. I was, if you’re Gen X like me, we were there at the emergent church movement when we were asking a lot of these questions. We were just simply shut down and told you’re not allowed to ask these questions. These are not questions that any of us are asking. It’s going to throw off the Christian culture that we’ve worked so hard to build. We’re forgetting that it’s very similar to even the day of Jesus. The New Testament is a book of deconstruction. It’s Jesus. There’s all these characters. You have John the Baptist, who’s saying, Hey, I’m out in the wilderness. I’m going to the other side of that river, the Jordan River, the part where we crossed for the first time to go into the Promised Land. I’m calling you all back out to leave the city and leave the temple. Come back out into the wilderness and be baptized and enter in again. This is a call to start over. This is a call to reform. Then Jesus enters in, and he points at Jesus and says, This is the one we’re going to follow into it. Jesus spends all the time presenting himself as a better path than Moses, a better path. We write about some of this as well in the book. Jesus was doing this work of asking, what does it really mean to be the presence of God in this world? Jesus says, It looks like this. Then we have these creeds, right? Like the Apostles Creed. When people ask me, what’s with all these creeds and stuff in our church? Because that’s our statement of faith, is the Apostles Creed. I say, well, these are the things that Jesus revealed to us about God. These are the things that completely changed our understanding of God, how we live, and how we interact with God. Then you have the entirety of Paul’s writings. He’s asking questions about what it looks like to follow Jesus in this city, in this city, in this city, and it’s different answers in every city. Oftentimes, it’s just different the way he interacts as the presence of Jesus in these different cities, the way he has people order their churches, the people he puts in charge, or the questions that he’s addressing. It’s different everywhere. We have spent so long trying to do this, I guess, Christendom thing, where we’re trying to get all of our children, all of our neighbors, and everyone to do the exact same thing all at one time and control the culture and all of it. But really, all we’re doing today, the deconstructors, we’re saying, I don’t think any of this is Christ-like, and when you start pointing out that it’s not Christ-like, that’s when they get the most blowback. Now that I’m so far off the question that I’ve actually sort of forgotten it, but I really do think it starts with having the right question, and it has everything to do with Christ-likeness here.

Scot McKnight
The burning down. You know, I’m 70. My wife and I began dating when we were sophomores in high school, okay? We’ve been going to church for 50, this is probably 1970, so what? 54 years? So this is not about leaving the church. This is about believing in the church and believing better about the church. Tommy’s a pastor, all right, so this is not people who are sitting on the sidelines chucking little grenades at people and hoping that the windows blow out. We are inside the building, and we want to see the church do better, but we are concerned about people who really do have some good ideas, who are being silenced, suppressed, and depressed. I sort of view that… I was telling someone, I’ve been on so many podcasts lately, I don’t even know if this was talking to my wife or a podcast. But I said this book is a little bit like I’m sitting here, and there’s a deconstructor here, and Tommy’s on this side, and Tommy’s trying to hand the book to this person while talking to someone next to him, saying, These people are not the problem. This is not the problem. These people actually have something to say. The deconstructors that we have our hearts on are not leaving the church. They’re going to different churches and they’re trying to find different forms of the church. These are not people who are throwing away the Christian faith. They are people who are, in a sense, yes, they’re trying to reform the faith. Well, everybody thinks they’re doing that. Alright, no, they’re actually taking concrete, embodied steps about trying to do something different, based upon the vision of Jesus about the Kingdom of God. I’m totally in favor of that. That’s why I like Tommy.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. I love that.

Tommy Phillips
There are so many people that I know younger than me, like millennials and Gen Z, who are very intent on building a church to leave to their kids. The ones that they grew up in are not it and the ones that they left are not it. They don’t want their children to turn out like these people in the church. They don’t want their children hyper-politicized, always angry, always bitter, fighting wars, and culture wars over every little thing. Always dividing over picking up an object and what do you think of this? What do you think of this? Which side are you on every single issue? They don’t want that. They never wanted that and that is what has been hoisted upon them. They’re trying to live. They’re going to build something different and the people who built the thing that came before are going to hate it, and they’ve accepted that, but they’re trying to follow Jesus with everything that they can in a way that makes sense to them, that they can leave behind, a way that is also inheriting. I heard somebody say recently, look, Christianity. We’re not making this up as we go. We inherit Christianity. I mean, it filters through us, our practices, our cultures, and our way, like our churches are mutts. We’re just people from all walks of Christianity. There’s Greek Orthodox, Catholics, and old Southern Baptists and they’ve all sort of been wandering in the wilderness, and we come together, and we bring in all our practices of communion, our baptism, and all the weird ways that we’ve all been raised. They’ve all come together and it is something new out of all the pieces. We’re building a new body and we need to encourage people to do that. These people who have left the church know a lot about Jesus and they know a lot about Christianity. They have access to education. We’re trying to encourage them to get together, worship Jesus, and gather in a way that forms you toward Christ-likeness. You can do this. You don’t need to worry about the criticisms you’re receiving. Move forward.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. It takes courage. A measure of courage. I’m thinking of pastors and ministry leaders watching along or listening, who have some of these challenges themselves. They have some of these questions that they’re wrestling with themselves but they may feel like, What can I do with it? I’m in a structure that doesn’t give space for this sort of conversation. It might be a denomination where there’s not really space to have these types of conversations. So they have these other concerns that they’re battling with. What encouragement or recommendations would you give them? Tommy, I guess from you, serving a local church yourself and experiencing this. For those who are serving, who know that they feel like there needs to be a fresh expression, but aren’t sure what steps they need to take and what impact is that going to have on their family, their kids, and everyone, what encouragement do you have for them?

Tommy Phillips
I don’t think it starts with a church plant. I don’t think it starts with people saying, we’re going to plant a church. Not too long ago I saw some friends who got basically, more or less, emotionally abused in our church, and they all left and went to start this other church. It was going to be unique because it was not like the other churches. When you start a church with sort of this spirit of, we’ll show you, or revenge, like we’re going to do it right. It always fails. This is not driven by the Spirit. I encourage people to start around the dinner table. Find those people, those friends of yours who have left the church, who wish there was something very different. Gather them together, have dinner, set the table, pray, and ask God to guide your conversation. Begin to talk about what it looks like to follow Jesus in your neighborhood, in your space, in your city, and find more like-minded people. Begin to gather more and more. This is going to happen, not in the business models, like the entrepreneurial way of starting a 501c3, raising money, and launching this thing. This is going to be more of a mobile, sort of triage unit, where we gather these people who are wandering and we say, Hey, I’ve got a seat for you right here at the table. Tell me about your experience. Tell me about Jesus. Tell me about what you love about Jesus. Just begin to gather regularly and live life together as Christians and ask God to guide you along the way. I trust that God’s going to build this church. I trust that the Spirit’s always going to be there and guide us. We just need to listen for new ways and it’s going to happen around the table. It’s going to happen when small groups of people get together and ask real questions and stop avoiding all the questions that our bigger churches are completely ignoring.

Scot McKnight
Alright, Tommy’s the pastor, and I think his answer is the best one. I just got a footnote, a sidebar, on what Tommy said. I’ll quote Bill Murray in the movie What About Bob? Baby steps. Take some baby steps. But here’s what I think is another challenge on the inside of this. Let’s just say you’re a pastor and you’re beginning to experience this yourself. How are you going to move forward? I don’t think the way to move forward is to stand up in the pulpit on Sunday morning and say, Hey, I’m a deconstructor, and I’m going to tell you what it’s all about. I think it is the pastor opening up some questions in a sermon, and just, let’s say, pondering answers without giving some kind of dogmatic and creating baby steps. Creating a culture where these questions can begin to be asked, and I think you’ll find suddenly some people coming up to talk to you that otherwise would not have. They would have thought, I don’t think he’s safe. All of a sudden they’ll think you’re safe and you’re going to create a new table. Maybe it’s 10 people in your church who want to get together about that, and I think a lot of pastors would be thrilled to discover some people who want to entertain these questions with them.

Tommy Phillips
I mean, if you’re a pastor going through it, that’s where I was. If you’re a pastor going through that, I found one of the best things I could do was get up and talk about the topic of the day, whatever it is, whatever passage we’re talking about, and talk about all the different ways that this has been interpreted throughout the family of Christianity. Over here, they read it this way, this, and this. Read a parable from different cultures and see what they see. It gives people sort of this freedom to say, oh, I can interact with this. I can bob and weave and sort of move through this and look at things differently the way. If all these Christians are reading this one particular passage in different ways, in the ways that it meets their particular needs through the power of God, like, what are my needs? When you give people this freedom, they begin to think differently. They begin to sort of open up their mind a little bit and listen to other traditions, other Christian traditions, and faith, and they begin to kick these ideas around. But it really does start with just showing people that this is not all one thing. This is, again, something we inherited, it’s very large, and there are lots of conversations happening, and invite people into that.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. That’s super helpful. But what’s interesting is that you wrote one really small chapter in the book Invisible Jesus. I think it’s chapter six. It’s just a few pages, but it’s about how you talk about deconstruction as conversion. You talk about this idea of conversion, and how when people are going through a conversion experience, really, when we look at deconstruction, that is that movement. As we’ve been talking about this is that idea of, man, we’re looking at things. We’re looking at our faith in Christ and saying, Man, all the stuff that’s the peripheral stuff, the baggage that has been tossed onto this message doesn’t fully align with the heart of Christ. There is freedom for us to say that, right? There’s freedom for us to say, hey, this doesn’t quite align with what Jesus was teaching and how he was living. Talk to us a bit about this idea of how deconstruction is conversion, and how we can be looking for those conversion stories in the midst of what many people within the church see as an issue or a problem, but actually we can see that the beauty of conversion is happening in there.

Scot McKnight
Tommy wrote the chapter.

Tommy Phillips
I did write that chapter. But before I wrote that chapter, Scot, in class years ago, taught about… who was the guy’s name? Rambo is his name?

Scot McKnight
Lewis Rambo, Conversion Theory.

Tommy Phillips
Yeah. He wrote a book called Conversion Theory, I don’t remember what the book calls it, but this topic of conversion theory, where he talks about how people are converted from one faith to another, or no faith to faith, and all the steps are there. Crisis. There’s this moment of awakening that, like things are not as they should be. Deconstruction as conversion. What I’m saying when I talk about that is there comes this moment when you awaken to the fact that you are following not a culture, not a set of doctrines and ideas. You’re following a man. You’re following a person, and that this person lived, and this person was here, and who called you to specific things, none of which you were probably taught that you were called to. But a church you were raised in who was probably instilling culture. So, there came this idea for me. There came this moment where I sort of made this conscious decision to sort of turn away from the old way that I was raised, and it sort of felt like a deconversion completely from that, and turning towards this new thing, to where I hear the language of Christianity sometimes, and I no longer see what I used to see, I see something different. It’s the same language. You know what I mean? It’s really hard to describe. But when people talk about like the Word of God, the way I talked about the Word of God back then and the way I talk about Word of God Now, it’s the same language, but I’m saying something very different. When I talked about Christian living back then, I’m talking about something that I’m not talking about anymore when I talk about Christian living. It used to be like, well, I obey the rules and I make sure I know the doctrines and I can argue them well, I evangelize, and I get people to pray the prayer. I don’t lie, I don’t cheat, and I don’t steal. It’s a bunch of rules. It’s sort of like Victorianism in religious form, in spiritual form, but suddenly the Christian life, to me, became loving my enemies. It became Matthew 5 through 7. It became non-violence. It became looking at the poor the same way I look at the wealthy. Treating people as my brother. It became something very different. What you see when you talk to deconstructed Christians, or reconstructed, and old evangelical Christians is that they’re using the same language, but they’re not saying the same thing, they’re not doing the same thing, and they’re not thinking the same thing. It is a different kind of faith, but it’s robust, it’s strong, and it guides them.

Scot McKnight
You know, Tommy’s outline came from the conversion theory of a book I wrote Turning to Jesus based on Rambo’s understanding of conversion. It begins with the crisis that always prompts a quest. The quest in the deconstruction is to find some resolution to what caused this crisis and it leads to an encounter with Jesus. We find creative, fresh comprehensions of the vision of Jesus in these people, and it leads, ultimately, to commitments to this is the way I’m going to lead, and the commitments made beyond that crisis will never be the same commitments that were made before. So it’s a new person for a new community. This was really a bonus chapter for me because I had studied conversion theory. Never in my life did I think of deconstruction as a conversion experience. But it is. It’s not a conversion away from Christianity toward Christianity. It’s a conversion from one form of Christianity into another. But once you’ve gone through that process, the old commitments can’t hold life the way the new commitments can. I think that’s what Tommy’s experienced himself. That’s what he’s surrounding himself with, people who are finding these new commitments, and creating a new kind of community.

Jason Daye
That’s excellent. This conversation has been fantastic. We encourage anyone to check out Invisible Jesus. Before we close on the conversation, I’m going to give each of you, and we’ll start with Scot, and we’ll end with Tommy. I want to give each of you an opportunity just to share some words of encouragement to pastors and ministry leaders who are watching or listening in. Words of encouragement for them around what we’re experiencing right now in life and ministry. This time we find ourselves in. This challenge that we might see in front of us with deconstruction. Maybe we’re personally experiencing it. Maybe we’re seeing it in our kids. Maybe we’re seeing it in people in our community. But just words of encouragement for pastors.

Scot McKnight
Yeah, I would say reorient all of your ministry toward Jesus because this is all we have to offer to anyone. We want to, Tommy said this earlier, we want to bring people to Jesus. We want to lead and guide people, join people who are trying to find Jesus, and that this is enough. This is enough. I understand budgets, that you got to make enough. You’ve got to have enough people to bring in enough money so that you get your budget paid. I get that, but let it not be at the expense of Jesus because Jesus is altogether wonderful. He is the bread of life and this is what we want people to explore is to focus on Jesus.

Jason Daye
Good word. Tommy?

Tommy Phillips
Yeah, I mean, it comes down to that. Christ-likeness and wisdom are enough of a thing to seek in community together. You don’t need to seek all the answers to all the questions of life. You don’t need to try and sort out every social issue for everyone. It’s okay to gather with a room full of people who think vastly differently on so many things and simply seek Christ-likeness and wisdom from the Spirit. And that’s enough.

Jason Daye
That’s good. Amen. Thank you, Scot. Thank you, Tommy. Thank you both for the book and for putting the time and energy into Invisible Jesus. As I said, I think, I don’t know if I mentioned since we’ve been on, but when we were just talking offline, I mentioned that after reading this book, I honestly believe that this is a book that every pastor today needs to read. I’m not just saying that because I like Scot and Tommy. I’m saying that because I believe it. This is a book for our times. It’s talking about and addressing an issue that I think is misunderstood by so many in ministry and this is a very refreshing take on it, and Scot and Tommy you both pointed this way. It points to Jesus and it points to what it means for us as pastors, ministry leaders, parents, grandparents, or friends right now in the world in which we live. What does it mean for us to help people really see Jesus and experience Jesus, and what does that mean for our own lives? It’s so refreshing. So I want to encourage all of you who are watching or listening along to check out PastorServe.org/network, where you will find the toolkit that complements this discussion, and there you’ll find all kinds of resources that you can use. I really encourage you to use this with your team at your local church. Work through the questions and the insights after you’ve watched or listened to the podcast, and allow this to be something that you guys wrestle through in your context in your local church. We’ll have links there to the book Invisible Jesus as well. So be sure to check that all out at PastorServe.org/network. Tommy and Scot, it’s been an absolute privilege. Thank you for making time to hang out with us today on Frontstage Backstage.

Scot McKnight
Thank you very much.

Tommy Phillips
Thank you.

Jason Daye
Thank you. God bless you guys.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.