Top Theology Stories of 2023

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Collin Hansen
Welcome to a special edition of gospel bound. I’m Colin Hansen and I am your host. And I’m joined today by my good friend, my dear friend and colleague Melissa Krueger. I’m sure many of you know her from previous episodes of gospel bound, you know, from the let’s talk podcast, and from TGC is national events which she leads, you’re listening to our bonus season and or watching our bonus season and episode, which is something we began doing in 2020. I guess we needed something to remember that special year, we wanted to take you behind the scenes look back on the on the big stories and trends of 2023. And thank you for listening and encouraging us in this work.

Melissa Kruger
So Colin, are you saying 2020 wasn’t known by our podcast? What are you?

Collin Hansen
Oh, 2020 that memorable year when Melissa started doing?

Melissa Kruger
I mean, 2020 I don’t really remember. Okay, so a lot happened. And a lot has happened this past year. Actually, we actually this year did a special episode of gospel gospel bound when we talked about Tim Keller and his life and his legacy. And we’re gonna jump into the theological stories in just a moment. But this is both a story for all of evangelicalism, in some ways, Tim’s passing. But it’s also very personal for you. And for all of us that TGC. How, in the past few months, have you really seen his continued impact on the church since his death? And just how have you seen his legacy already start to take root?

Collin Hansen
Well, I think in some ways, Melissa, we, we see his legacy by feeling his absence. And I mean, Tim left behind so much he left behind churches he left behind institutions, like the gospel coalition that he founded, he left behind books, he left behind just countless sermons that we can go listen to, today, thanks to city to city, it left behind so many things. And yet, the prospect of not having more of it is still sad. And one of the things that I that I really miss this year, but also is illustrative of his legacy was of how many things I was reading, in preparation for this interview. And for this list, specifically related to a lot of the questions around identity. And seeing mainstream voices begin to enter the fray in a in a critical manner. And I just kept thinking, oh, man, I would have Tim would have read this book, Tim would have loved this book, Tim would have been quoting this and assays he would have been emailing me about it, or I would have emailed him to tell him he needs to read it, or he would have told me he already read it pre publication months ago, or, or something like that, and already had a conversation with the author and that kind of thing. And so I think we see his legacy, of course, in those institutions and putting the one where we serve and where we’re talking about today. But I think in many ways, what I tried to do in my book about Tim is to show that there is a world for evangelicalism before and after Tim that he was instrumental in changing so many different things that he was simultaneously an inheritor of a legacy of evangelicalism. But actually he himself, modified it and proved it and changed it and tweaked it. And I’m getting ready to speak a couple of times next year at Samford University, and then at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. And those are the themes that are coming up in my in my writing for those lectures about his legacy about the ways that he inherited but then also changed that legacy. And I think, Melissa, that’s kind of just the way that it works for us. We inherit these things from Tim, but no doubt for decades to come, as he knew full well we’ll have to modify them in our own ways for a changing time.

Melissa Kruger
And one thing I’ve just reflected on was his personal pastoral faithfulness, meaning his life was lived well. And I think, you know, we’ll talk in a little bit we’ve had so many scandals continued, that go through the church. And so yes, he had this impact, but I think I’m so thankful for his personal faithfulness and ministry, I think we’ll all look back and just say, Wow, he was on the edge of this kind of, I hate to even use this term, famous pastor thing. And he he, he always seemed to just remain humble, and I’m so thankful for that legacy that he leaves behind. Let

Collin Hansen
me let me give you an example of That so since the podcast we recorded one of the venues and most fun venues where I’ve been able to speak about Tim has been at Bucknell University, his alma mater in central Pennsylvania, where did his undergraduate education from 68 to 72. And we did an event there that was led by Mako Fujimura. Miko is also a Bucknell graduate and elder, longtime elder at Redeemer Presbyterian Church under Tim and probably just about the biggest Tim Keller fan, if you want to ask him about how many sermons he slits into and everything. But Mike was on the board at Bucknell. And as we did this event in Bucknell is premier sort of dining space. There was an event to honor honor Tim and his life and we had the board of Bucknell in attendance. Were the president of Bucknell in attendance. The president came up to me afterwards showed me his phone and said I just bought your book. And but here’s the point. In the end was skipped Brian there Tim’s longtime friend on the panel with a journalist from the Wall Street Journal, and with Mako with me, most of what we talked about, were not these great intellectual achievements are these great institutions that he built and conceived. Really, it was a gospel presentation over and over and over again, about a man we loved because he helped us to love Jesus. I just thinking in this non Christian, secular, Premier liberal arts institution that in front of all these leaders, that’s what ended up being the focus of this. Actually, the panel ran for more than 90 minutes. Well, it just kept going. And we just kept talking about that with everybody there listening. And that, I hope, that’s one thing people will continue to remember, you mentioned that, Melissa, that that probably will be something we look back on just that integrity for a long time.

Melissa Kruger
That’s so good, because, you know, we can’t all aspire to maybe his intellect or his writing ability or things like, can I aspire to be someone who just makes someone want to love Jesus more? And I think that what, what a legacy? I mean, that’s, that’s the thing we can all seek to be. Well, I’m excited to jump in with all my questions about your top 10 theological stories. I’ve always loved getting to do this. Because while yes, I’d like to read I could just go read your story. This is from an article on TGC. It’s so great that I selfishly just get to be like, Well, tell me what you really think Colin about about all these things. So one of the stories that you mentioned was the discussion about with the SBC and Saddleback Church about women in ministry. Can you share a little bit about what happened this summer, and the impact that you think it’s going to have on SBC churches,

Collin Hansen
this is definitely a story in in progress. And essentially, what the Southern Baptist conventions annual meeting did over the summer was ratified the decision already made to remove Saddleback Church from fellowship, the southern maps convention, that is a big deal. It’s a big deal for a lot of reasons, including because it’s one of the biggest churches in the largest Protestant denomination in the country, because Rick Warren is most famous Baptist pastor in the United States, if not, probably the world in a lot of ways. And so that’s a really big deal that he would be disfellowshipped. But there was another major element of the story that was quite significant. And that was that Rick Warren, pushed and pushed and pushed for a major change, not just in how churches are relating to one another in the Southern Baptist Convention, but the Southern Baptist churches would change their views on women in ministry, specifically as pastors, and specifically in lead roles. So one of the responses to that came in an amendment that had massive consequences within the convention already and a lot of questions that possibly will change the way churches do relate to one another. And that was a restriction on churches from calling women pastors. Now, depending on your your denominational context, that the met that may be shocking, or that may not be surprising at all, but the point is, within the southern maps convention, there’s a wide spectrum of practice. It’s not a confessional denomination, it’s not a top down denomination. different churches have different views about women preaching as an example, as you and I have talked about a lot major differences between them and say the PCA in that regard, because the different standards of ordination. So there’s really kind of two parallel tracks here. The one was about should there be a major change in how women are the positions that women can or should hold within the convention, but there wasn’t a lot of support for that from from the sentiments kitchen toward Rick Warren. That was that was not a significant move. However, the change about Wait a minute Should the Southern Baptist Convention now proactively seek to remove churches that are out of step with this practice of calling women pas or are out of step with not naming other calling women pastors, they should now also be removed, that now divides people even who agree that they shouldn’t? Because the question becomes what is the role of the denomination in regard to churches that are supposed to be autonomous, and in a denomination that’s built off shared mission, but not necessarily some sort of strict shared confession, which is once again, a difference with the PCA in there? And I’ve just noticed, Melissa, there’s a lot of confusion, even among my very, very highly informed involved friends, people that we work with at TGC, about this issue. So I imagine going into 2024, it’ll be one of the issues that we continue to watch very closely.

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, it’s been really interesting. I mean, my work in TGC, with you with others has been so helpful, because when you’re in a denomination, like the PCA, or something that’s very structured, and everyone has to kind of, you know, follow suit, it can be very confusing, even the wording that other churches use when they describe the work someone’s doing, you know, and so we have clear lines just about what sort of ordained work versus what’s not. And we only use the term pastor for certain things are, yeah, and so it just it gets, it gets confusing. So it’s really helpful to hear your explanation, kind of just on how all that’s working itself out in a denomination that is more loosely associated in how they, how they manage church governance, and things like that. So it’s, it’s, you know, there’s, there’s a lot, there’s a lot to learn. And I think it’s actually a really good place to even always say, oh, like, it’s a good place to say, Well, now, what do you mean by that term? Right? You know, it’s just good to remember sometimes we’re talking past each other, because we’re not even understanding how a different denomination works from the one Moran and I have found that to be, Oh, you mean this, and I met this. So that’s why we’re totally talking past each other. I think another thing that’s been really interesting this year, and I love that you highlighted this in your top 10 theological stories, I think it’s really interesting that we’re getting a greater understanding of the de churching moment. We’ve talked a lot in these conversations about deconversion. Even, but this is a little different. The churching is different from sorry, deconversion. How would you explain one the difference between the two and we had our friends, Michael Graham and Jim Davis, who Jim Davis, we’re so thankful is okay, because he had Sunday. But thankfully, he’s okay. But their work on this has been really impactful. Even as I listened to a lot of it on the podcast, it’s really made me more hopeful, and more encouraged to try to ask people back to church. But how are you seeing that work impact our understanding of evangelism or even maybe the hope of recharging someone? Yeah,

Collin Hansen
we’ve talked a lot about deconstruction and deconversion over the years, and also the rise of the nuns, people claiming no religion. But really, I think, between Mike and Jim and Ryan Berge, who did a lot of the research with them, one of the leading sociologists of religion. In America today, I was gonna help please appeared on our good faith debates at TGC. And, and elsewhere, but they’ve helped to open this window of de churching. To simply observe that in the last 25 to 30 years, 40 million Americans have left the church that is the largest and fastest shift of religion in American history. That’s big news in and of itself, but the particular angle that I take up, is how surprising the reasons have been. Because you could gather 10 of us on TGC staff in a room and say, Why do you think this many people are leaving the church and you’ll get 50 different answers from them on why, and they may all be valid at one, one level or another. But one of my instincts, Melissa is that many of the large trends like this, it could be the churching it could be the decline of fertility, it could be the rise of anxiety, things like that. They typically owe to the structures and kind of practices of modern life. They’re not always or even primarily typically stories about ideas or about causative events or about particular figures, listeners, faithful listeners and viewers of gospel bound. Remember that I had this conversation with Jean Twiggy One of the leading again, psychologists working on these areas. And one of the reasons that people do church in fact, perhaps the major reason, the number one reason they leave the church is because they move. But since I mean, people don’t move as much now as they did a generation earlier, but in this generation with the moving that we have, our social bonds in the internet age are much less, they’re much weaker. And so when you move, you’re less likely to then re affiliate with an institution. Now, it could be any number of different things. But specifically, we’re looking here at the church, maybe there was a club, or a friend group or a dinner, you know, dinner party or something like that supper club that you used to go to, but you move and you don’t necessarily start a new one, you don’t look for other ones, you just sort of it falls out, you fall out of the habit. That’s what people find with with D churching. Now, the other reasons that people might associate, liberal theology, hypocrisy, politics, abuse scandals, they definitely play a role. But they do not play the decisive role. And certainly not the only role. There are a lot of just basic reasons people leave because of things like that social bonds afraid and when people move, they just, they don’t institutionalize in the same ways. So I think what’s hopeful about that, is then if we’re proactive about this are building those bonds within our churches, helping people to connect to other churches when they move. And of course, part of this Melissa is just because a life stage, from college to college, to from high school, to college, from college, to graduate school, or graduate school, to a job or college to a job or anything like that. So getting married, all sorts of different reasons can be why you move, and why you then don’t continue going to church. But I think if we’re more proactive at those different life stages as a church, and we’re more recognizing that a lot of the people who are not affiliated with a church, they’re not necessarily atheists, in fact, statistically speaking, they almost certainly aren’t atheists, probably not even agnostic, not necessarily hostile to the church. So they may have had some difficult experiences in there. But mainly, they just don’t know how to connect, they don’t necessarily feel welcomed, they don’t know where to get involved. They don’t really know a lot about churches, even in their area, or even where to start to look, and they don’t hear as much from their neighbors. So a little, you know, being proactive can go a long way at this phenomenon.

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s what really surprised me. Yeah, I always think if someone stopped going to church, well, they must just have given up on it. And it was, I found the research really hopeful of how maybe people are just out of the habit, which is really different than they don’t want to go in it. And it really speaks to me a lot about teaching our kids the habits of Church and the power of habit that could have as they go off to college, and often to their jobs, when that’s just all they think of on a Sunday as I should be in church. I think I think it gives us hope in the power of those simple habits of taking our kids to church, the impact that that can have later on in their life. Because I think we often just think, Oh, something negative happened. And now they don’t want anything to do with church. And we have seen definite disenchantment with church. But what’s been interesting, one of your stories I found really interesting was there’s disenchantment with secularism, as well. So maybe maybe culturally, we’re just disenchanted with lots of things at this point. But you’re you’re noting that it’s led to several kind of high profile conversions. And as well as some signs of spiritual revival and Gen Z. Where are you seeing those tell us a little bit more about those trends? How are people tiring of the kind of secular gospel that’s been given to them?

Collin Hansen
It’s kind of the financial angles here, Melissa, one of them is, in fact, a colleague of ours had just sent me a book proposal this morning. And he suggested, perhaps we should have a book that explores why the modern age is so unlivable. And this is one thing I’ve been telling people for quite some time when you look at the anxiety rates, you look at the deaths of despair, the suicides and things like that, you start to get a picture of I mean, whatever we think is working does not really seem to be working for a lot of people out there and yet we don’t seem to be coming to terms with that. But younger generations I think are and I I say this because I’m not sure we all live in this world, but I don’t think We all necessarily can recognize just how Stark it is, I put it this way, I say, imagine that from the earliest ages that you can recall, everything in your life is up for grabs. which gender you are, what sort of job you will have one day where you work, whether you will respect your parents or not, whether you will be a religious person and go to church or not, whether you will choose a different religion, whether you will choose no religion, whether you will be attracted to the same sex or a different sex, or both, or neither. What will you know, what kind of work will you find that will be altruistic and, and make the world a better place, but also still make so much money that you can live a certain lifestyle? How

Melissa Kruger
can you be anxious and panic just because you keep talking hon. Yeah.

Collin Hansen
So so let’s let’s just give one example of this. And I think I think people have found this helpful when I mentioned it to them. So we’ve transitioned into the sort of transgender stage of the sexual revolution. And that was bound to happen ever since the major Obergefell decision on gay marriage, the next Progress, you know, in that sexual revolution was going to be transgender. But I often need to point out to people that those are entirely different issues. And they’re entirely different issues for a lot of reasons. But among them, because of the ages at which they become actionable. The Trans issue can hit young children, it can affect how parents would, you know, lead their small children, there are legal implications of the child’s relationship to the parents versus the school, versus counselors versus doctors in terms of consent. Now, all of a sudden, you’re bringing these most basic questions of identity, male and female? Do I love my body? Do I hate my body? Do I want to change my body into really young ages, where we’re obviously our children are not remotely prepared, remotely prepared to be able to make these kinds of decisions? And yet there are a lot of powerful economic and political and cultural forces that want them to. Okay, that I think, given that that is the world that so many of these younger generations have grown up in already, Gen Z, this is the world that they’ve inhabited, inhabited since about 2014, you know, say, Ms. Eight years ago, nine years ago, here. That is that it gives them the sense that everything is fluid, that there’s no order to things, there’s no clear path to follow. Well, in a sense, reacting against Christianity is easy building and all if it’s all you know, as a culture, building a whole secular world, that is better is a whole nother question. And we’re finding that that secular world that is being built is definitely not better. That relates to the second point, which is that the group that it’s definitely not better than do better for Melissa, is women. And so a lot of the high profile conversions that I identified are women. Now, to be clear, there are some things that are better for women. But the things that are better for women are continuations of Christian morality applied accurately about the dignity of women, the worth of women, how women should be cared for, and honored and respected all those sorts of things. My point is, that’s not how the world saw women before Christianity. We’ve got we’ve got a book at TGC from from our, our friend Rebecca McLachlan Jesus through the eyes of women. And it’s a reminder in part of how radical Jesus was and is in his views of women. So I don’t think it’s a surprise that as secularism increases, that it’s not a good situation for women. Rostow from the New York Times would often say if you don’t like the religious right, you’re really not going to like what comes next, the secular right. And you combine that with a secular left, and you realize, wait a minute, all these assumptions about how women should be treated. Now add in a pornographic age that fetishize is abuse. And this is not a good situation. Now, maybe the Christian views of pornography is extremely harmful to everyone but especially to women. Now, it’s not prudish anymore. Now, it’s just common moral sense. And if you’re a teenage woman in particular, unfortunately, you’ve probably already experienced those harmful effects in how you’ve been treated. So I think that’s why you see the combination of high profile women converting as well as some spiritual revival seen among Gen Z I mean, this is this is the age of your kids. I mean, what do you see Melissa? Yeah,

Melissa Kruger
I mean, it’s just really interesting when you think about even even looking back to when I was a teen, it’s amazing. Even these new rules we have to have about consent, you know, on different things, when you’re morality is consent happens in marriage, meaning it just, you just don’t have those discussions, you know, always felt, you know, just saying, oh, that’s for marriage, what the Bible says, protects women. I mean, that’s, that’s just the reality. I’ve seen it time and time again, how protective it is, in every culture that gets farther and farther away from the Bible, women and weak, like, children are always treated worse, if that, if that makes sense. I mean, survival of the fittest culture is terrible. It’s always going to be terrible for just physically weaker individuals, because they’re their children are always vulnerable to the powerful and people who can do things. The same is going to be true in any any conversation we have about these topics. And so I’ve always just said, you know, you see these stories that make it look like women are being that Christianity harms women. And I’m just like, my experience of it has been, I’ve been treated with so much respect, and care, because my Christian Brothers view me as creating the image of God with them. And so, so do we have people who don’t always do that? Yes, I mean, but so do secular people. I mean, that’s just true in a fallen world. So it’s some of the things we’re all going to struggle with, in whatever system we’re in. But I just time and time again, the Bible, we would say the Bible works, because it’s true. But but but it just proves itself over and over, I guess,

Collin Hansen
well, if if, if abuse happens, rape happens, the weak are exploited. In a Christian system, you have a couple different options. One, you have the power of the Holy Spirit to be able to change and to protect and to redeem. But you also at the same time have a standard to call people back to, to call them to account to hold them, you know, to to enact justice against them. If you don’t have that, what do you fall back on? Yeah. What do you claim is is that standard that you’re using? And I think that’s why you’re pointing out Melissa? Well, the standard of nature, as Darwin himself pointed out, is the survival of the fittest, as pointed out, that typically does not go well for groups like who widows, orphans. Oh, right, that the groups that the Bible calls out for special protection, because they are so weak. I think this I think this leads then Melissa into another one of the areas that I that I had covered in my top stories and that was the some of the some of the trends to change biblical and historical views of sexuality to appease modern cultural trends and practices. And I think you see this in the Church of England right now looking to bless same sex unions. You see this in, in Andy Stanley’s confusing comments about acceptance of gay couples and, and things like that. And then you also see it in some of Francis Collins, or excuse me, Pope Francis, I mean, his kind of typically confused comments about, about sexuality sort of one policy in one way, but his words and his his rhetoric going another direction. The thing that confused me, Melissa, about all of these, it follows exactly from what you just what we just mentioned right there. The rationale is always in Andy Stanley has been explicit about this. If we don’t change, we’ll lose the next generation. What if the next generation knows better than we do? What if they’ve experienced the effects of the sexual revolution in ways that are more acute than what we’ve been able to see, because a lot of the older leaders were still protected in largely Christian context, especially across, you know, places like the South? What if they don’t understand what it’s really like to be a teenage girl today or to be that child with all that gender confusion? Well, I mean, so in an effort to try to sympathize with them, by actually just removing restrictions, you’re actually removing the exact thing that would protect them in these cases that would protect children from being exploited by forces outside of their ability to comprehend that would produce permanent change. changes in their body irreversible damage, as we’ve seen to their bodies or, or what if people who are confused about their about their sexuality should not be confirmed in saying, well, we want to do everything we can to appease you. But why would we don’t do that with sin, we shouldn’t at least do that with any kinds of sin. That only makes the burden that much more difficult for people. I’m trying to be faithful there. So I mean, that’s, that’s what I see is underlying theological assumption that what we need to do, what will make will appease people in the modern world, I’m thinking, I mean, that’s the opposite of what we should be doing. And I think it’s the opposite of even what a lot of those generations are saying, not to mention the fact that plenty of churches have changed their views. But the one thing it’s never produced, is a revival of interest in Christianity among youth. These are the oldest, most out of touch denominations are the ones that have changed their views. So I don’t know if I’m missing something there, Melissa. But that’s, that’s what I see on that topic. Yeah.

Melissa Kruger
And you know, I don’t think it’s leading to, you know, help in our teens as well. So it’s just interesting, because, yeah, if, if I want to know how, you know, my car works, I’m gonna have to read like a mechanic or read how my car works from someone who created the car. And I think so often, we view the Bible as this legalistic, keep you from life book. And I always like to say, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is the book from a loving Creator, who wants you to flourish. And so if he gives you boundaries, these are the way to show you, hey, this is how you work best. You’re not actually created to work that way. And so I think we have a real opportunity with, with young people and even with ourselves to approach scripture really differently. That God’s law is his grace. And that’s, that’s how it’s always been, it was a grace that the Israelites received that it was his goodness to them to teach them how to live. And because if you don’t, if you don’t, you’re going to essentially learn in the school of hard knocks, it’s not going to go well for you to live in opposition to God’s law, it never will. And I think we’re actually passing the blessing of wisdom down to the next generation. And in a world where they are, you know, left to choose anything. That’s overwhelming. And, and the irony is, we’ve been sold, that their mental health will suffer. If we have any expectations of them. I think that’s what’s being sold to parents. Yeah. And I just want to say, their full health will be better, if lived, lived in God’s word, it will, everything will go better, even if we can’t always understand how that will go better. In the end, it will and we can trust that the Creator who knows way more than you or I know, has put these things into place and has shown us eternal wisdom through his word that we can rely on in a world that’s telling us a new a new theory every year. These these truths have helped fast so yeah, yeah, it’s, it sounds like we had an article from JD Greer on this actually how downplaying the sin of homosexuality won’t win the next generation. And I think it’s really true. We don’t have to lose God’s word to win someone. It’s God’s word, that it’s going to be proven true in their life. And actually, hopefully, that will bring them bring them and awaken their hearts to the gospel. Okay. So, you know, we’ve talked about ancient truths, hopefully coming more alive in our modern world, but we have some modern things that are changing pretty dramatically. This was the year that chat, G PT, was introduced to the world. In fact, by my son, we went on a vacation. We had a lovely family vacation spring break all my kids Spring Break lined up. So we all went on spring break together. And the week after I got this amazing poem from my son and my son, you know, Colin is engineer major, like, that’s what he’s into. So to receive from him, I was like, wow, this is like, this whole side of my son. I didn’t know he had come to find out he had used, you know, chap, GBT to write his poem about our trip. And he just laughed that we all fell for it. So tell us about this new technology. How are you seeing it start to impact already clearly is impacting schools. I mean, huge ways, but it’s definitely impacting potentially our work. I mean, sometimes I’m tempted to be like, let let’s just write an article on this topic today and see what it puts out. But how are you seeing it have an impact? Well,

Collin Hansen
it’s interesting that this story has been going on throughout the year, the rise and sort of the public debut of these forms of artificial intelligence, whether it’s images, whether it’s articles, whether it’s poetry, who knows all these sorts of things that you can magically just type in and give some basic parameters with, and they’ll produce things that are occasionally amazing. Sometimes very deeply disturbing, and sometimes utterly made up, which is one of the interesting dynamics we started to learn throughout later on this year about these ghosts in the system of artificial intelligence. And I gotta say, maybe things will change fairly soon. And they often do with technology. But at this point, the old the olden days, where we used to complain about Wikipedia, Wikipedia is gonna look like the Encyclopedia Britannica, compared to artificial intelligence, the way that it will sometimes just fill in gaps, just out of nowhere, just manufacture facts and dates and ideas that are not remotely true. But of course, you mentioned the schools, you often have kids who if they’re, if they’re using this, which they’re not supposed to be to write essays and whatnot, it’ll produce a situation where, like, they don’t know any better. So they don’t even know if they’re handing in something that, that it just totally manufactured this stuff, and you hope, at least the teacher does in that case. But what it makes it a theological story, Melissa, is that there’s no realm of work that’s going to be utterly untouched by this. And in fact, a lot of work is going to be helped in different ways. There’s no doubt over time, a lot of things are going to be going to be improved with with this technology. But you know, so many, so much of Christian discipleship is understood by people. Sometimes as data transfer, you have information, I need information, this is quite a bit more true before the internet and before smartphones in particular. But that was a lot of the discipleship that we’ve seen. A lot of our sermons sometimes assume that kind of dynamic of either information about the Bible that you need. And if that’s what’s happening, if it’s data transfer, it’s not entirely clear why artificial intelligence, why using Chet GPT, to write your sermons would be a problem. Because it’s better at transferring that data, why wouldn’t you just mean it that the artificial mind can access more information instantaneously, then we can go ahead and research and pray over and all that kind of stuff. So why wouldn’t we do that? Well, of course, it all rests on the premise that preaching is data transfer. And that the individual is the individual is irrelevant to the conversation, the personality, the experiences, the conversations that that person has. And then the interaction, that person that teacher, whether it’s a women’s ministry leader, or a Bible Study leader, or a small group leader, or let alone the preaching pastor, that those conversations are irrelevant to the work of ministry. I’m hopeful then that artificial intelligence and instead of having us a wash and a bunch of chat, GPT sermons, will instead remind people Oh, yeah, ministry is relational work, it’s person to person work, even in large churches, even for, you know, preachers who are talking to large groups of people. It’s not data transfer, it’s, It’s life on life transformation brought about by the Holy Spirit in the application, the hearing and the doing of the word. And so that’s what I hope happens. And maybe some of these concerns about the ghosts in the system or things like that will make people you know, make people kind of awaken to that, but even the story with your with your son, it’s possible that that chat, GBT will just devalue poetry altogether. But maybe the other thing that it’ll do is if your son comes around and actually does write you a poem, even if it’s not half as good as that one. It’ll be that much more meaningful, knowing that a real human being who knows and loves you had had done it for you. Kind of like the kind of things that your kids made for you in school.

Melissa Kruger
Right. Exactly. Exactly. Well, and I think when it comes to the spiritual realm, right, I mean, just like you said, we can’t do Just count what the Spirit does. Because the presentation of the gospel, we know, it’s not just facts. It’s it’s a spiritual engagement that the the spirit has to open the eyes of our heart so that we understand. And so there’s a reality, whereas maybe it can write us a great email to send to our church leaders with about the picnic. Like, I mean, great. Yeah, I mean, that’s great. It’ll probably be something like we use Google Now you use it to generate a church wide email. Great. But in the transmission of spiritual truths, I think, yeah, we always want it to come with the Spirit’s power in any any way we’re doing, and even even the power of our own lives, we change that transmit something to rather than just the transmission of facts and data. And I think we see that more and more people people want to see lives changed more than just receive. Oh, that’s really interesting facts about the city of Ephesus that they could find. Yeah, anywhere.

Collin Hansen
And on Wikipedia. They

Melissa Kruger
can they can, they sure can. And so Google has changed those type of things, all the ways we can get information. Lastly, on the on your stories, I think I was hoping this year might be different. But last year, we really discussed war in Ukraine, and the impact of that it’s hard to believe how far how long reaching that war has been. And this year, we’ve found ourselves in a very surprising war in a lot of ways to me, I mean, you know, the war with Hamas and Israel, and what’s going on there. What has surprised you about this current situation, and the reaction around the world, particularly in the US as we deal with these realities?

Collin Hansen
I’ll tell you a couple of things, Melissa, that doesn’t surprise me. The first that, that there is ongoing conflict over the land in Israel and broader Palestine. I mean, that’s, that’s not new in there, that people can do evil deeds. I mean, that’s not that’s not new, unfortunately, in human history. And as Christians were prepared to, to understand that what was new this time around, was that there was so quickly after this most devastating attack on Jews since the Holocaust. You know, so last year, we had the largest really first land war in Europe since the end of World War Two since basically, let’s just say this. If 1945 is the last thing, then, you know, times something happened. It’s probably bad. You know, I mean, because you think of things like, first nuclear detonation since the Yeah, is bad things, bad things happened in 1945. So if you’re seeing largest attack on Jews since 1945, the year after you have first land war in Europe since 1945, as definitely a problem in there. But what’s so that surprised me? I mean, it surprised us that that particular would happen at that scale and obviously surprised, Jewish I mean, Israeli leaders, it’s surprised American military and intelligence leaders that caught a lot of people by surprised in there. The reaction though, very swift, I’m gonna say one other thing that does not surprise me is that there’s no obvious solution to the problem. No obvious like, what should Israel do? Or if you’re caught in Gaza, you have nothing to do with this. What do you do? I don’t have any easy answers for anybody. I know, it’s just all bad, like innocent people killed in in Israel by Hamas, innocent people dying because they’re caught now in this war in Gaza, like it’s, it’s just bad. And I don’t know what an obvious solution is to that. And, and I think that’s, again, that’s not really surprising, but still noteworthy. What was surprising was how quickly after the attack, there became a lot of support not just for ceasefires, but even specifically for Hamas, and for some of their overall overall aims, namely the elimination of the State of Israel and the genocide of the Jews. Now we found in part that when you ask young people about Hamas is slogans that they chant in the streets they have no idea what they’re talking about. That’s all one story recently that said, you know, they don’t even know which see is being referred to Whew, from the sea to the river, you know, and they don’t even know what the river they’re talking about either. Well, we shouldn’t be surprised. Because geography is not exactly a strength of American students going way back, you just watch late night talk shows, and their man on the street kind of interviews to be able to see that. But I

Melissa Kruger
don’t want to do this. I’m scared. So

Collin Hansen
can you probably pored over more biblical land maps than most people have? Over the years of teaching the Bible and studying the Bible? So? So I think, but nevertheless, the mass scale support from a lot of people in major western cities did surprise me. But I think the simplest way to explain it, Melissa is this. And I talked about this more in my top 10 theology stories idea. So people can, people can go and check that out, I think that’ll be helpful to them for further context. But Jews are in an awkward position in the way that we have framed in Western culture, the questions of identity and oppression, sort of created this idea that the oppressed have a certain kind of dignity that absolves them of certain moral responsibilities. It’s a really twisted form of Christianity, what we talked about earlier, Melissa, about how you know, caring for the weak and the oppressed, and things like that is a Christian idea. But it gets morphed into secularism to actually become an a new kind of power hierarchy. The challenge for Jews is that they are perceived to be both the top and the bottom of this hierarchy. They’re at the bottom, they’re at the top of the hierarchy as the most oppressed people over time. And this is a major part of the Bible, of course, and slavery in Egypt and all kinds of different things like that the exile and conquering of Jerusalem, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, this is all well known the oppression of the Jewish people. And then of course, you’ve got the worst depression, ever, the Holocaust, 6 million Jews killed. But it becomes confusing, because Jews are also widely associated with oppression of oppressing other people. And that’s seen as people talking about Israel as an apartheid state, about the United States major support, and the fact that a number of Jews are simply successful in the world through communal support, and education and, and initiative and entrepreneurship and all kinds of different things. So the whole system that’s built off identities and oppression structures, is thrown upside down and confused when it comes to Israel. And when it comes to Jews more broadly. And so what I’m been a little bit surprised by, and I have to say I’m actually encouraged by is the way that it’s illustrated the inconsistencies and incoherence of this thing that authors have called this identity synthesis. This oppression can sort of pyramid in there, that has been such a major obsession across sort of elite Elite Western circles the last 10 years or so. And that’s why it’s my top story of this year, not just the just a terrible violence, not just the debates about the land, which of course, Theologically speaking, go way back for Christians, not to mention Jews. But also the way that it’s exposed an entire identity matrix synthesis that is unlivable, unworkable, unlivable, and hopefully will be will be destroyed. I don’t think it’d be entirely destroyed, but needs to at least be dramatically rethought.

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it also, I mean, when just look at what’s happening. You think everything feels so wasted? Like why? Why? Why the Yeah, I look back to Ukraine the year before, why do this? Why attack a country? All these lives have been lost. I mean, it’s just, it’s just awful. And we see, this world is not okay. Outside of the hope of the gospel. I mean, it is we are prone to destruction, we are not prone to goodness, we have remnants of goodness, because we were created in the image of a good God. But the fall has rendered us just prone to terrible things. And so it really does just underscore what we speak to is that we need a new home, that these things are going to continue to happen. And I think it just reminds us that the hope of the world is the gospel. It’s the what’s happening at home. This means that we celebrate Jesus return is when when peace will come. But in the meantime, what people need for peace is not something the world can produce. It’s only something that the gospel can produce, whether it’s peace about my gender, whether it’s peace between nations, whatever we’re searching for, it’s only going to be found in the hope of Christ. And I think so often we think if we’re just smarter, we can figure it out. And I think it reminds me again and humbles us, just to see how how awful humanity can be, I think sometimes we think we’ve modernized to the point where we’re not that bad. And it just, it just reminds us of our desperate need of the gospel in every way. Well,

Collin Hansen
you know, Melissa, that the project I’ve been working on for much of this year is a is a book called, can we trust a God who is silent about evil. And I’m engaging with a lot of Jewish thought on that specifically related to the Holocaust. And in the course of research, one of the books that was really helpful for me in that process was, was by one of my professors from Northwestern. So Morrison was also Jewish, wrote the book, wonder confronts certainty Russian writers on the timeless questions and why their answers matter. And one of the problems that you run into with the with the problem of evil is that like I said, with a Christian background, it’s easy to say, well, these bad things happen. Well, must be Christianity’s fault. Because God should have stopped that, or else God doesn’t exist. That’s the basic problem that you hear. The difficulty is that when you turn it around and say, what’s the alternative? Things become very problematic at that point. So what what Saul Morson does in this magnum opus book, is he works through the Dostoevsky, Tolstoy going all the way through to one of my all time favorite writers, Wassily Grossman, a 20th century Jewish and Russian writer. And he talks about the dynamics of revolution and oppression. And one of the things that he says about oppression, is that you think that the people who are oppressed would be those who would least likely to do it. But history to repeat it, that history shows us the opposite. It shows us nothing of the sort. If history shows us anything, it is two things. Number one, it is that the oppressed will often they treat oppression as an alibi to be able to justify what they do. In response, if I’m oppressed, you know, I can do whatever I want. And you can see this I mean, this applies, by the way, of course, not just to Hamas is attack on Israel. But Israel’s retaliation against them. Don’t question us, we are the ones who got attacked. You can see it can be used by any side. And it has been over and over and over again in history. But the second thing he points out is that the oppressed often are the ones who know how to do the oppressing because they’ve experienced it. And that is scary. But that’s what I’m what I’m trying to get at and I mentioned in the in the top 10 theology stories is that the gospel shines most brightly when the culture is darkest. Because it shows you that this is the way out. Bonhoeffer used to talk about how Christians in World War Two need to be the spokes in the wheel, the wheel of Nazism is turning and somebody’s got to stick themselves in the middle of it to stop it. And what I’ve always seen so powerful from from Jesus, is that his death on the cross is that spoke in the wheel of a world that’s out of control. That is what stops that cycle. That never ending cycle of oppression, oppressed, oppression, oppressed over and over again, it’s the only way to find true dignity for the victims true justice in the end, but also, but help them to not then become oppressors themselves in response in there. And so I do think you’re right, Melissa, that, that all of these things that we see that are very discouraging, should drive us not only in prayer, but also in a recognition that it’s not like the world is offering better alternatives. We have no reason to be fearful. We have every reason to be confident in the Gospel. Going forward. Yeah. So that’s how I process all this stuff.

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, that’s good. That’s really, really good. Well, thanks for covering all of those stories with us. You’ve had a lot of interviews this year, as always, you’ve had a good number. Are there any interviews from your past year that really stood out to you or any ones that are upcoming that you want to tell us about in that in the next year?

Collin Hansen
Yeah, so 17 I think this year, which is fewer than I normally do, mainly because of the launch of my book on Timken. I was doing so many podcasts

Melissa Kruger
elsewhere I guess for other people exactly. That I

Collin Hansen
knew that was gonna happen. So we had a slower year on gospel bound, but we might have had our best episode ever. A present company excluded, of course. But

Melissa Kruger
I was I think we might announce I’m

Collin Hansen
had our best interview ever with Molly Worthen and a Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. You want to give a shout out

Melissa Kruger
here. It’s basically Chapel Hill people

Collin Hansen
I’ve done. I’ve done my obligatory Northwestern shout out so I only thought it was fair that I gave you a Chapel Hill shout out there too. But yeah, so Molly is. I’ve said for a while now Molly’s like my alter ego, because we’re both engaged in historical writing and journalism, but I’m a journalist and she’s a historian. I was I was urged to go study at Yale. She did study at Yale did her PhD master was a mess. We actually did a whole education in there. And, but she recently at JD, JD Greer’s church there and under the evangelistic influence of JD Greer as well as the apologetic influence of Tim Keller. And ultimately, by the power of the Holy Spirit, she was regenerate. And, you know, so I kind of I kind of teased in my gospel bound interview, so many of you have listened to it. It’s one of the one of the most popular episodes of all time. But I really teased it because I wanted it to be a bit of a slow burn of like, so tell me about your work until he was sort of stuff and and now tell me why you became a Christian. Because it was the first time that she had announced that publicly apart from her baptism at the church. And so that was an extremely memorable interview. But the thing I want to highlight about it, is just her palpable joy in the Lord. And as a Christian, I don’t get any greater joys than seeing other people come to faith. And to see those transformed hearts. And I think if you watch it here on on YouTube, after this episode, if you listen to it on the on the gospel bound podcast, I think he can see and you can feel and you can hear that palpable joy from her. So that’s, that was just amazing. But

Melissa Kruger
I would say stop listening to this one. Yeah. That was good. It was so good. It was really encouraging to hear and just to hear, you know, pastors, I mean, I think you’ll see a pastoral heart to not only did JD, you talk with Molly and get to know her, but he would call him and asked him for advice on you know, and you just see this care. Yeah, these pastors want people to come to life and to know Christ and that they’re eager to do

Collin Hansen
so. That is kind of Molly maybe maybe listening or watching but Molly certainly got she got the A Team. Guy, JD Greer doing the evangelism, Timothy Keller on Timothy Keller on your apologetic speed dial for any book recommendations. And obviously, as a, as a distinguished professor of American history, and never joke religion in particular, no surprise that he would say things like, read NT rights, you know, 1000 pages on the resurrection, the Son of God, of course, she goes and does it, and finds it to be incredibly compelling. So that was, that was probably the most memorable one of this year. And you know, Melissa, you it’s, it’s been a while let’s talk is was sunsetted at at TGC w 22. And much too many people’s disappointment there. But I think you guys have already kind of hinted at this at least through your social media accounts and things like that, but not sure how public it is. But you and Jackie and Jasmine, you actually just got together last month for a project you’re working on. And what you tell us more make a little make a little Oh, yeah,

Melissa Kruger
yeah, it was so fun. Um, so Jackie, and Jasmine and I have been working this past year on a Bible study on Ephesians. And so we’ve been studying together, we’re each writing different chapters, and we all got together. And so we’re kind of doing the Bible study, let’s talk style, which, you know, really combines my love of how do people learn? And I think they typically learn better through group discussions and things like that. And so I’m really hopeful that these discussions will be fruitful and that what I think happens with women around the Bible is just, it’s kind of what you were talking about. It’s much more than just information transfer. It’s the Spirit leading us as we’re in the word together and the Spirit teaches us that is by no means to say we do not need the preacher word on Sunday. Of course we do. But that it that the Lord does something when we get together in His Word, and he speaks through His Word, and we can kind of feast together on it. So that’s what it was a great time. So for any of our let’s talk listeners, we hope you’ll join us over as we’re studying Ephesians. Eventually, I think it comes out in June. So be out right before the women’s conference that is coming up in June. There’s always a conference coming up.

Collin Hansen
This year? Doesn’t you’re in charge of all of them. Yes.

Melissa Kruger
These conferences,

Collin Hansen
thought I had a year to a year to take off. But yeah, I think I think I might be the only person who’s been to all of them, Melissa, I might be, but they have been a blessing. I will say I just talked to somebody yesterday, who once again, expressed extreme thinks about how TGC 23 went. And so for anybody who’s thinking about coming back to the Gospel, Christian Women’s Conference, you know, Melissa’s role in her huge role in shaping the content, the feel, I mean, everything about that event, but TDC 23 was the first time Alyssa was charged with that. And I think so many of the things people appreciated a new about that national conference, we’re going, Melissa, to your leadership of that. And so if you think if you had things that you didn’t like about the conference, you can blame me because I also played a big role in saying that, but if he didn’t like something, you can blame me. But if you appreciate something about how it felt, and music and whatnot, you can you can think, Melissa for

Melissa Kruger
that. Yeah, no, it really is a team effort. And I’m so so thankful to see how many people were there and just the joy, I think that’s what we all came away from thinking about really just an experience of joy of being together, and sweet unity among a lot of different people. Well, we’ve got we’ll talk a little bit more about the conference in just a moment. But we have had a year of book reading, as always, we just did the end of your book awards with TGC. Thank you, Spence, who’s now in charge of it for us. And so there’s Yeah, there are always articles about different books we’ve enjoyed. But are there is there anything this year that you’ve read that really impacted you, that you that you’ve been thinking about? Why

Collin Hansen
I would encourage people to go ahead and check out the gospel coalition’s annual book awards, because you’ll see a lot of great work being done by a lot of different people and coming out of Christian publishers this year. And I think people are well aware, especially listening and watching gospel bound of how much I appreciate Andrew Wilson’s remaking the world. It’s one of my favorite books ever. That came out this year. So certainly go ahead and pick that up. But I thought once I just mentioned four books, and one of them have actually already mentioned now there have already, actually three of them, I’ve already mentioned or alluded to, in this conversation. They do well, I mean, you asked for books that are that have really made me think and changed now the way I think and that’s what I was going for in here. And so the first is the identity trap a story of ideas and power in our time by Yasha. Monk. I’m actually not entirely sure that’s how they pronounce his name professor at Johns Hopkins writer for The Atlantic. This book is a lot of the things I was talking earlier about oppressors and oppression came out of things that I was, in many ways reminded of or helped clarified in Josh’s work. I’m trying to figure out if I can interview him next year on gospel bound, see how that would go many ways that you and I, Melissa would disagree with him. As Christians, he’s Jewish and fairly liberal on a lot of different issues. But what’s interesting about the book is because his critique of some of these far left views is coming from a left wing perspective. So that’s one reason why I thought that book was very significant this year an indicative of a broader, a broader change that I’m seeing a number of different places. I also mentioned another gospel bound interview they’ve already done. That’s Gene 20s. Generations, the real differences between Gen Z, millennials, Gen X boomers and silence and what they mean for America’s future. Go listen to that interview. If you’re not, you know, just to get more a feel there. But she says a comprehensive sense for how different generations view the world and for her basic view, that generational change does not happen primarily because of events. Ie This is the Kennedy assassination generation or the 911 generation. Primarily, it happens because of technological innovations. That makes a lot of sense to me. It resonates a lot with my experience in my own study. So tick, tick.

Melissa Kruger
Did you read I Gen? No, actually, I

Collin Hansen
did not read that. But I think because I have read so many, because I’ve I’ve read so many summaries of it. And her her long term colleague Jonathan Hite, who is a friend of the show, and we’ll plan to have Jonathan back next year talking about his book The anxious generation, which is building off i Gen in there. So yeah, I mean, the big push push that gene and Jonathan are making right now is to ban smartphones from schools. I hope it works. But everything they’re seeing, there’s even just a recent stat that was showing major declines starting in 2012. In this is near and dear to your heart math proficiency, and some other different areas as a former math teacher, and and Jean and Jonathan were like, Huh, why does this chart like every other chart we have been pointing to forever? Seemed as started 2012 is the year that most of these students had switched from flip phones to smartphones?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, NASA requires such deep thinking. Yeah. And it’s hard. I used to always tell my students it’s just hard. It’s okay. It’s hard. We’re very uncomfortable with anything being hard.

Collin Hansen
Was the Jonathan Hite thing too? Is that the belief that kind of safety ism belief that if something is hard, it must be wrong? Yeah. I’ve already mentioned in here. So Morrison’s magnum opus, wonder confronts certainty Russian writers on the timeless questions and why their answers matter. I do. I this was a hard read for me and I have a good bit of background in the subject. So I don’t necessarily recommend it for everybody, but just saw Morrison’s writing wherever you can find it. It’s just positively I mean, it’s explosively insightful, when it comes to a lot of these questions of our of our age. And, and what I loved about this book, though, is the addition of writers like Vasily Grossman, in addition to the 19th century, realist novelists like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. So last book, I’ll just mention that I’m interested Melissa to know yours, but and that would be Paul Kics book, you have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live 10 weeks in Birmingham that changed America. Of course, this stands out to me not only because I live in Birmingham, and teach in Birmingham, but then also I do a lot of civil rights tours. What I loved about Paul, another example of somebody who’s basically on the left, but is criticizing a lot of the far left views. He’s in an interracial marriage and family and things like that. But he does a great job of showing the complexity of the civil rights movement, and especially its climactic battle here on the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, 1963 in the spring, as well as the bombing that came later on the fall. So that that book, just very interesting for a formative moment in American history, but especially for me stood out because of what I do here in Birmingham. So, Alyssa, you gotta give me some recommendations. What’s on what’s on your smaller

Melissa Kruger
list this year? I’ll be honest, I was in a bunch of writing projects. So I read a lot of fiction, just because it was kind of easy to take in. But one thing I did read, you know, I love biography. I’ve always loved biography and there were two Elizabeth Elliot biographies that came out. I think they both came out this year. But there was a life by Lucy Austin and then being Elizabeth Elliott by Ellen Vaughn. And the being Elizabeth Elliott was kind of the second in a series by Ellen von, I had read the earlier one on which was becoming Elizabeth Elliot. And being Elizabeth Elliott. We told kind of the second half of Elizabeth Elliot’s life, one that I was much less familiar with, I would say, I was familiar with her the book she published during that season, but not very familiar with what was going on in her life. And it’s, it’s, I would, I would say, it’s been just a fascinating read. It’s almost like reading someone you thought you knew. And then the story really changes when you when you hear more of the story. And so I recommend both of them. It’s it’s been pretty interesting. It’s been a pretty interesting read, to take in and pretty surprising in some ways.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, I mean, the I read the Austin book before it was published, and in part because of her significant role in teaching Tim McCarthy Keller and Gordon Conwell, so I wanted to know if there was anything in there but not surprising that in a Keller book, you’d learn a lot about Elliot, but you wouldn’t learn a lot in an Elliott book about the colors because they were just students. Yeah. of hers. It wouldn’t have been a big, big influence, but a lot of just fascinating and I got to admit fairly disturbing things, reading about their marriages and just love the challenges faced on the mission field. So but but for somebody go ahead.

Melissa Kruger
Well, I have to say I hated it for it, because I just finished some of the frustrations she was having on the mission field. And, you know, I was like I was really struck by Wow, some of the disunity we feel, even in our work. It’s not new. It’s not new. It’s not new. We think it’s always we always think it’s kind of worse, where sometimes it’s maybe just another iteration of just art.

Collin Hansen
Well, specifically, the issue that that that Austin discusses is the divide over reading, whether you should read books that were not the Bible, or direct Christian books about the Bible, and, and Elizabeth was a very expansive thinker and reader, very curious. And that’s how she was raised as an Evangelical, but working with a colleague with a more fundamentalist background that was a source of severe judgment and distrust between them. And I think, Melissa, you see that exactly today, whether it’s movies, other forms of art, literature, things like that. Very different viewpoints that people have. But yeah, it does kind of comfort you in some small way to know that it’s not new.

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, yeah, it does.

Collin Hansen
So now you like you mentioned earlier, conferences all the time, we mentioned TGC. W 24. Coming up this summer. I thought maybe Melissa, you could tell us a little bit about that. What you’re excited about, give people a preview of that. And also, though, related to that, I want you to tell us about the book that you’ve got coming out which I’ve been able to read and have really loved and plan to use very practically in my life. Go ahead.

Melissa Kruger
I’m thankful for that. So we have TGC 24. Coming up. TGC w 24. Coming up this summer. It’s our women’s conference, we’re going to be doing the I am statements of Jesus. It’s a Bible study. I’ll tell you I have wanted to write for years. And this is the benefit of having teams, right? Yeah. Courtney doctrine tells me I have the spiritual sense of telling other people what they should do. So I coordinate

Collin Hansen
for an editor. Yeah, exactly. During a conference planner.

Melissa Kruger
We should do this meaning, hey, Courtney and Joanna, we all write the Bible study. Well, y’all do the hard work. And then we’ll have a conference about it. But I’m really excited because I love the book of John. And I think it will be a wonderful way to outreach to neighbors, because it’s it’s who Jesus says He is, in his own words. And so if somebody is asking the question, who is Jesus, the I Am statements to me are just a wonderful way to study who is Jesus? Who does he claim to be? And it’s, I think it’s really exciting, but seven weeks rather than going through the whole Gospel of John. So it’s I think, it’s our hope is that women will come here the teaching, be refreshed in it, but then feel really equipped to go back into their neighborhoods, their preschools, you know, their work environments, and say, Hey, would you like to study about who Jesus is with me? That’s, that’s kind of our hope, on that, that the book I’ve been working on what we talked about, is parenting with hope, raising teens for Christ in a secular age. And I am, man, I’m so thankful it’s written. As we often say, the writing was rough. It’s probably the hardest book I’ve written, I think is the hardest book I’ve written. Because it’s such a tender topic. on parenting teens, there are so many parents who are going through such hard things with their teens. And so I wanted to acknowledge that. But I also really wanted to think about what principles can help us as parents, as we parents age, what what things just tend to work and what things can really be what, what practices can be maybe harmful. And even and maybe a little bit of a modern focus, you know, how do we deal with things like sports and activities and the craziness that’s going on with that our culture, but how do we also deal with cell phones? You know, I mean, I talked about this in the book, when I started at my first teenager, cell phones and social media was all new. Yeah. And there was no research, there was no information. And so my view on some of that has changed dramatically. Yeah, Instagram, I thought, Oh, sure. You can get Instagram. It’s just an app where you show pictures of each other, had no idea what it would become

Collin Hansen
and send pictures to each other.

Melissa Kruger
It seems so simple at the time, but you know, I hadn’t really thought through. What does it do to a young 12 year olds heart when she gets 50 likes and her friend gets 150 likes? Yeah, it’s like it’s like, uh, oh, let’s keep track on everyone’s you know, yeah, it’s really tough on teenagers these things that they’re going through and facing and so, but what my main, my main thing in the book is to say, the basics of Christianity, the word prayer And the church, really our anchor points as parents are not just for getting our kids sorted out, but for our own hearts as we’re in the season. So it’s really a book more to the parent than is how to get the perfect team. But how do we, how do we parent in the season and really maintain good relationship with our kids as we’re doing so whomever they might be, you know, coming up, what about you? What have you been working on? Well,

Collin Hansen
I mean, I mentioned earlier and that’s pretty much it right now. I mean, can we trust a God who was silent about evil, that probably will come out of it? So small Book Two, it’s only a funny 1000 words, or so. But I mean, I don’t know I’m at let me come back to working on something longer on that in the future, whatnot. We’ll see how this one plays out. But it brought together a lot of my, my interests. And I’ll mentioned this, Melissa, when I teach in cultural apologetics, here at Beeson Divinity School. The final project is everybody has to answer has to write a sermon, and then incorporates the hardest objection to Christianity. And they get to choose what the hardest objection is. And the point is they need to decide for themselves what’s the hardest for them to be able to believe. And so for me, it’s my hardest objection is the one that I share with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which he describes the suffering of innocent children, the eternal damnation and suffering of innocent children. And so that’s what I, I, I do a sermon that incorporates that for my students. And this booklet really is, is arisen out of that it’s completely reshaped and redone, but that’s where I’m coming from on it. So can we trust a God who was silent about evil, and then specifically is engaging with Elie Wiesel’s Night, which has this harrowing scene of like Jewish babies being tossed into the flames? And Auschwitz? So that’s, um, that’s what I’m, that’s what I’m working on right now. And it’s been a it’s been a heavy topic, of course, but it’s been very, very enlightening to be able to work through and to process through. Not only that, I mean, the Jewish writing on this on this topic, and the Old Testament itself, as well as the New Testament. So that’s what I’ve been working on. That’s great.

Melissa Kruger
That’s great. It’s, it’s definitely, it’s needed. I don’t know how you’re gonna cover it in 1000 words,

Collin Hansen
but not exhaustively tell you that much. Yeah,

Melissa Kruger
well, but it’ll be really I think it is the question. That is probably the hardest objection to Christianity for most people. So I’m looking forward to reading that when it when it comes out. So anything else going on at TDC? This year that you want to talk about?

Collin Hansen
Well, you’ve been a bit of busy year, we launched the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics earlier this year, and people may or may not have seen we also launched the Carson center for theological renewal. This fall, we’re still building this center. We’re looking for an executive director to hire to lead that center, we’ll have fellows coming along afterward, we’ll have video learning cohorts and things like that you’ll be able to study biblical theology in different disciplines. But this year, we’ve had a full Bible Commentary published, finally been working on that for a number of years, but the gospel coalition Bible Commentary. One of the cool things that came from the gospel coalition national conference was the biggest conference project we’ve ever had of fundraising, full fundraising support coming in to translate that commentary into Spanish and into Arabic, thank you to everybody who contributed so generously to that project. And, and we’ve, we’ve undertaken that work and set our budget for next year to complete and all that kind of stuff. So this is in addition to a lot of the essays and courses that we’ve already produced on a host of theological topics that are already available there, as well as our journal three times a year familly OS, for students of, of Biblical Studies and theology. So that’s, that’s what we mean, just a few things. I don’t know exactly what um, I mean, 23 was such a big year. 24 feels like it’s just kind of keep it going. You read a lot of ways, because he got the big conference, and you got the book coming out and everything but yeah, what are you particularly excited about with with TGC this year?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, I think the conference, I’m always I mean, I know that’s the big thing we have. But we we’ve had these smaller cohorts happening behind the scenes, and they’ve been wonderful and exciting to see how they almost the conference has been in place for all these people who are on these online cohorts meet up and then they come together and get to be together. In real person, but there’s just nothing like seeing so many people who just love Jesus all together worshiping the Lord together, it’s it’s really wonderful and encouraging to your soul to see in the midst of a world that looks so divided. Looks so angry all the time. It looks like everything is in disarray. And, and, and I have to say it’s seeing the younger people, you know, seeing young women who are just so excited about Jesus, and there are a lot of them. I mean, it’s, there’s, there’s a lot of good things going on, you know, with the next generation. And we’re seeing that. And it’s really exciting.

Collin Hansen
Well, I mean, love what you guys are doing in many ways at TGC. This is listen, I talk about this often, I mean, you and I, we probably do more than we should, probably bitten off more than we can chew in there. But any of the small ways that we’re able to support people who are watching and listening and in their in their life and their, their fellowship with Christ, their their love of the church, and their service of the church, the way they love their neighbors, where they raised their kids, the books they read, to edify and to learn about the world, we’re honored that we’re able to do that we’re grateful that that you guys make it possible, every year for us to be able to do that. And we can only do it because of your prayerful support. For us, this is a year where we needed a lot of prayer. It’s a year where we saw a lot of answers to prayers. So we thank you, everybody out there, who’s done that for us. We also depend on your financial support. We do have things sometimes our books or conferences help us with our budget, we’re able to reinvest all of that money back into literally running those things, but into the ministry itself into direct ministry that will benefit you guys, we’re not an organization that has much overhead at all, we have no head headquarters to maintain, and things like that. So we appreciate you guys and need your support. When it comes to like to the finances, there’s a few ways that you can do that. One of the easiest ways simplest ways become a monthly giver, to TGC, go to tgc.org/give tgc.org/give. And even just $25 a month very helpful to us. We don’t have nearly as many people who support us monthly as you might imagine, it’s actually pretty, pretty, pretty odd how few people we have to do that. But if you can support us with $25 a month, that’s a good way to keep our ministry going, you can also help us with a one time gift. Any amount, large or small is a blessing to us. If you’re making decisions about end of your giving, we would very much appreciate your your support of us, there are other ways that you can support us. You’ve heard about some of the books that we’re working on, or about some of the other things, come to our conferences, pick up those books, share this podcast with a friend who’s interested in things that are happening in the news and trends from a Christian perspective. Go on to our podcasts, you know, all the let’s talk stuff is still out there is still able to edify, share it with other women in your church and in your community. like it, subscribe to it, all that kind of stuff. And of course, with gospel bound, we’ve got a big year planned ahead. So go ahead and leave a rating marker review on there, it just helps other people to be able to find it in there. So there’s ways you can support us you can give a gift, you can become a regular donor to the gospel coalition tgc.org/give. So again, appreciate everybody’s support there.

Melissa Kruger
That’s right. Well, I know that because I think sometimes we think the internet is just full of bad things. And social media is just full of bad things. But I just think someone going and sharing your interview with Molly, what am I saying that might be I mean, it’s just a simple way. We can get really intimidated about sharing the gospel, but maybe you just share, you know that interview and someone listens to it, who maybe you would never expect listen to it. There are just simple ways we can use even our personal social media platforms to share the good news of Christ with others and so we encourage you to do that. We’re gonna keep doing that here. In every way we can, but you passing it on to others. It’s always amazing how the Lord works in surprising ways. Yeah, one final we’re almost done. Okay, because I know we always go too long. They have no idea how much longer our real conversations our call and if they hear those, they’d be like, Wow, they can really chat. But what so we always used to ask favorite things on Let’s Talk. Here’s why. My question for you, what’s something you’re really looking forward to in the new year can be family, it doesn’t have to be work. Work book,

Collin Hansen
no, not not a book.

Melissa Kruger
That happy that’s coming up.

Collin Hansen
You know, I think the experience of being a parent of little kids is that every year, somebody that you knew and loved really well disappears forever, and somebody else appears for the first time. And so you lose that five year old girl that you love so much, but you gain that new six year old girl who’s has new interests and excitements and things like that you lose that cute little two year old boy that, that you just love to tote around with you. But you gained the three year old boy who can who can talk with you now and tell you what he wants and things like that. And so I think that’s, that’s all that I think about in the upcoming year is, is I will, I will have a nine year old and a six year old and a three year old coming up next year. So that’s what I think about all their different activities. My daughter starting piano, she’s very excited about that. And my son continuing on with another year of football and baseball, which were so big for him in 2023. So that’s what I look forward to. So

Melissa Kruger
you need me Christmas present of your plugs for the piano. Well,

Collin Hansen
I mean, piano piano was bad, but I gotta say it is way better than a lot of other instruments. Oh, yeah. We had violin. I was gonna say I think violin is probably the worst. I’m used to I, I played piano for a long time. So I’m used to that part of it’s not too big a deal. But it give us your your favorite thing. 2024 Melissa,

Melissa Kruger
you know, it’s funny when you say that, because yeah, you’ve got kids, like what you said, I feel like yeah, you’re exactly right. I am losing and I am gaining. So I will officially lose Mr. Krueger, this year, I will gain it Mustang. Emma, my daughter, my oldest is getting married. And so I feel like I’m gaining a son in law. But I’m I’m getting you know, this big transition. So it feels like I will say it just feels like such a win. Because we love Andrew and are so thankful just for their upcoming wedding and can’t wait for it. It will happen the month after the conference. And it seems so much more manageable to plan a wedding for 200 versus 4000.

Collin Hansen
But it’s true if anybody can do it. It is you Melissa.

Melissa Kruger
It’s really fun. So it’s but man, you just praise the Lord, when when you see your kids loving Jesus and finding other people to walk through life with who also love Jesus. It’s an amazing, it’s amazing gift. So I’m thankful for it

Collin Hansen
was always a highlight Melissa, as we come toward the end of the year to be able to look back and look forward with you. And it is that way again. And we thank everybody out there for, for listening to this special episode and watching this special episode of gospel bound. Thank you for encouraging us with your comments over email and in person. When you do that, and when you’re specific about that, it’s probably more helpful than you realize. Because of this digital divide, we don’t know who’s out there. We don’t know exactly how you’re benefiting from that. But if you’ve listened to that Molly Worthen interview or shared it with somebody or somebody who’s skeptical about Christianity, just you know, let us know about that we’d love to, we’d love to hear that. So appreciate that. And you can help other people to find our podcasts. The two that we’ve referenced here that we’ve serve on gospel bound and let’s talk by rating and reviewing them. And you can also support us again, coming up monthly donor tgc.org/give $25 a month so well Merry Christmas to everybody and as well as a happy new year. We will be back Lord willing early next year look forward to joining you. As you as you watch, or as you listen as I typically do washing dishes commuting, working out on sort of stuff wherever however you appreciate your podcast. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and thank you Melissa for joining me again.

Melissa Kruger
Okay, thanks for having me on.