Advancing the Gospel Through Evangelical Unity

NAE.org

Darrell Bock: 

Welcome to the Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. And today, our topic is evangelicalism. What more could you want? And to discuss this topic with us is Walter Kim, who is President of the National Association of Evangelicals. I could hardly do better, right? So, Walter Kim became President of the National Association of Evangelicals in January 2020. He previously served as pastor in Boston's historic Park Street Church and at churches in Vancouver, Canada, and Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as campus chaplain at Yale University. I mean, you've done the south, you've done our 51st state, you've done the northeast. I mean, what haven't you done? 

And so, he preaches and writes and engages in collaborative leadership to connect the Bible to intellectual and cultural issues of the day. Regularly teaches at conferences and classrooms, addresses faith concerns with elected officials and public institutions, provides theological and cultural commentary to leading news outlets, serves on the boards of Christianity Today and World Relief, and consults with a wide range of organizations. You received your PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, an M.Div. from Regent College in Vancouver, and a BA from Northwestern University, which is where my daughter graduated from, by the way. So, tighter connections even than I realized. I was born in Canada. So I mean, we're so connected, it's frightening. 

Walter, glad to have you with us. 

Walter Kim: 

Darrell, thank you for the invitation. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, so we're just going to dive right in. My standard question to someone who comes to The Table for the first time is, what's a nice guy like you doing in a gig like this? How did you get connected to the National Association of Evangelicals? 

Walter Kim: 

So in many ways, Darrell, my journey of faith is one that would lead to the NAE. So, I need to actually take you back to even before I was born. So my father had escaped communism in North Korea, the border of China and North Korea, made his way to South Korea as a youngster with his family. And during the Korean War and after the Korean War, South Korea was in this incredible process of rebuilding. And evangelical organizations were very instrumental in seeing that happen. The revival that was breaking out after the Korean War among Korean churches, again, Christian organizations, World Vision, World Relief, many others were there. And this was all a part of my family's exposure to forms of Christianity that held the proclamation of Jesus with the demonstration of Jesus in the rebuilding of a country and all that entailed. 

They immigrated to America, I was born in New York City, part of a Korean Presbyterian immigrant church there and lived there for a bit. Lived in a small town in Western Pennsylvania, where I did a good bit of growing up and it was kind of an independent Baptist pastor who when I was 12 years old, shared the four spiritual laws with me. I didn't even know what this thing was, but prayed to receive Christ then. And began a journey where I was in campus ministry, worked with different denominations, ended up doing Near Eastern Languages, as you mentioned at Harvard. And it was at Park Street Church, originally attending as a grad student and then eventually on the pastoral staff, where I discovered that this was a church that was instrumental in the founding of World Relief, in the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals, and the founding and launching of Christianity Today and many other educational evangelical institutions as well. 

And what I discovered there, which eventually led me to a chance to serve on the board of the NAE and then in this position in 2020. But what I discovered in my time at Park Street was that my story, my story of coming to faith, my parents' journey from South Korea to America, my growing up in different denominational traditions, the immigrant church, and then discovering this journey of encountering faith in Christ through the four spiritual laws, and eventually Park Street. This was the story of the different types of work that the NAE was involved with. And so in some ways, serving as President of the NAE is an expression of a debt of gratitude to the way that American evangelicalism had formed our family, even before I knew the word NAE. And so, stepping into this role really does come with this life narrative of deep appreciation for the work of the good news in word and deed that has marked my journey. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, I love that phrase, the good news in word and deed. Let's talk a little bit about the NAE and what it is because I imagine some listeners, one, probably didn't even know what NAE stood for, and secondly, doesn't know what the NAE does. So, tell us about the NAE. 

Walter Kim: 

So, the world was going through a lot of issues at that time period, it's founded in 1942. 

Darrell Bock: 

Has anything changed? 

Walter Kim: 

Yeah, that's right. Ironically, very similar sets of dynamics, right? 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. 

Walter Kim: 

So 1942, the world had already gone through one world war, had gone through a major economic depression, had gone through a worldwide pandemic, was entering into a second world war. All sorts of challenges were facing our country and there was this deep debate between more fundamentalistic forms of Christian faith that were engaged in a cultural warfare mentality or a cultural isolation, trying to withdraw and preserve and protect Orthodox Christianity, and then other streams of Christianity that were more accommodating, capitulating to trends of modernism. And so the church itself was roiled in this kind of tension of figuring out its place in American society. 

And the NAE was formed in 1942 with a deep conviction that there had to be a third way, apart from the cultural warfare or the cultural isolation on one hand, and the cultural accommodation or capitulation and sacrifices of Orthodoxy on the other hand. Is there a third way? And could this third way bring together strands of gospel-believing denominations that actually did not believe that the other side believed in the same gospel? Pentecostals and Presbyterians, just give you that as an insight. There's lots of early records of the formation of the NAE that the Pentecostals and the Presbyterians were deeply suspicious of one another. And in the forming of the NAE, there was this profound sense that we needed a third way with respect to how the gospels lived out in our society, but that we needed another way with respect to keeping the main thing the main thing. And so at that time period, whether there were the Pentecostals or Presbyterians or Methodists, Wesleyans, Mennonites, there were a band of people who said, "We all have this deep common faith in Christ." 

And I would say in the 80 plus years since then, the NAE has been seeking to do this work of connecting evangelicals, those who have this high view of scripture, belief in the need to have a conversionary experience, the centrality of the atoning work of Jesus, and this expression that the gospel has not only personal but also public engagements. This theological commitment came within a package of a deep desire to bring together different strands of evangelicals who are better off together. And so in the last 80 years, the NAE has been a part of connecting, representing evangelicals. We were instrumental in the forming of the National Religious Broadcasting movement, in the translation of the NIV, in the launching of humanitarian organization like World Relief. We're the largest endorsing agency of chaplains, of evangelical chaplains, 38 denominations and counting. All forms of chaplaincy, in military and hospital care and increasingly marketplace. World Relief is our humanitarian arm and refugee resettlement, working with the vulnerable communities throughout the world and connecting them to churches. 

And then lastly, we do public policy endorsements or public policy engagements I should say, and I want to be careful with that. We don't endorse political candidates, so the NAE is not in the business of trying to be here, the NAE for ex-candidate. But we will work with any administration on areas of deep public concern for evangelical life. We'll write amicus brief to the Supreme Court on various types of religious liberty cases. We'll work with the State Department to ensure the work of Christians and evangelical organizations throughout the world. And so, whether it's Congress, the Executive office or the Judicial branch, the NAE is deeply engaged in public advocacy. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay. So if I boil that down, I would say on the one hand you're connected, and I'm assuming you're connected to churches and other evangelical organizations, both church and parachurch. 

Walter Kim: 

Yes. 

Darrell Bock: 

And on the other hand, you've got this advocacy wing that tries to represent evangelicalism in the public space. Is that just at the federal government level or does that filter down into the states as well? 

Walter Kim: 

Yeah, it does filter down into the states. It's primarily at the federal level, but there are issues, for instance, when a deep crisis was arising in California with campus ministries being threatened for removal in the University of California public school college system. The NAE was involved in advocacy and writing briefs in saying that evangelical ministries, whether it's InterVarsity, a Cru or Navigators or other types of ministries, really ought to have a place in the public life. And everyone benefits when the religious liberties of Christian groups are preserved, because they also spill over to religious liberties of other groups, and even the religious liberty to not have a faith. And so we will work on the state level, but primarily at the federal level. 

Darrell Bock: 

So, if someone wanted to find out about the NAE or get more detail on what the NAE does, what would you advise them to do? 

Walter Kim: 

Yeah, you can go to our website NAE.org, NAE.org, and you'll see the wealth of resources. You'll see the membership that 40 different denominations, but literally hundreds of other kinds of organizations, Christian institutions, ministries, nonprofits, working in a variety of spaces. It really speaks to the vitality and the breadth and the scope of good news work. 

Darrell Bock: 

So the President of the NAE, what do you find yourself doing? 

Walter Kim: 

Yeah, kind of picking up on this breadth and scope of the work. I can find myself in any given week speaking out at a conference on church planting or evangelism, running a workshop, or writing a resource on some of the public application of faith to cultural challenges, whether it's the issue of immigration or how we understand religious liberties. I can find myself working with secular institutions on common good issues. So, I was recently up at Harvard interacting with the Harvard Human Fellowship Human Flourishing Project and seeing ways in which some of their data can equip our member denominations. So we took some of our denominational executives and other leaders to engage with researchers on this incredible finding that's come out of the secular educational institution. We're talking Harvard here, right? 

Out of their public health department, this Human Flourishing Project has come to data that led them to the conclusion that churches are one of the best places in America for human flourishing. And they want to actually support and strengthen that, because their belief is that if America is going to get out of its pandemic of loneliness and the cultural divisions, regardless of what the media account may be of the place of evangelicals, evangelical churches, small groups, community development work, soup kitchens, these are some of the best places of flourishing in America right now. And the data is leading them to that, and so they're looking for how they could be collaborating with the NAE or other types of Christian ministries. 

So, it could be ranging from an issue on preaching just out of Ezekiel, to engaging in a Senate briefing on immigration and refugee issues, to interacting with civic or secular institutions on what it takes for communities to flourish. But central to all of this, Darrell, is a profound commitment that we believe that the gospel changes all things personally, and in our public life as well. 

Darrell Bock: 

So, what are some of the sub-groupings that you have in the structure of your organization? I think it would be worth people having a sense of what the scope is by hearing what those are. 

Walter Kim: 

Yeah, so we'll have things that equip the church, and that could range from, we run annual denominational executive retreats, a place for our executives and their spouses to gather, to be spiritually encouraged, to swap best practices, to know and pray for one another, to deliberate over how to handle particular issues that may be denominationally specific in terms of their governance structure. How someone with one type of government structure versus another type might handle it, but they're common issues. How do we understand ministry in a world of changing sexuality? How do we understand some of the discipleship and evangelism challenges in reaching Gen Z? So we want to provide resources, relationships to address these issues. 

And by church, it's not just local church, we seek to foster relationships with Christian ministries that work in areas of racial justice, or humanitarian aid, or equipping the church to handle the homelessness crisis. So some of my work is with, for instance, the Salvation Army or Citygate, which those two institutions, Salvation Army, both member organizations of the NAE, those two institutions cover a large proportion of the beds and shelters that are tackling the problem of homelessness in our country. All in the name of Jesus, all seeking to provide wraparound services, not just services to provide a bed, but counseling. Again, biblical, small groups that love and embrace them. So, that's one set of work. 

The chaplaincy program that we have, we will endorse and certify chaplains. So we have a board certification process that's now risen to provide a distinctly Christian opportunity for chaplains who historically have been certified through other institutions. These are board certification institutions that allow a chaplain to work in a hospital system or at Veterans Affair, or in other kind of marketplace settings. Increasingly, these certification entities are becoming suspicious, if not hostile to Christian faith. And so the NAE in the last year actually, we started a certification process that increasingly now is becoming recognized and will be embraced by various healthcare institutions. So that evangelical chaplains, which actually once again, are the majority of chaplains that are out there, could find a place where they could be certified, board certified, recognized and able to work in various healthcare settings, but can do so openly in the name of Jesus. 

And then again, refugee resettlement through World Relief, and the advocacy work that we do in the public sphere as well. So specific example of that, virtually every important religious liberty case that's come to the Supreme Court, the NAE, we've been a part of an amicus brief that has ensured the ability of institutions, churches, Christian organizations, Christian colleges, seminaries, to continue to hire according to their deeply held religious beliefs in whatever particular issue that it may be. 

So Darrell, you can sense that we are engaged in a pretty broad range of initiatives. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. In fact, we talked about earlier, proclaiming the word of God in word and deed. I guess the way to respond to that is, indeed. I mean, it's- 

Walter Kim: 

That's right. 

Darrell Bock: 

And just about in any sphere that you can think about. 

So, let me shift gears a little bit and go to, what are the challenges, given this, I mean, just beyond the scope of what it is that you're dealing with in the variety of areas that are present, what are the challenges that you see for the evangelical movement in the current environment? You've already made the comparison to where evangelicalism was in the 1940s and the tension between, how do you identify and remain faithful and distinct in your faith on the one hand, and engage in a public sphere in which you're trying to encourage people? To connect to the gospel who are outside the faith and who are the missional element of, I tell people, "People whose backs are turned to God are not the enemy, they're actually the goal." And so if we're going to share the gospel in a needy world and everybody's needy, then I'm sharing the gospel with anyone who's needy, which means I'm sharing the gospel with anyone. What challenges do you see for evangelicalism in the midst of that calling that we have? 

Walter Kim: 

Yeah, great set of questions and this really is what occupies my prayer life and my work at the NAE. And I would say there are a few immediately obvious challenges that are deeply felt, and there are a couple of deep underlying challenges that I think have a long-term need to be addressed. 

So, what are the things that we immediately feel? I would say we're at the point more than ever that we really need to think about evangelicalisms, not just evangelicalism, it's not a monolithic entity. Depending on your immigration pattern or where you live in the country, depending on what news source you will rely upon, depending on your actual heritage and tradition, theologically. Evangelicalism is experiencing what we as a country are experiencing, the fragmentation of society. It used to be the case that there were three major networks where everyone got their news. That's not true anymore. It used to be the case that even the sort of ethnic variety that was in America, when we thought about the racial problem, we often thought about it in black and white terms. The challenge now is that we're a multiplicity of ethnic backgrounds. It used to be the case that we were predominantly Judeo-Christian in worldview. Well, we have a multiplicity of religious perspectives now, but we're also experiencing a deep secularism. So, there's all this kind of fragmentation, that's one. We feel this deeply. 

But the fragmentation has been coupled with a polarization. So it's one thing to have a bunch of fragments, it's another thing to have a bunch of fragments who are distrustful and disdainful of each other. And that's an added thing now, that there is a moment in which there is deep distrust and even disdain between different communities. And while we have had culture wars, of course in different parts of and periods of American history, there seems to be a pronounced way in which that culture war now can be immediately executed upon by social media. 

If you write an op-ed, you're probably going to write it for your local newspaper that the rest of the country will not read or hear about. No one knew about the debates that were really happening in Oklahoma or in Massachusetts. You lived in a different kind of ecosystem. But now, any debate, any concern, any piece of polarization, any problem in any church is no longer local. You could just put it on social media and instantaneously get the debates out there. That fragmentation now is being pushed out in ways that we've never seen before and then coupled with the algorithm of anger that incentivizes kind of polarization. 

And then this third thing that I think we deeply feel is that, where is the place of religion in our country right now? I think we're used to having it in the middle of society, and now increasingly it's on the margins, and we don't know what to do with that. I think these are some of the issues that we feel deeply. Let me pause with that. I think there are a couple of other maybe deeper issues underlying it that I think are related more to the solutions, but these are some of the things that I sense and prayerfully I am seeking to see, how can we as followers of Jesus address some of these? 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, I like your observation about evangelicalisms, it's like the way I talk about culture. When I talk about culture engagement and I say, "We're not a culture, we're cultures." And the cultures are like plate tectonics rubbing against each other, and you know in geology, when you get plate tectonics, you build up pressure, you get enough pressure, you get an earthquake, and so you've got these tensions that exist. 

You also have very profound regional differences in our evangelicalism. I tell people if you want to think of the United States, you can think about the United States and Christianity as an upside down cross. That you have a swath of Christianity that runs really almost from coast to coast across the southern layer of the country, and you've got a swath that runs up the Midwest, but you go to the Northeast or the northwest and you wonder if you're in the same world. A very, very different environment in what we might call the Ivy League world of the Northeast or the Western independence streak that's in the northwest, from what runs down the middle of the country or through the south. 

Or from my own experience, I'm deeply obviously ensconced in the southern evangelicalism. I go to Wheaton on a regular basis. In fact, I'll be going tomorrow. And go up to Wheaton and I experienced Midwestern evangelicalism, it's not quite the same thing. A little more denominational, a lot more history up there in the north than we have generally speaking in the south, a little more tradition in some ways. So, that's another layer of this conversation, it seems to me. Where you are in the country can make all the difference in the world. 

Walter Kim: 

Yeah, it's so true. There's a book that was written several years back called American Nations, and it did this deep dive and made the point in argument based on all sorts of history and sociology that America actually has 11 different regions. 

Darrell Bock: 

Correct, yep. I'm familiar with the book 

Walter Kim: 

Right? And you can see it in popular foods, accents, but you can also see it in voting patterns. You can see it in what's the dominant industry. And I would say, even with denominations or immigration patterns, 11 rival regions, and here's the difference. When you used to live in a country with these 11 rival regions, that basically you were born and raised and died in, right? So multiple generations, you basically stayed in your area of the country. You were able then to believe your rival region actually is the only region because this is where you grew up and had multiple generations of your family. 

But something has changed, two things have changed. One is that people are now moving in ways that we have never done before. I mean, the average millennial now can expect the multiple jobs in the course of just one decade, and that will require you moving from one place to another. And all of a sudden what you're experiencing, going up to Wheaton, you're beginning to realize, wow, this really, America is not what I thought. And the second thing is the social media, right? You could tweet from your own particular community, assuming that everyone thinks this same way, but it's being seen by another region and processed in real time. 

These things, the migration that we're experiencing now, that's just a normal part of life. And the immediate access to each other in terms of information, this is really picking up your analogy, the plate tectonics now. No wonder they're rubbing on each other. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, and I'd say the phenomena that it produces, and I think this is a function of the communication revolution of what social media of course is a part of, is that we're both bigger and smaller at the same time. There are more of us but we're more tightly connected than we've ever been. And so that seems to contradict itself, but it actually is the reality that we find ourselves in. And so what people have tended to do as a result is to park themselves in, and I'll use this image, this popular image, in bubbles that allow them to function in the world they feel comfortable in. And as a result, we're more isolated in some ways from people who are different than us, even though they're more of us and we're more tightly connected. We also tend to react by, if I can say, walling ourselves in to some degree, in such a way that we're actually less aware of our differences or we view our differences as differences to be fought over, as opposed to be understood. 

Walter Kim: 

Yeah, that's so true. And those differences now we find, they're rubbing up against each other, not just in terms of different regions like this is my food, this is the school that I root for, this is the accent I speak by. But they're profoundly rubbing on each other with respect to cultural issues. How do I understand the challenges that face us with different understandings of sexuality or life, different understandings of racial history? How do we even understand the history of our country? I mean, these things rub up against each other and produce profound friction. And we seem less able to listen well to each other and less able to come up with this common vision. 

I think, Darrell, this is where I come back to this, we have fragmentation, then we have the polarization that builds on the fragmentation, and then we have all the kind of exacerbating issues of social media and so forth and the changing place of religion in society. But I think there are two really profound and long-standing challenges for evangelicalism. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, well, you're going where I wanted to go next- 

Walter Kim: 

Great. 

Darrell Bock: 

… because you said these would turn us towards solutions, let's go there. So, what do you have in mind here? 

Walter Kim: 

I think evangelicalism in America, one of the great blessings that it's offered the work of God throughout the world, is that it's incredibly entrepreneurial, it kind of matches the American spirit. Right? We're nation full of entrepreneurs in many ways. It's entrepreneurial, it's populist. I'm not talking in a political populist way, but it's populist in the sense that it's from the ground up, that's why we have revivals and awakenings. It's also incredibly practical and pragmatic, what works. Just as I am is such a compelling song to play at the altar call at the end of a Billy Graham crusade, that works. What's the kind of small group curriculum that works? We're just really good at that. 

I'd say we are really good at that, which is immediate, practical, popular, and personal. We're really strong in a salvation theology and practice of personal conversion. How to help marriages, how to help personal relationships, but it's the public stuff of not just how to be ethical at work, but what is the ethic of work itself? How do we even understand work? Not just having a good marriage in terms of conflict resolution, but a theology of marriage and society. Not just loving your immigrant neighbor, but how do we understand social and governmental responsibilities for security and for hospitality? What's a Christian worldview on these issues? I would say that's one of the real areas of need in evangelicalism. Great on personal, weaker on public issues. And when Jesus challenges us to say two commands, really the one great challenge, is love God and love your neighbor. He was hearkening back to a biblical context in which loving God and loving your neighbor encompassed all of life. 

I mean, I think of the original place in which loving God comes, in Deuteronomy 6. In that context, it was immediately followed by, well, impress this upon your children. Teach them night and day when you're going out and when you're coming back, when you're lying down, when you're rising up. Bind them on your foreheads and your arms and put them on your doorpost and on your city gates. You're supposed to do this. And whole life discipleship, was it about having a good prayer life? Absolutely. Was it about being kind to your spouse? Of course. But the discipleship of Deuteronomy covered things like economic practices, having even scales. 

It covered things like returning an ox that strayed from your neighbor's yard. It covers things like don't take when you come across a mother and it's chick in a nest. You can take the chick, you can take the eggs, but you can't take the mother. Why? Because you would end a species if you take the reproductive possibilities of a mother. So, there was creation care. That's an incredible form of discipleship that the people of God were commanded to pursue. That fuller type of discipleship I think is distinctly an area of growth for American evangelicalism. 

Darrell Bock: 

And it reflects our culture. Our culture is focused on the individual and the individualism. And I say when it comes to corporate concerns, we have muscles that have atrophied, that they don't get the exercise that they ought, they don't get the attention that they ought. I often say when it comes to cultural engagement, we don't have a theology of cultural engagement in the church. We lack that. And so, we don't know what to do in public because we don't talk about it, we don't meditate on it, we don't think about it. We don't even some cases see what's going on in such a way that we are able to assess theologically what's happening. I mean, we can in a general kind of way, and you can always just come at it and say, "Well, the world's a mess," but that really doesn't help us with the nuances of what's required in thinking through what public space could look like. 

Or another thing that I often say is that we often compare ourselves to that which we know isn't as good and say, "That's good enough," and we don't ask the question, "What should we be? What's the best we can be?" And when we look only to be better than the person who's next to us who we think we're better than to begin with, we don't go very far, and we could do better in the church. 

Walter Kim: 

Absolutely. And we have had histories of that, right? When I think about the Second Great Awakening, when I think about the movement of God in the 1950s and the Jesus People movement, these were moments where of course there was proclamation, of course there were camp revivals in which the circuit riders were proclaiming Jesus. But these were periods, Second Grade Awakening in the 1950s and '60s and '70s, in which there were incredible ministries of social engagement and transformation. There were ministries to change child labor laws. There were ministries and work to deal with drunkenness. There were the rise of abolitionist movement during these periods. And then all the international humanitarian aid organizations in the 1950s and '60s that were developed. 

So, this is the best of evangelicalism. When God's spirit moves, we do practical, pragmatic, entrepreneurial things, but we don't have a sustaining discipleship that when the wave of God's spirit has now washed over and we need to have disciplined discipleship, we didn't have the disciplined discipleship to sustain our public engagement. It was a function of God's spirit that creatively produced these instinctual responses, but we didn't have discipleship that could develop it as an integral part of what it means to follow Jesus. Just like our prayer life or a good marriage or reading the Bible has always persisted as part of our discipleship. This engagement in our public life has come in moments of revival, but is not endured when that revival needed to settle in to the long-term work of just discipling our people into the image of Jesus Christ. 

Darrell Bock: 

Interesting. So, the one is entrepreneurship and the creativity and energy that brings particularly to issues tied to individualized faith, and a little bit of a blind spot, I guess, when it comes to corporate dimensions. You said you had two, so what's the second one? 

Walter Kim: 

The second thing is, we're not accustomed in America to being on the margin of religious faith, not being in a position of assumed centrality. But being in a position of well, having to make the case as one voice among many voices. Other parts of the world, that is their default position. They are in the persecuted church or in a European context, or in the church, a situation where they're a minority of religion in a majority other religion space. They're used and accustomed to figuring out what it means to have a missionary mindset that doesn't rely on social, political, or cultural levers of power and centrality. Just, what does it look like to be a minority faith navigating our work? That's a huge shift in mentality. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, and it's happened in our lifetime. I mean, basically, yeah. 

Walter Kim: 

And it's happened. 

Darrell Bock: 

It's been quick. 

Walter Kim: 

Yeah, so we haven't had the chance. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. Well, and so, how do you… My illustration here is we've gone from being the home team to being the visitors, but we're not just the visitors, we're the rivals who get booed. And so that is, that's a huge shift. Everything that we do out of the center is trying to help the church wrestle with, how do you cope with the pluralism that you now find yourself in? And that pluralism can be defined that when you're in public space and you're sitting at a table, your religion in one sense means nothing. By which I mean, whether you're an atheist, an agnostic, a Jew, a Muslim, a Presbyterian, a Seventh-Day Adventist or whatever, we all have the same rights in public space. And so, my religion doesn't count for anything in that conversation and at that table. 

And when I come to that table, that means I need to come to that table understanding that that's the way the table is constructed, and that then impacts the way I address people who are different than me, because I don't question their right to be there. I have to be able to engage with them and their right as a neighbor who's set up in a country the way ours is set up to be able to contribute to the public good from the space that they occupy. 

Walter Kim: 

Yeah. Darrell, I think as we work through our sense of loss, like, oh, what a loss that we no longer have this shared Judeo-Christian worldview, much less a shared biblical, specifically Christian place in society, as we consider the diversity, this inflection point that we're at with the plurality of religion and voices that you're describing. On the one hand, that could lead to a sense of loss. It can maybe even worse, lead to a sense of aggrievement or a sense in which we have to respond with securing our rights and place in society. But I also think we can humbly embrace this as one of the greatest missionary opportunities. And as much as we may feel that there's loss, I think there are others that also feel a sense of insecurity about their place. I'm going to give you a very specific example about that, two examples. 

One is when I was living in Boston, I had this very post-Christian society. We had this neighbor, a scientist, developed a wonderful relationship. And we finally got to the point where we felt like, okay, we can finally invite this couple to our church, which we did. And she, as a scientist, responded, "Oh, I'm sorry. I can't come to church. I'm a scientist." Now, I knew her well enough to know what she actually meant. We might view this as, oh, yet again, this is the arrogant scientist who thinks that Christianity is a bunch of dummies that have no imagination for truth. It actually, that wasn't her reasoning. 

Her reasoning was this. As a scientist, not so much that I think Christians are stupid and I had nothing to offer. She didn't want to embarrass me. She thought as a scientist, a secular scientist, that she wouldn't be welcomed in church, and she liked me. She didn't want to get me in trouble by saying, "Oh, you're bringing the scientist in our midst? What are you doing that for?" Wow. We live at a time where people not only are just questioning the place of religion, they actually might be a little bit anxious on how Christians might view and treat them. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. 

Walter Kim: 

So- 

Darrell Bock: 

I find it one of the great ironies that living in a context of high diversity as we do and as we've come to talk about, that God's actually in the business through the gospel of bringing people who are diverse and estranged from one another together. That's actually the point of the gospel. And so, I often find myself saying, "Christianity is a non-tribal message in a tribal world." 

Walter Kim: 

That is good. 

Darrell Bock: 

And so as you think about the variety that's around you, you can see it as, well, they're not part of us. That's one way you can see it. Or you can see it as, no, this is an opportunity to bring the kind of people and combination of people together that God was after when he sent Jesus to the cross. I mean, the gospel is about Jew and Gentile being one in Christ. Jews and Gentiles did not get along in the first century, they were not friends. And the fact that this would be part of the corporate goal of the gospel, and then I like to stay on top of it, which means the church misses a tremendous opportunity to show how diversity should work and how God designed it to work in a world in which diversity isn't working. 

Walter Kim: 

Yeah, that is right. And it is a great missionary opportunity, the diversity that's on our shores right now. Right? 

When my son graduated from high school in Charlottesville, Virginia, there were more Mohammeds in his graduating class and they were Michaels. And I looked at that, and it was one way of looking at it, it's like, wow, the place of religion. Even in the South Christianity is maybe no longer central. But I looked at it and I think, this is one of the greatest missionary opportunities. You could reach the Muslim world just by staying in your community. 

Darrell Bock: 

And caring. 

Walter Kim: 

And caring. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. 

Walter Kim: 

And speaking in English. 

Darrell Bock: 

Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Walter Kim: 

You Don't even need to learn Arabic, right? 

Darrell Bock: 

I often talk about this as, we need to go back to the future, which means go back to the first century church, had no social power, no political power, no cultural power. All they had was spiritual power. They seemed to have done pretty well. 

Walter Kim: 

That's right. 

Darrell Bock: 

And we need to learn lessons from the way the early church did it, understanding that they didn't have the kind of power that most of the world wants and thinks is necessary in order to be effective. When in fact, the spiritual power that God has is quite effective when appropriately applied. "Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world." And so, I just think that we need that, we need organizations like the NAE to speak up for what the gospel is about and to do so in the wide variety of public spaces that they exist in. 

And so unfortunately, we've run out of time. I could keep going, but I want to thank you, one, for your ministry, two, for the NAE and what it does. And thank you for letting us know about the NAE and what it does, and for pinpointing for us some of the things that are going on around us and helping us to see perhaps how we should look at those. Those things that most people perhaps are grieving over or frustrated over, maybe even angry over, and yet the opportunity that it actually represents for the church. To do what Jesus called us to do, which is to go into the world and make disciples. He didn't say go into the church and make disciples. 

Walter Kim: 

Amen. Darrell, thank you for your friendship in Christ. Thank you for this friendship in ministry that we share, and deeply appreciative for the ways that you are helping to form people into the likeness of Christ in this fully-orbed way. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, thank you, Walter, for giving us your time. And we thank you, the listener, for listening to us today. If you like our show, please leave a rating or some type of review so that other people can hear about us. It's a great way to support the podcast and help other people discover us. And we hope that you'll join us again next time when we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life.