Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson. Go to shifting culture podcast.com to interact and donate. Don't forget to hit the Follow button on your favorite podcast app to be notified when new episodes come out each Tuesday, and go leave a rating and review on
Apple podcasts. Previous guests on the show have included Jr Woodward, Mark scan dreht and Emma Cotterell. You could go back listen to those episodes and more. But today's guest is Paul Hoffman. Paul has served as the lead pastor of evangelical friends Church of Newport, Rhode Island since 2007. His life's mission is contending for reconciliation, unity, and revival. He is the author of reconciling places and co author of his latest book preaching to
a divided nation. We sit down and talk about what it looks like to engage in reconciliation and unity efforts within the church in this divided world that we live in. There are a lot of good insights, Paul Gibbs. So enjoy my conversation with Paul Hoffman. Paul, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming on.
It's an honor and a privilege to be here with you. Thanks. Yeah, I'd
love to hear your story. You know, as you're writing this book, preaching to a divided nation, what, what was your impetus to get into this? And what is your relationship within some reconciliation circles?
Oh, yeah, thank you for that question. There's a number of reasons that compelled me and my co author Matt Kim to write the book. First off, like many Christians here in the United States and abroad, we know that our disunity breaks the heart of God. The last four or five years have been incredibly disheartening. For many of us just watching Christians tear each other apart. Social media and other kinds of venues. So we know it breaks out of God. We know it
just credits our witness. As a local church pastor, and someone that has done a lot of outreach, and I'm my previous life, I was a church planter. So I was not very good at it. That's a whole other story. I could tell you, I can tell you what not to do, Joshua, but you already know it better than me, since you oversee these movements and train people. But yeah, I think it demeans our witness. So I've
thought a lot about that. And then I felt compelled to write the book because for me, we are one body, it's the truth and the witnesses scripture that we are supposed to be one body with many parts. So we have unity and diversity. And then finally, the reality of Heaven is I've spent a lot of time reflecting on Revelation seven. And the fact is, I believe that text is happening right now. That right now in heaven, it's every tribe, tongue, nation, and people group
worshipping the lamb. And what's amazing to me, it still astonishes me to this day is that John can pick up on that in heaven, people have different ethnicities, right? People are not whitewashed, like eggs in a carton, but he can pick out their ethnicity. So there's the diversity. There's male and female, there's people from a global North global south globally Scoble West, there's people that live on $1, a day when they were here, and there's people that lived on millions of
dollars. And yet he sees that there's two things that have in common, number one, the object of their worship. And number two, they're all clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, as I interpret it. So those kinds of those are what drove the writing of the book. And then personally, I practice this I've been very involved in unity and reconciliation movements, for a number of years now. Just one example. In 2009, I co founded something in southern Rhode Island called one church,
one prayer. And it's a monthly gathering where Multi denominational, multi ethnic group of people gathered to pray and to seek God and pray that we would live out the revelation seven vision or we would be part of answering the Lord's Prayer with Jesus teaches us to pray, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven is in heaven. And it's ever thought long a nation people group so we're trying to pray every month, normally during the school year, so that we will live into that.
So as you started that, let's just start there as you're thinking about that, and every tribe, tongue and nation surrounding the throne worshiping Jesus forever, which is an incredible picture awesome picture. And southern Rhode Island's. How do you think that prayer and bringing people together to pray actually influenced and impacted the region or Round?
Yeah, that's a great question. One I wrestle with quite a bit. Because, you know, I've found in Unity reconciliation movements, you don't always see immediate fruit, you don't always see. You know, I wish I could say we've experienced some broad based revival. But what I do see is that a number of times, it's enabled us to reach out, it's led to greater mission. So to give an example, for three years, a number of churches, we
start off with four or five. And by the third year, we had 14 churches in three states, we did something called the festival of hope, right down on the beach. And this was where people could invite people to come, you know, seekers or people have not identified as Christian, maybe de churched, unchurched, people would come out, and they would
hear the Gospel. And in the three years, we did it, we had three different former members of the Boston Red Sox, who are strong Christians, being discipled would share their testimony. And we saw a number of people come to faith, we saw a number of people feel renewed faith. But in addition, it was just amazing. By the third year, we had 14 different churches working together across relationally crossed racially and I think that was a big
witness to our community. But as you would know, Joshua, it's not just to our community, I also believe what we do is a witness to the heavenlies, to the unseen realm of angels and demons. And obviously, we are all doing this for an audience of one before the very throne of God.
Yeah, you know, as I look at what Paul wrote, the Ephesians and, and he wrote in Ephesians, four, it's talking about the unity that we have in Christ, right, we have one God, we have one baptism, one Lord, one spirit, and that one of the things he says is that you need to bear with one another in love, right? That you want to pray for this spirit and the bond of peace, like you really
want want to have it. But bearing actually, that word bearing for me, doesn't sound like an easy word, when we're, and it's not something where it's, to me, Unity isn't uniformity. And I think with this poor polarization that we have in the United States, we've started to go into our own encampments, saying we have uniformity. And that's where I
could find my unity. But what Paul's saying there is that even in our differences, we need to bear with one another in love, because we actually have one spirit. How do you see that bearing with one another work out within the church?
Yeah, that's a that's a tricky question. Right? And thank you for bringing out that text. That's a it's a beautiful text. It's it's one that's challenging, right? Because we don't like the word bear. We'd rather use other words, I guess, tolerate right. But we know the gospel calls us the more so I would say, right, so we go back to First Corinthians 12, one body but many parts, right? There's noses there. We're not all noses. We're not all elbows. Yeah,
we're not all pinkies. We, we should expect that there is unity, which is we are the one body of Christ. But there's diversity within that. So we should not expect uniformity, I would, I would argue of political positions. Although I'm very much pro life. And I believe this smaller Orthodox Church, I don't believe everyone's going to vote the same way I do all the time. But I don't expect people to drive the same cars live in the same places, like the same music, even within the body of Christ.
What we've done in the book is we tried to say we think there's we should start when it talks about unity, is focus on the things that we do share, because what happens normally is Conversations people and polarization is all about how are we different? Right, the issue becomes, well, how did you? Who did you vote for? Yeah, right. And what's your position on this? What's your position on that? And in the book, we say, we really need to focus on our four, four major commonalities.
Number one, we have shared doctrines, right? Most Christians across the globe could believe in the Apostles Creed. And the Nicene Creed, we share the core of the faith. Yeah. Now, Christians across the globe have different perspectives on women in ministry, right, different views on baptism, different views on eternal security. For me, a lot of these things are secondary, they're not primary to the Gospel, that's that we make that case in the book. A second thing
is a shared identity. Right? You and I are children of God, you and I are members of the body. You and I are in the family of God and we go on on. A third thing is the shared mission. And I think you get this very well. And all your church planning movement efforts, which are really inspirational, but the great commandment Great Commission, right? That's not optional. And for any Christian and my understanding, we're all called to do that. And then a fourth thing is shared
experiences. I don't know what it's like to experience true persecution, like Christians in the Middle East, or parts of Asia, or Africa, or Central or South America, but they're experiencing real suffering and hardship. But I do know what it's like to suffer. I have had people reject me from my Christian faith, I have not been thrown into prison, I've not been tortured, but I still felt the sting of someone laughing at me because of my faith. And
that, that that cut deep. So I think shared experiences are what we can bond around. But what I would encourage us to do, and what we encourage people to do in the book is start with what unites us. Yeah, right, start with a common ground, then we can, after we've affirmed what it is we share, then we can move outward, and start to acknowledge the differences that we may have. And maybe even at the end of the day, we can disagree, but still love it. Yeah.
Yeah. If we're looking at, you know, Protestants around the world, I mean, most we are known, everything has been divided. Our denomination has been divided into say, Hey, I'm not really for that. I'm against that. So we're going to start something new. And we have a brand new denomination. So we have you know, I don't know, it's in the 40 1000s amount of denominations way too many denominations. But we do have, why don't we focus on that, that 98% of the things
we do agree on, right. And I think that's where we should probably start. And I like that I love that we're actually thinking about unity, I'd love to go into our shared identity. One of the things I see in especially in polarization that's happening is we have decided to forego our primary
identity as children of God. And we've put on a different primary identity, whether that be sexual orientation, political stance, whether it be my you know, my race, or ethnicity is my primary identity, whatever it is, we've forgotten that our primary identity is actually children of God. Have you seen a shift recently in people actually saying, I have a different primary identity now? And what is that done to the church?
Yeah, interesting. I think it's not explicit. I think it's more implicit. Yeah. So you know, look at people's social accounts, right? What's the back? What's the background on their, you know, Facebook page, or their, you know, Facebook profile, or Instagram or Twitter? What what is it? What's the visual? Is it a Bible verse? Is it scripture? Is it something that would, you know, point out they're a Christian?
Or is it a political party? Is it a platform is it you know, sometimes it just here, here's me riding on an ATV or whatever, like, I'm a fun adventure on the weekend. I'm a weekend warrior. I think, I think you can see a lot from the way people present themselves. And that brings us to social media, and especially how social media has really turned up, amplified our differences. One of the ones I'm most concerned about is the
political polarization. Yeah. And the book we make a call to, for people to return back to the, what I would call more of a biblical, broader understanding of politics, which is, you know, goes back to the Greek word polis, which refers to the city. And the city is the shared life that people have and, you know, ancient cities, it was a mishmash of people, like many of our modern cities, you've got people of different ethnicities, and people in different socio economic and educational
statuses, and so forth. And so for me, I want to recover the vision of the city. And so we try and use the word partisan ism, or political partisanship, which refers to party and division and fighting and squabbling. Now, one of the things I just want to point out, we talked about this in the book, and this is really, I'm still processing this couple of years ago, political scientists started using particular terms to define America's obsession
with partisanship. And they're now referring to politics as what they call a mega identity, a mega identity. This is a lady named Lilliana Mason, who wrote a book called uncivil agreement.
And so what's interesting is you have you have political scientists, who would not explicitly say I'm a person of faith, maybe they are maybe not, but they're using language that I would say, resonates with the biblical idea of idolatry, that even even you know, experts are saying, Look, this is taking on a bit of an idolatrous place in our civic lives and our public lives. Our identities are being
taken over by politics. And this is being borne out in the way that studies are now showing that and if you've picked up on this, you maybe you've heard this but Republicans were Wranglers. Democrats were Levi's I think Republicans drink Dunkin Donuts. You know, Democrats drink Starbucks. It's not just which cable channel you're watching. It's, it's where you live, it's what you wear. It's, it's what you eat, you know, it's the grocery store. And it's really forming silos. And I've
seen more and more of this. And it, it makes me very, very nervous because I believe this is what the prophets spoke about in the Old Testament, when they called Israel to return back to God, that they were calling up the pseudo saviors that the Israelites were putting their trust and hope and anything but God. And God said, Look, I'm gonna have to remove my restraining hand of grace here, and you're going to be disciplined, if you don't turn
back to Me. So I'd be curious what you think about that, or what you're observing in your context of Kansas City and through your various network networks throughout the globe?
Yeah, I mean, even even locally, in Kansas City, we see this all the time, especially mostly through, you know, the death of George Floyd all the way through, you know, the attack on the on the Capitol. So all the way through the election, race relations, people have started to say, Hey, I'm in this camper or that camp, and we've had a lot less dialogue between each other. We, you know, I had George Yancey. Dr. George Yancey, on our podcast recently, we've talked about having collaborative
conversations. And we've actually stopped having those conversations, right, because of the the political polarization that we have in this country, we stop being able to actually talk to one another, right? Because we, when that comes up, when our political mega identity, as they call it now comes up, we
actually start to get angry. And so when somebody is angry, and we can't actually listen to somebody, so when someone's yelling at you, or something, you actually, like your brain doesn't register it, you can't really have a conversation. So we have to figure out how to, to move into a different posture, right? Where we're focusing on the problem, and we're focusing on something else, which should be Jesus. And it should be Jesus centered, what does it actually look like to live out the
Gospel? What is it like to live out to live out these biblical principles that Jesus has taught? How do we live into the commands of Jesus and to love one another, as he has called us to love even our neighbors and our enemies? But what we're doing is we're saying, Hey, I'm on this side, you're on that side. And so we're just talking at each other, instead of
constructively. So have you found any good ways that we could have these constructive conversations or things where we could stop just talking at each other, but actually talking with one another? To solve some of these issues?
That's, that's the million dollar question. Yeah, no,
we're all trying to figure it out, Paul. Yeah. So
I would say first off, I really and I wrote a previous book, my first book is called reconciling places. And I talk a lot about social media and algorithms, and how a lot of the founders of social media now repenting because they see how it's been used as a divisive tool rather than a uniting tool. So my first thing is, let's spend a little bit less time on social media. Well, it's not because social media lends itself to outrage, and to clickbait. And to extremes, you
got to be extreme. And so a lot of social media is posturing. It's all about signaling to your tribe, hey, I'm legit. And you're just really just shouting into the void or trying to returning backward to the people behind you, like, you guys see what I'm doing. Like, I'm just as I'm just as fired up as you are. I'm just as low as you are. So I think it's a more wise, sell selective engagement of how
we do social media. And I just think, you know, when someone puts out something, and then it creates this whole ream, it just, you're just talking to people on a platform, it's disembodied. In fact, in my first book, I called social media a form of Docetism. And as you may know, that's the context of First John, where John's addressing this, this heretical teaching that Jesus only appeared like a ghost, if you will, in the flesh, but wasn't really in the flesh. And you
know, that's not the case. Jesus was fully incarnated. So we need to have fully incarnated conversations. That means I put aside my phone, and I reach out to someone I say, Hey, can we like have a cup of coffee? Can we go out to dinner? Can I talk to you like one on one not shout at you over social media? And that's difficult because when the time you spend face to face is time your quote unquote, not devoting to building your brand.
Yep. But but it's the only way to really have deep conversations about the things that we're that we're struggling with and misunderstanding, a misunderstanding each other about and those are the only context you can full body. Listening like true listening is full body, patient, empathic body, it's body language, right? Its eye, eye to eye contact, there's so much that's missed, and mediated forms of communication. And it's truly a or, you know, Zoom like we're
doing right now. So first, there has to be a greater commitment to embodied forms of communication and less on social media. And it starts there, I don't know, any other place to start. But that,
I mean, we definitely need to do that. So that gets us back into your book preaching to a divided nation. So if you're doing it from the pulpit, if you're saying, Hey, I'm going to give, give a message here, and a lot of it, you know, they, I think the hard thing if people just come to church services, and hear a message, a lot of that is information that is hard to create some actual change, and unity and reconciliation of things that practical and lived.
It's not as embodied, it's hard to go from the head to the heart. Alright. What are some practical ways that you could actually do that, within church services? And within some preaching, in a way where there is that Head to Heart embodiment of this is what unity and reconciliation actually looks like?
That's a nice question. So the first thing I'd say just as a little bit of a disclaimer, is that the book is preaching to a divided nation that was Baker academic, like, Hey, you gotta, you know, that's your title. I think our primary audience, our first audience, I should say, is preachers, you know, teachers speakers, but we believe we've written the book in a way that has brought application to ministry leaders that may not be speaking from a
pulpit every Sunday. Also just thoughtful Christians that care about this topic, and just want to be reconciler and uniter. So I want to make sure I spread the word that this is not just strictly for pastors and preachers, I think it has a broader application. In terms of from the pulpit, there's a number of things you could do.
Number one, you could do a focus group, before you preach on something, you could invite people into the conversation, you could email the sermon to a teenager, to a widow, to a young professional, you know, diversity of people and be like, how's the sermon hitting you? What do you know? Can you give me feedback on the tone of this sermon? And then I will oftentimes, if it is something controversial, or something
potentially challenging? Well, I'll reach out to the other board, reach out to the leadership team, my church and and just ask them, please. This is what's coming up. Will you pray? Let's cover this in prayer. I want you to be ready. I don't want you to be blindsided, this is going to be controversial, or this could cause some shockwaves in the church. So will you cover it in
prayer? And then when I speak, I tell people look, you got to have a couple of disclaimers like this is going to be a hard conversation. But this is really opening a conversation. I don't want this to be an open and shut door. Yeah. So I'm gonna say some things. I want this to be rooted in scripture. But I really, what I'm begging you to do please is Don't send me some reactive snarky email after the sermon, don't put out a passive aggressive tweet at all. My
pastor is a clown. You know, my pastor, I can't believe he said this. I said, I'm going to be available after service. Please come talk to me in the foyer, or here's my email. If I make you upset, take a couple days, cover it in prayer. And then send me an email with your concerns. And I'd love to meet up and have lunch or coffee. I'd love to follow up with you. Because I see this is really opening a conversation. And so I try and couch it in ways that this is really a dialogue. Yes, I'm
talking for 3035 minutes. Yes, I'm given a biblical exegesis. Yes, I'm trying to give application Yes, I'll tell you where I think this is my opinion. But I want feedback. And I'm desirous of feedback. I need to know what you think. I want to grow, I want to learn I'm mine is not the only perspective here. Maybe I've even misunderstood this text. Or maybe this is poor application.
So a lot of it is you know, involving people beforehand, through prayer through feedback, telling people during the sermon or before the sermon, you're soliciting feedback, and then creating the channels or the forums for feedback after the sermon is done. And we talked about a number of these practices in the book, because we think we need more feedback mechanisms than we currently
have available. We want to encourage pastors to put more effort into the feedback mechanisms than perhaps they are currently.
That's good. Is there any time where you've seen that done really poorly? And you've seen it done well, if you could contrast that you could, you could talk about your own your own experience, but you can talk to if you want.
I don't want to use names. Yeah, normally I see people do teasers on social media like this is going to be a big Sunday I'm going to, and then it just becomes about clickbait. And I just want you to watch, I don't want to judge their intentions. But the way that people can, quote unquote, market it is that they're just trying to, you know, get clicks or get more people tuned in or
boost attendance. So I think the way that you present it is important, we actually will normally do more of an internal communication to our people to give them a heads up. A number of years ago, we talked about pornography. And we just had to do that because, you know, we're gonna have kids in the service. Sometimes the parents don't put the kids in the, the children's church program, we have teens there. And we said, we're going to talk about this. We're making
these things available. It's up to you parent, whether you think your child or children should be in the service. But our recommendation is you make use of these other avenues that we're you know, going to provide so that the teens will have a safe space to go or the children we prefer if you have them sit in maybe this is not the Sunday to have them sit in. So our focus is probably more on internal dynamics, because I'm not trying to upset my own family as it were. So yeah, I've
seen people do clickbait. I see people get into their own parishioners before after the service. It's really crazy. They are. Yeah, it's like, isn't that person in your church? Why are you fighting with them on social media? Like, why would you put this food fight out there for the world to see? Yeah. So my thing is handle your business in house, people outside the church, you have to be careful.
Sometimes I'll see people put comments and stuff and then I'll try and reach out to them privately, I'm not going to fight it out. On social media, I'll just say hey, can we can we talk about this offline? So I think it's avoid clickbait, avoid trying to hype it, if you will. And then try and as often as you can to move people offline. If they won't do that. Sometimes you got to hide the comments or block them or
whatever the case is. Or if you're the perpetrator, and you made a mess, you need to apologize, repent. And even there's times, you know, I've had to apologize in social media. If I instigated something, and I'll say, You know what, maybe this wasn't the right forum. And I'm really sorry, I did it this way. I took this thing down. You know, and I think we need more repenting, public repentance seems pretty
common in the Bible. So I think we would be well served as ministry leaders, when we do fail, because we will fail. We're public people. If we've offended someone, and and even if we didn't mean to, I think the appropriate thing to do is to repent and say, I really did not mean to, or I didn't go out of my way to offend you. I'm so sorry. You know, let's talk about this.
Yeah. Yeah, recently, a lot. For some reason, this has come up a lot. But James 516 talks about confession of sin that leads to forgiveness and healing. And healing, you know, is like healing across brokenness, what is what's broken. And when we confess one to another, we actually can start to see broken things made whole and healed. And I think that's one of the the ways that we we bring about
this unity in this healing. So if you look at, say, in South Africa, what happened after apartheid, and that, that felt there was public confession of sin and a communal confession, saying we're actually like saying, Hey, we have sent, this was wrong. And there was, you know, there's embrace that. I mean, of course, there's a long way to go. But that's, I mean, that's a great example. I know,
people. I know some people that live in Indonesia, that have been doing some reconciliation camps with youth, with Muslims and Christians. And then, and then actually Christians and Muslims and Jews and Israel, they've done some reconciliation camps. And a lot of this is to say, hey, that confession actually brings about some saying, Oh, we're all human. And we're all actually seeking the same thing in life. And we're trying to, to live our lives in a way that is pleasing to God.
So how can we we actually see one another? And we often forget how to see one another. So I love what you said about actually repentance. Because it's necessary as needed as something where I think I mean, I don't know this is a bunny trail, but and we probably don't have to go down there. But there's this abuse of power that we've seen in the church. A lot of times we have some If there is repentance and it's internal, and we don't see it, they want
to keep face and keep power. And and nobody's opening themselves up in a way where it actually brings people in and brings people closer. So
we're, no, that's beautiful. I think. Just to add to that, I think that's the promise of Scripture referring again to James Right, humble yourselves, said, Lord, He will lift you up and those that humble themselves, you know, God will exalt. And I think when we do this, we're living out the gospel. Yeah, right. The gospel tells us to repent and believe, and it tells us to go and to be
reconciled. And, you know, as far as we have the authority to do so we shouldn't do it to, you know, we never repent, to get someone else to repent. It's not a power play. We do it genuinely. Because ultimately, all of life is live before God, and we must give account to him. But I think when we humble ourselves, I really do think the spirit of God works in others, because they see that deep humility that's been brought
about by the Spirit of God. And there's something beautiful and powerful and multiple times and I've preached, I've actually put this in the sermon sometimes. And sometimes the spirit has prompted me to say it publicly. If there was something that I'm talking about, I said, you know, I realize, I've not been good at this, I'll tell the church like, Hey, I'm talking about this thing about, you know, forgiveness, you know, recently upset my wife, I was out of
line, I was rude to her. I just want to publicly apologize to her like, like, I'm still trying to live this stuff out myself. Like I don't, I don't always do it well, and I think there's something powerful about the grace that God gives, when we humble ourselves before Him.
Yeah, that's really good. A lot of times when we are entering into the these spaces of saying, hey, we want to bring us together. We have a lot of subconscious bias in ourselves and subconscious assumptions that we think this is how the world works. And it's really a worldview issue. Like I'm putting on my my worldview lenses. This is how I view the world. And a lot of it is really is informed by subconscious
assumptions. Have you figured out any ways that we can start to uncover those so that we can know where our biases lie so that we can start to have see one another and have conversations?
Yes. What a great question. In the book, we have the third step. So we present seven steps in the book that we believe are really essential, and preaching, teaching, ministering in a divided nation, or in a divided context, which pretty much everywhere there's division, right, this is part of the fall. And in the book, we actually present a five part reconciling narrative that we think the gospel, the gospel is the gospel of reconciliation, and every Christian is called to be a peacemaker, and a
reconciler, law. You know, second Corinthians chapter five, but in particular, and the book here, and I've got the copy, because I've got my little diagrams, we created a little Venn diagram based on Psalm 51. And this was one of those spirit movements there. But we talked about this idea of renewal, and it starts with devotion. So first, the first way to blind spots is we need to be connected
to God. Yeah. Right, Joshua, you and I need to be walking with God reading His word on a regular basis, daily, right? Prayer, silence, centering prayer, worship, it couldn't be worship, music, serving the poor, the needy, the marginalized. There's devotion, which is worship. And you actually see in Psalm 51, David, at the beginning, makes an appeal to God's mercy. And he calls upon the match the attributes and the nature of God, we see that right at the beginning of the song. So first
is devotion. Then there's a second circle and the Venn diagram, if you will, that's introspection. And that's the God created me a clean heart. And that's where we see okay, God, show me revealed to me my hidden sins. Right? I think that's David, the Psalms. That's the Jeremiah 17. God, Your word says that my heart is wicked and deceitful above all else who can understand the human heart. And so part of this is in God, even I don't understand my heart.
Only you know the depths of my heart, even I don't know the depths of my heart. I believe you've crucified my sinful nature. I believe you are sanctifying me but there's still pockets to use Tim Keller, a metaphor he uses. There's still pockets of resistance, right?
Jesus Christ, the King has come and overthrown that kingdom that is the kingdom of sin in us but there's still pockets of resistance outside of the castle, if you will, countryside and those, those need to be dominated and destroyed by the Spirit and that's just part of our sanctification. So I think there needs to be the introspection, journaling, coaching, right, you do a lot of coaching now. We need mentors. We need coaches. We need to invite others people intentionally into our
sanctification journey. And then third is the, we call it the let me think of the right word here the connection, which is the community of believers. And that's where we are an intentional discipleship relationships with others. And so actually at the end of the book and one of the appendices we have an accountability
covenant. And it's based on the the Modesto manifesto that Billy Graham had at the beginning of His ministry, where he covenanted with others, the other evangelists so that they would not sin in four major areas. And so I think we needed a vibrant devotional life worship prayer study of Scripture, I think we need an introspective life, God, show me my hidden faults, through personality profiles, through coaches through journaling. And then we need a life of others.
Ministry and beyond that are holding us accountable that have the permission to speak truth into our lives to show us those hidden because believe me, those I work with, I can't see my faults. Those I work with can see my faults. My wife, my wife has got a very long list. And I don't know about your wife, but my wife is my wife
has a really short list. I don't have very many faults. Very, very low.
No, I'm emailing her right after this. You may be shocked.
Yeah, maybe shot. very shocked. I think actually, Psalm 51 is really powerful. For people actually just have the Holy Spirit move within somebody. And to real reveal. I'll share a quick story. We use this working with Syrian refugees. We had one woman she was a new believer. She just came to Jesus. We gave out some some coupons for gas bottles so that she could have heaters and in the winter, and we gave her some for her
sisters. And so we said hey, can you give these your sisters as well, I found out the organization that that we were getting these gas coupons for found out that she actually didn't give them to her sisters. She just kept them for herself. She's told them so. So what we did, we're like, okay, how do we actually broach this subject? How do we start to call somebody to account and say, confess your
sin, and repent, and please. So instead of actually just going in and saying, confess your sin and repent, we said, we studied the story of David Bathsheba and Psalm 51. And at the end of actually just reading scripture, reading the story and the psalm, you know, we asked, you know, what stood out to you? And she, she just confessed her sin, right? There she goes, I have something that I did. That was wrong. And I apologize, and this
is what it was. And we didn't have to say, we know, we didn't have to say, you've done this, you know, you need to confess, we actually let the Psalm and the story and the psalm speak, she discovered it in the Holy Spirit was the one who prompted her to do that. And so powerful stuff.
Yeah, no, that's amazing. And I do think that was in the context of a community, right? Like you're ministering to her. There's other that's one thing I've learned and you spend time overseas is a lot of Eastern cultures have a greater sense of communal identity. Yeah. You know, in the West, we tend to be very individualistic. It's just me and Jesus. But and the third circle there. And the Venn diagram that we've created
is connecting. If you actually look at the end of Psalm 51, it actually David at the very end, the last couple of verses prays for the renewal of Israel. He wants Israel, the nation, the city of Jerusalem to be renewed, and that points out the communal aspect, our sin actually has communal implications. No sin is truly private. It'll always have cascading impacts. But it's when we're in relation with others. And I love that, you know, you
just told her the story. You didn't go get in her face and shout, right. It's how we do in America on Twitter. You know, we just exactly shout the mob, the Twitter mob, shout people down, you just brought the story to her. And through the parable, which is a very powerful teaching method. You told the story. In the end, she just felt so convicted that she confessed it. Yeah, that's powerful.
Yeah. You know, how do we do this as as, okay, so everything that you're going to you wrote in the book comes to pass. And we're able to preach to a divided nation, we're able to actually reconcile, be unified within the church in the body of Christ. And we actually live like we're supposed to and love one
another. How can we take that and actually have some impact and influence in the broader culture around us so that we could see some of this reconciliation and unity happen not just in the church, but in the culture?
Yeah. Okay. The first thing I'd say is that I see a distinct link between reconciliation brings about unity. And I believe we have genuine unity, there's a revival. And I and whenever you study revivals, the fire always moves outside the church into the wider culture. Because people outside the church are saying what is happening, like, these people are confessing their sin. They're forgiving and loving one another. They're radically giving. They're
radically sacrificing. I want to be part of those people like I want to be in on that group. And those stories abound throughout the history of Christianity, of those that overheard the gospel or saw what God was doing in a community. It was truly spirit led, truly experiencing renewal, revival, reformation. Whatever terminology you want to use other people, it's irresistible.
So the first thing I'd say is when God renews his people, others, I think inevitably will join because the impact just spills out of the body of Christ. We truly do become light in the darkness, we become salt that's rubbed into the decay of our society. The next thing I'd say is I do think, and you've seen this, every great revival or renewal movement leads to just a massive expansion of
mission. Right now, church planning evangelism, people suddenly start praying bolder prayers, they start giving more money, and they start saying, what Isaiah prayed, Lord, send me. Yeah. And so I think God just shoots people out of there. The next thing I'd say is, I think, when this happens, I think there people really do take their work into the
workplace. I think they start by our furkating their vocation, from their faith, and people start bringing their faith into work, where they're praying for coworkers, they're looking at opportunities to share the gospel. They're inviting their co workers into the home and inviting them to their lives. So I think there's something there. And then I do think some of the great movements have become
major reform movements. So I think at the Clapham sect, with William Wilberforce, where there's this renewed group of people that became passionate about something, and there's not, you know, everybody's not called, I believe, to be a William Wilberforce, where they have to go to the central political body, and create register, you know, create legislation, but I do believe there will be people, you know, for, for every William Wilberforce, there's, like, 20 to 30 people praying to that
person. Yeah, bridging that person, resourcing that person connecting that person. And so, I think there's a whole group of people that get behind the larger social reform movement. So I don't have a lot of specific stories right now. But I think this is borne out well, throughout church history. Yeah. As I can tell,
yeah, I agree. And, you know, it's gonna take a move of the Spirit, to unify us what I love, like we see that right in Acts chapter two, and we see that from, you know, when, when the Spirit fell, they were given the Spirit. And then they actually became unified. And at the end of hacks to in verse 47, I think they had the
favor of all the city. And because they lived like they were supposed to live, they they shared with one another, they loved one another, they worshipped gods, they, they did everything that Jesus commanded, together, because of the help of the Holy Spirit. They had favor of the city. So I think that's, I mean, that's spot on, that's
what's going to happen. And it does take that it takes us to actually have some self awareness to know where we have have sins and where we have blind spots, open ourselves up, confess one to another, pre reconciled, saying, even in our differences, we can live together in unity and love because we have one Spirit, one God, one, one hope, one baptism. This is our one Lord, and was a we're going to rally around that. And so we could do this together and share one to
another. And that's going to spill out into the culture around us. And so I think that's spot on. And that's Thank you. So if you have some people who say, Hey, I like this, this is great interview, I want to go read his book, what are some of the things that you want people to take away from in your book?
Yeah. So thanks for asking that question. My hope in the book is that people will see how embedded reconciliation is in the Gospel. It is a Bible, the whole Bible can be understood as a reconciling narrative in five parts. I think the book is worth it just for that because the way we lay that out, we have great diagrams, one of the one of my best friends is a dynamic author
or an author Excuse me. I'm illustrator and he created diagrams, which I think there's a lot of visual learners that would benefit from the different diagrams that we put in the book. The book gives people, lots of practical resources. We give an example. Here's what a unity prayer reconciliation service looks like. Here are resources you can use. We have some reflections on critical race theory, how do we think about critical race theory
through a biblical lens? We have sample sermons from different voices from African American voices and Latin X voices and, and so forth. My co authors, Asian American. You know, I hope people just read the book, and it will ignite a greater passion, to be a reconciler to be a uniter to see how central This is to our witness. Yeah,
right. You're at the middle of all these amazing multiplication movements, multi making, multiplying mature disciples, making multiplying churches reaching unreached people groups all over the globe. I think our unity, and reconciliation is really, really critical to the witness, we see how core this was in an x we see right, Peter and Cornelius. I mean, this thing could have tanked the church if, if Peter didn't get
his head straight. We see Paul talking about this in Galatians, right, I mean, so much of the the New Testament is written around these Jewish Gentile conflicts and how the gospel is to take away the primacy of ethnic superiority. And over and over again, it says, Christ tore down the dividing wall of hostility so that we could be one new humanity are living this out is critical to our witness
in this day. So the book gives a lot of resources, I would be truly honored if people went out there, bought a copy and read it or gave it to their pastor or ministry leader, some of the cares passionately about this. And people can find more information about it. On my website, Pastor hoffman.com, that's Pastor altman.com. They can look up the book on Amazon,
or wherever books are sold. You can follow me on my social accounts where I document this I try not over document because I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to be given into the powers as you just interviewed my good friend, Jr. What are the powers I don't want to make it about the powers are getting me to build this ideology. And this, you know, I'm not trying to be a celebrity. I'm just trying to be I'm trying to be a
kingdom minded, Christian. But yeah, you can follow us follow me on Facebook at pastor Hoffman, Instagram at pastor Hoffman on Twitter at pastor Hoffman 77. Where, again, I would depending on the nature of the conversation, I might I reserve the right to move people offline. If we want to have a deeper conversation over zoom or in person, but I just would be appreciated. People pray for me pray that the book will get in as many hands as possible. I honestly I didn't write the book
to make money. I wrote the book to spread the message of the gospel and to really give tools. And these are tools, Joshua that I've learned over 17 plus years in ministry, I've had the blessing of traveling to 34 countries on four continents. I've been doing this with people all over the globe, but my heart is for America, because this is I'm just so broken by what's going on. And I know there's a better way and I know God can renew the body of Christ. I
know. God can help us overcome the four isms we talked about in the book. I know God can help us overcome the world, the flesh and the devil to truly live into the revelation seven vision. The last thing I'd say is, I say this a lot. I tell people, here's the deal. Revelation seven is our future. Yeah, that is that is heaven. If you don't like that, heaven is going to be a real downer. You're not gonna like heaven much. And so I believe we're called to be
citizens of heaven. Now, that moved forward living into that reality. Now, I don't think we'll ever truly live into it on planet Earth. I think we have to go go home and be resurrected and glorified. And but we should be moving toward that now because that is our future eternal home. And again, that will happen whether you like it or not, that is the reality of heaven. And just imagine just
dreaming me for a moment. What would it look like if we started to live into the revelation seven vision now in our communities, and our neighborhoods, in our cities and our regions, not only here in the United States, but all over the globe? What a beautiful, shining, glowing, attractive witness that would be how many people would come to saving faith in Jesus Christ from other religions or atheism or agnosticism? If we would live that out for the world to see if we would be that city on a
shining Hill. I think we'd be blown away at what God would do if we would just focus on living into that reality and the here and now.
Amen. Love it. That's great. Couple A couple questions here at the ends. And then go one if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?
Oh, man, take a chill Phil, very ambitious person as you can tell us though wrestling through that, enjoy it. Take the long view, you can't do everything in a year you can't do everything in two years can't do everything in a decade, pace yourself. There's been multiple periods of time I've struggled with burnout. And so I've had to go back and re
pace. So I think, learn to pace properly, but also learn to accept your belovedness to use the words of Henry now and I've been reading a lot of now and learn to live into the reality that you are a child of God, that there's nothing you can achieve. That's going to add on to the value for the love that our Father has through a suicide Son, Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit live into that love.
And man, you are beloved. Yeah, our beloved. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend
Oh, that's Oh, yeah. Henry now and what is it something about Genesee diaries, a bunch of now and I just read his book on leadership. I have a couple other books. There's, you know, blinking right now I'll have to email them to you after this. And if you want to put them in the notes. But I've been reading a lot of now and because the drive the seductive nature of power, prestige, popularity, these are always tugging at us to expand a platform and expense
the kingdom. So now and always brings me back and I just love that he went to this monastery in Genesee New York, and he just like made bread and had to pick little stones out of the wheat kernels and making bread and and so I'm always trying to try and get to that place. And whenever I read I feel like I'm a kindred spirit, that sense of ambition that I'm trying to ask the Lord
to purify. So that you know there's other things I could mention, but now and has been, I think what's most resonating in me right now a couple other good books. I'm reading a book becoming all things by Michelle Ray as Amy Rose Michelle, for a classroom to be teaching at Gordon Conwell an Adjunct Professor Gordon Conwell, so I'm preparing. So becoming all things she plays out first Corinthians nine, how do we really live out first Corinthians nine in a
multicultural world. And then I'm also looking at a book by Sam chan on preaching, topically in a complex world. And that's a really good book. So reading those books and a number of others, but those are really speaking to me right now.
Great. Well, Paul, thank you so much. It was it was fantastic conversation. I enjoyed it, I loved it, to figure out how do we have this reconciliation, this unity within the body of Christ? How could we actually be leaders in that and not just somebody that's gonna follow the culture and the polarization of our political nature and everything else that divides us, but actually, we could be reconciled is like God is a reconciling God. And so thank you so much
for this conversation. It was fantastic.
Yes, thank you so much for having me on. I just pray God's richest blessings over this podcast and all the missional endeavors that you're doing your I just want to thank you for your life, your testimony, your witness, and especially pouring in to the unreached people groups around the world. That's, that's, I wish more of us were doing that. Thanks, Paul.