Steve Brown, Etc.

Steve Brown: Hey, are you tired of pretending you have it all together? Then you're in the right place. Let's talk about it with Drew Hensley on Steve Brown, Etc.

Narrator: He's an old white guy, an author, broadcaster, and seminary professor who's sick of religion. And he's brought friends. Please welcome Steve Brown and Etc.

Steve Brown: Hey, we're so glad you're here. In case you're wondering, I'm Steve, the aforementioned old white guy. Matthew Porter is our executive producer, and he's here. Matthew says processed meats were just classified as a group one carcinogen. So if you see him outside the office a few times a day, he's on a bacon break.

Our producer, Jeremy, is in the little glass booth. Jeremy trusts that the wedding supper of the Lamb will be catered by Chick-fil-A. And our one-man IT department, John Meyer, is in the tech bunker. John says Gen X is the only generation that has to explain computers both to parents and to their kids.

And Dr. George Bingham is the president of Key Life. George asks you to give extra to Key Life because it's summertime and Matthew buys a lot of sunscreen and needs your help. And Kathy Wyatt is the soft, feminine side of the program. Kathy does the Lutheran old folks home. They have a pickleball court. I think you would be good at that, Catherine.

Kathy Wyatt: We don't have a pickleball court. It's a cheap place. We only have shuffleboard. Well, and the pool. We have a nice pool, but we only have shuffleboard. No pickleball.

Steve Brown: We've got a great guest. We've interviewed him about his invisible grace book, which, by the way, if you haven't bought it, you're crazy. Grief—Invisible Grace. Well, it's Invisible Grace too. You should have included it in the title. It's there; it's invisible.

Drew is a podcaster, and this is the first time we've interviewed somebody about a podcast. I do suggest that Invisible Grace should have been a part of the title for his book, because the title for his podcast is really, really long. We have to devote, on our podcast platform, an entire page just to get the title there: *Still Becoming: Where Grace Meets the Unfinished Conversations About Faith in Real Life*.

Kathy Wyatt: And you have a problem with that?

Steve Brown: No, I was just pointing out the separate page we had to use because of the long title. Drew, how long you been doing... by the way, how can people get the podcast platform at Key Life?

Matthew Porter: Go to KeyLife.org/podcastnetwork.

Steve Brown: And we're increasing those podcasts, so there's some really good stuff. I am, in fact, even though I've protested it repeatedly, working on one. But my title is shorter. It's called *Lunch with Steve*. We just don't have it yet.

Kathy Wyatt: We're not creative like Drew. We said, "What are we going to call it? Oh, just let's just do it at noon and call it Lunch with Steve."

Matthew Porter: Hey, are you going to serve Chick-fil-A or something when we do that?

Kathy Wyatt: Only to the guest. Right. Just asking for a friend.

Steve Brown: Drew, tell us about the podcast, why you're doing it, and what's happening with it.

Drew Hensley: Yeah, thanks for having me back on. I doubted that you would.

Kathy Wyatt: We had a vote, and it came out three to one.

Drew Hensley: I love it. I find myself—and I'm sure you guys too, I think everybody does—you find yourself having these conversations with friends or people at your church or other pastors, leaders, but just about faith and not really in a polished way, but in a way that matches up with the life that we all live.

As I found myself having more of these conversations and found them interesting and really helpful, I was like, "Hey, that could be cool for a podcast." Just this idea of "we're in process." In our faith, we're in process in our journey. People are in different places.

What does it look like to have just conversations that are hopefully helpful, encouraging, maybe challenging, but they really do hit that sweet spot of where grace does meet us right there in the middle, in the mess? These conversations about faith as it applies more to our day-in, day-out.

I love Eugene Peterson and I really like his work, *A Long Obedience in the Same Direction*. He has this line in there that just says all the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, and uneven performers. We're secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us. So my hope with this podcast was just to meet people there, as I'm there, and to have some of these different conversations around different themes and topics that matter in your day-to-day.

Steve Brown: That's the basis of some of the teaching at Key Life and all the voices of Key Life. But it's not the basis of a lot of Christianity or false Christianity. It really has become, because religion does weird things to you, it really does. It's so easy to say God is good and because He's good, I have to be "gooder." I have to do this more perfectly than I have. Better and better in every way, every day.

But it doesn't work like that. It's got to be refreshing to listen to you in this podcast, not only proclaiming that truth but putting the whole thing in the title of the broadcast.

Drew Hensley: No surprises. You get everything from the title. I thought, "How can I make this so long that I won't have to do a podcast?" Just "Here's what it is."

Steve Brown: Well, listen, tell us about it. Is it a call-in kind of thing where you talk to people?

Drew Hensley: No. What it is, I actually recruited my good friend Ryan Kerns. He actually wrote a first article for Key Life a couple months ago. He's a pastor down in Texas. We planted a church together in Seattle. We are really good mutual friends with Justin Holcomb. I don't even know what to call Justin Holcomb these days—the Bishop Extraordinaire.

Steve Brown: The Bishop. Anything.

Drew Hensley: So we're really good friends and I said, "Hey Ryan, I think you're a great interviewer, also have very wise insight. Do you want to jump in and do this with me?" We'll kind of co-host. Some of the conversations—we plotted out about 10 episodes—some of the conversations are just us having a conversation together on a theme, but then we've invited some great guests.

We've got several pastors, authors, therapists, just trying to hit a myriad of different topics. We just did one with a really good pastor buddy of mine named A.J. Sherrill. We talked about deconstruction and reconstruction of your faith. What's a healthy way to look at that? What's an unhealthy way to look at that?

Ryan and I just wrapped up a convo about ambition, platforms, and Jesus. How is that misused? Where does ambition and drive find a healthy place in our faith and in our life, and where does it get really unhealthy and messy? Just those types of conversations. No call-in, because I know that my mom would call in way too much and it would derail things. She would keep asking me to come back and visit Missouri more, and I just decided against that.

Steve Brown: I don't believe I would have said that. My mother's in heaven and it's okay, but if I'd said something like that publicly on a broadcast, she'd kill me. I wouldn't be here today. By the way, in case you're wondering, Drew Hensley is pastor of One Fellowship in Charleston, South Carolina. He's a former Seattle church planter, and he writes regularly for Key Life with great response from those who read his blogs. Triple X Church, he contributes to *Christianity Today* and *Gospel-Centered Discipleship*. His newest book, as I blew it earlier, is *Invisible Christianity*.

Drew Hensley: Yeah, *Invisible Christianity*.

Steve Brown: Hey, listen, you need to go to our podcast platform. It's increasing and it's really, really good stuff. I just forgot the address. What was it, Matthew?

Matthew Porter: KeyLife.org/podcastnetwork.

Steve Brown: And the title of Drew's—and we're going to talk about it—podcast is *Still Becoming: Where Grace Meets the Unfinished Conversations About Faith and Real Life*, and an exposition of the Graf-Wellhausen documentary hypothesis.

Narrator: Whoa, this place is huge! Welcome to the Vault, your home for classic sermons from Steve from the '90s, the '80s, even all the way back to the early '70s. The Vault is a one-of-a-kind online experience where you can explore more than three decades of grace-filled messages. Get the details and check out our free audio sample at KeyLife.org/Vault. That's KeyLife.org/Vault.

Steve Brown: Hi, this is Steve Brown. In case you didn't know, one of the main reasons Key Life exists is to remind believers that God isn't mad at His children. Why am I telling you this? Because our weekly email, *Key Life Connection*, takes the best of the videos, articles, and puts them right in your inbox. We'd love for you to try it. It's free. Go to KeyLife.org/subscribe.

Steve Brown: Thanks for joining us. We're talking with our friend, author, pastor, and podcaster Drew Hensley. His new podcast is called *Still Becoming*, with an additional comment: "Where Grace Meets the Unfinished Conversations About Faith in Real Life."

Matthew Porter: Steve, you're giving Drew a hard time about the subtitle of his podcast, and you were bragging about your podcast, *Lunch with Steve*. We didn't tell you yet, your podcast is going to have a subtitle. It's *Lunch with Steve: Conversations About Grace and Things that Steve has Done and People Steve has Known Throughout the Years*. And other things.

Steve Brown: Wait, is Drew on our marketing team now?

Matthew Porter: Listen, if it's good enough for Drew, it's good enough for me. Back on topic, maybe. I know I have had this moment, and maybe others have as well, where you think, "I've been a Christian for X number of years. I should be better than I am. Better than I was, but I should be better than where I am right now. I should be further down the road. I shouldn't be dealing with this again, or not to the same degree." Do we have a bad picture of what the sanctification process is and what it involves?

Drew Hensley: Yeah, I think we do. I had that idea or that belief for decades, and it was very frustrating. It started to feel more like shame and condemnation, which I knew didn't match up with the Gospel. So that was bothering too, but I felt like I would look around and I would see other people.

Here's the magic trick, if you will, or the illusion when we look around at other people: we only see an exterior version. So we don't really know everything that's going on in their life or that they're not even sharing. A lot of times we just get this false illusion of, "Man, they really seem to have it together. Why don't I have it together like them?" We start this comparison track, and it's really unhealthy.

I think I was reading something by Paul Zahl years ago, and he actually just had a really good description of sanctification and it shifted something for me where he talked about how we can have this very upward trajectory view of sanctification. You're still a little bit better every day. You're getting more like Jesus every day, and it's going to be this clean path upward. We'd love that if it worked like that.

But the reality is I think the sanctification—the way he describes it—it's a lot of peaks and valleys, and it's all over the place. That's what I've found true for my life. In some areas of my life, I feel like I've really grown. I would say that if you looked at my life five, 10 years ago and now, it's like, "Man, there's an area of faith or there's an area of something that's really grown."

But there are still areas in my life that I look at and I say, "Yeah, that one's still pretty rough around the edges." Or, "Man, I feel like I was here and maybe I've even dipped down a little bit for whatever reason." Life hits, circumstances change, our faith gets tested, all of those things. So I believe that a healthier view of sanctification is more of this uneven line, but we are becoming more like Christ, just not necessarily holistically all at the same time. There are still all of these edges.

I think in that, it allows us to actually be honest. I think God can only sanctify the real us. He can't sanctify a version of us that's not real. So only when we're able to be honest and say, "All right, I'll bring out my mess. I'll bring out this over here, my anger problem. I'll bring out this thing that's been tripping me up. I'll bring out my lack of patience over here and I'll just put it on the table."

Then I think God does some of His best work. But if we believe that sanctification is just all upward trajectory, that's defeated before it even gets started. I think that's why a lot of people feel like they stall out in their faith. They just become overwhelmed with this feeling of almost shame or, "Man, I'm just not going to get there." If we looked at it differently, I think it's actually much more freeing and honest.

Matthew Porter: I agree with that. You so often mention those "you too" conversations. Doesn't that open up those conversations to go, "Hey, you've shared some of your mess, I have something similar." It's encouraging that you're not the only one, you're not an outlier. You're not a project that God forgot. We're all kind of stumbling forward.

Steve Brown: You know, the interesting thing, when Matthew said "I'm not as good as I thought I'd be, I'm better in some areas," I immediately thought, "I think I'm worse." I'm not better. It's very hard to identify. But what happens as you walk with Christ is what Drew mentioned. You're all of a sudden honest before your Creator. Really honest. All of a sudden you see things you never saw before, and it's okay because you're forgiven, you're free, you're acceptable, and that will never change. So there's a sense in which not only am I not as good as I thought I would be, I'm worse, at least in what I see, and that in itself is a good thing.

Kathy Wyatt: Drew, we're coming in on a—I might have to just ask this and then you can answer on the other side of the break. I remember a specific time when I was growing up and it seemed like everybody had these really amazing testimonies and mine was just really not anything to write home about. Literally, I mean I grew up in the church and every time somebody gave an invitation, I asked Jesus in my heart again just to be sure that it took the first time. That was about the extent of anything exciting. Are there some people who feel like a testimony that's very tidy and easy is the way they're supposed to be? What is the problem with that? With 47 seconds left, I think you'll have to wait on that one.

Drew Hensley: No, I think that either side of it, we kind of love this idea of polished, buttoned-up testimonies because I think that unpolished, messy testimonies make us uncomfortable. I think that that is one thing that kind of keeps us sometimes in this isolation or hiding mode where it's just like, "Well, I think I need to have this more buttoned up." It goes back to even what Steve said there and what we've talked about with honesty. That's the word that keeps popping back to me. Even if you have a simplistic, what you would refer to as maybe a boring or ordinary testimony, I think that there's much more to it than that.

Steve Brown: On the other side of the break, though, why is it that we tend in the church to take the people with the big spectacular ones and put them up on stage then and make a big deal? We'll do that afterwards. Just so you know, I have a buttoned-up testimony too. I have never, not even once in my entire life, killed anybody. One day at a time, the night is young. But I haven't finished living yet. And I've thought about it a whole lot. And I've prayed for their death, but I haven't killed anybody yet, and I'm quite proud of that. Guys, like Jesus, we're going to return, so don't go anywhere.

Narrator: Hey, thanks for listening to *Steve Brown, Etc.* and if you're enjoying the show, would you help us let others know about it? You can share a link, click subscribe on our YouTube channel, or drop us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks much.

Steve Brown: Hi, this is Steve Brown and I'm excited to tell you about a new offer from Key Life called *Living with Steve*. Let me tell you the way it works. I travel with you wherever you go. If you need an entertaining conversation or even a sermon, there I am. That's the good news. The bad news is that it costs a million bucks. But wait, there's good news. You can get everything I've just described with the Key Life app. And for a limited time, it's not a million dollars—it's free. Try it now at KeyLife.org/app.

Steve Brown: Thanks for spending this time with us. That's a gift. By the way, have you subscribed to our weekly email, *Key Life Connection*? Now's a good... well, not now. Wait until we finish, and then you can go to our website. Actually, it's free. Go out today at KeyLife.org/subscribe.

Drew, an illustration that Steve used to use over the years came to mind. It was like a seminary professor with his class of prospective pastors, and they got word of a terrible earthquake that occurred in another part of the country and a lot of people devastated and so forth. One of his students asked him, "If you were pastor of a congregation there, what would you say?" He thought for a minute and said, "I would hope I wouldn't have to say anything. I would hope that I had prepared them for things such as this."

It made me think, most of our conversation so far about your podcast has kind of leaned toward people that have perhaps been walking for a long time and looking for encouragement of not being there yet. Are there things that you can or that you do say in your podcast directed toward younger believers that maybe can sort of prepare them for some of the struggles and challenges going forward?

Drew Hensley: That's a great question because pastorally, I think that the most... one of the most important things you can do for a younger believer, a newer believer, is tell them the truth before disappointment does. I think that sometimes we can paint things with really rose-colored glasses or we just aren't honest with them. Especially in our day and age here where I think we've leaned heavily in Western church culture toward more prosperity ideas, which will be very disconcerting when the storm comes. It's like, "Whoa, I didn't know I signed up for this."

Throughout the podcast, I think that what we try to do—even as Ryan and I prep some of the sessions—is keep everybody in mind. The person who's just going along in their faith and things are pretty even, the person who's really struggling with their faith, but even the person who is either newer to the faith or even outside of the faith.

I think that's where us not trying to go too "high church" with the podcast and just try to speak using normal language. It doesn't mean that we're pushing away from depth or still our backbone being God as grace, His word, all of that. But I think in a way that hopefully taps into people where they are.

Also in that sense, I think just being very honest. Ryan and I do an episode where we just talk about our doubts. Jesus never promised that life was going to be easy. What He actually promises is life's going to be difficult, but I'm going to be with you. Just telling people that and reminding them of that. It doesn't mean that we're having these Eeyore moments, but I think we're actually just being very truthful and loving when we're sharing with people up front, "Hey, this isn't actually going to be the easiest road. There's going to be stuff that you never expected that gets dropped into your life. Your faith is going to be stretched in so many different ways."

But I think if we name that early and we tell them that the Christian life is kind of less like a honeymoon and it's more like a marriage. There are mornings you wake up and the feeling is just there and it's warm and it's close, and there are stretches when you're choosing faithfulness without any emotional confirmation that it's working. Both of those are the marriage and neither one cancels the other out. So those things are just helpful. I think we actually need to be more honest with people about that and not so fearful. "Well, if they hear that, they might not stay in the faith." I actually think that's a really dangerous view to even take if we believe that God is the one that's actually keeping them. If God's keeping them and they're secure in the grace of Jesus, we should be all the more truthful about what this faith journey may look like.

Steve Brown: I know your podcast isn't primarily designed for evangelism. But as a matter of fact, the kind of thing you're talking about is probably the most effective evangelism there is. I know you've addressed people who've been walking it a long time, and to George's question, those who are new at it.

But I hope that people who are not believers and don't even want to be will tune in to your podcast because that's where evangelism takes place. In the face of amazing and surprising honesty, openness, and understanding of "dirt under the fingernails" Christian faith. I think that's very attractive to unbelievers too. Do you have that in mind as you talk?

Drew Hensley: I think so. In Seattle especially, planting churches, I interacted with so many people, whether it was students or any age, that had not even considered God or they'd kind of fallen away for a variety of reasons. I think that's always in the back of my mind. How do we get to those that are on the fringe but Jesus loves just as much, and that He cares about?

I'm just a firm believer in trying to give people the long view. Show people who are 10, 20, 30 years into their faith not because they've figured it all out, but because they're still here and they're still following and still imperfect and yet they're still held. That's kind of the whole idea of "we're still becoming." None of us have arrived yet. I think that actually takes down a lot of walls. It's like, "Oh, okay. You're not pushing something on me. Instead, you're just inviting me into something that, yeah, I'll talk about that. I'll listen in." So that's the hope.

Steve Brown: To radically change the subject, are you the founding pastor of that church in Charleston?

Drew Hensley: No, I'm actually in more of a teaching pastor role here. This church was founded around the same time that we founded our church in Seattle. I handed that off in Seattle to my good buddy Alex Early, who writes for Key Life. He leads that church. Then I moved down here to Charleston and I partnered up with a pastor down here. His name's Paul Sorenson. We do shared pulpit and I do a lot of teaching, leadership development.

Steve Brown: I think if I lived in Charleston, I would join your church.

Drew Hensley: I think I would let you in, even though you've never killed a man.

Steve Brown: Well, that's why you would let me in. If I'd killed them, you obviously would reject me because the sin would be too big.

Drew Hensley: This episode is going to pop up on *Dateline*. Everybody just know this is going to be a *Dateline* segment down the road.

Steve Brown: Drew, you're a gift. Thanks for spending this time with us. It's been a fun time and a learning time for me personally. I'm going to make sure my guns are clean. We're going to come back. Don't go anywhere.

Narrator: Hey, thanks for listening to *Steve Brown, Etc.* and if you're enjoying the show, would you help us let others know about it? You can share a link, click subscribe on our YouTube channel, or drop us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks much.

Steve Brown: What if you could start your day by hanging out in God's word and with some of the most significant theologians, authors, and pastors ever? That's the idea behind the one-year devotional, *God with Us*. Find it now at KeyLife.org/store.

This is Pete Alwinson, and if you're a guy, I want to show you how to recover and reclaim an intimate, growing relationship with your Heavenly Father. Check out *Like Father, Like Son: How Knowing God as Father Changes Men*. Available now at KeyLife.org/store.

Believer, I want you to remember that where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. And you will run out of sin before God runs out of grace. *Grace: The Real Good News of the Gospel*. Find it now at KeyLife.org/store.

A great hour with Drew. We like him a lot. We like him because he's fun. You know, people liked Jesus because He was fun too. That's why children were attracted to Him. Sometimes we forget that the incarnation was real. Very human, very sad sometimes, even filled with pathos, even though He was God. He emptied Himself and became a servant.

The good thing about this—and I just thought of it at the end of the broadcast—we are here for them. If eternal security is true, and it is—or if you're Presbyterian, you call it properly the "perseverance of the saints"—either way, you don't lose your salvation. Once it's settled, it's settled forever. No matter where you go, no matter what you do or have done, no matter who you hurt, you're still His and He'll never let you go.

The question then becomes, okay, if that's true, as soon as I became a Christian, why didn't God kill me and bring me to heaven? Because of them. That's why we're still here is because of them. In the latter years of my ministry, God has given me a real concern for the lost. I think that the way the lost are reached is by sensing the warmth of the fire that we as Christians share with each other.

The warmth of the fire isn't our purity—we don't have much. It isn't our goodness or our righteousness. It's the honesty and the reality of being accepted by your brothers and sisters in Christ because God has accepted the whole bunch despite all that. And that dog will hunt. So if you're not a believer, we're glad you're watching this broadcast or listening. Who's going to be on next week?

Kathy Wyatt: Next week our good friend Jordan Raynor is going to be with us. He's written quite a few kids' books, and every time we have him on, it's almost like he's writing a series of books. The new one is called *The Spirit in You*. He does such a great job that I always come away thinking, "Wow, there's some really good stuff in there," not just for little people but for us too.

Steve Brown: So that means we'll be back here next week. Same time, same place. It's our fond hope that you will join us again then. But between now and then, don't do anything we wouldn't, and that gives you a wide, wide berth. Bye.