Deconstruction is a buzzword in Christian circles as stories of prominent Christian leaders leaving their faith become more commonplace. Of course, the questioning and even unraveling of faith is not limited to pastors and worship leaders but to everyday churchgoers.
How can churches and pastors understand deconstruction? How should they walk with those who are doubting their faith? SOLA Editorial Board member Kevin Yi interviewed two pastors to talk about this phenomenon and how to address it, with additional emphasis on the Asian American church. Barnabas Piper is an associate pastor at Immanuel Nashville church and the author of many books. Jason Min is the lead pastor of Citizens Church in Los Angeles.
We hope this conversation can be helpful for the local church to walk compassionately with those who are deconstructing.
You can listen to the audio on our SOLA Network Podcast. A lightly edited transcript is below.
Kevin Yi: Welcome, everyone, to the SOLA Network. My name is Kevin Yi, and I’m the college and young adults pastor at Church Everyday. I want to welcome you guys to this conversation on deconstruction.
I’m here with my two guests today. Pastor Barnabas Piper and Pastor Jason Min. Barnabas Piper is an associate pastor at Immanuel Nashville church. He’s the author of a number of books, including The Pastor’s Kid, Help My Unbelief, and Hoping for Happiness. Pastor Jason Min is the senior pastor at Citizens LA church, host of the “Off the Pulpit” podcast, and the host of many rooms on clubhouse as well.
I love that you are joining us for this important conversation on deconstruction. It seems like we’re talking about this more. But I’d like to start with some basics in terms of definition. So when we’re talking about deconstruction, how do you understand that? And how do you understand what’s happening in the church right now when we talk particularly about young people who seem to be deconstructing their faith? Go ahead, Jason.
Jason Min: I like the way Richard Rohr frames it. He talks about our journey of faith in three stages, where there’s construction, deconstruction, reconstruction. You have construction, which is the faith that you were handed by your family of origin as a child. These are childhood experiences that shaped our understanding of who God is. It was kind of the first time we experienced or received God in a neatly packaged box. And then deconstruction, I would say happens, whether because of a moment or a season in your life, where you start to question the faith you’ve been handed. You start to see holes in your worldview when something happens in your life—and it always does—where that neatly packaged box that you had gotten somehow seems inadequate and it feels kind of skewed. Reconstruction is then the process of picking up those pieces and rebuilding a new understanding of God that maybe is a little bit bigger or maybe can hold more conflicting views in tension.
Barnabas Piper: I think that’s a really helpful paradigm. In terms of the big picture, if somebody says they’re in the midst of a time of deconstruction, asking them what they mean is really important. Because what Jason just described can be part of spiritual growth, as opposed to walking away from the faith—a disassembling of those things that you were handed for the sake of better understanding or for the sake of determining what your relationship with Christ looks like. That was kind of my experience; there was a deconstruction that the Lord used to build my faith.
We also see a lot of people where it’s more just destruction. There’s just pulling everything apart and going, “Well, I don’t believe anymore,” and there’s a walk away. So I think the question that needs to be clarified is: Is it a deconstruction of faith in Christ or is it a deconstruction of traditions or expressions—those things that are secondary to the actual gospel? Because one of those can be helpful. The other one is obviously what you see when somebody just abandons following Jesus altogether. That’s kind of a worst case outcome.
Kevin Yi: So what I’m hearing from you guys is that for deconstruction, there’s two pathways this can go. So if, as a pastor, one of our church members is talking to us about deconstruction, it’s really important for us to make sure that we understand which deconstruction is actually taking place.
Jason Min: One of the challenges of that is that when a person is deconstructing, when you’re actually in it, it’s really hard to figure out which one it is. I would say even healthy deconstruction can involve maybe, in my opinion, a season where you do feel like you’re walking away from price. The beauty of the gospel is this idea that Christ pursues us, even when we stop pursuing him, even when we’re walking away from him.
That term deconstruction carries with it an image of someone systematically pulling out a Jenga piece and systematically breaking down the house that they’ve built their faith on. But I heard another Richard Rohr talk where he doesn’t use the terms construction, deconstruction reconstruction. He actually uses the terms order, disorder, and reorder. I almost feel like that word disorder is actually a better image of what happens because it’s very disorienting. So that would be a challenge because I don’t always know in the moment which kind of deconstruction it is.
Barnabas Piper: I think that’s a really good point especially because I think the thing that leads a lot of people into what we would call deconstruction is usually a third-party thing. You’re looking from the outside and going, “You are deconstructing,” as opposed to a self-identified, systemic, organizing my thoughts in a new way, like Jason said.
Because usually, what precipitates that is often some crisis. There’s a failure in church leadership, and you’ve put your trust in a spiritual figure, they then break your trust and rattles your faith. Well, that doesn’t feel like deconstruction. That feels like everything just fell down and disorder and things don’t make sense. Or you experience a great tragedy in your life or somebody struggles with profound depression— there’s a whole bunch of things that can kick it off, and none of it feels tidy. It feels like this is a mess, and what do I still believe in?
Other people come to that place of what we would call deconstruction because it’s an interior thing where they just say they’re wrestling with what they would really like to do, which is usually unbiblical, versus what the Bible calls him to. So I really want to pursue this kind of lifestyle, I really want to be this kind of person, but traditional biblical morals say, to do this thing. Even that, though, is a wrestling not an ordering of thought. There’s a cataclysmic thing going on in their heart.
Kevin Yi: As a pastor who is beginning to see this take place, in our congregation, at least the questioning, why all of a sudden are these questions popping up in that people have never really asked before and wrestled with before. And I’m wondering if there’s things that you guys have seen happening right now, in our culture in particular, that is contributing to this?
There’s been some high profile Christians that have deconstructed their faith in the last year or so, and that definitely creates a conversation around what’s happening. But I’m wondering if you guys have thought about or talked about in the past that are lending itself towards either people talking about this more or this happening more.
Barnabas Piper: This isn’t a definitive answer, just more observations, and I’m sure Jason will clarify and add to what I’m observing. But I think I’m watching what we viewed as the evangelical church through my childhood—the 80s, the 90s—be exposed in its own hypocrisy. That’s not across the board, but there were really well-publicized cover ups of sexual abuse, leaders being horrific bullies or scam artists, the idolatry of political parties and the divisiveness. I was talking about the external crises that shake loose people whose foundation was in something that seemed solid, and now it no longer seems solid.
Who do you trust? Where do I go to find something that’s spiritually meaningful instead of politically loaded or culturally antagonistic. That has just shaken loose a lot of people’s faith, and they feel unmoored and unrooted. It also has probably exposed the culture of the American church. I don’t know how this expresses itself across different ethnicities and cultures, but the White evangelical church, let’s say, has been much more structure than community in recent years.
So again, when a leader fails, the core is not the body of Christ. We hung too much confidence and spiritual trust on a figurehead rather than a body of believers who are mutually building one another up. So community has been lacking, structure has been prominent. But when the structure fails, what do we have left? Those things, at least in the culture of the church, have been influential in the rise of questioning.
The other piece is, church is not a community leader thing anymore. So the church used to be a hub of community in terms of kind of societal influence, power, etc. Churches are very optional now. It’s a thing that people can do, not a thing that people build their lives around. And so again, when it becomes marginalized in our time and our money and in prominence in our lives, it’s a lot easier to go, “Well, how much does this really matter? Why should I give myself to this thing, versus any other community? Who is more open minded?” That’s where the thought process can go.
Jason Min: I really think that we are right now sleeping in the bed we made, especially in the American evangelical church, where it often looks a lot more like the Empire than it does the church we see in the Bible.
I would definitely say the fall of the high profile spiritual leaders has made an impact. In some sense, spiritual leaders were probably falling and abuse was in the church—they’re not a new modern phenomenon. But I do think also, with social media and the fact that people are so digitally connected, now a leader falling on the other side of the world can actually affect your own faith now, because in some sense, you don’t even see your pastor at your local church as the only pastor in your life. You feel pastored by all these people, and so when someone falls, it really does have a huge impact on our faith.
Connected to the rise of the digital age is just a real lack of biblical literacy. As people are talking about God and their faith, they’re not really talking about their understanding of the Bible but they’re usually parroting someone else’s interpretation of the Bible that they read on a social media post, a thumbnail, a GIF, coffee mug.
It just creates this environment where you’re getting people saying, “Well, this is what the Bible says,” and you reply, “ don’t know if that’s exactly what it says. I don’t know where you heard that or where you read that.” But because we’re just inundated with information, I almost feel like people don’t even feel the need to open up the Bible for themselves anymore. That’s a huge thing that we’re seeing in our community for sure.
Barnabas Piper: I would like to double down on the biblical literacy thing because when you remove a dedication to the Word of God, it’s not just the Bible—it’s the means by which the Holy Spirit speaks. So we (the church as a whole) have essentially muted the Holy Spirit’s voice in the lives of so many believers.
We have the news media voice, we have the social media voice, we have our community voice, and the voice of the Spirit saying to convict, to convert, to correct and comfort and all of these things—and it’s just starved. It’s muted, it’s choked out.
I don’t know why anybody would be a Christian if the Holy Spirit is not making this thing come alive because it’s pretty burdensome without the spirit giving life. So I understand cognitively why people would question and then depart if there’s not the Holy Spirit giving the life and joy and meaning to the whole thing.
Jason Min: They’re all connected because if there’s a low biblical literacy culture, then you’re going to put a lot of your faith and put a lot of your eggs in the basket of a charismatic person who can preach God’s word to you. They’re going to be the chosen anointed messenger of God that’s going to teach you the Bible. So when that person fails, you don’t really have a foundation to go back to. You’re like, “What do I believe then?” because everything I’ve learned and everything I know about God is from this one person.
Kevin Yi: I resonate with what both of you guys are saying on a personal level. There have been some people I really respected and looked up to who were Christian celebrities that fell. I know not to put all my eggs in the basket, but when you respect somebody that much and they break your heart that way. It is difficult, even as somebody who is dedicated to the word not to get caught up in that and have those questions and kind of sit with that.
I went through a little bit of that myself last year with the news about Ravi Zacharias. He was somebody that with his ministry really helped me reconstruct my faith when I went through a deconstruction in college, and then to work through that last year. So it’s been really difficult.
Barnabas Piper: Jason’s point about biblical literacy speaks to that situation because you take somebody like—let’s not list a bunch of names, so the example you gave—Ravi Zacharias. Ravi Zacharias spoke so much truth that was beneficial in the strengthening of people’s faith and people’s defense of the truth. Biblical literacy is what allows you to look at that and say, “These were true words.” The man from whom they came fell into sin and made a series of horrendous decisions, but it still allows you to look at it and go, “It’s okay that he helped me. It’s okay that I gained and grew through the words.”
I’ve had the same kind of wrestling over the years with Mark Driscoll. Driscoll became prominent when I was in my early and mid 20s; I was the target audience. So I remember various messages that he gave that were paradigm-shifting for me in long-term, helpful ways. And also, there were a lot of things about his ministry and his life that were real problematic, as we’re all hearing, as everybody and their mother is listening to “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.”
But to be able to say, “That message or that book was beneficial to me because I know what the Bible says, and this book was reflective of something of God. Even if the man departed from that, the truth remains true.” We can, if we’re rooted in Scripture, have the confidence to say, “I can hold on to what’s true and different and separate myself from following lock, stock and barrel, the man himself, whoever that person may be.”
Jason Min: And scripture is the blueprint for that in the sense that it’s a story of really imperfect, inadequate people who God uses for his purposes., I think it also allows you to kind of under, you know, to realize, “Oh, the Bible has already talked about this, and the Bible has already given us a way to think about some of these things that are happening.”
Kevin Yi: I love that point. That’s why you have the Messianic prophecies throughout the Old Testament. None of these guys are the Messiah. They’re pointing to Jesus, but they’re not actually Jesus, and then you have Jesus in the New Testament.
Going back to a little bit more cultural nuance, it does seem like a lot of what you’re seeing as a whole with what’s happening in the church, especially with young people kind of deconstructing, a lot of it seems to be positive in the sense that what we’re moving away from is a sort of non-biblical Christianity. What we’re trying to do and strive to do is to discover what the Bible is actually saying. So a lot of people are deconstructing because they might be reading their Bibles, seeing what the church is actually like, and saying these two things don’t seem to be matching. So there seems to be a lot of: how do we make sense of these two things together? And how do we understand our place in these organizations and in these churches and these communities that don’t seem to be reflective of what the Bible actually teaches? I get a sense that these are great questions that actually leaders need to be receiving well and listening to from the congregations.
But I’m also wondering, from a slightly more culturally nuanced perspective, with regards to the Asian American church as a whole, I’m wondering if you know, Jason, in particular, if you are seeing things happening within the Asian American church that maybe is more about deconstructing the immigrant church and the Asian American cultural church versus faith itself?
Jason Min: I think that process kind of started a while back. Even when I was in my 20s and 30s, people were reexamining their immigrant church experiences and asking questions: “Was how they taught this actually biblical? Or was that cultural?” I definitely think that’s accelerated in recent years. I absolutely see that.
I agree with you that in some sense, I do think some of the deconstruction we were seeing is healthy in that people are realizing, “Oh, maybe that isn’t God’s word. Maybe that’s something we added to God’s word.”
What I am seeing as a problem, not only in the Asian American church, but I would say as a whole is, I think we’re trying to reconstruct without the Word. We’re now realizing, “This is what we’re against, so let’s deconstruct this.” And then we just keep deconstructing and deconstructing. So now we know what we’re against, but we have no idea what we’re for. And I think we’re actually not using the word of God to reconstruct, but we’re actually using a lot of what we’re reading in culture in the news and media to reconstruct. So the faith that we’re reconstructing is also standing on shaky ground a little bit.
Barnabas Piper: I don’t know if that last point is particularly is culturally defined because it’s a spot-on description of what I see in what you would maybe call the progressive church. It’s deconstructed away from traditional conservative evangelicalism, but with a lack of building a new foundation on the Word of God, because one of the things that often has been deconstructed is the authority of Scripture—authority at all. There’s a mistrust of anything that smacks of the old evangelicalism.
There’s a temptation in the evangelical movement to kind of have no biblical basis whatsoever, as opposed to a more beautiful foundation where we say, “Let’s deconstruct the stuff that was bad. There was abuses of power, there was, you know, there’s cultural trappings, legalism, whatever. And let’s, let’s re construct something that’s beautifully reflective of the body of Christ rather than kind of the ugly thing that we just left.
Jason Min: Where I could see there being a cultural element to it is, for a long time, Asian Americans, maybe because of it being a shame-driven culture, it was very repressed, when you were doubting or deconstructing. There were the hierarchical elements of our families of origin, but also even some of the abuses of power that we’ve experienced from the the American Evangelical Church—the combination of all those things—and now for the first time, Asian Americans who’ve been quiet, with recent events, they’re feeling this permission to maybe start expressing some of it. But you’re getting years and years of baggage leaking out at the surface. And so that’s where I see kind of like a cultural element being thrown in there.
Kevin Yi: Do you get a sense that what you’re seeing with regards to the repressed stuff that’s coming out that a lot of it is driven by just anger at not being able to process this within the church? That at all has to be done outside the church because the church doesn’t feel like a safe place right now to be able to talk about those things?
Jason Min: For sure. This is the part that gets tricky because on one hand, you would hope the church can be a safe space for people to wrestle with these things. But you also have to realize, and I think you have to acknowledge, the fact that some of the trauma and abuse that the church has inflicted is real. It would be naïve for us to in the same way we would probably not compel someone to just go rebuild with their abuser.
For a lot of people, that’s what they feel like, and so I also don’t want to dismiss people’s experiences. And so, yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s a little bit of a rock and a hard place there, because I feel sad that they, a lot of people feel like they have to go outside the church, to kind of reconstruct, but then at the same time, I understand why some people feel it’s just so hard to do it in the church.
Kevin Yi: As a pastor who is seeing some of this happening, I’m trying to make our ministry in our church a safer place to talk about this kind of thing. Barnabas, you personally have gone through a deconstruction of sorts and have actually written about it. What are the ways in which—as pastors as church leaders—we can actually begin to cultivate a culture that actually allows for this kind of thing to happen within the bounds of the church.
Barnabas Piper: It’s the thing we talked about fairly often. I serve at Emmanuel Nashville. Cultural context: it’s a Bible Belt church, we’re in Nashville. Nashville is also a bit of a melting pot—we’ve got tons of people moving in from California and New York, etc., but traditionally it’s a Bible Belt church. So there’s a lot of people who end up at our church who come out of nominal or hypocritical or political or aggressive church situations because that’s deeply rooted in a lot of the Southern church.
So we value safety at our church. So we want this to be a safe place. And so we also want it to be a safe place for the single mom, the divorced person, and people coming out of any situation that normally they would not want to walk into a church because of shame, guilt, fear, whatever.
The things that come to mind readily are a posture of warmth and gentleness that’s genuine. Also, if we are confident in God’s word, then other people’s questions are not threatening. One of the worst things that pastors do is bowing up when there’s a question and feeling as if the truth is on the line: If I don’t answer this question correctly, if I don’t wrestle this person into submission, the truth loses. Jesus doesn’t need that from us, and it’s also not what we’re called to. We can rest in the confidence that Jesus said, “It is finished.” We’ve got it, y’all; it’s okay. So if somebody comes with their aggressive or fearful or angry questions, that’s okay. Just let them come.
The other thing is presenting a picture at a church wide level as much as we can of what the church ought to be: the beautiful church, not the aggressive, judgmental, and all of the things that people are trying to leave behind. So preaching sermons that just uphold Jesus constantly and with clarity. That’s going to be divisive on its own because there are people who do not want to follow Jesus, but it’s divisive in the right way, where Jesus is the thing that people are deciding on not, “You think that about social justice or that about political parties.” That shouldn’t be the banner that we wave.
And then reflect often on Jesus as a friend of sinners. Not Jesus as a proselytizer of sinners, but a friend. They liked him, and they kept inviting him over for some reason. What does it look like to emulate that? Where the people who disagree with us, the people who don’t feel safe, the people who aren’t signed up to serve every Sunday, they’re the ones who are like, “This is different. I want to talk to these people”?
That’s all a bit vague, but it’s a thing that the church has lost a lot because we’ve become power hungry or we become defensive, or we’ve viewed ourselves as on one side of a culture war and the world on another side, instead of as shepherds who shepherd the flock that is among us. That’s not an antagonistic stance.
Jason Min: I totally agree with everything Barnabas just said. I do think a lot rests on the leaders. A lot of times the way we walk with people through doubt and deconstruction is on our terms. So we want them to keep coming out on Sundays, keep filling the pews, keep giving, keep serving. Oftentimes what happens is, if they need time away, that also means we disregard them too, and that really isn’t the way of Jesus.
For pastors, that’s tough because it can be very inefficient. Sometimes you don’t feel like you’re getting anything back for your “investment.” But I think a lot of what restores people’s trust back in the church, back in leaders are if our pastors, shepherds, leaders are willing to pursue and willing to sit with people, knowing that they’re not really offering “benefit” to the community at the moment. And I think more leaders kind of have to do that.
The second thing is to go back to something Barnabas said. I totally agree that pastors put pressure on themselves to give people the right answer at the right time, in the right way. And I think there’s this idolatry of certainty that’s happening in the church. Jesus Himself was always confusing, when you think about the way everyone demanded certainty from him, and he never gave it to them. Yet pastors feel like, “Oh, man, I have to give them a really articulate clear answer here.”
I think leaders need the courage to be able to say, “That’s a great question. Let’s go into the Word together. Let’s investigate this.” Because I’ve been thinking about how more leaders need the willingness to be able to say, “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that one a lot, too,” or “I’ve been wrestling with that, too. Let’s look at this together.” Right now, you’re seeing more leaders dig their heels in the sand, and say, “No, no, this is what we believe, and this is what you have to believe too.”
Barnabas Piper: The example you gave of Jesus always being confusing is really striking to me because we know that Jesus was certain. He was more certain for better reasons than anybody else in history, and he had no problem giving these opaque parables with the express intent of saying those who have ears to hear will hear, and those who don’t, well, they’re not there yet.
That’s a helpful thing as a pastor. When I have a chance to preach, I don’t need to feel the pressure to persuade and convince and convert everybody in the room. I need to feel the freedom to put the gospel out there whatever the text calls for or the theme or the topic, and those who have ears to hear, will hear, and it’s not up to me who those people are.
So when we’re encountering somebody who’s deconstructing, for lack of a better term, we don’t know where they are on the spiritual spectrum. They may look very hardhearted, and they are also one Bible verse away from a soft heart towards Christ. Or they may look like they’re a genuine seeker, and they’re just arrogantly stubborn and don’t ever want to hear an answer. I don’t know. Those who have ears to hear, will hear.
Another aspect of that, though, is I think there are pastors who are embarrassed to say, “Well, what does the Bible say?” as if it’s too simple, it’s too Sunday school, it’s too childish. Let’s go to an apologetics book. Let’s go to Tim Keller. Those are really helpful things. I have read the majority of what Keller has written. But Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are probably better apologetics in the moment or the Psalms or Job to deal with this question. And again, pastors need to have the freedom to keep it simple. What does the Bible say? Like Jason said, let’s go to Scripture and not go with a compelling argument. I don’t think compelling argumentation is very compelling to the soul most of the time.
Kevin Yi: What I really appreciate about both of you guys is that you are humble pastors. That’s so important when somebody is coming to you with these questions. To know that there’s somebody who probably knows the answers who is willing to sit and listen.
I don’t think that’s automatic. I don’t think that just being a pastor makes you humble; that’s something that definitely the Holy Spirit is doing. What are some of the things that have brought you to a more humble space, to not fall into some of the traps that we can fall into as pastors when it comes to these kinds of things? How did you guys learn these lessons that really softened your heart towards those who are struggling in their faith?
Barnabas Piper: Nobody wants to go first on a question no a question about humility.
Jason Min: As with most people, it’s my own failures, getting it wrong so many times. Because I grew up in a pretty legalistic, conservative, Christian environment, the young Jason was the one trying to beat people over the heads with the five points of Calvinism. I had my TULIP.
It’s so true when they say that what’s problematic about our view of leadership and discipleship is that we’ve kind of grown up with Western modernist thinking that has trained us to believe that maturity looks like certainty. So the more certain I was, the more I felt like I was really spiritually mature. But I think as you grow older and you experience more of life—when I got married, there was one more layer added to that, when I had kids, there was another layer, and now as a pastor, another layer—you just realize that life is not black and white. There’s so much ambiguity and so much gray that you have to navigate. Things aren’t as cut and dry as sometimes you’re trained to believe.
In some sense, I almost feel like the opposite of faith is certainty. In Scripture, as people mature in their faith more, they almost feel like they know less and less about God because I think they realize how little they can fit God into their mind. When you see Paul’s ministry, when you track his letters and the things that he wrote over time, he actually believed he was worse and worse and worse. The humility came as he grew in knowledge and experience. It’s a combination of all those things happening.
Barnabas Piper: I resonate so much with what you said, especially starting off certain, and I would say for me, starting off arrogant. By the time I was 22, I was just certain that I knew everything I needed to know. I was theologically overdeveloped and I’d say spiritually really underdeveloped.
As is typical of my learning style, I always have to learn things the hard way. I don’t ever take people’s advice. I wish I could learn from other people’s mistakes, but no, it’s always mine. And it was a period of just crumbling because of hypocrisy in my life, because Christianity is not certainty. It is a rich relationship with Christ. The Lord had to develop me in a meaningful humble relationship.
Ironically, after saying earlier not to use Tim Keller to persuade people, I just read a Tim Keller quote this morning from his Proverbs devotional. It’s about how the gospel gives us the greatest sense of humility because it’s so clear about our need and our inability to save ourselves, and then the greatest sense of confidence because of what Christ has accomplished in us.
Similar to what Jason said, the closer you get to Christ, the more you draw near to God, and the more you’re humbled, not arrogant because you just look at this expanse—and I stare at this and understand it, in some sense more, but in some sense less and less every time. It just blows my mind more what Jesus did, and who I am in juxtaposition to that and the greatness of God. But conversely, it gives me greater confidence.
So spiritual maturity, on the one hand, I think is not certainty but it is confidence. That verse in Mark 9, “Help my unbelief”, when the Father has brought the demon-possessed son to Jesus is is one that just rings in my mind constantly. It’s the both/and aspect where we can’t be Christians unless we can say definitively something that we hang our faith on—I believe in who Jesus is, and what Jesus did, and that his word is authoritative, and that I can trust him no matter what. And then “help my unbelief” covers just about everything else.
That paradigm has been confidence-giving for me as well as it keeps me low, because I look at it, and I go, “I have so much unbelief that needs help,” whether it’s a lack of understanding, perpetual sins, or a temptation to pride—I perpetually need that help and just throwing myself back at the feet of Jesus for more mercy, day in and day out.
Jason Min: The three of us are all pastors. Another thing that can perpetually and hopefully keep you humble is your proximity to your congregation members and to your community. Oftentimes it’s easy to take that posture of arrogance or certainty when you’re distant because you don’t really know what’s going on in the lives of the people around you.
It’s very humbling, when all of a sudden, you realize that it’s the people you love most or the people in your own family who are going through some of these things. The more you get to hear their story and get close, the more it really does bring a certain level of humility and sobriety, even when talking about doubt and deconstruction.
Kevin Yi: You guys have come to see the beauty of theology and the beauty of the gospel not so much in black and white terms but in terms of tension. There’s so many tensions in Scripture—grace and truth, certainty and doubt.
I’ve compared it to a musical instrument. Like a stringed instrument is able to make beautiful music because there’s tension in the strings. When it’s too much one way, there’s not enough actual tension to create the notes. For a lot of us, we’re just looking for that combination of tensions, it’s going to produce the most kind of beautiful music. So I’m thinking not so much about the right answers versus bad answers or wrong answers, but I’m thinking in terms of how do we make the most beautiful music?
Especially for the younger church, we’re not asking whether or not this is true. I think the questions we’re asking are: Is this truth actually good? And is it actually beautiful? As pastors, if we’re not humble, I don’t think it’s possible to teach truth in that manner. So I really appreciate the postures that you guys have taken, the ways you guys are discussing this, and the compassion that you guys have for it for those who are deconstructing and for those who are for those who are disordered.
The last thing I’ll ask before you guys go is with regards to prayer, how can we pray for our congregants or for friends or family members who are in this season of life?
Barnabas Piper: I think it depends on where they are. There are people who are wrestling with traditions and the background, so for them I would pray that they capture Christ’s view of his church. If their heart is drawn to Christ, that they’re going to be able to differentiate between a man-made tradition that maybe once served a purpose but isn’t that good. We can leave behind, we can say goodbye, and be drawn to a genuine, beautiful community of believers.
For those who seem like they’re either on the brink or have abandoned the faith, you’re praying for salvation. One of the things that has been the most sort of uncomfortably surprising to me moving into ministry is the number of people in my own church who I’m not persuaded are followers of Jesus. They are faithful church attenders, they give the outward appearance, and I’m not certain of them—I don’t know that I can be certain of anything—but just I don’t see the spirit at work in their lives. So I think it’s praying for them to come alive, that the Spirit would make them alive to Christ.
Then I think as Jason said earlier, so much depends on the leaders. Praying that we would shepherd these people in a profoundly Psalm 23 way—still waters, green pastures—so that we are part of representing Jesus to them, as opposed to representing the problems that they’re fleeing. I feel burdened by that often because I don’t feel particularly Christ-like and thinking, “If I’m responsible for the shepherding of these people, under Christ’s leadership, am I doing it in a way that makes them want to be closer to Jesus or a way that makes Jesus harder to access, less desirable, less beautiful? How am I doing that? I think that that’s a prayer for the leaders in the church all the time.
Jason Min: To add to that, the way that I’ve prayed a lot for our congregation members is really simple, but it’s that they would know and experience the love of Christ. Sometimes when you’re on the road of deconstruction or doubt, you can feel very alone. Whether it’s an internal thing or some external circumstance, suffering, trauma, abuse, it’s just a very lonely place to be.
We talked about this before we started recording, but in Asian American circles, people can feel like you’re not only turning your back on God, but your family, your heritage, your culture—it can really be a dark, scary place. In those moments, what is the thing that will keep you pursuing or seeking? I think it’s the love of Jesus.
A lot of times, even when people deconstruct, they tell me, the thing that I was most afraid of, is that if I go down this road, that God won’t love me anymore or this community won’t love me anymore. So praying that not only that they would experience that love from Christ himself, but through his church.—that the church would really be able to surround them with that love and care. And as Barnabas said, with that Psalm 23 love.
Kevin Yi: Thank you guys, so much. This was really helpful and deeply encouraging. In the midst of so many questions and so many doubts, to know that what we really need to be doing is setting an example with regards to how we are humbly pursuing Christ as well is helpful and encouraging.
So thank you and thank you to the audience for listening to this podcast. At SOLA we want to resource you guys as much as possible with regards to all the difficult things about being a pastor, especially in the Asian American context. And so we’re just grateful that you guys are journeying with us. Thank you guys so much.