Editor’s Note: This interview is from SOLA Conference 2021. Find more resources and videos here.
Pastor Scott Sauls shares about some of the key witnesses in his own life that led him to faith in Christ, as well as some major lessons that he’s been learning in this past season. He also identifies some of the major challenges and opportunities for the Church and provides a word of encouragement to church leaders.
Below is a transcript of the interview. It has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the audio here.
Q: Who had the biggest impact on your relationship with Christ?
Well, I would say that the first witness of the gospel in my life was my grandmother. I did not grow up in a family that attended church or talked about Jesus or the gospel. But my grandmother on my mother’s side—a woman named Delamae—lived a very simple life in a small blue-collar town, and loved Jesus. She gave me a Bible, and whenever we would visit, she would talk about how she would pray for us. And she would put on, on Sunday afternoons, Charles Stanley sermons on the television, and encouraged us to watch with her. But it never really took until later on.
In high school, a staff member for Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru) who worked with Student Venture (the high school branch of Campus Crusade) named Mark McGoldrick—he’s still a friend of mine I’m still in contact with still working for Cru—led me to Christ. And he took me through the Campus Crusade version of what we call the Roman Path. And that was the first light bulb that went on for me that Christ had come, and he’d done so in order to forgive sins and to give a new life—an abundant life.
I would say, though, that Christ really became the Lord of my life toward the end of college. And that was through a group of people who were just my peers, and most of them were part of Fellowship of Christian Athletes and a church called Mitchell Road Presbyterian, which was the first place I heard the gospel clearly preached on a weekly basis, by a man named John Wood. So, those are the three seasons that eventually led me into faith.
Q: What are some things you’ve learned in this past season of the pandemic?
One of the main things that I’ve been learning this past year in the pandemic has been that the promise Jesus made to build his church, and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it, is true. It’s been well over a year now since the pandemic began, and of course, those of us in ministry felt like the sky was falling at different seasons, at least in our ministries, with lockdowns and closed sanctuaries, having to pivot and learn how to do things online, having a hard time staying in touch with all of our people, and keeping accounts of where everybody is, what they’re up to, and how they’re doing. Not knowing when it was all going to end really did feel like the church was being decimated.
But gradually, we’re starting to discover how resilient the Lord is in keeping his people, and how resilient the church is in that we’ve lost in our own situation so much less than we thought we would. As we start to do re-entry slowly but surely and safely, we’ve lost a lot less than we thought we would, and we’ve actually gained a lot in the past year in terms of sharpening for our ministries the things that are most important and primary and the things that aren’t.
We’ve also discovered that we have a wonderful supportive church family as well. I hear those stories from other pastors as well, even in a year where a lot of pastors struggled to stay in ministry. And yet, it seems like the Lord is just remaining faithful like he always does. So that’s one of the things that I’ve learned this past year is that he stays true to his church in every circumstance.
Q: What have you learned in the midst of recent social turmoil?
With social turmoil being so front center in the past year and a half, it’s felt, on the one hand, like unrest, and yet, on the other hand, it’s brought out and exposed both the worst and the best in us as a people, as a society, and also as as the church. One thing that has been very clear, at least to me, is that the best solutions—and perhaps even the only solutions—to social unrest and social division, are spiritual solutions. I have not seen, witnessed myself, or heard, of any secular solution that has effectively brought true peace—true persuasive peace as opposed to coercive peace—between people groups who are divided from one another, and the gospel gives us that resource.
We’re seeing a lot of really good work that’s happening internally in churches, and also between churches, to do the work of true reconciliation and true diversity. For a lot of years, the American church, or at least parts of the American church, have been satisfied with what you could call tokenism. As long as we have people who look differently and come from different backgrounds in the same room, we think we have a diverse community.
Well, what the last year has taught us is that true diversity is much harder work than that, and much more meaningful work. You’re bringing different cultures, different perspectives, different ideas, ideologies, and politics to the table, for a conversation about what a more robust, equal, and equitable community might look like with things like sharing influence, sharing resources, and sharing power, in order to accomplish something more similar to what we see in Acts chapter 6, where a Gentile group of leaders were fully empowered by an all-Jewish leadership to solve problems that were bringing injury to Gentiles within their midst. And I think we’ve seen more momentum in those areas, even though that we’ve got a lot further to go.
I don’t think, on the other hand, that these things are working very well in the world of politics and in the world of picketing and protesting, even though there’s certainly room and a good basis for things like picketing and protesting. But there doesn’t seem to be the essential underpinning of love and desire for true reconciliation and peace out in the secular sphere, as we do have an opportunity for inside the church. And so I’m hopeful that the church can be countercultural by adding true love, true reconciliation, and true justice, to the equation that doesn’t seem maybe even possible, let alone likely, to be accomplished outside of Christ.
Within American evangelicalism, it appears that we have younger generations bringing a new voice and new ideas and perspectives to the table, which has been, on the one hand, very disruptive, to certain status quo dynamics that have been built, established, protected, funded, and so on, by older generations. It’s been disruptive, yet it’s been refining as well, because older generations don’t want to lose their children, and they don’t want to lose their grandchildren. So there’s this dynamic of careful and humble listening that maybe wasn’t there before when family relationships weren’t as much at stake.
Some of the good that’s coming out of this disruptive, generational dynamic is that people’s perspectives are growing and broadening, in the same way that Adam’s perspective grew when God gave him Eve, his complementary partner. Generations have a complementary effect on each other. They can learn, refine, and sharpen each other.
Also, there has been some unhealth come into the church, as what many have called expressive individualism has been brought to the table in the realm of epistemology, or in the realm of how we determine what’s true and what’s not. Previous generations have, by and large, especially in the church, been settled that the truth comes to us from the outside from God. Now, expressive individualism says that the truth comes from the inside, where our feelings and our impulses are given more authority, sometimes even in the scriptures, and that’s concerning. Hopefully, there can be a pendulum shift back toward the truth that comes to us from the outside, because we don’t want to be standing on the Word of God editing it or revising it—we want to stand under the Word of God so the Word of God can edit and revise the things in us that aren’t healthy and whole, and that are not of Christ. And so, I would say the dynamics have been on the one hand beneficial, and on the other hand, concerning.
The challenge that I foresee is also the opportunity that I foresee, and that is for a more diverse church. Now for the first time in the history of the United States, over 50% of children age 10 and under are from non-White ethnic groups and communities. And that trajectory is only going to continue. So there is the opportunity that’s growing and developing not only in society but also in our churches of greater diversity of perspective and the refining that can come from that to be able to see the world and God and discipleship through the eyes of people from all different kinds of cultures and experiences.
This is Christ’s original vision all the way back to Abraham. You’re going to be the father of people from every nation, tribe, and tongue, continuing through the Gospels and the Great Commission, you know, Jews through Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth, and then the End Times vision of every nation, tribe and tongue gathered around the throne of Christ.
So this is a challenge because true diversity is a challenge. But it’s a worthy challenge that creates an opportunity for greater justice for people groups that have been held down by majority groups, majority power, and majority ideas. As the table becomes broadened, the table of influence and the table of impact becomes broad, and I think that’s a great opportunity. But it’s also painful because it includes certain people letting go of control and other people coming in, hopefully not to seize control, but to share with one another.
If we can get away from the zeal to hold on to power or the zeal to take power, and instead have a zeal to share power and influence together as one, which especially requires the elevation of minority voices and majority historic voices being quick to listen and slow to speak, hopefully, there’s hope for a better, more unified world. But again, as I’ve said before, I don’t think that can happen apart from Christ, and apart from the Holy Spirit and the gospel. So it’ll be a wonderful experiment to be a part of.
Especially for my brothers and sisters who are Asian American, my encouragement is that the Bible itself came to us from pain. And I know from the relationships that I have with brothers and sisters who share with one another the uniqueness of the image of Asian American experience, that this has been a very challenging year and season for Asian American brothers and sisters due to political rhetoric, due to certain responses in society to political rhetoric, even to the point where some people have died. There are all kinds of caricatures that are so painful to have to contend with as an ethnic body of image-bearers. And my encouragement to Asian American brothers and sisters as a minority, as well as to those who are in ministry which—especially the gospel ministry and holding to the integrity of Scripture—is becoming a minority group as well, is that all of Christianity came from that place. The whole Bible came to us from that place.
From a place of being behind culturally—this has always been the narrative for the Jewish people. It was certainly the narrative for the first Christians in the Roman Empire and around Asia Minor. So when the culture is lost, that does not mean that the gospel has been lost. It does not mean that kingdom momentum has been lost. In fact, where the culture is lost—in the classic culture wars—that tends to be where the Church of Jesus Christ thrives the most.
God has this remarkable way of turning our power structures upside down, where it’s the meek who will inherit the earth and where an apostle will write from prison “I rejoice in the Lord always and again, I will say rejoice for the Lord is near; do not be anxious about anything,” and so on. It’s where we will hear the Apostle Paul also say “I’ve learned to delight and things like weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties.” This is something that Christians, and especially Christians of minority descent—weakness, hardship, persecution, difficulties—these are common to, if not daily experience to, daily concerns, and potentially daily fears, and things that children have to be shepherded in and taught in, to not lose heart because the Lord is on the side of those who can be described in that way in terms of their day to day and life experience.
But I would also say, to continue to speak truth to power and to continue to advocate for what’s right, good, and just, and to courageously use your voices to encourage and persuade especially the church in the United States, to see what our part can be to bring God’s future or at least parts of it—morsels and crumbs of God’s future—into our present reality. For a more unified world, keep lovingly pushing—keep forgiving, but keep pushing for better. Because the Lord has better for us, and the prophetic voices that come from a place of pain are the most important voices for change to happen—first in the church, and then more broadly in society.
Mainly, don’t lose heart. Jesus has overcome the world. In this world, we will have trouble. But he has overcome the world.
For more resources from SOLA Conference 2021, click here.