The Tim Ahlman Podcast

Joining God's Story: A Conversation with Michael Goheen

• Unite Leadership Collective • Episode 22

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What if the entire Bible tells one cohesive story—and you're invited to play a part in it? Dr. Michael Goheen, author of "The Drama of Scripture," unpacks how understanding Scripture as a unified narrative transforms our spiritual lives and missional purpose. This narrative understanding transforms our approach to Scripture, vocation, and our role in God's kingdom.

• The Missio Dei describes God's unfolding plan to renew creation that was broken in the fall
• God's mission moves from one family to all families, one nation to all nations, one place to the ends of the earth
• Understanding the Bible as one story gives proper meaning to individual biblical passages
• The church's role is to embody God's blessing and knowledge for the sake of all nations
• Luther's view of baptism as daily drowning the old self and rising to new life remains relevant today
• Luther's understanding of vocation challenges false divisions between sacred and secular work
• Sin fundamentally curves us inward when we were designed to be curved outward toward God and others
• The resurrection inaugurates the new creation where all aspects of creation will be restored and perfected
• Our final hope isn't escaping to heaven but resurrected bodies in a renewed creation
• The biblical story invites our participation as it continues to unfold until Christ returns


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Tim Allman Podcast. Pray, the joy of Jesus is fueling you for a life of learning and love. As you carry the light and love of Jesus out into a dark and dying world. It's a beautiful day to be alive. I pray that you're excited man for a conversation today.

Speaker 1:

I've been looking forward to hanging out with this brother who has had an impact on one of our actually more than one of our students learners, bivocational, co-vocational learners. Most recently, though, eric Malden graduated from MTC, the Mission Training Center, and we'll get into some of the nuts and bolts of that learning journey. But, reverend Dr Michael Goheen, if you've not heard of Michael Goheen, he is one of. I got to build you up here, brother. You are well-respected in the wider church as one of the preeminent missiologists around today, and he has a history of teaching, preaching, but his two books, the Narrative of Scripture and the Symphony of Mission, which is a follow-up book, they need to be on your reading list. The drama of Scripture I said narrative, the drama of Scripture is one of his most well-known books. So, dr Goheen, how are you doing today, brother? Thanks for having a conversation with me.

Speaker 2:

Good to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 1:

Hey, all right, cool. So just tell a little bit more. You had some time in the parish and then you just were telling me you were a professor of preaching. So what kind of brought you to where you are today?

Speaker 2:

It's a long story. I'm almost 70. So how long do you have for an old man's story?

Speaker 1:

Just a brief biography. It's good.

Speaker 2:

I was a church planter and then a pastor for about seven years in Canada. And of course Canada is a much more non-Christian, very post-Christian country and church planting and pastoring there is a very different process in many ways than in America. And then I taught in the university for I don't know 25 or 30 years. I taught biblical studies, I taught missiology, but my main thing was worldview studies. So I taught about two or three different universities. Since then I've taught in seminary Calvin Seminary, covenant Seminary, regent College but most recently we planted and started Missional Training Center in Phoenix, arizona, which is an extension site of Calvin Seminary, where we're training leaders for the Phoenix area. So I've been, I've covered a lot of areas. I feel like I'm a jack of all trades, master of nuns, in the area of academics.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's not. That's not true. You know a lot as it relates to scripture and the way you communicate. I've sat in on a couple of your classes with some of our students down there. The way you communicate, you have the gift of theological hospitality which I think today in our denominations and in the wider American Christian church, the church in the West, from Catholic to charismatic we need more. We need more theological hospitality and you understand, because we got a lot of listeners who are Lutheran. You understand a lot of the Lutheran distinctives and can be kind of kind in those conversations with those who may think we're kind of weird.

Speaker 1:

You know, and we may think back and forth, like you just said, a really comfortable space for talking about Jesus. I praise God for that. And what we should all agree on, dr Goheen, is the mission of God and the kingdom of God advancing. So let's start with that. If someone asks you what is the Missio Dei, why do we even have to use Latin for this, for goodness sake? You know what is the mission of God. What do you start? I know you start a lot of your classes, your conversations, just giving a general summary of the mission of God. So let's start there, dr.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, precisely because that terminology is so difficult and also understood in such contradictory ways, I often find myself trying to use other language to describe it. But I suppose Missio Dei simply is a Latin word that means mission of God and what it's trying to describe it. But I suppose Missio Dei simply is a Latin word that means mission of God and what it's trying to describe is God's plan and purpose, to use two words that you'll find in the New Testament God's plan and purpose for his creation. That unfolds in the biblical story. So the mission of God first of all understands the Bible as one unfolding story. It begins in creation. That God's plan and purpose for the creation is messed up in the fall of Adam and Eve and the remainder of the biblical story, from Genesis 3 on, is God's plan and purpose to restore the creation to be what it was meant to be in the beginning, and so it begins with that narrative. And that narrative at the center of that narrative is the person of Jesus Christ, in whom is revealed and accomplished God's plan and purpose to renew and restore the creation, which will then be completed when Christ returns.

Speaker 2:

But the Missio Dei is trying to describe the fact that that story has a missional trajectory and what I mean by that is that the story moves from one family to all the families of the earth, the family of Abraham to all the families of the earth.

Speaker 2:

It moves from one nation Israel to all the nations of the earth. It moves from one place Palestine or Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. So there's a missional trajectory. So it is trying to show that God's mission is an unfolding story of the triune God, where the Father has a purpose. He sends Christ in the middle of history to accomplish that purpose and then the Father and the Son then send the Spirit on the church to make known that good news to the ends of the earth. But this unfolding of a story of the triune God to renew the creation has this trajectory and takes a people up into that trajectory and uses them to bring about his plan and his purpose. So if I was to very simply summarize, the Missio Dei is trying to stress that there's a story. It's a story of the triune God to renew the creation and that God takes a people, chooses a covenant people and takes that people up into his plan and purpose to bring about what he is accomplishing.

Speaker 1:

That's so good. There's a lot of folks who lament that biblical literacy is on the decline, that in a post-Christian or you could say even pre-Christian culture, those stories that used to ground us in culture, just all the Daniel, lyons and Jonah, I mean all these kind of general stories from the Old Testament through the New Testament, they're just not readily available and maybe one of the I think I'd love to get your take on this. One of the strategic evangelistic goals, purposes, aims for us right now is connecting smaller stories. This is what a lot of our preaching tries to do in our context our smaller stories, even biblical smaller stories, to the grand story. Because here's the way my brain works. Unless I understand why you're telling me this and how it fits in something larger, I'm going to forget it. But if I can place myself in the smaller story, like, why did Jesus come and touch and heal the leper? It's because from the very beginning of time, sin entered in disease, entered in death, entered into our story. And Jesus enters in as God in the flesh to undo the impact of sin, to bring healing and wholeness and restoration, not just physically but relationally. And this is why he touches the leper in anticipation of there being no more leprosy on that last day when the goodness and grace and the life of Jesus wins once and for all. So anything more to say about how we recapture biblical imagination around the grand narrative and then locate the smaller, even biblical stories in the grand story.

Speaker 1:

And let me land it here. I think there was a season of Christendom where we were not taught, and maybe this is one of the reasons why culture changed so much. We were not taught and I don't need to get into the generations and things like that was we were not taught, and I don't need to get into the generations and things like that. But we were not taught, especially here in the West, how the smaller stories like why do I even need to know about Jonah? You know it's whatever, it has no impact on my life, and maybe there was a season in American Christianity where we didn't connect things to the wider Missio Dei as well as we could have. So I know there's a lot in that question. Any kind of response, though, to smaller stories needed to be grounded in a larger story there.

Speaker 2:

Dr Goheen, yeah, any event or any particular story will always be understood in a bigger context. It's not a matter of whether a bigger context is needed. You always have a bigger context and that bigger context gives meaning to the story. And sometimes that bigger context and that bigger context gives meaning to the story, and sometimes that bigger context is not articulated, it's assumed, and so often, when we tell the story, we're assuming certain things about the context, and often, if that context is wrong, it will distort the meaning of the story. And so what we have in the Bible is a canon, that is, 67 books, and those books give us a story that begins in creation and ends in new creation, and every single book is within the context of that story it arose out of. The story, finds its meaning within that story, and every event, every story, every statement within any one of those books have to be understood within the context of that book and that book within the context of a story. And so understanding the bigger story of the Bible is essential for proper understanding of any particular text.

Speaker 2:

I like to illustrate that in this silly kind of way. A fox says to a crow my, you have a beautiful voice, won't you sing me a song and I ask my students what's the meaning of that event. And I say and if they don't know the story, I get them to guess. And some will immediately say, well, the fox is trying to trick the crow, it wants to eat the crow. And then, after I rebuke them for being a little bit too skeptical and saying, well, what if it's a Christian fox? Then they'll say, well, this fox is trying to use his spiritual gift of encouragement to encourage this poor crow. And you can go on and on giving reasons why this fox is saying this to the crow. And the question is is he got the spiritual gift of encouragement? Does he want to eat the crow? Is he trying to tease the crow? Is he a tone-deaf choir director starting a choir in the forest? What in the world is going on with this event? The only way you can know the meaning of that event is knowing the bigger story in which that event is found. And, as it happens, it's an Aesop's fable. The crow has a piece of food in its mouth and it wants to get that food, and so it flatters the crow. The ugly crow that has never had any kind of compliment about its voice is flattered, opens its mouth to sing a song, the food falls out, fox runs away with it, and the moral of the story is don't be deceived by flattery. There you've got the meaning of the event given to you by the context of the story, but you can make up any meaning you want with that event without the context, and so I want to suggest that the Bible has the exact same thing.

Speaker 2:

You gave an example of leprosy. Why was God, why was Jesus healing the leper? Well, you can say, because he was trying to show he was God. He was trying to give a big, powerful demonstration. Well, that might be partially true, but what this was was a sign of the kingdom, the kingdom that was coming, where disease will be defeated once and for all, as the prophets had promised. The leper would be healed. So when you have the bigger story, it gives meaning to every single event within that story, and you also mentioned that the idea of losing the story.

Speaker 2:

There's a book that's called the Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, written in 1970s by a biblical scholar, and his argument is that Jews and Christians have always understood the Bible as one story that formed the context for understanding the whole world and understood that from the beginning.

Speaker 2:

But with the beginning of the 18th century and the coming of the Enlightenment and where understanding was changed around physics to understand bits and pieces without the bigger whole, in other words the new science coming in in the 16th century, 17th, 16th and 17th century, what happens is biblical studies and the church begin to understand the Bible in that way and there's an eclipse of biblical narrative over the last 200 years. So sometimes people will come to me after reading drama of scripture and they'll say that was so exciting, a whole new way of understanding scripture. And I want to say no, it's actually an old way of understanding scripture. It's the way the church has understood the biblical, the Christian faith for the most of its history. It's the way Jesus understood what he was doing. It's the way the Jews understood the Bible. So returning to the Bible is one story, is returning to what the Bible actually is.

Speaker 1:

Love that, love it, love it. What are the other ways? This is where my mind I just struggle full confession here. I'm in a tribe that has dichotomized confessional Lutheranism from missional Lutheranism, which is very strange thing to do. We're a confessing people that are on mission to make Jesus known. That seems to be something that should be a uniting force and yet we've got these. And I think at the heart of tribalism that can take place in our denomination or any denomination, is a juxtaposition of story, and here's the way I'm kind of starting to formulate it is.

Speaker 1:

Jesus talks about the kingdom, the advancement of the kingdom. The kingdom of heaven is here, but unfortunately we have put the church as the locus of the kingdom rather than a conduit of the kingdom, bringing, in our context, word and sacrament out to the world. There's a catalytic effect in our gathering. Sacrament out to the world, there's a catalytic effect in our gathering, but unfortunately a lot of the conversation in our denomination I would say many church bodies can move in this direction. We start to control what we can control, which is the Sunday hour of power, you know, being kind of gathered together, rather than this emphasis of the scattering into all of our, the royal priesthood being scattered into all of our places, carrying the story of Jesus out into the world. And so there's a counter hermeneutic is is the Bible centering us in this is the way good church people do it or is it scattering us? Is it sending us?

Speaker 1:

And I, as one who's I haven't read as much as you have, but I have for my doctorate a whole chapter was on the Missio Dei. It's so evident to me that God is on a mission to get all of his kids back, and one of the means I think it's a primary means is the church on mission, but it's not the only means of which God is at work out in the world. And when I say church, I'm using small church centered around table and font, rather than the table and font mobilizing us as the forgiven, the redeemed, out into the world in all of our various vocations. So I think there's a counter-hermeneutic that we're just wrestling with today as we understand Scripture. Anything more to say there, dr Goheen?

Speaker 2:

Well, you've raised about 25 issues there, tim, and I'm not sure which one to jump on. One of the things I think that probably is true the Lutheran Church is also true of my own tradition is that we've often started with an understanding of who we are as church from within our confessions and within our systematic theology and our confessional tradition. And at the time of the Reformation, of course, there was battles around ecclesiology, and those battles centered around the preaching of the Word and the sacrament. And so we start defining the church because of the contextual, the context of history at that time, where the battles between the Catholics and the Reformers were around what the church is word and sacrament and so on. And so we start defining the church in terms of what it does within those four walls. In other words, what do we do on Sunday morning? What we're doing? Are we doing the preaching right? Are we doing the sacraments right? Are we disciplining right?

Speaker 2:

Now, all those things are really important. In fact, one of the things I love about Luther is his view of baptism that the whole Christian life is a daily baptism, dying to the old and rising to the new. These things are very important. However, when you put the word and sacrament and what we're doing on Sunday morning within the bigger context of the story. The story is about the coming of God's kingdom, and the church is a kingdom people, and that kingdom people gather for the sake of being renewed as the new humanity, so, as they are sent out into the world, they can bear witness to what it means to be fully human. Put another way, adamic humanity was called in their beginning to be a people that glorify God in the entirety of their lives, cultural, social, in every part of their lives. It was the fall that ruined that, and the whole story is about recovering a humanity to be what Adamic humanity failed to be Well.

Speaker 1:

If you've been listening, you probably wondered how did they change clothes so fast? Well, dr Goheen and I had a technical difficulty, and so we're picking up the conversation with this question. Dr Goheen, just to be honest, are you doing well? Brother? He's in Vancouver right now and it's rainy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's rainy and it's cold, but at least my family's here.

Speaker 1:

There you go. That's best. All right, let's dig into this. So I'm always curious about the Missio Dei, the mission of God, and other hermeneutical lenses through which we can look at the scriptures. I am biased. I've drank the mission of God from Genesis through Revelation Kool-Aid. But some others who love Jesus let's be honest and want to see that God may not view it with the same type of lens. So what are two or three other popular hermeneutical approaches that don't start with the mission of God, dr Goheen?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think, to put it another way around, instead of asking what doesn't, ask what's unique about it and then realize that this has to be incorporated into other hermeneutical approaches that are stressing important things Like, for example, most hermeneutical approaches would be deal with language, grammar, would deal with history, culture, would deal with literary considerations, theological considerations, and that's all important. Many more would go beyond that I think rightly so and what we would call redemptive historical hermeneutic and say that we got to realize that the Bible is one story and you've got to take every section not only within its bigger literary context but also within the redemptive, historical, narrative context of the whole of the Bible. All of that is good, but what a missional hermeneutic is trying to do is two things. Number one, to acknowledge that the story of the Bible call it the Missio Dei if you like, but the story of the Bible is what God is doing to restore and renew and heal the creation. And so the Missio Dei is the triune God and the story of that triune God as he restores and renews and heals the creation.

Speaker 2:

And a missional hermeneutic wants to recognize that there is a trajectory in that story, that is, that the story moves from bringing blessing to one family and moving that to all the families of the earth. Or giving the knowledge of God to one nation and that moves to all the nations of the earth. Or God setting his rule in one place Zion or Jerusalem and moving that rule to the ends of the earth. So there's this trajectory of from the one to the many, from one family to the many nations, one family to the many families, from one nation to the many nations, from one place to the ends of the earth. And it recognizes where you're within, where you are within that story, in that missional trajectory. But within that trajectory, the question is what is the vocation of God's people?

Speaker 2:

What role does God's people have, what role do they play within that story of moving the blessing from one family to all families, knowledge of God from one nation to all nations, and so on?

Speaker 2:

And I would argue that what we are called to do is embody the blessing of God, embody the knowledge of God, embody the knowledge of God, embody the reign of God for the sake of the nations, and that this vocation we must be constantly asking in our hermeneutic. How is this particular section of the Bible forming God's people to play their particular role in this story. So what our missional hermeneutic is doing is taking account of this trajectory, an account of what God's people are called to be, and then asking the question in the present how is that text forming God's people originally for their particular role in the story, and how is that particular text trying to form us today, to pick up our particular role in the story? So what I would want to just say is that a missional hermeneutic doesn't take on everything in hermeneutics. It's just saying there's this missional dimension, this missional trajectory of the story, this missional vocation of God's people that's often missed when we're talking about hermeneutics.

Speaker 1:

So so good. Are you paying attention? I'm sure you are. You're well-learned Some of the secular psychologists and their agreement on story being what grounds us that every human being sees the world through a story, and for Christians, obviously, this is a gateway and open a wide open door, I think, into a meta or grounding story that's connected to the God of the universe. Have you done some listening to what's going on in culture right now and love to get your take on the use of story, dr Goheen?

Speaker 2:

Well, absolutely. I think that what is happening in our culture today is a breakdown of the enlightenment vision of the world that's been basically the vision of Western culture for 200 years, and that enlightenment vision is a story. It's a story of progress through science and technology. But we have been fooled into thinking we're not living out of a story, we're living out of science. We're living out of this scientific vision provided by the Enlightenment and as that is breaking down, we're realizing no, that was a story and that story is breaking down.

Speaker 2:

And there are all these other stories. There's the Muslim story and there's various modern stories. And as post-modernity rejects the idea of a big story, they're saying but there are smaller stories we're living out of. There's the feminist story, there's the green story, there's all these various stories, and so I think that's led at many points in culture for a re-examination of what's the bigger context in which we live and a recognition that that bigger context is a story.

Speaker 2:

But the difference is they're talking about stories in the plural, that we all have our own story to live out of, and there's all these many stories in a pluralistic culture, whereas the Bible is making a pretty audacious claim to be the true story, singular, of the whole world and the whole of human life. But, yes, that is an option, an opening into talking about how we are shaped by some narrative. But the reality is we're being shaped by some bigger narrative which we believe to be the true story of the world, and I would even say, as a friend of mine has said about post-modernity, when they say there is no true story.

Speaker 1:

They are telling a whopper of a story. Yeah, it takes a lot of work to deny this grounding. Well, we see the world through story and stories, but that there's a grounding story. It is a whopper to deny a grounding story. So take the scriptures and the way the scriptures kind of came into being from Genesis through Revelation.

Speaker 1:

There's an open debate in some academic theological circles around open or closed canon. Right, and I think on the one sense there's nothing else that needs to be written Like we understand it. But insofar as it's open, it's open for the age of the church to advance the kingdom of God. And I'm living and breathing this living story in anticipation of the ultimate conclusion, or you could say new beginning, of Jesus coming back to make all things new Revelation 20, 21. So, yeah, talk about open, closed canon. In the Lutheran story we're definitely like Bible, we're like big time Bible. So we're really kind of leery about this conversation. But I think the role of the church active, participatory, anticipation that's a shout out to Michael Gorman that I actually interviewed here recently Our work in the world today not to earn God's grace but to participate actively in his mission Talk about open, closed text Dr Goheen, your perspective.

Speaker 2:

Well, if we're talking about the canon, the canon's clearly closed.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, obviously.

Speaker 2:

The finality of the final revelation of God is Jesus Christ. That's the final revelation. He's closed it, and the New Testament is that witness to Jesus Christ. That's the final revelation. He's closed it and the New Testament is that witness to Jesus Christ. But to say that doesn't mean that the story has ended. It means the story is continuing.

Speaker 2:

As a matter of fact, I would argue that the way that Luke has constructed the book of Acts is to invite us into the story when he ends in Acts 28,. He ends on this very strange note. You know you've been tracing Paul moving through all these trials until he gets to Rome and you're wondering what happens to Paul. But you're left with almost this abrupt, shocking ending where, well, abrupt ending, where he's sitting, where he's housed, and he under house arrest. He is preaching the kingdom of God and you kind of say he's been telling such a good story. Why does he end it on this note of he's preaching the kingdom of God? What happened to Paul? And you wonder. It doesn't seem to bring this to a close and yet I think what Luke is doing there is giving this abrupt ending and is using a particular literary device which is used by others, incidentally, in the ancient world, and that literary device is this story is not ended. Won't you come and join this story?

Speaker 2:

Because the movement of the gospel Jesus has said in Acts 1.8, is to the ends of the earth. And Rome is not the ends of the earth. It never was never considered to be. We have not reached the ends of the earth. Come, become part, not the ends of the earth. It never was never considered to be. We have not reached the ends of the earth. Come, become part of this story.

Speaker 2:

So, even though the canon is closed, the whole idea of the story being an open story and being a story that's going to continue until the consummation, a story into which we are invited, is important. I use the idea of a six-act story creation, sin, israel, christ, the mission of the church and consummation. And so the fifth act is the church. And I like to say there's two scenes. Scene one is the movement from Jerusalem to Rome, told in the book of Acts. Scene two are the rest of the movements within that story of moving from Rome to the ends of the earth, of which we are a part, and so we participate in that story. It remains an open story, while the canon itself has given a definitive testimony and witness to Jesus Christ as that final revelation of God.

Speaker 1:

So Acts is a type of suspended invitational story. Yes, I would say, and get your take on this. I've had some guests talking about Mark 16, and some manuscripts don't have 9 through 20. Most of the guys that I've actually interacted with think that that is how late of an edition, but nonetheless, that Mark is telling a story much like the Odyssey and the Iliad.

Speaker 1:

And now you said Luke in Acts that invites people to put themselves in the shoes of the women who leave the empty tomb having heard the angelic proclamation with fear and great trembling. And they said no one to nobody, nothing to nobody is kind of the Greek translation right. And so the invitation is what we know. They actually went and told the apostles, like we have the other, but you're invited into it. You just you've not seen Jesus Blessed. Are you who have not seen and yet believed that the tomb is empty? What are you going to do about it? Are you going to go and share with the women? So yeah, there's all sorts of these literary devices that are found in scripture that are quite fascinating. What are your thoughts at the end of Mark there? Am I okay? Am I on good territory?

Speaker 2:

I think that's true. I've just been reading about it. I read about that fairly recently and I think it could well be that Mark leaves this suspended ending as well and asks what are you going to do about the resurrection?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, cool. Hey, let's take a little pivot. You've taught for many years and some of our students in the Mission Training Center, MTC, and it is such a unique experience. I got to sit in on one of your classes and you've got well. I'll just let you tell the story of how it kind of came to be, because it's a very unique, unique model that has maybe more rabbinic type undertones than many of our higher ed models today. Tell the story, Dr Goheen.

Speaker 2:

It's a hard, it'd be hard to tell this. It's a long, long story. In a nutshell, I was invited to train leaders in the Phoenix area and there was a few things going on. Right now we're in we're in a situation where seminary education is in deep, deep trouble financially. I think the whole enlightenment model of education is breaking deep, deep trouble financially. I think the whole Enlightenment model of education is breaking down, where you kind of fill people with a lot of knowledge and expect them to apply it, and that whole model is breaking down.

Speaker 2:

And I just heard yesterday that the Trinity Seminary, what's been a huge and prominent seminary in the United States for the evangelical tradition, is now moving to Trinity Western prominent seminary in the United States for the evangelical tradition is now moving to Trinity Western, which is in my neck of the woods here in British Columbia and is joining there because it just can't sustain itself. This is an ongoing problem, many, many places. And so I was invited to come and to partner with a network, an ecumenical network of churches, to train leaders and one of their primary concerns was to have a missional curriculum, a missional curriculum which would nurture missional churches in their missional identity but also would enable them to understand the cultural trends around about them. So I was primarily invited to design a seminary with a missional curriculum. But it began to move out and it was not simply a missional curriculum but a missional pedagogy, a missional structure, a whole way of doing evaluation and assignments.

Speaker 2:

That would be different and, in a nutshell, what we are doing is we take on small cohorts, no bigger than 15 to 17, and it's for the purpose of discipling them, giving them more than simply head knowledge. And as we disciple them, we bring them into our home. So we have a home environment. We eat a meal together, either a hot breakfast early in the morning or a hot supper late at night into the evening. And what we do is we discuss together and we really get to know one another well. And it's a four-year cohort where they stick together and do this missional curriculum over four years and we've found it powerfully transformative, not simply in the mind, but also transforming leaders to think about their vocation. What does it mean to be a missional church? So, in a nutshell, that's what it's all about. It's a very different way of doing seminary, both pedagogically as well as curricularly, also structurally. We're not a freestanding seminary, we're one that's woven in in many ways to the churches in Phoenix.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's pretty wonderful and there's great benefit to studying with those in your same tradition. I went to Concordia Seminary in St Louis four years residential. Third year is your internship, and you develop deep bonds. This is some of the main arguments for residential only right. You develop deep bonds with your classmates and with your professors, and there's a culture. You're kind of enculturated there.

Speaker 1:

The opportunities today, though, is I think we are missing on context and curation. You get to kind of curate as more the rabbinic type leader. They sit with you for a long period of time and kind of understand your view connected to scripture obviously of the world and how theology is not just spoken but gets lived out. You get to model that with your wife. It's pretty impressive, and then the assignments are very character centered and context centered. Right, you're inviting the living out of whatever the teaching is, and, man, the verdict is in.

Speaker 1:

It's great. It's great, man, the guys that came through. Are they getting now more kind of the Lutheran, et cetera? Yeah, fine, it's great. I love our confession, but they got to learn and they have an openness and a sensitivity ecumenically. Let's get into the very strands, though, of Christianity. What do you say to the student who says you know what, dr Goheen, I don't want to be a part of any kind of denomination or strand of theological thinking. I just want to be a Christian connected to a non-denominational church, because I don't want any of those labels or any of that baggage of history, etc. How do you lovingly talk to that brother or sister, dr Goheen?

Speaker 2:

I would say that you're very much in a tradition, just like a Lutheran or a Calvinist or a Catholic or a Mennonite or whatever. You are very much in an evangelical tradition and that tradition has shaped you deeply and to call it non-denominational is to fool yourself. You're very much in a tradition and I can just ask you three, four, five questions about what you believe and I can show you where that comes from in terms of a historical development and show you that in fact you've got a confession of faith. In fact you have liturgical practices. You've got a whole tradition at work shaping and forming you, but you're just calling it non-denominational.

Speaker 1:

Because everybody comes from somewhere right and I think every guy's got, and so you got to look like where did those pastors go to learn? Like that obviously shaped the way they view the world. So let's talk. There's a lot of Lutherans that are listening to this. Dr Goheen, I know you're kind and charitable in your take on Luther. I've heard that first and second hand from our students. What ideas, teachings and practices do you think of Martin Luther should the wider church today consider? And maybe there's some reading that goes along with it. And you know, luther was not Jesus by any stretch and there's some parts of our story that were kind of rough too. But let's hunt the good stuff first and then we can offer a kind critique to dear Martin Luther. What's your take on Luther?

Speaker 2:

Well, I draw on Luther quite often and I would just mention a few things right off. On Luther quite often, and I would just mention a few things right off I really appreciate from the Catechism his views of baptism, that the Christian life is a daily baptism of drowning ourselves, drowning the old in ourselves and rising to the new. I think baptism is something that's been lost in the broader evangelical culture and the significance of it, and I suspect if you look at many Lutherans, they're going to have to go back to Luther and learn what Luther was saying as well. We all need to learn our traditions again, but what he said about baptism was excellent. I think the importance of his comments and where he came from and vocation is important.

Speaker 2:

During the Reformation he was challenging the division of life between a secular and sacred idea. He says you know, being a shoemaker is just as important as being a priest, and so the importance of vocation is important for, I think, significant. I think also his understanding of prayer is significant, the importance of prayer. John Calvin was like that too. I think there is among the Reformers an understanding of prayer that we need desperately to recover. So those are the ones I think about immediately.

Speaker 2:

And maybe there's one thing I like most it might seem like a small thing, but I don't think it is in our culture and that is his understanding of sin as being curved inward. But we are created to be curved outward. In other words, humanity is created to curve all we are and everything we are, all our resource, to be curved outward to the glory of God and outward to serve others sacrificially. But what changes? Is not the constituents of who we are? But now all those things are curved inward on ourselves. And that idea of sin being curved in on ourselves rather than being curved out, I think in a narcissistic, self-centered, self-absorbed culture. I think we need to hear Luther again saying that's at the very heart of what sin is, and the heart of the gospel is to call us to serve others sacrificially and to live our lives outwardly for the glory of God.

Speaker 1:

Hey, thank you for that kind of overview on some of the things you love most about Luther. I'm going to make a connection between so baptism, this one-time event that has ongoing ramifications, creating a new man, a new woman in me, the old being drowned, and I got this new identity. Now I am wrapped up in Christ. The Holy Spirit now makes me his dwelling place and for we as Lutherans, this is not anything I'm not accepted Like. If it's me, I'm actually coming kicking and screaming because there's a flesh that must be drowned right. So it's Christ's work for me, but then it always moves out. I've been convicted of my sin and now I am motivated by the Spirit, empowered, equipped, inspired whatever adjective you want to use to be about God's missional work in the world. There's a cause that I'm a part of. There's a debate in Lutheran circles about are you a confessional or a missional Lutheran? Right, and it's two sides of the same coin. I confess I am a sinner, thought, word and deed by what I've done and by goodness gracious, as you look at sin, there's no shortage of things I could do that I don't do, sins of omission. So, oh, wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death. Then baptism comes and I get reminded of who I am. And then I'm called up and out into this marvelous mission, empowered by the Holy Spirit, living a life of prayer and dependence upon the presence of God, the power of God, the voice and words of God to speak, the audacity of the whole thing that he would choose to work through me. And then I'm tethered to a tradition of a family, a church, a group of people who are on mission to make Jesus known, and, oh, we gather consistently and we've got all these rituals, et cetera, but therefore relationship God and then with one another, and we get to be sent out, like in all of our different vocations. This is, I think, the vocational piece that you bring up. We need a re understanding of Luther's understanding of a vocation. I just did.

Speaker 1:

I got to talk for three hours yesterday, dr Goheen, at on a career day at Valley Lutheran High School down the road here, and about 150 students kind of came through. There's probably, you know, 20 or so is a high number of people. Young kids are thinking of teaching or being a pastor or something like that, you know. And I asked what's church work, right? Well, that's what the pastor does and all this kind of stuff. I was like, oh guys, come on now, we're all into whatever the Lord calls you into. There is church work, and if I could get rid of some vernacular professional church work, oh my goodness, what are we talking about? And then nonprofessional church work.

Speaker 1:

We get into these debates in Lutheran circles about how Lutheran they need to be, we need at all of our universities and things like that, and they bifurcate the kids between professional church workers and non. Give me a break. Some are going to be paid, some are not going to be paid, but we're all about advancing the kingdom of God. We need a new understanding of vocation. And it's not new, it's actually very, very old. And thank you, thank you, martin Luther. Hey, this has been fun, dr Goheen, let's close with this question. What will it be returns? This is going to be aired in our Easter season of the church year. What makes you expectant and joyful about that great and glorious day? Give us a little. I can only imagine I've sang that song. I can only imagine, actually, dr Goheen, how many times. But we don't have to just use our imagination. Scripture gives us a great, great picture. Paint that picture. Tell that story, dr Goheen.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I think, first of all, it's interesting that you mentioned Easter and resurrection, because if you look at a lot of systematic theologies, people don't know what to do with the resurrection. The cross, yes, because the cross deals with our sin, but the resurrection? The resurrection is the inauguration of the new creation. The resurrection is a powerful affirmation of this world, of this material, if you want to use that word creation. We are bodily creatures made to live in this world, and this idea of living in heaven when we die is false. One of my grandsons, recently we were talking he said you know, heaven is like a hotel. We go there for a little while to stay there, but really the idea is to come back home. And yeah, we go to heaven after we die the intermediate state but after that we're coming back home to live in these bodies, on this new creation. And so the resurrection is a powerful affirmation that the new creation, the kingdom of God, the renewal of this world, has been inaugurated. And so what's this world going to be like? It's going to be like everything we're doing now, but with sin gone, with the curse gone. It's going to be the way God intended the creation to be in the very beginning when he concluded that in Genesis 131, and it was very good and the very good changed to being under a curse because of human rebellion and the idea for the biblical story was to remove that sin and remove that curse, to restore the creation to what it was meant to be in the beginning, not to remove us from the creation.

Speaker 2:

There's a Lutheran theologian I probably shouldn't mention him just because I don't know sensitivities in the Lutheran tradition but there's a Lutheran theologian that says if the gospel is just about picking up a few splinters from the creation, ie human beings, and taking them to heaven, then he says, then salvation is not gone as far as sin and the curse and this is his words and it fails to be redemption. In other words, redemption is only if it goes as far as the curse is found in that wonderful hymn that the gospel is about renewing everything that sin and the curse has touched and restoring the entire creation. So I love sports, my wife loves music. I'll just take those two things. We are going to enjoy sports on the new creation watching and playing but it's going to be totally all the curse and evil will be removed from it. Same thing with music and every other part of the creation that you love.

Speaker 1:

That's going to be great. I like sports too. I was a football and baseball player in college a long time ago, 27 years ago and I've often wondered if there was like competition. And I just think competition is fun. And I don't think there's going to be equality of gifts. I think there's still going to be diversity of gifts, right, and I think I'm going to perfectly rejoice, because what does sin do? It leads me to compare and inappropriately compete, like I want that gift. No, you're going to be perfectly content with how God, god made you to sing that song, shoot that, whatever the game happens to be, to do that work Right, the work is pre-fall. We'll just perfectly rejoice in the work, perfectly rejoice in the fun, and it will have. It's not going to be boring, it's not going to be harps, it's going to be embodied. It's just a right relationship forever with God. I like these.

Speaker 1:

I talk about four quadrants at funerals, right, bob or Sue, she looks good, he looks good Now you haven't seen anything yet. When he gets that, she gets that resurrected body and perfection is stored, restored with God, self, others and the rest of creation. You can say sin has damaged all four of those quadrants and it starts obviously with God, but then at shame. You know I'm actually looking down in shame at my sin. No more shame, no more guilt, no more sin. And then my eyes are up and out looking at others living in perfect harmony and relationship with others, and then I have no desire for anything in creation to replace who God is, my identity and how he's provided and sustained.

Speaker 1:

I'll be perfectly content in my daily bread, rather than all of the idols that we make today and the ways we try to numb ourself from the pain of existence. No more addiction. It's gonna be spectacular God self, others, the rest of creation. Any more addiction. It's going to be spectacular God self, others, the rest of creation. Any thoughts on kind of the four quadrants there, dr Goheen?

Speaker 2:

I love those. I speak of four relationships. We have the relationship with God. That defines everything else. We have many kinds of relationships with others, from the most intimate in marriage to friendships and beyond, and they all are different in marriage to friendships and beyond and they all are different, but we'll be restored in all of those. They will be restored in both ruling and stewarding God's good creation.

Speaker 2:

I think cultural development will continue and then we're restored to ourselves, and the way I think about being restored to ourselves is there's many dimensions emotional, rational, historical, cultural, social, ethical and all of those will find their proper place centered in God and there will be harmony. But what happens right now within ourselves is something gets disjointed like idolatry, causes us to take other things and make them too big in our lives. There's going to be harmony within ourselves. There's going to be harmony with others. There's going to be harmony with the non-human creation and harmony with God, which is most important, and I think that's the way it was in the beginning. And I think when you look at Genesis 3, it's precisely those things that you see are broken as a result of Adam's rebellion and are going to be healed in the new creation.

Speaker 1:

Have you read Thomas Aquinas and his four idols? Are you aware? Power, money, pleasure and fame. He wrote kind of and it's been kind of matriculated into different traditions. But I've been doing a lot of thinking about that. All of those, all of those idols, a desire to control the future based on my status and position. You see, jesus did not operate it. He had every right to take the high place, took the low place.

Speaker 1:

I want the big idol in our culture, I would say, is pleasure intimately connected with money. And then I want a good name based on what I do, like I will be perfectly content in my identity in Jesus and you can kind of take the invitation is you probably can remove one of those, maybe two of those pretty easy Like. For me it's fame and I didn't go into ministry for money, so it's like easy come, easy go. But then, okay, you get a little bit closer to pleasure and things like that. But then mine, you know, is as a preacher podcast, when people don't like me or say mean things about me. That's my idol, right, that it's the fame or honor, that's it, and I need to honestly confess that and bring it to the cross of Jesus Christ. Have you ever walked through that sort of a habit or discipline of examining your life in that such way, dr Goheen?

Speaker 2:

In what way exactly, in examining with these four lenses, or?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, those four lenses, and even for self-awareness. I've walked through that exercise with some folks on our staff to kind of get if Satan's going to come at me, it's going to be called to be so for example, in a world that is consumed by consumption.

Speaker 2:

We're called to be a people that are generous, thankful, content and stewardly, and so I'm asking myself where is it that I need to understand my own weakness? In a consumer culture, or a hedonistic culture, or self-centered culture, or a technicistic culture, or whatever you mean? And I think that each of us, as we examine the various idols, we're going to find out we're susceptible to some more than others and need to be aware of our own weaknesses there. But I usually think of it in terms of the various cultural idols and how those cultural idols are affecting us as a congregation, as a people, and then asking where am I most susceptible?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so good. This has been great. Thanks for round two with me. If people want to connect with you and even some of your writing, Dr Goheen, feel free to share.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I don't. Yeah, it's hard. I don't know even where to begin there.

Speaker 1:

You've written a lot Drama of Scripture, right, symphony of Mission, aren't those two?

Speaker 2:

I'd say you know, for many the most introductory books are the True Story of the Whole World, which tells the biblical story fairly quickly. It's a shortened version of Drama of Scripture. And then a book that's coming out in June that is designed for discipleship in the church. So it's another fairly popular book. It's what we call our prolegomena at MTC. In other words, it's the beginning point. It's what all students take for the first four or six months at MTC and that is what I think is it's called.

Speaker 2:

The title of the book is the Core of the Christian Faith Living the Gospel for the Sake of the World. And we deal first of all with the gospel. What is the gospel? Second, we deal with what is the biblical story and why is it urgent to live, to read it as such? Thirdly, we ask what does it mean to be a missional people at the center of that story? And then, finally, a missionary encounter with culture. How do we understand the idols of our culture that are constantly forcing us into ways and patterns of life that are not worthy of the gospel? So those would be maybe the most popular two starting points for people if they're interested in books.

Speaker 1:

Hey, dr Goheen, it's been a blessing, an honor, a privilege. You're a gift to me and the body of Christ. This is the Tim Allman Podcast. Please like, subscribe, comment wherever it is you take in these Jesus-centered conversations and I pray, as we're closing, that the love of Christ and your role in the story, by the Spirit's power, is compelling you for a life of meaning, purpose, significance, lived out of your identity in Christ, all for the sake of the world, for the days are too short to live any other way. Jesus is coming back very, very soon. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Thank you so much, dr Groheem.