The Legacy of the Reformation: Freedom, Fragmentation, and Accountability

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to Thanking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer, and I'm glad you're here. In this special series, we're stepping back into one of the most pivotal times in Christian history, the German Reformation. This was a time when the Gospel was being rediscovered, the Church was being challenged, and the course of Western civilization was being reshaped with ripples that still reach into our lives today. And to guide us through this journey, I'm joined by a true expert, someone who doesn't just know the Reformation from books, but from the cobblestone streets and cathedral halls where it actually happened, Doctor Greg Quiggle. Greg is a Reformation historian and the owner and operator of Kotelis Travel, a company that runs what they call tours for ten, intimate travel experiences designed for people who want something deeper than a typical tour. They offer a three to one guest to guide ratio, and these trips give you consistent access to guides who've been on location multiple times, who know not only the history, but also where to find the best able strudal and other German delicacies along the way. You can learn more about Greg and Kotellus at kotellistravelservice dot com. And if this series piques your interest, Greg actually has a German Reformation trip coming up this May, and last I heard, there are still a few seats available. In this series, Greg is going to help us explore the people, places, and theological stakes of the Reformation as well as helping us understand why it still matters for Christians today.

00:01:17
Speaker 2: So let's get started.

00:01:18
Speaker 1: Everyone, Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. We are here with Greg Guiggle and we're going to continue talking about the Reformation. Really this episode we're going to kind of talk a little bit about more of the legacy of the Reformation and what it actually means to be Protestant.

00:01:33
Speaker 2: And so Greg, welcome back to the show.

00:01:36
Speaker 3: How you doing. Thank you pretty good.

00:01:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a nice way to close up the series, I think, kind of wrap it up and talk a little bit about modern day Protestantism, its roots back in you know, the legacy of the Reformation obviously, and some of the promises and pitfalls that the Reformation is have been enduring after the reserv Reformation.

00:01:58
Speaker 3: Let's say, Okay, yeah, that's good way to put it.

00:02:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's start with some of the promise. I mean, I think, you know, we've talked in previous episodes. We talked last episode about the Sola's, you know, and you had your three questions that I think really sort of frame out some of the theological aspects.

00:02:15
Speaker 2: When we think about maybe relational dynamics within Protestantism.

00:02:20
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things we spoke about was all this sort of infighting, right, and and the way you had these you know, sort of back and forth against is we're trying to clarify doctrine and figure out what the relationship is to the state and all that kind of good stuff. Uh, what do you think the diversity within Protestantism? How does it provide us with some strength today and maybe in a way that it didn't in that at that time.

00:02:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think let me preface that by pointing out I think people make mistakes when they try to uncritically defend for additions.

00:03:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so.

00:03:03
Speaker 4: I'm not a Protestant because it's perfect. I'm a Protestant because it's the least problem of three options.

00:03:11
Speaker 3: I mean.

00:03:14
Speaker 1: That being Catholic and Greek Orthodox, is that.

00:03:17
Speaker 4: Eastern Orthodoxy or Orthodoxy if you want to use it, Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism. So Winston Churchill once said democracy is the best worst system. I think Protestantism is the best worst choice. And you know, it's kind of like getting married. I think it was John Mellencamp that has this line, I'm looking for a lady that's never been born. Part of deciding to marry somebody is finding a person whose problems you can live with, because there's no such thing as a perfect man or woman. You just you know you're going to get a mess. It's just which mess is livable.

00:04:03
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:04:04
Speaker 4: So I don't think Protestantism is the perfect church. I don't think the perfect church exists. I do not believe it will exist this side of the return of Christ. So what we're doing is we're we're making choices with our eyes wide open, acknowledging that really what we're doing here is saying these problems are less problematic than those problems. Yeah, so I'd like to frame it that way to begin with.

00:04:38
Speaker 2: That's a good framing. Yeah, that's helpful.

00:04:41
Speaker 1: So I mean, go ahead, Yeah, no, I was just going to say, like, when we think about you know, the beginnings of Protestantism, You're you're sort of moving from a more centralized religious institution in the Roman Catholic Church. We saw these problems. It means we've talked through the different aspects of the Reformation. You see the problems with that sort of broader authority, tarian, deeply hierarchical system and the really the isolation of the laity we might say, from the Word of God that created problems.

00:05:14
Speaker 2: And there were a lot of other factors.

00:05:15
Speaker 1: But and so now you're moving into Protestantism, which has a more diffuse authority structure that's going to allow everyone to sit underneath the Word of God that seems to me to have some really good things and some really bad things, right, because obviously, whenever we have these disruptions, you're going to end up amplifying the good parts of humanity and amplifying the bad parts of humanity exactly. So, yeah, talk through the positives of the Reformation that we'll get into some of the problems maybe.

00:05:47
Speaker 4: Well, the positives are I think you've mentioned the number one excuse me here. Number one, you have this notion that the church is not a professional or organization that is owned by the professionals, that it is an organism that every member has a responsibility and an obligation, and the Spirit gives all believers, and all believers are an essential part of the life of the church.

00:06:21
Speaker 3: So this sort of.

00:06:24
Speaker 4: For lack of a better term, ownership that comes out of Protestantism, I think is a very positive thing. The other emphasis on the scripture in local language, getting people in the Bible, making sure they're reading the Bible, making sure they know the Bible, making sure that it is accessible to lay people. That's a very good thing. I think that's a very positive thing. There is a kind of freedom that comes with Protestantism. Now that's a double leedged sword. Freedom always is, but the ability to question, to think, to raise issues, and do it in a construct where there isn't this kind of radical authoritarianism that you see tied to something like a papacy. So I think those are all positive things. It allows Protestantism to be flexible and it's it's changeable. Again, that's a double edged sword. There's this kind of Protestant mantra simple reforma always reforming, the church always needs to be reformed. This notion that static is not good that we need to be constantly looking to God, looking.

00:07:58
Speaker 3: To Scripture always.

00:08:00
Speaker 4: So there's this internal dynamic. And again that's a double edged sword. So I think those are things that are all positives. I think there's an upside. Again, it's a double edged sword, but I think there's an upside to this kind of denominationalism. It allows people to fellowship more deeply with people with whom they have more in common. So certainly, for example, there is something beneficial to people who are reading the scriptures the same way as it relates to a question like baptism. That creates a cohesion of practice and belief that has some value to it, and it does create choices for people, choices on things that are non negotiables or that are negotiables that.

00:08:59
Speaker 3: Are non essentials.

00:09:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think those are those are valuable. But again, what I'm gonna be a broken record on this, most of these are double edged swords.

00:09:12
Speaker 1: So yeah, because let me, let me probe it a little bit, And I think you're right.

00:09:17
Speaker 2: It is a double edged sword. I think that.

00:09:22
Speaker 1: So, I mean, we are both in higher education, We're both involved in Bible colleges and seminaries. I've done additional consulting outside of that. And so I've seen let's say, the Lutheran seminary system versus the what we might call the broadly evangelical seminary system. These are non affiliated with any denomination. You can just go to seminary and learn. You know, anybody can jump into a Master of Divinity degree, whether they're planning on being a pastor or not. Right, you can see the difference in the dynamic that that creates. And so even within Protestant is and what I would sort of argue is that when you get a Lutheran pastor, you pretty much know what you're getting. There's a stricter training, they have a more coordinated understanding of what they're trying to do within the pastorate.

00:10:13
Speaker 3: Yes, and I.

00:10:15
Speaker 1: Wouldn't say it's more hierarchical, although it could certainly be characterized that way.

00:10:19
Speaker 2: I want to call it coordinated. I want to say that.

00:10:24
Speaker 1: Everyone's in agreement that this is the way the cadence of that Lutheran Church is going to go. This is in general, what we want the homilies to look like, this is what we want the people to hear, the rituals they want them to go through That coordination is actually really crucial within the Lutheran Church. Whatever you may think of it, there is a rationale to it and it's quite important, yes, versus what we get in the dotted landscape of you know, seminary trained individuals who go out from an evangelical church and established now a non denominational church where, you know, in whatever city they want. This person doesn't have then those coordinated resources to draw on. It's all very I want to use a word, but I don't really mean it this way. It's consumerist. And what I mean by that is this person has to now go out and find a resource here and there and sort of cobble things together. There's not a consolidated set of materials that can be used. That to me, it strikes me is there's problems obviously with the Lutheran way. It can get a little bit too coordinated. It isn't quite as responsive. You know, as you add structure, that boat's going to be harder to turn right versus what you have on the other side, which feels like it could be that sort of stereotypical willing nilly you never really know where it's going kind of thing.

00:11:58
Speaker 4: Exactly those are the waters in which Protestantism navigates. I mean, strangely enough, Oh, it's probably been forty, maybe even fifty, maybe even sixty years ago now. Moody Monthly Magazine which is now defunct, but it was the monthly magazine of Moody Bible Institute ran a cover story is your pastor of Pope, Because that's the other thing that happens when you have these There is no It becomes a function of the personality of the most powerful person in the congregation. So you lose coherence, you lose continuity. So you can go to a Lutheran church pretty much anywhere in the world and it's going to be roughly the same evangelical churches. You really don't know what's going to happen because it is now there's both an upside and a downside to.

00:13:03
Speaker 2: That one hundred percent.

00:13:05
Speaker 4: And so I think that's I think, and certainly what has happened with non confessional evangelicalism. I think we can say that that is not what anybody had in mind in the sixteenth century.

00:13:24
Speaker 1: Right, And I think where I think I'm connecting this and it wouldn't be obviously it's not the only way to understand this, and I don't even think it's maybe not even the most prominent, but it strikes me that our conversation about the teaching office and Luther's convictions about the teaching office have been probably better preserved in a lot of ways in a more structured church environment like Lutheran, maybe Episcopal, some Presbyterian, right, because they have that more coordinated set and can pull people through congregants through a structured.

00:14:05
Speaker 2: It's like a curriculum.

00:14:06
Speaker 1: But it's not that a more structured life that's going to teach them katechiss yes, right, yeah, versus these these non denominational churches which are so loose and open that what we what tends to get lost is the katechisis. And so with regard to the teaching office, that's where I'm sort of leaning, and I've been thinking through this issue since we had the conversation. It's like, Man, those unstructured churches, how do you build that back into them?

00:14:39
Speaker 4: Well, the way that it had historically been held in my opinion, what's something like ordination, But even that's gone out the window.

00:14:48
Speaker 2: That's gone out the window.

00:14:49
Speaker 4: Yet, so ordination was at least a means by which the congregant did two things. They identify a person as being called, and they also identified a person as being doctrinally sound. Yeah, and when that is you know, when that is eliminated, then anybody who wants to can on the basis of their own authority claim teaching office. And the reality is this is a function. You use the word consumerism, and I know it's a loaded word, but in this case it's it's the accurate word. Who is the person that can generate the largest number of followers? And that may or may not be a function of either called or orthodoxy. That may be a function of simply charisma. And I think we may have mentioned there's a scholar out Mollyworthen that has a new book out. It's called Spellbound, where her whole book it's an academic book, so it's a heavy read. But her whole book is about the role that the charismatic person, not the charismatic.

00:16:15
Speaker 3: Kim talking about about.

00:16:18
Speaker 4: A person who is a gifted kind of person, the role they have played in religion in an American life.

00:16:27
Speaker 3: And so a.

00:16:28
Speaker 4: Person who has the capacity to draw.

00:16:31
Speaker 3: A crowd.

00:16:34
Speaker 4: Can draw crowd regardless of what they say, and there's no there's no control. That's that is the downside. That's Protestantism run a muck. That is not what anybody who was a proud or I shouldn't say anybody, but certainly not the major reformers in the sixteenth century wanted. And this is exactly what the Catholic Church said was going to happen. You're going to get these knuckleheads or these shucksters or these lunatics who are just and there's no control who controls this thing?

00:17:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, because there was no oh sorry, go ahead.

00:17:18
Speaker 4: Well, in sixteenth century Europe it was controlled by the king right, you had state religion, and then the United States said we got a new idea government staying out of that. You can believe anything you want. The only limit or on religion in the United States is how many people can you.

00:17:36
Speaker 3: Get to believe you?

00:17:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so you can set up a five oh one c three. You can say Jesus is returning to Flint, Michigan on November fourth in twenty twenty nine. And if you can get enough people to do it, you're good to go. And that's that's the downside. Now, my argument as a Protestant is that alone is not sufficient to justify a pope. So I'm willing to live with that in exchange for not living with a pope.

00:18:20
Speaker 1: So just just to clarify that, because I think our minds are tracking in the same direction. What I would argue is what you have in the Reformation is you have an accountability problem within the Catholic Church that the person who should have been the adult in the room was being a child and making foolish decisions, that immature decisions about indulgences. They got greedy, they fell into opulence, like however you want to say it, that's kind of what happens. Yeah, right, And now what we're doing in Protestantism we see that same dynamic is that as we have these different independent churches out there, their accountability has to be suspect because they aren't sitting under a hierarchy. They govern themselves to a large degree, and we've seen that go off the rails. We've probably also seen it go very very well. Right, So we don't want to say all of these are bad, but I think, what when I hear you say, I agree with you. I don't want to pope, but I think then what we need to be solving for within Protestantism is accountability.

00:19:28
Speaker 2: The main line.

00:19:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, the mainline denominations have it to a degree. Right, Lutheran Church has an accountability structure that they're utilizing, you know, some of these bigger conferences. You know, we've seen some of the challenges of the Presbyterian Church USA lately. The United Methodists just split, but they had accountability structures. Those accountability structures inevitably fracture as well, And I don't I don't think we can judge an accountability structure by whether it holds forever or not, right, right, So I think they were sufficient for a time, and now we still have to keep struggling on what does it look like to really have accountability within these areas That does not for us look like a pope, but it also can't look like for us. Hey, we're an independent church. We're going to do our own thing. Damn what everybody else thinks? That probably isn't the right movie either.

00:20:24
Speaker 4: That's yes, I just don't know how you fix that. Yeah, I mean there is no means now you know that used to be fixed by denominationalism. Yeah, so you know you had Baptists, and there was a even though the individual congregation was independent, there was still a level of accountability or at least a conversation with an external body. You still have that with Conservative Presbyterians, you have that with Conservative Lutherans, you have that with Conservative Methodists. So that is still in place, but those.

00:21:05
Speaker 3: That is not.

00:21:06
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I don't think that's where most of the juice is in terms of growth, and and that's a hard that's a hard case to make.

00:21:17
Speaker 2: Culturally, I don't disagree with you. I think I think where we are and technology has amplified this.

00:21:26
Speaker 3: Right.

00:21:27
Speaker 1: So in the same way that the printing press created sort of fast spread, we're now in an age where the printing press is like ancient technology and we have these other technologies that are sort of pushing out. And I think that what that creates is this sort of fragmentation within society where anybody who wants to say anything can say it with almost equal weight so long as they can find an audience to say it too.

00:21:53
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.

00:21:55
Speaker 1: And and we've just got to get our heads around I personally, I think the only place I don't know whether this is the solution, but I think there are two solutions, right. Number one, I think there has to be a coordinated effort to bring back some sense of the teaching office. I think Tim Keller was on the right road when he put out the New City Catechism. I think that's we need a new catechism for a new age that can sort of guide and shape the thinking of Christians across the board. I think that would be fantastic and coordinate as many of us as possible. I think that's a big part of the solution. I think the second part of the solution has to be an individual conviction, cultivated to say, this media environment isn't going away, but I need to make sure that the media environment is not causing me to diminish the work and the care and the community that comes along with the local congregation.

00:22:57
Speaker 3: Yes.

00:22:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, but see here, here's the double edged sword to that. What you lose when you do that is entrepreneurialism and aggressiveness and creativity and all that other kind of stuff. Somebody has said American religion is a mile wide and an inch deep, and that's true. Because we said we're going to let free enterprise work in religion, Yeah, you got to work for it, man. And so it has to stay close to the audience, because if it doesn't stay close to the audience, it loses the audience. If it loses the audience, it's out of business.

00:23:50
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:23:50
Speaker 2: I don't disagree with that.

00:23:51
Speaker 1: And I mean, you know, I came out an online higher EDMN, So yeah, this is a you know, like, this is one of those tensions you feel like, can you preserve a sufficient degree of quality while giving people this education through a means that is was I would say non traditional right, and and and was disruptive within the system, And.

00:24:15
Speaker 2: So I think it can be done. I think on some levels.

00:24:23
Speaker 1: When we see these entrepreneurial ventures go, my big concern with most of them is are we exercising any sort of theological scruples as we do it?

00:24:34
Speaker 3: Yes?

00:24:35
Speaker 2: And and sometimes I see that.

00:24:38
Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't, And obviously I shouldn't be the arbiter or the sole arbiter of this, but I do find that some of our we might call them, our cultural institutions within Christianity are so eroding in their ability to voice against some of these things that we've just got major, major problems.

00:25:03
Speaker 4: That I agree with, and that is incredibly disconcerting. I mean, case in point, I spent a good portion of my academic career beating on students about the teaching office, about the necessity of tradition, about you know, this generation. Your problem is not access to data. My generation was access to data. I had card catalogs. I had to go do three by five cards. I hand wrote papers. I paid a girl a dollar a page to type it. We didn't have personal computers.

00:25:44
Speaker 3: We had typewriters.

00:25:46
Speaker 4: Okay, your generation is not information is not The problem is not getting information, it's being able to tell the difference between good stuff and bad stuff. So, you know, I'd spent how to read a book, how to analyze an article, and then here we are, and I flip on Facebook and I watch former students, you know, just spewing out the stuff from their little echo chamber. You know, day after day, I'm either posting from the Blaze, Tucker Carlson, or occupied Democrats.

00:26:25
Speaker 3: As if these are objective sources.

00:26:28
Speaker 4: I'm not saying there isn't truth to some of this stuff, but assuming that this is objective sources, or you know, how many sports figures have I read in the last three days are dying of some disease. Somebody is cutting, pasting a brain tumor.

00:26:49
Speaker 3: Pray for this.

00:26:50
Speaker 4: Former Chicago Bear, he has a brain tumor. And then you scan the next day and it says somebody on the Cubs. And then the next day it's the former coach of the University of Michigan.

00:27:00
Speaker 3: And then the next day and they just I mean, it's the same article. They're just making stuff.

00:27:05
Speaker 4: And then you read THO and you watch and I know some of these people that are buying some of this stuff, and you're like, I guess it just went in one year and out the other.

00:27:18
Speaker 3: I don't, And.

00:27:25
Speaker 4: I feel, you know, we're making a defeatist broadcast here, and I don't want.

00:27:31
Speaker 3: To do that.

00:27:32
Speaker 4: But the other side that is, I think it's important that people begin.

00:27:37
Speaker 3: To stop, just stop.

00:27:41
Speaker 4: Where did this come from?

00:27:44
Speaker 3: But who?

00:27:45
Speaker 4: I used to make this case over and over again, and I probably got in trouble at Moody. But I would say, if I have to choose between my pastor and the guy who's speaking in chapel, that's a no brainer. I have a coven relationship with my pastor.

00:28:02
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:28:02
Speaker 4: Who this guy is speaking in chapel. I don't know what are his credentials somebody you know. And that doesn't mean I can't be edified and I won't listen or you know.

00:28:14
Speaker 1: But you have a different relationship with that guy than you do your pastor. And so it's a it's a different world that we swim in. And I don't I actually don't think what we're saying is defeatist. What I think we're saying is at least what I would say. We have to start somewhere. We can't continue to sit back and think this is going to get fixed with better information, literacy, you know, skills. I think that's part of the solution. But at the end of the day, what has to be rebuilt is the teaching office.

00:28:48
Speaker 3: Yes, and that.

00:28:49
Speaker 4: That is Protestant, Yeah, to pull this thing back and is not Protestant in the sixteenth century Protestant movement is not saying that every single individual has equal authority to interpret the text as they see fit. They believed in the teaching office every single person has has the right to engage the Bible. Right, but everybody is not called to be a teacher.

00:29:22
Speaker 3: But and there have to be.

00:29:24
Speaker 1: There have to be limits and boundaries that help people understand as they're engaging the Bible, help them understand it in appropriate fashion. Yes, not that it's like, hey, this verse has to mean this thing, right, That's not what the teaching office does. The teaching office provides a shape and a context, we can almost say, within which reading the Bible remains a faithful activity that seeks to where somebody seeks to sit under the authority of that scripture, as opposed to, you know, claiming in a authority for themselves that they don't have.

00:30:02
Speaker 4: And that is absolutely where the loss of catechism has killed us, because, at least in the past, if you knew a catechism that functioned as a hermeneutics, as a limiter of interpretation, so you were reading the Bible functionally with the pastor in your ear. And when that is gone, and since very few pastors preach theological method of sermons anymore.

00:30:35
Speaker 3: I've done exposition.

00:30:38
Speaker 4: But hardly anybody does theological or teaches people to think theologically models it in the pulpit. So here we are, and I think that's we resonate on. And that is not a Protestant thing that is not a that's not the way Protestantism should be.

00:31:00
Speaker 1: Right, We've gone off the rails there, and so almost what I would say, just to end this on a positive note, would be to say, yeah, be more careful about what you're looking at, be more careful about what you're consuming and creating. Recognize that that when you're throwing stuff out on social media, you are in some at least minor way participating as a teacher of others, Like I have difficulty believing that that's not the case, right, and so take that seriously, like, I think that's a you know, there's some minimal things that we could do. I like when I do consulting, I do near term, midterm, and long term, right, and so the mid near term, watch what you're watch what you're consuming, watch what you're creating, simple as that, right, you know. And then long term we've got to look at re establishing the teaching office. That just has to be like, what does it look like for your church to pick up a catechy and actually run people through it? What does it look like for your church to and even if it's just your church, maybe partnering with other churches doing this, you know, that to me is a long term activity that all of us have to commit to. But that is the way out of this situation in my estimation.

00:32:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have occasionally online just posted I just want to remember. I just want everybody who's writing this stuff to remember. Number one, God hates liars and God hates slander. Yeah, and everything you post online is subject to thou shalt not bear false witness. And if you think you're not going to answer to the thrice Holy God for what you put on social media, you're wrong. I don't care if you agree with me or not. You're going to explain to God why you thought it was okay to post this political thing that is not true because it was important for your side to win this little argument, or that you didn't bother to look up to see whether or not it was true, because it's important for your side to win this little argument.

00:33:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I focus, most of my focus has been more on what I call ambulance chasing content.

00:33:24
Speaker 3: Right.

00:33:25
Speaker 1: I've heard it called grift based the grift industrial complex, right, where people are just sort of benefiting off scandals. But when you look at the Old Testament, you look at some of the laws related to bearing false witness. What you see is that when you bear false witness, you take on the penalty that you are seeking to get put on to someone else. And we have largely lost that accountability loop. We have no sense in which a journalist or quasi journalist or blogger or whoever right content creator, when they put out something false, there is zero implications for them until they do something so egregious that they lose followers. They have no real skin in the game whatsoever. And I think it's just a we we missed that aspect of it. We need to be far more careful in who we're critiquing, how we're critiquing them, and making sure that the stuff we're putting out is sufficiently true and edifying that it can qualify as good teaching for the church.

00:34:32
Speaker 4: I did a Sunday school class in some seven. It's about David being slandered.

00:34:38
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:34:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I stood up and I held up my phone and I said, ladies and gentlemen, you know what this is. This is a weapon of mass destruction. Yeah, you can destroy people. And if you think, I mean, just let's just read what David says. Yeah, and let's just go through the Bible, and see what God says about people who slander. Yeah, well you know, well, well he's pro abortion, and if you want to argue that point, argue that point. But that doesn't give you the right to lie about him about something else, right, you know, it just doesn't.

00:35:23
Speaker 1: Slander doesn't not. Slandering doesn't mean we can't disagree with someone. It means that we we disagree with them in an appropriate manner, and we do not you know, pull them in at hominem arguments, you know, arguments against the person. They don't they don't have to be evil people. The whole the view that we don't happen to agree with, yep, And so we've got to be more careful with that.

00:35:48
Speaker 2: This has been helpful.

00:35:49
Speaker 1: I think we're catching a dynamic of Protestantism that is is both the fuel that we need to continue growing the church and the fuel that if we're not careful, we'll burn ourselves with the process.

00:36:06
Speaker 3: Right.

00:36:07
Speaker 1: I don't think the church ever goes away, and so it's not a if we don't stop this, the church is going to you know, be consumed with fire or something crazy like that. It's just that this is probably not going to be the most effective use. If we're trying to heat our churches, throwing gas on the floor is not the best move, right, right. We need to keep that fire contained and put it in an appropriate place so that you know, Okay, the occasional spark jumps out and there's a problem that's going to happen. But just spreading you know, gas all over the floor and heating the walls, you know, heating the church by burning the walls is not a good plan. And so we've we've got to be somewhere in between there and continually working to.

00:36:53
Speaker 2: Contain some of these.

00:36:57
Speaker 1: More exaggerated we could call them gestures toward independence that I think maybe Protestantism engenders, but then also recognizing that this is a very key aspect of what it means to be Protestant, that entrepreneurial spirit, that autonomy, you know, that push, but autonomy doesn't mean no accountability. Well said, all right, Well we're going to close it out here. You know, we'll be back with more episodes. We're doing the Great Awakening series later this year. We're going to do some stuff on the Swiss Reformation, and just want to encourage folks to go check out Ktelli's you can you can see the I've got a link in the show description for Katellis. It's Greg's travel company. And so we do trips over to Germany and we talk German Reformation as well as World War Two. Now neither of us we didn't really get into World War two and those kind of things. There's another gentleman, Michael McDuffie, who handles a lot more of that than either Greg or I do. But that tour does the German Reformation plus World War Two. I just encourage you to check it out. There's one coming up in May. You can sign up for. These are relatively inexpensive trips. They're called tours for ten because you basically we pile into a couple of vans. It's really comfortable and Greg and I drive, Mike is sort of around and you've got a three to one ratio essentially to talk with people who are knowledgeable about these subjects and just enjoy your time in Germany. So my encourage movie to check that out. Click the link, check out the site there and if you've got the time in May, we chuer love to have you. So we are also doing a Switzerland trip later in the year. There's still spot left in that trip. And Greg is going to England, jolly old England to do C. S. Lewis and Whitfield.

00:39:00
Speaker 3: Field and Wesley and George Mueller.

00:39:03
Speaker 2: George Mueller.

00:39:05
Speaker 3: Yeah so yeah.

00:39:07
Speaker 4: So Germany we do the Holocaust, which is a wonderful way to talk about civil responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. Switzerland we do a lot of church and state stuff because now we're into Antabaptists, Amish, those sorts of folks, Mennonites as long as well as John Calvin of course, and a guy named Zwingley who some of you may know something about. And then England we do the the English Reformation, Henry the Eighth, et cetera, John Wesley, George Whitfield, and then C. S. Lewis, J R. R. Tolkien and George Mueller. And that's what Jerry Rude, who's been on Jerry and I have been on with you before, and Jerry is encyclopedic and dynamic.

00:39:54
Speaker 3: When it comes to Cus Lewis.

00:39:56
Speaker 4: So if you're interested in that, join us.

00:40:00
Speaker 1: I'll put the link to that episode in the show notes as well here, so you can reach out and do that that was one of the that was pretty popular episodes, so you'll probably enjoy that if you haven't.

00:40:08
Speaker 3: Listened to it yet.

00:40:09
Speaker 1: But Greg all was a pleasure. This has been a great series. I've learned a lot. I always enjoy going back through this time period. I think it does help frame out what we're doing today and really important topic and I think you just get more of this when you get over actually in Germany. So absolutely, Yeah, being in place and talking about these things, seeing the sites, understanding where it happened really crucial. And so just encourage you to check out the site and the trip. But thanks for listening to the series, Thanks for listening to this episode, and we'll catch you on the next one.

00:40:42
Speaker 2: Take care of everybody.

00:40:43
Speaker 1: Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.