Becoming a Megachurch Pastor - Todd Phillips Pt. 1 | Ep. 2190

0:00Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Warmer Stories Podcast. I'm your host John DeLin. It's September 2nd, 2026. And today we have a former mega church pastor here to talk about his own religious transition and deconstruction after becoming a legit mega church pastor. This is a long part in a series of Warmer Stories Podcasts of guests who were members of other high-demand religion churches or traditions that weren't Mormon. And we have with us today Dr. Todd Phillips who is also known as the deconstructed pastor. Todd Phillips, welcome to Warmer Stories Podcasts. Thanks John, I appreciate you having me. So in your glory days of being an evangelical pastor, did you ever think you'd be on Warmer Stories Podcasts? No. This is the last place I thought I'd be. Things have taken a turn. Really quickly, at the peak of your mega church pastor success, tell us where you worked just so

1:04people could get a sense for the heights you achieved. Yeah, so the last 10 years I was pastoring was a McLean Bible church for seven years. That's up in the Washington, D.C. area. And then I was at Lake Point Church just outside of Dallas, Texas for just over two years. And these are mega churches, how big? Yeah, McLean Bible church at the time had 12, 14,000 people on the weekend. Lake Point was just a little smaller, maybe eight to 10. And you've preached to audiences that large? Yeah, on the weekends. So there was a, there were each one of them had a senior pastor and I was a teaching pastor. So I took about half the pulpit time each year. And then just really quickly, you're training just so the people get a sense because I was surprised to see how educated you are. I have a master's of divinity with biblical languages from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I did a doctoral fellowship at Princeton Theological Seminary and then got my doctorate actually from Dallas Theological Seminary. So way overeducated. And your high school graduating class just so I can date you, I can age you.

2:08He's 1986. So you're a year older than me basically. I'm 57. I turned 57 last week. I just turned 57. Did you really? That means you graduated young. I was young I was 16. Yeah, I was 17. Yeah. Okay, fun. All right. And we're both Texan because I can replicate that's right. Yeah. We got a lot in common. A lot in common. All right. Well, thanks for joining us just really quickly. Please like and subscribe. We don't do product endorsements or anything like that. We exist at the generosity of our donors. So if you're a donor, thank you. If you're not a donor and you value this type of content to become a monthly supporter, you go to morhamstories.org slash donate and become a monthly donor. We are getting sued by the Church of Jesus Christ, let her say, we think it's a false inappropriate lawsuit. In my opinion, it's to silence and bankrupt us. You can learn about that as well at morhamstories.org. I believe it's legal, but we're also taking support for our legal fund from that what we believe is inappropriate lawsuit. So anyway, we're excited to have you join us

3:10today. We will be doing this interview in two parts. We're not going to sacrifice the long form, but we've learned that breaking our interviews up into two parts allows YouTube to translate the audio into multiple languages. And so that's important enough to where you should just know, we're going to do the long form, but we're going to be in two parts. So just so you know, anyway, one of the things that was so fun to see, and we just talked about this before we started, one of the fun things to see in your outline, you listed three, let's just say influential presences in your deconstruction or reconstruction, and you listed to Ed McClellan, Brett Hartley, and a little bit of Mormon stories. And I thought, oh my gosh, ex Mormons or progressive Mormons or Mormons in social media have had a decent influence if those are the three-year mentioning. I wouldn't say decent, I would say massive. Well above decent, yeah, quite an impact on me. Oh, well, I mean, I'm really honored, and on behalf of our community, I'm so happy to hear we've

4:16been helpful. And hopefully, my hope is that part of part of why I brought you on is because Mormons can see their journey sometimes even more clearly through the experience of someone outside the tradition. So that's why I brought on Scientologists and Jova's witnesses and you know, Orthodox Jews and the like. But also because if we can help other traditions, you know, reach and help the same amount of people as we have, I think that's gravy. So hopefully we can help you do for your tradition what we've helped our tradition do. Well, I've taken a lot of taking quite a lead from you, just learning from the videos. And and the interviews you've had, and I hope this is one of those for others that are questioning the Mormon faith or any religion for that matter, your videos of these Mormon stories, the crossovers quite remarkable. I learned a lot by watching these videos early on, and that's why they had such an impact on me. Yeah. The last disclaimer I just want to say is, I am not, I do

5:22not identify as an atheist and I do not identify as an anti-Christian. I am pro people believing in divine being if it helps them and if it helps the world. And I am pro Christianity to the extent that Christianity leads people to do healthy, happy things. And so I am not, I do not conduct this interview with the desire to lead people out of belief in God or in Jesus. Even if that's sometimes where people end up, I just want to state that the outset that's not my goal here, even though that may be where you are and we'll wait to see where he is. But I just want to state that up front because I get accused of that way too often. Yeah, make sense. And I will say I consider myself a non-resistant non-believer and we'll obviously share this in my story. But yeah, I have no agenda other than to share my journey and help people who are primarily evangelical Christians who are questioning some of those theological precepts feel safe in doing.

6:23So regardless of whether that takes them back to their original Christian faith, some adjusted form of theology or where I've currently find myself. Yeah, yeah, perfect. All right, well let's jump in. Normally I say where does your Mormon story begin, but you don't have a Mormon story before today. So or maybe you do. But I also know you kind of converted to evangelical Christianity in adulthood sort of. So where does your faith story begin or your secular story before your faith story? Yeah, so I grew up- Take your childhood, I guess. Yeah, I grew up without much religious context at all. In fact, the only thing that we would do to go to church was my aunt actually took us or suggested we go my mother and I would go with them on Eastern Christmas to church to candlelight services in Austin. Okay. I can't even remember the method of church name, but we've met the church. Yeah, and we would go I would say I probably went half a dozen times during my childhood maybe more. And then I was I went to an Episcopalian private elementary school.

7:28I got a scholarship to go and my mom was all over that. So she sent me there from second through sixth grade and we had chapel every day. And I when I look back on it, I would say I assumed there probably was a God because we talked about God a lot inside those chapel services, but that really was the extent of it. It was just a a God out there that might be there and it didn't affect my life or caused me to think a certain way in my childhood. So I really didn't have any connection to that whatsoever. It wasn't until I was 24 that my life was I was I would say, it was kind of an existential crisis for me. I was 24 before we get there really quick. Tell me about your home in terms of like father, mother, a divided family divorce siblings just I just liked to have a little content. Yeah, so I'm an only child. Okay. My dad left when I was six months old. Oh, so I didn't have a lot of connection with him at all. He would show up about once a year through my childhood. I'd say a dozen times I would see him between, you know, birth and 16 or 17.

8:34And just considered that normal. I just thought that's the way things were. My mom raised me. She was full time at the internal revenue service. That was kind of a latsky kid. My grandparents lived next door. So we lived in a mobile home park in southeast Austin. Nice. And I was we were in the left trailer in my grandparents were in the right. My my grandfather was a gas station attendant. My grandmother was a former army nurse and she worked at the state hospital for many years. Night shift quite often. So it was a I look back. It was a bit chaotic, but it just seemed again normal to me. So that's that's my background. So I saw my mom at night, but I spent most of my time kind of being brought up in many ways by my grandmother. They were both incredible women. So I was raised by two women. I was an only child. And that's kind of the backdrop of my upbringing. And what were your middle and high school years like just in terms of what were you into? Did you get in trouble? Were you a super athlete, super academic or a burnout? You know, where were you?

9:38Yeah. So in middle school and high school, I came out of this elementary school private institution and getting into public school was quite a shock for me. Just a different world. And in Austin, they were busing. So they were they were moving people from schools all over town and busing them to different places to create some more integration in what were largely unintegrated schools. And so it was quite a shock to me. I would say I was very I was very open. I didn't I wasn't particularly a jock or I took honors classes. So I was in debate. I broke my back. I actually broke my vertebrae in my freshman year. So I was a football player till then. That was my sport. And then I did gymnastics in the off season. So I injured my back to the point where I couldn't do sports anymore after my freshman year. So the rest of my high school was spent actually doing debate. And so I shifted from sports into debate. And because of that shift, I met a lot of people

10:39and a lot of different arenas, you know, and inside high school. And so I kind of had friends in all areas. Here's a question. People will probably ever ask you, did you double ruby? You want that? No, I thought that was the distinction in Texas for like, oh, for the debate. Distinction. I told you about my memory. It's been too long. Yeah, it's been too long. I won I won the Austin City Lincoln Douglas debate. I remember you were a student. You weren't standard. Lincoln Douglas. Okay. I'll need a baby. Yeah, I loved it. Okay. I loved it. Yeah, so that was my thing. So I had a lot of friends in a lot of different areas and you know, didn't didn't cling to one group like Jocs or anything like that. I because of debate, I got interested in politics and I really, really flourished in that debate environment. And my teacher, my debate teacher was the one that taught me into taking honors classes, which I was kind of avoiding until she had an influence on my life. So she, and I was also quite a part of your. So I mean, there were a lot of pieces or aspects to my life

11:41that, you know, I went out a lot because I didn't have a lot of, I think, fatherly influence. And I kind of ran my roots, so to speak. The two women that were raising me tried to kind of control me, but that was a challenge. I was very, I think for me, I was always looking, I was always looking to connect with people and always felt like even though I knew a lot of people, I was a bit on the outside looking in. I always felt a little different. I'm not sure why. It didn't cause me not to build relationships and have friends and go out and do fun things. But I was, I was really moving in a lot of different directions, just trying to find myself, I think, for, for quite a long time. And I'm guessing, and I think we talked about this, that debate you mentioned you did Boy State, American Legion Boy State, yeah. It seems like that's pointing you in the direction of possibly law school, possibly politics. Is that kind of by the time you're graduating from high

12:41school? Yeah, I was considering it from my junior year on, considering law and politics both. I was probably leaning toward law. It wasn't, I haven't talked about this in a long time, but when I graduated from high school, I had a four-row debate. I kept my grades up, but I was also making some poor decisions as far as alcohol and drugs and things like that. And so my freshman year, I went from a four-row in high school to my freshman year at University of Texas was a .7. I got very aggressively involved in drugs and partying and making really, really poor decisions in life. And there were a lot of different reasons for that, but it caused me to really, it really just kind of derailed me obviously from law school and some other goals that I had, and kind of put me on a trajectory that turned out to be quite negative. Hmm, I'm sorry about that. Yeah, and we'll talk about that first. Did you know, this is just for fun, I'm being silly for a

13:42second, even though this is a serious topic. Did you know you were at, did you go to UT or second year? No. Oh, you dropped out of your first year? Yeah, after, well, they put me on probation. So I went to Texas Tech University and I was there for three years after that. I didn't graduate from tech, but I did go to tech. So I just, I needed to get out of the environment. It was too much like high school. It was just like a bigger high school. I was 16 when I went to college. Yeah, I was way too young. I was emotionally immature. Okay. So he dropped out of, yeah. So I left UT, went to tech. Okay. Okay. Okay. So did you finish your undergrad? Yeah. So I got, I went to Texas Tech University for about three years about readers. Was that Bobby, Bobby Knight years? Yeah. Yeah. Nice. You got to get, I wouldn't have remembered that without you. The, uh, uh, tech was great. I left there a semester before, um, before I graduated and got fell in love with this girl and moved to Houston and didn't finish college. It wasn't until I became a Christian at the age of 24 that I decided to finish my undergrad and go off to, um, postgraduate studies

14:48for theology. So he moved to Houston for a girl and moved to Houston for a girl. I sure did. There are worse places than Houston. No, Houston school. I enjoyed it. Yeah. And then I moved, when that, when that didn't work out after a while, I moved back to Austin. So, so pre conversion to Christianity or even jokal Christianity. Um, what were you doing professionally? Well, I spent a lot of years, uh, uh, in, uh, in insurance. I actually got an insurance job when I was still at tech. I liked it, made good money with it. So I did that for quite a while. Um, and, um, it was, I would say my, from 17 or 18 till 24 when I had my conversion experience, those were some very difficult years of just trying, I've still trying to find myself. And it, and it was that freshman year of college when things went off the rails with, with drug use and, and some other decisions that I made that really put me on a trajectory that, that continued

15:51in a very negative way for about seven years until I became a Christian. Christianity was really what brought me back from the break. Yeah. It is religions often do. Yeah. Um, did you get married or have kids during that time period that you want to talk about? I'm not saying detail. I'm just saying, yeah, I had a, that, the girl in Houston, I was married to for a very brief time. So we got married divorced within a year and a half. Just those kinds of poor decisions over that seven years. No kids then have three kids now from another. Okay. Yeah. Let's get to your, uh, your soul on the road to Damascus experience. Yeah. So I, I found myself in Denver, Colorado at the age of 24 and, uh, still no undergraduate degrees trying to figure my life out. And I just realized that things weren't, they, they just continue to not go the way that I thought they would. And I remembered who I was in high school. I remembered debate. I remembered boy state. I remembered wanted to be a lawyer. I always in the back of my mind, new politics was a passion. And I just

16:51lost that path. I mean, it just seemed like a million miles away. And at the time I was living with a girl in Denver, um, and it was a, it was a very unhealthy relationship as well. It was, it was just a continuation of seven years of bad decisions. Um, and I found myself one night just thinking to myself, I couldn't sleep. I still remember this. I remember thinking, you know, if I keep going this route, I'm, I'm just going to keep going down this path. And it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. I'm going to, and, and I, I can't stand it now. This is a horrible place to be. This is not who I'm supposed to be. This is, this is another person's life that I'm living. And I shouldn't be doing this. I owe it to myself and my family and friends and the world not to be in this kind of train wreck of a, of choices. And I just remember, I need to do something. And right about that time, I don't remember it was right before, right after, but I, my mom would call me every once in a while. Didn't like where I was either always wanted me to make some better

17:53decisions, come back to Austin and go back to school, all that stuff. And she called me one night and said, Hey, I ran into an old friend of yours who is a Christian now. You know, she was looking for a way to get my attention. And this guy that was now a Christian supposedly was a guy that I did a lot of partying with. And just drugs now call very poor decisions during a chapter in my life. So I remember him in that world. And the idea that he would be a Christian. And even further than that, he had a, a DVD out of saw, he was a singer now. And he had a Christian DVD. And she was all excited to have seen him at a, at a concert. And I remember thinking that's, there's no way that's a scam. This guy's making money off these CDs. There's, it's anything but he's really a Christian or that he's changed his ways. And one night, really late one night, that really bothered me. And so I called him back when you called people collect, you know, and had them take the charges when you made the phone call. So I tracked him down on information, found his

18:54number, called him at two or three o'clock in the morning. And he answered the phone and accepted the collect call. And I remember saying to him, listen, I know it's late, sorry to call you so late. I know it's been years. My mom told me that she saw you at this concert and that you're a Christian. I just have one question. What's the scam? Like I just need to know what's really going on. And his simple answer was, look, it's, it's not a scam. I'm a Christian now. Jesus has changed my life. I do have an album out. It's just my life's changing. If you want to know more about it, I can tell you about it. Well, that started a conversation that went on for a month, John. It was every night, several hours for maybe just a bit over a month. And he would tell me the story of Jesus. He would quote, scripture. And what he didn't know is I had an old Bible from my Episcopal private school in a box. And I had gotten that Bible out. And he would, he would quote a passage from Matthew or

19:55first Corinthians or wherever. And he didn't know it. But I was, I had a notepad because I couldn't flip my Bible quickly enough to find out if he was telling me the truth. Because I figured if I catch this guy in a lie, one time, I got him and I can just move on. But what he said to me was compelling. So I would write in on a notepad every single passage. And then when we'd hang up after two hours that night, I'd go back and I'd read every single one of those passages. So without him knowing it, I was validating and verifying everything he was saying and reading the Bible every night. And this lasted for a month. I mean, it must have been 60, 70, 80 hours of conversations and scripture reading. What a nice gift he gave you. Yeah, it was, it was crazy. So at the, at the end of this month or so, he said, listen, I've told you everything, Todd. I mean, you have the whole story. And you know, the whole gospel story from an evangelical Christian perspective, you can be forgiven of all your sins, past, present, and future. The stuff you haven't even done yet. You can start a new life. All these bad decisions that you've made just just disappear and you can start a brand new life. And I remember thinking to myself, but this is true. This is, this is huge. But he told me,

21:00he goes, look, I've told you everything. I want you to get the keys off your counter. Go get in your car. Go drive out on a hillside tonight somewhere outside of Denver. Look out over the skylights. Go talk to God and just do what he tells you to do. And I was like, no way. And I hung up the phone. And I grabbed the keys and I got in the car and I went on that hillside. And I did exactly what he told me to do. And I really, it's, it's, it's one of those memories that just, you know, it's etched in my mind and certainly in my emotions. I remember being in that car and by myself. And I remember saying to this God that I, you know, that that I had been told was there, you know, look, if you're real and there's a, there really is a Jesus and everything in the Bible is true. And I really can start over. I've tried everything else. I've got nowhere else to go unless I want to continue down the path I'm on. And so if you're there, I'm in, you know, forgive me. Start a relationship with me. That's real. This guy told me to tell me I'm going to give my life to you. And so I'm,

22:07I'll hand over my life and my decisions. And I want to start a relationship with you. Like I, like, almost verbatim what he told me to say, kind of the center's prayer. And for me, now, I don't see it this way any longer, obviously, where I am right now. But for me at the time, it was, it was, it was, it was maybe one of, well, it was definitely one of the most profound moments from an emotional experiential perspective. I had a very powerful experience in the car that night. So much so, you know, that I came off the hillside and woke up the, the next morning, it may have been the morning after. So one or two mornings later and sat down with the girl that I was living with and said, look, I, I know this sounds weird, but I met Jesus on a hillside. When I went out in the car last night or the night before. And I'm a Christian now. And everything that we're doing here just seems off. It doesn't seem like it's right for my life. I don't think we're right together. And I'm going to move back to Austin pretty soon. And you're welcome to come back with me.

23:07I'm guessing I'm going to go to church every day. I'm not sure exactly how that happens now. It's a Christian, but I'm going back to Austin. My family's there. This guy's there. There's a church there that I can go to. And you're welcome to come with me or you can stay here and just keep everything that we've created together. And I'm out of here. And she said, I'll keep everything. And so she stayed. I went back to Austin, moved in on the couch of this, this, this friend's apartment. And started going to Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin in February of 1994. So that was it. It was, it was, and when I say like a profound experience, it wasn't, it wasn't an intellectual exercise. I mean, I, I really do believe this. If he would have told me about Buddhism or Mormonism or Catholicism, any religion that would offer me a clean break, any religious ideology that would give me freedom to move forward without my old life, any

24:09forgiveness, opportunity, new chapter, I would have gone that route. It happened to be an evangelical version of Christianity that I was offered that day. It still doesn't negate the profound experience that I had in that car. Is not, is not called a Theophity. Is not what it's called? Weirdly, that's how Mormonism started. Just as Smith had a Theophity. At least that's what he claimed. Yeah, I think he did. So I mean, yeah, I've had an experience like that. So when I hear those kinds of religious experiences, I, I assume, I assume that, I assume that it happened. Because I certainly experienced it. That's what William James wrote about in the variety of religious experiences. It's, tail is old as time. Absolutely. And I'm glad it happened for you. Yeah, it certainly got me on track. Yeah. It was, it was, I don't know what would have happened without that. Yeah. And being a person that's kind of all in, I mean, I just go into Sunday school, isn't enough. And then obviously my education, everything came from that.

25:12And then pastoring. But, you know, the first few months when I got back to Austin, I just remember feeling this tremendous weight lifted off me. I mean, it just, the world was on my shoulders and it was gone. I still, I can tell you, it was just that it was that dramatic from an experiential perspective. Now, I don't, I don't, I no longer believe that was actually God transforming my life. It could have been. I, I, the version of evangelical Christianity that I was part of for so many years is what I question now. But, but the experience was incredible. So how did you change your life? Well, when I got to, when I got back to Austin, I started going to Hyde Park. I went forward a few weeks, a few Sundays later to officially accept Christ in front of the church and agree to be baptized. I was baptized on February 6th. Is that a mega church? Was it then? Yeah. Hyde Park, yeah. They was considered a mega church.

26:12Yeah. At about 2500 people on the weekends. And back then in the 80s, that was a, that was a pretty large church. Things have progressed since then for large churches. But, yeah, it was a large church. And I was baptized on February 6th. I started giving my testimony in Sunday school classes. I was kind of the bad boy gone good. And, and inside the Southern Baptist Church, that was, that was quite a story. And I was, I was being, I was being encouraged to tell that quite often. So I would go to Sunday school classes and then I eventually got in front of the Hyde Park church and gave my testimony in front of the church. And then after that happened many other Baptist churches around Austin, somehow got my, the name got out. And so I would be invited to come speaking these other churches and tell my story of God's grace and transformation in my life. And that's really what kind of started me in ministry. I didn't plan on it. I was just trying to go to church and, and be a good Christian and put borders in my life. I needed some borders.

27:14And I got a job at Dell computer at Dell. I was there for about two years. So that was a first job I had post Christian experience. And it allowed me to work full time there. Kind of get my finances in order and continue going to, to Hyde Park while I got my undergraduate degree. And Dell actually financed my undergrad degree from Concordia University. Love it. Yeah. It's been a while since my Microsoft days were I thought about Dell, but Microsoft and Dell go way back. They do. Yeah. Okay. So you get your degree and you're working for Dell. Where do you go next? Yes. I was in Dell for a while a couple of years. And then I got invited by the singles minister at Hyde Park to be on staff at the church. And so that was a major transition from what am I going to do with my life? I'm working at Dell. Maybe I'll just continue being in sales or whatever. But I had a passion for ministry in this guy. It's singles minister John

28:15Walters knew that. And so he kind of fashioned a position for me, kind of an intern role in the singles ministry. And that's really what started me in ministry. So I was getting my undergraduate degree finishing Concordia started working for John at Hyde Park. And at the same time I started a ministry, a new Sunday school class. He said, why don't you come in and help me start a Sunday school class and reach out to Dell? Because there was just so much a young 20 some things at Dell. I was 24 at the time. So everybody was my age at Dell. Everyone was in their mid 20s. And so he said, start inviting people. We'll create a Sunday school class and you can help lead it. And then invite people to it. And so we started a Sunday school class. So I led, I led help lead that for six months while I was getting finishing up Concordia. And then decided I was going to go to get a seminary degree. So now I was going to go, I felt, I felt called, we call it called by God to go into a ministry full time. So I accepted the call and agreed to go to Southwestern Seminary to get my master divinity program or degree with biblical languages because I wanted to be a preacher.

29:21So that all happened within that one or two year time frame as a very young Christian. One of the interesting side notes about that is when I started that Sunday school class, I at that time John also took me in about five guys, five other men through a experiencing God Bible study was by Henry Blackbeast. I still remember it. And it was a 12 week Bible study on how to give your life to God and your lifestyle to God to adjust your life and to discern what he wants you to do and to make that crisis to believe to decide exactly how to submit your lives to his purpose. And that that Bible study had a massive impact on me. And so when that 12 week study was over us, a John, I want to teach something like this. And I want to invite lots of people like to it, maybe a Sunday night or Monday night event because a lot of people don't want to get up on Sunday mornings because all my friends party on Saturday nights. So he's like, great, what do you want to call it? And it was at the time it was just a single sort of get together thing. That's literally what it was called. And then we called it the bottom line, a citywide Bible study, and I

30:22started inviting friends of mine from Dell that I knew from there to this Tuesday night event. And that thing is really where my ministry started. So we invited some people the first night, about 50 people showed up. John, I was supposed to ask John the singles minister to actually preach the first night. I was just putting the whole thing together and I didn't know how to preach from the Bible. I had no idea what I was doing. Well, he was out of town that weekend. And so there was no one else to teach. And I knew some people were showing up. So I ended up preaching out of Genesis chapter one. That's how much I knew about things. I just started at the beginning of the book. And I don't even remember what I said. It was probably horrible. But 50 people showed up to that Bible study. I preached my first sermon if you want to call it that or Bible study that day. And over the next four weeks, we went from 50 people down to 12. Everybody left. It was like, no, thanks. But those 12 people stuck with me. And they said,

31:23we're all Christians. We've been around for a while. We see your passion. We're going to keep going with you. And you can teach or we'll teach together and we'll just do this Bible study together. So we got down to this group of 10 or 12. I think it was 12. Actually, the number was 12, including me. And over time, that grew to 2500 people over the next 18 months. And as my teaching got better, more people showed up. We went from a small fellowship hall to the chapel, to the main auditorium at Hyde Park over time. And so we ended up filling kind of standing room only at the Hyde Park church on Tuesday nights. And that's where I really felt God moving in my life. Using my speaking skills and maybe some of the debate background that I had and my passion for the word. And I saw God blessing a ministry that I was involved with. And I'm like, this is what I'm supposed to do with the rest of my life. Really quick, how did becoming a Christian and beginning

32:29the ministry change your day-to-day behavior? Just some examples of how you cleaned up your life. Just yeah, you know, I haven't thought about this in a while. But it was really interesting. It was pretty radical. When I when I decided to make a shift and felt like there really was a clean break from my old life from those seven years of bad decisions, I took it really seriously. I went through a phase where I threw away all my DVDs. I threw away all my VHS tapes of all the movies I was watching. Nothing that wasn't Christian music was okay for my ears. I stopped drinking because the Southern Baptist Church. So that's one thing that's kind of at least back then was part of what you did. No drugs, no alcohol, no secular music, very few secular movies. They had to be positive, have a good theme about them. I mean, I took it I took it very seriously. And so through all that stuff away, basically, you became a Mormon just kidding. Yeah, maybe. I mean, it was it was a

33:30very radical transformation. And and I remember at the time, did you change how you did it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So I was, you know, I was in physical relationships before that and didn't see any problems with, you know, sex before marriage. And and then when I became a Christian, yeah, that that part of my life radically changed. You know, so I stopped, I stopped being physically involved. I read I kissed dating goodbye, which was a book about just, you know, being completely pure before marriage. I read there was a guy named Bill Gothard that had a certain ministry that he was talking about had to really live a Christian life and how you could actually become a spiritual virgin again. I mean, I bought into the whole thing, man, I was, I was all in. I was like, I'm I am truly new, right? I not only am I letting go of that old chapter. I'm I'm spiritually a virgin again. And I'm I'm I'm offering myself up clean, you know, to anybody that I might marry. I I dove in deep. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you were happier than you were in Denver. Oh, by far.

34:32Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, it put borders around my life. It structured my life in such a way that I didn't have to and this this became a problem down the road, but I didn't have to make any choices for myself. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. The the religion did it for me. Yeah. And and the walls around me were high and very thick. Yeah. Yeah. And it was comfy. Yeah. And and I had a I was very passionate about it because my life had changed. Now I I've become an evangelist for Christianity and the version of Christianity that I've been given. Yeah. And because of my speaking skills and my kind of all in personality, I was convinced, you know, got it called me to evangelize the world. But let's talk about there might be Mormons that don't really or ex-Mormons or members of other faiths that really don't know a lot about kind of the core tenants of your flavor of evangelical Christianity as you were learning it and preaching it in the late 90s. So what were the core tenants? A distinguishing

35:34tenants of your brand. What was your brand of evangelical Christianity and what were the core tenants? Yeah. Digly, you know, yeah. A lot of a lot of people put the Southern Baptist Church Bible churches, non-denominational, national churches kind of in the same vein. Evangelicalism is it's kind of playing out now spiritually, politically and otherwise in our cultures a little different. But my version really came from two premises. One was God is perfect. He's all loving, all knowing, all powerful, perfect in every way, incapable of making poor choices, bad decisions, doing anything evil. It's that God, that version of God. And then in addition to that, his word, this Bible from Genesis to Revelation 66 books, the Protestant Bible is the perfect revelation of a perfect God. It's perfect also in every way. It's without contradictions or errors in any way, shape or form. It's a setup and setup. Yeah. And so once you, so those two truths, so to speak, were the

36:36lenses for both my eyes and the lenses through which I saw all of life. And because of that, I took the Bible very seriously. And it was a version of Christianity that speaks of Jesus, you know, being the only way to God. And that even other denominations that didn't take the Bible seriously or didn't see the miracles necessarily as true or didn't believe they were necessary to be a Christian, we believe that you had to believe all the miracles. That in fact, the miracles were an expression of Jesus proving who he was and establishing his authority on earth. And in heaven and making clear who he was and that he was the only way to eternal life. And so that construct was the type of Christianity that I bought into and preached for 20 years. Was there a, and this is going to sound maybe a little bit geeky, I don't know, but like, was

37:38there an age of the earth component like was the earth six thousand year was a literalist, young earth creationist kind of thing? Yeah, there were plenty people in in in Hyde Park who believed that. I've found it interesting. What what I decided to do as a young Christian was, I remember thinking to myself, that seems strange. It just, it doesn't fit, but I've been making poor choices for the last seven years. And so I can't trust myself. Right. And, and what the Bible seems to say is that the earth is young. And I guess God could have orchestrated in such a way, I'm just going to buy in because everything else that's happened so far has been working for me. So it wasn't, it wasn't a critical thinking process. It was a tribal, this was my, this was literally my salvation. This was my way out. This was my new life. And if something didn't make sense, that was less important. If not, unimportant. Yeah. What was important was the tribal truth. Yeah. Right. That I just submit my life and my imperfection

38:44to God's perfection. I call it an emotional and a social conversion. Absolutely intellectuals tertiary literally. It's way down on the list. Yeah. It really is. Yeah. John, and I didn't see it that way. Yeah. But I mean, it cleaned up. That's the irony is, yeah. Sometimes you're, we make bad choices and we need guardrails. And if that means shutting off your cerebral frontal cortex so that you can have guardrails, the emotional and the social will clean you, clean your act up. Yeah. And it did. Yeah. And for that purpose, it worked extremely well. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, literal Adam and Eve. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And literal fall, original sin, Noah's Ark. Yeah. I mean, listen, I'll tell you that this is a bit of a side note. But I, I got, I went and introduced, got introduced to a guy named Bob Cornuke. This guy was a friend of the astronaut, Irvin. And Irvin was a big Noah's Ark Hunter. He was an adventure guy. And so Irvin and Bob Cornuke met and Bob was a Christian and kind of took over Irvin's ministry to find Noah's

39:49Ark. And I met Bob at a conference. And he was like the real life Indiana Jones. I spent several years traveling with him in his ministry. He invited me as a young, as a young pastor. And potentially kind of to be in his ministry for a while. I never did that. But I went to, I went to Iran. We were there for nearly three weeks. We were on mountainside. Error. Mount. We were on Mount Sablon. He didn't believe Mount Errorat was the actual place of Noah's Ark. It was the mountains of Errorat. Poor old. He took the Bible literally and therefore it was in a different place. It was in Jable Mosa, which was another mountain top in Iran. So we flew into Tehran. We spent almost three weeks in Iran looking for Noah's Ark. I went, I went on the Exodus route, traditional Exodus route. And he, he actually was over in Saudi Arabia looking at where he thought the real Mount Sinai was. He looked for the shipwreck of Paul. I mean, I was in it. There are three books. He has a trilogy of books on his search for Noah's Ark. They are, oh, and then we went to Ethiopia. We were in the Obedo for three weeks,

40:51just on the Ayretry and Border looking for the Ark of the Covenant. Went all over the world looking for all these relics. That's awesome. Yeah, man. Love the trebs. They were great. And I really, I believed it all right. So I was on a mission. So it's really very seriously. Yeah. Yeah. So in terms of, I don't know if Christology's though I word, but like what, what was it about Jesus that was crucial to the salvation of mankind? For those who don't know about Christianity, just at a high level. Yeah. He's shown at least in the New Testament. Well, he's shown in very many different ways. But I believed, and this is important to say this before I talk about Christology. My view of the Bible was that it was univocal, meaning it had one voice. So from Genesis to Revelation, it was a single story, single voice that voice was God speaking through men. And because of that, everything matched. Right. And so any supposed discrepancy in the theology of Christ, any Christology I might have had to harmonize even though they're very disparate perspectives on

41:55Jesus, his purpose, his life, his actions, that theology underpinning what he did. There are varied Jesuses in the New Testament. But I had a, you're giving the ending away. I'm sorry. No, I'm joking. I'm teasing. No, no, it's good. It's important. The Evangelical Christian Jesus I was given, that version of Jesus was that he really was, when I say the way, the truth and the life, the V, the article was key. He's not a way. He's not a truth. He's not a life. He's the way truth in life. So no one comes to the Father to God, but through Jesus. And so salvation is found in the person and works of Jesus Christ and Him alone. And it's specifically the version of Jesus that I was talking about. But I assumed that I had found the right version of Jesus. And that many other Christian denominations, we would call them mainline denominations maybe today, Methodist, Episcopalian Lutheran, they didn't fully understand the person and works of Christ

42:57as the Bible clearly, clearly showed. What did they get wrong? What did Protestant theology make? From my perspective, mainline Protestants didn't take as seriously the miracles, the virgin birth, the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus. And that was at a core. Because if Paul says of Jesus has not been risen and we assume to bodily resurrection, then we should be pitted. Christian should be pitted among all because it's the linchpin of Christianity. So the bodily physical resurrection into a glorified body of Jesus and his ascension into heaven was absolutely essential. And if you believed it was a spiritual ascension, the narrows and they, a physical salvation for our sinful bodies into a glorified body in the coming age. It was Jesus and that version of Jesus and his bodily resurrection and that is the core of evangelical Christian doctrine. And it's required that you believe that specific version of Christianity to be saved, to be forgiven of your

44:01sins, to be in right standing with God and to have eternal life. So God cares about what you believe, not just how you act, but what you believe. Yeah. And I find it, I don't know, in that mindset. Yeah. And I think what's hard for me sometimes, and again, this is the end of the story, but I don't want to forget this when you say what you believe. I told people from the pulpit for 20 years, just decide to believe. And what I find remarkable, you can't choose what you believe. You are they're convinced of something you're not. And the idea that God holds you morally accountable for an action you cannot take was really one of the things that that dismantled me. But at the time, it's like complete sense. Yeah. God, if you don't have the right beliefs, you're not crossing the pearly gates. Yeah. And we had a version of Christianity that believed that you were not only not crossing the pearly gates, but you were going to eternal suffering and hellfire. Literal flames. Yeah. Man, I mean, it was, it was suffering for eternity. Yeah. And that seemed reasonable. I know that comes up later for you. So that's the end doing a lot of

45:04evangelical pastors is the belief in hell. Yeah. I think what happens is as you go through the process, you start to the the borders you need for your life, the structure, that social and cultural importance, lessons. And at some point, some people at least I did start to ask the intellectual curiosity comes back and says, wait a minute, I'm okay now. For trading wheels. Yeah. Yeah. I they're off. I've gone to my Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Dr. Nation School. I've gone, you know, I've done all this. I clean up my life. Yeah. I'm good there. Right? And I don't feel that I'm in danger of falling off that cliff any longer. Yeah. Now you can turn your brother. I think Adam and Eve are real. Right? And then the questions. Right. The questions start to come up. Yeah. So a literal health burning hellfire. And then what did it mean to be saved? And then the second part, what role did baptism and confirmation have in salvation as well? Yeah. So what

46:08it meant to be saved was be right in right standing before God. So that that was salvation. It happened through Jesus. Jesus provided the way to be forgiven of sins. He, he reconciles us. Christ reconciles us to God. Although we were enemies of God, we're now friends with God. We are clothed in Christ. There's a passage that speaks to that. So God looks down and no longer sees my sinful self. He sees the perfection of Christ covering me. I'm covered with Christ. These are the kind of things, the kind of religious imagery that we get from many different New Testament passages. And I bought into that. You know, I was a wretched, sinful, worthless person other than other, but for the fact that I've been saved by grace through faith in Jesus and that my worth is, is not just tied to, but is in Jesus and only in him. And but for him, I would still be wretched. I'm laughing. I got in trouble once. I had some Orthodox Mormons on sitting in those chairs. And I called that part of Christian theology insidious. I hate the belief. What I hear

47:17you say, an enemy of God. I'm just like, we're creations of God. He's a loving father. If we're just being human as he designed us, the idea that we're his enemy, even when I was a faithful Mormon, it just, it never felt quite right to me. And so I called it insidious. And so then they, with their soundbites or their, you know, in their shorts on social media, sure. Or we're basically accusing me of being an anti-Christ and saying that I believed Christianity was insidious. No, that's not true. There's so much about Christianity I love and still support. But it is so triggering for me to hear this idea that God creates us. And then we're immediately as enemy. And then he's got to punish his own child and make him suffer and bleed and die. Because that's the only way he could figure out. And again, I'm giving the ending away, but you kind of led me there. Because I just, I can't stand that teaching. But I don't mean it disrespectfully

48:22for those for whom it's sacred. Sure. But it just doesn't, it just is triggering for me now. Well, I think, I think it's, I think I share that trigger. You know, I used to preach it as a beautiful picture that we were enemies with God, but now we're friends. And I would say it with passion and it would just lean into it as though it was the most important thing that anyone could hear. And again, I understand some people believe that still. But for me, over time, it became not just problematic. It became, it was, theologically, it was structurally problematic. I mean, it just, it fails to make sense in light of the whole story for me. Especially if you had the the Odyssey, this idea that God's all loving. Yeah, it just doesn't fit. If God is all loving, why are we ever an enemy? And if God's all powerful, couldn't he come up with a different plan? Right? Again, and the story stuff, right? That was, I just did, I did a, I did a, a video on the eight reasons I, I find myself no longer believing in the specifically the evangelical Christian

49:27God. And these are the, these are the, these are the reasons, right? These are the ones that, that kind of build on top of themselves and finally cause me to question. Okay. So really quickly, I, something that when I was believing Mormon at Katie High School in Houston growing up, I never got, because Mormons don't believe in this idea of being saved. That, it's a combination of faith and works, but faith without works is dead. And so we don't have, there's just this thing is being saved in the Mormon tradition. You get baptized, you get the gift of the Holy Ghost, and then you work hard to hustle through obedience to when God's love in favor, but there's never like an alter call being saved. And I would always like question my buddies in high school. Oh, so I like go get saved and I go, oh, I believe. And then I'm good for the rest of my life. What if I kill someone? These are the types that, and I know this is really obvious, you know, sort of questions from the realm you were in. But what, what, what did you believe about the role of like that

50:31alter call being saved and that being an important part of what you call salvation? Yeah, I was told back then and certainly bought into it that, that, that there's a sinner's prayer for lack of a better phrase. Now what that prayer was, nobody really knew, but there was, there was a prayer that a lot of people would pray. And basically, God, I know that I'm a sinner. I fall short of your plan for my life and your glory. I'm in need of a Savior and I acknowledge that. And because of that, I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior, accept his payment on the cross. He became sin for me so that I wouldn't have to pay the penalty of it. He paid the penalty for me. That's substitute share atonement. And I receive that free gift of eternal life and salvation from Jesus. And through Jesus and ask you to come into my heart and be in relationship with me. That's kind of the core of the prayer. And then at that moment, at that moment, you're saved, you're saved, you're, you're in the family of God. You're birthed into the family of God. And just as crazy as

51:31it would be to say that you could be unbirthed into your mother's womb, you cannot be unborn from the family of God. You are eternally secure in this relationship. And that second part is the one I never understood because I'm like one saved, the two are always saved. I'm like, wait a minute, what about a murder? You know what I mean? Yeah, so I, yeah, I preached one saved, always saved. In fact, it was the core, decore message of every sermon that I had. So what did you do with murders when you believed that? Well, I mean, if it was based on belief, so the concept is that it's based on belief. You believe the right things than you're saved, right? So if you believe Jesus died on the cross for your sins, it's a free gift. All you have to do is receive it. He's already done all the work. He's done everything. He's paid for the murder, he's paid for the lying, he's paid for everything that you've done or will do. And so there's no way you can earn your way to heaven through works. It must be through the salvific work of Jesus on the cross that you come into relationship with God. It is the only way. And so nothing you ever do is ever going to get you into or out of heaven. It's what God has already done past tense through

52:35Jesus. So there's this constant push toward you can't do any way to earn yourself into heaven. And because of that, there was no way to get there except for Jesus. Therefore, no heinous crime, no murder, no he's already paid for all those things that you might do or may have already done. And there's no way for you to absolve yourself of the the penalty for those things. That's why Jesus had to die. So murders get off free if they're saved. It didn't get off free. Jesus died for that murder. Right. But they don't have to. Yeah. They are forgiven. They are reconciled because of what Jesus did. Now, again, we keep jumping to the end of the story. But I mean, the idea of substitutionary atonement is ridiculous, in my opinion. It's just absurd. You don't make things right by having an innocent person pay for someone's else's guilt. The person who does something wrong, the issue of fairness and justice requires that that person

53:36pay the penalty for that crime. And no innocent person can jump in and take that for someone else. But that's the that's the entirety of the message from an evangelical Christian perspective. Yeah. And what I had to, so that's, I mean, I was I was raised definitely with the what do you call it substitution substitutionary atonement? Like that I was definitely raised with not with the one saved all was saved. It was faith in works. But definitely with the substitutionary atonement or whatever. That that part specifically, I didn't learn until relatively recently that not all Christians, you can be Christian and not believe in substitutionary atonement. But I didn't realize that. I thought it was all that's what the atonement was. You know, yeah, there's there's there's substitutionary atonement. There's there's a reconciliation there at theology. There's literally half a dozen of different different Christologies related to the cross. What what was accomplished

54:36on the cross? What actually happened in the spiritual realm because of Jesus' death? And there are many and varied perspectives on that based on many and varied passages in the New Testament. And I'm curious if you've come across this in the flavors of Christianity you learned about. In Mormonism, the most important act wasn't on the cross. It was in the Garden of Gassemite. In Mormonism, Jesus when he knelt in the prayer in the Garden of Gassemite, that's when he took on the pain and the suffering for all our sins. And we're taught that he bled from every poor in the Garden of Gassemite because he was so overwhelmed from suffering in that prayer in the Garden of Gassemite for everyone sins past, present, and future. And in Mormonism, it takes it once up further, there were even prophets that taught that it was for other planets too. People who lived on other planets like just this massive one-time event of suffering for everyone. That's where he overcame sin. And then when he was hung on the cross, died and then resurrected after three days.

55:42That's where he overcame death. So he overcame sin in the Garden of Gassemite and death on the cross and in the tomb. Is that new? Is that new? Yeah, yeah. So I would go to a passage that that Christ who knew, no sin, became sin for us on the cross. So in my Christology and in reference to the cross specifically, at some point he becomes, in his flesh, becomes all of our sin for all humanity and kills it, pays for it on the cross and bodily form. Now the only way it's verified that he has the authority to do that is if he raises from the dead three days later, Paul says, if the resurrection didn't happen, we should be pitied. So he becomes sin on the cross. He then validates that he actually accomplished that and finished it. It is finished on the cross because of the resurrection that he defeated death as well. If he'd not been raised from the dead, nothing on the cross would have mattered. Interesting. But the Garden of Gassemite, no, I've

56:45not heard that. That's new. Yeah, that's core Mormon theology. Interesting. Mormon is our very Christian. Even now, the church has actually communicated me and I still hate it when people say Mormon is our Christian just because they believe in Jesus. I grew up in evangelical Christian. No, but I mean, I hate that because they believe in God. They believe in the Bible. They believe that Jesus died for our sins. They believe that he took on our pain and suffering. Did he resurrect it after the third day? They read the Bible. They love the New Testament. What a... I know there's... Oh, but they don't believe the Bible's perfect. Oh, they don't believe that one saved all was saved or whatever. Some little, to me, tangential kind of thing, where you can find a different version of Christianity that doesn't believe whatever that thing is that disqualifies Mormons. You can find other Christians that are somehow in the club that don't believe that thing in the same way, but somehow Mormons because they're the red-headed

57:47stepchild get excluded. Well, for us... Yeah, I'll tell you what it was for us. For our church, it was that it was adding to the Bible. It was another testament. Yeah. And we saw that as a... It was canonized. This was the perfect word of God. And therefore this cannot be from God because this is from God. And weirdly, was that simple? No, no. And weirdly, Joseph Smith was ahead of both of us and your tradition because he saw errors in the Bible. Right. So he believed in the Bible. In fact, one of our articles of faith is... One of our... Yeah, articles of faith that Joseph Smith implemented was we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. So he saw the errors in the Bible and he did produce additional scripture, but he had a new testament basis for that because Jesus said, you know, other sheep I have that are not of this fold. They shall also hear my voice. And he talks about the stick of Joseph and the stick of Jacob and his Ezekiel and that there'll be two scrolls that join in my hand. And so even Joseph

58:52was basically saying, you can interpret scriptures in the Bible to allow for additional scripture. Sure. Sure. I'm not trying to argue Mormon theology. I'm just... No, no, I'm listening. I just know I find it personally fascinating. Yeah. I really do. Yeah. Because I know very... I know I studied in comparative religions about Mormon theology at a very basic level, but it's been since seminary. Yeah. Anyway. Fun. Okay. So I understand your Christology, your your tomen, you know, and all that. How critical for Mormon's baptism by immersion was crucial and the gift of Holy Ghost were crucial and you did it at eight. What was it for... What role did baptism or confirmation play at all for you? Yeah. And something Baptist theology immersion was important, but it was a symbol of something that already had been done. Okay. So it was a... That we'd already been forgiven. Okay. That we'd die to our old self. We've been birthed into a new kind of life. It wasn't a saving ordinance. It was not a saving ordinance. Immormonism, it's a... You can't get into heaven. That scripture, if you're not born

59:56to the water in the spirit, yeah. Immormons interpret that to mean literal baptism by immersion or no entrance into heaven. Yeah, and see we would perceive that as born of water as a physical birth from your mother's womb. One of the Spirit is being saved by Christ. Okay. And receiving the Holy Spirit upon salvation. Yeah. So baptism is a symbolic... Is a voluntary act of a believer who's now become a follower of Jesus to voluntarily show the rest of the world that he's died to his old self by going down into the water and dying and then being born into his new life by coming out of the water. So immersion was a very important symbol, but the person would go to heaven with it without baptism. Okay. Yeah. And thanks for doing this. It's almost like we're bible bashing, but you know, I never believe anymore. No, in the sense of our old selves friendly bible bashing, how we interpret Dr. Nuremberg. Yeah, I just, I find it right. I've always been very intellectually curious about theology and even after saying that I no longer

1:00:58believed in Christianity, I'm almost obsessed with theology and philosophy and having these kinds of discussions. It's a it's a healthy process for me. Okay. One one additional question that is the Lynch-Pin amormonism today. It's authority. So Joseph Smith taught that unless you have authority from the laying out of hands of someone who has authority, you can't baptize. You can't lead a church. You can't save humankind that the saving rituals in Mormonism, which is baptism, confirmation, gift of the Holy Ghost, and then eventually the the eronic priest of the Malkesic priesthood and then eventually the endowment ceremony, which you get in the temple and then temple marriage, which makes your marriage in your family last in heaven. All of that stuff is done with priesthood authority that that is administered through the laying out of hands.

1:02:03And so literally Joseph Smith claims that John the Baptist ordained him to the eronic priesthood and then Peter James and John came back as angels or dained him with the Malkesic priesthood and gave him the authority to lead God's one true church and to administer the saving ordinances. How did you all care about authority? And if so, how did you establish authority? Yeah, quite interesting from a Southern Baptist perspective. The priesthood of the believer is really at the core of Southern Baptist theology, meaning that each individual has the full ability by the power of the Holy Spirit living inside them to read and interpret and discern the truth of God's Word. So you don't need a ecclesiastical intermediary like a priest to tell you what the Bible says or even a pastor that the Holy Spirit is your intermediary. There is no human intermediary needed and that's a huge, huge thing in Southern

1:03:06Baptist theology. So that's the denomination that I kind of spiritually grew up in. So I came to the Bible, I came to the sense of authority that God himself has given me that the Holy Spirit is confirmed in my spirit. And so when I feel called to ministry, no one else can take that from me. I'm called to ministry. Nothing you do or anyone else ever says even a church authority can change that. Yeah, so it's quite on its head when you're talking about that's why Southern Baptist almost think the Catholic church may be the Antichrist, right? Because of the ecclesiastical authority that humans are conferring themselves as authority which allows for corruption within the system. Yeah, right? Oh, it's like a, it's like a McDonald's franchising licensing model, right? With Southern Baptist? With, with Mormons and Catholics and Catholics. Yeah, actually, saying you all have our brand endorsement legal contract authority. And so whatever you do is

1:04:10it legitimate, but we are a legitimate legal franchise. So it does lead to corrupt. Yeah, it's quite ironic isn't it that the Southern Baptist denomination is the largest denomination still I think in the country. So it's got this organizational structure and this hierarchy in practice. But theologically, it's, it's, that's a nathema. It's a very strange thing to watch. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you don't have this idea of unless you have baptism, because that was one of the things this was a stumbling block for me and Mormonism. I'm like, really? Like unless you have a Mormon baptism, I did the math in high school when I'm doing, when my friends are watching the God makers and telling me I'm in a cult, I'm thinking, no, no, no, wait, we're God's one and only true church of the earth. But then I'm like, okay, wait, we have six million people in the LDS church worldwide. There's billions of people. I did the math once. It was like less than one half of one percent. And I'm like, God kind of, God is kind

1:05:12of a bad marketer or a bad salesman because they're very, very few. I mean, I know that I know the Bible says narrow is the gate and few there will be or whatever. That's pretty narrow. That's right. Yeah, watch it. No, it's true. I'm just, you know, but but but literally that's that's where the baptism for the, and this is just a conversation, but that's where the baptism for the dead Mormon teaching comes from because Joseph is like, well, if you if you have to have a Mormon baptism to get baptized and over 99.9% of the people who've ever lived won't ever get a Mormon baptism, that means all those people are going to hell. If baptism by immersion with authorities, only way to get into heaven. So the only way Joseph could get out of that theological conundrum is to allow people to get baptized after their dead. Yeah. So that but what an inefficient ridiculous solution, but it's the only way to make it all logically. Yeah, if you assume those presuppositions, then that's the only thing that can be done. But that happens in all denominations

1:06:12in our religions, right? It must be true. And therefore, I have to find a way to that truth. Rather than it could be wrong. Right? That can't that can't be the case. Yeah. And then just because it this is striking memories, was it did I remember my Baptist friends not being allowed to dance? Is that was that part of your, but to the priest to the believer. So I depend on on which church. But yeah, overall, Southern Baptist did not drink and did not dance. So almost kind of like the foot loose, right movie, religious kind of ideology, no dancing, no drinking, no fun. Yeah. Yeah. And then talk quickly about like what the beliefs were around the second coming, the millennium and the judgment and that sort of thing. Yeah. So the left behind series, the books by Tim Lehigh, I guess they came out in the 90s. I guess it was about the time I became a Christian in 94, maybe late 80s. But the left behind series had a massive impact on

1:07:14Southern Baptist theology. They were already pre-millennial, meaning that, you know, Christ would come and get return and get take his, his flock his church up into heaven. And then there would be a thousand year, the tribulation in the thousand year reign and all that would happen later. But Christians would not experience any of the tribulation and the challenges that came at the end times. I didn't do a lot of study on end times. That was one of the problems I had from the beginning. I just thought there was a lot of, there was a lot of interpretive problems with end times theology. And I personally had some problems with the left behind series, even though it became very popularized. But almost everybody I knew bought into that perspective on Jesus coming back again to take his church home. And then there would be this tribulation and this anti-Christ would come and there would be a new heaven or a new earth after that. But it was interesting to me how many people were obsessed with end times theology inside the Southern Baptist church. Be watchful.

1:08:15It could happen. We don't know the day or the hour. Look into the heavens, be watchful. Be ready. Be prepared. You have to live your life in such a way that you're prepared when he comes. And it was a very fear-based, in my opinion, very damaging theology. Now I understand, at least from my perspective, from a scholarly perspective, revelation is a treatise at home. It's a political book dealing with the oppression of the Jewish people during the first century. I mean, it's very clear. It's addressing Nero. There's just a lot of imagery in there that deals with the political motivations of the time. And no critical scholar questions that. It's only religious people with certain lenses over their eyes that have been given a certain dogma that then reverse engineer the text to address and to validate the dogma. And then I'm always curious, we're made fun of. Mormons are made fun of by evangelicals for believing that eventually, if you're super

1:09:18righteous, you become a god and rule over your own planet, that is still Mormon theology, even though Mormons want to downplay or dismiss that now because it is cringey or viewed as heretical to mainstream Christians that we're trying to build bridges with mainstream Christians now, because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And so we become bedfellows with Catholics and evangelicals a bit, which I never thought would happen. But I digress. The main thing I'm asking is what was heaven going to be like? And I never understood, you know, as much as my evangelical friends wanted to make fun of the god makers idea, like sitting in heaven playing harps and singing and praising a narcissistic god that just wanted you to sit at his feet and sing his praises for eternity, like never made sense to me. So what what was heaven like? And I don't mean to be mocking of people's beliefs, because I'm sure there's all sorts of different beliefs around that. But what was your belief about the eternities as a evangelical Christian? Yeah, ultimately there would be a

1:10:23new heaven and a new earth. A perfected new a new heaven new earth. So this earth only perfected a new heaven. Basically, god comes down here and we we live out eternity in this new heaven, which is here on the new earth. And the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven and is physically present on this perfected earth. Basically, the garden of Eden again, but for the whole globe, where were all the people fit? At listen. These are the problems that I had, right? So when what I would just I would remember saying this in in servants, you know, I don't know how this happens, but scripture makes it plain. That's what I would say all the time. Scripture was very good. It would come down. Yeah, I mean, if god can if god can speak the universe into existence, he can do anything he wants with a new Jerusalem or a perfected world or anything. He literally can speak it. The Gulf of Mexico where it was going to land. I didn't know. I thought I believe that we believe that the city of Edenick was literally translated, meaning

1:11:26brought up to heaven. And I believed as a text that maybe it's the Gulf of Mexico that was where the city of Edenick was and then it was lifted up. Interesting. Come on, Galveston, Corpus Christi. Of course, it makes all sorts of sense now. I might still be a Christian today, if I if I only knew that. No, I just I didn't spend a lot of time on end times theology other than to know that that heaven was a place of eternal bliss. You know, no more tears, no more pain, no suffering, no sin. And somehow that made sense to me, you know, that and I think one of the biggest questions I had about heaven is I've gone through this. I actually did a video on on Instagram and TikTok recently where I said, if if heaven is either eternal worship of God and forever and ever and ever for trillions and trillions of years and that's only a day like forever and it never stops, I'll take non existence. And I did a whole short video on that because I just I don't not only I don't I don't find it plausible, but I don't find it something that I would aspire

1:12:29to any longer. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't make sense to me. And this narcissist of God that you speak of, that's that's exactly the way I view it now. Yeah. The way it's the way it's expressed as as far as we can tell in Scripture. Yeah. In the New Testament specifically. Okay. Okay. So turning back now because again, we're treading on sacred ground for believing Christians and Mormons really. And at the same time, I think we both have a soft place in our heart for the way that these theologies can transform lives that are metaphorically or literally in the gutter into something quite healthy or and more beautiful or more functional. And that also they're just tender beliefs for people. So I just want to acknowledge that while we're talking intellectually now and and being critical, I think we both still maintain a reverence for the way that these

1:13:29types of theologies can also do good in the world. And so can you talk about as you're becoming a pastor and giving your life to Christ into the ministry, what types of good things good fruits you're seeing in your life and in the lives of the Christians and in the congregations that you working. Yeah. So to say it transformed my life as an understatement. It was it was profound. Every every area of my life, my entire life and lifestyle, all the choices I made the words I spoke, the decisions, the actions I took, everything was driven around the centrality. I would say this phrase centrality of Jesus and who he was and what he wanted me to do not because I was afraid of him because I loved him so much. And this is I really felt this. I loved Jesus so much that I wanted to do these things as an active worship and an expression of love to this God that saved me from my own depravity. I mean, that's really the way I viewed the world. It got me to the point. In fact, I was involved from 20 2008 to 2020. I started a nonprofit when I was still at McLean Bible

1:14:36Church in DC. I started a nonprofit called The Last Well. And at this time, I was primarily pastoring these 4,000 or so 20-somethings. And these these were all very high output type A, you know, Mensa level genius young people that were coming in from all over the world who work on the hill, you know, and change the world. And for these Christians, I saw man, we have 4,000 young Christians who at the time reminded me of me when I got saved at the age of 24, right? So I was had a very passionate about 20-somethings specifically. And I started an organization called The Last Well. And it was working with these young adults to try to change the world. I believe, man, we have more influence and power and opportunity with these 4,000 young adults than we possibly imagine under the authority of God, you know, so we could do something amazing. So I started a nonprofit called The Last Well. And it was an effort to bring clean water and the Christian message

1:15:36to an entire developing country, border to border for the first time in history. So it was Liberia in West Africa. So it started in 2009 at the time Liberia was a second poorest country in the world. It was the most corrupt country in the world, according to the CIA. Where was Idiabia from? Was that the theory? It wasn't like the theory. Yeah. But the, we found the worst place we could go to to bring the gospel in clean water and to do it for the first time in history. And it was it was driven around the idea that God can do anything. So The Last Well wouldn't have existed, but for, you know, at least in part, but for my passion for God and my belief in his today power, I used to use that phrase quite often. And so we started this organization in 2009 to bring clean water, border to border to every single man, woman and child, every village, every community, every hut in in Liberia, West Africa. And we crossed the finish line on November 12th of

1:16:402020, 12 years later and brought basic access to clean water according to the UN guidelines to every single community in Liberia and did it. And that was the first time in history of developing country had ever been reached with clean water. And, and it was accomplished. Why? Because we believe God could do great things. That was the underpinning mechanism by which that happened. We did it, but our belief in the God that could push through any wall, any political barrier, any corruption was the reason it happened. So amazingly good things happen because of at least in my own life, because of my faith in this God. And it, it transformed my life, my, my life in literally every area. You know, and so but for belief in God, 3.4 million people would not have received clean water in that 12 year time. But for my belief in God, 150,000 people by UN estimates would not

1:17:42have seen their next birthday because of lack of clean water. And half of those 150,000, 75,000 were children under five. So 75,000 kids were seeing their next birthday because of a passion I had for God. And the fact that I believe God could use their adults to do great things. That almost makes belief trivial. Like my wife is coined the phrase beliefs aren't that important. Which can be interpreted as a way to devalue religion. But there's another angle you can look at it. Like if your faith, your beliefs led you to save the lives of 75,000 kids, historical criticism and multiple voices in the Bible don't matter. Compared to the fact that religion, this is kind of, I think the you've all know a harrari sapiens kind of argument. Oh sure. The religion provides people with a common myth, a common set of heroes, a level of trust that

1:18:44they wouldn't normally have with each other to allow a lot of people to work together to accomplish great things. We need a unifying story. Yeah. Yeah. And framework, for trust and cooperation. Like that. Well, you just described to me as an argument for Christianity. Not against. Oh no. And that's what I'm saying. I mean, many good things happen because of it. Many horrific things happen as well. Right. But but that same faith, that same Bible causes genocide in that faith, that same faith in that same Bible causes us to go reach an entire country with clean water. Yeah. It's so same Bible. So complicated. Same Bible. Yeah. So complicated. Wow. That's beautiful. What a cool story. So how what do you know this is out of the blue? But what was the highest annual budget that nonprofit reached at its zenith? Yeah. We raised 31 million dollars over that 12 years. And there's a lot. That's a 31 million dollar project. And in the last four years, we raised over half of that. Were you the CEO? Yeah. That was the founder

1:19:51and CEO of that for 12 years. Oh my goodness. Why are you a pastor? Yeah. I did it on a volunteer basis from 2009 to 2013. And when I left Lake Point Church in 2013, I went full time. So the board of directors, I was volunteer at the time. The board of directors came to me and said, why don't you take it over? We'll pay you. We'll we'll fund it. And so I actually got a nine guys. It was all men. And they actually covered 100% of the operational costs of the organization including my salary. And then all 31 million went directly to the to the to the project. Just because I run a nonprofit, I'm dying to know what your peak salary was at that nonprofit. If you remember and I can't remember. I honestly can't remember six figures at the end. Yeah. Yeah. I think nonprofit leaders have to do it. It probably hit that at the end. Yeah. But around six figures, not like two. Yeah. I mean, I honestly can't remember. I'm really terrible memory. But I would say this that the guys that were the guys that were supporting it

1:20:52understood where I was coming out of. Yeah. Kind of that mega church environment. And what I was making, I did take a hit to do what I did. Yeah. But then eventually kind of got back to parity with where I was. So and they and and that those were the choices they made. Not me. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You don't set your own. Yeah. They people don't understand it. I would come to them at different times and go, hey, maybe we yeah. But just for the record, people who run nonprofits don't choose their own salary. They don't choose their own salary. And and certainly not you don't you don't do it to make money. That's for sure. Yeah. Exactly. Although sometimes you can you can't have a decent living or good living running in nonprofit. Okay. So that's a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing what a inspiring story and what a beautiful fruits of Christianity. Absolutely. It's best. Right. Yeah. I would say I would say that that probably is the greatest without a doubt the greatest expression of my own personal faith and active faith in Jesus as it related to both my personal life and leadership. Yeah. Without a doubt. Okay. Going back a little bit just because

1:21:55we both grew up in Texas around the same time. I grew up with the names Jerry Falwell, oral Roberts, Jim and Tammy Febaker kind of in the zeitgeist. And it was like mega mega pastors are corrupt. They're sure. Having secret sex. They're flying or they're driving Cadillacs. They're flying around in jet planes. They may be gay secretly. You know, they're they may have not believe, but they're kooky, scammy, wealthy people kind of like righteous gemstones. It tries to portray them. So is your becoming a pastor and I'm assuming you you were paying attention when all that mega church scandal was happening or not somewhat not really. Okay. Yeah. I wasn't I just I wouldn't caught up in a lot of that. Yeah. But I will say that a lot of people when I say mega church pastor, I mean my persona online, you know, the deconstructed pastor and I mean,

1:22:59I'm introduced as a mega church pastor. I think I think it is relevant. Right. It's different pastoring a 200 person church in a neighborhood versus a 15,000 person church. It's a it's a corporation. It's, you know, we had a, but a $25 million budget. It's just a lot of money. Annual? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so and so, but I will say this and and on behalf of both, I went to the church that I went to that I've pastored in DC was McLean Bible church and then Lake Point Church in Dallas. I will say this about both of them. Can't say this for every mega church. I have problems with some mega churches that I see today for lots of different reasons. But at the time, both even though it was a business, you can't have 300 staff in a $20 million or $25 million budget. Seven services on the weekend, you know, 40 people running the stage to make the deal happen every Sunday or Saturday or all the different services we had. We had

1:24:01an internet campus. I mean, it was just it's a massive organization. But I will say for or and we can talk about all the shortcomings of mega churches. But I will say for those two churches, they were run by people, myself included, who really did believe the stuff that we were saying. I mean, we just did. We were, we were constrained by this love that we had for Jesus. And we believe that the number of people showing up was a validator by God himself for that we're doing the right thing. Right. God wouldn't let this happen because God's real. He's all powerful. And he would not let someone, you know, bring a crowd like this. Now I failed to reply the same critique to the obvious mega churches that were being like the ones you're mentioning that were being sued or people going to prison and corruption and all the things that happened, which all those markets that happen could be a modern example. You know, about him. Mark and I knew each other. Oh, you knew Mark? Yeah. Whoa. I want to hear all about Mark. I don't want to know. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's right. It's he and I he and I were connected to a Gen X conference back in

1:25:07the mid to late 90s and traveled to it. We cross path quite often at conferences. And this is just, most people don't know who Mark Driscoll is. I just, I found that podcast on Mars Hill, one of the coolest podcasts I've ever listened to just to hear the rise of, it was called Mars Hill, right? In Seattle with Mark Driscoll. And he's had a sort of a mega reemergence as kind of a mega. Yeah. It's very strange to watch. Yeah. I'm curious just because I'm a nerd in a way. When you and Mark were running in similar circles, would you have characterized your world views, your Christian world views then as being the Venn diagram pretty overlapped or quite different? It's a bit more complicated than that, I think. Back then, I mean. Yeah. Back then, what we had in common was we were both, we were both interested in young people in this Gen X movement that we saw during that time. And we were invited by people in authority in those conferences to come and speak.

1:26:12And there was a collection of us. Mark was one of them. I was one of them. And there were probably a dozen, 15 others that were kind of popularized by those conferences. And so we all saw each other in the same theological vein at the time. But I can't tell you just how amazed and distraught I am by, and I really don't want to go further with it other than to say this, the kind of the MAGA evangelical movement in the way evangelical churches have been kind of conscripted into this kind of political ideology, Christian nationalism. It's very disconcerting. And when I say I'm an evangelical, former evangelical pastor, many people who are maybe in their 20s right now only identify evangelicalism with conservative politics and white nationalism.

1:27:16And it's just couldn't, it couldn't have been more different. I mean, it just, it might as well be called two different things at this point from my perspective. But back then, yeah, I think we had some similarities. Yeah, and I'll just give the disclaimer I give every time. I'm not anti-Republican, I'm not anti conservative. Yeah, I love you if you voted for whoever I love you. And you can't talk about history, religion. It's just part of the process. The current events, yeah, politics and religion, they run the world. Yeah, and by definition, I mean, if you, especially if you're talking about evangelical Christianity, just because of its political connection to a certain political ideology, it has changed. And so someone making make an assumption about a certain person's ideology or theology for that matter. And it'd be incorrect. Yeah, yeah. I'd love to come back to talking about Christian nationalism, it may be in part two, just because I'm curious. I have a lot of things I want to talk about in part

1:28:18two. But let's go back to your story. So, um, so talk about, you know, why aren't you, why aren't you presiding over a 20,000 or 50,000 mega church now? Like what? It seems like you were on the path to Jolostin land. What happened? Yeah, so it goes slow like you don't have to rush it. Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic. So I, I, about let's see, in 2004, I got to McLean Bible church. And that was the first really, really big mega church. The other churches were like, you know, Hyde Park, two, three, four thousand people up to that point. And then you get to McLean, there's 10, 12, 14, whatever they had. And when I got there, um, it was interesting. I was actually living in San Antonio at the time. And my friend was the pastor of Frontline, which was a young adult ministry that I would, I would take over at McLean Bible church. And he actually brought me there to serve in ministry with him, but not be the main stage guy. I was actually

1:29:22looking for a break. I had spoken 400 times the year prior. And I just got burnt out. And so he said, hey, come up here hanging out for the next year and a half, two years and just help me with this place. And you can preach when you want to, but, you know, let us love on you a little bit and just get you out of the burnout phase. So I did. And a month after I got there, he sat me down at a Starbucks in, in Tyson's corner. And he said, I'm moving back to California. And the church wants you to take over Frontline. And it was like the last thing I wanted to hear. But again, you do what God tells you to do. So I took over that role and became a main teaching pastor, both at McLean and Frontline within that same organizational structure. And um, it was very passionate about it. And that's the, that was the seeds of the last well, the, the work that we did in West Africa. I mean, a lot of great things came out of the seven years that I was at McLean Bible church. In fact, I would say it was seven of, of some of the best years of my life. It was remarkable. Like I, I, nothing but smiles.

1:30:24It was just a, it was a wonderful, wonderful time in my life. It really was. And at the same time, I was kind of, I kind of re-emerged. I was traveling full time doing conferences, got burnout. Didn't want to do that anymore. Now I'm pastoring this big church that I never planned on doing. So it was just the last thing that I was going to do. And because you're talking about travel and working so hard, I, and I'm not gonna, I'm not asking anything more detailed than, did you get remarried? Did you have kids? Did you have a family? Yeah. So, if you want to share, if you want to share. Yeah. So in 1994, when I got saved, when I became a Christian, just two years after that, I was married. She was a wonderful woman. We're no longer married. We were married for about 24 years. And got a divorce in 2020. Incredible woman. She's an incredible mom to my three, our three kids. And we've got three incredible children. So it was a wonderful, and we have a good relationship now. But we met and I got married right into Christianity.

1:31:32Wanted to be married. Wanted to live a fulfilling life and a life as a Christian. And she was wonderful. And we did fall in love. And it just, it didn't work out long term. But our three kids, our marriage and our three kids grew up in the glass house of the mega church. I mean, that's all my kids knew. So from, from, from, from the birth, they were PKs, right? Yeah. What does that mean? PK, preacher kids, pastor's kids. Yeah. PKs. And, but I think, I think, I think we both did very well parenting in that glass house. And all three of our kids are very well adjusted today. They're, my, my third one just got out of college. All three of them are out of college now. Have great jobs. Love their lives. Love their mom. Love their dad. You know, I think as little shrapnel as could have happened through a divorce happened in our situation. Nice. So yeah. So I've got three wonderful kids. And, and, and thankful for the marriage that I had. Okay. So you were saying

1:32:35now in parallel to the amazing things happening in McLean. What? Yeah. At McLean, what was interesting is I was at that point, I am swimming in the deep. And I've got two tanks on my back. And I am, I am deep in evangelical mega church world. And, and, you know, just a few years after this, I'm going to start the last well. You know, we, we grew from about 12, 1300 people. When I took it over in, in 2004 to 18 months later, we had 4,000, 4,500 people coming. We had 10 campuses. We, we opened across the DC. We called it a spiritual beltway around Washington, DC. We had an internet campus. We simulcast it all, all of the sermons live to the other campuses. I mean, it was a, it was a deal. And, and we were saving lots of young people. And that's what I was all about. At the same time, I decided to go, I got accepted to a doctoral cohort at Princeton.

1:33:35And Princeton is a very liberal seminary, theologically. And I was, I was told by most people, because I got my masters at Southwestern Seminary or Southern Baptist Seminary, told by most people in my world, don't go to Princeton. It's just going to mess you up. You know, what, what in the world are you doing that for anyway? Is it for prestige? I don't understand why are you doing it. I actually went to Princeton to try to better understand liberal theology, because I was doing a lot of missionary work and needed to get along with people from different theological perspectives and thought Princeton would be the perfect place to do that. And so, ironically, somewhat looking back in my life right now, it was during the height of my passionate engagement in evangelical Christianity that I went to Princeton and Princeton sowed the seeds of my deconstruction eventually. So it was Princeton that, that opened me to a

1:34:40different way of thinking about my theology. And ultimately, I would say was the beginning of my deconstruction and my deconversion from Christianity. Let's, and I, and I joked with you, I did interview Barterman several years ago and recently and it was my memory that that's where Barterman also lost his faith. Learning about the Bible and, and yeah. So let's, let's slow-alk that. How did your faith start to come unraveled at Princeton? Yeah, so at Princeton, it was interesting. I was invited, I got accepted to this cohort of 10 individuals and it was all men. So myself and nine others. And they were from all over the world. So several of them from the states, but really, I think six, five, six of them at least were from outside the US. And I remember the first meeting we had, it was a three-year doctoral program cohort, three-year fellowship. And I remember the first time I met these guys. And up until that point, John, I really thought I could handle myself in any

1:35:43room. I mean, I just, I had enough confidence in my own intellectual prowess to kind of manage any situation or so I thought it wasn't until I got to Princeton and sat down within, I would say minutes, not even hours, but minutes of having discussions with some of the guys in my cohort. That I realized, you know what? I may be the 10th smartest guy in this room. I mean, these nine guys are much more intelligent, just brilliant at many levels. And what was more disconcerting for me was they didn't necessarily believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus. They didn't necessarily believe in the virgin birth of the miracles. Much more social gospel oriented and coming from more mainline denominations. And I remember thinking to myself, wow, I am not the smartest guy in this room. There are nine guys that are smarter than me in this room. That's humbling in itself. I got a real problem with it. It really, it took some emotional toll on me. I was like, how small of a pond if I've been swimming in, even though I was in a

1:36:44mega church, what is the, what is the world I've been living in? And so that got me thinking differently. In addition to that, I realized very soon that I just really had very little to contribute to the conversation that these guys are just talking at a level that that I had not been a part of up until that point. So my three years at Princeton, I just shut up. I just took notes. I I observed. It was a challenging time for me. And the other challenging component of that was, okay, I'm the only one that's still a conservative Christian, theologically speaking. I'm the, I'm the only one in here that really sees the Bible as an inherent word of God. They see God differently. They don't necessarily care about the miracles. And yet they still call themselves Christians. And in addition to that, the entire three-year cohort was built around what was called a habit of mind. So Princeton's goal was to teach you this habit of mind. It was critical thinking. That's a basic understanding of this. It was critical thing. It was a habit of mind a way to think

1:37:46and perceive and critique the message and scripture and how to perceive it. And it was very different than I'd ever been taught. And I started realizing then that Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary was an indoctrination school. It was a school of higher learning, but they weren't teaching you how to think. They weren't teaching you how to critique the Bible. They would probably tell you even today they are, but they're not. It's an indoctrination school. It's an apologetics master's program. It really is. And it wasn't until I got to Princeton that I realized that. Okay, Princeton doesn't care what I think about the word, about the passage, about the Bible. They're not trying to get me to think a certain way. They're teaching me how to think about how I think a certain way. And that was one step back. And that changed things for me. And so it got me to think differently. It introduced me to guys like Douglas John Hall, who's a Canadian Theologian that wrote a 4,500 page systematic theology three part book series, just massive. And I got 4,500 pages of this guy

1:38:53that I read during that time. And he was a liberal Theologian and he made more sense to me than most of the conservative Theologians that I was introduced to in my indoctrination program at Southwestern. And for those who just have no idea what you're talking about, which is Gus Mormons, give five or whatever examples of what liberal Christian theology would be. You've already touched on it, but just summarize maybe the pillars of liberal Christian theology. Yeah, so conservative theology is everything I've described at this point. So it's the it's the biblical literalism. It's the inerrancy, the infallibility of Scripture. Liberal theology or mainline theology is much more, is much less concerned with that kind of brutal, uncompromising perspective on Scripture. Many liberal Theologians buy into more of a social gospel. So they look at the 2,000 passages, for example, in the Old New Testament about clothing, the needy, and the homeless, and feeding

1:39:54the poor, and providing for those who are in need. And so those 2,000 passages drive a social perspective on the gospel that has more to do with a today theology than an afterlife theology. So and again, liberal Theologians will probably listen to this and just cringe because I'm not giving them their due, right? But in general terms, it's a very different perspective on Scripture. Hey, you're giving your take on this. Yeah, yeah. And how I see it is compared to my own theology at the time. So very much about the life of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, what that means, and how we live our lives today and how we serve others that's a much more liberal theological perspective on Jesus, whether he had a bodily resurrection or was born of a virgin as a secondary or even unimportant side note to the reality of the life and actions of Jesus and how we might be able to live according to that. So Christianity is seen in more liberal theological paradigms as a way of living, as a way of following the teachings of a person who claimed maybe to be God.

1:40:56But again, secondary. Now, the primary thing is what did he say and do and how can I live that way? My primary thing was afterlife, heaven, forgiveness, eternity, you know, hell avoiding that. You know, getting to the truth and that there is no there are no contradictions in Scripture. Everything it says is true. That's a much more conservative fundamentalist perspective on the Bible. Hope that makes sense. Yeah. So just to drive it home, liberal Christianity probably does not believe in an inherent Bible, true. By and large, I would say that's accurate. And they there's probably a lot of them that this idea of Christ being the only way they can probably look at that symbolically or metaphorically and find room for Buddhists or Muslims or Jews to depend on how liberal. But yeah, but yes, I think they would lean indeed. Definitely everything you're saying would it apply to certain liberal theological frameworks? Absolutely. Or that Jesus's resurrection maybe wasn't

1:42:02necessarily temporal or corporeal? Yeah, it could have been spiritual, could have been a metaphor for forgiveness, you know, it doesn't have to have happened the way the Bible says it had. And could it even be that Jesus, I'm sure this is there's a spectrum that Jesus wasn't really literally the son of God and wasn't really a God, but he taught really good principles. And in that sense, he taught teachings that are true, but he wasn't necessarily literally a God. Yeah, Christology is a very core component of the difference between liberal and conservative theology. Yeah, conservative theology takes very literally what it perceives to be the truth of Christ in his purpose for both being born, living, dying, resurrecting and ascending, right? All those things are core. In liberal theological paradigms, I think you stated it very well. Okay. Yeah, he's an example. So I'm curious, you know, Mormonism has sort of an adote to

1:43:10higher learning, you know, and I'm sure lots of fundamentals religions do. There's this saying that like the learned think themselves to be wise, but they can't not into the spirit, you know, or there are ways to basically say, you want to lose your faith, get educated, go to Princeton, go to Harvard, you know, that's just not what you do because the the learned are prideful and ultimately secular and wicked. And so by devaluing higher learning or certain types of higher learning, a lot of degrees are okay because you can become a lawyer and pay a lot of typing or get an MBA's fine or an accountants fine or an engineer because you're narrow, but like the liberal arts are pretty evil, history's pretty evil, and certainly liberal theology is like

1:44:13what Mormons would call the philosophies of men mingled with scripture. Like Mormonism's got a lot of anecdotes to keep you from in your Mormon theological worldview bubble and to never allow yourself to read books or hear ideas that are outside of the Orthodox mindset because they're dangerous to faith. How did you allow yourself at Princeton? You would have had lots of reasons as a mega church pastor to not allow your bubble to be permeated, to not entertain or take seriously end of the thing, any of the things discussed, even if you perceive them to be of higher IQ than you, the other fellow attendees at your Princeton Seminary, you could still have your shields or your defenses up to say that's evil, that's wicked, that's, you know, endothetical to the true Christianity. So I may sit in the same room as these people's mouths move and they make mouth sounds as

1:45:18Brit Hardly likes to say, but I'm never going to actually allow myself to consider whether this heretical, evil, worldly, secular version of Christianity is ever actually true. What was allowing you as a mega church pastor to actually entertain and take seriously the things they were discussing? Well, this is an important caveat to all this. So, so let me, let me back up a bit and say this. By the time I got done with my three years there, I was still convinced that I was right. I was still convinced that probably all nine of the other people in my cohort were not going to heaven. None of that changed. Okay. It was just the seeds, okay. Started thinking differently, but, but I was going back every weekend and preaching inside the church. And so I didn't have time to spend months or years reflecting on different theological precepts. The seeds of my deconstruction

1:46:19started there. Okay. But I didn't call myself agnostic until 2022, which is four years ago. Yeah. So, I mean, this is, I mean, 2005 to 2022. So I leave, so I leave Princeton at 2000 in 2000, but yeah, I know five. Okay. I leave there. I'm still, I'm still at McLean Bible Church. I'm still preaching. I'm full on in the only reason I bring up Princeton is because it started me thinking differently. So that when I was ready to ask questions in 2013, 2014, 2015, 10 years later, all that stuff stuck with me. I still had Douglas John Hall in my library. I still had the books from Princeton. I still had the habit of mind. All those things were still there. And, and when I was ready to ask those questions, I had a structure, a habit of mind, a framework from which to think about those things more critically. And I'm sure, you know, we, the metaphor we use in Mormonism is putting things on the shelf. You learn, you hear, oh, maybe Joseph Smith was a polygamist. What? I didn't, I wasn't taught that. I'll put it on the shelf and keep believing. Oh, what? The

1:47:23peeps don't have a hat translation. Oh, that can't be true. I'll put it on the shelf. Absolutely. But, but we also have the metaphor that like the shelf starts building up and cracks start developing. And eventually it capes in. So is that, you know, the seeds? 100% accurate. Yeah. I put everything back on the shelf. I didn't have time to think critically about anything. I had to go back to preaching every weekend. And I was passionate about what I was doing. Like, there was nothing getting me out of that. And just, it was this thing in the back of my head. It was on the shelf. Okay. And then it wasn't until 2013 when my contract at Lake Point Church ended. So I was at McLean Bible Church for seven years from 2004 to 2011, during which time I'd gone to Princeton. 2011 to 2013 was my time at Lake Point. And then at the point of 2013 when I took over last well full time to do missionary work, that was the first time in my Christian experience. I was allowed to spend some time thinking. So you had to be a pastor up until then you had been a pastor

1:48:24responsible for the faith and the practice of thousands of thousands of people. Tens of thousands, sure. Tens of thousands. And then all of a sudden you're leading in on profit. And no longer carrying the responsibility of tens of thousands of people's beliefs. Exactly right. So I no longer had to be certain every Sunday. And I had spent 20 years being certain every Sunday and preparing myself to be certain every Sunday. Now a sudden I'm not preaching every weekend. I don't have to be certain every week. I don't have to sit down with in counseling sessions and with couples and with youth groups and be certain every day. I didn't carry the burden and the agenda of saving every person I sat with. Now I had time to think. And in 2013 I was still a passionate Christian, but was taking over this nonprofit. And now I could spend weeks or months or what turned out to be years. And for some topics a decade asking questions that I did not have to have an

1:49:25answer to anymore. The issue of hell bothered me. The issue of biblical inerrancy was bothersome. And now I said, and I didn't have to get up and say the Bible was an error. I believed it, but it was bothersome to me. And so from 2013 to 2022 for nine years, that was my I would call it my active deconstruction phase. And for those nine years up until 2022, I was still a Christian. I spent nine years from 2013 to 22 being a Christian trying to come to terms with things that bothered me. And and come to terms with the doctrine of hell, come to terms with a substitutionary atonement. Question inerrancy when I found contradictions. And now I could honestly ask the question, are there contradictions? And it takes about 12 minutes to just consciously deal with the fact that there are, but they could be harmonized away inside the church. So there's a quote that comes to mind. I read the book The Jungle by Ethan Sinclair in high school about the meat packing plants in the

1:50:28the turn of the 19th to 20 centuries. And the and the book was about how how owners of the meat factory plants could justify all the harm that was being done to the factory workers. You know, they were getting wealthy, but that people were the carnage. And there's a quote that his stuck with me since then. It's difficult to get a man to see a point of view when his livelihood depends on not seeing it. Absolutely. I mean, you know, my my my entire career, my reputation. I spent 20 years building a career in becoming a mega church pastor. I had four books published. I had a DVD series and Bible studies that were out there. I was still traveling full time and speaking. Yeah. And I loved it. And it and to be fair, not to be cynical, it saved your life. 100% of the gutter, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And I would and I wouldn't change that. Yeah. I mean, I'm in a different place today, but I wouldn't change what happened to me at the age of 23.

1:51:29Absolutely not. Yeah. Yeah. Or the good you did. Oh, not profit. And and in people's lives, right? Yeah. I, you know, I still have people that email me now that I'm on social media that I get emails and messages and DMs and stuff. You know, from people that are heartbroken, you know, the pastor that quote unquote, saved them, you know, I got saved at front line that they'll say. And I'm still a lover of Jesus because of what you said in that I still have that sermon on a DVD. Right there completely devastated and I get that and that hurts my heart, honestly. I mean, it really it's a painful thing to go through, but I have to be true to myself in my own journey. Sure. Well, this is a natural place to wrap up part one of your story. I've loved every second of this. This is like, I'm 22 plus 100 episodes into Mormon stories over 4,000 hours of interviews and I'm loving every minute of this interview. Oh, thanks. Well, that means a lot to me. Yeah, no, I appreciate the invitation more than you know. So, so really quickly, don't go away.

1:52:29We're going to go ahead and end today's episode, but just to give a couple final plugs, the TikTok and the Instagram and I assume Facebook and YouTube are at Dr. Todd Phillips. That's the social media handles. He's also known as the deconstructed pastor. How do people support you in your mission now if they want to support you financially? Yeah, so there's a couple different ways. I have a they can go to any of my social media channels and have a link directly to a community. One of the things that I started recently was a was a deconstruction community primarily for evangelical Christians. What's it called? It's called it's called DeCon Recon. Okay. So deconstruction and reconstruction and it's really a it's a safe place for people to ask these questions. What I was seeing was thousands of people coming into the comment section and being bold enough to share their own questions and then being just lambasted by religious people or whatever. And I

1:53:34thought, you know, this is I wish I would have had a space where I could go and get encouragement and support. And there's a paywall behind it like they what I would say if people want to support they can they can message me at the email that you provide them in the description or wherever that would you email. It's just Todd H Phillips at gmail.com. They can send it to my personal one that would be preferable. And if they want to support me in discussed different ways, we have scholarship programs for people that are trying to join that don't have the financial ability to do so. Nice. So there's lots of different ways they can help. All right. Well, don't go away because we're going to stand or two hours so that this can be translated audibly to all the languages on the planet. But we're committed to long forms. So thanks for joining us for part one. Come right back for part two. We're going to slow walk Dr. Todd Phillips deconstruction as a mega church pastor or as a former mega church pastor at this point, but as a nonprofit, Christian nonprofit leader, we're going to talk about how the threads ended up being pulled and unraveling his orthodox

1:54:37Christian beliefs, fundamentalist Christian beliefs. And then we're going to talk about what deconstruction was like for him. Was it fun? Was it a joyride? Was it tragic and difficult and tedious and painful and excruciating? And so we're going to talk about that and what it was like having influenced so many people and having been so visible to go through that deconstruction. And then maybe a low point that he hit in that process and then what reconstruction is meant to him. And then we're going to talk about all the other people leaving organized religion or fundamentalist or high demand or orthodox religions and his decision to pivot to be a social media influencer in the deconstruction and reconstruction space. And we'll talk about that. And also, I'd love to get Todd your views on the rise of the nuns, the rise of people who are no longer affiliating with any religious tradition, how the state of both mainline Christianity and of

1:55:43evangelical Christianity in 2026 and where we're going as a country and as a world as, are things becoming more secular? Are we retrenching in the faith in 2026? And we're, you know, how what's the new promise land for those of us who aren't in orthodox religions anymore or for those of us who aren't orthodox believers? Where's the promise land? How do we find something that's as good or better as a framework for living than orthodox religion? Are you ready for part two? I'm excited about part two. All right. Well, thanks for joining us today. I'm Armistori's. Please check out Dr. Todd Phillips at Dr. Todd Phillips. And if you value this content and you want to see continue, if you like what we do, you can go to morhamistories.org slash donate and become a monthly donor. We can only do this because of the generous donations. If you are a donor, thank you for making all of this possible.

1:56:43Again, we're not anti-belief. We're not anti-Christian. The goal is not to make you deconstruct belief in God or Jesus. We're literally just experiencing the world along right side with you and trying to help everybody on their journey, journey wherever they are. But in no sense is it our agenda to take away your belief in God or in Jesus or in whatever you believe in. That's not what we're about, but we are in helping everyone find a happy, healthy, meaningful life in a route of faith. Agreed? Agreed. Absolutely. All right. So thanks for joining us. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Come right back for part two of my interview with Dr. Todd Phillips. Thanks, everybody.