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With Mark Meynell
77 Plays3 years ago
One of the biggest reasons for people to reject Christianity is because of their experience of the Church or other Christians behaving badly. How can we deal with abuse of power, hypocrisy and loss of trust? In an age of scandal, misinformation and conspiracy theories how can we point people to the love, truth and safety of Jesus Himself? Andy and Kristi speak with author and pastor Mark Meynell about these incredibly important questions.
Mark Meynell is Director (Europe and Caribbean) for Langham Preaching (one of the 3 programmes of Langham Partnership). An ordained Anglican minister, he has served in churches in the UK (in Oxford, Sheffield and London) and taught (and for a year was Acting Principal) at a small seminary in Kampala, Uganda. He is married to Rachel and they have 2 grown-up children. He is currently working on a Doctor of Ministry (DMin) at Covenant Theological Seminary in St Louis, MO,
He is the author of Cross-Examined (IVP, 1998, 2010), Good Book Guide to Colossians (GBC, 2008), The Resurrection (10ofThose, 2013), What Makes Us Human? (GBC, 2015) He is passionately concerned to cross the bridge between the Bible’s world and the contemporary world, which led to A Wilderness of Mirrors. (Zondervan, 2015)
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Kristy Ware and once more I'm joined by the brilliant Andy Bannister. Will you continue to join us from Dundee, don't you Andy? I do, one of these days we'll do a podcast and I'll be somewhere exotic, like I don't know, Aberdeen or Motherwell or somewhere, but you know, no Dundee, it is the centre of the universe.
00:00:31
Speaker
Well, welcome.
Guest Introduction: Mark Meno
00:00:32
Speaker
And we're also very, well, just thrilled to be joined by the brilliant Mark Meno. Mark, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. It's a real joy. Mark, we're old friends, but you you wear a lot of hats, as we mentioned earlier on. Let me see if I can remember.
00:00:50
Speaker
what we were just talking about. You are the European Caribbean director for Langham preaching. You've had the privilege of serving in the local church ministry for a number of years. And you've also served in a seminary in East Africa, among many, many
Power and Evangelical Culture
00:01:07
Speaker
other things. So you just bring just such a wealth of experience and heart, I think, to this important and really painful topic that we're talking about today on power and evangelical
00:01:20
Speaker
culture and what it looks like for the watching world, really, to see us just bleeding before them in all these different areas. Gosh, I'm not even sure how to start this conversation, Mark, other than to perhaps ask you, how did you first kind of start engaging with this topic? Thank you. Well, probably it was about
00:01:43
Speaker
10 or 11 years ago, I started just trying to get my head around why we seem to be in a uniquely suspicious age. And what was it that was leading to a breakdown in trust across the West
00:02:03
Speaker
and particularly suspicion and nervousness about the church and about the gospel. Now, it quickly became apparent that there are 101 different reasons and factors in that. So it's not a sort of question one can give a sort of pat reduced answer to. You can't sort of reduce it to a sound bite.
00:02:29
Speaker
But I quickly realized that there was at least one common thread of a number.
Patterns of Power Abuse
00:02:35
Speaker
And that was the natural response to having experienced the abuse of power is a suspicion of anyone who wields power again. So, you know, it's the classic once bitten, twice shy thing. You've had your fingers burnt. You're not going to go anywhere near the fire again. And I began to see that this pattern
00:02:57
Speaker
was being repeated at the sort of macro cultural level and also right down to the individual personal level. And this came together in a book that came out in 2015 called Wilderness of Mirrors. But I was just looking at lots of different strands. But since then,
00:03:16
Speaker
I found the kind of trends I was seeing culturally and across, well globally in some ways, but certainly across the West, were becoming very close to home. And some situations that have hit headlines just in recent months were just terrifying.
00:03:41
Speaker
kind of outworkings of precisely the things I thought about in theory or remotely. And now I was meeting with people who were directly affected and very sort of in parallel to what I'd seen. So that was just really scary. I didn't anticipate that, but I guess I should have done. So people have come to talk to me as soon as that book and I would reckon
00:04:05
Speaker
perhaps on average, monthly since that came out, somebody news got in touch and said, I need to talk to somebody about this.
00:04:16
Speaker
And it seems just in what you've said there in brief, Mark, to me, there's always two relating themes here going on. There's the suspicion in the culture of power and a lot of some of the biggest sort of trends in culture. I think things like critical race theory and others have shone a light on that. And it's easy to critique those things, but there's also they put their finger on some things. But then also at the same time, it's not just that people are suspicious of
00:04:40
Speaker
the church and power, right?
Scandals in Church Leadership
00:04:42
Speaker
It's that there have been, you alluded to it there, these really seems like high profile scandal after scandal after scandal where the church leaders have abused power. Is that kind of new thing going on that the church is just going through a particularly bad patch of bad leadership or is it the things that have been there structurally for a while and we've not taken the difficult decisions in dealing with perhaps now being seen for the first time?
00:05:07
Speaker
Well, I think it's always been a tendency and a problem, I think, throughout church history. What I think has changed is partly technological, and the internet has provided a never-before-seen means by which
00:05:25
Speaker
victims can coalesce and form a sort of common purpose and bond. So, you know, the hashtag me too thing is a case in point. But it's interesting. So when I was writing the book, the main illustration of this in sort of
00:05:44
Speaker
the Christianity terms, was the notorious Boston Archdiocese in the Catholic Church. And there was a book that came out from journalists of the Boston Globe that got made into a film called Spotlight. It was actually quite a good film. But before that film came out, I read the book written by that little cohort of journalists.
00:06:09
Speaker
and there were about five or six of them and they worked for years because basically they had so much pushback but there was an endemic system of cover-up and suppression and then basically known perpetrators weren't dismissed they were just moved and so you had repetition after repetition of this kind of behaviour. Now I said at the time in the book
00:06:37
Speaker
I mentioned this situation not because there's anything intrinsic to Catholicism.
00:06:44
Speaker
that means it's going to come out this way, because actually this kind of thing can happen anywhere and in any theology. But what you have is you have the perpetration of terrible things, but then you have the institutional cover-up, and it's the double whammy that is what has been so devastating for people. And unfortunately,
00:07:08
Speaker
not necessarily on the same massive scale but unfortunately we're seeing exactly the same thing across denominations and I'm pretty convinced that it's not anything to do with particular theology although I think one of the things we need to do is to examine any particular theology and say well what are the what are the Achilles heels here what are the weaknesses what are the possible ways in which this might get corrupted or distorted but we all need to be facing up to this
00:07:37
Speaker
It's thinking about coaches today and some of the, just the awful instances that have hit headlines and ones that are yet to kind of come out in the autumn and beyond. How do you think we can, I guess two things, how do you think we can best prepare ourselves as Christians who just, at the moment, we're just sitting under this constant drip of
00:08:08
Speaker
just, oh, just disgusting mess. How do we bear up under that?
Maintaining Faith Amid Scandals
00:08:15
Speaker
And then I guess second that how do we also love our friends who may not yet know the Lord well, as they see us kind of grappling with these realities and asking questions like, well, this is always going to happen. It's just inevitable, isn't it? Really? What are your thoughts on those two things, Mark?
00:08:35
Speaker
I think we need to brace ourselves. I think this is going to get worse before it gets better. I think the trickle will lead to a snowball, I think, because
00:08:52
Speaker
as things get exposed other people will say hey but I've experienced this too in circles and contexts that are very surprising they wouldn't necessarily put two and two together I was just talking to somebody early this morning about a situation that's just come to light and she just said to me and for years I just didn't join the dots well I think as these things come to light
00:09:17
Speaker
it's gonna be more obvious if you like to join the dots. So I think we need to brace ourselves. I think we need to weep. And there've been many times certainly in the last year or so when I've just sat at my desk and I've literally not known what to do with myself. And it's overwhelming at times. And I think there's a sense of our,
00:09:48
Speaker
our brokenness and limited nature. We just had to come to God and say, look, hands up, I don't know how we deal with this. I can see these tendencies in myself, I'm not pointing fingers, but I know that, Lord, somehow you are in control of all of this, and there's no alternative. Now, in terms of the witness, you see, I think it's interesting, because one of the things that very often has driven the cover up
00:10:18
Speaker
is a concern for the reputation of the kingdom and the church. So we've got to protect the ministry, we've got to protect the work, we've got to protect the gospel. And so that noble end is used to justify the means of, well, let's just make this go away a bit. And I get that motive, of course I do.
00:10:44
Speaker
But the awful thing is that in the long run, it makes it 10 times worse. And the earlier one deals with it, the better because quite frankly, you know, it will get worse. And that's what's happened. I mean, I think you've seen the collapse of colloquialism in countries like Spain and Ireland.
00:11:11
Speaker
because this has been going on for too long and people just said, right, well stuff it, I've had enough. You've been doing your worst for so long, why should we carry on trusting you? And people have a point. So I think actually, as far as our witness is concerned, we just need to be honest and transparent. It's utterly painful, but I suspect
00:11:39
Speaker
That's the only way people are going to gain trust in the church, which is ironic, isn't it? Because it's like us saying, but this is what we're really like. But I think there's an important discipleship thing
Challenges for Church's Witness
00:11:54
Speaker
here. So I think a book I come back to almost every year now is D Street Bonhoeffer's Life Together. It's only 100 pages. I'm always banging on about it with people.
00:12:07
Speaker
He wrote it about this illegal seminary community that he was running on the North German coast under the Nazis. It got shut down by the Gestapo. But they learned a lot of lessons about Christian community. And he's got this amazing bit where he talks about the shock horror of discovering that there's a sinner in the midst. And, you know, how appalling and somebody must be told, and who let this person in?
00:12:34
Speaker
And of course, it's absolutely ridiculous. And so he blames a lot of the problems in the church with this kind of sort of fakery, this mask of religion.
00:12:51
Speaker
where everybody's trying to be respectable and good. And when people fail, that lets the whole side down and we've got ostracized and beat them up. And how we deal with people who mess up is symptomatic of this. And he says, but that's not the church. We are here because we're sinful.
00:13:12
Speaker
And let's just get real about that. Now, as soon as you've made that step, then you can start being real about living together and how difficult that is, and depending on God. And so if we're saying to the world outside, hey, look, we're not much better, we screw up. And in fact, some of the things that you're seeing in the media about the church, we fess up and say, yeah, we're not that different. We're just like these other institutions you look at.
00:13:36
Speaker
And so then you're saying, well, why are you still together? Well, that's the question, isn't it? That's what you're hoping people... What is it about what you believe that means that you can somehow weather that tornado? That's, I guess, what you're hoping to sort of intrigue with. That fascinates me, Mark, because it seems to me, you know, we've got a couple of
00:14:02
Speaker
sort of different cultural trends here that are pulling in slightly different directions. In one sense, you've got the power thing that we've talked about. We've also got the fact that our culture doesn't understand how to do forgiveness. I think lots of written about this, you know, just recent stuff, whether it's like Ollie Robinson, you know, cricketer, tweet something daft, you know, when he's a teenager, game over, or someone who's done something worse, you know, how do we walk that line between dealing with it properly? We don't excuse stuff, but equally,
00:14:29
Speaker
you know, finding that path back to restoration. But I wanted to pick you up on something you said a moment ago that, you know, you know, in terms of people who have had their fingers burnt with power, people have been in churches where things have gone wrong, have experienced this kind of stuff, and are then hurt and are broken and are suspicious. How do we begin sharing
00:14:49
Speaker
into the gospel, into that setting. I mean, I've come across folks like that who begin talking. The reason they want nothing to do with the church isn't because they don't believe in God or they've got some clever objection. It's because they tried the church, something horrendous happened, and they've walked out on the whole thing. How do we even begin those conversations to helping those people find their way back to Jesus in your experience?
00:15:14
Speaker
I can answer that more in the theory than experience simply because I think this is really hard so I don't claim expertise from seeing this happen but what I will say is I think
00:15:31
Speaker
I sometimes summarize the seismic shifts that have happened in terms of the simple question. The first question somebody asked if they come within the spheres of a Christian group. 50 years ago, it was, is this true? Well, how can I know this is true? And you might've rattled off your evidence of the resurrection or whatever it was. They're not asking that today. They're asking, am I safe?
00:15:58
Speaker
And with good reason, because they're worried that my kids might be abused, or you're going to take all my money, or my personality is going to change, or I'm going to be made to do something I don't want to do, blah, blah, blah. And we've seen this again and again.
00:16:15
Speaker
And so we then need to ask, OK, well, what does it mean to be safe in a community? And we need to ask that of ourselves, because I'm not sure that a lot of Christians feel safe in their Christian communities. I'm not sure that leaders make it very safe.
Jesus: Power and Gentleness
00:16:29
Speaker
I'm not sure necessarily that leaders feel safe.
00:16:32
Speaker
So there's a whole range of issues there. But I think the ultimate thing and where we always need to come to, and of course it's the cliche, but here I think it's more specially appropriate than ever, the answer is Jesus. And the answer is Jesus because actually he is the only one with divine cosmic power
00:17:01
Speaker
who can be trusted to be gentle. So he is the son of man that Daniel is terrified of in his dream. Daniel has English understatement. He says, I was greatly disturbed by what he'd seen in Daniel 7. And actually no, it's a flipping nightmare because basically a human being is given divine power forever and all people on earth had to worship him.
00:17:27
Speaker
I mean, that vision is truly horrific. That is the thousand year Reich on steroids. And it's a gift of God to a human. What is he thinking? That is a terrifying prospect. Until you see what this one who's a son of man actually does when he gets his feet muddy in the River Jordan, he's walking the Jericho Road, he's talking to people, he lays a hand on a shoulder and says, don't be scared.
00:17:56
Speaker
and then he dies on a cross. Now, that subverts every conceivable category of power and power abuse. And that's what answers the philosophers, particularly the French post-war philosophers,
00:18:13
Speaker
Um, that is the one Trump card that anybody can have. And it's the interesting thing is it's not a Trump card that comes out of intellectual superiority. It's a Trump card for thinking, well, I don't know where else we turn. You've got a better alternative. Um, a God who is cosmically, awesomely powerful, who gets on his hands and knees and washes people's feet. Trump that.
00:18:38
Speaker
What a beautiful saviour we have, Mark. And my heart is just so thrilled to hear that, the way in which you've just shared him with us. I think that just brings us to our last question. It's something that's been rolling around in my head for a little while, and I'd just love to hear your thoughts on
Leadership and Justice in the Church
00:18:56
Speaker
it. You know, Michael 6'8", to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly.
00:19:04
Speaker
What do you think it looks like for us and for those who are in the position to make decisions on the eligibility of the ongoing positions of leaders in position of power? How does justice and a love of mercy
00:19:28
Speaker
apart from the cross what does that look like for human institutions and particularly the church right now and for us as we play technology and twitter and everything has brought these cases to our doorsteps what is our how do we rightly view them by pursuing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly what does that look like for us
00:19:51
Speaker
Does that make sense? Sorry. It totally does. And it's a huge one. I think there is a false dichotomy, a false separation of truth, justice and grace. Justice and grace are not opposites. That needs unpacking.
00:20:17
Speaker
Forgiveness and justice are not opposites. Now, that needs unpacking. But for instance, sometimes you'll hear, don't go after this person because they're really broken now and we need to show them grace. Well, we certainly do. But forgiveness is not the same as trust. So just because somebody is forgiven and restored to the fellowship, that doesn't mean so they can be trusted with a particular role.
Character Over Gifts in Leadership
00:20:45
Speaker
I think one of the big errors we've made, and I think it's partly because of this whole facade thing that Bonhoeffer identified 70 years ago, 80 years ago, but it's partly also our celebrity culture that's affected the church. I think one of the errors we've made is to divide gifting from character.
00:21:11
Speaker
So we take gifts and we think, oh, just think how useful those could be. So we're quite pragmatic about it. And we'll say, right, these are the perfect gifts for this job. This person is great upfront or really good on the big screen or just has a real charm and charisma in a large crowd. We'll not look too carefully at what they're like backstage.
00:21:40
Speaker
because actually in the end what matters is getting the bums on seats and drawing in the crowds because that'll look impressive and it's not necessarily a vain thing to try and look impressive. You want to win people. I get it. It's this sort of means to an end thing. But by divorcing character from gifting,
00:22:03
Speaker
We are too quick to overlook some real sort of warning lights in the selection process, whereas I think we need to be quite quick, open to
00:22:18
Speaker
sort of 360 appraisals and talking to different people and giving people the opportunity to feedback and asking for, you know, asking the people who never get asked of their opinion, that kind of thing. So that actually you get a more rounded view rather than this guy's really great and we will all follow him over a cliff.
00:22:43
Speaker
Wow, so much to chew on and think about there, Mark. We could go for another half hour easily, but thank you so much for some food for thought there. And I hope for folks listening that Mark's given you stuff to think about, stuff to challenge you, encourage you, and particularly for folks who are, you know, potentially God has brought people into your life who've been affected by some of these issues and you have the privilege of reaching out to them. I hope somewhat Mark has shared has been helpful. Mark, thank you so much for taking the time
00:23:12
Speaker
It's a pleasure to be with you, thank you.
Podcast Support and Future Episodes
00:23:14
Speaker
And the book that Mark mentioned will be linked in the show notes for this episode, so if you'd like to read more of what Mark's written on this, do check that out. But otherwise, from myself and from Christie, it's goodbye for now, and we will be back with you in two weeks' time with another guest. Thanks for joining us today on Tech Talk. Bye for now.
00:23:40
Speaker
I hope you've enjoyed listening to this episode of Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. This is a listener supported podcast. We can only make it with the support of our friends across the country and around the world. And if you'd like to be a part of that community, simply visit the website, thepeptalkpodcast.com.
00:23:56
Speaker
and click on the Support the Podcast button. If you sign up to support Solas and the podcast for as little as three pound a month as a thank you, we will send you a free copy of my book, The Atheist Didn't Exist, or if you prefer, Christie's book, More Truth as a thank you. And through your support, we can keep making more podcasts like this one.