Lead Time
Lead Time
True Unity for a Divided World with Temeko Richardson
Discover the transformative power of storytelling in film with our special guest, Temeko Richardson, a distinguished executive producer, director, and writer renowned for her inspirational works. Journey with us as we uncover how films can transcend socio-economic divides, offering audiences a mirror to universal human experiences like suffering, joy, and sacrifice. By highlighting the church's mission for unity in a divided world, we explore the creative arts' role in fostering a shared understanding of the gospel beyond political narratives.
Gain a fresh perspective on managing stress and anxiety as we introduce insights from Andi Kolber's latest book, focusing on the concept of expanding one's "window of tolerance." This episode explores how anchoring our identity in Jesus and practicing spiritual disciplines can lead to a life brimming with joy and peace. We'll also discuss the film "At the Cross," a project by Temeko that addresses specific societal needs and is available on platforms like Amazon Prime and Apple TV, offering psychological insights enriched with faith-based reflections.
Our discussion takes a deep dive into pressing issues within church communities, such as succession planning, intergenerational inclusivity, and gender-balanced leadership. We tackle the complex interplay between maintaining spiritual integrity and adapting to cultural shifts, ensuring churches remain resilient and inclusive. Finally, we reflect on the theological tensions surrounding love and acceptance, particularly for LGBTQ+ identities, while advocating for respect and compassion. This episode promises an enriching conversation on the evolving landscape of faith communities, underpinned by love and understanding.
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Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack Calberg. It is a gorgeous day to be alive. The joy of Jesus is our strength. We pray. The peace that surpasses understanding is mobilizing you for mission to share the light and love of Jesus with everyone around you in your variety of vocations. Today, jack and I get to hang out with a sister in Christ that I just met had been referred to. Get to hang out with a sister in Christ that I just met had been referred to. She is a seasoned executive producer, director and writer. She's known for inspirational films that combine business acumen with artistic vision, earning her six awards. We're going to hear about her latest film, at the Cross, which explores thought-provoking topics often overlooked in traditional church settings, and it resonates with youth and contemporary culture. This is the one and only T Tomiko Richardson. How are you doing, sister? Thanks?
Speaker 2:for hanging with us. Hi Will, how are you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's a great day, it's exciting.
Speaker 1:Well, it's good to have you, so let's get in. We're going to have a conversation today about the creative arts and using them to share the gospel, and we're in a context here where we're about ready to launch a campaign toward resource development toward the end of a movie called Wretch Like Me. This is our partnership with Red Braille Studios, wretch Like Me being produced. And just general opening question, though, tomiko why is film such a powerful medium for sharing the gospel and inspiration and joy? What is it about film that compels you? This is my life, calling Love to hear that.
Speaker 3:Um, well, I think a lot of it has to do with how you reach people. Um, I think what the main part of the gospel and anything as it relates to church, um, even how God presented himself in terms of being empathetic towards others, it's all about how you reach people and how you make them feel, and anything that relates to content like film, TV, etc. All of that helps people to have a feeling and a connection to others and have a way to relate to other people, have a feeling and a connection to others and have a way to relate to other people. So it's relating to the suffering, relating to the joy, relating to the sacrifice, relating to the actual journey, as well as being able to relate to the Testament and the testimony.
Speaker 1:Isn't it interesting how the brain though, we live in stories, don't we? Every human being lives in story and we integrate ourselves. If a story is really well told, a film, we're going to find ourselves in it. We're going to relate to the variety of characters. Talk about just the power of story and changing the human heart. To me, Go any thoughts there, just generally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think. Well, fortunately or unfortunately, what we are seeing unfold in this country, as it is very divisive, as we all know, one of the things is that the common story that everyone should be able to relate to another. We all have had our struggles. So, even if you are the richest person in the world like the richest person in the world has cancer that's the same struggle, really, as a person who's the poorest person in the world having right. The only difference is that they have different resources, right, but at the end of the day, they're feeling the same thing. They're feeling a loss of hope, they're feeling the anxiety, they're feeling the depression, they're feeling that they just want this whole thing to be over. And as far as loved ones and people that are caring for them and dealing with them, those people have the same journey and the same testimony, because they want their loved ones to be better. They want their loved ones to return back to normalcy. They want their lives to turn back to normalcy. They may have had to take off of work or not be able to do things that they wanted to do and sacrifice. The importance there is that the story and the connection is the same, and I think that what we can't do is move away and get lost in the road to the high success or the high road, and understand that we have a way to reach people and we have a way to use our story to bring people in.
Speaker 3:I think, even from a perspective of the Olympics that, you know, we just watched and we were all excited and for once we all felt all American, right. So at the end of the day, those stories resonate, right. The stories of a Simone Biles having to step away because she had twisties in the last Olympics right, none of us know what twisties are, but we do know what it means to not feel right at a certain moment. Right, but we do know what it means to not feel right at a certain moment. Right, because we all, in whatever, whatever ambition that we've had, we've all had a moment where we're just like you know what, I don't have it together. I need to pull back and figure this out, right, and to be able to do that on the biggest stage and then have a comeback like she did. Amazing story, right, so we can see ourselves in people.
Speaker 1:Right, so we can see ourselves in people, love and care, truth and love of holding well. And this is the mission of Jesus, with arms stretched wide at the cross, holding the tension between people who have certain ideologies, certain worldviews, and drawing everyone unto himself. Speak about the role of the church in and in your, in your context. You think today and I'm not talking church, you know the hour of power on a Sunday I'm talking like the embodied people of God, out on mission to bring unity under the cross of Christ, especially in the polarized day and age in which we live today. What are your prayers for the church, Tamiko?
Speaker 3:Well, my prayer for the church is to stop using Jesus on either narrative of the parties. Right? Because at the end of the day, we know that Jesus was a God of love, a God of unconditional love, but he was also a God of correction. So we also know that he was a God that wanted us to follow the rules of the land, a God that wanted us to follow the rules of the land. So we have all those three things together and we can't just be like, on one side we're for Jesus and the other side we're not for Jesus, right? I think the main thing is that we want to treat everybody the same in terms of do unto others as we would have others do unto us, right? We want to make sure that that is our principle. And in understanding that that's our principle, we have to have guidance from God. That you know. We always want to take care of the hungry. We want to feed the hungry right. We want to clothe the naked, like that's biblical. Let's not stray away from that. Those are basics, right? We don't have to be billionaires in order to feed the hungry right. A simple thing like getting a slice of pizza for someone that you see that's struggling on the street or whatever it is.
Speaker 3:All of that is working from the heart, and we can't work from the heart if we have such hatred for other people.
Speaker 3:We can't work from the heart if we have hatred for other people's ability to progress, ability for people project on their house and it looks great, awesome, guess what? My, my property value goes up. I mean, we got to think of it that way, right? So we can't sit and go oh, I'm so mad that they were able to do that. No, my property value goes up, and let me figure out how I can do that so we can add, increase the property value in the whole entire community, like if we work together within the body of church, if we work together, instead of working to continue this divisive agenda and keeping Christ in the middle of a divisive agenda, which that has never been his like, that's never been about Christ I think we would be better as a community, as church and as leaders, because we can't be leaders from a church perspective and want people to come to church when we're just as divisive as the world. I mean that's we can't be. We can be in the world, but we can't be of the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good, good, this is really fascinating. So hatred feeds on hatred, right, one person hates another person and then they hate them back, right, so they start feeding on each other's hatred. Um, and then we're all grumpy and angry in general because what you pointed out earlier, we're all suffering and we're all gonna die. We're all trying to. We're all trying to die.
Speaker 2:We're all trying to figure this out. Like, what hope is there? And in the midst of this, like grumpiness, that we're all suffering, we're all going to die. Now we're pointing the fingers at each other and we're coming up with our rules, saying this is the way to love your neighbor. And I think this is what we see in the political parties is we've come up with a structure of what it means to love your neighbor and it's different than what you're saying on how to love your neighbor. And now we're angry with each other because we're judging each other on our rules of what we said is proper on how to love our neighbor. So how do we actually escape this? How do we actually have a heart that doesn't have hatred in it? I think that's a really fascinating thing to tackle, right.
Speaker 3:Well, I think I mean I think that's a really fascinating thing to tackle, right.
Speaker 3:Well, I think I mean, if we go back to the old days, right, I mean right when I was able to start voting, if we go back to the old days, we don't have to go that far, but let's just say we go back to the days of George Bush.
Speaker 3:These were common decent people, right, and even in the state of New York my dad and I were talking about this a few weeks ago, like he, like we had someone who was of a high political stature and he passed away and I'm like, as a kid I always thought the guy was democrat, I never knew he was republican. That is where we got to get back to we have. We have to get back to where it's okay for us to have different opinions, different ideologies, but still love people, period. Like, still love humanity, still love people, still want to do what's best for the people they can't do for themselves, right, and I think that's where we have to get back to and the church has to lead from that perspective, in that it has to be able to bring people in without the judgment, bring people in without the hatred or the divisiveness. And, most importantly, the church has to lead by not being a divisive nature in itself. Right, because if the church has all the same things that the world has, why would anybody come to the church?
Speaker 2:I think this takes us back to our faith right, because what our faith is doing is, it's speaking something into our identity that actually then gives us permission to not have to judge our neighbors and actually not worry about the rightness necessarily, like am I right and I have to judge our neighbors and actually like, not worry about like the rightness necessarily, like am I right and I have to judge this person because they're not right. This identity isn't necessarily on that. It's more on what God is saying about me, the identity that God gives us, the forgiveness of sins, right, the restoration that Christ gives us on the cross. When we have this new identity, it's a. I think it's freeing. It frees us to not have to enter into that kind of a battle. Right, we can sit there and we can have peace and say the battle's already been won by Christ. So now I'm being given the freedom to actually love my neighbor without having to worry about, you know, worrying about these things in the same way. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it leads. It leads to a lightness of heart, Tameka. There's the Jesus way. His yoke is easy, his burden is light and, instead of trying harder to differentiate ourselves as better than, or becoming insecure because we're less than, we get to try softer. This is a brand new book that came out by a psychologist named Andi Kolber. And have you heard of this book, Tamika?
Speaker 3:No, it looks good, I like it already.
Speaker 1:It's a fresh approach to move us out of anxiety, stress and survival mode and into a life of connection and joy. And she uses a helpful metaphor. It actually has been in psychology for a long period of time metaphor. It actually has been in psychology for a long period of time. But anytime chaos, the unexpected trial comes, we're going to go to one of two places. It's hyper arousal and this is where fight or flight or fawn, actually just agreeing. It's passive, aggressive behavior, but there's still this like energetic reaction to it. On the other extreme is hypoarousal.
Speaker 1:This is someone who's just shut down as a protective mechanism and often we skip over what psychologists refer to as the window of tolerance, the window of tolerance and sometimes tolerance can get kind of. We're using it in the best sense of the word and tolerance is I'm able to enter into hard things and have a wide capacity from small things. So think of a narrow window. Small things can trigger me and move me to hyper or hypo arousal. Arousal as we grow up into Jesus, who is our head, our Lord, the lover of our souls, the peace giver, our window of tolerance continues to expand so that there's very few things that are going to offend me Like next to next to nothing can offend me. Why, Jack and this goes back to what you say, it's about our identity in Jesus the brain is always asking two questions every single nanosecond. Really, who am I Right? Who?
Speaker 3:am I.
Speaker 1:And then how do I connect to the people who are around me? What do we? What is the way that we behave here? And I think today, in, in this, in this day and age, man, we have to, as Christians, model. I go back to the fruit of the spirit, over and over again Love. If we lose love, we've lost everything Joy, peace, right.
Speaker 1:And this allows us to connect, to use our prefrontal cortex and to engage with people who may have differing opinions. Why? Because they come from differing contexts and to listen twice as much as we speak. We can have our opinions politically otherwise, but, man, I'm holding them with an open hand. The only thing that I hold with a closed fist is Jesus, who holds me in the palm of his hand, who's claimed me as his own and leads me to the cross, and leads me then to the way of the cross, which is arms open wide for the world. There's very little you can do or say that's going to radically offend me. I'm here as a listener, learner and then as a leader in our culture. That, for me, is the church has a major role to have that posture today.
Speaker 1:And guess, final thing, guess who's in the window? It's Jesus. Over and over in that window of tolerance is Jesus. He's smiling over us, he. He loves us so, so much. So any response to that, and then we're going to kind of move into your movie at the cross to tell a little bit of that story to Miko. Any response, though, to that window of tolerance kind of metaphor.
Speaker 3:No, I love that window of tolerance and I think it's very important because it also speaks to your ability to say there's nothing that can move me right as a follower of Christ as well as one of God's children, just like we all are.
Speaker 3:You can't move me, you can't irritate me, nothing that you can say nothing that you can put in front of me, because I know that the weapon still can be formed, but it won't prosper against me, and I think that that's where we have to be in our walk with God. And we also have to and I always say we always talk about faith, but we always miss that part with faith without works is dead, and I think that we also have to put in the work right. So we have to put in the work. Where we're reading the Bible, we are going to church, we are studying the word, we're actually getting in a really good Bible study, a group of people that really are eager to listen to the word and a leader that can interpret the word for what it is and not what like their own agenda. And I think that that's very important because that helps us to understand who we are in Christ and why it is very important to have that particular identity as one of God's children, totally agree.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. You're moving into some of the spiritual disciplines and there's a lightness to it. Like Lord Jesus, I'm engaged in this, I'm learning from you, I'm growing up into you, but it's all for the sake of bringing light and love to my neighbor, light and love into a dark world, because I can't be any more secure in my relationship with you than I am right now because of what you have done, because of what you've done for me through the cross and empty tombs. That's so good to me. Go tell us how you kind of came. You said you wrote, uh, some inspirational films, but then your most recent movie at the cross. I'd love to hear about that movie, that experience, and what you were hoping to accomplish um, so yeah, so that's.
Speaker 3:The feature film at the cross is available now on both Amazon Prime as well as Tubi and Apple TV, and so I think a lot of the reason that that film came across is because I was seeing a need. Well, I saw a lot of needs within the church, especially being a GPK preacher kid of both grandparents. So, at the end of the day, there were a lot of things that need to be addressed from a church perspective. One, the biggest thing that needs to be addressed in the church, of course, is the lack of succession planning. There are a lot of issues as it relates to churches where there's no succession plan from the person that has been leading for years and years and years and years. Right, so we become accustomed to the person that's in charge and it's great because that's all we've known, but then there's no transition plan out of that from that person to a new person and in some cases, as in some denominations, person to a new person, and in some cases, as in some denominations, there's forced transition where there is no succession plan. It's just this is your new pastor or priest and you just got to deal with it, and that's clearly not right. So I think that there's a problem there from that perspective and I think that the churches need to all churches, all denominations need to understand that. That is crucial, especially in the walk of people's lives, because a lot of people that is where they get their backbone of anything of their Christianity Right. So you change that, there's no plan, they lose it, they don't know what to do. Now we are back with like lost sheep. Right, that's what we don't want. We don't need any more lost sheep. Um, so that was one issue that I wanted to address in the movie.
Speaker 3:The second issue that I wanted to address in the movie was the lack of urgency on the need for inter or intergenerational mix of population within the church. The parishioners have to understand, from old to young, that there has to be a way for everyone to coexist, as well as the need for God to reach all generations, not just one. So it can't be the generations that were the deacons and the trustees from like 1940 and they're like, nothing can be different, et cetera. Right, things are going to have to change. But going into that, into the next thing, there's also the need to understand that the church does not need to be relevant. The church has to be spiritual and of God.
Speaker 3:So there's a lot of movement within churches where the preacher I'm sorry, the pastor or the leader of the church has a need to be more celebrity and have more ego and be relevant and do things of the world than they would of Christ, and that's another thing that I wanted to address. And then the fourth thing I wanted to address was the fact that in this particular society we have people of all ilks, all walks, all sexual orientations, all genders, et cetera, and what is the church doing to ensure that they are included in God's kingdom with love and correction and not judgment? So there's all of those things that I wanted to address. So it was all in the movie At the Cross.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, Well, I can't wait to watch it. It's definitely on my list, but I mean you had me at succession planning, Tomiko, this has been, and us, I mean this has been a major, major call and it's kind of jumped up on us. I think in the American church we struggle with it here. One observation we have is that churches have generally outsourced leadership development and we're looking for someone from outside the community to come in. What happens if churches created an upward draft of leaders all the way up to the senior pastor and there's more of a shared voice that takes place so that when the leader dies, hello, you're going to die. There's going to come a time when you're not there.
Speaker 1:The church is safe, they're protected, they know they have a shepherd who's under the head shepherd, but leaders don't often. This is your other point. Leaders just don't often think about that. I think we go to one extreme and there's a middle point here. We go to one extreme where we totally outsource it, either to an institution or to the elders or to some kind of committee into the future, or we maybe grab on too tight. The next, thus saith the Lord, this is the next leader. There's got to be a middle way where I think leaders are saying hey, here's a whole host of leaders.
Speaker 1:Now they're in the community. You choose the Holy Spirit through the church. Go ahead, Jack.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean to your point, Tim, like in our church body we've seen the stats seven to eight hundred pastoral vacancies either happening or imminent here, because the system we do not have a system, a pipeline, a bench that actually fills those vacancies. And I think the model that we have right it's this super, super, super centralized model rather than a decentralized model that's really well, centrally supported. And I think, more and more, if any church body is going to be successful at kind of, you know, if it's a multi, you know multi-congregational church body across a country, they're going to have to be the type of church body that says you, the local church, are responsible for raising up the next generation of pastors. And we're going to help facilitate you to do that. We're going to give you the best practices on how to do that, we're going to make sure that you're confident and competent at the ability of identifying and raising those people up. But you're going to have to take on that responsibility and we're going to resource you.
Speaker 2:I think more and more that's going to be the model for any kind of national church body that's going to be really healthy and actually try to grow um, in this, in this society, and that's, you know, uh, technology and the culture of education has shifted to allow that to happen and, uh, that's one of those things, that things that church bodies are going to have to adapt to and they're going to have to see, like, however your church is governed whether it's elders or a council or a board they're going to have to see that as their responsibility, not just to give oversight to a pastor, but to give oversight to accountability, to succession in the church, so that when something happens to the pastor, they're not left with this gap. You actually have something to implement a person, a talent pool, that's there, um, to keep the, keep the local congregation moving and I think it should be to your second point.
Speaker 1:Um, to miko, I should be intergenerational. There should be leaders at all different levels and ages and stages of life. In that pool of folks that are up and coming, you attract who you platform right. Whoever is speaking, whoever is leading, there's going to be others. And we're talking cross-cultural too. I mean if we desire to become a more diverse, open community and I mean diversity in the best sense of the world, every nation, if your community looks diverse, man, you better be having various women and men platformed and sharing In our denomination. We don't have people will get mad at me because we don't have women pastors in our denomination, but by goodness, by golly, gee whiz, we need females who are leading at all different levels, doing discipleship, et cetera. So anything more to say about the need for kind of intergenerational and cross-cultural leadership? Tomiko in the local church.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I think it's very important. So a lot of times what we do is we get comfortable with where we are and where the church is located and what is the surrounding of the church and what has been in the church the surrounding of the church and what has been in the church. If it's always been just all males in positions of power within a church, so maybe it's time to just start a specific ministry within the church and have a female lead that right. A simple thing is the women's ministry, right? You can't have a man lead the women's ministry Common sense, right? I hope not.
Speaker 1:Common sense, that's right.
Speaker 3:So, therefore, if you just start with something like that, something as simple as that, man, lead the women's ministry. Common sense, right. So, common sense, that's right, so. So, therefore, if you, if you just start with something like that, something as simple as that, right, you have them lead that. Or you have like a rites of passage, a female rites of passage, a male rites of passage, right, very similar to what, um, the jewish, uh faith does in terms of, uh, bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs, right. So have those types of things, and then you'll start having females in charge of those specific types of individuals and people will get used to right. It's all about people getting used to seeing a female in those types of positions. I think also, it's very important, like you indicated, intergenerational as well as cross-cultural churches, right. I don't think that we should just have all black and all Caucasian churches, right, because the world is not all black and the world is not all Caucasian, right, we are a mix of a whole lot of races and cultures, etc. Bring people in, because it's all about Jesus, it has nothing to do with the black leader or the Caucasian leader. Bring people in, right. I think that's very important and it's also it's well, our former pastor.
Speaker 3:Before retiring both of them, what they did is they had, literally they had a. They had preachers from every single generation, right, they had preachers from every single generation, right. So they had a 20-year-old preacher. They started in the 20s and they have a 20s and 30s group. They have the millennial group, right. So they had preachers in charge of each one of those groups, both female and male, and a Hispanic group that was in charge of, like, the prison ministry.
Speaker 3:So you always saw somebody of different races, different genders somewhere leading something, and then they would also have them alternate in terms of preaching any of the sermons on Sunday. So people were familiar with them, they got to understand who they were and, of course, people you know swayed they like this one more than this one, that kind of thing. But it was good to to bring up because, at the end of the day, they were raising a generation of other people that could actually follow their lead, and you don't see that often. You just see the main person in charge and that's there. Just always need to be in charge. So I think we need to get to a point where we're lifting other people up, we're showing people that there is a different way. There are other cultures that we need to represent. There are other genders that we need to represent.
Speaker 1:And the best way to do it is in the church because, at the end of the day, there's a mix of all of us. All right, we're going to lean into something that has the potential for us to model, maybe diverse thoughts regarding a topic and to unite around Jesus. When you bring up the gender conversation today, this is a very, very polarizing topic. The LGBTQ plus conversation is challenging and we're in a very Jack and I are part of a very conservative church and church body. In the beginning, god created the male and female and God's intention is for a husband and a wife to conceive kids and raise them up in the fear and love of the Lord. And, at the same time, we live in the midst of a culture where there are people walking around having their main identity be maybe gender rather than their identity in Christ. Right, and it leads to these identity struggles, etc. But here is what I know. I'm going to tell you a story. So I was, I was privileged to be a part of a funeral this past Saturday and and we have, you know, folks that are walking through maybe gay and lesbian experiences in our community. I don't believe that's God's intention for them, but we will meet them and love them where they're at and care for them and bring the gospel, bring law and gospel to them. There was a man who was dressed like a woman experiencing this and they were a part of the family of the one who had just passed and they're not a part of our community. But when I was proclaiming the gospel and I do some singing and things like that you could see the gospel at. I do some singing and things like that. You could see like the gospel at work in this person's life, like the love of Jesus there for them. And when the service was over and I pray we have a follow-up conversation this person left and said thank you for sharing Jesus with me. I heard the gospel today.
Speaker 1:So can our churches be a place that? And there's a tension? There's definitely a law, gospel tension here for us if we're reading the scripture. But can we be known for love? And until I have a relationship and this is where it comes down right Until I have a relationship and I hear a story, I don't have much grounds to speak.
Speaker 1:You know, I must have these arms and hands that are open when people may think this is a liberal, liberal move, then you would call Jesus a liberal, because Jesus, like, met people where they were at. He loved them enough and the transformation came after an encounter with Jesus. You think of the woman at the well and you think of you think of Peter, for goodness sake, I mean, jesus could have led with the law post resurrection, but he meets. He meets Peter on the beach. After Peter has denied, he's obviously walked in sin. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? I'm bringing you up into a new identity in me and it's going to be different now but it's going to be messy. So I think the gender conversation is something we, as kind of traditional confessional church leaders, are just struggling to walk through. So any words of wisdom for us, tamiko, as we try to walk that middle kind of tension-filled, law-gospel-balanced way right now, tamiko, I'm just curious.
Speaker 3:Well, I think I mean I don't have the answers because I grew up kind of cost of holiness. So I'm just as conservative as you are in terms of the basis, because when I grew up it was the way that I grew up and the way that I was taught it was Adam and Eve and never Adam and Steve right, that's how they always categorized it. And pastors they both. If they saw someone that was leaning on in that particular way, they still honored them and treated them as a human and treated them with love and respect. They never cared about any of that and it was always.
Speaker 3:I remember there were two males, if you would, and they were singing in the choir. Two, two males, if you would, and they were singing in the choir and, uh, it was one of the district choirs or whatever, and my dad my grandfather rather was a district elder in that district and um, the person quit the choir because you know a lot of judgment etc and what. What he did say um, after my grandparents passed, he indicated that my grandfather was the only one that treated him with respect and that would be the only reason why he ever came back to church. So that always sat with me because, at the end of the day, no matter what our differences are, no matter what our challenges are and our identities are, everybody wants to be treated with respect, and I think the main thing is you can treat people with respect, without judgment, and the church has to understand and learn that that doesn't mean let the lifestyle take over the church, lifestyle take over the church, because a lot of times what is also happening is that there are churches that focus on only allowing that lifestyle in the church, right, and saying it's okay, everything is good, etc.
Speaker 3:But at the end of the day, I think the first part is that we have to understand that there is no hierarchy of sins, right, and once to understand that there is no hierarchy of sins, right, and once we understand that there is no hierarchy of sins like your envy, your jealousy, your gossip, your hatred of your brother, all of that that's not up here in this line, and then there's murder, and then there's homosexuality, and then there's another type of pyramid of sorts Right. So I think we have to lead with that. Everything has to be done in love, respect, no judgment, but you can still correct people through love, right, you can still correct, just like parents, correct children through love. Right, and it's the same. It's the same concept, the same concept. You don't want a person that's always stealing to come to your church and think that it's okay to steal from the person's purse that's sitting next to him, right? So it's the same concept, right, we still have to love and respect, but also respect God and respect the orders of the chapter.
Speaker 1:So I'll go first, jack, and let you go to follow up on that. In relationship to God, and for those that are in Lutheran circles, we'll do some two kinds of righteousness. In our relationship to God, sin is sin, sin is selfishness. The wages of sin is death. We're all going to die. We desperately need the forgiveness of sins, the life and salvation that flows from Jesus alone, by grace alone, not by anything that we do. And then, horizontally, in our relationship with our neighbor, various sins have different.
Speaker 1:You hear the Apostle Paul talking about sins against the body. Right, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Certain sins may have varying will have varying consequences, degrees of consequence in our earthly life, and our Heavenly Father obviously wants us to live fully alive, fully integrated in love for God, in love for our neighbor. But I can tell the person this is law and gospel. I can tell the person, regardless of the decisions they've made, the choices they've made, whether it's gender or anything else, you are loved by the God of the universe, who fearfully and wonderfully made you. He knows you, he sees you by faith, you're his. And then, as we walk out this road, if we're walking out of step with the laws of God, there will be varying degrees of conflict because of our sin.
Speaker 1:I'm a father, tomiko of of three high schoolers pray for me, sister. You know, and as they get old, as they get older, the the choices that they make will have varying degrees of consequence, right, uh? But regardless of the choices they make, I get to rest, I get to tell them their identity is in Jesus and grow up and this is really wisdom Grow up into the Jesus, into the Jesus way. Let your reasonableness be made known to all. The Lord is at hand. Rejoice in all things, so just the character of Christ.
Speaker 1:Then, in our sanctified walk, our walk, or walk with the Holy Spirit, before the world, before our neighbor, it changes we, we recognize man, the Jesus way, the commandment way is is the better, is the better way. His laws are very, very good for me. With the psalmist, I rejoice in his, in his law now, but my, my ability to rejoice in the law has no standing before God. He can't be any more pleased with me than he is right now. I think we have to walk, especially in the gender conversation. We have to be very, very careful not to fall off on either end of the spectrum into legalism or into heresy. All right, jack, anything more to add to that kind of tension filled way heresy.
Speaker 2:All right, Jack, anything more to add to that kind of tension filled way?
Speaker 2:No, I think again, like you know what is. What is the solution for a deeply, deeply divided society which we're finding ourselves in right now, which I deeply, you know, I sincerely lament, because it wasn't like this. I can remember as a young person, as you said before, you know, there has always been political parties, but the division is nothing like we see now. So what is happening right now is that we are angry with each other because their sin is different than my sin, and I haven't come to terms that I first have to confess that I'm a sinner, see myself as a sinner, and then be able to see them just as I am a sinner who needs Jesus, just like I do. Right. And so that, I think, is what opens the door for us to have a more united, peaceful society is when faith can exist, on whatever spectrum it is, with your civil, political beliefs. And I'm going to quote Luther here. He's expanding on Paul and he says don't follow the left, Don't follow the right. Follow God, and he will let him make you right.
Speaker 1:That's the only way.
Speaker 2:That's the only way.
Speaker 3:Any response to that, tomiko, that's right.
Speaker 1:No, no I totally agree.
Speaker 3:I totally agree. I think that I think we have, um, we've all fallen short of the glory of God. We all need to admit that, and it was our need and our desire to want to fulfill God's commandments and not sin, because we want to see God from in the kingdom. That is what drives us to try to do better. Right, and it goes for everybody. Right so, if you want to not have high cholesterol, you don't go eating a whole lot of things that are high in cholesterol. Right so, but but that's because you want to be better, you want to have better health. Right so if you want to have a better life, and that life in Christ, you do the things that you need to do in order to do that. And it's all written and you know. But I still love you, even though you're a gossiper.
Speaker 1:Human beings are idol, we're idol makers, idol worshipers, and I've been wrestling with this that our means or our righteousness whatever the means are, the things that we do can become gods for us. So consistently, in the Lutheran church we have something called the means of grace, and it's a beautiful, beautiful teaching right, the way God delivers his grace and it's primarily through his word, namely his word made flesh, jesus, and then the way Jesus comes to us through water and then through his body and blood. So baptism and Lord's supper, very, very good. But we, even in the church, in our context, we can have these battles over the right way to do these things. You know, is it sprinkling, immersion, is it? Is it, you know, the common cop or the individual, whatever? We have differing opinions and we can become very, very intense on those opinions, which it's fine to have an opinion, if and when you forget the end, because it's the means of grace. Toward what end? Toward the restoration of all things, towards God's work in the world, toward the kingdom of God entering into the here and now, toward the return of Christ to make all things new, if we get away from God's end goal.
Speaker 1:God has a church and his church is hardwired to be on mission with arms wide open to bring light and love into a dark and dying world. If we forget the ends of the church and we focus simply on the means and finding our righteousness based on look at all the great things I do or our church man, we're going to be twice a son or daughter of hell. This is the pharisaical tendency that can hit the church that we must be on guard we must be on guard against. So hey, man, this time has flown, tamika. I don't know if we got to all this stuff, we just got a handful. Okay, let's talk about female leadership. I heard one of the topics you like to discuss is the patriarchal views of female leadership in the church. Just share your general thoughts there. Tamiko. Love to respond.
Speaker 3:I mean, I have no problem with having men in charge of church because that's how I grew up, because my grandfather was the pastor, but my grandmother was also a pastor of a church, so I can see it both ways. So I think the key there, I think, is that you have to have people that relate. Most of the I don't know about any of the churches that you guys go to on a frequent basis, but every single church that I've ever gone to in life it's always been 60% women.
Speaker 2:That would be correct here. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So women are literally the ones that are in the church. So, even though the man may hold down the household, but the women are always the ones that are in the church. So if you want to understand the needs of the woman, if you're preaching to the women, you can't preach to the women and know the woman's needs all the time as a man, right? So I mean, it's just kind of common sense. There are certain things that a man cannot do in terms of reaching women and vice versa, terms of reaching women and vice versa.
Speaker 3:So I think, from that perspective, we should understand that there is an importance for leadership of women in the church. As it relates to that Now, whether or not they're going to be the pastor, hey, I don't need to fight those denominational charges et cetera, but I know that there is a move in a lot of denominations to not have women as leaders, and I know there are moves in other denominations to definitely have women as pastors and leaders. So I just think that there has to be some type of middle ground, especially as, in terms of the ones that don't want them as leaders at all, to understand the importance of having that high percentage of women as parishioners and having them have a need to have someone guide them and lead them. From that perspective, that's so good.
Speaker 1:If our leadership team is not gender balanced, we're going to miss the and it seems like we've been hanging out here miss the middle way of Jesus. Right, jesus was very counter-cultural in the way that he interacted with women in the Bible. Right, like it was very unusual not just to talk to a Samaritan but to a Samaritan woman. We go back to that story. This is at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry. And the disciples come back to Jesus like what, who, what, how, what are you doing, bro? You shouldn't be engaged. There was a part of him. And then he's got the women who follow him. Obviously the women at the first, witnesses, preachers, if you will back to the disciples of the resurrected Christ, there are women all over in Jesus' story. And then you see the early church. There are women who are referenced.
Speaker 1:It's funny, he who writes a story, right, they kind of get to. Who do they highlight? And the apostles certainly get a fair amount of print and press, right. But there's, why am I trying to? But well, unison, lois, right, timothy's mother and grandmother who poured into him that paul talks about, there's women all over. All that to say, if we become imbalanced with an overly female church and that the female tendency would be agreeableness, right, and this kind kind of maybe more feely type of perspective, and then if there's too many guys in the room, we're not feely enough, right, it's all head. It's all head. It's a little hard, it's hard-charging individualism, rigid hierarchy.
Speaker 1:Rigid hierarchy, all of that, ooh Jack. Well, are we seeing that today in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod? A rigidity, possibly? So, yeah, we need men and women who are in our rooms, in our leadership teams. We balance one another out.
Speaker 1:It's not good that man should be alone, and therefore God gave him Eve, not just as a sign and signal for procreation I think that was definitely his heart but as a I love this for the female leaders, but to be a kind adjutant for I've said this numerous times a kind adjutant for Adam. You really want to do that, bro. You really want to go there. She's going to compliment him in every way physically, emotionally, relationally. We're just simply better together. So, tomiko, sister, you are a gift to the body of Christ. We just met each other. I know you're a follower of Jesus. You're not a part of the Lutheran. Most of the guests we have on this podcast, by the way, are in the Lutheran tradition. We've learned with you, We've grown up with you today and I want to champion your work. So how can people connect with you to At the Cross and your other kind of creative ventures to share the gospel?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so At the Cross again. Amazon Prime, tubi, apple TV, um, uh, anything else you can actually follow on, uh, instagram or facebook. Rlcg prod, as like rlcg prod all in one, one word there, um, and that will align with all of the different products that we have out, all the content, or all the films, etc. And then on the website rlcgprodcom, and that is where all of the information for events, as well as upcoming content and upcoming features that we're going to have will be up there as well.
Speaker 1:Excellent. This is a lead time, tim Allman here, jack Calberg, we have had the privilege of hanging out with Tomiko Richardson. The time has flown. Sharing is caring Like, subscribe, comment wherever it is. You take in podcasts like this and we promise to continue to have hopefully invigorating, challenging maybe debate. Phil, I'm sure people are going to talk about what you share. You may have diverse opinions. May we be united around Christ and Him crucified and getting His word into the heart and ears of people so that they would be transformed up and into the image of Christ to be light bringers out into a dark and dying world. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Wonderful work, tomiko. Thanks Jack.
Speaker 3:Great, thank you.