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The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
The All of Life podcast, hosted by Nate Claiborne, provides weekly episodes that help further our mission to call, form, and send disciple-makers. At NewCity, we want to see Orlando flourish by filling it with people who say "Follow me as I follow Jesus in all of life."
The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
Season 8 Preview with Benjamin Kandt
In our latest episode of the All in Life Podcast, Nate Claiborne and Benjamin Kandt kick off by connecting Leviticus to Hebrews and lay the groundwork for the upcoming spring sermon series at NewCity. They also talk about the importance of the Nicene Creed and plan to record a few episodes later this spring unpacking the riches and depths of this statement of faith.
Later this season, there will also be episodes supporting the "Summer in the Psalms" series that will spotlight Psalm 37, as well as deep dives on the various Common Rhythm practices in the life of NewCity.
Nate and Ben wrap up the episode by catching up briefly on each other's current PhD work. They highlight the mutual benefits for pastors and counselors learning from one another, especially in times of mental health crises.
Welcome to another episode of the All in Life Podcast. I'm your host, nate Claiborne, and I'm here today with Benjamin Kant. Nate, good to be back in action with you. It is good to be back. The last podcast we recorded was in this room, but I think it was last summer. I think it was last May. Yeah, I think so. It has been, because we didn't do any episodes over the summer and then you weren't. I don't think you were on an episode in the fall. That's what happened.
Speaker 1:I don't know what we were doing. You didn't want to talk about politics.
Speaker 2:I guess is what it was?
Speaker 1:Something like that, something like that. But if listeners remember, we had a pretty good rhythm. We did a how to Read the Bible series and we were recording kind of just shorter episodes every week, and so our hope is we're going to try to do that this spring at least. We can't speak much past the spring. Some of that's the PhD life, some of that's just kind of where we are, it's life at New City. But we're going to try to get rolling on some episodes this spring.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good. You know it's actually going to happen because we have a recurring calendar invite. That's right, and so now it's actually going to be a thing that happens, get it on the calendar, reserve the room, get a little bit of a plan going.
Speaker 1:So what we're going to do today, we wanted to give you all a little bit of a preview kind of like what we did last fall of some things we know we're going to be doing. And then we're also Ben and I actually haven't caught up on just things that we're into specifically our PhD programs. So we're actually just going to do that on this episode because we figured it might be interesting to other people as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I'm looking forward to this.
Speaker 1:So Ben Damien actually set you up for this on Sunday by saying he didn't want to announce what the spring series was, but it does start in two weeks less than two weeks, 10 days. So what are we going to be into this spring?
Speaker 2:We are jumping into the book of Hebrews.
Speaker 1:Okay, romans wasn't hard enough, that's right. Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker 2:There was some back and forth, because we also really want to do a gospel pretty soon, and so we were talking about maybe some sort of a thematic series in one of the gospels or maybe the parable, something like that. We did the Beatitudes last spring, so that is a gospel, of course, but really we'd like to get some of the narrative aspects of the gospels or something like that too.
Speaker 1:Which I can't remember. I mean we've, we've done passages, but I don't, can't remember I've only been around since 2017, but I can't remember a series on a gospel. I remember Sermon on the Mount series.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been. It's certainly been a while, that's for sure. So, um, the other reason for the reason that decided us in favor of Hebrews, though, is because we just finished Leviticus, and Leviticus and Hebrews pair nicely like a red wine and a steak, or something like that, and so, because of that, you know, you get out of Leviticus the strange world that is the Bible, and particularly the stranger world that is Leviticus, which, by the way, has changed the way I read the Old Testament and the New Testament. I mean, it's like you realize, when you sit in a book like Leviticus, you understand why it's pretty foundational. It's one of the foundational five, you know, and so I say that to say, going from Leviticus into Hebrews and then from Hebrews into Numbers in the fall, actually has a good flow conceptually and I think will set us up well and then from Hebrews into Numbers in the fall actually has a good flow conceptually and I think will set us up well.
Speaker 2:And then I think Numbers will set us up well potentially for Luke in 2026. So let's get way out ahead of our skis here.
Speaker 1:That's right. I mean, we do think ahead a little bit. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:So we're going to start Hebrews. Hebrews is going to take us from mid-February all the way through the end of May, and one of the things I'm most excited for is Hebrews has a. The essence of it is this idea of what does it look like to become unshakable in your discipleship to Jesus, in your faith in Christ, and so one of the ideas that I've been considering, since I spent a lot of time in the book of Philippians, is this idea of gospel resilience, or even, to take it further, gospel anti-fragility and I get that from the book by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, I believe is his name, called Anti-Fragility, and the illustration I think is best, for it is like you have things that are fragile, like a champagne glass, right. You knock it off the table, it hits the ground and shatters everywhere. You have things that are resilient, like a sippy cup, a kid's sippy cup. You throw it against the wall, it maintains its form. One of those old Nokia phones, that's right.
Speaker 1:The brick phone that you have the snake on.
Speaker 2:They maintain their form through adversity. That's a good definition of resilience. But then there's things that are anti-fragile. Your immune system is anti-fragile.
Speaker 2:So, if you throw adversity at your immune system, it might get some setbacks, but it actually comes back stronger. It's more than just resilient. Your muscles are that way too. You break your muscles down and they actually rebuild back with greater strength. Relationships, healthy relationships, are that way. If you have rupture in a relationship and you repair it properly, you have more trust and strength often in that relationship than before. So how can the gospel actually create an anti-fragility in disciples of Jesus and I think the book of Hebrews really sets us up for that for a gospel anti-fragility and I'm looking forward to Hebrews really sets us up for that for a gospel, anti-fragility, and I'm looking forward to exploring that together this spring.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because, even as you're saying that, I'm thinking about okay. Well, yeah, you made the connection between Leviticus and Hebrews, and one of the things that has historically made Hebrews so hard to understand for people is they don't understand Leviticus. That's right. It's like if you don't have that foundation from this is what was going on with the sacrificial system and the holiness codes, then it's not really clear, like what's the author of Hebrews getting at, like what are they trying to do?
Speaker 1:But then you also have these warning passages and it's like, okay, well, what? How do we think about those? Yeah, especially from a Reformed perspective, where we just our doctrinal commitments. It kind of sounds like Paul, you know, not Paul, but well, maybe depending on who you ask. Or Luke or Apollos or somebody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, are we going to spend a whole this is self-control for Nate and I right now that we're not going to do that rabbit trail yeah.
Speaker 1:I'll circle back to this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that rabbit trail. Yeah, I'll circle back to this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. Yeah, You're just those warning passages. I mean you've got to think about what are we? What are those? How do those function in the book? How am I supposed to think about those as a disciple, Because they're pretty straightforward in some sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Hebrews really, I think, is trying to protect us from really two things that are that are, uh, dangers. One is the, the kind of the, the pressures that we experience in following Jesus from the outside, from from the culture around us, that don't make you decide, like in a crisis moment, I don't want anything to do with Jesus anymore, but they just cause you to drift away In that language of drifting. We all know, we all know this idea that, like, without you know, deliberate intentionality to move in the direction of faithfulness, drifting is actually probably a default mode if we're not careful, and so that's one of the dangers. The other one is is that there's this real temptation to, in critical moments, like maybe persecution for the Hebrews, like these different things to go. Is this really worth it? Is this whole following Jesus thing really worth it? Maybe it's not.
Speaker 2:And kind of reconsider, and so I think it has something to do with to speak into our deconstructing, deconverting and dechurching phenomena in the United States right now which, by the way, I think all three of those might be almost synonymous in the Bible, like there's no such thing as somebody who's a Christian that's not a part of a local church in Scripture, right and so, and Hebrews would tell you that, like, do not forsake gathering together as is the habit of some. And so there's just something about Hebrews, and it's called a gospel resilience, gospel, anti-fragility, in the face of pressures and persecution. That, I think, is a good word for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, we'll look forward to it. And to circle back from what I said a minute ago, mike Allen and I, as part of this preview, we're going to be doing some episodes, probably dealing with some of these thornier issues in a way that we don't have time for on Sunday morning, but maybe even tackling some of those authorship questions. It is a little weird that it's the one book in the New Testament that we don't know exactly who wrote it, because it didn't have a name attached to it, and so there's a lot of speculations. And ultimately, the good news is the interpretation of what is being said in Hebrews does not hinge on whether it came from Paul or whether it came from one of the other people in that orbit.
Speaker 2:That's great. So helpful and interesting to explore that, because authorial intent typically matters in interpreting Scripture. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we've got Hebrews as kind of our big thing for the spring but we've got some other parallel tracks I mentioned. This may or may not include you, but it might to some extent. Is people may have noticed we switched away from the New City Catechism to doing the Nicene Creed. And I think we explained it maybe the first week, but just to reiterate, a lot of things in the evangelical world are sort of circling around. The 1700-year anniversary of the Council of Nicaea that was in 325.
Speaker 1:And so you know the Evangelical Theological Society's national conference. That's the theme for it this year. Some of the regional conferences are using that as the same theme. Ben, you were mentioning you could tell the listeners about your friend in Izmir, which is modern-day Nicaea right, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a friend who lives in Turkey and does work over there and he has organized a conference. Basically, nicaea is in modern-day Turkey and so it's this conference for the 1700-year anniversary of the writing of the Nicene Creed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a really foundational creed.
Speaker 1:I mean, the Apostles' Creed is a little bit earlier and there's continuity between the two, but the language of Nicaea has been carefully crafted as a result of that conference in 325 AD, and it has a you know, we're going to be saying it, reciting it together as our profession of faith every Sunday, and so it felt like, well, we should probably do some episodes kind of digging into the theology of it a little bit.
Speaker 1:There's a strong part of what sparked the idea. For me is and we'll circle back to this there's going to be a lot of circling in this podcast, but one of my PhD classes right now is called Theological Systems and we have to go through each of the major systems, slash traditions of Christendom, and we started with Roman Catholics, and so one of our textbooks was the Catholic Catechism, and the whole first part of it is a commentary on the Nicene Creed, and that's what they use to teach basic theology. It's like, oh okay, so they might interpret it a little bit differently than we would in a Reformed Presbyterian context, but there's something to hey, this has really stood the test of time. It's a really important confession of faith. We ought to not just know it, but know what it means.
Speaker 1:And so I think we're being formed by reciting it every Sunday and I hope people take the encouragement to memorize it you got 52 Sundays to work with, that's right but to actually understand it in a little more detail. So we're going to sprinkle some episodes in. We haven't decided on the exact shape of it, but some of it will be the historical background. Some of it's going to be the deep dives on why is it worded this way? I think we have to answer. Why does it say Catholic? We used to have an asterisk at the bottom, but there's reasons why.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm eager for it. I think somehow now we're only like four or five Sundays into 2025, but every time we've recited it together as a people, I get caught up in the moment of it. It hasn't become rote. It hasn't become white noise. There's such a majesty to the language of the. Nicene Creed, and I actually think the length of it compared to maybe, the Apostles' Creed is I don't know. There's just something about the length of it, right Even that draws you up into it.
Speaker 1:It almost makes it feel like a different experience Because, as much as I appreciate the simplicity of the New City Catechism, where we did a question a week and worked our way through it, sometimes it's like the question and answer, it's like two sentences and then you're on. It's like we didn't linger in it, not that we were supposed to, but it just sort of made that part of the liturgy feel really small.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:And now it's actually like a really by having to do the Nicene Creed. It's this developed portion of the liturgy where we're slowing down and reciting this thing together that millions of Christians have recited in Sunday services for 1,700 years. Yeah, which is remarkable.
Speaker 2:That's part of, I think, my experience of getting caught up in it. It's like, wow, we stand in to use the language we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church, right, and there's just this, like there's a unity to the body of Christ throughout history and around the globe today, when we stand with our brothers and sisters and recite this creed.
Speaker 1:Right, and even to that point it's like. You know. I was reading it in the Catholic Catechism, and as much as we would disagree with Catholics on a bunch, of things we both agree on that creed and Eastern Orthodox are going to claim that you know, they've been using that creed since it was written and so it's like the Eastern Orthodox. And so the three broad streams of Christendom Roman Catholics, eastern Orthodox, protestants there's one thing they can agree on, although there is that one phrase that is a little bit divisive.
Speaker 1:We won't get into the great schism in detail right and we'll use some more restraint.
Speaker 2:but yeah, that's good. So we've got the Nicene Creed episodes that'll be coming up Also. Maybe it's worth talking about the. We do our annual summer in the Psalms in June, and this summer we're going to be spending the whole month of June in Psalm 37. So this hasn't worked out perfectly, but we've had a practice of alternating between topical or thematic studies in the Psalms and then taking on a Psalm or two Psalms and really deep diving into that Was Psalm 16, the last one.
Speaker 1:We spent the whole summer in that one.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's right. And so Psalm 37, autobiographically speaking, I spent unintentionally, I spent all of 2024 memorizing it, and the reason why it took me all of 2024 is because I was distracted at points. And it's 40 verses, it's pretty long, but I started memorizing it because we were preaching through the Beatitudes and Blessed are the meek comes from Psalm 37. And so I wanted to memorize it before we preached on that text, and then I found myself just lingering in it for an entire year and realizing it's a wisdom psalm and just experiencing the wisdom for different seasons of 2024 that I found my life that were just happening in my life.
Speaker 2:So, for just a simple example, psalm 37 talks about justice a good bit, and I was in a course where I one of my main projects was to write a theology of justice and I've got some pretty clear, now way more clear. But I'm pretty opinionated on justice because I think there's a lot of nonsense about justice out there today, and so living in the psalm that says the Lord loves justice was really helpful for me, and I could tell you probably four or five other anecdotes from my own personal experience with this psalm. So the way we're going to come at this as a sermon series and we'll probably have some podcast episodes with it too but is there is a future?
Speaker 2:Psalm 37, verse 37 says there is a future for the man of peace, and I think there's something about Psalm 37 that orients us towards the future actually, is certain and sure and secure. It's actually the present. That's a little bit cloudy for us and so when you're in the here and now, it feels like what are we going to do? But if you belong to Jesus, you know the best is yet to come, no matter what, no matter what. And Psalm 37 kind of orients your gaze towards God's future and I think, in a meaningful way and then asks how should that shape your present? What should that mean for your money, for generosity, for justice, for how you deal with anxiety and anger and looking and experiencing envy and all these different things?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that'll be good.
Speaker 1:So the Psalm 37 over the summer, this theme of there is a future, that's right, we're not going to speak past that.
Speaker 1:But really the way we've been doing the way we've been doing the seasons on here is they're tied to the ministry calendar and just the ebb and flow of having a fall season where, where you know, community groups are meeting and all these things are going on, or communities, and then we take a dip through December and then part of January and then we kind of ramp back up until May, and so we're trying to have the the all of life podcast sort of follow, that ebb and flow.
Speaker 1:And so we don't really plan to do much over the summer, but we do want to. We'll probably drop episodes in May as preparation for that summer in the series, and then we'll pick back up in August for that Summer in the Psalms series, and then we'll pick back up in August, september with something else that we'll tell you about when we get closer to then. That's great. We did mention this at the front end, but just to kind of well actually, I'm remembering we have one more thing that I do know we're going to try to do and that's deep dives on common rhythm practices.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yeah, as a church we have the common rhythm which is the tagline is a common life for a common love, and one of the ways that we have this kind of life together as a people is by practicing together. And so we've got eight practices four are weekly, four are daily, and all of them are rooted in Scripture. Every one of them you could derive from the Bible, and they're ways for us to put our faith into practice.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I experienced when I'm around friends that are Jewish or friends that are Catholic, is they have a distinction that we don't use in Protestantism, and maybe nor should we, but there's something to it, which is you can be a Jew and be a practicing Jew or a Catholic. That's a practicing Catholic, and then you can kind of just be like a non-practicing Catholic or non-practicing Jew. Protestants don't allow for that One, because we have a higher emphasis on faith, on belief, like if you don't believe the things you're not in kind of a thing. But two, we just don't use that language of being I'm a practicing Presbyterian.
Speaker 1:You never hear that.
Speaker 2:But I think there's something interesting to that. But we call medical professionals, lawyers, healthcare professionals. They're practicing I practice medicine, I practice law, that kind of thing. So there's something really significant about do you practice your faith or not? That's actually the distinction between a practicing Jew or practicing Catholic and a non-practicing is. Does it matter to you, like, is it going to cost you something? Are you going to give yourself to it?
Speaker 2:And so at New City we are practicing disciples of Jesus. We really do put our faith into practice through prayer and scripture and rest and feast and fast and these other practices that we do, and scripture and rest and feast and fast, and these other practices that we do. So we thought, well, let's help continue to press in as a congregation and really have a pattern of pressing into these practices on an annual rhythm, so that we have a calendar, that kind of lines and maps onto the common rhythm practices. And so you'll see, the next time that you and I talk, nate, we'll be doing a deep dive on the scripture practice and we've got some of these other practices lined up according to the annual calendar and how these practices kind of fit with everything. And then we have the bookend, which is our seasons of rest, where we pause and we reflect, which is when we use the all of life guide.
Speaker 2:And so we do that twice a year and then we've got these eight practices stretched out throughout the other months of the year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and part of them being practices. Sometimes the joke is, like you mentioned, doctors and lawyers like, oh, you haven't gotten it down yet, you're still just practicing. It's like, no, there's an element to where and I won't share the full anecdote, but just an experience that my dad had with my mom and a healthcare professional over the weekend where they're trying to figure out something going on with her and the doctor was just like, yeah, people are different. Different people respond to different things. Sometimes you know people have you think they have this one thing and but they don't have these symptoms.
Speaker 1:And the doctor was just like that's why they call it a practice. Wow. So he was sort of just admitting the limits of his own knowledge, but just being like, yeah, there's this, the way he was using it. It was like there's this sense of you're further refining it by experience. And so, even though, yeah, he is a medical professional, he's at least aware that it's not cookie cutter, it's not one size fits all, it's we're practicing in the sense of we're getting better and better and better at it as we go, just you know, like a musician practices piano, even if they already have.
Speaker 1:They already have it down because they're trying to get better, and so, yes, I think that's some of our philosophy behind it is, you're never really going to master the scripture practice. It's like I got it down now, that's right, right, right. It's like none of them are designed for achievement in the sense of, yeah, you just have to master it and then you can move on, and then you do the common rhythm plus and it's these 16 things, that's right.
Speaker 1:Totally new and different. Yeah, that's really well said. So in some sense it's like yeah, we're doing deep dives now, but Lord willing, depending on how things play out with our calendars, we would do this same rhythm again next year. And we wouldn't be like oh, we recorded a scripture practice podcast last year, because I think if people go through our archives they'll find well, we've done them before, that's right, we haven't done it in depth on every single one, but it's not really a new thing.
Speaker 1:So we're trying to do the In light of the way we've changed and grown in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's well said. So, Nate, as we land the plane, tell us about your PhD and maybe tell us what you're studying and kind of where you are in this particular semester.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well yeah, and we'll have to exchange war stories. I'm in what I hope is my last year of coursework for a PhD in theological studies, so I started this. This journey really started. The possibility of it started in the spring of 21, but I didn't start classes until spring of 23.
Speaker 1:And I've got two classes this spring Seminar on Theological Systems that I already mentioned, where part of the way Dallas Seminary wants to form people as theologians is they want them to understand all the ways Christians have thought about theology, and not so much that they then say well then, this is the correct way to do it. It's you need to familiarize yourself with the different systems so you know the difference. So I've got a presentation on Lutheranism in a couple of weeks because they wanted you to present on systems you weren't familiar with.
Speaker 1:And I have no connection to Lutheranism in my past or probably my future.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile I was born and baptized as a Lutheran. I know On the eighth day of the tribe of Melanchthon.
Speaker 1:I have to use that. I'll run my presentation by you, you can make sure it's all sound. So I've got that and then run my presentation by you and make sure it's all. That's great, it's all sound. So I've got that and I've got a really fascinating class on historiography and hermeneutics, which are fancy words for the writing of history and the interpretation of texts like scripture. And so just doing a deep dive on how do we think about writing about the past, which is really just another version of interpretation, how do we make sense.
Speaker 1:How do we find meaning in the past, how do we find meaning in a text those sorts of things which everything I said right there is controversial, just? In the sense of like, if you put a bunch of PhD students in a room like, what do you mean by?
Speaker 2:meaning and what do you mean by finding it in the text? What if you put it in the text? Finding it in the text?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what if you put it in the text? Right, exactly. So yeah, that's kind of my spring, the fall. Hopefully I finish things out. But my dissertation work is on the flesh, so I'm trying to argue for a specific way of understanding where the flesh fits into our theology.
Speaker 1:Not really as a practical level, because it's a dissertation, but in more of a. How do we situate the flesh? Is it part of anthropology, part of what it means to be human? Is it part of our doctrine of sin? Is the flesh synonymous with sin, nature, or is it somehow distinct from it? And then, what does it mean to think of redemption, to think of salvation, to think of how does that impact my flesh? Is part of becoming a Christian, getting rid of the flesh, is it I'm at war with the flesh? Maybe based on how I'm reading Romans, but what does that actually mean? What does it mean that the word became flesh? And that is actually where things get really complicated. There's a lot of things John could have said. The word became a human, the word became a man, soma said the word became a human.
Speaker 2:the word became a man. Soma embodied the word became embodied.
Speaker 1:but he chose to use that very loaded term flesh that he knows how Paul uses it and he still uses it. So really it's linking all of those usages together and either arguing that it's the same concept, and this is the way to understand the concept, or it's different concepts. But that's for me to figure out in the dissertation phase.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm eager to learn from you as you keep going. That's great. Well, I am in a similar. My coursework is tapering at this point. I've still got a course. I've got two this semester. One is qualitative research. I did quantitative research last semester and it about killed me. I like to boil it down it's like quantitative and qualitative is stats and stories, and I am not a numbers person, I'm a words person. I'm not a stats person, I'm a stories person, and so I'm very eager for this class, because qualitative research is exactly what I want to do my dissertation on, and so I'm doing a PhD in counseling and the people will ask me look, why do you want to do that? And the I don't have an end game. That's the thing there's. There's not like a door, that's.
Speaker 1:I was going to say I should. I should say the same thing, because that's the question I get asked all the time too is what are you going to do when you're done? Yes, and it's like yes, and it's like well done. Right now, my graduation is 2029.
Speaker 2:So I don't 2026 is kind of a stretch to be thinking about, right, totally, yeah. And one of the things that's been clear, clear, clarified to me, which I've been thankful for, is I really want to teach pastors psychology and I want to teach counselors theology, and I think that both of those two groups of people being formed in each other's disciplines can really benefit. And I've found that to be true to my experience being both a pastor and a counselor who delves deeply into both theology and psychology. And the win for somebody like me is you don't really have to be very good at either of those disciplines, you just have to be better than the other group, because they're not going to be very well versed in it.
Speaker 1:You probably had a similar experience to me and I've commented on this to Mike Allen, but DTS and RTS at least the RTS you went to were very similar in that it was two groups of students there. There were pastors or pastors-in-training getting their MDiv or THM and there were counselors and early on they're all in the same classes together and they don't like each other.
Speaker 1:These are the truth, people, these are the feelings people, right, right and it's like but you guys would be so much better if you could actually listen to and learn from each other, rather than just staying in your like separate camps.
Speaker 2:You got it. That's right. So, uh, and, and what's been cool is, I've experienced pastors very eager to learn counseling and psychology, and I think one of the reasons for that is we live in a mental health crisis right now, which is, for the record, not ordinary.
Speaker 1:We live in an extraordinary moment, it's still unprecedented times. Yes, that's right, the precedented times are not coming back.
Speaker 2:Yeah this is the most anxious generation that's ever lived. And so pastors, I think, are feeling that because they're getting eaten alive by trying to care for the people in their congregations and feeling out of their depth to do that well. And then I think counselors probably feel a little bit less the need for theology. But I am deeply persuaded that when you're counseling people, you're exposed to some things like evil and suffering at levels that you I mean when you're hearing stories of abuse and things like that.
Speaker 2:If you don't have a robust doctrine of evil and theodicies and an understanding of God's sovereignty and how suffering is formative, or you know hermiteology, if you don't understand how sin works, like you're going to think everything is because of your family of origin and your cultural context and like. So there's just all of these things that I think counselors could benefit from theology and pastors could benefit from psychology. So I'm eager to press into that. But I've got more clarity on my dissertation, which is I really want to do a qualitative project where I study my elevator speeches, the spiritual experiences of business executives. If I double click on that, what I mean is I believe that the gifts, power and presence and fruit of the Spirit are for not only as not in the church only, but also as the church in the world.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so my two case studies are Daniel and Joseph. Okay, they're both faithful people of God that are in pagan contexts Joseph in Egypt, daniel in Babylon and they're both recognized as being one that has the spirit of God in them and that gives them extraordinary gifts and skills and abilities to actually lead. Administratively, of course, they're interpreting dreams for Pharaoh and stuff like that, but they're also doing like incredible leadership, executive leadership roles, and so I want to study how could, how does the Holy Spirit lead organizational leaders in ways that helps flourishing for them and the people that they lead, helps them endure the stressors and burdens of organizational leadership, helps them be more resilient, helps them in moments when they're in a crisis or trying to problem solve, or what does it mean to actually rely on the Holy Spirit to do your work in a non-Christian environment?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah. Well, even as you're talking about that, I'm like you know, we're not necessarily two sides of the same coin, but our dissertation projects are complimentary in the sense of Flesh and spirit. Flesh and spirit, because I'm like, yeah, you know, big passage for me is a feet or galatians five, where it's talking about works of the flesh. It's like contrasted with works of the spirit, it's like okay.
Speaker 1:So you're basically asking people how they've not relied on the flesh in their business endeavors but you're framing it, you know, around the spirit, whereas I'm framing things around the flesh but, but they're very that's, I've not thought about that mutually, mutually beneficial.
Speaker 2:We can co-author something at the end.
Speaker 1:There you go, there's, there's, there's something that we've talked about that before, and so hopefully, hopefully, we'll get the opportunity to Ben, it's been great catching up with you and just hearing a little bit about what's coming up for a new city in the spring and I look forward to getting back together next week.
