Show Notes
In this rich and reflective episode of Peaceable and Kind, host Derek Vreeland sits down with author and pastor Glenn Packiam to explore a timeless but timely question: What’s a Christian anyway? Drawing from Glenn’s new book by the same name, the conversation dives deep into the power of the Nicene Creed to shape our identity, unify the church, and guide believers through seasons of doubt, confusion, and cultural chaos.
Together, Derek and Glenn unpack how ancient Christian truths speak directly to modern challenges—offering scaffolding for those deconstructing, rebuilding, or simply seeking spiritual clarity. From the Trinity to the story of salvation, and from sacramental life to the wild work of the Holy Spirit, this episode is both pastoral and practical.
Whether you’re a lifelong believer or exploring faith for the first time, this conversation invites you to stay in the boat, embrace a deeper story, and remember that the church is bigger—and more beautiful—than we often realize.
Key Takeaways
Faith is a shared journey—not a solo act. The Creed helps us stay together, even in doubt.
The Nicene Creed echoes Scripture and centers us on the Trinity.
It gives guardrails for understanding who Jesus is and how to stay rooted in truth.
The Christian story leads to new creation—not escape, but renewal and resurrection.
The Holy Spirit leads us into power, obedience, and transformation.
Struggling with faith? Stay in the boat. Let others row when you can’t.
🎧 Listen now and discover why the Creed still matters—and how it can anchor your faith in a world of confusion and corruption.
Books mentioned in this podcast:
Exploring Christian Hope in Contemporary Worship by Glenn Packiam
Blessed Broken and Given by Glenn Packiam
The Resilient Pastor by Glenn Packiam
The Intentional Year by Glenn & Holly Packiam
What’s a Christian, Anyway? by Glenn Packiam
In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen
The Creed by Luke Timothy Johnson
Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible by Willie James Jennings
Learn more about Glenn’s new book and get free resources at whatsachristiananyway.com
Preorder Derek’s new book, Incarnation: 8 Lessons on How God Meets Us here: https://amzn.to/42jSZAs
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Transcript
Narrator: Welcome back to Another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I am your host, Derek Vreeland, and I am looking forward to today’s episode because I have a guest with me, a pastor and an author who I admire great deeply. Deal and I know we’re gonna have a great conversation. But before we jump into that, make sure you subscribe to this podcast if you haven’t already, and leave a rating and a review. That helps a lot. And just today I was reading a new review that made me really happy. This is a brand new review, and it says Derek is a thoughtful and has a pastoral approach in producing and hosting this podcast. In my opinion, he embodies what the Bible teaches as being peaceable and kind. This podcast is helpful and I recommend you listen routinely. Well, I appreciate that so much. Thanks for that review. And you know what? If you leave a review with five stars. I’ll read your review uh on an upcoming episode. Won’t use your name, but if you leave a review with five stars I’ll read it right here on the podcast. Does that sound like a deal? Let’s do that. But please uh let me know. Uh, what you think about the content we’re creating here, a peaceable and kind. I love to turn what becomes a bit of a monologue for me into a dialogue. So feel free to reach out to me on social media and let me know what you think about what we’re doing here at Peaceable and Kind. Today, my guest is Glenn Pacciam. Glenn is the lead pastor of Rock Harbor Church in Costa Mesa, California. Glenn’s also a senior fellow at the Barna Group. He earned a doctorate in theology and ministry from Durham University, England, and he has a master’s degree and bachelor’s degree from Oral Roberts University Shout out Golden Eagles. Glenn and his wife Holly have four children and live in Orange County, California. And he’s the author of numerous books. including Exploring Christian Hope in Contemporary Worship, a book based on his doctoral research, Blessed, Broken, Given, one of my personal favorites from Glenn and two bestsellers, The Resilient Pastor and The Intentional Year, which he co-authored with his wife. And he is the author of a new book that we’re going to talk about today, What’s a Christian Anyway? Finding our way in an age of confusion and corruption. Glenn, welcome to Peaceable and Kind.
Derek Vreeland: Derek, my friend, it is so good to see your face. So good to talk to you. And man, that is the first ORU Golden Eagle shout-out I’ve ever gotten on a podcast. So let’s go, fellas.
Narrator: Let’s go. So you we were both at ORU at the same time. same time, but you were an undergrad student and I was a grad student and we never met while we were there. We did not.
Derek Vreeland: I was fumbling my way through uh life and vocation and all of that. You probably had it I I should have known you. You would have been a good guide, I’m sure, a good brother to me in that season.
Narrator: I tell you what, when I was in the seminary at ORU, I was in class in the library, studying and working. That’s just about all I did. I I I dedicated myself and it and it was it was more challenging. Like graduate school is more challenging than I than I expected. So I may not have had time, but you were leading worship or you were you were on the worship team. um at Chapel, but I think you started leading after I left, so I just hate that that uh we were like ships passing in the night. I’ve been following you though for years uh in your pastoral ministry and and through your writing, and you you’ve had a deep uh impact on me. I feel like we’re sort of sort of like rowing in the same stream and and our spiritual journeys I think are are very similar. Um why don’t you tell us a bit about your your spiritual journey? Sort of uh tell us a bit about your story.
Derek Vreeland: Yeah, it it is true, Derek, with you know the times we’ve had together in the same room, the conversations we’ve had at various settings, there’s definitely this sympatico, this this sort of, you know, a relatability of the the ways that we’ve uh our journeys have you know the the paths they’ve taken. And and and for me I grew up kind of in this Pentecostal charismatic household. uh in Malaysia and then and but always had this love for the word of God. It’s funny that I would need to qualify that, but sometimes people’s experience of the Pentecostal or the charismatic uh is primarily about power encounters with the Holy Spirit and s and oftentimes light on on biblical teaching. My parents moved, we our family moved from Malaysia to the States. when I was ten years old, because they felt the call of God into vocational ministry, and so they went to a Bible school and that church there in Portland, um, you know, full of the spirit and such such a high value on on s Bible teaching So I was formed in kind of this word and spirit sort of environment. We moved back to Malaysia. I homeschooled my high school years, which allowed me the flexibility to sneak into these a classes that my mom was teaching at the Bible college at the church in Malaysia and I would sneak in the back and listen to her teach about Old Testament history and, you know, so Um, I had this deep love of scripture and this deep experience uh many deep experiences with God in worship and in prayer. When I went And did my undergrad at ORU though, I encountered some excesses in it. I mean, I encountered prosperity gospel for the first time, encountered um some some y you know, maybe even some of the hype dimensions of of the spiritual life. And so I went on this quest to search for something deeper. Uh uh thankfully the you know the faculty and the in the theology department were great uh guides in in that season as well Then I I I moved to Colorado and joined the staff of a church. I was twenty-two, twenty-three, I think what maybe when I twenty two when I joined the the team there. uh in Colorado Springs and non-denominational, you know, kind of charismatic evangelical church, founding senior pastor had a pretty public moral failure six years in. And Derek, that became catalytic for me to dig a little bit deeper. Sure. And I’m gonna narrate this quickly and so it’s gonna sound real clean. But of course, you know, in real life, these things, these earthquake events in life are not that clean, but over the span of about four, maybe five years, I began reading more deeply some authors that I’d never read before. In the wake of the scandal, I picked up Henry Nowen’s book in the Name of Jesus, Catholic author. Great book. And it’s this is a f this is a funny story. Our one of our mutual friends, you know, Jason Jackson, he he gave me that book a couple years prior. And I started reading it and I like threw it across the room. I was like, this guy, he’s talking about being irrelevant and he’s talking about like here I am in this growing mega church. I don’t need you know, it’s so funny. And then And then I I picked it up again in the wake of the scandal, and it spoke to me about a deeper life with God in a different direction. You know, this this sort of um open handedness, the surrendering of ambition and success. Then I began reading Eugene Peterson. I know your work uh continues Bible studies reflecting on his you know work in the Bible, the message paraphrase. And Eugene’s work, uh I began first reading the message, but then I began reading his books on pastoral ministry. And that’s what began to shape my in his phrase shape my pastoral imagination.
Narrator: That is really personal and local
Derek Vreeland: Uh and then a few years after that I began reading NC Wright, another one of your great heroes and mentors as well. And that rocked my world. I mean, I I think I had been on the on the scent, if you will, of of kingdom theology, but to read the Bible that way and to see how it all fit together, it was just Absolutely stunning. And then I I was, you know, so there’s a theological awakening there. There was a devotional awakening there with Henry Nowen. There was a vocational awakening there with Eugene. Peterson, and then I think all three of them, somewhere along the way, Derek, I realized, okay, wait a minute. Nowin’s a Catholic. Peterson’s a Presbyterian. Wright is an Anglican. All three of these guys know something about the Lord’s table that I don’t know. And so that set me on the journey in becoming sacramental So when I wrote Blessed, Broken, Given, it had been, I don’t know, seven, eight years of living out personally and pastorally a sacramental worldview. So what you know, like like you and I, I you know, where c I I feel like sometimes an ecclesial mutt yes pariah because you know b i I I I cause I’ve got Pentecostal streams, evangelical streams, um sacramental streams
Narrator: But I think we’re better for it. Yes. Yeah, I think we we need to open up outside of whatever we call home, and we all have our homes, but open up to the to the greater body of Christ. And I think one of the ways that we can build bridges and sort of open is recognize what we share in common. Sometimes we divide over doctrinal distinctives, but there’s a large part of the The essentials of the Christian faith that bind us together. And I think the Nicene Creed is a big part of that. And so I loved your new book, What’s a Christian Anyway. Because you you walk us through the creed and you say early in the book that the creed is what unites us in the body of Christ And we need a whole lot more unity. But I’m wondering about Christians who don’t come from a creedal background. What would you say to a Christian when you’re talking about the Nicene Creed who says, well, I believe in no creed but Christ, no book but the Bible? How would you respond to that person?
Derek Vreeland: I mean, amen to the instinct behind that statement. You know, that yes, we as Christians, Jesus is at the center of our lives, of our confession, and the Bible alone is the Word of God. We’re not adding to it. We’re not taking from it. Uh the the scriptures are our foundation. And I think that the here’s the irony. The people who put down these words of the creed would say a hearty amen to the instincts behind that statement. Right. So I think I think sometimes what we imagine is we associate the creed with a our uh our kind of imagined corrupted medieval church. And so we think, ah, this came from kind of that these were the people that Martin Luther was railing against. No, no, no, no, no. The Creed was written in 325, 1700 years ago this month. That’s right. The month of May, uh that you know, the year three twenty-five. And what they were trying to do is they were trying to unify and codify these core confessions that defined them as followers of Jesus. And the remarkable thing was it was not much of a fight. There was some theological disagreement, right? A guy named Arius had some funky teaching, but it was easy to spot. Wait a minute, that one of these things is not like the other. It was easy to spot what Arius was saying is something that stood out. And so the same council, the same gathering. is also the group that recognized the the 27 books of the New Testament as Christian scripture. I say recognized because they didn’t make it Christian scripture. They they bore witness to it as, oh, this is the word of God. And so and there were other documents from a around that time, that w there were secondary letters and things like that that that they were aware of, that they probably even circulated, but they knew, hey, these ones from Paul, these document eyewitness accounts of of the life of Jesus, these are different. And so they knew what was the word of God and they knew what was a confession of faith. And I think we’re we’re smart enough to know the difference too. And for someone who’s never read the Nicene Creed in particular. It might surprise you that you will see phrases and words in there that you go, oh my gosh, that sounds like John 1. That sounds like Colossians 1. That sounds like Hebrews 1. And you go, yes. Because they intentionally as much as possible used actual phrases from Scripture.
Narrator: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s not it’s not the the creed against Scripture. It’s scripture is the inspired written word of God given to us and our early, early uh uh ancestors, you know, were working with scripture. To give real definition. So when people say no creed but Christ, I would want to respond, well, it’s things like the Nicene Creed who help us to identify who Christ is.
Derek Vreeland: That’s it. Yeah, that’s it. And I mean I I I love that you said that. I mean even the the the Christ thing in the Nicene Creed is organized in three sections. Um I like to think of it as stanzas, you know, as a songwriter, you know, they’re there are three sections of a hymn, if you will. And the first stanza about the father is the is the briefest. The second stanza about Jesus is the longest because exactly what you said. When you say no greed but Christ, what is it we believe about Christ? And there’s three sub-movements within that stanza: the eternal, eternally begotten, eternal Son of God. the incarnate Son of God, and then the crucified, risen, returning, and reigning Son of God. That’s the thing, you know, so you gotta get all that right. And then the final stanza is about the Holy Spirit and his work through the church. I sometimes say that the creed is like bumper lanes for your Bible reading. Yes. So so yeah, you’re supp the creed doesn’t replace the Bible. Please read the Bible. But but the creed makes sure that you don’t read the Bible in such a way that contradicts um who the father is, who the son is, who the spirit is, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the, you know, all of these things. And I think that’s important. As evangelicals who want to return the Bible to the people, who want people to read the Bible for themselves, we we value that. The creed makes sure that people don’t show up at your church Bible study, midweek Bible study, and say funky things about Jesus or the Spirit because of their Bible reading.
Narrator: Hey friends, I wanted to pause for just a second to let you know that my next book, Incarnation, Eight Lessons on How God Meets Us, is available for pre-order. This Bible study is for individual devotional use or for small group discussion. Link to pre-order is in the show notes. Yeah, no, it that that’s been such a useful tool pastorally in my own congregation. And I’ve often used the metaphor and it’s kind of a it’s kind of a violent metaphor, but it works that The creed works with scripture like the sights on a rifle. Um so on on a rifle there’s there’s the And and I’m I’m not a hunter, so I’ve only just seen this This podcast is called Peaceable and Kind. Let’s talk about deer hunting and you know, okay. So you have the the The front kind of fork, and then you gotta line it up with another site because you can take the words of scripture and go in any direction, right? Mormons will use scripture. in talking about their version of Jesus. Jehovah Witnesses will talk about Jesus in New Scripture, but they take it in a way where they don’t have those those guardrails, those bumpers to keep us in the orthodox flow. So it, because you can take the Bible any way you want, the creed helps us to point the scriptures in that apostolic Orthodox faith. And that’s so helpful. I love your book for all the metaphors that you use, uh, because it’s it’s helpful. I love doing the kind of like Philosophy, theology, deep dives. But I think what connects people to major concepts that you find in the creed are so many different metaphors that you use in your book. One of them that I love so much is the imagery of the creed as sort of like a rowing team together. versus the one person kayak. So you write in the book, followers of Jesus are in one large boat together If you’re struggling with faith and need to set your oar down, that’s fine for a season. Just stay in the boat. Don’t jump overboard. Faith is not a solo sport. Let others row when you cannot. So, how does the Nicene Creed help us stay in the boat?
Derek Vreeland: So part of this recognition came, you know, in the couple years after the scandal at my previous church in Colorado and I was, you know, in my late twenties by then. Uh I I was given the the gift of being able to lead a community on Sunday evenings and it became somewhat of an experimental community and was even encouraged to Work out, test out some of these things. And so we started peppering in ancient practices. We started saying the Nicene Creed weekly in worship. And I realized for people who are disillusioned, disappointed, suspicious of uh institutions and preachers, and sometimes rightly so. Uh the creed was a way of saying the faith is bigger than this person. The faith is bigger than this church. The faith is bigger than this culture and this moment. And I think That that instinct to look for something bigger than ourselves has not gone away. It’s only heightened. Out here now on the West Coast, I really see the there’s such an individualistic uh ethos. You know, the the author Wallace Stegner said California is like the rest of America, just more so. You know, and I and I and I think that’s true. So if I say there’s individualism, you go, yeah, well that’s America. That’s true. And I think if we were to have written a creed, we would have started with the with the singular pronoun I. I know or I believe or I feel, you know. And I think what the creed invites us to say is yes, faith is personal, but it’s also communal. It’s not individual. And For all of the emphasis, the evangelical emphasis on personal faith, I fear there has been an unintended consequence that we think faith is private And so we have a lot of people who are deconstructing, sometimes rightly so, sometimes they are supposed to deconstruct certain elements of it. Sometimes we have a lot we have a lot of people who are wounded from from pastors who’ve misused their power and churches that have misused their voice in society. And so as they’re they’re for whatever reason they want to set down the oars of faith. I understand that. But if you imagine that faith is like a one-person kayak, then you think I just gotta get out of this. I don’t know if I believe anymore. I’m stock I’m gonna stop coming to church. Instead of saying, actually, faith is a community project, and it’s okay to go through seasons of doubt and unbelief. In fact, it’s pretty normal and even healthy at times. Set the oars down, stay in the boat, let the church say these words for you and with you even when you can’t. And so I think that y you know, we we we don’t say the creed regularly in worship now where I am But I think the moments that we do, or even i other forms of it, when you’re singing, when you’re praying together, it’s a reminder that even when you can’t say these words, you’re in the company of women and men who can, and that will lift you during those difficult seasons.
Narrator: I love that because I think a lot of Christians do view their faith privately and they think I’m in this all by myself, so I have to answer. all of the hard questions. How can a good God allow suffering in the world and and wrestle with all the complexity of Scripture all by themselves? But the creed invites us into an ancient tradition That has been continuing on for 2,000 years. And so you can wrestle or set your oar down for a little bit and let the church help you and guide you. And it’s comforting to me when I talk to people who are wrestling that the the creed gives you room enough to ask your questions because I think hiding from your doubts or uh spiritualizing your doubts um is not the way to grow in faith. We grow in faith by wrestling with our doubts. And people get scared. They’re like, well I’m not sure. I I used to believe this and now I’m not so sure. But the creeds give that that structure. It’s sort of the shape of the boat.
Derek Vreeland: Scaffolding.
Narrator: Scaffolding. So that you can you can explore and wrestle within the boundaries given to us by the creed. So there’s a sense of comfort in that and such deep formation takes place in dedicating ourselves to the creed.
Derek Vreeland: Yeah, and I I think you know you you referenced the Unity thing earlier, and I think that you know part of that we is a historic we, you know, the tr the billions who’ve gone before us. And a global we, the billion, you know, a couple billion Christians who are around the world. And one of the one of the most difficult things about any kind of pain or trauma is we tend to universalize our experience of a thing. And so we push everything through the prism of our own pain or the prism of our own experience. And there’s a story I tell in the book of a theology professor here in Costa Mesa, Bill Doctrum, who teaches at a at an AG school. And it’s just a wonderful sage and he’ll say to his students, What do you know about the church that Jesus doesn’t? you know? And they go, Okay, all right, Jesus knows, you know. But then he’ll flip it and say, What do you think Jesus knows about the church that you don’t? And and that’s that’s it, Derek. Like that’s part of that’s why we want people to travel uh and and go on whether it’s missions You know, we always say we get more blessed than we are a blessing. It’s really because your eyes are opened and you go, oh my goodness, the church is much bigger than my experience. And it doesn’t diminish our pain. I’m not trying to minimize it. But I am trying to to uh right-size it and to help us see kind of the the bigger picture of the church. I love that.
Narrator: Yeah, it’s the it’s the one holy Catholic Catholic, meaning universal, an apostolic church that we belong to, yeah, both globally and historically. And I think people are looking for that kind of rootedness these days. That’s why I think Books like yours are coming at the right time. Like we need these ancient resources to help us be rooted. You you describe in the book that we are storytelling creatures. And I I love thinking through that so much. I completely believe. I think story is how we make sense of the world. So like our family, we’re big Star Wars nerds, right? We just wrapped up Andor season two. I should do a whole podcast on the Andor season. It’s fan season two. It’s fantastic. But for for my boys and and two are adults now, we still talk about that because George Lucas created this world and these These stories. Well, the scriptures are telling a story from creation to new creation. And I love that the creed captures that the Creed how does the Nicene Creed help us to get the story right? Yeah, I mean, i it’s interesting that as it works through what we believe about the three persons at the uh in the Trinity,
Derek Vreeland: It also walks us through a bit of the story and in a s in an interesting order. So the f we believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. So there’s the beginning. You know, there’s the beginning of it all. And but it doesn’t go to fall right away, which is also maybe a good challenge for us of have we ratcheted up the the importance of the fall too much? Then it goes to Jesus and it talks about we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, you know, the e one God from one tr one God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. So eternal Son of God. Before the beginning of time, there was Jesus. And then it says, for us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven. So now we’ve got the incarnation. He became man, was crucified under Pontius Pilate. It is interesting to me that in the incarnation moment of the story, Derek, there are only two human names get mentioned. So the creed is primarily about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s a unifier. It’s a purifier for all the things we’ve added to it, but it’s a magnifier. It holds up this magnifying glass to who God is. And yet, somehow, right here in the middle of it, there’s two human names, Mary and Pilate. And when I reflect on this, Derek, I just think this is a beautiful part of the story where it’s almost like the the story slows down, the music starts to soar, and we recognize For us and our salvation. Who’s the us and who’s the hour? Is it all of us? Is it the best of us? Is it only those who need it? And however you mark it, you could say Mary represents the purest of the pure uh individual human beings. And you could say that Pilate represents the corrupt, powerful, oppressor, you know. Yeah, Jesus came for all of us, everything in between. Or you could say Mary the lowest of the low, the peasant girls by social strata, or Pilate the highest of the high. However you mark those two names on a continuum, I think the the early Christians were trying to say Jesus came for all of us. And that’s the a beautiful part of the story. Of course it then in talking about Jesus gives us that future part, the new creation. He’s The the five R’s. He’s returning. He’s gonna reign. There’ll be he’ll judge the living and the dead. There’ll be a reckoning, and then there’ll be our future resurrection and then the renewal of creation. That comes the very last line of the creed. We look But the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
Narrator: And that’s what gives us such hope. And as one who did not grow up with the creed, when we started implementing the creed, both through prayer and through our worship services, and emphasizing that, I one of the first things I noticed is is the ending. And how that helps us get the story right. Our future hope is not leaving the earth and God destroying the earth and we live in an ethereal heaven forever. But the creed reminds us what scripture teaches that our end is about a embodied resurrection, so new bodies and a and a recreation of Of heaven and earth, and we we have our hope oriented around the life of the world to come. So heaven as it’s been said, is important, but it’s not the end of the world. There’s actually a world that is to come and a a fully uh recreated world and that that gives I know me such hope and I think it’s imp I think it’s important to get the end of our story right because there’s other versions of the end of the Christian story that’s not necessarily what scripture is teaching and I appreciate the creed. helping us orient the story right.
Derek Vreeland: It’s so true, Derek. And I think, you know, people think, oh, well, this is just like little minutiae of theology. But actually, you know, even in the business world or life coaching world, like begin with the end in mind, right? Like you gotta know where are we headed?
Narrator: What are we trying to accomplish here, right?
Derek Vreeland: And if we think, uh uh, you know, begin with the end in mind, we think that what we’re trying to accomplish is an escape, or on another some streams of Christianity, it’s progress, you know, bringing it turning earth into paradise. You go, wait a minute, neither of those are right. And what the early Christians thought was what God began, he will perfect and complete by the power of the Holy Spirit when Christ comes again. Uh, and therefore we live with this hope. You know, it’s it’s so powerful to me that they close a confession of faith with a confession of hope. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Man, we gotta live with that.
Narrator: So good. Well, let’s talk a little bit about the Holy Spirit. Uh both you and I have been deeply influenced by the Pentecostal charismatic tradition. And um so the creed speaks of the Holy Spirit as the Lord and the giver of life. And uh in your chapter on the Holy Spirit, I love that you say that the Holy Spirit is like the drunk uncle in the Trinity. And I I laughed out loud. You had a parenthetical statement in there like hey guys I’m making a joke. I’m not trying to be irreverent, but I laughed out loud Because I’ve made similar comments, but you use that very funny kind of metaphor about the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit can make us uncomfortable at times. What is it about The Spirit. Gordon Fee speaks of the Spirit as God’s empowering presence. Why can sometimes the Holy Spirit make us feel uncomfortable?
Derek Vreeland: Well, yeah, it’s so funny because I the word they chose was the giver of life, you know, and instead of the one who gave life. And this is interesting. Luke Timothy Johnson is the one who points this out in his book on the creed. And I think it’s so significant because we have a static impression of God, mostly because when we think of Jesus, we think of Jesus in the past tense. He came, he was born, he died, he b was buried, and he rose. Great. One day we’ll meet him, you know? And we go, well, wa wait a minute, Jesus is alive, and the early Christians said, and we’re experiencing the presence of the risen Christ via the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit. And you know, depending on how different historians tell this, there was some sort of stumbling into a Trinitarian doctrine by the way that they were gathering at. at uh the Lord’s table to do what Jesus told them to do. And they go, wait a minute, guys, he’s here. Uh he’s here in a special way. Wait a minute. He’s here. What do we call this? And and so they’re They’re stumbling into naming this as the Holy Spirit. And of course, Paul’s got it all through his letters. So what that says to me is we can’t put God up there somewhere, just faraway creator. And we can’t put God back there as in away in sp in time. He’s not far away in space and past tense in time. The Holy Spirit says, no, he’s present. In space and time, you know, present in both dimensions. They’re present in space and present present tense in time. And so now when we’re talking about that, okay, that’s wild. That the same God who hovered over the waters of the deep at creation, the same spirit who raised Christ from the dead is present and active in my life, in your life, and in this prayer meeting? Uh-oh. Buckle up, you know? So so I think we have to have a bit of that expectation. And that doesn’t mean uh, you know, you know, this is the Pentecostal thing of When you when you abandon the plan for the service, that’s how you know the spirit is moving, you know. When the preacher says, I got something different. Sure, those are markers of it. But I really think the wildness of the spirit is in how The Holy Spirit is leading us out of our comfort zones, leading us into sacrificial obedience, leading us into a peaceable kingdom. I love how Willie Jennings, the African-American uh theologian here in his commentary in the book of Acts, he says, every time the spirit is poured out, somebody is being made to do what they don’t want to do. And I like that. It’s not just about uh manifestations and gifts and all that. It’s about obedience and sacrifice. And uh put the pouring out of your life, that’s the thing we don’t want to do, and that’s the thing the wildness of the spirit is always trying to get us to do.
Narrator: Yeah, I appreciate Pentecostalism for reminding us of the wildness of the spirit, the sort of transcendent otherness of God’s presence. So when God comes among us, we in the charismatic tradition we’ll talk about the manifest presence of God. This is God the Holy Spirit among us. It is a bit unsettling because the Spirit is at work in us both to empower us to do and to transform us to be other than we are And those moments when we’re called into sacrifice or we’re sensing the nudging of the spirit to move into a different direction. makes us really uncomfortable, but but we but we need that. We we need the power of the spirit among us. And so yes, we’re we’re tracking along the same lines. Like we we need the evangelical tradition with its emphasis on scripture. Scripture, the sacramental tradition with its sacramental ontology and emphasis on the table. And we need the charismatic dimensions of the faith because we need to be uncomfortable.
Derek Vreeland: Yes.
Narrator: It’s good for us. Well, Glenn, our time today was short, but I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. Uh, where can people find you online? You know, I’m going to say the best place for this is whatsachristiananyway.
Derek Vreeland: com. So what’s and obviously no apostrophe there, but include the S. What’s a Christiananyway dot com. And the reason I’m saying that is I’m giving away, Derek, I’m giving away all of the study questions for the book. We had it behind a an incentive wall. It it’s no longer behind an any incentive wall. Uh you can get the small group discussion guides. But also if you’re a person who teaches or preaches, I’m giving away my sermon notes. So I’ve done a series on the Creed twice now and I’ve I’ve gotten I only say that to say I’ve gotten better. So the second time around Here at Rock Harbor, I I really liked the way we went through it. So I’m giving away my full sermon notes for that seven-week series. Um there’s also links to the teaching videos if anybody wants to see that. So Everything’s there. What’s a Christiananyway. com. There’s links for bulk order discounts, all that. And then me personally, I’m on I’m pretty active on Instagram. uh at G Pacum. I am active on X as well, but it’s mostly NBA tweets. So, you know, people don’t want to my my discontentment with the NBA.
Narrator: I understand. Well listen, um I I hope what’s a Christian anyway finds a a wide audience. What a what a great work. And uh I believe in you, my friend. I’m championing all that you’re doing, uh both in Southern California and and around the world. So blessings to you my friend. I feel the same way about you, Derek.
Derek Vreeland: Thank you so much.
Narrator: Well, that’s all that we have for today. Make sure you go out and get a copy of What’s a Christian Anyway by Glenn Pacquiaum and go to that website. We’ll put that In the show notes, go to the website, go buy the book, and then download all these great resources. Thanks for joining us for this episode. That’s all we have for today. Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.