Beeson Podcast, Episode #690 Reverend Dr. Jeremy Treat Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney. I am here today with my good friend, Dr. Jeremy Treat, who serves as Pastor of Preaching and Vision at Reality LA, a large church in Los Angeles, California. Where he also serves as an adjunct professor of Theology at Biola University. Pastor Treat is the author of a number of books, including Seek First: How The Kingdom of God Changes Everything. The Crucified King: Atonement and Kingdom in Biblical and Systematic Theology. And the Atonement: An Introduction. He and his wife, Tiffany, have four daughters. They live in East Hollywood. Importantly, for this conversation today, Dr. Treat also served as the Conger Lecturer in Biblical Preaching here at Beeson just a few weeks back. We had a wonderful time together with him. And just so happened that given my busy schedule and his as well we scheduled our podcast interview for a couple of weeks later. So, Jeremy, great to see you again – from a distance! >>Treat: Yes. Well, thanks for having me on. I’m always happy to get more time with Doug Sweeney. And I had such a great time at Beeson. I was just really encouraged by the school, by the students, and how the Lord is working there. >>Doug Sweeney: Well, a lot of us know you already. But probably there will be some people tuning into the podcast who don’t know a lot about you. So, let’s introduce you to them. Can you tell us just a little bit about your upbringing? How you came to know the Lord? And maybe how you came to feel like he wanted you to be a pastor? >>Treat: Yeah. I’m originally from a small town in Alaska. I lived there until I was 12 and then my family moved to Seattle. And junior high and high school there. And I grew up in the church. My parents are great! My parents love the Lord and were great models to me and my siblings; taught us the bible. But I would say the churches that I grew up in were pretty legalistic. My understanding of Christianity was you keep the rules to keep God off of your back. And otherwise he’s going to be mad at you. I kind of learned how to play the game. I learned how to talk a certain way around my church friends and another way around me school friends. And I had so much pride. I mean, I just think back on myself at that season of life, even in junior high. My spirituality ... I knew how to perform at church. I honestly thought God was just so lucky to have me on his team. Like, I brought a lot to the table. I remember when I think I genuinely got saved was when I really first saw my sin. I realized that I wasn’t that different from the Pharisees in the New Testament and that I was one of the people that Jesus was constantly confronting. I just had this self righteousness and this pride. It was like when I saw that, it’s like God graciously and gently exposed the pride of my heart. And when I saw the ugliness of that it’s like I was then immediately flooded by God’s grace, compassion, and love. Which was just amazing, it felt amazing because I had this sense that, oh no, I knew I deserved judgment. I knew that what I was seeing was bad. And then to experience God’s mercy in that changed me. So, I feel like from that point forward my life has been ... going back to that gospel of understanding the grace of God in Christ and how that changed me then and how it still is changing me today and I’m still chipping away by God’s grace at that pride and self righteousness. So, that was in middle school for me. And honestly, I felt a call really early on in my walk with Christ towards some kind of ministry or leadership. I was leading bible studies in middle school and youth rallies in high school. And I just felt like what I had experienced in Christ I wanted others to see. And then I noticed that whenever I would do things up front ... the first time I ever preached was at a homeless shelter in Seattle. And I remember it just feeling really natural to me. I knew that other people would talk about kind of freaking out when they would stand up and talk in front of others. But when I would do that at the homeless shelter I just kind of felt this confidence that God is speaking and I get to be a part of that. And it’s not about me in the first place. And so I really felt a call towards preaching in that sense and recognized God was doing something there. And then a lot of my journey from that point was being in ministry while doing school and discovering a love for theology and a love for the church and not feeling like I really knew how to bring those two things together. I felt like I had to choose: do I go be an intellectual professor who loves theology? Or do I be a pastor who tells good stories and loves the church? God was kind of graciously showing me over the years of, no, those things aren’t supposed to be separated. They’re supposed to be together. And so a lot of my journey then has been being trained up in theology but learning to take that and really use it for the church, for the building up of the church. Whether that’s preaching in the church or in teaching students at Biola, but understanding that I’m like a stop along the way for them. And I want to make the most of it by pointing them to the local church – that that’s going to be the ongoing context of their formation throughout their lives. So, that’s kind of a quick overview of how the Lord has brought me to where I am vocationally. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s wonderful. And it puts me in mind of the fact that we had Gerald Hiestand at Beeson a couple of months ago. We did an interview with him that’s on the Beeson Podcast as well. For our listeners, by way of reminder, Gerald Hiestand is also a pastor who has a PhD and who serves as the chairperson of the board of the Center for Pastor Theologians, which is full of people like Pastor Treat who didn’t want to have to choose between his love for theology and his love for the church. So, Jeremy, not only did you go to school and do ministry while you were going to school ... you went as far as getting a PhD at Wheaton College as well. Was there ever a time when you doubted or you worried – if I get too academic here I’m not going to be as helpful as a pastor or there won’t be as many churches who want me to come and serve as a pastor? Or was it all just perfectly natural and good for you while you sort of proceeded on that trajectory? >>Treat: No, I definitely felt the pull. Even just the nature of a PhD of spending so much time studying and have to learn so much. You’re just naturally pulled towards the theoretical and you have less time for people. So, that can happen naturally. So, I tried to be really intentional throughout that process of not becoming someone who couldn’t connect with normal people. And who couldn’t translate what I was learning at school into everyday language. Because to be an academic you have to learn to speak the language, but then most people can’t keep up with that. And so you have to learn to translate. So, I learned a principle in seminary – there’s a quote by Albert Einstein actually that says, “If you can’t explain something to a child, you don’t really understand it.” And when I heard that I was doing youth ministry at the time. And so I thought, okay, everything I learned in seminary I need to be able to teach it to these junior high and high schoolers. And I tried to do that. It was so formative in me. Not only in the translating work of that, but actually understanding it. So, I didn’t have as much of an outlet when I was doing my PhD but I still worked really hard in the way that I was thinking and applying it when I did have opportunities to preach or lead in church. So, it’s definitely something that took intentionality throughout. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s great. And I think that’s a useful principle not only for pastors to bear in mind but even for university and seminary professors to bear in mind. That’s the kind of advice I often give people who want to teach in seminaries. Not that you need to be anti intellectual or apologize for wanting to go deep into the things of God. But you need to be able to sort of come out the other side and explain these things clearly. And if you can’t, maybe you don’t know them well enough. >>Treat: Right. I think about that with my kids now. I mean, I have two kids in elementary school and two in middle school. And kind of the key moment is when one of them says, “Dad, what are you preaching on Sunday?” Right? And okay, how do I explain this to my nine year old? Right? And I feel like if I can’t do that, it’s not clear enough in my mind yet. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s a good word. All right. Can we fast forward now and get to Hollywood, California? And maybe this is a good segue. Tell us a little bit about the people that you care for at Reality LA in East Hollywood. My guess is, I’ve not been to your church but I’ve heard about it, it’s a pretty broad array of people from all different walks of life. They’re not all people who think to themselves, “I gotta go hear that PhD pastor preach a sermon on Sunday.” But maybe some of them do. How do you process the things we’re talking about here and your calling and your sense as to how God is at work in your life and your ministry in relation to the people he’s given you to care for in Hollywood? >>Treat: One of the ironies is that people around here don’t really care that I have a PhD. They’re not impressed by it. If you’re in Boston or maybe even New York or these kinds of intellectual hubs that’s kind of a badge that you wear. And immediately wins a lot of credibility with people. Los Angeles is really a town full of a lot of creative’s and artists. And I mean honestly PhD’s represent institutions. (laughs) And so it’s funny to me that in God’s providence that I ended up in a place where I’m ministering to a lot of young creative’s and artists. And that’s not our entire church. I mean, we have quite a diversity vocationally. But it’s definitely not something that I wear on my sleeve. Most people in my church don’t even know that I have a PhD I don’t think. I don’t talk about it very often, or ever. But it deeply shapes my ministry and my preaching. And so I’m constantly talking about difficult subjects and we’re in a city where kind of the grain of our culture is going against the grain of scripture in so many ways. And when you’re talking about sexuality and gender and some of these different topics, there’s not always a verse to point to that kind of easily says how Christians should approach something like that. So, I feel like I’m constantly leaning into my theology and that definitely helps me a lot. >>Doug Sweeney: When you were here not long ago giving our Conger Lectures in Biblical Preaching, you talked with us quite a bit about what it means to preach faithfully in a post Christian society and I want to pose a question for you that gets you helping our listeners think about what it means to do that faithfully in any case no matter where it is the Lord has you. But then also are there differences in what it means to do that faithfully in a place like Hollywood or LA as compared to, say, a place like Birmingham, Alabama – which is still a little bit more in the bible belt and has a little bit more Christianity built into the culture? How do you think about kind of where we are as a society and what the role of good faithful preaching is? And then how much kind of contextualization do you think preachers and pastors ought to be doing as they think about sort of how post Christian their society is and what their role ought to be? >>Treat: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, it’s important to understand our cultural contexts. And I use that plural really intentionally because I’m in Los Angeles and there’s a strong cultural context here, but I’m also in America, right? And that’s a cultural context. So, you and I, we have a shared context in America. And there’s a variety of things that we could talk about of American culture that all preachers need to be really aware of, right? If we talk about things like ... this is what I talked about in my talks there was the distrust of authority, the increase of digital technology, diversity of culture, divisive politics. Those are things that are affecting every corner of the United States of America. And every preacher needs to be wrestling with how those things are changing culture and how that ... not that they need to change their preaching altogether but to be able to contextualize that. So, at one level I think that’s American culture, every preacher needs to be working through that. But then when you zoom in a little bit, my context in Los Angeles is very different than Birmingham. I mean, so when I’m talking about race for example, in LA it’s really different than Birmingham. Los Angeles is 49% Latino, right? And Latinos are almost always overlooked in the national conversation about Black and White. Now, if you go to Birmingham, the conversation is very much Black and White. The history there shapes the narrative a lot, just like the history in Los Angeles shapes the narrative a lot. So, I think we need to be aware of our American context but then also make sure that we’re really working locally as well with that. If I came and preached in Birmingham the exact same way that I do in Los Angeles it wouldn’t be faithful nor do I think it would be effective. And vice versa. Now, exegeting texts is going to be very similar. But the application of that and what shapes the way you talk about it is going to look really different. >>Doug Sweeney: What do you think about the role of preaching from a platform or a pulpit in church life today in a place like Hollywood? Here’s what’s in my head: a lot of people when they talk about cultural sensitivity in pastoral ministry, in preaching ministry, make suggestions these days to the effect that, well, we can’t really preach traditional sermons anymore, that’s not where people are. I would think maybe in Hollywood you’re surrounded by people who make movies and television shows and are artists of other kinds as well who probably want more sort of creative art at work in worship services on Sunday. I’ve been in conversations even in Birmingham where people have suggested you can’t really preach a traditional sermon anymore. We have to use media a lot more than we used to. I would think if anybody I know well is positioned well to address kind of where we are as a culture, especially at the most post Christian parts of the culture, especially in the parts of the culture that are most interested I innovation and creativity it would be my friend Jeremy Treat. So, how do you think about this? Do you think we need to change the way we preach? Do you think we should preach just like we did 50 years ago? How should we be preaching to be effective in the society where we are today? Particularly in a place like Hollywood? >>Treat: I mean, I constantly hear people saying things like the times have changed and if we’re going to keep up we’ve got to change with them. Right? And at one level that’s true, but I think it’s often used in the wrong way. What I mean by that is there’s a difference between adapting the message and contextualizing the message. Adapting the message is telling people what they want to hear. Contextualizing the message is telling people what they need to hear in a way that they can understand it and apply it. So, I don’t think that we need to adapt the message. I think the gospel is doing fine. It doesn’t need a PR campaign. It doesn’t need to be changed. The gospel is the power of salvation. We need to preach the gospel from the scriptures, but we do need to contextualize. And if we’re approaching people the same way that we were 60-70 years ago, then I don’t think they’re going to be able to connect the dots. We have to recognize people are asking different questions. They have different intuitional resistances to the gospel message today. There’s different idols and different narratives that they’re being taken by. So, we have to be able to recognize what those things are and apply the gospel. So, I would say in relation to the question about ... I hear you asking a question about format and kind of mediums of the way that its preached and do we need to be ... is monologue the wrong approach, or is one person talking for 40 minutes the wrong approach? I mean, I do think we have to be careful about this. The bible doesn’t talk about pulpits. Right? The bible doesn’t tell us how long a sermon needs to be. Those kinds of things. But I do think that the power is in the message that is proclaimed. And you see this throughout scripture. I mean, Romans 10 – how will they hear if somebody doesn’t preach to them? And I think about in 1 Corinthians 1, it’s not just the power of the cross, the power is in the message of the cross. It’s in the very proclamation of it. Even think of God as a speaking God. He created the world by speaking. So, you see throughout scripture that God accomplishes his purposes through his word. And so that doesn’t rule out a place for Christians getting creative with videos and all types ... what other kinds of mediums, formats you can think of and even implementing those in gatherings. I think there’s a lot of flexibility in how we approach this. But that should never be in replacing the preaching of the word. If you read through the New Testament the preaching of the word is so crucial to the advancement of the Church. So, I would say we don’t need to change that, we need to make sure that we’re contextualizing in a way that people can understand. And there’s lots of room for creativity and freedom to do different things, but not at the expense of preaching. >>Doug Sweeney: Can you take us just for a couple of minutes to your church on a Sunday? To Reality LA? And sort of tell us a little bit in a way that helps us imagine it? At sermon time at your church do you do things that are notably different from the way in which sermons would be handled in churches in a place like Birmingham? Or are you doing much the same thing but maybe with a little bit of difference? >>Treat: I mean, what we do feels really stripped down to me. There’s not a lot of bells and whistles at Reality LA. I mean, sometimes when people come from other contexts they’ll notice that I dress pretty normal. I kind of dress like I normally dress. Which I’m not dressed up like some people would be in other contexts. It’s a pretty informal context. But honestly that’s just a lot of California culture as well. But no, I usually preach for 45-50 minutes. I preach through books of the bible for the most part. Yeah, I don’t use props. I have slides behind me that just try and help people focus and follow along. But no, our services are pretty simple and our liturgy ... a unique aspect of your liturgy that a lot of people notice is that we put the sermon more towards the front of the service. And we believe that the gospel evokes a response. And so there’s the proclamation of the gospel according to the scriptures and then we go into what we call a second set of worship that usually lasts about 25 minutes. And we have corporate worship, so we’re singing but we have people available for prayers on the side of the auditorium. We have rugs up front, just space for people if they want to come and get on their knees or sit down, just have more space for the posture of their bodies to reflect the posture of their hearts. We receive the Lord’s Supper during that time. So, yeah, the idea is that the gospel is evoking this response and we want to create space for the Spirit to move and helping people be faithful in how they respond to the message on that day. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s great. All right. We want our people to tune into the recordings of the Conger Lectures that you gave when you were here. I don’t want to ask you to sort of give the lectures again now, but can you give us just a one or two minute teaser so that we can persuade ... they were wonderful. The students loved them, the faculty loved them. I want our listeners to listen to them. If they tune in and listen to them, real simply, what are they going to get? >>Treat: Well, one of the things I talked about in the chapel service I think reflects a lot of the posture that I was going for throughout that. I talked about how our approach to culture should not be a combative us versus them that says “you’re wrong, I’m right and for you to convert you need to lose an argument.” That’s the way a lot of people think of it. And I put forth an idea that’s called subversive fulfillment. It’s a basic three step process that says I want to affirm the longings that people have, whether it’s for freedom or inclusion or understanding who they are. I want to affirm those longings but then I want to challenge the means of how they’re going about those and then point to Christ as the fulfillment. So, that’s one that comes alongside of people and recognizes you have a deep longing for something good but you’re going about it the wrong way. Let me show you how that can truly be fulfilled in Christ. So, I talked about subversive fulfillment and then in the first lecture I tried to give a theology of preaching. And I try to answer the question what is preaching? What do we mean by preaching? What does the word preaching mean in scripture? How do we think about that theologically? And I talked essentially about how preaching is participating in God’s proclamation of his word. And then in the second lecture I got into the art of preaching and tried to get more practical going deeper with that idea of subversive fulfillment in a lot of ways. Getting into how do we discern, what are the cultural narratives that are out there, what are the cultural idols, and ideologies? What are the questions and intuitions that people are bringing into the church with them? And not just non Christians, but Christians as well. Many of whom have been deeply shaped by cultural narratives without even realizing it and it’s naturally for them to just say, yeah, I’m a Christian and I believe in the deity of Christ and the inerrancy of scriptures but they’re really living by a secular narrative that culminates in personal fulfillment. So, I want people to understand how to preach in such a way where it will land. Where actually meeting people where they’re at but we’re bringing them what they need the most and that’s the gospel. >>Doug Sweeney: It was a fantastic message, Jeremy. Thank you very much for giving it to us. And I don’t want to push too hard, too fast, but this is part of a book that you’re working on that has to do with preaching. Should we tell our listeners just a little bit about that? >>Treat: Yeah, I’m kind of at a mid career point in my life. I’ve been preaching for 23 years now as a pastor. And over the last year I tried to really kind of step back and sharpen my sword so to speak. And I do a lot of preaching, but I wanted to take time to think about what I’m doing with preaching. And so I’ve been doing that and giving talks on it in different contexts. And so I’m working on trying to bring some of that together. Because I feel a burden for the next generation of preachers. When it comes to preaching ... I love what I can read from John Stott and Tim Keller and Martin Lloyd Jones and Tony Evans ... I mean, there’s amazing preachers and all of those preachers have amazing books. But the world is changing fast. And I think to be able to have a deep theology of preaching and have a conviction, part of it I just want to restore conviction in preaching. My heart breaks. I honestly don’t see a lot of people preaching the word. So, at one level I want to hammer the fundamentals with that and not say anything new at all. But then do so in a way that younger people can understand and then be able to step into and do themselves. That’s really how I think of my contribution in this is not necessarily saying a lot of things new but helping people understand how to do it in today’s world. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s great. Well, we’re almost out of time. I always like to conclude these podcast interviews by asking our guests what the Lord is doing in their lives these days. And of course the premise is most of my guests are people who have been involved in ministry for a long time and some listeners might think, well, they’ve got their act together, they’re not still growing, they’ve matured as far as they’re going to mature. And I’m trying to encourage our listeners to believe and to live like they believe that the Lord is still at work in all of our lives, advancing us in discipleship, growing us up in maturity in Christ. So, does someone even like the Reverend Dr. Jeremy Treat continue to learn things from the Lord after all these years in pastoral ministry and teaching ministry? If so, what’s going on these days? What is God doing in your life? >>Treat: Oh man. Yeah, I’m a mess, but I’m God’s mess and a work in progress. What I would say what God has been doing in my life ... There’s been a sustained focus on this one idea I would say over about the last eighteen months and that is I’ve been learning to embrace weakness. I grew up being really ... I grew up playing sports and trying to be tough and I learned to avoid weakness and hide weakness and pretend that I didn’t have weakness. And through different circumstances and ultimately through the scriptures, God has been teaching me that I need to embrace weakness as a way of experiencing God’s strength. Because so often I just try to rely on my own strength, or even pretend that I have strength in areas that I don’t. God says to Paul in 2 Corinthians my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness. So, as I’ve gone through stuff in life whether it’s experiencing limitations or suffering or loss around me, rather than trying to avoid that or hide it or escape it, I’ve been trying to learn to embrace weakness and clinging to God’s grace through that and experiencing his strength. I’ll tell you what, as I’ve done that it’s been so freeing. Because I don’t have to pretend, I don’t have to act like I have it all together all the time. And I can actually even boast in my weakness – to go that far – because I can show that God is strong in the midst of that. So, that’s been a powerful lesson that the Lord has been doing in me. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s a wonderful biblical word. If I could follow up with a question that I know many of our Beeson students would want me to ask at this point ... you spent time with our students, got to know them a little bit, so I think you know what I’m talking about. I don’t think our students are unusual in this respect. A lot of young people today who feel like the Lord is moving them into ministry and the church are a little bit more sensitive, uncertain, sometimes even timid than the typical seminary student was when you were a young man in seminary. They’re trying to figure out ... they already feel pretty weak and they’re trying to figure out ... what does it mean practically ... what would pastor Treat, what is he talking about exactly? He’s the pastor of a big church out in LA. People know about him. He can’t get up every Sunday morning and just act weak, right? What does it mean for him to embrace weakness in this biblical way? And be the kind of strong leader of his congregation that his congregation needs him to be all at the same time? Do you have any wisdom for young seminary students on that one? >>Treat: Yeah. I mean, I think one level of that is we have to die to this idea that I’m supposed to be doing great all the time and I’m supposed to be strong all the time. So, what happens as a pastor is I feel the expectation that people have on me that I don’t sin, that I don’t struggle, that I’m not like them. I feel that. And people have very unrealistic expectations of pastors. And what I’m tempted to do is try to live up to that. What I have to do instead is I have to be vulnerable and I have to be able to acknowledge where I’m weak and where I’m insufficient. At one level I think we need measured vulnerability in the pulpit. I say measured because you have to be wise with vulnerability in the pulpit. Sometimes that’s not the place to air your stuff. Right? But especially in a time where there’s a growing distrust of pastors and authority figures in the church. We need to show that I have bad days, too. I had to confess to my kids last week. I had to repent of this. I always love Jack Miller said, “Pastors should be chief repenters.” And so I think that we need to show that rather than being people who are perfect, that we’re repentant. And we’re with them. Another aspect of it for me that’s really practical is ... and this is embracing weakness in terms of embracing my limitations is I could preach better sermons if I neglected my family. Right? I could. If I studied six hours on Saturday and didn’t spend time with my kids, my sermon would be more polished. I would have some more stuff to pull into it, all of that. But that’s not what I’m called to do. I’m called to minister to the congregation out of a place of health with my family. And so that means if my sermon isn’t where I want it to be, come the end of the week, I need to close my notes and say, “I did the best I could with the time I had.” If that means that my sermon is not as polished, that’s okay. I’m going to make sure I preach the gospel. I’m going to be faithful to the text. But I’m going to trust that the Lord is going to do the work and I’m just going to be faithful in the time that I have. So, that would be my word to people is let’s not live into the unrealistic, let’s not try to live into it, we can’t, let’s not try to live into the unrealistic expectations that people have for pastors. >>Doug Sweeney: A great way to conclude. You have been listening to the Reverend Dr. Jeremy Treat, Pastor for Preaching and Vision at Reality LA in Los Angeles, California. He was here earlier this semester giving our Conger Lectures in Biblical Preaching. I commend them to everybody listening heartily. They were wonderful. Please listen to them on our YouTube page, our website. Jeremy, thanks very much for being with us. More importantly, thank you for your faithfulness to the Lord in pastoral ministry. >>Treat: Thank you, Dr. Sweeney. It’s an honor. >>Doug Sweeney: We love you listeners. Thanks for praying for us. We’re praying for you. We say goodbye for now. >>Rob Willis: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our engineer is Rob Willis. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes and Spotify.