I wish more and more church leaders were like John Dickson.
He is someone who is wicked smart and has his Masters degree in Theology and a PhD. But what I find the most refreshing is that he never forgets what it is like looking into the church and "Christianity" from the outside.
We had a chat on his really great podcast "Undeceptions" that is for both non-Christians and Christians you can listen to here.
He is from Australia and we have some things in common as we both were in bands (he is a singer and I am a drummer) but we also had an elderly person who was our main influence in becoming a Christian. I got to meet the woman who was that for him when I spoke in Australia at an event once. But John is passionate about seeing the local church train people in theology - not just for head knowledge or to use to fight battles with other Christians. But learning theology to be able to share about Jesus in intelligent, kind, winsome ways with those who aren't Christian and asking questions.
In this podcast John makes a challenge to read at least 100 pages of the Bible in 2021. So we talked about what happens when you do read it and see talking snakes, slavery, a lot of violence and even unicorns. He also included a little bit of my drumming in the podcast from when I was in a band way back with my brother and my buddy Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing.
