Video Transcript: Introduction

Hi, I'm Henry Reyenga and with me is Steve Elzinga. You know, we've been  doing this for 30 years working together, right in ministry. But Henry, We've  never taken on a topic, this. No this risky. We usually go for the gospel thing.  training people for ministry, people will go for it. We're taking on in this little mini  course, the most controversial hot topics of our day, and why are we going to  risk everything on this? Well, first of all, because of you are facing these things  every day, they're in the news media every day, you and your families are  dealing with some of these issues in your churches, and ministries. And the  gospel does not shrink back from the agenda of the culture. It is relevant. And  sometimes we have to go into scary places and say things now we're going to  we're going to we're talk we're calling this critical grace theory. And one of the  things we're going to ask you is to have some grace. As we talk about this, we  might not use the exact word that you would prefer, or, you know, we're giving  our best shot at giving the gospel slant on these critical issues of today. Right,  so we see just these words critical, we see the word theory. In our society, that's  what's really happening, a different theories are being made pretty much about  everything. So what is this mini course about? It's about critical theory. Seven  current hot. cultural, culturally divisive topics, okay? And we're going to look at  why have these topics become so prominent in our society? We're going to look  at how does grace, change everything. So critical theory? Well, critical theory is  kind of an intellectual buzzword for the Study of in Social Sciences, it refers to  the study of deconstruction, is that word there, deconstructing certain things? To  construct other things taking apart? Yeah, that's sort of the critical part, but also  the kind of the scientific look at some. And theory, a theory really is another word for philosophy. We have a philosophy program under the philosophy classes,  you can take your philosophy, theory making, okay? So it really is heavy duty  stuff, but it's very practical as well. So our culture has grabbed on to these two  words. And then they put topics in there, like critical race theory, or critical  gender, gender theory theory, or critical whatever, equality theory. We're going to look at all these things. And we're going to see what the culture is really saying  about these things. And we're going to look at some of the good and bad of that. But then it sort of as an answer to it all, we're going to talk about critical grace  theory, that changes the perspective on all of these. You know, one of the things  we've talked about as we were preparing this class, as we see the tendency  toward taking God out of everything. Right, right. And I think that's going to be  an interesting inquiry, as we see how each of these theories, try to create a  world without God. And so obviously, if you put God in that world, makes all the  difference. So what are the topics? So here are the topics that we're going to  look at number one, race. Number two, gender. Number three. Pleasure. That's  interesting, what critical pleasure theory. Number four, equality, number five,  evolution number six, blame. And number seven, conflict. So as we look at  these topics, what do you expect out of this short, mini course, I think we're all 

dealing with this, we're all dealing with one way or another. And we're right now  in a culture that can't talk about these, the elephant in the room talking about  one of these things, you can get canceled. You can get fired, you can have  someone never talk to you again. We have people that are in the same family  that now cannot talk about many topics, right? I'm hoping that when you're  finished with this little mini course, that you actually have some tools with which  you can have a decent conversation with somebody and actually maybe make  some progress. My expectation is that we can do ministry even more effectively,  that we can actually know the spirit of this age. A little better. or the spirits of the  age. But then see the power of God in ways that change change our hearts and  the change the hearts around us. And show how relevant the gospel is. It is  relevant to all the subjects or all the issues of our today you know a lot of people say Christianity is old fashioned out of touch and all those things but no, it is as  relevant as it can be. I love it when (unintelligible) because that's how life is. So  welcome to this mini course and may God bless you as we dive deep into the  controversial subjects of our day.