In this episode of the Denison Forum Podcast, host Dr. Mark Turman and cultural theologian Dr. Jim Denison reflect on the passing of Pope Francis and what it means for the future of the Catholic Church. Together, they consider the leadership legacy Pope Francis leaves behind and the lessons all Christians can draw from his example.
Their conversation touches on the theological and cultural influence of his papacy, the shared convictions and key differences between Catholic and Protestant traditions, and the broader call to unity within the body of Christ. With thoughtful insights and personal reflections, Dr. Turman and Dr. Denison guide us through the spiritual and cultural implications of this historic moment—seeking to understand how faith shapes leadership, legacy, and the global church.
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Topics
- (00:32): Discussing the passing of Pope Francis
- (03:22): Appreciation for Catholic beliefs and practices
- (08:50): Navigating controversial issues in Catholicism
- (13:50): Religious freedom and Catholic contributions
- (19:57): Influential Catholic figures and personal stories
- (23:39): Differences between Catholic and Protestant beliefs
- (33:59): Honoring church tradition and Scripture
- (35:04): The Autonomy of the local church
- (36:52): Scriptural differences: The Apocrypha
- (38:25): Catholic vs. Christian: A common misunderstanding
- (40:08): Vatican II and its impact
- (45:05) Unity in diversity: Embracing differences
- (53:08): Pope Francis: A model of servant leadership
- (57:12): Reflecting on leadership and unity
- (01:03:36): A prayer for unity and guidance
Resources
- Pope Francis dies at the age of eighty-eight
- The life and legacy of Pope Francis
- What is the Synod on Synodality?
- Why are there so many denominations in Christianity? • DF
- How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
- Who Am I? Identity • Denison Forum
About Dr. Jim Denison
Jim Denison, PhD, is a cultural theologian and the founder and CEO of Denison Ministries. He speaks biblically into significant cultural issues at Denison Forum. He is the chief author of The Daily Article and has written more than 30 books, including The Coming Tsunami, the Biblical Insight to Tough Questions series, and The Fifth Great Awakening.
About Dr. Mark Turman
Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of The Denison Forum Podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.
Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.
Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.
Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Denison Forum podcast. I’m Mark Turman host for today’s conversation. Thank you for joining us. We hope that we can bring you some clarity at the intersection of faith and culture, things going on in our world. It is really our passion to equip you to think critically and biblically about everything and anything that comes across your radar.
Either personally or in the culture. And we hope that today we can be successful in that. We’re gonna have a conversation today about the passing of Pope Francis and how you and I can relate to our Catholic friends who follow a Catholic form of Christianity, Catholicism more generally, and also some of the leadership and legacy lessons that we can gain from Pope Francis.
And that’ll be very much in the news for a while. We suspect as we’re recording this, it’s just been announced that Pope Francis’ funeral [00:01:00] will be on Saturday the 26th coming up. And so a lot of attention, a lot of news coming out of that. Obviously a lot of conversation about Pope Francis as a unique leader and a particular expression of.
The leadership of the Catholic Church something that’s significant in my life. I’ll explain to that in a little bit more as we get into the conversation. But joining me today is our cultural theologian, friend and founder of Denison Forum, Jim Denison. Jim, how are you today?
Dr. Jim Denison: I am well, mark. So glad to be in the conversation with you, my friend.
Dr. Mark Turman: I’m glad that we get to do this. I think a lot of people will be interested in the things that we’re gonna talk about and how these next few days, next few weeks as the Catholic Church will gather a conclave and begin looking for the next pope to, to lead their church. But you’ve written and thought a lot about this over the years.
It’s something very important to me. People who have followed our podcast may have heard me say I grew up the first [00:02:00] 12 or so years of my life in a very, very dedicated and devout Catholic family. When my parents met and married in 1950, they made a decision about faith. And they were not on the same page in their upbringing, but they they settled the matter and became very committed Catholic believers in the town that I grew up in, they were over time very much became leaders in that church. They helped to build a private Catholic school system. In the town where I was raised, and that was the orientation that I was born into and was very much a part of for, like I said, the first decade or dozen years of my life until my parents experienced, like many Christians have over the years, a series of disappointments, several of them really close together.
And so by the time I came into my teen years we had dropped out of church. And that became a part of my testimony and I can tell you more about [00:03:00] that, but that’s kind of where we started. I still have, I. Family members one of my siblings text me yesterday about the passing of Pope Francis and said she had been watching reports from Rome all day long and she’s still very, very devout in her Catholic faith.
And so that’s still a part of our story, still a part of where we’re going. But just as a way of maybe getting started, is there maybe a general word about Pope Francis or a couple of things that you wanna mention about how you look at the Catholic expression of Christianity, what you appreciate about it?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, happy to start there. I’m glad we can do that. Been following Pope Francis’ career. His leadership with great interest over the years. A dear friend of mine, I didn’t ask his permission to cite his name, but pretty well known grew up in Argentina with Pope Francis, with Jorge Brilio, and knew him very, very well and was delighted when he was chosen as Pope felt him to be a very strong, very committed, he would say evangelical Christian.
In fact, my friend is the first person [00:04:00] that Jorge called when he became. Francis, oh wow. To share the news with him. And as my friend and I were talking about it later, he was just delighted to know that a person that had that depth of commitment to Christ was going to lead 1.4 billion believers around the world in the Catholic communion.
And so from that point to this, I followed his career with great interest, with praying for him regularly, certainly praying for him in recent weeks and months with the health issues that he’s been facing and praying now for the church as they make this transition, this massive historic transition that is so vital to their president, to their future as well.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah, just amazing that you, you know, it’s kind of makes me think about four levels of separation that you’re, you’re never more than one or two people away from even the, maybe the biggest figure that others might know in the media and in the culture. It just is kind of astounding that you could have that kind of connection and insight.
But as you’ve, you know, I, I remember standing with you outside of the Church of the Holy Seker a couple of [00:05:00] years ago and how you were talking about as evangelical Protestant Christians, we were going to step into an environment that might feel very different, very disconnected from us but that we needed to understand that this was the way the majority of Christians in the world.
And understand and practice their faith mm-hmm. Just from a, a standpoint of some of the things that you’ve experienced and, and walked with over your own faith journey. What are two or three things about the Catholic expression of Christianity that you really do appreciate?
Dr. Jim Denison: I’m thinking right now about a radio panel I was on some time ago.
It was televised as well. It was a variety of people from different denominational traditions, and we were there to discuss the issues of the day and time. After time after time, the only person at the table with whom I agreed was the Catholic priest who was there. We both agreed that the virgin birth was fact rather than tradition.
We both agreed that the bodily resurrection of Jesus was fact rather than tradition, and that the Bible is the word of [00:06:00] God and that living biblically is important and that Jesus is the only way to heaven. Those representing other Christian denominations disagreed with everything I just said, and I was just so grateful for the consistent, what we, we might say, conservative commitment to biblical authority and biblical truth.
Now, later we can explain the differences we have as Protestants and Catholics, but very, very grateful for that kind of foundational commitment that remains. The case on a second level. As a person who practices medical ethics with a very large healthcare system, I am again grateful for Catholic positions in that context as well.
They agree with us relative to abortion and euthanasia and absolute sanctity of life and the priority of adoption over abortion. And it’s the Catholic healthcare systems that we often model ourselves after relative to integrating faith in life, right? In the, in the practice of medicine. And so grateful for the way that they translate their biblical beliefs into actual practice, relative to medicine and the care for underprivileged and for orphans and for those in need.
A great [00:07:00] model for us in ways that have been really helpful to me over the years.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. So important. You know, you and I often talk about the sanctity of life issues relative to the unborn, the preborn as well as euthanasia. And we just keep coming back to what a great unity of thought and belief that we have in that area, and how they really lead the way.
In many ways, the tip of the spear when it comes to sanctity of life issues and reminding us over and over again that every person is sacred and made in the image of God from the moment of conception and then also ought to be honored and cared for until their natural death. Mm-hmm. And those issues are so vital and for all Christians to be connected in that.
I wanna go back to this panel that you mentioned when you were on that panel and found yourself, so much in alignment with the other person of a Catholic faith. Was that, was that a multi-faith, was that a panel of Christians, Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, or was it [00:08:00] basically all all supposedly a Christian panel,
Dr. Jim Denison: all Christian?
There were no other religions there. I, there was a Jewish rabbi.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm,
Dr. Jim Denison: okay. Apart from the Jewish rabbi, the others of us that were at the table all represented Christian traditions, Christian denominations Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, that sort of thing. And then Catholic and myself, there were five or six of us and except for the Jewish rabbi there, rest of us were in Christian traditions, Christian background.
And I understood where these others were coming from. I’m somewhat familiar with those worldview differences, that sort of thing. And wouldn’t wish to be as accusatory, I might as that might sound. But when it came to these basic foundations kind of fundamental issues, it just was time after time after time that it was the Catholic and I who found ourselves in debate.
Quite frankly, with others around the table, around the reality and the relevance of what we consider to be pretty foundational. Biblical truths.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Jim, talk a little bit about, you know, even in the first few hours, obviously after learning that Pope Francis passed away just a few hours after Easter.
Just just the [00:09:00] interesting. Timing of that in so many ways. One of my one of my brothers said, you know, maybe he was, he just had that mentality of having been so sick for the last few months of a near 40 day stay in the hospital. Mm-hmm. And, you know, we’ve all heard perhaps a story or two of someone who seemed to be holding on to a particular moment and then they got to that date or they got to visit with a certain person and then something seemed to change and they were able to kind of release themselves and soon after passed away.
Some people have that thought about Pope Francis, but one of the things that’s emerging is, is people kind of think about his leadership and his legacy. Was how he tried to navigate through the thorny issue of, of sex sexuality of, we’ve written, we often talk about sacred sexuality and it almost was like a you’re not quite sure exactly how to frame Pope Francis’ approach to L-G-B-T-Q issues.[00:10:00]
Can you kind of unpack that for a moment for us as you understand it? I’ll do my
Dr. Jim Denison: best. And you’re right, it is a challenge. It truly is. It’s one of those things where almost like a merry-go-round where, where you get honest, where you get off, you know, and you kind of see the things you wish to see in the context of your own position.
Relative to my view, relative to biblical sexual ethics, I’m grateful for the fact that he continued to say, sit fastly, that he believed abortion was wrong, that he believed that marriage should only be between male and female. And should be in the sacrament of the church. It’s one of the seven sacraments.
Catholic church should only be conferred upon a man and a woman. Continue to take that position very, very strongly. On the other, and also believed that L-G-B-T-Q individuals should not be practicing clergy in, in a, in a public way. There was things he said that seemed to move that direction.
Others were, we’re not so sure, right? If that’s what he believed, some conflict inside all of that. On the other side, he believed very, very strongly that L-G-B-T-Q individuals are minorities who in many ways have been excluded from the witness and ministry of the church, and felt [00:11:00] that one of the first things he needed to do was open the church to everybody.
That was one of his most common statements, comes out of his own pastoral life, out of his work with the impoverished in Argentina and his desire to live in solidarity with him. An absolute humility, as you know, with him. And so when he was asked about gay people and he said, who am I to judge? One of the first statements that he made, and when he made it clear early on that he wanted everybody to be able to participate in the life of the church, whatever their sexual orientation that was taken by others as an attempt to move the church much further than he actually was willing to move it.
And so there were L-G-B-T-Q activists on the one side who were frustrated with him that he didn’t move further towards same-sex marriage and toward L-G-B-T-Q individuals as licensed or or ordained clergy. And there were those of us who have a very different view of L-G-B-T-Q that felt he sent some uncertain signals relative to what the Bible says about sexual ethics, while at the same time being grateful for a statement that the church should be open to all people, we’re all sinners.
As you and I have said so many times on this [00:12:00] topic being gay is not the unpardonable sin. In fact, my own belief as you and I have discussed is that the Bible forbid same sex activity much more than it does even orientation. And so I do, I I think he’s right. When he says that the church has been too exclusionary of people who struggle with gender dysphoria struggle with same-sex orientation in ways that make them feel that they have no access to God, no access to the grace of the gospel and our desire to be steadfast relative to biblical morality.
And it’s a massive challenge in the culture for every church. He tried to navigate it in a way that e evidenced more inclusivity, but at the same time held the line with Orthodox Catholic biblical theology, and it’s going to be a debated issue going forward. To what degree did he do one or the other?
And what’s the ultimate outcome of this? I think one last thing, the way we’ll ultimately know what his leadership did here is to see what happens past him. Hmm. It was Lao that said the best leader is the one that when the job is done, the people say they did it themselves.
Dr. Mark Turman: And
Dr. Jim Denison: the way to a leader is what happens [00:13:00] after he is gone.
Where. If the church does take further steps toward L-G-B-T-Q ordination or towards same-sex marriage, or if on the other hand, the church continues to affirm its historic position as I hope it does relative to biblical morality, then we’ll kind of know what his leadership ultimately accomplished in the trajectory of the church.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, it’d be be an interesting thing to continue to watch, but it will, it was, it was courageous of him in some ways to step into it in any way. And that’s right. To could’ve avoided
Dr. Jim Denison: the entire subject and he could have avoided not to do that. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: And he, and he, he, we may not be able to really declare a hard position in either direction, but he was at least willing to wade into the topic and to try to value people, all people, regardless of mm-hmm.
What their situation is or, or what their current beliefs or practices are. Jim, you and I often talk, you’ve written extensively about the issue of religious freedom. One of the things that is so fundamental to faith, we believe that faith in its [00:14:00] truest and, and most real ways cannot be forced.
And that’s fundamental to our country. We know many of the stories about the founding of our country and how many people came here in pursuit of religious freedom and as people who come from the Baptist root of faith. You. And I know that that’s very much a part of story in many ways. But talk about how evangelicals, particularly Baptists and Catholics align around this issue of religious freedom.
And we often talk about, we hear other people talk about the wall of separation, that in so many ways, Catholic believers and the Catholic denomination as a whole. Have, have been so instrumental in helping us with both nationally and globally. Talk about that for a moment.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. Two things inside that.
The first is the wall of separation itself, which of course is a statement that was in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to a group of Baptists in Danforth, Connecticut. It’s not language in the constitution or [00:15:00] the declaration of Independence, but it certainly expresses his belief in the belief of the founders that there ought to be this separation so that the church doesn’t control the state and the state doesn’t control the church.
So the First Amendment codifies a freedom of religion and a freedom from religion so that each of us is free to practice our own religious beliefs without the coercion of the state and without trying to coerce the state. The Catholic Church has been extremely helpful in American history toward that.
For a lot of America, it’s hard for us to sometimes remember this. They were a minority position. Back in 1960, perhaps the greatest obstacle the JFK being elected is the fact that he was a Catholic. He had to actually gather a group of clergy in Houston, Texas in 1960 to make the clear declaration that if he were elected, the Pope would not be running the country.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Jim Denison: And that he would be leading us a secular leader because of this separation of church and state. Because there was a massive group led by Norman Vincent Peel and others, quite frankly, who did not want him to be elected because they thought the church would be running the state if that were the case.
And for a lot of our history Catholics were [00:16:00] somewhat a minority in the political world, and they therefore understood the value of this separation of church and State Baptist, a minority for a lot of our history, and therefore grateful for this as well. I’ve been to churches in England. I’ve seen two or three of them, mark, where they showed me a tunnel.
It was dug under the church with a wooden platform over it, which led to a river or a lake or a forest where when the authorities were coming to arrest from being Baptist, they could jump into the tunnel and run for their lives.
Dr. Mark Turman: Oh, wow.
Dr. Jim Denison: Because they were Baptist. Wow. You know, I’ve been to Martyr’s Monument at Oxford where Ridley LaMer and, and Kramer were burned at the stake for being Protestant.
I’ve been to other places in, in Edinburgh and Scotland where Catholics were burned at the stake for being Catholic. Wow. And so on both sides, it’s the minorities like Baptist under John Leland and Catholics who’ve been especially grateful for this separation of church and state. And I’m grateful for that as well.
But it leads to a second factor very quickly, and that has to do with IRS designation 5 0 1 C3 not-for-profit designation. [00:17:00] That designation is allowed to religious not-for-profits by the government on their own free will. They don’t have to confer that to our ministry or to any church they wish to do.
They do so because they believe we do more good with the money. We’re not paying in tax than they could do if they had the money. That’s the bottom line. Psychology at work here. That’s basic reason 5 0 1 C3 not-for-profit exists as a designation. And that’s the reason churches don’t pay taxes because we do a greater common good than the government could do if they had that money.
Is the idea behind that? If the government were ever to decide that, let’s say our ministry were to be imperiled relative to its 5 0 1 C3 because of our position on same sex marriage, let’s just say that, and they decided they wanted to threaten our not-for-profit status we’d have the Catholic Church to hide behind as it were, because the entire Catholic church in America takes that same position.
And that’s a political non-starter for the IRS. It’d be a political start, non-starter for the government to threaten the [00:18:00] tax exempt status of the Catholic church. If, for instance, as some people have suggested, freedom of religion is really just freedom of worship,
Dr. Mark Turman: right?
Dr. Jim Denison: And the only freedom you have to practice your religion is in the act of worship.
Therefore, every part of your property that’s not dedicated to worship should be taxable. That’s an idea. Yeah. It’s been floating around for a couple of decades now. You’ll sometimes hear people talk about freedom of worship versus freedom of religion. Again, that’s a non-starter because of the Catholic church.
If you brought that forward, think about all the schools, all the gymnasiums, all of the orphanages, all of the adoption services, all of the massive infrastructure of Catholic ministry. Praise God in this country that isn’t worship service centric. And that would be subject to taxation and the massive political issue that would result.
And so just on a practical level, a lot of us that are grateful for religious liberty are glad to have common cause with the Catholic church because we stand at the same position even politically and even to some degree relative to the [00:19:00] government as well.
Dr. Mark Turman: So important to realize how much alignment and how much good goes on for the entire expression of Christianity, not just the Catholic expression.
And I love, love that you bring up generosity and the care for the orphan, the widow, the alien that so many ministries coming through the Catholic church are known for. I was in a meeting just a couple of hours ago where we were talking about the commitment of Catholic charities and their desire to care for those who have real needs.
And to do that in every good place that they can. And mm-hmm. So many stories from Mother Teresa in other directions. We know if anybody follows you knows your, your thinking follows your writing on a regular basis. We know that you often quote some from very notable Catholic leaders like Mother Theresa Henry Nowan any others that come to mind about that have been significant in your journey of faith and in your thinking?
Where, where, I don’t know if hero would be the right word, [00:20:00] but where are inspiring Catholic leaders that have affected you?
Dr. Jim Denison: I would start with Henry now and absolutely. Quick story. I was pastoring in Atlanta. Our staff decided to have a silent retreat, a two day silent retreat, Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week in 1997.
So we went to a Jesuit Catholic retreat center on the Chattahoochee River, the northern part of Atlanta. Beautiful spot to spend two days of silence in contemplation with an outside retreat director that came in. But we were to spend two days in silence. For the rest of the staff, this was a great idea for me.
I had a sermon to prepare. I had Easter Sunday coming and a Super Bowl Sunday for preachers, you know? Yeah. And so Mark, I smuggled in my commentaries in my laptop. Everybody else was doing silence and retreat. I was in my cell preparing a sermon, sermon. I got an outline together, did some exegesis, decided to take a break, went on a walk, sat on a kind of an overlook next to a waterfall, and had the most significant spiritual experience of my life outside of my conversion.
So much of [00:21:00] what guided that time was a small book I had purchased earlier in the day in a bookstore on the premises of Ignatius House by Henry now, and I’d never read a book by Henry now, and I was familiar with his life and incredible story, Yale and Harvard, and then working at law and caring for disadvantaged and challenged people.
A remarkable story, but I’d never read any of his work until I happened to pick up a little book, little Green book called Out of Solitude, a few meditations by now, and just caught my eye in the trailer they were using for a bookstore back in those days. It’s much different now at Ignatius House and happened to carry it with me on this little walk.
Sat down on this, overlooked next to this waterfall, started reading through this book by Henry now, and long story short, the Holy Spirit made the love and the grace of Christ real to me. In a way, I have never experienced God’s grace before.
Dr. Mark Turman: Wow.
Dr. Jim Denison: I can remember it like it was yesterday, sitting at that spot and it was Henry Now’s thinking.
That led me to that position to be [00:22:00] so blessed by the Holy Spirit. From that point forward, I’ve read most of what he read, of what he wrote. It would be full-time work to read all of it. But I’ve read most of what he his book, return To the Prodigal, incredibly helpful to me. Right over there. You can’t see it in the camera, but there’s a, a, a Reproduction of Rembrandt’s, return of the Prodigal that I purchased at The Hermitage in St.
Petersburg, which you can’t do justice to. The actual painting, a life-sized painting that’s there at The Hermitage, which so moved Henry now, and he wrote that classic book, return to the Prodigal out of all of that, incredibly helpful to me. So I’d start there with Henry now from a Catholic point of view, and then really be on that.
Now you’re asking me to move into my academic life, which I’m happy to do. I’m not sure how far you want to go with this. Now we’re talking about St. Augusta, now we’re talking about Thomas Aquinas and the Sumit theologian and how incredibly formative that was, and bringing Aristotelian thinking together with biblical worldview and the context inside all of that.
Now, I tried to do all of that. Thinking about Carl Ronner I didn’t agree with how he tried to do anonymous Christianity, but learned from the attempt that was [00:23:00] made in the midst of that John Paul ii, an incredibly brilliant thinker, communicator, philosopher by background, incredible courage in the Cold War, and his desire to use aesthetics and to use our, our experience of beauty in the world to be much more holistic in our expression and experience of God’s grace than we sometimes are.
A number of figures in the history of the church that have been enormously helpful to me. But on a personal level, I.
Dr. Mark Turman: So many, so many good things to talk about and so much so much to learn, so much alignment from our Catholic friends and Catholic leaders Pope Francis and others. Many, many that we could talk about.
But Jim, there are also some real differences, um mm-hmm. Kind of fall under this topic of why you and I are not Catholic, and let me, let me just kind of pivot us into that conversation a little bit, because the differences do matter. Mm-hmm. If, if somebody were to walk up to me at certain stages of my life as an adult and said why aren’t you Catholic?
Mm-hmm. There, there would be several answers I could give to that. [00:24:00] Now, I actually learned a lot more about Catholic belief in theology when I became a Baptist minister than what I did as a, a child growing up in the church. But one thing I can go back to is that even as a young person, even as a child of 5, 8, 10 years old.
I always had struggles connecting to the pageantry of the Catholic church, and particularly the Catholic worship expressions and I don’t know why. But the architecture the, the robes, the practices within the mass even stained glass, this, this may be heresy to you and to others, but I still don’t have a real affection for stained glass.
It has to be, it has to be really unique stained glass for me to have an appreciation of it. We need to work on that. Yeah, we need to work on that. I have a, I have a childhood memory of, you know, my family set on the same pew, basically just like all regular churchgoers. We have our seat in church and I have [00:25:00] a very vivid image of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in this stained glass window in the church that we grew up in.
And it just. Nothing about that particular stained glass expression of Jesus inspired me in the least. Okay. Didn’t do it for you, huh? It just did not connect and I still don’t connect to those kinds of things. I guess my first question may be before we get into some specific doctrinal things that we need to talk about, which would be how much should style and preference around those kinds of things, music, how much should those matter in our faith?
I heard a, a pastor in California saying, you know what, those things matter, but they’re like number four on the list in terms of importance. Any thoughts on that before we get into deeper doctrinal issues?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, it’s a great question. It really is, and it goes across the entire, I think entire, the entire gamut of the Christian experience not just inside Catholicism itself.
It’s just human nature, I think to turn means into ends, you know, to turn what was supposed to be a [00:26:00] pathway to the transcendent, into the transcendent itself. And so in the Catholic tradition, there’s this history of using images, especially in a pre literate culture, through stained glass and through art to teach doctrine to those that don’t have access to written scripture.
Even in centuries before, there was no such thing as a printed scripture, although centuries when the mass was in Latin and people didn’t speak Latin anymore. And so the way of teaching theology was visual, kinda like PowerPoint today might be, you know, or so forth. And so it’s a lot of why in the Catholic tradition you see that kind of theological aesthetic around you.
That was always intended as a means to an end. And of course, some over the time were accused of worshiping the image itself. Of worshiping the icon rather than that which the icon represented. And we’ve got whole histories of church challenges and debates around iconography and iconoclasm and all the stuff inside that.
Baptist can do the same thing. We can get to the place where the service has to act exactly the way as it always, it has if you move the pulpit, if you put a different pulpit in place, if, if you don’t have the Lord’s separate [00:27:00] table where it needs to be, you know, if you don’t follow the same tradition I grew up with, then that bothers me because the tradition becomes an end instead of a means.
And so the aesthetics are pretty much any worship expression. I don’t know if the Quakers in a meeting house would qualify, but pretty much anybody else can become an end rather than a means. And then we get into fights over those traditions in ways that can become very divisive and very upsetting. And really if they’re a means to an end.
And within a Christian context, I have found myself the wide variety of these expressions to be helpful to me. I became a Christian in a Baptist church, the only stained glass we had stood over the baptistry and was an image of Jesus on some level. Other than that, we worshiped in a gymnasium where we set up pews, portable pews to have worship on Sunday, and we were anything but surrounded by the aesthetics of worship.
But even just the way we did, it could itself with the order of service and what the organ did versus the piano and even genders in the service. Mm-hmm. Mark, I remember the time that a woman, they [00:28:00] made some announcements at the end of the service, and that was very upsetting to some people in the service who did not think women should be speaking in public in a worship service, and they had a tradition around some of that that became difficult.
So as long as the means becomes a means and not the end, then in a Christian tradition, I think God can use and redeem most of those things to his glory.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And we have to, we have to constantly kind of be challenging ourselves on that. You know, you and I have been in ministry in a season where we experience and sometimes still today run into the worship wars relative to music styles.
And you know, whether, you know, we, you and I lived long enough to know that it was, it finally got to be okay to have a Sunday morning worship service where the preacher wasn’t wearing a coat and tie. And that was pretty earth shattering for some people. And it, it, we now look out, look back on it now, and it kind of seems and feels silly, but it wasn’t silly when it was going on.
Dr. Jim Denison: No.
Dr. Mark Turman: And kind of brings us around to something you wrote recently in the aftermath of, of Pope Francis passing [00:29:00] this idea of in essentials unity in non-essentials liberty in all things charity. I can remember when my home pastor preached a sermon based on that statement. Which is a wonderful way to look at many things.
We’re not exactly sure where this statement originated from but it’s a wonderful way to think, but it’s a very difficult way to live. You just mentioned that you came to Christ in the context of a evangelical Baptist church in the Houston area but you also made the comment that years later you kind of had to make a decision if you wanted to stay in the Baptist church or move in a different direction.
Kind of unpack that a little bit and. How, if any, it relates to Catholic intersections as well.
Dr. Jim Denison: Mm-hmm. That’s a great question. And it was out of a bus ministry, as I’ve told the story of men knocking on doors, inviting people to ride the bus to church, which is how I got invited to church and heard the gospel and eventually came to faith in Christ.
If they’d been Methodist, I’m sure I would’ve started my story in the Methodist Church or Presbyterian or [00:30:00] whatever. Dad encouraged my brother and me to ride the bus to the church. He happened to be a Methodist Sunday school teacher growing up. My mom grew up in the disciples of Christ Christian Church tradition, but neither of them were practicing at that point.
And so pretty much anybody that knocked on the door from any tradition, I don’t know that Catholic would’ve worked. Dad had issues there. But other than that, I would’ve probably started my story within that tradition. There came a time as should for all of us come a time. What we ask ourselves is what I inherited, what I want to continue to do.
Do I want to continue to in my life, it was on a vocational level. I’m about to move off into a seminary and spend theoretically the rest of my life practicing ministry within this Baptist tradition. How much do I really know this to be true? Is this really what I wanna do? I have a good consultant friend who says, when you get new information, you can make a new decision and so is the new information I need to be thinking about here.
And so I really did kind of a deconstruction as people sometimes say around a lot of that tried to get back to the bare essentials. What I came to very briefly was this, and it [00:31:00] relates to the Catholic Protestant question. In the Catholic tradition, there is this foundation of belief. God gave the Bible through the church.
So the church is the means by which the Bibles to be interpreted, and therefore the creeds and traditions of the church are the means by which the Spirit leads his people to interpret his word. Now I understand the logic of that. You want lawyers to go to law school. You want doctors to go to medical school.
When I had spinal fusion a few years ago, I didn’t read a law book, medical book or look up a YouTube video and decide to do this myself. You want experts to do that. Then the Catholic tradition, that’s how theology ought to be done. That’s how, that’s how ministry ought to be performed. The, the, the tradition of the church is the means by which the spirit interprets his word and applies it to life.
In the Protestant tradition, unlike medical textbooks and law schools, we have a belief that the Holy Spirit can directly speak from God’s word into our lives and hearts and can guide us directly. So scriptura, as we say, only scripture, a foundational principle to the reformation. I came to [00:32:00] believe that to be true biblically as best I could be objective.
And I recognize I’m doing this out of a Baptist background, but as objectively as I could, and I really tried hard to do this objectively. I came to believe that, I think scripture more teaches that position. We can go into lots of reasons for that. John 16, the work of the Holy Spirit in the early church, how he led them before there was anything centuries, before anything like a Catholic expression of faith as we would think of.
And I just came to believe myself that God leads by a spirit in the life of his, of his followers. Now, traditions enormously helpful. The Holy Spirit uses commentaries and tradition and the, and the, and the teachings and the thought of others, but in a subsidiary position as opposed to the means by the main means by which.
And so that’s why I stayed in the Protestant tradition is because of that why in the road then lots of conversation as to why I stayed Baptist versus other Protestant expressions as well. But that was the basic why in the road that I think exists to this day. And that’s why Protestants who have thought through this [00:33:00] are Protestant and Catholics who thought through this are Catholics.
That’s probably the single most foundational divide that exists between the two.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, it’s something to really, really think about because it’s, it is a big issue as to what is ultimate authority. And you and I come from this Baptist position that says that scripture is the ultimate authority the most, as I’ve come to understand the most objective standard of truth and authority that we can have.
Not to say that, you know, now 2000 years of church history doesn’t matter. It absolutely matters. But it doesn’t matter, at least to us, in the same way that written scripture that has been provided and protected and preserved by the Holy Spirit as assisted by the church has, has been guarded in that way.
So that when we hold a Bible, we are holding a reliable document. Mm-hmm. And it becomes, and it is, I believe, the most objective thing that we have. [00:34:00] And certainly church teaching and church tradition and church interpretation needs to be heavily considered, maybe in some ways in the Protestant tradition, not properly valued all the time.
I agree. But anytime a pastor or a Sunday school teacher picks up a commentary to try to understand a passage better, you’re honoring the tradition of the church. That’s right. And we ought to do that, but there is a singular belief and trust and, and authority that we attach to scripture above everything else, and that really does become a significant difference between Catholic belief and practice in Catholic and a Protestant belief in, in teaching.
Jim, would there be we don’t have time to go into all of the various differences of doctoral understanding, but. What, what might be two or three other issues that believers need to consider when they start thinking about the differences between the Catholic expression of Christianity and Protestant?
[00:35:00] Expressions of Christianity, what might be two or three other topics to go explore?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. One that comes to mind immediately would be specific to Catholic, but it’d certainly be relevant to that conversation, is the autonomy of the local church. The idea that either the local churches itself an autonomous expression of the body of Christ, or it’s part of a larger collective.
And the local churches, therefore to some degree, governed by external authorities. Now it’s not just the Catholics that have external authorities with bishops and, and the Catholic expression all the way to Cardinals and to popes, but they’re certainly the best expression of that. And their belief that it was the authority of Peter that was designated Peter designated as the, the representative of Christ on Earth.
In Matthew 1619, the keys of the kingdom were handed to Peter. Now Matthew 1818, the keys are also handed to the rest of the church as well to the rest of the disciples. That’s one of the Protestant versus Catholic issues we need to think about there. But in the Catholic tradition, it’s Peter Successors who are the representative of Christ on Earth, and they in turn confer people authority on [00:36:00] cardinals, on bishops, bishop, on priests, on deacons, and so forth, so that those that are in authority, even in a local expression, can trace their authority all the way to the Pope and he all the way back to Peter.
There’s a beautiful symmetry to that and a wonderful kind kind of sense of, of authority that is conveyed in that context. I myself, and again, I’m a Baptist here, but as I study this as objectively as I could, I’m not certain that’s as biblical an expression of authority as the idea of the Holy Spirit leading the church.
And by that I mean the local church, the local expression of faith. Now, Presbyterians have their own version of that polity as to Methodist Episcopalians, so that’s not unique to Catholics, but that’s one very practical thing to think about. As we’re trying to understand our church and the context of Catholicism is governance, church governance, and the degree to which there’s this external authority, the or the Holy Spirit working in the life of the local church.
Another very practical, I suppose, has to do with the scriptures themselves. We both absolutely believe the Bible to be the authoritative inspired word of [00:37:00] God, but in the Catholic tradition, there are a number of books called the Apocrypha, which are for various reasons, thought in Catholic tradition to also be part of scripture, which are not included in Protestant versions.
Most Protestant versions of scripture, some Episcopalian would be different than that, and some of the doctrines that are different between Catholic and Protestant have a lot of their founding in some of these apocryphal books. The doctrine of purgatory would be an example of that. It can be thought to be seen in one Corinthians three and other places, but it gets some of its fullest expressions and apocryphal books.
There are other traditions of the Catholic church that have have a lot of founding in these books as well, which Martin Luther did not consider to be as inspired as the text. Jewish tradition did not consider them to be a part of what we call the Old Testament of the Hebrew Bible, but in the Catholic tradition, they were thought to be inspired, authoritative scripture.
And so the apocrypha is a distinction between most Protestant, Catholic and a lot of the theology that are different between the [00:38:00] two come to some degree from those as well.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, yeah, a lot to think about and, and a number of different, you can spend a lifetime. Just trying to understand the differences between some key doctrines within the the Catholic church and the Catholic expression of faith.
And the Protestant church, which, you know, basically gave rise to what we now call the Protestant Reformation in 1513. A lot to think about there. Jim. Let me see if I can bring this down to maybe a ground level question that a lot of Christians, I know a lot of of evangelical Christians, I know sometimes you hear them say this, sometimes you hear them trying to understand this.
But depending on what conversation you may find yourself in, you may find yourself saying they’re, they’re Catholic, as if to indicate that they’re Catholic and not Christian. And then there’s regular Christianity over here. Why do we sometimes, why do we frame the [00:39:00] conversation that way? I remember when I, I, I I met a friend in high school who became instrumental in my conversion to Christ at 17.
He happened to come from the Baptist tradition. I had had earlier brushes with the United Methodist Church as also, and also with the Presbyterian Church. But ultimately this just kind of intersected my life at a particular moment. And as I started to learn and swim around in this reality of Evangelical Baptist faith I started hearing some of this conversation of those people are Catholic and these people are Christian.
And when I, when I brought that conversation home my parents and my family had a, a lot of other things to say about that. No, what we are Christian. How, why, why has that become the, the common vernacular do you think? Yeah,
Dr. Jim Denison: there’s a, that’s a massive issue that it was that way for me growing up as well in this Baptist church in Houston where I became a believer.
There was [00:40:00] that same idea that if you’re a Catholic, you’re not a Christian and you need to become a Christian, you know, in that context some of it’s theology, I think some of it’s history as well. There was a thing called Vatican Council too, from 1961 to 1965, which led the Catholic Church to toward a much broader opening to non-Catholic traditions as being within the body of Christ.
Prior to Vatican two, there was a fairly common position among some Catholics that unless you were Catholic, you were not a Christian. Because the Catholic church was the expression of the church on Earth. Going back to Peter, as we said. So if you’re not in the Catholic church, then you’re not part of the body of Christ and you can’t be a Christian.
I used to go to Cuba a lot, led a lot of study tours and ministry opportunities in Cuba. One of our groups down there one time. And by the way, a lot of Catholicism in Cuba is pre Vatican II has rejected a lot of the, of the reforms of Vatican ii. A lot of the Catholic churches in Cuba, at least back in our day, did, I’m not sure today, but back in that day, and one time one of our vans was driving past a Catholic church and the priest came out and shook his fist at us [00:41:00] as we drove by.
Oh, wow. One of the big problems we had and the day was with the Catholic church there, forbidding their members to come to anything we were doing. Not just in worship services, but even Bible studies or outreach events or even just benevolence things because they have been told that that is not Christian.
And in fact you can be imperiling your salvation if you do that. And so on the Catholic tradition, especially pre Vatican ii, some, not all, but some could have been very exclusionary for logical reasons. ’cause they are the body of Christ on Earth. And if you’re not part of the church, you can’t therefore be in the body of Christ.
On the evangelical side of Protestant side, some of it might have been the excesses of the church over the years. Some of the corruption of the, of all churches, but of Catholic, the Metes and some of the papacy and all that. But I think a lot of it was an emphasis in the 19th and earlier 20th century on a salvation experience.
Evangelical movement toward praying a salvation prayer as the way by which a person becomes a Christian getting saved, as we might say.
Dr. Mark Turman: Right? And
Dr. Jim Denison: if you can’t remember the day you prayed that prayer [00:42:00] and got saved, then you’re not a Christian. Then the Catholic tradition coming to that decision is typically part of the process by which one grows up in the church, is typically part of the catechetical process and experience that a Catholic has.
Not always does that happen, just as in Baptist churches. Not everybody who’s baptized, who’s genuinely a believer has genuinely come to faith in Christ. But in the best expression of catechism, there comes a time. When a Catholic comes to a place of trusting in Christ as their savior, forgiving their sins and being their Lord and Savior, but it’s more a process than it is a one-off, one-time prayer, specific prayer experience.
Ruth Bell Graham bill Graham’s wife grew up in the Presbyterian church, which didn’t emphasize a pray a salvation prayer so much, and to the day she died, she couldn’t tell you the day of her salvation married to Billy Graham because in her tradition it wasn’t so much a, a moment as it was a process.
Then the Catholic tradition, salvation is typically more that way. But for those of [00:43:00] us that came to salvation as a momentary experience, if you haven’t had that experience, you must not be saved.
Dr. Mark Turman: You
Dr. Jim Denison: must not be a Christian unless you did it the way I did it. There was a Catholic priest, still is in Dallas.
I won’t name him without his permission, but one of my dearest friends in Dallas as committed and evangelical as anybody I’ve ever met in my life, my entire life, who can’t tell you the moment of his salvation because he came to trust in Christ to Savior through the process of growing up in the church.
Pope Francis, the same thing. Mm-hmm. So this idea that unless you prayed it the way I prayed it, you’re not saved, is our problem. This idea that if you’re not in the Catholic church, you’re not in the body of Christ and therefore can’t be a Christian, has been their problem. And on both sides that division’s been significant.
Post Vatican two, there’s been a lot of reproachment. I would say Chuck Colson. Had a lot to do with building bridges and Father Newhouse with with building bridges between Catholics and Protestants and evangelicals back in the seventies and early eighties. And a lot of common cause to get habitat houses [00:44:00] right, and, and common missional expressions adoption agencies and standing together for life.
And a lot of common causes help with this as well. So I don’t perceive that it’d be the same division and issue that there used to be, but I will share a quick story of that same priest Monsignor in Dallas, my dear friend came to speak for me one Thursday at our men’s Bible study at the last church I pastored there.
I did a men’s Bible study on Thursdays, always had an a outside speaker, be the kickoff speaker while I was doing the book of Romans. And this particular priest, I lived in Rome, worked in the Vatican for a number of years, and so I asked him to come be the kick kickoff speaker. He was marvelous, brilliant thinker, brilliant communicator.
I found out after the event somebody learned this was happening and stood out on the sidewalk handing out anti-Catholic tracks.
Dr. Mark Turman: Oh wow.
Dr. Jim Denison: Explaining to everybody coming in that if you’re a Catholic, you’re going to help.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Jim Denison: And by our, I didn’t know about it, but our staff saw that actually had to call security to get this person off of our sidewalk that was passing that stuff out.
I apologized to the priest when I learned about this. He was very [00:45:00] gracious and he said even today, that still does happen on occasion. And so
Dr. Mark Turman: right
Dr. Jim Denison: there can still be these divisions. Jesus in John 17 prayed that we would be one so the world will believe The Father said the son. I pray that same prayer.
We need to pray that same prayer today.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And yeah, and I want to talk about that for just a moment. Just this opportunity that we have to continue to find ways to appreciate each other and to collaborate each with each other. I, I remember how comforting it was when somebody helped me to understand, you know, evangelicals tend to focus on the salvation experience of Paul on the Damascus Road.
Mm-hmm. And Catholics tend to focus on more the journey of faith that you see expressed in Peter or in John. You can’t really nail down exactly when either Peter or John fully trusted in Christ as their savior. You get various hints along the gospel story, but you can’t identify it with the kind of clarity you can with the Apostle Paul.
And so [00:46:00] neither one is better than the other. They’re just different. And and, and getting, you know, I can, I can remember being intimidated as a young Christian of No, you need to be able to say the exact day mm-hmm. When you trust it in Christ. And that, that can be pretty intimidating in some ways.
So it can be, and none those are normative, by the
Dr. Jim Denison: way. Yeah. You know, Paul didn’t, Paul didn’t pray a salvation prayer on the road to Damascus, did he? Yeah. The thief on the cross comes the closest to Annie when he said, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom, then someone walks an island of Baptist church to pray to receive praise.
That’s not what we ask them to pray. Lord, remember me. When you come into your kingdom, you know there’s not the sinner’s prayer that is so normative in scripture that everybody has to pray it. If that were the one way to become a Christian, you think the Bible would be clearer.
Dr. Mark Turman: Now
Dr. Jim Denison: I’m grateful for it.
That’s how I became a Christian by praying the so-called sinners prayer. I’ve led lots of people over the years, I’ve been so grateful to be able to do that, to pray that prayer. That’s one way to trust in Christ as your savior. But if that’s the only way you know, [00:47:00] then it’s understandable that you might worry about others that haven’t experienced it in the same way.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And there’s, there’s a lot for us to learn in that. But you know, Jim, this is the passing of Pope Francis in this process that we will see unfold in the coming weeks and months of the selection of a new Pope. That type of thing really brings us around to this question of our our shared witness as Christians around the world.
And, both the challenge and in some ways the confession that we all might need to embrace relative to unity and sometimes our lack of unity. Particularly in the United States, we are radically individualistic in just about everything, including our faith. Talk a little bit for a moment. We, we could do a, we could do a long history lesson.
We need to go get your son Ryan to come and help us remember some of our church history, what is typically known as the great schism of 10 54. Mm-hmm. Nearly a thousand years ago, the Protestant Reformation of [00:48:00] 1513, Martin Luther and John Calvin and many others that we could mention there. Those are at least two big division points within the Christian faith that happen for a lot of very important reasons.
And then some really bad reasons probably that we can mention as well. But people who are not Christian around the world, look at us and say you know, how can we make sense of this? There’s so many different types of Christianity that you guys keep talking about. Why can’t y’all all get on the same paper or on the same page?
How do we at, at, at a ground level think better about God’s call, Jesus’s call to unity, and how could we personally help move in a positive direction there?
Dr. Jim Denison: First thing I think we do is we pray Jesus prayer. You know, we pray for unity in the church and let us start with me. You know, Lord, show me how I can make common cause with my fellow believers in a way that most glorifies you [00:49:00] and advances the kingdom.
And then second, we embrace our differences as expressions of the body of Christ. Hands are not feet, eyes are not ears. People can come to Christ through a Catholic expression that may not come to Christ through a Baptist expression and vice versa. I’ve always thought that the Episcopal tradition with its liturgy and, and its stained glass that you love so much and all of that is especially appealing to people Out of a more of an artistic or more of an emotive or more of an intuitive sort of of a framework we know everything we know either practically, rationally, or intuitively.
We do math rationally. We start cars practically. We like people intuitively. One of those tends to dominate our personality. I tend to be highly rational by wiring. And so I’m attracted to a, a Bible church or Baptist, or a Presbyterian sort of doctrine centric sort of expression of faith. I have good friends.
I played the trumpet for living through a lot of my life and a lot of good friends who are musicians who are especially attracted to liturgical expressions faith and worship and, and the aesthetic around some of that. And then I’ve got lots of friends that are very [00:50:00] pragmatic by nature and they’re very attracted to de denominational expressions that are especially focused on missions and evangelism and doing good in the community and a lot of the Catholic community sort of ministries we’ve talked about, that sort of thing.
So I think the Lord looks at the broad spectrum of the church, not as a division in the FA family, so much as expressions of the body itself, hands and feet, eyes and ears, various ways of doing this thing that we’re called to do together. Now, if we fight each other in doing it. If we condemn the other, if the hand judges the foot for not being a hand now we’re, we’re we’re on some level really frustrating the Lord’s Prayer for unity around us.
And now we’re advancing the call, the call of the skeptic out there that we can’t get our act together. So why should they join us? And all of that. So the fighting is obviously off limits. The condemnation is off limits. The, the criticism that can be so visceral is and vehement is off limits, but expressing various ways by which to serve Jesus.
And then on a third level, finding common cost wherever we can, whether it’s a [00:51:00] Billy Graham mission back in the day, or it’s a habitat house, or it’s working together to do an urban renovation program in an inner city area. Or it might be working toward an expression in the context of poverty. Places where we can come together to advance the kingdom together are going to be ways we answer Jesus prayer and witness to the larger culture.
So I think it’s just vital that we do all three of those. That we seek unity, we stand within our own tradition with clarity, and we work for common cause where we can asking the Holy Spirit to lead us in that direction.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And, and a lot that we can look for on a local level, you know, where, where on a local level, where in and through your local congregation can you reach out and be networked and connected to other churches and, and other expressions of faith that may not be exactly aligned with your understanding, but are still seeking kingdom initiatives, still seeking to bring the, the kingdom of God and the righteousness of God [00:52:00] into the context of your community and the world.
Where can you do that? Where can you where can you say, you know what, it’s not all up to us, and we’re not the ones with all of the right answers. So how can we respect each other, honor each other, value each other, and collaborate with each other? In really great ways. And when you see that, it’s just an absolute beautiful expression of what the body of Christ is intended to be.
Jim, before we finish up we’ve talked about a lot already, but a lot of what will be talked about in the days to come will be the legacy of Pope Francis that we’ve mentioned already. In some ways the stakes that will be on the table for our Catholic friends as they choose a new leader will be the, is the issue of unity.
And some really wonder which direction the Catholic church may go next. And if, if they will be able to maintain current levels of unity, will they become more unified? Where will there be more fracturing that’ll be part of what’s in the consideration [00:53:00] as they pursue a new leader?
But let’s talk a little bit about some of the lessons maybe we gained from Pope Francis as a leader. You wrote a really beautiful article about his humility. Talk about that and maybe one or two other qualities that that you admire from his leadership that we can take away as inspirations for us.
Dr. Jim Denison: I am honored to over the years be part of the doctoral program in servant leadership at Dallas Baptist University. And one of the things that we say is kind of, central to our to our whole program, to our whole philosophy is the idea back to Jesus washing the feet of the disciples that leadership has earned.
We earn the right to lead by convincing those that we’re leading, that our leadership is in their best interest. There’s positional leadership. Do it because I said so as the boss, there’s charismatic leadership. Do it because you like me. There’s transitional leader or transactional leadership. Do it to get a raise or to get a promotion.
And then there’s servant leadership. Do it because you believe that what I want for us is best [00:54:00] for all of us, and I have to do that by serving the people I wish to lead. Hope Francis is as good an example of servant leadership as I have seen in my lifetime. And he set that tone at the very beginning of his pontificate.
He came in second to Benedict. Back in the previous conclave, he had had some health issues relative to lung, as we’re all familiar with, and that caused him back when he was not in as good of health at that point in time. Some say he would’ve been elected even back then. That’s how popular he was, and came in second to Benedict.
So when he was elected back in 2013, the very first thing you do as Pope in the Sistine Chapel. I’ve been there a number of times. It’s an incredible place. Very, very beautiful place. But there’s this raised sort of ad a platform at the end, at the, at the front of the Sistine Chapel that we’ve all seen on television.
The first thing the new Pope does, he’s, he’s a cardinal of on Cardinals. He goes up to that desk as he sits, and the others come forward and they kneel before him, and they kiss his ring as a way of expressing their submission to him as Peter’s representative, Christ representative on Earth. He refused to do that.[00:55:00]
He stood, he. Among his fellow cardinals. Didn’t get up on the days, didn’t sit, wouldn’t let them kiss the ring, stood and greeted them as as one of, as a peer. I don’t know when in Catholic history that’s been done, the aesthetics of what he chose across that he wore to the day he died all across his papa.
See, that had been worn by a martyred priest from the Middle East, I believe, if I’m not mistaken, as opposed to the Gold Cross. It was typically worn his orthotic shoes as opposed to the red slippers, which were probably practical, but also send some signals. A very simple white ca that he wore, never moved into the people apartments.
Stayed in the kind of the guest housing where he’d been before, drove a Renault 1984 Renault with 184,000 miles on it early in his papacy and such. Just really wanted to send signals early on that I’m going to be one of you as, as one of the people when it as first Monday Thursday service. It’s typical for the, for the pontiff to wash the feet of 12 [00:56:00] individuals representing the 12 disciples.
He chose 12 youth offenders from a juvenile detention facility in Rome, two of which were women, first time in Catholic history that a pope had ever washed the feet of women, two of who were Muslim.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. That’s, that’s astounding when, just when I heard you mention that, that the only pope in history to have washed the feet of women is just this Yeah.
You know, remarkable. Isn’t, that’s almost mind boggling, really.
Dr. Jim Denison: One last thing quickly. And he learned this early in his leadership. He would never end a conversation with someone without asking them to pray for him.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Jim Denison: And so when he became Pope, his first statement to the crowd. At St. Peter’s when he stands out on the, on the day, on the balcony, and all, all the people are there and they’re all cheering and all of that, the first thing he does is ask them to pray for Pope Benedict, whom he succeeded.
And for himself, if he were on this PO podcast, he wouldn’t allow us to finish the podcast without asking us to pray for him as the Pope. [00:57:00] There’s just a humility, a genuine humility there that earns the right to lead, and I think models the character of Jesus.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. Just such a, a beautiful way of thinking about it.
And Jim, I just wonder as, as we get ready to close, you know, it, it doesn’t matter if you’re on the Catholic side of the Christian family or the Protestant side of the Christian family it seems like we are living in a. A tsunami of another of our favorite words, something of a tsunami of broken leadership.
We all are very much aware of the scandals and the abuses both within the Catholic Church as well as this with within the Protestant church. We in the area where we live, we ha over the last year have seen a number of very prominent church leaders become embroiled in scandal and lose their ministries in many ways.
As we walk in the next few days through the memorial and funeral services of Pope Francis, there will [00:58:00] be people who say there’ll be, there’ll be people who are very, very grieved and sad and tearful over this. There will be people who think that this is too much po andto, too much pomp and circumstance for one person.
Mm-hmm. And that Jesus would not be s. Would not be, would not be pleased with the kind of typical elaborate celebration when a Pope passes away. Can you give us a word that would help us to think about our spiritual leaders as both a gift from God to help us, but not something that should become a dollarized by us.
Yeah. How, how could we better walk that line?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. Isn’t that a great way to look at this? To come at it from the Catholic point of view, the pomp and circumstance that we’re going to see all of the tradition of the church that’s about to happen is an ex, an example of what I was saying before about the belief that the traditions of the church over the centuries are the means by which the spirit [00:59:00] guides his people than interpreting and applying his word.
And so a lot of what you’re gonna see is nothing like what would’ve been in the first century, nothing like would’ve been had at Peter’s death when he was crucified upside down according to reliable, early the tradition or the death of the others, and certainly the burial of Jesus himself in the Catholic tradition.
That doesn’t make it wrong. The fact that it’s not an expression of what scripture does, because it’s how God has led the tradition of the church over the centuries, not to honor him, but what he represents. They would not say that they’re honoring po Pope Francis. They’re honoring the, the Lord.
They’re honoring the, the visible representation of Christ on Earth in what they’re doing here. And again, it’s a means to the end of worshiping the Lord who continues to lead the church through the papacy and through the people office and, and all that’s inside all of that. I’m not a Catholic. I don’t agree myself.
That wouldn’t be how I would do that. But that doesn’t make them wrong in the sense that because the scriptures didn’t do it, it shouldn’t be done in that sense. ’cause they just look at that from a different point of view. We Baptist do a number of things that aren’t [01:00:00] in the New Testament either. We have a lot of ways that we express our faith.
We try our best to be as biblical as we can be. But there are things in the 21st century that aren’t aligned with first century culture and, and tradition. And we can have a long conversation about all that. But relative to how we could see leadership in this moment, to me it probably starts with the leader themselves who understand that leadership is a gift that God has in his grace called us to experience and to share.
You and I are having the privilege of having this conversation right now, and we’ve been privileged to have decades of opportunity to be in leadership in churches and in ministries. That is such a privilege. That is such an unwarranted unmerited opportunity, and every single day we need to remind ourselves of that
Dr. Mark Turman: we
Dr. Jim Denison: hereby grace not by works.
We’re here because God chose for reasons known fully only to him to choose to use us as sin and full and flawed as we are as a means of continuing [01:01:00] to build his kingdom. So leader stopped by understanding that leadership is a gift of grace. Frank Harrington was a longtime pastor at Peachtree Presbyterian in Atlanta, one of the great churches in the country.
I pastored down the street from him and we became good friends. He told me once that he never stepped up on Sunday to preach behind that massive pulpit and that magnificent worship center that they had there without thanking God that somebody came to hear him. Every single Sunday, Frank Harrington, one of the great leaders in the Presbyterian church every Sunday, thanking God that somebody came to hear him.
They don’t have to do that.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah,
Dr. Jim Denison: no one has to listen to this podcast. No one has to read the next thing we write. No one has to show up the next time we speak someplace. It’s all by grace, isn’t it? And so we start, I think, with that. And then I think the second thing that we can do to help others understand leadership in the same context is encourage them in their own leadership.
Encourage them to understand you have gifts. I don’t have you have a calling. I don’t have. Again, it’s hands and feet and eyes and ears in the body of Christ. So let’s try to level [01:02:00] this thing. Let’s try to get away from hierarchy that says, yes, my calling is by grace, but still I’m at some position of authority that makes me on some level better than you on we did.
That is not biblical. That’s Jesus. Setting the child in the midst of the disciples and saying to be great, be like this. There’s a ground is level at the foot of the cross that we need to experience here that says every expression of the body of Christ is valuable and eternally significant. I saw a survey mark where someone asked people who went to a church and didn’t come back, why they didn’t come back.
Number one reason was the nursery. Number two was the bathroom. Number eight was the sermon. Yes. Which tells us what we really rank. Yeah. On the scheme of importance here in the life of the church, right? Yes. And says that the nursery workers deserve a huge raise in the custodians as well. So all that to say, if we’ll see ourselves as expressing leadership by grace and encourage others to the same grace.
As they see they’re [01:03:00] calling as just as significant in the kingdom, then maybe we can level this thing in a way that moves away from some of the idolatry of leadership we’re seeing today.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And and value it in its proper place. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Thank you for that, Jim, and thank you for this whole conversation.
I wonder as we finish up today, just wanna, as you said, thank the people who are listening to our conversation. We hope that it’s been helpful to you, that it is equipping you to think more biblically and that it will be something you might wanna share with others, be be that your own family or Catholic friends that you have.
We hope that this would be helpful in every way. But Jim, I also wonder if as we close here, you might offer a prayer for our Catholic friends, love to this is a very significant time for them in their understanding of faith and in their practice of faith. Gratitude for the leadership of Pope Francis in all the good ways that he led and served, and also for the direction and future of.
Their expression of the church, would you offer a prayer in that [01:04:00] way?
Dr. Jim Denison: Be glad to do that. If you understand, the Catholic tradition encompassing 1.4 billion people across nearly every nation on earth. This is like the passing of a president or the passing of a king or a queen. In the case of Queen Elizabeth, on a much larger level even than that, this is not just the passing of a leader of a country, but a leader of 1.4 billion people across nearly every country.
And so that kind of understanding, that kind of compassion, that kind of gratitude for leadership should motivate all of us as we pray for our Catholic sisters and brothers in this season. So let’s do that. Father God, first of all, I thank you that you are Lord of Lord’s, king of kings. You are on your throne that no death changes, your rulership, your leadership, your lordship, your kingship, and our world in Pope Francis.
We know Father would be the first to say that. Lord, we worship you as the one king of kings, as the one Lord of our lives. We submit ourselves again today to your Holy Spirit and ask you to fill us and control us and use us as the body of Christ to build your [01:05:00] kingdom, advance your kingdom on earth, that your kingdom would come and your will would be done on earth as it doesn’t again today.
And then second Lord, we’re praying for our Catholic sisters and brothers. Bless in. We know that Pope Francis wasn’t especially empathetic and and gracious and bridge building figure in the Catholic tradition, somebody for whom so many Catholics felt a personal attraction. And Lord, I, I, I pray Father, for your, for your grace, your encouragement, your healing, your strength, and your peace for those that are grieving.
Were genuinely grieving the loss of a leader that they so appreciated and for whom they prayed and for whom they were so very grateful. Third father, I pray for those in the leadership of the Catholic Church in this pivotal time. I pray that you’ll be giving them wisdom and direction across this season.
I pray for the camera lingo in this interim season that you give him wisdom and direction. I pray for those that will gather for the conclave here before long, that you give them guidance and direction. I pray, Lord, even now for the person who I believe by your [01:06:00] providence and your and your Holy Spirit’s leadership would be chosen to be the next Pope, that even now you’d be preparing that person, Lord God, to be a servant leader and to be one who manifests and glorifies you and represents Jesus well and helps the church, Catholic church to be part of your advancement of your kingdom around the world.
And then last. Father, I pray that you would use this season to draw those who do not know you, to know you. As we pray for unity, as we act in unity, as we demonstrate the unity found in Christ to a fractured and divisive and, and in so many ways, partisan world, Lord, that they would be attracted to the unity of the body and the beauty of the compassion and the love of Christ, may they come to faith in Christ as we draw closer to you, and we make this our prayer, all of this in the name of Jesus our Lord.
Amen.
Dr. Mark Turman: Thank you for that, Jim, and wanna thank our audience just again, we’re grateful for you as you follow along in these conversations, and we hope that they’re helpful. If they are, please rate review us on your favorite podcast [01:07:00] platform. And again, thank you for your support in every good way. We’ll see you next time on the Dennison Forum Podcast.
God bless you.
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