In this episode, we dive into a profound conversation with a guest who shares a refreshing perspective on the intersection of faith and consequences. Tullian Tchividjian eloquently expresses how, as a Christian, he believes that the cross was the ultimate expression of God's love, where all deserved punishment was meted out. He emphasizes a crucial distinction: the challenges we face are not punitive measures from God but rather the natural consequences of our decisions. As a result, he debunks the notion that hardship equals divine condemnation, asserting that the horizontal consequences we experience don't equate to vertical condemnation from God. The episode wraps with a discussion on enduring challenging times, emphasizing the importance of recognizing that God's goal is our freedom, not our punishment. In this way, Tullian challenges the common misconception that difficulties stem from God's anger and emphasizes that God's mission is our freedom. Join us as we explore this thought-provoking conversation, offering a perspective that might reshape how you view the intersection of faith and life's challenges. Discover a God whose mission is freedom, not punishment.
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Ben Derrick 0:04
Welcome to the Sex, God and Chaos podcast. A conversation built to help you address the mess, connect the dots and defeat addiction. Doing your work matters because if nothing changes, then nothing changes. Life is tough, and we're here to help. I'm your host, Ben Derrick. And as always, I'll be joined by Roane Hunter. Let's jump right in. Roane back again for another episode. I'm getting better at that
Roane Hunter 0:30
You really are. You've even got it memorized, you used to have notes now you've got it memorized.
Ben Derrick 0:38
My wife said, "Hey, you're smart man. Can you think up something different to say?" I'm like, "Look, if it isn't broken, why would we fix it?"
Roane Hunter 0:44
Yeah, it works. Man. We're men, you have to think about something.
Ben Derrick 0:49
Well, this is one of the best parts of my week. And we get to sit down and do this and listen to very smart people talk about things and we recruit them in and we have guests to talk about smart things. And this guest today, I will be very frank with you behind this microphone. I was shocked that you were able to secure this interview and thank God you did.
Roane Hunter 1:08
Man. I just again, one of these episodes that I've been looking forward to. And today we're going to be talking with Tullian Tully Tchividjian I think, I think I pronounced that right. He'll help you with the name. Okay. On the episode but wow. I mean, what a story and certainly Sex God and Chaos. This, he would put his picture on the on the cover of the podcast, permanently. Just being in the role that he was in, just internationally known. Pastor Billy Graham's grandson, and just a very spectacular public, fall. And but what a story and what a picture of just the redemptive work of God in now, as he says, qualified and bonafide, I think I had it bonafide. That sounds like you.Yeah no doubt. But certainly, now doing real ministry in real pastoring. He describes the church that he's involved with now, it's a recovery place masquerading as a church.Thats what they should be, all of them. Wow, man, that's my dream.Theres not many of those out there, but it needs to be. And so man, just this conversation was just incredible. And what a remarkable story, to go through what he did. Blues, everything, almost instantly, and to some degree, and survive it. That's a testimony to God.
Ben Derrick 3:07
We say this all the time, as we're working with men. Men, especially are concerned how they're going to be viewed as they discuss the dark parts of their story, their brokenness, as we term it. And we always follow up by saying, men, you are a more attractive, masculine figure, when you're willing to be open with your brokenness. That's the kind of man that most men want to follow. Because most of us don't have the courage to do that. And you do. And this guy's just been very public, with his journey to healing. And obviously, the fall was very public. And we were discussing off mic just the pressure of any time his name is mentioned, partly because his name so difficult, it's easy to just say, Billy Graham's grandson, you know, but just even the pressure of that the mantle of that I just can't imagine. And this guy still has a commitment to want to help people through their brokenness. That's inspiration.
Roane Hunter 4:01
It is. And you know, as we often say, man, God uses our brokenness a whole lot more than he uses our resumes.
Ben Derrick 4:10
Very true. So I'm going to do this this is how many, without further delay, here's our episode with Tali.
Roane Hunter 4:17
There you go, we got it. Man, welcome back, everybody to the Sex God and Chaos podcast. Excited today we have another very special guest, a guy that I've known about, followed, knew the story and a guy that's lived this stuff that we talk about every day, in a very real way and in a very public way. And so, man, we are so glad that you're with us, man, Tully Tullian
Tullian Tchividjian 5:01
I'll give you a tutorial here in a second on how to pronounce my name.
Roane Hunter 5:04
Absolutely. But yeah, we've got, we've got Tali with us, Tali tavidion. And just again excited to have you as a guest on the podcast, and so glad that you were able to find the time to join us and kind of let us learn more about you and get to know you better.
Tullian Tchividjian 5:26
Well, thanks for having me on Roane, it's a privilege and I've been looking forward to this conversation. But let's do a brief tutorial on my name because it is a bear an absolute bear. It's scoring when you look at it, but it's not as bad when you understand how to pronounce it. So my full name is William Graham, Tullian Tchividjian. It's a mouthful. The William Graham is after my maternal grandfather, my mom's dad. Tullian, it's pronounced Tullian, is after the early church father Tertullian that my mother was studying when she was pregnant with me. And she was so captivated by this guy that she prayed and said, "God if the baby that you're building in my belly is a boy, I'm going to name him Tertullian". So Rumor has it that for the first two or three days I was alive. It was William Graham Tertullian tchividjian, thank God she dropped the "ter" so it's just Tullian and the last name Tchividjian It's an Armenian last name my my dad was born and raised in Switzerland but his dad was born and raised in Armenia. And so tchividjian Anything ending and "I A N" is a dead giveaway that it's an Armenian last name. So like Kardashian, Kevorkian, Tchividjian. Those are all Armenians. And so it rhymes, sometimes this helps people I've heard my mom say this, in all my growing up years that Tchividjian rhymes with religion. Sometimes that helps people Tchavidjian and so it's Tullian. Some people go "Tullian" or "Twillian" in or you know, whatever, but it's Tullian and Tchividjian. And for whatever reason my entire life I've gone by Tullian, and that's what my parents always referred to me as so I've never gone by William, although that would have made my life a hell of a lot easier. But Tullian so I'm stuck with Tullian, but I'm happy. It's unique. It's a conversation starter. And it gives me the ability to explain my heritage, so.
Roane Hunter 7:45
I don't know if our listeners caught it. But you know that first part of your name, William Graham, some of you people may know of there's this guy named Billy Graham, and that was your grandfather. Yes, it was, yeah. And then you get, so you've got, you know, kind of that to live up to and then you get named after Tertullian. Right. Yeah.
Tullian Tchividjian 7:46
I was doomed from the get go.
Roane Hunter 8:14
You had pressure right out of the chute man. Holy cow. Right out of the womb. A lot to live up to.
Tullian Tchividjian 8:22
I know. Yeah. And I have consistently failed to live up to both those names just for the record. I have a perfect track record of inconsistency living up to those names.
Roane Hunter 8:37
Yes. Yeah. Awesome. So man, just kind of give us let's just jump into kind of your story. You know, growing up in that kind of, you know, Christian expectation and perfection. And so, and then you just kind of bring us up to where things are today.
Tullian Tchividjian 9:03
Yeah, well, again, thanks for having me on. Like I said, I've been looking forward to this. I love what you guys are doing, and greatly appreciate it. So I am the middle of seven kids. Born to an amazing mom and an amazing dad, I have nothing but fond memories of my upbringing. My home growing up was a happy home. It was it was Christian. But it was not legalistic in any way. And that grace reigned supreme in our home. And I'm very grateful for that because I talked to a lot of people who grew up inside the church or inside Christian homes, and it tended to be somewhat oppressive, somewhat legalistic. In fact, there are a lot of people that I know who because they grew up that way, walked away from the faith altogether because that's what they think Christianity is. That was not the case for me. I did however, at 16 years old, dropped out of high school, I got kicked out of my house. My I was just I was living very recklessly and my parents got to a point where they said, "Listen, we, we love you. But you if you're going to continue living this way, you can't live this way under our roof." I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, born in Jacksonville, grew up in Fort Lauderdale. So when you're 16 years old, in Fort Lauderdale, the late 80s, early 90s. And you no longer have teachers looking over your shoulder, or, you know, parents breathing down your neck, and you're finally free to do whatever you want to do, you can get into some serious trouble. Which I did, and enjoyed all of that trouble for a season. But the Bible says that, you know, sin is pleasurable for a season. But when that season comes to an end, you're left with a gaping hole in your soul that only God is big enough to fill. And that season came to an end for me at 21. It wasn't one particular event or one particular crisis, it was just this culminating sense of, there's gotta be more to life than what I'm experiencing. And I knew what the answer was because of the way I was raised. So very much like the prodigal son, I sort of sheepishly made my way home, was warmly embraced, welcomed, of course, it was, you know, it was an answer to years and years of prayers, from my parents, and from my extended family and from family friends. So, you know, there was a real party, at my homecoming. And I didn't know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, I was working at the time at a hotel. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. But I knew that I wanted to tell the world in one way, shape, or form, or to tell anybody who would listen about this amazingly gracious God, who runs after rebels like me. I knew myself well enough to know that I didn't deserve the affection of God, I didn't deserve the approval of God, I didn't deserve God's love. And yet, he persistently pursued me. And I could see that looking back, that he persistently pursued me. And most of the people that I had been around during those years, you know, they didn't believe in God, God was irrelevant to them. But I thought to myself, I think God would be a comfort to these people if they knew who he was. So, but I still didn't know what form that would take. So I continued, you know, working at the hotel, I had been dating a girl for about a year and a half. At that point, she became a Christian, she didn't grow up in a Christian home. But when that change happened with me, she became a Christian at that time. And shortly thereafter, we got engaged, probably about maybe three months into our engagement, we found out that she was pregnant. So even though we were already planning to get married, we weren't planning to be parents that early. So we bumped up the wedding a few months, so that, you know, she wouldn't be nine months pregnant. At our wedding. We got married in the summer of 1994. We were both 21 years old. I immediately, we immediately moved, and I started college. Because by that time, I knew what I wanted to study. I knew that I wanted to study at I mean, I just wanted to study God, I wanted to know God, I wanted to learn about God. And so I got accepted to a Christian university in Columbia, South Carolina, Columbia International University, loved, loved, loved my time there graduated in three and a half years with a degree in philosophy. By the time I graduated, my wife at the time, and I had two, two small boys. When I finished college, I knew that I wanted to go to seminary. I wasn't sure if I was going to one day be a preacher or a professor. But I knew that God had given me gifts to teach. And so we ended up moving to Orlando, my wife at the time, and our two small boys moved to Orlando, I attended reformed Theological Seminary, was there for three years. And by the time I graduated from seminary, my wife at the time was pregnant with child number three. I was I think, 26 or 27 years old, no, 20? By the time I graduated college, I was 25. So two kids one on the way at 25 years old, or 26, can't remember. And then by the time we left seminary, and that was in the spring of 2001, I took a job in Knoxville, Tennessee, at a large church there. The pastor was a friend of mine and he hired me on to be pastor to young adults, which at that church was everybody in their 20s and 30s. Did that for two years. My daughter, our youngest was born in Knoxville. And then in early spring of 2003, I got a call from a group of people back home in South Florida asking if I would come home and plant a church, which I was very reluctant to do, not because I didn't want to be back in South Florida, I desperately wanted to be back in South Florida, I never wanted to leave South Florida. It was my home, I love everything about it. But I just didn't think I had it in me to plant a church. I was scared to death. But to make a very long story short, God won the day and we moved in the summer of 2003, back home to South Florida, started a church that church was doing really, really well. It was growing fast. And about five years into that church plant, I was approached by a much larger, much more famous church about 20 minutes down the road, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, their founding pastor D. James Kennedy had died, and they were now looking for a pastor. And they came to me once and I said, "I'm honored, but I'm not interested." they came to me a second time I said, "I'm honored, I'm not interested." they came back to me a third time, and I said, "Listen, the only way I would ever consider this is if we merge the two churches because your church needs to be gutted and replanted from the bottom up. And there's no way I can do that by myself. So, if you allow me to bring everybody with me, my leaders, my congregants, everybody, I think we can get this done.". And, that was more of a tactic on my part to get them to leave me alone. But they were excited about that proposition, which was shocking to me. So we did, we went through a meticulous three or four month due diligence process to see if it would work. And then in March of 2009, we merged those two churches. And it became one new church, the first six months there was hell on earth, as you can imagine, merging two of anything is hard merging two families, merging two businesses, certainly merging two churches that are very, very different in style, and all of that stuff was very painful and hard. But after six months, a lot of that stuff went away, and we started to build it around the message of grace, and the church just exploded. I mean, it blew up in all in all the right ways. Before I moved to Coral Ridge, I had written two books. But once I got there, you know, my profile was elevated significantly because it was such a famous church. And so I even though I had been writing and traveling before that my life got super busy after that. So writing a book a year, you know, traveling around the country, speaking at churches, conferences, various events, universities. My sermons were broadcast on television every week around the world. They were broadcast on the radio every day around the country. And so life was fast, life was busy, life was exhilarating. You know, I had made it to the top of the totem pole in my industry, so to speak. And after six and a half years of being there, my whole life came crashing down. And this was is the part of the story that you know, is so unfortunately, well known. My worst moment in life was broadcast the furthest. But in the spring of 2015, my 21 year marriage, fell apart. It ended in divorce, in part because I was unfaithful to my first wife, and because I was a public person, all of this played out very publicly. You had everybody and their mother, mostly people I didn't know, commentating about it, writing about it, speculating about it. It made it very difficult for us to deal with it as a family. A there was a lot going on at that time in our home, and it just made it very, very painful. At the time it happened, my oldest son was 20, my middle son was 18, And my daughter was 13. my oldest son had just gotten married. He and his wife had just had their first child. So everybody was in a very vulnerable place. And to get not just the devastation and the destruction of infidelity infesting our home and blowing up our private life, my public life was blown up also. And it just, it was very painful for everybody involved. Everybody. We didn't have the space to process this stuff privately and deal with this stuff privately. Everything was being played out in public. So almost overnight, I lost everything. Of course, I lost my job, book contracts were canceled, speaking engagements were canceled. I mean, in within 24 hours of the news breaking. I mean, my family, of course, was decimated. I still had hope that I could, that my now ex wife and I, could work things out. But the whole thing was just a complete mess. And I found myself, Roane, in my early 40s, undergoing a massive identity crisis. I was speaking to a group of men last weekend, and I said, "you know, most of us don't know what we're depending on to make life worth living until it's gone." And for me, so much of my identity was anchored in who I was, the work that I did, the people that I knew, my family being intact in the way that it had always been, financial security, all that stuff. And so when that stuff was gone overnight, I found myself wondering, "Who in the hell am I?". I had no idea. And that's a very scary experience, for anybody at any stage, but it's specifically scary when you're sort of moving into mid, you know, to the middle of your life. You know, everything from financially you are on a trajectory to be fine for the rest of your life, socially, professionally, personally, everything seemed to be trending in the right direction. And then overnight, it started plummeting. And so I went through about a two year period of just complete, dishevelment, I was really jacked up, I wasn't jacked up so much in the way that I was acting out at that time. At that time, I was almost too scared to act out badly. Because I was, you know, I don't know if it's appropriate to say this, but I mean, I was scared shitless that I was going to do something stupid, that another headline would be written. So I kind of kept to myself, got off grid. But the the turmoil was all internal. It was, you know, feeling terrible, terrible. The regret, the guilt, the shame was overwhelming in terms of what I did to my first wife, and especially what I did to my three kids, just devastated. In fact, this has been it's been nine years now almost. And if I stop long enough and think about the damage that I did to my family, it's, I mean, I still can't help but cry and sort of beat my chest. I have an amazing relationship with my three kids. They are three of my best friend's. Our relationship was not interrupted even for a second, thank God, they never blinked, they never bailed, they loved their mother and their father through all of this and both their mom and I are super grateful for that. Very grateful for that. In fact, my 22 year old daughter lives with my new wife, Stacy and I, well, she's not that new. We've been married for seven years. But my newish wife, Stacy, my second wife, Stacy. My daughter lives with us and we just we love it. I mean, it's awesome. I mean, we're my daughter and I are very close. My sons and I, my sons live about 45 minutes south of me in Boca, and I'm in Jupiter. So we all, you know, I've got three grandkids. And so anyway, so all of that was repaired, the hard work was done and it was repaired. But I mean, I wandered in the wilderness for a few years. Thankfully, I had a couple of men. My good friend Paul, and my good friend Pat, two older men. Paul's in His early 70s, pats in his late 60s. And both of them, those were two friends that stuck. I told people this many times, but it's really, really hard to know who your friends are when you're at the top, and you have so much to offer. But when you're at the bottom, and you have nothing to offer people, but leprosy, and liability if they come close, that's when you discover who your true friends are. And what I discovered during that time was I had very few real friends, I had an impressive network, I had colleagues. But I didn't have a whole lot of friends, I thought I did, but I didn't. And Paul and Pat were those two friends who stuck closer than a brother. They were non blinking in all of the best ways, they didn't shrink back at my darkest confessions. They didn't shrink back, when I would share my struggles or, you know, tell my secrets or, you know, confess my sins, or whatever. They were right there, wise, incredibly helpful, gracious, loving, firm with me at times when I needed it. But even their firmness was cloaked in grace and love. And I wouldn't be here without those two guys. So, Stacy, my wife, now, we got married in August of 2016. We lived in Texas, the first year we were married, because that's where she's from, about an hour north of Houston, lived there, near her family, had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life, but had that year to kind of just do some intense therapy, a lot of time alone, a lot of time in counseling, just sort of being out of the public eye, off the grid. And God did a really, painful, but liberating work of deconstruction in my life at that time, raised my self awareness through the roof, I started understanding how and why everything fell apart what was going on inside of me at the time. You know, I know that a lot of people assume that when a man has an affair, it's because he's trying to fill some physical void, he just wants to have sex. And to be honest, Roane, that just wasn't the case for me. You know, my deepest desires at that time were not sexual, or, in some sense, me trying to fill some sexual void. They were emotional. I mean, I'm sort of a romantic at heart, and, you know, after you've been married for a long time, if you haven't done the hard work of nurturing that relationship, and pouring into that relationship inevitably becomes dry, it can happen to the best people to the best marriages, it can be dry, and a void begins to develop, a longing for connection, a longing for romance, a longing for deep feeling, and some of that was missing, in my first marriage at the time. And so my wandering heart was not so much looking for sex, that came with it, but that was not the primary reason for seeking it out. it was really a desire to be deeply connected, emotionally connected, to feel alive, romantically and emotionally. And, you know, I mean, I went in that sense looking for love in all the wrong places. And, and there's no excuse for it. What I should have done with that longing, that desire, was channel it toward my wife at the time, and look at her in the eye and say, "we have some work to do, and I'm committed to doing it. So whatever it takes, if I need to take a sabbatical, if I need time off, I'm willing to do it. But whatever it takes, I want you to know, I'm committed to you. I love you. And I want us to work and thrive.". But the easier way out was just, someone else. You know, that was easier. You're not dealing with all the baggage, you're not dealing with all the hard work, it's not an uphill battle. It feels like you're a teenager in love again. You know, and so, all of that was going on, and I didn't realize that, until, of course after the fact. And so that year in Texas was a year of deep deconstruction. It was it was the year that God worked out my identity crisis, that I was undergoing. I went through a season there, where I didn't want to leave the house, I was very suicidal. I was, you know, at that time in my mid 40s, had no idea who I was, no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life, no idea how I was going to even support my family. I knew the Christian community well enough to know that my particular sin canceled me forever, that I was never going to be invited back to those churches, those conferences, those, you know, publishers were not going to come to me and asked me to write books. And so I had to start thinking about a completely different line of work, and I didn't know what that was. And that was part of my struggle. After that year was over, in Texas, Stacey and I moved to Fort Myers, Florida, which is on the southwest coast of Florida, I'm from the southeast coast, but this is southwest coast, at the request of my friend, Pat, who I mentioned, who was pastoring, a small Lutheran church at the time, over there. And he said, "Listen, we're, a small church with an even smaller budget, so we can't offer you a job, but we can offer you community. We are a community built on Grace, and we love you, and we believe your best days are ahead of you. And if you and Stacey moved to Fort Myers, we would do whatever we could to take care of you guys." And so we made a couple of trips there to sort of explore that possibility, and after the second trip decided this is what God wants us to do. I had no idea what we were going to do for work at that time, because like I said, they weren't offering me a job, just just a place to land, a community to land in. And so we got to Fort Myers in early fall of 2017. We were there for a year and a half. During that time, I started writing again, and really pouring out my guts, telling my story. I sensed God's summons to begin writing again, but I it was a very specific summons, it wasn't just a summons to write anything, it was a summons, to tell the truth about myself, to tell the uncomfortable truth about myself and to share the worst parts of me with the public so that they could see the best parts of God. And that's essentially what I started doing. I started telling my story, describing different episodes, different moments during that time, where I was hitting rock bottom and feeling suicidal and alone and how God's grace met me in those dark corners of my life. And a friend had agreed to build me a website. And so I was just publishing this stuff as blogs on a website. And as a result of that, I started getting invitations to speak all over the place, places I didn't even know existed. Everything from 8000 member, African American church in Atlanta, to a predominantly all white Presbyterian church plant with 30 people in a middle school cafeteria, recovery places, men's retreats, you know, that sort of thing. My message was striking a very particular nerve at that point. And so all these people invited me to come tell my story and to share the good news of God's grace as it appeared in my story. And so we were doing that my wife, Stacy was traveling with me, we went all over the country, we even left the country to speak, for me to speak. I mean, it was a busy, busy, busy time. I was traveling, we were traveling, three weekends out of every month. And as exhilarating as that sounds for a guy like me, who's a complete homebody who likes routine, who likes to eat the same thing at the same time every day, go to the gym at the same time every day, go to bed, I mean, literally, I am a creature of habit. And so being on the road like that, in a different city every weekend, or, you know, three weekends out of the month was exhausting to me. And I was grateful to God for the opportunities to get out there and share my story and to help people and to connect with people. But I was also growing very weary of this life. I didn't want to do this anymore. And right about the time I was ready to throw in the towel and decide to do something else. We got a call from a group of people here in Jupiter, asking me if we would be interested in starting a church here. And I had done that, as I mentioned, but that was in my early 30s When I had a little bit more energy. And you know, here I am in my late 40s At the time, and I'm thinking about how exhausting it was the first time around, and so I was not, I wasn't excited. I was excited about it, for two reasons. One was it would it would get me off the road, and it would give Stacey United chance to sort of land and plant some roots. The second reason I was excited about it is because it was back on the southeast coast of Florida, where I'm from and where, you know, my kids were and all that stuff, so I was super excited about that. Those are the only two reasons I was excited about it. I wasn't excited about planting a church, I wasn't excited about having to preach again every week. Uh, you know, when you're traveling, you can pray, you can say the same thing, wherever you go. It's one or two messages you got because it's all new to these people. Absolutely. So I had been out of the habit of preparing new messages every week. So I wasn't looking forward to that. I was still experiencing a lot of PTSD, as it pertains to the church, I felt orphaned and abandoned by the church at large when I screwed up. And I wasn't real keen on in trusting my livelihood back into the hands of Christians again. I didn't trust them, to be honest with you, I just didn't trust that they're going to stick around when the shit hits the fan. And so, God had to drag me kicking and screaming to Jupiter. Stacy was more excited about it than I was, although it was hard for her too, because she because she could see how hard it was for me. And she had never done anything like this before. But her faith is stronger than mine. I was much more doubtful, much more skeptical, she was believing that this was what God wanted us to do, and thanks to her, that became contagious. And so we made the move to Jupiter to start the sanctuary. I didn't want to just start any kind of church, I wanted it to be a completely different kind of place. You know, a place for misfits, a place for drop outs, a place for people who've screwed up, a place for people who deal ongoingly with things like guilt and regret and shame for things they've done or failed to do. I wanted to create a place for people like me. And so Stacy and I set out to do just that, in fact, when we first met with this group of people, who were interested, I said, "let me just put all my cards on the table. Number one, here's my story, and I'm going to tell it unedited. The second thing is, if we move here, we're not starting just any kind of church, we're going to start a recovery place masquerading as a church." And they were all about it. There were a few people in that group who were in active recovery themselves, for different reasons. And so they were all about it. So we moved here and we moved to Jupiter in the spring of 2019. started laying the groundwork for the sanctuary that spring and summer, we launched in the fall of 2019, we were up and running in a high school auditorium for about six months until COVID shut us down. We were shut down for six, eight months, eight months, didn't think we would have a church, when we emerged from that. But during that time, we were able to secure our own space. And we reopened in November of 2020. And that's really when I mark the beginning of the sanctuary, November of 2020. That first iteration, that first six months was kind of like preseason for us, trying to figure out "What are we doing? Who are we?" But now it's we're rolling and I'm telling you, man, I've never felt as free. I mean, the connection that I have with the guys in our church in particular are connections that I myself need. We are in fact a recovery place masquerading as a church. You know, religionists don't darken our doors because none of them think I should be pastoring anyway, that I disqualified myself forever. So I tell our church, I'm like, "Listen, one of the great benefits to you, that I'm your pastor, is that Pharisees won't come through our door because they don't think I should be pastoring a church. So I'm like a, I'm like a Pharisee repellent when it comes to that." But I mean it is a very real place so real, that to be honest with you, Roane, I've told our people this on numerous occasions, if, the sanctuary didn't exist, I don't think I would go to church. In fact, I'm sure I wouldn't go to church and it doesn't have anything to do with whether I believe in God, or whether I think, you know, Christian communities important or whether or not I believe God loves me, and it's nothing to do with that stuff, because I believe in all those things. It's just that the church as it is currently, in its most dominant expression, is just not a safe place to tell the truth about yourself, It's not. It shouldn't be the safest place for broken people to break things, and for fallen people to fall down, but it's not it's the scariest place. I found that out firsthand, and a lot of other people have to that we hear from all over the place, all over the world really. And so we wanted to be, we want it to be a place that was not shocked by sin, and remained amazed by grace. And in order to do that you have to preach, speak, teach and cultivate a message and a culture that is built on the radicality of God's grace. There's a huge difference between, grace on paper, and grace in practice. And there are a lot of churches that are good when it comes to grace on paper, most of them suck when it comes to grace and practice, they just do, especially when it comes to Christian leaders. I mean, the church, black balls, people and black lists people as quickly and as easily as the world does, and in many cases, even more so. And so that's why I love where we are at. I love who we are, we have a twice a month gathering for men at our church called the vault. And we call it that because what said there stays there. And dude, it is a group of colorful characters with colorful language, and even more colorful stories. And what, I was telling my wife about this the other day, what's so awesome about it is, there are a couple of older guys in there who you know, are church guys been in church most of their lives, but they love the sanctuary. And I'm always curious to see their body language when, you know, some guy comes in and just starts dropping the F bomb left and right, because his marriage is falling apart because he can't stop cheating on his wife. I mean, you know, I hate his story. And these guys, these older guys who are, you know, at least based on appearance seem a bit more refined, they don't even blink man, they're just smiling from ear to ear. Like they're, in essence, their body language is saying, I've been looking for this my entire life, even though I haven't screwed up in the same ways that this guy is screwed up, all of that stuff he just described as in my heart, and I need to be here too. So it is a it is a potent power play. I mean, we're small, we're not a big church, and we like it that way. You know, I have no idea how big we are, I would guess that there are probably 350 people in the area of Jupiter that would call the sanctuary their home church. And obviously, not all of them are there every Sunday. So it's small enough to where we feel connected, but it's not so small that you feel weird walking in the door, if you're a visitor like, "This is weird." So it's a healthy size, I love it. I've said before that the way we're set up is you know, our in person local gathering on a weekly basis or when we get together with men, that's our smallest. That's the smallest demographic of our church or the smallest gathering, we have a large online presence. And so our greatest reach is out there not here we set up shop here in Jupiter, and we broadcast here from Jupiter, everything that we do, but our largest audience is not from Jupiter, which is kind of nice, because that keeps that keeps the sort of the overhead low. It's an easily maintained, you know, sort of thing we're doing and I like that because in my former life, my work was my life. And now the sanctuary is not my life, it's a part of my life, I have a lot more free time to engage with guys and to connect with people and to go deep. I think less is more, I've gotten to that point my life now, I'm 51, Less is more. Friendships are more important than networks and connections. You know, I'd rather go deep with two or three guys, than to sort of stay on the surface with 500 guys. And that's just and I'm very comfortable with because God did all of that, deconstruction work with regard to my identity, my identity is no longer anchored in, "How big is the church? You know, our book deals on the horizon? Am I accepted by the broader community?" I mean, I can give a rat's ass about that stuff, really and that is so liberating to finally be at that place where that stuff doesn't matter. So you know, and I think it surprises some people, especially people who knew me before who get reconnected to me now, and they're like, "You know, one of the things that attracted us to your ministry before was you were, you know, you were real. And we felt like you knew us because you were honest about your own struggles. But we didn't feel connected to you in the ways that we do now, because you just don't seem to care about so many things that you used to care about" You know, I'm not afraid, I think it was Leonardo DiCaprio, his character in The Revenant, where he says, "I'm not afraid to die, because I'm dead already." And that's the way I feel. I mean, it's kind of like, "Dude, I can say whatever the hell I want. And if you cancel me, you're too late, dude, I've already already been done." Yeah, I'm cancelled and I'm free because of it. Freedom. Right. So yeah, that really has freed me to tell the truth about myself in a much more unedited way. And I share this with our people, the sanctuary, all the time, or wherever I travel and speak, that "The person who is the most free is the person who...", how does it go? Yeah, "The person who is the most free is the person who is the most willing to tell the truth about themselves. And the person who is most willing to tell the most truth about themselves is the person who knows that God loves them unconditionally." Because when you know that God loves you unconditionally, you don't need everybody else to like you. And when you don't need everybody else to like you, you're more willing to tell the truth about yourself, because you will never have to endure rejection from God, you can endure rejection from other people, which frees you to take off your masks, stop pretending, and tell the truth about yourself. So that I could tell you my deepest struggles and secrets, and if you look at me and walk away, it might sting for a minute, but I'll be fine, because I know that God will never walk away. So that's kind of, man, you asked me one question, I talked for probably 35 minutes to give you my life story. But that's my story. And I'm sticking to it.
Roane Hunter 47:16
That's why we're here. Man, you know this quote, I think it was saying, Arrhenius, "The glory of God is a man fully alive." Yes, so good. They're asking you one question, and you come to life. Fully alive. Yeah. And, you know, Tully, man, your story is just so powerful. And it certainly exemplifies the best attributes of God, and who he is, and the worst attributes of the church, and where we are today in it.
Tullian Tchividjian 47:57
And the worst attributes of our own human frailty and brokenness. I mean really. I mean, I would love to be able to blame someone for all of my screw ups. I can't, I mean, that's on me. And I know that I put a lot of people including, my church, in a very precarious position, when I crashed and burned and bottomed out the way that I did, and I hate that. But as I talk to more people, and as more people around the world share their own crash and burn stories with me, it does grieve me that the church seems to abandon people at their worst. And I've shared this before, but, the church does a pretty good job of extending grace and help to those who are suffering because of what someone has done to them, the victims. But the church has historically done a shitty job extending grace and help to people who are suffering because of what they've done to themselves, or because of what they've done to others. And the good news of the gospel is that God's grace is for both parties. It's for the perpetrator and the victim. And so, you know, I think the church could learn a lot from the recovery community, to be honest with you. I mean, the recovery community has learned, that the best kind of person to help people who are in the dark, is someone who is well acquainted with the dark themselves. And, you would never, for instance, find someone who has never struggled with alcohol leading an AA meeting. What qualifies them to lead the meeting, is their struggle with alcohol. And the church just they use passages in Timothy and Titus about qualifications and they butcher passages in the Bible that elevate spiritual leaders as being something superhuman. And so pastors, the ones who reach out to me the most, are pastors who don't feel safe, being human, and broken because they'll lose their job, they'll get canceled in their towns, or in their cities. You know, there'll be blackballed. And, you know, it's just a sad state of affairs, when you see that, it really is, I mean, because of the platform I had and my name, and my family and all that stuff, you know, I mean, there have been doors that have been open to me, because my story was so public, there have been doors that have been open to me, that have allowed me to continue doing ministry in the current form that I'm doing it. With a lot of these guys, you know, solo pastors or pastors in smaller places, or, you know, don't have a name, or don't have a platform. I mean, they're stuck, man, I could read you emails that men have sent me that are so sad. I mean, I read an email from a guy who showed up at 10 o'clock at night, one night, and he said, he came through my website, he said, Listen, you don't know me, but this is who I am. And he described his career, his life. He was in his mid 60s described how he was a denominational leader had written a lot of books, was on the board of their denominational seminary, chairman of the board, blah, blah, blah, just sort of gave me his resume. And said, "About 18 months ago, my son in law, was on my laptop, and discovered that I had been in some same sex chat rooms, and immediately went and told my wife, who immediately went to the church. Within a week, I was fired, my wife filed for divorce." He said, "That was 18 months ago, I haven't seen, I'm now divorced, I haven't seen my wife, or spoken to my adult kids, during that time, nobody from the church has reached out, I'm currently living outside of Cleveland, Ohio, in a one bedroom apartment. I want to kill myself, and I just I want you to give me some reason to keep living." This guy had nowhere to go, nowhere. And I know that I was wasn't getting the whole story. I mean, there's always more to the story than all that, I get it. And if I were to talk to his wife, and church and kids, I'm sure I'd get another side. So I get all that. Here's the issue, regardless of what the story is, everybody in the story, at least claims to be, Christians. And at no point and at no place should a mid 60s man, who has screwed up bad, be sitting in an apartment, by himself, contemplating suicide without anybody returning his phone calls. So regardless of who you've heard, or what you've done, I mean, it's inhumane, in my opinion. And so, that's one of 5000 messages I've gotten over the last four or five years, literally. So it's their testimonies that prove more than even my testimony, that, there is a bit of a crisis in the Christian community when it comes to how we handle sinners. My friend, Pat, says I've been in the church for over six decades, and I've been disappointed in the way the church has handled sinners for over six decades. And he said, Why is it, I remember him saying this to me one time, why is it that the last institution in all of society that still believes in Original Sin is so scandalized when they actually encounter it? And he's right, he's right. He's exactly right. It's true. Yeah, it's true. Sad but true.
Roane Hunter 53:54
It is. You've probably read Paul David Trip's book Dangerous Calling. Yeah. Where he certainly kind of talks about the whole system is completely broken. And, I get it I always say if I was a pastor, and knowing that if you get honest or tell the truth, they'll shoot you first, and then they'll drag you out back and beat you with the Bible, and then they'll fire you.
Tullian Tchividjian 54:28
The shooting always comes first.
Roane Hunter 54:30
Yeah, I always say look, I like my stuff. I want more of it, and I wouldn't want to lose my career, my job either. Sure. But it's such a setup in kind of living in this really isolated, disconnected place. Yeah. And then man, your story, Gosh, being in the public eye, as you were, in going through what you did. I mean, it is a miracle that you are still alive. It is. Just because of our own shame in our infidelities and betrayals that we don't need more because we, we've got it. But then, you're in this role and in this capacity of being a pastor, and certainly on a national platform and even international, and and then this thing comes public. And you talked about being suicidal. Yeah. A miracle that that you didn't just, you know, hit the exit button.
Tullian Tchividjian 55:49
It is a miracle. I mean, The thought of killing myself, and this is no exaggeration. In fact, my kids, and my wife, Stacy can testify to this. Stacy more so than my kids. I wasn't saying every day I'm going to kill myself, I didn't want to burden people with that. But the thought of doing it crossed my mind every day for nearly 18 months. I mean, just when I thought things were bad, losing everything. It gets worse, because now you're it's not just that you lost everything, it's that there doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel, there is no hope on the horizon. What am I going to do now? I you know, I mean, my name is now mud to so many people that I used to respect and look up to and in an industry that I was once you know, on the top of and felt like I was somebody because of it has now you know, sort of just, you know, cast me out. And so it was it was really, really painful. One thing my friend pulls all said to me, and I'll I know we're running out of time, but I'd love to share this real quick. I was at my worst. Living in Texas, newly married, Stacey was working at a title company. So I was home alone most days. And I was experiencing a really low low for some reason, just, you know all this stuff. And Paul's all who was talking to me on a, you know, regular basis at that time, few times a week. I texted him from my home. It was early afternoon. And I said, Paul, I need you to give me one reason to keep living. And normally he would respond right away. And like three or four hours went by, and I didn't hear from him. And my initial thought was great. Paul's abandoned me too. He's had it. He can't take it anymore. I'm a drain on his life. You know, he's he's out. But he did text me back. And he told me that the reason that it took him three or four hours to text me back is because my question was so weighty. And he knew that the answer was, in some ways a matter of life and death for me. So he had to think about it. Pray about it. God, how do you want me to answer this man. And he sent me back one sentence that turned the tide at least began to turn the tide for me. He said Tolian the suffering you are going through? Is God kicking you, pushing you into a new freedom from false definitions of who you are. And he had walked with me enough to know that my deepest issue was an identity issue. The deepest suffering wasn't was an issue of identity. I, I didn't know who I was, because I had so wrongly anchored my identity and all these other things and people that without these things and people in my life anymore, I didn't know who I was, I felt dead, so I might as well be dead. And by saying what he said, he clued me into that, and sort of showed me that God is doing something good here. And I had written about freedom, preached about freedom talked about freedom. And here was God now doing the hard work to set me free. And so now I saw freedom as God's mission, freedom as God's goal, freedom as the light at the end of this very dark tunnel, freedom as the hope in a very hopeless moment. And so when I saw that When he helped me see that I started, I started recognizing sort of a method to God's madness, so to speak. And that really started turning the tide for me.
Roane Hunter 1:00:13
Wow. That was a that was a powerful sentence. By the way, I will steal that and I'll use it. Yeah, you can't do it counselor times, Pastor. You know we have the gift, the spiritual gift of plagiarize.
Tullian Tchividjian 1:00:30
yes. I've seen that.
Roane Hunter 1:00:31
Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the way I typically phrase it, it's like, you know, God grabs us by the scrotum. And he drags us through a keyhole. It feels like Yeah, right, when we're going through this. And as you say, you know, when we're in the crisis, when we're in the darkness. I believe as you just said that man, you know, Jesus came for our freedom. Yes. And and when we just like, yeah, we're open. We're transparent. I got nothing to hide, I hide nothing. You know, you're good. You said you kind of free to, like, tell it like it is. Yeah, it's a beautiful place.
Tullian Tchividjian 1:01:18
And I think when you see when someone's going through when someone's experiencing the consequences of bad decisions, it's very easy to think that those consequences equal punishment from God. And, you know, as a Christian, I believe that all of the punishment we deserved was meted out at the cross. So it's not punishment we're experiencing from God, we're experiencing the horizontal consequences of decisions. And, but it's not punishment from God, it's not condemnation from God, the whole horizontal consequences do not equal vertical condemnation. And the flip side of that is true as well, that no vertical condemnation does not mean no horizontal consequences. So if some guy asks me, well, in light of God's grace and forgiveness and unconditional love, why shouldn't I cheat on my wife? And my answer is because you'll screw up your life and you'll hurt people that you love, not because it's gonna affect God.
Roane Hunter 1:02:21
You'll be you'll be miserable, you'll be miserable.
Tullian Tchividjian 1:02:23
It's not because it's not because it's going to affect God or affect the way God feels about you. That was settled 2000 years ago. It's because you're going to hurt people you love, it's you're going to usher in guilt and shame and regret in your life, you're going to usher in burdens that you didn't want. So don't do it, because it's stupid dude. And hurt. You're hurting yourself and everybody else. That's why you're not doing it. Yes. And so when you're when you're going through that crucible of ache, like you described, the one thing that makes it at least moderately endurable is when you can see that freedom is God's goal in doing this not punishment, when you can see that God's goal in taking you through this is for you to be free, not for you to feel whipped. You know, that's that a that paints a very, very different picture of God than the one a lot of people have when they're going through crappy stuff, because they've done some really crappy things. They just think, Well, God, I'm experiencing this because God's pissed off at me. He's mad, and he's punishing me and he's taking me out to the woodshed. And that paints a picture of God is kind of that just wait till your father gets home kind of father. And that's not who he is to his people. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Paul said and Jesus said in Luke four, I have come to set the captives free. I mean, freedom is God's mission in our lives. And so when we see that, when we see that as the goal of God rather than punishment, teaching you a lesson. Then you know, it makes the suffering just a tad bit more endurable, because there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Roane Hunter 1:04:12
Yes, and we we we preach freedom. Because, as you said, that is the goal. And, you know, it's the it's like, I love your description of your church. Its recovery place disguised as a
Tullian Tchividjian 1:04:33
discovery of recovery place masquerading as a church.
Roane Hunter 1:04:36
Yes. Beautiful. And, you know, I, we talk about, you know, recovery. You know, Jesus talks about recovery the first time he speaks out in speaks in public. And it's just the idea of, you know, recovery is simply recovering the life that God intended us to live from the beginning. Before all hell broke loose. In, you know that that's what we're recovering. And so many people think, you know, recoveries about, you know, some program or some treatment or some something. And certainly those things are good. However, it really is the idea of like, Man, this life that God offers, and what he wanted from the beginning, it's available.
Tullian Tchividjian 1:05:23
Somebody, a friend of mine, not long ago, described the Christian life as adjusting to freedom, which I think is a great description, you know, it's not, I'm becoming better and better and more and more competent every day and less sinful. That's, that's not it. I've told our people for years now that my life doesn't look like Jesus, it looks like someone who needs Jesus, and my willingness and ability to admit that is a sign of growth. You know, we tend to think that growth is I'm getting better and better and better. Whereas in reality growth is I'm becoming increasingly aware of how weak I am, and how good God's grace is. That's growth. You know, it's always, it's always growth in our awareness of the grace we need and the grace we have, because of how jacked up we are. And so yeah, and I think a lot of people misunderstand, I know I did for many years, they misunderstand recovery, they hear the term recovery. And they automatically think of people in recovery programs because of alcohol, or drug abuse, or food or sex, or, you know, whatever. But I tell our people all the time, you know, if you're a human being, you're in recovery. If you we've all felt rejected, we've all felt betrayed, we've all betrayed other people, we've rejected other people, we all live with some measure of guilt, or regret, or shame, wishing we hadn't done certain things or broken certain relationships, certain people have broken relationships with us. If you're a human being you are in recovery. So the question is, it's not so much there are two kinds of people in this world, those in recovery and those who aren't it's there's two kinds of people in this world, those in recovery, who know that they are and those in recovery, who think that they aren't, but everyone's in recovery, whether they realize it or not.
Roane Hunter 1:07:25
Love it. I think you you if you could bottle that Pharisee repellent and figured out a way to market that sell it on the on the internet. That's a million dollar item that
Tullian Tchividjian 1:07:42
listen helped me with that, because I could sure use a million dollars.
Roane Hunter 1:07:48
Gosh, yes. Man, I just in your story, there's so much, man, we all get there, however we get there. And and then certainly, you know, God uses our brokenness, much more than he uses our resume. And very well. So your story is a beautiful picture of that. And will thank you, you know, the pain and the in the hurt and the everything that you've been through. Certainly, I believe it makes you much more qualified to be a pastor to be in ministry. And that's what it really is all about. Well,
Tullian Tchividjian 1:08:35
thank you. I I've said for years now that God loves and uses weak and fallen people who fail because there aren't any other kinds of people. So, so if you are a weak, fallen, broken human being you are qualified to be used by God. There's no question a
Roane Hunter 1:09:00
man so bonafide. Yeah, absolutely. Well, man, I we could I could continue this conversation for two days, I think. Just man so so grateful for you taking the time and joining us and I know that your story will be an encouragement as it has been to so many and just you know, God continues to use it. In in a in in just a great way. And so if if people want to get in touch with you tuning in to what you guys are doing down there, yeah. What's the best way? Yeah, for that? So
Tullian Tchividjian 1:09:45
the church website is just the sanctuary jupiter.com I think it's dot com might be.org might be both, I don't know. But we we have all my social media in Instagram is totally in. Tch, I don't spend much time on Twitter these days because it's such a toxic environment. But Facebook I think is totally and T. Instagram and I do I literally do my best to respond to as many messages as I get private messages that I get. And so people can reach me there. They can, you know, follow me there and reach me there. And if they need help with something, I'm happy to do my best to help them myself or point them in the right direction.
Roane Hunter 1:10:30
Alright man, so appreciate it. Thank you again. Appreciate welcome. Thanks for having me on. All right. Yes, sir.
Ben Derrick 1:10:40
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