Scathed by scandal and riddled with controversy, the American church today faces a credibility crisis. What is the way forward for renewal in our generation? Trevin Wax offers perspective from church history and the church around the world to help listeners recommit both to removing the rot from the church and fortifying the foundations of unchanging truth. It's time to rebuild.
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Season 2, Episode 10: Better Together: Denominations and the Hope of Evangelical Renewal
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In the first episode of this season, we looked at the reconstruction of Notre Dame after the fire, the painstaking work of refashioning and rebuilding a place that took centuries to construct. Rebuilding requires sacrifice… a dogged commitment to seeing the task through. If this is the case for churches, it’s also the case for families of churches,…
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Season 2, Episode 9: Family Breakdown and the Family of God
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The iconic family scenes we see in classic TV are not the norm for most people in American society today. Divorce has disrupted more families than ever before in our history. And the ripple effects go beyond the obvious heartache and loss, affecting even the banalities of annual rituals and traditions. Challenges to family life aren’t new. But the …
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Season 2, Episode 8: After the Worship Wars
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In the latter decades of the 20th century, many churches across the country shifted from a formal style of worship, with traditional and classical music, to a more informal style of worship, with praise choruses and rock-influenced instrumentation. These changes in worship didn’t happen without conflict. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, controversies beca…
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Season 2, Episode 7: The Spiritual Burnout Society
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For the past few years, sociologists and journalists have been describing millennials as “the burnout generation.” Now, there are reports that burnout and stress are on the rise with Gen Z as well. And then there’s the reality of spiritual burnout, the inability to feel the presence and power of God, a loss of desire for spiritual things. In the Bi…
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Season 2, Episode 6: No One Knows What’s Real Anymore
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We’ve entered a new era in terms of technology. AI is the most powerful predictive tool we’ve ever created. It’s really good at analyzing and predicting human behavior… like, scary good. And the new world of AI is leading to ethical dilemmas previous generations would have found unimaginable. What will happen when in the future, it becomes even har…
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Season 2, Episode 5: Gender Sanity in a World Gone Mad
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There will be no avoiding conversation about sex and gender in the days ahead, and as Christians, the starting place must be our convictions about reality. All our choices must flow from those convictions. Strong convictions are the prerequisite for true conversations. And convictions and compassion aren’t in opposition. When the world is falling e…
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Season 2, Episode 4: The Secret Catastrophe
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More and more commentators speak openly about the social and mental health consequences of porn: the degrading nature of warped expectations, the ever-more transgressive practices, the normalization of violence, and the dark underside of human trafficking. But most of the time, they stop short of pronouncing moral judgment about pornography in gene…
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Season 2, Episode 3: Boys to Men, For Mission
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All across the spectrum, you find commentators chattering away about the crisis of manhood in the wake of gender confusion, the denigration and disparagement of men traditionally involved in “men’s work,” and the quest for significance and identity among men who seem to be lost and lonely in our strange new world. What happens in a society where ma…
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Season 2, Episode 2: The De-Churching of America
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In the United States, we are experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of our country. Recent research shows about 15 percent of American adults — that’s 40 million people — have stopped going to church, and all of this, within the past 25 years. It’s a drop that has affected every region in the country, every theological …
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Season 2, Episode 1: Sledgehammers Don't Build Anything
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The continuing decline of institutional trust represents a seismic shift in our culture and society today. Some of that distrust is warranted. In season one, we looked at the credibility crisis facing the church on several fronts. We’ve considered the rot that’s in the church—rot that needs to be removed. But some of our institutional distrust come…
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In the first season of Reconstructing Faith, we looked at the credibility crisis facing the church today in a number of areas. In season two, we’re looking at specific challenges to rebuilding the church’s witness today. We’ll be talking about the decline of church attendance, the disappearance of institutional trust, the crisis of masculinity, the…
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Season 1, Episode 12: Season Finale: It's Time to Rebuild
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As you look at the church today, you may ache for the church. But maybe you ache because you love…. You love the church and know she can be better than this. And you love Jesus and know He deserves a Bride whose beauty showcases His. We’ve experienced a season of humiliation and pain, in which the Lord has seen fit to expose our sins and failures. …
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Season 1, Episode 11: Your Questions Answered
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In this series, we’ve been addressing the church’s credibility crisis, reflecting on the challenges of today while learning from church history and the church around the world. In this special episode of Reconstructing Faith, join Trevin Wax as he addresses some of the questions that you have sent in. Connect with Trevin on Twitter: @TrevinWax on F…
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Season 1, Episode 10: The Credible Apologist
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We’ve seen that there’s rot in the house of the Lord. Some of the rooms are dilapidated. In need of reconstruction and repair. It’s good to remind ourselves that the ultimate goal of addressing these challenges is not so we can reconstruct a healthier house, a more enduring edifice, for ourselves only. It’s so we can beckon others toward the light,…
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Season 1, Episode 9: The Silent Scandal
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So far, in this podcast, we’ve looked at various ways the church’s credibility has been harmed by a lack of consistency between our beliefs and our behaviors. These are the big issues that make headlines, that draw attention, that spark conversation. But what if there’s a problem so prevalent, so pervasive, so all-encompassing that we have a hard t…
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The stain of sexual abuse is one of the biggest reasons the church faces a crisis of credibility today. There’s mold in the house of the Lord. And with righteous anger and determination, we’ve got to say: this rot must be removed. On this episode of Reconstructing Faith, join Trevin Wax as he challenges the church to respond in ways that bring heal…
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Season 1, Episode 7: Can Anything Good Come From D.C.?
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If you’re active and involved in your church, you’ve probably noticed that things have gotten more tense regarding politics in recent years, and unless your church is monolithic in its political views, you’ve probably seen some division and debate. You want to apply your faith to your political involvement, yet you also want to avoid getting coopte…
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Season 1, Episode 6: Reckoning with Race
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In the past decade, many Christians have wrestled afresh with questions about racial injustice, racial disparities, racial prejudice and discrimination, and what racial reconciliation can and should look like in the church. There’s no avoiding this challenge. And if we truly believe God gets glory when we reflect the beautiful diversity of His king…
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Season 1, Episode 5: The Authority Question
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We can’t talk about renewing the church in our generation if we don’t put the question of abusive leadership on the table. But discussing leadership raises an even bigger question, one of authority, and how it is to be exercised. There’s no easy task in front of us. The problem is multifaceted. Shepherds who, for one reason or another, abuse their …
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Season 1, Episode 4: I Kissed Chastity Hello
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What if we can acknowledge with clarity some of the problems of purity culture while also rediscovering and fortifying the foundational Christian teaching about chastity? What if we can remove the rot and uphold the foundations, as a way of standing apart from the world for the good of the world? We need to distinguish what the Bible teaches, by ge…
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Season 1, Episode 3: The Water Is Toxic
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Social media primes us to see our life as a stage, a performing of an identity for our online community. These practices form and encourage negative character traits that lead us away from the kind of wholeness God desires for us. We get lonelier and more isolated, finding online communities that don’t ask much of us, often at the expense of flesh-…
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Season 1, Episode 2: Renewing the Church
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We’ve experienced a wave of terrible revelations about the condition of the church in the past decade. So much has come to light. And like homes that didn’t get the attention they needed after a flood, there’s rot, for sure. There’s mold in the house. Rotting floors. Sin has seeped in, and it’s left a watermark. And even after the floodwaters are g…
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Season 1, Episode 1: The Church's Credibility Crisis
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When we see leaders fall by the wayside either because of life or doctrine, the pain cuts in many directions all at once, with a lot of hurt left in the wake. The long-term effect of this kind of failure is a diminishing of the credibility of the church. Will God fail because of human weakness? No. But the church’s failures can become obstacles in …
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I’m Trevin Wax. In October, I’m starting a new podcast called Reconstructing Faith that examines the state of the American church’s witness. For years now, we’ve seen the church rocked by sin and scandal and our credibility as Christ’s followers has been diminished. Reconstructing Faith avoids the simplistic knee-jerk reactions you see on social me…
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