228: Laura Barringer & Scot McKnight and Becoming an Agent of Tov

Laura Barringer and Scot McKnight are the authors of the new book A Church Called Tov and it is an important one. Today, Laura and Scot share their sorrow at the news that Bill Hybels had been sexually inappropriate with women over his career. The response from Willow Creek bothered both of them deeply because Laura attended Willow and Scot had listened to Hybels over the years. As someone who trains pastors, Scot was concerned with the damage the Willow scandal would do to his students. We talk about what tov means and how to create a culture of goodness in our churches. Laura and Scot’s stories remind us that pursuing goodness is essential to the Christian life.

Listen to Laura and Scot’s story today!

Stories Laura and Scot shared:

The motivation for writing
Whether or not spiritual abuse is unique to large, Chicago area churches
Scot growing up in a world of “decisionism”
Scot praying to be filled with the Holy Spirit and having a spiritual experience
Scot going to major Christian publisher’s book stores in Grand Rapids
Laura coming to terms with not having a “moment” of coming to faith
How the news about Bill Hybels affected Laura
How good preachers mediate Christ
Scot reading outside his tradition and how reading the Gospels helped him
Why Laura felt a responsibility to speak out
How they found out about the scandal
Developing skills of discernment
The concept of tov in Scripture
Becoming an agent of tov yourself

Great quotes from Laura and Scot:

I grew into the faith as I grew.

We need to develop skills of discernment to see people who will lead toward toxicity and people who will work toward tov. (Scot)

Tov is a master category for understanding the way we are to live before God.

Any notion that we remain worthless or useless type people is an exaggeration of the emphasis of the Bible…the emphasis in the Bible is you were a sinner… and now you have been called to walk in the new ways of righteousness, and justice, and peace, and love, and grace.

Resources we mentioned:

Related episodes:

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