PODCAST | TELOS, The Hope in Heaven Today (feat. Len Wilson)

Resources:

Follow Len at lenwilson.us or on Twitter at @Len_Wilson

To get more resources: www.Inviteresources.com

Get a copy of TELOS : https://amzn.to/3JF2PnB

Christa Neidig:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, manager of marketing and business development here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast, I get to talk with Len Wilson, founder of Invite Resources. His passion and mission is to help ministries navigate obstacles and turn them into opportunities. In this podcast, Len talks about his heart behind the new book he co-wrote, Telos: The Hope in Heaven Today. He shares how culture has changed in the last half decade and the theology behind it. He shares ways to practically rely on the hope we have in Christ. We hope you enjoy this conversation.
Well, hey everyone, thanks so much for joining us today. I'm so excited I get to introduce you to Len Wilson. Len, thanks for joining us today.

Len Wilson:
Christa, it's nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Christa Neidig:
Of course. We're glad we get to hear all about your new book, where you've released it in December of '22, now we're in 2023 and it's already doing really, really well, and so I'm so glad to hear that. Do you mind telling the listeners just about your book a little bit?

Len Wilson:
Sure. It's called Telos: The Hope of Heaven Today, and I co-authored it with my mentor, my longtime friend, Leonard Sweet. Here's the paperback edition of it. It's definitely the thickest book I have ever written, so I've got room to make the font big on the spine there. So it's exciting. This book is really about five years in development. As I was going through my doctoral work under Len at Portland Seminary, I was asking a lot of questions about what was happening in our culture at the time, and just kind of the craziness of culture from the last half of this last decade to the present. And looking at that from a theological lens, I began to really think that so much what is happening and has been happening in our culture is based on bad theology about the future and bad theology about the end. And so this book was written in part to say, "Hey, maybe we need to rethink what we really mean when we say the end, when we talk about the Kingdom in our church, in the church life."

Christa Neidig:
That's great. And then also, I know we've had you on the podcast a couple times before, but would you mind just, for anyone who's new listening, tell us a little bit about your background and Invite Resources?

Len Wilson:
Sure. I'm publisher of Invite Press, president of Invite Resources. We're a almost three-year-old ministry startup based out of Plano, Texas. And we're looking at publishing, trying to do it a little differently. In fact, speaking of kingdom, we said to ourselves when we started this, we started Invite on the first day of shelter in place in March of '20. And we had had the vision for it here at my church at St. Andrew, there's the steeple, for several years. And when the pandemic started we said, "Well, there's no better time to launch this."
And so we did, but the driving question was, what does Christian publishing look like? What does publishing look like in the Kingdom of Heaven, is really what we said. So we've been doing a lot of things differently. My background as a full-time ministry, writing, publishing, worked in Nashville for a period, been on staff at large local churches. And so I had this experience with the world of writing, and speaking, and teaching to the larger church, and felt like there were a lot of things that we could approve upon, and so Invite has been an effort to do that.

Christa Neidig:
That's great. And we'll make sure to have a link in the show notes to Invite just if anyone wants to check that out that's listening. But the main reason why you're here is to talk more about your book and just the heart behind it. I know there's a lot leading up to it, and I just am excited to hear more about it. You talk about culture, and theology, and just the end time. You were telling me earlier what telos actually means in the Greek, which was news to me, I didn't even know that.

Len Wilson:
Yeah, it's one of the most underrepresented concepts because there is no direct English equivalent. So our translators have been doing the best they can when they convert the scriptures into English. Most of the time when you see the phrase "the end" in the New Testament, it's a reference to telos. But there's actually several forms of telos. It's an extremely common word and it's a real critical concept to the early church that's kind of been lost. So at a very basic level, it means the end, and in fact, we were going to name it the end, but we got some bad feedback early on, I thought, well, that's probably not a good idea. So we decided just to go with the actual Greek word instead. The book is thick because it takes a long time to really digest what it means, and what we've tried to do is to say what it doesn't mean.
So we have, on the first half of the book, there are six chapters devoted to what we call these isms and there's apocalypticism, utopianism, we name all these visions of the future and how they misrepresent the Kingdom of God in some way or form. And so each one of those chapters ends with a statement to say the Kingdom of God. For example, utopianism, we say the Kingdom of God is actually not something we build on our own. And the modern church has been doing a lot of "kingdom building" that really has not worked very well, and that's because the theology of it is off.

Christa Neidig:
That's great. And that's where we see ministries fall because of that a lot of the times. Yeah, I think it's really interesting, you do these six false endings and they all lead to, I believe you say, tragedy and despair.

Len Wilson:
Right. Yeah.

Christa Neidig:
And not what it's supposed to be, which is really interesting.

Len Wilson:
And this is out of my own history, Christa, because I was full on part of what we now call the Church Growth Era, the Church Growth Movement. When I first came up in ministry, we didn't know this was a moment in time, we just thought it was the way it was supposed to be, that we were out there building churches and building the Kingdom. But for anyone who knows that, and if you've listened to the Mars Hill Podcast, perhaps you have some glimpse of it, the dark underbelly of the Church Growth Era. And a lot of people began to ask 10 years ago or so, this isn't working, how do we do it better?
And that's a real disturbing question because if your whole orientation is around, we build it, then that became very challenging and very hard for church leaders to get their minds around. But Jesus is clear that we don't build the Kingdom, he builds the Kingdom, we receive the Kingdom. And that's a subtle nuance, but when we put it in our own minds that we're the ones doing the building, then we adopt this works theology, which ultimately, it puts it on us. We're not capable, spiritually, of handling that, so it ends in despair because we despair the fact that we can't achieve the Kingdom that we think that Jesus is tasking us to do. But in fact, Jesus is not asking us to build the Kingdom, so it's very grace filled. It was very liberating to realize this is the case.

Christa Neidig:
It feels like a very freeing book I feel like. Culturally, you look around, you turn the news on, you hear this, you hear that, and I just feel like there's a lot of relief in knowing, it's not what we build, it's not what we're doing. Because clearly we can't do that well, we need someone better to do it for us.

Len Wilson:
Right. Exactly. Yeah. In fact, Len Sweet called me out, it was the first month of the program, and I said a phrase that I had been saying, it was just an offhanded phrase I threw out. I said something about advancing the Kingdom, and that's a phrase I had used so many times before. And he just stopped me in my tracks, just called me out and said, "We don't advance the Kingdom, what are you talking about?" And so we just kind of got into this theological discussion, but that was like... Once I processed what he was saying, I was like, oh my gosh, I've been putting all this weight on myself. And we all have, all of us in the Church Growth Movement were doing that.

Christa Neidig:
And it's such a shift of mind and of culture, because we do. I think growing up in so many areas of ministry, we make it about ourselves. It's me. What do I get out of this? What are we doing? How am I going to be better? And it's not God. We lose sight of that. And I think there's a lot more pressure when we put it so much on ourselves. I think even in serving and leading certain areas of ministry, there's a lot of pressure we put on ourselves instead of reliance on God.

Len Wilson:
Yes.

Christa Neidig:
I had a mentor one time tell me... I was leading something at the time, and I think I was a little stressed out or carrying a burden of it, and she looked at me and she was like, "Christa, I'm going to say something really loving but also really mean and tell you that it's not about you here." And there was just a lot of weight lifted with that. You are right, this is not about Christa, this is about God. And she told me, she said, "God's going to move with or without you, so don't think it's so much on yourself."

Len Wilson:
Yeah. Absolutely. I've been through that experience too, and I think it's just something that we all in ministry have to learn at some point. Now, what's interesting to me also is that so much of the culture is still tied into this idea that we're building it, which is really a utopian idea. It's rooted in the enlightenment idea of progress that we're somehow going to progress our way to the Kingdom in the end. And you see that a lot in more secular approaches to political ideas right now.
But the flip side to that is this dark version that's apocalyptic that says, oh, the world's not getting better, the world's getting worse, and it's going to go down and down and down until there's a big special effects explosion then Jesus arrives. And we're like, that's not scripture either. And so that's also one of the six isms, is to say the apocalypticism. Now, the apocalyptic, the word technically by itself means something different, that means a revealing, but the way the world interprets it is a Michael Bay movie or something. And so you have this adjustment that we're trying to name. So those are two of these six isms in the book.

Christa Neidig:
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I'm just curious, and there may or may not be an answer to this, but with studying this and looking at the culture and the theology, have you noticed any trends that have changed with different generations or times of the world? Now we're in more of a technology culture. I was just curious if y'all have noticed any of those.

Len Wilson:
I think one of the big trends is that if you trace back the history of the philosophy of what I'm talking about, which is very rooted in the enlightenment, it goes back to the late 1600s. The enlightenment peaked before World War I. Basically, the whole world thought we were all going to drive our way to perfection. And in fact, the entire Social Gospel movement, I think this is fascinating, the entire Social Gospel movement started by Walter Rauschenbusch, who was a pastor in New York in the 19-teens. That was kind of blown up by World War I, philosophically, because everybody said, "Oh, wow, we're not improving. This is all going to hell. It's terrible what's happening." And in fact, Rauschenbusch himself tried to refute the Social Gospel movement that came out of his writings before he died, and that's carried forward in a church. And so you kind of have this split that was named by Rauschenbusch.
Whether you're on the political left or the political right is largely a function of your understanding of that theology. Whether or not you've studied him or not, then you have an opinion about that issue. And that's played out over the generations. And on the right side, you had church growth as a response to social justice on the left side. And I think what's happening with the newer generations is we're finally starting to get past some of this stuff a little bit. It's still there, but I see millennials and I see also some Gen Zers, my oldest is 21 and she's active in ministry and is asking great questions right now. And I see a desire to get past some of that split, that hundred-year-old split that was started before the first World War.

Christa Neidig:
That's great. No, that's really interesting. And to think of it that way, a hundred-year-old split, and just the ways that we're slowly starting to mend things or get past that is kind of cool. It brings a lot of hope to me. I want to talk a little bit more because you mentioned earlier the culture trends and then just bad theology. And I know that's a much deeper and longer conversation, but let's just dive into that, I want to hear you explaining and opening that up a little bit deeper.

Len Wilson:
Well, when Jesus says, "All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me." Then that's the statement that drives... Ultimately, these isms are questions of authority, is where we are putting our authority. And the church, over its 2000-year history, has been guilty over and over of synchronizing true christology and true orthodox understanding with whatever philosophical fad. Because philosophical fads are like megatrends, they can last decades or generations. And so Christianity gets blended into them, but then the trends change gradually.
And so it's really a question of authority because we have to go back and say, "Where is our true authority lie?" For example, in our current situation, does it lie in the four principles of the Enlightenment, which are science, reason, humanism and progress? Or are there ways in which Christianity is different than that? And to even ask that question is mind-blowing for people. Because if you really believe in science, or reason, or empiricism, then you say, "Well, maybe that's not always the case, maybe there is mystery." So hoping to understand that authority is in Jesus and in no other philosophy, is really the theological foundation of the book.

Christa Neidig:
Yeah. That's great. And then we mentioned briefly earlier, but I know Len Sweet helped you with this book as well, the two of you really wrote this. What was that relationship between you two, and then that led you and him to create this?

Len Wilson:
Yeah. Well, that's a great question. I've known Len since I got into ministry. I met him in 1993 when I went to get my MDiv. And if your listeners don't know Len Sweet, he's one of our greatest living theologians, in my opinion. He's written 70 something books. He's just really, really powerful in his leadership for many decades in the church. And so I had been with him in my master's level work, and had known him in ministry settings professionally for a while. But then when I wanted to go back and get my doctorate, he was really the only person that I wanted to go back and study with. I wanted to learn what he had been looking at. So the program, he was the lead, it's called the lead mentor, so he's the mentor over all the students. So you have some interaction, but limited interaction, so we were talking throughout the program.
But whenever I'd have a question like this idea of advancing the Kingdom, then I would shoot him a text or something and he would throw some nugget back at me. And so we were doing this for a while, and I'm writing and writing. But I'm also hitting walls because I think bigger than my capacity to understand what's happening and so I'm like, okay, I went down a rabbit hole here and I have no idea what I'm doing. But he would save me from that. So I would say the majority of the manuscript is mine, but many of the critical points are his because he would come in and say, "Wait a minute, you're off on this ditch over here, let me pull you back in." So he's critical of this success in that way as well.

Christa Neidig:
That's really great. I love that. And then I think this book for some is a big shift in perspective and changing the way we may even think or think about the world. What are some of the big takeaways you think readers will get from your book?

Len Wilson:
So the first half of the book is much denser because we're outlining the philosophy, and the history, and the theology of what's happening. But then the back half is hopefully more hopeful. So my sister's one of my readers, she's awesome. She reads everything I write. And so I sent this to her and she finished the first half and I said, "What'd you think?" And she said, "It's depressing." And I was like, well, it kind of is because we're saying all these things that are wrong with the world, but then the back half we try to say, "Okay, here's the hope of heaven today."
So then we talk about Jesus, we talk about the Kingdom. Jesus has the authority, and by the way, part of that is to say authority is not in a proposition, but it's in a person, so there's a difference there. And you name that, then you say he has all authority on heaven and Earth, and that leads to the Kingdom. And then understanding the Kingdom, then you understand telos in relationship to the Kingdom. So we kind of walk through these things, but then talk about how it applies to our lives. So it's both heady and also hopefully practical and encouraging at the same time.

Christa Neidig:
So what I'm is hearing is make it through the first half.

Len Wilson:
Or if you just skip to part two and you'll be fine.

Christa Neidig:
I like what you said about not proposition, but a person, the hope in Jesus. Would you explain what you mean by that?

Len Wilson:
Well, there's this idea right now, there's this phrase actually that Len Sweet and I both detests, this idea of your truth, my truth. Which is based on this experiential philosophy that says your experience defines your truth and there is no objective reality outside of that. And we're saying there is an objective reality, but in the old understanding, philosophically, that was a proposition. You could say truth is X. Reason defines truth, for example, or science defines truth.
And we're now living an age in which we realize there's limits to our understanding of science and reason, or experience, or tradition, or anything else you would look to, to say this is truth. And the only way to really name that is to say Jesus' truth, which so happens to be what Jesus says, right? I am the way, the truth, and the life. And so when you really break that down, then that means we're not dependent on saying that reason, or empiricism, or tradition, or all these other things that we all go through in the book, are truth. Because each one of those is limited, ultimately, and you'll hit a dead end if you pursue any one of those to its end.

Christa Neidig:
I love when that happens, when it's something so simple that we all memorized as kids, Jesus' truth, and then it takes this whole long discovery just to come back to, well, we looked right past it and we complicated it, as we do.

Len Wilson:
Absolutely. That's a hundred percent it. Yeah, you kind of get back to the end where hopefully there's a simplicity on the dark side of complexity, to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes. We have a simple understanding as children, we go through school, we adopt all these complex understandings and maybe they take us down these paths, down these ditches, but faith leads us back to the same simple understanding in the end, that it's all about Jesus.

Christa Neidig:
It is. And then you talked a little bit also in the second half of the book, how does that shape our day-to-day life when we walk in that hope and we walk in that true understanding?

Len Wilson:
One of the things that helped me personally as I was writing it and processing what was coming out, was this realization, just like with the advancing the Kingdom idea, this freeing idea that we can let go of worry about the future, worry about the church. You see all these articles like, oh, the church is declining, people aren't going, and so ministry leaders are up in arms. They're like, what do we do? When you say, no, ultimately it's not up to us. And part of that is, we touch on this crazy thing that, this is one of those examples, Christa, where I get way over my skis because I'm talking about time. And Len brought this in, this idea of maranatha is three tenses in one, it's past, present, and future. And we tend to think of the Kingdom as the future, and we're not yet at the Kingdom.
And so we have to do things in order for the Kingdom to come. But we say, no, the Kingdom is now. When Jesus said it is finished, he established the Kingdom, he resurrected, this is now the Kingdom. So the Kingdom is past, present, and future all at once. And when you realize that, it's both mind-blowing because you're like, how does that work? I don't really understand that. But at the same time it's also freeing because you realize that, again, it's not up to us. In fact, the time nature of that is how we structure the book. So every chapter is double time, out of time, in time, so all these time references throughout the book that, to me, ultimately, are encouraging, to get back to your question. Because I realized that we're in the Kingdom as believers, we're already here. We just need to learn to relax. I think appreciating grace and relaxing in the rhythms of life is actually one of the hardest things that we have to learn to do as believers.

Christa Neidig:
I think that's so good. I think that's something that probably isn't spoken out loud very often, but is very true. I think we all do that. Let me see. Because I know we only have so much time and I have so many questions. But if you had to tell someone who was slightly interested in the book to the listener, maybe this is interesting, what is one of the biggest pieces of a takeaway from the book? What's the ideal goal for the reader to take away or get out of this read?

Len Wilson:
I heard two different questions there. Let me respond to the... No, it's good. The first one there about the hooks or things that would interest people. The last of the isms is messianism, and it's a idea that we're going to look for a messiah. And I think history is somewhat cyclical, and we go through these eras where we say, "Somebody save us." And so we look for these authoritarian figures to come in our life, and we have authoritarian figures all over the world right now that are emerging, not just in America, but in every culture. And to me, that's a natural consequence, we've gone through every... The Jews did this, the Israelites. As they left Egypt, God says, "I'll be your leader." And they were like, "No, we actually want to have a leader we can see."
And so God said, "Okay, well here's Saul. And you have to understand, I'm giving you Saul, but you're not going to like what happens when you have an earthly king." And so that's what happens. And so if people are trying to understand politically what's happening in our culture today, the theological answer to that, to me, is this messianic desire for someone to save us when nobody outside of Jesus can do that work. And so we look to people to do that work and we can't find it. So to me, the book is extremely practical in the sense that it helps you to understand some of the ground shifting, crazy things that have been happening in our world these last few years. And I forgot the second part of your question, but that was the first part.

Christa Neidig:
That was great. My second part was, what do you want readers to take out of this book when they read it?

Len Wilson:
Another concept that we hit towards the end is the concept of Jubilee. We're so wide-ranging, Christa, I'm sorry, there's just so much to think about here. But Jubilee is tied to Sabbath and it's tied to the restoration of the Kingdom and all people to the garden. And when we talked about this idea that we don't have to earn it, but grace is present for us and the rhythm that comes with that, so the Sabbath has built into that. And learning the rhythms of that and being able to relax and to say, "Wow, Jesus came to free us, to release us. Jesus came to fulfill Jubilee." And if we can just accept that, then all the angst that we carry are all around us, and all the concern about mental health today, and all the anxiety, we can just put that to the side.

Christa Neidig:
That's so great. Len, thank you for hopping on this call with me today and being able to share with all of our listeners more about your book. Thank you for, I know all of the hours and time that went into writing a book. Why don't you tell our listeners where they can get their hands on their very own copy of this?

Len Wilson:
Sure. If you go to Amazon and search Telos: The Hope of Heaven Today by Leonard Sweet and Len Wilson, there it is. We also have the book direct on our website at inviteresources.com. And if you go to the Invite website, then I'll sign a copy for them as well.

Christa Neidig:
[inaudible 00:24:30]. That's great. And I'll make sure that we have our team link all of this in the show notes so that you can easily find those links. Len, thank you again so much for joining us today.

Len Wilson:
Thanks, Christa.

Christa Neidig:
Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderbloemen, we help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation, and diversity consulting services. Visit our website vanderbloemen.com to learn more. And subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts to keep up with our newest episodes. Thanks for listening.