Do You Have Space At Your Table With Dr. Brad Harper

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And we're back. And we are back from the recording studios of Multnomah University. Though not officially related to the. I mean, we kind of are.

We are.

The views aren't expressed, are just our own. There's no legal ramifications.

Welcome to MU Talks a new episode. There is. We have traditions. Can you imagine? We have traditions. And the tradition is that Rob will actually introduce our guest today. And we have a very, very good for you today. So here we go.

Very. Where are you from, Brad?

Originally from San Francisco Bay area in.

California, by the way, Dr. Brad Harper. I should probably mention that since we just restarted. Yes. A professor of the theology.

Church history. That's right.

And also, are you still. You're. You've been. Over the years, you've. You've chaired the Bible and theology.

Right, Right. Yeah. So I'm associate dean of Bible theology. Yeah.

Terrific. Best thing about living in California, growing up.

Best thing about living in California growing up. You are close to both the ocean and mountains. And that's a good deal. An ocean you can actually swim in.

Yeah. Oh, rub it in nice and warm.

Let's rub that in.

You have family?

I do. Been married for 35 years to Robin. Three kids, Drew, Bregan and Corey. They're all grown up and out of the house, which is cool. We're empty nesters. Every once in a while I will say to my wife, golly, I miss the kids, but I really like living with you. Just you.

I know. It's like you're dating again. Eh? We should offer a word of hope to this gentleman because he has three children. Just had a new one. Congratulations. Thank you.

But he's three under four.

He's working hard. So you know what this is like.

But I see hope.

But you know what this is like? You walk down the hallway, you open up the door to one of your kids rooms and you go, it looks exactly like it did yesterday. It looks like a hotel room. It's clean.

Empty. Nesting is okay. I like it personally.

You know, we can wrap the show here.

I got hope.

I got hope. I got. I got encouragement already.

It's better. Young families, hard days in those early days. Yeah. Well, important topic today.

Yes. So we had the blessing and honor to work with Dr. Brad Harper on a daily basis here. And Dr. Harper wrote a book a while ago that I got a chance to get in contact with. And just perusing through the book and having a few conversations with Dr. Harper on this, I realized that I got Educated. Further educated on a topic that we need to talk more about it. So I. I'm going to introduce the book. The book is called. And you can find it on Amazon, and please find it on Amazon. It's called Space at the Table. Conversations between an Evangelical Theologian and His Gay Son. I'm excited for us to talk about this today, so if you can walk us through the book, and definitely we're going to land on larger conversations on church and where we stand on this issue and how can we further the conversation. But one thing that I really appreciated, and I know our conversation is going to lead us there, what I really appreciated about even talking about this subject, on creating a space at the table, not just for the LGBTQ community, but for any. Anybody really in our lives. Is that how your conversational approach. And can we have a discussion. Can we truly have a legitimate, meaningful conversation on this? And that's why I welcome this conversation today. So walk us a little bit through Space at the Table.

Yeah, so sure. You know, I've been an Evangelical Christian all my life. Grew up in the church, was a pastor for 13 years. Very aware of the historic orthodox and evangelical position on marriage and sexuality. I affirm that view. And then God threw a monkey wrench into my life as a dad, and he gave me a son who's gay. And so all of a sudden, something that was primarily academic became something that was very, very personal to me, and it was about someone who I loved with my whole life. So what this meant for me and for my wife was as we began to walk with Drew through the reality of him understanding that he was gay, that he was attracted to men sexually as opposed to women, and what that meant for him, we had to think about, okay, where do we move forward with this as parents? And one of the early decisions we made was a, that relationship was going to matter more than anything else. We were going to stay in relationship with our son at all possible costs for us. We were very aware of the broad landscape of people in America who are conservative religious people who, when their kids come out to them, they say, get out. Of the 2 million people sleeping on the streets of America tonight, 40% of them are under 18. And 40% of them, or actually probably half, half of them would identify as lbgtq. And most of them are there because they were kicked out by their conservative religious parents. So this is a reality that we looked at and we said, we're not doing that at all. Possible, we're not doing that. We're going to stay in relationship with our son. And the second thing that we said is, we're not ashamed. We're not ashamed of our son. We love our son. He's beautiful, he's wonderful, he's creative, he's loving, he's caring, loves the underdog. He's a beautiful person created by God who also happens to have this reality in his life that creates a moral issue that we have to deal with. So, long story short, as Drew and I remained very, very close in our relationship for a number of years and continue to be. But there was a point in his life when he was a senior in high school where having been a Jesus follower and clearly saying, I love Jesus, I want to follow Jesus with my life. As a senior in high school, he said, I'm done. I'm done with Jesus, I'm done with the church. I'm gay. This is who I am. This is how I'm going to live my life. Get over it. And so, new phase of life. And we worked through a lot of difficulty for a number of years. And in the midst of working through our own clash of relationships, clash of morality. It was probably about six or seven years after him coming out where we had this conversation where I said to him, look, Drew, I am, as a college professor, as somebody who deals with 20 to 25 year olds all the time. I have people coming into my life, young people who are gay and who are Christian in a Christian family, and they don't know what to do about it. And they haven't told their parents. Then I have parents coming into my life saying, hey, I know you have a gay son. Our son just came out to us. What in the world do we do? And I said, drew, we need to tell our story. We need to tell the story of our relationship, about how we have committed to staying loving relationship with one another, despite the fact that we have significant disagreement on a serious moral issue that affects you deeply. So we decided to do that to write Space at the Table. And the way we decided to write it was that each chapter is Drew and I talking back and forth to each other. So we start with childhood, with his childhood. And I start by talking about my relationship with my own dad. I start by talking about his worth, my relationship with him, what I saw in him as a child. And then he responds back to me in the next chapter, talking about his sense of, of being a child and growing up with me and what the issues were and growing up in the church. And we go all the way through that really into his adulthood. And into years, not too far ago, not too long ago. So it's a conversation where we illustrate this process of disagreement, but staying in relationship with each other. And the idea being with issues like this in life, there needs to be space for everybody at the table. And the space at the table means there's space for disagreement, but it's disagreement in the midst of relationship. Right. We're going to stay committed to loving relationship with one another. And so really that's the theme. A space at the table. Yeah.

You know, by the way, one of the, one of the things I've always heard students talk about from your classes was the phrase live in the tension, which I love. Like I love because human beings were, we're sometimes small minded and we want to go to one extreme and the other, we just can't handle that. Wrestling with things and thinking through things. I love that anyways.

Yeah. Well, you know, as Christians, as we read the Bible and read about God's truth, there are some things that are black and white, but not very many.

There's a lot of nuance.

There's a lot of nuance, there's a lot of gray, there's a lot of complexity. And even when you take an issue in terms of how God designed marriage to be between a man and a woman, God says no to gay sex, that type of thing, which I think the Bible is pretty clear about. So we can look at that and go, well, that is black and white, isn't it? Well, yes, but once you move into a relationship with someone you love who holds a different view that complexifies everything. Because now it's not about how do I change my views necessarily. It's about how do I be in relationship with someone who disagrees with me about an issue that causes an enormous amount of pain. Right.

And how do you love your neighbor in that situation? Yeah, yeah.

It, it's, it's hard, it's difficult for people that have, have held views in that, in this space for so long and they've never actually been confronted with this and they're removed, far removed from this conversation. And that's why I want to go deeper in this conversation a little bit to see can we, what would you say to people that have never, have never dealt with this, with this subject and they, they use scripture to view. Cannot change in this regard. Right. I'm using scripture. Look, the Bible verses are clear on this. In this path, I cannot spend time with this person. I cannot talk to this person with these people. I have to be harsh against views that are different than mine.

Yeah. There's a difference between being harsh against a view and harsh against a person. Right. One of the places where I start with this when I talk in churches about this is to say, look, I believe the Bible says that marriage is to be between a man and a woman. The problem is that as evangelicals, often when we've talked about this issue, the pastor will talk about it. He'll go and quote all the. What the LGBTQ community calls the clobber passages that say, okay, it's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong. He'll do a whole sermon on that, and he'll say, okay, we're done. Next topic. And as if the only thing we have to figure out is what the correct theological, biblical, doctrinal idea is here. But the reality is that the same Bible that says some things about homosexuality and very few, by the way, is filled with conversations about loving our neighbors. And when Jesus is asked, what are the two things you need to be concerned about more than anything else? He says, love God and love your neighbor. And this Bible, this story that tells us about God's calling us to love our neighbor does not give us the freedom to choose which neighbors we will love and which neighbors we won't. So when our neighbors are gays, when our next door neighbors are lesbians, as mine are, that God who tells us what he says about marriage, says, love these people. Love these people.

One of the big ideas. One of the big ideas. Maybe the big idea of the Bible in my mind.

Absolutely. So what the church has to figure out is what does it look like for us to love our gay neighbors? Right. And one of our hugest concerns. Look, I just see this all the time. And you guys can do whatever you want to with this. I see. This is so much a part of, like, the bake, the wedding cake thing for the gay marriage is we are so concerned that if we love and welcome a gay person as a Christian, we're saying to them, oh, I support gay marriage. I think God's just fine with gay marriage.

That's somehow truth is in question.

Why do we think that if I go visit someone who killed somebody in prison, I go visit them and talk to them and love them, share the gospel with him. Am I supporting murder? Everybody?

Cheers for you if you do that.

Oh, I mean, it's just. It's an absurd idea. Right. So love of another person who I disagree with does not mean I support them. The moral position that they hold it does. It just Means I love them.

And it's always been confusing to me, like, how we've sort of given this special category of sin to this one sin. Like, like if you, if you struggle with worry. Let's say I struggle with worry. Sometimes I'm staying up all night worrying. Nobody's, you know, nobody's gonna, you know, hold placards against me. Or like, you know, it's kind of like, oh, that's a shame. You struggle with worry. You know, you're one of us. But suddenly, suddenly, because maybe some of us don't struggle with this one sin. It's like, oh, that one's bad, all mine. You know, Gluttony. Well, no big deal, gluttony. I mean, you know, it's just me.

So there's, there's, there's not a, A group of people from a Midwestern church that stand out your. Outside your house with placards that say, be anxious for nothing. But in all things, you know, don't worry. Worriers go to hell. God hates worriers. You know, we don't have that.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

It's weird.

Yeah.

Maybe it's just selfish. I don't know.

Yeah, well, we have raised this sin often to a very high level, and there's some, there's some reasons for that. Look, sex is very powerful.

Yeah, It's a big deal.

Sexuality is a very powerful thing for good or evil. It's part of most of much of our crime. It's part of our advertising. It fills our entertainment.

It.

It is a deeply powerful human reality. So when people disagree on it, they feel it at a deep, deep level. I get that. Okay. But we also have to come back to the Bible and look at how the Bible talks about sin and to recognize that. I don't really think the Bible puts this in a category that's greater than other things. Right. It puts it in lists of things that we hardly ever even think about. Right.

But says lots of them were guilty of.

That's right. But it puts them in the same list. So, yeah, it's unfortunate. And one of the questions the gay community has, you know, when, when somebody's thinking about, okay, I didn't grow up a Christian. I'm. I kind of want to investigate God. Maybe I should go to church and investigate this Jesus thing. They have questions like, are, if I come to church, are you going to see me being gay as a special sin. That's way above everything else. And, and, and the reality is they know that we do.

We do.

So how Then are they going to hear from us? How are they going to engage from us? They have questions like, if I come into your church as a gay man, will you automatically think that your children are in danger because I'm also a pedophile? And the answer is yes, we do think that. When in reality, these things have nothing to do with each other necessarily. One of the problems is when we posture ourselves that way on this issue, we put up a firewall for a gay person who wants to investigate Jesus even coming into our community, because he knows he's dead before he hits the front door, Right? And so we need to start rethinking, you know, these kinds of things.

And I think the invitation for the people that are actually listening to us on MU talks, and one of the main reasons I. We really wanted to tackle this is to invite people to really consider that when our position for what happens with the growing LGBTQ community is just political or of. Of dismissing and all that, what does that actually communicate for the love in creating that space at the table? It's concerning to me. I do want to bring our attention to something that I've learned a few years ago about the invisible line of the churches. So let me qualify that. There was somebody doing a research in Ethiopia on a very fascinating thing. There was a. There was a large church in Ethiopia, and right across the street from this church, there was a large parking lot where there were a lot of prostitutes. And this. This researcher got to observe that the dynamic between the church and the prostitutes in the parking lot across the street. What she's observed the case where one of the prostitutes took an initiative to walk across the street and go in the church and say, you know what? I want to give my life to Christ. And then the entire church came around that person and tried to help. I mean, some people came and supported with food and shelter and all this, and they just came alive to help them. But the entire pressure of crossing that invisible line was on that person, not on the church. And so the research question that came from the research I was reading from that church is, where is the invisible line? How far into that church? How many things did that person have to do to cross the street to enter the church to prove that they're serious, to do all these steps before the church realized, ah, okay, now we're in. Now we're good to help? We're fully dedicated to making sure that you're okay. But they had to go through a lot of, so where is that invisible line? And it left an echo in my mind, that even in this issue of. Of anyone close to lgbtq, and even. Even us mentioning this whole category is lgbtq. And we can. You say that, and it's done. It's a done deal. I know what I think about it, but you had it in your. In your household, you had an invisible line, and you pushed that behind your son and in front of him, you said, I'm gonna hold him here. I'm gonna build a relationship. And I want to talk a little bit about that. What are some practical steps that you think people, either they have it in your. In their homes or in their churches that they can actually take practically? Because on a day to day basis, we can say you should build a relationship. But how would they. What should they do? What should they. Is there anything that they can position themselves into really, truly building that space at that table?

Well, sure. And one of the things that I would say, and this came up in my mind as I was listening to you talk about the issue of these prostitutes is, is sometimes what we do with someone, and I suspect it happened in that situation with the prostitutes, and we do this with LGBTQ people too, is we say, okay, the person comes to the church, right? And this person says, I want to commit my life to Jesus Christ, or I want to investigate Jesus. Maybe they're not ready yet, or whatever. They come, they say, I'm really interested in this. The first thing we'll say is, you got to stop doing that first. Right? Oh, wow. You got to stop being a prostitute first. You got to stop being a gay person first. And then we can go on this process and. And again, getting back to your list, do we do that with people who gossip? Do we say, well, you need to stop gossiping before you can really start investigating a life? No, we would never do that. Right. So in the early church, when people came out of a pagan culture and wanted to follow Jesus, they spent a year catechizing these people before they would baptize them. And what that meant is they spent a year helping him understand this is what we believe. This is how Christians live. Are you sure you want to be committed to this? But the thing is, they were willing to engage this process of walking with these people towards really fully surrendering their lives to Jesus Christ. And it was a process, and it was a process that came through relationship and through being surrounded by the community, but it wasn't. Okay, if you want to know Jesus, you have to stop doing this. No, no, no, no. Let's just talk first about what it means to know Jesus. Let's talk about his love for you. Let's talk about what does it look like for you to realize that you are so loved by God in Christ that you are willing to turn towards him in all areas of your life? What might that look like? Such that you may get to the point along the way where the person goes, I think I need to stop being a prostitute. And then here's the deal. Then if the church wants that to happen, they need to go, yeah, we know, and we're going to help you, because we know you can't do it on your own because it's your only source of finances. Right? So do you see that kind of approach, that kind of communal relationship approach? I'll tell you another thing. I think evangelicals need to do either one on one or in the church, when someone comes who's a gay person who wants to investigate following Jesus, one of the first things we need to do is to apologize. We need to apologize and we need to say, I want to apologize for how my community has treated you as a gay person. We have said and done horrible things. Would you please forgive us? And the reality is that apology may have to come from a person who has never said or done anything like that. But the reality is, as evangelicals, we have to understand that when the LGBTQ community, that's not part of our community, when they think about us and they look at us, they see Westboro Baptist Church. That's what they think is God hates fags. But we're not like that. But they don't know that. To them, we're all of a piece. That's what evangelical Christians are. So we have to own.

The reverse happens. We think anything that has lgbtq, everybody's the same.

Absolutely. So we just have to own that that is part of our community, as much as we don't like it. And to say, you know what, I want to apologize to you for the pain and suffering that this has brought to you. And I can tell you I've seen that happen on numerous occasions. I've seen it happen with my son. And when a person does that, it just sweeps away so much fear and barriers and this type of stuff so that now relationship can start. And so that's a really important thing as well. I think another thing, similar to what I said earlier, is we have to understand that our most important job, if somebody gay person comes to our church, wants to investigate Jesus, our most important job is not to get them to agree with us that homosexuality is wrong. That's not our most important job. Our most important job is to help them understand the unbelievable love of them that God has for them through Christ and to introduce them to that love, because that love is transforming that love. Let's let God be the first person who really deals with them about their sexuality issues. Right. And we can come around and we'll see what that looks like.

Yeah, yeah. Very interesting. One thing that surprised me, and because I hear what you say and, you know, I'm pretty conservative guy, Like, I'm probably one of the more conservative guys on campus. I didn't go to a movie till I was 23. Still don't dance. You know, that kind of thing. Anyways, I think, though, you do play.

Hockey, which is similar.

I have a few.

I mean.

There'S a few outliers. But I think maybe you or maybe someone else told me that you've gotten some pushback from conservatives. And I can't for the life of me think why. Because everything you say feels orthodox to me.

Like, I think it is orthodox.

Yeah. Have you gotten pushed backwards?

Of course.

I get that confuses me.

I get. I get pushback. Oh, some of the pushback is in things like when I start talking about building relationships with people, loving them, caring, accepting them for who they are. There's often been in seminars that are doing someone standing up. Yeah. But you better make sure that they understand and read those passages that say if they don't stop this, they're going to hell. Okay, so first of all, A, I don't think that's what those passages mean.

Yeah, yeah.

If people in those passages all go to hell, if that's what it means, that they don't inherit the kingdom of God. Remember, there's adulterers and fornicators in there. So we're not going to see David or Solomon or Abraham or Jacob, you know, I mean. No, no, no, no. Those passages are about something a little different than that. But the other thing is too. Look again, my process in engaging people is not ever to surrender my theology of what scripture says about marriage. Listen, I have read the contemporary arguments that say, we've read the Bible wrong. God's fine with monogamous gay marriage. And if I thought those arguments were really good arguments biblically, I'd be the first adopter out of love of my son. Of course I would. I don't think they're great arguments. So I find myself in a situation where it is this tension, Rob, where I'm like, God calls me to love these people, care for Them, accept them, build relationships with them that hopefully lead them to Christ and whatever kind of transformation Christ, you know, once in their lives. But I'm also here dealing with this reality that I cannot surrender the truth that I believe scripture to teach. Because if the Bible's the inspired word of God, I have to submit myself to it, whether I'm comfortable with what it says or not. It's not about whether I'm comfortable with what the Bible says. You know what, there's a lot of things the Bible says that I'm not comfortable with, but the reality is, if it's the word of God, I have to submit myself to it, you know, personally. And so that's the tension that we find ourselves in. You know, what does it look like to surrender ourselves to the word of God on this, which creates difficulty for us in our relationship with LGBTQ people, but press on into that relationship anyway and love them. It's not easy.

Yeah. Now, by the way, generationally, it seems like the church has very different approaches to the issue. Like looking at young people nowadays, you know, you got the old. Some of the older folks, and God loved the older folks. Like, you know, I'm becoming an older folks, but like, you know, kind of a little bit angry sometimes and kind of judgmental. And then sometimes you get the young people at a camp or something and they're kind of like, why is the church so nasty, these people? Like, it's almost kind of like, is it possible for the church to fall off on. On either side of this issue? Like, too judgmental, too. I don't know, accepting. Is there? I don't know what you see with that.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And in fact, we're seeing that right now. Millennials and Gen Zs, especially as a whole.

Yeah.

As a category, think quite differently about this issue than their baby boomer evangelical parents. And for many of them, honestly, it's like, why is this such a big deal? Why do we care about how people love each other, for goodness sake? And the reality is this is splitting the American evangelical church right now. And what we're seeing is American evangelicalism splitting into affirming in non affirming churches. I don't see an end to that. I mean, that is going to continue. And for myself, I find myself being in some ways a sad person in the middle of that, saying, I really can't be on either side because this one over here is so judgmental. This one over here is surrendering something that I think the Bible teaches. And so I gotta find myself in the middle saying, let's hang on to both of these realities, truth and love, and live this out in a way that's complicated and difficult. But you know what? Simple is much easier. Black and white is much easier. And so I don't suspect that I, long term am going to be in the majority view in this.

A few, A few thoughts. We've barely scratched the surface on this very large topic and I. It's so ridiculous to even mention that. But I want, I want to make sure that whoever is listening to us on this podcast, this is a conversation that can continue. They can reach out to us and, and we can continue this conversation as much as we can. Would you agree or I'm curious what you think about this. That I think one of the major issues and every time you stereotype and you simplify this, it. You always lose something. Right. But one of the major issues that I've seen that I see in the evangelical church, that we're paralyzed to even talk about this. So generations don't talk even you know, when. So I was a youth pastor and the younger population wanted to talk about this. The older, the older people in the church, they just didn't even want to talk about this. There's nothing to talk about it. Or if you're in a workplace or if you're in any kind of organization, you're paralyzed to talk about it from a PC perspective. Hr, all these, you can't touch this from all that. There's just so many filters and filters and filter with where there's not a lot of space for conversation to happen on this. That's why I was really excited to even use this platform to at least continue the conversation. And so would you, would you agree that or I'm curious what you think about this. If, if the conversation would continue that, that actually would help if meaningful conversations would happen around this?

Well, yeah. And I think if one of the reasons that evangelicals have a difficult time talking about sexuality in general and this topic in particular is because mid 20th century evangelical theology and practice was largely about behavior modification. It was largely about what we look like on the outside. Right. So sex and sexuality was about that too. It was just simply about behavior. I mean, I can give you the entire youth group talk on sex that I got in the 1970s when I was in high school youth group. And it was simply keep your hands off each other. That was it. Next topic. And the reality is that what we need to do to have good conversations on this is we have to begin with relationship don't begin with behavior. Don't begin with rules. You begin with relationship. Because when you begin with relationship, what happens? You get people that can start to trust one another. And it's only when people can start to trust one another can they enter into a conversation that they know can be really difficult. Right? Yes, Because I can trust you, so I can have a difficult conversation with you. Right. And so for me, this is all about relationship. We begin with relationship, and then we begin to talk about things. So when my lesbian neighbors moved in next door, we didn't talk about this issue for a long time. We just worked together. We cut down trees together. We did things. Yeah. And then finally she brought it up, you know, one day and said, what do you, you know, what do you do? I'm a, I'm a college professor. Well, what do you teach? I teach Christian theology. She's like, oh, theology. I love theology. I, I, I, I, I'm trying to figure out what my place is in the world. And she goes, so what do you think about us? Yeah, you know, and it's like, but see, we had already worked together, we had already built a relationship which allowed her to believe that she might be safe bringing that up with me. And I was honest about what I thought about it. But I also said, my first call from God is to love you as my neighbor, not to judge you, you know, and she's like, yes. You know, and so. And they live next door to us for 17 years. You know, we've had lots of wonderful conversations, not all of them easy, but there's trust there, so we can have the conversation. So that's how I think we need to start.

I like that context for the conversation.

That's what Jesus would do. I mean, you look at the New Testament anyway.

Yes. And if we had more time, I would have loved to take this discussion to on a global scale, because I can only hope and pray that the rest of the world would actually look at the American Evangelical society that is dealing with this in a different way than having Putin here at one of the universities and saying, we do not have gay people in Russia. And I'm thinking, oh, Putin, Putin. Interesting, interesting statement. And Eastern Europe and Africa. Right. You know, President Obama was kicked out of a country just because he wanted to mention that. And, you know, the President said, you don't bring that agenda here being maybe completely ignorant. Ignorant of the fact that those practices or those people are in these countries. Right. But the church doesn't deal with that right now because they're not out. They're not vocal. They're not present in there, but they will. I think this is going to catch up with the rest of the world that, you know, the people that adopt this lifestyle and they're, they're involved in this, they're everywhere in the world. Right. I just can pray and hope that the church can actually learn a little bit from the American. The American evangelical. You know, what they're going through the pains of growing through. How do we talk about this? I can only hope and pray for that.

Our mistakes, maybe.

Yeah, yeah. And learn from those mistakes.

It's interesting. 1. One of the things that happens with me occasionally is I will be talking to overseas missionaries, white American overseas missionaries in those countries who have read my book, heard about what I do, and they'll come up to me and they'll go, we don't know how to talk about this on the mission field. We need help. Right. We need help to talk about it among ourselves, not to mention among the people. And yeah, there's just. They don't know how to do it.

Nope.

And so, yeah, there's a lot to grow.

Imagine. So, you know, I grew up in Eastern Europe. I don't think we've had in. In all my years of church, there was not one discussion on it because those. It was not needed. It was not in. In front of us. It was not next to us. It was never needed. So you have no context, no. Absolutely nothing to say on the topic or no information, and all of a sudden your face still, you know, respond to it. Yeah, go figure. I am very thankful for your presence here. I am also thankful that you are helping us in this regard and you've put your soul and your life out there. And it's in a book, so it's called Space at the table, which, by.

The way, that book has been very well received. Like, I've heard a lot, a lot. So folks out there, you should, yes. Do yourself a favor.

So go to Amazon. It's found everywhere, right. It's, you know, it's publicly available. Go and find it and read it. And also, also I. You guys already know that I'm Unapolog, apologetic about this. Dr. Brett Harper has a course in Multnomah plus@somonomaplus.com and it's called, conveniently called when God moves into your neighborhood, Talk about neighbors. So go, go find that course out in Monoma plus it's on the homepage. So I'm very excited. Thank you again for coming and being with us. Today. I am pretty certain that you're going to be with us again and again in some of our episodes down the road. And thank you.

Yeah.

Ready.

Do it. Take us out. Here comes the bass.

Are we ready?

I love this track.

Now, needless to say, we do have to say it in every episode, Rob.

I never get it right, though.

I know, but it's cool that it.

Uses it expressed on mulearn. In no way represent officially Multnomah University. Just three friends talking. Just three friends. It's been interesting.

Hey, thank you, everybody. Have a good one.