The World and Everything in It — January 17, 2020

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Good morning!

A leading pastor sparked a lot of reaction recently when he revealed his approach to the transgender issue.

GREEAR: My disposition would be to refer to them by their preferred pronoun. When we want to talk about gender, I will be clear with him on the truth.

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk with Southern Baptist Convention president J.D. Greear about how he balances grace and biblical truth. That’s ahead on Culture Friday. 

Plus families may want to hit the brakes before heading out to see the latest big family movie.

Also Myrna Brown talks with Todd Smith of Selah about finding beauty in the midst of terrible personal loss.

BASHAM: It’s Friday, January 17th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

BASHAM: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Senate passes USMCA » The new trade agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada sailed over its final legislative hurdle in the Senate on Thursday.

AUDIO: The ayes are 89, the nays are 10. The bill is passed.

The pact known as the USMCA will replace the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement—or NAFTA. Although lawmakers had concerns over some provisions, it eventually won wide bipartisan support.

President Trump is expected to sign the agreement into law soon. Mexico’s lawmakers already approved the deal, and the Canadian parliament is expected to take it up now that U.S. lawmakers have given their blessing.

Senate opens impeachment trial » The bipartisanship on display for the USMCA vote quickly faded as the Senate formally opened President Trump’s impeachment trial.

AUDIO: [Sound of clicking]

Four senior lawmakers escorted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts into the Senate chambers. He walked to the staccato rhythm of camera shutters documenting the historic moment.

ROBERTS: Senators, I attend the Senate in conformity with your notice for the purpose of joining with you for the trial of the President of the United States. I am now prepared to take the oath.

Thursday’s proceedings began when the House of Representatives’ seven impeachment managers formally delivered the articles of impeachment.

After the initial pomp and ceremony, the Senate adjourned the trial until next week. Opening arguments will begin Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office issued a report that could play a role in the trial. It said the White House broke the law by holding up aid to Ukraine for policy reasons, rather than budgetary constraints.

Ukraine begins investigation into Yovanovich surveillance » Ukrainian police are investigating claims that someone used electronic surveillance to monitor the former U.S. ambassador in Kyiv. 

Thursday’s announcement came two days after Democrats released documents provided by a former associate of President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Text messages suggested one of the president’s supporters had access to former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s location and cellphone use.

Denis Lenets is a deputy director in Ukraine’s Interior Ministry. He said such surveillance is illegal in Ukraine and violates the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

LENETS: Ukraine cannot ignore such illegal fact on its territory.

Ukranian officials said they have asked the FBI to hand over material relevant to the investigation. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov also suggested the United States should participate in the investigation.

The State Department has yet to comment.

Judge blocks Trump refugee order » A federal judge this week halted President Trump’s executive order—giving state and local officials the ability to turn away refugees. WORLD Radio’s Kristen Flavin reports. 

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte in Maryland ruled that the president’s order “flies in the face of clear congressional intent” in the 1980 Refugee Act. 

He issued a preliminary injunction, which means—at least for now—refugee resettlement agencies can decide where a person would best thrive.

President Trump issued the order in September and it was set to take effect in June. It required agencies to get written consent from state and local officials before resettling refugees in their jurisdictions. 

That drew heavy criticism from refugee advocates. But the president said he acted to respect communities that believe they do not have the jobs or resources needed to take in refugees.

Reporting for WORLD Radio, I’m Kristen Flavin. 

Trump announces new religious liberty rules » President Trump marked National Religious Freedom Day on Thursday by announcing new regulations to protect faith groups in public schools.

TRUMP: In a sacred principle of our republic, the government must never stand between the people and God. Yet in public schools around the country, authorities are stopping students and teachers from praying, sharing their faith or following their religious beliefs. … And we are doing something to stop that.

The new guidance requires states to verify that school districts have no policies limiting constitutionally protected prayer. States must refer any violators to the Education Department.

The president also ordered nine Cabinet departments to end the requirement that religious groups participating in federal programs must refer people to alternative providers upon request.

Third manager falls in MLB scandal » A third Major League Baseball team has sacked its manager this week in a growing sign-stealing scandal. 

On Thursday the New York Mets parted ways with Carlos Beltran before he even managed his first game. That’s because he was a player on the 2017 Houston Astros team the league has punished for stealing opposing pitchers’ signs. 

Houston promptly fired its manager and general manager after the league’s initial report became public on Monday. The Boston Red Sox then fired manager Alex Cora, who was a bench coach on the 2017 Astros team. 

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said the investigation continues. 

MANFRED: We are talking to people all over the industry: former employees, competitors, whatever. To the extent that we find other leads, we are going to follow these leads.

On Thursday former Mets manager Carlos Beltran accepted responsibility for his involvement. In a statement he said—quote—“As a veteran player on the team, I should’ve recognized the severity of the issue and truly regret the actions that were taken… I’m very sorry.”

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: the debate over whether Christians should practice “pronoun hospitality.”

Plus, the pro-life story behind a popular Christian song.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MEGAN BASHAM: It’s Friday, January 17th, 2020. Glad to have you along for The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Megan Basham.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher.  This week’s Culture Friday, we’ll just say here at the beginning, contains themes you may not be ready for your younger kids to hear. So we wanted to give you a heads up, take a pause here to give you the opportunity to hit the pause button if you feel like you need to. Because the topic is transgenderism.

What we’re going to talk about is how pastors might treat the subject. Well, more specifically, how a particular influential pastor treated the subject.

Before the holidays, on his podcast Ask Me Anything, pastor and president of the Southern Baptist Convention J.D. Greear sparked some headlines with his response to a question about transgender people and pronouns.

He suggested that Christians might consider something called “pronoun hospitality.”

GREEAR: If a transgender person came into our church, came into my life, I think my disposition would be to refer to them by their preferred pronoun. When we want to talk about gender, I will be clear with him on the truth. The question is, is that the battle front that you want to choose. 

I do think—and Andrew Walker points this out and I’ve got another guy named Preston Sprinkle who has some good thoughts on this—that you do see in the Bible evidence of this kind of generosity and accommodation of spirit in simple things like when they refer to different gods in the Old Testament. 

I mean, we know there’s only one God. But there’s a sense in which, I don’t know if I want to draw the battle front there. I’m going to declare the truth. I don’t know if the pronoun is exactly the place that I have to, you know, do it. … I’ve heard it called pronoun hospitality.

BASHAM: That response earned a lot of further responses from Christians, including some of our listeners who wrote into the program asking us to cover J.D. Greaar’s comments.

So we took that as a good opportunity to simply go straight to the horse’s mouth and call Pastor Greear and ask him about it.

Welcome to Culture Friday, J.D.!

J.D. GREEAR, GUEST: Megan, thank you guys for having me on. I’m a big fan of The World and Everything in It. It’s an honor to be here with you and your listeners.

BASHAM: So, to start out, I want to bring up the Nashville statement, because you signed that and I’d guess it took a lot of courage to sign, and plenty of pastors weren’t willing to do so. One tenet of the statement reads, “our duty [is] to speak the truth in love at all times, including when we speak to or about one another as male or female.”

Do you think that’s at odds with your podcast answer?

GREEAR: No, no and I gladly signed the Nashville Statement. I think it was a very important statement. I think it’s very timely and that statement was clear on a number of things, just about when it comes to gender and sexuality and historically what Christians have believed and those are things I hold very dear. 

Let me start with this. Michael Greene, the old Christian philosopher from Oxford, in his book Evangelism in the First Century, he talks about how in the body of Christ there are defenders of orthodoxy and there are missionaries. And he said a defender of orthodoxy is—their concern is to state things as clearly as possible and to show the difference between what the world believes and what the Bible teaches. He said the missionary, their role is in relationship to try to bridge the gap and try to love people and to move them toward the truth. He said the two should never be at odds. They should never contradict each other, but the approach that they take is different. 

In the roles that I play as president of the Southern Baptist Convention and a signer of the Nashville Statement, I’m a defender of orthodoxy. And as a pastor of a local church that has probably I think every weekend people that would be in the transgender category that would come or visit or at least somebody close to somebody there would be, I’m also a missionary and I’m trying to love them and move them and treat them as somebody made in the image of God and, so, yes, let me just say I profoundly agree that clarity on this issue—of all the things that we need to be clear on—we need to be clear right now on what gender is and what it is not.

EICHER: Well, let me turn to some of the sharpest criticism out there. Rod Dreher. He’s a very tough, very good opinion journalist at the American Conservative. And he said in his view, concepts like pronoun hospitality contribute to young people mutilating themselves with surgery and taking puberty blockers and hormones. 

And of course WORLD has done stories on people who have experienced lifelong regret after taking those kinds of actions.

Now, a word about where we’re coming from. And for that, let me read from our internal policy book, WORLD’s editorial style, and I’m quoting from it now, our policy is to “avoid reader confusion, use nouns rather than pronouns to refer to transgendered persons, recasting sentences whenever necessary… . We do not use made-up pronouns, except (if necessary) in a quotation. If a teenage boy wins a state women’s wrestling championship and we cannot avoid using a pronoun at some point, we write, ‘he won.’”

So, that’s where WORLD is coming from. And I understand a reporter in a news organization is different from a pastor. 

But you know, we’ve reported on some academic research on the subject of what the researcher called “rapid onset gender dysphoria.” To boil it way, way down, and at the risk of oversimplifying this phenomenon, the idea here is of gender dysphoria that’s essentially socially spread. Copycatting, in other words. It’s cool to be transgender.

So in light of that—hard question here, pastor, but you’ve faced tougher questioners than I am, but with respect:

If you make a compromise with pronouns, do you see any risk in contributing to a culture where it becomes more likely that this kind of confusion spreads, and leads people even to the point of life-altering surgeries?

GREEAR: Well, let me just make clear that I actually agree with your policy. I think it’s a very wise one and I would not—and I was not trying to address that in the comments that I made. I think clarity on the issue is absolutely essential. And I tried—in the context of that podcast, even longer than that minute or so that you played—I think that’s a theme that comes up multiple times that we have to be clear on this. 

Because basically what the situation I presented, Nick, is similar to what you quoted them because I’m acknowledging this is the word that you’re using. And if my use of a pronoun in that situation ever causes them any confusion as to what I believe and what God’s word teaches about the issue, then never would I use that pronoun or encourage anybody else to because truth is absolutely important. 

And if that’s the issue that we’re getting after. Once that has been clear. What leads a young person to get deceived and then mutilate themselves is confusion. It’s not the pronoun use, it’s what’s behind it. So, the question is if we’re clear on what we are saying about that, then in the moment when we’re talking with somebody, as we’re doing the give and take and interact, if you know and I know and you know that I know that this is not really what the Bible teaches and I’m kind of, you say basically this is what you’re saying, and for the sake of argument right now we’re going to use your term, I don’t think that is going to — I think there are other situations where we do that and it’s not considered to be lying because we’ve made clear what the truth actually is on this.

BASHAM: To kind of move from the one-on-one or personal or even an institutional policy, one of the writers that you mentioned in the podcast that has guided your thinking is Andrew Walker. And you pointed out his principle of avoiding being needlessly combative or confrontational.

I’ll confess that when I first heard that, what it immediately brought to mind for me was meat sacrificed to idols. I’m thinking of chapters 8 and 10 of 1 Corinthians. I want to ask you about, again, more of the witness perspective. Paul counsels that since many of the believers in the church at Corinth had come out of a lifestyle of idol worship, their consciences would be especially sensitive.

And he basically says if you and your brother are at the home of an unbeliever, don’t ask where the meat came from. Don’t be confrontational. But if someone tells you that meat was sacrificed to idols, then don’t eat it. Both for the sake of your brother and for the sake of the unbeliever.

Now, based on my reading, that principle has applications for our conversation here. And I have to be honest, they would lead me to a different conclusion than pronoun hospitality.

GREEAR: Yeah, well, so Romans 14 is the other place that he talks about that and what he says in Romans 14 is Paul puts himself definitely on the side that thinks that you should be able to eat meat that’s offered to an idol. He says, he quotes, basically says all things are clean for the Christian. And he calls those who don’t agree with him there, he calls them weak spiritually. So, it’s clear that he has an opinion on this and he feels free eating meat and he’s even free enough in a public letter like Romans say I think people who don’t see this are wrong. But what’s amazing is what he does after that. He then says unity in the body is more important than how I feel about this issue. I actually think that’s a marvelously relevant topic for this because I do think, Megan, there’s somebody like you that’s just convinced that in no situation—even if I’ve been clear on the truth and even if it’s clear that I’m kind of quoting what they’re saying—I just feel like I can’t do that. I think that’s a conviction that we can take in good conscience. If you’ve got somebody sitting right beside you that said, well, I think in that situation—like an Andrew Walker—who says I don’t need to confront you in this moment and I’m going to go along with what you’re saying even while I’m being clear. Well, if that’s the other side of it and you say well I’m really convinced of that side, I think unity in the body is more important than us insisting on uniformity on this.

EICHER: Let me ask you about a different kind of situation, Pastor Greear. This is part of what prompted our reaching out to you today. You discussed what your preference as a pastor would be, but the listener wrote in and asked for some specific advice in a different kind of situation. So let me quote from the email that we received: 

“I would be interested in what advice he would give to someone, say, in the medical field, where personal interaction and gender/biology are both critical issues.”

So, think about a doctor or a scientist in your congregation and they’re saying, “How do I deal with this and also speak the truth?”

GREEAR: Yeah, in that situation I’m probably going to do what I do in a lot of situations which is teach various principles. Tell them that, yes, this is going to be a difficult situation you’ve got to figure out and you’ve got to obey your conscience and what’s guided you by Scripture. If a person across from you comes up with a different conclusion as to what needs to be done in that moment, then I hope that’s something that you can exist in charity with one another and say, hey, we both believe the essential thing here, but how we’re applying it in this moment is not. My comments really are limited to the one-on-one relationship, not the journalistic standards that you brought up or how you deal in the medical profession. It’s merely—the context of what I was saying is those one-on-one relations. If he were asking me what should I do? I would say when in doubt, you err on the side of truth. I think being clear on it is more important. But when you’re in a situation where you’re like, I’ve been clear on truth but I also feel like this is not the place to draw the battle line. If somebody decides that because of that they’re going to go along with essentially quoting the person about what they’re saying about who they are, then that’s something I can leave to their conscience and say, you know, I understand what you’re wrestling with and I think this is a place where there can be unity in the body of Christ even when there’s a divergence of opinion. I think one of the most insidious things that takes place in the body of Christ, Nick, is our enemy takes lesser issues and makes them primary issues. That’s precisely why Paul wrote Romans 14. Paul thought that wasn’t an important question about meat being offered to idols. That’s why he called them weak because they didn’t understand that. He’s like, I want you to grow in your understanding. But he’s like, I’m not going to let an issue like that that you’re wrong about keep us from dividing with one another.

Let’s not get hung up there on those issues in a way that would bring division to the body of Christ. Because I think that does nothing but impede our gospel and delight our enemy.

EICHER: Well, J.D. Greear is the pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina and president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor Greear, thanks for wrestling through this with us.

GREEAR: Yeah! It is a wrestle and I’m sure we’ve got a lot to learn and we’ll keep doing it. But let’s be faithful and let’s be good witnesses, too.

MEGAN BASHAM: Today is Friday, January 17th, 2020. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Megan Basham.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It:  It’s the first big family film of 2020.

Dolittle. As in Dr. Dolittle, complete with the warm, whimsical looking trailers to promote the film. But, Megan, if I’m hearing you right, this one may not be the family-friendly film the marketing suggests.

BASHAM: Yeah, your hearing is in good order! This movie is based on Hugh Lofting’s classic British children’s stories from the 1920s. But only half the movie feels like it is. 

That half embodies all the proper charm an Anglophile’s heart could desire. It opens, as all English children’s stories should, in my opinion, in a wild wood hiding a mysterious, crumbling manor.

CLIP: Are you Dr. Dolittle? You can talk to animals? Yes.

Dreamy-eyed village lad, Stubbins, can’t bring himself to follow in his family’s footsteps and fire upon forest creatures. His gentle heart is rewarded by an invite from a talking parrot, played by Emma Thompson, to a secret animal sanctuary. There, he meets a pretty young aristocrat and an array of furry, feathered, and scaled hosts. At last he encounters the most eccentric man of science ever produced by the 19th century, an era famed for eccentric men of science. Doctor John Dolittle, played by Robert Downey Jr.

All ship-shape and Bristol fashion so far.

It’s when the animals start to speak that we sense the first whiff of danger.

CLIP: Are you even a bird? What bird stuff can you do? Well, what bear stuff can you do?

They all have inexplicably modern, American personalities. Still, even though his accent goes a bit wobbly and his performance is a bit whispery and subdued, Robert Downey Jr. offers a pleasingly crusty old Welshman. So our concern is easy enough to brush off. As Dolittle, Stubbins, and Lady Rose set off for Buckingham Palace on a mission to save her majesty, we settle in for a feast of charming Victoriana.

CLIP: We have no choice but to embark on this perilous journey.

And that’s when this sweet PG frolic becomes less Paddington and more South Park.

Every cheap, juvenile gag a lazy Hollywood screenwriter can be counted on to produce suddenly arrives to grate on parent’s nerves. There are scatological jokes like a dragon noisily passing gas while getting an unusual enema. There are puerile references to body parts, like a tiger named Barry roaring over an injury to crotch with cringe-worthy euphemism. There are inane puns, as when whales claim to be “flipping” someone off. And as if that weren’t enough, we also get obviously cut-off expletives and rhymes-with expletives, like when a squirrel expresses indifference using “duck” as a replacement for another four letter word.

It possesses all the wit and charm of antsy third grade boys trying to get a rise out of their friends during Sunday school.

Even the film’s trailer plays sly with how un-child-friendly some of the content is.

CLIP: Bleep, bleep, bleep. Okay, okay, stop, this is a family movie.

We already had a loud, crass, Americanized version of the story with 1998’s Eddie Murphy vehicle. We didn’t need a new one with an old accent.

MEGAN BASHAM: If you have kiddos running around the house—or, for that matter, a husband with a penchant for junk food—Brian Basham, I’m lookin’ at you—well, then you’ve probably had to deal with this.

Junk food residue wiped on the front of shirts. Wiped on the back of pants. Not to mention the couch cushions. 

Question is, what to call this orange, streaky scourge? Because you can’t solve a problem you can’t name.

But now we can.

The proper term for that dusty, junk food byproduct is “cheetle.” That’s what we are now to call Cheetos dust. It’s official. The snack maker Frito Lay put out a press release this week announcing the term.

EICHER: So, for the stylebook, then cheetle is both singular and plural? Not cheetles?

BASHAM: Right, like dust. Maybe it’ll even become a verb.

It’s funny, Cheetos and the resulting cheetle made their debut in 1948, but since that time people have evidently struggled with what to call Cheetos dust. 

I’m not sure why.

In my house, it’s just called, “Who did this?!”

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MEGAN BASHAM: Today is Friday, January 17th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. 

You know, there are only two kinds of people in this world: people who read WORLD Magazine and people who don’t. Now, we know that people who do read WORLD have friendships and family relationships with people who don’t—but who should be reading WORLD.

And one of our new year’s resolutions for 2020 is to help you out with that. Let’s call it 20-20 vision. We’re doing a pretty amazing thing between now and the end of next month: We’re offering two free months of WORLD Magazine to anyone you think ought to have it. Simple as that. All the details are at getworldnow.org.

This program has grown dramatically over the past few years, and it’s because one listener tells another about it. Maybe that’s your story.

And we want to do the same for the magazine whose journalism powers this program, WORLD Magazine: Help you introduce WORLD to others just like you.

BASHAM: Yes, I’m one of those WORLD Magazine writers, and very frequently you hear magazine writers and editors contributing content to The World and Everything in It. We’re one big, happy family at WORLD, and yeah, this offer is generous: Two months of our beautifully redesigned WORLD Magazine. I’ve seen it and it just looks great. It’s going to be rolling off the presses here over the next several days and going into the mailstream.

So, I like that idea of 20-20 vision: Introduce a friend or family member to WORLD. Go to get-world-now-dot-org, let us know where to send the magazine, whom we need to send it to, and at zero cost to you—all the cost to us—we will provide two full months of WORLD delivered to the homes of your friends.

EICHER: Easy to remember the web address: getworldnow.org. Limited time offer—between now and the end of next month. 

Well, coming next on The World and Everything in It: Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. 

January 1973, the United States Supreme Court considered a case called Roe versus Wade. The result was to overturn all state abortion laws and replace them with one of the most permissive abortion rules in the civilized world.

Eleven years later, President Ronald Regan designated January 22nd as “Sanctity of Human Life Day.” Since that time, many churches have recognized the third Sunday in January as “Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.”

BASHAM: This weekend families across the country will use this day to celebrate God’s gift of life.

Todd Smith, founding member of the contemporary Christian trio Selah is a husband and father. 

Twelve years ago he and his wife Angie made a life-changing decision while expecting their fourth child, a baby girl they named Audrey. WORLD Radio’s Myrna Brown spoke with him about it, and now we’ll hear the story in his own words. 

SONG: [I WILL CARRY YOU] There were photographs I wanted to take. Things I wanted to show you… 

TODD SMITH: We were at an ultrasound. It was in December. We were 18 weeks. We were trying for a boy. I guess I just make girls.

Early on, I mean immediately the technician looked worried. She looked at her and she said: “Is my baby gonna live?” And she said, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Her heart, her stomach, her kidneys were failing. No amniotic fluid was being created, so her body couldn’t develop.

They recommended that we terminate the pregnancy. The doctor was actually very compassionate. He was very caring, you know, but he was  just like, this one is not going to survive. 

We were told her bones were breaking her like multiple times. And she would be suffering. And so, you start to go in your head, man, what is the most compassionate thing to do? Obviously, an abortion is horrible as far as what they do and the pain she would experience, but it would end it.

Obviously, we were just devastated and left that room and then went to another doctor.

And he said, you are going to lose her. But, we were told she’d feel a lot of pain and he said, no. She knows what she knows and you can keep her as long as your body keeps her or as long as you want to do that. And so Angie really determined like, I want to get her to 32 weeks. I want to get her to an age of viability. We want to carry her until God takes her or we can get her to this point. 

So, we wrote this song called “I Will Carry You.” 

SONG: I will carry you… 

SMITH: So, she lived for about two and a half hours, and all the girls got to hold her, and she was beautiful. She had red hair. Her feet, they had twisted a little bit, but her bones weren’t broken the way that we visualized and thought it would be. 

It was a very peaceful day. Literally just knew we were being lifted by so many people praying and days before that were awful and days after that were awful. But that day in particular was just beautiful. Beautiful day.

SONG: I’ve shown her photographs of time beginning…

SMITH: Life is so precious. Who have we lost? The millions that have died, what they could bring to this world.

We would much rather have her with us, let me be clear, than go through the suffering or have a story to tell or write a book or write a song. If we had to do it over again, we would do the exact same thing. You know, we would do the exact same thing because she was worth it.

NICK EICHER: Well, it’s time to thank all the people who put the program together for you this week. Our thanks to these hardworking folks: Mindy Belz, Myrna Brown, Paul Butler,  Janie B. Cheaney, Kent Covington, Kristen Flavin, Jill Nelson, Trillia Newbell, Leigh Jones, Onize Ohikere, Andrée Seu Peterson, Mary Reichard, Sarah Schweinsberg, and Cal Thomas.

MEGAN BASHAM: Our audio engineers Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz stay up late to get the program to you early. J-C Derrick is managing editor, Marvin Olasky is editor in chief. 

And you make it all possible with your support and engagement with us. Thank you!

By the way, you’ll hear the third episode of our new podcast Effective Compassion tomorrow. Do go ahead and subscribe to it, but we’ll also drop it in this program feed on Saturday, because we really want you to hear it.

I hope you’ll worship in spirit and in truth this weekend. We’ll talk to you again on Monday!

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.