AI, Apologetics, and Viral Debates with Andy Steiger

Rob Chartrand (00:01.922)
Well, hey, we are just so thrilled to have on Church in the North, Andy Steiger. He's the founder and president of Apologetics Canada. Andy, welcome to Church in the North.

Andy Steiger (00:11.519)
Rob, it's good to be with you, man. Thanks for having me.

Rob Chartrand (00:14.114)
So for our listeners sake, I'm sure most people know who Apologetics Canada is, but how would you describe Apologetics Canada to the average person sitting in the pew?

Andy Steiger (00:25.504)
That's a question. How would I describe it? I would say that we're an evangelical, non-denominational, Christian charity in Canada that is an evangelistic organization. So one of the ways I actually put apologetics, know, apologetics is a Greek word. I hope our listeners know what that word is, right? It's a Greek word found in our Bibles in numerous passages.

most famously in 1 Peter 3.15, 16, 17, about being able, willing to give an answer or reason for the hope that we have in Jesus and to do so with gentleness and respect. So in Greek, word, know, apologia means to give an answer or a reason. And I think the thing that I often will say to people in church, because they, you know, I'm sure we'll get into this, Rob, but people either love apologetics or hate it. You know, I find that can be a very polarizing topic.

But I often just tell people, apologetics is a tool in the discipleship tool belt. It's not the only tool, but it's a valuable tool. I'd say it's a particularly valuable tool in our time. And it has been historically a part of that discipleship tool belt from the inception of Christianity. It has always been a part of our tradition.

Rob Chartrand (01:30.23)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Chartrand (01:46.028)
and you're giving people tools. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's talk about your backstory a little bit. You obviously, you didn't start your ministry in apologetics. You actually began in pastoral ministry. So let's map out your ministry journey. Tell us how you got started in ministry and up to the time where you are doing what you're currently doing.

Andy Steiger (01:47.938)
That's it. That's it. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (02:08.238)
Yeah, I'll give you the brief version, which ironically enough, I never wanted to be a pastor and I never wanted to be an apologist. So that's fun. I did not come from a Christian family. up in a pretty broken non-Christian family. Dad left my mom when I was young. I was born in Redding, California. My mom moved to Portland, Oregon with me and my three sisters. My mom became a Christian and I saw that transformation in her life and it had a huge impact on me.

I grew up believing life was meaningless until I saw my mom find meaning. And that began to change my perspective. I won't get into my whole story, but just to say that when I did find meaning and purpose in Jesus and my life was transformed by the gospel, I wanted to serve the Lord with my entire life. And for me, that meant missions. I wanted to be a missionary. When I gave my life to the Lord, I was introduced early on to a

mission opportunity to go to the Andes Mountains to hike the gospel into remote villages. And I said, yes, please. So I did that on three separate occasions, hiking into some very remote locations, bringing the gospels where I preached my first sermon to a bunch of, you'll love this Rob, to a bunch of sheep herders. My first sermon was, that Jesus is the good shepherd. Yeah, so that, I did, I did. I had a great,

Rob Chartrand (03:30.2)
That's so good. Did you have a translator? Okay.

Andy Steiger (03:36.11)
missionary, just a wonderful, godly man named Dave Greenman who translated for me and actually became a bit of a mentor to me. So I wanted to become a missionary, but that was not in the Lord's plans. And I don't even know sometimes how to think about that theologically because that's the direction I wanted to go in and those doors never opened for me. The door to pastoral ministry opened for me right after. So just a quick

backstory here. I heard about this place called Canada, this part of the US I thought nobody talked about. Yeah, I know it's pathetic. And so I remember I began to research this place, this Canada place, and found out that they had their own currency and that the currency wasn't as worth as much as the US currency. And this place started sounding magical to me, that I could go to school up there for less money.

Rob Chartrand (04:12.866)
And you're in Portland?

Andy Steiger (04:33.484)
So I packed up my car, drove up north and expected that it was going to be like a multi-day journey. It was a five hour drive, you know, to the border. Go to school in Canada, met my wife here and stayed ever since. And then I went right out of studies. I did a BA in biblical studies and I went straight into pastoral ministry. In total, I pastored for 20 years and loved every minute of it. I absolutely loved.

being a pastor. So that was that's kind how I got my start.

Rob Chartrand (05:06.574)
So what church were you pastoring at or churches?

Andy Steiger (05:09.934)
Yeah, two different denominations. The Baptist, Fellowship Baptist denomination, and the Mennonite Brethren MB denomination, which my wife is MB. so I'd never, being from Portland, Oregon, I'd never heard of Mennonites. And I expected them to be, you know, driving around on, with horse and buggy or something like that. I thought, I thought Amish sort of idea.

Rob Chartrand (05:21.942)
Okay. Yeah. But a lot of

Rob Chartrand (05:27.852)
Okay.

Rob Chartrand (05:34.07)
Right. Yeah, a little more advanced in Canada than the Pennsylvania Dutch. Yeah. So she attends like, did she just attend Mennonite churches or background like Mennonite as well? Her lineage. Okay. Okay.

Andy Steiger (05:39.703)
Yeah.

Andy Steiger (05:48.19)
yeah, full full Menno. Her maiden name is Schellenberg. Her parents came here from Paraguay. Their parents were refugees in South America. Yeah, full full full Menno.

Rob Chartrand (06:01.812)
Okay, so how did you then transition from your work in the church into your work now in apologetics? mean, were you doing apologetics already? Was it an interest to you and it kind of just carried over?

Andy Steiger (06:14.678)
I always had an interest in it, that's kind of a whole other story. I had always been theologically and philosophically inclined. I was always a deep thinker, but I never really felt like I had a place in the church. And I never really felt like my questions and thoughts had a place in the church. I was unaware of the intellectual tradition that the Christian church has that we should be so proud of.

What happened was I was pastoring. One day I asked my pastor to critique a sermon that I did and he said, listen, Andy, you're a great public speaker, but you lack depth. And I think he regrets saying that because I kid you not, wasn't, you know, but two weeks later that I resigned. Not because I was upset or anything, but he was right. So was like, okay, I need to get more depth. so I, my wife and I packed up our stuff and our kids and we went down to Los Angeles.

and I did my master's degree at Biola University. And it was there at Biola that I was really introduced into apologetics more deeply and found out. This was the part that was kind of a eye-opening moment for me. I don't know if you've ever had this moment, Rob, where you kind of like you found your people. You ever had like a moment like, oh, you're like, oh, this is my tribe. You know, and so I had like felt lost my whole life. And then I'm doing this, I'm in a car with a bunch of guys that love apologetics and girls that love apologetics.

Rob Chartrand (07:28.994)
Yeah. yeah.

Andy Steiger (07:41.206)
And we're talking, and I remember we talked for like an hour on a deep subject. And normally I'm lucky to get 15 minutes out of a person on a deep subject, you know? And we're an hour deep into this, like, and they're not done talking. They're loving this conversation. It was actually a really cool moment for me going, these are my people. And so that got me interested in apologetics. The thing that really turned the corner for me though on the whole thing was back in 2000,

nine, when I'm doing my master's degree, is at the height of the new atheist movement. And we have loads of young people leaving the church, know, upwards of 90 percent, both in the United States and Canada, of our young adults leaving the church. And I'm looking at these statistics, seeing the reality of it, and thinking, dear Lord, somebody's got to do something.

Rob Chartrand (08:35.096)
Hmm.

Andy Steiger (08:35.786)
And I was watching apologetics organizations in the United States doing an incredible job of really being missionaries. This was where the mission part of what God had done in my life really kind of teed up with apologetics. Because a missionary needs to know two things. They need to know the language and they need to know the culture. And I'm watching these apologetics organizations know the culture, they can speak the language, and I am seeing people come to faith and coming back to the faith.

And I thought, wow, Canada desperately needs something like this.

Rob Chartrand (09:10.808)
So, know, a couple of questions. mean, you were in your inter ministry 20 years, first of all, I mean, you're going back to school doing your masters at a bit of an older age. Did you? Was that a challenge? Or is that in between churches? Okay, okay.

Andy Steiger (09:21.546)
No, I was, that was in between. So like at that point I had, had pastored for like 10, a little over 10 years or something like that. Or, I'd have to do the math, but yeah, no, that would be, that would be midway. That'd be midway.

Rob Chartrand (09:32.236)
Okay.

Rob Chartrand (09:36.854)
Yeah. And how did your degree relate to this new apologetics movement that you were caught up in? What was your degree in? At Biola?

Andy Steiger (09:47.682)
Yeah, well, again, funny enough, when my wife and I went to Biola, we had every intentions of going off in the mission field. We had no intentions of coming back into pastoral ministry or starting an apologetics organization. But every mission agency that we applied to, they often just wouldn't even respond to our emails or inquiries. And I just got frustrated because I was thinking becoming a missionary should be easy. I'm going to have to raise my own support, which I was fully prepared to do.

but they're just not even giving me the time of day. So that's when I started being just, was one of those moments where you're like, okay, Lord, I clearly need to slow down and I need to be in prayer with you and see where you're leading. Because there's an interesting theological point here, Rob, that God's really pressed on me, especially through that situation. And that is, theologically speaking, if we believe that God knows us better than we know ourselves,

then we should always be attentive to where God's leading us because it means that he could lead us someplace better than we could lead ourselves. And that's definitely been true in my life. I would never have led myself into pastoral ministry and I would have never have led myself into apologetics and I have loved both of those dearly. And I still get to do missions on the side, so that's good. But the program that I was doing, it was a mix of apologetics and philosophy. Because I had already done a BA in biblical studies, I didn't want to do another.

Rob Chartrand (11:08.056)
Okay. So how did your

You don't need to read. Yeah, it'd be redundant. You don't need to take New Testament survey again at a higher level. Yeah. So how did your your new your advanced education and your new desire for apologetics change the way you led in your second church?

Andy Steiger (11:16.212)
Exactly.

Andy Steiger (11:30.06)
Well, so what happened was I came back to Canada, started Apologetics Canada, and led that full time for three years. And then, and I was pastoring during that time, but I was just helping out churches wherever they needed help. And then while that was happening, then a church, a larger church, but that's called Northview Community Church out here in BC, they asked me, yeah, you've had Mark? Okay, great, yeah.

Rob Chartrand (11:37.56)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Chartrand (11:41.73)
Yeah. Hmm. Okay. Yeah.

Rob Chartrand (11:52.556)
Yeah. Yeah, we've had Mark on that Mark on the podcast. Yeah. Twice, got on twice somehow. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (11:59.598)
Mark's a good friend of mine. Love that guy dearly. So I was working with this church because they wanted to host the next apologetics conference that we were hosting out here. And I went to do that with them. At that time, it was a different guy leading. That was Jeff Bucknum at that time. And I just laid into Jeff, honestly, where I was just like, Jeff, man.

Rob Chartrand (12:20.642)
Yes. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (12:26.594)
You got this large church doing great work, but you've got no young adults ministry. This is ridiculous. And young adults ministry, remember, that's what I was most concerned about. They were the ones leaving the church. And so it led to this conversation where you said, well, what if, what if you do it, And so, you know, pastors that are listening to this podcast, might find this interesting that we did something I had never seen done before. They, they, the church brought Apologetics Canada into the church and they brought our staff over into the church. They did our bookkeeping for free.

Rob Chartrand (12:33.325)
Mm-hmm.

Andy Steiger (12:56.204)
They paid my salary and they gave us the office space for free and they let us use their church for free. And we did that. We had that going for eight years. Just to finish that story off then, at the end of those eight years, I finished my PhD. I did my PhD at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. So I had to fly back and forth for that. And I told them, listen, I love you guys. I love North U Dearly. I attend there now. Because I always know pastors that are listening to this, they're always like,

Wonder what wonder went on there. You know, why why did you leave? I left because the Lord led me to go back to Apologetics Canada, but I still attend that church love that church. We laugh about it now. I volunteer there now. So we talk we laugh that you know, I once got paid to work at North you know, I work there for free but I just told them once my PhD is done. I'm gonna go back full-time to Apologetics Canada, but to answer your question then how did that impact man? Apologetics was was a part of everything I did

as a pastor moving forward. It was a part of everything that I did. we as pastors, and we'll get into this I'm sure in the podcast, but apologetics right now is such an important tool in the discipleship tool belt, particularly for young adults and especially for those in university.

Rob Chartrand (14:17.016)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you got kids?

Andy Steiger (14:21.518)
Yeah, I have two boys. One is 17. He's graduating this year. Yeah, just got accepted at UBC. What's that? Yeah, he wants to go into the sciences. He wants to into physics. So he's at UBC or going to be going to UBC. then my other son, William, we'll probably be sending him off to Briar Crest.

Rob Chartrand (14:26.124)
Wow. He's sending the Briar Crest. He's sending the Briar Crest now. He's going to university.

Andy Steiger (14:48.587)
I won't be surprised if he goes into ministry. William is in grade 10.

Rob Chartrand (14:50.626)
Hmm. Okay. So I'm just, I'm just looking into your world during that year. You're flying off to Scotland. You're finishing a PhD. You're managing apologetics, Canada, not for profit. You're managing a ministry. you've got family and kids and you wrote a book like that must've been crazy. how did you find margin in your life?

Andy Steiger (15:06.252)
And I wrote a And numerous chapters for other books. Yeah, you know what I found? This is gonna surprise people, but I make a lot of time for my family. You could ask my kids and be like, hey, did your dad make time for you? Their answer would be, yeah, of course he did. And I could tell you some stories that might surprise people. Because for me, I grew up without a dad.

So for me, having a dad was the most important thing. Being, sorry, being a good father was the most important thing for me. So at any rate, how did I do all that? The way that I did all of that is I just woke up early and this is the key. I woke up early every day. So just consistently in the morning and I'm telling you, you would be shocked at what you can do with your life if you just devoted two hours every morning to

Rob Chartrand (15:38.178)
Being a dad, yeah.

Rob Chartrand (15:55.074)
Mm-hmm.

Andy Steiger (16:04.056)
to writing a book, writing your PhD or whatever it is. Yep, that's exactly it. And that's why I did it, because I didn't want my kids to ever be like, man, where's dad? Why is he always studying? They never really saw it, not until the very end. The very end, I'd lock myself away for like three weeks to finish my dissertation. other than that, they really never saw me away. So one last thing on that just to encourage people.

Rob Chartrand (16:08.172)
before the kids get up and the family gets crazy, yeah.

Rob Chartrand (16:24.631)
Right.

Rob Chartrand (16:30.188)
Hmm. Wow.

Andy Steiger (16:33.75)
So I didn't watch a lot of TV either. I think a lot of people would be just shocked, I think, at how much of their life they waste watching TV or scrolling online. And I was just really dedicated with that time.

Rob Chartrand (16:43.256)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, good for you. Wow. Okay, I'm going to turn the page a little bit here. I want to talk about Apologetics Canada. Before you and I, we were chatting and you said that you wanted to be very clear. It's not an issues based organization, but it's a gospel centered organization. And of course, just hearing your story right now, I mean, that makes perfect sense. But can you explain the difference between an issues based organization and a gospel centered one?

Andy Steiger (17:14.636)
Yeah, this to me is such an important distinction. And it's an important distinction on two parts, I'd say. One is, when I came back to Canada and started Apologetics Canada, I was really shocked. by the way, here's a fun story on that. The organization I saw in the US, in California, just crushing it, was called Apologetics.com. So when I came to Canada, I saw myself being Apologetics.com Canada. We ended up dropping the dot com.

And that's how we became Apologetics Canada.

Rob Chartrand (17:46.638)
OK, so you had the URL apologetics.com the domain. OK, OK.

Andy Steiger (17:49.646)
my friends did in LA. And so they're still my friends, love those guys dearly, they helped me out a lot. But I kind of saw myself as an extension to them. And then we quickly realized, nah, they're doing their own thing, we're doing our own thing. And it was all good. Okay, so one of the things I found though, when I came back and started this organization, is that a lot of older people in the church really didn't like apologetics because they had seen it done poorly in the past. They had seen it

in very argumentative fashion, and they saw it as being very combative as well. I don't think that they really understood what it was because they saw it as being this more issues-based, which I'll explain here in a second, and they didn't see it as gospel-based. Now, on the same token, all the young people loved apologetics and loved what we were doing.

and embraced it wholeheartedly. So it was just kind of interesting on the one hand, older people not so much and we had to like convince them of the importance, younger people embraced it wholeheartedly because they were just felt attacked by the culture nonstop and just needed help. with regards then, so that's one level of they just have to appreciate is in the church, not everybody loves apologetics and not everybody hates apologetics. The thing though that I noticed is that some organizations

Rob Chartrand (19:07.33)
Yeah.

Andy Steiger (19:13.728)
were just, they're issue based. So for example, their issue is young earth, for example, or their issue or creation, know, creation, whatever that looks like. Some are older, right? And some are theistic evolution. Like that's just their thing. Like that's the lane they run in. Some are intelligent design. That's the lane they run. It's kind of interesting, right? There are flavors in that. Then there's others that abortion is their issue and that's the lane they run in.

Rob Chartrand (19:36.886)
Yeah, for sure.

Andy Steiger (19:43.82)
And so we had to make it very clear because everybody wanted to judge us, of course, when we're starting this new organization in Canada going, okay, what category are you? What issue are you? And we just wanted to make it very clear from the beginning that we are about the gospel. We are an evangelistic organization that is what we call primary issues focused. That's not to diminish the importance of, say, work on abortion. I think that that's important work.

But that's not us. That's not the Lane Rerunning. We are an evangelistic organization, so we are going to talk about issues that relate directly to the gospel.

Rob Chartrand (20:22.68)
Okay. Well, I mean, absolutely, absolutely. And I mean, that then makes sense for the helpful video series you guys have created. Can I Trust the Bible? Which, yeah, it's fantastic. The quality, the content is brilliant. As a matter of fact, I don't know if you know this, I think I told you, but for our Leadership Essentials video series that we've done for...

Andy Steiger (20:24.514)
Does that make sense?

Rob Chartrand (20:50.338)
for high school students. So it's for youth groups that are developing youth ministry leadership pathways. In our second video, we recommend, hey, stop the video right now. Go watch the trailer for this and then go and watch this series with your youth leaders because it's fantastic. So yeah, there are a lot of things you could have chosen for a project. Why'd you choose this project? Because it's a big endeavor that you guys have undertaken.

Andy Steiger (21:08.824)
Yeah. Well, thank you.

Andy Steiger (21:20.551)
Yeah, it was kind of funny. I'd say two reasons. One is because we always try to lean into the expertise of our staff. So we've done a number of series over the year. And I don't know if you noticed, but we've actually won a short film of the year. We've won People's Choice. We've had videos that have... This was a video series we did called The Human Project with Power to Change that was in...

Rob Chartrand (21:40.46)
No, I didn't know that.

Andy Steiger (21:48.92)
film festivals around the world. So we've been creating resources from day one of starting Apologetics Canada because I realized being an itinerant speaker is just not possible, unless you want to hate your life. If you want to be on a plane constantly, and some people do it, God bless them, but I was just, I don't want to be one of those people. And we realized if we could reach more people, particularly in Canada, given how vast Canada is, if we created videos. So that was one of the reasons why

we began to create those.

Rob Chartrand (22:18.744)
Okay. Is this one bigger in scope though? mean, like you're going overseas and you're filming in like remote places.

Andy Steiger (22:25.398)
I know this might surprise you, in some ways it's actually smaller in scope. When we did the human project, we filmed in Uganda, South Korea. Our other video series was we filmed in Nepal and what's that?

Rob Chartrand (22:31.936)
Okay, okay. I am not familiar with it. I gotta do my homework. I gotta do my homework. I failed you as a podcast host.

Andy Steiger (22:39.01)
That's all good. No, no, that's honestly, that's all good. But yeah, we've always filmed abroad. We'll film wherever. But here's something that I think is actually important. And let me just bring this up because I know that there's pastors that are listening to this and I just want to I want to encourage you and challenge listeners on this one. The Can I Trust the Bible series is the most popular video that we've done. That one in the Thinking series.

Rob Chartrand (22:59.992)
Mm-hmm.

Andy Steiger (23:08.556)
Those have been wildly popular. But just take the, can I trust the Bible? I'm not the lead guy on that. My staff member, Wesley Huff, is the main guy on that video. And I told Wes something. I said, Wes, when we were doing this, I'm like, we're gonna, as an organization, we're gonna invest a lot of money and time into you. And I'm telling you right now, my time in pastoral ministry, that would have never have happened. We live in a culture that is just so celebrity driven that it's like,

Whoever is the lead pastor, that's who we lift up and all of our money, resources, it just goes to that person, right? Lift them up sort of idea. And we've never been like that as an organization. We're like, we want to lift up, we use our staff and have them create all sorts of resources because I want to empower them and see them doing ministry. And this series, as you know, has exploded and taken off and Wes has received a lot of...

Rob Chartrand (23:45.272)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (24:06.136)
credit for it as he should, and a lot of people now love Wes and that's all great and everything. But it's interesting from a leadership perspective, because for me, I have to do two things, right? I gotta remain humble in the midst of that, and celebrate his success, and champion him, and continue to champion him. And I just wonder how many of us in pastoral ministry are willing to do that. Am I making sense, man?

Rob Chartrand (24:33.484)
Yeah. absolutely. Absolutely. And so it's about empowering a team and having the humility to say, I can fade into the dark into the background here. And that's fine, because it's it's not about me. Yeah. Yeah. And and to recognize, I think the giftedness of people in your team, like that's Wesley sweet spot. That's his lane. Right. And you've got your own lanes. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (24:44.77)
And that's fine. That's right, it's about Jesus.

Andy Steiger (24:56.098)
Yeah, so you asked why do we do the Bible? Well, because that's Wes's sweet spot, that's his lane. But it would be more than that, by the way, that this is a huge issue in our culture right now, is the Bible.

Rob Chartrand (25:03.736)
Hmm.

Rob Chartrand (25:07.5)
Yeah. So let me ask you a question about that then, because some would say, mean, evangelicals work really, really hard to defend the Bible, the Bible, the Bible. But is that the strongest starting point for a Christian apologetic or is it not the reliability of the resurrection?

Andy Steiger (25:24.45)
Well, that's the problem, right? They're so intertwined. Yeah, because you say, we have good reason to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. really? Where is that? it's found in the Bible. Right? Like, okay. So tell me about this Bible.

Rob Chartrand (25:25.484)
And they're interrelated, right? Right, yeah.

Rob Chartrand (25:34.712)
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But do you know what I mean? The fundamental point of our apologetic is the resurrection and all goes out from there, but you can't get there without reliability of the Bible. mean, it's historicity and et cetera.

Andy Steiger (25:47.404)
Right, you gotta trust the Bible. And this is kind of the irony of it that, again, just to speak to listeners on, that you gotta be careful, is a lot of people will, I have this all the time when I speak at places or even when I teach, students will ask me, well, what evidence do we have for the resurrection outside of the Bible? And you're like, well, I'll give you evidence for it, but you just need to appreciate that as you're asking that question, are you asking that because you don't think that the gospels are reliable? Because the irony is,

The gospels are what we have the most, are best attested for. These are the most, when you're talking about antiquity, you don't get any more reliable than the gospels when you're talking about, know, historicity. We have more and better information for Jesus than we do, you know, Caesar at the time of Jesus, Tiberius, like, that's crazy.

Rob Chartrand (26:30.092)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Chartrand (26:45.048)
or the Republic or whatever, you know, so many different documents from antiquity. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (26:50.188)
Yeah, so that's one thing that I'm always wanting to remind people of. Don't ask that in a way that's discrediting the Bible. You need to appreciate how reliable the Bible actually is and that we can trust it. So this then becomes the foundation that we're going to know who Jesus is, what He said, did, and whether or not He rose from the dead. Again, though, we can demonstrate that there is evidence outside of the Bible to

corroborate this as well.

Rob Chartrand (27:20.406)
Yeah. Now, is the evidence outside of the Bible what people say that they hear Christians say, or is it what people have in fact witnessed though? Do you know anything that has a secondary effect?

Andy Steiger (27:31.342)
Yeah, are you saying like the evidence outside the Bible is that just people saying what the Christians said? Yeah, well, yeah, one of the things that I think is interesting about, say, take Josephus as an example, that Josephus mentions Jesus and John the Baptist, but he also mentions Jesus' brother James and tells us that James died for his belief in Jesus. Right, to me, that's actually really powerful.

Rob Chartrand (27:37.036)
Yeah, like Josephus, for example, right? He's not.

Rob Chartrand (27:58.84)
Mm-hmm.

Andy Steiger (27:58.862)
because when we read the gospel, it's powerful on two fronts. One is it's powerful because it's telling us there is outside historical information that this person not only existed, but believed that his brother rose from the dead and died for that belief. It also gives us a date. We know that that happened in AD 62. Yeah, and now...

Rob Chartrand (28:20.406)
Right, so proximity.

Andy Steiger (28:23.566)
Now take this back to the Bible. When we go to the Bible, the Bible only tells us the death of one of the disciples. And that's James, but not Jesus' brother, it's James the brother of John. And that happens in Acts chapter 12. And we could date when that happened too, right? So that's in the 50s. So it begins to give you this perspective. You're like, okay, the Bible told me that that lesser James died, but it doesn't tell me about this

leader of the church, James, the brother of Jesus. So it would indicate, well, James hasn't died yet. Do you understand what I'm saying? It actually helps us as we're dating the Bible.

Rob Chartrand (28:59.818)
Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, which which, you know, helps to support its reliability. You know, it's not a second, third century document that was fabricated. Constantine locks some people in a room and said, don't come out till you've got it all written. The classic trope. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I appreciate like I think it was Blaise Pascal. said, I believe those witnesses who get their throats cut.

Andy Steiger (29:14.072)
That's right.

That's exactly it.

Andy Steiger (29:28.578)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Rob Chartrand (29:29.846)
right? To some of them to die for their faith. I mean, why would they do that ultimately at the end of the day?

Andy Steiger (29:34.954)
Especially if it's your brother and the Bible tells you that his brother thought he was crazy. And then it changes. I know, I find it persuasive.

Rob Chartrand (29:42.946)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Chartrand (29:48.054)
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Well, and it's all taken together. So there's so many of those pieces that you have to pull together to. And that's why we need apologists, because we don't have all that information accessible at all times. And I appreciate, you said, instead of going from conference to conference, you you go to a conference. I don't remember what I heard at a conference 20 years ago, but yours is online. Like we can access it at any time and it's available and it's categorized and we can look it up and, OK, that's a good argument.

Andy Steiger (30:07.95)
Hmm. Right.

Andy Steiger (30:17.218)
Right, and by the way, for people that are interested, the Can I Trust the Bible series is free, it's online, you can go to YouTube and check it out. But one of the things that we do in that series too is introduce people to ideas that maybe they've never even heard about before. Like one of the ways that we can demonstrate the reliability of the Bible is the way that the Bible uses names. So Wes Huff, as we were talking about, was recently on the Joe Rogan podcast and

He showed this video that we created, this animation that we created, showing, look at the names. A lot of people read their Bible. See, this is how you can include apologetics into your pastoral work. A lot of people read the Bible and they'll see that Peter's name is changed from Simon to Peter, or they can see that so many people have a nickname in the Bible, or they've got this qualifier, know, son of somebody or brother of somebody.

What they don't appreciate often is that the Bible gets that right. That whenever you got these nicknames, it's because they're popular names. Same thing happens. Andy's a popular name. I had a best friend whose name was Andy. How did we get around it? We only referred to each other by our last names. I didn't even realize until much later in my life that one of my good friends had the same name as me. Because just called him by his last name. But it's interesting, right, so that you've got...

Rob Chartrand (31:35.512)
Hmm. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (31:40.992)
Okay, the Bible gets the right name in the right place with the popularity, and then those names that are popular always gets a qualifier, and the ones that aren't popular don't have qualifiers. Well, that is really powerful.

Rob Chartrand (31:52.598)
Yeah, yeah. Just so you know which one we're talking about here. In a culture where Jesus was a very popular name, for example.

Andy Steiger (31:56.684)
And you could do the same, what's that?

Right, yeah, exactly, and they're qualifying, which Jesus they're talking about. You could get the same thing, by the way, they're doing a lot of these studies, great works being done on the Old Testament as well, that you can do this sort of thing on the Old Testament. I mean, an interesting example of this would be even the name Moses. Moses is an Egyptian name, and it's an Egyptian name that fits within the right era that Moses would have been in with regards to Egyptian history. And so that's important, right?

Rob Chartrand (32:25.164)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, one of the things I learned from when I was doing my church planning training more than a decade ago with Tim Keller, I did the Redeemer City to City training. And then I became a City to City trainer with them as well. But Tim Keller talks about doing like a theological or apologetic sidebar in your messages sometimes. So you're preaching a message, this is your topic and you're going in a direction, you have your big idea and all that. But sometimes you'll come to a point in the text where it's like, okay, this is an interesting opportunity to teach our congregation something.

And so this is a natural place. I'm just making this, fleshing this out for our listeners. That's a natural place to say to your congregation, hey, you know what? There's something really interesting going on in the text here. I just want to take a moment and just step aside and just do a theological, a little bit of an apologetic sidebar and explain this here. And that's where you could really unpack that, right? And they say, OK, I hope you take that with you. Here's, know, and then jump back into the message and go. You know, because sometimes I think we think, I can only talk about apologetics.

when I'm doing an apologetic series or when I'm doing an apologetic message. But you can let it infiltrate your sermons all the time and make it accessible to people.

Andy Steiger (33:36.386)
Yeah, and I would encourage people to do that. it just, what all of our studies show is that those two things, one is that those little sermon moments do a lot to help young people go, okay, I can trust this. I can trust this. The other thing too that we do at our church is we allow for people to ask questions and to raise their doubts. We do this thing called Questioning Christianity.

We do it twice a year. We run it for five weeks. And we have lots of people that come out and they just ask us whatever questions they want. we've had so many people come to faith through these times because it's just shocking how many people just come to church these days just by themselves. They'll just come and this is an opportunity to engage with them. But one of the things that research shows us is that if you engage people with their questions, you show that there's good reason to trust the reliability of the Bible as an example.

that later in their lives, say they head off to university or something and then they're confronted with a challenge and somebody raises a question, it's not like this crisis of faith moment for them because they've already been raising their own questions and heard other questions raised. I especially like to do that, by the way, pastorally, in a proactive way, where in a sermon, when it's appropriate, I'll raise a question that culture's raising or something. I'll raise it, hopefully, before they've even heard that.

Rob Chartrand (34:57.986)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (35:01.186)
But what happens then for young people is they'll be like, okay, I don't know the answer to that. It's a good question, but I've seen so many times questions that have been answered that I'll go check it out. But again, it's not like a crisis of faith.

Rob Chartrand (35:15.544)
That's right. That's right. And it's never really a crisis of faith over one question. It's a slow degradation of being hit constantly by the culture, right? And what if you could, you know, instead of seeing the seashore erode every week in a young person's life, you can build it back up again every Sunday or access to, you know, like apologetics videos and et cetera.

Andy Steiger (35:35.714)
That's right.

Andy Steiger (35:39.914)
Or, and what I'm kinda saying is a little bit more than that, maybe, where you're actually creating a dike, right? You are pushing it forward so that when the questions hit, they're already hitting what you've been, you know, this protective or, yeah, yeah, that you're anticipating. I call that, this was a huge one for me, Rob, with regards to even parenting. I used to be a reactive parent, and now I'm a proactive parent.

Rob Chartrand (35:55.244)
Yeah, you're anticipating.

Rob Chartrand (36:06.488)
Mm-hmm.

Andy Steiger (36:06.7)
So I'll be bringing issues to my boys long before culture brings them up.

Rob Chartrand (36:11.992)
So good. Hey, let's talk about some of your more recent work. Speaking of getting into lanes, let's get into your lane for a bit. I I listened to you on some other podcasts. I think Faith, today you were addressing this interface of theology and technology. What are some of the issues that you've been thinking about and addressing lately?

Andy Steiger (36:31.97)
Yeah, just for perspective, my doctoral work was in the area of theological anthropology, specifically did PhD work in the area of artificial intelligence. And for those nerds out there, my work particularly focused in the area of Michael Polanyi. And he was one of those early people that was engaging with people like Alan Turing and others. So your question with regards to technology.

You know what, Rob, I'm already forgetting exactly as me. I don't want to go into some tangent and miss it.

Rob Chartrand (37:05.912)
I just want to know, know, lately, what have you been addressing on the interface of theology and technology? Or maybe more particularly, what do think pastors should be paying attention to? Let's go there.

Andy Steiger (37:20.646)
The thing that I've been addressing is a theology of technology. And in fact, we were in Africa last year filming a new series that will be coming out shortly on a theology of technology. just, man, I'll tell you, whenever I address the subject of technology and AI in particular, so many people are interested in the subject. Many, many come out. But the thing that's overwhelming about the people that come out or the thing that I find fascinating is that there's a lot of fear right now.

There's a lot of fear about technology. There's a lot of fear about AI in general. And so what I'm kind of seeing is two things. One is the older people, know, more of your gray hair, gray hairs are afraid of technology and AI. And then a lot of your young people that are in university, a lot of your engineers, a lot of your scientists and coders are just kind of asking, how do I navigate this?

What should I be coding and what shouldn't I be coding? What should I be creating and what shouldn't I be creating? What is a Christian perspective? And then I think everybody in between is asking, what is a Christian perspective of the technologies that I'm using? And the big question that's being asked over and over again is how far is too far? So, yeah.

Rob Chartrand (38:38.336)
and maybe break down the difference between AI and AGI for our listeners.

Andy Steiger (38:43.17)
Yeah, when we're talking about AI or artificial intelligence, it has been historically thought of in two ways, what we'd call weak AI and strong AI. And so the one that you're bringing up, artificial general intelligence, is in that line of strong AI. Yeah, and so what is meant by that is more of an ideological view of AI

Rob Chartrand (39:04.824)
Stronger down.

Andy Steiger (39:12.694)
that artificial intelligence, it kind of gets into a whole backstory of behaviorism and just our view of the sciences and humanity in general. That's why it's a theological anthropology issue. What does it mean to be human? Because that stronger view of AI just says, what it means to be human is just what our behaviors are. It's our DNA code.

Rob Chartrand (39:25.964)
Yep. Yep.

Andy Steiger (39:38.7)
And if you could code a machine that could behave like a human, then it is a human. So it has these deep, you know, ideological implications that people need to be aware of. But the weaker thing of AI, like, cause people will ask me questions like, should I use AI and things like that? And I, you know, I have to hold back the laughter at some, at some regard, cause I'm like, well, first of all, artificial intelligence has been with us for decades.

When in my doctoral work, I saw algorithms back in the 70s and you can even see stuff in the 50s. So this is not new. What's new is just the ability to run the algorithms and the processing power that data required to process them. That's new, but the algorithms have been there.

The thing as well that I kind of find comical is that AI is driving all sorts of things. Like when you're on an airplane, many of our airplanes, just as an example, have engines that are bigger than the plane should have and make them inherently unstable. To counteract that, they have AI algorithms working in the background that stabilize your plane. So in the ones that people like, should I be using AI algorithm? Like you're our...

You're already using them. It's why you didn't crash when you went on vacation. They're driving our drones. They're operating behind the scenes on our computers. And this is where it kind of gets a little more nefarious though, right? Because they're also driving the algorithms that are feeding our news, our social media, and the various things that we watch are being curated by these AI algorithms. so people just need to appreciate that it's a much

Rob Chartrand (41:00.662)
You're already there. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (41:30.318)
deeper and more complex subject when you're going from weak AI, just the algorithms that are at play day to day, versus this more ideological view of AI with regards to a strong version of AI.

Rob Chartrand (41:43.476)
Do you think people are concerned too about say, well, one thing we've had since the 80s is Skynet, right? So this nefarious dystopian, so sentience and self-consciousness in computers. But I think that probably plays into your theology, right? And anthropology, can they ever actually be that?

Andy Steiger (41:52.054)
Right, Terminator.

Andy Steiger (42:08.75)
And this is actually also just plays into humanity in general because for a long time, okay, for quite some time, Google and Apple took two very different approaches to AI. For a long time, Google took the approach that AI is a tool that humans should use versus Apple took the approach that AI should be human.

And so that's where you get things like Siri as an example, right? Where you have these companies that are creating machines that act and behave like they are a human versus, you know, these tools that are to help humans.

Rob Chartrand (42:54.034)
So they're anthropomorphizing these things, giving them names and characters and...

Andy Steiger (42:57.432)
That's right. And human characteristics and the thing is over the years as we've gotten better at these technologies, they're more more convincing. And we are hardwired as humans to identify sentience and to connect with it. So for example, when I'm walking in the forest, I'm not confused whether or not trees are people. Honestly, we're very good at detecting.

when something's a person, when something's not a person. And even within persons, we're really good at detecting when they are, if there's something abnormal going on. If somebody, all of a sudden I'm talking with Rob and I'm like, Rob's not acting in normal self, I'm concerned sort of idea. We're good at this. Technologies have advanced to such a degree.

that they can trick us if we let them. Yeah, yes. And it has like multiple implications, right? On the one hand, it can pretend to be my friend. And I can, if I'm willing to have a relationship with this AI so that you have things like digital girlfriends and boyfriends, and you have these chat bots that are becoming wildly popular in a very lonely culture.

Rob Chartrand (43:56.268)
deep fakes are so good. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (44:24.62)
So one of the things that I would be saying to pastors is when it comes to technology and particularly AI that you should be concerned about, is we already were in a loneliness epidemic, but this is being exasperated by technologies that can mimic humans to such a degree that people are supplementing real relationships for fake ones. well, I just, it goes so much deeper too, Rob, like,

Rob Chartrand (44:44.854)
Yeah. Well, go ahead.

Andy Steiger (44:53.61)
where right now pastors can be part of the problem. I just critiqued a video of a pastor who created an AI version of himself for his congregants that people can phone up to get prayer. Have you seen this? I know! I know! And you know what's worse, Rob? You have to pay for it! $49, man, so that you can get fake prayer. It makes me furious.

Rob Chartrand (45:09.432)
Dude, you're breaking my heart. No. Yeah.

Rob Chartrand (45:16.12)
my goodness. my goodness.

Wow, wow. My daughters bought me a Joel Osteen cube for Christmas. And so if I press a button, I can get a daily affirmation or daily inspiration or a daily sermon. They do it as a joke because they know I'm certainly not in that theological lane.

Andy Steiger (45:32.762)
gosh.

Andy Steiger (45:36.813)
Yeah.

Andy Steiger (45:40.64)
On that note, by the way, one of the joys that was brought to my heart this last week is the Apologetics Canada podcast surpassed Joel Olsteen's podcast. And so it was just one of those moments of celebration.

Rob Chartrand (45:49.208)
He's got a big church, man. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Wow. And I don't mean to be divisive with our listeners, but on this one, I think I'm okay. I think I'm okay. If you listen to Church in the North, you have a good idea of what our stream is. Isn't it raising questions too, though, that not just of theology and interrelated, but epistemology, like in terms of meaning?

and real, what is real, what is not real. So I think of meta and the virtual world that they were creating and, and, and the, it's creating this cultural sense of misunderstanding of what, what is real. And, and, and then I think, I think that that really plays into expressive individualism as well. You will, it allows you to live in a world where you are

In many ways, you create your own world, you create your own identity, and you can live in that identity in an online world where it's not gonna be questioned. although you secretly desire that everybody would affirm you, but I mean, that's the, it all interplays together and it's coming together at a head and eventually I think it's gonna come at a crash because theologically we are embodied people. We were meant to be embodied. I mean, in our future.

our future life will be embodied in a new heaven and new earth that's grounded, right? That's actual tangible. Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent, but I mean, there's all sorts of epistemological problems here.

Andy Steiger (47:22.018)
you're speaking my language, there is, and I think it's important for pastors to appreciate that at the core, as you've identified, is this expressive individualism or this hyper individualism where everything is about you. And honestly, it's one thing to point your finger at culture, but at the same time as the church, we've got to own our own mistakes here because...

How often have we sold people a view of Christianity that it's all about you and Jesus? And it's about, you I have a personal relationship with Jesus. But listen, read the, you know, when Jesus teaches disciples how to pray, right? It's not my father in heaven, it's our father who, you know, who art in heaven. It's this idea that we, have a personal relationship with God, but we have a corporate relationship with God. And that...

Rob Chartrand (47:52.621)
Mm-hmm.

Andy Steiger (48:13.772)
These things are, these are both important and right now I believe more than ever the church needs to lead and lean into the corporate aspect of what it means to be a Christian.

Rob Chartrand (48:24.47)
Yeah. So are you going to touch base on, I think what Keller would call the cosmic implications of the gospel? Because I think the gospel that we preach is, Scott McKnight really goes hard on this in the King Jesus gospel, but just this truncated gospel that's highly individualistic and consumptive versus the implications of the gospel, which is Jesus came to reconcile not just me to himself, but all things to himself. Like all things, a new heaven and a new earth is all, and I think

Andy Steiger (48:49.357)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Chartrand (48:52.192)
Like you said, mean, if it's individualized and it's personalized, then that just plays into in our local churches. We don't preach a cosmic gospel. And we need both because you can go into either ditch, right? But as North American evangelicals from a Western tradition, we tend to go just to the personalized Jesus.

Andy Steiger (49:04.138)
It's always, yeah it's both. Yep.

Andy Steiger (49:14.638)
I think this is what's interesting even as we read in the Bible and in the New Testament. You see this fusion of the two. On the one hand, the Jews would have only understood a corporate gospel, and the Gentiles would have only stood an individual in a gospel. Yeah, the Greek tradition, and the two fused together in Jesus, and you have both, you know, the personal and the corporate.

Rob Chartrand (49:31.03)
Right. That Greek tradition. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (49:40.884)
In the midst of our hyper individualism, I feel like we have lost the corporate. I'm telling you, here's my hot take, okay? Some of the best evangelism you can do right now, and when I see people come into Faith and Dros, one of the best ways I see this is in community. That people are looking for real relationship, they're looking for community, they need community. And the community that the gospel provides, you cannot get anywhere else.

show me somewhere else in society that you can get the kind of community that you can get in the gospel. Not happening. Right? You know what saying? It reminds me of Ephesians, where Paul says, listen, this gospel has torn down the walls that have divided, and don't you dare rebuild those walls.

Rob Chartrand (50:16.152)
Right, yeah.

Rob Chartrand (50:27.49)
Yeah, yeah, good. Is there a

Andy Steiger (50:31.171)
Yeah, the dividing walls of hostility. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Chartrand (50:33.73)
dividing walls of hostility. Yeah, and that's those are strong words. But real. And I mean, if you think of the perspective of first century, a Jew to a Gentile, that was a pretty big wall.

Andy Steiger (50:47.022)
It was.

Rob Chartrand (50:49.154)
So do you think that there's a shift in the kind of apologetics that's gonna be needed in our current cultural moment? I mean, obviously with AI, but just the reality of the postmodern turn, the rise of critical theory, we're seeing a lot of seismic shifts in some of people's assumptions so that sometimes I feel like people aren't even asking some of the questions that apologetics, early apologetics or classic apologetics has sought to answer. Okay, so break that down for us.

Andy Steiger (51:14.488)
That's because they're not.

Rob Chartrand (51:19.006)
What are some of the changes that you see happening and how are you guys responding to that?

Andy Steiger (51:24.248)
To give you just like a brief history from what I've witnessed, and this has happened in our lifetime, it's happened really fast, is we went from 2001 when you had 9-11 and religion, you would have thought it was Islam would have been under attack, but it was religion in general, and Christianity in particular, became under attack that religion is the cause for all the harm in the world. Yeah, that's right, religion poisons everything, and then you have the rise of the new atheists.

Rob Chartrand (51:46.744)
Religion poisons everything. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (51:53.218)
who attack Christianity, in general, that becomes a very traditional apologetic that's happening in that moment with the new atheists. The new atheists become the old atheists. In fact, only two of the new atheists are even alive now. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens have passed away. In their attack on religion, which was ruthless, in their attack,

Rob Chartrand (51:53.346)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Chartrand (52:10.616)
That's right. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (52:22.136)
created a vacuum in the academy that all sorts of ideologies got sucked into that you and I are experiencing the implications of, right? Gender identities, sexual identities, you know, it's just an identity crisis across the board, hyper individualism and the such. So the apologetic, I would say has changed and I wanna...

Rob Chartrand (52:27.96)
Mm-hmm.

Andy Steiger (52:48.724)
explain this to listeners, maybe just by backing up even more, giving a little more of a history lesson. We went into the Enlightenment where we began to remove religion from everything, right? And began to embrace more and more of this secular, or what we would call a closed-off universe that is a universe in which God doesn't exist because God's not even a possibility within this universe. It's a

It's a closed universe in which only the only things that are physical, it's the physicalism, it's the naturalism, the materialism, that's the reigning ideology and has been for a very long time, for hundreds of years. And what's taken place, and I would say it's been taking place since World War II. I won't get into all of that, but I would say the pendulum has been shifting.

Rob Chartrand (53:39.17)
Mm-hmm.

Andy Steiger (53:44.334)
It's not like it just started shifting. It's been shifting since World War II. But we're in a stage where that pendulum has fully swung now to the other extreme. We've gone from a closed-off universe to an open universe. But people need to appreciate, and pastors in particular, that that open universe is open to everything. It's open to aliens. It's open to Bigfoot. It's open to God. It's open to the multiverse. It's open to

anything. so, yes, our apologetic has to change because the reigning ideology has changed. And so the questions that are being asked aren't being driven any longer from that staunch materialism of a closed-off universe. Now they're being asked from this more New Age open universe. And so the questions look different. And if I could just encourage listeners, I prefer this new ideology over the old one.

because at least people are open to the gospel. And this last year, we have seen more people come to faith than we've ever seen. And it's been an incredible year for us, of seeing people come to faith. But it's interesting, because they're a lot more open.

Rob Chartrand (54:55.931)
Now, is it true though, I mean, coupled with that scientific skepticism, but even a broader malaise of skepticism is this critical theory that seems more prevalent, at least in a certain part of the population and certainly in certain departments and universities, that would say that what helps to embolden them in their skepticism is to say like, well, our science is in very many ways a structural power

grab that is in many ways controlling our knowledge and knowledge is power and power is knowledge, etc. Therefore, anything to do with that, we want to tear it down. So here we see like fake news, etc. and all those types of arguments. so that it's almost making it even more challenging to have a reasonable thought, a rational thought, because anyone who has a rational thought can easily be accused of being

partaking in the structural system that's seeking to tear down people's autonomy.

Andy Steiger (55:56.802)
Well, see, this is a great point here, Rob, because notice how science was in charge there for some, right? Before the Enlightenment, yeah, before the Enlightenment, you wanna make an authoritative statement, you make a theological statement. Into the Enlightenment, you wanna make an authoritative statement, you make a scientific statement. Notice, science doesn't hold the weight that it once held. Now, it's actually seen in, know, skeptically and is seen as actually something that needs to be tarnished.

Rob Chartrand (56:06.87)
Yeah, the empiricism, yeah.

Andy Steiger (56:26.126)
torn down. even that demonstrates that seismic shift that has occurred in our society. now you could ask, what now is the authoritative statement of our time? I would actually say a legal statement is now the authority. That's why think politics is such a hot topic in Canada and United States, because everybody knows if you want to get your way legally,

You need to be in control politically. you're right. This creates issues with things like critical theory. Now on a positive note, critical theory is under, know, people are finally starting to realize the last couple of years now that this is a failed endeavor. mean, it's just repackaged communism and people are moving away from it, but I still wish they would move away from it quicker.

But let me give you just another illustration of how this happens. Take gender identity as an example with the whole transgender movement. This is a very interesting ideology in that it's a dualism. It is this dualism between sex and gender, between body and mind, and that these two things can be out of sync with one another. And that yes, you have a body,

And yes, you have a mind, this is where things get really interesting. But the mind actually trumps the body. That you should bring the body into conformity with the mind, not the mind within conformity of the body. That is a complete shift from enlightenment thinking. A complete shift.

Rob Chartrand (58:04.024)
That's right.

Rob Chartrand (58:09.984)
Right. Yeah, it's interesting. I think I was listening to a podcast, was it Dawkins was being interviewed? And he was talking about the historic new atheist conferences that they would have, have now all been taken over by critical theorists. And so all of the classic apologetics arguments and all that aren't even considered. It's just all. And so the

Andy Steiger (58:33.248)
I don't even meet atheists anymore, Rob.

Rob Chartrand (58:35.36)
Yeah, they just back off. They're like, I these these people crazy. I got to get out of these conferences because there's just no place for them anymore.

Andy Steiger (58:39.502)
Well, the irony is that's the vacuum that they created. That's what got sucked into it, is this critical theory. so it's fascinating to take Dawkins as an example, because what does Dawkins now call himself? He calls himself a cultural Christian. And if you've seen, he has moved into being buddy-buddy now with Christianity way more than ever before. Before, I remember he was in the United States.

Rob Chartrand (58:46.498)
That's right. Yeah.

Rob Chartrand (58:57.196)
I know, right?

Andy Steiger (59:07.276)
This was unbelievable, particularly as an American. He's in Washington, gives a talk, and he says that religion, Christianity in particular, should be mocked and ridiculed. And he's a Brit, dude. So have to understand, from an American, that gets your blood boiling. We already had to leave England for religious freedom, and now you have a Brit coming here telling you to mock it and ridicule religion. But that aside,

I mean now all of sudden now he's buddy-buddy because he's like, well I'd rather take the Christians than the critical theorists.

Rob Chartrand (59:38.498)
Hmm. Yeah. Well, you've obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this. Anything we should be concerned about from a Canadian standpoint about AI, say in the next five years?

Andy Steiger (59:54.478)
You know, honestly, it's just this topic. Well, I think maybe two things, Disinformation and making sure that you're just helping your congregation know truth, because people are skeptical right now about truth. I mean, we get this all the time. People can even ask, I mean, are you and I actually talking to each other or are these just our avatars that are having a conversation on our behalf?

Rob Chartrand (01:00:02.058)
Mm-hmm.

Andy Steiger (01:00:23.002)
People can become so hyper skeptical. They just don't even know up from down within a society that can now mimic things so well like we can do. The one that concerns me the most is the WALL-E issue, if you've ever seen that movie, WALL-E. It's this issue where we just are so individualistic that we just live in our own little universes.

Rob Chartrand (01:00:39.522)
Yep. Eva.

Rob Chartrand (01:00:50.828)
Yeah, these large 400 pound people on these floating chairs drinking drinks from slurpee cups and watching their own screens and not really having a relationship with them until the ship gets turned upside down and suddenly they're bumping into each other.

Andy Steiger (01:01:07.22)
Exactly. And it's actually quite prophetic. know, I mean, that movie is like made in like 2008 or something. So prophetic of the time, maybe even more. I'm not sure, but it was a while ago. But so prophetic of the time that you and I are living in. And the gospel is all about bumping into each other. It's all about living in community. And the reason is because we need each other.

Rob Chartrand (01:01:14.349)
Mm-hmm.

Andy Steiger (01:01:35.53)
Jesus says that he has come to bring life and to bring it abundantly. It's another way of saying that if you want to flourish, it's found in him. What does Jesus offer? He offers love God, love people. He offers community. Our relationship with God can be reconciled through him, and our relationship with one another can be reconciled through him. You and I need God, and we need one another. Real flourishing is found in relationship. It shouldn't surprise us then that

what we're being sold is counterfeit relationship. my prayer is that Christians are equipped to be able to identify counterfeit relationship and to not embrace it, to seek the real.

Rob Chartrand (01:02:21.784)
Yeah. Well, we are embodied beings. We were designed that way. And I think so much is lost when we when we take that step back into technology and we move ourselves from each other in our physicality. There's a there's a I remember coming out of Covid and our church making a very strong decision to like we could have really upped our game in terms of our online church experience. But we actually chose to step back and make it a little bit worse.

Andy Steiger (01:02:51.022)
Hmm.

Rob Chartrand (01:02:51.21)
so that if you were watching us or participating in our service online, you felt like you were missing something because you weren't in room with everybody. And that was a theological decision. And I remember the first sermon I preached coming back was I preached from Paul's six references in his letters, greet one another with a holy kiss. And looking at the history of that and how it evolved and changed and how they had to get rid of it because people abused it. But nevertheless, this...

Andy Steiger (01:03:11.694)
Hmm.

Andy Steiger (01:03:18.213)
Hahaha

Rob Chartrand (01:03:20.856)
Nevertheless, you know it It became passing the peace that's where the passing the peace in some of our like Anglican churches and that comes from in its history But but the reality is I mean they were that that's personal like that's deeply personal and intimate I'm not suggesting we go back to that. I mean there's plan to protect will never allow it but nevertheless You know that embodiment is is so important for us as as the people of God and

You can't deep fake that.

Andy Steiger (01:03:53.494)
Right. this might be more controversial, hear me out on this one. But all my friends that are counselors and in counseling, they would say that a lot of their, this isn't true of everybody. There are people out there, they need a professional counselor, but they would tell you, go ask a counselor. You'd say, how many of your clients do you think just needs a really good friend? And they'd say, well, Vast majority Yeah. Right.

Rob Chartrand (01:04:17.868)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Andy Steiger (01:04:21.016)
You know, how many friends do you have? What kind of a community do you have that you can walk through the highs and lows of life with? And that's what the church was always meant to be. We're a family, we're a community. And I tell you, I just think that it's a message we're gonna have to preach and live out. And in the midst of a world that's incredibly individualistic and lonely, the church is gonna shine ever more brighter.

if we can and do live out what real community and real flourishing looks like in relationship.

Rob Chartrand (01:04:52.088)
I remember listening to Keller in his final years and him talking about the importance of a theology of friendship. Do you know any books, any good books on the theology of friendship?

Andy Steiger (01:05:02.478)
That's an interesting question. I actually wrote a book on this subject called Reclaimed, How Jesus, now let me pull the book off. I'm gonna misquote my own subtitle, How Jesus Restores Our Humanity in a Dehumanized World. And so I address that very issue in this book.

Rob Chartrand (01:05:07.49)
Okay.

Rob Chartrand (01:05:14.953)
I have that book, yeah.

Rob Chartrand (01:05:21.559)
Yeah.

You talk about it in there. Yeah. Yeah, we need to get back to that.

Andy Steiger (01:05:27.21)
Other than that, no book is immediately jumping to my mind. However, ironically, there are a number of secular writers that have been speaking to the subject, like Jonathan Hyatt in his new book, The Anxious Generation, and as well Sherry Turkle in her book Alone Together. And she's got other books on this subject where...

Rob Chartrand (01:05:41.538)
Yeah, great book.

Andy Steiger (01:05:51.342)
That always concerns me, by the way, is when you've got secular writers identifying that this is a problem. I sure hope that the Christian community understands the importance of this issue, the society does.

Rob Chartrand (01:06:05.624)
Well, Jonathan Hyatt's got on a lot of Christian podcasts in this last year since the release of his book. I mean, I really appreciate his research, him and Gene Twenge as well. What do you think of what he's writing? You know, the fundamental premise of the Anchorage Generation is, of course, there's deleterious effects of social media and, you know, they're tracing it back to 2007 with the emergence of the iPhone and then 2010 when it became much more popularized. And then from that point on, we see

Andy Steiger (01:06:08.95)
Hmm. Yes.

Rob Chartrand (01:06:34.165)
suicidal ideation going off the charts, mental health crises, etc. Do you think he's done good research on that?

Andy Steiger (01:06:43.246)
110 % and I wish that book had come out a long time ago. This is an issue that parents have been, anybody with kids right now are dealing with, have been dealing with. One of the things that we're realizing is an addictive substance doesn't necessarily need to be a drug that you consume orally or smoke or whatever. It actually can be something digitally that you're encountering.

with your eyes, these AI algorithms are incredibly addictive. They're a substance in and of themselves that parents are trying to navigate and children. How do I navigate a world that is geared towards sucking me in and addicting me into these algorithms, which it's an irony, right? Because it goes back to our conversation about AI. AI can either be a tool that we use to help us or we become the tool that it uses.

in this case, to make money off of us. And now we're the tool as they pump us full of ads and whatnot to make money off of watching their stuff that's incredibly addictive. So I think that Jonathan is 100 % right on this and it's something that the church needs to talk more about and help parents with as best we can.

and just even speak into because the reality is these days, it's not just kids that are struggling with online addiction. It is our phone addiction in general. It's parents as well. And like, let me give you an example on this. mean, Rob, okay, take my son example. My boys, the way that I did things is no judgment to anybody else. But I'm just telling you, here's what I did. Our boys weren't allowed to get a cell phone until they were 15. And you had to pass your drivers, you know, get your

and what we call in British Columbia, your learners to get a phone. And my son, he'll be eligible for this in May, but he's the only kid in his class that does not have a cell phone. Vast majority of kids from a very early age have cell phones with no supervision and access to whatever.

Andy Steiger (01:09:05.686)
And again, my kids don't have access to social media either. And our rule there is, not until you're 18 should you be on social media. This is particularly true. If you read Jonathan Hyde's book, anybody that particularly has a daughter,

Rob Chartrand (01:09:22.742)
Yes, young girls are mostly affected, more affected.

Andy Steiger (01:09:25.076)
they're mostly affected. Please read this book. like if I had a daughter, there is no way that she would have access to social media. No way. And it's not just from that book. Wherever I speak, it's vast majority of the issues tend to be with young girls.

Rob Chartrand (01:09:35.65)
Yeah.

Rob Chartrand (01:09:44.056)
That's right. The challenge is if your kid's the only one and the other parent's are. So there's a networking effect that you have to address with a common group of parents, get them all on the same page. And that really, really helps. same thing with our daughters when they were, so we raised them probably five, well, maybe 10 years earlier than you, but I was a youth pastor. And so I'm working with young people all the time and I was seeing what their phones are doing to them. And plus there's the early research.

Andy Steiger (01:09:54.19)
Yep. Yep.

Rob Chartrand (01:10:11.384)
even mean, even Jean Twenge's early research was people scoffed at at the time, but I we said, you know, no phones in your room after this time, we controlled all the Wi Fi, we didn't even give them a phone until way later. And they're like, all my friends have a phone. We're like, we're gonna wear that like a badge of honor. I don't care. I don't care. You're not going to get one. Because we didn't we need we just knew where it would happen. And of course, I grew up reading

Andy Steiger (01:10:27.712)
Yeah.

Rob Chartrand (01:10:41.371)
All sorts of information technology. Some of the original guys, Mug Ridge and give me some of the classic guys. so yeah, we had a good sense that that was not a good idea at all. So last question. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

Andy Steiger (01:11:01.966)
And that, well, I was just gonna say, and by the way, on that, doesn't mean that, you can't take, this is the challenge for parents, you can't take all their technology away from them. And so, but what you need is a plan. When are you gonna introduce certain technologies to them and what are you doing to parent their technology, their use of technology and helping set them up for success? that, you know, that would be my thoughts there is just, man, how,

Proactively helping your kid navigate this. So, I'll just give you one example that we're doing. So now that my son is 17, he's got his driver's license, he has a phone, full-fledged phone and everything. Because I think it's an important safety device, especially when you're these days. At any rate, I made a deal with him that, hey, I'll pay for your cell phone, but you have to choose one of your friends to be your accountability partner on your phone.

Rob Chartrand (01:11:59.992)
That's great.

Andy Steiger (01:12:00.834)
Yeah, your choice. You want to go with that deal or not?

Rob Chartrand (01:12:03.702)
Yeah. It's really interesting. I'm working in the college here at Briarcrest and so many young men have just been negatively affected by their phones and young women that there's this real move now to turn their phones into a brick. So it doesn't have all of these apps. It's got like three or four apps and they can't access it. And to access it, they actually have to get password permissions from their friends to open it up. There's a real move away from that.

Andy Steiger (01:12:29.923)
Yeah.

Rob Chartrand (01:12:32.822)
the use of social media because they're just more aware and more wise.

Andy Steiger (01:12:36.686)
And that's a whole nother conversation. This could be a whole nother podcast, but like even as pastors, okay, what platforms are we gonna participate in? So like as an organization, we've chosen that we won't participate in TikTok. It's too addictive. We've chosen, we're just not gonna be on that platform. As a staff, said, no, we're not doing it. But man, as a church, you have to figure that out. Okay, am I gonna be on Instagram? Am I gonna be on Facebook? Am I gonna be on YouTube? Am I gonna, you know, there's so many of these platforms. You gotta decide how you're gonna do that and...

Rob Chartrand (01:12:48.898)
Hmm. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (01:13:06.87)
in a way that you're not part of the problem.

Rob Chartrand (01:13:08.834)
That's right. And I wish we had more time, but I mean, just to quickly say, mean, getting back to the medium is the message. I mean, this this technology is not neutral. It's not the content that's the challenge. It's the the reality and the experience of the technology itself that's shaping us. Yeah. Can we talk briefly about Wesley and Billy? Just quickly give it give our listeners real quick. What's the backstory on that? What how how did

Andy Steiger (01:13:26.294)
Yeah, agreed.

Andy Steiger (01:13:31.433)
yeah, yeah, let's do that.

Rob Chartrand (01:13:38.712)
this all come about if they're not familiar.

Andy Steiger (01:13:41.42)
Yeah, a very short backstory is that Wes one day very quickly, I remember it very well, got asked to be on a podcast with Billy and I think it's happened actually right before our staff meet or something. Yeah, Billy Carson. Billy Carson has a huge social media following, like over a million subscribers on YouTube talking about aliens and ancient civilizations and all sorts of conspiracy theory type stuff and has often

Rob Chartrand (01:13:53.132)
Yulie Carson.

Andy Steiger (01:14:08.938)
talked about Jesus being an alien or challenging the Bible and saying that it's not trustworthy and things like that. So Wes had made a number of videos responding to what Billy had said and that led to this guy podcasting with Billy deciding that he would bring Wes on last minute. And Wes raced off, jumped on this podcast with Billy and in it, yeah, it's very quick. And he,

Rob Chartrand (01:14:30.968)
24 hours to prepare. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (01:14:38.196)
He then had a conversation with Billy where he challenged Billy on a lot of the stuff that he was saying and Billy didn't, and it was just very apparent that Billy had no idea what he was talking about and lost all credibility with his listeners. But if that's where things had gone, probably would have never have gone anywhere. But then what happened was Billy threatened to sue the guy who put the pod, his friend who was doing the podcast and Wes for

you know, with being on it, if they were, if they promoted it, it talked about it. he gave them a cease and desist order and said, you can't talk about this and mentioned me or whatever, or I'm going to sue you. And I remember Wes calling me, and just saying, Hey, Andy, I got a cease and desist letter. This guy's threatening to sue us. If you know, we talk about this podcast or post it or whatever. And he's like, what should I do? I'm like, go forward, man. like.

You know, it's one of those moments, you know, you got to be wise in these things, but it's one of those moments you're like, I am not going to have some guy threaten a lawsuit against us over a podcast that my staff was on because this guy didn't do well on the podcast. You know what I'm saying? And then threaten us into like some sort of silence about it. At any rate, that started to blow things up. But then Billy just, you know, he just made a number of bad decisions. Then, then

Billy went online and had a three hour live YouTube show where he just lambasted everybody, including his own listeners, calling them poor people or something like that. I mean, it's just crazy. And talking about the podcast and that this thing was all fake and that he's gonna sue everybody and sue them for millions of dollars. That ultimately blew this whole thing up.

We had like, I think like 14 lawyers reach out to us, tell us that they would represent us for free. We had one lawyer actually reach out to Billy's lawyer and they CC'd us on it. And it was just a whole, this person was an expert in media law and just gave them like six reasons why this was a fraudulent case and that if they proceeded forward with it, they would take them to the bar. They would report this lawyer to the bar.

Andy Steiger (01:17:00.276)
Anyway, not surprisingly, this thing got dropped, but in the meantime, it got tons of media attention. And then Joe Rogan started following Wes and then we had a feeling that Wes might get invited onto the Joe Rogan podcast and he did.

Rob Chartrand (01:17:14.87)
And Billy had been on Joe before as well. Yeah.

Andy Steiger (01:17:17.262)
He had, yeah, and PBD, think is what the podcast is called. It's another really popular podcast. And so they had Wes on as well because they had had Billy on. yeah, yeah. So that then just opened up a whole, another can of social media virality. we, we've been going viral as an organization for like four weeks straight.

Rob Chartrand (01:17:28.792)
Yeah, I haven't heard that one yet. It's in my docket.

Rob Chartrand (01:17:46.24)
Yeah, I mean, talk to us about your ratings. Like that just is crazy.

Andy Steiger (01:17:50.7)
Yeah, yeah. Our podcast is currently ranked like number three in Canada and number 11 in the United States under religion. Our social media following has grown exponentially. Our YouTube following has grown exponentially, especially Wes. Wes has grown tremendously from all that and Apologetics Canada has as well, which a lot of people will be like, well,

Rob Chartrand (01:17:59.096)
crazy.

Andy Steiger (01:18:19.522)
What's important about that? Well, nothing except that lots of people are hearing the gospel as Wes shared the gospel on Joe Rogan podcast. it's interesting just to encourage people, listeners, we had seen a record number of people come to faith this last year before the Rogan podcast. After the Rogan podcast, we now keep like a tally. We just like not tally, but like document. We have a document where we just post testimonies that we hear.

And those are just a sample. Would you like to hear a couple? All right, I'll give you, here's just some encouragement. Honestly, we could read these for hours. These are just the two, here's just two that just came in. How about that? This one's from Chris. I'm sure you've received many messages recently, but I accepted Jesus as my savior thanks to information presented in a way I had never considered. It's a shock to everyone.

Rob Chartrand (01:18:52.714)
Love it. Do it. Yes.

Andy Steiger (01:19:16.798)
I'm the last person that they would have expected this from. Thanks for all you do. I'm a big fan of the work all of you are doing and a fan of the website channel. Wes, you're doing incredible work. Thank you for reminding me that Jesus loves me. Man, I know we've gone long here, but I could read more. I'll just read that one for you.

Rob Chartrand (01:19:37.976)
Oh yeah, no, that's a problem. And I'm happy to go long if you are. I mean, that's just fantastic what God's doing through all of that as an organization and as, through that work. I listened to the podcast, you know, and for a while there, I'm like, it's like two hours in and I'm like, you know, he's going back and forth with Joe about these things. And Joe is being very, he's been very good and very, you know, he's asking really great questions. And I'm like, I wonder if they're ever going to get to the gospel at some

And then there was one point where it's just, just laid it out, the reality of the resurrection and what he believes in all that. so good, just so good. But it was built on a foundation of credibility of everything that he had said before, right? That created that opportunity for him to do that. Interesting, I wonder, you know, I wonder what's going on. Because Joe has shifted over the years. He used to be very antagonistic towards Christians, but he's getting more thoughtful Christians on his podcast.

Andy Steiger (01:20:29.666)
big time, which-

Andy Steiger (01:20:34.978)
Well, and it's even more than that. When you listen to the podcast, you'll notice that he's actually more antagonistic towards atheism. So in the show, he talks about how atheism is so arrogant, right, to say, there is nothing. He's like, well, how could you possibly know that? So it's really interesting, because to me, he's just a real demonstration of the

the cultural shift that's happened. So notice, yeah, to what I was talking about. So notice how he's gone away from atheism and there's an openness. He's open to aliens, he's open to conspiracy theories, but he's also open to Jesus.

Rob Chartrand (01:21:04.642)
That's right. Yeah. From classic empiricism modernism to... Yeah.

Rob Chartrand (01:21:19.596)
and vaccine theories too.

Andy Steiger (01:21:21.352)
Yes, but it's important to understand that's a part of the culture. They're open. They're open. And so preach the gospel to them because they're open.

Rob Chartrand (01:21:26.498)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, amen. Well, hey, Andy, this has been so rich. I wonder if as we close, if you can maybe share a word of encouragement to our listeners, our ministry leaders across the country.

Andy Steiger (01:21:44.61)
Yeah, I do want to just share one word of encouragement for you all. You know, the tagline for Apologetics Canada is to love God and to love people. And right now, I think that people are not just looking for truth in this world, they're looking for character, people of character that go along with those words of truth. And I am telling you right now, I really don't think that Wes would have ever been invited on to the Joe Rogan podcast unless he, I think in many ways it was because of his character, because this guy wasn't a jerk.

Rob Chartrand (01:22:12.29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Steiger (01:22:14.958)
He genuinely loved God, genuinely loved people, sought truth, and did it in a way that was gentle and respectful. So that's my encouragement to us. Man, preach the gospel and do it with gentleness and respect. And right now, man, there is a culture out there that is just longing for that. And they want to see the truth of loving God, loving people, and they want to see it lived out in our character. And I pray that we would be those kind of pastors.

Rob Chartrand (01:22:44.554)
Amen. Well, thank you for joining us on Church in the North. I hope we can get you on here again sometime in the future, Andy.

Andy Steiger (01:22:51.583)
man, Rob, so good to be with you. God's richest blessings over this podcast and all those that are listening.

Rob Chartrand (01:22:57.954)
Yeah, thanks.