Show Notes
On this episode of Nuance, Case is joined by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Justin Holcomb, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida. Together they discuss Rev. Holcomb’s latest book: Prophet, Priest, and King: Christology in Global Perspective. They explore the intersection of faith and culture, focusing on how the global Christian church engages public spaces. Rev. Holcomb shares his unique journey of ordination in Sudan, the hospitality and faith of the Sudanese people, and his work with anti-human trafficking ministries GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) and REST (Real Escape from the Sex Trade).
This episode of Nuance is also a part of @podcasthon , a global event where creators come together to support life-changing nonprofits. We’re proud to spotlight iDignity ( @idignity8133 ), an organization that helps people obtain essential identification documents—things like birth certificates, state IDs, and Social Security cards. These aren’t just pieces of paper; they’re the key to jobs, housing, and healthcare. iDignity serves those who need it most—people experiencing homelessness, survivors of domestic violence, former inmates rebuilding their lives, and anyone struggling to access the identification they need.
To learn more or support their mission, visit iDignity.org.
Episode Resources:
Prophet, Priest, and King: Christology in Global Perspective: https://justinholcomb.com/2024/09/05/prophet-priest-and-king-christology-in-global-perspective/
GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in Christian Environments): http://netgrace.org/
White Horse Inn podcast: https://whitehorseinn.org/
Learn more at justinholcomb.com
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website: https://wecolabor.com/
Get to know Case: https://wecolabor.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
In today’s episode of Nuance, I’m joined by my good buddy, the right reverend Dr. Justin Holcomb. But before we dive in, I wanted to take a moment and highlight an incredible cause. This episode of Nuance is part of Podcastathon, this global event where throughout the week of March 15th to 22nd, content creators come together to support life-changing local nonprofits.
We are proud to participate and support iDignity. Founded in May of 2008 by members of the five downtown Orlando churches, including my very own First Pres Orlando and Dr. Holcomb’s St. Luke’s Cathedral, iDignity was created to assist vulnerable populations in central Florida, helping them navigate the complexities of obtaining their personal identification.
Through church and governmental partnership, along with the support of hundreds of volunteers, iDignity helps U.S. citizens and legal residents obtain birth certificates, Florida ID, social security cards, and more so that they can apply for school and go to work, gain access to shelters and other social service programs, or even get secure permanent housing.
I encourage you to check out their work and consider supporting this nonprofit.
Go to IDignity.org for more information. Now, let’s get to the show!
Picture a bustling square in the heart of Nairobi, Kenya, thronged with vendors selling fresh produce, office workers between appointments, children weaving through the crowd on their way home from school. Now in the heart of most African capitals, the public square is more than just a physical space. It’s a vibrant gathering point where culture, politics, religion, and community intersect. These open spaces, often bustling with activity, become places for political demonstrations, cultural performances, market exchanges, and the everyday interactions of citizens. Well, in today’s episode, we’ll look at how the global Christian church engages such public spaces and consider the distinct perspective of the American church and that conversation, exploring how different cultural contexts shape the ways Christians bring their faith into society’s most visible arenas. And to do just that, I’m honored to have my good buddy Bishop Justin Holcomb today. Justin, thanks for joining me.
Justin Holcomb
Hey, Case, thank you for the invitation, and happy to be joining in on some fun with Nuance.
Case Thorp
So, I don’t remember how long we’ve known each other. How did we first meet?
Justin Holcomb
I know how we met. It’s all because someone just yesterday was asking me about the event and he said, I remember you from this event. It’s when we brought in the Diocese of Central Florida when I was working for the previous Bishop. We wanted to have a faith and work event and we were bringing in Katherine Leary Alsdorf, who wrote Every Good Endeavor with Tim Keller. And you were kind of like the faith and work guru in Central Florida and Orlando area. And you and I met up there because you invited her to do some stuff with the Collaborative. And then you and I started, you know, doing stuff in central Florida. I invited you to come speak at the diocese to a bunch of clergy about faith and work with Made to Flourish. And then it all just kind of flourished from there. So it was funny because someone just yesterday said, I remember you from that because he came as a local business guy in Orlando. And he was like, Hey, that’s when I started realizing how cool it is that this stuff actually converges and actually, you know, Sunday meets Monday through Friday. And he was just talking about all the stuff that you would have loved to have heard him talking about.
Case Thorp
Got it. Well, I also privileged myself as one of Bishop Holcomb’s behind the scenes campaign counselors when he ran for office and sought the Lord’s will through the diocese, it was fun to watch that journey. And dude, the Lord called. Here you are.
Justin Holcomb
Thank you. And he got the good seats for that. We got the, and some other locals, Ed Stetcher and some others who came in for the service and made sure we had had all the local pastors who were my buddies all together.
Case Thorp
Yes, visiting clergy for a bishop’s installation. I tell you people, they have some beautiful vestments. We’re kind of boring as Presbyterians. Well, to our friends and viewers, welcome to Nuance, where we seek to be faithful in the public square. I’m Case Thorp, and come on now, like, subscribe, share. We’ve gotten some great numbers lately, and the more you do that, the more folks can get some good theology and more integration. Well, let me tell you about our guest, the Rt. Reverend Dr. Justin Holcomb. Look at all that. Now tell me what “right” means.
Justin Holcomb
So you’re the reverend if you are ordained as a deacon or priest to the Anglican community.
Case Thorp
Okay, so I’m a reverend.
Justin Holcomb
Yeah, you’re a reverend. And if you are like a dean, you’re the very reverend. And then bishops get “right” reverend. I’m not exactly sure where that comes from. That’s just the, everyone you see, you know, right reverend, you’re like, okay, that’s a bishop. And then there’s another one for the high, the presiding bishops of provinces and I forget what I think they’re like the most Reverend. I should know this kind of stuff.
Case Thorp
Yeah, you should. Now when you say a Dean, you mean you’re the top guy at the cathedral downtown.
Justin Holcomb
Well, the cathedral is the Cathedral Church of St. Luke. And so the minister, the priest there is the dean. But we also have, the diocese has 14 counties. And so the diocese with 80 churches is divided into five sub-regions. We have central, northwest, northeast, southwest, southeast. The clergy person who has been elected by peers there is called the dean of that deanery. So they also get the reverend, or the very reverend.
Case Thorp
Wow. Okay. I’m very confused. Well, the Bishop Holcomb is the fifth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of central Florida, a seasoned educator. He has taught theology and apologetics since 2000 and written or edited almost 30 books ranging from abuse, theology, and biblical studies. He has a PhD from Emory university, my alma mater, two master’s degrees from Reformed Theological Seminary and a BA from Southeastern University. Justin and his wife, Lindsay, co-founded the ministry, REST: Real Escape from the Sex Trade in 2009. He’s been such an influence in the publishing world. Some of his titles include Rid of My Disgrace, God Made All of Me, Know the Creeds and Councils, Know the Heretics. And he and two co-editors are soon to release a new book, Prophet, Priest and King, Christology and Global Perspective. Justin serves on multiple nonprofit boards, lives in Orlando with two fantastic daughters. So what did I miss? What else do you want people to know?
Justin Holcomb
I’m on the Board of GRACE: Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment. Been on the Board for about 12 years. And that’s about it. I’m a friend of Case. That’s one of my calling cards.
Case Thorp
Well, F-O-C, you know, friends of Bill Clinton used to be F-O-Bs, so you need to put F-O-C at your end.
Well, so I’ve got Justin here today to talk a bit more about the global church, as Americans are a little self-centered at times and we think we’re about it going on. But friends, there is such a wide world out there. And frankly, it’s where the Christian movement has the most dynamism and setting the best trends. And so Justin has great experience in that and I wanted him to talk a bit more. And then make that connection back to, okay, our everyday lives here in this country and where are we to understand and engage with the global church. So Justin, I did not realize this as long as we’ve been friends, but in ‘06, you were ordained a deacon and priest in the providence of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan. Okay, like how on earth? Tell me about that.
Justin Holcomb
Yes. So one of my mentors is Carl Dixon. He’s a Calvary Chapel pastor in Sarasota. I knew him since I was probably 18 and I’m 51. So we can do the math on that. He started teaching chaplains in the Sudanese people’s liberation army. So this is before there was a South Sudan. And so I was actually ordained in the diocese of Sudan because there wasn’t a South Sudan.
So he started going in, I believe, 2000, maybe 1999, but I believe around there. And he went on this trip to South Sudan training the chaplains for the SPLA, Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, because there was a liberation movement because the north, the Arabic speaking Muslim north that had all the money was bombing the African, black African Christian or animist in southern Sudan that had all the oil. So they were one of them off the oil, mostly Christian.
Case Thorp
So it’s mostly Arab Muslims in the north and then more continental black African in the south.
Justin Holcomb
Yeah, and the North was funding a Christian terrorist group called the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. So the people of South Sudan were getting bombed from the North and attacked by terrorists from the South. And they wanted them off the land because if they could get off the land, they could then pump all the oil back up and take the oil money. So there’s a liberation movement. And the chaplains were people who wanted to support the liberation movement but didn’t want to kill their enemy.
Some of them had a past of this piece. Some of them just, they weren’t trained to be soldiers, but they wanted to serve the liberation movement. So there were multiple motivations. I heard the stories from my mentor and it was inspiring. And he said, well, I’m going back in October of 2001. And I said, I would love to go. I’ll raise the money so I can carry your bags. I just want to be there to support you and see it. And then he called about two months before and said, I need you to teach with me. You’ll teach in the morning. I’ll teach in the afternoon. So I was completely honored. Then 9/11 happened. So I went a month after 9/11. Then I kept up. That was, they were not too fun.
Case Thorp
Okay. Good grief. I bet your mother was thrilled about that.
Justin Holcomb
Exactly. My dad was more worried. My mom, yeah. No one was happy with that. And I kept on going back. I went back every year for about a month and would stay and just develop friendships, connections. At the same time, I had been in 2003 moved to Charlottesville to teach at the University of Virginia. I started going through the discernment process in the Episcopal Church to be ordained as a priest there. And so what happened is in the United States, many dioceses have a partner relationship with the diocese somewhere else in the world. In central Florida, we’ve had one for 50 years with the Diocese of Honduras. It’s the longest lasting partnership. What I didn’t know is that the Diocese of Virginia, where I was, had a partnership with the Diocese in Sudan. So the Bishop of Sudan, because there’s a lot of Anglicans in East Africa, and the Bishop there saw me somewhere in Sudan and said, hey, you’re training all my clergy. Aren’t you getting ordained? That’s just sort of in the process. And he said, well, I should ordain you. I’ll email your Bishop. I was like, okay. I get back to the United States. The Bishop, Peter Lee at the time, summoned me to his office in Richmond. And when the Bishop summons, it’s like, okay, what did I do wrong? And he said, I would like for you to be ordained in Sudan. And so he approved it. So it ended up, that’s the longer version of how I got ordained in Sudan. So I flew to Sudan for a month and then I was ordained there. And then I transferred finally back to the Episcopal Church about three years later.
Case Thorp
Well, I know for my ordination service, it was such an important family moment. Did your family come to Sudan?
Justin Holcomb
No, I was there by myself. It was a mass ordination. I got ordained. The deacons, there were about 15 to 20 deacons that got ordained that day. And then there were about another 15, maybe 20 priests. So you have to be ordained a priest, a deacon before you ordain a priest. And so they ordained me to the deaconate. And then about 30 minutes later, I was ordained to the priest individually, but there were a big group of us.
Case Thorp
Okay, got it.
Justin Holcomb
It was, so that’s why it was so special about the consecration service is that, that you were at that we were kind of talking about and having fun about the best ones. I got married to my wife. I got ordained in May and married to Lindsay in December. So I, you know, we were dating, we were engaged, no children. My parents were at my ordination. So for the consecration service, June, 2023, that was the one time I got to actually enjoy that with family and friends.
Case Thorp
Well, I mean, the warfare, the Christians and liberation movements, such a different world, such a different faith journey. What did you grow to appreciate about the Sudanese and their faith?
Justin Holcomb
The Sudanese as a people group are some of the most, if not the most hospitable people in the world. I noticed that by my experience. I thought, well, maybe it’s this village I’m in. I was going to Nimule, N-I-M-U-L-E, a small, what was then small. It was, mean, we’re talking mud huts, a little bit of electricity, maybe right off the Nile. You’re eating perch from the Nile and cattle and goat and mud huts.
I would go places and have meetings and they would send off a boy on his bike to go get a cold Coca-Cola in a bottle. And I’m thinking, I mean, once I got ordained, they had threw a party for me and Lindsay and the next year when we went back and how much they spent relative to what they had to honor this guy, the hospitality is through the roof, which, connects theologically to God’s generosity and the abundance and lavishing. And so it’s part of their culture, but also connected to their faith. The other thing that stood out about the chaplains is what was always noteworthy about the chaplains. Those chaplains, they had a few different people that they were there for. They were there to serve the soldiers. So they were pastors to the soldiers. And you’re doing a lot of, you have bayonets and an AK-47, so it’s not like precision bombing. So there’s a lot of trauma, even if you’re doing the killing. So there’s just a lot of pastoral care for these Sudanese Liberation Army soldiers.
Case Thorp
And these were Episcopal priests serving as military chaplains.
Justin Holcomb
They’re Anglican, mostly Anglican, but there were other denominations who were involved. This is military chaplains. Yeah. They were also there for the civilians because the civilians were the ones that were being bombed and starved and attacked from the government, but also from this terrorist Christian group who had come in with machetes and just doing horrible things. And then they were in charge of the POW. So if they captured someone from the North, so they had to do pastoral care for soldiers, POWs and civilians.
They had three different congregations for which they were caring. A beautiful story. I remember when I was teaching a class on Romans or Revelation or something, and the guy who oversaw the chaplaincy program said, Hey, Justin, they have like 20 POWs. So take them and go tell them how to do prison ministry. And I was like, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. And he said, the Lord will guide you. You’ll figure it out. This is a good opportunity for us. So we went and brought all the students to these 20 POWs. Well, the Southern Sudanese soldiers hate, these are the enemy. And so, I was like, hey, can you get them? Cause we need to introduce them to the chaplains. And so I said, you know, what do you need? And they said, we need mosquito spray, we need blankets. So I told the chaplains that they handed over all their mosquito spray to these POWs who were flying planes bombing, you know, their people. And, they went back and a lot of my students ended up getting malaria because they gave away their mosquito spray, which I didn’t know. I thought they knew that there was like a big box in the storage room. You can just go get another one. And so the fact that they sacrificed themselves for their supposed enemy was beautiful. Well, then a year later, I didn’t go back. My friend went and said, Hey Justin, I got a story for you. And he took a picture of these four Arabic looking men from North and they had just gotten baptized. And what happened was, they were the POWs, they were four of the 20 that were there before, and the chaplains were caring for them. And he said, what happened is one of them stood up after the service, a worship service on Sunday after the sermon, and started talking. And then everyone started yelling at him. And my friend was like, oh my goodness, this is going down. There’s gonna be a fight here, it’s a clash of cultures. I mean, what is this guy thinking? He’s standing up. And his translator was like, shh,
stop, don’t talk to me right now, I gotta listen to this. And so finally after all, everything got done, everyone got up to walk out. He’s like, what’s happening? And he said, that guy just stood up and said, me and my three friends here have been coming to this church, because this is our new home since we’ve lived here as prisoners. And we believe in Jesus, but we’re not sure what we do next, because we’re the enemy.
The people were yelling back, you’re not the enemy, you’re our brothers in Christ. They weren’t yelling like, get out of here Muslims. They were saying, you’re not the enemy, you’re our brother. Let’s go get baptized. So they went down and got baptized. That’s beautiful. That’s the ministry of the chaplains of just the fullness of what they were doing. They’re like heroes to me. Then they also helped lead South Sudan. South Sudan didn’t even merge as a country until years after that. It was, you know, late 2000s. I don’t know the exact dates, but, you know, now it’s this old country and they were there for the kind of forming of it.
Case Thorp
Well, for those on podcasts that can’t see, you should know Justin’s a bit weepy. The emotions, that’s real, that’s good.
Hello! Just a quick break to remind you that this episode is part of Podcastathon, a movement using podcasts to amplify nonprofits making a difference. So we’re featuring iDignity, a nonprofit dedicated to helping the vulnerable reclaim their independence by providing the vital documents they need to move forward in life. If you’d like to be a part of the change, visit iDignity.org and see how you can make a difference. Now, back to the conversation.
Okay. So this is actually a great connection to your upcoming book. I think about how we engage with Jesus and who he is for us in different periods of our journey in our life. Of course, he is the one same God and Jesus all the way through, but you’ve got in your title of your book, Prophet, Priest and King. So he was a real priest to those POWs in and through the Sudanese. They felt his love through that mosquito spray. But then, you know, Jesus might have been a real prophet to some of those South Sudanese who needed to say, you know what, we’re going to love him as our brother, even though they’re technically on the northern side of the army. So talk to us about your book, Prophet, Priest, and King, Christology in the Global Church. Tell us what this word Christology is and then how it applies.
Justin Holcomb
The word Christology means the study of the person and work of Jesus Christ. So just like biology, bio-ology, know, Christology is Christology, study of Christ. And who is Jesus? The God-man, fully God, fully man. And what did he do? What are his works? Cross, resurrection, ascension. And it came out, this is one of, this is the first of four or five volumes. So we’ll do one on the doctrine of God and other theological topics.
The project emerged, let me do a little bit of background on that. From the past 10 years, I’ve been working with my friend Mike Horton, who’s a seminary professor theologian at Westminster, California. And we do the podcast White Horse Inn together. And we go to India, Chiang Mai, Thailand, East Africa, we’re talking about Nairobi, Egypt. we have a thing called Theo Global.
And what we do is we go and we host a theology conference for local seminary professors and scholars to come for networking, meeting each other, supporting them, encouraging them. And what happened was we started doing that and the papers were so good, we thought, let’s publish these, let’s work together as a team. we brought in scholars from all these different areas. We have India, Egypt, Middle East, East Africa, there’s Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Burundi, Kenya, Ethiopia, South and Central America, Southeast Asia and South Asia. We brought it to Istanbul and the place where some of the creeds were hammered out. And we all worked together on this project for a week straight. And so we have people from different regions working on teams. So we have a prophet team, a priest team, and a king team, all different. And so that’s where it emerged from.
The prophet, priest, king language comes from the roles that were anointed in the Old Testament were prophets, priests, and kings. And Jesus presented himself as the fulfillment, as the Messiah, as he’s a prophet bringing the word of God to ignorance. He’s a king bringing freedom to those who are oppressed. And he’s a priest bringing forgiveness to those who feel guilty. And so it’s the fullness of the role of the Messiah.
Case Thorp
Well, so I kind of think about it like you have roles, you’re a husband, you’re a dad. I don’t know if you coach any of your kids’ teams. You’re a bishop, you’re a brother in Christ. So Christology is looking at Jesus in these various roles. And then, you emphasize the global voice on this, because the way I understand a prophet might be very different than those South Sudanese. You know, I’ve got Martin Luther King Jr. in my mind and heart from being an American.
Justin Holcomb
Love it. Yes.
Case Thorp
I’ve got other prophets, like Phil Hissom, a guy here in Orlando that I love who I think is a great prophetic voice. But you know, that’s not the same when you live in Taiwan.
Justin Holcomb
And that’s it, the goal we set out is we don’t want to start forming our theology from our context and our experience and go from there only. I don’t want to go, this is what I understand as prophet, priest and king in America, then fill that in to Jesus as prophet, priest and king. What we want to do is go, okay, what does the Bible say about Jesus as prophet, priest and king?
That’s the first thing, how we do theology, what does scripture say? But how does it connect to my experience as an American? So we don’t want to have an American theology, an African theology, an East African theology, a South American theology. But we do want to say, what’s distinctive about your context that asks questions? So exactly, so if you go to India and you go priest, well, a priest in India is doing sacrifices by the Ganges and doing certain things there. Then you do priests, Hindu priests. And so what we’re doing is we’re trying to do theology in context, bring all of those connections of what does it mean for Jesus to be the great high priest and how does it engage that setting? What does it look like for in certain areas in East Africa where you have tribal religions that would have something like a king or a clan leader. How does the category work out? So that’s the project. And see what gets brought when you have those multiple voices from different cultures going, hey, when these are assumptions we make as the Americans at the table about Christology from our context, and some of them are good, some of them are bad because we have blinders on from our culture.
Case Thorp
Yeah, well sure. I mean, democracy–like we threw the king out–and I find when I teach the Bible sometimes I have to open up our understanding of a king, of a monarch, before we then can fully appreciate scripture.
Justin Holcomb
Yeah. And most kings, mean, just how shocking it is that most kings would tax you for their comfort and for the idea of Jesus as a king who says, I’m going to lay down my life and shed blood for your protection. When everyone else’s, their understanding of the king is we’re going to go die for the king’s kingdom to expand. Just that in itself is shocking. And then you put into it like, yeah, we vote people in, we’ll vote you out, got to keep us happy.
That’s not how, I mean, that influences how you think about, and you know, there’s deep structures to American culture, all the sociologists like Christian Smith, James Davis and Hunter others. mean, so we’re informed by things that we have, we don’t even think about it. We just take it for granted. We’re radically individualized, privatized, we’re in a pluralized society for good or for bad, with deep consumerism. So there’s lots of deep structures of American culture that inform all of us. And then we bring that to the Bible, bring that to our relationship with God. And having these global conversations, like I still remember, it’s really simple. I remember one gentleman, we were in East Africa and he said, tell me, tell me about your family. And I had talked about my wife and my two daughters. That’s how an American would talk about the family.
And so he said, he’s like, is everyone else dead? I mean, he was so, I said, what do you mean? He said, what about your mom, your dad, your wife’s mom and dad? Do you have any sisters or brothers? Are they married? Do you have any cousins or nieces and nephews? And I was like, just something as simple as how I answer, tell me about your family was that different. How much more is it going to be different from the context we’re talking about things like forgiveness, power? And globally, you know, the world, global thinkers have talked about. There’s shame cultures, power cultures, guilt cultures. America is more of a guilt culture. Asia is typically known as a shame culture. A lot of Africa is known as a power culture. How do all these get negotiated from scripture and applied? So there’s a lot of different threads going in and out on these global theology conversations.
Case Thorp
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was teaching through Hebrews last fall and there’s beautiful imagery there where Jesus is the great high priest. He’s serving in that sacrificial management role. And then the author is all about, you know, he’s more than just the priest doing the functions. He is the sacrifice himself. And so to illustrate this, this is perhaps a visual image, none of you want, but I had a table in the room and I literally I’m standing behind it as if I’m a priest and participating in the Lord’s Supper. And then I literally threw a leg up on the table and I climbed up on the table to demonstrate, you know, this is what he’s getting at, that Jesus chooses to be that very sacrifice himself. Well, you can imagine the room was a little shocked. What’s Case doing on a table?
So, I appreciate, I hear you talking about how the biblically grounded, but yet multiple understandings of Jesus that are there, not only in the scriptures, but then when you get into various cultures, for the plumber, the banker, the stay-at-home parent, how are they benefited by understanding what the Brazilians might think of Jesus as a prophet or the African culture as a king? How does that get down to our daily lives?
Justin Holcomb
Yeah, it gets down. I’m going to go back real quick to something you said at the very beginning, which I just loved. You started talking about the bustling image of Nairobi and just to be encouraging first of all, you know, to the Christians who are listening. I know some non-Christians listening to, and I’m not to throw rocks at them, but what’s really cool about what makes me proud as a Christian is looking at where Christianity is around the world. And when you see a group of Christians, being in a place…You will see hospitals being built, schools being built, engagement in fruitful politics that tries to do something about corruption. Libraries are built. Women are treated much better. Women’s health has changed. Environment, because the environment impinges on poverty. Usually women and children are first. And so you see a lot of really tangible, real live implications just from the Christian faith and a community of Christians being together.
And just you kind of in my head you kind of ticked off all the different dimensions you’re like in your introduction so that was just cool and when to celebrate that and and and that’s the thing is These global conversations about Christology at the biggest level that makes me kind of check myself and wonder: What am I believing or saying or thinking about God or how I relate to friends, family, church, how God relates to me, how I relate to God, that’s informed more by being an American than by being a Christian. And I keep on finding through these larger conversations that I, in fact, too often default to following the patterns of this world. And I keep on, you know, through these engagements with global scholars, realizing, I think I’m doing that because I’m an American, not necessarily because I’m a Christian.
And that’s just a convicting moment. And then seeing how full the work of Christ is, that if he’s prophet, priest, and king, he’s bringing wisdom and knowledge to our ignorance. He’s bringing guilt. He’s bringing forgiveness to our guilt and our shame. And he’s freeing us from bondage. And so that’s a grounding of who you are in Christ that actually frees you up to do so; there’s not a direct prophet-priest-king How does this influence people in the workforce that are not paid to be Christians in a church doing ministry? But once you have that vision that we talked about earlier from your intro that all of these Christians like good things flow from people who have the humility of having your eyes fixed on Jesus, author and perfecter of our faith, being a recipient of His great goodness that flattens out our self-righteousness, which then gives you this wonderful gratitude to love God and neighbor out of gratitude for the gift you’ve been given. And then realizing that He was the sent one, Jesus is sent to the world to reconcile the world to Himself. This is not just, He’s not just coming for souls, He’s coming for resurrection. New bodies, new heavens, new earth. And that as a Christian, you are a part of, he’s making all things new. In one way he’s doing it, in the Christian life, we call that sanctification, that he’s slowly conforming me and you as individuals into the image of Christ. On the macro scale, it’s eschatology, it’s the kingdom of God language that he’s transforming the world into what he wants it to be until he finally returns and then it’s going to be there. And the way he’s doing that, one of the main ways he’s doing that are through individuals and communities that are in these different fields as salt and light. Whether you’re evangelizing or not, keep on evangelizing, but that’s one way.
Case Thorp
Well, as a pastor, I hear folks a lot of times say to me, you know, I don’t understand my Catholic coworker, or I don’t understand why this coworker cares so much about this issue of immigration or abortion. And I hear in their questions, as I often hear in other people, they’re leaning on Jesus more as a prophet, one who calls out injustice, and they lean towards that Jesus who’s trying to fix the broken stuff.
But then, you know, there are coworkers that want to bring people to faith in Christ, and they’re more like that priest who’s wanting to talk about sacrifice and forgiveness. And I hope that folks can hear in your focus on Christology a way to better understand those around us and the different ways Jesus means something to us.
Justin Holcomb
Yeah, one of our friends, Damien, who I know has been on the podcast, when he talks about faith and work issues, he talks about ethics, evangelism, and enjoyment of the endeavor of work. And there’s all these different dimensions. And what you just said is picking, we don’t just pick one of those things that, work is important because it gives me an opportunity to evangelize. I can’t evangelize. Work isn’t important because it has an effect on me and makes me feel fulfilled. But that’s actually one of the beautiful things about being fulfilled. And it’s not just because I can talk about ethics and be ethical and I’m doing pre-evangelism, but that is noteworthy that when people hire the Christians because they’re going to be the trustworthy ones, there’s all these different dimensions that absolutely I can see people hearing that going, which one is a prophet, priest or king and how does that apply to your vocation?
Case Thorp
And I’m realizing that at the Collaborative, we probably tend to emphasize the King nature of Jesus a bit much in terms of, Hey, lead in your business, lead in your industry, lead in our community by doing the right thing, seeing people flourish, provide a great product or service at a fair price, that leadership in fixing the world. Well, I want to shift a bit, hang on to the global piece, but also dip into your incredible work for survivors of sexual abuse and the church. So you’re on the board of GRACE, which stands for Godly response to abuse in Christian environments. And I know when I’ve come across churches that have had sexual scandal, your ministry there at GRACE has just been invaluable to them. And as I mentioned, you co-founded with your wife, REST. So, you know, we hear a lot about sex trafficking on the domestic side. And it’s more on the radar of our churches and community leaders. So as a very abusive thing to people, talk to us about sex trafficking in the global dynamic, and particularly how women are being brought into this nation and how we can see more of that around us.
Justin Holcomb
So yeah, sex trafficking is both, it’s happening elsewhere and happening here. So on the American side of things, women are trafficked within the United States, but also globally to come here, especially usually in destinations like Orlando. Orlando is pretty high on the sex trafficking list. On the West coast it’s called the I-5 corridor. It goes all the way from Vancouver, all the way down to Mexico, and goes down the whole West coast from Seattle, California, all the way down and in Orlando.
Case Thorp
And Orlando, because we have so many conferences and conventions, you have men on their own who were looking for that. And that’s why it’s big here.
Justin Holcomb
And if you can move people around, so you have Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Jacksonville. So it’s easy proximity to move people quickly so they don’t know and they don’t start relationships. And it’s also connected to organized crime. Like, the Russian Mafia is connected to Orlando and there’s different organized crime dimensions. And so that’s supply and demand. And I’m not trying to be crass about this, but the supply of trafficked women, is…traffickers have talked about it’s not like drugs or guns that you can use once but there’s multiple so there’s low cost high income just It’s just horrific the way they’re talked about but the demand is the problem. You have all the conferences coming to Orlando. Yeah businesses, so a lot of companies come to Orlando for their conventions, their conferences, and globally the biggest problem are American men, Japanese men, and soldiers, especially American soldiers, you have disposable, you have the money that you get, it’s so much more in other contexts. That can be the problem globally. It’s not, you want to get to the United States if you’re doing trafficking because you just have more income influx coming in.
That’s where REST, the Real Escape from the Sex Trade, that’s where that came from, was when we were in the West Coast. My wife, she was pregnant with her first daughter and she started working with another woman who was pregnant with their first daughter and she would go downtown to meet with 14-year-old girls who were being trafficked by their pimps. And then that just grew into something else. So that’s the trafficking side of things.
You do want to try to get the women free from that type of trafficking, but if you can address the demand side of things, it would starve the market, but that demand does not slow down. So you have to make it so painful for someone to participate in sexual exploitation of someone.
Case Thorp
Yeah. So do I hear you saying that there’s less or not really much of American women being trafficked overseas? It’s more about bringing others here.
Justin Holcomb
Yeah, it’s not as much American women being moved. I mean, it will happen, but, the cost of doing that is, in the reality of doing that is difficult. And so it’s usually because you have the way of doing that in other places, other countries is, you know, there’s no reason to do that from people here to move them. That will happen because it’s easier and closer in proximity right there.
Case Thorp
Yeah. So now bring in the Christology, for the woman who has been so abused, who is Jesus to her?
Justin Holcomb
Yeah. This is huge because many people think Jesus died for your sins only. Of course he died and rose again, so your sins would be forgiven. But salvation, because we understand the effects of sin and being sinned against. Jesus died to undo sin and its effects. One of the dimensions of sin is guilt. That when we sin, we feel guilty and we are guilty before a holy God. Another effect is death, sickness. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
So when you’re bringing justice to a situation or so, you know, on the guilt side, there’s, you know, a whole bunch of different professions connected to that. And then death is another piece. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be, but then shame. The effects of sin is not just the sins I’ve done, but the sins done against me. And to know for someone who’s been harmed like that, knowing that Jesus, there’s three images of shame in the Bible, naked, defiled and excluded from the people of God. Adam and Eve were stripped naked, they were kicked out of the garden, and they were considered defiled by their sin. Those are the three things that Jesus experienced in the crucifixion. He was stripped naked, treated as if he was defiled and he was removed, he was crucified off in a garbage heap. And Jesus took on all the effects of shame.
He took on filth so we could be robed in his righteousness. He took on, or he was naked so we could be robed. He took on the filth so we would be clean. He was excluded so we would be adopted. And so for the person who’s experienced the shame, one, Jesus understands in his humanity of the experience of being harmed. He experienced the injustice and horror of trauma of the crucifixion and being humiliated. And not only does he get it, but he conquered Satan, sin, hell, death, and the grave and his resurrection. While those things that happen to you are a part of your story, they’re not the last word on your story, and he can tame all evil, and he will also not just tame it, but he’s undoing it, and he’s making all things new. And last, he’s not only gets it, and died and rose again to conquer Satan, sin, hell, death, and the grave, he’s the ascended Lord who is currently interceding for you. He’s mediating between you and the Father so you have access, and he’s advocating for you that you belong there. And then he’s gonna come back and make all things right. So again, that’s just, it’s a lot in a few minutes, but it’s robust.
Case Thorp
Yeah. Well, and so it’s, it’s that priest. It’s that loving healer who helps with that restoration. And then I think about the Johns. Is that the right word for the customers? The Johns? I mean, and even for pimps, I mean, there needs to be that angry Jesus, that prophetic Jesus saying, it. Yeah.
Justin Holcomb
The kingly Jesus who’s coming back saying, uh-uh, I’m freeing them from bondage and my orders. And he’s coming back to make all things new and he’s bringing justice in his return. That’s the kingly ministry of Jesus, absolutely. And the prophetic message when he’s saying, let me give you some words that he inspired in scripture. If you’re in Jesus, you are pure, perfect, righteous, and holy. That’s prophet Jesus saying that through his apostles to us. Those are crazy words for people to be, that’s what you’re called if you’re in Christ.
Pure, perfect, righteous, and holy because we’re called as He was and what He is. So yeah, the Prophet, Priest, King ministry applied the sex trafficking victims and perpetrators.
Case Thorp
Well, let’s push a little further. You know, I know as a hiring manager at times, I’ve had to speak truth. And if I want to be like Christ, how does he speak truth in love? I think about coworking relationships that go sour and there’s so much hatred, anger, jealousy, frustration, and, Jesus, I need you to heal my heart over this. I need you to help me not harbor these feelings. But then, the kingly side, I’m going to lead in my department with my co-workers in a way that promotes peace and love and goodness. It’s just so applicable in so many ways. I always like for folks not to be scared by the big theology words, Christology, but hopefully expand their imaginations. And that these things really matter.
Justin Holcomb
Well, you brought up a review, like doing a review, being reviewed by someone who’s an authority, but then doing the review for someone else is going to be informed about how you dealt with and engage God. If you can’t handle the truth, and this is law and gospel, if you can’t handle reality, the law describes reality, the gospel’s the solution. It’s going to influence how you lead, how you’re led, and how you follow. And then there’s a book called Radical Candor, and it is going through how do you put speaking truthfully to someone and then loving them deeply. How do you hold those together? If you love them and speak the truth to them, that’s called radical candor. And there’s various options. The opposite of radical candor is called ruinous empathy.
And the example of Jesus Christ is what leads us to radical candor and away from ruinous empathy, because that’s not loving at all as a leader to give someone ruinous empathy or just being a jerk doesn’t help either. Or never saying anything true to someone because you don’t want to hurt their feelings is not loving for them at all. It sets them up for failure. So there’s cool implications that come through in leadership on some of these things.
Case Thorp
Okay, so in closing, you’re about a year into your, is it bishopric?
Justin Holcomb
Yeah, my episcopacy. Or bishopric, you can pick either.
Case Thorp
I love it. Well, so like you’ve been in this role for a bit now. How has your leadership, how has your faith and work evolved now that you’re in this very different and highly visible and highly responsible role?
Justin Holcomb
Yeah, I’ve developed a question that I ask myself and I make a lot of decisions and they’re not, there’s a lot of them and many of them are big and have an influence over a lot of people. And a question for me that’s emerged that’s been very helpful is what’s the most loving thing as a Christian? I feel like I need to answer that question. Does it mean the nicest? Does it mean what will the most people like?
Because the most loving thing can disappoint people. It can disappoint someone who wants to be ordained. It can disappoint a leader in a church that wants to do something that’s different from me. Or how do I lead my staff? So that’s been fun, is seeing how that’s emerged. What’s the most loving thing? I’ve also noticed that before, when I had less responsibilities, I could get all my stuff done and my desk was clean and I felt great and yeah, I checked before we got on, I have 103 emails I need to get to and that’s overwhelming so it feels like I’m prioritizing as best I can knowing that I’m gonna let someone down so it feels like selective negligence like, I can’t do everything because my identity can’t be in other people being thrilled with me all the time. I’m a human, I’m a creature and I have a body that needs food and time with my wife and kids and friends. So it feels like selective negligence. And again, I’m not trying to neglect anyone. But also just understanding how responsibility and authority works that I don’t have the luxury to ruminate with a group of people. I need to be really careful to not either ruminate, to manipulate people or to just verbally process. And so it’s really pushed me back on looking at what I, or patterns that I have that there’s been a few things where I’ve had people after a meeting or a visit at a church go, man, when you did this, that was amazing. And the cool part about that is I don’t even know what I was doing. It was just instinct. And that’s great when your instinct matches what people need. Well, I’ve also had the opposite of that where what’s my instinct is horrible, hurts people, confuses them, angers them, makes them wonder if I’m upset with them. I’ve learned the more I’m leading, the more I am apologizing. Now I don’t apologize to appease people. That’s manipulative. But I’m just realizing people say, Hey, I was just really disappointed in whatever I did. And I’ll hear it and go, okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. So a lot more that was, it wasn’t, I was shocked by many decisions I had to make. I was shocked by how people would hear me thinking out loud, ruminating. Shocked by the amount of stuff that needs to be prioritized, but I was ultimately shocked by how great my instincts were on some things and how bad they were on some things and to course correct. So hopefully I’ll be apologizing less because I won’t be creating the need to apologize as much.
Case Thorp
Man, thank you. Thank you for that honesty. And I appreciate that we got on your calendar. I won’t send you an email of thanks. I’ll tell you now so you don’t have to check it. Well, Justin, I really do appreciate it. Folks, his book will be released this March of 2025. Prophet, Priest and King: Christology in Global Perspective. Go check out GRACE, Godly Response to Abuse in Christian Environments, netgrace.org.
He’s also co host for the White Horse Inn podcast. And that’s a great one loved by many, learn more at JustinHolcomb.com. Well, friends, thank you for joining us. Remember, like and share, leave a comment helps us to get our message out there. You can visit collaborativeOrlando.com. Wait, that redo that. You can visit weco labor.com for all sorts of further content there you give us your email, we’ll send you a 31 day faith and work
You can find us also across the social media platforms. Don’t forget also, Nuance Formed for Faithfulness, a weekly 10-minute devotional for the working Christian that follows the liturgical calendar. I thank our sponsor for today, the Magruder Foundation. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
