In the premiere episode of Credible Witness, host Nikki Toyama-Szeto is joined by theologian and public historian Jemar Tisby and pastor and scholar Mark Labberton to explore how the witness of the church has become compromised—and what might restore its credibility. Reflecting on five years of candid, challenging conversation among diverse Christian leaders during the wake of George Floyd’s murder and rising Christian nationalism, the three discuss the soul-searching, disillusionment, and hope that emerged.

Together, they examine the cultural fractures, theological tensions, and moral failures that have pushed many to extremes, elevating strident voices as an increased number of people to leave the church.

They articulate the mission and vision of Credible Witness, testify to a persistent hope in Jesus and the power of honest community, face painful truths, and imagine a church that more truly reflects the love, justice, and mercy of God.

Key Moments

1. “We absolutely get that… but we’re still on board with Jesus. And Jesus has always been with us and hasn’t left us.”
2. “This isn’t about leaving Jesus. This is about following Jesus.”
3. “We’ve got a better story to tell.”
4. “It was the church that was putting the church at risk.”
5. “The church has a reputation in the United States… and not a good one by and large.”

About the Contributors

Nikki Toyama-Szeto is the host of Credible Witness, and is executive director of Christians for Social Action, equipping the church to pursue justice and follow Jesus in the tension of our times.

Jemar Tisby is the author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism, and founder of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective. He is the host of Pass the Mic.

Mark Labberton is a pastor, author, and former president of Fuller Seminary, known for his prophetic voice on faith, justice, and the credibility of the church. He is host of the podcast Conversing.

Show Notes

• “This isn’t about leaving Jesus. This is about following Jesus.” —Jemar Tisby
• Nikki introduces Credible Witness as a space for honest stories of faith amid moral complexity and social tension
• Mark recalls the origins of the conversation in summer 2020: COVID-19, George Floyd, church division, and racial injustice
• Jemar Tisby clarifies the mission for imagining a more credible Christian witness
• Nikki reflects on trust-building in a space that welcomed “tricky truths” and honesty without pretense
• The group’s five-year journey begins as a short experiment but grows into a lasting community of deep discernment
• “We weren’t trying to replicate any harm.” —Jemar Tisby
• The group names white Christian nationalism and silence on injustice as threats to the church’s credibility
• Ephesians 2 and the power of “coming together of the unlikes” as a witness to the resurrection
• “It was the church that was putting the gospel at risk.” —Mark Labberton
• Nikki explains how church neutrality began to speak volumes: “Choosing silence was actually a loud voice.”
• Discussion on the failure of integrity: “Too many things in isolation” eroded credibility
• Jemar highlights story as central to public theology: “We’ve got a better story to tell.”
• The group wrestles with algorithmic distortion and toxic digital narratives shaping Christian identity
• “Not just message, but embodiment”: The church’s credibility depends on lived ethics, not just theological claims
• Mark emphasizes self-examination: “Are we credible?”
• Dissonance and disagreement as gifts: “What kept people in the room was the gift of dissonance.” —Nikki Toyama-Szeto
• Jemar recalls moments of tension over how to prioritize justice issues while remaining unified in Christ
• The group’s diversity as a deliberate strategy: different traditions, backgrounds, and responsibilities within the church
• Nikki names divine timing: the conversation is more urgent now than when it began
• “We’re not all supposed to be the same… That’s how everything gets covered.” —Jemar Tisby
• Mark frames the church’s failure as internal implosion—not external threat
• “Why is the church seemingly so unchanged?” —Mark Labberton
• Nikki describes how marginalized voices carry wisdom for the way forward
• Jemar articulates the podcast’s goal: a mirror and a window for listeners to see both themselves and the larger church
• Nikki closes with an invitation to slow down and listen generously: “Pull up a chair…”

Transcript

Jemar Tisby: What stands out to me most is how often we emphasized this isn’t about leaving Jesus. This is about following Jesus.
This isn’t about leaving the church universal behind. It’s about cultivating a sense of the true church. And I remember this really admirable feistiness two.Share of faith and proclaim a faith that looked a lot more like Jesus than it did like the American Empire, And that was critical at that point as it is today, because so many people were leaving the church. There’s this evangelical movement going on.
There’s all these memoirs and books and podcasts about church hurt, sexual abuse, racism, anti this, anti that. And people saying, I’m done with Christianity, I’m done with the church. And we were gathering to say, we absolutely get that. And we are as fired up and angry about these things as you are, but we’re still on board with Jesus.
And so we wanted to have very appropriately, a credible witness in the midst of all of this and say, that’s not the Christianity of Christ that you’re seeing in the headlines. That is hurting people and abusing people. There is another way.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I’m Nikki Toyama-Szeto and this is Credible Witness, A collection of stories and wisdom from faithful people, wrestling with and bearing witness to the credibility of Christian life today.
Each episode is an invitation to listen generously courageously. To one person, navigating social tension and moral complexity, negotiating doubts, struggles and fears, overcoming obstacles, and pursuing justice and living out the convictions of their faith.
And every voice reminds us that church is called to be a credible witness to Christ, a living reality of hope, justice, truth and love.
Welcome listeners to Credible Witness. We are so grateful that you’ve joined us today.
Credible witness is a place where we have one-on-one conversations with leaders who are trying to navigate tensions and divisions honesty who’ve experienced something of the love and the hope of God, and at the same time find themselves troubled by the witness of the church in our communities today.
We hope that these conversations can be healing and practical and insightful.
Emotional and spiritual roadmaps.
Offering the chance to take some perspective and embody a generous listening to many voices unified in a common purpose of seeking a more credible witness to the gospel.
In this first episode of the show, Mark Labberton, Jemar Tisby and I discuss the how the show came to be while we’re launching into this moment, the meaning of the concept of a credible witness and the personal significance of the experience for each one of us.
We’ll be releasing episodes weekly. Remember to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts to get the next episode when it releases.
You belong in this conversation. Join us as we pursue a more credible witness.
Mark Labberton: Welcome Nikki. Welcome Jemar, to the first episode of Credible Witness. What a gift it is to have you and to have shared quite a remarkable experience together with you over these last five years since the conversations about the state of the church in the United States in particular really began to take hold for all of us.
So glad that you, you can be with us.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Thank you, mark. Thanks for welcoming
us.
Jemar Tisby: Thrilled to be on this inaugural episode.
Mark Labberton: Absolutely. it was five years ago this summer, the summer of 2020, which I think anyone listening to this episode would be a Summer of living Memory, where we, uh, vividly recall the unfolding horizon of COVID and all that that was going to hold. But it also occurred at that time that there had already been this long string of, of shootings of young African American men in particular, but also women.
We had seen signs of, of a rising tide of. Church division that was already really clear and palpable. We had seen this sense of racial division that has always been present, but was in one of the seasons that would be particularly inflamed. saw evidences of a church that was beginning to divide even more clearly along political and racial lines.
These were just some of the things that were going on and it prompted, uh, the invitation to both of you and several other people and a number of other people, about 25 initially who were invited to come together. In a setting where with all of our diversity of races, ethnicities, denominations, we were invited simply to have a conversation together as individuals, not representative of something else, not institution, not a category, but to simply have honest conversations as brothers and sisters in Christ about the state of the church for which all of us shared a, a great concern.
Nikki, why don’t you begin by just expressing a bit about your sense of how things got going and what those early period really was about.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I will say the invitation to come into this conversation about what we were seeing in the church and also a little bit of what we dreamed. About and for the church, it was not an unusual invitation.
I just feel like there’s a lot of, uh, self-reflection or conversations that were going on and trying to sort of understand the times. But the thing that I found very startling is that the community that, you gathered, mark, really had a different way of showing up. And it took me quite a while to recognize that, oh, this is actually a place where I didn’t have to, hold back and, and, and to kind of moderate some of what I was thinking for the sake of being polite.
But that there was actually a, an expansiveness for us all to bring some pretty tricky truths that we were openly wrestling with. And to be a little bit honest with that and, and, and sort of suss that out in this broader community. And I think, um, it took me a little while to. Recognized that that was welcome and it was, I think, incredibly helpful to really bump up against, as I was just trying to make my way in the world and in the church world to ask these questions of like, well, how does this work?
Both in my own experience, but also in the communities that are adjacent to me as we all are striving for the same thing for the church.
Mark Labberton: what about you, Jemar?
Jemar Tisby: What stands out to me most about that group gathering is how often we emphasized this isn’t about leaving Jesus. This is about following Jesus.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Jemar Tisby: This isn’t about leaving the church universal behind. It’s about cultivating a sense of the true church. And I remember this really admirable feistiness
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jemar Tisby: Uh, to share of faith and proclaim a faith that looked a lot more like Jesus than it did like the American Empire, or to put a finer point on it, white Christian nationalism.
And that was critical at that point as it is today, because so many people were leaving the church. There’s this evangelical movement going on.
There’s all these memoirs and books and podcasts about church hurt, sexual abuse, racism, anti this, anti that. And people saying, I’m done with Christianity, I’m done with the church. And we were gathering to say, we absolutely get that. And we are as fired up and angry about these things as you are, but we’re still on board with Jesus.
And Jesus has always been. Us and hasn’t left us. And so we wanted to have very appropriately, a credible witness in the midst of all of this and say, that’s not the Christianity of Christ that you’re seeing in the headlines. That is hurting people and abusing people. There is another way. And that’s what we wanted to display.
So there was that sense of solidarity. It was that sense of community. It was the sense that we could be wholly ourselves in terms of our faith and also our extremely diverse experiences and even burdens and priorities when it came to justice issues. But it was all welcome at that table. So it was a very well curated table that, um, unfortunately has become all too rare.
Mark Labberton: I do remember that in the early months we were really trying to discern together what are the critical issues and the then what’s behind those critical issues and then what’s behind those analyses as well. We were really trying to go for a careful dissection in a certain way of the cluster of problems and what are the fundamental roots of why we have landed in the moment that we were in.
How did this come about? When did it show signs of beginning to be what it is? If we can discern that, and I think that one of the. Earliest impressions I had of our dynamics. Again, for the listeners, I just wanna underscore this is a group of around 20, 25 people men and women from all different denominations, all different social settings, different roles of ministry, but we came together first and foremost as brothers and sisters in Christ, caring deeply about what both Nikki and Jemar have just shared.
And then trying to figure out what is the etymology of this? What’s the, what’s behind it that, if we could. Get a grasp of more clearly. Perhaps there would be something that could be said or done that would try to address the roots and not just the symptoms that we were seeing at the surface.
And I, there was both agreement and disagreement over various things that we thought greater and lesser priorities around various things. But I would say in the core, as you said, Jemar, with some pretty feisty conversations and a lot of personal honesty, there was a sense of a general diagnosis of what we thought was troubling and that we were now on this journey together.
It’s, it’s worth listeners knowing that when. The invitation to this first began, it was just really an invitation to about a five or six month experiment. It was, it was not a five year journey, and it was certainly not something that would only now in this way show up as a podcast. But because what we, we were also doing is trying to discern, uh, as a hugely important word in this, discern something spiritually.
what is God saying and doing? In this period, not just what is this church being and saying, but what is God saying and doing? And because we came together as a group that had some relationships among ourselves, but a lot of relationships that were new to one another, uh, it took, as Nikki said some time to figure out what is the, what is this community and how, uh, how important it was to figure out whether it could really be trusted.
I think that’s part of it, isn’t it, Nikki, when you say it took a while to actually recognize that it was also a while to know whether you could really trust it. I.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, ’cause I, I think I have heard similar words being used. Oh, we want you to bring your troublesome questions. Oh, we want you to bring your perspective. Oh, that’s the very thing we need. And then is the moment that those troublesome questions or that presence starts to mess with sort of the sacred cows or mesh with the things that are actually really important, then it’s suddenly like, oh, actually we, no, no, no, we don’t, can you leave that part at the door?
So that’s where the invitation was not unusual, but I think the embodiment of the values of it and how that, how the community ended up showing up with a good amount of honesty and vulnerability as well as with a lot of perspectives. It’s not like everyone was just, you know, taking it to the lowest common denominator.
But that’s what I think I really appreciated about the community. I think the thing that was so powerful was. There was a lot of people in the room for whom I was very familiar with their perspective, but it was getting a chance to journey with them and understand their story and how they actually came to some of those conclusions.
That to me, was really powerful because I think I realized there was a way that so many folks were like, Jemar, as you were saying, we were wrestling for that. We were, asking some hard questions of the church and at the same time we so much wanted. For those hard questions to also be a generative thing, a, a, a life renewing, um, kind of a thing.
Um, because we had also tasted and seen so much good of God through these different communities, and I think we were just not yet ready to completely let it go. so I appreciated getting close to a lot of these different, um, these different ways that God was really shaping and forming people and, and folks in the community.
Jemar Tisby: I remember really being very sensitive to people who might eventually listen in on our conversation in
whatever form it took, podcast or something else, and really not wanting to replicate any harm.
That they had endured. Right. We, we had, as I recall, a lot of conversations, uh, generally about the topic of how can you convey the faith and talk about these conversations, whether, politics, racism, immigration, uh, poverty, whatever it might be, without repeating the same mistakes that so many churches and organizations had already done without becoming part of the problem.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yes.
Jemar Tisby: also, I think even more than that, I mean, we knew in general each other’s commitments just being in the same virtual room, so to speak. It was more so about how do we convey ourselves in a way that we’re not perceived. As part of the problem, because if you say Christian, if you say church, if you say justice, if you say culture, if you say politics, anything like that, it comes loaded with baggage.
And so what we were trying to do is say we get those assumptions and how do we convey a message that just, uh, counters those assumptions in a healthy way. So that was a, you know, it was, it was the church has a reputation in the United States in, you know, in that case, in 2020 and not a good one by and large, uh, by the, you know, track by the rise of the nuns, N-O-N-E-S, by the decline of church going and denominations.
And we were like, okay, well how do we kind of cut through the noise and say, Hey, we know that you’ve heard about. Church is doing X, Y, Z. Christians doing X, Y, Z. But there’s another way, and yet there’s all this, also this sort of wall up. There’s already these preconceived notions. So that was a real challenge that but I remember being a long, long conversation over, over the course of our meetings.
Mark Labberton: I think it is a long conversation because the problems at the core have to do with problems that have existed for generations and are part of the Old Testament people of God as well as part of the New Testament church. And, and I just fairly recently finished rereading the Bible again, and one of the things that was so powerful in light of this conversation is that it is possible, I think to say that one of the primary crises over and over and over again with the people of God, older New Testament, is that the people of God have tended to imitate the surrounding culture rather than to be the peculiar people that God has always wanted people to be.
And the reason why that matters to God is that, in my reading of the text, is that God has always wanted the people of God to be a reflection of God.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mark Labberton: Not a reflection simply of their neighbors, but we’ve always had this temptation to simply mirror our neighbors because of course their influence is immediate and direct and personal and daily and hourly.
And therefore we naturally mimic what is primary in our environment, which tends to be our neighbors rather than actually the uniqueness in character and life and mercy and justice and love of God. And what distilled, for me, the urgency of this is that I felt as though the crisis that was happening was not that the church was being attacked from outside, it was principally that the church was imploding, that it was, as I’ve sometimes said, for those who would use the word evangelical, that uh, it’s the evangelicals who are really in certain ways condemning the evangel by our by words and actions.
The reason is because it, it’s not showing the populist evangelicalism in America is in so many places, especially in the white church. But not only, uh, that it’s not showing the vividly and clearly and and faithfully what the character of God is. It’s showing what a combined energy of clever people who call themselves Christians and are Christians are simply galvanized around a political vision ideological vision rather than brought together through, this sense of, of a being.
A peculiar people that are mirroring the unexpected love, the unexpected justice, the unexpected mercy of God, and, it was the church that was putting the church at risk. It was the church that was putting the gospel at risk. It was the church that was. Damaging the way that people could understand the gospel. Because if this is how the gospel’s being represented, then I, that gospel is not a gospel I recognize as good news or a gospel that I think is actually true or faithful, uh, to the God of the Bible. So it’s, it was that recovery process.
What, why is this crisis happening? Why is the church doing this to itself? and what crisis does this create? Both, for the church, for the culture that’s meant to receive the goodness of, of the gospel through the life of the church, when the church. In so many ways seems to be so radically failing to be that kind of church.
Hence ultimately then the question surfaced about really we’re asking what is subverting the credibility of the gospel in and through the life of the American church and what could restore the credibility? What are the marks of a credible that is believable, trustworthy? So when Ephesians talks about the fact that Jesus Christ died and rose, the text goes on, then to say the. And the evidence, the apologetic, the defense for the truth of that reality is that there are people in your neighborhood who like you, who are receiving this letter from,from the Apostle about being Christians in Ephesus.
You are meant to be people who have died and risen. And the evidence of that is that you are part of this new community based on a new humanity that responds to a different set of priorities. And it’s that capacity to be a church that’s called together in its unlikeness with one another in our life, our experience, our background, our ethnicity, our gender, et cetera.
And we are called into the likeness of Jesus Christ. And it’s in that. A very, very significant role that the church, I think is meant to embody its life and bear witness to the credibility of the death and resurrection of Jesus himself.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-hmm.
Mark Labberton: That is,I would say, one of the church’s primary vocations.
So it’s, it was out of that, and I think all of us carried this sense of urgency.
I’d like you to comment a bit around this theme of credibility. ‘ cause in this podcast we’re gonna be exploring things that are, that are deeply related to the credibility of the gospel and the witness of credibility to which we’re all called and committed.
So Nikki, why don’t you start by just giving us a sense of what is it about the threat to the credibility of the church that is most vivid to you?
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yeah. And with little bit of hesitation, I wanted to add on to what you
Mark Labberton: Sure,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: about Ephesians, that it was the coming together of these un unlikelies that the ability to come up together into the head, which is Jesus that testified to the power of the
resurrection.
Mark Labberton: yes,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: And, um, I think that,we sort of underestimate that is what this gathering together of un unlikes in this wrestling together like that’s actually testifying to the power of the resurrection.
Um, you asked the question about what are some of the things that are eroding some of the credibility of the church, and I appreciate that you framed it, that there wasn’t this, an external thing that was happening. But I think the other thing that I feel very mindful of is that, The boundary lines around the church also shifted, and I wasn’t sure how much the church had recognized that those changing boundary lines were part of the eroding what they, what the church was able to do in the past and have this presumption of goodness have this presumption of being a positive force.
That those things were no longer quite in play in the same way. and I think folks recognized it outside of the church, but I wasn’t sure how much folks within the church recognized it. So, by way of an example, I have a real good friend who’s from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and her family is often asked, when did you all come to this country?
Meaning America. And part of what she says is they actually never came to America. The country boundary line moved over them. Their family heritage is in Mexico. But the boundary line moved and suddenly they found themselves in the United States. They actually never immigrated.
And I wondered how much the church recognized that with incidents like Charlottesville, uh, what was happening in Charlottesville with the extra judicial killings of George Floyd, it wasn’t new. It was just newly documented in a way that other folks were more aware of what had always been going on, all of these sort of things.
So I think for a while the church could choose silence or neutrality, and that was seen as neutral, but suddenly part of what was eroding the credibility. Is that the church was choosing to not speak out on things that, because they might’ve been deemed, oh, too political or, or that sort of thing. And they didn’t, I think the church didn’t recognize that choosing silence was actually a loud voice and vocation of something that they didn’t maybe recognize that they were giving credence to.
Mark Labberton: Right?
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: So I think,that was one of the things that, that the church wasn’t recognizing. There’s a whole slew of pastoral issues. There was a whole invitation of what it means for us to live out our faithfulness in the public square. That there was a different kind of a boundary line on that. And if others had chosen it’s okay to co-op some of the language of Christian faithfulness in order to push forward something else, that if the church stayed silent, that it was seen to be supporting that.
So I think that’s, that’s a way that, um, some of the credibility, I think a lot of young folks were asking some legit questions.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I thought Jesus was this, so then why not? Or they were watching what was happening in the Me Too movement. Then that became the church too movement. And they noticed like, wow, no one is saying anything about sexual abuse. What does that mean for me? One outta three. Right. You know? So I think that there’s just a way that old behaviors used to be okay or neutral, and it was the not recognizing that the boundary had changed, that was eroding quickly the credibility of
Mark Labberton: Right,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: and its witness in the local communities, but also I think in the broader society.
Mark Labberton: Thank you.
Jemar Tisby: Yeah, I should have mentioned, toward the top of the show. One of the things that we often referenced in those early meetings in 2020 is when we say the church, which church?
Mark Labberton: Right, right.
Jemar Tisby: So we were all coming from. Evangelical or evangelical adjacent context where we knew that landscape and we knew it sort of dominated the airwaves, what white evangelicals were doing, the Southern Baptist Convention, this conference, that website.
But what where many of us were coming from was like, that’s actually not my current tradition. That’s not the, the kind of church that, I mean when I say the church, uh, a lot of times. So we should mention that. I mean, we had people of, you know, varying racial and ethnic descent, people of varying nationalities and internationalities.
All of those things came into play. And what we found was there’s always been a church that doesn’t see Jesus and justice at odds, but it inseparable.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-hmm.
Jemar Tisby: And often it’s the church at the margins. In some way, shape or form. And often this can be a churches within a church, you know, church as in the people of God being found within congregations, denominations, nonprofits, but still being the people of God in the sense of acting like Jesus.
So that was a big part of what we saw as our job and our role is to say that church, the one you hear about in the headlines, the white evangelical, the dominant, the patriarchal, whatever church, that’s not what is or can be. So I think that was a huge part of it. And when you say, you know, I, I really think that word implosion is very appropriate.
because where that’s coming from is a dominant narrative.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: That looks nothing like Jesus.
So you know, when you get down to the evangel, the gospel, the good news, it’s a story that we proclaim. And the problem is that story that we proclaim A, was getting corrupted and twisted just the message itself.
Jemar Tisby: And B, perhaps even more damaging. The content of the message was coming through, but not the ethics of the
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: That’s right. Mm-hmm.
Jemar Tisby: the actual faith in action. Oh, they said the right words. Although you’ll notice they assiduously stay away from the words of Jesus himself, but they’ll convey in the right vehicle, Christianity, right, but then they won’t act like it.
Mark Labberton:
Jemar Tisby: And that’s the thing, especially with young people, it’s. Y’all say all this stuff about loving neighbors, about 10 commandments, about how to treat other people. And you are not only not doing it, you’re the agents of the most harm. So that, that, that cannot square with people and it shouldn’t, and it didn’t square with us.
Um, and that’s what we were trying to convey.
Mark Labberton: I think that’s really important.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Jemar. I love what you said because I, I think that is true, that there was a way that the talk was not matching how the faithfulness was showing up in person and tho and those things were really loud and clashing So I think when we talk about what it was eroding some of the credibility, it was that the hypocrisy or the lack of integrity between those things.
And I think the thing that I appreciated that the community was trying to do is we weren’t trying to analyze it, understand all the dynamics and dissect it. I feel like part of what we are trying to do as a community. Was identify what is the posture to navigate through these things that are so confusing, that are so complicated, and that sometimes different parts of the gospel feel at tension with each other.
What is the posture, um, not the one that we inherited from our neighbors, but is there kind of something that might either yield more fruitfulness or reflect more faithfulness? So I, I think that was the thing that I appreciated, because the church was declaring too many things in isolation and. Uh, and I think that’s, that was also eroding some of the credibility.
Mark Labberton: In isolation from what, Nikki?
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Oh, kind of in isolation from each other. So they might say, oh, well, we believe this thing about men and women,
and yet those exact same dynamics did not extend to, uh, of color and a similar power dynamic. Or it didn’t extend to immigrants or people of vulnerable status in our neighborhoods, or invisible people in our neighborhoods.
Or people might be very passionate about holiness and this sort of a thing, and that they did not recognize how their economics or their consumption was actually enslaving other folks. So I think that it was too, too much in isolation, and that’s what I appreciated about the community is that it brought together a lot of these different pieces about the gospel that people were wrestling with that. It might have seemed intention with each other, but it was having something of this posture of like, well, how do, how are these two things true? Or what does it mean for us to actually take this one with full integrity? Boy, that’s a, that those are constant conclusions for me, for my church, for my family, those sort of things.
Mark Labberton: It’s really important, I think, to undergird how. Self-critical we sought to be as well. So it’s not as though we were looking out at quote them and saying they are lacking credibility. We had to of course, be self-examining, are we credible
and what would, what would make what we are doing In saying actually credible.
As well, not not trying to suggest that we have the perfect view, that we were in a position of,judgment as much as trying to really understand that all of this is part of us as the body of Christ. These are brothers and sisters who we may or may not always understand, and or identify with, but who belong to Christ.
And, and we’re calling ourselves as we want to call others to being a credible witness. And what is it that is getting in the way of which there’s many things that get in the way of our being credible witnesses. And I think that sense of self-examination was in my spirit at least. A deep undergirding assumption that we were not doing this work over and against, uh, people as though we are not part of the problem ourselves.
and I think as we come to the launch of this podcast, the credible witness that we’re seeking is a, is a witness where the church bears more and more evidence by our actions and by our words, that it’s Jesus Christ that we seek to, model our life and our.
Understandings of power and our understandings of, of grace and our understandings of justice, uh, measured by Jesus, not measured by simply raw power or measured by economic or social opportunity or by political consolidation, but by really this, this, the unlikeliness of a yeast that gets needed into the flower.
Um, that is our culture in our life and our in our world. I found it very motivating that people were willing to also do that work.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Well, that was, I think, a distinctive of the group as well. It was generative. It was forward looking. It was constructive in the sense of, I think as Nikki mentioned, it wasn’t just about diagnosing the problem or what’s going wrong or. Tearing people down for, oh, aren’t they behaving so badly? and, you know, thank goodness we’re not like them.
Jemar Tisby: It wasn’t that it was much more along the lines of, we, the church, universal, have a problem. How can we craft a different vision, that we ourselves believe, but sometimes struggle to articulate and tailor to the present context? So it was really forward looking in that sense. it was much more about, crafting a positive image of the faith that is, is not an image.
It is indeed substantive and there, but conveying it in a way, uh, that others. Uh, because of their particular witness of faith, uh, were damaging those, were damaging to the credibility, right? And so that was kind of at the center. How do, how do we make this believable and not just believable on an, in terms of intellectual ascent, but attractive in terms of a, of a spiritual draw and a communal draw.
And I want to be part of this. And those were the most interesting conversations because it was like not just credible witness in terms of message, but credible witness in terms of embodying How can we be salt and light? How can we be the yeast? How can we be, the, the aroma of Christ wherever we are?
that conversation is endless.
Mark Labberton: But that was the power of coming together in community. To have it, I think was, was what sticks with me.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mark, I think one of the things I really appreciated was the group of people that you had pulled together. It was both challenging, but it really was a gift. How, how did you figure out, or how did you decide who you were gonna have as part of this conversation?
Mark Labberton: Yeah, that was a very interesting process because I was trying to discern what kind of people are going to be willing to be in a conversation like this.
They had to have a enough of a sense of the strength of their own voice, combined with humility. That it wasn’t just strength per se, it was also humility in order to actually enter thoughtfully into a conversation that was really going to be mutual and highly interactive and not something that was uh, lot of proclamation.
I think the other thing was I really wanted people whose hearts were. for Christ, that that was really what they were about, and that was an, an arguable center in which, uh, the conversation would be placed. That we weren’t, we could have all kinds of debates and challenges about issues and institutions and,rationales for why certain things are as they are, but.
Fundamentally committed to Christ and fundamentally committed to the wellbeing of the church. Even in messy seasons, which frankly is every season in the life of the church. This just happens to be one that we consider to be especially messy. So it was that. Then it was also very different from one another.
Again, based on my understanding. And I think our understanding of Ephesians two, it felt like now this has to be deliberately hearing from people who may not hear from one another and thinking of angles of vision that come out of a different perspective than my own cultural setting. So often what we call wise these days is just what’s most common in the culture that we’re a part of, whereas I would say the Bible’s vision of wisdom is that it’s a reflection of the character of God, and the way that we see biblical wisdom is through God’s ability to take.
Unlike people and move us in this unexpected way toward the character and life of God in Word and indeed. So I think it was trying to discern that it was also people who I thought carried some real measure of responsibility for other people. That they were doing work that was seriously invested in people’s lives and not just in, ideas or just invested in a certain institutionalism, but really invested in people who are always central to the gospel itself.
So, it was beyond that. It was also harvesting in a certain way, the kaleidoscope of people that I have the privilege to know,and it felt like, oh my gosh, here’s this unbelievable array of. What for me are, really deeply influential people and voices, your witnesses, both yours, Nikki, yours, Jemar, and the witness of these other friends who were invited into this conversation or people that were relatively new to me.
Um, so it was all of that that came together and then trusting the providence of God, that the right people in the end would say yes, and the, and people who, uh, this group just isn’t the right time or the right project, uh, would feel free not to. So that was where actually, and how it emerged.
So we’ve said that the storytelling is really the key to this podcast, but why do you think storytelling is essential in re-imagining the credibility of the church?
Jemar Tisby: In this information age, we’re constantly assailed almost by different stories. The way we conceptualize the world is in story form. Uh, one of my favorite ways to explain something pernicious like white Christian nationalism comes from uh, a book called The Flag and the Cross, and they explain white Christian nationalism as a deep story. About the founding of this nation and about Christianity. And you know, the story goes, you know, the nation was founded with Christian principles. It’s thrived and prospered to the extent that we’ve been faithful to them. They leaped the part out of the story that this is a very narrow fundamentalist view of following the faith.
And we’re off track because not only are we not adhering to those principles, but because of quote unquote others, whether that be immigrants or people of color or women, or you name it, right? Others are veering us off course into quote unquote, save America. We gotta bring back the faith, bring back Christianity, right?
That’s how people are thinking about it. Meaning they’re not picking up a book, taking notes and coming up with some sort of personal manifesto about their. Commitment to white Christian nationalism? No, it’s a story and we’ve got a better story to tell. The problem is it’s hard to be heard on a very practical level.
We are all locked into algorithmic ways of forming narratives today.
Mark Labberton: right.
Jemar Tisby: And to be quite honest, all the data tells us that the most pernicious voices out there are dominating the airwaves and the algorithm rewards controversy, even if it’s bad faith, even if it’s based on,untruths and myths, right? So the question is what’s the better story and how do we break through the noise?
And I think this is not just a practical question in the digital age. This is what Jesus was doing. You have heard it said. But I say unto you,
Hmm. you’ve heard this story, told this way about what it means to follow God. But I say unto you, this is what it truly means. And the people who received that message, it was, that’s, that’s their hearts were on fire, right?
And that message still has power if we hold to it and if we can convey it in a way that people can access. So I think story is the name of the game right now.
Mark Labberton: Amen and amen. I mean, I just think that’s. E Exactly right. Jemar,
I love this question about why do you think people stayed in the room?
So we’ve talked about the fact that there were some, some moments of tension and challenge in the conversations, so people were really being very candid about their own convictions and how much we shared about also places of difference.
Why do you think people stayed in the room rather than often happens where there’s differences in people? Bold. What? What caused people to stay?
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: You know, there was a time or two that I thought the group was gonna unravel and um, and I think I felt a certain amount of tension and there was enough chaos going on in life outside. but one of the things that I sensed, and I’ll say at least it was true for me, and I’m not sure how true it was for everyone else, is that there was a particular grace in the room, even in the feistiness and even in I’ll say a little bit of the fighting, that it was a unique opportunity to ask some really hard, some really honest questions to share some. Life experiences that sort of stir the pot
Mark Labberton: Right.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: in a community where everyone was pretty committed to trying to understand what faithfulness in the context of the gospel actually does look like, you know? So there was something that was a little bit unifying in that sense, and it was a really unique opportunity in some ways to receive some honest and some very hard challenge that I wondered if that’s a little bit unique for some of the folks the room.
for me, I’ve, I experienced that in sort of a unique way, folks who are bringing up some really difficult parts of their story that really complicated the pretty simple conclusions I had been, had come to and was living out of. So I think that was maybe something that kept folks in the room was both an understanding that underneath some of it there was a common commitment, but also the gift of of dissonance.
Mark Labberton: And I do think it’s worth noting that not everyone did stay in the room. Um, some people of course, needed to fall out because of other demands. the people. Some people left really because the conversation was not the conversation they were interested in having.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: And that was understandable. I think that was treated, uh, respectfully and well.
Mark Labberton: But that was, but by far, the people who came stayed, and I just never took that for granted. It was, it was a gift and a, a venture that we were all experiencing together. And it didn’t feel like there was any kind of, uh, coercion either to stay or to go, but simply this is what we’re doing and if you wanna be part of this, this, we’re going to continue doing this.
We’re not going to change what we’re doing. it has to be marked by the, by the qualities. I think that were part of our, our initial challenge and opportunity.
Jemar Tisby: I think we stayed in the room because we did share a lot of the same foundational beliefs, and a lot of the tension, at least in those meetings, was around how do we prioritize all of these important things.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Oh, that’s true.
Jemar Tisby: Because we all were, were deeply committed to certain areas and certain passions, right?
Um, whether it was gender equity, climate justice, racial justice, you name it, we had this long list of very, you know, positive. Issues that we wanted to champion and advocate and promote. How do you hold all of that together and not, you know, have this competition of whose issue is more important or more vital?
So that was, I think, a lot of the tension there. It wasn’t the tension that many of us had experienced in the past of, you know, this version of Christianity that didn’t look very much like Christ at all versus a truer form. It was, we were all in there on the same page, loving Jesus, trying to be faithful, recognizing the problems within, right.
then from there, when when you, when you go further and deeper as the group allowed us to do, it’s like, oh, well, Mike. My issue or priority isn’t really yours. And it’s not that you devalue it or don’t think it’s important, it’s just not your thing. And that’s always been attention within groups and one of the things that we gotta learn.
And so I think practically what, what, what we did, we created subgroups, um, and people could volunteer to be part of it. And, and then we all came together.And that was a beautiful demonstration of the body functioning as it’s supposed to. We’re not all supposed to be the same. We’re not all gifted the same way.
We don’t all have the same particular burdens or priorities. That’s actually okay because that’s the way everything gets covered. And then when we were able to go into these smaller groups, have the deeper discussions come back with ideas and visions and practical ways forward, then it helped everyone.
Mark Labberton: We’ve mentioned that this project began five years ago, and there’s no way that at the time that it started, we would imagine that we were, would be five years, hence, and now having the launching episode of Credible Witness. So I’m just curious, how do you think about the divine timing of that in that, that we began a long time ago, he could have imagined something like this emerging much sooner, various reasons that didn’t occur.
Now it is occurring. And what makes this moment a good moment for the launching of credible witness? I.
Jemar Tisby: keep saying five years ago, and I’m like, really? How, um, it, it again seems like, like Nikki said earlier, at once, so recent and, and yet so long ago, and I, I just can’t believe it’s been a half decade really when we were at 2020 context, uh, you know, racial justice uprisings around George Floyd, AHMA, Arbery, Breonna Taylor, also COVID, we were social distancing as they called it then we were, uh, not, um, in our regular rhythms of li and so it was actually prime opportunity then to come together, virtually have these discussions about the state of the church because we’d also, Just seeing the, the, this rise of white Christian nationalism, which is only the latest label for, for these sort of fundamentalist, uh, movements that are inflected with religion and state and all that. so that was a ripe time and we, I feel like we were all kind of tender at that moment. Like it was still very raw new. We’re still coming together, we’re trying to heal, we’re trying to move forward. We’re trying to figure out how to do church on Zoom, you know, all these
kind of things. And then, um, but now it’s five years later. That time as tense as it was almost seems quaint by comparison because now we are faced with what I call the free fault into fascism. Now we’re faced with the nation’s own military being used against its own citizens. or people in this country, right? Right now the, the focal point is immigrants, but it’s, it’s anyone deemed out of step with the regime and power.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: And so we have this sense now our very, going back to story, the very story we’ve told ourselves about the stability of democracy in the United States has come into question in ways that even five years ago, January 6th hadn’t happened yet. We at least thought we would have free and fair elections, and if things weren’t going the way we wanted to, we could get people in office who would do a better job.
Jemar Tisby: That was the hope. That was what the protests were about. You know, all these things. And we were arguing about defunding the police and now abolish ice was, was also back then and now. Those very same forces of state power are weaponized against the vulnerable. So that felt preparatory and it landing right now is necessary. It’s necessary because what we’re fundamentally trying to do in those conversations is lead us back to the heart of the gospel, which isn’t simply a proclamation, a person. And to remember that the people who gather around Jesus are the church. Whatever organized or disorganized form that takes, and we have to remember that we are the people of God and come together in community because that’s the only way we survive this, let alone make progress and find our way out of.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yeah. I think this question about divine timing, it’s challenging for me, Jemar. I appreciate that. As you were putting us back into that starting moment, and I think remembering kind of in my body what all that felt like. I think one of the things. At the beginning of this conversation that started five years ago was nobody questioned why the different voices were in the room, why those were needed, and I think some of the ways that you, um, sort of stretched to think about the invitation, um, I think that was, uh, that argument was sort of done and, and there was a way thatsome voices that are generally kind of marginalized or less amplified were really given an equal space.
And there was a con commonality on the value of that, that I just feel like the floor has fallen from under our feet. On that there is, there’s all this disruption that happened and we’re starting at a totally different altitude than we ever started in before. And that’s where I wonder if that’s the grace of the timing that.
In these moments where we see the government turning on its own citizens in, in these moments that we are questioning things that we, we took as assumptions before, that it is listening and journeying with the voices of those on the marginalized. It’s turning and listening to the voices of those on the margins, that there is some level of credibility that comes from their experience and the way that they recognize the movement of Jesus in their communities.
That might be a sure and reliable guide for these moment in these times. it’s a question that I wonder.
Mark Labberton: I think one of the things that. Undergirds my own faith is that we’re really participant in an extremely long story, and that that doesn’t mean we lose a sense of urgency about the moment in season we’re in. This is the moment in season that all of us and those participating in this podcast are in.
Clearly, this is our chance and moment to live into believe, into, uh, respond to and, and engage what it means to be meaningful disciples, uh, in the, in the era and cultural moments that we share. So. So there’s a, there’s a immediacy, but there’s also this long story, and I think, uh, we’re driven so much right now to think that we just simply lunge from crisis to crisis to crisis from node to node to node.
And that, of course, is an impossible thing to sustain. And, um, and not necessarily really a, a meaningful way to approach the, the period that we’re in.I think one of the gifts that Jemar’s own work Jemar has been, uh, the gift of, of being a historian and helping us to remember and recover that we are part of this much longer story.
Both, uh, the Story of America, but also the still much larger story of God’s grace and purposes in the world. and I think my version of the problem of evil is not, why is, if God is all good and all powerful, why do bad things happen to good people? Or why does suffering still exist, but instead. If God is all good and all powerful, why is the church seemingly so unchanged? and that feels to me like the crisis of this moment. And that’s a long, long question that again, through my reading of the Bible, I just am struck by God’s unbelievable endurance with the people he chooses to call his own. And,and therefore, I’m not fearful of this moment in the sense that somehow God is going to abandon us or is abandoning us.
It’s, but I am sober, really sober, really saddened, really humbled by the fact that I’ve been a church leader, uh, through my adult life in various forms. and in the context of that, I look now at the church and say to myself, to what end? Where’s, where is the legitimate fruit that is legitimate? Because it looks like Jesus, not because it simply mirrors again, the culture that we’re all part of.
So when I think about the five years, it feels like, yeah, well that’s, that’s a while. Definitely. And in, in ordinary terms, it’s a significant thing, half a decade as you said. but it is also a long story that we’re part of. We didn’t get here in a short story we got here and a long story we’re in the story.
And I do think there’s something about the urgency of this moment, which only becomes more grave and problematic to me. Uh, it seemed that way. Absolutely. In 2020 when we started, that was unmistakable and now it’s, it’s even more dramatically the case. So it feels timely to me, even though unexpected.
So this new podcast really invites listeners into this journey with, a number of people who are going to share their own individual stories. Nikki Toyama-Szeto is going to be the host of the podcast. She’s the one who will be doing the in interviews and will have an opportunity to hear people’s stories and to reflect on what that particular person and that set of stories that they share might provoke in our lives.
And, uh, we’re, it’s going to unfold over a number of episodes and at the end we’ll have a framing episode to try to reflect back on what we believe we’ve learned. But I’m just curious as we get started, Nikki, since you are the host of credible Witness, give us your sense of hope about what listeners might expect and experience as well as what you would hope they. Come to as a consequence of, of the whole experience.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yeah, you know, I’m sitting in the host chair and I’m asking the questions, but I do feel like part of what is actually happening is more, uh. Reflective of the curiosity of a community of people around one person’s story. And I’m, I’m just the one who’s sort of asking the questions. And I think one of the things that I hope people see as I experienced these stories is the way that some folks in pretty significant levels of leadership had to wrestle with a good amount of vulnerability and risk with some of these questions of how is the gospel good news in this place or in this way, what does faithfulness look like?
And I, I felt, I felt like we got to see a bit of the heart and the wrestling and the reflection that goes on when folks are asking some pretty tough questions when the stakes are a little bit high. And, um, what I really appreciated is that it’s folks who are, um. Navigating things that I, to be honest, I kind of thought, oh, these are folks that I read from or, or hear and experience their teaching.
And it’s usually sort of this finished kind of a thing. But I felt like I learned so much with the, how they were navigating and holding some of these very difficult questions. The thing that I noticed is that folks find a point of dissonance maybe with the church, maybe with, their Christian faith community. And actually as they ask really, really hard questions of Jesus, a surprise that comes of discovering that Jesus is actually a little bit bigger, a little bit more creative, or a little bit more discoverable than we anticipated, just sometimes not in the places we saw. And that’s one of the things I sort of appreciate about the journey with these folks stories is it’s, it’s sort of that like, wait for it moment of like, oh. Actually, there is a whole nother invitation. So it’s in the wrestling, it’s in the hard spots that actually it kind of opens up a new place to explore what the gospel means in a new way. And that’s, I think that to me was some of the hope
Mark Labberton: Great Jemar, how would you answer those questions?
Jemar Tisby: It’s a mirror and a window,this series. so it’s a window into different people’s experiences of the church. And I do think that people will be, uh, well, they’ll get to see behind the scenes, right? Like you said, Nikki, there’s this finished product that many of us have, whether that’s a sermon, a book, a video, online, whatever.
You get to sort of see, not even the polished version, but you know, the, the, the publicly presentable part, right? And then. You get into people’s stories, and the reality is they’ve had to endure a lot of wounding and healing and scars to bring you this offering, whatever it might be, a song,a poem, a their leadership in general. And so you’ll, you’ll, you’ll see a window into the world of people whose names you write might recognize whose work you may have accessed, and understand that this comes through a long journey. Of walking with Jesus and God’s people and others and everything that comes with that.
The good, the bad, the ugly. Uh, but it’s also a mirror, like you said, of, you know, these are particular people whose stories we’re tracking with, but also we see our own experiences mirrored and reflected in theirs. So I think it’ll be honestly cathartic in that sense of I’m not the only one. It’ll relieve some of the isolation.
It’ll also articulate some of the frustration, which can be, you know, blowing off steam, kind of even just listening to the podcast and Nikki’s excellent voice. You’re gonna love it. It’s like silk. and then along with that, like, like what comes out of that, it is this more constructive, generative view of the faith.
I think it will challenge us in a really good, healthy way to say, how am I showing up in this moment?
Hmm. Mm-hmm.How can I show up more faithfully, more credibly in this moment? That’s where I think the real transformation is, is if we come out of these episodes in this series thinking, how can I be a credible witness?
Like that’s the stuff right there, and I’m sure that’s where people will land when they give this a a, a faithful hearing.
Mark Labberton: Well, those are great invitations to the experience that lies before us. And I just wanna say how grateful I am to all of the people who have participated. Each of the stories that are going to be told will be told by people who have been part of this journey over the last five years. They each come from their own particular perspective and offer their own narrative.
And Nikki’s going to give us an invitation as we close to, to come to this moment and to receive what it is that we’re trying to offer, and that we hope by God’s grace people will be able to receive. let me just invite you to, to invite people into this.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Friends, I wanna invite you to grab a warm beverage, pull up a chair, and join us at the table as we come close and hear each other’s stories we are trying to with what it means to be a credible witness to the character of God in these times and in these places. I hope that you will be both surprised and inspired as you hear of different folks whose stories are perhaps very similar and very different from your own as they are trying to navigate what faithfulness looks like in this time and in this place.
Come join us for these episodes of Credible Witness.
Mark Labberton: It is been a gift to have you here today, and I am so looking forward to this series as it unfolds.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: credible witness is brought to you by the Rethinking Church Initiative,
produced and edited by Mark Labberton, Sarah Martin Concepcion, and Evan Rosa. And I’m your host, Nikki Toyama-Szeto.
Thanks to Fuller Seminary Christians for Social action, and Brenda Salter McNeil sharing her book title our podcast.
Special thanks to all of our conversation partners in the Rethinking Church Initiative and network, both public and private.
And Above all, thank you for your own courageous listening and your own credible witness to the gospel.
more information, visit crediblewitness us.

More Episodes

• Trailer | July 15, 2025

  Introducing Credible Witness

  Introducing the premiere season of Credible Witness, exploring stories of Christian faithfulness and the courage to listen.