Introduction and Guest Welcome

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's September 2, 2026, and today we have a former megachurch pastor here to talk about his own religious transition and deconstruction after becoming a legit megachurch pastor. This is a long part in a series on Mormon Stories podcast of guests who were members of other high demand religion churches or traditions that weren't Mormon. And we have with us today Dr. Todd Phillips, who is also known as the deconstructed pastor. Todd Phillips, welcome to Mormon Stories Podcast.

Todd Phillips [00:00:43] Thanks, John. I appreciate you having me.

John Dehlin [00:00:45] So, in your glory days of being an evangelical pastor, did you ever think you'd be on Mormon Stories Podcast?

Todd Phillips [00:00:52] No, it's the last place I thought I'd be. Things have taken a turn really quickly

John Dehlin [00:00:59] at the peak of your megachurch pastor. Tell us where you worked just so people can get a sense for the heights you achieved.

Todd Phillips [00:01:07] Yeah. So the last 10 years I was pastoring was McLean Bible Church for seven years. That's up in the Washington, D.C. area. And then I was at Lake Point Church just outside of Dallas, Texas for just over two years.

John Dehlin [00:01:20] And these are mega churches. How big?

Todd Phillips [00:01:22] Yeah, McLean Bible Church at the time had 12, 14,000 people. On the weekend, Lake Point was just a little smaller, maybe 8 to 10.

John Dehlin [00:01:29] And you've preached to audiences that large?

Todd Phillips [00:01:32] Yeah, on the weekends. So each one of them had a senior pastor and I was a teaching pastor, so I took about half the pulpit time each year.

John Dehlin [00:01:41] And then just really quickly, your training, just so that people get a sense, because I was surprised to see how educated you are.

Todd Phillips [00:01:49] I have a Master's of divinity with biblical languages from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I did a doctoral fellowship at Princeton Theological Seminary and then got my doctorate actually from Dallas Theological Seminary. So way over educated.

John Dehlin [00:02:04] And your. Your high school graduating class? Just so I can date you. I can age you.

Todd Phillips [00:02:08] Yeah, 1986.

John Dehlin [00:02:09] So you're a year older than me, basically.

Todd Phillips [00:02:11] I'm 57. I turned 57 last week.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] I just turned 57.

Todd Phillips [00:02:15] Did you really?

John Dehlin [00:02:16] That means you graduated young.

Todd Phillips [00:02:17] I was young. I was 16.

John Dehlin [00:02:19] Yeah. I was 17.

Todd Phillips [00:02:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:20] Okay.

Todd Phillips [00:02:21] Fun.

John Dehlin [00:02:21] All right. And we're both Texan because I grew up.

Todd Phillips [00:02:23] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:02:23] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [00:02:24] We got a lot in common.

John Dehlin [00:02:25] Lot in common. All right, well, thanks for joining us. Just really quickly, please like and subscribe. We don't do product endorsements or anything like that. We exist at the generosity of our donors. So if you're a donor. Thank you. If you're not A donor and you value this type of content. To become a monthly supporter, you go to mormonstories.org donate and become a monthly donor. We are getting sued by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We think it's a false, inappropriate lawsuit. In my opinion, it's to silence and bankrupt us. You can learn about that as well@mormonstories.org, i believe it's legal, but we're also taking support for our legal fund from that what we believe is inappropriate lawsuit.

John Dehlin [00:03:09] So, anyway, we're excited to have you joining us today. We will be doing this interview in two parts. We're not going to sacrifice the long form, but we've learned that breaking our interviews up into two parts allows YouTube to translate the audio into multiple languages. And so that's important enough to where you should just know we're going to do the long form, but we're going to be in two parts. So just so you know. Anyway, one of the things that was so fun to see, and we just talked about this before we started, one of the fun things to see in your outline, you listed three, let's just say, influential presences in your deconstruction or reconstruction.

John Dehlin [00:03:47] And you listed Ed McClellan, Brit Hartley and a little bit of Mormon stories. And I thought, oh my go. Ex Mormons or progressive Mormons or Mormons in social media have had a decent influence. If those are the three you're mentioning.

Todd Phillips [00:04:04] I wouldn't say decent. I would say massive, well above decent. Yeah, quite an impact on me.

John Dehlin [00:04:09] Oh, well, I mean, I'm really honored and on behalf of our community, I'm so happy to hear we've been helpful. And hopefully my hope is that part of why I brought you on is because Mormons can see their journey sometimes even more clearly through the experience of someone outside the tradition. So that's why I brought on Scientologists and Jehovah's Witnesses and Orthodox Jews and the like. But also because if we can help other traditions, you know, reach and help the same amount of people as we have, I think that's gravy. So hopefully we can help you do for your tradition what we've helped our tradition do.

Todd Phillips [00:04:55] Well, I've taken a lot of, I've taken quite a lead from you, just learning from the videos and the interviews you've had. And I hope this is one of those for others that are questioning the Mormon faith or any religion for that matter, your videos of these Mormon stories, the crossover is quite remarkable. I learned a lot by watching these videos. Early on, and that's why they had such an impact on me.

John Dehlin [00:05:17] Yeah. The last disclaimer I just want to say is I do not identify as an atheist and I do not identify as an anti Christian. I am pro people believing in a divine being if it helps them and if it helps the world. And I am pro Christianity to the extent that Christianity leads people to do healthy, happy things. And so I'm not. I do not conduct this interview with the desire to lead people out of belief in God or in Jesus, even if that's sometimes where people end up. I just want to state at the outset that's not my goal here, even though that may be where you are and we'll wait to see where he is. But I just want to state that up front because I get accused of that way too often.

Todd Phillips [00:06:05] Yeah, it makes sense. And I will say I consider myself a non resistant, non believer. And we'll obviously share this in my story. But, yeah, I have no agenda other than to share my journey and help people who are primarily evangelical Christians who are questioning some of those theological precepts feel safe in doing so, regardless of whether that takes them back to their original Christian faith, some adjusted form of theology, or where I currently find myself.

John Dehlin [00:06:32] Yeah. Yeah, perfect. All right, well, let's jump in. Normally I say, where does your Mormon story begin? But you don't have a Mormon story before today, so. Or maybe you do, but I also know you kind of converted to evangelical Christianity in adulthood, sort of. So where does your faith story begin? Or your secular story before your faith story?

Todd's Childhood and Family Background

Todd Phillips [00:06:53] Yeah. So I grew up.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] Take us back to your childhood, I guess.

Todd Phillips [00:06:56] Yeah, I grew up without much religious context at all. In fact, the only thing that we would do to go to church was my aunt actually took us or suggested we go. My mother and I would go with them on Easter and Christmas to church, to candlelight services in Austin. I can't even remember the Methodist Church name. But we went to the Methodist Church. Yeah. And we would go. I would say I probably went half a dozen times during my childhood, maybe more.

Todd Phillips [00:07:24] And then I was. I went to an Episcopalian private elementary school. I got a scholarship to go, and my mom was. Was all over that. So she sent me there from second through sixth grade. And we had chapel every day. And, and I, I. When I look back on it, I would say I assumed there probably was a God because we talked about God a lot inside those chapel services, but that really was the extent of it. It was just a God out there that might be There. And it didn't affect my life or cause me to think a certain way in my childhood. So I really didn't have any connection to that whatsoever.

Todd Phillips [00:07:59] It wasn't until I was 24 that my life was. I would say it was kind of an existential crisis for me. I was 24.

John Dehlin [00:08:07] Before we get there, really quick, tell me about your home in terms of a father, mother, a divided family, divorce, siblings. Just. I just like to have a little context.

Todd Phillips [00:08:17] Yeah. So I'm an only child.

John Dehlin [00:08:18] Okay.

Todd Phillips [00:08:19] My dad left when I was six months old, so I didn't have a lot of connection with him at all. He would show up about once a year through my childhood, I'd say a dozen times. I would see him between, you know, birth and 16 or 17, and just consider that normal. I just thought that's the way things were. My mom raised me. She was full time at the Internal Revenue Service. I was kind of a latchkey kid. My grandparents lived next door, so we lived in a mobile home park in Southeast Austin.

John Dehlin [00:08:49] Nice.

Todd Phillips [00:08:49] And we were in the left trailer, and my grandparents were on the right. My grandfather was a gas station attendant. My grandmother was a former army nurse, and she worked at the state hospital for many years, night shift, quite often. So it was a. I look back, it was a bit chaotic, but it just seemed, again, normal to me. So that's. That's my background. So I saw my mom at night, but I spent most of my time kind of being brought up in many ways by my grandmother. They were both incredible women. So I was raised by two women. I was an only child. And that's kind of the backdrop of my upbringing.

John Dehlin [00:09:27] And what were your middle and high school years like, just in terms of what were you into? Did you get into trouble? Were you a super athlete, super academic, or a burnout? Where were you?

Todd Phillips [00:09:38] Yeah, so in middle school and high school, I came out of this elementary school, private institution, and getting into public school was quite a shock for me. Just a different world. And in Austin, they were busing. So they were moving people from schools all over town and busing them to different places to create some more integration in what were largely unintegrated schools.

Todd Phillips [00:10:02] And so it's quite a shock to me. I would say I was very open. I wasn't particularly a jocker. I took honors classes, so I was in debate. I broke my back. I actually broke my vertebrae in my freshman year. So I was a football player till then.

Todd Phillips [00:10:22] That was my sport. And then I did gymnastics in the off season. So I broke Injured my back to the point where I couldn't do sports anymore after my freshman year. So the rest of my high school was spent actually doing debate. And so I shifted from sports into debate. And because of that shift, I. I met a lot of people in a lot of different arenas, you know, in and inside high school. And so I kind of had friends in all areas.

John Dehlin [00:10:46] Here's a question few people will probably ever ask you. Did you double Ruby? You know what that is?

Todd Phillips [00:10:51] No.

John Dehlin [00:10:52] I thought that was the distinction in Texas for, like.

Todd Phillips [00:10:54] Oh, for the debate.

John Dehlin [00:10:55] Debate distinction.

Todd Phillips [00:10:57] I told you about my memory.

John Dehlin [00:10:58] It's been too long.

Todd Phillips [00:10:58] Yeah, it's been too long. I won the Austin City Lincoln Douglas debate.

John Dehlin [00:11:03] I remember you were ld.

Todd Phillips [00:11:04] You weren't standard Lincoln Douglas.

John Dehlin [00:11:06] Okay.

Todd Phillips [00:11:06] LD debate. Yeah, I loved it.

John Dehlin [00:11:08] Okay.

Todd Phillips [00:11:09] I loved it. Yeah. So that was my thing. So I had a lot of friends in a lot of different areas and didn't cling to one group like jocks or anything like that. Because of debate. I got interested in politics, and I really, really flourished in that debate environment. And my teacher. My debate teacher was the. That taught me into taking honors classes, which I was kind of avoiding until she had an influence on my life.

Todd Phillips [00:11:36] And I was also quite a partier. So, I mean, there were a lot of pieces or aspects to my life that I went out a lot because I didn't have a lot of, I think, fatherly influence. And I kind of ran my roost, so to speak. The two women that were raising me tried to kind of control me, but that was a challenge.

Todd Phillips [00:12:00] I was very. I think for me, I was always looking to connect with people and always felt like even though I knew a lot of people, I was a bit on the outside looking in. I always felt a little different. I'm not sure why it didn't cause me not to build relationships and have friends and go out and do fun things, but I was really moving in a lot of different directions, just trying to find myself, I think, for quite a long time.

John Dehlin [00:12:25] And I'm guessing. And I think we talked about this, that debate you mentioned. You did boy state?

Todd Phillips [00:12:30] American Legion, Boy state. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:34] It seems like that's pointing you in the direction of possibly law school, possibly politics. Is that kind of by the time you're graduating from high school?

Todd Phillips [00:12:41] Yeah, I was considering it from my junior year on, considering law and politics both. I was probably leaning toward law. It wasn't. You know, I haven't talked about this in a long time, but when I graduated from high school, I had a 4.0 debate. You know, I kept my grades up, but I was also making some poor decisions as far as alcohol and drugs and things like that. And so my freshman year, I went from a 4.0 in high school to my freshman year at University of Texas was a seven. I got very aggressively involved in drugs and partying and making really, really poor decisions in life. And there were a lot of different reasons for that, but it caused me to really. It really kind of derailed me, obviously, from law school and some other goals that I had and kind of put me on a trajectory that turned out to be quite negative.

John Dehlin [00:13:34] I'm sorry about that. Yeah, and we'll talk about that first. Did you know this is just for fun? I'm being silly for a second, even though this is a serious topic. Did you know you were at. Did you go to UT your second year?

Todd Phillips [00:13:48] No.

John Dehlin [00:13:48] Oh, you dropped out after your first year?

Todd Phillips [00:13:50] Yeah, after. Well, they. They put me on probation, so I went to. I went to Texas Tech University and I was there for three years after that. I didn't graduate from Tech, but I did go to Tech, so I just. I needed to get out of the environment. It was too much like high school. It was just like a bigger high school. I was 16 when I went to college. Yeah, I was way too young. I was emotionally immature.

John Dehlin [00:14:07] Okay, you dropped out of.

Todd Phillips [00:14:09] Yeah, so I left ut, went to Tech.

John Dehlin [00:14:10] Okay, okay. Okay. So did you finish your undergrad?

Todd Phillips [00:14:15] Yeah, so I got. I went to Texas Tech University for about three years. About Raiders.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] Was that Bobby Knight years?

Todd Phillips [00:14:21] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:22] Nice.

Todd Phillips [00:14:23] You've got a good. I wouldn't have remembered that without you. The Tech was great. I left there a semester before

John Dehlin [00:14:34] I

Todd Phillips [00:14:34] graduated, fell in love with this girl, and moved to Houston and didn't finish college. It wasn't until I became a Christian at the age of 24 that I decided to finish my undergrad and go off to postgraduate studies for theology.

John Dehlin [00:14:49] So you moved to Houston for a girl?

Todd Phillips [00:14:50] Yeah, I moved to Houston for a girl. I sure did.

John Dehlin [00:14:52] There are worse places than Houston.

Todd Phillips [00:14:54] No Houston school. I enjoyed it. Yeah. And then I moved when that. When that didn't work out. After a while I moved back to Austin. So.

John Dehlin [00:15:00] Okay, so pre.

Todd Phillips [00:15:02] A scenic route through college.

John Dehlin [00:15:04] So pre. Conversion to Christianity or evangelical Christianity. What were you doing professionally?

Todd Phillips [00:15:12] Well, I spent a lot of years in. In insurance. I actually got an insurance job when I was still at Tech. Liked it, made good money with it. So I did that for quite a while. And it was, I would say my. From 17 or 18 till 24, when I had my conversion experience. Those were some very difficult years of just trying. I was still trying to find myself. And it was that freshman year of college when things went off the rails with drug use and some other decisions that I made that really put me on a trajectory that continued in a very negative way for about seven years until I became a Christian. Christianity was really what brought me back from the brink.

John Dehlin [00:15:58] Yeah. As religions often do. Did you get married or have kids during that time. Time period that you want to talk about? And I'm not saying in detail. I'm just saying, yeah, I had a.

Todd Phillips [00:16:09] That the girl in Houston I was married to for a very brief time. So we got married. Divorced within a year and a half. Just those kinds of poor decisions over that seven years. No kids then.

John Dehlin [00:16:19] Okay.

Todd Phillips [00:16:19] I have three kids now from another America.

John Dehlin [00:16:21] Okay.

Todd Phillips [00:16:22] Yeah.

A Conversion Experience and Early Faith

John Dehlin [00:16:22] Let's get to your. Your Saul on the Road to Damascus experience.

Todd Phillips [00:16:27] Yeah. So I found myself in Denver, Colorado, at the age of 24 and still no undergraduate degrees, trying to figure my life. And I just realized that things weren't. They just continued to not go the way that I thought they would. And I remembered who I was in high school. I remembered debate. I remembered Boys State. I remembered wanting to be a lawyer. I always, in the back of my mind, knew politics was a passion. And I just lost that path. I mean, it just seemed like a million miles away.

Todd Phillips [00:16:56] And at the time, I was living with a girl in Denver. And it was a very unhealthy relationship as well. It was just a continuation of seven years of bad decisions. And I found myself one night just thinking to myself, I couldn't sleep. I still remember this.

Todd Phillips [00:17:17] I remember thinking, you know, if I keep going this route, I'm just going to keep going down this path, and it's just going to get worse and worse and worse, and I can't stand it now. This is a horrible place to be. This is not who I'm supposed to be. This is. This is another person's life that I'm living and I shouldn't be doing this. I owe it to myself and my family and friends and the world not to be in this kind of train wreck of choices.

Todd Phillips [00:17:42] And I just remember thinking, I need to do something. And right about that time, and I don't remember if it was right before or right after, but my mom would call me every once in a while. Didn't like where I was either. Always wanted me to make some better decisions, come back to Austin, go back to school, all that stuff.

Todd Phillips [00:17:57] And she called me one night and said, hey, I ran into an old friend of yours and who is a Christian now. She was looking for a way to get my attention. And this guy that was now a Christian supposedly was a guy that I did a lot of partying with and just drugs and alcohol. Very poor decisions during a chapter in my life. So I remember him in that world and the idea that he would be a Christian and even further than that. He had a DVD out, a song. He was a singer now and he had a Christian dvd. And she was all excited to have seen him at a concert.

Todd Phillips [00:18:35] And I remember thinking, that's there's no way that's a scam. This guy's making money off these CDs. It's anything but he's really a Christian or that he's changed his ways. And one night, really late one night, that really bothered me. And so I called him back when you called people collect and had them take the charges when you made the phone call. So I tracked him down on information, found his number, called him at 2 or 3 o' clock in the morning, and he answered the phone and accepted the collect call.

Todd Phillips [00:19:01] And I remember saying to him, listen, I know it's late, sorry to call you so late. I know it's been years. My mom told me that she saw you at this concert and that you're a Christian. I just have one question. What's the scam? I just need to know what's really going on. And his simple answer was, look, it's not a scam. I'm a Christian now. Jesus has changed my life. I do have an album out.

Todd Phillips [00:19:24] It's just my life's changed. And if you want to know more about it, I can tell you about it. Well, that started a conversation that went on for a month, John. It was every night, several hours, for maybe just a bit over a month.

Todd Phillips [00:19:38] And he would tell me the story of Jesus. He would quote Scripture. And what he didn't know is I had an old Bible from my Episcopal private school in a box and I had gotten that Bible out. And he would quote a passage from Matthew or First Corinthians or wherever, and he didn't know it. But I had a notepad because I couldn't flip my Bible quickly enough to find out if he was telling me the truth. Because I figured if I catch this guy in a lie one time, I got him and I can just move on. But what he said to me was compelling.

Todd Phillips [00:20:12] So I would write on a notepad every single passage and then when we'd hang up after two hours that night, I'd go back and I'd read every single one of those passages. So without him knowing it, I was validating and verifying everything he was saying and reading the Bible every night. And this lasted for a month. I mean, it must have been 60, 70, 80 hours of conversations and scripture reading.

John Dehlin [00:20:31] What a nice gift he gave you.

Todd Phillips [00:20:33] Yeah, it was crazy. So at the end of this month or so, he said, listen, I've told you everything, Todd. I mean, you have the whole story and the whole gospel story from an evangelical Christian perspective. You can be forgiven of all your sins, past, present and future. The stuff you haven't even done yet.

Todd Phillips [00:20:49] You can start a new life. All these bad decisions that you've made just disappear, and you can start a brand new life. And I remember thinking to myself that this is true. This is huge. But he told me, he goes, look, I've told you everything. I want you to get the keys off your counter, go get in your car. Go drive out on a hillside tonight somewhere outside of Denver. Look out over the skylights, go talk to God and just do what he tells you to do. And I was like, no way. And I hung up the phone and I grabbed the keys and I got in the car and I went on that hillside and I did exactly what he told me to do.

Todd Phillips [00:21:25] And I really. It. It's. It's one of those memories that just, you know, it's etched in my mind and certainly in my emotions. I remember being in that car by myself, and I remember saying to this God that I, you know, that. That I had been told was there. You know, look, if you're real and there really is a Jesus and everything in the Bible is true, and I really can start over. I've tried everything else.

Todd Phillips [00:21:52] I've got nowhere else to go unless I want to continue down the path I'm on. And so if you're there, I'm in. Forgive me. Start a relationship with me that's real. This guy told me to tell me I'm going to give my life to you. And so I'm. I'll hand over my life and my decisions, and I want to start a relationship with you, like almost verbatim what he told me to say, kind of the sinner's prayer.

Todd Phillips [00:22:16] And for me, now, I don't see it this way any longer, obviously, where I am right now. But for me, at the time, it was maybe one. Well, it was definitely one of the most profound moments from an emotional Experiential perspective. I had a very powerful experience in the car that night.

Todd Phillips [00:22:32] So much so that I came off the hillside and woke up the next morning. It may have been the morning after. So one or two mornings later, later, and sat down with the girl that I was living with and said, look, I know this sounds weird, but I met Jesus on a hillside when I went out in the car last night or the night before.

Todd Phillips [00:22:52] And I'm a Christian now, and everything that we're doing here just seems off. It doesn't seem like it's right for my life. I don't think we're right together. And I'm going to move back to Austin pretty soon. And you're welcome to come back with me.

Todd Phillips [00:23:08] I'm guessing. I'm going to go to church every day. I'm not sure exactly how that happens now, as a Christian, but I'm going back to Austin. My family's there, this guy's there. There's a church there that I can go to, and you're welcome to come with me, or you can stay here and just keep everything that we've created together and I'm out of here. And she said, I'll keep everything.

Todd Phillips [00:23:28] And so she stayed. I went back to Austin, moved in on the couch of this friend's apartment, and started going to Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin in February of 1994. So that was it. And when I say like a profound experience, it wasn't an intellectual exercise. I mean, I really do believe this. If he would have told me about Buddhism or Mormonism or Catholicism, any religion that would offer me a clean break, any religious ideology that would give me freedom to move forward without my old life, any forgiveness, opportunity, new chapter, I would have gone that route. It happened to be an evangelical version of Christianity that I was offered that day. It still doesn't negate. The profound experience that I had in

John Dehlin [00:24:25] that car is not called a theophany. Isn't that what it's called? And weirdly, that's how Mormonism started. Joseph Smith had a theophany, or at least that's what he claimed. I think he did.

Todd Phillips [00:24:36] So, I mean, yeah, I've had an experience like that. So when I hear those kinds of religious experiences, I assume that it happened because I certainly experienced it.

John Dehlin [00:24:48] That's what William James wrote about in the variety of religious experiences. It's tale as old as time.

Todd Phillips [00:24:54] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:24:55] And I'm glad it happened for you.

Todd Phillips [00:24:57] Yeah, it certainly got me on track. I don't know what would have happened

John Dehlin [00:25:02] without that yeah, no, I think.

Todd Phillips [00:25:05] And being a person, that's kind of all in. I mean, I just. Going to Sunday school wasn't enough. And then obviously my education and everything came from that and then pastoring. But, you know, the first few months when I got back to Austin, I just remember feeling this tremendous weight lifted off me. I mean, the world was on my shoulders and it was gone. I still, I can tell you it was just that it was that dramatic from an experiential perspective. Now I no longer believe that was actually God transforming my life. It could have been the version of evangelical Christianity that I was part of for so many years is what I question now. But the experience was incredible.

John Dehlin [00:25:52] So how did you change your life?

Todd Phillips [00:25:54] Well, when I got back to Austin, I started going to Hyde Park. I went forward a few weeks, a few Sundays later to officially accept Christ in front of the church and agree to be baptized. I was baptized on February 6th.

John Dehlin [00:26:09] Is that a megachurch? Was it then Hyde Park?

Todd Phillips [00:26:11] Yeah, it was considered a megachurch. Had about 2,500 people on the weekends. And back then in the 80s, that was a pretty large church. Things have progressed since then for large churches, but yeah, it was a large church. And I was baptized on February 6th. I started giving my testimony in Sunday school classes. I was kind of the bad boy gone good.

Todd Phillips [00:26:35] And inside the Southern Baptist Church, that was quite a story. And I was being encouraged to tell that quite often. So I would go to Sunday school classes. And then I eventually got in front of the Hyde park church and gave my testimony in front of the church. And then after that happened many other Baptist churches around Austin, somehow the name got out. And so I would be invited to come speak at these other churches and tell my story of God's grace and transformation in my life. And that's really what kind of started me in ministry. I didn't plan on it. I was just trying to go to church and be a good Christian and put borders in my life.

Todd Phillips [00:27:13] I needed some borders and I got a job at Dell Computer. At Dell. I was there for about two years. So that was the first job I had post Christian experience. And it allowed me to work full time there, kind of get my finances in order and continue going to Hyde park while I got my undergraduate degree and Dell actually financed my undergrad degree from Concordia University.

John Dehlin [00:27:39] Love it.

Todd Phillips [00:27:39] Yeah,

John Dehlin [00:27:42] it's been a while since my Microsoft days where I thought about Dell. But Microsoft and Dell go way back. They do, yeah. Okay, so you get your degree and you're working for Dell. Where do you go next?

Early Ministry Career and Church Work

Todd Phillips [00:27:54] Yes. I was in Dell for a while, a couple years, and then I got invited by the singles minister at Hyde park to be on staff at the church. And so that was a major transition from what am I going to do with my life? I'm working at Dell, maybe I'll just continue being in sales or whatever. But I had a passion for ministry and this guy, singles minister John Walters, knew that. And so he kind of fashioned a position for me, kind of an intern role in the singles ministry. And that's really what started me in ministry. So I was getting my undergraduate degree, finishing Concordia, started working for John at Hyde park, and at the same time I started a ministry, a new Sunday school class.

Todd Phillips [00:28:35] He said, well, why don't you come in and help me start a Sunday school class and reach out to Dell. Because there was just a bunch of young 20 somethings at Dell. I was 24 at the time, so everybody was my age at Dell. Everyone was in their mid-20s. And so he said, start inviting people, we'll create a Sunday school class and you can help lead it and then invite people to it. And so we started a Sunday school class. So I helped lead that for six months while I was getting finishing up Concordia and then decided I was going to go to get a seminary degree.

Todd Phillips [00:29:05] So now I was going to go, I felt called, we call it called by God, to go into ministry full time. So I accepted the call and agreed to go to Southwestern Seminary to get my Master of Divinity program or degree with Biblical languages because I wanted to be a preacher.

Todd Phillips [00:29:22] So that all happened within that one or two year timeframe as a very young Christian. One of the interesting side notes about that is when I started that Sunday school class, I at that time John also took me and about five guys, five other men through a Experiencing God Bible study. It was by Henry Blackaby, I still remember it. And it was a 12 week Bible study on how to give your life to God and your lifestyle to God, to adjust your life and to discern what he wants you to do and to make that crisis of belief to decide exactly how to submit your lives to his purpose.

Todd Phillips [00:29:55] And that that Bible study had a massive impact on me. And so when that 12 week study was over, I said, John, I want to teach something like this and I want to invite lots of people to maybe a Sunday night or Monday night event because a lot of people don't want to get up on Sunday mornings because all my friends party on Saturday nights. So he's like, great, what do you want to call it. And at the time, it was just a single sort of get together thing. That's literally what it was called. And then we called it the Bottom Line, a citywide Bible study.

Todd Phillips [00:30:23] And I started inviting friends of mine from Dell that I knew from there to this Tuesday night event. And that thing is really where my ministry started. So we invited some people the first night. About 50 people showed up.

Todd Phillips [00:30:39] John. I was supposed to ask John the singles minister to actually preach the first night. I was just putting the whole thing together and I didn't know how to preach from the Bible. I had no idea what I was doing. Well, he was out of town that weekend and so there was no one else to teach. And I knew some people were showing up. So I ended up preaching out of Genesis chapter one.

Todd Phillips [00:30:58] That's how much I knew about things. I just start at the beginning of the book and I don't even remember what I said. It was probably horrible. But 50 people showed up to that Bible study. I preached my first sermon, if you want to call it that, or Bible study that day. And over the next four weeks, we went from 50 people down to 12.

Todd Phillips [00:31:17] Everybody left. It was like, no thanks, thanks. But those 12 people stuck with me. And they said, you know, Todd, we're all Christians. We've been around for a while. We see your passion. We're going to keep going with you and you can teach or we'll teach together and we'll just do this Bible study together. So we got down to this group of 10 or 12, I think it was 12. Actually the number was 12, including me. And over time that grew to 2,500 people over the next 18 months. And as my teaching got better, more people showed up. We went from a small fellowship hall to the chapel to the main auditorium at Hyde park over time.

Todd Phillips [00:31:55] And so we, we ended up filling kind of standing room only at the, at the Hyde park church on Tuesday nights. And that's, that's where I really felt God moving in my life. Using my speaking skills and maybe some of the debate background that I had and my passion for the word.

Todd Phillips [00:32:13] And I saw God blessing a ministry that I was involved with. And I'm like, this is what I'm supposed to do with the rest of my life.

John Dehlin [00:32:21] Really quick. How did becoming a Christian and beginning the ministry change your day to day behavior? Just some examples of how you cleaned up your life. Just.

Todd Phillips [00:32:35] Yeah, you know, I haven't thought about this in a while, but it was really interesting. It was pretty radical. When I decided to make a shift and felt like there really was a clean break from my old life, from those seven years of bad decisions. I took it really seriously. I went through a phase where I threw away all my DVDs, I threw away all my VHS tapes of all the movies I was watching. Nothing that wasn't Christian music was okay for my ears. I stopped drinking because of Southern Baptist church. So that's one thing that's kind of, at least back then, was part of what you did. No drugs, no alcohol, no secular music. Very few secular movies. They had to be positive, have a good theme about them. I mean, I took it very seriously and so threw all that stuff away, basically.

John Dehlin [00:33:24] You became a Mormon? Just kidding.

Todd Phillips [00:33:25] Yeah, maybe. I mean, it was a very radical transformation. And I remember at that time.

John Dehlin [00:33:31] What about dating? Did you change how you dated?

Todd Phillips [00:33:33] Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So I was in physical relationships before that and didn't see any problems with, you know, sex before marriage. And then when I became a Christian. Yeah. That part of my life radically changed, you know, so I stopped being physically involved. I read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which was a book about just, you know, being completely pure before marriage. I read there was a guy named Bill Gothard that had a certain ministry that he was talking about how to really live a Christian life and how you could actually become a spiritual virgin again. I mean, I bought into the whole thing, man. I was all in. I was like, I am truly new. Right. Not only am I letting go of that old chapter, I'm spiritually a virgin again, and I'm offering myself up clean to anybody that I might marry. I dove in deep.

John Dehlin [00:34:25] Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you were happier than you were in Denver.

Todd Phillips [00:34:29] Oh, by far. Yeah. I mean, look, it put borders around my life. It structured my life in such a way that I didn't have to. And this became a problem down the road. But I didn't have to make any choices for myself. The religion did it for me. And the walls around me were high and very thick and it was comfy. And I was very passionate about it because my life had changed. Now I've become an evangelist for Christianity and the version of Christianity that I'd been given.

John Dehlin [00:35:02] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [00:35:02] And because of my speaking skills and my kind of all in personality, I was convinced, you know, God had called me to evangelize the world.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] Love it. Let's talk about. There might be Mormons that don't really. Or ex Mormons or members of other faiths that really don't know a lot about kind of the core tenets of your flavor of evangelical Christianity as you were learning it and preaching it in the late 90s. So what were the core tenets, distinguishing tenets of your brand? What was your brand of evangelical Christianity and what were the core tenets theologically?

Evangelical Theology and Core Beliefs

Todd Phillips [00:35:39] Yeah, a lot of people put the Southern Baptist Church, Bible churches, non denominational churches, kind of in the same vein. Evangelicalism, as it's kind of playing out now spiritually, politically and otherwise in our culture is a little different. But my version really came from two premises. One was God is perfect. He's all loving, all knowing, all powerful, perfect in every way, incapable of making poor choices, bad decisions, doing anything evil. It's that God, that version of God. And then in addition to that, his word, this Bible from genesis to Revelation 66 books, the Protestant Bible is the perfect revelation of a perfect God. And it's perfect also in every way. It's without contradictions or errors in any way, shape or form.

John Dehlin [00:36:24] It's a setup.

Todd Phillips [00:36:26] Yeah. And so once you. So those two truths, so to speak, were the lenses for both my eyes and the lenses through which I saw all of life. And because of that, I took the Bible very seriously. And it was a version of Christianity that speaks of Jesus being the only way, you know, to God and that even other denominations that didn't take the Bible seriously or didn't see the miracles necessarily as true or didn't believe they were necessary to be a Christian. We believe that you had to believe all the miracles. That in fact the miracles were an expression of Jesus proving who he was and establishing his authority on earth and in heaven and making clear who he was and that he was the only way to eternal life. And so that construct was the type of Christianity that I bought into and preached for 20 years.

John Dehlin [00:37:31] Was there a. And this is going to sound maybe a little bit geeky, I don't know, but was there an age of the earth component? Like, was the Earth 6000 years was a literalistic young earth creationist kind of thing?

Todd Phillips [00:37:44] Yeah, there were plenty of people in Hyde park who believed that. I found it interesting. What I decided to do as a young Christian was I remember thinking to myself, that seems strange, that doesn't fit. But I've been making poor choices for the last seven years. And so I can't trust myself. Right. And what the Bible seems to say is that the earth is young. And I guess God could have orchestrated it in such a way. I'm just going to buy in because everything else that's happened so far has been working for Me. So it wasn't a critical thinking process. It was a tribal. This was literally my salvation. This was my way out. This was my new life. And if something didn't make sense, that was less important, if not unimportant. What was important was the tribal truth that I just submit my life and my imperfection to God's perfection.

John Dehlin [00:38:43] I call it an emotional and a social conversion.

Todd Phillips [00:38:47] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:38:48] Intellectuals, tertiary, literally.

Todd Phillips [00:38:50] It's way down on the list. Yeah, it really is, John. And I didn't see it that way.

John Dehlin [00:38:54] Yeah, but I mean, it cleaned you up. That's the. The irony is.

Todd Phillips [00:38:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:59] Sometimes you're. We make bad choices and we. We need guardrails. And if that means shutting off your cerebral frontal cortex so that you can have guardrails, the emotional and the social will clean your act up.

Todd Phillips [00:39:11] Yeah, and it did. And for that purpose, it worked extremely well.

John Dehlin [00:39:15] Yeah. Okay. So literal Adam and Eve.

Todd Phillips [00:39:18] Oh, yeah, absolutely literal Fall, original sin, Noah's Ark. I mean, listen, I'll tell you that this is a bit of a side note, but I went introduced, got introduced to a guy named Bob Cornuke. This guy was a friend of the astronaut Irvin, and Irvin was a big Noah's Ark hunter. He was an adventure guy. And so Irvin and Bob Cornuke met, and Bob was a Christian and kind of took over Irvin's ministry to find Noah's Ark. And I met Bob at a conference and he was like the real life Indiana Jones. I spent several years traveling with him and his ministry. He invited me, as a young pastor and potentially kind of to be in his ministry for a while.

Todd Phillips [00:40:02] I never did that, but I went to Iran. We were there for nearly three weeks. We were on mountainsides. We were on Mount Sabalon. He didn't believe Mount Ararat was the actual place of Noah's Ark. It was the mountains of Ararat, plural. He took the Bible literally, and therefore it was in a different place. It was in Jebel Mosa, which was another mountaintop in Iran. So we flew into Tehran. We spent almost three weeks in Iran looking for Noah's Ark.

Todd Phillips [00:40:29] I went on the Exodus route, the traditional exodus route. And he actually was over in Saudi Arabia looking at where he thought the real Mount Sinai was. He looked for the shipwreck of Paul. I mean, I was in it. There are three books. He has a trilogy of books on his search for Noah's Ark. Oh, and then we went to Ethiopia. We were in Ethiopia for three weeks. Went to. Just on the Eritrean border looking for the Ark of The Covenant went all over the world looking for all these relics.

John Dehlin [00:40:56] That's awesome.

Todd Phillips [00:40:57] Yeah, man. Loved the trips. They were great. And I really. I believed it. All right, so I was on a mission.

John Dehlin [00:41:03] Yeah, I took it very seriously. Yeah, yeah. So in terms of. I don't know if Christology is the right word, but, like, what was it about Jesus that was crucial to the salvation of mankind? Just for those who don't know about Christianity, just at a high level.

Todd Phillips [00:41:19] Yeah. He's shown, at least in the New Testament. Well, he's shown in very many different ways. But I believed, and this is important to say this before I talk about Christology. My view of the Bible was that it was univocal, meaning it had one voice. So from Genesis to Revelation, it was a single story, single voice. That voice was God speaking through men. And because of that, everything matched. Right. And so any supposed discrepancy in the theology of Christ, any Christology I might have had to harmonize. Even though there are very disparate perspectives on Jesus, his purpose, his life, his actions, the theology underpinning what he did. There are varied Jesuses in the New Testament. But I had a.

John Dehlin [00:42:04] You're giving the ending away.

Todd Phillips [00:42:06] I'm sorry.

John Dehlin [00:42:06] No, I'm joking. I'm teasing.

Todd Phillips [00:42:07] No, no, no, it's good.

John Dehlin [00:42:09] It's important.

Todd Phillips [00:42:11] The evangelical Christian Jesus I was given that version of Jesus was that he really was. When I say the way, the truth and the life, the. The. The article was key. He's not a way, he's not a truth, he's not a life. He's the way, truth and life, totally. So no one comes to the Father, to God, but through Jesus. And so salvation is found in the person and works of Jesus Christ and him alone. And it's specifically the version of Jesus that I was talking about. But I assumed that I had found the right version of Jesus and that many other Christian denominations, we would call them mainline denominations, maybe today, Methodist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, they didn't fully understand the person and works of Christ, as the Bible clearly, clearly showed.

John Dehlin [00:42:59] What did they get wrong? What did Protestant.

Todd Phillips [00:43:01] Yeah, Protestant theology. From my perspective, mainline Protestants didn't take as seriously the miracles, the virgin birth, the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus. And that was at a core, because if Paul says, if Jesus has not been risen and we assumed a bodily resurrection, then we should be pitied. Christians should be pitied among all because it's the linchpin of Christianity. So the bodily, physical, resurrection into a glorified body of Jesus and his ascension into heaven was Absolutely essential. And if you believed it was a spiritual ascension, then there isn't a physical salvation for our sinful bodies into a glorified body in the coming age. And that version of Jesus and his bodily resurrection, that is the core of evangelical Christian doctrine. And it's required that you believe that specific version of Christianity to be saved, to be forgiven of your sins, to be in right standing with God and to have eternal life.

John Dehlin [00:44:03] So God cares about what you believe, not just how you act, but what you believe.

Todd Phillips [00:44:07] Yeah. And I find it. I don't know if.

John Dehlin [00:44:09] In that mindset.

Todd Phillips [00:44:09] Yeah. And I think what's hard for me sometimes. And again, this is the end of the story. But I don't want to forget this. When you say what you believe, I told people from the pulpit for 20 years, just decide to believe. And what I find remarkable. Now turn it off. Basically, you can't choose what you believe. You are either convinced of something or you're not. And the idea that God holds you morally accountable for an action you cannot take was really one of the things

John Dehlin [00:44:33] that did you in.

Todd Phillips [00:44:34] That dismantled me. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:35] But at the time, it makes complete sense. Yeah. God, if you don't have the right beliefs, you're not crossing the pearly gates.

Todd Phillips [00:44:43] Yeah. And we had a version of Christianity that believed that you were not only not crossing the pearly gates, but you were going to eternal suffering and hellfire.

John Dehlin [00:44:51] Literal flames.

Todd Phillips [00:44:52] Yeah, man. I mean, it was suffering for eternity.

John Dehlin [00:44:54] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [00:44:55] And that seemed reasonable.

John Dehlin [00:44:57] I know that comes up later for you. So that's the undoing of a lot of evangelical pastors, is the belief in hell.

Todd Phillips [00:45:04] Yeah. I think what happens is, as you go through the process, you start to the borders you need for your life, the structure that social and cultural importance, lessons. And at some point, some people, at least I did start to ask, the intellectual curiosity comes back and says, wait a minute, I'm okay now.

John Dehlin [00:45:26] It's like training wheels.

Todd Phillips [00:45:27] Yeah. Yeah. They're off. I've gone to my Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary indoctrination school. I've gone, you know, I've done all this.

John Dehlin [00:45:35] I've cleaned up my life.

Todd Phillips [00:45:36] Yeah. I'm good there. Right. And I don't feel that I'm in danger of falling off that cliff any longer.

John Dehlin [00:45:41] Yeah. Now you can turn your brain.

Todd Phillips [00:45:43] Do I think Adam and Eve were real? Right. And then. And then the questions. Right, the questions start to come up.

John Dehlin [00:45:49] Yeah. Okay. So literal hell, burning hellfire. And then what did it mean to be saved? And. And then the second part. What role did baptism and confirmation have in salvation as well.

Todd Phillips [00:46:03] Yeah. So what it meant to be saved was to be right in right standing before God, so that that was salvation. It happened through Jesus. Jesus provided the way to be forgiven of sins. He reconciles us. Christ reconciles us to God. Although we were enemies of God, we're now friends with God. We are clothed in Christ. There's a passage that speaks to that. So God looks down and no longer sees my sinful self. He sees the perfection of Christ covering me. I'm covered with Christ. These are the kind of things, the kind of religious imagery that we get from many different New Testament passages.

Todd Phillips [00:46:36] And I bought into that. I was a wretched, sinful, worthless person. But for the fact that I've been saved by grace through faith in Jesus and that my worth is not just tied to, but is in Jesus and only in him. And but for Him, I would still be wretched.

John Dehlin [00:46:57] I'm laughing. I got in trouble once. I had some orthodox Mormons on sitting in those chairs, and I called that part of Christian theology insidious. I hate the belief. When I hear you say an enemy of God, I'm just like, we're creations of God. He's a loving father.

John Dehlin [00:47:21] If we're just being human as he designed us, the idea that we're his enemy, even when I was a faithful Mormon, it just. It never felt quite right to me. And so I called it insidious. And so then they, with their sound bites or their, you know, in their shorts on social media, sure. Were basically accusing me of being an antichrist and saying that I believed Christianity was insidious.

John Dehlin [00:47:47] No, that's not true. There's so much about Christianity I love and still support, but it is so triggering for me to hear this idea that God creates us and then we're immediately his enemy and that he's gotta punish his own child.

Todd Phillips [00:48:04] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:04] And make him suffer and bleed and die, because that's the only way he could figure out. And again, I'm giving the ending away, but you kind of led me there because I just. I can't stand that teaching. But I don't mean it disrespectfully for those for whom it's sacred.

Todd Phillips [00:48:19] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:48:20] But it just doesn't. It just is triggering for me now.

Todd Phillips [00:48:23] Well, I think. I think it's. I think I share that trigger. You know, I used to preach it as a beautiful picture that we were enemies with God, but now we're friends. And I would say it with passion and I would just lean into it as though it was the most important thing that anyone could hear. And again, I understand some people believe that still. But for me, over time, it became not just problematic, it became. It was theologically, it was structurally problematic. I mean, it just. It fails to make sense in light of the whole story.

John Dehlin [00:48:56] For me, especially if you had the theodicy, this idea that God's all loving, powerful fit. If God is all loving, why are we ever an enemy? And if God's all powerful, couldn't he come up with a different plan? Right.

Todd Phillips [00:49:11] Again, into story stuff. Right. I did a video on the eight reasons I find myself no longer believing in the. Specifically the evangelical Christian God. And these are the reasons. Right. These are the ones that kind of build on top of themselves and finally cause me to question.

John Dehlin [00:49:32] Okay, so really quickly, something that when I was a believing Mormon at Katy High School in Houston growing up, I never got. Cause Mormons don't believe in this idea of being saved, that it's a combination of faith and works, but faith without works is dead. And so we don't have. There's no such thing as being saved in the Mormon tradition.

John Dehlin [00:49:52] You get baptized, you get the gift of the Holy Ghost, and then you work hard to hustle through obedience to win God's love and favor. But there's never, like an altar call being saved. And I would always question my buddies in high school, oh, so I go get saved and I go, oh, I believe. And then I'm good for the rest of my life. What if I kill someone? These are the types of. And I know this is really obvious sort of questions from the realm you were in, but what did you believe about the role of, like, that altar call being saved and that being an important part of what you call salvation?

Todd Phillips [00:50:32] Yeah. I was told back then, and certainly bought into it, that there's a sinner's prayer, for lack of a better phrase. Now, what that prayer was, nobody really knew, but there was a prayer that a lot of people would pray. And basically, God, I know that I'm a sinner. I fall short of your plan for my life and your glory.

Todd Phillips [00:50:49] I'm in need of a Savior, and I acknowledge that. And because of that, I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior, accept his payment on the cross. He became sin for me so that I wouldn't have to pay the penalty of it. He paid the penalty for me. That's substitutionary atonement. And I receive that free gift of eternal life and salvation from Jesus and through Jesus, and ask you to come into my heart and be in relationship with me. That's kind of the core of the prayer. And then at that moment, at that moment, you're saved. You're saved. You're in the family of God. You're birthed into the family of God.

Todd Phillips [00:51:25] And just as crazy as it would be to say that you could be unbirthed into your mother's womb, you cannot be unborn from the family of God. You are eternally secure in this relationship.

John Dehlin [00:51:36] And that second part is the one I never understood because I'm like, once saved. The term I heard growing up is once saved, always saved. I'm like, wait a minute, what about a murderer? You know what I mean?

Todd Phillips [00:51:46] Yeah. I preached once saved, always saved. In fact, it was the core message of every sermon that I had.

John Dehlin [00:51:53] So what did you do with murders when you believed that?

Todd Phillips [00:51:55] Well, I mean, if it was based on belief. So the concept is that it's based on belief. You believe the right things, then you're saved. Right. So if you believe Jesus died on the cross for your sins, it's a free gift. All you have to do is receive it. He's already done all the work he's done everything he's paid for. The murder he's paid for, the lying he's paid for. Everything that you're doing you've done or will do. And so there's no way you can earn your way to heaven through works. It must be through the salvific work of Jesus on the cross that you come into relationship with God.

Todd Phillips [00:52:23] It is the only way. And so nothing you ever do is ever going to get you into or out of heaven. It's what God has already done, past tense, through Jesus. So there's this constant push toward. You can't do any way to earn yourself into heaven. And because of that, there was no way to get there except for Jesus. Therefore, no heinous crime, no murder. He's already paid for all those things that you might do or may have already done. And there's no way for you to absolve yourself of the penalty for those things. That's why Jesus had to die.

John Dehlin [00:53:00] So murderers get off free if they're saved.

Todd Phillips [00:53:02] They didn't get off free. Jesus died for that murder.

John Dehlin [00:53:05] Right, but they don't have to.

Todd Phillips [00:53:07] Yeah, they are forgiven. They are reconciled because of what Jesus did. Now again, we keep jumping to the end of the story, but, I mean, the idea of substitutionary atonement is ridiculous in my opinion. It's just absurd. You don't make things right by having an innocent person pay for someone else's guilt, the person who does something wrong. The issue of fairness and justice requires that that person pay the penalty for that crime. And no innocent person can jump in and take that for someone else. But that's the entirety of the message from an evangelical Christian perspective.

John Dehlin [00:53:44] Yeah, and what I had to. So that's, I mean, I was raised definitely with the, what'd you call it?

Todd Phillips [00:53:53] Substitution, Substitutionary atonement like that.

John Dehlin [00:53:56] I was definitely raised with. Not with the one saved, always saved. It was faith and works. But definitely with the substitutionary atonement or whatever that, that part specifically. I didn't learn until relatively recently that not all Christians, you can be Christian and not believe in substitutionary atonement. But I didn't realize that. I thought it was all. That's what the atonement was, you know.

Todd Phillips [00:54:19] Yeah, there's, there's substitutionary atonement, there's, there's a reconciliation theology, there's literally half a dozen of different Christologies related to the cross. What was accomplished on the cross, what actually happened in the spiritual realm because of Jesus death. And there are many and varied perspectives on that based on many and varied passages in the New Testament.

John Dehlin [00:54:43] And I'm curious if you've come across this in the flavors of Christianity you learned about. In Mormonism, the most important act wasn't on the cross. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane. In Mormonism, Jesus, when he knelt in the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, that's when he took on the pain and the suffering for all our sins. And we're taught that he bled from every pore in the Garden of Gethsemane because he was so overwhelmed from suffering in that prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane for everyone's sins, past, present and future. And in Mormonism, it takes it one step further. There were even prophets that taught that it was for other planets too, people who lived on other planets, like just this massive one time event of suffering for everyone.

John Dehlin [00:55:28] That's where he overcame sin. And then when he was hung on the cross, died and then resurrected after three days. That's where he overcame death. So he overcame sin in the Garden of Gethsemane and death on the cross and in the tomb. Is that very interesting? Is that new?

Todd Phillips [00:55:47] Yeah, yeah. So I would go to a passage that said that Christ, who knew no sin, became sin for us on the cross. So in my Christology and in reference to the cross specifically, at some point he becomes, he in his flesh becomes all of our sin for all humanity and kills it, pays for it on the cross in bodily form. Now, the only way it's verified that he has the authority to do that is if he raises from the dead three days later. Paul says if the resurrection didn't happen, we should be pitied. So he becomes sin on the cross. He then validates the. The that he actually accomplished that and finished it. It is finished on the cross because of the resurrection, that he defeated death as well. If he'd not been raised from the dead, nothing on the cross would have mattered.

John Dehlin [00:56:37] Yeah, interesting.

Todd Phillips [00:56:37] Yeah. But the Garden of Gethsemane. No, I, I didn't. I, I've. I've not heard that.

John Dehlin [00:56:41] That's new.

Todd Phillips [00:56:41] Yeah, that's.

John Dehlin [00:56:42] Yeah, that's core Mormon atonement theology.

Todd Phillips [00:56:46] Interesting.

John Dehlin [00:56:46] Mormons are very Christian. That's. Even now you know that the church has excommunicated me. And I still hate it when people say Mormons aren't Christian just because, like, they believe in Jesus.

Todd Phillips [00:56:57] I would have said that.

John Dehlin [00:56:58] Oh, of course.

Todd Phillips [00:56:59] I grew up as an evangelical Christian.

John Dehlin [00:57:01] Yeah, no, but I mean, I hate that because, like, they believe in God. They believe in the Bible. They believe that Jesus died for our sins. They believe that he took on our pain and suffering, that he resurrected after the third day. They read the Bible, they love the New Testament. And I know there's. Oh, but they don't believe the Bible's perfect. Or. Oh, they don't believe that, but once saved, all is saved or whatever. Some little, to me tangential kind of thing where you can find a different version of Christianity that doesn't believe whatever that thing is that disqualifies Mormons. You can find other Christians that are somehow in the club that don't believe that thing in the same way, but somehow Mormons, because they're the redheaded stepchild, get excluded.

Todd Phillips [00:57:45] Well, for us, I'll tell you what it was for us, for our church, it was the. It was adding to the Bible. It was another testament. And we saw that as it was canonized. This was the perfect word of God. And therefore, this cannot be from God, because this is from God. And weirdly, it really was that simple.

John Dehlin [00:58:03] No, no. And weirdly, Joseph Smith was ahead of both of us and your tradition because he saw errors in the Bible, so he believed in the Bible. In fact, one of our articles of faith is. One of our articles of faith that Joseph Smith implemented was we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. We also believe the book of Mormon to be the word of God. So he saw the errors in the Bible and he did produce additional scripture, but he had a New Testament basis for that. Because Jesus said, you know, other sheep I have that are not of this fold, they shall also hear my voice.

John Dehlin [00:58:38] And he talks about the stick of Joseph and the stick of Jacob and Ezekiel and that there'll be two scrolls that join in my hand. And so even Joseph Smith was basically saying, you can interpret scriptures in the Bible to allow for additional scripture. Sure, sure. I'm not trying to argue Mormon theology. I'm just.

Todd Phillips [00:58:59] No, no, I'm listening. I just. No, I find it. I find it personally fascinating. Yeah, I really do. Because I know very. I know I studied in comparative religions about Mormon theology at a very basic level, but it's been. Since seminary.

John Dehlin [00:59:11] Yeah. Anyway, fun. Okay. So I understand your Christology, your atonement, you know, and all that. How critical. For Mormons, baptism by immersion was crucial and the gift of the Holy Ghost were crucial. And you did it at 8. What was it for? What role did baptism or confirmation play at all for?

Todd Phillips [00:59:31] Yeah, in Southern Baptist theology, immersion was important, but it was a symbol of something that already had been done.

John Dehlin [00:59:36] Okay.

Todd Phillips [00:59:37] So it was a. That we'd already been forgiven, that we die to our old self. We've been birthed into a new kind of life.

John Dehlin [00:59:44] It wasn't a saving ordinance.

Todd Phillips [00:59:45] It was not a saving ordinance.

John Dehlin [00:59:47] In Mormonism, it's a. You can't get into heaven that scripture, if you're not born of the water and the spirit. Mormons interpret that to mean literal baptism by immersion or no entrance into heaven.

Todd Phillips [00:59:58] Yeah. And see, we would perceive that as born of water, as a physical birth from your mother's womb. Born of the Spirit is being saved by Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit upon salvation. So baptism is a symbolic. Is a voluntary act of a believer who's now become a follower of Jesus to voluntarily show the rest of the world that he's died to his old self by going down into the water and dying and then being born into his new life by coming out of the water. So immersion was a very important symbol. But a person would go to heaven with or without baptism.

John Dehlin [01:00:32] Okay.

Todd Phillips [01:00:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:33] And thanks for doing this. It's almost like we're Bible bashing. But, you know, neither. Neither of us really believe anymore. No. In the sense of our old selves. Friendly Bible bashing. How we interpret doctrine, certainly.

Todd Phillips [01:00:46] Yeah. I just. I find it. Right. I've always been very intellectually curious about theology, and even after saying, you know that I no longer believed in Christianity. I'm almost obsessed with theology and philosophy and having these kinds of discussions. It's a healthy process for me.

John Dehlin [01:01:06] Yeah. Okay. One additional question that is the linchpin of Mormonism today. It's authority. So Joseph Smith taught that unless you have authority from the laying on of hands of someone who has authority, you can't baptize, you can't lead a church, you can't save humankind. That the saving rituals in Mormonism, which is baptism, confirmation, gift of the Holy Ghost, and then eventually the Aaronic priesthood, the Melchizedek priesthood, and then eventually the endowment ceremony, which you get in the temple, and then temple marriage, which makes your marriage and your family last in heaven.

John Dehlin [01:01:50] All of that stuff is done with priesthood authority that is administered through the laying out of hands. And so literally, Joseph Smith claims that John the Baptist ordained him to the Aaronic priesthood, and then Peter, James, and John came back as angels, ordained him with the Melchizedek priesthood, and gave him the authority to lead God's one true church and to administer the saving ordinances. Did y' all care about authority? And if so, how did you establish authority?

Todd Phillips [01:02:27] Yeah. Quite interesting from a Southern Baptist perspective. The priesthood of the believer is really at the core of Southern Baptist theology, meaning that each individual has the full ability, by the power of the Holy Spirit living inside them, to read and interpret and discern the truth of God's word. So you don't need a ecclesiastical intermediary like a priest, to tell you what the Bible says, or even a pastor, that the Holy Spirit is your intermediary. There is no human intermediary needed. And that's a huge, huge thing in Southern Baptist theology. So that's the denomination that I kind of spiritually grew up in. So I came to the Bible.

Todd Phillips [01:03:09] I came to this sense of authority by authority that God himself has given me, that the Holy Spirit is confirmed in my spirit. And so when I feel called to ministry, no one else can take that from me, I'm called to ministry. Nothing you do or anyone else ever says even a church authority can change that.

John Dehlin [01:03:29] Fascinating.

Todd Phillips [01:03:29] Yeah. So it's quite on its head from what you were talking about. That's why Southern Baptists almost think the Catholic Church may be the Antichrist. Right.

John Dehlin [01:03:38] Why spell that out?

Todd Phillips [01:03:40] Because of the ecclesiastical authority that humans are conferring themselves as authority, which allows for corruption within the system.

John Dehlin [01:03:48] Yeah, right. Oh, it's like a McDonald's franchising licensing model. Right. With Southern Baptists, with Mormons and Catholics

Todd Phillips [01:03:57] oh, with Mormons and Catholics, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:58] Oh, I see.

Todd Phillips [01:03:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:03:59] You're saying you don't have our brand endorsement, legal contract, authority, and so whatever you do, is it legitimate? But we are a legitimate legal franchise. So it does lead to corruption.

Todd Phillips [01:04:11] Yeah. It's quite ironic, isn't it, that the Southern Baptist denomination is the largest denomination still, I think, in the country. So it's got this organizational structure and this hierarchy in practice, but theologically, that's anathema. It's a very strange thing to watch.

John Dehlin [01:04:28] Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you don't have this idea of unless you have baptism, because that was one of the things that was a stumbling block for me in Mormonism. I'm like, really? Like, unless you have a Mormon baptism. I did the math in high school. When I'm. When my friends are watching the God Makers and telling me I'm in a cult, I'm thinking, no, no, no, wait. We're God's one and only true church on the earth. But then I'm like, okay, wait, we have 6 million people in the LDS Church worldwide, there's billions of people. I did the math once. It was like less than one half of 1%. And I'm like, God kind of. God is kind of a bad marketer or a bad salesman, because there are very, very few. I mean, I know the Bible says narrow is the gate and few there will be or whatever.

Todd Phillips [01:05:17] That's pretty narrow.

John Dehlin [01:05:18] That's pretty narrow. Watch it. No, it's true. But literally, that's where the baptism. This is just a conversation, but that's where the baptism for the dead Mormon teaching comes from. Because Joseph is like, well, if you have to have a Mormon baptism to get baptized, and over 99.9% of the people who've ever lived won't ever get a Mormon in baptism, that means all those people are going to hell. If baptism by immersion with authority is the only way to get into heaven. So the only way Joseph could get out of that theological conundrum is to allow people to get baptized after they're dead. But what an inefficient, ridiculous solution. But it's the only way to make it all logically mixed.

Todd Phillips [01:06:03] Yes. If you assume those presuppositions, then that's the only thing that can be bit. But that happens in all denominations in all religions. Right. It must be true. And therefore I have to find a way to that truth rather than it could be wrong. Right. That can't be the case.

John Dehlin [01:06:17] Yeah. And then just because this is striking my memories Was it. Did I remember my Baptist friends not being allowed to dance? Was that part of your speaking of

Todd Phillips [01:06:31] the priesthood of the believer? So it depended on which church. But yeah, overall Southern Baptists did not drink and did not dance. So almost kind of like the Footloose movie religious kind of ideology. No dancing, no drinking, no fun.

John Dehlin [01:06:44] Yeah, yeah. And then talk quickly about like what the beliefs were around the second coming, the millennium and the Judgment and that sort of thing.

End Times, Heaven, and Evangelical Eschatology

Todd Phillips [01:06:55] Yeah. So the Left behind series, the books by Tim LaHaye, I guess they came out in the 90s. I guess it was around the time I became a Christian in 94, maybe late 80s. But the left behind series had a massive impact on Southern Baptist theology. They were already pre millennial, meaning that Christ would come and return and take his flock, his church, up into heaven and then there would be a thousand year, the tribulation and the thousand year reign and all that would happen later. But Christians would not experience any of the tribulation and the challenges that came with the end times. I didn't do a lot of study on end times.

Todd Phillips [01:07:32] That was one of the problems I had from the beginning. I just thought there was a lot of interpretive problems with end times theology. And I personally had some problems with the Left behind series, even though it became very popularized. But almost everybody I knew bought into that perspective on Jesus coming back again to take his church home. And then there would be this tribulation and this Antichrist would come and there would be a new heaven and new earth after that.

Todd Phillips [01:07:58] But it was interesting to me how many people were obsessed with end times theology inside the Southern Baptist Church. Be watchful. It could happen. We don't know the day or the hour. Look into the heavens. Be watchful, be ready, be prepared. You have to live your life in such a way that you're prepared when he comes.

Todd Phillips [01:08:20] And it was a very fear based, in my opinion, very damaging theology. Now I understand, at least from my perspective, from a scholarly perspective, Revelation is a treatise, a tome. It's a political book dealing with the oppression of the Jewish people during the first century. I mean, it's very clear. It's addressing Nero. There's just a lot of, there's a lot of imagery in there that deals with the political motivations of the time.

Todd Phillips [01:08:50] And no critical scholar questions that. It's only religious people with certain lenses over their eyes that have been given a certain dogma that then reverse engineer the text to address and to validate the dogma.

John Dehlin [01:09:03] Right. And then I'm always curious, you know, we're made fun of. Mormons are made fun of by evangelicals for believing that eventually if you're super righteous, you become a God and rule over your own planet. That that is still Mormon theology, even though Mormons want to downplay or dismiss that now because it is cringy or viewed as heretical to mainstream Christians. And we're trying to build bridges with mainstream Christians now because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And so we've become bedfellows with Catholics and evangelicals a bit, which I never thought would happen. But I digress.

John Dehlin [01:09:42] The main thing I'm asking is what was heaven going to be like? And I never understood, you know, as much as my evangelical friends wanted to make fun of the God makers idea, like sitting in heaven, playing harps and singing and praising a narcissistic God that just wanted you to sit at his feet and sing his praises for eternity. Like, never made sense to me. So what was heaven like? And I don't mean to be mocking of people's beliefs because I'm sure there's all sorts of different beliefs around that.

Todd Phillips [01:10:10] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:10:11] But what was your belief about the eternities as an evangelical Christian?

Todd Phillips [01:10:16] Yeah, ultimately there would be a new heaven and a new earth, a perfected new. A new heaven, new earth. So this earth only perfected, a new heaven. Basically, God comes down here and we live out eternity in this new heaven which is here on the new earth. And the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven and is physically present on this perfected earth. Basically the Garden of Eden again, but

John Dehlin [01:10:43] for the whole globe, where would all the people fit?

Todd Phillips [01:10:45] Listen, these are the problems that I had. Right. So when I would just. I remember saying this in servants, you know, I don't know how this happens, but Scripture makes it plain. That's what I would say all the time.

John Dehlin [01:11:00] Scripture would come down.

Todd Phillips [01:11:02] Yeah. I mean, if God. Listen, if God can, if, if God can speak the universe into existence, he can do anything he wants with a new Jerusalem or a perfected world or anything. He literally can take the Gulf of

John Dehlin [01:11:13] Mexico where it was going to land.

Todd Phillips [01:11:14] I didn't know. I didn't know.

John Dehlin [01:11:16] I believe that. We believe that the city of Enoch was literally translated meaning brought up to heaven. And I believed as a Texan that maybe it's the Gulf of Mexico. That was where the city of Enoch was. And then it was lifted up.

Todd Phillips [01:11:30] Interesting.

John Dehlin [01:11:32] Come on, Galveston. Corpus Christi.

Todd Phillips [01:11:34] Come on. Of course, it makes all sorts of sense now. I might still be a Christian today if I only knew that. No I didn't spend a lot of time on end times theology other than to know that heaven was a place of eternal bliss. No more tears, no more pain, no suffering, no sin. And somehow that made sense to me.

Todd Phillips [01:11:55] I think one of the biggest questions I had about heaven as I've gone through this, I actually did a video on Instagram and TikTok recently where I said, if heaven is either eternal worship of God forever and ever and ever for trillions and trillions of years, and that's only a day, like forever, and it never stops, I'll take non existence.

Todd Phillips [01:12:14] And I did a whole short video on that because I just, I don't. Not only I don't find it plausible, but I don't find it something that I would aspire to any longer. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me. And this narcissistic God that you speak of, that's. That's exactly the way I view it now. Yeah, the way it's. The way it's expressed as. As far as we can tell, in Scripture.

John Dehlin [01:12:37] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:12:38] In the New Testament, specifically.

John Dehlin [01:12:41] Okay, okay. So turning back now because again, we're treading on sacred ground for believing Christians and. And Mormons, really. And at the same time, I think we both have a soft place in our heart for the way that these theologies can transform lives that are metaphorically or literally in the gutter into something quite healthier and more beautiful or more functional. And that also they're just tender beliefs for people. So I just want to acknowledge that while we're talking intellectually now and being critical, I think we both still maintain a reverence for the way that these types of theologies can also do good in the world. And so can you talk about, as you're becoming a pastor and giving your life to Christ into the ministry, what types of good things, good fruits you're seeing in your life and in the lives of the Christians and in the congregations that you work in.

Life as a Megachurch Pastor and Nonprofit Work

Todd Phillips [01:13:45] Yeah. So to say it transformed my life is an understatement. It was profound. Every area of my life, my entire life and lifestyle, all the choices I made, the words I spoke, the decisions, the actions I took, everything was driven around the centrality, I would say this phrase, centrality of Jesus and who he was and what he wanted me to do. Not because I was afraid of him, but because I loved him so much. And I really felt this. I loved Jesus so much that I wanted to do these things as an act of worship and an expression of love to this God that saved me from My own depravity, I mean, that's really the way I viewed the world.

Todd Phillips [01:14:23] It got me to the point, in fact, I was involved from 2008 to 2020. I started a nonprofit when I was still at McLean Bible Church in D.C. i started a nonprofit called the Last well. And at the time I was primarily pastoring these 4000 or so 20 somethings. And these were all very high output, type A mensa level, genius young people that were coming in from all over the world to work on the hill and change the world. And for these Christians, I saw, man, we have 4,000 young Christians who at the time reminded me of me when I got saved at the age of 24.

Todd Phillips [01:15:02] So I was very passionate about 20 somethings specifically. And I started an organization called the Last well. And it was working with these young adults to try to change the world. I believe, man, we have more influence and power and opportunity with these 4,000 young adults than we possibly imagine under the authority of God, so we could do something amazing. So I started a nonprofit called the Last well. And it was an effort to bring clean water and the Christian message to an entire developing country. Border to border for the first time in history.

Todd Phillips [01:15:36] So it was Liberia in West Africa. So it started in 2009. At the time, Liberia was the second poorest country in the world. It was the most corrupt country in the world according to the CIA.

John Dehlin [01:15:47] Where was IDI Amin from?

Todd Phillips [01:15:48] Was that wasn't Liberia. Yeah, but we found the worst place we could go to to bring the gospel in clean water and to do it for the first time in history. And it was driven around the idea that God can do anything.

Todd Phillips [01:16:08] So the Last well wouldn't have existed but for, you know, at least in part, but for my passion for God and my belief in his today power, I used to use that phrase quite often. And so we started this organization in 2009 to bring clean water, border to border, to every single man, woman and child, every village, every community, every hut in Liberia, West Africa. And we crossed the finish line on November 12th of 2020, 12 years later, and brought basic access to clean water according to the UN guidelines to every single community in Liberia and did it. And that was the first time in history a developing country had ever been reached with clean water.

Todd Phillips [01:16:50] And it was accomplished. Why? Because we believe God could do great things. That was the underpinning mechanism by which that happened. We did it. But our belief in the God that could push through any wall, any political barrier, any corruption was the reason it happened so amazingly good Things happen because of. At least in my own life, because of my faith in this God. And it transformed my life, my life and literally every area, you know, and so. But for belief in God, 3.4 million people would not have received clean water in that 12 year timeline. But for my belief in God, 150,000 people, by UN estimates, would not have seen their next birthday because of lack of clean water.

Todd Phillips [01:17:41] And half of those 150,000, 75,000 were children under five. So 75,000 kids were seeing their next birthday because of a passion I had for God. And the fact that I believe God could use young adults to do great

John Dehlin [01:17:54] things, that almost makes belief trivial. Like, my wife has coined the phrase beliefs aren't that important, which can be interpreted as a way to devalue religion. But there's another angle. You can look at it like if your faith, your beliefs, led you to save the lives of 75,000 kids, historical criticism and multiple voices in the Bible don't matter compared to the fact that religion. This is kind of, I think, the Yuval, Noah Harare, Sapiens kind of argument.

Todd Phillips [01:18:32] Oh, sure.

John Dehlin [01:18:32] That religion provides people with a common myth, a common set of heroes, a level of trust that they wouldn't normally have with each other. To allow a lot of people to work together to accomplish great things.

Todd Phillips [01:18:44] We need a unifying story.

John Dehlin [01:18:46] Yeah, yeah. And framework for trust and cooperation like that. What you just described to me is an argument for Christianity, not against.

Todd Phillips [01:18:58] Oh, no. And that's what I'm saying. I mean, many good things happen because of it. Many horrific things happen as well. Right. But that same faith, that same Bible causes genocide. And that same faith and that same Bible causes us to go reach an entire country with clean water.

John Dehlin [01:19:13] Man, it's so complicated. Same Bible, so complicated.

Todd Phillips [01:19:15] Same Bible, yes.

John Dehlin [01:19:16] So complicated. Wow, that's beautiful. What a cool story. So how do you know this is out of the blue, but, like, what was the highest annual budget that nonprofit reached at its zenith?

Todd Phillips [01:19:28] Yeah, we raised $31 million over that 12 years. And. Whoa, there's a lot. It's a $31 million project. And. But in the last four years, we raised over half of that.

John Dehlin [01:19:44] Were you the CEO?

Todd Phillips [01:19:45] Yeah, I was the founder and CEO of that for 12 years.

John Dehlin [01:19:47] Oh, my goodness. While you were a pastor?

Todd Phillips [01:19:49] Yeah, I did it on a volunteer basis from 2009 to 2013. And when I left Lake Point Church in 2013, I went full time. So the board of directors. I was a volunteer at the time. The board of directors came to me and said, why don't you take it over? We'll pay you, we'll fund it. And so I actually got nine guys. It was all men, and they actually covered 100% of the operational costs of the organization, including my salary. And then all 31 million went directly to the project.

John Dehlin [01:20:20] Just because I run a nonprofit. I'm dying to know what your peak salary was at that nonprofit, if you remember. And I can't remember.

Todd Phillips [01:20:27] I honestly can't remember. Six figures at the end.

John Dehlin [01:20:31] Yeah, yeah. I think nonprofit leaders, if they do

Todd Phillips [01:20:34] it, probably hit that at the end.

John Dehlin [01:20:35] Yeah, but. But around six figures, not like two.

Todd Phillips [01:20:38] Yeah. I mean, I honestly can't remember. I'm really terrible. But I. But I will say this, that the, the guys that were. The guys that were supporting it understood where I was coming out of.

John Dehlin [01:20:49] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:20:50] Kind of that megachurch environment and what I was making. I did take a hit to do what I did, but then eventually kind of got back to parody with where I was, so. And those were the choices they made, not me.

John Dehlin [01:21:00] Sure, yeah, yeah. You don't set your own.

Todd Phillips [01:21:02] Yeah, they.

John Dehlin [01:21:03] People don't understand it.

Todd Phillips [01:21:05] I would come to them at different times and go, hey, maybe we should.

John Dehlin [01:21:08] Yeah, but just for the record, people who run non profits don't choose their own salary.

Todd Phillips [01:21:14] No, they don't choose their own salary. And certainly not. You don't do it to make money, that's for sure.

John Dehlin [01:21:18] Yeah, exactly. Although sometimes you can have a decent living or good living running a non profit. Okay, so that's a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing. What an inspiring story and what beautiful fruits of Christianity at its best. Right?

Todd Phillips [01:21:34] Yeah. I would say that probably is the greatest, without a doubt, the greatest expression of my own personal faith and active faith in Jesus as it related to both my personal life and leadership.

John Dehlin [01:21:47] Yeah, without a doubt. Okay, going back a little bit. Just because we both grew up in Texas around the same time. I grew up with the names Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, kind of in the zeitgeist. And it was like, mega pastors are corrupt. They're having secret sex, they're driving Cadillacs, they're flying around in jet planes. They may be gay, secretly, they may even not believe. But they're kooky, scammy, wealthy people, kind of like righteous gemstones tries to portray them. So as you're becoming a pastor and I'm assuming you were paying attention when all that megachurch scandal was happening or not somewhat. I mean, not a lot.

Todd Phillips [01:22:42] Not really.

John Dehlin [01:22:43] Oh, okay.

Todd Phillips [01:22:43] Yeah, I wasn't I just, I wasn't caught up in a lot of that. Yeah. But I will say that a lot of people, when I say mega church pastor, I mean my Persona online, you know, the deconstructed pastor. And I mean, I'm introduced as a megachurch pastor. I think, I think it is relevant, right? It's different pastoring a 200 person church in a neighborhood versus a 15,000 person church. It's a, it's a corporation. It's. You know, we had a. We had a $25 million budget. It's just a lot of money annual. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so. And so. But I will say this, and on behalf of both the church that I went to that I pastored in D.C.

Todd Phillips [01:23:21] was McLean Bible Church and then Lake Point Church in Dallas, I will say this about both of them. Can't say this for every megachurch. I have problems with some mega churches that I see today for lots of different reasons, but at the time, both, even though it was a business, you can't have 300 staff in a $20 million, $25 million budget.

Todd Phillips [01:23:45] Seven services on the weekend, 40 people running the stage to make the deal happen every Sunday or Saturday or all the different services. We had, we had an Internet campus. I mean, it's a massive organization. But I will say for.

Todd Phillips [01:24:02] And we can talk about all the shortcomings of megachurches, but I will say for those two churches, they were run by people, myself included, who really did believe the stuff that we were saying. I mean, we just did. We were constrained by this love that we had for Jesus. And we believe that the number of people showing up was a validator by God himself. For that, we're doing the right thing. Right. God wouldn't let this happen because God's real. He's all powerful, and he would not let someone bring a crowd like this. Now, I failed to apply the same critique to the obvious megachurches that were being like the ones you're mentioning that were being sued or people going to prison and corruption and all the things that happened, which all those things could

John Dehlin [01:24:47] be a modern example, you know, about him.

Todd Phillips [01:24:49] Mark and I knew each other.

John Dehlin [01:24:50] Oh, you knew Mark?

Todd Phillips [01:24:51] Yeah. Whoa.

John Dehlin [01:24:52] I want to hear all about Mark Driscoll. I don't want to.

Todd Phillips [01:24:54] I know.

John Dehlin [01:24:54] Okay, okay, that's fine.

Todd Phillips [01:24:55] It's. He. He and I, he and I were connected to a Gen X conference back in the mid to late 90s and traveled to. We crossed path quite often at conferences.

John Dehlin [01:25:12] And this is just. Most people don't know who Mark Driscoll is. I just. I found that podcast on Mars Hill, one of the coolest podcasts I've ever listened to, just to hear the rise of it was called Mars Hill right in Seattle with Mark Driscoll. And he's had a sort of a maga reemergence as kind of a maga.

Todd Phillips [01:25:29] Yeah, it's very strange to watch. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:31] I'm curious just because I'm a nerd in a way. When you and Mark were running in similar circles, would you have characterized your worldviews, your Christian worldviews then, as being the Venn diagram, pretty overlapped or quite different?

Todd Phillips [01:25:50] It's a bit more complicated than that, I think.

John Dehlin [01:25:52] Back then, I mean.

Todd Phillips [01:25:53] Yeah, back then, what we had in common was we were both interested in young people in this Gen X movement that we saw during that time, and we were invited by people in authority in those conferences to come and speak.

Todd Phillips [01:26:07] And there was a collection of us. Mark was one of them, I was one of them, and there were probably a dozen 15 others that were kind of popularized by those conferences. And so we all saw each other in the same theological vein at the time.

Todd Phillips [01:26:28] But I can't tell you just how amazed and distraught I am by. And I really don't want to go further with it other than to say this, that kind of the MAGA evangelical movement and the way evangelical churches have been kind of conscripted into this kind of political ideology, Christian nationalism, it's very disconcerting. And when I say I'm an evangelical, former evangelical pastor, many people who are maybe in their 20s right now only identify evangelicalism with conservative politics, with conservative politics and white nationalism. And it couldn't have been more different. I mean, it might as well be called two different things at this point, from my perspective. But back then, yeah, I think we had some similarities.

John Dehlin [01:27:21] Yeah. And I'll just give the disclaimer I give every time. I'm not anti Republican. I'm not anti conservative.

Todd Phillips [01:27:27] Me too.

John Dehlin [01:27:27] Yeah. I love you. If you voted for whoever, I love you. But you can't talk about history, religion. Yes.

Todd Phillips [01:27:38] It's just part of the process.

John Dehlin [01:27:39] The current events, politics and religion, they run the world.

Todd Phillips [01:27:44] Yeah. And by definition, I mean, especially if you're talking about evangelical Christianity, just because of its political connection to a certain political ideology, it has changed. Changed. And so someone may make an assumption about a certain person's ideology or theology, for that matter, and it'd be incorrect.

John Dehlin [01:28:00] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'd love to come back to talking about Christian nationalism, maybe in Part two, just because I'm curious. I have a lot of things I want to talk about in part two, but let's go back to your story. So talk about why aren't you. Why aren't you presiding over a 20,000 or 50,000 megachurch now? It seems like you were on the path to Joel Osteen land. What happened? Yeah, and go slow. You don't have to rush it.

Todd Phillips [01:28:36] Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic. So about, let's see, in 2004, I got to McLean Bible Church, and that was the first really, really big mega church. The other churches were like Hyde Park, 2, 3, 4,000 people up to that point. And then you get to McLean, there's 10, 12, 14, whatever they had.

Todd Phillips [01:28:56] And when I got there, it was interesting. I was actually living in San Antonio at the time, and my friend was the pastor of Frontline, which was a young adult ministry that I would take over at McLean Bible Church. And he actually brought me there to serve in ministry with him, but not be the main stage guy. I was actually looking for a break. I had spoken to 400 times the year prior, and I just got burnt out. And so he said, hey, come up here, hang out for the next year and a half, two years, and just help me with this place. And you can preach when you want to, but, you know, let us love on you a little bit and just get you out of the burnout phase.

Todd Phillips [01:29:31] So I did. And a month after I got there, he sat me down at a Starbucks in Tyson's Corner and he said, I'm moving back to California and the church wants you to take over Frontline. And it was like the last thing I wanted to hear. But again, you do what God tells you to do. So I took over that role and became a main teaching pastor both at McLean and Frontline within that same organizational structure, and was very passionate about it. And that was the seeds of the last, well, the work that we did in West Africa. I mean, a lot of great things came out of the seven years that I was at McLean Bible Church.

Todd Phillips [01:30:10] In fact, I would say it was seven of some of the best years of my life. It was remarkable, like nothing but smiles. It was a wonderful, wonderful time in my life. It really was. And at the same time, I was kind of. I kind of re emerged. I was traveling full time doing conferences, got burned out, didn't want to do that anymore. Now I'm pastoring this big church that I never planned on doing. So it was just the last thing that I was going to do.

John Dehlin [01:30:38] And because you're talking about travel and working so hard, and I'm not going to, I'm not asking anything more detailed than, did you get remarried? Did you have kids? Did you have a family? If you want to share. If you want to share.

Todd Phillips [01:30:51] Yeah. So in 1994, when I got saved, when I became a Christian, just two years after that, I was married. She was a wonderful woman. We're no longer married. We were married for about 24 years and got a divorce in 2020. Incredible woman. She's an incredible mom to our three kids, and we've got three incredible children. So it was a wonderful. And we have a good relationship now, but we met and got married right into Christianity, wanted to be married, wanted to live a fulfilling life and a life as a Christian. And she was wonderful. And we did fall in love and it just, it didn't work out long term. But our three kids, our marriage and our three kids grew up in the glass house of the megachurch. I mean, that's all my kids knew. So from birth they were PK's. Right.

John Dehlin [01:31:48] Now, what does that mean? PK?

Todd Phillips [01:31:50] Preachers kids, pastor's kids. Yeah, PKs. And. But I think we both did very well parenting in that glass house. And all three of our kids are very well adjusted today. My third one just got out of college. All three of them are out of college now. Have great jobs, love their lives, love their mom, love their dad. You know, I think as little shrapnel as could have happened through a divorce happened in our situation.

John Dehlin [01:32:19] Nice.

Todd Phillips [01:32:19] So, yeah. So I've got three wonderful kids and thankful for the marriage that I had.

John Dehlin [01:32:25] Beautiful. Okay, so you were saying now in parallel to the amazing things happening at McLean. What?

Todd Phillips [01:32:33] Yeah, at McLean. What was interesting is I was at that point, I am swimming in the deep and I've got two tanks on my back and I am deep in evangelical mega church world. And just a few years after this, I'm going to start the last. Well, you know, we grew from about 12, 1300 people when I took it over in 2004 to 18 months later. We had 4000, 4500 people coming. We had 10 campuses. We opened across the D.C. we called it a spiritual beltway around Washington, D.C. we had an Internet campus. We simulcasted all of the sermons live to the other campuses.

Todd Phillips [01:33:16] I mean, it was a deal and we were saving lots of young people. And that's what I was all about. At the same time, I decided to go. I got accepted to a doctoral cohort at Princeton and Princeton is a very liberal seminary theologically.

Todd Phillips [01:33:34] And I was told by most people, because I had got my master's at Southwestern Seminary or Southern Baptist Seminary, told by most people in my world, don't go to Princeton, it's just going to mess you up. You know, what in the world are you doing that for anyway? Is it for prestige? I don't understand. Why are you doing it? I actually went to Princeton to try to better understand liberal theology because I was doing a lot of missionary work and needed to get along with people from different theological perspectives and thought Princeton would be the perfect place to do that.

Todd Phillips [01:34:09] And so, ironically, somewhat looking back in my life right now, it was during the height of my passionate engagement in evangelical Christianity that I went to Princeton. And Princeton sowed the seeds of my deconstruction eventually. So it was Princeton that opened me to a different way of thinking about my theology, and ultimately, I would say, was the beginning of my deconstruction and my deconversion from Christianity.

John Dehlin [01:34:43] And I joked with you, I did interview Bart Ehrman several years ago and recently. And it was my memory that that's where Bart Ehrman also lost his faith, learning about the Bible. And so let's slow walk that. How did your faith start to come unraveled at Princeton?

Studying at Princeton and Encountering Liberal Theology

Todd Phillips [01:35:01] Yeah. So at Princeton, it was interesting. I was invited. I got accepted to this cohort of 10 individuals, and it was all men. So myself and nine others, and they were from all over the world, so several of them from the States, but really, I think six, five, six of them at least were from outside the US And I remember the first meeting we had, it was a three year doctoral program cohort, three year fellowship. And I remember the first time I met these guys.

Todd Phillips [01:35:32] And up until that point, John, I really thought I could handle myself in any room. I mean, I had enough confidence in my own intellectual prowess to kind of manage any situation, or so I thought it was until I got to Princeton and sat down within, I would say minutes, not even hours, but minutes of having discussions with some of the guys in my cohort that I realized, you know what? I may be the 10th smartest guy in this room. I mean, these nine guys are much more intelligent, just brilliant at many levels. And what was more disconcerting for me was they didn't necessarily believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus.

Todd Phillips [01:36:13] They didn't necessarily believe in the virgin birth of the miracles, much more social gospel oriented and coming from more mainline denominations. And I remember thinking to myself, wow, I am not the smartest guy in this room. There are nine guys that are smarter than me in this room. That's humbling in itself. I had a real problem with, took some emotional toll on me. I was like, how small of a pond have I been swimming in? Even though I was in a megachurch, what is the world I've been living in? And so that got me thinking differently. In addition to that, I realized very soon that I just really had very little to contribute to the conversation, that these guys were just talking at a level that I had not been a part of up until that point.

Todd Phillips [01:36:55] So my three years at Princeton, I just shut up, I just took notes, I observed. It was a challenging time for me. And the other challenging component of that was, okay, I'm the only one that's still a conservative Christian, theologically speaking, I'm the only one in here that really sees the Bible as an inerrant word of God. They see God differently. They don't necessarily care about the miracles, and yet they still call themselves Christians. And in addition to that, the entire three year cohort was built around what was called a habit of mind. So Princeton's goal was to teach you this habit of mind. It was critical thinking.

Todd Phillips [01:37:36] That's a basic understanding of it. It was critical thinking. It was a habit of mind, a way to think and perceive and critique the message in Scripture and how to perceive it. And it was very different than I'd ever been taught. And I started realizing then that Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary was an indoctrination school.

Todd Phillips [01:37:53] It was a school of higher learning. But they weren't teaching you how to think, they weren't teaching you how to critique the Bible. They would probably tell you even today they are, but they're not. It's an indoctrination school. It's an apologetics master's program.

Todd Phillips [01:38:06] It really is. And it wasn't until I got to Princeton that I realized that, okay, Princeton doesn't care what I think about the Word, about the passage, about the Bible. They're not trying to get me to think a certain way. They're teaching me how to think about how I think a certain way.

Todd Phillips [01:38:23] And that was one step back. And that changed things for me. And so it got me to think differently. It introduced me to guys like Douglas John hall, who's a Canadian theologian that wrote a 4,500 page systematic theology, three part book series, just massive. And I got 4,500 pages of this guy that I read during that time. And he was a liberal theologian. And he made more sense to me than most of the Conservative theologians that I was introduced to in my indoctrination program at Southwestern.

John Dehlin [01:38:58] And for those who just have no idea what you're talking about, which is most Mormons give five or whatever examples of what liberal Christian theology would be versus. And you've already touched on it, but just summarize.

Todd Phillips [01:39:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:11] Maybe the pillars of. Of liberal Christian theology.

Todd Phillips [01:39:14] Yeah. So conservative theology is everything I've described at this point. Right. So it's the biblical literalism, it's the inerrancy, the infallibility of scripture. Liberal theology or mainline theology is much less concerned with that kind of brutal, uncompromising perspective on Scripture. Many liberal theologians buy into more of a social gospel. So they look at the 2,000 passages, for example, in the Old and New Testament about clothing the needy and the homeless and feeding the poor and providing for those who are in need. And so those 2,000 passages drive a social perspective on the gospel that has more to do with a today theology than an afterlife theology. And again, liberal theologians will probably listen to this and just cringe because I'm not giving them their due. Right. But in general terms, it's a very different perspective on Scripture.

John Dehlin [01:40:10] Hey, you're giving your take.

Todd Phillips [01:40:12] Yeah, this is my take. Yeah, yeah. And how I see it as compared to my own theology at the time, so very much about the life of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, what that means, and how we live our lives today and how we serve others. That's a much more liberal theological perspective on Jesus. Whether he had a bodily resurrection or was born of a virgin is a secondary or even unimportant side note to the reality of the life and actions of Jesus and how we might be able to live according to that. So Christianity is seen and moral liberal theological paradigms as a way of living, as a way of following the teachings of a person who claimed maybe to be God, but again, secondary.

Todd Phillips [01:40:52] Now the primary thing is what did he say and do and how can I live that way? My primary thing was afterlife, heaven, forgiveness, eternity, you know, hell. Avoiding that, you know, getting to the truth and that there is no. There are no contradictions in Scripture. Everything it says is true. That's a much more conservative fundamentalist perspective on the Bible. Hope that makes sense.

John Dehlin [01:41:17] Yeah. So just to drive it home, liberal Christianity probably does not believe in an inerrant Bible. True.

Todd Phillips [01:41:25] By and large, I would say that's accurate.

John Dehlin [01:41:28] And there's probably a lot of them that this idea of Christ being the only way, they could probably look at that symbolically or metaphorically and find room for Buddhists or Muslims or Jews to.

Todd Phillips [01:41:42] It would depend on how liberal. But, yes, I think they would lean. Definitely. Everything you're saying would apply to certain liberal theological frameworks. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:41:53] Or that Jesus's resurrection maybe wasn't necessarily temporal or corporeal.

Todd Phillips [01:41:59] Yeah. It could have been spiritual, could have been a metaphor for forgiveness. You know, it doesn't have to have happened the way the Bible says it happened.

John Dehlin [01:42:07] And could it even be that Jesus. And I'm sure this is. There's a spectrum, that Jesus wasn't really literally the Son of God and wasn't really a God, but he taught really good principles. And in that sense, he taught teachings that are true, but he wasn't necessarily literally a God.

Todd Phillips [01:42:27] Yeah. Christology is a very core component of the difference between liberal and conservative theology. Yeah. Conservative theology takes very literally what it perceives to be the truth of Christ and his purpose for both being born, living, dying, resurrecting, and ascending. Right. All those things are core in liberal theological paradigms. I think you stated it very well.

John Dehlin [01:42:49] Okay.

Todd Phillips [01:42:50] Yeah. He's an example.

John Dehlin [01:42:55] So I'm curious. Mormonism has sort of a antidote to higher learning, you know, and I'm sure lots of fundamentalist religions do. There's a saying that, like, the learned think themselves to be wise, but they hearken not unto the Spirit, you know, or there are ways to basically say you want to lose your faith, get educated, go to Princeton, go to Harvard.

John Dehlin [01:43:29] You know, that's just not what you do, because the learned are prideful and ultimately secular and wicked. And so by devaluing higher learning or certain types of higher learning, law degrees are okay because you can become a lawyer and pay a lot of tithing or get an MBA's fine or an accountant's fine or an engineer, because you're narrow. But the liberal arts are pretty evil. History's pretty evil.

John Dehlin [01:44:03] And certainly liberal theology is like what Mormons would call the philosophies of men mingled with scripture. Mormonism's got a lot of antidotes to keep you from in your Mormon theological worldview bubble. And to never allow yourself to read books or hear ideas that are outside of the orthodox mindset because they're dangerous to faith.

John Dehlin [01:44:30] How did you allow yourself at Princeton? You would have had lots of reasons as a megachurch pastor to not allow your bubble to be permeated, to not entertain or take seriously any of the things discussed, even if you perceive them to be of higher IQ than you, the other fellow attendees at your Princeton seminary, you could still have your shields or your defenses up to say, that's evil, that's wicked, that's antithetical to the true Christianity. So I may sit in the same room as these people's mouths move and they make mouth sounds, as Britt Hartley likes to say, but I'm never going to actually allow myself to consider whether this heretical, evil, worldly, secular version of Christianity is ever actually true. What was allowing you as a megachurch pastor to actually entertain and take seriously the things they were discussing?

Todd Phillips [01:45:38] Well, this is an important caveat to all this, so let me back up a bit and say this. By the time I got done with my three years there, I was still convinced that I was right. I was still convinced that probably all nine of the other people in my cohort were not going to heaven. None of that changed. Okay. It was just the seeds. I started thinking differently, but I was going back every weekend and preaching inside the church. And so I didn't have time to spend months or years reflecting on different theological precepts. The seeds of my deconstruction started there. But I didn't call myself agnostic until

John Dehlin [01:46:17] 2022, which is four years ago.

Todd Phillips [01:46:20] Yeah. So, I mean, this is, I mean, 2005 to 2022.

John Dehlin [01:46:25] So you.

Todd Phillips [01:46:26] So I leave. So, so I leave Princeton at 2000.

John Dehlin [01:46:29] In 2005.

Todd Phillips [01:46:30] Yeah, in 05.

John Dehlin [01:46:31] Okay.

Todd Phillips [01:46:31] I leave there. I'm still. I'm still at McLean Bible Church. I'm still preaching. I'm full on in. The only reason I bring up Princeton is because it started me thinking differently. So that when I was ready to ask questions in 2013, 2014, 2015, 10 years later, all that stuff stuck with me. I still had Douglas John hall in my library. I still had the books from Princeton. I still had the habit of mind. All those things were still there. And when I was ready to ask those questions, I had a structure, a habit of mind, a framework from which to think about those things more critically.

John Dehlin [01:47:04] And I'm sure the metaphor we use in Mormonism is putting things on the shelf. You learn and you hear, oh, maybe Joseph Smith was a polygamist. What? I didn't. I wasn't taught that. I'll put it on the shelf and keep believing. Oh, what, the peep stone in a hat translation? That can't be true. I'll put it on the shelf.

Todd Phillips [01:47:22] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:47:23] But we also have the metaphor that, like, the shelf starts building up and cracks start developing and eventually it caves in. So is that, you know, the seeds 100% accurate?

Todd Phillips [01:47:34] Yeah. I put everything back on the Shelf, I didn't have time to think critically about anything. I had to go back to preaching every weekend. And I was passionate about what I was doing. Like there was nothing getting me out of that. It was this thing in the back of my head. It was on the shelf. And then it wasn't until 2013 when my contract at Lake Point Church ended. So I was at McLean Bible Church for seven years from 2004 to 2011, during which time I had gone to Princeton. 2011 to 2013 was my time at Lake Point. And then at the point of 2013 when I took over last, well, full time, to do missionary work, that was the first time in my Christian experience I was allowed to spend some time thinking.

Beginning of Deconstruction and What Comes Next

John Dehlin [01:48:15] So you had been a pastor up until then, you had been a pastor responsible for the faith and the practice of thousands and thousands of people.

Todd Phillips [01:48:24] Tens of thousands.

John Dehlin [01:48:24] Sure, tens of thousands. And then all of a sudden you're leading a non profit and no longer carrying the responsibility of tens of thousands of people's beliefs.

Todd Phillips [01:48:34] Exactly right. So I no longer had to be certain every Sunday. And I had spent 20 years being certain every Sunday and preparing myself to be certain every Sunday. Now all of a sudden, I'm not preaching every weekend.

Todd Phillips [01:48:48] I don't have to be certain every week. I don't have to sit down in counseling sessions and with couples and with youth groups and be certain every day. I didn't carry the burden and the agenda of saving every person I sat with. Now I had time to think.

Todd Phillips [01:49:04] And in 2013, I was still a passionate Christian, but was taking over this nonprofit. And now I could spend weeks or months or what turned out to be years and for some topics, a decade, asking questions that I did not have to have an answer to anymore.

Todd Phillips [01:49:22] The issue of hell bothered me. The issue of biblical inerrancy was bothersome. And now all of a sudden, I didn't have to get up and say the Bible was inerrant, I believed it, but it was bothersome to me. And from 2013 to 2022, for nine years, that was my, I would call it my active deconstruction phase. And for those nine years up until 2022, I was still a Christian. I spent nine years from 2013-22 being a Christian, trying to come to terms with things that bothered me and come to terms with the doctrine of hell, come to terms with substitutionary atonement, question, inerrancy. When I found contradictions, and now I could honestly ask the question, are there contradictions?

Todd Phillips [01:50:05] And it takes about 12 minutes to just consciously deal with the fact that there are. But they could be harmonized away inside the church.

John Dehlin [01:50:15] So there's a quote that comes to mind. I read the book the Jungle by Upton Sinclair in high school about the meat packing plants in the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. The book was about how owners of the meat factory plants could justify all the harm that was being done to the factory workers. They were getting wealthy, but the people were the carnage. And there's a quote that has stuck with me since then. It's difficult to get a man to see a point of view when his livelihood depends on not seeing it.

Todd Phillips [01:50:50] Absolutely. I mean, my entire career, my reputation, I spent 20 years building a career and becoming a megachurch pastor. I had four books published. I had DVD series and Bible studies that were out there. I was still traveling full time and speaking, and I loved it.

John Dehlin [01:51:07] And to be fair, not to be cynical, it Saved your life 100%. Pulled you out of the gutter, right?

Todd Phillips [01:51:14] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:51:15] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:51:16] And I wouldn't change that. I mean, I'm in a different place today, but I wouldn't change what happened to me at the age of 23. Three. Absolutely not.

John Dehlin [01:51:24] Yeah. Yeah. Or the good you did with the nonprofit and in people's lives. Right.

Todd Phillips [01:51:29] Yeah. You know, I still have people that email me now that I'm on social media, that I get emails and messages and DMS and stuff, you know, from people that are heartbroken. You know, the pastor that quote, unquote, saved them. You know, I got saved at Frontline. They'll say, and I'm still a lover of Jesus because of what you said in that. I still have that sermon on a dvd. Like. Right. They're completely devastated. And I get that. And that hurts my heart, honestly. I mean, it really. It's a painful thing to go through, but I have to be true to myself and my own journey.

John Dehlin [01:51:59] Sure. Well, this is a natural place to wrap up part one of your story. I've loved every second of this. This is like I'm 22 plus, hundred episodes into Mormon stories, over 4,000 hours of interviews, and I'm loving every minute of this interview.

Todd Phillips [01:52:15] Oh, thanks. Well, that means a lot to me. Yeah, no, I appreciate the invitation more than, you know.

John Dehlin [01:52:21] So really quickly, don't go away. We're going to go ahead and end today's episode, but just to give a couple final plugs, the TikTok and the Instagram, and I assume Facebook and YouTube are rtodphillips. That's the social media handles. He's also known as the deconstructed pastor. How do people support you in your mission now if they want to support you financially?

Todd Phillips [01:52:49] Yeah. So there's a couple different ways. They can go to any of my social media channels and have a link directly to a community. One of the things that I started recently was a deconstruction community primarily for evangelical Christians.

John Dehlin [01:53:03] What's it called?

Todd Phillips [01:53:05] It's called decon recon.

John Dehlin [01:53:07] Okay.

Todd Phillips [01:53:07] So deconstruction and reconstruction. And it's really a safe place for people to. To ask these questions. What I was seeing was thousands of people coming into the comment section and being bold enough to share their own questions and then being just lambasted by religious people or whatever. And I thought, you know, this is. I wish I would have had a space where I could go and get encouragement and support. And there's a paywall behind it. Like they. What I would say if people want to support, they can. They can message me at the email that you provide them in the description or wherever that would be.

John Dehlin [01:53:41] What's your email?

Todd Phillips [01:53:42] It's just toddhphillipsmail.com they can send it to my personal one. That would be preferable. And if they want to support me and discuss different ways, we have scholarship programs for people that are trying to join that don't have the financial ability to do so.

John Dehlin [01:53:55] Nice.

Todd Phillips [01:53:56] So there's lots of different ways they can help.

John Dehlin [01:53:57] All right, well, don't go away because we're going to stay under two hours so that this can be translated audibly to all the languages on the planet. But we're committed to long form. So thanks for joining us. For part one. Come right back for part two. We're going to slow Dr. Todd Phillips, deconstruction as a megachurch pastor, or as a former megachurch pastor at this point, but as a nonprofit Christian nonprofit leader. We're going to talk about how the threads ended up being pulled and unraveling his orthodox Christian beliefs, fundamentalist Christian beliefs. And then we're going to talk about what deconstruction was like for him.

John Dehlin [01:54:37] Was it fun? Was it a joyride? Was it tragic and difficult and tedious and painful and excruciating. And so we're going to talk about that and what it was like having influenced so many people and having been so visible, to go through that deconstruction. And then maybe a low point that he hit in that process and then what reconstruction has meant to him.

John Dehlin [01:55:03] And then we're going to talk about all the other people leaving organized religion or fundamentalist or high demand or orthodox religions, and his decision to pivot to be a social media influencer in the deconstruction and reconstruction space. And we'll talk about that. And also I'd love to get, Todd, your views on the rise of the nones, the rise of people who are no longer affiliating with any religious tradition, how the state of both mainline Christianity and of evangelical Christianity in 2026 and where we're going as a country and as a world, as you know, are things becoming more secular? Are we retrenching in the faith in 2026?

John Dehlin [01:55:51] And what's the new promised land? For those of us who aren't in orthodox religions anymore, or for those of us who aren't orthodox believers, where's the promised land? How do we find something that's better as good or better as a framework for living than orthodox religion? You ready for part two?

Todd Phillips [01:56:14] Oh, I'm excited about part two. It's gonna be good.

John Dehlin [01:56:17] All right, well, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Please check out Dr. Todd Phillips, RTODPhillips and if you value this content and you want to see continue. If you like what we do, you can go to mormonstories.org donate and become a monthly donor. We can only do this because of the generous donations. If you are a donor, thank you for making all of this possible. Again, we're not anti belief, we're not anti Christian. The goal is not to make you deconstruct belief in God or Jesus. We're literally just experiencing the world along right side with you and trying to help everybody on their journey, wherever they are.

John Dehlin [01:56:54] But in no sense is it our agenda to take away your belief in God or in Jesus or in whatever you believe in. And that's not what we're about, but we are in helping everyone find a happy, healthy, meaningful life in or out of faith. Agreed?

Todd Phillips [01:57:08] Agreed. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:57:10] All right, so thanks for joining us. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Come right back for part two of my interview with Dr. Todd Phillips. Thanks, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.