You're listening to the Bible for normal people the only God ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete ends and I'm Jared bias.

Hey folks welcome to this episode of the Bible for normal people but before we get started.

Just a reminder folks you know what we have this wonderful I think 800 page commentary that Jared's written on on Jonah Jonah. No it's not 800 pages that would be that would be insane.

Yeah there as there is on Jonah you'd be surprised at how many very long commentaries are on the book of Jonah because you know what you can be so

Analy thorough and a little for chapter books you just go ahead and do that but anyway Jonah for normal people folks is out and you need to read this and buy it and give it to everybody you know.

That's right so you can just go to Amazon wherever you get books and get Jonah for normal people. I mean only if you want to respect the blood sweat and tears. Yeah put into for Jared.

Writing it I mean if you don't if you don't care about me then don't you know don't bother it's fine. He's never really written anything good before and I think he's really trying to make this work folks so if you if you would just buy this making feel good about it but yeah so it's it's part of our series.

It's part of our series so we have Genesis out we have Exodus out in now Jonah yeah and we have some other books coming out too. Right we have don't know I'm not gonna have anything I would love to don't get ahead.

But I get Jonah first. Yeah, but I think it's fun. Jonah is again one of my favorite books and I try to bring in critical scholarship and some of the understandings but also a personal spin on it because I think as you'll see in the book of Jonah itself I think it invites personal response discussion conversation argument and so I try to bring some of that in as well.

Okay, our topic today is a deep dive in the mega church and our guest is David Ferrier. Yeah David is a journalist and producer from New Zealand he co hosts armchair and dangerous monthly podcast with

that shepherd and Monica Padman about conspiracy theories he has a newsletter named web worm that you can subscribe to at webworm.co.

Not com he couldn't afford the said he couldn't afford the m dot com webworm dot com but I was really excited to have David on he's I've been just following what he does with armchair and dangerous and recognize that he started writing about mega churches and I thought it would be a really good guest to talk about some of the scandals there's been a lot of things in the news.

We often have I don't know if everybody knows this but we usually have really nerdy guests who maybe not you wouldn't equate with like pop culture right but sometimes we have people like David on.

Because there are this is in the news these are things that are coming up whether it's a hill song that new documentary on discovery plus or a next m on HBO right yeah so this is also there's an old good one to on Scientology which is also an HBO which is an amazing and they're all so connected but right exactly now those are

cultish things but also talking about the mega church which gets a little bit sort of touching but a little coltie well that they did yeah yeah excellent all right well let's get into it.

When you're a young person who is figuring out the world and you're experimenting you try to figure out who you are I could not think of a worse place to be to make you feel mentally unwell I keep questioning their motives is his motivation saving people from the eternal pits of how is his motivation to feel

really good about himself and to have a nice house and a nice car and just to see this empire he's running.

Well welcome David to the podcast it's great to have you thanks for having me yeah absolutely so we're really excited to hear about the work you've been doing on mega churches there just this is in the zeitgeist in a lot of the conversations that we've been having and so it's great to have someone who is an expert journalist who can give us some of the scoop on what's going on what you've been learning about but

before we do that maybe you can say a little of your experience with the church and Christianity before you even got into writing about mega churches yeah I guess like putting it really simply I grew up in a Christian home pretty New Zealand pretty bog standard Christianity I suppose I think we sort of it's funny my memories aren't great when I was a kid like they kind of faded like their positive memories but they're hard to access but we were sort of involved mostly in like I guess the Baptist kind of tradition.

So not too intense but also those classic kind of Christian ideas of heaven and hell and leading a moral life and a personal relationship with Jesus and that kind of thing and I was pretty into it and I ended up comically I mean I was born on Christmas day which is quite funny or I ended up living in a town in New Zealand called Bethlehem which is also quite funny.

I wish I could say I was born in Bethlehem but I moved there later in life but I ended up attending private Christian school in Bethlehem in a town called Tauranga in New Zealand and I really enjoyed it there like I really fitted in I in a large part sort of like knowing the answers to everything and I ended

up being a like a prefect at that school. So you know rewind to when I was 17, I'd you

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