This episode is sponsored by the Good Book Company, publisher of Future Proof by Steven McAlpine.

Steven McAlpine is an Australian writer and speaker who specializes in cultural engagement

and the church. In his new book Future Proof, coming February 2024, Steven encourages readers

that we have been given everything we need in Christ to thrive in a post-Christian cultural landscape.

Visit thegoodbook.com slash post-podcast to find this book and other resources that will help you

engage with the culture in a thoughtful and biblical way and use code post at checkout to receive

25% off. That's the Good Book.com slash post podcast.

Welcome to the Gospel Coalition podcast. In 2021, the Gospel Coalition released a short form video

series called TGC Talks. In these videos, Christian thought leaders help us think

biblically and timely about important cultural issues. And now we're bringing these talks to you

right here on TGC podcast. On today's episode, you'll hear from Sam Albury, as he addresses the

reasons Christian pastors have become less trustworthy in society and how they might become trusted again.

A few years ago, I was invited to a fancy dress party and lacking imagination and resourcefulness,

but being an ordained Anglican clergyman, I decided to take my Anglican robes and to use those

as a costume. Now the party was outdoors and we had to walk through a public park to get there.

And as I was walking through this park wearing my robes, I noticed a mother with a couple of kids.

And as she saw me, she grabbed her kids and pulled them away from my direction with a look of kind

of horror in her face. And it made me realize that actually what I was wearing to a previous

few generations would have been very familiar and reassuring. But evidently at the time I was

wearing them, I just looked very peculiar, very weird and a bit of a threat.

And it then struck me that actually that is probably true of the office of being a pastor in general.

In days gone, pastors were seen as kind of being respectable members of the community,

...