But I think it is important in the life of a church to tell the truth when there's an opportunity to do so.

Not for the sake of destruction.

This happened in this church, we need to burn it down.

But saying like, no, this can happen in any church.

And actually, I think the way the church responded on the whole was good.

And I think there's some lessons to learn from there.

Caleb Morel is an assistant pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, and a doctoral student in historical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He's also the author of a new book with Crossway called A Light on the Hill,

the surprising story of how a local church in the nation's capital influence evangelicalism.

Caleb, thank you so much for joining me today on the Crossway podcast.

Thanks for having me, Matt.

So one of the foundational, maybe the core theme of this new book that you've written is the idea that church history,

even the history of a single local congregation, holds profound lessons for Christians living today.

And yet we live in a culture where often history is not valued.

We're kind of obsessed with the new. We're obsessed with

innovation and change and the future. And so the history can feel like an afterthought. And there are

some people who love history, love studying history, but when it comes to thinking wisely about

how to live in the world, that's often not where we would think to go.

So what is it that first got you excited and passionate and it kind of awakened this

realization for you that church history in particular holds with it so much wisdom for us living

today? Yeah, I've always loved history. Ever since I was a kid, I loved reading books about history. And the only thing I loved more than history as a kid was detective novels. I just ate up detective novels, Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, you name it. And the thing I love about history is it is kind of like detective work. You're discerning, you're turning over stones, you're learning new things. You're putting clues together to try to learn something, to try to answer questions.

Because ultimately what you're answering is, how did things get to be the way they are today?

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