This is the Faith Debate, a theological roundtable gab fest, a free-for-all forum with faith community leaders wrestling over the truth. Hoorah! In less than one half hour, learn more about what really matters than what most others learn in a week. Hoorah! The Faith Debate is on the World Wide Web at WFMD.com, keyword faith. Are you ready for the clash of ideas? Are you ready for the sound of freedom? Let's get ready to rumble in this corner, weighing in with a master of divinity from Reform Theological Seminary, the Faith Debate Master of Ceremonies, Troy Skinner. On today's episode of the Faith Debate, me, Troy Skinner, I'm going to tell you a story. And I can't recall if I've told this story before. I don't think I have. I think maybe I've told it in bits and pieces. I don't think I've ever told the whole story kind of from start to finish. The story of the faith debate. It's 15 years ago, 15 years ago, basically right now that the faith debate was birthed. So going back to the beginning, I first moved to Frederick back in 2001. And it was in late 2001, October actually of 2001, when I began working for WFMD and sister station WFRE. And my capacity, by the way, was as a salesperson selling advertising for the stations. And probably six months or so into me working for the station, thereabouts, probably a handful of months, I ran into a gentleman named Jonathan Switzer. who was pastoring a new church, a church plant called, at the time, Crossroads Valley Chapel. And they were gonna have a marriage conference, a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, weekend long kind of marriage conference for the people in his church and people that the church was connected to. And they thought it would be a good opportunity to invite people from the broader community to come and have marriages strengthened as well. And so they wanted to advertise it. And so Jonathan and I had lunch. We talked about it. They had a little bit of money to spend. I put together an advertising campaign for them. They had their marriage seminar and a friendship was born. John, as it turns out, lives just like, I don't know, a mile from my house, if that. I'm not sure. It's within walking distance for sure. And he was having at the time a men's group meeting at his house on Wednesday evenings. And so I was invited. And so I attended. And we started having these conversations during the men's group that would start at seven o'clock. And I think we were scheduled to end around eight thirty, nine o'clock, something like that. and everybody would leave by nine, and then John and I would continue to talk, and we would wrestle over theological questions, deep, deep theological questions, getting in the weeds, splitting hairs, raging over the debates that have been within the church over 2,000 years. like we were going to solve all of those, but we did it respectfully. John and I were coming at things from a different place, but he was always, well, from a different perspective, let's put it that way, but from the same place, he was rooting his arguments in the scripture and I was at least attempting to root my arguments in the scripture. And so it really was an exercise of iron sharpening iron, and we would go on for hours. And there were times when it was midnight, one o'clock, two o'clock. Again, we started meeting at seven, everybody else left at nine, and we would continue on for two, three, four, five hours. There were several times when my wife would call two o'clock in the morning, are you ever coming home? And we just, it was such a delight to have those kinds of conversations. I've had some conversations like that with some other people, but never as regularly and never as spirited, but respectful like I was able to have with John. And so Jonathan and I kind of would joke, boy, because he knew I worked in radio and he knew that I used to be on the radio before I got into the sales part of the business. And we would joke, boy, wouldn't it be fun to do what we're doing right now in your living room on the radio someday, hash these things out, even invite other people onto the show to hash these things out with us. And at the time there was a cable show. I don't think it exists anymore. If it does, I haven't seen it in years, but it was called Faith in the Community, I believe. I think that's what it's called. Darn it, I used to know the name of that show. Anyway... I think that's what it's called. It was a panel discussion shows on television, a cable show. And at the time, the then chaplain of the hospital in town would host the show. So he would host it every week. And he had a rotating cast of characters. It was always him plus four guests. And those four guests were usually one of the same, I don't know, six to 10 people that kind of rotated the same general crew, but it wasn't the exact same panel week after week. Actually, a friend of the program, friend of the radio station, friend of mine, Paul Bundy, former pastor here in town, he was on that panel. He's been a guest on this show a handful of times over the years as well. He was on that panel all the time. But one of the things that frustrated me and John about that show was their guests would include a Roman Catholic. Let's say a particular panel might include a Roman Catholic, a Protestant, a Muslim, and a Jew. And they all agreed. about everything, all the time. That's not possible. There's a reason that a Jew is a Jew and not a Christian, or that a Christian is a Christian and not a Muslim, and so forth. I mean, there are important things about which we disagree, and we should give ourselves permission, it seems to me, and it seemed to Jonathan Schweitzer. to give ourselves permission to honestly grapple with those areas over which we disagree, but again to do so with a spirit of gentleness and politeness as much as absolutely possible. So That was part of a motivation for us, not just joking about doing the show on the radio, but actually giving it more serious thought about doing the show. You know, there's a call for it. We want to model. What the cable show wasn't modeling, we hoped to model. That you could talk about things that are disagreeable and do it in a way that's not disagreeable. And so fast forward a couple of years, Jonathai continued to have a rapport and a growing relationship and friendship. And it was 2004. And I can't remember exactly, oh, I remember now. I was leading a workplace book study slash Bible study kind of a thing. And at first we were meeting in the building, and then the leadership of the radio station began to feel like that might be received poorly by certain people. So they said, you guys can continue to meet. Would you mind meeting somewhere other than in the building? We don't want to ruffle feathers. They weren't mean about it. I'm not trying to make anybody look bad by telling you the story. They were trying to be respectful of us who were having the meeting and everybody else who wasn't in the meeting. It's like, no worries. So we took the meeting off campus, if you will, and met in a local restaurant, a restaurant that now has been closed. It no longer exists. So that chapter of Frederick history is over. And we had a really cool time with the group that came together because it was eclectic. It wasn't – everybody wouldn't always show up every week. If everybody had, there might have been, I don't know, eight, 12 people. If everybody had showed up at the same time, I don't think we ever had more than maybe six, seven, eight at any given time show up. But there were agnostics, atheists, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Jews, Roman Catholics. It was an interesting mix, kind of an ecumenical kind of a group. But we were grappling over spiritual, religious, Bible-related questions, and it was really fun and enlightening in a lot of ways. I really enjoyed that experience. But over time, it became difficult for people to work it into their schedule. We met before work, and it became harder and harder, particularly when the weather turned bad, for people to make it. And so we started to enter into the fall season. It got into October. And the threat of winter weather was looming, and people said, I don't know if we should continue to do this through the winter. People started to fall off. And we decided to – OK, let's pick an end date, a logical place to end up this group study so that we can kind of end at a finish point and not just have it fade and disappear awkwardly. So we strategized how we would orchestrate the end and that came to an end. just as a courtesy, I went to the then general manager of WFMD and said, hey, you know that book study, Bible study thing we've been doing for a little while? He said, yeah, how's it been going? I said, actually, it's been going pretty good. But we've all decided as a group that, you know, it's that chapter is coming to an end. And so we're going to have our last meeting next week. I just wanted to, you know, I figured you might be curious to know, kind of know what your staff is up to, even though it's happening outside of school, out of school, out of work hours. And I said campus before, which made me think of school. And we're doing it off campus, but just thought you'd want to know. And he said, yeah, no, that's good. I said, it was really exciting. We did this ecumenical thing, a lot of different people, a lot of perspectives. And I think it was really good for the rapport and the team building of the building. I thought it was really good. It's too bad it had to end. He said, yeah, that is too bad. I said, yeah, it's the kind of thing that'd be fun to do on the radio someday. And to my surprise, he said, yeah, it would be. Now, I don't know if he was just guessing me to death. I've always been suspicious. He was just kind of telling me what I wanted to hear and basically guessing me to death. But he said it. And so I immediately, my ears perked up and my body posture changed and I said, do you mean it? And he kind of almost woke up from a stupor like, mean what? I said, well, you said it might be fun to do a show based around the idea of what our book study was, a variety of perspectives coming together to hash out what they believe about these things. And he said, well, yeah, no, that would be great. I said, wow, well, can I do it? And he was caught so flat-footed, he didn't know what to say. And so he said, well, you can do it, I guess, if our program director is OK with it. So I said, really? OK, well, great. So I was concerned in the back of my mind that the general manager was going to call the program director and say, hey, Troy is going to come find you here in a minute and ask you about doing a show. Tell him that there's really not room for it or something like that and push him off. I'm not saying he would have done that, but I was concerned that he might do that. So I immediately ran to our program director and said, Hey, I just got done talking to the general manager and he said, I can do a show if you're okay with it. Are you okay with it? What's he going to say? The general manager said it was okay. He doesn't want to say anything against the general manager. He says, well, I guess if the GM is okay, I'm okay. What kind of show are we talking about? So I told him, you know, this kind of ecumenical panel discussion. Obviously, I'm a Christian, unapologetic, and will defend and fight tooth and nail for what I am firmly convinced is the truth. But I wanted to show that you could have disagreements and do it honestly and openly, but still do it in a way that was winsome and becoming, and people wouldn't have to end those discussions as enemies. I wanted to model that. And I also wanted to illustrate that not everybody agrees on everything, and that might be okay. We don't have to all agree all the time on everything. And so he said, yeah, OK, well, I guess we can do that. But I guess you have to put together a panel and, you know, come up with a show open and that sort of thing. So, you know, you have to figure out how to produce it and you'd have to figure out what time slot. So I said, well, I can produce it. I have a background in that. I used to produce radio shows in a former life. I was a talk show host of a long-form show, a three-hour show, actually at one point a four-hour long show. So I said, I know how to do this at least well enough that I can fake my way through it if I have to. And I could put together a panel and get this done fast. And at the time we were running the Mormon Tabernacle Choir music for a half hour on Sunday mornings at six o'clock. And it was just filler, to be honest. The Latter-day Saint church was sending that to radio stations all across the country, and some of them would play it just as filler on Sunday mornings. We were one of those stations. And I said, you know, there's no money being made there. I'm not sure how good the ratings are for that necessarily. There's no contract for that. We're just running it as filler. Could I just have that slot? And I knew about that because I used to program a station in Syracuse where we did the same thing. We ran the Mormon show, the Mormon music for a half hour as filler. So I knew what the contract deals on that sort of thing were. So I had a little inside track on that. Some might call it the providence of God, on getting the faith debate birthed, if you will. By the way, this is the faith debate on 930 WFMD and I'm Troy Skinner giving you kind of a background history. So, can try to figure out how to tighten this story up and shorten it just a little bit so we can fit it into one episode of The Faith Debate. So I guess as the saying goes, long story short, Frank said, yeah, you can do it. And I said, great, can I do it this week? And this was like, I don't know, a Tuesday or something. Well, if you can do it that fast, I guess so. Because I wanted to act while the iron was hot. I didn't want to give anybody any chance to change their mind. So as soon as I got that OK, I called John Switzer on the phone and said, John, guess what? You know how we've been talking and almost joking about doing a radio show? That time has come, we can do it. But I'm afraid that the rug might get pulled out from under us if we don't act fast. We gotta pull together a panel and we gotta get and record now. Let's get something scheduled for this week. Who do you know that would be willing to come on? So Jonathan, he's a pastor in town, he knew a lot of people, and so he put together our first shows panel. Now, at the time, we had no idea of how the show's flow would be, and so we overbooked the show. So there was me, there was Jonathan, there was a rabbi, and there was a leader in the Muslim community, in Islam. And we only did, I think, one show. I think we were planning to do one show. We ended up doing a second because there was so much left to talk about. So we recorded two shows in the same evening and it went not as well as we would have liked. The tensions were very high. And I said, boy, this was really insightful and helpful. The dialogue was really instructive. I'm hoping maybe we can put this panel together again and do this again. And the answer I got was, no way, not happening again. So I learned from that that we have to couch things in a particular way and prepare and manage expectations going into the show. And the other thing I learned from that is that having four people trying to contribute on the show, was a little bit too many. We didn't learn that immediately. There were a couple times we had five people on the show, me, John, and three others, and that was definitely too many. And we also learned that booking the show wouldn't be as easy as we thought, and so we decided to start recording multiple shows in an evening. So that's why you've started, if you've listened to the show for any length of time, you've probably started to notice that we do panel arcs, if you will, arcs of shows where it's the same panel for three, four, five shows in a row, typically four. And the reason is we basically spend two hours recording four shows back to back to back. And that covers like a month's worth of shows, basically. So if we do four at a time, that's 13 recording sessions a year as opposed to 52. It makes it a little bit easier to pull the panel together. Also, the kinds of things that we talk about on the show, they need some air to breathe, you know? And the show is only like, I'd say it's a half hour. It's really only like 25 minutes. And we're talking about some heady stuff, and 25 minutes isn't enough. But you spread that out over a two-hour conversation, you can actually begin to get somewhere in the dialogue. And you can do it in a way that isn't quite so adversarial, where you're trying to set the other guy up so you can knock him down. You can be more relational. And so that all became part of what we were doing on the show as well. And think about it, a 25-minute show, and a couple of times we had five people on the show, that means everybody got five minutes on average to talk. And part of that is me introducing the show, introducing the guests, the theme music at the beginning and the end. We've had sponsors on the show over the years. I'd have mentioned the sponsors. So really, we had maybe 20 minutes of content divided by five voices. Everybody had four minutes. What can you say about deep theological truths in four minutes when others are trying to knock down what you're saying? You don't have time even to respond. So anyway, so that's how the show began to take shape the way that it has over the years, where now it's basically me. I've been the one constant. I've appeared on every episode of The Faith Debate. And by the way, it's been exactly 15 years 15 times 52 is 780. We've done 780 faith debate shows and we weren't even sure we would be allowed to do the first one. And once we got up and running, we weren't sure how long they'd let us do it. I felt like we were living on borrowed time for a little while, but once we got momentum and information and the ratings were good, we were the highest rated, um, half hour on WFMD on Sundays. And we were on at six o'clock in the morning. So we got moved to eight o'clock in the morning or 830. Actually, we got moved to 830. And when we got moved to 830, the ratings improved even more. And we were the highest rated a show on the entire weekend on WFMD. And so then I started to breathe a little bit easier, like they're not going to cancel us now because we've got people listening. We've got sponsors. We had as many as three sponsors at a time, at one point in time. And so we had momentum. And it's interesting how the climate has changed over the years regarding the hosts, the guests that we've had on this show. Early on, we had a hard time getting conservative guests to come on because they were a little bit suspicious. Why are you going to have all these non-conservative people who aren't teaching the truth on your show? Why would you give them a forum? And I've always felt like, you know, hey, what are you going to be afraid of? You feel like you're advocating for the truth. You know, the light will expose the darkness. The truth will become even more apparent when it's contrasted with things that aren't the truth. You know, people advocating for the truth shouldn't be worried about other people trying to have a voice in that conversation. At least that's been my position and opinion. But we got a reputation, Jonathan and I did, after a few years of doing the show, because we could only get the liberal guests to come on, or not only, but we had more success getting more liberal-minded. By liberal, I don't mean politically liberal, although sometimes that's part of it. But I'm talking about theologically liberal. liberal theologically people. We were having more success getting them to come on the show. And then, because of the faith debate, you know, we would engage them in a way that made it clear that, okay, Jonathan is a pretty conservative guy when it comes to, well, politics too, but particularly when it comes to theology, he's a pretty conservative guy theologically, and so am I. So we started to get a reputation for being conservatives. And so the liberals weren't as comfortable coming on, the liberal theologians weren't as comfortable coming on the show anymore. So then we started having a whole bunch of conservative guests. Which was fine. We started grappling with particular Christian questions about, you know, issues like baptism or the Lord's Supper or, you know, things that Christians fight about, you know, God's sovereignty and human free will, views on the end times, things like that. Things that Christians sometimes agree to disagree over. And we had those battles hashed out on the radio. And then we went through a season where we had a lot of non-Christian guests on and we became more of a comparative religions kind of a show with with Baha'i faith and Buddhists and Muslims and I mean Mormons. We never had a Jehovah's Witness guest on the show, which is interesting. We've had a very militant atheist on the show, all stripes of Christian or at least professing Christian. Pretty much every denomination of the Christian sphere has been on this show. Seventh-day Adventists, Baptists, Presbyterians, people more Orthodox, people more liberal, Lutherans, you name it, they've pretty much been on the show over the years, and it's been our privilege to have that be the case. And we went through a season where, a long season, over probably 10 years, where it was John and I on almost every show. With rare exception, John would miss a show. Then John ran for political office. He ran for a school board. And because of equal time rules when it comes to political candidates, John had to take a break from the show. So I kind of did the show by myself with a panel. And then John came back. And then John had a change in direction with his ministry, and so he had to take a, well he didn't had to, I guess he chose, sort of it was a need, take a bit of a break from the show. So there was a season when I had Jace Broadhurst on the show. He had been on the show a number of times in the past, and he served as kind of a co-host for a little while before that ended, and Jace has moved out of the area now. And so I did the show by myself again for a little while, and I use that as an opportunity to opine on some things, to share some sermon messages I've been privileged to and honored to share throughout the regions I've been invited to speak on occasion. It's always such an honor and just a thrill, really, to be able to share God's word from pulpits in the local area. So I did that. And then Jonathan most recently came back on the show, but if you've been listening regularly, you notice that John's not on all the time. He's on as he can, but he's got a whole new ministry. Crossroads Valley Chapel became Crossroads Valley Church, which became a non-entity, sadly, after a little while. And so he has moved on to his crossed bridges ministry, and that's keeping him from being able to be on the show in the same capacity as often as he once was. And so why am I telling you all of this? So that's the arc, the history of how the show came to be, what our motivations were. We wanted to be an example of how to have these dialogues. We wanted to be ambassadors for the truth. as the Bible would reveal it. We wanted to do so in a way that was friendly and gentle and kind and yet still tenacious and willing to do verbal battle over what is right and what is wrong. And I feel like we've done a pretty good job of that over the years and I hope that you agree. And so here we are on our 15th anniversary of doing the show. It's been exactly 15 years, exactly 780 shows, and I'm not entirely sure what the future holds. There's a lot of things going on in my life with ministry opportunities, and we'll have to see if this show will continue to exist. or not. My hope is that it will, but if it doesn't, then I hope that you will consider this to be a fond farewell. You'll know if I'm on the air again next week, you'll know that this was not a fond farewell. You'll know that this was just a reminiscence and a celebration of our 15 years on the air. So I want to thank you so much for listening over all this time. All the people who have sponsored this show over the years, thank you. If you want to listen to podcasts, this show or other shows recently we've had, go to WFMD.com. Keyword Faith at the drop-down menu with the show lineup gets you there. Possibly we'll be back next week. I'm hoping that I will be, but we'll see. I got to figure out these ministry directions I have going on. So if I'm back next week, I'll see you 167 and a half hours from right now. God bless.